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HISTORY

OF

MODERN EUROPE

1792-1878


BY

C. A. FYFFE, M.A.

Barrister-at-Law; Fellow of University College, Oxford;
Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society


POPULAR EDITION

With Maps




PREFACE.


In acceding to the Publishers' request for a re-issue of the "History of
Modern Europe," in the form of a popular edition, I feel that I am only
fulfilling what would have been the wish of the Author himself. A few
manuscript corrections and additions found in his own copy of the work have
been adopted in the present edition; in general, however, my attention in
revising each sheet for the press has been devoted to securing an accurate
reproduction of the text and notes as they appeared in the previous
editions in three volumes. I trust that in this cheaper and more portable
form the work will prove, both to the student and the general reader, even
more widely acceptable than heretofore.

HENRIETTA F. A. FYFFE.

London, November, 1895.




PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.


The object of this work is to show how the States of Europe have gained the
form and character which they possess at the present moment. The outbreak
of the Revolutionary War in 1792, terminating a period which now appears
far removed from us, and setting in motion forces which have in our own day
produced a united Germany and a united Italy, forms the natural
starting-point of a history of the present century. I have endeavoured to
tell a simple story, believing that a narrative in which facts are chosen
for their significance, and exhibited in their real connection, may be made
to convey as true an impression as a fuller history in which the writer is
not forced by the necessity of concentration to exercise the same rigour
towards himself and his materials. The second volume of the work will bring
the reader down to the year 1848: the third, down to the present time.

London, 1880.




PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION OF THE FIRST VOLUME. [1]


In revising this volume for the second edition I have occupied myself
mainly with two sources of information--the unpublished Records of the
English Foreign Office, and the published works which have during recent
years resulted from the investigation of the Archives of Vienna. The
English Records from 1792 to 1814, for access to which I have to express my
thanks to Lord Granville, form a body of first-hand authority of
extraordinary richness, compass, and interest. They include the whole
correspondence between the representatives of Great Britain at Foreign
Courts and the English Foreign Office; a certain number of private
communications between Ministers and these representatives; a quantity of
reports from consuls, agents, and "informants" of every description; and in
addition to these the military reports, often admirably vivid and full of
matter, sent by the British officers attached to the head-quarters of our
Allies in most of the campaigns from 1792 to 1814. It is impossible that
any one person should go through the whole of this material, which it took
the Diplomatic Service a quarter of a century to write. I have endeavoured
to master the correspondence from each quarter of Europe which, for the
time being, had a preponderance in political or military interest, leaving
it when its importance became obviously subordinate to that of others; and
although I have no doubt left untouched much that would repay
investigation, I trust that the narrative has gained in accuracy from a
labour which was not a light one, and that the few short extracts which
space has permitted me to throw into the notes may serve to bring the
reader nearer to events. At some future time I hope to publish a selection
from the most important documents of this period. It is strange that our
learned Societies, so appreciative of every distant and trivial chronicle
of the Middle Ages, should ignore the records of a time of such surpassing
interest, and one in which England played so great a part. No just
conception can be formed of the difference between English statesmanship
and that of the Continental Courts in integrity, truthfulness, and public
spirit, until the mass of diplomatic correspondence preserved at London has
been studied; nor, until this has been done, can anything like an adequate
biography of Pitt be written.

The second and less important group of authorities with which I have busied
myself during the work of revision comprises the works of Hüffer, Vivenot,
Beer, Helfert, and others, based on Austrian documents, along with the
Austrian documents and letters that have been published by Vivenot. The
last-named writer is himself a partizan, but the material which he has
given to the world is most valuable. The mystery in which the Austrian
Government until lately enveloped all its actions caused some of these to
be described as worse than they really were; and I believe that in the
First Edition I under-estimated the bias of Prussian and North-German
writers. Where I have seen reasons to alter any statements, I have done so
without reserve, as it appears to me childish for any one who attempts to
write history to cling to an opinion after the balance of evidence seems to
be against it. The publication of the second volume of this work has been
delayed by the revision of the first; but I hope that it will appear before
many months more. I must express my obligations to Mr. Oscar Browning, a
fellow-labourer in the same field, who not only furnished me with various
corrections, but placed his own lectures at my disposal; and to Mr. Alfred
Kingston, whose unfailing kindness and courtesy make so great a difference
to those whose work lies in the department of the Record Office which is
under his care.

London, 1883.




PREFACE TO THE SECOND VOLUME. [2]


In writing this volume I have not had the advantage of consulting the
English Foreign Office Records for a later period than the end of 1815. A
rule not found necessary at Berlin and some other foreign capitals still
closes to historical inquirers the English documents of the last seventy
years. Restrictions are no doubt necessary in the case of transactions of
recent date, but the period of seventy years is surely unnecessarily long.
Public interests could not be prejudiced, nor could individuals be even
remotely affected, by the freest examination of the papers of 1820 or 1830.

The London documents of 1814-1815 are of various degrees of interest and
importance. Those relating to the Congress of Vienna are somewhat
disappointing. Taken all together, they add less to our knowledge on the
one or two points still requiring elucidation than the recently-published
correspondence of Talleyrand with Louis XVIII. The despatches from Italy
are on the other hand of great value, proving, what I believe was not
established before, that the Secret Treaty of 1815, whereby Austria gained
a legal right to prevent any departure from absolute Government at Naples,
was communicated to the British Ministry and received its sanction. This
sanction explains the obscure and embarrassed language of Castlereagh in
1820, which in its turn gave rise to the belief in Italy that England was
more deeply committed to Austria than it actually was, and probably
occasioned the forgery of the pretended Treaty of July 27, 1813, exposed in
vol. i. of this work, p. 538, 2nd edit. [3] The papers from France and
Spain are also interesting, though not establishing any new conclusions.

While regretting that I have not been able to use the London archives later
than 1815, I believe that it is nevertheless possible, without recourse to
unpublished papers, to write the history of the succeeding thirty years
with substantial correctness. There exist in a published form, apart from
documents printed officially, masses of first-hand material of undoubtedly
authentic character, such as the great English collection known by the
somewhat misleading name of Wellington Despatches, New Series; or again,
the collection printed as an appendix to Prokesch von Osten's History of
the Greek Rebellion, or the many volumes of Gentz' Correspondence belonging
to the period about 1820, when Gentz was really at the centre of affairs.
The Metternich papers, interesting as far as they go, are a mere selection.
The omissions are glaring, and scarcely accidental. Many minor collections
bearing on particular events might be named, such as those in Guizot's
Mémoires. Frequent references will show my obligation to the German series
of historical works constituting the Leipzig Staatengeschichte, as well as
to French authors who, like Viel-Castel, have worked with original sources
of information before them. There exist in English literature singularly
few works on this period of Continental history.

A greater publicity was introduced into political affairs on the Continent
by the establishment of Parliamentary Government in France in 1815, and
even by the attempts made to introduce it in other States. In England we
have always had freedom of discussion, but the amount of information made
public by the executive in recent times has been enormously greater than it
was at the end of the last century. The only documents published at the
outbreak of the war of 1793 were, so far as I can ascertain, the well-known
letters of Chauvelin and Lord Grenville. During the twenty years' struggle
with France next to nothing was known of the diplomatic transactions
between England and the Continental Powers. But from the time of the Reform
Bill onwards the amount of information given to the public has been
constantly increasing, and the reader of Parliamentary Papers in our own
day is likely to complain of diffusiveness rather than of reticence.
Nevertheless the perusal of published papers can never be quite the same
thing as an examination of the originals; and the writer who first has
access to the English archives after 1815 will have an advantage over those
who have gone before him.

The completion of this volume has been delayed by almost every circumstance
adverse to historical study and production, including a severe
Parliamentary contest. I trust, however, that no trace of partisanship or
unrest appears in the work, which I have valued for the sake of the mental
discipline which it demanded. With quieter times the third volume will, I
trust, advance more rapidly.

LONDON, October, 1886.

NOTE.--The third volume was published in 1889.




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER I.

FRANCE AND GERMANY AT THE OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR.

Outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1792--Its immediate causes--
Declaration of Pillnitz made and withdrawn--Agitation of the Priests and
Emigrants--War Policy of the Gironde--Provocations offered to France by the
Powers--State of Central Europe in 1792--The Holy Roman Empire--Austria--
Rule of the Hapsburgs--The Reforms of Maria Theresa and Joseph II.--Policy
of Leopold II.--Government and Foreign Policy of Francis II.--Prussia--
Government of Frederick William II.--Social Condition of Prussia--Secondary
States of Germany--Ecclesiastical States--Free Cities--Knights--Weakness of
Germany

CHAPTER II.

THE WAR, DOWN TO THE TREATIES OF BASLE AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE
DIRECTORY.

French and Austrian Armies on the Flemish Frontier--Prussia enters the
War--Brunswick invades France--His Proclamation--Insurrection of Aug. 10 at
Paris--Massacres of September--Character of the War--Brunswick, checked at
Valmy, retreats--The War becomes a Crusade of France--Neighbours of
France--Custine enters Mainz--Dumouriez conquers the Austrian Netherlands--
Nice and Savoy annexed--Decree of the Convention against all Governments--
Execution of Louis XVI.--War with England, followed by war with the
Mediterranean States--Condition of England--English Parties, how affected
by the Revolution--The Gironde and the Mountain--Austria recovers the
Netherlands--The Allies invade France--La Vendée--Revolutionary System of
1793--Errors of the Allies--New French Commanders and Democratic
Army--Victories of Jourdan, Hoche, and Pichegru--Prussia withdrawing from
the War--Polish Affairs--Austria abandons the Netherlands--Treaties of
Basle--France in 1795--Insurrection of 13 Vendémiaire--Constitution of
1795--The Directory--Effect of the Revolution on the Spirit of Europe up to
1795

CHAPTER III.

ITALIAN CAMPAIGNS: TREATY OF CAMPO FORMIO.

Triple attack on Austria--Moreau, Jourdan--Bonaparte in Italy--Condition
of the Italian States--Professions and real intentions of Bonaparte and the
Directory--Battle of Montenotte--Armistice with Sardinia--Campaign in
Lombardy--Treatment of the Pope, Naples, Tuscany--Siege of Mantua--
Castiglione--Moreau and Jourdan in Germany--Their retreat--Secret Treaty
with Prussia--Negotiations with England--Cispadane Republic--Rise of the
idea of Italian Independence--Battles of Arcola and Rivoli--Peace with the
Pope at Tolentino--Venice--Preliminaries of Leoben--The French in
Venice--The French take the Ionian Islands and give Venice to
Austria--Genoa--Coup d'état of 17 Fructidor in Paris--Treaty of Campo
Formio--Victories of England at Sea--Bonaparte's project against Egypt

CHAPTER IV.

FROM THE CONGRESS OF RASTADT TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CONSULATE.

Congress of Rastadt--The Rhenish Provinces ceded--Ecclesiastical States of
Germany suppressed--French Intervention in Switzerland--Helvetic
Republic--The French invade the Papal States--Roman Republic--Expedition to
Egypt--Battle of the Nile--Coalition of 1798--Ferdinand of Naples enters
Rome--Mack's defeats--French enter Naples--Parthenopean Republic--War with
Austria and Russia--Battle of Stockach--Murder of the French Envoys at
Rastadt--Campaign in Lombardy--Reign of Terror at Naples--Austrian designs
upon Italy--Suvaroff and the Austrians--Campaign in Switzerland--Campaign
in Holland--Bonaparte returns from Egypt--Coup d'état of 18 Brumaire--
Constitution of 1799--System of Bonaparte in France--Its effect on the
influence of France abroad

CHAPTER V.

FROM MARENGO TO THE RUPTURE OF THE PEACE OF AMIENS.

Overtures of Bonaparte to Austria and England--The War continues--Massena
besieged in Genoa--Moreau invades Southern Germany--Bonaparte crosses the
St. Bernard, and descends in the rear of the Austrians--Battle of
Marengo--Austrians retire behind the Mincio--Treaty between England and
Austria--Austria continues the War--Battle of Hohenlinden--Peace of
Lunéville--War between England and the Northern Maritime League--Battle
of Copenhagen--Murder of Paul--End of the Maritime War--English Army
enters Egypt--French defeated at Alexandria--They capitulate at Cairo and
Alexandria--Preliminaries of Peace between England and France signed at
London, followed by Peace of Amiens--Pitt's Irish Policy and his
retirement--Debates on the Peace--Aggressions of Bonaparte during the
Continental Peace--Holland, Italy, Switzerland--Settlement of Germany
under French and Russian influence--Suppression of Ecclesiastical States
and Free Cities--Its effects--Stein--France under the Consulate--The
Civil Code--The Concordat

CHAPTER VI.

THE EMPIRE, TO THE PEACE OF PRESBURG.

England claims Malta--War renewed--Bonaparte occupies Hanover, and
blockades the Elbe--Remonstrances of Prussia--Cadoudal's Plot--Murder
of the Duke of Enghien--Napoleon Emperor--Coalition of 1805--Prussia
holds aloof--State of Austria--Failure of Napoleon's Attempt to gain
Naval Superiority in the Channel--Campaign in Western Germany--
Capitulation of Ulm--Trafalgar--Treaty of Potsdam between Prussia and
the Allies--The French enter Vienna--Haugwitz sent to Napoleon with
Prussian Ultimatum--Battle of Austerlitz--Haugwitz signs a Treaty of
Alliance with Napoleon--Peace--Treaty of Presburg--End of the Holy
Roman Empire--Naples given to Joseph Bonaparte--Battle of Maida--The
Napoleonic Empire and Dynasty--Federation of the Rhine--State of
Germany--Possibility of maintaining the Empire of 1806

CHAPTER VII.

DEATH OF PITT, TO THE PEACE OF TILSIT.

Death of Pitt--Ministry of Fox and Grenville--Napoleon forces Prussia into
war with England, and then offers Hanover to England--Prussia resolves on
war with Napoleon--State of Prussia--Decline of the Army--Southern Germany
with Napoleon--Austria neutral--England and Russia about to help Prussia,
but not immediately--Campaign of 1806--Battles of Jena and Auerstädt--Ruin
of the Prussian Army--Capitulation of Fortresses--Demands of Napoleon--The
War continues--Berlin Decree--Exclusion of English goods from the
Continent--Russia enters the war--Campaign in Poland and East
Prussia--Eylau--Treaty of Bartenstein--Friedland--Interview at
Tilsit--Alliance of Napoleon and Alexander--Secret Articles--English
expedition to Denmark--The French enter Portugal--Prussia after the Peace
of Tilsit--Stein's Edict of Emancipation--The Prussian Peasant--Reform of
the Prussian Army, and creation of Municipalities--Stein's other projects
of Reform, which are not carried out

CHAPTER VIII.

SPAIN, TO THE FALL OF SARAGOSSA.

Spain in 1806--Napoleon uses the quarrel between Ferdinand and Godoy--He
affects to be Ferdinand's Protector--Dupont's Army enters Spain--Murat in
Spain--Charles abdicates--Ferdinand King--Savary brings Ferdinand to
Bayonne--Napoleon makes both Charles and Ferdinand resign--Spirit of the
Spanish Nation--Contrast with Germany--Rising of all Spain--The Notables
at Bayonne--Campaign of 1808--Capitulation of Baylen--Wellesley lands in
Portugal--Vimieiro--Convention of Cintra--Effect of the Spanish Rising on
Europe--War Party in Prussia--Napoleon and Alexander at Erfurt--Stein
resigns, and is proscribed--Napoleon in Spain--Spanish Misgovernment--
Campaign on the Ebro--Campaign of Sir John Moore--Corunna--Napoleon
leaves Spain--Siege of Saragossa--Successes of the French

CHAPTER IX.

WAR OF 1809: THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE--SPAIN, TO THE BATTLE OF SALAMANCA.

Austria preparing for war--The war to be one on behalf of the German
Nation--Patriotic movement in Prussia--Expected Insurrection in North
Germany--Plans of Campaign--Austrian Manifesto to the Germans--Rising of
the Tyrolese--Defeats of the Archduke Charles in Bavaria--French in
Vienna--Attempts of Dörnberg and Schill--Battle of Aspern--Second passage
of the Danube--Battle of Wagram--Armistice of Znaim--Austria waiting for
Events--Wellesley in Spain--He gains the Battle of Talavera, but
retreats--Expedition against Antwerp fails--Austria makes Peace--Treaty of
Vienna--Real Effects of the War of 1809--Austria after 1809--Metternich--
Marriage of Napoleon with Marie Louise--Severance of Napoleon and
Alexander--Napoleon annexes the Papal States, Holland, Le Valais, and the
North German Coast--The Napoleonic Empire: its benefits and wrongs--The
Czar withdraws from Napoleon's Commercial System--War with Russia
imminent--Wellington in Portugal; Lines of Torres Vedras; Massena's
Campaign of 1810, and retreat--Soult in Andalusia--Wellington's Campaign
of 1811--Capture of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz--Salamanca

CHAPTER X.

RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN, TO THE TREATY OF KALISCH.

War approaching between France and Russia--Policy of Prussia--Hardenberg's
Ministry--Prussia forced into Alliance with Napoleon--Austrian Alliance--
Napoleon's Preparations--He enters Russia--Alexander and Bernadotte--Plan
of Russians to fight a battle at Drissa frustrated--They retreat on
Witepsk--Sufferings of the French--French enter Smolensko--Battle of
Borodino--Evacuation of Moscow--Moscow fired--The Retreat from Moscow--
French at Smolensko--Advance of Russian Armies from North and South--Battle
of Krasnoi--Passage of the Beresina--The French reach the Niemen--York's
Convention with the Russians--The Czar and Stein--Russian Army enters
Prussia--Stein raises East Prussia--Treaty of Kalisch--Prussia declares
War--Enthusiasm of the Nation--Idea of German Unity--The Landwehr

CHAPTER XI.

WAR OF LIBERATION, TO THE PEACE OF PARIS.

The War of Liberation--Blücher crosses the Elbe--Battle of Lützen--The
Allies retreat to Silesia--Battle of Bautzen--Armistice--Napoleon intends
to intimidate Austria--Mistaken as to the Forces of Austria--Metternich's
Policy--Treaty of Reichenbach--Austria offers its Mediation--Congress of
Prague--Austria enters the War--Armies and Plans of Napoleon and the
Allies--Campaign of August--Battles of Dresden, Grosbeeren, the Katzbach,
and Kulm--Effect of these Actions--Battle of Dennewitz--German Policy of
Austria favourable to the Princes of the Rhenish Confederacy--Frustrated
hopes of German Unity--Battle of Leipzig--The Allies reach the Rhine--
Offers of Peace at Frankfort--Plan of Invasion of France--Backwardness of
Austria--The Allies enter France--Campaign of 1814--Congress of
Châtillon--Napoleon moves to the rear of the Allies--The Allies advance
on Paris--Capitulation of Paris--Entry of the Allies--Dethronement of
Napoleon--Restoration of the Bourbons--The Charta--Treaty of Paris--
Territorial effects of the War, 1792-1814--Every Power except France had
gained--France relatively weaker in Europe--Summary of the permanent
effects of this period on Europe

END OF VOL. I. (ORIGINAL EDITION).


CHAPTER XII.

THE RESTORATION.

The Restoration of 1814--Norway--Naples--Westphalia--Spain--The Spanish
Constitution overthrown: victory of the clergy--Restoration in France--The
Charta--Encroachments of the nobles and clergy--Growing hostility to the
Bourbons--Congress of Vienna--Talleyrand and the Four Powers--The Polish
question--The Saxon question--Theory of Legitimacy--Secret alliance
against Russia and Prussia--Compromise--The Rhenish Provinces--Napoleon
leaves Elba and lands in France--His declarations--Napoleon at Grenoble,
at Lyons, at Paris--The Congress of Vienna unites Europe against
France--Murat's action in Italy--The Acte Additionnel--The Champ de
Mai--Napoleon takes up the offensive--Battles of Ligny, Quatre Bras,
Waterloo--Affairs at Paris--Napoleon sent to St. Helena--Wellington and
Fouché--Arguments on the proposed cession of French territory--Treaty of
Holy Alliance--Second Treaty of Paris--Conclusion of the work of the
Congress of Vienna--Federation of Germany--Estimate of the Congress of
Vienna and of the Treaties of 1815--The Slave Trade

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PROGRESS OF REACTION.

Concert of Europe after 1815--Spirit of the Foreign Policy of Alexander, of
Metternich, and of the English Ministry--Metternich's action in Italy,
England's in Sicily and Spain--The Reaction in France--Richelieu and the
New Chamber--Execution of Ney--Imprisonments and persecutions--Conduct of
the Ultra-Royalists in Parliament--Contests on the Electoral Bill and the
Budget--The Chamber prorogued--Affair of Grenoble--Dissolution of the
Chamber--Electoral Law and Financial Settlement of 1817--Character of the
first years of peace in Europe generally--Promise of a Constitution in
Prussia--Hardenberg opposed by the partisans of autocracy and
privilege--Schmalz' Pamphlet--Delay of Constitutional Reform in Germany at
large--The Wartburg Festival--Progress of Reaction--The Czar now inclines
to repression--Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle--Evacuation of France--Growing
influence of Metternich in Europe--His action on Prussia--Murder of
Kotzebue--The Carlsbad Conference and measures of repression in
Germany--Richelieu and Decazes--Murder of the Duke of Berry--Progress of
the reaction in France--General causes of the victory of reaction in Europe

CHAPTER XIV.

THE MEDITERRANEAN MOVEMENTS OF 1820.

Movements in the Mediterranean States beginning in 1820--Spain from
1814 to 1820--The South American Colonies--The Army at Cadiz: Action
of Quiroga and Riego--Movement at Corunna--Ferdinand accepts the
Constitution of 1812--Naples from 1815 to 1820--The Court-party, the
Muratists, the Carbonari--The Spanish Constitution proclaimed at
Naples--Constitutional movement in Portugal--Alexander's proposal with
regard to Spain--The Conference and Declaration of Troppau--Protest of
England--Conference of Laibach--The Austrians invade Naples and restore
absolute Monarchy--Insurrection in Piedmont, which fails--Spain from
1820 to 1822--Death of Castlereagh--The Congress of Verona--Policy of
England--The French invade Spain--Restoration of absolute Monarchy, and
violence of the reaction--England prohibits the conquest of the Spanish
Colonies by France, and subsequently recognises their independence--
Affairs in Portugal--Canning sends troops to Lisbon--The Policy of
Canning--Estimate of his place in the history of Europe

CHAPTER XV.

GREECE AND EASTERN AFFAIRS.

Condition of Greece: its Races and Institutions--The Greek Church
--Communal System--The Ægæan Islands--The Phanariots--Greek intellectual
revival: Koraes--Beginning of Greek National Movement; Contact of Greece
with the French Revolution and Napoleon--The Hetæria Philike--Hypsilanti's
Attempt in the Danubian Provinces: its failure--Revolt of the Morea:
Massacres: Execution of Gregorius, and Terrorism at Constantinople
--Attitude of Russia, Austria, and England--Extension of the Revolt:
Affairs at Hydra--The Greek Leaders--Fall of Tripolitza--The Massacre of
Chios--Failure of the Turks in the Campaign of 1822--Dissensions of the
Greeks--Mahmud calls upon Mehemet Ali for Aid--Ibrahim conquers Crete and
invades the Morea--Siege of Missolonghi--Philhellenism in Europe--Russian
proposal for Intervention--Conspiracies in Russia: Death of Alexander:
Accession of Nicholas--Military Insurrection at St. Petersburg--
Anglo-Russian Protocol--Treaty between England, Russia, and France--Death
of Canning--Navarino--War between Russia and Turkey--Campaigns of 1828 and
1829--Treaty of Adrianople--Capodistrias President of Greece--Leopold
accepts and then declines the Greek Crown--Murder of Capodistrias--Otho,
King of Greece

CHAPTER XVI.

THE MOVEMENTS OF 1830.

France before 1830--Reign of Charles X.--Ministry of Martignac--Ministry
of Polignac--The Duke of Orleans--War in Algiers--The July Ordinances--
Revolution of July--Louis Philippe King--Nature and effects of the July
Revolution--Affairs in Belgium--The Belgian Revolution--The Great
Powers--Intervention, and establishment of the Kingdom of Belgium--Affairs
of Poland--Insurrection at Warsaw--War between Russia and Poland--Overthrow
of the Poles: End of the Polish Constitution--Affairs of Italy--
Insurrection in the Papal States--France and Austria--Austrian
Intervention--Ancona occupied by the French--Affairs of Germany--Prussia;
the Zollverein--Brunswick, Hanover, Saxony--The Palatinate--Reaction in
Germany--The exiles in Switzerland: Incursion into Savoy--Dispersion of the
Exiles--France under Louis Philippe: Successive risings--Period of
Parliamentary activity--England after 1830: The Reform Bill

CHAPTER XVII.

SPANISH AND EASTERN AFFAIRS.

France and England after 1830--Affairs of Portugal--Don Miguel--Don Pedro
invades Portugal--Ferdinand of Spain--The Pragmatic Sanction--Death of
Ferdinand: Regency of Christina--The Constitution--Quadruple
Alliance--Miguel and Carlos expelled from Portugal--Carlos enters
Spain--The Basque Provinces--Carlist War: Zumalacarregui--The Spanish
Government seeks French assistance, which is refused--Constitution of
1837--End of the War--Regency of Espartero--Isabella Queen--Affairs of
the Ottoman Empire--Ibrahim invades Syria; his victories--Rivalry of
France and Russia at Constantinople--Peace of Kutaya and Treaty of Unkiar
Skelessi--Effect of this Treaty--France and Mehemet Ali--Commerce of the
Levant--Second War between Mehemet and the Porte--Ottoman disasters--The
Policy of the Great Powers--Quadruple Treaty without France--Ibrahim
expelled from Syria--Final Settlement--Turkey after 1840--Attempted
reforms of Reschid Pasha

CHAPTER XVIII.

EUROPE BEFORE 1848.

Europe during the Thirty-years' Peace--Italy and Austria--Mazzini--The
House of Savoy--Gioberti--Election of Pius IX.--Reforms expected--
Revolution at Palermo--Agitation in Northern Italy--Lombardy--State of
the Austrian Empire--Growth of Hungarian national spirit--The Magyars
and Slavs--Transylvania--Parties among the Magyars--Kossuth--The Slavic
national movements in Austria--The government enters on reforms in
Hungary--Policy of the Opposition--The Rural system of Austria--
Insurrection in Galicia: the nobles and the peasants--Agrarian
edict--Public opinion in Vienna--Prussia--Accession and character of
King Frederick William IV.--Convocation of the United Diet--Its
debates and dissolution--France--The Spanish Marriages--Reform
movement--Socialism--Revolution of February--End of the Orleanist
Monarchy

END OF VOL. II. (ORIGINAL EDITION).


CHAPTER XIX.

THE MARCH REVOLUTION, 1848.

Europe in 1789 and in 1848--Agitation in Western Germany before and
after the Revolution at Paris--Austria and Hungary--The March Revolution
at Vienna--Flight of Metternich--The Hungarian Diet--Hungary wins its
independence--Bohemian movement--Autonomy promised to Bohemia--
Insurrection of Lombardy--Of Venice--Piedmont makes war on Austria--A
general Italian war against Austria imminent--The March Days at
Berlin--Frederick William IV.--A National Assembly promised--
Schleswig-Holstein--Insurrection in Holstein--War between Germany and
Denmark--The German Ante-Parliament--Republican Rising in Baden--Meeting
of the German National Assembly at Frankfort--Europe generally in March,
1848--The French Provisional Government--The National Workshops--The
Government and the Red Republicans--French National Assembly--Riot of
May 15--Measures against the National Workshops--The Four Days of
June--Cavaignac--Louis Napoleon--He is elected to the Assembly--Elected
President

CHAPTER XX.

THE PERIOD OF CONFLICT, DOWN TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SECOND FRENCH
EMPIRE.

Austria and Italy--Vienna from March to May--Flight of the Emperor
--Bohemian National Movement--Windischgrätz subdues Prague--Campaign around
Verona--Papal Allocution--Naples in May--Negotiations as to Lombardy--
Reconquest of Venetia--Battle of Custozza--The Austrians enter
Milan--Austrian Court and Hungary--The Serbs in Southern Hungary--Serb
Congress at Carlowitz--Jellacic--Affairs of Croatia--Jellacic, the Court
and the Hungarian Movement--Murder of Lamberg--Manifesto of October 3--
Vienna on October 6--The Emperor at Olmütz--Windischgrätz conquers
Vienna--The Parliament at Kremsier--Schwarzenberg Minister--Ferdinand
abdicates--Dissolution of the Kremsier Parliament--Unitary Edict--Hungary
--The Roumanians in Transylvania--The Austrian Army occupies Pesth--
Hungarian Government at Debreczin--The Austrians driven out of
Hungary--Declaration of Hungarian Independence--Russian Intervention--The
Hungarian Summer Campaign--Capitulation of Vilagos--Italy--Murder of
Rossi--Tuscany--The March Campaign in Lombardy--Novara--Abdication of
Charles Albert--Victor Emmanuel--Restoration in Tuscany--French
Intervention in Rome--Defeat of Oudinot--Oudinot and Lesseps--The French
enter Rome--The Restored Pontifical Government--Fall of Venice--Ferdinand
reconquers Sicily--Germany--The National Assembly at Frankfort--The
Armistice of Malmö--Berlin from April to September--The Prussian Army--Last
Days of the Prussian Parliament--Prussian Constitution granted by
Edict--The German National Assembly and Austria--Frederick William IV.
elected Emperor--He refuses the Crown--End of the National Assembly--
Prussia attempts to form a separate Union--The Union Parliament at
Erfurt--Action of Austria--Hesse-Cassel--The Diet of Frankfort
restored--Olmütz--Schleswig-Holstein--Germany after 1849--Austria after
1851--France after 1848--Louis Napoleon--The October Message--Law Limiting
the Franchise--Louis Napoleon and the Army--Proposed Revision of the
Constitution--The Coup d'Etat--Napoleon III. Emperor

CHAPTER XXI.

THE CRIMEAN WAR.

England and France in 1851--Russia under Nicholas--The Hungarian
Refugees--Dispute between France and Russia on the Holy Places--Nicholas
and the British Ambassador--Lord Stratford de Redcliffe--Menschikoff's
Mission--Russian troops enter the Danubian Principalities--Lord Aberdeen's
Cabinet--Movements of the Fleets--The Vienna Note--The Fleets pass the
Dardanelles--Turkish Squadron destroyed at Sinope--Declaration of
War--Policy of Austria--Policy of Prussia--The Western Powers and the
European Concert--Siege of Silistria--The Principalities evacuated--
Further objects of the Western Powers--Invasion of the Crimea--Battle of
the Alma--The Flank March--Balaclava--Inkermann--Winter in the
Crimea--Death of Nicholas--Conference of Vienna--Austria--Progress of the
Siege--Plans of Napoleon III.--Canrobert and Pélissier--Unsuccessful
Assault--Battle of the Tchernaya--Capture of the Malakoff--Fall of
Sebastopol--Fall of Kars--Negotiations for Peace--The Conference of
Paris--Treaty of Paris--The Danubian Principalities--Continued discord in
the Ottoman Empire--Revision of the Treaty of Paris in 1871

CHAPTER XXII.

THE CREATION OF THE ITALIAN KINGDOM.

Piedmont after 1849--Ministry of Azeglio--Cavour Prime Minister--Designs
of Cavour--His Crimean Policy--Cavour at the Conference of Paris--Cavour
and Napoleon III.--The Meeting at Plombières--Preparations in Italy--Treaty
of January, 1859--Attempts at Mediation--Austrian Ultimatum--Campaign of
1859--Magenta--Movement in Central Italy--Solferino--Napoleon and
Prussia--Interview of Villafranca--Cavour resigns--Peace of Zürich--Central
Italy after Villafranca--The Proposed Congress--"The Pope and the
Congress"--Cavour resumes office--Cavour and Napoleon--Union of the Duchies
and the Romagna with Piedmont--Savoy and Nice added to France--Cavour on
this cession--European opinion--Naples--Sicily--Garibaldi lands at
Marsala--Capture of Palermo--The Neapolitans evacuate Sicily--Cavour and
the Party of Action--Cavour's Policy as to Naples--Garibaldi on the
mainland--Persano and Villamarina at Naples--Garibaldi at Naples--The
Piedmontese Army enters Umbria and the Marches--Fall of Ancona--Garibaldi
and Cavour--The Armies on the Volturno--Fall of Gaeta--Cavour's Policy
with regard to Rome and Venice--Death of Cavour--The Free Church in the
Free State

CHAPTER XXIII.

GERMAN ASCENDENCY WON BY PRUSSIA.

Germany after 1858--The Regency in Prussia--Army-reorganisation--King
William I.--Conflict between the Crown and the Parliament--Bismarck--The
struggle continued--Austria from 1859--The October Diploma--Resistance of
Hungary--The Reichsrath--Russia under Alexander II.--Liberation of the
Serfs--Poland--The Insurrection of 1863--Agrarian measures in Poland--
Schleswig-Holstein--Death of Frederick VII.--Plans of Bismarck--Campaign
in Schleswig--Conference of London--Treaty of Vienna--England and Napoleon
III.--Prussia and Austria--Convention of Gastein--Italy--Alliance of
Prussia with Italy--Proposals for a Congress fail--War between Austria and
Prussia--Napoleon III.--Königgrätz--Custozza--Mediation of Napoleon
--Treaty of Prague--South Germany--Projects for compensation to
France--Austria and Hungary--Deák--Establishment of the Dual System in
Austria-Hungary

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY.

Napoleon III.--The Mexican Expedition--Withdrawal of the French and death
of Maximilian--The Luxemburg Question--Exasperation in France against
Prussia--Austria--Italy--Mentana--Germany after 1866--The Spanish
Candidature of Leopold of Hohenzollern--French declaration--Benedetti and
King William--Withdrawal of Leopold and demand for guarantees--The telegram
from Ems--War--Expected Alliances of France--Austria--Italy--Prussian
plans--The French army--Causes of French inferiority--Weissenburg--Wörth--
Spicheren--Borny--Mars-la-Tour--Gravelotte--Sedan--The Republic proclaimed
at Paris--Favre and Bismarck--Siege of Paris--Gambetta at Tours--The Army
of the Loire--Fall of Metz--Fighting at Orleans--Sortie of Champigny--The
Armies of the North, of the Loire, of the East--Bourbaki's ruin--
Capitulation of Paris and Armistice--Preliminaries of Peace--Germany--
Establishment of the German Empire--The Commune of Paris--Second Siege--
Effects of the war as to Russia and Italy--Rome

CHAPTER XXV.

EASTERN AFFAIRS.

France after 1871--Alliance of the Three Emperors--Revolt of Herzegovina--
The Andrássy Note--Murder of the Consuls at Salonika--The Berlin
Memorandum--Rejected by England--Abdul Aziz deposed--Massacres in
Bulgaria--Servia and Montenegro declare War--Opinion in England--Disraeli--
Meeting of Emperors at Reichstadt--Servian Campaign--Declaration of the
Czar--Conference at Constantinople--Its Failure--The London Protocol--
Russia declares War--Advance on the Balkans--Osman at Plevna--Second Attack
on Plevna--The Shipka Pass--Roumania--Third Attack on Plevna--Todleben--
Fall of Plevna--Passage of the Balkans--Armistice--England--The Fleet
passes the Dardanelles--Treaty of San Stefano--England and Russia--Secret
Agreement--Convention with Turkey--Congress of Berlin--Treaty of
Berlin--Bulgaria


MAPS.

EUROPEAN STATES IN 1792

CENTRAL EUROPE IN 1812




MODERN EUROPE.




CHAPTER I.


Outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1792--Its immediate causes--
Declaration of Pillnitz made and withdrawn--Agitation of the Priests and
Emigrants--War Policy of the Gironde--Provocations offered to France by
the Powers--State of Central Europe in 1792--The Holy Roman Empire--
Austria--Rule of the Hapsburgs--The Reforms of Maria Theresa and Joseph
II.--Policy of Leopold II.--Government and Foreign Policy of Francis
II.--Prussia--Government of Frederick William II.--Social condition or
Prussia--Secondary States of Germany--Ecclesiastical States--Free
Cities--Knights--Weakness of Germany


On the morning of the 19th of April, 1792, after weeks of stormy agitation
in Paris, the Ministers of Louis XVI. brought down a letter from the King
to the Legislative Assembly of France. The letter was brief but
significant. It announced that the King intended to appear in the Hall of
Assembly at noon on the following day. Though the letter did not disclose
the object of the King's visit, it was known that Louis had given way to
the pressure of his Ministry and the national cry for war, and that a
declaration of war against Austria was the measure which the King was about
to propose in person to the Assembly. On the morrow the public thronged the
hall; the Assembly broke off its debate at midday in order to be in
readiness for the King. Louis entered the hall in the midst of deep
silence, and seated himself beside the President in the chair which was now
substituted for the throne of France. At the King's bidding General
Dumouriez, Minister of Foreign Affairs, read a report to the Assembly upon
the relations of France to foreign Powers. The report contained a long
series of charges against Austria, and concluded with the recommendation of
war. When Dumouriez ceased reading Louis rose, and in a low voice declared
that he himself and the whole of the Ministry accepted the report read to
the Assembly; that he had used every effort to maintain peace, and in vain;
and that he was now come, in accordance with the terms of the Constitution,
to propose that the Assembly declare war against the Austrian Sovereign. It
was not three months since Louis himself had supplicated the Courts of
Europe for armed aid against his own subjects. The words which he now
uttered were put in his mouth by men whom he hated, but could not resist:
the very outburst of applause that followed them only proved the fatal
antagonism that existed between the nation and the King. After the
President of the Assembly had made a short answer, Louis retired from the
hall. The Assembly itself broke up, to commence its debate on the King's
proposal after an interval of some hours. When the House re-assembled in
the evening, those few courageous men who argued on grounds of national
interest and justice against the passion of the moment could scarcely
obtain a hearing. An appeal for a second day's discussion was rejected; the
debate abruptly closed; and the declaration of war was carried against
seven dissentient votes. It was a decision big with consequences for France
and for the world. From that day began the struggle between Revolutionary
France and the established order of Europe. A period opened in which almost
every State on the Continent gained some new character from the aggressions
of France, from the laws and political changes introduced by the conqueror,
or from the awakening of new forces of national life in the crisis of
successful resistance or of humiliation. It is my intention to trace the
great lines of European history from that time to the present, briefly
sketching the condition of some of the principal States at the outbreak of
the Revolutionary War, and endeavouring to distinguish, amid scenes of
ever-shifting incident, the steps by which the Europe of 1792 has become
the Europe of to-day.

[First threats of foreign Courts against France, 1791.]

The first two years of the Revolution had ended without bringing France
into collision with foreign Powers. This was not due to any goodwill that
the Courts of Europe bore to the French people, or to want of effort on the
part of the French aristocracy to raise the armies of Europe against their
own country. The National Assembly, which met in 1789, had cut at the roots
of the power of the Crown; it had deprived the nobility of their privileges,
and laid its hand upon the revenues of the Church. The brothers of King
Louis XVI., with a host of nobles too impatient to pursue a course of
steady political opposition at home, quitted France, and wearied foreign
Courts with their appeals for armed assistance. The absolute monarchs of
the Continent gave them a warm and even ostentatious welcome; but they
confined their support to words and tokens of distinction, and until the
summer of 1791 the Revolution was not seriously threatened with the
interference of the stranger. The flight of King Louis from Paris in June,
1791, followed by his capture and his strict confinement within the
Tuileries, gave rise to the first definite project of foreign intervention.
[4] Louis had fled from his capital and from the National Assembly; he
returned, the hostage of a populace already familiar with outrage and
bloodshed. For a moment the exasperation of Paris brought the Royal Family
into real jeopardy. The Emperor Leopold, brother of Marie Antoinette,
trembled for the safety of his unhappy sister, and addressed a letter to
the European Courts from Padua, on the 6th of July, proposing that the
Powers should unite to preserve the Royal Family of France from popular
violence. Six weeks later the Emperor and King Frederick William II. of
Prussia met at Pillnitz, in Saxony. A declaration was published by the two
Sovereigns, stating that they considered the position of the King of France
to be matter of European concern, and that, in the event of all the other
great Powers consenting to a joint action, they were prepared to supply an
armed force to operate on the French frontier.

[Declaration of Pillnitz withdrawn.]

Had the National Assembly instantly declared war on Leopold and Frederick
William, its action would have been justified by every rule of
international law. The Assembly did not, however, declare war, and for a
good reason. It was known at Paris that the manifesto was no more than a
device of the Emperor's to intimidate the enemies of the Royal Family.
Leopold, when he pledged himself to join a coalition of all the Powers, was
in fact aware that England would be no party to any such coalition. He was
determined to do nothing that would force him into war; and it did not
occur to him that French politicians would understand the emptiness of his
threats as well as he did himself. Yet this turned out to be the case; and
whatever indignation the manifesto of Pillnitz excited in the mass of the
French people, it was received with more derision than alarm by the men who
were cognisant of the affairs of Europe. All the politicians of the
National Assembly knew that Prussia and Austria had lately been on the
verge of war with one another upon the Eastern question; they even
underrated the effect of the French revolution in appeasing the existing
enmities of the great Powers. No important party in France regarded the
Declaration of Pillnitz as a possible reason for hostilities; and the
challenge given to France was soon publicly withdrawn. It was withdrawn
when Louis XVI., by accepting the Constitution made by the National
Assembly, placed himself, in the sight of Europe, in the position of a free
agent. On the 14th September, 1791, the King, by a solemn public oath,
identified his will with that of the nation. It was known in Paris that he
had been urged by the emigrants to refuse his assent, and to plunge the
nation into civil war by an open breach with the Assembly. The frankness
with which Louis pledged himself to the Constitution, the seeming sincerity
of his patriotism, again turned the tide of public opinion in his favour.
His flight was forgiven; the restrictions placed upon his personal liberty
were relaxed. Louis seemed to be once more reconciled with France, and
France was relieved from the ban of Europe. The Emperor announced that the
circumstances which had provoked the Declaration of Pillnitz no longer
existed, and that the Powers, though prepared to revive the League if
future occasion should arise, suspended all joint action in reference to
the internal affairs of France.

[Priests and emigrants keep France in agitation.]

The National Assembly, which, in two years, had carried France so far
towards the goal of political and social freedom, now declared its work
ended. In the mass of the nation there was little desire for further
change. The grievances which pressed most heavily upon the common course of
men's lives--unfair taxation, exclusion from public employment, monopolies
among the townspeople, and the feudal dues which consumed the produce of
the peasant--had been swept away. It was less by any general demand for
further reform than by the antagonisms already kindled in the Revolution
that France was forced into a new series of violent changes. The King
himself was not sincerely at one with the nation; in everything that most
keenly touched his conscience he had unwillingly accepted the work of the
Assembly. The Church and the noblesse were bent on undoing what had already
been done. Without interfering with doctrine or ritual, the National
Assembly had re-organised the ecclesiastical system of France, and had
enforced that supremacy of the State over the priesthood to which,
throughout the eighteenth century, the Governments of Catholic Europe had
been steadily tending. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which was
created by the National Assembly in 1790, transformed the priesthood from a
society of landowners into a body of salaried officers of the State, and
gave to the laity the election of their bishops and ministers. The change,
carried out in this extreme form, threw the whole body of bishops and a
great part of the lower clergy into revolt. Their interests were hurt by
the sale of the Church lands; their consciences were wounded by the system
of popular election, which was condemned by the Pope. In half the pulpits
of France the principles of the Revolution were anathematised, and the
vengeance of heaven denounced against the purchasers of the secularised
Church lands. Beyond the frontier the emigrant nobles, who might have
tempered the Revolution by combining with the many liberal men of their
order who remained at home, gathered in arms, and sought the help of
foreigners against a nation in which they could see nothing but rebellious
dependents of their own. The head-quarters of the emigrants were at
Coblentz in the dominions of the Elector of Trèves. They formed themselves
into regiments, numbering in all some few thousands, and occupied
themselves with extravagant schemes of vengeance against all Frenchmen who
had taken part in the destruction of the privileges of their caste.

[Legislative Assembly. Oct. 1791.]

[War policy of the Gironde.]

Had the elections which followed the dissolution of the National Assembly
sent to the Legislature a body of men bent only on maintaining the
advantages already won, it would have been no easy task to preserve the
peace of France in the presence of the secret or open hostility of the
Court, the Church, and the emigrants. But the trial was not made. The
leading spirits among the new representatives were not men of compromise.
In the Legislative Body which met in 1791 there were all the passions of
the Assembly of 1789, without any of the experience which that Assembly had
gained. A decree, memorable among the achievements of political folly, had
prohibited members of the late Chamber from seeking re-election. The new
Legislature was composed of men whose political creed had been drawn almost
wholly from literary sources; the most dangerous theorists of the former
Assembly were released from Parliamentary restraints, and installed, like
Robespierre, as the orators of the clubs. Within the Chamber itself the
defenders of the Monarchy and of the Constitution which had just been given
to France were far outmatched by the party of advance. The most conspicuous
of the new deputies formed the group named after the district of the
Gironde, where several of their leaders had been elected. The orator
Vergniaud, pre-eminent among companions of singular eloquence, the
philosopher Condorcet, the veteran journalist Brissot, gave to this party
an ascendancy in the Chamber and an influence in the country the more
dangerous because it appeared to belong to men elevated above the ordinary
regions of political strife. Without the fixed design of turning the
monarchy into a republic, the orators of the Gironde sought to carry the
revolutionary movement over the barrier erected against it in the
Constitution of 1791. From the moment of the opening of the Assembly it was
clear that the Girondins intended to precipitate the conflict between the
Court and the nation by devoting all the wealth of their eloquence to the
subjects which divided France the most. To Brissot and the men who
furnished the ideas of the party, it would have seemed a calamity that the
Constitution of 1791, with its respect for the prerogative of the Crown and
its tolerance of mediæval superstition, should fairly get underway. In
spite of Robespierre's prediction that war would give France a strong
sovereign in the place of a weak one, the Girondins persuaded themselves
that the best means of diminishing or overthrowing monarchical power in
France was a war with the sovereigns of Europe; and henceforward they
laboured for war with scarcely any disguise. [5]

[Notes of Kaunitz, Dec. 21, Feb. 17.]

Nor were occasions wanting, if war was needful for France. The protection
which the Elector of Trèves gave to the emigrant army at Coblentz was so
flagrant a violation of international law that the Gironde had the support
of the whole nation when they called upon the King to demand the dispersal
of the emigrants in the most peremptory form. National feeling was keenly
excited by debates in which the military preparations of the emigrants and
the encouragement given to them by foreign princes were denounced with all
the energy of southern eloquence. On the 13th of December Louis declared to
the Electors of Trèves and Mainz that he would treat them as enemies unless
the armaments within their territories were dispersed by January 15th; and
at the same time he called upon the Emperor Leopold, as head of the
Germanic body, to use his influence in bringing the Electors to reason. The
demands of France were not resisted. On the 16th January, 1792, Louis
informed the Assembly that the emigrants had been expelled from the
electorates, and acknowledged the good offices of Leopold in effecting this
result. The substantial cause of war seemed to have disappeared; but
another had arisen in its place. In a note of December 21st the Austrian
Minister Kaunitz used expressions which implied that a league of the Powers
was still in existence against France. Nothing could have come more
opportunely for the war-party in the Assembly. Brissot cried for an
immediate declaration of war, and appealed to the French nation to
vindicate its honour by an attack both upon the emigrants and upon their
imperial protector. The issue depended upon the relative power of the Crown
and the Opposition. Leopold saw that war was inevitable unless the
Constitutional party, which was still in office, rallied for one last
effort, and gained a decisive victory over its antagonists. In the hope of
turning public opinion against the Gironde, he permitted Kaunitz to send a
despatch to Paris which loaded the leaders of the war-party with abuse, and
exhorted the French nation to deliver itself from men who would bring upon
it the hostility of Europe. (Feb. 17.) [6] The despatch gave singular proof
of the inability of the cleverest sovereign and the most experienced
minister of the age to distinguish between the fears of a timid cabinet and
the impulses of an excited nation. Leopold's vituperations might have had
the intended effect if they had been addressed to the Margrave of Baden or
the Doge of Venice; addressed to the French nation and its popular Assembly
in the height of civil conflict, they were as oil poured upon the flames.
Leopold ruined the party which he meant to reinforce; he threw the nation
into the arms of those whom he attacked. His despatch was received in the
Assembly with alternate murmurs and bursts of laughter; in the clubs it
excited a wild outburst of rage. The exchange of diplomatic notes continued
for a few weeks more; but the real answer of France to Austria was the
"Marseillaise," composed at Strasburg almost simultaneously with Kaunitz'
attack upon the Jacobins. The sudden death of the Emperor on March 1st
produced no pause in the controversy. Delessart, the Foreign Minister of
Louis, was thrust from office, and replaced by Dumouriez, the
representative of the war-party.

[War declared, April 20th, 1792.]

Expostulation took a sharper tone; old subjects of complaint were revived;
and the armies on each side were already pressing towards the frontier when
the unhappy Louis was brought down to the Assembly by his Ministers, and
compelled to propose the declaration of war.

[Pretended grounds of war.]

[Expectation of foreign attack real among the French people; not real among
the French politicians.]

It is seldom that the professed grounds correspond with the real motives of
a war; nor was this the case in 1792. The ultimatum of the Austrian
Government demanded that compensation should be made to certain German
nobles whose feudal rights over their peasantry had been abolished in
Alsace; that the Pope should be indemnified for Avignon and the Venaissin,
which had been taken from him by France; and that a Government should be
established at Paris capable of affording the Powers of Europe security
against the spread of democratic agitation. No one supposed the first two
grievances to be a serious ground for hostilities. The rights of the German
nobles in Alsace over their villagers were no doubt protected by the
treaties which ceded those districts to France; but every politician in
Europe would have laughed at a Government which allowed the feudal system
to survive in a corner of its dominions out of respect for a settlement a
century and a half old: nor had the Assembly refused to these foreign
seigneurs a compensation claimed in vain by King Louis for the nobles of
France. As to the annexation of Avignon and the Venaissin, a power which,
like Austria, had joined in dismembering Poland, and had just made an
unsuccessful attempt to dismember Turkey, could not gravely reproach France
for incorporating a district which lay actually within it, and whose
inhabitants, or a great portion of them, were anxious to become citizens of
France. The third demand, the establishment of such a government as Austria
should deem satisfactory, was one which no high-spirited people could be
expected to entertain. Nor was this, in fact, expected by Austria. Leopold
had no desire to attack France, but he had used threats, and would not
submit to the humiliation of renouncing them. He would not have begun a war
for the purpose of delivering the French Crown; but, when he found that he
was himself certain to be attacked, he accepted a war with the Revolution
without regret. On the other side, when the Gironde denounced the league of
the Kings, they exaggerated a far-off danger for the ends of their domestic
policy. The Sovereigns of the Continent had indeed made no secret of their
hatred to the Revolution. Catherine of Russia had exhorted every Court in
Europe to make war; Gustavus of Sweden was surprised by a violent death in
the midst of preparations against France; Spain, Naples, and Sardinia were
ready to follow leaders stronger than themselves. But the statesmen of the
French Assembly well understood the interval that separates hostile feeling
from actual attack; and the unsubstantial nature of the danger to France,
whether from the northern or the southern Powers, was proved by the very
fact that Austria, the hereditary enemy of France, and the country of the
hated Marie Antoinette, was treated as the main enemy. Nevertheless, the
Courts had done enough to excite the anger of millions of French people who
knew of their menaces, and not of their hesitations and reserves. The man
who composed the "Marseillaise" was no maker of cunningly-devised fables;
the crowds who first sang it never doubted the reality of the dangers which
the orators of the Assembly denounced. The Courts of Europe had heaped up
the fuel; the Girondins applied the torch. The mass of the French nation
had little means of appreciating what passed in Europe; they took their
facts from their leaders, who considered it no very serious thing to plunge
a nation into war for the furtherance of internal liberty. Events were soon
to pass their own stern and mocking sentence upon the wisdom of the
Girondin statesmanship.

[Germany follows Austria into the war.]

[State of Germany.]

After voting the Declaration of War the French Assembly accepted a
manifesto, drawn up by Condorcet, renouncing in the name of the French
people all intention of conquest. The manifesto expressed what was
sincerely felt by men like Condorcet, to whom the Revolution was still too
sacred a cause to be stained with the vulgar lust of aggrandisement. But
the actual course of the war was determined less by the intentions with
which the French began it than by the political condition of the States
which bordered upon the French frontier. The war was primarily a war with
Austria, but the Sovereign of Austria was also the head of Germany. The
German Ecclesiastical Princes who ruled in the Rhenish provinces had been
the most zealous protectors of the emigrants; it was impossible that they
should now find shelter in neutrality. Prussia had made an alliance with
the Emperor against France; other German States followed in the wake of one
or other of the great Powers. If France proved stronger than its enemy,
there were governments besides that of Austria which would have to take
their account with the Revolution. Nor indeed was Austria the power most
exposed to violent change. The mass of its territory lay far from France;
at the most, it risked the loss of Lombardy and the Netherlands. Germany at
large was the real area threatened by the war, and never was a political
community less fitted to resist attack than Germany at the end of the
eighteenth century. It was in the divisions of the German people, and in
the rivalries of the two leading German governments, that France found its
surest support throughout the Revolutionary war, and its keenest stimulus
to conquest. It will throw light upon the sudden changes that now began to
break over Europe if we pause to make a brief survey of the state of
Germany at the outbreak of the war, to note the character and policy of its
reigning sovereigns, and to cast a glance over the circumstances which had
brought the central district of Europe into its actual condition.

[Since 1648, all the German States independent of the Emperor.]

[Holy Roman Empire.]

Germany at large still preserved the mediæval name and forms of the Holy
Roman Empire. The members of this so-called Empire were, however, a
multitude of independent States; and the chief of these States, Austria,
combined with its German provinces a large territory which did not even in
name form part of the Germanic body. The motley of the Empire was made up
by governments of every degree of strength and weakness. Austria and
Prussia possessed both political traditions and resources raising them to
the rank of great European Powers; but the sovereignties of the second
order, such as Saxony and Bavaria, had neither the security of strength nor
the free energy often seen in small political communities; whilst in the
remaining petty States of Germany, some hundreds in number, all public life
had long passed out of mind in a drowsy routine of official benevolence or
oppression. In theory there still existed a united Germanic body; in
reality Germany was composed of two great monarchies in embittered rivalry
with one another, and of a multitude of independent principalities and
cities whose membership in the Empire involved little beyond a liability to
be dragged into the quarrels of their more powerful neighbours. A German
national feeling did not exist, because no combination existed uniting the
interests of all Germany. The names and forms of political union had come
down from a remote past, and formed a grotesque anachronism amid the
realities of the eighteenth century. The head of the Germanic body held
office not by hereditary right, but as the elected successor of Charlemagne
and the Roman Cæsars. Since the fifteenth century the imperial dignity had
rested with the Austrian House of Hapsburg; but, with the exception of
Charles V., no sovereign of that House had commanded forces adequate to the
creation of a united German state, and the opportunity which then offered
itself was allowed to pass away. The Reformation severed Northern Germany
from the Catholic monarchy of the south. The Thirty Years' War, terminating
in the middle of the seventeenth century, secured the existence of
Protestantism on the Continent of Europe, but it secured it at the cost of
Germany, which was left exhausted and disintegrated. By the Treaty of
Westphalia, A.D. 1648, the independence of every member of the Empire was
recognised, and the central authority was henceforth a mere shadow. The
Diet of the Empire, where the representatives of the Electors, of the
Princes, and of the Free Cities, met in the order of the Middle Ages, sank
into a Heralds' College, occupied with questions of title and precedence;
affairs of real importance were transacted by envoys from Court to Court.
For purposes of war the Empire was divided into Circles, each Circle
supplying in theory a contingent of troops; but this military organisation
existed only in letter. The greater and the intermediate States regulated
their armaments, as they did their policy, without regard to the Diet of
Ratisbon; the contingents of the smaller sovereignties and free cities were
in every degree of inefficiency, corruption, and disorder; and in spite of
the courage of the German soldier, it could make little difference in a
European war whether a regiment which had its captain appointed by the city
of Gmünd, its lieutenant by the Abbess of Rotenmünster, and its ensign by
the Abbot of Gegenbach, did or did not take the field with numbers fifty
per cent. below its statutory contingent. [7] How loose was the connection
subsisting between the members of the Empire, how slow and cumbrous its
constitutional machinery, was strikingly proved after the first inroads of
the French into Germany in 1792, when the Diet deliberated for four weeks
before calling out the forces of the Empire, and for five months before
declaring war.

[Austria.]

[Catholic policy of the Hapsburgs.]

The defence of Germany rested in fact with the armies of Austria and
Prussia. The Austrian House of Hapsburg held the imperial title, and
gathered around it the sovereigns of the less progressive German States.
While the Protestant communities of Northern Germany identified their
interests with those of the rising Prussian Monarchy, religious sympathy
and the tradition of ages attached the minor Catholic Courts to the
political system of Vienna. Austria gained something by its patronage; it
was, however, no real member of the German family. Its interests were not
the interests of Germany; its power, great and enduring as it proved, was
not based mainly upon German elements, nor used mainly for German ends. The
title of the Austrian monarch gave the best idea of the singular variety of
races and nationalities which owed their political union only to their
submission to a common head. In the shorter form of state the reigning
Hapsburg was described as King of Hungary, Bohemia, Croatia, Slavonia, and
Galicia; Archduke of Austria; Grand Duke of Transylvania; Duke of Styria,
Carinthia, and Carniola; and Princely Count of Hapsburg and Tyrol. At the
outbreak of the war of 1792 the dominions of the House of Austria included
the Southern Netherlands and the Duchy of Milan, in addition to the great
bulk of the territory which it still governs. Eleven distinct languages
were spoken in the Austrian monarchy, with countless varieties of dialects.
Of the elements of the population the Slavic was far the largest, numbering
about ten millions, against five million Germans and three million Magyars;
but neither numerical strength nor national objects of desire coloured the
policy of a family which looked indifferently upon all its subject races as
instruments for its own aggrandisement. Milan and the Netherlands had come
into the possession of Austria since the beginning of the eighteenth
century, but the destiny of the old dominions of the Hapsburg House had
been fixed for many generations in the course of the Thirty Years' War. In
that struggle, as it affected Austria, the conflict of the ancient and the
reformed faith had become a conflict between the Monarchy, allied with the
Church, and every element of national life and independence, allied with
the Reformation. Protestantism, then dominant in almost all the Hapsburg
territories, was not put down without extinguishing the political liberties
of Austrian Germany, the national life of Bohemia, the spirit and ambition
of the Hungarian nobles. The detestable desire of the Emperor Ferdinand,
"Rather a desert than a country full of heretics," was only too well
fulfilled in the subsequent history of his dominions. In the German
provinces, except the Tyrol, the old Parliaments, and with them all trace
of liberty, disappeared; in Bohemia the national Protestant nobility lost
their estates, or retained them only at the price of abandoning the
religion, the language, and the feelings of their race, until the country
of Huss passed out of the sight of civilised Europe, and Bohemia
represented no more than a blank, unnoticed mass of tillers of the soil. In
Hungary, where the nation was not so completely crushed in the Thirty
Years' War, and Protestantism survived, the wholesale executions in 1686,
ordered by the Tribunal known as the "Slaughter-house of Eperies,"
illustrated the traditional policy of the Monarchy towards the spirit of
national independence. Two powers alone were allowed to subsist in the
Austrian dominions, the power of the Crown and the power of the Priesthood;
and, inasmuch as no real national unity could exist among the subject
races, the unity of a blind devotion to the Catholic Church was enforced
over the greater part of the Monarchy by all the authority of the State.

[Reforms of Maria Theresa, 1740-1780.]

Under the pressure of this soulless despotism the mind of man seemed to
lose all its finer powers. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in
which no decade passed in England and France without the production of some
literary masterpiece, some scientific discovery, or some advance in
political reasoning, are marked by no single illustrious Austrian name,
except that of Haydn the musician. When, after three generations of torpor
succeeding the Thirty Years' War, the mind of North Germany awoke again in
Winckelmann and Lessing, and a widely-diffused education gave to the middle
class some compensation for the absence of all political freedom, no trace
of this revival appeared in Austria. The noble hunted and slept; the serf
toiled heavily on; where a school existed, the Jesuit taught his schoolboys
ecclesiastical Latin, and sent them away unable to read their
mother-tongue. To this dull and impenetrable society the beginnings of
improvement could only be brought by military disaster. The loss of Silesia
in the first years of Maria Theresa disturbed the slumbers of the
Government, and reform began. Although the old provincial Assemblies,
except in Hungary and the Netherlands, had long lost all real power, the
Crown had never attempted to create a uniform system of administration: the
collection of taxes, the enlistment of recruits, was still the business of
the feudal landowners of each district. How such an antiquated order was
likely to fare in the presence of an energetic enemy was clearly enough
shown in the first attack made upon Austria by Frederick the Great. As the
basis of a better military organisation, and in the hope of arousing a
stronger national interest among her subjects, Theresa introduced some of
the offices of a centralised monarchy, at the same time that she improved
the condition of the serf, and substituted a German education and German
schoolmasters for those of the Jesuits. The peasant, hitherto in many parts
of the monarchy attached to the soil, was now made free to quit his lord's
land, and was secured from ejectment so long as he fulfilled his duty of
labouring for the lord on a fixed number of days in the year. Beyond this
Theresa's reform did not extend. She had no desire to abolish the feudal
character of country life; she neither wished to temper the sway of
Catholicism, nor to extinguish those provincial forms which gave to the
nobles within their own districts a shadow of political independence.
Herself conservative in feeling, attached to aristocracy, and personally
devout, Theresa consented only to such change as was recommended by her
trusted counsellors, and asked no more than she was able to obtain by the
charm of her own queenly character.

[Joseph II., 1780-1790.]

With the accession of her son Joseph II. in 1780 a new era began for
Austria. The work deferred by Theresa was then taken up by a monarch whose
conceptions of social and religious reform left little for the boldest
innovators of France ten years later to add. There is no doubt that the
creation of a great military force for enterprises of foreign conquest was
an end always present in Joseph's mind, and that the thirst for
uncontrolled despotic power never left him; but by the side of these
coarser elements there was in Joseph's nature something of the true fire of
the man who lives for ideas. Passionately desirous of elevating every class
of his subjects at the same time that he ignored all their habits and
wishes, Joseph attempted to transform the motley and priest-ridden
collection of nations over whom he ruled into a single homogeneous body,
organised after the model of France and Prussia, worshipping in the spirit
of a tolerant and enlightened Christianity, animated in its relations of
class to class by the humane philosophy of the eighteenth century. In the
first year of his reign Joseph abolished every jurisdiction that did not
directly emanate from the Crown, and scattered an army of officials from
Ostend to the Dniester to conduct the entire public business of his
dominions under the immediate direction of the central authority at Vienna.
In succeeding years edict followed edict, dissolving monasteries,
forbidding Church festivals and pilgrimages, securing the protection of the
State to every form of Christian worship, abolishing the exemption from
land-tax and the monopoly of public offices enjoyed by the nobility,
transforming the Universities from dens of monkish ignorance into schools
of secular learning, converting the peasant's personal service into a
rent-charge, and giving him in the officer of the Crown a protector and an
arbiter in all his dealings with his lord. Noble and enlightened in his
aims, Joseph, like every other reformer of the eighteenth century,
underrated the force which the past exerts over the present; he could see
nothing but prejudice and unreason in the attachment to provincial custom
or time-honoured opinion; he knew nothing of that moral law which limits
the success of revolutions by the conditions which precede them. What was
worst united with what was best in resistance to his reforms. The bigots of
the University of Louvain, who still held out against the discoveries of
Newton, excited the mob to insurrection against Joseph, as the enemy of
religion; the Magyar landowners in Hungary resisted a system which
extinguished the last vestiges of their national independence at the same
time that it destroyed the harsh dominion which they themselves exercised
over their peasantry. Joseph alternated between concession and the extreme
of autocratic violence. At one moment he resolved to sweep away every local
right that fettered the exercise of his power; then, after throwing the
Netherlands into successful revolt, and forcing Hungary to the verge of
armed resistance, he revoked his unconstitutional ordinances (January 28,
1790), and restored all the institutions of the Hungarian monarchy which
existed at the date of his accession.

[Leopold II., 1790-1792.]

A month later, death removed Joseph from his struggle and his sorrows. His
successor, Leopold II., found the monarchy involved as Russia's ally in an
attack upon Turkey; threatened by the Northern League of Prussia, England,
and Holland; exhausted in finance; weakened by the revolt of the
Netherlands; and distracted in every province by the conflict of the
ancient and the modern system of government, and the assertion of new
social rights that seemed to have been created only in order to be
extinguished. The recovery of Belgium and the conclusion of peace with
Turkey were effected under circumstances that brought the adroit and
guarded statesmanship of Leopold into just credit. His settlement of the
conflict between the Crown and the Provinces, between the Church and
education, between the noble and the serf, marked the line in which, for
better or for worse, Austrian policy was to run for sixty years. Provincial
rights, the privileges of orders and corporate bodies, Leopold restored;
the personal sovereignty of his house he maintained unimpaired. In the more
liberal part of Joseph's legislation, the emancipation of learning from
clerical control, the suppression of unjust privilege in taxation, the
abolition of the feudal services of the peasant, Leopold was willing to
make concessions to the Church and the aristocracy; to the spirit of
national independence which his predecessor's aggression had excited in
Bohemia as well as in Hungary, he made no concession beyond the restoration
of certain cherished forms. An attempt of the Magyar nobles to affix
conditions to their acknowledgment of Leopold as King of Hungary was
defeated; and, by creating new offices at Vienna for the affairs of Illyria
and Transylvania, and making them independent of the Hungarian Diet,
Leopold showed that the Crown possessed an instrument against the dominant
Magyar race in the Slavic and Romanic elements of the Hungarian Kingdom.
[8] On the other hand, Leopold consented to restore to the Church its
control over the higher education, and to throw back the burden of taxation
upon land not occupied by noble owners. He gave new rigour to the
censorship of the press; but the gain was not to the Church, to which the
censorship had formerly belonged, but to the Government, which now employed
it as an instrument of State. In the great question of the emancipation of
the serf Leopold was confronted by a more resolute and powerful body of
nobility in Hungary than existed in any other province. The right of the
lord to fetter the peasant to the soil and to control his marriage Leopold
refused to restore in any part of his dominions; but, while in parts of
Bohemia he succeeded in maintaining the right given by Joseph to the
peasant to commute his personal service for a money payment, in Hungary he
was compelled to fall back upon the system of Theresa, and to leave the
final settlement of the question to the Diet. Twenty years later the
statesman who emancipated the peasants of Prussia observed that Hungary was
the only part of the Austrian dominions in which the peasant was not in a
better condition than his fellows in North Germany; [9] and so torpid was
the humanity of the Diet that until the year 1835 the prison and the
flogging-board continued to form a part of every Hungarian manor.

[Death of Leopold, March 1, 1792.]

[Francis II., 1792.]

Of the self-sacrificing ardour of Joseph there was no trace in Leopold's
character; yet his political aims were not low. During twenty-four years'
government of Tuscany he had proved himself almost an ideal ruler in the
pursuit of peace, of religious enlightenment, and of the material
improvement of his little sovereignty. Raised to the Austrian throne, the
compromise which he effected with the Church and the aristocracy resulted
more from a supposed political necessity than from his own inclination. So
long as Leopold lived, Austria would not have wanted an intelligence
capable of surveying the entire field of public business, nor a will
capable of imposing unity of action upon the servants of State. To the
misfortune of Europe no less than of his own dominions, Leopold was carried
off by sickness at the moment when the Revolutionary War broke out. An
uneasy reaction against Joseph's reforms and a well-grounded dread of the
national movements in Hungary and the Netherlands were already the
principal forces in the official world at Vienna; in addition to these came
the new terror of the armed proselytism of the Revolution. The successor of
Leopold, Francis II., was a sickly prince, in whose homely and
unimaginative mind the great enterprises of Joseph, amidst which he had
been brought up, excited only aversion. Amongst the men who surrounded him,
routine and the dread of change made an end of the higher forms of public
life. The Government openly declared that all change should cease so long
as the war lasted; even the pressing question of the peasant's relation to
his lord was allowed to remain unsettled by the Hungarian Diet, lest the
spirit of national independence should find expression in its debates. Over
the whole internal administration of Austria the torpor of the days before
Theresa seemed to be returning. Its foreign policy, however, bore no trace
of this timorous, conservative spirit. Joseph, as restless abroad as at
home, had shared the ambition of the Russian Empress Catherine, and
troubled Europe with his designs upon Turkey, Venice, and Bavaria. These
and similar schemes of territorial extension continued to fill the minds of
Austrian courtiers and ambassadors. Shortly after the outbreak of war with
France the aged minister Kaunitz, who had been at the head of the Foreign
Office during three reigns, retired from power. In spite of the first
partition of Poland, made in combination with Russia and Prussia in 1772,
and in spite of subsequent attempts of Joseph against Turkey and Bavaria,
the policy of Kaunitz had not been one of mere adventure and shifting
attack. He had on the whole remained true to the principle of alliance with
France and antagonism to Prussia; and when the revolution brought war
within sight, he desired to limit the object of the war to the restoration
of monarchical government in France. The conditions under which the young
Emperor and the King of Prussia agreed to turn the war to purposes of
territorial aggrandisement caused Kaunitz, with a true sense of the fatal
import of this policy, to surrender the power which he had held for forty
years. It was secretly agreed between the two courts that Prussia should
recoup itself for its expenses against France by seizing part of Poland. On
behalf of Austria it was demanded that the Emperor should annex Bavaria,
giving Belgium to the Elector as compensation. Both these schemes violated
what Kaunitz held to be sound policy. He believed that the interests of
Austria required the consolidation rather than the destruction of Poland;
and he declared the exchange of the Netherlands for Bavaria to be, in the
actual state of affairs, impracticable. [10] Had the coalition of 1792 been
framed on the principles advocated by Kaunitz, though Austria might not
have effected the restoration of monarchial power in France, the alliance
would not have disgracefully shattered on the crimes and infamies attending
the second partition of Poland.

From the moment when Kaunitz retired from office, territorial extension
became the great object of the Austrian Court. To prudent statesmen the
scattered provinces and varied population of the Austrian State would have
suggested that Austria had more to lose than any European Power; to the men
of 1792 it appeared that she had more to gain. The Netherlands might be
increased with a strip of French Flanders; Bavaria, Poland, and Italy were
all weak neighbours, who might be made to enrich Austria in their turn. A
sort of magical virtue was attached to the acquisition of territory. If so
many square miles and so many head of population were gained, whether of
alien or kindred race, mutinous or friendly, the end of all statesmanship
was realised, and the heaviest sacrifice of life and industry repaid.
Austria affected to act as the centre of a defensive alliance, and to fight
for the common purpose of giving a Government to France which would respect
the rights of its neighbours. In reality, its own military operations were
too often controlled, and an effective common warfare frustrated, at one
moment by a design upon French Flanders, at another by the course of Polish
or Bavarian intrigue, at another by the hope of conquests in Italy. Of all
the interests which centred in the head of the House of Hapsburg, the least
befriended at Vienna was the interest of the Empire and of Germany.

[Prussia.]

Nor, if Austria was found wanting, had Germany any permanent safeguard in
the rival Protestant State. Prussia, the second great German Power and the
ancient enemy of Austria, had been raised to an influence in Europe quite
out of proportion to its scanty resources by the genius of Frederick the
Great and the earlier Princes of the House of Hohenzollern. Its population
was not one-third of that of France or Austria; its wealth was perhaps not
superior to that of the Republic of Venice. That a State so poor in men and
money should play the part of one of the great Powers of Europe was
possible only so long as an energetic ruler watched every movement of that
complicated machinery which formed both army and nation after the prince's
own type. Frederick gave his subjects a just administration of the law; he
taught them productive industries; he sought to bring education to their
doors [11]; but he required that the citizen should account himself before
all the servant of the State. Every Prussian either worked in the great
official hierarchy or looked up to it as the providence which was to direct
all his actions and supply all his judgments. The burden of taxation
imposed by the support of an army relatively three times as great as that
of any other Power was wonderfully lightened by Frederick's economy: far
more serious than the tobacco-monopoly and the forage-requisitions, at
which Frederick's subjects grumbled during his life-time, was the danger
that a nation which had only attained political greatness by its obedience
to a rigorous administration should fall into political helplessness, when
the clear purpose and all-controlling care of its ruler no longer animated
a system which, without him, was only a pedantic routine. What in England
we are accustomed to consider as the very substance of national life,--the
mass of political interest and opinion, diffused in some degree amongst all
classes, at once the support and the judge of the servants of the
State,--had in Prussia no existence. Frederick's subjects obeyed and
trusted their Monarch; there were probably not five hundred persons outside
the public service who had any political opinions of their own. Prussia did
not possess even the form of a national representation; and, although
certain provincial assemblies continued to meet, they met only to receive
the instructions of the Crown-officers of their district. In the absence of
all public criticism, the old age of Frederick must in itself have
endangered the efficiency of the military system which had raised Prussia
to its sudden eminence. [12] The impulse of Frederick's successor was
sufficient to reverse the whole system of Prussian foreign policy, and to
plunge the country in alliance with Austria into a speculative and
unnecessary war.

[Frederick William II., 1786.]

[Alliance with Austria against France, Feb., 1792.]

On the death of Frederick in 1786, the crown passed to Frederick William
II., his nephew. Frederick William was a man of common type, showy and
pleasure-loving, interested in public affairs, but incapable of acting on
any fixed principle. His mistresses gave the tone to political society. A
knot of courtiers intrigued against one another for the management of the
King; and the policy of Prussia veered from point to point as one unsteady
impulse gave place to another. In countries less dependent than Prussia
upon the personal activity of the monarch, Frederick William's faults might
have been neutralised by able Ministers; in Prussia the weakness of the
King was the decline of the State. The whole fabric of national greatness
had been built up by the royal power; the quality of the public service,
apart from which the nation was politically non-existent, was the quality
of its head. When in the palace profusion and intrigue took the place of
Frederick the Great's unflagging labour, the old uprightness, industry, and
precision which had been the pride of Prussian administration fell out of
fashion everywhere. Yet the frivolity of the Court was a less active cause
of military decline than the abandonment of the first principles of
Prussian policy. [13] If any political sentiment existed in the nation, it
was the sentiment of antagonism to Austria. The patriotism of the army,
with all the traditions of the great King, turned wholly in this direction.
When, out of sympathy with the Bourbon family and the emigrant French
nobles, Frederick William allied himself with Austria (Feb. 1792), and
threw himself into the arms of his ancient enemy in order to attack a
nation which had not wronged him, he made an end of all zealous obedience
amongst his servants. Brunswick, the Prussian Commander-in-Chief, hated the
French emigrants as much as he did the Revolution; and even the generals
who did not originally share Brunswick's dislike to the war recovered their
old jealousy of Austria after the first defeat, and exerted themselves only
to get quit of the war at the first moment that Prussia could retire from
it without disgrace. The very enterprise in which Austria had consented
that the Court of Berlin should seek its reward--the seizure of a part of
Poland--proved fatal to the coalition. The Empress Catherine was already
laying her hand for the second time upon this unfortunate country. It was
easy for the opponents of the Austrian alliance who surrounded King
Frederick William to contrast the barren effort of a war against France
with the cheap and certain advantages to be won by annexation, in concert
with Russia, of Polish territory. To pursue one of these objects with
vigour it was necessary to relinquish the other. Prussia was not rich
enough to maintain armies both on the Vistula and the Rhine. Nor, in the
opinion of its rulers, was it rich enough to be very tender of its honour
or very loyal towards its allies. [14]

[Social system of Prussia.]

In the institutions of Prussia two opposite systems existed side by side,
exhibiting in the strongest form a contrast which in a less degree was
present in most Continental States. The political independence of the
nobility had long been crushed; the King's Government busied itself with
every detail of town and village administration; yet along with this
rigorous development of the modern doctrine of the unity and the authority
of the State there existed a social order more truly archaic than that of
the Middle Ages at their better epochs. The inhabitants of Prussia were
divided into the three classes of nobles, burghers, and peasants, each
confined to its own stated occupations, and not marrying outside its own
order. The soil of the country bore the same distinction; peasant's land
could not be owned by a burgher; burgher's land could not be owned by a
noble. No occupation was lawful for the noble, who was usually no more than
a poor gentleman, but the service of the Crown; the peasant, even where
free, might not practise the handicraft of a burgher. But the mass of the
peasantry in the country east of the Elbe were serfs attached to the soil;
and the noble, who was not permitted to exercise the slightest influence
upon the government of his country, inherited along with his manor a
jurisdiction and police-control over all who were settled within it.
Frederick had allowed serfage to continue because it gave him in each
manorial lord a task-master whom he could employ in his own service. System
and obedience were the sources of his power; and if there existed among his
subjects one class trained to command and another trained to obey, it was
so much the easier for him to force the country into the habits of industry
which he required of it. In the same spirit, Frederick officered his army
only with men of the noble caste. They brought with them the habit of
command ready-formed; the peasants who ploughed and threshed at their
orders were not likely to disobey them in the presence of the enemy. It was
possible that such a system should produce great results so long as
Frederick was there to guard against its abuses; Frederick gone, the
degradation of servitude, the insolence of caste, was what remained. When
the army of France, led by men who had worked with their fathers in the
fields, hunted a King of Prussia amidst his capitulating grandees from the
centre to the verge of his dominions, it was seen what was the permanent
value of a system which recognised in the nature of the poor no capacity
but one for hereditary subjection. The French peasant, plundered as he was
by the State, and vexed as he was with feudal services, knew no such
bondage as that of the Prussian serf, who might not leave the spot where he
was born; only in scattered districts in the border-provinces had serfage
survived in France. It is significant of the difference in self-respect
existing in the peasantry of the two countries that the custom of striking
the common soldier, universal in Germany, was in France no more than an
abuse, practised by the admirers of Frederick, and condemned by the better
officers themselves.

[Minor States of Germany.]

[Ecclesiastical States.]

In all the secondary States of Germany the government was an absolute
monarchy; though, here and there, as in Würtemberg, the shadow of the old
Assembly of the Estates survived; and in Hanover the absence of the
Elector, King George III., placed power in the hands of a group of nobles
who ruled in his name. Society everywhere rested on a sharp division of
classes similar in kind to that of Prussia; the condition of the peasant
ranging from one of serfage, as it existed in Mecklenburg, [15] to one of
comparative freedom and comfort in parts of the southern and western
States. The sovereigns differed widely in the enlightenment or selfishness
of their rule; but, on the whole, the character of government had changed
for the better of late years; and, especially in the Protestant States,
efforts to improve the condition of the people were not wanting. Frederick
the Great had in fact created a new standard of monarchy in Germany. Forty
years earlier, Versailles, with its unfeeling splendours, its glorification
of the personal indulgence of the monarch, had been the ideal which, with a
due sense of their own inferiority, the German princes had done their best
to imitate. To be a sovereign was to cover acres of ground with state
apartments, to lavish the revenues of the country upon a troop of
mistresses and adventurers, to patronise the arts, to collect with the same
complacency the masterpieces of ancient painting that adorn the Dresden
Gallery, or an array of valuables scarcely more interesting than the chests
of treasure that were paid for them. In the ecclesiastical States, headed
by the Electorates of Mainz, Trèves, and Cologne, the affectations of a
distinctive Christian or spiritual character had long been abandoned. The
prince-bishop and canons, who were nobles appointed from some other
province, lived after the gay fashion of the time, at the expense of a land
in which they had no interest extending beyond their own lifetime. The only
feature distinguishing the ecclesiastical residence from that of one of the
minor secular princes was that the parade of state was performed by monks
in the cathedral instead of by soldiers on the drill-ground, and that even
the pretence of married life was wanting among the flaunting harpies who
frequented a celibate Court. Yet even on the Rhine and on the Moselle the
influence of the great King of Prussia had begun to make itself felt. The
intense and penetrating industry of Frederick was not within the reach of
every petty sovereign who might envy its results; but the better spirit of
the time was seen under some of the ecclesiastical princes in the
encouragement of schools, the improvement of the roads, and a retrenchment
in courtly expenditure. That deeply-seated moral disease which resulted
from centuries of priestly rule was not to be so lightly shaken off. In a
district where Nature most bountifully rewards the industry of man,
twenty-four out of every hundred of the population were monks, nuns, or
beggars. [16]

[Petty States. Free Cities. Knights.]

Two hundred petty principalities, amongst which Weimar, the home of Goethe,
stood out in the brightest relief from the level of princely routine and
self-indulgence; fifty imperial cities, in most of which the once vigorous
organism of civic life had shrivelled to the type of the English rotten
borough, did not exhaust the divisions of Germany. Several hundred Knights
of the Empire, owing no allegiance except to the Emperor, exercised, each
over a domain averaging from three to four hundred inhabitants, all the
rights of sovereignty, with the exception of the right to make war and
treaties. The districts in which this order survived were scattered over
the Catholic States of the south-west of Germany, where the knights
maintained their prerogatives by federations among themselves and by the
support of the Emperor, to whom they granted sums of money. There were
instances in which this union of the rights of the sovereign and the
landlord was turned to good account; but the knight's land was usually the
scene of such poverty and degradation that the traveller needed no guide to
inform him when he entered it. Its wretched tracks interrupted the great
lines of communication between the Rhine and further Germany; its hovels
were the refuge of all the criminals and vagabonds of the surrounding
country; for no police existed but the bailiffs of the knight, and the only
jurisdiction was that of the lawyer whom the knight brought over from the
nearest town. Nor was the disadvantage only on the side of those who were
thus governed. The knight himself, even if he cherished some traditional
reverence for the shadow of the Empire, was in the position of a man who
belongs to no real country. If his sons desired any more active career than
that of annuitants upon the family domains, they could obtain it only by
seeking employment at one or other of the greater Courts, and by
identifying themselves with the interests of a land which they entered as
strangers.

Such was in outline the condition of Germany at the moment when it was
brought into collision with the new and unknown forces of the French
Revolution. A system of small States, which in the past of Greece and Italy
had produced the finest types of energy and genius, had in Germany resulted
in the extinction of all vigorous life, and in the ascendancy of all that
was stagnant, little, and corrupt. If political disorganisation, the decay
of public spirit, and the absence of a national idea, are the signs of
impending downfall, Germany was ripe for foreign conquest. The obsolete and
dilapidated fabric of the Empire had for a century past been sustained only
by the European tradition of the Balance of Power, or by the absence of
serious attack from without. Austria once overpowered, the Empire was ready
to fall to pieces by itself: and where, among the princes or the people of
Germany, were the elements that gave hope of its renovation in any better
form of national life?




CHAPTER II.


French and Austrian armies on the Flemish frontier--Prussia enters the
war--Brunswick invades France--His Proclamation--Insurrection of Aug. 10
at Paris--Massacres of September--Character of the war--Brunswick, checked
at Valmy, retreats--The War becomes a Crusade of France--Neighbours of
France--Custine enters Mainz--Dumouriez conquers the Austrian Netherlands
--Nice and Savoy annexed--Decree of the Convention against all Governments
--Execution of Louis XVI.--War with England, followed by war with the
Mediterranean States--Condition of England--English Parties, how affected
by the Revolution--The Gironde and the Mountain--Austria recovers the
Netherlands--The Allies invade France--La Vendée--Revolutionary System of
1793--Errors of the Allies--New French Commanders and Democratic Army--
Victories of Jourdan, Hoche, and Pichegru--Prussia withdrawing from the War
--Polish Affairs--Austria abandons the Netherlands--Treaties of
Basle--France in 1795--Insurrection of 13 Vendémiaire--Constitution of
1795--The Directory--Effect of the Revolution on the spirit of Europe up
to 1795.


[Fighting on Flemish frontier, April, 1792.]

[Prussian army invades France, July, 1792. Proclamation.]

The war between France and Austria opened in April, 1792, on the Flemish
frontier. The first encounters were discreditable to the French soldiery,
who took to flight and murdered one of their generals. The discouragement
with which the nation heard of these reverses deepened into sullen
indignation against the Court, as weeks and months passed by, and the
forces lay idle on the frontier or met the enemy only in trifling
skirmishes which left both sides where they were before. If at this crisis
of the Revolution, with all the patriotism, all the bravery, all the
military genius of France burning for service, the Government conducted the
war with results scarcely distinguishable from those of a parade, the
suggestion of treason on the part of the Court was only too likely to be
entertained. The internal difficulties of the country were increasing. The
Assembly had determined to banish from France the priests who rejected the
new ecclesiastical system, and the King had placed his veto upon their
decree. He had refused to permit the formation of a camp of volunteers in
the neighbourhood of Paris. He had dismissed the popular Ministry forced
upon him by the Gironde. A tumult on the 20th of June, in which the mob
forced their way into the Tuileries, showed the nature of the attack
impending upon the monarchy if Louis continued to oppose himself to the
demands of the nation; but the lesson was lost upon the King. Louis was as
little able to nerve himself for an armed conflict with the populace as to
reconcile his conscience to the Ecclesiastical Decrees, and he surrendered
himself to a pious inertia at a moment when the alarm of foreign invasion
doubled revolutionary passion all over France. Prussia, in pursuance of a
treaty made in February, united its forces to those of Austria. Forty
thousand Prussian troops, under the Duke of Brunswick, the best of
Frederick's surviving generals, advanced along the Moselle. From Belgium
and the upper Rhine two Austrian armies converged upon the line of
invasion; and the emigrant nobles were given their place among the forces
of the Allies.

On the 25th of July the Duke of Brunswick, in the name of the Emperor and
the King of Prussia, issued a proclamation to the French people, which, but
for the difference between violent words and violent deeds, would have left
little to be complained of in the cruelties that henceforward stained the
popular cause. In this manifesto, after declaring that the Allies entered
France in order to deliver Louis from captivity, and that members of the
National Guard fighting against the invaders would be punished as rebels
against their king, the Sovereigns addressed themselves to the city of
Paris and to the representatives of the French nation:--"The city of Paris
and its inhabitants are warned to submit without delay to their King; to
set that Prince at entire liberty, and to show to him and to all the Royal
Family the inviolability and respect which the law of nature and of nations
imposes on subjects towards their Sovereigns. Their Imperial and Royal
Majesties will hold all the members of the National Assembly, of the
Municipality, and of the National Guard of Paris responsible for all events
with their heads, before military tribunals, without hope of pardon. They
further declare that, if the Tuileries be forced or insulted, or the least
violence offered to the King, the Queen, or the Royal Family, and if
provision be not at once made for their safety and liberty, they will
inflict a memorable vengeance, by delivering up the city of Paris to
military execution and total overthrow, and the rebels guilty of such
crimes to the punishment they have merited." [17]

[Insurrection August 10, 1792.]

This challenge was not necessary to determine the fate of Louis. Since the
capture of the Bastille in the first days of the Revolution the National
Government had with difficulty supported itself against the populace of the
capital; and, even before the foreigner threatened Paris with fire and
sword, Paris had learnt to look for the will of France within itself. As
the columns of Brunswick advanced across the north-eastern frontier, Danton
and the leaders of the city-democracy marshalled their army of the poor and
the desperate to overthrow that monarchy whose cause the invader had made
his own. The Republic which had floated so long in the thoughts of the
Girondins was won in a single day by the populace of Paris, amid the roar
of cannons and the flash of bayonets. On the 10th of August Danton let
loose the armed mob upon the Tuileries. Louis quitted the Palace without
giving orders to the guard either to fight or to retire; but the guard were
ignorant that their master desired them to offer no resistance, and one
hundred and sixty of the mob were shot down before an order reached the
troops to abandon the Palace. The cruelties which followed the victory of
the people indicated the fate in store for those whom the invader came to
protect. It is doubtful whether the foreign Courts would have made any
serious attempt to undo the social changes effected by the Revolution in
France; but no one supposed that those thousands of self-exiled nobles who
now returned behind the guns of Brunswick had returned in order to take
their places peacefully in the new social order. In their own imagination,
as much as in that of the people, they returned with fire and sword to
repossess themselves of rights of which they had been despoiled, and to
take vengeance upon the men who were responsible for the changes made in
France since 1789. [18] In the midst of a panic little justified by the
real military situation, Danton inflamed the nation with his own passionate
courage and resolution; he unhappily also thought it necessary to a
successful national defence that the reactionary party at Paris should be
paralysed by a terrible example. The prisons were filled with persons
suspected of hostility to the national cause, and in the first days of
September many hundreds of these unfortunate persons were massacred by
gangs of assassins paid by a committee of the Municipality. Danton did not
disguise his approval of the act. He had made up his mind that the work of
the Revolution could only be saved by striking terror into its enemies, and
by preventing the Royalists from co-operating with the invader. But the
multitudes who flocked to the standards of 1792 carried with them the
patriotism of Danton unstained by his guilt. Right or wrong in its origin,
the war was now unquestionably a just one on the part of France, a war
against a privileged class attempting to recover by force the unjust
advantages that they had not been able to maintain, a war against the
foreigner in defence of the right of the nation to deal with its own
government. Since the great religious wars there had been no cause so
rooted in the hearts, so close to the lives of those who fought for it.
Every soldier who joined the armies of France in 1792 joined of his own
free will. No conscription dragged the peasant to the frontier. Men left
their homes in order that the fruit of the poor man's labour should be his
own, in order that the children of France should inherit some better
birthright than exaction and want, in order that the late-won sense of
human right should not be swept from the earth by the arms of privilege and
caste. It was a time of high-wrought hope, of generous and pathetic
self-sacrifice; a time that left a deep and indelible impression upon those
who judged it as eye-witnesses. Years afterwards the poet Wordsworth, then
alienated from France and cold in the cause of liberty, could not recall
without tears the memories of 1792. [19]

[Brunswick checked at Valmy, Sept. 20.]

[Retreat of Brunswick.]

The defence of France rested on General Dumouriez. The fortresses of Longwy
and Verdun, covering the passage of the Meuse, had fallen after the
briefest resistance; the troops that could be collected before Brunswick's
approach were too few to meet the enemy in the open field. Happily for
France the slow advance of the Prussian general permitted Dumouriez to
occupy the difficult country of the Argonne, where, while waiting for his
reinforcements, he was able for some time to hold the invaders in check. At
length Brunswick made his way past the defile which Dumouriez had chosen
for his first line of defence; but it was only to find the French posted in
such strength on his flank that any further advance would imperil his own
army. If the advance was to be continued, Dumouriez must be dislodged.
Accordingly, on the 20th of September, Brunswick directed his artillery
against the hills of Valmy, where the French left was encamped. The
cannonade continued for some hours, but it was followed by no general
attack. The firmness of the French under Brunswick's fire made it clear
that they would not be displaced without an obstinate battle; and,
disappointed of victory, the King of Prussia began to listen to proposals
of peace sent to him by Dumouriez. [20] A week spent in negotiation served
only to strengthen the French and to aggravate the scarcity and sickness
within the German camp. Dissensions broke out between the Prussian and
Austrian commanders; a retreat was ordered; and to the astonishment of
Europe the veteran forces of Brunswick fell back before the mutinous
soldiery and unknown generals of the Revolution, powerless to delay for a
single month the evacuation of France and the restoration of the fortresses
which they had captured.

[The Convention meets. Proclaims Republic, Sept. 21.]

[The war becomes a crusade of democracy.]

In the meantime the Legislative Assembly had decreed its own dissolution in
consequence of the overthrow of the monarchy on August both, and had
ordered the election of representatives to frame a constitution for France.
The elections were held in the crisis of invasion, in the height of
national indignation against the alliance of the aristocracy with the
foreigner, and, in some districts, under the influence of men who had not
shrunk from ordering the massacres in the prisons. At such a moment a
Constitutional Royalist had scarcely more chance of election than a
detected spy from the enemy's camp. The Girondins, who had been the party
of extremes in the Legislative Assembly, were the party of moderation and
order in the Convention. By their side there were returned men whose whole
being seemed to be compounded out of the forces of conflict, men who,
sometimes without conscious depravity, carried into political and social
struggles that direct, unquestioning employment of force which has
ordinarily been reserved for war or for the diffusion of religious
doctrines. The moral differences that separated this party from the Gironde
were at once conspicuous: the political creed of the two parties appeared
at first to be much the same. Monarchy was abolished, and France declared a
Republic (Sept. 21). Office continued in the hands of the Gironde; but the
vehement, uncompromising spirit of their rivals, the so-called party of the
Mountain, quickly made itself felt in all the relations of France to
foreign Powers. The intention of conquest might still be disavowed, as it
had been five months before; but were the converts to liberty to be denied
the right of uniting themselves to the French people by their own free
will? When the armies of the Republic had swept its assailants from the
border-provinces that gave them entrance into France, were those provinces
to be handed back to a government of priests and nobles? The scruples which
had condemned all annexation of territory vanished in that orgy of
patriotism which followed the expulsion of the invader and the discovery
that the Revolution was already a power in other lands than France. The
nation that had to fight the battle of European freedom must appeal to the
spirit of freedom wherever it would answer the call: the conflict with
sovereigns must be maintained by arming their subjects against them in
every land. In this conception of the universal alliance of the nations,
the Governments with which France was not yet at war were scarcely
distinguished from those which had pronounced against her. The
frontier-lines traced by an obsolete diplomacy, the artificial guarantees
of treaties, were of little account against the living and inalienable
sovereignty of the people. To men inflamed with the passions of 1792 an
argument of international law scarcely conveyed more meaning than to Peter
the Hermit. Among the statesmen of other lands, who had no intention of
abandoning all the principles recognised as the public right of Europe, the
language now used by France could only be understood as the avowal of
indiscriminate aggression.

[The neighbors of France.]

The Revolution had displayed itself in France as a force of union as well
as of division. It had driven the nobles across the frontier; it had torn
the clergy from their altars; but it had reconciled sullen Corsica; and by
abolishing feudal rights it had made France the real fatherland of the
Teutonic peasant in Alsace and Lorraine. It was now about to prove its
attractive power in foreign lands. At the close of the last century the
nationalities of Europe were far less consolidated than they are at
present; only on the Spanish and the Swiss frontier had France a neighbour
that could be called a nation. On the north, what is now the kingdom of
Belgium was in 1792 a collection of provinces subject to the House of
Austria. The German population both of the districts west of the Rhine and
of those opposite to Alsace was parcelled out among a number of petty
principalities. Savoy, though west of the chain of the Alps and French in
speech, formed part of the kingdom of Piedmont, which was itself severed by
history and by national character from the other States of Northern Italy.
Along the entire frontier, from Dunkirk to the Maritime Alps, France
nowhere touched a strong, united, and independent people; and along this
entire frontier, except in the country opposite Alsace, the armed
proselytism of the French Revolution proved a greater force than the
influences on which the existing order of things depended. In the Low
Countries, in the Principalities of the Rhine, in Switzerland, in Savoy, in
Piedmont itself, the doctrines of the Revolution were welcomed by a more or
less numerous class, and the armies of France appeared, though but for a
moment, as the missionaries of liberty and right rather than as an invading
enemy.

[Custine enters Mainz, Oct. 20.]

No sooner had Brunswick been brought to a stand by Dumouriez at Valmy than
a French division under Custine crossed the Alsatian frontier and advanced
upon Spires, where Brunswick had left large stores of war. The garrison was
defeated in an encounter outside the town; Spires and Worms surrendered to
Custine. In the neighbouring fortress of Mainz, the key to Western Germany,
Custine's advance was watched by a republican party among the inhabitants,
from whom the French general learnt that he had only to appear before the
city to become its master. Brunswick had indeed apprehended the failure of
his invasion of France, but he had never given a thought to the defence of
Germany; and, although the King of Prussia had been warned of the
defenceless state of Mainz, no steps had been taken beyond the payment of a
sum of money for the repair of the fortifications, which money the
Archbishop expended in the purchase of a wood belonging to himself and the
erection of a timber patchwork. On news arriving of the capture of Spires,
the Archbishop fled, leaving the administration to the Dean, the
Chancellor, and the Commandant. The Chancellor made a speech, calling upon
his "beloved brethren" the citizens to defend themselves to the last
extremity, and daily announced the overthrow of Dumouriez and the
approaching entry of the Allies into Paris, until Custine's soldiers
actually came into sight. [21] Then a council of war declared the city to
be untenable; and before Custine had brought up a single siege-gun the
garrison capitulated, and the French were welcomed into Mainz by the
partisans of the Republic (Oct. 20). With the French arms came the French
organisation of liberty. A club was formed on the model of the Jacobin Club
of Paris; existing officers and distinctions of rank were abolished; and
although the mass of the inhabitants held aloof, a Republic was finally
proclaimed, and incorporated with the Republic of France.

[Dumouriez invades the Netherlands.]

[Battle of Jemappes, Nov. 6.]

The success of Custine's raid into Germany did not divert the Convention
from the design of attacking Austria in the Netherlands, which Dumouriez
had from the first pressed upon the Government. It was not three years
since the Netherlands had been in revolt against the Emperor Joseph. In its
origin the revolt was a reactionary movement of the clerical party against
Joseph's reforms; but there soon sprang up ambitions and hopes at variance
with the first impulses of the insurrection; and by the side of monks and
monopolists a national party came into existence, proclaiming the
sovereignty of the people, and imitating all the movements of the French
Revolution. During the brief suspension of Austrian rule the popular and
the reactionary parties attacked one another; and on the restoration of
Leopold's authority in 1791 the democratic leaders, with a large body of
their followers, took refuge beyond the frontier, looking forward to the
outbreak of war between Austria and France. Their partisans formed a French
connection in the interior of the country; and by some strange illusion,
the priests themselves and the close corporations which had been attacked
by Joseph supposed that their interests would be respected by Revolutionary
France. [22] Thus the ground was everywhere prepared for a French invasion.
Dumouriez crossed the frontier. The border fortresses no longer existed;
and after a single battle won by the French at Jemappes on the 6th of
November, [23] the Austrians, finding the population universally hostile,
abandoned the Netherlands without a struggle.

[Nice and Savoy annexed.]

[Decree of Dec. 15.]

The victory of Jemappes, the first pitched battle won by the Republic,
excited an outburst of revolutionary fervour in the Convention which deeply
affected the relations of France to Great Britain, hitherto a neutral
spectator of the war. A manifesto was published declaring that the French
nation offered its alliance to all peoples who wished to recover their
freedom, and charging the generals of the Republic to give their protection
to all persons who might suffer in the cause of liberty (Nov. 19). A week
later Savoy and Nice were annexed to France, the population of Savoy having
declared in favour of France and Sardinia. On the 15th of December the
Convention proclaimed that social and political revolution was henceforth
to accompany every movement of its armies on foreign soil. "In every
country that shall be occupied by the armies of the French Republic"--such
was the substance of the Decree of December 15th--"the generals shall
announce the abolition of all existing authorities; of nobility, of
serfage, of every feudal right and every monopoly; they shall proclaim the
sovereignty of the people, and convoke the inhabitants in assemblies to
form a provisional Government, to which no officer of a former Government,
no noble, nor any member of the former privileged corporations shall be
eligible. They shall place under the charge of the French Republic all
property belonging to the Sovereign or his adherents, and the property of
every civil or religious corporation. The French nation will treat as
enemies any people which, refusing liberty and equality, desires to
preserve its prince and privileged castes, or to make any accommodation
with them."

[England arms.]

[The Schelde.]

[Execution of Louis XVI., Jan. 21, 1793.]

This singular announcement of a new crusade caused the Government of Great
Britain to arm. Although the decree of the Convention related only to
States with which France was at war, the Convention had in fact formed
connections with the English revolutionary societies; and the French
Minister of Marine informed his sailors that they were about to carry fifty
thousand caps of liberty to their English brethren. No prudent statesman
would treat a mere series of threats against all existing authorities as
ground for war; but the acts of the French Government showed that it
intended to carry into effect the violent interference in the affairs of
other nations announced in its manifestoes. Its agents were stirring up
dissatisfaction in every State; and although the annexation of Savoy and
the occupation of the Netherlands might be treated as incidental to the
conflict with Austria and Sardinia, in which Great Britain had pledged
itself to neutrality, other acts of the Convention were certainly
infringements of the rights of allies of England. A series of European
treaties, oppressive according to our own ideas, but in keeping with the
ideas of that age, prohibited the navigation of the River Schelde, on which
Antwerp is situated, in order that the commerce of the North Sea might flow
exclusively into Dutch ports. On the conquest of Belgium the French
Government gave orders to Dumouriez to send a flotilla down the river, and
to declare Antwerp an open port in right of the law of nature, which
treaties cannot abrogate. Whatever the folly of commercial restraints, the
navigation of the Schelde was a question between the Antwerpers and the
Dutch, and one in which France had no direct concern. The incident, though
trivial, was viewed in England as one among many proofs of the intention of
the French to interfere with the affairs of neighbouring States at their
pleasure. In ordinary times it would not have been easy to excite much
interest in England on behalf of a Dutch monopoly; but the feeling of this
country towards the French Revolution had been converted into a passionate
hatred by the massacres of September, and by the open alliance between the
Convention and the Revolutionary societies in England itself. Pitt indeed,
whom the Parisians imagined to be their most malignant enemy, laboured
against the swelling national passion, and hoped against all hope for
peace. Not only was Pitt guiltless of the desire to add this country to the
enemies of France, but he earnestly desired to reconcile France with
Austria, in order that the Western States, whose embroilment left Eastern
Europe at the mercy of Catherine of Russia, might unite to save both Poland
and Turkey from falling into the hands of a Power whose steady aggression
threatened Europe more seriously than all the noisy and outspoken
excitement of the French Convention. Pitt, moreover, viewed with deep
disapproval the secret designs of Austria and Prussia. [24] If the French
executive would have given any assurance that the Netherlands should not be
annexed, or if the French ambassador, Chauvelin, who was connected with
English plotters, had been superseded by a trustworthy negotiator, it is
probable that peace might have been preserved. But when, on the execution
of King Louis (Jan. 21, 1793), Chauvelin was expelled from England as a
suspected alien, war became a question of days. [25]

[Holland and Mediterranean States enter the war.]

[War with England, Feb. 1st, 1793.]

Points of technical right figured in the complaints of both sides; but the
real ground of war was perfectly understood. France considered itself
entitled to advance the Revolution and the Rights of Man wherever its own
arms or popular insurrection gave it the command. England denied the right
of any Power to annul the political system of Europe at its pleasure. No
more serious, no more sufficient, ground of war ever existed between two
nations; yet the event proved that, with the highest justification for war,
the highest wisdom would yet have chosen peace. England's entry into the
war converted it from an affair of two or three campaigns into a struggle
of twenty years, resulting in more violent convulsions, more widespread
misery, and more atrocious crimes, than in all probability would have
resulted even from the temporary triumph of the revolutionary cause in
1793. But in both nations political passion welcomed impending calamity;
and the declaration of war by the Convention on February 1st only
anticipated the desire of the English people. Great Britain once committed
to the struggle, Pitt spared neither money nor intimidation in his efforts
to unite all Europe against France. Holland was included with England in
the French declaration of war. The Mediterranean States felt that the navy
of England was nearer to them than the armies of Austria and Prussia; and
before the end of the summer of 1793, Spain, Portugal, Naples, Tuscany, and
the Papal States had joined the Coalition.

[French wrongly think England inclined to revolution.]

The Jacobins of Paris had formed a wrong estimate of the political
condition of England. At the outbreak of the war they believed that England
itself was on the verge of revolution. They mistook the undoubted
discontent of a portion of the middle and lower classes, which showed
itself in the cry for parliamentary reform, for a general sentiment of
hatred towards existing institutions, like that which in France had swept
away the old order at a single blow. The Convention received the addresses
of English Radical societies, and imagined that the abuses of the
parliamentary system under George III. had alienated the whole nation. What
they had found in Belgium and in Savoy--a people thankful to receive the
Rights of Man from the soldiers of the Revolution--they expected to find
among the dissenting congregations of London and the factory-hands of
Sheffield. The singular attraction exercised by each class in England upon
the one below it, as well as the indifference of the nation generally to
all ideals, was little understood in France, although the Revolutions of
the two countries bore this contrast on their face. A month after the fall
of the Bastille, the whole system of class-privilege and monopoly had
vanished from French law; fifteen years of the English Commonwealth had
left the structure of English society what it had been at the beginning.
But political observation vanished in the delirium of 1793; and the French
only discovered, when it was too late, that in Great Britain the Revolution
had fallen upon an enemy of unparalleled stubbornness and inexhaustible
strength.

[The Whigs not democratic.]

[Political condition of England.]

In the first Assembly of the Revolution it was usual to speak of the
English as free men whom the French ought to imitate; in the Convention it
was usual to speak of them as slaves whom the French ought to deliver. The
institutions of England bore in fact a very different aspect when compared
with the absolute monarchy of the Bourbons and when compared with the
democracy of 1793. Frenchmen who had lived under the government of a Court
which made laws by edict and possessed the right to imprison by
letters-patent looked with respect upon the Parliament of England, its
trial by jury, and its freedom of the press. The men who had sent a king to
prison and confiscated the estates of a great part of the aristocracy could
only feel compassion for a land where three-fourths of the national
representatives were nominees of the Crown or of wealthy peers. Nor, in
spite of the personal sympathy of Fox with the French revolutionary
movement, was there any real affinity between the English Whig party and
that which now ruled in the Convention. The event which fixed the character
of English liberty during the eighteenth century, the Revolution of 1688,
had nothing democratic in its nature. That revolution was directed against
a system of Roman Catholic despotism; it gave political power not to the
mass of the nation, which had no desire and no capacity to exercise it, but
to a group of noble families and their retainers, who, during the reigns of
the first two Georges, added all the patronage and influence of the Crown
to their social and constitutional weight in the country. The domestic
history of England since the accession of George III. had turned chiefly
upon the obstinate struggle of this monarch to deliver himself from all
dependence upon party. The divisions of the Whigs, their jealousies, but,
above all, their real alienation from the mass of the people whose rights
they professed to defend, ultimately gave the King the victory, when, after
twenty years of errors, be found in the younger Pitt a Minister capable of
uniting the interests of the Crown with the ablest and most patriotic
liberal statesmanship. Bribes, threats, and every species of base influence
had been employed by King George to break up the great Coalition of 1783,
which united all sections of the Whigs against him under the Ministry of
Fox and North; but the real support of Pitt, whom the King placed in office
with a minority in the House of Commons, was the temper of the nation
itself, wearied with the exclusiveness, the corruption, and the
party-spirit of the Whigs, and willing to believe that a popular Minister,
even if he had entered upon power unconstitutionally, might do more for the
country than the constitutional proprietors of the rotten boroughs.

[Pitt Minister, 1783.]

[Effect of French Revolution on English Parties.]

From 1783 down to the outbreak of the French Revolution, Pitt, as a Tory
Minister confronted by a Whig Opposition, governed England on more liberal
principles than any statesman who had held power during the eighteenth
century. These years were the last of the party-system of England in its
original form. The French Revolution made an end of that old distinction in
which the Tory was known as the upholder of Crown-prerogative and the Whig
as the supporter of a constitutional oligarchy of great families. It
created that new political antagonism in which, whether under the names of
Whig and Tory, or of Liberal and Conservative, two great parties have
contended, one for a series of beneficial changes, the other for the
preservation of the existing order. The convulsions of France and the dread
of revolutionary agitation in England transformed both Pitt and the Whigs
by whom he was opposed. Pitt sacrificed his schemes of peaceful progress to
foreign war and domestic repression, and set his face against the reform of
Parliament which he had once himself proposed. The Whigs broke up into two
sections, led respectively by Burke and by Fox, the one denouncing the
violence of the Revolution, and ultimately uniting itself with Pitt; the
other friendly to the Revolution, in spite of its excesses, as the cause of
civil and religious liberty, and identifying itself, under the healthy
influence of parliamentary defeat and disappointment, with the defence of
popular rights in England and the advocacy of enlightened reform.

[Burke's "Reflections," Oct. 1790.]

[Most of the Whigs support Pitt against France.]

The obliteration of the old dividing-line in English politics may be said
to date from the day when the ancient friendship of Burke and Fox was
bitterly severed by the former in the House of Commons (May 6, 1791). The
charter of the modern Conservative party was that appeal to the nation
which Burke had already published, in the autumn of 1790, under the title
of "Reflections on the French Revolution." In this survey of the political
forces which he saw in action around him, the great Whig writer, who in
past times had so passionately defended the liberties of America and the
constitutional tradition of the English Parliament against the aggression
of George III., attacked the Revolution as a system of violence and caprice
more formidable to freedom than the tyranny of any Crown. He proved that
the politicians and societies of England who had given it their sympathy
had given their sympathy to measures and to theories opposed to every
principle of 1688. Above all, he laid bare that agency of riot and
destructiveness which, even within the first few months of the Revolution,
filled him with presentiment of the calamities about to fall upon France.
Burke's treatise was no dispassionate inquiry into the condition of a
neighbouring state: it was a denunciation of Jacobinism as fierce and as
little qualified by political charity as were the maledictions of the
Hebrew prophets upon their idolatrous neighbours; and it was intended, like
these, to excite his own countrymen against innovations among themselves.
It completely succeeded. It expressed, and it heightened, the alarm arising
among the Liberal section of the propertied class, at first well inclined
to the Revolution; and, although the Whigs of the House of Commons
pronounced in favour of Fox upon his first rupture with Burke, the tide of
public feeling, rising higher with every new outrage of the Revolution,
soon invaded the legislature, and carried the bulk of the Whig party to the
side of the Minister, leaving to Fox and his few faithful adherents the
task of maintaining an unheeded protest against the blind passions of war,
and the increasing rigour with which Pitt repressed every symptom of
popular disaffection.

[The Gironde and the Mountain in the Convention.]

[The Gironde and the Commune of Paris.]

The character of violence which Burke traced and condemned in the earliest
acts of the Revolution displayed itself in a much stronger light after the
overthrow of the Monarchy by the insurrection of August 10th. That event
was the work of men who commanded the Parisian democracy, not the work of
orators and party-leaders in the Assembly. The Girondins had not hesitated
to treat the victory as their own, by placing the great offices of State,
with one exception, in the hands of their leaders; they instantly found
that the real sovereignty lay elsewhere. The Council of the Commune, or
Municipality, of Paris, whose members had seized their post at the moment
of the insurrection, was the only administrative body that possessed the
power to enforce its commands; in the Ministries of State one will alone
made itself felt, that of Danton, whom the Girondins had unwillingly
admitted to office along with themselves. The massacres of September threw
into full light the powerlessness of the expiring Assembly. For five
successive days it was unable to check the massacres; it was unable to
bring to justice the men who had planned them, and who called upon the rest
of France to follow their example. With the meeting of the Convention,
however, the Girondins, who now regarded themselves as the legitimate
government, and forgot that they owed office to an insurrection, expected
to reduce the capital to submission. They commanded an overwhelming
majority in the new chamber; they were supported by the middle class in all
the great cities of France. The party of the Mountain embraced at first
only the deputies of Paris, and a group of determined men who admitted no
criticism on the measures which the democracy of Paris had thought
necessary for the Revolution. In the Convention they were the assailed, not
the assailants. Without waiting to secure themselves by an armed force, the
orators of the Gironde attempted to crush both the Municipality and the
deputies who ruled at the Clubs. They reproached the Municipality with the
murders of September; they accused Robespierre of aiming at the
Dictatorship. It was under the pressure of these attacks that the party of
the Mountain gathered its strength within the Convention, and that the
populace of Paris transferred to the Gironde the passionate hatred which it
had hitherto borne to the King and the aristocracy. The gulf that lay
between the people and those who had imagined themselves to be its leaders
burst into view. The Girondins saw with dismay that the thousands of hungry
workmen whose victory had placed them in power had fought for something
more tangible than Republican phrases from Tacitus and Plutarch. On one
side was a handful of orators and writers, steeped in the rhetoric and the
commonplace of ancient Rome, and totally strange to the real duties of
government; on the other side the populace of Paris, such as centuries of
despotism, privilege, and priestcraft had made it: sanguinary, unjust,
vindictive; convulsed since the outbreak of the Revolution with every
passion that sways men in the mass; taught no conception of progress but
the overthrow of authority, and acquainted with no title to power but that
which was bestowed by itself. If the Girondins were to remain in power,
they could do so only by drawing an army from the departments, or by
identifying themselves with the multitude. They declined to take either
course. Their audience was in the Assembly alone; their support in the
distant provinces. Paris, daily more violent, listened to men of another
stamp. The Municipality defied the Government; the Mountain answered the
threats and invectives of the majority in the Assembly by displays of
popular menace and tumult. In the eyes of the common people, who after so
many changes of government found themselves more famished and more
destitute than ever, the Gironde was now but the last of a succession of
tyrannies; its statesmen but impostors who stood between the people and the
enjoyment of their liberty.

Among the leaders of the Mountain, Danton aimed at the creation of a
central Revolutionary Government, armed with absolute powers for the
prosecution of the war; and he attacked the Girondins only when they
themselves had rejected his support. Robespierre, himself the author of
little beyond destruction, was the idol of those whom Rousseau's writings
had filled with the idea of a direct exercise of sovereignty by the people.
It was in the trial of the King that the Gironde first confessed its
submission to the democracy of Paris. The Girondins in their hearts desired
to save the King; they voted for his death with the hope of maintaining
their influence in Paris, and of clearing themselves from the charge of
lukewarmness in the cause of the Revolution. But the sacrifice was as vain
as it was dishonourable. The populace and the party of the Mountain took
the act in its true character, as an acknowledgment of their own victory. A
series of measures was brought forward providing for the poorer classes at
the expense of the wealthy. The Gironde, now forced to become the defenders
of property, encountered the fatal charge of deserting the cause of the
people; and from this time nothing but successful foreign warfare could
have saved their party from ruin.

[Defeat and treason of Dumouriez, March, 1793.]

Instead of success came inaction, disaster, and treason. The army of
Flanders lay idle during January and February for want of provisions and
materials of war; and no sooner had Dumouriez opened the campaign against
Holland than he was recalled by intelligence that the Austrians had fallen
upon his lieutenant, Miranda, at Maestricht, and driven the French army
before them. Dumouriez returned, in order to fight a pitched battle before
Brussels. He attacked the Austrians at Neerwinden (March 18), and suffered
a repulse inconsiderable in itself, but sufficient to demoralise an army
composed in great part of recruits and National Guards. [26] His defeat
laid Flanders open to the Austrians; but Dumouriez intended that it should
inflict upon the Republic a far heavier blow. Since the execution of the
King, he had been at open enmity with the Jacobins. He now proposed to the
Austrian commander to unite with him in an attack upon the Convention, and
in re-establishing monarchy in France. The first pledge of Dumouriez's
treason was the surrender of three commissioners sent by the Convention to
his camp; the second was to have been the surrender of the fortress of
Condé. But Dumouriez had overrated his influence with the army. Plainer
minds than his own knew how to deal with a general who intrigues with the
foreigner. Dumouriez's orders were disregarded; his movements watched; and
he fled to the Austrian lines under the fire of his own soldiers. About
thirty officers and eight hundred men passed with him to the enemy.

[Defeats on the North and East. Revolt of La Vendée, March, 1793.]

[The Commune crushes the Gironde, June 2.]

The defeat and treason of Dumouriez brought the army of Austria over the
northern frontier. Almost at the same moment Custine was overpowered in the
Palatinate; and the conquests of the previous autumn, with the exception of
Mainz, were lost as rapidly as they had been won. Custine fell back upon
the lines of Weissenburg, leaving the defence of Mainz to a garrison of
17,000 men, which, alone among the Republican armies, now maintained its
reputation. In France itself civil war broke out. The peasants of La
Vendée, a district destitute of large towns, and scarcely touched either by
the evils which had produced the Revolution or by the hopes which animated
the rest of France, had seen with anger the expulsion of the parish priests
who refused to take the oath to the Constitution. A levy of 300,000 men,
which was ordered by the Convention in February, 1793, threw into revolt
the simple Vendeans, who cared for nothing outside their own parishes, and
preferred to fight against their countrymen rather than to quit their
homes. The priests and the Royalists fanned these village outbreaks into a
religious war of the most serious character. Though poorly armed, and
accustomed to return to their homes as soon as fighting was over, the
Vendean peasantry proved themselves a formidable soldiery in the moment of
attack, and cut to pieces the half-disciplined battalions which the
Government sent against them. On the north, France was now assailed by the
English as well as by the Austrians. The Allies laid siege to Condé and
Valenciennes, and drove the French army back in disorder at Famars. Each
defeat was a blow dealt to the Government of the Gironde at Paris. With
foreign and civil war adding disaster to disaster, with the general to whom
the Gironde had entrusted the defence of the Republic openly betraying it
to its enemies, the fury of the capital was easily excited against the
party charged with all the misfortunes of France. A threatening movement of
the middle classes in resistance to a forced loan precipitated the
struggle. The Girondins were accused of arresting the armies of the
Republic in the midst of their conquests, of throwing the frontier open to
the foreigner, and of kindling the civil war of La Vendée. On the 31st of
May a raging mob invaded the Convention. Two days later the representatives
of France were surrounded by the armed forces of the Commune; the
twenty-four leading members of the Gironde were placed under arrest, and
the victory of the Mountain was completed. [27]

[Civil War. The Committee of Public Safety.]

The situation of France, which was serious before, now became desperate;
for the Girondins, escaping from their arrest, called the departments to
arms against Paris. Normandy, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Lyons, rose in
insurrection against the tyranny of the Mountain, and the Royalists of the
south and west threw themselves into a civil war which they hoped to turn
to their own advantage. But a form of government had now arisen in France
well fitted to cope with extraordinary perils. It was a form of government
in which there was little trace of the constitutional tendencies of 1789,
one that had come into being as the stress of conflict threw into the
background the earlier hopes and efforts of the Revolution. In the two
earlier Assemblies it had been a fixed principle that the representatives
of the people were to control the Government, but were not to assume
executive powers themselves. After the overthrow of Monarchy on the 10th
August, the Ministers, though still nominally possessed of powers distinct
from the representative body, began to be checked by Committees of the
Convention appointed for various branches of the public service; and in
March, 1793, in order to meet the increasing difficulties of the war, a
Committee of Public Safety was appointed, charged with the duty of
exercising a general surveillance over the administration. In this
Committee, however, as in all the others, the Gironde were in the majority;
and the twenty-four members who composed it were too numerous a body to act
with effect. The growing ascendancy of the Mountain produced that
concentration of force which the times required. The Committee was reduced
in April to nine members, and in this form it ultimately became the supreme
central power. It was not until after the revolt of Lyons that the
Committee, exchanging Danton's influence for that of Robespierre, adopted
the principle of Terror which has made the memory of their rule one of the
most sinister in history. Their authority steadily increased. The members
divided among themselves the great branches of government. One directed the
army, another the navy, another foreign affairs; the signature of three
members practically gave to any measure the force of law, for the
Convention accepted and voted their reports as a matter of course.

[Commissioners of the Convention]

Whilst the Committee gave orders as the supreme executive, eighty of the
most energetic of the Mountain spread themselves over France, in parties of
two and three, with the title of Commissioners of the Convention, and with
powers over-riding those of all the local authorities. They were originally
appointed for the purpose of hastening on the levy ordered by the
Convention in March, but their powers were gradually extended over the
whole range of administration. Their will was absolute, their authority
supreme. Where the councillors of the Departments or the municipal officers
were good Jacobins, the Commissioners availed themselves of local
machinery; where they suspected their principles, they sent them to the
scaffold, and enforced their own orders by whatever means were readiest.
They censured and dismissed the generals; one of them even directed the
movements of a fleet at sea. What was lost by waste and confusion and by
the interference of the Commissioners in military movements was more than
counterbalanced by the vigour which they threw into all the preparations of
war, and by the unity of purpose which, at the price of unsparing
bloodshed, they communicated to every group where Frenchmen met together.

[Local revolutionary system of 1793]

But no individual energy could have sustained these dictatorships without
the support of a popular organisation. All over France a system of
revolutionary government sprang up, which superseded all existing
institutions just as the authority of the Commissioners of the Convention
superseded all existing local powers. The local revolutionary
administration consisted of a Committee, a Club, and a Tribunal. [28] In
each of 21,000 communes a committee of twelve was elected by the people,
and entrusted by the Convention, as the Terror gained ground, with
boundless powers of arrest and imprisonment. Popular excitement was
sustained by clubs, where the peasants and labourers assembled at the close
of their day's work, and applauded the victories or denounced the enemies
of the Revolution. A Tribunal with swift procedure and powers of life and
death sat in each of the largest towns, and judged the prisoners who were
sent to it by the committees of the neighbouring district. Such was the
government of 1793--an executive of uncontrolled power drawn from the
members of a single Assembly, and itself brought into immediate contact
with the poorest of the people in their assemblies and clubs. The balance
of interests which creates a constitutional system, the security of life,
liberty, and property, which is the essence of every recognised social
order, did not now exist in France. One public purpose, the defence of the
Revolution, became the law before which all others lost their force.
Treating all France like a town in a state of siege, the Government took
upon itself the duty of providing support for the poorest classes by
enactments controlling the sale and possession of the necessaries of life.

[Law of the Maximum]

The price of corn and other necessaries was fixed; and, when the traders
and producers consequently ceased to bring their goods to market, the
Commissioners of the Convention were empowered to make requisition of a
certain quantity of corn for every acre of ground. Property was thus placed
at the disposal of the men who already exercised absolute political power.
"The state of France," said Burke, "is perfectly simple. It consists of but
two descriptions, the oppressors and the oppressed." It is in vain that the
attempt has been made to extenuate the atrocious and senseless cruelties of
this time by extolling the great legislative projects of the Convention, or
pleading the dire necessity of a land attacked on every side by the
foreigner, and rent with civil war. The more that is known of the Reign of
Terror, the more hateful, the meaner and more disgusting is the picture
unveiled. France was saved not by the brutalities, but by the energy, of
the faction that ruled it. It is scarcely too much to say that the cause of
European progress would have been less injured by the military overthrow of
the Republic, by the severance of the border provinces from France and the
restoration of some shadow of the ancient _régime_, than by the traditions
of horror which for the next fifty years were inseparably associated in
men's minds with the victory of the people over established power.

[French disasters, March-Sept., 1793.]

The Revolutionary organisation did not reach its full vigour till the
autumn of 1793, when the prospects of France were at their worst. Custine,
who was brought up from Alsace to take command of the Army of the North,
found it so demoralised that he was unable to attempt the relief of the
fortresses which were now besieged by the Allies. Condé surrendered to the
Austrians on the 10th of July; Valenciennes capitulated to the Duke of York
a fortnight later. In the east the fortune of war was no better. An attack
made on the Prussian army besieging Mainz totally failed; and on the 23rd
of July this great fortress, which had been besieged since the middle of
April, passed back into the hands of the Germans. On every side the
Republic seemed to be sinking before its enemies. Its frontier defences had
fallen before the victorious Austrians and English; Brunswick was ready to
advance upon Alsace from conquered Mainz; Lyons and Toulon were in revolt;
La Vendée had proved the grave of the forces sent to subdue it. It was in
this crisis of misfortune that the Convention placed the entire male
population of France between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five at the
disposal of the Government, and turned the whole country into one great
camp and arsenal of war. Nor was there wanting a mind equal to the task of
giving order to this vast material. The appointment of Carnot, an officer
of engineers, to a seat on the Committee of Public Safety placed the
military administration of France in the hands of a man who, as an
organiser, if not as a strategist, was soon to prove himself without equal
in Europe.

[The Allies seek each their separate ends.]

Nevertheless, it was to the dissensions and to the bad policy of the Allies
more than to the energy of its own Government that France owed its safety.
The object for which the Allies professed to be carrying on the war, the
establishment of a pacific Government in France, was subordinated to
schemes of aggrandisement, known as the acquisition of just indemnities.
While Prussia, bent chiefly on preventing the Emperor from gaining Bavaria
in exchange for Belgium, kept its own army inactive on the Rhine, [29]
Austria, with the full approval of Pitt's Cabinet, claimed annexations in
Northern France, as well as Alsace, and treated the conquered town of Condé
as Austrian territory. [30] Henceforward all the operations of the northern
army were directed to the acquisition of frontier territory, not to the
pursuit and overthrow of the Republican forces. The war was openly
converted from a war of defence into a war of spoliation. It was a change
which mocked the disinterested professions with which the Allies had taken
up arms; in its military results it was absolutely ruinous. In face of the
immense levies which promised the French certain victory in a long war, the
only hope for the Allies lay in a rapid march to Paris; they preferred the
extreme of division and delay. No sooner had the advance of their united
armies driven Custine from his stronghold at Famars, than the English
commander led off his forces to besiege Dunkirk, while the Austrians, under
Prince Coburg, proceeded to invest Cambray and Le Quesnoy. The line of the
invaders thus extended from the Channel to Brunswick's posts at Landau, on
the border of Alsace; the main armies were out of reach of one another, and
their strength was diminished by the corps detached to keep up their
communications. The French held the inner circle; and the advantage which
this gave them was well understood by Carnot, who now inspired the measures
of the Committee. In steadiness and precision the French recruits were no
match for the trained armies of Germany; but the supply of them was
inexhaustible, and Carnot knew that when they were thrown in sufficient
masses upon the enemy their courage and enthusiasm would make amends for
their inexperience. The successes of the Allies, unbroken from February to
August, now began to alternate with defeats; the flood of invasion was
first slowly and obstinately repelled, then swept away before a victorious
advance.

[York driven from Dunkirk Sept. 8.]

It was on the British commander that the first blow was struck. The forces
that could be detached from the French Northern army were not sufficient to
drive York from before Dunkirk; but on the Moselle there were troops
engaged in watching an enemy who was not likely to advance; and the
Committee did not hesitate to leave this side of France open to the
Prussians in order to deal a decisive stroke in the north. Before the
movement was noticed by the enemy, Carnot had transported 30,000 men from
Metz to the English Channel; and in the first week of September the German
corps covering York was assailed by General Houchard with numbers double
its own. The Germans were driven back upon Dunkirk; York only saved his own
army from destruction by hastily raising the siege and abandoning his heavy
artillery. The victory of the French, however, was ill followed up.
Houchard was sent before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and he paid with his
life for his mistakes. Custine had already perished, unjustly condemned for
the loss of Mainz and Valenciennes.

[Commands given to men of the people.]

[Jourdan's victory at Wattignies, Oct 15.]

It was no unimportant change for France when the successors of Custine and
Houchard received their commands from the Committee of Public Safety. The
levelling principle of the Reign of Terror left its effect on France
through its operation in the army, and through this almost alone. Its
executions produced only horror and reaction; its confiscations were soon
reversed; but the creation of a thoroughly democratic army, the work of the
men who overthrew the Gironde, gave the most powerful and abiding impulse
to social equality in France. The first generals of the Revolution had been
officers of the old army, men, with a few exceptions, of noble birth, who,
like Custine, had enrolled themselves on the popular side when most of
their companions quitted the country. These generals were connected with
the politicians of the Gironde, and were involved in its fall. The victory
of the Mountain brought men of another type into command. Almost all the
leaders appointed by the Committee of Public Safety were soldiers who had
served in the ranks. In the levies of 1792 and 1793 the officers of the
newly-formed battalions were chosen by the recruits themselves. Patriotism,
energy of character, acquaintance with warfare, instantly brought men into
prominence. Soldiers of the old army, like Massena, who had reached middle
life with their knapsacks on their backs; lawyers, like the Breton Moreau;
waiters at inns, like Murat, found themselves at the head of their
battalions, and knew that Carnot was ever watching for genius and ability
to call it to the highest commands. With a million of men under arms, there
were many in whom great natural gifts supplied the want of professional
training. It was also inevitable that at the outset command should
sometimes fall into the hands of mere busy politicians; but the character
of the generals steadily rose as the Committee gained the ascendancy over a
knot of demagogues who held the War Ministry during the summer of 1793; and
by the end of the year there was scarcely one officer in high command who
had not proved himself worthy of his post. In the investigation into
Houchard's conduct at Dunkirk, Carnot learnt that the victory had in fact
been won by Jourdan, one of the generals of division. Jourdan had begun
life as a common soldier fifteen years before. Discharged at the end of the
American War, he had set up a draper's shop in Limoges, his native town. He
joined the army a second time on the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, and
the men of his battalion elected him captain. His ability was noticed; he
was made successively general of brigade and general of division; and, upon
the dismissal of Houchard, Carnot summoned him to the command of the Army
of the North. The Austrians were now engaged in the investment of Maubeuge.
On the 15th of October Jourdan attacked and defeated their covering army at
Wattignies. His victory forced the Austrians to raise the siege, and
brought the campaign to an end for the winter.

[Lyons, Toulon, La Vendée, conquered, Oct.-Dec. 1793.]

Thus successful on the northern frontier, the Republic carried on war
against its internal enemies without pause and without mercy. Lyons
surrendered in October; its citizens were slaughtered by hundreds in cold
blood. Toulon had thrown itself into the hands of the English, and
proclaimed King Louis XVII. It was besieged by land; but the operations
produced no effect until Napoleon Bonaparte, captain of artillery, planned
the capture of a ridge from which the cannon of the besiegers would command
the English fleet in the harbour. Hood, the British admiral, now found his
position hopeless. He took several thousands of the inhabitants on board
his ships, and put out to sea, blowing up the French ships which he left in
the harbour. Hood had received the fleet from the Royalists in trust for
their King; its destruction gave England command of the Mediterranean and
freed Naples from fear of attack; and Hood thought too little of the
consequences which his act would bring down upon those of the inhabitants
of Toulon whom he left behind. [31]

The horrors that followed the entry of the Republican army into the city
did not prevent Pitt from including among the subjects of congratulation in
the King's Speech of 1794 "the circumstances attending the evacuation of
Toulon." It was perhaps fortunate for the Royalists in other parts of
France that they failed to receive the assistance of England. Help was
promised to the Vendeans, but it arrived too late. The appearance of Kleber
at the head of the army which had defended Mainz had already turned the
scale. Brave as they were, the Vendeans could not long resist trained
armies. The war of pitched battles ended on the Loire with the year 1793.
It was succeeded by a war of merciless and systematic destruction on the
one side, and of ambush and surprises on the other.

[Prussia withdrawing from the war on account of Polish affairs.]

At home the foes of the Republic were sinking; its invaders were too much
at discord with one another to threaten it any longer with serious danger.
Prussia was in fact withdrawing from the war. It has been seen that when
King Frederick William and the Emperor concerted the autumn campaign of
1792, the understanding was formed that Prussia, in return for its efforts
against France, should be allowed to seize part of western Poland, if the
Empress Catherine should give her consent. With this prospect before it,
the thoughts of the Prussian Government had been from the first busied more
with Poland, where it hoped to enter into possession, than with France,
where it had only to fight Austria's battles. Negotiations on the Polish
question had been actively carried on between Berlin and St. Petersburg
during the first months of the war; and in January, 1793, the Empress
Catherine had concluded a Treaty of Partition with King Frederick William,
in virtue of which a Prussian army under General Möllendorf immediately
entered western Poland. It was thought good policy to keep the terms of
this treaty secret from Austria, as it granted a much larger portion of
Poland to Prussia than Austria was willing that it should receive. Two
months passed before the Austrian Sovereign learnt how he had been treated
by his ally. He then denounced the treaty, and assumed so threatening an
attitude that the Prussians thought it necessary to fortify the territory
that they had seized. [32] The Ministers who had been outwitted by the
Court of Berlin were dismissed; Baron Thugut, who from the first had
prophesied nothing but evil of the Prussian alliance, was called to power.
The history of this statesman, who for the next eight years directed the
war-policy of Austria, and filled a part in Europe subordinate only to
those of Pitt and Bonaparte, has until a recent date been drawn chiefly
from the representations of his enemies. Humbly born, scornful and
inaccessible, Thugut was detested by the Viennese aristocracy; the French
emigrants hated and maligned him on account of his indifference to their
cause; the public opinion of Austria held him responsible for unparalleled
military disasters; Prussian generals and ambassadors, whose reports have
formed the basis of Prussian histories, pictured him as a Satanic
antagonist. It was long believed of Thugut that while ambassador at
Constantinople he had sold the Austrian cypher to the French; that in 1794
he prevented his master's armies from winning victories because he had
speculated in the French funds; and that in 1799 he occasioned the murder
of the French envoys at Rastadt, in order to recover documents
incriminating himself. Better sources of information are now opened, and a
statesman, jealous, bitter, and over-reaching, but not without great
qualities of character, stands in the place of the legendary criminal. It
is indeed clear that Thugut's hatred of Prussia amounted almost to mania;
it is also clear that his designs of aggression, formed in the school of
the Emperor Joseph, were fatally in conflict with the defensive principles
which Europe ought to have opposed to the aggressions of France. Evidence
exists that during the eight years of Thugut's ministry he entertained,
together or successively, projects for the annexation of French Flanders,
Bavaria, Alsace, part of Poland, Venice and Dalmatia, Salzburg, the Papal
Legations, the Republic of Genoa, Piedmont, and Bosnia; and to this list
Tuscany and Savoy ought probably to be added. But the charges brought
against Thugut of underhand dealings with France, and of the willing
abandonment of German interests in return for compensation to Austria in
Italy, rest on insufficient ground. Though, like every other politician at
Vienna and Berlin, he viewed German affairs not as a matter of nationality
but in subordination to the general interests of his own Court, Thugut
appears to have been, of all the Continental statesmen of that time, the
steadiest enemy of French aggression, and to have offered the longest
resistance to a peace that was purchased by the cession of German soil.
[33]

[Victories of Hoche and Pichegru at Wörth and Weissenburg, Dec. 23, 26.]

Nevertheless, from the moment when Thugut was called to power the alliance
between Austria and Prussia was doomed. Others might perhaps have averted a
rupture; Thugut made no attempt to do so. The siege of Mainz was the last
serious operation of war which the Prussian army performed. The mission of
an Austrian envoy, Lehrbach, to the Prussian camp in August, 1793, and his
negotiations on the Polish and the Bavarian questions, only widened the
breach between the two Courts. It was known that the Austrians were
encouraging the Polish Diet to refuse the cession of the provinces occupied
by Prussia; and the advisers of King Frederick William in consequence
recommended him to quit the Rhine, and to place himself at the head of an
army in Poland. At the headquarters of the Allies, between Mainz and the
Alsatian frontier, all was dissension and intrigue. The impetuosity of the
Austrian general, Wurmser, who advanced upon Alsace without consulting the
King, was construed as a studied insult. On the 29th of September, after
informing the allied Courts that Prussia would henceforth take only a
subordinate part in the war, King Frederick William quitted the army,
leaving orders with the Duke of Brunswick to fight no great battle. It was
in vain that Wurmser stormed the lines of Weissenburg (Oct. 13), and
victoriously pushed forward into Alsace. The hopes of a Royalist
insurrection in Strasburg proved illusory. The German sympathies shown by a
portion of the upper and middle classes of Alsace only brought down upon
them a bloody vengeance at the hands of St. Just, commissioner of the
Convention. The peasantry, partly from hatred of the feudal burdens of the
old _régime_, partly from fear of St. Just and the guillotine, thronged to
the French camp. In place of the beaten generals came Hoche and Pichegru:
Hoche, lately a common soldier in the Guards, earning by a humble industry
little sums for the purchase of books, now, at the age of twenty-six, a
commander more than a match for the wrangling veterans of Germany;
Pichegru, six years older, also a man sprung from the people, once a
teacher in the military school of Brienne, afterwards a private of
artillery in the American War. A series of harassing encounters took place
during December. At length, with St. Just cheering on the Alsatian peasants
in the hottest of the fire, these generals victoriously carried the
Austrian positions at Wörth and at Weissenburg (Dec. 23, 26). The Austrian
commander declared his army to be utterly ruined; and Brunswick, who had
abstained from rendering his ally any real assistance, found himself a
second time back upon the Rhine. [34]

[Pitt's bargain with Prussia, April, 1794.]

[Revolt of Kosciusko. April, 1794.]

[Möllendorf refuses to help in Flanders.]

The virtual retirement of Prussia from the Coalition was no secret to the
French Government: amongst the Allies it was viewed in various lights. The
Empress Catherine, who had counted on seeing her troublesome Prussian
friend engaged with her detested French enemy, taunted the King of Prussia
with the loss of his personal honour. Austria, conscious of the antagonism
between Prussian and Austrian interests and of the hollow character of the
Coalition, would concede nothing to keep Prussia in arms. Pitt alone was
willing to make a sacrifice, in order to prevent the rupture of the
alliance. The King of Prussia was ready to continue the struggle with
France if his expenses were paid, but not otherwise. Accordingly, after
Austria had refused to contribute the small sum which Pitt asked, a bargain
was struck between Lord Malmesbury and the Prussian Minister Haugwitz, by
which Great Britain undertook to furnish a subsidy, provided that 60,000
Prussian troops, under General Möllendorf, were placed at the disposal of
the Maritime Powers. [35] It was Pitt's intention that the troops which he
subsidised should be massed with Austrian and English forces for the
defence of Belgium: the Prussian Ministry, availing themselves of an
ambiguous expression in the treaty, insisted on keeping them inactive upon
the Upper Rhine. Möllendorf wished to guard Mainz: other men of influence
longed to abandon the alliance with Austria, and to employ the whole of
Prussia's force in Poland. At the moment when Haugwitz was contracting to
place Möllendorf's army at Pitt's disposal, Poland had risen in revolt
under Kosciusko, and the Russian garrison which occupied Warsaw had been
overpowered and cut to pieces. Catherine called upon the King of Prussia
for assistance; but it was not so much a desire to rescue the Empress from
a momentary danger that excited the Prussian Cabinet as the belief that her
vengeance would now make an absolute end of what remained of the Polish
kingdom. The prey was doomed; the wisdom of Prussia was to be the first to
seize and drag it to the ground. So large a prospect offered itself to the
Power that should crush Poland during the brief paralysis of the Russian
arms, that, on the first news of the outbreak, the King's advisers urged
him instantly to make peace with France and to throw his whole strength
into the Polish struggle. Frederick William could not reconcile himself to
making peace with the Jacobins; but he ordered an army to march upon
Warsaw, and shortly afterwards placed himself at its head (May, 1794). When
the King, who was the only politician in Prussia who took an interest in
the French war, thus publicly acknowledged the higher importance of the
Polish campaign, his generals upon the Rhine made it their only object to
do nothing which it was possible to leave undone without actually
forfeiting the British subsidy. Instead of fighting, Möllendorf spent his
time in urging other people to make peace. It was in vain that Malmesbury
argued that the very object of Pitt's bargain was to keep the French out of
the Netherlands: Möllendorf had made up his mind that the army should not
be committed to the orders of Pitt and the Austrians. He continued in the
Palatinate, alleging that any movement of the Prussian army towards the
north would give the French admittance to southern Germany. Pitt's hope of
defending the Netherlands now rested on the energy and on the sincerity of
the Austrian Cabinet, and on this alone.

[Battles on the Sambre, May-June, 1794.]

After breaking up from winter quarters in the spring of 1794, the Austrian
and English allied forces had successfully laid siege to Landrecies, and
defeated the enemy in its neighbourhood. [36] Their advance, however, was
checked by a movement of the French Army of the North, now commanded by
Pichegru, towards the Flemish coast. York and the English troops were
exposed to the attack, and suffered a defeat at Turcoing. The decision of
the campaign lay, however, not in the west of Flanders, but at the other
end of the Allies' position, at Charleroi on the Sambre, where a French
victory would either force the Austrians to fall back eastwards, leaving
York to his fate, or sever their communications with Germany. This became
evident to the French Government; and in May the Commissioners of the
Convention forced the generals on the Sambre to fight a series of battles,
in which the French repeatedly succeeded in crossing the Sambre, and were
repeatedly driven back again. The fate of the Netherlands depended,
however, on something beside victory or defeat on the Sambre. The Emperor
had come with Baron Thugut to Belgium in the hope of imparting greater
unity and energy to the allied forces, but his presence proved useless.
Among the Austrian generals and diplomatists there were several who desired
to withdraw from the contest in the Netherlands, and to follow the example
of Prussia in Poland. The action of the army was paralysed by intrigues.
"Every one," wrote Thugut, "does exactly as he pleases: there is absolute
anarchy and disorder." [37] At the beginning of June the Emperor quitted
the army; the combats on the Sambre were taken up by Jourdan and 50,000
fresh troops brought from the army of the Moselle; and on the 26th of June
the French defeated Coburg at Fleurus, as he advanced to the relief of
Charleroi, unconscious that Charleroi had surrendered on the day before.
Even now the defence of Belgium was not hopeless; but after one council of
war had declared in favour of fighting, a second determined on a retreat.
It was in vain that the representatives of England appealed to the good
faith and military honour of Austria. Namur and Louvain were abandoned; the
French pressed onwards; and before the end of July the Austrian army had
fallen back behind the Meuse. York, forsaken by the allies, retired
northwards before the superior forces of Pichegru, who entered Antwerp and
made himself master of the whole of the Netherlands up to the Dutch
frontier. [38]

[England disappointed by the Allies.]

Such was the result of Great Britain's well-meant effort to assist the two
great military Powers to defend Europe against the Revolution. To the aim
of the English Minister, the defence of existing rights against democratic
aggression, most of the public men alike of Austria and Prussia were now
absolutely indifferent. They were willing to let the French seize and
revolutionise any territory they pleased, provided that they themselves
obtained their equivalent in Poland. England was in fact in the position of
a man who sets out to attack a highway robber, and offers each of his arms
to a pickpocket. The motives and conduct of these politicians were justly
enough described by the English statesmen and generals who were brought
into closest contact with them. In the councils of Prussia, Malmesbury
declared that he could find no quality but "great and shabby art and
cunning; ill-will, jealousy, and every sort of dirty passion." From the
head quarters of Möllendorf he wrote to a member of Pitt's Cabinet: "Here I
have to do with knavery and dotage.... If we listened only to our feelings,
it would be difficult to keep any measure with Prussia. We must consider it
an alliance with the Algerians, whom it is no disgrace to pay, or any
impeachment of good sense to be cheated by." To the Austrian commander the
Duke of York addressed himself with royal plainness: "Your Serene Highness,
the British nation, whose public opinion is not to be despised, will
consider that it has been bought and sold." [39]

[French reach the Rhine, Oct., 1794.]

[Pichegru conquers Holland, Dec., 1794.]

The sorry concert lasted for a few months longer. Coburg, the Austrian
commander, was dismissed at the peremptory demand of Great Britain; his
successor, Clerfayt, after losing a battle on the Ourthe, offered no
further resistance to the advance of the Republican army, and the campaign
ended in the capture of Cologne by the French, and the disappearance of the
Austrians behind the Rhine. The Prussian subsidies granted by England
resulted in some useless engagements between Möllendorf's corps in the
Palatinate and a French army double its size, followed by the retreat of
the Prussians into Mainz. It only remained for Great Britain to attempt to
keep the French out of Holland. The defence of the Dutch, after everything
south of the river Waal had been lost, Pitt determined to entrust to abler
hands than those of the Duke of York; but the presence of one high-born
blunderer more or less made little difference in a series of operations
conceived in indifference and perversity. Clerfayt would not, or could not,
obey the Emperor's orders and succour his ally. City after city in Holland
welcomed the French. The very elements seemed to declare for the Republic.
Pichegru's army marched in safety over the frozen rivers; and, when the
conquest of the land was completed, his cavalry crowned the campaign by the
capture of the Dutch fleet in the midst of the ice-bound waters of the
Texel. The British regiments, cut off from home, made their way eastward
through the snow towards the Hanoverian frontier, in a state of prostrate
misery which is compared by an eye-witness of both events to that of the
French on their retreat in 1813 after the battle of Leipzig. [40]

[Treaties of Basle with Prussia, April 5, and Spain, July 22, 1795.]

The first act of the struggle between France and the Monarchies of Europe
was concluded. The result of three years of war was that Belgium, Nice, and
Savoy had been added to the territory of the Republic, and that French
armies were in possession of Holland, and the whole of Germany west of the
Rhine. In Spain and in Piedmont the mountain-passes and some extent of
country had been won. Even on the seas, in spite of the destruction of the
fleet at Toulon, and of a heavy defeat by Lord Howe off Ushant on the 1st
of June, 1794, the strength of France was still formidable; and the losses
which she inflicted on the commercial marine of her enemies exceeded those
which she herself sustained. England, which had captured most of the French
West Indian Islands, was the only Power that had wrested anything from the
Republic. The dream of suppressing the Revolution by force of arms had
vanished away; and the States which had entered upon the contest in levity,
in fanaticism, or at the bidding of more powerful allies, found it
necessary to make peace upon such terms as they could obtain. Holland, in
which a strong Republican party had always maintained connection with
France, abolished the rule of its Stadtholder, and placed its resources at
the disposal of its conquerors. Sardinia entered upon abortive
negotiations. Spain, in return for peace, ceded to the Republic the Spanish
half of St. Domingo (July 22, 1795). Prussia concluded a Treaty at Basle
(April 5), which marked and perpetuated the division of Germany by
providing that, although the Empire as a body was still at war with France,
the benefit of Prussia's neutrality should extend to all German States
north of a certain line. A secret article stipulated that, upon the
conclusion of a general peace, if the Empire should cede to France the
principalities west of the Rhine, Prussia should cede its own territory
lying in that district, and receive compensation elsewhere. [41]

[Austria and England continue the war, 1795.]

Humiliating such a peace certainly was; yet it would probably have been the
happiest issue for Europe had every Power been forced to accept its
conditions. The territory gained by France was not much more than the very
principle of the Balance of Power would have entitled it to demand, at a
moment when Russia, victorious over the Polish rebellion, was proceeding to
make the final partition of Poland among the three Eastern Monarchies; and,
with all its faults, the France of 1795 would have offered to Europe the
example of a great free State, such as the growth of the military spirit
made impossible after the first of Napoleon's campaigns. But the dark
future was withdrawn from the view of those British statesmen who most
keenly felt the evils of the present; and England, resolutely set against
the course of French aggression, still found in Austria an ally willing to
continue the struggle. The financial help of Great Britain, the Russian
offer of a large share in the spoils of Poland, stimulated the flagging
energy of the Emperor's government. Orders were sent to Clerfayt to advance
from the Rhine at whatever risk, in order to withdraw the troops of the
Republic from the west of France, where England was about to land a body of
Royalists. Clerfayt, however, disobeyed his instructions, and remained
inactive till the autumn. He then defeated a French army pushing beyond the
Rhine, and drove back the besiegers of Mainz; but the British expedition
had already failed, and the time was passed when Clerfayt's successes might
have produced a decisive result. [42]

[Landing at Quiberon, June 27, 1795.]

[France in 1795.]

A new Government was now entering upon power in France. The Reign of Terror
had ended in July, 1794, with the life of Robespierre. The men by whom
Robespierre was overthrown were Terrorists more cruel and less earnest than
himself, who attacked him only in order to save their own lives, and
without the least intention of restoring a constitutional Government to
France. An overwhelming national reaction forced them, however, to
represent themselves as the party of clemency. The reaction was indeed a
simple outburst of human feeling rather than a change in political opinion.
Among the victims of the Terror the great majority had been men of the
lower or middle class, who, except in La Vendée and Brittany, were as
little friendly to the old _régime_ as their executioners. Every class in
France, with the exception of the starving city mobs, longed for security,
and the quiet routine of life. After the disorders of the Republic a
monarchical government naturally seemed to many the best guarantee of
peace; but the monarchy so contemplated was the liberal monarchy of 1791,
not the ancient Court, with its accessories of a landed Church and
privileged noblesse. Religion was still a power in France; but the peasant,
with all his superstition and all his desire for order, was perfectly free
from any delusions about the good old times. He liked to see his children
baptised; but he had no desire to see the priest's tithe-collector back in
his barn: he shuddered at the summary marketing of Conventional
Commissioners; but he had no wish to resume his labours on the fields of
his late seigneur. To be a Monarchist in 1795, among the shopkeepers of
Paris or the farmers of Normandy, meant no more than to wish for a
political system capable of subsisting for twelve months together, and
resting on some other basis than forced loans and compulsory sales of
property. But among the men of the Convention, who had abolished monarchy
and passed sentence of death upon the King, the restoration of the Crown
seemed the bitterest condemnation of all that the Convention had done for
France, and a sentence of outlawry against themselves. If the will of the
nation was for the moment in favour of a restored monarchy, the Convention
determined that its will must be overpowered by force or thwarted by
constitutional forms. Threatened alternately by the Jacobin mob of Paris
and by the Royalist middle class, the Government played off one enemy
against the other, until an ill-timed effort of the emigrant noblesse gave
to the Convention the prestige of a decisive victory over Royalists and
foreigners combined. On the 27th of June, 1795, an English fleet landed the
flower of the old nobility of France at the Bay of Quiberon in southern
Brittany. It was only to give one last fatal proof of their incapacity that
these unhappy men appeared once more on French soil. Within three weeks
after their landing, in a region where for years together the peasantry,
led by their landlords, baffled the best generals of the Republic, this
invading army of the nobles, supported by the fleet, the arms, and the
money of England, was brought to utter ruin by the discord of its own
leaders. Before the nobles had settled who was to command and who was to
obey, General Hoche surprised their fort, beat them back to the edge of the
peninsula where they had landed, and captured all who were not killed
fighting or rescued by English boats (July 20). The Commissioner Tallien,
in order to purge himself from the just suspicion of Royalist intrigues,
caused six hundred prisoners to be shot in cold blood. [43]

[Project of Constitution, 1795.]

At the moment when the emigrant army reached France, the Convention was
engaged in discussing the political system which was to succeed its own
rule. A week earlier, the Committee appointed to draw up a new constitution
for France had presented its report. The main object of the new
constitution in its original form was to secure France against a recurrence
of those evils which it had suffered since 1792. The calamities of the last
three years were ascribed to the sovereignty of a single Assembly. A vote
of the Convention had established the Revolutionary Tribunal, proscribed
the Girondins, and placed France at the mercy of eighty individuals
selected by the Convention from itself. The legislators of 1795 desired a
guarantee that no party, however determined, should thus destroy its
enemies by a single law, and unite supreme legislative and executive power
in its own hands. With the object of dividing authority, the executive was,
in the new draft-constitution, made independent of the legislature, and the
legislature itself was broken up into two chambers. A Directory of five
members, chosen by the Assemblies, but not responsible except under actual
impeachment, was to conduct the administration, without the right of
proposing laws; a Chamber of five hundred was to submit laws to the
approval of a Council of two hundred and fifty Ancients, or men of middle
life; but neither of these bodies was to exercise any influence upon the
actual government. One director and a third part of each of the legislative
bodies were to retire every year. [44]

[Constitution of 1795. Insurrection of Vendémiaire, Oct. 4.]

The project thus outlined met with general approval, and gained even that
of the Royalists, who believed that a popular election would place them in
a majority in the two new Assemblies. Such an event was, however, in the
eyes of the Convention, the one fatal possibility that must be averted at
every cost. In the midst of the debates upon the draft-constitution there
arrived the news of Hoche's victory at Quiberon. The Convention gained
courage to add a clause providing that two-thirds of the new deputies
should be appointed from among its own members, thus rendering a Royalist
majority in the Chambers impossible. With this condition attached to it,
the Constitution was laid before the country. The provinces accepted it;
the Royalist middle class of Paris rose in insurrection, and marched
against the Convention in the Tuileries. Their revolt was foreseen; the
defence of the Convention was entrusted to General Bonaparte, who met the
attack of the Parisians in a style unknown in the warfare of the capital.
Bonaparte's command of trained artillery secured him victory; but the
struggle of the 4th of October (13 Vendémiaire) was the severest that took
place in Paris during the Revolution, and the loss of life in fighting
greater than on the day that overthrew the Monarchy.

[The Directory, Oct., 1795.]

The new Government of France now entered into power. Members of the
Convention formed two-thirds of the new legislative bodies; the one-third
which the country was permitted to elect consisted chiefly of men of
moderate or Royalist opinions. The five persons who were chosen Directors
were all Conventionalists who had voted for the death of the King; Carnot,
however, who had won the victories without sharing in the cruelties of the
Reign of Terror, was the only member of the late Committee of Public Safety
who was placed in power. In spite of the striking homage paid to the great
act of regicide in the election of the five Directors, the establishment of
the Directory was accepted by Europe as the close of revolutionary
disorder. The return of constitutional rule in France was marked by a
declaration on the part of the King of England of his willingness to treat
for peace. A gentler spirit seemed to have arisen in the Republic. Although
the laws against the emigrants and non-juring priests were still
unrepealed, the exiles began to return unmolested to their homes. Life
resumed something of its old aspect in the capital. The rich and the gay
consoled themselves with costlier luxury for all the austerities of the
Reign of Terror. The labouring classes, now harmless and disarmed, were
sharply taught that they must be content with such improvement in their lot
as the progress of society might bring.

[What was new to Europe in the Revolution.]

[Absolute governments of 18th century engaged in reforms.]

At the close of this first period of the Revolutionary War we may pause to
make an estimate of the new influences which the French Revolution had
brought into Europe, and of the effects which had thus far resulted from
them. The opinion current among the French people themselves, that the
Revolution gave birth to the modern life not of France only but of the
Western Continent generally, is true of one great set of facts; it is
untrue of another. There were conceptions in France in 1789 which made
France a real contrast to most of the Continental monarchies; there were
others which it shared in common with them. The ideas of social, legal, and
ecclesiastical reform which were realised in 1789 were not peculiar to
France; what was peculiar to France was the idea that these reforms were to
be effected by the nation itself. In other countries reforms had been
initiated by Governments, and forced upon an unwilling people. Innovation
sprang from the Crown; its agents were the servants of the State. A
distinct class of improvements, many of them identical with the changes
made by the Revolution in France, attracted the attention in a greater or
less degree of almost all the Western Courts of the eighteenth century. The
creation of a simple and regular administrative system; the reform of the
clergy; the emancipation of the Church from the jurisdiction of the Pope,
and of all orders in the State from the jurisdiction of the Church; the
amelioration of the lot of the peasant; the introduction of codes of law
abolishing both the cruelties and the confusion of ancient practice,--all
these were purposes more or less familiar to the absolute sovereigns of the
eighteenth century, whom the French so summarily described as benighted
tyrants. It was in Austria, Prussia, and Tuscany that the civilising energy
of the Crown had been seen in its strongest form, but even the Governments
of Naples and Spain had caught the spirit of change. The religious
tolerance which Joseph gave to Austria, the rejection of Papal authority
and the abolition of the punishment of death which Leopold effected in
Tuscany, were bolder efforts of the same political rationalism which in
Spain minimised the powers of the Inquisition and in Naples attempted to
found a system of public education. In all this, however, there was no
trace of the action of the people, or of any sense that a nation ought to
raise itself above a state of tutelage. Men of ideas called upon
Governments to impose better institutions upon the people, not upon the
people to wrest them from the Governments.

[In France, the nation itself acted.]

In France alone a view of public affairs had grown up which impelled the
nation to create its reforms for itself. If the substance of many of the
French revolutionary changes coincided with the objects of Austrian or of
Tuscan reform, there was nothing similar in their method. In other
countries reform sprang from the command of an enlightened ruler; in France
it started with the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and aimed at the
creation of local authority to be exercised by the citizens themselves. The
source of this difference lay partly in the influence of England and
America upon French opinion, but much more in the existence within France
of a numerous and energetic middle class, enriched by commerce, and keenly
interested in all the speculation and literary activity of the age. This
was a class that both understood the wrongs which the other classes
inflicted or suffered, and felt itself capable of redressing them. For the
flogged and over-driven peasant in Naples or Hungary no ally existed but
the Crown. In most of those poor and backward States which made up
monarchical Europe, the fraction of the inhabitants which neither enjoyed
privilege nor stood in bondage to it was too small to think of forcing
itself into power. The nobles sought to preserve their feudal rights: the
Crown sought to reduce them; the nation, elsewhere than in France, did not
intervene and lay hands upon power for itself, because the nation was
nothing but the four mutually exclusive classes of the landlords who
commanded, the peasants who served, the priests who idled, and the soldiers
who fought. France differed from all the other monarchies of the Continent
in possessing a public which blended all classes and was dominated by none;
a public comprehending thousands of men who were familiar with the great
interests of society, and who, whether noble or not noble, possessed the
wealth and the intelligence that made them rightly desire a share in power.

[Movements against governments outside France.]

Liberty, the right of the nation to govern itself, seemed at the outset to
be the great principle of the Revolution. The French people themselves
believed the question at issue to be mainly between authority and popular
right; the rest of Europe saw the Revolution under the same aspect. Hence,
in those countries where the example of France produced political
movements, the effect was in the first instance to excite agitation against
the Government, whatever might be the form of the latter. In England the
agitation was one of the middle class against the aristocratic
parliamentary system; in Hungary, it was an agitation of the nobles against
the Crown; on the Rhine it was an agitation of the commercial classes
against ecclesiastical rule. But in every case in which the reforming
movement was not supported by the presence of French armies, the terrors
which succeeded the first sanguine hopes of the Revolution struck the
leaders of these movements with revulsion and despair, and converted even
the better Governments into engines of reaction. In France itself it was
seen that the desire for liberty among an enlightened class could not
suddenly transform the habits of a nation accustomed to accept everything
from authority. Privilege was destroyed, equality was advanced; but instead
of self-government the Revolution brought France the most absolute rule it
had ever known. It was not that the Revolution had swept by, leaving things
where they were before: it had in fact accomplished most of those great
changes which lay the foundation of a sound social life: but the faculty of
self-government, the first condition of any lasting political liberty,
remained to be slowly won.

[Reaction.]

Outside France reaction set in without the benefit of previous change. At
London, Vienna, Naples, and Madrid, Governments gave up all other objects
in order to devote themselves to the suppression of Jacobinism. Pitt, whose
noble aims had been the extinction of the slave-trade, the reform of
Parliament, and the advance of national intercourse by free trade,
surrendered himself to men whose thoughts centred upon informers, Gagging
Acts, and constructive treasons, and who opposed all legislation upon the
slave-trade because slaves had been freed by the Jacobins of the
Convention. State trials and imprisonments became the order of the day; but
the reaction in England at least stopped short of the scaffold. At Vienna
and Naples fear was more cruel. The men who either were, or affected to be,
in such fear of revolution that they discovered a Jacobinical allegory in
Mozart's last opera, [45] did not spare life when the threads of anything
like a real conspiracy were placed in their hands. At Vienna terror was
employed to crush the constitutional opposition of Hungary to the Austrian
Court. In Naples a long reign of cruelty and oppression began with the
creation of a secret tribunal to investigate charges of conspiracy made by
informers. In Mainz, the Archbishop occupied the last years of his
government, after his restoration in 1793, with a series of brutal
punishments and tyrannical precautions.

These were but instances of the effect which the first epoch of the
Revolution produced upon the old European States. After a momentary
stimulus to freedom it threw the nations themselves into reaction and
apathy; it totally changed the spirit of the better governments, attaching
to all liberal ideas the stigma of Revolution, and identifying the work of
authority with resistance to every kind of reform. There were States in
which this change, the first effect of the Revolution, was also its only
one; States whose history, as in the case of England, is for a whole
generation the history of political progress unnaturally checked and thrown
out of its course. There were others, and these the more numerous, where
the first stimulus and the first reaction were soon forgotten in new and
penetrating changes produced by the successive victories of France. The
nature of these changes, even more than the warfare which introduced them,
gives its interest to the period on which we are about to enter.




CHAPTER III.


Triple attack on Austria--Moreau, Jourdan--Bonaparte in Italy--Condition of
the Italian States--Professions and real intentions of Bonaparte and the
Directory--Battle of Montenotte--Armistice with Sardinia--Campaign in
Lombardy--Treatment of the Pope, Naples, Tuscany--Siege of Mantua--
Castiglione, Moreau and Jourdan in Germany Their retreat--Secret Treaty
with Prussia--Negotiations with England--Cispadane Republic--Rise of the
idea of Italian Independence--Battles of Arcola and Rivoli--Peace with the
Pope at Tolentino--Venice--Preliminaries of Leoben--The French in
Venice--The French take the Ionian Islands and give Venice to
Austria--Genoa--Coup d'état of 17 Fructidor in Paris--Treaty of Campo
Formio--Victories of England at sea--Bonaparte's project against Egypt.


[Armies of Italy, the Danube, and the Main, 1796.]

With the opening of the year 1796 the leading interest of European history
passes to a new scene. Hitherto the progress of French victory had been in
the direction of the Rhine: the advance of the army of the Pyrenees had
been cut short by the conclusion of peace with Spain; the army of Italy had
achieved little beyond some obscure successes in the mountains. It was the
appointment of Napoleon Bonaparte to the command of the latter force, in
the spring of 1796, that first centred the fortunes of the Republic in the
land beyond the Alps. Freed from Prussia by the Treaty of Basle, the
Directory was now able to withdraw its attention from Holland and from the
Lower Rhine, and to throw its whole force into the struggle with Austria.
By the advice of Bonaparte a threefold movement was undertaken against
Vienna, by way of Lombardy, by the valley of the Danube, and by the valley
of the Main. General Jourdan, in command of the army that had conquered the
Netherlands, was ordered to enter Germany by Frankfort; Moreau crossed the
Rhine at Strasburg: Bonaparte himself, drawing his scanty supplies along
the coast-road from Nice, faced the allied forces of Austria and Sardinia
upon the slopes of the Maritime Apennines, forty miles to the west of
Genoa. The country in which he was about to operate was familiar to
Bonaparte from service there in 1794; his own descent and language gave him
singular advantages in any enterprise undertaken in Italy. Bonaparte was no
Italian at heart; but he knew at least enough of the Italian nature to work
upon its better impulses, and to attach its hopes, so long as he needed the
support of Italian opinion, to his own career of victory.

[Condition of Italy.]

Three centuries separated the Italy of that day from the bright and
vigorous Italy which, in the glow of its Republican freedom, had given so
much to Northern Europe in art, in letters, and in the charm of life. A
long epoch of subjection to despotic or foreign rule, of commercial
inaction, of decline in mind and character, had made the Italians of no
account among the political forces of Europe. Down to the peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 their provinces were bartered between the Bourbons
and the Hapsburgs; and although the settlement of that date left no part of
Italy, except the Duchy of Milan, incorporated in a foreign empire, yet the
crown of Naples was vested in a younger branch of the Spanish Bourbons, and
the marriage of Maria Theresa with the Archduke Francis made Tuscany an
appanage of the House of Austria. Venice and Genoa retained their
independence and their republican government, but little of their ancient
spirit. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Austrian influence was
dominant throughout the peninsula, Marie Caroline, the Queen and the ruler
of Ferdinand of Naples, being the sister of the Emperor Leopold and Marie
Antoinette. With the exception of Piedmont, which preserved a strong
military sentiment and the tradition of an active and patriotic policy, the
Italian States were either, like Venice and Genoa, anxious to keep
themselves out of danger by seeming to hear and see nothing that passed
around them, or governed by families in the closest connection with the
great reigning Houses of the Continent. Neither in Italy itself, nor in the
general course of European affairs during the Napoleonic period, was
anything determined by the sentiment of the Italian people. The peasantry
at times fought against the French with energy; but no strong impulse, like
that of the Spaniards, enlisted the upper class of Italians either on the
side of Napoleon or on that of his enemies. Acquiescence and submission had
become the habit of the race; the sense of national unity and worth, the
personal pride which makes the absence of liberty an intolerable wrong,
only entered the Italian character at a later date.

[Revival after 1740.]

Yet, in spite of its political nullity, Italy was not in a state of
decline. Its worst days had ended before the middle of the eighteenth
century. The fifty years preceding the French Revolution, if they had
brought nothing of the spirit of liberty, had in all other respects been
years of progress and revival. In Lombardy the government of Maria Theresa
and Joseph awoke life and motion after ages of Spanish torpor and misrule.
Traditions of local activity revived; the communes were encouraged in their
works of irrigation and rural improvement; a singular liberality towards
public opinion and the press made the Austrian possessions the centre of
the intellectual movement of Italy. In the south, progress began on the day
when the last foreign Viceroy disappeared from Naples (1735), and King
Charles III., though a member of the Spanish House, entered upon the
government of the two Sicilies as an independent kingdom. Venice and the
Papal States alone seemed to be untouched by the spirit of material and
social improvement, so active in the rest of Italy before the interest in
political life had come into being.

Nor was the age without its intellectual distinction. If the literature of
Italy in the second half of the eighteenth century had little that recalled
the inspiration of its splendid youth, it showed at least a return to
seriousness and an interest in important things. The political economists
of Lombardy were scarcely behind those of England; the work of the Milanese
Beccaria on "Crimes and Punishments" stimulated the reform of criminal law
in every country in Europe; an intelligent and increasing attention to
problems of agriculture, commerce, and education took the place of the
fatuous gallantries and insipid criticism which had hitherto made up the
life of Italians of birth and culture. One man of genius, Vittorio Alfieri,
the creator of Italian tragedy, idealised both in prose and verse a type of
rugged independence and resistance to tyrannical power. Alfieri was neither
a man of political judgment himself nor the representative of any real
political current in Italy; but the lesson which he taught to the Italians,
the lesson of respect for themselves and their country, was the one which
Italy most of all required to learn; and the appearance of this manly and
energetic spirit in its literature gave hope that the Italian nation would
not long be content to remain without political being.

[Social condition.]

[Tuscany.]

Italy, to the outside world, meant little more than the ruins of the Roman
Forum, the galleries of Florence, the paradise of Capri and the Neapolitan
coast; the singular variety in its local conditions of life gained little
attention from the foreigner. There were districts in Italy where the
social order was almost of a Polish type of barbarism; there were others
where the rich and the poor lived perhaps under a happier relation than in
any other country in Europe. The difference depended chiefly upon the
extent to which municipal life had in past time superseded the feudal order
under which the territorial lord was the judge and the ruler of his own
domain. In Tuscany the city had done the most in absorbing the landed
nobility; in Naples and Sicily it had done the least. When, during the
middle ages, the Republic of Florence forced the feudal lords who
surrounded it to enter its walls as citizens, in some cases it deprived
them of all authority, in others it permitted them to retain a jurisdiction
over their peasants; but even in these instances the sovereignty of the
city deprived the feudal relation of most of its harshness and force. After
the loss of Florentine liberty, the Medici, aping the custom of older
monarchies, conferred the title of marquis and count upon men who preferred
servitude to freedom, and accompanied the grant of rank with one of
hereditary local authority; but the new institutions took no deep hold on
country life, and the legislation of the first Archduke of the House of
Lorraine (1749) left the landed aristocracy in the position of mere country
gentlemen. [46] Estates were not very large: the prevalent agricultural
system was, as it still is, that of the _mezzeria_, a partnership between
the landlord and tenant; the tenant holding by custom in perpetuity, and
sharing the produce with the landlord, who supplied a part of the stock and
materials for farming. In Tuscany the conditions of the _mezzeria_ were
extremely favourable to the tenant; and if a cheerful country life under a
mild and enlightened government were all that a State need desire, Tuscany
enjoyed rare happiness.

[Naples and Sicily.]

[Piedmont.]

Far different was the condition of Sicily and Naples. Here the growth of
city life had never affected the rough sovereignty which the barons
exercised over great tracts of country withdrawn from the civilised world.
When Charles III. ascended the throne in 1735, he found whole provinces in
which there was absolutely no administration of justice on the part of the
State. The feudal rights of the nobility were in the last degree
oppressive, the barbarism of the people was in many districts extreme. Out
of two thousand six hundred towns and villages in the kingdom, there were
only fifty that were not subject to feudal authority. In the manor of San
Gennaro di Palma, fifteen miles from Naples, even down to the year 1786 the
officers of the baron were the only persons who lived in houses; the
peasants, two thousand in number, slept among the corn-ricks. [47] Charles,
during his tenure of the Neapolitan crown, from 1735 to 1759, and the
Ministers Tanucci and Caraccioli under his feeble successor Ferdinand IV.,
enforced the authority of the State in justice and administration, and
abolished some of the most oppressive feudal rights of the nobility; but
their legislation, though bold and even revolutionary according to an
English standard, could not in the course of two generations transform a
social system based upon centuries of misgovernment and disorder. At the
outbreak of the French Revolution the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was, as
it still in a less degree is, a land of extreme inequalities of wealth and
poverty, a land where great estates wasted in the hands of oppressive or
indolent owners, and the peasantry, untrained either by remunerative
industry or by a just and regular enforcement of the law, found no better
guide than a savage and fanatical priesthood. Over the rest of Italy the
conditions of life varied through all degrees between the Tuscan and the
Neapolitan type. Piedmont, in military spirit and patriotism far superior
to the other Italian States, was socially one of the most backward of all.
It was a land of priests, nobles, and soldiers, where a gloomy routine and
the repression of all originality of thought and character drove the most
gifted of its children, like the poet Alfieri, to seek a home on some more
liberal soil.

[Professions and real intentions of the Directory and Bonaparte, 1796.]

During the first years of the Revolution, an attempt had been made by
French enthusiasts to extend the Revolution into Italy by means of
associations in the principal towns; but it met with no great success. A
certain liberal movement arose among the young men of the upper classes at
Naples, where, under the influence of Queen Marie Caroline, the Government
had now become reactionary; and in Turin and several of the Lombard cities
the French were not without partisans; but no general disaffection like
that of Savoy existed east of the Alps. The agitation of 1789 and 1792 had
passed by without bringing either liberty or national independence to the
Italians. When Bonaparte received his command, that fervour of Republican
passion which, in the midst of violence and wrong, had seldom been wanting
in the first leaders of the Revolutionary War, had died out in France. The
politicians who survived the Reign of Terror and gained office in the
Directory repeated the old phrases about the Rights of Man and the
Liberation of the Peoples only as a mode of cajolery. Bonaparte entered
Italy proclaiming himself the restorer of Italian freedom, but with the
deliberate purpose of using Italy as a means of recruiting the exhausted
treasury of France. His correspondence with the Directory exposes with
brazen frankness this well-considered system of pillage and deceit, in
which the general and the Government were cordially at one. On the further
question, how France should dispose of any territory that might be
conquered in Northern Italy, Bonaparte and the Directory had formed no
understanding, and their purposes were in fact at variance. The Directory
wished to conquer Lombardy in order to hand it back to Austria in return
for the Netherlands; Bonaparte had at least formed the conception that an
Italian State was possible, and he intended to convert either Austrian
Lombardy itself, or some other portion of Northern Italy, into a Republic,
serving as a military outwork for France.

[Bonaparte separates the Austrian and Sardinian Armies, April, 1796.]

[Armistice and peace with Sardinia.]

The campaign of 1796 commenced in April, in the mountains above the
coast-road connecting Nice and Genoa. Bonaparte's own army numbered 40,000
men; the force opposed to it consisted of 38,000 Austrians, under Beaulieu,
and a smaller Sardinian army, so placed upon the Piedmontese Apennines as
to block the passes from the coast-road into Piedmont, and to threaten the
rear of the French if they advanced eastward against Genoa. The Piedmontese
army drew its supplies from Turin, the Austrian from Mantua; to sever the
two armies was to force them on to lines of retreat conducting them farther
and farther apart from one another. Bonaparte foresaw the effect which such
a separation of the two armies would produce upon the Sardinian Government.
For four days he reiterated his attacks at Montenotte and Millesimo, until
he had forced his own army into a position in the centre of the Allies;
then, leaving a small force to watch the Austrians, he threw the mass of
his troops upon the Piedmontese, and drove them back to within thirty miles
of Turin. The terror-stricken Government, anticipating an outbreak in the
capital itself, accepted an armistice from Bonaparte at Cherasco (April
28), and handed over to the French the fortresses of Coni, Ceva, and
Tortona, which command the entrances of Italy. It was an unworthy
capitulation for Turin could not have been taken before the Austrians
returned in force; but Bonaparte had justly calculated the effect of his
victory; and the armistice, which was soon followed by a treaty of peace
between France and Sardinia, ceding Savoy to the Republic, left him free to
follow the Austrians, untroubled by the existence of some of the strongest
fortresses of Europe behind him.

[Bridge of Lodi, May 10.]

In the negotiations with Sardinia Bonaparte demanded the surrender of the
town of Valenza, as necessary to secure his passage over the river Po.
Having thus led the Austrian Beaulieu to concentrate his forces at this
point, he suddenly moved eastward along the southern bank of the river, and
crossed at Piacenza, fifty miles below the spot where Beaulieu was awaiting
him. It was an admirable movement. The Austrian general, with the enemy
threatening his communications, had to abandon Milan and all the country
west of it, and to fall back upon the line of the Adda. Bonaparte followed,
and on the 10th of May attacked the Austrians at Lodi. He himself stormed
the bridge of Lodi at the head of his Grenadiers. The battle was so
disastrous to the Austrians that they could risk no second engagement, and
retired upon Mantua and the line of the Mincio. [48]

[Bonaparte in Milan. Extortions.]

Bonaparte now made his triumphal entry into Milan (May 15). The splendour
of his victories and his warm expressions of friendship for Italy excited
the enthusiasm of a population not hitherto hostile to Austrian rule. A new
political movement began. With the French army there came all the partisans
of the French Republic who had been expelled from other parts of Italy.
Uniting with the small revolutionary element already existing in Milan,
they began to form a new public opinion by means of journals and patriotic
meetings. It was of the utmost importance to Bonaparte that a Republican
party should be organised among the better classes in the towns of
Lombardy; for the depredations of the French army exasperated the peasants,
and Bonaparte's own measures were by no means of a character to win him
unmixed goodwill. The instructions which he received from the Directory
were extremely simple. "Leave nothing in Italy," they wrote to him on the
day of his entry into Milan, "which will be useful to us, and which the
political situation will allow you to remove." If Bonaparte had felt any
doubt as to the meaning of such an order, the pillage of works of art in
Belgium and Holland in preceding years would have shown him that it was
meant to be literally interpreted. Accordingly, in return for the gift of
liberty, the Milanese were invited to offer to their deliverers twenty
million francs, and a selection from the paintings in their churches and
galleries. The Dukes of Parma and Modena, in return for an armistice, were
required to hand over forty of their best pictures, and a sum of money
proportioned to their revenues. The Dukes and the townspeople paid their
contributions with good grace: the peasantry of Lombardy, whose cattle were
seized in order to supply an army that marched without any stores of its
own, rose in arms, and threw themselves into Pavia, killing all the French
soldiers who fell in their way. The revolt was instantly suppressed, and
the town of Pavia given up to pillage. In deference to the Liberal party of
Italy, the movement was described as a conspiracy of priests and nobles.

[Venice.]

[Battle on the Mincio, May 29.]

The way into Central Italy now lay open before Bonaparte. Rome and Naples
were in no condition to offer resistance; but with true military judgment
the French general declined to move against this feeble prey until the army
of Austria, already crippled, was completely driven out of the field.
Instead of crossing the Apennines, Bonaparte advanced against the Austrian
positions upon the Mincio. It suited him to violate the neutrality of the
adjacent Venetian territory by seizing the town of Brescia. His example was
followed by Beaulieu, who occupied Peschiera, at the foot of the Lake of
Garda, and thus held the Mincio along its whole course from the lake to
Mantua. A battle was fought and lost by the Austrians half-way between the
lake and the fortress. Beaulieu's strength was exhausted; he could meet the
enemy no more in the field, and led his army out of Italy into the Tyrol,
leaving Mantua to be invested by the French. The first care of the
conqueror was to make Venice pay for the crime of possessing territory
intervening between the eastern and western extremes of the Austrian
district. Bonaparte affected to believe that the Venetians had permitted
Beaulieu to occupy Peschiera before he seized upon Brescia himself. He
uttered terrifying threats to the envoys who came from Venice to excuse an
imaginary crime. He was determined to extort money from the Venetian
Republic; he also needed a pretext for occupying Verona, and for any future
wrongs. "I have purposely devised this rupture," he wrote to the Directory
(June 7th), "in case you should wish to obtain five or six millions of
francs from Venice. If you have more decided intentions, I think it would
be well to keep up the quarrel." The intention referred to was the
disgraceful project of sacrificing Venice to Austria in return for the
cession of the Netherlands, a measure based on plans familiar to Thugut as
early as the year 1793. [49]

[Armistice with Naples, June 6.]

[Armistice with the Pope, June 23.]

The Austrians were fairly driven out of Lombardy, and Bonaparte was now
free to deal with southern Italy. He advanced into the States of the
Church, and expelled the Papal Legate from Bologna. Ferdinand of Naples,
who had lately called heaven and earth to witness the fury of his zeal
against an accursed horde of regicides, thought it prudent to stay
Bonaparte's hand, at least until the Austrians were in a condition to renew
the war in Lombardy. He asked for a suspension of hostilities against his
own kingdom. The fleet and the sea-board of Naples gave it importance in
the struggle between France and England, and Bonaparte granted the king an
armistice on easy terms. The Pope, in order to gain a few months' truce,
had to permit the occupation of Ferrara, Ravenna, and Ancona, and to
recognise the necessities, the learning, the taste, and the virtue of his
conquerors by a gift of twenty million francs, five hundred manuscripts, a
hundred pictures, and the busts of Marcus and Lucius Brutus. The rule of
the Pope was unpopular in Bologna, and a Senate which Bonaparte placed in
power, pending the formation of a popular Government gladly took the oath
of fidelity to the French Republic. Tuscany was the only State that
remained to be dealt with. Tuscany had indeed made peace with the Republic
a year before, but the ships and cargoes of the English merchants at
Leghorn were surely fair prey; and, with the pretence of punishing insults
offered by the English to the French flag, Bonaparte descended upon
Leghorn, and seized upon everything that was not removed before his
approach. Once established in Leghorn, the French declined to quit it. By
way of adjusting the relations of the Grand Duke, the English seized his
harbour of Porto Ferraio, in the island of Elba.

[Battles of Lonato and Castiglione, July, Aug., 1796.]

Mantua was meanwhile invested, and thither, after his brief incursion into
Central Italy, Bonaparte returned. Towards the end of July an Austrian
relieving army, nearly double the strength of Bonaparte's, descended from
the Tyrol. It was divided into three corps: one, under Quosdanovich,
advanced by the road on the west of Lake Garda; the others, under Wurmser,
the commander-in-chief, by the roads between the lake and the river Adige.
The peril of the French was extreme; their outlying divisions were defeated
and driven in; Bonaparte could only hope to save himself by collecting all
his forces at the foot of the lake, and striking at one or other of the
Austrian armies before they effected their junction on the Mincio. He
instantly broke up the siege of Mantua, and withdrew from every position
east of the river. On the 30th of July, Quosdanovich was attacked and
checked at Lonato, on the west of the Lake of Garda. Wurmser, unaware of
his colleague's repulse, entered Mantua in triumph, and then set out,
expecting to envelop Bonaparte between two fires. But the French were ready
for his approach. Wurmser was stopped and defeated at Castiglione, while
the western Austrian divisions were still held in check at Lonato. The
junction of the Austrian armies had become impossible. In five days the
skill of Bonaparte and the unsparing exertions of his soldiery had more
than retrieved all that appeared to have been lost. [50] The Austrians
retired into the Tyrol, beaten and dispirited, and leaving 15,000 prisoners
in the hands of the enemy.

Bonaparte now prepared to force his way into Germany by the Adige, in
fulfilment of the original plan of the campaign. In the first days of
September he again routed the Austrians, and gained possession of Roveredo
and Trent. Wurmser hereupon attempted to shut the French up in the
mountains by a movement southwards; but, while he operated with
insufficient forces between the Brenta and the Adige, he was cut off from
Germany, and only escaped capture by throwing himself into Mantua with the
shattered remnant of his army. The road into Germany through the Tyrol now
lay open; but in the midst of his victories Bonaparte learnt that the
northern armies of Moreau and Jourdan, with which he had intended to
co-operate in an attack upon Vienna, were in full retreat.

[Invasion of Germany by Moreau and Jourdan, June-Oct., 1796.]

[The Archduke Charles overpowers Jourdan.]

Moreau's advance into the valley of the Danube had, during the months of
July and August, been attended with unbroken military and political
success. The Archduke Charles, who was entrusted with the defence of the
Empire, found himself unable to bring two armies into the field capable of
resisting those of Moreau and Jourdan separately, and he therefore
determined to fall back before Moreau towards Nuremberg, ordering
Wartensleben, who commanded the troops facing Jourdan on the Main, to
retreat in the same direction, in order that the two armies might throw
their collected force upon Jourdan while still at some distance north of
Moreau. [51] The design of the Archduke succeeded in the end, but it opened
Germany to the French for six weeks, and showed how worthless was the
military constitution of the Empire, and how little the Germans had to
expect from one another. After every skirmish won by Moreau some
neighbouring State abandoned the common defence and hastened to make its
terms with the invader. On the 17th of July the Duke of Würtemberg
purchased an armistice at the price of four million francs; a week later
Baden gained the French general's protection in return for immense supplies
of food and stores. The troops of the Swabian Circle of the Empire, who
were ridiculed as "harlequins" by the more martial Austrians, dispersed to
their homes; and no sooner had Moreau entered Bavaria than the Bavarian
contingent in its turn withdrew from the Archduke. Some consideration was
shown by Moreau's soldiery to those districts which had paid tribute to
their general; but in the region of the Main, Jourdan's army plundered
without distinction and without mercy. They sacked the churches, they
maltreated the children, they robbed the very beggars of their pence.
Before the Archduke Charles was ready to strike, the peasantry of this
country, whom their governments were afraid to arm, had begun effective
reprisals of their own. At length the retreating movement of the Austrians
stopped. Leaving 30,000 men on the Lech to disguise his motions from
Moreau, Charles turned suddenly northwards from Neuburg on the 17th August,
met Wartensleben at Amberg, and attacked Jourdan at this place with greatly
superior numbers. Jourdan was defeated and driven back in confusion towards
the Rhine. The issue of the campaign was decided before Moreau heard of his
colleague's danger. It only remained for him to save his own army by a
skilful retreat. Jourdan's soldiers, returning through districts which they
had devastated, suffered heavier losses from the vengeance of the peasantry
than from the army that pursued them. By the autumn of 1796 no Frenchman
remained beyond the Rhine. The campaign had restored the military spirit of
Austria and given Germany a general in whom soldiers could trust; but it
had also shown how willing were the Governments of the minor States to
become the vassals of a foreigner, how little was wanting to convert the
western half of the Empire into a dependency of France.

[Secret Treaty with Prussia, Aug. 5.]

With each change in the fortunes of the campaign of 1796 the diplomacy of
the Continent had changed its tone. When Moreau won his first victories,
the Court of Prussia, yielding to the pressure of the Directory,
substituted for the conditional clauses of the Treaty of Basle a definite
agreement to the cession of the left bank of the Rhine, and a stipulation
that Prussia should be compensated for her own loss by the annexation of
the Bishopric of Münster. Prussia could not itself cede provinces of the
Empire: it could only agree to their cession. In this treaty, however,
Prussia definitely renounced the integrity of the Empire, and accepted the
system known as the Secularisation of Ecclesiastical States, the first step
towards an entire reconstruction of Germany. [52] The engagement was kept
secret both from the Emperor and from the ecclesiastical princes. In their
negotiations with Austria the Directory were less successful. Although the
long series of Austrian disasters had raised a general outcry against
Thugut's persistence in the war, the resolute spirit of the Minister never
bent; and the ultimate victory of the Archduke Charles more than restored
his influence over the Emperor. Austria refused to enter into any
negotiation not conducted in common with England, and the Directory were
for the present foiled in their attempts to isolate England from the
Continental Powers. It was not that Thugut either hoped or cared for that
restoration of Austrian rule in the Netherlands which was the first object
of England's Continental policy. The abandonment of the Netherlands by
France was, however, in his opinion necessary for Austria, as a step
towards the acquisition of Bavaria, which was still the cherished hope of
the Viennese Government. It was in vain that the Directory suggested that
Austria should annex Bavaria without offering Belgium or any other
compensation to its ruler. Thugut could hardly be induced to listen to the
French overtures. He had received the promise of immediate help from the
Empress Catherine; he was convinced that the Republic, already anxious for
peace, might by one sustained effort be forced to abandon all its
conquests; and this was the object for which, in the winter of 1796, army
after army was hurled against the positions where Bonaparte kept his guard
on the north of the still unconquered Mantua. [53]

[Malmesbury sent to Paris, Oct., 1796.]

In England itself the victory of the Archduke Charles raised expectations
of peace. The war had become unpopular through the loss of trade with
France, Spain, and Holland, and petitions for peace daily reached
Parliament. Pitt so far yielded to the prevalent feeling as to enter into
negotiations with the Directory, and despatched Lord Malmesbury to Paris;
but the condition upon which Pitt insisted, the restoration of the
Netherlands to Austria, rendered agreement hopeless; and as soon as Pitt's
terms were known to the Directory, Malmesbury was ordered to leave Paris.
Nevertheless, the negotiation was not a mere feint on Pitt's part. He was
possessed by a fixed idea that the resources of France were exhausted, and
that, in spite of the conquest of Lombardy and the Rhine, the Republic must
feel itself too weak to continue the war. Amid the disorders of
Revolutionary finance, and exaggerated reports of suffering and distress,
Pitt failed to recognise the enormous increase of production resulting from
the changes which had given the peasant full property in his land and
labour, and thrown vast quantities of half-waste domain into the busy hands
of middling and small proprietors. [54]

Whatever were the resources of France before the Revolution, they were now
probably more than doubled. Pitt's belief in the economic ruin of France,
the only ground on which he could imagine that the Directory would give up
Belgium without fighting for it, was wholly erroneous, and the French
Government would have acted strangely if they had listened to his demand.

[Bonaparte creates a Cispadane Republic, Oct., 1796.]

Nevertheless, though the Directory would not hear of surrendering Belgium,
they were anxious to conclude peace with Austria, and unwilling to enter
into any engagements in the conquered provinces of Italy which might render
peace with Austria more difficult. They had instructed Bonaparte to stir up
the Italians against their Governments, but this was done with the object
of paralysing the Governments, not of emancipating the peoples. They looked
with dislike upon any scheme of Italian reconstruction which should bind
France to the support of newly-formed Italian States. Here, however, the
scruples of the Directory and the ambition of Bonaparte were in direct
conflict. Bonaparte intended to create a political system in Italy which
should bear the stamp of his own mind and require his own strong hand to
support it. In one of his despatches to the Directory he suggested the
formation of a client Republic out of the Duchy of Modena, where
revolutionary movements had broken out. Before it was possible for the
Government to answer him, he published a decree, declaring the population
of Modena and Reggio under the protection of the French army, and deposing
all the officers of the Duke (Oct. 4). When, some days later, the answer of
the Directory arrived, it cautioned Bonaparte against disturbing the
existing order of the Italian States. Bonaparte replied by uniting to
Modena the Papal provinces of Bologna and Ferrara, and by giving to the
State which he had thus created the title of the Cispadane Republic. [55]

[Idea of free Italy.]

The event was no insignificant one. It is from this time that the idea of
Italian independence, though foreign to the great mass of the nation, may
be said to have taken birth as one of those political hopes which wane and
recede, but do not again leave the world. A class of men who had turned
with dislike from the earlier agitation of French Republicans in Italy
rightly judged the continued victories of Bonaparte over the Austrians to
be the beginning of a series of great changes, and now joined the
revolutionary movement in the hope of winning from the overthrow of the old
Powers some real form of national independence. In its origin the French
party may have been composed of hirelings and enthusiasts. This ceased to
be the case when, after the passage of the Mincio, Bonaparte entered the
Papal States. Among the citizens of Bologna in particular there were men of
weight and intelligence who aimed at free constitutional government, and
checked in some degree the more numerous popular party which merely
repeated the phrases of French democracy. Bonaparte's own language and
action excited the brightest hopes. At Modena he harangued the citizens
upon the mischief of Italy's divisions, and exhorted them to unite with
their brethren whom he had freed from the Pope. A Congress was held at
Modena on the 16th of October. The representatives of Modena, Reggio,
Bologna, and Ferrara declared themselves united in a Republic under the
protection of France. They abolished feudal nobility, decreed a national
levy, and summoned a General Assembly to meet at Reggio two months later,
in order to create the Constitution of the new Cispadane Republic. It was
in the Congress of Modena, and in the subsequent Assembly of Reggio (Dec.
23), that the idea of Italian unity and independence first awoke the
enthusiasm of any considerable body of men. With what degree of sincerity
Bonaparte himself acted may be judged from the circumstance that, while he
harangued the Cispadanes on the necessity of Italian union, he imprisoned
the Milanese who attempted to excite a popular movement for the purpose of
extending this union to themselves. Peace was not yet made with Austria,
and it was uncertain to what account Milan might best be turned.

[Rivoli, Jan. 14, 15, 1797.]

[Arcola, Nov. 15-17.]

Mantua still held out, and in November the relieving operations of the
Austrians were renewed. Two armies, commanded by Allvintzy and Davidovich,
descended the valleys of the Adige and the Piave, offering to Bonaparte,
whose centre was at Verona, a new opportunity of crushing his enemy in
detail. Allvintzy, coming from the Piave, brought the French into extreme
danger in a three days' battle at Arcola, but was at last forced to retreat
with heavy loss. Davidovich, who had been successful on the Adige, retired
on learning the overthrow of his colleague. Two months more passed, and the
Austrians for the third time appeared on the Adige. A feint made below
Verona nearly succeeded in drawing Bonaparte away from Rivoli, between the
Adige and Lake Garda, where Allvintzy and his main army were about to make
the assault; but the strength of Allvintzy's force was discovered before it
was too late, and by throwing his divisions from point to point with
extraordinary rapidity, Bonaparte at length overwhelmed the Austrians in
every quarter of the battle-field. This was their last effort. The
surrender of Mantua on the 2nd February, 1797, completed the French
conquest of Austrian Lombardy. [56]

[Peace of Tolentino, Feb. 19, 1797.]

The Pope now found himself left to settle his account with the invaders,
against whom, even after the armistice, he had never ceased to intrigue.
[57] His despatches to Vienna fell into the hands of Bonaparte, who
declared the truce broken, and a second time invaded the Papal territory. A
show of resistance was made by the Roman troops; but the country was in
fact at the mercy of Bonaparte, who advanced as far as Tolentino, thirty
miles south of Ancona. Here the Pope tendered his submission. If the Roman
Court had never appeared to be in a more desperate condition, it had never
found a more moderate or a more politic conqueror. Bonaparte was as free
from any sentiment of Christian piety as Nero or Diocletian; but he
respected the power of the Papacy over men's minds, and he understood the
immense advantage which any Government of France supported by the
priesthood would possess over those who had to struggle with its hostility.
In his negotiations with the Papal envoys he deplored the violence of the
French Executive, and consoled the Church with the promise of his own
protection and sympathy. The terms of peace which he granted, although they
greatly diminished the ecclesiastical territory were in fact more
favourable than the Pope had any right to expect. Bologna, Ferrara, and the
Romagna, which had been occupied in virtue of the armistice, were now ceded
by the Papacy. But conditions affecting the exercise of the spiritual power
which had been proposed by the Directory were withdrawn; and, beyond a
provision for certain payments in money, nothing of importance was added to
the stipulations of the armistice.

The last days of the Venetian Republic were now at hand. It was in vain
that Venice had maintained its neutrality when all the rest of Italy joined
the enemies of France; its refusal of a French alliance was made an
unpardonable crime. So long as the war with Austria lasted, Bonaparte
exhausted the Venetian territory with requisitions: when peace came within
view, it was necessary that he should have some pretext for seizing it or
handing it over to the enemy. In fulfilment of his own design of keeping a
quarrel open, he had subjected the Government to every insult and wrong
likely to goad it into an act of war. When at length Venice armed for the
purpose of protecting its neutrality, the organs of the invader called upon
the inhabitants of the Venetian mainland to rise against the oligarchy, and
to throw in their lot with the liberated province of Milan. A French
alliance was once more urged upon Venice by Bonaparte: it was refused, and
the outbreak which the French had prepared instantly followed. Bergamo and
Brescia, where French garrisons deprived the Venetian Government of all
power of defence, rose in revolt, and renounced all connection with Venice.
The Senate begged Bonaparte to withdraw the French garrisons; its
entreaties drew nothing from him but repeated demands for the acceptance of
the French alliance, which was only another name for subjection. Little as
the Venetians suspected it, the only doubt now present to Bonaparte was
whether he should add the provinces of Venetia to his own Cispadane
Republic or hand them over to Austria in exchange for other cessions which
France required.

[Preliminaries of Leoben, April 18.]

Austria could defend itself in Italy no longer. Before the end of March the
mountain-passes into Carinthia were carried by Bonaparte. His army drove
the enemy before it along the road to Vienna, until both pursuers and
pursued were within eighty miles of the capital. At Leoben, on the 7th of
April, Austrian commander asked for a suspension of arms. It was granted,
and negotiations for peace commenced. [58] Bonaparte offered the Venetian
provinces, but not the city of Venice, to the Emperor. On the 18th of April
preliminaries of peace were signed at Leoben, by which, in return for the
Netherlands and for Lombardy west of the river Oglio, Bonaparte secretly
agreed to hand over to Austria the whole of the territory of Venice upon
the mainland east of the Oglio, in addition to its Adriatic provinces of
Istria and Dalmatia. To disguise the act of spoliation, it was pretended
that Bologna and Ferrara should be offered to Venice in return. [59]

[French enter Venice.]

But worse was yet to come. While Bonaparte was in conference at Leoben, an
outbreak took place at Verona, and three hundred French soldiers, including
the sick in the hospital, perished by popular violence. The Venetian Senate
despatched envoys to Bonaparte to express their grief and to offer
satisfaction; in the midst of the negotiations intelligence arrived that
the commander of a Venetian fort had fired upon a French vessel and killed
some of the crew. Bonaparte drove the envoys from his presence, declaring
that he could not treat with men whose hands were dripping with French
blood. A declaration of war was published, charging the Senate with the
design of repeating the Sicilian Vespers, and the panic which it was
Bonaparte's object to inspire instantly followed. The Government threw
themselves upon his mercy. Bonaparte pretended that he desired no more than
to establish a popular government in Venice in the place of the oligarchy.
His terms were accepted. The Senate consented to abrogate the ancient
Constitution of the Republic, and to introduce a French garrison into
Venice. On the 12th of May the Grand Council voted its own dissolution.
Peace was concluded. The public articles of the treaty declared that there
should be friendship between the French and the Venetian Republics; that
the sovereignty of Venice should reside in the body of the citizens; and
that the French garrison should retire so soon as the new Government
announced that it had no further need of its support. Secret articles
stipulated for a money payment, and for the usual surrender of works of
art; an indefinite expression relating to an exchange of territory was
intended to cover the surrender of the Venetian mainland, and the union of
Bologna and Ferrara with what remained of Venice. The friendship and
alliance of France, which Bonaparte had been so anxious to bestow on
Venice, were now to bear their fruit. "I shall do everything in my power,"
he wrote to the new Government of Venice, "to give you proof of the great
desire I have to see your liberty take root, and to see this unhappy Italy,
freed from the rule of the stranger, at length take its place with glory on
the scene of the world, and resume, among the great nations, the rank to
which nature, destiny, and its own position call it." This was for Venice;
for the French Directory Bonaparte had a very different tale. "I had
several motives," he wrote (May 19), "in concluding the treaty:--to enter
the city without difficulty; to have the arsenal and all else in our
possession, in order to take from it whatever we needed, under pretext of
the secret articles; ... to evade the odium attaching to the Preliminaries
of Leoben; to furnish pretexts for them, and to facilitate their
execution."

[French seize Ionian islands.]

[Venice to be given to Austria.]

As the first fruits of the Venetian alliance, Bonaparte seized upon Corfu
and the other Ionian Islands. "You will start," he wrote to General
Gentili, "as quickly and as secretly as possible, and take possession of
all the Venetian establishments in the Levant.... If the inhabitants
should be inclined for independence, you should flatter their tastes, and
in all your proclamations you should not fail to allude to Greece, Athens,
and Sparta." This was to be the French share in the spoil. Yet even now,
though stripped of its islands, its coasts, and its ancient Italian
territory, Venice might still have remained a prominent city in Italy. It
was sacrificed in order to gain the Rhenish Provinces for France. Bonaparte
had returned to the neighbourhood of Milan, and received the Austrian
envoy, De Gallo, at the villa of Montebello. Wresting a forced meaning from
the Preliminaries of Leoben, Bonaparte claimed the frontier of the Rhine,
offering to Austria not only the territory of Venice upon the mainland, but
the city of Venice itself. De Gallo yielded. Whatever causes subsequently
prolonged the negotiation, no trace of honour or pity in Bonaparte led him
even to feign a reluctance to betray Venice. "We have to-day had our first
conference on the definitive treaty," he wrote to the Directory, on the
night of the 26th of May, "and have agreed to present the following
propositions: the line of the Rhine for France; Salzburg, Passau for the
Emperor; ... the maintenance of the Germanic Body; ... Venice for the
Emperor. Venice," he continued, "which has been in decadence since the
discovery of the Cape of Good Hope and the rise of Trieste and Ancona, can
scarcely survive the blows we have just struck. With a cowardly and
helpless population in no way fit for liberty, without territory and
without rivers, it is but natural that she should go to those to whom we
give the mainland." Thus was Italy to be freed from foreign intervention;
and thus was Venice to be regenerated by the friendship of France!

[Genoa.]

In comparison with the fate preparing for Venice, the sister-republic of
Genoa met with generous treatment. A revolutionary movement, long prepared
by the French envoy, overthrew the ancient oligarchical Government; but
democratic opinion and French sympathies did not extend below the middle
classes of the population; and, after the Government had abandoned its own
cause, the charcoal-burners and dock-labourers rose in its defence, and
attacked the French party with the cry of "Viva Maria," and with figures of
the Virgin fastened to their hats, in the place where their opponents wore
the French tricolour. Religious fanaticism won the day; the old Government
was restored, and a number of Frenchmen who had taken part in the conflict
were thrown into prison. The imprisonment of the Frenchmen gave Bonaparte a
pretext for intervention. He disclaimed all desire to alter the Government,
and demanded only the liberation of his countrymen and the arrest of the
enemies of France. But the overthrow of the oligarchy had been long
arranged with Faypoult, the French envoy; and Genoa received a democratic
constitution which place the friends of France in power (June 5).

[France in 1797.]

While Bonaparte, holding Court in the Villa of Montebello, continued to
negotiate with Austria upon the basis of the Preliminaries of Leoben,
events took place in France which offered him an opportunity of interfering
directly in the government of the Republic. The elections which were to
replace one-third of the members of the Legislature took place in the
spring of 1797. The feeling of the country was now much the same as it had
been in 1795, when a large Royalist element was returned for those seats in
the Councils which the Convention had not reserved for its own members.
France desired a more equitable and a more tolerant rule. The Directory had
indeed allowed the sanguinary laws against non-juring priests and returning
emigrants to remain unenforced; but the spirit and traditions of official
Jacobinism were still active in the Government. The Directors themselves
were all regicides; the execution of the King was still celebrated by a
national _fête_; offices, great and small, were held by men who had risen
in the Revolution; the whole of the old gentry of France was excluded from
participation in public life. It was against this revolutionary class-rule,
against a system which placed the country as much at the mercy of a few
directors and generals as it had been at the mercy of the Conventional
Committee, that the elections of 1797 were a protest. Along with certain
Bourbonist conspirators, a large majority of men were returned who, though
described as Royalists, were in fact moderate Constitutionalists, and
desired only to undo that part of the Revolution which excluded whole
classes of the nation from public life. [60]

[Opposition to the Directory.]

Such a party in the legislative body naturally took the character of an
Opposition to the more violent section of the Directory. The Director
retiring in 1797 was replaced by the Constitutionalist Barthélemy,
negotiator of the treaty of Basle; Carnot, who continued in office, took
part with the Opposition, justly fearing that the rule of the Directory
would soon amount to nothing more than the rule of Bonaparte himself. The
first debates in the new Chamber arose upon the laws relating to emigrants;
the next, upon Bonaparte's usurpation of sovereign power in Italy. On the
23rd of June a motion for information on the affairs of Venice and Genoa
was brought forward in the Council of Five Hundred. Dumolard, the mover,
complained of the secrecy of Bonaparte's action, of the contempt shown by
him to the Assembly, of his tyrannical and un-republican interference with
the institutions of friendly States. No resolution was adopted by the
Assembly; but the mere fact that the Assembly had listened to a hostile
criticism of his own actions was sufficient ground in Bonaparte's eyes to
charge it with Royalism and with treason. Three of the Directors, Barras,
Rewbell, and Laréveillère, had already formed the project of overpowering
the Assembly by force. Bonaparte's own interests led him to offer them his
support. If the Constitutional party gained power, there was an end to his
own unshackled rule in Italy; if the Bourbonists succeeded, a different
class of men would hold all the honours of the State. However feeble the
Government of the Directory, its continuance secured his own present
ascendency, and left him the hope of gaining supreme power when the public
could tolerate the Directory no longer.

[Coup d'état, 17 Fructidor (Sept. 3).]

The fate of the Assembly was sealed. On the anniversary of the capture of
the Bastille, Bonaparte issued a proclamation to his army declaring the
Republic to be threatened by Royalist intrigues. A banquet was held, and
the officers and soldiers of every division signed addresses to the
Directory full of threats and fury against conspiring aristocrats.
"Indignation is at its height in the army," wrote Bonaparte to the
Government; "the soldiers are asking with loud cries whether they are to be
rewarded by assassination on their return home, as it appears all patriots
are to be so dealt with. The peril is increasing every day, and I think,
citizen Directors, you must decide to act one way or other." The Directors
had no difficulty in deciding after such an exhortation as this; but, as
soon as Bonaparte had worked up their courage, he withdrew into the
background, and sent General Augereau, a blustering Jacobin, to Paris, to
risk the failure or bear the odium of the crime. Augereau received the
military command of the capital; the air was filled with rumours of an
impending blow; but neither the majority in the Councils nor the two
threatened Directors, Carnot and Barthélemy, knew how to take measures of
defence. On the night of the 3rd September (17 Fructidor) the troops of
Augereau surrounded the Tuileries. Barthélemy was seized at the Luxembourg;
Carnot fled for his life; the members of the Councils, marching in
procession to the Tuileries early the next morning, were arrested or
dispersed by the soldiers. Later in the day a minority of the Councils was
assembled to ratify the measures determined upon by Augereau and the three
Directors. Fifty members of the Legislature, and the writers, proprietors,
and editors of forty-two journals, were sentenced to exile; the elections
of forty-eight departments were annulled; the laws against priests and
emigrants were renewed; and the Directory was empowered to suppress all
journals at its pleasure. This coup d'état was described as the suppression
of a Royalist conspiracy. It was this, but it was something more. It was
the suppression of all Constitutional government, and all but the last step
to the despotism of the chief of the army.

[Peace signed with Austria, Oct. 17.]

The effect of the movement was instantly felt in the negotiations with
Austria and with England. Lord Malmesbury was now again in France, treating
for peace with fair hopes of success, since the Preliminaries of Leoben had
removed England's opposition to the cession of the Netherlands, the
discomfiture of the moderate party in the Councils brought his mission to
an abrupt end. Austria, on the other hand, had prolonged its negotiations
because Bonaparte claimed Mantua and the Rhenish Provinces in addition to
the cessions agreed upon at Leoben. Count Ludwig Cobenzl, Austrian
ambassador at St. Petersburg, who had protected his master's interests only
too well in the last partition of Poland, was now at the head of the
plenipotentiaries in Italy, endeavouring to bring Bonaparte back to the
terms fixed in the Preliminaries, or to gain additional territory for
Austria in Italy. The Jacobin victory at Paris depressed the Austrians as
much as it elated the French leader. Bonaparte was resolved on concluding a
peace that should be all his own, and this was only possible by
anticipating an invasion of Germany, about to be undertaken by Augereau at
the head of the Army of the Rhine. It was to this personal ambition of
Bonaparte that Venice was sacrificed. The Directors were willing that
Austria should receive part of the Venetian territory: they forbade the
proposed cession of Venice itself. Within a few weeks more, the advance of
the Army of the Rhine would have enabled France to dictate its own terms;
but no consideration either for France or for Italy could induce Bonaparte
to share the glory of the Peace with another. On the 17th of October he
signed the final treaty of Campo Formio, which gave France the frontier of
the Rhine, and made both the Venetian territory beyond the Adige and Venice
itself the property of the Emperor. For a moment it seemed that the Treaty
might be repudiated at Vienna as well as at Paris. Thugut protested against
it, because it surrendered Mantua and the Rhenish Provinces without gaining
for Austria the Papal Legations; and he drew up the ratification only at
the absolute command of the Emperor. The Directory, on the other hand,
condemned the cession of Venice. But their fear of Bonaparte and their own
bad conscience left them impotent accessories of his treachery; and the
French nation at large was too delighted with the peace to resent its baser
conditions. [61]

[Treaty of Campo Formio, Oct. 17.]

By the public articles of the Treaty of Campo Formio, the Emperor ceded to
France the Austrian possessions in Lombardy and in the Netherlands, and
agreed to the establishment of a Cisalpine Republic, formed out of Austrian
Lombardy, the Venetian territory west of the Adige, and the districts
hitherto composing the new Cispadane State. France took the Ionian Islands,
Austria the City of Venice, with Istria and Dalmatia, and the Venetian
mainland east of the Adige. For the conclusion of peace between France and
the Holy Roman Empire, it was agreed that a Congress should meet at
Rastadt; but a secret article provided that the Emperor should use his
efforts to gain for France the whole left bank of the Rhine, except a tract
including the Prussian Duchies of Cleve and Guelders. With humorous
duplicity the French Government, which had promised Prussia the Bishopric
of Münster in return for this very district, now pledged itself to Austria
that Prussia should receive no extension whatever, and affected to exclude
the Prussian Duchies from the Rhenish territory which was to be made over
to France. Austria was promised the independent Bishopric of Salzburg, and
that portion of Bavaria which lies between the Inn and the Salza. The
secular princes dispossessed in the Rhenish Provinces were to be
compensated in the interior of the Empire by a scheme framed in concert
with France.

[Austria sacrifices Germany.]

The immense advantages which the Treaty of Campo Formio gave to France--its
extension over the Netherlands and the Rhenish Provinces, and the virtual
annexation of Lombardy, Modena, and the Papal Legations under the form of a
client republic--were not out of proportion to its splendid military
successes. Far otherwise was it with Austria. With the exception of the
Archduke's campaign of 1796, the warfare of the last three years had
brought Austria nothing but a series of disasters; yet Austria gained by
the Treaty of Campo Formio as much as it lost. In the place of the distant
Netherlands and of Milan it gained, in Venice and Dalmatia, a territory
touching its own, nearly equal to the Netherlands and Milan together in
population, and so situated as to enable Austria to become one of the naval
Powers of the Mediterranean. The price which Austria paid was the
abandonment of Germany, a matter which, in spite of Thugut's protests,
disturbed the Court of Vienna as little as the betrayal of Venice disturbed
Bonaparte. The Rhenish Provinces were surrendered to the stranger; German
districts were to be handed over to compensate the ejected Sovereigns of
Holland and of Modena; the internal condition and order of the Empire were
to be superseded by one framed not for the purpose of benefiting Germany,
but for the purpose of extending the influence of France.

[Policy of Bonaparte.]

As defenders of Germany, both Prussia and Austria had been found wanting.
The latter Power seemed to have reaped in Italy the reward of its firmness
in prolonging the war. Bonaparte ridiculed the men who, in the earlier
spirit of the Revolution, desired to found a freer political system in
Europe upon the ruins of Austria's power. "I have not drawn my support in
Italy," he wrote to Talleyrand (Oct. 7), "from the love of the peoples for
liberty and equality, or at least but a very feeble support. The real
support of the army of Italy has been its own discipline, ... above all,
our promptitude in repressing malcontents and punishing those who declared
against us. This is history; what I say in my proclamations and speeches is
a romance.... If we return to the foreign policy of 1793, we shall do so
knowing that a different policy has brought us success, and that we have no
longer the great masses of 1793 to enrol in our armies, nor the support of
an enthusiasm which has its day and does not return." Austria might well,
for the present, be left in some strength, and France was fortunate to have
so dangerous an enemy off her hands. England required the whole forces of
the Republic. "The present situation," wrote Bonaparte, after the Peace of
Campo Formio, "offers us a good chance. We must set all our strength upon
the sea; we must destroy England; and the Continent is at our feet."

[Battles of St. Vincent, Feb. 14, 1797, and Camperdown, Oct. 6.]

It had been the natural hope of the earlier Republicans that the Spanish
and the Dutch navies, if they could be brought to the side of France, would
make France superior to Great Britain as a maritime Power. The conquest of
Holland had been planned by Carnot as the first step towards an invasion of
England. For a while these plans seemed to be approaching their fulfilment,
Holland was won; Spain first made peace, and then entered into alliance
with the Directory (Aug. 1796). But each increase in the naval forces of
the Republic only gave the admirals of Great Britain new material to
destroy. The Spanish fleet was beaten by Jarvis off St. Vincent; even the
mutiny of the British squadrons at Spithead and the Nore, in the spring and
summer of 1797, caused no change in the naval situation in the North Sea.
Duncan, who was blockading the Dutch fleet in the Texel when his own
squadron joined the mutineers, continued the blockade with one ship beside
his own, signalling all the while as if the whole fleet were at his back;
until the misused seamen, who had lately turned their guns upon the Thames,
returned to the admiral, and earned his forgiveness by destroying the Dutch
at Camperdown as soon as they ventured out of shelter.

[Bonaparte about to invade Egypt.]

It is doubtful whether at any time after his return from Italy Bonaparte
seriously entertained the project of invading England. The plan was at any
rate soon abandoned, and the preparations, which caused great alarm in the
English coast-towns, were continued only for the purpose of disguising
Bonaparte's real design of an attack upon Egypt. From the beginning of his
career Bonaparte's thoughts had turned towards the vast and undefended
East. While still little known, he had asked the French Government to send
him to Constantinople to organise the Turkish army; as soon as Venice fell
into his hands, he had seized the Ionian Islands as the base for a future
conquest of the Levant. Every engagement that confirmed the superiority of
England upon the western seas gave additional reason for attacking her
where her power was most precarious, in the East. Bonaparte knew that
Alexander had conquered the country of the Indus by a land-march from the
Mediterranean, and this was perhaps all the information which he possessed
regarding the approaches to India; but it was enough to fix his mind upon
the conquest of Egypt and Syria, as the first step towards the destruction
of the Asiatic Empire of England. Mingled with the design upon India was a
dream of overthrowing the Mohammedan Government of Turkey, and attacking
Austria from the East with an army drawn from the liberated Christian races
of the Ottoman Empire. The very vagueness of a scheme of Eastern conquest
made it the more attractive to Bonaparte's genius and ambition. Nor was
there any inclination on the part of the Government to detain the general
at home. The Directory, little concerned with the real merits or dangers of
the enterprise, consented to Bonaparte's project of an attack upon Egypt,
thankful for any opportunity of loosening the grasp which was now closing
so firmly upon themselves.




CHAPTER IV.


Congress of Rastadt--The Rhenish Provinces ceded--Ecclesiastical States of
Germany suppressed--French intervention in Switzerland--Helvetic Republic--
The French invade the Papal States--Roman Republic--Expedition to Egypt--
Battle of the Nile--Coalition of 1798--Ferdinand of Naples enters
Rome--Mack's defeats--French enter Naples--Parthenopean Republic--War with
Austria and Russia--Battle of Stockach--Murder of the French Envoys at
Rastadt--Campaign in Lombardy--Reign of Terror at Naples--Austrian designs
upon Italy--Suvaroff and the Austrians--Campaign in Switzerland--Campaign
in Holland--Bonaparte returns from Egypt--Coup d'état of 18 Brumaire--
Constitution of 1799--System of Bonaparte in France--Its effect on the
influence of France abroad.


[Congress of Rastadt, Nov. 1797.]

The public articles of the Treaty of Campo Formio contained only the terms
which had been agreed upon by France and Austria in relation to Italy and
the Netherlands: the conditions of peace between France and the Germanic
Body, which had been secretly arranged between France and the two leading
Powers, were referred by a diplomatic fiction to a Congress that was to
assemble at Rastadt. Accordingly, after Prussia and Austria had each signed
an agreement abandoning the Rhenish Provinces, the Congress was duly
summoned. As if in mockery of his helpless countrymen, the Emperor informed
the members of the Diet that "in unshaken fidelity to the great principle
of the unity and indivisibility of the German Empire, they were to maintain
the common interests of the Fatherland with noble conscientiousness and
German steadfastness; and so, united with their imperial head, to promote a
just and lasting peace, founded upon the basis of the integrity of the
Empire and of its Constitution." [62] Thus the Congress was convoked upon
the pretence of preserving what the two greater States had determined to
sacrifice; while its real object, the suppression of the ecclesiastical
principalities and the curtailment of Bavaria, was studiously put out of
sight.

[Rivalry of the Germans.]

The Congress was composed of two French envoys, of the representatives of
Prussia and Austria, and of a committee, numbering with their secretaries
seventy-four persons, appointed by the Diet of Ratisbon. But the recognised
negotiators formed only a small part of the diplomatists who flocked to
Rastadt in the hope of picking up something from the wreck of the Empire.
Every petty German sovereign, even communities which possessed no political
rights at all, thought it necessary to have an agent on the spot, in order
to filch, if possible, some trifling advantage from a neighbour, or to
catch the first rumour of a proposed annexation. It was the saturnalia of
the whole tribe of busybodies and intriguers who passed in Germany for men
of state. They spied upon one another; they bribed the secretaries and
doorkeepers, they bribed the very cooks and coachmen, of the two omnipotent
French envoys. Of the national humiliation of Germany, of the dishonour
attaching to the loss of entire provinces and the reorganisation of what
remained at the bidding of the stranger, there seems to have been no sense
in the political circles of the day. The collapse of the Empire was viewed
rather as a subject of merriment. A gaiety of life and language prevailed,
impossible among men who did not consider themselves as the spectators of a
comedy. Cobenzl, the chief Austrian plenipotentiary, took his travels in a
fly, because his mistress, the _citoyenne_ Hyacinthe, had decamped with all
his carriages and horses. A witty but profane pamphlet was circulated, in
which the impending sacrifice of the Empire was described in language
borrowed from the Gospel narrative, Prussia taking the part of Judas
Iscariot, Austria that of Pontius Pilate, the Congress itself being the
chief priests and Pharisees assembling that they may take the Holy Roman
Empire by craft, while the army of the Empire figures as the "multitude who
smote upon their breasts and departed." In the utter absence of any German
pride or patriotism the French envoys not only obtained the territory that
they required, but successfully embroiled the two leading Powers with one
another, and accustomed the minor States to look to France for their own
promotion at the cost of their neighbours. The contradictory pledges which
the French Government had given to Austria and to Prussia caused it no
embarrassment. To deceive one of the two powers was to win the gratitude of
the other; and the Directory determined to fulfil its engagement to Prussia
at the expense of the bishoprics, and to ignore what it had promised to
Austria at the expense of Bavaria.

[Rhenish Provinces.]

[Ecclesiastical States suppressed.]

A momentary difficulty arose upon the opening of the Congress, when it
appeared that, misled by the Emperor's protestations, the Diet had only
empowered its Committee to treat upon the basis of the integrity of the
Empire (Dec. 9). The French declined to negotiate until the Committee had
procured full powers: and the prospects of the integrity of the Empire were
made clear enough a few days later by the entry of the French into Mainz,
and the formal organisation of the Rhenish Provinces as four French
Departments. In due course a decree of the Diet arrived, empowering the
Committee to negotiate at their discretion: and for some weeks after the
inhabitants of the Rhenish Provinces had been subjected to the laws, the
magistracy, and the taxation of France, the Committee deliberated upon the
proposal for their cession with as much minuteness and as much impartiality
as if it had been a point of speculative philosophy. At length the French
put an end to the tedious trifling, and proceeded to the question of
compensation for the dispossessed lay Princes. This they proposed to effect
by means of the disestablishment, or secularisation, of ecclesiastical
States in the interior of Germany. Prussia eagerly supported the French
proposal, both with a view to the annexation of the great Bishopric of
Münster, and from ancient hostility to the ecclesiastical States as
instruments and allies of Catholic Austria. The Emperor opposed the
destruction of his faithful dependents; the ecclesiastical princes
themselves raised a bitter outcry, and demonstrated that the fall of their
order would unloose the keystone of the political system of Europe; but
they found few friends. If Prussia coveted the great spoils of Münster, the
minor sovereigns, as a rule, wore just as eager for the convents and abbeys
that broke the continuity of their own territories: only the feeblest of
all the members of the Empire, the counts, the knights, and the cities,
felt a respectful sympathy for their ecclesiastical neighbours, and foresaw
that in a system of annexation their own turn would come next. The
principle of secularisation was accepted by the Congress without much
difficulty, all the energy of debate being reserved for the discussion of
details: arrangements which were to transfer a few miles of ground and half
a dozen custom-houses from some bankrupt ecclesiastic to some French-bought
duke excited more interest in Germany than the loss of the Rhenish
Provinces, and the subjection of a tenth part of the German nation to a
foreign rule.

[Austria determines on war, 1798.]

One more question was unexpectedly presented to the Congress. After
proclaiming for six years that the Rhine was the natural boundary of
France, the French Government discovered that a river cannot be a military
frontier at all. Of what service, urged the French plenipotentiaries, were
Strasburg and Mainz, so long as they were commanded by the guns on the
opposite bank? If the Rhine was to be of any use to France, France must be
put in possession of the fortresses of Kehl and Castel upon the German
side. Outrageous as such a demand appears, it found supporters among the
venal politicians of the smaller Courts, and furnished the Committee with
material for arguments that extended over four months. But the policy of
Austria was now taking a direction that rendered the resolutions of the
Congress of very little importance. It had become clear that France was
inclining to an alliance with Prussia, and that the Bavarian annexations
promised to Austria by the secret articles of Campo Formio were to be
withheld. Once convinced, by the failure of a private negotiation in
Alsace, that the French would neither be content with their gains of 1797,
nor permit Austria to extend its territory in Italy, Thugut determined upon
a renewal of the war. [63] In spite of a powerful opposition at Court,
Thugut's stubborn will still controlled the fortune of Austria: and the
aggressions of the French Republic in Switzerland and the Papal States, at
the moment when it was dictating terms of peace to the Empire, gave only
too much cause for the formation of a new European league.

[French intervention in Switzerland.]

At the close of the last century there was no country where the spirit of
Republican freedom was so strong, or where the conditions of life were so
level, as in Switzerland; its inhabitants, however, were far from enjoying
complete political equality. There were districts which stood in the
relation of subject dependencies to one or other of the ruling cantons: the
Pays de Vaud was governed by an officer from Berne; the valley of the
Ticino belonged to Uri; and in most of the sovereign cantons themselves
authority was vested in a close circle of patrician families. Thus,
although Switzerland was free from the more oppressive distinctions of
caste, and the Governments, even where not democratic, were usually just
and temperate, a sufficiently large class was excluded from political
rights to give scope to an agitation which received its impulse from Paris.
It was indeed among communities advanced in comfort and intelligence, and
divided from those who governed them by no great barrier of wealth and
prestige, that the doctrines of the Revolution found a circulation which
they could never gain among the hereditary serfs of Prussia or the
priest-ridden peasantry of the Roman States. As early as the year 1792 a
French army had entered the territory of Geneva, in order to co-operate
with the democratic party in the city. The movement was, however, checked
by the resolute action of the Bernese Senate; and the relations of France
to the Federal Government had subsequently been kept upon a friendly
footing by the good sense of Barthélemy, the French ambassador at Berne,
and the discretion with which the Swiss Government avoided every occasion
of offence. On the conquest of Northern Italy, Bonaparte was brought into
direct connection with Swiss affairs by a reference of certain points in
dispute to his authority as arbitrator. Bonaparte solved the difficulty by
annexing the district of the Valteline to the Cisalpine Republic; and from
that time he continued in communication with the Swiss democratic leaders
on the subject of a French intervention in Switzerland, the real purpose of
which was to secure the treasure of Berne, and to organise a government,
like that of Holland and the Cisalpine Republic, in immediate dependence
upon France.

[Helvetic Republic, April 12.]

[War between France and Swiss Federation, June, 1798.]

At length the moment for armed interference arrived. On the 15th December,
1797, a French force entered the Bishopric of Basle, and gave the signal
for insurrection in the Pays de Vaud. The Senate of Berne summoned the Diet
of the Confederacy to provide for the common defence: the oath of
federation was renewed, and a decree was passed calling out the Federal
army. It was now announced by the French that they would support the
Vaudois revolutionary party, if attacked. The Bernese troops, however,
advanced; and the bearer of a flag of truce having been accidentally
killed, war was declared between the French Republic and the Government of
Berne. Democratic movements immediately followed in the northern and
western cantons; the Bernese Government attempted to negotiate with the
French invaders, but discovered that no terms would be accepted short of
the entire destruction of the existing Federal Constitution. Hostilities
commenced; and the Bernese troops, supported by contingents from most of
the other cantons, offered a brave but ineffectual resistance to the
advance of the French, who entered the Federal capital on the 6th of March,
1798. The treasure of Berne, amounting to about £800,000, accumulated by
ages of thrift and good management, was seized in order to provide for
Bonaparte's next campaign, and for a host of voracious soldiers and
contractors. A system of robbery and extortion, more shameless even than
that practised in Italy, was put in force against the cantonal governments,
against the monasteries, and against private individuals. In compensation
for the material losses inflicted upon the country, the new Helvetic
Republic, one and indivisible, was proclaimed at Aarau. It conferred an
equality of political rights upon all natives of Switzerland, and
substituted for the ancient varieties of cantonal sovereignty a single
national government, composed, like that of France, of a Directory and two
Councils of Legislature.

The towns and districts which had been hitherto excluded from a share in
government welcomed a change which seemed to place them on a level with
their former superiors: the mountain-cantons fought with traditional
heroism in defence of the liberties which they had inherited from their
fathers; but they were compelled, one after another, to submit to the
overwhelming force of France, and to accept the new constitution. Yet, even
now, when peace seemed to have been restored, and the whole purpose of
France attained, the tyranny and violence of the invaders exhausted the
endurance of a spirited people. The magistrates of the Republic were
expelled from office at the word of a French Commission; hostages were
seized; at length an oath of allegiance to the new order was required as a
condition for the evacuation of Switzerland by the French army. Revolt
broke out in Unterwalden, and a handful of peasants met the French army at
the village of Stanz, near the eastern shore of the Lake of Lucerne (Sept.
8). There for three days they fought with unyielding courage. Their
resistance inflamed the French to a cruel vengeance; slaughtered families
and burning villages renewed, in this so-called crusade of liberty, the
savagery of ancient war.

[French intrigues in Rome.]

Intrigues at Rome paved the way for a French intervention in the affairs of
the Papal States, coincident in time with the invasion of Switzerland. The
residence of the French ambassador at Rome, Joseph Bonaparte, was the
centre of a democratic agitation. The men who moved about him were in great
part strangers from the north of Italy, but they found adherents in the
middle and professional classes in Rome itself, although the mass of the
poor people, as well as the numerous body whose salaries or profits
depended upon ecclesiastical expenditure, were devoted to the priests and
the Papacy. In anticipation of disturbances, the Government ordered
companies of soldiers to patrol the city. A collision occurred on the 28th
December, 1797, between the patrols and a band of revolutionists, who,
being roughly handled by the populace as well as by the soldiers, made
their way for protection to the courtyard of the Palazzo Corsini, where
Joseph Bonaparte resided. Here, in the midst of a confused struggle,
General Duphot, a member of the Embassy, was shot by a Papal soldier. [64]

[Berthier enters Rome, Feb. 10, 1798.]

[Roman Republic, Feb. 15, 1798.]

The French had now the pretext against the Papal Government which they
desired. Joseph Bonaparte instantly left the city, and orders were sent to
Berthier, chief of the staff in northern Italy, to march upon Rome.
Berthier advanced amid the acclamations of the towns and the curses of the
peasantry, and entered Rome on the 10th of February, 1798. Events had
produced in the capital a much stronger inclination towards change than
existed on the approach of Bonaparte a year before. The treaty of Tolentino
had shaken the prestige of Papal authority; the loss of so many well-known
works of art, the imposition of new and unpopular taxes, had excited as
much hatred against the defeated government as against the extortionate
conquerors; even among the clergy and their retainers the sale of a portion
of the Church-lands and the curtailment of the old Papal splendours had
produced alienation and discontent. There existed too within the Italian
Church itself a reforming party, lately headed by Ricci, bishop of Pistoia,
which claimed a higher degree of independence for the clergy, and condemned
the assumption of universal authority by the Roman See. The ill-judged
exercise of the Pope's temporal power during the last six years had gained
many converts to the opinion that the head of the Church would best perform
his office if emancipated from a worldly sovereignty, and restored to his
original position of the first among the bishops. Thus, on its approach to
Rome, the Republican army found the city ripe for revolution. On the 15th
of February an excited multitude assembled in the Forum, and, after
planting the tree of liberty in front of the Capitol, renounced the
authority of the Pope, and declared that the Roman people constituted
itself a free Republic. The resolution was conveyed to Berthier, who
recognised the Roman Commonwealth, and made a procession through the city
with the solemnity of an ancient triumph. The Pope shut himself up in the
Vatican. His Swiss guard was removed, and replaced by one composed of
French soldiers, at whose hands the Pontiff, now in his eighty-first year,
suffered unworthy insults. He was then required to renounce his temporal
power, and, upon his refusal, was removed to Tuscany, and afterwards beyond
the Alps to Valence, where in 1799 he died, attended by a solitary
ecclesiastic.

In the liberated capital a course of spoliation began, more thorough and
systematic than any that the French had yet effected. The riches of Rome
brought all the brokers and contractors of Paris to the spot. The museums,
the Papal residence, and the palaces of many of the nobility were robbed of
every article that could be moved; the very fixtures were cut away, when
worth the carriage. On the first meeting of the National Institute in the
Vatican it was found that the doors had lost their locks; and when, by
order of the French, masses were celebrated in the churches in expiation of
the death of Duphot, the patrols who were placed at the gates to preserve
order rushed in and seized the sacred vessels. Yet the general robbery was
far less the work of the army than of the agents and contractors sent by
the Government. In the midst of endless peculation the soldiers were in
want of their pay and their food. A sense of the dishonour done to France
arose at length in the subordinate ranks of the army; and General Massena,
who succeeded Berthier, was forced to quit his command in consequence of
the protests of the soldiery against a system to which Massena had
conspicuously given his personal sanction. It remained to embody the
recovered liberties of Rome in a Republican Constitution, which was, as a
matter of course, a reproduction of the French Directory and Councils of
Legislature, under the practical control of the French general in command.
What Rome had given to the Revolution in the fashion of classical
expressions was now more than repaid. The Directors were styled Consuls;
the divisions of the Legislature were known as the Senate and the
Tribunate; the Prætorship and the Quæstorship were recalled to life in the
Courts of Justice. That the new era might not want its classical memorial,
a medal was struck, with the image and superscription of Roman heroism, to
"Berthier, the restorer of the city," and to "Gaul, the salvation of the
human race."

[Expedition to Egypt, May, 1798.]

It was in the midst of these enterprises in Switzerland and Central Italy
that the Directory assembled the forces which Bonaparte was to lead to the
East. The port of Expedition to embarkation was Toulon; and there, on the
9th of May, 1798, Bonaparte took the command of the most formidable
armament that had ever left the French shores. Great Britain was still but
feebly represented in the Mediterranean, a detachment from St. Vincent's
fleet at Cadiz, placed under the command of Nelson, being the sole British
force in these waters. Heavy reinforcements were at hand; but in the
meantime Nelson had been driven by stress of weather from his watch upon
Toulon. On the 19th of May the French armament put out to sea, its
destination being still kept secret from the soldiers themselves. It
appeared before Malta on the 16th of June. By the treachery of the knights
Bonaparte was put in possession of this stronghold, which he could not even
have attempted to besiege. After a short delay the voyage was resumed, and
the fleet reached Alexandria without having fallen in with the English, who
had now received their reinforcements. The landing was safely effected, and
Alexandria fell at the first assault. After five days the army advanced
upon Cairo. At the foot of the Pyramids the Mameluke cavalry vainly threw
themselves upon Bonaparte's soldiers. They were repulsed with enormous loss
on their own side and scarcely any on that of the French. Their camp was
stormed; Cairo was occupied; and there no longer existed a force in Egypt
capable of offering any serious resistance to the invaders.

[Battle of the Nile, Aug. 1.]

But the fortune which had brought Bonaparte's army safe into the Egyptian
capital was destined to be purchased by the utter destruction of his fleet.
Nelson had passed the French in the night, when, after much perplexity, he
decided on sailing in the direction of Egypt. Arriving at Alexandria before
his prey, he had hurried off in an imaginary pursuit to Rhodes and Crete.
At length he received information which led him to visit Alexandria a
second time. He found the French fleet, numbering thirteen ships of the
line and four frigates, at anchor in Aboukir Bay. [65] His own fleet was
slightly inferior in men and guns, but he entered battle with a
presentiment of the completeness of his victory. Other naval battles have
been fought with larger forces; no destruction was ever so complete as that
of the Battle of the Nile (August 1). Two ships of the line and two
frigates, out of the seventeen sail that met Nelson, alone escaped from his
hands. Of eleven thousand officers and men, nine thousand were taken
prisoners, or perished in the engagement. The army of Bonaparte was cut off
from all hope of support or return; the Republic was deprived of
communication with its best troops and its greatest general.

[Coalition of 1798.]

A coalition was now gathering against France superior to that of 1793 in
the support of Russia and the Ottoman Empire, although Spain was now on the
side of the Republic, and Prussia, in spite of the warnings of the last two
years, refused to stir from its neutrality. The death of the Empress
Catherine, and the accession of Paul, had caused a most serious change in
the prospects of Europe. Hitherto the policy of the Russian Court had been
to embroil the Western Powers with one another, and to confine its efforts
against the French Republic to promises and assurances; with Paul, after an
interval of total reaction, the professions became realities. [66] No
monarch entered so cordially into Pitt's schemes for a renewal of the
European league; no ally had joined the English minister with a sincerity
so like his own. On the part of the Ottoman Government, the pretences of
friendship with which Bonaparte disguised the occupation of Egypt were
taken at their real worth. War was declared by the Porte; and a series of
negotiations, carried on during the autumn of 1798, united Russia, England,
Turkey, and Naples in engagements of mutual support against the French
Republic.

[Nelson at Naples, Sept., 1798.]

A Russian army set out on its long march towards the Adriatic: the levies
of Austria prepared for a campaign in the spring of 1799; but to the
English Government every moment that elapsed before actual hostilities was
so much time given to uncertainties; and the man who had won the Battle of
the Nile ridiculed the precaution which had hitherto suffered the French to
spread their intrigues through Italy, and closed the ports of Sicily and
Naples to his own most urgent needs. Towards the end of September, Nelson
appeared in the Bay of Naples, and was received with a delirium that
recalled the most effusive scenes in the French Revolution. [67] In the
city of Naples, as in the kingdom generally, the poorest classes were the
fiercest enemies of reform, and the steady allies of the Queen and the
priesthood against that section of the better-educated classes which had
begun to hope for liberty. The system of espionage and persecution with
which the sister of Marie Antoinette avenged upon her own subjects the
sufferings of her kindred had grown more oppressive with every new victory
of the Revolution. In the summer of 1798 there were men languishing for the
fifth year in prison, whose offences had never been investigated, and whose
relatives were not allowed to know whether they were dead or alive. A mode
of expression, a fashion of dress, the word of an informer, consigned
innocent persons to the dungeon, with the possibility of torture. In the
midst of this tyranny of suspicion, in the midst of a corruption which made
the naval and military forces of the kingdom worse than useless, King
Ferdinand and his satellites were unwearied in their theatrical invocations
of the Virgin and St. Januarius against the assailants of divine right and
the conquerors of Rome. A Court cowardly almost beyond the example of
Courts, a police that had trained every Neapolitan to look upon his
neighbour as a traitor, an administration that had turned one of the
hardiest races in Europe into soldiers of notorious and disgraceful
cowardice--such were the allies whom Nelson, ill-fitted for politics by his
sailor-like inexperience and facile vanity, heroic in his tenderness and
fidelity, in an evil hour encouraged to believe themselves invincible
because they possessed his own support. On the 14th of November, 1798, King
Ferdinand published a proclamation, which, without declaring war on the
French, announced that the King intended to occupy the Papal States and
restore the Papal government. The manifesto disclaimed all intention of
conquest, and offered a free pardon to all compromised persons. Ten days
later the Neapolitan army crossed the frontier, led by the Austrian
general, Mack, who passed among his admirers for the greatest soldier in
Europe. [68]

[Ferdinand enters Rome, Nov. 29.]

The mass of the French troops, about twelve thousand in number, lay in the
neighbourhood of Ancona; Rome and the intermediate stations were held by
small detachments. Had Mack pushed forward towards the Upper Tiber, his
inroad, even if it failed to crush the separated wings of the French army,
must have forced them to retreat; but, instead of moving with all his
strength through Central Italy, Mack led the bulk of his army upon Rome,
where there was no French force capable of making a stand, and sent weak
isolated columns towards the east of the peninsula, where the French were
strong enough to make a good defence. On the approach of the Neapolitans to
Rome, Championnet, the French commander, evacuated the city, leaving a
garrison in the Castle of St. Angelo, and fell back on Civita Castellana,
thirty miles north of the capital. The King of Naples entered Rome on the
29th November. The restoration of religion was celebrated by the erection
of an immense cross in the place of the tree of liberty, by the immersion
of several Jews in the Tiber, by the execution of a number of compromised
persons whose pardon the King had promised, and by a threat to shoot one of
the sick French soldiers in the hospital for every shot fired by the guns
of St. Angelo. [69] Intelligence was despatched to the exiled Pontiff of
the discomfiture of his enemies. "By help of the divine grace," wrote King
Ferdinand, "and of the most miraculous St. Januarius, we have to-day with
our army entered the sacred city of Rome, so lately profaned by the
impious, who now fly terror-stricken at the sight of the Cross and of my
arms. Leave then, your Holiness, your too modest abode, and on the wings of
cherubim, like the virgin of Loreto, come and descend upon the Vatican, to
purify it by your sacred presence." A letter to the King of Piedmont, who
had already been exhorted by Ferdinand to encourage his peasants to
assassinate French soldiers, informed him that "the Neapolitans, guided by
General Mack, had sounded the hour of death to the French, and proclaimed
to Europe, from the summit of the Capitol, that the time of the Kings had
come."

[Mack defeated by Championnet, Dec. 6-13.]

The despatches to Piedmont fell into the hands of the enemy, and the usual
modes of locomotion would scarcely have brought Pope Pius to Rome in time
to witness the exit of his deliverer. Ferdinand's rhapsodies were cut short
by the news that his columns advancing into the centre and east of the
Papal States had all been beaten or captured. Mack, at the head of the main
army, now advanced to avenge the defeat upon the French at Civita
Castellana and Terni. But his dispositions were as unskilful as ever:
wherever his troops encountered the enemy they were put to the rout; and,
as he had neglected to fortify or secure a single position upon his line of
march, his defeat by a handful of French soldiers on the north of Rome
involved the loss of the country almost up to the gates of Naples. On the
first rumour of Mack's reverses the Republican party at Rome declared for
France. King Ferdinand fled; Championnet re-entered Rome, and, after a few
days' delay, advanced into Neapolitan territory. Here, however, he found
himself attacked by an enemy more formidable than the army which had been
organised to expel the French from Italy. The Neapolitan peasantry, who, in
soldiers' uniform and under the orders of Mack, could scarcely be brought
within sight of the French, fought with courage when an appeal to their
religious passions collected them in brigand-like bands under leaders of
their own. Divisions of Championnet's army sustained severe losses; they
succeeded, however, in effecting their junction upon the Volturno; and the
stronghold of Gaeta, being defended by regular soldiers and not by
brigands, surrendered to the French at the first summons.

[French enter Naples, Jan. 23, 1799.]

Mack was now concentrating his troops in an entrenched camp before Capua.
The whole country was rising against the invaders; and, in spite of lost
battles and abandoned fortresses, the Neapolitan Government if it had
possessed a spark of courage, might still have overthrown the French army,
which numbered only 18,000 men. But the panic and suspicion which the
Government had fostered among its subjects were now avenged upon itself.
The cry of treachery was raised on every side. The Court dreaded a
Republican rising; the priests and the populace accused the Court of
conspiracy with the French; Mack protested that the soldiers were resolved
to be beaten; the soldiers swore that they were betrayed by Mack. On the
night of the 21st of December, the Royal Family secretly went on board
Nelson's ship the _Vanguard_, and after a short interval they set sail
for Palermo, leaving the capital in charge of Prince Pignatelli, a courtier
whom no one was willing to obey. [70] Order was, however, maintained by a
civic guard enrolled by the Municipality, until it became known that Mack
and Pignatelli had concluded an armistice with the French, and surrendered
Capua and the neighbouring towns. Then the populace broke into wild uproar.
The prisons were thrown open; and with the arms taken from the arsenal the
lazzaroni formed themselves into a tumultuous army, along with thousands of
desperate men let loose from the gaols and the galleys. The priests,
hearing that negotiations for peace were opened, raised the cry of treason
anew; and, with the watchword of the Queen, "All the gentlemen are
Jacobins; only the people are faithful," they hounded on the mob to riot
and murder. On the morning of January 15th hordes of lazzaroni issued from
the gates to throw themselves upon the French, who were now about nine
miles from the city; others dragged the guns down from the forts to defend
the streets. The Republican party, however, and that considerable body
among the upper class which was made Republican by the chaos into which the
Court, with its allies, the priests, and the populace, had thrown Naples,
kept up communication with Championnet, and looked forward to the entrance
of the French as the only means of averting destruction and massacre. By a
stratagem carried out on the night of the 20th they gained possession of
the fort of St. Elmo, while the French were already engaged in a bloody
assault upon the suburbs. On the 23rd Championnet ordered the attack to be
renewed. The conspirators within St. Elmo hoisted the French flag and
turned their guns upon the populace; the fortress of the Carmine was
stormed by the French; and, before the last struggle for life and death
commenced in the centre of the city, the leaders of the lazzaroni listened
to words of friendship which Championnet addressed to them in their own
language, and, with the incoherence of a half-savage race, escorted his
soldiers with cries of joy to the Church of St. Januarius, which
Championnet promised to respect and protect.

[Parthenopean Republic.]

Championnet used his victory with a discretion and forbearance rare amongst
French conquerors. He humoured the superstition of the populace; he
encouraged the political hopes of the enlightened. A vehement revulsion of
feeling against the fugitive Court and in favour of Republican government
followed the creation of a National Council by the French general, and his
ironical homage to the patron saint. The Kingdom of Naples was converted
into the Parthenopean Republic. New laws, new institutions, discussed in a
representative assembly, excited hopes and interests unknown in Naples
before. But the inevitable incidents of a French occupation, extortion and
impoverishment, with all their bitter effects on the mind of the people,
were not long delayed. In every country district the priests were exciting
insurrection. The agents of the new Government, men with no experience in
public affairs, carried confusion wherever they went. Civil war broke out
in fifty different places; and the barbarity of native leaders of
insurrection, like Fra Diavolo, was only too well requited by the French
columns which traversed the districts in revolt.

[War with Austria and Russia, March, 1799.]

The time was ill chosen by the French Government for an extension of the
area of combat to southern Italy. Already the first division of the Russian
army, led by Suvaroff, had reached Moravia, and the Court of Vienna was
only awaiting its own moment for declaring war. So far were the
newly-established Governments in Rome and Naples from being able to assist
the French upon the Adige, that the French had to send troops to Rome and
Naples to support the new Governments. The force which the French could
place upon the frontier was inferior to that which two years of preparation
had given to Austria: the Russians, who were expected to arrive in Lombardy
in April, approached with the confidence of men who had given to the French
none of their recent triumphs. Nor among the leaders was personal
superiority any longer markedly on the side of the French, as in the war of
the First Coalition. Suvaroff and the Archduke Charles were a fair match
for any of the Republican generals, except Bonaparte, who was absent in
Egypt. The executive of France had deeply declined. Carnot was in exile;
the work of organisation which he had pursued with such energy and
disinterestedness flagged under his mediocre and corrupt successors.
Skilful generals and brave soldiers were never wanting to the Republic; but
no single controlling will, no storm of national passion, inspired the
Government with the force which it had possessed under the Convention, and
which returned to it under Napoleon.

A new character was given to the war now breaking out by the inclusion of
Switzerland in the area of combat. In the war of the First Coalition,
Switzerland had been neutral territory; but the events of 1798 had left the
French in possession of all Switzerland west of the Rhine, and an Austrian
force subsequently occupied the Grisons. The line separating the combatants
now ran without a break from Mainz to the Adriatic. The French armies were
in continuous communication with one another, and the movements of each
could be modified according to the requirements of the rest. On the other
hand, a disaster sustained at any one point of the line endangered every
other point; for no neutral territory intervened, as in 1796, to check a
lateral movement of the enemy, and to protect the communications of a
French army in Lombardy from a victorious Austrian force in southern
Germany. The importance of the Swiss passes in this relation was understood
and even overrated by the French Government; and an energy was thrown into
their mountain warfare which might have produced greater results upon the
plains.

[The Archduke Charles defeats Jourdan at Stockach, March, 25.]

Three armies formed the order of battle on either side. Jourdan held the
French command upon the Rhine; Massena in Switzerland; Scherer, the least
capable of the Republican generals, on the Adige. On the side of the
Allies, the Archduke Charles commanded in southern Germany; in Lombardy the
Austrians were led by Kray, pending the arrival of Suvaroff and his corps;
in Switzerland the command was given to Hotze, a Swiss officer who had
gained some distinction in foreign service. It was the design of the French
to push their centre under Massena through the mountains into the Tyrol,
and by a combined attack of the central and the southern army to destroy
the Austrians upon the upper Adige, while Jourdan, also in communication
with the centre, drove the Archduke down the Danube upon Vienna. Early in
March the campaign opened. Massena assailed the Austrian positions east of
the head-waters of the Rhine, and forced back the enemy into the heart of
the Grisons. Jourdan crossed the Rhine at Strasburg, and passed the Black
Forest with 40,000 men. His orders were to attack the Archduke Charles,
whatever the Archduke's superiority of force. The French and the Austrian
armies met at Stockach, near the head of the Lake of Constance (March 25).
Overwhelming numbers gave the Archduke a complete victory. Jourdan was not
only stopped in his advance, but forced to retreat beyond the Rhine.
Whatever might be the fortune of the armies of Switzerland and Italy, all
hope of an advance upon Vienna by the Danube was at an end.

[Murder of the French envoys at Rastadt, April 28.]

Freed from the invader's presence, the Austrians now spread themselves over
Baden, up to the gates of Rastadt, where, in spite of the war between
France and Austria, the envoys of the minor German States still continued
their conferences with the French agents. On the 28th of April the French
envoys, now three in number, were required by the Austrians to depart
within twenty-four hours. An escort, for which they applied, was refused.
Scarcely had their carriages passed through the city gates when they were
attacked by a squadron of Austrian hussars. Two of French envoys the French
envoys were murdered; the third left for dead. Whether this frightful
violation of international law was the mere outrage of a drunken soldiery,
as it was represented to be by the Austrian Government; whether it was to
any extent occasioned by superior civil orders, or connected with French
emigrants living in the neighbourhood, remains unknown. Investigations
begun by the Archduke Charles were stopped by the Cabinet, in order that a
more public inquiry might be held by the Diet. This inquiry, however, never
took place. In the year 1804 all papers relating to the Archduke's
investigation were removed by the Government from the military archives.
They have never since been discovered. [71]

[Battle of Magnano, April 5.]

The outburst of wrath with which the French people learnt the fate of their
envoys would have cost Austria dear if Austria had now been the losing
party in the war; but, for the present, everything seemed to turn against
the Republic. Jourdan had scarcely been overthrown in Germany before a
ruinous defeat at Magnano, on the Adige, drove back the army of Italy to
within a few miles of Milan; while Massena, deprived of the fruit of his
own victories by the disasters of his colleagues, had to abandon the
eastern half of Switzerland, and to retire upon the line of the river
Limnat, Lucerne, and the Gothard. Charles now moved from Germany into
Switzerland. Massena fixed his centre at Zürich, and awaited the Archduke's
assault. For five weeks Charles remained inactive: at length, on the 4th of
June, he gave battle. After two days' struggle against greatly superior
forces, Massena was compelled to evacuate Zürich. He retreated, however, no
farther than to the ridge of the Uetliberg, a few miles west of the city;
and here, fortifying his new position, he held obstinately on, while the
Austrians established themselves in the central passes of Switzerland, and
disaster after disaster seemed to be annihilating the French arms in Italy.

[Suvaroff's Campaign in Lombardy, April-June.]

Suvaroff, at the head of 17,000 Russians, had arrived in Lombardy in the
middle of April. His first battle was fought, and his first victory won, at
the passage of the Adda on the 25th of April. It was followed by the
surrender of Milan and the dissolution of the Cisalpine Republic. Moreau,
who now held the French command, fell back upon Alessandria, intending to
cover both Genoa and Turin; but a sudden movement of Suvaroff brought the
Russians into the Sardinian capital before it was even known to be in
jeopardy. The French general, cut off from the roads over the Alps, threw
himself upon the Apennines above Genoa, and waited for the army which had
occupied Naples, and which, under the command of Macdonald, was now
hurrying to his support, gathering with it on its march the troops that lay
scattered on the south of the Po. Macdonald moved swiftly through central
Italy, and crossed the Apennines above Pistoia in the beginning of June.
His arrival at Modena with 20,000 men threatened to turn the balance in
favour of the French. Suvaroff, aware of his danger, collected all the
troops within reach with the utmost despatch, and pushed eastwards to meet
Macdonald on the Trebbia. Moreau descended from the Apennines in the same
direction; but he had underrated the swiftness of the Russian general; and,
before he had advanced over half the distance, Macdonald was attacked by
Suvaroff on the Trebbia, and overthrown in three days of the most desperate
fighting that had been seen in the war (June 18). [72]

[Naples.]

All southern Italy now rose against the Governments established by the
French. Cardinal Ruffo, with a band of fanatical peasants, known as the
Army of the Faith, made himself master of Apulia and Calabria amid scenes
of savage cruelty, and appeared before Naples, where the lazzaroni were
ready to unite with the hordes of the Faithful in murder and pillage.
Confident of support within the city, and assisted by some English and
Russian vessels in the harbour, Ruffo attacked the suburbs of Naples on the
morning of the 13th of June. Massacre and outrage continued within and
without the city for five days. On the morning of the 19th, the Cardinal
proposed a suspension of arms. It was accepted by the Republicans, who were
in possession of the forts. Negotiations followed. On the 23rd conditions
of peace were signed by Ruffo on behalf of the King of Naples, and by the
representatives of Great Britain and of Russia in guarantee for their
faithful execution. It was agreed that the Republican garrison should march
out with the honours of war; that their persons and property should be
respected; that those who might prefer to leave the country should be
conveyed to Toulon on neutral vessels; and that all who remained at home
should be free from molestation.

[Reign of Terror.]

The garrison did not leave the forts that night. On the following morning,
while they were embarking on board the polaccas which were to take them to
Toulon, Nelson's fleet appeared in the Bay of Naples. Nelson declared that
in treating with rebels Cardinal Ruffo had disobeyed the King's orders, and
he pronounced the capitulation null and void. The polaccas, with the
Republicans crowded on board, were attached to the sterns of the English
ships, pending the arrival of King Ferdinand. On the 29th of June, Admiral
Caracciolo, who had taken office under the new Government, and on its fall
had attempted to escape in disguise, was brought a captive before Nelson.
Nelson ordered him to be tried by a Neapolitan court-martial, and, in spite
of his old age, his rank, and his long service to the State, caused him to
be hanged from a Neapolitan ship's yard-arm, and his body to be thrown into
the sea. Some days later, King Ferdinand arrived from Palermo, and Nelson
now handed over all his prisoners to the Bourbon authorities. A reign of
terror followed. Innumerable persons were thrown into prison.
Courts-martial, or commissions administering any law that pleased
themselves, sent the flower of the Neapolitan nation to the scaffold. Above
a hundred sentences of death were carried out in Naples itself:
confiscation, exile, and imprisonment struck down thousands of families. It
was peculiar to the Neapolitan proscriptions that a Government with the
names of religion and right incessantly upon its lips selected for
extermination both among men and women those who were most distinguished in
character, in science, and in letters, whilst it chose for promotion and
enrichment those who were known for deeds of savage violence. The part
borne by Nelson in this work of death has left a stain on his glory which
time cannot efface. [73]

[Austrian designs in Italy.]

[New plan of the War.]

It was on the advance of the Army of Naples under Macdonald that the French
rested their last hope of recovering Lombardy. The battle of the Trebbia
scattered this hope to the winds, and left it only too doubtful whether
France could be saved from invasion. Suvaroff himself was eager to fall
upon Moreau before Macdonald could rally from his defeat, and to drive him
westwards along the coast-road into France. It was a moment when the
fortune of the Republic hung in the scales. Had Suvaroff been permitted to
follow his own counsels, France would probably have seen the remnant of her
Italian armies totally destroyed, and the Russians advancing upon Lyons or
Marseilles. The Republic was saved, as it had been in 1793, by the
dissensions of its enemies. It was not only for the purpose of resisting
French aggression that Austria had renewed the war, but for the purpose of
extending its own dominion in Italy. These designs were concealed from
Russia; they were partially made known by Thugut to the British Ambassador,
under the most stringent obligation to secrecy. On the 17th of August,
1799, Lord Minto acquainted his Government with the intentions of the
Austrian Court. "The Emperor proposes to retain Piedmont, and to take all
that part of Savoy which is important in a military view. I have no doubt
of his intention to keep Nice also, if he gets it, which will make the Var
his boundary with France. The whole territory of the Genoese Republic seems
to be an object of serious speculation ... The Papal Legations will, I am
persuaded, be retained by the Emperor ... I am not yet master of the
designs on Tuscany." [74] This was the sense in which Austria understood
the phrase of defending the rights of Europe against French aggression. It
was not, however, for this that the Czar had sent his army from beyond the
Carpathians. Since the opening of the campaign Suvaroff had been in
perpetual conflict with the military Council of Vienna. [75] Suvaroff was
bent upon a ceaseless pursuit of the enemy; the Austrian Council insisted
upon the reduction of fortresses. What at first appeared as a mere
difference of military opinion appeared in its true political character
when the allied troops entered Piedmont. The Czar desired with his whole
soul to crush the men of the Revolution, and to restore the governments
which France had overthrown. As soon as his troops entered Turin, Suvaroff
proclaimed the restoration of the House of Savoy, and summoned all
Sardinian officers to fight for their King. He was interrupted by a letter
from Vienna requiring him to leave political affairs in the hands of the
Viennese Ministry. [76] The Russians had already done as much in Italy as
the Austrian Cabinet desired them to do, and the first wish of Thugut was
now to free himself from his troublesome ally. Suvaroff raged against the
Austrian Government in every despatch, and tendered his resignation. His
complaints inclined the Czar to accept a new military scheme, which was
supported by the English Government in the hope of terminating the
contention between Suvaroff and the Austrian Council. It was agreed at St.
Petersburg that, as soon as the French armies were destroyed, the reduction
of the Italian fortresses should be left exclusively to the Austrians; and
that Suvaroff, uniting with a new Russian army now not far distant, should
complete the conquest of Switzerland, and then invade France by the Jura,
supported on his right by the Archduke Charles. An attack was to be made at
the same time upon Holland by a combined British and Russian force.

If executed in its original form, this design would have thrown a
formidable army upon France at the side of Franche Comté, where it is least
protected by fortresses. But at the last moment an alteration in the plan
was made at Vienna. The prospect of an Anglo-Russian victory in Holland
again fixed the thoughts of the Austrian Minister upon Belgium, which had
been so lightly abandoned five years before, and which Thugut now hoped to
re-occupy and to barter for Bavaria or some other territory. "The Emperor,"
he wrote, "cannot turn a deaf ear to the appeal of his subjects. He cannot
consent that the Netherlands shall be disposed of without his own
concurrence." [77] The effect of this perverse and mischievous resolution
was that the Archduke Charles received orders to send the greater part of
his army from Switzerland to the Lower Rhine, and to leave only 25,000 men
to support the new Russian division which, under General Korsakoff, was
approaching from the north to meet Suvaroff. The Archduke, as soon as the
new instructions reached him, was filled with the presentiment of disaster,
and warned his Government that in the general displacement of forces an
opportunity would be given to Massena, who was still above Zürich, to
strike a fatal blow. Every despatch that passed between Vienna and St.
Petersburg now increased the Czar's suspicion of Austria. The Pope and the
King of Naples were convinced that Thugut had the same design upon their
own territories which had been shown in his treatment of Piedmont. [78]
They appealed to the Czar for protection. The Czar proposed a European
Congress, at which the Powers might learn one another's real intentions.
The proposal was not accepted by Austria; but, while disclaiming all desire
to despoil the King of Sardinia, the Pope, or the King of Naples, Thugut
admitted that Austria claimed an improvement of its Italian frontier, in
other words, the annexation of a portion of Piedmont, and of the northern
part of the Roman States. The Czar replied that he had taken up arms in
order to check one aggressive Government, and that he should not permit
another to take its place.

[Battle of Novi, Aug. 15.]

For the moment, however, the allied forces continued to co-operate in Italy
against the French army on the Apennines covering Genoa. This army had
received reinforcements, and was now placed under the command of Joubert,
one of the youngest and most spirited of the Republican generals. Joubert
determined to attack the Russians before the fall of Mantua should add the
besieging army to Suvaroff's forces in the field. But the information which
he received from Lombardy misled him. In the second week of August he was
still unaware that Mantua had fallen a fortnight before. He descended from
the mountains to attack Suvaroff at Tortona, with a force about equal to
Suvaroff's own. On reaching Novi he learnt that the army of Mantua was also
before him (Aug. 15). It was too late to retreat; Joubert could only give
to his men the example of Republican spirit and devotion. Suvaroff himself,
with Kray, the conqueror of Mantua, began the attack: the onset of a second
Austrian corps, at the moment when the strength of the Russians was
failing, decided the day. Joubert did not live to witness the close of a
defeat which cost France eleven thousand men. [79]

[Suvaroff goes into Switzerland.]

The allied Governments had so framed their plans that the most overwhelming
victory could produce no result. Instead of entering France, Suvaroff was
compelled to turn back into Switzerland, while the Austrians continued to
besiege the fortresses of Piedmont. In Switzerland Suvaroff had to meet an
enemy who was forewarned of his approach, and who had employed every
resource of military skill and daring to prevent the union of the two
Russian armies now advancing from the south and the north. Before Suvaroff
could leave Italy, a series of admirably-planned attacks had given Massena
the whole network of the central Alpine passes, and closed every avenue of
communication between Suvaroff and the army with which he hoped to
co-operate. The folly of the Austrian Cabinet seconded the French general's
exertions. No sooner had Korsakoff and the new Russian division reached
Schaffhausen than the Archduke Charles, forced by his orders from Vienna,
turned northwards (Sept. 3), leaving the Russians with no support but
Hotze's corps, which was scattered over six cantons. [80] Korsakoff
advanced to Zürich; Massena remained in his old position on the Uetliberg.
It was now that Suvaroff began his march into the Alps, sorely harassed and
delayed by the want of the mountain-teams which the Austrians had promised
him, and filled with the apprehension that Korsakoff would suffer some
irreparable disaster before his own arrival.

[Second Battle of Zürich, Sept. 26.]

Two roads lead from the Italian lakes to central Switzerland; one, starting
from the head of Lago Maggiore and crossing the Gothard, ends on the shore
of Lake Lucerne; the other, crossing the Splügen, runs from the Lake of
Como to Reichenau, in the valley of the Rhine. The Gothard in 1799 was not
practicable for cannon; it was chosen by Suvaroff, however, for his own
advance, with the object of falling upon Massena's rear with the utmost
possible speed. He left Bellinzona on the 21st of September, fought his way
in a desperate fashion through the French outposts that guarded the defiles
of the Gothard, and arrived at Altorf near the Lake of Lucerne. Here it was
discovered that the westward road by which Suvaroff meant to strike upon
the enemy's communications had no existence. Abandoning this design,
Suvaroff made straight for the district where his colleague was encamped,
by a shepherd's path leading north-eastwards across heights of 7,000 feet
to the valley of the Muotta. Over this desolate region the Russians made
their way; and the resolution which brought them as far as the Muotta would
have brought them past every other obstacle to the spot where they were to
meet their countrymen. But the hour was past. While Suvaroff was still
struggling in the mountains, Massena advanced against Zürich, put
Korsakoff's army to total rout, and drove it, with the loss of all its
baggage and of a great part of its artillery, outside the area of
hostilities.

[Retreat of Suvaroff.]

The first rumours of the catastrophe reached Suvaroff on the Muotta; he
still pushed on eastwards, and, though almost without ammunition, overthrew
a corps commanded by Massena in person, and cleared the road over the
Pragel at the point of the bayonet, arriving in Glarus on the 1st of
October. Here the full extent of Korsakoff's disaster was made known to
him. To advance or to fall back was ruin. It only remained for Suvaroff's
army to make its escape across a wild and snow-covered mountain-tract into
the valley of the Rhine, where the river flows below the northern heights
of the Grisons. This exploit crowned a campaign which filled Europe with
astonishment. The Alpine traveller of to-day turns with some distrust from
narratives which characterise with every epithet of horror and dismay
scenes which are the delight of our age; but the retreat of Suvaroff's
army, a starving, footsore multitude, over what was then an untrodden
wilderness of rock, and through fresh-fallen autumn snow two feet deep, had
little in common with the boldest feats of Alpine hardihood. [81] It was
achieved with loss and suffering; it brought the army from a position of
the utmost danger into one of security; but it was followed by no renewed
attack. Proposals for a combination between Suvaroff and the Archduke
Charles resulted only in mutual taunts and menaces. The co-operation of
Russia in the war was at an end. The French remained masters of the whole
of the Swiss territory that they had lost since the beginning of the
campaign.

[British and Russian expedition against Holland Aug. 1799.]

In the summer months of 1799 the Czar had relieved his irritation against
Austria by framing in concert with the British Cabinet the plan for a joint
expedition against Holland. It was agreed that 25,000 English and 17,000
Russian troops, brought from the Baltic in British ships, should attack the
French in the Batavian Republic, and raise an insurrection on behalf of the
exiled Stadtholder. Throughout July the Kentish coast-towns were alive with
the bustle of war; and on the 13th of August the first English division,
numbering 12,000 men, set sail from Deal under the command of Sir Ralph
Abercromby. After tossing off the Dutch coast for a fortnight, the troops
landed at the promontory of the Helder. A Dutch corps was defeated on the
sand-hills, and the English captured the fort of the Helder, commanding the
Texel anchorage. Immediately afterwards a movement in favour of the
Stadtholder broke out among the officers of the Dutch fleet. The captains
hoisted the Orange flag, and brought their ships over to the English.

This was the first and the last result of the expedition. The Russian
contingent and a second English division reached Holland in the middle of
September, and with them came the Duke of York, who now took the command
out of the hands of Abercromby. On the other side reinforcements daily
arrived from France, until the enemy's troops, led by General Brune, were
equal in strength to the invaders. A battle fought at Alkmaar on the 19th
of September gave the Allies some partial successes and no permanent
advantage; and on the 3rd of October the Duke of York gained one of those
so-called victories which result in the retreat of the conquerors. Never
were there so many good reasons for a bad conclusion. The Russians moved
too fast or too slow; the ditches set at nought the rules of strategy; it
was discovered that the climate of Holland was unfavourable to health, and
that the Dutch had not the slightest inclination to get back their
Stadtholder. The result of a series of mischances, every one of which would
have been foreseen by an average midshipman in Nelson's fleet, or an
average sergeant in Massena's army, was that York had to purchase a retreat
for the allied forces at a price equivalent to an unconditional surrender.
He was allowed to re-embark on consideration that Great Britain restored to
the French 8,000 French and Dutch prisoners, and handed over in perfect
repair all the military works which our own soldiers had erected at the
Helder. Bitter complaints were raised among the Russian officers against
York's conduct of the expedition. He was accused of sacrificing the Russian
regiments in battle, and of courting a general defeat in order not to
expose his own men. The accusation was groundless. Where York was,
treachery or bad faith was superfluous. York in command, the feeblest enemy
became invincible. Incompetence among the hereditary chiefs of the English
army had become part of the order of nature. The Ministry, when taxed with
failure, obstinately shut their eyes to the true cause of the disaster.
Parliament was reminded that defeat was the most probable conclusion of any
military operations that we might undertake, and that England ought not to
expect success when Prussia and Austria had so long met only with
misfortune. Under the command of Nelson, English sailors were indeed
manifesting that kind of superiority to the seamen of other nations which
the hunter possesses over his prey; yet this gave no reason why foresight
and daring should count for anything ashore. If the nation wished to see
its soldiers undefeated, it must keep them at home to defend their country.
Even among the Opposition no voice was raised to protest against the system
which sacrificed English life and military honour to the dignity of the
Royal Family. The collapse of the Anglo-Russian expedition was viewed with
more equanimity in England than in Russia. The Czar dismissed his
unfortunate generals. York returned home, to run horses at Newmarket, to
job commissions with his mistress, and to earn his column at St. James's
Park.

[Unpopularity of the Directory.]

[Plans of Siéyès 1799.]

It was at this moment, when the tide of military success was already
turning in favour of the Republic, that the revolution took place which
made Bonaparte absolute ruler of France. Since the attack of the Government
upon the Royalists in Fructidor, 1797, the Directory and the factions had
come no nearer to a system of mutual concession, or to a peaceful
acquiescence in the will of a parliamentary majority. The Directory,
assailed both by the extreme Jacobins and by the Constitutionalists, was
still strong enough to crush each party in its turn. The elections of 1798,
which strengthened the Jacobins, were annulled with as little scruple as
the Royalist elections in the preceding year; it was only when defeat in
Germany and Italy had brought the Government into universal discredit that
the Constitutionalist party, fortified by the return of a large majority in
the elections of 1799, dared to turn the attack upon the Directors
themselves. The excitement of foreign conquest had hitherto shielded the
abuses of Government from criticism; but when Italy was lost, when generals
and soldiers found themselves without pay, without clothes, without
reinforcements, one general outcry arose against the Directory, and the
nation resolved to have done with a Government whose outrages and
extortions had led to nothing but military ruin. The disasters of France in
the spring of 1799, which resulted from the failure of the Government to
raise the armies to their proper strength, were not in reality connected
with the defects of the Constitution. They were caused in part by the
shameless jobbery of individual members of the Administration, in part by
the absence of any agency, like that of the Conventional Commissioners of
1793, to enforce the control of the central Government over the local
authorities, left isolated and independent by the changes of 1789. Faults
enough belonged, however, to the existing political order; and the
Constitutionalists, who now for the second time found themselves with a
majority in the Councils, were not disposed to prolong a system which from
the first had turned their majorities into derision. A party grew up around
the Abbé Siéyès intent upon some change which should give France a
government really representing its best elements. What the change was to be
few could say; but it was known that Siéyès, who had taken a leading part
in 1789, and had condemned the Constitution of 1795 from the moment when it
was sketched, had elaborated a scheme which he considered exempt from every
error that had vitiated its predecessors. As the first step to reform,
Siéyès himself was elected to a Directorship then falling vacant. Barras
attached himself to Siéyès; the three remaining Directors, who were
Jacobins and popular in Paris, were forced to surrender their seats. Siéyès
now only needed a soldier to carry out his plans. His first thought had
turned on Joubert, but Joubert was killed at Novi. Moreau scrupled to raise
his hand against the law; Bernadotte, a general distinguished both in war
and in administration, declined to play a secondary part. Nor in fact was
the support of Siéyès indispensable to any popular and ambitious soldier
who was prepared to attack the Government. Siéyès and his friends offered
the alliance of a party weighty in character and antecedents; but there
were other well-known names and powerful interests at the command of an
enterprising leader, and all France awaited the downfall of a Government
whose action had resulted only in disorder at home and defeat abroad.

[Bonaparte returns from Egypt, Oct., 1799.]

Such was the political situation when, in the summer of 1799, Bonaparte,
baffled in an attack upon the Syrian fortress of St. Jean d'Acre, returned
to Egypt, and received the first tidings from Europe which had reached him
since the outbreak of the war. He saw that his opportunity had arrived. He
determined to leave his army, whose ultimate failure was inevitable, and to
offer to France in his own person that sovereignty of genius and strength
for which the whole nation was longing. On the 7th of October a despatch
from Bonaparte was read in the Council of Five Hundred, announcing a
victory over the Turks at Aboukir. It brought the first news that had been
received for many months from the army of Egypt; it excited an outburst of
joyous enthusiasm for the general and the army whom a hated Government was
believed to have sent into exile; it recalled that succession of victories
which had been unchecked by a single defeat, and that Peace which had given
France a dominion wider than any that her Kings had won. While every
thought was turned upon Bonaparte, the French nation suddenly heard that
Bonaparte himself had landed on the coast of Provence. "I was sitting that
day," says Béranger in his autobiography, "in our reading-room with thirty
or forty other persons. Suddenly the news was brought in that Bonaparte had
returned from Egypt. At the words, every man in the room started to his
feet and burst into one long shout of joy." The emotion portrayed by
Béranger was that of the whole of France. Almost everything that now
darkens the early fame of Bonaparte was then unknown. His falsities, his
cold, unpitying heart were familiar only to accomplices and distant
sufferers; even his most flagrant wrongs, such as the destruction of
Venice, were excused by a political necessity, or disguised as acts of
righteous chastisement. The hopes, the imagination of France saw in
Bonaparte the young, unsullied, irresistible hero of the Republic. His fame
had risen throughout a crisis which had destroyed all confidence in others.
The stale placemen of the factions sank into insignificance by his side;
even sincere Republicans, who feared the rule of a soldier, confessed that
it is not always given to a nation to choose the mode of its own
deliverance. From the moment that Bonaparte landed at Fréjus, he was master
of France.

[Conspiracy of Siéyès and Bonaparte.]

Siéyès saw that Bonaparte, and no one else, was the man through whom he
could overthrow the existing Constitution. [82] So little sympathy existed,
however, between Siéyès and the soldier to whom he now offered his support,
that Bonaparte only accepted Siéyès' project after satisfying himself that
neither Barras nor Bernadotte would help him to supreme power. Once
convinced of this, Bonaparte closed with Siéyès' offers. It was agreed that
Siéyès and his friend Ducos should resign their Directorships, and that the
three remaining Directors should be driven from office. The Assemblies, or
any part of them favourable to the plot, were to appoint a Triumvirate
composed of Bonaparte, Siéyès, and Ducos, for the purpose of drawing up a
new Constitution. In the new Constitution it was understood, though without
any definite arrangement, that Bonaparte and Siéyès were to be the leading
figures. The Council of Ancients was in great part in league with the
conspirators: the only obstacle likely to hinder the success of the plot
was a rising of the Parisian populace. As a precaution against attack, it
was determined to transfer the meeting of the Councils to St. Cloud.
Bonaparte had secured the support of almost all the generals and troops in
Paris. His brother Lucien, now President of the Council of Five Hundred,
hoped to paralyse the action of his own Assembly, in which the conspirators
were in the minority.

[Coup d'état, 18 Brumaire (Nov. 9), 1799.]

Early on the morning of the 9th of November (18 Brumaire), a crowd of
generals and officers met before Bonaparte's house. At the same moment a
portion of the Council of Ancients assembled, and passed a decree which
adjourned the session to St. Cloud, and conferred on Bonaparte the command
over all the troops in Paris. The decree was carried to Bonaparte's house
and read to the military throng, who acknowledged it by brandishing their
swords. Bonaparte then ordered the troops to their posts, received the
resignation of Barras, and arrested the two remaining Directors in the
Luxembourg. During the night there was great agitation in Paris. The arrest
of the two Directors and the display of military force revealed the true
nature of the conspiracy, and excited men to resistance who had hitherto
seen no great cause for alarm. The Councils met at St. Cloud at two on the
next day. The Ancients were ready for what was coming; the Five Hundred
refused to listen to Bonaparte's accomplices, and took the oath of fidelity
to the Constitution. Bonaparte himself entered the Council of Ancients, and
in violent, confused language declared that he had come to save the
Republic from unseen dangers. He then left the Assembly, and entered the
Chamber of the Five Hundred, escorted by armed grenadiers. A roar of
indignation greeted the appearance of the bayonets. The members rushed in a
mass upon Bonaparte, and drove him out of the hall. His brother now left
the President's chair and joined the soldiers outside, whom he harangued in
the character of President of the Assembly. The soldiers, hitherto
wavering, were assured by Lucien's civil authority and his treacherous
eloquence. The drums beat; the word of command was given; and the last free
representatives of France struggled through doorways and windows before the
levelled and advancing bayonets.

[Siéyès' plan of Constitution.]

The Constitution which Siéyès hoped now to impose upon France had been
elaborated by its author at the close of the Reign of Terror. Designed at
that epoch, it bore the trace of all those apprehensions which gave shape
to the Constitution of 1795. The statutory outrages of 1793, the Royalist
reaction shown in the events of Vendémiaire, were the perils from which
both Siéyès and the legislators of 1795 endeavoured to guard the future of
France. It had become clear that a popular election might at any moment
return a royalist majority to the Assembly: the Constitution of 1795
averted this danger by prolonging the power of the Conventionalists; Siéyès
overcame it by extinguishing popular election altogether. He gave to the
nation no right but that of selecting half a million persons who should be
eligible to offices in the Communes, and who should themselves elect a
smaller body of fifty thousand, eligible to offices in the Departments. The
fifty thousand were in their turn to choose five thousand, who should be
eligible to places in the Government and the Legislature. The actual
appointments were to be made, however, not by the electors, but by the
Executive. With the irrational multitude thus deprived of the power to
bring back its old oppressors, priests, royalists, and nobles might safely
do their worst. By way of still further precaution, Siéyès proposed that
every Frenchman who had been elected to the Legislature since 1789 should
be inscribed for ten years among the privileged five thousand.

Such were the safeguards provided against a Bourbonist reaction. To guard
against a recurrence of those evils which France had suffered from the
precipitate votes of a single Assembly, Siéyès broke up the legislature
into as many chambers as there are stages in the passing of a law. The
first chamber, or Council of State, was to give shape to measures suggested
by the Executive; a second chamber, known as the Tribunate, was to discuss
the measures so framed, and ascertain the objections to which they were
liable; the third chamber, known as the Legislative Body, was to decide in
silence for or against the measures, after hearing an argument between
representatives of the Council and of the Tribunate. As a last impregnable
bulwark against Jacobins and Bourbonists alike, Siéyès created a Senate
whose members should hold office for life, and be empowered to annul every
law in which the Chambers might infringe upon the Constitution.

It only remained to invent an Executive. In the other parts of his
Constitution, Siéyès had borrowed from Rome, from Greece, and from Venice;
in his Executive he improved upon the political theories of Great Britain.
He proposed that the Government should consist of two Consuls and a Great
Elector; the Elector, like an English king, appointing and dismissing the
Consuls, but taking no active part in the administration himself. The
Consuls were to be respectively restricted to the affairs of peace and of
war. Grotesque under every aspect, the Constitution of Siéyès was really
calculated to effect in all points but one the end which he had in view.
His object was to terminate the convulsions of France by depriving every
element in the State of the power to create sudden change. The members of
his body politic, a Council that could only draft, a Tribunate that could
only discuss, a Legislature that could only vote, Yes or No, were impotent
for mischief; and the nation itself ceased to have a political existence as
soon as it had selected its half-million notables.

[Siéyès and Bonaparte.]

So far, nothing could have better suited the views of Bonaparte; and up to
this point Bonaparte quietly accepted Siéyès' plan. But the general had his
own scheme for what was to follow. Siéyès might apportion the act of
deliberation among debating societies and dumb juries to the full extent of
his own ingenuity; but the moment that he applied his disintegrating method
to the Executive, Bonaparte swept away the flimsy reasoner, and set in the
midst of his edifice of shadows the reality of an absolute personal rule.
The phantom Elector, and the Consuls who were to be the Elector's
tenants-at-will, corresponded very little to the power which France desired
to see at its head. "Was there ever anything so ridiculous?" cried
Bonaparte. "What man of spirit could accept such a post?" It was in vain
that Siéyès had so nicely set the balance. His theories gave to France only
the pageants which disguised the extinction of the nation beneath a single
will: the frame of executive government which the country received in 1799
was that which Bonaparte deduced from the conception of an absolute central
power. The First Consul summed up all executive authority in his own
person. By his side there were set two colleagues whose only function was
to advise. A Council of State placed the highest skill and experience in
France at the disposal of the chief magistrate, without infringing upon his
sovereignty. All offices, both in the Ministries of State and in the
provinces, were filled by the nominees of the First Consul. No law could be
proposed but at his desire.

[Contrast of the Institutions of 1791 and 1799.]

[Centralisation of 1799.]

The institutions given to France by the National Assembly of 1789 and those
given to it in the Consulate exhibited a direct contrast seldom found
outside the region of abstract terms. Local customs, survivals of earlier
law, such as soften the difference between England and the various
democracies of the United States, had no place in the sharp-cut types in
which the political order of France was recast in 1791 and 1799. The
Constituent Assembly had cleared the field before it began to reconstruct.
Its reconstruction was based upon the Rights of Man, identified with the
principle of local self-government by popular election. It deduced a system
of communal administration so completely independent that France was
described by foreign critics as partitioned into 40,000 republics; and the
criticism was justified when, in 1793, it was found necessary to create a
new central Government, and to send commissioners from the capital into the
provinces. In the Constitution of 1791, judges, bishops, officers of the
National Guard, were all alike subjected to popular election; the Minister
of War could scarcely move a regiment from one village to another without
the leave of the mayor of the commune. In the Constitution of 1799 all
authority was derived from the head of the State. A system of
centralisation came into force with which France under her kings had
nothing to compare. All that had once served as a check upon monarchical
power, the legal Parliaments, the Provincial Estates of Brittany and
Languedoc, the rights of lay and ecclesiastical corporations, had vanished
away. In the place of the motley of privileges that had tempered the
Bourbon monarchy, in the place of the popular Assemblies of the Revolution,
there sprang up a series of magistracies as regular and as absolute as the
orders of military rank. [83] Where, under the Constitution of 1791, a body
of local representatives had met to conduct the business of the Department,
there was now a Préfet, appointed by the First Consul, absolute, like the
First Consul himself, and assisted only by the advice of a nominated
council, which met for one fortnight in the year. In subordination to the
Préfet, an officer and similar council transacted the local business of the
Arrondissement. Even the 40,000 Maires with their communal councils were
all appointed directly or indirectly by the Chief of the State. There
existed in France no authority that could repair a village bridge, or light
the streets of a town, but such as owed its appointment to the central
Government. Nor was the power of the First Consul limited to the
administration. With the exception of the lowest and the highest members of
the judicature, he nominated all judges, and transferred them at his
pleasure to inferior or superior posts.

Such was the system which, based to a great extent upon the preferences of
the French people, fixed even more deeply in the national character the
willingness to depend upon an omnipresent, all-directing power. Through its
rational order, its regularity, its command of the highest science and
experience, this system of government could not fail to confer great and
rapid benefits upon the country. It has usually been viewed by the French
themselves as one of the finest creations of political wisdom. In
comparison with the self-government which then and long afterwards existed
in England, the centralisation of France had all the superiority of
progress and intelligence over torpor and self-contradiction. Yet a heavy,
an incalculable price is paid by every nation which for the sake of
administrative efficiency abandons its local liberties, and all that is
bound up with their enjoyment. No practice in the exercise of public right
armed a later generation of Frenchmen against the audacity of a common
usurper: no immortality of youth secured the institutions framed by
Napoleon against the weakness and corruption which at some period undermine
all despotisms. The historian who has exhausted every term of praise upon
the political system of the Consulate lived to declare, as Chief of the
State himself, that the first need of France was the decentralisation of
power. [84]

[State policy of Bonaparte.]

After ten years of disquiet, it was impossible that any Government could be
more welcome to the French nation than one which proclaimed itself the
representative, not of party or of opinion, but of France itself. No
section of the nation had won a triumph in the establishment of the
Consulate; no section had suffered a defeat. In his own elevation Bonaparte
announced the close of civil conflict. A Government had arisen which
summoned all to its service which would employ all, reward all, reconcile
all. The earliest measures of the First Consul exhibited the policy of
reconciliation by which he hoped to rally the whole of France to his side.
The law of hostages, under which hundreds of families were confined in
retaliation for local Royalist disturbances, was repealed, and Bonaparte
himself went to announce their liberty to the prisoners in the Temple.
Great numbers of names were struck off the list of the emigrants, and the
road to pardon was subsequently opened to all who had not actually served
against their country. In the selection of his officers of State, Bonaparte
showed the same desire to win men of all parties. Cambacérès, a regicide,
was made Second Consul; Lebrun, an old official of Louis XVI., became his
colleague. In the Ministries, in the Senate, and in the Council of State
the nation saw men of proved ability chosen from all callings in life and
from all political ranks. No Government of France had counted among its
members so many names eminent for capacity and experience. One quality
alone was indispensable, a readiness to serve and to obey. In that
intellectual greatness which made the combination of all the forces of
France a familiar thought in Bonaparte's mind, there was none of the moral
generosity which could pardon opposition to himself, or tolerate energy
acting under other auspices than his own. He desired to see authority in
the best hands; he sought talent and promoted it, but on the understanding
that it took its direction from himself. Outside this limit ability was his
enemy, not his friend; and what could not be caressed or promoted was
treated with tyrannical injustice. While Bonaparte boasted of the career
that he had thrown open to talent, he suppressed the whole of the
independent journalism of Paris, and banished Mme. de Stael, whose guests
continued to converse, when they might not write, about liberty. Equally
partial, equally calculated, was Bonaparte's indulgence towards the ancient
enemies of the Revolution, the Royalists and the priests. He felt nothing
of the old hatred of Paris towards the Vendean noble and the superstitious
Breton; he offered his friendship to the stubborn Breton race, whose
loyalty and piety he appreciated as good qualities in subjects; but failing
their submission, he instructed his generals in the west of France to burn
down their villages, and to set a price upon the heads of their chiefs.
Justice, tolerance, good faith, were things which had no being for
Bonaparte outside the circle of his instruments and allies.

[France ceases to excite democracy abroad, but promotes equality under
monarchical systems.]

[Effect of Bonaparte's autocracy outside France.]

In the foreign relations of France it was not possible for the most
unscrupulous will to carry aggression farther than it had been already
carried; yet the elevation of Bonaparte deeply affected the fortunes of all
those States whose lot depended upon France. It was not only that a mind
accustomed to regard all human things as objects for its own disposal now
directed an irresistible military force, but from the day when France
submitted to Bonaparte, the political changes accompanying the advance of
the French armies took a different character. Belgium and Holland, the
Rhine Provinces, the Cisalpine, the Roman, and the Parthenopean Republics,
had all received, under whatever circumstances of wrong, at least the forms
of popular sovereignty. The reality of power may have belonged to French
generals and commissioners; but, however insincerely uttered, the call to
freedom excited hopes and aspirations which were not insincere themselves.
The Italian festivals of emancipation, the trees of liberty, the rhetoric
of patriotic assemblies, had betrayed little enough of the instinct for
self-government; but they marked a separation from the past; and the period
between the years 1796 and 1799 was in fact the birth-time of those hopes
which have since been realised in the freedom and the unity of Italy. So
long as France had her own tumultuous assemblies, her elections in the
village and in the county-town, it was impossible for her to form republics
beyond the Alps without introducing at least some germ of republican
organisation and spirit. But when all power was concentrated in a single
man, when the spoken and the written word became an offence against the
State, when the commotion of the old municipalities was succeeded by the
silence and the discipline of a body of clerks working round their chief,
then the advance of French influence ceased to mean the support of popular
forces against the Governments. The form which Bonaparte had given to
France was the form which he intended for the clients of France. Hence in
those communities which directly received the impress of the Consulate, as
in Bavaria and the minor German States, authority, instead of being
overthrown, was greatly strengthened. Bonaparte carried beyond the Rhine
that portion of the spirit of the Revolution which he accepted at home, the
suppression of privilege, the extinction of feudal rights, the reduction of
all ranks to equality before the law, and the admission of all to the
public service. But this levelling of the social order in the client-states
of France, and the establishment of system and unity in the place of
obsolete privilege, cleared the way not for the supremacy of the people,
but for the supremacy of the Crown. The power which was taken away from
corporations, from knights, and from ecclesiastics, was given, not to a
popular Representative, but to Cabinet Ministers and officials ranged after
the model of the official hierarchy of France. What the French had in the
first epoch of their Revolution endeavoured to impart to Europe--the spirit
of liberty and self-government--they had now renounced themselves. The
belief in popular right, which made the difference between the changes of
1789 and those attempted by the Emperor Joseph, sank in the storms of the
Revolution.

[Bonaparte legislates in the spirit of the reforming monarchs of the 18th
century.]

Yet the statesmanship of Bonaparte, if it repelled the liberal and
disinterested sentiment of 1789, was no mere cunning of a Corsican soldier,
or exploit of mediæval genius born outside its age. Subject to the fullest
gratification of his own most despotic or most malignant impulse, Bonaparte
carried into his creations the ideas upon which the greatest European
innovators before the French Revolution had based their work. What
Frederick and Joseph had accomplished, or failed to accomplish, was
realised in Western Germany when its Sovereigns became the clients of the
First Consul. Bonaparte was no child of the French Revolution; he was the
last and the greatest of the autocratic legislators who worked in an unfree
age. Under his rule France lost what had seemed to be most its own; it most
powerfully advanced the forms of progress common to itself and the rest of
Europe. Bonaparte raised no population to liberty: in extinguishing
privilege and abolishing the legal distinctions of birth, in levelling all
personal and corporate authority beneath the single rule of the State, he
prepared the way for a rational freedom, when, at a later day, the
Government of the State should itself become the representative of the
nation's will.




CHAPTER V.


Overtures of Bonaparte to Austria and England--The War continues--Massena
besieged in Genoa--Moreau invades Southern Germany--Bonaparte crosses the
St. Bernard, and descends in the rear of the Austrians--Battle of
Marengo--Austrians retire behind the Mincio--Treaty between England and
Austria--Austria continues the War--Battle of Hohenlinden--Peace of
Lunéville--War between England and the Northern Maritime League--Battle of
Copenhagen--Murder of Paul--End of the Maritime War--English Army enters
Egypt--French defeated at Alexandria--They capitulate at Cairo and
Alexandria--Preliminaries of Peace between England and France signed at
London, followed by Peace of Amiens--Pitt's Irish Policy and his
retirement--Debates on the Peace--Aggressions of Bonaparte during the
Continental Peace--Holland, Italy, Switzerland--Settlement of Germany under
French and Russian influence--Suppression of Ecclesiastical States and Free
Cities--Its effects--Stein--France under the Consulate--The Civil Code--The
Concordat.


[Overtures of Bonaparte to Austria and to England, 1799.]

The establishment of the Consulate gave France peace from the strife of
parties. Peace from foreign warfare was not less desired by the nation; and
although the First Consul himself was restlessly planning the next
campaign, it belonged to his policy to represent himself as the mediator
between France and Europe. Discarding the usual diplomatic forms, Bonaparte
addressed letters in his own name to the Emperor Francis and to King George
III., deploring the miseries inflicted by war upon nations naturally
allied, and declaring his personal anxiety to enter upon negotiations for
peace. The reply of Austria which was courteously worded, produced an offer
on the part of Bonaparte to treat for peace upon the basis of the Treaty of
Campo Formio. Such a proposal was the best evidence of Bonaparte's real
intentions. Austria had re-conquered Lombardy, and driven the armies of the
Republic from the Adige to within a few miles of Nice. To propose a peace
which should merely restore the situation existing at the beginning of the
war was pure irony. The Austrian Government accordingly declared itself
unable to treat without the concurrence of its allies. The answer of
England to the overtures of the First Consul was rough and defiant. It
recounted the causes of war and distrust which precluded England from
negotiating with a revolutionary Government; and, though not insisting on
the restoration of the Bourbons as a condition of peace, it stated that no
guarantee for the sincerity and good behaviour of France would be so
acceptable to Great Britain as the recall of the ancient family. [85]

Few State papers have been distinguished by worse faults of judgment than
this English manifesto. It was intended to recommend the Bourbons to France
as a means of procuring peace: it enabled Bonaparte to represent England as
violently interfering with the rights of the French people, and the
Bourbons as seeking their restoration at the hand of the enemy of their
country. The answer made to Pitt's Government from Paris was such as one
high-spirited nation which had recently expelled its rulers might address
to another that had expelled its rulers a century before. France, it was
said, had as good a right to dismiss an incapable dynasty as Great Britain.
If Talleyrand's reply failed to convince King George that before restoring
the Bourbons he ought to surrender his own throne to the Stuarts, it
succeeded in transferring attention from the wrongs inflicted by France to
the pretensions advanced by England. That it affected the actual course of
events there is no reason to believe. The French Government was well
acquainted with the real grounds of war possessed by England, in spite of
the errors by which the British Cabinet weakened the statement of its
cause. What the mass of the French people now thought, or did not think,
had become a matter of very little importance.

[Situation of the Armies.]

[Moreau invades South Germany, April, 1800.]

The war continued. Winter and the early spring of 1800 passed in France
amidst vigorous but concealed preparations for the campaign which was to
drive the Austrians from Italy. In Piedmont the Austrians spent months in
inaction, which might have given them Genoa and completed the conquest of
Italy before Bonaparte's army could take the field. It was not until the
beginning of April that Melas, their general, assailed the French positions
on the Genoese Apennines; a fortnight more was spent in mountain warfare
before Massena, who now held the French command, found himself shut up in
Genoa and blockaded by land and sea. The army which Bonaparte was about to
lead into Italy lay in between Dijon and Geneva, awaiting the arrival of
the First Consul. On the Rhine, from Strasburg to Schaffhausen, a force of
100,000 men was ready to cross into Germany under the command of Moreau,
who was charged with the task of pushing the Austrians back from the Upper
Danube, and so rendering any attack through Switzerland upon the
communications of Bonaparte's Italian force impossible. Moreau's army was
the first to move. An Austrian force, not inferior to Moreau's own, lay
within the bend of the Rhine that covers Baden and Würtemberg. Moreau
crossed the Rhine at various points, and by a succession of ingenious
manoeuvres led his adversary, Kray, to occupy all the roads through the
Black Forest except those by which the northern divisions of the French
were actually passing. A series of engagements, conspicuous for the skill
of the French general and the courage of the defeated Austrians, gave
Moreau possession of the country south of the Danube as far as Ulm, where
Kray took refuge in his entrenched camp. Beyond this point Moreau's
instructions forbade him to advance. His task was fulfilled by the
severance of the Austrian army from the roads into Italy.

[Bonaparte crosses the Alps, May, 1800.]

Bonaparte's own army was now in motion. Its destination was still secret;
its very existence was doubted by the Austrian generals. On the 8th of May
the First Consul himself arrived at Geneva, and assumed the command. The
campaign upon which this army was now entering was designed by Bonaparte to
surpass everything that Europe had hitherto seen most striking in war. The
feats of Massena and Suvaroff in the Alps had filled his imagination with
mountain warfare. A victory over nature more imposing than theirs might, in
the present position of the Austrian forces in Lombardy, be made the
prelude to a victory in the field without a parallel in its effects upon
the enemy. Instead of relieving Genoa by an advance along the coast-road,
Bonaparte intended to march across the Alps and to descend in the rear of
the Austrians. A single defeat would then cut the Austrians off from their
communications with Mantua, and result either in the capitulation of their
army or in the evacuation of the whole of the country that they had won,
Bonaparte led his army into the mountains. The pass of the Great St.
Bernard, though not a carriage-road, offered little difficulty to a
commander supplied with every resource of engineering material and skill;
and by this road the army crossed the Alps. The cannons were taken from
their carriages and dragged up the mountain in hollowed trees; thousands of
mules transported the ammunition and supplies; workshops for repairs were
established on either slope of the mountain; and in the Monastery of St.
Bernard there were stores collected sufficient to feed the soldiers as they
reached the summit during six successive days (May 15-20). The passage of
the St. Bernard was a triumph of organisation, foresight, and good
management; as a military exploit it involved none of the danger, none of
the suffering, none of the hazard, which gave such interest to the campaign
of Massena and Suvaroff.

[Bonaparte cuts off the Austrian army from Eastern Lombardy.]

Bonaparte had rightly calculated upon the unreadiness of his enemy. The
advanced guard of the French army poured down the valley of the Dora-Baltea
upon the scanty Austrian detachments at Ivrea and Chiusella, before Melas,
who had in vain been warned of the departure of the French from Geneva,
arrived with a few thousand men at Turin to dispute the entrance into
Italy. Melas himself, on the opening of the campaign, had followed a French
division to Nice, leaving General Ott in charge of the army investing
Genoa. On reaching Turin he discovered the full extent of his peril, and
sent orders to Ott to raise the siege of Genoa and to join him with every
regiment that he could collect. Ott, however, was unwilling to abandon the
prey at this moment falling into his grasp. He remained stationary till the
5th of June, when Massena, reduced to the most cruel extremities by famine,
was forced to surrender Genoa to the besiegers. But his obstinate endurance
had the full effect of a battle won. Ott's delay rendered Melas powerless
to hinder the movements of Bonaparte, when, instead of marching upon Genoa,
as both French and Austrians expected him to do, he turned eastward, and
thrust his army between the Austrians and their own fortresses. Bonaparte
himself entered Milan (June 2); Lannes and Murat were sent to seize the
bridges over the Po and the Adda. The Austrian detachment guarding Piacenza
was overpowered; the communications of Melas with the country north of the
Powere completely severed. Nothing remained for the Austrian commander but
to break through the French or to make his escape to Genoa.

[Battle of Marengo, June 14, 1800.]

[Conditions of Armistice.]

The French centre was now at Stradella, half-way between Piacenza and
Alessandria. Melas was at length joined by Ott at Alessandria, but so
scattered were the Austrian forces, that out of 80,000 men Melas had not
more than 33,000 at his command. Bonaparte's forces were equal in number;
his only fear was that Melas might use his last line of retreat, and escape
to Genoa without an engagement. The Austrian general, however, who had
shared with Suvaroff the triumph over Joubert at Novi, resolved to stake
everything upon a pitched battle. He awaited Bonaparte's approach at
Alessandria. On the 12th of June Bonaparte advanced westward from
Stradella. His anxiety lest Melas might be escaping from his hands
increased with every hour of the march that brought him no tidings of the
enemy; and on the 13th, when his advanced guard had come almost up to the
walls of Alessandria without seeing an enemy, he could bear the suspense no
longer, and ordered Desaix to march southward towards Novi and hold the
road to Genoa. Desaix led off his division. Early the next morning the
whole army of Melas issued from Alessandria, and threw itself upon the
weakened line of the French at Marengo. The attack carried everything
before it: at the end of seven hours' fighting, Melas, exhausted by his
personal exertions, returned into Alessandria, and sent out tidings of a
complete victory. It was at this moment that Desaix, who had turned at the
sound of the cannon, appeared on the field, and declared that, although one
battle had been lost, another might be won. A sudden cavalry-charge struck
panic into the Austrians, who believed the battle ended and the foe
overthrown. Whole brigades threw down their arms and fled; and ere the day
closed a mass of fugitives, cavalry and infantry, thronging over the
marshes of the Bormida, was all that remained of the victorious Austrian
centre. The suddenness of the disaster, the desperate position of the army,
cut off from its communications, overthrew the mind of Melas, and he agreed
to an armistice more fatal than an unconditional surrender. The Austrians
retired behind the Mincio, and abandoned to the French every fortress in
Northern Italy that lay west of that river. A single battle had produced
the result of a campaign of victories and sieges. Marengo was the most
brilliant in conception of all Bonaparte's triumphs. If in its execution
the genius of the great commander had for a moment failed him, no mention
of the long hours of peril and confusion was allowed to obscure the
splendour of Bonaparte's victory. Every document was altered or suppressed
which contained a report of the real facts of the battle. The descriptions
given to the French nation claimed only new homage to the First Consul's
invincible genius and power. [86]

[Austria continues the war.]

At Vienna the military situation was viewed more calmly than in Melas'
camp. The conditions of the armistice were generally condemned, and any
sudden change in the policy of Austria was prevented by a treaty with
England, binding Austria, in return for British subsidies, and for a secret
promise of part of Piedmont, to make no separate peace with France before
the end of February, 1801. This treaty was signed a few hours before the
arrival of the news of Marengo. It was the work of Thugut, who still
maintained his influence over the Emperor, in spite of growing unpopularity
and almost universal opposition. Public opinion, however, forced the
Emperor at least to take steps for ascertaining the French terms of peace.
An envoy was sent to Paris; and, as there could be no peace without the
consent of England, conferences were held with the object of establishing a
naval armistice between England and France. England, however, refused the
concessions demanded by the First Consul; and the negotiations were broken
off in September. But this interval of three months had weakened the
authority of the Minister and stimulated the intrigues which at every great
crisis paralysed the action of Austria. At length, while Thugut was
receiving the subsidies of Great Britain and arranging for the most
vigorous prosecution of the war, the Emperor, concealing the transaction
from his Minister, purchased a new armistice by the surrender of the
fortresses of Ulm and Ingolstadt to Moreau's army. [87]

[Battle of Hohenlinden, Dec. 3, 1800.]

A letter written by Thugut after a council held on the 25th of September
gives some indication of the stormy scene which then passed in the
Emperor's presence. Thugut tendered his resignation, which was accepted;
and Lehrbach, the author of the new armistice, was placed in office. But
the reproaches of the British ambassador forced the weak Emperor to rescind
this appointment on the day after it had been published to the world. There
was no one in Vienna capable of filling the vacant post; and after a short
interval the old Minister resumed the duties of his office, without,
however, openly resuming the title. The remainder of the armistice was
employed in strengthening the force opposed to Moreau, who now received
orders to advance upon Vienna. The Archduke John, a royal strategist of
eighteen, was furnished with a plan for surrounding the French army and
cutting it off from its communications. Moreau lay upon the Isar; the
Austrians held the line of the Inn. On the termination of the armistice the
Austrians advanced and made some devious marches in pursuance of the
Archduke's enterprise, until a general confusion, attributed to the
weather, caused them to abandon their manoeuvres and move straight against
the enemy. On the 3rd of December the Austrians plunged into the
snow-blocked roads of the Forest of Hohenlinden, believing that they had
nothing near them but the rear-guard of a retiring French division. Moreau
waited until they had reached the heart of the forest, and then fell upon
them with his whole force in front, in flank, and in the rear. The defeat
of the Austrians was overwhelming. What remained of the war was rather a
chase than a struggle. Moreau successively crossed the Inn, the Salza, and
the Traun; and on December 25th the Emperor, seeing that no effort of Pitt
could keep Moreau out of Vienna, accepted an armistice at Steyer, and
agreed to treat for peace without reference to Great Britain.

[Peace of Lunéville, Feb. 9, 1801.]

Defeats on the Mincio, announced during the following days, increased the
necessity for peace. Thugut was finally removed from power. Some resistance
was offered to the conditions proposed by Bonaparte, but these were
directed more to the establishment of French influence in Germany than to
the humiliation of the House of Hapsburg. Little was taken from Austria but
what she had surrendered at Campo Formio. It was not by the cession of
Italian or Slavonic provinces that the Government of Vienna paid for
Marengo and Hohenlinden, but at the cost of that divided German race whose
misfortune it was to have for its head a sovereign whose interests in the
Empire and in Germany were among the least of all his interests. The Peace
of Lunéville, [88] concluded between France and the Emperor on the 9th of
February, 1801, without even a reference to the Diet of the Empire, placed
the minor States of Germany at the mercy of the French Republic. It left to
the House of Hapsburg the Venetian territory which it had gained in 1797;
it required no reduction of the Hapsburg influence in Italy beyond the
abdication of the Grand Duke of Tuscany; but it ceded to France, without
the disguises of 1797, the German provinces west of the Rhine, and it
formally bound the Empire to compensate the dispossessed lay Sovereigns in
such a manner as should be approved by France. The French Republic was thus
made arbiter, as a matter of right, in the rearrangement of the maimed and
shattered Empire. Even the Grand Duke of Tuscany, like his predecessor in
ejection, the Duke of Modena, was to receive some portion of the German
race for his subjects, in compensation for the Italians taken from him. To
such a pass had political disunion brought a nation which at that time
could show the greatest names in Europe in letters, in science, and in art.

[Peace with Naples.]

[Russia turns against England.]

[Northern Maritime League, Dec., 1800.]

Austria having succumbed, the Court of Naples, which had been the first of
the Allies to declare war, was left at the mercy of Bonaparte. Its
cruelties and tyranny called for severe punishment; but the intercession of
the Czar kept the Bourbons upon the throne, and Naples received peace upon
no harder condition than the exclusion of English vessels from its ports.
England was now left alone in its struggle with the French Republic. Nor
was it any longer to be a struggle only against France and its
dependencies. The rigour with which the English Government had used its
superiority at sea, combined with the folly which it had shown in the
Anglo-Russian attack upon Holland, raised against it a Maritime League
under the leadership of a Power which England had offended as a neutral and
exasperated as an ally. Since the pitiful Dutch campaign, the Czar had
transferred to Great Britain the hatred which he had hitherto borne to
France. The occasion was skilfully used by Bonaparte, to whom, as a
soldier, the Czar felt less repugnance than to the Government of advocates
and contractors which he had attacked in 1799. The First Consul restored
without ransom several thousands of Russian prisoners, for whom the
Austrians and the English had refused to give up Frenchmen in exchange, and
followed up this advance by proposing that the guardianship of Malta, which
was now blockaded by the English, should be given to the Czar. Paul had
caused himself to be made Grand Master of the Maltese Order of St. John of
Jerusalem. His vanity was touched by Bonaparte's proposal, and a friendly
relation was established between the French and Russian Governments.
England, on the other hand, refused to place Malta under Russian
guardianship, either before or after its surrender. This completed the
breach between the Courts of London and St. Petersburg. The Czar seized all
the English vessels in his ports and imprisoned their crews (Sept. 9). A
difference of long standing existed between England and the Northern
Maritime Powers, which was capable at any moment of being made a cause of
war. The rights exercised over neutral vessels by English ships in time of
hostilities, though good in international law, were so oppressive that, at
the time of the American rebellion, the Northern Powers had formed a
league, known as the Armed Neutrality, for the purpose of resisting by
force the interference of the English with neutral merchantmen upon the
high seas. Since the outbreak of war with France, English vessels had again
pushed the rights of belligerents to extremes. The Armed Neutrality of 1780
was accordingly revived under the auspices of the Czar. The League was
signed on the 16th of December, 1800, by Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. Some
days later Prussia gave in its adhesion. [89]

[Points at issue.]

The points at issue between Great Britain and the Neutrals were such as
arise between a great naval Power intent upon ruining its adversary and
that larger part of the world which remains at peace and desires to carry
on its trade with as little obstruction as possible. It was admitted on all
sides that a belligerent may search a neutral vessel in order to ascertain
that it is not conveying contraband of war, and that a neutral vessel,
attempting to enter a blockaded port, renders itself liable to forfeiture;
but beyond these two points everything was in dispute. A Danish ship
conveys a cargo of wine from a Bordeaux merchant to his agent in New York.
Is the wine liable to be seized in the mid-Atlantic by an English cruiser,
to the destruction of the Danish carrying-trade, or is the Danish flag to
protect French property from a Power whose naval superiority makes capture
upon the high seas its principal means of offence? England announces that a
French port is in a state of blockade. Is a Swedish vessel, stopped while
making for the port in question, to be considered a lawful prize, when, if
it had reached the port, it would as a matter of fact have found no real
blockade in existence? A Russian cargo of hemp, pitch, and timber is
intercepted by an English vessel on its way to an open port in France. Is
the staple produce of the Russian Empire to lose its market as contraband
of war? Or is an English man-of-war to allow material to pass into France,
without which the repair of French vessels of war would be impossible?

[War between England and the Northern Maritime Powers, Jan., 1801.]

These were the questions raised as often as a firm of shipowners in a
neutral country saw their vessel come back into port cleared of its cargo,
or heard that it was lying in the Thames awaiting the judgment of the
Admiralty Court. Great Britain claimed the right to seize all French
property, in whatever vessel it might be sailing, and to confiscate, as
contraband of war, not only muskets, gunpowder, and cannon, but wheat, on
which the provisioning of armies depended, and hemp, pitch, iron, and
timber, out of which the navies of her adversary were formed. The Neutrals,
on the other hand, demanded that a neutral flag should give safe passage to
all goods on board, not being contraband of war; that the presence of a
vessel of State as convoy should exempt merchantmen from search; that no
port should be considered in a state of blockade unless a competent
blockading force was actually in front of it; and that contraband of war
should include no other stores than those directly available for battle.
Considerations of reason and equity may be urged in support of every
possible theory of the rights of belligerents and neutrals; but the theory
of every nation has, as a matter of fact, been that which at the time
accorded with its own interests. When a long era of peace had familiarised
Great Britain with the idea that in the future struggles of Europe it was
more likely to be a spectator than a belligerent, Great Britain accepted
the Neutrals' theory of international law at the Congress of Paris in 1856;
but in 1801, when the lot of England seemed to be eternal warfare, any
limitation of the rights of a belligerent appeared to every English jurist
to contradict the first principles of reason. Better to add a general
maritime war to the existing difficulties of the country than to abandon
the exercise of its naval superiority in crippling the commerce of an
adversary. The Declaration of armed Neutrality, announcing the intention of
the Allied Powers to resist the seizure of French goods on board their own
merchantmen, was treated in this country as a declaration of war. The
Government laid an embargo upon all vessels of the allied neutrals lying in
English ports (Jan. 14th, 1801), and issued a swarm of privateers against
the trading ships making for the Baltic. Negotiations failed to lower the
demands of either side, and England prepared to deal with the navies of
Russia, Denmark, Sweden, and Prussia.

[Battle of Copenhagen, April 2, 1801.]

At the moment, the concentrated naval strength of England made it more than
a match for its adversaries. A fleet of seventeen ships of the line sailed
from Yarmouth on the 12th of March, under the command of Parker and Nelson,
with orders to coerce the Danes and to prevent the junction of the
confederate navies. The fleet reached the Sound. The Swedish batteries
commanding the Sound failed to open fire. Nelson kept to the eastern side
of the channel, and brought his ships safely past the storm of shot poured
upon them from the Danish guns at Elsinore. He appeared before Copenhagen
at mid-day on the 30th of March. Preparations for resistance were made by
the Danes with extraordinary spirit and resolution. The whole population of
Copenhagen volunteered for service on the ships, the forts, and the
floating batteries. Two days were spent by the English in exploring the
shallows of the channel; on the morning of the 2nd of April Nelson led his
ships into action in front of the harbour. Three ran aground; the Danish
fire from land and sea was so violent that after some hours Admiral Parker,
who watched the engagement from the mid-channel, gave the signal of recall.
Nelson laughed at the signal, and continued the battle. In another hour the
six Danish men-of-war and the whole of the floating batteries were disabled
or sunk. The English themselves had suffered most severely from a
resistance more skilful and more determined than anything that they had
experienced from the French, and Nelson gladly offered a truce as soon as
his own victory was assured. The truce was followed by negotiation, and the
negotiation by an armistice for fourteen weeks, a term which Nelson
considered sufficient to enable him to visit and to overthrow the navies of
Sweden and Russia.

[Murder of Paul, March 23.]

[Peace between England and the Northern Powers.]

But an event had already occurred more momentous in its bearing upon the
Northern Confederacy than the battle of Copenhagen itself. On the night of
the 23rd of March the Czar of Russia was assassinated in his palace. Paul's
tyrannical violence, and his caprice verging upon insanity, had exhausted
the patience of a court acquainted with no mode of remonstrance but
homicide. Blood-stained hands brought to the Grand Duke Alexander the crown
which he had consented to receive after a pacific abdication. Alexander
immediately reversed the policy of his father, and sent friendly
communications both to the Government at London and to the commander of the
British fleet in the Baltic. The maintenance of commerce with England was
in fact more important to Russia than the protection of its carrying trade.
Nelson's attack was averted. A compromise was made between the two
Governments, which saved Russia's interests, without depriving England of
its chief rights against France. The principles of the Armed Neutrality
were abandoned by the Government of St. Petersburg in so far as they
related to the protection of an enemy's goods by the neutral flag. Great
Britain continued to seize French merchandise on board whatever craft it
might be found; but it was stipulated that the presence of a ship of war
should exempt neutral vessels from search by privateers, and that no port
should be considered as in a state of blockade unless a reasonable
blockading force was actually in front of it. The articles condemned as
contraband were so limited as not to include the flax, hemp, and timber, on
whose export the commerce of Russia depended. With these concessions the
Czar was easily brought to declare Russia again neutral. The minor Powers
of the Baltic followed the example of St. Petersburg; and the naval
confederacy which had threatened to turn the balance in the conflict
between England and the French Republic left its only trace in the
undeserved suffering of Denmark.

[Affairs in Egypt.]

Eight years of warfare had left France unassailable in Western Europe, and
England in command of every sea. No Continental armies could any longer be
raised by British subsidies: the navies of the Baltic, with which Bonaparte
had hoped to meet England on the seas, lay at peace in their ports. Egypt
was now the only arena remaining where French and English combatants could
meet, and the dissolution of the Northern Confederacy had determined the
fate of Egypt by leaving England in undisputed command of the approach to
Egypt by sea. The French army, vainly expecting reinforcements, and
attacked by the Turks from the east, was caught in a trap. Soon after the
departure of Bonaparte from Alexandria, his successor, General Kleber, had
addressed a report to the Directory, describing the miserable condition of
the force which Bonaparte had chosen to abandon. The report was intercepted
by the English, and the Government immediately determined to accept no
capitulation which did not surrender the whole of the French army as
prisoners of war. An order to this effect was sent to the Mediterranean.
Before, however, the order reached Sir Sidney Smith, the English admiral
co-operating with the Turks, an agreement had been already signed by him at
El Arish, granting Kleber's army a free return to France (Feb. 24, 1800).
After Kleber, in fulfilment of the conditions of the treaty, had withdrawn
his troops from certain positions, Sir Sidney Smith found himself compelled
to inform the French General that in the negotiations of El Arish he had
exceeded his powers, and that the British Government insisted upon the
surrender of the French forces. Kleber replied by instantly giving battle
to the Turks at Heliopolis, and putting to the rout an army six times as
numerous as his own. The position of the French seemed to be growing
stronger in Egypt, and the prospect of a Turkish re-conquest more doubtful,
when the dagger of a fanatic robbed the French of their able chief, and
transferred the command to General Menou, one of the very few French
officers of marked incapacity who held command at any time during the war.
The British Government, as soon as it learnt what had taken place between
Kleber and Sir Sidney Smith, declared itself willing to be bound by the
convention of El Arish. The offer was, however, rejected by the French. It
was clear that the Turks could never end the war by themselves; and the
British Ministry at last came to understand that Egypt must be re-conquered
by English arms.

[English army lands in Egypt, March, 1801.]

[French capitulate at Cairo, June 27, 1801.]

[And at Alexandria, Aug. 30.]

On the 8th of March, 1801, a corps of 17,000 men, led by Sir Ralph
Abercromby, landed at Aboukir Bay. According to the plan of the British
Government, Abercromby's attack was to be supported by a Turkish corps from
Syria, and by an Anglo-Indian division brought from Ceylon to Kosseir, on
the Red Sea. The Turks and the Indian troops were, however, behind their
time, and Abercromby opened the campaign alone. Menou had still 27,000
troops at his disposal. Had he moved up with the whole of his army from
Cairo, he might have destroyed the English immediately after their landing.
Instead of doing so, he allowed weak isolated detachments of the French to
sink before superior numbers. The English had already gained confidence of
victory when Menou advanced in some force in order to give battle in front
of Alexandria. The decisive engagement took place on the 21st of March. The
French were completely defeated. Menou, however, still refused to
concentrate his forces; and in the course of a few weeks 13,000 French
troops which had been left behind at Cairo were cut off from communication
with the rest of the army. A series of attempts made by Admiral Ganteaume
to land reinforcements from France ended fruitlessly. Towards the end of
June the arrival of a Turkish force enabled the English to surround the
French in Cairo. The circuit of the works was too large to be successfully
defended; on the other hand, the English were without the heavy artillery
necessary for a siege. Under these circumstances the terms which had
originally been offered at El Arish were again proposed to General Belliard
for himself and the army of Cairo. They were accepted, and Cairo was
surrendered to the English on condition that the garrison should be
conveyed back to France (June 27). Soon after the capitulation General
Baird reached Lower Egypt with an Anglo-Indian division. Menou with the
remainder of the French army was now shut up in Alexandria. His forts and
outworks were successively carried; his flotilla was destroyed; and when
all hope of support from France had been abandoned, the army of Alexandria,
which formed the remnant of the troops with which Bonaparte had won his
earliest victories in Italy, found itself compelled to surrender the last
stronghold of the French in Egypt (Aug. 30). It was the first important
success which had been gained by English soldiers over the troops of the
Republic; the first campaign in which English generalship had permitted the
army to show itself in its true quality.

[Negotiations for peace.]

[Preliminaries of London, Oct. 1, 1801.]

[Peace of Amiens, March 27, 1802.]

Peace was now at hand. Soon after the Treaty of Lunéville had withdrawn
Austria from the war, unofficial negotiations had begun between the
Governments of Great Britain and France. The object with which Pitt had
entered upon the war, the maintenance of the old European system against
the aggression of France, was now seen to be one which England must
abandon. England had borne its share in the defence of the Continent. If
the Continental Powers could no longer resist the ascendancy of a single
State, England could not struggle for the Balance of Power alone. The
negotiations of 1801 had little in common with those of 1796. Belgium,
which had been the burden of all Pitt's earlier despatches, no longer
figured as an object of contention. The frontier of the Rhine, with the
virtual possession of Holland and Northern Italy, under the title of the
Batavian, Ligurian, and Cisalpine Republics, was tacitly conceded to
France. In place of the restoration of the Netherlands, the negotiators of
1801 argued about the disposal of Egypt, of Malta, and of the colonies
which Great Britain had conquered from France and its allies. Events
decided the fate of Egypt. The restoration of Malta to the Knights of St.
John was strenuously demanded by France, and not refused by England. It was
in relation to the colonial claims of France that the two Governments found
it most difficult to agree. Great Britain, which had lost no territory
itself, had conquered nearly all the Asiatic and Atlantic colonies of the
French Republic and of its Dutch and Spanish allies. In return for the
restoration of Ceylon, the Cape of Good Hope, Guiana, Trinidad, and various
East and West Indian settlements, France had nothing to offer to Great
Britain but peace. If peace, however, was to be made, the only possible
settlement was by means of a compromise; and it was finally agreed that
England should retain Ceylon and Trinidad, and restore the rest of the
colonies which it had taken from France, Spain, and Holland. Preliminaries
of peace embodying these conditions were signed at London on the 1st of
October, 1801. Hostilities ceased; but an interval of several months
between the preliminary agreement and the conclusion of the final treaty
was employed by Bonaparte in new usurpations upon the Continent, to which
he forced the British Government to lend a kind of sanction in the
continuance of the negotiations. The Government, though discontented, was
unwilling to treat these acts as new occasions of war. The conferences were
at length brought to a close, and the definitive treaty between France and
Great Britain was signed at Amiens on the 27th of March, 1802. [90]

[Pitt's retirement. Its cause.]

[Union of Ireland and Great Britain, 1800.]

The Minister who, since the first outbreak of war, had so resolutely
struggled for the freedom of Europe, was no longer in power when Great
Britain entered into negotiations with the First Consul. In the same week
that Austria signed the Peace of Lunéville, Pitt had retired from office.
The catastrophe which dissolved his last Continental alliance may possibly
have disposed Pitt to make way for men who could treat for peace with a
better grace than himself, but the immediate cause of his retirement was an
affair of internal policy. Among the few important domestic measures which
Pitt had not sacrificed to foreign warfare was a project for the
Legislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland. Ireland had up to this time
possessed a Parliament nominally independent of that of Great Britain. Its
population, however, was too much divided to create a really national
government; and, even if the internal conditions of the country had been
better, the practical sovereignty of Great Britain must at that time have
prevented the Parliament of Dublin from being more than an agency of
ministerial corruption. It was the desire of Pitt to give to Ireland, in
the place of a fictitious independence, that real participation in the
political life of Great Britain which has more than recompensed Scotland
and Wales for the loss of separate nationality. As an earnest of
legislative justice, Pitt gave hopes to the leaders of the Irish Catholic
party that the disabilities which excluded Roman Catholics from the House
of Commons and from many offices in the public service would be no longer
maintained. On this understanding the Catholics of Ireland abstained from
offering to Pitt's project a resistance which would probably have led to
its failure. A majority of members in the Protestant Parliament of Dublin
accepted the price which the Ministry offered for their votes. A series of
resolutions in favour of the Legislative Union of the two countries was
transmitted to England in the spring of 1800; the English Parliament passed
the Act of Union in the same summer; and the first United Parliament of
Great Britain and Ireland assembled in London at the beginning of the year
1801.

[Pitt desires to emancipate the Catholics.]

[Pitt resigns Feb. 1801.]

[Addington Minister.]

Pitt now prepared to fulfil his virtual promise to the Irish Catholics. A
measure obliterating the ancient lines of civil and religious enmity, and
calling to public life a class hitherto treated as alien and hostile to the
State, would have been in true consonance with all that was best in Pitt's
own statesmanship. But the ignorant bigotry of King George III. was excited
against him by men who hated every act of justice or tolerance to Roman
Catholics; and it proved of greater force than the genius of the Minister.
The old threat of the King's personal enmity was publicly addressed to
Pitt's colleague, Dundas, when the proposal for Catholic emancipation was
under discussion in the Cabinet; and, with a just regard for his own
dignity, Pitt withdrew from office (Feb. 5, 1801), unable to influence a
Sovereign who believed his soul to be staked on the letter of the
Coronation Oath. The ablest members of Pitt's government, Grenville,
Dundas, and Windham, retired with their leader. Addington, Speaker of the
House of Commons, became Prime Minister, with colleagues as undistinguished
as himself. It was under the government of Addington that the negotiations
were begun which resulted in the signature of Preliminaries of Peace in
October 1801.

[The Peace of 1801.]

Pitt himself supported the new Ministry in their policy of peace;
Grenville, lately Pitt's Foreign Minister, unsparingly condemned both the
cession of the conquered colonies and the policy of granting France peace
on any terms whatever. Viewed by the light of our own knowledge of events,
the Peace of 1801 appears no more than an unprofitable break in an
inevitable war; and perhaps even then the signs of Bonaparte's ambition
justified those who, like Grenville, urged the nation to give no truce to
France, and to trust to Bonaparte's own injustice to raise us up allies
upon the Continent. But, for the moment, peace seemed at least worth a
trial. The modes of prosecuting a war of offence were exhausted; the cost
of the national defence remained the same. There were no more navies to
destroy, no more colonies to seize; the sole means of injuring the enemy
was by blockading his ports, and depriving him of his maritime commerce. On
the other hand, the possibility of a French invasion required the
maintenance of an enormous army and militia in England, and prevented any
great reduction in the expenses of the war, which had already added two
hundred millions to the National Debt. Nothing was lost by making peace,
except certain colonies and military positions which few were anxious to
retain. The argument that England could at any moment recover what she now
surrendered was indeed a far sounder one than most of those which went to
prove that the positions in question were of no real service. Yet even on
the latter point there was no want of high authority. It was Nelson himself
who assured the House of Lords that neither Malta nor the Cape of Good Hope
could ever be of importance to Great Britain. [91] In the face of such
testimony, the men who lamented that England should allow the adversary to
recover any lost ground in the midst of a struggle for life or death,
passed for obstinate fanatics. The Legislature reflected the general
feeling of the nation; and the policy of the Government was confirmed in
the Lords and the Commons by majorities of ten to one.

[Aggressions of Bonaparte during the Continental peace.]

[Holland, Sept., 1801.]

Although the Ministry of Addington had acted with energy both in Egypt and
in the Baltic, it was generally felt that Pitt's retirement marked the
surrender of that resolute policy which had guided England since 1793. When
once the Preliminaries of Peace had been signed in London, Bonaparte
rightly judged that Addington would waive many just causes of complaint,
rather than break off the negotiations which were to convert the
Preliminaries into a definitive treaty. Accordingly, in his instructions to
Joseph Bonaparte, who represented France at the conferences held at Amiens,
the First Consul wrote, through Talleyrand, as follows:--"You are forbidden
to entertain any proposition relating to the King of Sardinia, or to the
Stadtholder, or to the internal affairs of Batavia, of Helvetia, or the
Republic of Italy. None of these subjects have anything to do with the
discussions of England." The list of subjects excluded from the
consideration of England was the list of aggressions by which Bonaparte
intended to fill up the interval of Continental peace. In the Treaty of
Lunéville, the independence of the newly-established republics in Holland,
Switzerland, and Italy had been recognised by France. The restoration of
Piedmont to the House of Savoy had been the condition on which the Czar
made peace. But on every one of these points the engagements of France were
made only to be broken. So far from bringing independence to the
client-republics of France, the peace of Lunéville was but the introduction
to a series of changes which brought these States directly into the hands
of the First Consul. The establishment of absolute government in France
itself entailed a corresponding change in each of its dependencies, and the
creation of an executive which should accept the First Consul's orders with
as little question as the Prefect of a French department. Holland received
its new constitution while France was still at war with England. The
existing Government and Legislature of the Batavian Republic were dissolved
(Sept., 1801), and replaced by a council of twelve persons, each holding
the office of President in turn for a period of three months, and by a
legislature of thirty-five, which met only for a few days in the year. The
power given to the new President during his office was enough, and not more
than enough, to make him an effective servant: a three-months' Minister and
an Assembly that met and parted at the word of command were not likely to
enter into serious rivalry with the First Consul. The Dutch peaceably
accepted the constitution thus forced upon them; they possessed no means of
resistance, and their affairs excited but little interest upon the
Continent.

[Bonaparte made President of the Italian Republic, Jan., 1802.]

[Piedmont annexed to France, Sept., 1802.]

Far more striking was the revolution next effected by the First Consul. In
obedience to orders sent from Paris to the Legislature of the Cisalpine
Republic, a body of four hundred and fifty Italian representatives crossed
the Alps in the middle of winter in order to meet the First Consul at
Lyons, and to deliberate upon a constitution for the Cisalpine Republic.
The constitution had, as a matter of fact, been drawn up by Talleyrand, and
sent to the Legislature at Milan some months before. But it was not for the
sake of Italy that its representatives were collected at Lyons, in the
presence of the First Consul, with every circumstance of national
solemnity. It was the most striking homage which Bonaparte could exact from
a foreign race in the face of all France; it was the testimony that other
lands besides France desired Bonaparte to be their sovereign. When all the
minor offices in the new Cisalpine Constitution had been filled, the
Italians learnt that the real object of the convocation was to place the
sceptre in Bonaparte's hands. They accepted the part which they found
themselves forced to play, and offered to the First Consul the presidency
of the Cisalpine State (Jan. 25, 1802). Unlike the French Consulate, the
chief magistracy in the new Cisalpine Constitution might be prolonged
beyond the term of ten years. Bonaparte had practically won the Crown of
Lombardy; and he had given to France the example of a submission more
unqualified than its own. A single phrase rewarded the people who had thus
placed themselves in his hands. The Cisalpine Republic was allowed to
assume the name of Italian Republic. The new title indicated the national
hopes which had sprung up in Italy during the past ten years; it indicated
no real desire on the part of Bonaparte to form either a free or a united
Italian nation. In the Cisalpine State itself, although a good
administration and the extinction of feudal privileges made Bonaparte's
government acceptable, patriots who asked for freedom ran the risk of exile
or imprisonment. What further influence was exercised by France upon
Italian soil was not employed for the consolidation of Italy. Tuscany was
bestowed by Bonaparte upon the Spanish Prince of Parma, and controlled by
agents of the First Consul. Piedmont, which had long been governed by
French generals, was at length definitely annexed to France.

[Intervention in Switzerland.]

[Bonaparte Mediator of the Helvetic League, Oct. 4, 1802.]

Switzerland had not, like the Cisalpine Republic, derived its liberty from
the victories of French armies, nor could Bonaparte claim the presidency of
the Helvetic State under the title of its founder. The struggles of the
Swiss parties, however, placed the country at the mercy of France. Since
the expulsion of the Austrians by Massena in 1799, the antagonism between
the Democrats of the town and the Federalists of the Forest Cantons had
broken out afresh. A French army still occupied Switzerland; the Minister
of the First Consul received instructions to interfere with all parties and
consolidate none. In the autumn of 1801, the Federalists were permitted to
dissolve the central Helvetic Government, which had been created by the
Directory in 1798. One change followed another, until, on the 19th of May,
1802, a second Constitution was proclaimed, based, like that of 1798, on
centralising and democratic principles, and almost extinguishing the old
local independence of the members of the Swiss League. No sooner had French
partisans created this Constitution, which could only be maintained by
force against the hostility of Berne and the Forest Cantons, than the
French army quitted Switzerland. Civil war instantly broke out, and in the
course of a few weeks the Government established by the French had lost all
Switzerland except the Pays de Vaud. This was the crisis for which
Bonaparte had been waiting. On the 4th of October a proclamation appeared
at Lausanne, announcing that the First Consul had accepted the office of
Mediator of the Helvetic League. A French army entered Switzerland.
Fifty-six deputies from the cantons were summoned to Paris; and, in the
beginning of 1803, a new Constitution, which left the central Government
powerless in the hands of France and reduced the national sovereignty to
cantonal self-administration, placed Switzerland on a level with the
Batavian and the Cisalpine dependencies of Bonaparte. The Rhone Valley,
with the mountains crossed by the new road over the Simplon, was converted
into a separate republic under the title of La Valais. The new chief
magistrate of the Helvetic Confederacy entered upon his office with a
pension paid out of Bonaparte's secret police fund.

[Settlement of Germany.]

Such was the nature of the independence which the Peace of Lunéville gave
to Holland, to Northern Italy, and to Switzerland. The re-organisation of
Germany, which was provided for by the same treaty, affected larger
interests, and left more permanent traces upon European history. In the
provinces ceded to France lay the territory of the ancient ecclesiastical
princes of the empire, the Electors of Mainz, Cologne, and Trèves; but,
besides these spiritual sovereigns, a variety of secular potentates,
ranging from the Elector Palatine, with 600,000 subjects, to the Prince of
Wiedrunkel, with a single village, owned territory upon the left bank of
the Rhine; and for the dispossessed lay princes new territories had now to
be formed by the destruction of other ecclesiastical States in the interior
of Germany. Affairs returned to the state in which they had stood in 1798,
and the comedy of Rastadt was renewed at the point where it had been broken
off: the only difference was that the French statesmen who controlled the
partition of ecclesiastical Germany now remained in Paris, instead of
coming to the Rhine, to run the risk of being murdered by Austrian hussars.
Scarcely was the Treaty of Lunéville signed when the whole company of
intriguers who had touted at Rastadt posted off to the French capital with
their maps and their money-bags, the keener for the work when it became
known that by common consent the Free Cities of the Empire were now to be
thrown into the spoil. Talleyrand and his confidant Mathieu had no occasion
to ask for bribes, or to manoeuvre for the position of arbiters in Germany.
They were overwhelmed with importunities. Solemn diplomatists of the old
school toiled up four flights of stairs to the office of the needy
secretary, or danced attendance at the parties of the witty Minister. They
hugged Talleyrand's poodle; they vied with one another in gaining a smile
from the child whom he brought up at his house. [92] The shrewder of them
fortified their attentions with solid bargains, and made it their principal
care not to be outbidden at the auction. Thus the game was kept up as long
as there was a bishopric or a city in the market.

This was the real process of the German re-organisation. A pretended one
was meanwhile enacted by the Diet of Ratisbon. The Diet deliberated during
the whole of the summer of 1801 without arriving at a single resolution.
Not even the sudden change of Russian policy that followed the death of the
Emperor Paul and deprived Bonaparte of the support of the Northern Maritime
League, could stimulate the German Powers to united action. The old
antagonism of Austria and Prussia paralysed the Diet. Austria sought a
German indemnity for the dethroned Grand Duke of Tuscany; Prussia aimed at
extending its influence into Southern Germany by the annexation of Würzburg
and Bamberg. Thus the summer of 1801 was lost in interminable debate, until
Bonaparte regained the influence over Russia which he had held before the
death of Paul, and finally set himself free from all check and restraint by
concluding peace with England.

[German policy of Bonaparte.]

No part of Bonaparte's diplomacy was more ably conceived or more likely to
result in a permanent empire than that which affected the secondary States
of Germany. The rivalry of Austria and Prussia, the dread of Austrian
aggression felt in Bavaria, the grotesque ambition of the petty sovereigns
of Baden and Würtemburg, were all understood and turned to account in the
policy which from this time shaped the French protectorate beyond the
Rhine. Bonaparte intended to give to Prussia such an increase of territory
upon the Baltic as should counterbalance the power of Austria; and for this
purpose he was willing to sacrifice Hanover or Mecklenburg: but he forbade
Prussia's extension to the south. Austria, so far from gaining new
territory in Bavaria, was to be deprived of its own outlying possessions in
Western Germany, and excluded from all influence in this region. Bavaria,
dependent upon French protection against Austria, was to be greatly
strengthened. Baden and Würtemberg, enriched by the spoil of little
sovereignties, of Bishoprics and Free Cities, were to look to France for
further elevation and aggrandisement. Thus, while two rival Powers balanced
one another upon the Baltic and the Lower Danube, the sovereigns of central
and western Germany, owing everything to the Power that had humbled
Austria, would find in submission to France the best security for their own
gains, and the best protection against their more powerful neighbours.

[Treaty between France and Russia for joint action in Germany, Oct. 11,
1801.]

One condition alone could have frustrated a policy agreeable to so many
interests, namely, the existence of a national sentiment among the Germans
themselves. But the peoples of Germany cared as little about a Fatherland
as their princes. To the Hessian and the Bavarian at the centre of the
Empire, Germany was scarcely more than it was to the Swiss or the Dutch,
who had left the Empire centuries before. The inhabitants of the Rhenish
Provinces had murmured for a while at the extortionate rule of the
Directory; but their severance from Germany and their incorporation with a
foreign race touched no fibre of patriotic regret; and after the
establishment of a better order of things under the Consulate the
annexation to France appears to have become highly popular. [93] Among a
race whose members could thus be actually conquered and annexed without
doing violence to their feelings Bonaparte had no difficulty in finding
willing allies. While the Diet dragged on its debates upon the settlement
of the Empire, the minor States pursued their bargainings with the French
Government; and on the 14th of August, 1801, Bavaria signed the first of
those treaties which made the First Consul the patron of Western Germany.
Two months later a secret treaty between France and Russia admitted the new
Czar, Alexander, to a share in the reorganisation of the Empire. The
Governments of Paris and St. Petersburg pledged themselves to united action
for the purpose of maintaining an equilibrium between Austria and Prussia;
and the Czar further stipulated for the advancement of his own relatives,
the Sovereigns of Bavaria, Baden, and Würtemberg. The relationship of these
petty princes to the Russian family enabled Bonaparte to present to the
Czar, as a graceful concession, the very measure which most vitally
advanced his own power in Germany. Alexander's intervention made resistance
on the part of Austria hopeless. One after another the German Sovereigns
settled with their patrons for a share in the spoil; and on the 3rd of
June, 1802, a secret agreement between France and Russia embodied the whole
of these arrangements, and disposed of almost all the Free Cities and the
entire ecclesiastical territory of the Empire.

[Diet of Ratisbon accepts French Scheme.]

[End of German Ecclesiastical States and forty-five Free Cities, March,
1803.]

When everything had thus been settled by the foreigners, a Committee, to
which the Diet of Ratisbon had referred the work of re-organisation, began
its sessions, assisted by a French and a Russian representative. The Scheme
which had been agreed upon between France and Russia was produced entire;
and in spite of the anger and the threats of Austria it passed the
Committee with no greater delay than was inseparable from everything
connected with German affairs. The Committee presented the Scheme to the
Diet: the Diet only agitated itself as to the means of passing the Scheme
without violating those formalities which were the breath of its life. The
proposed destruction of all the Ecclesiastical States, and of forty-five
out of the fifty Free Cities, would extinguish a third part of the members
of the Diet itself. If these unfortunate bodies were permitted to vote upon
the measure, their votes might result in its rejection: if unsummoned,
their absence would impair the validity of the resolution. By a masterpiece
of conscientious pedantry it was agreed that the doomed prelates and cities
should be duly called to vote in their turn, and that upon the mention each
name the answer "absent" should be returned by an officer. Thus, faithful
to its formalities, the Empire voted the destruction of its ancient
Constitution; and the sovereignties of the Ecclesiastics and Free Cities,
which had lasted for so many centuries, vanished from Europe (March, 1803).
[94]

[Effect on Germany.]

The loss was small indeed. The internal condition of the priest-ruled
districts was generally wretched; heavy ignorance, beggary, and intolerance
reduced life to a gross and dismal inertia. Except in their patronage of
music, the ecclesiastical princes had perhaps rendered no single service to
Germany. The Free Cities, as a rule, were sunk in debt; the management of
their affairs had become the perquisite of a few lawyers and privileged
families. For Germany, as a nation, the destruction of these petty
sovereignties was not only an advantage but an absolute necessity. The
order by which they were superseded was not devised in the interest of
Germany itself; yet even in the arrangements imposed by the foreigner
Germany gained centres from which the institutions of modern political life
entered into regions where no public authority had yet been known beyond
the court of the bishop or the feudal officers of the manor. [95] Through
the suppression of the Ecclesiastical States a Protestant majority was
produced in the Diet. The change bore witness to the decline of Austrian
and of Catholic energy during the past century; it scarcely indicated the
future supremacy of the Protestant rival of Austria; for the real interests
of Germany were but faintly imaged in the Diet, and the leadership of the
race was still open to the Power which should most sincerely identify
itself with the German nation. The first result of the changed character of
the Diet was the confiscation of all landed property held by religious or
charitable bodies, even where these had never advanced the slightest claim
to political independence. The Diet declared the whole of the land held in
Germany by pious foundations to be at the disposal of the Governments for
purposes of religion, of education, and of financial relief. The more needy
courts immediately seized so welcome an opportunity of increasing their
revenues. Germany lost nothing by the dissolution of some hundreds of
monasteries; the suppression of hospitals and the impoverishment of
Universities was a doubtful benefit. Through the destruction of the
Ecclesiastical States and the confiscation of Church lands, the support of
an army of priests was thrown upon the public revenues. The Elector of
Cologne, who had been an indifferent civil ruler, became a very prosperous
clergyman on £20,000 a year. All the members of the annexed or disendowed
establishments, down to the acolytes and the sacristans, were credited with
annuities equal in value to what they had lost. But in the confusion caused
by war the means to satisfy these claims was not always forthcoming; and
the ecclesiastical revolution, so beneficial on the whole to the public
interest, was not effected without much severe and undeserved individual
suffering.

[Governments in Germany become more absolute and more regular.]

[Bavaria. Reforms of Montgelas.]

[Suppression of the Knights.]

The movement of 1803 put an end to an order of things more curious as a
survival of the mixed religious and political form of the Holy Roman Empire
than important in the actual state of Europe. The temporal power now lost
by the Church in Germany had been held in such sluggish hands that its
effect was hardly visible except in a denser prejudice and an idler life
than prevailed under other Governments. The first consequence of its
downfall was that a great part of Germany which had hitherto had no
political organisation at all gained the benefit of a regular system of
taxation, of police, of civil and of criminal justice. If harsh and
despotic, the Governments which rose to power at the expense of the Church
were usually not wanting in the love of order and uniformity. Officers of
the State administered a fixed law where custom and privilege had hitherto
been the only rule. Appointments ceased to be bought or inherited; trades
and professions were thrown open; the peasant was relieved of his heaviest
feudal burdens. Among the newly consolidated States, Bavaria was the one
where the reforming impulse of the time took the strongest form. A new
dynasty, springing from the west of the Rhine, brought something of the
spirit of French liberalism into a country hitherto unsurpassed in Western
Europe for its ignorance and bigotry. [96] The Minister Montgelas, a
politician of French enlightenment, entered upon the same crusade against
feudal and ecclesiastical disorder which Joseph had inaugurated in Austria
twenty years before. His measures for subjecting the clergy to the law, and
for depriving the Church of its control over education, were almost
identical with those which in 1790 had led to the revolt of Belgium; and
the Bavarian landowners now unconsciously reproduced all the mediæval
platitudes of the University of Louvain. Montgelas organised and levelled
with a remorseless common sense. Among his victims there was a class which
had escaped destruction in the recent changes. The Knights of the Empire,
with their village jurisdictions, were still legally existent; but to
Montgelas such a class appeared a mere absurdity, and he sent his soldiers
to disperse their courts and to seize their tolls. Loud lamentation
assailed the Emperor at Vienna. If the dethroned bishops had bewailed the
approaching extinction of Christianity in Europe, the knights just as
convincingly deplored the end of chivalry. Knightly honour, now being swept
from the earth, was proved to be the true soul of German nationality, the
invisible support of the Imperial throne. For a moment the intervention of
the Emperor forced Montgelas to withdraw his grasp from the sacred rents
and turnpikes; but the threatening storm passed over, and the example of
Bavaria was gradually followed by the neighbouring Courts.

[Stein and the Duke of Nassau.]

[Stein's attack on the Minor Princes.]

It was to the weak and unpatriotic princes who were enriched by the French
that the knights fell victims. Among the knights thus despoiled by the Duke
of Nassau was the Ritter vom Stein, a nobleman who had entered the Prussian
service in the reign of Frederick the Great, and who had lately been placed
in high office in the newly-acquired province of Münster. Stein was
thoroughly familiar with the advantages of systematic government; the loss
of his native parochial jurisdiction was not a serious one to a man who had
become a power in Prussia; and although domestic pride had its share in
Stein's resentment, the protest now published by him against the
aggressions of the Duke of Nassau sounded a different note from that of his
order generally. That a score of farmers should pay their dues and take off
their hats to the officer of the Duke of Nassau instead of to the bailiff
of the Ritter vom Stein was not a matter to excite deep feeling in Europe;
but that the consolidation of Germany should be worked out in the interest
of French hirelings instead of in the interests of the German people was
justly treated by Stein as a subject for patriotic anger. In his letter
[97] to the Duke of Nassau, Stein reproached his own despoiler and the
whole tribe of petty princes with that treason to German interests which
had won them the protection of the foreigner. He argued that the knights
were a far less important obstacle to German unity than those very princes
to whom the knights were sacrificed; and he invoked that distant day which
should give to Germany a real national unity, over knights and princes
alike, under the leadership of a single patriotic sovereign. Stein's appeal
found little response among his contemporaries. Like a sober man among
drunkards, he seemed to be scarcely rational. The simple conception of a
nation sacrificing its internal rivalries in order to avert foreign rule
was folly to the politicians who had all their lives long been outwitting
one another at Vienna or Berlin, or who had just become persons of
consequence in Europe through the patronage of Bonaparte. Yet, if years of
intolerable suffering were necessary before any large party in Germany rose
to the idea of German union, the ground had now at least been broken. In
the changes that followed the Peace of Lunéville the fixity and routine of
Germany received its death-blow. In all but name the Empire had ceased to
exist. Change and re-constitution in one form or another had become
familiar to all men's minds; and one real statesman at the least was
already beginning to learn the lesson which later events were to teach to
the rest of the German race.

[France, 1801-1804.]

[Civil Code.]

Four years of peace separated the Treaty of Lunéville from the next
outbreak of war between France and any Continental Power. They were years
of extension of French influence in every neighbouring State; in France
itself, years of the consolidation of Bonaparte's power, and of the decline
of everything that checked his personal rule. The legislative bodies sank
into the insignificance for which they had been designed; everything that
was suffered to wear the appearance of strength owed its vigour to the
personal support of the First Consul. Among the institutions which date
from this period, two, equally associated with the name of Napoleon, have
taken a prominent place in history, the Civil Code and the Concordat. Since
the middle of the eighteenth century the codification of law had been
pursued with more or less success by almost every Government in Europe. In
France the Constituent Assembly of 1789 had ordered the statutes, by which
it superseded the old variety of local customs, to be thus cast into a
systematic form. A Committee of the Convention had completed the draft of a
Civil Code. The Directory had in its turn appointed a Commission; but the
project still remained unfulfilled when the Directory was driven from
power. Bonaparte instinctively threw himself into a task so congenial to
his own systematising spirit, and stimulated the efforts of the best
jurists in France by his personal interest and pride in the work of
legislation. A Commission of lawyers, appointed by the First Consul,
presented the successive chapters of a Civil Code to the Council of State.
In the discussions in the Council of State Bonaparte himself took an
active, though not always a beneficial, part. The draft of each chapter, as
it left the Council of State, was submitted, as a project of Law, to the
Tribunate and to the Legislative Body. For a moment the free expression of
opinion in the Tribunate caused Bonaparte to suspend his work in impatient
jealousy. The Tribunate, however, was soon brought to silence; and in
March, 1804, France received the Code which has formed from that time to
the present the basis of its civil rights.

[Napoleon as a legislator.]

When Napoleon declared that he desired his fame to rest upon the Civil
Code, he showed his appreciation of the power which names exercise over
mankind. It is probable that a majority of the inhabitants of Western
Europe believe that Napoleon actually invented the laws which bear his
name. As a matter of fact, the substance of these laws was fixed by the
successive Assemblies of the Revolution; and, in the final revision which
produced the Civil Code, Napoleon appears to have originated neither more
nor less than several of the members of his Council whose names have long
been forgotten. He is unquestionably entitled to the honour of a great
legislator, not, however, as one who, like Solon or like Mahomet, himself
created a new body of law, but as one who most vigorously pursued the work
of consolidating and popularising law by the help of all the skilled and
scientific minds whose resources were at his command. Though faulty in
parts, the Civil Code, through its conciseness, its simplicity, and its
justice, enabled Napoleon to carry a new and incomparably better social
order into every country that became part of his Empire. Four other Codes,
appearing at intervals from the year 1804 to the year 1810, embodied, in a
corresponding form, the Law of Commerce, the Criminal Law, and the Rules of
Civil and of Criminal Process. [98] The whole remains a monument of the
legal energy of the period which began in 1789, and of the sagacity with
which Napoleon associated with his own rule all the science and the
reforming zeal of the jurists of his day.

[The Concordat.]

[The Concordat destroys the Free Church.]

Far more distinctively the work of Napoleon's own mind was the
reconciliation with the Church of Rome effected by the Concordat. It was a
restoration of religion similar to that restoration of political order
which made the public service the engine of a single will. The bishops and
priests, whose appointment the Concordat transferred from their
congregations to the Government, were as much instruments of the First
Consul as his prefects and his gendarmes. The spiritual wants of the
public, the craving of the poor for religious consolation, were made the
pretext for introducing the new theological police. But the situation of
the Catholic Church was in reality no worse in France at the commencement
of the Consulate than its present situation in Ireland. The Republic had
indeed subjected the non-juring priests to the heaviest penalties, but the
exercise of Christian worship, which, even in the Reign of Terror, had only
been interrupted by local and individual fanaticism, had long recovered the
protection of the law, services in the open air being alone prohibited.
[99] Since 1795 the local authorities had been compelled to admit the
religious societies of their district to the use of church-buildings.
Though the coup d'état of Fructidor, 1797, renewed the persecution of
non-juring priests, it in no way checked the activity of the Constitutional
Church, now free from all connection with the Civil Government. While the
non-juring priests, exiled as political offenders, or theatrically adoring
the sacred elements in the woods, pretended that the age of the martyrs had
returned to France, a Constitutional Church, ministering in 4,000 parishes,
unprivileged but unharassed by the State, supplied the nation with an
earnest and respectable body of clergy. [100] But in the eyes of the First
Consul everything left to voluntary association was so much lost to the
central power. In the order of nature, peasants must obey priests, priests
must obey bishops, and bishops must obey the First Consul. An alliance with
the Pope offered to Bonaparte the means of supplanting the popular
organisation of the Constitutional Church by an imposing hierarchy, rigid
in its orthodoxy and unquestioning in its devotion to himself. In return
for the consecration of his own rule, Bonaparte did not shrink from
inviting the Pope to an exercise of authority such as the Holy See had
never even claimed in France. The whole of the existing French Bishops,
both the exiled non-jurors and those of the Constitutional Church, were
summoned to resign their Sees into the hands of the Pope; against all who
refused to do so sentence of deposition was pronounced by the Pontiff,
without a word heard in defence, or the shadow of a fault alleged. The Sees
were re-organised, and filled up by nominees of the First Consul. The
position of the great body of the clergy was substantially altered in its
relation to the Bishops. Episcopal power was made despotic, like all other
power in France: thousands of the clergy, hitherto secure in their livings,
were placed at the disposal of their bishop, and rendered liable to be
transferred at the pleasure of their superior from place to place. The
Constitutional Church vanished, but religion appeared to be honoured by
becoming part of the State.

[Results in Ultramontanism.]

In its immediate action, the Napoleonic Church served the purpose for which
it was intended. For some few years the clergy unflaggingly preached,
prayed, and catechised to the glory of their restorer. In the greater cycle
of religious change, the Concordat of Bonaparte appears in another light.
However little appreciated at the time, it was the greatest, the most
critical, victory which the Roman See has ever gained over the more
enlightened and the more national elements in the Catholic Church. It
converted the Catholicism of France from a faith already far more
independent than that of Fénélon and Bossuet into the Catholicism which in
our own day has outstripped the bigotry of Spain and Austria in welcoming
the dogma of Papal infallibility. The lower clergy, condemned by the State
to an intolerable subjection, soon found their only hope in an appeal to
Rome, and instinctively worked as the emissaries of the Roman See. The
Bishops, who owed their office to an unprecedented exercise of Papal power
and to the destruction of religious independence in France, were not the
men who could maintain a struggle with the Papacy for the ancient Gallican
liberties. In the resistance to the Papacy which had been maintained by the
Continental Churches in a greater or less degree during the eighteenth
century, France had on the whole taken the most effective part; but, from
the time when the Concordat dissolved both the ancient and the
revolutionary Church system of France, the Gallican tradition of the past
became as powerless among the French clergy as the philosophical liberalism
of the Revolution.

[So do the German changes.]

In Germany the destruction of the temporal power of the Church tended
equally to Ultramontanism. An archbishop of Cologne who governed half a
million subjects was less likely to prostrate himself before the Papal
Chair than an archbishop of Cologne who was only one among a regiment of
churchmen. The spiritual Electors and Princes who lost their dominions in
1801 had understood by the interests of their order something more tangible
than a body of doctrines. When not hostile to the Papacy, they had usually
treated it with indifference. The conception of a Catholic society exposed
to persecution at the hands of the State on account of its devotion to Rome
was one which had never entered the mind of German ecclesiastics in the
eighteenth century. Without the changes effected in Germany by the Treaty
of Lunéville, without the Concordat of Bonaparte, Catholic orthodoxy would
never have become identical with Ultramontanism. In this respect the
opening years of the present century mark a turning-point in the relation
of the Church to modern life. Already, in place of the old monarchical
Governments, friendly on the whole to the Catholic Church, events were
preparing the way for that changed order with which the century seems
destined to close--an emancipated France, a free Italy, a secular,
state-disciplined Germany, and the Church in conspiracy against them all.




CHAPTER VI.


England claims Malta--War renewed--Bonaparte occupies Hanover, and
blockades the Elbe--Remonstrances of Prussia--Cadoudal's Plot--Murder of
the Duke of Enghien--Napoleon Emperor--Coalition of 1805--Prussia holds
aloof--State of Austria--Failure of Napoleon's attempt to gain naval
superiority in the Channel--Campaign in Western Germany--Capitulation of
Ulm--Trafalgar--Treaty of Potsdam between Prussia and the Allies--The
French enter Vienna--Haugwitz sent to Napoleon with Prussian Ultimatum--
Battle of Austerlitz--Haugwitz signs a Treaty of Alliance with
Napoleon--Peace--Treaty of Presburg--End of the Holy Roman Empire--
Naples given to Joseph Bonaparte--Battle of Maida--The Napoleonic Empire
and Dynasty--Federation of the Rhine--State of Germany--Possibility of
maintaining the Empire of 1806.


[England prepares for war, Nov., 1802.]

[England claims Malta.]

War was renewed between France and Great Britain in the spring of 1803.
Addington's Government, in their desire for peace, had borne with
Bonaparte's aggressions during all the months of negotiation at Amiens;
they had met his complaints against the abuse of the English press by
prosecuting his Royalist libellers; throughout the Session of 1802 they had
upheld the possibility of peace against the attacks of their parliamentary
opponents. The invasion of Switzerland in the autumn of 1802, following the
annexation of Piedmont, forced the Ministry to alter its tone. The King's
Speech at the meeting of Parliament in November declared that the changes
in operation on the Continent demanded measures of security on the part of
Great Britain. The naval and military forces of the country were restored
to a war-footing; the evacuation of Malta by Great Britain, which had
hitherto been delayed chiefly through a misunderstanding with Russia, was
no longer treated as a matter of certainty. While the English Government
still wavered, a challenge was thrown down by the First Consul which forced
them into decided action. The _Moniteur_ published on the 13th of January,
1803, a report upon Egypt by Colonel Sebastiani, pointing in the plainest
terms to the renewal of French attacks upon the East. The British
Government demanded explanations, and declared that until satisfaction was
given upon this point they should retain possession of Malta. Malta was in
fact appropriated by Great Britain as an equivalent for the Continental
territory added to France since the end of the war. [101]

[War, May, 1803.]

It would have been better policy if, some months earlier, Bonaparte had
been required to withdraw from Piedmont or from Switzerland, under pain of
hostilities with England. Great Britain had as little technical right to
retain Malta as Bonaparte had to annex Piedmont. The desire for peace had,
however, led Addington's Government to remain inactive until Bonaparte's
aggressions had become accomplished facts. It was now too late to attempt
to undo them: England could only treat the settlement of Amiens as
superseded, and claim compensation on its own side. Malta was the position
most necessary to Great Britain, in order to prevent Bonaparte from
carrying out projects in Egypt and Greece of which the Government had
evidence independent of Sebastiani's report. The value of Malta, so lately
denied by Nelson, was now fully understood both in France and England. No
sooner had the English Ministry avowed its intention of retaining the
island than the First Consul declared himself compelled to take up arms in
behalf of the faith of treaties. Ignoring his own violations of
treaty-rights in Italy and Switzerland, Bonaparte declared the retention of
Malta by Great Britain to be an outrage against all Europe. He assailed the
British Ambassador with the utmost fury at a reception held at the
Tuileries on the 13th of March; and, after a correspondence of two months,
which probably marked his sense of the power and obstinacy of his enemy,
the conflict was renewed which was now to continue without a break until
Bonaparte was driven from his throne.

[Bonaparte and Hanover.]

So long as England was without Continental allies its warfare was limited
to the seizure of colonies and the blockade of ports: on the part of France
nothing could be effected against the island Power except by actual
invasion. There was, however, among the communities of Germany one which,
in the arguments of a conqueror, might be treated as a dependency of
England, and made to suffer for its connection with the British Crown.
Hanover had hitherto by common agreement been dissociated from the wars in
which its Elector engaged as King of England; even the personal presence of
King George II. at the battle of Dettingen had been held no ground for
violating its neutrality. Bonaparte, however, was untroubled by precedents
in a case where he had so much to gain. Apart from its value as a possible
object of exchange in the next treaty with England, Hanover would serve as
a means of influencing Prussia: it was also worth so many millions in cash
through the requisitions which might be imposed upon its inhabitants. The
only scruple felt by Bonaparte in attacking Hanover arose from the
possibility of a forcible resistance on the part of Prussia to the
appearance of a French army in North Germany. Accordingly, before the
invasion began, General Duroc was sent to Berlin to inform the King of the
First Consul's intentions, and to soothe any irritation that might be felt
at the Prussian Court by assurances of friendship and respect.

[Prussia and Hanover.]

It was a moment of the most critical importance to Prussia. Prussia was the
recognised guardian of Northern Germany; every consideration of interest
and of honour required that its Government should forbid the proposed
occupation of Hanover--if necessary, at the risk of actual war. Hanover in
the hands of France meant the extinction of German independence up to the
frontiers of the Prussian State. If, as it was held at Berlin, the cause of
Great Britain was an unjust one, and if the connection of Hanover with the
British Crown was for the future to make that province a scapegoat for the
offences of England, the wisest course for Prussia would have been to
deliver Hanover at once from its French and from its English enemies by
occupying it with its own forces. The Foreign Minister, Count Haugwitz,
appears to have recommended this step, but his counsels were overruled.
King Frederick William III., who had succeeded his father in 1797, was a
conscientious but a timid and spiritless being. Public affairs were in the
hands of his private advisers, of whom the most influential were the
so-called cabinet-secretaries, Lombard and Beyme, men credulously anxious
for the goodwill of France, and perversely blind to the native force and
worth which still existed in the Prussian Monarchy. [102] Instead of
declaring the entry of the French into Hanover to be absolutely
incompatible with the safety of the other North German States, King
Frederick William endeavoured to avert it by diplomacy. He tendered his
mediation to the British Government upon condition of the evacuation of
Malta; and, when this proposal was bluntly rejected, he offered to the
First Consul his personal security that Hanover should pay a sum of money
in order to be spared the intended invasion.

[French enter Hanover, May, 1803.]

[Oppression in Hanover, 1803-1805.]

Such a proposal marked the depth to which Prussian statemanship had sunk;
it failed to affect the First Consul in the slightest degree. While
negotiations were still proceeding, a French division, commanded by General
Mortier, entered Hanover (May, 1803). The Hanoverian army was lost through
the follies of the civil Government; the Duke of Cambridge, commander of
one of its divisions, less ingenious than his brother the Duke of York in
finding excuses for capitulation, resigned his commission, and fled to
England, along with many brave soldiers, who subsequently found in the army
of Great Britain the opportunity for honourable service which was denied to
them at home. Hanover passed into the possession of France, and for two
years the miseries of French occupation were felt to the full. Extortion
consumed the homely wealth of the country; the games and meetings of the
people were prohibited; French spies violated the confidences of private
life; law was administered by foreign soldiers; the press existed only for
the purpose of French proselytism. It was in Hanover that the bitterness of
that oppression was first felt which subsequently roused all North Germany
against a foreign master, and forced upon the race the long-forgotten
claims of patriotism and honour.

[French blockade the Elbe.]

[Vain remonstrance of Prussia.]

Bonaparte had justly calculated upon the inaction of the Prussian
Government when he gave the order to General Mortier to enter Hanover; his
next step proved the growth of his confidence in Prussia's impassivity. A
French force was despatched to Cuxhaven, at the mouth of the Elbe, in order
to stop the commerce of Great Britain with the interior of Germany. The
British Government immediately informed the Court of Berlin that it should
blockade the Elbe and the Weser against the ships of all nations unless the
French soldiers withdrew from the Elbe. As the linen trade of Silesia and
other branches of Prussian industry depended upon the free navigation of
the Elbe, the threatened reprisals of the British Government raised very
serious questions for Prussia. It was France, not England, that had first
violated the neutrality of the river highway; and the King of Prussia now
felt himself compelled to demand assurances Bonaparte that the interests of
Germany should suffer no further injury at his hands. A letter was written
by the King to the First Consul, and entrusted to the cabinet-secretary,
Lombard, who carried it to Napoleon at Brussels (July, 1803). Lombard, the
son of French parents who had settled at Berlin in the reign of Frederick
the Great, had risen from a humble station through his skill in expression
in the two languages that were native to him; and the accomplishments which
would have made him a good clerk or a successful journalist made him in the
eyes of Frederick William a counsellor for kings. The history of his
mission to Brussels gives curious evidence both of the fascination
exercised by Napoleon over common minds, and of the political helplessness
which in Prussia could now be mistaken for the quality of a statesman.
Lombard failed to obtain from Napoleon any guarantee or security whatever;
yet he wrote back in terms of the utmost delight upon the success of his
mission. Napoleon had infatuated him by the mere exercise of his personal
charm. "What I cannot describe," said Lombard, in his report to the King
relating his interview with the First Consul, [103] "is the tone of
goodness and noble frankness with which he expressed his reverence for your
Majesty's rights, and asked for that confidence from your Majesty which he
so well deserves." "I only wish," he cried at the close of Napoleon's
address, "that I could convey to the King, my master, every one of your
words and the tone in which they are uttered; he would then, I am sure,
feel a double joy at the justice with which you have always been treated at
his hands." Lombard's colleagues at Berlin were perhaps not stronger men
than the envoy himself, but they were at least beyond the range of
Napoleon's voice and glance, and they received this rhapsody with coldness.
They complained that no single concession had been made by the First Consul
upon the points raised by the King. Cuxhaven continued in French hands; the
British inexorably blockaded the Germans upon their own neutral waters; and
the cautious statecraft of Prussia proved as valueless to Germany as the
obstinate, speculating warfare of Austria.

[Alexander displeased.]

There was, however, a Power which watched the advance of French dominion
into Northern Germany with less complaisance than the Germans themselves.
The Czar of Russia had gradually come to understand the part allotted to
him by Bonaparte since the Peace of Lunéville, and was no longer inclined
to serve as the instrument of French ambition. Bonaparte's occupation of
Hanover changed the attitude of Alexander into one of coldness and
distrust. Alexander saw and lamented the help which he himself had given to
Bonaparte in Germany: events that now took place in France itself, as well
as the progress of French intrigues in Turkey, [104] threw him into the
arms of Bonaparte's enemies, and prepared the way for a new European
coalition.

[Bonaparte about to become Emperor.]

[Murder of the Duke of Enghien, March 20, 1804.]

The First Bonaparte Consul had determined to assume the dignity of Emperor.
The renewal of war with England excited a new outburst of enthusiasm for
his person; nothing was wanting to place the crown on his head but the
discovery of a plot against his life. Such a plot had been long and
carefully followed by the police. A Breton gentleman, Georges Cadoudal, had
formed the design of attacking the First Consul in the streets of Paris in
the midst of his guards. Cadoudal and his fellow-conspirators, including
General Pichegru, were traced by the police from the coast of Normandy to
Paris: an unsuccessful attempt was made to lure the Count of Artois, and
other royal patrons of the conspiracy, from Great Britain. When all the
conspirators who could be enticed to France were collected within the
capital, the police, who had watched every stage of the movement, began to
make arrests. Moreau, the last Republican soldier of France, was charged
with complicity in the plot. Pichegru and Cadoudal were thrown into prison,
there to await their doom; Moreau, who probably wished for the overthrow of
the Consular Government, but had no part in the design against Bonaparte's
life, [105] was kept under arrest and loaded with official calumny. One
sacrifice more remained to be made, in place of the Bourbon d'Artois, who
baffled the police of the First Consul beyond the seas. In the territory of
Baden, twelve miles from the French frontier, there lived a prince of the
exiled house, the Duke of Enghien, a soldier under the first Coalition
against France, now a harmless dependent on the bounty of England. French
spies surrounded him; his excursions into the mountains gave rise to a
suspicion that he was concerned in Pichegru's plot. This was enough to mark
him for destruction. Bonaparte gave orders that he should be seized,
brought to Paris, and executed. On the 15th of March, 1804, a troop of
French soldiers crossed the Rhine and arrested the Duke in his own house at
Ettenheim. They arrived with him at Paris on the 20th. He was taken to the
fort of Vincennes without entering the city. On that same night a
commission of six colonels sat in judgment upon the prisoner, whose grave
was already dug, and pronounced sentence of death without hearing a word of
evidence. At daybreak the Duke was led out and shot.

[Napoleon Emperor, May 18, 1804.]

If some barbaric instinct made the slaughter of his predecessor's kindred
in Bonaparte's own eyes the omen of a successful usurpation, it was not so
with Europe generally. One universal sense of horror passed over the
Continent. The Court of Russia put on mourning; even the Diet of Ratisbon
showed signs of human passion at the indignity done to Germany by the
seizure of the Duke of Enghien on German soil. Austria kept silent, but
watched the signs of coming war. France alone showed no pity. Before the
Duke of Enghien had been dead a week, the Senate besought Napoleon to give
to France the security of a hereditary throne. Prefects, bishops, mayors,
and councils with one voice repeated the official prayer. A resolution in
favour of imperial rule was brought forward in the Tribunate, and passed,
after a noble and solitary protest on the part of Carnot. A decree of the
Senate embodied the terms of the new Constitution; and on the 18th of May,
without waiting for the sanction of a national vote, Napoleon assumed the
title of Emperor of the French.

[Title of Emperor of Austria, Aug., 1804.]

In France itself the change was one more of the name than of the substance
of power. Napoleon could not be vested with a more absolute authority than
he already possessed; but the forms of republican equality vanished; and
although the real social equality given to France by the Revolution was
beyond reach of change, the nation had to put up with a bastard Court and a
fictitious aristocracy of Corsican princes, Terrorist excellencies, and
Jacobin dukes. The new dynasty was recognised at Vienna and Berlin: on the
part of Austria it received the compliment of an imitation. Three months
after the assumption of the Imperial title by Napoleon, the Emperor Francis
(Emperor in Germany, but King in Hungary and Bohemia) assumed the title of
Emperor of all his Austrian dominions. The true reason for this act was the
virtual dissolution of the Germanic system by the Peace of Lunéville, and
the probability that the old Imperial dignity, if preserved in name, would
soon be transferred to some client of Napoleon or to Napoleon himself. Such
an apprehension was, however, not one that could be confessed to Europe.
Instead of the ruin of Germany, the grandeur of Austria was made the
ostensible ground of change. In language which seemed to be borrowed from
the scriptural history of Nebuchadnezzar, the Emperor Francis declared
that, although no possible addition could be made to his own personal
dignity, as Roman Emperor, yet the ancient glory of the Austrian House, the
grandeur of the principalities and kingdoms which were united under its
dominion, required that the Sovereigns of Austria should hold a title equal
to that of the greatest European throne. A general war against Napoleon was
already being proposed by the Court of St. Petersburg; but for the present
the Corsican and the Hapsburg Cæsar exchanged their hypocritical
congratulations. [106]

[Pitt again Minister, May, 1804.]

[Coalition of 1805.]

Almost at the same time that Bonaparte ascended the throne, Pitt returned
to power in Great Britain. He was summoned by the general distrust felt in
Addington's Ministry, and by the belief that no statesman but himself could
rally the Powers of Europe against the common enemy. Pitt was not long in
framing with Russia the plan of a third Coalition. The Czar broke off
diplomatic intercourse with Napoleon in September, 1804, and induced the
Court of Vienna to pledge itself to resist any further extension of French
power. Sweden entered into engagements with Great Britain. On the opening
of Parliament at the beginning of 1805, King George III. announced that an
understanding existed between Great Britain and Russia, and asked in
general terms for a provision for Continental subsidies. In April, a treaty
was signed at St. Petersburg by the representatives of Russia and Great
Britain, far more comprehensive and more serious in its provisions than any
which had yet united the Powers against France. [107] Russia and England
bound themselves to direct their efforts to the formation of a European
League capable of placing five hundred thousand men in the field. Great
Britain undertook to furnish subsidies to every member of the League; no
peace was to be concluded with France but by common consent; conquests
made by any of the belligerents were to remain unappropriated until the
general peace; and at the termination of the war a Congress was to fix
certain disputed points of international right, and to establish a
federative European system for their maintenance and enforcement. As the
immediate objects of the League, the treaty specified the expulsion of
the French from Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Northern Germany; the
re-establishment of the King of Sardinia in Piedmont, with an increase of
territory; and the creation of a solid barrier against any future
usurpations of France. The last expression signified the union of Holland
and part of Belgium under the House of Orange. In this respect, as in the
provision for a common disposal of conquests and for the settlement of
European affairs by a Congress, the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1805 defined
the policy actually carried out in 1814. Other territorial changes now
suggested by Pitt, including the annexation of the Rhenish Provinces to
the Prussian Monarchy, were not embodied in the treaty, but became from
this time understood possibilities.

[Policy of Prussia.]

[Prussia neutral.]

England and Russia had, however, some difficulty in securing allies.
Although in violation of his promises to Austria, Napoleon had accepted the
title of King of Italy from the Senate of the Italian Republic, and had
crowned himself with the Iron Crown of Lombardy (March, 1805), the
Ministers at Vienna would have preferred peace, if that had been possible;
and their master reluctantly consented to a war against Napoleon when war
in some form or other seemed inevitable. The policy of Prussia was
doubtful. For two years past Napoleon had made every effort to induce
Prussia to enter into alliance with himself. After the invasion of Hanover
he had doubled his attentions to the Court of Berlin, and had spared
nothing in the way of promises and assurances of friendship to win the King
over to his side. The neutrality of Prussia was of no great service to
France: its support would have been of priceless value, rendering any
attack upon France by Russia or Austria almost impossible, and thus
enabling Napoleon to throw his whole strength into the combat with Great
Britain. In the spring of 1804, the King of Prussia, uncertain of the
friendship of the Czar, and still unconvinced of the vanity of Napoleon's
professions, had inclined to a defensive alliance with France. The news of
the murder of the Duke of Enghien, arriving almost simultaneously with a
message of goodwill from St. Petersburg, led him to abandon this project of
alliance, but caused no breach with Napoleon. Frederick William adhered to
the temporising policy which Prussia had followed since 1795, and the
Foreign Minister, Haugwitz, who had recommended bolder measures, withdrew
for a time from the Court. [108] Baron Hardenberg, who had already acted as
his deputy, stepped into his place. Hardenberg, the negotiator of the peace
of Basle, had for the last ten years advocated a system of neutrality. A
politician quick to grasp new social and political ideas, he was without
that insight into the real forces at work in Europe which, in spite of
errors in detail, made the political aims of Pitt, and of many far inferior
men, substantially just and correct. So late as the end of the year 1804,
Hardenberg not only failed to recognise the dangers to which Prussia was
exposed from Napoleon's ambition, but conceived it to be still possible for
Prussia to avert war between France and the Allied Powers by maintaining a
good understanding with all parties alike. Hardenberg's neutrality excited
the wrath of the Russian Cabinet. While Metternich, the Austrian ambassador
at Berlin, cautiously felt his way, the Czar proposed in the last resort to
force Prussia to take up arms. A few months more passed; and, when
hostilities were on the point of breaking out, Hanover was definitely
offered to Prussia by Napoleon as the price of an alliance. Hardenberg,
still believing that it lay within the power of Prussia, by means of a
French alliance, both to curb Napoleon and to prevent a European war, urged
the King to close with the offer of the French Emperor. [109] But the King
shrank from a decision which involved the possibility of immediate war. The
offer of Hanover was rejected, and Prussia connected itself neither with
Napoleon nor his enemies.

[State of Austria. The army.]

Pitt, the author of the Coalition of 1805, had formed the most sanguine
estimate of the armaments of his allies. Austria was said to have entered
upon a new era since the peace of Lunéville, and to have turned to the best
account all the disasters of its former campaigns. There had indeed been no
want of fine professions from Vienna, but Pitt knew little of the real
state of affairs. The Archduke Charles had been placed at the head of the
military administration, and entrusted with extraordinary powers; but the
whole force of routine and corruption was ranged against him. He was
deceived by his subordinates; and after three years of reorganisation he
resigned his post, confessing that he left the army no nearer efficiency
than it was before. Charles was replaced at the War Office by General Mack.
Within six months this bustling charlatan imagined himself to have effected
the reorganisation of which the Archduke despaired, [110] while he had in
fact only introduced new confusion into an army already hampered beyond any
in Europe by its variety of races and languages.

[Political condition of Austria.]

If the military reforms of Austria were delusive, its political reforms
were still more so. The Emperor had indeed consented to unite the
Ministers, who had hitherto worked independently, in a Council of State;
but here reform stopped. Cobenzl, who was now First Minister, understood
nothing but diplomacy. Men continued in office whose presence was an
insuperable bar to any intelligent action: even in that mechanical routine
which, in the eyes of the Emperor Francis, constituted the life of the
State, everything was antiquated and self-contradictory. In all that
affected the mental life of the people the years that followed the peace of
Lunéville were distinctly retrograde. Education was placed more than ever
in the hands of the priests; the censorship of the press was given to the
police; a commission was charged with the examination of all the books
printed during the reign of the Emperor Joseph, and above two thousand
works, which had come into being during that brief period of Austrian
liberalism, were suppressed and destroyed. Trade regulations were issued
which combined the extravagance of the French Reign of Terror with the
ignorance of the Middle Ages. All the grain in the country was ordered to
be sold before a certain date, and the Jews were prohibited from carrying
on the corn-trade for a year. Such were the reforms described by Pitt in
the English Parliament as having effected the regeneration of Austria.
Nearer home things were judged in a truer light. Mack's paper-regiments,
the helplessness and unreality of the whole system of Austrian officialism,
were correctly appreciated by the men who had been most in earnest during
the last war. Even Thugut now thought a contest hopeless. The Archduke
Charles argued to the end for peace, and entered upon the war with the
presentiment of defeat and ruin.

[Plans of campaign, 1805.]

The plans of the Allies for the campaign of 1805 covered an immense field.
[111] It was intended that one Austrian army should operate in Lombardy
under the Archduke Charles, while a second, under General Mack, entered
Bavaria, and there awaited the arrival of the Russians, who were to unite
with it in invading France: British and Russian contingents were to combine
with the King of Sweden in Pomerania, and with the King of Naples in
Southern Italy. At the head-quarters of the Allies an impression prevailed
that Napoleon was unprepared for war. It was even believed that his
character had lost something of its energy under the influence of an
Imperial Court. Never was there a more fatal illusion. The forces of France
had never been so overwhelming; the plans of Napoleon had never been worked
out with greater minuteness and certainty. From Hanover to Strasburg masses
of troops had been collected upon the frontier in readiness for the order
to march; and, before the campaign opened, the magnificent army of
Boulogne, which had been collected for the invasion of England, was thrown
into the scale against Austria.

[Failure of Napoleon's naval designs against England.]

[Nelson and Villeneuve, April-June, 1805.]

Events had occurred at sea which frustrated Napoleon's plan for an attack
upon Great Britain. This attack, which in 1797 had been but lightly
threatened, had, upon the renewal of war with England in 1803, become the
object of Napoleon's most serious efforts. An army was concentrated at
Boulogne sufficient to overwhelm the military forces of England, if once it
could reach the opposite shore. Napoleon's thoughts were centred on a plan
for obtaining the naval superiority in the Channel, if only for the few
hours which it would take to transport the army from Boulogne to the
English coast. It was his design to lure Nelson to the other side of the
Atlantic by a feigned expedition against the West Indies, and, during the
absence of the English admiral, to unite all the fleets at present lying
blockaded in the French ports, as a cover for the invading armament.
Admiral Villeneuve was ordered to sail to Martinique, and, after there
meeting with some other ships, to re-cross the Atlantic with all possible
speed, and liberate the fleets blockaded in Ferrol, Brest, and Rochefort.
The junction of the fleets would give Napoleon a force of fifty sail in the
British Channel, a force more than sufficient to overpower all the
squadrons which Great Britain could possibly collect for the defence of its
shores. Such a design exhibited all the power of combination which marked
Napoleon's greatest triumphs; but it required of an indifferent marine the
precision and swiftness of movement which belonged to the land-forces of
France; it assumed in the seamen of Great Britain the same absence of
resource which Napoleon had found among the soldiers of the Continent. In
the present instance, however, Napoleon had to deal with a man as far
superior to all the admirals of France as Napoleon himself was to the
generals of Austria and Prussia. Villeneuve set sail for the West Indies in
the spring of 1805, and succeeded in drawing Nelson after him; but, before
he could re-cross the Atlantic, Nelson, incessantly pursuing the French
squadron in the West-Indian seas, and at length discovering its departure
homewards at Antigua (June 13), had warned the English Government of
Villeneuve's movement by a message sent in the swiftest of the English
brigs. [112] The Government, within twenty-four hours of receiving Nelson's
message, sent orders to Sir Robert Calder instantly to raise the blockades
of Ferrol and Rochefort, and to wait for Villeneuve off Cape Finisterre.
Here Villeneuve met the English fleet (July 22). He was worsted in a
partial engagement, and retired into the harbour of Ferrol. The pressing
orders of Napoleon forced the French admiral, after some delay, to attempt
that movement on Brest and Rochefort on which the whole plan of the
invasion of England depended. But Villeneuve was no longer in a condition
to meet the English force assembled against him. He put back without
fighting, and retired to Cadiz. All hope of carrying out the attack upon
England was lost.

[March of French armies on Bavaria, Sept.]

It only remained for Napoleon to avenge himself upon Austria through the
army which was baulked of its English prey. On the 1st of September, when
the Austrians were now on the point of crossing the Inn, the camp of
Boulogne was broken up. The army turned eastwards, and distributed itself
over all the roads leading from the Channel to the Rhine and the Upper
Danube. Far on the north-east the army of Hanover, commanded by Bernadotte,
moved as its left wing, and converged upon a point in Southern Germany
half-way between the frontiers of France and Austria. In the fables that
long disguised the true character of every action of Napoleon, the
admirable order of march now given to the French armies appears as the
inspiration of a moment, due to the rebound of Napoleon's genius after
learning the frustration of all his naval plans. In reality, the employment
of the "Army of England" against a Continental coalition had always been an
alternative present to Napoleon's mind; and it was threateningly mentioned
in his letters at a time when Villeneuve's failure was still unknown.

[Austrians invade Bavaria, Sept. 8.]

The only advantage which the Allies derived from the remoteness of the
Channel army was that Austria was able to occupy Bavaria without
resistance. General Mack, who was charged with this operation, crossed the
Inn on the 8th of September. The Elector of Bavaria was known to be
secretly hostile to the Coalition. The design of preventing his union with
the French was a correct one; but in the actual situation of the allied
armies it was one that could not be executed without great risk. The
preparations of Russia required more time than was allowed for them; no
Russian troops could reach the Inn before the end of October; and, in
consequence, the entire force operating in Western Germany did not exceed
seventy thousand men. Any doubts, however, as to the prudence of an advance
through Bavaria were silenced by the assurance that Napoleon had to bring
the bulk of his army from the British Channel. [113] In ignorance of the
real movements of the French, Mack pushed on to the western limit of
Bavaria, and reached the river Iller, the border of Würtemberg, where he
intended to stand on the defensive until the arrival of the Russians.

[Mack at Ulm, October.]

[Capitulation of Ulm, Oct. 17.]

Here, in the first days of October, he became aware of the presence of
French troops, not only in front but to the east of his own position.
With some misgiving as to the situation of the enemy, Mack nevertheless
refused to fall back from Ulm. Another week revealed the true state of
affairs. Before the Russians were anywhere near Bavaria, the vanguard of
Napoleon's Army of the Channel and the Army of Hanover had crossed
North-Western Germany, and seized the roads by which Mack had advanced
from Vienna. Every hour that Mack remained in Ulm brought new divisions
of the French into the Bavarian towns and villages behind him. Escape was
only possible by a retreat into the Tyrol, or by breaking through the
French line while it was yet incompletely formed. Resolute action might
still have saved the Austrian army; but the only energy that was shown
was shown in opposition to the general. The Archduke Ferdinand, who was
the titular commander-in-chief, cut his way through the French with part
of the cavalry; Mack remained in Ulm, and the iron circle closed around
him. At the last moment, after the hopelessness of the situation had
become clear even to himself, Mack was seized by an illusion that some
great disaster had befallen the French in their rear, and that in the
course of a few days Napoleon would be in full retreat. "Let no man utter
the word 'Surrender'"--he proclaimed in an order of October 15th--"the
enemy is in the most fearful straits; it is impossible that he can
continue more than a few days in the neighbourhood. If provisions run
short, we have three thousand horses to nourish us." "I myself," continued
the general, "will be the first to eat horseflesh." Two days later the
inevitable capitulation took place; and Mack with 25,000 men, fell into the
hands of the enemy without striking a blow. A still greater number of the
Austrians outside Ulm surrendered in detachments. [114]

[Trafalgar, Oct. 21.]

[Effects.]

All France read with wonder Napoleon's bulletins describing the capture of
an entire army and the approaching presentation of forty Austrian standards
to the Senate at Paris. No imperial rhetoric acquainted the nation with an
event which, within four days of the capitulation of Ulm, inflicted a
heavier blow on France than Napoleon himself had ever dealt to any
adversary. On the 21st of October Nelson's crowning victory of Trafalgar,
won over Villeneuve venturing out from Cadiz, annihilated the combined
fleets of France and Spain. Nelson fell in the moment of his triumph; but
the work which his last hours had achieved was one to which years prolonged
in glory could have added nothing. He had made an end of the power of
France upon the sea. Trafalgar was not only the greatest naval victory, it
was the greatest and most momentous victory won either by land or by sea
during the whole of the Revolutionary War. No victory, and no series of
victories, of Napoleon produced the same effect upon Europe. Austria was in
arms within five years of Marengo, and within four years of Austerlitz;
Prussia was ready to retrieve the losses of Jena in 1813; a generation
passed after Trafalgar before France again seriously threatened England at
sea. The prospect of crushing the British navy, so long as England had the
means to equip a navy, vanished: Napoleon henceforth set his hopes on
exhausting England's resources by compelling every State on the Continent
to exclude her commerce. Trafalgar forced him to impose his yoke upon all
Europe, or to abandon the hope of conquering Great Britain. If national
love and pride have idealised in our great sailor a character which, with
its Homeric force and freshness, combined something of the violence and the
self-love of the heroes of a rude age, the common estimate of Nelson's work
in history is not beyond the truth. So long as France possessed a navy,
Nelson sustained the spirit of England by his victories; his last triumph
left England in such a position that no means remained to injure her but
those which must result in the ultimate deliverance of the Continent.

[Treaty of Potsdam, Nov. 3.]

[Violation of Prussian territory.]

The consequences of Trafalgar lay in the future; the military situation in
Germany after Mack's catastrophe was such that nothing could keep the army
of Napoleon out of Vienna. In the sudden awakening of Europe to its danger,
one solitary gleam of hope appeared in the attitude of the Prussian Court.
Napoleon had not scrupled, in his anxiety for the arrival of the Army of
Hanover, to order Bernadotte, its commander, to march through the Prussian
territory of Anspach, which lay on his direct route towards Ulm. It was
subsequently alleged by the Allies that Bernadotte's violation of Prussian
neutrality had actually saved him from arriving too late to prevent Mack's
escape; but, apart from all imaginary grounds of reproach, the insult
offered to Prussia by Napoleon was sufficient to incline even Frederick
William to decided action. Some weeks earlier the approach of Russian
forces to his frontier had led Frederick William to arm; the French had now
more than carried out what the Russians had only suggested. When the
outrage was made known to the King of Prussia, that cold and reserved
monarch displayed an emotion which those who surrounded him had seldom
witnessed. [115] The Czar was forthwith offered a free passage for his
armies through Silesia; and, before the news of Mack's capitulation reached
the Russian frontier, Alexander himself was on the way to Berlin. The
result of the deliberations of the two monarchs was the Treaty of Potsdam,
signed on November 3rd. By this treaty Prussia undertook to demand from
Napoleon an indemnity for the King of Piedmont, and the evacuation of
Germany, Switzerland, and Holland: failing Napoleon's acceptance of
Prussia's mediation upon these terms, Prussia engaged to take the field
with 180,000 men.

[French enter Vienna, Nov. 13.]

Napoleon was now close upon Vienna. A few days after the capitulation of
Ulm thirty thousand Russians, commanded by General Kutusoff, had reached
Bavaria; but Mack's disaster rendered it impossible to defend the line of
the Inn, and the last detachments of the Allies disappeared as soon as
Napoleon's vanguard approached the river. The French pushed forth in
overpowering strength upon the capital. Kutusoff and the weakened Austrian
army could neither defend Vienna nor meet the invader in the field. It was
resolved to abandon the city, and to unite the retreating forces on the
northern side of the Danube with a second Russian army now entering
Moravia. On the 7th of November the Court quitted Vienna. Six days later
the French entered the capital, and by an audacious stratagem of Murat's
gained possession of the bridge connecting the city with the north bank of
the Danube, at the moment when the Austrian gunners were about to blow it
into the air. [116] The capture of this bridge deprived the allied army of
the last object protecting it from Napoleon's pursuit. Vienna remained in
the possession of the French. All the resources of a great capital were now
added to the means of the conqueror; and Napoleon prepared to follow his
retreating adversary beyond the Danube, and to annihilate him before he
could reach his supports.

[The Allies and Napoleon in Moravia, Nov.]

The retreat of the Russian army into Moravia was conducted with great skill
by General Kutusoff, who retorted upon Murat the stratagem practised at the
bridge of Vienna, and by means of a pretended armistice effected his
junction with the newly-arrived Russian corps between Olmütz and Brünn.
Napoleon's anger at the escape of his prey was shown in the bitterness of
his attacks upon Murat. The junction of the allied armies in Moravia had in
fact most seriously altered the prospects of the war. For the first time
since the opening of the campaign, the Allies had concentrated a force
superior in numbers to anything that Napoleon could bring against it. It
was impossible for Napoleon, while compelled to protect himself on the
Italian side, to lead more than 70,000 men into Moravia. The Allies had now
80,000 in camp, with the prospect of receiving heavy reinforcements. The
war, which lately seemed to be at its close, might now, in the hands of a
skilful general, be but beginning. Although the lines of Napoleon's
communication with France were well guarded, his position in the heart of
Europe exposed him to many perils; the Archduke Charles had defeated
Massena at Caldiero on the Adige, and was hastening northwards; above all,
the army of Prussia was preparing to enter the field. Every mile that
Napoleon advanced into Moravia increased the strain upon his resources;
every day that postponed the decision of the campaign brought new strength
to his enemies. Merely to keep the French in their camp until a Prussian
force was ready to assail their communications seemed enough to ensure the
Allies victory; and such was the counsel of Kutusoff, who made war in the
temper of the wariest diplomatist. But the scarcity of provisions was
telling upon the discipline of the army, and the Czar was eager for battle.
[117] The Emperor Francis gave way to the ardour of his allies. Weyrother,
the Austrian chief of the staff, drew up the most scientific plans for a
great victory that had ever been seen even at the Austrian head-quarters;
and towards the end of November it was agreed by the two Emperors that the
allied army should march right round Napoleon's position near Brünn, and
fight a battle with the object of cutting off his retreat upon Vienna.

[Haugwitz comes with Prussian demands to Napoleon, Nov. 28.]

[Haugwitz goes away to Vienna.]

It was in the days immediately preceding the intended battle, and after
Napoleon had divined the plans of his enemy, that Count Haugwitz, bearing
the demands of the Cabinet of Berlin, reached the French camp at Brünn.
[118] Napoleon had already heard something of the Treaty of Potsdam, and
was aware that Haugwitz had started from Berlin. He had no intention of
making any of those concessions which Prussia required; at the same time it
was of vital importance to him to avoid the issue of a declaration of war
by Prussia, which would nerve both Austria and Russia to the last
extremities. He therefore resolved to prevent Haugwitz by every possible
method from delivering his ultimatum, until a decisive victory over the
allied armies should have entirely changed the political situation. The
Prussian envoy himself played into Napoleon's hands. Haugwitz had obtained
a disgraceful permission from his sovereign to submit to all Napoleon's
wishes, if, before his arrival, Austria should be separately treating for
peace; and he had an excuse for delay in the fact that the military
preparations of Prussia were not capable of being completed before the
middle of December. He passed twelve days on the journey from Berlin, and
presented himself before Napoleon on the 28th of November. The Emperor,
after a long conversation, requested that he would proceed to Vienna and
transact business with Talleyrand. He was weak enough to permit himself to
be removed to a distance with his ultimatum to Napoleon undelivered. When
next the Prussian Government heard of their envoy, he was sauntering in
Talleyrand's drawing-rooms at Vienna, with the cordon of the French Legion
of Honour on his breast, exchanging civilities with officials who politely
declined to enter upon any question of business.

[Austerlitz, Dec. 2.]

[Armistice, Dec. 4.]

Haugwitz once removed to Vienna, and the Allies thus deprived of the
certainty that Prussia would take the field, Napoleon trusted that a single
great defeat would suffice to break up the Coalition. The movements of the
Allies were exactly those which he expected and desired. He chose his own
positions between Brünn and Austerlitz in the full confidence of victory;
and on the morning of the 2nd of December, when the mists disappeared
before a bright wintry sun, he saw with the utmost delight that the Russian
columns were moving round him in a vast arc, in execution of the
turning-movement of which he had forewarned his own army on the day before.
Napoleon waited until the foremost columns were stretched far in advance of
their supports; then, throwing Soult's division upon the gap left in the
centre of the allied line, he cut the army into halves, and crushed its
severed divisions at every point along the whole line of attack. The
Allies, although they outnumbered Napoleon, believed themselves to be
overpowered by an army double their own size. The incoherence of the allied
movements was as marked as the unity and effectiveness of those of the
French. It was alleged in the army that Kutusoff, the commander-in-chief,
had fallen asleep while the Austrian Weyrother was expounding his plans for
the battle; a truer explanation of the palpable errors in the allied
generalship was that the Russian commander had been forced by the Czar to
carry out a plan of which he disapproved. The destruction in the ranks of
the Allies was enormous, for the Russians fought with the same obstinacy as
at the Trebbia and at Novi. Austria had lost a second army in addition to
its capital; and the one condition which could have steeled its Government
against all thoughts of peace--the certainty of an immediate Prussian
attack upon Napoleon--had vanished with the silent disappearance of the
Prussian envoy. Two days after the battle, the Emperor Francis met his
conqueror in the open field, and accepted an armistice, which involved the
withdrawal of the Russian army from his dominions.

[Haugwitz signs Treaty with Napoleon, Dec. 15.]

Yet even now the Czar sent appeals to Berlin for help, and the negotiation
begun by Austria would possibly have been broken off if help had been
given. But the Cabinet of Frederick William had itself determined to evade
its engagements; and as soon as the news of Austerlitz reached Vienna,
Haugwitz had gone over heart and soul to the conqueror. While negotiations
for peace were carried on between France and Austria, a parallel
negotiation was carried on with the envoy of Prussia; and even before the
Emperor Francis gave way to the conqueror's demands, Haugwitz signed a
treaty with Napoleon at Schönbrunn, by which Prussia, instead of attacking
Napoleon, entered into an alliance with him, and received from him in
return the dominion of Hanover (December 15, 1805). [119] Had Prussia been
the defeated power at Austerlitz, the Treaty of Schönbrunn could not have
more completely reversed the policy to which King Frederick William had
pledged himself six weeks before. While Haugwitz was making his pact with
Napoleon, Hardenberg had been arranging with an English envoy for the
combination of English and Russian forces in Northern Germany. [120]

There were some among the King's advisers who declared that the treaty must
be repudiated, and the envoy disgraced. But the catastrophe of Austerlitz,
and the knowledge that the Government of Vienna was entering upon a
separate negotiation, had damped the courage of the men in power. The
conduct of Haugwitz was first excused, then supported, then admired. The
Duke of Brunswick disgraced himself by representing to the French
Ambassador in Berlin that the whole course of Prussian policy since the
beginning of the campaign had been an elaborate piece of dissimulation in
the interest of France. The leaders of the patriotic party in the army
found themselves without influence or following; the mass of the nation
looked on with the same stupid unconcern with which it had viewed every
event of the last twenty years. The King finally decided that the treaty by
which Haugwitz had thrown the obligations of his country to the winds
should be ratified, with certain modifications, including one that should
nominally reserve to King George III. a voice in the disposal of Hanover.
[121]

[Treaty of Presburg, Dec. 27.]

[End of the Holy Roman Empire, Aug. 6, 1806.]

Ten days after the departure of the Prussian envoy from Vienna, peace was
concluded between France and Austria by the Treaty of Presburg [122]
(December 27). At the outbreak of the war Napoleon had declared to his army
that he would not again spare Austria, as he had spared her at Campo Formio
and at Lunéville; and he kept his word. The Peace of Presburg left the
Austrian State in a condition very different from that in which it had
emerged from the two previous wars. The Treaty of Campo Formio had only
deprived Austria of Belgium in order to replace it by Venice; the
Settlement of Lunéville had only substituted French for Austrian influence
in Western Germany: the Treaty that followed the battle of Austerlitz
wrested from the House of Hapsburg two of its most important provinces, and
cut it off at once from Italy, from Switzerland, and from the Rhine.
Venetia was ceded to Napoleon's kingdom of Italy; the Tyrol was ceded to
Bavaria; the outlying districts belonging to Austria in Western Germany
were ceded to Baden and to Würtemberg. Austria lost 28,000 square miles of
territory and 3,000,000 inhabitants. The Emperor recognised the sovereignty
and independence of Bavaria, Baden, and Würtemberg, and renounced all
rights over those countries as head of the Germanic Body. The Electors of
Bavaria and Würtemberg, along with a large increase of territory, received
the title of King. The constitution of the Empire ceased to exist even in
name. It only remained for its chief, the successor of the Roman Cæsars, to
abandon his title at Napoleon's bidding; and on the 6th of August, 1806, an
Act, published by Francis II. at Vienna, made an end of the outworn and
dishonoured fiction of a Holy Roman Empire.

[Naples given to Joseph Bonaparte.]

Though Russia had not made peace with Napoleon, the European Coalition was
at an end. Now, as in 1801, the defeat of the Austrian armies left the
Neapolitan Monarchy to settle its account with the conqueror. Naples had
struck no blow; but it was only through the delays of the Allies that the
Neapolitan army had not united with an English and a Russian force in an
attack upon Lombardy. What had been pardoned in 1801 was now avenged upon
the Bourbon despot of Naples and his Austrian Queen, who from the first had
shown such bitter enmity to France. Assuming the character of a judge over
the sovereigns of Europe, Napoleon pronounced from Vienna that the House of
Naples had ceased to reign (Dec. 27, 1805). The sentence was immediately
carried into execution. Ferdinand fled, as he had fled in 1798, to place
himself under the protection of the navy of Great Britain. The vacant
throne was given by Napoleon to his own brother, Joseph Bonaparte.
Ferdinand, with the help of the English fleet, maintained himself in
Sicily. A thread of sea two miles broad was sufficient barrier against the
Power which had subdued half the Continent; and no attempt was made either
by Napoleon or his brother to gain a footing beyond the Straits of Messina.
In Southern Italy the same fanatical movements took place among the
peasantry as in the previous period of French occupation. When the armies
of Austria and Russia were crushed, and the continent lay at the mercy of
France, Great Britain imagined that it could effect something against
Napoleon in a corner of Italy, with the help of some ferocious villagers. A
British force, landing near Maida, on the Calabrian coast, in the summer of
1806, had the satisfaction of defeating the French at the point of the
bayonet, of exciting a horde of priests and brigands to fruitless
barbarities, and of abandoning them to their well-merited chastisement.

[Battle of Maida, July 6, 1806.]

[The Empire. Napoleonic dynasty and titles.]

The elevation of Napoleon's brother Joseph to the throne of Naples was the
first of a series of appointments now made by Napoleon in the character of
Emperor of the West. He began to style himself the new Charlemagne; his
thoughts and his language were filled with pictures of universal
sovereignty; his authority, as a military despot who had crushed his
neighbours, became strangely confused in his own mind with that half-sacred
right of the Cæsars from which the Middle Ages derived all subordinate
forms of power. He began to treat the government of the different countries
of Western Europe as a function to be exercised by delegation from himself.
Even the territorial grants which under the Feudal System accompanied
military or civil office were now revived and the commander of a French
army-corps or the chief of the French Foreign Office became the titular
lord of some obscure Italian principality. [123] Napoleon's own family were
to reign in many lands, as the Bourbons and the Hapsburgs had reigned
before them, but in strict dependence on their head. Joseph Bonaparte had
not long been installed at Naples when his brother Louis was compelled to
accept the Crown of Holland. Jerome, for whom no kingdom was at present
vacant, was forced to renounce his American wife, in order that he might
marry the daughter of the King of Würtemberg. Eugène Beauharnais,
Napoleon's step-son, held the office of Viceroy of Italy; Murat, who had
married Napoleon's sister, had the German Duchy of Berg. Bernadotte,
Talleyrand, and Berthier found themselves suzerains of districts whose
names were almost unknown to them. Out of the revenues of Northern Italy a
yearly sum was reserved as an endowment for the generals whom the Emperor
chose to raise to princely honours.

[Federation of the Rhine.]

More statesmanlike, more practical than Napoleon's dynastic policy, was his
organisation of Western Germany under its native princes as a dependency of
France. The object at which all French politicians had aimed since the
outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the exclusion of both Austria and
Prussia from influence in Western Germany, was now completely attained. The
triumph of French statesmanship, the consummation of two centuries of
German discord, was seen in the Act of Federation subscribed by the Western
German Sovereigns in the summer of 1806. By this Act the Kings of Bavaria
and Würtemberg, the Elector of Baden, and thirteen minor princes, united
themselves, in the League known as the Rhenish Confederacy, under the
protection of the French Emperor, and undertook to furnish contingents,
amounting to 63,000 men, in all wars in which the French Empire should
engage. Their connection with the ancient Germanic Body was completely
severed; the very town in which the Diet of the Empire had held its
meetings was annexed by one of the members of the Confederacy. The
Confederacy itself, with a population of 8,000,000, became for all purposes
of war and foreign policy a part of France. Its armies were organised by
French officers; its frontiers were fortified by French engineers; its
treaties were made for it at Paris. In the domestic changes which took
place within these States the work of consolidation begun in 1801 was
carried forward with increased vigour. Scores of tiny principalities which
had escaped dissolution in the earlier movement were now absorbed by their
stronger neighbours. Governments became more energetic, more orderly, more
ambitious. The princes who made themselves the vassals of Napoleon assumed
a more despotic power over their own subjects. Old constitutional forms
which had imposed some check on the will of the sovereign, like the Estates
of Würtemberg, were contemptuously suppressed; the careless, ineffective
routine of the last age gave place to a system of rigorous precision
throughout the public services. Military service was enforced in countries
hitherto free from it. The burdens of the people became greater, but they
were more fairly distributed. The taxes were more equally levied; justice
was made more regular and more simple. A career both in the army and the
offices of Government was opened to a people to whom the very conception of
public life had hitherto been unknown.

[No national unity in Germany.]

The establishment of German unity in our own day after a victorious
struggle with France renders it difficult to imagine the voluntary
submission of a great part of the race to a French sovereign, or to excuse
a policy which, like that of 1806, appears the opposite of everything
honourable and patriotic. But what seems strange now was not strange then.
No expression more truly describes the conditions of that period than one
of the great German poet who was himself so little of a patriot. "Germany,"
said Goethe, "is not a nation." Germany had indeed the unity of race; but
all that truly constitutes a nation, the sense of common interest, a common
history, pride, and desire, Germany did not possess at all. Bavaria, the
strongest of the western States, attached itself to France from a
well-grounded fear of Austrian aggression. To be conquered by Austria was
just as much conquest for Bavaria as to be conquered by any other Power; it
was no step to German unity, but a step in the aggrandisement of the House
of Hapsburg. The interests of the Austrian House were not the interests of
Germany any more than they were the interests of Croatia, or of Venice, or
of Hungary. Nor, on the other hand, had Prussia yet shown a form of
political life sufficiently attractive to lead the southern States to
desire to unite with it. Frederick's genius had indeed made him the hero of
Germany, but his military system was harsh and tyrannical. In the actual
condition of Austria and Prussia, it is doubtful whether the population of
the minor States would have been happier united to these Powers than under
their own Governments. Conquest in any case was impossible, and there was
nothing to stimulate to voluntary union. It followed that the smaller
States were destined to remain without a nationality, until the violence of
some foreign Power rendered weakness an intolerable evil, and forced upon
the better minds of Germany the thought of a common Fatherland.

[What German unity desirable.]

The necessity of German unity is no self-evident political truth. Holland
and Switzerland in past centuries detached themselves from the Empire, and
became independent States, with the highest advantage to themselves.
Identity of blood is no more conclusive reason for political union between
Holstein and the Tyrol than between Great Britain and the United States of
America. The conditions which determine both the true area and the true
quality of German unity are, in fact, something more complex than an
ethnological law or an outburst of patriotic indignation against the
French. Where local circumstances rendered it possible for a German
district, after detaching itself from the race, to maintain a real national
life and defend itself from foreign conquest, there it was perhaps better
that the connection with Germany should be severed; where, as in the great
majority of minor States, independence resulted only in military
helplessness and internal stagnation, there it was better that independence
should give place to German unity. But the conditions of any tolerable
unity were not present so long as Austria was the leading Power. Less was
imperilled in the future of the German people by the submission of the
western States to France than would have been lost by their permanent
incorporation under Austria.

[The Empire of 1806 might have been permanent.]

[Limits of a possible Napoleonic Empire.]

With the establishment of the Rhenish Confederacy and the conquest of
Naples, Napoleon's empire reached, but did not overpass, the limits within
which the sovereignty of France might probably have been long maintained.
It has been usual to draw the line between the sound statesmanship and the
hazardous enterprises of Napoleon at the Peace of Lunéville: a juster
appreciation of the condition of Western Europe would perhaps include
within the range of a practical, though mischievous, ideal the whole of the
political changes which immediately followed the war of 1805, and which
extended Napoleon's dominion to the Inn and to the Straits of Messina.
Italy and Germany were not then what they have since become. The districts
that lay between the Rhine and the Inn were not more hostile to the
foreigner than those Rhenish Provinces which so readily accepted their
union with France. The more enterprising minds in Italy found that the
Napoleonic rule, with all its faults, was superior to anything that Italy
had known in recent times. If we may judge from the feeling with which
Napoleon was regarded in Germany down to the middle of the year 1806, and
in Italy down to a much later date, the Empire then founded might have been
permanently upheld, if Napoleon had abstained from attacking other States.
No comparison can be made between the attractive power exercised by the
social equality of France, its military glory, and its good administration,
and the slow and feeble process of assimilation which went on within the
dominions of Austria; yet Austria succeeded in uniting a greater variety of
races than France sought to unite in 1806. The limits of a possible France
were indeed fixed, and fixed more firmly than by any geographical line, in
the history and national character of two other peoples. France could not
permanently overpower Prussia, and it could not permanently overpower
Spain. But within a boundary-line drawn roughly from the mouth of the Elbe
to the head of the Adriatic, that union of national sentiment and material
force which checks the formation of empires did not exist. The true
turning-point in Napoleon's career was the moment when he passed beyond the
policy which had planned the Federation of the Rhine, and roused by his
oppression the one State which was still capable of giving a national life
to Germany.




CHAPTER VII.


Death of Pitt--Ministry of Fox and Grenville--Napoleon forces Prussia into
War with England, and then offers Hanover to England--Prussia resolves on
War with Napoleon--State of Prussia--Decline of the Army--Southern Germany
with Napoleon--Austria Neutral--England and Russia about to help Prussia,
but not immediately--Campaign of 1806--Battles of Jena and Auerstädt--Ruin
of the Prussian Army--Capitulation of Fortresses--Demands of Napoleon--The
War continues--Berlin Decree--Exclusion of English Goods from the
Continent--Russia enters the War--Campaign in Poland and East
Prussia--Eylau--Treaty of Bartenstein--Friedland--Interview at
Tilsit--Alliance of Napoleon and Alexander--Secret Articles--English
Expedition to Denmark--The French enter Portugal--Prussia after the Peace
of Tilsit--Stein's Edict of Emancipation--The Prussian Peasant--Reform of
the Prussian Army, and Creation of Municipalities--Stein's other Projects
of Reform, which are not carried out.


[Death of Pitt, Jan. 23rd, 1806.]

[Coalition Ministry of Fox and Grenville.]

Six weeks after the tidings of Austerlitz reached Great Britain, the
statesman who had been the soul of every European coalition against France
was carried to the grave. [124] Pitt passed away at a moment of the deepest
gloom. His victories at sea appeared to have effected nothing; his
combinations on land had ended in disaster and ruin. If during Pitt's
lifetime a just sense of the greatness and patriotism of all his aims
condoned the innumerable faults of his military administration, that
personal ascendancy which might have disarmed criticism even after the
disaster of Austerlitz belonged to no other member of his Ministry. His
colleagues felt their position to be hopeless. Though the King attempted to
set one of Pitt's subordinates in the vacant place, the prospects of Europe
were too dark, the situation of the country too serious, to allow a
Ministry to be formed upon the ordinary principles of party-organisation or
in accordance with the personal preferences of the monarch. The nation
called for the union of the ablest men of all parties in the work of
government; and, in spite of the life-long hatred of King George to Mr.
Fox, a Ministry entered upon office framed by Fox and Grenville conjointly;
Fox taking the post of Foreign Secretary, with a leading influence in the
Cabinet, and yielding to Grenville the title of Premier. Addington received
a place in the Ministry, and carried with him the support of a section of
the Tory party, which was willing to countenance a policy of peace.

[Napoleon hopes to intimidate Fox through Prussia.]

Fox had from the first given his whole sympathy to the French Revolution,
as the cause of freedom. He had ascribed the calamities of Europe to the
intervention of foreign Powers in favour of the Bourbon monarchy: he had
palliated the aggressions of the French Republic as the consequences of
unjust and unprovoked attack: even the extinction of liberty in France
itself had not wholly destroyed his faith in the honour and the generosity
of the soldier of the Revolution. In the brief interval of peace which in
1802 opened the Continent to English travellers, Fox had been the guest of
the First Consul. His personal feeling towards the French Government had in
it nothing of that proud and suspicious hatred which made negotiation so
difficult while Pitt continued in power. It was believed at Paris, and with
good reason, that the first object of Fox on entering upon office would be
the restoration of peace. Napoleon adopted his own plan in view of the
change likely to arise in the spirit of the British Cabinet. It was his
habit, wherever he saw signs of concession, to apply more violent means of
intimidation. In the present instance he determined to work upon the
pacific leanings of Fox by adding Prussia to the forces arrayed against
Great Britain. Prussia, isolated and discredited since the battle of
Austerlitz, might first be driven into hostilities with England, and then
be made to furnish the very satisfaction demanded by England as the primary
condition of peace.

[The King of Prussia wishes to disguise the cession of Hanover.]

[Napoleon forces Prussia into war with England, March, 1806.]

At the moment when Napoleon heard of Pitt's death, he was expecting the
arrival of Count Haugwitz at Paris for the purpose of obtaining some
modification in the treaty which he had signed on behalf of Prussia after
the battle of Austerlitz. The principal feature in that treaty had been the
grant of Hanover to Prussia by the French Emperor in return for its
alliance. This was the point which above all others excited King Frederick
William's fears and scruples. He desired to retain Hanover, but he also
desired to derive his title rather from its English owner than from its
French invader. It was the object of Haugwitz' visit to Paris to obtain an
alteration in the terms of the treaty which should make the Prussian
occupation of Hanover appear to be merely provisional, and reserve to the
King of England at least a nominal voice in its ultimate transfer. In full
confidence that Napoleon would agree to such a change, the King of Prussia
had concealed the fact of its cession to himself by Napoleon, and published
an untruthful proclamation, stating that, in the interests of the
Hanoverian people themselves, a treaty had been signed and ratified by the
French and Prussian Governments, in virtue of which Hanover was placed
under the protection of the King of Prussia until peace should be concluded
between Great Britain and France. The British Government received
assurances of Prussia's respect for the rights of King George III.: the
bitter truth that the treaty between France and Prussia contained no single
word reserving the rights of the Elector, and that the very idea of
qualifying the absolute cession of Hanover was an afterthought, lay hidden
in the conscience of the Prussian Cabinet. Never had a Government more
completely placed itself at the mercy of a pitiless enemy. Count Haugwitz,
on reaching Paris, was received by Napoleon with a storm of invective
against the supposed partisans of England at the Prussian Court. Napoleon
declared that the ill faith of Prussia had made an end even of that
miserable pact which had been extorted after Austerlitz, and insisted that
King Frederick William should openly defy Great Britain by closing the
ports of Northern Germany to British vessels, and by declaring himself
endowed by Napoleon with Hanover in virtue of Napoleon's own right of
conquest. Haugwitz signed a second and more humiliating treaty embodying
these conditions; and the Prussian Government, now brought into the depths
of contempt, but unready for immediate war, executed the orders of its
master. [125] A proclamation, stating that Prussia had received the
absolute dominion of Hanover from its conqueror Napoleon, gave the lie to
the earlier announcements of King Frederick William. A decree was published
excluding the ships of England from the ports of Prussia and from those of
Hanover itself (March 28, 1806). It was promptly answered by the seizure of
four hundred Prussian vessels in British harbours, and by the total
extinction of Prussian maritime commerce by British privateers. [126]

[Napoleon negotiates with Fox. Offers Hanover to England.]

Scarcely was Prussia committed to this ruinous conflict with Great Britain,
when Napoleon opened negotiations for peace with Mr. Fox's Government. The
first condition required by Great Britain was the restitution of Hanover to
King George III. It was unhesitatingly granted by Napoleon. [127] Thus was
Prussia to be mocked of its prey, after it had been robbed of all its
honour. For the present, however, no rumour of this part of the negotiation
reached Berlin. The negotiation itself, which dragged on through several
months, turned chiefly upon the future ownership of Sicily. Napoleon had in
the first instance agreed that Sicily should be left in the hands of
Ferdinand of Naples, who had never been expelled from it by the French.
Finding, however, that the Russian envoy d'Oubril, who had been sent to
Paris with indefinite instructions by the Emperor Alexander, was willing to
separate the cause of Russia from that of England, and to sign a separate
peace, Napoleon retracted his promise relating to Sicily, and demanded that
this island should be ceded to his brother Joseph. D'Oubril signed
Preliminaries on behalf of Russia on the 20th of July, and left the English
negotiator to obtain what terms he could. Fox had been willing to recognise
the order of things established by Napoleon on the Italian mainland; he
would even have ceded Sicily, if Russia had urged this in a joint
negotiation; but he was too good a statesman to be cheated out of Sicily by
a mere trick. He recalled the English envoy from Paris, and waited for the
judgment of the Czar upon the conduct of his own representative. The Czar
disavowed d'Oubril's negotiations, and repudiated the treaty which he
brought back to St. Petersburg. Napoleon had thus completely overreached
himself, and, instead of severing Great Britain and Russia by separate
agreements, had only irritated and displeased them both. The negotiations
went no further; their importance lay only in the effect which they
produced upon Prussia, when Napoleon's offer of Hanover to Great Britain
became known at Berlin.

[Prussia learns of Napoleon's offer of Hanover to England, Aug. 7.]

[Prussia determines on war.]

From the time when Haugwitz' second treaty placed his master at Napoleon's
feet, Prussia had been subjected to an unbroken series of insults and
wrongs. Murat, as Duke of Berg, had seized upon territory allotted to
Prussia in the distribution of the ecclesiastical lands; the establishment
of a North German Confederacy under Prussian leadership was suggested by
Napoleon himself, only to be summarily forbidden as soon as Prussia
attempted to carry the proposal into execution. There was scarcely a
courtier in Berlin who did not feel that the yoke of the French had become
past endurance; even Haugwitz himself now considered war as a question of
time. The patriotic party in the capital and the younger officers of the
army bitterly denounced the dishonoured Government, and urged the King to
strike for the credit of his country. [128] In the midst of this deepening
agitation, a despatch arrived from Lucchesini, the Prussian Ambassador at
Paris (August 7), relating the offer of Hanover made by Napoleon to the
British Government. For nearly three months Lucchesini had caught no
glimpse of the negotiations between Great Britain and France; suddenly, on
entering into conversation with the English envoy at a dinner-party, he
learnt the blow which Napoleon had intended to deal to Prussia. Lucchesini
instantly communicated with the Court of Berlin; but his despatch was
opened by Talleyrand's agents before it left Paris, and the French
Government was thus placed on its guard against the sudden explosion of
Prussian wrath. Lucchesini's despatch had indeed all the importance that
Talleyrand attributed to it. It brought that spasmodic access of resolution
to the irresolute King which Bernadotte's violation of his territory had
brought in the year before. The whole Prussian army was ordered to prepare
for war; Brunswick was summoned to form plans of a campaign; and appeals
for help were sent to Vienna, to St. Petersburg, and even to the hostile
Court of London.

[Condition of Prussia.]

[Ministers not in the King's Cabinet.]

The condition of Prussia at this critical moment was one which filled with
the deepest alarm those few patriotic statesmen who were not blinded by
national vanity or by slavery to routine. The foreign policy of Prussia in
1805, miserable as it was, had been but a single manifestation of the
helplessness, the moral deadness that ran through every part of its
official and public life. Early in the year 1806 a paper was drawn up by
Stein, [129] exposing, in language seldom used by a statesman, the
character of the men by whom Frederick William was surrounded, and
declaring that nothing but a speedy change of system could save the
Prussian State from utter downfall and ruin. Two measures of immediate
necessity were specified by Stein, the establishment of a responsible
council of Ministers, and the removal of Haugwitz and all his friends from
power. In the existing system of government the Ministers were not the
monarch's confidential advisers. The Ministers performed their work in
isolation from one another; the Cabinet, or confidential council of the
King, was composed of persons holding no public function, and free from all
public responsibility. No guarantee existed that the policy of the country
would be the same for two days together. The Ministers were often unaware
of the turn that affairs had taken in the Cabinet; and the history of
Haugwitz' mission to Austerlitz showed that an individual might commit the
State to engagements the very opposite of those which he was sent to
contract. The first necessity for Prussia was a responsible governing
council: with such a council, formed from the heads of the actual
Administration, the reform of the army and of the other branches of the
public service, which was absolutely hopeless under the present system,
might be attended with some chance of success.

[State of the Prussian Army.]

[Higher officers.]

The army of Prussia, at an epoch when the conscription and the genius of
Napoleon had revolutionised the art of war, was nothing but the army of
Frederick the Great grown twenty years older. [130] It was obvious to all
the world that its commissariat and marching-regulations belonged to a time
when weeks were allowed for movements now reckoned by days; but there were
circumstances less conspicuous from the outside which had paralysed the
very spirit of soldiership, and prepared the way for a military collapse in
which defeats in the field were the least dishonourable event. Old age had
rendered the majority of the higher officers totally unfit for military
service. In that barrack-like routine of officialism which passed in
Prussia for the wisdom of government, the upper ranks of the army formed a
species of administrative corps in time of peace, and received for their
civil employment double the pay that they could earn in actual war. Aged
men, with the rank of majors, colonels, and generals, mouldered in the
offices of country towns, and murmured at the very mention of a war, which
would deprive them of half their salaries. Except in the case of certain
princes, who were placed in high rank while young, and of a few vigorous
patriarchs like Blücher, all the energy and military spirit of the army was
to be found in men who had not passed the grade of captain. The higher
officers were, on an average, nearly double the age of French officers of
corresponding rank. [131] Of the twenty-four lieutenant-generals, eighteen
were over sixty; the younger ones, with a single exception, were princes.
Five out of the seven commanders of infantry were over seventy; even the
sixteen cavalry generals included only two who had not reached sixty-five.
These were the men who, when the armies of Prussia were beaten in the
field, surrendered its fortresses with as little concern as if they had
been receiving the French on a visit of ceremony. Their vanity was as
lamentable as their faint-heartedness. "The army of his Majesty," said
General Rüchel on parade, "possesses several generals equal to Bonaparte."
Faults of another character belonged to the generation which had grown up
since Frederick. The arrogance and licentiousness of the younger officers
was such that their ruin on the field of Jena caused positive joy to a
great part of the middle classes of Prussia. But, however hateful their
manners, and however rash their self-confidence, the vices of these younger
men had no direct connection with the disasters of 1806. The gallants who
sharpened their swords on the window-sill of the French Ambassador received
a bitter lesson from the plebeian troopers of Murat; but they showed
courage in disaster, and subsequently gave to their country many officers
of ability and honour.

[Common soldiers.]

What was bad in the higher grades of the army was not retrieved by any
excellence on the part of the private soldier. The Prussian army was
recruited in part from foreigners, but chiefly from Prussian serfs, who
were compelled to serve. Men remained with their regiments till old age;
the rough character of the soldiers and the frequency of crimes and
desertions occasioned the use of brutal punishments, which made the
military service an object of horror to the better part of the middle and
lower classes. The soldiers themselves, who could be flogged and drilled
into high military perfection by a great general like Frederick, felt a
surly indifference to their present taskmasters, and were ready to desert
in masses to their homes as soon as a defeat broke up the regimental muster
and roll-call. A proposal made in the previous year to introduce that
system of general service which has since made Prussia so great a military
power was rejected by a committee of generals, on the ground that it "would
convert the most formidable army of Europe into a militia." But whether
Prussia entered the war with a militia or a regular army, under the men who
held command in 1806 it could have met with but one fate. Neither soldiery
nor fortresses could have saved a kingdom whose generals knew only how to
capitulate.

[Southern Germany. Execution of Palm, Aug. 26.]

All southern Germany was still in Napoleon's hands. As the probability of a
war with Prussia became greater and greater, Napoleon had tightened his
grasp upon the Confederate States. Publications originating among the
patriotic circles of Austria were beginning to appeal to the German people
to unite against a foreign oppressor. An anonymous pamphlet, entitled
"Germany in its Deep Humiliation," was sold by various booksellers in
Bavaria, among others by Palm, a citizen of Nuremberg. There is no evidence
that Palm was even acquainted with the contents of the pamphlet; but as in
the case of the Duke of Enghien, two years before, Napoleon had required a
victim to terrify the House of Bourbon, so now he required a victim to
terrify those who among the German people might be inclined to listen to
the call of patriotism. Palm was not too obscure for the new Charlemagne.
The innocent and unoffending man, innocent even of the honourable crime of
attempting to save his country, was dragged before a tribunal of French
soldiers, and executed within twenty-four hours, in pursuance of the
imperative orders of Napoleon (August 26). The murder was an unnecessary
one, for the Bavarians and the Würtembergers were in fact content with the
yoke they bore; its only effect was to arouse among a patient and
home-loving class the doubt whether the German citizen and his family might
not after all have some interest in the preservation of national
independence.

[Austria neutral. England and Russia can give Prussia no prompt help.]

When, several years later, the oppressions of Napoleon had given to a great
part of the German race at least the transient nobleness of a real
patriotism, the story of Palm's death was one of those that kindled the
bitterest sense of wrong: at the time, it exercised no influence upon the
course of political events. Southern Germany remained passive, and supplied
Napoleon with a reserve of soldiers: Prussia had to look elsewhere for
allies. Its prospects of receiving support were good, if the war should
prove a protracted one, but not otherwise. Austria, crippled by the
disasters of 1805, could only hope to renew the struggle if victory should
declare against Napoleon. In other quarters help might be promised, but it
could not be given at the time and at the place where it was needed. The
Czar proffered the whole forces of his Empire; King George III. forgave the
despoilers of his patrimony when he found that they really intended to
fight the French; but the troops of Alexander lay far in the East, and the
action of England in any Continental war was certain to be dilatory and
ineffective. Prussia was exposed to the first shock of the war alone. In
the existing situation of the French armies, a blow unusually swift and
crushing might well be expected by all who understood Napoleon's warfare.

[Situation of the French and Prussian armies, Sept., 1806.]

[French on the Main.]

[Prussians on the Saale.]

A hundred and seventy thousand French soldiers, with contingents from the
Rhenish Confederate States, lay between the Main and the Inn. The last
weeks of peace, in which the Prussian Government imagined themselves to be
deceiving the enemy while they pushed forward their own preparations, were
employed by Napoleon in quietly concentrating this vast force upon the Main
(September, 1806). Napoleon himself appeared to be absorbed in friendly
negotiations with General Knobelsdorff, the new Prussian Ambassador at
Paris. In order to lull Napoleon's suspicions, Haugwitz had recalled
Lucchesini from Paris, and intentionally deceived his successor as to the
real designs of the Prussian Cabinet. Knobelsdorff confidentially informed
the Emperor that Prussia was not serious in its preparations for war.
Napoleon, caring very little whether Prussia intended to fight or not,
continued at Paris in the appearance of the greatest calm, while his
lieutenants in Southern Germany executed those unobserved movements which
were to collect the entire army upon the Upper Main. In the meantime the
advisers of King Frederick William supposed themselves to have made
everything ready for a vigorous offensive. Divisions of the Prussian army,
numbering nearly 130,000 men, were concentrated in the neighbourhood of
Jena, on the Saale. The bolder spirits in the military council pressed for
an immediate advance through the Thuringian Forest, and for an attack upon
what were supposed to be the scattered detachments of the French in
Bavaria. Military pride and all the traditions of the Great Frederick
impelled Prussia to take the offensive rather than to wait for the enemy
upon the strong line of the Elbe. Political motives pointed in the same
direction, for the support of Saxony was doubtful if once the French were
permitted to approach Dresden.

[Confusion of the Prussians.]

On the 23rd of September King Frederick William arrived at the
head-quarters of the army, which were now at Naumburg, on the Saale. But
his presence brought no controlling mind to the direction of affairs.
Councils of war held on the two succeeding days only revealed the discord
and the irresolution of the military leaders of Prussia. Brunswick, the
commander-in-chief, sketched the boldest plans, and shrank from the
responsibility of executing them. Hohenlohe, who commanded the left wing,
lost no opportunity of opposing his superior; the suggestions of officers
of real ability, like Scharnhorst, chief of the staff, fell unnoticed among
the wrangling of pedants and partisans. Brunswick, himself a man of great
intelligence though of little resolution, saw the true quality of the men
who surrounded him. "Rüchel," he cried, "is a tin trumpet, Möllendorf a
dotard, Kalkreuth a cunning trickster. The generals of division are a set
of stupid journeymen. Are these the people with whom one can make war on
Napoleon? No. The best service that I could render to the King would be to
persuade him to keep the peace." [132] It was ultimately decided, after two
days of argument, that the army should advance through the Thuringian
Forest, while feints on the right and left deceived the French as to its
real direction. The diplomatists, however, who were mad enough to think
that an ultimatum which they had just despatched to Paris would bring
Napoleon on to his knees, insisted that the opening of hostilities should
be deferred till the 8th of October, when the term of grace which they had
given to Napoleon would expire.

[Prussians at Erfurt, Oct. 4.]

A few days after this decision had been formed, intelligence arrived at
head-quarters that Napoleon himself was upon the Rhine. Before the
ultimatum reached the hands of General Knobelsdorff in Paris, Napoleon had
quitted the capital, and the astonished Ambassador could only send the
ultimatum in pursuit of him after he had gone to place himself at the head
of 200,000 men. The news that Napoleon was actually in Mainz confounded the
diplomatists in the Prussian camp, and produced an order for an immediate
advance. This was the wisest as well as the boldest determination that had
yet been formed; and an instant assault upon the French divisions on the
Main might perhaps even now have given the Prussian army the superiority in
the first encounter. But some fatal excuse was always at hand to justify
Brunswick in receding from his resolutions. A positive assurance was
brought into camp by Lucchesini that Napoleon had laid his plans for
remaining on the defensive on the south of the Thuringian Forest. If this
were true, there might yet be time to improve the plan of the campaign; and
on the 4th of October, when every hour was of priceless value, the forward
march was arrested, and a new series of deliberations began at the
head-quarters at Erfurt. In the council held on the 4th of October, a total
change in the plan of operations was urged by Hohenlohe's staff. They
contended, and rightly, that it was the design of Napoleon to pass the
Prussian army on the east by the valley of the Saale, and to cut it off
from the roads to the Elbe. The delay in Brunswick's movements had in fact
brought the French within striking distance of the Prussian communications.
Hohenlohe urged the King to draw back the army from Erfurt to the Saale, or
even to the east of it, in order to cover the roads to Leipzig and the
Elbe. His theory of Napoleon's movements, which was the correct one, was
adopted by the council, and the advance into the Thuringian Forest was
abandoned; but instead of immediately marching eastwards with the whole
army, the generals wasted two more days in hesitations and half-measures.
At length it was agreed that Hohenlohe should take post at Jena, and that
the mass of the army should fall back to Weimar, with the object of
striking a blow at some undetermined point on the line of Napoleon's
advance.

[Encounter at Saalfeld, Oct. 10.]

[Napoleon defeats Hohenlohe at Jena, Oct. 14.]

[Davoust defeats Brunswick at Auerstädt, Oct. 14.]

[Ruin of the Prussian Army.]

Napoleon, who had just received the Prussian ultimatum with unbounded
ridicule and contempt, was now moving along the roads that lead from
Bamberg and Baireuth to the Upper Saale. On the 10th of October, as the
division of Lannes was approaching Saalfeld, it was attacked by Prince
Louis Ferdinand at the head of Hohenlohe's advanced guard. The attack was
made against Hohenlohe's orders. It resulted in the total rout of the
Prussian force. Though the numbers engaged were small, the loss of
magazines and artillery, and the death of Prince Louis Ferdinand, the hero
of the war-party, gave to this first repulse the moral effect of a great
military disaster. Hohenlohe's troops at Jena were seized with panic;
numbers of men threw away their arms and dispersed; the drivers of
artillery-waggons and provision-carts cut the traces and rode off with
their horses. Brunswick, however, and the main body of the army, were now
at Weimar, close at hand; and if Brunswick had decided to fight a great
battle at Jena, the Prussians might have brought nearly 90,000 men into
action. But the plans of the irresolute commander were again changed. It
was resolved to fall back upon Magdeburg and the Elbe. Brunswick himself
moved northwards to Naumburg; Hohenlohe was ordered to hold the French in
check at Jena until this movement was completed. Napoleon reached Jena. He
had no intelligence of Brunswick's retreat, and imagined the mass of the
Prussian army to be gathered round Hohenlohe, on the plateau before him. He
sent Davoust, with a corps 27,000 strong, to outflank the enemy by a march
in the direction of Naumburg, and himself prepared to make the attack in
front with 90,000 men, a force more than double Hohenlohe's real army. The
attack was made on the 14th of October. Hohenlohe's army was dashed to
pieces by Napoleon, and fled in wild disorder. Davoust's weak corps, which
had not expected to meet with any important forces until it fell upon
Hohenlohe's flank, found itself in the presence of Brunswick's main army,
when it arrived at Auerstädt, a few miles to the north. Fortune had given
to the Prussian commander an extraordinary chance of retrieving what
strategy had lost. A battle conducted with common military skill would not
only have destroyed Davoust, but have secured, at least for the larger
portion of the Prussian forces, a safe retreat to Leipzig or the Elbe. The
French general, availing himself of steep and broken ground, defeated
numbers nearly double his own through the confusion of his adversary, who
sent up detachment after detachment instead of throwing himself upon
Davoust with his entire strength. The fighting was as furious on the
Prussian side as its conduct was unskilful. King Frederick William, who led
the earlier cavalry charges, had two horses killed under him. Brunswick was
mortally wounded. Many of the other generals were killed or disabled. There
remained, however, a sufficient number of unbroken regiments to preserve
some order in the retreat until the army came into contact with the remnant
of Hohenlohe's forces, flying for their lives before the cavalry of Murat.
Then all hope was lost. The fugitive mass struck panic and confusion into
the retreating columns; and with the exception of a few regiments which
gathered round well-known leaders, the soldiers threw away their arms and
spread over the country in headlong rout. There was no line of retreat, and
no rallying-point. The disaster of a single day made an end of the Prussian
army as a force capable of meeting the enemy in the field. A great part of
the troops was captured by the pursuing enemy during the next few days. The
regiments which preserved their coherence were too weak to make any attempt
to check Napoleon's advance, and could only hope to save themselves by
escaping to the fortresses on the Oder.

[Haugwitz and Lord Morpeth.]

[Retreat and surrender of Hohenlohe.]

Two days before the battle of Jena, an English envoy, Lord Morpeth, had
arrived at the head-quarters of the King of Prussia, claiming the
restoration of Hanover, and bearing an offer of the friendship and support
of Great Britain. At the moment when the Prussian monarchy was on the point
of being hurled to the ground, its Government might have been thought
likely to welcome any security that it should not be abandoned in its
utmost need. Haugwitz, however, was at head-quarters, dictating lying
bulletins, and perplexing the generals with ridiculous arguments of policy
until the French actually opened fire. When the English envoy made known
his arrival, he found that no one would transact business with him.
Haugwitz had determined to evade all negotiations until the battle had been
fought. He was unwilling to part with Hanover, and he hoped that a victory
over Napoleon would enable him to meet Lord Morpeth with a bolder
countenance on the following day. When that day arrived, Ministers and
diplomatists were flying headlong over the country. The King made his
escape to Weimar, and wrote to Napoleon, begging for an armistice; but the
armistice was refused, and the pursuit of the broken army was followed up
without a moment's pause. The capital offered no safe halting-place; and
Frederick William only rested when he had arrived at Graudenz, upon the
Vistula. Hohenlohe's poor remnant of an army passed the Elbe at Magdeburg,
and took the road for Stettin, at the mouth of the Oder, leaving Berlin to
its fate. The retreat was badly conducted; alternate halts and strained
marches discouraged the best of the soldiers. As the men passed their
native villages they abandoned the famishing and broken-spirited columns;
and at the end of a fortnight's disasters Prince Hohenlohe surrendered to
his pursuers at Prenzlau with his main body, now numbering only 10,000 men
(Oct. 28).

[Blücher at Lübeck.]

Blücher, who had shown the utmost energy and fortitude after the
catastrophe of Jena, was moving in the rear of Hohenlohe with a
considerable force which his courage had gathered around him. On learning
of Hohenlohe's capitulation, he instantly reversed his line of march, and
made for the Hanoverian fortress of Hameln, in order to continue the war in
the rear of the French. Overwhelming forces, however, cut off his retreat
to the Elbe; he was hemmed in on the east and on the west; and nothing
remained for him but to throw himself into the neutral town of Lübeck, and
fight until food and ammunition failed him. The French were at his heels.
The magistrates of Lübeck prayed that their city might not be made into a
battle-field, but in vain; Blücher refused to move into the open country.
The town was stormed by the French, and put to the sack. Blücher was driven
out, desperately fighting, and pent in between the Danish frontier and the
sea. Here, surrounded by overpowering numbers, without food, without
ammunition, he capitulated on the 7th of November, after his courage and
resolution had done everything that could ennoble both general and soldiers
in the midst of overwhelming calamity.

[Napoleon at Berlin, Oct. 27.]

[Capitulation of Prussian fortresses.]

The honour of entering the Prussian capital was given by Napoleon to
Davoust, whose victory at Auerstädt had in fact far surpassed his own.
Davoust entered Berlin without resistance on the 25th of October; Napoleon
himself went to Potsdam, and carried off the sword and the scarf that lay
upon the grave of Frederick the Great. Two days after Davoust, the Emperor
made his own triumphal entry into the capital. He assumed the part of the
protector of the people against the aristocracy, ordering the formation of
a municipal body and of a civic guard for the city of Berlin. The military
aristocracy he treated with the bitterest hatred and contempt. "I will make
that noblesse," he cried, "so poor that they shall beg their bread." The
disaster of Jena had indeed fearfully punished the insolence with which the
officers of the army had treated the rest of the nation. The Guards were
marched past the windows of the citizens of Berlin, a miserable troop of
captives; soldiers of rank who remained in the city had to attend upon the
French Emperor to receive his orders. But calamity was only beginning. The
overthrow of Jena had been caused by faults of generalship, and cast no
stain upon the courage of the officers; the surrender of the Prussian
fortresses, which began on the day when the French entered Berlin, attached
the utmost personal disgrace to their commanders. Even after the
destruction of the army in the field, Prussia's situation would not have
been hopeless if the commanders of fortresses had acted on the ordinary
rules of military duty. Magdeburg and the strongholds upon the Oder were
sufficiently armed and provisioned to detain the entire French army, and to
give time to the King to collect upon the Vistula a force as numerous as
that which he had lost. But whatever is weakest in human nature--old age,
fear, and credulity--seemed to have been placed at the head of Prussia's
defences. The very object for which fortresses exist was forgotten; and the
fact that one army had been beaten in the field was made a reason for
permitting the enemy to forestall the organisation of another. Spandau
surrendered on the 25th of October, Stettin on the 29th. These were places
of no great strength; but the next fortress to capitulate, Küstrin on the
Oder, was in full order for a long siege. It was surrendered by the older
officers, amidst the curses of the subalterns and the common soldiers: the
artillerymen had to be dragged from their guns by force. Magdeburg, with a
garrison of 24,000 men and enormous supplies, fell before a French force
not numerous enough to beleaguer it (Nov. 8).

[Napoleon's demands.]

Neither Napoleon himself nor any one else in Europe could have foreseen
such conduct on the part of the Prussian commanders. The unexpected series
of capitulations made him demand totally different terms of peace from
those which he had offered after the battle of Jena. A week after the
victory, Napoleon had demanded, as the price of peace, the cession of
Prussia's territory west of the Elbe, with the exception of the town of
Magdeburg, and the withdrawal of Prussia from the affairs of Germany. These
terms were communicated to King Frederick William; he accepted them, and
sent Lucchesini to Berlin to negotiate for peace upon this basis.
Lucchesini had scarcely reached the capital when the tidings arrived of
Hohenlohe's capitulation, followed by the surrender of Stettin and Küstrin.
The Prussian envoy now sought in vain to procure Napoleon's ratification of
the terms which he had himself proposed. No word of peace could be
obtained: an armistice was all that the Emperor would grant, and the terms
on which the armistice was offered rose with each new disaster to the
Prussian arms. On the fall of Magdeburg becoming known, Napoleon demanded
that the troops of Prussia should retire behind the Vistula, and surrender
every fortress that they still retained, with the single exception of
Königsberg. Much as Prussia had lost, it would have cost Napoleon a second
campaign to make himself master of what he now asked; but to such a depth
had the Prussian Government sunk, that Lucchesini actually signed a
convention at Charlottenburg (November 16), surrendering to Napoleon, in
return for an armistice, the entire list of uncaptured fortresses,
including Dantzig and Thorn on the Lower Vistula, Breslau, with the rest of
the untouched defences of Silesia, Warsaw and Praga in Prussian Poland, and
Colberg upon the Pomeranian coast. [133]

[Frederick William continues the war.]

The treaty, however, required the King's ratification. Frederick William,
timorous as he was, hesitated to confirm an agreement which ousted him from
his dominions as completely as if the last soldier of Prussia had gone into
captivity. The patriotic party, headed by Stein, pleaded for the honour of
the country against the miserable Cabinet which now sought to complete its
work of ruin. Assurances of support arrived from St. Petersburg. The King
determined to reject the treaty, and to continue the war to the last
extremity. Haugwitz hereupon tendered his resignation, and terminated a
political career disastrous beyond any recorded in modern times. For a
moment, it seemed as if the real interests of the country were at length to
be recognised in the appointment of Stein to one of the three principal
offices of State. But the King still remained blind to the necessity of
unity in the government, and angrily dismissed Stein when he refused to
hold the Ministry if representatives of the old Cabinet and of the
peace-party were to have places beside him. The King's act was ill
calculated to serve the interests of Prussia, either at home or abroad.
Stein was the one Minister on whom the patriotic party of Prussia and the
Governments of Europe could rely with perfect confidence. [134] His
dismissal at this crisis proved the incurable poverty of Frederick
William's mental nature; it also proved that, so long as any hope remained
of saving the Prussian State by the help of the Czar of Russia, the
patriotic party had little chance of creating a responsible government at
home.

[Napoleon at Berlin.]

[The Berlin decree against English commerce, Nov. 21, 1806.]

Throughout the month of November French armies overran Northern Germany:
Napoleon himself remained at Berlin, and laid the foundations of a
political system corresponding to that which he had imposed upon Southern
Germany after the victory of Austerlitz. The Houses of Brunswick and
Hesse-Cassel were deposed, in order to create a new client-kingdom of
Westphalia; Saxony, with Weimar and four other duchies, entered the
Confederation of the Rhine. A measure more widely affecting the Continent
of Europe dated from the last days of the Emperor's residence at the
Prussian capital. On the 21st of November, 1806, a decree was published at
Berlin prohibiting the inhabitants of the entire European territory allied
with France from carrying on any commerce with Great Britain, or admitting
any merchandise that had been produced in Great Britain or in its colonies.
[135] The line of coast thus closed to the shipping and the produce of the
British Empire included everything from the Vistula to the southern point
of Dalmatia, with the exception of Denmark and Portugal and the Austrian
port of Trieste. All property belonging to English subjects, all
merchandise of British origin, whoever might be the owner, was ordered to
be confiscated: no vessel that had even touched at a British port was
permitted to enter a Continental harbour. It was the fixed purpose of
Napoleon to exhaust Great Britain, since he could not destroy its navies,
or, according to his own expression, to conquer England upon the Continent.
All that was most harsh and unjust in the operation of the Berlin Decree
fell, however, more upon Napoleon's own subjects than upon Great Britain.
The exclusion of British ships from the harbours of the allies of France
was no more than the exercise of a common right in war; even the seizure of
the property of Englishmen, though a violation of international law, bore
at least an analogy to the seizure of French property at sea; but the
confiscation of the merchandise of German and Dutch traders, after it had
lain for weeks in their own warehouses, solely because it had been produced
in the British Empire, was an act of flagrant and odious oppression. The
first result of the Berlin Decree was to fill the trading towns of North
Germany with French revenue-officers and inquisitors. Peaceable tradesmen
began to understand the import of the battle of Jena when French gendarmes
threw their stock into the common furnace, or dragged them to prison for
possessing a hogshead of Jamaica sugar or a bale of Leeds cloth. The
merchants who possessed a large quantity of English or colonial wares were
the heaviest sufferers by Napoleon's commercial policy: the public found
the markets supplied by American and Danish traders, until, at a later
period, the British Government adopted reprisals, and prevented the ships
of neutrals from entering any port from which English vessels were
excluded. Then every cottage felt the stress of the war. But if the full
consequences of the Berlin Decree were delayed until the retaliation of
Great Britain reached the dimensions of Napoleon's own tyranny, the Decree
itself marked on the part of Napoleon the assumption of a power in conflict
with the needs and habits of European life. Like most of the schemes of
Napoleon subsequent to the victories of 1806, it transgressed the limits of
practical statesmanship, and displayed an ambition no longer raised above
mere tyranny by its harmony with forms of progress and with the better
tendencies of the age.

[Napoleon and the Poles.]

Immediately after signing the Berlin Decree, Napoleon quitted the Prussian
capital (Nov. 25). The first act of the war had now closed. The Prussian
State was overthrown; its territory as far as the Vistula lay at the mercy
of the invader; its King was a fugitive at Königsberg, at the eastern
extremity of his dominions. The second act of the war began with the
rejection of the armistice which had been signed by Lucchesini, and with
the entry of Russia into the field against Napoleon. The scene of
hostilities was henceforward in Prussian Poland and in the Baltic Province
lying between the lower Vistula and the Russian frontier. Napoleon entered
Poland, as he had entered Italy ten years before, with the pretence of
restoring liberty to an enslaved people. Kosciusko's name was fraudulently
attached to a proclamation summoning the Polish nation to arms; and
although Kosciusko himself declined to place any trust in the betrayer of
Venice, thousands of his countrymen flocked to Napoleon's standard, or
anticipated his arrival by capturing and expelling the Prussian detachments
scattered through their country. Promises of the restoration of Polish
independence were given by Napoleon in abundance; but the cause of Poland
was the last to attract the sympathy of a man who considered the sacrifice
of the weak to the strong to be the first principle of all good policy. To
have attempted the restoration of Polish independence would have been to
make permanent enemies of Russia and Prussia for the sake of an ally weaker
than either of them. The project was not at this time seriously entertained
by Napoleon. He had no motive to face a work of such enormous difficulty as
the creation of a solid political order among the most unpractical race in
Europe. He was glad to enrol the Polish nobles among his soldiers; he knew
the value of their enthusiasm, and took pains to excite it; but, when the
battle was over, it was with Russia, not Poland, that France had to settle;
and no better fate remained, even for the Prussian provinces of Poland,
than in part to be formed into a client-state, in part to be surrendered as
a means of accommodation with the Czar.

[Campaign in Poland against Russia, Dec., 1806.]

The armies of Russia were at some distance from the Vistula when, in
November, 1806, Napoleon entered Polish territory. Their movements were
slow, their numbers insufficient. At the moment when all the forces of the
Empire were required for the struggle against Napoleon, troops were being
sent into Moldavia against the Sultan. Nor were the Russian commanders
anxious to save what still remained of the Prussian kingdom. The disasters
of Prussia, like those of Austria at the beginning of the campaign of 1805,
excited less sympathy than contempt; and the inclination of the Czar's
generals was rather to carry on the war upon the frontier of their own
country than to commit themselves to a distant campaign with a despised
ally. Lestocq, who commanded the remnant of the Prussian army upon the
Vistula, was therefore directed to abandon his position at Thorn and to
move eastwards. The French crossed the Vistula higher up the river; and by
the middle of December the armies of France and Russia lay opposite to one
another in the neighbourhood of Pultusk, upon the Ukra and the Narew. The
first encounter, though not of a decisive character, resulted in the
retreat of the Russians. Heavy rains and fathomless mud checked the
pursuit. War seemed almost impossible in such a country and such a climate;
and Napoleon ordered his troops to take up their winter quarters along the
Vistula, believing that nothing more could be attempted on either side
before the spring.

[Eylau, Feb. 8, 1807.]

[Napoleon and Bennigsen in East Prussia.]

But the command of the Russian forces was now transferred from the aged and
half-mad Kamenski, [136] who had opened the campaign, to a general better
qualified to cope with Napoleon. Bennigsen, the new commander-in-chief, was
an active and daring soldier. Though a German by birth, his soldiership was
of that dogged and resolute order which suits the character of Russian
troops; and, in the mid-winter of 1806, Napoleon found beyond the Vistula
such an enemy as he had never encountered in Western Europe. Bennigsen
conceived the design of surprising the extreme left of the French line,
where Ney's division lay stretched towards the Baltic, far to the
north-east of Napoleon's main body. Forest and marsh concealed the movement
of the Russian troops, and both Ney and Bernadotte narrowly escaped
destruction. Napoleon now broke up his winter quarters, and marched in
great force against Bennigsen in the district between Königsberg and the
mouth of the Vistula. Bennigsen manoeuvred and retired until his troops
clamoured for battle. He then took up a position at Eylau, and waited for
the attack of the French. The battle of Eylau, fought in the midst of
snowstorms on the 8th of February, 1807, was unlike anything that Napoleon
had ever yet seen. His columns threw themselves in vain upon the Russian
infantry. Augereau's corps was totally destroyed in the beginning of the
battle. The Russians pressed upon the ground where Napoleon himself stood;
and, although the superiority of the Emperor's tactics at length turned the
scale, and the French began a forward movement, their advance was stopped
by the arrival of Lestocq and a body of 13,000 Prussians. At the close of
the engagement 30,000 men lay wounded or dead in the snow; the positions of
the armies remained what they had been in the morning. Bennigsen's
lieutenants urged him to renew the combat on the next day; but the
confusion of the Russian army was such that the French, in spite of their
losses and discouragement, would probably have gained the victory in a
second battle; [137] and the Russian commander determined to fall back
towards Königsberg, content with having disabled the enemy and given
Napoleon such a check as he had never received before. Napoleon, who had
announced his intention of entering Königsberg in triumph, fell back upon
the river Passarge, and awaited the arrival of reinforcements.

[Sieges of Dantzig and Colberg, March, 1807.]

[Inaction of England.]

[Fall of Grenville's Ministry, March 24, 1807.]

[Treaty of Bartenstein between Russia, Prussia, England, and Sweden.
April, 1807.]

The warfare of the next few months was confined to the reduction of the
Prussian fortresses which had not yet fallen into the hands of the French.
Dantzig surrendered after a long and difficult siege; the little town of
Colberg upon the Pomeranian coast prolonged a defence as honourable to its
inhabitants as to the military leaders. Two soldiers of singularly
different character, each destined to play a conspicuous part in coming
years, first distinguished themselves in the defence of Colberg. Gneisenau,
a scientific soldier of the highest order, the future guide of Blücher's
victorious campaigns, commanded the garrison; Schill, a cavalry officer of
adventurous daring, gathered round him a troop of hardy riders, and
harassed the French with an audacity as perplexing to his military
superiors as to the enemy. The citizens, led by their burgomaster, threw
themselves into the work of defence with a vigour in striking contrast to
the general apathy of the Prussian people; and up to the end of the war
Colberg remained uncaptured. Obscure as Colberg was, its defence might have
given a new turn to the war if the Government of Great Britain had listened
to the entreaties of the Emperor Alexander, and despatched a force to the
Baltic to threaten the communications of Napoleon. The task was not a
difficult one for a Power which could find troops, as England now did, to
send to Constantinople, to Alexandria, and to Buenos Ayres; but military
judgment was more than ever wanting to the British Cabinet. Fox had died at
the beginning of the war; his successors in Grenville's Ministry, though
they possessed a sound theory of foreign policy, [138] were not fortunate
in its application, nor were they prompt enough in giving financial help to
their allies. Suddenly, however, King George quarrelled with his Ministers
upon the ancient question of Catholic Disabilities, and drove them from
office (March 24). The country sided with the King. A Ministry came into
power, composed of the old supporters of Pitt, men, with the exception of
Canning and Castlereagh, of narrow views and poor capacity, headed by the
Duke of Portland, who, in 1793, had given his name to the section of the
Whig party which joined Pitt. The foreign policy of the new Cabinet, which
concealed its total lack of all other statesmanship, returned to the lines
laid down by Pitt in 1805. Negotiations were opened with Russia for the
despatch of an English army to the Baltic; arms and money were promised to
the Prussian King. For a moment it seemed as if the Powers of Europe had
never been united in so cordial a league. The Czar embraced the King of
Prussia in the midst of his soldiers, and declared with tears that the two
should stand or fall together. The Treaty of Bartenstein, signed in April
1807 pledged the Courts of St. Petersburg, Stockholm, and Berlin to a joint
prosecution of the war, and the common conclusion of peace. Great Britain
joined the pact, and prepared to fulfil its part in the conflict upon the
Baltic. But the task was a difficult one, for Grenville's Ministry had
dispersed the fleet of transports; and, although Canning determined upon
the Baltic expedition in April, two months passed before the fleet was
ready to sail.

[Summer campaign in East Prussia, 1807.]

[Battle of Friedland.]

In the meantime army upon army was moving to the support of Napoleon, from
France, from Spain, from Holland, and from Southern Germany. The fortresses
of the Elbe and the Oder, which ought to have been his barrier, had become
his base of operations; and so enormous were the forces at his command,
that, after manning every stronghold in Central Europe, he was able at the
beginning of June to bring 140,000 men into the field beyond the Vistula.
The Russians had also received reinforcements, but Bennigsen's army was
still weaker than that of the enemy. It was Bennigsen, nevertheless, who
began the attack; and now, as in the winter campaign, he attempted to
surprise and crush the northern corps of Ney. The same general movement of
the French army followed as in January. The Russian commander, outnumbered
by the French, retired to his fortified camp at Heilsberg. After sustaining
a bloody repulse in an attack upon this position, Napoleon drew Bennigsen
from his lair by marching straight upon Königsberg. Bennigsen supposed
himself to be in time to deal with an isolated corps; he found himself face
to face with the whole forces of the enemy at Friedland, accepted battle,
and was unable to save his army from a severe and decisive defeat (June
14). The victory of Friedland brought the French into Königsberg. Bennigsen
retired behind the Niemen; and on the 19th of June an armistice closed the
operations of the hostile forces upon the frontiers of Russia. [139]

The situation of Bennigsen's army was by no means desperate. His men had
not been surrounded; they had lost scarcely any prisoners; they felt no
fear of the French. But the general exaggerated the seriousness of his
defeat. Like most of his officers, he was weary of the war, and felt no
sympathy with the motives which led the Emperor to fight for the common
cause of Europe. The politicians who surrounded Alexander urged him to
withdraw Russia from a conflict in which she had nothing to gain. The
Emperor wavered. The tardiness of Great Britain, the continued neutrality
of Austria, cast a doubt upon the wisdom of his own disinterestedness; and
he determined to meet Napoleon, and ascertain the terms on which Russia
might be reconciled to the master of half the Continent.

[Interview of Napoleon and Alexander at Tilsit, June 25.]

On the 25th of June the two sovereigns met one another on the raft of
Tilsit, in the midstream of the river Niemen. The conversation, which is
alleged to have been opened by Alexander with an expression of hatred
towards England, was heard by no one but the speakers. But whatever the
eagerness or the reluctance of the Russian monarch to sever himself from
Great Britain, the purpose of Napoleon was effected. Alexander surrendered
himself to the addresses of a conqueror who seemed to ask for nothing and
to offer everything. The negotiations were prolonged; the relations of the
two monarchs became more and more intimate; and the issue of the struggle
for life or death was that Russia accepted the whole scheme of Napoleonic
conquest, and took its place by the side of the despoiler in return for its
share of the prey. It was in vain that the King of Prussia had rejected
Napoleon's offers after the battle of Eylau, in fidelity to his engagements
towards his ally. Promises, treaties, and pity were alike cast to the
winds. The unfortunate Frederick William received no more embraces; the
friend with whom he was to stand or fall bargained away the larger half of
his dominions to Napoleon, and even rectified the Russian frontier at his
expense. Prussia's continued existence in any shape whatever was described
as a concession made by Napoleon to Alexander. By the public articles of
the Treaties of Tilsit, signed by France, Russia, and Prussia in the first
week of July, the King of Prussia ceded to Napoleon the whole of his
dominions west of the Elbe, and the entire territory which Prussia had
gained in the three partitions of Poland, with the exception of a district
upon the Lower Vistula connecting Pomerania with Eastern Prussia. Out of
the ceded territory on the west of the Elbe a Kingdom of Westphalia was
created for Napoleon's brother Jerome; the Polish provinces of Prussia,
with the exception of a strip made over to Alexander, were formed into the
Grand-Duchy of Warsaw, and presented to Napoleon's vassal, the King of
Saxony. Russia recognised the Napoleonic client-states in Italy, Holland,
and Germany. The Czar undertook to offer his mediation in the conflict
between France and Great Britain; a secret article provided that, in the
event of Great Britain and France being at war on the ensuing 1st of
December, Prussia should declare war against Great Britain.

[Secret Treaty of Alliance.]

[Conspiracy of the two Emperors.]

Such were the stipulations contained in the formal Treaties of Peace
between the three Powers. These, however, contained but a small part of the
terms agreed upon between the masters of the east and of the west.
A secret Treaty of Alliance, distinct from the Treaty of Peace, was also
signed by Napoleon and Alexander. In the conversations which won over the
Czar to the cause of France, Napoleon had offered to Alexander the spoils
of Sweden and the Ottoman Empire. Finland and the Danubian provinces were
not too high a price for the support of a Power whose arms could paralyse
Austria and Prussia. In return for the promise of this extension of his
Empire, Alexander undertook, in the event of Great Britain refusing terms
of peace dictated by himself, to unite his arms to those of Napoleon, and
to force the neutral maritime Powers, Denmark and Portugal, to take part in
the struggle against England. The annexation of Moldavia and Wallachia to
the Russian Empire was provided for under the form of a French mediation.
In the event of the Porte declining this mediation, Napoleon undertook to
assist Russia to liberate all the European territory subject to the yoke of
the Sultan, with the exception of Roumelia and Constantinople. A partition
of the liberated territory between France and Russia, as well as the
establishment of the Napoleonic house in Spain, probably formed the subject
rather of a verbal understanding than of any written agreement. [140]

Such was this vast and threatening scheme, conceived by the man whose whole
career had been one consistent struggle for personal domination, accepted
by the man who among the rulers of the Continent had hitherto shown the
greatest power of acting for a European end, and of interesting himself in
a cause not directly his own. In the imagination of Napoleon, the national
forces of the western continent had now ceased to exist. Austria excepted,
there was no State upon the mainland whose army and navy were not
prospectively in the hands of himself and his new ally. The commerce of
Great Britain, already excluded from the greater part of Europe, was now to
be shut out from all the rest; the armies which had hitherto fought under
British subsidies for the independence of Europe, the navies which had
preserved their existence by neutrality or by friendship with England, were
soon to be thrown without distinction against that last foe. If even at
this moment an English statesman who had learnt the secret agreement of
Tilsit might have looked without fear to the future of his country, it was
not from any imperfection in the structure of Continental tyranny. The
fleets of Denmark and Portugal might be of little real avail against
English seamen; the homes of the English people might still be as secure
from foreign invasion as when Nelson guarded the seas; but it was not from
any vestige of political honour surviving in the Emperor Alexander. Where
Alexander's action was of decisive importance, in his mediation between
France and Prussia, he threw himself without scruple on to the side of
oppression. It lay within his power to gain terms of peace for Prussia as
lenient as those which Austria had gained at Campo Formio and at Lunéville:
he sacrificed Prussia, as he allied himself against the last upholders of
national independence in Europe, in order that he might himself receive
Finland and the Danubian Provinces.

[English expedition against Denmark, July, 1807.]

Two days before the signature of the Treaty of Tilsit the British troops
which had once been so anxiously expected by the Czar landed in the island
of Rügen. The struggle in which they were intended to take their part was
over. Sweden alone remained in arms; and even the Quixotic pugnacity of
King Gustavus was unable to save Stralsund from a speedy capitulation. But
the troops of Great Britain were not destined to return without striking a
blow. The negotiations between Napoleon and Alexander had scarcely begun,
when secret intelligence of their purport was sent to the British
Government. [141] It became known in London that the fleet of Denmark was
to be seized by Napoleon, and forced to fight against Great Britain.
Canning and his colleagues acted with the promptitude that seldom failed
the British Government when it could effect its object by the fleet alone.
They determined to anticipate Napoleon's violation of Danish neutrality,
and to seize upon the navy which would otherwise be seized by France and
Russia.

[Bombardment of Copenhagen, Sept. 2.]

On the 28th of July a fleet with 20,000 men on board set sail from the
British coast. The troops landed in Denmark in the middle of August, and
united with the corps which had already been despatched to Rügen. The
Danish Government was summoned to place its navy in the hands of Great
Britain, in order that it might remain as a deposit in some British port
until the conclusion of peace. While demanding this sacrifice of Danish
neutrality, England undertook to protect the Danish nation and colonies
from the hostility of Napoleon, and to place at the disposal of its
Government every means of naval and military defence. Failing the surrender
of the fleet, the English declared that they would bombard Copenhagen. The
reply given to this summons was such as might be expected from a courageous
nation exasperated against Great Britain by its harsh treatment of neutral
ships of commerce, and inclined to submit to the despot of the Continent
rather than to the tyrants of the seas. Negotiations proved fruitless, and
on the 2nd of September the English opened fire on Copenhagen. For three
days and nights the city underwent a bombardment of cruel efficiency.
Eighteen hundred houses were levelled, the town was set on fire in several
places, and a large number of the inhabitants lost their lives. At length
the commander found himself compelled to capitulate. The fleet was handed
over to Great Britain, with all the stores in the arsenal of Copenhagen. It
was brought to England, no longer under the terms of a friendly neutrality,
but as a prize of war.

The captors themselves were ashamed of their spoil. England received an
armament which had been taken from a people who were not our enemies, and
by an attack which was not war, with more misgiving than applause. In
Europe the seemingly unprovoked assault upon a weak neutral State excited
the utmost indignation. The British Ministry, who were prevented from
making public the evidence which they had received of the intention of the
two Emperors, were believed to have invented the story of the Secret
Treaty. The Danish Government denied that Napoleon had demanded their
co-operation; Napoleon and Alexander themselves assumed the air of
indignant astonishment. But the facts alleged by Canning and his colleagues
were correct. The conspiracy of the two Emperors was no fiction. The only
question still remaining open--and this is indeed an essential one--relates
to the engagements entered into by the Danish Government itself. Napoleon
in his correspondence of this date alludes to certain promises made to him
by the Court of Denmark, but he also complains that these promises had not
been fulfilled; and the context of the letter renders it almost certain
that, whatever may have been demanded by Napoleon, nothing more was
promised by Denmark than that its ports should be closed to English
vessels. [142] Had the British Cabinet possessed evidence of the
determination of the Danish Government to transfer its fleet to Napoleon
without resistance, the attack upon Denmark, considered as virtually an act
of war, would not have been unjust. But beyond an alleged expression of
Napoleon at Tilsit, no such evidence was even stated to have reached
London; and the undoubted conspiracy of the Emperors against Danish
neutrality was no sufficient ground for an action on the part of Great
Britain which went so far beyond the mere frustration of their designs. The
surrender of the Danish fleet demanded by England would have been an
unqualified act of war on the part of Denmark against Napoleon; it was no
mere guarantee for a continued neutrality. Nor had the British Government
the last excuse of an urgent and overwhelming necessity. Nineteen Danish
men-of-war would not have turned the scale against England. The memory of
Trafalgar might well have given a British Ministry courage to meet its
enemies by the ordinary methods of war. Had the forces of Denmark been far
larger than they actually were, the peril of Great Britain was not so
extreme as to excuse the wrong done to mankind by an example encouraging
all future belligerents to anticipate one another in forcing each neutral
state to take part with themselves.

[Napoleon's demands upon Portugal.]

The fleet which Napoleon had meant to turn against this country now lay
safe within Portsmouth harbour. Denmark, in bitter resentment, declared war
against Great Britain, and rendered some service to the Continental League
by the attacks of its privateers upon British merchant-vessels in the
Baltic. The second neutral Power whose fate had been decided by the two
Emperors at Tilsit received the summons of Napoleon a few days before the
attack on Copenhagen. The Regent of Portugal himself informed the British
Government that he had been required by Napoleon to close his ports to
British vessels, to declare war on England, and to confiscate all British
property within his dominions. Placed between a Power which could strip him
of his dominions on land, and one which could despoil him of everything he
possessed beyond the sea, the Regent determined to maintain his ancient
friendship with Great Britain, and to submit to Napoleon only in so far as
the English Government would excuse him, as acting under coercion. Although
a nominal state of war arose between Portugal and England, the Regent
really acted in the interest of England, and followed the advice of the
British Cabinet up to the end.

[Treaty of Fontainebleau between France and Spain for the partition of
Portugal, Oct. 27.]

The end was soon to come. The demands of Napoleon, arbitrary and oppressive
as they were, by no means expressed his full intentions towards Portugal.
He had determined to seize upon this country, and to employ it as a means
for extending his own dominion over the whole of the Spanish Peninsula. An
army-corps, under the command of Junot, had been already placed in the
Pyrenees. On the 12th of October Napoleon received the answer of the Regent
of Portugal, consenting to declare war upon England, and only rejecting the
dishonourable order to confiscate all English property. This single act of
resistance was sufficient for Napoleon's purpose. He immediately recalled
his ambassador from Lisbon, and gave orders to Junot to cross the frontier,
and march upon Portugal. The King of Spain, who was to be Napoleon's next
victim, was for the moment employed as his accomplice. A treaty was
concluded at Fontainebleau between Napoleon and King Charles IV. for the
partition of Portugal (Oct. 27). [143] In return for the cession of the
kingdom of Etruria, which was still nominally governed by a member of the
Spanish house, the King of Spain was promised half the Portuguese colonies,
along with the title of Emperor of the Indies; the northern provinces of
Portugal were reserved for the infant King of Etruria, its southern
provinces for Godoy, Minister of Charles IV.; the central districts were to
remain in the hands of France, and to be employed as a means of regaining
the Spanish colonies from England upon the conclusion of a general peace.

[Junot invades Portugal, Nov., 1807.]

[Flight of the House of Braganza.]

Not one of these provisions was intended to be carried into effect. The
conquest of Portugal was but a part of the conquest of the whole peninsula.
But neither the Spanish Court nor the Spanish people suspected Napoleon's
design. Junot advanced without resistance through the intervening Spanish
territory, and pushed forward upon Lisbon with the utmost haste. The speed
at which Napoleon's orders forced him to march reduced his army to utter
prostration, and the least resistance would have resulted in its ruin. But
the Court of Lisbon had determined to quit a country which they could not
hope to defend against the master of the Continent. Already in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the House of Braganza had been
familiar with the project of transferring the seat of their Government to
Brazil; and now, with the approval of Great Britain, the Regent resolved to
maintain the independence of his family by flight across the Atlantic. As
Junot's troops approached the capital, the servants of the palace hastily
stowed the royal property on ship-board. On the 29th of November, when the
French were now close at hand, the squadron which bore the House of
Braganza to its colonial home dropped down the Tagus, saluted by the cannon
of the English fleet that lay in the same river. Junot entered the capital
a few hours later, and placed himself at the head of the Government without
encountering any opposition. The occupation of Portugal was described by
Napoleon as a reprisal for the bombardment of Copenhagen. It excited but
little attention in Europe; and even at the Spanish Court the only feeling
was one of satisfaction at the approaching aggrandisement of the Bourbon
monarchy. The full significance of Napoleon's intervention in the affairs
of the Peninsula was not discovered until some months were passed.

[Prussia after the Peace of Tilsit.]

[Stein Minister, Oct. 5, 1807.]

Portugal and Denmark had felt the consequences of the peace made at Tilsit.
Less, however, depended upon the fate of the Danish fleet and the
Portuguese Royal Family than upon the fate of Prussia, the most cruelly
wronged of all the victims sacrificed by Alexander's ambition. The
unfortunate Prussian State, reduced to half its former extent, devastated
and impoverished by war, and burdened with the support of a French army,
found in the crisis of its ruin the beginning of a worthier national life.
Napoleon, in his own vindictive jealousy, unwittingly brought to the head
of the Prussian Government the ablest and most patriotic statesman of the
Continent. Since the spring of 1807 Baron Hardenberg had again been the
leading Minister of Prussia, and it was to his counsel that the King's
honourable rejection of a separate peace after the battle of Eylau was due.
Napoleon could not permit this Minister, whom he had already branded as a
partisan of Great Britain, to remain in power; he insisted upon
Hardenberg's dismissal, and recommended the King of Prussia to summon
Stein, who was as yet known to Napoleon only as a skilful financier, likely
to succeed in raising the money which the French intended to extort.

[Edict of Emancipation, Oct. 9, 1807.]

Stein entered upon office on the 5th of October, 1807, with almost
dictatorial power. The need of the most radical changes in the public
services, as well as in the social order of the Prussian State, had been
brought home to all enlightened men by the disasters of the war; and a
commission, which included among its members the historian Niebuhr, had
already sketched large measures of reform before Hardenberg quitted office.
Stein's appointment brought to the head of the State a man immeasurably
superior to Hardenberg in the energy necessary for the execution of great
changes, and gave to those who were the most sincerely engaged in civil or
military reform a leader unrivalled in patriotic zeal, in boldness, and in
purity of character. The first great legislative measure of Stein was the
abolition of serfage, and of all the legal distinctions which fixed within
the limits of their caste the noble, the citizen, and the peasant. In
setting his name to the edict [144] which, on the 9th of October, 1807,
made an end of the mediæval framework of Prussian society, Stein was indeed
but consummating a change which the progress of neighbouring States must
have forced upon Prussia, whoever held its government. The Decree was
framed upon the report of Hardenberg's Commission, and was published by
Stein within six days after his own entry upon office. Great as were the
changes involved in this edict of emancipation, it contained no more than
was necessary to bring Prussia up to the level of the least advanced of the
western Continental States. In Austria pure serfage had been abolished by
Maria Theresa thirty years before; it vanished, along with most of the
legal distinctions of class, wherever the victories of France carried a new
political order; even the misused peasantry of Poland had been freed from
their degrading yoke within the borders of the newly-founded Duchy of
Warsaw. If Prussia was not to renounce its partnership in European progress
and range itself with its barbarous eastern neighbour, that order which
fettered the peasant to the soil, and limited every Prussian to the
hereditary occupations of his class could no longer be maintained. It is
not as an achievement of individual genius, but as the most vivid
expression of the differences between the old and the new Europe, that the
first measure of Stein deserves a closer examination.

[The Prussian peasant before and after the Edict of Oct. 9.]

The Edict of October 9, 1807, extinguished all personal servitude; it
permitted the noble, the citizen, and the peasant to follow any calling; it
abolished the rule which prevented land held by a member of one class from
passing into the hands of another class; it empowered families to free
their estates from entail. Taken together, these enactments substitute the
free disposition of labour and property for the outworn doctrine which
Prussia had inherited from the feudal ages, that what a man is born that he
shall live and die. The extinction of serfage, though not the most
prominent provision of the Edict, was the one whose effects were the
soonest felt. In the greater part of Prussia the marks of serfage, as
distinct from payments and services amounting to a kind of rent, were the
obligation of the peasant to remain on his holding, and the right of the
lord to take the peasant's children as unpaid servants into his house. A
general relation of obedience and command existed, as between an hereditary
subject and master, although the lord could neither exact an arbitrary
amount of labour nor inflict the cruel punishments which had been common in
Poland and Hungary. What the villein was in England in the thirteenth
century, that the serf was in Prussia in the year 1806; and the change
which in England gradually elevated the villein into the free copyholder
was that change which, so many centuries later, the Prussian legislator
effected by one great measure. Stein made the Prussian peasant what the
English copyholder had become at the accession of Henry VII., and what the
French peasant had been before 1789, a free person, but one bound to render
fixed dues and service to the lord of the manor in virtue of the occupation
of his land. These feudal dues and services, which the French peasant,
accustomed for centuries before the Revolution to consider himself as the
full proprietor of the land, treated as a mere grievance and abuse, Stein
considered to be the best form in which the joint interest of the lord and
the peasant could be maintained. It was reserved for Hardenberg, four years
later, to free the peasant from all obligations towards his lord, and to
place him in unshackled proprietorship of two-thirds of his former holding,
the lord receiving the remaining one-third in compensation for the loss of
feudal dues. Neither Stein nor Hardenberg interfered with the right of the
lord to act as judge and police-magistrate within the limits of his manor;
and the hereditary legal jurisdiction, which was abolished in Scotland in
1747, and in France in 1789, continued unchanged in Prussia down to the
year 1848.

[Relative position of the peasant in Prussia and England.]

The history of Agrarian Reform upon the Continent shows how vast was the
interval of time by which some of the greatest social changes in England
had anticipated the corresponding changes in almost all other nations. But
if the Prussian peasant at the beginning of this century remained in the
servile condition which had passed out of mind in Great Britain before the
Reformation, the early prosperity of the peasant in England was dearly
purchased by a subsequent decline which has made his present lot far
inferior to that of the children or grandchildren of the Prussian serf.
However heavy the load of the Prussian serf, his holding was at least
protected by law from absorption into the domain of his lord. Before
sufficient capital had been amassed in Prussia to render landed property an
object of competition, the forced military service of Frederick had made it
a rule of State that the farmsteads of the peasant class must remain
undiminished in number, at whatever violence to the laws of the market or
the desires of great landlords. No process was permitted to take place
corresponding to that by which in England, after the villein had become the
free copyholder, the lord, with or without technical legal right,
terminated the copyhold tenure of his retainer, and made the land as much
his own exclusive property as the chairs and tables in his house. In
Prussia, if the law kept the peasant on the land, it also kept the land for
the peasant. Economic conditions, in the absence of such control in
England, worked against the class of small holders. Their early
enfranchisement in fact contributed to their extinction. It would perhaps
have been better for the English labouring class to remain bound by a
semi-servile tie to their land, than to gain a free holding which the law,
siding with the landlord, treated as terminable at the expiration of
particular lives, and which the increasing capital of the rich made its
favourite prey. It is little profit to the landless, resourceless English
labourer to know that his ancestor was a yeoman when the Prussian was a
serf. Long as the bondage of the peasant on the mainland endured,
prosperity came at last. The conditions which once distinguished
agricultural England from the Continent are now reversed. Nowhere on the
Continent is there a labouring class so stripped and despoiled of all
interest in the soil, so sedulously excluded from all possibilities of
proprietorship, as in England. In England alone the absence of internal
revolution and foreign pressure has preserved a class whom a life spent in
toil leaves as bare and dependent as when it began, and to whom the only
boon which their country can offer is the education which may lead them to
quit it.

[Reform of Prussian Army.]

[Short service.]

Besides the commission which had drafted the Edict of Emancipation, Stein
found a military commission engaged on a plan for the reorganisation of the
Prussian army. The existing system forced the peasant to serve in the ranks
for twenty years, and drew the officers from the nobility, leaving the
inhabitants of towns without either the duty or the right to enter the army
at all. Since the battle of Jena, no one doubted that the principle of
universal liability to military service must be introduced into Prussia; on
the other hand, the very disasters of the State rendered it impossible to
maintain an army on anything approaching to its former scale. With half its
territory torn from it, and the remainder devastated by war, Prussia could
barely afford to keep 40,000 soldiers in arms. Such were the conditions
laid before the men who were charged with the construction of a new
Prussian military system. Their conclusions, imperfect in themselves, and
but partially carried out in the succeeding years, have nevertheless been
the basis of the latest military organisation of Prussia and of Europe
generally. The problem was solved by the adoption of a short period of
service and the rapid drafting of the trained conscript into a
reserve-force. Scharnhorst, President of the Military Commission, to whom
more than to any one man Prussia owed its military revival, proposed to
maintain an Active Army of 40,000 men; a Reserve, into which soldiers
should pass after short service in the active army; a Landwehr, to be
employed only for the internal defence of the country; and a Landsturm, or
general arming of the population, for a species of guerilla warfare.
Scharnhorst's project was warmly supported by Stein, who held a seat and a
vote on the Military Commission; and the system of short service, with a
Reserve, was immediately brought into action, though on a very limited
scale. The remainder of the scheme had to wait for the assistance of
events. The principle of universal military obligation was first proclaimed
in the war of 1813, when also the Landwehr was first enrolled.

[Stein's plans of political reform.]

[Design for a Parliament, for Municipalities, and District boards.]

The reorganisation of the Prussian military system and the emancipation of
the peasant, though promoted by Stein's accession to power, did not
originate in Stein himself; the distinctive work of Stein was a great
scheme of political reform. Had Stein remained longer in power, he would
have given to Prussia at least the beginnings of constitutional government.
Events drove him from office when but a small part of his project was
carried into effect; but the project itself was great and comprehensive. He
designed to give Prussia a Parliament, and to establish a system of
self-government in its towns and country districts. Stein had visited
England in his youth. The history and the literature of England interested
him beyond those of any other country; and he had learnt from England that
the partnership of the nation in the work of government, so far from
weakening authority, animates it with a force which no despotic system can
long preserve. Almost every important State-paper written by Stein
denounces the apathy of the civil population of Prussia, and attributes it
to their exclusion from all exercise of public duties. He declared that the
nation must be raised from its torpor by the establishment of
representative government and the creation of free local institutions in
town and country. Stein was no friend of democracy. Like every other
Prussian statesman he took for granted the exercise of a vigorous
monarchical power at the centre of the State; but around the permanent
executive he desired to gather the Council of the Nation, checking at least
the caprices of Cabinet-rule, and making the opinion of the people felt by
the monarch. Stein's Parliament would have been a far weaker body than the
English House of Commons, but it was at least not intended to be a mockery,
like those legislative bodies which Napoleon and his clients erected as the
disguise of despotism. The transaction of local business in the towns and
country districts, which had hitherto belonged to officials of the Crown,
Stein desired to transfer in part to bodies elected by the inhabitants
themselves. The functions allotted to the new municipal bodies illustrated
the modest and cautious nature of Stein's attempt in the direction of
self-government, including no more than the care of the poor, the
superintendence of schools, and the maintenance of streets and public
buildings. Finance remained partly, police wholly, in the hands of the
central Government. Equally limited were the powers which Stein proposed to
entrust to the district councils elected by the rural population. In
comparison with the self-government of England or America, the
self-government which Stein would have introduced into Prussia was of the
most elementary character; yet his policy stood out in striking contrast to
that which in every client-state of Napoleon was now crushing out the last
elements of local independence under a rigid official centralisation.

[Municipal reform alone carried out.]

Stein was indeed unable to transform Prussia as he desired. Of the
legislative, the municipal, and the district reforms which he had sketched,
the municipal reform was the only one which he had time to carry out before
being driven from power; and for forty years the municipal institutions
created by Stein were the only fragment of liberty which Prussia enjoyed. A
vehement opposition to reform was excited among the landowners, and
supported by a powerful party at the Court. Stein was detested by the
nobles whose peasants he had emancipated, and by the Berlin aristocracy,
which for the last ten years had maintained the policy of friendship with
France, and now declared the only safety of the Prussian State to lie in
unconditional submission to Napoleon. The fire of patriotism, of energy, of
self-sacrifice, which burned in Stein made him no representative of the
Prussian governing classes of his time. It was not long before the
landowners, who deemed him a Jacobin, and the friends of the French, who
called him a madman, had the satisfaction of seeing the Minister sent into
banishment by order of Napoleon himself (Dec., 1808). Stein left the
greater part of his work uncompleted, but he had not laboured in vain. The
years of his ministry in 1807 and 1808 were the years that gathered
together everything that was worthiest in Prussia in the dawn of a national
revival, and prepared the way for that great movement in which, after an
interval of the deepest gloom, Stein was himself to light the nation to its
victory.




CHAPTER VIII.


Spain in 1806--Napoleon uses the quarrel between Ferdinand and Godoy--He
affects to be Ferdinand's protector--Dupont's army enters Spain--Murat in
Spain--Charles abdicates--Ferdinand King--Savary brings Ferdinand to
Bayonne--Napoleon makes both Charles and Ferdinand resign--Spirit of the
Spanish Nation--Contrast with Germany--Rising of all Spain--The Notables at
Bayonne--Campaign of 1808--Capitulation of Baylen--Wellesley lands in
Portugal--Vimieiro--Convention of Cintra--Effect of the Spanish Rising on
Europe--War Party in Prussia--Napoleon and Alexander at Erfurt--Stein
resigns, and is proscribed--Napoleon in Spain--Spanish Misgovernment--
Campaign on the Ebro--Campaign of Sir John Moore--Corunna--Napoleon
leaves Spain--Siege of Saragossa--Successes of the French.


[Spanish affairs, 1793-1806.]

[Spain in 1806.]

Spain, which had played so insignificant a part throughout the
Revolutionary War, was now about to become the theatre of events that
opened a new world of hope to Europe. Its King, the Bourbon Charles IV.,
was more weak and more pitiful than any sovereign of the age. Power
belonged to the Queen and to her paramour Godoy, who for the last fourteen
years had so conducted the affairs of the country that every change in its
policy had brought with it new disaster. In the war of the First Coalition
Spain had joined the Allies, and French armies had crossed the Pyrenees. In
1796 Spain entered the service of France, and lost the battle of St.
Vincent. At the Peace of Amiens, Napoleon surrendered its colony Trinidad
to England; on the renewal of the war he again forced it into hostilities
with Great Britain, and brought upon it the disaster of Trafalgar. This
unbroken humiliation of the Spanish arms, combined with intolerable
oppression and impoverishment at home, raised so bitter an outcry against
Godoy's government, that foreign observers, who underrated the loyalty of
the Spanish people, believed the country to be on the verge of revolution.
At the Court itself the Crown Prince Ferdinand, under the influence of his
Neapolitan wife, headed a party in opposition to Godoy and the supporters
of French dominion. Godoy, insecure at home, threw himself the more
unreservedly into the arms of Napoleon, who bestowed upon him a
contemptuous patronage, and flattered him with the promise of an
independent principality in Portugal. Izquierdo, Godoy's agent at Paris,
received proposals from Napoleon which were concealed from the Spanish
Ambassador; and during the first months of 1806 Napoleon possessed no more
devoted servant than the man who virtually held the government of Spain.

[Spain intends to join Prussia in 1806.]

The opening of negotiations between Napoleon and Fox's Ministry in May,
1806, first shook this relation of confidence and obedience. Peace between
France and England involved the abandonment on the part of Napoleon of any
attack upon Portugal; and Napoleon now began to meet Godoy's inquiries
after his Portuguese principality with an ominous silence. The next
intelligence received was that the Spanish Balearic Islands had been
offered by Napoleon to Great Britain, with the view of providing an
indemnity for Ferdinand of Naples, if he should give up Sicily to Joseph
Bonaparte (July, 1806.) This contemptuous appropriation of Spanish
territory, without even the pretence of consulting the Spanish Government,
excited scarcely less anger at Madrid than the corresponding proposal with
regard to Hanover excited at Berlin. The Court began to meditate a change
of policy, and watched the events which were leading Prussia to arm for the
war of 1806. A few weeks more passed, and news arrived that Buenos Ayres,
the capital of Spanish South America, had fallen into the hands of the
English. This disaster produced the deepest impression, for the loss of
Buenos Ayres was believed, and with good reason, to be but the prelude to
the loss of the entire American empire of Spain. Continuance of the war
with England was certain ruin; alliance with the enemies of Napoleon was at
least not hopeless, now that Prussia was on the point of throwing its army
into the scale against France. An agent was despatched by the Spanish
Government to London (Sept., 1806); and, upon the commencement of
hostilities by Prussia, a proclamation was issued by Godoy, which, without
naming any actual enemy, summoned the Spanish people to prepare for a war
on behalf of their country.

[Treaty of Fontainebleau, Oct., 1807.]

Scarcely had the manifesto been read by the Spaniards when the Prussian
army was annihilated at Jena. The dream of resistance to Napoleon vanished
away; the only anxiety of the Spanish Government was to escape from the
consequences of its untimely daring. Godoy hastened to explain that his
martial proclamation had been directed not against the Emperor of the
French, but against the Emperor of Morocco. Napoleon professed himself
satisfied with this palpable absurdity: it appeared as if the events of the
last few months had left no trace on his mind. Immediately after the Peace
of Tilsit he resumed his negotiations with Godoy upon the old friendly
footing, and brought them to a conclusion in the Treaty of Fontainebleau
(Oct., 1807), which provided for the invasion of Portugal by a French and a
Spanish army, and for its division into principalities, one of which was to
be conferred upon Godoy himself. The occupation of Portugal was duly
effected, and Godoy looked forward to the speedy retirement of the French
from the province which was to be his portion of the spoil.

[Napoleon uses the enmity of Ferdinand against Godoy.]

[Napoleon about to intervene as protector of Ferdinand.]

Napoleon, however, had other ends in view. Spain, not Portugal, was the
true prize. Napoleon had gradually formed the determination of taking Spain
into his own hands, and the dissensions of the Court itself enabled him to
appear upon the scene as the judge to whom all parties appealed. The Crown
Prince Ferdinand had long been at open enmity with Godoy and his own
mother. So long as Ferdinand's Neapolitan wife was alive, her influence
made the Crown Prince the centre of the party hostile to France; but after
her death in 1806, at a time when Godoy himself inclined to join Napoleon's
enemies, Ferdinand took up a new position, and allied himself with the
French Ambassador, at whose instigation he wrote to Napoleon, soliciting
the hand of a princess of the Napoleonic House. [145] Godoy, though unaware
of the letter, discovered that Ferdinand was engaged in some intrigue. King
Charles was made to believe that his son had entered into a conspiracy to
dethrone him. The Prince was placed under arrest, and on the 30th of
October, 1807, a royal proclamation appeared at Madrid, announcing that
Ferdinand had been detected in a conspiracy against his parents, and that
he was about to be brought to justice along with his accomplices. King
Charles at the same time wrote a letter to Napoleon, of whose connection
with Ferdinand he had not the slightest suspicion, stating that he intended
to exclude the Crown Prince from the succession to the throne of Spain. No
sooner had Napoleon received the communication from the simple King than he
saw himself in possession of the pretext for intervention which he had so
long desired. The most pressing orders were given for the concentration of
troops on the Spanish frontier; Napoleon appeared to be on the point of
entering Spain as the defender of the hereditary rights of Ferdinand. The
opportunity, however, proved less favourable than Napoleon had expected.
The Crown Prince, overcome by his fears, begged forgiveness of his father,
and disclosed the negotiations which had taken place between himself and
the French Ambassador. Godoy, dismayed at finding Napoleon's hand in what
he had supposed to be a mere palace-intrigue, abandoned all thought of
proceeding further against the Crown Prince; and a manifesto announced that
Ferdinand was restored to the favour of his father. Napoleon now
countermanded the order which he had given for the despatch of the Rhenish
troops to the Pyrenees, and contented himself with directing General
Dupont, the commander of an army-corps nominally destined for Portugal, to
cross the Spanish frontier and advance as far as Vittoria.

[Dupont enters Spain, Dec., 1807.]

[French welcomed in Spain as Ferdinand's protectors.]

Dupont's troops entered Spain in the last days of the year 1807, and were
received with acclamations. It was universally believed that Napoleon had
espoused the cause of Ferdinand, and intended to deliver the Spanish nation
from the detested rule of Godoy. Since the open attack made upon Ferdinand
in the publication of the pretended conspiracy, the Crown Prince, who was
personally as contemptible as any of his enemies, had become the idol of
the people. For years past the hatred of the nation towards Godoy and the
Queen had been constantly deepening, and the very reforms which Godoy
effected in the hope of attaching to himself the more enlightened classes
only served to complete his unpopularity with the fanatical mass of the
nation. The French, who gradually entered the Peninsula to the number of
80,000, and who described themselves as the protectors of Ferdinand and of
the true Catholic faith, were able to spread themselves over the northern
provinces without exciting suspicion. It was only when their commanders, by
a series of tricks worthy of American savages, obtained possession of the
frontier citadels and fortresses, that the wiser part of the nation began
to entertain some doubt as to the real purpose of their ally. At the Court
itself and among the enemies of Ferdinand the advance of the French roused
the utmost alarm. King Charles wrote to Napoleon in the tone of ancient
friendship; but the answer he received was threatening and mysterious. The
utterances which the Emperor let fall in the presence of persons likely to
report them at Madrid were even more alarming, and were intended to terrify
the Court into the resolution to take flight from Madrid. The capital once
abandoned by the King, Napoleon judged that he might safely take everything
into his own hands on the pretence of restoring to Spain the government
which it had lost.

[Murat sent to Spain, Feb., 1808.]

[Charles IV. abdicates, March 17, 1808.]

On the 20th of February, 1808, Murat was ordered to quit Paris in order to
assume the command in Spain. Not a word was said by Napoleon to him before
his departure. His instructions first reached him at Bayonne; they were of
a military nature, and gave no indication of the ultimate political object
of his mission. Murat entered Spain on the 1st of March, knowing no more
than that he was ordered to reassure all parties and to commit himself to
none, but with full confidence that he himself was intended by Napoleon to
be the successor of the Bourbon dynasty. It was now that the Spanish Court,
expecting the appearance of the French army in Madrid, resolved upon that
flight which Napoleon considered so necessary to his own success. The
project was not kept a secret. It passed from Godoy to the Ministers of
State, and from them to the friends of Ferdinand. The populace of Madrid
was inflamed by the report that Godoy was about to carry the King to a
distance, in order to prolong the misgovernment which the French had
determined to overthrow. A tumultuous crowd marched from the capital to
Aranjuez, the residence of the Court. On the evening of the 17th of March,
the palace of Godoy was stormed by the mob. Godoy himself was seized, and
carried to the barracks amid the blows and curses of the populace. The
terrified King, who already saw before him the fate of his cousin, Louis
XVI., first published a decree depriving Godoy of all his dignities, and
then abdicated in favour of his son. On the 19th of March Ferdinand was
proclaimed King.

[French enter Madrid, March 23.]

Such was the unexpected intelligence that met Murat as he approached
Madrid. The dissensions of the Court, which were to supply his ground of
intervention, had been terminated by the Spaniards themselves: in the place
of a despised dotard and a menaced favourite, Spain had gained a youthful
sovereign around whom all classes of the nation rallied with the utmost
enthusiasm. Murat's position became a very difficult one; but he supplied
what was wanting in his instructions by the craft of a man bent upon
creating a vacancy in his own favour. He sent his aide-de-camp, Monthieu,
to visit the dethroned sovereign, and obtained a protest from King Charles
IV., declaring his abdication to have been extorted from him by force, and
consequently to be null and void. This document Murat kept secret; but he
carefully abstained from doing anything which might involve a recognition
of Ferdinand's title. On the 23rd of March the French troops entered
Madrid. Nothing had as yet become known to the public that indicated an
altered policy on the part of the French; and the soldiers of Murat, as the
supposed friends of Ferdinand, met with as friendly a reception in Madrid
as in the other towns of Spain. On the following day Ferdinand himself made
his solemn entry into the capital, amid wild demonstrations of an almost
barbaric loyalty.

[Savary brings Ferdinand to Bayonne, April, 1808.]

In the tumult of popular joy it was noticed that Murat's troops continued
their exercises without the least regard to the pageant that so deeply
stirred the hearts of the Spaniards. Suspicions were aroused; the
enthusiasm of the people for the French soldiers began to change into
irritation and ill-will. The end of the long drama of deceit was in fact
now close at hand. On the 4th of April General Savary arrived at Madrid
with instructions independent of those given to Murat. He was charged to
entice the new Spanish sovereign from his capital, and to bring him, either
as a dupe or as a prisoner, on to French soil. The task was not a difficult
one. Savary pretended that Napoleon had actually entered Spain, and that he
only required an assurance of Ferdinand's continued friendship before
recognising him as the legitimate successor of Charles IV. Ferdinand, he
added, could show no greater mark of cordiality to his patron than by
advancing to meet him on the road. Snared by these hopes, Ferdinand set out
from Madrid, in company with Savary and some of his own foolish confidants.
On reaching Burgos, the party found no signs of the Emperor. They continued
their journey to Vittoria. Here Ferdinand's suspicions were aroused, and he
declined to proceed farther. Savary hastened to Bayonne to report the delay
to Napoleon. He returned with a letter which overcame Ferdinand's scruples
and induced him to cross the Pyrenees, in spite of the prayers of statesmen
and the loyal violence of the simple inhabitants of the district. At
Bayonne Ferdinand was visited by Napoleon, but not a word was spoken on the
object of his journey. In the afternoon the Emperor received Ferdinand and
his suite at a neighbouring château, but preserved the same ominous
silence. When the other guests departed, the Canon Escoiquiz, a member of
Ferdinand's retinue, was detained, and learned from Napoleon's own lips the
fate in store for the Bourbon Monarchy. Savary returned to Bayonne with
Ferdinand, and informed the Prince that he must renounce the crown of
Spain. [146]

[Charles and Ferdinand surrender their rights to Napoleon.]

[Attack on the French in Madrid, May 2.]

For some days Ferdinand held out against Napoleon's demands with a
stubbornness not often shown by him in the course of his mean and
hypocritical career. He was assailed not only by Napoleon but by those
whose fall had been his own rise; for Godoy was sent to Bayonne by Murat,
and the old King and Queen hurried after their son in order to witness his
humiliation. Ferdinand's parents attacked him with an indecency that
astonished even Napoleon himself; but the Prince maintained his refusal
until news arrived from Madrid which terrified him into submission. The
irritation of the capital had culminated in an armed conflict between the
populace and the French troops. On an attempt being made by Murat to remove
the remaining members of the royal family from the palace, the capital had
broken into open insurrection, and wherever French soldiers were found
alone or in small bodies they were massacred. (May 2.) Some hundreds of the
French perished; but the victory of Murat was speedy, and his vengeance
ruthless. The insurgents were driven into the great central square of the
city, and cut down by repeated charges of cavalry. When all resistance was
over, numbers of the citizens were shot in cold blood. Such was the
intelligence which reached Bayonne in the midst of Napoleon's struggle with
Ferdinand. There was no further need of argument. Ferdinand was informed
that if he withheld his resignation for twenty-four hours longer he would
be treated as a rebel. He yielded; and for a couple of country houses and
two life-annuities the crown of Spain and the Indies was renounced in
favour of Napoleon by father and son.

[National spirit of the Spaniards.]

The crown had indeed been won without a battle. That there remained a
Spanish nation ready to fight to the death for its independence was not a
circumstance which Napoleon had taken into account. His experience had as
yet taught him of no force but that of Governments and armies. In the
larger States, or groups of States, which had hitherto been the spoil of
France, the sense of nationality scarcely existed. Italy had felt it no
disgrace to pass under the rule of Napoleon. The Germans on both sides of
the Rhine knew of a fatherland only as an arena of the keenest jealousies.
In Prussia and in Austria the bond of citizenship was far less the love of
country than the habit of obedience to government. England and Russia,
where patriotism existed in the sense in which it existed in Spain, had as
yet been untouched by French armies. Judging from the action of the Germans
and the Italians, Napoleon might well suppose that in settling with the
Spanish Government he had also settled with the Spanish people, or, at the
worst, that his troops might have to fight some fanatical peasants, like
those who resisted the expulsion of the Bourbons from Naples. But the
Spanish nation was no mosaic of political curiosities like the Holy Roman
Empire, and no divided and oblivious family like the population of Italy.
Spain, as a single nation united under its King, had once played the
foremost part in Europe: when its grandeur departed, its pride had remained
behind: the Spaniard, in all his torpor and impoverishment, retained the
impulse of honour, the spirited self-respect, which periods of national
greatness leave behind them among a race capable of cherishing their
memory. Nor had those influences of a common European culture, which
directly opposed themselves to patriotism in Germany, affected the
home-bred energy of Spain. The temper of mind which could find satisfaction
in the revival of a form of Greek art when Napoleon's cavalry were scouring
Germany, or which could inquire whether mankind would not profit by the
removal of the barriers between nations, was unknown among the Spanish
people. Their feeling towards a foreign invader was less distant from that
of African savages than from that of the civilised and literary nations
which had fallen so easy a prey to the French. Government, if it had
degenerated into everything that was contemptible, had at least failed to
reduce the people to the passive helplessness which resulted from the
perfection of uniformity in Prussia. Provincial institutions, though
corrupted, were not extinguished; provincial attachments and prejudices
existed in unbounded strength. Like the passion of the Spaniard for his
native district, his passion for Spain was of a blind and furious
character. Enlightened conviction, though not altogether absent, had small
place in the Spanish war of defence. Religious fanaticism, hatred of the
foreigner, delight in physical barbarity, played their full part by the
side of nobler elements in the struggle for national independence.

[Rising of Spain, May, 1808.]

The captivity of Ferdinand, and the conflict of Murat's troops with the
inhabitants of Madrid, had become known in the Spanish cities before the
middle of May. On the 20th of the same month the _Gaceta_ announced
the abdication of the Bourbon family. Nothing more was wanting to throw
Spain into tumult. The same irresistible impulse seized provinces and
cities separated by the whole breadth of the Peninsula. Without
communication, and without the guidance of any central authority, the
Spanish people in every part of the kingdom armed themselves against the
usurper. Carthagena rose on the 22nd. Valencia forced its magistrates to
proclaim King Ferdinand on the 23rd. Two days later the mountain-district
of Asturias, with a population of half a million, formally declared war on
Napoleon, and despatched envoys to Great Britain to ask for assistance. On
the 26th, Santander and Seville, on opposite sides of the Peninsula, joined
the national movement. Corunna, Badajoz, and Granada declared themselves on
the Feast of St. Ferdinand, the 30th of May. Thus within a week the entire
country was in arms, except in those districts where the presence of French
troops rendered revolt impossible. The action of the insurgents was
everywhere the same. They seized upon the arms and munitions of war
collected in the magazines, and forced the magistrates or commanders of
towns to place themselves at their head. Where the latter resisted, or were
suspected of treachery to the national cause, they were in many cases put
to death. Committees of Government were formed in the principal cities, and
as many armies came into being as there were independent centres of the
insurrection.

[Joseph Bonaparte made King.]

[Napoleon's Assembly at Bayonne, June, 1808.]

Napoleon was in the meantime collecting a body of prelates and grandees at
Bayonne, under the pretence of consulting the representatives of the
Spanish nation. Half the members of the intended Assembly received a
personal summons from the Emperor; the other half were ordered to be chosen
by popular election. When the order, however, was issued from Bayonne, the
country was already in full revolt. Elections were held only in the
districts occupied by the French, and not more than twenty representatives
so elected proceeded to Bayonne. The remainder of the Assembly, which
numbered in all ninety-one persons, was composed of courtiers who had
accompanied the Royal Family across the Pyrenees, and of any Spaniards of
distinction upon whom the French could lay their hands. Joseph Bonaparte
was brought from Naples to receive the crown of Spain. [147] On the 15th of
June the Assembly of the Notables was opened. Its discussions followed the
order prescribed by Napoleon on all similar occasions. Articles disguising
a central absolute power with some pretence of national representation were
laid before the Assembly, and adopted without criticism. Except in the
privileges accorded to the Church, little indicated that the Constitution
of Bayonne was intended for the Spanish rather than for any other nation.
Its political forms were as valuable or as valueless as those which
Napoleon had given to his other client States; its principles of social
order were those which even now despotism could not dissever from French
supremacy--the abolition of feudal services, equality of taxation,
admission of all ranks to public employment. Titles of nobility were
preserved, the privileges of nobility abolished. One genuine act of homage
was rendered to the national character. The Catholic religion was declared
to be the only one permitted in Spain.

[Attempts of Napoleon to suppress the Spanish rising.]

While Napoleon was thus emancipating the peasants from the nobles, and
reconciling his supremacy with the claims of the Church, peasants and
townspeople were flocking to arms at the call of the priests, who so little
appreciated the orthodoxy of their patron as to identify him in their
manifestos with Calvin, with the Antichrist, and with Apollyon. [148] The
Emperor underrated the military efficiency of the national revolt, and
contented himself with sending his lieutenants to repress it, while he
himself, expecting a speedy report of victory, remained in Bayonne.
Divisions of the French army moved in all directions against the
insurgents. Dupont was ordered to march upon Seville from the capital,
Moncey upon Valencia; Marshal Bessières took command of a force intended to
disperse the main army of the Spaniards, which threatened the roads from
the Pyrenees to Madrid. The first encounters were all favourable to the
practised French troops; yet the objects which Napoleon set before his
generals were not achieved. Moncey failed to reduce Valencia; Dupont found
himself outnumbered on passing the Sierra Morena, and had to retrace his
steps and halt at Andujar, where the road to Madrid leaves the valley of
the Guadalquivir. Without sustaining any severe loss, the French divisions
were disheartened by exhausting and resultless marches; the Spaniards
gained new confidence on each successive day which passed without
inflicting upon them a defeat. At length, however, the commanders of the
northern army were forced by Marshal Bessières to fight a pitched battle at
Rio Seco, on the west of Valladolid (July 13th). Bessières won a complete
victory, and gained the lavish praises of his master for a battle which,
according to Napoleon's own conception, ended the Spanish war by securing
the roads from the Pyrenees to Madrid.

[Capitulation of Baylen, July 19.]

[Dupont in Andalusia.]

Never had Napoleon so gravely mistaken the true character of a campaign.
The vitality of the Spanish insurrection lay not in the support of the
capital, which had never passed out of the hands of the French, but in the
very independence of the several provincial movements. Unlike Vienna and
Berlin, Madrid might be held by the French without the loss being felt by
their adversary; Cadiz, Corunna, Lisbon, were equally serviceable bases for
the insurrection. The victory of Marshal Bessières in the north preserved
the communication between France and Madrid, and it did nothing more. It
failed to restore the balance of military force in the south of Spain, or
to affect the operations of the Spanish troops which were now closing round
Dupont upon the Guadalquivir. On the 15th of July Dupont was attacked at
Andujar by greatly superior forces. His lieutenant, Vedel, knowing the
Spaniards to be engaged in a turning movement, made a long march northwards
in order to guard the line of retreat. In his absence the position of
Baylen, immediately in Dupont's rear, was seized by the Spanish general
Reding. Dupont discovered himself to be surrounded. He divided his army
into two columns, and moved on the night of the 18th from Andujar towards
Baylen, in the hope of overpowering Reding's division. At daybreak on the
19th the positions of Reding were attacked by the French. The struggle
continued until mid-day, though the French soldiers sank exhausted with
thirst and with the burning heat. At length the sound of cannon was heard
in the rear. Castanos, the Spanish general commanding at Andujar, had
discovered Dupont's retreat, and pressed behind him with troops fresh and
unwearied by conflict. Further resistance was hopeless. Dupont had to
negotiate for a surrender. He consented to deliver up Vedel's division as
well as his own, although Vedel's troops were in possession of the road to
Madrid, the Spanish commander promising, on this condition, that the
captives should not be retained as prisoners of war in Spain, but be
permitted to return by sea to their native country. The entire army of
Andalusia, numbering 23,000 men, thus passed into the hands of an enemy
whom Napoleon had not believed to possess a military existence. Dupont's
anxiety to save something for France only aggravated the extent of the
calamity; for the Junta of Seville declined to ratify the terms of the
capitulation, and the prisoners, with the exception of the superior
officers, were sent to the galleys at Cadiz. The victorious Spaniards
pushed forwards upon Madrid. King Joseph, who had entered the city only a
week before, had to fly from his capital. The whole of the French troops in
Spain were compelled to retire to a defensive position upon the Ebro.

[Wellesley lands in Portugal, Aug. 1, 1808.]

[Vimieiro, Aug. 21.]

[Convention of Cintra, Aug. 30.]

The disaster of Baylen did not come alone. Napoleon's attack upon Portugal
had brought him within the striking-range of Great Britain. On the 1st of
August an English army, commanded by Sir Arthur Wellesley, landed on the
Portuguese coast at the mouth of the Mondego. Junot, the first invader of
the Peninsula, was still at Lisbon; his forces in occupation of Portugal
numbered nearly 30,000 men, but they were widely dispersed, and he was
unable to bring more than 13,000 men into the field against the 16,000 with
whom Wellesley moved upon Lisbon. Junot advanced to meet the invader. A
battle was fought at Vimieiro, thirty miles north of Lisbon, on the 21st of
August. The victory was gained by the British; and had the first advantage
been followed up, Junot's army would scarcely have escaped capture. But the
command had passed out of Wellesley's hands. His superior officer, Sir
Harry Burrard, took up the direction of the army immediately the battle
ended, and Wellesley had to acquiesce in a suspension of operations at a
moment when the enemy seemed to be within his grasp. Junot made the best
use of his reprieve. He entered into negotiations for the evacuation of
Portugal, and obtained the most favourable terms in the Convention of
Cintra, signed on the 30th of August. The French army was permitted to
return to France with its arms and baggage. Wellesley, who had strongly
condemned the inaction of his superior officers after the battle of the
21st, agreed with them that, after the enemy had once been permitted to
escape, the evacuation of Portugal was the best result which the English
could obtain. [149] Junot's troops were accordingly conveyed to French
ports at the expense of the British Government, to the great displeasure of
the public, who expected to see the marshal and his army brought prisoners
into Portsmouth. The English were as ill-humoured with their victory as the
French with their defeat. When on the point of sending Junot to a
court-martial for his capitulation, Napoleon learnt that the British
Government had ordered its own generals to be brought to trial for
permitting the enemy to escape them.

[Effect of Spanish rising on Europe.]

[War-party in Austria and Prussia.]

[Napoleon and Prussia.]

If the Convention of Cintra gained little glory for England, the tidings of
the successful uprising of the Spanish people against Napoleon, and of
Dupont's capitulation at Baylen, created the deepest impression in every
country of Europe that still entertained the thought of resistance to
France. The first great disaster had befallen Napoleon's arms. It had been
inflicted by a nation without a government, without a policy, without a
plan beyond that of the liberation of its fatherland from the foreigner.
What Coalition after Coalition had failed to effect, the patriotism and
energy of a single people deserted by its rulers seemed about to
accomplish. The victory of the regular troops at Baylen was but a part of
that great national movement in which every isolated outbreak had had its
share in dividing and paralysing the Emperor's force. The capacity of
untrained popular levies to resist practised troops might be exaggerated in
the first outburst of wonder and admiration caused by the Spanish rising;
but the difference made in the nature of the struggle by the spirit of
popular resentment and determination was one upon which mistake was
impossible. A sudden light broke in upon the politicians of Austria and
Prussia, and explained the powerlessness of those Coalitions in which the
wars had always been the affair of the Cabinets, and never the affair of
the people. What the Spanish nation had effected for itself against
Napoleon was not impossible for the German nation, if once a national
movement like that of Spain sprang up among the German race. "I do not
see," wrote Blücher some time afterwards, "why we should not think
ourselves as good as the Spaniards." The best men in the Austrian and
Prussian Governments began to look forward to the kindling of popular
spirit as the surest means for combating the tyranny of Napoleon. Military
preparations were pushed forward in Austria with unprecedented energy and
on a scale rivalling that of France itself. In Prussia the party of Stein
determined upon a renewal of the war, and decided to risk the extinction of
the Prussian State rather than submit to the extortions by which Napoleon
was completing the ruin of their country. It was among the patriots of
Northern Germany that the course of the Spanish struggle excited the
deepest emotion, and gave rise to the most resolute purpose of striking for
European liberty.

Since the nominal restoration of peace between France and Prussia by the
cession of half the Prussian kingdom, not a month had passed without the
infliction of some gross injustice upon the conquered nation. The
evacuation of the country had in the first instance been made conditional
upon the payment of certain requisitions in arrear. While the amount of
this sum was being settled, all Prussia, except Königsberg, remained in the
hands of the French, and 157,000 French soldiers lived at free quarters
upon the unfortunate inhabitants. At the end of the year 1807 King
Frederick William was informed that, besides paying to Napoleon 60,000,000
francs in money, and ceding domain lands of the same value, he must
continue to support 40,000 French troops in five garrison-towns upon the
Oder. Such was the dismay caused by this announcement, that Stein quitted
Königsberg, now the seat of government, and passed three months at the
head-quarters of the French at Berlin, endeavouring to frame some
settlement less disastrous to his country. Count Daru, Napoleon's
administrator in Prussia, treated the Minister with respect, and accepted
his proposal for the evacuation of Prussian territory on payment of a fixed
sum to the French. But the agreement required Napoleon's ratification, and
for this Stein waited in vain. [150]

[Stein urges war.]

[Demands of Napoleon, Sept., 1808.]

Month after month dragged on, and Napoleon made no reply. At length the
victories of the Spanish insurrection in the summer of 1808 forced the
Emperor to draw in his troops from beyond the Elbe. He placed a bold front
upon his necessities, and demanded from the Prussian Government, as the
price of evacuation, a still larger sum than that which had been named in
the previous winter: he insisted that the Prussian army should be limited
to 40,000 men, and the formation of the Landwehr abandoned; and he required
the support of a Prussian corps of 16,000 men, in the event of hostilities
breaking out between France and Austria. Not even on these conditions was
Prussia offered the complete evacuation of her territory. Napoleon still
insisted on holding the three principal fortresses on the Oder with a
garrison of 10,000 men. Such was the treaty proposed to the Prussian Court
(September, 1808) at a time when every soldierly spirit thrilled with the
tidings from Spain, and every statesman was convinced by the events of the
last few months that Napoleon's treaties were but stages in a progression
of wrongs. Stein and Scharnhorst urged the King to arm the nation for a
struggle as desperate as that of Spain, and to delay only until Napoleon
himself was busied in the warfare of the Peninsula. Continued submission
was ruin; revolt was at least not hopeless. However forlorn the condition
of Prussia, its alliances were of the most formidable character. Austria
was arming without disguise; Great Britain had intervened in the warfare of
the Peninsula with an efficiency hitherto unknown in its military
operations; Spain, on the estimate of Napoleon himself, required an army of
200,000 men. Since the beginning of the Spanish insurrection Stein had
occupied himself with the organisation of a general outbreak throughout
Northern Germany. Rightly or wrongly, he believed the train to be now laid,
and encouraged the King of Prussia to count upon the support of a popular
insurrection against the French in all the territories which they had taken
from Prussia, from Hanover, and from Hesse.

[Stein resigns, Nov. 24. Proscribed by Napoleon.]

[Napoleon and Alexander meet at Erfurt, Oct. 7, 1808.]

In one point alone Stein was completely misinformed. He believed that
Alexander, in spite of the Treaty of Tilsit, would not be unwilling to see
the storm burst upon Napoleon, and that in the event of another general war
the forces of Russia would more probably be employed against France than in
its favour. The illusion was a fatal one. Alexander was still the
accomplice of Napoleon. For the sake of the Danubian Principalities,
Alexander was willing to hold central Europe in check while Napoleon
crushed the Spaniards, and to stifle every bolder impulse in the simple
King of Prussia. Napoleon himself dreaded the general explosion of Europe
before Spain was conquered, and drew closer to his Russian ally.
Difficulties that had been placed in the way of the Russian annexation of
Roumania vanished. The Czar and the Emperor determined to display to all
Europe the intimacy of their union by a festal meeting at Erfurt in the
midst of their victims and their dependents. The whole tribe of vassal
German sovereigns was summoned to the meeting-place; representatives
attended from the Courts of Vienna and Berlin. On the 7th of October
Napoleon and Alexander made their entry into Erfurt. Pageants and
festivities required the attendance of the crowned and titled rabble for
several days; but the only serious business was the settlement of a treaty
confirming the alliance of France and Russia, and the notification of the
Czar to the envoy of the King of Prussia that his master must accept the
terms demanded by Napoleon, and relinquish the idea of a struggle with
France. [151] Count Goltz, the Prussian envoy, unwillingly signed the
treaty which gave Prussia but a partial evacuation at so dear a cost, and
wrote to the King that no course now remained for him but to abandon
himself to unreserved dependence upon France, and to permit Stein and the
patriotic party to retire from the direction of the State. Unless the King
could summon up courage to declare war in defiance of Alexander, there was,
in fact, no alternative left open to him. Napoleon had discovered Stein's
plans for raising an insurrection in Germany several weeks before, and had
given vent to the most furious outburst of wrath against Stein in the
presence of the Prussian Ambassador at Erfurt. If the great struggle on
which Stein's whole heart and soul were set was to be relinquished, if
Spain was to be crushed before Prussia moved an arm, and Austria was to be
left to fight its inevitable battle alone, then the presence of Stein at
the head of the Prussian State was only a snare to Europe, a peril to
Prussia, and a misery to himself. Stein asked for and received his
dismissal. (Nov. 24, 1808.)

Stein's retirement averted the wrath of Napoleon from the King of Prussia;
but the whole malignity of that Corsican nature broke out against the
high-spirited patriot as soon as fresh victories had released Napoleon from
the ill-endured necessity of self-control. On the 16th of December, when
Madrid had again passed into the possession of the French, an imperial
order appeared, which gave the measure of Napoleon's hatred of the fallen
Minister. Stein was denounced as the enemy of the Empire; his property was
confiscated; he was ordered to be seized by the troops of the Emperor or
his allies wherever they could lay their hands upon him. As in the days of
Roman tyranny, the west of Europe could now afford no asylum to the enemies
of the Emperor. Russia and Austria remained the only refuge of the exile.
Stein escaped into Bohemia; and, as the crowning humiliation of the
Prussian State, its police were forced to pursue as a criminal the
statesman whose fortitude had still made it possible in the darkest days
for Prussian patriots not to despair of their country.

[Misgovernment of the Spanish Junta.]

[Napoleon goes to Spain, Nov., 1808.]

Central Europe secured by the negotiations with Alexander at Erfurt,
Napoleon was now able to place himself at the head of the French forces in
Spain without fear of any immediate attack from the side of Germany. Since
the victory of Baylen the Spaniards had made little progress either towards
good government or towards a good military administration. The provincial
Juntas had consented to subordinate themselves to a central committee
chosen from among their own members; but this new supreme authority, which
held its meetings at Aranjuez, proved one of the worst governments that
even Spain itself had ever endured. It numbered thirty persons,
twenty-eight of whom were priests, nobles, or officials. [152] Its
qualities were those engrained in Spanish official life. In legislation it
attempted absolutely nothing but the restoration of the Inquisition and the
protection of Church lands; its administration was confined to a foolish
interference with the better generals, and the acquisition of enormous
supplies of war from Great Britain, which were either stolen by contractors
or allowed to fall into the hands of the French. While the members of the
Junta discussed the titles of honour which were to attach to them
collectively and individually, and voted themselves salaries equal to those
of Napoleon's generals, the armies fell into a state of destitution which
scarcely any but Spanish troops would have been capable of enduring. The
energy of the humbler classes alone prolonged the military existence of the
insurrection; the Government organised nothing, comprehended nothing. Its
part in the national movement was confined to a system of begging and
boasting, which demoralised the Spaniards, and bewildered the agents and
generals of England who first attempted the difficult task of assisting the
Spaniards to help themselves. When the approach of army after army, the
levies of Germany, Poland, Holland, and Italy, in addition to Napoleon's
own veteran troops of Austerlitz and Jena, gave to the rest of the world
some idea of the enormous force which Napoleon was about to throw on to
Spain, the Spanish Government could form no better design than to repeat
the movement of Baylen against Napoleon himself on the banks of the Ebro.

[Napoleon enters Madrid, Dec. 4.]

[Campaign on the Ebro, Nov., 1808.]

The Emperor for the first time crossed the Pyrenees in the beginning of
November, 1808. The victory of the Spaniards in the summer had forced the
invaders to retire into the district between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, and
the Ebro now formed the dividing-line between the hostile armies. It was
the intention of Napoleon to roll back the extremes of the Spanish line to
the east and the west, and, breaking through its centre, to move straight
upon Burgos and Madrid. The Spaniards, for their part, were not content to
act upon the defensive. When Napoleon arrived at Vittoria on the 5th of
November, the left wing of the Spanish army under General Blake had already
received orders to move eastwards from the upper waters of the Ebro, and to
cut the French off from their communication with the Pyrenees. The movement
was exactly that which Napoleon desired; for in executing it, Blake had
only to march far enough eastwards to find himself completely surrounded by
French divisions. A premature movement of the French generals themselves
alone saved Blake from total destruction. He was attacked and defeated at
Espinosa, on the upper Ebro, before he had advanced far enough to lose his
line of retreat (Nov. 10); and, after suffering great losses, he succeeded
in leading off a remnant of his army into the mountains of Asturias. In the
centre, Soult drove the enemy before him, and captured Burgos. Of the army
which was to have cleared Spain of the French, nothing now remained but a
corps on the right at Tudela, commanded by Palafox. The destruction of this
body was committed by the Emperor to Lannes and Ney. Ney was ordered to
take a long march southwards in order to cut off the retreat of the
Spaniards; he found it impossible, however, to execute his march within the
time prescribed; and Palafox, beaten by Lannes at Tudela, made good his
retreat into Saragossa. A series of accidents had thus saved the divisions
of the Spanish army from actual capture, but there no longer existed a
force capable of meeting the enemy in the field. Napoleon moved forward
from Burgos upon Madrid. The rest of his march was a triumph. The batteries
defending the mountain-pass of Somo Sierra were captured by a charge of
Polish cavalry; and the capital itself surrendered, after a short artillery
fire, on the 4th of December, four weeks after the opening of the campaign.

[Campaign of Sir John Moore.]

An English army was slowly and painfully making its way towards the Ebro at
the time when Napoleon broke in pieces the Spanish line of defence. On the
14th of October Sir John Moore had assumed the command of 20,000 British
troops at Lisbon. He was instructed to march to the neighbourhood of
Burgos, and to co-operate with the Spanish generals upon the Ebro.
According to the habit of the English, no allowance was made for the
movements of the enemy while their own were under consideration; and the
mountain-country which Moore had to traverse placed additional obstacles in
the way of an expedition at least a month too late in its starting. Moore
believed it to be impossible to carry his artillery over the direct road
from Lisbon to Salamanca, and sent it round by way of Madrid, while he
himself advanced through Ciudad Rodrigo, reaching Salamanca on the 13th of
November. Here, while still waiting for his artillery, rumours reached him
of the destruction of Blake's army at Espinosa, and of the fall of Burgos.
Later came the report of Palafox's overthrow at Tudela. Yet even now Moore
could get no trustworthy information from the Spanish authorities. He
remained for some time in suspense, and finally determined to retreat into
Portugal. Orders were sent to Sir David Baird, who was approaching with
reinforcements from Corunna, to turn back towards the northern coast.
Scarcely had Moore formed this decision, when despatches arrived from
Frere, the British agent at Madrid, stating that the Spaniards were about
to defend the capital to the last extremity, and that Moore would be
responsible for the ruin of Spain and the disgrace of England if he failed
to advance to its relief. To the great joy of his soldiers, Moore gave
orders for a forward march. The army advanced upon Valladolid, with the
view of attacking the French upon their line of communication, while the
siege of the capital engaged them in front. Baird was again ordered
southwards. It was not until the 14th of December, ten days after Madrid
had passed into the hands of the French, that Moore received intelligence
of its fall. Neither the Spanish Government nor the British agent who had
caused Moore to advance took the trouble to inform him of the surrender of
the capital; he learnt it from an intercepted French despatch. From the
same despatch Moore learnt that to the north of him, at Saldanha, on the
river Carrion, there lay a comparatively small French force under the
command of Soult. The information was enough for Moore, heart-sick at the
mockery to which his army had been subjected, and burning for decisive
action. He turned northwards, and marched against Soult, in the hope of
surprising him before the news of his danger could reach Napoleon in the
capital.

[Napoleon marches against Moore, Dec. 19.]

[Retreat of the English.]

[Corunna, Jan. 16, 1809.]

On the 19th of December a report reached Madrid that Moore had suspended
his retreat on Portugal. Napoleon instantly divined the actual movement of
the English, and hurried from Madrid against Moore at the head of 40,000
men. Moore had met Baird on the 20th at Mayorga; on the 23rd the united
British divisions reached Sahagun, scarcely a day's march from Soult at
Saldanha. Here the English commander learnt that Napoleon himself was on
his track. Escape was a question of hours. Napoleon had pushed across the
Guadarama mountains in forced marches through snow and storm. Had his
vanguard been able to seize the bridge over the river Esla at Benavente
before the English crossed it, Moore would have been cut off from all
possibility of escape. The English reached the river first and blew up the
bridge. This rescued them from immediate danger. The defence of the river
gave Moore's army a start which rendered the superiority of Napoleon's
numbers of little effect. For a while Napoleon followed Moore towards the
northern coast. On the 1st of January, 1809, he wrote an order which showed
that he looked upon Moore's escape as now inevitable, and on the next day
he quitted the army, leaving to his marshals the honour of toiling after
Moore to the coast, and of seizing some thousands of frozen or drunken
British stragglers. Moore himself pushed on towards Corunna with a rapidity
which was dearly paid for by the demoralisation of his army. The sufferings
and the excesses of the troops were frightful; only the rear-guard, which
had to face the enemy, preserved soldierly order. At length Moore found it
necessary to halt and take up position, in order to restore the discipline
of his army. He turned upon Soult at Lugo, and offered battle for two
successive days; but the French general declined an engagement; and Moore,
satisfied with having recruited his troops, continued his march upon
Corunna. Soult still followed. On January 11th the English army reached the
sea; but the ships which were to convey them back to England were nowhere
to be seen. A battle was inevitable, and Moore drew up his troops, 14,000
in number, on a range of low hills outside the town to await the attack of
the French. On the 16th, when the fleet had now come into harbour, Soult
gave battle. The French were defeated at every point of their attack. Moore
fell at the moment of his victory, conscious that the army which he had so
bravely led had nothing more to fear. The embarkation was effected that
night; on the next day the fleet put out to sea.

[Siege of Saragossa, Dec., 1808.]

[Napoleon leaves Spain, Jan 19, 1809.]

Napoleon quitted Spain on the 19th of January, 1809, leaving his brother
Joseph again in possession of the capital, and an army of 300,000 men under
the best generals of France engaged with the remnants of a defeated force
which had never reached half that number. No brilliant victories remained
to be won; no enemy remained in the field important enough to require the
presence of Napoleon. Difficulties of transit and the hostility of the
people might render the subjugation of Spain a slower process than the
subjugation of Prussia or Italy; but, to all appearance, the ultimate
success of the Emperor's plans was certain, and the worst that lay before
his lieutenants was a series of wearisome and obscure exertions against an
inconsiderable foe. Yet, before the Emperor had been many weeks in Paris, a
report reached him from Marshal Lannes which told of some strange form of
military capacity among the people whose armies were so contemptible in the
field. The city of Saragossa, after successfully resisting its besiegers in
the summer of 1808, had been a second time invested after the defeats of
the Spanish armies upon the Ebro. [153] The besiegers themselves were
suffering from extreme scarcity when, on the 22nd of January, 1809, Lannes
took up the command. Lannes immediately called up all the troops within
reach, and pressed the battering operations with the utmost vigour. On the
29th, the walls of Saragossa were stormed in four different places.

[Defeats of the Spaniards, March, 1809.]

According to all ordinary precedents of war, the French were now in
possession of the city. But the besiegers found that their real work was
only beginning. The streets were trenched and barricaded; every dwelling
was converted into a fortress; for twenty days the French were forced to
besiege house by house. In the centre of the town the popular leaders
erected a gallows, and there they hanged every one who flinched from
meeting the enemy. Disease was added to the horrors of warfare. In the
cellars, where the women and children crowded in filth and darkness, a
malignant pestilence broke out, which, at the beginning of February, raised
the deaths to five hundred a day. The dead bodies were unburied; in that
poisoned atmosphere the slightest wound produced mortification and death.
At length the powers of the defenders sank. A fourth part of the town had
been won by the French; of the townspeople and peasants who were within the
walls at the beginning of the siege, it is said that thirty thousand had
perished; the remainder could only prolong their defence to fall in a few
days more before disease or the enemy. Even now there were members of the
Junta who wished to fight as long as a man remained, but they were
outnumbered. On the 20th of February what was left of Saragossa
capitulated. Its resistance gave to the bravest of Napoleon's soldiers an
impression of horror and dismay new even to men who had passed through
seventeen years of revolutionary warfare, but it failed to retard
Napoleon's armies in the conquest of Spain. No attempt was made to relieve
the heroic or ferocious city. Everywhere the tide of French conquest
appeared to be steadily making its advance. Soult invaded Portugal; in
combination with him, two armies moved from Madrid upon the southern and
the south-western provinces of Spain. Oporto fell on the 28th of March; in
the same week the Spanish forces covering the south were decisively beaten
at Ciudad Real and at Medellin upon the line of the Guadiana. The hopes of
Europe fell. Spain itself could expect no second Saragossa. It appeared as
if the complete subjugation of the Peninsula could now only be delayed by
the mistakes of the French generals themselves, and by the untimely removal
of that controlling will which had hitherto made every movement a step
forward in conquest.




CHAPTER IX.


Austria preparing for war--The war to be one on behalf of the German
Nation--Patriotic Movement in Prussia--Expected Insurrection in North
Germany--Plans of Campaign--Austrian Manifesto to the Germans--Rising of
the Tyrolese--Defeats of the Archduke Charles in Bavaria--French in
Vienna--Attempts of Dörnberg and Schill--Battle of Aspern--Second Passage
of the Danube--Battle of Wagram--Armistice of Znaim--Austria waiting for
events--Wellesley in Spain--He gains the Battle of Talavera, but
retreats--Expedition against Antwerp fails--Austria makes Peace--Treaty of
Vienna--Real Effects of the War of 1809--Austria after 1809--Metternich--
Marriage of Napoleon with Marie Louise--Severance of Napoleon and
Alexander--Napoleon annexes the Papal States, Holland, La Valais, and the
North German Coast--The Napoleonic Empire: Its Benefits and Wrongs--The
Czar withdraws from Napoleon's Commercial System--War with Russia
imminent--Wellington in Portugal: Lines of Torres Vedras; Massena's
Campaign of 1810, and retreat--Soult in Andalusia--Wellington's Campaign
of 1810--Capture of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz--Salamanca.


[Austria preparing for war, 1808-9.]

Napoleon, quitting Spain in the third week of January, 1809, travelled to
Paris with the utmost haste. He believed Austria to be on the point of
declaring war; and on the very day of his arrival at the capital he called
out the contingents of the Rhenish Federation. In the course of the next
few weeks, however, he formed the opinion that Austria would either decline
hostilities altogether, or at least find it impossible to declare war
before the middle of May. For once the efforts of Austria outstripped the
calculations of her enemy. Count Stadion, the earnest and enlightened
statesman who had held power in Austria since the Peace of Presburg, had
steadily prepared for a renewal of the struggle with France. He was
convinced that Napoleon would soon enter upon new enterprises of conquest,
and still farther extend his empire at the expense of Austria, unless
attacked before Spain had fallen under his dominion. Metternich, now
Austrian Ambassador at Paris, reported that Napoleon was intending to
divide Turkey as soon as he had conquered Spain; and, although he advised
delay, he agreed with the Cabinet at Vienna that Austria must sooner or
later strike in self-defence. [154] Stadion, more sanguine, was only
prevented from declaring war in 1808 by the counsels of the Archduke
Charles and of other generals who were engaged in bringing the immense mass
of new levies into military formation. Charles himself attached little
value to the patriotic enthusiasm which, since the outbreak of the Spanish
insurrection, had sprung up in the German provinces of Austria. He saw the
approach of war with more apprehension than pleasure; but, however faint
his own hopes, he laboured earnestly in creating for Austria a force far
superior to anything that she had possessed before, and infused into the
mass of the army that confident and patriotic spirit which he saw in others
rather than felt in himself. By the beginning of March, 1809, Austria had
260,000 men ready to take the field.

[The war of 1809 to be a war for Germany.]

The war now breaking out was to be a war for the German nation, as the
struggle of the Spaniards had been a struggle for Spain. The animated
appeals of the Emperor's generals formed a singular contrast to the silence
with which the Austrian Cabinet had hitherto entered into its wars. The
Hapsburg sovereign now stood before the world less as the inheritor of an
ancient empire and the representative of the Balance of Power than as the
disinterested champion of the German race. On the part of the Emperor
himself the language of devotion for Germany was scarcely more than
ironical. Francis belonged to an age and to a system in which the idea of
nationality had no existence; and, like other sovereigns, he regarded his
possessions as a sort of superior property which ought to be defended by
obedient domestic dogs against marauding foreign wolves. The same personal
view of public affairs had hitherto satisfied the Austrians. It had been
enough for them to be addressed as the dutiful children of a wise and
affectionate father. The Emperor spoke the familiar Viennese dialect; he
was as homely in his notions and his prejudices as any beerseller in his
dominions; his subjects might see him at almost any hour of the day or
night; and out of the somewhat tough material of his character popular
imagination had no difficulty in framing an idol of parental geniality and
wisdom. Fifteen years of failure and mismanagement had, however, impaired
the beauty of the domestic fiction; and although old-fashioned Austrians,
like Haydn, the composer of the Austrian Hymn, were ready to go down to the
grave invoking a blessing on their gracious master, the Emperor himself and
his confidants were shrewd enough to see that the newly-excited sense of
German patriotism would put them in possession of a force which they could
hardly evoke by the old methods.

[Austrian Parties.]

One element of reality lay in the professions which were not for the most
part meant very seriously. There was probably now no statesman in Austria
who any longer felt a jealousy of the power of Prussia. With Count Stadion
and his few real supporters the restoration of Germany was a genuine and
deeply-cherished desire; with the majority of Austrian politicians the
interests of Austria herself seemed at least for the present to require the
liberation of North Germany. Thus the impassioned appeals of the Archduke
Charles to all men of German race to rise against their foreign oppressor,
and against their native princes who betrayed the interests of the
Fatherland, gained the sanction of a Court hitherto very little inclined to
form an alliance with popular agitation. If the chaotic disorder of the
Austrian Government had been better understood in Europe, less importance
would have been attached to this sudden change in its tone. No one in the
higher ranks at Vienna was bound by the action of his colleagues. The
Emperor, though industrious, had not the capacity to enforce any coherent
system of government. His brothers caballed one against another, and
against the persons who figured as responsible ministers. State-papers were
brought by soldiers to the Emperor for his signature without the knowledge
of his advisers. The very manifestos which seemed to herald a new era for
Germany owed most of their vigour to the literary men who were entrusted
with their composition. [155]

[Patriotic movement in Prussia.]

[Governing classes in South Germany on the side of Napoleon.]

The answer likely to be rendered by Germany to the appeal of Austria was
uncertain. In the Rhenish Federation there were undoubted signs of
discontent with French rule among the common people; but the official
classes were universally on the side of Napoleon, who had given them their
posts and their salaries; while the troops, and especially the officers,
who remembered the time when they had been mocked by the Austrians as
"harlequins" and "nose-bags," were won by the kindness of the great
conqueror, who organised them under the hands of his own generals, and gave
them the companionship of his own victorious legions. Little could be
expected from districts where to the mass of the population the old régime
of German independence had meant nothing more than attendance at the
manor-court of a knight, or the occasional spectacle of a ducal wedding, or
a deferred interest in the droning jobbery of some hereditary
town-councillor. In Northern Germany there was far more prospect of a
national insurrection. There the spirit of Stein and of those who had
worked with him was making itself felt, in spite of the fall of the
Minister. Scharnhorst's reforms had made the Prussian army a school of
patriotism, and the work of statesmen and soldiers was promoted by men who
spoke to the feelings and the intelligence of the nation. Literature lost
its indifference to nationality and to home. The philosopher Fichte, the
poet Arndt, the theologian Schleiermacher pressed the claims of Germany and
of the manlier virtues upon a middle class singularly open to literary
influences, singularly wanting in the experience and the impulses of active
public life. [156] In the Kingdom of Westphalia preparations for an
insurrection against the French were made by officers who had served in the
Prussian and the Hessian armies. In Prussia itself, by the side of many
nobler agencies, the newly-founded Masonic society of the Tugendbund, or
League of Virtue, made the cause of the Fatherland popular among thousands
to whom it was an agreeable novelty to belong to any society at all. No
spontaneous, irresistible uprising, like that which Europe had seen in the
Spanish Peninsula, was to be expected among the unimpulsive population of
the North German plains; but the military circles of Prussia were generally
in favour of war, and an insurrection of the population west of the Elbe
was not improbable in the event of Napoleon's army being defeated by
Austria in the field. King Frederick William, too timid to resolve upon war
himself, too timid even to look with satisfaction upon the bold attitude of
Austria, had every reason for striking, if once the balance should incline
against Napoleon: even against his own inclination it was possible that the
ardour of his soldiers might force him into war.

[Plans of campaign.]

So strong were the hopes of a general rising in Northern Germany, that the
Austrian Government to some extent based its plans for the campaign on this
event. In the ordinary course of hostilities between France and Austria the
line of operations in Germany is the valley of the Danube; but in preparing
for the war of 1809 the Austrian Government massed its forces in the
north-west of Bohemia, with the object of throwing them directly upon
Central Germany. The French troops which were now evacuating Prussia were
still on their way westwards at the time when Austria was ready to open the
campaign. Davoust, with about 60,000 men, was in Northern Bavaria,
separated by a great distance from the nearest French divisions in Baden
and on the Rhine. By a sudden incursion of the main army of Austria across
the Bohemian mountains, followed by an uprising in Northern Germany,
Davoust and his scattered detachments could hardly escape destruction. Such
was the original plan of the campaign, and it was probably a wise one in
the present exceptional superiority of the Austrian preparations over those
of France. For the first time since the creation of the Consulate it
appeared as if the opening advantages of the war must inevitably be upon
the side of the enemies of France. Napoleon had underrated both the energy
and the resources of his adversary. By the middle of March, when the
Austrians were ready to descend upon Davoust from Bohemia, Napoleon's first
troops had hardly crossed the Rhine. Fortunately for the French commander,
the Austrian Government, at the moment of delivering its well-planned blow,
was seized with fear at its own boldness. Recollections of Hohenlinden and
Ulm filled anxious minds with the thought that the valley of the Danube was
insufficiently defended; and on the 20th of March, when the army was on the
point of breaking into Northern Bavaria, orders were given to divert the
line of march to the south, and to enter the Rhenish Confederacy by the
roads of the Danube and the Inn. Thus the fruit of so much energy, and of
the enemy's rare neglectfulness, was sacrificed at the last moment. It was
not until the 9th of April that the Austrian movement southward was
completed, and that the army lay upon the line of the Inn, ready to attack
Napoleon in the territory of his principal German ally.

[Austrian manifesto to the Germans.]

The proclamations now published by the Emperor and the Archduke bore
striking testimony to the influence of the Spanish insurrection in exciting
the sense of national right, and awakening the Governments of Europe to the
force which this placed in their hands. For the first time in history a
manifesto was addressed "to the German nation." The contrast drawn in the
Archduke's address to his army between the Spanish patriots dying in the
defence of their country, and the German vassal-contingents dragged by
Napoleon into Spain to deprive a gallant nation of its freedom, was one of
the most just and the most telling that tyranny has ever given to the
leaders of a righteous cause. [157] The Emperor's address "to the German
nation" breathed the same spirit. It was not difficult for the politicians
of the Rhenish Federation to ridicule the sudden enthusiasm for liberty and
nationality shown by a Government which up to the present time had dreaded
nothing so much as the excitement of popular movements; but, however
unconcernedly the Emperor and the old school of Austrian statesmen might
adopt patriotic phrases which they had no intention to remember when the
struggle was over, such language was a reality in the effect which it
produced upon the thousands who, both in Austria and other parts of
Germany, now for the first time heard the summons to unite in defence of a
common Fatherland.

[Austrians invade Bavaria, April 9, 1809.]

[Rising of the Tyrol, April, 1809.]

[Its causes religious.]

The leading divisions of the Archduke's army crossed the Inn on the 9th of
April. Besides the forces intended for the invasion of Bavaria, which
numbered 170,000 men, the Austrian Government had formed two smaller
armies, with which the Princes Ferdinand and John were to take up the
offensive in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and in Northern Italy. On every side
Austria was first in the field; but even before its regular forces could
encounter the enemy, a popular outbreak of the kind that the Government had
invoked wrested from the French the whole of an important province. While
the army crossed the Inn, the Tyrolese people rose, and overpowered the
French and Bavarian detachments stationed in their country. The Tyrol had
been taken from Austria at the Peace of Presburg, and attached to
Napoleon's vassal kingdom of Bavaria. In geographical position and in
relationship of blood the Tyrolese were as closely connected with the
Bavarians as with the Austrians; and the annexation would probably have
caused no lasting discontent if the Bavarian Government had condescended to
take some account of the character of its new subjects. Under the rule of
Austria the Tyrolese had enjoyed many privileges. They were exempt from
military service, except in their own militia; they paid few taxes; they
possessed forms of self-government which were at least popular enough to be
regretted after they had been lost. The people adored their bishops and
clergy. Nowhere could the Church exhibit a more winning example of unbroken
accord between a simple people and a Catholic Crown. Protestantism and the
unholy activities of reason had never brought trouble into the land. The
people believed exactly what the priests told them, and delighted in the
innumerable holidays provided by the Church. They had so little cupidity
that no bribe could induce a Tyrolese peasant to inform the French of any
movement; they had so little intelligence that, when their own courage and
stout-heartedness had won their first battle, they persuaded one another
that they had been led by a Saint on a white horse. Grievances of a
substantial character were not wanting under the new Bavarian rule; but it
was less the increased taxation and the enforcement of military service
that exasperated the people than the attacks made by the Government upon
the property and rights of the Church. Montgelas, the reforming Bavarian
minister, treated the Tyrolese bishops with as little ceremony as the
Swabian knights. The State laid claim to all advowsons; and upon the
refusal of the bishops to give up their patronage, the bishops themselves
were banished and their revenues sequestrated. A passion for uniformity and
common sense prompted the Government to revive the Emperor Joseph's edicts
against pilgrimages and Church holidays. It became a police-offence to shut
up a shop on a saint's day, or to wear a gay dress at a festival. Bavarian
soldiers closed the churches at the end of a prescribed number of masses.
At a sale of Church property, ordered by the Government, some of the sacred
vessels were permitted to fall into the hands of the Jews.

These were the wrongs that fired the simple Tyrolese. They could have borne
the visits of the tax-gatherer and the lists of conscription; they could
not bear that their priests should be overruled, or that their observances
should be limited to those sufficient for ordinary Catholics. Yet, with all
its aspect of unreason, the question in the Tyrol was also part of that
larger question whether Napoleon's pleasure should be the rule of European
life, or nations should have some voice in the disposal of their own
affairs. The Tyrolese were not more superstitious, and they were certainty
much less cruel, than the Spaniards. They fought for ecclesiastical
absurdities; but their cause was also the cause of national right, and the
admiration which their courage excited in Europe was well deserved.

[Tyrolese expel Bavarians and French, April 1809.]

Early in the year 1809 the Archduke John had met the leaders of the
Tyrolese peasantry, and planned the first movements of a national
insurrection. As soon as the Austrian army crossed the Inn, the peasants
thronged to their appointed meeting-places. Scattered detachments of the
Bavarians were surrounded, and on the 12th of April the main body of the
Tyrolese, numbering about 15,000 men, advanced upon Innsbruck. The town was
invested; the Bavarian garrison, consisting of 3,000 regular troops, found
itself forced to surrender after a severe engagement. On the next morning a
French column, on the march from Italy to the Danube, approached Innsbruck,
totally unaware of the events of the preceding day. The Tyrolese closed
behind it as it advanced. It was not until the column was close to the town
that its commander, General Brisson, discovered that Innsbruck had fallen
into an enemy's hands. Retreat was impossible; ammunition was wanting for a
battle; and Brisson had no choice but to surrender to the peasants, who had
already proved more than a match for the Bavarian regular troops. The
Tyrolese had done their work without the help of a single Austrian
regiment. In five days the weak fabric of Bavarian rule had been thrown to
the ground. The French only maintained themselves in the lower valley of
the Adige: and before the end of April their last positions at Trent and
Roveredo were evacuated, and no foreign soldier remained on Tyrolese soil.

[Campaign of Archduke Charles in Bavaria.]

The operations of the Austrian commanders upon the Inn formed a melancholy
contrast to the activity of the mountaineers. In spite of the delay of
three weeks in opening the campaign, Davoust had still not effected his
junction with the French troops in Southern Bavaria, and a rapid movement
of the Austrians might even now have overwhelmed his isolated divisions at
Ratisbon. Napoleon himself had remained in Paris till the last moment,
instructing Berthier, the chief of the staff, to concentrate the vanguard
at Ratisbon, if by the 15th of April the enemy had not crossed the Inn, but
to draw back to the line of the Lech if the enemy crossed the Inn before
that day. [158] The Archduke entered Bavaria on the 9th; but, instead of
retiring to the Lech, Berthier allowed the army to be scattered over an
area sixty miles broad, from Ratisbon to points above Augsburg. Davoust lay
at Ratisbon, a certain prey if the Archduke pushed forwards with vigour and
thrust his army between the northern and the southern positions of the
French. But nothing could change the sluggishness of the Austrian march.
The Archduke was six days in moving from the Inn to the Isar; and before
the order was given for an advance upon Ratisbon, Napoleon himself had
arrived at Donauwörth, and taken the command out of the hands of his feeble
lieutenant.

[Napoleon restores superiority of French, April 18, 19.]

It needed all the Emperor's energy to snatch victory from the enemy's
grasp. Davoust was bidden to fall back from Ratisbon to Neustadt; the most
pressing orders were sent to Massena, who commanded the right at Augsburg,
to push forward to the north-east in the direction of his colleague, before
the Austrians could throw the mass of their forces upon Davoust's weak
corps. Both generals understood the urgency of the command. Davoust set out
from Ratisbon on the morning of the 19th. He was attacked by the Archduke,
but so feebly and irresolutely that, with all their superiority in numbers,
the Austrians failed to overpower the enemy at any one point. Massena,
immediately after receiving his orders, hurried from Augsburg
north-eastwards, while Napoleon himself advanced into the mid-space between
the two generals, and brought the right and left wings of the French army
into communication with one another. In two days after the Emperor's
arrival all the advantages of the Austrians were gone: the French, so
lately exposed to destruction, formed a concentrated mass in the presence
of a scattered enemy. The issue of the campaign was decided by the
movements of these two days. Napoleon was again at the head of 150,000 men;
the Archduke, already baulked in his first attack upon Davoust, was seized
with unworthy terror when he found that Napoleon himself was before him,
and resigned himself to anticipations of ruin.

[Austrian defeats at Landshut and Eggmühl, April 22.]

[French enter Vienna, May 13.]

A series of manoeuvres and engagements in the finest style of Napoleonic
warfare filled the next three days with French victories and Austrian
disasters. On April the 20th the long line of the Archduke's army was cut
in halves by an attack at Abensberg. The left was driven across the Isar at
Landshut; the right, commanded by the Archduke himself, was overpowered at
Eggmühl on the 22nd, and forced northwards. The unbroken mass of the French
army now thrust itself between the two defeated wings of the enemy. The
only road remaining open to the Archduke was that through Ratisbon to the
north of the Danube. In five days, although no engagement of the first
order had taken place between the French and Austrian armies, Charles had
lost 60,000 men; the mass of his army was retreating into Bohemia, and the
road to Vienna lay scarcely less open than after Mack's capitulation at Ulm
four years before. A desperate battle fought against the advancing French
at Edelsberg by the weak divisions that had remained on the south of the
Danube, proved that the disasters of the campaign were due to the faults of
the general, not to the men whom he commanded. But whatever hopes of
ultimate success might still be based on the gallant temper of the army, it
was impossible to prevent the fall of the capital. The French, leaving the
Archduke on the north of the Danube, pressed forwards along the direct
route from the Inn to Vienna. The capital was bombarded and occupied. On
the 13th of May Napoleon again took up his quarters in the palace of the
Austrian monarchs where he had signed the Peace of 1806. The divisions
which had fallen back before him along the southern road crossed the Danube
at Vienna, and joined the Archduke on the bank of the river opposite the
capital.

[Attempts of Dörnberg and Schill in Northern Germany, April, 1809.]

The disasters of the Bavarian campaign involved the sacrifice of all that
had resulted from Austrian victories elsewhere, and of all that might have
been won by a general insurrection in Northern Germany. In Poland and in
Italy the war had opened favourably for Austria. Warsaw had been seized;
Eugene Beauharnais, the Viceroy of Italy, had been defeated by the Archduke
John at Sacile, in Venetia; but it was impossible to pursue these
advantages when the capital itself was on the point of falling into the
hands of the enemy. The invading armies halted, and ere long the Archduke
John commenced his retreat into the mountains. In Northern Germany no
popular uprising could be expected when once Austria had been defeated. The
only movements that took place were undertaken by soldiers, and undertaken
before the disasters in Bavaria became known. The leaders in this military
conspiracy were Dörnberg, an officer in the service of King Jerome of
Westphalia, and Schill, the Prussian cavalry leader who had so brilliantly
distinguished himself in the defence of Colberg. Dörnberg had taken service
under Jerome with the design of raising Jerome's own army against him. It
had been agreed by the conspirators that at the same moment Dörnberg should
raise the Hessian standard in Westphalia, and Schill, marching from Berlin
with any part of the Prussian army that would follow him, should proclaim
war against the French in defiance of the Prussian Government. Dörnberg had
made sure of the support of his own regiment; but at the last moment the
plot was discovered, and he was transferred to the command of a body of men
upon whom he could not rely. He placed himself at the head of a band of
peasants, and raised the standard of insurrection. King Jerome's troops met
the solicitations of their countrymen with a volley of bullets. Dörnberg
fled for his life; and the revolt ended on the day after it had begun
(April 23). Schill, unconscious of Dörnberg's ruin, and deceived by reports
of Austrian victories upon the Danube, led out his regiment from Berlin as
if for a day's manoeuvring, and then summoned his men to follow him in
raising a national insurrection against Napoleon. The soldiers answered
Schill's eloquent words with shouts of applause; the march was continued
westwards, and Schill crossed the Elbe, intending to fall upon the
communications of Napoleon's army, already, as he believed, staggering
under the blows delivered by the Archduke in the valley of the Danube.

[Schill at Stralsund, May 23.]

On reaching Halle, Schill learnt of the overthrow of the Archduke and of
Dörnberg's ruin in Westphalia. All hope of success in the enterprise on
which he had quitted Berlin was dashed to the ground. The possibility of
raising a popular insurrection vanished. Schill, however, had gone too far
to recede; and even now it was not too late to join the armies of
Napoleon's enemies. Schill might move into Bohemia, or to some point on the
northern coast where he would be within reach of English vessels. But in
any case quick and steady decision was necessary; and this Schill could not
attain. Though brave even to recklessness, and gifted with qualities which
made him the idol of the public, Schill lacked the disinterestedness and
self-mastery which calm the judgment in time of trial. The sudden ruin of
his hopes left him without a plan. He wasted day after day in purposeless
marches, while the enemy collected a force to overwhelm him. His influence
over his men became impaired; the denunciations of the Prussian Government
prevented other soldiers from joining him. At length Schill determined to
recross the Elbe, and to throw himself into the coast town of Stralsund, in
Swedish Pomerania. He marched through Mecklenburg, and suddenly appeared
before Stralsund at moment when the French cannoneers in garrison were
firing a salvo in honour of Napoleon's entry into Vienna. A hand-to-hand
fight gave Schill possession of the town, with all its stores. For a moment
it seemed as if Stralsund might become a second Saragossa; but the French
were at hand before it was possible to create works of defence. Schill had
but eighteen hundred men, half of whom were cavalry; he understood nothing
of military science, and would listen to no counsels. A week after his
entry into Stralsund the town was stormed by a force four times more
numerous than its defenders. Capitulation was no word for the man who had
dared to make a private war upon Napoleon; Schill could only set the
example of an heroic death. [159] The officers who were not so fortunate as
to fall with their leader were shot in cold blood, after trial by a French
court-martial. Six hundred common soldiers who surrendered were sent to the
galleys of Toulon to sicken among French thieves and murderers. The cruelty
of the conqueror, the heroism of the conquered, gave to Schill's
ill-planned venture the importance of a great act of patriotic martyrdom.
Another example had been given of self-sacrifice in the just cause.
Schill's faults were forgotten; his memory deepened the passion with which
all the braver spirits of Germany now looked for the day of reckoning with
their oppressor. [160]

[Napoleon crosses the Danube, May 20.]

[Battle of Aspern, May 21, 22.]

Napoleon had finished the first act of the war of 1809 by the occupation of
Vienna; but no peace was possible until the Austrian army, which lay upon
the opposite bank of the river, had been attacked and beaten. Four miles
below Vienna the Danube is divided into two streams by the island of Lobau:
the southern stream is the main channel of the river, the northern is only
a hundred and fifty yards broad. It was here that Napoleon determined to
make the passage. The broad arm of the Danube, sheltered by the island from
the enemy's fire, was easily bridged by boats; the passage from the island
to the northern bank, though liable to be disputed by the Austrians, was
facilitated by the narrowing of the stream. On the 18th of May, Napoleon,
supposing himself to have made good the connection between the island and
the southern bank, began to bridge the northern arm of the river. His
movements were observed by the enemy, but no opposition was offered. On the
20th a body of 40,000 French crossed to the northern bank, and occupied the
villages of Aspern and Essling. This was the movement for which the
Archduke Charles, who had now 80,000 men under arms, had been waiting.
Early on the 21st a mass of heavily-laden barges was let loose by the
Austrians above the island. The waters of the Danube were swollen by the
melting of the snows, and at midday the bridges of the French over the
broad arm of the river were swept away. A little later, dense Austrian
columns were seen advancing upon the villages of Aspern and Essling, where
the French, cut off from their supports, had to meet an overpowering enemy
in front, with an impassable river in their rear. The attack began at four
in the afternoon; when night fell the French had been driven out of Aspern,
though they still held the Austrians at bay in their other position at
Essling. During the night the long bridges were repaired; forty thousand
additional troops moved across the island to the northern bank of the
Danube; and the engagement was renewed, now between equal numbers, on the
following morning. Five times the village of Aspern was lost and won. In
the midst of the struggle the long bridges were again carried away. Unable
to break the enemy, unable to bring up any new forces from Vienna, Napoleon
ordered a retreat. The army was slowly withdrawn into the island of Lobau.
There for the next two days it lay without food and without ammunition,
severed from Vienna, and exposed to certain destruction if the Archduke
could have thrown his army across the narrow arm of the river and renewed
the engagement. But the Austrians were in no condition to follow up their
victory. Their losses were enormous; their stores were exhausted. The
moments in which a single stroke might have overthrown the whole fabric of
Napoleon's power were spent in forced inaction. By the third day after the
battle of Aspern the communications between the island and the mainland
were restored, and Napoleon's energy had brought the army out of immediate
danger.

[Effect on Europe.]

[Brunswick invades Saxony.]

Nevertheless, although the worst was averted, and the French now lay secure
in their island fortress, the defeat of Aspern changed the position of
Napoleon in the eyes of all Europe. The belief in his invincibility was
destroyed; he had suffered a defeat in person, at the head of his finest
troops, from an enemy little superior in strength to himself. The disasters
of the Austrians in the opening of the campaign were forgotten; everywhere
the hopes of resistance woke into new life. Prussian statesmen urged their
King to promise his support if Austria should gain one more victory. Other
enemies were ready to fall upon Napoleon without waiting for this
condition. England collected an immense armament destined for an attack
upon some point of the northern coast. Germany, lately mute and nerveless,
gave threatening signs. The Duke of Brunswick, driven from his inheritance
after his father's death at Jena, invaded the dominions of Napoleon's
vassal, the King of Saxony, and expelled him from his capital. Popular
insurrections broke out in Würtemberg and in Westphalia, and proved the
rising force of national feeling even in districts where the cause of
Germany lately seemed so hopelessly lost.

[Napoleon's preparations for the second passage of the Danube, June.]

[French cross the Danube, July 4.]

But Napoleon concerned himself little with these remoter enemies. Every
energy of his mind was bent to the one great issue on which victory
depended, the passage of the Danube. His chances of success were still
good, if the French troops watching the enemy between Vienna and the
Adriatic could be brought up in time for the final struggle. The Archduke
Charles was in no hurry for a battle, believing that every hour increased
the probability of an attack upon Napoleon by England or Prussia, or
insurgent Germany. Never was the difference between Napoleon and his ablest
adversaries more strikingly displayed than in the work which was
accomplished by him during this same interval. He had determined that in
the next battle his army should march across the Danube as safely and as
rapidly as it could march along the streets of Vienna. Two solid bridges
were built on piles across the broad arm of the river; no less than six
bridges of rafts were made ready to be thrown across the narrow arm when
the moment arrived for the attack. By the end of June all the outlying
divisions of the French army had gathered to the great rallying-point; a
hundred and eighty thousand men were in the island, or ready to enter it;
every movement, every position to be occupied by each member of this vast
mass in its passage and advance, was fixed down to the minutest details.
Napoleon had decided to cross from the eastern, not from the northern side
of the island, and thus to pass outside the fortifications which the
Archduke had erected on the former battle-field. Towards midnight on the 4th
of July, in the midst of a violent storm, the six bridges were successively
swung across the river. The artillery opened fire. One army corps after
another, each drawn up opposite to its own bridge, marched to the northern
shore, and by sunrise nearly the whole of Napoleon's force deployed on the
left bank of the Danube. The river had been converted into a great highway;
the fortifications which had been erected by the Archduke were turned by
the eastward direction of the passage. All that remained for the Austrian
commander was to fight a pitched battle on ground that was now at least
thoroughly familiar to him. Charles had taken up a good position on the
hills that look over the village of Wagram. Here, with 130,000 men, he
awaited the attack of the French. The first attack was made in the
afternoon after the crossing of the river. It failed; and the French army
lay stretched during the night between the river and the hills, while the
Archduke prepared to descend upon their left on the morrow, and to force
himself between the enemy and the bridges behind them.

[Battle of Wagram, July 5, 6.]

[Armistice of Znaim, July 12.]

Early on the morning of the 6th the two largest armies that had ever been
brought face to face in Europe began their onslaught. Spectators from the
steeples of Vienna saw the fire of the French little by little receding on
their left, and dense masses of the Austrians pressing on towards the
bridges, on whose safety the existence of the French army depended. But ere
long the forward movement stopped. Napoleon had thrown an overpowering
force against the Austrian centre, and the Archduke found himself compelled
to recall his victorious divisions and defend his own threatened line.
Gradually the superior numbers of the French forced the enemy back. The
Archduke John, who had been ordered up from Presburg, failed to appear on
the field; and at two o'clock Charles ordered a retreat. The order of the
Austrians was unbroken; they had captured more prisoners than they had
lost; their retreat was covered by so powerful an artillery that the French
could make no pursuit. The victory was no doubt Napoleon's, but it was a
victory that had nothing in common with Jena and Austerlitz. Nothing was
lost by the Austrians at Wagram but their positions and the reputation of
their general. The army was still in fighting-order, with the fortresses of
Bohemia behind it. Whether Austria would continue the war depended on the
action of the other European Powers. If Great Britain successfully landed
an armament in Northern Germany or dealt any overwhelming blow in Spain, if
Prussia declared war on Napoleon, Austria might fight on. If the other
Powers failed, Austria, must make peace. The armistice of Znaim, concluded
on the 12th of July, was recognised on all sides as a mere device to gain
time. There was a pause in the great struggle in the central Continent. Its
renewal or its termination depended upon the issue of events at a distance.

[Wellesley invades Spain, June, 1809.]

[Talavera, July 27.]

[Wellesley retreats to Portugal.]

For the moment the eyes of all Europe were fixed upon the British army in
Spain. Sir Arthur Wellesley, who took command at Lisbon in the spring, had
driven Soult out of Oporto, and was advancing by the valley of the Tagus
upon the Spanish capital. Some appearance of additional strength was given
to him by the support of a Spanish army under the command of General
Cuesta. Wellesley's march had, however, been delayed by the neglect and bad
faith of the Spanish Government, and time had been given to Soult to
collect a large force in the neighbourhood of Salamanca, ready either to
fall upon Wellesley from the north, or to unite with another French army
which lay at Talavera, if its commander, Victor, had the wisdom to postpone
an engagement. The English general knew nothing of Soult's presence on his
flank: he continued his march towards Madrid along the valley of the Tagus,
and finally drew up for battle at Talavera, when Victor, after retreating
before Cuesta to some distance, hunted back his Spanish pursuer to the
point from which he had started. [161] The first attack was made by Victor
upon the English positions at evening on the 27th of July. Next morning the
assault was renewed, and the battle became general. Wellesley gained a
complete victory, but the English themselves suffered heavily, and the army
remained in its position. Within the next few days Soult was discovered to
be descending from the mountains between Salamanca and the Tagus. A force
superior to Wellesley's own threatened to close upon him from the rear, and
to hem him in between two fires. The sacrifices of Talavera proved to have
been made in vain. Wellesley had no choice but to abandon his advance upon
the Spanish capital, and to fall back upon Portugal by the roads south of
the Tagus. In spite of the defeat of Victor, the French were the winners of
the campaign. Madrid was still secure; the fabric of French rule in the
Spanish Peninsula was still unshaken. The tidings of Wellesley's retreat
reached Napoleon and the Austrian negotiators, damping the hopes of
Austria, and easing Napoleon's fears. Austria's continuance of the war now
depended upon the success or failure of the long-expected descent of an
English army upon the northern coast of Europe.

Three months before the Austrian Government declared war upon Napoleon, it
had acquainted Great Britain with its own plans, and urged the Cabinet to
dispatch an English force to Northern Germany. Such a force, landing at the
time of the battle of Aspern, would certainly have aroused both Prussia and
the country between the Elbe and the Maine. But the difference between a
movement executed in time and one executed weeks and months too late was
still unknown at the English War Office. The Ministry did not even begin
their preparations till the middle of June, and then they determined, in
pursuance of a plan made some years earlier, to attack the French fleet and
docks at Antwerp, and to ignore that patriotic movement in Northern Germany
from which they had so much to hope.

[British Expedition against Antwerp, July, 1809.]

[Total failure.]

On the 28th of July, two months after the battle of Aspern and three weeks
after the battle of Wagram, a fleet of thirty-seven ships of the line, with
innumerable transports and gunboats, set sail from Dover for the Schelde.
Forty thousand troops were on board; the commander of the expedition was
the Earl of Chatham, a court-favourite in whom Nature avenged herself upon
Great Britain for what she had given to this country in his father and his
younger brother. The troops were landed on the island of Walcheren. Instead
of pushing forward to Antwerp with all possible haste, and surprising it
before any preparations could be made for its defence, Lord Chatham placed
half his army on the banks of various canals, and with the other half
proceeded to invest Flushing. On the 16th of August this unfortunate town
surrendered, after a bombardment that had reduced it to a mass of ruins.
During the next ten days the English commander advanced about as many
miles, and then discovered that for all prospect of taking Antwerp he might
as well have remained in England. Whilst Chatham was groping about in
Walcheren, the fortifications of Antwerp were restored, the fleet carried
up the river, and a mass of troops collected sufficient to defend the town
against a regular siege. Defeat stared the English in the face. At the end
of August the general recommended the Government to recall the expedition,
only leaving a force of 15,000 soldiers to occupy the marshes of Walcheren.
Chatham's recommendations were accepted; and on a spot so notoriously
pestiferous that Napoleon had refused to permit a single French soldier to
serve there on garrison duty, [162] an English army-corps, which might at
least have earned the same honour as Schill and Brunswick in Northern
Germany, was left to perish of fever and ague. When two thousand soldiers
were in their graves, the rest were recalled to England.

[Austria makes peace.]

Great Britain had failed to weaken or to alarm Napoleon; the King of
Prussia made no movement on behalf of the losing cause; and the Austrian
Government unwillingly found itself compelled to accept conditions of
peace. It was not so much a deficiency in its forces as the universal
distrust of its generals that made it impossible for Austria to continue
the war. The soldiers had fought as bravely as the French, but in vain. "If
we had a million soldiers," it was said, "we must make peace; for we have
no one to command them." Count Stadion, who was for carrying on the war to
the bitter end, despaired of throwing his own energetic courage into the
men who surrounded the Emperor, and withdrew from public affairs. For week
after week the Emperor fluctuated between the acceptance of Napoleon's hard
conditions and the renewal of a struggle which was likely to involve his
own dethronement as well as the total conquest of the Austrian State. At
length Napoleon's demands were presented in the form of an ultimatum. In
his distress the Emperor's thoughts turned towards the Minister who, eight
years before, had been so strong, so resolute, when all around him wavered.
Thugut, now seventy-six years old, was living in retirement. The Emperor
sent one of his generals to ask his opinion on peace or war. "I thought to
find him," reported the general, "broken in mind and body; but the fire of
his spirit is in its full force." Thugut's reply did honour to his
foresight: "Make peace at any price. The existence of the Austrian monarchy
is at stake: the dissolution of the French Empire is not far off." On the
14th of October the Emperor Francis accepted his conqueror's terms, and
signed conditions of peace. [163]

[Peace of Vienna, Oct. 14, 1809.]

[Real effects of the war of 1809.]

The Treaty of Vienna, the last which Napoleon signed as a conqueror, took
from the Austrian Empire 50,000 square miles of territory and more than
4,000,000 inhabitants. Salzburg, with part of Upper Austria, was ceded to
Bavaria; Western Galicia, the territory gained by Austria in the final
partition of Poland, was transferred to the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw; part of
Carinthia, with the whole of the country lying between the Adriatic and the
Save as far as the frontier of Bosnia, was annexed to Napoleon's own
Empire, under the title of the Illyrian Provinces. Austria was cut off from
the sea, and the dominion of Napoleon extended without a break to the
borders of Turkey. Bavaria and Saxony, the outposts of French sovereignty
in Central Europe, were enriched at the expense of the Power which had
called Germany to arms; Austria, which at the beginning of the
Revolutionary War had owned territory upon the Rhine and exercised a
predominating influence over all Italy, seemed now to be finally excluded
both from Germany and the Mediterranean. Yet, however striking the change
of frontier which gave to Napoleon continuous dominion from the Straits of
Calais to the border of Bosnia, the victories of France in 1809 brought in
their train none of those great moral changes which had hitherto made each
French conquest a stage in European progress. The campaign of 1796 had
aroused the hope of national independence in Italy; the settlements of 1801
and 1806 had put an end to Feudalism in Western Germany; the victories of
1809 originated nothing but a change of frontier such as the next war might
obliterate and undo. All that was permanent in the effects of the year 1809
was due, not to any new creations of Napoleon, but to the spirit of
resistance which France had at length excited in Europe. The revolt of the
Tyrol, the exploits of Brunswick and Schill, gave a stimulus to German
patriotism which survived the defeat of Austria. Austria itself, though
overpowered, had inflicted a deadly injury upon Napoleon, by withdrawing
him from Spain at the moment when he might have completed its conquest, and
by enabling Wellesley to gain a footing in the Peninsula. Napoleon appeared
to have gathered a richer spoil from the victories of 1809 than from any of
his previous wars; in reality he had never surrounded himself with so many
dangers. Russia was alienated by the annexation of West Galicia to the
Polish Grand Duchy of Warsaw; Northern Germany had profited by the examples
of courage and patriotism shown so largely in 1809 on behalf of the
Fatherland; Spain, supported by Wellesley's army, was still far from
submission. The old indifference which had smoothed the way for the earlier
French conquests was no longer the characteristic of Europe. The
estrangement of Russia, the growth of national spirit in Germany and in
Spain, involved a danger to Napoleon's power which far outweighed the
visible results of his victory.

[Austria and the Tyrol.]

Austria itself could only acquiesce in defeat: nor perhaps would the
permanent interests of Europe have been promoted by its success. The
championship of Germany which it assumed at the beginning of the war would
no doubt have resulted in the temporary establishment of some form of
German union under Austrian leadership, if the event of the war had been
different; but the sovereign of Hungary and Croatia could never be the true
head of the German people; and the conduct of the Austrian Government after
the peace of 1809 gave little reason to regret its failure to revive a
Teutonic Empire. No portion of the Emperor's subjects had fought for him
with such determined loyalty as the Tyrolese. After having been the first
to throw off the yoke of the stranger, they had again and again freed their
country when Napoleon's generals supposed all resistance overcome; and in
return for their efforts the Emperor had solemnly assured them that he
would never accept a peace which did not restore them to his Empire. If
fair dealing was due anywhere it was due from the Court of Austria to the
Tyrolese. Yet the only reward of the simple courage of these mountaineers
was that the war-party at head-quarters recklessly employed them as a means
of prolonging, hostilities after the armistice of Znaim, and that up to the
moment when peace was signed they were left in the belief that the Emperor
meant to keep his promise, Austria, however, could not ruin herself to
please the Tyrolese. Circumstances were changed; and the phrases of
patriotism which had excited so much rejoicing at the beginning of the war
were now fallen out of fashion at Vienna. Nothing more was heard about the
rights of nations and the deliverance of Germany. Austria had made a great
venture and failed; and the Government rather resumed than abandoned its
normal attitude in turning its back upon the professions of 1809.

[Austrian policy after 1809.]

[Metternich.]

Henceforward the policy of Austria was one of calculation, untinged by
national sympathies. France had been a cruel enemy; yet if there was a
prospect of winning something for Austria by a French alliance,
considerations of sentiment could not be allowed to stand in the way. A
statesman who, like Count Stadion, had identified the interests of Austria
with the liberation of Germany, was no fitting helmsman for the State in
the shifting course that now lay before it. A diplomatist was called to
power who had hitherto by Napoleon's own desire represented the Austrian
State at Paris. Count Metternich, the new Chief Minister, was the son of a
Rhenish nobleman who had held high office under the Austrian crown. His
youth had been passed at Coblentz, and his character and tastes were those
which in the eighteenth century had marked the court-circles of the little
Rhenish Principalities, French in their outer life, unconscious of the
instinct of nationality, polished and seductive in that personal management
which passed for the highest type of statesmanship. Metternich had been
ambassador at Dresden and at Berlin before he went to Paris. Napoleon had
requested that he might be transferred to the Court of the Tuileries, on
account of the marked personal courtesy shown by Metternich to the French
ambassador at Berlin during the war between France and Austria in 1805.
Metternich carried with him all the friendliness of personal intercourse
which Napoleon expected in him, but he also carried with him a calm and
penetrating self-possession, and the conviction that Napoleon would give
Europe no rest until his power was greatly diminished. He served Austria
well at Paris, and in the negotiations for peace which followed the battle
of Wagram he took a leading part. After the disasters of 1809, when war was
impossible and isolation ruin, no statesman could so well serve Austria as
one who had never confessed himself the enemy of any Power; and, with the
full approval of Napoleon, the late Ambassador at Paris was placed at the
head of the Austrian State.

[Marriage of Napoleon with Marie Louise, 1810.]

[Severance of Napoleon and Alexander.]

Metternich's first undertaking gave singular evidence of the flexibility of
system which was henceforward to guard Austria's interests. Before the
grass had grown over the graves at Wagram, the Emperor Francis was
persuaded to give his daughter in marriage to Napoleon. For some time past
Napoleon had determined on divorcing Josephine and allying himself to one
of the reigning houses of the Continent. His first advances were made at
St. Petersburg; but the Czar hesitated to form a connection which his
subjects would view as a dishonour; and the opportunity was seized by the
less fastidious Austrians as soon as the fancies of the imperial suitor
turned towards Vienna. The Emperor Francis, who had been bullied by
Napoleon upon the field of Austerlitz, ridiculed and insulted in every
proclamation issued during the late campaign, gave up his daughter for what
was called the good of his people, and reconciled himself to a son-in-law
who had taken so many provinces for his dowry. Peace had not been
proclaimed four months when the treaty was signed which united the House of
Bonaparte to the family of Marie Antoinette. The Archduke Charles
represented Napoleon in the espousals; the Archbishop of Vienna anointed
the bride with the same sacred oil with which he had consecrated the
banners of 1809; the servile press which narrated the wedding festivities
found no space to mention that the Emperor's bravest subject, the Tyrolese
leader Hofer, was executed by Napoleon as a brigand in the interval between
the contract and the celebration of the marriage. Old Austrian families,
members of the only aristocracy upon the Continent that still possessed
political weight and a political tradition, lamented the Emperor's consent
to a union which their prejudices called a mis-alliance, and their
consciences an adultery; but the object of Metternich was attained. The
friendship between France and Russia, which had inflicted so much evil on
the Continent since the Peace of Tilsit, was dissolved; the sword of
Napoleon was turned away from Austria for at least some years; the
restoration of the lost provinces of the Hapsburg seemed not impossible,
now that Napoleon and Alexander were left face to face in Europe, and the
alliance of Austria had become so important to the power which had hitherto
enriched itself at Austria's expense.

[Napoleon annexes Papal States, May, 1809.]

Napoleon crowned his new bride, and felt himself at length the equal of the
Hapsburgs and the Bourbons. Except in Spain, his arms were no longer
resisted upon the Continent, and the period immediately succeeding the
Peace of Vienna was that which brought the Napoleonic Empire to its widest
bounds. Already, in the pride of the first victories of 1809, Napoleon had
completed his aggressions upon the Papal sovereignty by declaring the
Ecclesiastical States to be united to the French Empire (May 17, 1809). The
Pope retorted upon his despoiler with a Bull of Excommunication; but the
spiritual terrors were among the least formidable of those then active in
Europe, and the sanctity of the Pontiff did not prevent Napoleon's soldiers
from arresting him in the Quirinal, and carrying him as a prisoner to
Savona. Here Pius VII., was detained for the next three years. The Roman
States received the laws and the civil organisation of France. [164]
Bishops and clergy who refused the oath of fidelity to Napoleon were
imprisoned or exiled; the monasteries and convents were dissolved; the
cardinals and great officers, along with the archives and the whole
apparatus of ecclesiastical rule, were carried to Paris. In relation to the
future of European Catholicism, the breach between Napoleon and Pius VII.,
was a more important event than was understood at the time; its immediate
and visible result was that there was one sovereign the fewer in Europe,
and one more province opened to the French conscription.

[Napoleon annexes, Holland, July, 1810.]

The next of Napoleon's vassals who lost his throne was the King of Holland.
Like Joseph in Spain, and like Murat in Naples, Louis Bonaparte had made an
honest effort to govern for the benefit of his subjects. He had endeavoured
to lighten the burdens which Napoleon laid upon the Dutch nation, already
deprived of its colonies, its commerce, and its independence; and every
plea which Louis had made for his subjects had been treated by Napoleon as
a breach of duty towards himself. The offence of the unfortunate King of
Holland became unpardonable when he neglected to enforce the orders of
Napoleon against the admission of English goods. Louis was summoned to
Paris, and compelled to sign a treaty, ceding part of his dominions and
placing his custom-houses in the hands of French officers. He returned to
Holland, but affairs grew worse and worse. French troops overran the
country; Napoleon's letters were each more menacing than the last; and at
length Louis fled from his dominions (July 1, 1810), and delivered himself
from a royalty which had proved the most intolerable kind of servitude. A
week later Holland was incorporated with the French Empire.

[Annexation of Le Valais, and of the North German coast.]

Two more annexations followed before the end of the year. The Republic of
the Valais was declared to have neglected the duty imposed upon it of
repairing the road over the Simplon, and forfeited its independence. The
North German coast district, comprising the Hanse towns, Oldenburg, and
part of the Kingdom of Westphalia, was annexed to the French Empire, with
the alleged object of more effectually shutting out British goods from the
ports of the Elbe and the Weser. Hamburg, however, and most of the
territory now incorporated with France, had been occupied by French troops
ever since the war of 1806, and the legal change in its position scarcely
made its subjection more complete. Had the history of this annexation been
written by men of the peasant-class, it would probably have been described
in terms of unmixed thankfulness and praise. In the Decree introducing the
French principle of the free tenure of land, thirty-six distinct forms of
feudal service are enumerated, as abolished without compensation. [165]

[Extent of Napoleon's Empire and Dependencies, 1810.]

Napoleon's dominion had now reached its widest bounds. The frontier of the
Empire began at Lübeck on the Baltic, touched the Rhine at Wesel, and
followed the river and the Jura mountains to the foot of the Lake of
Geneva; then, crossing the Alps above the source of the Rhone, it ran with
the rivers Sesia and Po to a point nearly opposite Mantua, mounted to the
watershed of the Apennines, and descended to the Mediterranean at
Terracina. The late Ecclesiastical States were formed into the two
Departments of the Tiber and of Trasimene; Tuscany, also divided into
French Departments, and represented in the French Legislative Body, gave
the title of Archduchess and the ceremonial of a Court to Napoleon's sister
Eliza; the Kingdom of Italy, formed by Lombardy, Venice, and the country
east of the Apennines as far south as Ascoli, belonged to Napoleon himself,
but was not constitutionally united with the French Empire. On the east of
the Adriatic the Illyrian Provinces extended Napoleon's rule to the borders
of Bosnia and Montenegro. Outside the frontier of this great Empire an
order of feudatories ruled in Italy, in Germany, and in Poland. Murat, King
of Naples, and the client-princes of the Confederation of the Rhine,
holding all Germany up to the frontiers of Prussia and Austria, as well as
the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw, were nominally sovereigns within their own
dominions; but they held their dignities at Napoleon's pleasure, and the
population and revenues of their States were at his service.

[Benefits of Napoleon's rule.]

[Wrongs of Napoleon's rule.]

[Commercial blockade.]

The close of the year 1810 saw the last changes effected which Europe was
destined to receive at the hands of Napoleon. The fabric of his sovereignty
was raised upon the ruins of all that was obsolete and forceless upon the
western Continent; the benefits as well as the wrongs or his supremacy were
now seen in their widest operation. All Italy, the northern districts of
Germany which were incorporated with the Empire, and a great part of the
Confederate Territory of the Rhine, received in the Code Napoleon a law
which, to an extent hitherto unknown in Europe, brought social justice into
the daily affairs of life. The privileges of the noble, the feudal burdens
of the peasant, the monopolies of the guilds, passed away, in most
instances for ever. The comfort and improvement of mankind were vindicated
as the true aim of property by the abolition of the devices which convert
the soil into an instrument of family pride, and by the enforcement of a
fair division of inheritances among the children of the possessor. Legal
process, both civil and criminal, was brought within the comprehension of
ordinary citizens, and submitted to the test of publicity. These were among
the fruits of an earlier enlightenment which Napoleon's supremacy bestowed
upon a great part of Europe. The price which was paid for them was the
suppression of every vestige of liberty, the conscription, and the
Continental blockade. On the whole, the yoke was patiently borne. The
Italians and the Germans of the Rhenish Confederacy cared little what
Government they obeyed; their recruits who were sent to be killed by the
Austrians or the Spaniards felt it no especial hardship to fight Napoleon's
battles. More galling was the pressure of Napoleon's commercial system and
of the agencies by which he attempted to enforce it. In the hope of ruining
the trade of Great Britain, Napoleon spared no severity against the owners
of anything that had touched British hands, and deprived the Continent of
its entire supply of colonial produce, with the exception of such as was
imported at enormous charges by traders licensed by himself. The possession
of English goods became a capital offence. In the great trading towns a
system of permanent terrorism was put in force against the merchants.
Soldiers ransacked their houses; their letters were opened; spies dogged
their steps. It was in Hamburg, where Davoust exercised a sort of
independent sovereignty, that the violence and injustice of the Napoleonic
commercial system was seen in its most repulsive form; in the greater part
of the Empire it was felt more in the general decline of trade and in a
multitude of annoying privations than in acts of obtrusive cruelty. [166]
The French were themselves compelled to extract sugar from beetroot, and to
substitute chicory for coffee; the Germans, less favoured by nature, and
less rapid in adaptation, thirsted and sulked. Even in such torpid
communities as Saxony political discontent was at length engendered by
bodily discomfort. Men who were proof against all the patriotic exaltation
of Stein and Fichte felt that there must be something wrong in a system
which sent up the price of coffee to five shillings a pound, and reduced
the tobacconist to exclusive dependence upon the market-gardener.

[The Czar withdraws from Napoleon's commercial system, Dec., 1810.]

[France and Russia preparing for war, 1811.]

It was not, however, by its effects upon Napoleon's German vassals that the
Continental system contributed to the fall of its author. Whatever the
discontent of these communities, they obeyed Napoleon as long as he was
victorious, and abandoned him only when his cause was lost. Its real
political importance lay in the hostility which it excited between France
and Russia. The Czar, who had attached himself to Napoleon's commercial
system at the Peace of Tilsit, withdrew from it in the year succeeding the
Peace of Vienna. The trade of the Russian Empire had been ruined by the
closure of its ports to British vessels and British goods. Napoleon had
broken his promise to Russia by adding West Galicia to the Polish Duchy of
Warsaw; and the Czar refused to sacrifice the wealth of his subjects any
longer in the interest of an insincere ally. At the end of the year 1810 an
order was published at St. Petersburg, opening the harbours of Russia to
all ships bearing a neutral flag, and imposing a duty upon many of the
products of France. This edict was scarcely less than a direct challenge to
the French Emperor. Napoleon exaggerated the effect of his Continental
prohibitions upon English traffic. He imagined that the command of the
European coast-line, and nothing short of this, would enable him to exhaust
his enemy; and he was prepared to risk a war with Russia rather than permit
it to frustrate his long-cherished hopes. Already in the Austrian marriage
Napoleon had marked the severance of his interests from those of Alexander.
An attempted compromise upon the affairs of Poland produced only new
alienation and distrust; an open affront was offered to Alexander in the
annexation of the Duchy of Oldenburg, whose sovereign was a member of his
own family. The last event was immediately followed by the publication of
the new Russian tariff. In the spring of 1811 Napoleon had determined upon
war. With Spain still unsubdued, he had no motive to hurry on hostilities;
Alexander on his part was still less ready for action; and the forms of
diplomatic intercourse were in consequence maintained for some time longer
at Paris and St. Petersburg. But the true nature of the situation was shown
by the immense levies that were ordered both in France and Russia; and the
rest of the year was spent in preparations for the campaign which was
destined to decide the fate of Europe.

[Affairs in Spain and Portugal, 1809-1812.]

[Lines of Torres Vedras, 1809-1810.]

We have seen that during the period of more than two years that elapsed
between the Peace of Vienna and the outbreak of war with Russia, Napoleon
had no enemy in arms upon the Continent except in the Spanish Peninsula.
Had the Emperor himself taken up the command in Spain, he would probably
within a few months have crushed both the Spanish armies and their English
ally. A fatal error in judgment made him willing to look on from a distance
whilst his generals engaged with this last foe. The disputes with the Pope
and the King of Holland might well have been adjourned for another year;
but Napoleon felt no suspicions that the conquest of the Spanish Peninsula
was too difficult a task for his marshals; nor perhaps would it have been
so if Wellington had been like any of the generals whom Napoleon had
himself encountered. The French forces in the Peninsula numbered over
300,000 men: in spite of the victory of Talavera, the English had been
forced to retreat into Portugal. But the warfare of Wellington was a
different thing from that even of the best Austrian or Russian commanders.
From the time of the retreat from Talavera he had foreseen that Portugal
would be invaded by an army far outnumbering his own; and he planned a
scheme of defence as original, as strongly marked with true military
insight, as Napoleon's own most daring schemes of attack. Behind Lisbon a
rugged mountainous tract stretches from the Tagus to the sea: here, while
the English army wintered in the neighbourhood of Almeida, Wellington
employed thousands of Portuguese labourers in turning the promontory into
one vast fortress. No rumour of the operation was allowed to reach the
enemy. A double series of fortifications, known as the Lines of Torres
Vedras, followed the mountain-bastion on the north of Lisbon, and left no
single point open between the Tagus and the sea. This was the barrier to
which Wellington meant in the last resort to draw his assailants, whilst
the country was swept of everything that might sustain an invading army,
and the irregular troops of Portugal closed in upon its rear. [167]

[Retreat of Massena, 1810-11.]

[Massena's campaign against Wellington, 1810.]

In June, 1810, Marshal Massena, who had won the highest distinction at
Aspern and Wagram, arrived in Spain, and took up the command of the army
destined for the conquest of Portugal. Ciudad Rodrigo was invested:
Wellington, too weak to effect its relief, too wise to jeopardise his army
for the sake of Spanish praise, lay motionless while this great fortress
fell into the hands of the invader. In September, the French, 70,000
strong, entered Portugal. Wellington retreated down the valley of the
Mondego, devastating the country. At length he halted at Busaco and gave
battle (September 27). The French were defeated; the victory gave the
Portuguese full confidence in the English leader; but other roads were open
to the invader, and Wellington continued his retreat. Massena followed, and
heard for the first time of the fortifications of Torres Vedras when he was
within five days' march of them. On nearing the mountain-barrier, Massena
searched in vain for an unprotected point. Fifty thousand English and
Portuguese regular troops, besides a multitude of Portuguese militia, were
collected behind the lines; with the present number of the French an
assault was hopeless. Massena waited for reinforcements. It was with the
utmost difficulty that he could keep his army from starving; at length,
when the country was utterly exhausted, he commenced his retreat (Nov. 14).
Wellington descended from the heights, but his marching force was still too
weak to risk a pitched battle. Massena halted and took post at Santarem, on
the Tagus. Here, and in the neighbouring valley of the Zezere, he
maintained himself during the winter. But in March, 1811, reinforcements
arrived from England: Wellington moved forward against his enemy, and the
retreat of the French began in real earnest. Massena made his way
northwards, hard pressed by the English, and devastating the country with
merciless severity in order to retard pursuit. Fire and ruin marked the
track of the retreating army; but such were the sufferings of the French
themselves, both during the invasion and the retreat, that when Massena
re-entered Spain, after a campaign in which only one pitched battle had
been fought, his loss exceeded 30,000 men.

[Soult conquers Spain as far as Cadiz.]

[Wellington's campaign of 1811.]

Other French armies, in spite of a most destructive guerilla warfare, were
in the meantime completing the conquest of the south and the east of Spain.
Soult captured Seville, and began to lay siege to Cadiz. Here, at the end
of 1810, an order reached him from Napoleon to move to the support of
Massena. Leaving Victor in command at Cadiz, Soult marched northwards,
routed the Spaniards, and conquered the fortress of Badajoz, commanding the
southern road into Portugal. Massena, however, was already in retreat, and
Soult's own advance was cut short by intelligence that Graham, the English
general in Cadiz, had broken out upon the besiegers and inflicted a heavy
defeat. Soult returned to Cadiz and resumed the blockade. Wellington, thus
freed from danger of attack from the south, and believing Massena to be
thoroughly disabled, considered that the time had come for a forward
movement into Spain. It was necessary for him to capture the fortresses of
Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo on the northern road, and to secure his own
communications with Portugal by wresting back Badajoz from the French. He
left a small force to besiege Almeida, and moved to Elvas to make
arrangements with Beresford for the siege of Badajoz. But before the
English commander had deemed it possible, the energy of Massena had
restored his troops to efficiency; and the two armies of Massena and Soult
were now ready to assail the English on the north and the south. Massena
marched against the corps investing Almeida. Wellington hastened back to
meet him, and fought a battle at Fuentes d'Onoro. The French were defeated;
Almeida passed into the hands of the English. In the south, Soult advanced
to the relief of Badajoz. He was overthrown by Beresford in the bloody
engagement of Albuera (May 16th); but his junction with the army of the
north, which was now transferred from Massena to Marmont, forced the
English to raise the siege; and Wellington, after audaciously offering
battle to the combined French armies, retired within the Portuguese
frontier, and marched northwards with the design of laying siege to Ciudad
Rodrigo. Again outnumbered by the French, he was compelled to retire to
cantonments on the Coa.

[Capture of Ciudad Rodrigo, Jan. 19, 1812.]

[Capture of Badajoz, April 6.]

Throughout the autumn months, which were spent in forced inaction,
Wellington held patiently to his belief that the French would be unable to
keep their armies long united, on account of the scarcity of food. His
calculations were correct, and at the close of the year 1811 the English
were again superior in the field. Wellington moved against Ciudad Rodrigo,
and took it by storm on the 19th of January, 1812. The road into Spain was
opened; it only remained to secure Portugal itself by the capture of
Badajoz. Wellington crossed the Tagus on the 8th of March, and completed
the investment of Badajoz ten days later. It was necessary to gain
possession of the city, at whatever cost, before Soult could advance to its
relief. On the night of the 6th of April Wellington gave orders for the
assault. The fury of the attack, the ferocity of the English soldiers in
the moment of their victory, have made the storm of Badajoz conspicuous
amongst the most terrible events of war. But the purpose of Wellington was
effected; the base of the English army in Portugal was secured from all
possibility of attack; and at the moment when Napoleon was summoning his
veteran regiments from beyond the Pyrenees for the invasion of Russia, the
English commander, master of the frontier fortresses of Spain, was
preparing to overwhelm the weakened armies in the Peninsula, and to drive
the French from Madrid.

[Wellington invades Spain, June 1812.]

[Salamanca, July 22.]

[Wellington retires to Portugal.]

It was in the summer of 1812, when Napoleon was now upon the point of
opening the Russian campaign, that Wellington advanced against Marmont's
positions in the north of Spain and the French lines of communication with
the capital. Marmont fell back and allowed Wellington to pass Salamanca;
but on reaching the Douro he turned upon his adversary, and by a succession
of swift and skilful marches brought the English into some danger of losing
their communications with Portugal. Wellington himself now retreated as far
as Salamanca, and there gave battle (July 22). A decisive victory freed the
English army from its peril, and annihilated all the advantages gained by
Marmont's strategy and speed. The French were so heavily defeated that they
had to fall back on Burgos. Wellington marched upon Madrid. At his approach
King Joseph fled from the capital, and ordered Soult to evacuate Andalusia,
and to meet him at Valencia, on the eastern coast. Wellington entered
Madrid amidst the wild rejoicing of the Spaniards, and then turned
northwards to complete the destruction of the army which he had beaten at
Salamanca. But the hour of his final success was not yet come. His advance
upon Madrid, though wise as a political measure, had given the French
northern army time to rally. He was checked by the obstinate defence of
Burgos; and finding the French strengthened by the very abandonment of
territory which his victory had forced upon them, he retired to Portugal,
giving to King Joseph a few months' more precarious enjoyment of his
vassal-sovereignty before his final and irrevocable overthrow.

[The war excites a constitutional movement in Spain.]

In Spain itself the struggle of the nation for its independence had
produced a political revolution as little foreseen by the Spaniards as by
Napoleon himself when the conflict began. When, in 1808, the people had
taken up arms for its native dynasty, the voices of those who demanded a
reform in the abuses of the Bourbon government had scarcely been heard amid
the tumult of loyal enthusiasm for Ferdinand. There existed, however, a
group of liberally-minded men in Spain; and as soon as the invasion of the
French and the subsequent successes of the Spaniards had overthrown both
the old repressive system of the Bourbons and that which Napoleon attempted
to put in its place, the opinions of these men, hitherto scarcely known
outside the circle of their own acquaintances, suddenly became a power in
the country through the liberation of the press. Jovellanos, an upright and
large-minded statesman, who had suffered a long imprisonment in the last
reign in consequence of his labours in the cause of progress, now
represented in the Central Junta the party of constitutional reform. The
Junta itself acted with but little insight or sincerity. A majority of its
members neither desired nor understood the great changes in government
which Jovellanos advocated; yet the Junta itself was an irregular and
revolutionary body, and was forced to appeal to the nation in order to hold
its ground against the old legal Councils of the monarchy, which possessed
not only a better formal right, but all the habits of authority. The
victories of Napoleon at the end of 1808, and the threatening attitude both
of the old official bodies and of the new provincial governments which had
sprung up in every part of the kingdom, extorted from the Junta in the
spring of 1809 a declaration in favour of the assembling of the Cortes, or
National Parliament, in the following year. Once made, the declaration
could not be nullified or withdrawn. It was in vain that the Junta, alarmed
at the progress of popular opinions, restored the censorship of the press,
and attempted to suppress the liberal journals. The current of political
agitation swept steadily on; and before the end of the year 1809 the
conflict of parties, which Spain was henceforward to experience in common
with the other Mediterranean States, had fairly begun. [168]

[Spanish Liberals in 1809 and 1810.]

The Spanish Liberals of 1809 made the same attack upon despotic power, and
upheld the same theories of popular right, as the leaders of the French
nation twenty years before. Against them was ranged the whole force of
Spanish officialism, soon to be supported by the overwhelming power of the
clergy. In the outset, however, the Liberals carefully avoided infringing
on the prerogatives of the Church. Thus accommodating its policy to the
Catholic spirit of the nation, the party of reform gathered strength
throughout the year 1809, as disaster after disaster excited the wrath of
the people against both the past and the present holders of power. It was
determined by the Junta that the Cortes should assemble on the 1st of
March, 1810. According to the ancient usage of Spain, each of the Three
Estates, the Clergy, the Nobles, and the Commons, would have been
represented in the Cortes by a separate assembly. The opponents of reform
pressed for the maintenance of this mediæval order, the Liberals declared
for a single Chamber; the Junta, guided by Jovellanos, adopted a middle
course, and decided that the higher clergy and nobles should be jointly
represented by one Chamber, the Commons by a second. Writs of election had
already been issued, when the Junta, driven to Cadiz by the advance of the
French armies, and assailed alike by Liberals, by reactionists, and by city
mobs, ended its ineffective career, and resigned its powers into the hands
of a Regency composed of five persons (Jan. 30, 1810). Had the Regency
immediately taken steps to assemble the Cortes, Spain would probably have
been content with the moderate reforms which two Chambers, formed according
to the plans of Jovellanos, would have been likely to sanction. The
Regency, however, preferred to keep power in its own hands and ignored the
promise which the Junta had given to the nation. Its policy of obstruction,
which was continued for months after the time when the Cortes ought to have
assembled, threw the Liberal party into the hands of men of extremes, and
prepared the way for revolution instead of reform. It was only when the
report reached Spain that Ferdinand was about to marry the daughter of King
Joseph, and to accept the succession to the Spanish crown from the usurper
himself, that the Regency consented to convoke the Cortes. But it was now
no longer possible to create an Upper House to serve as a check upon the
popular Assembly. A single Chamber was elected, and elected in great part
within the walls of Cadiz itself; for the representatives of districts
where the presence of French soldiery rendered election impossible were
chosen by refugees from those districts within Cadiz, amid the tumults of
political passion which stir a great city in time of war and revolution.

[Constitution made by the Cortes, 1812.]

On the 24th of September, 1810, the Cortes opened. Its first act was to
declare the sovereignty of the people, its next act to declare the freedom
of the Press. In every debate a spirit of bitter hatred towards the old
system of government and of deep distrust towards Ferdinand himself
revealed itself in the speeches of the Liberal deputies, although no one in
the Assembly dared to avow the least want of loyalty towards the exiled
House. The Liberals knew how passionate was the love of the Spanish people
for their Prince; but they resolved that, if Ferdinand returned to his
throne, he should return without the power to revive the old abuses of
Bourbon rule. In this spirit the Assembly proceeded to frame a Constitution
for Spain. The Crown was treated as the antagonist and corrupter of the
people; its administrative powers were jealously reduced; it was confronted
by an Assembly to be elected every two years, and the members of this
Assembly were prohibited both from holding office under the Crown, and from
presenting themselves for re-election at the end of their two years'
service. To a Representative Body thus excluded from all possibility of
gaining any practical acquaintance with public affairs was entrusted not
only the right of making laws, but the control of every branch of
government. The executive was reduced to a mere cypher.

[The Clergy against the Constitution.]

Such was the Constitution which, under the fire of the French artillery now
encompassing Cadiz, the Cortes of Spain proclaimed in the spring of the
year 1812. Its principles had excited the most vehement opposition within
the Assembly itself; by the nation, or at least that part of it which was
in communication with Cadiz, it appeared to be received with enthusiasm.
The Liberals, who had triumphed over their opponents in the debates in the
Assembly, believed that their own victory was the victory of the Spanish
people over the forces of despotism. But before the first rejoicings were
over, ominous signs appeared of the strength of the opposite party, and of
the incapacity of the Liberals themselves to form any effective Government.
The fanaticism of the clergy was excited by a law partly ratifying the
suppression of monasteries begun by Joseph Bonaparte; the enactments of the
Cortes regarding the censorship of religious writings threw the Church into
open revolt. In declaring the freedom of the Press, the Cortes had
expressly guarded themselves against extending this freedom to religious
discussion; the clergy now demanded the restoration of the powers of the
Inquisition, which had been in abeyance since the beginning of the war. The
Cortes were willing to grant to the Bishops the right of condemning any
writing as heretical, and they were willing to enforce by means of the
ordinary tribunals the law which declared the Catholic religion to be the
only one permitted in Spain; but they declined to restore the jurisdiction
of the Holy Office (Feb., 1813). Without this engine for the suppression of
all mental independence the priesthood of Spain conceived its cause to be
lost. The anathema of the Church went out against the new order. Uniting
with the partisans of absolutism, whom Wellington, provoked by the
extravagances of the Liberals, now took under his protection, the clergy
excited an ignorant people against its own emancipators, and awaited the
time when the return of Ferdinand, and a combination of all the interests
hostile to reform, should overthrow the Constitution which the Liberals
fondly imagined to have given freedom to Spain.




CHAPTER X.


War approaching between France and Russia--Policy of Prussia--Hardenberg's
Ministry--Prussia forced into Alliance with Napoleon--Austrian Alliance--
Napoleon's Preparations--He enters Russia--Alexander and Bernadotte--Plan
of the Russians to fight a Battle at Drissa frustrated--They retreat on
Witepsk--Sufferings of the French--French enter Smolensko--Battle of
Borodino--Evacuation of Moscow--Moscow fired--The Retreat from Moscow--The
French at Smolensko--Advance of Russian Armies from North and South--
Battle of Krasnoi--Passage of the Beresina--The French reach the Niemen--
York's Convention with the Russians--The Czar and Stein--Russian Army
enters Prussia--Stein raises East Prussia--Treaty of Kalisch--Prussia
declares War--Enthusiasm of the Nation--Idea of German Unity--The Landwehr.


[Austria and Prussia in 1811.]

[Hardenberg's Ministry.]

War between France and Russia was known to be imminent as early as the
spring of 1811. The approach of the conflict was watched with the deepest
anxiety by the two States of central Europe which still retained some
degree of independence. The Governments of Berlin and Vienna had been drawn
together by misfortune. The same ultimate deliverance formed the secret
hope of both; but their danger was too great to permit them to combine in
open resistance to Napoleon's will. In spite of a tacit understanding
between the two powers, each was compelled for the present to accept the
conditions necessary to secure its own existence. The situation of Prussia
in especial was one of the utmost danger. Its territory lay directly
between the French Empire and Russia; its fortresses were in the hands of
Napoleon, its resources were certain to be seized by one or other of the
hostile armies. Neutrality was impossible, however much desired by Prussia
itself; and the only question to be decided by the Government was whether
Prussia should enter the war as the ally of France or of Russia. Had the
party of Stein been in power, Prussia would have taken arms against
Napoleon at every risk. Stein, however, was in exile his friends, though
strong in the army, were not masters of the Government; the foreign policy
of the country was directed by a statesman who trusted more to time and
prudent management than to desperate resolves. Hardenberg had been recalled
to office in 1810, and permitted to resume the great measures of civil
reform which had been broken off two years before. The machinery of
Government was reconstructed upon principles that had been laid down by
Stein; agrarian reform was carried still farther by the abolition of
peasant's service, and the partition of peasant's land between the occupant
and his lord; an experiment, though a very ill-managed one, was made in the
forms of constitutional Government by the convocation of three successive
assemblies of the Notables. On the part of the privileged orders Hardenberg
encountered the most bitter opposition; his own love of absolute power
prevented him from winning popular confidence by any real approach towards
a Representative System. Nor was the foreign policy of the Minister of a
character to excite enthusiasm. A true patriot at heart, he seemed at times
to be destitute of patriotism, when he was in fact only destitute of the
power to reveal his real motives.

[Hardenberg's foreign policy, 1811.]

Convinced that Prussia could not remain neutral in the coming war, and
believing some relief from its present burdens to be absolutely necessary,
Hardenberg determined in the first instance to offer Prussia's support to
Napoleon, demanding in return for it a reduction of the payments still due
to France, and the removal of the limits imposed upon the Prussian army.
[169] The offer of the Prussian alliance reached Napoleon in the spring of
1811: he maintained an obstinate silence. While the Prussian envoy at Paris
vainly waited for an audience, masses of troops advanced from the Rhine
towards the Prussian frontier, and the French garrisons on the Oder were
raised far beyond their stipulated strength. In July the envoy returned
from Paris, announcing that Napoleon declined even to enter upon a
discussion of the terms proposed by Hardenberg. King Frederick William
now wrote to the Czar, proposing an alliance between Prussia and Russia.
It was not long before the report of Hardenberg's military preparations
reached Paris. Napoleon announced that if they were not immediately
suspended he should order Davoust to march on Berlin; and he presented a
counter-proposition for a Prussian alliance, which was in fact one of
unqualified submission. The Government had to decide between accepting a
treaty which placed Prussia among Napoleon's vassals, or certain war.
Hardenberg, expecting favourable news from St. Petersburg, pronounced in
favour of war; but the Czar, though anxious for the support of Prussia,
had determined on a defensive plan of operations, and declared that he
could send no troops beyond the Russian frontier.

[Prussia accepts alliance with Napoleon Feb, 1812.]

Prussia was thus left to face Napoleon alone. Hardenberg shrank from the
responsibility of proclaiming a war for life or death, and a treaty was
signed which added the people of Frederick the Great to that inglorious
crowd which fought at Napoleon's orders against whatever remained of
independence and nationality in Europe. [170] (Feb. 24th, 1812.) Prussia
undertook to supply Napoleon with 20,000 men for the impending campaign,
and to raise no levies and to give no orders to its troops without
Napoleon's consent. Such was the bitter termination of all those patriotic
hopes and efforts which had carried Prussia through its darkest days.
Hardenberg himself might make a merit of bending before the storm, and of
preserving for Prussia the means of striking when the time should come; but
the simpler instincts of the patriotic party felt his submission to be the
very surrender of national existence. Stein in his exile denounced the
Minister with unsparing bitterness. Scharnhorst resigned his post; many of
the best officers in the Prussian army quitted the service of King
Frederick William in order to join the Russians in the last struggle for
European liberty.

[Alliance of Austria with Napoleon.]

The alliance which Napoleon pressed upon Austria was not of the same
humiliating character as that which Prussia was forced to accept. Both
Metternich and the Emperor Francis would have preferred to remain neutral,
for the country was suffering from a fearful State-bankruptcy, and the
Government had been compelled to reduce its paper money, in which all debts
and salaries were payable, to a fifth of its nominal value. Napoleon,
however, insisted on Austria's co-operation. The family-relations of the
two Emperors pointed to a close alliance, and the reward which Napoleon
held out to Austria, the restoration of the Illyrian provinces, was one of
the utmost value. Nor was the Austrian contingent to be treated, like the
Prussian, as a mere French army-corps. Its operations were to be separate
from those of the French, and its command was to be held by an Austrian
general, subordinate only to Napoleon himself. On these terms Metternich
was not unwilling to enter the campaign. He satisfied his scruples by
inventing a strange diplomatic form in which Austria was still described as
a neutral, although she took part in the war, [171] and felt as little
compunction in uniting with France as in explaining to the Courts of St.
Petersburg and Berlin that the union was a hypocritical one. The Sovereign
who was about to be attacked by Napoleon, and the Sovereigns who sent their
troops to Napoleon's support, perfectly well understood one another's
position. The Prussian corps, watched and outnumbered by the French, might
have to fight the Russians because they could not help it; the Austrians,
directed by their own commander, would do no serious harm to the Russians
so long as the Russians did no harm to them. Should the Czar succeed in
giving a good account of his adversary, he would have no difficulty in
coming to a settlement with his adversary's forced allies.

[Preparations of Napoleon for invasion of Russia.]

The Treaties which gave to Napoleon the hollow support of Austria and
Prussia were signed early in the year 1812. During the next three months
all Northern Germany was covered with enormous masses of troops and
waggon-trains, on their way from the Rhine to the Vistula. No expedition
had ever been organised on anything approaching to the scale of the
invasion of Russia. In all the wars of the French since 1793 the enemy's
country had furnished their armies with supplies, and the generals had
trusted to their own exertions for everything but guns and ammunition. Such
a method could not, however, be followed in an invasion of Russia. The
country beyond the Niemen was no well-stocked garden, like Lombardy or
Bavaria. Provisions for a mass of 450,000 men, with all the means of
transport for carrying them far into Russia, had to be collected at Dantzig
and the fortresses of the Vistula. No mercy was shown to the unfortunate
countries whose position now made them Napoleon's harvest-field and
storehouse. Prussia was forced to supplement its military assistance with
colossal grants of supplies. The whole of Napoleon's troops upon the march
through Germany lived at the expense of the towns and villages through
which they passed; in Westphalia such was the ruin caused by military
requisitions that King Jerome wrote to Napoleon, warning him to fear the
despair of men who had nothing more to lose. [172]

[Napoleon crosses Russian frontier, June, 1812.]

[Alexander and Bernadotte.]

At length the vast stores were collected, and the invading army reached the
Vistula. Napoleon himself quitted Paris on the 9th of May, and received the
homage of the Austrian and Prussian Sovereigns at Dresden. The eastward
movement of the army continued. The Polish and East Prussian districts
which had been the scene of the combats of 1807 were again traversed by
French columns. On the 23rd of June the order was given to cross the Niemen
and enter Russian territory. Out of 600,000 troops whom Napoleon had
organised for this campaign, 450,000 were actually upon the frontier. Of
these, 380,000 formed the central army, under Napoleon's own command, at
Kowno, on the Niemen; to the north, at Tilsit, there was formed a corps of
32,000, which included the contingent furnished by Prussia; the Austrians,
under Schwarzenburg, with a small French division, lay to the south, on the
borders of Galicia. Against the main army of Napoleon, the real invading
force, the Russians could only bring up 150,000 men. These were formed into
the First and Second Armies of the West. The First, or Northern Army, with
which the Czar himself was present, numbered about 100,000, under the
command of Barclay de Tolly; the Second Army, half that strength, was led
by Prince Bagration. In Southern Poland and on the Lower Niemen the French
auxiliary corps were faced by weak divisions. In all, the Russians had only
220,000 men to oppose to more than double that number of the enemy. The
principal reinforcements which they had to expect were from the armies
hitherto engaged with the Turks upon the Danube. Alexander found it
necessary to make peace with the Porte at the cost of a part of the spoils
of Tilsit. The Danubian provinces, with the exception of Bessarabia, were
restored to the Sultan, in order that Russia might withdraw its forces from
the south. Bernadotte, Crown Prince of Sweden, who was threatened with the
loss of his own dominions in the event of Napoleon's victory, concluded an
alliance with the Czar. In return for the co-operation of a Swedish army,
Alexander undertook, with an indifference to national right worthy of
Napoleon himself, to wrest Norway from Denmark, and to annex it to the
Swedish crown.

[Russians intend to fight at Drissa.]

[Russian armies severed, and retreat on Witepsk.]

The head-quarters of the Russian army were at Wilna when Napoleon crossed
the Niemen. It was unknown whether the French intended to advance upon
Moscow or upon St. Petersburg; nor had any systematic plan of the campaign
been adopted by the Czar. The idea of falling back before the enemy was
indeed familiar in Russia since the war between Peter the Great and Charles
XII. of Sweden, and there was no want of good counsel in favour of a
defensive warfare; [173] but neither the Czar nor any one of his generals
understood the simple theory of a retreat in which no battles at all should
be fought. The most that was understood by a defensive system was the
occupation of an entrenched position for battle, and a retreat to a second
line of entrenchments before the engagement was repeated. The actual course
of the campaign was no result of a profound design; it resulted from the
disagreements of the general's plans, and the frustration of them all. It
was intended in the first instance to fight a battle at Drissa, on the
river Dwina. In this position, which was supposed to cover the roads both
to Moscow and St. Petersburg, a great entrenched camp had been formed, and
here the Russian army was to make its first stand against Napoleon.
Accordingly, as soon as the French crossed the Niemen, both Barclay and
Bagration were ordered by the Czar to fall back upon Drissa. But the
movements of the French army were too rapid for the Russian commanders to
effect their junction. Bagration, who lay at some distance to the south,
was cut off from his colleague, and forced to retreat along the eastern
road towards Witepsk. Barclay reached Drissa in safety, but he knew himself
to be unable to hold it alone against 300,000 men. He evacuated the lines
without waiting for the approach of the French, and fell back in the
direction taken by the second army. The first movement of defence had thus
failed, and the Czar now quitted the camp, leaving to Barclay the command
of the whole Russian forces.

[Collapse of the French transport.]

[Barclay and Bagration unite at Smolensko, Aug. 3.]

Napoleon entered Wilna, the capital of Russian Poland, on the 28th of June.
The last Russian detachments had only left it a few hours before; but the
French were in no condition for immediate pursuit. Before the army reached
the Niemen the unparalleled difficulties of the campaign had become only
too clear. The vast waggon-trains broke down on the highways. The stores
were abundant, but the animals which had to transport them died of
exhaustion. No human genius, no perfection of foresight and care, could
have achieved the enormous task which Napoleon had undertaken. In spite of
a year's preparations the French suffered from hunger and thirst from the
moment that they set foot on Russian soil. Thirty thousand stragglers had
left the army before it reached Wilna; twenty-five thousand sick were in
the hospitals; the transports were at an unknown distance in the rear. At
the end of six days' march from the Niemen, Napoleon found himself
compelled to halt for nearly three weeks. The army did not leave Wilna till
the 16th of July, when Barclay had already evacuated the camp at Drissa.
When at length a march became possible, Napoleon moved upon the Upper
Dwina, hoping to intercept Barclay upon the road to Witepsk; but
difficulties of transport again brought him to a halt, and the Russian
commander reached Witepsk before his adversary. Here Barclay drew up for
battle, supposing Bagration's army to be but a short distance to the south.
In the course of the night intelligence arrived that Bagration's army was
nowhere near the rallying-point, but had been driven back towards
Smolensko. Barclay immediately gave up the thought of fighting a battle,
and took the road to Smolensko himself, leaving his watch-fires burning.
His movement was unperceived by the French; the retreat was made in good
order; and the two severed Russian armies at length effected their junction
at a point three hundred miles distant from the frontier.

[The French waste away.]

[French enter Smolensko, Aug. 18.]

[Barclay superseded by Kutusoff.]

Napoleon, disappointed of battle, entered Witepsk on the evening after the
Russians had abandoned it (July 28). Barclay's escape was, for the French,
a disaster of the first magnitude, since it extinguished all hope of
crushing the larger of the two Russian armies by overwhelming numbers in
one great and decisive engagement. The march of the French during the last
twelve days showed at what cost every further step must be made. Since
quitting Wilna the 50,000 sick and stragglers had risen to 100,000. Fever
and disease struck down whole regiments. The provisioning of the army was
beyond all human power. Of the 200,000 men who still remained, it might
almost be calculated in how many weeks the last would perish. So fearful
was the prospect that Napoleon himself thought of abandoning any further
advance until the next year, and of permitting the army to enter into
winter-quarters upon the Dwina. But the conviction that all Russian
resistance would end with the capture of Moscow hurried him on. The army
left Witepsk on the 13th of August, and followed the Russians to Smolensko.
Here the entire Russian army clamoured for battle. Barclay stood alone in
perceiving the necessity for retreat. The generals caballed against him;
the soldiers were on the point of mutiny; the Czar himself wrote to express
his impatience for an attack upon the French. Barclay nevertheless
persisted in his resolution to abandon Smolensko. He so far yielded to the
army as to permit the rearguard to engage in a bloody struggle with the
French when they assaulted the town; but the evacuation was completed under
cover of night; and when the French made their entrance into Smolensko on
the next morning they found it deserted and in rums. The surrender of
Smolensko was the last sacrifice that Barclay could extort from Russian
pride. He no longer opposed the universal cry for battle, and the retreat
was continued only with the intention of halting at the first strong
position. Barclay himself was surveying a battleground when he heard that
the command had been taken out of his hands. The Czar had been forced by
national indignation at the loss of Smolensko to remove this able soldier,
who was a Livonian by birth, and to transfer the command to Kutusoff, a
thorough Russian, whom a life-time spent in victories over the Turk had
made, in spite of his defeat at Austerlitz, the idol of the nation.

[The French advance from Smolensko.]

When Kutusoff reached the camp, the prolonged miseries of the French
advance had already reduced the invaders to the number of the army opposed
to them. As far as Smolensko the French had at least not suffered from the
hostility of the population, who were Poles, not Russians; but on reaching
Smolensko they entered a country where every peasant was a fanatical enemy.
The villages were burnt down by their inhabitants, the corn destroyed, and
the cattle driven into the woods. Every day's march onward from Smolensko
cost the French three thousand men. On reaching the river Moskwa in the
first week of September, a hundred and seventy-five thousand out of
Napoleon's three hundred and eighty thousand soldiers were in the
hospitals, or missing, or dead. About sixty thousand guarded the line of
march. The Russians, on the other hand, had received reinforcements which
covered their losses at Smolensko; and although detachments had been sent
to support the army of Riga, Kutusoff was still able to place over one
hundred thousand men in the field.

[Battle of Borodino, Sept. 7.]

[Evacuation of Moscow. French enter Moscow, Sept. 14.]

On the 5th of September the Russian army drew up for battle at Borodino, on
the Moskwa, seventy miles west of the capital. At early morning on the 7th
the French advanced to the attack. The battle was, in proportion to its
numbers, the most sanguinary of modern times. Forty thousand French, thirty
thousand Russians were struck down. At the close of the day the French were
in possession of the enemy's ground, but the Russians, unbroken in their
order, had only retreated to a second line of defence. Both sides claimed
the victory; neither had won it. It was no catastrophe such as Napoleon
required for the decision of the war, it was no triumph sufficient to save
Russia from the necessity of abandoning its capital. Kutusoff had sustained
too heavy a loss to face the French beneath the walls of Moscow. Peace was
no nearer for the 70,000 men who had been killed or wounded in the fight.
The French steadily advanced; the Russians retreated to Moscow, and
evacuated the capital when their generals decided that they could not
encounter the French assault. The Holy City was left undefended before the
invader. But the departure of the army was the smallest part of the
evacuation. The inhabitants, partly of their own free will, partly under
the compulsion of the Governor, abandoned the city in a mass. No gloomy or
excited crowd, as at Vienna and Berlin, thronged the streets to witness the
entrance of the great conqueror, when on the 14th of September Napoleon
took possession of Moscow. His troops marched through silent and deserted
streets. In the solitude of the Kremlin Napoleon received the homage of a
few foreigners, who alone could be collected by his servants to tender to
him the submission of the city.

[Moscow fired.]

But the worst was yet to come. On the night after Napoleon's entry, fires
broke out in different parts of Moscow. They were ascribed at first to
accident; but when on the next day the French saw the flames gaining ground
in every direction, and found that all the means for extinguishing fire had
been removed from the city, they understood the doom to which Moscow had
been devoted by its own defenders. Count Rostopchin, the governor, had
determined on the destruction of Moscow without the knowledge of the Czar.
The doors of the prisons were thrown open. Rostopchin gave the signal by
setting fire to his own palace, and let loose his bands of incendiaries
over the city. For five days the flames rose and fell; and when, on the
evening of the 20th, the last fires ceased, three-fourths of Moscow lay in
ruins.

[Napoleon at Moscow, Sept. 14-Oct. 19.]

Such was the prize for which Napoleon had sacrificed 200,000 men, and
engulfed the weak remnant of his army six hundred miles deep in an enemy's
country. Throughout all the terrors of the advance Napoleon had held fast
to the belief that Alexander's resistance would end with the fall of his
capital. The events that accompanied the entry of the French into Moscow
shook his confidence; yet even now Napoleon could not believe that the Czar
remained firm against all thoughts of peace. His experience in all earlier
wars had given him confidence in the power of one conspicuous disaster to
unhinge the resolution of kings. His trust in the deepening impression made
by the fall of Moscow was fostered by negotiations begun by Kutusoff for
the very purpose of delaying the French retreat. For five weeks Napoleon
remained at Moscow as if spell-bound, unable to convince himself of his
powerlessness to break Alexander's determination, unable to face a retreat
which would display to all Europe the failure of his arms and the
termination of his career of victory. At length the approach of winter
forced him to action. It was impossible to provision the army at Moscow
during the winter months, even if there had been nothing to fear from the
enemy. Even the mocking overtures of Kutusoff had ceased. The frightful
reality could no longer be concealed. On the 19th of October the order for
retreat was given. It was not the destruction of Moscow, but the departure
of its inhabitants, that had brought the conqueror to ruin. Above two
thousand houses were still standing; but whether the buildings remained or
perished made little difference; the whole value of the capital to Napoleon
was lost when the inhabitants, whom he could have forced to procure
supplies for his army, disappeared. Vienna and Berlin had been of such
incalculable service to Napoleon because the whole native administration
placed itself under his orders, and every rich and important citizen became
a hostage for the activity of the rest. When the French gained Moscow, they
gained nothing beyond the supplies which were at that moment in the city.
All was lost to Napoleon when the class who in other capitals had been his
instruments fled at his approach. The conflagration of Moscow acted upon
all Europe as a signal of inextinguishable national hatred; as a military
operation, it neither accelerated the retreat of Napoleon nor added to the
miseries which his army had to undergo.

[Napoleon leaves Moscow, Oct. 19.]

[Forced to retreat by the same road.]

The French forces which quitted Moscow in October numbered about 100,000
men. Reinforcements had come in during the occupation of the city, and the
health of the soldiers had been in some degree restored by a month's rest.
Everything now depended upon gaining a line of retreat where food could be
found. Though but a fourth part of the army which entered Russia in the
summer, the army which left Moscow was still large enough to protect itself
against the enemy, if allowed to retreat through a fresh country; if forced
back upon the devastated line of its advance it was impossible for it to
escape destruction. Napoleon therefore determined to make for Kaluga, on
the south of Moscow, and to endeavour to gain a road to Smolensko far
distant from that by which he had come. The army moved from Moscow in a
southern direction. But its route had been foreseen by Kutusoff. At the end
of four days' march it was met by a Russian corps at Jaroslavitz. A bloody
struggle left the French in possession of the road: they continued their
advance; but it was only to find that Kutusoff, with his full strength, had
occupied a line of heights farther south, and barred the way to Kaluga. The
effort of an assault was beyond the powers of the French. Napoleon surveyed
the enemy's position, and recognised the fatal necessity of abandoning the
march southwards and returning to the wasted road by which he had advanced.
The meaning of the backward movement was quickly understood by the army.
From the moment of quitting Jaroslavitz, disorder and despair increased
with every march. Thirty thousand men were lost upon the road before a
pursuer appeared in sight. When, on the 2nd of November, the army reached
Wiazma, it numbered no more than 65,000 men.

[Kutusoff follows by parallel road.]

Kutusoff was unadventurous in pursuit. The necessity of moving his army
along a parallel road south of the French, in order to avoid starvation,
diminished the opportunities for attack; but the general himself disliked
risking his forces, and preferred to see the enemy's destruction effected
by the elements. At Wiazma, where, on the 3rd of November, the French were
for the first time attacked in force, Kutusoff's own delay alone saved them
from total ruin. In spite of heavy loss the French kept possession of the
road, and secured their retreat to Smolensko, where stores of food had been
accumulated, and where other and less exhausted French troops were at hand.

[Frost, Nov. 6.]

[French reach Smolensko, Nov. 9.]

Up to the 6th of November the weather had been sunny and dry. On the 6th
the long-delayed terrors of Russian winter broke upon the pursuers and the
pursued. Snow darkened the air and hid the last traces of vegetation from
the starving cavalry trains. The temperature sank at times to forty degrees
of frost. Death came, sometimes in the unfelt release from misery,
sometimes in horrible forms of mutilation and disease. Both armies were
exposed to the same sufferings; but the Russians had at least such succour
as their countrymen could give; where the French sank, they died. The order
of war disappeared under conditions which made life itself the accident of
a meal or of a place by the camp-fire. Though most of the French soldiery
continued to carry their arms, the Guard alone kept its separate formation;
the other regiments marched in confused masses. From the 9th to the 13th of
November these starving bands arrived one after another at Smolensko,
expecting that here their sufferings would end. But the organisation for
distributing the stores accumulated in Smolensko no longer existed. The
perishing crowds were left to find shelter where they could; sacks of corn
were thrown to them for food.

[Russian armies from north and south attempt to cut off French retreat.]

[Krasnoi, Nov. 17.]

It was impossible for Napoleon to give his wearied soldiers rest, for new
Russian armies were advancing from the north and the south to cut off their
retreat. From the Danube and from the Baltic Sea troops were pressing
forward to their meeting-point upon the rear of the invader. Witgenstein,
moving southwards at the head of the army of the Dwina, had overpowered the
French corps stationed upon that river, and made himself master of Witepsk.
The army of Bucharest, which had been toiling northwards ever since the
beginning of August, had advanced to within a few days' march of its
meeting-point with the army of the Dwina upon the line of Napoleon's
communications. Before Napoleon reached Smolensko he sent orders to Victor,
who was at Smolensko with some reserves, to march against Witgenstein and
drive him back upon the Dwina. Victor set out on his mission. During the
short halt of Napoleon in Smolensko, Kutusoff pushed forward to the west of
the French, and took post at Krasnoi, thirty miles farther along the road
by which Napoleon had to pass. The retreat of the French seemed to be
actually cut off. Had the Russian general dared to face Napoleon and his
Guards, he might have held the French in check until the arrival of the two
auxiliary armies from the north and south enabled him to capture Napoleon
and his entire force. Kutusoff, however, preferred a partial and certain
victory to a struggle with Napoleon for life or death. He permitted
Napoleon and the Guard to pass by unattacked, and then fell upon the hinder
divisions of the French army. (Nov. 17.) These unfortunate troops were
successively cut to pieces. Twenty-six thousand were made prisoners. Ney,
with a part of the rear-guard, only escaped by crossing the Dnieper on the
ice. Of the army that had quitted Moscow there now remained but 10,000
combatants and 20,000 followers. Kutusoff himself was brought to such a
state of exhaustion that he could carry the pursuit no further, and entered
into quarters upon the Dnieper.

[Victor joins Napoleon.]

[Passage of the Beresina, Nov. 28th.]

It was a few days after the battle at Krasnoi that the divisions of Victor,
coming from the direction of the Dwina, suddenly encountered the remnant
of Napoleon's army. Though aware that Napoleon was in retreat, they knew
nothing of the calamities that had befallen him, and were struck with
amazement when, in the middle of a forest, they met with what seemed more
like a miserable troop of captives than an army upon the march. Victor's
soldiers of a mere auxiliary corps found themselves more than double the
effective strength of the whole army of Moscow. Their arrival again placed
Napoleon at the head of 30,000 disciplined troops, and gave the French a
gleam of victory in the last and seemingly most hopeless struggle in the
campaign. Admiral Tchitchagoff, in command of the army marching from the
Danube, had at length reached the line of Napoleon's retreat, and
established himself at Borisov, where the road through Poland crosses the
river Beresina. The bridge was destroyed by the Russians, and Tchitchagoff
opened communication with Witgenstein's army, which lay only a few miles to
the north. It appeared as if the retreat of the French was now finally
intercepted, and the surrender of Napoleon inevitable. Yet even in this
hopeless situation the military skill and daring of the French worked with
something of its ancient power. The army reached the Beresina; Napoleon
succeeded in withdrawing the enemy from the real point of passage; bridges
were thrown across the river, and after desperate fighting a great part of
the army made good its footing upon the western bank (Nov. 28). But the
losses even among the effective troops were enormous. The fate of the
miserable crowd that followed them, torn by the cannon-fire of the
Russians, and precipitated into the river by the breaking of one of the
bridges, has made the passage of the Beresina a synonym for the utmost
degree of human woe.

[French reach the Niemen, Dec. 13.]

This was the last engagement fought by the army. The Guards still preserved
their order: Marshal Ney still found soldiers capable of turning upon the
pursuer with his own steady and unflagging courage; but the bulk of the
army struggled forward in confused crowds, harassed by the Cossacks, and
laying down their arms by thousands before the enemy. The frost, which had
broken up on the 19th, returned on the 30th of November with even greater
severity. Twenty thousand fresh troops which joined the army between the
Beresina and Wilna scarcely arrested the process of dissolution. On the 3rd
of December Napoleon quitted the army. Wilna itself was abandoned with all
its stores; and when at length the fugitives reached the Niemen, they
numbered little more than twenty thousand. Here, six months earlier, three
hundred and eighty thousand men had crossed with Napoleon. A hundred
thousand more had joined the army in the course of its retreat. Of all this
host, not the twentieth part reached the Prussian frontier. A hundred and
seventy thousand remained prisoners in the hands of the Russians; a greater
number had perished. Of the twenty thousand men who now beheld the Niemen,
probably not seven thousand had crossed with Napoleon. In the presence of a
catastrophe so overwhelming and so unparalleled the Russian generals might
well be content with their own share in the work of destruction. Yet the
event proved that Kutusoff had done ill in sparing the extremest effort to
capture or annihilate his foe. Not only was Napoleon's own escape the
pledge of continued war, but the remnant that escaped with him possessed a
military value out of all proportion to its insignificant numbers. The best
of the army were the last to succumb. Out of those few thousands who
endured to the end, a very large proportion were veteran officers, who
immediately took their place at the head of Napoleon's newly-raised armies,
and gave to them a military efficiency soon to be bitterly proved by Europe
on many a German battle-field.

[York's convention with the Russians, Dec. 30.]

[York and the Prussian contingent at Riga.]

Four hundred thousand men were lost to a conqueror who could still stake
the lives of half a million more. The material power of Napoleon, though
largely, was not fatally diminished by the Russian campaign; it was through
its moral effect, first proved in the action of Prussia, that the retreat
from Moscow created a new order of things in Europe. The Prussian
contingent, commanded by General von York, lay in front of Riga, where it
formed part of the French subsidiary army-corps led by Marshal Macdonald.
Early in November the Russian governor of Riga addressed himself to York,
assuring him that Napoleon was ruined, and soliciting York himself to take
up arms against Macdonald. [174] York had no evidence, beyond the word of
the Russian commander, of the extent of Napoleon's losses; and even if the
facts were as stated, it was by no means clear that the Czar might not be
inclined to take vengeance on Prussia on account of its alliance with
Napoleon. York returned a guarded answer to the Russian, and sent an
officer to Wilna to ascertain the real state of the French army. On the 8th
of December the officer returned, and described what he had himself seen.
Soon afterwards the Russian commandant produced a letter from the Czar,
declaring his intention to deal with Prussia as a friend, not as an enemy.
On these points all doubt was removed; York's decision was thrown upon
himself. York was a rigid soldier of the old Prussian type, dominated by
the idea of military duty. The act to which the Russian commander invited
him, and which the younger officers were ready to hail as the liberation of
Prussia, might be branded by his sovereign as desertion and treason.
Whatever scruples and perplexity might be felt in such a situation by a
loyal and obedient soldier were felt by York. He nevertheless chose the
course which seemed to be for his country's good; and having chosen it, he
accepted all the consequences which it involved. On the 30th of December a
convention was signed at Tauroggen, which, under the guise of a truce,
practically withdrew the Prussian army from Napoleon, and gave the Russians
possession of Königsberg. The momentous character of the act was recognised
by Napoleon as soon as the news reached Paris. York's force was the
strongest military body upon the Russian frontier; united with Macdonald,
it would have forced the Russian pursuit to stop at the Niemen; abandoning
Napoleon, it brought his enemies on to the Vistula, and threatened
incalculable danger by its example to all the rest of Germany. For the
moment, however, Napoleon could count upon the spiritless obedience of King
Frederick William. In the midst of the French regiments that garrisoned
Berlin, the King wrote orders pronouncing York's convention null and void,
and ordering York himself to be tried by court-martial. The news reached
the loyal soldier: he received it with grief, but maintained his resolution
to act for his country's good. "With bleeding heart," he wrote, "I burst
the bond of obedience, and carry on the war upon my own responsibility. The
army desires war with France; the nation desires it; the King himself
desires it, but his will is not free. The army must make his will free."

[The Czar and Stein.]

[Alexander enters Prussia, Jan., 1813.]

York's act was nothing less than the turning-point in Prussian history.
Another Prussian, at this great crisis of Europe, played as great, though
not so conspicuous, a part. Before the outbreak of the Russian war, the
Czar had requested the exile Stein to come to St. Petersburg to aid him
with his counsels during the struggle with Napoleon. Stein gladly accepted
the call; and throughout the campaign he encouraged the Czar in the
resolute resistance which the Russian nation itself required of its
Government. So long as French soldiers remained on Russian soil, there was
indeed little need for a foreigner to stimulate the Czar's energies; but
when the pursuit had gloriously ended on the Niemen, the case became very
different. Kutusoff and the generals were disinclined to carry the war into
Germany. The Russian army had itself lost three-fourths of its numbers;
Russian honour was satisfied; the liberation of Western Europe might be
left to Western Europe itself. Among the politicians who surrounded
Alexander, there were a considerable number, including the first minister
Romanzoff, who still believed in the good policy of a French alliance.
These were the influences with which Stein had to contend, when the
question arose whether Russia should rest satisfied with its own victories,
or summon all Europe to unite in overthrowing Napoleon's tyranny. No record
remains of the stages by which Alexander's mind rose to the clear and firm
conception of a single European interest against Napoleon; indications
exist that it was Stein's personal influence which most largely affected
his decision. Even in the darkest moments of the war, when the forces of
Russia seemed wholly incapable of checking Napoleon's advance, Stein had
never abandoned his scheme for raising the German nation against Napoleon.
The confidence with which he had assured Alexander of ultimate victory over
the invader had been thoroughly justified; the triumph which he had
predicted had come with a rapidity and completeness even surpassing his
hopes. For a moment Alexander identified himself with the statesman who, in
the midst of Germany's humiliation, had been so resolute, so far-sighted,
so aspiring. [175] The minister of the peace-party was dismissed: Alexander
ordered his troops to advance into Prussia, and charged Stein himself to
assume the government of the Prussian districts occupied by Russian armies.
Stein's mission was to arm the Landwehr, and to gather all the resources of
the country for war against France; his powers were to continue until some
definite arrangement should be made between the King of Prussia and the
Czar.

[Stein's commission from Alexander.]

[Province of East Prussia arms, Jan., 1813.]

Armed with this commission from a foreign sovereign, Stein appeared at
Königsberg on the 22nd of January, 1813, and published an order requiring
the governor of the province of East Prussia to convoke an assembly for the
purpose of arming the people. Stein would have desired York to appear as
President of the Assembly; but York, like most of the Prussian officials,
was alarmed and indignant at Stein's assumption of power in Prussia as the
representative of the Russian Czar, and hesitated to connect himself with
so revolutionary a measure as the arming of the people. It was only upon
condition that Stein himself should not appear in the Assembly that York
consented to recognise its powers. The Assembly met. York entered the
house, and spoke a few soul-stirring words. His undisguised declaration of
war with France was received with enthusiastic cheers. A plan for the
formation of a Landwehr, based on Scharnhorst's plans of 1808, was laid
before the Assembly, and accepted. Forty thousand men were called to arms
in a province which included nothing west of the Vistula. The nation itself
had begun the war, and left its Government no choice but to follow. Stein's
task was fulfilled; and he retired to the quarters of Alexander, unwilling
to mar by the appearance of foreign intervention the work to which the
Prussian nation had now committed itself beyond power of recall. It was the
fortune of the Prussian State, while its King dissembled before the French
in Berlin, to possess a soldier brave enough to emancipate its army, and a
citizen bold enough to usurp the government of its provinces. Frederick
William forgave York his intrepidity; Stein's action was never forgiven by
the timid and jealous sovereign whose subjects he had summoned to arm
themselves for their country's deliverance.

[Policy of Hardenberg.]

[Treaty of Kalisch, Feb. 27.]

The Government of Berlin, which since the beginning of the Revolutionary
War had neither been able to fight, nor to deceive, nor to be honest, was
at length forced by circumstances into a certain effectiveness in all three
forms of action. In the interval between the first tidings of Napoleon's
disasters and the announcement of York's convention with the Russians,
Hardenberg had been assuring Napoleon of his devotion, and collecting
troops which he carefully prevented from joining him. [176] The desire of
the King was to gain concessions without taking part in the war either
against Napoleon or on his side. When, however, the balance turned more
decidedly against Napoleon, he grew bolder; and the news of York's
defection, though it seriously embarrassed the Cabinet for the moment,
practically decided it in favour of war with France. The messenger who was
sent to remove York from his command received private instructions to fall
into the hands of the Russians, and to inform the Czar that, if his troops
advanced as far as the Oder, King Frederick William would be ready to
conclude an alliance. Every post that arrived from East Prussia
strengthened the warlike resolutions of the Government. At length the King
ventured on the decisive step of quitting Berlin and placing himself at
Breslau (Jan. 25). At Berlin he was in the power of the French; at Breslau
he was within easy reach of Alexander. The significance of the journey
could not be mistaken: it was immediately followed by open preparation for
war with France. On February 3rd there appeared an edict inviting
volunteers to enrol themselves: a week later all exemptions from military
service were abolished, and the entire male population of Prussia between
the ages of seventeen and twenty-four was declared liable to serve. General
Knesebeck was sent to the headquarters of the Czar, which were now between
Warsaw and Kalisch, to conclude a treaty of alliance. Knesebeck demanded
securities for the restoration to Prussia of all the Polish territory which
it had possessed before 1806; the Czar, unwilling either to grant this
condition or to lose the Prussian alliance, kept Knesebeck at his quarters,
and sent Stein with a Russian plenipotentiary to Breslau to conclude the
treaty with Hardenberg himself. Stein and Hardenberg met at Breslau on the
26th of February. Hardenberg accepted the Czar's terms, and the treaty,
known as the Treaty of Kalisch, [177] was signed on the following day. By
this treaty, without guaranteeing the restoration of Prussian Poland,
Russia undertook not to lay down its arms until the Prussian State as a
whole was restored to the area and strength which it had possessed before
1806. For this purpose annexations were promised in Northern Germany. With
regard to Poland, Russia promised no more than to permit Prussia to retain
what it had received in 1772, together with a strip of territory to connect
this district with Silesia. The meaning of the agreement was that Prussia
should abandon to Russia the greater part of its late Polish provinces, and
receive an equivalent German territory in its stead. The Treaty of Kalisch
virtually surrendered to the Czar all that Prussia had gained in the
partitions of Poland made in 1793 and in 1795. The sacrifice was deemed a
most severe one by every Prussian politician, and was accepted only as a
less evil than the loss of Russia's friendship, and a renewed submission to
Napoleon. No single statesman, not even Stein himself, appears to have
understood that in exchanging its Polish conquests for German annexations,
in turning to the German west instead of to the alien Slavonic east,
Prussia was in fact taking the very step which made it the possible head of
a future united Germany.

[French retreat to the Elbe.]

War was still undeclared upon Napoleon by King Frederick William, but
throughout the month of February the light cavalry of the Russians pushed
forward unhindered through Prussian territory towards the Oder, and crowds
of volunteers, marching through Berlin on their way to the camps in
Silesia, gave the French clear signs of the storm that was about to burst
upon them. [178] The remnant of Napoleon's army, now commanded by Eugene
Beauharnais, had fallen back step by step to the Oder. Here, resting on the
fortresses, it might probably have checked the Russian advance; but the
heart of Eugene failed; the line of the Oder was abandoned, and the retreat
continued to Berlin and the Elbe. The Cossacks followed. On the 20th of
February they actually entered Berlin and fought with the French in the
streets. The French garrison was far superior in force; but the appearance
of the Cossacks caused such a ferment that, although the alliance between
France and Prussia was still in nominal existence, the French troops
expected to be cut to pieces by the people. For some days they continued to
bivouac in the streets, and as soon as it became known that a regular
Russian force had reached the Oder, Eugene determined to evacuate Berlin.
On the 4th of March the last French soldier quitted the Prussian capital.
The Cossacks rode through the town as the French left it, and fought with
their rear-guard. Some days later Witgenstein appeared with Russian
infantry. On March 17th York made his triumphal entry at the head of his
corps, himself cold and rigid in the midst of tumultuous outbursts of
patriotic joy.

[King of Prussia declares war March 17.]

It was on this same day that King Frederick William issued his proclamation
to the Prussian people, declaring that war had begun with France, and
summoning the nation to enter upon the struggle as one that must end either
in victory or in total destruction. The proclamation was such as became a
monarch conscious that his own faint-heartedness had been the principal
cause of Prussia's humiliation. It was simple and unboastful, admitting
that the King had made every effort to preserve the French alliance, and
ascribing the necessity for war to the intolerable wrongs inflicted by
Napoleon in spite of Prussia's fulfilment of its treaty-obligations. The
appeal to the great memories of Prussia's earlier sovereigns, and to the
example of Russia, Spain, and all countries which in present or in earlier
times had fought for their independence against a stronger foe, was worthy
of the truthful and modest tone in which the King spoke of the misfortunes
of Prussia under his own rule.

[Spirit of the Prussian nation.]

[Idea of Germany unity.]

But no exhortations were necessary to fire the spirit of the Prussian
people. Seven years of suffering and humiliation had done their work. The
old apathy of all classes had vanished under the pressure of a bitter sense
of wrong. If among the Court party of Berlin and the Conservative
landowners there existed a secret dread of the awakening of popular forces,
the suspicion could not be now avowed. A movement as penetrating and as
universal as that which France had experienced in 1792 swept through the
Prussian State. It had required the experience of years of wretchedness,
the intrusion of the French soldier upon the peace of the family, the sight
of the homestead swept bare of its stock to supply the invaders of Russia,
the memory of Schill's companions shot in cold blood for the cause of the
Fatherland, before the Prussian nation caught that flame which had
spontaneously burst out in France, in Spain, and in Russia at the first
shock of foreign aggression. But the passion of the Prussian people, if it
had taken long to kindle, was deep, steadfast, and rational. It was
undisgraced by the frenzies of 1792, or by the religious fanaticism of the
Spanish war of liberation; where religion entered into the struggle, it
heightened the spirit of self-sacrifice rather than that of hatred to the
enemy. Nor was it a thing of small moment to the future of Europe that in
every leading mind the cause of Prussia was identified with the cause of
the whole German race. The actual condition of Germany warranted no such
conclusion, for Saxony, Bavaria, and the whole of the Rhenish Federation
still followed Napoleon: but the spirit and the ideas which became a living
force when at length the contest with Napoleon broke out were those of men
like Stein, who in the depths of Germany's humiliation had created the
bright and noble image of a common Fatherland. It was no more given to
Stein to see his hopes fulfilled than it was given to Mirabeau to establish
constitutional liberty in France, or to the Italian patriots of 1797 to
create a united Italy. A group of States where kings like Frederick William
and Francis, ministers like Hardenberg and Metternich, governed millions of
people totally destitute of political instincts and training, was not to be
suddenly transformed into a free nation by the genius of an individual or
the patriotism of a single epoch. But if the work of German union was one
which, even in the barren form of military empire, required the efforts of
two more generations, the ideals of 1813 were no transient and ineffective
fancy. Time was on the side of those who called the Prussian monarchy the
true centre round which Germany could gather. If in the sequel Prussia was
slow to recognise its own opportunities, the fault was less with patriots
who hoped too much than with kings and ministers who dared too little.

[Formation of the Landwehr.]

For the moment, the measures of the Prussian Government were worthy of the
spirit shown by the nation. Scharnhorst's military system had given Prussia
100,000 trained soldiers ready to join the existing army of 45,000. The
scheme for the formation of a Landwehr, though not yet carried into effect,
needed only to receive the sanction of the King. On the same day that
Frederick William issued his proclamation to the people, he decreed the
formation of the Landwehr and the Landsturm. The latter force, which was
intended in case of necessity to imitate the peasant warfare of Spain and
La Vendée, had no occasion to act: the Landwehr, though its arming was
delayed by the poverty and exhaustion of the country, gradually became a
most formidable reserve, and sent its battalions to fight by the side of
the regulars in some of the greatest engagements in the war. It was the
want of arms and money, not of willing soldiers, that prevented Prussia
from instantly attacking Napoleon with 200,000 men. The conscription was
scarcely needed from the immense number of volunteers who joined the ranks.
Though the completion of the Prussian armaments required some months more,
Prussia did not need to stand upon the defensive. An army of 50,000 men was
ready to cross the Elbe immediately on the arrival of the Russians, and to
open the next campaign in the territory of Napoleon's allies of the Rhenish
Federation.




CHAPTER XI.


The War of Liberation--Blücher crosses the Elbe--Battle of Lützen--The
Allies retreat to Silesia--Battle of Bautzen--Armistice--Napoleon intends
to intimidate Austria--Mistaken as to the Forces of Austria--Metternich's
Policy--Treaty of Reichenbach--Austria offers its Mediation--Congress of
Prague--Austria enters the War--Armies and Plans of Napoleon and the
Allies--Campaign of August--Battles of Dresden, Grosbeeren, the Katzbach,
and Kulm--Effect of these Actions--Battle of Dennewitz--German Policy of
Austria favourable to the Princes of the Rhenish Confederacy--Frustrated
Hopes of German Unity--Battle of Leipzig--The Allies reach the Rhine--
Offers of Peace at Frankfort--Plan of Invasion of France--Backwardness of
Austria--The Allies enter France--Campaign of 1814--Congress of Châtillon--
Napoleon moves to the rear of the Allies--The Allies advance on Paris--
Capitulation of Paris--Entry of the Allies--Dethronement of Napoleon--
Restoration of the Bourbons--The Charta--Treaty of Paris--Territorial
Effects of the War, 1792-1814--Every Power except France had gained--France
relatively weaker in Europe--Summary of the Permanent Effects of this
Period on Europe.


[Napoleon in 1813.]

The first three months of the year 1813 were spent by Napoleon in vigorous
preparation for a campaign in Northern Germany. Immediately after receiving
the news of York's convention with the Russians he had ordered a levy of
350,000 men. It was in vain that Frederick William and Hardenberg affected
to disavow the general as a traitor; Napoleon divined the national
character of York's act, and laid his account for a war against the
combined forces of Prussia and Russia. In spite of the catastrophe of the
last campaign, Napoleon was still stronger than his enemies. Italy and the
Rhenish Federation had never wavered in their allegiance; Austria, though a
cold ally, had at least shown no signs of hostility. The resources of an
empire of forty million inhabitants were still at Napoleon's command. It
was in the youth and inexperience of the new soldiers, and in the scarcity
of good officers, [179] that the losses of the previous year showed their
most visible effect. Lads of seventeen, commanded in great part by officers
who had never been through a campaign, took the place of the soldiers who
had fought at Friedland and Wagram. They were as brave as their
predecessors, but they failed in bodily strength and endurance. Against
them came the remnant of the men who had pursued Napoleon from Moscow, and
a Prussian army which was but the vanguard of an armed nation.
Nevertheless, Napoleon had no cause to expect defeat, provided that Austria
remained on his side. Though the Prussian nation entered upon the conflict
in the most determined spirit, a war on the Elbe against Russia and Prussia
combined was a less desperate venture than a war with Russia alone beyond
the Niemen.

[Blücher crosses the Elbe, March, 1813.]

When King Frederick William published his declaration of war (March 17),
the army of Eugène had already fallen back as far west as Magdeburg,
leaving garrisons in most of the fortresses between the Elbe and the
Russian frontier. Napoleon was massing troops on the Main, and preparing
for an advance in force, when the Prussians, commanded by Blücher, and some
weak divisions of the Russian army, pushed forward to the Elbe. On the 18th
of March the Cossacks appeared in the suburbs of Dresden, on the right bank
of the river. Davoust, who was in command of the French garrison, blew up
two arches of the bridge, and retired to Magdeburg: Blücher soon afterwards
entered Dresden, and called upon the Saxon nation to rise against Napoleon.
But he spoke to deaf ears. The common people were indifferent; the
officials waited to see which side would conquer. Blücher could scarcely
obtain provisions for his army; he passed on westwards, and came into the
neighbourhood of Leipzig. Here he found himself forced to halt, and to wait
for his allies. Though a detachment of the Russian army under Witgenstein
had already crossed the Elbe, the main army, with Kutusoff, was still
lingering at Kalisch on the Polish frontier, where it had arrived six weeks
before. As yet the Prussians had only 50,000 men ready for action; until
the Russians came up, it was unsafe to advance far beyond the Elbe. Blücher
counted every moment lost that kept him from battle: the Russian
commander-in-chief, sated with glory and sinking beneath the infirmities of
a veteran, could scarcely be induced to sign an order of march. At length
Kutusoff's illness placed the command in younger hands. His strength failed
him during the march from Poland; he was left dying in Silesia; and on the
24th of April the Czar and the King of Prussia led forward his veteran
troops into Dresden.

[Napoleon enters Dresden, May 14.]

[Battle of Lützen, May 2.]

Napoleon was now known to be approaching with considerable force by the
roads of the Saale. A pitched battle west of the Elbe was necessary before
the Allies could hope to win over any of the States of the Rhenish
Confederacy; the flat country beyond Leipzig offered the best possible
field for cavalry, in which the Allies were strong and Napoleon extremely
deficient. It was accordingly determined to unite all the divisions of the
army with Blücher on the west of Leipzig, and to attack the French as soon
as they descended from the hilly country of the Saale, and began their
march across the Saxon plain. The Allies took post at Lützen: the French
advanced, and at midday on the 2nd of May the battle of Lützen began. Till
evening, victory inclined to the Allies. The Prussian soldiery fought with
the utmost spirit; for the first time in Napoleon's campaigns, the French
infantry proved weaker than an enemy when fighting against them in equal
numbers. But the generalship of Napoleon turned the scale. Seventy thousand
of the French were thrown upon fifty thousand of the Allies; the battle was
fought in village streets and gardens, where cavalry were useless; and at
the close of the day, though the losses on each side were equal, the Allies
were forced from the positions which they had gained. Such a result was
equivalent to a lost battle. Napoleon's junction with the army of Eugène at
Magdeburg was now inevitable, unless a second engagement was fought and
won. No course remained to the Allies but to stake everything upon a
renewed attack, or to retire behind the Elbe and meet the reinforcements
assembling in Silesia. King Frederick William declared for a second battle;
[180] he was over-ruled, and the retreat commenced. Napoleon entered
Dresden on May 14th. No attempt was made by the Allies to hold the line of
the Elbe; all the sanguine hopes with which Blücher and his comrades had
advanced to attack Napoleon within the borders of the Rhenish Confederacy
were dashed to the ground. The Fatherland remained divided against itself.
Saxony and the rest of the vassal States were secured to France by the
victory of Lützen; the liberation of Germany was only to be wrought by
prolonged and obstinate warfare, and by the wholesale sacrifice of Prussian
life.

[Armistice, June 4.]

[Battle of Bautzen, May 21.]

It was with deep disappointment, but not with any wavering of purpose, that
the allied generals fell back before Napoleon towards the Silesian
fortresses. The Prussian troops which had hitherto taken part in the war
were not the third part of those which the Government was arming; new
Russian divisions were on the march from Poland. As the Allies moved
eastwards from the Elbe, both their own forces and those of Napoleon
gathered strength. The retreat stopped at Bautzen, on the river Spree; and
here, on the 19th of May, 90,000 of the Allies and the same number of the
French drew up in order of battle. The Allies held a long, broken chain of
hills behind the river, and the ground lying between these hills and the
village of Bautzen. On the 20th the French began the attack, and won the
passage of the river. In spite of the approach of Ney with 40,000 more
troops, the Czar and the King of Prussia determined to continue the battle
on the following day. The struggle of the 21st was of the same obstinate
and indecisive character as that at Lützen. Twenty-five thousand French had
been killed or wounded before the day was over, but the bad generalship of
the Allies had again given Napoleon the victory. The Prussian and Russian
commanders were all at variance; Alexander, who had to decide in their
contentions, possessed no real military faculty. It was not for want of
brave fighting and steadfastness before the enemy that Bautzen was lost.
The Allies retreated in perfect order, and without the loss of a single
gun. Napoleon followed, forcing his wearied regiments to ceaseless
exertion, in the hope of ruining by pursuit an enemy whom he could not
overthrow in battle. In a few more days the discord of the allied generals
and the sufferings of the troops would probably have made them unable to
resist Napoleon's army, weakened as it was. But the conqueror himself
halted in the moment of victory. On the 4th of June an armistice of seven
weeks arrested the pursuit, and brought the first act of the War of
Liberation to a close.

[Napoleon and Austria.]

Napoleon's motive for granting this interval to his enemies, the most fatal
step in his whole career, has been vaguely sought among the general reasons
for military delay; as a matter of fact, Napoleon was thinking neither of
the condition of his own army nor of that of the Allies when he broke off
hostilities, but of the probable action of the Court of Vienna. [181] "I
shall grant a truce," he wrote to the Viceroy of Italy (June 2, 1813), "on
account of the armaments of Austria, and in order to gain time to bring up
the Italian army to Laibach to threaten Vienna." Austria had indeed
resolved to regain, either by war or negotiation, the provinces which it
had lost in 1809. It was now preparing to offer its mediation, but it was
also preparing to join the Allies in case Napoleon rejected its demands.
Metternich was anxious to attain his object, if possible, without war. The
Austrian State was bankrupt; its army had greatly deteriorated since 1809;
Metternich himself dreaded both the ambition of Russia and what he
considered the revolutionary schemes of the German patriots. It was his
object not to drive Napoleon from his throne, but to establish a European
system in which neither France nor Russia should be absolutely dominant.
Soon after the retreat from Moscow the Cabinet of Vienna had informed
Napoleon, though in the most friendly terms, that Austria could not longer
remain in the position of a dependent ally. [182] Metternich stated, and
not insincerely, that by certain concessions Napoleon might still count on
Austria's friendship; but at the same time he negotiated with the allied
Powers, and encouraged them to believe that Austria would, under certain
circumstances, strike on their behalf. The course of the campaign of May
was singularly favourable to Metternich's policy. Napoleon had not won a
decided victory; the Allies, on the other hand, were so far from success
that Austria could set almost any price it pleased upon its alliance. By
the beginning of June it had become a settled matter in the Austrian
Cabinet that Napoleon must be made to resign the Illyrian Provinces
conquered in 1809 and the districts of North Germany annexed in 1810; but
it was still the hope of the Government to obtain this result by peaceful
means. Napoleon saw that Austria was about to change its attitude, but he
had by no means penetrated the real intentions of Metternich. He credited
the Viennese Government with a stronger sentiment of hostility towards
himself than it actually possessed; at the same time he failed to
appreciate the fixed and settled character of its purpose. He believed that
the action of Austria would depend simply upon the means which he possessed
to intimidate it; that, if the army of Italy were absent, Austria would
attack him; that, on the other hand, if he could gain time to bring the
army of Italy into Carniola, Austria would keep the peace. It was with this
belief, and solely for the purpose of bringing up a force to menace
Austria, that Napoleon stayed his hand against the Prussian and Russian
armies after the battle of Bautzen, and gave time for the gathering of the
immense forces which were destined to effect his destruction.

[Metternich offers Austria's mediation.]

Immediately after the conclusion of the armistice of June 4th, Metternich
invited Napoleon to accept Austria's mediation for a general peace. The
settlement which Metternich contemplated was a very different one from that
on which Stein and the Prussian patriots had set their hopes. Austria was
willing to leave to Napoleon the whole of Italy and Holland, the frontier
of the Rhine, and the Protectorate of Western Germany: all that was
required by Metternich, as arbiter of Europe, was the restoration of the
provinces taken from Austria after the war of 1809, the reinstatement of
Prussia in Western Poland, and the abandonment by France of the
North-German district annexed in 1810. But to Napoleon the greater or less
extent of the concessions asked by Austria was a matter of no moment. He
was determined to make no concessions at all, and he entered into
negotiations only for the purpose of disguising from Austria the real
object with which he had granted the armistice. While Napoleon affected to
be weighing the proposals of Austria, he was in fact calculating the number
of marches which would place the Italian army on the Austrian frontier;
this once effected, he expected to hear nothing more of Metternich's
demands.

[Napoleon deceived as to the forces of Austria.]

It was a game of deceit; but there was no one who was so thoroughly
deceived as Napoleon himself. By some extraordinary miscalculation on
the part of his secret agents, he was led to believe that the whole
force of Austria, both in the north and the south, amounted to only
100,000 men, [183] and it was on this estimate that he had formed his
plans of intimidation. In reality Austria had double that number of men
ready to take the field. By degrees Napoleon saw reason to suspect
himself in error. On the 11th of July he wrote to his Foreign Minister,
Maret, bitterly reproaching him with the failure of the secret service
to gain any trustworthy information. It was not too late to accept
Metternich's terms. Yet even now, when the design of intimidating
Austria had proved an utter delusion, and Napoleon was convinced that
Austria would fight, and fight with very powerful forces, his pride and
his invincible belief in his own superiority prevented him from drawing
back. He made an attempt to enter upon a separate negotiation with
Russia, and, when this failed, he resolved to face the conflict with
the whole of Europe.

[Treaty of Reichenbach, June 27.]

There was no longer any uncertainty among Napoleon's enemies. On the 27th
of June, Austria had signed a treaty at Reichenbach, pledging itself to
join the allied Powers in the event of Napoleon rejecting the conditions to
be proposed by Austria as mediator; and the conditions so to be proposed
were fixed by the same treaty. They were the following:--The suppression of
the Duchy of Warsaw; the restoration to Austria of the Illyrian Provinces;
and the surrender by Napoleon of the North-German district annexed to his
Empire in 1810. Terms more hostile to France than these Austria declined to
embody in its mediation. The Elbe might still sever Prussia from its German
provinces lost in 1807; Napoleon might still retain, as chief of the
Rhenish Confederacy, his sovereignty over the greater part of the German
race.

[Austria enters the war, Aug. 10.]

[Congress of Prague, July 15-Aug. 10.]

From the moment when these conditions were fixed, there was nothing which
the Prussian generals so much dreaded as that Napoleon might accept them,
and so rob the Allies of the chance of crushing him by means of Austria's
support. But their fears were groundless. The counsels of Napoleon were
exactly those which his worst enemies would have desired him to adopt. War,
and nothing but war, was his fixed resolve. He affected to entertain
Austria's propositions, and sent his envoy Caulaincourt to a Congress which
Austria summoned at Prague; but it was only for the purpose of gaining a
few more weeks of preparation. The Congress met; the armistice was
prolonged to the 10th of August. Caulaincourt, however, was given no power
to close with Austria's demands. He was ignorant that he had only been sent
to Prague in order to gain time. He saw the storm gathering: unable to
believe that Napoleon intended to fight all Europe rather than make the
concessions demanded of him, he imagined that his master still felt some
doubt whether Austria and the other Powers meant to adhere to their word.
As the day drew nigh which closed the armistice and the period given for a
reply to Austria's ultimatum, Caulaincourt implored Napoleon not to deceive
himself with hopes that Austria would draw back. Napoleon had no such hope;
he knew well that Austria would declare war, and he accepted the issue.
Caulaincourt heard nothing more. At midnight on the 10th of August the
Congress declared itself dissolved. Before the dawn of the next morning the
army in Silesia saw the blaze of the beacon-fires which told that
negotiation was at an end, and that Austria was entering the war on the
side of the Allies. [184]

[Armies of Napoleon and the Allies.]

Seven days' notice was necessary before the commencement of actual
hostilities. Napoleon, himself stationed at Dresden, held all the lower
course of the Elbe; and his generals had long had orders to be ready to
march on the morning of the 18th. Forces had come up from all parts of the
Empire, raising the French army at the front to 300,000 men; but, for the
first time in Napoleon's career, his enemies had won from a pause in war
results even surpassing his own. The strength of the Prussian and Russian
armies was now enormously different from what it had been at Lützen and
Bautzen. The Prussian Landwehr, then a weaponless and ill-clad militia
drilling in the villages, was now fully armed, and in great part at the
front. New Russian divisions had reached Silesia. Austria took the field
with a force as numerous as that which had checked Napoleon in 1809. At the
close of the armistice, 350,000 men actually faced the French positions
upon the Elbe; 300,000 more were on the march, or watching the German
fortresses and the frontier of Italy. The allied troops operating against
Napoleon were divided into three armies. In the north, between Wittenberg
and Berlin, Bernadotte commanded 60,000 Russians and Prussians, in addition
to his own Swedish contingent. Blücher was placed at the head of 100,000
Russians and Prussians in Silesia. The Austrians remained undivided, and
formed, together with some Russian and Prussian divisions, the great army
of Bohemia, 200,000 strong, under the command of Schwarzenberg. The plan of
the campaign had been agreed upon by the Allies soon after the Treaty of
Reichenbach had been made with Austria. It was a sound, though not a daring
one.

[Plan of the Allies.]

The three armies, now forming an arc from Wittenberg to the north of
Bohemia, were to converge upon the line of Napoleon's communications behind
Dresden; if separately attacked, their generals were to avoid all hazardous
engagements, and to manoeuvre so as to weary the enemy and preserve their
own general relations, as far as possible, unchanged. Blücher, as the most
exposed, was expected to content himself the longest with the defensive;
the great army of Bohemia, after securing the mountain-passes between
Bohemia and Saxony, might safely turn Napoleon's position at Dresden, and
so draw the two weaker armies towards it for one vast and combined
engagement in the plain of Leipzig.

[Napoleon's plan of attack.]

In outline, the plan of the Allies was that which Napoleon expected them to
adopt. His own design was to anticipate it by an offensive of extraordinary
suddenness and effect. Hostilities could not begin before the morning of
the 18th of August; by the 21st or the 22nd, Napoleon calculated that he
should have captured Berlin. Oudinot, who was at Wittenberg with 80,000
men, had received orders to advance upon the Prussian capital at the moment
that the armistice expired, and to force it, if necessary by bombardment,
into immediate surrender. The effect of this blow, as Napoleon supposed,
would be to disperse the entire reserve-force of the Prussian monarchy, and
paralyse the action of its army in the field. While Oudinot marched on
Berlin, Blücher was to be attacked in Silesia, and prevented from rendering
any assistance either on the north or on the south. The mass of Napoleon's
forces, centred at Dresden, and keeping watch upon the movements of the
army of Bohemia, would either fight a great battle, or, if the Allies made
a false movement, march straight upon Prague, the centre of Austria's
supplies, and reach it before the enemy. All the daring imagination of
Napoleon's earlier campaigns displayed itself in such a project, which, if
successful, would have terminated the war within ten days; but this
imagination was no longer, as in those earlier campaigns, identical with
insight into real possibilities. The success of Napoleon's plan involved
the surprise or total defeat of Bernadotte before Berlin, the disablement
of Blücher, and a victory, or a strategical success equivalent to a
victory, over the vast army of the south. It demanded of a soldiery,
inferior to the enemy in numerical strength, the personal superiority which
had belonged to the men of Jena and Austerlitz, when in fact the French
regiments of conscripts had ceased to be a match for equal numbers of the
enemy. But no experience could alter Napoleon's fixed belief in the fatuity
of all warfare except his own. After the havoc of Borodino, after the even
struggles of Lützen and Bautzen, he still reasoned as if he had before him
the armies of Brunswick and Mack. His plan assumed the certainty of success
in each of its parts; for the failure of a single operation hazarded all
the rest, by requiring the transfer of reinforcements from armies already
too weak for the tasks assigned to them. Nevertheless, the utmost that
Napoleon would acknowledge was that the execution of his design needed
energy. He still underrated the force which Austria had brought into the
field against him. Though ignorant of the real position and strength of the
army in Bohemia, and compelled to wait for the enemy's movements before
striking on this side, he already in imagination saw the war decided by the
fall of the Prussian capital.

[Triple movement, Aug. 18-26.]

[Battle of Dresden, Aug. 26, 27.]

[Battles of Grossbeeren, Aug. 23, and the Katzbach, Aug. 26.]

On the 18th of August the forward movement began. Oudinot advanced from
Wittenberg towards Berlin; Napoleon himself hurried into Silesia, intending
to deal Blücher one heavy blow, and instantly to return and place himself
before Schwarzenberg. On the 21st, and following days, the Prussian general
was attacked and driven eastwards. Napoleon committed the pursuit to
Macdonald, and hastened back to Dresden, already threatened by the advance
of the Austrians from Bohemia. Schwarzenberg and the allied sovereigns, as
soon as they heard that Napoleon had gone to seek Blücher in Silesia, had
in fact abandoned their cautious plans, and determined to make an assault
upon Dresden with the Bohemian army alone. But it was in vain that they
tried to surprise Napoleon. He was back at Dresden on the 25th, and ready
for the attack. Never were Napoleon's hopes higher than on this day. His
success in Silesia had filled him with confidence. He imagined Oudinot to
be already in Berlin; and the advance of Schwarzenberg against Dresden gave
him the very opportunity which he desired for crushing the Bohemian army in
one great battle, before it could draw support either from Blücher or from
Bernadotte. Another Austerlitz seemed to be at hand. Napoleon wrote to
Paris that he should be in Prague before the enemy; and, while he completed
his defences in front of Dresden, he ordered Vandamme, with 40,000 men, to
cross the Elbe at Königstein, and force his way south-westwards on to the
roads into Bohemia, in the rear of the Great Army, in order to destroy its
magazines and menace its line of retreat on Prague. On August 26th
Schwarzenberg's host assailed the positions of Napoleon on the slopes and
gardens outside Dresden. Austrians, Russians, and Prussians all took part
in the attack. Moreau, the victor of Hohenlinden, stood by the side of the
Emperor Alexander, whom he had come to help against his own countrymen. He
lived only to witness one of the last and greatest victories of France. The
attack was everywhere repelled: the Austrian divisions were not only
beaten, but disgraced and overthrown. At the end of two days' fighting the
Allies were in full retreat, leaving 20,000 prisoners in the hands of
Napoleon. It was a moment when the hearts of the bravest sank, and when
hope itself might well vanish, as the rumour passed through the Prussian
regiments that Metternich was again in friendly communication with
Napoleon. But in the midst of Napoleon's triumph intelligence arrived which
robbed it of all its worth. Oudinot, instead of conquering Berlin, had been
defeated by the Prussians of Bernadotte's army at Grossbeeren (Aug. 23),
and driven back upon the Elbe. Blücher had turned upon Macdonald in
Silesia, and completely overthrown his army on the river Katzbach, at the
very moment when the Allies were making their assault upon Dresden. It was
vain to think of a march upon Prague, or of the annihilation of the
Austrians, when on the north and the east Napoleon's troops were meeting
with nothing but disaster. The divisions which had been intended to support
Vandamme's movement from Königstein upon the rear of the Great Army were
retained in the neighbourhood of Dresden, in order to be within reach of
the points where their aid might be needed. Vandamme, ignorant of his
isolation, was left with scarcely 40,000 men to encounter the Great Army in
its retreat.

[Battle of Kulm, Aug. 29, 30.]

He threw himself upon a Russian corps at Kulm, in the Bohemian mountains,
on the morning of the 29th. The Russians, at first few in number, held
their ground during the day; in the night, and after the battle had
recommenced on the morrow, vast masses of the allied troops poured in. The
French fought desperately, but were overwhelmed. Vandamme himself was made
prisoner, with 10,000 of his men. The whole of the stores and most of the
cannon of his army remained in the enemy's hands.

[Effect of the twelve days, Aug. 18-30.]

[Battle of Dennewitz, Sept. 6.]

The victory at Kulm secured the Bohemian army from pursuit, and almost
extinguished the effects of its defeat at Dresden. Thanks to the successes
of Blücher and of Bernadotte's Prussian generals, which prevented Napoleon
from throwing all his forces on to the rear of the Great Army,
Schwarzenberg's rash attack had proved of no worse significance than an
unsuccessful raid. The Austrians were again in the situation assigned to
them in the original plan of the campaign, and capable of resuming their
advance into the interior of Saxony: Blücher and the northern commanders
had not only escaped separate destruction, but won great victories over the
French: Napoleon, weakened by the loss of 100,000 men, remained exactly
where he had been at the beginning of the campaign. Had the triple movement
by which he meant to overwhelm his adversaries been capable of execution,
it would now have been fully executed. The balance, however, had turned
against Napoleon; and the twelve days from the 18th to the 29th of August,
though marked by no catastrophe like Leipzig or Waterloo, were in fact the
decisive period in the struggle of Europe against Napoleon. The attack by
which he intended to prevent the junction of the three armies had been
made, and had failed. Nothing now remained for him but to repeat the same
movements with a discouraged force against an emboldened enemy, or to quit
the line of the Elbe, and prepare for one vast and decisive encounter with
all three armies combined. Napoleon drove from his mind the thought of
failure; he ordered Ney to take command of Oudinot's army, and to lead it
again, in increased strength, upon Berlin; he himself hastened to
Macdonald's beaten troops in Silesia, and rallied them for a new assault
upon Blücher. All was in vain. Ney, advancing on Berlin, was met by the
Prussian general Billow at Dennewitz, and totally routed (Sept. 6):
Blücher, finding that Napoleon himself was before him, skilfully avoided
battle, and forced his adversary to waste in fruitless marches the brief
interval which he had snatched from his watch on Schwarzenberg. Each conflict
with the enemy, each vain and exhausting march, told that the superiority
had passed from the French to their foes, and that Napoleon's retreat was
now only a matter of time. "These creatures have learnt something," said
Napoleon in the bitterness of his heart, as he saw the columns of Blücher
manoeuvring out of his grasp. Ney's report of his own overthrow at
Dennewitz sounded like an omen of the ruin of Waterloo. "I have been
totally defeated," he wrote, "and do not yet know whether my army has
re-assembled. The spirit of the generals and officers is shattered. To
command in such conditions is but half to command. I had rather be a common
grenadier."

[Metternich.]

[German policy of Stein and of Austria.]

The accession of Austria had turned the scale in favour of the Allies; it
rested only with the allied generals themselves to terminate the warfare
round Dresden, and to lead their armies into the heart of Saxony. For a
while the course of the war flagged, and military interests gave place to
political. It was in the interval between the first great battles and the
final advance on Leipzig that the future of Germany was fixed by the three
allied Powers. In the excitement of the last twelve months little thought
had been given, except by Stein and his friends, to the political form to
be set in the place of the Napoleonic Federation of the Rhine. Stein, in
the midst of the Russian campaign, had hoped for a universal rising of the
German people against Napoleon, and had proposed the dethronement of all
the German princes who supported his cause. His policy had received the
general approval of Alexander, and, on the entrance of the Russian army
into Germany, a manifesto had been issued appealing to the whole German
nation, and warning the vassals of Napoleon that they could only save
themselves by submission. [185] A committee had been appointed by the
allied sovereigns, under the presidency of Stein himself, to administer the
revenues of all Confederate territory that should be occupied by the allied
armies. Whether the reigning Houses should be actually expelled might
remain in uncertainty; but it was the fixed hope of Stein and his friends
that those princes who were permitted to retain their thrones would be
permitted to retain them only as officers in a great German Empire, without
sovereign rights either over their own subjects or in relation to foreign
States. The Kings of Bavaria and Würtemberg had gained their titles and
much of their despotic power at home from Napoleon; their independence of
the Head of Germany had made them nothing more than the instruments of a
foreign conqueror. Under whatever form the central authority might be
revived, Stein desired that it should be the true and only sovereign Power
in Germany, a Power to which every German might appeal against the
oppression of a minor Government, and in which the whole nation should find
its representative before the rest of Europe. In the face of such a central
authority, whether an elected Parliament or an Imperial Council, the minor
princes could at best retain but a fragment of their powers; and such was
the theory accepted at the allied head-quarters down to the time when
Austria proffered its mediation and support. Then everything changed. The
views of the Austrian Government upon the future system of Germany were in
direct opposition to those of Stein's party. Metternich dreaded the thought
of popular agitation, and looked upon Stein, with his idea of a National
Parliament and his plans for dethroning the Rhenish princes, as little
better than the Jacobins of 1792. The offer of a restored imperial dignity
in Germany was declined by the Emperor of Austria at the instance of his
Minister. With characteristic sense of present difficulties, and blindness
to the great forces which really contained their solution, Metternich
argued that the minor princes would only be driven into the arms of the
foreigner by the establishment of any supreme German Power. They would
probably desert Napoleon if the Allies guaranteed to them everything that
they at present possessed; they would be freed from all future temptation
to attach themselves to France if Austria contented itself with a
diplomatic influence and with the ties of a well-constructed system of
treaties. In spite of the influence of Stein with the Emperor Alexander,
Metternich's views prevailed. Austria had so deliberately kept itself in
balance during the first part of the year 1813, that the Allies were now
willing to concede everything, both in this matter and in others, in return
for its support. Nothing more was heard of the dethronement of the
Confederate princes, or even of the limitation of their powers. It was
agreed by the Treaty of Teplitz, signed by Prussia, Russia, and Austria on
September 9th, that every State of the Rhenish Confederacy should be placed
in a position of absolute independence. Negotiations were opened with the
King of Bavaria, whose army had steadily fought on the side of Napoleon in
every campaign since 1806. Instead of being outlawed as a criminal, he was
welcomed as an ally. The Treaty of Ried, signed on the 3rd of October,
guaranteed to the King of Bavaria, in return for his desertion of Napoleon,
full sovereign rights, and the whole of the territory which he had received
from Napoleon, except the Tyrol and the Austrian district on the Inn. What
had been accorded to the King of Bavaria could not be refused to the rest
of Napoleon's vassals who were willing to make their peace with the Allies
in time. Germany was thus left at the mercy of a score of petty Cabinets.
It was seen by the patriotic party in Prussia at what price the alliance of
Austria had been purchased. Austria had indeed made it possible to conquer
Napoleon, but it had also made an end of all prospect of the union of the
German nation.

[Allies cross the Elbe, Oct. 3.]

Till the last days of September the position of the hostile armies round
Dresden remained little changed, Napoleon unweariedly repeated his attacks,
now on one side, now on another, but without result. The Allies on their
part seemed rooted to the soil. Bernadotte, balanced between the desire to
obtain Norway from the Allies and a foolish hope of being called to the
throne of France, was bent on doing the French as little harm as possible;
Schwarzenberg, himself an indifferent general, was distracted by the
councillors of all the three monarchs; Blücher alone pressed for decided
and rapid action. At length the Prussian commander gained permission to
march northwards, and unite his army with Bernadotte's in a forward
movement across the Elbe. The long-expected Russian reserves, led by
Bennigsen, reached the Bohemian mountains; and at the beginning of October
the operation began which was to collect the whole of the allied forces in
the plain of Leipzig. Blücher forced the passage of the Elbe at Wartenburg.
It was not until Napoleon learnt that the army of Silesia had actually
crossed the river that he finally quitted Dresden. Then, hastening
northwards, he threw himself upon the Prussian general; but Blücher again
avoided battle, as he had done in Silesia; and on the 7th of October his
army united with Bernadotte's, which had crossed the Elbe two days before.

The enemy was closing in upon Napoleon. Obstinately as he had held on to
the line of the Elbe, he could hold on no longer. In the frustration of all
his hopes there flashed across his mind the wild project of a march
eastwards to the Oder, and the gathering of all the besieged garrisons for
a campaign in which the enemy should stand between himself and France; but
the dream lasted only long enough to gain a record. Napoleon ventured no
more than to send a corps back to the Elbe to threaten Berlin, in the hope
of tempting Blücher and Bernadotte to abandon the advance which they had
now begun in co-operation with the great army of Schwarzenberg. From the
10th to the 14th of October, Napoleon lingered at Düben, between Dresden and
Leipzig, restlessly expecting to hear of Blücher's or Bernadotte's retreat.
The only definite information that he could gain was that Schwarzenberg was
pressing on towards the west. At length he fell back to Leipzig, believing
that Blücher, but not Bernadotte, was advancing to meet Schwarzenberg and
take part in a great engagement. As he entered Leipzig on October 14th the
cannon of Schwarzenberg was heard on the south.

[Battle of Leipzig. Oct 16-19.]

Napoleon drew up for battle. The number of his troops in position around
the city was 170,000: about 15,000 others lay within call. He placed
Marmont and Ney on the north of Leipzig at the village of Möckern, to meet
the expected onslaught of Blücher; and himself, with the great mass of his
army, took post on the south, facing Schwarzenberg. On the morning of the
16th, Schwarzenberg began the attack. His numbers did not exceed 150,000,
for the greater part of the Russian army was a march in the rear. The
battle was an even one. The Austrians failed to gain ground: with one more
army-corps Napoleon saw that he could overpower the enemy. He was still
without intelligence of Blücher's actual appearance in the north; and in
the rash hope that Blücher's coming might be delayed, he sent orders to Ney
and Marmont to leave their positions and hurry to the south to throw
themselves upon Schwarzenberg. Ney obeyed. Marmont, when the order reached
him, was actually receiving Blücher's first fire. He determined to remain
and defend the village of Möckern, though left without support. York,
commanding the vanguard of Blücher's army, assailed him with the utmost
fury. A third part of the troops engaged on each side were killed or
wounded before the day closed; but in the end the victory of the Prussians
was complete. It was the only triumph won by the Allies on this first day
of the battle, but it turned the scale against Napoleon. Marmont's corps
was destroyed; Ney, divided between Napoleon and Marmont, had rendered no
effective help to either. Schwarzenberg, saved from a great disaster,
needed only to wait for Bernadotte and the Russian reserves, and to renew
the battle with an additional force of 100,000 men.

[Storm of Leipzig, 19th. French retreat.]

[Battle of the 18th.]

In the course of the night Napoleon sent proposals for peace. It was in the
vain hope of receiving some friendly answer from his father-in-law, the
Austrian Emperor, that he delayed making his retreat during the next day,
while it might still have been unmolested. No answer was returned to his
letter. In the evening of the 17th, Bennigsen's army reached the field of
battle. Next morning began that vast and decisive encounter known in the
language of Germany as "the battle of the nations," the greatest battle in
all authentic history, the culmination of all the military effort of the
Napoleonic age. Not less than 300,000 men fought on the side of the Allies;
Napoleon's own forces numbered 170,000. The battle raged all round Leipzig,
except on the west, where no attempt was made to interpose between Napoleon
and the line of his retreat. As in the first engagement, the decisive
successes were those of Blücher, now tardily aided by Bernadotte, on the
north; Schwarzenberg's divisions, on the south side of the town, fought
steadily, but without gaining much ground. But there was no longer any
doubt as to the issue of the struggle. If Napoleon could not break the
Allies in the first engagement, he had no chance against them now when they
had been joined by 100,000 more men. The storm of attack grew wilder and
wilder: there were no new forces to call up for the defence. Before the day
was half over Napoleon drew in his outer line, and began to make
dispositions for a retreat from Leipzig. At evening long trains of wounded
from the hospitals passed through the western gates of the city along the
road towards the Rhine. In the darkness of night the whole army was
withdrawn from its positions, and dense masses poured into the town, until
every street was blocked with confused and impenetrable crowds of cavalry
and infantry. The leading divisions moved out of the gates before sunrise.
As the throng lessened, some degree of order was restored, and the troops
which Napoleon intended to cover the retreat took their places under the
walls of Leipzig. The Allies advanced to the storm on the morning of the
19th. The French were driven into the town; the victorious enemy pressed on
towards the rear of the retreating columns. In the midst of the struggle an
explosion was heard above the roar of the battle. The bridge over the
Elster, the only outlet from Leipzig to the west, had been blown up by
--the mistake of a French soldier before the rear-guard began to cross. The
mass of fugitives, driven from the streets of the town, found before them
an impassable river. Some swam to the opposite bank or perished in
attempting to do so; the rest, to the number of 15,000, laid down their
arms. This was the end of the battle. Napoleon had lost in the three days
40,000 killed and wounded, 260 guns, and 30,000 prisoners. The killed and
wounded of the Allies reached the enormous sum of 54,000.

[Conditions of peace offered to Napoleon at Frankfort, Nov. 9th.]

[Allies follow Napoleon to the Rhine.]

The campaign was at an end. Napoleon led off a large army, but one that was
in no condition to turn upon its pursuers. At each stage in the retreat
thousands of fever-stricken wretches were left to terrify even the pursuing
army with the dread of their infection. It was only when the French found
the road to Frankfort blocked at Hanau by a Bavarian force that they
rallied to the order of battle. The Bavarians were cut to pieces; the road
was opened; and, a fortnight after the Battle of Leipzig, Napoleon, with
the remnant of his great army, re-crossed the Rhine. Behind him the fabric
of his Empire fell to the ground. Jerome fled from Westphalia; [186] the
princes of the Rhenish Confederacy came one after another to make their
peace with the Allies; Bülow, with the army which had conquered Ney at
Dennewitz, marched through the north of Germany to the deliverance of
Holland. Three days after Napoleon had crossed the Rhine the Czar reached
Frankfort; and here, on the 7th of November, a military council was held,
in which Blücher and Gneisenau, against almost all the other generals,
advocated an immediate invasion of France. The soldiers, however, had time
to re-consider their opinions, for, on the 9th, it was decided by the
representatives of the Powers to send an offer of peace to Napoleon, and
the operations of the war were suspended by common consent. The condition
on which peace was offered to Napoleon was the surrender of the conquests
of France beyond the Alps and the Rhine. The Allies were still willing to
permit the Emperor to retain Belgium, Savoy, and the Rhenish Provinces;
they declined, however, to enter into any negotiation until Napoleon had
accepted this basis of peace; and they demanded a distinct reply before the
end of the month of November.

[Offer of peace withdrawn, Dec. 1.]

[Plan of invasion of France.]

[Allies enter France, Jan., 1814.]

Napoleon, who had now arrived in Paris, and saw around him all the signs of
power, returned indefinite answers. The month ended without the reply which
the Allies required; and on the 1st of December the offer of peace was
declared to be withdrawn. It was still undecided whether the war should
take the form of an actual invasion of France. The memory of Brunswick's
campaign of 1792, and of the disasters of the first coalition in 1793, even
now exercised a powerful influence over men's minds. Austria was unwilling
to drive Napoleon to extremities, or to give to Russia and Prussia the
increased influence which they would gain in Europe from the total
overthrow of Napoleon's power. It was ultimately determined that the allied
armies should enter France, but that the Austrians, instead of crossing the
north-eastern frontier, should make a détour by Switzerland, and gain the
plateau of Langres in Champagne, from which the rivers Seine, Marne, and
Aube, with the roads following their valleys, descend in the direction of
the capital. The plateau of Langres was said to be of such strategical
importance that its occupation by an invader would immediately force
Napoleon to make peace. As a matter of fact, the plateau was of no
strategical importance whatever; but the Austrians desired to occupy it,
partly with the view of guarding against any attack from the direction of
Italy and Lyons, partly from their want of the heavy artillery necessary
for besieging the fortresses farther north, [187] and from a just
appreciation of the dangers of a campaign conducted in a hostile country
intersected by several rivers. Anything was welcomed by Metternich that
seemed likely to avert, or even to postpone, a struggle with Napoleon for
life or death. Blücher correctly judged the march through Switzerland to be
mere procrastination. He was himself permitted to take the straight road
into France, though his movements were retarded in order to keep pace with
the cautious steps of Schwarzenberg. On the last day of the year 1813 the
Prussian general crossed the Rhine near Coblentz; on the 18th of January,
1814, the Austrian army, having advanced from Switzerland by Belfort and
Vesoul, reached its halting-place on the plateau of Langres. Here the march
stopped; and here it was expected that terms of peace would be proposed by
Napoleon.

[Wellington entering France from the south.]

It was not on the eastern side alone that the invader was now entering
France. Wellington had passed the Pyrenees. His last victorious march into
the north of Spain began on the day when the Prussian and Russian armies
were defeated by Napoleon at Bautzen (May 21, 1813). During the armistice
of Dresden, a week before Austria signed the treaty which fixed the
conditions of its armed mediation, he had gained an overwhelming triumph at
Vittoria over King Joseph and the French army, as it retreated with all the
spoils gathered in five years' occupation of Spain (June 21). A series of
bloody engagements had given the English the passes of the Pyrenees in
those same days of August and September that saw the allied armies close
around Napoleon at Dresden; and when, after the catastrophe of Leipzig, the
wreck of Napoleon's host was retreating beyond the Rhine, Soult, the
defender of the Pyrenees, was driven by the British general from his
entrenchments on the Nivelle, and forced back under the walls of Bayonne.

[French armies unable to hold the frontier.]

[Napoleon's plan of defence.]

Twenty years had passed since, in the tempestuous morn of the Revolution,
Hoche swept the armies of the first coalition across the Alsatian frontier.
Since then, French soldiers had visited every capital, and watered every
soil with their blood; but no foreign soldier had set foot on French soil.
Now the cruel goads of Napoleon's military glory had spent the nation's
strength, and the force no longer existed which could bar the way to its
gathered enemies. The armies placed upon the eastern frontier had to fall
back before an enemy five times more numerous than themselves. Napoleon had
not expected that the Allies would enter France before the spring. With
three months given him for organisation, he could have made the
frontier-armies strong enough to maintain their actual positions; the
winter advance of the Allies compelled him to abandon the border districts
of France, and to concentrate his defence in Champagne, between the Marne,
the Seine, and the Aube. This district was one which offered extraordinary
advantages to a great general acting against an irresolute and
ill-commanded enemy. By holding the bridges over the three rivers, and
drawing his own supplies along the central road from Paris to
Arcis-sur-Aube, Napoleon could securely throw the bulk of his forces from
one side to the other against the flank of the Allies, while his own
movements were covered by the rivers, which could not be passed except at
the bridges. A capable commander at the head of the Allies would have
employed the same river-strategy against Napoleon himself, after conquering
one or two points of passage by main force; but Napoleon had nothing of the
kind to fear from Schwarzenberg; and if the Austrian head-quarters
continued to control the movements of the allied armies, it was even now
doubtful whether the campaign would close at Paris or on the Rhine.

[Campaign of 1814.]

For some days after the arrival of the monarchs and diplomatists at Langres
(Jan. 22), Metternich and the more timorous among the generals opposed any
further advance into France, and argued that the army had already gained
all it needed by the occupation of the border provinces. It was only upon
the threat of the Czar to continue the war by himself that the Austrians
consented to move forward upon Paris. After several days had been lost in
discussion, the advance from Langres was begun. Orders were given to
Blücher, who had pushed back the French divisions commanded by Marmont and
Mortier, and who was now near St. Dizier on the Marne, to meet the Great
Army at Brienne. This was the situation of the Allies when, on the 25th of
January, Napoleon left Paris, and placed himself at Châlons on the Marne,
at the head of his left wing, having his right at Troyes and at Arcis,
guarding the bridges over the Seine and the Aube. Napoleon knew that
Blücher was moving towards the Austrians; he hoped to hold the Prussian
general in check at St. Dizier, and to throw himself upon the heads of
Schwarzenberg's columns as they moved towards the Aube. Blücher, however,
had already passed St. Dizier when Napoleon reached it. Napoleon pursued,
and overtook the Prussians at Brienne. After an indecisive battle, Blücher
fell back towards Schwarzenberg. The allied armies effected their junction,
and Blücher, now supported by the Austrians, turned and marched down the
right bank of the Aube to meet Napoleon. Napoleon, though far outnumbered,
accepted battle. He was attacked at La Rothière close above Brienne, and
defeated with heavy loss (Feb. 1). A vigorous pursuit would probably have
ended the war; but the Austrians held back. Schwarzenberg believed peace to
be already gained, and condemned all further action as useless waste of
life. In spite of the protests of the Emperor Alexander, he allowed
Napoleon to retire unmolested. Schwarzenberg's inaction was no mere error
in military judgment. There was a direct conflict between the Czar and the
Austrian Cabinet as to the end to be obtained by the war. Alexander already
insisted on the dethronement of Napoleon; the Austrian Government would
have been content to leave Napoleon in power if he would accept a peace
giving France no worse a frontier than it had possessed in 1791.
Castlereagh, who had come from England, and Hardenberg were as yet inclined
to support Metternich's policy, although the whole Prussian army, the
public opinion of Great Britain, and the counsels of Stein and all the
bolder Prussian statesmen, were on the side of the Czar. [188]

[Congress of Châtillon, Feb. 5-9.]

Already the influence of the peace-party was so far in the ascendant that
negotiations had been opened with Napoleon. Representatives of all the
Powers assembled at Châtillon, in Burgundy; and there, towards the end of
January, Caulaincourt appeared on behalf of France. The first sitting took
place on the 5th of February; on the following day Caulaincourt received
full powers from Napoleon to conclude peace. The Allies laid down as the
condition of peace the limitation of France to the frontiers of 1791. Had
Caulaincourt dared to conclude peace instantly on these terms, Napoleon
would have retained his throne; but he was aware that Napoleon had only
granted him full powers in consequence of the disastrous battle of La
Rothière, and he feared to be disavowed by his master as soon as the army
had escaped from danger. Instead of simply accepting the Allies' offer, he
raised questions as to the future of Italy and Germany. The moment was
lost; on the 9th of February the Czar recalled his envoy from Châtillon,
and the sittings of the Congress were broken off.

[Defeats of Blücher on the Marne Feb. 10-14.]

[Montereau, Feb 18.]

[Austrians fall back towards Langres.]

Schwarzenberg was now slowly and unwillingly moving forwards along the
Seine towards Troyes. Blücher was permitted to return to the Marne, and to
advance upon Paris by an independent line of march. He crossed the country
between the Aube and the Marne, and joined some divisions which he had left
behind him on the latter river. But his dispositions were outrageously
careless: his troops were scattered over a space of sixty miles from
Châlons westward, as if he had no enemy to guard against except the weak
divisions commanded by Mortier and Marmont, which had uniformly fallen back
before his advance. Suddenly Napoleon himself appeared at the centre of the
long Prussian line at Champaubert. He had hastened northwards in pursuit of
Blücher with 30,000 men, as soon as Schwarzenberg entered Troyes; and on
February 10th a weak Russian corps that lay in the centre of Blücher's
column was overwhelmed before it was known the Emperor had left the Seine.
Then, turning leftwards, Napoleon overthrew the Prussian vanguard at
Montmirail, and two days later attacked and defeated Blücher himself, who
was bringing up the remainder of his troops in total ignorance of the enemy
with whom he had to deal. In four days Blücher's army, which numbered
70,000 men, had thrice been defeated in detail by a force of 30,000.
Blücher was compelled to fall back upon Châlons; Napoleon instantly
returned to the support of Oudinot's division, which he had left in front
of Schwarzenberg. In order to relieve Blücher, the Austrians had pushed
forward on the Seine beyond Montereau. Within three days after the battle
with Blücher, Napoleon was back upon the Seine, and attacking the heads of
the Austrian column. On the 18th of February he gained so decisive a
victory at Montereau that Schwarzenberg abandoned the advance, and fell
back upon Troyes, sending word to Blücher to come southwards again and help
him to fight a great battle. Blücher moved off with admirable energy, and
came into the neighbourhood of Troyes within a week after his defeats upon
the Marne. But the design of fighting a great battle was given up. The
disinclination of the Austrians to vigorous action was too strong to be
overcome; and it was finally determined that Schwarzenberg should fall back
almost to the plateau of Langres, leaving Blücher to unite with the troops
of Bülow which had conquered Holland, and to operate on the enemy's flank
and rear.

[Congress of Châtillon resumed, Feb. 17-March 15.]

The effect of Napoleon's sudden victories on the Marne was instantly seen
in the councils of the allied sovereigns. Alexander, who had withdrawn his
envoy from Châtillon, could no longer hold out against negotiations with
Napoleon. He restored the powers of his envoy, and the Congress
re-assembled. But Napoleon already saw himself in imagination driving the
invaders beyond the Rhine, and sent orders to Caulaincourt to insist upon
the terms proposed at Frankfort, which left to France both the Rhenish
Provinces and Belgium. At the same time he attempted to open a private
negotiation with his father-in-law the Emperor of Austria, and to detach
him from the cause of the Allies. The attempt failed; the demands now made
by Caulaincourt overcame even the peaceful inclinations of the Austrian
Minister; and on the 1st of March the Allies signed a new treaty at
Chaumont, pledging themselves to conclude no peace with Napoleon that did
not restore the frontier of 1791, and to maintain a defensive alliance
against France for a period of twenty years. [189] Caulaincourt continued
for another fortnight at Châtillon, instructed by Napoleon to prolong the
negotiations, but forbidden to accept the only conditions which the Allies
were willing to grant.

[Napoleon follows Blücher to the north. Battle of Laon, March 10.]

Blücher was now on his way northwards to join the so-called army of
Bernadotte upon the Aisne. Since the Battle of Leipzig, Bernadotte himself
had taken no part in the movements of the army nominally under his command.
The Netherlands had been conquered by Bülow and the Russian general
Winzingerode, and these officers were now pushing southwards in order to
take part with Blücher in a movement against Paris. Napoleon calculated
that the fortress of Soissons would bar the way to the northern army, and
enable him to attack and crush Blücher before he could effect a junction
with his colleagues. He set out in pursuit of the Prussians, still hoping
for a second series of victories like those he had won upon the Marne. But
the cowardice of the commander of Soissons ruined his chances of success.
The fortress surrendered to the Russians at the first summons. Blücher met
the advanced guard of the northern army upon the Aisne on the 4th of March,
and continued his march towards Laon for the purpose of uniting with its
divisions which lay in the rear. The French followed, but the only
advantage gained by Napoleon was a victory over a detached Russian corps at
Craonne. Marmont was defeated with heavy loss by a sally of Blücher from
his strong position on the hill of Laon (March 10); and the Emperor
himself, unable to restore the fortune of the battle, fell back upon
Soissons, and thence marched southward to throw himself again upon the line
of the southern army.

[Napoleon marches to the rear of the Allies, March 23.]

[The Allies advance on Paris.]

Schwarzenberg had once more begun to move forward on the news of Blücher's
victory at Laon. His troops were so widely dispersed that Napoleon might
even now have cut the line in halves had he known Schwarzenberg's real
position. But he made a détour in order to meet Oudinot's corps, and gave
the Austrians time to concentrate at Arcis-sur-Aube. Here, on the 20th of
March, Napoleon found himself in face of an army of 100,000 men. His own
army was less than a third of that number; yet with unalterable contempt
for the enemy he risked another battle. No decided issue was reached in the
first day's fighting, and Napoleon remained in position, expecting that
Schwarzenberg would retreat during the night. But on the morrow the
Austrians were still fronting him. Schwarzenberg had at length learnt his
own real superiority, and resolved to assist the enemy no longer by a
wretched system of retreat. A single act of firmness on the part of the
Austrian commander showed Napoleon that the war of battles was at an end.
He abandoned all hope of resisting the invaders in front: it only remained
for him to throw himself on to their rear, and, in company with the
frontier-garrisons and the army of Lyons, to attack their communications
with Germany. The plan was no unreasonable one, if Paris could either have
sustained a siege or have fallen into the enemy's hands without terminating
the war. But the Allies rightly judged that Napoleon's power would be
extinct from the moment that Paris submitted. They received the
intelligence of the Emperor's march to the east, and declined to follow
him. The armies of Schwarzenberg and Blücher approached one another, and
moved together on Paris. It was at Vitry, on March 27th, that Napoleon
first discovered that the troops which had appeared to be following his
eastward movement were but a detachment of cavalry, and that the allied
armies were in full march upon the capital. He instantly called up every
division within reach, and pushed forward by forced marches for the Seine,
hoping to fall upon Schwarzenberg's rear before the allied vanguard could
reach Paris. But at each hour of the march it became more evident that the
enemy was far in advance. For two days Napoleon urged his men forward; at
length, unable to bear the intolerable suspense, he quitted the army on the
morning of the 30th, and drove forward at the utmost speed along the road
through Fontainebleau to the capital. As day sank, he met reports of a
battle already begun. When he reached the village of Fromenteau, fifteen
miles from Paris, at ten o'clock at night, he heard that Paris had actually
surrendered.

[Attack on Paris, March 30.]

[Capitulation of Marmont.]

[Allies enter Paris, March 31.]

The Allies had pressed forward without taking any notice of Napoleon's
movements, and at early morning on the 30th they had opened the attack on
the north-eastern heights of Paris. Marmont, with the fragments of a beaten
army and some weak divisions of the National Guard, had but 35,000 men to
oppose to three times that number of the enemy. The Government had taken no
steps to arm the people, or to prolong resistance after the outside line of
defence was lost, although the erection of barricades would have held the
Allies in check until Napoleon arrived with his army. While Marmont fought
in the outer suburbs, masses of the people were drawn up on Montmartre,
expecting the Emperor's appearance, and the spectacle of a great and
decisive battle. But the firing in the outskirts stopped soon after noon:
it was announced that Marmont had capitulated. The report struck the people
with stupor and fury. They had vainly been demanding arms since early
morning; and even after the capitulation unsigned papers were handed about
by men of the working classes, advocating further resistance. [190] But the
people no longer knew how to follow leaders of its own. Napoleon had
trained France to look only to himself: his absence left the masses, who
were still eager to fight for France, helpless in the presence of the
conqueror: there were enemies enough of the Government among the richer
classes to make the entry of the foreigner into Paris a scene of actual joy
and exultation. To such an extent had the spirit of caste and the malignant
delight in Napoleon's ruin overpowered the love of France among the party
of the old noblesse, that upon the entry of the allied forces into Paris on
the 31st of March hundreds of aristocratic women kissed the hands, or the
very boots and horses, of the leaders of the train, and cheered the
Cossacks who escorted a band of French prisoners, bleeding and exhausted,
through the streets.

[Napoleon dethroned, April 2.]

Napoleon's reign was indeed at an end. Since the rupture of the Congress of
Châtillon on the 18th of March, the Allies had determined to make his
dethronement a condition of peace. As the end approached, it was seen that
no successor was possible but the chief of the House of Bourbon, although
Austria would perhaps have consented to the establishment of a Regency
under the Empress Marie Louise, and the Czar had for a time entertained the
project of placing Bernadotte at the head of the French State. Immediately
after the entry into Paris it was determined to raise the exile Louis
XVIII. to the throne. The politicians of the Empire who followed Talleyrand
were not unwilling to unite with the conquerors, and with the small party
of Royalist noblesse, in recalling the Bourbon dynasty. Alexander, who was
the real master of the situation, rightly judged Talleyrand to be the man
most capable of enlisting the public opinion of France on the side of the
new order. He took up his abode at Talleyrand's house, and employed this
dexterous statesman as the advocate both of the policy of the Allies, and
of the principles of constitutional liberty, which at this time Alexander
himself sincerely befriended. A Provisional Government was appointed under
Talleyrand's leadership. On the 2nd of April the Senate proclaimed the
dethronement of Napoleon. On the 6th it published a Constitution, and
recalled the House of Bourbon.

Louis XVIII. was still in England: his brother, the Count of Artois, had
joined the invaders in France and assumed the title of Lieutenant of the
Kingdom; but the influence of Alexander was necessary to force this
obstinate and unteachable man into anything like a constitutional position.
The Provisional Government invited the Count to take up the administration
until the King's arrival, in virtue of a decree of the Senate. D'Artois
declined to recognise the Senate's competency, and claimed the Lieutenancy
of the Kingdom as his brother's representative. The Senate refusing to
admit the Count's divine right, some unmeaning words were exchanged when
d'Artois entered Paris; and the Provisional Government, disregarding the
claims of the Royal Lieutenant, continued in the full exercise of its
powers. At length the Czar insisted that d'Artois should give way. The
decree of the Senate was accordingly accepted by him at the Tuileries on
the 14th of April; the Provisional Government retired, and a Council of
State was formed, in which Talleyrand still continued to exercise the real
powers of government. In the address made by d'Artois on this occasion, he
stated that although the King had not empowered him to accept the
Constitution made by the Senate on the 6th of April, he entertained no
doubt that the King would accept the principles embodied in that
Constitution, which were those of Representative Government, of the freedom
of the press, and of the responsibility of ministers. A week after
d'Artois' declaration, Louis XVIII. arrived in France.

[Louis XVIII. and the Czar.]

[Louis XVIII. enters Paris, May 3.]

Louis XVIII., though capable of adapting himself in practice to a
constitutional system, had never permitted himself to question the divine
right of the House of Bourbon to sovereign power. The exiles who surrounded
him were slow to understand the needs of the time. They recommended the
King to reject the Constitution. Louis made an ambiguous answer when the
Legislative Body met him at Compiègne and invited an expression of the
royal policy. It was again necessary for the Czar to interfere, and to
explain to the King that France could no longer be an absolute monarchy.
Louis, however, was a better arguer than the Count of Artois. He reasoned
as a man whom the sovereigns of Europe had felt it their duty to restore
without any request from himself. If the Senate of Napoleon, he urged, had
the right to give France a Constitution, he himself ought never to have
been brought from his peaceful English home. He was willing to grant a free
Constitution to his people in exercise of his own royal rights, but he
could not recognise one created by the servants of an usurper. Alexander
was but half satisfied with the liberal professions of Louis: he did not,
however, insist on his acceptance of the Constitution drawn up by the
Senate, but he informed him that until the promises made by d'Artois were
confirmed by a royal proclamation, there would be no entry into Paris. The
King at length signed a proclamation written by Talleyrand, and made his
festal entry into the capital on the 3rd of May.

[Feeling of Paris.]

The promises of Louis himself, the unbroken courtesy and friendliness shown
by the Allies to Paris since their victory a month before, had almost
extinguished the popular feeling of hostility towards a dynasty which owed
its recall to the overthrow of French armies. The foreign leaders
themselves had begun to excite a certain admiration and interest. Alexander
was considered, and with good reason, as a generous enemy; the simplicity
of the King of Prussia, his misfortunes, his well-remembered gallantry at
the Battle of Jena, gained him general sympathy. It needed but little on
the part of the returning Bourbons to convert the interest and curiosity of
Paris into affection. The cortège which entered the capital with Louis
XVIII. brought back, in a singular motley of obsolete and of foreign
costumes, the bearers of many unforgotten names. The look of the King
himself, as he drove through Paris, pleased the people. The childless
father of the murdered Duke of Enghien gained the pitying attention of
those few who knew the face of a man twenty-five years an exile. But there
was one among the members of the returning families whom every heart in
Paris went out to meet. The daughter of Louis XVI., who had shared the
captivity of her parents and of her brother, the sole survivor of her
deeply-wronged house, now returned as Duchess of Angoulême. The uniquely
mournful history of her girlhood, and her subsequent marriage with her
cousin, the son of the Count of Artois, made her the natural object of a
warmer sympathy than could attach to either of the brothers of Louis XVI.
But adversity had imprinted its lines too deeply upon the features and the
disposition of this joyless woman for a moment's light to return. Her voice
and her aspect repelled the affection which thousands were eager to offer
to her. Before the close of the first days of the restored monarchy, it was
felt that the Bourbons had brought back no single person among them who was
capable of winning the French nation's love.

[Napoleon sent to Elba.]

[Napoleon.]

The recall of the ancient line had been allowed to appear to the world as
the work of France itself; Napoleon's fate could only be fixed by his
conquerors. After the fall of Paris, Napoleon remained at Fontainebleau
awaiting events. The soldiers and the younger officers of his army were
still ready to fight for him; the marshals, however, were utterly weary,
and determined that France should no longer suffer for the sake of a single
man. They informed Napoleon that he must abdicate. Yielding to their
pressure, Napoleon, on the 3rd of April, drew up an act of abdication in
favour of his infant son, and sent it by Caulaincourt to the allied
sovereigns at Paris. The document was rejected by the Allies; Caulaincourt
returned with the intelligence that Napoleon must renounce the throne for
himself and all his family. For a moment the Emperor thought of renewing
the war; but the marshals refused their aid more resolutely than before,
and, on the 6th of April, Napoleon signed an unconditional surrender of the
throne for himself and his heirs. He was permitted by the Allies to retain
the unmeaning title of Emperor, and to carry with him a body-guard and a
considerable revenue to the island of Elba, henceforward to be his
principality and his prison. The choice of this island, within easy reach
of France and Italy, and too extensive to be guarded without a large fleet,
was due to Alexander's ill-judged generosity towards Napoleon, and to a
promise made to Marmont that the liberty of the Emperor should be
respected. Alexander was not left without warning of the probable effects
of his leniency. Sir Charles Stewart, military representative of Great
Britain at the allied head-quarters, urged both his own and the allied
Governments to substitute some more distant island for Elba, if they
desired to save Europe from a renewed Napoleonic war, and France from the
misery of a second invasion. The Allies, though not without misgivings,
adhered to their original plan, and left it to time to justify the
predictions of their adviser.

[Treaty of Paris, May 30.]

It was well known what would be the terms of peace, now that Napoleon was
removed from the throne. The Allies had no intention of depriving France of
any of the territory that it had held before 1792: the conclusion of a
definitive Treaty was only postponed until the Constitution, which
Alexander required King Louis XVIII. to grant, had been drawn up by a royal
commission and approved by the King. On the 27th of May the draft of this
Constitution, known as the Charta, was laid before the King, and sanctioned
by him; on the 30th, the Treaty of Paris was signed by the representatives
of France and of all the great Powers. [191] France, surrendering all its
conquests, accepted the frontier of the 1st of January, 1792, with a slight
addition of territory on the side of Savoy and at points on its northern
and eastern border. It paid no indemnity. It was permitted to retain all
the works of art accumulated by twenty years of rapine, except the trophies
carried from the Brandenburg Gate of Berlin and the spoils of the Library
of Vienna. It received back nearly all the colonies which had been taken
from it by Great Britain. By the clauses of the Treaty disposing of the
territory that had formed the Empire and the dependencies of Napoleon,
Holland was restored to the House of Orange, with the provision that its
territory should be largely increased; Switzerland was declared
independent; it was stipulated that Italy, with the exception of the
Austrian Provinces, should consist of independent States, and that Germany
should remain distributed among a multitude of sovereigns, independent, but
united by a Federal tie. The navigation of the Rhine was thrown open. By a
special agreement with Great Britain the French Government undertook to
unite its efforts to those of England in procuring the suppression of the
Slave-trade by all the Powers, and pledged itself to abolish the
Slave-trade among French subjects within five years at the latest. For the
settlement of all European questions not included in the Treaty of Paris it
was agreed that a Congress of the Powers should, within two months,
assemble at Vienna. These were the public articles of the Treaty of Paris.
Secret clauses provided that the Allies--that is, the Allies independently
of France--should control the distributions of territory to be made at the
Congress; that Austria should receive Venetia and all Northern Italy as far
as the Ticino; that Genoa should be given to the King of Sardinia; and that
the Southern Netherlands should be united into a single kingdom with
Holland, and thus form a solid bulwark against France on the north. No
mention was made of Naples, whose sovereign, Murat, had abandoned Napoleon
and allied himself with Austria, but without fulfilling in good faith the
engagements into which he had entered against his former master. A nominal
friend of the Allies, he knew that he had played a double game, and that
his sovereignty, though not yet threatened, was insecure. [192]

[Territorial arrangements of 1814.]

Much yet remained to be settled by the Congress at Vienna, but in the
Treaty of Paris two at least of the great Powers saw the objects attained
for which they had straggled so persistently through all the earlier years
of the war, and which at a later time had appeared to pass almost out of
the range of possibility. England saw the Netherlands once more converted
into a barrier against France, and Antwerp held by friendly hands. Austria
reaped the full reward of its cool and well-balanced diplomacy during the
crisis of 1813, in the annexation of an Italian territory that made it the
real mistress of the Peninsula. Castlereagh and every other English
politician felt that Europe had done itself small honour in handing Venice
back to the Hapsburg; but this had been the condition exacted by Metternich
at Prague before he consented to throw the sword of Austria into the
trembling scale; [193] and the Republican traditions both of Venice and of
Genoa counted for little among the statesmen of 1814, in comparison with
the divine right of a Duke of Modena or a Prince of Hesse Cassel. [194]
France itself, though stripped of the dominion won by twenty years of
warfare, was permitted to retain, for the benefit of a restored line of
kings, the whole of its ancient territory, and the spoil of all the
galleries and museums of Western Europe. It would have been no unnatural
wrong if the conquerors of 1814 had dealt with the soil of France as France
had dealt with other lands; it would have been an act of bare justice to
restore to its rightful owners the pillage that had been brought to Paris,
and to recover from the French treasury a part of the enormous sums which
Napoleon had extorted from conquered States. But the Courts were too well
satisfied with their victory to enter into a strict account upon secondary
matters; and a prudent regard on the part of the Allies to the prospects of
the House of Bourbon saved France from experiencing what it had inflicted
upon others.

[All the Powers except France gained territory by the war, 1792-1814.]

The policy which now restored to France the frontier of 1792 was viewed
with a very different feeling in France and in all other countries. Europe
looked with a kind of wonder upon its own generosity; France forgot the
unparalleled provocations which it had offered to mankind, and only
remembered that Belgium and the Rhenish Provinces had formed part of the
Republic and the Empire for nearly twenty years. These early conquests of
the Republic, which no one had attempted to wrest from France since 1795,
had undoubtedly been the equivalent for which, in the days of the
Directory, Austria had been permitted to extend itself in Italy, and
Prussia in Germany. In the opinion of men who sincerely condemned
Napoleon's distant conquests, the territory between France and the Rhine
was no more than France might legitimately demand, as a counterpoise to the
vast accessions falling to one or other of the Continental Powers out of
the territory of Poland, Venice, and the body of suppressed States in
Germany. Poland, excluding the districts taken from it before 1792,
contained a population twice as great as that of Belgium and the Rhenish
Provinces together: Venice carried with it, in addition to a commanding
province on the Italian mainland, the Eastern Adriatic Coast as far as
Ragusa. If it were true that the proportionate increase of power formed the
only solid principle of European policy, France sustained a grievous injury
in receiving back the limits of 1791, when every other State on the
Continent was permitted to retain the territory, or an equivalent for the
territory, which it had gained in the great changes that took place between
1791 and 1814. But in fact there had never been a time during the last
hundred and fifty years when France, under an energetic Government, had not
possessed a force threatening to all its neighbours. France, reduced to its
ancient limits, was still the equal, and far more than the equal, of any of
the Continental Powers, with all that they had gained during the
Revolutionary War. It remained the first of European nations, though no
longer, as in the eighteenth century, the one great nation of the western
continent. Its efforts after universal empire had aroused other nations
into life. Had the course of French conquest ceased before Napoleon grasped
power, France would have retained its frontier of the Rhine, and long have
exercised an unbounded influence over both Germany and Italy, through the
incomparably juster and brighter social life which the Revolution, combined
with all that France had inherited from the past, enabled it to display to
those countries. Napoleon, in the attempt to impose his rule upon all
Europe, created a power in Germany whose military future was to be not less
solid than that of France itself, and left to Europe, in the accord of his
enemies, a firmer security against French attack than any that the efforts
of statesmen had ever framed.

[Permanent effect on Europe of period 1792-1814.]

[National sense excited in Germany and Italy.]

The league of the older monarchies had proved stronger in the end than the
genius and the ambition of a single man. But if, in the service of
Napoleon, France had exhausted its wealth, sunk its fleets, and sacrificed
a million lives, only that it might lose all its earlier conquests, and
resume limits which it had outgrown before Napoleon held his first command,
it was not thus with the work which, for or against itself, France had
effected in Europe during the movements of the last twenty years. In the
course of the epoch now ending the whole of the Continent up to the
frontiers of Austria and Russia had gained the two fruitful ideas of
nationality and political freedom. There were now two nations in Europe
where before there had been but aggregates of artificial States. Germany
and Italy were no longer mere geographical expressions: in both countries,
though in a very unequal degree, the newly-aroused sense of nationality had
brought with it the claim for unity and independence. In Germany, Prussia
had set a great example, and was hereafter to reap its reward; in Italy
there had been no State and no statesman to take the lead either in
throwing off Napoleon's rule, or in forcing him, as the price of support,
to give to his Italian kingdom a really national government. Failing to act
for itself, the population of all Italy, except Naples, was parcelled out
between Austria and the ancient dynasties; but the old days of passive
submission to the foreigner were gone for ever, and time was to show
whether those were the dreamers who thought of a united Italy, or those who
thought that Metternich's statesmanship had for ever settled the fate of
Venice and of Milan.

[Desire for political liberty.]

The second legacy of the Revolutionary epoch, the idea of constitutional
freedom, which in 1789 had been as much wanting in Spain, where national
spirit was the strongest, as in those German States where it was the
weakest, had been excited in Italy by the events of 1796 and 1798, in Spain
by the disappearance of the Bourbon king and the self-directed struggle of
the nation against the invader; in Prussia it had been introduced by the
Government itself when Stein was at the head of the State. "It is
impossible," wrote Lord Castlereagh in the spring of 1814, "not to perceive
a great moral change coming on in Europe, and that the principles of
freedom are in full operation." [195] There was in fact scarcely a Court in
Europe which was not now declaring its intention to frame a Constitution.
The professions might be lightly made; the desire and the capacity for
self-government might still be limited to a narrower class than the friends
of liberty imagined; but the seed was sown, and a movement had begun which
was to gather strength during the next thirty years of European history,
while one revolution after another proved that Governments could no longer
with safety disregard the rights of their subjects.

[Social changes.]

Lastly, in all the territory that had formed Napoleon's Empire and
dependencies, and also in Prussia, legal changes had been made in the
rights and relations of the different classes of society, so important as
almost to create a new type of social life. Within the Empire itself the
Code Napoléon, conferring upon the subjects of France the benefits which
the French had already won for themselves, had superseded a society resting
on class-privilege, on feudal service, and on the despotism of custom, by a
society resting on equality before the law, on freedom of contract, and on
the unshackled ownership and enjoyment of land, whether the holder
possessed an acre or a league. The principles of the French Code, if not
the Code itself, had been introduced into Napoleon's kingdom of Italy, into
Naples, and into almost all the German dependencies of France. In Prussia
the reforms of Stein and Hardenberg had been directed, though less boldly,
towards the same end; and when, after 1814, the Rhenish Provinces were
annexed to Prussia by the Congress of Vienna, the Government was wise
enough and liberal enough to leave these districts in the enjoyment of the
laws which France had given them, and not to risk a comparison between even
the best Prussian legislation and the Code Napoleon. In other territory now
severed from France and restored to German or Italian princes, attempts
were not wanting to obliterate the new order and to re-introduce the
burdens and confusions of the old regime. But these reactions, even where
unopposed for a time, were too much in conflict with the spirit of the age
to gain more than a temporary and precarious success. The people had begun
to know good and evil: examples of a free social order were too close at
hand to render it possible for any part of the western continent to relapse
for any very long period into the condition of the eighteenth century.

[Limits.]

It was indeed within a distinct limit that the Revolutionary epoch effected
its work of political and social change. Neither England nor Austria
received the slightest impulse to progress. England, on the contrary,
suspended almost all internal improvement during the course of the war; the
domestic policy of the Austrian Court, so energetic in the reign
immediately preceding the Revolution, became for the next twenty years,
except where it was a policy of repression, a policy of pure vacancy and
inaction. But in all other States of Western Europe the period which
reached its close with Napoleon's fall left deep and lasting traces behind
it. Like other great epochs of change, it bore its own peculiar character.
It was not, like the Renaissance and the Reformation, a time when new
worlds of faith and knowledge transformed the whole scope and conception of
human life; it was not, like our own age, a time when scientific discovery
and increased means of communication silently altered the physical
conditions of existence; it was a time of changes directly political in
their nature, and directly effected by the political agencies of
legislation and of war. In the perspective of history the Napoleonic age
will take its true place among other, and perhaps greater, epochs. Its
elements of mere violence and disturbance will fill less space in the eyes
of mankind; its permanent creations, more. As an epoch of purely political
energy, concentrating the work of generations within the compass of twenty
five years, it will perhaps scarcely find a parallel.




CHAPTER XII.


The Restoration of 1814--Norway--Naples--Westphalia--Spain--The Spanish
Constitution overthrown: Victory of the Clergy--Restoration in France--The
Charta--Encroachments of the Nobles and Clergy--Growing Hostility to the
Bourbons--Congress of Vienna--Talleyrand and the Four Powers--The Polish
Question--The Saxon Question--Theory of Legitimacy--Secret Alliance against
Russia and Prussia--Compromise--The Rhenish Provinces--Napoleon leaves Elba
and lands in France--His Declarations--Napoleon at Grenoble, at Lyon, at
Paris--The Congress of Vienna unites Europe against France--Murat's Action
in Italy--The Acte Additionnel--The Champ de Mai--Napoleon takes up the
offensive--Battles of Ligny, Quatre Bras, Waterloo--Affairs at
Paris--Napoleon sent to St. Helena--Wellington and Fouché--Arguments on the
proposed Cession of French Territory--Treaty of Holy Alliance--Second
Treaty of Paris--Conclusion of the Work of the Congress of Vienna--
Federation of Germany--Estimate of the Congress of Vienna and of the
Treaties of 1815--The Slave Trade.


Of all the events which, in the more recent history of mankind, have struck
the minds of nations with awe, and appeared to reveal in its direct
operation a power overruling the highest human effort, there is none equal
in grandeur and terror to the annihilation of Napoleon's army in the
invasion of Russia. It was natural that a generation which had seen State
after State overthrown, and each new violation of right followed by an
apparent consolidation of the conqueror's strength, should view in the
catastrophe of 1812 the hand of Providence visibly outstretched for the
deliverance of Europe. [196] Since that time many years have passed. Perils
which then seemed to envelop the future of mankind now appear in part
illusory; sacrifices then counted cheap have proved of heavy cost. The
history of the two last generations shows that not everything was lost to
Europe in passing subjection to a usurper, nor everything gained by the
victory of his opponents. It is now not easy to suppress the doubt whether
the permanent interests of mankind would not have been best served by
Napoleon's success in 1812. His empire had already attained dimensions that
rendered its ultimate disruption certain: less depended upon the
postponement or the acceleration of its downfall than on the order of
things ready to take its place. The victory of Napoleon in 1812 would have
been followed by the establishment of a Polish kingdom in the provinces
taken from Russia. From no generosity in the conqueror, from no sympathy on
his part with a fallen people, but from the necessities of his political
situation, Poland must have been so organised as to render it the bulwark
of French supremacy in the East. The serf would have been emancipated. The
just hatred of the peasant to the noble, which made the partition of 1772
easy, and has proved fatal to every Polish uprising from that time to the
present, would have been appeased by an agrarian reform executed with
Napoleon's own unrivalled energy and intelligence, and ushered in with
brighter hopes than have at any time in the history of Poland lit the dark
shades of peasant-life. The motives which in 1807 had led Napoleon to stay
his hand, and to content himself with half-measures of emancipation in the
Duchy of Warsaw [197], could have had no place after 1812, when Russia
remained by his side, a mutilated but inexorable enemy, ever on the watch
to turn to its own advantage the first murmurs of popular discontent beyond
the border. Political independence, the heritage of the Polish noble, might
have been withheld, but the blessing of landed independence would have been
bestowed on the mass of the Polish people. In the course of some years this
restored kingdom, though governed by a member of the house of Bonaparte,
would probably have gained sufficient internal strength to survive the
downfall of Napoleon's Empire or his own decease. England, Austria, and
Turkey would have found it no impossible task to prevent its absorption by
Alexander at the re-settlement of Europe, if indeed the collapse of Russia
had not been followed by the overthrow of the Porte, and the establishment
of a Greek, a Bulgarian, and a Roumanian Kingdom under the supremacy of
France. By the side of the three absolute monarchs of Central and Eastern
Europe there would have remained, upon Napoleon's downfall, at least one
people in possession of the tradition of liberty: and from the example of
Poland, raised from the deep but not incurable degradation of its social
life, the rulers of Russia might have gained courage to emancipate the
serf, without waiting for the lapse of another half-century and the
occurrence of a second ruinous war. To compare a possible sequence of
events with the real course of history, to estimate the good lost and evil
got through events which at the time seemed to vindicate the moral
governance of the world, is no idle exercise of the imagination. It may
serve to give caution to the judgment: it may guard us against an arbitrary
and fanciful interpretation of the actual. The generation which witnessed
the fall of Napoleon is not the only one which has seen Providence in the
fulfilment of its own desire, and in the storm-cloud of nature and history
has traced with too sanguine gaze the sacred lineaments of human equity and
love.

[Settlement of 1814.]

[Norway.]

[Naples.]

The Empire of Napoleon had indeed passed away. The conquests won by the
first soldiers of the Republic were lost to France along with all the
latest spoils of its Emperor; but the restoration which was effected in
1814 was no restoration of the political order which had existed on the
Continent before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. The Powers which
had overthrown Napoleon had been partakers, each in its own season, in the
system of aggrandisement which had obliterated the old frontiers of Europe.
Russia had gained Finland, Bessarabia, and the greater part of Poland;
Austria had won Venice, Dalmatia, and Salzburg; Prussia had received
between the years 1792 and 1806 an extension of territory in Poland and
Northern Germany that more than doubled its area. It was now no part of the
policy of the victorious Courts to reinstate the governments which they had
themselves dispossessed: the settlement of 1814, in so far as it deserved
the name of a restoration, was confined to the territory taken from
Napoleon and from princes of his house. Here, though the claims of
Republics and Ecclesiastical Princes were forgotten, the titles of the old
dynasties were freely recognised. In France itself, in the Spanish
Peninsula, in Holland, Westphalia, Piedmont, and Tuscany, the banished
houses resumed their sovereignty. It cost the Allies nothing to restore
these countries to their hereditary rulers, and it enabled them to describe
the work of 1814 in general terms as the restoration of lawful government
and national independence. But the claims of legitimacy, as well as of
national right, were, as a matter of fact, only remembered where there
existed no motive to disregard them; where they conflicted with
arrangements of policy, they received small consideration. Norway, which
formed part of the Danish monarchy, had been promised by Alexander to
Bernadotte, Crown Prince of Sweden, in 1812, in return for his support
against Napoleon, and the bargain had been ratified by the Allies. As soon
as Napoleon was overthrown, Bernadotte claimed his reward. It was in vain
that the Norwegians, abandoned by their king, declared themselves
independent, and protested against being handed over like a flock of sheep
by the liberators of Europe. The Allies held to their contract; a British
fleet was sent to assist Bernadotte in overpowering his new subjects, and
after a brief resistance the Norwegians found themselves compelled to
submit to their fate (April--Aug., 1814). [198] At the other extremity of
Europe a second of Napoleon's generals still held his throne among the
restored legitimate monarchs. Murat, King of Naples, had forsaken Napoleon
in time to make peace and alliance with Austria. Great Britain, though
entering into a military convention, had not been a party to this treaty;
and it had declared that its own subsequent support of Murat would depend
upon the condition that he should honourably exert himself in Italy against
Napoleon's forces. This condition Murat had not fulfilled. The British
Government was, however, but gradually supplied with proofs of his
treachery; nor was Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister, inclined to raise
new difficulties at Vienna by pressing the claim of Ferdinand of Sicily to
his territories on the mainland. [199] Talleyrand, on behalf of the
restored Bourbons of Paris, intended to throw all his strength into a
diplomatic attack upon Murat before the end of the Congress; but for the
present Murat's chances seemed to be superior to those of his rival.
Southern Italy thus continued in the hands of a soldier of fortune, who,
unlike Bernadotte, was secretly the friend of Napoleon, and ready to
support him in any attempt to regain his throne.

[Restoration in Westphalia.]

The engagement of the Allies towards Bernadotte, added to the stipulations
of the Peace of Paris, left little to be decided by the Congress of Vienna
beyond the fate of Poland, Saxony, and Naples, and the form of political
union to be established in Germany. It had been agreed that the Congress
should assemble within two months after the signature of the Peace of
Paris: this interval, however, proved to be insufficient, and the autumn
had set in before the first diplomatists arrived at Vienna, and began the
conferences which preceded the formal opening of the Congress. In the
meantime a singular spectacle was offered to Europe by the Courts whose
restoration was the subject of so much official thanksgiving. Before King
Louis XVIII. returned to Paris, the exiled dynasties had regained their
thrones in Northern Germany and in Spain. The process of reaction had begun
in Hanover and in Hesse as soon as the battle of Leipzig had dissolved the
Kingdom of Westphalia and driven Napoleon across the Rhine. Hanover indeed
did not enjoy the bodily presence of its Sovereign: its character was
oligarchical, and the reaction here was more the affair of the privileged
classes than of the Government. In Hesse a prince returned who was the very
embodiment of divine right, a prince who had sturdily fought against French
demagogues in 1792, and over whose stubborn, despotic nature the
revolutions of a whole generation and the loss of his own dominions since
the battle of Jena had passed without leaving a trace. The Elector was
seventy years old when, at the end of the year 1813, his faithful subjects
dragged his carriage in triumph into the streets of Cassel. On the day
after his arrival he gave orders that the Hessian soldiery who had been
sent on furlough after the battle of Jena should present themselves, every
man in the garrison-town where he had stood on the 1st of November, 1806. A
few weeks later all the reforms of the last seven years were swept away
together. The Code Napoleon ceased to be the law of the land; the old
oppressive distinctions of caste, with the special courts for the
privileged orders, came again into force, in defiance of the spirit of the
age. The feudal burdens of the peasantry were revived, the purchasers of
State-lands compelled to relinquish the land without receiving back any of
their purchase-money. The decimal coinage was driven out of the country.
The old system of taxation, with its iniquitous exemptions, was renewed.
All promotions, all grants of rank made by Jerome's Government were
annulled: every officer, every public servant resumed the station which he
had occupied on the 1st of November, 1806. The very pigtails and powder of
the common soldier under the old regime were revived. [200]

[Restoration in Spain.]

The Hessians and their neighbours in North-Western Germany had from of old
been treated with very little ceremony by their rulers; and if they
welcomed back a family which had been accustomed to hire them out at so
much a head to fight against the Hindoos or by the side of the North
American Indians, it only proved that they preferred their native
taskmasters to Jerome Bonaparte and his French crew of revellers and
usurers. The next scene in the European reaction was a far more mournful
one. Ferdinand of Spain had no sooner re-crossed the Pyrenees in the spring
of 1814, than, convinced of his power by the transports of popular
enthusiasm that attended his progress through Northern Spain, he determined
to overthrow the Constitution of 1812, and to re-establish the absolute
monarchy which had existed before the war. The courtiers and ecclesiastics
who gathered round the King dispelled any scruples that he might have felt
in lifting his hand against a settlement accepted by the nation. They
represented to him that the Cortes of 1812--which, whatever their faults,
had been recognised as the legitimate Government of Spain by both England
and Russia--consisted of a handful of desperate men, collected from the
streets of Cadiz, who had taken upon themselves to insult the Crown, to rob
the Church, and to imperil the existence of the Catholic Faith. On the
entry of the King into Valencia, the cathedral clergy expressed the wishes
of their order in the address of homage which they offered to Ferdinand.
"We beg your Majesty," their spokesman concluded, "to take the most
vigorous measures for the restoration of the Inquisition, and of the
ecclesiastical system that existed in Spain before your Majesty's
departure." "These," replied the King, "are my own wishes, and I will not
rest until they are fulfilled." [201]

[Spanish Constitution overthrown.]

The victory of the clergy was soon declared. On the 11th of May the King
issued a manifesto at Valencia, proclaiming the Constitution of 1812 and
every decree of the Cortes null and void, and denouncing the penalties of
high treason against everyone who should defend the Constitution by act,
word, or writing. A variety of promises, made only to be broken,
accompanied this assertion of the rights of the Crown. The King pledged
himself to summon new Cortes as soon as public order should be restored, to
submit the expenditure to the control of the nation, and to maintain
inviolate the security of person and property. It was a significant comment
upon Ferdinand's professions of Liberalism that on the very day on which
the proclamation was issued the censorship of the Press was restored. But
the King had not miscalculated his power over the Spanish people. The same
storm of wild, unreasoning loyalty which had followed Ferdinand's
reappearance in Spain followed the overthrow of the Constitution. The mass
of the Spaniards were ignorant of the very meaning of political liberty:
they adored the King as a savage adores his fetish: their passions were at
the call of a priesthood as brutish and unscrupulous as that which in 1798
had excited the Lazzaroni of Naples against the Republicans of Southern
Italy. No sooner had Ferdinand set the example, by arresting thirty of the
most distinguished of the Liberals, than tumults broke out in every part of
the country against Constitutionalist magistrates and citizens. Mobs,
headed by priests bearing the standard of the Inquisition, destroyed the
tablets erected in honour of the Constitution of 1812, and burned Liberal
writings in bonfires in the market-places. The prisons were filled with men
who, but a short time before, had been the objects of popular adulation.

[The clergy in power.]

Whatever pledges of allegiance had been given to the Constitution of 1812,
it was clear that this Constitution had no real hold on the nation, and
that Ferdinand fulfilled the wish of the majority of Spaniards in
overthrowing it. A wise and energetic sovereign would perhaps have allowed
himself to use this outburst of religious fanaticism for the purpose of
substituting some better order for the imprudent arrangements of 1812.
Ferdinand, an ignorant, hypocritical buffoon, with no more notion of
political justice or generosity than the beasts of the field, could only
substitute for the fallen Cortes a government by palace-favourites and
confessors. It was in vain, that the representatives of Great Britain urged
the King to fulfil his constitutional promises, and to liberate the persons
who had unjustly been thrown into prison. [202] The clergy were masters of
Spain and of the King: their influence daily outweighed even that of
Ferdinand's own Ministers, when, under the pressure of financial necessity,
the Ministers began to offer some resistance to the exorbitant demands of
the priesthood. On the 23rd of May the King signed an edict restoring all
monasteries throughout Spain, and reinstating them in their lands. On the
24th of June the clergy were declared exempt from taxation. On the 21st of
July the Church won its crowning triumph in the re-establishment of the
Inquisition. In the meantime the army was left without pay, in some places
actually without food. The country was at the mercy of bands of guerillas,
who, since the disappearance of the enemy, had turned into common brigands,
and preyed upon their own countrymen. Commerce was extinct; agriculture
abandoned; innumerable villages were lying in ruins; the population was
barbarised by the savage warfare with which for years past it had avenged
its own sufferings upon the invader. Of all the countries of Europe, Spain
was the one in which the events of the Revolutionary epoch seemed to have
left an effect most nearly approaching to unmixed evil.

[Restoration in France.]

In comparison with the reaction in the Spanish Peninsula the reaction in
France was sober and dignified. Louis XVIII. was at least a scholar and a
man of the world. In the old days, among companions whose names were now
almost forgotten, he had revelled in Voltaire and dallied with the
fashionable Liberalism of the time. In his exile he had played the king
with some dignity; he was even believed to have learnt some political
wisdom by his six years' residence in England. If he had not character,
[203] he had at least some tact and some sense of humour; and if not a
profound philosopher, he was at least an accomplished epicurean. He hated
the zealotry of his brother, the Count of Artois. He was more inclined to
quiz the emigrants than to sacrifice anything on their behalf; and the
whole bent of his mind made him but an insincere ally of the priesthood,
who indeed could hardly expect to enjoy such an orgy in France as their
brethren were celebrating in Spain. The King, however, was unable to impart
his own indifference to the emigrants who returned with him, nor had he
imagination enough to identify himself, as King of France, with the
military glories of the nation and with the democratic army that had won
them. Louis held high notions of the royal prerogative: this would not in
itself have prevented him from being a successful ruler, if he had been
capable of governing in the interest of the nation at large. There were few
Republicans remaining in France; the centralised institutions of the Empire
remained in full vigour; and although the last months of Napoleon's rule
had excited among the educated classes a strong spirit of constitutional
opposition, an able and patriotic Bourbon accepting his new position, and
wielding power for the benefit of the people and not of a class, might
perhaps have exercised an authority not much inferior to that possessed by
the Crown before 1789. But Louis, though rational, was inexperienced and
supine. He was ready enough to admit into his Ministry and to retain in
administrative posts throughout the country men who had served under
Napoleon; but when the emigrants and the nobles, led by the Count of
Artois, pushed themselves to the front of the public service, and treated
the restoration of the Bourbons as the victory of their own order, the King
offered but a faint resistance, and allowed the narrowest class-interests
to discredit a monarchy whose own better traditions identified it not with
an aristocracy but with the State.

[The Charta.]

The Constitution promulgated by King Louis XVIII. on the 4th of June, 1814,
and known as the Charta, [204] was well received by the French nation.
Though far less liberal than the Constitution accepted by Louis XVI. in
1791, it gave to the French a measure of representative government to which
they had been strangers under Napoleon. It created two legislative
chambers, the Upper House consisting of peers who were nominated by the
Crown at its pleasure, whether for life-peerages or hereditary dignity; the
Lower House formed by national election, but by election restricted by so
high a property-qualification [205] that not one person in two hundred
possessed a vote. The Crown reserved to itself the sole power of proposing
laws. In spite of this serious limitation of the competence of the two
houses, the Lower Chamber possessed, in its right of refusing taxes and of
discussing and rejecting all measures laid before it, a reality of power
such as no representative body had possessed in France since the beginning
of the Consulate. The Napoleonic nobility was placed on an equality with
the old noblesse of France, though neither enjoyed, as nobles, anything
more than a titular distinction. [206] Purchasers of landed property sold
by the State since the beginning of the Revolution were guaranteed in their
possessions. The principles of religious freedom, of equality before the
law, and of the admissibility of all classes to public employment, which
had taken such deep root during the Republic and the Empire, were declared
to form part of the public law of France; and by the side of these
deeply-cherished rights the Charta of King Louis XVIII. placed, though in a
qualified form, the long-forgotten principle of the freedom of the Press.

[Encroachments of Nobles.]

Under such a Constitution there was little room for the old noblesse to
arrogate to itself any legal superiority over the mass of the French
nation. What was wanting in law might, however, in the opinion of the Count
of Artois and his friends, be effected by administration. Of all the
institutions of France the most thoroughly national and the most thoroughly
democratic was the army; it was accordingly against the army that the
noblesse directed its first efforts. Financial difficulties made a large
reduction in the forces necessary. Fourteen thousand officers and sergeants
were accordingly dismissed on half-pay; but no sooner had this measure of
economy been effected than a multitude of emigrants who had served against
the Republic in the army of the Prince of Condé or in La Vendée were
rewarded with all degrees of military rank. Naval officers who had quitted
the service of France and entered that of its enemies were reinstated with
the rank which they had held in foreign navies. [207] The tricolor, under
which every battle of France had been fought from Jemappes to Montmartre,
was superseded by the white flag of the House of Bourbon, under which no
living soldier had marched to victory. General Dupont, known only by his
capitulation at Baylen in 1808, was appointed Minister of War. The Imperial
Guard was removed from service at the Palace, and the so-called Military
Household of the old Bourbon monarchy revived, with the privileges and the
insignia belonging to the period before 1775. Young nobles who had never
seen a shot fired crowded into this favoured corps, where the musketeer and
the trooper held the rank and the pay of a lieutenant in the army. While in
every village of France some battered soldier of Napoleon cursed the
Government that had driven him from his comrades, the Court revived at
Paris all the details of military ceremonial that could be gathered from
old almanacks, from the records of court-tailors, and from the memories of
decayed gallants. As if to convince the public that nothing had happened
during the last twenty-two years, the aged Marquis de Chansenets, who had
been Governor of the Tuileries on the 10th of August, 1792, and had then
escaped by hiding among the bodies of the dead, [208] resumed his place at
the head of the officers of the Palace.

[Encroachments of the clergy.]

[Growing hostility to the Bourbons.]

These were but petty triumphs for the emigrants and nobles, but they were
sufficient to make the restored monarchy unpopular. Equally injurious was
their behaviour in insulting the families of Napoleon's generals, in
persecuting men who had taken part in the great movement of 1789, and in
intimidating the peasant-owners of land that had been confiscated and sold
by the State. Nor were the priesthood backward in discrediting the
Government of Louis XVIII. in the service of their own order. It might be
vain to think of recovering the Church-lands, or of introducing the
Inquisition into France, but the Court might at least be brought to invest
itself with the odour of sanctity, and the parish-priest might be made as
formidable a person within his own village as the mayor or the agent of the
police-minister. Louis XVIII. was himself sceptical and self-indulgent.
This, however, did not prevent him from publishing a letter to the Bishops
placing his kingdom under the especial protection of the Virgin Mary, and
from escorting the image of the patron-saint through the streets of Paris
in a procession in which Marshal Soult and other regenerate Jacobins of the
Court braved the ridicule of the populace by acting as candle-bearers.
Another sign of the King's submission to the clergy was the publication of
an edict which forbade buying and selling on Sundays and festivals.

Whatever the benefits of a freely-observed day of rest, this enactment,
which was not submitted to the Chambers, passed for an arrogant piece of
interference on the part of the clergy with national habits; and while it
caused no inconvenience to the rich, it inflicted substantial loss upon a
numerous and voluble class of petty traders. The wrongs done to the
French nation by the priests and emigrants who rose to power in 1814 were
indeed the merest trifle in comparison with the wrongs which it had
uncomplainingly borne at the hands of Napoleon. But the glory of the
Empire, the strength and genius of its absolute rule, were gone. In its
place there was a family which had been dissociated from France during
twenty years, which had returned only to ally itself with an unpopular
and dreaded caste, and to prove that even the unexpected warmth with
which it had been welcomed home could not prevent it from becoming, at
the end of a few months, utterly alien and uninteresting. The indifference
of the nation would not have endangered the Bourbon monarchy if the army
had been won over by the King. But here the Court had excited the
bitterest enmity. The accord which for a moment had seemed possible even
to Republicans of the type of Carnot had vanished at a touch. [209]
Rumours of military conspiracies grew stronger with every month.
Wellington, now British Ambassador at Paris, warned his Government of the
changed feeling of the capital, of the gatherings of disbanded officers,
of possible attacks upon the Tuileries. "The truth is," he wrote, "that
the King of France without the army is no King." Wellington saw the more
immediate danger: [210] he failed to see the depth and universality of
the movement passing over France, which before the end of the year 1814
had destroyed the hold of the Bourbon monarchy except in those provinces
where it had always found support, and prepared the nation at large to
welcome back the ruler who so lately seemed to have fallen for ever.

[Congress of Vienna, Sept., 1814.]

Paris and Madrid divided for some months after the conclusion of peace the
attention of the political world. At the end of September the centre of
European interest passed to Vienna. The great council of the Powers, so
long delayed, was at length assembled. The Czar of Russia, the Kings of
Prussia, Denmark, Bavaria, and Würtemberg, and nearly all the statesmen of
eminence in Europe, gathered round the Emperor Francis and his Minister,
Metternich, to whom by common consent the presidency of the Congress was
offered. Lord Castlereagh represented England, and Talleyrand France.
Rasumoffsky and other Russian diplomatists acted under the immediate
directions of their master, who on some occasions even entered into
personal correspondence with the Ministers of the other Powers.
Hardenberg stood in a somewhat freer relation to King Frederick William;
Stein was present, but without official place. The subordinate envoys and
attaches of the greater Courts, added to a host of petty princes and the
representatives who came from the minor Powers, or from communities which
had ceased to possess any political existence at all, crowded Vienna. In
order to relieve the antagonisms which had already come too clearly into
view, Metternich determined to entertain his visitors in the most
magnificent fashion; and although the Austrian State was bankrupt, and in
some districts the people were severely suffering, a sum of about £10,000
a day was for some time devoted to this purpose. The splendour and the
gaieties of Metternich were emulated by his guests; and the guardians of
Europe enjoyed or endured for months together a succession of fêtes,
banquets, dances, and excursions, varied, through the zeal of Talleyrand
to ingratiate himself with his new master, by a Mass of great solemnity
on the anniversary of the execution of Louis XVI. [211] One incident
lights the faded and insipid record of vanished pageants and defunct
gallantries. Beethoven was in Vienna. The Government placed the great
Assembly-rooms at his disposal, and enabled the composer to gratify a
harmless humour by sending invitations in his own name to each of the
Sovereigns and grandees then in Vienna. Much personal homage, some
substantial kindness from these gaudy creatures of the hour, made the
period of the Congress a bright page in that wayward and afflicted life
whose poverty has enriched mankind with such immortal gifts.

[Talleyrand and the four Powers.]

The Congress had need of its distractions, for the difficulties which faced
it were so great that, even after the arrival of the Sovereigns, it was
found necessary to postpone the opening of the regular sittings until
November. By the secret articles of the Peace of Paris, the Allies had
reserved to themselves the disposal of all vacant territory, although their
conclusions required to be formally sanctioned by the Congress at large.
The Ministers of Austria, England, Prussia, and Russia accordingly
determined at the outset to decide upon all territorial questions among
themselves, and only after their decisions were completely formed to submit
them to France and the other Powers. [212] Talleyrand, on hearing of this
arrangement, protested that France itself was now one of the Allies, and
demanded that the whole body of European States should at once meet in open
Congress. The four Courts held to their determination, and began their
preliminary sittings without Talleyrand. But the French statesman had,
under the form of a paradox, really stated the true political situation.
The greater Powers were so deeply divided in their aims that their old bond
of common interest, the interest of union against France, was now less
powerful than the impulse that made them seek the support of France against
one another. Two men had come to the Congress with a definite aim:
Alexander had resolved to gain the Duchy of Warsaw, and to form it, with or
without some part of Russian Poland, into a Polish kingdom, attached to his
own crown: Talleyrand had determined, either on the question of Poland, or
on the question of Saxony, which arose out of it, to break allied Europe
into halves, and to range France by the side of two of the great Powers
against the two others. The course of events favoured for a while the
design of the Minister: Talleyrand himself prosecuted his plan with an
ability which, but for the untimely return of Napoleon from Elba, would
have left France, without a war, the arbiter and the leading Power of
Europe.

[Polish question.]

Since the Russian victories of 1812, the Emperor Alexander had made no
secret of his intention to restore a Polish Kingdom and a Polish
nationality. [213] Like many other designs of this prince, the project
combined a keen desire for personal glorification with a real generosity of
feeling. Alexander was thoroughly sincere in his wish not only to make the
Poles again a people, but to give them a Parliament and a free
Constitution. The King of Poland, however, was to be no independent prince,
but Alexander himself: although the Duchy of Warsaw, the chief if not the
sole component of the proposed new kingdom, had belonged to Austria and
Prussia after the last partition of Poland, and extended into the heart of
the Prussian monarchy. Alexander insisted on his anxiety to atone for the
crime of Catherine in dismembering Poland: the atonement, however, was to
be made at the sole cost of those whom Catherine had allowed to share the
booty. Among the other Governments, the Ministry of Great Britain would
gladly have seen a Polish State established in a really independent form;
[214] failing this, it desired that the Duchy of Warsaw should be divided,
as formerly, between Austria and Prussia. Metternich was anxious that the
fortress of Cracow, at any rate, should not fall into the hands of the
Czar. Stein and Hardenberg, and even Alexander's own Russian counsellors,
earnestly opposed the Czar's project, not only on account of the claims of
Prussia on Warsaw, but from dread of the agitation likely to be produced by
a Polish Parliament among all Poles outside the new State. King Frederick
William, however, was unaccustomed to dispute the wishes of his ally; and
the Czar's offer of Saxony in substitution for Warsaw gave to the Prussian
Ministers, who were more in earnest than their master, at least the
prospect of receiving a valuable equivalent for what they might surrender.

[Saxon question.]

By the Treaty of Kalisch, made when Prussia united its arms with those of
Russia against Napoleon (Feb. 27th, 1813), the Czar had undertaken to
restore the Prussian monarchy to an extent equal to that which it had
possessed in 1805. It was known before the opening of the Congress that the
Czar proposed to do this by handing over to King Frederick William the
whole of Saxony, whose Sovereign, unlike his colleagues in the Rhenish
Confederacy, had supported Napoleon up to his final overthrow at Leipzig.
Since that time the King of Saxony had been held a prisoner, and his
dominions had been occupied by the Allies. The Saxon question had thus
already gained the attention of all the European Governments, and each of
the Ministers now at Vienna brought with him some more or less distinct
view upon the subject. Castlereagh, who was instructed to foster the union
of Prussia and Austria against Alexander's threatening ambition, was
willing that Prussia should annex Saxony if in return it would assist him
in keeping Russia out of Warsaw: [215] Metternich disliked the annexation,
but offered no serious objection, provided that in Western Germany Prussia
would keep to the north of the Main: Talleyrand alone made the defence of
the King of Saxony the very centre of his policy, and subordinated all
other aims to this. His instructions, like those of Castlereagh, gave
priority to the Polish question; [216] but Talleyrand saw that Saxony, not
Poland, was the lever by which he could throw half of Europe on to the side
of France; and before the four Allied Courts had come to any single
conclusion, the French statesman had succeeded, on what at first passed for
a subordinate point, in breaking up their concert.

[Talleyrand's action on Saxony.]

For a while the Ministers of Austria, Prussia, and England appeared to be
acting in harmony; and throughout the month of October all three
endeavoured to shake the purpose of Alexander regarding Warsaw. [217]
Talleyrand, however, foresaw that the efforts of Prussia in this direction
would not last very long, and he wrote to Louis XVIII. asking for his
permission to make a definite offer of armed assistance to Austria in case
of need. Events took the turn which Talleyrand expected. Early in November
the King of Prussia completely yielded to Alexander, and ordered Hardenberg
to withdraw his opposition to the Russian project. Metternich thus found
himself abandoned on the Polish question by Prussia; and at the same moment
the answer of King Louis XVIII. arrived, and enabled Talleyrand to assure
the Austrian Minister that, if resistance to Russia and Prussia should
become necessary, he might count on the support of a French army.
Metternich now completely changed his position on the Saxon question, and
wrote to Hardenberg (Dec. 10) stating that, inasmuch as Prussia had chosen
to sacrifice Warsaw, the Emperor Francis absolutely forbade the annexation
of more than a fifth part of the kingdom of Saxony. Castlereagh, disgusted
with the obstinacy of Russia and the subserviency of King Frederick
William, forgave Talleyrand for not supporting him earlier, and cordially
entered into this new plan for thwarting the Northern Powers. The leading
member of the late Rhenish Confederacy, the King of Bavaria, threw himself
with eagerness into the struggle against Prussia and against German unity.
In proportion as Stein and the patriots of 1813 urged the claims of German
nationality under Prussian leadership against the forfeited rights of a
Court which had always served on Napoleon's side, the politicians of the
Rhenish Confederacy declaimed against the ambition and the Jacobinism of
Prussia, and called upon Europe to defend the united principles of
hereditary right and of national independence in the person of the King of
Saxony.

[Theory of Legitimacy.]

Talleyrand's object was attained. He had isolated Russia and Prussia, and
had drawn to his own side not only England and Austria but the whole body
of the minor German States. Nothing was wanting but a phrase, or an idea,
which should consecrate the new league in the opinion of Europe as a league
of principle, and bind the Allies, in matters still remaining open, to the
support of the interests of the House of Bourbon. Talleyrand had made his
theory ready. In notes to Castlereagh and Metternich, [218] he declared
that the whole drama of the last twenty years had been one great struggle
between revolution and established right, a struggle at first between
Republicanism and Monarchy, afterwards between usurping dynasties and
legitimate dynasties. The overthrow of Napoleon had been the victory of the
principle of legitimacy; the task of England and Austria was now to extend
the work of restitution to all Europe, and to defend the principle against
new threatened aggressions. In the note to Castlereagh, Talleyrand added a
practical corollary. "To finish the revolution, the principle of legitimacy
must triumph without exception. The kingdom of Saxony must be preserved;
the kingdom of Naples must return to its legitimate king."

[Alliance against Russia and Prussia, Jan. 3, 1815.]

As an historical summary of the Napoleonic wars, Talleyrand's doctrine was
baseless. No one but Pitt had cared about the fate of the Bourbons; no one
would have hesitated to make peace with Napoleon, if Napoleon would have
accepted terms of peace. The manifesto was not, however, intended to meet a
scientific criticism. In the English Foreign Office it was correctly
described as a piece of drollery; and Metternich was too familiar with the
language of principles himself to attach much meaning to it in the mouth of
anyone else. Talleyrand, however, kept a grave countenance. With inimitable
composure the old Minister of the Directory wrote to Louis XVIII. lamenting
that Castlereagh did not appear to care much about the principle of
legitimacy, and in fact did not quite comprehend it; [219] and he added his
fear that this moral dimness on the part of the English Minister arose from
the dealing of his countrymen with Tippoo Sahib. But for Europe at
large,--for the English Liberal party, who looked upon the Saxons and the
Prussians as two distinct nations, and for the Tories, who forgot that
Napoleon had made the Elector of Saxony a king; for the Emperor of Austria,
who had no wish to see the Prussian frontier brought nearer to Prague;
above all, for the minor German courts who dreaded every approach towards
German unity,--Talleyrand's watchword was the best that could have been
invented. His counsel prospered. On the 3rd of January, 1815, after a rash
threat of war uttered by Hardenberg, a secret treaty [220] was signed by
the representatives of France, England, and Austria, pledging these Powers
to take the field, if necessary, against Russia and Prussia in defence of
the principles of the Peace of Paris. The plan of the campaign was drawn
up, the number of the forces fixed. Bavaria had already armed; Piedmont,
Hanover, and even the Ottoman Porte, were named as future members of the
alliance.

[Compromise on Polish and Saxon questions.]

[Prussia gains Rhenish Provinces.]

It would perhaps be unfair to the French Minister to believe that he
actually desired to kindle a war on this gigantic scale. Talleyrand had
not, like Napoleon, a love for war for its own sake. His object was rather
to raise France from its position as a conquered and isolated Power; to
surround it with allies; to make the House of Bourbon the representatives
of a policy interesting to a great part of Europe; and, having thus undone
the worst results of Napoleon's rule, to trust to some future complication
for the recovery of Belgium and the frontier of the Rhine. Nor was
Talleyrand's German policy adopted solely as the instrument of a passing
intrigue. He appears to have had a true sense of the capacity of Prussia to
transform Germany into a great military nation; and the policy of alliance
with Austria and protection of the minor States which he pursued in 1814
was that which he had advocated throughout his career. The conclusion of
the secret treaty of January 3rd marked the definite success of his plans.
France was forthwith admitted into the council hitherto known as that of
the Four Courts, and from this time its influence visibly affected the
action of Russia and Prussia, reports of the secret treaty having reached
the Czar immediately after its signature. [221] The spirit of compromise
now began to animate the Congress. Alexander had already won a virtual
decision in his favour on the Polish question, but he abated something of
his claims, and while gaining the lion's share of the Duchy of Warsaw, he
ultimately consented that Cracow, which threatened the Austrian frontier,
should be formed into an independent Republic, and that Prussia should
receive the fortresses of Dantzic and Thorn on the Vistula, with the
district lying between Thorn and the border of Silesia. [222] This was
little for Alexander to abandon; on the Saxon question the allies of
Talleyrand gained most that they demanded. The King of Saxony was restored
to his throne, and permitted to retain Dresden and about half of his
dominions. Prussia received the remainder. In lieu of a further expansion
in Saxony, Prussia was awarded territory on the left bank of the Rhine,
which, with its recovered Westphalian provinces, restored the monarchy to
an area and population equal to that which it had possessed in 1805. But
the dominion given to Prussia beyond the Rhine, though considered at the
time to be a poor equivalent for the second half of Saxony, was in reality
a gift of far greater value. It made Prussia, in defence of its own soil,
the guardian and bulwark of Germany against France. It brought an element
into the life of the State in striking contrast with the aristocratic and
Protestant type predominant in the older Prussian provinces,--a Catholic
population, liberal in its political opinions, and habituated by twenty
years' union with France to the democratic tendencies of French social
life. It gave to Prussia something more in common with Bavaria and the
South, and qualified it, as it had not been qualified before, for its
future task of uniting Germany under its own leadership.

[Napoleon leaves Elba, Feb. 26.]

[Lands in France, March 1.]

The Polish and Saxon difficulties, which had threatened the peace of
Europe, were virtually settled before the end of the month of January.
Early in February Lord Castlereagh left Vienna, to give an account of his
labours and to justify his policy before the English House of Commons. His
place at the Congress was taken by the Duke of Wellington. There remained
the question of Naples, the formation of a Federal Constitution for
Germany, and several matters of minor political importance, none of which
endangered the good understanding of the Powers. Suddenly the action of the
Congress was interrupted by the most startling intelligence. On the night
of March 6th Metternich was roused from sleep to receive a despatch
informing him that Napoleon had quitted Elba. The news had taken eight days
to reach Vienna. Napoleon had set sail on the 26th of February. In the
silence of his exile he had watched the progress of events in France: he
had convinced himself of the strength of the popular reaction against the
priests and emigrants; and the latest intelligence which he had received
from Vienna led him to believe that the Congress itself was on the point of
breaking up. There was at least some chance of success in an attempt to
regain his throne; and, the decision once formed, Napoleon executed it with
characteristic audacity and despatch. Talleyrand, on hearing that Napoleon
had left Elba, declared that he would only cross into Italy and there raise
the standard of Italian independence: instead of doing this, Napoleon made
straight for France, with the whole of his guard, eleven hundred in number,
embarked on a little flotilla of seven ships. The voyage lasted three days:
no French or English vessels capable of offering resistance met the
squadron. On the 1st of March Napoleon landed at the bay of Jouan, three
miles to the west of Antibes. A detachment of his guards called upon the
commandant of Antibes to deliver up the town to the Emperor; the commandant
refused, and the troops bivouacked that evening, with Napoleon among them,
in the olive-woods by the shore of the Mediterranean.

[Moves on Grenoble.]

[Troops at La Mure.]

Before daybreak began the march that was to end in Paris. Instead of
following the coast road of Provence, which would have brought him to
Toulon and Marseilles, where most of the population were fiercely Royalist,
[223] and where Massena and other great officers might have offered
resistance, Napoleon struck northwards into the mountains, intending to
descend upon Lyons by way of Grenoble. There were few troops in this
district, and no generals capable of influencing them. The peasantry of
Dauphiné were in great part holders of land that had been taken from the
Church and the nobles: they were exasperated against the Bourbons, and,
like the peasantry of France generally, they identified the glory of the
country which they loved with the name and the person of Napoleon. As the
little band penetrated into the mountains the villagers thronged around
them, and by offering their carts and horses enabled Napoleon to march
continuously over steep and snowy roads at the rate of forty miles a day.
No troops appeared to dispute these mountain passages: it was not until the
close of the fifth day's march that Napoleon's mounted guard, pressing on
in front of the marching column, encountered, in the village of La Mure,
twenty miles south of Grenoble, a regiment of infantry wearing the white
cockade of the House of Bourbon. The two bodies of troops mingled and
conversed in the street: the officer commanding the royal infantry fearing
the effect on his men, led them back on the road towards Grenoble.
Napoleon's lancers also retired, and the night passed without further
communication. At noon on the following day the lancers, again advancing
towards Grenoble, found the infantry drawn up to defend the road. They
called out that Napoleon was at hand, and begged the infantry not to fire.
Presently Napoleon's column came in sight; one of his _aides-de-camp_
rode to the front of the royal troops, addressed them, and pointed out
Napoleon. The regiment was already wavering, the officer commanding had
already given the order of retreat, when the men saw their Emperor
advancing towards them. They saw his face, they heard his voice: in another
moment the ranks were broken, and the soldiers were pressing with shouts
and tears round the leader whom nature had created with such transcendent
capacity for evil, and endowed with such surpassing power of attracting
love.

[Enters Grenoble, March 7.]

[Declaration of his purpose.]

Everything was decided by this first encounter. "In six days," said
Napoleon, "we shall be in the Tuileries." The next pledge of victory came
swiftly. Colonel Labédoyère, commander of the 7th Regiment of the Line, had
openly declared for Napoleon in Grenoble, and appeared on the road at the
head of his men a few hours after the meeting at La Mure. Napoleon reached
Grenoble the same evening. The town had been in tumult all day. The Préfet
fled: the general in command sent part of his troops away, and closed the
gates. On Napoleon's approach the population thronged the ramparts with
torches; the gates were burst open; Napoleon was borne through the town in
triumph by a wild and intermingled crowd of soldiers and workpeople. The
whole mass of the poorer classes of the town welcomed him with enthusiasm:
the middle classes, though hostile to the Church and the Bourbons, saw too
clearly the dangers to France involved in Napoleon's return to feel the
same joy. [224] They remained in the background, neither welcoming Napoleon
nor interfering with the welcome offered him by others. Thus the night
passed. On the morning of the next day Napoleon received the magistrates
and principal inhabitants of the town, and addressed them in terms which
formed the substance of every subsequent declaration of his policy. "He had
come," he said, "to save France from the outrages of the returning nobles;
to secure to the peasant the possession of his land; to uphold the rights
won in 1789 against a minority which sought to re-establish the privileges
of caste and the feudal burdens of the last century. France had made trial
of the Bourbons: it had done well to do so; but the experiment had failed.
The Bourbon monarchy had proved incapable of detaching itself from its
worst supports, the priests and nobles: only the dynasty which owed its
throne to the Revolution could maintain the social work of the Revolution.
As for himself, he had learnt wisdom by misfortune. He renounced conquest.
He should give France peace without and liberty within. He accepted the
Treaty of Paris and the frontiers of 1792. Freed from the necessities which
had forced him in earlier days to found a military Empire, he recognised
and bowed to the desire of the French nation for constitutional government.
He should henceforth govern only as a constitutional sovereign, and seek
only to leave a constitutional crown to his son."

[Feeling of the various classes.]

[Napoleon enters Lyons, March 10.]

This language was excellently chosen. It satisfied the peasants and the
workmen, who wished to see the nobles crushed, and it showed at least a
comprehension of the feelings uppermost in the minds of the wealthier and
more educated middle classes, the longing for peace, and the aspiration
towards political liberty. It was also calculated to temper the unwelcome
impression that an exiled ruler was being forced upon France by the
soldiery. The military movement was indeed overwhelmingly decisive, yet the
popular movement was scarcely less so. The Royalists were furious, but
impotent to act; thoughtful men in all classes held back, with sad
apprehensions of returning war and calamity; [225] but from the time when
Napoleon left Grenoble, the nation at large was on his side. There was
nowhere an effective centre of resistance. The Préfets and other civil
officers appointed under the Empire still for the most part held their
posts; they knew themselves to be threatened by the Bourbonist reaction,
but they had not yet been displaced; their professions of loyalty to Louis
XVIII. were forced, their instincts of obedience to their old master, even
if they wished to have done with him, profound. From this class, whose
cowardice and servility find too many parallels in history, [226] Napoleon
had little to fear. Among the marshals and higher officers charged with the
defence of the monarchy, those who sincerely desired to serve the Bourbons
found themselves powerless in the midst of their troops. Macdonald, who
commanded at Lyons, had to fly from his men, in order to escape being made
a prisoner. The Count of Artois, who had come to join him, discovered that
the only service he could render to the cause of his family was to take
himself out of sight. Napoleon entered Lyons on the 10th of March, and now
formally resumed his rank and functions as Emperor. His first edicts
renewed that appeal to the ideas and passions of the Revolution which had
been the key-note of every one of his public utterances since leaving Elba.
Treating the episode of Bourbon restoration as null and void, the edicts of
Lyons expelled from France every emigrant who had returned without the
permission of the Republic or the Emperor; they drove from the army the
whole mass of officers intruded by the Government of Louis XVIII.; they
invalidated every appointment and every dismissal made in the magistracy
since the 1st of April, 1814; and, reverting to the law of the Constituent
Assembly of 1789, abolished all nobility except that which had been
conferred by the Emperor himself.

[Marshal Ney.]

[The Chambers in Paris.]

[Napoleon enters Paris, March 20.]

From this time all was over. Marshal Ney, who had set out from Paris
protesting that Napoleon deserved to be confined in an iron cage, [227]
found, when at some distance from Lyons, that the nation and army were on
the side of the Emperor, and proclaimed his own adherence to him in an
address to his troops. The two Chambers of Legislature, which had been
prorogued, were summoned by King Louis XVIII. as soon as the news of
Napoleon's landing reached the capital. The Chambers met on the 13th of
March. The constitutionalist party, though they had opposed various
measures of King Louis' Government as reactionary, were sincerely loyal to
the Charta, and hastened, in the cause of constitutional liberty, to offer
to the King their cordial support in resisting Bonaparte's military
despotism. The King came down to the Legislative Chamber, and, in a scene
concerted with his brother, the Count of Artois, made, with great dramatic
effect, a declaration of fidelity to the Constitution. Lafayette and the
chiefs of the Parliamentary Liberals hoped to raise a sufficient force from
the National Guard of Paris to hold Napoleon in check. The project,
however, came to nought. The National Guard, which represented the middle
classes of Paris, was decidedly in favour of the Charta and Constitutional
Government; but it had no leaders, no fighting-organisation, and no
military spirit. The regular troops who were sent out against Napoleon
mounted the tricolor as soon as they were out of sight of Paris, and joined
their comrades. The courtiers passed from threats to consternation and
helplessness. On the night of March 19th King Louis fled from the
Tuileries. Napoleon entered the capital the next evening, welcomed with
acclamations by the soldiers and populace, but not with that general
rejoicing which had met him at Lyons, and at many of the smaller towns
through which he had passed.

[Congress of Vienna outlaws Napoleon.]

[Napoleon's preparations for defence.]

France was won: Europe remained behind. On the 13th of March the Ministers
of all the Great Powers, assembled at Vienna, published a manifesto
denouncing Napoleon Bonaparte as the common enemy of mankind, and declaring
him an outlaw. The whole political structure which had been reared with so
much skill by Talleyrand vanished away. France was again alone, with all
Europe combined against it. Affairs reverted to the position in which they
had stood in the month of March, 1814, when the Treaty of Chaumont was
signed, which bound the Powers to sustain their armed concert against
France, if necessary, for a period of twenty years. That treaty was now
formally renewed. [228] The four great Powers undertook to employ their
whole available resources against Bonaparte until he should be absolutely
unable to create disturbance, and each pledged itself to keep permanently
in the field a force of at least a hundred and fifty thousand men. The
presence of the Duke of Wellington at Vienna enabled the Allies to decide
without delay upon the general plan for their invasion of France. It was
resolved to group the allied troops in three masses; one, composed of the
English and the Prussians under Wellington and Blücher, to enter France by
the Netherlands; the two others, commanded by the Czar and Prince
Schwarzenberg, to advance from the middle and upper Rhine. Nowhere was
there the least sign of political indecision. The couriers sent by Napoleon
with messages of amity to the various Courts were turned back at the
frontiers with their despatches undelivered. It was in vain for the Emperor
to attempt to keep up any illusion that peace was possible. After a brief
interval he himself acquainted France with the true resolution of his
enemies. The most strenuous efforts were made for defence. The old soldiers
were called from their homes. Factories of arms and ammunition began their
hurried work in the principal towns. The Emperor organised with an energy
and a command of detail never surpassed at any period of his life; the
nature of the situation lent a new character to his genius, and evoked in
the organisation of systematic defence all that imagination and resource
which had dazzled the world in his schemes of invasion and surprise. Nor,
as hitherto, was the nation to be the mere spectator of his exploits. The
population of France, its National Guard, its _levée en masse_, as
well as its armies and its Emperor, was to drive the foreigner from French
soil. Every operation of defensive warfare, from the accumulation of
artillery round the capital to the gathering of forest-guards and
free-shooters in the thickets of the Vosges and the Ardennes, occupied in
its turn the thoughts of Napoleon. [229] Had France shared his resolution
or his madness, had the Allies found at the outset no chief superior to
their Austrian leader in 1814, the war on which they were now about to
enter would have been one of immense difficulty and risk, its ultimate
issue perhaps doubtful.

[Campaign and fall of Murat, April, 1815]

Before Napoleon or his adversaries were ready to move, hostilities broke
out in Italy. Murat, King of Naples, had during the winter of 1814 been
represented at Vienna by an envoy: he was aware of the efforts made by
Talleyrand to expel him from his throne, and knew that the Government of
Great Britain, convinced of his own treachery during the pretended
combination with the Allies in 1814, now inclined to act with France. [230]
The instinct of self-preservation led him to risk everything in raising the
standard of Italian independence, rather than await the loss of his
kingdom; and the return of Napoleon precipitated his fall. At the moment
when Napoleon was about to leave Elba, Murat, who knew his intention, asked
the permission of Austria to move a body of troops through Northern Italy
for the alleged purpose of attacking the French Bourbons, who were
preparing to restore his rival, Ferdinand. Austria declared that it should
treat the entry either of French or of Neapolitan troops into Northern
Italy as an act of war. Murat, as soon as Napoleon's landing in France
became known, protested to the Allies that he intended to remain faithful
to them, but he also sent assurances of friendship to Napoleon, and
forthwith invaded the Papal States. He acted without waiting for Napoleon's
instructions, and probably with the intention of winning all Italy for
himself even if Napoleon should victoriously re-establish his Empire. On
the 10th of April, Austria declared war against him. Murat pressed forward
and entered Bologna, now openly proclaiming the unity and independence of
Italy. The feeling of the towns and of the educated classes generally
seemed to be in his favour, but no national rising took place. After some
indecisive encounters with the Austrians, Murat retreated. As he fell back
towards the Neapolitan frontier, his troops melted away. The enterprise
ended in swift and total ruin; and on the 22nd of May an English and
Austrian force took possession of the city of Naples in the name of King
Ferdinand. Murat, leaving his family behind him, fled to France, and sought
in vain to gain a place by the side of Napoleon in his last great struggle,
and to retrieve as a soldier the honour which he had lost as a king. [231]

[The Acte Additionnel, April 23, 1815.]

In the midst of his preparations for war with all Europe, Napoleon found it
necessary to give some satisfaction to that desire for liberty which was
again so strong in France. He would gladly have deferred all political
change until victory over the foreigner had restored his own undisputed
ascendency over men's minds; he was resolved at any rate not to be harassed
by a Constituent Assembly, like that of 1789, at the moment of his greatest
peril; and the action of King Louis XVIII. in granting liberty by Charta
gave him a precedent for creating a Constitution by an Edict supplementary
to the existing laws of the Empire. Among the Liberal politicians who had
declared for King Louis XVIII. while Napoleon was approaching Paris, one of
the most eminent was Benjamin Constant, who had published an article
attacking the Emperor with great severity on the very day when he entered
the capital. Napoleon now invited Constant to the Tuileries, assured him
that he no longer either desired or considered it possible to maintain an
absolute rule in France, and requested Constant himself to undertake the
task of drawing up a Constitution. Constant, believing the Emperor to be in
some degree sincere, accepted the proposals made to him, and, at the cost
of some personal consistency, entered upon the work, in which Napoleon by
no means allowed him entire freedom. [232] The result of Constant's labours
was the Decree known as the Acte Additionnel of 1815. The leading
provisions of this Act resembled those of the Charta: both professed to
establish a representative Government and the responsibility of Ministers;
both contained the usual phrases guaranteeing freedom of religion and
security of person and property. The principal differences were that the
Chamber of Peers was now made wholly hereditary, and that the Emperor
absolutely refused to admit the clause of the Charta abolishing
confiscation as a penalty for political offences. On the other hand,
Constant definitely extinguished the censorship of the Press, and provided
some real guarantee for the free expression of opinion by enacting that
Press-offences should be judged only in the ordinary Jury-courts. Constant
was sanguine enough to believe that the document which he had composed
would reduce Napoleon to the condition of a constitutional king. As a
Liberal statesman, he pressed the Emperor to submit the scheme to a
Representative Assembly, where it could be examined and amended. This
Napoleon refused to do, preferring to resort to the fiction of a Plébiscite
for the purpose of procuring some kind of national sanction for his Edict.
The Act was published on the 23rd of April, 1815. Voting lists were then
opened in all the Departments, and the population of France, most of whom
were unable to read or write, were invited to answer Yes or No to the
question whether they approved of Napoleon's plan for giving his subjects
Parliamentary government.

[The Chambers summoned for June.]

There would have been no difficulty in obtaining some millions of votes for
any absurdity that the Emperor might be pleased to lay before the French
people; but among the educated minority who had political theories of their
own, the publication of this reform by Edict produced the worst possible
impression. No stronger evidence, it was said, could have been given of the
Emperor's insincerity than the dictatorial form in which he affected to
bestow liberty upon France. Scarcely a voice was raised in favour of the
new Constitution. The measure had in fact failed of its effect. Napoleon's
object was to excite an enthusiasm that should lead the entire nation, the
educated classes as well as the peasantry, to rally round him in a struggle
with the foreigner for life or death: he found, on the contrary, that he
had actually injured his cause. The hostility of public opinion was so
serious that Napoleon judged it wise to make advances to the Liberal party,
and sent his brother Joseph to Lafayette, to ascertain on what terms he
might gain his support. [233] Lafayette, strongly condemning the form of
the Acte Additionnel, stated that the Emperor could only restore public
confidence by immediately convoking the Chambers. This was exactly what
Napoleon desired to avoid, until he had defeated the English and Prussians;
nor in fact had the vote of the nation accepting the new Constitution yet
been given. But the urgency of the need overcame the Emperor's inclinations
and the forms of law. Lafayette's demand was granted: orders were issued
for an immediate election, and the meeting of the Chambers fixed for the
beginning of June, a few days earlier than the probable departure of the
Emperor to open hostilities on the northern frontier.

[Elections.]

Lafayette's counsel had been given in sincerity, but Napoleon gained little
by following it. The nation at large had nothing of the faith in the
elections which was felt by Lafayette and his friends. In some places not a
single person appeared at the poll: in most, the candidates were elected by
a few scores of voters. The Royalists absented themselves on principle: the
population generally thought only of the coming war, and let the professed
politicians conduct the business of the day by themselves. Among the
deputies chosen there were several who had sat in the earlier Assemblies of
the Revolution; and, mingled with placemen and soldiers of the Empire, a
considerable body of men whose known object was to reduce Napoleon's power.
One interest alone was unrepresented--that of the Bourbon family, which so
lately seemed to have been called to the task of uniting the old and the
new France around itself.

[Champ de Mai.]

Napoleon, troubling himself little about the elections, laboured
incessantly at his preparations for war, and by the end of May two hundred
thousand men were ready to take the field. The delay of the Allies, though
necessary, enabled their adversary to take up the offensive. It was the
intention of the Emperor to leave a comparatively small force to watch the
eastern frontier, and himself, at the head of a hundred and twenty-five
thousand men, to fall upon Wellington and Blücher in the Netherlands, and
crush them before they could unite their forces. With this object the
greater part of the army was gradually massed on the northern roads at
points between Paris, Lille, and Maubeuge. Two acts of State remained to be
performed by the Emperor before he quitted the capital; the inauguration of
the new Constitution and the opening of the Chambers of Legislature. The
first, which had been fixed for the 26th of May, and announced as a revival
of the old Frankish Champ de Mai, was postponed till the beginning of the
following month. On the 1st of June the solemnity was performed with
extraordinary pomp and splendour, on that same Champ de Mars where,
twenty-five years before, the grandest and most affecting of all the
festivals of the Revolution, the Act of Federation, had been celebrated by
King Louis XVI. and his people. Deputations from each of the constituencies
of France, from the army, and from every public body, surrounded the
Emperor in a great amphitheatre enclosed at the southern end of the plain:
outside there were ranged twenty thousand soldiers of the Guard and other
regiments; and behind them spread the dense crowd of Paris. When the total
of the votes given in the Plébiscite had been summed up and declared, the
Emperor took the oath to the Constitution, and delivered one of his
masterpieces of political rhetoric. The great officers of State took the
oath in their turn: mass was celebrated, and Napoleon, leaving the enclosed
space, then presented their standards to the soldiery in the Champ de Mars,
addressing some brief, soul-stirring word to each regiment as it passed.
The spectacle was magnificent, but except among the soldiers themselves a
sense of sadness and disappointment passed over the whole assembly. The
speech of the Emperor showed that he was still the despot at heart: the
applause was forced: all was felt to be ridiculous, all unreal. [234]

[Plan of Napoleon.]

The opening of the Legislative Chambers took place a few days later, and on
the night of the 11th of June Napoleon started for the northern frontier.
The situation of the forces opposed to him in this his last campaign
strikingly resembled that which had given him his first Italian victory in
1796. Then the Austrians and Sardinians, resting on opposite bases, covered
the approaches to the Sardinian capital, and invited the assailant to break
through their centre and drive the two defeated wings along diverging and
severed paths of retreat. Now the English and the Prussians covered
Brussels, the English resting westward on Ostend, the Prussians eastward on
Cologne, and barely joining hands in the middle of a series of posts nearly
eighty miles long. The Emperor followed the strategy of 1796. He determined
to enter Belgium by the central road of Charleroi, and to throw his main
force upon Blücher, whose retreat, if once he should be severed from his
colleague, would carry him eastwards towards Liège, and place him outside
the area of hostilities round Brussels. Blücher driven eastwards, Napoleon
believed that he might not only push the English commander out of Brussels,
but possibly, by a movement westwards, intercept him from the sea and cut
off his communication with Great Britain. [235]

[Situation of the armies.]

On the night of the 13th of June, the French army, numbering a hundred and
twenty-nine thousand men, had completed its concentration, and lay gathered
round Beaumont and Philippeville. Wellington was at Brussels; his troops,
which consisted of thirty-five thousand English and about sixty thousand
Dutch, Germans, and Belgians, [236] guarded the country west of the
Charleroi road as far as Oudenarde on the Scheldt. Blücher's headquarters
were at Namur; he had a hundred and twenty thousand Prussians under his
command, who were posted between Charleroi, Namur, and Liège. Both the
English and Prussian generals were aware that very large French forces had
been brought close to the frontier, but Wellington imagined Napoleon to be
still in Paris, and believed that the war would be opened by a forward
movement of Prince Schwarzenberg into Alsace. It was also his fixed
conviction that if Napoleon entered Belgium he would throw himself not upon
the Allied centre, but upon the extreme right of the English towards the
sea. [237] In the course of the 14th, the Prussian outposts reported that
the French were massed round Beaumont: later in the same day there were
clear signs of an advance upon Charleroi. Early next morning the attack on
Charleroi began. The Prussians were driven out of it, and retreated in the
direction of Ligny, whither Blücher now brought up all the forces within
his reach. It was unknown to Wellington until the afternoon of the 15th
that the French had made any movement whatever: on receiving the news of
their advance, he ordered a concentrating movement of all his forces
eastward, in order to cover the road to Brussels and to co-operate with the
Prussian general. A small division of the British army took post at Quatre
Bras that night, and on the morning of the 16th Wellington himself rode to
Ligny, and promised his assistance to Blücher, whose troops were already
drawn up and awaiting the attack of the French.

[Ligny, June 16.]

But the march of the invader was too rapid for the English to reach the
field of battle. Already, on returning to Quatre Bras in the afternoon,
Wellington found his own troops hotly engaged. Napoleon had sent Ney along
the road to Brussels to hold the English in check and, if possible, to
enter the capital, while he himself, with seventy thousand men, attacked
Blücher. The Prussian general had succeeded in bringing up a force superior
in number to his assailants; but the French army, which consisted in a
great part of veterans recalled to the ranks, was of finer quality than any
that Napoleon had led since the campaign of Moscow, and it was in vain that
Blücher and his soldiers met them with all the gallantry and even more than
the fury of 1813. There was murderous hand-to-hand fighting in the villages
where the Prussians had taken up their position: now the defenders, now the
assailants gave way: but at last the Prussians, with a loss of thirteen
thousand men, withdrew from the combat, and left the battle-field in
possession of the enemy. If the conquerors had followed up the pursuit that
night, the cause of the Allies would have been ruined. The effort of battle
had, however, been too great, or the estimate which Napoleon made of his
adversary's rallying power was too low. He seems to have assumed that
Blücher must necessarily retreat eastwards towards Namur; while in reality
the Prussian was straining every nerve to escape northwards, and to restore
his severed communication with his ally.

[Quatre Bras, June 16.]

At Quatre Bras the issue of the day was unfavourable to the French. Ney
missed his opportunity of seizing this important point before it was
occupied by the British in any force; and when the battle began the British
infantry-squares unflinchingly bore the attack of Ney's cavalry, and drove
them back again and again with their volleys, until successive
reinforcements had made the numbers on both sides even. At the close of the
day the French marshal, baffled and disheartened, drew back his troops to
their original position. The army-corps of General d'Erlon, which Napoleon
had placed between himself and Ney in order that it might act wherever
there was the greatest need, was first withdrawn from Ney to assist at
Ligny, and then, as it was entering into action at Ligny, recalled to
Quatre Bras, where it arrived only after the battle was over. Its presence
in either field would probably have altered the issue of the campaign.

[Prussian movement.]

Blücher, on the night of the 16th, lay disabled and almost senseless; his
lieutenant, Gneisenau, not only saved the army, but repaired, and more than
repaired, all its losses by a memorable movement northwards that brought
the Prussians again into communication with the British. Napoleon, after an
unexplained inaction during the night of the 16th and the morning of the
17th, committed the pursuit of the Prussians to Marshal Grouchy, ordering
him never to let the enemy out of his sight; but Blücher and Gneisenau had
already made their escape, and had concentrated so large a body in the
neighbourhood of Wavre, that Grouchy could not now have prevented a force
superior to his own from uniting with the English, even if he had known the
exact movements of each of the three armies, and, with a true presentiment
of his master's danger, had attempted to rejoin him on the morrow.

Wellington, who had both anticipated that Blücher would be beaten at Ligny,
and assured himself that the Prussian would make good his retreat
northwards, moved on the 17th from Quatre Bras to Waterloo, now followed by
Napoleon and the mass of the French army. At Waterloo he drew up for
battle, trusting to the promise of the gallant Prussian that he would
advance in that direction on the following day. Blücher, in so doing,
exposed himself to the risk of having his communications severed and half
his army captured, if Napoleon should either change the direction of his
main attack and bend eastwards, or should crush Wellington before the
arrival of the Prussians, and seize the road from Brussels to Louvain with
a victorious force. Such considerations would have driven a commander like
Schwarzenberg back to Liège, but they were thrown to the winds by Blücher
and Gneisenau. In just reliance on his colleague's energy, Wellington, with
thirty thousand English and forty thousand Dutch, Germans, and Belgians,
awaited the attack of Napoleon, at the head of seventy-four thousand
veteran soldiers. The English position extended two miles along the brow of
a gentle slope of cornfields, and crossed at right angles the great road
from Charleroi to Brussels; the château of Hugomont, some way down the
slope on the right, and the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, on the high-road
in front of the left centre, served as fortified outposts. The French
formed on the opposite and corresponding slope; the country was so open
that, but for the heavy rain on the evening of the 17th, artillery could
have moved over almost any part of the field with perfect freedom.

[Waterloo, June 18.]

At eleven o'clock on Sunday, the 18th of June, the battle began. Napoleon,
unconscious of the gathering of the Prussians on his right, and
unacquainted with the obstinacy of English troops, believed the victory
already thrown into his hands by Wellington's hardihood. His plan was to
burst through the left of the English line near La Haye Sainte, and thus to
drive Wellington westwards and place the whole French army between its two
defeated enemies. The first movement was an assault on the buildings of
Hugomont, made for the purpose of diverting Wellington from the true point
of attack. The English commander sent detachments to this outpost
sufficient to defend it, but no more. After two hours' indecisive fighting
and a heavy cannonade, Ney ordered D'Erlon's corps forward to the great
onslaught on the centre and left. As the French column pressed up the
slope, General Picton charged at the head of a brigade. The English leader
was among the first to fall, but his men drove the enemy back, and at the
same time the Scots Greys, sweeping down from the left, cut right through
both the French infantry and their cavalry supports, and, charging far up
the opposite slope, reached and disabled forty of Ney's guns, before they
were in their turn overpowered and driven back by the French dragoons. The
English lost heavily, but the onslaught of the enemy had totally failed,
and thousands of prisoners remained behind. There was a pause in the
infantry combat; and again the artillery of Napoleon battered the English
centre, while Ney marshalled fresh troops for a new and greater effort.
About two o'clock the attack was renewed on the left. La Haye Sainte was
carried, and vast masses of cavalry pressed up the English slope, and rode
over the plateau to the very front of the English line. Wellington sent no
cavalry to meet them, but trusted, and trusted justly, to the patience and
endurance of the infantry themselves, who, hour after hour, held their
ground, unmoved by the rush of the enemy's horse and the terrible spectacle
of havoc and death in their own ranks; for all through the afternoon the
artillery of Napoleon poured its fire wherever the line was left open, or
the assault of the French cavalry rolled back.

At last the approach of the Prussians visibly told. Napoleon had seen their
vanguard early in the day, and had detached Count Lobau with seven thousand
men to hold them in check; but the little Prussian corps gradually swelled
to an army, and as the day wore on it was found necessary to reinforce
Count Lobau with some of the finest divisions of the French infantry. Still
reports came in of new Prussian columns approaching. At six o'clock
Napoleon prepared to throw his utmost strength into one grand final attack
upon the British, and to sweep them away before the battle became general
with their allies. Two columns of the Imperial Guard, supported by every
available regiment, moved from the right and left towards the English
centre. The column on the right, unchecked by the storm of Wellington's
cannon-shot from front and flank, pushed to the very ridge of the British
slope, and came within forty yards of the cross-road where the English
Guard lay hidden. Then Wellington gave the order to fire. The French
recoiled; the English advanced at the charge, and drove the enemy down the
hill, returning themselves for a while to their own position. The left
column of the French Guard attacked with equal bravery, and met with the
same fate. Then, while the French were seeking to re-form at the bottom of
the hill, Wellington commanded a general advance. The whole line of the
British infantry and cavalry swept down into the valley; before them the
baffled and sorely-stricken host of the enemy broke into a confused mass;
only the battalions of the old Guard, which had halted in the rear of the
attacking columns, remained firm together. Blücher, from the east, dealt
the death-blow, and, pressing on to the road by which the French were
escaping, turned the defeat into utter ruin and dispersion. The pursuit,
which Wellington's troops were too exhausted to attempt, was carried on
throughout the night by the Prussian cavalry with memorable ardour and
terrible success. Before the morning the French army was no more than a
rabble of fugitives.

[Napoleon at Paris.]

[Allies enter Paris, July 7.]

Napoleon fled to Philippeville, and made some ineffectual attempts both
there and at Laon to fix a rallying point for his vanished forces. From
Laon he hastened to Paris, which he reached at sunrise on the 21st. His
bulletin describing the defeat of Waterloo was read to the Chambers on the
same morning. The Lower House immediately declared against the Emperor, and
demanded his abdication. Unless Napoleon seized the dictatorship his cause
was lost. Carnot and Lucien Bonaparte urged him to dismiss the Chambers and
to stake all on his own strong will; but they found no support among the
Emperor's counsellors. On the next day Napoleon abdicated in favour of his
son. But it was in vain that he attempted to impose an absent successor
upon France, and to maintain his own Ministers in power. It was equally in
vain that Carnot, filled with the memories of 1793, called upon the
Assembly to continue the war and to provide for the defence of Paris. A
Provisional Government entered upon office. Days were spent in inaction and
debate while the Allies advanced through France. On the 28th of June, the
Prussians appeared on the north of the capital; and, as the English
followed, they moved to the south of the Seine, out of the range of the
fortifications with which Napoleon had covered the side of St. Denis and
Montmartre. Davoust, with almost all the generals in Paris, declared
defence to be impossible. On the 3rd of July, a capitulation was signed.
The remnants of the French army were required to withdraw beyond the Loire.
The Provisional Government dissolved itself; the Allied troops entered the
capital and on the following day the Members of the Chamber of Deputies, on
arriving at their Hall of Assembly, found the gates closed, and a
detachment of soldiers in possession. France was not, even as a matter of
form, consulted as to its future government. Louis XVIII. was summarily
restored to his throne. Napoleon, who had gone to Rochefort with the
intention of sailing to the United States, lingered at Rochefort until
escape was no longer possible, and then embarked on the British ship
_Bellerophon_, commending himself, as a second Themistocles, to the
generosity of the Prince Regent of England. He who had declared that the
lives of a million men were nothing to him [238] trusted to the folly or
the impotence of the English nation to provide him with some agreeable
asylum until he could again break loose and deluge Europe with blood. But
the lesson of 1814 had been learnt. Some island in the ocean far beyond the
equator formed the only prison for a man whom no European sovereign could
venture to guard, and whom no fortress-walls could have withdrawn from the
attention of mankind. Napoleon was conveyed to St. Helena. There, until at
the end of six years death removed him, he experienced some trifling share
of the human misery that he had despised.

[Wellington and Fouché.]

Victory had come so swiftly that the Allied Governments were unprepared
with terms of peace. The Czar and the Emperor of Austria were still at
Heidelberg when the battle of Waterloo was fought; they had advanced no
further than Nancy when the news reached them that Paris had surrendered.
Both now hastened to the capital, where Wellington was already exercising
the authority to which his extraordinary successes as well as his great
political superiority over all the representatives of the Allies then
present, entitled him. Before the entry of the English and Prussian troops
into Paris he had persuaded Louis XVIII. to sever himself from the party of
reaction by calling to office the regicide Fouché, head of the existing
Provisional Government. Fouché had been guilty of the most atrocious crimes
at Lyons in 1793; he had done some of the worst work of each succeeding
government in France; and, after returning to his old place as Napoleon's
Minister of Police during the Hundred Days, he had intrigued as early as
possible for the restoration of Louis XVIII., if indeed he had not held
treasonable communication with the enemy during the campaign. His sole
claim to power was that every gendarme and every informer in France had at
some time acted as his agent, and that, as a regicide in office, he might
possibly reconcile Jacobins and Bonapartists to the second return of the
Bourbon family. Such was the man whom, in association with Talleyrand, the
Duke of Wellington found himself compelled to propose as Minister to Louis
XVIII. The appointment, it was said, was humiliating, but it was necessary;
and with the approval of the Count of Artois the King invited this
blood-stained eavesdropper to an interview and placed him in office. Need
subdued the scruples of the courtiers: it could not subdue the resentment
of that grief-hardened daughter of Louis XVI. whom Napoleon termed the only
man of her family. The Duchess of Angoulême might have forgiven the Jacobin
Fouché the massacres at Lyons: she refused to speak to a Minister whom she
termed one of the murderers of her father.

[Disagreement on terms of peace.]

Fouché had entered into a private negotiation with Wellington while the
English were on the outskirts of Paris, and while the authorised envoys of
the Assembly were engaged elsewhere. Wellington's motive for recommending
him to the King was the indifference or hostility felt by some of the
Allies to Louis XVIII. personally, which led the Duke to believe that if
Louis did not regain his throne before the arrival of the sovereigns he
might never regain it at all. [239] Fouché was the one man who could at
that moment throw open the road to the Tuileries. If his overtures were
rejected, he might either permit Carnot to offer some desperate resistance
outside Paris, or might retire himself with the army and the Assembly
beyond the Loire, and there set up a Republican Government. With Fouché and
Talleyrand united in office under Louis XVIII., there was no fear either of
a continuance of the war or of the suggestion of a change of dynasty on the
part of any of the Allies. By means of the Duke's independent action Louis
XVIII. was already in possession when the Czar arrived at Paris, and
nothing now prevented the definite conclusion of peace but the disagreement
of the Allies themselves as to the terms to be exacted. Prussia, which had
suffered so bitterly from Napoleon, demanded that Europe should not a
second time deceive itself with the hollow guarantee of a Bourbon
restoration, but should gain a real security for peace by detaching Alsace
and Lorraine, as well as a line of northern fortresses, from the French
monarchy. Lord Liverpool, Prime Minister of England, stated it to be the
prevailing opinion in this country that France might fairly be stripped of
the principal conquests made by Louis XIV.; but he added that if Napoleon,
who was then at large, should become a prisoner, England would waive a
permanent cession of territory, on condition that France should be occupied
by foreign armies until it had, at its own cost, restored the
barrier-fortresses of the Netherlands. [240] Metternich for a while held
much the same language as the Prussian Minister: Alexander alone declared
from the first against any reduction of the territory of France, and
appealed to the declarations of the Powers that the sole object of the war
was the destruction of Napoleon and the maintenance of the order
established by the Peace of Paris.

[Arguments for and against cessions.]

[Prussia isolated.]

[Second Treaty of Paris, Nov. 20.]

The arguments for and against the severance of the border-provinces from
France were drawn at great length by diplomatists, but all that was
essential in them was capable of being very briefly put. On the one side,
it was urged by Stein and Hardenberg that the restoration of the Bourbons
in 1814 with an undiminished territory had not prevented France from
placing itself at the end of a few months under the rule of the military
despot whose life was one series of attacks on his neighbours: that the
expectation of long-continued peace, under whatever dynasty, was a vain one
so long as the French possessed a chain of fortresses enabling them at any
moment to throw large armies into Germany or the Netherlands: and finally,
that inasmuch as Germany, and not England or Russia, was exposed to these
irruptions, Germany had the first right to have its interests consulted in
providing for the public security. On the other side, it was argued by the
Emperor Alexander, and with far greater force by the Duke of Wellington,
[241] that the position of the Bourbons would be absolutely hopeless if
their restoration, besides being the work of foreign armies, was
accompanied by the loss of French provinces: that the French nation,
although it had submitted to Napoleon, had not as a matter of fact offered
the resistance to the Allies which it was perfectly capable of offering:
and that the danger of any new aggressive or revolutionary movement might
be effectually averted by keeping part of France occupied by the Allied
forces until the nation had settled down into tranquillity under an
efficient government. Notes embodying these arguments were exchanged
between the Ministers of the great Powers during the months of July and
August. The British Cabinet, which had at first inclined to the Prussian
view, accepted the calm judgment of Wellington, and transferred itself to
the side of the Czar. Metternich went with the majority. Hardenberg, thus
left alone, abandoned point after point in his demands, and consented at
last that France should cede little more than the border-strips which had
been added by the Peace of 1814 to its frontier of 1791. Chambéry and the
rest of French Savoy, Landau and Saarlouis on the German side,
Philippeville and some other posts on the Belgian frontier, were fixed upon
as the territory to be surrendered. The resolution of the Allied
Governments was made known to Louis XVIII. towards the end of September.
Negotiation on details dragged on for two months more, while France itself
underwent a change of Ministry; and the definitive Treaty of Peace, known
as the second Treaty of Paris, was not signed until November the 20th.
France escaped without substantial loss of territory; it was, however,
compelled to pay indemnities amounting in all to about £40,000,000; to
consent to the occupation of its northern provinces by an Allied force of
150,000 men for a period not exceeding five years; and to defray the cost
of this occupation out of its own revenues. The works of art taken from
other nations, which the Allies had allowed France to retain in 1814, had
already been restored to their rightful owners. No act of the conquerors in
1815 excited more bitter or more unreasonable complaint.

[Treaty of Holy Alliance, Sept. 26.]

It was in the interval between the entry of the Allies into Paris and the
definitive conclusion of peace that a treaty was signed which has gained a
celebrity in singular contrast with its real insignificance, the Treaty of
Holy Alliance. Since the terrible events of 1812 the Czar's mind had taken
a strongly religious tinge. His private life continued loose as before; his
devotion was both very well satisfied with itself and a prey to mysticism
and imposture in others; but, if alloyed with many weaknesses, it was at
least sincere, and, like Alexander's other feelings, it naturally sought
expression in forms which seemed theatrical to stronger natures. Alexander
had rendered many public acts of homage to religion in the intervals of
diplomatic and military success in the year 1814; and after the second
capture of Paris he drew up a profession of religious and political faith,
embodying, as he thought, those high principles by which the Sovereigns of
Europe, delivered from the iniquities of Napoleon, were henceforth to
maintain the reign of peace and righteousness on earth. [242] This
document, which resembled the pledge of a religious brotherhood, formed the
draft of the Treaty of the Holy Alliance. The engagement, as one binding on
the conscience, was for the consideration of the Sovereigns alone, not of
their Ministers; and in presenting it to the Emperor Francis and King
Frederick William, the Czar is said to have acted with an air of great
mystery. The King of Prussia, a pious man, signed the treaty in
seriousness; the Emperor of Austria, who possessed a matter-of-fact humour,
said that if the paper related to doctrines of religion, he must refer it
to his confessor, if to secrets of State, to Prince Metternich. What the
confessor may have thought of the Czar's political evangel is not known:
the opinion delivered by the Minister was not a sympathetic one. "It is
verbiage," said Metternich; and his master, though unwillingly, signed the
treaty. With England the case was still worse. As the Prince Regent was not
in Paris, Alexander had to confide the articles of the Holy Alliance to
Lord Castlereagh. Of all things in the world the most incomprehensible to
Castlereagh was religious enthusiasm. "The fact is," he wrote home to the
English Premier, "that the Emperor's mind is not completely sound." [243]
Apart, however, from the Czar's sanity or insanity, it was impossible for
the Prince Regent, or for any person except the responsible Minister, to
sign a treaty, whether it meant anything or nothing, in the name of Great
Britain. Castlereagh was in great perplexity. On the one hand, he feared to
wound a powerful ally; on the other, he dared not violate the forms of the
Constitution. A compromise was invented. The Treaty of the Holy Alliance
was not graced with the name of the Prince Regent, but the Czar received a
letter declaring that his principles had the personal approval of this
great authority on religion and morality. The Kings of Naples and Sardinia
were the next to subscribe, and in due time the names of the witty glutton,
Louis XVIII., and of the abject Ferdinand of Spain were added. Two
potentates alone received no invitation from the Czar to enter the League:
the Pope, because he possessed too much authority within the Christian
Church, and the Sultan, because he possessed none at all.

[Treaty between the Four Powers, Nov. 20.]

Such was the history of the Treaty of Holy Alliance, of which, it may be
safely said, no single person connected with it, except the Czar and the
King of Prussia, thought without a smile. The common belief that this
Treaty formed the basis of a great monarchical combination against Liberal
principles is erroneous; for, in the first place, no such combination
existed before the year 1818; and, in the second place, the Czar, who was
the author of the Treaty, was at this time the zealous friend of Liberalism
both in his own and in other countries. The concert of the Powers was
indeed provided for by articles signed on the same day as the Peace of
Paris; but this concert, which, unlike the Holy Alliance, included England,
was directed towards the perpetual exclusion of Napoleon from power, and
the maintenance of the established Government in France. The Allies pledged
themselves to act in union if revolution or usurpation should again
convulse France and endanger the repose of other States, and undertook to
resist with their whole force any attack that might be made upon the army
of occupation. The federative unity which for a moment Europe seemed to
have gained from the struggle against Napoleon, and the belief existing in
some quarters in its long continuance, were strikingly shown in the last
article of this Quadruple Treaty, which provided that, after the holding of
a Congress at the end of three or more years, the Sovereigns or Ministers
of all the four great Powers should renew their meetings at fixed
intervals, for the purpose of consulting upon their common interests, and
considering the measures best fitted to secure the repose and prosperity of
nations, and the continuance of the peace of Europe. [244]

[German Federation.]

Thus terminated, certainly without any undue severity, yet not without some
loss to the conquered nation, the work of 1815 in France. In the meantime
the Congress of Vienna, though interrupted by the renewal of war, had
resumed and completed its labours. One subject of the first importance
remained unsettled when Napoleon returned, the federal organisation of
Germany. This work had been referred by the Powers in the autumn of 1814 to
a purely German committee, composed of the representatives of Austria and
Prussia and of three of the Minor States; but the first meetings of the
committee only showed how difficult was the problem, and how little the
inclination in most quarters to solve it. The objects with which statesmen
like Stein demanded an effective federation were thoroughly plain and
practical. They sought, in the first place, that Germany should be rendered
capable of defending itself against the foreigner; and in the second place,
that the subjects of the minor princes, who had been made absolute rulers
by Napoleon, should now be guaranteed against despotic oppression. To
secure Germany from being again conquered by France, it was necessary that
the members of the League, great and small, should abandon something of
their separate sovereignty, and create a central authority with the sole
right of making war and alliances. To protect the subjects of the minor
princes from the abuse of power, it was necessary that certain definite
civil rights and a measure of representative government should be assured
by Federal Law to the inhabitants of every German State, and enforced by
the central authority on the appeal of subjects against their Sovereigns.
There was a moment when some such form of German union had seemed to be
close at hand, the moment when Prussia began its final struggle with
Napoleon, and the commander of the Czar's army threatened the German
vassals of France with the loss of their thrones (Feb., 1813). But even
then no statesman had satisfied himself how Prussia and Austria were to
unite in submission to a Federal Government; and from the time when Austria
made terms with the vassal princes little hope of establishing a really
effective authority at the centre of Germany remained. Stein, at the
Congress of Vienna, once more proposed to restore the title and the
long-vanished powers of the Emperor; but he found no inclination on the
part of Metternich to promote his schemes for German unity, while some of
the minor princes flatly refused to abandon any fraction of their
sovereignty over their own subjects. The difficulties in the way of
establishing a Federal State were great, perhaps insuperable; the statesmen
anxious for it few in number; the interests opposed to it all but
universal. Stein saw that the work was intended to be unsubstantial, and
withdrew himself from it before its completion. The Act of Federation,
[245] which was signed on the 8th of June, created a Federal Diet, forbade
the members of the League to enter into alliances against the common
interest, and declared that in each State, Constitutions should be
established. But it left the various Sovereigns virtually independent of
the League; it gave the nomination of members of the Diet to the
Governments absolutely, without a vestige of popular election; and it
contained no provision for enforcing in any individual State, whose ruler
might choose to disregard it, the principle of constitutional rule. Whether
the Federation would in any degree have protected Germany in case of attack
by France or Russia is matter for conjecture, since a long period of peace
followed the year 1815; but so far was it from securing liberty to the
Minor States, that in the hands of Metternich the Diet, impotent for every
other purpose, became an instrument for the persecution of liberal opinion
and for the suppression of the freedom of the press.

[Final Act of the Congress, June 10.]

German affairs, as usual, were the last to be settled at the Congress; when
these were at length disposed of, the Congress embodied the entire mass of
its resolutions in one great Final Act [246] of a hundred and twenty-one
articles, which was signed a few days before the battle of Waterloo was
fought. This Act, together with the second Treaty of Paris, formed the
public law with which Europe emerged from the warfare of a quarter of a
century, and entered upon a period which proved, even more than it was
expected to prove, one of long-lasting peace. Standing on the boundary-line
between two ages, the legislation of Vienna forms a landmark in history.
The provisions of the Congress have sometimes been criticised as if that
body had been an assemblage of philosophers, bent only on advancing the
course of human progress, and endowed with the power of subduing the
selfish impulses of every Government in Europe. As a matter of fact the
Congress was an arena where national and dynastic interests struggled for
satisfaction by every means short of actual war. To inquire whether the
Congress accomplished all that it was possible to accomplish for Europe is
to inquire whether Governments at that moment forgot all their own
ambitions and opportunities, and thought only of the welfare of mankind.
Russia would not have given up Poland without war; Austria would not have
given up Lombardy and Venice without war. The only measures of 1814-15 in
which the common interest was really the dominant motive were those adopted
either with the view of strengthening the States immediately exposed to
attack by France, or in the hope of sparing France itself the occasion for
new conflicts. The union of Holland and Belgium, and the annexation of the
Genoese Republic to Sardinia, were the means adopted for the former end;
for the latter, the relinquishment of all claims to Alsace and Lorraine.
These were the measures in which the statesmen of 1814-15 acted with their
hands free, and by these their foresight may fairly be judged. Of the union
of Belgium to Holland it is not too much to say that, although planned by
Pitt, and treasured by every succeeding Ministry as one of his wisest
schemes, it was wholly useless and inexpedient. The tranquillity of Western
Europe was preserved during fifteen years, not by yoking together
discordant nationalities, but by the general desire to avoid war; and as
soon as France seriously demanded the liberation of Belgium from Holland,
it had to be granted. Nor can it be believed that the addition of the
hostile and discontented population of Genoa to the kingdom of Piedmont
would have saved that monarchy from invasion if war had again arisen. The
annexation of Genoa was indeed fruitful of results, but not of results
which Pitt and his successors had anticipated. It was intended to
strengthen the House of Savoy for the purpose of resistance to France:
[247] it did strengthen the House of Savoy, but as the champion of Italy
against Austria. It was intended to withdraw the busy trading city Genoa
from the influences of French democracy: in reality it brought a strong
element of innovation into the Piedmontese State itself, giving, on the one
hand, a bolder and more national spirit to its Government, and, on the
other hand, elevating to the ideal of a united Italy those who, like the
Genoese Mazzini, were now no longer born to be the citizens of a free
Republic. In sacrificing the ancient liberty of Genoa, the Congress itself
unwittingly began the series of changes which was to refute the famous
saying of Metternich, that Italy was but a geographical expression.

[Alsace and Lorraine.]

But if the policy of 1814-15 in the affairs of Belgium and Piedmont only
proves how little an average collection of statesmen can see into the
future, the policy which, in spite of Waterloo, left France in possession
of an undiminished territory, does no discredit to the foresight, as it
certainly does the highest honour to the justice and forbearance of
Wellington, whose counsels then turned the scale. The wisdom of the
resolution has indeed been frequently impugned. German statesmen held then,
and have held ever since, that the opportunity of disarming France once for
all of its weapons of attack was wantonly thrown away. Hardenberg, when his
arguments for annexation of the frontier-fortresses were set aside,
predicted that streams of blood would hereafter flow for the conquest of
Alsace and Lorraine, [248] and his prediction has been fulfilled. Yet no
one perhaps would have been more astonished than Hardenberg himself, could
he have known that fifty-five years of peace between France and Prussia
would precede the next great struggle. When the same period of peace shall
have followed the acquisition of Metz and Strasburg by Prussia, it will be
time to condemn the settlement of 1815 as containing the germ of future
wars; till then, the effects of that settlement in maintaining peace are
entitled to recognition. It is impossible to deny that the Allies, in
leaving to France the whole of its territory in 1815, avoided inflicting
the most galling of all tokens of defeat upon a spirited and still most
powerful nation. The loss of Belgium and the frontier of the Rhine was
keenly enough felt for thirty years to come, and made no insignificant part
of the French people ready at any moment to rush into war; how much greater
the power of the war-cry, how hopeless the task of restraint, if to the
other motives for war there had been added the liberation of two of the
most valued provinces of France. Without this the danger was great enough.
Thrice at least in the next thirty years the balance seemed to be turning
against the continuance of peace. An offensive alliance between France and
Russia was within view when the Bourbon monarchy fell; the first years of
Louis Philippe all but saw the revolutionary party plunge France into war
for Belgium and for Italy; ten years later the dismissal of a Ministry
alone prevented the outbreak of hostilities on the distant affairs of
Syria. Had Alsace and Lorraine at this time been in the hands of disunited
Germany, it is hard to believe that the Bourbon dynasty would not have
averted, or sought to avert, its fall by a popular war, or that the victory
of Louis Philippe over the war-party, difficult even when there was no
French soil to reconquer, would have been possible. The time indeed came
when a new Bonaparte turned to enterprises of aggression the resources
which Europe had left unimpaired to his country; but to assume that the
cessions proposed in 1815 would have made France unable to move, with or
without allies, half a century afterwards, is to make a confident guess in
a doubtful matter; and, with Germany in the condition in which it remained
after 1815, it is at least as likely that the annexation of Alsace and
Lorraine would have led to the early reconquest of the Rhenish provinces by
France, or to a war between Austria and Prussia, as that it would have
prolonged the period of European peace beyond that distant limit which it
actually reached.

[English efforts at the Congress to abolish the slave-trade.]

Among the subjects which were pressed upon the Congress of Vienna there was
one in which the pursuit of national interests and calculations of policy
bore no part, the abolition of the African slave-trade. The British people,
who, after twenty years of combat in the cause of Europe, had earned so
good a right to ask something of their allies, probably attached a deeper
importance to this question than to any in the whole range of European
affairs, with the single exception of the personal overthrow of Napoleon.
Since the triumph of Wiberforce's cause in the Parliament of 1807, and the
extinction of English slave-traffic, the anger with which the nation viewed
this detestable cruelty, too long tolerated by itself, had become more and
more vehement and widespread. By the year 1814 the utterances of public
opinion were so loud and urgent that the Government, though free from
enthusiasm itself, was forced to place the international prohibition of the
slave-trade in the front rank of its demands. There were politicians on the
Continent credulous enough to believe that this outcry of the heart and the
conscience of the nation was but a piece of commercial hypocrisy.
Talleyrand, with far different insight, but not with more sympathy, spoke
of the state of the English people as one of frenzy. [249] Something had
already been effected at foreign courts. Sweden had been led to prohibit
slave-traffic in 1813, Holland in the following year. Portugal had been
restrained by treaty from trading north of the line. France had pledged
itself in the first Treaty of Paris to abolish the commerce within five
years. Spain alone remained unfettered, and it was indeed intolerable that
the English slavers should have been forced to abandon their execrable
gains only that they should fall into the hands of the subjects of King
Ferdinand. It might be true that the Spanish colonies required a larger
supply of slaves than they possessed; but Spain had at any rate not the
excuse that it was asked to surrender an old and profitable branch of
commerce. It was solely through the abolition of the English slave-trade
that Spain possessed any slave-trade whatever. Before the year 1807 no
Spanish ship had been seen on the coast of Africa for a century, except one
in 1798 fitted out by Godoy. [250] As for the French trade, that had been
extinguished by the capture of Senegal and Goree; and along the two
thousand miles of coast from Cape Blanco to Cape Formosa a legitimate
commerce with the natives was gradually springing up in place of the
desolating traffic in flesh and blood. It was hoped by the English people
that Castlereagh would succeed in obtaining a universal and immediate
prohibition of the slave-trade by all the Powers assembled at Vienna. The
Minister was not wanting in perseverance, but he failed to achieve this
result. France, while claiming a short delay elsewhere, professed itself
willing, like Portugal, to abolish at once the traffic north of the line;
but the Government on which England had perhaps the greatest claim, that of
Spain, absolutely refused to accept this restriction, or to bind itself to
a final prohibition before the end of eight years. Castlereagh then
proposed that a Council of Ambassadors at London and Paris should be
charged with the international duty of expediting the close of the
slave-trade; the measure which he had in view being the punishment of
slave-dealing States by a general exclusion of their exports. Against this
Spain and Portugal made a formal protest, treating the threat as almost
equivalent to one of war. The project dropped, and the Minister of England
had to content himself with obtaining from the Congress a solemn
condemnation of the slave-trade, as contrary to the principles of
civilisation and human right (Feb., 1815).

The work was carried a step further by Napoleon's return from Elba.
Napoleon understood the impatience of the English people, and believed that
he could make no higher bid for its friendship than by abandoning the
reserves made by Talleyrand at the Congress, and abolishing the French
slave-trade at once and for all. This was accomplished; and the Bourbon
ally of England, on his second restoration could not undo what had been
done by the usurper. Spain and Portugal alone continued to pursue--the
former country without restriction, the latter on the south of the line--a
commerce branded by the united voice of Europe as infamous. The Governments
of these countries alleged in their justification that Great Britain itself
had resisted the passing of the prohibitory law until its colonies were far
better supplied with slaves than those of its rivals now were. This was
true, but it was not the whole truth. The whole truth was not known, the
sincerity of English feeling was not appreciated, until, twenty years
later, the nation devoted a part of its wealth to release the slave from
servitude, and the English race from the reproach of slave holding. Judged
by the West Indian Emancipation of 1833, the Spanish appeal to English
history sounds almost ludicrous. But the remembrance of the long years
throughout which the advocates of justice encountered opposition in England
should temper the severity of our condemnation of the countries which still
defended a bad interest. The light broke late upon ourselves: the darkness
that still lingered elsewhere had too long been our own.




CHAPTER XIII.


Concert of Europe after 1815--Spirit of the Foreign Policy of Alexander, of
Metternich, and of the English Ministry--Metternich's action in Italy,
England's in Sicily and Spain--The Reaction in France--Richelieu and the
New Chamber--Execution of Ney--Imprisonments and persecutions--Conduct of
the Ultra-Royalists in Parliament--Contests on the Electoral Bill and the
Budget--The Chamber prorogued--Affair of Grenoble--Dissolution of the
Chamber--Electoral Law and Financial Settlement of 1817--Character of the
first years of peace in Europe generally--Promise of a Constitution in
Prussia--Hardenberg opposed by the partisans of autocracy and
privilege--Schmalz's Pamphlet--Delay of Constitutional Reform in Germany at
large--The Wartburg Festival--Progress of Reaction--The Czar now inclines
to repression--Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle--Evacuation of France--Growing
influence of Metternich in Europe--His action on Prussia--Murder of
Kotzebue--The Carlsbad Conference and measures of repression in
Germany--Richelieu and Decazes--Murder of the Duke of Berry--Progress of
the reaction in France--General causes of the victory of reaction in
Europe.


[Concert of Europe regarding France.]

For nearly twenty years the career of Bonaparte had given to European
history the unity of interest which belongs to a single life. This unity
does not immediately disappear on the disappearance of his mighty figure.
The Powers of Europe had been too closely involved in the common struggle,
their interests were too deeply concerned in the maintenance of the
newly-established order, for the thoughts of Governments to be withdrawn
from foreign affairs, and the currents of national policy to fall at once
apart into separate channels. The Allied forces continued to occupy France
with Wellington as commander-in-chief; the defence of the Bourbon monarchy
had been declared the cause of Europe at large; the conditions under which
the numbers of the army of occupation might be reduced, or the period of
occupation shortened, remained to be fixed by the Allies themselves. France
thus formed the object of a common European deliberation; nor was the
concert of the Powers without its peculiar organ. An International Council
was created at Paris, consisting of the Ambassadors of the four great
Courts. The forms of a coalition were, for the first time, preserved after
the conclusion of peace. Communications were addressed to the Government of
Louis XVIII., in the name of all the Powers together. The Council of
Ambassadors met at regular intervals, and not only transacted business
relating to the army of occupation and the payment of indemnities, but
discussed the domestic policy of the French Government, and the situation
of parties or the signs of political opinion in the Assembly and the
nation.

[Action of the Powers outside France.]

In thus watching over the restored Bourbon monarchy, the Courts of Europe
were doing no more than they had bound themselves to do by treaty. Paris,
however, was not the only field for a busy diplomacy. In most of the minor
capitals of Europe each of the Great Powers had its own supposed interests
to pursue, or its own principles of government to inculcate. An age of
transition seemed to have begun. Constitutions had been promised in many
States, and created in some; in Spain and in Sicily they had reached the
third stage, that of suppression. It was not likely that the statesmen who
had succeeded to Napoleon's power in Europe should hold themselves entirely
aloof from the affairs of their weaker neighbours, least of all when a
neighbouring agitation might endanger themselves. In one respect the
intentions of the British, the Austrian, and the Russian Governments were
identical, and continued to be so, namely, in the determination to
countenance no revolutionary movement. Revolution, owing to the experience
of 1793, had come to be regarded as synonymous with aggressive warfare.
Jacobins, anarchists, disturbers of the public peace, were only different
names for one and the same class of international criminals, who were
indeed indigenous to France, but might equally endanger the peace of
mankind in other countries. Against these fomenters of mischief all the
Courts were at one.

[Alexander.]

Here, however, agreement ceased. It was admitted that between revolutionary
disturbance and the enjoyment of constitutional liberty a wide interval
existed, and the statesmen of the leading Powers held by no means the same
views as to the true relation between nations and their rulers. The most
liberal in theory among the Sovereigns of 1815 was the Emperor Alexander.
Already, in the summer of 1815, he had declared the Duchy of Warsaw to be
restored to independence and nationality, under the title of the Kingdom of
Poland; and before the end of the year he had granted it a Constitution,
which created certain representative assemblies, and provided the new
kingdom with an army and an administration of its own, into which no person
not a Pole could enter. The promised introduction of Parliamentary life
into Poland was but the first of a series of reforms dimly planned by
Alexander, which was to culminate in the bestowal of a Constitution upon
Russia itself, and the emancipation of the serf. [251] Animated by hopes
like these for his own people, hopes which, while they lasted, were not
merely sincere but ardent, Alexander was also friendly to the cause of
constitutional government in other countries. Ambition mingled with
disinterested impulses in the foreign policy of the Czar. It was impossible
that Alexander should forget the league into which England and Austria had
so lately entered against him. He was anxious to keep France on his side;
he was not inclined to forego the satisfaction of weakening Austria by
supporting national hopes in Italy; [252] and he hoped to create some
counterpoise to England's maritime power by allying Russia with a
strengthened and better-administered Spain. Agents of the Czar abounded in
Italy and in Germany, but in no capital was the Ambassador of Russia more
active than in Madrid. General Tatistcheff, who was appointed to this post
in 1814, became the terror of all his colleagues and of the Cabinet of
London from his extraordinary activity in intrigue; but in relation to the
internal affairs of Spain his influence was beneficial; and it was
frequently directed towards the support of reforming Ministers, whom King
Ferdinand, if free from foreign pressure, would speedily have sacrificed to
the pleasure of his favourites and confessors.

[Metternich.]

[Metternich's policy in Germany.]

[In Italy.]

In the eyes of Prince Metternich, the all-powerful Minister of Austria,
Alexander was little better than a Jacobin. The Austrian State, though its
frontiers had been five times changed since 1792, had continued in a
remarkable degree free from the impulse to internal change. The Emperor
Francis was the personification of resistance to progress; the Minister
owed his unrivalled position not more to his own skilful statesmanship in
the great crisis of 1813 than to a genuine accord with the feelings of his
master. If Francis was not a man of intellect, Metternich was certainly a
man of character; and for a considerable period they succeeded in
impressing the stamp of their own strongly-marked Austrian policy upon
Europe. The force of their influence sprang from no remote source; it was
due mainly to a steady intolerance of all principles not their own.
Metternich described his system with equal simplicity and precision as an
attempt neither to innovate nor to go back to the past, but to keep things
as they were. In the old Austrian dominions this was not difficult to do,
for things had no tendency to move and remained fixed of themselves; [253]
but on the outside, both on the north and on the south, ideas were at work
which, according to Metternich, ought never to have entered the world, but,
having unfortunately gained admittance, made it the task of Governments to
resist their influence by all available means. Stein and the leaders of the
Prussian War of Liberation had agitated Germany with hopes of national
unity, of Parliaments, and of the impulsion of the executive powers of
State by public opinion. Against these northern innovators, Metternich had
already won an important victory in the formation of the Federal
Constitution. The weakness and timidity of the King of Prussia made it
probable that, although he was now promising his subjects a Constitution,
he might at no distant date be led to unite with other German Governments
in a system of repression, and in placing Liberalism under the ban of the
Diet. In Italy, according to the conservative statesman, the same dangers
existed and the same remedies were required. Austria, through the
acquisition of Venice, now possessed four times as large a territory beyond
the Alps as it had possessed before 1792; but the population was no longer
the quiescent and contented folk that it had been in the days of Maria
Theresa. Napoleon's kingdom and army of Italy had taught the people
warfare, and given them political aims and a more masculine spirit.
Metternich's own generals had promised the Italians independence when they
entered the country in 1814; Murat's raid a year later had actually been
undertaken in the name of Italian unity. These were disagreeable incidents,
and signs were not wanting of the existence of a revolutionary spirit in
the Italian provinces of Austria, especially among the officers who had
served under Napoleon. Metternich was perfectly clear as to the duties of
his Government. The Italians might have a Viceroy to keep Court at Milan, a
body of native officials to conduct their minor affairs, and a mock
Congregation or Council, without any rights, powers, or functions whatever;
if this did not satisfy them, they were a rebellious people, and government
must be conducted by means of spies, police, and the dungeons of the
Spielberg. [254]

[Scheme of an Austrian Protectorate over Italy.]

On this system, backed by great military force, there was nothing to fear
from the malcontents of Lombardy and Venice: it remained for Metternich to
extend the same security to the rest of the peninsula, and by a series of
treaties to effect the double end of exterminating constitutional
government and of establishing an Austrian Protectorate over the entire
country, from the Alps to the Sicilian Straits. The design was so ambitious
that Metternich had not dared to disclose it at the Congress of Vienna; it
was in fact a direct violation of the Treaty of Paris, and of the
resolution of the Congress, that Italy, outside the possessions of Austria,
should consist of independent States. The first Sovereign over whom the net
was cast was Ferdinand of Naples. On the 15th of June, 1815, immediately
after the overthrow of Murat, King Ferdinand signed a Treaty of Alliance
with Austria, which contained a secret clause, pledging the King to
introduce no change into his recovered kingdom inconsistent with its own
old monarchical principles, or with the principles which had been adopted
by the Emperor of Austria for the government of his Italian provinces.
[255] Ferdinand, two years before, had been compelled by Great Britain to
grant Sicily a Constitution, and was at this very moment promising one to
Naples. The Sicilian Constitution was now tacitly condemned; the
Neapolitans were duped. By a further secret clause, the two contracting
Sovereigns undertook to communicate to one another everything that should
come to their knowledge affecting the security and tranquillity of the
Italian peninsula; in other words, the spies and the police of Ferdinand
were now added to Metternich's staff in Lombardy. Tuscany, Modena, and
Parma entered into much the same condition of vassalage; but the scheme for
a universal federation of Italy under Austria's leadership failed through
the resistance of Piedmont and of the Pope. Pius VII. resented the attempts
of Austria, begun in 1797 and repeated at the Congress of Vienna, to
deprive the Holy See of Bologna and Ravenna. The King of Sardinia, though
pressed by England to accept Metternich's offer of alliance, maintained
with great decision the independence of his country, and found in the
support of the Czar a more potent argument than any that he could have
drawn from treaties. [256]

[Spirit of England's foreign policy.]

The part played by the British Government at this epoch has been severely
judged not only by the later opinion of England itself, but by the
historical writers of almost every nation in Europe. It is perhaps
fortunate for the fame of Pitt that he did not live to witness the
accomplishment of the work in which he had laboured for thirteen years. The
glory of a just and courageous struggle against Napoleon's tyranny remains
with Pitt; the opprobrium of a settlement hostile to liberty has fallen on
his successors. Yet there is no good ground for believing that Pitt would
have attached a higher value to the rights or inclinations of individual
communities than his successors did in re-adjusting the balance of power;
on the contrary, he himself first proposed to destroy the Republic of
Genoa, and to place Catholic Belgium under the Protestant Crown of Holland;
nor was any principle dearer to him than that of aggrandising the House of
Austria as a counterpoise to the power of France. [257] The Ministry of
1815 was indeed but too faithfully walking in the path into which Pitt had
been driven by the King and the nation in 1793. Resistance to France had
become the one absorbing care, the beginning and end of English
statesmanship. Government at home had sunk to a narrow and unfeeling
opposition to the attempts made from time to time to humanise the mass of
the people, to reform an atrocious criminal law, to mitigate the civil
wrongs inflicted in the name and the interest of a State-religion. No one
in the Cabinet doubted that authority, as such, must be wiser than
inexperienced popular desire, least of all the statesman who now, in
conjunction with the Duke of Wellington, controlled the policy of Great
Britain upon the Continent. Lord Castlereagh had no sympathy with cruelty
or oppression in Continental rulers; he had just as little belief in the
value of free institutions to their subjects. [258] The nature of his
influence, which has been drawn sometimes in too dark colours, may be
fairly gathered from the course of action which he followed in regard to
Sicily and to Spain.

[In Sicily.]

In Sicily the representative of Great Britain, Lord William Bentinck, had
forced King Ferdinand, who could not have maintained himself for an hour
without the arms and money of England, to establish in 1813 a Parliament
framed on the model of our own. The Parliament had not proved a wise or a
capable body, but its faults were certainly not equal to those of King
Ferdinand, and its re-construction under England's auspices would have been
an affair of no great difficulty. Ferdinand, however, had always detested
free institutions, and as soon as he regained the throne of Naples he
determined to have done with the Sicilian Parliament. A correspondence on
the intended change took place between Lord Castlereagh and A'Court, the
Ambassador who had now succeeded Lord William Bentinck. [259] That the
British Government, which had protected the Sicilian Crown against Napoleon
at the height of his power, could have protected the Sicilian Constitution
against King Ferdinand's edicts without detaching a single man-of-war's
boat, is not open to doubt. Castlereagh, however, who for years past had
been paying, stimulating, or rebuking every Government in Europe, and who
had actually sent the British fleet to make the Norwegians submit to
Bernadotte, now suddenly adopted the principle of non-intervention, and
declared that, so long as Ferdinand did not persecute the Sicilians who at
the invitation of England had taken part in political life, or reduce the
privileges of Sicily below those which had existed prior to 1813, Great
Britain would not interfere with his action. These stipulations were
inserted in order to satisfy the House of Commons, and to avert the charge
that England had not only abandoned the Sicilian Constitution, but
consented to a change which left the Sicilians in a worse condition than if
England had never intervened in their affairs. Lord Castlereagh shut his
eyes to the confession involved, that he was leaving the Sicilians to a
ruler who, but for such restraint, might be expected to destroy every
vestige of public right, and to take the same bloody and unscrupulous
revenge upon his subjects which he had taken when Nelson restored him to
power in 1799.

[Action of England in Spain.]

The action of the British Government in Spain showed an equal readiness to
commit the future to the wisdom of Courts. Lord Castlereagh was made
acquainted with the Spanish Ferdinand's design of abolishing the
Constitution on his return in the year 1814. "So far," he replied, "as the
mere existence of the Constitution is at stake, it is impossible to believe
that any change tranquilly effected can well be worse." [260] In this case
the interposition of England would perhaps not have availed against a
reactionary clergy and nation: Castlereagh, was, moreover, deceived by
Ferdinand's professions that he had no desire to restore absolute
government. He credited the King with the same kind of moderation which had
led Louis XVIII. to accept the Charta in France, and looked forward to the
maintenance of a constitutional régime, though under conditions more
favourable to the executive power and to the influence of the great landed
proprietors and clergy. [261] Events soon proved what value was to be
attached to the word of the King; the flood of reaction and vengeance broke
over the country; and from this time the British Government, half
confessing and half excusing Ferdinand's misdeeds, exerted itself to check
the outrages of despotism, and to mitigate the lot of those who were now
its victims. In the interest of the restored monarchies themselves, as much
as from a regard to the public opinion of Great Britain, the Ambassadors of
England urged moderation upon all the Bourbon Courts. This, however, was
also done by Metternich, who neither took pleasure in cruelty, nor desired
to see new revolutions produced by the extravagances of priests and
emigrants. It was not altogether without cause that the belief arose that
there was little to choose, in reference to the constitutional liberties of
other States, between the sentiments of Austria and those of the Ministers
of free England. A difference, however, did exist. Metternich actually
prohibited the Sovereigns over whom his influence extended from granting
their subjects liberty: England, believing the Sovereigns to be more
liberal than they were, did not interfere to preserve constitutions from
destruction.

[Outrages of the Royalists in the south of France, June-August.]

Such was the general character of the influence now exercised by the three
leading Powers of Europe. Prussia, which had neither a fleet like England,
an Italian connection like Austria, nor an ambitious Sovereign like Russia,
concerned itself little with distant States, and limited its direct action
to the affairs of France, in which it possessed a substantial interest,
inasmuch as the indemnities due from Louis XVIII. had yet to be paid. The
possibility of recovering these sums depended upon the maintenance of peace
and order in France; and from the first it was recognised by every
Government in Europe that the principal danger to peace and order arose
from the conduct of the Count of Artois and his friends, the party of
reaction. The counterrevolutionary movement began in mere riot and outrage.
No sooner had the news of the battle of Waterloo reached the south of
France than the Royalist mob of Marseilles drove the garrison out of the
town, and attacked the quarter inhabited by the Mameluke families whom
Napoleon had brought from Egypt. Thirteen of these unfortunate persons, and
about as many Bonapartist citizens, were murdered. [262] A few weeks later
Nismes was given over to anarchy and pillage. Religious fanaticism here
stimulated the passion of political revenge. The middle class in Nismes
itself and a portion of the surrounding population were Protestant, and had
hailed Napoleon's return from Elba as a deliverance from the ascendancy of
priests, and from the threatened revival of the persecutions which they had
suffered under the old Bourbon monarchy. The Catholics, who were much more
numerous, included the lowest class in the town, the larger landed
proprietors of the district, and above half of the peasantry. Bands of
volunteers had been formed by the Duke of Angoulême at the beginning of the
Hundred Days, in the hope of sustaining a civil war against Napoleon. After
capitulating to the Emperor's generals, some companies had been attacked by
villagers and hunted down like wild beasts. The bands now reassembled and
entered Nismes. The garrison, after firing upon them, were forced to give
up their arms, and in this defenceless state a considerable number of the
soldiers were shot down (July 17). On the next day the leaders of the armed
mob began to use their victory. For several weeks murder and outrage,
deliberately planned and publicly announced, kept not only Nismes itself,
but a wide extent of the surrounding country in constant terror. The
Government acted slowly and feebly; the local authorities were intimidated;
and, in spite of the remonstrances of Wellington and the Russian
Ambassador, security was not restored until the Allies took the matter into
their own hands, and a detachment of Austrian troops occupied the
Department of the Gard. Other districts in the south of France witnessed
the same outbreaks of Royalist ferocity. Avignon was disgraced by the
murder of Marshal Brune, conqueror of the Russians and English in the Dutch
campaign of 1799, an honest soldier, who after suffering Napoleon's neglect
in the time of prosperity, had undertaken the heavy task of governing
Marseilles during the Hundred Days. At Toulouse, General Ramel, himself a
Royalist, was mortally wounded by a band of assassins, and savagely
mutilated while lying disabled and expiring.

[Elections of 1815.]

Crimes like these were the counterpart of the September massacres of 1792;
and the terrorism exercised by the Royalists in 1815 has been compared, as
a whole, with the Republican Reign of Terror twenty-two years earlier. But
the comparison does little credit to the historical sense of those who
suggested it. The barbarities of 1815 were strictly local: shocking as they
were, they scarcely amounted in all to an average day's work of Carrier or
Fouché in 1794; and the action of the established Government, though
culpably weak, was not itself criminal. A second and more dangerous stage
of reaction began, however, when the work of popular vengeance closed.
Elections for a new Chamber of Deputies were held at the end of August. The
Liberals and the adherents of Napoleon, paralysed by the disasters of
France and the invaders' presence, gave up all as lost: the Ministers of
Louis XVIII. abstained from the usual electoral manoeuvres, Talleyrand
through carelessness, Fouché from a desire to see parties evenly balanced:
the ultra-Royalists alone had extended their organisation over France, and
threw themselves into the contest with the utmost passion and energy.
Numerically weak, they had the immense forces of the local administration
on their side. The Préfets had gone over heart and soul to the cause of the
Count of Artois, who indeed represented to them that he was acting under
the King's own directions. The result was that an Assembly was elected to
which France has seen only one parallel since, namely in the Parliament of
1871, elected when invaders again occupied the country, and the despotism
of a second Bonaparte had ended in the same immeasurable calamity. The bulk
of the candidates returned were country gentlemen whose names had never
been heard of in public life since 1789, men who had resigned themselves to
inaction and obscurity under the Republic and the Empire, and whose one
political idea was to reverse the injuries done by the Revolution to their
caste and to their Church. They were Royalists because a Bourbon monarchy
alone could satisfy their claims: they called themselves ultra-Royalists,
but they were so only in the sense that they required the monarchy to
recognise no ally but themselves. They had already shown before Napoleon's
return that their real chief was the Count of Artois, not the King; in what
form their ultra-Royalism would exhibit itself in case the King should not
submit to be their instrument remained to be proved.

[Fall of Talleyrand and Fouché.]

[Richelieu's Ministry, Sept., 1815.]

The first result of the elections was the downfall of Talleyrand's Liberal
Ministry. The Count of Artois and the courtiers, who had been glad enough
to secure Fouché's services while their own triumph was doubtful, now
joined in the outcry of the country gentlemen again this monster of
iniquity. Talleyrand promptly disencumbered himself of his old friend, and
prepared to meet the new Parliament as an ultra-Royalist; but in the eyes
of the victorious party Talleyrand himself, the married priest and the
reputed accomplice in the murder of the Duke of Enghien, was little better
than his regicide colleague; and before the Assembly met he was forced to
retire from power.

[Richelieu's Ministry, Sept. 1815.]

His successor, the Duc de Richelieu, was recommended to Louis XVIII. by the
Czar. Richelieu had quitted France early in the Revolution, and, unlike
most of the emigrants, had played a distinguished part in the country which
gave him refuge. Winning his first laurels in the siege of Ismail under
Suvaroff, he had subsequently been made Governor of the Euxine provinces of
Russia, and the flourishing town of Odessa had sprung up under his rule.
His reputation as an administrator was high; his personal character
singularly noble and disinterested. Though the English Government looked at
first with apprehension upon a Minister so closely connected with the Czar
of Russia, Richelieu's honesty and truthfulness soon gained him the respect
of every foreign Court. His relation to Alexander proved of great service
to France in lightening the burden of the army of occupation; his equity,
his acquaintance with the real ends of monarchical government, made him,
though no lover of liberty, a valuable Minister in face of an Assembly
which represented nothing but the passions and the ideas of a reactionary
class. But Richelieu had been too long absent from France to grasp the
details of administration with a steady hand. The men, the parties of 1815,
were new to him: it is said that he was not acquainted by sight with most
of his colleagues when he appointed them to their posts. The Ministry in
consequence was not at unity within itself. Some of its members, like
Decazes, were more liberal than their chief; others, like Clarke and
Vaublanc, old servants of Napoleon now turned ultra-Royalists, were eager
to make themselves the instruments of the Count of Artois, and to carry
into the work of government the enthusiasm of revenge which had already
found voice in the elections.

[Violence of the Chamber of 1815.]

The session opened on the 7th of October. Twenty-nine of the peers, who had
joined Napoleon during the Hundred Days, were excluded from the House, and
replaced by adherents of the Bourbons; nevertheless the peers as a body
opposed themselves to extreme reaction, and, in spite of Chateaubriand's
sanguinary harangues, supported the moderate policy of Richelieu against
the majority of the Lower House. The first demand of the Chamber of
Deputies was for retribution upon traitors; [263] their first conflict with
the Government of Louis XVIII. arose upon the measures which were brought
forward by the Ministry for the preservation of public security and the
punishment of seditious acts. The Ministers were attacked, not because
their measures were too severe, but because they were not severe enough.
While taking power to imprison all suspected persons without trial, or to
expel them from their homes, Decazes, the Police-Minister, proposed to
punish incitements to sedition by fines and terms of imprisonment varying
according to the gravity of the offence. So mild a penalty excited the
wrath of men whose fathers and brothers had perished on the guillotine.
Some cried out for death, others for banishment to Cayenne. When it was
pointed out that the infliction of capital punishment for the mere attempt
at sedition would place this on a level with armed rebellion, it was
answered that a distinction might be maintained by adding in the latter
case the ancient punishment of parricide, the amputation of the hand.
Extravagances like this belonged rather to the individuals than to a party;
but the vehemence of the Chamber forced the Government to submit to a
revision of its measure. Transportation to Cayenne, but not death, was
ultimately included among the penalties for seditious acts. The Minister of
Justice, M. Barbé-Marbois, who had himself been transported to Cayenne by
the Jacobins in 1797, was able to satisfy the Chamber from his own
experience that they were not erring on the side of mercy. [264]

[Ney executed, Dec. 7.]

It was in the midst of these heated debates that Marshal Ney was brought to
trial for high treason. A so-called Edict of Amnesty had been published by
the King on the 24th of July, containing the names of nineteen persons who
were to be tried by courts-martial on capital charges, and of thirty-eight
others who were to be either exiled or brought to justice, as the Chamber
might determine. Ney was included in the first category. Opportunities for
escape had been given to him by the Government, as indeed they had to
almost every other person on the list. King Louis XVIII. well understood
that his Government was not likely to be permanently strengthened by the
execution of some of the most distinguished men in France; the emigrants,
however, and especially the Duchess of Angoulême, were merciless, and the
English Government acted a deplorable part. "One can never feel that the
King is secure on his throne," wrote Lord Liverpool, "until he has dared to
spill traitors' blood." It is not that many examples would be necessary;
but the daring to make a few will alone manifest any strength in the
Government. [265] Labédoyère had already been executed. On the 9th of
November Ney was brought before a court-martial, at which Castlereagh and
his wife had the bad taste to be present. The court-martial, headed by
Ney's old comrade Jourdan, declared itself incompetent to judge a peer of
France accused of high treason, [266] Ney was accordingly tried before the
House of Peers. The verdict was a foregone conclusion, and indeed the legal
guilt of the Marshal could hardly be denied. Had the men who sat in
judgment upon him been a body of Vendean peasants who had braved fire and
sword for the Bourbon cause, the sentence of death might have been
pronounced with pure, though stern lips: it remains a deep disgrace to
France that among the peers who voted not only for Ney's condemnation but
for his death, there were some who had themselves accepted office and pay
from Napoleon during the Hundred Days. A word from Wellington would still
have saved the Marshal's life, but in interceding for Ney the Duke would
have placed himself in direct opposition to the action of his own
Government. When the Premier had dug the grave, it was not for Wellington
to rescue the prisoner. It is permissible to hope that he, who had so
vehemently reproached Blücher for his intention to put Napoleon to death if
he should fall into his hands, would have asked clemency for Ney had he
considered himself at liberty to obey the promptings of his own nature. The
responsibility for Marshal Ney's death rests, more than upon any other
individual, upon Lord Liverpool.

On the 7th of December the sentence was executed. Ney was shot at early
morning in an unfrequented spot, and the Government congratulated itself
that it had escaped the dangers of a popular demonstration and heard the
last of a disagreeable business. Never was there a greater mistake. No
crime committed in the Reign of Terror attached a deeper popular opprobrium
to its authors than the execution of Ney did to the Bourbon family. The
victim, a brave but rough half-German soldier, [267] rose in popular legend
almost to the height of the Emperor himself. His heroism in the retreat
from Moscow became, and with justice, a more glorious memory than Davoust's
victory at Jena or Moreau's at Hohenlinden. Side by side with the thought
that the Bourbons had been brought back by foreign arms, the remembrance
sank deep into the heart of the French people that this family had put to
death "the bravest of the brave." It would have been no common good fortune
for Louis XVIII. to have pardoned or visited with light punishment a great
soldier whose political feebleness had led him to an act of treason,
condoned by the nation at large. Exile would not have made the transgressor
a martyr. But the common sense of mankind condemns Ney's execution: the
public opinion of France has never forgiven it.

[Amnesty Bill, Dec 8.]

On the day after the great example was made, Richelieu brought forward the
Amnesty Bill of the Government in the House of Representatives. The King,
while claiming full right of pardon, desired that the Chamber should be
associated with him in its exercise, and submitted a project of law
securing from prosecution all persons not included in the list published on
July 24th. Measures of a very different character had already been
introduced under the same title into the Chamber. Though the initiative in
legislation belonged by virtue of the Charta to the Crown, resolutions
might be moved by members in the shape of petition or address, and under
this form the leaders of the majority had drawn up schemes for the
wholesale proscription of Napoleon's adherents. It was proposed by M. la
Bourdonnaye to bring to trial all the great civil and military officers
who, during the Hundred Days, had constituted the Government of the
usurper; all generals, préfets, and commanders of garrisons, who had obeyed
Napoleon before a certain day, to be named by the Assembly; and all voters
for the death of Louis XVI. who had recognised Napoleon by signing the Acte
Additionnel. The language in which these prosecutions were urged was the
echo of that which had justified the bloodshed of 1793; its violence was
due partly to the fancy that Napoleon's return was no sudden and unexpected
act, but the work of a set of conspirators in high places, who were still
plotting the overthrow of the monarchy. [268]

[Persecution of suspected persons over all France.]

It was in vain that Richelieu intervened with the expression of the King's
own wishes, and recalled the example of forgiveness shown in the testament
of Louis XVI. The committee which was appointed to report on the projects
of amnesty brought up a scheme little different from that of La
Bourdonnaye, and added to it the iniquitous proposal that civil actions
should be brought against all condemned persons for the damages sustained
by the State through Napoleon's return. This was to make a mock of the
clause in the Charta which abolished confiscation. The report of the
committee caused the utmost dismay both in France itself and among the
representatives of foreign Powers at Paris. The conflict between the men of
reaction and the Government had openly broken out; Richelieu's Ministry,
the guarantee of peace, seemed to be on the point of falling. On the 2nd of
January, 1816, the Chamber proceeded to discuss the Bill of the Government
and the amendments of the committee. The debate lasted four days; it was
only by the repeated use of the King's own name that the Ministers
succeeded in gaining a majority of nine votes against the two principal
categories of exception appended to the amnesty by their opponents. The
proposal to restore confiscation under the form of civil actions was
rejected by a much greater majority, but on the vote affecting the
regicides the Government was defeated. This indeed was considered of no
great moment. Richelieu, content with having averted measures which would
have exposed several hundred persons to death, exile, or pecuniary ruin,
consented to banish from France the regicides who had acknowledged
Napoleon, along with the thirty-eight persons named in the second list of
July 24th. Among other well-known men, Carnot, who had rendered such great
services to his country, went to die in exile. Of the seventeen companions
of Ney and Labédoyère in the first list of July 24th, most had escaped from
France; one alone suffered death. [269] But the persons originally excluded
from the amnesty and the regicides exiled by the Assembly formed but a
small part of those on whom the vengeance of the Royalists fell; for it was
provided that the amnesty-law should apply to no one against whom
proceedings had been taken before the formal promulgation of the law. The
prisons were already crowded with accused persons, who thus remained
exposed to punishment; and after the law had actually passed the Chamber,
telegraph-signals were sent over the country by Clarke, the Minister of
War, ordering the immediate accusation of several others. One distinguished
soldier at least, General Travot, was sentenced to death on proceedings
thus instituted between the passing and the promulgation of the law of
amnesty. [270] Executions, however, were not numerous except in the south
of France, but an enormous number of persons were imprisoned or driven from
their homes, some by judgment of the law-courts, some by the exercise of
the powers conferred on the administration by the law of Public Security.
[271] The central government indeed had less part in this species of
persecution than the Préfets and other local authorities, though within
their own departments Clarke and Vaublanc set an example which others were
not slow to follow. Royalist committees were formed all over the country,
and assumed the same kind of irregular control over the officials of their
districts as had been practised by the Jacobin committees of 1793.
Thousands of persons employed in all grades of the public service, in
schools and colleges as well as in the civil administration, in the
law-courts as well as in the army and navy, were dismissed from their
posts. The new-comers were professed agents of the reaction; those who were
permitted to retain their offices strove to outdo their colleagues in their
renegade zeal for the new order. It was seen again, as it had been seen
under the Republic and under the Empire, that if virtue has limits,
servility has none. The same men who had hunted down the peasant for
sheltering his children from Napoleon's conscription now hunted down those
who were stigmatised as Bonapartists. The clergy threw in their lot with
the victorious party, and denounced to the magistrates their parishioners
who treated them with disrespect. [272] Darker pages exist in French
history than the reaction of 1815, none more contemptible. It is the
deepest condemnation of the violence of the Republic and the despotism of
the Empire that the generation formed by it should have produced the class
who could exhibit, and the public who could tolerate, the prodigies of
baseness which attended the second Bourbon restoration.

[The reactionists adopt Parliamentary theory.]

Within the Chamber of Deputies the Ultra-Royalist majority had gained
Parliamentary experience in the debates on the Amnesty Bill and the Law of
Public Security: their own policy now took a definite shape, and to
outbursts of passion there succeeded the attempt to realise ideas. Hatred
of the Revolution and all its works was still the dominant impulse of the
Assembly; but whatever may have been the earlier desire of the
Ultra-Royalist noblesse, it was no longer their intention to restore the
political system that existed before 1789. They would in that case have
desired to restore absolute monarchy, and to surrender the power which
seemed at length to have fallen into the hands of their own class. With
Artois on the throne this might have been possible, for Artois, though heir
to the crown, was still what he had been in his youth, the chief of a
party: with Louis XVIII. and Richelieu at the head of the State, the
Ultra-Royalists became the adversaries of royal prerogative and the
champions of the rights of Parliament. Before the Revolution the noblesse
had possessed privileges; it had not possessed political power. The
Constitution of 1814 had unexpectedly given it, under representative forms,
the influence denied to it under the old monarchy. New political vistas
opened; and the men who had hitherto made St. Louis and Henry IV. the
subject of their declamations, now sought to extend the rights of
Parliament to the utmost, and to perpetuate in succeeding assemblies the
rule of the present majority. An electoral law favourable to the great
landed proprietors was the first necessity. This indeed was but a means to
an end; another and a greater end might be attained directly, the
restoration of a landed Church, and of the civil and social ascendancy of
the clergy.

[Ecclesiastical schemes of the reaction.]

It had been admitted by King Louis XVIII. that the clause in the Charta
relating to elections required modification, and on this point the
Ultra-Royalists in the Chamber were content to wait for the proposals of
the Government. In their ecclesiastical policy they did not maintain the
same reserve. Resolutions in favour of the State-Church were discussed in
the form of petitions to be presented to the Crown. It was proposed to make
the clergy, as they had been before the Revolution, the sole keepers of
registers of birth and marriage; to double the annual payment made to them
by the State; to permit property of all kinds to be acquired by the Church
by gift or will; to restore all Church lands not yet sold by the State;
and, finally, to abolish the University of France, and to place all schools
and colleges throughout the country under the control of the Bishops. One
central postulate not only passed the Chamber, but was accepted by the
Government and became law. Divorce was absolutely abolished; and for two
generations after 1816 no possible aggravation of wrong sufficed in France
to release either husband or wife from the mockery of a marriage-tie. The
power to accept donations or legacies was granted to the clergy, subject,
however, in every case to the approval of the Crown. The allowance made to
them out of the revenues of the State was increased by the amount of
certain pensions as they should fall in, a concession which fell very far
short of the demands of the Chamber. In all, the advantages won for the
Church were scarcely proportioned to the zeal displayed in its cause. The
most important question, the disposal of the unsold Church lands, remained
to be determined when the Chamber should enter upon the discussion of the
Budget.

[Electoral Bill, Dec. 18, 1815.]

The Electoral Bill of the Government, from which the Ultra-Royalists
expected so much, was introduced at the end of the year 1815. It showed in
a singular manner the confusion of ideas existing within the Ministry as to
the nature of the Parliamentary liberty now supposed to belong to France.
The ex-préfet Vaublanc, to whom the framing of the measure was entrusted,
though he imagined himself purged from the traditions of Napoleonism, could
conceive of no relation between the executive and the legislative power but
that which exists between a substance and its shadow. It never entered his
mind that the representative institutions granted by the Charta were
intended to bring an independent force to bear upon the Government, or that
the nation should be treated as more than a fringe round the compact and
lasting body of the administration. The language in which Vaublanc
introduced his measure was grotesquely candid. Montesquieu, he said, had
pointed out that powers must be subordinate; therefore the electoral power
must be controlled by the King's Government. [273] By the side of the
electors in the Canton and the Department there was accordingly placed, in
the Ministerial scheme, an array of officials numerous enough to carry the
elections, if indeed they did not actually outnumber the private voters.
The franchise was confined to the sixty richest persons in each Canton:
these, with the officials of the district, were to elect the voters of the
Department, who, with a similar contingent of officials, were to choose the
Deputies. Re-affirming the principle laid down in the Constitution of 1795
and repeated in the Charta, Vaublanc proposed that a fifth part of the
Assembly should retire each year.

[Counter-project of Villèle.]

If the Minister had intended to give the Ultra-Royalists the best possible
means of exalting the peculiar policy of their class into something like a
real defence of liberty, he could not have framed a more fitting measure.
The creation of constituent bodies out of mayors, crown-advocates, and
justices of the peace, was described, and with truth, as a mere Napoleonic
juggle. The limitation of the franchise to a fixed number of rich persons
was condemned as illiberal and contrary to the spirit of the Charta: the
system of yearly renovation by fifths, which threatened to curtail the
reign of the present majority, was attributed to the dread of any complete
expression of public opinion. It was evident that the Bill of the
Government would either be rejected or altered in such a manner as to give
it a totally different character. In the Committee of the Chamber which
undertook the task of drawing up amendments, the influence was first felt
of a man who was soon to become the chief and guiding spirit of the
Ultra-Royalist party. M. de Villèle, spokesman of the Committee, had in his
youth been an officer in the navy of Louis XVI. On the dethronement of the
King he had quitted the service, and settled in the Isle of Bourbon, where
he gained some wealth and an acquaintance with details of business and
finance rare among the French landed gentry. Returning to France under the
Empire, he took up his abode near Toulouse, his native place, and was made
Mayor of that city on Napoleon's second downfall. Villèle's politics gained
a strong and original colour from his personal experience and the character
of the province in which he lived. The south was the only part of France
known to him. There the reactionary movement of 1815 had been a really
popular one, and the chief difficulty of the Government, at the end of the
Hundred Days, had been to protect the Bonapartists from violence. Villèle
believed that throughout France the wealthier men among the peasantry were
as ready to follow the priests and nobles as they were in Provence and La
Vendée. His conception of the government of the future was the rule of a
landed aristocracy, resting, in its struggle against monarchical
centralisation and against the Liberalism of the middle class, on the
conservative and religious instincts of the peasantry. Instead of excluding
popular forces, Villèle welcomed them as allies. He proposed to lower the
franchise to one-sixth of the sum named in the Charta, and, while retaining
a system of double-election, to give a vote in the primary assemblies to
every Frenchman paying annual taxes to the amount of fifty francs. In
constituencies so large as to include all the more substantial peasantry,
while sufficiently limited to exclude the ill-paid populace in towns,
Villèle believed that the Church and the noblesse would on the whole
control the elections. In the interest of the present majority he rejected
the system of renovation by fifths proposed by the Government, and demanded
that the present Chamber should continue unchanged until its dissolution,
and the succeeding Chamber be elected entire.

[Result of debates on Electoral Bill.]

Villèle's scheme, if carried, would in all probability have failed at the
first trial. The districts in which the reaction of 1815 was popular were
not so large as he supposed: in the greater part of France the peasantry
would not have obeyed the nobles except under intimidation. This was
suspected by the majority, in spite of the confident language in which they
spoke of the will of the nation as identical with their own. Villèle's
boldness alarmed them: they anticipated that these great constituencies of
peasants, if really left masters of the elections, would be more likely to
return a body of Jacobins and Bonapartists than one of hereditary
landlords. It was not necessary, however, to sacrifice the well-sounding
principle of a low franchise, for the democratic vote at the first stage of
the elections might effectively be neutralised by putting the second stage
into the hands of the chief proprietors. The Assembly had in fact only to
imitate the example of the Government, and to appoint a body of persons who
should vote, as of right, by the side of the electors chosen in the primary
assemblies. The Government in its own interest had designated a troop of
officials as electors: the Assembly, on the contrary, resolved that in the
Electoral College of each Department, numbering in all about 150 persons,
the fifty principal landowners of the Department should be entitled to
vote, whether they had been nominated by the primary constituencies or not.
Modified by this proviso, the project of Villèle passed the Assembly. The
Government saw that under the disguise of a series of amendments a measure
directly antagonistic to their own had been carried. The franchise had been
altered; the real control of the elections placed in the hands of the very
party which was now in open opposition to the King and his Ministers. No
compromise was possible between the law proposed by the Government and that
passed by the Assembly. The Government appealed to the Chamber of Peers.
The Peers threw out the amendments of the Lower House. A provisional
measure was then introduced by Richelieu for the sake of providing France
with at least some temporary rule for the conduct of elections. It failed;
and the constitutional legislation of the country came to a dead-lock,
while the Government and the Assembly stood face to face, and it became
evident that one or the other must fall. The Ministers of the Great Powers
at Paris, who watched over the restored dynasty, debated whether or not
they should recommend the King to resort to the extreme measure of a
dissolution.

[Contest on the Budget.]

[The Chambers prorogued, April 29.]

The Electoral Bill was not the only object of conflict between Richelieu's
Ministry and the Chamber, nor indeed the principal one. The Budget excited
fiercer passions, and raised greater issues. It was for no mere scheme of
finance that the Government had to fight, but against a violation of public
faith which would have left France insolvent and creditless in the face of
the Powers who still held its territory in pledge. The debt incurred by the
nation since 1813 was still unfunded. That part of it which had been raised
before the summer of 1814 had been secured by law upon the unsold forests
formerly belonging to the Church, and upon the Communal lands which
Napoleon had made the property of the State: the remainder, which included
the loans made during the Hundred Days, had no specified security. It was
now proposed by the Government to place the whole of the unfunded debt upon
the same level, and to provide for its payment by selling the so-called
Church forests. The project excited the bitterest opposition on the side of
the Count of Artois and his friends. If there was one object which the
clerical and reactionary party pursued with religious fervour, it was the
restoration of the Church lands: if there was one class which they had no
scruple in impoverishing, it was the class that had lent money to Napoleon.
Instead of paying the debts of the State, the Committee of the Chamber
proposed to repeal the law of September, 1814, which pledged the Church
forests, and to compel both the earlier and the later holders of the
unfunded debt to accept stock in satisfaction of their claims, though the
stock was worth less than two-thirds of its nominal value. The resolution
was in fact one for the repudiation of a third part of the unfunded debt.
Richelieu, seeing in what fashion his measure was about to be transformed,
determined upon withdrawing it altogether: the majority in the Chamber,
intent on executing its own policy and that of the Count of Artois, refused
to recognise the withdrawal. Such a step was at once an insult and a
usurpation of power. So great was the scandal and alarm caused by the
scenes in the Chamber, that the Duke of Wellington, at the instance of the
Ambassadors, presented a note to King Louis XVIII. requiring him in plain
terms to put a stop to the machinations of his brother. [274] The
interference of the foreigner provoked the Ultra-Royalists, and failed to
excite energetic action on the part of King Louis, who dreaded the sour
countenance of the Duchess of Angoulême more than he did Wellington's
reproofs. In the end the question of a settlement of the unfunded debt was
allowed to remain open. The Government was unable to carry the sale of the
Church forests, the Chamber did not succeed in its project of confiscation.
The Budget for the year, greatly altered in the interest of the landed
proprietors, was at length brought into shape. A resolution of the Lower
House restoring the unsold forests to the Church was ignored by the Crown;
and the Government, having obtained the means of carrying on the public
services, gladly abstained from further legislation, and on the 29th of
April ended the turmoil which surrounded it by proroguing the Chambers.

[Rising at Grenoble, May 6th. Executions.]

It was hoped that with the close of the Session the system of imprisonment
and surveillance which prevailed in the Departments would be brought to an
end. Vaublanc, the Minister of coercion, was removed from office. But the
troubles of France were not yet over. On the 6th of May, a rising of
peasants took place at Grenoble. According to the report of General
Donnadieu, commander of the garrison, which brought the news to the
Government, the revolt had only been put down after the most desperate
fighting. "The corpses of the King's enemies," said the General in his
despatch, "cover all the roads for a league round Grenoble." [275] It was
soon known that twenty-four prisoners had been condemned to death by
court-martial, and sixteen of these actually executed: the court-martial
recommended the other eight to the clemency of the Government. But the
despatches of Donnadieu had thrown the Cabinet into a panic. Decazes, the
most liberal of the Ministers, himself signed the hasty order requiring the
remaining prisoners to be put to death. They perished; and when it was too
late the Government learnt that Donnadieu's narrative was a mass of the
grossest exaggerations, and that the affair which he had represented as an
insurrection of the whole Department was conducted by about 300 peasants,
half of whom were unarmed. The violence and illegality with which the
General proceeded to establish a régime of military law soon brought him
into collision with the Government. He became the hero of the
Ultra-Royalists; but the Ministry, which was unwilling to make a public
confession that it had needlessly put eight persons to death, had to bear
the odium of an act of cruelty for which Donnadieu was really responsible.
The part into which Decazes had been entrapped probably strengthened the
determination of this Minister, who was now gaining great influence over
the King, to strike with energy against the Ultra-Royalist faction. From
this time he steadily led the King towards the only measure which could
free the country from the rule of the Count of Artois and the
reactionists--the dissolution of Parliament.

[Decazes.]

[Dissolution of the Chamber, Sept. 5, 1816.]

Louis XVIII. depended much on the society of some personal favourite.
Decazes was young and an agreeable companion; his business as
Police-Minister gave him the opportunity of amusing the King with anecdotes
and gossip much more congenial to the old man's taste than discussions on
finance or constitutional law. Louis came to regard Decazes almost as a
son, and gratified his own studious inclination by teaching him English.
The Minister's enemies said that he won the King's heart by taking private
lessons from some obscure Briton, and attributing his extraordinary
progress to the skill of his royal master. But Decazes had a more effective
retort than witticism. He opened the letters of the Ultra-Royalists and
laid them before the King. Louis found that these loyal subjects jested
upon his infirmities, called him a dupe in the hands of Jacobins, and
grumbled at him for so long delaying the happy hour when Artois should
ascend the throne. Humorous as Louis was, he was not altogether pleased to
read that he "ought either to open his eyes or to close them for ever." At
the same time the reports of Decazes' local agents proved that the
Ultra-Royalist party were in reality weak in numbers and unpopular
throughout the greater part of the country. The project of a dissolution
was laid before the Ministers and some of the King's confidants. Though the
Ambassadors were not consulted on the measure, it was certain that they
would not resist it. No word of the Ministerial plot reached the rival camp
of Artois. The King gained courage, and on the 5th of September signed the
Ordonnance which appealed from the Parliament to the nation, and, to the
anger and consternation of the Ultra-Royalists, made an end of the
intractable Chamber a few weeks before the time which had been fixed for
its re-assembling.

[Electoral law, 1817.]

France was well rid of a body of men who had been elected at a moment of
despair, and who would either have prolonged the occupation of the country
by foreign armies, or have plunged the nation into civil war. The elections
which followed were favourable to the Government. The questions fruitlessly
agitated in the Assembly of 1815 were settled to the satisfaction of the
public in the new Parliament. An electoral law was passed, which, while it
retained the high franchise fixed by the Charta, and the rule of renewing
the Chamber by fifths, gave life and value to the representative system by
making the elections direct. Though the constituent body of all France
scarcely numbered under this arrangement a hundred thousand persons, it was
extensive enough to contain a majority hostile to the reactionary policy of
the Church and the noblesse. The men who had made wealth by banking,
commerce, or manufactures, the so-called higher bourgeoisie, greatly
exceeded in number the larger landed proprietors; and although they were
not usually democratic in their opinions, they were liberal, and keenly
attached to the modern as against the old institutions of France, inasmuch
as their industrial interests and their own personal importance depended
upon the maintenance of the victory won in 1789 against aristocratic
privilege and monopoly. So strong was the hostility between the civic
middle class and the landed noblesse, that the Ultra-Royalists in the
Chamber sought, as they had done in the year before, to extend the
franchise to the peasantry, in the hope of overpowering wealth with
numbers. The electoral law, however, passed both Houses in the form in
which it had been drawn up by the Government. Though deemed narrow and
oligarchical by the next generation, it was considered, and with justice,
as a great victory won by liberalism at the time. The middle class of Great
Britain had to wait for fifteen years before it obtained anything like the
weight in the representation given to the middle class of France by the law
of 1817.

[Establishment of financial credit.]

Not many of the persons who had been imprisoned under the provisional acts
of the last year now remained in confinement. It was considered necessary
to prolong the Laws of Public Security, and they were re-enacted, but under
a much softened form. It remained for the new Chamber to restore the
financial credit of the country by making some equitable arrangement for
securing the capital and paying the interest of the unfunded debt. Projects
of repudiation now gained no hearing. Richelieu consented to make an annual
allowance to the Church, equivalent to the rental of the Church forests;
but the forests themselves were made security for the debt, and the power
of sale was granted to the Government. Pending such repayment of the
capital, the holders of unfunded debt received stock, calculated at its
real, not at its titular, value. The effect of this measure was at once
evident. The Government was enabled to enter into negotiations for a loan,
which promised it the means of paying the indemnities due to the foreign
Powers. On this payment depended the possibility of withdrawing the army of
occupation. Though Wellington at first offered some resistance, thirty
thousand men were removed in the spring of 1817; and the Czar allowed
Richelieu to hope that, if no further difficulties should arise, the
complete evacuation of French territory might take place in the following
year.

[Character of the years 1816-18.]

Thus the dangers with which reactionary passion had threatened France
appeared to be passing away. The partial renovation of the Chamber which
took place in the autumn of 1817 still further strengthened the Ministry of
Richelieu and weakened the Ultra-Royalist opposition. A few more months
passed, and before the third anniversary of Waterloo, the Czar was ready to
advise the entire withdrawal of foreign armies from France. An invitation
was issued to the Powers to meet in Conference at Aix-la-Chapelle. There
was no longer any doubt that the five years' occupation, contemplated when
the second Treaty of Paris was made, would be abandoned. The good will of
Alexander, the friendliness of his Ambassador, Pozzo di Borgo, who, as a
native of Corsica, had himself been a French subject, and who now aspired
to become Minister of France, were powerful influences in favour of Louis
XVIII. and his kingdom; much, however, of the speedy restoration of
confidence was due to the temperate rule of Richelieu. The nation itself,
far from suffering from Napoleon's fall, regained something of the
spontaneous energy so rich in 1789, so wanting at a later period. The cloud
of military disaster lifted; new mental and political life began; and under
the dynasty forced back by foreign arms France awoke to an activity unknown
to it while its chief gave laws to Europe. Parliamentary debate offered the
means of legal opposition to those who bore no friendship to the Court:
conspiracy, though it alarmed at the moment, had become the resort only of
the obscure and the powerless. Groups of able men were gathering around
recognised leaders, or uniting in defence of a common political creed. The
Press, dumb under Napoleon except for purposes of sycophancy, gradually
became a power in the land. Even the dishonest eloquence of Chateaubriand,
enforcing the principles of legal and constitutional liberty on behalf of a
party which would fain have used every weapon of despotism in its own
interest, proved that the leaden weight that had so long crushed thought
and expression existed no more.

[Prussia after 1815.]

[Edict promising a Constitution, May 22, 1815.]

But if the years between 1815 and 1819 were in France years of hope and
progress, it was not so with Europe generally. In England they were years
of almost unparalleled suffering and discontent; in Italy the rule of
Austria grew more and more anti-national; in Prussia, though a vigorous
local and financial administration hastened the recovery of the
impoverished land, the hopes of liberty declined beneath the reviving
energy of the nobles and the resistance of the friends of absolutism. When
Stein had summoned the Prussian people to take up arms for their
Fatherland, he had believed that neither Frederick William nor Alexander
would allow Prussia to remain without free institutions after the battle
was won. The keener spirits in the War of Liberation had scarcely
distinguished between the cause of national independence and that of
internal liberty. They returned from the battle-fields of Saxony and France,
knowing that the Prussian nation had unsparingly offered up life and wealth
at the call of patriotism, and believing that a patriot-king would rejoice
to crown his triumph by inaugurating German freedom. For a while the hope
seemed near fulfilment. On the 22nd of May, 1815, Frederick William
published an ordinance, declaring that a Representation of the People
should be established. [276] For this end the King stated that the existing
Provincial Estates should be re-organised, and new ones founded where none
existed, and that out of the Provincial Estates the Assembly of
Representatives of the country should be chosen. It was added that a
commission would be appointed, to organise under Hardenberg's presidency
the system of representation, and to draw up a written Constitution. The
right of discussing all legislative measures affecting person or property
was promised to the Assembly. Though foreign affairs seemed to be directly
excluded from parliamentary debate, and the language of the Edict suggested
that the representative body would only have a consultative voice, without
the power either of originating or of rejecting laws, these reservations
only showed the caution natural on the part of a Government divesting
itself for the first time of absolute power. Guarded as it was, the scheme
laid down by the King would hardly have displeased the men who had done the
most to make constitutional rule in Prussia possible.

[Resistance of feudal and autocratic parties.]

But the promise of Frederick William was destined to remain unfulfilled. It
was no good omen for Prussia that Stein, who had rendered such glorious
services to his country and to all Europe, was suffered to retire from
public life. The old court-party at Berlin, politicians who had been forced
to make way for more popular men, landowners who had never pardoned the
liberation of the serf, all the interests of absolutism and class-privilege
which had disappeared for a moment in the great struggle for national
existence, gradually re-asserted their influence over the King, and
undermined the authority of Hardenberg, himself sinking into old age amid
circumstances of private life that left to old age little of its honour. To
decide even in principle upon the basis to be given to the new Prussian
Constitution would have taxed all the foresight and all the constructive
skill of the most experienced statesman; for by the side of the ancient
dominion of the Hohenzollerns there were now the Rhenish and the Saxon
Provinces, alien in spirit and of doubtful loyalty, in addition to Polish
territory and smaller German districts acquired at intervals between 1792
and 1815. Hardenberg was right in endeavouring to link the Constitution
with something that had come down from the past; but the decision that the
General Assembly should be formed out of the Provincial Estates was
probably an injudicious one; for these Estates, in their present form, were
mainly corporations of nobles, and the spirit which animated them was at
once the spirit of class-privilege and of an intensely strong localism.
Hardenberg had not only occasioned an unnecessary delay by basing the
representative system upon a reform of the Provincial Estates, but had
exposed himself to sharp attacks from these very bodies, to whom nothing
was more odious than the absorption of their own dignity by a General
Assembly. It became evident that the process of forming a Constitution
would be a tedious one; and in the meantime the opponents of the popular
movement opened their attack upon the men and the ideas whose influence in
the war of Liberation appeared to have made so great a break between the
German present and the past.

[Schmalz's pamphlet, 1815.]

The first public utterance of the reaction was a pamphlet issued in July,
1815, by Schmalz, a jurist of some eminence, and brother-in-law of
Scharnhorst, the re-organiser of the army. Schmalz, contradicting a
statement which attributed to him a highly honourable part in the patriotic
movement of 1808, attacked the Tugendbund, and other political associations
dating from that epoch, in language of extreme violence. In the stiff and
peremptory manner of the old Prussian bureaucracy, he denied that popular
enthusiasm had anything whatever to do with the victory of 1813, [277]
attributing the recovery of the nation firstly to its submission to the
French alliance in 1812, and secondly to the quiet sense of duty with
which, when the time came, it took up arms in obedience to the King. Then,
passing on to the present aims of the political societies, he accused them
of intending to overthrow all established governments, and to force unity
upon Germany by means of revolution, murder, and pillage. Stein was not
mentioned by name, but the warning was given to men of eminence who
encouraged Jacobinical societies, that in such combinations the giants end
by serving the dwarfs. Schmalz's pamphlet, which was written with a
strength and terseness of style very unusual in Germany, made a deep
impression, and excited great indignation in Liberal circles. It was
answered, among other writers, by Niebuhr; and the controversy thickened
until King Frederick William, in the interest of public tranquillity,
ordered that no more should be said on either side. It was in accordance
with Prussian feeling that the King should thus interfere to stop the
quarrels of his subjects. There would have been nothing unseemly in an act
of impartial repression. But the King made it impossible to regard his act
as of this character. Without consulting Hardenberg, he conferred a
decoration upon the author of the controversy. Far-sighted men saw the true
bearing of the act. They warned Hardenberg that, if he passed over this
slight, he would soon have to pass over others more serious, and urged him
to insist upon the removal of the counsellors on whose advice the King had
acted. [278] But the Minister disliked painful measures. He probably
believed that no influence could ever supplant his own with the King, and
looked too lightly upon the growth of a body of opponents, who, whether in
open or in concealed hostility to himself, were bent upon hindering the
fulfilment of the constitutional reforms which he had at heart.

[The promised Constitutions delayed in Germany.]

In the Edict of the 22nd of May, 1815, the King had ordered that the work
of framing a Constitution should be begun in the following September.
Delays, however, arose; and when the commission was at length appointed,
its leading members were directed to travel over the country in order to
collect opinions upon the form of representation required. Two years passed
before even this preliminary operation began. In the meantime very little
progress had been made towards the establishment of constitutional
government in Germany at large. One prince alone, the Grand Duke of Weimar,
already eminent in Europe from his connection with Goethe and Schiller,
loyally accepted the idea of a free State, and brought representative
institutions into actual working. In Hesse, the Elector summoned the
Estates, only to dismiss them with contumely when they resisted his
extortions. In most of the minor States contests or negotiations took place
between the Sovereigns and the ancient Orders, which led to little or no
result. The Federal Diet, which ought to have applied itself to the
determination of certain principles of public right common to all Germany,
remained inactive. Though hope had not yet fallen, a sense of discontent
arose, especially among the literary class which had shown such enthusiasm
in the War of Liberation. It was characteristic of Germany that the demand
for free government came not from a group of soldiers, as in Spain, not
from merchants and men of business, as in England, but from professors and
students, and from journalists, who were but professors in another form.
The middle class generally were indifferent: the higher nobility, and the
knights who had lost their semi-independence in 1803, sought for the
restoration of privileges which were really incompatible with any
State-government whatever. The advocacy of constitutional rule and of
German unity was left, in default of Prussian initiative, to the ardent
spirits of the Universities and the Press, who naturally exhibited in the
treatment of political problems more fluency than knowledge, and more zeal
than discretion. Jena, in the dominion of the Duke of Weimar, became, on
account of the freedom of printing which existed there, the centre of the
new Liberal journalism. Its University took the lead in the Teutonising
movement which had been inaugurated by Fichte twelve years before in the
days of Germany's humiliation, and which had now received so vigorous an
impulse from the victory won over the foreigner.

[The Wartburg Festival, Oct., 1817.]

On the 18th of October, 1817, the students of Jena, with deputations from
all the Protestant Universities of Germany, held a festival at Eisenach, to
celebrate the double anniversary of the Reformation and of the battle of
Leipzig. Five hundred young patriots, among them scholars who had been
decorated for bravery at Waterloo, bound their brows with oak-leaves, and
assembled within the venerable hall of Luther's Wartburg Castle; sang,
prayed, preached, and were preached to; dined; drank to German liberty, the
jewel of life, to Dr. Martin Luther, the man of God, and to the Grand Duke
of Saxe-Weimar; then descended to Eisenach, fraternised with the Landsturm
in the market-place, and attended divine service in the parish church
without mishap. In the evening they edified the townspeople with
gymnastics, which were now the recognised symbol of German vigour, and
lighted a great bonfire on the hill opposite the castle. Throughout the
official part of the ceremony a reverential spirit prevailed; a few rash
words were, however, uttered against promise-breaking kings, and some of
the hardier spirits took advantage of the bonfire to consign to the flames,
in imitation of Luther's dealing with the Pope's Bull, a quantity of what
they deemed un-German and illiberal writings. Among these was Schmalz's
pamphlet. They also burnt a soldier's strait-jacket, a pigtail, and a
corporal's cane, emblems of the military brutalism of past times which were
now being revived in Westphalia. [279] Insignificant as the whole affair
was, it excited a singular alarm not only in Germany but at foreign Courts.
Richelieu wrote from Paris to inquire whether revolution was breaking out.
The King of Prussia sent Hardenberg to Weimar to make investigations on the
spot. Metternich, who saw conspiracy and revolution everywhere and in
everything, congratulated himself that his less sagacious neighbours were
at length awakening to their danger. The first result of the Wartburg
scandal was that the Duke of Weimar had to curtail the liberties of his
subjects. Its further effects became only too evident as time went on. It
left behind it throughout Germany the impression that there were forces of
disorder at work in the Press and in the Universities which must be crushed
at all cost by the firm hand of Government; and it deepened the anxiety
with which King Frederick William was already regarding the promises of
liberty which he had made to the Prussian people two years before.

[Alexander in 1818.]

Twelve months passed between the Wartburg festival and the beginning of the
Conferences at Aix-la-Chapelle. In the interval a more important person
than the King of Prussia went over to the side of reaction. Up to the
summer of 1818, the Czar appeared to have abated nothing of his zeal for
constitutional government. In the spring of that year, he summoned the
Polish Diet; addressed them in a speech so enthusiastic as to alarm not
only the Court of Vienna but all his own counsellors; and stated in the
clearest possible language his intention of extending the benefits of a
representative system to the whole Russian Empire. [280] At the close of
the brief session he thanked the Polish Deputies for their boldness in
throwing out a measure proposed by himself. Alexander's popular rhetoric at
Warsaw might perhaps be not incompatible with a settled purpose to permit
no encroachment on authority either there or elsewhere; but the change in
his tone was so great when he appeared at Aix-la-Chapelle a few months
afterwards, that some strange and sudden cause has been thought necessary
to explain it. It is said that during the Czar's residence at Moscow, in
June, 1818, the revelation was made to him of the existence of a mass of
secret societies in the army, whose aim was the overthrow of his own
Government. Alexander's father had died by the hands of murderers: his own
temperament, sanguine and emotional, would make the effects of such a
discovery, in the midst of all his benevolent hopes for Russia, poignant to
the last degree. It is not inconsistent either with his character or with
earlier events in his personal history that the Czar should have yielded to
a single shock of feeling, and have changed in a moment from the liberator
to the despot. But the evidence of what passed in his mind is wanting.
Hearsay, conjecture, gossip, abound; [281] the one man who could have told
all has left no word. This only is certain, that from the close of the year
1818, the future, hitherto bright with dreams of peaceful progress, became
in Alexander's view a battle-field between the forces of order and anarchy.
The task imposed by Providence on himself and other kings was no longer to
spread knowledge and liberty among mankind, but to defend existing
authority, and even authority that was oppressive and un-Christian, against
the madness that was known as popular right.

[Conferences of Aix-la-Chapelle, Oct., 1818.]

[France evacuated.]

[Proposed Quintuple Alliance.]

[Canning.]

At the end of September, 1818, the Sovereigns or Ministers of the Great
Powers assembled at Aix-la-Chapelle, and the Conferences began. The first
question to be decided was whether the Allied Army might safely be
withdrawn from France; the second, in what form the concert of Europe
should hereafter be maintained. On the first question there was no
disagreement: the evacuation of France was resolved upon and promptly
executed. The second question was a more difficult one. Richelieu, on
behalf of King Louis XVIII., represented that France now stood on the same
footing as any other European Power, and proposed that the Quadruple
Alliance of 1815 should be converted into a genuine European federation by
adding France to it as a fifth member. The plan had been communicated to
the English Government, and would probably have received its assent but for
the strong opposition raised by Canning within the Cabinet. Canning took a
gloomy but a true view of the proposed concert of the Powers. He foresaw
that it would really amount to a combination of governments against
liberty. Therefore, while recognising the existing engagements of this
country, he urged that England ought to join in no combination except that
to which it had already pledged itself, namely, the combination made with
the definite object of resisting French disturbance. To combine with three
Powers to prevent Napoleon or the Jacobins from again becoming masters of
France was a reasonable act of policy: to combine with all the Great Powers
of Europe against nothing in particular was to place the country on the
side of governments against peoples, and to involve England in any
enterprise of repression which the Courts might think fit to undertake.
Canning's warning opened the eyes of his colleagues to the view which was
likely to be taken of such a general alliance by Parliament and by public
opinion. Lord Castlereagh was forbidden to make this country a party to any
abstract union of Governments. In memorable words the Prime Minister
described the true grounds for the decision: "We must recollect in the
whole of this business, and ought to make our Allies feel, that the general
and European discussion of these questions will be in the British
Parliament." [282] Fear of the rising voice of the nation, no longer forced
by military necessities to sanction every measure of its rulers, compelled
Lords Liverpool and Castlereagh to take account of scruples which were not
their own. On the same grounds, while the Ministry agreed that Continental
difficulties which might hereafter arise ought to be settled by a friendly
discussion among the Great Powers, it declined to elevate this occasional
deliberation into a system, and to assent to the periodical meeting of a
Congress. Peace might or might not be promoted by the frequent gatherings
of Sovereigns and statesmen; but a council so formed, if permanent in its
nature, would necessarily extinguish the independence of every minor State,
and hand over the government of all Europe to the Great Courts, if only
they could agree with one another.

[Declarations and Secret Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.]

It was the refusal of England to enter into a general league that
determined the form in which the results of the Conference of 1818 were
embodied. In the first place the Quadruple Alliance against French
revolution was renewed, and with such seriousness that the military centres
were fixed, at which, in case of any outbreak, the troops of each of the
Great Powers should assemble. [283] This Treaty, however, was kept secret,
in order not to add to the difficulties of Richelieu. The published
documents breathed another spirit. [284] Without announcing an actual
alliance with King Louis XVIII., the Courts, including England, declared
that through the restoration of legitimate and constitutional monarchy
France had regained its place in the councils of Europe, and that it would
hereafter co-operate in maintaining the general peace. For this end
meetings of the sovereigns or their ministers might be necessary; such
meetings would, however, be arranged by the ordinary modes of negotiation,
nor would the affairs of any minor State be discussed by the Great Powers,
except at the direct invitation of that State, whose representatives would
then be admitted to the sittings. In these guarded words the intention of
forming a permanent and organised Court of Control over Europe was
disclaimed. A manifesto, addressed to the world at large, declared that the
sovereigns of the five great States had no other object in their union than
the maintenance of peace on the basis of existing treaties. They had formed
no new political combinations; their rule was the observance of
international law; their object the prosperity and moral welfare of their
subjects.

[Repressive tone of the Conference.]

[Metternich and Austrian principles henceforth dominant.]

The earnestness with which the statesmen of 1818, while accepting the
conditions laid down by England, persevered in the project of a joint
regulation of European affairs may suggest the question whether the plan
which they had at heart would not in truth have operated to the benefit of
mankind. The answer is, that the value of any International Council depends
firstly on the intelligence which it is likely to possess, and secondly on
the degree in which it is really representative. Experience proved that the
Congresses which followed 1818 possessed but a limited intelligence, and
that they represented nothing at all but authority. The meeting at
Aix-la-Chapelle was itself the turning-point in the constitutional history
of Europe. Though no open declaration was made against constitutional
forms, every Sovereign and every minister who attended the Conference left
it with the resolution to draw the reins of government tighter. A note of
alarm had been sounded. Conspiracies in Belgium, an attempt on the life of
Wellington, rumours of a plot to rescue Napoleon from St. Helena, combined
with the outcry against the German Universities and the whispered tales
from Moscow in filling the minds of statesmen with apprehensions. The
change which had taken place in Alexander himself was of the most serious
moment. Up to this time Metternich, the leader of European Conservatism,
had felt that in the Czar there were sympathies with Liberalism and
enlightenment which made the future of Europe doubtful. [285] To check the
dissolution of existing power, to suppress all tendency to change, was the
habitual object of Austria, and the Czar was the one person who had seemed
likely to prevent the principles of Austria from becoming the law of
Europe. Elsewhere Metternich had little to fear in the way of opposition.
Hardenberg, broken in health and ill-supported by his King, had ceased to
be a power. Yielding to the apprehensions of Frederick William, perhaps
with the hope of dispelling them at some future time, he took his place
among the alarmists of the day, and suffered the German policy of Prussia,
to which so great a future lay open a few years before, to become the mere
reflex of Austrian inaction and repression. [286] England, so long as it
was represented on the Continent by Castlereagh and Wellington, scarcely
counted for anything on the side of liberty. The sudden change in Alexander
removed the one check that stood in Austria's way; and from this time
Metternich exercised an authority in Europe such as few statesmen have ever
possessed. His influence, overborne by that of the Czar during 1814 and
1815, struck root at the Conference of Aix-la-Chapelle, maintained itself
unimpaired during five eventful years, and sank only when the death of Lord
Castlereagh allowed the real voice of England once more to be heard, and
Canning, too late to forbid the work of repression in Italy and in Spain,
inaugurated, after an interval of forced neutrality, that worthier concert
which established the independence of Greece.

[Metternich's advice to Prussia, 1818.]

If it is the mark of a clever statesman to know where to press and where to
give way, Metternich certainly proved himself one in 1818. Before the end
of the Conference he delivered to Hardenberg and to the King of Prussia two
papers containing a complete set of recommendations for the management of
Prussian affairs. The contents of these documents were singular enough: it
is still more singular that they form the history of what actually took
place in Prussia during the succeeding years. Starting with the assumption
that the party of revolution had found its lever in the promise of King
Frederick William to create a Representative System, Metternich
demonstrated in polite language to the very men who had made this promise,
that any central Representation would inevitably overthrow the Prussian
State; pointed out that the King's dominions consisted of seven Provinces;
and recommended Frederick William to fulfil his promise only by giving to
each Province a Diet for the discussion of its own local concerns. Having
thus warned the King against creating a National Parliament, like that
which had thrown France into revolution in 1789, Metternich exhibited the
specific dangers of the moment and the means of overcoming them. These
dangers were Universities, Gymnastic establishments, and the Press. "The
revolutionists," he said, "despairing of effecting their aim themselves,
have formed the settled plan of educating the next generation for
revolution. The Gymnastic 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,
on the contrary, were invented at Berlin, and spring from 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." With regard to the abuse of
the Press, Metternich contented himself with saying that a difference ought
to be made between substantial books and mere pamphlets or journals; and
that the regulation of the Press throughout Germany at large could only be
effected by an agreement between Austria and Prussia. [287]

[Stourdza's pamphlet.]

With a million men under arms, the Sovereigns who had overthrown Napoleon
trembled because thirty or forty journalists and professors pitched their
rhetoric rather too high, and because wise heads did not grow upon
schoolboys' shoulders. The Emperor Francis, whose imagination had failed to
rise to the glories of the Holy Alliance, alone seems to have had some
suspicion of the absurdity of the present alarms. [288] The Czar
distinguished himself by his zeal against the lecturers who were turning
the world upside down. As if Metternich had not frightened the Congress
enough already, the Czar distributed at Aix-la-Chapelle a pamphlet
published by one Stourdza, a Moldavian, which described Germany as on the
brink of revolution, and enumerated half a score of mortal disorders which
racked that unfortunate country. The chief of all was the vicious system of
the Universities, which instead of duly developing the vessel of the
Christian State from the cradle of Moses, [289] brought up young men to be
despisers of law and instruments of a licentious Press. The ingenious
Moldavian, whose expressions in some places bear a singular resemblance to
those of Alexander, while in others they are actually identical with
reflections of Metternich's not then published, went on to enlighten the
German Governments as to the best means of rescuing their subjects from
their perilous condition. Certain fiscal and administrative changes were
briefly suggested, but the main reform urged was exactly that propounded by
Metternich, the enforcement of a better discipline and of a more
rigidly-prescribed course of study at the Universities, along with the
supervision of all journals and periodical literature.

[The murder of Kotzebue, March 23, 1819.]

Stourdza's pamphlet, in which loose reasoning was accompanied by the
coarsest invective, would have gained little attention if it had depended
on its own merits or on the reputation of its author: it became a different
matter when it was known to represent the views of the Czar. A vehement but
natural outcry arose at the Universities against this interference of the
foreigner with German domestic affairs. National independence, it seemed,
had been won in the deadly struggle against France only in order that
internal liberty, the promised fruit of this independence, should be
sacrificed at the bidding of Russia. The Czar himself was out of reach: the
vengeance of outraged patriotism fell upon an insignificant person who had
the misfortune to be regarded as his principal agent. A dramatic author
then famous, now forgotten, August Kotzebue, held the office of Russian
agent in Central Germany, and conducted a newspaper whose object was to
throw ridicule on the national movement of the day, and especially on those
associations of students where German enthusiasm reached its climax. Many
circumstances embittered popular feeling against this man, and caused him
to be regarded less as a legitimate enemy than as a traitor and an
apostate. Kotzebue had himself been a student at Jena, and at one time had
turned liberal sentiments to practical account in his plays. Literary
jealousies and wounded vanity had subsequently alienated him from his
country, and made him the willing and acrid hireling of a foreign Court.
The reports which, as Russian agent, he sent to St. Petersburg were
doubtless as offensive as the attacks on the Universities which he
published in his journal; but it was an extravagant compliment to the man
to imagine that he was the real author of the Czar's desertion from
Liberalism to reaction. This, however, was the common belief, and it cost
Kotzebue dear. A student from Erlangen, Carl Sand, who had accompanied the
standard at the Wartburg festival, formed the silent resolve of sacrificing
his own life in order to punish the enemy of his country. Sand was a man of
pure and devout, though ill-balanced character. His earlier life marked him
as one whose whole being was absorbed by what he considered a divine call.
He thought of the Greeks who, even in their fallen estate, had so often
died to free their country from Turkish oppression, and formed the
deplorable conclusion that by murdering a decayed dramatist he could strike
some great blow against the powers of evil. [290] He sought the unfortunate
Kotzebue in the midst of his family, stabbed him to the heart, and then
turned his weapon against himself. Recovering from his wounds, he was
condemned to death, and perished, after a year's interval, on the scaffold,
calling God to witness that he died for Germany to be free.

[Action of Metternich.]

The effects of Sand's act were very great, and their real nature was at
once recognised. Hardenberg, the moment that he heard of Kotzebue's death,
exclaimed that a Prussian Constitution had now become impossible.
Metternich, who had thought the Czar mad because he desired to found a
peaceful alliance of Sovereigns on religious principles, was not likely to
make allowance for a kind of piety that sent young rebels over the country
on missions of murder. The Austrian statesman was in Rome when the news of
Kotzebue's assassination reached him. He saw that the time had come for
united action throughout Germany, and, without making any public utterance,
drew up a scheme of repressive measures, and sent out proposals for a
gathering of the Ministers of all the principal German Courts. In the
summer he travelled slowly northwards, met the King of Prussia at Teplitz,
in Bohemia, and shortly afterwards opened the intended Conference of
Ministers in the neighbouring town of Carlsbad. A number of innocent
persons had already, at his instigation, been arrested in Prussia and other
States, under circumstances deeply discreditable to Government. Private
papers were seized, and garbled extracts from them published in official
prints as proof of guilt. [291] "By the help of God," Metternich wrote, "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." [292] Metternich's plan was to
enforce throughout Germany, by means of legislation in the Federal Diet,
the principle which he had already privately commended to the King of
Prussia. There were two distinct objects of policy before him: the first,
to prevent the formation in any German State of an assembly representing
the whole community, like the English House of Commons or the French
Chamber of Deputies; the second, to establish a general system of
censorship over the Press and over the Universities, and to create a
central authority, vested, as the representative of the Diet, with
inquisitorial powers.

[The South-Western States become constitutional as Prussia relapses.]

[Bavarian Constitution, May 26, 1818.]

The first of these objects, the prevention of general assemblies, had been
rendered more difficult by recent acts of the Governments of Bavaria and
Baden. A singular change had taken place in the relation between Prussia
and the Minor States which had formerly constituted the Federation of the
Rhine. When, at the Congress of Vienna, Prussian statesmen had endeavoured
to limit the arbitrary rule of petty sovereigns by charging the Diet with
the protection of constitutional right over all Germany, the Kings of
Bavaria and Würtemberg had stoutly refused to part with sovereign power. To
submit to a law of liberty, as it then seemed, was to lose their own
separate existence, and to reduce themselves to dependence upon the
Jacobins of Berlin. This apprehension governed the policy of the Minor
Courts from 1813 to 1815. But since that time events had taken an
unexpected turn. Prussia, which once threatened to excite popular movement
over all Germany in its own interest, had now accepted Metternich's
guidance, and made its representative in the Diet the mouthpiece of
Austrian interest and policy. It was no longer from Berlin but from Vienna
that the separate existence of the Minor States was threatened. The two
great Courts were uniting against the independence of their weaker
neighbours. The danger of any popular invasion of kingly rights in the name
of German unity had passed away, and the safety of the lesser sovereigns
seemed now to lie not in resisting the spirit of constitutional reform but
in appealing to it. In proportion as Prussia abandoned itself to
Metternich's direction, the Governments of the South-Western States
familiarised themselves with the idea of a popular representation; and at
the very time when the conservative programme was being drawn up for the
Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, the King of Bavaria published a Constitution.
Baden followed after a short interval, and in each of these States,
although the Legislature was divided into two Chambers, the representation
established was not merely provincial, according to Metternich's plan, or
wholly on the principle of separate Estates or Orders, as before the
Revolution, but to some extent on the type of England and France, where the
Lower Chamber, in theory, represented the public at large. This was enough
to make Metternich condemn the new Constitutions as radically bad and
revolutionary. [293] He was, however, conscious of the difficulty of making
a direct attack upon them. This task he reserved for a later time. His
policy at present was to obtain a declaration from the Diet which should
prevent any other Government within the League from following in the same
path; while, by means of Press-laws, supervision of the Universities, and a
central commission of inquiry, he expected to make the position of
rebellious professors and agitators so desperate that the forces of
disorder, themselves not deeply rooted in German nature, would presently
disappear.

[Conference of Carlsbad, Aug., 1819.]

The Conference of Ministers at Carlsbad, which in the memory of the German
people is justly associated with the suppression of their liberty for an
entire generation, began and ended in the month of August, 1819. Though
attended by the representatives of eight German Governments, it did little
more than register the conclusions which Metternich had already formed.
[294] The zeal with which the envoy of Prussia supported every repressive
measure made it useless for the Ministers of the Minor Courts to offer an
open opposition. Nothing more was required than that the Diet should
formally sanction the propositions thus privately accepted by all the
leading Ministers. On the 20th of September this sanction was given. The
Diet, which had sat for three years without framing a single useful law,
ratified all Metternich's oppressive enactments in as many hours. It was
ordered that in every State within the Federation the Government should
take measures for preventing the publication of any journal or pamphlet
except after licence given, and each Government was declared responsible to
the Federation at large for any objectionable writing published within its
own territory. The Sovereigns were required to appoint civil commissioners
at the Universities, whose duty it should be to enforce public order and to
give a salutary direction to the teaching of the professors. They were also
required to dismiss all professors who should overstep the bounds of their
duty, and such dismissed persons were prohibited from being employed in any
other State. It was enacted that within fifteen days of the passing of the
decree an extraordinary Commission should assemble at Mainz to investigate
the origin and extent of the secret revolutionary societies which
threatened the safety of the Federation. The Commission was empowered to
examine and, if necessary, to arrest any subject of any German State. All
law-courts and other authorities were required to furnish it with
information and with documents, and to undertake all inquiries which the
Commission might order. The Commission, however, was not a law-court
itself: its duty was to report to the Diet, which would then create such
judicial machinery as might be necessary. [295]

[Supplementary Act of Vienna, June, 1820.]

These measures were of an exceptional, and purported to be of a temporary,
character. There were, however, other articles which Metternich intended to
raise to the rank of organic laws, and to incorporate with the Act of 1815,
which formed the basis of the German Federation. The conferences of
Ministers were accordingly resumed after a short interval, but at Vienna
instead of at Carlsbad. They lasted for several months, a stronger
opposition being now made by the Minor States than before. A second body of
federal law was at length drawn up, and accepted by the Diet on the 8th of
June, 1820. [296] The most important of its provisions was that which
related to the Constitutions admissible within the German League. It was
declared that in every State, with the exception of the four free cities,
supreme power resided in the Sovereign and in him alone, and that no
Constitution might do more than bind the Sovereign to co-operate with the
Estates in certain definite acts of government. [297]

In cases where a Government either appealed for help against rebellious
subjects, or was notoriously unable to exert authority, the Diet charged
itself with the duty of maintaining public order.

[The reaction in Prussia.]

From this time whatever liberty existed in Germany was to be found in the
Minor States, in Bavaria and Baden, and in Würtemberg, which received a
Constitution a few days before the enrolment of the decrees of Carlsbad. In
Prussia the reaction carried everything before it. Humboldt, the best and
most liberal of the Ministers, resigned, protesting in vain against the
ignominious part which the King had determined to play. He was followed by
those of his colleagues whose principles were dearer to them than their
places. Hardenberg remained in office, a dying man, isolated, neglected,
thwarted; clinging to some last hope of redeeming his promises to the
Prussian people, yet jealous of all who could have given him true aid;
dishonouring by tenacity of place a career associated with so much of his
country's glory, and ennobled in earlier days by so much fortitude in time
of evil. There gathered around the King a body of men who could see in the
great patriotic efforts and reforms of the last decade nothing but an
encroachment of demagogues on the rights of power. They were willing that
Prussia should receive its orders from Metternich and serve a foreign Court
in the work of repression, rather than that it should take its place at the
head of all Germany on the condition of becoming a free and constitutional
State. [298] The stigma of disloyalty was attached to all who had kindled
popular enthusiasm in 1808 and 1812. To have served the nation was to have
sinned against the Government. Stein was protected by his great name from
attack, but not from calumny. His friend Arndt, whose songs and addresses
had so powerfully moved the heart of Germany during the War of Liberation,
was subjected to repeated legal process, and, although unconvicted of any
offence, was suspended from the exercise of his professorship for twenty
years. Other persons, whose fault at the most was to have worked for German
unity, were brought before special tribunals, and after long trial either
refused a public acquittal or sentenced to actual imprisonment. Free
teaching, free discussion, ceased. The barrier of authority closed every
avenue of political thought. Everywhere the agent of the State prescribed
an orthodox opinion, and took note of those who raised a dissentient voice.

[The Commission at Mainz.]

The pretext made at Carlsbad for this crusade against liberty, which was
more energetically carried out in Prussia than elsewhere, was the existence
of a conspiracy or agitation for the overthrow of Governments and of the
present constitution of the German League. It was stated that proofs
existed of the intention to establish by force a Republic one and
indivisible, like that of France in 1793. But the very Commission which was
instituted by the Carlsbad Ministers to investigate the origin and nature
of this conspiracy disproved its existence. The Commission assembled at
Mainz, examined several hundred persons and many thousand documents, and
after two years' labour delivered a report to the Diet. The report went
back to the time of Fichte's lectures and the formation of the Tugendbund
in 1808, traced the progress of all the students' associations and other
patriotic societies from that time to 1820; and, while exhibiting in the
worst possible light the aims and conduct of the advocates of German unity,
acknowledged that scarcely a single proof had been discovered of
treasonable practice, and that the loyalty of the mass of the people was
itself a sufficient guarantee against the impulses of the evil-minded.
[299] Such was the impression of triviality and imposture produced at the
Diet by this report, that the representatives of several States proposed
that the Commission should forthwith be dissolved as useless and
unnecessary. This, however, could not be tolerated by Metternich and his
new disciples. The Commission was allowed to continue in existence, and
with it the regime of silence and repression. The measures which had been
accepted at Carlsbad as temporary and provisional became more and more a
part of the habitual system of government. Prosecutions succeeded one
another; letters were opened; spies attended the lectures of professors and
the meetings of students; the newspapers were everywhere prohibited from
discussing German affairs. In a country where there were so many printers
and so many readers journalism could not altogether expire. It was still
permissible to give the news and to offer an opinion about foreign lands:
and for years to come the Germans, like beggars regaling themselves with
the scents from rich men's kitchens, [300] followed every stage of the
political struggles that were agitating France, England, and Spain, while
they were not allowed to express a desire or to formulate a grievance of
their own.

[Prussian Provincial Estates, June, 1823.]

[Redeeming features of Prussian absolutism.]

In the year 1822 Hardenberg died. All hope of a fulfilment of the promises
made in Prussia in 1815 had already become extinct. Not many months after
the Minister's death, King Frederick William established the Provincial
Estates which had been recommended to him by Metternich, and announced that
the creation of a central representative system would be postponed until
such time as the King should think fit to introduce it. This meant that the
project was finally abandoned; and Prussia in consequence remained without
a Parliament until the Revolution of 1848 was at the door. The Provincial
Estates, with which the King affected to temper absolute rule, met only
once in three years. Their function was to express an opinion upon local
matters when consulted by the Government: their enemies said that they were
aristocratic and did harm, their partizans could not pretend that they did
much good. In the bitterness of spirit with which, at a later time, the
friends of liberty denounced the betrayal of the cause of freedom by the
Prussian Court, a darker colour has perhaps been introduced into the
history of this period than really belongs to it. The wrongs sustained by
the Prussian nation have been compared to those inflicted by the despotism
of Spain. But, however contemptible the timidity of King Frederick William,
however odious the ingratitude shown to the truest friends of King and
people, the Government of 1819 is not correctly represented in such a
parallel. To identify the thousand varieties of wrong under the common name
of oppression, is to mistake words for things, and to miss the
characteristic features which distinguish nations from one another. The
greatest evils which a Government can inflict upon its subjects are
probably religious persecution, wasteful taxation, and the denial of
justice in the daily affairs of life. None of these were present in Prussia
during the darkest days of reaction. The hand of oppression fell heavily on
some of the best and some of the most enlightened men; it violated
interests so precious as those of free criticism and free discussion of
public affairs; but the great mass of the action of Government was never on
the side of evil. The ordinary course of justice was still pure, the
administration conscientious and thrifty. The system of popular education,
which for the first time placed Prussia in advance of Saxony and other
German States, dates from these years of warfare against liberty. A
reactionary despotism built the schools and framed the laws whose
reproduction in free England half a century later is justly regarded as the
chief of all the liberal measures of our day. So strong, so lasting, was
that vital tradition which made monarchy in Prussia an instrument for the
execution of great public ends.

[A new Liberalism grows up in Germany after 1820.]

[Interest in France.]

But the old harmony between rulers and subjects in Germany perished in
the system of coercion which Metternich established in 1819. Patient as
the Germans were, loyal as they had proved themselves to Frederick William
and to worse princes through good and evil, the galling disappointment of
noble hopes, the silencing of the Press, the dissolution of societies,--
calumnies, expulsions, prosecutions,--embittered many an honest mind
against authority. The Commission of Mainz did not find conspirators, but
it made them. As years went by, and all the means of legitimately working
for the improvement of German public life were one after another
extinguished, men of ardent character thought of more violent methods.
Secret societies, such as Metternich had imagined, came into actual being.
[301] And among those who neither sank into apathy and despair nor enrolled
themselves against existing power, a new body of ideas supplanted the old
loyal belief in the regeneration of Germany by its princes. The
Parliamentary struggles of France, the revolutionary movements in Italy and
in Spain which began at this epoch, drew the imagination away from that
pictured restoration of a free Teutonic past which had proved so barren of
result, and set in its place the idea of a modern universal or European
Liberalism. The hatred against France, especially among the younger men,
disappeared. A distinction was made between the tyrant Napoleon and the
people who were now giving to the rest of the Continent the example of a
free and animated public life, and illuminating the age with a political
literature so systematic and so ingenious that it seemed almost like a
political philosophy. The debates in the French Assembly, the writings of
French publicists, became the school of the Germans. Paris regained in
foreign eyes something of the interest that it had possessed in 1789. Each
victory or defeat of the French popular cause awoke the joy or the sorrow
of German Liberals, to whom all was blank at home: and when at length the
throne of the Bourbons fell, the signal for deliverance seemed to have
sounded in many a city beyond the Rhine.

[France after 1818.]

[Richelieu resigns, Dec., 1818. Decazes keeps power.]

We have seen that in Central Europe the balance between liberty and
reaction, wavering in 1815, definitely fell to the side of reaction at the
Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle. It remains to trace the course of events which
in France itself suspended the peaceful progress of the nation, and threw
power for some years into the hands of a faction which belonged to the
past. The measures carried by Decazes in 1817, which gave so much
satisfaction to the French, were by no means viewed with the same approval
either at London or at Vienna. The two principal of these were the
Electoral Law, and a plan of military reorganisation which brought back
great numbers of Napoleon's old officers and soldiers to the army.
Richelieu, though responsible as the head of the Ministry, felt very grave
fears as to the results of this legislation. He had already become anxious
and distressed when the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle met; and the events
which took place in France during his absence, as well as the
communications which passed between himself and the foreign Ministers,
convinced him that a change of internal policy was necessary. The busy mind
of Metternich had already been scheming against French Liberalism. Alarmed
at the energy shown by Decazes, the Austrian statesman had formed the
design of reconciling Artois and the Ultra-Royalists to the King's
Government; and he now urged Richelieu, if his old opponents could be
brought to reason, to place himself at the head of a coalition of all the
conservative elements in the State. [302] While the Congress of
Aix-la-Chapelle was sitting, the partial elections for the year 1818, the
second under the new Electoral Law, took place. Among the deputies returned
there were some who passed for determined enemies of the Bourbon
restoration, especially Lafayette, whose name was so closely associated
with the humiliations of the Court in 1789. Richelieu received the news
with dismay, and on his return to Paris took steps which ended in the
dismissal of Decazes, and the offer of a seat in the Cabinet to Villèle,
the Ultra-Royalist leader. But the attempted combination failed. Richelieu
accordingly withdrew from office; and a new Ministry was formed, of which
Decazes, who had proved himself more powerful than his assailants, was the
real though not the nominal chief.

[Election of Grégoire, Sept., 1819.]

The victory of the young and popular statesman was seen with extreme
displeasure by all the foreign Courts, nor was his success an enduring one.
For awhile the current of Liberal opinion in France and the favour of King
Louis XVIII. enabled Decazes to hold his own against the combinations of
his opponents and the ill-will of all the most powerful men in Europe. An
attack made on the Electoral Law by the Upper House was defeated by the
creation of sixty new Peers, among whom there were several who had been
expelled in 1815. But the forces of Liberalism soon passed beyond the
Minister's own control, and his steady dependence upon Louis XVIII. now
raised against him as resolute an opposition among the enemies of the House
of Bourbon as among the Ultra-Royalists. In the elections of 1819 the
candidates of the Ministry were beaten by men of more pronounced opinions.
Among the new members there was one whose victory caused great astonishment
and alarm. The ex-bishop Grégoire, one of the authors of the destruction of
the old French Church in 1790, and mover of the resolution which
established the Republic in 1792, was brought forward from his retirement
and elected Deputy by the town of Grenoble. To understand the panic caused
by this election we must recall, not the events of the Revolution, but the
legends of them which were current in 1819. The history of Grégoire by no
means justifies the outcry which was raised against him; his real actions,
however, formed the smallest part of the things that were alleged or
believed by his enemies. It was said he had applauded the execution of King
Louis XVI., when he had in fact protested against it: [303] his courageous
adherence to the character of a Christian priest throughout the worst days
of the Convention, his labours in organising the Constitutional Church when
the choice lay between that and national atheism, were nothing, or worse
than nothing, in the eyes of men who felt themselves to be the despoiled
heirs of that rich and aristocratic landed society, called the Feudal
Church, which Grégoire had been so active in breaking up. Unluckily for
himself, Grégoire, though humane in action, had not abstained from the
rhodomontades against kings in general which were the fashion in 1793.
Louis XVIII., forgetting that he had himself lately made the regicide
Fouché a Minister, interpreted Grégoire's election by the people of
Grenoble, to which the Ultra-Royalists had cunningly contributed, as a
threat against the Bourbon family. He showed the displeasure usual with him
when any slight was offered to his personal dignity, and drew nearer to his
brother Artois and the Ultra-Royalists, whom he had hitherto shunned as his
favourite Minister's worst enemies. Decazes, true to his character as the
King's friend, now confessed that he had gone too far in the legislation of
1817, and that the Electoral Law, under which such a monster as Grégoire
could gain a seat, required to be altered. A project of law was sketched,
designed to restore the preponderance in the constituencies to the landed
aristocracy. Grégoire's election was itself invalidated; and the Ministers
who refused to follow Decazes in his new policy of compromise were
dismissed from their posts.

[Murder of the Duke of Berry, Feb. 13, 1820.]

[Reaction sets in.]

[Fall of Decazes. Richelieu Minister, Feb., 1820.]

A few months more passed, and an event occurred which might have driven a
stronger Government than that of Louis XVIII. into excesses of reaction.
The heirs to the Crown next in succession to the Count of Artois were his
two sons, the Dukes of Angoulême and Berry. Angoulême was childless; the
Duke of Berry was the sole hope of the elder Bourbon line, which, if he
should die without a son, would, as a reigning house, become extinct, the
Crown of France not descending to a female. [304] The circumstance which
made Berry's life so dear to Royalists made his destruction the
all-absorbing purpose of an obscure fanatic, who abhorred the Bourbon
family as the lasting symbol of the foreigner's victory over France.
Louvel, a working man, had followed Napoleon to exile in Elba. After
returning to his country he had dogged the footsteps of the Bourbon princes
for years together, waiting for the chance of murder. On the night of the
13th of February, 1820, he seized the Duke of Berry as he was leaving the
Opera House, and plunged a knife into his breast. The Duke lingered for
some hours, and expired early the next morning in the presence of King
Louis XVIII., the Princes, and all the Ministers. Terrible as the act was,
it was the act of a single resolute mind: no human being had known of
Louvel's intention. But it was impossible that political passion should
await the quiet investigation of a law-court. No murder ever produced a
stronger outburst of indignation among the governing classes, or was more
skilfully turned to the advantage of party. The Liberals felt that their
cause was lost. While fanatical Ultra-Royalists, abandoning themselves to a
credulity worthy of the Reign of Terror, accused Decazes himself of
complicity with the assassin, their leaders fixed upon the policy which was
to be imposed on the King. It was in vain that Decazes brought forward his
reactionary Electoral Law, and proposed to invest the officers of State
with arbitrary powers of arrest and to re-establish the censorship of the
Press. The Count of Artois insisted upon the dismissal of the Minister, as
the only consolation which could be given to him for the murder of his son
The King yielded; and, as an Ultra-Royalist administration was not yet
possible, Richelieu unwillingly returned to office, assured by Artois that
his friends had no other desire than to support his own firm and temperate
rule.

[Progress of the reaction in France.]

[Ultra-Royalist Ministry, Dec., 1821.]

[The Congregation.]

Returning to power under such circumstances, Richelieu became, in spite of
himself, the Minister of reaction. The Press was fettered, the legal
safeguards of personal liberty were suspended, the electoral system was
transformed by a measure which gave a double vote to men of large property.
So violent were the passions which this retrograde march of Government
excited, that for a moment Paris seemed to be on the verge of revolution.
Tumultuous scenes occurred in the streets; but the troops, on whom
everything depended, obeyed the orders given to them, and the danger passed
away. The first elections under the new system reduced the Liberal party to
impotence, and brought back to the Chamber a number of men who had sat in
the reactionary Parliament of 1816. Villèle and other Ultra-Royalists were
invited to join Richelieu's Cabinet. For awhile it seemed as if the
passions of Church and aristocracy might submit to the curb of a practical
statesmanship, friendly, if not devoted, to their own interests. But
restraint was soon cast aside. The Count of Artois saw the road to power
open, and broke his promise of supporting the Minister who had taken office
at his request. Censured and thwarted in the Chamber of Deputies, Richelieu
confessed that he had undertaken a hopeless task, and bade farewell to
public life. King Louis, now nearing the grave, could struggle no longer
against the brother who was waiting to ascend his throne. The next Ministry
was nominated not by the King but by Artois. Around Villèle, the real head
of the Cabinet, there was placed a body of men who represented not the new
France, or even that small portion of it which was called to exercise the
active rights of citizenship, but the social principles of a past age, and
that Catholic or Ultramontane revival which was now freshening the surface
but not stirring the depths of the great mass of French religious
indifference. A religious society known as the Congregation, which had
struck its first roots under the storm of Republican persecution, and grown
up during the Empire, a solitary yet unobserved rallying-place for Catholic
opponents of Napoleon's despotism, now expanded into a great organism of
government. The highest in blood and in office sought membership in it: its
patronage raised ambitious men to the stations they desired, its hostility
made itself felt against the small as well as against the great. The spirit
which now gained the ascendancy in French government was clerical even more
than it was aristocratic. It was monarchical too, but rather from dislike
to the secularist tone of Liberalism and from trust in the orthodoxy of the
Count of Artois than from any fixed belief in absolutist principles. There
might be good reason to oppose King Louis XVIII.; but what priest, what
noble, could doubt the divine right of a prince who was ready to compensate
the impoverished emigrants out of the public funds, and to commit the whole
system of public education to the hands of the clergy?

[Bourbon rule before and after 1821.]

In the middle class of France, which from this time began to feel itself in
opposition to the Bourbon Government, there had been no moral change
corresponding to that which made so great a difference between the
governing authority of 1819 and that of 1822. Public opinion, though
strongly affected, was not converted into something permanently unlike
itself by the murder of the Duke of Berry. The courtiers, the devotees, the
great ladies, who had laid a bold hand upon power, had not the nation on
their side, although for a while the nation bore their sway submissively.
But the fate of the Bourbon monarchy was in fact decided when Artois and
his confidants became its representatives. France might have forgotten that
the Bourbons owed their throne to foreign victories; it could not be
governed in perpetuity by what was called the _Parti Prêtre_. Twenty
years taken from the burden of age borne by Louis XVIII., twenty years of
power given to Decazes, might have prolonged the rule of the restored
family perhaps for some generations. If military pride found small
satisfaction in the contrast between the Napoleonic age and that which
immediately succeeded it, there were enough parents who valued the blood of
their children, there were enough speakers and writers who valued the
liberty of discussion, enough capitalists who valued quiet times, for the
new order to be recognised as no unhopeful one. France has indeed seldom
had a better government than it possessed between 1816 and 1820, nor could
an equal period be readily named during which the French nation, as a
whole, enjoyed greater happiness.

[General causes of the victory of reaction in Europe.]

Political reaction had reached its full tide in Europe generally about five
years after the end of the great war. The phenomena were by no means the
same in all countries, nor were the accidents of personal influence without
a large share in the determination of events: yet, underlying all
differences, we may trace the operation of certain great causes which were
not limited by the boundaries of individual States. The classes in which
any fixed belief in constitutional government existed were nowhere very
large; outside the circle of state officials there was scarcely any one who
had had experience in the conduct of public affairs. In some countries, as
in Russia and Prussia, the conception of progress towards self-government
had belonged in the first instance to the holders of power: it had
exercised the imagination of a Czar, or appealed to the understanding of a
Prussian Minister, eager, in the extremity of ruin, to develop every
element of worth and manliness existing within his nation. The cooling of a
warm fancy, the disappearance of external dangers, the very agitation which
arose when the idea of liberty passed from the rulers to their subjects,
sufficed to check the course of reform. And by the side of the Kings and
Ministers who for a moment had attached themselves to constitutional
theories there stood the old privileged orders, or what remained of them,
the true party of reaction, eager to fan the first misgivings and alarms of
Sovereigns, and to arrest a development more prejudicial to their own power
and importance than to the dignity and security of the Crown. Further,
there existed throughout Europe the fatal and ineradicable tradition of the
convulsions of the first Revolution, and of the horrors of 1793. No votary
of absolutism, no halting and disquieted friend of freedom, could ever be
at a loss for images of woe in presaging the results of popular
sovereignty; and the action of one or two infatuated assassins owed its
wide influence on Europe chiefly to the ancient name and memory of
Jacobinism.

There was also in the very fact that Europe had been restored to peace by
the united efforts of all the governments something adverse to the success
of a constitutional or a Liberal party in any State. Constitutional systems
had indeed been much praised at the Congress of Vienna; but the group of
men who actually controlled Europe in 1815, and who during the five
succeeding years continued in correspondence and in close personal
intercourse with one another, had, with one exception, passed their lives
in the atmosphere of absolute government, and learnt to regard the conduct
of all great affairs as the business of a small number of very eminent
individuals. Castlereagh, the one Minister of a constitutional State,
belonged to a party which, to a degree almost unequalled in Europe,
identified political duty with the principle of hostility to change. It is
indeed in the correspondence of the English Minister himself, and in
relation to subjects of purely domestic government in England, that the
community of thought which now existed between all the leading statesmen of
Europe finds its most singular exhibition. Both Metternich and Hardenberg
took as much interest in the suppression of Lancashire Radicalism, and in
the measures of coercion which the British Government thought it necessary
to pass in the year 1819, as in the chastisement of rebellious pamphleteers
upon the Rhine, and in the dissolution of the students' clubs at Jena. It
was indeed no very great matter for the English people, who were now close
upon an era of reform, that Castlereagh received the congratulations of
Vienna and Berlin for suspending the Habeas Corpus Act and the right of
public meeting, [305] or that Metternich believed that no one but himself
knew the real import of the shouts with which the London mob greeted Sir
Francis Burdett. [306] Neither the impending reform of the English Criminal
Law nor the emancipation of Irish Catholics resulted from the enlightenment
of foreign Courts, or could be hindered by their indifference. But on the
Continent of Europe the progress towards constitutional freedom was indeed
likely to be a slow and a chequered one when the Ministers of absolutism
formed so close and intimate a band, when the nations contained within them
such small bodies of men in any degree versed in public affairs, and when
the institutions on which it was proposed to base the liberty of the future
were so destitute of that strength which springs from connection with the
past.




CHAPTER XIV.


Movements in the Mediterranean States beginning in 1820--Spain from 1814 to
1820--The South American Colonies--The Army at Cadiz: Action of Quiroga
and Riego--Movement at Corunna--Ferdinand accepts the Constitution of
1812--Naples from 1815 to 1820--The Court-party, the Muratists, the
Carbonari--The Spanish Constitution proclaimed at Naples--Constitutional
movement in Portugal--Alexander's proposal with regard to Spain--The
Conference and Declaration of Troppau--Protest of England--Conference of
Laibach--The Austrians invade Naples and restore absolute Monarchy--
Insurrection in Piedmont, which fails--Spain from 1820 to 1822--Death of
Castlereagh--The Congress of Verona--Policy of England--The French invade
Spain--Restoration of absolute Monarchy, and violence of the reaction--
England prohibits the conquest of the Spanish Colonies by France, and
subsequently recognises their independence--Affairs in Portugal--Canning
sends troops to Lisbon--The Policy of Canning--Estimate of his place in the
history of Europe.


[The Mediterranean movements, beginning in 1820.]

When the guardians of Europe, at the end of the first three years of peace,
scanned from their council-chamber at Aix-la-Chapelle that goodly heritage
which, under Providence, their own parental care was henceforth to guard
against the assaults of malice and revolution, they had fixed their gaze
chiefly on France, Germany, and the Netherlands, as the regions most
threatened by the spirit of change. The forecast was not an accurate one.
In each of these countries Government proved during the succeeding years to
be much more than a match for its real or imaginary foes: it was in the
Mediterranean States, which had excited comparatively little anxiety, that
the first successful attack was made upon established power. Three
movements arose successively in the three southern peninsulas, at the time
when Metternich was enjoying the silence which he had imposed upon Germany,
and the Ultra-Royalists of France were making good the advantage which the
crime of an individual and the imprudence of a party had thrown into their
hands. In Spain and in Italy a body of soldiers rose on behalf of
constitutional government: in Greece a nation rose against the rule of the
foreigner. In all three countries the issue of these movements was, after a
longer or shorter interval, determined by the Northern Powers. All three
movements were at first treated as identical in their character, and all
alike condemned as the work of Jacobinism. But the course of events, and a
change of persons in the government of one great State, brought about a
truer view of the nature of the struggle in Greece. The ultimate action of
Europe in the affairs of that country was different from its action in the
affairs of Italy and Spain. It is now only remembered as an instance of
political recklessness or stupidity that a conflict of race against race
and of religion against religion should for a while have been confused by
some of the leading Ministers of Europe with the attempt of a party to make
the form of domestic government more liberal. The Hellenic rising had
indeed no feature in common with the revolutions of Naples and Cadiz; and,
although in order of time the opening of the Greek movement long preceded
the close of the Spanish movement, the historian, who has neither the
politician's motive for making a confusion, nor the protection of his
excuse of ignorance, must in this case neglect the accidents of chronology,
and treat the two as altogether apart.

[Spain between 1814 and 1820.]

King Ferdinand of Spain, after overthrowing the Constitution which he found
in existence on his return to his country, had conducted himself as if his
object had been to show to what lengths a legitimate monarch might abuse
the fidelity of his subjects and defy the public opinion of Europe. The
leaders of the Cortes, whom he had arrested in 1814, after being declared
innocent by one tribunal after another were sentenced to long terms of
imprisonment by an arbitrary decree of the King, without even the pretence
of judicial forms. Men who had been conspicuous in the struggle of the
nation against Napoleon were neglected or disgraced; many of the highest
posts were filled by politicians who had played a double part, or had even
served under the invader. Priests and courtiers intrigued for influence
over the King; even when a capable Minister was placed in power through the
pressure of the ambassadors, and the King's name was set to edicts of
administrative reform, these edicts were made a dead letter by the powerful
band who lived upon the corruption of the public service. Nothing was
sacred except the interest of the clergy; this, however, was enough to keep
the rural population on the King's side. The peasant, who knew that his
house would not now be burnt by the French, and who heard that true
religion had at length triumphed over its enemies, understood, and cared to
understand, nothing more. Rumours of kingly misgovernment and oppression
scarcely reached his ears. Ferdinand was still the child of Spain and of
the Church; his return had been the return of peace; his rule was the
victory of the Catholic faith.

[The nation satisfied: the officers discontented.]

But the acquiescence of the mass of the people was not shared by the
officers of the army and the educated classes in the towns. The overthrow
of the Constitution was from the first condemned by soldiers who had won
distinction under the government of the Cortes; and a series of military
rebellion, though isolated and on the smallest scale, showed that the
course on which Ferdinand had entered was not altogether free from danger.
The attempts of General Mina in 1814, and of Porlier and Lacy in succeeding
years, to raise the soldiery on behalf of the Constitution, failed, through
the indifference of the soldiery themselves, and the power which the
priesthood exercised in garrison-towns. Discontent made its way in the army
by slow degrees; and the ultimate declaration of a military party against
the existing Government was due at least as much to Ferdinand's absurd
system of favouritism, and to the wretched condition into which the army
had been thrown, as to an attachment to the memory or the principles of
constitutional rule. Misgovernment made the treasury bankrupt; soldiers and
sailors received no pay for years together; and the hatred with which the
Spanish people had now come to regard military service is curiously shown
by an order of the Government that all the beggars in Madrid and other
great towns should be seized on a certain night (July 23, 1816), and
enrolled in the army. [307] But the very beggars were more than a match for
Ferdinand's administration. They heard of the fate in store for them, and
mysteriously disappeared, so frustrating a measure by which it had been
calculated that Spain would gain sixty thousand warriors.

[Struggle of Spain with its colonies, 1810-1820.]

The military revolution which at length broke out in the year 1820 was
closely connected with the struggle for independence now being made by the
American colonies of Spain; and in its turn it affected the course of this
struggle and its final result. The colonies had refused to accept the rule
either of Joseph Bonaparte or of the Cortes of Cadiz when their legitimate
sovereign was dispossessed by Napoleon. While acting for the most part in
Ferdinand's name, they had engaged in a struggle with the National
Government of Spain. They had tasted independence; and although after the
restoration of Ferdinand they would probably have recognised the rights of
the Spanish Crown if certain concessions had been made, they were not
disposed to return to the condition of inferiority in which they had been
held during the last century, or to submit to rulers who proved themselves
as cruel and vindictive in moments of victory as they were incapable of
understanding the needs of the time. The struggle accordingly continued.
Regiment after regiment was sent from Spain, to perish of fever, of forced
marches, or on the field. The Government of King Ferdinand, despairing of
its own resources, looked around for help among the European Powers.
England would have lent its mediation, and possibly even armed assistance,
if the Court of Madrid would have granted a reasonable amount of freedom to
the colonies, and have opened their ports to British commerce. This,
however, was not in accordance with the views of Ferdinand's advisers.
Strange as it may appear, the Spanish Government demanded that the alliance
of Sovereigns, which had been framed for the purpose of resisting the
principle of rebellion and disorder in Europe, should intervene against its
revolted subjects on the other side of the Atlantic, and it implied that
England, if acting at all, should act as the instrument of the Alliance.
[308] Encouragement was given to the design by the Courts of Paris and St.
Petersburg. Whether a continent claimed its independence, or a German
schoolboy wore a forbidden ribbon in his cap, the chiefs of the Holy
Alliance now assumed the frown of offended Providence, and prepared to
interpose their own superior power and wisdom to save a misguided world
from the consequences of its own folly. Alexander had indeed for a time
hoped that the means of subduing the colonies might be supplied by himself;
and in his zeal to supplant England in the good graces of Ferdinand he sold
the King a fleet of war on very moderate terms. To the scandal of Europe
the ships, when they reached Cadiz, turned out to be thoroughly rotten and
unseaworthy. As it was certain that the Czar's fleet and the Spanish
soldiers, however holy their mission, would all go to the bottom together
as soon as they encountered the waves of the Atlantic, the expedition was
postponed, and the affairs of America were brought before the Conference of
Aix-la-Chapelle. The Envoys of Russia and France submitted a paper, in
which, anticipating the storm-warnings of more recent times, they described
the dangers to which monarchical Europe would be exposed from the growth of
a federation of republics in America; and 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 with reference to the
terms to be offered to the Transatlantic States. [309] England, however, in
spite of Lord Castlereagh's dread of revolutionary contagion, adhered to
the principles which it had already laid down; and as the counsellors of
King Ferdinand declined to change their policy, Spain was left to subdue
its colonies by itself.

[Conspiracy in the Army of Cadiz.]

It was in the army assembled at Cadiz for embarkation in the summer of 1819
that the conspiracy against Ferdinand's Government found its leaders.
Secret societies had now spread themselves over the principal Spanish
towns, and looked to the soldiery on the coast for the signal of revolt.
Abisbal, commander at Cadiz, intending to make himself safe against all
contingencies, encouraged for awhile the plots of the discontented
officers: then, foreseeing the failure of the movement, he arrested the
principal men by a stratagem, and went off to Madrid, to reveal the
conspiracy to the Court and to take credit for saving the King's crown
(July, 1819). [310] If the army could have been immediately despatched to
America, the danger would possibly have passed away. This, however, was
prevented by an outbreak of yellow fever, which made it necessary to send
the troops into cantonments for several months. The conspirators gained
time to renew their plans. The common soldiers, who had hitherto been
faithful to the Government, heard in their own squalor and inaction the
fearful stories of the few sick and wounded who returned from beyond the
seas, and learnt to regard the order of embarkation as a sentence of death.
Several battalions were won over to the cause of constitutional liberty by
their commanders. The leaders imprisoned a few months before were again in
communication with their followers. After the treachery of Abisbal, it was
agreed to carry out the revolt without the assistance of generals or
grandees. The leaders chosen were two colonels, Quiroga and Riego, of whom
the former was in nominal confinement in a monastery near Medina Sidonia,
twenty miles east of Cadiz, while Riego was stationed at Cabezas, a few
marches distant on the great road to Seville. The first day of the year
1820 was fixed for the insurrection. It was determined that Riego should
descend upon the head-quarters, which were at Arcos, and arrest the
generals before they could hear anything of the movement, while Quiroga,
moving from the east, gathered up the battalions stationed on the road, and
threw himself into Cadiz, there to await his colleague's approach.

[Action of Quiroga and Riego, Jan. 1820.]

The first step in the enterprise proved successful. Riego, proclaiming the
Constitution of 1812, surprised the headquarters, seized the generals, and
rallied several companies to his standard. Quiroga, however, though he
gained possession of San Fernando, at the eastern end of the peninsula of
Leon, on which Cadiz is situated, failed to make his entrance into Cadiz.
The commandant, hearing of the capture of the head-quarters, had closed the
city gates, and arrested the principal inhabitants whom he suspected of
being concerned in the plot. The troops within the town showed no sign of
mutiny. Riego, when he arrived at the peninsula of Leon, found that only
five thousand men in all had joined the good cause, while Cadiz, with a
considerable garrison and fortifications of great strength, stood hostile
before him. He accordingly set off with a small force to visit and win over
the other regiments which were lying in the neighbouring towns and
villages. The commanders, however, while not venturing to attack the
mutineers, drew off their troops to a distance, and prevented them from
entering into any communication with Riego. The adventurous soldier,
leaving Quiroga in the peninsula of Leon, then marched into the interior of
Andalusia (January 27), endeavouring to raise the inhabitants of the towns.
But the small numbers of his band, and the knowledge that Cadiz and the
greater part of the army still held by the Government, prevented the
inhabitants from joining the insurrection, even where they received Riego
with kindness and supplied the wants of his soldiers. During week after
week the little column traversed the country, now cut off from retreat,
exhausted by forced marches in drenching rain, and harassed by far stronger
forces sent in pursuit. The last town that Riego entered was Cordova. The
enemy was close behind him. No halt was possible. He led his band, now
numbering only two hundred men, into the mountains, and there bade them
disperse (March 11).

[Corunna proclaims the Constitution Feb. 20.]

[Abisbal's defection March 4.]

With Quiroga lying inactive in the peninsula of Leon and Riego hunted from
village to village, it seemed as if the insurrection which they had begun
could only end in the ruin of its leaders. But the movement had in fact
effected its object. While the courtiers around King Ferdinand, unwarned by
the news from Cadiz, continued their intrigues against one another, the
rumour of rebellion spread over the country. If no great success had been
achieved by the rebels, it was also certain that no great blow had been
struck by the Government. The example of bold action had been set; the
shock given at one end of the peninsula was felt at the other; and a
fortnight before Riego's band dispersed, the garrison and the citizens of
Corunna together declared for the Constitution (February 20). From Corunna
the revolutionary movement spread to Ferrol and to all the other
coast-towns of Galicia. The news reached Madrid, terrifying the Government,
and exciting the spirit of insurrection in the capital itself. The King
summoned a council of the leading men around him. The wisest of them
advised him to publish a moderate Constitution, and, by convoking a
Parliament immediately, to stay the movement, which would otherwise result
in the restoration of the Assembly and the Constitution of 1812. They also
urged the King to abolish the Inquisition forthwith. Ferdinand's brother,
Don Carlos, the head of the clerical party, succeeded in preventing both
measures. Though the generals in all quarters of Spain wrote that they
could not answer for the troops, there were still hopes of keeping down the
country by force of arms. Abisbal, who was at Madrid, was ordered to move
with reinforcements towards the army in the south. He set out, protesting
to the King that he knew the way to deal with rebels. When he reached Ocaña
he proclaimed the Constitution himself (March 4).

[Ferdinand accepts the Constitution 1812, March 9.]

It was now clear that the cause of absolute monarchy was lost. The ferment
in Madrid increased. On the night of the 6th of March all the great bodies
of State assembled for council in the King's palace, and early on the 7th
Ferdinand published a proclamation, stating that he had determined to
summon the Cortes immediately. This declaration satisfied no one, for the
Cortes designed by the King might be the mere revival of a mediæval form,
and the history of 1814 showed how little value was to be attached to
Ferdinand's promises. Crowds gathered in the great squares of Madrid,
crying for the Constitution of 1812. The statement of the Minister of War
that the Guard was on the point of joining the people now overcame even the
resistance of Don Carlos and the confessors; and after a day wasted in
dispute, Ferdinand announced to his people that he was ready to take the
oath to the Constitution which they desired. The next day was given up to
public rejoicings; the book of the Constitution was carried in procession
through the city with the honours paid to the Holy Sacrament, and all
political prisoners were set at liberty. The prison of the Inquisition was
sacked, the instruments of torture broken in pieces. On the 9th the leaders
of the agitation took steps to make the King fulfil his promise. A mob
invaded the court and threshold of the palace. At their demand the
municipal council of 1814 was restored; its members were sent, in company
with six deputies chosen by the populace, to receive the pledges of the
King. Ferdinand, all smiles and bows, while he looked forward to the day
when force or intrigue should make him again absolute master of Spain, and
enable him to take vengeance upon the men who were humiliating, him, took
the oath of fidelity to the Constitution of 1812. [311] New Ministers were
immediately called to office, and a provisional Junta was placed by their
side as the representative of the public until the new Cortes should be
duly elected.

[Condition of Naples, 1815-1820.]

Tidings of the Spanish revolution passed rapidly over Europe, disquieting
the courts and everywhere reviving the hopes of the friends of popular
right. Before four months had passed, the constitutional movement begun in
Cadiz was taken up in Southern Italy. The kingdom of Naples was one of
those States which had profited the most by French conquest. During the
nine years that its crown was held by Joseph Bonaparte and Murat, the laws
and institutions which accompanied Napoleon's supremacy had rudely broken
up the ancient fixity of confusions which passed for government, and had
aroused no insignificant forces of new social life. The feudal tenure of
land, and with it something of the feudal structure of society, had passed
away: the monasteries had been dissolved; the French civil code, and a
criminal code based upon that of France, had taken the place of a thousand
conflicting customs and jurisdictions; taxation had been made, if not
light, yet equitable and simple; justice was regular, and the same for
baron and peasant; brigandage had been extinguished; and, for the first
time in many centuries, the presence of a rational and uniform
administration was felt over all the south of Italy. Nor on the restoration
of King Ferdinand had any reaction been permitted to take place like that
which in a moment destroyed the work of reform in Spain and in Westphalia.
England and Austria insisted that there should be neither vengeance nor
counterrevolution. Queen Marie Caroline, the principal agent in the
cruelties of 1799, was dead; Ferdinand himself was old and indolent, and
willing to leave affairs in the hands of Ministers more intelligent than
himself. Hence the laws and the administrative system of Murat remained on
the whole unchanged. [312] As in France, a Bourbon Sovereign placed himself
at the head of a political order fashioned by Napoleon and the Revolution.
Where changes in the law were made, or acts of State revoked, it was for
the most part in consequence of an understanding with the Holy See. Thus,
while no attempt was made to eject the purchasers of Church-lands, the
lands not actually sold were given back to the Church; a considerable
number of monasteries were restored; education was allowed to fall again
into the hands of the clergy; the Jesuits were recalled, and the Church
regained its jurisdiction in marriage-causes, as well as the right of
suppressing writings at variance with the Catholic faith.

[Hostility between the Court party and the Muratists.]

But the legal and recognised changes which followed Ferdinand's return by
no means expressed the whole change in the operation of government. If
there were not two conflicting systems at work, there were two conflicting
bodies of partisans in the State. Like the emigrants who returned with
Louis XVIII., a multitude of Neapolitans, high and low, who had either
accompanied the King in his exile to Sicily or fought for him on the
mainland in 1799 and 1806, now expected their reward. In their interest the
efficiency of the public service was sacrificed and the course of justice
perverted. Men who had committed notorious crimes escaped punishment if
they had been numbered among the King's friends; the generals and officials
who had served under Murat, though not removed from their posts, were
treated with discourtesy and suspicion. It was in the army most of all that
the antagonism of the two parties was felt. A medal was struck for service
in Sicily, and every year spent there in inaction was reckoned as two in
computing seniority. Thus the younger officers of Murat found their way
blocked by a troop of idlers, and at the same time their prospects suffered
from the honest attempts made by Ministers to reduce the military
expenditure. Discontent existed in every rank. The generals were familiar
with the idea of political change, for during the last years of Murat's
reign they had themselves thought of compelling him to grant a
Constitution: the younger officers and the sergeants were in great part
members of the secret society of the Carbonari, which in the course of the
last few years had grown with the weakness of the Government, and had now
become the principal power in the Neapolitan kingdom.

[The Carbonari.]

The origin of this society, which derived its name and its symbolism from
the trade of the charcoal-burner, as Freemasonry from that of the builder,
is uncertain. Whether its first aim was resistance to Bourbon tyranny after
1799, or the expulsion of the French and Austrians from Italy, in the year
1814 it was actively working for constitutional government in opposition to
Murat, and receiving encouragement from Sicily, where Ferdinand was then
playing the part of constitutional King. The maintenance of absolute
government by the restored Bourbon Court severed the bond which for a time
existed between legitimate monarchy and conspiracy; and the lodges of the
Carbonari, now extending themselves over the country with great rapidity,
became so many centres of agitation against despotic rule. By the year 1819
it was reckoned that one person out of every twenty-five in the kingdom of
Naples had joined the society. Its members were drawn from all classes,
most numerously perhaps from the middle class in the towns; but even
priests had been initiated, and there was no branch of the public service
that had not Carbonari in its ranks. The Government, apprehending danger
from the extension of the sect, tried to counteract it by founding a rival
society of Calderari, or Braziers, in which every miscreant who before 1815
had murdered and robbed in the name of King Ferdinand and the Catholic
faith received a welcome. But though the number of such persons was not
small, the growth of this fraternity remained far behind that of its model;
and the chief result of the competition was that intrigue and mystery
gained a greater charm than ever for the Italians, and that all confidence
in Government perished, under the sense that there was a hidden power in
the land which was only awaiting the due moment to put forth its strength
in revolutionary action.

[Morelli's movement, July 2, 1820.]

After the proclamation of the Spanish Constitution, an outbreak in the
kingdom of Naples had become inevitable. The Carbonari of Salerno, where
the sect had its headquarters, had intended to rise at the beginning of
June; their action, however, was postponed for some months, and it was
anticipated by the daring movement of a few sergeants belonging to a
cavalry regiment stationed at Nola, and of a lieutenant, named Morelli,
whom they had persuaded to place himself at their head. Leading out a
squadron of a hundred and fifty men in the direction of Avellino on the
morning of July 2nd, Morelli proclaimed the Constitution. One of the
soldiers alone left the band; force or persuasion kept others to the
Standard, though they disapproved of the enterprise. The inhabitants of the
populous places that lie between Nola and Avellino welcomed the squadron,
or at least offered it no opposition: the officer commanding at Avellino
came himself to meet Morelli, and promised him assistance. The band
encamped that night in a village; on the next day they entered Avellino,
where the troops and townspeople, headed by the bishop and officers,
declared in their favour. From Avellino the news of the movement spread
quickly over the surrounding country. The Carbonari were everywhere
prepared for revolt; and before the Government had taken a single step in
its own defence, the Constitution had been joyfully and peacefully
accepted, not only by the people but by the militia and the regular troops,
throughout the greater part of the district that lies to the east of
Naples.

[Affairs at Naples, July 2-7.]

The King was on board ship in the bay, when, in the afternoon of July 2nd,
intelligence came of Morelli's revolt at Nola. Nothing was done by the
Ministry on that day, although Morelli and his band might have been
captured in a few hours if any resolute officer, with a few trustworthy
troops, had been sent against them. On the next morning, when the garrison
of Avellino had already joined the mutineers, and taken up a strong
position commanding the road from Naples, General Carrascosa was sent, not
to reduce the insurgents--for no troops were given to him--but to pardon,
to bribe, and to coax them into submission. [313] Carrascosa failed to
effect any good; other generals, who, during the following days, attempted
to attack the mutineers, found that their troops would not follow them, and
that the feeling of opposition to the Government, though it nowhere broke
into lawlessness, was universal in the army as well as the nation. If the
people generally understood little of politics, they had learnt enough to
dislike arbitrary taxation and the power of arbitrary arrest. Not a single
hand or voice was anywhere raised in defence of absolutism. Escaping from
Naples, where he was watched by the Government, General Pepe, who was at
once the chief man among the Carbonari and military commandant of the
province in which Avellino lies, went to place himself at the head of the
revolution. Naples itself had hitherto remained quiet, but on the night of
July 6th a deputation from the Carbonari informed the King that they could
no longer preserve tranquillity in the city unless a Constitution was
granted. The King, without waiting for morning, published an edict
declaring that a Constitution should be drawn up within eight days;
immediately afterwards he appointed a new Ministry, and, feigning illness,
committed the exercise of royal authority to his son, the Duke of Calabria.

[Ferdinand takes the Oath to the Spanish Constitution, July 13.]

Ferdinand's action was taken by the people as a stratagem. He had employed
the device of a temporary abdication some years before in cajoling the
Sicilians; and the delay of eight days seemed unnecessary to ardent souls
who knew that a Spanish Constitution was in existence and did not know of
its defects in practice. There was also on the side of the Carbonari the
telling argument that Ferdinand, as a possible successor to his nephew, the
childless King of Spain, actually had signed the Spanish Constitution in
order to preserve his own contingent rights to that crown. What Ferdinand
had accepted as Infante of Spain he might well accept as King of Naples.
The cry was therefore for the immediate proclamation of the Spanish
Constitution of 1812. The court yielded, and the Duke of Calabria, as
viceroy, published an edict making this Constitution the law of the kingdom
of the Two Sicilies. But the tumult continued, for deceit was still feared,
until the edict appeared again, signed by the King himself. Then all was
rejoicing. Pepe, at the head of a large body of troops, militia and
Carbonari, made a triumphal entry into the city, and, in company with
Morelli and other leaders of the military rebellion, was hypocritically
thanked by the Viceroy for his services to the nation. On the 13th of July
the King, a hale but venerable-looking man of seventy, took the oath to the
Constitution before the altar in the royal chapel. The form of words had
been written out for him; but Ferdinand was fond of theatrical acts of
religion, and did not content himself with reading certain solemn phrases.
Raising his eyes to the crucifix above the altar, he uttered aloud a prayer
that if the oath was not sincerely taken the vengeance of God might fall
upon his head. Then, after blessing and embracing his sons, the venerable
monarch wrote to the Emperor of Austria, protesting that all that he did
was done under constraint, and that his obligations were null and void.
[314]

[Affairs in Portugal, 1807-1820.]

A month more passed, and in a third kingdom absolute government fell before
the combined action of soldiers and people. The Court of Lisbon had
migrated to Brazil in 1807, when the troops of Napoleon first appeared upon
the Tagus, and Portugal had since then been governed by a Regency, acting
in the name of the absent Sovereign. The events of the Peninsular War had
reduced Portugal almost to the condition of a dependency of Great Britain.
Marshal Beresford, the English commander-in-chief of its army, kept his
post when the war was over, and with him there remained a great number of
English officers who had led the Portuguese regiments in Wellington's
campaigns. The presence of these English soldiers was unwelcome, and
commercial rivalry embittered the natural feeling of impatience towards an
ally who remained as master rather than guest. Up to the year 1807 the
entire trade with Brazil had been confined by law to Portuguese merchants;
when, however, the Court had established itself beyond the Atlantic, it had
opened the ports of Brazil to British ships, in return for the assistance
given by our own country against Napoleon. Both England and Brazil profited
by the new commerce, but the Portuguese traders, who had of old had the
monopoly, were ruined. The change in the seat of government was in fact
seen to be nothing less than a reversal of the old relations between the
European country and its colony. Hitherto Brazil had been governed in the
interests of Portugal; but with a Sovereign fixed at Rio Janeiro, it was
almost inevitable that Portugal should be governed in the interests of
Brazil. Declining trade, the misery and impoverishment resulting from a
long war, resentment against a Court which could not be induced to return
to the kingdom and against a foreigner who could not be induced to quit it,
filled the army and all classes in the nation with discontent. Conspiracies
were discovered as early as 1817, and the conspirators punished with all
the barbarous ferocity of the Middle Ages. Beresford, who had not
sufficient tact to prevent the execution of a sentence ordering twelve
persons to be strangled, beheaded, and then burnt in the streets of Lisbon,
found, during the two succeeding years, that the state of the country was
becoming worse and worse. In the spring of 1820, when the Spanish
revolution had made some change in the neighbouring kingdom, either for
good or evil, inevitable, Beresford set out for Rio Janeiro, intending to
acquaint the King with the real condition of affairs, and to use his
personal efforts in hastening the return of the Court to Lisbon. Before he
could recross the Atlantic, the Government which he left behind him at
Lisbon had fallen.

[Revolution at Oporto, August 1820.]

The grievances of the Portuguese army made it the natural centre of
disaffection, but the military conspirators had their friends among all
classes. On the 24th of August, 1820, the signal of revolt was given at
Oporto. Priests and magistrates, as well as the town-population, united
with officers of the army in declaring against the Regency, and in
establishing a provisional Junta, charged with the duty of carrying on the
government in the name of the King until the Cortes should assemble and
frame a Constitution. No resistance was offered by any of the civil or
military authorities at Oporto. The Junta entered upon its functions, and
began by dismissing all English officers, and making up the arrears of pay
due to the soldiers. As soon as the news of the revolt reached Lisbon, the
Regency itself volunteered to summon the Cortes, and attempted to
conciliate the remainder of the army by imitating the measures of the Junta
of Oporto. [315] The troops, however, declined to act against their
comrades, and on the 15th of September the Regency was deposed, and a
provisional Junta installed in the capital. Beresford, who now returned
from Brazil, was forbidden to set foot on Portuguese soil. The two rival
governing-committees of Lisbon and Oporto coalesced; and after an interval
of confusion the elections to the Cortes were held, resulting in the return
of a body of men whose loyalty to the Crown was not impaired by their
hostility to the Regency. The King, when the first tidings of the
constitutional movement reached Brazil, gave a qualified consent to the
summoning of the Cortes which was announced by the Regency, and promised to
return to Europe. Beresford, continuing his voyage to England without
landing at Lisbon, found that the Government of this country had no
disposition to interfere with the domestic affairs of its ally.

[Alexander proposes joint action with regard to Spain, April, 1820.]

It was the boast of the Spanish and Italian Liberals that the revolutions
effected in 1820 were undisgraced by the scenes of outrage which had
followed the capture of the Bastille and the overthrow of French absolutism
thirty years before. [316] The gentler character of these southern
movements proved, however, no extenuation in the eyes of the leading
statesmen of Europe: on the contrary, the declaration of soldiers in favour
of a Constitution seemed in some quarters more ominous of evil than any
excess of popular violence. The alarm was first sounded at St. Petersburg.
As soon as the Czar heard of Riego's proceedings at Cadiz, he began to
meditate intervention; and when it was known that Ferdinand had been forced
to accept the Constitution of 1812, he ordered his ambassadors to propose
that all the Great Powers, acting through their Ministers at Paris, should
address a remonstrance to the representative of Spain, requiring the Cortes
to disavow the crime of the 8th of March, by which they had been called
into being, and to offer a pledge of obedience to their King by enacting
the most rigorous laws against sedition and revolt. [317] In that case, and
in that alone, the Czar desired to add, would the Powers maintain their
relations of confidence and amity with Spain.

[England prevents joint diplomatic intervention.]

This Russian proposal was viewed with some suspicion at Vienna; it was
answered with a direct and energetic negative from London. Canning was
still in the Ministry. The words with which in 1818 he had protested
against a league between England and autocracy were still ringing in the
ears of his colleagues. Lord Liverpool's Government knew itself to be
unpopular in the country; every consideration of policy as well as of
self-interest bade it resist the beginnings of an intervention which, if
confined to words, was certain to be useless, and, if supported by action,
was likely to end in that alliance between France and Russia which had been
the nightmare of English statesmen ever since 1814, and in a second
occupation of Spain by the very generals whom Wellington had spent so many
years in dislodging. Castlereagh replied to the Czar's note in terms which
made it clear that England would never give its sanction to a collective
interference with Spain. [318] Richelieu, the nominal head of the French
Government, felt too little confidence in his position to act without the
concurrence of Great Britain; and the crusade of absolutism against Spanish
liberty was in consequence postponed until the victory of the
Ultra-Royalists at Paris was complete, and the overthrow of Richelieu had
brought to the head of the French State a group of men who felt no scruple
in entering upon an aggressive war.

[Naples and the Great Powers.]

[Austria.]

[England admits Austrian but not joint intervention.]

But the shelter of circumstances which for a while protected Spain from the
foreigner did not extend to Italy, when in its turn the Neapolitan
revolution called a northern enemy into the field. Though the kingdom of
the Two Sicilies was in itself much less important than Spain, the
established order of the Continent was more directly threatened by a change
in its government. No European State was exposed to the same danger from a
revolution in Madrid as Austria from a revolution in Naples. The Czar had
invoked the action of the Courts against Spain, not because his own
dominions were in peril, but because the principle of monarchical right was
violated: with Austria the danger pressed nearer home. The establishment of
constitutional liberty in Naples was almost certain to be followed by an
insurrection in the Papal States and a national uprising in the Venetian
provinces; and among all the bad results of Austria's false position in
Italy, one of the worst was that in self-defence it was bound to resist
every step made towards political liberty beyond its own frontier. The
dismay with which Metternich heard of the collapse of absolute government
at Naples [319] was understood and even shared by the English Ministry, who
at this moment were deprived of their best guide by Canning's withdrawal.
Austria, in peace just as much as in war, had uniformly been held to be the
natural ally of England against the two aggressive Courts of Paris and St.
Petersburg. It seemed perfectly right and natural to Lord Castlereagh that
Austria, when its own interests were endangered by the establishment of
popular sovereignty at Naples, should intervene to restore King Ferdinand's
power; the more so as the secret treaty of 1815, by which Metternich had
bound this sovereign to maintain absolute monarchy, had been communicated
to the ambassador of Great Britain, and had received his approval. But the
right to intervene in Italy belonged, according to Lord Castlereagh, to
Austria alone. The Sovereigns of Europe had no more claim, as a body, to
interfere with Naples than they had to interfere with Spain. Therefore,
while the English Government sanctioned and even desired the intervention
of Austria, as a State acting in protection of its own interests against
revolution in a neighbouring country, it refused to sanction any joint
intervention of the European Powers, and declared itself opposed to the
meeting of a Congress where any such intervention might be discussed. [320]

[Conference at Troppau, Oct. 1820.]

Had Metternich been free to follow his own impulses, he would have thrown
an army into Southern Italy as soon as soldiers and stores could be
collected, and have made an end of King Ferdinand's troubles forthwith. It
was, however, impossible for him to disregard the wishes of the Czar, and
to abandon all at once the system of corporate action, which was supposed
to have done such great things for Europe. [321] A meeting of sovereigns
and Ministers was accordingly arranged, and at the end of October the
Emperor of Austria received the Czar and King Frederick William in the
little town of Troppau, in Moravia. France had itself first recommended the
summoning of a Congress to deal with Neapolitan affairs, and it was
believed for a while that England would be isolated in its resistance to a
joint intervention. But before the Congress assembled, the firm language of
the English Ministry had drawn Richelieu over to its side; [322] and
although one of the two French envoys made himself the agent of the
Ultra-Royalist faction, it was not possible for him to unite his country
with the three Eastern Courts. France, through the weakness of its
Government and the dissension between its representatives, counted for
nothing at the Congress. England sent its ambassador from Vienna, but with
instructions to act as an observer and little more; and in consequence the
meeting at Troppau resolved itself into a gathering of the three Eastern
autocrats and their Ministers. As Prussia had ceased to have any
independent foreign policy whatever, Metternich needed only to make certain
of the support of the Czar in order to range on his side the entire force
of eastern and central Europe in the restoration of Neapolitan despotism.

[Contest between Metternich and Capodistrias.]

[Circular of Troppau, Dec. 8, 1820.]

[The principle of intervention laid down by three Courts.]

The plan of the Austrian statesman was not, however, to be realised without
some effort. Alexander had watched with jealousy Metternich's recent
assumption of a dictatorship over the minor German Courts; he had never
admitted Austria's right to dominate in Italy; and even now some vestiges
of his old attachment to liberal theories made him look for a better
solution of the Neapolitan problem than in that restoration of despotism
pure and simple which Austria desired. While condemning every attempt of a
people to establish its own liberties, Alexander still believed that in
some countries sovereigns would do well to make their subjects a grant of
what he called sage and liberal institutions. It would have pleased him
best if the Neapolitans could have been induced by peaceful means to
abandon their Constitution, and to accept in return certain chartered
rights as a gift from their King; and the concurrence of the two Western
Powers might in this case possibly have been regained. This project of a
compromise, by which Ferdinand would have been freed from his secret
engagement with Austria, was exactly what Metternich desired to frustrate.
He found himself matched, and not for the first time, against a statesman
who was even more subtle than himself. This was Count Capodistrias, a Greek
who from a private position had risen to be Foreign Minister of Russia, and
was destined to become the first sovereign, in reality if not in title, of
his native land. Capodistrias, the sympathetic partner of the Czar's
earlier hopes, had not travelled so fast as his master along the
reactionary road. He still represented what had been the Italian policy of
Alexander some years before, and sought to prevent the re-establishment of
absolute rule at Naples, at least by the armed intervention of Austria.
Metternich's first object was to discredit the Minister in the eyes of his
sovereign. It is said that he touched the Czar's keenest fears in a
conversation relating to a mutiny that had just taken place among the
troops at St. Petersburg, and so in one private interview cut the ground
from under Capodistrias' feet; he also humoured the Czar by reviving that
monarch's own favourite scheme for a mutual guarantee of all the Powers
against revolution in any part of Europe. Alexander had proposed in 1818
that the Courts should declare resistance to authority in any country to be
a violation of European peace, entitling the Allied Powers, if they should
think fit, to suppress it by force of arms. This doctrine, which would have
empowered the Czar to throw the armies of a coalition upon London if the
Reform Bill had been carried by force, had hitherto failed to gain
international acceptance owing to the opposition of Great Britain. It was
now formally accepted by Austria and Prussia. Alexander saw the federative
system of European monarchy, with its principle of collective intervention,
recognised as an established fact by at least three of the great Powers;
[323] and in return he permitted Metternich to lay down the lines which, in
the case of Naples, this intervention should follow. It was determined to
invite King Ferdinand to meet his brother-sovereigns at Laibach, in the
Austrian province of Carniola, and through him to address a summons to the
Neapolitan people, requiring them, in the name of the three Powers, and
under threat of invasion, to abandon their Constitution. This determination
was announced, as a settled matter, to the envoys of England and France;
and a circular was issued from Troppau by the three Powers to all the
Courts of Europe (Dec. 8), embodying the doctrine of federative
intervention, and expressing a hope that England and France would approve
its immediate application in the case of Naples. [324]

[Protest of England.]

There was no ground whatever for this hope with regard to England. On the
contrary, in proportion as the three Courts strengthened their union and
insisted on their claim to joint jurisdiction over Europe, they drove
England away from them. Lord Castlereagh had at first promised the moral
support of this country to Austria in its enterprise against Naples; but
when this enterprise ceased to be the affair of Austria alone, and became
part of the police-system of the three despotisms, it was no longer
possible for the English Government to view it with approval or even with
silence. The promise of a moral support was withdrawn: England declared
that it stood strictly neutral with regard to Naples, and protested against
the doctrine contained in the Troppau circular, that a change of government
in any State gave the Allied Powers the right to intervene. [325]

France made no such protest; but it was still hoped at Paris that an
Austrian invasion of Southern Italy, so irritating to French pride, might
be averted. King Louis XVIII. endeavoured, but in vain, to act the part of
mediator, and to reconcile the Neapolitan House of Bourbon at once with its
own subjects and with the Northern Powers.

[Conference at Laibach, Jan., 1821.]

The summons went out from the Congress to King Ferdinand to appear at
Laibach. It found him enjoying all the popularity of a constitutional King,
surrounded by Ministers who had governed under Murat, exchanging
compliments with a democratic Parliament, lavishing distinctions upon the
men who had overthrown his authority, and swearing to everything that was
set before him. As the Constitution prohibited the King from leaving the
country without the consent of the Legislature, it was necessary for
Ferdinand to communicate to Parliament the invitation which he had received
from the Powers, and to take a vote of the Assembly on the subject of his
journey. Ferdinand's Ministers possessed some political experience; they
recognised that it would be impossible to maintain the existing
Constitution against the hostility of three great States, and hoped that
the Parliament would consent to Ferdinand's departure on condition that he
pledged himself to uphold certain specified principles of free government.
A message to the Assembly was accordingly made public, in which the King
expressed his desire to mediate with the Powers on this basis. But the
Ministers had not reckoned with the passions of the people. As soon as it
became known that Ferdinand was about to set out, the leaders of the
Carbonari mustered their bands. A host of violent men streamed into Naples
from the surrounding country. The Parliament was intimidated, and Ferdinand
was prohibited from leaving Naples until he had sworn to maintain the
Constitution actually in force, that, namely, which Naples had borrowed
from Spain. Ferdinand, whose only object was to escape from the country as
quickly as possible, took the oath with his usual effusions of patriotism.
He then set out for Leghorn, intending to cross from thence into Northern
Italy. No sooner had he reached the Tuscan port than he addressed a letter
to each of the five principal sovereigns of Europe, declaring that his last
acts were just as much null and void as all his earlier ones. He made no
attempt to justify, or to excuse, or even to explain his conduct; nor is
there the least reason to suppose that he considered the perjuries of a
prince to require a justification. "These sorry protests," wrote the
secretary of the Congress of Troppau, "will happily remain secret. No
Cabinet will be anxious to draw them from the sepulchre of its archives.
Till then there is not much harm done."

[Ferdinand at Laibach.]

[Demands of the Allies on Naples.]

Ferdinand reached Laibach, where the Czar rewarded him for the fatigues of
his journey by a present of some Russian bears. His arrival was peculiarly
agreeable to Metternich, whose intentions corresponded exactly with his
own; and the fact that he had been compelled to swear to maintain the
Spanish Constitution at Naples acted favourably for the Austrian Minister,
inasmuch as it enabled him to say to all the world that negotiation was now
out of the question. [326] Capodistrias, brought face to face with failure,
twisted about, according to his rival's expression, like a devil in holy
water, but all in vain. It was decided that Ferdinand should be restored as
absolute monarch by an Austrian army, and that, whether the Neapolitans
resisted or submitted, their country should be occupied by Austrian troops
for some years to come. The only difficulty remaining was to vest King
Ferdinand's conduct in some respectable disguise. Capodistrias, when
nothing else was to be gained, offered to invent an entire correspondence,
in which Ferdinand should proudly uphold the Constitution to which he had
sworn, and protest against the determination of the Powers to force the
sceptre of absolutism back into his hand. [327] This device, however, was
thought too transparent. A letter was sent in the King's name to his son,
the Duke of Calabria, stating that he had found the three Powers determined
not to tolerate an order of things sprung from revolution; that submission
alone would avert war; but that even in case of submission certain
securities for order, meaning the occupation of the country by an Austrian
army, would be exacted. The letter concluded with the usual promises of
reform and good government. It reached Naples on the 9th of February, 1821.
No answer was either expected or desired. On the 6th the order had been
given to the Austrian army to cross the Po.

[State of Naples and Sicily.]

[The Austrians enter Naples, March 24, 1821.]

[Third Neapolitan restoration.]

There was little reason to fear any serious resistance on the part of the
Neapolitans. The administration of the State was thoroughly disorganised;
the agitation of the secret societies had destroyed all spirit of obedience
among the soldiers; a great part of the army was absent in Sicily, keeping
guard over a people who, under wiser management, might have doubled the
force which Naples now opposed to the invader. When the despotic government
of Ferdinand was overthrown, the island of Sicily, or that part of it which
was represented by Palermo, had claimed the separate political existence
which it had possessed between 1806 and 1815, offering to remain united to
Naples in the person of the sovereign, but demanding a National Parliament
and a National Constitution of its own. The revolutionary Ministers of
Naples had, however, no more sympathy with the wishes of the Sicilians than
the Spanish Liberals of 1812 had with those of the American Colonists. They
required the islanders to accept the same rights and duties as any other
province of the Neapolitan kingdom, and, on their refusal, sent over a
considerable force and laid siege to Palermo. [328] The contest soon ended
in the submission of the Sicilians, but it was found necessary to keep
twelve thousand troops on the island in order to prevent a new revolt. The
whole regular army of Naples numbered little more than forty thousand; and
although bodies of Carbonari and of the so-called Militia set out to join
the colours of General Pepe and to fight for liberty, they remained for the
most part a disorderly mob, without either arms or discipline. The invading
army of Austria, fifty thousand strong, not only possessed an immense
superiority in organisation and military spirit, but actually outnumbered
the forces of the defence. At the first encounter, which took place at
Rieti, in the Papal States, the Neapolitans were put to the rout. Their
army melted away, as it had in Murat's campaign in 1815. Nothing was heard
among officers and men but accusations of treachery; not a single strong
point was defended; and on the 24th of March the Austrians made their entry
into Naples. Ferdinand, halting at Florence, sent on before him the worst
instruments of his former despotism. It was indeed impossible for these men
to renew, under Austrian protection, the scenes of reckless bloodshed which
had followed the restoration of 1799; and a great number of compromised
persons had already been provided with the means of escape. But the hand of
vengeance was not easily stayed. Courts-martial and commissions of judges
began in all parts of the kingdom to sentence to imprisonment and death. An
attempted insurrection in Sicily and some desperate acts of rebellion in
Southern Italy cost the principal actors their lives; and when an amnesty
was at length proclaimed, an exception was made against those who were now
called the deserters, and who were lately called the Sacred Band, of Nola,
that is to say, the soldiers who had first risen for the Constitution.
Morelli, who had received the Viceroy's treacherous thanks for his conduct,
was executed, along with one of his companions; the rest were sent in
chains to labour among felons. Hundreds of persons were left lying,
condemned or uncondemned, in prison; others, in spite of the amnesty, were
driven from their native land; and that great, long-lasting stream of
fugitives now began to pour into England, which, in the early memories of
many who are not yet old, has associated the name of Italian with the image
of an exile and a sufferer.

[Insurrection in Piedmont, March 10.]

There was a moment in the campaign of Austria against Naples when the
invading army was threatened with the most serious danger. An insurrection
broke out in Piedmont, and the troops of that country attempted to unite
with the patriotic party of Lombardy in a movement which would have thrown
all Northern Italy upon the rear of the Austrians. In the first excess of
alarm, the Czar ordered a hundred thousand Russians to cross the Galician
frontier, and to march in the direction of the Adriatic. It proved
unnecessary, however, to continue this advance. The Piedmontese army was
divided against itself; part proclaimed the Spanish Constitution, and, on
the abdication of the King, called upon his cousin, the Regent, Charles
Albert of Carignano, to march against the Austrians; part adhered to the
rightful heir, the King's brother, Charles Felix, who was absent at Modena,
and who, with an honesty in strong contrast to the frauds of the Neapolitan
Court, refused to temporise with rebels, or to make any compromise with the
Constitution. The scruples of the Prince of Carignano, after he had gone
some way with the military party of action, paralysed the movement of
Northern Italy. Unsupported by Piedmontese troops, the conspirators of
Milan failed to raise any open insurrection. Austrian soldiers thronged
westwards from the Venetian fortresses, and entered Piedmont itself; the
collapse of the Neapolitan army destroyed the hopes of the bravest
patriots; and the only result of the Piedmontese movement was that the
grasp of Austria closed more tightly on its subject provinces, while the
martyrs of Italian freedom passed out of the sight of the world, out of the
range of all human communication, buried for years to come in the silent,
unvisited prison of the North. [329]

[The French Ultra-Royalists urging attack on Spain.]

Thus the victory of absolutism was completed, and the law was laid down to
Europe that a people seeking its liberties elsewhere than in the grace and
spontaneous generosity of its legitimate sovereign became a fit object of
attack for the armies of the three Great Powers. It will be seen in a later
chapter how Metternich persuaded the Czar to include under the anathema
issued by the Congress of Laibach (May, 1821) [330] the outbreak of the
Greeks, which at this moment began, and how Lord Castlereagh supported the
Austrian Minister in denying to these rebels against the Sultan all right
or claim to the consideration of Europe. Spain was for the present left
unmolested; but the military operations of 1821 prepared the way for a
similar crusade against that country by occasioning the downfall of
Richelieu's Ministry, and throwing the government of France entirely into
the hands of the Ultra-Royalists. All parties in the French Chamber,
whether they condemned or approved the suppression of Neapolitan liberty,
censured a policy which had kept France in inaction, and made Austria
supreme in Italy. The Ultra-Royalists profited by the general discontent to
overthrow the Minister whom they had promised to support (Dec., 1821); and
from this time a war with Spain, conducted either by France alone or in
combination with the three Eastern Powers, became the dearest hope of the
rank and file of the dominant faction. Villèle, their nominal chief,
remained what he had been before, a statesman among fanatics, and desired
to maintain the attitude of observation as long as this should be possible.
A body of troops had been stationed on the southern frontier in 1820 to
prevent all intercourse with the Spanish districts afflicted with the
yellow fever. This epidemic had passed away, but the number of the troops
was now raised to a hundred thousand. It was, however, the hope of Villèle
that hostilities might be averted unless the Spaniards should themselves
provoke a combat, or, by resorting to extreme measures against King
Ferdinand, should compel Louis XVIII. to intervene on behalf of his
kinsman. The more violent section of the French Cabinet, represented by
Montmorency, the Foreign Minister, called for an immediate march on Madrid,
or proposed to delay operations only until France should secure the support
of the other Continental Powers.

[Spain from 1820 to 1822.]

[Ferdinand plots with the Serviles against the Constitution.]

The condition of Spain in the year 1822 gave ample encouragement to those
who longed to employ the arms of France in the royalist cause. The hopes of
peaceful reform, which for the first few months after the revolution had
been shared even by foreign politicians at Madrid, had long vanished. In
the moment of popular victory Ferdinand had brought the leaders of the
Cortes from their prisons and placed them in office. These men showed a
dignified forgetfulness of the injuries which they had suffered. Misfortune
had calmed their impetuosity, and taught them more of the real condition of
the Spanish people. They entered upon their task with seriousness and good
faith, and would have proved the best friends of constitutional monarchy if
Ferdinand had had the least intention of co-operating with them loyally.
But they found themselves encountered from the first by a double enemy. The
clergy, who had overthrown the Constitution six years before, intrigued or
openly declared against it as soon as it was revived; the more violent of
the Liberals, with Riego at their head, abandoned themselves to
extravagances like those of the club-orators of Paris in 1791, and did
their best to make any peaceable administration impossible. After combating
these anarchists, or Exaltados, with some success, the Ministry was forced
to call in their aid, when, at the instigation of the Papal Nuncio, the
King placed his veto upon a law dissolving most of the monasteries [331]
(Oct., 1820). Ferdinand now openly combined with the enemies of the
Constitution, and attempted to transfer the command of the army to one of
his own agents. The plot failed; the Ministry sent the alarm over the whole
country, and Ferdinand stood convicted before his people as a conspirator
against the Constitution which he had sworn to defend. The agitation of the
clubs, which the Ministry had hitherto suppressed, broke out anew. A storm
of accusations assailed Ferdinand himself. He was compelled at the end of
the year 1820 to banish from Madrid most of the persons who had been his
confidants; and although his dethronement was not yet proposed, he had
already become, far more than Louis XVI. of France under similar
conditions, the recognised enemy of the revolution, and the suspected
patron of every treason against the nation.

[The Ministry between the Exaltados and Serviles, 1821.]

[Attempted coup d'état, July 6, 1822.]

[Royalists revolt in the north.]

The attack of the despotic Courts on Naples in the spring of 1821
heightened the fury of parties in Spain, encouraging the Serviles, or
Absolutists, in their plots, and forcing the Ministry to yield to the cry
for more violent measures against the enemies of the Constitution. In the
south of Spain the Exaltados gained possession of the principal military
and civil commands, and openly refused obedience to the central
administration when it attempted to interfere with their action Seville,
Carthagena, and Cadiz acted as if they were independent Republics and even
spoke of separation from Spain. Defied by its own subordinates in the
provinces, and unable to look to the King for any sincere support, the
moderate governing party lost all hold upon the nation. In the Cortes
elected in 1822 the Exaltados formed the majority, and Riego was appointed
President. Ferdinand now began to concert measures of action with the
French Ultra-Royalists. The Serviles, led by priests, and supported by
French money, broke into open rebellion in the north. When the session of
the Cortes ended, the King attempted to overthrow his enemies by military
force. Three battalions of the Royal Guard, which had been withdrawn from
Madrid, received secret orders to march upon the capital (July 6, 1822),
where Ferdinand was expected to place himself at their head. They were,
however, met and defeated in the streets by other regiments, and Ferdinand,
vainly attempting to dissociate himself from the action of his partisans,
found his crown, if not his life, in peril. He wrote to Louis XVIII. that
he was a prisoner. Though the French King gave nothing more than good
counsel, the Ultra-Royalists in the French Cabinet and in the army now
strained every nerve to accelerate a war between the two countries. The
Spanish Absolutists seized the town of Seo d'Urgel, and there set up a
provisional government. Civil war spread over the northern provinces. The
Ministry, which was now formed of Riego's friends, demanded and obtained
from the Cortes dictatorial powers like those which the French Committee of
Public Safety had wielded in 1793, but with far other result. Spain found
no Danton, no Carnot, at this crisis, when the very highest powers of
intellect and will would have been necessary to arouse and to arm a people
far less disposed to fight for liberty than the French were in 1793. One
man alone, General Mina, checked and overthrew the rebel leaders of the
north with an activity superior to their own. The Government, boastful and
violent in its measures, effected scarcely anything in the organisation of
a national force, or in preparing the means of resistance against those
foreign armies with whose attack the country was now plainly threatened.

[England and the Congress of 1822.]

When the Congress of Laibach broke up in the spring of 1821. its members
determined to renew their meeting in the following year, in order to decide
whether the Austrian army might then be withdrawn from Naples, and to
discuss other questions affecting their common interests. The progress of
the Greek insurrection and a growing strife between Russia and Turkey had
since then thrown all Italian difficulties into the shade. The Eastern
question stood in the front rank of European politics; next in importance
came the affairs of Spain. It was certain that these, far more than the
occupation of Naples, would supply the real business of the Congress of
1822. England had a far greater interest in both questions than in the
Italian negotiations of the two previous years. It was felt that the system
of abstention which England had then followed could be pursued no longer,
and that the country must be represented not by some casual and wandering
diplomatist, but by its leading Minister, Lord Castlereagh. The intentions
of the other Powers in regard to Spain were matter of doubt; it was the
fixed policy of Great Britain to leave the Spanish revolution in Europe to
run its own course, and to persuade the other Powers to do the same. But
the difficulties connected with Spain did not stop at the Spanish frontier.
The South American colonies had now in great part secured their
independence. They had developed a trade with Great Britain which made it
impossible for this country to ignore their flag and the decisions of their
law courts. The British navigation-laws had already been modified by
Parliament in favour of their shipping; and although it was no business of
the English Government to grant a formal title to communities which had
made themselves free, the practical recognition of the American States by
the appointment of diplomatic agents could in several cases not be justly
delayed. Therefore, without interfering with any colonies which were still
fighting or still negotiating with Spain, the British Minister proposed to
inform the Allied cabinets of the intention of this country to accredit
agents to some of the South American Republics, and to recommend to them
the adoption of a similar policy.

[Death of Castlereagh, Aug. 12, 1822.]

Such was the tenour of the instructions which, a few weeks before his
expected departure for the Continent, Castlereagh drew up for his own
guidance, and submitted to the Cabinet and the King. [332] Had he lived to
fulfil the mission with which he was charged, the recognition of the South
American Republics, which adds so bright a ray to the fame of Canning,
would probably have been the work of the man who, more than any other, is
associated in popular belief with the traditions of a hated and outworn
system of oppression. Two more years of life, two more years of change in
the relations of England to the Continent, would have given Castlereagh a
different figure in the history both of Greece and of America. No English
statesman in modern times has been so severely judged. Circumstances, down
to the close of his career, withheld from Castlereagh the opportunities
which fell to his successor; ties from which others were free made it hard
for him to accelerate the breach with the Allies of 1814. Antagonists
showed Castlereagh no mercy, no justice. The man whom Byron disgraced
himself by ridiculing after his death possessed in a rich measure the
qualities which, in private life, attract esteem and love. His public life,
if tainted in earlier days by the low political morality of the time, rose
high above that of every Continental statesman of similar rank, with the
single exception of Stein. The best testimony to his integrity is the
irritation which it caused to Talleyrand. [333] If the consciousness of
labour unflaggingly pursued in the public cause, and animated on the whole
by a pure and earnest purpose, could have calmed the distress of a breaking
mind, the decline of Castlereagh's days might have been one of peace. His
countrymen would have recognised that, if blind to the rights of nations,
Castlereagh had set to foreign rulers the example of truth and good faith.
But the burden of his life was too heavy to bear. Mists of despondency
obscured the outlines of the real world, and struck chill into his heart.
Death, self-invoked, brought relief to the over-wrought brain, and laid
Castlereagh, with all his cares, in everlasting sleep.

[Canning Foreign Secretary. Wellington deputed to the Congress, Sept.,
1822.]

[Congress of Verona, Oct., 1822.]

The vacant post was filled by Canning, by far the most gifted of the band
of statesmen who had begun their public life in the school of Pitt.
Wellington undertook to represent England at the Congress of 1822, which
was now about to open at Vienna. His departure was, however, delayed for
several weeks, and the preliminary meeting, at which it had been intended
to transact all business not relating to Italy, was almost over before his
arrival. Wellington accordingly travelled on to Verona, where Italian
affairs were to be dealt with; and the Italian Conference, which the
British Government had not intended to recognise, thus became the real
Congress of 1822. Anxious as Lord Castlereagh had been on the question of
foreign interference with Spain, he hardly understood the imminence of the
danger. In passing through Paris, Wellington learnt for the first time that
a French or European invasion of Spain would be the foremost object of
discussion among the Powers; and on reaching Verona he made the unwelcome
discovery that the Czar was bent upon sending a Russian army to take part,
as the mandatary of Europe, in overthrowing the Spanish Constitution.
Alexander's desire was to obtain a joint declaration from the Congress like
that which had been issued against Naples by the three Courts at Troppau,
but one even more formidable, since France might be expected in the present
case to give its concurrence, which had been withheld before. France indeed
occupied, according to the absolutist theory of the day, the same position
in regard to a Jacobin Spain as Austria in regard to a Jacobin Naples, and
might perhaps claim to play the leading military part in the crusade of
repression. But the work was likely to be a much more difficult one than
that of 1821. The French troops, said the Czar, were not trustworthy; and
there was a party in France which might take advantage of the war to
proclaim the second Napoleon or the Republic. King Louis XVIII. could not
therefore be allowed to grapple with Spain alone. It was necessary that the
principal force employed by the alliance should be one whose loyalty and
military qualities were above suspicion: the generals who had marched from
Moscow to Paris were not likely to fail beyond the Pyrenees: and a campaign
of the Russian army in Western Europe promised to relieve the Czar of some
of the discontent of his soldiers, who had been turned back after entering
Galicia in the previous year, and who had not been allowed to assist their
fellow-believers in Greece in their struggle against the Sultan. [334]

[No joint declaration by made by the Congress against Spain.]

Wellington had ascertained, while in Paris, that King Louis XVIII. and
Villèle were determined under no circumstances to give Russian troops a
passage through France. His knowledge of this fact enabled him to speak
with some confidence to Alexander. It was the earnest desire of the English
Government to avert war, and its first object was therefore to prevent the
Congress, as a body, from sending an ultimatum to Spain. If all the Powers
united in a declaration like that of Troppau, war was inevitable; if France
were left to settle its own disputes with its neighbour, English mediation
might possibly preserve peace. The statement of Wellington, that England
would rather sever itself from the great alliance than consent to a joint
declaration against Spain, had no doubt its effect in preventing such a
declaration being proposed; but a still weightier reason against it was the
direct contradiction between the intentions of the French Government and
those of the Czar. If the Czar was determined to be the soldier of Europe,
while on the other hand King Louis absolutely denied him a passage through
France, it was impossible that the Congress should threaten Spain with a
collective attack. No great expenditure of diplomacy was therefore
necessary to prevent the summary framing of a decree against Spain like
that which had been framed against Naples two years before. In the first
despatches which he sent back to England Wellington expressed his belief
that the deliberations of the Powers would end in a decision to leave the
Spaniards to themselves.

[Course of the negotiation against Spain.]

But the danger was only averted in appearance. The impulse to war was too
strong among the French Ultra-Royalists for the Congress to keep silence on
Spanish affairs. Villèle indeed still hoped for peace, and, unlike other
members of his Cabinet, he desired that, if war should arise, France should
maintain entire freedom of action, and enter upon the struggle as an
independent Power, not as the instrument of the European concert. This did
not prevent him, however, from desiring to ascertain what assistance would
be forthcoming, if France should be hard pressed by its enemy. Instructions
were given to the French envoys at Verona to sound the Allies on this
question. [335] It was out of the inquiry so suggested that a negotiation
sprang which virtually combined all Europe against Spain. The envoy
Montmorency, acting in the spirit of the war party, demanded of all the
Powers whether, in the event of France withdrawing its ambassador from
Madrid, they would do the same, and whether, in case of war, France would
receive their moral and material support. Wellington in his reply protested
against the framing of hypothetical cases; the other envoys answered
Montmorency's questions in the affirmative. The next step was taken by
Metternich, who urged that certain definite acts of the Spanish people or
Government ought to be specified as rendering war obligatory on France and
its allies, and also that, with a view of strengthening the Royalist party
in Spain, notes ought to be presented by all the ambassadors at Madrid,
demanding a change in the Constitution. This proposal was in its turn
submitted to Wellington and rejected by him. It was accepted by the other
plenipotentiaries, and the acts of the Spanish people were specified on
which war should necessarily follow. These were, the commission of any act
of violence against a member of the royal family, the deposition of the
King, or an attempt to change the dynasty. A secret clause was added to the
second part of the agreement, to the effect that if the Spanish Government
made no satisfactory answer to the notes requiring a change in the
Constitution, all the ambassadors should be immediately withdrawn. A draft
of the notes to be presented was sketched; and Montmorency, who thought
that he had probably gone too far in his stipulations, returned to Paris to
submit the drafts to the King before handing them over to the ambassadors
at Paris for transmission to Madrid.

[Villèle and Montmorency.]

[Speech of Louis XVIII., Jan. 27, 1823.]

It was with great dissatisfaction that Villèle saw how his colleague had
committed France to the direction of the three Eastern Powers. There was no
likelihood that the Spanish Government would make the least concession of
the kind required, and in that case France stood pledged, if the action of
Montmorency was ratified, to withdraw its ambassador from Madrid at once.
Villèle accordingly addressed himself to the ambassadors at Paris, asking
that the despatch of the notes might be postponed. No notice was taken of
his request: the notes were despatched forthwith. Roused by this slight,
Villèle appealed to the King not to submit to the dictation of foreign
Courts. Louis XVIII. declared in his favour against all the rest of the
Cabinet, and Montmorency had to retire from office. But the decision of the
King meant that he disapproved of the negotiations of Verona as shackling
the movements of France, not that he had freed himself from the influence
of the war-party. Chateaubriand, the most reckless agitator for
hostilities, was appointed Foreign Minister. The mediation of Great Britain
was rejected; [336] and in his speech at the opening of the Chambers of
1823, King Louis himself virtually published the declaration of war.

[England in 1823.]

[French invasion of Spain, April, 1823.]

The ambassadors of the three Eastern Courts had already presented their
notes at Madrid demanding a change in the Constitution; and, after
receiving a high-spirited answer from the Ministers, they had quitted the
country. Canning, while using every diplomatic effort to prevent an unjust
war, had made it clear to the Spaniards that England could not render them
armed assistance. The reasons against such an intervention were indeed
overwhelming. Russia, Austria, and Prussia would have taken the field
rather than have permitted the Spanish Constitution to triumph; and
although, if leagued with Spain in a really national defence like that of
1808, Great Britain might perhaps have protected the Peninsula against all
the Powers of Europe combined, it was far otherwise when the cause at stake
was one to which a majority of the Spanish nation had shown itself to be
indifferent, and against which the northern provinces had actually taken up
arms. The Government and the Cortes were therefore left to defend
themselves as best they could against their enemies. They displayed their
weakness by enacting laws of extreme severity against deserters, and by
retiring, along with the recalcitrant King, from Madrid to Seville. On the
7th of April the French troops, led by the Duke of Angoulême, crossed the
frontier. The priests and a great part of the peasantry welcomed them as
deliverers: the forces opposed to them fell back without striking a blow.
As the invader advanced towards the capital, gangs of royalists, often led
by monks, spread such terror and devastation over the northern provinces
that the presence of foreign troops became the only safeguard for the
peaceable inhabitants. [337] Madrid itself was threatened by the corps of a
freebooter named Bessières. The commandant sent his surrender to the French
while they were still at some distance, begging them to advance as quickly
as possible in order to save the city from pillage. The message had
scarcely been sent when Bessières and his bandits appeared in the suburbs.
The governor drove them back, and kept the royalist mob within the city at
bay for four days more. On the 23rd of May the advance-guard of the French
army entered the capital.

[Angoulême and the Regency, and the ambassadors.]

It had been the desire of King Louis XVIII. and Angoulême to save Spain
from the violence of royalist and priestly fanaticism. On reaching Madrid,
Angoulême intended to appoint a provisional, government himself; he was,
however, compelled by orders from Paris to leave the election in the hands
of the Council of Castille, and a Regency came into power whose first acts
showed in what spirit the victory of the French was to be used. Edicts were
issued declaring all the acts of the Cortes affecting the monastic orders
to be null and void, dismissing all officials appointed since March 7,
1820, and subjecting to examination those who, then being in office, had
not resigned their posts. [338] The arrival of the ambassadors of the three
Eastern Powers encouraged the Regency in their antagonism to the French
commander. It was believed that the Cabinet of Paris was unwilling to
restore King Ferdinand as an absolute monarch, and intended to obtain from
him the grant of institutions resembling those of the French Charta. Any
such limitation of absolute power was, however, an object of horror to the
three despotic Courts. Their ambassadors formed themselves into a council
with the express object of resisting the supposed policy of Angoulême. The
Regency grew bolder, and gave the signal for general retribution upon the
Liberals by publishing an order depriving all persons who had served in the
voluntary militia since March, 1820, of their offices, pensions, and
titles. The work inaugurated in the capital was carried much further in the
provinces. The friends of the Constitution, and even soldiers who were
protected by their capitulation with the French, were thrown into prison by
the new local authorities. The violence of the reaction reached such a
height that Angoulême, now on the march to Cadiz, was compelled to publish
an ordinance forbidding arrests to be made without the consent of a French
commanding officer, and ordering his generals to release the persons who
had been arbitrarily imprisoned. The council of ambassadors, blind in their
jealousy of France to the danger of an uncontrolled restoration, drew up a
protest against his ordinance, and desired that the officers of the Regency
should be left to work their will.

[The Cortes at Cadiz.]

[Ferdinand liberated, Oct. 1.]

After spending some weeks in idle debates at Seville, the Cortes had been
compelled by the appearance of the French on the Sierra Morena to retire to
Cadiz. As King Ferdinand refused to accompany them, he was declared
temporarily insane, and forced to make the journey (June 12). Angoulême,
following the French vanguard after a considerable interval, appeared
before Cadiz in August, and sent a note to King Ferdinand, recommending him
to publish an amnesty, and to promise the restoration of the mediæval
Cortes. It was hoped that the terms suggested in this note might be
accepted by the Government in Cadiz as a basis of peace, and so render an
attack upon the city unnecessary. The Ministry, however, returned a defiant
answer in the King's name. The siege of Cadiz accordingly began in earnest.
On the 30th of August the fort of the Trocadero was stormed; three weeks
later the city was bombarded. In reply to all proposals for negotiation
Angoulême stated that he could only treat when King Ferdinand was within
his own lines. There was not the least hope of prolonging the defence of
Cadiz with success, for the combat was dying out even in those few
districts of Spain where the constitutional troops had fought with energy.
Ferdinand himself pretended that he bore no grudge against his Ministers,
and that the Liberals had nothing to fear from his release. On the 30th of
September he signed, as if with great satisfaction, an absolute and
universal amnesty. [339] On the following day he was conveyed with his
family across the bay to Angoulême's head-quarters.

[Violence of the Restoration.]

The war was over: the real results of the French invasion now came into
sight. Ferdinand had not been twelve hours in the French camp when,
surrounded by monks and royalist desperadoes, he published a proclamation
invalidating every act of the constitutional Government of the last three
years, on the ground that his sanction had been given under constraint. The
same proclamation ratified the acts of the Regency of Madrid. As the
Regency of Madrid had declared all persons concerned in the removal of the
King to Cadiz to be liable to the penalties of high treason, Ferdinand had
in fact ratified a sentence of death against several of the men from whom
he had just parted in friendship. [340] Many of these victims of the King's
perfidy were sent into safety by the French. But Angoulême was powerless to
influence Ferdinand's policy and conduct. Don Saez, the King's confessor,
was made First Secretary of State. On the 4th of October an edict was
issued banishing for ever from Madrid, and from the country fifty miles
round it, every person who during the last three years had sat in the
Cortes, or who had been a Minister, counsellor of State, judge, commander,
official in any public office, magistrate, or officer in the so-called
voluntary militia. It was ordered that throughout Spain a solemn service
should be celebrated in expiation of the insults offered to the Holy
Sacrament; that missions should be sent over the land to combat the
pernicious and heretical doctrines associated with the late outbreak, and
that the bishops should relegate to monasteries of the strictest observance
the priests who had acted as the agents of an impious faction. [341] Thus
the war of revenge was openly declared against the defeated party. It was
in vain that Angoulême indignantly reproached the King, and that the
ambassadors of the three Eastern Courts pressed him to draw up at least
some kind of amnesty. Ferdinand travelled slowly towards Madrid, saying
that he could take no such step until he reached the capital. On the 7th of
November, Riego was hanged. Thousands of persons were thrown into prison,
or compelled to fly from the country. Except where order was preserved by
the French, life and property were at the mercy of royalist mobs and the
priests who led them; and although the influence of the Russian statesman
Pozzo di Borgo at length brought a respectable Ministry into office, this
only roused the fury of the clerical party, and led to a cry for the
deposition of the King, and for the elevation of his more fanatical
brother, Don Carlos, to the throne. Military commissions were instituted at
the beginning of 1824 for the trial of accused persons, and a pretended
amnesty, published six months later, included in its fifteen classes of
exception the participators in almost every act of the revolution.
Ordinance followed upon ordinance, multiplying the acts punishable with
death, and exterminating the literature which was believed to be the source
of all religious and social heterodoxy. Every movement of life was watched
by the police; every expression of political opinion was made high treason.
Young men were shot for being freemasons; women were sent to prison for ten
years for possessing a portrait of Riego. The relation of the restored
Government to its subjects was in fact that which belonged to a state of
civil war. Insurrections arose among the fanatics who were now taking the
name of the Carlist or Apostolic party, as well as among a despairing
remnant of the Constitutionalists. After a feeble outbreak of the latter at
Tarifa, a hundred and twelve persons were put to death by the military
commissions within eighteen days. [342] It was not until the summer of 1825
that the jurisdiction of these tribunals and the Reign of Terror ended.

[England prohibits the conquest of Spanish colonies by France or its
allies.]

[England recognises the independence of the colonies. 1824-5.]

France had won a cheap and inglorious victory. The three Eastern Courts had
seen their principle of absolutism triumph at the cost of everything that
makes government morally better than anarchy. One consolation remained for
those who felt that there was little hope for freedom on the Continent of
Europe. The crusade against Spanish liberty had put an end for ever to the
possibility of a joint conquest of Spanish America in the interest of
despotism. The attitude of England was no longer what it had been in 1818.
When the Czar had proposed at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle that the
allied monarchs should suppress the republican principle beyond the seas,
Castlereagh had only stated that England could bear no part in such an
enterprise; he had not said that England would effectually prevent others
from attempting it. This was the resolution by which Canning, isolated and
baffled by the conspiracy of Verona, proved that England could still do
something to protect its own interest and the interests of mankind against
a league of autocrats. There is indeed little doubt that the independence
of the Spanish colonies would have been recognised by Great Britain soon
after the war of 1823, whoever might have been our Minister for Foreign
Affairs, but this recognition was a different matter in the hands of
Canning from what it would have been in the hands of his predecessor. The
contrast between the two men was one of spirit rather than of avowed rules
of action. Where Castlereagh offered apologies to the Continental
sovereigns, Canning uttered defiance [343] The treaties of 1815, which
connected England so closely with the foreign courts, were no work of his;
though he sought not to repudiate them, he delighted to show that in spite
of them England has still its own policy, its own sympathies, its own
traditions. In face of the council of kings and its assumption of universal
jurisdiction, he publicly described himself as an enthusiast for the
independence of nations. If others saw little evidence that France intended
to recompense itself for its services to Ferdinand by appropriating some of
his rebellious colonies, Canning was quick to lay hold of every suspicious
circumstance. At the beginning of the war of 1823 he gave a formal warning
to the ambassador of Louis XVIII. that France would not be permitted to
bring any of these provinces under its dominion, whether by conquest or
cession. [344] When the war was over, he rejected the invitation of
Ferdinand's Government to take part in a conference at Paris, where the
affairs of South America were to be laid before the Allied Powers. [345]
What these Powers might or might not think on the subject of America was
now a matter of indifference, for the policy of England was fixed, and it
was useless to debate upon a conclusion that could not be altered. British
consular agents were appointed in most of the colonies before the close of
the year 1823; and after some interval the independence of Buenos Ayres,
Colombia, and Mexico were formally recognised by the conclusion of
commercial treaties. "I called the New World into existence," cried
Canning, when reproached with permitting the French occupation of Spain,
"in order to redress the balance of the Old." 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 aegis of Great Britain, declaring that
no other European Power should reimpose the yoke which Spain had not been
able to maintain.

[Affairs in Portugal.]

[Constitution granted by Pedro, May, 1826.]

The overthrow of the Spanish Constitution by foreign arms led to a series
of events in Portugal which forced England to a more direct intervention in
the Peninsula than had yet been necessary, and heightened the conflict that
had sprung up between its policy and that of Continental absolutism. The
same parties and the same passions, political and religious, existed in
Portugal as in Spain, and the enemies of the Constitution found the same
support at foreign Courts. The King of Portugal, John VI., was a weak but
not ill-meaning man; his wife, who was a sister of Ferdinand of Spain, and
his son Don Miguel were the chiefs of the conspiracy against the Cortes. In
June, 1823, a military revolt, arranged by Miguel, brought the existing
form of government to an end: the King promised, however, when dissolving
the Cortes, that a Constitution should be bestowed by himself upon
Portugal; and he seems to have intended to keep his word. The ambassadors
of France and Austria were, however, busy in throwing hindrances in the
way, and Don Miguel prepared to use violence to prevent his father from
making any concession to the Liberals. King John, in fear for his life,
applied to England for troops; Canning declined to land soldiers at Lisbon,
but sent a squadron, with orders to give the King protection. The winter of
1823 was passed in intrigues; in May, 1824, Miguel arrested the Ministers
and surrounded the King's palace with troops. After several days of
confusion King John made his escape to the British ships, and Miguel, who
was alternately cowardly and audacious, then made his submission, and was
ordered to leave the country. King John died in the spring of 1826 without
having granted a Constitution. Pedro, his eldest son, had already been made
Emperor of Brazil; and, as it was impossible that Portugal and Brazil could
again be united, it was arranged that Pedro's daughter, when of sufficient
age, should marry her uncle Miguel, and so save Portugal from the danger of
a contested succession. Before renouncing the crown of Portugal, Pedro
granted a Constitution to that country. A Regency had already been
appointed by King John, in which neither the Queen-dowager nor Miguel was
included.

[Desertion of Portuguese soldiery, 1826.]

[Spain permits the deserters to attack Portugal.]

[Canning sends troops to Lisbon, Dec., 1826.]

Miguel had gone to Vienna. Although a sort of Caliban in character and
understanding, this Prince met with the welcome due to a kinsman of the
Imperial house, and to a representative of the good cause of absolutism. He
was received by Metternich with great interest, and his fortunes were taken
under the protection of the Austrian Court. In due time, it was hoped this
savage and ignorant churl would do yeoman's service to Austrian principles
in the Peninsula. But the Regency and the new Constitution of Portugal had
not to wait for the tardy operation of Metternich's covert hostility. The
soldiery who had risen at Miguel's bidding in 1823 now proclaimed him King,
and deserted to Spanish soil. Within the Spanish frontier they were
received by Ferdinand's representatives with open arms. The demands made by
the Portuguese ambassador at Madrid for their dispersion and for the
surrender of their weapons were evaded. The cause of these armed bands on
the frontier became the cause of the Clerical and Ultra-Royalist party over
all Europe. Money was sent to them from France and Austria. They were
joined by troops of Spanish Carlists or Apostolicals; they were fed,
clothed, and organised, if not by the Spanish Government itself, at least
by those over whose action the Spanish Government exercised control. [346]
Thus raised to considerable military strength, they made incursions into
Portugal, and at last attempted a regular invasion. The Regency of Lisbon,
justly treating these outrages as the act of the Spanish Government, and
appealing to the treaties which bound Great Britain to defend Portugal
against foreign attack, demanded the assistance of this country. More was
involved in the action taken by Canning than a possible contest with Spain;
the seriousness of the danger lay in the fact that Spain was still occupied
by French armies, and that a war with Spain might, and probably would,
involve a war with France, if not with other Continental Powers. But the
English Ministry waited only for the confirmation of the alleged facts by
their own ambassador. The treaty-rights of Portugal were undoubted; the
temper of the English Parliament and nation, strained to the utmost by the
events of the last three years, was such that a war against Ferdinand and
against the destroyers of Spanish liberty would have caused more rejoicing
than alarm. Nine days after the formal demand of the Portuguese arrived,
four days after their complaint was substantiated by the report of our
ambassador, Canning announced to the House of Commons that British troops
were actually on the way to Lisbon. In words that alarmed many of his own
party, and roused the bitter indignation of every Continental Court,
Canning warned those whose acts threatened to force England into war, that
the war, if war arose, would be a war of opinion, and that England, however
earnestly she might endeavour to avoid it, could not avoid seeing ranked
under her banner all the restless and discontented of any nation with which
she might come into conflict. As for the Portuguese Constitution which
formed the real object of the Spanish attack, it had not, Canning said,
been given at the instance of Great Britain, but he prayed that Heaven
might prosper it. It was impossible to doubt that a Minister who spoke
thus, and who, even under expressions of regret, hinted at any alliance
with the revolutionary elements in France and Spain, was formidably in
earnest. The words and the action of Canning produced the effect which he
desired. The Government of Ferdinand discovered the means of checking the
activity of the Apostolicals: the presence of the British troops at Lisbon
enabled the Portuguese Regency to throw all its forces upon the invaders
and to drive them from the country. They were disbanded when they
re-crossed the Spanish frontier; the French Court loudly condemned their
immoral enterprise; and the Constitution of Portugal seemed, at least for
the moment, to have triumphed over its open and its secret enemies.

[The policy of Canning.]

The tone of the English Government had indeed changed since the time when
Metternich could express a public hope that the three Eastern Powers would
have the approval of this country in their attack upon the Constitution of
Naples. In 1820 such a profession might perhaps have passed for a mistake;
in 1826 it would have been a palpable absurdity. Both in England and on the
Continent it was felt that the difference between the earlier and the later
spirit of our policy was summed up in the contrast between Canning and
Castlereagh. It has become an article of historical faith that
Castlereagh's melancholy death brought one period of our foreign policy to
a close and inaugurated another: it has been said that Canning liberated
England from its Continental connexions; it has even been claimed for him
that he performed for Europe no less a task than the dissolution of the
Holy Alliance. [347] The figure of Canning is indeed one that will for ever
fill a great space in European history; and the more that is known of the
opposition which he encountered both from his sovereign and from his great
rival Wellington, the greater must be our admiration for his clear, strong
mind, and for the conquering force of his character. But the legend which
represents English policy as taking an absolutely new departure in 1822
does not correspond to the truth of history. Canning was a member of the
Cabinet from 1816 to 1820; it is a poor compliment to him to suppose that
he either exercised no influence upon his colleagues or acquiesced in a
policy of which he disapproved; and the history of the Congress of
Aix-la-Chapelle proves that his counsels had even at that time gained the
ascendant. The admission made by Castlereagh in 1820, after Canning had
left the Cabinet, that Austria, as a neighbouring and endangered State, had
a right to suppress the revolutionary constitution of Naples, would
probably not have gained Canning's assent; in all other points, the action
of our Government at Troppau and Laibach might have been his own. Canning
loved to speak of his system as one of neutrality, and of non-interference
in that struggle between the principles of despotism and of democracy which
seemed to be spreading over Europe. He avowed his sympathy for Spain as the
object of an unjust and unprovoked war, but he most solemnly warned the
Spaniards not to expect English assistance. He prayed that the Constitution
of Portugal might prosper, but he expressly disclaimed all connection with
its origin, and defended Portugal not because it was a Constitutional
State, but because England was bound by treaties to defend it against
foreign invasion. The arguments against intervention on behalf of Spain
which Canning addressed to the English sympathisers with that country might
have been uttered by Castlereagh; the denial of the right of foreign Powers
to attack the Spanish Constitution, with which Castlereagh headed his own
instructions for Verona, might have been written by Canning.

[Canning and the European concert.]

The statements that Canning withdrew England from the Continental system,
and that he dissolved the Holy Alliance, cannot be accepted without large
correction. The general relations existing between the Great Powers were
based, not on the ridiculous and obsolete treaty of Holy Alliance, but on
the Acts which were signed at the Conference of Aix-la-Chapelle. The first
of these was the secret Quadruple Treaty which bound England and the three
Eastern Powers to attack France in case a revolution in that country should
endanger the peace of Europe; the second was the general declaration of all
the five Powers that they would act in amity and take counsel with one
another. From the first of these alliances Canning certainly did not
withdraw England. He would perhaps have done so in 1823 if the Quadruple
Treaty had bound England to maintain the House of Bourbon on the French
throne; but it had been expressly stated that the deposition of the
Bourbons would not necessarily and in itself be considered by England as
endangering the peace of Europe. This treaty remained in full force up to
Canning's death; and if a revolutionary army had marched from Paris upon
Antwerp, he would certainly have claimed the assistance of the three
Eastern Powers. With respect to the general concert of Europe, established
or confirmed by the declaration of Aix-la-Chapelle, this had always been
one of varying extent and solidity. Both France and England had held
themselves aloof at Troppau. The federative action was strongest and most
mischievous not before but after the death of Castlereagh, and in the
period that followed the Congress of Verona; for though the war against
Spain was conducted by France alone, the three Eastern Powers had virtually
made themselves responsible for the success of the enterprise, and it was
the influence of their ambassadors at Paris and Madrid which prevented any
restrictions from being imposed upon Ferdinand's restored sovereignty.

Canning is invested with a spurious glory when it is said that his action
in Spain and in Portugal broke up the league of the Continental Courts.
Canning indeed shaped the policy of our own country with equal independence
and wisdom, but the political centre of Europe was at this time not London
but Vienna. The keystone of the European fabric was the union of Austria
and Russia, and this union was endangered, not by anything that could take
place in the Spanish Peninsula, but by the conflicting interests of these
two great States in regard to the Ottoman Empire. From the moment when the
Treaty of Paris was signed, every Austrian politician fixed his gaze upon
the roads leading to the Lower Danube, and anxiously noted the signs of
coming war, or of continued peace, between Russia and the Porte. [348] It
was the triumph of Metternich to have diverted the Czar's thoughts during
the succeeding years from his grievances against Turkey, and to have
baffled the Russian diplomatists and generals who, like Capodistrias,
sought to spur on their master to enterprises of Eastern conquest. At the
Congress of Verona the shifting and incoherent manoeuvres of Austrian
statecraft can indeed only be understood on the supposition that Metternich
was thinking all the time less of Spain than of Turkey, and struggling at
whatever cost to maintain that personal influence over Alexander which had
hitherto prevented the outbreak of war in the East. But the antagonism so
long suppressed broke out at last. The progress of the Greek insurrection
brought Austria and Russia not indeed into war, but into the most
embittered hostility with one another. It was on this rock that the
ungainly craft which men called the Holy Alliance at length struck and went
to pieces. Canning played his part well in the question of the East, but he
did not create this question. There were forces at work which, without his
intervention, would probably have made an end of the despotic amities of
1815. It is not necessary to the title of a great statesman that he should
have called into being the elements which make a new political order
possible; it is sufficient praise that he should have known how to turn
them to account.




CHAPTER XV.


Condition of Greece: its Races and Institutions--The Greek Church--Communal
System--The Ægæan Islands--The Phanariots--Greek Intellectual Revival;
Koraes--Beginning of Greek National Movement; Contact of Greece with the
French Revolution and Napoleon--The Hetæria Philike--Hypsilanti's Attempt
in the Danubian Provinces; its Failure--Revolt of the Morea: Massacres:
Execution of Gregorius, and Terrorism at Constantinople--Attitude of
Russia, Austria, and England--Extension of the Revolt: Affairs at
Hydra--The Greek Leaders--Fall of Tripolitza--The Massacre of Chios--
Failure of the Turks in the Campaign of 1822--Dissensions of the
Greeks--Mahmud calls upon Mehemet Ali for Aid--Ibrahim conquers Crete and
invades the Morea--Siege of Missolonghi--Philhellenism in Europe--Russian
Proposal for Intervention--Conspiracies in Russia: Death of Alexander:
Accession of Nicholas--Military Insurrection at St. Petersburg--
Anglo-Russian Protocol--Treaty between England, Russia, and France--Death
of Canning--Navarino--War between Russia and Turkey--Campaigns of 1828 and
1829--Treaty of Adrianople--Capodistrias President of Greece--Leopold
accepts and then declines the Greek Crown--Murder of Capodistrias--Otho,
King of Greece.


[Greece in the Napoleonic age.]

Of the Christian races which at the beginning of the third decade of this
century peopled the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the Greek was
that which had been least visibly affected by the political and military
events of the Napoleonic age. Servia, after a long struggle, had in the
year 1817 gained local autonomy under its own princes, although Turkish
troops still garrisoned its fortresses, and the sovereignty of the Sultan
was acknowledged by the payment of tribute. The Romanic districts,
Wallachia and Moldavia, which, in the famous interview of Tilsit, Napoleon
had bidden the Czar to make his own, were restored by Russia to the Porte
in the Treaty of Bucharest in 1812, but under conditions which virtually
established a Russian protectorate. Greece, with the exception of the
Ionian Islands, had neither been the scene of any military operations, nor
formed the subject of any treaty. Yet the age of the French Revolution and
of the Napoleonic wars had silently wrought in the Greek nation the last of
a great series of changes which fitted it to take its place among the free
peoples of Europe. The signs were there from which those who could read the
future might have gathered that the political resurrection of Greece was
near at hand. There were some who, with equal insight and patriotism,
sought during this period to lay the intellectual foundation for that
national independence which they foresaw that their children would win with
the sword.

[Greece in the eighteenth century.]

The forward movement of the Greek nation may be said, in general terms, to
have become visible during the first half of the eighteenth century.
Serfage had then disappeared; the peasant was either a free-holder, or a
farmer paying a rent in kind for his land. In the gradual and unobserved
emancipation of the labouring class the first condition of national revival
had already been fulfilled. The peasantry had been formed which, when the
conflict with the Turk broke out, bore the brunt of the long struggle. In
comparison with the Prussian serf, the Greek cultivator at the beginning of
the eighteenth century was an independent man: in comparison with the
English labourer, he was well fed and well housed. The evils to which the
Greek population was exposed, wherever Greeks and Turks lived together,
were those which brutalised or degraded the Christian races in every
Ottoman province. There was no redress for injury inflicted by a Mohammedan
official or neighbour. If a wealthy Turk murdered a Greek in the fields,
burnt down his house, and outraged his family, there was no court where the
offender could be brought to justice. The term by which the Turk described
his Christian neighbour was "our rayah," that is, "our subject." A
Mohammedan landowner might terrorise the entire population around him,
carry off the women, flog and imprison the men, and yet feel that he had
committed no offence against the law; for no law existed but the Koran, and
no Turkish court of justice but that of the Kadi, where the complaint of
the Christian passed for nothing.

This was the monstrous relation that existed between the dominant and the
subject nationalities, not in Greece only, but in every part of the Ottoman
Empire where Mohammedans and Christians inhabited the same districts. The
second great and general evil was the extortion practised by the
tax-gatherers, and this fell upon the poorer Mohammedans equally with the
Christians, except in regard to the poll-tax, or haratsch, the badge of
servitude, which was levied on Christians alone. All land paid tithe to the
State; and until the tax-gatherer had paid his visit it was not permitted
to the peasant to cut the ripe crop. This rule enabled the tax-gatherer,
whether a Mohammedan or a Christian, to inflict ruin upon those who did not
bribe himself or his masters; for by merely postponing his visit he could
destroy the value of the harvest. Round this central institution of tyranny
and waste, there gathered, except in the districts protected by municipal
privileges, every form of corruption natural to a society where the State
heard no appeals, and made no inquiry into the processes employed by those
to whom it sold the taxes. What was possible in the way of extortion was
best seen in the phenomenon of well-built villages being left tenantless,
and the population of rich districts dying out in a time of peace, without
pestilence, without insurrection, without any greater wrong on the part of
the Sultan's government than that normal indifference which permitted the
existence of a community to depend upon the moderation or the caprice of
the individual possessors of force.

[Origin of modern Greece Byzantine, not classic.]

[Slavonic and Albanian elements.]

Such was the framework, or, as it may be said, the common-law of the mixed
Turkish and Christian society of the Ottoman Empire. On this background we
have now to trace the social and political features which stood out in
Greek life, which preserved the race from losing its separate nationality,
and which made the ultimate recovery of its independence possible. In the
first outburst of sympathy and delight with which every generous heart in
western Europe hailed the standard of Hellenic freedom upraised in 1821,
the twenty centuries which separated the Greece of literature from the
Greece of to-day were strangely forgotten. The imagination went straight
back to Socrates and Leonidas, and pictured in the islander or the hillsman
who rose against Mahmud II. the counterpart of those glorious beings who
gave to Europe the ideals of intellectual energy, of plastic beauty, and of
poetic truth. The illusion was a happy one, if it excited on behalf of a
brave people an interest which Servia or Montenegro might have failed to
gain; but it led to a reaction when disappointments came; it gave
inordinate importance to the question of the physical descent of the
Greeks; and it produced a false impression of the causes which had led up
to the war of independence, and of the qualities, the habits, the bonds of
union, which exercised the greatest power over the nation. These were, to a
great extent, unlike anything existing in the ancient world; they had
originated in Byzantine, not in classic Greece; and where the scenes of old
Hellenic history appeared to be repeating themselves, it was due more to
the continuing influence of the same seas and the same mountains than to
the survival of any political fragments of the past. The Greek population
had received a strong Slavonic infusion many centuries before. More
recently, Albanian settlers had expelled the inhabitants from certain
districts both in the mainland and in the Morea. Attica, Boeotia, Corinth,
and Argolis were at the outbreak of the war of independence peopled in the
main by a race of Albanian descent, who still used, along with some Greek,
the Albanian language. [349] The sense of a separate nationality was,
however, weak among these settlers, who, unlike some small Albanian
communities in the west of the Morea, were Christians, not Mohammedans.
Neighbourhood, commerce, identity of religion and similarity of local
institutions were turning these Albanians into Greeks; and no community of
pure Hellenic descent played a greater part in the national war, or
exhibited more of the maritime energy and daring which we associate
peculiarly with the Hellenic name, than the islanders of Hydra and Spetza,
who had crossed from the Albanian parts of the Morea and taken possession
of these desert rocks not a hundred years before. The same phenomenon of an
assimilation of Greeks and Albanians was seen in southern Epirus, the
border-ground between the two races. The Suliotes, Albanian mountaineers,
whose military exploits form one of the most extraordinary chapters in
history, showed signs of Greek influences before the Greek war of
independence began, and in this war they made no distinction between the
Greek cause and their own. Even the rule of the ferocious Ali Pasha at
Janina had been favourable to the extension of Greek civilisation in
Epirus. Under this Mohammedan tyrant Janina contained more schools than
Athens. The Greek population of the district increased; and in the sense of
a common religious antagonism to the Mohammedan, the Greek and the Albanian
Christians in Epirus forgot their difference of race.

[The Greek Church.]

[Lower clergy.]

[The Patriarch an imperial functionary.]

[The Bishops civil magistrates.]

The central element in modern Greek life was the religious profession of
the Orthodox Eastern Church. Where, as in parts of Crete, the Greek adopted
Mohammedanism, all the other elements of his nationality together did not
prevent him from amalgamating with the Turk. The sound and popular forces
of the Church belonged to the lower clergy, who, unlike the priests of the
Roman Church, were married and shared the life of the people. If ignorant
and bigoted, they were nevertheless the real guardians of national spirit;
and if their creed was a superstition rather than a religion, it at least
kept the Greeks in a wholesome antagonism to the superstition of their
masters. The higher clergy stood in many respects in a different position.
The Patriarch of Constantinople was a great officer of the Porte. His
dignities and his civil jurisdiction had been restored and even enlarged by
the Mohammedan conquerors of the Greek Empire, with the express object of
employing the Church as a means of securing obedience to themselves: and it
was quite in keeping with the history of this great office that, when the
Greek national insurrection at last broke out, the Patriarch Gregorius IV.
should have consented, though unwillingly, to launch the curse of the
Church against it. The Patriarch gained his office by purchase, or through
intrigues at the Divan; he paid an enormous annual backsheesh for it; and
he was liable to be murdered or deposed as soon as his Mussulman patrons
lost favour with the Sultan, or a higher bid was made for his office by a
rival ecclesiastic. To satisfy the claims of the Palace the Patriarch was
compelled to be an extortioner himself. The bishoprics in their turn were
sold in his ante-chambers, and the Bishops made up the purchase-money by
fleecing their clergy. But in spite of a deserved reputation for venality,
the Bishops in Greece exercised very great influence, both as ecclesiastics
and as civil magistrates. Whether their jurisdiction in lawsuits between
Christians arose from the custom of referring disputes to their arbitration
or was expressly granted to them by the Sultan, they virtually displaced in
all Greek communities the court of the Kadi, and afforded the merchant or
the farmer a tribunal where his own law was administered in his own
language. Even a Mohammedan in dispute with a Christian would sometimes
consent to bring the matter before the Bishops' Court rather than enforce
his right to obtain the dilatory and capricious decision of an Ottoman
judge.

[Communal organisation.]

[The Morea.]

The condition of the Greeks living in the country that now forms the
Hellenic Kingdom and in the Ægæan Islands exhibited strong local contrasts.
It was, however, common to all that, while the Turk held the powers of
State in his hand, the details of local administration in each district
were left to the inhabitants, the Turk caring nothing about these matters
so long as the due amount of taxes was paid and the due supply of sailors
provided. The apportionment of taxes among households and villages seems to
have been the germ of self-government from which several types of municipal
organisation, some of them of great importance in the history of the Greek
nation, developed. In the Paschalik of the Morea the taxes were usually
farmed by the Voivodes, or Beys, the Turkish governors of the twenty-three
provinces into which the Morea was divided. But in each village or township
the inhabitants elected officers called Proestoi, who, besides collecting
the taxes and managing the affairs of their own communities, met in a
district-assembly, and there determined what share of the district-taxation
each community should bear. One Greek officer, called Primate, and one
Mohammedan, called Ayan, were elected to represent the district, and to
take part in the council of the Pasha of the Morea, who resided at
Tripolitza. [350] The Primates exercised considerable power. Created
originally by the Porte to expedite the collection of the revenue, they
became a Greek aristocracy. They were indeed an aristocracy of no very
noble kind. Agents of a tyrannical master, they shared the vices of the
tyrant and of the slave. Often farmers of the taxes themselves, obsequious
and intriguing in the palace of the Pasha at Tripolitza, grasping and
despotic in their native districts, they were described as a species of
Christian Turk. But whatever their vices, they saved the Greeks from being
left without leaders. They formed a class accustomed to act in common,
conversant with details of administration, and especially with the
machinery for collecting and distributing supplies. It was this financial
experience of the Primates of the Morea which gave to the rebellion of the
Greeks what little unity of organisation it exhibited in its earliest
stage.

[Northern Greece. The Armatoli and the Klephts.]

On the north of the Gulf of Corinth the features of the communal system
were less distinct than in the Morea. There was, however, in the
mountain-country of Ætolia and Pindus a rough military organisation which
had done great service to Greece in keeping alive the national spirit and
habits of personal independence. The Turks had found a local militia
established in this wild region at the time of their conquest, and had not
interfered with it for some centuries. The Armatoli, or native soldiery,
recruited from peasants, shepherds, and muleteers, kept Mohammedan
influences at a distance, until, in the eighteenth century, the Sultans
made it a fixed rule of policy to diminish their numbers and to reduce the
power of their captains. Before 1820 the Armatoli had become comparatively
few and weak; but as they declined, bands of Klephts, or brigands, grew in
importance; and the mountaineer who was no longer allowed to practise arms
as a guardian of order, enlisted himself among the robbers. Like the
freebooters of our own northern border, these brigands became the heroes of
song. Though they plundered the Greek as well as the Mohammedan, the
national spirit approved their exploits. It was, no doubt, something, that
the physical energy of the marauder and the habit of encountering danger
should not be wholly on the side of the Turk and the Albanian. But the
influence of the Klephts in sustaining Greek nationality has been
overrated. They had but recently become numerous, and the earlier
organisation of the northern Armatoli was that to which the sound and
vigorous character of the Greek peasantry in these regions, the finest part
of the Greek race on the mainland, was really due. [351]

[The Ægæan Islands.]

[Chios.]

In the islands of the Ægæan the condition of the Greeks was on the whole
happy and prosperous. Some of these islands had no Turkish population; in
others the caprice of a Sultana, the goodwill of the Capitan Pasha who
governed the Archipelago, or the judicious offer of a sum of money when
money was wanted by the Porte, had so lightened the burden of Ottoman
sovereignty, that the Greek island-community possessed more liberty than
was to be found in any part of Europe, except Switzerland. The taxes
payable to the central government, including the haratsch or poll-tax
levied on all Christians, had often been commuted for a fixed sum, which
was raised without the interposition of the Turkish tax-gatherer. In Hydra,
Spetza, and Psara, the so-called nautical islands, the supremacy of the
Turk was felt only in the obligation to furnish sailors to the Ottoman
navy, and in the payment of a tribute of about £100 per annum. The
government of these three islands was entirely in the hands of the
inhabitants. In Chios, though a considerable Mussulman population existed
by the side of the Greek, there was every sign of peace and prosperity.
Each island bore its own peculiar social character, and had its municipal
institutions of more or less value. The Hydriote was quarrelsome,
turbulent, quick to use the knife, but outspoken, honest in dealing, and an
excellent sailor. The picture of Chian life, as drawn even by those who
have judged the Greeks most severely, is one of singular beauty and
interest; the picture of a self-governing society in which the family
trained the citizen in its own bosom, and in which, while commerce enriched
all, the industry of the poor within their homes and in their gardens was
refined by the practice of an art. The skill which gave its value to the
embroidery and to the dyes of Chios was exercised by those who also worked
the hand-loom and cultivated the mastic and the rose. The taste and the
labour of man requited nature's gifts of sky, soil, and sea; and in the
pursuit of occupations which stimulated, not deadened, the faculties of the
worker, idleness and intemperance were alike unknown. [352] How bright a
scene of industry, when compared with the grime and squalor of the English
factory-town, where the human and the inanimate machine grind out their
yearly mountains of iron-ware and calico, in order that the employer may
vie with his neighbours in soulless ostentation, and the workman consume
his millions upon millions in drink.

[The Greeks have ecclesiastical power in other Turkish provinces.]

The territory where the Greeks formed the great majority of the population
included, beyond the boundaries of the present Hellenic Kingdom, the
islands adjacent to the coast of Asia Minor, Crete, and the Chalcidic
peninsula in Macedonia. But the activity of the race was not confined
within these limits. If the Greek was a subject in his own country, he was
master in the lands of some of his neighbours. A Greek might exercise power
over other Christian subjects of the Porte either as an ecclesiastic, or as
the delegate of the Sultan in certain fixed branches of the administration.
The authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople was recognised over the
whole of the European provinces of Turkey, except Servia. The Bishops in
all these provinces were Greeks; the services of the Church were conducted
in the Greek tongue; the revenues of the greater part of the Church-lands,
and the fees of all the ecclesiastical courts, went into Greek pockets. In
things religious, and in that wide range of civil affairs which in
communities belonging to the Eastern Church appertains to the higher
religious office, the Greeks had in fact regained the ascendancy which they
had possessed under the Byzantine Empire. The dream of the Churchman was
not the creation of an independent kingdom of Greece, but the restoration
of the Eastern Empire under Greek supremacy. When it was seen that the Slav
and the Rouman came to the Greek for law, for commercial training, for
religious teaching, and looked to the Patriarch of Constantinople as the
ultimate judge of all disputes, it was natural that the belief should arise
that, when the Turk passed away, the Greek would step into his place. But
the influence of the Greeks, great as it appeared to be, did not in reality
reach below the surface, except in Epirus. The bishops were felt to be
foreigners and extortioners. There was no real process of assimilation at
work, either in Bulgaria or in the Danubian Provinces. The slow and
plodding Bulgarian peasant, too stupid for the Greek to think of him as a
rival, preserved his own unchanging tastes and nationality, sang to his
children the songs which he had learnt from his parents, and forgot the
Greek which he had heard in the Church when he re-entered his home. [353]
In Roumania, the only feeling towards the Greek intruder was one of intense
hatred.

[The Phanariot officials of the Porte.]

[Greek Hospodars.]

Four great offices of the Ottoman Empire were always held by Greeks. These
were the offices of Dragoman, [354] or Secretary, of the Porte, Dragoman of
the Fleet, and the governorships, called Hospodariates, of Wallachia and
Moldavia. The varied business of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the
administration of its revenues, the conduct of its law-courts, had drawn a
multitude of pushing and well-educated Greeks to the quarter of
Constantinople called the Phanar, in which the palace of the Patriarch is
situated. Merchants and professional men inhabited the same district. These
Greeks of the capital, the so-called Phanariots, gradually made their way
into the Ottoman administration as Turkish energy declined, and the
conquering race found that it could no longer dispense with the weapons of
calculation and diplomacy. The Treaty of Carlowitz, made in 1699, after the
unsuccessful war in which the Turks laid siege to Vienna, was negotiated on
behalf of the Porte by Alexander Maurokordatos, a Chian by birth, who had
become physician to the Sultan and was virtually the Foreign Minister of
Turkey. His sons, Nicholas and Constantine, were made Hospodars of
Wallachia and Moldavia early in the eighteenth century; and from this time
forward, until the outbreak of the Greek insurrection, the governorships of
the Roumanian provinces were entrusted to Phanariot families. The result
was that a troop of Greek adventurers passed to the north of the Danube,
and seized upon every office of profit in these unfortunate lands. There
were indeed individuals among the Hospodars, especially among the
Maurokordati, who rendered good service to their Roumanian subjects; but on
the whole the Phanariot rule was grasping, dishonest, and cruel. [355] Its
importance in relation to Greece was not that it Hellenised the Danubian
countries, for that it signally failed to do; but that it raised the
standard of Greek education, and enlarged the range of Greek thought, by
opening a political and administrative career to ambitious men. The
connection of the Phanariots with education was indeed an exceedingly close
one. Alexander Maurokordatos was the ardent and generous founder of schools
for the instruction of his countrymen in Constantinople as well as in other
cities, and for the improvement of the existing language of Greece. His
example was freely followed throughout the eighteenth century. It is,
indeed, one of the best features in the Greek character that the owner of
wealth has so often been, and still so often is, the promoter of the
culture of his race. As in Germany in the last century, and in Hungary and
Bohemia at a more recent date, the national revival of Greece was preceded
by a striking revival of interest in the national language.

[Greek intellectual movement in the eighteenth century.]

The knowledge of ancient Greek was never wholly lost among the priesthood,
but it had become useless. Nothing was read but the ecclesiastic
commonplace of a pedantic age; and in the schools kept by the clergy before
the eighteenth century the ancient language was taught only as a means of
imparting divinity. The educational movement promoted by men like
Maurokordatos had a double end; it revived the knowledge of the great age
of Greece through its literature, and it taught the Greek to regard the
speech which he actually used not as a mere barbarous patois which each
district had made for itself, but as a language different indeed from that
of the ancient world, yet governed by its own laws, and capable of
performing the same functions as any other modern tongue. It was now that
the Greek learnt to call himself Hellen, the name of his forefathers,
instead of Romaios, a Roman. As the new schools grew up and the old ones
were renovated or transformed, education ceased to be merely literary. In
the second half of the eighteenth century science returned in a humble form
to the land that had given it birth, and the range of instruction was
widened by men who had studied law, physics, and moral philosophy at
foreign Universities. Something of the liberal spirit of the inquirers of
Western Europe arose among the best Greek teachers. Though no attack was
made upon the doctrines of the Church, and no direct attack was made upon
the authority of the Sultan, the duty of religious toleration was
proclaimed in a land where bigotry had hitherto reigned supreme, and the
political freedom of ancient Greece was held up as a glorious ideal to a
less happy age. Some of the higher clergy and of the Phanariot instruments
of Turkish rule took fright at the independent spirit of the new learning,
and for a while it seemed as if the intellectual as well as the political
progress of Greece might be endangered by ecclesiastical ill-will. But the
attachment of the Greek people to the Church was so strong and so universal
that, although satire might be directed against the Bishops, a breach with
the Church formed no part of the design of any patriot. The antagonism
between episcopal and national feeling, strongest about the end of the
eighteenth century, declined during succeeding years, and had almost
disappeared before the outbreak of the war of liberation.

[Koraes, 1748-1833.]

[The language of Modern Greece.]

The greatest scholar of modern Greece was also one of its greatest
patriots. Koraes, known as the legislator of the Greek language, was born
in 1748, of Chian parents settled at Smyrna. The love of learning, combined
with an extreme independence of character, made residence insupportable to
him in a land where the Turk was always within sight, and where few
opportunities existed for gaining wide knowledge. His parents permitted him
to spend some years at Amsterdam, where a branch of their business was
established. Recalled to Smyrna at the age of thirty, Koraes almost
abandoned human society. The hand of a beautiful heiress could not tempt
him from the austere and solitary life of the scholar; and quitting his
home, he passed through the medical school of Montpellier, and settled at
Paris. He was here when the French Revolution began. The inspiration of
that time gave to his vast learning and inborn energy a directly patriotic
aim. For forty years Koraes pursued the work of serving Greece by the means
open to the scholar. The political writings in which he addressed the
Greeks themselves or appealed to foreigners in favour of Greece, admirable
as they are, do not form the basis of his fame. The peculiar task of Koraes
was to give to the reviving Greek nation the national literature and the
form of expression which every civilised people reckons among its most
cherished bonds of unity. Master, down to the minutest details, of the
entire range of Greek writings, and of the history of the Greek language
from classical times down to our own century, Koraes was able to select the
Hellenic authors, Christian as well as Pagan, whose works were best suited
for his countrymen in their actual condition, and to illustrate them as no
one could who had not himself been born and bred among Greeks. This was one
side of Koraes' literary task. The other was to direct the language of the
future Hellenic kingdom into its true course. Classical writing was still
understood by the educated in Greece, but the spoken language of the people
was something widely different. Turkish and Albanian influences had
barbarised the vocabulary; centuries of ignorance had given play to every
natural irregularity of local dialect. When the restoration of Greek
independence came within view, there were some who proposed to revive
artificially each form used in the ancient language, and thus, without any
real blending, to add the old to the new: others, seeing this to be
impossible, desired that the common idiom, corrupt as it was, should be
accepted as a literary language. Koraes chose the middle and the rational
path. Taking the best written Greek of the day as his material, he
recommended that the forms of classical Greek, where they were not wholly
obsolete, should be fixed in the grammar of the language. While ridiculing
the attempt to restore modes of expression which, even in the written
language, had wholly passed out of use, he proposed to expunge all words
that were in fact not Greek at all, but foreign, and to replace them by
terms formed according to the natural laws of the language. The Greek,
therefore, which Koraes desired to see his countrymen recognise as their
language, and which he himself used in his writings, was the written Greek
of the most cultivated persons of his time, purged of its foreign elements,
and methodised by a constant reference to a classical model, which,
however, it was not to imitate pedantically. The correctness of this theory
has been proved by its complete success. The patois which, if it had been
recognised as the language of the Greek kingdom, would now have made
Herodotus and Plato foreign authors in Athens, is indeed still preserved in
familiar conversation, but it is little used in writing and not taught in
schools. A language year by year more closely approximating in its forms to
that of classical Greece unites the Greeks both with their past and among
themselves, and serves as the instrument of a widening Hellenic
civilization in the Eastern Mediterranean. The political object of Koraes
has been completely attained. No people in Europe is now prouder of its
native tongue, or turns it to better account in education, than his
countrymen. In literature, the renovated language has still its work before
it. The lyric poetry that has been written in Greece since the time of
Koraes is not wanting, if a foreigner may express an opinion, in tenderness
and grace The writer who shall ennoble Greek prose with the energy and
directness of the ancient style has yet to arise [356]

[Development of Greek commerce, 1750-1820.]

[The Treaty of Kainardji, 1774.]

The intellectual advance of the Greeks in the eighteenth century was
closely connected with the development of their commerce, and this in its
turn was connected with events in the greater cycle of European history. A
period of comparative peace and order in the Levantine waters, following
the final expulsion of the Venetians from the Morea in 1718, gave play to
the natural aptitude of the Greek islanders for coasting-trade. Then ships,
still small and unfit to venture on long voyages, plied between the
harbours in the Ægæan and in the Black Sea, and brought profit to their
owners in spite of the imposition of burdens from which not only many of
the Mussulman subjects of the Sultan, but foreign nations protected by
commercial treaties, were free. It was at this epoch, after Venice had lost
its commercial supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean, that Russia began to
exercise a direct influence upon the fortunes of Greece. The Empress
Catherine had formed the design of conquering Constantinople, and intended,
under the title of Protectress of the Christian Church, to use the Greeks
as her allies. In the war which broke out between Russia and Turkey in
1768, a Russian expeditionary force landed in the Morea, and the Greeks
were persuaded to take up arms. The Moreotes themselves paid dearly for the
trust which they had placed in the orthodox Empress. They were virtually
abandoned to the vengeance of their oppressors; but to Greece at large the
conditions on which peace was made proved of immense benefit. The Treaty of
Kainardji, signed in 1774, gave Russia the express right to make
representations at Constantinople on behalf of the Christian inhabitants of
the Danubian provinces; it also bound the Sultan to observe certain
conditions in his treatment of the Greek islanders. Out of these clauses,
Russian diplomacy constructed a general right of interference on behalf of
any Christian subjects of the Porte. The Treaty also opened the Black Sea
to Russian ships of commerce, and conferred upon Russia the commercial
privileges of the most favoured nation. [357] The result of this compact
was a very remarkable one. The Russian Government permitted hundreds of
Greek shipowners to hoist its own flag, and so changed the footing of Greek
merchantmen in every port of the Ottoman Empire. The burdens which had
placed the Greek trader at a disadvantage, when compared with the
Mohammedan, vanished. A host of Russian consular agents, often Greeks
themselves, was scattered over the Levant. Eager for opportunities of
attaching the Greeks to their Russian patrons, quick to make their
newly-won power felt by the Turks, these men extracted a definite meaning
from the clauses of the Treaty of Kainardji, by which the Porte had bound
itself to observe the rights of its Christian subjects. The sense of
security in the course of their business, no less than the emancipation
from commercial fetters, gave an immense impulse to Greek traders. Their
ships were enlarged; voyages, hitherto limited to the Levant, were extended
to England and even to America; and a considerable armament of cannon was
placed on board each ship for defence against the attack of Algerian
pirates.

[Foundation of Odessa, 1792.]

[Death of Rhegas, 1798.]

[Influence of the French Revolution on Greece.]

Before the end of the eighteenth century another war between Turkey and
Russia, resulting in the cession of the district of Oczakoff on the
northern shore of the Black Sea, made the Greeks both carriers and vendors
of the corn-export of Southern Russia. The city of Odessa was founded on
the ceded territory. The merchants who raised it to its sudden prosperity
were not Russians but Greeks; and in the course of a single generation many
a Greek trading-house, which had hitherto deemed the sum of £3,000 to be a
large capital, rose to an opulence little behind that of the great London
firms. Profiting by the neutrality of Turkey or its alliance with England
during a great part of the revolutionary war, the Greeks succeeded to much
of the Mediterranean trade that was lost by France and its dependencies.
The increasing intelligence of the people was shown in the fact that
foreigners were no longer employed by Greek merchants as their travelling
agents in distant countries; there were countrymen enough of their own who
could negotiate with an Englishman or a Dane in his own language. The
richest Greeks were no doubt those of Odessa and Salonica, not of Hellas
proper; but even the little islands of Hydra and Spetza, the refuge of the
Moreotes whom Catherine had forsaken in 1770, now became communities of no
small wealth and spirit. Psara, which was purely Greek, formed with these
Albanian colonies the nucleus of an Ægæan naval Power. The Ottoman
Government, cowed by its recent defeats, and perhaps glad to see the means
of increasing its resources, made no attempt to check the growth of the
Hellenic armed marine. Under the very eyes of the Sultan, the Hydriote and
Psarian captains, men as venturesome as the sea-kings of ancient Greece,
accumulated the artillery which was hereafter to hold its own against many
an Ottoman man-of-war, and to sweep the Turkish merchantmen from the
Ægæan. Eighteen years before the Greek insurrection broke out, Koraes,
calling the attention of Western Europe to the progress made by his
country, wrote the following significant words:--"If the Ottoman Government
could have foreseen that the Greeks would create a merchant-navy, composed
of several hundred vessels, most of them regularly armed, it would have
crushed the movement at its commencement. It is impossible to calculate the
effects which may result from the creation of this marine, or the influence
which it may exert both upon the destiny of the oppressed nation and upon
that of its oppressors." [358] Like its classic sisterland in the
Mediterranean, Greece was stirred by the far-sounding voices of the French
Revolution. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, the revival of a supposed
antique Republicanism, the victories of Hoche and Bonaparte, successively
kindled the enthusiasm of a race already restless under the Turkish yoke.
France drew to itself some of the hopes that had hitherto been fixed
entirely upon Russia. Images and ideas of classic freedom invaded the
domain where the Church had hitherto been all in all; the very sailors
began to call their boats by the names of Spartan and Athenian heroes, as
well as by those of saints and martyrs. In 1797 Venice fell, and Bonaparte
seized its Greek possessions, the Ionian Islands. There was something of
the forms of liberation in the establishment of French rule; the
inhabitants of Zante were at least permitted to make a bonfire of the
stately wigs worn by their Venetian masters. Great changes seemed to be
near at hand. It was not yet understood that France fought for empire, not
for justice; and the man who, above all others, represented the early
spirit of the revolution among the Greeks, the poet Rhegas, looked to
Bonaparte to give the signal for the rising of the whole of the Christian
populations subject to Mohammedan rule. Rhegas, if he was not a wise
politician, was a thoroughly brave man, and he was able to serve his
country as a martyr. While engaged in Austria in conspiracies against the
Sultan's Government, and probably in intrigues with Bernadotte, French
ambassador at Vienna, he was arrested by the agents of Thugut, and handed
over to the Turks. He was put to death at Belgrade, with five of his
companions, in May, 1798. The songs of Rhegas soon passed through every
household in Greece. They were a precious treasure to his countrymen, and
they have immortalised his name as a patriot. But the work which he had
begun languished for a time after his death. The series of events which
followed Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt extinguished the hope of the
liberation of Greece by the French Republic. Among the higher Greek clergy
the alliance with the godless followers of Voltaire was seen with no
favourable eye. The Porte was even able to find a Christian Patriarch to
set his name to a pastoral, warning the faithful against the sin of
rebellion, and reminding them that, while Satan was creating the Lutherans
and Calvinists, the infinite mercy of God had raised up the Ottoman Power
in order that the Orthodox Church might be preserved pure from the heresies
of the West. [359]

[The Ionian Islands. 1798-1815.]

[Ali Pasha, 1798-1821.]

From the year 1798 down to the Peace of Paris, Greece was more affected by
the vicissitudes of the Ionian Islands and by the growth of dominion of Ali
Pasha in Albania than by the earlier revolutionary ideas. France was
deprived of its spoils by the combined Turkish and Russian fleets in the
coalition of 1799, and the Ionian Islands were made into a Republic under
the protection of the Czar and the Sultan. It was in the native
administration of Corfu that the career of Capodistrias began. At the peace
of Tilsit the Czar gave these islands back to Napoleon, and Capodistrias,
whose ability had gained general attention, accepted an invitation to enter
the Russian service. The islands were then successively beleaguered and
conquered by the English, with the exception of Corfu; and after the fall
of Napoleon they became a British dependency. Thus the three greatest
Powers of Europe were during the first years of this century in constant
rivalry on the east of the Adriatic, and a host of Greeks, some fugitives,
some adventurers, found employment among their armed forces. The most
famous chieftain in the war of liberation, Theodore Kolokotrones, a Klepht
of the Morea, was for some years major of a Greek regiment in the pay of
England. In the meantime Ali Pasha, on the neighbouring mainland, neither
rested himself nor allowed any of his neighbours to rest. The Suliotes,
vanquished after years of heroic defence, migrated in a body to the Ionian
Islands in 1804. Every Klepht and Armatole of the Epirote border had fought
at some time either for Ali or against him; for in the extension of his
violent and crafty rule Ali was a friend to-day and an enemy to-morrow
alike to Greek, Turk, and Albanian. When his power was at its height, Ali's
court at Janina was as much Greek as it was Mohammedan: soldiers,
merchants, professors, all, as it was said, with a longer or a shorter rope
round their necks, played their part in the society of the Epirote capital.
[360] Among the officers of Ali's army there were some who were soon to be
the military rivals of Kolokotrones in the Greek insurrection: Ali's
physician, Dr. Kolettes, was gaining an experience and an influence among
these men which afterwards placed him at the head of the Government. For
good or for evil, it was felt that the establishment of a virtually
independent kingdom of Albania must deeply affect the fate of Greece; and
when at length Ali openly defied the Sultan, and Turkish armies closed
round his castle at Janina, the conflict between the Porte and its most
powerful vassal gave the Greeks the signal to strike for their own
independence.

[The Hetæria Philike.]

The secret society, which under the name of Hetæria Philike, or association
of friends, inaugurated the rebellion of Greece, was founded in 1814, after
it had become clear that the Congress of Vienna would take no steps on
behalf of the Christian subjects of the Porte. The founders of this society
were traders of Odessa, and its earliest members seem to have been drawn
more from the Greeks in Russia and in the Danubian provinces than from
those of Greece Proper. The object of the conspiracy was the expulsion of
the Turk from Europe, and the re-establishment of a Greek Eastern Empire.
It was pretended by the council of directors that the Emperor Alexander had
secretly joined them; and the ingenious fiction was circulated that a
society for the preservation of Greek antiquities, for which Capodistrias
had gained the patronage of the Czar and other eminent men at the Congress
of Vienna, was in fact this political association in disguise. The real
chiefs of the conspiracy always spoke of themselves as acting under the
instructions of a nameless superior power. They were as little troubled by
scruple in thus deceiving their followers as they were in planning a
general massacre of the Turks, and in murdering their own agents when they
wished to have them out of the way. The ultimate design of the Hetæria was
an unsound one, and its operations were based upon an imposture; but in
exciting the Greeks against Turkish rule, and in inspiring confidence in
its own resources and authority, it was completely successful. In the
course of six years every Greek of note, both in Greece itself and in the
adjacent countries, had joined the association. The Turkish Government had
received warnings of the danger which threatened it, but disregarded them
until revolt was on the point of breaking out. The very improvement in the
condition of the Christians, the absence of any crying oppression or
outrage in Greece during late years, probably lulled the anxieties of
Sultan Mahmud, who, terrible as he afterwards proved himself, had not
hitherto been without sympathy for the Rayah. But the history of France, no
less than the history of Greece, shows that it is not the excess, but the
sense, of wrong that produces revolution. A people may be so crushed by
oppression as to suffer all conceivable misery with patience. It is when
the pulse has again begun to beat strong, when the eye is fixed no longer
on the ground, and the knowledge of good and evil again burns in the heart,
that the right and the duty of resistance is felt.

[Capodistrias and Hypsilanti.]

Early in 1820 the ferment in Greece had become so general that the chiefs
of the Hetæria were compelled to seek at St. Petersburg for the Russian
leader who had as yet existed only in their imagination. There was no
dispute as to the person to whom the task of restoring the Eastern Empire
rightfully belonged. Capodistrias, at once a Greek and Foreign Minister of
Russia, stood in the front rank of European statesmen; he was known to love
the Greek cause; he was believed to possess the strong personal affection
of the Emperor Alexander. The deputies of the Hetæria besought him to place
himself at its head. Capodistrias, however, knew better than any other man
the force of those influences which would dissuade the Czar from assisting
Greece. He had himself published a pamphlet in the preceding year
recommending his countrymen to take no rash step; and, apart from all
personal considerations, he probably believed that he could serve Greece
better as Minister of Russia than by connecting himself with any dangerous
enterprise. He rejected the offers of the Hetærists, who then turned to a
soldier of some distinction in the Russian army, Prince Alexander
Hypsilanti, a Greek exile, whose grandfather, after governing Wallachia as
Hospodar, had been put to death by the Turks for complicity with the
designs of Rhegas. It is said that Capodistrias encouraged Hypsilanti to
attempt the task which he had himself declined, and that he allowed him to
believe that if Greece once rose in arms the assistance of Russia could not
long be withheld. [361] Hypsilanti, sacrificing his hopes of the recovery
of a great private fortune through the intercession of the Czar at
Constantinople, placed himself at the head of the Hetæria, and entered upon
a career, for which, with the exception of personal courage proved in the
campaigns against Napoleon, he seems to have possessed no single
qualification.

[The Herærist plan.]

In October, 1820, the leading Hetærists met in council at Ismail to decide
whether the insurrection against the Turk should begin in Greece itself or
in the Danubian provinces. Most of the Greek officers in the service of
Sutsos, the Hospodar of Moldavia, were ready to join the revolt. With the
exception of a few companies serving as police, there were no Turkish
soldiers north of the Danube, the Sultan having bound himself by the Treaty
of Bucharest to send no troops into the Principalities without the Czar's
consent. It does not appear that the Hetærists had yet formed any
calculation as to the probable action of the Roumanian people: they had
certainly no reason to believe that this race bore good-will to the Greeks,
or that it would make any effort to place a Greek upon the Sultan's throne.
The conspirators at Ismail were so far on the right track that they decided
that the outbreak should begin, not on the Danube, but in Peloponnesus.
Hypsilanti, however, full of the belief that Russia would support him,
reversed this conclusion, and determined to raise his standard in Moldavia.
[362] And now for the first time some account was taken of the Roumanian
population. It was known that the mass of the people groaned under the
feudal oppression of the Boyards, or landowners, and that the Boyards
themselves detested the government of the Greek Hospodars. A plan found
favour among Hypsilanti's advisers that the Wallachian peasantry should
first be called to arms by a native leader for the redress of their own
grievances, and that the Greeks should then step in and take control of the
insurrectionary movement. Theodor Wladimiresco, a Roumanian who had served
in the Russian army, was ready to raise the standard of revolt among his
countrymen. It did not occur to the Hetærists that Wladimiresco might have
a purpose of his own, or that the Roumanian population might prefer to see
the Greek adventure fail. No sovereign by divine right had a firmer belief
in his prerogative within his own dominions than Hypsilanti in his power to
command or outwit Roumanians, Slavs, and all other Christian subjects of
the Sultan.

[Hypsilanti in Roumania March, 1821.]

The feint of a native rising was planned and executed. In February, 1821,
while Hypsilanti waited on the Russian frontier, Wladimiresco proclaimed
the abolition of feudal services, and marched with a horde of peasants upon
Bucharest. On the 16th of March the Hetærists began their own insurrection
by a deed of blood that disgraced the Christian cause. Karavias, a
conspirator commanding the Greek troops of the Hospodar at Galatz, let
loose his soldiers and murdered every Turk who could be hunted down.
Hypsilanti crossed the Pruth next day, and appeared at Jassy with a few
hundred followers. A proclamation was published in which the Prince called
upon all Christian subjects of the Porte to rise, and declared that a great
European Power, meaning Russia, supported him in his enterprise. Sutsos,
the Hospodar, at once handed over all the apparatus of government, and
supplied the insurgents with a large sum of money. Two thousand armed men,
some of them regular troops, gathered round Hypsilanti at Jassy. The roads
to the Danube lay open before him; the resources of Moldavia were at his
disposal; and had he at once thrown a force into Galatz and Ibraila, he
might perhaps have made it difficult for Turkish troops to gain a footing
on the north of the Danube.

[The Czar disavows the movement.]

But the incapacity of the leader became evident from the moment when he
began his enterprise. He loitered for a week at Jassy, holding court and
conferring titles, and then, setting out for Bucharest, wasted three weeks
more upon the road. In the meantime the news of the insurrection, and of
the fraudulent use that had been made of his own name, reached the Czar,
who was now engaged at the Congress of Laibach. Alexander was at this
moment abandoning himself heart and soul to Metternich's reactionary
influence, and ordering his generals to make ready a hundred thousand men
to put down the revolution in Piedmont. He received with dismay a letter
from Hypsilanti invoking his aid in a rising which was first described in
the phrases of the Holy Alliance as the result of a divine inspiration, and
then exhibited as a master-work of secret societies and widespread
conspiracy. A stern answer was sent back. Hypsilanti was dismissed from the
Russian service; he was ordered to lay down his arms, and a manifesto was
published by the Russian Consul at Jassy declaring that the Czar repudiated
and condemned the enterprise with which his name had been connected. The
Patriarch of Constantinople, helpless in the presence of Sultan Mahmud, now
issued a ban of excommunication against the leader and all his followers.
Some weeks later the Congress of Laibach officially branded the Greek
revolt as a work of the same anarchical spirit which had produced the
revolutions of Italy and Spain. [363]

[The enterprise fails.]

The disavowal of the Hetærist enterprise by the Czar was fatal to its
success. Hypsilanti, indeed, put on a bold countenance and pretended that
the public utterances of the Russian Court were a mere blind, and in
contradiction to the private instructions given him by the Czar; but no one
believed him. The Roumanians, when they knew that aid was not coming from
Russia, held aloof, or treated insurgents as enemies. Turkish troops
crossed the Danube, and Hypsilanti fell back from Bucharest towards the
Austrian frontier. Wladimiresco followed him, not however to assist him in
his struggle, but to cut off his retreat and to betray him to the enemy. It
was in vain that the bravest of Hypsilanti's followers, Georgakis, a Greek
from Olympus, sought the Wallachian at his own headquarters, exposed his
treason to the Hetærist officers who surrounded him, and carried him, a
doomed man, to the Greek camp. Wladimiresco's death was soon avenged. The
Turks advanced. Hypsilanti was defeated in a series of encounters, and fled
ignobly from his followers, to seek a refuge, and to find a prison, in
Austria. Bands of his soldiers, forsaken by their leader, sold their lives
dearly in a hopeless struggle. At Skuleni, on the Pruth, a troop of four
hundred men refused to cross to Russian soil until they had given battle to
the enemy. Standing at bay, they met the onslaught of ten times their
number of pursuers. Georgakis, who had sworn that he would never fall alive
into the enemy's hands, kept his word. Surrounded by Turkish troops in the
tower of a monastery, he threw open the doors for those of his comrades who
could to escape, and then setting fire to a chest of powder, perished in
the explosion, together with his assailants.

[Revolt of Morea, April 2, 1891.]

The Hetærist invasion of the Principalities had ended in total failure, and
with it there passed away for ever the dream of re-establishing the Eastern
Empire under Greek ascendancy. But while this enterprise, planned in vain
reliance upon foreign aid and in blind assumption of leadership over an
alien race, collapsed through the indifference of a people to whom the
Greeks were known only as oppressors, that genuine uprising of the Greek
nation, which, in spite of the nullity of its leaders, in spite of the
crimes, the disunion, the perversity of a race awaking from centuries of
servitude, was to add one more to the free peoples of Europe, broke out in
the real home of the Hellenes, in the Morea and the islands of the Ægæan.
Soon after Hypsilanti's appearance in Moldavia the Turkish governor of the
Morea, anticipating a general rebellion of the Greeks, had summoned the
Primates of his province to Tripolitza, with the view of seizing them as
hostages. The Primates of the northern district set out, but halted on
their way, debating whether they should raise the standard of insurrection
or wait for events. While they lingered irresolutely at Kalavryta the
decision passed out of their hands, and the people rose throughout the
Morea. The revolt of the Moreot Greeks against their oppressors was from
the first, and with set purpose, a war of extermination. "The Turk," they
sang in their war-songs, "shall live no longer, neither in Morea nor in the
whole earth." This terrible resolution was, during the first weeks of the
revolt, carried into literal effect. The Turks who did not fly from their
country-houses to the towns where there were garrisons or citadels to
defend them, were attacked and murdered with their entire families, men,
women and children. This was the first act of the revolution; and within a
few weeks after the 2nd of April, on which the first outbreaks occurred,
the open country was swept clear of its Ottoman population, which had
numbered about 25,000, and the residue of the lately dominant race was
collected within the walls of Patras, Tripolitza, and other towns, which
the Greeks forthwith began to beleaguer. [364]

[Terrorism at Constantinople.]

[Execution of the Patriarch, April 22.]

The news of the revolt of the Morea and of the massacre of Mohammedans
reached Constantinople, striking terror into the politicians of the Turkish
capital, and rousing the Sultan Mahmud to a vengeance tiger-like in its
ferocity, but deliberate and calculated like every bloody deed of this
resolute and able sovereign. Reprisals had already been made upon the
Greeks at Constantinople for the acts of Hypsilanti, and a number of
innocent persons had been put to death by the executioner, but no general
attack upon the Christians had been suggested, nor had the work of
punishment passed out of the hands of the government itself. Now, however,
the fury of the Mohammedan populace was let loose upon the infidel. The
Sultan called upon his subjects to arm themselves in defence of their
faith. Executions were redoubled; soldiers and mobs devastated Greek
settlements on the Bosphorus; and on the most sacred day of the Greek
Church a blow was struck which sent a thrill over Eastern Europe. The
Patriarch of Constantinople had celebrated the service which ushers in the
dawn of Easter Sunday, when he was summoned by the Dragoman of the Porte to
appear before a Synod hastily assembled. There an order of the Sultan was
read declaring Gregorius IV. a traitor, and degrading him from his office.
The Synod was commanded to elect his successor. It did so. While the new
Archbishop was receiving his investiture, Gregorius was led out, and was
hanged, still wearing his sacred robes, at the gate of his palace. His body
remained during Easter Sunday and the two following days at the place of
execution. It was then given to the Jews to be insulted, dragged through
the streets, and cast into the sea. The Archbishops of Adrianople,
Salonica, and Tirnovo suffered death on the same Easter Sunday. The body of
Gregorius, floating in the waves, was picked up by a Greek ship and carried
to Odessa. Brought, as it was believed, by a miracle to Christian soil, the
relics of the Patriarch received at the hands of the Russian government the
funeral honours of a martyr. Gregorius had no doubt had dealings with the
Hetærists; but he was put to death untried; and whatever may have been the
real extent of his offence, he was executed not for this but in order to
strike terror into the Sultan's Christian subjects.

[Massacre of Christians, April-October.]

[Effect on Russia.]

[Russian ambassador leaves Constantinople, July 27.]

During the succeeding months, in Asia Minor as well as in Macedonia and at
Constantinople itself, there were wholesale massacres of the Christians,
and the churches of the Greeks were pillaged or destroyed by their enemies,
both Jews and Turks. Smyrna, Adrianople, and Salonica, in so far as these
towns were Greek, were put to the sack; thousands of the inhabitants were
slain by the armed mobs who held command, or were sold into slavery. It was
only the fear of a war with Russia which at length forced Sultan Mahmud to
stop these deeds of outrage and to restore some of the conditions of
civilised life in the part of his dominions which was not in revolt. The
Russian army and nation would have avenged the execution of the Patriarch
by immediate war if popular instincts had governed its ruler. Strogonoff,
the ambassador at Constantinople, at once proposed to the envoys of the
other Powers to unite in calling up war-ships for the protection of the
Christians. Joint action was, however, declined by Lord Strangford, the
representative of England, and the Porte was encouraged by the attitude of
this politician to treat the threats of Strogonoff with indifference. There
was an interval during which the destiny of a great part of Eastern Europe
depended upon the fluctuations of a single infirm will. The Czar had
thoroughly identified himself while at Laibach with the principles and the
policy of European conservatism, and had assented to the declaration in
which Metternich placed the Greek rebellion, together with the Spanish and
Italian insurrections, under the ban of Europe. Returning to St.
Petersburg, Alexander, in spite of the veil that intercepts from every
sovereign the real thoughts and utterances of his people, found himself
within the range of widely different influences. Russian passions were not
roused by what might pass in Italy or Spain. The Russian priest, the
soldier, the peasant understood nothing of theories of federal
intervention, and of the connection between Neapolitan despotism and the
treaties of 1815: but his blood boiled when he heard that the chief priest
of his Church had been murdered by the Sultan, and that a handful of his
brethren were fighting for their faith unhelped. Alexander felt to some
extent the throb of national spirit. There had been a time in his life when
a single hour of strong emotion or of overpowering persuasion had made him
renounce every obligation and unite with Napoleon against his own allies;
and there were those who in 1821 believed that the Czar would as suddenly
break loose from his engagements with Metternich and throw himself, with a
fanatical army and nation, into a crusade against the Turk. Sultan Mahmud
had himself given to the Russian party of action a ground for denouncing
him in the name of Russian honour and interests independently of all that
related to Greece. In order to prevent the escape of suspected persons, the
Porte had ordered Russian vessels to be searched at Constantinople, and it
had forced all corn-ships coming from the Euxine to discharge their cargoes
at the Bosphorus, under the apprehension that the corn-supplies of the
capital would be cut off by Greek vessels in command of the Ægæan.
Further, Russia had by treaty the right to insist that the Danubian
Principalities should be governed by their civil authorities, the
Hospodars, and not by Turkish Pashas, insurrection in Wallachia had been
put down, but the rule of Hospodars had not been restored; Turkish
generals, at the head of their forces, still administered their provinces
under military law. On all these points Russia had at least the semblance
of grievances of its own. The outrages which shocked all Europe were not
the only wrong which Russian pride called upon the Czar to redress. The
influence of Capodistrias revived at St. Petersburg. A despatch was sent to
Constantinople declaring that the Porte had begun a war for life or death
with the Christian religion, and that its continued existence among the
Powers of Europe must depend upon its undertaking to restore the churches
which had been destroyed, to guarantee the inviolability of Christian
worship in the future, and to discriminate in its punishments between the
innocent and the guilty. Presenting ultimatum from his master, Strogonoff,
in accordance with his instructions, demanded a written answer within eight
days. No such answer came. On the 27th of July the ambassador quitted
Constantinople. War seemed to be on the point of breaking out.

[Eastern policy of Austria.]

The capital where these events were watched with the greatest apprehension
was Vienna. The fortunes of the Ottoman Empire have always been most
intimately connected with those of Austria; and although the long struggle
of the House of Hapsburg with Napoleon and its wars in recent times with
Prussia and with Italy have made the western aspect of Austrian policy more
prominent and more familiar than its eastern one, the eastern interests of
the monarchy have always been at least as important in the eyes of its
actual rulers. Before the year 1720 Austria, not Russia, was the great
enemy of Turkey and the aggressive Power of the east of Europe. After 1780
the Emperor Joseph had united with Catherine of Russia in a plan for
dividing the Sultan's dominions in Europe, and actually waged a war for
this purpose. In 1795 the alliance, with the same object, had been
prospectively revived by Thugut; in 1809, after the Treaty of Tilsit,
Metternich had determined in the last resort to combine with Napoleon and
Alexander in dismembering Turkey, if all diplomatic means should fail to
prevent a joint attack on the Porte by France and Russia. But this
resolution had been adopted by Metternich only as a matter of necessity,
and in view of a combination which threatened to reduce Austria to the
position of a vassal State. Metternich's own definite and consistent policy
after 1814 was the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire. His statesmanship
was, as a rule, governed by fear; and his fear of Alexander was second only
to his old fear of Napoleon. Times were changed since Joseph and Thugut
could hope to enter upon a game of aggression with Russia upon equal terms.
The Austrian army had been beaten in every battle that it had fought during
nearly twenty years. Province after province had been severed from it,
without, except in the Tyrol, raising a hand in its support; and when in
1821 the Minister compared Austria's actual Empire and position in Europe,
won and maintained in great part by his own diplomacy, with the ruin to
which a series of wars had brought it ten years before, he might well thank
Heaven that international Congresses were still so much in favour with the
Courts, and tremble at the clash of arms which from the remote Morea
threatened to call Napoleon's northern conquerors once more into the field
[365]

[Eastern policy of England.]

England was not, like Austria, exposed to actual danger by the advance of
Russia towards the Ægæan; but the growth of Russian power had been viewed
with alarm by English politicians since 1788, when Pitt had formed a triple
alliance with Prussia and Holland for the purpose of defending the Porte
against the attacks of Catherine and Joseph. The interest of Great Britain
in the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire had not been laid down as a
principle before that date, nor was it then acknowledged by the Whig party.
It was asserted by Pitt from considerations relating to the European
balance of power, not, as in our own times, with a direct reference to
England's position in India. The course of events from 1792 to 1807 made
England and Russia for awhile natural allies; but this friendship was
turned into hostility by the Treaty of Tilsit; and although after a few
years Alexander was again fighting for the same cause as Great Britain, and
the public opinion of this country enthusiastically hailed the issue of the
Moscow campaign, English statesmen never forgot the interview upon the
Niemen, and never, in the brightest moments of victory, regarded Alexander
without some secret misgivings. During the campaign of 1814 in France,
Castlereagh's willingness to negotiate with Bonaparte was due in great part
to the fear that Alexander's high-wrought resolutions would collapse before
Napoleon could be thoroughly crushed, and that reaction would carry him
into a worse peace than that which he then disdained. [366] The
negotiations at the Congress of Vienna brought Great Britain and Russia, as
it has been seen, into an antagonism which threatened to end in the resort
to arms; and the tension which then and for some time afterwards existed
between the two governments led English Ministers to speak, certainly in
exaggerated and misleading language, of the mutual hostility of the English
and the Russian nations. From 1815 to 1821 the Czar had been jealously
watched. It had been rumoured over and over again that he was preparing to
invade the Ottoman Empire; and when the rebellion of the Greeks broke out,
the one thought of Castlereagh and his colleagues was that Russia must be
prevented from throwing itself into the fray, and that the interests of
Great Britain required that the authority of the Sultan should as soon as
possible be restored throughout his dominions.

[Fears of new period of warfare.]

[Metternich and the Greeks.]

Both at London therefore and at Vienna the rebellion of Greece was viewed
by governments only as an unfortunate disturbance which was likely to
excite war between Russia and its neighbours, and to imperil the peace of
Europe at large. It may seem strange that the spectacle of a nation rising
to assert its independence should not even have aroused the question
whether its claims deserved to be considered. But to do justice at least to
the English Ministers of 1821, it must be remembered how terrible, how
overpowering, were the memories left by the twenty years of European war
that had closed in 1815, and at how vast a cost to mankind the regeneration
of Greece would have been effected, if, as then seemed probable, it had
ranged the Great Powers again in arms against one another, and re-kindled
the spirit of military aggression which for a whole generation had made
Europe the prey of rival coalitions. It is impossible to read the letter in
which Castlereagh pleaded with the Czar to sacrifice his own glory and
popularity to the preservation of European peace, without perceiving in
what profound earnestness the English statesman sought to avert the renewal
of an epoch of conflict, and how much the apprehension of coming calamity
predominated in his own mind over the mere jealousy of an extension of
Russian power. [367] If Castlereagh had no thought for Greece itself, it
was because the larger interests of Europe wholly absorbed him, and because
he lacked the imagination and the insight to conceive of a better
adjustment of European affairs under the widening recognition of national
rights. The Minister of Austria, to whom at this crisis Castlereagh looked
as his natural ally, had no doubt the same dread of a renewed convulsion of
Europe, but in his case it was mingled with considerations of a much
narrower kind. It is not correct to say that Metternich was indifferent to
the Greek cause; he actually hated it, because it gave a stimulus to the
liberal movement of Germany. In his empty and pedantic philosophy of human
action, Metternich linked together every form of national aspiration and
unrest as something presumptuous and wanton. He understood nothing of the
debt that mankind owes to the spirit of freedom. He was just as ready to
dogmatise upon the wickedness of the English Reform Bill as he was to trace
the hand of Capodistrias in every tumult in Servia or the Morea: and even
if there had been no fear of Russian aggression in the background, he would
instinctively have condemned the Greek revolt when he saw that the
light-headed professors in the German Universities were beginning to
agitate in its favour, and that the recalcitrant minor Courts regarded it
with some degree of sympathy.

[Alexander adheres to policy of peace.]

[Capdostrias retires, Aug 1822.]

The policy of Metternich in the Eastern Question had for its object the
maintenance of the existing order of things; and as it was certain that
some satisfaction or other must be given to Russian pride, Metternich's
counsel was that the grievances of the Czar which were specifically Russian
should be clearly distinguished from questions relating to the independence
of Greece; and that on the former the Porte should be recommended to agree
with its adversary quickly, the good offices of Europe being employed
within given limits on the Czar's behalf; so that, the Russian causes of
complaint being removed, Alexander might without loss of honour leave the
Greeks to be subdued, and resume the diplomatic relations with
Constantinople which had been so perilously severed by Strogonoff's
departure. It remained for the Czar to decide whether, as head of Russia
and protector of the Christians of the East, he would solve the Eastern
Question by his own sword, or whether, constant to the principle and ideal
of international action to which he had devoted himself since 1815, he
would commit his cause to the joint mediation of Europe, and accept such
solution of the problem as his allies might attain. In the latter case it
was clear that no blow would be struck on behalf of Greece. For a year or
more the balance wavered; at length the note of triumph sounded in the
Austrian Cabinet. Capodistrias, the representative of the Greek cause at
St. Petersburg, rightly measured the force of the opposing impulses in the
Czar's mind. He saw that Alexander, interested as he was in Italy and
Spain, would never break with that federation of the Courts which he had
himself created, nor shake off the influences of legitimism which had
dominated him since the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle. Submitting when
contention had become hopeless, and anticipating his inevitable fall by a
voluntary retirement from public affairs, Capodistrias, still high in
credit and reputation, quitted St. Petersburg under the form leave of
absence, and withdrew to Geneva, there to await events, and to enjoy the
distinction of a patriot whom love for Greece had constrained to abandon
one of the most splendid positions in Europe. Grave, melancholy, and
austere, as one who suffered with his country, Capodistrias remained in
private life till the vanquished cause had become the victorious one, and
the liberated Greek nation called him to place himself at its head.

[Extension of the Greek revolt.]

[Central Greece.]

[Fall of Ali Pasha, Feb., 1822.]

[Chalcidice.]

An international diplomatic campaign of vast activity and duration began in
the year 1821, but the contest of arms was left, as Metternich desired, to
the Greeks and the Turks alone. The first act of the war was the
insurrection of the Morea: the second was the extension of this
insurrection over parts of Continental Greece and the Archipelago, and its
summary extinction by the Turk in certain districts, which in consequence
remained for the future outside the area of hostilities, and so were not
ultimately included in the Hellenic Kingdom. Central Greece, that is, the
country lying immediately north of the Corinthian Gulf, broke into revolt a
few weeks later than the Morea. The rising against the Mohammedans was
distinguished by the same merciless spirit: the men were generally
massacred; the women, if not killed, were for the most part sold into
slavery; and when, after an interval of three years, Lord Byron came to
Missolonghi, he found that a miserable band of twenty-three captive women
formed the sole remnant of the Turkish population of that town. Thessaly,
with some exceptions, remained passive, and its inaction was of the utmost
service to the Turkish cause; for Ali Pasha in Epirus was now being
besieged by the Sultan's armies, and if Thessaly had risen in the rear of
these troops, they could scarcely have escaped destruction. Khurshid, the
Ottoman commander conducting the siege of Janina, held firmly to his task,
in spite of the danger which threatened his communications, and in spite of
the circumstance that his whole household had fallen into the hands of the
Moreot insurgents. His tenacity saved the border-provinces for the Ottoman
Empire. No combination was effected between Ali and the Greeks, and at the
beginning of 1822 the Albanian chieftain lost both his stronghold and his
life. In the remoter district of Chalcidice, on the Macedonian coast, where
the promontory of Athos and the two parallel peninsulas run out into the
Ægæan, and a Greek population, clearly severed from the Slavic inhabitants
of the mainland, maintained its own communal and religious organisation,
the national revolt broke out under Hetærist leaders. The monks of Mount
Athos, like their neighbours, took up arms. But there was little sympathy
between the privileged chiefs of these abbeys and the desperate men who had
come to head the revolt. The struggle was soon abandoned; and, partly by
force of arms, partly by negotiation, the authority of the Sultan was
restored without much difficulty throughout this region.

[The Ægæan Islands.]

The settlements of the Ægæan which first raised the flag of Greek
independence were the so-called Nautical Islands, Hydra, Spetza, and Psara,
where the absence of a Turkish population and the enjoyment of a century of
self-government had allowed the bold qualities of an energetic maritime
race to grow to their full vigour. Hydra and Spetza were close to the Greek
coast, Psara was on the farther side of the archipelago, almost within view
of Asia Minor; so that in joining the insurrection its inhabitants showed
great heroism, for they were exposed to the first attack of any Turkish
force that could maintain itself for a few hours at sea, and the whole
adjacent mainland was the recruiting-ground of the Sultan. At Hydra the
revolt against the Ottoman was connected with the internal struggles of the
little community, and these in their turn were connected with the great
economical changes of Europe which, at the opposite end of the continent,
and in a widely different society, led to the enactment of the English Corn
Laws, and to the strife of classes which resulted from them. During
Napoleon's wars the carrying-trade of most nations had become extinct;
little corn reached England, and few besides Greek ships navigated the
Euxine and Mediterranean. When peace opened the markets and the ports of
all nations, just as the renewed importation of foreign corn threatened to
lower the profits of English farmers and the rents of English landlords, so
the reviving freedom of navigation made an end of the monopoly of the
Hydriote and Psarian merchantmen. The shipowners formed an oligarchy in
Hydra; the captains and crews of their ships, though they shared the
profits of each voyage, were excluded from any share in the government of
the island. Failure of trade, want and inactivity, hence led to a political
opposition. The shipowners, wealthy and privileged men, had no inclination
to break with the Turk; the captains and sailors, who had now nothing to
lose, declared for Greek independence. There was a struggle in which for
awhile nothing but the commonest impulses of need and rapacity came into
play; but the greater cause proved its power: Hydra threw in its lot with
Greece; and although private greed and ill-faith, as well as great cruelty,
too often disgraced both the Hydriote crews and those of the other islands,
the nucleus of a naval force was now formed which made the achievement of
Greek independence possible. The three islands which led the way were soon
followed by the wealthier and more populous Samos and by the greater part
of the Archipelago. Crete, inhabited by a mixed Greek and Turkish
population, also took up arms, and was for years to come the scene of a
bloody and destructive warfare.

[The Greek leaders.]

Within the Morea the first shock of the revolt had made the Greeks masters
of everything outside the fortified towns. The reduction of these places
was at once undertaken by the insurgents. Tripolitza, lately the seat of
the Turkish government, was the centre of operations, and in the
neighbourhood of this town the first provisional government of the Greeks,
called the Senate of Kaltesti, was established. Demetrius Hypsilanti, a
brother of the Hetærist leader, whose failure in Roumania was not yet
known, landed in the Morea and claimed supreme power. He was tumultuously
welcomed by the peasant-soldiers, though the Primates, who had hitherto
held undisputed sway, bore him no good will. Two other men became prominent
at this time as leaders in the Greek war of liberation. These were
Maurokordatos, a descendant of the Hospodars of Wallachia--a politician
superior to all his rivals in knowledge and breadth of view, but wanting in
the faculty of action required by the times--and Kolokotrones, a type of
the rough fighting Klepht; a mere savage in attainments, scarcely able to
read or write, cunning, grossly avaricious and faithless, incapable of
appreciating either military or moral discipline, but a born soldier in his
own irregular way, and a hero among peasants as ignorant as himself. There
was yet another, who, if his character had been equal to his station, would
have been placed at the head of the government of the Morea. This was
Petrobei, chief of the family of Mauromichalis, ruler of the rugged
district of Maina, in the south-west of Peloponnesus, where the Turk had
never established more than nominal sovereignty. A jovial, princely person,
exercising among his clansmen a mild Homeric sway, Petrobei, surrounded by
his nine vigorous sons, was the most picturesque figure in Greece. But he
had no genius for great things. A sovereignty, which in other hands might
have expanded to national dominion, remained with Petrobei a mere ornament
and curiosity; and the power of the deeply-rooted clan-spirit of the Maina
only made itself felt when, at a later period, the organisation of a united
Hellenic State demanded its sacrifice.

[Fall of Tripolitza, Oct. 5, 1821.]

Anarchy, egotism, and ill-faith disgraced the Greek insurrection from its
beginning to its close. There were, indeed, some men of unblemished honour
among the leaders, and the peasantry in the ranks fought with the most
determined courage year after year; but the action of most of those who
figured as representatives of the people brought discredit upon the
national cause. Their first successes were accompanied by gross treachery
and cruelty. Had the Greek leaders been Bourbon kings, nurtured in all the
sanctities of divine right, instead of tax-gatherers and cattle-lifters,
truants from the wild school of Turkish violence and deceit, they could not
have perjured themselves with lighter hearts. On the surrender of Navarino,
in August, 1821, after a formal capitulation providing for the safety of
its Turkish inhabitants, men, women, and children were indiscriminately
massacred. The capture of Tripolitza, which took place two months later,
was changed from a peaceful triumph into a scene of frightful slaughter by
the avarice of individual chiefs, who, while negotiations were pending,
made their way into the town, and bargained with rich inhabitants to give
them protection in return for their money and jewels. The soldiery, who had
undergone the labours of the siege for six months, saw that their reward
was being pilfered from them. Defying all orders, and in the absence of
Demetrius Hypsilanti, the commander-in-chief, they rushed upon the
fortifications of Tripolitza, and carried them by storm. A general massacre
of the inhabitants followed. For three days the work of carnage was
continued in the streets and houses, until few out of a population of many
thousands remained living. According to the testimony of Kolokotrones
himself, the roads were so choked with the dead, that as he rode from the
gateway to the citadel his horse's hoofs never touched the ground. [368]

[The Massacre of Chios, April-June, 1822.]

In the opening scenes of the Greek insurrection the barbarity of Christians
and of Ottomans was perhaps on a level. The Greek revenged himself with the
ferocity of the slave who breaks his fetters; the Turk resorted to
wholesale massacre and extermination as the normal means of government in
troubled times. And as experience has shown that the savagery of the
European yields in one generation to the influences of civilised rule,
while the Turk remains as inhuman to-day as he was under Mahmud II., so the
history of 1822 proved that the most devilish passions of the Greek were in
the end but a poor match for disciplined Turkish prowess in the work of
butchery. It was no easy matter for the Sultan to requite himself for the
sack of Tripolitza upon Kolokotrones and his victorious soldiers; but there
was a peaceful and inoffensive population elsewhere, which offered all the
conditions for free, unstinted, and unimperilled vengeance which the Turk
desires. A body of Samian troops had landed in Chios, and endeavoured, but
with little success, to excite the inhabitants to revolt, the absence of
the Greek fleet rendering them an almost certain prey to the Sultan's
troops on the mainland. The Samian leader nevertheless refused to abandon
the enterprise, and laid siege to the citadel, in which there was a Turkish
garrison. Before this fortress could be reduced, a relieving army of seven
thousand Turks, with hosts of fanatical volunteers, landed on the island.
The Samians fled; the miserable population of Chios was given up to
massacre. For week after week the soldiery and the roving hordes of
Ottomans slew, pillaged, and sold into slavery at their pleasure. In parts
of the island where the inhabitants took refuge in the monasteries, they
were slaughtered by thousands together; others, tempted back to their homes
by the promulgation of an amnesty, perished family by family. The lot of
those who were spared was almost more pitiable than of those who died. The
slave-markets of Egypt and Tunis were glutted with Chian captives. The
gentleness, the culture, the moral worth of the Chian community made its
fate the more tragical. No district in Europe had exhibited a civilisation
more free from the vices of its type: on no community had there fallen in
modern times so terrible a catastrophe. The estimates of the destruction of
life at Chios are loosely framed; among the lowest is that which sets the
number of the slain and the enslaved at thirty thousand. The island, lately
thronging with life and activity, became a thinly-populated place. After a
long period of depression and the slow return of some fraction of its
former prosperity, convulsions of nature have in our own day again made
Chios a ruin. A new life may arise when the Turk is no longer master of its
shores, but the old history of Chios is closed for ever.

[Exploit of Kanaris, June 18th, 1822.]

The impression made upon public opinion in Europe by the massacre of 1822
was a deep and lasting one, although it caused no immediate change in the
action of Governments. The general feeling of sympathy for the Greeks and
hatred for the Turks, which ultimately forced the Governments to take up a
different policy, was intensified by a brilliant deed of daring by which a
Greek captain avenged the Chians upon their devastor, and by the unexpected
success gained by the insurgents on the mainland against powerful armies of
the Sultan. The Greek executive, which was now headed by Maurokordatos, had
been guilty of gross neglect in not sending over the fleet in time to
prevent the Turks from landing in Chios. When once this landing had been
effected, the ships which afterwards arrived were powerless to prevent the
massacre, and nothing could be attempted except against the Turkish fleet
itself. The instrument of destruction employed by the Greeks was the
fire-ship, which had been used with success against the Turk in these same
waters in the war of 1770. The sacred month of the Ramazan was closing, and
on the night of June 18, Kara Ali, the Turkish commander, celebrated the
festival of Bairam with above a thousand men on board his flag-ship. The
vessel was illuminated with coloured lanterns. In the midst of the
festivities, Constantine Kanaris, a Psarian captain, brought his fire-ship
unobserved right up to the Turkish man-of-war, and drove his bowsprit
firmly into one of her portholes; then, after setting fire to the
combustibles, he stepped quietly into a row-boat, and made away. A breeze
was blowing, and in a moment the Turkish crew were enveloped in a mass of
flames. The powder on board exploded; the boats were sunk; and the vessel,
with its doomed crew, burned to the water-edge, its companions sheering off
to save themselves from the shower of blazing fragments that fell all
around. Kara Ali was killed by a broken mast; a few of his men saved their
lives by swimming or were picked up by rescuers; the rest perished. Such
was the consternation caused by the deed of Kanaris, that the Ottoman fleet
forthwith quitted the Ægæan waters, and took refuge under the guns of the
Dardanelles. Kanaris, unknown before, became from this exploit a famous man
in Europe. It was to no stroke of fortune or mere audacity that he owed his
success, but to the finest combination of nerve and nautical skill. His
feat, which others were constantly attempting, but with little success, to
imitate, was repeated by him in the same year. He was the most brilliant of
Greek seamen, a simple and modest hero; and after his splendid achievements
in the war of liberation, he served his country well in a political career.
Down to his death in a hale old age, he was with justice the idol and pride
of the Greek nation.

[Double invasion of Greece 1822.]

[Destruction of the Philhellenes near Arta, July 16.]

[Unsuccessful siege of Missolonghi, Nov., 1822.]

The fall of the Albanian rebel, Ali Pasha, in the spring of 1822 made it
possible for Sultan Mahmud, who had hitherto been crippled by the
resistance of Janina, to throw his whole land-force against the Hellenic
revolt; and the Greeks of the mainland, who had as yet had to deal only
with scattered detachments or isolated garrisons, now found themselves
exposed to the attack of two powerful armies. Kurshid, the conqueror of Ali
Pasha, took up his headquarters at Larissa in Thessaly, and from this base
the two invading armies marched southwards on diverging lines. The first,
under Omer Brionis, was ordered to make its way through Southern Epirus to
the western entrance of the Corinthian Gulf, and there to cross into the
Morea; the second, under Dramali, to reduce Central Greece, and enter the
Morea by the isthmus of Corinth; the conquest of Tripolitza and the relief
of the Turkish coast-fortresses which were still uncaptured being the
ultimate end to be accomplished by the two armies in combination with one
another and with the Ottoman fleet. Not less than fifty thousand men were
under the orders of the Turkish commanders, the division of Dramali being
by far the larger of the two. Against this formidable enemy the Greeks
possessed poor means of defence, nor were their prospects improved when
Maurokordatos, the President, determined to take a military command, and to
place himself at the head of the troops in Western Greece. There were
indeed urgent reasons for striking with all possible force in this quarter.
The Suliotes, after seventeen years of exile in Corfu, had returned to
their mountains, and were now making common cause with Greece. They were
both the military outwork of the insurrection, and the political link
between the Hellenes and the Christian communities of Albania, whose action
might become of decisive importance in the struggle against the Turks.
Maurokordatos rightly judged the relief of Suli to be the first and most
pressing duty of the Government. Under a capable leader this effort would
not have been beyond the power of the Greeks; directed by a politician who
knew nothing of military affairs, it was perilous in the highest degree.
Maurokordatos, taking the command out of abler hands, pushed his troops
forward to the neighbourhood of Arta, mismanaged everything, and after
committing a most important post to Botzares, an Albanian chieftain of
doubtful fidelity, left two small regiments exposed to the attack of the
Turks in mass. One of these regiments, called the corps of Philhellenes,
was composed of foreign officers who had volunteered to serve in the Greek
cause as common soldiers. Its discipline was far superior to anything that
existed among the Greeks themselves; and at its head were men who had
fought in Napoleon's campaigns. But this corps, which might have become the
nucleus of a regular army, was sacrificed to the incapacity of the general
and the treachery of his confederate. Betrayed and abandoned by the
Albanian, the Philhellenes met the attack of the Turks gallantly, and
almost all perished. Maurokordatos and the remnant of the Greek troops now
retired to Missolonghi. The Suliotes, left to their own resources, were
once more compelled to quit their mountain home, and to take refuge in
Corfu. Their resistance, however, delayed the Turks for some months, and it
was not until the beginning of November that the army of Omer Brionis,
after conquering the intermediate territory, appeared in front of
Missolonghi. Here the presence of Maurokordatos produced a better effect
than in the field. He declared that he would never leave the town as long
as a man remained to fight the Turks. Defences were erected, and the
besiegers kept at bay for two months. On the 6th of January, 1823, Brionis
ordered an assault. It was beaten back with heavy loss; and the Ottoman
commander, hopeless of maintaining his position throughout the winter,
abandoned his artillery, and retired into the interior of the country.
[369]

[Dramali passes the Isthmus of Corinth, July 1822.]

[His retreat and destruction, Aug., 1822.]

In the meantime Dramali had advanced from Thessaly with twenty-four
thousand infantry and six thousand cavalry, the most formidable armament
that had been seen in Greece since the final struggle between the Turks and
Venetians in 1715. At the terror of his approach all hopes of resistance
vanished. He marched through Boeotia and Attica, devastating the country,
and reached the isthmus of Corinth in July, 1822. The mountain passes were
abandoned by the Greeks; the Government, whose seat was at Argos,
dispersed; and Dramali moved on to Nauplia, where the Turkish garrison was
on the point of surrendering to the Greeks. The entrance to the Morea had
been won; the very shadow of a Greek government had disappeared, and the
definite suppression of the revolt seemed now to be close at hand. But two
fatal errors of the enemy saved the Greek cause. Dramali neglected to
garrison the passes through which he had advanced; and the commander of the
Ottoman fleet, which ought to have met the land-force at Nauplia, disobeyed
his instructions and sailed on to Patras. Two Greeks, at this crisis of
their country's history, proved themselves equal to the call of events.
Demetrius Hypsilanti, now President of the Legislature, refused to fly with
his colleagues, and threw himself, with a few hundred men, into the
Acropolis of Argos. Kolokotrones, hastening to Tripolitza, called out every
man capable of bearing arms, and hurried back to Argos, where the Turks
were still held at bay by the defenders of the citadel. Dramali could no
longer think of marching into the interior of the Morea. The gallantry of
Demetrius had given time for the assemblage of a considerable force, and
the Ottoman general now discovered the ruinous effect of his neglect to
garrison the passes in his rear. These were seized by Kolokotrones. The
summer-drought threatened the Turkish army with famine; the fleet which
would have rendered them independent of land-supplies was a hundred miles
away; and Dramali, who had lately seen all Greece at his feet, now found
himself compelled to force his way back through the enemy to the isthmus of
Corinth. The measures taken by Kolokotrones to intercept his retreat were
skilfully planned, and had they been adequately executed not a man of the
Ottoman army would have escaped. It was only through the disorder and the
cupidity of the Greeks themselves that a portion of Dramali's force
succeeded in cutting its way back to Corinth. Baggage was plundered while
the retreating enemy ought to have been annihilated, and divisions which
ought to have co-operated in the main attack sought trifling successes of
their own. But the losses and the demoralisation of the Turkish army were
as ruinous to it as total destruction. Dramali himself fell ill and died;
and the remnant of his troops which had escaped from the enemy's hands
perished in the neighbourhood of Corinth from sickness and want.

[Greek Civil Wars, 1824.]

The decisive events of 1822 opened the eyes of European Governments to the
real character of the Greek national rising, and to the probability of its
ultimate success. The forces of Turkey were exhausted for the moment, and
during the succeeding year no military operations could be undertaken by
the Sultan on anything like the same scale. It would perhaps have been
better for the Greeks themselves if the struggle had been more continuously
sustained. Nothing but foreign pressure could give unity to the efforts of
a race distracted by so many local rivalries, and so many personal
ambitions and animosities. Scarcely was the extremity of danger passed when
civil war began among the Greeks themselves. Kolokotrones set himself up in
opposition to the Legislature, and seized on some of the strong places in
the Morea. This first outbreak of the so-called military party against the
civil authorities was, however, of no great importance. The Primates of the
Morea took part with the representatives of the islands and of Central
Greece against the disturber of the peace, and an accommodation was soon
arranged. Konduriottes, a rich ship-owner of Hydra, was made President,
with Kolettes, a politician of great influence in Central Greece, as his
Minister. But in place of the earlier antagonism between soldier and
civilian, a new and more dangerous antagonism, that of district against
district, now threatened the existence of Greece. The tendency of the new
government to sacrifice everything to the interest of the islands at once
became evident. Konduriottes was a thoroughly incompetent man, and made
himself ridiculous by appointing his friends, the Hydriote sea-captains, to
the highest military and civil posts. Rebellion again broke out, and
Kolokotrones was joined by his old antagonists, the Primates of the Morea.
A serious struggle ensued, and the government, which was really conducted
by Kolettes, displayed an energy that surprised both its friends and its
foes. The Morea was invaded by a powerful force from Hydra. No mercy was
shown to the districts which supported the rebels. Kolokotrones was
thoroughly defeated, and compelled to give himself up to the Government. He
was carried to Hydra and thrown into prison, where he remained until new
peril again rendered his services indispensable to Greece.

[Mahmud calls for the help of Egypt.]

After the destruction of Dramali's army and the failure of the Ottoman navy
to effect any result whatever, the Sultan appears to have conceived a doubt
whether the subjugation of Greece might not in fact be a task beyond his
own unaided power. Even if the mainland were conquered, it was certain that
the Turkish fleet could never reduce the islands, nor prevent the passage
of supplies and reinforcements from these to the ports of the Morea.
Strenuous as Mahmud had hitherto shown himself in crushing his vassals who,
like Ali Pasha, attempted to establish an authority independent of the
central government, he now found himself compelled to apply to the most
dangerous of them all for assistance. Mehemet Ali, Pasha of Egypt, had
risen to power in the disturbed time that followed the expulsion of
Napoleon's forces from Egypt. His fleet was more powerful than that of
Turkey. He had organised an army composed of Arabs, negroes, and fellahs,
and had introduced into it, by means of French officers, the military
system and discipline of Europe. The same reform had been attempted in
Turkey seventeen years before by Mahmud's predecessor, Selim III., but it
had been successfully resisted by the soldiery of Constantinople, and Selim
had paid for his innovations with his life. Mahmud, silent and tenacious,
had long been planning the destruction of the Janissaries, the mutinous and
degraded representatives of a once irresistible force, who would now
neither fight themselves nor permit their rulers to organise any more
effective body of troops in their stead. It is possible that the Sultan may
have believed that a victory won over the enemies of Islam by the
re-modelled forces of Egypt would facilitate the execution of his own plans
of military reform; it is also possible that he may not have been unwilling
to see his vassal's resources dissipated by a distant and hazardous
enterprise. Not without some profound conviction of the urgency of the
present need, not without some sinister calculation as to the means of
dealing with an eventual rival in the future, was the offer of
aggrandisement--if we may judge from the whole tenor of Sultan Mahmud's
career and policy--made to the Pasha of Egypt by his jealous and far-seeing
master. The Pasha was invited to assume the supreme command of the Ottoman
forces by land and sea, and was promised the island of Crete in return for
his co-operation against the Hellenic revolt. Messages to this effect
reached Alexandria at the beginning of 1824. Mehemet, whose ambition had no
limits, welcomed the proposals of his sovereign with ardour, and, while
declining the command for himself, accepted it on behalf of Ibrahim, his
adopted son.

[Turkish-Egyptian plans.]

[Egyptians conquer Crete, April, 1824.]

[Destruction of Psara, July, 1824.]

The most vigorous preparations for war were now made at Alexandria. The
army was raised to 90,000 men, and new ships were added to the navy from
English dockyards. A scheme was framed for the combined operation of the
Egyptian and the Turkish forces which appeared to render the ultimate
conquest of Greece certain. It was agreed that the island of Crete, which
is not sixty miles distant from the southern extremity of the Morea, should
be occupied by Ibrahim, and employed as his place of arms; that
simultaneous or joint attacks should then be made upon the principal
islands of the Ægæan; and that after the capture of these strongholds and
the destruction of the maritime resources of the Greeks, Ibrahim's troops
should pass over the narrow sea between Crete and the Morea, and complete
their work by the reduction of the mainland, thus left destitute of all
chance of succour from without. Crete, like Sicily, is a natural
stepping-stone between Europe and Africa; and when once the assistance of
Egypt was invoked by the Sultan, it was obvious that Crete became the
position which above all others it was necessary for the Greeks to watch
and to defend. But the wretched Government of Konduriottes was occupied
with its domestic struggles. The appeal of the Cretans for protection
remained unanswered, and in the spring of 1824 a strong Egyptian force
landed on this island, captured its fortresses, and suppressed the
resistance of the inhabitants with the most frightful cruelty. The base of
operations had been won, and the combined attacks of the Egyptian and
Turkish fleets upon the smaller islands followed. Casos, about thirty miles
east of Crete, was surprised by the Egyptians, and its population
exterminated. Psara was selected for the attack of the Turkish fleet. Since
the beginning of the insurrection the Psariotes had been the scourge and
terror of the Ottoman coasts. The services that they had rendered in the
Greek navy had been priceless; and if there was one spot of Greek soil
which ought to have been protected as long as a single boat's crew remained
afloat, it was the little rock of Psara. Yet, in spite of repeated
warnings, the Greek Government allowed the Turkish fleet to pass the
Dardanelles unobserved, and some clumsy feints were enough to blind it to
the real object of an expedition whose aim was known to all Europe. There
were ample means for succouring the islanders, as subsequent events proved;
but when the Turkish admiral, Khosrew, with 10,000 men on board, appeared
before Psara, the Greek fleet was far away. The Psariotes themselves were
over-confident. They trusted to their batteries on land, and believed their
rocks to be impregnable. They were soon undeceived. While a corps of
Albanians scaled the cliffs behind the town, the Turks gained a footing in
front, and overwhelmed their gallant enemy by weight of numbers. No mercy
was asked or given. Eight thousand of the Psarians were slain or carried
away as slaves. Not more than one-third of the population succeeded in
escaping to the neighbouring islands. [370]

[Greek successes off the coast of Asia Minor, September, 1824.]

[Ibrahim reaches Crete. December, 1824.]

The first part of the Turko-Egyptian plan had thus been successfully
accomplished, and if Khosrew had attacked Samos immediately after his first
victory, this island would probably have fallen before help could arrive.
But, like other Turkish commanders, Khosrew loved intervals of repose, and
he now sailed off to Mytilene to celebrate the festival of Bairam. In the
meantime the catastrophe of Psara had aroused the Hydriote Government to a
sense of its danger. A strong fleet was sent across the Ægæan, and adequate
measures were taken to defend Samos both by land and sea. The Turkish fleet
was attacked with some success, and though Ibrahim with the Egyptian
contingent now reached the coast of Asia Minor, the Greeks proved
themselves superior to their adversaries combined. The operations of the
Mussulman commanders led to no result; they were harassed and terrified by
the Greek fireships; and when at length all hope of a joint conquest of
Samos had been abandoned, and Ibrahim set sail for Crete to carry out his
own final enterprise alone, he was met on the high seas by the Greeks, and
driven back to the coast of Asia Minor. During the autumn of 1824 the
disasters of the preceding months were to some extent retrieved, and the
situation of the Egyptian fleet would have become one of some peril if the
Greeks had maintained their guard throughout the winter. But they
underrated the energy of Ibrahim, and surrendered themselves to the belief
that he would not repeat the attempt to reach Crete until the following
spring. Careless, or deluded by false information, they returned to Hydra,
and left the seas unwatched. Ibrahim saw his opportunity, and, setting sail
for Crete at the beginning of December, he reached it without falling in
with the enemy.

[Ibrahim in the Morea, Feb., 1825.]

The snowy heights of Taygetus are visible on a clear winter's day from the
Cretan coast; yet, with their enemy actually in view of them, the Greeks
neglected to guard the passage to the Morea. On the 22nd of February, 1825,
Ibrahim crossed the sea unopposed and landed five thousand men at Modon. He
was even able to return to Crete and bring over a second contingent of
superior strength before any steps were taken to hinder his movements. The
fate of the mainland was now settled. Ibrahim marched from Modon upon
Navarino, defeated the Greek forces on the way, and captured the garrison
placed in the Island of Sphakteria--the scene of the first famous surrender
of the Spartans--before the Greek fleet could arrive to relieve it. The
forts of Navarino then capitulated, and Ibrahim pushed on his victorious
march towards the centre of the Morea. It was in vain that the old chief
Kolokotrones was brought from his prison at Hydra to take supreme command.
The conqueror of Dramali was unable to resist the onslaught of Ibrahim's
regiments, recruited from the fierce races of the Soudan, and fighting
with the same arms and under the same discipline as the best troops in
Europe. Kolokotrones was driven back through Tripolitza, and retired as the
Russians had retired from Moscow, leaving a deserted capital behind him.
Ibrahim gave his troops no rest; he hurried onwards against Nauplia, and on
the 24th of June reached the summit of the mountain-pass that looks down
upon the Argolic Gulf. "Ah, little island," he cried, as he saw the rock of
Hydra stretched below him, "how long wilt thou escape me?" At Nauplia
itself the Egyptian commander rode up to the very gates and scanned the
defences, which he hoped to carry at the first assault. Here, however, a
check awaited him. In the midst of general flight and panic, Demetrius
Hypsilanti was again the undaunted soldier. He threw himself with some few
hundreds of men into the mills of Lerna, and there beat back Ibrahim's
vanguard when it attempted to carry this post by storm. The Egyptian
recognised that with men like these in front of him Nauplia could be
reduced only by a regular siege. He retired for a while upon Tripolitza,
and thence sent out his harrying columns, slaughtering and devastating in
every direction. It seemed to be his design not merely to exhaust the
resources of his enemy but to render the Morea a desert, and to exterminate
its population. In the very birthplace of European civilisation, it was
said, this savage, who had already been nominated Pasha of the Morea,
intended to extinguish the European race and name, and to found for himself
upon the ashes of Greece a new barbaric state composed of African negroes
and fellaheen. That such design had actually been formed was denied by the
Turkish government in answer to official inquiries, and its existence was
not capable of proof. But the brutality of one age is the stupidity of the
next, and Ibrahim's violence recoiled upon himself. Nothing in the whole
struggle between the Sultan and the Greeks gave so irresistible an argument
to the Philhellenes throughout Europe, or so directly overcame the scruples
of Governments in regard to an armed intervention in favour of Greece, as
Ibrahim's alleged policy of extermination and re-settlement. The days were
past when Europe could permit its weakest member to be torn from it and
added to the Mohammedan world.

[Siege of Missolonghi, April, 1825-April, 1826.]

One episode of the deepest tragic interest yet remained in the
Turko-Hellenic conflict before the Powers of Europe stepped in and struck
with weapons stronger than those which had fallen from dying hands. The
town of Missolonghi was now beleaguered by the Turks, who had invaded
Western Greece while Ibrahim was overrunning the Morea. Missolonghi had
already once been besieged without success; and, as in the case of
Saragossa, the first deliverance appears to have inspired the townspeople
with the resolution, maintained even more heroically at Missolonghi than at
the Spanish city, to die rather than capitulate. From the time when
Reschid, the Turkish commander, opened the second attack by land and sea in
the spring of 1825, the garrison and the inhabitants met every movement of
the enemy with the most obstinate resistance. It was in vain that Reschid
broke through the defences with his artillery, and threw mass after mass
upon the breaches which he made. For month after month the assaults of the
Turks were uniformly repelled, until at length the arrival of a Hydriote
squadron forced the Turkish fleet to retire from its position, and made the
situation of Reschid himself one of considerable danger. And now, as winter
approached, and the guerilla bands in the rear of the besiegers grew more
and more active, the Egyptian army with its leader was called from the
Morea to carry out the task in which the Turks had failed. The Hydriote
sea-captains had departed, believing their presence to be no longer needed;
and although they subsequently returned for a short time, their services
were grudgingly rendered and ineffective. Ibrahim, settling down to his
work at the beginning of 1826, conducted his operations with the utmost
vigour, boasting that he would accomplish in fourteen days what the Turks
could not effect in nine months. But his veteran soldiers were thoroughly
defeated when they met the Greeks hand to hand; and the Egyptian, furious
with his enemy, his allies, and his own officers, confessed that
Missolonghi could only be taken by blockade. He now ordered a fleet of
flat-bottomed boats to be constructed and launched upon the lagoons that
lie between Missolonghi and the open sea. Missolonghi was thus completely
surrounded; and when the Greek admirals appeared for the last time and
endeavoured to force an entrance through the shallows, they found the
besieger in full command of waters inaccessible to themselves, and after
one unsuccessful effort abandoned Missolonghi to its fate. In the third
week of April, 1826, exactly a year after the commencement of the siege,
the supply of food was exhausted. The resolution, long made, that the
entire population, men, women, and children, should fall by the enemy's
sword rather than surrender, was now actually carried out. On the night of
the 22nd of April all the Missolonghiots, with the exception of those whom
age, exhaustion, or illness made unable to leave their homes, were drawn up
in bands at the city gates, the women armed and dressed as men, the
children carrying pistols. Preceded by a body of soldiers, they crossed the
moat under Turkish fire. The attack of the vanguard carried everything
before it, and a way was cut through the Turkish lines. But at this moment
some cry of confusion was mistaken by those who were still on the bridges
for an order to retreat. A portion of the non-combatants returned into the
town, and with them the rearguard of the military escort. The leading
divisions, however, continued their march forward, and would have escaped
with the loss of some of the women and children, had not treachery already
made the Turkish commander acquainted with the routes which they intended
to follow. They had cleared the Turkish camp, and were expecting to meet
the bands of Greek armatoli, who had promised to fall upon the enemy's
rear, when, instead of friends, they encountered troop after troop of
Ottoman cavalry and of Albanians placed in ambush along the road between
Missolonghi and the mountains. Here, exhausted and surprised, they were cut
down without mercy, and out of a body numbering several thousand not more
than fifteen hundred men, with a few women and children, ultimately reached
places of safety. Missolonghi itself was entered by the Turks during the
sortie. The soldiers who had fallen back during the confusion on the
bridges, proved that they had not acted from cowardice. They fought
unflinchingly to the last, and three bands, establishing themselves in the
three powder magazines of the town, set fire to them when surrounded by the
Turks, and perished in the explosion Some thousands of women and children
were captured around and within the town, or wandering on the mountains;
but the Turks had few other prisoners. The men were dead or free.

[Fall of the Acropolis of Athens, June 5, 1827.]

From Missolonghi the tide of Ottoman conquest rolled eastward, and the
Acropolis of Athens was in its turn the object of a long and arduous siege.
The Government, which now held scarcely any territory on the mainland
except Nauplia, where it was itself threatened by Ibrahim, made the most
vigorous efforts to prevent the Acropolis from falling into Reschid's
hands. All, however, was in vain. The English officers, Church and
Cochrane, who were now placed at the head of the military and naval forces
of Greece, failed ignominiously in the attacks which they made on Reschid's
besieging army; and the garrison capitulated on June 5, 1827. But the time
was past when the liberation of Greece could be prevented by any Ottoman
victory. The heroic defence of the Missolonghiots had achieved its end.
Greece had fought long enough to enlist the Powers of Europe on its side;
and in the same month that Missolonghi fell the policy of non-intervention
was definitely abandoned by those Governments which were best able to carry
their intentions into effect. If the struggle had ended during the first
three years of the insurrection, no hand would have been raised to prevent
the restoration of the Sultan's rule. Russia then lay as if spell-bound
beneath the diplomacy of the Holy Alliance; and although in the second year
of the war the death of Castlereagh and the accession of Canning to power
had given Greece a powerful friend instead of a powerful foe within the
British Ministry, it was long before England stirred from its neutrality.
Canning indeed made no secret of his sympathies for Greece, and of his
desire to give the weaker belligerent such help as a neutral might afford;
but when he took up office the time had not come when intervention would
have been useful or possible. Changes in the policy of other great Powers
and in the situation of the belligerents themselves were, he considered,
necessary before the influence of England could be successfully employed in
establishing peace in the East.

[First Russian project of joint intervention, 12 Jan., 1824.]

A vigorous movement of public opinion in favour of Greece made itself felt
throughout Western Europe as the struggle continued; and the vivid and
romantic interest excited over the whole civilised world by the death of
Lord Byron in 1823, among the people whom he had come to free, probably
served the Greek cause better than all that Byron could have achieved had
his life been prolonged. In France and England, where public opinion had
great influence on the action of the Government, as well as in Germany,
where it had none whatever, societies were formed for assisting the Greeks
with arms, stores, and money. The first proposal, however, for a joint
intervention in favour of Greece came from St. Petersburg. The undisguised
good-will of Canning towards the insurgents led the Czar's Government to
anticipate that England itself might soon assume that championship of the
Greek cause which Russia, at the bidding of Metternich and of Canning's
predecessor, had up to that time declined. If the Greeks were to be
befriended, it was intolerable that others should play the part of the
patron. Accordingly, on the 12th of January, 1824, a note was submitted in
the Czar's name to all the Courts of Europe, containing a plan for a
settlement of the Greek question, which it was proposed that the great
Powers of Europe should enforce upon Turkey either by means of an armed
demonstration or by the threat of breaking off all diplomatic relations.
According to this scheme, Greece, apart from the islands, was to be divided
into three Principalities, each tributary to the Sultan and garrisoned by
Turkish troops, but in other respects autonomous, like the Principalities
of Moldavia and Wallachia. The islands were to retain their municipal
organisation as before. In one respect this scheme was superior to all that
have succeeded it, for it included in the territory of the Greeks both
Crete and Epirus; in all other respects it was framed in the interest of
Russia alone. Its object was simply to create a second group of provinces,
like those on the Danube, which should afford Russia a constant opportunity
for interfering with the Ottoman Empire, and which at the same time should
prevent the Greeks from establishing an independent and self-supporting
State. The design cannot be called insidious, for its object was so
palpable that not a single politician in Europe was deceived by it; and a
very simple ruse of Metternich's was enough to draw from the Russian
Government an explicit declaration against the independence of Greece,
which was described by the Czar as a mere chimera. But of all the parties
concerned, the Greeks themselves were loudest in denounciation of the
Russian plan. Their Government sent a protest against it to London, and was
assured by Canning in reply that the support of this country should never
be given to any scheme for disposing of the Greeks without their own
consent. Elsewhere the Czar's note was received with expressions of
politeness due to a Court which it might be dangerous to contradict; and a
series of conferences was opened at St. Petersburg for the purpose of
discussing propositions which no one intended to carry into execution.
Though Canning ordered the British ambassador at St. Petersburg to
dissociate himself from these proceedings, the conferences dragged on, with
long adjournments, from the spring of 1824 to the summer of the following
year. [371]

[Discontent and conspiracies in Russia.]

In the meantime a strong spirit of discontent was rising in the Russian
army and nation. The religious feeling no less than the pride of the people
was deeply wounded by Alexander's refusal to aid the Greeks in their
struggle, and by the pitiful results of his attempted diplomatic concert.
Alone among the European nations the Russians understood the ecclesiastical
character of the Greek insurrection, and owed nothing of their sympathy
with it to the spell of classical literature and art. It is characteristic
of the strength of the religious element in the political views of the
Russian people, that the floods of the Neva which overwhelmed St.
Petersburg in the winter of 1825 should have been regarded as a sign of
divine anger at the Czar's inaction in the struggle between the Crescent
and the Cross. But other causes of discontent were not wanting in Russia.
Though Alexander had forgotten his promises to introduce constitutional
rule, there were many, especially in the army, who had not done so.
Officers who served in the invasion of France in 1815, and in the three
years' occupation which followed it, returned from Western Europe with
ideas of social progress and of constitutional rights which they could
never have gathered in their own country. And when the bright hopes which
had been excited by the recognition of these same ideas by the Czar passed
away, and Russia settled down into the routine of despotism and corruption,
the old unquestioning loyalty of the army was no longer proof against the
workings of the revolutionary spirit. In a land where legal means of
opposition to government and of the initiation of reform were wholly
wanting, discontent was forced into its most dangerous form, that of
military conspiracy. The army was honeycombed with secret societies. Both
in the north and in the south of Russia men of influence worked among the
younger officers, and gained a strong body of adherents to their design of
establishing a constitution by force. The southern army contained the most
resolute and daring conspirators. These men had definitely abandoned the
hope of effecting any public reform as long as Alexander lived, and they
determined to sacrifice the sovereign, as his father and others before him
had been sacrificed, to the political necessities of the time. If the
evidence subsequently given by those implicated in the conspiracy is worthy
of credit, a definite plan had been formed for the assassination of the
Czar in the presence of his troops at one of the great reviews intended to
be held in the south of Russia in the autumn of 1825. On the death of the
monarch a provisional government was at once to be established, and a
constitution proclaimed.

[Death of the Czar, Dec. 1, 1825.]

Alexander, aware of the rising indignation of his people, and irritated
beyond endurance by the failure of his diplomatic efforts, had dissolved
the St. Petersburg Conferences in August, 1825, and declared that Russia
would henceforth act according to its own discretion. He quitted St.
Petersburg and travelled to the Black Sea, accompanied by some of the
leaders of the war-party. Here, plunged in a profound melancholy, conscious
that all his early hopes had only served to surround him with conspirators,
and that his sacrifice of Russia's military interests to international
peace had only rendered his country impotent before all Europe, he still
hesitated to make the final determination between peace and war. A certain
mystery hung over his movements, his acts, and his intentions. Suddenly,
while all Europe waited for the signal that should end the interval of
suspense, the news was sent out from a lonely port on the Black Sea that
the Czar was dead. Alexander, still under fifty years of age, had welcomed
the illness which carried him from a world of cares, and closed a career in
which anguish and disappointment had succeeded to such intoxicating glory
and such unbounded hope. Young as he still was for one who had reigned
twenty-four years, Alexander was of all men the most life-weary. Power,
pleasure, excitement, had lavished on him hours of such existence as none
but Napoleon among all his contemporaries had enjoyed. They had left him
nothing but the solace of religious resignation, and the belief that a
Power higher than his own might yet fulfil the purposes in which he himself
had failed. Ever in the midst of great acts and great events, he had missed
greatness himself. Where he had been best was exactly where men inferior to
himself considered him to have been worst--in his hopes; and these hopes he
had himself abandoned and renounced. Strength, insight, unity of purpose,
the qualities which enable men to mould events, appeared in him but
momentarily or in semblance. For want of them the large and fair horizon of
his earlier years was first obscured and then wholly blotted out from his
view, till in the end nothing but his pietism and his generosity
distinguished him from the politicians of repression whose instrument he
had become.

[Military insurrection at St. Petersburg, Dec 26, 1825.]

The sudden death of Alexander threw the Russian Court into the greatest
confusion, for it was not known who was to succeed him. The heir to the
throne was his brother Constantine, an ignorant and brutal savage, who had
just sufficient sense not to desire to be Czar of Russia, though he
considered himself good enough to tyrannise over the Poles. Constantine had
renounced his right to the crown some years before, but the renunciation
had not been made public, nor had the Grand Duke Nicholas, Constantine's
younger brother, been made aware that the succession was irrevocably fixed
upon himself. Accordingly, when the news of Alexander's death reached St.
Petersburg, and the document embodying Constantine's abdication was brought
from the archives by the officials to whose keeping it had been entrusted,
Nicholas refused to acknowledge it as binding, and caused the troops to
take the oath of allegiance to Constantine, who was then at Warsaw.
Constantine, on the other hand, proclaimed his brother emperor. An
interregnum of three weeks followed, during which messages passed between
Warsaw and St. Petersburg, Nicholas positively refusing to accept the crown
unless by his elder brother's direct command. This at length arrived, and
on the 26th of December Nicholas assumed the rank of sovereign. But the
interval of uncertainty had been turned to good account by the conspirators
at St. Petersburg. The oath already taken by the soldiers to Constantine
enabled the officers who were concerned in the plot to denounce Nicholas as
a usurper, and to disguise their real designs under the cloak of loyalty to
the legitimate Czar. Ignorant of the very meaning of a constitution, the
common soldiers mutinied because they were told to do so; and it is said
that they shouted the word Constitution, believing it to be the name of
Constantine's wife. When summoned to take the oath to Nicholas, the Moscow
Regiment refused it, and marched off to the place in front of the Senate
House, where it formed square, and repulsed an attack made upon it by the
Cavalry of the Guard. Companies from other regiments now joined the
mutineers, and symptoms of insurrection began to show themselves among the
civil population. Nicholas himself did not display the energy of character
which distinguished him through all his later life; on the contrary, his
attitude was for some time rather that of resignation than of
self-confidence. Whether some doubt as to the justice of his cause haunted
him, or a trial like that to which he was now exposed was necessary to
bring to its full strength the iron quality of his nature, it is certain
that the conduct of the new Czar during these critical hours gave to those
around him little indication of the indomitable will which was hence forth
to govern Russia. Though the great mass of the army remained obedient, it
was but slowly brought up to the scene of revolt. Officers of high rank
were sent to harangue the insurgents, and one of these, General
Miloradovitsch, a veteran of the Napoleonic campaigns, was mortally wounded
while endeavouring to make himself heard. It was not until evening that the
artillery was ordered into action, and the command given by the Czar to
fire grape-shot among the insurgents. The effect was decisive. The
mutineers fled before a fire which they were unable to return, and within a
few minutes the insurrection was over. It had possessed no chief of any
military capacity; its leaders were missing at the moment when a forward
march or an attack on the palace of the Czar might have given them the
victory; and among the soldiers at large there was not the least desire to
take part in any movement against the established system of Russia. The
only effect left by the conspiracy within Russia itself was seen in the
rigorous and uncompromising severity with which Nicholas henceforward
enforced the principle of autocratic rule. The illusions of the previous
reign were at an end. A man with the education and the ideas of a
drill-sergeant and the religious assurance of a Covenanter was on the
throne; rebellion had done its worst against him; and woe to those who in
future should deviate a hair's breadth from their duty of implicit
obedience to the sovereign's all-sufficing power. [372]

[Anglo-Russian Protocol, April 4, 1826.]

It has been stated, and with some probability of truth, that the military
insurrection of 1825 disposed the new Czar to a more vigorous policy
abroad. The conspirators, when on their trial, declared it to have been
their intention to throw the army at once into an attack upon the Turks;
and in so doing they would certainly have had the feeling of the nation on
their side. Nicholas himself had little or no sympathy for the Greeks. They
were a democratic people, and the freedom which they sought to gain was
nothing but anarchy. "Do not speak of the Greeks," he said to the
representative of a foreign power, "I call them the rebels." Nevertheless,
little as Nicholas wished to serve the Greek democracy, both inclination
and policy urged him to make an end of his predecessor's faint-hearted
system of negotiation, and to bring the struggle in the East to a summary
close. Canning had already, in conversation with the Russian ambassador at
London, discussed a possible change of policy on the part of the two rival
Courts. He now saw that time had come for establishing new relations
between Great Britain and Russia, and for attempting that co-operation in
the East which he had held to be impracticable during Alexander's reign.
The Duke of Wellington was sent to St. Petersburg, nominally to offer the
usual congratulations to the new sovereign, in reality to dissuade him from
going to war, and to propose either the separate intervention of England or
a joint intervention by England and Russia on behalf of Greece. The mission
was successful. It was in vain that Metternich endeavoured to entangle the
new Czar in the diplomatic web that had so long held his predecessor. The
spell of the Holy Alliance was broken. Nicholas looked on the past
influence of Austria on the Eastern Question only with resentment; he would
hear of no more conferences of ambassadors; and on the 4th of April, 1826,
a Protocol was signed at St. Petersburg, by which Great Britain and Russia
fixed the conditions under which the mediation of the former Power was to
be tendered to the Porte. Greece was to remain tributary to the Sultan; it
was, however, to be governed by its own elected authorities, and to be
completely independent in its commercial relations. The policy known in our
own day as that of bag-and-baggage expulsion was to be carried out in a far
more extended sense than that in which it has been advocated by more recent
champions of the subject races of the East; the Protocol of 1826
stipulating for the removal not only of Turkish officials but of the entire
surviving Turkish population of Greece. All property belonging to the
Turks, whether on the continent or in the islands, was to be purchased by
the Greeks. [373]

Thus was the first step taken in the negotiations which ended in the
establishment of Hellenic independence. The Protocol, which had been
secretly signed, was submitted after some interval to the other Courts of
Europe. At Vienna it was received with the utmost disgust. Metternich had
at first declared the union of England and Russia to be an impossibility.
When this union was actually established, no language was sufficiently
strong to express his mortification and his spite. At one moment he
declared that Canning was a revolutionist who had entrapped the young and
inexperienced Czar into an alliance with European radicalism; at another,
that England had made itself the cat's-paw of Russian ambition. Not till
now, he protested, could Europe understand what it had lost in Castlereagh.
Nor did Metternich confine himself to lamentations. While his
representatives at Paris and Berlin spared no effort to excite the
suspicion of those Courts against the Anglo-Russian project of
intervention, the Austrian ambassador at London worked upon King George's
personal hostility to Canning, and conspired against the Minister with that
important section of the English aristocracy which was still influenced by
the traditional regard for Austria. Berlin, however, was the only field
where Metternich's diplomacy still held its own. King Frederick William had
not yet had time to acquire the habit of submission to the young Czar
Nicholas, and was therefore saved the pain of deciding which of two masters
he should obey. In spite of his own sympathy for the Greeks, he declined to
connect Prussia with the proposed joint-intervention, and remained passive,
justifying this course by the absence of any material interests of Prussia
in the East. Being neither a neighbour of the Ottoman Empire nor a maritime
Power, Prussia had in fact no direct means of making its influence felt.

[Treaty between England, Russia and France, July, 1827.]

France, on whose action much more depended, was now governed wholly in the
interests of the Legitimist party. Louis XVIII. had died in 1824, and the
Count of Artois had succeeded to the throne, under the title of Charles X.
The principles of the Legitimists would logically have made them defenders
of the hereditary rights of the Sultan against his rebellious subjects; but
the Sultan, unlike Ferdinand of Spain, was not a Bourbon nor even a
Christian; and in a case where the legitimate prince was an infidel and the
rebels were Christians, the conscience of the most pious Legitimist might
well recoil from the perilous task of deciding between the divine rights of
the Crown and the divine rights of the Church, and choose, in so painful an
emergency, the simpler course of gratifying the national love of action.
There existed, both among Liberals and among Ultramontanes, a real sympathy
for Greece, and this interest was almost the only one in which all French
political sections felt that they had something in common. Liberals
rejoiced in the prospect of making a new free State in Europe; Catholics,
like Charles X. himself, remembered Saint Louis and the Crusades;
diplomatists understood the extreme importance of the impending breach
between Austria and Russia, and of the opportunity of allying France with
the latter Power. Thus the natural and disinterested impulse of the greater
part of the public coincided exactly with the dictates of a far-seeing
policy; and the Government, in spite of its Legitimist principles and of
some assurances given to Metternich in person when he visited Paris in
1825, determined to accept the policy of the Anglo-Russian intervention in
the East, and to participate in the active measures about to be taken by
the two Powers. The Protocol of St. Petersburg formed the basis of a
definitive treaty which was signed at London in July, 1827. By this act
England, Russia, and France undertook to put an end to the conflict in the
East, which, through the injury done to the commerce of all nations, had
become a matter of European concern. The contending parties were to be
summoned to accept the mediation of the Powers and to consent to an
armistice. Greece was to be made autonomous, under the paramount
sovereignty of the Sultan; the Mohammedan population of the Greek provinces
was, as in the Protocol of St. Petersburg, to be entirely removed; and the
Greeks were to enter upon possession of all Turkish property within their
limits, paying an indemnity to the former owners. Each of the three
contracting Governments pledged itself to seek no increase of territory in
the East, and no special commercial advantages. In the secret articles of
the treaty provisions were made for the case of the rejection by the Turks
of the proposed offer of mediation. Should the armistice not be granted
within one month, the Powers agreed that they would announce to each
belligerent their intention to prevent further encounters, and that they
would take the necessary steps for enforcing this declaration, without,
however, taking part in hostilities themselves. Instructions in conformity
with the Treaty were to be sent to the Admirals commanding the
Mediterranean squadrons of the three Powers. [374]

[Death of Canning, August, 1827.]

[Policy of Canning.]

Scarcely was the Treaty of London signed when Canning died. He had
definitely broken from the policy of his predecessors, that policy which,
for the sake of guarding against Russia's advance, had condemned the
Christian races of the East to 1827. eternal subjection to the Turk, and
bound up Great Britain with the Austrian system of resistance to the very
principle and name of national independence. Canning was no blind friend to
Russia. As keenly as any of his adversaries he appreciated the importance
of England's interests in the East; of all English statesmen of that time
he would have been the last to submit to any diminution of England's just
influence or power. But, unlike his predecessors, he saw that there were
great forces at work which, whether with England's concurrence or in spite
of it, would accomplish that revolution in the East for which the time was
now come; and he was statesman enough not to acquiesce in the belief that
the welfare of England was in permanent and necessary antagonism to the
moral interests of mankind and the better spirit of the age. Therefore,
instead of attempting to maintain the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, or
holding aloof and resorting to threats and armaments while Russia
accomplished the liberation of Greece by itself, he united with Russia in
this work, and relied on concerted action as the best preventive against
the undue extension of Russia's influence in the East. In committing
England to armed intervention, Canning no doubt hoped that the settlement
of the Greek question arranged by the Powers would be peacefully accepted
by the Sultan, and that a separate war between Russia and the Porte, on
this or any other issue, would be averted. Neither of these hopes was
realised. The joint-intervention had to be enforced by arms, and no sooner
had the Allies struck their common blow than a war between Turkey and
Russia followed. How far the course of events might have been modified had
Canning's life not been cut short it is impossible to say; but whether his
statesmanship might or might not have averted war on the Danube, the
balance of results proved his policy to have been the right one. Greece was
established as an independent State, to supply in the future a valuable
element of resistance to Slavic preponderance in the Levant; and the
encounter between Russia and Turkey, so long dreaded, produced none of
those disastrous effects which had been anticipated from it. On the
relative value of Canning's statesmanship as compared with that of his
predecessors, the mind of England and of Europe has long been made up. He
stands among those who have given to this country its claim to the respect
of mankind. His monument, as well as his justification, is the existence of
national freedom in the East; and when half a century later a British
Government reverted to the principle of non-intervention, as it had been
understood by Castlereagh, and declined to enter into any effective
co-operation with Russia for the emancipation of Bulgaria, even then, when
the precedent of Canning's action in 1827 stood in direct and glaring
contradiction to the policy of the hour, no effective attempt was made by
the leaders of the party to which Canning had belonged to impugn his
authority, or to explain away his example. It might indeed be alleged that
Canning had not explicitly resolved on the application of force; but those
who could maintain that Canning would, like Wellington, have used the
language of apology and regret when Turkish obstinacy had made it
impossible to effect the object of his intervention by any other means, had
indeed read the history of Canning's career in vain. [375]

[Intervention of the Admirals, Sept., 1827.]

The death of Canning, which brought his rival, the Duke of Wellington,
after a short interval to the head of affairs, caused at the moment no
avowed change in the execution of his plans. In accordance with the
provisions of the Treaty of London the mediation of the allied Powers was
at once tendered to the belligerents, and an armistice demanded. The
armistice was accepted by the Greeks; it was contemptuously refused by the
Turks. In consequence of this refusal the state of war continued, as it
would have been absurd to ask the Greeks to sit still and be massacred
because the enemy declined to lay down his arms. The Turk being the party
resisting the mediation agreed upon, it became necessary to deprive him of
the power of continuing hostilities. Heavy reinforcements had just arrived
from Egypt, and an expedition was on the point of sailing from Navarino,
the gathering place of Ibrahim's forces, against Hydra, the capture of
which would have definitely made an end of the Greek insurrection. Admiral
Codrington, the commander of the British fleet, and the French Admiral De
Rigny, were now off the coast of Greece. They addressed themselves to
Ibrahim, and required from him a promise that he would make no movement
until further orders should arrive from Constantinople. Ibrahim made this
promise verbally on the 25th of September. A few days later, however,
Ibrahim learnt that while he himself was compelled to be inactive, the
Greeks, continuing hostilities as they were entitled to do, had won a
brilliant naval victory under Captain Hastings within the Gulf of Corinth.
Unable to control his anger, he sailed out from the harbour of Navarino,
and made for Patras. Codrington, who had stationed his fleet at Zante,
heard of the movement, and at once threw himself across the track of the
Egyptian, whom he compelled to turn back by an energetic threat to sink his
fleet. Had the French and Russian contingents been at hand, Codrington
would have taken advantage of Ibrahim's sortie to cut him off from all
Greek harbours, and to force him to return direct to Alexandria, thus
peaceably accomplishing the object of the intervention. This, however, to
the misfortune of Ibrahim's seamen, the English admiral could not do alone.
Ibrahim re-entered Navarino, and there found the orders of the Sultan for
which it had been agreed that he should wait. These orders were dictated by
true Turkish infatuation. They bade Ibrahim continue the subjugation of the
Morea with the utmost vigour, and promised him the assistance of Reschid
Pasha, his rival in the siege of Missolonghi. Ibrahim, perfectly reckless
of the consequences, now sent out his devastating columns again. No life,
and nothing that could support life, was spared. Not only were the crops
ravaged, but the fruit-trees, which are the permanent support of the
country, were cut down at the roots. Clouds of fire and smoke from burning
villages showed the English officers who approached the coast in what
spirit the Turk met their proposals for a pacification. "It is supposed
that if Ibrahim remained in Greece," wrote Captain Hamilton, "more than a
third of its inhabitants would die of absolute starvation."

[Battle of Navarino, Oct. 20th, 1827.]

It became necessary to act quickly, the more so as the season was far
advanced, and a winter blockade of Ibrahim's fleet was impossible. A
message was sent to the Egyptian head-quarters, requiring that hostilities
should cease, that the Morea should be evacuated, and the Turko-Egyptian
fleet return to Constantinople and Alexandria. In answer to this message
there came back a statement that Ibrahim had left Navarino for the interior
of the country, and that it was not known where to find him. Nothing now
remained for the admirals but to make their presence felt. On the 18th of
October it was resolved that the English, French, and Russian fleets, which
were now united, should enter the harbour of Navarino in battle order. The
movement was called a demonstration, and in so far as the admirals had not
actually determined upon making an attack, it was not directly a hostile
measure; but every gun was ready to open fire, and it was well understood
that any act of resistance on the part of the opposite fleet would result
in hostilities. Codrington, as senior officer, took command of the allied
squadron, and the instructions which he gave to his colleagues for the
event of a general engagement concluded with Nelson's words, that no
captain could do very wrong who placed his ship alongside that of an enemy.

Thus, ready to strike hard, the English admiral sailed into the harbour of
Navarino at noon on October 20, followed by the French and the Russians.
The allied fleet advanced to within pistol-shot of the Ottoman ships and
there anchored. A little to the windward of the position assigned to the
English corvette _Dartmouth_ there lay a Turkish fire-ship. A request
was made that this dangerous vessel might be removed to a safer distance;
it was refused, and a boat's crew was then sent to cut its cable. The boat
was received with musketry fire. This was answered by the _Dartmouth_
and by a French ship, and the battle soon became general. Codrington, still
desirous to avoid bloodshed, sent his pilot to Moharem Bey, who commanded
in Ibrahim's absence, proposing to withhold fire on both sides. Moharem
replied with cannon-shot, killing the pilot and striking Codrington's own
vessel. This exhausted the patience of the English admiral, who forthwith
made his adversary a mere wreck. The entire fleets on both sides were now
engaged. The Turks had a superiority of eight hundred guns, and fought with
courage. For four hours the battle raged at close quarters in the
land-locked harbour, while twenty thousand of Ibrahim's soldiers watched
from the surrounding hills the struggle in which they could take no part.
But the result of the combat was never for a moment doubtful. The confusion
and bad discipline of the Turkish fleet made it an easy prey. Vessel after
vessel was sunk or blown to pieces, and before evening fell the work of the
allies was done. When Ibrahim returned from his journey on the following
day he found the harbour of Navarino strewed with wrecks and dead bodies.
Four thousand of his seamen had fallen; the fleet which was to have
accomplished the reduction of Hydra was utterly ruined. [376]

[Inaction of England after Navarino.]

Over all Greece it was at once felt that the nation was saved. The
intervention of the Powers had been sudden and decisive beyond the most
sanguine hopes; and though this intervention might be intended to establish
something less than the complete independence of Greece, the violence of
the first collision bade fair to carry the work far beyond the bounds
originally assigned to it. The attitude of the Porte after the news of the
battle of Navarino reached Constantinople was exactly that which its worst
enemies might have desired. So far from abating anything in its resistance
to the mediation of the three Powers, it declared the attack made upon its
navy to be a crime and an outrage, and claimed satisfaction for it from the
ambassadors of the Allied Powers. Arguments proved useless, and the united
demand for an armistice with the Greeks having been finally and
contemptuously refused, the ambassadors, in accordance with their
instructions, quitted the Turkish capital (Dec. 8). Had Canning been still
living, it is probable that the first blow of Navarino would have been
immediately followed by the measures necessary to make the Sultan submit to
the Treaty of London, and that the forces of Great Britain would have been
applied with sufficient vigour to render any isolated action on the part of
Russia both unnecessary and impossible. But at this critical moment a
paralysis fell over the English Government. Canning's policy was so much
his own, he had dragged his colleagues so forcibly with him in spite of
themselves, that when his place was left empty no one had the courage
either to fulfil or to reverse his intentions, and the men who succeeded
him acted as if they were trespassers in the fortress which Canning had
taken by storm. The very ground on which Wellington, no less than Canning,
had justified the agreement made with Russia in 1826 was the necessity of
preventing Russia from acting alone; and when Russian and Turkish ships had
actually fought at Navarino, and war was all but formally declared, it
became more imperative than ever that Great Britain should keep the most
vigorous hold upon its rival, and by steady, consistent pressure let it be
known to both Turks and Russians that the terms of the Treaty of London and
no others must be enforced. To retire from action immediately after dealing
the Sultan one dire, irrevocable blow, without following up this stroke or
attaining the end agreed upon--to leave Russia to take up the armed
compulsion where England had dropped it, and to win from its crippled
adversary the gains of a private and isolated war--was surely the weakest
of all possible policies that could have been adopted. Yet this was the
policy followed by English Ministers during that interval of transition and
incoherence that passed between Canning's death and the introduction of the
Reform Bill.

[War between Russia and Turkey, April, 1828.]

By the Russian Government nothing was more ardently desired than a contest
with Turkey, in which England and France, after they had destroyed the
Turkish fleet, should be mere on-lookers, debarred by the folly of the
Porte itself from prohibiting or controlling hostilities between it and its
neighbour. There might indeed be some want of a pretext for war, since all
the points of contention between Russia and Turkey other than those
relating to Greece had been finally settled in Russia's favour by a Treaty
signed at Akerman in October, 1826. But the spirit of infatuation had
seized the Sultan, or a secret hope that the Western Powers would in the
last resort throw over the Court of St. Petersburg led him to hurry on
hostilities by a direct challenge to Russia. A proclamation which reads
like the work of some frantic dervish, though said to have been composed by
Mahmud himself, called the Mussulman world to arms. Russia was denounced as
the instigator of the Greek rebellion, and the arch-enemy of Islam. The
Treaty of Akerman was declared to have been extorted by compulsion and to
have been signed only for the purpose of gaining time. "Russia has imparted
its own madness to the other Powers and persuaded them to make an alliance
to free the Rayah from his Ottoman master. But the Turk does not count his
enemies. The law forbids the people of Islam to permit any injury to be
done to their religion; and if all the unbelievers together unite against
them, they will enter on the war as a sacred duty, and trust in God for
protection." This proclamation was followed by a levy of troops and the
expulsion of most of the Christian residents in Constantinople. Russia
needed no other pretext. The fanatical outburst of the Sultan was treated
by the Court of St. Petersburg as if it had been the deliberate expression
of some civilised Power, and was answered on the 26th of April, 1828, by a
declaration of war. In order to soften the effect of this step and to reap
the full benefit of its subsisting relations with France and England,
Russia gave a provisional undertaking to confine its operations as a
belligerent to the mainland and the Black Sea, and within the Mediterranean
to act still as one of the allied neutrals under the terms of the Treaty of
London.

[Military condition of Turkey.]

The moment seized by Russia for the declaration of war was one singularly
favourable to itself and unfortunate for its adversary. Not only had the
Turkish fleet been destroyed by the neutrals, but the old Turkish force of
the Janissaries had been destroyed by its own master, and the new-modelled
regiments which were to replace it had not yet been organised. The Sultan
had determined in 1826 to postpone his long-planned military reform no
longer, and to stake everything on one bold stroke against the Janissaries.
Troops enough were brought up from the other side of the Bosphorus to make
Mahmud certain of victory. The Janissaries were summoned to contribute a
proportion of their number to the regiments about to be formed on the
European pattern; and when they proudly refused to do so and raised the
standard of open rebellion they were cut to pieces and exterminated by
Mahmud's Anatolian soldiers in the midst of Constantinople. [377] The
principal difficulty in the way of a reform of the Turkish army was thus
removed and the work of reorganisation was earnestly taken in hand; but
before there was time to complete it the enemy entered the field. Mahmud
had to meet the attack of Russia with an army greatly diminished in number,
and confused by the admixture of European and Turkish discipline. The
resources of the empire were exhausted by the long struggle with Greece,
and, above all, the destruction of the Janissaries had left behind it an
exasperation which made the Sultan believe that rebellion might at any
moment break out in his own capital. Nevertheless, in spite of its inherent
weakness and of all the disadvantages under which it entered into war,
Turkey succeeded in prolonging its resistance through two campaigns, and
might, with better counsels, have tried the fortune of a third.

[Military condition of Russia.]

The actual military resources of Russia were in 1828 much below what they
were believed to be by all Europe. The destruction of Napoleon's army in
1812 and the subsequent exploits of Alexander in the campaigns which ended
in the capture of Paris had left behind them an impression of Russian
energy and power which was far from corresponding with the reality, and
which, though disturbed by the events of 1828, had by no means vanished at
the time of the Crimean War. The courage and patience of the Russian
soldier were certainly not over-rated; but the progress supposed to have
been made in Russian military organisation since the campaign of 1799, when
it was regarded in England and Austria as little above that of savages, was
for the most part imaginary. The proofs of a radically bad system--scanty
numbers, failing supplies, immense sickness--were never more conspicuous
than in 1828. Though Russia had been preparing for war for at least seven
years, scarcely seventy thousand soldiers could be collected on the Pruth.
The general was Wittgenstein, one of the heroes of 1812, but now a veteran
past effective work. Nicholas came to the camp to make things worse by
headstrong interference. The best Russian officer, Paskiewitsch, was put in
command of the forces about to operate in Asia Minor, and there, thrown on
his own resources and free to create a system of his own, he achieved
results in strong contrast to the failure of the Russian arms on the
Danube.

[Campaign of 1828.]

In entering on the campaign of 1828, it was necessary for the Czar to avoid
giving any unnecessary causes of anxiety to Austria, which had already made
unsuccessful attempts to form a coalition against him. The line of
operations was therefore removed as far as possible from the Austrian
frontier; and after the Roumanian principalities had been peacefully
occupied, the Danube was crossed at a short distance above the point where
its mouths divide (June 7). The Turks had no intention of meeting the enemy
in a pitched battle; they confined themselves to the defence of fortresses,
the form of warfare to which, since the decline of the military art in
Turkey, the patience and abstemiousness of the race best fit them. Ibraila
and Silistria on the Danube, Varna and Shumla in the neighbourhood of the
Balkans, were their principal strongholds; of these Ibraila was at once
besieged by a considerable force, while Silistria was watched by a weak
contingent, and the vanguard of the Russian army pushed on through the
Dobrudscha towards the Black Sea, where, with the capture of the minor
coast-towns, it expected to enter into communication with the fleet. The
first few weeks of the campaign were marked by considerable successes.
Ibraila capitulated on the 18th of June, and the military posts in the
Dobrudscha fell one after another into the hands of the invaders, who met
with no effective resistance in this district. But their serious work was
only now beginning. The Russian army, in spite of its weakness, was divided
into three parts, occupied severally in front of Silistria, Shumla, and
Varna. At Shumla the mass of the Turkish army, under Omer Brionis, was
concentrated. The force brought against it by the invader was inadequate to
its task, and the attempts which were made to lure the Turkish army from
its entrenched camp into the open field proved unsuccessful. The
difficulties of the siege proved so great that Wittgenstein after a while
proposed to abandon offensive operations at this point, and to leave a mere
corps of observation before the enemy until Varna should have fallen. This,
however, was forbidden by the Czar. As the Russians wasted away before
Shumla with sickness and fatigue, the Turks gained strength, and on the
24th of September Omer broke out from his entrenchments and moved eastwards
to the relief of Varna. Nicholas again over-ruled his generals, and ordered
his cousin, Prince Eugene of Würtemberg, to attack the advancing Ottomans
with the troops then actually at his disposal. Eugene did so, and suffered
a severe defeat. A vigorous movement of the Turks would probably have made
an end of the campaign, but Omer held back at the critical moment, and on
the 10th of October Varna surrendered. This, however, was the only conquest
made by the Russians. The season was too far advanced for them either to
cross the Balkans or to push forward operations against the uncaptured
fortresses. Shumla and Silistria remained in the hands of their defenders,
and the Russians, after suffering enormous losses in proportion to the
smallness of their numbers, withdrew to Varna and the Danube, to resume the
campaign in the spring of the following year. [378]

[Campaign of 1829.]

The spirits of the Turks and of their European friends were raised by the
unexpected failure of the Czar's arms. Metternich resumed his efforts to
form a coalition, and tempted French Ministers with the prospect of
recovering the Rhenish provinces, but in vain. The Sultan began
negotiations, but broke them off when he found that the events of the
campaign had made no difference in the enemy's tone. The prestige of Russia
was in fact at stake, and Nicholas would probably have faced a war with
Austria and Turkey combined rather than have made peace without restoring
the much-diminished reputation of his troops. The winter was therefore
spent in bringing up distant reserves. Wittgenstein was removed from his
command; the Czar withdrew from military operations in which he had done
nothing but mischief; and Diebitsch, a Prussian by birth and training, was
placed at the head of the army, untrammelled by the sovereign presence or
counsels which had hampered his predecessor. The intention of the new
commander was to cross the Balkans as soon as Silistria should have fallen,
without waiting for the capture of Shumla. In pursuance of this design the
fleet was despatched early in the spring of 1829 to seize a port beyond the
mountain-range. Diebitsch then placed a corps in front of Silistria, and
made his preparations for the southward march; but before any progress had
been made in the siege the Turks themselves took the field. Reschid Pasha,
now Grand Vizier, moved eastwards from Shumla at the beginning of May
against the weak Russian contingent that still lay in winter quarters
between that place and Varna. The superiority of his force promised him
an easy victory; but after winning some unimportant successes, and
advancing to a considerable distance from his stronghold, he allowed
himself to be held at bay until Diebitsch, with the army of the Danube,
was ready to fall upon his rear. The errors of the Turks had given to the
Russian commander, who hastened across Bulgaria on hearing of his
colleague's peril, the choice of destroying their army, or of seizing
Shumla by a _coup-de-main_. Diebitsch determined upon attacking his
enemy in the open field, and on the 10th of June Reschid's army, attempting
to regain the roads to Shumla, was put to total rout at Kulewtscha. A
fortnight later Silistria surrendered, and Diebitsch, reinforced by the
troops that had besieged that fortress, was now able to commence his
march across the Balkans.

[Crossing of the Balkans, July, 1829.]

Rumour magnified into hundreds of thousands the scanty columns which for
the first time carried the Russian flag over the Balkan range. Resistance
everywhere collapsed. The mountains were crossed without difficulty, and on
the 19th of August the invaders appeared before Adrianople, which
immediately surrendered. Putting on the boldest countenance in order to
conceal his real weakness, Diebitsch now struck out right and left, and
sent detachments both to the Euxine and the Ægæan coast. The fleet
co-operated with him, and the ports of the Black Sea, almost as far south
as the Bosphorus, fell into the invaders' hands. The centre of the army
began to march upon Constantinople. If the Sultan had known the real
numbers of the force which threatened his capital, a force not exceeding
twenty thousand men, he would probably have recognised that his assailant's
position was a more dangerous one than his own. Diebitsch had advanced into
the heart of the enemy's country with a mere handful of men. Sickness was
daily thinning his ranks; his troops were dispersed over a wide area from
sea to sea; and the warlike tribes of Albania threatened to fall upon his
communications from the west. For a moment the Sultan spoke of fighting
upon the walls of Constantinople; but the fear of rebellion within his own
capital, the discovery of conspiracies, and the disasters sustained by his
arms in Asia, where Kars and Erzeroum had fallen into the enemy's hands,
soon led him to make overtures of peace and to accept the moderate terms
which the Russian Government, aware of its own difficulties, was willing to
grant. It would have been folly for the Czar to stimulate the growing
suspicion of England and to court the attack of Austria by prolonging
hostilities; and although King Charles X. and the French Cabinet, reverting
to the ideas of Tilsit, proposed a partition of the Ottoman Empire, and a
general re-arrangement of the map of Europe which would have given Belgium
and the Palatinate to France, the plan was originated too late to produce
any effect. [379] Russia had everything to lose and nothing to gain by a
European war. It had reduced Turkey to submission, and might fairly hope to
maintain its ascendency at Constantinople during coming years without
making any of those great territorial changes which would have given its
rivals a pretext for intervening on the Sultan's behalf. Under the guise of
a generous forbearance the Czar extricated himself from a dangerous
position with credit and advantage. As much had been won as could be
maintained without hazard; and on the 14th of September peace was concluded
in Adrianople.

[Treaty of Adrianople, Sept. 14, 1829.]

The Treaty of Adrianople gave Russia a slight increase of territory in
Asia, incorporating with the Czar's dominions the ports of Anapa and Poti
on the eastern coast of the Black Sea; but its most important provisions
were those which confirmed and extended the Protectorate exercised by the
Czar over the Danubian Principalities, and guaranteed the commercial rights
of Russian subjects throughout the Ottoman Empire both by land and sea. In
order more effectively to exclude the Sultan's influence from Wallachia and
Moldavia, the office of Hospodar, hitherto tenable for seven years, was now
made an appointment for life, and the Sultan specifically engaged to permit
no interference on the part of his neighbouring Pashas with the affairs of
these provinces. No fortified point was to be retained by the Turks on the
left bank of the Danube; no Mussulman was to be permitted to reside within
the Principalities; and those possessing landed estates there were to sell
them within eighteen months. The Porte pledged itself never again to detain
Russian ships of commerce coming from the Black Sea, and acknowledged that
such an act would amount to an infraction of treaties justifying Russia in
having recourse to reprisals. The Straits of Constantinople and the
Dardanelles were declared free and open to the merchant ships of all Powers
at peace with the Porte, upon the same conditions which were stipulated for
vessels under the Russian flag. The same freedom of trade and navigation
was recognised within the Black Sea. All treaties and conventions hitherto
concluded between Turkey and Russia were recognised as in force, except in
so far as modified by the present agreement. The Porte further gave its
adhesion to the Treaty of London relating to Greece, and to an Act entered
into by the Allied Powers in March, 1829, for regulating the Greek
frontier. An indemnity in money was declared to be owing to Russia; and as
the amount of this remained to be fixed by mutual agreement, the means were
still left open to the Russian Government for exercising a gentle pressure
at Constantinople, or for rewarding the compliance of the conquered. [380]

[Capodistrias elected President of Greece, April, 1827.]

The war between Turkey and Russia, while it left the European frontier
between the belligerents unchanged, exercised a two-fold influence upon the
settlement of Greece. On the one hand, by exciting the fears and suspicions
of Great Britain, it caused the Government of our own country, under the
Duke of Wellington, to insist on the limitation of the Greek State to the
narrowest possible area; [381] on the other hand, by reducing Turkey itself
almost to the condition of a Russian dependency, it led to the abandonment
of the desire to maintain the Sultan's supremacy in any form over the
emancipated provinces, and resulted in the establishment of an absolutely
independent Hellenic kingdom. An important change had taken place within
Greece itself just at the time when the allied Powers determined upon
intervention. The parts of the local leaders were played out, and in April,
1827, Capodistrias, ex-Minister of Russia, was elected President for seven
years. Capodistrias accepted the call. He was then, as he had been
throughout the insurrection, at a distance from Greece; and before making
his way thither, he visited the principal Courts of Europe, with the view
of ascertaining what moral or financial support he should be likely to
receive from them. His interview with the Czar Nicholas led to a clear
statement by that sovereign of the conditions which he expected
Capodistrias, in return for Russia's continued friendship, to fulfil.
Greece was to be rescued from revolution: in other words, personal was to
be substituted for popular government. The State was to remain tributary to
the Sultan: that is, in both Greece and Turkey the door was to be kept open
for Russia's interference. Whether Capodistrias had any intention of
fulfilling the latter condition is doubtful. His love for Greece and his
own personal ambition prevented his regard for Russia, strong though this
might be, from making him the mere instrument of the Court of St.
Petersburg; and while outwardly acquiescing in the Czar's decision that
Greece should remain a tributary State, he probably resolved from the first
to aim at establishing its complete independence. With regard to the Czar's
demand that the system of local self-government should be superseded within
Greece itself by one of autocratic rule, Capodistrias was in harmony with
his patron. He had been the Minister of a centralised despotism himself.
His experience was wholly that of the official of an absolute sovereign;
and although Capodistrias had represented the more liberal tendencies of
the Russian Court when it was a question of arguing against Metternich
about the complete or the partial restoration of despotic rule in Italy, he
had no real acquaintance and no real sympathy with the action of free
institutions, and moved in the same circle of ideas as the autocratic
reformers of the eighteenth century, of whom Joseph II. was the type. [382]

[The Protocols of Nov., 1828, and March, 1829.]

The Turks were still masters of the Morea when Capodistrias reached Greece.
The battle of Navarino had not caused Ibrahim to relax his hold upon the
fortresses, and it was deemed necessary by the Allies to send a French
army-corps to dislodge him from his position. This expeditionary force,
under General Maison, landed in Greece in the summer of 1828, and Ibrahim,
not wishing to fight to the bitter end, contented himself with burning
Tripolitza to the ground and sowing it with salt, and then withdrew. The
war between Turkey and Russia had now begun. Capodistrias assisted the
Russian fleet in blockading the Dardanelles, and thereby gained for himself
the marked ill-will of the British Government. At a conference held in
London by the representatives of France, England, and Russia, in November,
1828, it was resolved that the operations of the Allies should be limited
to the Morea and the islands. Capodistrias, in consequence of this
decision, took the most vigorous measures for continuing the war against
Turkey. What the allies refused to guarantee must be won by force of arms;
and during the winter of 1829, while Russia pressed upon Turkey from the
Danube, Capodistrias succeeded in reconquering Missolonghi and the whole
tract of country immediately to the north of the Gulf of Corinth. The
Porte, in prolonging its resistance after the November conference, played
as usual into its enemy's hands. The negotiations at London were resumed in
a spirit somewhat more favourable to Greece, and a Protocol was signed on
the 22nd of March, 1829, extending the northern frontier of Greece up to a
line drawn from the Gulf of Arta to the Gulf of Volo. Greece, according to
this Protocol, was still to remain under the Sultan's suzerainty: its ruler
was to be a hereditary prince belonging to one of the reigning European
families, but not to any of the three allied Courts. [383]

[Leopold accepts the Greek Crown, Feb., 1830.]

The mediation of Great Britain was now offered to the Porte upon the terms
thus laid down, and for the fourteenth time its mediation was rejected. But
the end was near at hand. Diebitsch crossed the Balkans, and it was in vain
that the Sultan then proposed the terms which he had scouted in November.
The Treaty of Adrianople enforced the decisions of the March Protocol.
Greece escaped from a limitation of its frontier, which would have left
both Athens and Missolonghi Turkish territory. The principle of the
admission of the provinces north of the Gulf of Corinth within the Hellenic
State was established, and nothing remained for the friends of the Porte
but to cut down to the narrowest possible area the district which had been
loosely indicated in the London Protocol. While Russia, satisfied with its
own successes against the Ottoman Empire and anxious to play the part of
patron of the conquered, ceased to interest itself in Greece, the
Government of Great Britain contested every inch of territory proposed to
be ceded to the new State, and finally induced the Powers to agree upon a
boundary-line which did not even in letter fulfil the conditions of the
treaty. Northern Acarnania and part of Ætolia were severed from Greece,
and the frontier was drawn from the mouth of the river Achelous to a spot
near Thermopylae. On the other hand, as Russian influence now appeared to
be firmly established and likely to remain paramount at Constantinople, the
Western Powers had no motive to maintain the Sultan's supremacy over
Greece. This was accordingly by common consent abandoned; and the Hellenic
Kingdom, confined within miserably narrow limits on the mainland, and
including neither Crete nor Samos among its islands, was ultimately offered
in full sovereignty to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, the widower of
Charlotte, daughter of George IV. After some negotiations, in which Leopold
vainly asked for a better frontier, he accepted the Greek crown on the 11th
of February, 1830.

[Government of Capodistrias.]

In the meantime, Capodistrias was struggling hard to govern and to organise
according to his own conceptions a land in which every element of anarchy,
ruin, and confusion appeared to be arrayed against the restoration of
civilised life. The country was devastated, depopulated, and in some places
utterly barbarised. Out of a population of little more than a million, it
was reckoned that three hundred thousand had perished during the conflict
with the Turk. The whole fabric of political and social order had to be
erected anew; and, difficult as this task would have been for the wisest
ruler, it was rendered much more difficult by the conflict between
Capodistrias' own ideal and the character of the people among whom he had
to work. Communal or local self-government lay at the very root of Greek
nationality. In many different forms this intense provincialism had
maintained itself unimpaired up to the end of the war, in spite of national
assemblies and national armaments. The Hydriote ship-owners, the Primates
of the Morea, the guerilla leaders of the north, had each a type of life
and a body of institutions as distinct as the dialects which they spoke or
the saints whom they cherished in their local sanctuaries. If antagonistic
in some respects to national unity, this vigorous local life had
nevertheless been a source of national energy while Greece had still its
independence to win; and now that national independence was won, it might
well have been made the basis of a popular and effective system of
self-government. But to Capodistrias, as to greater men of that age, the
unity of the State meant the uniformity of all its parts; and, shutting his
eyes to all the obstacles in his path, he set himself to create an
administrative system as rigorously centralised as that which France had
received from Napoleon. Conscious of his own intellectual superiority over
his countrymen, conscious of his own integrity and of the sacrifice of all
his personal wealth in his country's service, he put no measure on his
expressions of scorn for the freebooters and peculators whom he believed to
make up the Greek official world, and he both acted and spoke as if, in the
literal sense of the words, all who ever came before him were thieves and
robbers. The peasants of the mainland, who had suffered scarcely less from
Klephts and Primates than from Turks, welcomed Capodistrias' levelling
despotism, and to the end his name was popular among them; but among the
classes which had supplied the leaders in the long struggle for
independence, and especially among the ship-owners of the Archipelago, who
felt the contempt expressed by Capodistrias for their seven years' efforts
to be grossly unjust, a spirit of opposition arose which soon made it
evident that Capodistrias would need better instruments than those which he
had around him to carry out his task of remodelling Greece.

[Leopold renounces the crown, May, 1830.]

It was in the midst of this growing antagonism that the news reached
Capodistrias that Leopold of Saxe-Coburg had been appointed King of Greece.
The resolution made by the Powers in March, 1829, that the sovereign of
Greece should belong to some reigning house, had perhaps not wholly
destroyed the hopes of Capodistrias that he might become Prince or Hospodar
of Greece himself. There were difficulties in the way of filling the
throne, and these difficulties, after the appointment of Leopold,
Capodistrias certainly did not seek to lessen. His subtlety, his command of
the indirect methods of effecting a purpose, were so great and so habitual
to him that there was little chance of his taking any overt step for
preventing Leopold's accession to the crown; there appears, however, to be
evidence that he repressed the indications of assent which the Greeks
attempted to offer to Leopold; and a series of letters written by him to
that prince was probably intended, though in the most guarded language, to
give Leopold the impression that the task which awaited him was a hopeless
one. Leopold himself, at the very time when he accepted the crown, was
wavering in his purpose. He saw with perfect clearness that the territory
granted to the Greek State was too small to secure either its peace or its
independence. The severance of Acarnania and Northern Ætolia meant the
abandonment of the most energetic part of the Greek inland population, and
a probable state of incessant warfare upon the northern frontier; the
relinquishment of Crete meant that Greece, bankrupt as it was, must
maintain a navy to protect the south coast of the Morea from Turkish
attack. These considerations had been urged upon the Powers by Leopold
before he accepted the crown, and he had been induced for the moment to
withdraw them. But he had never fully acquiesced in the arrangements
imposed upon him: he remained irresolute for some months; and at last,
whether led to this decision by the letters of Capodistrias or by some
other influences, he declared the conditions under which he was called upon
to rule Greece to be intolerable, and renounced the crown (May, 1830).
[384]

[Government and death of Capodistrias.]

Capodistrias thus found himself delivered from his rival, and again face to
face with the task to which duty or ambition called him. The candidature of
Leopold had embittered the relations between Capodistrias and all who
confronted him in Greece, for it gave him the means of measuring their
hostility to himself by the fervour of their addresses to this unknown
foreigner. A dark shadow fell over his government. As difficulties
thickened and resistance grew everywhere more determined, the President
showed himself harsher and less scrupulous in the choice of his means. The
men about him were untrustworthy; to crush them, he filled the offices of
government with relatives and creatures of his own who were at once
tyrannous and incapable. Thwarted and checked, he met opposition by
imprisonment and measures of violence, suspended the law-courts, and
introduced the espionage and the police-system of St. Petersburg. At length
armed rebellion broke out, and while Miaoulis, the Hydriote admiral, blew
up the best ships of the Greek navy to prevent them falling into the
President's hands, the wild district of Maina, which had never admitted the
Turkish tax-gatherer, refused to pay taxes to the Hellenic State. The
revolt was summarily quelled by Capodistrias, and several members of the
family of Mauromichalis, including the chief Petrobei, formerly feudal
ruler of Maina, were arrested. Some personal insult, imaginary or real, was
moreover offered by Capodistrias to this fallen foe, after the aged mother
of Petrobei, who had lost sixty-four kinsmen in the war against the Turks,
had begged for his release. The vendetta of the Maina was aroused. A son
and a nephew of Petrobei laid wait for the President, and as he entered the
Church of St. Spiridion at Nauplia on the 9th of October, 1831, a
pistol-shot and a blow from a yataghan laid him dead on the ground. He had
been warned that his life was sought, but had refused to make any change in
his habits, or to allow himself to be attended by a guard.

[Otho King of Greece, Feb. 1, 1833.]

The death of Capodistrias excited sympathies and regrets which to a great
extent silenced criticism upon his government, and which have made his name
one of those most honoured by the Greek nation. His fall threw the country
into anarchy. An attempt was made by his brother Augustine to retain
autocratic power, but the result was universal dissension and the
interference of the foreigner. At length the Powers united in finding a
second sovereign for Greece, and brought the weary scene of disorder to a
close. Prince Otho of Bavaria was sent to reign at Athens, and with him
there came a group of Bavarian officials to whom the Courts of Europe
persuaded themselves that the future of Greece might be safely entrusted. A
frontier somewhat better than that which had been offered to Leopold was
granted to the new sovereign, but neither Crete, Thessaly, nor Epirus was
included within his kingdom. Thus hemmed in within intolerably narrow
limits, while burdened with the expenses of an independent state, alike
unable to meet the calls upon its national exchequer and to exclude the
intrigues of foreign Courts, Greece offered during the next generation
little that justified the hopes that had been raised as to its future. But
the belief of mankind in the invigorating power of national independence is
not wholly vain, nor, even under the most hostile conditions, will the
efforts of a liberated people fail to attract the hope and the envy of
those branches of its race which still remain in subjection. Poor and
inglorious as the Greek kingdom was, it excited the restless longings not
only of Greeks under Turkish bondage, but of the prosperous Ionian Islands
under English rule; and in 1864 the first step in the expansion of the
Hellenic kingdom was accomplished by the transfer of these islands from
Great Britain to Greece. Our own day has seen Greece further strengthened
and enriched by the annexation of Thessaly. The commercial and educational
development of the kingdom is now as vigorous as that of any State in
Europe: in agriculture and in manufacturing industry it still lingers far
behind. Following the example of Cavour and the Sardinian statesmen who
judged no cost too great in preparing for Italian union, the rulers of
Greece burden the national finances with the support of an army and navy
excessive in comparison both with the resources and with the present
requirements of the State. To the ideal of a great political future the
material progress of the land has been largely sacrificed. Whether, in the
re-adjustment of frontiers which must follow upon the gradual extrusion of
the Turk from Eastern Europe, Greece will gain from its expenditure
advantages proportionate to the undoubted evils which it has involved, the
future alone can decide.




CHAPTER XVI.


France before 1830--Reign of Charles X.--Ministry of Martignac--Ministry of
Polignac--The Duke of Orleans--War in Algiers--The July Ordinances--
Revolution of July--Louis Philippe King--Nature and Effects of the July
Revolution--Affairs in Belgium--The Belgian Revolution--The Great
Powers--Intervention, and Establishment of the Kingdom of Belgium--Affairs
of Poland--Insurrection at Warsaw--War between Russia and Poland--Overthrow
of the Poles: End of the Polish Constitution--Affairs of Italy--
Insurrection in the Papal States--France and Austria--Austrian
Intervention--Ancona occupied by the French--Affairs of Germany--Prussia;
the Zollverein--Brunswick, Hanover, Saxony--The Palatinate--Reaction in
Germany--Exiles in Switzerland; Incursion into Savoy--Dispersion of the
Exiles--France under Louis Philippe: Successive Risings--Period of
Parliamentary Activity--England after 1830: The Reform Bill.


When the Congress of Vienna re-arranged the map of Europe after Napoleon's
fall, Lord Castlereagh expressed the opinion that no prudent statesman
would forecast a duration of more than seven years for any settlement that
might then be made. At the end of a period twice as long the Treaties of
1815 were still the public law of Europe. The grave had peacefully closed
over Napoleon; the revolutionary forces of France had given no sign of
returning life. As the Bourbon monarchy struck root, and the elements of
opposition grew daily weaker in France, the perils that lately filled all
minds appeared to grow obsolete, and the very Power against which the
anti-revolutionary treaties of 1815 had been directed took its place, as of
natural right, by the side of Austria and Russia in the struggle against
revolution. The attack of Louis XVIII. upon the Spanish Constitutionalists
marked the complete reconciliation of France with the Continental dynasties
which had combined against it in 1815; and from this time the Treaties of
Chaumont and Aix-la-Chapelle, though their provisions might be still
unchallenged, ceased to represent the actual relations existing between the
Powers. There was no longer a moral union of the Courts against a supposed
French revolutionary State; on the contrary, when Eastern affairs reached
their crisis, Russia detached itself from its Hapsburg ally, and definitely
allied itself with France. If after the Peace of Adrianople any one Power
stood isolated, it was Austria; and if Europe was threatened by renewed
aggression, it was not under revolutionary leaders or with revolutionary
watchwords, but as the result of an alliance between Charles X. and the
Czar of Russia. After the Bourbon Cabinet had resolved to seek an extension
of French territory at whatever sacrifice of the balance of power in the
East, Europe could hardly expect that the Court of St. Petersburg would
long reject the advantages offered to it. The frontiers of 1815 seemed
likely to be obliterated by an enterprise which would bring Russia to the
Danube and France to the Rhine. From this danger the settlement of 1815 was
saved by the course of events that took place within France itself. The
Revolution of 1830, insignificant in its immediate effects upon the French
people, largely influenced the governments and the nations of Europe; and
while within certain narrow limits it gave a stimulus to constitutional
liberty, its more general result was to revive the union of the three
Eastern Courts which had broken down in 1826, and to reunite the principal
members of the Holy Alliance by the sense of a common interest against the
Liberalism of the West.

[Government of Charles X., 1824-1827.]

In the person of Charles X. reaction and clericalism had ascended the
French throne. The minister, Villèle, who had won power in 1820 as the
representative of the Ultra-Royalists, had indeed learnt wisdom while in
office, and down to the death of Louis XVIII. in 1824 he had kept in check
the more violent section of his party. But he now retained his post only at
the price of compliance with the Court, and gave the authority of his name
to measures which his own judgment condemned. It was characteristic of
Charles X. and of the reactionaries around him that out of trifling matters
they provoked more exasperation than a prudent Government would have
aroused by changes of infinitely greater importance. Thus in a
sacrilege-law which was introduced in 1825 they disgusted all reasonable
men by attempting to revive the barbarous mediæval punishment of amputation
of the hand; and in a measure conferring some fractional rights upon the
eldest son in cases of intestacy they alarmed the whole nation by a
preamble declaring the French principle of the equal division of
inheritances to be incompatible with monarchy. Coming from a Government
which had thus already forfeited public confidence, a law granting the
emigrants a compensation of £40,000,000 for their estates which had been
confiscated during the Revolution excited the strongest opposition,
although, apart from questions of equity, it benefited the nation by for
ever setting at rest all doubt as to the title of the purchasers of the
confiscated lands. The financial operations by which, in order to provide
the vast sum allotted to the emigrants, the national debt was converted
from a five per cent, to a three per cent, stock, alienated all
stockholders and especially the powerful bankers of Paris. But more than
any single legislative act, the alliance of the Government with the
priestly order, and the encouragement given by it to monastic corporations,
whose existence in France was contrary to law, offended the nation. The
Jesuits were indicted before the law-courts by Montlosier, himself a
Royalist and a member of the old noblesse. A vehement controversy sprang up
between the ecclesiastics and their opponents, in which the Court was not
spared. The Government, which had lately repealed the law of censorship,
now restored it by edict. The climax of its unpopularity was reached; its
hold upon the Chamber was gone, and the very measure by which Villèle, when
at the height of his power, had endeavoured to give permanence to his
administration, proved its ruin. He had abolished the system of partial
renovation, by which one-fifth of the Chamber of Deputies was annually
returned, and substituted for it the English system of septennial
Parliaments with general elections. In 1827 King Charles, believing his
Ministers to be stronger in the country than in the Chamber, exercised his
prerogative of dissolution. The result was the total defeat of the
Government, and the return of an assembly in which the Liberal opposition
outnumbered the partisans of the Court by three to one. Villèle's Ministry
now resigned. King Charles, unwilling to choose his successor from the
Parliamentary majority, thought for a moment of violent resistance, but
subsequently adopted other counsels, and, without sincerely intending to
bow to the national will, called to office the Vicomte de Martignac, a
member of the right centre, and the representative of a policy of
conciliation and moderate reform (January 2, 1828).

[Ministry of Martignac, 1828-29.]

[Polignac Minister, Aug. 9, 1829.]

It was not the fault of this Minister that the last chance of union between
the French nation and the elder Bourbon line was thrown away. Martignac
brought forward a measure of decentralisation conferring upon the local
authorities powers which, though limited, were larger than they had
possessed at any time since the foundation of the Consulate; and he
appealed to the Liberal sections of the Chamber to assist him in winning an
instalment of self-government which France might well have accepted with
satisfaction. But the spirit of opposition within the Assembly was too
strong for a coalition of moderate men, and the Liberals made the success
of Martignac's plan impossible by insisting on concessions which the
Minister was unable to grant. The reactionists were ready to combine with
their opponents. King Charles himself was in secret antagonism to his
Minister, and watched with malicious joy his failure to control the
majority in the Chamber. Instead of throwing all his influence on to the
side of Martignac, and rallying all doubtful forces by the pronounced
support of the Crown, he welcomed Martignac's defeat as a proof of the
uselessness of all concessions, and dismissed the Minister from office,
declaring that the course of events had fulfilled his own belief in the
impossibility of governing in accord with a Parliament. The names of the
Ministers who were now called to power excited anxiety and alarm not only
in France but throughout the political circles of Europe. They were the
names of men known as the most violent and embittered partisans of
reaction; men whose presence in the councils of the King could mean nothing
but a direct attack upon the existing Parliamentary system of France. At
the head was Jules Polignac, then French ambassador at London, a man
half-crazed with religious delusions, who had suffered a long imprisonment
for his share in Cadoudal's attempt to kill Napoleon, and on his return to
France in 1814 had refused to swear to the Charta because it granted
religious freedom to non-Catholics. Among the subordinate members of the
Ministry were General Bourmont, who had deserted to the English at
Waterloo, and La Bourdonnaye, the champion of the reactionary Terrorists in
1816. [385]

[Prospects in 1830. The Orleanists.]

The Ministry having been appointed immediately after the close of the
session of 1829, an interval of several months passed before they were
brought face to face with the Chambers. During this interval the prospect
of a conflict with the Crown became familiar to the public mind, though no
general impression existed that an actual change of dynasty was close at
hand. The Bonapartists were without a leader, Napoleon's son, their natural
head, being in the power of the Austrian Court; the Republicans were
neither numerous nor well organised, and the fatal memories of 1793 still
weighed upon the nation; the great body of those who contemplated
resistance to King Charles X. looked only to a Parliamentary struggle, or,
in the last resort, to the refusal of payment of taxes in case of a breach
of the Constitution. There was, however, a small and dexterous group of
politicians which, at a distance from all the old parties, schemed for the
dethronement of the reigning branch of the House of Bourbon, and for the
elevation of Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, to the throne. The chief of
this intrigue was Talleyrand. Slighted and thwarted by the Court, the old
diplomatist watched for the signs of a falling Government, and when the
familiar omens met his view he turned to the quarter from which its
successor was most likely to arise. Louis Philippe stood high in credit
with all circles of Parliamentary Liberals. His history had been a strange
and eventful one. He was the son of that Orleans who, after calling himself
Égalité, and voting for the death of his cousin, Louis XVI., had himself
perished during the Reign of Terror. Young Louis Philippe had been a member
of the Jacobin Club, and had fought for the Republic at Jemappes. Then,
exiled and reduced to penury, he had earned his bread by teaching
mathematics in Switzerland, and had been a wanderer in the new as well as
in the old world. After awhile his fortunes brightened. A marriage with the
daughter of Ferdinand of Sicily restored him to those relations with the
reigning houses of Europe which had been forfeited by his father, and
inspired him with the hope of gaining a crown. During Napoleon's invasion
of Spain he had caballed with politicians in that country who were inclined
to accept a substitute for their absent sovereign; at another time he had
entertained hopes of being made king of the Ionian Islands. After the peace
of Paris, when the allied sovereigns and their ministers visited England,
Louis Philippe was sent over by his father-in-law to intrigue among them
against Murat, and in pursuance of this object he made himself acquainted
not only with every foreign statesman then in London but with every leading
English politician. He afterwards settled in France, and was reinstated in
the vast possessions of the House of Orleans, which, though confiscated,
had not for the most part been sold during the Revolution. His position at
Paris under Louis XVIII. and Charles X. was a peculiar one. Without taking
any direct part in politics or entering into any avowed opposition to the
Court, he made his home, the Palais Royale, a gathering-place for all that
was most distinguished in the new political and literary society of the
capital; and while the Tuileries affected the pomp and the ceremoniousness
of the old regime, the Duke of Orleans moved with the familiarity of a
citizen among citizens. He was a clever, ready, sensible man, equal, as it
seemed, to any practical task likely to come in his way, but in reality
void of any deep insight, of any far-reaching aspiration, of any profound
conviction. His affectation of a straightforward middle-class geniality
covered a decided tendency towards intrigue and a strong love of personal
power. Later events indeed gave rise to the belief that, while professing
the utmost loyalty to Charles X., Louis Philippe had been scheming to oust
him from his throne; but the evidence really points the other way, and
indicates that, whatever secret hopes may have suggested themselves to the
Duke, his strongest sentiment during the Revolution of 1830 was the fear of
being driven into exile himself, and of losing his possessions. He was not
indeed of a chivalrous nature; but when the Crown came in his way, he was
guilty of no worse offence than some shabby evasions of promises.

[Meeting and Prorogation of the Chambers, March, 1830.]

Early in March, 1830, the French Chambers assembled after their recess. The
speech of King Charles at the opening of the session was resolute and even
threatening. It was answered by an address from the Lower House, requesting
him to dismiss his Ministers. The deputation which presented this address
was received by the King in a style that left no doubt as to his
intentions, and on the following day the Chambers were prorogued for six
months. It was known that they would not be permitted to meet again, and
preparations for a renewed general election were at once made with the
utmost vigour by both parties throughout France. The Court unsparingly
applied all the means of pressure familiar to French governments; it
moreover expected to influence public opinion by some striking success in
arms or in diplomacy abroad. The negotiations with Russia for the
acquisition of Belgium were still before the Cabinet, and a quarrel with
the Dey of Algiers gave Polignac the opportunity of beginning a war of
conquest in Africa. General Bourmont left the War Office, to wipe out the
infamy still attaching to his name by a campaign against the Arabs; and the
Government trusted that, even in the event of defeat at the elections, the
nation at large would at the most critical moment be rallied to its side by
an announcement of the capture of Algiers.

[Polignac's project.]

While the dissolution of Parliament was impending, Polignac laid before the
King a memorial expressing his own views on the courses open to Government
in case of the elections proving adverse. The Charta contained a clause
which, in loose and ill-chosen language, declared it to be the function of
the King "to make the regulations and ordinances necessary for the
execution of the laws and for the security of the State." These words,
which no doubt referred to the exercise of the King's normal and
constitutional powers, were interpreted by Polignac as authorising the King
to suspend the Constitution itself, if the Representative Assembly should
be at variance with the King's Ministers. Polignac in fact entertained the
same view of the relation between executive and deliberative bodies as
those Jacobin directors who made the _coup-d'état_ of Fructidor, 1797;
and the measures which he ultimately adopted were, though in a softened
form, those adopted by Barras and Laréveillère after the Royalist elections
in the sixth year of the Republic. To suspend the Constitution was not, he
suggested, to violate the Charta, for the Charta empowered the sovereign to
issue the ordinances necessary for the security of the State; and who but
the sovereign and his advisers could be the judges of this necessity? This
was simple enough; there was nevertheless among Polignac's colleagues some
doubt both as to the wisdom and as to the legality of his plans. King
Charles who, with all his bigotry, was anxious not to violate the letter of
the Charta, brooded long over the clause which defined the sovereign's
powers. At length he persuaded himself that his Minister's interpretation
was the correct one, accepted the resignation of the dissentients within
the Cabinet, and gave his sanction to the course which Polignac
recommended. [386]

[Elections of 1830.]

The result of the general election, which took place in June, surpassed all
the hopes of the Opposition and all the fears of the Court. The entire body
of Deputies which had voted the obnoxious address to the Crown in March was
returned, and the partisans of Government lost in addition fifty seats. The
Cabinet, which had not up to this time resolved upon the details of its
action, now deliberated upon several projects submitted to it, and, after
rejecting all plans that might have led to a compromise, determined to
declare the elections null and void, to silence the press, and to supersede
the existing electoral system by one that should secure the mastery of the
Government both at the polling-booths and in the Chamber itself. All this
was to be done by Royal Edict, and before the meeting of the new
Parliament. The date fixed for the opening of the Chambers had been placed
as late as possible in order to give time to General Bourmont to win the
victory in Africa from which the Court expected to reap so rich a harvest
of prestige. On the 9th of July news arrived that Algiers had fallen. The
announcement, which was everywhere made with the utmost pomp, fell flat on
the country. The conflict between the Court and the nation absorbed all
minds, and the rapturous congratulations of Bishops and Prefects scarcely
misled even the blind _côterie_ of the Tuileries. Public opinion was
no doubt with the Opposition; King Charles, however, had no belief that the
populace of Paris, which alone was to be dreaded as a fighting body, would
take up arms on behalf of the middle-class voters and journalists against
whom his Ordinances were to be directed. The populace neither read nor
voted: why should it concern itself with constitutional law? Or why, in a
matter that related only to the King and the Bourgeoisie, should it not
take part with the King against this new and bastard aristocracy which
lived on others' labour? Politicians who could not fight were troublesome
only when they were permitted to speak and to write. There was force enough
at the King's command to close the gates of the Chamber of Deputies, and to
break up the printing-presses of the journals; and if King Louis XVI. had
at last fallen by the hands of men of violence, it was only because he had
made concessions at first to orators and politicians. Therefore, without
dreaming that an armed struggle would be the immediate result of their
action, King Charles and Polignac determined to prevent the meeting of the
Chamber, and to publish, a week before the date fixed for its opening, the
Edicts which were to silence the brawl of faction and to vindicate
monarchical government in France.

[The Ordinances, July 26, 1830.]

Accordingly, on the 26th of July, a series of Ordinances appeared in the
_Moniteur_, signed by the King and counter-signed by the Ministers.
The first Ordinance forbade the publication of any journal without royal
permission; the second dissolved the Chamber of Deputies; the third raised
the property-qualification of voters, established a system of
double-election, altered the duration of Parliaments, and re-enacted the
obsolete clause of the Charta confining the initiative in all legislation
to the Government. Other Ordinances convoked a Chamber to be elected under
the new rules, and called to the Council of State a number of the most
notorious Ultra-Royalists and fanatics in France. Taken together, the
Ordinances left scarcely anything standing of the Constitutional and
Parliamentary system of the day. The blow fell first on the press, and the
first step in resistance was taken by the journalists of Paris, who, under
the leadership of the young Thiers, editor of the _National_,
published a protest declaring that they would treat the Ordinances as
illegal, and calling upon the Chambers and nation to join in this
resistance. For a while the journalists seemed likely to stand alone. Paris
at large remained quiet, and a body of the recently elected Deputies, to
whom the journalists appealed as representatives of the nation, proved
themselves incapable of any action or decision whatsoever. It was not from
these timid politicians, but from a body of obscure Republicans, that the
impulse proceeded which overthrew the Bourbon throne. Unrepresented in
Parliament and unrepresented in the press, there were a few active men who
had handed down the traditions of 1792, and who, in sympathy with the
Carbonari and other conspirators abroad, had during recent years founded
secret societies in Paris, and enlisted in the Republican cause a certain
number of workmen, of students, and of youths of the middle classes. While
the journalists discussed legal means of resistance, and the Deputies
awaited events, the Republican leaders met and determined upon armed
revolt. They were assisted, probably without direct concert, by the
printing firms and other employers of labour, who, in view of the general
suspension of the newspapers, closed their establishments on the morning of
July 27, and turned their workmen into the streets.

[July 27.]

[July 28.]

Thus on the day after the appearance of the Edicts the aspect of Paris
changed. Crowds gathered, and revolutionary cries were raised. Marmont, who
was suddenly ordered to take command of the troops, placed them around the
Tuileries, and captured two barricades which were erected in the
neighbourhood; but the populace was not yet armed, and no serious conflict
took place. In the evening Lafayette reached Paris, and the revolution had
now a real, though not an avowed, leader. A body of his adherents met
during the night at the office of the _National_, and, in spite of
Thiers' resistance, decided upon a general insurrection. Thiers himself,
who desired nothing but a legal and Parliamentary attack upon Charles X.,
quitted Paris to await events. The men who had out-voted him placed
themselves in communication with all the district committees of Paris, and
began the actual work of revolt by distributing arms. On the morning of
Wednesday, July 28th, the first armed bands attacked and captured the
arsenals and several private depôts of weapons and ammunition. Barricades
were erected everywhere. The insurgents swelled from hundreds to thousands,
and, converging on the old rallying-point of the Commune of Paris, they
seized the Hôtel de Ville, and hoisted the tricolor flag on its roof.
Marmont wrote to the King, declaring the position to be most serious, and
advising concession; he then put his troops in motion, and succeeded, after
a severe conflict, in capturing several points of vantage, and in expelling
the rebels from the Hôtel de Ville.

[July 29.]

In the meantime the Deputies, who were assembled at the house of one of
their number in pursuance of an agreement made on the previous day, gained
sufficient courage to adopt a protest declaring that in spite of the
Ordinances they were still the legal representatives of the nation. They
moreover sent a deputation to Marmont, begging him to put a stop to the
fighting, and offering their assistance in restoring order if the King
would withdraw his Edicts. Marmont replied that he could do nothing without
the King's command, but he despatched a second letter to St. Cloud, urging
compliance. The only answer which he received was a command to concentrate
his troops and to act in masses. The result of this was that the positions
which had been won by hard fighting were abandoned before evening, and that
the troops, famished and exhausted, were marched back through the streets
of Paris to the Tuileries. On the march some fraternised with the people,
others were surrounded and disarmed. All eastern Paris now fell into the
hands of the insurgents; the middle-class, as in 1789 and 1792, remained
inactive, and allowed the contest to be decided by the populace and the
soldiery. Messages from the capital constantly reached St. Cloud, but the
King so little understood his danger and so confidently reckoned on the
victory of the troops in the Tuileries that he played whist as usual during
the evening; and when the Duc de Mortemart, French Ambassador at St.
Petersburg, arrived at nightfall, and pressed for an audience, the King
refused to receive him until the next morning. When morning came, the march
of the insurgents against the Tuileries began. Position after position fell
into their hands. The regiments stationed in the Place Vendôme abandoned
their commander, and marched off to place themselves at the disposal of the
Deputies. Marmont ordered the Swiss Guard, which had hitherto defended the
Louvre, to replace them; and in doing so he left the Louvre for a moment
without any garrison. The insurgents saw the building empty, and rushed
into it. From the windows they commanded the Court of the Tuileries, where
the troops in reserve were posted; and soon after mid-day all was over. A
few isolated battalions fought and perished, but the mass of the soldiery
with their commander fell back upon the Place de la Concorde, and then
evacuated Paris. [387]

The Duke of Orleans was all this time in hiding. He had been warned that
the Court intended to arrest him, and, whether from fear of the Court or of
the populace, he had secreted himself at a hunting-lodge in his woods,
allowing none but his wife and his sister to know where he was concealed.
His partisans, of whom the rich and popular banker, Laffitte, was the most
influential among the Deputies, were watching for an opportunity to bring
forward his name; but their chances of success seemed slight. The Deputies
at large wished only for the withdrawal of the Ordinances, and were wholly
averse from a change of dynasty. It was only through the obstinacy of King
Charles himself, and as the result of a series of accidents, that the Crown
passed from the elder Bourbon line. King Charles would not hear of
withdrawing the Ordinances until the Tuileries had actually fallen; he then
gave way and charged the Duc de Mortemart to form a new Ministry, drawn
from the ranks of the Opposition. But instead of formally repealing the
Edicts by a public Decree, he sent two messengers to Paris to communicate
his change of purpose to the Deputies by word of mouth. The messengers
betook themselves to the Hôtel de Ville, where a municipal committee under
Lafayette had been installed; and, when they could produce no written
authority for their statements, they were referred by this committee to the
general body of Deputies, which was now sitting at Laffitte's house. The
Deputies also demanded a written guarantee. Laffitte and Thiers spoke in
favour of the Duke of Orleans, but the Assembly at large was still willing
to negotiate with Charles X., and only required the presence of the Duc de
Mortemart himself, and a copy of the Decree repealing the Ordinances.

[July 30.]

It was now near midnight. The messengers returned to St. Cloud, and were
not permitted to deliver their intelligence until the King awoke next
morning. Charles then signed the necessary document, and Mortemart set out
for Paris; but the night's delay had given the Orleanists time to act, and
before the King was up Thiers had placarded the streets of Paris with a
proclamation extolling Orleans as the prince devoted to the cause of the
Revolution, as the soldier of Jemappes, and the only constitutional King
now possible. Some hours after this manifesto had appeared the Deputies
again assembled at Laffitte's house, and waited for the appearance of
Mortemart. But they waited in vain. Mortemart's carriage was stopped on the
road from St. Cloud, and he was compelled to make his way on foot by a long
circuit and across a score of barricades. When he approached Laffitte's
house, half dead with heat and fatigue, he found that the Deputies had
adjourned to the Palais Bourbon, and, instead of following them, he ended
his journey at the Luxemburg, where the Peers were assembled. His absence
was turned to good account by the Orleanists. At the morning session the
proposition was openly made to call Louis Philippe to power; and when the
Deputies reassembled in the afternoon and the Minister still failed to
present himself, it was resolved to send a body of Peers and Deputies to
Louis Philippe to invite him to come to Paris and to assume the office of
Lieutenant-General of the kingdom. No opposition was offered to this
proposal in the House of Peers, and a deputation accordingly set out to
search for Louis Philippe at his country house at Neuilly. The prince was
not to be found; but his sister, who received the deputation, undertook
that he should duly appear in Paris. She then communicated with her brother
in his hiding-place, and induced him, in spite of the resistance of his
wife, to set out for the capital. He arrived at the Palais Royale late on
the night of the 30th. Early the next morning he received a deputation from
the Assembly, and accepted the powers which they offered him. A
proclamation was then published, announcing to the Parisians that in order
to save the country from anarchy and civil war the Duke of Orleans had
assumed the office of Lieutenant-General of the kingdom.

[The Hôtel de Ville.]

But there existed another authority in Paris beside the Assembly of
Representatives, and one that was not altogether disposed to permit Louis
Philippe and his satellites to reap the fruits of the people's victory.
Lafayette and the Municipal Committee, which occupied the Hôtel de Ville,
had transformed themselves into a provisional government, and sat
surrounded by the armed mob which had captured the Tuileries two days
before. No single person who had fought in the streets had risked his life
for the sake of making Louis Philippe king; in so far as the Parisians had
fought for any definite political idea, they had fought for the Republic.
It was necessary to reconcile both the populace and the provisional
government to the assumption of power by the new Regent; and with this
object Louis Philippe himself proceeded to the Hôtel de Ville, accompanied
by an escort of Deputies and Peers. It was a hazardous moment when he
entered the crowd on the Place de Grève; but Louis Philippe's readiness of
speech stood him in good stead, and he made his way unhurt through the
throng into the building, where Lafayette received him. Compliments and
promises were showered upon this veteran of 1789, who presently appeared on
a balcony and embraced Louis Philippe, while the Prince grasped the
tricolor flag, the flag which had not waved in Paris since 1815. The
spectacle was successful. The multitude shouted applause; and the few
determined men who still doubted the sincerity of a Bourbon and demanded
the proclamation of the Republic were put off with the promise of an
ultimate appeal to the French people.

[Charles X.]

In the meantime Charles X. had withdrawn to Rambouillet, accompanied by the
members of his family and by a considerable body of troops. Here the news
reached him that Orleans had accepted from the Chambers the office of
Lieutenant-General. It was a severe blow to the old king, who, while others
doubted of Louis Philippe's loyalty, had still maintained his trust in this
prince's fidelity. For a moment he thought of retiring beyond the Loire and
risking a civil war; but the troops now began to disperse, and Charles,
recognising that his cause was hopeless, abdicated together with the
Dauphin in favour of his grandson the young Chambord, then called Duc de
Bordeaux. He wrote to Louis Philippe, appointing him, as if on his own
initiative, Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, and required him to proclaim
Henry V. king, and to undertake the government during the new sovereign's
minority. It is doubtful whether Louis Philippe had at this time formed any
distinct resolve, and whether his answer to Charles X. was inspired by mere
good nature or by conscious falsehood; for while replying officially that
he would lay the king's letter before the Chambers, he privately wrote to
Charles X. that he would retain his new office only until he could safely
place the Duc de Bordeaux upon the throne. Having thus soothed the old
man's pride, Louis Philippe requested him to hasten his departure from the
neighbourhood of Paris; and when Charles ignored the message, he sent out
some bands of the National Guard to terrify him into flight. This device
succeeded, and the royal family, still preserving the melancholy ceremonial
of a court, moved slowly through France towards the western coast. At
Cherbourg they took ship and crossed to England, where they were received
as private persons. Among the British nation at large the exiled Bourbons
excited but little sympathy. They were, however, permitted to take up their
abode in the palace of Holyrood, and here Charles X. resided for two years.
But neither the climate nor the society of the Scottish capital offered any
attraction to the old and failing chief of a fallen dynasty. He sought a
more congenial shelter in Austria, and died at Goritz in November, 1836.

[Louis Philippe made King, Aug. 7.]

The first public notice of the abdication of King Charles was given by
Louis Philippe in the Chamber of Deputies, which was convoked by him, as
Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, on the 3rd of August. In addressing the
Deputies, Louis Philippe stated that he had received a letter containing
the abdication both of the King and of the Dauphin, but he uttered no
single word regarding the Duc de Bordeaux, in whose favour both his
grandfather and his uncle had renounced their rights. Had Louis Philippe
mentioned that the abdications were in fact conditional, and had he
declared himself protector of the Duc de Bordeaux during his minority,
there is little doubt that the legitimate heir would have been peaceably
accepted both by the Chamber and by Paris. Louis Philippe himself had up to
this time done nothing that was inconsistent with the assumption of a mere
Regency; the Chamber had not desired a change of dynasty; and, with the
exception of Lafayette, the men who had actually made the Revolution bore
as little goodwill to an Orleanist as to a Bourbon monarchy. But from the
time when Louis Philippe passed over in silence the claims of the grandson
of Charles X., his own accession to the throne became inevitable. It was
left to an obscure Deputy to propose that the crown should be offered to
Louis Philippe, accompanied by certain conditions couched in the form of
modifications of the Charta. The proposal was carried in the Chamber on the
7th of August, and the whole body of representatives marched to the Palais
Royale to acquaint the prince with its resolution. Louis Philippe, after
some conventional expressions of regret, declared that he could not resist
the call of his country. When the Lower Chamber had thus disposed of the
crown, the House of Peers, which had proved itself a nullity throughout the
crisis, adopted the same resolution, and tendered its congratulations in a
similar fashion. Two days later Louis Philippe took the oath to the Charta
as modified by the Assembly, and was proclaimed King of the French.

[Nature of the Revolution of 1830.]

Thus ended a revolution, which, though greeted with enthusiasm at the time,
has lost much of its splendour and importance in the later judgment of
mankind. In comparison with the Revolution of 1789, the movement which
overthrew the Bourbons in 1830 was a mere flutter on the surface. It was
unconnected with any great change in men's ideas, and it left no great
social or legislative changes behind it. Occasioned by a breach of the
constitution on the part of the Executive Government, it resulted mainly in
the transfer of administrative power from one set of politicians to
another: the alterations which it introduced into the constitution itself
were of no great importance. France neither had an absolute Government
before 1830, nor had it a popular Government afterwards. Instead of a
representative of divine right, attended by guards of nobles and counselled
by Jesuit confessors, there was now a citizen-king, who walked about the
streets of Paris with an umbrella under his arm and sent his sons to the
public schools, but who had at heart as keen a devotion to dynastic
interests as either of his predecessors, and a much greater capacity for
personal rule. The bonds which kept the entire local administration of
France in dependence upon the central authority were not loosened;
officialism remained as strong as ever; the franchise was still limited to
a mere fraction of the nation. On the other hand, within the administration
itself the change wrought by the July Revolution was real and lasting. It
extinguished the political power of the clerical interest. Not only were
the Bishops removed from the House of Peers, but throughout all departments
of Government the influence of the clergy, which had been so strong under
Charles X., vanished away. The State took a distinctly secular colour. The
system of public education was regulated with such police-like
exclusiveness that priests who insisted upon opening schools of their own
for Catholic teaching were enabled to figure as champions of civil liberty
and of freedom of opinion against despotic power. The noblesse lost
whatever political influence it had regained during the Restoration. The
few surviving Regicides who had been banished in 1815 were recalled to
France, among them the terrorist Barrère, who was once more returned to the
Assembly. But the real winners in the Revolution of 1830 were not the men
of extremes, but the middle-class of France. This was the class which Louis
Philippe truly represented; and the force which for eighteen years kept
Louis Philippe on the throne was the middle-class force of the National
Guard of Paris. Against this sober, prosaic, unimaginative power there
struggled the hot and restless spirit which had been let loose by the
overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty, and which, fired at once with the
political ideal of a Republic, with dreams of the regeneration of Europe by
French armies, and with the growing antagonism between the labouring class
and the owners of property, threatened for awhile to overthrow the
newly-constituted monarchy in France, and to plunge Europe into war. The
return of the tricolor flag, the long-silenced strains of the Republic and
the Empire, the sense of victory with which men on the popular side
witnessed the expulsion of the dynasty which had been forced upon France
after Waterloo, revived that half-romantic military ardour which had
undertaken the liberation of Europe in 1792. France appeared once more in
the eyes of enthusiasts as the deliverer of nations. The realities of the
past epoch of French military aggression, its robberies, its corruption,
the execrations of its victims, were forgotten; and when one people after
another took up the shout of liberty that was raised in Paris, and
insurrections broke out in every quarter of Europe, it was with difficulty
that Louis Philippe and the few men of caution about him could prevent the
French nation from rushing into war.

[Affairs in Belgium.]

The State first affected by the events of July was the kingdom of the
Netherlands. The creation of this kingdom, in which the Belgian provinces
formerly subject to Austria were united with Holland to serve as an
effective barrier against French aggression on the north, had been one of
Pitt's most cherished schemes, and it had been carried into effect ten
years after his death by the Congress of Vienna. National and religious
incongruities had been little considered by the statesmen of that day, and
at the very moment of union the Catholic bishops of Belgium had protested
against a constitution which gave equal toleration to all religions under
the rule of a Protestant King. The Belgians had been uninterruptedly united
with France for the twenty years preceding 1814; the French language was
not only the language of their literature, but the spoken language of the
upper classes; and though the Flemish portion of the population was nearly
related to the Dutch, this element had not then asserted itself with the
distinctness and energy which it has since developed. The antagonism
between the northern and the southern Netherlands, though not insuperable,
was sufficiently great to make a harmonious union between the two countries
a work of difficulty, and the Government of The Hague had not taken the
right course to conciliate its opponents. The Belgians, though more
numerous, were represented by fewer members in the National Assembly than
the Dutch. Offices were filled by strangers from Holland; finance was
governed by a regard for Dutch interests; and the Dutch language was made
the official language for the whole kingdom. But the chief grievances were
undoubtedly connected with the claims of the clerical party in Belgium to a
monopoly of spiritual power and the exclusive control of education. The one
really irreconcilable enemy of the Protestant House of Orange was the
Church; and the governing impulse in the conflicts which preceded the
dissolution of the kingdom of the Netherlands in 1830 sprang from the same
clerical interest which had thrown Belgium into revolt against the Emperor
Joseph forty years before. There was again seen the same strange phenomenon
of a combination between the Church and a popular or even revolutionary
party. For the sake of an alliance against a constitution distasteful to
both, the clergy of Belgium accepted the democratic principles of the
political Opposition, and the Opposition consented for a while to desist
from their attacks upon the Papacy. The contract was faithfully observed on
both sides until the object for which it was made was attained. [388]

[Belgian Revolution, August, 1830.]

For some months before the Revolution of July, 1830, the antagonism between
the Belgians and their Government had been so violent that no great shock
from outside was necessary to produce an outbreak. The convulsions of Paris
were at once felt at Brussels, and on the 25th of August the performance of
a revolutionary opera in that city gave the signal for the commencement of
insurrection. From the capital the rebellion spread from town to town
throughout the southern Netherlands. The King summoned the Estates General,
and agreed to the establishment of an administration for Belgium separate
from that of Holland: but the storm was not allayed; and the appearance of
a body of Dutch troops at Brussels was sufficient to dispel the expectation
of a peaceful settlement. Barricades were erected; a conflict took place in
the streets; and the troops, unable to carry the city by assault, retired
to the outskirts and kept up a desultory attack for several days. They then
withdrew, and a provisional government, which was immediately established,
declared the independence of Belgium. For a moment there appeared some
possibility that the Crown Prince of Holland, who had from the first
assumed the part of mediator, might be accepted as sovereign of the
newly-formed State; but the growing violence of the insurrection, the
activity of French emissaries and volunteers, and the bombardment of
Antwerp by the Dutch soldiers who garrisoned its citadel, made an end of
all such hopes. Belgium had won its independence, and its connection with
the House of Orange could be re-established only by force of arms.

[France and the Belgian Revolution.]

[France and England.]

The accomplishment of this revolution in one of the smallest Continental
States threatened to involve all Europe in war. Though not actually
effected under the auspices of a French army, it was undoubtedly to some
extent effected in alliance with the French revolutionary party. It broke
up a kingdom established by the European Treaties of 1814; and it was so
closely connected with the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy as to be
scarcely distinguishable from those cases in which the European Powers had
pledged themselves to call their armies into the field. Louis Philippe,
however, had been recognised by most of the European Courts as the only
possible alternative to a French Republic; and a general disposition
existed to second any sincere effort that should be made by him to prevent
the French nation from rushing into war. This was especially the case with
England; and it was to England that Louis Philippe turned for co-operation
in the settlement of the Belgian question. Louis Philippe himself had every
possible reason for desiring to keep the peace. If war broke out, France
would be opposed to all the Continental Powers together. Success was in the
last degree improbable; it could only be hoped for by a revival of the
revolutionary methods and propaganda of 1793; and failure, even for a
moment, would certainly cost him his throne, and possibly his life. His
interest no less than his temperament made him the strenuous, though
concealed, opponent of the war-party in the Assembly; and he found in the
old diplomatist who had served alike under the Bourbons, the Republic, and
the Empire, an ally thoroughly capable of pursuing his own wise though
unpopular policy of friendship and co-operation with England. Talleyrand,
while others were crying for a revenge for Waterloo, saw that the first
necessity for France was to rescue it from its isolation; and as at the
Congress of Vienna he had detached Austria and England from the two
northern Courts, so now, before attempting to gain any extension of
territory, he sought to make France safe against the hostility of the
Continent by allying it with at least one great Power. Russia had become an
enemy instead of a friend. The expulsion of the Bourbons had given mortal
offence to the Czar Nicholas, and neither Austria nor Prussia was likely to
enter into close relations with a Government founded upon revolution.
England alone seemed a possible ally, and it was to England that the French
statesman of peace turned in the Belgian crisis. Talleyrand, now nearly
eighty years old, came as ambassador to London, where he had served in
1792. He addressed himself to Wellington and to the new King, William IV.,
assuring them that, under the Government of Louis Philippe, France would
not seek to use the Belgian revolution for its own aggrandisement; and,
with his old aptness in the invention of general principles to suit a
particular case, he laid down the principle of non-intervention as one that
ought for the future to govern the policy of Europe. His efforts were
successful. So complete an understanding was established between France and
England on the Belgian question, that all fear of an armed intervention of
the Eastern Courts on behalf of the King of Holland, which would have
rendered a war with France inevitable, passed away. The regulation of
Belgian affairs was submitted to a Conference at London. Hostilities were
stopped, and the independence of the new kingdom was recognised in
principle by the Conference before the end of the year. A Protocol defining
the frontiers of Belgium and Holland, and apportioning to each State its
share in the national debt, was signed by the representatives of the Powers
in January, 1831. [389]

[Leopold elected King, June 4.]

Thus far, a crisis which threatened the peace of Europe had been surmounted
with unexpected ease. But the first stage of the difficulty alone was
passed; it still remained for the Powers to provide a king for Belgium, and
to gain the consent of the Dutch and Belgian Governments to the territorial
arrangements drawn up for them. The Belgians themselves, with whom a
connection with France was popular, were disposed to elect as their
sovereign the Duc de Nemours, second son of Louis Philippe; and although
Louis Philippe officially refused his sanction to this scheme, which in the
eyes of all Europe would have turned Belgium into a French dependency, he
privately encouraged its prosecution after a Bonapartist candidate, the son
of Eugène Beauharnais, had appeared in the field. The result was that the
Duc de Nemours was elected king on the 3rd of February, 1831. Against this
appointment the Conference of the Powers at London had already pronounced
its veto, and the British Government let it be understood that it would
resist any such extension of French influence by force. Louis Philippe now
finally refused the crown for his son, and, the Bonapartist candidate being
withdrawn, the two rival Powers agreed in recommending Prince Leopold of
Saxe-Coburg, on the understanding that, if elected King of Belgium, he
should marry a daughter of Louis Philippe. The Belgians fell in with the
advice given them, and elected Leopold on the 4th of June. He accepted the
crown, subject to the condition that the London Conference should modify in
favour of Belgium some of the provisions relating to the frontiers and to
the finances of the new State which had been laid down by the Conference,
and which the Belgian Government had hitherto refused to accept.

[Settlement of the Belgian frontier.]

The difficulty of arranging the Belgian frontier arose principally from the
position of the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg. This territory, though subject to
Austria before the French Revolution, had always been treated as distinct
from the body of the Austrian Netherlands. When, at the peace of 1814, it
was given to the King of Holland in substitution for the ancient
possessions of his family at Nassau, its old character as a member of the
German federal union was restored to it, so that the King of Holland in
respect of this portion of his dominions became a German prince, and the
fortress of Luxemburg, the strongest in Europe after Gibraltar, was liable
to occupation by German troops. The population of the Duchy had, however,
joined the Belgians in their revolt, and, with the exception of the
fortress itself, the territory had passed into possession of the Belgian
Government. In spite of this actual overthrow of Dutch rule, the Conference
of London had attached such preponderating importance to the military and
international relations of Luxemburg that it had excluded the whole of the
Duchy from the new Belgian State, and declared it still to form part of the
dominions of the King of Holland. The first demand of Leopold was for the
reversal or modification of this decision, and the Powers so far gave way
as to substitute for the declaration of January a series of articles, in
which the question of Luxemburg was reserved for future settlement. The
King of Holland had assented to the January declaration; on hearing of its
abandonment, he took up arms, and threw fifty thousand men into Belgium.
Leopold appealed to France for assistance, and a French army immediately
crossed the frontier. The Dutch now withdrew, and the French in their turn
were recalled, after Leopold had signed a treaty undertaking to raze the
fortifications of five towns on his southern border. The Conference again
took up its work, and produced a third scheme, in which the territory of
Luxemburg was divided between Holland and Belgium. This was accepted by
Belgium, and rejected by Holland. The consequence was that a treaty was
made between Leopold and the Powers; and at the beginning of 1832 the
kingdom of Belgium, as defined by the third award of the Conference, was
recognised by all the Courts, Lord Palmerston on behalf of England
resolutely refusing to France even the slightest addition of territory, on
the ground that, if annexations once began, all security for the
continuance of peace would be at an end. On this wise and firm policy the
concert of Europe in the establishment of the Belgian kingdom was
successfully maintained; and it only remained for the Western Powers to
overcome the resistance of the King of Holland, who still held the citadel
of Antwerp and declined to listen either to reason or authority. A French
army corps was charged with the task of besieging the citadel; an English
fleet blockaded the river Scheldt. After a severe bombardment the citadel
surrendered. Hostilities ceased, and negotiations for a definitive
settlement recommenced. As, however, the Belgians were in actual occupation
of all Luxemburg with the exception of the fortress, they had no motive to
accelerate a settlement which would deprive them of part of their existing
possessions; on the other hand, the King of Holland held back through mere
obstinacy. Thus the provisional state of affairs was prolonged for year
after year, and it was not until April, 1839, that the final Treaty of
Peace between Belgium and Holland was executed.

[Affairs of Poland.]

The consent of the Eastern Powers to the overthrow of the kingdom of the
United Netherlands, and to the establishment of a State based upon a
revolutionary movement, would probably have been harder to gain if in the
autumn of 1830 Russia had been free to act with all its strength. But at
this moment an outbreak took place in Poland, which required the
concentration of all the Czar's forces within his own border. The conflict
was rather a war of one armed nation against another than the insurrection
of a people against its government. Poland--that is to say, the territory
which had formerly constituted the Grand Duchy of Warsaw--had, by the
treaties of 1814, been established as a separate kingdom, subject to the
Czar of Russia, but not forming part of the Russian Empire. It possessed an
administration and an army of its own, and the meetings of its Diet gave to
it a species of parliamentary government to which there was nothing
analogous within Russia proper. During the reign of Alexander the
constitutional system of Poland had, on the whole, been respected; and
although the real supremacy of an absolute monarch at St. Petersburg had
caused the Diet to act as a body in opposition to the Russian Government,
the personal connection existing between Alexander and the Poles had
prevented any overt rebellion during his own life-time. But with the
accession of Nicholas all such individual sympathy passed away, and the
hard realities of the actual relation between Poland and the Court of
Russia came into full view. In the conspiracies of 1825 a great number of
Poles were implicated. Eight of these persons, after a preliminary inquiry,
were placed on trial before the Senate at Warsaw, which, in spite of strong
evidence of their guilt, acquitted them. Pending the decision, Nicholas
declined to convoke the Diet: he also stationed Russian troops in Poland,
and violated the constitution by placing Russians in all branches of the
administration. Even without these grievances the hostility of the mass of
the Polish noblesse to Russia would probably have led sooner or later to
insurrection. The peasantry, ignorant and degraded, were but instruments in
the hands of their territorial masters. In so far as Poland had rights of
self-government, these rights belonged almost exclusively to the nobles, or
landed proprietors, a class so numerous that they have usually been
mistaken in Western Europe for the Polish nation itself. The so-called
emancipation of the serfs, effected by Napoleon after wresting the Grand
Duchy of Warsaw from Prussia in 1807, had done little for the mass of the
population; for, while abolishing the legal condition of servitude,
Napoleon had given the peasant no vestige of proprietorship in his holding,
and had consequently left him as much at the mercy of his landlord as he
was before. The name of freedom appears in fact to have worked actual
injury to the peasant; for in the enjoyment of a pretended power of free
contract he was left without that protection of the officers of State
which, under the Prussian regime from 1795 to 1807, had shielded him from
the tyranny of his lord. It has been the fatal, the irremediable bane of
Poland that its noblesse, until too late, saw no country, no right, no law,
outside itself. The very measures of interference on the part of the Czar
which this caste resented as unconstitutional were in part directed against
the abuse of its own privileges; and although in 1830 a section of the
nobles had learnt the secret of their country's fall, and were prepared to
give the serf the real emancipation of proprietorship, no universal impulse
worked in this direction, nor could the wrong of ages be undone in the
tumult of war and revolution.

[Insurrection at Warsaw, Nov. 29.]

A sharp distinction existed between the narrow circle of the highest
aristocracy of Poland and the mass of the poor and warlike noblesse. The
former, represented by men like Czartoryski, the friend of Alexander I. and
ex-Minister of Russia, understood the hopelessness of any immediate
struggle with the superior power, and advocated the politic development of
such national institutions as were given to Poland by the constitution of
1815, institutions which were certainly sufficient to preserve Poland from
absorption by Russia, and to keep alive the idea of the ultimate
establishment of its independence. It was among the lesser nobility, among
the subordinate officers of the army and the population of Warsaw itself,
who jointly formed the so-called democratic party, that the spirit of
revolt was strongest. Plans for an outbreak had been made during the
Turkish war of 1828; but unhappily this opportunity, which might have been
used with fatal effect against Russia, was neglected, and it was left for
the French Revolution of 1830 to kindle an untimely and ineffective flame.
The memory of Napoleon's campaigns and the wild voices of French democracy
filled the patriots at Warsaw with vain hopes of a military union with
western Liberalism, and overpowered the counsels of men who understood the
state of Europe better. Revolt broke out on the 29th of November, 1830. The
Polish regiments in Warsaw joined the insurrection, and the Russian troops,
under the Grand Duke Constantine, withdrew from the capital, where their
leader had narrowly escaped with his life. [390]

[Attempted negotiation with the Czar.]

The Government of Poland had up to this time been in the hands of a Council
nominated by the Czar as King of Poland, and controlled by instructions
from a secretary at St. Petersburg. The chief of the Council was Lubecki, a
Pole devoted to the Emperor Nicholas. On the victory of the insurrection at
Warsaw, the Council was dissolved and a provisional Government installed.
Though the revolt was the work of the so-called democratic party, the
influence of the old governing families of the highest aristocracy was
still so great that power was by common consent placed in their hands.
Czartoryski became president, and the policy adopted by himself and his
colleagues was that of friendly negotiation with Russia. The insurrection
of November was treated not as the beginning of a national revolt, but as a
mere disturbance occasioned by unconstitutional acts of the Government. So
little did the committee understand the character of the Emperor Nicholas,
as to imagine that after the expulsion of his soldiers and the overthrow of
his Ministers at Warsaw he would peaceably make the concessions required of
him, and undertake for the future faithfully to observe the Polish
constitution. Lubecki and a second official were sent to St. Petersburg to
present these demands, and further (though this was not seriously intended)
to ask that the constitution should be introduced into all the Russian
provinces which had once formed part of the Polish State. The reception
given to the envoys at the frontier was of an ominous character. They were
required to describe themselves as officers about to present a report to
the Czar, inasmuch as no representatives of rebels in arms could be
received into Russia. Lubecki appears now to have shaken the dust of Poland
off his feet; his colleague pursued his mission, and was admitted to the
Czar's presence. Nicholas, while expressing himself in language of injured
tenderness, and disclaiming all desire to punish the innocent with the
guilty, let it be understood that Poland had but two alternatives,
unconditional submission or annihilation. The messenger who in the
meanwhile carried back to Warsaw the first despatches of the envoy reported
that the roads were already filled with Russian regiments moving on their
prey.

[Diebitsch invades Poland, Feb. 1831.]

Six weeks of precious time were lost through the illusion of the Polish
Government that an accommodation with the Emperor Nicholas was possible.
Had the insurrection at Warsaw been instantly followed by a general levy
and the invasion of Lithuania, the resources of this large province might
possibly have been thrown into the scale against Russia. Though the mass of
the Lithuanian population, in spite or several centuries of union with
Poland, had never been assimilated to the dominant race, and remained in
language and creed more nearly allied to the Russians than the Poles, the
nobles formed an integral part of the Polish nation, and possessed
sufficient power over their serfs to drive them into the field to fight for
they knew not what. The Russian garrisons in Lithuania were not strong, and
might easily have been overpowered by a sudden attack. When once the
population of Warsaw had risen in arms against Nicholas, the only
possibility of success lay in the extension of the revolt over the whole of
the semi-Polish provinces, and in a general call to arms. But beside other
considerations which disinclined the higher aristocracy at Warsaw to
extreme measures, they were influenced by a belief that the Powers of
Europe might intervene on behalf of the constitution of the Polish kingdom
as established by the treaty of Vienna; while, if the struggle passed
beyond the borders of that kingdom, it would become a revolutionary
movement to which no Court could lend its support. It was not until the
envoy returned from St. Petersburg bearing the answer of the Emperor
Nicholas that the democratic party carried all before it, and all hopes of
a peaceful compromise vanished away. The Diet then passed a resolution
declaring that the House of Romanoff had forfeited the Polish crown, and
preparations began for a struggle for life or death with Russia. But the
first moments when Russia stood unguarded and unready had been lost beyond
recall. Troops had thronged westwards into Lithuania; the garrisons in the
fortresses had been raised to their full strength; and in February, 1831,
Diebitsch took up the offensive, and crossed the Polish frontier with a
hundred and twenty thousand men.

[Campaign in Poland, 1831.]

[Capture of Warsaw, Sept. 8, 1831.]

The Polish army, though far inferior in numbers to the enemy which it had
to meet, was no contemptible foe. Among its officers there were many who
had served in Napoleon's campaigns; it possessed, however, no general
habituated to independent command; and the spirit of insubordination and
self-will, which had wrought so much ruin in Poland, was still ready to
break out when defeat had impaired the authority of the nominal chiefs. In
the first encounters the advancing Russian army was gallantly met; and,
although the Poles were forced to fall back upon Warsaw, the losses
sustained by Diebitsch were so serious that he had to stay his operations
and to wait for reinforcements. In March the Poles took up the offensive
and surprised several isolated divisions of the enemy; their general,
however, failed to push his advantages with the necessary energy and
swiftness; the junction of the Russians was at length effected, and on the
26th of May the Poles were defeated after obstinate resistance in a pitched
battle at Ostrolenka. Cholera now broke out in the Russian camp. Both
Diebitsch and the Grand Duke Constantine were carried off in the midst of
the campaign, and some months more were added to the struggle of Poland,
hopeless as this had now become. Incursions were made into Lithuania and
Podolia, but without result. Paskiewitch, the conqueror of Kars, was called
up to take the post left vacant by the death of his rival. New masses of
Russian troops came in place of those who had perished in battle and in the
hospitals; and while the Governments of Western Europe lifted no hand on
behalf of Polish independence, Prussia, alarmed lest the revolt should
spread into its own Polish provinces, assisted the operations of the
Russian general by supplying stores and munition of war. Blow after blow
fell upon the Polish cause. Warsaw itself became the prey of disorder,
intrigue, and treachery; and at length the Russian army made its entrance
into the capital, and the last soldiers of Poland laid down their arms, or
crossed into Prussian or Austrian territory. The revolt had been rashly and
unwisely begun: its results were fatal and lamentable. The constitution of
Poland was abolished; it ceased to be a separate kingdom, and became a
province of the Russian Empire. Its defenders were exiles over the face of
Europe or forgotten in Siberia. All that might have been won by the gradual
development of its constitutional liberties without breach with the Czar's
sovereignty was sacrificed. The future of Poland, like that of Russia
itself, now depended on the enlightenment and courage of the Imperial
Government, and on that alone. The very existence of a Polish nationality
and language seemed for a while to be threatened by the measures of
repression that followed the victory of 1831: and if it be true that
Russian autocracy has at length done for the Polish peasants what their
native masters during centuries of ascendency refused to do, this
emancipation would probably not have come the later for the preservation of
some relics of political independence, nor would it have had the less value
if unaccompanied by the proscription of so great a part of that class which
had once been held to constitute the Polish nation. [391]

[Insurrection in the Papal States, Feb., 1831.]

During the conflict on the banks of the Vistula, the attitude of the
Austrian Government had been one of watchful neutrality. Its own Polish
territory was not seriously menaced with disturbance, for in a great part
of Galicia the population, being of Ruthenian stock and belonging to the
Greek Church, had nothing in common with the Polish and Catholic noblesse
of their province, and looked back upon the days of Polish dominion as a
time of suffering and wrong. Austria's danger in any period of European
convulsion lay as yet rather on the side of Italy than on the East, and the
vigour of its policy in that quarter contrasted with the equanimity with
which it watched the struggle of its Slavic neighbours. Since the
suppression of the Neapolitan constitutional movement in 1821, the
Carbonari and other secret societies of Italy had lost nothing of their
activity. Their head-quarters had been removed from Southern Italy to the
Papal States, and the numerous Italian exiles in France and elsewhere kept
up a busy communication at once with French revolutionary leaders like
Lafayette and with the enemies of the established governments in Italy
itself. The death of Pope Pius VIII., on November 30, 1830, and the
consequent paralysis of authority within the Ecclesiastical States, came at
an opportune moment; assurances of support arrived from Paris; and the
Italian leaders resolved upon a general insurrection throughout the minor
Principalities on the 5th of February, 1831. Anticipating the signal,
Menotti, chief of a band of patriots at Modena, who appears to have been
lured on by the Grand Duke himself, assembled his partisans on February 3.
He was overpowered and imprisoned; but the outbreak of the insurrection in
Bologna, and its rapid extension over the northern part of the Papal
States, soon caused the Grand Duke to fly to Austrian territory, carrying
his prisoner Menotti with him, whom he subsequently put to death. The new
Pope, Gregory XVI., had scarcely been elected when the report reached him
that Bologna had declared the temporal power of the Papacy to be at an end.
Uncertain of the character of the revolt, he despatched Cardinal Benvenuti
northwards, to employ conciliation or force as occasion might require. The
Legate fell into the hands of the insurgents; the revolt spread southwards;
and Gregory, now hopeless of subduing it by the forces at his own command,
called upon Austria for assistance. [392]

[Attitude of France.]

The principle which, since the Revolution of July, the government of France
had repeatedly laid down as the future basis of European politics was that
of non-intervention. It had disclaimed any purpose of interfering with the
affairs of its neighbours, and had required in return that no foreign
intervention should take place in districts which, like Belgium and Savoy,
adjoined its own frontier. But there existed no real unity of purpose in
the councils of Louis Philippe. The Ministry had one voice for the
representatives of foreign powers, another for the Chamber of Deputies, and
another for Lafayette and the bands of exiles and conspirators who were
under his protection. The head of the government at the beginning of 1831
was Laffitte, a weak politician, dominated by revolutionary sympathies and
phrases, but incapable of any sustained or resolute action, and equally
incapable of resisting Louis Philippe after the King had concluded his
performance of popular leader, and assumed his real character as the wary
and self-seeking chief of a reigning house. Whether the actual course of
French policy would be governed by the passions of the streets or by the
timorousness of Louis Philippe was from day to day a matter of conjecture.
The official answer given to the inquiries of the Austrian ambassador as to
the intentions of France in case of an Austrian intervention in Italy was,
that such intervention might be tolerated in Parma and Modena, which
belonged to sovereigns immediately connected with the Hapsburgs, but that
if it was extended to the Papal States war with France would be probable,
and if extended to Piedmont, certain. On this reply Metternich, who saw
Austria's own dominion in Italy once more menaced by the success of an
insurrectionary movement, had to form his decision. He could count on the
support of Russia in case of war; he knew well the fears of Louis Philippe,
and knew that he could work on these fears both by pointing to the presence
of the young Louis Bonaparte and his brother with the Italian insurgents as
evidence of the Bonapartist character of the movement, and by hinting that
in the last resort he might himself let loose upon France Napoleon's son,
the Duke of Reichstadt, now growing to manhood at Vienna, before whom Louis
Philippe's throne would have collapsed as speedily as that of Louis XVIII.
in 1814. Where weakness existed, Metternich was quick to divine it and to
take advantage of it. He rightly gauged Louis Philippe. Taking at their
true value the threats of the French Government, he declared that it was
better for Austria to fall, if necessary, by war than by revolution; and,
resolving at all hazards to suppress the Roman insurrection, he gave orders
to the Austrian troops to enter the Papal States.

[Austrians suppress Roman revolt, March, 1831.]

[Casimir Perier, March, 1831.]

The military resistance which the insurgents could offer to the advance of
the Pope's Austrian deliverers was insignificant, and order was soon
restored. But all Europe expected the outbreak of war between Austria and
France. The French ambassador at Constantinople had gone so far as to offer
the Sultan an offensive and defensive alliance, and to urge him to make
preparations for an attack upon both Austria and Russia on their southern
frontiers. A despatch from the ambassador reached Paris describing the
warlike overtures he had made to the Porte. Louis Philippe saw that if this
despatch reached the hands of Laffitte and the war party in the Council of
Ministers the preservation of peace would be almost impossible. In concert
with Sebastiani, the Foreign Minister, he concealed the despatch from
Laffitte. The Premier discovered the trick that had been played upon him,
and tendered his resignation. It was gladly accepted by Louis Philippe.
Laffitte quitted office, begging pardon of God and man for the part that he
had taken in raising Louis Philippe to the throne. His successor was
Casimir Perier, a man of very different mould; resolute, clear-headed, and
immovably true to his word; a constitutional statesman of the strictest
type, intolerant of any species of disorder, and a despiser of popular
movements, but equally proof against royal intrigues, and as keen to
maintain the constitutional system of France against the Court on one side
and the populace on the other as he was to earn for France the respect of
foreign powers by the abandonment of a policy of adventure, and the steady
adherence to the principles of international obligation which he had laid
down. Under his firm hand the intrigues of the French Government with
foreign revolutionists ceased; it was felt throughout Europe that peace was
still possible, and that if war was undertaken by France it would be
undertaken only under conditions which would make any moral union of all
the great Powers against France impossible. The Austrian expedition into
the Papal States had already begun, and the revolutionary Government had
been suppressed; the most therefore that Casimir Perier could demand was
that the evacuation of the occupied territory should take place as soon as
possible, and that Austria should add its voice to that of the other Powers
in urging the Papal Government to reform its abuses. Both demands were
granted. For the first time Austria appeared as the advocate of something
like a constitutional system. A Conference held at Rome agreed upon a
scheme of reforms to be recommended to the Pope; the prospects of peace
grew daily fairer; and in July, 1831, the last Austrian soldiers quitted
the Ecclesiastical States. [393]

[Second Austrian intervention, Jan., 1832.]

[French occupy Ancona, February, 1832.]

It now remained to be seen whether Pope Gregory and his cardinals had the
intelligence and good-will necessary for carrying out the reforms on the
promise of which France had abstained from active intervention. If any such
hopes existed they were doomed to speedy disappointment. The apparatus of
priestly maladministration was restored in all its ancient deformity. An
amnesty which had been promised by the Legate Benvenuti was disregarded,
and the Pope set himself to strengthen his authority by enlisting new bands
of ruffians and adventurers under the standard of St. Peter. Again
insurrection broke out, and again at the Pope's request the Austrians
crossed the frontier (January, 1832). Though their appearance was fatal to
the cause of liberty, they were actually welcomed as protectors in towns
which had been exposed to the tender mercies of the Papal condottieri.
There was no disorder, no severity, where the Austrian commandants held
sway; but their mere presence in central Italy was a threat to European
peace; and Casimir Perier was not the man to permit Austria to dominate in
Italy at its will. Without waiting for negotiations, he despatched a French
force to Ancona, and seized this town before the Austrians could approach
it. The rival Powers were now face to face in Italy; but Perier had no
intention of forcing on war if his opponent was still willing to keep the
peace. Austria accepted the situation, and made no attempt to expel the
French from the position they had seized. Casimir Perier, now on his
death-bed, defended the step that he had taken against the remonstrances of
ambassadors and against the protests of the Pope, and declared the presence
of the French at Ancona to be no incentive to rebellion, but the mere
assertion of the rights of a Power which had as good a claim to be in
central Italy as Austria itself. Had his life been prolonged, he would
probably have insisted upon the execution of the reforms which the Powers
had urged upon the Papal government, and have made the occupation of Ancona
an effectual means for reaching this end. But with his death the wrongs of
the Italians themselves and the question of a reformed government in the
Papal States gradually passed out of sight. France and Austria jealously
watched one another on the debatable land; the occupation became a mere
incident of the balance of power, and was prolonged for year after year,
until, in 1838, the Austrians having finally withdrawn all their troops,
the French peacefully handed over the citadel of Ancona to the Holy See.

[Prussia in 1830.]

[The Zollverein, 1828-1836.]

The arena in which we have next to follow the effects of the July
Revolution, in action and counter-action, is Germany. It has been seen that
in the southern German States an element of representative government, if
weak, yet not wholly ineffective, had come into being soon after 1815, and
had survived the reactionary measures initiated by the conference of
Ministers at Carlsbad. In Prussia the promises of King Frederick William to
his people had never been fulfilled. Years had passed since exaggerated
rumours of conspiracy had served as an excuse for withholding the
Constitution. Hardenberg had long been dead; the foreign policy of the
country had taken a freer tone; the rigours of the police-system had
departed; but the nation remained as completely excluded from any share in
the government as it had been before Napoleon's fall. It had in fact become
clear that during the lifetime of King Frederick William things must be
allowed to remain in their existing condition; and the affection of the
people for their sovereign, who had been so long and so closely united with
Prussia in its sufferings and in its glories, caused a general willingness
to postpone the demand for constitutional reform until the succeeding
reign. The substantial merits of the administration might moreover have
reconciled a less submissive people than the Prussians to the absolute
government under which they lived. Under a wise and enlightened financial
policy the country was becoming visibly richer. Obstacles to commercial
development were removed, communications opened; and finally, by a series
of treaties with the neighbouring German States, the foundations were laid
for that Customs-Union which, under the name of the Zollverein, ultimately
embraced almost the whole of non-Austrian Germany. As one Principality
after another attached itself to the Prussian system, the products of the
various regions of Germany, hitherto blocked by the frontier dues of each
petty State, moved freely through the land, while the costs attending the
taxation of foreign imports, now concentrated upon the external line of
frontier, were enormously diminished. Patient, sagacious, and even liberal
in its negotiations with its weaker neighbours, Prussia silently connected
with itself through the ties of financial union States which had hitherto
looked to Austria as their natural head. The semblance of political union
was carefully avoided, but the germs of political union were nevertheless
present in the growing community of material interests. The reputation of
the Prussian Government, no less than the welfare of the Prussian people,
was advanced by each successive step in the extension of the Zollverein;
and although the earlier stages alone had been passed in the years before
1830, enough had already been done to affect public opinion; and the
general sense of material progress combined with other influences to close
Prussia to the revolutionary tendencies of that year.

[Insurrections in Brunswick and Cassel.]

[Constitutions in Hanover and Saxony, 1830-1833.]

There were, however, other States in northern Germany which had all the
defects of Prussian autocracy without any of its redeeming qualities. In
Brunswick and in Hesse Cassel despotism existed in its most contemptible
form; the violence of a half-crazy youth in the one case, and the caprices
of an obstinate dotard in the other, rendering authority a mere nuisance to
those who were subject to it. Here accordingly revolution broke out. The
threatened princes had made themselves too generally obnoxious or
ridiculous for any hand to be raised in their defence. Their disappearance
excited no more than the inevitable lament from Metternich; and in both
States systems of representative government were introduced by their
successors. In Hanover and in Saxony agitation also began in favour of
Parliamentary rule. The disturbance that arose was not of a serious
character, and it was met by the Courts in a conciliatory spirit.
Constitutions were granted, the liberty of the Press extended, and trial by
jury established. On the whole, the movement of 1830, as it affected
northern Germany, was rationally directed and salutary in its results.
Changes of real value were accomplished with a sparing employment of
revolutionary means, and, in the more important cases, through the friendly
co-operation of the sovereigns with their subjects. It was not the fault of
those who had asked for the same degree of liberty in northern Germany
which the south already possessed, that Germany at large again experienced
the miseries of reaction and repression which had afflicted it ten years
before.

[Movement in the Palatinate.]

Like Belgium and the Rhenish Provinces, the Bavarian Palatinate had for
twenty years been incorporated with France. Its inhabitants had grown
accustomed to the French law and French institutions, and had caught
something of the political animation which returned to France after
Napoleon's fall. Accordingly when the government of Munich, alarmed by the
July Revolution, showed an inclination towards repressive measures, the
Palatinate, severed from the rest of the Bavarian monarchy and in immediate
contact with France, became the focus of a revolutionary agitation. The
Press had already attained some activity and some influence in this
province; and although the leaders of the party of progress were still to a
great extent Professors, they had so far advanced upon the patriots of 1818
as to understand that the liberation of the German people was not to be
effected by the lecturers and the scholars of the Universities. The design
had been formed of enlisting all classes of the public on the side of
reform, both by the dissemination of political literature and by the
establishment of societies not limited, as in 1818, to academic circles,
but embracing traders as well as soldiers and professional men. Even the
peasant was to be reached and instructed in his interests as a citizen. It
was thought that much might be effected by associating together all the
Oppositions in the numerous German Parliaments; but a more striking feature
of the revolutionary movement which began in the Palatinate, and one
strongly distinguishing it from the earlier agitation of Jena and Erfurt,
was its cosmopolitan character. France in its triumph and Poland in its
death-struggle excited equal interest and sympathy. In each the cause of
European liberty appeared to be at stake. The Polish banner was saluted in
the Palatinate by the side of that of united Germany; and from that time
forward in almost every revolutionary movement of Europe, down to the
insurrection of the Commune of Paris in 1871, Polish exiles have been
active both in the organisation of revolt and in the field.

[Reaction in Germany.]

Until the fall of Warsaw, in September, 1831, the German governments,
uncertain of the course which events might take in Europe, had shown a
certain willingness to meet the complaints of their subjects, and had in
especial relaxed the supervision exercised over the press. The fall of
Warsaw, which quieted so many alarms, and made the Emperor Nicholas once
more a power outside his own dominions, inaugurated a period of reaction in
Germany. The Diet began the campaign against democracy by suppressing
various liberal newspapers, and amongst them the principal journal of the
Palatinate. It was against this movement of regression that the agitation
in the Palatinate and elsewhere was now directed. A festival, or
demonstration, was held at the Castle of Hambach, near Zweibrücken, at
which a body of enthusiasts called upon the German people to unite against
their oppressors, and some even urged an immediate appeal to arms (May 27,
1832). Similar meetings, though on a smaller scale, were held in other
parts of Germany. Wild words abounded, and the connection of the German
revolutionists with that body of opponents of all established governments
which had its council-chamber at Paris and its head in Lafayette was openly
avowed. Weak and insignificant as the German demagogues were, their
extravagance gave to Metternich and to the Diet sufficient pretext for
revising the reactionary measures of 1819. Once more the subordination of
all representative bodies to the sovereign's authority was laid down by the
Diet as a binding principle for every German state. The refusal of taxes by
any legislature was declared to be an act of rebellion which would be met
by the armed intervention of the central Powers. All political meetings and
associations were forbidden; the Press was silenced; the introduction of
German books printed abroad was prohibited, and the Universities were again
placed under the watch of the police (July, 1832). [394]

[Attempt at Frankfort, April, 1833.]

If among the minor sovereigns of Germany there were some who, as in Baden,
sincerely desired the development of free institutions, the authority
exercised by Metternich and his adherents in reaction bore down all the
resistance that these courts could offer, and the hand of despotism fell
everywhere heavily upon the party of political progress. The majority of
German Liberals, not yet prepared for recourse to revolutionary measures,
submitted to the pressure of the times, and disclaimed all sympathy with
illegal acts; a minority, recognising that nothing was now to be gained by
constitutional means, entered into conspiracies, and determined to liberate
Germany by force. One insignificant group, relying upon the armed
co-operation of Polish bands in France, and deceived by promises of support
from some Würtemberg soldiers, actually rose in insurrection at Frankfort.
A guard-house was seized, and a few soldiers captured; but the citizens of
Frankfort stood aloof, and order was soon restored (April, 1833). It was
not to be expected that the reactionary courts should fail to draw full
advantage from this ill-timed outbreak of their enemies. Prussian troops
marched into Frankfort, and Metternich had no difficulty in carrying
through the Diet a decree establishing a commission to superintend and to
report upon the proceedings instituted against political offenders
throughout Germany. For several years these investigations continued, and
the campaign against the opponents of government was carried on with
various degrees of rigour in the different states. About two thousand
persons altogether were brought to trial: in Prussia thirty-nine sentences
of death were pronounced, but not executed. In the struggle against
revolution the forces of monarchy had definitely won the victory. Germany
again experienced, as it had in 1819, that the federal institutions which
were to have given it unity existed only for the purposes of repression.
The breach between the nation and its rulers, in spite of the apparent
failure of the democratic party, remained far deeper and wider than it had
been before; and although Metternich, victor once more over the growing
restlessness of the age, slumbered on for another decade in fancied
security, the last of his triumphs had now been won, and the next uprising
proved how blind was that boasted statesmanship which deemed the sources of
danger exhausted when once its symptoms had been driven beneath the
surface.

[Conspirators and exiles.]

[Dispersion of the Swiss exiles, 1834.]

In half the states of Europe there were now bodies of exasperated,
uncompromising men, who devoted their lives to plotting against
governments, and who formed, in their community of interest and purpose, a
sort of obverse of the Holy Alliance, a federation of kings' enemies, a
league of principle and creed, in which liberty and human right stood
towards established rule as light to darkness. As the grasp of authority
closed everywhere more tightly upon its baffled foes, more and more of
these men passed into exile. Among them was the Genoese Mazzini, who, after
suffering imprisonment in 1831, withdrew to Marseilles, and there, in
combination with various secret societies, planned an incursion into the
Italian province of Savoy. It was at first intended that this enterprise
should be executed simultaneously with the German rising at Frankfort.
Delays, however, arose, and it was not until the beginning of the following
year that the little army, which numbered more Poles than Italians, was
ready for its task. The incursion was made from Geneva in February, 1834,
and ended disastrously. [395] Mazzini returned to Switzerland, where
hundreds of exiles, secure under the shelter of the Republic, devised
schemes of attack upon the despots of Europe, and even rioted in honour of
freedom in the streets of the Swiss cities which protected them. The effect
of the revolutionary movement of the time in consolidating the alliance of
the three Eastern Powers, so rudely broken by the Greek War of Liberation,
now came clearly into view. The sovereigns of Russia and Austria had met at
Münchengrätz in Bohemia in the previous autumn, and, in concert with
Prussia, had resolved upon common principles of action if their
intervention should be required against disturbers of order. Notes were now
addressed from every quarter to the Swiss Government, requiring the
expulsion of all persons concerned in enterprises against the peace of
neighbouring States. Some resistance to this demand was made by individual
cantons; but the extravagance of many of the refugees themselves alienated
popular sympathy, and the greater part of them were forced to quit
Switzerland and to seek shelter in England or in America. With the
dispersion of the central band of exiles the open alliance which had
existed between the revolutionists of Europe gradually passed away. The
brotherhood of the kings had proved a stern reality, the brotherhood of the
peoples a delusive vision. Mazzini indeed, who up to this time had scarcely
emerged from the rabble of revolutionary leaders, was yet to prove how
deeply the genius, the elevation, the fervour of one man struggling against
the powers of the world may influence the history of his age; but the fire
that purified the fine gold charred and consumed the baser elements; and of
those who had hoped the most after 1830, many now sank into despair, or
gave up their lives to mere restless agitation and intrigue.

[Difficulties of Louis Philippe.]

[Insurrections, 1832-1834.]

[Repressive Laws, Sept., 1835.]

It was in France that the revolutionary movement was longest maintained.
During the first year of Louis Philippe's rule the opposition to his
government was inspired not so much by Republicanism as by a wild and
inconsiderate sympathy with the peoples who were fighting for liberty
elsewhere, and by a headstrong impulse to take up arms on their behalf. The
famous decree of the Convention in 1792, which promised the assistance of
France to every nation in revolt against its rulers, was in fact the true
expression of what was felt by a great part of the French nation in 1831;
and in the eyes of these enthusiasts it was the unpardonable offence of
Louis Philippe against the honour of France that he allowed Poland and
Italy to succumb without drawing his sword against their conquerors. That
France would have had to fight the three Eastern Powers combined, if it had
allied itself with those in revolt against any one of the three, passed for
nothing among the clamorous minority in the Chamber and among the orators
of Paris. The pacific policy of Casimir Perier was misunderstood; it passed
for mere poltroonery, when in fact it was the only policy that could save
France from a recurrence of the calamities of 1815. There were other causes
for the growing unpopularity of the King and of his Ministers, but the
first was their policy of peace. As the attacks of his opponents became
more and more bitter, the government of Casimir Perier took more and more
of a repressive character. Disappointment at the small results produced in
France itself by the Revolution of July worked powerfully in men's minds.
The forces that had been set in motion against Charles X. were not to be
laid at rest at the bidding of those who had profited by them, and a
Republican party gradually took definite shape and organisation. Tumult
succeeded tumult. In the summer of 1832 the funeral of General Lamarque, a
popular soldier, gave the signal for insurrection at Paris. There was
severe fighting in the streets; the National Guard, however, proved true to
the king, and shared with the army in the honours of its victory.
Repressive measures and an unbroken series of prosecutions against
seditious writers followed this first armed attack upon the established
government. The bitterness of the Opposition, the discontent of the working
classes, far surpassed anything that had been known under Charles X. The
whole country was agitated by revolutionary societies and revolutionary
propaganda. Disputes between masters and workmen, which, in consequence of
the growth of French manufacturing industry, now became both frequent and
important, began to take a political colour. Polish and Italian exiles
connected their own designs with attacks to be made upon the French
Government from within; and at length, in April, 1834, after the passing of
a law against trades-unions, the working classes of Lyons, who were on
strike against their employers, were induced to rise in revolt. After
several days' fighting the insurrection was suppressed. Simultaneous
outbreaks took place at St. Etienne, Grenoble, and many other places in the
south and centre of France; and on a report of the success of the
insurgents reaching Paris, the Republic was proclaimed and barricades were
erected. Again civil war raged in the streets, and again the forces of
Government gained the victory. A year more passed, during which the
investigations into the late revolt and the trial of a host of prisoners
served rather to agitate than to reassure the public mind; and in the
summer of 1835 an attempt was made upon the life of the King so terrible
and destructive in its effects as to amount to a public calamity. An
infernal machine composed of a hundred gun-barrels was fired by a Corsican
named Fieschi, as the King with a large suite was riding through the
streets of Paris on the anniversary of the Revolution of July. Fourteen
persons were killed on the spot, among whom was Mortier, one of the oldest
of the marshals of France; many others were fatally or severely injured.
The King, however, with his three sons, escaped unhurt, and the repressive
laws that followed this outrage marked the close of open revolutionary
agitation in France. Whether in consequence of the stringency of the new
laws, or of the exhaustion of a party discredited in public estimation by
the crimes of a few of its members and the recklessness of many more, the
constitutional monarchy of Louis Philippe now seemed to have finally
vanquished its opponents. Repeated attempts were made on the life of the
King, but they possessed for the most part little political significance.
Order was welcome to the nation at large; and though in the growth of a
socialistic theory and creed of life which dates from this epoch there lay
a danger to Governments greater than any purely political, Socialism was as
yet the affair of thinkers rather than of active workers either in the
industrial or in the Parliamentary world. The Government had beaten its
enemies outside the Chamber. Within the Chamber, the parties of extremes
ceased to exercise any real influence. Groups were formed, and rival
leaders played against one another for office; but they were separated by
no far-reaching differences of aim, and by no real antagonism of
constitutional principle. During the succeeding years of Louis Philippe's
reign there was little visible on the surface but the normal rivalry of
parties under a constitutional monarchy. The middle-class retained its
monopoly of power: authority, centralised as before, maintained its old
prestige in France, and softened opposition by judicious gifts of office
and emolument. Revolutionary passion seemed to have died away: and the
triumphs or reverses of party-leaders in the Chamber of Deputies succeeded
to the harassing and doubtful conflict between Government and insurrection.

[The English Reform movement.]

The near coincidence in time between the French Revolution of 1830 and the
passing of the English Reform Bill is apt to suggest to those who look for
the operation of wide general causes in history that the English Reform
movement should be viewed as a part of the great current of political
change which then traversed the continent of Europe. But on a closer
examination this view is scarcely borne out by facts, and the coincidence
of the two epochs of change appears to be little more than accidental. The
general unity that runs through the history of the more advanced
continental states is indeed stronger than appears to a superficial reader
of history; but this correspondence of tendency does not always embrace
England; on the contrary, the conditions peculiar to England usually
preponderate over those common to England and other countries, exhibiting
at times more of contrast than of similarity, as in the case of the
Napoleonic epoch, when the causes which drew together the western half of
the continent operated powerfully to exclude our own country from the
current influences of the time, and made the England of 1815, in opinion,
in religion, and in taste much more insular than the England of 1780. The
revolution which overthrew Charles X. did no doubt encourage and stimulate
the party of Reform in Great Britain; but, unlike the Belgian, the German,
and the Italian movements, the English Reform movement would unquestionably
have run the same course and achieved the same results even if the revolt
against the ordinances of Charles X. had been successfully repressed, and
the Bourbon monarchy had maintained itself in increased strength and
reputation. A Reform of Parliament had been acknowledged to be necessary
forty years before. Pitt had actually proposed it in 1785, and but for the
outbreak of the French Revolution would probably have carried it into
effect before the close of the last century. The development of English
manufacturing industry which took place between 1790 and 1830, accompanied
by the rapid growth of towns and the enrichment of the urban middle class,
rendered the design of Pitt, which would have transferred the
representation of the decayed boroughs to the counties alone, obsolete, and
made the claims of the new centres of population too strong to be resisted.
In theory the representative system of the country was completely
transformed; but never was a measure which seemed to open the way to such
boundless possibilities of change so thoroughly safe and so thoroughly
conservative. In spite of the increased influence won by the wealthy part
of the commercial classes, the House of Commons continued to be drawn
mainly from the territorial aristocracy. Cabinet after Cabinet was formed
with scarcely a single member included in it who was not himself a man of
title, or closely connected with the nobility: the social influence of rank
was not diminished; and although such measures as the Reform of Municipal
Corporations attested the increased energy of the Legislature, no party in
the House of Commons was weaker than that which supported the democratic
demands for the Ballot and for Triennial Parliaments, nor was the repeal of
the Corn Laws seriously considered until famine had made it inevitable.
That the widespread misery which existed in England after 1832, as the
result of the excessive increase of our population and the failure alike of
law and of philanthropy to keep pace with the exigencies of a vast
industrial growth, should have been so quietly borne, proves how great was
the success of the Reform Bill as a measure of conciliation between
Government and people. But the crowning justification of the changes made
in 1832, and the complete and final answer to those who had opposed them as
revolutionary, was not afforded until 1848, when, in the midst of European
convulsion, the monarchy and the constitution of England remained unshaken.
Bold as the legislation of Lord Grey appeared to men who had been brought
up amidst the reactionary influences dominant in England since 1793, the
Reform Bill belongs not to the class of great creative measures which have
inaugurated new periods in the life of nations, but to the class of those
which, while least affecting the general order of society, have most
contributed to political stability and to the avoidance of revolutionary
change.




CHAPTER XVII.


France and England after 1830--Affairs of Portugal--Don Miguel--Don Pedro
invades Portugal--Ferdinand of Spain--The Pragmatic Sanction--Death of
Ferdinand: Regency of Christina--The Constitution--Quadruple Alliance--
Miguel and Carlos expelled from Portugal--Carlos enters Spain--The Basque
Provinces--Carlist War: Zumalacarregui--The Spanish Government seeks French
assistance, which is refused--Constitution of 1837--End of the War--Regency
of Espartero--Isabella Queen--Affairs of the Ottoman Empire--Ibrahim
invades Syria; his victories--Rivalry of France and Russia at
Constantinople--Peace of Kutaya and Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi--Effect of
this Treaty--France and Mehemet Ali--Commerce of the Levant--Second War
between Mehemet and the Porte--Ottoman disasters--The Policy of the Great
Powers--Quadruple Treaty without France--Ibrahim expelled from Syria--Final
Settlement--Turkey after 1840--Attempted reforms of Reschid Pasha.


[France and England after 1830.]

Alliances of opinion usually cover the pursuit on one or both sides of some
definite interest; and to this rule the alliance which appeared to be
springing up between France and England after the changes of 1830 was no
exception. In the popular view, the bond of union between the two States
was a common attachment to principles of liberty; and on the part of the
Whig statesmen who now governed England this sympathy with free
constitutional systems abroad was certainly a powerful force: but other
motives than mere community of sentiment combined to draw the two
Governments together, and in the case of France these immediate interests
greatly outweighed any abstract preference for a constitutional ally. Louis
Philippe had an avowed and obstinate enemy in the Czar of Russia, who had
been his predecessor's friend: the Court of Vienna tolerated usurpers only
where worse mischief would follow from attacking them; Prussia had no
motive for abandoning the connexions which it had maintained since 1815. As
the union between the three Eastern Courts grew closer in consequence of
the outbreak of revolution beyond the borders of France, a good
understanding with Great Britain became more and more obviously the right
policy for Louis Philippe; on the other hand, the friendship of France
seemed likely to secure England from falling back into that isolated
position which it had occupied when the Holy Alliance laid down the law to
Europe, and averted the danger to which the Ottoman Empire, as well as the
peace of the world, had been exposed by the combination of French with
Russian schemes of aggrandizement. If Canning, left without an ally in
Europe, had called the new world into existence to redress the balance of
the old, his Whig successors might well look with some satisfaction on that
shifting of the weights which had brought over one of the Great Powers to
the side of England, and anticipate, in the concert of the two great
Western States, the establishment of a permanent force in European politics
which should hold in check the reactionary influences of Vienna and St.
Petersburg. To some extent these views were realised. A general relation of
friendliness was recognised as subsisting between the Governments of Paris
and London, and in certain European complications their intervention was
arranged in common. But even here the element of mistrust was seldom
absent; and while English Ministers jealously watched each action of their
neighbour, the French Government rarely allowed the ties of an informal
alliance to interfere with the prosecution of its own views. Although down
to the close of Louis Philippe's reign the good understanding between
England and France was still nominally in existence, all real confidence
had then long vanished; and on more than one occasion the preservation of
peace between the two nations had been seriously endangered.

[Affairs of Portugal, 1826-1830.]

It was in the establishment of the kingdom of Belgium that the combined
action of France and England produced its first and most successful result.
A second demand was made upon the Governments of the two constitutional
Powers by the conflicts which agitated the Spanish Peninsula, and which
were stimulated in the general interests of absolutism by both the Austrian
and the Russian Court. The intervention of Canning in 1826 on behalf of the
constitutional Regency of Portugal against the foreign supporters of Don
Miguel, the head of the clerical and reactionary party, had not permanently
restored peace to that country. Miguel indeed accepted the constitution,
and, after betrothing himself to the infant sovereign, Donna Maria, who was
still with her father Pedro, in Brazil, entered upon the Regency which his
elder brother had promised to him. But his actions soon disproved the
professions of loyalty to the constitution which he had made; and after
dissolving the Cortes, and re-assembling the mediæval Estates, he caused
himself to be proclaimed King (June, 1828). A reign of terror followed. The
constitutionalists were completely crushed. Miguel's own brutal violence
gave an example to all the fanatics and ruffians who surrounded him; and
after an unsuccessful appeal to arms, those of the adherents of Donna Maria
and the constitution who escaped from imprisonment or execution took refuge
in England or in the Azore islands, where Miguel had not been able to
establish his authority. Though Miguel was not officially recognised as
Sovereign by most of the foreign Courts, his victory was everywhere seen
with satisfaction by the partisans of absolutism; and in Great Britain,
where the Duke of Wellington was still in power, the precedent of Canning's
intervention was condemned, and a strict neutrality maintained. Not only
was all assistance refused to Donna Maria, but her adherents who had taken
refuge in England were prevented from making this country the basis of any
operations against the usurper.

[Invasion of Portugal by Pedro. July, 1832.]

Such was the situation of Portuguese affairs when the events of 1830
brought an entirely new spirit into the foreign policy of both England and
France. Miguel, however, had no inclination to adapt his own policy to the
change of circumstances; on the contrary, he challenged the hostility of
both governments by persisting in a series of wanton attacks upon English
and French subjects resident at Lisbon. Satisfaction was demanded, and
exacted by force. English and French squadrons successively appeared in the
Tagus. Lord Palmerston, now Foreign Secretary in the Ministry of Earl Grey,
was content with obtaining a pecuniary indemnity for his countrymen,
accompanied by a public apology from the Portuguese Government: the French
admiral, finding some difficulty in obtaining redress, carried off the best
ships of Don Miguel's navy. [396] A weightier blow was, however, soon to
fall upon the usurper. His brother, the Emperor Pedro, threatened with
revolution in Brazil, resolved to return to Europe and to enforce the
rights of his daughter to the throne of Portugal. Pedro arrived in London
in July, 1831, and was permitted by the Government to raise troops and to
secure the services of some of the best naval officers of this country. The
gathering place of his forces was Terceira, one of the Azore islands, and
in the summer of 1832 a sufficiently strong body of troops was collected to
undertake the reconquest of Portugal. A landing was made at Oporto, and
this city fell into the hands of Don Pedro without resistance. Miguel,
however, now marched against his brother, and laid siege to Oporto. For
nearly a year no progress was made by either side; at length the arrival of
volunteers from various countries, among whom was Captain Charles Napier,
enabled Pedro to divide his forces and to make a new attack on Portugal
from the south. Napier, in command of the fleet, annihilated the navy of
Don Miguel off St. Vincent; his colleague, Villa Flor, landed and marched
on Lisbon. The resistance of the enemy was overcome, and on the 28th of
July, 1833, Don Pedro entered the capital. But the war was not yet at an
end, for Miguel's cause was as closely identified with the interests of
European absolutism as that of his brother was with constitutional right,
and assistance both in troops and money continued to arrive at his camp.
The struggle threatened to prove a long and obstinate one, when a new turn
was given to events in the Peninsula by the death of Ferdinand, King of
Spain.

[Death of Ferdinand, Sept., 1833.]

Since the restoration of absolute Government in Spain in 1823, Ferdinand,
in spite of his own abject weakness and ignorance, had not given complete
satisfaction to the fanatics of the clerical party. Some vestiges of
statesmanship, some sense of political necessity, as well as the influence
of foreign counsellors, had prevented the Government of Madrid from
completely identifying itself with the monks and zealots who had first
risen against the constitution of 1820, and who now sought to establish the
absolute supremacy of the Church. The Inquisition had not been restored,
and this alone was enough to stamp the King as a renegade in the eyes of
the ferocious and implacable champions of mediæval bigotry. Under the name
of Apostolicals, these reactionaries had at times broken into open
rebellion. Their impatience had, however, on the whole been restrained by
the knowledge that in the King's brother and heir, Don Carlos, they had an
adherent whose devotion to the priestly cause was beyond suspicion, and who
might be expected soon to ascend the throne. Ferdinand had been thrice
married; he was childless; his state of health miserable; and his life
likely to be a short one. The succession to the throne of Spain had
moreover, since 1713, been governed by the Salic Law, so that even in the
event of Ferdinand leaving female issue Don Carlos would nevertheless
inherit the crown. These confident hopes were rudely disturbed by the
marriage of the King with his cousin Maria Christina of Naples, followed by
an edict, known as the Pragmatic Sanction, repealing the Salic Law which
had been introduced with the first Bourbon, and restoring the ancient
Castilian custom under which women were capable of succeeding to the crown.
A daughter, Isabella, was shortly afterwards born to the new Queen. On the
legality of the Pragmatic Sanction the opinions of publicists differed; it
was judged, however, by Europe at large not from the point of view of
antiquarian theory, but with direct reference to its immediate effect. The
three Eastern Courts emphatically condemned it, as an interference with
established monarchical right, and as a blow to the cause of European
absolutism through the alliance which it would almost certainly produce
between the supplanters of Don Carlos and the Liberals of the Spanish
Peninsula. [397] To the clerical and reactionary party at Madrid, it
amounted to nothing less than a sentence of destruction, and the utmost
pressure was brought to bear upon the weak and dying King with the object
of inducing him to undo the alleged wrong which he had done to his brother.
In a moment of prostration Ferdinand revoked the Pragmatic Sanction; but,
subsequently, regaining some degree of strength, he re-enacted it, and
appointed Christina Regent during the continuance of his illness. Don
Carlos, protesting against the violation of his rights, had betaken himself
to Portugal, where he made common cause with Miguel. His adherents had no
intention of submitting to the change of succession. Their resentment was
scarcely restrained during Ferdinand's life-time, and when, in September,
1833, his long-expected death took place, and the child Isabella was
declared Queen under the Regency of her mother, open rebellion broke out,
and Carlos was proclaimed King in several of the northern provinces.

[The Regency and the Carlists.]

[Quadruple Treaty, April 22, 1834.]

[Miguel and Carlos removed, May, 1834.]

For the moment the forces of the Regency seemed to be far superior to those
of the insurgents, and Don Carlos failed to take advantage of the first
outburst of enthusiasm and to place himself at the head of his followers.
He remained in Portugal, while Christina, as had been expected, drew nearer
to the Spanish Liberals, and ultimately called to power a Liberal minister,
Martinez de la Rosa, under whom a constitution was given to Spain by Royal
Statute (April 10, 1834). At the same time negotiations were opened with
Portugal and with the Western Powers, in the hope of forming an alliance
which should drive both Miguel and Carlos from the Peninsula. On the 22nd
of April, 1834, a Quadruple Treaty was signed at London, in which the
Spanish Government undertook to send an army into Portugal against Miguel,
the Court of Lisbon pledging itself in return to use all the means in its
power to expel Don Carlos from Portuguese territory. England engaged to
co-operate by means of its fleet. The assistance of France, if it should be
deemed necessary for the attainment of the objects of the Treaty, was to be
rendered in such manner as should be settled by common consent. In
pursuance of the policy of the Treaty, and even before the formal
engagement was signed, a Spanish division under General Rodil crossed the
frontier and marched against Miguel. The forces of the usurper were
defeated. The appearance of the English fleet and the publication of the
Treaty of Quadruple Alliance rendered further resistance hopeless, and on
the 22nd of May Miguel made his submission, and in return for a large
pension renounced all rights to the crown, and undertook to quit the
Peninsula for ever. Don Carlos, refusing similar conditions, went on board
an English ship, and was conducted to London. [398]

[Carlos appears in Spain.]

With respect to Portugal, the Quadruple Alliance had completely attained
its object; and in so far as the Carlist cause was strengthened by the
continuance of civil war in the neighbouring country, this source of
strength was no doubt withdrawn from it. But in its effect upon Don Carlos
himself the action of the Quadruple Alliance was worse than useless. While
fulfilling the letter of the Treaty, which stipulated for the expulsion of
the two pretenders from the Peninsula, the English Admiral had removed
Carlos from Portugal, where he was comparatively harmless, and had taken no
effective guarantee that he should not re-appear in Spain itself and
enforce his claim by arms. Carlos had not been made a prisoner of war; he
had made no promises and incurred no obligations; nor could the British
Government, after his arrival in this country, keep him in perpetual
restraint. Quitting England after a short residence, he travelled in
disguise through France, crossed the Pyrenees, and appeared on the 10th of
July, 1834, at the headquarters of the Carlist insurgents in Navarre.

[The Basque Provinces.]

In the country immediately below the western Pyrenees, the so-called Basque
Provinces, lay the chief strength of the Carlist rebellion. These
provinces, which were among the most thriving and industrious parts of
Spain, might seem by their very superiority an unlikely home for a movement
which was directed against everything favourable to liberty, tolerance, and
progress in the Spanish kingdom. But the identification of the Basques with
the Carlist cause was due in fact to local, not to general, causes; and in
fighting to impose a bigoted despot upon the Spanish people, they were in
truth fighting to protect themselves from a closer incorporation with
Spain. Down to the year 1812, the Basque provinces had preserved more than
half of the essentials of independence. Owing to their position on the
French frontier, the Spanish monarchy, while destroying all local
independence in the interior of Spain, had uniformly treated the Basques
with the same indulgence which the Government of Great Britain has shown to
the Channel Islands, and which the French monarchy, though in a less
degree, showed to the frontier province of Alsace in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. The customs-frontier of the north of Spain was drawn
to the south of these districts. The inhabitants imported what they pleased
from France without paying any duties; while the heavy import-dues levied
at the border of the neighbouring Spanish provinces gave them the
opportunity of carrying on an easy and lucrative system of smuggling. The
local administration remained to a great extent in the hands of the people
themselves; each village preserved its active corporate life; and the
effect of this survival of a vigorous local freedom was seen in the
remarkable contrast described by travellers between the aspect of the
Basque districts and that of Spain at large. The Fueros, or local rights,
as the Basques considered them, were in reality, when viewed as part of the
order of the Spanish State, a series of exceptional privileges; and it was
inevitable that the framers of the Constitution of 1812, in their attempt
to create a modern administrative and political system doing justice to the
whole of the nation, should sweep away the distinctions which had hitherto
marked off one group of provinces from the rest of the community. The
continuance of war until the return of Ferdinand, and the overthrow of the
Constitution, prevented the plans of the Cortes from being at that time
carried into effect; but the revolution of 1820 brought them into actual
operation, and the Basques found themselves, as a result of the victory of
Liberal principles, compelled to pay duties on their imports, robbed of the
profits of their smuggling, and supplanted in the management of their local
affairs by an army of officials from Madrid. They had gained by the
Constitution little that they had not possessed before, and their losses
were immediate, tangible, and substantial. The result was, that although
the larger towns, like Bilbao, remained true to modern ideas, the country
districts, led chiefly by priests, took up arms on behalf of the absolute
monarchy, assisted the French in the restoration of despotism in 1823, and
remained the permanent enemies of the constitutional cause. [399] On the
death of Ferdinand they declared at once for Don Carlos, and rose in
rebellion against the Government of Queen Christina, by which they
considered the privileges of the Basque Provinces and the interests of
Catholic orthodoxy to be alike threatened.

[Carlist victories, 1834-5.]

There was little in the character of Don Carlos to stimulate the loyalty
even of his most benighted partizans. Of military and political capacity he
was totally destitute, and his continued absence in Portugal when the
conflict had actually begun proved him to be wanting in the natural
impulses of a brave man. It was, however, his fortune to be served by a
soldier of extraordinary energy and skill; and the first reverses of the
Carlists were speedily repaired, and a system of warfare organised which
made an end of the hopes of easy conquest with which the Government of
Christina had met the insurrection. Fighting in a worthless cause, and
commanding resources scarcely superior to those of a brigand chief, the
Carlist leader, Zumalacarregui, inflicted defeat after defeat upon the
generals who were sent to destroy him. The mountainous character of the
country and the universal hostility of the inhabitants made the exertions
of a regular soldiery useless against the alternate flights and surprises
of men who knew every mountain track, and who gained information of the
enemy's movements from every cottager. Terror was added by Zumalacarregui
to all his other methods for demoralising his adversary. In the exercise of
reprisals he repeatedly murdered all his prisoners in cold blood, and gave
to the war so savage a character that foreign Governments at last felt
compelled to urge upon the belligerents some regard for the usages of the
civilised world. The appearance of Don Carlos himself in the summer of 1834
raised still higher the confidence already inspired by the victories of his
general. It was in vain that the old constitutionalist soldier, Mina, who
had won so great a name in these provinces in 1823, returned after long
exile to the scene of his exploits. Enfeebled and suffering, he was no
longer able to place himself at the head of his troops, and he soon sought
to be relieved from a hopeless task. His successor, the War Minister
Valdes, took the field announcing his determination to act upon a new
system, and to operate with his troops in mass instead of pursuing the
enemy's bands with detachments. The result of this change of tactics was a
defeat more ruinous and complete than had befallen any of Valdes'
predecessors. He with difficulty withdrew the remainder of his army from
the insurgent provinces; and the Carlist leader master of the open country
up to the borders of Castile, prepared to cross the Ebro and to march upon
Madrid. [400]

[Request to France for assistance, May, 1835.]

The Ministers of Queen Christina, who had up till this time professed
themselves confident in their power to deal with the insurrection, could
now no longer conceal the real state of affairs. Valdes himself declared
that the rebellion could not be subdued without foreign aid; and after
prolonged discussion in the Cabinet it was determined to appeal to France
for armed assistance. The flight of Don Carlos from England had already
caused an additional article to be added to the Treaty of the Quadruple
Alliance, in which France undertook so to watch the frontier of the
Pyrenees that no reinforcements or munition of war should reach the
Carlists from that side, while England promised to supply the troops of
Queen Christina with arms and stores, and, if necessary, to render
assistance with a naval force (18th August, 1834). The foreign supplies
sent to the Carlists had thus been cut off both by land and sea; but more
active assistance seemed indispensable if Madrid was to be saved from
falling into the enemy's hands. The request was made to Louis Philippe's
Government to occupy the Basque Provinces with a corps of twelve thousand
men. Reasons of weight might be addressed to the French Court in favour of
direct intervention. The victory of Don Carlos would place upon the throne
of Spain a representative of all those reactionary influences throughout
Europe which were in secret or in open hostility to the House of Orleans,
and definitely mark the failure of that policy which had led France to
combine with England in expelling Don Miguel from Portugal. On the other
hand, the experience gained from earlier military enterprises in Spain
might well deter even bolder politicians than those about Louis Philippe
from venturing upon a task whose ultimate issues no man could confidently
forecast. Napoleon had wrecked his empire in the struggle beyond the
Pyrenees not less than in the march to Moscow: and the expedition of 1823,
though free from military difficulties, had exposed France to the
humiliating responsibility for every brutal act of a despotism which, in
the very moment of its restoration, had scorned the advice of its
restorers. The constitutional Government which invoked French assistance
might, moreover, at any moment give place to a democratic faction which
already harassed it within the Cortes, and which, in its alliance with the
populace in many of the great cities, threatened to throw Spain into
anarchy, or to restore the ill-omened constitution of 1812. But above all,
the attitude of the three Eastern Powers bade the ruler of France hesitate
before committing himself to a military occupation of Spanish territory.
Their sympathies were with Don Carlos, and the active participation of
France in the quarrel might possibly call their opposing forces into the
field and provoke a general war. In view of the evident dangers arising out
of the proposed intervention, the French Government, taking its stand on
that clause of the Quadruple Treaty which provided that the assistance of
France should be rendered in such manner as might be agreed upon by all the
parties to the Treaty, addressed itself to Great Britain, inquiring whether
this country would undertake a joint responsibility in the enterprise and
share with France the consequences to which it might give birth. Lord
Palmerston in reply declined to give the assurance required. He stated that
no objection would be raised by the British Government to the entry of
French troops into Spain, but that such intervention must be regarded as
the work of France alone, and be undertaken by France at its own peril.
This answer sufficed for Louis Philippe and his Ministers. The Spanish
Government was informed that the grant of military assistance was
impossible, and that the entire public opinion of France would condemn so
dangerous an undertaking. As a proof of goodwill, permission was given to
Queen Christina to enrol volunteers both in England and France. Arms were
supplied; and some thousands of needy or adventurous men ultimately made
their way from our own country as well as from France, to earn under
Colonel De Lacy Evans and other leaders a scanty harvest of profit or
renown.

[Continuance of the war.]

The first result of the rejection of the Spanish demand for the direct
intervention of France was the downfall of the Minister by whom this demand
had been made. His successor, Toreno, though a well-known patriot, proved
unable to stem the tide of revolution that was breaking over the country.
City after city set up its own Junta, and acted as if the central
government had ceased to exist. Again the appeal for help was made to Louis
Philippe, and now, not so much to avert the victory of Don Carlos as to
save Spain from anarchy and from the constitution of 1812. Before an answer
could arrive, Toreno in his turn had passed away. Mendizabal, a banker who
had been entrusted with financial business at London, and who had entered
into friendly relations with Lord Palmerston, was called to office, as a
politician acceptable to the democratic party, and the advocate of a close
connection with England rather than with France. In spite of the confident
professions of the Minister, and in spite of some assistance actually
rendered by the English fleet, no real progress was made in subduing the
Carlists, or in restoring administrative and financial order. The death of
Zumalacarregui, who was forced by Don Carlos to turn northwards and besiege
Bilbao instead of marching upon Madrid immediately after his victories, had
checked the progress of the rebellion at a critical moment; but the
Government, distracted and bankrupt, could not use the opportunity which
thus offered itself, and the war soon blazed out anew not only in the
Basque Provinces but throughout the north of Spain. For year after year the
monotonous struggle continued, while Cortes succeeded Cortes and faction
supplanted faction, until there remained scarcely an officer who had not
lost his reputation or a politician who was not useless and discredited.

[Constitution of 1837.]

[End of the war, Sept., 1839.]

The Queen Regent, who from the necessities of her situation had for awhile
been the representative of the popular cause, gradually identified herself
with the interests opposed to democratic change; and although her name was
still treated with some respect, and her policy was habitually attributed
to the misleading advice of courtiers, her real position was well
understood at Madrid, and her own resistance was known to be the principal
obstacle to the restoration of the Constitution of 1812. It was therefore
determined to overcome this resistance by force; and on the 13th of August,
1836, a regiment of the garrison of Madrid, won over by the Exaltados,
marched upon the palace of La Granja, invaded the Queen's apartments, and
compelled her to sign an edict restoring the Constitution of 1812 until the
Cortes should establish that or some other. Scenes of riot and murder
followed in the capital. Men of moderate opinions, alarmed at the approach
of anarchy, prepared to unite with Don Carlos. King Louis Philippe, who had
just consented to strengthen the French legion by the addition of some
thousands of trained soldiers, now broke entirely from the Spanish
connection, and dismissed his Ministers who refused to acquiesce in this
change of policy. Meanwhile the Eastern Powers and all rational partisans
of absolutism besought Don Carlos to give those assurances which would
satisfy the wavering mass among his opponents, and place him on the throne
without the sacrifice of any right that was worth preserving. It seemed as
if the opportunity was too clear to be misunderstood; but the obstinacy and
narrowness of Don Carlos were proof against every call of fortune. Refusing
to enter into any sort of engagement, he rendered it impossible for men to
submit to him who were not willing to accept absolutism pure and simple. On
the other hand, a majority of the Cortes, whose eyes were now opened to the
dangers around them, accepted such modifications of the Constitution of
1812 that political stability again appeared possible (June, 1837). The
danger of a general transference of all moderate elements in the State to
the side of Don Carlos was averted; and, although the Carlist armies took
up the offensive, menaced the capital, and made incursions into every part
of Spain, the darkest period of the war was now over; and when, after
undertaking in person the march upon Madrid, Don Carlos swerved aside and
ultimately fell back in confusion to the Ebro, the suppression of the
rebellion became a certainty. General Espartero, with whom such distinction
remained as was to be gathered in this miserable war, forced back the
adversary step by step, and carried fire and sword into the Basque
Provinces, employing a system of devastation which alone seemed capable of
exhausting the endurance of the people. Reduced to the last extremity, the
Carlist leaders turned their arms against one another. The priests
excommunicated the generals, and the generals shot the priests; and
finally, on the 14th September, after the surrender of almost all his
troops to Espartero, Don Carlos crossed the French frontier, and the
conflict which during six years had barbarised and disgraced the Spanish
nation, reached its close.

[End of the Regency, Isabella, Queen, Nov., 1843.]

The triumph of Queen Christina over her rivals was not of long duration.
Confronted by a strong democratic party both in the Cortes and in the
country, she endeavoured in vain to govern by the aid of Ministers of her
own choice. Her popularity had vanished away. The scandals of her private
life gave just offence to the nation, and fatally weakened her political
authority. Forced by insurrection to bestow office on Espartero, as the
chief of the Progressist party, she found that the concessions demanded by
this general were more than she could grant, and in preference to
submitting to them she resigned the Regency, and quitted Spain (Oct.,
1840). Espartero, after some interval, was himself appointed Regent by the
Cortes. For two years he maintained himself in power, then in his turn he
fell before the combined attack of his political opponents and the extreme
men of his own party, and passed into exile. There remained in Spain no
single person qualified to fill the vacant Regency, and in default of all
other expedients the young princess Isabella, who was now in her fourteenth
year, was declared of full age, and placed on the throne (Nov., 1843).
Christina returned to Madrid. After some rapid changes of Ministry, a more
durable Government was formed from the Moderado party under General
Narvaez; and in comparison with the period that had just ended, the first
few years of the new reign were years of recovery and order.

[War between Mehemet Ali and the Porte, 1832.]

The withdrawal of Louis Philippe from his engagements after the
capitulation of Maria Christina to the soldiery at La Granja in 1836 had
diminished the confidence placed in the King by the British Ministry; but
it had not destroyed the relations of friendship existing between the two
Governments. Far more serious causes of difference arose out of the course
of events in the East, and the extension of the power of Mehemet Ali,
Viceroy of Egypt. The struggle between Mehemet and his sovereign, long
foreseen, broke out in the year 1832. After the establishment of the
Hellenic Kingdom, the island of Crete had been given to Mehemet in return
for his services to the Ottoman cause by land and sea. This concession,
however, was far from satisfying the ambition of the Viceroy, and a quarrel
with Abdallah, Pasha of Acre, gave him the opportunity of throwing an army
into Palestine without directly rebelling against his sovereign (Nov.,
1831). Ibrahim, in command of his father's forces, laid siege to Acre; and
had this fortress at once fallen, it would probably have been allowed by
the Sultan to remain in its conqueror's hands as an addition to his own
province, since the Turkish army was not ready for war, and it was no
uncommon thing in the Ottoman Empire for one provincial governor to possess
himself of territory at the expense of another. So obstinate, however, was
the defence of Acre that time was given to the Porte to make preparations
for war; and in the spring of 1832, after the issue of a proclamation
declaring Mehemet and his son to be rebels, a Turkish army led by Hussein
Pasha entered Syria.

[Ibrahim conquers Syria and Asia Minor.]

Ibrahim, while the siege of Acre was proceeding, had overrun the
surrounding country. He was now in possession of all the interior of
Palestine, and the tribes of Lebanon had joined him in the expectation of
gaining relief from the burdens of Turkish misgovernment. The fall of Acre,
while the relieving army was still near Antioch, enabled him to throw his
full strength against his opponent in the valley of the Orontes. It was the
intention of the Turkish general, whose forces, though superior in number,
had not the European training of Ibrahim's regiments, to meet the assault
of the Egyptians in an entrenched camp near Hama. The commander of the
vanguard, however, pushed forward beyond this point, and when far in
advance of the main body of the army was suddenly attacked by Ibrahim at
Homs. Taken at a moment of complete disorder, the Turks were put to the
rout. Their overthrow and flight so alarmed the general-in-chief that he
determined to fall back upon Aleppo, leaving Antioch and all the valley of
the Orontes to the enemy. Aleppo was reached, but the governor, won over by
Ibrahim, closed the gates of the city against the famishing army, and
forced Hussein to continue his retreat to the mountains which form the
barrier between Syria and Cilicia. Here, at the pass of Beilan, he was
attacked by Ibrahim, outmanoeuvred, and forced to retreat with heavy loss
(July 29). The pursuit was continued through the province of Cilicia.
Hussein's army, now completely demoralised, made its escape to the centre
of Asia Minor; the Egyptian, after advancing as far as Mount Taurus and
occupying the passes in this range, took up his quarters in the conquered
country in order to refresh his army and to await reinforcements. After two
months' halt he renewed his march, crossed Mount Taurus and occupied
Konieh, the capital of this district. Here the last and decisive blow was
struck. A new Turkish army, led by Reschid Pasha, Ibrahim's colleague in
the siege of Missolonghi, advanced from the north. Against his own advice,
Reschid was compelled by orders from Constantinople to risk everything in
an engagement. He attacked Ibrahim at Konieh on the 21st of December, and
was completely defeated. Reschid himself was made a prisoner; his army
dispersed; the last forces of the Sultan were exhausted, and the road to
the Bosphorus lay open before the Egyptian invader.

[Russian aid offered to the Sultan.]

[Peace of Kutaya, April, 1833.]

In this extremity the Sultan looked around for help; nor were offers of
assistance wanting. The Emperor Nicholas had since the Treaty of Adrianople
assumed the part of the magnanimous friend; his belief was that the Ottoman
Empire might by judicious management and without further conquest be
brought into a state of habitual dependence upon Russia; and before the
result of the battle of Konieh was known General Muravieff had arrived at
Constantinople bringing the offer of Russian help both by land and sea, and
tendering his own personal services in the restoration of peace. Mahmud had
to some extent been won over by the Czar's politic forbearance in the
execution of the Treaty of Adrianople. His hatred of Mehemet Ali was a
consuming passion; and in spite of the general conviction both of his
people and of his advisers that no possible concession to a rebellious
vassal could be so fatal as the protection of the hereditary enemy of
Islam, he was disposed to accept the Russian tender of assistance. As a
preliminary, Muravieff was sent to Alexandria with permission to cede Acre
to Mehemet Ali, if in return the Viceroy would make over his fleet to the
Sultan. These were conditions on which no reasonable man could have
expected that Mehemet would make peace; and the intention of the Russian
Court probably was that Muravieff's mission should fail. The envoy soon
returned to Constantinople announcing that his terms were rejected. Mahmud
now requested that Russian ships might be sent to the Bosphorus, and to the
dismay of the French and English embassies a Russian squadron appeared
before the capital. Admiral Roussin, the French ambassador, addressed a
protest to the Sultan and threatened to leave Constantinople. His
remonstrances induced Mahmud to consent to some more serious negotiation
being opened with Mehemet Ali. A French envoy was authorised to promise the
Viceroy the governorship of Tripoli in Syria as well as Acre; his
overtures, however, were not more acceptable than those of Muravieff, and
Mehemet openly declared that if peace were not concluded on his own terms
within six weeks, he should order Ibrahim, who had halted at Kutaya, to
continue his march on the Bosphorus. Thoroughly alarmed at this threat, and
believing that no Turkish force could keep Ibrahim out of the capital,
Mahmud applied to Russia for more ships and also for troops. Again Admiral
Roussin urged upon the Sultan that if Syria could be reconquered only by
Russian forces it was more than lost to the Porte. His arguments were
supported by the Divan, and with such effect that a French diplomatist was
sent to Ibrahim with power to negotiate for peace on any terms.
Preliminaries were signed at Kutaya under French mediation on the 10th of
April, 1833, by which the Sultan made over to his vassal not only the whole
of Syria but the province of Adana which lies between Mount Taurus and the
Mediterranean. After some delay these Preliminaries were ratified by
Mahmud; and Ibrahim, after his dazzling success both in war and in
diplomacy, commenced the evacuation of northern Anatolia.

[Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, July, 1833.]

For the moment it appeared that French influence had decisively prevailed
at Constantinople, and that the troops of the Czar had been summoned from
Sebastopol only to be dismissed with the ironical compliments of those who
were most anxious to get rid of them. But this was not really the case.
Whether the fluctuations in the Sultan's policy had been due to mere fear
and irresolution, or whether they had to some extent proceeded from the
desire to play off one Power against another, it was to Russia, not France,
that his final confidence was given. The soldiers of the Czar were encamped
by the side of the Turks on the eastern shore of the Bosphorus; his ships
lay below Constantinople. Here on the 8th of July a Treaty was signed at
the palace of Unkiar Skelessi, [401] in which Russia and Turkey entered
into a defensive alliance of the most intimate character, each Power
pledging itself to render assistance to the other, not only against the
attack of an external enemy, but in every event where its peace and
security might be endangered. Russia undertook, in cases where its support
should be required, to provide whatever amount of troops the Sultan should
consider necessary both by sea and land, the Porte being charged with no
part of the expense beyond that of the provisioning of the troops. The
duration of the Treaty was fixed in the first instance for eight years. A
secret article, which, however, was soon afterwards published, declared
that, in order to diminish the burdens of the Porte, the Czar would not
demand the material help to which the Treaty entitled him; while, in
substitution for such assistance, the Porte undertook, when Russia should
be at war, to close the Dardanelles to the war-ships of all nations.

[Effect of this Treaty.]

By the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, Russia came nearer than it has at any
time before or since to that complete ascendency at Constantinople which
has been the modern object of its policy. The success of its diplomatists
had in fact been too great; for, if the abstract right of the Sultan to
choose his own allies had not yet been disputed by Europe at large, the
clause in the Treaty which related to the Dardanelles touched the interests
of every Power which possessed a naval station in the Mediterranean. By the
public law of Europe the Black Sea, which until the eighteenth century was
encompassed entirely by the Sultan's territory, formed no part of the open
waters of the world, but a Turkish lake to which access was given through
the Dardanelles only at the pleasure of the Porte. When, in the eighteenth
century, Russia gained a footing on the northern shore of the Euxine, this
carried with it no right to send war-ships through the straits into the
Mediterranean, nor had any Power at war with Russia the right to send a
fleet into the Black Sea otherwise than by the Sultan's consent. The Treaty
of Unkiar Skelessi, in making Turkey the ally of Russia against all its
enemies, converted the entrance to the Black Sea into a Russian fortified
post, from behind which Russia could freely send forth its ships of war
into the Mediterranean, while its own ports and arsenals remained secure
against attack. England and France, which were the States whose interests
were principally affected, protested against the Treaty, and stated they
reserved to themselves the right of taking such action in regard to it as
occasion might demand. Nor did the opposition rest with the protests of
diplomatists. The attention both of the English nation and of its
Government was drawn far more than hitherto to the future of the Ottoman
Empire. Political writers exposed with unwearied vigour, and not without
exaggeration, the designs of the Court of St. Petersburg in Asia as well as
in Europe; and to this time, rather than to any earlier period, belongs the
first growth of that strong national antagonism to Russia which found its
satisfaction in the Crimean War, and which has by no means lost its power
at the present day.

[France and Mehemet Ali.]

In desiring to check the extension of Russia's influence in the Levant,
Great Britain and France were at one. The lines of policy, however,
followed by these two States were widely divergent. Great Britain sought to
maintain the Sultan's power in its integrity; France became in an
increasing degree the patron and the friend of Mehemet Ali. Since the
expedition of Napoleon to Egypt in 1798, which was itself the execution of
a design formed in the reign of Louis XVI., Egypt had largely retained its
hold on the imagination of the leading classes in France. Its monuments,
its relics of a mighty past, touched a livelier chord among French men of
letters and science than India has at any time found among ourselves; and
although the hope of national conquest vanished with Napoleon's overthrow,
Egypt continued to afford a field of enterprise to many a civil and
military adventurer. Mehemet's army and navy were organised by French
officers; he was surrounded by French agents and men of business; and after
the conquest of Algiers had brought France on to the southern shore of the
Mediterranean, the advantages of a close political relation with Egypt did
not escape the notice of statesmen who saw in Gibraltar and Malta the most
striking evidences of English maritime power. Moreover the personal fame of
Mehemet strongly affected French opinion. His brilliant military reforms,
his vigorous administration, and his specious achievements in finance
created in the minds of those who were too far off to know the effects of
his tyranny the belief that at the hands of this man the East might yet
awaken to new life. Thus, from a real conviction of the superiority of
Mehemet's rule over that of the House of Osman no less than from
considerations of purely national policy, the French Government, without
any public or official bond of union, gradually became the acknowledged
supporters of the Egyptian conqueror, and connected his interests with
their own.

[Rule of Mehemet and Ibrahim.]

Sultan Mahmud had ratified the Preliminaries of Kutaya with wrath in his
heart; and from this time all his energies were bent upon the creation of a
force which should wrest back the lost provinces and take revenge upon his
rebellious vassal. As eager as Mehemet himself to reconstruct his form of
government upon the models of the West, though far less capable of
impressing upon his work the stamp of a single guiding will, thwarted
moreover by the jealous interference of Russia whenever his reforms seemed
likely to produce any important result, he nevertheless succeeded in
introducing something of European system and discipline into his army under
the guidance of foreign soldiers, among whom was a man then little known,
but destined long afterwards to fill Europe with his fame, the Prussian
staff-officer Moltke. On the other side Mehemet and Ibrahim knew well that
the peace was no more than an armed truce, and that what had been won by
arms could only be maintained by constant readiness to meet attack. Under
pressure of this military necessity, Ibrahim sacrificed whatever sources of
strength were open to him in the hatred borne by his new subjects to the
Turkish yoke, and in their hopes of relief from oppression under his own
rule. Welcomed at first as a deliverer, he soon proved a heavier
task-master than any who had gone before him. The conscription was
rigorously enforced; taxation became more burdensome; the tribes who had
enjoyed a wild independence in the mountains were disarmed and reduced to
the level of their fellow-subjects. Thus the discontent which had so
greatly facilitated the conquest of the border-provinces soon turned
against the conqueror himself, and one uprising after another shook
Ibrahim's hold upon Mount Lebanon and the Syrian desert. The Sultan watched
each outbreak against his adversary with grim joy, impatient for the moment
when the re-organisation of his own forces should enable him to re-enter
the field and to strike an overwhelming blow.

[The commerce of the Levant.]

With all its characteristics of superior intelligence in the choice of
means, the system of Mehemet All was in its end that of the genuine
Oriental despot. His final object was to convert as many as possible of his
subjects into soldiers, and to draw into his treasury the profits of the
labour of all the rest. With this aim he gradually ousted from their rights
of proprietorship the greater part of the land-owners of Egypt, and finally
proclaimed the entire soil to be State-domain, appropriating at prices
fixed by himself the whole of its produce. The natural commercial
intercourse of his dominions gave place to a system of monopolies carried
on by the Government itself. Rapidly as this system, which was introduced
into the newly-conquered provinces, filled the coffers of Mehemet Ali, it
offered to the Sultan, whose paramount authority was still acknowledged,
the means of inflicting a deadly injury upon him by a series of commercial
treaties with the European Powers, granting to western traders a free
market throughout the Ottoman Empire. Resistance to such a measure would
expose Mehemet to the hostility of the whole mercantile interest of Europe;
submission to it would involve the loss of a great part of that revenue on
which his military power depended. It was probably with this result in
view, rather than from any more obvious motive, that in the year 1838 the
Sultan concluded a new commercial Treaty with England, which was soon
followed by similar agreements with other States.

[Campaign of Nissib, June, 1839.]

The import of the Sultan's commercial policy was not lost upon Mehemet, who
had already determined to declare himself independent. He saw that war was
inevitable, and bade Ibrahim collect his forces in the neighbourhood of
Aleppo, while the generals of the Sultan massed on the upper Euphrates the
troops that had been successfully employed in subduing the wild tribes of
Kurdistan. The storm was seen to be gathering, and the representatives of
foreign Powers urged the Sultan, but in vain, to refrain from an enterprise
which might shatter his empire. Mahmud was now a dying man. Exhausted by
physical excess and by the stress and passion of his long reign, he bore in
his heart the same unquenchable hatreds as of old; and while assuring the
ambassadors of his intention to maintain the peace, he despatched a letter
to his commander-in-chief, without the knowledge of any single person,
ordering him to commence hostilities. The Turkish army crossed the frontier
on the 23rd of May, 1839. In the operations which followed, the advice and
protests of Moltke and the other European officers at head-quarters were
persistently disregarded. The Turks were outmanoeuvred and cut off from
their communications, and on the 24th of June the onslaught of Ibrahim
swept them from their position at Nissib in utter rout. The whole of their
artillery and stores fell into the hands of the enemy: the army dispersed.
Mahmud did not live to hear of the catastrophe. Six days after the battle
of Nissib was fought, and while the messenger who bore the news was still
in Anatolia, he expired, leaving the throne to his son, Abdul Medjid, a
youth of sixteen. Scarcely had the new Sultan been proclaimed when it
became known that the Admiral, Achmet Fewzi, who had been instructed to
attack the Syrian coast, had sailed into the port of Alexandria, and handed
over the Turkish fleet to Mehemet Ali himself.

[Relations of the Powers to Mehemet.]

[Quadruple Treaty without France. July, 1840.]

The very suddenness of these disasters, which left the Ottoman Empire
rulerless and without defence by land or sea, contributed ultimately to its
preservation, inasmuch as it impelled the Powers to combined action, which,
under less urgent pressure, would probably not have been attainable. On the
announcement of the exorbitant conditions of peace demanded by Mehemet, the
ambassadors addressed a collective note to the Divan, requesting that no
answer might be made until the Courts had arrived at some common
resolution. Soon afterwards the French and English fleets appeared at the
Dardanelles, nominally to protect Constantinople against the attack of the
Viceroy, in reality to guard against any sudden movement on the part of
Russia. This display of force was, however, not necessary, for the Czar, in
spite of some expressions to the contrary, had already convinced himself
that it was impossible to act upon the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi and to
make the protectorate of Turkey the affair of Russia alone. The tone which
had been taken by the English Government during the last preceding years
proved that any attempt to exercise exclusive power at Constantinople would
have been followed by war with Great Britain, in which most, if not all, of
the European Powers would have stood on the side of the latter. Abandoning
therefore the hope of attaining sole control, the Russian Government
addressed itself to the task of widening as far as possible the existing
divergence between England and France. Nor was this difficult. The Cabinet
of the Tuileries desired to see Mehemet Ali issue with increased strength
from the conflict, or even to establish his dynasty at Constantinople in
place of the House of Osman. Lord Palmerston, always jealous and suspicious
of Louis Philippe, refused to believe that the growth of Russian power
could be checked by dividing the Ottoman Empire, or that any system of
Eastern policy could be safely based on the personal qualities of a ruler
now past his seventieth year. [402] He had moreover his own causes of
discontent with Mehemet. The possibility of establishing an overland route
to India either by way of the Euphrates or of the Red Sea had lately been
engaging the attention of the English Government, and Mehemet had not
improved his position by raising obstacles to either line of passage. It
was partly in consequence of the hostility of Mehemet, who was now master
of a great part of Arabia, and of his known devotion to French interests,
that the port of Aden in the Red Sea was at this time occupied by England.
If, while Russia accepted the necessity of combined European action and
drew nearer to its rival, France persisted in maintaining the claim of
the Viceroy to extended dominion, the exclusion of France from the
European concert was the only possible result. There was no doubt as to
the attitude of the remaining Powers. Metternich, whether from genuine
pedantry, or in order to avoid the expression of those fears of Russia
which really governed his Eastern policy, repeated his threadbare
platitudes on the necessity of supporting legitimate dynasties against
rebels, and spoke of the victor of Konieh and Nissib as if he had been a
Spanish constitutionalist or a recalcitrant German professor. The Court
of Berlin followed in the same general course. In all Europe Mehemet Ali
had not a single ally, with the exception of the Government of Louis
Philippe. Under these circumstances it was of little avail to the Viceroy
that his army stood on Turkish soil without a foe before it, and that the
Sultan's fleet lay within his own harbour of Alexandria. The intrigues by
which he hoped to snatch a hasty peace from the inexperience of the young
Sultan failed, and he learnt in October that no arrangement which he
might make with the Porte without the concurrence of the Powers would be
recognised as valid. In the meantime Russia was suggesting to the English
Government one project after another for joint military action with the
object of driving Mehemet from Syria and restoring this province to the
Porte; and at the beginning of the following year it was determined on
Metternich's proposition that a Conference should forthwith be held in
London for the settlement of Eastern affairs. The irreconcilable
difference between the intentions of France and those of the other Powers
at once became evident. France proposed that all Syria and Egypt should
be given in hereditary dominion to Mehemet Ali, with no further
obligation towards the Porte than the payment of a yearly tribute. The
counter-proposal of England was that Mehemet, recognising the Sultan's
authority, should have the hereditary government of Egypt alone, that he
should entirely withdraw from all Northern Syria, and hold Palestine only
as an ordinary governor appointed by the Porte for his lifetime. To this
proposition all the Powers with the exception of France gave their
assent. Continued negotiation only brought into stronger relief the
obstinacy of Lord Palmerston, and proved the impossibility of attaining
complete agreement. At length, when it had been discovered that the
French Cabinet was attempting to conduct a separate mediation, the Four
Powers, without going through the form of asking for French sanction,
signed on the 15th of July a Treaty with the Sultan pledging themselves
to enforce upon Mehemet Ali the terms arranged. The Sultan undertook in
the first instance to offer Mehemet Egypt in perpetuity and southern
Syria for his lifetime. If this offer was not accepted within ten days,
Egypt alone was to be offered. If at the end of twenty days Mehemet still
remained obstinate, that offer in its turn was to be withdrawn, and the
Sultan and the Allies were to take such measures as the interests of the
Ottoman Empire might require. [403]

[Warlike spirit in France, 1840.]

The publication of this Treaty, excluding France as it did from the concert
of Europe, produced a storm of indignation at Paris. Thiers, who more than
any man had by his writings stimulated the spirit of aggressive warfare
among the French people and revived the worship of Napoleon, was now at the
head of the Government. His jealousy for the prestige of France, his
comparative indifference to other matters when once the national honour
appeared to be committed, his sanguine estimate of the power of his
country, rendered him a peculiarly dangerous Minister at the existing
crisis. It was not the wrongs or the danger of Mehemet Ali, but the slight
offered to France, and the revived League of the Powers which had humbled
it in 1814, that excited the passion of the Minister and the nation. Syria
was forgotten; the cry was for the recovery of the frontier of the Rhine,
and for revenge for Waterloo. New regiments were enrolled, the fleet
strengthened, and the long-delayed fortification of Paris begun. Thiers
himself probably looked forward to a campaign in Italy, anticipating that
successfully conducted by Napoleon III. in 1859, rather than to an attack
upon Prussia; but the general opinion both in France itself and in other
states was that, if war should break out, an invasion of Germany was
inevitable. The prospect of this invasion roused in a manner little
expected the spirit of the German people. Even in the smaller states, and
in the Rhenish provinces themselves, which for twenty years had shared the
fortunes of France, and in which the introduction of Prussian rule in 1814
had been decidedly unpopular, a strong national movement carried everything
before it; and the year 1840 added to the patriotic minstrelsy of Germany a
war-song, written by a Rhenish citizen, not less famous than those of 1813
and 1870. [404] That there were revolutionary forces smouldering throughout
Europe, from which France might in a general war have gained some
assistance, the events of 1848 sufficiently proved; but to no single
Government would a revolutionary war have been fraught with more imminent
peril than to that of France itself, and to no one was this conviction more
habitually present than to King Louis Philippe. Relying upon his influence
within the Chamber of Deputies, itself a body representing the wealth and
the caution rather than the hot spirit of France, the King refused to read
at the opening of the session in October the speech drawn up for him by
Thiers, and accepted the consequent resignation of the Ministry. Guizot,
who was ambassador in London, and an advocate for submission to the will of
Europe, was called to office, and succeeded after long debate in gaining a
vote of confidence from the Chamber. Though preparations for war continued,
a policy of peace was now assured. Mehemet Ali was left to his fate; and
the stubborn assurance of Lord Palmerston, which had caused so much
annoyance to the English Ministry itself, received a striking justification
in the face of all Europe.

[Ibrahim expelled from Syria, Sept.-Nov., 1840.]

[Final settlement, Feb., 1841.]

[The Dardanelles.]

The operations of the Allies against Mehemet Ali had now begun. While
Prussia kept guard on the Rhine, and Russia undertook to protect
Constantinople against any forward movement of Ibrahim, an Anglo-Austrian
naval squadron combined with a Turkish land-force in attacking the Syrian
coast-towns. The mountain-tribes of the interior were again in revolt. Arms
supplied to them by the Allies, and the insurrection soon spread over the
greater part of Syria. Ibrahim prepared for an obstinate defence, but his
dispositions were frustrated by the extension of the area of conflict, and
he was unable to prevent the coast-towns from falling one after another
into the hands of the Allies. On the capture of Acre by Sir Charles Napier
he abandoned all hope of maintaining himself any longer in Syria, and made
his way with the wreck of his army towards the Egyptian frontier. Napier
had already arrived before Alexandria, and there executed a convention with
the Viceroy, by which the latter, abandoning all claim upon his other
provinces, and undertaking to restore the Turkish fleet, was assured of the
hereditary possession of Egypt. The convention was one which the English
admiral had no authority to conclude, but it contained substantially the
terms which the Allies intended to enforce; and after Mehemet had made a
formal act of submission to the Sultan, the hereditary government of Egypt
was conferred upon himself and his family by a decree published by the
Sultan and sanctioned by the Powers. This compromise had been proposed by
the French Government after the expiry of the twenty days named in the
Treaty of July, and immediately before the fall of M. Thiers, but
Palmerston would not then listen to any demand made under open or implied
threats of war. Since that time a new and pacific Ministry had come into
office; it was no part of Palmerston's policy to keep alive the antagonism
between England and France; and he readily accepted an arrangement which,
while it saved France from witnessing the total destruction of an ally,
left Egypt to a ruler who, whatever his faults, had certainly shown a
greater capacity for government than any Oriental of that age. It remained
for the Powers to place upon record some authoritative statement of the law
recognised by Europe with regard to the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. Russia
had already virtually consented to the abrogation of the Treaty of Unkiar
Skelessi. It now joined with all the other Powers, including France, in a
declaration that the ancient rule of the Ottoman Empire which forbade the
passage of these straits to the war-ships of all nations, except when the
Porte itself should be at war, was accepted by Europe at large. Russia thus
surrendered its chance of gaining by any separate arrangement with Turkey
the permanent right of sending its fleets from the Black Sea into the
Mediterranean, and so becoming a Mediterranean Power. On the other hand,
Sebastopol and the arsenals of the Euxine remained safe against the attack
of any maritime Power, unless Turkey itself should take up arms against the
Czar. Having regard to the great superiority of England over Russia at sea,
and to the accessibility and importance of the Euxine coast towns, it is an
open question whether the removal of all international restrictions upon
the passage of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles would not be more to the
advantage of England than of its rival. This opinion, however, had not been
urged before the Crimean War, nor has it yet been accepted in our own
country.

[Turkey after 1840.]

[Legislation of Reschid.]

The conclusion of the struggle of 1840 marked with great definiteness the
real position which the Ottoman Empire was henceforth to occupy in its
relations to the western world. Rescued by Europe at large from the
alternatives of destruction at the hands of Ibrahim or complete vassalage
under Russia, the Porte entered upon the condition nominally of an
independent European State, really of a State existing under the protection
of Europe, and responsible to Europe as well for its domestic government as
for its alliances and for the conduct of its foreign policy. The necessity
of conciliating the public opinion of the West was well understood by the
Turkish statesman who had taken the leading part in the negotiations which
freed the Porte from dependence upon Russia. Reschid Pasha, the younger,
Foreign Minister at the accession of the new Sultan, had gained in an
unusual degree the regard and the confidence of the European Ministers with
whom, as a diplomatist, he had been brought into contact. As the author of
a wide system of reforms, it was his ambition so to purify and renovate the
internal administration of the Ottoman Empire that the contrasts which it
presented to the civilised order of the West should gradually disappear,
and that Turkey should become not only in name but in reality a member of
the European world. Stimulated no doubt by the achievements of Mehemet Ali,
and anxious to win over to the side of the Porte the interest which
Mehemet's partial adoption of European methods and ideas had excited on his
behalf, Reschid in his scheme of reform paid an ostentatious homage to the
principles of western administration and law, proclaiming the security of
person and property, prohibiting the irregular infliction of punishment,
recognising the civil rights of Christians and Jews, and transferring the
collection of taxes from the provincial governors to the officers of the
central authority. The friends of the Ottoman State, less experienced then
than now in the value of laws made in a society where there exists no power
that can enforce them, and where the agents of government are themselves
the most lawless of all the public enemies, hailed in Reschid's enlightened
legislation the opening of a new epoch in the life of the Christian and
Oriental races subject to the Sultan. But the fall of the Minister before a
palace-intrigue soon proved on how slight a foundation these hopes were
built. Like other Turkish reformers, Reschid had entered upon a hopeless
task; and the name of the man who was once honoured as the regenerator of a
great Empire is now almost forgotten.




CHAPTER XVIII.


Europe during the Thirty-years' Peace--Italy and Austria--Mazzini--The
House of Savoy--Gioberti--Election of Pius IX.--Reforms expected--
Revolution at Palermo--Agitation in Northern Italy--Lombardy--State of
the Austrian Empire--Growth of Hungarian National Spirit--The Magyars and
Slavs--Transylvania--Parties among the Magyars--Kossuth--The Slavic
National Movements in Austria--The Government enters on Reform in
Hungary--Policy of the Opposition--The Rural System of Austria--
Insurrection in Galicia: the Nobles and the Peasants--Agrarian
Edict--Public Opinion in Vienna--Prussia--Accession and Character of King
Frederick William IV.--Convocation of the United Diet--Its Debates and
Dissolution--France--The Spanish Marriages--Reform Movement--Socialism--
Revolution of February--End of the Orleanist Monarchy.


The characteristic of Continental history during the second quarter of this
century is the sense of unrest. The long period of European peace which
began in 1815 was not one of internal repose; the very absence of those
engrossing and imperious interests which belong to a time of warfare gave
freer play to the feelings of discontent and the vague longings for a
better political order which remained behind after the convulsions of the
revolutionary epoch and the military rule of Napoleon had passed away.
During thirty years of peace the breach had been widening between those
Governments which still represented the system of 1815, and the peoples
over whom they ruled. Ideas of liberty, awakenings of national sense, were
far more widely diffused in Europe than at the time of the revolutionary
war. The seed then prematurely forced into an atmosphere of storm and
reaction had borne its fruit: other growths, fertilised or accelerated by
Western Liberalism, but not belonging to the same family, were springing up
in unexpected strength, and in regions which had hitherto lain outside the
movement of the modern world. New forces antagonistic to Government had
come into being, penetrating an area unaffected by the constitutional
struggles of the Mediterranean States, or by the weaker political efforts
of Germany. In the homes of the Magyar and the Slavic subjects of Austria,
so torpid throughout the agitation of an earlier time, the passion of
nationality was every hour gaining new might. The older popular causes,
vanquished for the moment by one reaction after another, had silently
established a far stronger hold on men's minds. Working, some in exile and
conspiracy, others through such form of political literature as the
jealousy of Governments permitted, the leaders of the democratic movement
upon the Continent created a power before which the established order at
length succumbed. They had not created, nor was it possible under the
circumstances that they should create, an order which was capable of taking
its place.

[Italy. 1831-1848.]

Italy, rather than France, forms the central figure in any retrospect of
Europe immediately before 1848 in which the larger forces at work are not
obscured by those for the moment more prominent. The failure of the
insurrection of 1831 had left Austria more visibly than before master over
the Italian people even in those provinces in which Austria was not
nominally sovereign. It had become clear that no effort after reform could
be successful either in the Papal States or in the kingdom of Naples so
long as Austria held Lombardy and Venice. The expulsion of the foreigner
was therefore not merely the task of those who sought to give the Italian
race its separate and independent national existence, it was the task of
all who would extinguish oppression and misgovernment in any part of the
Italian peninsula. Until the power of Austria was broken, it was vain to
take up arms against the tyranny of the Duke of Modena or any other
contemptible oppressor. Austria itself had twice taught this lesson; and if
the restoration of Neapolitan despotism in 1821 could be justified by the
disorderly character of the Government then suppressed, the circumstances
attending the restoration of the Pope's authority in 1831 had extinguished
Austria's claim to any sort of moral respect; for Metternich himself had
united with the other European Courts in declaring the necessity for
reforms in the Papal Government, and of these reforms, though a single
earnest word from Austria would have enforced their execution, not one had
been carried into effect. Gradually, but with increasing force as each
unhappy year passed by, the conviction gained weight among all men of
serious thought that the problem to be faced was nothing less than the
destruction of the Austrian yoke. Whether proclaimed as an article of faith
or veiled in diplomatic reserve, this belief formed the common ground among
men whose views on the immediate future of Italy differed in almost every
other particular.

[Mazzini.]

Three main currents of opinion are to be traced in the ferment of ideas
which preceded the Italian revolution of 1848. At a time not rich in
intellectual or in moral power, the most striking figure among those who
are justly honoured as the founders of Italian independence is perhaps that
of Mazzini. Exiled during nearly the whole of his mature life, a
conspirator in the eyes of all Governments, a dreamer in the eyes of the
world, Mazzini was a prophet or an evangelist among those whom his
influence led to devote themselves to the one cause of their country's
regeneration. No firmer faith, no nobler disinterestedness, ever animated
the saint or the patriot; and if in Mazzini there was also something of the
visionary and the fanatic, the force with which he grasped the two vital
conditions of Italian revival--the expulsion of the foreigner and the
establishment of a single national Government--proves him to have been a
thinker of genuine political insight. Laying the foundation of his creed
deep in the moral nature of man, and constructing upon this basis a fabric
not of rights but of duties, he invested the political union with the
immediateness, the sanctity, and the beauty of family life. With him, to
live, to think, to hope, was to live, to think, to hope for Italy; and the
Italy of his ideal was a Republic embracing every member of the race,
purged of the priestcraft and the superstition which had degraded the man
to the slave, indebted to itself alone for its independence, and
consolidated by the reign of equal law. The rigidity with which Mazzini
adhered to his own great project in its completeness, and his impatience
with any bargaining away of national rights, excluded him from the work of
those practical politicians and men of expedients who in 1859 effected with
foreign aid the first step towards Italian union; but the influence of his
teaching and his organisation in preparing his countrymen for independence
was immense; and the dynasty which has rendered to United Italy services
which Mazzini thought impossible, owes to this great Republican scarcely
less than to its ablest friends.

[Hopes of Piedmont.]

Widely separated from the school of Mazzini in temper and intention was the
group of politicians and military men, belonging mostly to Piedmont, who
looked to the sovereign and the army of this State as the one hope of Italy
in its struggle against foreign rule. The House of Savoy, though foreign in
its origin, was, and had been for centuries, a really national dynasty. It
was, moreover, by interest and traditional policy, the rival rather than
the friend of Austria in Northern Italy. If the fear of revolution had at
times brought the Court of Turin into close alliance with Vienna, the
connection had but thinly veiled the lasting antagonism of two States
which, as neighbours, had habitually sought expansion each at the other's
cost. Lombardy, according to the expression of an older time, was the
artichoke which the Kings of Piedmont were destined to devour leaf by leaf.
Austria, on the other hand, sought extension towards the Alps: it had in
1799 clearly shown its intention of excluding the House of Savoy altogether
from the Italian mainland; and the remembrance of this epoch had led the
restored dynasty in 1815 to resist the plans of Metternich for establishing
a league of all the princes of Italy under Austria's protection. The
sovereign, moreover, who after the failure of the constitutional movement
of 1821 had mounted the throne surrounded by Austrian bayonets, was no
longer alive. Charles Albert of Carignano, who had at that time played so
ambiguous a part, and whom Metternich had subsequently endeavoured to
exclude from the succession, was on the throne. He had made his peace with
absolutism by fighting in Spain against the Cortes in 1823; and since his
accession to the throne he had rigorously suppressed the agitation of
Mazzini's partizans within his own dominions. But in spite of strong
clerical and reactionary influences around him, he had lately shown an
independence of spirit in his dealings with Austria which raised him in the
estimation of his subjects; and it was believed that his opinions had been
deeply affected by the predominance which the idea of national independence
was now gaining over that of merely democratic change. If the earlier
career of Charles Albert himself cast some doubt upon his personal
sincerity, and much more upon his constancy of purpose, there was at least
in Piedmont an army thoroughly national in its sentiment, and capable of
taking the lead whenever the opportunity should arise for uniting Italy
against the foreigner. In no other Italian State was there an effective
military force, or one so little adulterated with foreign elements.

[Hopes of the Papacy.]

A third current of opinion in these years of hope and of illusion was that
represented in the writings of Gioberti, the depicter of a new and glorious
Italy, regenerated not by philosophic republicanism or the sword of a
temporal monarch, but by the moral force of a reformed and reforming
Papacy. The conception of the Catholic Church as a great Liberal power,
strange and fantastic as it now appears, was no dream of an isolated
Italian enthusiast; it was an idea which, after the French Revolution of
1830, and the establishment of a government at once anti-clerical and
anti-democratic, powerfully influenced some of the best minds in France,
and found in Montalembert and Lamennais exponents who commanded the ear of
Europe. If the corruption of the Papacy had been at once the spiritual and
the political death of Italy, its renovation in purity and in strength
would be also the resurrection of the Italian people. Other lands had
sought, and sought in vain, to work out their problems under the guidance
of leaders antagonistic to the Church, and of popular doctrines divorced
from religious faith. To Italy belonged the prerogative of spiritual power.
By this power, aroused from the torpor of ages, and speaking, as it had
once spoken, to the very conscience of mankind, the gates of a glorious
future would be thrown open. Conspirators might fret, and politicians
scheme, but the day on which the new life of Italy would begin would be
that day when the head of the Church, taking his place as chief of a
federation of Italian States, should raise the banner of freedom and
national right, and princes and people alike should follow the
all-inspiring voice.

[Election of Pius IX., June, 1846.]

[Reforms expected from Pius.]

[Ferrara, June, 1847.]

A monk, ignorant of everything but cloister lore, benighted, tyrannical,
the companion in his private life of a few jolly priests and a gossiping
barber, was not an alluring emblem of the Church of the future. But in 1846
Pope Gregory XVI., who for the last five years had been engaged in one
incessant struggle against insurgents, conspirators, and reformers, and
whose prisons were crowded with the best of his subjects, passed away.
[405] His successor, Mastai Ferretti, Bishop of Imola, was elected under
the title of Pius IX., after the candidate favoured by Austria had failed
to secure the requisite number of votes (June 17). The choice of this
kindly and popular prelate was to some extent a tribute to Italian feeling;
and for the next eighteen months it appeared as it Gioberti had really
divined the secret of the age. The first act of the new Pope was the
publication of a universal amnesty for political offences. The prison doors
throughout his dominions were thrown open, and men who had been sentenced
to confinement for life returned in exultation to their homes. The act
created a profound impression throughout Italy, and each good-humoured
utterance of Pius confirmed the belief that great changes were at hand. A
wild enthusiasm seized upon Rome. The population abandoned itself to
festivals in honour of the Pontiff and of the approaching restoration of
Roman liberty. Little was done; not much was actually promised; everything
was believed. The principle of representative government was discerned in
the new Council of State now placed by the side of the College of
Cardinals; a more serious concession was made to popular feeling in the
permission given to the citizens of Rome, and afterwards to those of the
provinces, to enrol themselves in a civic guard. But the climax of
excitement was reached when, in answer to a threatening movement of
Austria, occasioned by the growing agitation throughout Central Italy, the
Papal Court protested against the action of its late protector. By the
Treaties of Vienna Austria had gained the right to garrison the citadel of
Ferrara, though this town lay within the Ecclesiastical States. Placing a
new interpretation on the expression used in the Treaties, the Austrian
Government occupied the town of Ferrara itself (June 17th, 1847). The
movement was universally understood to be the preliminary to a new
occupation of the Papal States, like that of 1831; and the protests of the
Pope against the violation of his territory gave to the controversy a
European importance. The English and French fleets appeared at Naples; the
King of Sardinia openly announced his intention to take the field against
Austria if war should break out. By the efforts of neutral Powers a
compromise on the occupation of Ferrara was at length arranged; but the
passions which had been excited were not appeased, and the Pope remained in
popular imagination the champion of Italian independence against Austria,
as well as the apostle of constitutional Government and the rights of the
people.

[Revolution at Palermo, Jan., 1848.]

In the meantime the agitation begun in Rome was spreading through the north
and the south of the peninsula, and beyond the Sicilian Straits. The
centenary of the expulsion of the Austrians from Genoa in December, 1746,
was celebrated throughout central Italy with popular demonstrations which
gave Austria warning of the storm about to burst upon it. In the south,
however, impatience under domestic tyranny was a far more powerful force
than the distant hope of national independence. Sicily had never forgotten
the separate rights which it had once enjoyed, and the constitution given
to it under the auspices of England in 1812. Communications passed between
the Sicilian leaders and the opponents of the Bourbon Government on the
mainland, and in the autumn of 1847 simultaneous risings took place in
Calabria and at Messina. These were repressed without difficulty; but the
fire smouldered far and wide, and on the 13th of January, 1848, the
population of Palermo rose in revolt. For fourteen days the conflict
between the people and the Neapolitan troops continued. The city was
bombarded, but in the end the people were victorious, and a provisional
government was formed by the leaders of the insurrection. One Sicilian town
after another followed the example of the capital, and expelled its
Neapolitan garrison. Threatened by revolution in Naples itself, King
Ferdinand II., grandson of the despot of 1821, now imitated the policy of
his predecessor, and proclaimed a constitution. A Liberal Ministry was
formed, but no word was said as to the autonomy claimed by Sicily, and
promised, as it would seem, by the leaders of the popular party on the
mainland. After the first excitement of success was past, it became clear
that the Sicilians were as widely at variance with the newly-formed
Government at Naples as with that which they had overthrown.

[Agitation in Austrian Italy.]

The insurrection of Palermo gave a new stimulus and imparted more of
revolutionary colour to the popular movement throughout Italy.
Constitutions were granted in Piedmont and Tuscany. In the Austrian
provinces national exasperation against the rule of the foreigner grew
daily more menacing. Radetzky, the Austrian Commander-in-chief, had long
foreseen the impending struggle, and had endeavoured, but not with complete
success, to impress his own views upon the imperial Government. Verona had
been made the centre of a great system of fortifications, and the strength
of the army under Radetzky's command had been considerably increased, but
it was not until the eleventh hour that Metternich abandoned the hope of
tiding over difficulties by his old system of police and spies, and
permitted the establishment of undisguised military rule. In order to
injure the finances of Austria, a general resolution had been made by the
patriotic societies of Upper Italy to abstain from the use of tobacco, from
which the Government drew a large part of its revenue. On the first Sunday
in 1848 Austrian officers, smoking in the streets of Milan, were attacked
by the people. The troops were called to arms: a conflict took place, and
enough blood was shed to give to the tumult the importance of an actual
revolt. In Padua and elsewhere similar outbreaks followed. Radetzky issued
a general order to his troops, declaring that the Emperor was determined to
defend his Italian dominion whether against an external or domestic foe.
Martial law was proclaimed; and for a moment, although Piedmont gave signs
of throwing itself into the Italian movement, the awe of Austria's military
power hushed the rising tempest. A few weeks more revealed to an astonished
world the secret that the Austrian State, so great and so formidable in the
eyes of friend and foe, was itself on the verge of dissolution.

[Austria.]

[Affairs in Hungary.]

It was to the absence of all stirring public life, not to any real
assimilative power or any high intelligence in administration, that the
House of Hapsburg owed, during the eighteenth century, the continued union
of that motley of nations or races which successive conquests, marriages,
and treaties had brought under its dominion. The violence of the attack
made by the Emperor Joseph upon all provincial rights first re-awakened the
slumbering spirit of Hungary; but the national movement of that time, which
excited such strong hopes and alarms, had been succeeded by a long period
of stagnation, and during the Napoleonic wars the repression of everything
that appealed to any distinctively national spirit had become more avowedly
than before the settled principle of the Austrian Court. In 1812 the
Hungarian Diet had resisted the financial measures of the Government. The
consequence was that, in spite of the law requiring its convocation every
three years, the Diet was not again summoned till 1825. During the
intermediate period, the Emperor raised taxes and levies by edict alone.
Deprived of its constitutional representation, the Hungarian nobility
pursued its opposition to the encroachments of the Crown in the Sessions of
each county. At these assemblies, to which there existed no parallel in the
western and more advanced States of the Continent, each resident land-owner
who belonged to the very numerous caste of the noblesse was entitled to
speak and to vote. Retaining, in addition to the right of free discussion
and petition, the appointment of local officials, as well as a considerable
share in the actual administration, the Hungarian county-assemblies,
handing down a spirit of rough independence from an immemorial past, were
probably the hardiest relic of self-government existing in any of the great
monarchical States of Europe. Ignorant, often uncouth in their habits,
oppressive to their peasantry, and dominated by the spirit of race and
caste, the mass of the Magyar nobility had indeed proved as impervious to
the humanising influences of the eighteenth century as they had to the
solicitations of despotism. The Magnates, or highest order of noblesse, who
formed a separate chamber in the Diet, had been to some extent
denationalised; they were at once more European in their culture, and more
submissive to the Austrian Court. In banishing political discussion from
the Diet to the County Sessions, the Emperor's Government had intensified
the provincial spirit which it sought to extinguish. Too numerous to be won
over by personal inducements, and remote from the imperial agencies which
had worked so effectively through the Chamber of Magnates, the lesser
nobility of Hungary during these years of absolutism carried the habit of
political discussion to their homes, and learnt to baffle the imperial
Government by withholding all help and all information from its subordinate
agents. Each county-assembly became a little Parliament, and a centre of
resistance to the usurpation of the Crown. The stimulus given to the
national spirit by this struggle against unconstitutional rule was seen not
less in the vigorous attacks made upon the Government on the re-assembling
of the Diet in 1825, than in the demand that Magyar, and not Latin as
heretofore, should be the language used in recording the proceedings of the
Diet, and in which communications should pass between the Upper and the
Lower House.

[Magyars and Slavs.]

There lay in this demand for the recognition of the national language the
germ of a conflict of race against race which was least of all suspected by
those by whom the demand was made. Hungary, as a political unity,
comprised, besides the Slavic kingdom of Croatia, wide regions in which the
inhabitants were of Slavic or Roumanian race, and where the Magyar was
known only as a feudal lord. The district in which the population at large
belonged to the Magyar stock did not exceed one-half of the kingdom. For
the other races of Hungary, who were probably twice as numerous as
themselves, the Magyars entertained the utmost contempt, attributing to
them the moral qualities of the savage, and denying to them the possession
of any nationality whatever. In a country combining so many elements
ill-blended with one another, and all alike subject to a German Court at
Vienna, Latin, as the language of the Church and formerly the language of
international communication, had served well as a neutral means of
expression in public affairs. There might be Croatian deputies in the Diet
who could not speak Magyar; the Magyars could not understand Croatian; both
could understand and could without much effort express themselves in the
species of Latin which passed muster at Presburg and at Vienna. Yet no
freedom of handling could convert a dead language into a living one; and
when the love of country and of ancient right became once more among the
Magyars an inspiring passion, it naturally sought a nobler and more
spontaneous utterance than dog-latin. Though no law was passed upon the
subject in the Parliament in which it was first mooted, speakers in the
Diet of 1832 used their mother-tongue; and when the Viennese Government
forbade the publication of the debates, reports were circulated in
manuscript through the country by Kossuth, a young deputy, who after the
dissolution of the Diet in 1836 paid for his defiance of the Emperor by
three years' imprisonment.

[Hungary after 1830.]

[The Diet of 1832-36.]

[Széchenyi.]

Hungary now seemed to be entering upon an epoch of varied and rapid
national development. The barriers which separated it from the Western
world were disappearing. The literature, the ideas, the inventions of
Western Europe were penetrating its archaic society, and transforming a
movement which in its origin had been conservative and aristocratic into
one of far-reaching progress and reform. Alone among the opponents of
absolute power on the Continent, the Magyars had based their resistance on
positive constitutional right, on prescription, and the settled usage of
the past; and throughout the conflict with the Crown between 1812 and 1825
legal right was on the side not of the Emperor but of those whom he
attempted to coerce. With excellent judgment the Hungarian leaders had
during these years abstained from raising any demand for reforms,
appreciating the advantage of a purely defensive position in a combat with
a Court pledged in the eyes of all Europe, as Austria was, to the defence
of legitimate rights. This policy had gained its end; the Emperor, after
thirteen years of conflict, had been forced to re-convoke the Diet, and to
abandon the hope of effecting a work in which his uncle, Joseph II., had
failed. But, the constitution once saved, that narrow and exclusive body of
rights for which the nobility had contended no longer satisfied the needs
or the conscience of the time. [406] Opinion was moving fast; the claims of
the towns and of the rural population were making themselves felt; the
agitation that followed the overthrow of the Bourbons in 1830 reached
Hungary too, not so much through French influence as through the Polish war
of independence, in which the Magyars saw a struggle not unlike their own,
enlisting their warmest sympathies for the Polish armies so long as they
kept the field, and for the exiles who came among them when the conflict
was over. By the side of the old defenders of class-privilege there arose
men imbued with the spirit of modern Liberalism. The laws governing the
relation of the peasant to his lord, which remained nearly as they had been
left by Maria Theresa, were dealt with by the Diet of 1832 in so liberal a
spirit that the Austrian Government, formerly far in advance of Hungarian
opinion on this subject, refused its assent to many of the measures passed.
Great schemes of social and material improvement also aroused the public
hopes in these years. The better minds became conscious of the real aspect
of Hungarian life in comparison with that of civilised Europe--of its
poverty, its inertia, its boorishness. Extraordinary energy was thrown into
the work of advance by Count Széchenyi, a nobleman whose imagination had
been fired by the contrast which the busy industry of Great Britain and the
practical interests of its higher classes presented to the torpor of his
own country. It is to him that Hungary owes the bridge uniting its double
capital at Pesth, and that Europe owes the unimpeded navigation of the
Danube, which he first rendered possible by the destruction of the rocks
known as the Iron Gates at Orsova. Sanguine, lavishly generous, an ardent
patriot, Széchenyi endeavoured to arouse men of his own rank, the great and
the powerful in Hungary, to the sense of what was due from them to their
country as leaders in its industrial development. He was no revolutionist,
nor was he an enemy to Austria. A peaceful political future would best have
accorded with his own designs for raising Hungary to its due place among
nations.

[Transylvania.]

That the Hungarian movement of this time was converted from one of fruitful
progress into an embittered political conflict ending in civil war was due,
among other causes, to the action of the Austrian Cabinet itself. Wherever
constitutional right existed, there Austria saw a natural enemy. The
province of Transylvania, containing a mixed population of Magyars,
Germans, and Roumanians, had, like Hungary, a Diet of its own, which Diet
ought to have been summoned every year. It was, however, not once assembled
between 1811 and 1834. In the agitation at length provoked in Transylvania
by this disregard of constitutional right, the Magyar element naturally
took the lead, and so gained complete ascendancy in the province. When the
Diet met in 1834, its language and conduct were defiant in the highest
degree. It was speedily dissolved, and the scandal occasioned by its
proceedings disturbed the last days of the Emperor Francis, who died in
1835, leaving the throne to his son Ferdinand, an invalid incapable of any
serious exertion. It soon appeared that nothing was changed in the
principles of the Imperial Government, and that whatever hopes had been
formed of the establishment of a freer system under the new reign were
delusive. The leader of the Transylvanian Opposition was Count Wesselényi,
himself a Magnate in Hungary, who, after the dissolution of the Diet,
betook himself to the Sessions of the Hungarian counties, and there
delivered speeches against the Court which led to his being arrested and
brought to trial for high treason. His cause was taken up by the Hungarian
Diet, as one in which the rights of the local assemblies were involved. The
plea of privilege was, however, urged in vain, and the sentence of exile
which was passed upon Count Wesselényi became a new source of contention
between the Crown and the Magyar Estates. [407]

[Parties among the Magyars.]

[The Diet of 1843.]

The enmity of Government was now a sufficient passport to popular favour.
On emerging from his prison under a general amnesty in 1840, Kossuth
undertook the direction of a Magyar journal at Pesth, which at once gained
an immense influence throughout the country. The spokesman of a new
generation, Kossuth represented an entirely different order of ideas from
those of the orthodox defenders of the Hungarian Constitution. They had
been conservative and aristocratic; he was revolutionary: their weapons had
been drawn from the storehouse of Hungarian positive law; his inspiration
was from the Liberalism of western Europe. Thus within the national party
itself there grew up sections in more or less pronounced antagonism to one
another, though all were united by a passionate devotion to Hungary and by
an unbounded faith in its future. Széchenyi, and those who with him
subordinated political to material ends, regarded Kossuth as a dangerous
theorist. Between the more impetuous and the more cautious reformers stood
the recognised Parliamentary leaders of the Liberals, among whom Deák had
already given proof of political capacity of no common order. In Kossuth's
journal the national problems of the time were discussed both by his
opponents and by his friends. Publicity gave greater range as well as
greater animation to the conflict of ideas; and the rapid development of
opinion during these years was seen in the large and ambitious measures
which occupied the Diet of 1843. Electoral and municipal reform, the
creation of a code of criminal law, the introduction of trial by jury, the
abolition of the immunity of the nobles from taxation; all these, and
similar legislative projects, displayed at once the energy of the time and
the influence of western Europe in transforming the political conceptions
of the Hungarian nation. Hitherto the forty-three Free Cities had possessed
but a single vote in the Diet, as against the sixty-three votes possessed
by the Counties. It was now generally admitted that this anomaly could not
continue; but inasmuch as civic rights were themselves monopolised by small
privileged orders among the townsmen, the problem of constitutional reform
carried with it that of a reform of the municipalities. Hungary in short
was now face to face with the task of converting its ancient system of the
representation of the privileged orders into the modern system of a
representation of the nation at large. Arduous at every epoch and in every
country, this work was one of almost insuperable difficulty in Hungary,
through the close connection with the absolute monarchy of Austria; through
the existence of a body of poor noblesse, numbered at two hundred thousand,
who, though strong in patriotic sentiment, bitterly resented any attack
upon their own freedom from taxation; and above all through the variety of
races in Hungary, and the attitude assumed by the Magyars, as the dominant
nationality, towards the Slavs around them. In proportion as the energy of
the Magyars and their confidence in the victory of the national cause
mounted high, so rose their disdain of all claims beside their own within
the Hungarian kingdom. It was resolved by the Lower Chamber of the Diet of
1843 that no language but Magyar should be permitted in debate, and that at
the end of ten years every person not capable of speaking the Magyar
language should be excluded from all public employment. The Magnates
softened the latter provision by excepting from it the holders of merely
local offices in Slavic districts; against the prohibition of Latin in the
Diet the Croatians appealed to the Emperor. A rescript arrived from Vienna
placing a veto upon the resolution. So violent was the storm excited in the
Diet itself by this rescript, and so threatening the language of the
national leaders outside, that the Cabinet, after a short interval, revoked
its decision, and accepted a compromise which, while establishing Magyar as
the official language of the kingdom, and requiring that it should be
taught even in Croatian schools, permitted the use of Latin in the Diet for
the next six years. In the meantime the Diet had shouted down every speaker
who began with the usual Latin formula, and fighting had taken place in
Agram, the Croatian capital, between the national and the Magyar factions.

[The Slavic national movements.]

It was in vain that the effort was made at Presburg to resist all claims
but those of one race. The same quickening breath which had stirred the
Magyar nation to new life had also passed over the branches of the Slavic
family within the Austrian dominions far and near. In Bohemia a revival of
interest in the Czech language and literature, which began about 1820, had
in the following decade gained a distinctly political character. Societies
originally or professedly founded for literary objects had become the
centres of a popular movement directed towards the emancipation of the
Czech elements in Bohemia from German ascendancy, and the restoration of
something of a national character to the institutions of the kingdom. Among
the southern Slavs, with whom Hungary was more directly concerned, the
national movement first became visible rather later. Its earliest
manifestations took, just as in Bohemia, a literary or linguistic form.
Projects for the formation of a common language which, under the name of
Illyrian, should draw together all the Slavic populations between the
Adriatic and the Black Sea, occupied for a while the fancy of the learned;
but the more ambitious part of this design, which had given some umbrage to
the Turkish Government, was abandoned in obedience to instructions from
Vienna; and the movement first gained political importance when its scope
was limited to the Croatian and Slavonic districts of Hungary, and it was
endowed with the distinct task of resisting the imposition of Magyar as an
official language. In addition to their representation in the Diet of the
Kingdom at Presburg, the Croatian landowners had their own Provincial Diet
at Agram. In this they possessed not only a common centre of action, but an
organ of communication with the Imperial Government at Vienna, which
rendered them some support in their resistance to Magyar pretensions. Later
events gave currency to the belief that a conflict of races in Hungary was
deliberately stimulated by the Austrian Court in its own interest. But the
whole temper and principle of Metternich's rule was opposed to the
development of national spirit, whether in one race or another; and the
patronage which the Croats appeared at this time to receive at Vienna was
probably no more than an instinctive act of conservatism, intended to
maintain the balance of interests, and to reduce within the narrowest
possible limits such changes as might prove inevitable.

[Agitation after 1843.]

Of all the important measures of reform which were brought before the
Hungarian Diet of 1843, one alone had become law. The rest were either
rejected by the Chamber of Magnates after passing the Lower House, or were
thrown out in the Lower House in spite of the approval of the majority, in
consequence of peremptory instructions sent to Presburg by the county
assemblies. The representative of a Hungarian constituency was not free to
vote at his discretion; he was the delegate of the body of nobles which
sent him, and was legally bound to give his vote in accordance with the
instructions which he might from time to time receive. However zealous the
Legislature itself, it was therefore liable to be paralysed by external
pressure as soon as any question was raised which touched the privileges of
the noble caste. This was especially the case with all projects involving
the expenditure of public revenue. Until the nobles bore their share of
taxation it was impossible that Hungary should emerge from a condition of
beggarly need; yet, be the inclination of the Diet what it might, it was
controlled by bodies of stubborn squires or yeomen in each county, who
fully understood their own power, and stoutly forbade the passing of any
measure which imposed a share of the public burdens upon themselves. The
impossibility of carrying out reforms tinder existing conditions had been
demonstrated by the failures of 1843. In order to overcome the obstruction
as well of the Magnates as of the county assemblies, it was necessary that
an appeal should be made to the country at large, and that a force of
public sentiment should be aroused which should both overmaster the
existing array of special interests, and give birth to legislation merging
them for the future in a comprehensive system of really national
institutions. To this task the Liberal Opposition addressed itself; and
although large differences existed within the party, and the action of
Kossuth, who now exchanged the career of the journalist for that of the
orator, was little fettered by the opinions of his colleagues, the general
result did not disappoint the hopes that had been formed. Political
associations and clubs took vigorous root in the country. The magic of
Kossuth's oratory left every hearer a more patriotic, if not a wiser man;
and an awakening passion for the public good seemed for a while to throw
all private interests into the shade.

[Government Policy of Reform.]

[Programme of the Opposition.]

It now became plain to all but the blindest that great changes were
inevitable; and at the instance of the more intelligent among the
Conservative party in Hungary the Imperial Government resolved to enter the
lists with a policy of reform, and, if possible, to wrest the helm from the
men who were becoming masters of the nation. In order to secure a majority
in the Diet, it was deemed requisite by the Government first to gain a
predominant influence in the county-assemblies. As a preliminary step, most
of the Lieutenants of counties, to whose high dignity no practical
functions attached, were removed from their posts, and superseded by paid
administrators, appointed from Vienna. Count Apponyi, one of the most
vigorous of the conservative and aristocratic reformers, was placed at the
head of the Ministry. In due time the proposals of the Government were made
public. They comprised the taxation of the nobles, a reform of the
municipalities, modifications in the land-system, and a variety of economic
measures intended directly to promote the material development of the
country. The latter were framed to some extent on the lines laid down by
Széchenyi, who now, in bitter antagonism to Kossuth, accepted office under
the Government, and gave to it the prestige of his great name. It remained
for the Opposition to place their own counter-proposals before the country.
Differences within the party were smoothed over, and a manifesto, drawn up
by Deák, gave statesmanlike expression to the aims of the national leaders.
Embracing every reform included in the policy of the Government, it added
to them others which the Government had not ventured to face, and gave to
the whole the character of a vindication of its own rights by the nation,
in contrast to a scheme of administrative reform worked out by the officers
of the Crown. Thus while it enforced the taxation of the nobles, it claimed
for the Diet the right of control over every branch of the national
expenditure. It demanded increased liberty for the Press, and an unfettered
right of political association; and finally, while doing homage to the
unity of the Crown, it required that the Government of Hungary should be
one in direct accord with the national representation in the Diet, and that
the habitual effort of the Court of Vienna to place this kingdom on the
same footing as the Emperor's non-constitutional provinces should be
abandoned. With the rival programmes of the Government and the Opposition
before it, the country proceeded to the elections of 1847. Hopefulness and
enthusiasm abounded on every side; and at the close of the year the Diet
assembled from which so great a work was expected, and which was destined
within so short a time to witness, in storm and revolution, the passing
away of the ancient order of Hungarian life.

[The Rural System of Hungary.]

The directly constitutional problems with which the Diet of Presburg had to
deal were peculiar to Hungary itself, and did not exist in the other parts
of the Austrian Empire. There were, however, social problems which were not
less urgently forcing themselves upon public attention alike in Hungary and
in those provinces which enjoyed no constitutional rights. The chief of
these was the condition of the peasant-population. In the greater part of
the Austrian dominions, though serfage had long been abolished, society was
still based upon the manorial system. The peasant held his land subject to
the obligation of labouring on his lord's domain for a certain number of
days in the year, and of rendering him other customary services: the
manor-court, though checked by the neighbourhood of crown-officers,
retained its jurisdiction, and its agents frequently performed duties of
police. Hence the proposed extinction of the so-called feudal tie, and the
conversion of the semi-dependent cultivator into a freeholder bound only to
the payment of a fixed money-charge, or rendered free of all obligation by
the surrender of a part of his holding, involved in many districts the
institution of new public authorities and a general reorganisation of the
minor local powers. From this task the Austrian Government had shrunk in
mere lethargy, even when, as in 1835, proposals for change had come from
the landowners themselves. The work begun by Maria Theresa and Joseph
remained untouched, though thirty years of peace had given abundant
opportunity for its completion, and the legislation of Hardenberg in 1810
afforded precedents covering at least part of the field.

[Insurrection in Galicia, Feb., 1846.]

[Rural Edict, Dec., 1845.]

At length events occurred which roused the drowsiest heads in Vienna from
their slumbers. The party of action among the Polish refugees at Paris had
determined to strike another blow for the independence of their country.
Instead, however, of repeating the insurrection of Warsaw, it was arranged
that the revolt should commence in Prussian and Austrian Poland, and the
beginning of the year 1846 was fixed for the uprising. In Prussia the
Government crushed the conspirators before a blow could be struck. In
Austria, though ample warning was given, the precautions taken were
insufficient. General Collin occupied the Free City of Cracow, where the
revolutionary committee had its headquarters; but the troops under his
command were so weak that he was soon compelled to retreat, and to await
the arrival of reinforcements. Meanwhile the landowners in the district of
Tarnow in northern Galicia raised the standard of insurrection, and sought
to arm the country. The Ruthenian peasantry, however, among whom they
lived, owed all that was tolerable in their condition to the protection of
the Austrian crown-officers, and detested the memory of an independent
Poland. Instead of following their lords into the field, they gave
information of their movements, and asked instructions from the nearest
Austrian authorities. They were bidden to seize upon any persons who
instigated them to rebellion, and to bring them into the towns. A war of
the peasants against the nobles forthwith broke out. Murder, pillage, and
incendiary fires brought both the Polish insurrection and its leaders to a
miserable end. The Polish nobles, unwilling to acknowledge the humiliating
truth that their own peasants were their bitterest enemies, charged the
Austrian Government with having set a price on their heads, and with having
instigated the peasants to a communistic revolt. Metternich, disgraced by
the spectacle of a Jacquerie raging apparently under his own auspices,
insisted, in a circular to the European Courts, that the attack of the
peasantry upon the nobles had been purely spontaneous, and occasioned by
attempts to press certain villagers into the ranks of the rebellion by
brute force. But whatever may have been the measure of responsibility
incurred by the agents of the Government, an agrarian revolution was
undoubtedly in full course in Galicia, and its effects were soon felt in
the rest of the Austrian monarchy. The Arcadian contentment of the rural
population, which had been the boast, and in some degree the real strength,
of Austria, was at an end. Conscious that the problem which it had so long
evaded must at length be faced, the Government of Vienna prepared to deal
with the conditions of land-tenure by legislation extending over the whole
of the Empire. But the courage which was necessary for an adequate solution
of the difficulty nowhere existed within the official world, and the Edict
which conveyed the last words of the Imperial Government on this vital
question contained nothing more than a series of provisions for
facilitating voluntary settlements between the peasants and their lords. In
the quality of this enactment the Court of Vienna gave the measure of its
own weakness. The opportunity of breaking with traditions of impotence had
presented itself and had been lost. Revolution was at the gates; and in the
unsatisfied claim of the rural population the Government had handed over to
its adversaries a weapon of the greatest power. [408]

[Vienna.]

In the purely German provinces of Austria there lingered whatever of the
spirit of tranquillity was still to be found within the Empire. This,
however, was not the case in the districts into which the influence of the
capital extended. Vienna had of late grown out of its old careless spirit.
The home in past years of a population notoriously pleasure-loving,
good-humoured, and indifferent to public affairs, it had now taken
something of a more serious character. The death of the Emperor Francis,
who to the last generation of Viennese had been as fixed a part of the
order of things as the river Danube, was not unconnected with this change
in the public tone. So long as the old Emperor lived, all thought that was
given to political affairs was energy thrown away. By his death not only
had the State lost an ultimate controlling power, if dull, yet practised
and tenacious, but this loss was palpable to all the world. The void stood
bare and unrelieved before the public eye. The notorious imbecility of the
Emperor Ferdinand, the barren and antiquated formalism of Metternich and of
that entire system which seemed to be incorporated in him, made Government
an object of general satire, and in some quarters of rankling contempt. In
proportion as the culture and intelligence of the capital exceeded that of
other towns, so much the more galling was the pressure of that part of the
general system of tutelage which was especially directed against the
independence of the mind. The censorship was exercised with grotesque
stupidity. It was still the aim of Government to isolate Austria from the
ideas and the speculation of other lands, and to shape the intellectual
world of the Emperor's subjects into that precise form which tradition
prescribed as suitable for the members of a well-regulated State. In
poetry, the works of Lord Byron were excluded from circulation, where
custom-house officers and market-inspectors chose to enforce the law; in
history and political literature, the leading writers of modern times lay
under the same ban. Native production was much more effectively controlled.
Whoever wrote in a newspaper, or lectured at a University, or published a
work of imagination, was expected to deliver himself of something agreeable
to the constituted authorities, or was reduced to silence. Far as Vienna
fell short of Northern Germany in intellectual activity, the humiliation
inflicted on its best elements by this life-destroying surveillance was
keenly felt and bitterly resented. More perhaps by its senile warfare
against mental freedom than by any acts of direct political repression, the
Government ranged against itself the almost unanimous opinion of the
educated classes. Its hold on the affection of the capital was gone. Still
quiescent, but ready to unite against the Government when opportunity
should arrive, there stood, in addition to the unorganised mass of the
middle ranks, certain political associations and students' societies, a
vigorous Jewish element, and the usual contingent furnished by poverty and
discontent in every great city from among the labouring population.
Military force sufficient to keep the capital in subjection was not
wanting; but the foresight and the vigour necessary to cope with the first
onset of revolution were nowhere to be found among the holders of power.

[Prussia.]

[Frederick William IV., 1840.]

At Berlin the solid order of Prussian absolutism already shook to its
foundation. With King Frederick William III., whose long reign ended in
1840, there departed the half-filial, half-spiritless acquiescence of the
nation in the denial of the liberties which had been so solemnly promised
to it at the epoch of Napoleon's fall. The new Sovereign, Frederick William
IV., ascended the throne amid high national hopes. The very contrast which
his warm, exuberant nature offered to the silent, reserved disposition of
his father impressed the public for awhile in his favour. In the more
shining personal qualities he far excelled all his immediate kindred. His
artistic and literary sympathies, his aptitude of mind and readiness of
speech, appeared to mark the man of a new age, and encouraged the belief
that, in spite of the mediæval dreams and reactionary theories to which,
as prince, he had surrendered himself, he would, as King, appreciate the
needs of the time, and give to Prussia the free institutions which the
nation demanded. The first acts of the new reign were generously conceived.
Political offenders were freely pardoned. Men who had suffered for their
opinions were restored to their posts in the Universities and the public
service, or selected for promotion. But when the King approached the
constitutional question, his utterances were unsatisfactory. Though
undoubtedly in favour of some reform, he gave no sanction to the idea of a
really national representation, but seemed rather to seek occasions to
condemn it. Other omens of ill import were not wanting. Allying his
Government with a narrow school of theologians, the King offended men of
independent mind, and transgressed against the best traditions of Prussian
administration. The prestige of the new reign was soon exhausted. Those who
had believed Frederick William to be a man of genius now denounced him as a
vaporous, inflated dilettante; his enthusiasm was seen to indicate nothing
in particular; his sonorous commonplaces fell flat on second delivery. Not
only in his own kingdom, but in the minor German States, which looked to
Prussia as the future leader of a free Germany, the opinion rapidly gained
ground that Frederick William IV. was to be numbered among the enemies
rather than the friends of the good cause.

[United Diet convoked at Berlin, Feb. 3, 1847.]

In the Edicts by which the last King of Prussia had promised his people a
Constitution, it had been laid down that the representative body was to
spring from the Provincial Estates, and that it was to possess, in addition
to its purely consultative functions in legislation, a real power of
control over all State loans and over all proposed additions to taxation.
The interdependence of the promised Parliament and the Provincial Estates
had been seen at the time to endanger the success of Hardenberg's scheme;
nevertheless, it was this conception which King Frederick William IV. made
the very centre of his Constitutional policy. A devotee to the distant
past, he spoke of the Provincial Estates, which in their present form had
existed only since 1823, as if they were a great national and historic
institution which had come down unchanged through centuries. His first
experiment was the summoning of a Committee from these bodies to consider
certain financial projects with which the Government was occupied (1842).
The labours of the Committee were insignificant, nor was its treatment at
the hands of the Crown Ministers of a serious character. Frederick William,
however, continued to meditate over his plans, and appointed a Commission
to examine the project drawn up at his desire by the Cabinet. The agitation
in favour of Parliamentary Government became more and more pressing among
the educated classes; and at length, in spite of some opposition from his
brother, the Prince of Prussia, afterwards Emperor of Germany, the King
determined to fulfil his father's promise and to convoke a General Assembly
at Berlin. On the 3rd of February, 1847, there appeared a Royal Patent,
which summoned all the Provincial Estates to the capital to meet as a
United Diet of the Kingdom. The Diet was to be divided into two Chambers,
the Upper Chamber including the Royal Princes and highest nobles, the Lower
the representatives of the knights, towns, and peasants. The right of
legislation was not granted to the Diet; it had, however, the right of
presenting petitions on internal affairs. State-loans and new taxes were
not, in time of peace, to be raised without its consent. No regular
interval was fixed for the future meetings of the Diet, and its financial
rights were moreover reduced by other provisions, which enacted that a
United Committee from the Provincial Estates was to meet every four years
for certain definite objects, and that a special Delegation was to sit each
year for the transaction of business relating to the National Debt. [409]

[King Frederick William and the Diet.]

The nature of the General Assembly convoked by this Edict, the functions
conferred upon it, and the guarantees offered for Representative Government
in the future, so little corresponded with the requirements of the nation,
that the question was at once raised in Liberal circles whether the
concessions thus tendered by the King ought to be accepted or rejected. The
doubt which existed as to the disposition of the monarch himself was
increased by the speech from the throne at the opening of the Diet (April
11). In a vigorous harangue extending over half an hour, King Frederick
William, while he said much that was appropriate to the occasion, denounced
the spirit of revolution that was working in the Prussian Press, warned the
Deputies that they had been summoned not to advocate political theories,
but to protect each the rights of his own order, and declared that no power
on earth should induce him to change his natural relation to his people
into a constitutional one, or to permit a written sheet of paper to
intervene like a second Providence between Prussia and the Almighty. So
vehement was the language of the King, and so uncompromising his tone, that
the proposal was forthwith made at a private conference that the Deputies
should quit Berlin in a body. This extreme course was not adopted; it was
determined instead to present an address to the King, laying before him in
respectful language the shortcomings in the Patent of February 3rd. In the
debate on this address began the Parliamentary history of Prussia. The
Liberal majority in the Lower Chamber, anxious to base their cause on some
foundation of positive law, treated the Edicts of Frederick William III.
defining the rights of the future Representative Body as actual statutes of
the realm, although the late King had never called a Representative Body
into existence. From this point of view the functions now given to
Committees and Delegations were so much illegally withdrawn from the rights
of the Diet. The Government, on the other hand, denied that the Diet
possessed any rights or claims whatever beyond those assigned to it by the
Patent of February 3rd, to which it owed its origin. In receiving the
address of the Chambers, the King, while expressing a desire to see the
Constitution further developed, repeated the principle already laid down
by his Ministers, and refused to acknowledge any obligation outside those
which he had himself created.

[Proceedings and Dissolution of the Diet.]

When, after a series of debates on the political questions at issue, the
actual business of the Session began, the relations between the Government
and the Assembly grew worse rather than better. The principal measures
submitted were the grant of a State-guarantee to certain land-banks
established for the purpose of extinguishing the rent-charges on peasants'
holdings, and the issue of a public loan for the construction of railways
by the State. Alleging that the former measure was not directly one of
taxation, the Government, in laying it before the Diet, declared that they
asked only for an opinion, and denied that the Diet possessed any right of
decision. Thus challenged, as it were, to make good its claims, the Diet
not only declined to assent to this guarantee, but set its veto on the
proposed railway-loan. Both projects were in themselves admitted to be to
the advantage of the State; their rejection by the Diet was an emphatic
vindication of constitutional rights which the Government seemed indisposed
to acknowledge. Opposition grew more and more embittered; and when, as a
preliminary to the dissolution of the Diet, the King ordered its members to
proceed to the election of the Committees and Delegation named in the Edict
of February 3rd, an important group declined to take part in the elections,
or consented to do so only under reservations, on the ground that the Diet,
and that alone, possessed the constitutional control over finance which the
King was about to commit to other bodies. Indignant at this protest, the
King absented himself from the ceremony which brought the Diet to a close
(June 26th). Amid general irritation and resentment the Assembly broke up.
Nothing had resulted from its convocation but a direct exhibition of the
antagonism of purpose existing between the Sovereign and the national
representatives. Moderate men were alienated by the doctrines promulgated
from the Throne; and an experiment which, if more wisely conducted, might
possibly at the eleventh hour have saved all Germany from revolution, left
the Monarchy discredited and exposed to the attack of the most violent of
its foes.

[Louis Philippe.]

The train was now laid throughout central Europe; it needed but a flash
from Paris to kindle the fire far and wide. That the Crown which Louis
Philippe owed to one popular outbreak might be wrested from him by another,
had been a thought constantly present not only to the King himself but to
foreign observers during the earlier years of his reign. The period of
comparative peace by which the first Republican movements after 1830 had
been succeeded, the busy working of the Parliamentary system, the keen and
successful pursuit of wealth which seemed to have mastered all other
impulses in France, had made these fears a thing of the past. The Orleanist
Monarchy had taken its place among the accredited institutions of Europe;
its chief, aged, but vigorous in mind, looked forward to the future of his
dynasty, and occupied himself with plans for extending its influence or its
sway beyond the limits of France itself. At one time Louis Philippe had
hoped to connect his family by marriage with the Courts of Vienna or
Berlin; this project had not met with encouragement; so much the more
eagerly did the King watch for opportunities in another direction, and
devise plans for restoring the family-union between France and Spain which
had been established by Louis XIV. and which had so largely influenced the
history of Europe down to the overthrow of the Bourbon Monarchy. The Crown
of Spain was now held by a young girl; her sister was the next in
succession; to make the House of Orleans as powerful at Madrid as it was at
Paris seemed under these circumstances no impossible task to a King and a
Minister who, in the interests of the dynasty, were prepared to make some
sacrifice of honour and good faith.

[The Spanish Marriage, October, 1846.]

While the Carlist War was still continuing, Lord Palmerston had convinced
himself that Louis Philippe intended to marry the young Queen Isabella, if
possible, to one of his sons. Some years later this project was
unofficially mentioned by Guizot to the English statesman, who at once
caused it to be understood that England would not permit the union.
Abandoning this scheme, Louis Philippe then demanded, by a misconstruction
of the Treaty of Utrecht, that the Queen's choice of a husband should be
limited to the Bourbons of the Spanish or Neapolitan line. To this claim
Lord Aberdeen, who had become Foreign Secretary in 1841, declined to give
his assent; he stated, however, that no step would be taken by England in
antagonism to such marriage, if it should be deemed desirable at Madrid.
Louis Philippe now suggested that his youngest son, the Duke of
Montpensier, should wed the Infanta Fernanda, sister of the Queen of Spain.
On the express understanding that this marriage should not take place until
the Queen should herself have been married and have had children, the
English Cabinet assented to the proposal. That the marriages should not be
simultaneous was treated by both Governments as the very heart and
substance of the arrangement, inasmuch as the failure of children by the
Queen's marriage would make her sister, or her sister's heir, inheritor of
the Throne. This was repeatedly acknowledged by Louis Philippe and his
Minister, Guizot, in the course of communications with the British Court
which extended over some years. Nevertheless, in 1846, the French
Ambassador at Madrid, in conjunction with the Queen's mother, Maria
Christina, succeeded in carrying out a plan by which the conditions laid
down at London and accepted at Paris were utterly frustrated. Of the
Queen's Spanish cousins, there was one, Don Francisco, who was known to be
physically unfit for marriage. To this person it was determined by Maria
Christina and the French Ambassador that the young Isabella should be
united, her sister being simultaneously married to the Duke of Montpensier.
So flagrantly was this arrangement in contradiction to the promises made at
the Tuileries, that, when intelligence of it arrived at Paris, Louis
Philippe declared for a moment that the Ambassador must be disavowed and
disgraced. Guizot, however, was of better heart than his master, and asked
for delay. In the very crisis of the King's perplexity the return of Lord
Palmerston to office, and the mention by him of a Prince of Saxe-Coburg as
one of the candidates for the Spanish Queen's hand, afforded Guizot a
pretext for declaring that Great Britain had violated its engagements
towards the House of Bourbon by promoting the candidature of a Coburg. In
reality the British Government had not only taken no part in assisting the
candidature of the Coburg Prince, but had directly opposed it. This,
however, was urged in vain at the Tuileries. Whatever may have been the
original intentions of Louis Philippe or of Guizot, the temptation of
securing the probable succession to the Spanish Crown was too strong to be
resisted. Preliminaries were pushed forward with the utmost haste, and on
the 10th of October, 1846, the marriages of Queen Isabella and her sister,
as arranged by the French Ambassador and the Queen-Mother, were
simultaneously solemnised at Madrid. [410]

[Louis Philippe and Guizot, 1847.]

Few intrigues have been more disgraceful than that of the Spanish
Marriages; none more futile. The course of history mocked its ulterior
purposes; its immediate results were wholly to the injury of the House of
Orleans. The cordial understanding between France and Great Britain, which
had been revived after the differences of 1840, was now finally shattered,
Louis Philippe stood convicted before his people of sacrificing a valuable
alliance to purely dynastic ends; his Minister, the austere and
sanctimonious Guizot, had to defend himself against charges which would
have covered with shame the most hardened man of the world. Thus stripped
of its garb of moral superiority, condemned as at once unscrupulous and
unpatriotic, the Orleanist Monarchy had to meet the storm of popular
discontent which was gathering over France as well as over neighbouring
lands. For the lost friendship of England it was necessary to seek a
substitute in the support of some Continental Power. Throwing himself into
the reactionary policy of the Court of Vienna, Guizot endeavoured to
establish a diplomatic concert from which England should be excluded, as
France had been in 1840. There were circumstances which gave some
countenance to the design. The uncompromising vigour with which Lord
Palmerston supported the Liberal movement now becoming so formidable in
Italy made every absolute Government in Europe his enemy; and had time been
granted, the despotic Courts would possibly have united with France in some
more or less open combination against the English Minister. But the moments
were now numbered; and ere the projected league could take substance, the
whirlwind descended before which Louis Philippe and his Minister were the
first to fall.

[Demand for Parliamentary Reform.]

A demand for the reform of the French Parliamentary system had been made
when Guizot was entering upon office in the midst of the Oriental crisis of
1840. It had then been silenced and repressed by all the means at the
disposal of the Executive; King Louis Philippe being convinced that with a
more democratic Chamber the maintenance of his own policy of peace would be
impossible. The demand was now raised again with far greater energy.
Although the franchise had been lowered after the Revolution of July, it
was still so high that not one person in a hundred and fifty possessed a
vote, while the property-qualification which was imposed upon the Deputies
themselves excluded from the Chamber all but men of substantial wealth.
Moreover, there existed no law prohibiting the holders of administrative
posts under the Government from sitting in the Assembly. The consequence
was that more than one-third of the Deputies were either officials who had
secured election, or representatives who since their election had accepted
from Government appointments of greater or less value. Though Parliamentary
talent abounded, it was impossible that a Chamber so composed could be the
representative of the nation at large. The narrowness of the franchise, the
wealth of the Deputies themselves, made them, in all questions affecting
the social condition of the people, a mere club of capitalists; the
influence which the Crown exercised through the bestowal of offices
converted those who ought to have been its controllers into its dependents,
the more so as its patronage was lavished on nominal opponents even more
freely than on avowed friends. Against King Louis Philippe the majority in
the Chamber had in fact ceased to possess a will of its own. It represented
wealth; it represented to some extent the common-sense of France; but on
all current matters of dispute it only represented the executive government
in another form. So thoroughly had the nation lost all hope in the Assembly
during the last years of Louis Philippe, that even the elections had ceased
to excite interest. On the other hand, the belief in the general prevalence
of corruption was every day receiving new warrant. A series of State-trials
disclosed the grossest frauds in every branch of the administration, and
proved that political influence was habitually used for purposes of
pecuniary gain. Taxed with his tolerance of a system scarcely
distinguishable from its abuses, the Minister could only turn to his own
nominees in the Chamber and ask them whether they felt themselves
corrupted; invited to consider some measure of Parliamentary reform, he
scornfully asserted his policy of resistance. Thus, hopeless of obtaining
satisfaction either from the Government or from the Chamber itself, the
leaders of the Opposition resolved in 1847 to appeal to the country at
large; and an agitation for Parliamentary reform, based on the methods
employed by O'Connell in Ireland, soon spread through the principal towns
of France.

[Socialism.]

But there were other ideas and other forces active among the labouring
population of Paris than those familiar to the politicians of the Assembly.
Theories of Socialism, the property of a few thinkers and readers during
the earlier years of Louis Philippe's reign, had now sunk deep among the
masses, and become, in a rough and easily apprehended form, the creed of
the poor. From the time when Napoleon's fall had restored to France its
faculty of thought, and, as it were, turned the soldier's eyes again upon
his home, those questionings as to the basis of the social union which had
occupied men's minds at an earlier epoch were once more felt and uttered.
The problem was still what it had been in the eighteenth century; the
answer was that of a later age. Kings, priests, and nobles had been
overthrown, but misery still covered the world. In the teaching of
Saint-Simon, under the Restoration, religious conceptions blended with a
great industrial scheme; in the Utopia of Fourier, produced at the same
fruitful period, whatever was valuable belonged to its suggestions in
co-operative production. But whether the doctrine propounded was that of
philosopher, or sage, or charlatan, in every case the same leading ideas
were visible;--the insufficiency of the individual in isolation, the
industrial basis of all social life, the concern of the community, or of
its supreme authority, in the organisation of labour. It was naturally in
no remote or complex form that the idea of a new social order took
possession of the mind of the workman in the faubourgs of Paris. He read in
Louis Blanc, the latest and most intelligible of his teachers of the right
to labour, of the duty of the State to provide work for its citizens. This
was something actual and tangible. For this he was ready upon occasion to
take up arms; not for the purpose of extending the franchise to another
handful of the Bourgeoisie, or of shifting the profits of government from
one set of place-hunters to another. In antagonism to the ruling Minister
the Reformers in the Chamber and the Socialists in the streets might for a
moment unite their forces: but their ends were irreconcilable, and the
allies of to-day were necessarily the foes of to-morrow.

[The February Revolution, 1848.]

[Feb. 22nd.]

At the close of the year 1847 the last Parliament of the Orleanist Monarchy
assembled. The speech from the Throne, delivered by Louis Philippe himself,
denounced in strong terms the agitation for Reform which had been carried
on during the preceding months, though this agitation had, on the whole,
been the work of the so-called Dynastic Opposition, which, while demanding
electoral reform, was sincerely loyal to the Monarchy. The King's words
were a challenge; and in the debate on the Address, the challenge was taken
up by all ranks of Monarchical Liberals as well as by the small Republican
section in the Assembly. The Government, however, was still secure of its
majority. Defeated in the votes on the Address, the Opposition determined,
by way of protest, to attend a banquet to be held in the Champs Elysées on
the 22nd of February by the Reform-party in Western Paris. It was at first
desired that by some friendly arrangement with the Government, which had
declared the banquet illegal, the possibility of recourse to violence
should be avoided. Misunderstandings, however, arose, and the Government
finally prohibited the banquet, and made preparations for meeting any
disturbance with force of arms. The Deputies, anxious to employ none but
legal means of resistance, now resolved not to attend the banquet; on the
other hand, the Democratic and Socialist leaders welcomed a possible
opportunity for revolt. On the morning of the 22nd masses of men poured
westwards from the workmen's quarter. The city was in confusion all day,
and the erection of barricades began. Troops were posted in the streets; no
serious attack, however, was made by either side, and at nightfall quiet
returned.

[Feb. 23rd.]

On the next morning the National Guard of Paris was called to arms.
Throughout the struggle between Louis Philippe and the populace of Paris in
the earlier years of his reign, the National Guard, which was drawn
principally from the trading classes, had fought steadily for the King.
Now, however, it was at one with the Liberal Opposition in the Assembly,
and loudly demanded the dismissal of the Ministers. While some of the
battalions interposed between the regular troops and the populace and
averted a conflict, others proceeded to the Chamber with petitions for
Reform. Obstinately as Louis Philippe had hitherto refused all concession,
the announcement of the threatened defection of the National Guard at
length convinced him that resistance was impossible. He accepted Guizot's
resignation, and the Chamber heard from the fallen Minister himself that he
had ceased to hold office. Although the King declined for awhile to commit
the formation of a Ministry to Thiers, the recognised chief of the
Opposition, and endeavoured to place a politician more acceptable to
himself in office, it was felt that with the fall of Guizot all real
resistance to Reform was broken. Nothing more was asked by the
Parliamentary Opposition or by the middle-class of Paris. The victory
seemed to be won, the crisis at an end. In the western part of the capital
congratulation and good-humour succeeded to the fear of conflict. The
troops fraternised with the citizens and the National Guard; and when
darkness came on, the boulevards were illuminated as if for a national
festival.

[Feb. 24th.]

In the midst, however, of this rejoicing, and while the chiefs of the
revolutionary societies, fearing that the opportunity had been lost for
striking a blow at the Monarchy, exhorted the defenders of the barricades
to maintain their positions, a band of workmen came into conflict,
accidentally or of set purpose, with the troops in front of the Foreign
Office. A volley was fired, which killed or wounded eighty persons. Placing
the dead bodies on a waggon, and carrying them by torchlight through the
streets in the workmen's quarter, the insurrectionary leaders called the
people to arms. The tocsin sounded throughout the night; on the next
morning the populace marched against the Tuileries. In consequence of the
fall of the Ministry and the supposed reconciliation of the King with the
People, whatever military dispositions had been begun had since been
abandoned. At isolated points the troops fought bravely; but there was no
systematic defence. Shattered by the strain of the previous days, and
dismayed by the indifference of the National Guard when he rode out among
them, the King, who at every epoch of his long life had shown such
conspicuous courage in the presence of danger, now lost all nerve and all
faculty of action. He signed an act of abdication in favour of his
grandson, the Count of Paris, and fled. Behind him the victorious mob burst
into the Tuileries and devastated it from cellar to roof. The Legislative
Chamber, where an attempt was made to proclaim the Count of Paris King, was
in its turn invaded. In uproar and tumult a Provisional Government was
installed at the Hôtel de Ville; and ere the day closed the news went out
to Europe that the House of Orleans had ceased to reign, and that the
Republic had been proclaimed. It was not over France alone, it was over the
Continent at large, that the tide of revolution was breaking.


END OF VOL. II.






VOLUME III.



CHAPTER XIX.


Europe in 1789 and in 1848--Agitation in Western Germany before and
after the Revolution at Paris--Austria and Hungary--The March
Revolution at Vienna--Flight of Metternich--The Hungarian Diet--Hungary
wins its independence--Bohemian movement--Autonomy promised to Bohemia--
Insurrection of Lombardy--Of Venice--Piedmont makes war on Austria--A
general Italian war against Austria imminent--The March Days at
Berlin--Frederick William IV.--A National Assembly promised--
Schleswig-Holstein--Insurrection in Holstein--War between Germany and
Denmark--The German Ante-Parliament--Republican rising in Baden--Meeting
of the German National Assembly at Frankfort--Europe generally in March,
1848--The French Provisional Government--The National Workshops--The
Government and the Red Republicans--French National Assembly--Riot of May
15--Measures against the National Workshops--The Four Days of June--
Cavaignac--Louis Napoleon--He is elected to the Assembly--Elected
President.


[Europe in 1789 and 1848.]

There were few statesmen living in 1848 who, like Metternich and like Louis
Philippe, could remember the outbreak of the French Revolution. To those
who could so look back across the space of sixty years, a comparison of the
European movements that followed the successive onslaughts upon authority
in France afforded some measure of the change that had passed over the
political atmosphere of the Continent within a single lifetime. The
Revolution of 1789, deeply as it stirred men's minds in neighbouring
countries, had occasioned no popular outbreak on a large scale outside
France. The expulsion of Charles X. in 1830 had been followed by national
uprisings in Italy, Poland, and Belgium, and by a struggle for
constitutional government in the smaller States of Northern Germany. The
downfall of Louis Philippe in 1848 at once convulsed the whole of central
Europe. From the Rhenish Provinces to the Ottoman frontier there was no
government but the Swiss Republic that was not menaced; there was no race
which did not assert its claim to a more or less complete independence.
Communities whose long slumber had been undisturbed by the shocks of the
Napoleonic period now vibrated with those same impulses which, since 1815,
no pressure of absolute power had been able wholly to extinguish in Italy
and Germany. The borders of the region of political discontent had been
enlarged; where apathy, or immemorial loyalty to some distant crown, had
long closed the ear to the voices of the new age, now all was restlessness,
all eager expectation of the dawning epoch of national life. This was
especially the case with the Slavic races included in the Austrian Empire,
races which during the earlier years of this century had been wholly mute.
These in their turn now felt the breath of patriotism, and claimed the
right of self-government. Distinct as the ideas of national independence
and of constitutional liberty are in themselves, they were not distinct in
their operation over a great part of Europe in 1848; and this epoch will be
wrongly conceived if it is viewed as no more than a repetition on a large
scale of the democratic outbreak of Paris with which it opened. More was
sought in Europe in 1848 than the substitution of popular for monarchical
or aristocratic rule. The effort to make the State one with the nation
excited wider interests than the effort to enlarge and equalise citizen
rights; and it is in the action of this principle of nationality that we
find the explanation of tendencies of the epoch which appear at first view
to be in direct conflict with one another. In Germany a single race was
divided under many Governments: here the national instinct impelled to
unity. In Austria a variety of races was held together by one crown: here
the national instinct impelled to separation. In both these States, as in
Italy, where the predominance of the foreigner and the continuance of
despotic government were in a peculiar manner connected with one another,
the efforts of 1848 failed; but the problems which then agitated Europe
could not long be set aside, and the solution of them complete, in the case
of Germany and Italy, partial and tentative in the case of Austria, renders
the succeeding twenty-five years a memorable period in European history.

[Agitation in Western Germany.]

The sudden disappearance of the Orleanist monarchy and the proclamation of
the Republic at Paris struck with dismay the Governments beyond the Rhine.
Difficulties were already gathering round them, opposition among their own
subjects was daily becoming more formidable and more outspoken. In Western
Germany a meeting of Liberal deputies had been held in the autumn of 1847,
in which the reform of the Federal Constitution and the establishment of a
German Parliament had been demanded: a Republican or revolutionary party,
small but virulent, had also its own avowed policy and its recognised
organs in the press. No sooner had the news of the Revolution at Paris
passed the frontier than in all the minor German States the cry for reform
became irresistible. Ministers everywhere resigned; the popular demands
were granted; and men were called to office whose names were identified
with the struggle for the freedom of the Press, for trial by jury, and for
the reform of the Federal Constitution. The Federal Diet itself, so long
the instrument of absolutism, bowed beneath the stress of the time,
abolished the laws of censorship, and invited the Governments to send
Commissioners to Frankfort to discuss the reorganisation of Germany. It was
not, however, at Frankfort or at the minor capitals that the conflict
between authority and its antagonists was to be decided. Vienna, the
stronghold of absolutism, the sanctuary from which so many interdicts had
gone forth against freedom in every part of Europe, was itself invaded by
the revolutionary spirit. The clear sky darkened, and Metternich found
himself powerless before the storm.

[Austria.]

There had been until 1848 so complete an absence of political life in the
Austrian capital, that, when the conviction suddenly burst upon all minds
that the ancient order was doomed, there were neither party-leaders to
confront the Government, nor plans of reform upon which any considerable
body of men were agreed. The first utterances of public discontent were
petitions drawn up by the Chamber of Commerce and by literary associations.
These were vague in purport and far from aggressive in their tone. A
sterner note sounded when intelligence reached the capital of the
resolutions that had been passed by the Hungarian Lower House on the 3rd of
March, and of the language in which these had been enforced by Kossuth.
Casting aside all reserve, the Magyar leader had declared that the reigning
dynasty could only be saved by granting to Hungary a responsible Ministry
drawn from the Diet itself, and by establishing constitutional government
throughout the Austrian dominions. "From the charnel-house of the Viennese
system," he cried, "a poison-laden atmosphere steals over us, which
paralyses our nerves and bows us when we would soar. The future of Hungary
can never be secure while in the other provinces there exists a system of
government in direct antagonism to every constitutional principle. Our task
it is to found a happier future on the brotherhood of all the Austrian
races, and to substitute for the union enforced by bayonets and police the
enduring bond of a free constitution." When the Hungarian Assembly had thus
taken into its own hands the cause of the rest of the monarchy, it was not
for the citizens of Vienna to fall short in the extent of their demands.
The idea of a Constitution for the Empire at large was generally accepted
and it was proposed that an address embodying this demand should be sent in
to the Emperor by the Provincial Estates of Lower Austria, whose meeting
happened to be fixed for the 13th of March. In the meantime the students
made themselves the heroes of the hour. The agitation of the city
increased; rumours of State bankruptcy and of the impending repudiation of
the paper currency filled all classes with the belief that some catastrophe
was near at hand. [411]

[The March Revolution at Vienna.]

The Provincial Estates of Lower Austria had long fallen into such
insignificance that in ordinary times their proceedings were hardly noticed
by the capital. The accident that they were now to assemble in the midst of
a great crisis elevated them to a sudden importance. It was believed that
the decisive word would be spoken in the course of their debates; and on
the morning of the 13th of March masses of the populace, led by a
procession of students, assembled round the Hall of the Diet. While the
debate proceeded within, street-orators inflamed the passions of the crowd
outside. The tumult deepened; and when at length a note was let down from
one of the windows of the Hall stating that the Diet were inclining to
half-measures, the mob broke into uproar, and an attack was made upon the
Diet Hall itself. The leading members of the Estates were compelled to
place themselves at the head of a deputation, which proceeded to the
Emperor's palace in order to enforce the demands of the people. The Emperor
himself, who at no time was capable of paying serious attention to
business, remained invisible during this and the two following days; the
deputation was received by Metternich and the principal officers of State,
who were assembled in council. Meanwhile the crowds in the streets became
denser and more excited; soldiers approached, to protect the Diet Hall and
to guard the environs of the palace; there was an interval of confusion;
and on the advance of a new regiment, which was mistaken for an attack, the
mob who had stormed the Diet Hall hurled the shattered furniture from the
windows upon the soldiers' heads. A volley was now fired, which cost
several lives. At the sound of the firing still deeper agitation seized the
city. Barricades were erected, and the people and soldiers fought hand to
hand. As evening came on, deputation after deputation pressed into the
palace to urge concession upon the Government. Metternich, who, almost
alone in the Council, had made light of the popular uprising, now at length
consented to certain definite measures of reform. He retired into an
adjoining room to draft an order abolishing the censorship of the Press.
During his absence the cry was raised among the deputations that thronged
the Council-chamber, "Down with Metternich!" The old man returned, and
found himself abandoned by his colleagues. There were some among them,
members of the Imperial family, who had long been his opponents; others who
had in vain urged him to make concessions before it was too late.
Metternich saw that the end of his career was come; he spoke a few words,
marked by all the dignity and self-possession of his greatest days, and
withdrew, to place his resignation in the Emperor's hands.

[Flight of Metternich.]

For thirty-nine years Metternich had been so completely identified with the
Austrian system of government that in his fall that entire system seemed to
have vanished away. The tumult of the capital subsided on the mere
announcement of his resignation, though the hatred which he had excited
rendered it unsafe for him to remain within reach of hostile hands. He was
conveyed from Vienna by a faithful secretary on the night of the 14th of
March, and, after remaining for a few days in concealment, crossed the
Saxon frontier. His exile was destined to be of some duration, but no exile
was ever more cheerfully borne, or sweetened by a profounder satisfaction
at the evils which a mad world had brought upon itself by driving from it
its one thoroughly wise and just statesman. Betaking himself in the general
crash of the Continental Courts to Great Britain, which was still as safe
as when he had visited it fifty-five years before, Metternich received a
kindly welcome from the Duke of Wellington and the leaders of English
society; and when the London season was over he sought and found at
Brighton something of the liveliness and the sunshine of his own southern
home. [412]

[The Hungarian Diet.]

The action of the Hungarian Diet under Kossuth's leadership had powerfully
influenced the course of events at Vienna. The Viennese outbreak in its
turn gave irresistible force to the Hungarian national movement. Up to the
13th of March the Chamber of Magnates had withheld their assent from the
resolution passed by the Lower House in favour of a national executive;
they now accepted it without a single hostile vote; and on the 15th a
deputation was sent to Vienna to lay before the Emperor an address
demanding not only the establishment of a responsible Ministry but the
freedom of the Press, trial by jury, equality of religion, and a system of
national education. At the moment when this deputation reached Vienna the
Government was formally announcing its compliance with the popular demand
for a Constitution for the whole of the Empire. The Hungarians were
escorted in triumph through the streets, and were received on the following
day by the Emperor himself, who expressed a general concurrence with the
terms of the address. The deputation returned to Presburg, and the
Palatine, or representative of the sovereign in Hungary, the Archduke
Stephen, forthwith charged Count Batthyány, one of the most popular of the
Magyar nobles, with the formation of a national Ministry. Thus far the Diet
had been in the van of the Hungarian movement; it now sank almost into
insignificance by the side of the revolutionary organisation at Pesth,
where all the ardour and all the patriotism of the Magyar race glowed in
their native force untempered by the political experience of the statesmen
who were collected at Presburg, and unchecked by any of those influences
which belong to the neighbourhood of an Imperial Court. At Pesth there
broke out an agitation at once so democratic and so intensely national that
all considerations of policy and of regard for the Austrian Government
which might have affected the action of the Diet were swept away before it.
Kossuth, himself the genuine representative of the capital, became supreme.
At his bidding the Diet passed a law abolishing the departments of the
Central Government by which the control of the Court over the Hungarian
body politic had been exercised. A list of Ministers was submitted and
approved, including not only those who were needed for the transaction of
domestic business, but Ministers of War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs; and
in order that the entire nation might rally round its Government, the
peasantry were at one stroke emancipated from all services attaching to the
land, and converted into free proprietors. Of the compensation to be paid
to the lords for the loss of these services, no more was said than that it
was a debt of honour to be discharged by the nation.

[Hungary wins independence.]

Within the next few days the measures thus carried through the Diet by
Kossuth were presented for the Emperor's ratification at Vienna. The fall
of Metternich, important as it was, had not in reality produced that effect
upon the Austrian Government which was expected from it by popular opinion.
The new Cabinet at Vienna was drawn from the ranks of the official
hierarchy; and although some of its members were more liberally disposed
than their late chief, they had all alike passed their lives in the
traditions of the ancient system, and were far from intending to make
themselves the willing agents of revolution. These men saw clearly enough
that the action of the Diet at Presburg amounted to nothing less than the
separation of Hungary from the Austrian Empire. With the Ministries of War,
Finance, and Foreign Affairs established in independence of the central
government, there would remain no link between Hungary and the Hereditary
States but the person of a titular, and, for the present time, an imbecile
sovereign. Powerless and distracted, Metternich's successors looked in all
directions for counsel. The Palatine argued that three courses were open to
the Austrian Government. It might endeavour to crush the Hungarian movement
by force of arms; for this purpose, however, the troops available were
insufficient: or it might withdraw from the country altogether, leaving the
peasants to attack the nobles, as they had done in Galicia; this was a
dishonourable policy, and the action of the Diet had, moreover, secured to
the peasant everything that he could gain by a social insurrection: or
finally, the Government might yield for the moment to the inevitable, make
terms with Batthyány's Ministry, and quietly prepare for vigorous
resistance when opportunity should arrive. The last method was that which
the Palatine recommended; the Court inclined in the same direction, but it
was unwilling to submit without making some further trial of the temper of
its antagonists. A rescript was accordingly sent to Presburg, announcing
that the Ministry formed by Count Batthyány was accepted by the Emperor,
but that the central offices which the Diet had abolished must be
preserved, and the functions of the Ministers of War and Finance be reduced
to those of chiefs of departments, dependent on the orders of a higher
authority at Vienna. From the delay that had taken place in the despatch of
this answer the nationalist leaders at Pesth and at Presburg had augured no
good result. Its publication brought the country to the verge of armed
revolt. Batthyány refused to accept office under the conditions named; the
Palatine himself declared that he could remain in Hungary no longer.
Terrified at the result of its own challenge, the Court now withdrew from
the position that it had taken up, and accepted the scheme of the Diet in
its integrity, stipulating only that the disposal of the army outside
Hungary in time of war, and the appointment to the higher commands, should
remain with the Imperial Government. [413]

[Bohemian movement.]

[Autonomy promised.]

Hungary had thus made good its position as an independent State connected
with Austria only through the person of its monarch. Vast and momentous as
was the change, fatal as it might well appear to those who could conceive
of no unity but the unity of a central government, the victory of the
Magyars appears to have excited no feeling among the German Liberals at
Vienna but one of satisfaction. So odious, so detested, was the fallen
system of despotism, that every victory won by its adversaries was hailed
as a triumph of the good cause, be the remoter issues what they might. Even
where a powerful German element, such as did not exist in Hungary itself,
was threatened by the assertion of provincial claims, the Government could
not hope for the support of the capital if it should offer resistance. The
example of the Magyars was speedily followed by the Czechs in Bohemia.
Forgotten and obliterated among the nationalities of Europe, the Czechs had
preserved in their language, and in that almost alone, the emblem of their
national independence. Within the borders of Bohemia there was so large a
German population that the ultimate absorption of the Slavic element by
this wealthier and privileged body had at an earlier time seemed not
unlikely. Since 1830, however, the Czech national movement had been
gradually gaining ground. In the first days of the agitation of 1848 an
effort had been made to impress a purely constitutional form upon the
demands made in the name of the people of Prague, and so to render the
union of all classes possible. This policy, however, received its deathblow
from the Revolution in Vienna and from the victory of the Magyars. The
leadership at Prague passed from men of position and experience,
representing rather the intelligence of the German element in Bohemia than
the patriotism of the Czechs, to the nationalist orators who commanded the
streets. An attempt made by the Cabinet at Vienna to evade the demands
drawn up under the influence of the more moderate politicians resulted only
in the downfall of this party, and in the tender of a new series of demands
of far more revolutionary character. The population of Prague were
beginning to organise a national guard; arms were being distributed;
authority had collapsed. The Government was now forced to consent to
everything that was asked of it, and a legislative Assembly with an
independent local administration was promised to Bohemia. To this Assembly,
as soon as it should meet, the new institutions of the kingdom were to be
submitted.

[Insurrection of Lombardy, March 18.]

Thus far, if the authority of the Court of Vienna, had been virtually
shaken off by a great part of its subjects, the Emperor had at least not
seen these subjects in avowed rebellion against the House of Hapsburg, nor
supported in their resistance by the arms of a foreign Power. South of the
Alps the dynastic connection was openly severed, and the rule of Austria
declared for ever at an end. Lombardy had since the beginning of the year
1848 been held in check only by the display of great military force. The
Revolution at Paris had excited both hopes and fears; the Revolution at
Vienna was instantly followed by revolt in Milan. Radetzky, the Austrian
commander, a veteran who had served with honour in every campaign since
that against the Turks in 1788, had long foreseen the approach of an armed
conflict; yet when the actual crisis arrived his dispositions had not been
made for meeting it. The troops in Milan were ill placed; the offices of
Government were moreover separated by half the breadth of the city from the
military head-quarters. Thus when on the 18th of March the insurrection
broke out, it carried everything before it. The Vice-Governor, O'Donell,
was captured, and compelled to sign his name to decrees handing over the
government of the city to the Municipal Council. Radetzky now threw his
soldiers upon the barricades, and penetrated to the centre of the city; but
he was unable to maintain himself there under the ceaseless fire from the
windows and the housetops, and withdrew on the night of the 19th to the
line of fortifications. Fighting continued during the next two days in the
outskirts and at the gates of the city. The garrisons of all the
neighbouring towns were summoned to the assistance of their general, but
the Italians broke up the bridges and roads, and one detachment alone out
of all the troops in Lombardy succeeded in reaching Milan. A report now
arrived at Radetzky's camp that the King of Piedmont was on the march
against him. Preferring the loss of Milan to the possible capture of his
army, he determined to evacuate the city. On the night of the 22nd of March
the retreat was begun, and Radetzky fell back upon the Mincio and Verona,
which he himself had made the centre of the Austrian system of defence in
Upper Italy. [414]

[Insurrection of Venice.]

[Piedmont makes war.]

Venice had already followed the example of the Lombard capital. The tidings
received from Vienna after the 13th of March appear to have completely
bewildered both the military and the civil authorities on the Adriatic
coast. They released their political prisoners, among whom was Daniel
Manin, an able and determined foe of Austria; they entered into
constitutional discussions with the popular leaders; they permitted the
formation of a national guard, and finally handed over to this guard the
arsenals and the dockyards with all their stores. From this time all was
over. Manin proclaimed the Republic of St. Mark, and became the chief of a
Provisional Government. The Italian regiments in garrison joined the
national cause; the ships of war at Pola, manned chiefly by Italian
sailors, were only prevented from sailing to the assistance of the rebels
by batteries that were levelled against them from the shore. Thus without a
blow being struck Venice was lost to Austria. The insurrection spread
westwards and northwards through city and village in the interior, till
there remained to Austria nothing but the fortresses on the Adige and the
Mincio, where Radetzky, deaf to the counsels of timidity, held his ground
unshaken. The national rising carried Piedmont with it. It was in vain that
the British envoy at Turin urged the King to enter into no conflict with
Austria. On the 24th of March Charles Albert published a proclamation
promising his help to the Lombards. Two days later his troops entered
Milan. [415]

[General war against Austria, beginning in Italy.]

Austria had for thirty years consistently laid down the principle that its
own sovereignty in Upper Italy vested it with the right to control the
political system of every other State in the peninsula. It had twice
enforced this principle by arms: first in its intervention in Naples in
1820, afterwards in its occupation of the Roman States in 1831. The
Government of Vienna had, as it were with fixed intention, made it
impossible that its presence in any part of Italy should be regarded as the
presence of an ordinary neighbour, entitled to quiet possession until some
new provocation should be given. The Italians would have proved themselves
the simplest of mankind if, having any reasonable hope of military success,
they had listened to the counsels of Palmerston and other statesmen who
urged them not to take advantage of the difficulties in which Austria was
now placed. The paralysis of the Austrian State was indeed the one
unanswerable argument for immediate war. So long as the Emperor retained
his ascendency in any part of Italy, his interests could not permanently
suffer the independence of the rest. If the Italians should chivalrously
wait until the Cabinet of Vienna had recovered its strength, it was quite
certain that their next efforts in the cause of internal liberty would be
as ruthlessly crushed as their last. Every clearsighted patriot understood
that the time for a great national effort had arrived. In some respects the
political condition of Italy seemed favourable to such united action. Since
the insurrection of Palermo in January, 1848, absolutism had everywhere
fallen. Ministries had come into existence containing at least a fair
proportion of men who were in real sympathy with the national feeling.
Above all, the Pope seemed disposed to place himself at the head of a
patriotic union against the foreigner. Thus, whatever might be the secret
inclinations of the reigning Houses, they were unable for the moment to
resist the call to arms. Without an actual declaration of war troops were
sent northwards from Naples, from Florence, and from Rome, to take part, as
it was supposed, in the national struggle by the side of the King of
Piedmont. Volunteers thronged to the standards. The Papal benediction
seemed for once to rest on the cause of manhood and independence. On the
other hand, the very impetus which had brought Liberal Ministries into
power threatened to pass into a phase of violence and disorder. The
concessions already made were mocked by men who expected to win all the
victories of democracy in an hour. It remained to be seen whether there
existed in Italy the political sagacity which, triumphing over all local
jealousies, could bend to one great aim the passions of the multitude and
the fears of the Courts, or whether the cause of the whole nation would be
wrecked in an ignoble strife between demagogues and reactionists, between
the rabble of the street and the camarilla round the throne. [416]

[The March Days at Berlin.]

Austria had with one hand held down Italy, with the other it had weighed on
Germany. Though the Revolutionary movement was in full course on the east
of the Rhine before Metternich's fall, it received, especially at Berlin, a
great impetus from this event. Since the beginning of March the Prussian
capital had worn an unwonted aspect. In this city of military discipline
public meetings had been held day after day, and the streets had been
blocked by excited crowds. Deputations which laid before the King demands
similar to those now made in every German town received halting and evasive
answers. Excitement increased, and on the 13th of March encounters began
between the citizens and the troops, which, though insignificant, served to
exasperate the people and its leaders. The King appeared to be wavering
between resistance and concession until the Revolution at Vienna, which
became known at Berlin on the 15th of March, brought affairs to their
crisis. On the 17th the tumult in the streets suddenly ceased; it was
understood that the following day would see the Government either
reconciled with the people or forced to deal with an insurrection on a
great scale. Accordingly on the morning of the 18th crowds made their way
towards the palace, which was surrounded by troops. About midday there
appeared a Royal edict summoning the Prussian United Diet for the 2nd of
April, and announcing that the King had determined to promote the creation
of a Parliament for all Germany and the establishment of Constitutional
Government in every German State. This manifesto drew fresh masses towards
the palace, desirous, it would seem, to express their satisfaction; its
contents, however, were imperfectly understood by the assembly already in
front of the palace, which the King vainly attempted to address. When
called upon to disperse, the multitude refused to do so, and answered by
cries for the withdrawal of the soldiery. In the midst of the confusion two
shots were fired from the ranks without orders; a panic followed, in which,
for no known reason, the cavalry and infantry threw themselves upon the
people. The crowd was immediately put to flight, but the combat was taken
up by the population of Berlin. Barricades appeared in the streets;
fighting continued during the evening and night. Meanwhile the King, who
was shocked and distressed at the course that events had taken, received
deputations begging that the troops might be withdrawn from the city.
Frederick William endeavoured for awhile to make the surrender of the
barricades the condition for an armistice; but as night went on the troops
became exhausted, and although they had gained ground, the resistance of
the people was not overcome. Whether doubtful of the ultimate issue of the
conflict or unwilling to permit further bloodshed, the King gave way, and
at daybreak on the 19th ordered the troops to be withdrawn. His intention
was that they should continue to garrison the palace, but the order was
misunderstood, and the troops were removed to the outside of Berlin. The
palace was thus left unprotected, and, although no injury was inflicted
upon its inmates, the King was made to feel that the people could now
command his homage. The bodies of the dead were brought into the court of
the palace; their wounds were laid bare, and the King, who appeared in a
balcony, was compelled to descend into the court, and to stand before them
with uncovered head. Definite political expression was given to the changed
state of affairs by the appointment of a new Ministry. [417]

The conflict between the troops and the people at Berlin was described, and
with truth, as the result of a misunderstanding. Frederick William had
already determined to yield to the principal demands of his subjects; nor
on the part of the inhabitants of Berlin had there existed any general
hostility towards the sovereign, although a small group of agitators, in
part foreign, had probably sought to bring about an armed attack on the
throne. Accordingly, when once the combat was broken off, there seemed to
be no important obstacle to a reconciliation between the King and the
people. Frederick William chose a course which spared and even gratified
his own self-love. In the political faith of all German Liberals the
establishment of German unity was now an even more important article than
the introduction of free institutions into each particular State. The
Revolution at Berlin had indeed been occasioned by the King's delay in
granting internal reform; but these domestic disputes might well be
forgotten if in the great cause of German unity the Prussians saw their
King rising to the needs of the hour. Accordingly the first resolution of
Frederick William, after quiet had returned to the capital, was to appear
in public state as the champion of the Fatherland. A proclamation announced
on the morning of the 21st of March that the King had placed himself at the
head of the German nation, and that he would on that day appear on
horseback wearing the old German colours. In due time Frederick William
came forth at the head of a procession, wearing the tricolor of gold,
white, and black, which since 1815 had been so dear to the patriots and so
odious to the Governments of Germany. As he passed through the streets he
was saluted as Emperor, but he repudiated the title, asserting with oaths
and imprecations that he intended to rob no German prince of his
sovereignty. At each stage of his theatrical progress he repeated to
appropriate auditors his sounding but ambiguous allusions to the duties
imposed upon him by the common danger. A manifesto, published at the close
of the day, summed up the utterances of the monarch in a somewhat less
rhetorical form. "Germany is in ferment within, and exposed from without to
danger from more than one side. Deliverance from this danger can come only
from the most intimate union of the German princes and people under a
single leadership. I take this leadership upon me for the hour of peril. I
have to-day assumed the old German colours, and placed myself and my people
under the venerable banner of the German Empire. Prussia henceforth is
merged in Germany." [418]

[National Assembly promised.]

The ride of the King through Berlin, and his assumption of the character of
German leader, however little it pleased the minor sovereigns, or gratified
the Liberals of the smaller States, who considered that such National
authority ought to be conferred by the nation, not assumed by a prince, was
successful for the moment in restoring to the King some popularity among
his own subjects. He could now without humiliation proceed with the
concessions which had been interrupted by the tragical events of the 18th
of March. In answer to a deputation from Breslau, which urged that the
Chamber formed by the union of the Provincial Diets should be replaced by a
Constituent Assembly, the King promised that a national Representative
Assembly should be convoked as soon as the United Diet had passed the
necessary electoral law. To this National Assembly the Government would
submit measures securing the liberty of the individual, the right of public
meeting and of associations, trial by jury, the responsibility of
Ministers, and the independence of the judicature. A civic militia was to
be formed, with the right of choosing its own officers, and the standing
army was to take the oath of allegiance to the Constitution. Hereditary
jurisdictions and manorial rights of police were to be abolished; equality
before the law was to be universally enforced; in short, the entire scheme
of reforms demanded by the Constitutional Liberals of Prussia was to be
carried into effect. In Berlin, as in every other capital in Germany, the
victory of the party of progress now seemed to be assured. The Government
no longer represented a power hostile to popular rights; and when, on the
22nd of March, the King spontaneously paid the last honours to those who
had fallen in combat with his troops, as the long funeral procession passed
his palace, it was generally believed that his expression of feeling was
sincere.

[Schleswig-Holstein.]

In the passage of his address in which King Frederick William spoke of the
external dangers threatening Germany, he referred to apprehensions which
had for a while been current that the second French Republic would revive
the aggressive energy of the first. This fear proved baseless;
nevertheless, for a sovereign who really intended to act as the champion of
the German nation at large, the probability of war with a neighbouring
Power was far from remote. The cause of the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein,
which were in rebellion against the Danish Crown, excited the utmost
interest and sympathy in Germany. The population of these provinces, with
the exception of certain districts in Schleswig, was German; Holstein was
actually a member of the German Federation. The legal relation of the
Duchies to Denmark was, according to the popular view, very nearly that of
Hanover to England before 1837. The King of Denmark was also Duke of
Schleswig and of Holstein, but these were no more an integral portion of
the Danish State than Hanover was of the British Empire; and the laws of
succession were moreover different in Schleswig-Holstein, the Crown being
transmitted by males, while in Denmark females were capable of succession.
On the part of the Danes it was admitted that in certain districts in
Holstein the Salic law held good; it was, however, maintained that in the
remainder of Holstein and in all Schleswig the rules of succession were the
same as in Denmark. The Danish Government denied that Schleswig-Holstein
formed a unity in itself, as alleged by the Germans, and that it possessed
separate national rights as against the authority of the King's Government
at Copenhagen. The real heart of the difficulty lay in the fact that the
population of the Duchies was German. So long as the Germans as a race
possessed no national feeling, the union of the Duchies with the Danish
Monarchy had not been felt as a grievance. It happened, however, that the
great revival of German patriotism resulting from the War of Liberation in
1813 was almost simultaneous with the severance of Norway from the Danish
Crown, which compelled the Government of Copenhagen to increase very
heavily the burdens imposed on its German subjects in the Duchies. From
this time discontent gained ground, especially in Altona and Kiel, where
society was as thoroughly German as in the neighbouring city of Hamburg.
After 1830, when Provincial Estates were established in Schleswig and
Holstein, the German movement became formidable. The reaction, however,
which marked the succeeding period generally in Europe prevailed in Denmark
too, and it was not until 1844, when a posthumous work of Lornsen, the
exiled leader of the German party, vindicated the historical rights of the
Duchies, that the claims of German nationality in these provinces were
again vigorously urged. From this time the separation of Schleswig-Holstein
from Denmark became a question of practical politics. The King of Denmark,
Christain VIII., had but one son, who, though long married, was childless,
and with whom the male line of the reigning House would expire. In answer
to an address of the Danish Provincial Estates calling upon the King to
declare the unity of the Monarchy and the validity of the Danish law of
succession for all its parts, the Holstein Estates passed a resolution in
November, 1844, that the Duchies were an independent body, governed by the
rule of male descent, and indivisible. After an interval of two years,
during which a Commission examined the succession-laws, King Christian
published a declaration that the succession was the same in Schleswig as in
Denmark proper, and that, as regarded those parts of Holstein where a
different rule of succession existed, he would spare no effort to maintain
the unity of the Monarchy. On this the Provincial Estates both of Schleswig
and of Holstein addressed protests to the King, who refused to accept them.
The deputies now resigned in a mass, whilst on behalf of Holstein an appeal
was made to the German Federal Diet. The Diet merely replied by a
declaration of rights; but in Germany at large the keenest interest was
aroused on behalf of these severed members of the race who were so
resolutely struggling against incorporation with a foreign Power. The
deputies themselves, passing from village to village, excited a strenuous
spirit of resistance throughout the Duchies, which was met by the Danish
Government with measures of repression more severe than any which it had
hitherto employed. [419]

[Insurrection in Holstein, March 24.]

[War between Germany and Denmark.]

Such was the situation of affairs when, on the 20th of January, 1848, King
Christian VIII. died, leaving the throne to Frederick VII., the last of the
male line of his House. Frederick's first act was to publish the draft of a
Constitution, in which all parts of the Monarchy were treated as on the
same footing. Before the delegates could assemble to whom the completion of
this work was referred, the shock of the Paris Revolution reached the North
Sea ports. A public meeting at Altona demanded the establishment of a
separate constitution for Schleswig-Holstein, and the admission of
Schleswig into the German Federation. The Provincial Estates accepted this
resolution, and sent a deputation to Copenhagen to present this and other
demands to the King. But in the course of the next few days a popular
movement at Copenhagen brought into power a thoroughly Danish Ministry,
pledged to the incorporation of Schleswig with Denmark as an integral part
of the Kingdom. Without waiting to learn the answer made by the King to the
deputation, the Holsteiners now took affairs into their own hands. A
Provisional Government was formed at Kiel (March 24), the troops joined the
people, and the insurrection instantly spread over the whole province. As
the proposal to change the law of succession to the throne had originated
with the King of Denmark, the cause of the Holsteiners was from one point
of view that of established right. The King of Prussia, accepting the
positions laid down by the Holstein Estates in 1844, declared that he would
defend the claims of the legitimate heir by force of arms, and ordered his
troops to enter Holstein. The Diet of Frankfort, now forced to express the
universal will of Germany, demanded that Schleswig, as the sister State of
Holstein, should enter the Federation. On the passing of this resolution,
the envoy who represented the Denmark. King of Denmark at the Diet, as Duke
of Holstein, quitted Frankfort, and a state of war ensued between Denmark
on the one side and Prussia with the German Federation on the other.

[The German Ante-Parliament, March 30-April 4.]

[Republican rising in Baden.]

The passionate impulse of the German people towards unity had already
called into being an organ for the expression of national sentiment, which,
if without any legal or constitutional authority, was yet strong enough to
impose its will upon the old and discredited Federal Diet and upon most of
the surviving Governments. At the invitation of a Committee, about five
hundred Liberals who had in one form or another taken part in public
affairs assembled at Frankfort on the 30th of March to make the necessary
preparations for the meeting of a German national Parliament. This
Assembly, which is known as the Ante-Parliament, sat but for five days. Its
resolutions, so far as regarded the method of electing the new Parliament,
and the inclusion of new districts in the German Federation, were accepted
by the Diet, and in the main carried into effect. Its denunciation of
persons concerned in the repressive measures of 1819 and subsequent
reactionary epochs was followed by the immediate retirement of all members
of the Diet whose careers dated back to those detested days. But in the
most important work that was expected from the Ante-Parliament, the
settlement of a draft-Constitution to be laid before the future National
Assembly as a basis for its deliberations, nothing whatever was
accomplished. The debates that took place from the 31st of March to the 4th
of April were little more than a trial of strength between the Monarchical
and Republican parties. The Republicans, far outnumbered when they
submitted a constitutional scheme of their own, proposed, after this
repulse, that the existing Assembly should continue in session until the
National Parliament met; in other words, that it should take upon itself
the functions and character of a National Convention. Defeated also on this
proposal, the leaders of the extreme section of the Republican party,
strangely miscalculating their real strength, determined on armed
insurrection. Uniting with a body of German refugees beyond the Rhine, who
were themselves assisted by French and Polish soldiers of revolution, they
raised the Republican standard in Baden, and for a few days maintained a
hopeless and inglorious struggle against the troops which were sent to
suppress them. Even in Baden, which had long been in advance of all other
German States in democratic sentiment, and which was peculiarly open to
Republican influences from France and Switzerland, the movement was not
seriously supported by the population, and in the remainder of Germany it
received no countenance whatever. The leaders found themselves ruined men.
The best of them fled to the United States, where, in the great struggle
against slavery thirteen years later, they rendered better service to their
adopted than they had ever rendered to their natural Fatherland.

[Meeting of the German National Assembly, May 18.]

On breaking up on the 4th of April, the Ante-Parliament left behind it a
Committee of Fifty, whose task it was to continue the work of preparation
for the National Assembly to which it had itself contributed so little. One
thing alone had been clearly established, that the future Constitution of
Germany was not to be Republican. That the existing Governments could not
be safely ignored by the National Assembly in its work of founding the new
Federal Constitution for Germany was clear to those who were not blinded by
the enthusiasm of the moment. In the Committee of Fifty and elsewhere plans
were suggested for giving to the Governments a representation within the
Constituent Assembly, or for uniting their representatives in a Chamber
co-ordinate with this, so that each step in the construction of the new
Federal order should be at once the work of the nation and of the
Governments. Such plans were suggested and discussed; but in the haste and
inexperience of the time they were brought to no conclusion. The opening of
the National Assembly had been fixed for the 18th of May, and this brief
interval had expired before the few sagacious men who understood the
necessity of co-operation between the Governments and the Parliament had
decided upon any common course of action. To the mass of patriots it was
enough that Germany, after thirty years of disappointment, had at last won
its national representation. Before this imposing image of the united race,
Kings, Courts, and armies, it was fondly thought, must bow. Thus, in the
midst of universal hope, the elections were held throughout Germany in its
utmost federal extent, from the Baltic to the Italian border; Bohemia
alone, where the Czech majority resisted any closer union with Germany,
declining to send representatives to Frankfort. In the body of deputies
elected there were to be found almost all the foremost Liberal politicians
of every German community; a few still vigorous champions of the time of
the War of Liberation, chief among them the poet Arndt; patriots who in the
evil days that followed had suffered imprisonment and exile; historians,
professors, critics, who in the sacred cause of liberty have, like
Gervinus, inflicted upon their readers worse miseries than ever they
themselves endured at the hands of unregenerate kings; theologians,
journalists; in short, the whole group of leaders under whom Germany
expected to enter into the promised land of national unity and freedom. No
Imperial coronation ever brought to Frankfort so many honoured guests, or
attracted to the same degree the sympathy of the German race. Greeted with
the cheers of the citizens of Frankfort, whose civic militia lined the
streets, the members of the Assembly marched in procession on the afternoon
of the 18th of May from the ancient banqueting-hall of the Kaisers, where
they had gathered, to the Church of St. Paul, which had been chosen as
their Senate House. Their President and officers were elected on the
following day. Arndt, who in the frantic confusion of the first meeting had
been unrecognised and shouted down, was called into the Tribune, but could
speak only a few words for tears. The Assembly voted him its thanks for his
famous song, "What is the German's Fatherland?" and requested that he would
add to it another stanza commemorating the union of the race at length
visibly realised in that great Parliament. Four days after the opening of
the General Assembly of Frankfort, the Prussian national Parliament began
its sessions at Berlin. [420]

[Europe generally in March, 1848.]

At this point the first act in the Revolutionary drama of 1848 in Germany,
as in Europe generally, may be considered to have reached its close. A
certain unity marks the memorable epoch known generally as the March Days
and the events immediately succeeding. Revolution is universal; it scarcely
meets with resistance; its views seem on the point of being achieved; the
baffled aspirations of the last half-century seem on the point of being
fulfilled. There exists no longer in Central Europe such a thing as an
autocratic Government; and, while the French Republic maintains an
unexpected attitude of peace, Germany and Italy, under the leadership of
old dynasties now penetrated with a new spirit, appear to be on the point
of achieving each its own work of Federal union and of the expulsion of the
foreigner from its national soil. All Italy prepares to move under Charles
Albert to force the Austrians from their last strongholds on the Mincio and
the Adige; all Germany is with the troops of Frederick William of Prussia
as they enter Holstein to rescue this and the neighbouring German province
from the Dane. In Radetzky's camp alone, and at the Court of St.
Petersburg, the old monarchical order of Europe still survives. How
powerful were these two isolated centres of anti-popular energy the world
was soon to see. Yet they would not have turned back the tide of European
affairs and given one more victory to reaction had they not had their
allies in the hatred of race to race, in the incapacity and the errors of
peoples and those who represented them; above all, in the enormous
difficulties which, even had the generation been one of sages and martyrs,
the political circumstances of the time would in themselves have opposed to
the accomplishment of the ends desired.

[The French Provisional Government.]

[The National Workshops.]

France had given to Central Europe the signal for the Revolution of 1848,
and it was in France, where the conflict was not one for national
independence but for political and social interests, that the Revolution
most rapidly ran its course and first exhausted its powers. On the flight
of Louis Philippe authority had been entrusted by the Chamber of Deputies
to a Provisional Government, whose most prominent member was the orator and
poet Lamartine. Installed at the Hôtel de Ville, this Government had with
difficulty prevented the mob from substituting the Red Flag for the
Tricolor, and from proceeding at once to realise the plans of its own
leaders. The majority of the Provisional Government were Republicans of a
moderate type, representing the ideas of the urban middle classes rather
than those of the workmen; but by their side were Ledru Rollin, a
rhetorician dominated by the phrases of 1793, and Louis Blanc, who
considered all political change as but an instrument for advancing the
organisation of labour and for the emancipation of the artisan from
servitude, by the establishment of State-directed industries affording
appropriate employment and adequate remuneration to all. Among the first
proclamations of the Provisional Government was one in which, in answer to
a petition demanding the recognition of the Right to Labour, they undertook
to guarantee employment to every citizen. This engagement, the heaviest
perhaps that was ever voluntarily assumed by any Government, was followed
in a few days by the opening of national workshops. That in the midst of a
Revolution which took all parties by surprise plans for the conduct of a
series of industrial enterprises by the State should have been seriously
examined was impossible. The Government had paid homage to an abstract
idea; they were without a conception of the mode in which it was to be
realised. What articles were to be made, what works were to be executed, no
one knew. The mere direction of destitute workmen to the centres where they
were to be employed was a task for which a new branch of the administration
had to be created. When this was achieved, the men collected proved useless
for all purposes of industry. Their numbers increased enormously, rising in
the course of four weeks from fourteen to sixty-five thousand. The
Revolution had itself caused a financial and commercial panic, interrupting
all the ordinary occupations of business, and depriving masses of men of
the means of earning a livelihood. These, with others who had no intention
of working, thronged to the State workshops; while the certainty of
obtaining wages from the public purse occasioned a series of strikes of
workmen against their employers and the abandonment of private factories.
The chocks which had been intended to confine enrolment at the public works
to persons already domiciled in Paris completely failed; from all the
neighbouring departments the idle and the hungry streamed into the capital.
Every abuse incidental to a system of public relief was present in Paris in
its most exaggerated form; every element of experience, of wisdom, of
precaution, was absent. If, instead of a group of benevolent theorists, the
experiment of 1848 had had for its authors a company of millionaires
anxious to dispel all hope that mankind might ever rise to a higher order
than that of unrestricted competition of man against man, it could not have
been conducted under more fatal conditions. [421]

[The Provisional Government and the Red Republicans.]

[Elections, April 23.]

The leaders of the democracy in Paris had from the first considered that
the decision upon the form of Government to be established in France in
place of the Orleanist monarchy belonged rather to themselves than to the
nation at large. They distrusted, and with good reason, the results of the
General Election which, by a decree of the Provisional Government, was to
be held in the course of April. A circular issued by Ledru Rollin, Minister
of the Interior, without the knowledge of his colleagues, to the
Commissioners by whom he had replaced the Prefects of the Monarchy gave the
first open indication of this alarm, and of the means of violence and
intimidation by which the party which Ledru Rollin represented hoped to
impose its will upon the country. The Commissioners were informed in plain
language that, as agents of a revolutionary authority, their powers were
unlimited, and that their task was to exclude from election all persons who
were not animated by revolutionary spirit, and pure from any taint of
association with the past. If the circular had been the work of the
Government, and not of a single member of it who was at variance with most
of his colleagues and whose words were far more formidable than his
actions, it would have clearly foreshadowed a return to the system of 1793.
But the isolation of Ledru Rollin was well understood. The attitude of the
Government generally was so little in accordance with the views of the Red
Republicans that on the 16th of April a demonstration was organised with
the object of compelling them to postpone the elections. The prompt
appearance in arms of the National Guard, which still represented the
middle classes of Paris, baffled the design of the leaders of the mob, and
gave to Lamartine and the majority in the Government a decisive victory
over their revolutionary colleague. The elections were held at the time
appointed; and, in spite of the institution of universal suffrage, they
resulted in the return of a body of Deputies not widely different from
those who had hitherto appeared in French Parliaments. The great majority
were indeed Republicans by profession, but of a moderate type; and the
session had no sooner opened than it became clear that the relation between
the Socialist democracy of Paris and the National Representatives could
only be one of more or less violent antagonism.

[The National Assembly, May 4.]

[Riot of May 15.]

[Measures against the National Workshops.]

The first act of the Assembly, which met on the 4th of May, was to declare
that the Provisional Government had deserved well of the country, and to
reinstate most of its members in office under the title of an Executive
Commission. Ledru Rollin's offences were condoned, as those of a man
popular with the democracy, and likely on the whole to yield to the
influence of his colleagues. Louis Blanc and his confederate, Albert, as
really dangerous persons, were excluded. The Jacobin leaders now proceeded
to organise an attack on the Assembly by main force. On the 15th of May the
attempt was made. Under pretence of tendering a petition on behalf of
Poland, a mob invaded the Legislative Chamber, declared the Assembly
dissolved, and put the Deputies to flight. But the triumph was of short
duration. The National Guard, whose commander alone was responsible for the
failure of measures of defence, soon rallied in force; the leaders of the
insurgents, some of whom had installed themselves as a Provisional
Government at the Hôtel de Ville, were made captive; and after an interval
of a few hours the Assembly resumed possession of the Palais Bourbon. The
dishonour done to the national representation by the scandalous scenes of
the 15th of May, as well as the decisively proved superiority of the
National Guard over the half armed mob, encouraged the Assembly to declare
open war against the so-called social democracy, and to decree the
abolition of the national workshops. The enormous growth of these
establishments, which now included over a hundred thousand men, threatened
to ruin the public finances; the demoralisation which they engendered
seemed likely to destroy whatever was sound in the life of the working
classes of Paris. Of honest industry there was scarcely a trace to be found
among the masses who were receiving their daily wages from the State.
Whatever the sincerity of those who had founded the national workshops,
whatever the anxiety for employment on the part of those who first resorted
to them, they had now become mere hives of disorder, where the resources of
the State were lavished in accumulating a force for its own overthrow. It
was necessary, at whatever risk, to extinguish the evil. Plans for the
gradual dispersion of the army of workmen were drawn up by Committees and
discussed by the Assembly. If put in force with no more than the necessary
delay, these plans might perhaps have rendered a peaceful solution of the
difficulty possible. But the Government hesitated, and finally, when a
decision could no longer be avoided, determined upon measures more violent
and more sudden than those which the Committees had recommended. On the
21st of June an order was published that all occupants of the public
workshops between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five must enlist in the
army or cease to receive support from the State, and that the removal of
the workmen who had come into Paris from the provinces, for which
preparations had already been made, must be at once effected. [422]

[The Four Days of June, 23-26.]

The publication of this order was the signal for an appeal to arms. The
legions of the national workshops were in themselves a half-organised force
equal in number to several army-corps, and now animated by something like
the spirit of military union. The revolt, which began on the morning of the
23rd of June, was conducted as no revolt in Pans had ever been conducted
before. The eastern part of the city was turned into a maze of barricades.
Though the insurgents had not artillery, they were in other respects fairly
armed. The terrible nature of the conflict impending now became evident to
the Assembly. General Cavaignac, Minister of War, was placed in command,
and subsequently invested with supreme authority, the Executive Commission
resigning its powers. All the troops in the neighbourhood of Paris were at
once summoned to the capital, Cavaignac well understood that any attempt to
hold the insurrection in check by means of scattered posts would only end,
as in 1830, by the capture or the demoralisation of the troops. He treated
Paris as one great battle-field in which the enemy must be attacked in mass
and driven by main force from all his positions. At times the effort
appeared almost beyond the power of the forces engaged, and the insurgents,
sheltered by huge barricades and firing from the windows of houses, seemed
likely to remain masters of the field. The struggle continued for four
days, but Cavaignac's artillery and the discipline of his troops at last
crushed resistance; and after the Archbishop of Paris had been mortally
wounded in a heroic effort to stop further bloodshed, the last bands of the
insurgents, driven back into the north-eastern quarter of the city, and
there attacked with artillery in front and flank, were forced to lay down
their arms.

[Fears left by the events of June.]

Such was the conflict of the Four Days of June, a conflict memorable as one
in which the combatants fought not for a political principle or form of
Government, but for the preservation or the overthrow of society based on
the institution of private property. The National Guard, with some
exceptions, fought side by side with the regiments of the line, braved the
same perils, and sustained an equal loss. The workmen threw themselves the
more passionately into the struggle, inasmuch as defeat threatened them
with deprivation of the very means of life. On both sides acts of savagery
were committed which the fury of the conflict could not excuse. The
vengeance of the conquerors in the moment of success appears, however, to
have been less unrelenting than that which followed the overthrow of the
Commune in 1871, though, after the struggle was over, the Assembly had no
scruple in transporting without trial the whole mass of prisoners taken
with arms in their hands. Cavaignac's victory left the classes for whom he
had fought terror-stricken at the peril from which they had escaped, and
almost hopeless of their own security under any popular form of Government
in the future. Against the rash and weak concessions to popular demands
that had been made by the administration since February, especially in the
matter of taxation and finance, there was now a deep, if not loudly
proclaimed, reaction. The national workshops disappeared; grants were made
by the Legislature for the assistance of the masses who were left without
resource, but the money was bestowed in charitable relief or in the form of
loans to associations, not as wages from the State. On every side among the
holders of property the cry was for a return to sound principles of finance
in the economy of the State, and for the establishment of a strong central
power.

[Cavaignac and Louis Napoleon.]

[Louis Napoleon elected Deputy but resigns, June 14.]

General Cavaignac after the restoration of order had laid down the supreme
authority which had been conferred on him, but at the desire of the
Assembly he continued to exercise it until the new Constitution should be
drawn up and an Executive appointed in accordance with its provisions.
Events had suddenly raised Cavaignac from obscurity to eminence, and seemed
to mark him out as the future ruler of France. But he displayed during the
six months following the suppression of the revolt no great capacity for
government, and his virtues as well as his defects made against his
personal success. A sincere Republican, while at the same time a rigid
upholder of law, he refused to lend himself to those who were, except in
name, enemies of Republicanism; and in his official acts and utterances he
spared the feelings of the reactionary classes as little as he would have
spared those of rioters and Socialists. As the influence of Cavaignac
declined, another name began to fill men's thoughts. Louis Napoleon, son of
the Emperor's brother Louis, King of Holland, had while still in exile been
elected to the National Assembly by four Departments. He was as yet almost
unknown except by name to his fellow-countrymen. Born in the Tuileries in
1808, he had been involved as a child in the ruin of the Empire, and had
passed into banishment with his mother Hortense, under the law that
expelled from France all members of Napoleon's family. He had been brought
up at Augsburg and on the shores of the Lake of Constance, and as a
volunteer in a Swiss camp of artillery he had gained some little
acquaintance with military life. In 1831 he had joined the insurgents in
the Romagna who were in arms against the Papal Government. The death of his
own elder brother, followed in 1832 by that of Napoleon's son, the Duke of
Reichstadt, made him chief of the house of Bonaparte. Though far more of a
recluse than a man of action, though so little of his own nation that he
could not pronounce a sentence of French without a marked German accent,
and had never even seen a French play performed, he now became possessed by
the fixed idea that he was one day to wear the French Crown. A few obscure
adventurers attached themselves to his fortunes, and in 1836 he appeared at
Strasburg and presented himself to the troops as Emperor. The enterprise
ended in failure and ridicule. Louis Napoleon was shipped to America by the
Orleanist Government, which supplied him with money, and thought it
unnecessary even to bring him to trial. He recrossed the Atlantic, made his
home in England, and in 1840 repeated at Boulogne the attempt that had
failed at Strasburg. The result was again disastrous. He was now sentenced
to perpetual imprisonment, and passed the next six years in captivity at
Ham, where he produced a treatise on the Napoleonic Ideas, and certain
fragments on political and social questions. The enthusiasm for Napoleon,
of which there had been little trace in France since 1815, was now
reviving; the sufferings of the epoch of conquest were forgotten; the
steady maintenance of peace by Louis Philippe seemed humiliating to young
and ardent spirits who had not known the actual presence of the foreigner.
In literature two men of eminence worked powerfully upon the national
imagination. The history of Thiers gave the nation a great stage-picture of
Napoleon's exploits; Béranger's lyrics invested his exile at St. Helena
with an irresistible, though spurious, pathos. Thus, little as the world
concerned itself with the prisoner at Ham, the tendencies of the time were
working in his favour; and his confinement, which lasted six years and was
terminated by his escape and return to England, appears to have deepened
his brooding nature, and to have strengthened rather than diminished his
confidence in himself. On the overthrow of Louis Philippe he visited Paris,
but was requested by the Provisional Government, on the ground of the
unrepealed law banishing the Bonaparte family, to quit the country. He
obeyed, probably foreseeing that the difficulties of the Republic would
create better opportunities for his reappearance. Meanwhile the group of
unknown men who sought their fortunes in a Napoleonic restoration busily
canvassed and wrote on behalf of the Prince, and with such success that, in
the supplementary elections that were held at the beginning of June, he
obtained a fourfold triumph. The Assembly, in spite of the efforts of the
Government, pronounced his return valid. Yet with rare self-command the
Prince still adhered to his policy of reserve, resigning his seat on the
ground that his election had been made a pretext for movements of which he
disapproved, while at the same time he declared in his letter to the
President of the Assembly that if duties should be imposed upon him by the
people he should know how to fulfil them. [423]

[Louis Napoleon again elected, Sept. 17.]

[Louis Napoleon elected President, Dec. 10.]

From this time Louis Napoleon was a recognised aspirant to power. The
Constitution of the Republic was now being drawn up by the Assembly. The
Executive Commission had disappeared in the convulsion of June; Cavaignac
was holding the balance between parties rather than governing himself. In
the midst of the debates on the Constitution Louis Napoleon was again
returned elected, to the Assembly by the votes of five Departments. He saw
that he ought to remain no longer in the background, and, accepting the
call of the electors, he took his seat in the Chamber. It was clear that he
would become a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, and that the
popularity of his name among the masses was enormous. He had twice
presented himself to France as the heir to Napoleon's throne; he had never
directly abandoned his dynastic claim; he had but recently declared, in
almost threatening language, that he should know how to fulfil the duties
that the people might impose upon him. Yet with all these facts before it
the Assembly, misled by the puerile rhetoric of Lamartine, decided that in
the new Constitution the President of the Republic, in whom was vested the
executive power, should be chosen by the direct vote of all Frenchmen, and
rejected the amendment of M. Grevy, who, with real insight into the future,
declared that such direct election by the people could only give France a
Dictator, and demanded that the President should be appointed not by the
masses but by the Chamber. Thus was the way paved for Louis Napoleon's
march to power. The events of June had dispelled any attraction that he had
hitherto felt towards Socialistic theories. He saw that France required an
upholder of order and of property. In his address to the nation announcing
his candidature for the Presidency he declared that he would shrink from no
sacrifice in defending society, so audaciously attacked; that he would
devote himself without reserve to the maintenance of the Republic, and make
it his pride to leave to his successor at the end of four years authority
strengthened, liberty unimpaired, and real progress accomplished. Behind
these generalities the address dexterously touched on the special wants of
classes and parties, and promised something to each. The French nation in
the election which followed showed that it believed in Louis Napoleon even
more than he did in himself. If there existed in the opinion of the great
mass any element beyond the mere instinct of self-defence against real or
supposed schemes of spoliation, it was reverence for Napoleon's memory. Out
of seven millions of votes given, Louis Napoleon received above five,
Cavaignac, who alone entered into serious competition with him, receiving
about a fourth part of that number. Lamartine and the men who ten months
before had represented all the hopes of the nation now found but a handful
of supporters. Though none yet openly spoke of Monarchy, on all sides there
was the desire for the restoration of power. The day-dreams of the second
Republic had fled. France had shown that its choice lay only between a
soldier who had crushed rebellion and a stranger who brought no title to
its confidence but an Imperial name.




CHAPTER XX.


Austria and Italy--Vienna from March to May--Flight of the Emperor--
Bohemian National Movement--Windischgrätz subdues Prague--Campaign
around Verona--Papal Allocution--Naples in May--Negotiations as to
Lombardy--Reconquest of Venetia--Battle of Custozza--The Austrians enter
Milan--Austrian Court and Hungary--The Serbs in Southern Hungary--Serb
Congress at Carlowitz--Jellacic--Affairs of Croatia--Jellacic, the Court
and the Hungarian Movement--Murder of Lamberg--Manifesto of October 3
Vienna on October 6--The Emperor at Olmütz--Windischgrätz conquers
Vienna--The Parliament at Kremsier--Schwarzenberg Minister--Ferdinand
abdicates--Dissolution of the Kremsier Parliament--Unitary Edict--
Hungary--The Roumanians in Transylvania--The Austrian Army occupies
Pesth--Hungarian Government at Debreczin--The Austrians driven out of
Hungary--Declaration of Hungarian Independence--Russian Intervention--
The Hungarian Summer Campaign--Capitulation of Vilagos--Italy--Murder of
Rossi--Tuscany--The March Campaign in Lombardy--Novara--Abdication of
Charles Albert--Victor Emmanuel--Restoration in Tuscany--French
Intervention in Rome--Defeat of Oudinot--Oudinot and Lesseps--The French
enter Rome--The Restored Pontifical Government--Fall of Venice--
Ferdinand reconquers Sicily Germany--The National Assembly at Frankfort--
The Armistice of Malmö--Berlin from April to September--The Prussian
Army--Last days of the Prussian Parliament--Prussian Constitution
granted by Edict--The German National Assembly and Austria--Frederick
William IV. elected Emperor--He refuses the Crown--End of the National
Assembly--Prussia attempts to form a separate Union--The Union
Parliament at Erfurt--Action of Austria--Hesse Cassel--The Diet of
Frankfort restored--Olmütz--Schleswig-Holstein--Germany after 1849--
Austria after 1851--France after 1848--Louis Napoleon--The October
Message--Law Limiting the Franchise--Louis Napoleon and the Army--
Proposed Revision of the Constitution--The Coup d'État--Napoleon III.
Emperor


[Austria and Italy.]

The plain of Northern Italy has ever been an arena on which the contest
between interests greater than those of Italy itself has been brought to an
issue, and it may perhaps be truly said that in the struggle between
established Governments and Revolution through out Central Europe in 1848
the real turning point, if it can anywhere be fixed, lay rather in the
fortunes of a campaign in Lombardy than in any single combination of events
at Vienna or Berlin. The very existence of the Austrian Monarchy depended
on the victory of Radetzky's forces over the national movement at the head
of which Piedmont had now placed itself. If Italian independence should be
established upon the ruin of the Austrian arms, and the influence and
example of the victorious Italian people be thrown into the scale against
the Imperial Government in its struggle with the separatist forces that
convulsed every part of the Austrian dominions, it was scarcely possible
that any stroke of fortune or policy could save the Empire of the Hapsburgs
from dissolution. But on the prostration or recovery of Austria, as
represented by its central power at Vienna, the future of Germany in great
part depended. Whatever compromise might be effected between popular and
monarchical forces in the other German States if left free from Austria's
interference, the whole influence of a resurgent Austrian power could not
but be directed against the principles of popular sovereignty and national
union. The Parliament of Frankfort might then in vain affect to fulfil its
mandate without reckoning with the Court of Vienna. All this was indeed
obscured in the tempests that for a while shut out the political horizon.
The Liberals of Northern Germany had little sympathy with the Italian cause
in the decisive days of 1848. Their inclinations went rather with the
combatant who, though bent on maintaining an oppressive dominion, was
nevertheless a member of the German race and paid homage for the moment to
Constitutional rights. Yet, as later events were to prove, the fetters
which crushed liberty beyond the Alps could fit as closely on to German
limbs; and in the warfare of Upper Italy for its own freedom the battle of
German Liberalism was in no small measure fought and lost.

[Vienna from March to May.]

Metternich once banished from Vienna, the first popular demand was for a
Constitution. His successors in office, with a certain characteristic
pedantry, devoted their studies to the Belgian Constitution of 1831; and
after some weeks a Constitution was published by edict for the
non-Hungarian part of the Empire, including a Parliament of two Chambers,
the Lower to be chosen by indirect election, the Upper consisting of
nominees of the Crown and representatives of the great landowners. The
provisions of this Constitution in favour of the Crown and the Aristocracy,
as well as the arbitrary mode of its promulgation, displeased the Viennese.
Agitation recommenced in the city; unpopular officials were roughly handled
the Press grew ever more violent and more scurrilous. One strange result of
the tutelage in which Austrian society had been held was that the students
of the University became, and for some time continued to be, the most
important political body of the capital. Their principal rivals in
influence were the National Guard drawn from citizens of the middle class,
the workmen as yet remaining in the background. Neither in the Hall of the
University nor at the taverns where the civic militia discussed the events
of the hour did the office-drawn Constitution find favour. On the 13th of
May it was determined, with the view of exercising stronger pressure upon
the Government, that the existing committees of the National Guard and of
the students should be superseded by one central committee representing
both bodies. The elections to this committee had been held, and its
sittings had begun, when the commander of the National Guard declared such
proceedings to be inconsistent with military discipline, and ordered the
dissolution of the committee. Riots followed, during which the students and
the mob made their way into the Emperor's palace and demanded from his
Ministers not only the re-establishment of the central committee but the
abolition of the Upper Chamber in the projected Constitution, and the
removal of the checks imposed on popular sovereignty by a limited franchise
and the system of indirect elections. On point after point the Ministry
gave way; and, in spite of the resistance and reproaches of the Imperial
household, they obtained the Emperor's signature to a document promising
that for the future all the important military posts in the city should be
held by the National Guard jointly with the regular troops, that the latter
should never be called out except on the requisition of the National Guard,
and that the projected Constitution should remain without force until it
should have been submitted for confirmation to a single Constituent
Assembly elected by universal suffrage.

[Flight of the Emperor, May 17.]

[Tumult of May 26.]

The weakness of the Emperor's intelligence rendered him a mere puppet in
the hands of those who for the moment exercised control over his actions.
During the riot of the 15th of May he obeyed his Ministers; a few hours
afterwards he fell under the sway of the Court party, and consented to fly
from Vienna. On the 18th the Viennese learnt to their astonishment that
Ferdinand was far on the road to the Tyrol. Soon afterwards a manifesto was
published, stating that the violence and anarchy of the capital had
compelled the Emperor to transfer his residence to Innsbruck; that he
remained true, however, to the promises made in March and to their
legitimate consequences; and that proof must be given of the return of the
Viennese to their old sentiments of loyalty before he could again appear
among them. A certain revulsion of feeling in the Emperor's favour now
became manifest in the capital, and emboldened the Ministers to take the
first step necessary towards obtaining his return, namely the dissolution
of the Students' Legion. They could count with some confidence on the
support of the wealthier part of the middle class, who were now becoming
wearied of the students' extravagances and alarmed at the interruption of
business caused by the Revolution; moreover, the ordinary termination of
the academic year was near at hand. The order was accordingly given for the
dissolution of the Legion and the closing of the University. But the
students met the order with the stoutest resistance. The workmen poured in
from the suburbs to join in their defence. Barricades were erected, and the
insurrection of March seemed on the point of being renewed. Once more the
Government gave way, and not only revoked its order, but declared itself
incapable of preserving tranquillity in the capital unless it should
receive the assistance of the leaders of the people. With the full
concurrence of the Ministers, a Committee of Public Safety was formed,
representing at once the students, the middle class, and the workmen; and
it entered upon its duties with an authority exceeding, within the limits
of the capital, that of the shadowy functionaries of State. [424]

[Bohemian national movement.]

[Windischgrätz subdues Prague, June 12-17.]

In the meantime the antagonism between the Czechs and the Germans in
Bohemia was daily becoming more bitter. The influence of the party of
compromise, which had been dominant in the early days of March, had
disappeared before the ill-timed attempt of the German national leaders at
Frankfort to include Bohemia within the territory sending representatives
to the German national Parliament. By consenting to this incorporation the
Czech population would have definitely renounced its newly asserted claim
to nationality. If the growth of democratic spirit at Vienna was
accompanied by a more intense German national feeling in the capital, the
popular movements at Vienna and at Prague must necessarily pass into a
relation of conflict with one another. On the flight of the Emperor
becoming known at Prague, Count Thun, the governor, who was also the chief
of the moderate Bohemian party, invited Ferdinand to make Prague the seat
of his Government. This invitation, which would have directly connected the
Crown with Czech national interests, was not accepted. The rasher
politicians, chiefly students and workmen, continued to hold their meetings
and to patrol the streets; and a Congress of Slavs from all parts of the
Empire, which was opened on the 2nd of June, excited national passions
still further. So threatening grew the attitude of the students and workmen
that Count Windischgrätz, commander of the troops at Prague, prepared to
act with artillery. On the 12th of June, the day on which the Congress of
Slavs broke up, fighting began. Windischgrätz, whose wife was killed by a
bullet, appears to have acted with calmness, and to have sought to arrive
at some peaceful settlement. He withdrew his troops, and desisted from a
bombardment that he had begun, on the understanding that the barricades
which had been erected should be removed. This condition was not fulfilled.
New acts of violence occurred in the city, and on the 17th Windischgrätz
reopened fire. On the following day Prague surrendered, and Windischgrätz
re-entered the city as Dictator. The autonomy of Bohemia was at an end. The
army had for the first time acted with effect against a popular rising; the
first blow had been struck on behalf of the central power against the
revolution which till now had seemed about to dissolve the Austrian State
into its fragments.

[Campaign around Verona, April-May.]

At this point the dominant interest in Austrian affairs passes from the
capital and the northern provinces to Radetzky's army and the Italians with
whom it stood face to face. Once convinced of the necessity of a retreat
from Milan, the Austrian commander had moved with sufficient rapidity to
save Verona and Mantua from passing into the hands of the insurgents. He
was thus enabled to place his army in one of the best defensive positions
in Europe, the Quadrilateral flanked by the rivers Mincio and Adige, and
protected by the fortresses of Verona, Mantua, Peschiera, and Legnano. With
his front on the Mincio he awaited at once the attack of the Piedmontese
and the arrival of reinforcements from the north-east. On the 8th of April
the first attack was made, and after a sharp engagement at Goito the
passage of the Mincio was effected by the Sardinian army. Siege was now
laid to Peschiera; and while a Tuscan contingent watched Mantua, the bulk
of Charles Albert's forces operated farther northward with the view of
cutting off Verona from the roads to the Tyrol. This result was for a
moment achieved, but the troops at the King's disposal were far too weak
for the task of reducing the fortresses; and in an attempt that was made on
the 6th of May to drive the Austrians out of their positions in front of
Verona, Charles Albert was defeated at Santa Lucia and compelled to fall
back towards the Mincio. [425]

[Papal Allocution, April 29.]

[Naples in May.]

A pause in the war ensued, filled by political events of evil omen for
Italy. Of all the princes who had permitted their troops to march
northwards to the assistance of the Lombards, not one was acting in full
sincerity. The first to show himself in his true colours was the Pope. On
the 29th of April an Allocution was addressed to the Cardinals, in which
Pius disavowed all participation in the war against Austria, and declared
that his own troops should do no more than defend the integrity of the
Roman States. Though at the moment an outburst of popular indignation in
Rome forced a still more liberal Ministry into power, and Durando, the
Papal general, continued his advance into Venetia, the Pope's renunciation
of his supposed national leadership produced the effect which its author
desired, encouraging every open and every secret enemy of the Italian
cause, and perplexing those who had believed themselves to be engaged in a
sacred as well as a patriotic war. In Naples things hurried far more
rapidly to a catastrophe. Elections had been held to the Chamber of
Deputies, which was to be opened on the 15th of May, and most of the
members returned were men who, while devoted to the Italian national cause
were neither Republicans nor enemies of the Bourbon dynasty, but anxious to
co-operate with their King in the work of Constitutional reform.
Politicians of another character, however, commanded the streets of Naples.
Rumours were spread that the Court was on the point of restoring despotic
government and abandoning the Italian cause. Disorder and agitation
increased from day to day; and after the Deputies had arrived in the city
and begun a series of informal meetings preparatory to the opening of the
Parliament, an ill-advised act of Ferdinand gave to the party of disorder,
who were weakly represented in the Assembly, occasion for an insurrection.
After promulgating the Constitution on February both, Ferdinand had agreed
that it should be submitted to the two Chambers for revision. He notified,
however, to the Representatives on the eve of the opening of Parliament
that they would be required to take an oath of fidelity to the
Constitution. They urged that such an oath would deprive them of their
right of revision. The King, after some hours, consented to a change in the
formula of the oath; but his demand had already thrown the city into
tumult. Barricades were erected, the Deputies in vain endeavouring to calm
the rioters and to prevent a conflict with the troops. While negotiations
were still in progress shots were fired. The troops now threw themselves
upon the people; there was a struggle, short in duration, but sanguinary
and merciless; the barricades were captured, some hundreds of the
insurgents slain, and Ferdinand was once more absolute master of Naples.
The Assembly was dissolved on the day after that on which it should have
met. Orders were at once sent by the King to General Pepe, commander of the
troops that were on the march to Lombardy, to return with his army to
Naples. Though Pepe continued true to the national cause, and endeavoured
to lead his army forward from Bologna in defiance of the King's
instructions, his troops now melted away; and when he crossed the Po and
placed himself under the standard of Charles Albert in Venetia there
remained with him scarcely fifteen hundred men.

[Negotiations as to Lombardy.]

[Reconquest of Venetia, June, July.]

It thus became clear before the end of May that the Lombards would receive
no considerable help from the Southern States in their struggle for
freedom, and that the promised league of the Governments in the national
cause was but a dream from which there was a bitter awakening. Nor in
Northern Italy itself was there the unity in aim and action without which
success was impossible. The Republican party accused the King and the
Provisional Government at Milan of an unwillingness to arm the people;
Charles Albert on his part regarded every Republican as an enemy. On
entering Lombardy the King had stated that no question as to the political
organisation of the future should be raised until the war was ended;
nevertheless, before a fortress had been captured, he had allowed Modena
and Parma to declare themselves incorporated with the Piedmontese monarchy;
and, in spite of Mazzini's protest, their example was followed by Lombardy
and some Venetian districts. In the recriminations that passed between the
Republicans and the Monarchists it was even suggested that Austria had
friends of its own in certain classes of the population. This was not the
view taken by the Viennese Government, which from the first appears to have
considered its cause in Lombardy as virtually lost. The mediation of Great
Britain was invoked by Metternich's successors, and a willingness expressed
to grant to the Italian provinces complete autonomy under the Emperor's
sceptre. Palmerston, in reply to the supplications of a Court which had
hitherto cursed his influence, urged that Lombardy and the greater part of
Venetia should be ceded to the King of Piedmont. The Austrian Government
would have given up Lombardy to their enemy; they hesitated to increase his
power to the extent demanded by Palmerston, the more so as the French
Ministry was known to be jealous of the aggrandisement of Sardinia, and to
desire the establishment of weak Republics like those formed in 1796.
Withdrawing from its negotiations at London, the Emperor's Cabinet now
entered into direct communication with the Provisional Government at Milan,
and, without making any reference to Piedmont or Venice, offered complete
independence to Lombardy. As the union of this province with Piedmont had
already been voted by its inhabitants, the offer was at once rejected.
Moreover, even it the Italians had shown a disposition to compromise their
cause and abandon Venice, Radetzky would not have broken off the combat
while any possibility remained of winning over the Emperor from the side
of the peace-party. In reply to instructions directing him to offer an
armistice to the enemy, he sent Prince Felix Schwarzenberg to Innsbruck to
implore the Emperor to trust to the valour of his soldiers and to continue
the combat. Already there were signs that the victory would ultimately be
with Austria. Reinforcements had cut their way through the insurgent
territory and reached Verona; and although a movement by which Radetzky
threatened to sever Charles Albert's communications was frustrated by a
second engagement at Goito, and Peschiera passed into the besiegers' hands,
this was the last success won by the Italians. Throwing himself suddenly
eastwards, Radetzky appeared before Vicenza, and compelled this city, with
the entire Papal army, commanded by General Durando, to capitulate. The
fall of Vicenza was followed by that of the other cities on the
Venetian mainland till Venice alone on the east of the Adige defied the
Austrian arms. As the invader pressed onward, an Assembly which Manin had
convoked at Venice decided on union with Piedmont. Manin himself had been
the most zealous opponent of what he considered the sacrifice of Venetian
independence. He gave way nevertheless at the last, and made no attempt to
fetter the decision of the Assembly; but when this decision had been given
he handed over the conduct of affairs to others, and retired for awhile
into private life, declining to serve under a king. [426]

[Battle of Custozza July 25.]

[Austrians re-enter Milan, Aug. 6.]

Charles Albert now renewed his attempt to wrest the central fortresses from
the Austrians. Leaving half his army at Peschiera and farther north, he
proceeded with the other half to blockade Mantua. Radetzky took advantage
of the unskilful generalship of his opponent, and threw himself upon the
weakly guarded centre of the long Sardinian line. The King perceived his
error, and sought to unite with his the northern detachments, now separated
from him by the Mincio. His efforts were baffled, and on the 25th of July,
after a brave resistance, his troops were defeated at Custozza. The retreat
across the Mincio was conducted in fair order, but disasters sustained by
the northern division, which should have held the enemy in check, destroyed
all hope, and the retreat then became a flight. Radetzky followed in close
pursuit. Charles Albert entered Milan, but declared himself unable to
defend the city. A storm of indignation broke out against the unhappy King
amongst the Milanese, whom he was declared to have betrayed. The palace
where he had taken up his quarters was besieged by the mob; his life was
threatened; and he escaped with difficulty on the night of August 5th under
the protection of General La Marmora and a few faithful Guards. A
capitulation was signed, and as the Piedmontese army evacuated the city
Radetzky's troops entered it in triumph. Not less than sixty thousand of
the inhabitants, according to Italian statements, abandoned their homes and
sought refuge in Switzerland or Piedmont rather than submit to the
conqueror's rule. Radetzky could now have followed his retreating enemy
without difficulty to Turin, and have crushed Piedmont itself under foot;
but the fear of France and Great Britain checked his career of victory, and
hostilities were brought to a close by an armistice at Vigevano on August
9th. [427]

[The Austrian Court and Hungary.]

The effects of Radetzky's triumph were felt in every province of the
Empire. The first open expression given to the changed state of affairs was
the return of the Imperial Court from its refuge at Innsbruck to Vienna.
The election promised in May had been held, and an Assembly representing
all the non-Hungarian parts of the Monarchy, with the exception of the
Italian provinces, had been opened by the Archduke John, as representative
of the Emperor, on the 22nd of July. Ministers and Deputies united in
demanding the return of the Emperor to the capital. With Radetzky and
Windischgrätz within call, the Emperor could now with some confidence face
his students and his Parliament. But of far greater importance than the
return of the Court to Vienna was the attitude which it now assumed towards
the Diet and the national Government of Hungary. The concessions made in
April, inevitable as they were, had in fact raised Hungary to the position
of an independent State. When such matters as the employment of Hungarian
troops against Italy or the distribution of the burden of taxation came
into question, the Emperor had to treat with the Hungarian Ministry almost
as if it represented a foreign and a rival Power. For some months this
humiliation had to be borne, and the appearance of fidelity to the new
Constitutional law maintained. But a deep, resentful hatred against the
Magyar cause penetrated the circles in which the old military and official
absolutism of Austria yet survived; and behind the men and the policy still
representing with some degree of sincerity the new order of things, there
gathered the passions and the intrigues of a reaction that waited only for
the outbreak of civil war within Hungary itself, and the restoration of
confidence to the Austrian army, to draw the sword against its foe.
Already, while Italy was still unsubdued, and the Emperor was scarcely safe
in his palace at Vienna, the popular forces that might be employed against
the Government at Pesth came into view.

[The Serbs in Southern Hungary.]

[Serb Congress at Carlowitz, May 13-15.]

In one of the stormy sessions of the Hungarian Diet at the time when the
attempt was first made to impose the Magyar language upon Croatia the
Illyrian leader, Gai, had thus addressed the Assembly: "You Magyars are an
island in the ocean of Slavism. Take heed that its waves do not rise and
overwhelm you." The agitation of the spring of 1848 first revealed in its
full extent the peril thus foreshadowed. Croatia had for above a year been
in almost open mutiny, but the spirit of revolt now spread through the
whole of the Serb population of Southern Hungary, from the eastern limits
of Slavonia, [428] across the plain known as the Banat beyond the junction
of the Theiss and the Danube, up to the borders of Transylvania. The Serbs
had been welcomed into these provinces in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries by the sovereigns of Austria as a bulwark against the Turks.
Charters had been given to them, which were still preserved, promising them
a distinct political administration under their own elected Voivode, and
ecclesiastical independence under their own Patriarch of the Greek Church.
[429] These provincial rights had fared much as others in the Austrian
Empire. The Patriarch and the Voivode had disappeared, and the Banat had
been completely merged in Hungary. Enough, however, of Serb nationality
remained to kindle at the summons of 1848, and to resent with a sudden
fierceness the determination of the Magyar rulers at Pesth that the Magyar
language, as the language of State, should thenceforward bind together all
the races of Hungary in the enjoyment of a common national life. The Serbs
had demanded from Kossuth and his colleagues the restoration of the local
and ecclesiastical autonomy of which the Hapsburgs had deprived them, and
the recognition of their own national language and customs. They found, or
believed, that instead of a German they were now to have a Magyar lord, and
one more near, more energetic, more aggressive. Their reply to Kossuth's
defence of Magyar ascendency was the summoning of a Congress of Serbs at
Carlowitz on the Lower Danube. Here it was declared that the Serbs of
Austria formed a free and independent nation under the Austrian sceptre and
the common Hungarian Crown. A Voivode was elected and the limits of his
province were defined. A National Committee was charged with the duty of
organising a Government and of entering into intimate connection with the
neighbouring Slavic Kingdom of Croatia.

[Jellacic in Croatia.]

At Agram, the Croatian capital, all established authority had sunk in the
catastrophe of March, and a National Committee had assumed power. It
happened that the office of Governor, or Ban, of Croatia was then vacant.
The Committee sent a deputation to Vienna requesting that the colonel of
the first Croatian regiment, Jellacic, might be appointed. Without waiting
for the arrival of the deputation, the Court, by a patent dated the 23rd of
March, nominated Jellacic to the vacant post. The date of this appointment,
and the assumption of office by Jellacic on the 14th of April, the very day
before the Hungarian Ministry entered upon its powers, have been considered
proof that a secret understanding existed from the first between Jellacic
and the Court. No further evidence of this secret relation has, however,
been made public, and the belief long current among all friends of the
Magyar cause that Croatia was deliberately instigated to revolt against the
Hungarian Government by persons around the Emperor seems to rest on no
solid foundation. The Croats would have been unlike all other communities
in the Austrian Empire if they had not risen under the national impulse of
1848. They had been murmuring against Magyar ascendency for years past, and
the fire long smouldering now probably burst into flame here as elsewhere
without the touch of an incendiary hand. With regard to Jellacic's sudden
appointment it is possible that the Court, powerless to check the Croatian
movement, may have desired to escape the appearance of compulsion by
spontaneously conferring office on the popular soldier, who was at least
more likely to regard the Emperor's interests than the lawyers and
demagogues around him. Whether Jellacic was at this time genuinely
concerned for Croatian autonomy, or whether from the first, while he
apparently acted with the Croatian nationalists his deepest sympathies were
with the Austrian army, and his sole design was that of serving the
Imperial Crown with or without its own avowed concurrence, it is impossible
to say. That, like most of his countrymen, he cordially hated the Magyars,
is beyond doubt. The general impression left by his character hardly
accords with the Magyar conception of him as the profound and far-sighted
conspirator--he would seem, on the contrary, to have been a man easily
yielding to the impulses of the moment, and capable of playing
contradictory parts with little sense of his own inconsistency. [430]

[Affairs of Croatia April 14-June 16.]

Installed in office, Jellacic cast to the winds all consideration due to
the Emperor's personal engagements towards Hungary, and forthwith permitted
the Magyar officials to be driven out of the country. On the 2nd of May he
issued an order forbidding all Croatian authorities to correspond with the
Government at Pesth. Batthyány, the Hungarian Premier, at once hurried to
Vienna, and obtained from the Emperor a letter commanding Jellacic to
submit to the Hungarian Ministry. As the Ban paid no attention to this
mandate, General Hrabowsky, commander of the troops in the southern
provinces, received orders from Pesth to annul all that Jellacic had done,
to suspend him from his office, and to bring him to trial for high treason.
Nothing daunted, Jellacic on his own authority convoked the Diet of Croatia
for the 5th of June; the populace of Agram, on hearing of Hrabowsky's
mission, burnt the Palatine in effigy. This was a direct outrage on the
Imperial family, and Batthyány turned it to account. The Emperor had just
been driven from Vienna by the riot of the 15th of May. Batthyány sought
him at Innsbruck, and by assuring him of the support of his loyal
Hungarians against both the Italians and the Viennese obtained his
signature on June 10th to a rescript vehemently condemning the Ban's action
and suspending him from office. Jellacic had already been summoned to
appear at Innsbruck. He set out, taking with him a deputation of Croats and
Serbs, and leaving behind him a popular Assembly sitting at Agram, in
which, besides the representatives of Croatia, there were seventy Deputies
from the Serb provinces. On the very day on which the Ban reached
Innsbruck, the Imperial order condemning him and suspending him from his
functions was published by Batthyány at Pesth. Nor was the situation made
easier by the almost simultaneous announcement that civil war had broken
out on the Lower Danube, and that General Hrabowsky, on attempting to
occupy Carlowitz, had been attacked and compelled to retreat by the Serbs
under their national leader Stratimirovic. [431]

[Jellacic, the Court, and the Hungarian Government.]

It is said that the Emperor Ferdinand, during deliberations in council on
which the fate of the Austrian Empire depended, was accustomed to occupy
himself with counting the number of carriages that passed from right and
left respectively under the windows. In the struggle between Croatia and
Hungary he appears to have avoided even the formal exercise of authority,
preferring to commit the decision between the contending parties to the
Archduke John, as mediator or judge. John was too deeply immersed in other
business to give much attention to the matter. What really passed between
Jellacic and the Imperial family at Innsbruck is unknown. The official
request of the Ban was for the withdrawal or suppression of the rescript
signed by the Emperor on June 10th. Prince Esterhazy, who represented the
Hungarian Government at Innsbruck, was ready to make this concession; but
before the document could be revoked, it had been made public by Batthyány.
With the object of proving his fidelity to the Court, Jellacic now
published an address to the Croatian regiments serving in Lombardy,
entreating them not to be diverted from their duty to the Emperor in the
field by any report of danger to their rights and their nationality nearer
home. So great was Jellacic's influence with his countrymen that an appeal
from him of opposite tenor would probably have caused the Croatian
regiments to quit Radetzky in a mass, and so have brought the war in Italy
to an ignominious end. His action won for him a great popularity in the
higher ranks of the Austrian army, and probably gained for him, even if he
did not possess it before, the secret confidence of the Court. That some
understanding now existed is almost certain, for, in spite of the
unrepealed declaration of June 10th, and the postponement of the Archduke's
judgment, Jellacic was permitted to return to Croatia and to resume his
government. The Diet at Agram occupied itself with far-reaching schemes for
a confederation of the southern Slavs; but its discussions were of no
practical effect, and after some weeks it was extinguished under the form
of an adjournment. From this time Jellacic held dictatorial power. It was
unnecessary for him in his relations with Hungary any longer to keep up the
fiction of a mere defence of Croatian rights; he appeared openly as the
champion of Austrian unity. In negotiations which he held with Batthyány at
Vienna during the last days of July, he demanded the restoration of single
Ministries for War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs for the whole Austrian
Empire. The demand was indignantly refused, and the chieftains of the two
rival races quitted Vienna to prepare for war.

[Imminent breach between Austria and Hungary.]

[Jellacic restored to office, Sept. 3. He marches on Pesth.]

The Hungarian National Parliament, elected under the new Constitution, had
been opened at Pesth on July 5th. Great efforts had been made, in view of
the difficulties with Croatia and of the suspected intrigues between the
Ban and the Court party, to induce the Emperor Ferdinand to appear at Pesth
in person. He excused himself from this on the ground of illness, but sent
a letter to the Parliament condemning not only in his own name but in that
of every member of the Imperial family the resistance offered to the
Hungarian Government in the southern provinces. If words bore any meaning,
the Emperor stood pledged to a loyal co-operation with the Hungarian
Ministers in defence of the unity and the constitution of the Hungarian
Kingdom as established by the laws of April. Yet at this very time the
Minister of War at Vienna was encouraging Austrian officers to join the
Serb insurgents. Kossuth, who conducted most of the business of the
Hungarian Government in the Lower Chamber at Pesth, made no secret of his
hostility to the central powers. While his colleagues sought to avoid a
breach with the other half of the Monarchy, it seemed to be Kossuth's
object rather to provoke it. In calling for a levy of two hundred thousand
men to crash the Slavic rebellion, he openly denounced the Viennese
Ministry and the Court as its promoters. In leading the debate upon the
Italian War, he endeavoured without the knowledge of his colleagues to
make the cession of the territory west of the Adige a condition of
Hungary's participation in the struggle. As Minister of Finance, he spared
neither word nor act to demonstrate his contempt for the financial
interests of Austria. Whether a gentler policy on the part of the most
powerful statesman in Hungary might have averted the impending conflict it
is vain to ask; but in the uncompromising enmity of Kossuth the Austrian
Court found its own excuse for acts in which shamelessness seemed almost to
rise into political virtue. No sooner had Radetzky's victories and the fall
of Milan brought the Emperor back to Vienna than the new policy came into
effect. The veto of the sovereign was placed upon the laws passed by the
Diet at Pesth for the defence of the Kingdom. The Hungarian Government was
required to reinstate Jellacic in his dignities, to enter into negotiations
at Vienna with him and the Austrian Ministry, and finally to desist from
all military preparations against the rebellious provinces. In answer to
these demands the Diet sent a hundred of its members to Vienna to claim
from the Emperor the fulfilment of his plighted word. The miserable man
received them on the 9th of September with protestations of his sincerity;
but even before the deputation had passed the palace-gates, there appeared
in the official gazette a letter under the Emperor's own hand replacing
Jellacic in office and acquitting him of every charge that had been brought
against him. It was for this formal recognition alone that Jellacic had
been waiting. On the 11th of September he crossed the Drave with his army,
and began his march against the Hungarian capital. [432]

[Mission of Lamberg. He is murdered at Pesth, Sept. 28.]

The Ministry now in office at Vienna was composed in part of men who had
been known as reformers in the early days of 1848; but the old order was
represented by Count Wessenberg, who had been Metternich's assistant at the
Congress of Vienna, and by Latour, the War Minister, a soldier of high
birth whose career dated back to the campaign of Austerlitz. Whatever
contempt might be felt by one section of the Cabinet for the other, its
members were able to unite against the independence of Hungary as they had
united against the independence of Italy. They handed in to the Emperor a
memorial in which the very concessions to which they owed their own
existence as a Constitutional Ministry were made a ground for declaring the
laws establishing Hungarian autonomy null and void. In a tissue of
transparent sophistries they argued that the Emperor's promise of a
Constitution to all his dominions on the 15th of March disabled him from
assenting, without the advice of his Viennese Ministry, to the resolutions
subsequently passed by the Hungarian Diet, although the union between
Hungary and the other Hereditary States had from the first rested solely on
the person of the monarch, and no German official had ever pretended to
exercise authority over Hungarians otherwise than by order of the sovereign
as Hungarian King. The publication of this Cabinet memorial, which appeared
in the journals at Pesth on the 15th of September, gave plain warning to
the Hungarians that, if they were not to be attacked by Jellacic and the
Austrian army simultaneously, they must make some compromise with the
Government at Vienna. Batthyány was inclined to concession, and after
resigning office in consequence of the Emperor's desertion he had already
re-assumed his post with colleagues disposed to accept his own pacific
policy. Kossuth spoke openly of war with Austria and of a dictatorship. As
Jellacic advanced towards Pesth, the Palatine took command of the Hungarian
army and marched southwards. On reaching Lake Baloton, on whose southern
shore the Croats were encamped, he requested a personal conference with
Jellacic, and sailed to the appointed place of meeting. But he waited in
vain for the Ban; and rightly interpreting this rejection of his overtures,
he fled from the army and laid down his office. The Emperor now sent
General Lamberg from Vienna with orders to assume the supreme command alike
over the Magyar and the Croatian forces, and to prevent an encounter. On
the success of Lamberg's mission hung the last chance of reconciliation
between Hungary and Austria. Batthyány, still clinging to the hope of
peace, set out for the camp in order to meet the envoy on his arrival.
Lamberg, desirous of obtaining the necessary credentials from the Hungarian
Government, made his way to Pesth. There he found Kossuth and a Committee
of Six installed in power. Under their influence the Diet passed a
resolution forbidding Lamberg to assume command of the Hungarian troops,
and declaring him a traitor if he should attempt to do so. The report
spread through Pesth that Lamberg had come to seize the citadel and bombard
the town; and before he could reach a place of safety he was attacked and
murdered by a raging mob. It was in vain that Batthyány, who now laid down
his office, besought the Government at Vienna to take no rash step of
vengeance. The pretext for annihilating Hungarian independence had been
given, and the mask was cast aside. A manifesto published by the Emperor on
the 3rd of October declared the Hungarian Parliament dissolved, and its
acts null and void. Martial law was proclaimed, and Jellacic appointed
commander of all the forces and representative of the sovereign. In the
course of the next few days it was expected that he would enter Pesth as
conqueror.

[Manifesto of Oct. 3.]

[Tumult of Oct. 6 at Vienna. Latour murdered.]

In the meantime, however confidently the Government might reckon on
Jellacic's victory, the passions of revolution were again breaking loose in
Vienna itself. Increasing misery among the poor, financial panics, the
reviving efforts of professional agitators, had renewed the disturbances of
the spring in forms which alarmed the middle classes almost as much as the
holders of power. The conflict of the Government with Hungary brought
affairs to a crisis. After discovering the uselessness of negotiations with
the Emperor, the Hungarian Parliament had sent some of its ablest members
to request an audience from the Assembly sitting at Vienna, in order that
the representatives of the western half of the Empire might, even at the
last moment, have the opportunity of pronouncing a judgment upon the action
of the Court. The most numerous group in the Assembly was formed by the
Czech deputies from Bohemia. As Slavs, the Bohemian deputies had
sympathised with the Croats and Serbs in their struggle against Magyar
ascendency, and in their eyes Jellacic was still the champion of a national
cause. Blinded by their sympathies of race to the danger involved to all
nationalities alike by the restoration of absolutism, the Czech majority,
in spite of a singularly impressive warning given by a leader of the German
Liberals, refused a hearing to the Hungarian representatives. The Magyars,
repelled by the Assembly, sought and found allies in the democracy of
Vienna itself. The popular clubs rang with acclamations for the cause of
Hungarian freedom and with invectives against the Czech instruments of
tyranny. In the midst of this deepening agitation tidings arrived at Vienna
that Jellacic had been repulsed in his march on Pesth and forced to retire
within the Austrian frontier. It became necessary for the Viennese
Government to throw its own forces into the struggle, and an order was
given by Latour to the regiments in the capital to set out for the scene of
warfare. This order had, however, been anticipated by the democratic
leaders, and a portion of the troops had been won over to the popular side.
Latour's commands were resisted; and upon an attempt being made to enforce
the departure of the troops, the regiments fired on one another (October
6th). The battalions of the National Guard which rallied to the support of
the Government were overpowered by those belonging to the working men's
districts. The insurrection was victorious; the Ministers submitted once
more to the masters of the streets, and the orders given to the troops were
withdrawn. But the fiercer part of the mob was not satisfied with a
political victory. There were criminals and madmen among its leaders who,
after the offices of Government had been stormed and Latour had been
captured, determined upon his death. It was in vain that some of the
keenest political opponents of the Minister sought at the peril of their
own lives to protect him from his murderers. He was dragged into the court
in front of the War Office, and there slain with ferocious and yet
deliberate barbarity. [433]

[The Emperor at Olmütz.]

[Windischgrätz marches on Vienna.]

The Emperor, while the city was still in tumult, had in his usual fashion
promised that the popular demands should be satisfied; but as soon as he
was unobserved he fled from Vienna, and in his flight he was followed by
the Czech deputies and many German Conservatives, who declared that their
lives were no longer safe in the capital. Most of the Ministers gathered
round the Emperor at Olmütz in Moravia; the Assembly, however, continued to
hold its sittings in Vienna, and the Finance Minister, apparently under
instructions from the Court, remained at his post, and treated the Assembly
as still possessed of legal powers. But for all practical purposes the
western half of the Austrian Empire had now ceased to have any Government
whatever; and the real state of affairs was bluntly exposed in a manifesto
published by Count Windischgrätz at Prague on the 11th of October, in
which, without professing to have received any commission from the Emperor,
he announced his intention of marching on Vienna in order to protect the
sovereign and maintain the unity of the Empire. In due course the Emperor
ratified the action of his energetic soldier; Windischgrätz was appointed
to the supreme command over all the troops of the Empire with the exception
of Radetzky's army, and his march against Vienna was begun.

[Windischgrätz conquers Vienna, Oct. 26-Nov. 1.]

To the Hungarian Parliament, exasperated by the decree ordering its own
dissolution and the war openly levied against the country by the Court in
alliance with Jellacic, the revolt of the capital seemed to bring a sudden
deliverance from all danger. The Viennese had saved Hungary, and the Diet
was willing, if summoned by the Assembly at Vienna, to send its troops to
the defence of the capital. But the urgency of the need was not understood
on either side till too late. The Viennese Assembly, treating itself as a
legitimate and constitutional power threatened by a group of soldiers who
had usurped the monarch's authority, hesitated to compromise its legal
character by calling in a Hungarian army. The Magyar generals on the other
hand were so anxious not to pass beyond the strict defence of their own
kingdom, that, in the absence of communication from a Viennese authority,
they twice withdrew from Austrian soil after following Jellacic in pursuit
beyond the frontier. It was not until Windischgrätz had encamped within
sight of Vienna, and had detained as a rebel the envoy sent to him by the
Hungarian Government, that Kossuth's will prevailed over the scruples of
weaker men, and the Hungarian army marched against the besiegers. In the
meantime Windischgrätz had begun his attack on the suburbs, which were
weakly defended by the National Guard and by companies of students and
volunteers, the nominal commander being one Messenhauser, formerly an
officer in the regular army, who was assisted by a soldier of far greater
merit than himself, the Polish general Bem. Among those who fought were two
members of the German Parliament of Frankfort, Robert Blum and Fröbel, who
had been sent to mediate between the Emperor and his subjects, but had
remained at Vienna as combatants. The besiegers had captured the outskirts
of the city, and negotiations for surrender were in progress, when, on the
30th of October, Messenhauser from the top of the cathedral tower saw
beyond the line of the besiegers on the south-east the smoke of battle, and
announced that the Hungarian army was approaching. An engagement had in
fact begun on the plain of Schwechat between the Hungarians and Jellacic,
reinforced by divisions of Windischgrätz's troops. In a moment of wild
excitement the defenders of the capital threw themselves once more upon
their foe, disregarding the offer of surrender that had been already made.
But the tide of battle at Schwechat turned against the Hungarians. They
were compelled to retreat, and Windischgrätz, reopening his cannonade upon
the rebels who were also violators of their truce, became in a few hours
master of Vienna. He made his entry on the 31st of October, and treated
Vienna as a conquered city. The troops had behaved with ferocity during the
combat in the suburbs, and slaughtered scores of unarmed persons. No
Oriental tyrant ever addressed his fallen foes with greater insolence and
contempt for human right than Windischgrätz in the proclamations which, on
assuming government, he addressed to the Viennese; yet, whatever might be
the number of persons arrested and imprisoned, the number now put to death
was not great. The victims were indeed carefully selected; the most
prominent being Robert Blum, in whom, as a leader of the German Liberals
and a Deputy of the German Parliament inviolable by law, the Austrian
Government struck ostentatiously at the Parliament itself and at German
democracy at large.

[The Parliament at Kremsier, Nov. 22.]

[Schwarzenberg Minister.]

In the subjugation of Vienna the army had again proved itself the real
political power in Austria; but the time had not yet arrived when absolute
government could be openly restored. The Bohemian deputies, fatally as they
had injured the cause of constitutional rule by their secession from
Vienna, were still in earnest in the cause of provincial autonomy, and
would vehemently have repelled the charge of an alliance with despotism.
Even the mutilated Parliament of Vienna had been recognised by the Court as
in lawful session until the 22nd of October, when an order was issued
proroguing the Parliament and bidding it re-assemble a month later at
Kremsier, in Moravia. There were indications in the weeks succeeding the
fall of Vienna of a conflict between the reactionary and the more liberal
influences surrounding the Emperor, and of an impending _coup d'etat_:
but counsels of prudence prevailed for the moment; the Assembly was
permitted to meet at Kremsier, and professions of constitutional principle
were still made with every show of sincerity. A new Ministry, however, came
into office, with Prince Felix Schwarzenberg at its head. Schwarzenberg
belonged to one of the greatest Austrian families. He had been ambassador
at Naples when the revolution of 1848 broke out, and had quitted the city
with words of menace when insult was offered to the Austrian flag.
Exchanging diplomacy for war, he served under Radetzky, and was soon
recognised as the statesman in whom the army, as a political power, found
its own peculiar representative. His career had hitherto been illustrated
chiefly by scandals of private life so flagrant that England and other
countries where he had held diplomatic posts had insisted on his removal;
but the cynical and reckless audacity of the man rose in his new calling as
Minister of Austria to something of political greatness. Few statesmen have
been more daring than Schwarzenberg; few have pushed to more excessive
lengths the advantages to be derived from the moral or the material
weakness of an adversary. His rule was the debauch of forces respited in
their extremity for one last and worst exertion. Like the Roman Sulla, he
gave to a condemned and perishing cause the passing semblance of restored
vigour, and died before the next great wave of change swept his creations
away.

[Ferdinand abdicates, Dec. 2. Francis Joseph Emperor.]

[Dissolution of the Kremsier Parliament, March 7, 1849.]

[The Unitary Constitutional Edict, March, 1849.]

Schwarzenberg's first act was the deposition of his sovereign. The
imbecility of the Emperor Ferdinand had long suggested his abdication or
dethronement, and the time for decisive action had now arrived. He gladly
withdrew into private life: the crown, declined by his brother and heir,
was passed on to his nephew, Francis Joseph, a youth of eighteen. This
prince had at least not made in person, not uttered with his own lips, not
signed with his own hand, those solemn engagements with the Hungarian
nation which Austria was now about to annihilate with fire and sword. He
had not moved in friendly intercourse with men who were henceforth doomed
to the scaffold. He came to the throne as little implicated in the acts of
his predecessor as any nominal chief of a State could be; as fitting an
instrument in the hands of Court and army as any reactionary faction could
desire. Helpless and well-meaning, Francis Joseph, while his troops poured
into Hungary, played for a while in Austria the part of a loyal observer of
his Parliament; then, when the moment had come for its destruction, he
obeyed his soldier-minister as Ferdinand had in earlier days obeyed the
students, and signed the decree for its dissolution (March 4, 1849). The
Assembly, during its sittings at Vienna, had accomplished one important
task: it had freed the peasantry from the burdens attaching to their land
and converted them into independent proprietors. This part of its work
survived it, and remained almost the sole gain that Austria derived from
the struggle of 1848. After the removal to Kremsier, a Committee of the
Assembly had been engaged with the formation of a Constitution for Austria,
and the draft was now completed. In the course of debate something had been
gained by the representatives of the German and the Slavic races in the way
of respect for one another's interests and prejudices; some political
knowledge had been acquired; some approach made to an adjustment between
the claims of the central power and of provincial autonomy. If the
Constitution sketched at Kremsier had come into being, it would at least
have given to Western Austria and to Galicia, which belonged to this half
of the Empire, a system of government based on popular desires and worthy,
on the part of the Crown, of a fair trial. But, apart from its own defects
from the monarchical point of view, this Constitution rested on the
division of the Empire into two independent parts; it assumed the
separation of Hungary from the other Hereditary States; and of a separate
Hungarian Kingdom the Minister now in power would hear no longer. That
Hungary had for centuries possessed and maintained its rights; that, with
the single exception of the English, no nation in Europe had equalled the
Magyars in the stubborn and unwearied defence of Constitutional law; that,
in an age when national spirit was far less hotly inflamed, the Emperor
Joseph had well-nigh lost his throne and wrecked his Empire in the attempt
to subject this resolute race to a centralised administration, was nothing
to Schwarzenberg and the soldiers who were now trampling upon revolution.
Hungary was declared to have forfeited by rebellion alike its ancient
rights and the contracts of 1848. The dissolution of the Parliament of
Kremsier was followed by the publication of an edict affecting to bestow a
uniform and centralised Constitution upon the entire Austrian Empire. All
existing public rights were thereby extinguished; and, inasmuch as the new
Constitution, in so far as it provided for a representative system, never
came into existence, but remained in abeyance until it was formally
abrogated in 1851, the real effect of the Unitary Edict of March, 1849,
which professed to close the period of revolution by granting the same
rights to all, was to establish absolute government and the rule of the
sword throughout the Emperor's dominions. Provincial institutions giving to
some of the German and Slavic districts a shadowy control of their own
local affairs only marked the distinction between the favoured and the
dreaded parts of the Empire. Ten years passed before freedom again came
within sight of the Austrian peoples. [434]

[Hungary.]

[The Roumanians in Transylvania.]

The Hungarian Diet, on learning of the transfer of the crown from Ferdinand
to Francis Joseph, had refused to acknowledge this act as valid, on the
ground that it had taken place without the consent of the Legislature, and
that Francis Joseph had not been crowned King of Hungary. Ferdinand was
treated as still the reigning sovereign, and the war now became, according
to the Hungarian view, more than ever a war in defence of established
right, inasmuch as the assailants of Hungary were not only violators of a
settled constitution but agents of a usurping prince. The whole nation was
summoned to arms; and in order that there might be no faltering at
headquarters, the command over the forces on the Danube was given by
Kossuth to Görgei, a young officer of whom little was yet known to the
world but that he had executed Count Eugène Zichy, a powerful noble, for
holding communications with Jellacic. It was the design of the Austrian
Government to attack Hungary at once by the line of the Danube and from the
frontier of Galicia on the north-east. The Serbs were to be led forward
from their border-provinces against the capital; and another race, which
centuries of oppression had filled with bitter hatred of the Magyars, was
to be thrown into the struggle. The mass of the population of Transylvania
belonged to the Roumanian stock. The Magyars, here known by the name of
Szeklers, and a community of Germans, descended from immigrants who settled
in Transylvania about the twelfth century, formed a small but a privileged
minority, in whose presence the Roumanian peasantry, poor, savage, and
absolutely without political rights, felt themselves before 1848 scarcely
removed from serfdom. In the Diet of Transylvania the Magyars held command,
and in spite of the resistance of the Germans, they had succeeded in
carrying an Act, in May, 1848, uniting the country with Hungary. This Act
had been ratified by the Emperor Ferdinand, but it was followed by a
widespread insurrection of the Roumanian peasantry, who were already
asserting their claims as a separate nation and demanding equality with
their oppressors. The rising of the Roumanians had indeed more of the
character of an agrarian revolt than of a movement for national
independence. It was marked by atrocious cruelty; and although the Hapsburg
standard was raised, the Austrian commandant, General Puchner, hesitated
long before lending the insurgents his countenance. At length, in October,
he declared against the Hungarian Government. The union of the regular
troops with the peasantry overpowered for a time all resistance. The towns
fell under Austrian sway, and although the Szeklers were not yet disarmed,
Transylvania seemed to be lost to Hungary. General Puchner received orders
to lead his troops, with the newly formed Roumanian militia, westward into
the Banat, in order to co-operate in the attack which was to overwhelm the
Hungarians from every quarter of the kingdom. [435]

[The Austrians occupy Pesth, Jan. 5, 1849.]

On the 15th of December, Windischgrätz, in command of the main Austrian
army, crossed the river Leitha, the border between German and Magyar
territory. Görgei, who was opposed to him, had from the first declared that
Pesth must be abandoned and a war of defence carried on in Central Hungary.
Kossuth, however, had scorned this counsel, and announced that he would
defend Pesth to the last. The backwardness of the Hungarian preparations
and the disorder of the new levies justified the young general, who from
this time assumed the attitude of contempt and hostility towards the
Committee of Defence. Kossuth had in fact been strangely served by fortune
in his choice of Görgei. He had raised him to command on account of one
irretrievable act of severity against an Austrian partisan, and without any
proof of his military capacity. In the untried soldier he had found a
general of unusual skill; in the supposed devotee to Magyar patriotism he
had found a military politician as self-willed and as insubordinate as any
who have ever distracted the councils of a falling State. Dissensions and
misunderstandings aggravated the weakness of the Hungarians in the field.
Position after position was lost, and it soon became evident that the
Parliament and Government could remain no longer at Pesth. They withdrew to
Debreczin beyond the Theiss, and on the 5th of January, 1849, Windischgrätz
made his entry into the capital. [436]

[The Hungarian Government at Debreczin.]

[Kossuth and Görgei.]

The Austrians now supposed the war to be at an end. It was in fact but
beginning. The fortress of Comorn, on the upper Danube, remained in the
hands of the Magyars; and by conducting his retreat northwards into a
mountainous country where the Austrians could not follow him Görgei gained
the power either of operating against Windischgrätz's communications or of
combining with the army of General Klapka, who was charged with the defence
of Hungary against an enemy advancing from Galicia. While Windischgrätz
remained inactive at Pesth, Klapka met and defeated an Austrian division
under General Schlick which had crossed the Carpathians and was moving
southwards towards Debreczin. Görgei now threw himself eastwards upon the
line of retreat of the beaten enemy, and Schlick's army only escaped
capture by abandoning its communications and seeking refuge with
Windischgrätz at Pesth. A concentration of the Magyar forces was effected
on the Theiss, and the command over the entire army was given by Kossuth to
Dembinski, a Pole who had gained distinction in the wars of Napoleon and in
the campaign of 1831. Görgei, acting as the representative of the officers
who had been in the service before the Revolution, had published an address
declaring that the army would fight for no cause but that of the
Constitution as established by Ferdinand, the legitimate King, and that it
would accept no commands but those of the Ministers whom Ferdinand had
appointed. Interpreting this manifesto as a direct act of defiance, and as
a warning that the army might under Görgei's command make terms on its own
authority with the Austrian Government, Kossuth resorted to the dangerous
experiment of superseding the national commanders by a Pole who was
connected with the revolutionary party throughout Europe. The act was
disastrous in its moral effects upon the army; and, as a general, Dembinski
entirely failed to justify his reputation. After permitting Schlick's corps
to escape him he moved forwards from the Theiss against Pesth. He was met
by the Austrians and defeated at Kapolna (February 26). Both armies retired
to their earlier positions, and, after a declaration from the Magyar
generals that they would no longer obey his orders, Dembinski was removed
from his command, though he remained in Hungary to interfere once more with
evil effect before the end of the war.

[The Austrians driven out of Hungary, April.]

The struggle between Austria and Hungary had reached this stage when the
Constitution merging all provincial rights in one centralised system was
published by Schwarzenberg. The Croats, the Serbs, the Roumanians, who had
so credulously flocked to the Emperor's banner under the belief that they
were fighting for their own independence, at length discovered their
delusion. Their enthusiasm sank; the bolder among them even attempted to
detach their countrymen from the Austrian cause; but it was too late to
undo what had already been done. Jellacic, now undistinguishable from any
other Austrian general, mocked the politicians of Agram who still babbled
of Croatian autonomy: Stratimirovic, the national leader of the Serbs, sank
before his rival the Patriarch of Carlowitz, a Churchman who preferred
ecclesiastical immunities granted by the Emperor of Austria to independence
won on the field of battle by his countrymen. Had a wiser or more generous
statesmanship controlled the Hungarian Government in the first months of
its activity, a union between the Magyars and the subordinate races against
Viennese centralisation might perhaps even now have been effected. But
distrust and animosity had risen too high for the mediators between Slav
and Magyar to attain any real success, nor was any distinct promise of
self-government even now to be drawn from the offers of concession which
were held out at Debreczin. An interval of dazzling triumph seemed indeed
to justify the Hungarian Government in holding fast to its sovereign
claims. In the hands of able leaders no task seemed too hard for Magyar
troops to accomplish. Bem, arriving in Transylvania without a soldier,
created a new army, and by a series of extraordinary marches and surprises
not only overthrew the Austrian and Roumanian troops opposed to him, but
expelled a corps of Russians whom General Puchner in his extremity had
invited to garrison Hermannstadt. Görgei, resuming in the first week of
April the movement in which Dembinski had failed, inflicted upon the
Austrians a series of defeats that drove them back to the walls of Pesth;
while Klapka, advancing on Comorn, effected the relief of this fortress,
and planted in the rear of the Austrians a force which threatened to cut
them off from Vienna. It was in vain that the Austrian Government removed
Windischgrätz from his command. His successor found that a force superior
to his own was gathering round him on every side. He saw that Hungary was
lost; and leaving a garrison in the fortress of Buda, he led off his army
in haste from the capital, and only paused in his retreat when he had
reached the Austrian frontier.

[Declaration of Hungarian Independence, April 19.]

The Magyars, rallying from their first defeats, had brilliantly achieved
the liberation of their land. The Court of Vienna, attempting in right of
superior force to overthrow an established constitution, had proved itself
the inferior power; and in mingled exaltation and resentment it was natural
that the party and the leaders who had been foremost in the national
struggle of Hungary should deem a renewed union with Austria impossible,
and submission to the Hapsburg crown an indignity. On the 19th of April,
after the defeat of Windischgrätz but before the evacuation of Pesth, the
Diet declared that the House of Hapsburg had forfeited its throne, and
proclaimed Hungary an independent State. No statement was made as to the
future form of government, but everything indicated that Hungary, if
successful in maintaining its independence, would become a Republic, with
Kossuth, who was now appointed Governor, for its chief. Even in the
revolutionary severance of ancient ties homage was paid to the legal and
constitutional bent of the Hungarian mind. Nothing was said in the
Declaration of April 19th of the rights of man; there was no Parisian
commonplace on the sovereignty of the people. The necessity of Hungarian
independence was deduced from the offences which the Austrian House had
committed against the written and unwritten law of the land, offences
continued through centuries and crowned by the invasion under
Windischgrätz, by the destruction of the Hungarian Constitution in the
edict of March 9th, and by the introduction of the Russians into
Transylvania. Though coloured and exaggerated by Magyar patriotism, the
charges made against the Hapsburg dynasty were on the whole in accordance
with historical fact; and if the affairs of States were to be guided by no
other considerations than those relating to the performance of contracts,
Hungary had certainly established its right to be quit of partnership with
Austria and of its Austrian sovereign. But the judgment of history has
condemned Kossuth's declaration of Hungarian independence in the midst of
the struggle of 1849 as a great political error. It served no useful
purpose; it deepened the antagonism already existing between the Government
and a large part of the army; and while it added to the sources of internal
discord, it gave colour to the intervention of Russia as against a
revolutionary cause. Apart from its disastrous effect upon the immediate
course of events, it was based upon a narrow and inadequate view both of
the needs and of the possibilities of the future. Even in the interests of
the Magyar nation itself as a European power, it may well be doubted
whether in severance from Austria such influence and such weight could
possibly have been won by a race numerically weak and surrounded by hostile
nationalities, as the ability and the political energy of the Magyars have
since won for them in the direction of the accumulated forces of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire.

[Russian intervention against Hungary.]

It has generally been considered a fatal error on the part of the Hungarian
commanders that, after expelling the Austrian army, they did not at once
march upon Vienna, but returned to lay siege to the fortress of Buda, which
resisted long enough to enable the Austrian Government to reorganise and to
multiply its forces. But the intervention of Russia would probably have
been fatal to Hungarian independence, even if Vienna had been captured and
a democratic government established there for a while in opposition to the
Court at Olmütz. The plan of a Russian intervention, though this
intervention was now explained by the community of interest between Polish
and Hungarian rebels, was no new thing. Soon after the outbreak of the
March Revolution the Czar had desired to send his troops both into Prussia
and into Austria as the restorers of monarchical authority. His help was
declined on behalf of the King of Prussia; in Austria the project had been
discussed at successive moments of danger, and after the overthrow of the
Imperial troops in Transylvania by Bem the proffered aid was accepted. The
Russians who then occupied Hermannstadt did not, however, enter the country
as combatants; their task was to garrison certain positions still held by
the Austrians, and so to set free the Emperor's troops for service in the
field. On the declaration of Hungarian independence, it became necessary
for Francis Joseph to accept his protector's help without qualification or
disguise. An army of eighty thousand Russians marched across Galicia to
assist the Austrians in grappling with an enemy before whom, when
single-handed, they had succumbed. Other Russian divisions, while Austria
massed its troops on the Upper Danube, entered Transylvania from the south
and east, and the Magyars in the summer of 1849 found themselves compelled
to defend their country against forces three times more numerous than their
own. [437]

[The summer campaign in Hungary, July-August, 1849.]

[Capitulation of Vilagos, August 13.]

[Vengeance of Austria.]

When it became known that the Czar had determined to throw all his strength
into the scale, Kossuth saw that no ordinary operations of war could
possibly avert defeat, and called upon his countrymen to destroy their
homes and property at the approach of the enemy, and to leave to the
invader a flaming and devastated solitude. But the area of warfare was too
vast for the execution of this design, even if the nation had been prepared
for so desperate a course. The defence of Hungary was left to its armies,
and Görgei became the leading figure in the calamitous epoch that followed.
While the Government prepared to retire to Szegedin, far in the south-east,
Görgei took post on the Upper Danube, to meet the powerful force which the
Emperor of Austria had placed under the orders of General Haynau, a soldier
whose mingled energy and ferocity in Italy had marked him out as a fitting
scourge for the Hungarians, and had won for him supreme civil as well as
military powers. Görgei naturally believed that the first object of the
Austrian commander would be to effect a junction with the Russians, who,
under Paskiewitsch, the conqueror of Kars in 1829, were now crossing the
Carpathians; and he therefore directed all his efforts against the left of
the Austrian line. While he was unsuccessfully attacking the enemy on the
river Waag north of Comorn, Haynau with the mass of his forces advanced on
the right bank of the Danube, and captured Raab (June 28th). Görgei threw
himself southwards, but his efforts to stop Haynau were in vain, and the
Austrians occupied Pesth (July 11th). The Russians meanwhile were advancing
southwards by an independent line of march. Their vanguard reached the
Danube and the Upper Theiss, and Görgei seemed to be enveloped by the
enemy. The Hungarian Government adjured him to hasten towards Szegedin and
Arad, where Kossuth was concentrating all the other divisions for a final
struggle; but Görgei held on to his position about Comorn until his retreat
could only be effected by means of a vast detour northwards, and before he
could reach Arad all was lost. Dembinski was again in command. Charged with
the defence of the passage of the Theiss about Szegedin, he failed to
prevent the Austrians from crossing the river, and on the 5th of August was
defeated at Czoreg with heavy loss. Kossuth now gave the command to Bern,
who had hurried from Transylvania, where overpowering forces had at length
wrested victory from his grasp. Bern fought the last battle of the campaign
at Temesvar. He was overthrown and driven eastwards, but succeeded in
leading a remnant of his army across the Moldavian frontier and so escaped
capture. Görgei, who was now close to Arad, had some strange fancy that it
would dishonour his army to seek refuge on neutral soil. He turned
northwards so as to encounter Russian and not Austrian regiments, and
without striking a blow, without stipulating even for the lives of the
civilians in his camp, he led his army within the Russian lines at Vilagos,
and surrendered unconditionally to the generals of the Czar. His own life
was spared; no mercy was shown to those who were handed over as his
fellow-prisoners by the Russian to the Austrian Government, or who were
seized by Haynau as his troops advanced. Tribunals more resembling those of
the French Reign of Terror than the Courts of a civilised Government sent
the noblest patriots and soldiers of Hungary to the scaffold. To the deep
disgrace of the Austrian Crown, Count Batthyány, the Minister of Ferdinand,
was included among those whose lives were sacrificed. The vengeance of the
conqueror seemed the more frenzied and the more insatiable because it had
only been rendered possible by foreign aid. Crushed under an iron rule,
exhausted by war, the prey of a Government which knew only how to employ
its subject-races as gaolers over one another, Hungary passed for some
years into silence and almost into despair. Every vestige of its old
constitutional rights was extinguished. Its territory was curtailed by the
separation of Transylvania and Croatia; its administration was handed over
to Germans from Vienna. A conscription, enforced not for the ends of
military service but as the surest means of breaking the national spirit,
enrolled its youth in Austrian regiments, and banished them to the
extremities of the empire. No darker period was known in the history of
Hungary since the wars of the seventeenth century than that which followed
the catastrophe of 1849. [438]

[Italian affairs, August, 1848-March, 1849.]

[Murder of Rossi, Nov. 15. Flight of Pius IX.]

[Roman Republic, Feb. 9, 1849.]

[Tuscany.]

The gloom which followed Austrian victory was now descending not on Hungary
alone but on Italy also. The armistice made between Radetzky and the King
of Piedmont at Vigevano in August, 1848, lasted for seven months, during
which the British and French Governments endeavoured, but in vain, to
arrange terms of peace between the combatants. With military tyranny in its
most brutal form crushing down Lombardy, it was impossible that Charles
Albert should renounce the work of deliverance to which he had pledged
himself. Austria, on the other hand, had now sufficiently recovered its
strength to repudiate the concessions which it had offered at an earlier
time, and Schwarzenberg on assuming power announced that the Emperor would
maintain Lombardy at every cost. The prospects of Sardinia as regarded help
from the rest of the Peninsula were far worse than when it took up arms in
the spring of 1848. Projects of a general Italian federation, of a military
union between the central States and Piedmont, of an Italian Constituent
Assembly, had succeeded one another and left no result. Naples had fallen
back into absolutism; Rome and Tuscany, from which aid might still have
been expected, were distracted by internal contentions, and hastening as it
seemed towards anarchy. After the defeat of Charles Albert at Custozza,
Pius IX., who was still uneasily playing his part as a constitutional
sovereign, had called to office Pellegrino Rossi, an Italian patriot of an
earlier time, who had since been ambassador of Louis Philippe at Rome, and
by his connection with the Orleanist Monarchy had incurred the hatred of
the Republican party throughout Italy. Rossi, as a vigorous and independent
reformer, was as much detested in clerical and reactionary circles as he
was by the demagogues and their followers. This, however, profited him
nothing; and on the 15th of November, as he was proceeding to the opening
of the Chambers, he was assassinated by an unknown hand. Terrified by this
crime, and by an attack upon his own palace by which it was followed, Pius
fled to Gaeta and placed himself under the protection of the King of
Naples. A Constituent Assembly was summoned and a Republic proclaimed at
Rome, between which and the Sardinian Government there was so little
community of feeling that Charles Albert would, if the Pope had accepted
his protection, have sent his troops to restore him to a position of
security. In Tuscany affairs were in a similar condition. The Grand Duke
had for some months been regarded as a sincere, though reserved, friend of
the Italian cause, and he had even spoken of surrendering his crown if this
should be for the good of the Italian nation. When, however, the Pope had
fled to Gaeta, and the project was openly avowed of uniting Tuscany with
the Roman States in a Republic, the Grand Duke, moved more by the
fulminations of Pius against his despoilers than by care for his own crown,
fled in his turn, leaving the Republicans masters of Florence. A miserable
exhibition of vanity, riot, and braggadocio was given to the world by the
politicians of the Tuscan State. Alike in Florence and in Rome all sense of
the true needs of the moment, of the absolute uselessness of internal
changes of Government if Austria was to maintain its dominion, seemed to
have vanished from men's minds. Republican phantoms distracted the heart
and the understanding; no soldier, no military administrator arose till too
late by the side of the rhetoricians and mob-leaders who filled the stage;
and when, on the 19th of March, the armistice was brought to a close in
Upper Italy, Piedmont took the field alone. [439]

[The Match campaign, 1849.]

[Battle of Novara, March 23.]

The campaign which now began lasted but for five days. While Charles Albert
scattered his forces from Lago Maggiore to Stradella on the south of the
Po, hoping to move by the northern road upon Milan, Radetzky concentrated
his troops near Pavia, where he intended to cross the Ticino. In an evil
moment Charles Albert had given the command of his army to Chrzanowski, a
Pole, and had entrusted its southern division, composed chiefly of Lombard
volunteers, to another Pole, Ramorino, who had been engaged in Mazzini's
incursion into Savoy in 1833. Ramorino had then, rightly or wrongly,
incurred the charge of treachery. His relations with Chrzanowski were of
the worst character, and the habit of military obedience was as much
wanting to him as the sentiment of loyalty to the sovereign from whom he
had now accepted a command. The wilfulness of this adventurer made the
Piedmontese army an easy prey. Ramorino was posted on the south of the Po,
near its junction with the Ticino, but received orders on the commencement
of hostilities to move northwards and defend the passage of the Ticino at
Pavia, breaking up the bridges behind him. Instead of obeying this order he
kept his division lingering about Stradella. Radetzky, approaching the
Ticino at Pavia, found the passage unguarded. He crossed the river with the
mass of his army, and, cutting off Ramorino's division, threw himself upon
the flank of the scattered Piedmontese. Charles Albert, whose headquarters
were at Novara, hurried southwards. Before he could concentrate his troops,
he was attacked at Mortara by the Austrians and driven back. The line of
retreat upon Turin and Alessandria was already lost; an attempt was made to
hold Novara against the advancing Austrians. The battle which was fought in
front of this town on the 23rd of March ended with the utter overthrow of
the Sardinian army. So complete was the demoralisation of the troops that
the cavalry were compelled to attack bodies of half-maddened infantry in
the streets of Novara in order to save the town from pillage. [440]

[Abdication of Charles Albert.]

Charles Albert had throughout the battle of the 23rd appeared to seek
death. The reproaches levelled against him for the abandonment of Milan in
the previous year, the charges of treachery which awoke to new life the
miserable record of his waverings in 1821, had sunk into the very depths of
his being. Weak and irresolute in his earlier political career, harsh and
illiberal towards the pioneers of Italian freedom during a great part of
his reign, Charles had thrown his whole heart and soul into the final
struggle of his country against Austria. This struggle lost, life had
nothing more for him. The personal hatred borne towards him by the rulers
of Austria caused him to believe that easier terms of peace might be
granted to Piedmont if another sovereign were on its throne, and his
resolution, in case of defeat, was fixed and settled. When night fell after
the battle of Novara he called together his generals, and in their presence
abdicated his crown. Bidding an eternal farewell to his son Victor
Emmanuel, who knelt weeping before him, he quitted the army accompanied by
but one attendant, and passed unrecognised through the enemy's guards. He
left his queen, his capital, unvisited as he journeyed into exile. The
brief residue of his life was spent in solitude near Oporto. Six months
after the battle of Novara he was carried to the grave.

[Beginning of Victor Emmanuel's reign.]

It may be truly said of Charles Albert that nothing in his reign became him
like the ending of it. Hopeless as the conflict of 1849 might well appear,
it proved that there was one sovereign in Italy who was willing to stake
his throne, his life, the whole sum of his personal interests, for the
national cause; one dynasty whose sons knew no fear save that others should
encounter death before them on Italy's behalf. Had the profoundest
statesmanship, the keenest political genius, governed the counsels of
Piedmont in 1849, it would, with full prescience of the ruin of Novara,
have bidden the sovereign and the army strike in self-sacrifice their last
unaided blow. From this time there was but one possible head for Italy. The
faults of the Government of Turin during Charles Albert's years of peace
had ceased to have any bearing on Italian affairs; the sharpest tongues no
longer repeated, the most credulous ear no longer harboured the slanders of
1848; the man who, beaten and outnumbered, had for hours sat immovable in
front of the Austrian cannon at Novara had, in the depth of his misfortune,
given to his son not the crown of Piedmont only but the crown of Italy.
Honour, patriotism, had made the young Victor Emmanuel the hope of the
Sardinian army; the same honour and patriotism carried him safely past the
lures which Austria set for the inheritor of a ruined kingdom, and gave in
the first hours of his reign an earnest of the policy which was to end in
Italian union. It was necessary for him to visit Radetzky in his camp in
order to arrange the preliminaries of peace. There, amid flatteries offered
to him at his father's expense, it was notified to him that if he would
annul the Constitution that his father had made, he might reckon not only
on an easy quittance with the conqueror, but on the friendship and support
of Austria. This demand, though strenuously pressed in later negotiations,
Victor Emmanuel unconditionally refused. He had to endure for a while the
presence of Austrian troops in his kingdom, and to furnish an indemnity
which fell heavily on so small a State; but the liberties of his people
remained intact, and the pledge given by his father inviolate. Amid the
ruin of all hopes and the bankruptcy of all other royal reputations
throughout Italy, there proved to be one man, one government, in which the
Italian people could trust. This compensation at least was given in the
disasters of 1849, that the traitors to the cause of Italy and of freedom
could not again deceive, nor the dream of a federation of princes again
obscure the necessity of a single national government. In the fidelity of
Victor Emmanuel to the Piedmontese Constitution lay the pledge that when
Italy's next opportunity should arrive, the chief would be there who would
meet the nation's need.

[Restoration in Tuscany.]

[Rome and France.]

[French intervention determined on.]

The battle of Novara had not long been fought when the Grand Duke of
Tuscany was restored to his throne under an Austrian garrison, and his late
democratic Minister, Guerazzi, who had endeavoured by submission to the
Court-party to avert an Austrian occupation, was sent into imprisonment. At
Rome a far bolder spirit was shown. Mazzini had arrived in the first week
of March, and, though his exhortation to the Roman Assembly to forget the
offences of Charles Albert and to unite against the Austrians in Lombardy
came too late, he was able, as one of a Triumvirate with dictatorial
powers, to throw much of his own ardour into the Roman populace in defence
of their own city and State. The enemy against whom Rome had to be defended
proved indeed to be other than that against whom preparations were being
made. The victories of Austria had aroused the apprehension of the French
Government; and though the fall of Piedmont and Lombardy could not now be
undone, it was determined by Louis Napoleon and his Ministers to anticipate
Austria's restoration of the Papal power by the despatch of French troops
to Rome. All the traditions of French national policy pointed indeed to
such an intervention. Austria had already invaded the Roman States from the
north, and the political conditions which in 1832 had led so pacific a
minister as Casimir Perier to occupy Ancona were now present in much
greater force. Louis Napoleon could not, without abandoning a recognised
interest and surrendering something of the due influence of France, have
permitted Austrian generals to conduct the Pope back to his capital and to
assume the government of Central Italy. If the first impulses of the
Revolution of 1848 had still been active in France, its intervention would
probably have taken the form of a direct alliance with the Roman Republic;
but public opinion had travelled far in the opposite direction since the
Four Days of June; and the new President, if he had not forgotten his own
youthful relations with the Carbonari, was now a suitor for the solid
favours of French conservative and religious sentiment. His Ministers had
not recognised the Roman Republic. They were friends, no doubt, to liberty;
but when it was certain that the Austrians, the Spaniards, the Neapolitans,
were determined to restore the Pope, it might be assumed that the
continuance of the Roman Republic was an impossibility. France, as a
Catholic and at the same time a Liberal Power, might well, under these
circumstances, address itself to the task of reconciling Roman liberty with
the inevitable return of the Holy Father to his temporal throne. Events
were moving too fast for diplomacy; troops must be at once despatched, or
the next French envoy would find Radetzky on the Tiber. The misgivings of
the Republican part of the Assembly at Paris were stilled by French
assurances of the generous intentions of the Government towards the Roman
populations, and of its anxiety to shelter them from Austrian domination,
President, Ministers, and generals resolutely shut their eyes to the
possibility that a French occupation of Rome might be resisted by force by
the Romans themselves; and on the 22nd of April an armament of about ten
thousand men set sail for Civita Vecchia under the command of General
Oudinot, a son of the Marshal of that name.

[The French at Civita Vecchia, April 25, 1849.]

[Oudinot attacks Rome and is repelled, April 30.]

Before landing on the Italian coast, the French general sent envoys to the
authorities at Civita Vecchia, stating that his troops came as friends, and
demanding that they should be admitted into the town. The Municipal Council
determined not to offer resistance, and the French thus gained a footing on
Italian soil and a basis for their operations. Messages came from French
diplomatists in Rome encouraging the general to advance without delay. The
mass of the population, it was said, would welcome his appearance; the
democratic faction, if reckless, was too small to offer any serious
resistance, and would disappear as soon as the French should enter the
city. On this point, however, Oudinot was speedily undeceived. In reply to
a military envoy who was sent to assure the Triumvirs of the benevolent
designs of the French, Mazzini bluntly answered that no reconciliation with
the Pope was possible; and on the 26th of April the Roman Assembly called
upon the Executive to repel force by force. Oudinot now proclaimed a state
of siege at Civita Vecchia, seized the citadel, and disarmed the garrison.
On the 28th he began his march on Rome. As he approached, energetic
preparations were made for resistance. Garibaldi, who had fought at the
head of a free corps against the Austrians in Upper Italy in 1848, had now
brought some hundreds of his followers to Rome. A regiment of Lombard
volunteers, under their young leader Manara, had escaped after the
catastrophe of Novara, and had come to fight for liberty in its last
stronghold on Italian soil. Heroes, exiles, desperadoes from all parts of
the Peninsula, met in the streets of Rome, and imparted to its people a
vigour and resolution of which the world had long deemed them incapable.
Even the remnant of the Pontifical Guard took part in the work of defence.
Oudinot, advancing with his little corps of seven thousand men, found
himself, without heavy artillery, in front of a city still sheltered by its
ancient fortifications, and in the presence of a body of combatants more
resolute than his own troops and twice as numerous. He attacked on the
30th, was checked at every point, and compelled to retreat towards Civita
Vecchia, leaving two hundred and fifty prisoners in the hands of the enemy.
[441]

[French policy, April-May.]

Insignificant as was this misfortune of the French arms, it occasioned no
small stir in Paris and in the Assembly. The Government, which had declared
that the armament was intended only to protect Rome against Austria, was
vehemently reproached for its duplicity, and a vote was passed demanding
that the expedition should not be permanently diverted from the end
assigned to it. Had the Assembly not been on the verge of dissolution it
would probably have forced upon the Government a real change of policy. A
general election, however, was but a few days distant, and until the result
of this election should be known the Ministry determined to temporise. M.
Lesseps, since famous as the creator of the Suez Canal, was sent to Rome
with instructions to negotiate for some peaceable settlement. More honest
than his employers, Lesseps sought with heart and soul to fulfil his task.
While he laboured in city and camp, the French elections for which the
President and Ministers were waiting took place, resulting in the return of
a Conservative and reactionary majority. The new Assembly met on the 28th
of May. In the course of the next few days Lesseps accepted terms proposed
by the Roman Government, which would have precluded the French from
entering Rome. Oudinot, who had been in open conflict with the envoy
throughout his mission, refused his sanction to the treaty, and the
altercations between the general and the diplomatist were still at their
height when despatches arrived from Paris announcing that the powers given
to Lesseps were at an end, and ordering Oudinot to recommence hostilities.
The pretence of further negotiation would have been out of place with the
new Parliament. On the 4th of June the French general, now strongly
reinforced, occupied the positions necessary for a regular siege of Rome.

[Attempted insurrection in France, June 13.]

[The French enter Rome, July 3.]

Against the forces now brought into action it was impossible that the Roman
Republic could long defend itself. One hope remained, and that was in a
revolution within France itself. The recent elections had united on the one
side all Conservative interests, on the other the Socialists and all the
more extreme factions of the Republican party. It was determined that a
trial of strength should first be made within the Assembly itself upon the
Roman question, and that, if the majority there should stand firm, an
appeal should be made to insurrection. Accordingly on the 11th of June,
after the renewal of hostilities had been announced in Paris, Ledru Rollin
demanded the impeachment of the Ministry. His motion was rejected, and the
signal was given for an outbreak not only in the capital but in Lyons and
other cities. But the Government were on their guard, and it was in vain
that the resources of revolution were once more brought into play. General
Changarnier suppressed without bloodshed a tumult in Paris on June 13th;
and though fighting took place at Lyons, the insurrection proved feeble in
comparison with the movements of the previous year. Louis Napoleon and his
Ministry remained unshaken, and the siege of Rome was accordingly pressed
to its conclusion. Oudinot, who at the beginning of the month had carried
the positions held by the Roman troops outside the walls, opened fire with
heavy artillery on the 14th. The defence was gallantly sustained by
Garibaldi and his companions until the end of the month, when the breaches
made in the walls were stormed by the enemy, and further resistance became
impossible. The French made their entry into Rome on the 3rd of July,
Garibaldi leading his troops northwards in order to prolong the struggle
with the Austrians who were now in possession of Bologna, and, if possible,
to reach Venice, which was still uncaptured. Driven to the eastern coast
and surrounded by the enemy, he was forced to put to sea. He landed again,
but only to be hunted over mountain and forest. His wife died by his side.
Rescued by the devotion of Italian patriots, he made his escape to Piedmont
and thence to America, to reappear in all the fame of his heroic deeds and
sufferings at the next great crisis in the history of his country.

[The restored Pontifical Government.]

It had been an easy task for a French army to conquer Rome; it was not so
easy for the French Government to escape from the embarrassments of its
victory. Liberalism was still the official creed of the Republic, and the
protection of the Roman population from a reaction under Austrian auspices
had been one of the alleged objects of the Italian expedition. No
stipulation had, however, been made with the Pope during the siege as to
the future institutions of Rome; and when, on the 14th of July, the
restorations of Papal authority was formally announced by Oudinot, Pius and
his Minister Antonelli still remained unfettered by any binding engagement.
Nor did the Pontiff show the least inclination to place himself in the
power of his protectors. He remained at Gaeta, sending a Commission of
three Cardinals to assume the government of Rome. The first acts of the
Cardinals dispelled any illusion that the French might have formed as to
the docility of the Holy See. In the presence of a French Republican army
they restored the Inquisition, and appointed a Board to bring to trial all
officials compromised in the events that had taken place since the murder
of Rossi in November, 1848. So great was the impression made on public
opinion by the action of the Cardinals that Louis Napoleon considered it
well to enter the lists in person on behalf of Roman liberty; and in a
letter to Colonel Ney, a son of the Marshal, he denounced in language of
great violence the efforts that were being made by a party antagonistic to
France to base the Pope's return upon proscription and tyranny. Strong in
the support of Austria and the other Catholic Powers, the Papal Government
at Gaeta received this menace with indifference, and even made the
discourtesy of the President a ground for withholding concessions. Of the
re-establishment of the Constitution granted by Pius in 1848 there was now
no question; all that the French Ministry could hope was to save some
fragments in the general shipwreck of representative government, and to
avert the vengeance that seemed likely to fall upon the defeated party. A
Pontifical edict, known as the Motu Proprio, ultimately bestowed upon the
municipalities certain local powers, and gave to a Council, nominated by
the Pope from among the persons chosen by the municipalities, the right of
consultation on matters of finance. More than this Pius refused to grant,
and when he returned to Rome it was as an absolute sovereign. In its
efforts on behalf of the large body of persons threatened with prosecution
the French Government was more successful. The so-called amnesty which was
published by Antonelli with the Motu Proprio seemed indeed to have for its
object the classification of victims rather than the announcement of
pardon; but under pressure from the French the excepted persons were
gradually diminished in number, and all were finally allowed to escape
other penalties by going into exile. To those who were so driven from their
homes Piedmont offered a refuge.

[Fall of Venice, Aug. 25.]

[Sicily conquered by Ferdinand, April, May.]

Thus the pall of priestly absolutism and misrule fell once more over the
Roman States, and the deeper the hostility of the educated classes to the
restored power the more active became the system of repression. For liberty
of person there was no security whatever, and, though the offences of 1848
were now professedly amnestied, the prisons were soon thronged with persons
arrested on indefinite charges and detained for an unlimited time without
trial. Nor was Rome more unfortunate in its condition than Italy generally.
The restoration of Austrian authority in the north was completed by the
fall of Venice. For months after the subjugation of the mainland, Venice,
where the Republic had again been proclaimed and Manin had been recalled to
power, had withstood all the efforts of the Emperor's forces. Its hopes had
been raised by the victories of the Hungarians, which for a moment seemed
almost to undo the catastrophe of Novara. But with the extinction of all
possibility of Hungarian aid the inevitable end came in view. Cholera and
famine worked with the enemy; and a fortnight after Görgei had laid down
his arms at Vilagos the long and honourable resistance of Venice ended with
the entry of the Austrians (August 25th). In the south, Ferdinand of Naples
was again ruling as despot throughout the full extent of his dominions.
Palermo, which had struck the first blow for freedom in 1848, had soon
afterwards become the seat of a Sicilian Parliament, which deposed the
Bourbon dynasty and offered the throne of Sicily to the younger brother of
Victor Emmanuel. To this Ferdinand replied by a fleet to Messina, which
bombarded that city for five days and laid a great part of it in ashes. His
violence caused the British and French fleets to interpose, and hostilities
were suspended until the spring of 1849, the Western Powers ineffectually
seeking to frame some compromise acceptable at once to the Sicilians and to
the Bourbon dynasty. After the triumph of Radetzky at Novara and the
rejection by the Sicilian Parliament of the offer of a separate
constitution and administration for the island, Ferdinand refused to remain
any longer inactive. His fleet and army moved southwards from Messina, and
a victory won at the foot of Mount Etna over the Sicilian forces, followed
by the capture of Catania, brought the struggle to a close. The Assembly at
Palermo dispersed, and the Neapolitan troops made their entry into the
capital without resistance on the 15th of May. It was in vain that Great
Britain now urged Ferdinand to grant to Sicily the liberties which he had
hitherto professed himself willing to bestow. Autocrat he was, and autocrat
he intended to remain. On the mainland the iniquities practised by his
agents seem to have been even worse than in Sicily, where at least some
attempt was made to use the powers of the State for the purposes of
material improvement. For those who had incurred the enmity of Ferdinand's
Government there was no law and no mercy. Ten years of violence and
oppression, denounced by the voice of freer lands, had still to be borne by
the subjects of this obstinate tyrant ere the reckoning-day arrived, and
the deeply rooted jealousy between Sicily and Naples, which had wrought so
much ill to the cause of Italian freedom, was appeased by the fall of the
Bourbon throne. [442]

[Germany from May, 1848.]

[The National Assembly at Frankfort.]

[Archduke John chosen Administrator, June 29.]

We have thus far traced the stages of conflict between the old monarchical
order and the forces of revolution in the Austrian empire and in that
Mediterranean land whose destiny was so closely interwoven with that of
Austria. We have now to pass back into Germany, and to resume the history
of the German revolution at the point where the national movement seemed to
concentrate itself in visible form, the opening of the Parliament of
Frankfort on the 18th of May, 1848. That an Assembly representing the
entire German people, elected in unbounded enthusiasm and comprising within
it nearly every man of political or intellectual eminence who sympathised
with the national cause, should be able to impose its will upon the
tottering Governments of the individual German States, was not an unnatural
belief in the circumstances of the moment. No second Chamber represented
the interests of the ruling Houses, nor had they within the Assembly itself
the organs for the expression of their own real or unreal claims. With all
the freedom of a debating club or of a sovereign authority like the French
Convention, the Parliament of Frankfort entered upon its work of moulding
Germany afresh, limited only by its own discretion as to what it should
make matter of consultation with any other power. There were thirty-six
Governments in Germany, and to negotiate with each of these on the future
Constitution might well seem a harder task than to enforce a Constitution
on all alike. In the creation of a provisional executive authority there
was something of the same difficulty. Each of the larger States might, if
consulted, resist the selection of a provisional chief from one of its
rivals; and though the risk of bold action was not denied, the Assembly, on
the instance of its President, Von Gagern, a former Minister of
Hesse-Darmstadt, resolved to appoint an Administrator of the Empire by a
direct vote of its own. The Archduke John of Austria, long known as an
enemy of Metternich's system of repression and as a patron of the idea of
German union, was chosen Administrator, and he accepted the office. Prussia
and the other States acquiesced in the nomination, though the choice of a
Hapsburg prince was unpopular with the Prussian nation and army, and did
not improve the relations between the Frankfort Assembly and the Court of
Berlin. [443] Schmerling, an Austrian, was placed at the head of the
Archduke's Ministry.

[The National Assembly. May-Sept.]

In the preparation of a Constitution for Germany the Assembly could draw
little help from the work of legislators in other countries. Belgium, whose
institutions were at once recent and successful, was not a Federal State;
the founders of the American Union had not had to reckon with four kings
and to include in their federal territory part of the dominions of an
emperor. Instead of grappling at once with the formidable difficulties of
political organisation, the Committee charged with the drafting of a
Constitution determined first to lay down the principles of civil right
which were to be the basis of the German commonwealth. There was something
of the scientific spirit of the Germans in thus working out the
substructure of public law on which all other institutions were to rest;
moreover, the remembrance of the Decrees of Carlsbad and of the other
exceptional legislation from which Germany had so heavily suffered excited
a strong demand for the most solemn guarantees against arbitrary departure
from settled law in the future. Thus, regardless of the absence of any
material power by which its conclusions were to be enforced, the Assembly,
in the intervals between its stormy debates on the politics of the hour,
traced with philosophic thoroughness the consequences of the principles of
personal liberty and of equality before the law, and fashioned the order of
a modern society in which privileges of class, diversity of jurisdictions,
and the trammels of feudalism on industrial life were alike swept away.
Four months had passed, and the discussion of the so-called Primary Rights
was still unfinished, when the Assembly was warned by an outbreak of
popular violence in Frankfort itself of the necessity of hastening towards
a constitutional settlement.

[The Armistice of Malmö, Aug. 26.]

[Outrages at Frankfort, Sept. 18.]

The progress of the insurrection in Schleswig-Holstein against Danish
sovereignty had been watched with the greatest interest throughout Germany;
and in the struggle of these provinces for their independence the rights
and the honour of the German nation at large were held to be deeply
involved. As the representative of the Federal authority, King Frederick
William of Prussia had sent his troops into Holstein, and they arrived
there in time to prevent the Danish army from following up its first
successes and crushing the insurgent forces. Taking up the offensive,
General Wrangel at the head of the Prussian troops succeeded in driving the
Danes out of Schleswig, and at the beginning of May he crossed the border
between Schleswig and Jutland and occupied the Danish fortress of
Fredericia. His advance into purely Danish territory occasioned the
diplomatic intervention of Russia and Great Britain; and, to the deep
disappointment of the German nation and its Parliament, the King of Prussia
ordered his general to retire into Schleswig. The Danes were in the
meantime blockading the harbours and capturing the merchant-vessels of the
Germans, as neither Prussia nor the Federal Government possessed a fleet of
war. For some weeks hostilities were irresolutely continued in Schleswig,
while negotiations were pursued in foreign capitals and various forms of
compromise urged by foreign Powers. At length, on the 26th of August, an
armistice of seven months was agreed upon at Malmö in Sweden by the
representatives of Denmark and Prussia, the Court of Copenhagen refusing to
recognise the German central Government at Frankfort or to admit its envoy
to the conferences. The terms of this armistice, when announced in Germany,
excited the greatest indignation, inasmuch as they declared all the acts of
the Provisional Government of Schleswig-Holstein null and void, removed all
German troops from the Duchies, and handed over their government during the
duration of the armistice to a Commission of which half the members were to
be appointed by the King of Denmark. Scornfully as Denmark had treated the
Assembly of Frankfort, the terms of the armistice nevertheless required its
sanction. The question was referred to a committee, which, under the
influence of the historian Dahlmann, himself formerly an official in
Holstein, pronounced for the rejection of the treaty. The Assembly, in a
scene of great excitement, resolved that the execution of the measures
attendant on the armistice should be suspended. The Ministry in consequence
resigned, and Dahlmann was called upon to replace it by one under his own
leadership. He proved unable to do so. Schmerling resumed office, and
demanded that the Assembly should reverse its vote. Though in severance
from Prussia the Central Government had no real means of carrying on a war
with Denmark, the most passionate opposition was made to this demand. The
armistice was, however, ultimately ratified by a small majority. Defeated
in the Assembly, the leaders of the extreme Democratic faction allied
themselves with the populace of Frankfort, which was ready for acts of
violence. Tumultuous meetings were held; the deputies who had voted for the
armistice were declared traitors to Germany. Barricades were erected, and
although the appearance of Prussian troops prevented an assault from being
made on the Assembly, its members were attacked in the streets, and two of
them murdered by the mob (Sept. 17th). A Republican insurrection was once
more attempted in Baden, but it was quelled without difficulty. [444]

[Berlin, April-Sept., 1848.]

The intervention of foreign Courts on behalf of Denmark had given
ostensible ground to the Prussian Government for not pursuing the war with
greater resolution; but though the fear of Russia undoubtedly checked King
Frederick William, this was not the sole, nor perhaps the most powerful
influence that worked upon him. The cause of Schleswig-Hulstein was, in
spite of its legal basis, in the main a popular and a revolutionary one,
and between the King of Prussia and the revolution there was an intense and
a constantly deepening antagonism. Since the meeting of the National
Assembly at Berlin on the 22nd of May the capital had been the scene of an
almost unbroken course of disorder. The Assembly, which was far inferior in
ability and character to that of Frankfort, soon showed itself unable to
resist the influence of the populace. On the 8th of June a resolution was
moved that the combatants in the insurrection of March deserved well of
their country. Had this motion been carried the King would have dissolved
the Assembly: it was outvoted, but the mob punished this concession to the
feelings of the monarch by outrages upon the members of the majority. A
Civic Guard was enrolled from citizens of the middle class, but it proved
unable to maintain order, and wholly failed to acquire the political
importance which was gained by the National Guard of Paris after the
revolution of 1830. Exasperated by their exclusion from service in the
Guard, the mob on the 14th of June stormed an arsenal and destroyed the
trophies of arms which they found there. Though violence reigned in the
streets the Assembly rejected a proposal for declaring the inviolability of
its members, and placed itself under the protection of the citizens of
Berlin. King Frederick William had withdrawn to Potsdam, where the leaders
of reaction gathered round him. He detested his Constitutional Ministers,
who, between a petulant king and a suspicious Parliament, were unable to
effect any useful work and soon found themselves compelled to relinquish
their office. In Berlin the violence of the working classes, the
interruption of business, the example of civil war in Paris, inclined men
of quiet disposition to a return to settled government at any price.
Measures brought forward by the new Ministry for the abolition of the
patrimonial jurisdictions, the hunting-rights and other feudal privileges
of the greater landowners, occasioned the organisation of a league for the
defence of property, which soon became the focus of powerful conservative
interests. Above all, the claims of the Archduke John, as Administrator of
the Empire, to the homage of the army, and the hostile attitude assumed
towards the army by the Prussian Parliament itself, exasperated the
military class and encouraged the king to venture on open resistance. A
tumult having taken place at Schweidnitz in Silesia, in which several
persons were shot by the soldiery, the Assembly, pending an investigation
into the circumstances, demanded that the Minister of War should publish an
order requiring the officers of the army to work with the citizens for the
realisation of Constitutional Government; and it called upon all officers
not loyally inclined to a Constitutional system to resign their commissions
as a matter of honour. Denying the right of the Chamber to act as a
military executive, the Minister of War refused to publish the order
required. The vote was repeated, and in the midst of threatening
demonstrations in the streets the Ministry resigned (Sept. 7th). [445]

[The Prussian army.]

[Count Brandenburg Minister, Nov. 2.]

[Prorogation of the Prussian Assembly, Nov. 9.]

It had been the distinguishing feature of the Prussian revolution that the
army had never for a moment wavered in its fidelity to the throne. The
success of the insurrection of March 18th had been due to the paucity of
troops and the errors of those in command, not to any military disaffection
such as had paralysed authority in Paris and in the Mediterranean States.
Each affront offered to the army by the democratic majority in the Assembly
supplied the King with new weapons; each slight passed upon the royal
authority deepened the indignation of the officers. The armistice of Malmö
brought back to the neighbourhood of the capital a general who was longing
to crush the party of disorder, and regiments on whom he could rely; but
though there was now no military reason for delay, it was not until the
capture of Vienna by Windischgrätz had dealt a fatal blow at democracy in
Germany that Frederick William determined to have done with his own
mutinous Parliament and the mobs by which it was controlled. During
September and October the riots and tumults in the streets of Berlin
continued. The Assembly, which had rejected the draft of a Constitution
submitted to it by the Cabinet, debated the clauses of one drawn up by a
Committee of its own members, abolished nobility, orders and titles, and
struck out from the style of the sovereign the words that described him as
King by the Grace of God. When intelligence arrived in Berlin that the
attack of Windischgrätz upon Vienna had actually begun, popular passion
redoubled. The Assembly was besieged by an angry crowd, and a resolution in
favour of the intervention of Prussia was brought forward within the House.
This was rejected, and it was determined instead to invoke the mediation of
the Central Government at Frankfort between the Emperor and his subjects.
But the decision of the Assembly on this and every other point was now
matter of indifference. Events outstripped its deliberations, and with the
fall of Vienna its own course was run. On the 2nd of November the King
dismissed his Ministers and called to office the Count of Brandenburg, a
natural son of Frederick William II., a soldier in high command, and one of
the most outspoken representatives of the monarchical spirit of the army.
The meaning of the appointment was at once understood. A deputation from
the Assembly conveyed its protest to the King at Potsdam. The King turned
his back upon them without giving an answer, and on the 9th of November an
order was issued proroguing the Assembly, and bidding it to meet on the
27th at Brandenburg, not at Berlin.

[Last days of the Prussian Assembly.]

[Dissolution of the Assembly, Dec. 5.]

[Prussian Constitution granted by edict.]

The order of prorogation, as soon as signed by the King was brought into
the Assembly by the Ministers, who demanded that it should be obeyed
immediately and without discussion. The President allowing a debate to
commence, the Ministers and seventy-eight Conservative deputies left the
Hall. The remaining deputies, two hundred and eighty in number, then passed
a resolution declaring that they would not meet at Brandenburg; that the
King had no power to remove, to prorogue, or to dissolve the Assembly
without its own consent; and that the Ministers were unfit to hold office.
This challenge was answered by a proclamation of the Ministers declaring
the further meeting of the deputies illegal, and calling upon the Civic
Guard not to recognise them as a Parliament. On the following day General
Wrangel and his troops entered Berlin and surrounded the Assembly Hall. In
reply to the protests of the President, Wrangel answered that the
Parliament had been prorogued and must disappear. The members peaceably
left the Hall, but reassembled at another spot that they had selected in
anticipation of expulsion; and for some days they were pursued by the
military from one place of meeting to another. On the 15th of November they
passed a resolution declaring the expenditure of state funds and the
raising of taxes by the Government to be illegal so long as the Assembly
should not be permitted to continue its deliberations. The Ministry on its
part showed that it was determined not to brook resistance. The Civic Guard
was dissolved and ordered to surrender its arms. It did so without striking
a blow, and vanished from the scene, a memorable illustration of the
political nullity of the middle class in Berlin as compared with that of
Paris. The state of siege was proclaimed, the freedom of the Press and the
right of public meeting were suspended. On the 27th of November a portion
of the Assembly appeared, according to the King's order, at Brandenburg,
but the numbers present were not sufficient for the transaction of
business. The presence of the majority, however, was not required, for the
King had determined to give no further legal opportunities to the men who
had defied him. Treating the vote of November 15th as an act of rebellion
on the part of those concerned in it, the King dissolved the Assembly
(December 5th), and conferred upon Prussia a Constitution drawn up by his
own advisers, with the promise that this Constitution should be subject to
revision by the future representative body. Though the dissolution of the
Assembly occasioned tumults in Breslau and Cologne it was not actively
resented by the nation at large. The violence of the fallen body during its
last weeks of existence had exposed it to general discredit; its vote of
the 15th of November had been formally condemned by the Parliament of
Frankfort; and the liberal character of the new Constitution, which agreed
in the main with the draft-Constitution produced by the Committee of the
Assembly, disposed moderate men to the belief that in the conflict between
the King and the popular representatives the fault had not been on the side
of the sovereign.

[The Frankfort Parliament and Austria, Oct.-Dec.]

In the meantime the Parliament of Frankfort, warned against longer delay by
the disturbances of September 17th, had addressed itself in earnest to the
settlement of the Federal Constitution of Germany. Above a host of minor
difficulties two great problems confronted it at the outset. The first was
the relation of the Austrian Empire, with its partly German and partly
foreign territory, to the German national State; the other was the nature
of the headship to be established. As it was clear that the Austrian
Government could not apply the public law of Germany to its Slavic and
Hungarian provinces, it was enacted in the second article of the Frankfort
Constitution that where a German and a non-German territory had the same
sovereign, the relation between these countries must be one of purely
personal union under the sovereign, no part of Germany being incorporated
into a single State with any non-German land. At the time when this article
was drafted the disintegration of Austria seemed more probable than the
re-establishment of its unity; no sooner, however, had Prince Schwarzenberg
been brought into power by the subjugation of Vienna, than he made it plain
that the government of Austria was to be centralised as it had never been
before. In the first public declaration of his policy he announced that
Austria would maintain its unity and permit no exterior influence to modify
its internal organisation; that the settlement of the relations between
Austria and Germany could only be effected after each had gained some new
and abiding political form; and that in the meantime Austria would continue
to fulfil its duties as a confederate. [446] The interpretation put upon
this statement at Frankfort was that Austria, in the interest of its own
unity, preferred not to enter the German body, but looked forward to the
establishment of some intimate alliance with it at a future time. As the
Court of Vienna had evidently determined not to apply to itself the second
article of the Constitution, and an antagonism between German and Austrian
policy came within view, Schmerling, as an Austrian subject, was induced to
resign his office, and was succeeded in it by Gagern, hitherto President of
the Assembly (Dec. 16th). [447]

[The Frankfort Parliament and Austria, Dec., Jan.]

In announcing the policy of the new Ministry, Gagern assumed the exclusion
of Austria from the German Federation. Claiming for the Assembly, as the
representative of the German nation, sovereign power in drawing up the
Constitution, he denied that the Constitution could be made an object of
negotiation with Austria. As Austria refused to fulfil the conditions of
the second article, it must remain outside the Federation; the Ministry
desired, however, to frame some close and special connection between
Austria and Germany, and asked for authority to negotiate with the Court of
Vienna for this purpose. Gagern's declaration of the exclusion of Austria
occasioned a vehement and natural outburst of feeling among the Austrian
deputies, and was met by their almost unanimous protest. Some days later
there arrived a note from Schwarzenberg which struck at the root of all
that had been done and all that was claimed by the Assembly. Repudiating
the interpretation that had been placed upon his words, Schwarzenberg
declared that the affairs of Germany could only be settled by an
understanding between the Assembly and the Courts, and by an arrangement
with Austria, which was the recognised chief of the Governments and
intended to remain so in the new Federation. The question of the inclusion
or exclusion of Austria now threw into the shade all the earlier
differences between parties in the Assembly. A new dividing-line was drawn.
On the one side appeared a group composed of the Austrian representatives,
of Ultramontanes who feared a Protestant ascendency if Austria should be
excluded, and of deputies from some of the smaller States who had begun to
dread Prussian domination. On the other side was the great body of
representatives who set before all the cause of German national union, who
saw that this union would never be effected in any real form if it was made
to depend upon negotiations with the Austrian Court, and who held, with the
Minister, that to create a true German national State without the Austrian
provinces was better than to accept a phantom of complete union in which
the German people should be nothing and the Cabinet of Vienna everything.
Though coalitions and intrigues of parties obscured the political prospect
from day to day, the principles of Gagern were affirmed by a majority of
the Assembly, and authority to negotiate some new form of connection with
Austria, as a power outside the Federation, was granted to the Ministry.

[The Federal Headship.]

[King Frederick William IV. elected Emperor, March 28.]

The second great difficulty of the Assembly was the settlement of the
Federal headship. Some were for a hereditary Emperor, some for a President
or Board, some for a monarchy alternating between the Houses of Prussia and
Austria, some for a sovereign elected for life or for a fixed period. The
first decision arrived at was that the head should be one of the reigning
princes of Germany, and that he should bear the title of Emperor. Against
the hereditary principle there was a strong and, at first, a successful
opposition. Reserving for future discussion other questions relating to the
imperial office, the Assembly passed the Constitution through the first
reading on February 3rd, 1849. It was now communicated to all the German
Governments, with the request that they would offer their opinions upon it.
The four minor kingdoms--Saxony, Hanover, Bavaria, and Würtemberg--with one
consent declared against any Federation in which Austria should not be
included; the Cabinet of Vienna protested against the subordination of the
Emperor of Austria to a central power vested in any other German prince,
and proposed that the entire Austrian Empire, with its foreign as well as
its German elements, should enter the Federation. This note was enough to
prove that Austria was in direct conflict with the scheme of national union
which the Assembly had accepted; but the full peril of the situation was
not perceived till on the 9th of March Schwarzenberg published the
Constitution of Olmütz, which extinguished all separate rights throughout
the Austrian Empire, and confounded in one mass, as subjects of the Emperor
Francis Joseph, Hungarians, Germans, Slavs and Italians. The import of the
Austrian demand now stood out clear and undisguised. Austria claimed to
range itself with a foreign population of thirty millions within the German
Federation; in other words, to reduce the German national union to a
partnership with all the nationalities of Central Europe, to throw the
weight of an overwhelming influence against any system of free
representative government, and to expose Germany to war where no interests
but those of the Pole or the Magyar might be at stake. So deep was the
impression made at Frankfort by the fall of the Kremsier Parliament and the
publication of Schwarzenberg's unitary edict, that one of the most eminent
of the politicians who had hitherto opposed the exclusion of Austria--the
Baden deputy Welcker--declared that further persistence in this course
would be treason to Germany. Ranging himself with the Ministry, he
proposed that the entire German Constitution, completed by a hereditary
chieftainship, should be passed at a single vote on the second reading, and
that the dignity of Emperor should be at once offered to the King of
Prussia. Though the Assembly declined to pass the Constitution by a single
vote, it agreed to vote upon clause by clause without discussion. The
hereditary principle was affirmed by the narrow majority of four in a House
of above five hundred. The second reading of the Constitution was completed
on the 27th of March, and on the following day the election of the
sovereign took place. Two hundred and ninety votes were given for the King
of Prussia. Two hundred and forty-eight members, hostile to the hereditary
principle or to the prince selected, abstained from voting. [448]

[Frederick William IV.]

Frederick William had from early years cherished the hope of seeing some
closer union of Germany established under Prussian influence. But he dwelt
in a world where there was more of picturesque mirage than of real insight.
He was almost superstitiously loyal to the House of Austria; and he failed
to perceive, what was palpable to men of far inferior endowments to his
own, that by setting Prussia at the head of the constitutional movement of
the epoch he might at any time from the commencement of his reign have
rallied all Germany round it. Thus the revolution of 1848 burst upon him,
and he was not the man to act or to lead in time of revolution. Even in
1848, had he given promptly and with dignity what, after blood had been
shed in his streets, he had to give with humiliation, he would probably
have been acclaimed Emperor on the opening of the Parliament of Frankfort,
and have been accepted by the universal voice of Germany. But the odium
cast upon him by the struggle of March 18th was so great that in the
election of a temporary Administrator of the Empire in June no single
member at Frankfort gave him a vote. Time was needed to repair his credit,
and while time passed Austria rose from its ruins. In the spring of 1849
Frederick William could not have assumed the office of Emperor of Germany
without risk of a war with Austria, even had he been willing to accept this
office on the nomination of the Frankfort Parliament. But to accept the
Imperial Crown from a popular Assembly was repugnant to his deepest
convictions. Clear as the Frankfort Parliament had been, as a whole, from
the taint of Republicanism or of revolutionary violence, it had
nevertheless had its birth in revolution: the crown which it offered would,
in the King's expression, have been picked up from blood and mire. Had the
princes of Germany by any arrangement with the Assembly tendered the crown
to Frederick William the case would have been different; a new Divine right
would have emanated from the old, and conditions fixed by negotiation
between the princes and the popular Assembly might have been endured. That
Frederick William still aspired to German leadership in one form or another
no one doubted; his disposition to seek or to reject an accommodation with
the Frankfort Parliament varied with the influences which surrounded him.
The Ministry led by the Count of Brandenburg, though anti-popular in its
domestic measures, was desirous of arriving at some understanding with
Gagern and the friends of German union. Shortly before the first reading of
the Constitution at Frankfort, a note had been drafted in the Berlin
Cabinet admitting under certain provisions the exclusion of Austria from
the Federation, and proposing, not that the Assembly should admit the right
of each Government to accept or reject the Constitution, but that it should
meet in a fair spirit such recommendations as all the Governments together
should by a joint act submit to it. This note, which would have rendered an
agreement between the Prussian Court and the Assembly possible, Frederick
William at first refused to sign. He was induced to do so (Jan. 23rd) by
his confidant Bunsen, who himself was authorised to proceed to Frankfort.
During Bunsen's absence despatches arrived at Berlin from Schwarzenberg,
who, in his usual resolute way, proposed to dissolve the Frankfort
Assembly, and to divide Germany between Austria, Prussia, and the four
secondary kingdoms. Bunsen on his return found his work undone; the King
recoiled under Austrian pressure from the position which he had taken up,
and sent a note to Frankfort on the 16th of February, which described
Austria as a necessary part of Germany and claimed for each separate
Government the right to accept or reject the Constitution as it might think
fit. Thus the acceptance of the headship by Frederick William under any
conditions compatible with the claims of the Assembly was known to be
doubtful when, on the 28th of March, the majority resolved to offer him the
Imperial Crown. The disposition of the Ministry at Berlin was indeed still
favourable to an accommodation; and when, on the 2nd of April, the members
of the Assembly who were charged to lay its offer before Frederick William
arrived at Berlin, they were received with such cordiality by Brandenburg
that it was believed the King's consent had been won.

[Frederick William IV. refuses the Crown, April 3.]

The reply of the King to the deputation on the following day rudely
dispelled these hopes. He declared that before he could accept the Crown
not only must he be summoned to it by the Princes of Germany, but the
consent of all the Governments must be given to the Constitution. In other
words, he required that the Assembly should surrender its claims to
legislative supremacy, and abandon all those parts of the Federal
Constitution of which any of the existing Governments disapproved. As it
was certain that Austria and the four minor kingdoms would never agree to
any Federal union worthy of the name, and that the Assembly could not now,
without renouncing its past, admit that the right of framing the
Constitution lay outside itself, the answer of the King was understood to
amount to a refusal. The deputation left Berlin in the sorrowful conviction
that their mission had failed; and a note which was soon afterwards
received at Frankfort from the King showed that this belief was
correct. [449]

[The Frankfort Constitution rejected by the Governments.]

The answer of King Frederick William proved indeed much more than that he
had refused the Crown of Germany; it proved that he would not accept the
Constitution which the Assembly had enacted. The full import of this
determination, and the serious nature of the crisis now impending over
Germany, were at once understood. Though twenty-eight Governments
successively accepted the Constitution, these were without exception petty
States, and their united forces would scarcely have been a match for one of
its more powerful enemies. On the 5th of April the Austrian Cabinet
declared the Assembly to have been guilty of illegality in publishing the
Constitution, and called upon all Austrian deputies to quit Frankfort. The
Prussian Lower Chamber, elected under the King's recent edict, having
protested against the state of siege in Berlin, and having passed a
resolution in favour of the Frankfort Constitution, was forthwith
dissolved. Within the Frankfort Parliament the resistance of Governments
excited a patriotic resentment and caused for the moment a union of
parties. Resolutions were passed declaring that the Assembly would adhere
to the Constitution. A Committee was charged with the ascertainment of
measures to be adopted for enforcing its recognition; and a note was
addressed to all the hostile Governments demanding that they should abstain
from proroguing or dissolving the representative bodies within their
dominions with the view of suppressing the free utterance of opinions in
favour of the Constitution.

[End of the German National Assembly, June, 1849.]

On the ground of this last demand the Prussian official Press now began to
denounce the Assembly of Frankfort as a revolutionary body. The situation
of affairs daily became worse. It was in vain that the Assembly appealed to
the Governments, the legislative Chambers, the local bodies, the whole
people, to bring the Constitution into effect. The moral force on which it
had determined to rely proved powerless, and in despair of conquering the
Governments by public opinion the more violent members of the democratic
party determined to appeal to insurrection. On the 4th of May a popular
rising began at Dresden, where the King, under the influence of Prussia,
had dismissed those of his Ministers who urged him to accept the
Constitution, and had dissolved his Parliament. The outbreak drove the King
from his capital; but only five days had passed when a Prussian army-corps
entered the city and crushed the rebellion. In this interval, short as it
was, there had been indications that the real leaders of the insurrection
were fighting not for the Frankfort Constitution but for a Republic, and
that in the event of their victory a revolutionary Government, connected
with French and Polish schemes of subversion, would come into power. In
Baden this was made still clearer. There the Government of the Grand Duke
had actually accepted the Frankfort Constitution, and had ordered elections
to be held for the Federal legislative body by which the Assembly was to be
succeeded. Insurrection nevertheless broke out. The Republic was openly
proclaimed; the troops joined the insurgents; and a Provisional Government
allied itself with a similar body that had sprung into being with the help
of French and Polish refugees in the neighbouring Palatinate. Conscious
that these insurrections must utterly ruin its own cause, the Frankfort
Assembly on the suggestion of Gagern called upon the Archduke John to
suppress them by force of arms, and at the same time to protect the free
expression of opinion on behalf of the Constitution where threatened by
Governments. John, who had long clung to his office only to further the
ends of Austria, refused to do so, and Gagern in consequence resigned. With
his fall ended the real political existence of the Assembly. In reply to a
resolution which it passed on the 10th of May, calling upon John to employ
all the forces of Germany in defence of the Constitution, the Archduke
placed a mock-Ministry in office. The Prussian Government, declaring the
vote of the 10th of May to be a summons to civil war, ordered all Prussian
deputies to withdraw from the Assembly, and a few days later its example
was imitated by Saxony and Hanover. On the 20th of May sixty-five of the
best known of the members, including Arndt and Dahlmann, placed on record
their belief that in the actual situation the relinquishment of the task of
the Assembly was the least of evils, and declared their work at Frankfort
ended. Other groups followed them till there remained only the party of the
extreme Left, which had hitherto been a weak minority, and which in no
sense represented the real opinions of Germany. This Rump-Parliament,
troubling itself little with John and his Ministers, determined to withdraw
from Frankfort, where it dreaded the appearance of Prussian troops, into
Würtemberg, where it might expect some support from the revolutionary
Governments of Baden and the Palatinate. On the 6th of June a hundred and
five deputies assembled at Stuttgart. There they proceeded to appoint a
governing Committee for all Germany, calling upon the King of Würtemberg to
supply them with seven thousand soldiers, and sending out emissaries to
stir up the neighbouring population. But the world disregarded them. The
Government at Stuttgart, after an interval of patience, bade them begone;
and on the 18th of June their hall was closed against them and they were
dispersed by troops, no one raising a hand on their behalf. The overthrow
of the insurgents who had taken up arms in Baden and the Palatinate was not
so easy a matter. A campaign of six weeks was necessary, in which the army
of Prussia, led by the Prince of Prussia, sustained some reverses, before
the Republican levies were crushed, and with the fall of Rastadt the
insurrection was brought to a close. [450]

[The Baden insurrection suppressed, July, 1849.]

[Prussia attempts to form a separate union.]

The end of the German Parliament, on which the nation had set such high
hopes and to which it had sent so much of what was noblest in itself,
contrasted lamentably with the splendour of its opening. Whether a better
result would have been attained if, instead of claiming supreme authority
in the construction of Federal union, the Assembly had from the first
sought the co-operation of the Governments, must remain matter of
conjecture. Austria would under all circumstances have been the great
hindrance in the way; and after the failure of the efforts made at
Frankfort to establish the general union of Germany, Austria was able
completely to frustrate the attempts which were now made at Berlin to
establish partial union upon a different basis. In notifying to the
Assembly his refusal of the Imperial Crown, King Frederick William had
stated that he was resolved to place himself at the head of a Federation to
be formed by States voluntarily uniting with him under terms to be
subsequently arranged; and in a circular note addressed to the German
Governments he invited such as were disposed to take counsel with Prussia
to unite in Conference at Berlin. The opening of the Conference was fixed
for the 17th of May. Two days before this the King issued a proclamation to
the Prussian people announcing that in spite of the failure of the Assembly
of Frankfort a German union was still to be formed. When the Conference
opened at Berlin, no envoys appeared but those of Austria, Saxony, Hanover,
and Bavaria. The Austrian representative withdrew at the end of the first
sitting, the Bavarian rather later, leaving Prussia to lay such foundations
as it could for German unity with the temporising support of Saxony and
Hanover. A confederation was formed, known as the League of the Three
Kingdoms. An undertaking was given that a Federal Parliament should be
summoned, and that a Constitution should be made jointly by this Parliament
and the Governments (May 26th). On the 11th of June the draft of a Federal
Constitution was published. As the King of Prussia was apparently acting in
good faith, and the draft-Constitution in spite of some defects seemed to
afford a fair basis for union, the question now arose among the leaders of
the German national movement whether the twenty-eight States which had
accepted the ill-fated Constitution of Frankfort ought or ought not to
enter the new Prussian League. A meeting of a hundred and fifty ex-members
of the Frankfort Parliament was held at Gotha; and although great
indignation was expressed by the more democratic faction, it was determined
that the scheme now put forward by Prussia deserved a fair trial. The whole
of the twenty-eight minor States consequently entered the League, which
thus embraced all Germany with the exception of Austria, Bavaria and
Würtemberg. But the Courts of Saxony and Hanover had from the first been
acting with duplicity. The military influence of Prussia, and the fear
which they still felt of their own subjects, had prevented them from
offering open resistance to the renewed work of Federation; but they had
throughout been in communication with Austria, and were only waiting for
the moment when the complete restoration of Austria's military strength
should enable them to display their true colours. During the spring of
1849, while the Conferences at Berlin were being held, Austria was still
occupied with Hungary and Venice. The final overthrow of these enemies
enabled it to cast its entire weight upon Germany. The result was seen in
the action of Hanover and Saxony, which now formally seceded from the
Federation. Prussia thus remained at the end of 1849 with no support but
that of the twenty-eight minor States. Against it, in open or in tacit
antagonism to the establishment of German unity in any effective form, the
four secondary Kingdoms stood ranged by the side of Austria.

[Prussia in 1849.]

[The Union Parliament at Erfurt, March 1850.]

It was not until the 20th of March, 1850, that the Federal Parliament,
which had been promised ten months before on the incorporation of the new
League, assembled at Erfurt. In the meantime reaction had gone far in many
a German State. In Prussia, after the dissolution of the Lower Chamber on
April 27th, 1849, the King had abrogated the electoral provisions of the
Constitution so recently granted by himself, and had substituted for them a
system based on the representation of classes. Treating this act as a
breach of faith, the Democratic party had abstained from voting at the
elections, with the result that in the Berlin Parliament of 1850
Conservatives, Reactionists, and officials formed the great majority. The
revision of the Prussian Constitution, promised at first as a concession to
Liberalism, was conducted in the opposite sense. The King demanded the
strengthening of monarchical power; the Feudalists, going far beyond him,
attacked the municipal and social reforms of the last two years, and sought
to lead Prussia back to the system of its mediæval estates. It was in the
midst of this victory of reaction in Prussia that the Federal Parliament at
Erfurt began its sittings. Though the moderate Liberals, led by Gagern and
other tried politicians of Frankfurt, held the majority in both Houses, a
strong Absolutist party from Prussia confronted them, and it soon became
clear that the Prussian Government was ready to play into the hands of this
party. The draft of the Federal Constitution, which had been made at
Berlin, was presented, according to the undertaking of May 28th, 1849, to
the Erfurt Assembly. Aware of the gathering strength of the reaction and of
the danger of delay, the Liberal majority declared itself ready to pass the
draft into law without a single alteration. The reactionary minority
demanded that a revision should take place; and, to the scandal of all who
understood the methods or the spirit of Parliamentary rule, the Prussian
Ministers united with the party which demanded alterations in the project
which they themselves had brought forward. A compromise was ultimately
effected; but the action of the Court of Prussia and the conduct of its
Ministers throughout the Erfurt debates struck with deep despondency those
who had believed that Frederick William might still effect the work in
which the Assembly of Frankfort had failed. The trust in the King's
sincerity or consistence of purpose sank low. The sympathy of the national
Liberal party throughout Germany was to a great extent alienated from
Prussia; while, if any expectation existed at Berlin that the adoption of a
reactionary policy would disarm the hostility of the Austrian Government to
the new League, this hope was wholly vain and baseless. [451]

[Action of Austria.]

Austria had from the first protested against the attempt of the King of
Prussia to establish any new form of union in Germany, and had declared
that it would recognise none of the conclusions of the Federal Parliament
of Erfurt. According to the theory now advanced by the Cabinet of Vienna
the ancient Federal Constitution of Germany was still in force. All that
had happened since March, 1848, was so much wanton and futile
mischief-making. The disturbance of order had at length come to an end, and
with the exit of the rioters the legitimate powers re-entered into their
rights. Accordingly, there could be no question of the establishment of new
Leagues. The old relation of all the German States to one another under the
ascendency of Austria remained in full strength; the Diet of Frankfort,
which had merely suspended its functions and by no means suffered
extinction, was still the legitimate central authority. That some
modifications might be necessary in the ancient Constitution was the most
that Austria was willing to admit. This, however, was an affair not for the
German people but for its rulers, and Austria accordingly invited all the
Governments to a Congress at Frankfort where the changes necessary might be
discussed. In reply to this summons, Prussia strenuously denied that the
old Federal Constitution was still in existence. The princes of the
numerous petty States which were included in the new Union assembled at
Berlin round Frederick William, and resolved that they would not attend the
Conference at Frankfort except under reservations and conditions which
Austria would not admit. Arguments and counter-arguments were exchanged;
but the controversy between an old and a new Germany was one to be decided
by force of will or force of arms, not by political logic. The struggle was
to be one between Prussia and Austria, and the Austrian Cabinet had well
gauged the temper of its opponent. A direct summons to submission would
have roused all the King's pride, and have been answered by war. Before
demanding from Frederick William the dissolution of the Union which he had
founded, Schwarzenberg determined to fix upon a quarrel in which the King
should be perplexed or alarmed at the results of his own policy. The
dominant conviction in the mind of Frederick William was that of the
sanctity of monarchical rule. If the League of Berlin could be committed to
some enterprise hostile to monarchical power, and could be charged with an
alliance with rebellion, Frederick William would probably falter in his
resolutions, and a resort to arms, for which, however, Austria was well
prepared, would become unnecessary. [452]

[Hesse-Cassel.]

[The Diet of Frankfort restored, Sept., 1850.]

[Prussia and Austria.]

[The Warsaw meeting, Oct. 29, 1850.]

[Manteuffel at Olmütz, Nov. 29.]

Among the States whose Governments had been forced by public opinion to
join the new Federation was the Electorate of Hesse-Cassel. The Elector
was, like his predecessors, a thorough despot at heart, and chafed under
the restrictions which a constitutional system imposed upon his rule.
Acting under Austrian instigation, he dismissed his Ministers in the spring
of 1850, and placed in office one Hassenpflug, a type of the worst and most
violent class of petty tyrants produced by the officialism of the minor
German States. Hassenpflug immediately quarrelled with the Estates at
Cassel, and twice dissolved them, after which he proceeded to levy taxes by
force. The law-courts declared his acts illegal; the officers of the army,
when called on for assistance, began to resign. The conflict between the
Minister and the Hessian population was in full progress when, at the
beginning of September, Austria with its vassal Governments proclaimed the
re-establishment of the Diet of Frankfort. Though Prussia and most of the
twenty-eight States confederate with it treated this announcement as null
and void, the Diet, constituted by the envoys of Austria, the four minor
Kingdoms, and a few seceders from the Prussian Union, commenced its
sittings. To the Diet the Elector of Hesse forthwith appealed for help
against his subjects, and the decision was given that the refusal of the
Hessian Estates to grant the taxes was an offence justifying the
intervention of the central power. Fortified by this judgment, Hassenpflug
now ordered that every person offering resistance to the Government should
be tried by court-martial. He was baffled by the resignation of the entire
body of officers in the Hessian army; and as this completed the
discomfiture of the Elector, the armed intervention of Austria, as
identified with the Diet of Frankfort, now became a certainty. But to the
protection of the people of Hesse in their constitutional rights Prussia,
as chief of the League which Hesse had joined, stood morally pledged. It
remained for the King to decide between armed resistance to Austria or the
humiliation of a total abandonment of Prussia's claim to leadership in any
German union. Conflicting influences swayed the King in one direction and
another. The friends of Austria and of absolutism declared that the
employment of the Prussian army on behalf of the Hessians would make the
King an accomplice of revolution: the bolder and more patriotic spirits
protested against the abdication of Prussia's just claims and the evasion
of its responsibilities towards Germany. For a moment the party of action,
led by the Prince of Prussia, gained the ascendant. General Radowitz, the
projector of the Union, was called to the Foreign Ministry, and Prussian
troops entered Hesse. Austria now ostentatiously prepared for war.
Frederick William, terrified by the danger confronting him, yet unwilling
to yield all, sought the mediation of the Czar of Russia. Nicholas came
to Warsaw, where the Emperor of Austria and Prince Charles, brother of
the King of Prussia, attended by the Ministers of their States, met him.
The closest family ties united the Courts of St. Petersburg and Berlin
but the Russian sovereign was still the patron of Austria as he had been
in the Hungarian campaign. He resented the action of Prussia in
Schleswig-Holstein, and was offended that King Frederick William had not
presented himself at Warsaw in person. He declared in favour of all
Austria's demands, and treated Count Brandenburg with such indignity that
the Count, a high-spirited patriot, never recovered from its effect. He
returned to Berlin only to give in his report and die. Manteuffel,
Minister of the Interior, assured the King that the Prussian army was so
weak in numbers and so defective in organisation that, if it took the
field against Austria and its allies, it would meet with certain ruin.
Bavarian troops, representing the Diet of Frankfort, now entered Hesse at
Austria's bidding, and stood face to face with the Prussians. The moment
had come when the decision must be made between peace and war. At a
Council held at Berlin on November and the peace-party carried the King
with them. Radowitz gave up office; Manteuffel, the Minister of
repression within and of submission without, was set at the head of the
Government. The meaning of his appointment was well understood, and with
each new proof of the weakness of the King the tone of the Court of
Austria became more imperious. On the 9th of November Schwarzenberg
categorically demanded the dissolution of the Prussian Union, the
recognition of the Federal Diet, and the evacuation of Hesse by the
Prussian troops. The first point was at once conceded, and in hollow,
equivocating language Manteuffel made the fact known to the members of
the Confederacy. The other conditions not being so speedily fulfilled,
Schwarzenberg set Austrian regiments in motion, and demanded the
withdrawal of the Prussian troops from Hesse within twenty-four hours.
Manteuffel begged the Austrian Minister for an interview, and, without
waiting for an answer, set out for Olmütz. His instructions bade him to
press for certain concessions; none of these did he obtain, and he made
the necessary submission without them. On the 29th of November a convention
was signed at Olmütz, in which Prussia recognised the German Federal
Constitution of 1815 as still existing, undertook to withdraw all its
troops from Hesse with the exception of a single battalion, and consented
to the settlement of affairs both in Hesse and in Schleswig-Holstein by the
Federal Diet. One point alone in the scheme of the Austrian statesman was
wanting among the fruits of his victory at Olmütz and of the negotiations
at Dresden by which this was followed. Schwarzenberg had intended that the
entire Austrian Empire should enter the German Federation; and if he had
had to reckon with no opponents but the beaten and humbled Prussia, he
would have effected his design. But the prospect of a central European
Power, with a population of seventy millions, controlled as this would
virtually be by the Cabinet of Vienna, alarmed other nations. England
declared that such a combination would undo the balance of power in Europe
and menace the independence of Germany; France protested in more
threatening terms; and the project fell to the ground, to be remembered
only as the boldest imagination of a statesman for whom fortune, veiling
the Nemesis in store, seemed to set no limit to its favours.

[Schleswig-Holstein.]

[The German National Fleet sold by auction, June, 1852.]

The cause of Schleswig-Holstein, so intimately bound up with the efforts of
the Germans towards national union, sank with the failure of these efforts;
and in the final humiliation of Prussia it received what might well seem
its death-blow. The armistice of Malmö, which was sanctioned by the
Assembly of Frankfort in the autumn of 1848, lasted until March 26th, 1849.
War was then recommenced by Prussia, and the lines of Düppel were stormed
by its troops, while the volunteer forces of Schleswig-Holstein
unsuccessfully laid siege to Fredericia. Hostilities had continued for
three months, when a second armistice, to last for a year, and
Preliminaries of Peace, were agreed upon. At the conclusion of this
armistice, in July, 1850, Prussia, in the name of Germany, made peace with
Denmark. The inhabitants of the Duchies in consequence continued the war
for themselves, and though defeated with great loss at Idstedt on the 24th
of July, they remained unconquered at the end of the year. This was the
situation of affairs when Prussia, by the Treaty of Olmütz, agreed that the
restored Federal Diet should take upon itself the restoration of order in
Schleswig-Holstein, and that the troops of Prussia should unite with those
of Austria to enforce its decrees. To the Cabinet of Vienna, the foe in
equal measure of German national union and of every democratic cause, the
Schleswig-Holsteiners were simply rebels in insurrection against their
Sovereign. They were required by the Diet, under Austrian dictation, to lay
down their arms; and commissioners from Austria and Prussia entered the
Duchies to compel them to do so. Against Denmark, Austria, and Prussia
together, it was impossible for Schleswig-Holstein to prolong its
resistance. The army was dissolved, and the Duchies were handed over to the
King of Denmark, to return to the legal status which was defined in the
Treaties of Peace. This was the nominal condition of the transfer; but the
Danish Government treated Schleswig as part of its national territory, and
in the northern part of the Duchy the process of substituting Danish for
German nationality was actively pursued. The policy of foreign Courts,
little interested in the wish of the inhabitants, had from the beginning of
the struggle of the Duchies against Denmark favoured the maintenance and
consolidation of the Danish Kingdom. The claims of the Duke of
Augustenburg, as next heir to the Duchies in the male line, were not
considered worth the risk of a new war; and by a protocol signed at London
on the 2nd of August, 1850, the Powers, with the exception of Prussia,
declared themselves in favour of a single rule of succession in all parts
of the Danish State. By a Treaty of the 8th of May, 1852, to which Prussia
gave its assent, the pretensions of all other claimants to the disputed
succession were set aside, and Prince Christian, of the House of
Glücksburg, was declared heir to the throne, the rights of the German
Federation as established by the Treaties of 1815 being reserved. In spite
of this reservation of Federal rights, and of the stipulations in favour of
Schleswig and Holstein made in the earlier agreements, the Duchies appeared
to be now practically united with the Danish State. Prussia, for a moment
their champion, had joined with Austria in coercing their army, in
dissolving their Government, in annulling the legislation by which the
Parliament of Frankfort had made them participators in public rights
thenceforward to be the inheritance of all Germans. A page in the national
history was obliterated; Prussia had turned its back on its own
professions; there remained but one relic from the time when the whole
German people seemed so ardent for the emancipation of its brethren beyond
the frontier. The national fleet, created by the Assembly of Frankfort for
the prosecution of the struggle with Denmark, still lay at the mouth of the
Elbe. But the same power which had determined that Germany was not to be a
nation had also determined that it could have no national maritime
interests. After all that had passed, authority had little call to be nice
about appearances; and the national fleet was sold by auction, in
accordance with a decree of the restored Diet of Frankfort, in the summer
of 1852. [453]

[Germany after 1849.]

It was with deep disappointment and humiliation that the Liberals of
Germany, and all in whom the hatred of democratic change had not
overpowered the love of country, witnessed the issue of the movement of
1848. In so far as that movement was one directed towards national union it
had totally failed, and the state of things that had existed before 1848
was restored without change. As a movement of constitutional and social
reform, it had not been so entirely vain; nor in this respect can it be
said that Germany after the year 1848 returned altogether to what it was
before it. Many of the leading figures of the earlier time re-appeared
indeed with more or less of lustre upon the stage. Metternich though
excluded from office by younger men, beamed upon Vienna with the serenity
of a prophet who had lived to see most of his enemies shot and of a martyr
who had returned to one of the most enviable Salons in Europe. No dynasty
lost its throne, no class of the population had been struck down with
proscription as were the clergy and the nobles of France fifty years
before. Yet the traveller familiar with Germany before the revolution found
that much of the old had now vanished, much of a new world come into being.
It was not sought by the re-established Governments to undo at one stroke
the whole of the political, the social, the agrarian legislation of the
preceding time, as in some other periods of reaction. The nearest approach
that was made to this was in a decree of the Diet annulling the Declaration
of Rights drawn up by the Frankfort Assembly, and requiring the Governments
to bring into conformity with the Federal Constitution all laws and
institutions made since the beginning of 1848. Parliamentary government was
thereby enfeebled, but not necessarily extinguished. Governments narrowed
the franchise, curtailed the functions of representative assemblies, filled
these with their creatures, coerced voters at elections; but, except in
Austria, there was no open abandonment of constitutional forms. In some
States, as in Saxony under the reactionary rule of Count Beust, the system
of national representation established in 1848 was abolished and the
earlier Estates were revived; in Prussia the two Houses of Parliament
continued in existence, but in such dependence upon the royal authority,
and under such strong pressure of an aristocratic and official reaction,
that, after struggling for some years in the Lower House, the Liberal
leaders at length withdrew in despair. The character which Government now
assumed in Prussia was indeed far more typical of the condition of Germany
at large than was the bold and uncompromising despotism of Prince
Schwarzenberg in Austria. Manteuffel, in whom the Prussian epoch of
reaction was symbolised, was not a cruel or a violent Minister; but his
rule was stamped with a peculiar and degrading meanness, more irritating to
those who suffered under it than harsher wrong. In his hands government was
a thing of eavesdropping and espionage, a system of petty persecution, a
school of subservience and hypocrisy. He had been the instrument at Olmütz
of such a surrender of national honour and national interests as few
nations have ever endured with the chances of war still untried. This
surrender may, in the actual condition of the Prussian army, have been
necessary, but the abasement of it seemed to cling to Manteuffel and to
lower all his conceptions of government. Even where the conclusions of his
policy were correct they seemed to have been reached by some unworthy
process. Like Germany at large, Prussia breathed uneasily under an
oppression which was everywhere felt and yet was hard to define. Its best
elements were those which suffered the most: its highest intellectual and
political aims were those which most excited the suspicion of the
Government. Its King had lost whatever was stimulating or elevated in his
illusions. From him no second alliance with Liberalism, no further effort
on behalf of German unity, was to be expected: the hope for Germany and for
Prussia, if hope there was, lay in a future reign.

[Austria after 1851.]

[Austrian Concordat, Sept. 18, 1855.]

The powerlessness of Prussia was the measure of Austrian influence and
prestige. The contrast presented by Austria in 1848 and Austria in 1851 was
indeed one that might well arrest political observers. Its recovery had no
doubt been effected partly by foreign aid, and in the struggle with the
Magyars a dangerous obligation had been incurred towards Russia; but
scarred and riven as the fabric was within, it was complete and imposing
without. Not one of the enemies who in 1848 had risen against the Court of
Vienna now remained standing. In Italy, Austria had won back what had
appeared to be hopelessly lost; in Germany it had more than vindicated its
old claims. It had thrown its rival to the ground, and the full measure of
its ambition was perhaps even yet not satisfied. "First to humiliate
Prussia, then to destroy it," was the expression in which Schwarzenberg
summed up his German policy. Whether, with his undoubted firmness and
daring, the Minister possessed the intellectual qualities and the
experience necessary for the successful administration of an Empire built
up, as Austria now was, on violence and on the suppression of every
national force, was doubted even by his admirers. The proof, however, was
not granted to him, for a sudden death carried him off in his fourth year
of power (April 5th, 1852). Weaker men succeeded to his task. The epoch of
military and diplomatic triumph was now ending, the gloomier side of the
reaction stood out unrelieved by any new succession of victories. Financial
disorder grew worse and worse. Clericalism claimed its bond from the
monarchy which it had helped to restore. In the struggle of the
nationalities of Austria against the central authority the Bishops had on
the whole thrown their influence on to the side of the Crown. The restored
despotism owed too much to their help and depended too much on their
continued goodwill to be able to refuse their demands. Thus the new
centralised administration, reproducing in general the uniformity of
government attempted by the Emperor Joseph II., contrasted with this in its
subservience to clerical power. Ecclesiastical laws and jurisdictions were
allowed to encroach on the laws and jurisdiction of the State; education
was made over to the priesthood; within the Church itself the bishops were
allowed to rule uncontrolled. The very Minister who had taken office under
Schwarzenberg as the representative of the modern spirit, to which the
Government still professed to render homage, became the instrument of an
act of submission to the Papacy which marked the lowest point to which
Austrian policy fell. Alexander Bach, a prominent Liberal in Vienna at the
beginning of 1848, had accepted office at the price of his independence,
and surrendered himself to the aristocratic and clerical influences that
dominated the Court. Consistent only in his efforts to simplify the forms
of government, to promote the ascendency of German over all other elements
in the State, to maintain the improvement in the peasant's condition
effected by the Parliament of Kremsier, Bach, as Minister of the Interior,
made war in all other respects on his own earlier principles. In the former
representative of the Liberalism of the professional classes in Vienna
absolutism had now its most efficient instrument; and the Concordat
negotiated by Bach with the Papacy in 1855 marked the definite submission
of Austria to the ecclesiastical pretensions which in these years of
political languor and discouragement gained increasing recognition
throughout Central Europe. Ultramontanism had sought allies in many
political camps since the revolution of 1848. It had dallied in some
countries with Republicanism; but its truer instincts divined in the
victory of absolutist systems its own surest gain. Accommodations between
the Papacy and several of the German Governments were made in the years
succeeding 1849; and from the centralised despotism of the Emperor Francis
Joseph the Church won concessions which since the time of Maria Theresa it
had in vain sought from any ruler of the Austrian State.

[France after 1848.]

[Louis Napoleon.]

The European drama which began in 1848 had more of unity and more of
concentration in its opening than in its close. In Italy it ends with the
fall of Venice; in Germany the interest lingers till the days of Olmütz; in
France there is no decisive break in the action until the Coup d'Etat
which, at the end of the year 1851, made Louis Napoleon in all but name
Emperor of France. The six million votes which had raised Louis Napoleon to
the Presidency of the Republic might well have filled with alarm all who
hoped for a future of constitutional rule; yet the warning conveyed by the
election seems to have been understood by but few. As the representative of
order and authority, as the declared enemy of Socialism, Louis Napoleon was
on the same side as the Parliamentary majority; he had even been supported
in his candidature by Parliamentary leaders such as M. Thiers. His victory
was welcomed as a victory over Socialism and the Red Republic; he had
received some patronage from the official party of order, and it was
expected that, as nominal chief of the State, he would act as the
instrument of this party. He was an adventurer, but an adventurer with so
little that was imposing about him, that it scarcely occurred to men of
influence in Paris to credit him with the capacity for mischief. His mean
look and spiritless address, the absurdities of his past, the
insignificance of his political friends, caused him to be regarded during
his first months of public life with derision rather than with fear. The
French, said M. Thiers long afterwards, made two mistakes about Louis
Napoleon: the first when they took him for a fool, the second when they
took him for a man of genius. It was not until the appearance of the letter
to Colonel Ney, in which the President ostentatiously separated himself
from his Ministers and emphasised his personal will in the direction of the
foreign policy of France, that suspicions of danger to the Republic from
his ambition arose. From this time, in the narrow circle of the Ministers
whom official duty brought into direct contact with the President, a
constant sense of insecurity and dread of some new surprise on his part
prevailed, though the accord which had been broken by the letter to Colonel
Ney was for a while outwardly re-established, and the forms of
Parliamentary government remained unimpaired.

[Message of Oct. 31, 1849.]

The first year of Louis Napoleon's term of office was drawing to a close
when a message from him was delivered to the Assembly which seemed to
announce an immediate attack upon the Constitution. The Ministry in office
was composed of men of high Parliamentary position; it enjoyed the entire
confidence of a great majority in the Assembly, and had enforced with at
least sufficient energy the measures of public security which the President
and the country seemed agreed in demanding. Suddenly, on the 31st of
October, the President announced to the Assembly by a message carried by
one of his aides-de-camp that the Ministry were dismissed. The reason
assigned for their dismissal was the want of unity within the Cabinet
itself; but the language used by the President announced much more than a
ministerial change. "France, in the midst of confusion, seeks for the hand,
the will of him whom it elected on the 10th of December. The victory won on
that day was the victory of a system, for the name of Napoleon is in itself
a programme. It signifies order, authority, religion, national prosperity
within; national dignity without. It is this policy, inaugurated by my
election, that I desire to carry to triumph with the support of the
Assembly and of the people." In order to save the Republic from anarchy, to
maintain the prestige of France among other nations, the President declared
that he needed men of action rather than of words; yet when the list of the
new Ministers appeared, it contained scarcely a single name of weight.
Louis Napoleon had called to office persons whose very obscurity had marked
them as his own instruments, and guaranteed to him the ascendency which he
had not hitherto possessed within the Cabinet. Satisfied with having given
this proof of his power, he resumed the appearance of respect, if not of
cordiality, towards the Assembly. He had learnt to beware of precipitate
action; above two years of office were still before him; and he had now
done enough to make it clear to all who were disposed to seek their
fortunes in a new political cause that their services on his behalf would
be welcomed, and any excess of zeal more than pardoned. From this time
there grew up a party which had for its watchword the exaltation of Louis
Napoleon and the derision of the methods of Parliamentary government.
Journalists, unsuccessful politicians, adventurers of every description,
were enlisted in the ranks of this obscure but active band. For their acts
and their utterances no one was responsible but themselves. They were
disavowed without compunction when their hardihood went too far; but their
ventures brought them no peril, and the generosity of the President was not
wanting to those who insisted on serving him in spite of himself.

[Law limiting the Franchise, May 31, 1850.]

France was still trembling with the shock of the Four Days of June; and
measures of repression formed the common ground upon which Louis Napoleon
and the Assembly met without fear of conflict. Certain elections which were
held in the spring of 1850, and which gave a striking victory in Paris and
elsewhere to Socialist or Ultra-Democratic candidates, revived the alarms
of the owners of property, and inspired the fear that with universal
suffrage the Legislature itself might ultimately fall into the hands of the
Red Republicans. The principle of universal suffrage had been proclaimed
almost by accident in the midst of the revolution of 1848. It had been
embodied in the Constitution of that year because it was found already in
existence. No party had seriously considered the conditions under which it
was to be exercised, or had weighed the political qualifications of the
mass to whom it was so lightly thrown. When election after election
returned to the Chamber men whose principles were held to menace society
itself, the cry arose that France must be saved from the hands of the vile
multitude; and the President called upon a Committee of the Assembly to
frame the necessary measures of electoral reform. Within a week the work of
the Committee was completed, and the law which it had drafted was brought
before the Assembly. It was proposed that, instead of a residence of six
months, a continuous residence of three years in the same commune should be
required of every voter, and that the fulfilment of this condition should
be proved, not by ordinary evidence, but by one of certain specified acts,
such as the payment of personal taxes. With modifications of little
importance the Bill was passed by the Assembly. Whether its real effect was
foreseen even by those who desired the greatest possible limitation of the
franchise is doubtful; it is certain that many who supported it believed,
in their ignorance of the practical working of electoral laws, that they
were excluding from the franchise only the vagabond and worthless class
which has no real place within the body politic. When the electoral lists
drawn up in pursuance of the measure appeared, they astounded all parties
alike. Three out of the ten millions of voters in France were
disfranchised. Not only the inhabitants of whole quarters in the great
cities but the poorer classes among the peasantry throughout France had
disappeared from the electoral body. The Assembly had at one blow converted
into enemies the entire mass of the population that lived by the wages of
bodily labour. It had committed an act of political suicide, and had given
to a man so little troubled with scruples of honour as Louis Napoleon the
fatal opportunity of appealing to France as the champion of national
sovereignty and the vindicator of universal suffrage against an Assembly
which had mutilated it in the interests of class. [454]

[Prospects of Louis Napoleon.]

The duration of the Presidency was fixed by the Constitution of 1848 at
four years, and it was enacted that the President should not be re-eligible
to his dignity. By the operation of certain laws imperfectly adjusted to
one another, the tenure of office by Louis Napoleon expired on the 8th of
May, 1852, while the date for the dissolution of the Assembly fell within a
few weeks of this day. France was therefore threatened with the dangers
attending the almost simultaneous extinction of all authority. The perils
of 1852 loomed only too visibly before the country, and Louis Napoleon
addressed willing hearers when, in the summer of 1850, he began to hint at
the necessity of a prolongation of his own power. The Parliamentary recess
was employed by the President in two journeys through the Departments; the
first through those of the south-east, where Socialism was most active, and
where his appearance served at once to prove his own confidence and to
invigorate the friends of authority; the second through Normandy, where the
prevailing feeling was strongly in favour of firm government, and
utterances could safely be made by the President which would have brought
him into some risk at Paris. In suggesting that France required his own
continued presence at the head of the State Louis Napoleon was not
necessarily suggesting a violation of the law. It was provided by the
Statutes of 1848 that the Assembly by a vote of three-fourths might order a
revision of the Constitution; and in favour of this revision petitions were
already being drawn up throughout the country. Were the clause forbidding
the re-election of the President removed from the Constitution, Louis
Napoleon might fairly believe that an immense majority of the French people
would re-invest him with power. He would probably have been content with a
legal re-election had this been rendered possible; but the Assembly showed
little sign of a desire to smooth his way, and it therefore became
necessary for him to seek the means of realising his aims in violation of
the law. He had persuaded himself that his mission, his destiny, was to
rule France; in other words, he had made up his mind to run such risks and
to sanction such crimes as might be necessary to win him sovereign power.
With the loftier impulses of ambition, motives of a meaner kind stimulated
him to acts of energy. Never wealthy, the father of a family though
unmarried, he had exhausted his means, and would have returned to private
life a destitute man, if not laden with debt. When his own resolution
flagged, there were those about him too deeply interested in his fortunes
to allow him to draw back.

[Louis Napoleon and the army.]

[Dismissal of Changarnier, Jan., 1851.]

It was by means of the army that Louis Napoleon intended in the last resort
to make himself master of France, and the army had therefore to be won over
to his personal cause. The generals who had gained distinction either in
the Algerian wars or in the suppression of insurrection in France were
without exception Orleanists or Republicans. Not a single officer of
eminence was as yet included in the Bonapartist band. The President himself
had never seen service except in a Swiss camp of exercise; beyond his name
he possessed nothing that could possibly touch the imagination of a
soldier. The heroic element not being discoverable in his person or his
career, it remained to work by more material methods. Louis Napoleon had
learnt many things in England, and had perhaps observed in the English
elections of that period how much may be effected by the simple means of
money-bribes and strong drink. The saviour of society was not ashamed to
order the garrison of Paris double rations of brandy and to distribute
innumerable doles of half a franc or less. Military banquets were given, in
which the sergeant and the corporal sat side by side with the higher
officers. Promotion was skilfully offered or withheld. As the generals of
the highest position were hostile to Bonaparte, it was the easier to tempt
their subordinates with the prospect of their places. In the acclamations
which greeted the President at the reviews held at Paris in the autumn of
1850, in the behaviour both of officers and men in certain regiments, it
was seen how successful had been the emissaries of Bonapartism. The
Committee which represented the absent Chamber in vain called the Minister
of War to account for these irregularities. It was in vain that
Changarnier, who, as commander both of the National Guard of Paris and of
the first military division, seemed to hold the arbitrament between
President and Assembly in his hands, openly declared at the beginning of
1851 in favour of the Constitution. He was dismissed from his post; and
although a vote of censure which followed this dismissal led to the
resignation of the Ministry, the Assembly was unable to reinstate
Changarnier in his command, and helplessly witnessed the authority which he
had held pass into hostile or untrustworthy hands.

[Proposed Revision of the Constitution.]

[Revision of the Constitution rejected, July 19.]

There now remained only one possible means of averting the attack upon the
Constitution which was so clearly threatened, and that was by subjecting
the Constitution itself to revision in order that Louis Napoleon might
legally seek re-election at the end of his Presidency. An overwhelming
current of public opinion pressed indeed in the direction of such a change.
However gross and undisguised the initiative of the local functionaries in
preparing the petitions which showered upon the Assembly, the national
character of the demand could not be doubted. There was no other candidate
whose name carried with it any genuine popularity or prestige, or around
whom even the Parliamentary sections at enmity with the President could
rally. The Assembly was divided not very unevenly between Legitimists,
Orleanists, and Republicans. Had indeed the two monarchical groups been
able to act in accord, they might have had some hope of re-establishing the
throne; and an attempt had already been made to effect a union, on the
understanding that the childless Comté de Chambord should recognise the
grandson of Louis Philippe as his heir, the House of Orleans renouncing its
claims during the lifetime of the chief of the elder line. These plans had
been frustrated by the refusal of the Comté de Chambord to sanction any
appeal to the popular vote, and the restoration of the monarchy was
therefore hopeless for the present. It remained for the Assembly to decide
whether it would facilitate Louis Napoleon's re-election as President by a
revision of the Constitution or brave the risk of his violent usurpation of
power. The position was a sad and even humiliating one for those who, while
they could not disguise their real feeling towards the Prince, yet knew
themselves unable to count on the support of the nation if they should
resist him. The Legitimists, more sanguine in temper, kept in view an
ultimate restoration of the monarchy, and lent themselves gladly to any
policy which might weaken the constitutional safeguards of the Republic.
The Republican minority alone determined to resist any proposal for
revision, and to stake everything upon the maintenance of the constitution
in its existing form. Weak as the Republicans were as compared with the
other groups in the Assembly when united against them, they were yet strong
enough to prevent the Ministry from securing that majority of three-fourths
without which the revision of the Constitution could not be undertaken.
Four hundred and fifty votes were given in favour of revision, two hundred
and seventy against it (July 19th). The proposal therefore fell to the
ground, and Louis Napoleon, who could already charge the Assembly with
having by its majority destroyed universal suffrage, could now charge it
with having by its minority forbidden the nation to choose its own head.
Nothing more was needed by him. He had only to decide upon the time and the
circumstances of the _coup d'état_ which was to rid him of his adversaries
and to make him master of France.

[Preparations for the _coup d'état_.]

Louis Napoleon had few intimate confidants; the chief among these were his
half-brother Morny, one of the illegitimate offspring of Queen Hortense, a
man of fashion and speculator in the stocks; Fialin or Persigny, a person
of humble origin who had proved himself a devoted follower of the Prince
through good and evil; and Fleury, an officer at this time on a mission in
Algiers. These were not men out of whom Louis Napoleon could form an
administration, but they were useful to him in discovering and winning over
soldiers and officials of sufficient standing to give to the execution of
the conspiracy something of the appearance of an act of Government. A
general was needed at the War Office who would go all lengths in
illegality. Such a man had already been found in St. Arnaud, commander of a
brigade in Algiers, a brilliant soldier who had redeemed a disreputable
past by years of hard service, and who was known to be ready to treat his
French fellow-citizens exactly as he would treat the Arabs. As St. Arnaud's
name was not yet familiar in Paris, a campaign was arranged in the summer
of 1851 for the purpose of winning him distinction. At the cost of some
hundreds of lives St. Arnaud was pushed into sufficient fame; and after
receiving congratulations proportioned to his exploits from the President's
own hand, he was summoned to Paris, in order at the right moment to be made
Minister of War. A troop of younger officers, many of whom gained a
lamentable celebrity as the generals of 1870, were gradually brought over
from Algiers and placed round the Minister in the capital. The command of
the army of Paris was given to General Magnan, who, though he preferred not
to share in the deliberations on the _coup d'état_, had promised his
co-operation when the moment should arrive. The support, or at least the
acquiescence, of the army seemed thus to be assured. The National Guard,
which, under Changarnier, would probably have rallied in defence of the
Assembly, had been placed under an officer pledged to keep it in inaction.
For the management of the police Louis Napoleon had fixed upon M. Maupas,
Préfet of the Haute Garonne. This person, to whose shamelessness we owe the
most authentic information that exists on the _coup d'état_, had,
while in an inferior station, made it his business to ingratiate himself
with the President by sending to him personally police reports which ought
to have been sent to the Ministers. The objects and the character of M.
Maupas were soon enough understood by Louis Napoleon. He promoted him to
high office; sheltered him from the censure of his superiors; and, when the
_coup d'état_ was drawing nigh, called him to Paris, in the full and
well-grounded confidence that, whatever the most perfidious ingenuity could
contrive in turning the guardians of the law against the law itself, that
M. Maupas, as Préfet of Police, might be relied upon to accomplish.

[The _coup d'état_ fixed for December.]

Preparations for the _coup d'état_ had been so far advanced in
September that a majority of the conspirators had then urged Louis Napoleon
to strike the blow without delay, while the members of the Assembly were
still dispersed over France in the vacation. St. Arnaud, however, refused
his assent, declaring that the deputies, if left free, would assemble at a
distance from Paris, summon to them the generals loyal to the Constitution,
and commence a civil war. He urged that, in order to avoid greater
subsequent risks, it would be necessary to seize all the leading
representatives and generals from whom resistance might be expected, and to
hold them under durance until the crisis should be over. This simultaneous
arrest of all the foremost public men in France could only be effected at a
time when the Assembly was sitting. St. Arnaud therefore demanded that the
_coup d'état_ should be postponed till the winter. Another reason made
for delay. Little as the populace of Paris loved the reactionary Assembly,
Louis Napoleon was not altogether assured that it would quietly witness his
own usurpation of power. In waiting until the Chamber should again be in
session, he saw the opportunity of exhibiting his cause as that of the
masses themselves, and of justifying his action as the sole means of
enforcing popular rights against a legislature obstinately bent on denying
them. Louis Napoleon's own Ministers had overthrown universal suffrage.
This might indeed be matter for comment on the part of the censorious, but
it was not a circumstance to stand in the way of the execution of a great
design. Accordingly Louis Napoleon determined to demand from the Assembly
at the opening of the winter session the repeal of the electoral law of May
31st, and to make its refusal, on which he could confidently reckon, the
occasion of its destruction.

[Louis Napoleon demands repeal of Law of May 31.]

[The Assembly refuses.]

The conspirators were up to this time conspirators and nothing more. A
Ministry still subsisted which was not initiated in the President's designs
nor altogether at his command. On his requiring that the repeal of the law
of May 31st should be proposed to the Assembly, the Cabinet resigned. The
way to the highest functions of State was thus finally opened for the
agents of the _coup d'état_. St. Arnaud was placed at the War Office,
Maupas at the Prefecture of Police. The colleagues assigned to them were
too insignificant to exercise any control over their actions. At the
reopening of the Assembly on the 4th of November an energetic message from
the President was read. On the one hand he denounced a vast and perilous
combination of all the most dangerous elements of society which threatened
to overwhelm France in the following year; on the other hand he demanded,
with certain undefined safeguards, the re-establishment of universal
suffrage. The middle classes were scared with the prospect of a Socialist
revolution; the Assembly was divided against itself, and the democracy of
Paris flattered by the homage paid to the popular vote. With very little
delay a measure repealing the Law of May 31st was introduced into the
Assembly. It was supported by the Republicans and by many members of the
other groups; but the majority of the Assembly, while anxious to devise
some compromise, refused to condemn its own work in the unqualified form on
which the President insisted. The Bill was thrown out by seven votes.
Forthwith the rumour of an impending _coup d'etat_ spread through
Paris. The Questors, or members charged with the safeguarding of the
Assembly, moved the resolutions necessary to enable them to secure
sufficient military aid. Even now prompt action might perhaps have saved
the Chamber. But the Republican deputies, incensed by their defeat on the
question of universal suffrage, plunged headlong into the snare set for
them by the President, and combined with his open or secret partisans to
reject the proposition of the Questors. Changarnier had blindly vouched for
the fidelity of the army; one Republican deputy, more imaginative than his
colleagues, bade the Assembly confide in their invisible sentinel, the
people. Thus the majority of the Chamber, with the clearest warning of
danger, insisted on giving the aggressor every possible advantage. If the
imbecility of opponents is the best augury of success in a bold enterprise,
the President had indeed little reason to anticipate failure.

[The _coup d'etat_, Dec. 2.]

The execution of the _coup d'etat_ was fixed for the early morning of
December 2nd. On the previous evening Louis Napoleon held a public
reception at the Elysée, his quiet self-possessed manner indicating nothing
of the struggle at hand. Before the guests dispersed the President withdrew
to his study. There the last council of the conspirators was held, and they
parted, each to the execution of the work assigned to him. The central
element in the plan was the arrest of Cavaignac, of Changarnier and three
other generals who were members of the Assembly, of eleven civilian
deputies including M. Thiers, and of sixty-two other politicians of
influence. Maupas summoned to the Prefecture of Police in the dead of night
a sufficient number of his trusted agents, received each of them on his
arrival in a separate room, and charged each with the arrest of one of the
victims. The arrests were accomplished before dawn, and the leading
soldiers and citizens of France met one another in the prison of Mazas. The
Palais Bourbon, the meeting-place of the Assembly, was occupied by troops.
The national printing establishment was seized by gendarmes, and the
proclamations of Louis Napoleon, distributed sentence by sentence to
different compositors, were set in type before the workmen knew upon what
they were engaged. When day broke the Parisians found the soldiers in the
streets, and the walls placarded with manifestoes of Louis Napoleon. The
first of these was a decree which announced in the name of the French
people that the National Assembly and the Council of State were dissolved,
that universal suffrage was restored, and that the nation was convoked in
its electoral colleges from the 14th to the 21st of December. The second
was a proclamation to the people, in which Louis Napoleon denounced at once
the monarchical conspirators within the Assembly and the anarchists who
sought to overthrow all government. His duty called upon him to save the
Republic by an appeal to the nation. He proposed the establishment of a
decennial executive authority, with a Senate, a Council of State, a
Legislative Body, and other institutions borrowed from the Consulate of
1799. If the nation refused him a majority of its votes he would summon a
new Assembly and resign his powers; if the nation believed in the cause of
which his name was the symbol, in France regenerated by the Revolution and
organised by the Emperor, it would prove this by ratifying his authority. A
third proclamation was addressed to the army. In 1830 and in 1848 the army
had been treated as the conquered, but its voice was now to be heard.
Common glories and sorrows united the soldiers of France with Napoleon's
heir, and the future would unite them in common devotion to the repose and
greatness of their country.

[Paris on Dec. 2.]

The full meaning of these manifestoes was not at first understood by the
groups who read them. The Assembly was so unpopular that the announcement
of its dissolution, with the restoration of universal suffrage, pleased
rather than alarmed the democratic quarters of Paris. It was not until some
hours had passed that the arrests became generally known, and that the
first symptoms of resistance appeared. Groups of deputies assembled at the
houses of the Parliamentary leaders; a body of fifty even succeeded in
entering the Palais Bourbon and in commencing a debate: they were, however,
soon dispersed by soldiers. Later in the day above two hundred members
assembled at the Mairie of the Tenth Arrondissement. There they passed
resolutions declaring the President removed from his office, and appointing
a commander of the troops at Paris. The first officers who were sent to
clear the Mairie flinched in the execution of their work, and withdrew for
further orders. The Magistrates of the High Court, whose duty it was to
order the impeachment of the President in case of the violation of his oath
to the Constitution, assembled, and commenced the necessary proceedings;
but before they could sign a warrant, soldiers forced their way into the
hall and drove the judges from the Bench. In due course General Forey
appeared with a strong body of troops at the Mairie, where the two hundred
deputies were assembled. Refusing to disperse, they were one and all
arrested, and conducted as prisoners between files of troops to the
Barracks of the Quai d'Orsay. The National Guard, whose drums had been
removed by their commander in view of any spontaneous movement to arms,
remained invisible. Louis Napoleon rode out amidst the acclamations of the
soldiery; and when the day closed it seemed as if Paris had resolved to
accept the change of Government and the overthrow of the Constitution
without a struggle.

[December 3.]

[December 4.]

There were, however, a few resolute men at work in the workmen's quarters;
and in the wealthier part of the city the outrage upon the National
Representation gradually roused a spirit of resistance. On the morning of
December 3rd the Deputy Baudin met with his death in attempting to defend a
barricade which had been erected in the Faubourg St. Antoine. The artisans
of eastern Paris showed, however, little inclination to take up arms on
behalf of those who had crushed them in the Four Days of June; the
agitation was strongest within the Boulevards, and spread westwards towards
the stateliest district of Paris. The barricades erected on the south of
the Boulevards were so numerous, the crowds so formidable, that towards the
close of the day the troops were withdrawn, and it was determined that
after a night of quiet they should make a general attack and end the
struggle at one blow. At midday on December 4th divisions of the army
converged from all directions upon the insurgent quarter. The barricades
were captured or levelled by artillery, and with a loss on the part of the
troops of twenty-eight killed, and a hundred and eighty wounded resistance
was overcome. But the soldiers had been taught to regard the inhabitants of
Paris as their enemies, and they bettered the instructions given them.
Maddened by drink or panic, they commenced indiscriminate firing in the
Boulevards after the conflict was over, and slaughtered all who either in
the street or at the windows of the houses came within range of their
bullets. According to official admissions, the lives of sixteen civilians
paid for every soldier slain; independent estimates place far higher the
number of the victims of this massacre. Two thousand arrests followed, and
every Frenchman who appeared dangerous to Louis Napoleon's myrmidons, from
Thiers and Victor Hugo down to the anarchist orators of the wineshops, was
either transported, exiled, or lodged in prison. Thus was the Republic
preserved and society saved.

[The Plébiscite, Dec. 20.]

[Napoleon III. Emperor, Dec. 2, 1852.]

France in general received the news of the _coup d'etat_ with indifference:
where it excited popular movements these movements were of such a character
that Louis Napoleon drew from them the utmost profit. A certain fierce,
blind Socialism had spread among the poorest of the rural classes in the
centre and south of France. In these departments there were isolated
risings, accompanied by acts of such murderous outrage and folly that a
general terror seized the surrounding districts. In the course of a few
days the predatory bands were dispersed, and an unsparing chastisement
inflicted on all who were concerned in their misdeeds; but the reports sent
to Paris were too serviceable to Louis Napoleon to be left in obscurity;
and these brutish village-outbreaks, which collapsed at the first
appearance of a handful of soldiers, were represented as the prelude to a
vast Socialist revolution from which the _coup d'etat_, and that alone, had
saved France. Terrified by the re-appearance of the Red Spectre, the French
nation proceeded on the 20th of December to pass its judgment on the
accomplished usurpation. The question submitted for the _plébiscite_ was,
whether the people desired the maintenance of Louis Napoleon's authority
and committed to him the necessary powers for establishing a Constitution
on the basis laid down in his proclamation of December 2nd. Seven million
votes answered this question in the affirmative, less than one-tenth of
that number in the negative. The result was made known on the last day of
the year 1851. On the first day of the new year Louis Napoleon attended a
service of thanksgiving at Notre Dame, took possession of the Tuileries,
and restored the eagle as the military emblem of France. He was now in all
but name an absolute sovereign. The Church, the army, the ever-servile body
of the civil administration, waited impatiently for the revival of the
Imperial title. Nor was the saviour of society the man to shrink from
further responsibilities. Before the year closed the people was once more
called upon to express its will. Seven millions of votes pronounced for
hereditary power; and on the anniversary of the _coup d'etat_ Napoleon III.
was proclaimed Emperor of the French.




CHAPTER XXI.


England and France in 1851--Russia under Nicholas--The Hungarian
Refugees--Dispute between France and Russia on the Holy Places--Nicholas
and the British Ambassador--Lord Stratford de Redcliffe--Menschikoff's
Mission--Russian Troops enter the Danubian Principalities--Lord Aberdeen's
Cabinet--Movements of the Fleets--The Vienna Note--The Fleets pass the
Dardanelles--Turkish Squadron destroyed at Sinope--Declaration of
War--Policy of Austria--Policy of Prussia--The Western Powers and the
European Concert--Siege of Silistria--The Principalities evacuated--Further
objects of the Western Powers--Invasion of the Crimea--Battle of the
Alma--The Flank March--Balaclava--Inkermann--Winter in the Crimea--Death of
Nicholas--Conference of Vienna--Austria--Progress of the Siege--Plans of
Napoleon III.--Canrobert and Pélissier--Unsuccessful Assault--Battle of the
Tchernaya--Capture of the Malakoff--Fall of Sebastopol--Fall of
Kars--Negotiations for Peace--The Conference of Paris--Treaty of Paris
--The Danubian Principalities--Continued discord in the Ottoman
Empire--Revision of the Treaty of Paris in 1871.


[England in 1851.]

The year 1851 was memorable in England as that of the Great Exhibition.
Thirty-six years of peace, marked by an enormous development of
manufacturing industry, by the introduction of railroads, and by the
victory of the principle of Free Trade, had culminated in a spectacle so
impressive and so novel that to many it seemed the emblem and harbinger of
a new epoch in the history of mankind, in which war should cease, and the
rivalry of nations should at length find its true scope in the advancement
of the arts of peace. The apostles of Free Trade had idealised the cause
for which they contended. The unhappiness and the crimes of nations had, as
they held, been due principally to the action of governments, which plunged
harmless millions into war for dynastic ends, and paralysed human energy by
their own blind and senseless interference with the natural course of
exchange. Compassion for the poor and the suffering, a just resentment
against laws which in the supposed interest of a minority condemned the
mass of the nation to a life of want, gave moral fervour and elevation to
the teaching of Cobden and those who shared his spirit. Like others who
have been constrained by a noble enthusiasm, they had their visions; and in
their sense of the greatness of that new force which was ready to operate
upon human life, they both forgot the incompleteness of their own doctrine,
and under-estimated the influences which worked, and long must work, upon
mankind in an opposite direction. In perfect sincerity the leader of
English economical reform at the middle of this century looked forward to a
reign of peace as the result of unfettered intercourse between the members
of the European family. What the man of genius and conviction had
proclaimed the charlatan repeated in his turn. Louis Napoleon appreciated
the charm which schemes of commercial development exercised upon the
trading classes in France. He was ready to salute the Imperial eagles as
objects of worship and to invoke the memories of Napoleon's glory when
addressing soldiers; when it concerned him to satisfy the commercial world,
he was the very embodiment of peace and of peaceful industry. "Certain
persons," he said, in an address at Bordeaux, shortly before assuming the
title of Emperor, "say that the Empire is war. I say that the Empire is
peace; for France desires peace, and when France is satisfied the world is
tranquil. We have waste territories to cultivate, roads to open, harbours
to dig, a system of railroads to complete; we have to bring all our great
western ports into connection with the American continent by a rapidity of
communication which we still want. We have ruins to restore, false gods to
overthrow, truths to make triumphant. This is the sense that I attach to
the Empire; these are the conquests which I contemplate." Never had the
ideal of industrious peace been more impressively set before mankind than
in the years which succeeded the convulsion of 1848. Yet the epoch on which
Europe was then about to enter proved to be pre-eminently an epoch of war.
In the next quarter of a century there was not one of the Great Powers
which was not engaged in an armed struggle with its rivals. Nor were the
wars of this period in any sense the result of accident, or disconnected
with the stream of political tendencies which makes the history of the age.
With one exception they left in their train great changes for which the
time was ripe, changes which for more than a generation had been the
recognised objects of national desire, but which persuasion and revolution
had equally failed to bring into effect. The Crimean War alone was barren
in positive results of a lasting nature, and may seem only to have
postponed, at enormous cost of life, the fall of a doomed and outworn
Power. But the time has not yet arrived when the real bearing of the
overthrow of Russia in 1854 on the destiny of the Christian races of Turkey
can be confidently expressed. The victory of the Sultan's protectors
delayed the emancipation of these races for twenty years; the victory, or
the unchecked aggression, of Russia in 1854 might possibly have closed to
them for ever the ways to national independence.

[Russian policy under Nicholas.]

The plans formed by the Empress Catherine in the last century for the
restoration of the Greek Empire under a prince of the Russian House had
long been abandoned at St. Petersburg. The later aim of Russian policy
found its clearest expression in the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, extorted
from Sultan Mahmud in 1833 in the course of the first war against Mehemet
Ali. This Treaty, if it had not been set aside by the Western Powers, would
have made the Ottoman Empire a vassal State under the Czar's protection. In
the concert of Europe which was called into being by the second war of
Mehemet Ali against the Sultan in 1840, Nicholas had considered it his
interest to act with England and the German Powers in defence of the Porte
against its Egyptian rival and his French ally. A policy of moderation had
been imposed upon Russia by the increased watchfulness and activity now
displayed by the other European States in all that related to the Ottoman
Empire. Isolated aggression had become impracticable; it was necessary for
Russia to seek the countenance or support of some ally before venturing on
the next step in the extension of its power southwards.

[Nicholas in England, 1844.]

In 1844 Nicholas visited England. The object of his journey was to sound
the Court and Government, and to lay the foundation for concerted action
between Russia and England, to the exclusion of France, when circumstances
should bring about the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, an event which
the Czar believed to be not far off. Peel was then Prime Minister; Lord
Aberdeen was Foreign Secretary. Aberdeen had begun his political career in
a diplomatic mission to the Allied Armies in 1814. His feelings towards
Russia were those of a loyal friend towards an old ally; and the
remembrance of the epoch of 1814, when the young Nicholas had made
acquaintance with Lord Aberdeen in France, appears to have given to the
Czar a peculiar sense of confidence in the goodwill of the English Minister
towards himself. Nicholas spoke freely with Aberdeen, as well as with Peel
and Wellington, on the impending fall of the Ottoman Empire. "We have," he
said, "a sick, a dying man on our hands. We must keep him alive so long as
it is possible to do so, but we must frankly take into view all
contingencies. I wish for no inch of Turkish soil myself, but neither will
I permit any other Power to seize an inch of it. France, which has designs
upon Africa, upon the Mediterranean, and upon the East, is the only Power
to be feared. An understanding between England and Russia will preserve the
peace of Europe." If the Czar pursued his speculations further into detail,
of which there is no evidence, he elicited no response. He was heard with
caution, and his visit appears to have produced nothing more than the
formal expression of a desire on the part of the British Government that
the existing treaty-rights of Russia should be respected by the Porte,
together with an unmeaning promise that, if unexpected events should occur
in Turkey, Russia and England should enter into counsel as to the best
course of action to be pursued in common. [455]

[Nicholas in 1848.]

[The Hungarian refugees, 1849.]

Nicholas, whether from policy or from a sense of kingly honour which at
most times powerfully influenced him, did not avail himself of the
prostration of the Continental Powers in 1848 to attack Turkey. He detested
revolution, as a crime against the divinely ordered subjection of nations
to their rulers, and would probably have felt himself degraded had he, in
the spirit of his predecessor Catherine, turned the calamities of his
brother-monarchs to his own separate advantage. It accorded better with his
proud nature, possibly also with the schemes of a far-reaching policy, for
Russia to enter the field as the protector of the Hapsburgs against the
rebel Hungarians than for its armies to snatch from the Porte what the
lapse of time and the goodwill of European allies would probably give to
Russia at no distant date without a struggle. Disturbances at Bucharest and
at Jassy led indeed to a Russian intervention in the Danubian
Principalities in the interests of a despotic system of government; but
Russia possessed by treaty protectorial rights over these Provinces. The
military occupation which followed the revolt against the Hospodars was the
subject of a convention between Turkey and Russia; it was effected by the
armies of the two Powers jointly; and at the expiration of two years the
Russian forces were peacefully withdrawn. More serious were the
difficulties which arose from the flight of Kossuth and other Hungarian
leaders into Turkey after the subjugation of Hungary by the allied Austrian
and Russian armies. The Courts of Vienna and St. Petersburg united in
demanding from the Porte the surrender of these refugees; the Sultan
refused to deliver them up, and he was energetically supported by Great
Britain, Kossuth's children on their arrival at Constantinople being
received and cared for at the British Embassy. The tyrannous demand of the
two Emperors, the courageous resistance of the Sultan, excited the utmost
interest in Western Europe. By a strange turn of fortune, the Power which
at the end of the last century had demanded from the Court of Vienna the
Greek leader Rhegas, and had put him to death as soon as he was handed over
by the Austrian police, was now gaining the admiration of all free nations
as the last barrier that sheltered the champions of European liberty from
the vengeance of despotic might. The Czar and the Emperor of Austria had
not reckoned with the forces of public indignation aroused against them in
the West by their attempt to wrest their enemies from the Sultan's hand.
They withdrew their ambassadors from Constantinople and threatened to
resort to force. But the appearance of the British and French fleets at the
Dardanelles gave a new aspect to the dispute. The Emperors learnt that if
they made war upon Turkey for the question at issue they would have to
fight also against the Western Powers. The demand for the surrender of the
refugees was withdrawn; and in undertaking to keep the principal of them
under surveillance for a reasonable period, the Sultan gave to the two
Imperial Courts such satisfaction as they could, without loss of dignity,
accept. [456]

[Dispute between France and Russia on the Holy Places, 1850-2.]

The _coup d'état_ of Louis Napoleon at the end of the year 1851 was
witnessed by the Czar with sympathy and admiration as a service to the
cause of order; but the assumption of the Imperial title by the Prince
displeased him exceedingly. While not refusing to recognise Napoleon III.,
he declined to address him by the term (_mon frère_) usually employed
by monarchs in writing to one another. In addition to the question relating
to the Hungarian refugees, a dispute concerning the Holy Places in
Palestine threatened to cause strife between France and Russia. The same
wave of religious and theological interest which in England produced the
Tractarian movement brought into the arena of political life in France an
enthusiasm for the Church long strange to the Legislature and the governing
circles of Paris. In the Assembly of 1849 Montalembert, the spokesman of
this militant Catholicism, was one of the foremost figures. Louis Napoleon,
as President, sought the favour of those whom Montalembert led; and the
same Government which restored the Pope to Rome demanded from the Porte a
stricter enforcement of the rights of the Latin Church in the East. The
earliest Christian legends had been localised in various spots around
Jerusalem. These had been in the ages of faith the goal of countless
pilgrimages, and in more recent centuries they had formed the object of
treaties between the Porte and France. Greek monks, however, disputed
with Latin monks for the guardianship of the Holy Places; and as the
power of Russia grew, the privileges of the Greek monks had increased.
The claims of the rival brotherhoods, which related to doors, keys, stars
and lamps, might probably have been settled to the satisfaction of all
parties within a few hours by an experienced stage-manager; in the hands
of diplomatists bent on obtaining triumphs over one another they assumed
dimensions that overshadowed the peace of Europe. The French and the
Russian Ministers at Constantinople alternately tormented the Sultan in
the character of aggrieved sacristans, until, at the beginning of 1852,
the Porte compromised itself with both parties by adjudging to each
rights which it professed also to secure to the other. A year more, spent
in prevarications, in excuses, and in menaces, ended with the triumph of
the French, with the evasion of the promises made by the Sultan to
Russia, and with the discomfiture of the Greek Church in the person of
the monks who officiated at the Holy Sepulchre and the Shrine of the
Nativity. [457]

[Nicholas and Sir H. Seymour, Jan., Feb., 1853.]

Nicholas treated the conduct of the Porte as an outrage upon himself. A
conflict which had broken out between the Sultan and the Montenegrins, and
which now threatened to take a deadly form, confirmed the Czar in his
belief that the time for resolute action had arrived. At the beginning of
the year 1853 he addressed himself to Hamilton Seymour, British ambassador
at St. Petersburg, in terms much stronger and clearer than those which he
had used towards Lord Aberdeen nine years before. "The Sick Man," he said,
"was in extremities; the time had come for a clear understanding between
England and Russia. The occupation of Constantinople by Russian troops
might be necessary, but the Czar would not hold it permanently. He would
not permit any other Power to establish itself at the Bosphorus, neither
would he permit the Ottoman Empire to be broken up into Republics to afford
a refuge to the Mazzinis and the Kossuths of Europe. The Danubian
Principalities were already independent States under Russian protection.
The other possessions of the Sultan north of the Balkans might be placed on
the same footing. England might annex Egypt and Crete." After making this
communication to the British ambassador, and receiving the reply that
England declined to enter into any schemes based on the fall of the Turkish
Empire and disclaimed all desire for the annexation of any part of the
Sultan's dominions, Nicholas despatched Prince Menschikoff to
Constantinople, to demand from the Porte not only an immediate settlement
of the questions relating to the Holy Places, but a Treaty guaranteeing to
the Greek Church the undisturbed enjoyment of all its ancient rights and
the benefit of all privileges that might be accorded by the Porte to any
other Christian communities. [458]

[The Claims of Russia.]

The Treaty which Menschikoff was instructed to demand would have placed the
Sultan and the Czar in the position of contracting parties with regard to
the entire body of rights and privileges enjoyed by the Sultan's subjects
of the Greek confession, and would so have made the violation of these
rights in the case of any individual Christian a matter entitling Russia to
interfere, or to claim satisfaction as for the breach of a Treaty
engagement. By the Treaty of Kainardjie (1774) the Sultan had indeed bound
himself "to protect the Christian religion and its Churches"; but this
phrase was too indistinct to create specific matter of Treaty-obligation;
and if it had given to Russia any general right of interference on behalf
of members of the Greek Church, it would have given it the same right in
behalf of all the Roman Catholics and all the Protestants in the Sultan's
dominions, a right which the Czars had never professed to enjoy. Moreover,
the Treaty of Kainardjie itself forbade by implication any such
construction, for it mentioned by name one ecclesiastical building for
whose priests the Porte did concede to Russia the right of addressing
representations to the Sultan. Over the Danubian Principalities Russia
possessed by the Treaty of Adrianople undoubted protectorial rights; but
these Provinces stood on a footing quite different from that of the
remainder of the Empire. That the Greek Church possessed by custom and by
enactment privileges which it was the duty of the Sultan to respect, no one
contested: the novelty of Menschikoff's claim was that the observation of
these rights should be made matter of Treaty with Russia. The importance of
the demand was proved by the fact that Menschikoff strictly forbade the
Turkish Ministers to reveal it to the other Powers, and that Nicholas
caused the English Government to be informed that the mission of his envoy
had no other object than the final adjustment of the difficulties
respecting the Holy Places. [459]

[Lord Stratford de Redcliffe.]

[Menschikoff leaves Constantinople, May 21.]

[Russian troops enter the Principalities.]

When Menschikoff reached Constantinople the British Embassy was in the
hands of a subordinate officer. The Ambassador, Sir Stratford Canning, had
recently returned to England. Stratford Canning, a cousin of the Premier,
had been employed in the East at intervals since 1810. There had been a
period in his career when he had desired to see the Turk expelled from
Europe as an incurable barbarian; but the reforms of Sultan Mahmud had at a
later time excited his warm interest and sympathy, and as Ambassador at
Constantinople from 1842 to 1852 he had laboured strenuously for the
regeneration of the Turkish Empire, and for the improvement of the
condition of the Christian races under the Sultan's rule. His dauntless,
sustained energy, his noble presence, the sincerity of his friendship
towards the Porte, gave him an influence at Constantinople seldom, if ever,
exercised by a foreign statesman. There were moments when he seemed to be
achieving results of some value; but the task which he had attempted was
one that surpassed human power; and after ten years so spent as to win for
him the fame of the greatest ambassador by whom England has been
represented in modern times, he declared that the prospects of Turkish
reform were hopeless, and left Constantinople, not intending to return.
[460] Before his successor had been appointed, the mission of Prince
Menschikoff, the violence of his behaviour at Constantinople, and a rumour
that he sought far more than his ostensible object, alarmed the British
Government. Canning was asked to resume his post. Returning to
Constantinople as Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, he communicated on his
journey with the Courts of Paris and Vienna, and carried with him authority
to order the Admiral of the fleet at Malta to hold his ships in readiness
to sail for the East. He arrived at the Bosphorus on April 5th, learnt at
once the real situation of affairs, and entered into negotiation with
Menschikoff. The Russian, a mere child in diplomacy in comparison with his
rival, suffered himself to be persuaded to separate the question of the
Holy Places from that of the guarantee of the rights of the Greek Church.
In the first matter Russia had a good cause; in the second it was advancing
a new claim. The two being dissociated, Stratford had no difficulty in
negotiating a compromise on the Holy Places satisfactory to the Czar's
representative; and the demand for the Protectorate over the Greek
Christians now stood out unobscured by those grievances of detail with
which it had been at first interwoven. Stratford encouraged the Turkish
Government to reject the Russian proposal. Knowing, nevertheless, that
Menschikoff would in the last resort endeavour to intimidate the Sultan
personally, he withheld from the Ministers, in view of this last peril, the
strongest of all his arguments; and seeking a private audience with the
Sultan on the 9th of May, he made known to him with great solemnity the
authority which he had received to order the fleet at Malta to be in
readiness to sail. The Sultan placed the natural interpretation on this
statement, and ordered final rejection of Menschikoff's demand, though the
Russian had consented to a modification of its form, and would now have
accepted a note declaratory of the intentions of the Sultan towards the
Greek Church instead of a regular Treaty. On the 21st of May Menschikoff
quitted Constantinople; and the Czar, declaring that some guarantee must be
held by Russia for the maintenance of the rights of the Greek Christians,
announced that he should order his army to occupy the Danubian Provinces.
After an interval of some weeks the Russian troops crossed the Pruth, and
spread themselves over Moldavia and Wallachia. (June 22nd.) [461]

[English Policy.]

In the ordinary course of affairs the invasion of the territory of one
Empire by the troops of another is, and can be nothing else than, an act of
war, necessitating hostilities as a measure of defence on the part of the
Power invaded. But the Czar protested that in taking the Danubian
Principalities in pledge he had no intention of violating the peace; and as
yet the common sense of the Turks, as well as the counsels that they
received from without, bade them hesitate before issuing a declaration of
war. Since December, 1852, Lord Aberdeen had been Prime Minister of
England, at the head of a Cabinet formed by a coalition between followers
of Sir Robert Peel and the Whig leaders Palmerston and Russell. [462] There
was no man in England more pacific in disposition, or more anxious to
remain on terms of honourable friendship with Russia, than Lord Aberdeen.
The Czar had justly reckoned on the Premier's own forbearance; but he had
failed to recognise the strength of those forces which, both within and
without the Cabinet, set in the direction of armed resistance to Russia.
Palmerston was keen for action. Lord Stratford appears to have taken it for
granted from the first that, if a war should arise between the Sultan and
the Czar in consequence of the rejection of Menschikoff's demand, Great
Britain would fight in defence of the Ottoman Empire. He had not stated
this in express terms, but the communication which he made to the Sultan
regarding his own instructions could only have been intended to convey this
impression. If the fleet was not to defend the Sultan, it was a mere piece
of deceit to inform him that the Ambassador had powers to place it in
readiness to sail; and such deceit was as alien to the character of Lord
Stratford as the assumption of a virtual engagement towards the Sultan was
in keeping with his imperious will and his passionate conviction of the
duty of England. From the date of Lord Stratford's visit to the Palace,
although no Treaty or agreement was in existence, England stood bound in
honour, so long as the Turks should pursue the policy laid down by her
envoy, to fulfil the expectations which this envoy had held out.

[British and French fleets moved to Besika Bay, July, 1853.]

[The Vienna Note, July 28.]

[Constantinople in September.]

[British and French fleets pass the Dardanelles, Oct. 22.]

Had Lord Stratford been at the head of the Government, the policy and
intentions of Great Britain would no doubt have been announced with such
distinctness that the Czar could have fostered no misapprehension as to the
results of his own acts. Palmerston, as Premier, would probably have
adopted the same clear course, and war would either have been avoided by
this nation or have been made with a distinct purpose and on a definite
issue. But the Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen was at variance with itself.
Aberdeen was ready to go to all lengths in negotiation, but he was not
sufficiently master of his colleagues and of the representatives of England
abroad to prevent acts and declarations which in themselves brought war
near; above all, he failed to require from Turkey that abstention from
hostilities on which, so long as negotiations lasted, England and the other
Powers which proposed to make the cause of the Porte their own ought
unquestionably to have insisted. On the announcement by the Czar that his
army was about to enter the Principalities, the British Government
despatched the fleet to Besika Bay near the entrance to the Dardanelles,
and authorised Stratford to call it to the Bosphorus, in case
Constantinople should be attacked. [463] The French fleet, which had come
into Greek waters on Menschikoff's appearance at Constantinople, took up
the same position. Meanwhile European diplomacy was busily engaged in
framing schemes of compromise between the Porte and Russia. The
representatives of the four Powers met at Vienna, and agreed upon a note
which, as they considered, would satisfy any legitimate claims of Russia on
behalf of the Greek Church, and at the same time impose upon the Sultan no
further obligations towards Russia than those which already existed. [464]
This note, however, was ill drawn, and would have opened the door to new
claims on the part of Russia to a general Protectorate not sanctioned by
its authors. The draft was sent to St. Petersburg, and was accepted by the
Czar. At Constantinople its ambiguities were at once recognised; and though
Lord Stratford in his official capacity urged its acceptance under a
European guarantee against misconstruction, the Divan, now under the
pressure of strong patriotic forces, refused to accept the note unless
certain changes were made in its expressions. France, England, and Austria
united in recommending to the Court of St. Petersburg the adoption of these
amendments. The Czar, however, declined to admit them, and a Russian
document, which obtained a publicity for which it was not intended, proved
that the construction of the note which the amendments were expressly
designed to exclude was precisely that which Russia meant to place upon it.
The British Ministry now refused to recommend the note any longer to the
Porte. [465] Austria, while it approved of the amendments, did not consider
that their rejection by the Czar justified England in abandoning the note
as the common award of the European Powers; and thus the concert of Europe
was interrupted, England and France combining in a policy which Austria and
Prussia were not willing to follow. In proportion as the chances of joint
European action diminished, the ardour of the Turks themselves, and of
those who were to be their allies, rose higher. Tumults, organised by the
heads of the war-party, broke out at Constantinople; and although Stratford
scorned the alarms of his French colleagues, who reported that a massacre
of the Europeans in the capital was imminent, he thought it necessary to
call up two vessels of war in order to provide for the security of the
English residents and of the Sultan himself. In England Palmerston and the
men of action in the Cabinet dragged Lord Aberdeen with them. The French
Government pressed for vigorous measures, and in conformity with its desire
instructions were sent from London to Lord Stratford to call the fleet to
the Bosphorus, and to employ it in defending the territory of the Sultan
against aggression. On the 22nd of October the British and French fleets
passed the Dardanelles.

[The ultimatum of Omar Pasha rejected, Oct. 10.]

[Turkish squadron destroyed at Sinope, Nov. 30.]

The Turk, sure of the protection of the Western Powers, had for some weeks
resolved upon war; and yet the possibilities of a diplomatic settlement
were not yet exhausted. Stratford himself had forwarded to Vienna the draft
of an independent note which the Sultan was prepared to accept. This had
not yet been seen at St. Petersburg. Other projects of conciliation filled
the desks of all the leading politicians of Europe. Yet, though the belief
generally existed that some scheme could be framed by which the Sultan,
without sacrifice of his dignity and interest, might induce the Czar to
evacuate the Principalities, no serious attempt was made to prevent the
Turks from coming into collision with their enemies both by land and sea.
The commander of the Russian troops in the Principalities having, on the
10th of October, rejected an ultimatum requiring him to withdraw within
fifteen days, this answer was taken as the signal for the commencement of
hostilities. The Czar met the declaration of war with a statement that he
would abstain from taking the offensive, and would continue merely to hold
the Principalities as a material guarantee. Omar Pasha, the Ottoman
commander in Bulgaria, was not permitted to observe the same passive
attitude. Crossing the Danube, he attacked and defeated the Russians at
Oltenitza. Thus assailed, the Czar considered that his engagement not to
act on the offensive was at an end, and the Russian fleet, issuing from
Sebastopol, attacked and destroyed a Turkish squadron in the harbour of
Sinope on the southern coast of the Black Sea (November 30). The action was
a piece of gross folly on the part of the Russian authorities if they still
cherished the hopes of pacification which the Czar professed; but others
also were at fault. Lord Stratford and the British Admiral, if they could
not prevent the Turkish ships from remaining in the Euxine, where they were
useless against the superior force of Russia, might at least in exercise of
the powers given to them have sent a sufficient escort to prevent an
encounter. But the same ill-fortune and incompleteness that had marked all
the diplomacy of the previous months attended the counsels of the Admirals
at the Bosphorus; and the disaster of Sinope rendered war between the
Western Powers and Russia almost inevitable. [466]

[Effect of the action at Sinope.]

[Russian ships required to enter port, December.]

[England and France declare war, March 27, 1854.]

The Turks themselves had certainly not understood the declaration of the
Emperor Nicholas as assuring their squadron at Sinope against attack; and
so far was the Ottoman Admiral from being the victim of a surprise that he
had warned his Government some days before of the probability of his own
destruction. But to the English people, indignant with Russia since its
destruction of Hungarian liberty and its tyrannous demand for the surrender
of the Hungarian refugees, all that now passed heaped up the intolerable
sum of autocratic violence and deceit. The cannonade which was continued
against the Turkish crews at Sinope long after they had become defenceless
gave to the battle the aspect of a massacre; the supposed promise of the
Czar to act only on the defensive caused it to be denounced as an act of
flagrant treachery; the circumstance that the Turkish fleet was lying
within one of the Sultan's harbours, touching as it were the territory
which the navy of England had undertaken to protect, imparted to the attack
the character of a direct challenge and defiance to England. The cry rose
loud for war. Napoleon, eager for the alliance with England, eager in
conjunction with England to play a great part before Europe, even at the
cost of a war from which France had nothing to gain, proposed that the
combined fleets should pass the Bosphorus and require every Russian vessel
sailing on the Black Sea to re-enter port. His proposal was adopted by the
British Government. Nicholas learnt that the Russian flag was swept from
the Euxine. It was in vain that a note upon which the representatives of
the Powers at Vienna had once more agreed was accepted by the Porte and
forwarded to St. Petersburg (December 31). The pride of the Czar was
wounded beyond endurance, and at the beginning of February he recalled his
ambassadors from London and Paris. A letter written to him by Napoleon
III., demanding in the name of himself and the Queen of England the
evacuation of the Principalities, was answered by a reference to the
campaign of Moscow, Austria now informed the Western Powers that if they
would fix a delay for the evacuation of the Principalities, the expiration
of which should be the signal for hostilities, it would support the
summons; and without waiting to learn whether Austria would also unite with
them in hostilities in the event of the summons being rejected, the British
and French Governments despatched their ultimatum to St. Petersburg.
Austria and Prussia sought, but in vain, to reconcile the Court of St.
Petersburg to the only measure by which peace could now be preserved. The
ultimatum remained without an answer, and on the 27th of March England and
France declared war.

[Policy of Austria.]

The Czar had at one time believed that in his Eastern schemes he was sure
of the support of Austria; and he had strong reasons for supposing himself
entitled to its aid. But his mode of thought was simpler than that of the
Court of Vienna. Schwarzenberg, when it was remarked that the intervention
of Russia in Hungary would bind the House of Hapsburg too closely to its
protector, had made the memorable answer, "We will astonish the world by
our ingratitude." It is possible that an instance of Austrian gratitude
would have astonished the world most of all; but Schwarzenberg's successors
were not the men to sacrifice a sound principle to romance. Two courses of
Eastern policy have, under various modifications, had their advocates in
rival schools of statesmen at Vienna. The one is that of expansion
southward in concert with Russia; the other is that of resistance to the
extension of Russian power, and the consequent maintenance of the integrity
of the Ottoman Empire. During Metternich's long rule, inspired as this was
by a faith in the Treaties and the institutions of 1815, and by the dread
of every living, disturbing force, the second of these systems had been
consistently followed. In 1854 the determining motive of the Court of
Vienna was not a decided political conviction, but the certainty that if it
united with Russia it would be brought into war with the Western Powers.
Had Russia and Turkey been likely to remain alone in the arena, an
arrangement for territorial compensation would possibly, as on some other
occasions, have won for the Czar an Austrian alliance. Combination against
Turkey was, however, at the present time, too perilous an enterprise for
the Austrian monarchy; and, as nothing was to be gained through the war, it
remained for the Viennese diplomatists to see that nothing was lost and as
little as possible wasted. The presence of Russian troops in the
Principalities, where they controlled the Danube in its course between the
Hungarian frontier and the Black Sea, was, in default of some definite
understanding, a danger to Austria; and Count Buol, the Minister at Vienna,
had therefore every reason to thank the Western Powers for insisting on the
evacuation of this district. When France and England were burning to take
up arms, it would have been a piece of superfluous brutality towards the
Czar for Austria to attach to its own demand for the evacuation of the
Principalities the threat of war. But this evacuation Austria was
determined to enforce. It refused, as did Prussia, to give to the Czar the
assurance of its neutrality; and, inasmuch as the free navigation of the
Danube as far as the Black Sea had now become recognised as one of the
commercial interests of Germany at large, Prussia and the German Federation
undertook to protect the territory of Austria, if, in taking the measures
necessary to free the Principalities, it should itself be attacked by
Russia. [467]

[Prussia.]

The King of Prussia, clouded as his mind was by political and religious
phantasms, had nevertheless at times a larger range of view than his
neighbours; and his opinion as to the true solution of the difficulties
between Nicholas and the Porte, at the time of Menschikoff's mission,
deserved more attention than it received. Frederick William proposed that
the rights of the Christian subjects of the Sultan should be placed by
Treaty under the guarantee of all the Great Powers. This project was
opposed by Lord Stratford and the Turkish Ministers as an encroachment on
the Sultan's sovereignty, and its rejection led the King to write with some
asperity to his ambassador in London that he should seek the welfare of
Prussia in absolute neutrality. [468] At a later period the King demanded
from England, as the condition of any assistance from himself, a guarantee
for the maintenance of the frontiers of Germany and Prussia. He regarded
Napoleon III. as the representative of a revolutionary system, and believed
that under him French armies would soon endeavour to overthrow the order of
Europe established in 1815. That England should enter into a close alliance
with this man excited the King's astonishment and disgust; and unless the
Cabinet of London were prepared to give a guarantee against any future
attack on Germany by the French Emperor, who was believed to be ready for
every political adventure, it was vain for England to seek Prussia's aid.
Lord Aberdeen could give no such guarantee; still less could he gratify the
King's strangely passionate demand for the restoration of his authority in
the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel, which before 1848 had belonged in name to
the Hohenzollerns. Many influences were brought to bear upon the King from
the side both of England and of Russia. The English Court and Ministers,
strenuously supported by Bunsen, the Prussian ambassador, strove to enlist
the King in an active concert of Europe against Russia by dwelling on the
duties of Prussia as a Great Power and the dangers arising to it from
isolation. On the other hand, the admiration felt by Frederick William for
the Emperor Nicholas, and the old habitual friendship between Prussia and
Russia, gave strength to the Czar's advocates at Berlin. Schemes for a
reconstruction of Europe, which were devised by Napoleon, and supposed to
receive some countenance from Palmerston, reached the King's ear. [469] He
heard that Austria was to be offered the Danubian Provinces upon condition
of giving up northern Italy; that Piedmont was to receive Lombardy, and in
return to surrender Savoy to France; that, if Austria should decline to
unite actively with the Western Powers, revolutionary movements were to be
stirred up in Italy and in Hungary. Such reports kindled the King's rage.
"Be under no illusion," he wrote to his ambassador; "tell the British
Ministers in their private ear and on the housetops that I will not suffer
Austria to be attacked by the revolution without drawing the sword in its
defence. If England and France let loose revolution as their ally, be it
where it may, I unite with Russia for life and death." Bunsen advocated the
participation of Prussia in the European concert with more earnestness than
success. While the King was declaiming against the lawlessness which was
supposed to have spread from the Tuileries to Downing Street, Bunsen, on
his own authority, sent to Berlin a project for the annexation of Russian
territory by Prussia as a reward for its alliance with the Western Courts.
This document fell into the hands of the Russian party at Berlin, and it
roused the King's own indignation. Bitter reproaches were launched against
the authors of so felonious a scheme. Bunsen could no longer retain his
office. Other advocates of the Western alliance were dismissed from their
places, and the policy of neutrality carried the day at Berlin.

[Relation of the Western Powers to the European Concert.]

The situation of the European Powers in April, 1854, was thus a very
strange one. All the Four Powers were agreed in demanding the evacuation of
the Principalities by Russia, and in the resolution to enforce this, if
necessary, by arms. Protocols witnessing this agreement were signed on the
9th of April and the 23rd of May, [470] and it was moreover declared that
the Four Powers recognised the necessity of maintaining the independence
and the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. But France and England, while they
made the presence of the Russians in the Principalities the avowed cause of
war, had in reality other intentions than the mere expulsion of the
intruder and the restoration of the state of things previously existing. It
was their desire so to cripple Russia that it should not again be in a
condition to menace the Ottoman Empire. This intention made it impossible
for the British Cabinet to name, as the basis of a European league, that
single definite object for which, and for which alone, all the Powers were
in May, 1854, ready to unite in arms. England, the nation and the
Government alike, chose rather to devote itself, in company with France, to
the task of indefinitely weakening Russia than, in company with all Europe,
to force Russia to one humiliating but inevitable act of submission.
Whether in the prosecution of their ulterior objects the Western Courts
might or might not receive some armed assistance from Austria and Prussia
no man could yet predict with confidence. That Austria would to some extent
make common cause with the Allies seemed not unlikely; that Prussia would
do so there was no real ground to believe; on the contrary, fair warning
had been given that there were contingencies in which Prussia might
ultimately be found on the side of the Czar. Striving to the utmost to
discover some principle, some object, or even some formula which might
expand the purely defensive basis accepted by Austria and Prussia into a
common policy of reconstructive action, the Western Powers could obtain
nothing more definite from the Conference at Vienna than the following
shadowy engagement:--"The Four Governments engage to endeavour in common to
discover the guarantees most likely to attach the existence of the Ottoman
Empire to the general equilibrium of Europe. They are ready to deliberate
as to the employment of means calculated to accomplish the object of their
agreement." This readiness to deliberate, so cautiously professed, was a
quality in which during the two succeeding years the Courts of Vienna and
Berlin were not found wanting; but the war in which England and France now
engaged was one which they had undertaken at their own risk, and they
discovered little anxiety on any side to share their labour.

[Siege of Silistria, May.]

[The Principalities evacuated, June.]

During the winter of 1853 and the first weeks of the following year
hostilities of an indecisive character continued between the Turks and the
Russians on the Danube. At the outbreak of the war Nicholas had consulted
the veteran Paskiewitsch as to the best road by which to march on
Constantinople. Paskiewitsch, as a strategist, knew the danger to which a
Russian force crossing the Danube would be exposed from the presence of
Austrian armies on its flank; as commander in the invasion of Hungary in
1849 he had encountered, as he believed, ill faith and base dealing on the
part of his ally, and had repaid it with insult and scorn; he had learnt
better than any other man the military and the moral weakness of the
Austrian Empire in its eastern part. His answer to the Czar's inquiries
was, "The road to Constantinople lies through Vienna." But whatever
bitterness the Czar might have felt at the ingratitude of Francis Joseph,
he was not ready for a war with Austria, in which he could hardly have
avoided the assistance of revolutionary allies; moreover, if the road to
Constantinople lay through Vienna, it might be urged that the road to
Vienna lay through Berlin. The simpler plan was adopted of a march on the
Balkans by way of Shumla, to which the capture of Silistria was to be the
prelude. At the end of March the Russian vanguard passed the Danube at the
lowest point where a crossing could be made, and advanced into the
Dobrudscha. In May the siege of Silistria was undertaken by Paskiewitsch
himself. But the enterprise began too late, and the strength employed both
in the siege and in the field operations farther east was insufficient. The
Turkish garrison, schooled by a German engineer and animated by two young
English officers, maintained a stubborn and effective resistance. French
and English troops had already landed at Gallipoli for the defence of
Constantinople, and finding no enemy within range had taken ship for Varna
on the north of the Balkans. Austria, on the 3rd of June, delivered its
summons requiring the evacuation of the Principalities. Almost at the same
time Paskiewitsch received a wound that disabled him, and was forced to
surrender his command into other hands. During the succeeding fortnight the
besiegers of Silistria were repeatedly driven back, and on the 22nd they
were compelled to raise the siege. The Russians, now hard pressed by an
enemy whom they had despised, withdrew to the north of the Danube. The
retreating movement was continued during the succeeding weeks, until the
evacuation of the Principalities was complete, and the last Russian soldier
had recrossed the Pruth. As the invader retired, Austria sent its troops
into these provinces, pledging itself by a convention with the Porte to
protect them until peace should be concluded, and then to restore them to
the Sultan.

[Further objects of the Western Powers.]

With the liberation of the Principalities the avowed ground of war passed
away; but the Western Powers had no intention of making peace without
further concessions on the part of Russia. As soon as the siege of
Silistria was raised instructions were sent to the commanders of the allied
armies at Varna, pressing, if not absolutely commanding, them to attack
Sebastopol, the headquarters of Russian maritime power in the Euxine. The
capture of Sebastopol had been indicated some months before by Napoleon
III. as the most effective blow that could be dealt to Russia. It was from
Sebastopol that the fleet had issued which destroyed the Turks at Sinope:
until this arsenal had fallen, the growing naval might which pressed even
more directly upon Constantinople than the neighbourhood of the Czar's
armies by land could not be permanently laid low. The objects sought by
England and France were now gradually brought into sufficient clearness to
be communicated to the other Powers, though the more precise interpretation
of the conditions laid down remained open for future discussion. It was
announced that the Protectorate of Russia over the Danubian Principalities
and Servia must be abolished; that the navigation of the Danube at its
mouths must be freed from all obstacles; that the Treaty of July, 1841,
relating to the Black Sea and the Dardanelles, must be revised in the
interest of the balance of power in Europe; and that the claim to any
official Protectorate over Christian subjects of the Porte, of whatever
rite, must be abandoned by the Czar. Though these conditions, known as the
Four Points, were not approved by Prussia, they were accepted by Austria in
August, 1854, and were laid before Russia as the basis of any negotiation
for peace. The Czar declared in answer that Russia would only negotiate on
such a basis when at the last extremity. The Allied Governments, measuring
their enemy's weakness by his failure before Silistria, were determined to
accept nothing less; and the attack upon Sebastopol, ordered before the
evacuation of the Principalities, was consequently allowed to take its
course. [471]

[Sebastopol.]

[The Allies land in the Crimea, Sept. 14.]

[Battle of the Alma, Sept. 20.]

The Roadstead, or Great Harbour, of Sebastopol runs due eastwards inland
from a point not far from the south-western extremity of the Crimea. One
mile from the open sea its waters divide, the larger arm still running
eastwards till it meets the River Tchernaya, the smaller arm, known as the
Man-of-War Harbour, bending sharply to the south. On both sides of this
smaller harbour Sebastopol is built. To the seaward, that is from the
smaller harbour westwards, Sebastopol and its approaches were thoroughly
fortified. On its landward, southern, side the town had been open till
1853, and it was still but imperfectly protected, most weakly on the
south-eastern side. On the north of the Great Harbour Fort Constantine at
the head of a line of strong defences guarded the entrance from the sea;
while on the high ground immediately opposite Sebastopol and commanding the
town there stood the Star Fort with other military constructions. The
general features of Sebastopol were known to the Allied commanders; they
had, however, no precise information as to the force by which it was held,
nor as to the armament of its fortifications. It was determined that the
landing should be made in the Bay of Eupatoria, thirty miles north of the
fortress. Here, on the 14th of September, the Allied forces, numbering
about thirty thousand French, twenty-seven thousand English, and seven
thousand Turks, effected their disembarkation without meeting any
resistance. The Russians, commanded by Prince Menschikoff, lately envoy at
Constantinople, had taken post ten miles further south on high ground
behind the River Alma. On the 20th of September they were attacked in front
by the English, while the French attempted a turning movement from the sea.
The battle was a scene of confusion, and for a moment the assault of the
English seemed to be rolled back. But it was renewed with ever increasing
vigour, and before the French had made any impression on the Russian left
Lord Raglan's troops had driven the enemy from their positions. Struck on
the flank when their front was already broken, outnumbered and badly led,
the Russians gave up all for lost. The form of an orderly retreat was
maintained only long enough to disguise from the conquerors the
completeness of their victory. When night fell the Russian army abandoned
itself to total disorder, and had the pursuit been made at once it could
scarcely have escaped destruction. But St. Arnaud, who was in the last
stage of mortal illness, refused, in spite of the appeal of Lord Raglan, to
press on his wearied troops. Menschikoff, abandoning the hope of checking
the advance of the Allies in a second battle, and anxious only to prevent
the capture of Sebastopol by an enemy supposed to be following at his
heels, retired into the fortress, and there sank seven of his war-ships as
a barrier across the mouth of the Great Harbour, mooring the rest within.
The crews were brought on shore to serve in the defence by land; the guns
were dragged from the ships to the bastions and redoubts. Then, when it
appeared that the Allies lingered, the Russian commander altered his plan.
Leaving Korniloff, the Vice-Admiral, and Todleben, an officer of engineers,
to man the existing works and to throw up new ones where the town was
undefended, Menschikoff determined to lead off the bulk of his army into
the interior of the Crimea, in order to keep open his communications with
Russia, to await in freedom the arrival of reinforcements, and, if
Sebastopol should not at once fall, to attack the Allies at his own time
and opportunity. (September 24th.)

[Flank march to south of Sebastopol.]

[Ineffectual Bombardment, Sept. 17-25.]

The English had lost in the battle of the Alma about two thousand men, the
French probably less than half that number. On the morning after the
engagement Lord Raglan proposed that the two armies should march straight
against the fortifications lying on the north of the Great Harbour, and
carry these by storm, so winning a position where their guns would command
Sebastopol itself. The French, supported by Burgoyne, the chief of the
English engineers, shrank from the risk of a front attack on works supposed
to be more formidable than they really were, and induced Lord Raglan to
consent to a long circuitous march which would bring the armies right round
Sebastopol to its more open southern side, from which, it was thought, an
assault might be successfully made. This flank-march, which was one of
extreme risk, was carried out safely, Menschikoff himself having left
Sebastopol, and having passed along the same road in his retreat into the
interior a little before the appearance of the Allies. Pushing southward,
the English reached the sea at Balaclava, and took possession of the
harbour there, accepting the exposed eastward line between the fortress and
the Russia is outside; the French, now commanded by Canrobert, continued
their march westwards round the back of Sebastopol, and touched the sea at
Kasatch Bay. The two armies were thus masters of the broken plateau which,
rising westwards from the plain of Balaclava and the valley of the
Tchernaya, overlooks Sebastopol on its southern side. That the garrison,
which now consisted chiefly of sailors, could at this moment have resisted
the onslaught of the fifty thousand troops who had won the battle of the
Alma, the Russians themselves did not believe; [472] but once more the
French staff, with Burgoyne, urged caution, and it was determined to wait
for the siege-guns, which were still at sea. The decision was a fatal one.
While the Allies chose positions for their heavy artillery and slowly
landed and placed their guns, Korniloff and Todleben made the
fortifications on the southern side of Sebastopol an effective barrier
before an enemy. The sacrifice of the Russian fleet had not been in vain.
The sailors were learning all the duties of a garrison: the cannon from the
ships proved far more valuable on land. Three weeks of priceless time were
given to leaders who knew how to turn every moment to account. When, on the
17th of October, the bombardment which was to precede the assault on
Sebastopol began, the French artillery, operating on the south-west, was
overpowered by that of the defenders. The fleets in vain thundered against
the solid sea-front of the fortress. At the end of eight days' cannonade,
during which the besiegers' batteries poured such a storm of shot and shell
upon Sebastopol as no fortress had yet withstood, the defences were still
unbroken.

[Battle of Balaclava, Oct. 25.]

Menschikoff in the meantime had received the reinforcements which he
expected, and was now ready to fall upon the besiegers from the east. His
point of attack was the English port of Balaclava and the fortified road
lying somewhat east of this, which formed the outer line held by the
English and their Turkish supports. The plain of Balaclava is divided by a
low ridge into a northern and a southern valley. Along this ridge runs the
causeway, which had been protected by redoubts committed to a weak Turkish
guard. On the morning of the 25th the Russians appeared in the northern
valley. They occupied the heights rising from it on the north and east,
attacked the causeway, captured three of the redoubts, and drove off the
Turks, left to meet their onset alone. Lord Raglan, who watched these
operations from the edge of the western plateau, ordered up infantry from a
distance, but the only English troops on the spot were a light and a heavy
brigade of cavalry, each numbering about six hundred men. The Heavy
Brigade, under General Scarlett, was directed to move towards Balaclava
itself, which was now threatened. While they were on the march, a dense
column of Russian cavalry, about three thousand strong, appeared above the
crest of the low ridge, ready, as it seemed, to overwhelm the weak troops
before them. But in their descent from the ridge the Russians halted, and
Scarlett with admirable courage and judgment formed his men for attack, and
charged full into the enemy with the handful who were nearest to him. They
cut their way into the very heart of the column; and before the Russians
could crush them with mere weight the other regiments of the same brigade
hurled themselves on the right and on the left against the huge inert mass.
The Russians broke and retreated in disorder before a quarter of their
number, leaving to Scarlett and his men the glory of an action which
ranks with the Prussian attack at Mars-la-Tour in 1870 as the most
brilliant cavalry operation in modern warfare. The squadrons of the Light
Brigade, during the peril and the victory of their comrades, stood
motionless, paralysed by the same defect of temper or intelligence in
command which was soon to devote them to a fruitless but ever-memorable
act of self-sacrifice. Russian infantry were carrying off the cannon from
the conquered redoubts on the causeway, when an aide-de-camp from the
general-in-chief brought to the Earl of Lucan, commander of the cavalry,
an order to advance rapidly to the front, and save these guns. Lucan, who
from his position could see neither the enemy nor the guns, believed
himself ordered to attack the Russian artillery at the extremity of the
northern valley, and he directed the Light Brigade to charge in this
direction. It was in vain that the leader of the Light Brigade, Lord
Cardigan, warned his chief, in words which were indeed but too weak, that
there was a battery in front, a battery on each flank, and that the
ground was covered with Russian riflemen. The order was repeated as that
of the head of the army, and it was obeyed. Thus

  "Into the valley of Death
   Rode the Six Hundred."

How they died there, the remnant not turning till they had hewn their way
past the guns and routed the enemy's cavalry behind them, the English
people will never forget. [473]

[Battle of Inkermann, Nov. 5.]

The day of Balaclava brought to each side something of victory and
something of failure. The Russians remained masters of the road that they
had captured, and carried off seven English guns; the English, where they
had met the enemy, proved that they could defeat overwhelming numbers. Not
many days passed before our infantry were put to the test which the cavalry
had so victoriously undergone. The siege-approaches of the French had been
rapidly advanced, and it was determined that on the 5th of November the
long-deferred assault on Sebastopol should be made. On that very morning,
under cover of a thick mist, the English right was assailed by massive
columns of the enemy. Menschikoff's army had now risen to a hundred
thousand men; he had thrown troops into Sebastopol, and had planned the
capture of the English positions by a combined attack from Sebastopol
itself, and by troops advancing from the lower valley of the Tchernaya
across the bridge of Inkermann. The battle of the 5th of November, on the
part of the English, was a soldier's battle, without generalship, without
order, without design. The men, standing to their ground whatever their own
number and whatever that of the foe, fought, after their ammunition was
exhausted, with bayonets, with the butt ends of their muskets, with their
fists and with stones. For hours the ever-surging Russian mass rolled in
upon them; but they maintained the unequal struggle until the arrival of
French regiments saved them from their deadly peril and the enemy were
driven in confusion from the field. The Russian columns, marching right up
to the guns, had been torn in pieces by artillery-fire. Their loss in
killed and wounded was enormous, their defeat one which no ingenuity could
disguise. Yet the battle of Inkermann had made the capture of Sebastopol,
as it had been planned by the Allies, impossible. Their own loss was too
great, the force which the enemy had displayed was too vast, to leave any
hope that the fortress could be mastered by a sudden assault. The terrible
truth soon became plain that the enterprise on which the armies had been
sent had in fact failed, and that another enterprise of a quite different
character, a winter siege in the presence of a superior enemy, a campaign
for which no preparations had been made, and for which all that was most
necessary was wanting, formed the only alternative to an evacuation of the
Crimea.

[Storm of Nov. 14.]

[Winter in the Crimea.]

On the 14th of November the Euxine winter began with a storm which swept
away the tents on the exposed plateau, and wrecked twenty-one vessels
bearing stores of ammunition and clothing. From this time rain and snow
turned the tract between the camp and Balaclava into a morass. The loss of
the paved road which had been captured by the Russians three weeks before
now told with fatal effect on the British army. The only communication with
the port of Balaclava was by a hillside track, which soon became impassable
by carts. It was necessary to bring up supplies on the backs of horses; but
the horses perished from famine and from excessive labour. The men were too
few, too weak, too destitute of the helpful ways of English sailors, to
assist in providing for themselves. Thus penned up on the bleak promontory,
cholera-stricken, mocked rather than sustained during their benumbing toil
with rations of uncooked meat and green coffee-berries, the British
soldiery wasted away. Their effective force sank at mid-winter to eleven
thousand men. In the hospitals, which even at Scutari were more deadly to
those who passed within them than the fiercest fire of the enemy, nine
thousand men perished before the end of February. The time indeed came when
the very Spirit of Mercy seemed to enter these abodes of woe, and in the
presence of Florence Nightingale nature at last regained its healing power,
pestilence no longer hung in the atmosphere which the sufferers breathed,
and death itself grew mild. But before this new influence had vanquished
routine the grave had closed over whole regiments of men whom it had no
right to claim. The sufferings of other armies have been on a greater
scale, but seldom has any body of troops furnished a heavier tale of loss
and death in proportion to its numbers than the British army during the
winter of the Crimean War. The unsparing exposure in the Press of the
mismanagement under which our soldiers were perishing excited an outburst
of indignation which overthrew Lord Aberdeen's Ministry and placed
Palmerston in power. It also gave to Europe at large an impression that
Great Britain no longer knew how to conduct a war, and unduly raised the
reputation of the French military administration, whose shortcomings, great
as they were, no French journalist dared to describe. In spite of Alma and
Inkermann, the military prestige of England was injured, not raised, by the
Crimean campaign; nor was it until the suppression of the Indian Mutiny
that the true capacity of the nation in war was again vindicated before the
world.

[Death of Nicholas, March 2, 1855.]

[Conference of Vienna, March-May, 1855.]

[Austria.]

"I have two generals who will not fail me," the Czar is reported to have
said when he heard of Menschikoff's last defeat, "Generals January and
February." General February fulfilled his task, but he smote the Czar too.
In the first days of March a new monarch inherited the Russian crown. [474]
Alexander II. ascended the throne, announcing that he would adhere to the
policy of Peter the Great, of Catherine, and of Nicholas. But the proud
tone was meant rather for the ear of Russia than of Europe, since Nicholas
had already expressed his willingness to treat for peace on the basis laid
down by the Western Powers in August, 1854. This change was not produced
wholly by the battles of Alma and Inkermann. Prussia, finding itself
isolated in Germany, had after some months of hesitation given a diplomatic
sanction to the Four Points approved by Austria as indispensable conditions
of peace. Russia thus stood forsaken, as it seemed, by its only friend, and
Nicholas could no longer hope to escape with the mere abandonment of those
claims which had been the occasion of the war. He consented to treat with
his enemies on their own terms. Austria now approached still more closely
to the Western Powers, and bound itself by treaty, in the event of peace
not being concluded by the end of the year on the stated basis, to
deliberate with France and England upon effectual means for obtaining the
object of the Alliance. [475] Preparations were made for a Conference at
Vienna, from which Prussia, still declining to pledge itself to warlike
action in case of the failure of the negotiations, was excluded. The
sittings of the Conference began a few days after the accession of
Alexander II. Russia was represented by its ambassador, Prince Alexander
Gortschakoff, who, as Minister of later years, was to play so conspicuous a
part in undoing the work of the Crimean epoch. On the first two Articles
forming the subject of negotiation, namely the abolition of the Russian
Protectorate over Servia and the Principalities, and the removal of all
impediments to the free navigation of the Danube, agreement was reached.
On the third Article, the revision of the Treaty of July, 1841, relating
to the Black Sea and the Dardanelles, the Russian envoy and the
representatives of the Western Powers found themselves completely at
variance. Gortschakoff had admitted that the Treaty of 1841 must be so
revised as to put an end to the preponderance of Russia in the Black Sea;
[476] but while the Western Governments insisted upon the exclusion of
Russian war-vessels from these waters, Gortschakoff would consent only to
the abolition of Russia's preponderance by the free admission of the
war-vessels of all nations, or by some similar method of counterpoise.
The negotiations accordingly came to an end, but not before Austria,
disputing the contention of the Allies that the object of the third
Article could be attained only by the specific means proposed by them,
had brought forward a third scheme based partly upon the limitation of
the Russian navy in the Euxine, partly upon the admission of war-ships of
other nations. This scheme was rejected by the Western Powers, whereupon
Austria declared that its obligations under the Treaty of December 2nd,
1854, had now been fulfilled, and that it returned in consequence to the
position of a neutral.

Great indignation was felt and was expressed at London and Paris at this
so-called act of desertion, and at the subsequent withdrawal of Austrian
regiments from the positions which they had occupied in anticipation of
war. It was alleged that in the first two conditions of peace Austria had
seen its own special interests effectually secured; and that as soon as the
Court of St. Petersburg had given the necessary assurances on these heads
the Cabinet of Vienna was willing to sacrifice the other objects of the
Alliance and to abandon the cause of the Maritime Powers, in order to
regain, with whatever loss of honour, the friendship of the Czar. Though it
was answered with perfect truth that Austria had never accepted the
principle of the exclusion of Russia from the Black Sea, and was still
ready to take up arms in defence of that system by which it considered that
Russia's preponderance in the Black Sea might be most suitably prevented,
this argument sounded hollow to combatants convinced of the futility of all
methods for holding Russia in check except their own. Austria had
grievously injured its own position and credit with the Western Powers. On
the other hand it had wounded Russia too deeply to win from the Czar the
forgiveness which it expected. Its policy of balance, whether best
described as too subtle or as too impartial, had miscarried. It had
forfeited its old, without acquiring new friendships. It remained isolated
in Europe, and destined to meet without support and without an ally the
blows which were soon to fall upon it.

[Progress of the siege, January-May, 1855.]

[Canrobert succeeded by Pélissier, May.]

[Unsuccessful assault, June 18.]

[Battle of the Tchernaya, Aug. 16.]

[Capture of the Malakoff, Sept. 8.]

[Fall of Sebastopol, Sept. 9.]

The prospects of the besieging armies before Sebastopol were in some
respects better towards the close of January, 1855, than they were when the
Conference of Vienna commenced its sittings six weeks later. Sardinia,
under the guidance of Cavour, had joined the Western Alliance, and was
about to send fifteen thousand soldiers to the Crimea. A new plan of
operations, which promised excellent results, had been adopted at
headquarters. Up to the end of 1854 the French had directed their main
attack against the Flagstaff bastion, a little to the west of the head of
the Man-of-War Harbour. They were now, however, convinced by Lord Raglan
that the true keystone to the defences of Sebastopol was the Malakoff, on
the eastern side, and they undertook the reduction of this formidable work,
while the British directed their efforts against the neighbouring Redan.
[477] The heaviest fire of the besiegers being thus concentrated on a
narrow line, it seemed as if Sebastopol must soon fall. But at the
beginning of February a sinister change came over the French camp. General
Niel arrived from Paris vested with powers which really placed him in
control of the general-in-chief; and though Canrobert was but partially
made acquainted with the Emperor's designs, he was forced to sacrifice to
them much of his own honour and that of the army. Napoleon had determined
to come to the Crimea himself, and at the fitting moment to end by one
grand stroke the war which had dragged so heavily in the hands of others.
He believed that Sebastopol could only be taken by a complete investment;
and it was his design to land with a fresh army on the south-eastern coast
of the Crimea, to march across the interior of the peninsula, to sweep
Menschikoff's forces from their position above the Tchernaya, and to
complete the investment of Sebastopol from the north. With this scheme of
operations in view, all labour expended in the attack on Sebastopol from
the south was effort thrown away. Canrobert, who had promised his most
vigorous co-operation to Lord Raglan, was fettered and paralysed by the
Emperor's emissary at headquarters. For three successive months the
Russians not only held their own, but by means of counter-approaches won
back from the French some of the ground that they had taken. The very
existence of the Alliance was threatened when, after Canrobert and Lord
Raglan had despatched a force to seize the Russian posts on the Sea of
Azof, the French portion of this force was peremptorily recalled by the
Emperor, in order that it might be employed in the march northwards across
the Crimea. At length, unable to endure the miseries of the position,
Canrobert asked to be relieved of his command. He was succeeded by General
Pélissier. Pélissier, a resolute, energetic soldier, one moreover who did
not owe his promotion to complicity in the _coup d'état_, flatly
refused to obey the Emperor's orders. Sweeping aside the flimsy schemes
evolved at the Tuileries, he returned with all his heart to the plan agreed
upon by the Allied commanders at the beginning of the year; and from this
time, though disasters were still in store, they were not the result of
faltering or disloyalty at the headquarters of the French army. The general
assault on the Malakoff and the Redan was fixed for the 18th of June. It
was bravely met by the Russians; the Allies were driven back with heavy
loss, and three months more were added to the duration of the siege. Lord
Raglan did not live to witness the last stage of the war. Exhausted by his
labours, heartsick at the failure of the great attack, he died on the 28th
of June, leaving the command to General Simpson, an officer far his
inferior. As the lines of the besiegers approached nearer and nearer to the
Russian fortifications, the army which had been defeated at Inkermann
advanced for one last effort. Crossing the Tchernaya, it gave battle on the
16th of August. The French and the Sardinians, with little assistance from
the British army, won a decisive victory. Sebastopol could hope no longer
for assistance from without, and on the 8th of September the blow which had
failed in June was dealt once more. The French, throwing themselves in
great strength upon the Malakoff, carried this fortress by storm, and
frustrated every effort made for its recovery; the British, attacking the
Redan with a miserably weak force, were beaten and overpowered. But the
fall of the Malakoff was in itself equivalent to the capture of Sebastopol.
A few more hours passed, and a series of tremendous explosions made known
to the Allies that the Russian commander was blowing up his magazines and
withdrawing to the north of the Great Harbour. The prize was at length won,
and at the end of a siege of three hundred and fifty days what remained of
the Czar's great fortress passed into the hands of his enemies.

[Exhaustion of Russia.]

[Fall of Kars, Nov. 28.]

[Negotiations for peace.]

The Allies had lost since their landing in the Crimea not less than a
hundred thousand men. An enterprise undertaken in the belief that it would
be accomplished in the course of a few weeks, and with no greater sacrifice
of life than attends every attack upon a fortified place, had proved
arduous and terrible almost beyond example. Yet if the Crimean campaign was
the result of error and blindness on the part of the invaders, it was
perhaps even more disastrous to Russia than any warfare in which an enemy
would have been likely to engage with fuller knowledge of the conditions to
be met. The vast distances that separated Sebastopol from the military
depôts in the interior of Russia made its defence a drain of the most
fearful character on the levies and the resources of the country. What tens
of thousands sank in the endless, unsheltered march without ever nearing
the sea, what provinces were swept of their beasts of burden, when every
larger shell fired against the enemy had to be borne hundreds of miles by
oxen, the records of the war but vaguely make known. The total loss of the
Russians should perhaps be reckoned at three times that of the Allies. Yet
the fall of Sebastopol was not immediately followed by peace. The
hesitation of the Allies in cutting off the retreat of the Russian army had
enabled its commander to retain his hold upon the Crimea; in Asia, the
delays of a Turkish relieving army gave to the Czar one last gleam of
success in the capture of Kars, which, after a strenuous resistance,
succumbed to famine on the 28th of November. But before Kars had fallen
negotiations for peace had commenced. France was weary of the war.
Napoleon, himself unwilling to continue it except at the price of French
aggrandisement on the Continent, was surrounded by a band of palace
stock-jobbers who had staked everything on the rise of the funds that would
result from peace. It was known at every Court of Europe that the Allies
were completely at variance with one another; that while the English
nation, stung by the failure of its military administration during the
winter, by the nullity of its naval operations in the Baltic, and by the
final disaster at the Redan, was eager to prove its real power in a new
campaign, the ruler of France, satisfied with the crowning glory of the
Malakoff, was anxious to conclude peace on any tolerable terms. Secret
communications from St. Petersburg were made at Paris by Baron Seebach,
envoy of Saxony, a son-in-law of the Russian Chancellor: the Austrian
Cabinet, still bent on acting the part of arbiter, but hopeless of the
results of a new Conference, addressed itself to the Emperor Napoleon
singly, and persuaded him to enter into a negotiation which was concealed
for a while from Great Britain. The two intrigues were simultaneously
pursued by our ally, but Seebach's proposals were such that even the
warmest friends of Russia at the Tuileries could scarcely support them, and
the Viennese diplomatists won the day. It was agreed that a note containing
Preliminaries of Peace should be presented by Austria at St. Petersburg as
its own ultimatum, after the Emperor Napoleon should have won from the
British Government its assent to these terms without any alteration. The
Austrian project embodied indeed the Four Points which Britain had in
previous months fixed as the conditions of peace, and in substance it
differed little from what, even after the fall of Sebastopol, British
statesmen were still prepared to accept; but it was impossible that a
scheme completed without the participation of Britain and laid down for its
passive acceptance should be thus uncomplainingly adopted by its
Government. Lord Palmerston required that the Four Articles enumerated
should be understood to cover points not immediately apparent on their
surface, and that a fifth Article should be added reserving to the Powers
the right of demanding certain further special conditions, it being
understood that Great Britain would require under this clause only that
Russia should bind itself to leave the Åland Islands in the Baltic Sea
unfortified. Modified in accordance with the demand of the British
Government, the Austrian draft was presented to the Czar at the end of
December, with the notification that if it as not accepted by the 16th of
January the Austrian ambassador would quit St. Petersburg. On the 15th a
Council was held in the presence of the Czar. Nesselrode, who first gave
his opinion, urged that the continuance of the war would plunge Russia into
hostilities with all Europe, and advised submission to a compact which
would last only until Russia had recovered its strength or new relations
had arisen among the Powers. One Minister after another declared that
Poland, Finland, the Crimea, and the Caucasus would be endangered if peace
were not now made; the Chief of the Finances stated that Russia could not
go through another campaign without bankruptcy. [478] At the end of the
discussion the Council declared unanimously in favour of accepting the
Austrian propositions; and although the national feeling was still in
favour of resistance, there appears to have been one Russian statesman
alone, Prince Gortschakoff, ambassador at Vienna, who sought to dissuade
the Czar from making peace. His advice was not taken. The vote of the
Council was followed by the despatch of plenipotentiaries to Paris, and
here, on the 25th of February, 1856, the envoys of all the Powers, with the
exception of Prussia, assembled in Conference, in order to frame the
definitive Treaty of Peace. [479]

[Conference of Paris, Feb. 25, 1856.]

[Treaty of Paris, March 30, 1856.]

In the debates which now followed, and which occupied more than a month,
Lord Clarendon, who represented Great Britain, discovered that in each
contested point he had to fight against the Russian and the French envoys
combined, so completely was the Court of the Tuileries now identified with
a policy of conciliation and friendliness towards Russia. [480] Great
firmness, great plainness of speech was needed on the part of the British
Government, in order to prevent the recognised objects of the war from
being surrendered by its ally, not from a conviction that they were
visionary or unattainable, but from unsteadiness of purpose and from the
desire to convert a defeated enemy into a friend. The end, however, was at
length reached, and on the 30th of March the Treaty of Paris was signed.
The Black Sea was neutralised; its waters and ports, thrown open to the
mercantile marine of every nation, were formally and in perpetuity
interdicted to the war-ships both of the Powers possessing its coasts and
of all other Powers. The Czar and the Sultan undertook not to establish or
maintain upon its coasts any military or maritime arsenal. Russia ceded a
portion of Bessarabia, accepting a frontier which excluded it from the
Danube. The free navigation of this river, henceforth to be effectively
maintained by an international Commission, was declared part of the public
law of Europe. The Powers declared the Sublime Porte admitted to
participate in the advantages of the public law and concert of Europe, each
engaging to respect the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire,
and all guaranteeing in common the strict observance of this engagement,
and promising to consider any act tending to its violation as a question of
general interest. The Sultan "having, in his constant solicitude for the
welfare of his subjects, issued a firman recording his generous intentions
towards the Christian population of his empire, [481] and having
communicated it to the Powers," the Powers "recognised the high value of
this communication," declaring at the same time "that it could not, in any
case, give to them the right to interfere, either collectively or
separately, in the relations of the Sultan to his subjects, or in the
internal administration of his empire." The Danubian Principalities,
augmented by the strip of Bessarabia taken from Russia, were to continue to
enjoy, under the suzerainty of the Porte and under the guarantee of the
Powers, all the privileges and immunities of which they were in possession,
no exclusive protection being exercised by any of the guaranteeing
Powers. [482]

[Agreement of the Conference on rights of neutrals.]

Passing beyond the immediate subjects of negotiation, the Conference
availed itself of its international character to gain the consent of Great
Britain to a change in the laws of maritime war. England had always
claimed, and had always exercised, the right to seize an enemy's goods on
the high sea though conveyed in a neutral vessel, and to search the
merchant-ships of neutrals for this purpose. The exercise of this right had
stirred up against England the Maritime League of 1800, and was condemned
by nearly the whole civilised world. Nothing short of an absolute command
of the seas made it safe or possible for a single Power to maintain a
practice which threatened at moments of danger to turn the whole body of
neutral States into its enemies. Moreover, if the seizure of belligerents'
goods in neutral ships profited England when it was itself at war, it
injured England at all times when it remained at peace during the struggles
of other States. Similarly by the issue of privateers England inflicted
great injury on its enemies; but its own commerce, exceeding that of every
other State, offered to the privateers of its foes a still richer booty.
The advantages of the existing laws of maritime war were not altogether on
the side of England, though mistress of the seas; and in return for the
abolition of privateering, the British Government consented to surrender
its sharpest, but most dangerous, weapon of offence, and to permit the
products of a hostile State to find a market in time of war. The rule was
laid down that the goods of an enemy other than contraband of war should
henceforth be safe under a neutral flag. Neutrals' goods discovered on an
enemy's ship were similarly made exempt from capture.

[Fictions of the Treaty of Paris as to Turkey.]

The enactments of the Conference of Paris relating to commerce in time of
hostilities have not yet been subjected to the strain of a war between
England and any European State; its conclusions on all other subjects were
but too soon put to the test, and have one after another been found
wanting. If the Power which calls man into his moment of life could smile
at the efforts and the assumptions of its creature, such smile might have
been moved by the assembly of statesmen who, at the close of the Crimean
War, affected to shape the future of Eastern Europe. They persuaded
themselves that by dint of the iteration of certain phrases they could
convert the Sultan and his hungry troop of Pashas into the chiefs of a
European State. They imagined that the House of Osman, which in the stages
of a continuous decline had successively lost its sway over Hungary, over
Servia, over Southern Greece and the Danubian Provinces, and which would
twice within the last twenty-five years have seen its Empire dashed to
pieces by an Egyptian vassal but for the intervention of Europe, might be
arrested in its decadence by an incantation, and be made strong enough and
enlightened enough to govern to all time the Slavic and Greek populations
which had still the misfortune to be included within its dominions.
Recognising--so ran the words which read like bitter irony, but which were
meant for nothing of the kind--the value of the Sultan's promises of
reform, the authors of the Treaty of Paris proceeded, as if of set purpose,
to extinguish any vestige of responsibility which might have been felt at
Constantinople, and any spark of confidence that might still linger among
the Christian populations, by declaring that, whether the Sultan observed
or broke his promises, in no case could any right of intervention by Europe
arise. The helmsman was given his course; the hatches were battened down.
If words bore any meaning, if the Treaty of Paris was not an elaborate
piece of imposture, the Christian subjects of the Sultan had for the
future, whatever might be their wrongs, no redress to look for but in the
exertion of their own power. The terms of the Treaty were in fact such as
might have been imposed if the Western Powers had gone to war with Russia
for some object of their own, and had been rescued, when defeated and
overthrown, by the victorious interposition of the Porte. All was hollow,
all based on fiction and convention. The illusions of nations in time of
revolutionary excitement, the shallow, sentimental commonplaces of liberty
and fraternity have afforded just matter for satire; but no democratic
platitudes were ever more palpably devoid of connection with fact, more
flagrantly in contradiction to the experience of the past, or more
ignominiously to be refuted by each succeeding act of history, than the
deliberate consecration of the idol of an Ottoman Empire as the crowning
act of European wisdom in 1856.

[The Danubian Principalities.]

[Alexander Cuza Hospodar of both Provinces.]

[Complete Union, 1862.]

[Charles of Hohenzollern, Hereditary Prince, 1866.]

Among the devotees of the Turk the English Ministers were the most
impassioned, having indeed in the possession of India some excuse for their
fervour on behalf of any imaginable obstacle that would keep the Russians
out of Constantinople. The Emperor of the French had during the Conferences
at Paris revived his project of incorporating the Danubian Principalities
with Austria in return for the cession of Lombardy, but the Viennese
Government had declined to enter into any such arrangement. Napoleon
consequently entered upon a new Eastern policy. Appreciating the growing
force of nationality in European affairs, and imagining that in the
championship of the principle of nationality against the Treaties of 1815
he would sooner or later find means for the aggrandisement of himself and
France, he proposed that the Provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia, while
remaining in dependence upon the Sultan, should be united into a single
State under a prince chosen by themselves. The English Ministry would not
hear of this union. In their view the creation of a Roumanian Principality
under a chief not appointed by the Porte was simply the abstraction from
the Sultan of six million persons who at present acknowledged his
suzerainty, and whose tribute to Constantinople ought, according to Lord
Clarendon, to be increased. [483] Austria, fearing the effect of a
Roumanian national movement upon its own Roumanian subjects in
Transylvania, joined in resistance to Napoleon's scheme, and the political
organisation of the Principalities was in consequence reserved by the
Conference of Paris for future settlement. Elections were held in the
spring of 1857 under a decree from the Porte, with the result that
Moldavia, as it seemed, pronounced against union with the sister province.
But the complaint at once arose that the Porte had falsified the popular
vote. France and Russia had now established relations of such amity that
their ambassadors jointly threatened to quit Constantinople if the
elections were not annulled. A visit paid by the French Emperor to Queen
Victoria, with the object of smoothing over the difficulties which had
begun to threaten the Western alliance, resulted rather in increased
misunderstandings between the two Governments as to the future of the
Principalities than in any real agreement. The elections were annulled. New
representative bodies met at Bucharest and Jassy, and pronounced almost
unanimously for union (October, 1857). In the spring of 1858 the Conference
of Paris reassembled in order to frame a final settlement of the affairs of
the Principalities. It determined that in each Province there should be a
Hospodar elected for life, a separate judicature, and a separate
legislative Assembly, while a central Commission, formed by representatives
of both Provinces, should lay before the Assemblies projects of law on
matters of joint interest. In accordance with these provisions, Assemblies
were elected in each Principality at the beginning of 1859. Their first
duty was to choose the two Hospodars, but in both Provinces a unanimous
vote fell upon the same person, Prince Alexander Cuza. The efforts of
England and Austria to prevent union were thus baffled by the Roumanian
people itself, and after three years the elaborate arrangements made by the
Conference were similarly swept away, and a single Ministry and Assembly
took the place of the dual Government. It now remained only to substitute a
hereditary Prince for a Hospodar elected for life; and in 1866, on the
expulsion of Alexander Cuza by his subjects, Prince Charles of
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a distant kinsman of the reigning Prussian
sovereign, was recognised by all Europe as Hereditary Prince of Roumania.
The suzerainty of the Porte, now reduced to the bare right to receive a
fixed tribute, was fated to last but for a few years longer.

[Continued discord in Turkish Empire.]

[Revision of the Treaty of Paris, 1871.]

Europe had not to wait for the establishment of Roumanian independence in
order to judge of the foresight and the statesmanship of the authors of the
Treaty of Paris. Scarcely a year passed without the occurrence of some
event that cast ridicule upon the fiction of a self-regenerated Turkey, and
upon the profession of the Powers that the epoch of external interference
in its affairs was at an end. The active misgovernment of the Turkish
authorities themselves, their powerlessness or want of will to prevent
flagrant outrage and wrong among those whom they professed to rule,
continued after the Treaty of Paris to be exactly what they had been before
it. In 1860 massacres and civil war in Mount Lebanon led to the occupation
of Syria by French troops. In 1861 Bosnia and Herzegovina took up arms. In
1863 Servia expelled its Turkish garrisons. Crete, rising in the following
year, fought long for its independence, and seemed for a moment likely to
be united with Greece under the auspices of the Powers, but it was finally
abandoned to its Ottoman masters. At the end of fourteen years from the
signature of the Peace of Paris, the downfall of the French Empire enabled
Russia to declare that it would no longer recognise the provisions of the
Treaty which excluded its war-ships and its arsenals from the Black Sea. It
was for this, and for this almost alone, that England had gone through the
Crimean War. But for the determination of Lord Palmerston to exclude Russia
from the Black Sea, peace might have been made while the Allied armies were
still at Varna. This exclusion was alleged to be necessary in the interests
of Europe at large; that it was really enforced not in the interest of
Europe but in the interest of England was made sufficiently clear by the
action of Austria and Prussia, whose statesmen, in spite of the discourses
so freely addressed to them from London, were at least as much alive to the
interests of their respective countries as Lord Palmerston could be on
their behalf. Nor had France in 1854 any interest in crippling the power of
Russia, or in Eastern affairs generally, which could be remotely compared
with those of the possessors of India. The personal needs of Napoleon III.
made him, while he seemed to lead, the instrument of the British Government
for enforcing British aims, and so gave to Palmerston the momentary shaping
of a new and superficial concert of the Powers. Masters of Sebastopol, the
Allies had experienced little difficulty in investing their own conclusions
with the seeming authority of Europe at large; but to bring the
representatives of Austria and Prussia to a Council-table, to hand them the
pen to sign a Treaty dictated by France and England, was not to bind them
to a policy which was not their own, or to make those things interests of
Austria and Prussia which were not their interests before. Thus when in
1870 the French Empire fell, England stood alone as the Power concerned in
maintaining the exclusion of Russia from the Euxine, and this exclusion it
could enforce no longer. It was well that Palmerston had made the Treaty of
Paris the act of Europe, but not for the reasons which Palmerston had
imagined. The fiction had engendered no new relation in fact; it did not
prolong for one hour the submission of Russia after it had ceased to be
confronted in the West by a superior force; but it enabled Great Britain to
retire without official humiliation from a position which it had conquered
only through the help of an accidental Alliance, and which it was unable to
maintain alone. The ghost of the Conference of 1856 was, as it were,
conjured up in the changed world of 1871. The same forms which had once
stamped with the seal of Europe the instrument of restraint upon Russia now
as decorously executed its release. Britain accepted what Europe would not
resist; and below the slopes where lay the countless dead of three nations
Sebastopol rose from its ruins, and the ensign of Russia floated once more
over its ships of war.




CHAPTER XXII.


Piedmont after 1849--Ministry of Azeglio--Cavour Prime Minister--Designs of
Cavour--His Crimean Policy--Cavour at the Conference of Paris--Cavour and
Napoleon III.--The Meeting at Plombières--Preparations in Italy--Treaty of
January, 1859--Attempts at Mediation--Austrian Ultimatum--Campaign of
1859--Magenta--Movement in Central Italy--Solferino--Napoleon and Prussia
--Interview of Villafranca--Cavour resigns--Peace of Zürich--Central Italy
after Villafranca--The Proposed Congress--"The Pope and the Congress"--
Cavour resumes office--Cavour and Napoleon--Union of the Duchies and the
Romagna with Piedmont--Savoy and Nice added to France--Cavour on this
cession--European opinion--Naples--Sicily--Garibaldi lands at Marsala--
Capture of Palermo--The Neapolitans evacuate Sicily--Cavour and the Party
of Action--Cavour's Policy as to Naples--Garibaldi on the Mainland--Persano
and Villamarina at Naples--Garibaldi at Naples--The Piedmontese Army enters
Umbria and the Marches--Fall of Ancona--Garibaldi and Cavour--The Armies on
the Volturno--Fall of Gaeta--Cavour's Policy with regard to Rome and
Venice--Death of Cavour--The Free Church in the Free State.


[Piedmont after 1849.]

In the gloomy years that followed 1849 the kingdom of Sardinia had stood
out in bright relief as a State which, though crushed on the battle-field,
had remained true to the cause of liberty while all around it the forces of
reaction gained triumph after triumph. Its King had not the intellectual
gifts of the maker of a great State, but he was one with whom those
possessed of such gifts could work, and on whom they could depend. With
certain grave private faults Victor Emmanuel had the public virtues of
intense patriotism, of loyalty to his engagements and to his Ministers, of
devotion to a single great aim. Little given to speculative thought, he saw
what it most concerned him to see, that Piedmont by making itself the home
of liberty could become the Master-State of Italy. His courage on the
battle-field, splendid and animating as it was, distinguished him less than
another kind of courage peculiarly his own. Ignorant and superstitious, he
had that rare and masculine quality of soul which in the anguish of
bereavement and on the verge of the unseen world remains proof against the
appeal and against the terrors of a voice speaking with more than human
authority. Rome, not less than Austria, stood across the path that led to
Italian freedom, and employed all its art, all its spiritual force, to turn
Victor Emmanuel from the work that lay before him. There were moments in
his life when a man of not more than common weakness might well have
flinched from the line of conduct on which he had resolved in hours of
strength and of insight; there were times when a less constant mind might
well have wavered and cast a balance between opposing systems of policy. It
was not through heroic greatness that Victor Emmanuel rendered his
priceless services to Italy. He was a man not conspicuously cast in a
different mould from many another plain, strong nature, but the qualities
which he possessed were precisely those which Italy required. Fortune,
circumstance, position favoured him and made his glorious work possible;
but what other Italian prince of this century, though placed on the throne
of Piedmont, and numbering Cavour among his subjects, would have played the
part, the simple yet all momentous part, which Victor Emmanuel played so
well? The love and the gratitude of Italy have been lavished without stint
on the memory of its first sovereign, who served his nation with qualities
of so homely a type, and in whose life there was so much that needed
pardon. The colder judgment of a later time will hardly contest the title
of Victor Emmanuel to be ranked among those few men without whom Italian
union would not have been achieved for another generation.

[Ministry of Azeglio, 1849-52.]

[Cavour Prime Minister, 1852.]

On the conclusion of peace with Austria after the campaign of Novara, the
Government and the Parliament of Turin addressed themselves to the work of
emancipating the State from the system of ecclesiastical privilege and
clerical ascendency which had continued in full vigour down to the last
year of Charles Albert's reign. Since 1814 the Church had maintained, or
had recovered, both in Piedmont and in the island of Sardinia, rights which
had been long wrested from it in other European societies, and which were
out of harmony with the Constitution now taking root under Victor Emmanuel.
The clergy had still their own tribunals, and even in the case of criminal
offences were not subject to the jurisdiction of the State. The Bishops
possessed excessive powers and too large a share of the Church revenues;
the parochial clergy lived in want; monasteries and convents abounded. It
was not in any spirit of hostility towards the Church that Massimo
d'Azeglio, whom the King called to office after Novara, commenced the work
of reform by measures subjecting the clergy to the law-courts of the State,
abolishing the right of sanctuary in monasteries, and limiting the power of
corporations to acquire landed property. If the Papacy would have met
Victor Emmanuel in a fair spirit his Government would gladly have avoided a
dangerous and exasperating struggle; but all the forces and the passions of
Ultramontanism were brought to bear against the proposed reforms. The
result was that the Minister, abandoned by a section of the Conservative
party on whom he had relied, sought the alliance of men ready for a larger
and bolder policy, and called to office the foremost of those from whom he
had received an independent support in the Chamber, Count Cavour. Entering
the Cabinet in 1850 as Minister of Commerce, Cavour rapidly became the
master of all his colleagues. On his own responsibility he sought and won
the support of the more moderate section of the Opposition, headed by
Rattazzi; and after a brief withdrawal from office, caused by divisions
within the Cabinet, he returned to power in October, 1852, as Prime
Minister.

[Cavour.]

Cavour, though few men have gained greater fame as diplomatists, had not
been trained in official life. The younger son of a noble family, he had
entered the army in 1826, and served in the Engineers; but his sympathies
with the liberal movement of 1830 brought him into extreme disfavour with
his chiefs. He was described by Charles Albert, then Prince of Carignano,
as the most dangerous man in the kingdom, and was transferred at the
instance of his own father to the solitary Alpine fortress of Bard. Too
vigorous a nature to submit to inaction, too buoyant and too sagacious to
resort to conspiracy, he quitted the army, and soon afterwards undertook
the management of one of the family estates, devoting himself to scientific
agriculture on a large scale. He was a keen and successful man of business,
but throughout the next twelve years, which he passed in fruitful private
industry, his mind dwelt ardently on public affairs. He was filled with a
deep discontent at the state of society which he saw around him in
Piedmont, and at the condition of Italy at large under foreign and clerical
rule. Repeated visits to France and England made him familiar with the
institutions of freer lands, and gave definiteness to his political and
social aims. [484] In 1847, when changes were following fast, he founded
with some other Liberal nobles the journal _Risorgimento_, devoted to
the cause of national revival; and he was one of the first who called upon
King Charles Albert to grant a Constitution. During the stormy days of 1848
he was at once the vigorous advocate of war with Austria and the adversary
of Republicans and Extremists who for their own theories seemed willing to
plunge Italy into anarchy. Though unpopular with the mob, he was elected to
the Chamber by Turin, and continued to represent the capital after the
peace. Up to this time there had been little opportunity for the proof of
his extraordinary powers, but the inborn sagacity of Victor Emmanuel had
already discerned in him a man who could not remain in a subordinate
position. "You will see him turn you all out of your places," the King
remarked to his Ministers, as he gave his assent to Cavour's first
appointment to a seat in the Cabinet.

[Plans of Cavour.]

[Cavour's Crimean policy.]

The Ministry of Azeglio had served Piedmont with honour from 1849 to 1852,
but its leader scarcely possessed the daring and fertility of mind which
the time required. Cavour threw into the work of government a passion and
intelligence which soon produced results visible to all Europe. His
devotion to Italy was as deep, as all-absorbing, as that of Mazzini
himself, though the methods and schemes of the two men were in such
complete antagonism. Cavour's fixed purpose was to drive Austria out of
Italy by defeat in the battle-field, and to establish, as the first step
towards national union, a powerful kingdom of Northern Italy under Victor
Emmanuel. In order that the military and naval forces of Piedmont might be
raised to the highest possible strength and efficiency, he saw that the
resources of the country must be largely developed; and with this object he
negotiated commercial treaties with Foreign Powers, laid down railways, and
suppressed the greater part of the monasteries, selling their lands to
cultivators, and devoting the proceeds of sale not to State-purposes but to
the payment of the working clergy. Industry advanced; the heavy pressure of
taxation was patiently borne; the army and the fleet grew apace. But the
cause of Piedmont was one with that of the Italian nation, and it became
its Government to demonstrate this day by day with no faltering voice or
hand. Protection and support were given to fugitives from Austrian and
Papal tyranny; the Press was laid open to every tale of wrong; and when,
after an unsuccessful attempt at insurrection in Milan in 1853, for which
Mazzini and the Republican exiles were alone responsible, the Austrian
Government sequestrated the property of its subjects who would not return
from Piedmont, Cavour bade his ambassador quit Vienna, and appealed to
every Court in Europe. Nevertheless, Cavour did not believe that Italy,
even by a simultaneous rising, could permanently expel the Austrian armies
or conquer the Austrian fortresses. The experience of forty years pointed
to the opposite conclusion; and while Mazzini in his exile still imagined
that a people needed only to determine to be free in order to be free,
Cavour schemed for an alliance which should range against the Austrian
Emperor armed forces as numerous and as disciplined as his own. It was
mainly with this object that Cavour plunged Sardinia into the Crimean War.
He was not without just causes of complaint against the Czar; but the
motive with which he sent the Sardinian troops to Sebastopol was not that
they might take vengeance on Russia, but that they might fight side by side
with the soldiers of England and France. That the war might lead to
complications still unforeseen was no doubt a possibility present to
Cavour's mind, and in that case it was no small thing that Sardinia stood
allied to the two Western Powers; but apart from these chances of the
future, Sardinia would have done ill to stand idle when at any moment, as
it seemed, Austria might pass from armed neutrality into active concert
with England and France. Had Austria so drawn the sword against Russia
whilst Piedmont stood inactive, the influence of the Western Powers must
for some years to come have been ranged on the side of Austria in the
maintenance of its Italian possessions, and Piedmont could at the best have
looked only to St. Petersburg for sympathy or support. Cavour was not
scrupulous in his choice of means when the liberation of Italy was the end
in view, and the charge was made against him that in joining the coalition
against Russia he lightly entered into a war in which Piedmont had no
direct concern. But reason and history absolve, and far more than absolve,
the Italian statesman. If the cause of European equilibrium, for which
England and France took up arms, was a legitimate ground of war in the case
of these two Powers, it was not less so in the case of their ally; while if
the ulterior results rather than the motive of a war are held to constitute
its justification, Cavour stands out as the one politician in Europe whose
aims in entering upon the Crimean War have been fulfilled, not mocked, by
events. He joined in the struggle against Russia not in order to maintain
the Ottoman Empire, but to gain an ally in liberating Italy. The Ottoman
Empire has not been maintained; the independence of Italy has been
established, and established by means of the alliance which Cavour gained.
His Crimean policy is one of those excessively rare instances of
statesmanship where action has been determined not by the driving and
half-understood necessities of the moment, but by a distinct and true
perception of the future. He looked only in one direction, but in that
direction he saw clearly. Other statesmen struck blindfold, or in their
vision of a regenerated Turkey fought for an empire of mirage. It may with
some reason be asked whether the order of Eastern Europe would now be
different if our own English soldiers who fell at Balaclava had been
allowed to die in their beds: every Italian whom Cavour sent to perish on
the Tchernaya or in the cholera-stricken camp died as directly for the
cause of Italian independence as if he had fallen on the slopes of Custozza
or under the walls of Rome.

[Cavour at the Conference of Paris.]

[Change of Austrian policy, 1856.]

At the Conference of Paris in 1856 the Sardinian Premier took his place in
right of alliance by the side of the representatives of the great Powers;
and when the main business of the Conference was concluded, Count Buol, the
Austrian Minister, was forced to listen to a vigorous denunciation by
Cavour of the misgovernment that reigned in Central and Southern Italy, of
the Austrian occupation which rendered this possible. Though the French
were still in Rome, their presence might by courtesy be described as a
measure of precaution rendered necessary by the intrusion of the Austrians
farther north; and both the French and English plenipotentiaries at the
Conference supported Cavour in his invective. Cavour returned to Italy
without any territorial reward for the services that Piedmont had rendered
to the Allies; but his object was attained. He had exhibited Austria
isolated and discredited before Europe; he had given to his country a voice
that it had never before had in the Councils of the Powers; he had produced
a deep conviction throughout Italy that Piedmont not only could and would
act with vigour against the national enemy, but that in its action it would
have the help of allies. From this time the Republican and Mazzinian
societies lost ground before the growing confidence in the House of Savoy,
in its Minister and its army. [485] The strongest evidence of the effect of
Cavour's Crimean policy and of his presence at the Conference of Paris was
seen in the action of the Austrian Government itself. From 1849 to 1856 its
rule in Northern Italy had been one not so much of severity as of brutal
violence. Now all was changed. The Emperor came to Milan to proclaim a
general amnesty and to win the affection of his subjects. The sequestrated
estates were restored to their owners. Radetzky, in his ninety-second year,
was at length allowed to pass into retirement; the government of the sword
was declared at an end; Maximilian, the gentlest and most winning of the
Hapsburgs, was sent with his young bride to charm away the sad memories of
the evil time. But it was too late. The recognition shown by the Lombards
of the Emperor's own personal friendliness indicated no reconciliation with
Austria; and while Francis Joseph was still in Milan, King Victor Emmanuel,
in the presence of a Lombard deputation, laid the first stone of the
monument erected by subscriptions from all Italy in memory of those who had
fallen in the campaigns of 1848 and 1849, the statue of a foot-soldier
waving his sword towards the Austrian frontier. The Sardinian Press
redoubled its attacks on Austria and its Italian vassals. The Government of
Vienna sought satisfaction; Cavour sharply refused it; and diplomatic
relations between the two Courts, which had been resumed since the
Conference of Paris, were again broken off.

[Cavour and Napoleon III.]

[Meeting at Plombières, July, 1858.]

Of the two Western Powers, Cavour would have preferred an alliance with
Great Britain, which had no objects of its own to seek in Italy; but when
he found that the Government of London would not assist him by arms against
Austria, he drew closer to the Emperor Napoleon, and supported him
throughout his controversy with England and Austria on the settlement of
the Danubian Principalities. Napoleon, there is no doubt, felt a real
interest in Italy. His own early political theories formed on a study of
the Napoleonic Empire, his youthful alliance with the Carbonari, point to a
sympathy with the Italian national cause which was genuine if not profound,
and which was not altogether lost in 1849, though France then acted as the
enemy of Roman independence. If Napoleon intended to remould the
Continental order and the Treaties of 1815 in the interests of France and
of the principle of nationality, he could make no better beginning than by
driving Austria from Northern Italy. It was not even necessary for him to
devise an original policy. Early in 1848, when it seemed probable that
Piedmont would be increased by Lombardy and part of Venetia, Lamartine had
laid it down that France ought in that case to be compensated by Savoy, in
order to secure its frontiers against so powerful a neighbour as the new
Italian State. To this idea Napoleon returned. Savoy had been incorporated
with France from 1792 to 1814; its people were more French than Italian;
its annexation would not directly injure the interests of any great Power.
Of the three directions in which France might stretch towards its old
limits of the Alps and the Rhine, the direction of Savoy was by far the
least dangerous. Belgium could not be touched without certain loss of the
English alliance, with which Napoleon could not yet dispense; an attack
upon the Rhenish Provinces would probably be met by all the German Powers
together; in Savoy alone was there the chance of gaining territory without
raising a European coalition against France. No sooner had the organisation
of the Danubian Principalities been completed by the Conference which met
in the spring of 1858 than Napoleon began to develop his Italian plans. An
attempt of a very terrible character which was made upon his life by
Orsini, a Roman exile, though at the moment it threatened to embroil
Sardinia with France, probably stimulated him to action. In the summer of
1858 he invited Cavour to meet him at Plombières. The negotiations which
there passed were not made known by the Emperor to his Ministers; they were
communicated by Cavour to two persons only besides Victor Emmanuel. It
seems that no written engagement was drawn up; it was verbally agreed that
if Piedmont could, without making a revolutionary war, and without exposing
Napoleon to the charge of aggression, incite Austria to hostilities, France
would act as its ally. Austria was then to be expelled from Venetia as well
as from Lombardy. Victor Emmanuel was to become sovereign of North-Italy,
with the Roman Legations and Marches; the remainder of the Papal territory,
except Rome itself and the adjacent district, was to be added to Tuscany,
so constituting a new kingdom of Central Italy. The two kingdoms, together
with Naples and Rome, were to form an Italian Confederation under the
presidency of the Pope. France was to receive Savoy and possibly Nice. A
marriage between the King's young daughter Clotilde and the Emperor's
cousin Prince Jerome Napoleon was discussed, if not actually settled. [486]

[Cavour in view of the French Alliance.]

From this moment Cavour laboured night and day for war. His position was an
exceedingly difficult one. Not only had he to reckon with the irresolution
of Napoleon, and his avowed unwillingness to take up arms unless with the
appearance of some good cause; but even supposing the goal of war reached,
and Austria defeated, how little was there in common between Cavour's aims
for Italy and the traditional policy of France! The first Napoleon had
given Venice to Austria at Campo Formio; even if the new Napoleon should
fulfil his promise and liberate all Northern Italy, his policy in regard to
the centre and south of the Peninsula would probably be antagonistic to any
effective union or to any further extension of the influence of the House
of Savoy. Cavour had therefore to set in readiness for action national
forces of such strength that Napoleon, even if he desired to draw back,
should find it difficult to do so, and that the shaping of the future of
the Italian people should be governed not by the schemes which the Emperor
might devise at Paris, but by the claims and the aspirations of Italy
itself. It was necessary for him not only to encourage and subsidise the
National Society--a secret association whose branches in the other Italian
States were preparing to assist Piedmont in the coming war, and to unite
Italy under the House of Savoy--but to enter into communication with some
of the Republican or revolutionary party who had hitherto been at enmity
with all Crowns alike. He summoned Garibaldi in secrecy to Turin, and there
convinced him that the war about to be waged by Victor Emmanuel was one in
which he ought to take a prominent part. As the foremost defender of the
Roman Republic and a revolutionary hero, Garibaldi was obnoxious to the
French Emperor. Cavour had to conceal from Napoleon the fact that Garibaldi
would take the field at the head of a free-corps by the side of the Allied
armies; he had similarly to conceal from Garibaldi that one result of the
war would be the cession of Nice, his own birthplace, to France. Thus
plunged in intrigue, driving his Savoyards to the camp and raising from
them the last farthing in taxation, in order that after victory they might
be surrendered to a Foreign Power; goading Austria to some act of passion;
inciting, yet checking and controlling, the Italian revolutionary elements;
bargaining away the daughter of his sovereign to one of the most odious of
mankind, Cavour staked all on the one great end of his being, the
establishment of Italian independence. Words like those which burst from
Danton in the storms of the Convention--"Perish my name, my reputation, so
that France be free"--were the calm and habitual expression of Cavour's
thought when none but an intimate friend was by to hear. [487] Such tasks
as Cavour's are not to be achieved without means which, to a man noble in
view as Cavour really was, it would have been more agreeable to leave
unemployed. Those alone are entitled to pronounce judgment upon him who
have made a nation, and made it with purer hands. It was well for English
statesmen and philanthropists, inheritors of a world-wide empire, to
enforce the ethics of peace and to plead for a gentlemanlike frankness and
self-restraint in the conduct of international relations. English women had
not been flogged by Austrian soldiers in the market-place; the treaties of
1815 had not consecrated a foreign rule over half our race. To Cavour the
greatest crime would have been to leave anything undone which might
minister to Italy's liberation. [488]

[Treaty of January, 1859.]

[Attempts at mediation.]

[Austrian ultimatum, April 23.]

Napoleon seems to have considered that he would be ready to begin war in
the spring of 1859. At the reception at the Tuileries on the 1st of January
he addressed the Austrian ambassador in words that pointed to an
approaching conflict; a few weeks later a marriage-contract was signed
between Prince Napoleon and Clotilde, daughter of Victor Emmanuel, and part
of the agreement made at Plombières was embodied in a formal Treaty.
Napoleon undertook to support Sardinia in a war that might arise from any
aggressive act on the part of Austria, and, if victorious, to add both
Lombardy and Venetia to Victor Emmanuel's dominions. France was in return
to receive Savoy, the disposal of Nice being reserved till the restoration
of peace. [489] Even before the Treaty was signed Victor Emmanuel had
thrown down the challenge to Austria, declaring at the opening of the
Parliament of Turin that he could not be insensible to the cry of suffering
that rose from Italy. In all but technical form the imminence of war had
been announced, when, under the influence of diplomatists and Ministers
about him, and of a financial panic that followed his address to the
Austrian ambassador, the irresolute mind of Napoleon shrank from its
purpose, and months more of suspense were imposed upon Italy and Europe, to
be terminated at last not by any effort of Napoleon's will but by the rash
and impolitic action of Austria itself. At the instance of the Court of
Vienna the British Government had consented to take steps towards
mediation. Lord Cowley, Ambassador at Paris, was sent to Vienna with
proposals which, it was believed, might form the basis for an amicable
settlement of Italian affairs. He asked that the Papal States should be
evacuated by both Austrian and French troops; that Austria should abandon
the Treaties which gave it a virtual Protectorate over Modena and Parma;
and that it should consent to the introduction of reforms in all the
Italian Governments. Negotiations towards this end had made some progress
when they were interrupted by a proposal sent from St. Petersburg, at the
instance of Napoleon, that Italian affairs should be submitted to a
European Congress. Austria was willing under certain conditions to take
part in a Congress, but it required, as a preliminary measure, that
Sardinia should disarm. Napoleon had now learnt that Garibaldi was to fight
at the head of the volunteers for Victor Emmanuel. His doubts as to the
wisdom of his own policy seem to have increased hour by hour; from Britain,
whose friendship he still considered indispensable to him, he received the
most urgent appeals against war; it was necessary that Cavour himself
should visit Paris in order to prevent the Emperor from acquiescing in
Austria's demand. In Cavour's presence Napoleon seems to have lost some of
his fears, or to have been made to feel that it was not safe to provoke his
confidant of Plombières; [490] but Cavour had not long left Paris when a
proposal was made from London, that in lieu of the separate disarmament of
Sardinia the Powers should agree to a general disarmament, the details to
be settled by a European Commission. This proposal received Napoleon's
assent. He telegraphed to Cavour desiring him to join in the agreement.
Cavour could scarcely disobey, yet at one stroke it seemed that all his
hopes when on the very verge of fulfilment were dashed to the ground, all
his boundless efforts for the liberation of Italy through war with Austria
lost and thrown away. For some hours he appeared shattered by the blow.
Strung to the extreme point of human endurance by labour scarcely remitted
by day or night for weeks together, his strong but sanguine nature gave
way, and for a while the few friends who saw him feared that he would take
his own life. But the crisis passed: Cavour accepted, as inevitable, the
condition of general disarmament; and his vigorous mind had already begun
to work upon new plans for the future, when the report of a decision made
at Vienna, which was soon confirmed by the arrival of an Austrian
ultimatum, threw him into joy as intense as his previous despair. Ignoring
the British proposal for a general disarmament, already accepted at Turin,
the Austrian Cabinet demanded, without qualifications and under threat of
war within three days, that Sardinia should separately disarm. It was
believed at Vienna that Napoleon was merely seeking to gain time; that a
conflict was inevitable; and that Austria now stood better prepared for
immediate action than its enemies. Right or wrong in its judgment of
Napoleon's real intentions, the Austrian Government had undeniably taken
upon itself the part of the aggressor. Cavour had only to point to his own
acceptance of the plan of a general disarmament, and to throw upon his
enemy the responsibility for a disturbance of European peace. His reply was
taken as the signal for hostilities, and on the 29th of April Austrian
troops crossed the Ticino. A declaration of war from Paris followed without
delay. [491]

[Campaign of 1859.]

[Battle of Magenta, June 4.]

For months past Austria had been pouring its troops into Northern Italy. It
had chosen its own time for the commencement of war; a feeble enemy stood
before it, its more powerful adversary could not reach the field without
crossing the Alps or the mountain-range above Genoa. Everything pointed to
a vigorous offensive on the part of the Austrian generals, and in Piedmont
itself it was believed that Turin must fall before French troops could
assist in its defence. From Turin as a centre the Austrians could then
strike with ease, and with superior numbers, against the detachments of the
French army as they descended the mountains at any points in the semicircle
from Genoa to Mont Cenis. There has seldom been a case where the necessity
and the advantages of a particular line of strategy have been so obvious;
yet after crossing the Ticino the Austrians, above a hundred thousand
strong, stood as if spell-bound under their incompetent chief, Giulay.
Meanwhile French detachments crossed Mont Cenis; others, more numerous,
landed with the Emperor at Genoa, and established communications with the
Piedmontese, whose headquarters were at Alessandria. Giulay now believed
that the Allies would strike upon his communications in the direction of
Parma. The march of Bonaparte upon Piacenza in 1796, as well as the
campaign of Marengo, might well inspire this fear; but the real intention
of Napoleon III. was to outflank the Austrians from the north and so to
gain Milan. Garibaldi was already operating at the extreme left of the
Sardinian line in the neighbourhood of Como. While the Piedmontese
maintained their positions in the front, the French from Genoa marched
northwards behind them, crossed the Po, and reached Vercelli before the
Austrians discovered their manoeuvre. Giulay, still lingering between the
Sesia and the Ticino, now called up part of his forces northwards, but not
in time to prevent the Piedmontese from crossing the Sesia and defeating
the troops opposed to them at Palestro (May 30). While the Austrians were
occupied at this point, the French crossed the river farther north, and
moved eastwards on the Ticino. Giulay was thus outflanked and compelled to
fall back. The Allies followed him, and on the 4th of June attacked the
Austrian army in its positions about Magenta on the road to Milan. The
assault of Macmahon from the north gave the Allies victory after a
hard-fought day. It was impossible for the Austrians to defend Milan; they
retired upon the Adda and subsequently upon the Mincio, abandoning all
Lombardy to the invaders, and calling up their troops from Bologna and the
other occupied towns in the Papal States, in order that they might take
part in the defence of the Venetian frontier and the fortresses that
guarded it.

[Movement in Central Italy.]

The victory of the Allies was at once felt throughout Central Italy. The
Grand Duke of Tuscany had already fled from his dominions, and the
Dictatorship for the period of the war had been offered by a Provisional
Government to Victor Emmanuel, who, while refusing this, had allowed his
envoy, Boncampagni, to assume temporary powers at Florence as his
representative. The Duke of Modena and the Duchess of Parma now quitted
their territories. In the Romagna the disappearance of the Austrians
resulted in the immediate overthrow of Papal authority. Everywhere the
demand was for union with Piedmont. The calamities of the last ten years
had taught their lesson to the Italian people. There was now nothing of the
disorder, the extravagance, the childishness of 1848. The populations who
had then been so divided, so suspicious, so easy a prey to demagogues, were
now watchful, self-controlled, and anxious for the guidance of the only
real national Government. As at Florence, so in the Duchies and in the
Romagna, it was desired that Victor Emmanuel should assume the
Dictatorship. The King adhered to the policy which he had adopted towards
Tuscany, avoiding any engagement that might compromise him with Europe or
his ally, but appointing Commissioners to enrol troops for the common war
against Austria and to conduct the necessary work of administration in
those districts. Farini, the historian of the Roman States, was sent to
Modena; Azeglio, the ex-Minister, to Bologna. Each of these officers
entered on his task in a spirit worthy of the time; each understood how
much might be won for Italy by boldness, how much endangered or lost by
untimely scruples. [492]

[Battle of Solferino, June 24.]

In his proclamations at the opening of the war Napoleon had declared that
Italy must be freed up to the shore of the Adriatic. His address to the
Italian people on entering Milan with Victor Emmanuel after the victory of
Magenta breathed the same spirit. As yet, however, Lombardy alone had been
won. The advance of the allied armies was accordingly resumed after an
interval of some days, and on the 23rd of June they approached the
positions held by the Austrians a little to the west of the Mincio. Francis
Joseph had come from Vienna to take command of the army. His presence
assisted the enemy, inasmuch as he had no plan of his own, and wavered from
day to day between the antagonistic plans of the generals at headquarters.
Some wished to make the Mincio the line of defence, others to hold the
Chiese some miles farther west. The consequence was that the army marched
backwards and forwards across the space between the two rivers according as
one or another general gained for the moment the Emperor's confidence. It
was while the Austrians were thus engaged that the allied armies came into
contact with them about Solferino. On neither side was it known that the
whole force of the enemy was close at hand. The battle of Solferino, one of
the bloodiest of recent times, was fought almost by accident. About a
hundred and fifty thousand men were present under Napoleon and Victor
Emmanuel; the Austrians had a slight superiority in force. On the north,
where Benedek with the Austrian right was attacked by the Piedmontese at
San Martino, it seemed as if the task imposed on the Italian troops was
beyond their power. Victor Emmanuel, fighting with the same courage as at
Novara, saw the positions in front of his troops alternately won and lost.
But the success of the French at Solferino in the centre decided the day,
and the Austrians withdrew at last from their whole line with a loss in
killed and wounded of fourteen thousand men. On the part of the Allies the
slaughter was scarcely less.

[Napoleon and Prussia.]

[Interview of Villafranca, July 11.]

[Peace of Villafranca.]

[Treaty of Zürich, Nov. 10.]

Napoleon stood a conqueror, but a conqueror at terrible cost; and in front
of him he saw the fortresses of the Quadrilateral, while new divisions were
hastening from the north and east to the support of the still unbroken
Austrian army. He might well doubt whether, even against his present
antagonist alone, further success was possible. The fearful spectacle of
Solferino, heightened by the effects of overpowering summer heat, probably
affected a mind humane and sensitive and untried in the experience of war.
The condition of the French army, there is reason to believe, was far
different from that represented in official reports, and likely to make the
continuance of the campaign perilous in the extreme. But beyond all this,
the Emperor knew that if he advanced farther Prussia and all Germany might
at any moment take up arms against him. There had been a strong outburst of
sympathy for Austria in the south-western German States. National
patriotism was excited by the attack of Napoleon on the chief of the German
sovereigns, and the belief was widely spread that French conquest in Italy
would soon be followed by French conquest on the Rhine. Prussia had
hitherto shown reserve. It would have joined its arms with those of Austria
if its own claims to an improved position in Germany had been granted by
the Court of Vienna; but Francis Joseph had up to this time refused the
concessions demanded. In the stress of his peril he might at any moment
close with the offers which he had before rejected; even without a distinct
agreement between the two Courts, and in mere deference to German public
opinion, Prussia might launch against France the armies which it had
already brought into readiness for the field. A war upon the Rhine would
then be added to the war before the Quadrilateral, and from the risks of
this double effort Napoleon might well shrink in the interest of France not
less than of his own dynasty. He determined to seek an interview with
Francis Joseph, and to ascertain on what terms peace might now be made. The
interview took place at Villafranca, east of the Mincio, on the 11th of
July. Francis Joseph refused to cede any part of Venetia without a further
struggle. He was willing to give up Lombardy, and to consent to the
establishment of an Italian Federation under the presidency of the Pope, of
which Federation Venetia, still under Austria's rule, should be a member;
but he required that Mantua should be left within his own frontier, and
that the sovereigns of Tuscany and Modena should resume possession of their
dominions. To these terms Napoleon assented, on obtaining a verbal
agreement that the dispossessed princes should not be restored by foreign
arms. Regarding Parma and the restoration of the Papal authority in the
Romagna no stipulations were made. With the signature of the Preliminaries
of Villafranca, which were to form the base of a regular Treaty to be
negotiated at Zürich, and to which Victor Emmanuel added his name with
words of reservation, hostilities came to a close. The negotiations at
Zürich, though they lasted for several months, added nothing of importance
to the matter of the Preliminaries, and decided nothing that had been left
in uncertainty. The Italian Federation remained a scheme which the two
Emperors, and they alone, undertook to promote. Piedmont entered into no
engagement either with regard to the Duchies or with regard to Federation.
Victor Emmanuel had in fact announced from the first that he would enter no
League of which a province governed by Austria formed a part, and from this
resolution he never swerved. [493]

[Resignation of Cavour.]

[Central Italy.]

Though Lombardy was gained, the impression made upon the Italians by the
peace of Villafranca was one of the utmost dismay. Napoleon had so
confidently and so recently promised the liberation of all Northern Italy
that public opinion ascribed to treachery or weakness what was in truth an
act of political necessity. On the first rumour of the negotiations Cavour
had hurried from Turin, but the agreement was signed before his arrival.
The anger and the grief of Cavour are described by those who then saw him
as terrible to witness. [494] Napoleon had not the courage to face him;
Victor Emmanuel bore for two hours the reproaches of his Minister, who had
now completely lost his self-control. Cavour returned to Turin, and shortly
afterwards withdrew from office, his last act being the despatch of ten
thousand muskets to Farini at Modena. In accordance with the terms of
peace, instructions, which were probably not meant to be obeyed, were sent
by Cavour's successor, Rattazzi, to the Piedmontese Commissioners in
Central Italy, bidding them to return to Turin and to disband any forces
that they had collected. Farini, on receipt of this order, adroitly
divested himself of his Piedmontese citizenship, and, as an honorary
burgher of Modena, accepted the Dictatorship from his fellow-townsmen.
Azeglio returned to Turin, but took care before quitting the Romagna to
place four thousand soldiers under competent leaders in a position to
resist attack. It was not the least of Cavour's merits that he had gathered
about him a body of men who, when his own hand was for a while withdrawn,
could pursue his policy with so much energy and sagacity as was now shown
by the leaders of the national movement in Central Italy. Venetia was lost
for the present; but if Napoleon's promise was broken, districts which he
had failed or had not intended to liberate might be united with the Italian
Kingdom. The Duke of Modena, with six thousand men who had remained true to
him, lay on the Austrian frontier, and threatened to march upon his
capital. Farini mined the city gates, and armed so considerable a force
that it became clear that the Duke would not recover his dominions without
a serious battle. Parma placed itself under the same Dictatorship with
Modena; in the Romagna a Provisional Government which Azeglio had left
behind him continued his work. Tuscany, where Napoleon had hoped to find a
throne for his cousin, pronounced for national union, and organised a
common military force with its neighbours. During the weeks that followed
the Peace of Villafranca, declarations signed by tens of thousands, the
votes of representative bodies, and popular demonstrations throughout
Central Italy, showed in an orderly and peaceful form how universal was the
desire for union under the House of Savoy.

[Cavour's Plans before Villafranca.]

[Central Italy after Villafranca. July-November.]

[Mazzini and Garibaldi. August-November.]

Cavour, in the plans which he had made before 1859, had not looked for a
direct and immediate result beyond the creation of an Italian Kingdom
including the whole of the territory north of the Po. The other steps in
the consolidation of Italy would, he believed, follow in their order. They
might be close at hand, or they might be delayed for a while; but in the
expulsion of Austria, in the interposition of a purely Italian State
numbering above ten millions of inhabitants, mistress of the fortresses and
of a powerful fleet, between Austria and those who had been its vassals,
the essential conditions of Italian national independence would have been
won. For the rest, Italy might be content to wait upon time and
opportunity. But the Peace of Villafranca, leaving Venetia in the enemy's
hands, completely changed this prospect. The fiction of an Italian
Federation in which the Hapsburg Emperor, as lord of Venice, should forget
his Austrian interests and play the part of Italian patriot, was too gross
to deceive any one. Italy, on these terms, would either continue to be
governed from Vienna, or be made a pawn in the hands of its French
protector. What therefore Cavour had hitherto been willing to leave to
future years now became the need of the present. "Before Villafranca," in
his own words, "the union of Italy was a possibility; since Villafranca it
is a necessity." Victor Emmanuel understood this too, and saw the need for
action more clearly than Rattazzi and the Ministers who, on Cavour's
withdrawal in July, stepped for a few months into his place. The situation
was one that called indeed for no mean exercise of statesmanship. If Italy
was not to be left dependent upon the foreigner and the reputation of the
House of Savoy ruined, it was necessary not only that the Duchies of Modena
and Parma, but that Central Italy, including Tuscany and at least the
Romagna, should be united with the Kingdom of Piedmont; yet the
accomplishment of this work was attended with the utmost danger. Napoleon
himself was hoping to form Tuscany, with an augmented territory, into a
rival Kingdom of Etruria or Central Italy, and to place his cousin on its
throne. The Ultramontane party in France was alarmed and indignant at the
overthrow of the Pope's authority in the Romagna, and already called upon
the Emperor to fulfil his duties towards the Holy See. If the national
movement should extend to Rome itself, the hostile intervention of France
was almost inevitable. While the negotiations with Austria at Zürich were
still proceeding, Victor Emmanuel could not safely accept the sovereignty
that was offered him by Tuscany and the neighbouring provinces, nor permit
his cousin, the Prince of Carignano, to assume the regency which, during
the period of suspense, it was proposed to confer upon him. Above all, it
was necessary that the Government should not allow the popular forces with
which it was co-operating to pass beyond its own control. In the critical
period that followed the armistice of Villafranca, Mazzini approached
Victor Emmanuel, as thirty years before he had approached his father, and
offered his own assistance in the establishment of Italian union under the
House of Savoy. He proposed, as the first step, to overthrow the Neapolitan
Government by means of an expedition headed by Garibaldi, and to unite
Sicily and Naples to the King's dominions; but he demanded in return that
Piedmont should oppose armed resistance to any foreign intervention
occasioned by this enterprise; and he seems also to have required that an
attack should be made immediately afterwards upon Rome and upon Venetia. To
these conditions the King could not accede; and Mazzini, confirmed in his
attitude of distrust towards the Court of Turin, turned to Garibaldi, who
was now at Modena. At his instigation Garibaldi resolved to lead an
expedition at once against Rome itself. Napoleon was at this very moment
promising reforms on behalf of the Pope, and warning Victor Emmanuel
against the annexation even of the Romagna (Oct. 20th). At the risk of
incurring the hostility of Garibaldi's followers and throwing their leader
into opposition to the dynasty, it was necessary for the Sardinian
Government to check him in his course. The moment was a critical one in the
history of the House of Savoy. But the soldier of Republican Italy proved
more tractable than its prophet. Garibaldi was persuaded to abandon or
postpone an enterprise which could only have resulted in disaster for
Italy; and with expressions of cordiality towards the King himself, and of
bitter contempt for the fox-like politicians who advised him, he resigned
his command and bade farewell to his comrades, recommending them, however,
to remain under arms, in full confidence that they would ere long find a
better opportunity for carrying the national flag southwards. [495]

[The proposed Congress.]

Soon after the Agreement of Villafranca, Napoleon had proposed to the
British Government that a Congress of all the Powers should assemble at
Paris in order to decide upon the many Italian questions which still
remained unsettled. In taking upon himself the emancipation of Northern
Italy Napoleon had, as it proved, attempted a task far beyond his own
powers. The work had been abruptly broken off; the promised services had
not been rendered, the stipulated reward had not been won. On the other
hand, forces had been set in motion which he who raised them could not
allay; populations stood in arms against the Governments which the
Agreement of Villafranca purported to restore; the Pope's authority in the
northern part of his dominions was at an end; the Italian League over which
France and Austria were to join hands of benediction remained the
laughing-stock of Europe. Napoleon's victories had added Lombardy to
Piedmont; for the rest, except from the Italian point of view, they had
only thrown affairs into confusion. Hesitating at the first between his
obligations towards Austria and the maintenance of his prestige in Italy,
perplexed between the contradictory claims of nationality and of
Ultramontanism, Napoleon would gladly have cast upon Great Britain, or upon
Europe at large, the task of extricating him from his embarrassment. But
the Cabinet of London, while favourable to Italy, showed little inclination
to entangle itself in engagements which might lead to war with Austria and
Germany in the interest of the French Sovereign. Italian affairs, it was
urged by Lord John Russell, might well be governed by the course of events
within Italy itself; and, as Austria remained inactive, the principle of
non-intervention really gained the day. The firm attitude of the population
both in the Duchies and in the Romagna, their unanimity and self-control,
the absence of those disorders which had so often been made a pretext for
foreign intervention, told upon the mind of Napoleon and on the opinion of
Europe at large. Each month that passed rendered the restoration of the
fallen Governments a work of greater difficulty, and increased the
confidence of the Italians in themselves. Napoleon watched and wavered.
When the Treaty of Zürich was signed his policy was still undetermined. By
the prompt and liberal concession of reforms the Papal Government might
perhaps even now have turned the balance in its favour. But the obstinate
mind of Pius IX. was proof against every politic and every generous
influence. The stubbornness shown by Rome, the remembrance of Antonelli's
conduct towards the French Republic in 1849, possibly also the discovery of
a Treaty of Alliance between the Papal Government and Austria, at length
overcame Napoleon's hesitation in meeting the national demand of Italy, and
gave him courage to defy both the Papal Court and the French priesthood. He
resolved to consent to the formation of an Italian Kingdom under Victor
Emmanuel including the northern part of the Papal territories as well as
Tuscany and the other Duchies, and to silence the outcry which this act of
spoliation would excite among the clerical party in France by the
annexation of Nice and Savoy.

["The Pope and the Congress," Dec. 24.]

[Change of Ministry at Paris, Jan. 5, 1860.]

[Cavour resumes office, Jan. 16.]

The decision of the Emperor was foreshadowed by the publication on the 24th
of December of a pamphlet entitled "The Pope and the Congress." The
doctrine advanced in this essay was that, although a temporal authority was
necessary to the Pope's spiritual independence, the peace and unity which
should surround the Vicar of Christ would be best attained when his
temporal sovereignty was reduced within the narrowest possible limits. Rome
and the territory immediately around it, if guaranteed to the Pope by the
Great Powers, would be sufficient for the temporal needs of the Holy See.
The revenue lost by the separation of the remainder of the Papal
territories might be replaced by a yearly tribute of reverence paid by the
Catholic Powers to the Head of the Church. That the pamphlet advocating
this policy was written at the dictation of Napoleon was not made a secret.
Its appearance occasioned an indignant protest at Rome. The Pope announced
that he would take no part in the proposed Congress unless the doctrines
advanced in the pamphlet were disavowed by the French Government. Napoleon
in reply submitted to the Pope that he would do well to purchase the
guarantee of the Powers for the remainder of his territories by giving up
all claim to the Romagna, which he had already lost. Pius retorted that he
could not cede what Heaven had granted, not to himself, but to the Church;
and that if the Powers would but clear the Romagna of Piedmontese intruders
he would soon reconquer the rebellious province without the assistance
either of France or of Austria. The attitude assumed by the Papal Court
gave Napoleon a good pretext for abandoning the plan of a European
Congress, from which he could hardly expect to obtain a grant of Nice and
Savoy. It was announced at Paris that the Congress would be postponed; and
on the 5th of January, 1860, the change in Napoleon's policy was publicly
marked by the dismissal of his Foreign Minister, Walewski, and the
appointment in his place of Thouvenel, a friend to Italian union. Ten days
later Rattazzi gave up office at Turin, and Cavour returned to power.

[Cavour and Napoleon, Jan-March.]

[Union of the Duchies and the Romagna with Piedmont, March.]

[Savoy and Nice ceded to France.]

Rattazzi, during the six months that he had conducted affairs, had steered
safely past some dangerous rocks; but he held the helm with an unsteady and
untrusted hand, and he appears to have displayed an unworthy jealousy
towards Cavour, who, while out of office, had not ceased to render what
services he could to his country. Cavour resumed his post, with the resolve
to defer no longer the annexation of Central Italy, but with the heavy
consciousness that Napoleon would demand in return for his consent to this
union the cession of Nice and Savoy. No Treaty entitled France to claim
this reward, for the Austrians still held Venetia; but Napoleon's troops
lay at Milan, and by a march southwards they could easily throw Italian
affairs again into confusion, and undo all that the last six months had
effected. Cavour would perhaps have lent himself to any European
combination which, while directed against the extension, of France, would
have secured the existence of the Italian Kingdom; but no such alternative
to the French alliance proved possible; and the subsequent negotiations
between Paris and Turin were intended only to vest with a certain
diplomatic propriety the now inevitable transfer of territory from the
weaker to the stronger State. A series of propositions made from London
with the view of withdrawing from Italy both French and Austrian influence
led the Austrian Court to acknowledge that its army would not be employed
for the restoration of the sovereigns of Tuscany and Modena. Construing
this statement as an admission that the stipulations of Villafranca and
Zürich as to the return of the fugitive princes had become impracticable,
Napoleon now suggested that Victor Emmanuel should annex Parma and Modena,
and assume secular power in the Romagna as Vicar of the Pope, leaving
Tuscany to form a separate Government. The establishment of so powerful a
kingdom on the confines of France was, he added, not in accordance with the
traditions of French foreign policy, and in self-defence France must
rectify its military frontier by the acquisition of Nice and Savoy (Feb.
24th). Cavour well understood that the mention of Tuscan independence, and
the qualified recognition of the Pope's rights in the Romagna, were no more
than suggestions of the means of pressure by which France might enforce the
cessions it required. He answered that, although Victor Emmanuel could not
alienate any part of his dominions, his Government recognised the same
popular rights in Savoy and Nice as in Central Italy; and accordingly that
if the population of these districts declared in a legal form their desire
to be incorporated with France, the King would not resist their will.
Having thus consented to the necessary sacrifice, and ignoring Napoleon's
reservations with regard to Tuscany and the Pope, Cavour gave orders that a
popular vote should at once be taken in Tuscany, as well as in Parma,
Modena, and the Romagna, on the question of union with Piedmont. The voting
took place early in March, and gave an overwhelming majority in favour of
union. The Pope issued the major excommunication against the authors,
abettors, and agents in this work of sacrilege, and heaped curses on
curses; but no one seemed the worse for them. Victor Emmanuel accepted the
sovereignty that was offered to him, and on the 2nd of April the Parliament
of the united kingdom assembled at Turin. It had already been announced to
the inhabitants of Nice and Savoy that the King had consented to their
union with France. The formality of a _plébiscite_ was enacted a few
days later, and under the combined pressure of the French and Sardinian
Governments the desired results were obtained. Not more than a few hundred
persons protested by their vote against a transaction to which it was
understood that the King had no choice but to submit. [496]

[Cavour on the cession of Nice and Savoy.]

That Victor Emmanuel had at one time been disposed to resist Cavour's
surrender of the home of his race is well known. Above a year, however, had
passed since the project had been accepted as the basis of the French
alliance; and if, during the interval of suspense after Villafranca, the
King had cherished a hope that the sacrifice might be avoided without
prejudice either to the cause of Italy or to his own relations with
Napoleon, Cavour had entertained no such illusions. He knew that the
cession was an indispensable link in the chain of his own policy, that
policy which had made it possible to defeat Austria, and which, he
believed, would lead to the further consolidation of Italy. Looking to
Rome, to Palermo, where the smouldering fire might at any moment blaze out,
he could not yet dispense with the friendship of Napoleon, he could not
provoke the one man powerful enough to shape the action of France in
defiance of Clerical and of Legitimist aims. Rattazzi might claim credit
for having brought Piedmont past the Treaty of Zürich without loss of
territory; Cavour, in a far finer spirit, took upon himself the
responsibility for the sacrifice made to France, and bade the Parliament of
Italy pass judgment upon his act. The cession of the border-provinces
overshadowed what would otherwise have been the brightest scene in Italian
history for many generations, the meeting of the first North-Italian
Parliament at Turin. Garibaldi, coming as deputy from his birthplace, Nice,
uttered words of scorn and injustice against the man who had made him an
alien in Italy, and quitted the Chamber. Bitterly as Cavour felt, both now
and down to the end of his life, the reproaches that were levelled against
him, he allowed no trace of wounded feeling, of impatience, of the sense of
wrong, to escape him in the masterly speech in which he justified his
policy and won for it the ratification of the Parliament. It was not until
a year later, when the hand of death was almost upon him, that fierce words
addressed to him face to face by Garibaldi wrung from him the impressive
answer, "The act that has made this gulf between us was the most painful
duty of my life. By what I have felt myself I know what Garibaldi must have
felt. If he refuses me his forgiveness I cannot reproach him for it." [497]

[The cession in relation to Europe and Italy.]

The annexation of Nice and Savoy by Napoleon was seen with extreme
displeasure in Europe generally, and most of all in England. It directly
affected the history of Britain by the stimulus which it gave to the
development of the Volunteer Forces. Owing their origin to certain
demonstrations of hostility towards England made by the French army after
Orsini's conspiracy and the acquittal of one of his confederates in London,
the Volunteer Forces rose in the three months that followed the annexation
of Nice and Savoy from seventy to a hundred and eighty thousand men. If
viewed as an indication that the ruler of France would not be content with
the frontiers of 1815, the acquisition of the Sub-Alpine provinces might
with some reason excite alarm; on no other ground could their transfer be
justly condemned. Geographical position, language, commercial interests,
separated Savoy from Piedmont and connected it with France; and though in
certain parts of the County of Nice the Italian character predominated,
this district as a whole bore the stamp not of Piedmont or Liguria but of
Provence. Since the separation from France in 1815 there had always been,
both in Nice and Savoy, a considerable party which desired reunion with
that country. The political and social order of the Sardinian Kingdom had
from 1815 to 1848 been so backward, so reactionary, that the middle classes
in the border-provinces looked wistfully to France as a land where their
own grievances had been removed and their own ideals attained. The
constitutional system of Victor Emmanuel, and the despotic system of Louis
Napoleon had both been too recently introduced to reverse in the minds of
the greater number the political tradition of the preceding thirty years.
Thus if there were a few who, like Garibaldi, himself of Genoese descent
though born at Nice, passionately resented separation from Italy, they
found no considerable party either in Nice or in Savoy animated by the same
feeling. On the other hand, the ecclesiastical sentiment of Savoy rendered
its transfer to France an actual advantage to the Italian State. The Papacy
had here a deeply-rooted influence. The reforms begun by Azeglio's Ministry
had been steadily resisted by a Savoyard group of deputies in the interests
of Rome. Cavour himself, in the prosecution of his larger plans, had always
been exposed to the danger of a coalition between this ultra-Conservative
party and his opponents of the other extreme. It was well that in the
conflict with the Papacy, without which there could be no such thing as a
Kingdom of United Italy, these influences of the Savoyard Church and
Noblesse should be removed from the Parliament and the Throne. Honourable
as the Savoyard party of resistance had proved themselves in Parliamentary
life, loyal and faithful as they were to their sovereign, they were yet not
a part of the Italian nation. Their interests were not bound up with the
cause of Italian union; their leaders were not inspired with the ideal of
Italian national life. The forces that threatened the future of the new
State from within were too powerful for the surrender of a priest-governed
and half-foreign element to be considered as a real loss.

[Naples.]

Nice and Savoy had hardly been handed over to Napoleon when Garibaldi set
out from Genoa to effect the liberation of Sicily and Naples. King
Ferdinand II., known to his subjects and to Western Europe as King Bomba,
had died a few days before the battle of Magenta, leaving the throne to his
son Francis II. In consequence of the friendship shown by Ferdinand to
Russia during the Crimean War, and of his refusal to amend his tyrannical
system of government, the Western Powers had in 1856 withdrawn their
representatives from Naples. On the accession of Francis II. diplomatic
intercourse was renewed, and Cavour, who had been at bitter enmity with
Ferdinand, sought to establish relations of friendship with his son. In the
war against Austria an alliance with Naples would have been of value to
Sardinia as a counterpoise to Napoleon's influence, and this alliance
Cavour attempted to obtain. He was, however, unsuccessful; and after the
Peace of Villafranca the Neapolitan Court threw itself with ardour into
schemes for the restoration of the fallen Governments and the overthrow of
Piedmontese authority in the Romagna by means of a coalition with Austria
and Spain and a counterrevolutionary movement in Italy itself. A rising on
behalf of the fugitive Grand Duke of Tuscany was to give the signal for the
march of the Neapolitan army northwards. This rising, however, was expected
in vain, and the great Catholic design resulted in nothing. Baffled in its
larger aims, the Bourbon Government proposed in the spring of 1860 to
occupy Umbria and the Marches, in order to prevent the revolutionary
movement from spreading farther into the Papal States. Against this Cavour
protested, and King Francis yielded to his threat to withdraw the Sardinian
ambassador from Naples. Knowing that a conspiracy existed for the
restoration of the House of Murat to the Neapolitan throne, which would
have given France the ascendency in Southern Italy, Cavour now renewed his
demand that Francis II. should enter into alliance with Piedmont, accepting
a constitutional system of government and the national Italian policy of
Victor Emmanuel. But neither the summons from Turin, nor the agitation of
the Muratists, nor the warnings of Great Britain that the Bourbon dynasty
could only avert its fall by reform, produced any real change in the spirit
of the Neapolitan Court. Ministers were removed, but the absolutist and
anti-national system remained the same. Meanwhile Garibaldi was gathering
his followers round him in Genoa. On the 15th of April Victor Emmanuel
wrote to King Francis that unless his fatal system of policy was
immediately abandoned the Piedmontese Government itself might shortly be
forced to become the agent of his destruction. Even this menace proved
fruitless; and after thus fairly exposing to the Court of Naples the
consequence of its own stubbornness, Victor Emmanuel let loose against it
the revolutionary forces of Garibaldi.

[Sicily.]

[Garibaldi starts for Sicily, May 5.]

[Garibaldi at Marsala, May 11.]

Since the campaign of 1859 insurrectionary committees had been active in
the principal Sicilian towns. The old desire of the Sicilian Liberals for
the independence of the island had given place, under the influence of the
events of the past year, to the desire for Italian union. On the
abandonment of Garibaldi's plan for the march on Rome in November, 1859,
the liberation of Sicily had been suggested to him as a more feasible
enterprise, and the general himself wavered in the spring of 1860 between
the resumption of his Roman project and an attack upon the Bourbons of
Naples from the south. The rumour spread through Sicily that Garibaldi
would soon appear there at the head of his followers. On the 3rd of April
an attempt at insurrection was made at Palermo. It was repressed without
difficulty; and although disturbances broke out in other parts of the
island, the reports which reached Garibaldi at Genoa as to the spirit and
prospects of the Sicilians were so disheartening that for a while he seemed
disposed to abandon the project of invasion as hopeless for the present. It
was only when some of the Sicilian exiles declared that they would risk the
enterprise without him that he resolved upon immediate action. On the night
of the 5th of May two steamships lying in the harbour of Genoa were seized,
and on these Garibaldi with his Thousand put to sea. Cavour, though he
would have preferred that Sicily should remain unmolested until some
progress had been made in the consolidation of the North Italian Kingdom,
did not venture to restrain Garibaldi's movements, with which he was well
acquainted. He required, however, that the expedition should not touch at
the island of Sardinia, and gave ostensible orders to his admiral, Persano,
to seize the ships of Garibaldi if they should put into any Sardinian port.
Garibaldi, who had sheltered the Sardinian Government from responsibility
at the outset by the fiction of a sudden capture of the two merchant-ships,
continued to spare Victor Emmanuel unnecessary difficulties by avoiding the
fleet which was supposed to be on the watch for him off Cagliari in
Sardinia, and only interrupted his voyage by a landing at a desolate spot
on the Tuscan coast in order to take up artillery and ammunition which were
waiting for him there. On the 11th of May, having heard from some English
merchantmen that there were no Neapolitan vessels of war at Marsala, he
made for this harbour. The first of his two ships entered it in safety and
disembarked her crew; the second, running on a rock, lay for some time
within range of the guns of a Neapolitan war-steamer which was bearing up
towards the port. But for some unknown reason the Neapolitan commander
delayed opening fire, and the landing of Garibaldi's followers was during
this interval completed without loss. [498]

[Garibaldi captures Palermo, May 26.]

On the following day the little army, attired in the red shirts which are
worn by cattle-ranchers in South America, marched eastwards from Marsala.
Bands of villagers joined them as they moved through the country, and many
unexpected adherents were gained among the priests. On the third day's
march Neapolitan troops were seen in position at Calatafimi. They were
attacked by Garibaldi, and, though far superior in number, were put to the
rout. The moral effects of this first victory were very great. The
Neapolitan commander retired into Palermo, leaving Garibaldi master of the
western portion of the island. Insurrection spread towards the interior;
the revolutionary party at Palermo itself regained its courage and prepared
to co-operate with Garibaldi on his approach. On nearing the city Garibaldi
determined that he could not risk a direct assault upon the forces which
occupied it. He resolved, if possible, to lure part of the defenders into
the mountains, and during their absence to throw himself into the city and
to trust to the energy of its inhabitants to maintain himself there. This
strategy succeeded. While the officer in command of some of the Neapolitan
battalions, tempted by an easy victory over the ill-disciplined Sicilian
bands opposed to him, pursued his beaten enemy into the mountains,
Garibaldi with the best of his troops fought his way into Palermo on the
night of May 26th. Fighting continued in the streets during the next two
days, and the cannon of the forts and of the Neapolitan vessels in harbour
ineffectually bombarded the city. On the 30th, at the moment when the
absent battalions were coming again into sight, an armistice was signed on
board the British man-of-war _Hannibal_. The Neapolitan commander gave
up to Garibaldi the bank and public buildings, and withdrew into the forts
outside the town. But the Government at Naples was now becoming thoroughly
alarmed; and considering Palermo as lost, it directed the troops to be
shipped to Messina and to Naples itself. Garibaldi was thus left in
undisputed possession of the Sicilian capital. He remained there for nearly
two months, assuming the government of Sicily as Dictator in the name of
Victor Emmanuel, appointing Ministers, and levying taxes. Heavy
reinforcements reached him from Italy. The Neapolitans, driven from the
interior as well as from the towns occupied by the invader, now held only
the north-eastern extremity of the island. On the 20th of July Garibaldi,
operating both by land and sea, attacked and defeated them at Milazzo on
the northern coast. The result of this victory was that Messina itself,
with the exception of the citadel, was evacuated by the Neapolitans without
resistance. Garibaldi, whose troops now numbered eighteen thousand, was
master of the island from sea to sea, and could with confidence look
forward to the overthrow of Bourbon authority on the Italian mainland.

[The Party of Action.]

During Garibaldi's stay at Palermo the antagonism between the two political
creeds which severed those whose devotion to Italy was the strongest came
clearly into view. This antagonism stood embodied in its extreme form in
the contrast between Mazzini and Cavour. Mazzini, handling moral and
political conceptions with something of the independence of a
mathematician, laid it down as the first duty of the Italian nation to
possess itself of Rome and Venice, regardless of difficulties that might be
raised from without. By conviction he desired that Italy should be a
Republic, though under certain conditions he might be willing to tolerate
the monarchy of Victor Emmanuel. Cavour, accurately observing the play of
political forces in Europe, conscious above all of the strength of those
ties which still bound Napoleon to the clerical cause, knew that there were
limits which Italy could not at present pass without ruin. The centre of
Mazzini's hopes, an advance upon Rome itself, he knew to be an act of
self-destruction for Italy, and this advance he was resolved at all costs
to prevent. Cavour had not hindered the expedition to Sicily; he had not
considered it likely to embroil Italy with its ally; but neither had he
been the author of this enterprise. The liberation of Sicily might be
deemed the work rather of the school of Mazzini than of Cavour. Garibaldi
indeed was personally loyal to Victor Emmanuel; but around him there were
men who, if not Republicans, were at least disposed to make the grant of
Sicily to Victor Emmanuel conditional upon the king's fulfilling the will
of the so-called Party of Action, and consenting to an attack upon Rome.
Under the influence of these politicians Garibaldi, in reply to a
deputation expressing to him the desire of the Sicilians for union with the
Kingdom of Victor Emmanuel, declared that he had come to fight not for
Sicily alone but for all Italy, and that if the annexation of Sicily was to
take place before the union of Italy was assured, he must withdraw his hand
from the work and retire. The effect produced by these words of Garibaldi
was so serious that the Ministers whom he had placed in office resigned.
Garibaldi endeavoured to substitute for them men more agreeable to the
Party of Action, but a demonstration in Palermo itself forced him to
nominate Sicilians in favour of immediate annexation. The public opinion of
the island was hostile to Republicanism and to the friends of Mazzini; nor
could the prevailing anarchy long continue without danger of a reactionary
movement. Garibaldi himself possessed no glimmer of administrative faculty.
After weeks of confusion and misgovernment he saw the necessity of
accepting direction from Turin, and consented to recognise as Pro-Dictator
of the island a nominee of Cavour, the Piedmontese Depretis. Under the
influence of Depretis a commencement was made in the work of political and
social reorganisation. [499]

[Cavour's policy with regard to Naples.]

[Garibaldi crosses to the mainland, Aug. 19.]

Cavour, during Garibaldi's preparation for his descent upon Sicily and
until the capture of Palermo, had affected to disavow and condemn the
enterprise as one undertaken by individuals in spite of the Government, and
at their own risk. The Piedmontese ambassador was still at Naples as the
representative of a friendly Court; and in reply to the reproaches of
Germany and Russia, Cavour alleged that the title of Dictator of Sicily in
the name of Victor Emmanuel had been assumed by Garibaldi without the
knowledge or consent of his sovereign. But whatever might be said to
Foreign Powers, Cavour, from the time of the capture of Palermo, recognised
that the hour had come for further steps towards Italian union; and,
without committing himself to any definite line of action, he began already
to contemplate the overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty at Naples. It was in
vain that King Francis now released his political prisoners, declared the
Constitution of 1848 in force, and tendered to Piedmont the alliance which
he had before refused. Cavour, in reply to his overtures, stated that he
could not on his own authority pledge Piedmont to the support of a dynasty
now almost in the agonies of dissolution, and that the matter must await
the meeting of Parliament at Turin. Thus far the way had not been
absolutely closed to a reconciliation between the two Courts; but after the
victory of Garibaldi at Milazzo and the evacuation of Messina at the end of
July Cavour cast aside all hesitation and reserve. He appears to have
thought a renewal of the war with Austria probable, and now strained every
nerve to become master of Naples and its fleet before Austria could take
the field. He ordered Admiral Persano to leave two ships of war to cover
Garibaldi's passage to the mainland, and with one ship to proceed to Naples
himself, and there excite insurrection and win over the Neapolitan fleet to
the flag of Victor Emmanuel. Persano reached Naples on the 3rd of August,
and on the next day the negotiations between the two Courts were broken
off. On the 19th Garibaldi crossed from Sicily to the mainland. His march
upon the capital was one unbroken triumph.

[Persano and Villamarina at Naples.]

[Departure of King Francis, Sept. 6.]

[Garibaldi enters Naples, Sept. 7.]

It was the hope of Cavour that before Garibaldi could reach Naples a
popular movement in the city itself would force the King to take flight, so
that Garibaldi on his arrival would find the machinery of government, as
well as the command of the fleet and the army, already in the hands of
Victor Emmanuel's representatives. If war with Austria was really
impending, incalculable mischief might be caused by the existence of a
semi-independent Government at Naples, reckless, in its enthusiasm for the
march on Rome, of the effect which its acts might produce on the French
alliance. In any case the control of Italian affairs could but half belong
to the King and his Minister if Garibaldi, in the full glory of his
unparalleled exploits, should add the Dictatorship of Naples to the
Dictatorship of Sicily. Accordingly Cavour plied every art to accelerate
the inevitable revolution. Persano and the Sardinian ambassador,
Villamarina, had their confederates in the Bourbon Ministry and in the
Royal Family itself. But their efforts to drive King Francis from Naples,
and to establish the authority of Victor Emmanuel before Garibaldi's
arrival, were baffled partly by the tenacity of the King and Queen, partly
by the opposition of the committees of the Party of Action, who were
determined that power should fall into no hands but those of Garibaldi
himself. It was not till Garibaldi had reached Salerno, and the Bourbon
generals had one after another declined to undertake the responsibility of
command in a battle against him, that Francis resolved on flight. It was
now feared that he might induce the fleet to sail with him, and even that
he might hand it over to the Austrians. The crews, it was believed, were
willing to follow the King; the officers, though inclined to the Italian
cause, would be powerless to prevent them. There was not an hour to lose.
On the night of September 5th, after the King's intention to quit the
capital had become known, Persano and Villamarina disguised themselves, and
in company with their partisans mingled with the crews of the fleet, whom
they induced by bribes and persuasion to empty the boilers and to cripple
the engines of their ships. When, on the 6th, King Francis, having
announced his intention to spare the capital bloodshed, went on board a
mail steamer and quitted the harbour, accompanied by the ambassadors of
Austria, Prussia, and Spain, only one vessel of the fleet of followed him.
An urgent summons was sent to Garibaldi, whose presence was now desired by
all parties alike in order to prevent the outbreak of disorders. Leaving
his troops at Salerno, Garibaldi came by railroad to Naples on the morning
of the 7th, escorted only by some of his staff. The forts were still
garrisoned by eight thousand of the Bourbon troops, but all idea of
resistance had been abandoned, and Garibaldi drove fearlessly through the
city in the midst of joyous crowds. His first act as Dictator was to
declare the ships of war belonging to the State of the Two Sicilies united
to those of King Victor Emmanuel under Admiral Persano's command. Before
sunset the flag of Italy was hoisted by the Neapolitan fleet. The army was
not to be so easily incorporated with the national forces. King Francis,
after abandoning the idea of a battle between Naples and Salerno, had
ordered the mass of his troops to retire upon Capua in order to make a
final struggle on the line of the Volturno, and this order had been obeyed.
[500]

[The Piedmontese army enters Umbria and the Marches. Sept. 11.]

[Fall of Ancona, Sept. 25.]

As soon as it had become evident that the entry of Garibaldi into Naples
could not be anticipated by the establishment of Victor Emmanuel's own
authority, Cavour recognised that bold and aggressive action on the part of
the National Government was now necessity. Garibaldi made no secret or his
intention to carry the Italian arms to Rome. The time was past when the
national movement could be checked at the frontiers of Naples and Tuscany.
It remained only for Cavour to throw the King's own troops into the Papal
States before Garibaldi could move from Naples, and, while winning for
Italy the last foot of ground that could be won without an actual conflict
with France, to stop short at those limits where the soldiers of Napoleon
would certainly meet an invader with their fire. The Pope was still in
possession of the Marches, of Umbria, and of the territory between the
Apennines and the coast from Orvieto to Terracina. Cavour had good reason
to believe that Napoleon would not strike on behalf of the Temporal Power
until this last narrow district was menaced. He resolved to seize upon the
Marches and Umbria, and to brave the consequences. On the day of
Garibaldi's entry into Naples a despatch was sent by Cavour to the Papal
Government requiring, in the name of Victor Emmanuel, the disbandment of
the foreign mercenaries who in the previous spring had plundered Perugia,
and whose presence was a continued menace to the peace of Italy. The
announcement now made by Napoleon that he must break off diplomatic
relations with the Sardinian Government in case of the invasion of the
Papal States produced no effect. Cavour replied that by no other means
could he prevent revolution from mastering all Italy, and on the 10th of
September the French ambassador quitted Turin. Without waiting for
Antonelli's answer to his ultimatum, Cavour ordered the King's troops to
cross the frontier. The Papal army was commanded by Lamoricière, a French
general who had gained some reputation in Algiers; but the resistance
offered to the Piedmontese was unexpectedly feeble. The column which
entered Umbria reached the southern limit without encountering any serious
opposition except from the Irish garrison of Spoleto. In the Marches, where
Lamoricière had a considerable force at his disposal, the dispersion of the
Papal troops and the incapacity shown in their command brought the campaign
to a rapid and inglorious end. The main body of the defenders was routed on
the Musone, near Loreto, on the 19th of September. Other divisions
surrendered, and Ancona alone remained to Lamoricière. Vigorously attacked
in this fortress both by land and sea, Lamoricière surrendered after a
siege of eight days. Within three weeks from Garibaldi's entry into Naples
the Piedmontese army had completed the task imposed upon it, and Victor
Emmanuel was master of Italy as far as the Abruzzi.

[Cavour, Garibaldi, and the Party of Action.]

Cavour's successes had not come a day too soon, for Garibaldi, since his
entry into Naples, was falling more and more into the hands of the Party of
Action, and, while protesting his loyalty to Victor Emmanuel, was openly
announcing that he would march the Party of on Rome whether the King's
Government permitted it or no. In Sicily the officials appointed by this
Party were proceeding with such violence that Depretis, unable to obtain
troops from Cavour, resigned his post. Garibaldi suddenly appeared at
Palermo on the 11th of September, appointed a new Pro-Dictator, and
repeated to the Sicilians that their union with the Kingdom of Victor
Emmanuel must be postponed until all members of the Italian family were
free. But even the personal presence and the angry words of Garibaldi were
powerless to check the strong expression of Sicilian opinion in favour of
immediate and unconditional annexation. His visit to Palermo was answered
by the appearance of a Sicilian deputation at Turin demanding immediate
union, and complaining that the island was treated by Garibaldi's officers
like a conquered province. At Naples the rash and violent utterances of the
Dictator were equally condemned. The Ministers whom he had himself
appointed resigned. Garibaldi replaced them by others who were almost
Republicans, and sent a letter to Victor Emmanuel requesting him to consent
to the march upon Rome and to dismiss Cavour. It was known in Turin that at
this very moment Napoleon was taking steps to increase the French force in
Rome, and to garrison the whole of the territory that still remained to the
Pope. Victor Emmanuel understood how to reply to Garibaldi's letter. He
remained true to his Minister, and sent orders to Villamarina at Naples in
case Garibaldi should proclaim the Republic to break off all relations with
him and to secure the fleet. The fall of Ancona on September 28th brought a
timely accession of popularity and credit to Cavour. He made the Parliament
which assembled at Turin four days later arbiter in the struggle between
Garibaldi and himself, and received from it an almost unanimous vote of
confidence. Garibaldi would perhaps have treated lightly any resolution of
Parliament which conflicted with his own opinion: he shrank from a breach
with the soldier of Novara and Solferino. Now, as at other moments of
danger, the character and reputation of Victor Emmanuel stood Italy in good
stead. In the enthusiasm which Garibaldi's services to Italy excited in
every patriotic heart, there was room for thankfulness that Italy possessed
a sovereign and a statesman strong enough even to withstand its hero when
his heroism endangered the national cause. [501]

[The armies on the Volturno.]

[Meeting of Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi, Oct. 26.]

[Fall of Gaeta, Feb. 14, 1861.]

The King of Naples had not yet abandoned the hope that one or more of the
European Powers would intervene in his behalf. The trustworthy part of his
army had gathered round the fortress of Capua on the Volturno, and there
were indications that Garibaldi would here meet with far more serious
resistance than he had yet encountered. While he was still in Naples, his
troops, which had pushed northwards, sustained a repulse at Cajazzo.
Emboldened by this success, the Neapolitan army at the beginning of October
assumed the offensive. It was with difficulty that Garibaldi, placing
himself again at the head of his forces, drove the enemy back to Capua. But
the arms of Victor Emmanuel were now thrown into the scale. Crossing the
Apennines, and driving before him the weak force that was intended to bar
his way at Isernia, the King descended in the rear of the Neapolitan army.
The Bourbon commander, warned of his approach, moved northwards on the line
of the Garigliano, leaving a garrison to defend Capua. Garibaldi followed
on his track, and in the neighbourhood of Teano met King Victor Emmanuel
(October 26th). The meeting is said to have been cordial on the part of the
King, reserved on the part of Garibaldi, who saw in the King's suite the
men by whom he had been prevented from invading the Papal States in the
previous year. In spite of their common patriotism the volunteers of
Garibaldi and the army of Victor Emmanuel were rival bodies, and the
relations between the chiefs of each camp were strained and difficult.
Garibaldi himself returned to the siege of Capua, while the King marched
northwards against the retreating Neapolitans. All that was great in
Garibaldi's career was now in fact accomplished. The politicians about him
had attempted at Naples, as in Sicily, to postpone the union with Victor
Emmanuel's monarchy, and to convoke a Southern Parliament which should fix
the conditions on which annexation would be permitted; but, after
discrediting the General, they had been crushed by public opinion, and a
popular vote which was taken at the end of October on the question of
immediate union showed the majority in favour of this course to be
overwhelming. After the surrender of Capua on the 2nd of November, Victor
Emmanuel made his entry into Naples. Garibaldi, whose request for the
Lieutenancy of Southern Italy for the space of a year with full powers was
refused by the King, [502] declined all minor honours and rewards, and
departed to his home, still filled with resentment against Cavour, and
promising his soldiers that he would return in the spring and lead them to
Rome and Venice. The reduction of Gaeta, where King Francis II. had taken
refuge, and of the citadel of Messina, formed the last act of the war. The
French fleet for some time prevented the Sardinians from operating against
Gaeta from the sea, and the siege in consequence made slow progress. It was
not until the middle of January, 1861, that Napoleon permitted the French
admiral to quit his station. The bombardment was now opened both by land
and sea, and after a brave resistance Gaeta surrendered on the 14th of
February. King Francis and his young Queen, a sister of the Empress of
Austria, were conveyed in a French steamer to the Papal States, and there
began their life-long exile. The citadel of Messina, commanded by one of
the few Neapolitan officers who showed any soldierly spirit, maintained its
obstinate defence for a month after the Bourbon flag had disappeared from
the mainland.

[Cavour's policy with regard to Rome and Venice.]

[The Free Church in the Free State.]

Thus in the spring of 1861, within two years from the outbreak of war with
Austria, Italy with the exception of Rome and Venice was united under
Victor Emmanuel. Of all the European Powers, Great Britain alone watched
the creation of the new Italian Kingdom with complete sympathy and
approval. Austria, though it had made peace at Zürich, declined to renew
diplomatic intercourse with Sardinia, and protested against the assumption
by Victor Emmanuel of the title of King of Italy. Russia, the ancient
patron of the Neapolitan Bourbons, declared that geographical conditions
alone prevented its intervention against their despoilers. Prussia, though
under a new sovereign, had not yet completely severed the ties which bound
it to Austria. Nevertheless, in spite of wide political ill-will, and of
the passionate hostility of the clerical party throughout Europe, there was
little probability that the work of the Italian people would be overthrown
by external force. The problem which faced Victor Emmanuel's Government was
not so much the frustration of reactionary designs from without as the
determination of the true line of policy to be followed in regard to Rome
and Venice. There were few who, like Azeglio, held that Rome might be
permanently left outside the Italian Kingdom; there were none who held this
of Venice. Garibaldi might be mad enough to hope for victory in a campaign
against Austria and against France at the head of such a troop as he
himself could muster; Cavour would have deserved ill of his country if he
had for one moment countenanced the belief that the force which had
overthrown the Neapolitan Bourbons could with success, or with impunity to
Italy, measure itself against the defenders of Venetia or of Rome. Yet the
mind of Cavour was not one which could rest in mere passive expectancy as
to the future, or in mere condemnation of the unwise schemes of others. His
intelligence, so luminous, so penetrating, that in its utterances we seem
at times to be listening to the very spirit of the age, ranged over wide
fields of moral and of spiritual interests in its forecast of the future of
Italy, and spent its last force in one of those prophetic delineations
whose breadth and power the world can feel, though a later time alone can
judge of their correspondence with the destined course of history. Venice
was less to Europe than Rome; its transfer to Italy would, Cavour believed,
be effected either by arms or negotiations so soon as the German race
should find a really national Government, and refuse the service which had
hitherto been exacted from it for the maintenance of Austrian interests. It
was to Prussia, as the representative of nationality in Germany, that
Cavour looked as the natural ally of Italy in the vindication of that part
of the national inheritance which still lay under the dominion of the
Hapsburg. Rome, unlike Venice, was not only defended by foreign arms, it
was the seat of a Power whose empire over the mind of man was not the sport
of military or political vicissitudes. Circumstances might cause France to
relax its grasp on Rome, but it was not to such an accident that Cavour
looked for the incorporation of Rome with Italy. He conceived that the time
would arrive when the Catholic world would recognise that the Church would
best fulfil its task in complete separation from temporal power. Rome would
then assume its natural position as the centre of the Italian State; the
Church would be the noblest friend, not the misjudging enemy, of the
Italian national monarchy. Cavour's own religious beliefs were perhaps less
simple than he chose to represent them. Occupying himself, however, with
institutions, not with dogmas, he regarded the Church in profound
earnestness as a humanising and elevating power. He valued its independence
so highly that even on the suppression of the Piedmontese monasteries he
had refused to give to the State the administration of the revenue arising
from the sale of their lands, and had formed this into a fund belonging to
the Church itself, in order that the clergy might not become salaried
officers of the State. Human freedom was the principle in which he trusted;
and looking upon the Church as the greatest association formed by men, he
believed that here too the rule of freedom, of the absence of
State-regulation, would in the end best serve man's highest interests. With
the passing away of the Pope's temporal power, Cavour imagined that the
constitution of the Church itself would become more democratic, more
responsive to the movement of the modern world. His own effort in
ecclesiastical reform had been to improve the condition and to promote the
independence of the lower clergy. He had hoped that each step in their
moral and material progress would make them more national at heart; and
though this hope had been but partially fulfilled, Cavour had never ceased
to cherish the ideal of a national Church which, while recognising its Head
in Rome, should cordially and without reserve accept the friendship of the
Italian State. [503]

[Death of Cavour, June 6, 1861.]

[Free Church in Free State.]

It was in the exposition of these principles, in the enforcement of the
common moral interest of Italian nationality and the Catholic Church, that
Cavour gave his last counsels to the Italian Parliament. He was not himself
to lead the nation farther towards the Promised Land. The immense exertions
which he had maintained during the last three years, the indignation and
anxiety caused to him by Garibaldi's attacks, produced an illness which
Cavour's own careless habits of life and the unskilfulness of his doctors
rendered fatal. With dying lips he repeated to those about him the words in
which he had summed up his policy in the Italian Parliament: "A free Church
in a free State." [504] Other Catholic lands had adjusted by Concordats
with the Papacy the conflicting claims of temporal and spiritual authority
in such matters as the appointment of bishops, the regulation of schools,
the family-rights of persons married without ecclesiastical form. Cavour
appears to have thought that in Italy, where the whole nation was in a
sense Catholic, the Church might as safely and as easily be left to manage
its own affairs as in the United States, where the Catholic community is
only one among many religious societies. His optimism, his sanguine and
large-hearted tolerance, was never more strikingly shown than in this
fidelity to the principle of liberty, even in the case of those who for the
time declined all reconciliation with the Italian State. Whether Cavour's
ideal was an impracticable fancy a later age will decide. The ascendency
within the Church of Rome would seem as yet to have rested with the
elements most opposed to the spirit of the time, most obstinately bent on
setting faith and reason in irreconcilable enmity. In place of that
democratic movement within the hierarchy and the priesthood which Cavour
anticipated, absolutism has won a new crown in the doctrine of Papal
Infallibility. Catholic dogma has remained impervious to the solvents which
during the last thirty years have operated with perceptible success on the
theology of Protestant lands. Each conquest made in the world of thought
and knowledge is still noted as the next appropriate object of denunciation
by the Vatican. Nevertheless the cautious spirit will be slow to conclude
that hopes like those of Cavour were wholly vain. A single generation may
see but little of the seed-time, nothing of the harvests that are yet to
enrich mankind. And even if all wider interests be left out of view, enough
remains to justify Cavour's policy of respect for the independence of the
Church in the fact that Italy during the thirty years succeeding the
establishment of its union has remained free from civil war. Cavour was
wont to refer to the Constitution which the French National Assembly
imposed upon the clergy in 1790 as the type of erroneous legislation. Had
his own policy and that of his successors not been animated by a wiser
spirit; had the Government of Italy, after overthrowing the Pope's temporal
sovereignty, sought enemies among the rural priesthood and their
congregations, the provinces added to the Italian Kingdom by Garibaldi
would hardly have been maintained by the House of Savoy without a second
and severer struggle. Between the ideal Italy which filled the thoughts not
only of Mazzini but of some of the best English minds of that time--the
land of immemorial greatness, touched once more by the divine hand and
advancing from strength to strength as the intellectual and moral pioneer
among nations--between this ideal and the somewhat hard and commonplace
realities of the Italy of to-day there is indeed little enough resemblance.
Poverty, the pressure of inordinate taxation, the physical and moral habits
inherited from centuries of evil government,--all these have darkened in no
common measure the conditions from which Italian national life has to be
built up. If in spite of overwhelming difficulties each crisis has hitherto
been surmounted; if, with all that is faulty and infirm, the omens for the
future of Italy are still favourable, one source of its good fortune has
been the impress given to its ecclesiastical policy by the great statesman
to whom above all other men it owes the accomplishment of its union, and
who, while claiming for Italy the whole of its national inheritance, yet
determined to inflict no needless wound upon the conscience of Rome.




CHAPTER XXIII.


Germany after 1858--The Regency in Prussia--Army re-organisation--King
William I.--Conflict between the Crown and the Parliament--Bismarck--The
struggle continued--Austria from 1859--The October Diploma--Resistance of
Hungary--The Reichsrath--Russia under Alexander II.--Liberation of the
Serfs--Poland--The Insurrection of 1863--Agrarian measures in
Poland--Schleswig-Holstein--Death of Frederick VII.--Plans of
Bismarck--Campaign in Schleswig--Conference of London--Treaty of
Vienna--England and Napoleon III.--Prussia and Austria--Convention of
Gastein--Italy--Alliance of Prussia with Italy--Proposals for a Congress
fail--War between Austria and Prussia--Napoleon III.--Königgrätz--
Custozza-Mediation of Napoleon--Treaty of Prague--South Germany--Projects
for compensation to France--Austria and Hungary--Deák--Establishment of
the Dual System in Austria-Hungary.


[Germany from 1858.]

[The Regency in Prussia, Oct. 1858.]

Shortly before the events which broke the power of Austria in Italy, the
German people believed themselves to have entered on a new political era.
King Frederick William IV., who, since 1848, had disappointed every hope
that had been fixed on Prussia and on himself, was compelled by mental
disorder to withdraw from public affairs in the autumn of 1858. His
brother, Prince William of Prussia, who had for a year acted as the King's
representative, now assumed the Regency. In the days when King Frederick
William still retained some vestiges of his reputation the Prince of
Prussia had been unpopular, as the supposed head of the reactionary party;
but the events of the last few years had exhibited him in a better aspect.
Though strong in his belief both in the Divine right of kings in general,
and in the necessity of a powerful monarchical rule in Prussia, he was
disposed to tolerate, and even to treat with a certain respect, the humble
elements of constitutional government which he found in existence. There
was more manliness in his nature than in that of his brother, more belief
in the worth of his own people. The espionage, the servility, the overdone
professions of sanctity in Manteuffel's régime displeased him, but most of
all he despised its pusillanimity in the conduct of foreign affairs. His
heart indeed was Prussian, not German, and the destiny which created him
the first Emperor of united Germany was not of his own making nor of his
own seeking; but he felt that Prussia ought to hold a far greater station
both in Germany and in Europe than it had held during his brother's reign,
and that the elevation of the State to the position which it ought to
occupy was the task that lay before himself. During the twelve months
preceding the Regency the retirement of the King had not been treated as
more than temporary, and the Prince of Prussia, though constantly at
variance with Manteuffel's Cabinet, had therefore not considered himself at
liberty to remove his brother's advisers. His first act on the assumption
of the constitutional office of Regent was to dismiss the hated Ministry.
Prince Antony of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was called to office, and posts
in the Government were given to men well known as moderate Liberals. Though
the Regent stated in clear terms that he had no intention of forming a
Liberal party-administration, his action satisfied public opinion. The
troubles and the failures of 1849 had inclined men to be content with far
less than had been asked years before. The leaders of the more advanced
sections among the Liberals preferred for the most part to remain outside
Parliamentary life rather than to cause embarrassment to the new
Government; and the elections of 1859 sent to Berlin a body of
representatives fully disposed to work with the Regent and his Ministers in
the policy of guarded progress which they had laid down.

[Revival of idea of German union.]

This change of spirit in the Prussian Government, followed by the events
that established Italian independence, told powerfully upon public opinion
throughout Germany. Hopes that had been crushed in 1849 now revived. With
the collapse of military despotism in the Austrian Empire the clouds of
reaction seemed everywhere to be passing away; it was possible once more to
think of German national union and of common liberties in which all Germans
should share. As in 1808 the rising of the Spaniards against Napoleon had
inspired Blücher and his countrymen with the design of a truly national
effort against their foreign oppressor, so in 1859 the work of Cavour
challenged the Germans to prove that their national patriotism and their
political aptitude were not inferior to those of the Italian people. Men
who had been prominent in the National Assembly at Frankfort again met one
another and spoke to the nation. In the Parliaments of several of the minor
States resolutions were brought forward in favour of the creation of a
central German authority. Protests were made against the infringement of
constitutional rights that had been common during the last ten years;
patriotic meetings and demonstrations were held; and a National Society, in
imitation of that which had prepared the way for union with Piedmont in
Central and Southern Italy, was formally established. There was indeed no
such preponderating opinion in favour of Prussian leadership as had existed
in 1848. The southern States had displayed a strong sympathy with Austria
in its war with Napoleon III., and had regarded the neutrality of Prussia
during the Italian campaign as a desertion of the German cause. Here there
were few who looked with friendly eye upon Berlin. It was in the minor
states of the north, and especially in Hesse-Cassel, where the struggle
between the Elector and his subjects was once more breaking out, that the
strongest hopes were directed towards the new Prussian ruler, and the
measures of his government were the most anxiously watched.

[The Regent of Prussia and the army.]

[Scheme of reorganisation.]

The Prince Regent was a soldier by profession and habit. He was born in
1797, and had been present at the battle of Arcis-sur-Aube, the last fought
by Napoleon against the Allies in 1814. During forty years he had served on
every commission that had been occupied with Prussian military affairs; no
man better understood the military organisation of his country, no man more
clearly recognised its capacities and its faults. The defective condition
of the Prussian army had been the principal, though not the sole, cause of
the miserable submission to Austria at Olmütz in 1850, and of the
abandonment of all claims to German leadership on the part of the Court of
Berlin. The Prince would himself have risked all chances of disaster rather
than inflict upon Prussia the humiliation with which King Frederick William
then purchased peace; but Manteuffel had convinced his sovereign that the
army could not engage in a campaign against Austria without ruin. Military
impotence was the only possible justification for the policy then adopted,
and the Prince determined that Prussia should not under his own rule have
the same excuse for any political shortcomings. The work of reorganisation
was indeed begun during the reign of Frederick William IV., through the
enforcement of the three-years' service to which the conscript was liable
by law, but which had fallen during the long period of peace to two-years'
service. The number of troops with the colours was thus largely increased,
but no addition had been made to the yearly levy, and no improvement
attempted in the organisation of the Landwehr. When in 1859 the order for
mobilisation was given in consequence of the Italian war, it was discovered
that the Landwehr battalions were almost useless. The members of this force
were mostly married men approaching middle life, who had been too long
engaged in other pursuits to resume their military duties with readiness,
and whose call to the field left their families without means of support
and chargeable upon the public purse. Too much, in the judgment of the
reformers of the Prussian army, was required from men past youth, not
enough from youth itself. The plan of the Prince Regent was therefore to
enforce in the first instance with far more stringency the law imposing the
universal obligation to military service; and, while thus raising the
annual levy from 40,000 to 60,000 men, to extend the period of service in
the Reserve, into which the young soldier passed on the completion of his
three years with the colours, from two to four years. Asserting with
greater rigour its claim to seven years in the early life of the citizen,
the State would gain, without including the Landwehr, an effective army of
four hundred thousand men, and would practically be able to dispense with
the service of those who were approaching middle life, except in cases of
great urgency. In the execution of this reform the Government could on its
own authority enforce the increased levy and the full three years' service
in the standing army; for the prolongation of service in the Reserve, and
for the greater expenditure entailed by the new system, the consent of
Parliament was necessary.

[The Prussian Parliament and the army, 1859-1861.]

[Accession of King William, Jan., 1861.]

The general principles on which the proposed reorganisation was based were
accepted by public opinion and by both Chambers of Parliament; it was,
however, held by the Liberal leaders that the increase of expenditure
might, without impairing the efficiency of the army, be avoided by
returning to the system of two-years service with the colours, which during
so long a period had been thought sufficient for the training of the
soldier. The Regent, however, was convinced that the discipline and the
instruction of three years were indispensable to the Prussian conscript,
and he refused to accept the compromise suggested. The mobilisation of 1859
had given him an opportunity for forming additional battalions; and
although the Landwehr were soon dismissed to their homes the new formation
was retained, and the place of the retiring militiamen was filled by
conscripts of the year. The Lower Chamber, in voting the sum required in
1860 for the increased numbers of the army, treated this arrangement as
temporary, and limited the grant to one year; in spite of this the Regent,
who on the death of his brother in January, 1861, became King of Prussia,
formed the additional battalions into new regiments, and gave to these new
regiments their names and colours. The year 1861 passed without bringing
the questions at issue between the Government and the Chamber of Deputies
to a settlement. Public feeling, disappointed in the reserved and
hesitating policy which was still followed by the Court in German affairs,
stimulated too by the rapid consolidation of the Italian monarchy, which
the Prussian Government on its part had as yet declined to recognise, was
becoming impatient and resentful. It seemed as if the Court of Berlin still
shrank from committing itself to the national cause. The general confidence
reposed in the new ruler at his accession was passing away; and when in the
summer of 1861 the dissolution of Parliament took place, the elections
resulted in the return not only of a Progressist majority, but of a
majority little inclined to submit to measures of compromise, or to shrink
from the assertion of its full constitutional rights.

[First Parliament of 1862.]

[Dissolution, May, 1862.]

[Second Parliament of 1862.]

[Bismarck becomes Minister, Sept., 1862.]

The new Parliament assembled at the beginning of 1862. Under the impulse
of public opinion, the Government was now beginning to adopt a more
vigorous policy in German affairs, and to re-assert Prussia's claims to
an independent leadership in defiance of the restored Diet of Frankfort.
But the conflict with the Lower Chamber was not to be averted by revived
energy abroad. The Army Bill, which was passed at once by the Upper
House, was referred to a hostile Committee on reaching the Chamber of
Deputies, and a resolution was carried insisting on the right of the
representatives of the people to a far more effective control over the
Budget than they had hitherto exercised. The result of this vote was the
dissolution of Parliament by the King, and the resignation of the
Ministry, with the exception of General Roon, Minister of War, and two of
the most conservative among his colleagues. Prince Hohenlohe, President
of the Upper House, became chief of the Government. There was now an open
and undisguised conflict between the Crown and the upholders of
Parliamentary rights. "King or Parliament" was the expression in which
the newly-appointed Ministers themselves summed up the struggle. The
utmost pressure was exerted by the Government in the course of the
elections which followed, but in vain. The Progressist Party returned in
overwhelming strength to the new Parliament; the voice of the country
seemed unmistakably to condemn the policy to which the King and his
advisers were committed. After a long and sterile discussion in the
Budget Committee, the debate on the Army Bill began in the Lower House on
the 11th of September. Its principal clauses were rejected by an almost
unanimous vote. An attempt made by General Roon to satisfy his opponents
by a partial and conditional admission of the principle of two-years'
service resulted only in increased exasperation on both sides. Hohenlohe
resigned, and the King now placed in power, at the head of a Ministry of
conflict, the most resolute and unflinching of all his friends, the most
contemptuous scorner of Parliamentary majorities, Herr von Bismarck. [505]

[Bismarck.]

The new Minister was, like Cavour, a country gentleman, and, like Cavour,
he owed his real entry into public life to the revolutionary movement of
1848. He had indeed held some obscure official posts before that epoch, but
it was as a member of the United Diet which assembled at Berlin in April,
1848, that he first attracted the attention of King or people. He was one
of two Deputies who refused to join in the vote of thanks to Frederick
William IV. for the Constitution which he had promised to Prussia.
Bismarck, then thirty-three years old, was a Royalist of Royalists, the
type, as it seemed, of the rough and masterful Junker, or Squire, of the
older parts of Prussia, to whom all reforms from those of Stein downwards
were hateful, all ideas but those of the barrack and the kennel alien.
Others in the spring of 1848 lamented the concessions made by the Crown to
the people; Bismarck had the courage to say so. When reaction came there
were naturally many, and among them King Frederick William, who were
interested in the man who in the heyday of constitutional enthusiasm had
treated the whole movement as so much midsummer madness, and had remained
faithful to monarchical authority as the one thing needful for the Prussian
State. Bismarck continued to take a prominent part in the Parliaments of
Berlin and Erfurt; it was not, however, till 1851 that he passed into the
inner official circle. He was then sent as the representative of Prussia to
the restored Diet of Frankfort. As an absolutist and a conservative,
brought up in the traditions of the Holy Alliance, Bismarck had in earlier
days looked up to Austria as the mainstay of monarchical order and the
historic barrier against the flood of democratic and wind-driven sentiment
which threatened to deluge Germany. He had even approved the surrender made
at Olmütz in 1850, as a matter of necessity; but the belief now grew strong
in his mind, and was confirmed by all he saw at Frankfort, that Austria
under Schwarzenberg's rule was no longer the Power which had been content
to share the German leadership with Prussia in the period before 1848, but
a Power which meant to rule in Germany uncontrolled. In contact with the
representatives of that outworn system which Austria had resuscitated at
Frankfort, and with the instruments of the dominant State itself, Bismarck
soon learnt to detest the paltriness of the one and the insolence of the
other. He declared the so-called Federal system to be a mere device for
employing the secondary German States for the aggrandisement of Austria and
the humiliation of Prussia. The Court of Vienna, and with it the Diet of
Frankfort, became in his eyes the enemy of Prussian greatness and
independence. During the Crimean war he was the vigorous opponent of an
alliance with the Western Powers, not only from distrust of France, and
from regard towards Russia as on the whole the most constant and the most
natural ally of his own country, but from the conviction that Prussia ought
to assert a national policy wholly independent of that of the Court of
Vienna. That the Emperor of Austria was approaching more or less nearly to
union with France and England was, in Bismarck's view, a good reason why
Prussia should stand fast in its relations of friendship with St.
Petersburg. [506] The policy of neutrality, which King Frederick William
and Manteuffel adopted more out of disinclination to strenuous action than
from any clear political view, was advocated by Bismarck for reasons which,
if they made Europe nothing and Prussia everything, were at least inspired
by a keen and accurate perception of Prussia's own interests in its present
and future relations with its neighbours. When the reign of Frederick
William ended, Bismarck, who stood high in the confidence of the new
Regent, was sent as ambassador to St. Petersburg. He subsequently
represented Prussia for a short time at the Court of Napoleon III., and was
recalled by the King from Paris in the autumn of 1862 in order to be placed
at the head of the Government. Far better versed in diplomacy than in
ordinary administration, he assumed, together with the Presidency of the
Cabinet, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

[Bismarck and the Lower Chamber, 1862.]

There were now at the head of the Prussian State three men eminently suited
to work with one another, and to carry out, in their own rough and military
fashion, the policy which was to unite Germany under the House of
Hohenzollern. The King, Bismarck, and Roon were thoroughly at one in their
aim, the enforcement of Prussia's ascendency by means of the army. The
designs of the Minister, which expanded with success and which involved a
certain daring in the choice of means, were at each new development so ably
veiled or disclosed, so dexterously presented to the sovereign, as to
overcome his hesitation on striking into many an unaccustomed path. Roon
and his workmen, who, in the face of a hostile Parliament and a hostile
Press, had to supply to Bismarck what a foreign alliance and enthusiastic
national sentiment had supplied to Cavour, forged for Prussia a weapon of
such temper that, against the enemies on whom it was employed, no
extraordinary genius was necessary to render its thrust fatal. It was no
doubt difficult for the Prime Minister, without alarming his sovereign and
without risk of an immediate breach with Austria, to make his ulterior aims
so clear as to carry the Parliament with him in the policy of military
reorganisation. Words frank even to brutality were uttered by him, but they
sounded more like menace and bluster than the explanation of a
well-considered plan. "Prussia must keep its forces together," he said in
one of his first Parliamentary appearances, "its boundaries are not those
of a sound State. The great questions of the time are to be decided not by
speeches and votes of majorities but by blood and iron." After the
experience of 1848 and 1850, a not too despondent political observer might
well have formed the conclusion that nothing less than the military
overthrow of Austria could give to Germany any tolerable system of national
government, or even secure to Prussia its legitimate field of action. This
was the keystone of Bismarck's belief, but he failed to make his purpose
and his motives intelligible to the representatives of the Prussian people.
He was taken for a mere bully and absolutist of the old type. His personal
characteristics, his arrogance, his sarcasm, his habit of banter,
exasperated and inflamed. Roon was no better suited to the atmosphere of a
popular assembly. Each encounter of the Ministers with the Chamber
embittered the struggle and made reconciliation more difficult. The
Parliamentary system of Prussia seemed threatened in its very existence
when, after the rejection by the Chamber of Deputies of the clause in the
Budget providing for the cost of the army-reorganisation, this clause was
restored by the Upper House, and the Budget of the Government passed in its
original form. By the terms of the Constitution the right of the Upper
House in matters of taxation was limited to the approval or rejection of
the Budget sent up to it from the Chamber of Representatives. It possessed
no power of amendment. Bismarck, however, had formed the theory that in the
event of a disagreement between the two Houses a situation arose for which
the Constitution had not provided, and in which therefore the Crown was
still possessed of its old absolute authority. No compromise, no
negotiation between the two Houses, was, in his view, to be desired. He was
resolved to govern and to levy taxes without a Budget, and had obtained the
King's permission to close the session immediately the Upper House had
given its vote. But before the order for prorogation could be brought down
the President of the Lower Chamber had assembled his colleagues, and the
unanimous vote of those present declared the action of the Upper House null
and void. In the agitation attending this trial of strength between the
Crown, the Ministry and the Upper House on one side and the Representative
Chamber on the other the session of 1862 closed. [507]

[King William.]

[The conflict continued, 1863.]

[Measures against the Press.]

The Deputies, returning to their constituencies, carried with them the
spirit of combat, and received the most demonstrative proofs of popular
sympathy and support. Representations of great earnestness were made to the
King, but they failed to shake in the slightest degree his confidence in
his Minister, or to bend his fixed resolution to carry out his military
reforms to the end. The claim of Parliament to interfere with matters of
military organisation in Prussia touched him in his most sensitive point.
He declared that the aim of his adversaries was nothing less than the
establishment of a Parliamentary instead of a royal army. In perfect
sincerity he believed that the convulsions of 1848 were on the point of
breaking out afresh. "You mourn the conflict between the Crown and the
national representatives," he said to the spokesman of an important
society; "do I not mourn it? I sleep no single night." The anxiety, the
despondency of the sovereign were shared by the friends of Prussia
throughout Germany; its enemies saw with wonder that Bismarck in his
struggle with the educated Liberalism of the middle classes did not shrink
from dalliance with the Socialist leaders and their organs. When Parliament
reassembled at the beginning of 1863 the conflict was resumed with even
greater heat. The Lower Chamber carried an address to the King, which,
while dwelling on the loyalty of the Prussian people to their chief,
charged the Ministers with violating the Constitution, and demanded their
dismissal. The King refused to receive the deputation which was to present
the address, and in the written communication in which he replied to it he
sharply reproved the Assembly for their errors and presumption. It was in
vain that the Army Bill was again introduced. The House, while allowing the
ordinary military expenditure for the year, struck out the costs of the
reorganisation, and declared Ministers personally answerable for the sums
expended. Each appearance of the leading members of the Cabinet now became
the signal for contumely and altercation. The decencies of debate ceased to
be observed on either side. When the President attempted to set some limit
to the violence of Bismarck and Roon, and, on resistance to his authority,
terminated the sitting, the Ministers declared that they would no longer
appear in a Chamber where freedom of speech was denied to them. Affairs
came to a deadlock. The Chamber again appealed to the King, and insisted
that reconciliation between the Crown and the nation was impossible so long
as the present Ministers remained in office. The King, now thoroughly
indignant, charged the Assembly with attempting to win for itself supreme
power, expressed his gratitude to his Ministers for their resistance to
this usurpation, and declared himself too confident in the loyalty of the
Prussian people to be intimidated by threats. His reply was followed by the
prorogation of the Assembly (May 26th). A dissolution would have been worse
than useless, for in the actual state of public opinion the Opposition
would probably have triumphed throughout the country. It only remained for
Bismarck to hold his ground, and, having silenced the Parliament for a
while, to silence the Press also by the exercise of autocratic power. The
Constitution authorised the King, in the absence of the Chambers, to
publish enactments on matters of urgency having the force of laws. No
sooner had the session been closed than an edict was issued empowering the
Government, without resort to courts of law, to suppress any newspaper
after two warnings. An outburst of public indignation branded this return
to the principles of pure despotism in Prussia; but neither King nor
Minister was to be diverted by threats or by expostulations from his
course. The Press was effectively silenced. So profound, however, was the
distrust now everywhere felt as to the future of Prussia, and so deep the
resentment against the Minister in all circles where Liberal influences
penetrated, that the Crown Prince himself, after in vain protesting against
a policy of violence which endangered his own prospective interests in the
Crown, publicly expressed his disapproval of the action of Government. For
this offence he was never forgiven.

[Austria from 1859.]

The course which affairs were taking at Berlin excited the more bitter
regret and disappointment among all friends of Prussia as at this very time
it seemed that constitutional government was being successfully established
in the western part of the Austrian Empire. The centralised military
despotism with which Austria emerged from the convulsions of 1848 had been
allowed ten years of undisputed sway; at the end of this time it had
brought things to such a pass that, after a campaign in which there had
been but one great battle, and while still in possession of a vast army and
an unbroken chain of fortresses, Austria stood powerless to move hand or
foot. It was not the defeat of Solferino or the cession of Lombardy that
exhibited the prostration of Austria's power, but the fact that while the
conditions of the Peace of Zürich were swept away, and Italy was united
under Victor Emmanuel in defiance of the engagements made by Napoleon III.
at Villafranca, the Austrian Emperor was compelled to look on with folded
arms. To have drawn the sword again, to have fired a shot in defence of the
Pope's temporal power or on behalf of the vassal princes of Tuscany and
Modena, would have been to risk the existence of the Austrian monarchy. The
State was all but bankrupt; rebellion might at any moment break out in
Hungary, which had already sent thousands of soldiers to the Italian camp.
Peace at whatever price was necessary abroad, and at home the system of
centralised despotism could no longer exist, come what might in its place.
It was natural that the Emperor should but imperfectly understand at the
first the extent of the concessions which it was necessary for him to make.
He determined that the Provincial Councils which Schwarzenberg had promised
in 1850 should be called into existence, and that a Council of the Empire
(Reichsrath), drawn in part from these, should assemble at Vienna, to
advise, though not to control, the Government in matters of finance. So
urgent, however, were the needs of the exchequer, that the Emperor
proceeded at once to the creation of the Central Council, and nominated its
first members himself. (March, 1860.)

[Hungary.]

[Centralists and Federalists in the Council.]

[The Diploma of Oct 20, 1860.]

That the Hungarian members nominated by the Emperor would decline to appear
at Vienna unless some further guarantee was given for the restoration of
Hungarian liberty was well known. The Emperor accordingly promised to
restore the ancient county-organisation, which had filled so great a space
in Hungarian history before 1848, and to take steps for assembling the
Hungarian Diet. This, with the repeal of an edict injurious to the
Protestants, opened the way for reconciliation, and the nominated
Hungarians took their place in the Council, though under protest that the
existing arrangement could only be accepted as preparatory to the full
restitution of the rights of their country. The Council continued in
session during the summer of 1860. Its duties were financial; but the
establishment of financial equilibrium in Austria was inseparable from the
establishment of political stability and public confidence; and the
Council, in its last sittings, entered on the widest constitutional
problems. The non-German members were in the majority; and while all
parties alike condemned the fallen absolutism, the rival declarations of
policy submitted to the Council marked the opposition which was
henceforward to exist between the German Liberals of Austria and the
various Nationalist or Federalist groups. The Magyars, uniting with those
who had been their bitterest enemies, declared that the ancient
independence in legislation and administration of the several countries
subject to the House of Hapsburg must be restored, each country retaining
its own historical character. The German minority contended that the
Emperor should bestow upon his subjects such institutions as, while based
on the right of self-government should secure the unity of the Empire and
the force of its central authority. All parties were for a constitutional
system and for local liberties in one form or another; but while the
Magyars and their supporters sought for nothing less than national
independence, the Germans would at the most have granted a uniform system
of provincial self-government in strict subordination to a central
representative body drawn from the whole Empire and legislating for the
whole Empire. The decision of the Emperor was necessarily a compromise. By
a Diploma published on the 20th of October he promised to restore to
Hungary its old Constitution, and to grant wide legislative rights to the
other States of the Monarchy, establishing for the transaction of affairs
common to the whole Empire an Imperial Council, and reserving for the
non-Hungarian members of this Council a qualified right of legislation for
all the Empire except Hungary. [508]

[Hungary resists the establishment of a Central Council.]

The Magyars had conquered their King; and all the impetuous patriotism that
had been crushed down since the ruin of 1849 now again burst into flame.
The County Assemblies met, and elected as their officers men who had been
condemned to death in 1849 and who were living in exile; they swept away
the existing law-courts, refused the taxes, and proclaimed the legislation
of 1848 again in force. Francis Joseph seemed anxious to avert a conflict,
and to prove both in Hungary and in the other parts of the Empire the
sincerity of his promises of reform, on which the nature of the provincial
Constitutions which were published immediately after the Diploma of October
had thrown some doubt. At the instance of his Hungarian advisers he
dismissed the chief of his Cabinet, and called to office Schmerling, who,
in 1848, had been Prime Minister of the German National Government at
Frankfort. Schmerling at once promised important changes in the provincial
systems drawn up by his predecessor, but in his dealings with Hungary he
proved far less tractable than the Magyars had expected. If the Hungarians
had recovered their own constitutional forms, they still stood threatened
with the supremacy of a Central Council in all that related to themselves
in common with the rest of the Empire, and against this they rebelled. But
from the establishment of this Council of the Empire neither the Emperor
nor Schmerling would recede. An edict of February 26th, 1861, while it made
good the changes promised by Schmerling in the several provincial systems,
confirmed the general provisions of the Diploma of October, and declared
that the Emperor would maintain the Constitution of his dominions as now
established against an attack.

[Conflict of Hungary with the Crown, 1861.]

In the following April the Provincial Diets met throughout the Austrian
Empire, and the Diet of the Hungarian Kingdom assembled at Pesth. The first
duty of each of these bodies was to elect representatives to the Council of
the Empire which was to meet at Vienna. Neither Hungary nor Croatia,
however, would elect such representatives, each claiming complete
legislative independence, and declining to recognise any such external
authority as it was now proposed to create. The Emperor warned the
Hungarian Diet against the consequences of its action; but the national
spirit of the Magyars was thoroughly roused, and the County Assemblies vied
with one another in the violence of their addresses to the Sovereign. The
Diet, reviving the Constitutional difficulties connected with the
abdication of Ferdinand, declared that it would only negotiate for the
coronation of Francis Joseph after the establishment of a Hungarian
Ministry and the restoration of Croatia and Transylvania to the Hungarian
Kingdom. Accepting Schmerling's contention that the ancient constitutional
rights of Hungary had been extinguished by rebellion, the Emperor insisted
on the establishment of a Council for the whole Empire, and refused to
recede from the declarations which he had made in the edict of February.
The Diet hereupon protested, in a long and vigorous address to the King,
against the validity of all laws made without its own concurrence, and
declared that Francis Joseph had rendered an agreement between the King and
the nation impossible. A dissolution followed. The County Assemblies took
up the national struggle. They in their turn were suppressed; their
officers were dismissed, and military rule was established throughout the
land, though with explicit declarations on the part of the King that it was
to last only till the legally existing Constitution could be brought into
peaceful working. [509]

[The Reichsrath at Vienna, May, 1861-Dec., 1862.]

[Second session of the Reichsrath, 1863.]

[The Reichsrath at Vienna, May, 1861-Dec., 1862.]

[Second session of the Reichsrath, 1863.]

Meanwhile the Central Representative Body, now by enlargement of its
functions and increase in the number of its members made into a Parliament
of the Empire, assembled at Vienna. Its real character was necessarily
altered by the absence of representatives from Hungary; and for some time
the Government seemed disposed to limit its competence to the affairs of
the Cis-Leithan provinces; but after satisfying himself that no accord with
Hungary was possible, the Emperor announced this fact to the Assembly, and
bade it perform its part as the organ of the Empire at large, without
regard to the abstention of those who did not choose to exercise their
rights. The Budget for the entire Empire was accordingly submitted to the
Assembly, and for the first time the expenditure of the Austrian State was
laid open to public examination and criticism. The first session of this
Parliament lasted, with adjournments, from May, 1861, to December, 1862. In
legislation it effected little, but its relations as a whole with the
Government remained excellent, and its long-continued activity, unbroken by
popular disturbances, did much to raise the fallen credit of the Austrian
State and to win for it the regard of Germany. On the close of the session
the Provincial Diets assembled, and throughout the spring of 1863 the
rivalry of the Austrian nationalities gave abundant animation to many a
local capital. In the next summer the Reichsrath reassembled at Vienna.
Though Hungary remained in a condition not far removed from rebellion, the
Parliamentary system of Austria was gaining in strength, and indeed, as it
seemed, at the expense of Hungary itself; for the Roumanian and German
population of Transylvania, rejoicing in the opportunity of detaching
themselves from the Magyars, now sent deputies to Vienna. While at Berlin
each week that passed sharpened the antagonism between the nation and its
Government, and made the Minister's name more odious, Austria seemed to
have successfully broken with the traditions of its past, and to be fast
earning for itself an honourable place among States of the constitutional
type.

One of the reproaches brought against Bismarck by the Progressist majority
in the Parliament of Berlin was that he had isolated Prussia both in
Germany and in Europe. That he had roused against the Government of his
country the public opinion of Germany was true: that he had alienated
Prussia from all Europe was not the case; on the contrary, he had
established a closer relation between the Courts of Berlin and St.
Petersburg than had existed at any time since the commencement of the
Regency, and had secured for Prussia a degree of confidence and goodwill on
the part of the Czar which, in the memorable years that were to follow,
served it scarcely less effectively than an armed alliance. Russia, since
the Crimean War, had seemed to be entering upon an epoch of boundless
change. The calamities with which the reign of Nicholas had closed had
excited in that narrow circle of Russian society where thought had any
existence a vehement revulsion against the sterile and unchanging system of
repression, the grinding servitude of the last thirty years. From the
Emperor downwards all educated men believed not only that the system of
government, but that the whole order of Russian social life, must be
recast. The ferment of ideas which marks an age of revolution was in full
course; but in what forms the new order was to be moulded, through what
processes Russia was to be brought into its new life, no one knew. Russia
was wanting in capable statesmen; it was even more conspicuously wanting in
the class of serviceable and intelligent agents of Government of the second
rank. Its monarch, Alexander II., humane and well-meaning, was irresolute
and vacillating beyond the measure of ordinary men. He was not only devoid
of all administrative and organising faculty himself, but so infirm of
purpose that Ministers whose policy he had accepted feared to let him pass
out of their sight, lest in the course of a single journey or a single
interview he should succumb to the persuasions of some rival politician. In
no country in Europe was there such incoherence, such self-contradiction,
such absence of unity of plan and purpose in government as in Russia, where
all nominally depended upon a single will. Pressed and tormented by all the
rival influences that beat upon the centre of a great empire, Alexander
seems at times to have played off against one another as colleagues in the
same branch of Government the representatives of the most opposite schools
of action, and, after assenting to the plans of one group of advisers, to
have committed the execution of these plans, by way of counterpoise, to
those who had most opposed them. But, like other weak men, he dreaded
nothing so much as the reproach of weakness or inconstancy; and in the
cloud of half-formed or abandoned purposes there were some few to which he
resolutely adhered. The chief of these, the great achievement of his reign,
was the liberation of the serfs.

[Liberation of the Serfs. March, 1861.]

It was probably owing to the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 that the
serfs had not been freed by Nicholas. That sovereign had long understood
the necessity for the change, and in 1847 he had actually appointed a
Commission to report on the best means of effecting it. The convulsions of
1848, followed by the Hungarian and the Crimean Wars, threw the project
into the background during the remainder of Nicholas's reign; but if the
belief of the Russian people is well founded, the last injunction of the
dying Czar to his successor was to emancipate the serfs throughout his
empire. Alexander was little capable of grappling with so tremendous a
problem himself; in the year 1859, however, he directed a Commission to
make a complete inquiry into the subject, and to present a scheme of
emancipation. The labours of the Commission extended over two years; its
discussions were agitated, at times violent. That serfage must sooner or
later be abolished all knew; the points on which the Commission was divided
were the bestowal of land on the peasants and the regulation of the village
community. European history afforded abundant precedents in emancipation,
and under an infinite variety of detail three types of the process of
enfranchisement were clearly distinguishable from one another. Maria
Theresa, in liberating the serf, had required him to continue to render a
fixed amount of labour to his lord, and had given him on this condition
fixity of tenure in the land he occupied; the Prussian reformers had made a
division of the land between the peasant and the lord, and extinguished all
labour-dues; Napoleon, in enfranchising the serfs in the Duchy of Warsaw,
had simply turned them into free men, leaving the terms of their occupation
of land to be settled by arrangement or free contract with their former
lords. This example had been followed in the Baltic Provinces of Russia
itself by Alexander I. Of the three modes of emancipation, that based on
free contract had produced the worst results for the peasant; and though
many of the Russian landowners and their representatives in the Commission
protested against a division of the land between themselves and their serfs
as an act of agrarian revolution and spoliation, there were men in high
office, and some few among the proprietors, who resolutely and successfully
fought for the principle of independent ownership by the peasants. The
leading spirit in this great work appears to have been Nicholas Milutine,
Adjunct of the Minister of the Interior, Lanskoi. Milutine, who had drawn
up the Municipal Charta of St. Petersburg, was distrusted by the Czar as a
restless and uncompromising reformer. It was uncertain from day to day
whether the views of the Ministry of the Interior or those of the
territorial aristocracy would prevail; ultimately, however, under
instructions from the Palace, the Commission accepted not only the
principle of the division of the land, but the system of communal
self-government by the peasants themselves. The determination of the amount
of land to be held by the peasants of a commune and of the fixed rent to be
paid to the lord was left in the first instance to private agreement; but
where such agreement was not reached, the State, through arbiters elected
at local assemblies of the nobles, decided the matter itself. The rent once
fixed, the State enabled the commune to redeem it by advancing a capital
sum to be recouped by a quit-rent to the State extending over forty-nine
years. The Ukase of the Czar converting twenty-five millions of serfs into
free proprietors, the greatest act of legislation of modern times, was
signed on the 3rd of March, 1861, and within the next few weeks was read in
every church of the Russian Empire. It was a strange comment on the system
of government in Russia that in the very month in which the edict was
published both Lanskoi and Milutine, who had been its principal authors,
were removed from their posts. The Czar feared to leave them in power to
superintend the actual execution of the law which they had inspired. In
supporting them up to the final stage of its enactment Alexander had
struggled against misgivings of his own, and against influences of vast
strength alike at the Court, within the Government, and in the Provinces.
With the completion of the Edict of Emancipation his power of resistance
was exhausted, and its execution was committed by him to those who had been
its opponents. That some of the evils which have mingled with the good in
Russian enfranchisement might have been less had the Czar resolutely stood
by the authors of reform and allowed them to complete their work in
accordance with their own designs and convictions, is scarcely open to
doubt. [510]

[Poland, 1861, 1862.]

It had been the belief of educated men in Russia that the emancipation of
the serf would be but the first of a series of great organic changes,
bringing their country more nearly to the political and social level of its
European neighbours. This belief was not fulfilled. Work of importance was
done in the reconstruction of the judicial system of Russia, but in the
other reforms expected little was accomplished. An insurrection which broke
out in Poland at the beginning of 1863 diverted the energies of the
Government from all other objects; and in the overpowering outburst of
Russian patriotism and national feeling which it excited, domestic reforms,
no less than the ideals of Western civilisation, lost their interest. The
establishment of Italian independence, coinciding in time with the general
unsettlement and expectation of change which marked the first years of
Alexander's reign, had stirred once more the ill-fated hopes of the Polish
national leaders. From the beginning of the year 1861 Warsaw was the scene
of repeated tumults. The Czar was inclined, within certain limits, to a
policy of conciliation. The separate Legislature and separate army which
Poland had possessed from 1815 to 1830 he was determined not to restore;
but he was willing to give Poland a large degree of administrative
autonomy, to confide the principal offices in its Government to natives,
and generally to relax something of that close union with Russia which had
been enforced by Nicholas since the rebellion of 1831. But the concessions
of the Czar, accompanied as they were by acts of repression and severity,
were far from satisfying the demands of Polish patriotism. It was in vain
that Alexander in the summer of 1862 sent his brother Constantine as
Viceroy to Warsaw, established a Polish Council of State, placed a Pole,
Wielopolski, at the head of the Administration, superseded all the Russian
governors of Polish provinces by natives, and gave to the municipalities
and the districts the right of electing local councils; these concessions
seemed nothing, and were in fact nothing, in comparison with the national
independence which the Polish leaders claimed. The situation grew worse and
worse. An attempt made upon the life of the Grand Duke Constantine during
his entry into Warsaw was but one among a series of similar acts which
discredited the Polish cause and strengthened those who at St. Petersburg
had from the first condemned the Czar's attempts at conciliation. At length
the Russian Government took the step which precipitated revolt. A levy of
one in every two hundred of the population throughout the Empire had been
ordered in the autumn of 1862. Instructions were sent from St. Petersburg
to the effect that in raising this levy in Poland the country population
were to be spared, and that all persons who were known to be connected with
the disorders in the towns were to be seized as soldiers. This terrible
sentence against an entire political class was carried out, so far as it
lay within the power of the authorities, on the night of January 14th,
1863. But before the imperial press-gang surrounded the houses of its
victims a rumour of the intended blow had gone abroad. In the preceding
hours, and during the night of the 14th, thousands fled from Warsaw and the
other Polish towns into the forests. There they formed themselves into
armed bands, and in the course of the next few days a guerilla warfare
broke out wherever Russian troops were found in insufficient strength or
off their guard. [511]

[Poland and Russia.]

The classes in which the national spirit of Poland lived were the so-called
noblesse, numbering hundreds of thousands, the town populations, and the
priesthood. The peasants, crushed and degraded, though not nominally in
servitude, were indifferent to the national cause. On the neutrality, if
not on the support, of the peasants the Russian Government could fairly
reckon; within the towns it found itself at once confronted by an invisible
national Government whose decrees were printed and promulgated by unknown
hands, and whose sentences of death were mercilessly executed against those
whom it condemned as enemies or traitors to the national cause. So
extraordinary was the secrecy which covered the action of this National
Executive, that Milutine, who was subsequently sent by the Czar to examine
into the affairs of Poland, formed the conclusion that it had possessed
accomplices within the Imperial Government at St. Petersburg itself. The
Polish cause retained indeed some friends in Russia even after the outbreak
of the insurrection; it was not until the insurrection passed the frontier
of the kingdom and was carried by the nobles into Lithuania and Podolia
that the entire Russian nation took up the struggle with passionate and
vindictive ardour as one for life or death. It was the fatal bane of Polish
nationality that the days of its greatness had left it a claim upon vast
territories where it had planted nothing but a territorial aristocracy, and
where the mass of population, if not actually Russian, was almost
indistinguishable from the Russians in race and language, and belonged like
them to the Greek Church, which Catholic Poland had always persecuted. For
ninety years Lithuania and the border provinces had been incorporated with
the Czar's dominions, and with the exception of their Polish landowners
they were now in fact thoroughly Russian. When therefore the nobles of
these provinces declared that Poland must be reconstituted with the limits
of 1772, and subsequently took up arms in concert with the insurrectionary
Government at Warsaw, the Russian people, from the Czar to the peasant,
felt the struggle to be nothing less than one for the dismemberment or the
preservation of their own country, and the doom of Polish nationality, at
least for some generations, was sealed. The diplomatic intervention of the
Western Powers on behalf of the constitutional rights of Poland under the
Treaty of Vienna, which was to some extent supported by Austria, only
prolonged a hopeless struggle, and gave unbounded popularity to Prince
Gortschakoff, by whom, after a show of courteous attention during the
earlier and still perilous stage of the insurrection, the interference of
the Powers was resolutely and unconditionally repelled. By the spring of
1864 the insurgents were crushed or exterminated. General Muravieff, the
Governor of Lithuania, fulfilled his task against the mutinous nobles of
this province with unshrinking severity, sparing neither life nor fortune
so long as an enemy of Russia remained to be overthrown. It was at Wilna,
the Lithuanian capital, not at Warsaw, that the terrors of Russian
repression were the greatest. Muravieff's executions may have been less
numerous than is commonly supposed; but in the form of pecuniary
requisitions and fines he undoubtedly aimed at nothing less than the utter
ruin of a great part of the class most implicated in the rebellion.

[Agrarian measures in Poland.]

[Agrarian measures in Poland, 1864.]

In Poland itself the Czar, after some hesitation, determined once and for
all to establish a friend to Russia in every homestead of the kingdom by
making the peasant owner of the land on which he laboured. The
insurrectionary Government at the outbreak of the rebellion had attempted
to win over the peasantry by promising enactments to this effect, but no
one had responded to their appeal. In the autumn of 1863 the Czar recalled
Milutine from his enforced travels and directed him to proceed to Warsaw,
in order to study the affairs of Poland on the spot, and to report on the
measures necessary to be taken for its future government and organisation.
Milutine obtained the assistance of some of the men who had laboured most
earnestly with him in the enfranchisement of the Russian serfs; and in the
course of a few weeks he returned to St. Petersburg, carrying with him the
draft of measures which were to change the face of Poland. He recommended
on the one hand that every political institution separating Poland from the
rest of the Empire should be swept away, and the last traces of Polish
independence utterly obliterated; on the other hand, that the peasants, as
the only class on which Russia could hope to count in the future, should be
made absolute and independent owners of the land they occupied. Prince
Gortschakoff, who had still some regard for the opinion of Western Europe,
and possibly some sympathy for the Polish aristocracy, resisted this daring
policy; but the Czar accepted Milutine's counsel, and gave him a free hand
in the execution of his agrarian scheme. The division of the land between
the nobles and the peasants was accordingly carried out by Milutine's own
officers under conditions very different from those adopted in Russia. The
whole strength of the Government was thrown on to the side of the peasant
and against the noble. Though the population was denser in Poland than in
Russia, the peasant received on an average four times as much land; the
compensation made to the lords (which was paid in bonds which immediately
fell to half their nominal value) was raised not by quit-rents on the
peasants' lands alone, as in Russia, but by a general land-tax falling
equally on the land left to the lords, who had thus to pay a great part of
their own compensation: above all, the questions in dispute were settled,
not as in Russia by arbiters elected at local assemblies of the nobles, but
by officers of the Crown. Moreover, the division of landed property was not
made once and for all, as in Russia, but the woods and pastures remaining
to the lords continued subject to undefined common-rights of the peasants.
These common-rights were deliberately left unsettled in order that a source
of contention might always be present between the greater and the lesser
proprietors, and that the latter might continue to look to the Russian
Government as the protector or extender of their interests. "We hold
Poland," said a Russian statesman, "by its rights of common." [512]

[Russia and Polish nationality.]

Milutine, who, with all the fiery ardour of his national and levelling
policy, seems to have been a gentle and somewhat querulous invalid, and who
was shortly afterwards struck down by paralysis, to remain a helpless
spectator of the European changes of the next six years, had no share in
that warfare against the language, the religion, and the national culture
of Poland with which Russia has pursued its victory since 1863. The public
life of Poland he was determined to Russianise; its private and social life
he would probably have left unmolested, relying on the goodwill of the
great mass of peasants who owed their proprietorship to the action of the
Czar. There were, however, politicians at Moscow and St. Petersburg who
believed that the deep-lying instinct of nationality would for the first
time be called into real life among these peasants by their very elevation
from misery to independence, and that where Russia had hitherto had three
hundred thousand enemies Milutine was preparing for it six millions. It was
the dread of this possibility in the future, the apprehension that material
interests might not permanently vanquish the subtler forces which pass from
generation to generation, latent, if still unconscious, where nationality
itself is not lost, that made the Russian Government follow up the
political destruction of the Polish noblesse by measures directed against
Polish nationality itself, even at the risk of alienating the class who for
the present were effectively won over to the Czar's cause. By the side of
its life-giving and beneficent agrarian policy Russia has pursued the
odious system of debarring Poland from all means of culture and improvement
associated with the use of its own language, and has aimed at eventually
turning the Poles into Russians by the systematic impoverishment and
extinction of all that is essentially Polish in thought, in sentiment, and
in expression. The work may prove to be one not beyond its power; and no
common perversity on the part of its Government would be necessary to turn
against Russia the millions who in Poland owe all they have of prosperity
and independence to the Czar: but should the excess of Russian
propagandism, or the hostility of Church to Church, at some distant date
engender a new struggle for Polish independence, this struggle will be one
governed by other conditions than those of 1831 or 1863, and Russia will,
for the first time, have to conquer on the Vistula not a class nor a city,
but a nation.

[Berlin and St. Petersburg, 1863.]

It was a matter of no small importance to Bismarck and to Prussia that in
the years 1863 and 1864 the Court of St. Petersburg found itself confronted
with affairs of such seriousness in Poland. From the opportunity which was
then presented to him of obliging an important neighbour, and of profiting
by that neighbour's conjoined embarrassment and goodwill, Bismarck drew
full advantage. He had always regarded the Poles as a mere nuisance in
Europe, and heartily despised the Germans for the sympathy which they had
shown towards Poland in 1848. When the insurrection of 1863 broke out,
Bismarck set the policy of his own country in emphatic contrast with that
of Austria and the Western Powers, and even entered into an arrangement
with Russia for an eventual military combination in case the insurgents
should pass from one side to the other of the frontier. [513] Throughout
the struggle with the Poles, and throughout the diplomatic conflict with
the Western Powers, the Czar had felt secure in the loyalty of the stubborn
Minister at Berlin; and when, at the close of the Polish revolt, the events
occurred which opened to Prussia the road to political fortune, Bismarck
received his reward in the liberty of action given him by the Russian
Government. The difficulties connected with Schleswig-Holstein, which,
after a short interval of tranquillity following the settlement of 1852,
had again begun to trouble Europe, were forced to the very front of
Continental affairs by the death of Frederick VII., King of Denmark, in
November, 1863. Prussia had now at its head a statesman resolved to pursue
to their extreme limit the chances which this complication offered to his
own country; and, more fortunate than his predecessors of 1848, Bismarck
had not to dread the interference of the Czar of Russia as the patron and
protector of the interests of the Danish court.

[Schleswig-Holstein, 1852-1863.]

[The Patent of March 30, 1863.]

By the Treaty of London, signed on May 8th, 1852, all the great Powers,
including Prussia, had recognised the principle of the integrity of the
Danish Monarchy, and had pronounced Prince Christian of Glücksburg to be
heir-presumptive to the whole dominions of the reigning King. The rights of
the German Federation in Holstein were nevertheless declared to remain
unprejudiced; and in a Convention made with Austria and Prussia before they
joined in this Treaty, King Frederick VII. had undertaken to conform to
certain rules in his treatment of Schleswig as well as of Holstein. The
Duke of Augustenburg, claimant to the succession in Schleswig-Holstein
through the male line, had renounced his pretensions in consideration of an
indemnity paid to him by the King of Denmark. This surrender, however, had
not received the consent of his son and of the other members of the House
of Augustenburg, nor had the German Federation, as such, been a party to
the Treaty of London. Relying on the declaration of the Great Powers in
favour of the integrity of the Danish Kingdom, Frederick VII. had resumed
his attempts to assimilate Schleswig, and in some degree Holstein, to the
rest of the Monarchy; and although the Provincial Estates were allowed to
remain in existence, a national Constitution was established in October,
1855, for the entire Danish State. Bitter complaints were made of the
system of repression and encroachment with which the Government of
Copenhagen was attempting to extinguish German nationality in the border
provinces; at length, in November, 1858, under threat of armed intervention
by the German Federation, Frederick consented to exclude Holstein from the
operation of the new Constitution. But this did not produce peace, for the
inhabitants of Schleswig, severed from the sister-province and now excited
by the Italian war, raised all the more vigorous a protest against their
own incorporation with Denmark; while in Holstein itself the Government
incurred the charge of unconstitutional action in fixing the Budget without
the consent of the Estates. The German Federal Diet again threatened to
resort to force, and Denmark prepared for war. Prussia took up the cause of
Schleswig in 1861; and even the British Government, which had hitherto
shown far more interest in the integrity of Denmark than in the rights of
the German provinces, now recommended that the Constitution of 1855 should
be abolished, and that a separate legislation and administration should be
granted to Schleswig as well as to Holstein. The Danes, however, were bent
on preserving Schleswig as an integral part of the State, and the
Government of King Frederick, while willing to recognise Holstein as
outside Danish territory proper, insisted that Schleswig should be included
within the unitary Constitution, and that Holstein should contribute a
fixed share to the national expenditure. A manifesto to this effect,
published by King Frederick on the 30th of March, 1863, was the immediate
ground of the conflict now about to break out between Germany and Denmark.
The Diet of Frankfort announced that if this proclamation were not revoked
it should proceed to Federal execution, that is, armed intervention,
against the King of Denmark as Duke of Holstein. Still counting upon
foreign aid or upon the impotence of the Diet, the Danish Government
refused to change its policy, and on the 29th of September laid before the
Parliament at Copenhagen the law incorporating Schleswig with the rest of
the Monarchy under the new Constitution. Negotiations were thus brought to
a close, and on the 1st of October the Diet decreed the long-threatened
Federal execution. [514]

[Death of Frederick VII., November, 1863.]

[Federal execution in Holstein. December, 1863.]

Affairs had reached this stage, and the execution had not yet been put in
force, when, on the 15th of November, King Frederick VII. died. For a
moment it appeared possible that his successor, Prince Christian of
Glücksburg, might avert the conflict with Germany by withdrawing from the
position which his predecessor had taken up. But the Danish people and
Ministry were little inclined to give way; the Constitution had passed
through Parliament two days before King Frederick's death, and on the 18th
of November it received the assent of the new monarch. German national
feeling was now as strongly excited on the question of Schleswig-Holstein
as it had been in 1848. The general cry was that the union of these
provinces with Denmark must be treated as at an end, and their legitimate
ruler, Frederick of Augustenburg, son of the Duke who had renounced his
rights, be placed on the throne. The Diet of Frankfort, however, decided to
recognise neither of the two rival sovereigns in Holstein until its own
intervention should have taken place. Orders were given that a Saxon and a
Hanoverian corps should enter the country; and although Prussia and Austria
had made a secret agreement that the settlement of the Schleswig-Holstein
question was to be conducted by themselves independently of the Diet, the
tide of popular enthusiasm ran so high that for the moment the two leading
Powers considered it safer not to obstruct the Federal authority, and the
Saxon and Hanoverian troops accordingly entered Holstein as mandatories of
the Diet at the end of 1863. The Danish Government, offering no resistance,
withdrew its troops across the river Eider into Schleswig.

[Plans of Bismarck.]

[Union of Austria and Prussia.]

[Austrian and Prussian troops enter Schleswig. Feb., 1864.]

From this time the history of Germany is the history of the profound and
audacious statecraft and of the overmastering will of Bismarck; the nation,
except through its valour on the battle-field, ceases to influence the
shaping of its own fortunes. What the German people desired in 1864 was
that Schleswig-Holstein should be attached, under a ruler of its own, to
the German Federation as it then existed; what Bismarck intended was that
Schleswig-Holstein, itself incorporated more or less directly with Prussia,
should be made the means of the destruction of the existing Federal system
and of the expulsion of Austria from Germany. That another petty State,
bound to Prussia by no closer tie than its other neighbours, should be
added to the troop among whom Austria found its vassals and its
instruments, would have been in Bismarck's eyes no gain but actual
detriment to Germany. The German people desired one course of action;
Bismarck had determined on something totally different; and with matchless
resolution and skill he bore down all opposition of people and of Courts,
and forced a reluctant nation to the goal which he had himself chosen for
it. The first point of conflict was the apparent recognition by Bismarck of
the rights of King Christian IX. as lawful sovereign in the Duchies as well
as in the rest of the Danish State. By the Treaty of London Prussia had
indeed pledged itself to this recognition; but the German Federation had
been no party to the Treaty, and under the pressure of a vehement national
agitation Bavaria and the minor States one after another recognised
Frederick of Augustenburg as Duke of Schleswig-Holstein. Bismarck was
accused alike by the Prussian Parliament and by the popular voice of
Germany at large of betraying German interests to Denmark, of abusing
Prussia's position as a Great Power, of inciting the nation to civil war.
In vain he declared that, while surrendering no iota of German rights, the
Government of Berlin must recognise those treaty-obligations with which its
own legal title to a voice in the affairs of Schleswig was intimately bound
up, and that the King of Prussia, not a multitude of irresponsible and
ill-informed citizens, must be the judge of the measures by which German
interests were to be effectually protected. His words made no single
convert either in the Prussian Parliament or in the Federal Diet. At
Frankfort the proposal made by the two leading Powers that King Christian
should be required to annul the November Constitution, and that in case of
his refusal Schleswig also should be occupied, was rejected, as involving
an acknowledgment of the title of Christian as reigning sovereign. At
Berlin the Lower Chamber refused the supplies which Bismarck demanded for
operations in the Duchies, and formally resolved to resist his policy by
every means at its command. But the resistance of Parliament and of Diet
were alike in vain. By a masterpiece of diplomacy Bismarck had secured the
support and co-operation of Austria in his own immediate Danish policy,
though but a few months before he had incurred the bitter hatred of the
Court of Vienna by frustrating its plans for a reorganisation of Germany by
a Congress of princes at Frankfort, and had frankly declared to the
Austrian ambassador at Berlin that if Austria did not transfer its
political centre to Pesth and leave to Prussia free scope in Germany, it
would find Prussia on the side of its enemies in the next war in which it
might be engaged. [515] But the democratic and impassioned character of the
agitation in the minor States in favour of the Schleswig-Holsteiners and
their Augustenburg pretender had enabled Bismarck to represent this
movement to the Austrian Government as a revolutionary one, and by a
dexterous appeal to the memories of 1848 to awe the Emperor's advisers into
direct concert with the Court of Berlin, as the representative of
monarchical order, in dealing with a problem otherwise too likely to be
solved by revolutionary methods and revolutionary forces. Count Rechberg,
the Foreign Minister at Vienna, was lured into a policy which, after
drawing upon Austria a full share of the odium of Bismarck's Danish plans,
after forfeiting for it the goodwill of the minor States with which it
might have kept Prussia in check, and exposing it to the risk of a European
war, was to confer upon its rival the whole profit of the joint enterprise,
and to furnish a pretext for the struggle by which Austria was to be
expelled alike from Germany and from what remained to it of Italy. But of
the nature of the toils into which he was now taking the first fatal and
irrevocable step Count Rechberg appears to have had no suspicion. A seeming
cordiality united the Austrian and Prussian Governments in the policy of
defiance to the will of all the rest of Germany and to the demands of their
own subjects. It was to no purpose that the Federal Diet vetoed the
proposed summons to King Christian and the proposed occupation of
Schleswig. Austria and Prussia delivered an ultimatum at Copenhagen
demanding the repeal of the November Constitution; and on its rejection
their troops entered Schleswig, not as the mandatories of the German
Federation, but as the instruments of two independent and allied Powers.
(Feb. 1, 1864.)

[Campaign in Schleswig. Feb.-April, 1864.]

Against the overwhelming forces by which they were thus attacked the Danes
could only make a brave but ineffectual resistance. Their first line of
defence was the Danewerke, a fortification extending east and west towards
the sea from the town of Schleswig. Prince Frederick Charles, who commanded
the Prussian right, was repulsed in an attack upon the easternmost part of
this work at Missunde; the Austrians, however, carried some positions in
the centre which commanded the defenders' lines, and the Danes fell back
upon the fortified post of Düppel, covering the narrow channel which
separates the island of Alsen from the mainland. Here for some weeks they
held the Prussians in check, while the Austrians, continuing the march
northwards, entered Jutland. At length, on the 18th of April, after several
hours of heavy bombardment, the lines of Düppel were taken by storm and the
defenders driven across the channel into Alsen. Unable to pursue the enemy
across this narrow strip of sea, the Prussians joined their allies in
Jutland, and occupied the whole of the Danish mainland as far as the Lüm
Fiord. The war, however, was not to be terminated without an attempt on the
part of the neutral Powers to arrive at a settlement by diplomacy. A
Conference was opened at London on the 20th of April, and after three weeks
of negotiation the belligerents were induced to accept an armistice. As the
troops of the German Federation, though unconcerned in the military
operations of the two Great Powers, were in possession of Holstein, the
Federal Government was invited to take part in the Conference. It was
represented by Count Beust, Prime Minister of Saxony, a politician who was
soon to rise to much greater eminence; but in consequence of the diplomatic
union of Prussia and Austria the views entertained by the Governments of
the secondary German States had now no real bearing on the course of
events, and Count Beust's earliest appearance on the great European stage
was without result, except in its influence on his own career. [516]

[Conference of London. April, 1864.]

The first proposition laid before the Conference was that submitted by
Bernstorff, the Prussian envoy, to the effect that Schleswig-Holstein
should receive complete independence, the question whether King Christian
or some other prince should be sovereign of the new State being reserved
for future settlement. To this the Danish envoys replied that even on the
condition of personal union with Denmark through the Crown they could not
assent to the grant of complete independence to the Duchies. Raising their
demand in consequence of this refusal, and declaring that the war had made
an end of the obligations subsisting under the London Treaty of 1852, the
two German Powers then demanded that Schleswig-Holstein should be
completely separated from Denmark and formed into a single State under
Frederick of Augustenburg, who in the eyes of Germany possessed the best
claim to the succession. Lord Russell, while denying that the acts or
defaults of Denmark could liberate Austria and Prussia from their
engagements made with other Powers in the Treaty of London, admitted that
no satisfactory result was likely to arise from the continued union of the
Duchies with Denmark, and suggested that King Christian should make an
absolute cession of Holstein and of the southern part of Schleswig,
retaining the remainder in full sovereignty. The frontier-line he proposed
to draw at the River Schlei. To this principle of partition both Denmark
and the German Powers assented, but it proved impossible to reach an
agreement on the frontier-line. Bernstorff, who had at first required
nearly all Schleswig, abated his demands, and would have accepted a line
drawn westward from Flensburg, so leaving to Denmark at least half the
province, including the important position of Düppel. The terms thus
offered to Denmark were not unfavourable. Holstein it did not expect, and
could scarcely desire, to retain; and the territory which would have been
taken from it in Schleswig under this arrangement included few districts
that were not really German. But the Government of Copenhagen, misled by
the support given to it at the Conference by England and Russia--a support
which was one of words only--refused to cede anything north of the town of
Schleswig. Even when in the last resort Lord Russell proposed that the
frontier-line should be settled by arbitration the Danish Government held
fast to its refusal, and for the sake of a few miles of territory plunged
once more into a struggle which, if it was not to kindle a European war of
vast dimensions, could end only in the ruin of the Danes. The expected help
failed them. Attacked and overthrown in the island of Alsen, the German
flag carried to the northern extremity of their mainland, they were
compelled to make peace on their enemies' terms. Hostilities were brought
to a close by the signature of Preliminaries on the 1st of August; and by
the Treaty of Vienna, concluded on the 30th of October, 1864, King
Christian ceded his rights in the whole of Schleswig-Holstein to the
sovereigns of Austria and Prussia jointly, and undertook to recognise
whatever dispositions they might make of those provinces.

[Great Britain and Napoleon III.]

The British Government throughout this conflict had played a sorry part, at
one moment threatening the Germans, at another using language towards the
Danes which might well be taken to indicate an intention of lending them
armed support. To some extent the errors of the Cabinet were due to the
relation which existed between Great Britain and Napoleon III. It had up to
this time been considered both at London and at Paris that the Allies of
the Crimea had still certain common interests in Europe; and in the
unsuccessful intervention at St. Petersburg on behalf of Poland in 1863 the
British and French Governments had at first gone hand in hand. But behind
every step openly taken by Napoleon III. there was some half-formed design
for promoting the interests of his dynasty or extending the frontiers of
France; and if England had consented to support the diplomatic concert at
St. Petersburg by measures of force, it would have found itself engaged in
a war in which other ends than those relating to Poland would have been the
foremost. Towards the close of the year 1863 Napoleon had proposed that a
European Congress should assemble, in order to regulate not only the
affairs of Poland but all those European questions which remained
unsettled. This proposal had been abruptly declined by the English
Government; and when in the course of the Danish war Lord Palmerston showed
an inclination to take up arms if France would do the same, Napoleon was
probably not sorry to have the opportunity of repaying England for its
rejection of his own overtures in the previous year. He had moreover hopes
of obtaining from Prussia an extension of the French frontier either in
Belgium or towards the Rhine. [517] In reply to overtures from London,
Napoleon stated that the cause of Schleswig-Holstein to some extent
represented the principle of nationality, to which France was friendly, and
that of all wars in which France could engage a war with Germany would be
the least desirable. England accordingly, if it took up arms for the Danes,
would have been compelled to enter the war alone; and although at a later
time, when the war was over and the victors were about to divide the spoil,
the British and French fleets ostentatiously combined in manoeuvres at
Cherbourg, this show of union deceived no one, least of all the resolute
and well-informed director of affairs at Berlin. To force, and force alone,
would Bismarck have yielded. Palmerston, now sinking into old age,
permitted Lord Russell to parody his own fierce language of twenty years
back; but all the world, except the Danes, knew that the fangs and the
claws were drawn, and that British foreign policy had become for the time a
thing of snarls and grimaces.

[Intentions of Bismarck as to Schleswig-Holstein.]

Bismarck had not at first determined actually to annex Schleswig-Holstein
to Prussia. He would have been content to leave it under the nominal
sovereignty of Frederick of Augustenburg if that prince would have placed
the entire military and naval resources of Schleswig-Holstein under the
control of the Government of Berlin, and have accepted on behalf of his
Duchies conditions which Bismarck considered indispensable to German
union under Prussian leadership. In the harbour of Kiel it was not
difficult to recognise the natural headquarters of a future German fleet;
the narrow strip of land projecting between the two seas naturally
suggested the formation of a canal connecting the Baltic with the German
Ocean, and such a work could only belong to Germany at large or to its
leading Power. Moreover, as a frontier district, Schleswig-Holstein was
peculiarly exposed to foreign attack; certain strategical positions
necessary for its defence must therefore be handed over to its protector.
That Prussia should have united its forces with Austria in order to win
for the Schleswig-Holsteiners the power of governing themselves as they
pleased, must have seemed to Bismarck a supposition in the highest degree
preposterous. He had taken up the cause of the Duchies not in the
interest of the inhabitants but in the interest of Germany; and by
Germany he understood Germany centred at Berlin and ruled by the House of
Hohenzollern. If therefore the Augustenburg prince was not prepared to
accept his throne on these terms, there was no room for him, and the
provinces must be incorporated with Prussia itself. That Austria would
not without compensation permit the Duchies thus to fall directly or
indirectly under Prussian sway was of course well known to Bismarck; but
so far was this from causing him any hesitation in his policy, that from
the first he had discerned in the Schleswig-Holstein question a favourable
pretext for the war which was to drive Austria out of Germany.

[Relations of Prussia and Austria, Dec., 1854-Aug., 1865.]

[Convention of Gastein, Aug. 14, 1865.]

Peace with Denmark was scarcely concluded when, at the bidding of Prussia,
reluctantly supported by Austria, the Saxon and Hanoverian troops which had
entered Holstein as the mandatories of the Federal Diet were compelled to
leave the country. A Provisional Government was established under the
direction of an Austrian and a Prussian Commissioner. Bismarck had met the
Prince of Augustenburg at Berlin some months before, and had formed an
unfavourable opinion of the policy likely to be adopted by him towards
Prussia. All Germany, however, was in favour of the Prince's claims, and at
the Conference of London these claims had been supported by the Prussian
envoy himself. In order to give some appearance of formal legality to his
own action, Bismarck had to obtain from the Crown-jurists of Prussia a
decision that King Christian IX. had, contrary to the general opinion of
Germany, been the lawful inheritor of Schleswig-Holstein, and that the
Prince of Augustenburg had therefore no rights whatever in the Duchies. As
the claims of Christian had been transferred by the Treaty of Vienna to the
sovereigns of Austria and Prussia jointly, it rested with them to decide
who should be Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, and under what conditions.
Bismarck announced at Vienna on the 22nd of February, 1865, the terms on
which he was willing that Schleswig-Holstein should be conferred by the two
sovereigns upon Frederick of Augustenburg. He required, in addition to
community of finance, postal system, and railways, that Prussian law,
including the obligation to military service, should be introduced into the
Duchies; that their regiments should take the oath of fidelity to the King
of Prussia, and that their principal military positions should be held by
Prussian troops. These conditions would have made Schleswig-Holstein in all
but name a part of the Prussian State: they were rejected both by the Court
of Vienna and by Prince Frederick himself, and the population of
Schleswig-Holstein almost unanimously declared against them. Both Austria
and the Federal Diet now supported the Schleswig-Holsteiners in what
appeared to be a struggle on behalf of their independence against Prussian
domination; and when the Prussian Commissioner in Schleswig-Holstein
expelled the most prominent of the adherents of Augustenburg, his Austrian
colleague published a protest declaring the act to be one of lawless
violence. It seemed that the outbreak of war between the two rival Powers
could not long be delayed; but Bismarck had on this occasion moved too
rapidly for his master, and considerations relating to the other European
Powers made it advisable to postpone the rupture for some months. An
agreement was patched up at Gastein by which, pending an ultimate
settlement, the government of the two provinces was divided between their
masters, Austria taking the administration of Holstein, Prussia that of
Schleswig, while the little district of Lauenburg on the south was made
over to King William in full sovereignty. An actual conflict between the
representatives of the two rival governments at their joint headquarters in
Schleswig-Holstein was thus averted; peace was made possible at least for
some months longer; and the interval was granted to Bismarck which was
still required for the education of his Sovereign in the policy of blood
and iron, and for the completion of his own arrangements with the enemies
of Austria outside Germany. [518]

[Bismarck at Biarritz, Sept., 1865.]

The natural ally of Prussia was Italy; but without the sanction of Napoleon
III. it would have been difficult to engage Italy in a new war. Bismarck
had therefore to gain at least the passive concurrence of the French
Emperor in the union of Italy and Prussia against Austria. He visited
Napoleon at Biarritz in September, 1865, and returned with the object of
his journey achieved. The negotiation of Biarritz, if truthfully recorded,
would probably give the key to much of the European history of the next
five years. As at Plombières, the French Emperor acted without his
Ministers, and what he asked he asked without a witness. That Bismarck
actually promised to Napoleon III. either Belgium or any part of the
Rhenish Provinces in case of the aggrandisement of Prussia has been denied
by him, and is not in itself probable. But there are understandings which
prove to be understandings on one side only; politeness may be
misinterpreted; and the world would have found Count Bismarck unendurable
if at every friendly meeting he had been guilty of the frankness with which
he informed the Austrian Government that its centre of action must be
transferred from Vienna to Pesth. That Napoleon was now scheming for an
extension of France on the north-east is certain; that Bismarck treated
such rectification of the frontier as a matter for arrangement is hardly to
be doubted; and if without a distinct and written agreement Napoleon was
content to base his action on the belief that Bismarck would not withhold
from him his reward, this only proved how great was the disparity between
the aims which the French ruler allowed himself to cherish and his mastery
of the arts by which alone such aims were to be realised. Napoleon desired
to see Italy placed in possession of Venice; he probably believed at this
time that Austria would be no unequal match for Prussia and Italy together,
and that the natural result of a well-balanced struggle would be not only
the completion of Italian union but the purchase of French neutrality or
mediation by the cession of German territory west of the Rhine. It was no
part of the duty of Count Bismarck to chill Napoleon's fancies or to teach
him political wisdom. The Prussian statesman may have left Biarritz with
the conviction that an attack on Germany would sooner or later follow the
disappointment of those hopes which he had flattered and intended to mock;
but for the present he had removed one dangerous obstacle from his path,
and the way lay free before him to an Italian alliance if Italy itself
should choose to combine with him in war.

[Italy, 1862-65.]

Since the death of Cavour the Italian Government had made no real progress
towards the attainment of the national aims, the acquisition of Rome and
Venice. Garibaldi, impatient of delay, had in 1862 landed again in Sicily
and summoned his followers to march with him upon Rome. But the enterprise
was resolutely condemned by Victor Emmanuel, and when Garibaldi crossed to
the mainland he found the King's troops in front of him at Aspromonte.
There was an exchange of shots, and Garibaldi fell wounded. He was treated
with something of the distinction shown to a royal prisoner, and when his
wound was healed he was released from captivity. His enterprise, however,
and the indiscreet comments on it made by Rattazzi, who was now in power,
strengthened the friends of the Papacy at the Tuileries, and resulted in
the fall of the Italian Minister. His successor, Minghetti, deemed it
necessary to arrive at some temporary understanding with Napoleon on the
Roman question. The presence of French troops at Rome offended national
feeling, and made any attempt at conciliation between the Papal Court and
the Italian Government hopeless. In order to procure the removal of this
foreign garrison Minghetti was willing to enter into engagements which
seemed almost to imply the renunciation of the claim on Rome. By a
Convention made in September, 1864, the Italian Government undertook not to
attack the territory of the Pope, and to oppose by force every attack made
upon it from without. Napoleon on his part engaged to withdraw his troops
gradually from Rome as the Pope should organise his own army, and to
complete the evacuation within two years. It was, however, stipulated in an
Article which was intended to be kept secret, that the capital of Italy
should be changed, the meaning of this stipulation being that Florence
should receive the dignity which by the common consent of Italy ought to
have been transferred from Turin to Rome and to Rome alone. The publication
of this Article, which was followed by riots in Turin, caused the immediate
fall of Minghetti's Cabinet. He was succeeded in office by General La
Marmora, under whom the negotiations with Prussia were begun which, after
long uncertainty, resulted in the alliance of 1866 and in the final
expulsion of Austria from Italy. [519]

[La Marmora.]

[Govone at Berlin, March, 1866.]

[Treaty of April 8, 1856.]

Bismarck from the beginning of his Ministry appears to have looked forward
to the combination of Italy and Prussia against the common enemy; but his
plans ripened slowly. In the spring of 1865, when affairs seemed to be
reaching a crisis in Schleswig-Holstein, the first serious overtures were
made by the Prussian ambassador at Florence. La Marmora answered that any
definite proposition would receive the careful attention of the Italian
Government, but that Italy would not permit itself to be made a mere
instrument in Prussia's hands for the intimidation of Austria. Such caution
was both natural and necessary on the part of the Italian Minister; and his
reserve seemed to be more than justified when, a few months later, the
Treaty of Gastein restored Austria and Prussia to relations of friendship.
La Marmora might now well consider himself released from all obligations
towards the Court of Berlin: and, entering on a new line of policy, he sent
an envoy to Vienna to ascertain if the Emperor would amicably cede Venetia
to Italy in return for the payment of a very large sum of money and the
assumption by Italy of part of the Austrian national debt. Had this
transaction been effected, it would probably have changed the course of
European history; the Emperor, however, declined to bargain away any part
of his dominions, and so threw Italy once more into the camp of his great
enemy. In the meantime the disputes about Schleswig-Holstein broke out
afresh. Bismarck renewed his efforts at Florence in the spring of 1866,
with the result that General Govone was sent to Berlin in order to discuss
with the Prussian Minister the political and military conditions of an
alliance. But instead of proposing immediate action, Bismarck stated to
Govone that the question of Schleswig-Holstein was insufficient to justify
a great war in the eyes of Europe, and that a better cause must be put
forward, namely, the reform of the Federal system of Germany. Once more the
subtle Italians believed that Bismarck's anxiety for a war with Austria was
feigned, and that he sought their friendship only as a means of extorting
from the Court of Vienna its consent to Prussia's annexation of the Danish
Duchies. There was an apparent effort on the part of the Prussian statesman
to avoid entering into any engagement which involved immediate action; the
truth being that Bismarck was still in conflict with the pacific influences
which surrounded the King, and uncertain from day to day whether his master
would really follow him in the policy of war. He sought therefore to make
the joint resort to arms dependent on some future act, such as the
summoning of a German Parliament, from which the King of Prussia could not
recede if once he should go so far. But the Italians, apparently not
penetrating the real secret of Bismarck's hesitation, would be satisfied
with no such indeterminate engagement; they pressed for action within a
limited time; and in the end, after Austria had taken steps which went far
to overcome the last scruples of King William, Bismarck consented to fix
three months as the limit beyond which the obligation of Italy to accompany
Prussia into war should not extend. On the 8th of April a Treaty of
offensive and defensive alliance was signed. It was agreed that if the King
of Prussia should within three months take up arms for the reform of the
Federal system of Germany, Italy would immediately after the outbreak of
hostilities declare war upon Austria. Both Powers were to engage in the
war with their whole force, and peace was not to be made but by common
consent, such consent not to be withheld after Austria should have agreed
to cede Venetia to Italy and territory with an equal population to Prussia.
[520]

[Bismarck and Austria, Aug., 1865-April, 1866.]

Eight months had now passed since the signature of the Convention of
Gastem. The experiment of an understanding with Austria, which King William
had deemed necessary, had been made, and it had failed; or rather, as
Bismarck expressed himself in a candid moment, it had succeeded, inasmuch
as it had cured the King of his scruples and raised him to the proper point
of indignation against the Austrian Court. The agents in effecting this
happy result had been the Prince of Augustenburg, the population of
Holstein, and the Liberal party throughout Germany at large. In Schleswig,
which the Convention of Gastein had handed over to Prussia, General
Manteuffel, a son of the Minister of 1850, had summarily put a stop to
every expression of public opinion, and had threatened to imprison the
Prince if he came within his reach; in Holstein the Austrian Government had
permitted, if it had not encouraged, the inhabitants to agitate in favour
of the Pretender, and had allowed a mass-meeting to be held at Altona on
the 23rd of January, where cheers were raised for Augustenburg, and the
summoning of the Estates of Schleswig-Holstein was demanded. This was
enough to enable Bismarck to denounce the conduct of Austria as an alliance
with revolution. He demanded explanations from the Government of Vienna,
and the Emperor declined to render an account of his actions. Warlike
preparations now began, and on the 16th of March the Austrian Government
announced that it should refer the affairs of Schleswig-Holstein to the
Federal Diet. This was a clear departure from the terms of the Convention
of Gastein, and from the agreement made between Austria and Prussia before
entering into the Danish war in 1864 that the Schleswig-Holstein question
should be settled by the two Powers independently of the German Federation.
King William was deeply moved by such a breach of good faith; tears filled
his eyes when he spoke of the conduct of the Austrian Emperor; and though
pacific influences were still active around him he now began to fall in
more cordially with the warlike policy of his Minister. The question at
issue between Prussia and Austria expanded from the mere disposal of the
Duchies to the reconstitution of the Federal system of Germany. In a note
laid before the Governments of all the Minor States Bismarck declared that
the time had come when Germany must receive a new and more effective
organisation, and inquired how far Prussia could count on the support of
allies if it should be attacked by Austria or forced into war. It was
immediately after this re-opening of the whole problem of Federal reform in
Germany that the draft of the Treaty with Italy was brought to its final
shape by Bismarck and the Italian envoy, and sent to the Ministry at
Florence for its approval.

[Austria offers Venice, May 5.]

Bismarck had now to make the best use of the three months' delay that was
granted to him. On the day after the acceptance of the Treaty by the
Italian Government, the Prussian representative at the Diet of Frankfort
handed in a proposal for the summoning of a German Parliament, to be
elected by universal suffrage. Coming from the Minister who had made
Parliamentary government a mockery in Prussia, this proposal was scarcely
considered as serious. Bavaria, as the chief of the secondary States, had
already expressed its willingness to enter upon the discussion of Federal
reform, but it asked that the two leading Powers should in the meantime
undertake not to attack one another. Austria at once acceded to this
request, and so forced Bismarck into giving a similar assurance. Promises
of disarmament were then exchanged; but as Austria declined to stay the
collection of its forces in Venetia against Italy, Bismarck was able to
charge his adversary with insincerity in the negotiation, and preparations
for war were resumed on both sides. Other difficulties, however, now came
into view. The Treaty between Prussia and Italy had been made known to the
Court of Vienna by Napoleon, whose advice La Marmora had sought before its
conclusion, and the Austrian Emperor had thus become aware of his danger.
He now determined to sacrifice Venetia if Italy's neutrality could be so
secured. On the 5th of May the Italian ambassador at Paris, Count Nigra,
was informed by Napoleon that Austria had offered to cede Venetia to him on
behalf of Victor Emmanuel if France and Italy would not prevent Austria
from indemnifying itself at Prussia's expense in Silesia. Without a war, at
the price of mere inaction, Italy was offered all that it could gain by a
struggle which was likely to be a desperate one, and which might end in
disaster. La Marmora was in sore perplexity. Though he had formed a juster
estimate of the capacity of the Prussian army than any other statesman or
soldier in Europe, he was thoroughly suspicious of the intentions of the
Prussian Government; and in sanctioning the alliance of the previous month
he had done so half expecting that Bismarck would through the prestige of
this alliance gain for Prussia its own objects without entering into war,
and then leave Italy to reckon with Austria as best it might. He would
gladly have abandoned the alliance and have accepted Austria's offer if
Italy could have done this without disgrace. But the sense of honour was
sufficiently strong to carry him past this temptation. He declined the
offer made through Paris, and continued the armaments of Italy, though
still with a secret hope that European diplomacy might find the means of
realising the purpose of his country without war. [521]

[Proposals for a Congress.]

The neutral Powers were now, with various objects, bestirring themselves in
favour of a European Congress. Napoleon believed the time to be come when
the Treaties of 1815 might be finally obliterated by the joint act of
Europe. He was himself ready to join Prussia with three hundred thousand
men if the King would transfer the Rhenish Provinces to France. Demands,
direct and indirect, were made on Count Bismarck on behalf of the Tuileries
for cessions of territory of greater or less extent. These demands were
neither granted nor refused. Bismarck procrastinated; he spoke of the
obstinacy of the King his master; he inquired whether parts of Belgium or
Switzerland would not better assimilate with France than a German province;
he put off the Emperor's representatives by the assurance that he could
more conveniently arrange these matters with the Emperor when he should
himself visit Paris. On the 28th of May invitations to a Congress were
issued by France, England, and Russia jointly, the objects of the Congress
being defined as the settlement of the affairs of Schleswig-Holstein, of
the differences between Austria and Italy, and of the reform of the Federal
Constitution of Germany, in so far as these affected Europe at large. The
invitation was accepted by Prussia and by Italy; it was accepted by Austria
only under the condition that no arrangement should be discussed which
should give an increase of territory or power to one of the States invited
to the Congress. This subtly-worded condition would not indeed have
excluded the equal aggrandisement of all. It would not have rendered the
cession of Venetia to Italy or the annexation of Schleswig-Holstein to
Prussia impossible; but it would either have involved the surrender of the
former Papal territory by Italy in order that Victor Emmanuel's dominions
should receive no increase, or, in the alternative, it would have entitled
Austria to claim Silesia as its own equivalent for the augmentation of the
Italian Kingdom. Such reservations would have rendered any efforts of the
Powers to preserve peace useless, and they were accepted as tantamount to a
refusal on the part of Austria to attend the Congress. Simultaneously with
its answer to the neutral Powers, Austria called upon the Federal Diet to
take the affairs of Schleswig-Holstein into its own hands, and convoked the
Holstein Estates. Bismarck thereupon declared the Convention of Gastein to
be at an end, and ordered General Manteuffel to lead his troops into
Holstein. The Austrian commander, protesting that he yielded only to
superior force, withdrew through Altona into Hanover. Austria at once
demanded and obtained from the Diet of Frankfort the mobilisation of the
whole of the Federal armies. The representative of Prussia, declaring that
this act of the Diet had made an end of the existing Federal union, handed
in the plan of his Government for the reorganisation of Germany, and
quitted Frankfort. Diplomatic relations between Austria and Prussia were
broken off on the 12th of June, and on the 15th Count Bismarck demanded of
the sovereigns of Hanover, Saxony, and Hesse-Cassel, that they should on
that very day put a stop to their military preparations and accept the
Prussian scheme of Federal reform. Negative answers being given, Prussian
troops immediately marched into these territories, and war began. Weimar,
Mecklenburg, and other petty States in the north took part with Prussia:
all the rest of Germany joined Austria. [522]

[German Opinion.]

The goal of Bismarck's desire, the end which he had steadily set before
himself since entering upon his Ministry, was attained; and, if his
calculations as to the strength of the Prussian army were not at fault,
Austria was at length to be expelled from the German Federation by force of
arms. But the process by which Bismarck had worked up to this result had
ranged against him the almost unanimous opinion of Germany outside the
military circles of Prussia itself. His final demand for the summoning of a
German Parliament was taken as mere comedy. The guiding star of his policy
had hitherto been the dynastic interest of the House of Hohenzollern; and
now, when the Germans were to be plunged into war with one another, it
seemed as if the real object of the struggle was no more than the
annexation of the Danish Duchies and some other coveted territory to the
Prussian Kingdom. The voice of protest and condemnation rose loud from
every organ of public opinion. Even in Prussia itself the instances were
few where any spontaneous support was tendered to the Government. The
Parliament of Berlin, struggling up to the end against the all-powerful
Minister, had seen its members prosecuted for speeches made within its own
walls, and had at last been prorogued in order that its insubordination
might not hamper the Crown in the moment of danger. But the mere
disappearance of Parliament could not conceal the intensity of ill-will
which the Minister and his policy had excited. The author of a fratricidal
war of Germans against Germans was in the eyes of many the greatest of all
criminals; and on the 7th of May an attempt was made by a young fanatic to
take Bismarck's life in the streets of Berlin. The Minister owed the
preservation of his life to the feebleness of his assailant's weapon and to
his own vigorous arm. But the imminence of the danger affected King William
far more than Bismarck himself. It spoke to his simple mind of supernatural
protection and aid; it stilled his doubts; and confirmed him in the belief
that Prussia was in this crisis the instrument for working out the
Almighty's will.

[Napoleon III.]

A few days before the outbreak of hostilities the Emperor Napoleon gave
publicity to his own view of the European situation. He attributed the
coming war to three causes: to the faulty geographical limits of the
Prussian State, to the desire for a better Federal system in Germany, and
to the necessity felt by the Italian nation for securing its independence.
These needs would, he conceived, be met by a territorial rearrangement in
the north of Germany consolidating and augmenting the Prussian Kingdom; by
the creation of a more effective Federal union between the secondary German
States; and finally, by the incorporation of Venetia with Italy, Austria's
position in Germany remaining unimpaired. Only in the event of the map of
Europe being altered to the exclusive advantage of one Great Power would
France require an extension of frontier. Its interests lay in the
preservation of the equilibrium of Europe, and in the maintenance of the
Italian Kingdom. These had already been secured by arrangements which would
not require France to draw the sword; a watchful but unselfish neutrality
was the policy which its Government had determined to pursue. Napoleon had
in fact lost all control over events, and all chance of gaining the Rhenish
Provinces, from the time when he permitted Italy to enter into the Prussian
alliance without any stipulation that France should at its option be
admitted as a third member of the coalition. He could not ally himself with
Austria against his own creation, the Italian Kingdom; on the other hand,
he had no means of extorting cessions from Prussia when once Prussia was
sure of an ally who could bring two hundred thousand men into the field.
His diplomacy had been successful in so far as it had assured Venetia to
Italy whether Prussia should be victorious or overthrown, but as regarded
France it had landed him in absolute powerlessness. He was unable to act on
one side; he was not wanted on the other. Neutrality had become a matter
not of choice but of necessity; and until the course of military events
should have produced some new situation in Europe, France might well be
watchful, but it could scarcely gain much credit for its disinterested
part. [523]

[Hanover and Hesse-Cassel conquered.]

[The Bohemian Campaign, June 26-July 3.]

[Battle of Königgrätz, July 3.]

Assured against an attack from the side of the Rhine, Bismarck was able to
throw the mass of the Prussian forces southwards against Austria, leaving
in the north only the modest contingent which was necessary to overcome the
resistance of Hanover and Hesse-Cassel. Through the precipitancy of a
Prussian general, who struck without waiting for his colleagues, the
Hanoverians gained a victory at Langensalza on the 27th of June; but other
Prussian regiments arrived on the field a few hours later, and the
Hanoverian army was forced to capitulate on the next day. The King made his
escape to Austria; the Elector of Hesse-Cassel, less fortunate, was made a
prisoner of war. Northern Germany was thus speedily reduced to submission,
and any danger of a diversion in favour of Austria in this quarter
disappeared. In Saxony no attempt was made to bar the way to the advancing
Prussians. Dresden was occupied without resistance, but the Saxon army
marched southwards in good time, and joined the Austrians in Bohemia. The
Prussian forces, about two hundred and fifty thousand strong, now gathered
on the Saxon and Silesian frontier, covering the line from Pirna to
Landshut. They were composed of three armies: the first, or central, army
under Prince Frederick Charles, a nephew of the King; the second, or
Silesian, army under the Crown Prince; the westernmost, known as the army
of the Elbe, under General Herwarth von Bittenfeld. Against these were
ranged about an equal number of Austrians, led by Benedek, a general who
had gained great distinction in the Hungarian and the Italian campaigns. It
had at first been thought probable that Benedek, whose forces lay about
Olmütz, would invade Southern Silesia, and the Prussian line had therefore
been extended far to the east. Soon, however, it appeared that the
Austrians were unable to take up the offensive, and Benedek moved westwards
into Bohemia. The Prussian line was now shortened, and orders were given to
the three armies to cross the Bohemian frontier and converge in the
direction of the town of Gitschin. General Moltke, the chief of the staff,
directed their operations from Berlin by telegraph. The combined advance of
the three armies was executed with extraordinary precision; and in a series
of hard-fought combats extending from the 26th to the 29th of June the
Austrians were driven back upon their centre, and effective communication
was established between the three invading bodies. On the 30th the King of
Prussia, with General Moltke and Count Bismarck, left Berlin; on the 2nd of
July they were at headquarters at Gitschin. It had been Benedek's design to
leave a small force to hold the Silesian army in check, and to throw the
mass of his army westwards upon Prince Frederick Charles and overwhelm him
before he could receive help from his colleagues. This design had been
baffled by the energy of the Crown Prince's attack, and by the superiority
of the Prussians in generalship, in the discipline of their troops, and in
the weapon they carried; for though the Austrians had witnessed in the
Danish campaign the effects of the Prussian breech-loading rifle, they had
not thought it necessary to adopt a similar arm. Benedek, though no great
battle had yet been fought, saw that the campaign was lost, and wrote to
the Emperor on the 1st of July recommending him to make peace, for
otherwise a catastrophe was inevitable. He then concentrated his army on
high ground a few miles west of Königgrätz, and prepared for a defensive
battle on the grandest scale. In spite of the losses of the past week he
could still bring about two hundred thousand men into action. The three
Prussian armies were now near enough to one another to combine in their
attack, and on the night of July 2nd the King sent orders to the three
commanders to move against Benedek before daybreak. Prince Frederick
Charles, advancing through the village of Sadowa, was the first in the
field. For hours his divisions sustained an unequal struggle against the
assembled strength of the Austrians. Midday passed; the defenders now
pressed down upon their assailants; and preparations for a retreat had been
begun, when the long-expected message arrived that the Crown Prince was
close at hand. The onslaught of the army of Silesia on Benedek's right,
which was accompanied by the arrival of Herwarth at the other end of the
field of battle, at once decided the day. It was with difficulty that the
Austrian commander prevented the enemy from seizing the positions which
would have cut off his retreat. He retired eastwards across the Elbe with a
loss of eighteen thousand killed and wounded and twenty-four thousand
prisoners. His army was ruined; and ten days after the Prussians had
crossed the frontier the war was practically at an end. [524]

[Battle of Custozza, June 24.]

[Napoleon's mediation, July 5.]

[Preliminaries of Nicolsburg, July 26.]

[Treaty of Prague, Aug. 23.]

The disaster of Königgrätz was too great to be neutralised by the success
of the Austrian forces in Italy. La Marmora, who had given up his place at
the head of the Government in order to take command of the army, crossed
the Mincio at the head of a hundred and twenty thousand men, but was
defeated by inferior numbers on the fatal ground of Custozza, and compelled
to fall back on the Oglio. This gleam of success, which was followed by a
naval victory at Lissa off the Istrian coast, made it easier for the
Austrian Emperor to face the sacrifices that were now inevitable.
Immediately after the battle of Königgrätz he invoked the mediation of
Napoleon III., and ceded Venetia to him on behalf of Italy. Napoleon at
once tendered his good offices to the belligerents, and proposed an
armistice. His mediation was accepted in principle by the King or Prussia,
who expressed his willingness also to grant an armistice as soon as
preliminaries of peace were recognised by the Austrian Court. In the
meantime, while negotiations passed between all four Governments, the
Prussians pushed forward until their outposts came within sight of Vienna.
If in pursuance of General Moltke's plan the Italian generals had thrown a
corps north-eastwards from the head of the Adriatic, and so struck at the
very heart of the Austrian monarchy, it is possible that the victors of
Königgrätz might have imposed their own terms without regard to Napoleon's
mediation, and, while adding the Italian Tyrol to Victor Emmanuel's
dominions, have completed the union of Germany under the House of
Hohenzollern at one stroke. But with Hungary still intact, and the Italian
army paralysed by the dissensions of its commanders, prudence bade the
great statesman of Berlin content himself with the advantages which he
could reap without prolongation of the war, and without the risk of
throwing Napoleon into the enemy's camp. He had at first required, as
conditions of peace, that Prussia should be left free to annex Saxony,
Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, and other North German territory; that Austria
should wholly withdraw from German affairs; and that all Germany, less the
Austrian Provinces, should be united in a Federation under Prussian
leadership. To gain the assent of Napoleon to these terms, Bismarck hinted
that France might by accord with Prussia annex Belgium. Napoleon, however,
refused to agree to the extension of Prussia's ascendency over all Germany,
and presented a counter-project which was in its turn rejected by Bismarck.
It was finally settled that Prussia should not be prevented from annexing
Hanover, Nassau, and Hesse-Cassel, as conquered territory that lay between
its own Rhenish Provinces and the rest of the kingdom; that Austria should
completely withdraw from German affairs; that Germany north of the Main,
together with Saxony, should be included in a Federation under Prussian
leadership; and that for the States south of the Main there should be
reserved the right of entering into some kind of national bond with the
Northern League. Austria escaped without loss of any of its non-Italian
territory; it also succeeded in preserving the existence of Saxony, which,
as in 1815, the Prussian Government had been most anxious to annex.
Napoleon, in confining the Prussian Federation to the north of the Main,
and in securing by a formal stipulation in the Treaty the independence of
the Southern States, imagined himself to have broken Germany into halves,
and to have laid the foundation of a South German League which should look
to France as its protector. On the other hand, Bismarck by his annexation
of Hanover and neighbouring districts had added a population of four
millions to the Prussian Kingdom, and given it a continuous territory; he
had forced Austria out of the German system; he had gained its sanction to
the Federal union of all Germany north of the Main, and had at least kept
the way open for the later extension of this union to the Southern States.
Preliminaries of peace embodying these conditions and recognising Prussia's
sovereignty in Schleswig-Holstein were signed at Nicolsburg on the 26th of
July, and formed the basis of the definitive Treaty of Peace which was
concluded at Prague on the 23rd of August. An illusory clause, added at the
instance of Napoleon, provided that if the population of the northern
districts of Schleswig should by a free vote express the wish to be united
with Denmark, these districts should be ceded to the Danish Kingdom. [525]

[The South German States.]

[Secret Treaties of the Southern States with Prussia.]

Bavaria and the south-western allies of Austria, though their military
action was of an ineffective character, continued in arms for some weeks
after the battle of Königgrätz and the suspension of hostilities arranged
at Nicolsburg did not come into operation on their behalf till the 2nd of
August. Before that date their forces were dispersed and their power of
resistance broken by the Prussian generals Falckenstein and Manteuffel in a
series of unimportant engagements and intricate manoeuvres. The City of
Frankfort, against which Bismarck seems to have borne some personal hatred,
was treated for a while by the conquerors with extraordinary and most
impolitic harshness; in other respects the action of the Prussian
Government towards these conquered States was not such as to render future
union and friendship difficult. All the South German Governments, with the
single exception of Baden, appealed to the Emperor Napoleon for assistance
in the negotiations which they had opened at Berlin. But at the very moment
when this request was made and granted Napoleon was himself demanding from
Bismarck the cession of the Bavarian Palatinate and of the Hessian
districts west of the Rhine. Bismarck had only to acquaint the King of
Bavaria and the South German Ministers with the designs of their French
protector in order to reconcile them to his own chastening, but not
unfriendly, hand. The grandeur of a united Fatherland flashed upon minds
hitherto impenetrable by any national ideal when it became known that
Napoleon was bargaining for Oppenheim and Kaiserslautern. Not only were the
insignificant questions as to the war-indemnities to be paid to Prussia and
the frontier villages to be exchanged promptly settled, but by a series of
secret Treaties all the South German States entered into an offensive and
defensive alliance with the Prussian King, and engaged in case of war to
place their entire forces at his disposal and under his command. The
diplomacy of Napoleon III. had in the end effected for Bismarck almost more
than his earlier intervention had frustrated, for it had made the South
German Courts the allies of Prussia not through conquest or mere compulsion
but out of regard for their own interests. [526] It was said by the
opponents of the Imperial Government in France, and scarcely with
exaggeration, that every error which it was possible to commit had, in the
course of the year 1866, been committed by Napoleon III. One crime, one act
of madness, remained open to the Emperor's critics, to lash him and France
into a conflict with the Power whose union he had not been able to prevent.

[Projects of compensation for France.]

Prior to the battle of Königgrätz, it would seem that all the suggestions
of the French Emperor relating to the acquisition of Belgium were made to
the Prussian Government through secret agents, and that they were actually
unknown, or known by mere hearsay, to Benedetti, the French Ambassador at
Berlin. According to Prince Bismarck, these overtures had begun as early as
1862, when he was himself Ambassador at Paris, and were then made verbally
and in private notes to himself; they were the secret of Napoleon's
neutrality during the Danish war; and were renewed through relatives and
confidential agents of the Emperor when the struggle with Austria was seen
to be approaching. The ignorance in which Count Benedetti was kept of his
master's private diplomacy may to some extent explain the extraordinary
contradictions between the accounts given by this Minister and by Prince
Bismarck of the negotiations that passed between them in the period
following the campaign of 1866, after Benedetti had himself been charged to
present the demands of the French Government. In June, while the Ambassador
was still, as it would seem, in ignorance of what was passing behind his
back, he had informed the French Ministry that Bismarck, anxious for the
preservation of French neutrality, had hinted at the compensations that
might be made to France if Prussia should meet with great success in the
coming war. According to the report of the Ambassador, made at the time,
Count Bismarck stated that he would rather withdraw from public life than
cede the Rhenish Provinces with Cologne and Bonn, but that he believed it
would be possible to gain the King's ultimate consent to the cession of the
Prussian district of Trèves on the Upper Moselle, which district, together
with Luxemburg or parts of Belgium and Switzerland, would give France an
adequate improvement of its frontier. The Ambassador added in his report,
by way of comment, that Count Bismarck was the only man in the kingdom who
was disposed to make any cession of Prussian territory whatever, and that a
unanimous and violent revulsion against France would be excited by the
slightest indication of any intention on the part of the French Government
to extend its frontiers towards the Rhine. He concluded his report with the
statement that, after hearing Count Bismarck's suggestions, he had brought
the discussion to a summary close, not wishing to leave the Prussian
Minister under the impression that any scheme involving the seizure of
Belgian or Swiss territory had the slightest chance of being seriously
considered at Paris. (June 4-8.)

[Demand for Rhenish territory, July 25-Aug. 7, 1866.]

[The Belgian project, Aug. 16-30.]

Benedetti probably wrote these last words in full sincerity. Seven weeks
later, after the settlement of the Preliminaries at Nicolsburg, he was
ordered to demand the cession of the Bavarian Palatinate, of the portion of
Hesse-Darmstadt west of the Rhine, including Mainz, and of the strip of
Prussian territory on the Saar which had been left to France in 1814 but
taken from it in 1815. According to the statement of Prince Bismarck, which
would seem to be exaggerated, this demand was made by Benedetti as an
ultimatum and with direct threats of war, which were answered by Bismarck
in language of equal violence. In any case the demand was unconditionally
refused, and Benedetti travelled to Paris in order to describe what had
passed at the Prussian headquarters. His report made such an impression on
the Emperor that the demand for cessions on the Rhine was at once
abandoned, and the Foreign Minister, Drouyn de Lhuys, who had been disposed
to enforce this by arms, was compelled to quit office. Benedetti returned
to Berlin, and now there took place that negotiation relating to Belgium on
which not only the narratives of the persons immediately concerned, but the
documents written at the time, leave so much that is strange and
unexplained. According to Benedetti, Count Bismarck was keenly anxious to
extend the German Federation to the South of the Main, and desired with
this object an intimate union with at least one Great Power. He sought in
the first instance the support of France, and offered in return to
facilitate the seizure of Belgium. The negotiation, according to Benedetti,
failed because the Emperor Napoleon required that the fortresses in
Southern Germany should be held by the troops of the respective States to
which they belonged, while at the same time General Manteuffel, who had
been sent from Berlin on a special mission to St. Petersburg, succeeded in
effecting so intimate a union with Russia that alliance with France became
unnecessary. According to the counter-statement of Prince Bismarck, the
plan now proposed originated entirely with the French Ambassador, and was
merely a repetition of proposals which had been made by Napoleon during the
preceding four years, and which were subsequently renewed at intervals by
secret agents almost down to the outbreak of the war of 1870. Prince
Bismarck has stated that he dallied with these proposals only because a
direct refusal might at any moment have caused the outbreak of war between
France and Prussia, a catastrophe which up to the end he sought to avert.
In any case the negotiation with Benedetti led to no conclusion, and was
broken off by the departure of both statesmen from Berlin in the beginning
of autumn. [527]

[Prussia and North Germany after the war.]

The war of 1866 had been brought to an end with extraordinary rapidity; its
results were solid and imposing. Venice, perplexed no longer by its
Republican traditions or by doubts of the patriotism of the House of Savoy,
prepared to welcome King Victor Emmanuel; Bismarck, returning from the
battle-field of Königgrätz, found his earlier unpopularity forgotten in the
flood of national enthusiasm which his achievements and those of the army
had evoked. A new epoch had begun; the antagonisms of the past were out of
date; nobler work now stood before the Prussian people and its rulers than
the perpetuation of a barren struggle between Crown and Parliament. By none
was the severance from the past more openly expressed than by Bismarck
himself; by none was it more bitterly felt than by the old Conservative
party in Prussia, who had hitherto regarded the Minister as their own
representative. In drawing up the Constitution of the North German
Federation, Bismarck remained true to the principle which he had laid down
at Frankfort before the war, that the German people must be represented by
a Parliament elected directly by the people themselves. In the
incorporation of Hanover, Hesse-Cassel and the Danish Duchies with Prussia,
he saw that it would be impossible to win the new populations to a loyal
union with Prussia if the King's Government continued to recognise no
friends but the landed aristocracy and the army. He frankly declared that
the action of the Cabinet in raising taxes without the consent of
Parliament had been illegal, and asked for an Act of Indemnity. The
Parliament of Berlin understood and welcomed the message of reconciliation.
It heartily forgave the past, and on its own initiative added the name of
Bismarck to those for whose services to the State the King asked a
recompense. The Progressist party, which had constituted the majority in
the last Parliament, gave place to a new combination known as the National
Liberal party, which, while adhering to the Progressist creed in domestic
affairs, gave its allegiance to the Foreign and the German policy of the
Minister. Within this party many able men who in Hanover and the other
annexed territories had been the leaders of opposition to their own
Governments now found a larger scope and a greater political career. More
than one of the colleagues of Bismarck who had been appointed to their
offices in the years of conflict were allowed to pass into retirement, and
their places were filled by men in sympathy with the National Liberals.
With the expansion of Prussia and the establishment of its leadership in a
German Federal union, the ruler of Prussia seemed himself to expand from
the instrument of a military monarchy to the representative of a great
nation.

[Hungary and Austria, 1865.]

To Austria the battle of Königgrätz brought a settlement of the conflict
between the Crown and Hungary. The Constitution of February, 1861,
hopefully as it had worked during its first years, had in the end fallen
before the steady refusal of the Magyars to recognise the authority of a
single Parliament for the whole Monarchy. Within the Reichsrath itself the
example of Hungary told as a disintegrating force; the Poles, the Czechs
seceded from the Assembly; the Minister, Schmerling, lost his authority,
and was forced to resign in the summer of 1865. Soon afterwards an edict of
the Emperor suspended the Constitution. Count Belcredi, who took office in
Schmerling's place, attempted to arrive at an understanding with the Magyar
leaders. The Hungarian Diet was convoked, and was opened by the King in
person before the end of the year. Francis Joseph announced his abandonment
of the principle that Hungary had forfeited its ancient rights by
rebellion, and asked in return that the Diet should not insist upon
regarding the laws of 1848 as still in force. Whatever might be the formal
validity of those laws, it was, he urged, impossible that they should be
brought into operation unaltered. For the common affairs of the two halves
of the Monarchy there must be some common authority. It rested with the
Diet to arrive at the necessary understanding with the Sovereign on this
point, and to place on a satisfactory footing the relations of Hungary to
Transylvania and Croatia. As soon as an accord should have been reached on
these subjects, Francis Joseph stated that he would complete his
reconciliation with the Magyars by being crowned King of Hungary.

[Deák.]

In the Assembly to which these words were addressed the majority was
composed of men of moderate opinions, under the leadership of Francis Deák.
Deák had drawn up the programme of the Hungarian Liberals in the election
of 1847. He had at that time appeared to be marked out by his rare
political capacity and the simple manliness of his character for a great,
if not the greatest, part in the work that then lay before his country. But
the violence of revolutionary methods was alien to his temperament. After
serving in Batthyány's Ministry, he withdrew from public life on the
outbreak of war with Austria, and remained in retirement during the
dictatorship of Kossuth and the struggle of 1849. As a loyal friend to the
Hapsburg dynasty, and a clear-sighted judge of the possibilities of the
time, he stood apart while Kossuth dethroned the Sovereign and proclaimed
Hungarian independence. Of the patriotism and the disinterestedness of Deák
there was never the shadow of a doubt; a distinct political faith severed
him from the leaders whose enterprise ended in the catastrophe which he had
foreseen, and preserved for Hungary one statesman who could, without
renouncing his own past and without inflicting humiliation on the
Sovereign, stand as the mediator between Hungary and Austria when the time
for reconciliation should arrive. Deák was little disposed to abate
anything of what he considered the just demands of his country. It was
under his leadership that the Diet had in 1861 refused to accept the
Constitution which established a single Parliament for the whole Monarchy.
The legislative independence of Hungary he was determined at all costs to
preserve intact; rather than surrender this he had been willing in 1861 to
see negotiations broken off and military rule restored. But when Francis
Joseph, wearied of the sixteen years' struggle, appealed once more to
Hungary for union and friendship, there was no man more earnestly desirous
to reconcile the Sovereign with the nation, and to smooth down the
opposition to the King's proposals which arose within the Diet itself, than
Deák.

[Scheme of Hungarian Committee, June 25, 1866.]

Under his influence a committee was appointed to frame the necessary basis
of negotiation. On the 25th of June, 1866, the Committee gave in its
report. It declared against any Parliamentary union with the Cis-Leithan
half of the Monarchy, but consented to the establishment of common
Ministries for War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs, and recommended that the
Budget necessary for these joint Ministries should be settled by
Delegations from the Hungarian Diet and from the western Reichsrath. [528]
The Delegations, it was proposed, should meet separately, and communicate
their views to one another by writing. Only when agreement should not have
been thus attained were the Delegations to unite in a single body, in which
case the decision was to rest with an absolute majority of votes.

[Negotiations with Hungary after Königgrätz.]

[Federalism or Dualism.]

[Settlement by Beust.]

[Francis Joseph's Coronation, June 8, 1867.]

The debates of the Diet on the proposals of King Francis Joseph had been
long and anxious; it was not until the moment when the war with Prussia was
breaking out that the Committee presented its report. The Diet was now
prorogued, but immediately after the battle of Königgrätz the Hungarian
leaders were called to Vienna, and negotiations were pushed forward on the
lines laid down by the Committee. It was a matter of no small moment to the
Court of Vienna that while bodies of Hungarian exiles had been preparing to
attack the Empire both from the side of Silesia and of Venice, Deák and his
friends had loyally abstained from any communication with the foreign
enemies of the House of Hapsburg. That Hungary would now gain almost
complete independence was certain; the question was not so much whether
there should be an independent Parliament and Ministry at Pesth as whether
there should not be a similarly independent Parliament and Ministry in each
of the territories of the Crown, the Austrian Sovereign becoming the head
of a Federation instead of the chief of a single or a dual State. Count
Belcredi, the Minister at Vienna, was disposed towards such a Federal
system; he was, however, now confronted within the Cabinet by a rival who
represented a different policy. After making peace with Prussia, the
Emperor called to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Count Beust, who had
hitherto been at the head of the Saxon Government, and who had been the
representative of the German Federation at the London Conference of 1864.
Beust, while ready to grant the Hungarians their independence, advocated
the retention of the existing Reichsrath and of a single Ministry for all
the Cis-Leithan parts of the Monarchy. His plan, which pointed to the
maintenance of German ascendency in the western provinces, and which deeply
offended the Czechs and the Slavic populations, was accepted by the
Emperor: Belcredi withdrew from office, and Beust was charged, as President
of the Cabinet, with the completion of the settlement with Hungary (Feb. 7,
1867). Deák had hitherto left the chief ostensible part in the negotiations
to Count Andrássy, one of the younger patriots of 1848, who had been
condemned to be hanged, and had lived a refugee during the next ten years.
He now came to Vienna himself, and in the course of a few days removed the
last remaining difficulties. The King gratefully charged him with the
formation of the Hungarian Ministry under the restored Constitution, but
Deák declined alike all office, honours, and rewards, and Andrássy, who had
actually been hanged in effigy, was placed at the head of the Government.
The Diet, which had reassembled shortly before the end of 1866, greeted the
national Ministry with enthusiasm. Alterations in the laws of 1848 proposed
in accordance with the agreement made at Vienna, and establishing the three
common Ministries with the system of Delegations for common affairs, were
carried by large majorities. [529] The abdication of Ferdinand, which
throughout the struggle of 1849 Hungary had declined to recognise, was now
acknowledged as valid, and on the 8th of June, 1867, Francis Joseph was
crowned King of Hungary amid the acclamations of Pesth. The gift of money
which is made to each Hungarian monarch on his coronation Francis Joseph by
a happy impulse distributed among the families of those who had fallen in
fighting against him in 1849. A universal amnesty was proclaimed, no
condition being imposed on the return of the exiles but that they should
acknowledge the existing Constitution. Kossuth alone refused to return to
his country so long as a Hapsburg should be its King, and proudly clung to
ideas which were already those of the past.

[Hungary since 1867.]

The victory of the Magyars was indeed but too complete. Not only were Beust
and the representatives of the western half of the Monarchy so overmatched
by the Hungarian negotiators that in the distribution of the financial
burdens of the Empire Hungary escaped with far too small a share, but in
the more important problem of the relation of the Slavic and Roumanian
populations of the Hungarian Kingdom to the dominant race no adequate steps
were taken for the protection of these subject nationalities. That Croatia
and Transylvania should be reunited with Hungary if the Emperor and the
Magyars were ever to be reconciled was inevitable; and in the case of
Croatia certain conditions were no doubt imposed, and certain local rights
guaranteed. But on the whole the non-Magyar peoples in Hungary were handed
over to the discretion of the ruling race. The demand of Bismarck that the
centre of gravity of the Austrian States should be transferred from Vienna
to Pesth had indeed been brought to pass. While in the western half of the
Monarchy the central authority, still represented by a single Parliament,
seemed in the succeeding years to be altogether losing its cohesive power,
and the political life of Austria became a series of distracting
complications, in Hungary the Magyar Government resolutely set itself to
the task of moulding into one the nationalities over which it ruled.
Uniting the characteristic faults with the great qualities of a race marked
out by Nature and ancient habit for domination over more numerous but less
aggressive neighbours, the Magyars have steadily sought to the best of
their power to obliterate the distinctions which make Hungary in reality
not one but several nations. They have held the Slavic and the Roumanian
population within their borders with an iron grasp, but they have not
gained their affection. The memory of the Russian intervention in 1849 and
of the part then played by Serbs, by Croats and Roumanians in crushing
Magyar independence has blinded the victors to the just claims of these
races both within and without the Hungarian kingdom, and attached their
sympathy to the hateful and outworn empire of the Turk. But the
individuality of peoples is not to be blotted out in a day; nor, with all
its striking advance in wealth, in civilisation, and in military power, has
the Magyar State been able to free itself from the insecurity arising from
the presence of independent communities on its immediate frontiers
belonging to the same race as those whose language and nationality it seeks
to repress.




CHAPTER XXIV.


Napoleon III.--The Mexican Expedition--Withdrawal of the French and death
of Maximilian--The Luxemburg Question--Exasperation in France against
Prussia--Austria--Italy--Mentana--Germany after 1866--The Spanish
candidature of Leopold of Hohenzollern--French declaration--Benedetti and
King William--Withdrawal of Leopold and demand for guarantees--The
telegram from Ems--War--Expected Alliances of France--Austria--Italy--
Prussian plans--The French army--Causes of French inferiority--
Weissenburg--Wörth--Spicheren--Borny--Mars-la-Tour--Gravelotte--Sedan--
The Republic proclaimed at Paris--Favre and Bismarck--Siege of
Paris--Gambetta at Tours--The Army of the Loire--Fall of Metz--Fighting
at Orleans--Sortie of Champigny--The Armies of the North, of the Loire,
of the East--Bourbaki's ruin--Capitulation of Paris and Armistice--
Preliminaries of Peace--Germany--Establishment of the German Empire--The
Commune of Paris--Second siege--Effects of the war as to Russia and
Italy--Rome.


[Napoleon III.]

The reputation of Napoleon III. was perhaps at its height at the end of the
first ten years of his reign. His victories over Russia and Austria had
flattered the military pride of France; the flowing tide of commercial
prosperity bore witness, as it seemed, to the blessings of a government at
once firm and enlightened; the reconstruction of Paris dazzled a generation
accustomed to the mean and dingy aspect of London and other capitals before
1850, and scarcely conscious of the presence or absence of real beauty and
dignity where it saw spaciousness and brilliance. The political faults of
Napoleon, the shiftiness and incoherence of his designs, his want of grasp
on reality, his absolute personal nullity as an administrator, were known
to some few, but they had not been displayed to the world at large. He had
done some great things, he had conspicuously failed in nothing. Had his
reign ended before 1863, he would probably have left behind him in popular
memory the name of a great ruler. But from this time his fortune paled. The
repulse of his intervention on behalf of Poland in 1863 by the Russian
Court, his petulant or miscalculating inaction during the Danish War of the
following year, showed those to be mistaken who had imagined that the
Emperor must always exercise a controlling power in Europe. During the
events which formed the first stage in the consolidation of Germany his
policy was a succession of errors. Simultaneously with the miscarriage of
his European schemes, an enterprise which he had undertaken beyond the
Atlantic, and which seriously weakened his resources at a time when
concentrated strength alone could tell on European affairs, ended in
tragedy and disgrace.

[The Mexican Project.]

There were in Napoleon III., as a man of State, two personalities, two
mental existences, which blended but ill with one another. There was the
contemplator of great human forces, the intelligent, if not deeply
penetrative, reader of the signs of the times, the brooder through long
years of imprisonment and exile, the child of Europe, to whom Germany,
Italy, and England had all in turn been nearer than his own country; and
there was the crowned adventurer, bound by his name and position to gain
for France something that it did not possess, and to regard the greatness
of every other nation as an impediment to the ascendency of his own.
Napoleon correctly judged the principle of nationality to be the dominant
force in the immediate future of Europe. He saw in Italy and in Germany
races whose internal divisions alone had prevented them from being the
formidable rivals of France, and yet he assisted the one nation to effect
its union, and was not indisposed, within certain limits, to promote the
consolidation of the other. That the acquisition of Nice and Savoy, and
even of the Rhenish Provinces, could not in itself make up to France for
the establishment of two great nations on its immediate frontiers Napoleon
must have well understood: he sought to carry the principle of
agglomeration a stage farther in the interests of France itself, and to
form some moral, if not political, union of the Latin nations, which should
embrace under his own ascendency communities beyond the Atlantic as well as
those of the Old World. It was with this design that in the year 1862 he
made the financial misdemeanours of Mexico the pretext for an expedition to
that country, the object of which was to subvert the native Republican
Government, and to place the Hapsburg Maximilian, as a vassal prince, on
its throne. England and Spain had at first agreed to unite with France in
enforcing the claims of the European creditors of Mexico; but as soon as
Napoleon had made public his real intentions these Powers withdrew their
forces, and the Emperor was left free to carry out his plans alone.

[The Mexican Expedition, 1862-1865.]

[Napoleon compelled to withdraw, 1866-7.]

[Fall and Death of Maximilian.]

The design of Napoleon to establish French influence in Mexico was
connected with his attempt to break up the United States by establishing
the independence of the Southern Confederacy, then in rebellion, through
the mediation of the Great Powers of Europe. So long as the Civil War in
the United States lasted, it seemed likely that Napoleon's enterprise in
Mexico would be successful. Maximilian was placed upon the throne, and the
Republican leader, Juarez, was driven into the extreme north of the
country. But with the overthrow of the Southern Confederacy and the
restoration of peace in the United States in 1865 the prospect totally
changed. The Government of Washington refused to acknowledge any authority
in Mexico but that of Juarez, and informed Napoleon in courteous terms that
his troops must be withdrawn. Napoleon had bound himself by Treaty to keep
twenty-five thousand men in Mexico for the protection of Maximilian. He
was, however, unable to defy the order of the United States. Early in 1866
he acquainted Maximilian with the necessities of the situation, and with
the approaching removal of the force which alone had placed him and could
sustain him on the throne. The unfortunate prince sent his consort, the
daughter of the King of the Belgians, to Europe to plead against this act
of desertion; but her efforts were vain, and her reason sank under the just
presentiment of her husband's ruin. The utmost on which Napoleon could
venture was the postponement of the recall of his troops till the spring of
1867. He urged Maximilian to abdicate before it was too late; but the
prince refused to dissociate himself from his counsellors who still
implored him to remain. Meanwhile the Juarists pressed back towards the
capital from north and south. As the French detachments were withdrawn
towards the coast the entire country fell into their hands. The last French
soldiers quitted Mexico at the beginning of March, 1867, and on the 15th of
May, Maximilian, still lingering at Queretaro, was made prisoner by the
Republicans. He had himself while in power ordered that the partisans of
Juarez should be treated not as soldiers but as brigands, and that when
captured they should be tried by court-martial and executed within
twenty-four hours. The same severity was applied to himself. He was
sentenced to death and shot at Queretaro on the 19th of June.

[Decline of Napoleon's reputation.]

Thus ended the attempt of Napoleon III. to establish the influence of
France and of his dynasty beyond the seas. The doom of Maximilian excited
the compassion of Europe; a deep, irreparable wound was inflicted on the
reputation of the man who had tempted him to his treacherous throne, who
had guaranteed him protection, and at the bidding of a superior power had
abandoned him to his ruin. From this time, though the outward splendour of
the Empire was undiminished, there remained scarcely anything of the
personal prestige which Napoleon had once enjoyed in so rich a measure. He
was no longer in the eyes of Europe or of his own country the profound,
self-contained statesman in whose brain lay the secret of coming events; he
was rather the gambler whom fortune was preparing to desert, the usurper
trembling for the future of his dynasty and his crown. Premature old age
and a harassing bodily ailment began to incapacitate him for personal
exertion. He sought to loosen the reins in which his despotism held France,
and to make a compromise with public opinion which was now declaring
against him. And although his own cooler judgment set little store by any
addition of frontier strips of alien territory to France, and he would
probably have been best pleased to pass the remainder of his reign in
undisturbed inaction, he deemed it necessary, after failure in Mexico had
become inevitable, to seek some satisfaction in Europe for the injured
pride of his country. He entered into negotiations with the King of Holland
for the cession of Luxemburg, and had gained his assent, when rumours of
the transaction reached the North German Press, and the project passed from
out the control of diplomatists and became an affair of rival nations.

[The Luxemburg question, Feb.-May, 1867.]

Luxemburg, which was an independent Duchy ruled by the King of Holland, had
until 1866 formed a part of the German Federation; and although Bismarck
had not attempted to include it in his own North German Union, Prussia
retained by the Treaties of 1815 a right to garrison the fortress of
Luxemburg, and its troops were actually there in possession. The proposed
transfer of the Duchy to France excited an outburst of patriotic resentment
in the Federal Parliament at Berlin. The population of Luxemburg was indeed
not wholly German, and it had shown the strongest disinclination to enter
the North German league; but the connection of the Duchy with Germany in
the past was close enough to explain the indignation roused by Napoleon's
project among politicians who little suspected that during the previous
year Bismarck himself had cordially recommended this annexation, and that
up to the last moment he had been privy to the Emperor's plan. The Prussian
Minister, though he did not affect to share the emotion of his countrymen,
stated that his policy in regard to Luxemburg must be influenced by the
opinion of the Federal Parliament, and he shortly afterwards caused it to
be understood at Paris that the annexation of the Duchy to France was
impossible. As a warning to France he had already published the Treaties of
alliance between Prussia and the South German States, which had been made
at the close of the war of 1866, but had hitherto been kept secret. [530]
Other powers now began to tender their good offices. Count Beust, on behalf
of Austria, suggested that Luxemburg should be united to Belgium, which in
its turn should cede a small district to France. This arrangement, which
would have been accepted at Berlin, and which, by soothing the irritation
produced in France by Prussia's successes, would possibly have averted the
war of 1870, was frustrated by the refusal of the King of Belgium to part
with any of his territory--Napoleon, disclaiming all desire for territorial
extension, now asked only for the withdrawal of the Prussian garrison from
Luxemburg; but it was known that he was determined to enforce this demand
by arms. The Russian Government proposed that the question should be
settled by a Conference of the Powers at London. This proposal was accepted
under certain conditions by France and Prussia, and the Conference
assembled on the 7th of May. Its deliberations were completed in four days,
and the results were summed up in the Treaty of London signed on the 11th.
By this Treaty the Duchy of Luxemburg was declared neutral territory under
the collective guarantee of the Powers. Prussia withdrew its garrison, and
the King of Holland, who continued to be sovereign of the Duchy, undertook
to demolish the fortifications of Luxemburg, and to maintain it in the
future as an open town. [531]

[Exasperation in France against Prussia.]

Of the politicians of France, those who even affected to regard the
aggrandisement of Prussia and the union of Northern Germany with
indifference or satisfaction were a small minority. Among these was the
Emperor, who, after his attempts to gain a Rhenish Province had been
baffled, sought to prove in an elaborate State-paper that France had won
more than it had lost by the extinction of the German Federation as
established in 1815, and by the dissolution of the tie that had bound
Austria and Prussia together as members of this body. The events of 1866
had, he contended, broken up a system devised in evil days for the purpose
of uniting Central Europe against France, and had restored to the Continent
the freedom of alliances; in other words, they had made it possible for the
South German States to connect themselves with France. If this illusion was
really entertained by the Emperor, it was rudely dispelled by the discovery
of the Treaties between Prussia and the Southern States and by their
publication in the spring of 1867. But this revelation was not necessary to
determine the attitude of the great majority of those who passed for the
representatives of independent political opinion in France. The Ministers
indeed were still compelled to imitate the Emperor's optimism, and a few
enlightened men among the Opposition understood that France must be content
to see the Germans effect their national unity; but the great body of
unofficial politicians, to whatever party they belonged, joined in the
bitter outcry raised at once against the aggressive Government of Prussia
and the feeble administration at Paris, which had not found the means to
prevent, or had actually facilitated, Prussia's successes. Thiers, who more
than any one man had by his writings popularised the Napoleonic legend and
accustomed the French to consider themselves entitled to a monopoly of
national greatness on the Rhine, was the severest critic of the Emperor,
the most zealous denouncer of the work which Bismarck had effected. It was
only with too much reason that the Prussian Government looked forward to an
attack by France at some earlier or later time as almost certain, and
pressed forward the military organisation which was to give to Germany an
army of unheard-of efficiency and strength.

[France and Prussia after 1867.]

There appears to be no evidence that Napoleon III. himself desired to
attack Prussia so long as that Power should strictly observe the
stipulations of the Treaty of Prague which provided for the independence of
the South German States. But the current of events irresistibly impelled
Germany to unity. The very Treaty which made the river Main the limit of
the North German Confederacy reserved for the Southern States the right of
attaching themselves to those of the North by some kind of national tie.
Unless the French Emperor was resolved to acquiesce in the gradual
development of this federal unity until, as regarded the foreigner, the
North and the South of Germany should be a single body, he could have no
confident hope of lasting peace. To have thus anticipated and accepted the
future, to have removed once and for all the sleepless fears of Prussia by
the frank recognition of its right to give all Germany effective Union,
would have been an act too great and too wise in reality, too weak and
self-renouncing in appearance, for any chief of a rival nation. Napoleon
did not take this course; on the other hand, not desiring to attack Prussia
while it remained within the limits of the Treaty of Prague, he refrained
from seeking alliances with the object of immediate and aggressive action.
The diplomacy of the Emperor during the period from 1866 to 1870 is indeed
still but imperfectly known; but it would appear that his efforts were
directed only to the formation of alliances with the view of eventual
action when Prussia should have passed the limits which the Emperor himself
or public opinion in Paris should, as interpreter of the Treaty of Prague,
impose upon this Power in its dealings with the South German States.

[Negotiations with Austria, 1868-69.]

The Governments to which Napoleon could look for some degree of support
were those of Austria and Italy. Count Beust, now Chancellor of the
Austrian Monarchy, was a bitter enemy to Prussia, and a rash and
adventurous politician, to whom the very circumstance of his sudden
elevation from the petty sphere of Saxon politics gave a certain levity and
unconstraint in the handling of great affairs. He cherished the idea of
recovering Austria's ascendency in Germany, and was disposed to repel the
extension of Russian influence westwards by boldly encouraging the Poles to
seek for the satisfaction of their national hopes in Galicia under the
Hapsburg Crown. To Count Beust France was the most natural of all allies.
On the other hand, the very system which Beust had helped to establish in
Hungary raised serious obstacles against the adoption of his own policy.
Andrássy, the Hungarian Minister, while sharing Beust's hostility to
Russia, declared that his countrymen had no interest in restoring Austria's
German connection, and were in fact better without it. In these
circumstances the negotiations of the French and the Austrian Emperor were
conducted by a private correspondence. The interchange of letters continued
during the years 1868 and 1869, and resulted in a promise made by Napoleon
to support Austria if it should be attacked by Prussia, while the Emperor
Francis Joseph promised to assist France if it should be attacked by
Prussia and Russia together. No Treaty was made, but a general assurance
was exchanged between the two Emperors that they would pursue a common
policy and treat one another's interests as their own. With the view of
forming a closer understanding the Archduke Albrecht visited Paris in
February, 1870, and a French general was sent to Vienna to arrange the plan
of campaign in case of war with Prussia. In such a war, if undertaken by
the two Powers, it was hoped that Italy would join. [532]

[Italy after 1866.]

[Mentana, Nov. 3, 1867.]

The alliance of 1866 between Prussia and Italy had left behind it in each
of these States more of rancour than of good-will. La Marmora had from the
beginning to the end been unfortunate in his relations with Berlin. He had
entered into the alliance with suspicion; he would gladly have seen Venetia
given to Italy by a European Congress without war; and when hostilities
broke out, he had disregarded and resented what he considered an attempt of
the Prussian Government to dictate to him the military measures to be
pursued. On the other hand, the Prussians charged the Italian Government
with having deliberately held back its troops after the battle of Custozza
in pursuance of arrangements made between Napoleon and the Austrian Emperor
on the voluntary cession of Venice, and with having endangered or minimised
Prussia's success by enabling the Austrians to throw a great part of their
Italian forces northwards. There was nothing of that comradeship between
the Italian and the Prussian armies which is acquired on the field of
battle. The personal sympathies of Victor Emmanuel were strongly on the
side of the French Emperor; and when, at the close of the year 1866, the
French garrison was withdrawn from Rome in pursuance of the convention made
in September, 1864, it seemed probable that France and Italy might soon
unite in a close alliance. But in the following year the attempts of the
Garibaldians to overthrow the Papal Government, now left without its
foreign defenders, embroiled Napoleon and the Italian people. Napoleon was
unable to defy the clerical party in France; he adopted the language of
menace in his communications with the Italian Cabinet; and when, in the
autumn of 1867, the Garibaldians actually invaded the Roman States, he
despatched a body of French troops under General Failly to act in support
of those of the Pope. An encounter took place at Mentana on November 3rd,
in which the Garibaldians, after defeating the Papal forces, were put to
the rout by General Failly. The occupation of Civita Vecchia was renewed,
and in the course of the debates raised at Paris on the Italian policy of
the Government, the Prime Minister, M. Rouher, stated, with the most
passionate emphasis that, come what might, Italy should never possess
itself of Rome. "Never," he cried, "will France tolerate such an outrage on
its honour and its dignity." [533]

[Napoleon and Italy after Mentana.]

[Italy and Austria.]

The affair of Mentana, the insolent and heartless language in which General
Failly announced his success, the reoccupation of Roman territory by French
troops, and the declaration made by M. Rouher in the French Assembly,
created wide and deep anger in Italy, and made an end for the time of all
possibility of a French alliance. Napoleon was indeed, as regarded Italy,
in an evil case. By abandoning Rome he would have turned against himself
and his dynasty the whole clerical interest in France, whose confidence he
had already to some extent forfeited by his policy in 1860; on the other
hand, it was vain for him to hope for the friendship of Italy whilst he
continued to bar the way to the fulfilment of the universal national
desire. With the view of arriving at some compromise he proposed a European
Conference on the Roman question; but this was resisted above all by Count
Bismarck, whose interest it was to keep the sore open; and neither England
nor Russia showed any anxiety to help the Pope's protector out of his
difficulties. Napoleon sought by a correspondence with Victor Emmanuel
during 1868 and 1869 to pave the way for a defensive alliance; but Victor
Emmanuel was in reality as well as in name a constitutional king, and
probably could not, even if he had desired, have committed Italy to
engagements disapproved by the Ministry and Parliament. It was made clear
to Napoleon that the evacuation of the Papal States must precede any treaty
of alliance between France and Italy. Whether the Italian Government would
have been content with a return to the conditions of the September
Convention, or whether it made the actual possession of Rome the price of a
treaty-engagement, is uncertain; but inasmuch as Napoleon was not at
present prepared to evacuate Civita Vecchia, he could aim at nothing more
than some eventual concert when the existing difficulties should have been
removed. The Court of Vienna now became the intermediary between the two
Powers who had united against it in 1859. Count Beust was free from the
associations which had made any approach to friendship with the kingdom of
Victor Emmanuel impossible for his predecessors. He entered into
negotiations at Florence, which resulted in the conclusion of an agreement
between the Austrian and the Italian Governments that they would act
together and guarantee one another's territories in the event of a war
between France and Prussia. This agreement was made with the assent of the
Emperor Napoleon, and was understood to be preparatory to an accord with
France itself; but it was limited to a defensive character, and it implied
that any eventual concert with France must be arranged by the two Powers in
combination with one another. [534]

[Isolation of France.]

At the beginning of 1870 the Emperor Napoleon was therefore without any
more definite assurance of support in a war with Prussia than the promise
of the Austrian Sovereign that he would assist France if attacked by
Prussia and Russia together, and that he would treat the interests of
France as his own. By withdrawing his protection from Rome Napoleon had
undoubtedly a fair chance of building up this shadowy and remote engagement
into a defensive alliance with both Austria and Italy. But perfect
clearness and resolution of purpose, as well as the steady avoidance of all
quarrels on mere incidents, were absolutely indispensable to the creation
and the employment of such a league against the Power which alone it could
have in view; and Prussia had now little reason to fear any such exercise
of statesmanship on the part of Napoleon. The solution of the Roman
question, in other words the withdrawal of the French garrison from Roman
territory, could proceed only from some stronger stimulus than the
declining force of Napoleon's own intelligence and will could now supply.
This fatal problem baffled his attempts to gain alliances; and yet the
isolation of France was but half acknowledged, but half understood; and a
host of rash, vainglorious spirits impatiently awaited the hour that should
call them to their revenge on Prussia for the triumphs in which it had not
permitted France to share.

[Germany, 1867-1870.]

Meanwhile on the other side Count Bismarck advanced with what was most
essential in his relations with the States of Southern Germany--the
completion of the Treaties of Alliance by conventions assimilating the
military systems of these States to that of Prussia. A Customs-Parliament
was established for the whole of Germany, which, it was hoped, would be the
precursor of a National Assembly uniting the North and the South of the
Main. But in spite of this military and commercial approximation, the
progress towards union was neither so rapid nor so smooth as the patriots
of the North could desire. There was much in the harshness and
self-assertion of the Prussian character that repelled the less disciplined
communities of the South. Ultramontanism was strong in Bavaria; and
throughout the minor States the most advanced of the Liberals were opposed
to a closer union with Berlin, from dislike of its absolutist traditions
and the heavy hand of its Government. Thus the tendency known as
Particularism was supported in Bavaria and Würtemberg by classes of the
population who in most respects were in antagonism to one another; nor
could the memories of the campaign of 1866 and the old regard for Austria
be obliterated in a day. Bismarck did not unduly press on the work of
consolidation. He marked and estimated the force of the obstacles which too
rapid a development of his national policy would encounter. It is possible
that he may even have seen indications that religious and other influences
might imperil the military union which he had already established, and that
he may not have been unwilling to call to his aid, as the surest of all
preparatives for national union, the event which he had long believed to be
inevitable at some time or other in the future, a war with France.

[The Spanish candidature of Leopold of Hohenzollern.]

[Leopold accepts the Spanish Crown, July 3, 1870.]

Since the autumn of 1868 the throne of Spain had been vacant in consequence
of a revolution in which General Prim had been the leading actor. It was
not easy to discover a successor for the Bourbon Isabella; and after other
candidatures had been vainly projected it occurred to Prim and his friends
early in 1869 that a suitable candidate might be found in Prince Leopold of
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, whose elder brother had been made Prince of
Roumania, and whose father, Prince Antony, had been Prime Minister of
Prussia in 1859. The House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was so distantly
related to the reigning family of Prussia that the name alone preserved the
memory of the connection; and in actual blood-relationship Prince Leopold
was much more nearly allied to the French Houses of Murat and Beauharnais.
But the Sigmaringen family was distinctly Prussian by interest and
association, and its chief, Antony, had not only been at the head of the
Prussian Administration himself, but had, it is said, been the first to
suggest the appointment of Bismarck to the same office. The candidature of
a Hohenzollern might reasonably be viewed in France as an attempt to
connect Prussia politically with Spain; and with so much reserve was this
candidature at the first handled at Berlin that, in answer to inquiries
made by Benedetti in the spring of 1869, the Secretary of State who
represented Count Bismarck stated on his word of honour that the
candidature had never been suggested. The affair was from first to last
ostensibly treated at Berlin as one with which the Prussian Government was
wholly unconcerned, and in which King William was interested only as head
of the family to which Prince Leopold belonged. For twelve months after
Benedetti's inquiries it appeared as if the project had been entirely
abandoned; it was, however, revived in the spring of 1870, and on the 3rd
of July the announcement was made at Paris that Prince Leopold had
consented to accept the Crown of Spain if the Cortes should confirm his
election.

[French Declaration, July 6.]

At once there broke out in the French Press a storm of indignation against
Prussia. The organs of the Government took the lead in exciting public
opinion. On the 6th of July the Duke of Gramont, Foreign Minister, declared
to the Legislative Body that the attempt of a Foreign Power to place one of
its Princes on the throne of Charles V. imperilled the interests and the
honour of France, and that, if such a contingency were realised, the
Government would fulfil its duty without hesitation and without weakness.
The violent and unsparing language of this declaration, which had been
drawn up at a Council of Ministers under the Emperor's presidency, proved
that the Cabinet had determined either to humiliate Prussia or to take
vengeance by arms. It was at once seen by foreign diplomatists, who during
the preceding days had been disposed to assist in removing a reasonable
subject of complaint, how little was the chance of any peaceable settlement
after such a public challenge had been issued to Prussia in the Emperor's
name. One means of averting war alone seemed possible, the voluntary
renunciation by Prince Leopold of the offered Crown. To obtain this
renunciation became the task of those who, unlike the French Minister of
Foreign Affairs, were anxious to preserve peace.

[Ollivier's Ministry.]

The parts that were played at this crisis by the individuals who most
influenced the Emperor Napoleon are still but imperfectly known; but there
is no doubt that from the beginning to the end the Duke of Gramont, with
short intermissions, pressed with insane ardour for war. The Ministry now
in office had been called to their places in January, 1870, after the
Emperor had made certain changes in the constitution in a Liberal
direction, and had professed to transfer the responsibility of power from
himself to a body of advisers possessing the confidence of the Chamber.
Ollivier, formerly one of the leaders of the Opposition, had accepted the
Presidency of the Cabinet. His colleagues were for the most part men new to
official life, and little able to hold their own against such
representatives of unreformed Imperialism as the Duke of Gramont and the
War-Minister Leboeuf who sat beside them. Ollivier himself was one of the
few politicians in France who understood that his countrymen must be
content to see German unity established whether they liked it or not. He
was entirely averse from war with Prussia on the question which had now
arisen; but the fear that public opinion would sweep away a Liberal
Ministry which hesitated to go all lengths in patriotic extravagance led
him to sacrifice his own better judgment, and to accept the responsibility
for a policy which in his heart he disapproved. Gramont's rash hand was
given free play. Instructions were sent to Benedetti to seek the King of
Prussia at Ems, where he was taking the waters, and to demand from him, as
the only means of averting war, that he should order the Hohenzollern
Prince to revoke his acceptance of the Crown. "We are in great haste,"
Gramont added, "for we must gain the start in case of an unsatisfactory
reply, and commence the movement of troops by Saturday in order to enter
upon the campaign in a fortnight. Be on your guard against an answer merely
leaving the Prince of Hohenzollern to his fate, and disclaiming on the part
of the King any interest in his future." [535]

[Benedetti and King William at Ems, July 9-14.]

Benedetti's first interview with the King was on the 9th of July. He
informed the King of the emotion that had been caused in France by the
candidature of the Hohenzollern Prince; he dwelt on the value to both
countries of the friendly relation between France and Prussia; and, while
studiously avoiding language that might wound or irritate the King, he
explained to him the requirements of the Government at Paris. The King had
learnt beforehand what would be the substance of Benedetti's communication.
He had probably been surprised and grieved at the serious consequences
which Prince Leopold's action had produced in France; and although he had
determined not to submit to dictation from Paris or to order Leopold to
abandon his candidature, he had already, as it seems, taken steps likely to
render the preservation of peace more probable. At the end of a
conversation with the Ambassador, in which he asserted his complete
independence as head of the family of Hohenzollern, he informed Benedetti
that he had entered into communication with Leopold and his father, and
that he expected shortly to receive a despatch from Sigmaringen. Benedetti
rightly judged that the King, while positively refusing to meet Gramont's
demands, was yet desirous of finding some peaceable way out of the
difficulty; and the report of this interview which he sent to Paris was
really a plea in favour of good sense and moderation. But Gramont was
little disposed to accept such counsels. "I tell you plainly," he wrote to
Benedetti on the next day, "public opinion is on fire, and will leave us
behind it. We must begin; we wait only for your despatch to call up the
three hundred thousand men who are waiting the summons. Write, telegraph,
something definite. If the King will not counsel the Prince of Hohenzollern
to resign, well, it is immediate war, and in a few days we are on the
Rhine."

[Leopold withdraws, July 12.]

[Guarantee against renewal demanded.]

[Benedetti and the King, July 13.]

Nevertheless Benedetti's advice was not without its influence on the
Emperor and his Ministers. Napoleon, himself wavering from hour to hour,
now inclined to the peace-party, and during the 11th there was a pause in
the military preparations that had been begun. On the 12th the efforts of
disinterested Governments, probably also the suggestions of the King of
Prussia himself, produced their effects. A telegram was received at Madrid
from Prince Antony stating that his son's candidature was withdrawn. A few
hours later Ollivier announced the news in the Legislative Chamber at
Paris, and exchanged congratulations with the friends of peace, who
considered that the matter was now at an end. But this pacific conclusion
little suited either the war-party or the Bonapartists of the old type, who
grudged to a Constitutional Ministry so substantial a diplomatic success.
They at once declared that the retirement of Prince Leopold was a secondary
matter, and that the real question was what guarantees had been received
from Prussia against a renewal of the candidature. Gramont himself, in an
interview with the Prussian Ambassador, Baron Werther, sketched a letter
which he proposed that King William should send to the Emperor, stating
that in sanctioning the candidature of Prince Leopold he had not intended
to offend the French, and that in associating himself with the Prince's
withdrawal he desired that all misunderstandings should be at an end
between the two Governments. The despatch of Baron Werther conveying this
proposition appears to have deeply offended King William, whom it reached
about midday on the 13th. Benedetti had that morning met the King on the
promenade at Ems, and had received from him the promise that as soon as the
letter which was still on its way from Sigmaringen should arrive he would
send for the Ambassador in order that he might communicate its contents at
Paris. The letter arrived; but Baron Werther's despatch from Paris had
arrived before it; and instead of summoning Benedetti as he had promised,
the King sent one of his aides-de-camp to him with a message that a written
communication had been received from Prince Leopold confirming his
withdrawal, and that the matter was now at an end. Benedetti desired the
aide-de-camp to inform the King that he was compelled by his instructions
to ask for a guarantee against a renewal of the candidature. The
aide-de-camp did as he was requested, and brought back a message that the
King gave his entire approbation to the withdrawal of the Prince of
Hohenzollern, but that he could do no more. Benedetti begged for an
audience with His Majesty. The King replied that he was compelled to
decline entering into further negotiation, and that he had said his last
word. Though the King thus refused any further discussion, perfect courtesy
was observed on both sides; and on the following morning the King and the
Ambassador, who were both leaving Ems, took leave of one another at the
railway station with the usual marks of respect.

[Publication of the telegram from Ems, July 13.]

[War decided at Paris, July 14.]

That the guarantee which the French Government had resolved to demand would
not be given was now perfectly certain; yet, with the candidature of Prince
Leopold fairly extinguished, it was still possible that the cooler heads at
Paris might carry the day, and that the Government would stop short of
declaring war on a point on which the unanimous judgment of the other
Powers declared it to be in the wrong. But Count Bismarck was determined
not to let the French escape lightly from the quarrel. He had to do with an
enemy who by his own folly had come to the brink of an aggressive war, and,
far from facilitating his retreat, it was Bismarck's policy to lure him
over the precipice. Not many hours after the last message had passed
between King William and Benedetti, a telegram was officially published at
Berlin, stating, in terms so brief as to convey the impression of an actual
insult, that the King had refused to see the French Ambassador, and had
informed him by an aide-de-camp that he had nothing more to communicate to
him. This telegram was sent to the representatives of Prussia at most of
the European Courts, and to its agents in every German capital. Narratives
instantly gained currency, and were not contradicted by the Prussian
Government, that Benedetti had forced himself upon the King on the
promenade at Ems, and that in the presence of a large company the King had
turned his back upon the Ambassador. The publication of the alleged
telegram from Ems became known in Paris on the 14th. On that day the
Council of Ministers met three times. At the first meeting the advocates of
peace were still in the majority; in the afternoon, as the news from Berlin
and the fictions describing the insult offered to the French Ambassador
spread abroad, the agitation in Paris deepened, and the Council decided
upon calling up the Reserves; yet the Emperor himself seemed still disposed
for peace. It was in the interval between the second and the third meeting
of the Council, between the hours of six and ten in the evening, that
Napoleon finally gave way before the threats and importunities of the
war-party. The Empress, fanatically anxious for the overthrow of a great
Protestant Power, passionately eager for the military glory which alone
could insure the Crown to her son, won the triumph which she was so
bitterly to rue. At the third meeting of the Council, held shortly before
midnight, the vote was given for war.

In Germany this decision had been expected; yet it made a deep impression
not only on the German people but on Europe at large that, when the
declaration of war was submitted to the French Legislative Body in the form
of a demand for supplies, no single voice was raised to condemn the war for
its criminality and injustice: the arguments which were urged against it by
M. Thiers and others were that the Government had fixed upon a bad cause,
and that the occasion was inopportune. Whether the majority of the Assembly
really desired war is even now matter of doubt. But the clamour of a
hundred madmen within its walls, the ravings of journalists and
incendiaries, who at such a time are to the true expression of public
opinion what the Spanish Inquisition was to the Christian religion,
paralysed the will and the understanding of less infatuated men. Ten votes
alone were given in the Assembly against the grant demanded for war; to
Europe at large it went out that the crime and the madness was that of
France as a nation. Yet Ollivier and many of his colleagues up to the last
moment disapproved of the war, and consented to it only because they
believed that the nation would otherwise rush into hostilities under a
reactionary Ministry who would serve France worse than themselves. They
found when it was too late that the supposed national impulse, which they
had thought irresistible, was but the outcry of a noisy minority. The
reports of their own officers informed them that in sixteen alone out of
the eighty-seven Departments of France was the war popular. In the other
seventy-one it was accepted either with hesitation or regret. [536]

[Initial forces of either side.]

[Expected Alliances of France.]

[Austria preparing.]

How vast were the forces which the North German Confederation could bring
into the field was well known to Napoleon's Government. Benedetti had kept
his employers thoroughly informed of the progress of the North German
military organisation; he had warned them that the South German States
would most certainly act with the North against a foreign assailant; he had
described with great accuracy and great penetration the nature of the tie
that existed between Berlin and St. Petersburg, a tie which was close
enough to secure for Prussia the goodwill, and in certain contingencies the
armed support, of Russia, while it was loose enough not to involve Prussia
in any Muscovite enterprise that would bring upon it the hostility of
England and Austria. The utmost force which the French military
administration reckoned on placing in the field at the beginning of the
campaign was two hundred and fifty thousand men, to be raised at the end of
three weeks by about fifty thousand more. The Prussians, even without
reckoning on any assistance from Southern Germany, and after allowing for
three army-corps that might be needed to watch Austria and Denmark, could
begin the campaign with three hundred and thirty thousand. Army to army,
the French thus stood according to the reckoning of their own War Office
outnumbered at the outset; but Leboeuf, the War-Minister, imagined that the
Foreign Office had made sure of alliances, and that a great part of the
Prussian Army would not be free to act on the western frontier. Napoleon
had in fact pushed forward his negotiations with Austria and Italy from the
time that war became imminent. Count Beust, while clearly laying it down
that Austria was not bound to follow France into a war made at its own
pleasure, nevertheless felt some anxiety lest France and Prussia should
settle their differences at Austria's expense; moreover from the victory of
Napoleon, assisted in any degree by himself, he could fairly hope for the
restoration of Austria's ascendency in Germany and the undoing of the work
of 1866. It was determined at a Council held at Vienna on the 18th of July
that Austria should for the present be neutral if Russia should not enter
the war on the side of Prussia; but this neutrality was nothing more than a
stage towards alliance with France if at the end of a certain brief period
the army of Napoleon should have penetrated into Southern Germany. In a
private despatch to the Austrian Ambassador at Paris Count Beust pointed
out that the immediate participation of Austria in the war would bring
Russia into the field on King William's side. "To keep Russia neutral," he
wrote, "till the season is sufficiently advanced to prevent the
concentration of its troops must be at present our object; but this
neutrality is nothing more than a means for arriving at the real end of our
policy, the only means for completing our preparations without exposing
ourselves to premature attack by Prussia or Russia." He added that Austria
had already entered into a negotiation with Italy with a view to the armed
mediation of the two Powers, and strongly recommended the Emperor to place
the Italians in possession of Rome. [537]

[France, Austria, and Italy.]

Negotiations were now pressed forward between Paris, Florence, and Vienna,
for the conclusion of a triple alliance. Of the course taken by these
negotiations contradictory accounts are given by the persons concerned in
them. According to Prince Napoleon, Victor Emmanuel demanded possession of
Rome and this was refused to him by the French Emperor, in consequence of
which the project of alliance failed. According to the Duke of Gramont, no
more was demanded by Italy than the return to the conditions of the
September Convention; this was agreed to by the Emperor, and it was in
pursuance of this agreement that the Papal States were evacuated by their
French garrison on the 2nd of August. Throughout the last fortnight of
July, after war had actually been declared, there was, if the statement of
Gramont is to be trusted, a continuous interchange of notes, projects, and
telegrams between the three Governments. The difficulties raised by Italy
and Austria were speedily removed, and though some weeks were needed by
these Powers for their military preparations, Napoleon was definitely
assured of their armed support in case of his preliminary success. It was
agreed that Austria and Italy, assuming at the first the position of armed
neutrality, should jointly present an ultimatum to Prussia in September
demanding the exact performance of the Treaty of Prague, and, failing its
compliance with this summons in the sense understood by its enemies, that
the two Powers would immediately declare war, their armies taking the field
at latest on the 15th of September. That Russia would in that case assist
Prussia was well known; but it would seem that Count Beust feared little
from his northern enemy in an autumn campaign. The draft of the Treaty
between Italy and Austria had actually, according to Gramont's statement,
been accepted by the two latter Powers, and received its last amendments in
a negotiation between the Emperor Napoleon and an Italian envoy, Count
Vimercati, at Metz. Vimercati reached Florence with the amended draft on
the 4th of August, and it was expected that the Treaty would be signed on
the following day. When that day came it saw the forces of the French
Empire dashed to pieces. [538]

[Prussian Plans.]

Preparations for a war with France had long occupied the general staff at
Berlin. Before the winter of 1868 a memoir had been drawn up by General
Moltke, containing plans for the concentration of the whole of the German
forces, for the formation of each of the armies to be employed, and the
positions to be occupied at the outset by each corps. On the basis of this
memoir the arrangements for the transport of each corps from its depôt to
the frontier had subsequently been worked out in such minute detail that
when, on the 16th of July, King William gave the order for mobilisation,
nothing remained but to insert in the railway time-tables and
marching-orders the day on which the movement was to commence. This
minuteness of detail extended, however, only to that part of Moltke's plan
which related to the assembling and first placing of the troops. The events
of the campaign could not thus be arranged and tabulated beforehand; only
the general object and design could be laid down. That the French would
throw themselves with great rapidity upon Southern Germany was considered
probable. The armies of Baden, Würtemberg, and Bavaria were too weak, the
military centres of the North were too far distant, for effective
resistance to be made in this quarter to the first blows of the invader.
Moltke therefore recommended that the Southern troops should withdraw from
their own States and move northwards to join those of Prussia in the
Palatinate or on the Middle Rhine, so that the entire forces of Germany
should be thrown upon the flank or rear of the invader; while, in the event
of the French not thus taking the offensive, France itself was to be
invaded by the collective strength of Germany along the line from
Saarbrücken to Landau, and its armies were to be cut off from their
communications with Paris by vigorous movements of the invader in a
northerly direction. [539]

[German mobilisation.]

The military organisation of Germany is based on the division of the
country into districts, each of which furnishes at its own depôt a small
but complete army. The nucleus of each such corps exists in time of peace,
with its own independent artillery, stores, and material of war. On the
order for mobilisation being given, every man liable to military service,
but not actually serving, joins the regiment to which he locally belongs,
and in a given number of days each corps is ready to take the field in full
strength. The completion of each corps at its own depôt is the first stage
in the preparation for a campaign. Not till this is effected does the
movement of troops towards the frontier begin. The time necessary for the
first act of preparation was, like that to be occupied in transport,
accurately determined by the Prussian War Office. It resulted from General
Moltke's calculations that, the order of mobilisation having been given on
the 16th of July, the entire army with which it was intended to begin the
campaign would be collected and in position ready to cross the frontier on
the 4th of August, if the French should not have taken up the offensive
before that day. But as it was apprehended that part at least of the French
army would be thrown into Germany before that date, the westward movement
of the German troops stopped short at a considerable distance from the
border, in order that the troops first arriving might not be exposed to the
attack of a superior force before their supports should be at hand. On the
actual frontier there was placed only the handful of men required for
reconnoitring, and for checking the enemy during the few hours that would
be necessary to guard against the effect of a surprise.

[The French Army.]

The French Emperor was aware of the numerical inferiority of his army to
that of Prussia; he hoped, however, by extreme rapidity of movement to
penetrate Southern Germany before the Prussian army could assemble, and so,
while forcing the Southern Governments to neutrality, to meet on the Upper
Danube the assisting forces of Italy and Austria. It was his design to
concentrate a hundred and fifty thousand men at Metz, a hundred thousand at
Strasburg, and with these armies united to cross the Rhine into Baden;
while a third army, which was to assemble at Châlons, protected the
north-eastern frontier against an advance of the Prussians. A few days
after the declaration of war, while the German corps were still at their
depôts in the interior, considerable forces were massed round Metz and
Strasburg. All Europe listened for the rush of the invader and the first
swift notes of triumph from a French army beyond the Rhine; but week after
week passed, and the silence was still unbroken. Stories, incredible to
those who first heard them, yet perfectly true, reached the German
frontier-stations of actual famine at the advanced posts of the enemy, and
of French soldiers made prisoners while digging in potato-fields to keep
themselves alive. That Napoleon was less ready than had been anticipated
became clear to all the world; but none yet imagined the revelations which
each successive day was bringing at the headquarters of the French armies.
Absence of whole regiments that figured in the official order of battle,
defective transport, stores missing or congested, made it impossible even
to attempt the inroad into Southern Germany within the date up to which it
had any prospect of success. The design was abandoned, yet not in time to
prevent the troops that were hurrying from the interior from being sent
backwards and forwards according as the authorities had, or had not, heard
of the change of plan. Napoleon saw that a Prussian force was gathering on
the Middle Rhine which it would be madness to leave on his flank; he
ordered his own commanders to operate on the corresponding line of the
Lauter and the Saar, and despatched isolated divisions to the very
frontier, still uncertain whether even in this direction he would be able
to act on the offensive, or whether nothing now remained to him but to
resist the invasion of France by a superior enemy. Ollivier had stated in
the Assembly that he and his colleagues entered upon the war with a light
heart; he might have added that they entered upon it with bandaged eyes.
The Ministers seem actually not to have taken the trouble to exchange
explanations with one another. Leboeuf, the War-Minister, had taken it
for granted that Gramont had made arrangements with Austria which would
compel the Prussians to keep a large part of their forces in the interior.
Gramont, in forcing on the quarrel with Prussia, and in his negotiations
with Austria, had taken it for granted that Leboeuf could win a series of
victories at the outset in Southern Germany. The Emperor, to whom alone the
entire data of the military and the diplomatic services of France were
open, was incapable of exertion or scrutiny, purposeless, distracted with
pain, half-imbecile.

[Causes of French military inferiority.]

That the Imperial military administration was rotten to the core the
terrible events of the next few weeks sufficiently showed. Men were in high
place whose antecedents would have shamed the better kind of brigand. The
deficiencies of the army were made worse by the diversion of public funds
to private necessities; the looseness, the vulgar splendour, the base
standards of judgment of the Imperial Court infected each branch of the
public services of France, and worked perhaps not least on those who were
in military command. But the catastrophe of 1870 seemed to those who
witnessed it to tell of more than the vileness of an administration; in
England, not less than in Germany, voices of influence spoke of the doom
that had overtaken the depravity of a sunken nation; of the triumph of
simple manliness, of Godfearing virtue itself, in the victories of the
German army. There may have been truth in this; yet it would require a nice
moral discernment to appraise the exact degeneracy of the French of 1870
from the French of 1854 who humbled Russia, or from the French of 1859 who
triumphed at Solferino; and it would need a very comprehensive acquaintance
with the lower forms of human pleasure to judge in what degree the
sinfulness of Paris exceeds the sinfulness of Berlin. Had the French been
as strict a race as the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae, as devout as the
Tyrolese who perished at Königgrätz, it is quite certain that, with the
numbers which took the field against Germany in 1870, with Napoleon III. at
the head of affairs, and the actual generals of 1870 in command, the armies
of France could not have escaped destruction.

[Cause of German Success.]

The main cause of the disparity of France and Germany in 1870 was in truth
that Prussia had had from 1862 to 1866 a Government so strong as to be able
to force upon its subjects its own gigantic scheme of military organisation
in defiance of the votes of Parliament and of the national will. In 1866
Prussia, with a population of nineteen millions, brought actually into the
field three hundred and fifty thousand men, or one in fifty-four of its
inhabitants. There was no other government in Europe, with the possible
exception of Russia, which could have imposed upon its subjects, without
risking its own existence, so vast a burden of military service as that
implied in this strength of the fighting army. Napoleon III. at the height
of his power could not have done so; and when after Königgrätz he
endeavoured to raise the forces of France to an equality with those of the
rival Power by a system which would have brought about one in seventy of
the population into the field, his own nominees in the Legislative Body,
under pressure of public opinion, so weakened the scheme that the effective
numbers of the army remained little more than they were before. The true
parallel to the German victories of 1870 is to be found in the victories of
the French Committee of Public Safety in 1794 and in those of the first
Napoleon. A government so powerful as to bend the entire resources of the
State to military ends will, whether it is one of democracy run mad, or of
a crowned soldier of fortune, or of an ancient monarchy throwing new vigour
into its traditional system and policy, crush in the moment of impact
communities of equal or greater resources in which a variety of rival
influences limit and control the central power and subordinate military to
other interests. It was so in the triumphs of the Reign of Terror over the
First Coalition; it was so in the triumphs of King William over Austria and
France. But the parallel between the founders of German unity and the
organisers of victory after 1793 extends no farther than to the sources of
their success. Aggression and adventure have not been the sequels of the
war of 1870. The vast armaments of Prussia were created in order to
establish German union under the House of Hohenzollern, and they have been
employed for no other object. It is the triumph of statesmanship, and it
has been the glory of Prince Bismarck, after thus reaping the fruit of a
well-timed homage to the God of Battles, to know how to quit his shrine.

[The frontier, Aug. 2.]

[Saarbrücken, Aug 2.]

[Weissenburg, Aug 4.]

[Battle of Wörth, Aug. 6.]

At the end of July, twelve days after the formal declaration of war, the
gathering forces of the Germans, over three hundred and eighty thousand
strong, were still some distance behind the Lauter and the Saar. Napoleon,
apparently without any clear design, had placed certain bodies of troops
actually on the frontier at Forbach, Weissenburg, and elsewhere, while
other troops, raising the whole number to about two hundred and fifty
thousand, lay round Metz and Strasburg, and at points between these and the
most advanced positions. The reconnoitring of the small German detachments
on the frontier was conducted with extreme energy: the French appear to
have made no reconnaissances at all, for when they determined at last to
discover what was facing them at Saarbrücken, they advanced with
twenty-five thousand men against one-tenth of that number. On the 2nd of
August Frossard's corps from Forbach moved upon Saarbrücken with the
Emperor in person. The garrison was driven out, and the town bombarded, but
even now the reconnaissance was not continued beyond the bridge across the
Saar which divides the two parts of the town. Forty-eight hours later the
alignment of the German forces in their invading order was completed, and
all was ready for an offensive campaign. The central army, commanded by
Prince Frederick Charles, spreading east and west behind Saarbrücken,
touched on its right the northern army commanded by General Steinmetz, on
its left the southern army commanded by the Crown Prince, which covered the
frontier of the Palatinate, and included the troops of Bavaria and
Würtemberg. The general direction of the three armies was thus from
north-west to south-east. As the line of invasion was to be nearly due west,
it was necessary that the first step forwards should be made by the army of
the Crown Prince in order to bring it more nearly to a level with the
northern corps in the march into France. On the 4th of August the Crown
Prince crossed the Alsatian frontier and moved against Weissenburg. The
French General Douay, who was posted here with about twelve thousand men,
was neither reinforced nor bidden to retire. His troops met the attack of
an enemy many times more numerous with great courage; but the struggle was
a hopeless one, and after several hours of severe fighting the Germans were
masters of the field. Douay fell in the battle; his troops frustrated an
attempt made to cut off their retreat, and fell back southwards towards the
corps of McMahon, which lay about ten miles behind them. The Crown Prince
marched on in search of his enemy, McMahon, who could collect only
forty-five thousand men, desired to retreat until he could gain some
support; but the Emperor, tormented by fears of the political consequences
of the invasion, insisted upon his giving battle. He drew up on the hills
about Wörth, almost on the spot where in 1793 Hoche had overthrown the
armies of the First Coalition. On the 6th of August the leading divisions
of the Crown Prince, about a hundred thousand strong, were within striking
distance. The superiority of the Germans in numbers was so great that
McMahon's army might apparently have been captured or destroyed with far
less loss than actually took place if time had been given for the movements
which the Crown Prince's staff had in view, and for the employment of his
full strength. But the impetuosity of divisional leaders on the morning of
the 6th brought on a general engagement. The resistance of the French was
of the most determined character. With one more army-corps--and the corps
of General Failly was expected to arrive on the field--it seemed as if the
Germans might yet be beaten back. But each hour brought additional forces
into action in the attack, while the French commander looked in vain for
the reinforcements that could save him from ruin. At length, when the last
desperate charges of the Cuirassiers had shattered against the fire of
cannon and needle-guns, and the village of Froschwiller, the centre of the
French position, had been stormed house by house, the entire army broke and
fled in disorder. Nine thousand prisoners, thirty-three cannon, fell into
the hands of the conquerors. The Germans had lost ten thousand men, but
they had utterly destroyed McMahon's army as an organised force. Its
remnant disappeared from the scene of warfare, escaping by the western
roads in the direction of Châlons, where first it was restored to some
degree of order. The Crown Prince, leaving troops behind him to beleaguer
the smaller Alsatian fortresses, marched on untroubled through the northern
Vosges, and descended into the open country about Lunéville and Nancy,
unfortified towns which could offer no resistance to the passage of an
enemy.

[Spicheren, Aug. 6.]

On the same day that the battle of Wörth was fought, the leading columns of
the armies of Steinmetz and Prince Frederick Charles crossed the frontier
at Saarbrücken. Frossard's corps, on the news of the defeat at Weissenburg,
had withdrawn to its earlier positions between Forbach and the frontier: it
held the steep hills of Spicheren that look down upon Saarbrücken, and the
woods that flank the high road where this passes from Germany into France.
As at Wörth, it was not intended that any general attack should be made on
the 6th; a delay of twenty-four hours would have enabled the Germans to
envelop or crush Frossard's corps with an overwhelming force. But the
leaders of the foremost regiments threw themselves impatiently upon the
French whom they found before them: other brigades hurried up to the sound
of the cannon, until the struggle took the proportion of a battle, and
after hours of fluctuating success the heights of Spicheren were carried by
successive rushes of the infantry full in the enemy's fire. Why Frossard
was not reinforced has never been explained, for several French divisions
lay at no great distance westward, and the position was so strong that, if
a pitched battle was to be fought anywhere east of Metz, few better points
could have been chosen. But, like Douay at Weissenburg, Frossard was left
to struggle alone against whatever forces the Germans might throw upon him.
Napoleon, who directed the operations of the French armies from Metz,
appears to have been now incapable of appreciating the simplest military
necessities, of guarding against the most obvious dangers. Helplessness,
infatuation ruled the miserable hours.

[Paris after Aug. 6.]

The impression made upon Europe by the battles of the 6th of August
corresponded to the greatness of their actual military effects. There was
an end to all thoughts of the alliance of Austria and Italy with France.
Germany, though unaware of the full magnitude of the perils from which it
had escaped, breathed freely after weeks of painful suspense; the very
circumstance that the disproportion of numbers on the battle-field of
Wörth was still unknown heightened the joy and confidence produced by the
Crown Prince's victory, a victory in which the South German troops,
fighting by the side of those who had been their foes in 1866, had borne
their full part. In Paris the consternation with which the news of
McMahon's overthrow was received was all the greater that on the previous
day reports had been circulated of a victory won at Landau and of the
capture of the Crown Prince with his army. The bulletin of the Emperor,
briefly narrating McMahon's defeat and the repulse of Frossard, showed in
its concluding words--"All may yet be retrieved"--how profound was the
change made in the prospects of the war by that fatal day. The truth was
at once apprehended. A storm of indignation broke out against the
Imperial Government at Paris. The Chambers were summoned. Ollivier,
attacked alike by the extreme Bonapartists and by the Opposition, laid
down his office. A reactionary Ministry, headed by the Count of Palikao,
was placed in power by the Empress, a Ministry of the last hour as it was
justly styled by all outside it. Levies were ordered, arms and stores
accumulated for the reserve-forces, preparations made for a siege of
Paris itself. On the 12th the Emperor gave up the command which he had
exercised with such miserable results, and appointed Marshal Bazaine, one
of the heroes of the Mexican Expedition, General-in-Chief of the Army of
the Rhine.

[Napoleon at Metz. Aug. 7-11.]

[Borny, Aug 14.]

After the overthrow of McMahon and the victory of the Germans at Spicheren,
there seems to have been a period of utter paralysis in the French
headquarters at Metz. The divisions of Prince Frederick Charles and
Steinmetz did not immediately press forward; it was necessary to allow some
days for the advance of the Crown Prince through the Vosges; and during
these days the French army about Metz, which, when concentrated, numbered
nearly two hundred thousand men, might well have taken the positions
necessary for the defence of Moselle, or in the alternative might have
gained several marches in the retreat towards Verdun and Châlons. Only a
small part of this body had as yet been exposed to defeat. It included in
it the very flower of the French forces, tens of thousands of troops
probably equal to any in Europe, and capable of forming a most formidable
army if united to the reserves which would shortly be collected at Châlons
or nearer Paris. But from the 7th to the 12th of August Napoleon, too cowed
to take the necessary steps for battle in defence of the line of Moselle,
lingered purposeless a id irresolute at Metz, unwilling to fall back from
this fortress. It was not till the 14th that the retreat was begun. By this
time the Germans were close at hand, and their leaders were little disposed
to let the hesitating enemy escape them. While the leading divisions of the
French were crossing the Moselle, Steinmetz hurried forward his troops and
fell upon the French detachments still lying on the south-east of Metz
about Borny and Courcelles. Bazaine suspended his movement of retreat in
order to beat back an assailant who for once seemed to be inferior in
strength. At the close of the day the French commander believed that he had
gained a victory and driven the Germans off their line of advance; in
reality he had allowed himself to be diverted from the passage of the
Moselle at the last hour, while the Germans left under Prince Frederick
Charles gained the river farther south, and actually began to cross it in
order to bar his retreat.

[Mars-la-Tour, Aug. 15.]

From Metz westwards there is as far as the village of Gravelotte, which is
seven miles distant, but one direct road; at Gravelotte the road forks, the
southern arm leading towards Verdun by Vionville and Mars-la-Tour, the
northern by Conflans. During the 15th of August the first of Bazaine's
divisions moved as far as Vionville along the southern road; others came
into the neighbourhood of Gravelotte, but two corps which should have
advanced past Gravelotte on to the northern road still lay close to Metz.
The Prussian vanguard was meanwhile crossing the Moselle southwards from
Noveant to Pont-a-Mousson, and hurrying forwards by lines converging on the
road taken by Bazaine. Down to the evening of the 15th it was not supposed
at the Prussian headquarters that Bazaine could be overtaken and brought to
battle nearer than the line of the Meuse; but on the morning of the 16th
the cavalry-detachments which had pushed farthest to the north-west
discovered that the heads of the French columns had still not passed
Mars-la-Tour. An effort was instantly made to seize the road and block the
way before the enemy. The struggle, begun by a handful of combatants on
each side, drew to it regiment after regiment as the French battalions
close at hand came into action, and the Prussians hurried up in wild haste
to support their comrades who were exposed to the attack of an entire army.
The rapidity with which the Prussian generals grasped the situation before
them, the vigour with which they brought up their cavalry over a distance
which no infantry could traverse in the necessary time, and without a
moment's hesitation hurled this cavalry in charge after charge against a
superior foe, mark the battle of Mars-la-Tour as that in which the military
superiority of the Germans was most truly shown. Numbers in this battle had
little to do with the result, for by better generalship Bazaine could
certainly at any one point have overpowered his enemy. But while the
Germans rushed like a torrent upon the true point of attack--that is the
westernmost--Bazaine by some delusion considered it his primary object to
prevent the Germans from thrusting themselves between the retreating army
and Metz, and so kept a great part of his troops inactive about the
fortress. The result was that the Germans, with a loss of sixteen thousand
men, remained at the close of the day masters of the road at Vionville, and
that the French army could not, without winning a victory and breaking
through the enemy's line, resume its retreat along this line.

[Gravelotte, Aug. 18.]

It was expected during the 17th that Bazaine would make some attempt to
escape by the northern road, but instead of doing so he fell back on
Gravelotte and the heights between this and Metz, in order to fight a
pitched battle. The position was a well-chosen one; but by midday on the
18th the armies of Steinmetz and Prince Frederick Charles were ranged in
front of Bazaine with a strength of two hundred and fifty thousand men, and
in the judgment of the King these forces were equal to the attack. Again,
as at Wörth, the precipitancy of divisional commanders caused the sacrifice
of whole brigades before the battle was won. While the Saxon corps with
which Moltke intended to deliver his slow but fatal blow upon the enemy's
right flank was engaged in its long northward détour, Steinmetz pushed his
Rhinelanders past the ravine of Gravelotte into a fire where no human being
could survive, and the Guards, pressing forward in column over the smooth
unsheltered slope from St. Marie to St. Privat, sank by thousands without
reaching midway in their course. Until the final blow was dealt by the
Saxon corps from the north flank, the ground which was won by the Prussians
was won principally by their destructive artillery fire: their infantry
attacks had on the whole been repelled, and at Gravelotte itself it had
seemed for a moment as if the French were about to break the assailant's
line. But Bazaine, as on the 16th, steadily kept his reserves at a distance
from the points where their presence was most required, and, according to
his own account, succeeded in bringing into action no more than a hundred
thousand men, or less than two-thirds of the forces under his command.
[540] At the close of the awful day, when the capture of St. Privat by the
Saxons turned the defender's line, the French abandoned all their positions
and drew back within the defences of Metz.

[McMahon is compelled to attempt Bazaine's relief.]

The Germans at once proceeded to block all the roads round the fortress,
and Bazaine made no effort to prevent them. At the end of a few days the
line was drawn around him in sufficient strength to resist any sudden
attack. Steinmetz, who was responsible for a great part of the loss
sustained at Gravelotte, was now removed from his command; his army was
united with that under Prince Frederick Charles as the besieging force,
while sixty thousand men, detached from this great mass, were formed into a
separate army under Prince Albert of Saxony, and sent by way of Verdun to
co-operate with the Crown Prince against McMahon. The Government at Paris
knew but imperfectly what was passing around Metz from day to day; it knew,
however, that if Metz should be given up for lost the hour of its own fall
could not be averted. One forlorn hope remained, to throw the army which
McMahon was gathering at Châlons north-eastward to Bazaine's relief, though
the Crown Prince stood between Châlons and Metz, and could reach every
point in the line of march more rapidly than McMahon himself. Napoleon had
quitted Metz on the evening of the 15th; on the 17th a council of war was
held at Châlons, at which it was determined to fall back upon Paris and to
await the attack of the Crown Prince under the forts of the capital. No
sooner was this decision announced to the Government at Paris than the
Empress telegraphed to her husband warning him to consider what would be
the effects of his return, and insisting that an attempt should be made to
relieve Bazaine. [541] McMahon, against his own better judgment, consented
to the northern march. He moved in the first instance to Rheims in order to
conceal his intention from the enemy, but by doing this he lost some days.
On the 23rd, in pursuance of arrangements made with Bazaine, whose
messengers were still able to escape the Prussian watch, he set out
north-eastwards in the direction of Montmédy.

[German movement northwards, Aug 26.]

[Battle of Sedan, Sept. 1.]

[Capitulation of Sedan, Sept. 2.]

The movement was discovered by the Prussian cavalry and reported at the
headquarters at Bar-le-Duc on the 25th. Instantly the westward march of the
Crown Prince was arrested, and his army, with that of the Prince of Saxony,
was thrown northwards in forced marches towards Sedan. On reaching Le
Chesne, west of the Meuse, on the 27th, McMahon became aware of the enemy's
presence. He saw that his plan was discovered, and resolved to retreat
westwards before it was too late. The Emperor, who had attached himself to
the army, consented, but again the Government at Paris interfered with
fatal effect. More anxious for the safety of the dynasty than for the
existence of the army, the Empress and her advisers insisted that McMahon
should continue his advance. Napoleon seems now to have abdicated all
authority and thrown to the winds all responsibility. He allowed the march
to be resumed in the direction of Mouzon and Stenay. Failly's corps, which
formed the right wing, was attacked on the 29th before it could reach the
passage of the Meuse at the latter place, and was driven northwards to
Beaumont. Here the commander strangely imagined himself to be in security.
He was surprised in his camp on the following day, defeated, and driven
northwards towards Mouzon. Meanwhile the left of McMahon's army had crossed
the Meuse and moved eastwards to Carignan, so that his troops were severed
by the river and at some distance from one another. Part of Failly's men
were made prisoners in the struggle on the south, or dispersed on the west
of the Meuse; the remainder, with their commander, made a hurried and
disorderly escape beyond the river, and neglected to break down the bridges
by which they had passed. McMahon saw that if the advance was continued his
divisions would one after another fall into the enemy's hands. He recalled
the troops which had reached Carignan, and concentrated his army about
Sedan to fight a pitched battle. The passages of the Meuse above and below
Sedan were seized by the Germans. Two hundred and forty thousand men were
at Moltke's disposal; McMahon had about half that number. The task of the
Germans was not so much to defeat the enemy as to prevent them from
escaping to the Belgian frontier. On the morning of September 1st, while on
the east of Sedan the Bavarians after a desperate resistance stormed the
village of Bazeilles, Hessian and Prussian regiments crossed the Meuse at
Donchéry several miles to the west. From either end of this line corps
after corps now pushed northwards round the French positions, driving in
the enemy wherever they found them, and, converging under the eyes of the
Prussian King, his general, and his Minister, each into its place in the
arc of fire before which the French Empire was to perish. The movement was
as admirably executed as designed. The French fought furiously but in vain:
the mere mass of the enemy, the mere narrowing of the once completed
circle, crushed down resistance without the clumsy havoc of Gravelotte.
From point after point the defenders were forced back within Sedan itself.
The streets were choked with hordes of beaten infantry and cavalry; the
Germans had but to take one more step forward and the whole of their
batteries would command the town. Towards evening there was a pause in the
firing, in order that the French might offer negotiations for surrender;
but no sign of surrender was made, and the Bavarian cannon resumed their
fire, throwing shells into the town itself. Napoleon now caused a white
flag to be displayed on the fortress, and sent a letter to the King of
Prussia, stating that as he had not been able to die in the midst of his
troops, nothing remained for him but to surrender his sword into the hands
of his Majesty. The surrender was accepted by King William, who added that
General Moltke would act on his behalf in arranging terms of capitulation.
General Wimpffen, who had succeeded to the command of the French army on
the disablement of McMahon by a wound, acted on behalf of Napoleon. The
negotiations continued till late in the night, the French general pressing
for permission for his troops to be disarmed in Belgium, while Moltke
insisted on the surrender of the entire army as prisoners of war. Fearing
the effect of an appeal by Napoleon himself to the King's kindly nature,
Bismarck had taken steps to remove his sovereign to a distance until the
terms of surrender should be signed. At daybreak on September 2nd Napoleon
sought the Prussian headquarters. He was met on the road by Bismarck, who
remained in conversation with him till the capitulation was completed on
the terms required by the Germans. He then conducted Napoleon to the
neighbouring château of Bellevue, where King William, the Crown Prince, and
the Prince of Saxony visited him. One pang had still to be borne by the
unhappy man. Down to his interview with the King, Napoleon had imagined
that all the German armies together had operated against him at Sedan, and
he must consequently have still had some hope that his own ruin might have
purchased the deliverance of Bazaine. He learnt accidentally from the King
that Prince Frederick Charles had never stirred from before Metz. A
convulsion of anguish passed over his face: his eyes filled with tears.
There was no motive for a prolonged interview between the conqueror and the
conquered, for, as a prisoner, Napoleon could not discuss conditions of
peace. After some minutes of conversation the King departed for the
Prussian headquarters. Napoleon remained in the château until the morning
of the next day, and then began his journey towards the place chosen for
his captivity, the palace of Wilhelmshöhe at Cassel. [542]

[The Republic Proclaimed, Sept. 4.]

[Circular of Jules Favre, Sept. 6.]

Rumours of disaster had reached Paris in the last days of August, but to
each successive report of evil the Government replied with lying boasts of
success, until on the 3rd of September it was forced to announce a
catastrophe far surpassing the worst anticipations of the previous days.
With the Emperor and his entire army in the enemy's hands, no one supposed
that the dynasty could any longer remain on the throne: the only question
was by what form of government the Empire should be succeeded. The
Legislative Chamber assembled in the dead of night; Jules Favre proposed
the deposition of the Emperor, and was heard in silence. The Assembly
adjourned for some hours. On the morning of the 4th, Thiers, who sought to
keep the way open for an Orleanist restoration, moved that a Committee of
Government should be appointed by the Chamber itself, and that elections to
a new Assembly should be held as soon as circumstances should permit.
Before this and other propositions of the same nature could be put to the
vote, the Chamber was invaded by the mob. Gambetta, with most of the
Deputies for Paris, proceeded to the Hôtel de Ville, and there proclaimed
the Republic. The Empress fled; a Government of National Defence came into
existence, with General Trochu at its head, Jules Favre assuming the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Gambetta that of the Interior. No hand was
raised in defence of the Napoleonic dynasty or of the institutions of the
Empire. The Legislative Chamber and the Senate disappeared without even
making an attempt to prolong their own existence. Thiers, without approving
of the Republic or the mode in which it had come into being, recommended
his friends to accept the new Government, and gave it his own support. On
the 6th of September a circular of Jules Favre, addressed to the
representatives of France at all the European Courts, justified the
overthrow of the Napoleonic Empire, and claimed for the Government by which
it was succeeded the goodwill of the neutral Powers. Napoleon III. was
charged with the responsibility for the war: with the fall of his dynasty,
it was urged, the reasons for a continuance of the struggle had ceased to
exist. France only asked for a lasting peace. Such peace, however, must
leave the territory of France inviolate, for peace with dishonour would be
but the prelude to a new war of extermination. "Not an inch of our soil
will we cede"--so ran the formula--"not a stone of our fortresses." [543]

[Favre and Bismarck, Sept. 29.]

The German Chancellor had nothing ready in the way of rhetoric equal to his
antagonist's phrases; but as soon as the battle of Sedan was won it was
settled at the Prussian headquarters that peace would not be made without
the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. Prince Bismarck has stated that his
own policy would have stopped at the acquisition of Strasburg: Moltke,
however, and the chiefs of the army pronounced that Germany could not be
secure against invasion while Metz remained in the hands of France, and
this opinion was accepted by the King. For a moment it was imagined that
the victory of Sedan had given the conqueror peace on his own terms. This
hope, however, speedily disappeared, and the march upon Paris was resumed
by the army of the Crown Prince without waste of time. In the third week of
September the invaders approached the capital. Favre, in spite of his
declaration of the 6th, was not indisposed to enter upon negotiations; and,
trusting to his own arts of persuasion, he sought an interview with the
German Chancellor, which was granted to him at Ferrières on the 19th, and
continued on the following day. Bismarck hesitated to treat the holders of
office in Paris as an established Government; he was willing to grant an
armistice in order that elections might be held for a National Assembly
with which Germany could treat for peace; but he required, as a condition
of the armistice, that Strasburg and Toul should be surrendered. Toul was
already at the last extremity; Strasburg was not capable of holding out ten
days longer; but of this the Government at Paris was not aware. The
conditions demanded by Bismarck were rejected as insulting to France, and
the war was left to take its course. Already, while Favre was negotiating
at Ferrières, the German vanguard was pressing round to the west of Paris.
A body of French troops which attacked them on the 19th at Châtillon was
put to the rout and fled in panic. Versailles was occupied on the same day,
and the line of investment was shortly afterwards completed around the
capital.

[Siege of Paris, Sept. 19.]

[Tours.]

[Gambetta at Tours.]

The second act in the war now began. Paris had been fortified by Thiers
about 1840, at the time when it seemed likely that France might be engaged
in war with a coalition on the affairs of Mehemet Ali. The forts were not
distant enough from the city to protect it altogether from artillery with
the lengthened range of 1870; they were sufficient, however, to render an
assault out of the question, and to compel the besieger to rely mainly on
the slow operation of famine. It had been reckoned by the engineers of 1840
that food enough might be collected to enable the city to stand a
two-months' siege; so vast, however, were the supplies collected in 1870
that, with double the population, Paris had provisions for above four
months. In spite therefore of the capture and destruction of its armies the
cause of France was not hopeless, if, while Paris and Metz occupied four
hundred thousand of the invaders, the population of the provinces should
take up the struggle with enthusiasm, and furnish after some months of
military exercise troops more numerous than those which France had lost, to
attack the besiegers from all points at once and to fall upon their
communications. To organise such a national resistance was, however,
impossible for any Government within the besieged capital itself. It was
therefore determined to establish a second seat of Government on the Loire;
and before the lines were drawn round Paris three members of the Ministry,
with M. Crémieux at their head, set out for Tours. Crémieux, however, who
was an aged lawyer, proved quite unequal to his task. His authority was
disputed in the west and the south. Revolutionary movements threatened to
break up the unity of the national defence. A stronger hand, a more
commanding will, was needed. Such a hand, such a will belonged to Gambetta,
who on the 7th of October left Paris in order to undertake the government
of the provinces and the organisation of the national armies. The circle of
the besiegers was now too closely drawn for the ordinary means of travel to
be possible. Gambetta passed over the German lines in a balloon, and
reached Tours in safety, where he immediately threw his feeble colleagues
into the background and concentrated all power in his own vigorous grasp.
The effect of his presence was at once felt throughout France. There was an
end of the disorders in the great cities, and of all attempts at rivalry
with the central power. Gambetta had the faults of rashness, of excessive
self-confidence, of defective regard for scientific authority in matters
where he himself was ignorant: but he possessed in an extraordinary degree
the qualities necessary for a Dictator at such a national crisis:
boundless, indomitable courage; a simple, elemental passion of love for his
country that left absolutely no place for hesitations or reserve in the
prosecution of the one object for which France then existed, the war. He
carried the nation with him like a whirlwind. Whatever share the military
errors of Gambetta and his rash personal interference with commanders may
have had in the ultimate defeat of France, without him it would never have
been known of what efforts France was capable. The proof of his capacity
was seen in the hatred and the fear with which down to the time of his
death he inspired the German people. Had there been at the head of the army
of Metz a man of one-tenth of Gambetta's effective force, it is possible
that France might have closed the war, if not with success, at least with
undiminished territory.

[Fall of Strasburg, Sept. 28.]

[The army of the Loire.]

[Tann takes Orleans, Oct. 12.]

Before Gambetta left Paris the fall of Strasburg set free the army under
General Werder by which it had been besieged, and enabled the Germans to
establish a civil Government in Alsace, the western frontier of the new
Province having been already so accurately studied that, when peace was
made in 1871, the frontier-line was drawn not upon one of the earlier
French maps but on the map now published by the German staff. It was
Gambetta's first task to divide France into districts, each with its own
military centre, its own army, and its own commander. Four such districts
were made: the centres were Lille, Le Mans, Bourges, and Besançon. At
Bourges and in the neighbourhood considerable progress had already been
made in organisation. Early in October German cavalry-detachments,
exploring southwards, found that French troops were gathering on the Loire.
The Bavarian General Von der Tann was detached by Moltke from the besieging
army at Paris, and ordered to make himself master of Orleans. Von der Tann
hastened southwards, defeated the French outside Orleans on the 11th of
October, and occupied this city, the French retiring towards Bourges.
Gambetta removed the defeated commander, and set in his place General
Aurelle de Paladines. Von der Tann was directed to cross the Loire and
destroy the arsenals at Bourges; he reported, however, that this task was
beyond his power, in consequence of which Moltke ordered General Werder
with the army of Strasburg to move westwards against Bourges, after
dispersing the weak forces that were gathering about Besançon. Werder set
out on his dangerous march, but he had not proceeded far when an army of
very different power was thrown into the scale against the French levies on
the Loire.

[Bazaine at Metz.]

[Capitulation of Metz, Oct. 27.]

In the battle of Gravelotte, fought on the 18th of August, the French
troops had been so handled by Bazaine as to render it doubtful whether he
really intended to break through the enemy's line and escape from Metz. At
what period political designs inconsistent with his military duty first
took possession of Bazaine's thoughts is uncertain. He had played a
political part in Mexico; it is probable that as soon as he found himself
at the head of the one effective army of France, and saw Napoleon
hopelessly discredited, he began to aim at personal power. Before the
downfall of the Empire he had evidently adopted a scheme of inaction with
the object of preserving his army entire: even the sortie by which it had
been arranged that he should assist McMahon on the day before Sedan was
feebly and irresolutely conducted. After the proclamation of the Republic
Bazaine's inaction became still more marked. The intrigues of an adventurer
named Regnier, who endeavoured to open a negotiation between the Prussians
and the exiled Empress Eugénie, encouraged him in his determination to keep
his soldiers from fulfilling their duty to France. Week after week passed
by; a fifth of the besieging army was struck down with sickness; yet
Bazaine made no effort to break through, or even to diminish the number of
men who were consuming the supplies of Metz by giving to separate
detachments the opportunity of escape. On the 12th of October, after the
pretence of a sortie on the north, he entered into communication with the
German headquarters at Versailles. Bismarck offered to grant a free
departure to the army of Metz on condition that the fortress should be
placed in his hands, that the army should undertake to act on behalf of the
Empress, and that the Empress should pledge herself to accept the Prussian
conditions of peace, whatever these might be. General Boyer was sent to
England to acquaint the Empress with these propositions. They were declined
by her, and after a fortnight had been spent in manoeuvres for a
Bonapartist restoration. Bazaine found himself at the end of his resources.
On the 27th the capitulation of Metz was signed. The fortress itself, with
incalculable cannon and material of war, and an army of a hundred and
seventy thousand men, including twenty-six thousand sick and wounded in the
hospitals, passed into the hands of the Germans. [544]

[Bazaine.]

Bazaine was at a later time tried by a court-martial, found guilty of the
neglect of duty, and sentenced to death. That sentence was not executed;
but if there is an infamy that is worse than death, such infamy will to all
time cling to his name. In the circumstances in which France was placed no
effort, no sacrifice of life could have been too great for the commander of
the army at Metz. To retain the besiegers in full strength before the
fortress would not have required the half of Bazaine's actual force. If
half his army had fallen on the field of battle in successive attempts to
cut their way through the enemy, brave men would no doubt have perished;
but even had their efforts failed their deaths would have purchased for
Metz the power to hold out for weeks or for months longer. The civil
population of Metz was but sixty thousand, its army was three times as
numerous; unlike Paris, it saw its stores consumed not by helpless millions
of women and children, but by soldiers whose duty it was to aid the defence
of their country at whatever cost. Their duty, if they could not cut their
way through, was to die fighting; and had they shown hesitation, which was
not the case, Bazaine should have died at their head. That Bazaine would
have fulfilled his duty even if Napoleon III. had remained on the throne is
more than doubtful, for his inaction had begun before the catastrophe of
Sedan. His pretext after that time was that the government of France had
fallen into the hands of men of disorder, and that it was more important
for his army to save France from the Government than from the invader. He
was the only man in France who thought so. The Government of September 4th,
whatever its faults, was good enough for tens of thousands of brave men,
Legitimists, Orleanists, Bonapartists, who flocked without distinction of
party to its banners: it might have been good enough for Marshal Bazaine.
But France had to pay the penalty for the political, the moral indifference
which could acquiesce in the Coup d'État of 1851, in the servility of the
Empire, in many a vile and boasted deed in Mexico, in China, in Algiers.
Such indifference found its Nemesis in a Bazaine.

[Tann driven from Orleans, Nov. 9.]

[Battles of Orleans, Nov. 28-Dec. 2.]

[Sortie of Champigny, Nov. 29-Dec. 4.]

[Battle of Amiens, Nov. 27.]

The surrender of Metz and the release of the great army of Prince Frederick
Charles by which it was besieged fatally changed the conditions of the
French war of national defence. Two hundred thousand of the victorious
troops of Germany under some of their ablest generals were set free to
attack the still untrained levies on the Loire and in the north of France,
which, with more time for organisation, might well have forced the Germans
to raise the siege of Paris. The army once commanded by Steinmetz was now
reconstituted, and despatched under General Manteuffel towards Amiens;
Prince Frederick Charles moved with the remainder of his troops towards the
Loire. Aware that his approach could not long be delayed, Gambetta insisted
that Aurelle de Paladines should begin the march on Paris. The general
attacked Tann at Coulmiers on the 9th of November, defeated him, and
re-occupied Orleans, the first real success that the French had gained in
the war. There was great alarm at the German headquarters at Versailles;
the possibility of a failure of the siege was discussed; and forty thousand
troops were sent southwards in haste to the support of the Bavarian
general. Aurelle, however, did not move upon the capital: his troops were
still unfit for the enterprise; and he remained stationary on the north of
Orleans, in order to improve his organisation, to await reinforcements, and
to meet the attack of Frederick Charles in a strong position. In the third
week of November the leading divisions of the army of Metz approached, and
took post between Orleans and Paris. Gambetta now insisted that the effort
should be made to relieve the capital. Aurelle resisted, but was forced to
obey. The garrison of Paris had already made several unsuccessful attacks
upon the lines of their besiegers, the most vigorous being that of Le
Bourget on the 30th of October, in which bayonets were crossed. It was
arranged that in the last days of November General Trochu should endeavour
to break out on the southern side, and that simultaneously the army of the
Loire should fall upon the enemy in front of it and endeavour to force its
way to the capital. On the 28th the attack upon the Germans on the north of
Orleans began. For several days the struggle was renewed by one division
after another of the armies of Aurelle and Prince Frederick Charles.
Victory remained at last with the Germans; the centre of the French
position was carried; the right and left wings of the army were severed
from one another and forced to retreat, the one up the Loire, the other
towards the west. Orleans on the 5th of December passed back into the hands
of the Germans. The sortie from Paris, which began with a successful attack
by General Ducrot upon Champigny beyond the Marne, ended after some days of
combat in the recovery by the Germans of the positions which they had lost,
and in the retreat of Ducrot into Paris. In the same week Manteuffel,
moving against the relieving army of the north, encountered it near Amiens,
defeated it after a hard struggle, and gained possession of Amiens itself.

[Rouen occupied, Dec. 6.]

[Bapaume, Jan. 3.]

[St. Quentin, Jan 19.]

After the fall of Amiens, Manteuffel moved upon Rouen. This city fell into
his hands without resistance; the conquerors pressed on westwards, and at
Dieppe troops which had come from the confines of Russia gazed for the
first time upon the sea. But the Republican armies, unlike those which the
Germans had first encountered, were not to be crushed at a single blow.
Under the energetic command of Faidherbe the army of the North advanced
again upon Amiens. Goeben, who was left to defend the line of the Somme,
went out to meet him, defeated him on the 23rd of December, and drove him
back to Arras. But again, after a week's interval, Faidherbe pushed
forward. On the 3rd of January he fell upon Goeben's weak division at
Bapaume, and handled it so severely that the Germans would on the following
day have abandoned their position, if the French had not themselves been
the first to retire. Faidherbe, however, had only fallen back to receive
reinforcements. After some days' rest he once more sought to gain the road
to Paris, advancing this time by the eastward line through St. Quentin. In
front of this town Goeben attacked him. The last battle of the army of the
North was fought on the 19th of January. The French general endeavoured to
disguise his defeat, but the German commander had won all that he desired.
Faidherbe's army was compelled to retreat northwards in disorder; its part
in the war was at an end.

[The Armies of the Loire and of the East.]

[Le Mans, Jan. 12.]

[Bourbaki.]

[Montbéliard, Jan. 15-17.]

[The Eastern army crosses the Swiss Frontier, Feb. 1.]

During the last three weeks of December there was a pause in the operations
of the Germans on the Loire. It was expected that Bourbaki and the east
wing of The Armies of the French army would soon re-appear at Orleans and
endeavour to combine with Chanzy's troops. Gambetta, however, had formed
another plan. He considered that Chanzy, with the assistance of divisions
formed in Brittany, would be strong enough to encounter Prince Frederick
Charles, and he determined to throw the army of Bourbaki, strengthened by
reinforcements from the south, upon Germany itself. The design was a daring
one, and had the two French armies been capable of performing the work
which Gambetta required of them, an inroad into Baden, or even the
re-conquest of Alsace, would most seriously have affected the position of
the Germans before Paris. But Gambetta miscalculated the power of young,
untrained troops, imperfectly armed, badly fed, against a veteran enemy. In
a series of hard-fought struggles the army of the Loire under General
Chanzy was driven back at the beginning of January from Vendôme to Le Mans.
On the 12th, Chanzy took post before this city and fought his last battle.
While he was making a vigorous resistance in the centre of the line, the
Breton regiments stationed on his right gave way; the Germans pressed round
him, and gained possession of the town. Chanzy retreated towards Laval,
leaving thousands of prisoners in the hands of the enemy, and saving only
the debris of an army. Bourbaki in the meantime, with a numerous but
miserably equipped force, had almost reached Belfort. The report of his
eastward movement was not at first believed at the German headquarters
before Paris, and the troops of General Werder, which had been engaged
about Dijon with a body of auxiliaries commanded by Garibaldi, were left to
bear the brunt of the attack without support. When the real state of
affairs became known Manteuffel was sent eastwards in hot haste towards the
threatened point. Werder had evacuated Dijon and fallen back upon Vesoul;
part of his army was still occupied in the siege of Belfort. As Bourbaki
approached he fell back with the greater part of his troops in order to
cover the besieging force, leaving one of his lieutenants to make a flank
attack upon Bourbaki at Villersexel. This attack, one of the fiercest in
the war, delayed the French for two days, and gave Werder time to occupy
the strong positions that he had chosen about Montbéliard. Here, on the
15th of January, began a struggle which lasted for three days. The French,
starving and perishing with cold, though far superior in number to their
enemy, were led with little effect against the German entrenchments. On the
18th Bourbaki began his retreat. Werder was unable to follow him;
Manteuffel with a weak force was still at some distance, and for a moment
it seemed possible that Bourbaki, by a rapid movement westwards, might
crush this isolated foe. Gambetta ordered Bourbaki to make the attempt: the
commander refused to court further disaster with troops who were not fit to
face an enemy, and retreated towards Pontarlier in the hope of making his
way to Lyons. But Manteuffel now descended in front of him; divisions of
Werder's army pressed down from the north; the retreat was cut off; and the
unfortunate French general, whom a telegram from Gambetta removed from his
command, attempted to take his own life. On the 1st of February, the wreck
of his army, still numbering eighty-five thousand men, but reduced to the
extremity of weakness and misery, sought refuge beyond the Swiss frontier.

[Capitulation of Paris and Armistice, Jan. 28.]

The war was now over. Two days after Bourbaki's repulse at Montbéliard the
last unsuccessful sortie was made from Paris. There now remained provisions
only for another fortnight; above forty thousand of the inhabitants had
succumbed to the privations of the siege; all hope of assistance from the
relieving armies before actual famine should begin disappeared. On the 23rd
of January Favre sought the German Chancellor at Versailles in order to
discuss the conditions of a general armistice and of the capitulation of
Paris. The negotiations lasted for several days; on the 28th an armistice
was signed with the declared object that elections might at once be freely
held for a National Assembly, which should decide whether the war should be
continued, or on what conditions peace should be made. The conditions of
the armistice were that the forts of Paris and all their material of war
should be handed over to the German army; that the artillery of the
enceinte should be dismounted; and that the regular troops in Paris should,
as prisoners of war, surrender their arms. The National Guard were
permitted to retain their weapons and their artillery. Immediately upon the
fulfilment of the first two conditions all facilities were to be given for
the entry of supplies of food into Paris. [545]

[National Assembly at Bordeaux, Feb. 12.]

[Preliminaries of Peace, Feb. 26.]

The articles of the armistice were duly executed, and on the 30th of
January the Prussian flag waved over the forts of the French capital.
Orders were sent into the provinces by the Government that elections should
at once be held. It had at one time been feared by Count Bismarck that
Gambetta would acknowledge no armistice that might be made by his
colleagues at Paris. But this apprehension was not realised, for, while
protesting against a measure adopted without consultation with himself and
his companions at Bordeaux, Gambetta did not actually reject the armistice.
He called upon the nation, however, to use the interval for the collection
of new forces; and in the hope of gaining from the election an Assembly in
favour of a continuation of the war, he published a decree incapacitating
for election all persons who had been connected with the Government of
Napoleon III. Against this decree Bismarck at once protested, and at his
instance it was cancelled by the Government of Paris. Gambetta thereupon
resigned. The elections were held on the 8th of February, and on the 12th
the National Assembly was opened at Bordeaux. The Government of Defence now
laid down its powers. Thiers--who had been the author of those
fortifications which had kept the Germans at bay for four months after the
overthrow of the Imperial armies; who, in the midst of the delirium of
July, 1870, had done all that man could do to dissuade the Imperial
Government and its Parliament from war; who, in spite of his seventy years,
had, after the fall of Napoleon, hurried to London, to St. Petersburg, to
Florence, to Vienna, in the hope of winning some support for France,--was
the man called by common assent to the helm of State. He appointed a
Ministry, called upon the Assembly to postpone all discussions as to the
future Government of France, and himself proceeded to Versailles in order
to negotiate conditions of peace. For several days the old man struggled
with Count Bismarck on point after point in the Prussian demands. Bismarck
required the cession of Alsace and Eastern Lorraine, the payment of six
milliards of francs, and the occupation of part of Paris by the German army
until the conditions of peace should be ratified by the Assembly. Thiers
strove hard to save Metz, but on this point the German staff was
inexorable; he succeeded at last in reducing the indemnity to five
milliards, and was given the option between retaining Belfort and sparing
Paris the entry of the German troops. On the last point his patriotism
decided without a moment's hesitation. He bade the Germans enter Paris, and
saved Belfort for France. On the 26th of February preliminaries of peace
were signed. Thirty thousand German soldiers marched into the Champs
Elysées on the 1st of March; but on that same day the treaty was ratified
by the Assembly at Bordeaux, and after forty-eight hours Paris was freed
from the sight of its conquerors. The Articles of Peace provided for the
gradual evacuation of France by the German army as the instalments of the
indemnity, which were allowed to extend over a period of three years,
should be paid. There remained for settlement only certain matters of
detail, chiefly connected with finance; these, however, proved the object
of long and bitter controversy, and it was not until the 10th of May that
the definitive Treaty of Peace was signed at Frankfort.

[German Unity.]

France had made war in order to undo the work of partial union effected by
Prussia in 1866: it achieved the opposite result, and Germany emerged from
the war with the Empire established. Immediately after the victory of Wörth
the Crown Prince had seen that the time had come for abolishing the line of
division which severed Southern Germany from the Federation of the North.
His own conception of the best form of national union was a German Empire
with its chief at Berlin. That Count Bismarck was without plans for uniting
North and South Germany it is impossible to believe; but the Minister and
the Crown Prince had always been at enmity; and when, after the battle of
Sedan, they spoke together of the future, it seemed to the Prince as if
Bismarck had scarcely thought of the federation of the Empire or of the
re-establishment of the Imperial dignity, and as if he was inclined to it
only under certain reserves. It was, however, part of Bismarck's system to
exclude the Crown Prince as far as possible from political affairs, under
the strange pretext that his relationship to Queen Victoria would be abused
by the French proclivities of the English Court; and it is possible that
had the Chancellor after the battle of Sedan chosen to admit the Prince to
his confidence instead of resenting his interference, the difference
between their views as to the future of Germany would have been seen to be
one rather of forms and means than of intention. But whatever the share of
these two dissimilar spirits in the initiation of the last steps towards
German union, the work, as ultimately achieved, was both in form and in
substance that which the Crown Prince had conceived. In the course of
September negotiations were opened with each of the Southern States for its
entry into the Northern Confederation. Bavaria alone raised serious
difficulties, and demanded terms to which the Prussian Government could not
consent. Bismarck refrained from exercising pressure at Munich, but invited
the several Governments to send representatives to Versailles for the
purpose of arriving at a settlement. For a moment the Court of Munich drew
the sovereign of Würtemberg to its side, and orders were sent to the envoys
of Würtemberg at Versailles to act with the Bavarians in refusing to sign
the treaty projected by Bismarck. The Würtemberg Ministers hereupon
tendered their resignation; Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt signed the treaty,
and the two dissentient kings saw themselves on the point of being excluded
from United Germany. They withdrew their opposition, and at the end of
November the treaties uniting all the Southern States with the existing
Confederation were executed, Bavaria retaining larger separate rights than
were accorded to any other member of the Union.

[Proclamation of the Empire, Jan. 18.]

In the acts which thus gave to Germany political cohesion there was nothing
that altered the title of its chief. Bismarck, however, had in the meantime
informed the recalcitrant sovereigns that if they did not themselves offer
the Imperial dignity to King William, the North German Parliament would do
so. At the end of November a letter was accordingly sent by the King of
Bavaria to all his fellow-sovereigns, proposing that the King of Prussia,
as President of the newly-formed Federation, should assume the title of
German Emperor. Shortly afterwards the same request was made by the same
sovereign to King William himself, in a letter dictated by Bismarck. A
deputation from the North German Reichstag, headed by its President, Dr.
Simson, who, as President of the Frankfort National Assembly, had in 1849
offered the Imperial Crown to King Frederick William, expressed the
concurrence of the nation in the act of the Princes. It was expected that
before the end of the year the new political arrangements would have been
sanctioned by the Parliaments of all the States concerned, and the 1st of
January had been fixed for the assumption of the Imperial title. So
vigorous, however, was the opposition made in the Bavarian Chamber, that
the ceremony was postponed till the 18th. Even then the final approving
vote had not been taken at Munich; but a second adjournment would have been
fatal to the dignity of the occasion; and on the 18th of January, in the
midst of the Princes of Germany and the representatives of its army
assembled in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, King William assumed the
title of German Emperor. The first Parliament of the Empire was opened at
Berlin two months later.

[The Commune of Paris.]

[Troops withdrawn to Versailles, March 18.]

[The Commune.]

The misfortunes of France did not end with the fall of its capital and the
loss of its border provinces; the terrible drama of 1870 closed with civil
war. It is part of the normal order of French history that when an
established Government is overthrown, and another is set in its place, this
second Government is in its turn attacked by insurrection in Paris, and an
effort is made to establish the rule of the democracy of the capital
itself, or of those who for the moment pass for its leaders. It was so in
1793, in 1831, in 1848, and it was so again in 1870. Favre, Trochu, and the
other members of the Government of Defence had assumed power on the
downfall of Napoleon III. because they considered themselves the
individuals best able to serve the State. There were hundreds of other
persons in Paris who had exactly the same opinion of themselves; and when,
with the progress of the siege, the Government of Defence lost its
popularity and credit, it was natural that ambitious and impatient men of a
lower political rank should consider it time to try whether Paris could not
make a better defence under their own auspices. Attempts were made before
the end of October to overthrow the Government. They were repeated at
intervals, but without success. The agitation, however, continued within
the ranks of the National Guard, which, unlike the National Guard in the
time of Louis Philippe, now included the mass of the working class, and was
the most dangerous enemy, instead of the support, of Government. The
capitulation brought things to a crisis. Favre had declared that it would
be impossible to disarm the National Guard without a battle in the streets;
at his instance Bismarck allowed the National Guard to retain their
weapons, and the fears of the Government itself thus prepared the way for
successful insurrection. When the Germans were about to occupy western
Paris, the National Guard drew off its artillery to Montmartre and there
erected entrenchments. During the next fortnight, while the Germans were
withdrawing from the western forts in accordance with the conditions of
peace, the Government and the National Guard stood facing one another in
inaction; on the 18th of March General Lecomte was ordered to seize the
artillery parked at Montmartre. His troops, surrounded and solicited by the
National Guard, abandoned their commander. Lecomte was seized, and, with
General Clément Thomas, was put to death. A revolutionary Central Committee
took possession of the Hôtel de Ville; the troops still remaining faithful
to the Government were withdrawn to Versailles, where Thiers had assembled
the Chamber. Not only Paris itself, but the western forts with the
exception of Mont Valérien, fell into the hands of the insurgents. On the
26th of March elections were held for the Commune. The majority of peaceful
citizens abstained from voting. A council was elected, which by the side of
certain harmless and well-meaning men contained a troop of revolutionists
by profession; and after the failure of all attempts at conciliation,
hostilities began between Paris and Versailles.

[Second Siege--April 2, May 21.]

There were in the ranks of those who fought for the Commune some who fought
in the sincere belief that their cause was that of municipal freedom; there
were others who believed, and with good reason, that the existence of the
Republic was threatened by a reactionary Assembly at Versailles; but the
movement was on the whole the work of fanatics who sought to subvert every
authority but their own; and the unfortunate mob who followed them, in so
far as they fought for anything beyond the daily pay which had been their
only means of sustenance since the siege began, fought for they knew not
what. As the conflict was prolonged, it took on both sides a character of
atrocious violence and cruelty. The murder of Generals Lecomte and Thomas
at the outset was avenged by the execution of some of the first prisoners
taken by the troops of Versailles. Then hostages were seized by the
Commune. The slaughter in cold blood of three hundred National Guards
surprised at Clamart by the besiegers gave to the Parisians the example of
massacre. When, after a siege of six weeks, in which Paris suffered far
more severely than it had suffered from the cannonade of the Germans, the
troops of Versailles at length made their way into the capital, humanity,
civilisation, seemed to have vanished in the orgies of devils. The
defenders, as they fell back, murdered their hostages, and left behind them
palaces, museums, the entire public inheritance of the nation in its
capital, in flames. The conquerors during several days shot down all whom
they took fighting, and in many cases put to death whole bands of prisoners
without distinction. The temper of the army was such that the Government,
even if it had desired, could probably not have mitigated the terrors of
this vengeance. But there was little sign anywhere of an inclination to
mercy. Courts-martial and executions continued long after the heat of
combat was over. A year passed, and the tribunals were still busy with
their work. Above ten thousand persons were sentenced to transportation or
imprisonment before public justice was satisfied.

[Entry of Italian Troops into Rome, Sept. 20, 1870.]

[The Papacy.]

The material losses which France sustained at the hands of the invader and
in civil war were soon repaired; but from the battle of Wörth down to the
overthrow of the Commune France had been effaced as a European Power, and
its effacement was turned to good account by two nations who were not its
enemies. Russia, with the sanction of Europe, threw off the trammels which
had been imposed upon it in the Black Sea by the Treaty of 1856. Italy
gained possession of Rome. Soon after the declaration of war the troops of
France, after an occupation of twenty-one years broken only by an interval
of some months in 1867, were withdrawn from the Papal territory. Whatever
may have been the understanding with Victor Emmanuel on which Napoleon
recalled his troops from Civita Vecchia, the battle of Sedan set Italy
free; and on the 20th of September the National Army, after overcoming a
brief show of resistance, entered Rome. The unity of Italy was at last
completed; Florence ceased to be the national capital. A body of laws
passed by the Italian Parliament, and known as the Guarantees, assured to
the Pope the honours and immunities of a sovereign, the possession of the
Vatican and the Lateran palaces, and a princely income; in the appointment
of Bishops and generally in the government of the Church a fulness of
authority was freely left to him such as he possessed in no other European
land. But Pius would accept no compromise for the loss of his temporal
power. He spurned the reconciliation with the Italian people, which had now
for the first time since 1849 become possible. He declared Rome to be in
the possession of brigands; and, with a fine affectation of disdain for
Victor Emmanuel and the Italian Government, he invented, and sustained down
to the end of his life, before a world too busy to pay much heed to his
performance, the reproachful part of the Prisoner of the Vatican.




CHAPTER XXV.


France after 1871--Alliance of the Three Emperors--Revolt of
Herzegovina--The Andrássy Note--Murder of the Consuls at Salonika--The
Berlin Memorandum--Rejected by England--Abdul Aziz deposed--Massacres in
Bulgaria--Servia and Montenegro declare War--Opinion in England--
Disraeli--Meeting of Emperors at Reichstadt--Servian Campaign--Declaration
of the Czar--Conference at Constantinople--Its Failure--The London
Protocol--Russia declares War--Advance on the Balkans--Osman at
Plevna--Second Attack on Plevna--The Shipka Pass--Roumania--Third attack
on Plevna--Todleben--Fall of Plevna--Passage of the Balkans--Armistice--
England--The Fleet passes the Dardanelles--Treaty of San Stefano--England
and Russia--Secret Agreement--Convention with Turkey--Congress of
Berlin--Treaty of Berlin--Bulgaria.


[France after 1871.]

The storm of 1870 was followed by some years of European calm. France,
recovering with wonderful rapidity from the wounds inflicted by the war,
paid with ease the instalments of its debt to Germany, and saw its soil
liberated from the foreigner before the period fixed by the Treaty of
Frankfort. The efforts of a reactionary Assembly were kept in check by M.
Thiers; the Republic, as the form of government which divided Frenchmen the
least, was preferred by him to the monarchical restoration which might have
won France allies at some of the European Courts. For two years Thiers
baffled or controlled the royalist majority at Versailles which sought to
place the Comté de Chambord or the chief of the House of Orleans on the
throne, and thus saved his country from the greatest of all perils, the
renewal of civil war. In 1873 he fell before a combination of his
opponents, and McMahon succeeded to the Presidency, only to find that the
royalist cause was made hopeless by the refusal of the Comté de Chambord to
adopt the Tricolour flag, and that France, after several years of trial,
definitely preferred the Republic. Meanwhile, Prince Bismarck had known how
to frustrate all plans for raising a coalition against victorious Germany
among the Powers which had been injured by its successes, or whose
interests were threatened by its greatness. He saw that a Bourbon or a
Napoleon on the throne of France would find far more sympathy and
confidence at Vienna and St. Petersburg than the shifting chief of a
Republic, and ordered Count Arnim, the German Ambassador at Paris, who
wished to promote a Napoleonic restoration, to desist from all attempts to
weaken the Republican Government. At St. Petersburg, where after the
misfortunes of 1815 France had found its best friends, the German statesman
had as yet little to fear. Bismarck had supported Russia in undoing the
Treaty of Paris; in announcing the conclusion of peace with France, the
German Emperor had assured the Czar in the most solemn language that his
services in preventing the war of 1870 from becoming general should never
be forgotten; and, whatever might be the feeling of his subjects, Alexander
II. continued to believe that Russia could find no steadier friend than the
Government of Berlin.

[Alliance of the three Emperors.]

With Austria Prince Bismarck had a more difficult part to play. He could
hope for no real understanding so long as Beust remained at the head of
affairs. But the events of 1870, utterly frustrating Beust's plans for a
coalition against Prussia, and definitely closing for Austria all hope of
recovering its position within Germany, had shaken the Minister's position.
Bismarck was able to offer to the Emperor Francis Joseph the sincere and
cordial friendship of the powerful German Empire, on the condition that
Austria should frankly accept the work of 1866 and 1870. He had dissuaded
his master after the victory of Königgrätz from annexing any Austrian
territory; he had imposed no condition of peace that left behind it a
lasting exasperation; and he now reaped the reward of his foresight.
Francis Joseph accepted the friendship offered him from Berlin, and
dismissed Count Beust from office, calling to his place the Hungarian
Minister Andrássy, who, by conviction as well as profession, welcomed the
establishment of a German Empire, and the definite abandonment by Austria
of its interference in German affairs. In the summer of 1872 the three
Emperors, accompanied by their Ministers, met in Berlin. No formal alliance
was made, but a relation was established of sufficient intimacy to insure
Prince Bismarck against any efforts that might be made by France to gain an
ally. For five years this so-called League of the three Emperors continued
in more or less effective existence, and condemned France to isolation. In
the apprehension of the French people, Germany, gorged with the five
milliards but still lean and ravenous, sought only for some new occasion
for war. This was not the case. The German nation had entered unwillingly
into the war of 1870; that its ruler, when once his great aim had been
achieved, sought peace not only in word but in deed the history of
subsequent years has proved. The alarms which at intervals were raised at
Paris and elsewhere had little real foundation; and when next the peace of
Europe was broken, it was not by a renewal of the struggle on the Vosges,
but by a conflict in the East, which, terrible as it was in the sufferings
and the destruction of life which it involved, was yet no senseless duel
between two jealous nations, but one of the most fruitful in results of all
modern wars, rescuing whole provinces from Ottoman dominion, and leaving
behind it in place of a chaos of outworn barbarism at least the elements
for a future of national independence among the Balkan population.

[Revolt of Herzegovina, Aug., 1875.]

[Andrássy Note, Jan. 31, 1876.]

In the summer of 1875 Herzegovina rose against its Turkish masters, and in
Bosnia conflicts broke out between Christians and Mohammedans. The
insurrection was vigorously, though privately, supported by Servia and
Montenegro, and for some months baffled all the efforts made by the Porte
for its suppression. Many thousands of the Christians, flying from a
devastated land and a merciless enemy, sought refuge beyond the Austrian
frontier, and became a burden upon the Austrian Government. The agitation
among the Slavic neighbours and kinsmen of the insurgents threatened the
peace of Austria itself, where Slav and Magyar were almost as ready to fall
upon one another as Christian and Turk. Andrássy entered into
communications with the Governments of St. Petersburg and Berlin as to the
adoption of a common line of policy by the three Empires towards the Porte;
and a scheme of reforms, intended to effect the pacification of the
insurgent provinces, was drawn up by the three Ministers in concert with
one another. This project, which was known as the Andrássy Note, and which
received the approval of England and France, demanded from the Porte the
establishment of full and entire religious liberty, the abolition of the
farming of taxes, the application of the revenue produced by direct
taxation in Bosnia and Herzegovina to the needs of those provinces
themselves, the institution of a Commission composed equally of Christians
and Mohammedans to control the execution of these reforms and of those
promised by the Porte, and finally the improvement of the agrarian
condition of the population by the sale to them of waste lands belonging to
the State. The Note demanding these reforms was presented in Constantinople
on the 31st of January, 1876. The Porte, which had already been lavish of
promises to the insurgents, raised certain objections in detail, but
ultimately declared itself willing to grant in substance the concessions
which were specified by the Powers. [546]

[Murder of the Consuls at Salonika, May 6.]

Armed with this assurance, the representatives of Austria now endeavoured
to persuade the insurgents to lay down their arms and the refugees to
return to their homes. But the answer was made that promises enough had
already been given by the Sultan, and that the question was, not what more
was to be written on a piece of paper, but how the execution of these
promises was to be enforced. Without some guarantee from the Great Powers
of Europe the refugees refused to place themselves again at the mercy of
the Turk, and the leaders in Herzegovina refused to disband their troops.
The conflict broke out afresh with greater energy; the intervention of the
Powers, far from having produced peace, roused the fanatical passions of
the Mohammedans both against the Christian rayahs and against the foreigner
to whom they had appealed. A wave of religious, of patriotic agitation, of
political disquiet, of barbaric fury, passed over the Turkish Empire. On
the 6th of May the Prussian and the French Consuls at Salonika were
attacked and murdered by the mob. In Smyrna and Constantinople there were
threatening movements against the European inhabitants; in Bulgaria, the
Circassian settlers and the hordes of irregular troops whom the Government
had recently sent into that province waited only for the first sign of an
expected insurrection to fall upon their prey and deluge the land with
blood.

[The Berlin Memorandum, May 13.]

As soon as it became evident that peace was not to be produced by Count
Andrássy's Note, the Ministers of the three Empires determined to meet one
another with the view of arranging further diplomatic steps to be taken in
common. Berlin, which the Czar was about to visit, was chosen as the
meeting-place; the date of the meeting was fixed for the second week in
May. It was in the interval between the despatch of Prince Bismarck's
invitation and the arrival of the Czar, with Prince Gortschakoff and Count
Andrássy, that intelligence came of the murder of the Prussian and French
Consuls at Salonika. This event gave a deeper seriousness to the
deliberations now held. The Ministers declared that if the representatives
of two foreign Powers could be thus murdered in broad daylight in a
peaceful town under the eyes of the powerless authorities, the Christians
of the insurgent provinces might well decline to entrust themselves to an
exasperated enemy. An effective guarantee for the execution of the promises
made by the Porte had become absolutely necessary. The conclusions of the
Ministers were embodied in a Memorandum, which declared that an armistice
of two months must be imposed on the combatants; that the mixed Commission
mentioned in the Andrássy Note must be at once called into being, with a
Christian native of Herzegovina at its head; and that the reforms promised
by the Porte must be carried out under the superintendence of the
representatives of the European Powers. If before the end of the armistice
the Porte should not have given its assent to these terms, the Imperial
Courts declared that they must support these diplomatic efforts by measures
of a more effective character. [547]

[England alone rejects the Berlin Memorandum.]

On the same day that this Memorandum was signed, Prince Bismarck invited
the British, the French, and Italian Ambassadors to meet the Russian and
the Austrian Chancellors at his residence. They did so. The Memorandum was
read, and an urgent request was made that Great Britain France, and Italy
would combine with the Imperial Courts in support of the Berlin Memorandum
as they had in support of the Andrássy Note. As Prince Gortschakoff and
Andrássy were staying in Berlin only for two days longer, it was hoped that
answers might be received by telegraph within forty-eight hours. Within
that time answers arrived from the French and Italian Governments accepting
the Berlin Memorandum; the reply from London did not arrive till five days
later; it announced the refusal of the Government to join in the course
proposed. Pending further negotiations on this subject, French, German,
Austrian, Italian, and Russian ships of war were sent to Salonika to
enforce satisfaction for the murder of the Consuls. The Cabinet of London,
declining to associate itself with the concert of the Powers, and stating
that Great Britain, while intending nothing in the nature of a menace,
could not permit territorial changes to be made in the East without its own
consent, despatched the fleet to Besika Bay.

[Abdul Aziz deposed, May 29.]

[Massacres in Bulgaria.]

[Servia and Montenegro declare war, July 2.]

Up to this time little attention had been paid in England to the revolt of
the Christian subjects of the Porte or its effect on European politics.
Now, however, a series of events began which excited the interest and even
the passion of the English people in an extraordinary degree. The ferment
in Constantinople was deepening. On the 29th of May the Sultan Abdul Aziz
was deposed by Midhat Pasha and Hussein Avni, the former the chief of the
party of reform, the latter the representative of the older Turkish
military and patriotic spirit which Abdul Aziz had incensed by his
subserviency to Russia. A few days later the deposed Sultan was murdered.
Hussein Avni and another rival of Midhat were assassinated by a desperado
as they sat at the council; Murad V., who had been raised to the throne,
proved imbecile; and Midhat, the destined regenerator of the Ottoman Empire
as many outside Turkey believed, grasped all but the highest power in the
State. Towards the end of June reports reached western Europe of the
repression of an insurrection in Bulgaria with measures of atrocious
violence. Servia and Montenegro, long active in support of their kinsmen
who were in arms, declared war. The reports from Bulgaria, at first vague,
took more definite form; and at length the correspondents of German as well
as English newspapers, making their way to the district south of the
Balkans, found in villages still strewed with skeletons and human remains
the terrible evidence of what had passed. The British Ministry, relying
upon the statements of Sir H. Elliot, Ambassador at Constantinople, at
first denied the seriousness of the massacres: they directed, however, that
investigations should be made on the spot by a member of the Embassy; and
Mr. Baring, Secretary of Legation, was sent to Bulgaria with this duty.
Baring's report confirmed the accounts which his chief had refused to
believe, and placed the number of the victims, rightly or wrongly, at not
less than twelve thousand. [548]

[Opinion in England.]

The Bulgarian massacres acted on Europe in 1876 as the massacre of Chios
had acted on Europe in 1822. In England especially they excited the deepest
horror, and completely changed the tone of public opinion towards the Turk.
Hitherto the public mind had scarcely been conscious of the questions that
were at issue in the East. Herzegovina, Bosnia, Bulgaria, were not familiar
names like Greece; the English people hardly knew where these countries
were, or that they were not inhabited by Turks. The Crimean War had left
behind it the tradition of friendship with the Sultan; it needed some
lightning-flash, some shock penetrating all ranks of society, to dispel
once and for all the conventional idea of Turkey as a community resembling
a European State, and to bring home to the English people the true
condition of the Christian races of the Balkan under their Ottoman masters.
But this the Bulgarian massacres effectively did; and from this time the
great mass of the English people, who had sympathised so strongly with the
Italians and the Hungarians in their struggle for national independence,
were not disposed to allow the influence of Great Britain to be used for
the perpetuation of Turkish ascendency over the Slavic races. There is
little doubt that if in the autumn of 1876 the nation had had the
opportunity of expressing its views by a Parliamentary election, it would
have insisted on the adoption of active measures in concert with the Powers
which were prepared to force reform upon the Porte. But the Parliament of
1876 was but two years old; the majority which supported the Government was
still unbroken; and at the head of the Cabinet there was a man gifted with
extraordinary tenacity of purpose, with great powers of command over
others, and with a clear, cold, untroubled apprehension of the line of
conduct which he intended to pursue. It was one of the strangest features
of this epoch that a Minister who in a long career had never yet exercised
the slightest influence upon foreign affairs, and who was not himself
English by birth, should have impressed in such an extreme degree the stamp
of his own individuality upon the conduct of our foreign policy; that he
should have forced England to the very front in the crisis through which
Europe was passing; and that, for good or for evil, he should have reversed
the tendency which since the Italian war of 1859 had seemed ever to be
drawing England further and further away from Continental affairs.

[Disraeli.]

Disraeli's conception of Parliamentary politics was an ironical one. It had
pleased the British nation that the leadership of one of its great
political parties should be won by a man of genius only on the condition of
accommodating himself to certain singular fancies of his contemporaries;
and for twenty years, from the time of his attacks upon Sir Robert Peel for
the abolition of the corn-laws down to the time when he educated his party
into the democratic Reform Bill of 1867, Disraeli with an excellent grace
suited himself to the somewhat strange parts which he was required to play.
But after 1874, when he was placed in office at the head of a powerful
majority in both Houses of Parliament and of a submissive Cabinet, the
antics ended; the epoch of statesmanship, and of statesmanship based on the
leader's own individual thought not on the commonplace of public creeds,
began. At a time when Cavour was rice-growing and Bismarck unknown outside
his own county, Disraeli had given to the world in Tancred his visions of
Eastern Empire. Mysterious chieftains planned the regeneration of Asia by a
new crusade of Arab and Syrian votaries of the one living faith, and
lightly touched on the transfer of Queen Victoria's Court from London to
Delhi. Nothing indeed is perfect; and Disraeli's eye was favoured with such
extraordinary perceptions of the remote that it proved a little uncertain
in its view of matters not quite without importance nearer home. He thought
the attempt to establish Italian independence a misdemeanour; he listened
to Bismarck's ideas on the future of Germany, and described them as the
vapourings of a German baron. For a quarter of a century Disraeli had
dazzled and amused the House of Commons without, as it seemed, drawing
inspiration from any one great cause or discerning any one of the political
goals towards which the nations of Europe were tending. At length, however,
the time came for the realisation of his own imperial policy; and before
the Eastern question had risen conspicuously above the horizon in Europe,
Disraeli, as Prime Minister of England, had begun to act in Asia and
Africa. He sent the Prince of Wales to hold Durbars and to hunt tigers
amongst the Hindoos; he proclaimed the Queen Empress of India; he purchased
the Khedive's shares in the Suez Canal. Thus far it had been uncertain
whether there was much in the Minister's policy beyond what was theatrical
and picturesque; but when a great part of the nation began to ask for
intervention on behalf of the Eastern Christians against the Turks, they
found out that Disraeli's purpose was solid enough. Animated by a deep
distrust and fear of Russia, he returned to what had been the policy of
Tory Governments in the days before Canning, the identification of British
interests with the maintenance of Ottoman power. If a generation of
sentimentalists were willing to sacrifice the grandeur of an Empire to
their sympathies with an oppressed people, it was not Disraeli who would be
their instrument. When the massacre of Batak was mentioned in the House of
Commons, he dwelt on the honourable qualities of the Circassians; when
instances of torture were alleged, he remarked that an oriental people
generally terminated its connection with culprits in a more expeditious
manner. [549] There were indeed Englishmen enough who loved their country
as well as Disraeli, and who had proved their love by sacrifices which
Disraeli had not had occasion to make, who thought it humiliating that the
greatness of England should be purchased by the servitude and oppression of
other races, and that the security of their Empire should be deemed to rest
on so miserable a thing as Turkish rule. These were considerations to which
Disraeli did not attach much importance. He believed the one thing needful
to be the curbing of Russia; and, unlike Canning, who held that Russia
would best be kept in check by England's own armed co-operation with it in
establishing the independence of Greece, he declined from the first to
entertain any project of imposing reform on the Sultan by force, doubting
only to what extent it would be possible for him to support the Sultan in
resistance to other Powers. According to his own later statement he would
himself, had he been left unfettered, have definitely informed the Czar
that if he should make war upon the Porte England would act as its ally.
Public opinion in England, however, rendered this course impossible. The
knife of Circassian and Bashi-Bazouk had severed the bond with Great
Britain which had saved Turkey in 1854. Disraeli--henceforward Earl of
Beaconsfield--could only utter grim anathemas against Servia for presuming
to draw the sword upon its rightful lord and master, and chide those
impatient English who, like the greater man whose name is associated with
Beaconsfield, considered that the world need not be too critical as to the
means of getting rid of such an evil as Ottoman rule. [550]

[Meeting and Treaty of Reichstadt, July 8.]

[The Servian Campaign, July-Oct.]

[Russian enforces an armistice, Oct. 30.]

The rejection by England of the Berlin Memorandum and the proclamation of
war by Servia and Montenegro were followed by the closer union of the
three Imperial Courts. The Czar and the Emperor Francis Joseph, with
their Ministers, met at Reichstadt in Bohemia on the 8th of July.
According to official statements the result of the meeting was that the
two sovereigns determined upon non-intervention for the present, and
proposed only to renew the attempt to unite all the Christian Powers in a
common policy when some definite occasion should arise. Rumours, however,
which proved to be correct, went abroad that something of the nature of
an eventual partition of European Turkey had been the object of
negotiation. A Treaty had in fact been signed providing that if Russia
should liberate Bulgaria by arms, Austria should enter into possession of
Bosnia and Herzegovina. The neutrality of Austria had virtually been
purchased at this price, and Russia had thus secured freedom of action in
the event of the necessary reforms not being forced upon Turkey by the
concert of Europe. Sooner perhaps than Prince Gortschakoff had expected,
the religious enthusiasm of the Russian people and their sympathy for
their kinsmen and fellow-believers beyond the Danube forced the Czar into
vigorous action. In spite of the assistance of several thousands of
Russian volunteers and of the leadership of the Russian General
Tchernaieff, the Servians were defeated in their struggle with the Turks.
The mediation of England was in vain tendered to the Porte on the only
terms on which even at London peace was seen to be possible, the
maintenance of the existing rights of Servia and the establishment of
provincial autonomy in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria. After a brief
suspension of hostilities in September war was renewed. The Servians were
driven from their positions; Alexinatz was captured, the road to Belgrade
lay open, and the doom of Bulgaria seemed likely to descend upon the
conquered Principality. The Turks offered indeed a five months' armistice,
which would have saved them the risks of a winter campaign and enabled
them to crush their enemy with accumulated forces in the following
spring. This, by the advice of Russia, the Servians refused to accept. On
the 30th of October a Russian ultimatum was handed in at Constantinople
by the Ambassador Ignatieff, requiring within forty-eight hours the grant
to Servia of an armistice for two months and the cessation of hostilities.
The Porte submitted; and wherever Slav and Ottoman stood facing one
another in arms, in Herzegovina and Bosnia as well as Servia and
Montenegro, there was a pause in the struggle.

[Declaration of the Czar, Nov. 2.]

[England proposes a Conference.]

The imminence of a war between Russia and Turkey in the last days of
October and the close connection between Russia and the Servian cause
justified the anxiety of the British Government. This anxiety the Czar
sought to dispel by a frank declaration of his own views. On the 2nd of
November he entered into conversation with the British Ambassador, Lord A.
Loftus, and assured him on his word of honour that he had no intention of
acquiring Constantinople; that if it should be necessary for him to occupy
part of Bulgaria his army would remain there only until peace was restored
and the security of the Christian population established; and, generally,
that he desired nothing more earnestly than a complete accord between
England and Russia in the maintenance of European peace and the improvement
of the condition of the Christian population in Turkey. He stated, however,
with perfect clearness that if the Porte should continue to refuse the
reforms demanded by Europe, and the Powers should put up with its continued
refusal, Russia would act alone. Disclaiming in words of great earnestness
all desire for territorial aggrandisement, he protested against the
suspicion with which his policy was regarded in England, and desired that
his words might be made public in England as a message of peace. [551] Lord
Derby, then Foreign Secretary, immediately expressed the satisfaction with
which the Government had received these assurances; and on the following
day an invitation was sent from London to all the European Powers proposing
a Conference at Constantinople, on the basis of a common recognition of the
integrity of the Ottoman Empire, accompanied by a disavowal on the part of
each of the Powers of all aims at aggrandisement or separate advantage. In
proposing this Conference the Government acted in conformity with the
expressed desire of the Czar. But there were two voices within the Cabinet.
Lord Beaconsfield, had it been in his power, would have informed Russia
categorically that England would support the Sultan if attacked. This the
country and the Cabinet forbade: but the Premier had his own opportunities
of utterance, and at the Guildhall Banquet on the 9th of November, six days
after the Foreign Secretary had acknowledged the Czar's message of
friendship, and before this message had been made known to the English
people, Lord Beaconsfield uttered words which, if they were not idle
bluster, could have been intended only as a menace to the Czar or as an
appeal to the war-party at home:--"Though the policy of England is peace,
there is no country so well prepared for war as our own. If England enters
into conflict in a righteous cause, her resources are inexhaustible. She is
not a country that when she enters into a campaign has to ask herself
whether she can support a second or a third campaign. She enters into a
campaign which she will not terminate till right is done."

[Project of Ottoman Constitution.]

The proposal made by the Earl of Derby for a Conference at Constantinople
was accepted by all the Powers, and accepted on the bases specified. Lord
Salisbury, then Secretary of State for India, was appointed to represent
Great Britain in conjunction with Sir H. Elliot, its Ambassador. The
Minister made his journey to Constantinople by way of the European
capitals, and learnt at Berlin that the good understanding between the
German Emperor and the Czar extended to Eastern affairs. Whether the
British Government had as yet gained any trustworthy information on the
Treaty of Reichstadt is doubtful; but so far as the public eye could judge,
there was now, in spite of the tone assumed by Lord Beaconsfield, a fairer
prospect of the solution of the Eastern question by the establishment of
some form of autonomy in the Christian provinces than there had been at any
previous time. The Porte itself recognised the serious intention of the
Powers, and, in order to forestall the work of the Conference, prepared a
scheme of constitutional reform that far surpassed the wildest claims of
Herzegovinian or of Serb. Nothing less than a complete system of
Parliamentary Government, with the very latest ingenuities from France and
Belgium, was to be granted to the entire Ottoman Empire. That Midhat Pasha,
who was the author of this scheme, may have had some serious end in view is
not impossible; but with the mass of Palace-functionaries at Constantinople
it was simply a device for embarrassing the West with its own inventions;
and the action of men in power, both great and small, continued after the
constitution had come into nominal existence to be exactly what it had been
before. The very terms of the constitution must have been unintelligible to
all but those who had been employed at foreign courts. The Government might
as well have announced its intention of clothing the Balkans with the flora
of the deep sea.

[Demands settled at the Preliminary Conference, Dec. 11-21.]

In the second week of December the representatives of the six Great Powers
assembled at Constantinople. In order that the demands of Europe should be
presented to the Porte with unanimity, they determined to hold a series of
preliminary meetings with one another before the formal opening of the
Conference and before communicating with the Turks. At these meetings,
after Ignatieff had withdrawn his proposal for a Russian occupation of
Bulgaria, complete accord was attained. It was resolved to demand the
cession of certain small districts by the Porte to Servia and Montenegro;
the grant of administrative autonomy to Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria;
the appointment in each of these provinces of Christian governors, whose
terms of office should be for five years, and whose nomination should be
subject to the approval of the Powers; the confinement of Turkish troops to
the fortresses; the removal of the bands of Circassians to Asia; and
finally the execution of these reforms under the superintendence of an
International Commission, which should have at its disposal a corps of six
thousand gendarmes to be enlisted in Switzerland or Belgium. By these
arrangements, while the Sultan retained his sovereignty and the integrity
of the Ottoman Empire remained unimpaired, it was conceived that the
Christian population would be effectively secured against Turkish violence
and caprice.

[The Turks refuse the demands of the Conference, Jan. 20, 1877.]

All differences between the representatives of the European Powers having
been removed, the formal Conference was opened on the 23rd of December
under the presidency of the Turkish Foreign Minister, Savfet Pasha. The
proceedings had not gone far when they were interrupted by the roar of
cannon. Savfet explained that the new Ottoman constitution was being
promulgated, and that the salvo which the members of the Conference heard
announced the birth of an era of universal happiness and prosperity in the
Sultan's dominions. It soon appeared that in the presence of this great
panacea there was no place for the reforming efforts of the Christian
Powers. Savfet declared from the first that, whatever concessions might be
made on other points, the Sultan's Government would never consent to the
establishment of a Foreign Commission to superintend the execution of its
reforms, nor to the joint action of the Powers in the appointment of the
governors of its provinces. It was in vain argued that without such
foreign control Europe possessed no guarantee that the promises and the
good intentions of the Porte, however gratifying these might be, would be
carried into effect. Savfet replied that by the Treaty of 1856 the Powers
had declared the Ottoman Empire to stand on exactly the same footing as
any other great State in Europe, and had expressly debarred themselves
from interfering, under whatever circumstances, with its internal
administration. The position of the Turkish representative at the
Conference was in fact the only logical one. In the Treaty of Paris the
Powers had elaborately pledged themselves to an absurdity; and this
Treaty the Turk was never weary of throwing in their faces. But the
situation was not one for lawyers and for the interpretation of
documents. The Conference, after hearing the arguments and the
counter-projects of the Turkish Ministers, after reconsidering its own
demands and modifying these in many important points in deference to
Ottoman wishes, adhered to the demand for a Foreign Commission and for a
European control over the appointment of governors. Midhat, who was now
Grand Vizier, summoned the Great Council of the Empire, and presented to
it the demands of the Conference. These demands the Great Council
unanimously rejected. Lord Salisbury had already warned the Sultan what
would be the results of continued obstinacy; and after receiving Midhat's
final reply the ambassadors of all the Powers, together with the envoys
who had been specially appointed for the Conference, quitted
Constantinople.

[The London Protocol, Mar. 31.]

[The Porte rejects the Protocol.]

[Russia declares war, April 24.]

Russia, since the beginning of November, had been actively preparing for
war. The Czar had left the world in no doubt as to his own intentions in
case of the failure of the European Concert; it only remained for him to
ascertain whether, after the settlement of a definite scheme of reform by
the Conference and the rejection of this scheme by the Porte, the Powers
would or would not take steps to enforce their conclusion. England
suggested that the Sultan should be allowed a year to carry out his good
intentions: Gortschakoff inquired whether England would pledge itself to
action if, at the end of the year, reform was not effected; but no such
pledge was forthcoming. With the object either of discovering some
arrangement in which the Powers would combine, or of delaying the outbreak
of war until the Russian preparations were more advanced and the season
more favourable, Ignatieff was sent round to all the European Courts. He
visited England, and subsequently drew up, with the assistance of Count
Schouvaloff, Russian Ambassador at London, a document which gained the
approval of the British as well as the Continental Governments. This
document, known as the London Protocol, was signed on the 31st of March.
After a reference to the promises of reform made by the Porte, it stated
that the Powers intended to watch carefully by their representatives over
the manner in which these promises were carried into effect; that if their
hopes should be once more disappointed they should regard the condition of
affairs as incompatible with the interests of Europe; and that in such case
they would decide in common upon the means best fitted to secure the
well-being of the Christian population and the interests of general peace.
Declarations relative to the disarmament of Russia, which it was now the
principal object of the British Government to effect, were added. There was
indeed so little of a substantial engagement in this Protocol that it would
have been surprising had Russia disarmed without obtaining some further
guarantee for the execution of reform. But weak as the Protocol was, it was
rejected by the Porte. Once more the appeal was made to the Treaty of
Paris, once more the Sultan protested against the encroachment of the
Powers on his own inviolable rights. Lord Beaconsfield's Cabinet even now
denied that the last word had been spoken, and professed to entertain some
hope in the effect of subsequent diplomatic steps; but the rest of Europe
asked and expected no further forbearance on the part of Russia. The army
of operations already lay on the Pruth: the Grand Duke Nicholas, brother of
the Czar, was appointed to its command; and on the 24th of April the
Russian Government issued its declaration of war.

[Passage of the Danube, June 27.]

[Advance on the Balkans, July.]

[Gourko south of the Balkans, July 15.]

Between the Russian frontier and the Danube lay the Principality of
Roumania. A convention signed before the outbreak of hostilities gave to
the Russian army a free passage through this territory, and Roumania
subsequently entered the war as Russia's ally. It was not, however, until
the fourth week of June that the invaders were able to cross the Danube.
Seven army-corps were assembled in Roumania; of these one crossed the Lower
Danube into the Dobrudscha, two were retained in Roumania as a reserve, and
four crossed the river in the neighbourhood of Sistowa, in order to enter
upon the Bulgarian campaign. It was the desire of the Russians to throw
forward the central part of their army by the line of the river Jantra upon
the Balkans; with their left to move against Rustchuk and the Turkish
armies in the eastern fortresses of Bulgaria; with their right to capture
Nicopolis, and guard the central column against any flank attack from the
west. But both in Europe and in Asia the Russians had underrated the power
of their adversary, and entered upon the war with insufficient forces.
Advantages won by their generals on the Armenian frontier while the
European army was still marching through Roumania were lost in the course
of the next few weeks. Bayazid and other places that fell into the hands of
the Russians at the first onset were recovered by the Turks under Mukhtar
Pasha; and within a few days after the opening of the European campaign the
Russian divisions in Asia were everywhere retreating upon their own
frontier. The Bulgarian campaign was marked by the same rapid successes of
the invader at the outset, to be followed, owing to the same insufficiency
of force, by similar disasters. Encountering no effective opposition on the
Danube, the Russians pushed forward rapidly towards the Balkans by the line
of the Jantra. The Turkish army lay scattered in the Bulgarian fortresses,
from Widdin in the extreme west to Shumla at the foot of the Eastern
Balkans. It was considered by the Russian commanders that two army-corps
would be required to operate against the Turks in Eastern Bulgaria, while
one corps would be enough to cover the central line of invasion from the
west. There remained, excluding the two corps in reserve in Roumania and
the corps holding the Dobrudscha, but one corps for the march on the
Balkans and Adrianople. The command of the vanguard of this body was given
to General Gourko, who pressed on into the Balkans, seized the Shipka Pass,
and descended into Southern Bulgaria (July 15). The Turks were driven from
Kesanlik and Eski Sagra, and Gourko's cavalry, a few hundreds in number,
advanced to within two days' march of Adrianople.

[Osman occupies Plevna, July 19.]

[First engagement at Plevna, July 20.]

[Second battle at Plevna, July 30.]

[The Shipka Pass, Aug. 20-23.]

The headquarters of the whole Russian army were now at Tirnova, the ancient
Bulgarian capital, about half-way between the Danube and the Balkans. Two
army-corps, commanded by the Czarewitch, moved eastwards against Rustchuk
and the so-called Turkish army of the Danube, which was gathering behind
the lines of the Kara Lom; another division, under General Krudener, turned
westward and captured Nicopolis with its garrison. Lovatz and other points
lying westward of the Jantra were occupied by weak detachments; but so
badly were the reconnaissances of the Russians performed in this direction
that they were unaware of the approach of a Turkish army from Widdin,
thirty-five thousand strong, till this was close on their flank. Before the
Russians could prevent him, Osman Pasha, with the vanguard of this army,
had occupied the town and heights of Plevna, between Nicopolis and Lovatz.
On the 20th of July, still unaware of their enemy's strength, the Russians
attacked him at Plevna: they were defeated with considerable loss, and
after a few days one of Osman's divisions, pushing forward upon the
invader's central line, drove them out of Lovatz. The Grand Duke now sent
reinforcements to Krudener, and ordered him to take Plevna at all costs.
Krudener's strength was raised to thirty-five thousand; but in the meantime
new Turkish regiments had joined Osman, and his troops, now numbering about
fifty thousand, had been working day and night entrenching themselves in
the heights round Plevna which the Russians had to attack. The assault was
made on the 30th of July; it was beaten back with terrible slaughter, the
Russians leaving a fifth of their number on the field. Had Osman taken up
the offensive and the Turkish commander on the Lom pressed vigorously upon
the invader's line, it would probably have gone ill with the Russian army
in Bulgaria. Gourko was at once compelled to abandon the country south of
the Balkans. His troops, falling back upon the Shipka Pass, were there
attacked from the south by far superior forces under Suleiman Pasha. The
Ottoman commander, prodigal of the lives of his men and trusting to mere
blindfold violence, hurled his army day after day against the Russian
positions (Aug. 20-23). There was a moment when all seemed lost, and the
Russian soldiers sent to their Czar the last message of devotion from men
who were about to die at their post. But in the extremity of peril there
arrived a reinforcement, weak, but sufficient to turn the scale against the
ill-commanded Turks. Suleiman's army withdrew to the village of Shipka at
the southern end of the pass. The pass itself, with the entrance from
northern Bulgaria, remained in the hands of the Russians.

[Roumania.]

[Third battle of Plevna, Sept 11-12.]

After the second battle of Plevna it became clear that the Russians could
not carry on the campaign with their existing forces. Two army-corps were
called up which were guarding the coast of the Black Sea; several others
were mobilised in the interior of Russia, and began their journey towards
the Danube. So urgent, however, was the immediate need, that the Czar was
compelled to ask help from Roumania. This help was given. Roumanian troops,
excellent in quality, filled up the gap caused by Krudener's defeats, and
the whole army before Plevna was placed under the command of the Roumanian
Prince Charles. At the beginning of September the Russians were again ready
for action. Lovatz was wrested from the Turks, and the division which had
captured it moved on to Plevna to take part in a great combined attack.
This attack was made on the 11th of September under the eyes of the Czar.
On the north the Russians and Roumanians together, after a desperate
struggle, stormed the Grivitza redoubt. On the south Skobeleff carried the
first Turkish position, but could make no impression on their second line
of defence. Twelve thousand men fell on the Russian side before the day was
over, and the main defences of the Turks were still unbroken. On the morrow
the Turks took up the offensive. Skobeleff, exposed to the attack of a far
superior foe, prayed in vain for reinforcements. His men, standing in the
positions that they had won from the Turks, repelled one onslaught after
another, but were ultimately overwhelmed and driven from the field. At the
close of the second day's battle the Russians were everywhere beaten back
within their own lines, except at the Grivitza redoubt, which was itself
but an outwork of the Turkish defences, and faced by more formidable works
within. The assailants had sustained a loss approaching that of the Germans
at Gravelotte with an army one-third of the Germans' strength. Osman was
stronger than at the beginning of the campaign; with what sacrifices Russia
would have to purchase its ultimate victory no man could calculate.

[Todleben besieges Plevna.]

[Fall of Plevna, Dec. 10.]

The three defeats at Plevna cast a sinister light upon the Russian military
administration and the quality of its chiefs. The soldiers had fought
heroically; divisional generals like Skobeleff had done all that man could
do in such positions; the faults were those of the headquarters and the
officers by whom the Imperial Family were surrounded. After the third
catastrophe, public opinion called for the removal of the authors of these
disasters and the employment of abler men. Todleben, the defender of
Sebastopol, who for some unknown reason had been left without a command,
was now summoned to Bulgaria, and virtually placed at the head of the army
before Plevna. He saw that the stronghold of Osman could only be reduced by
a regular siege, and prepared to draw his lines right round it. For a time
Osman kept open his communications with the south-west, and heavy trains of
ammunition and supplies made their way into Plevna from this direction; but
the investment was at length completed, and the army of Plevna cut off from
the world. In the meantime new regiments were steadily pouring into
Bulgaria from the interior of Russia. East of the Jantra, after many
alternations of fortune, the Turks were finally driven back behind the
river Lom. The last efforts of Suleiman failed to wrest the Shipka Pass
from its defenders. From the narrow line which the invaders had with such
difficulty held during three anxious months their forces, accumulating day
by day, spread out south and west up to the slopes of the Balkans, ready to
burst over the mountain-barrier and sweep the enemy back to the walls of
Constantinople when once Plevna should have fallen and the army which
besieged it should be added to the invader's strength. At length, in the
second week of December, Osman's supply of food was exhausted. Victor in
three battles, he refused to surrender without one more struggle. On the
10th of December, after distributing among his men what there remained of
provisions, he made a desperate effort to break out towards the west. His
columns dashed in vain against the besieger's lines; behind him his enemies
pressed forward into the positions which he had abandoned; a ring of fire
like that of Sedan surrounded the Turkish army; and after thousands had
fallen in a hopeless conflict, the general and the troops who for five
months had held in check the collected forces of the Russian Empire
surrendered to their conqueror.

[Crossing of the Balkans, Dec. 25-Jan. 8.]

[Capitulation of Shipka, Jan. 9.]

[Russians enter Adrianople, Jan. 20, 1878.]

If in the first stages of the war there was little that did credit to
Russia's military capacity, the energy that marked its close made amends
for what had gone before. Winter was descending in extreme severity: the
Balkans were a mass of snow and ice; but no obstacle could now bar the
invader's march. Gourko, in command of an army that had gathered to the
south-west of Plevna, made his way through the mountains above Etropol in
the last days of December, and, driving the Turks from Sophia, pressed on
towards Philippopolis and Adrianople. Farther east two columns crossed the
Balkans by bye-paths right and left of the Shipka Pass, and then,
converging on Shipka itself, fell upon the rear of the Turkish army which
still blocked the southern outlet. Simultaneously a third corps marched
down the pass from the north and assailed the Turks in front. After a
fierce struggle the entire Turkish army, thirty-five thousand strong, laid
down its arms. There now remained only one considerable force between the
invaders and Constantinople. This body, which was commanded by Suleiman,
held the road which runs along the valley of the Maritza, at a point
somewhat to the east of Philippopolis. Against it Gourko advanced from the
west, while the victors of Shipka, descending due south through Kesanlik,
barred the line of retreat towards Adrianople. The last encounter of the
war took place on the 17th of January. Suleiman's army, routed and
demoralised, succeeded in making its escape to the Ægæan coast. Pursuit was
unnecessary, for the war was now practically over. On the 20th of January
the Russians made their entry into Adrianople; in the next few days their
advanced guard touched the Sea of Marmora at Rodosto.

[Armistice, Jan. 31.]

Immediately after the fall of Plevna the Porte had applied to the European
Powers for their mediation. Disasters in Asia had already warned it not to
delay submission too long; for in the middle of October Mukhtar Pasha had
been driven from his positions, and a month later Kars had been taken by
storm. The Russians had subsequently penetrated into Armenia and had
captured the outworks of Erzeroum. Each day that now passed brought the
Ottoman Empire nearer to destruction. Servia again declared war; the
Montenegrins made themselves masters of the coast-towns and of
border-territory north and south; Greece seemed likely to enter into the
struggle. Baffled in his attempt to gain the common mediation of the
Powers, the Sultan appealed to the Queen of England personally for her good
offices in bringing the conflict to a close. In reply to a telegram from
London, the Czar declared himself willing to treat for peace as soon as
direct communications should be addressed to his representatives by the
Porte. On the 14th of January commissioners were sent to the headquarters
of the Grand Duke Nicholas at Kesanlik to treat for an armistice and for
preliminaries of peace. The Russians, now in the full tide of victory, were
in no hurry to agree with their adversary. Nicholas bade the Turkish envoys
accompany him to Adrianople, and it was not until the 31st of January that
the armistice was granted and the preliminaries of peace signed.

[England.]

[Vote of Credit, Jan. 28-Feb. 8.]

[Fleet passes the Dardanelles, Feb. 6.]

While the Turkish envoys were on their journey to the Russian headquarters,
the session of Parliament opened at London. The Ministry had declared at
the outbreak of the war that Great Britain would remain neutral unless its
own interests should be imperilled, and it had defined these interests with
due clearness both in its communications with the Russian Ambassador and in
its statements in Parliament. It was laid down that Her Majesty's
Government could not permit the blockade of the Suez Canal, or the
extension of military operations to Egypt; that it could not witness with
indifference the passing of Constantinople into other hands than those of
its present possessors; and that it would entertain serious objections to
any material alterations in the rules made under European sanction for the
navigation of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. [552] In reply to Lord Derby's
note which formulated these conditions of neutrality Prince Gortschakoff
had repeated the Czar's assurance that the acquisition of Constantinople
was excluded from his views, and had promised to undertake no military
operation in Egypt; he had, however, let it be understood that, as an
incident of warfare, the reduction of Constantinople might be necessary
like that of any other capital. In the Queen's speech at the opening of
Parliament, Ministers stated that the conditions on which the neutrality of
England was founded had not hitherto been infringed by either belligerent,
but that, should hostilities be prolonged, some unexpected occurrence might
render it necessary to adopt measures of precaution, measures which could
not be adequately prepared without an appeal to the liberality of
Parliament. From language subsequently used by Lord Beaconsfield's
colleagues, it would appear that the Cabinet had some apprehension that the
Russian army, escaping from the Czar's control, might seize and attempt
permanently to hold Constantinople. On the 23rd of January orders were sent
to Admiral Hornby, commander of the fleet at Besika Bay, to pass the
Dardanelles, and proceed to Constantinople. Lord Derby, who saw no
necessity for measures of a warlike character until the result of the
negotiations at Adrianople should become known, now resigned office; but on
the reversal of the order to Admiral Hornby he rejoined the Cabinet. On the
28th of January, after the bases of peace had been communicated by Count
Schouvaloff to the British Government but before they had been actually
signed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer moved for a vote of £6,000,000 for
increasing the armaments of the country. This vote was at first vigorously
opposed on the ground that none of the stated conditions of England's
neutrality had been infringed, and that in the conditions of peace between
Russia and Turkey there was nothing that justified a departure from the
policy which England had hitherto pursued. In the course of the debates,
however, a telegram arrived from Mr. Layard, Elliot's successor at
Constantinople, stating that notwithstanding the armistice the Russians
were pushing on towards the capital; that the Turks had been compelled to
evacuate Silivria on the Sea of Marmora; that the Russian general was about
to occupy Tchataldja, an outpost of the last line of defence not thirty
miles from Constantinople; and that the Porte was in great alarm, and
unable to understand the Russian proceedings. The utmost excitement was
caused at Westminster by this telegram. The fleet was at once ordered to
Constantinople. Mr. Forster, who had led the opposition to the vote of
credit, sought to withdraw his amendment; and although on the following
day, with the arrival of the articles of the armistice, it appeared that
the Russians were simply moving up to the accepted line of demarcation, and
that the Porte could hardly have been ignorant of this when Layard's
telegram was despatched, the alarm raised in London did not subside, and
the vote of credit was carried by a majority of above two hundred. [553]

[Imminence of war with England.]

When a victorious army is, without the intervention of some external Power,
checked in its work of conquest by the negotiation of an armistice, it is
invariably made a condition that positions shall be handed over to it which
it does not at the moment occupy, but which it might reasonably expect to
have conquered within a certain date, had hostilities not been suspended.
The armistice granted to Austria by Napoleon after the battle of Marengo
involved the evacuation of the whole of Upper Italy; the armistice which
Bismarck offered to the French Government of Defence at the beginning of
the siege of Paris would have involved the surrender of Strasburg and of
Toul. In demanding that the line of demarcation should be carried almost up
to the walls of Constantinople the Russians were asking for no more than
would certainly have been within their hands had hostilities been prolonged
for a few weeks, or even days. Deeply as the conditions of the armistice
agitated the English people, it was not in these conditions, but in the
conditions of the peace which was to follow, that the true cause of
contention between England and Russia, if cause there was, had to be found.
Nevertheless, the approach of the Russians to Gallipoli and the lines of
Tchataldja, followed, as it was, by the despatch of the British fleet to
Constantinople, brought Russia and Great Britain within a hair's breadth of
war. It was in vain that Lord Derby described the fleet as sent only for
the protection of the lives and property of British subjects. Gortschakoff,
who was superior in amenities of this kind, replied that the Russian
Government had exactly the same end in view, with the distinction that its
protection would be extended to all Christians. Should the British fleet
appear at the Bosphorus, Russian troops would, in the fulfilment of a
common duty of humanity, enter Constantinople. Yielding to this threat,
Lord Beaconsfield bade the fleet halt at a convenient point in the Sea of
Marmora. On both sides preparations were made for immediate action. The
guns on our ships stood charged for battle; the Russians strewed the
shallows with torpedoes. Had a Russian soldier appeared on the heights of
Gallipoli, had an Englishman landed on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus,
war would at once have broken out. But after some weeks of extreme danger
the perils of mere contiguity passed away, and the decision between peace
and war was transferred from the accidents of tent and quarter deck to the
deliberations of statesmen assembled in Congress.

[Treaty of San Stefano, Mar. 3.]

The bases of Peace which were made the condition of the armistice granted
at Adrianople formed with little alteration the substance of the Treaty
signed by Russia and Turkey at San Stefano, a village on the Sea of
Marmora, on the 3rd of March. By this Treaty the Porte recognised the
independence of Servia, Montenegro, and Roumania, and made considerable
cessions of territory to the two former States. Bulgaria was constituted an
autonomous tributary Principality, with a Christian Government and a
national militia. Its frontier, which was made so extensive as to include
the greater part of European Turkey, was defined as beginning near Midia on
the Black Sea, not sixty miles from the Bosphorus; passing thence westwards
just to the north of Adrianople; descending to the Ægæan Sea, and following
the coast as far as the Thracian Chersonese; then passing inland westwards,
so as barely to exclude Salonika; running on to the border of Albania
within fifty miles of the Adriatic, and from this point following the
Albanian border up to the new Servian frontier. The Prince of Bulgaria was
to be freely elected by the population, and confirmed by the Porte with the
assent of the Powers; a system of administration was to be drawn up by an
Assembly of Bulgarian notables; and the introduction of the new system into
Bulgaria with the superintendence of its working was to be entrusted for
two years to a Russian Commissioner. Until the native militia was
organised, Russian troops, not exceeding fifty thousand in number, were to
occupy the country; this occupation, however, was to be limited to a term
approximating to two years. In Bosnia and Herzegovina the proposals laid
before the Porte at the first sitting of the Conference of 1876 were to be
immediately introduced, subject to such modifications as might be agreed
upon between Turkey, Russia, and Austria. The Porte undertook to apply
scrupulously in Crete the Organic Law which had been drawn up in 1868,
taking into account the previously expressed wishes of the native
population. An analogous law, adapted to local requirements, was, after
being communicated to the Czar, to be introduced into Epirus, Thessaly, and
the other parts of Turkey in Europe for which a special constitution was
not provided by the Treaty. Commissions, in which the native population was
to be largely represented, were in each province to be entrusted with the
task of elaborating the details of the new organisation. In Armenia the
Sultan undertook to carry into effect without further delay the
improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements, and to guarantee
the security of the Armenians from Kurds and Circassians. As an indemnity
for the losses and expenses of the war the Porte admitted itself to be
indebted to Russia in the sum of fourteen hundred million roubles; but in
accordance with the wishes of the Sultan, and in consideration of the
financial embarrassments of Turkey, the Czar consented to accept in
substitution for the greater part of this sum the cession of the Dobrudscha
in Europe, and of the districts of Ardahan, Kars, Batoum, and Bayazid in
Asia. As to the balance of three hundred million roubles left due to
Russia, the mode of payment or guarantee was to be settled by an
understanding between the two Governments. The Dobrudscha was to be given
by the Czar to Roumania in exchange for Bessarabia, which this State was to
transfer to Russia. The complete evacuation of Turkey in Europe was to take
place within three months, that of Turkey in Asia within six months, from
the conclusion of peace. [554]

[Congress proposed.]

[Opposite purposes of Russia and England.]

It had from the first been admitted by the Russian Government that
questions affecting the interests of Europe at large could not be settled
by a Treaty between Russia and Turkey alone, but must form the subject of
European agreement. Early in February the Emperor of Austria had proposed
that a European Conference should assemble at his own capital. It was
subsequently agreed that Berlin, instead of Vienna, should be the place of
meeting, and instead of a Conference a Congress should be held, that is, an
international assembly of the most solemn form, in which each of the Powers
is represented not merely by an ambassador or an envoy, but by its leading
Ministers. But the question at once arose whether there existed in the mind
of the Russian Government a distinction between parts of the Treaty of San
Stefano bearing on the interests of Europe generally and parts which
affected no States but Russia and Turkey; and whether, in this case, Russia
was willing that Europe should be the judge of the distinction, or, on the
contrary, claimed for itself the right of withholding portions of the
Treaty from the cognisance of the European Court. In accepting the
principle of a Congress, Lord Derby on behalf of Great Britain made it a
condition that every article of the Treaty without exception should be laid
before the Congress, not necessarily as requiring the concurrence of the
Powers, but in order that the Powers themselves might in each case decide
whether their concurrence was necessary or not. To this demand Prince
Gortschakoff offered the most strenuous resistance, claiming for Russia the
liberty of accepting, or not accepting, the discussion of any question that
might be raised. It would clearly have been in the power of the Russian
Government, had this condition been granted, to exclude from the
consideration of Europe precisely those matters which in the opinion of
other States were most essentially of European import. Phrases of
conciliation were suggested; but no ingenuity of language could shade over
the difference of purpose which separated the rival Powers. Every day the
chances of the meeting of the Congress seemed to be diminishing, the
approach of war between Russia and Great Britain more unmistakable. Lord
Beaconsfield called out the Reserves and summoned troops from India; even
the project of seizing a port in Asia Minor in case the Sultan should fall
under Russian influence was discussed in the Cabinet. Unable to reconcile
himself to these vigorous measures, Lord Derby, who had long been at
variance with the Premier, now finally withdrew from the Cabinet (March
28). He was succeeded in his office by the Marquis of Salisbury, whose
comparison of his relative and predecessor to Titus Oates revived the
interest of the diplomatic world in a now forgotten period of English
history.

[Circular of April 1.]

The new Foreign Secretary had not been many days in office when a Circular,
despatched to all the Foreign Courts, summed up the objections of Great
Britain to the Treaty of San Stefano. It was pointed out that a strong
Slavic State would be created under the control of Russia, possessing
important harbours upon the shores of the Black Sea and the Archipelago,
and giving to Russia a preponderating influence over political and
commercial relations on both those seas; that a large Greek population
would be merged in a dominant Slavic majority; that by the extension of
Bulgaria to the Archipelago the Albanian and Greek provinces left to the
Sultan would be severed from Constantinople; that the annexation of
Bessarabia and of Batoum would make the will of the Russian Government
dominant over all the vicinity of the Black Sea; that the acquisition of
the strongholds of Armenia would place the population of that province
under the immediate influence of the Power that held these strongholds,
while through the cession of Bayazid the European trade from Trebizond to
Persia would become liable to be arrested by the prohibitory barriers of
the Russian commercial system. Finally, by the stipulation for an indemnity
which it was beyond the power of Turkey to discharge, and by the reference
of the mode of payment or guarantee to a later settlement, Russia had
placed it in its power either to extort yet larger cessions of territory,
or to force Turkey into engagements subordinating its policy in all things
to that of St. Petersburg.

[Count Schouvaloff.]

[Secret agreement, May 30th.]

[Convention with Turkey, June 4.]

[Cyprus.]

It was the object of Lord Salisbury to show that the effects of the Treaty
of San Stefano, taken in a mass, threatened the peace and the interests of
Europe, and therefore, whatever might be advanced for or against individual
stipulations of the Treaty, that the Treaty as a whole, and not clauses
selected by one Power, must be submitted to the Congress if the examination
was not to prove illusory. This was a just line of argument. Nevertheless
it was natural to suppose that some parts of the Treaty must be more
distasteful than others to Great Britain; and Count Schouvaloff, who was
sincerely desirous of peace, applied himself to the task of discovering
with what concessions Lord Beaconsfield's Cabinet would be satisfied. He
found that if Russia would consent to modifications of the Treaty in
Congress excluding Bulgaria from the Ægæan Sea, reducing its area on the
south and west, dividing it into two provinces, and restoring the Balkans
to the Sultan as a military frontier, giving back Bayazid to the Turks, and
granting to other Powers besides Russia a voice in the organisation of
Epirus, Thessaly, and the other Christian provinces of the Porte, England
might be induced to accept without essential change the other provisions of
San Stefano. On the 7th of May Count Schouvaloff quitted London for St.
Petersburg, in order to lay before the Czar the results of his
communications with the Cabinet, and to acquaint him with the state of
public opinion in England. On his journey hung the issues of peace or war.
Backed by the counsels of the German Emperor, Schouvaloff succeeded in his
mission. The Czar determined not to risk the great results already secured
by insisting on the points contested, and Schouvaloff returned to London
authorised to conclude a pact with the British Government on the general
basis which had been laid down. On the 30th of May a secret agreement, in
which the above were the principal points, was signed, and the meeting of
the Congress for the examination of the entire Treaty of San Stefano was
now assured. But it was not without the deepest anxiety and regret that
Lord Beaconsfield consented to the annexation of Batoum and the Armenian
fortresses. He obtained indeed an assurance in the secret agreement with
Schouvaloff that the Russian frontier should be no more extended on the
side of Turkey in Asia; but his policy did not stop short here. By a
Convention made with the Sultan on the 4th of June, Great Britain engaged,
in the event of any further aggression by Russia upon the Asiatic
territories of the Sultan, to defend these territories by force of arms.
The Sultan in return promised to introduce the necessary reforms, to be
agreed upon by the two Powers, for the protection of the Christian and
other subjects of the Porte in these territories, and further assigned the
Island of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by England. It was
stipulated by a humorous after-clause that if Russia should restore to
Turkey its Armenian conquests, Cyprus would be evacuated by England, and
the Convention itself should be at an end. [555]

[Congress of Berlin, June 13-July 13.]

[Treaty of Berlin, July 13.]

The Congress of Berlin, at which the Premier himself and Lord Salisbury
represented Great Britain, opened on the 13th of June. Though the
compromise between England and Russia had been settled in general terms,
the arrangement of details opened such a series of difficulties that the
Congress seemed more than once on the point of breaking up. It was mainly
due to the perseverance and wisdom of Prince Bismarck, who transferred the
discussion of the most crucial points from the Congress to private meetings
of his guests, and who himself acted as conciliator when Gortschakoff
folded up his maps or Lord Beaconsfield ordered a special train, that the
work was at length achieved. The Treaty of Berlin, signed on the 13th of
July, confined Bulgaria, as an autonomous Principality, to the country
north of the Balkans, and diminished the authority which, pending the
establishment of its definitive system of government, would by the Treaty
of San Stefano have belonged to a Russian commissioner. The portion of
Bulgaria south of the Balkans, but extending no farther west than the
valley of the Maritza, and no farther south than Mount Rhodope, was formed
into a Province of East Roumelia, to remain subject to the direct political
and military authority of the Sultan, under conditions of administrative
autonomy. The Sultan was declared to possess the right of erecting
fortifications both on the coast and on the land-frontier of this province,
and of maintaining troops there. Alike in Bulgaria and in Eastern Roumelia
the period of occupation by Russian troops was limited to nine months.
Bosnia and Herzegovina were handed over to Austria, to be occupied and
administered by that Power. The cessions of territory made to Servia and
Montenegro in the Treaty of San Stefano were modified with the object of
interposing a broader strip between these two States; Bayazid was omitted
from the ceded districts in Asia, and the Czar declared it his intention to
erect Batoum into a free port, essentially commercial. At the instance of
France the provisions relating to the Greek Provinces of Turkey were
superseded by a vote in favour of the cession of part of these Provinces to
the Hellenic Kingdom. The Sultan was recommended to cede Thessaly and part
of Epirus to Greece, the Powers reserving to themselves the right of
offering their mediation to facilitate the negotiations. In other respects
the provisions of the Treaty of San Stefano were confirmed without
substantial change.

[Comparison of the two Treaties.]

Lord Beaconsfield returned to London, bringing, as he said, peace with
honour. It was claimed, in the despatch to our Ambassadors which
accompanied the publication of the Treaty of Berlin, that in this Treaty
the cardinal objections raised by the British Government to the Treaty of
San Stefano had found an entire remedy. "Bulgaria," wrote Lord Salisbury,
"is now confined to the river-barrier of the Danube, and consequently has
not only ceased to possess any harbour on the Archipelago, but is removed
by more than a hundred miles from the neighbourhood of that sea. On the
Euxine the important port of Bourgas has been restored to the Government of
Turkey; and Bulgaria retains less than half the sea-board originally
assigned to it, and possesses no other port except the roadstead of Varna,
which can hardly be used for any but commercial purposes. The replacement
under Turkish rule of Bourgas and the southern half of the sea-board on the
Euxine, and the strictly commercial character assigned to Batoum, have
largely obviated the menace to the liberty of the Black Sea. The political
outposts of Russian power have been pushed back to the region beyond the
Balkans; the Sultan's dominions have been provided with a defensible
frontier." It was in short the contention of the English Government that
while Russia, in the pretended emancipation of a great part of European
Turkey by the Treaty of San Stefano, had but acquired a new dependency,
England, by insisting on the division of Bulgaria, had baffled this plan
and restored to Turkey an effective military dominion over all the country
south of the Balkans. That Lord Beaconsfield did well in severing Macedonia
from the Slavic State of Bulgaria there is little reason to doubt; that,
having so severed it, he did ill in leaving it without a European guarantee
for good government, every successive year made more plain; the wisdom of
his treatment of Bulgaria itself must, in the light of subsequent events,
remain matter for controversy. It may fairly be said that in dealing with
Bulgaria English statesmen were, on the whole, dealing with the unknown.
Nevertheless, had guidance been accepted from the history of the other
Balkan States, analogies were not altogether wanting or altogether remote.
During the present century three Christian States had been formed out of
what had been Ottoman territory: Servia, Greece, and Roumania. Not one of
these had become a Russian Province, or had failed to develop and maintain
a distinct national existence. In Servia an attempt had been made to retain
for the Porte the right of keeping troops in garrison. This attempt had
proved a mistake. So long as the right was exercised it had simply been a
source of danger and disquiet, and it had finally been abandoned by the
Porte itself. In the case of Greece, Russia, with a view to its own
interests, had originally proposed that the country should be divided into
four autonomous provinces tributary to the Sultan: against this the Greeks
had protested, and Canning had successfully supported their protest. Even
the appointment of an ex-Minister of St. Petersburg, Capodistrias, as first
President of Greece in 1827 had failed to bring the liberated country under
Russian influence; and in the course of the half-century which had since
elapsed it had become one of the commonplaces of politics, accepted by
every school in every country of Western Europe, that the Powers had
committed a great error in 1833 in not extending to far larger dimensions
the Greek Kingdom which they then established. In the case of Roumania, the
British Government had, out of fear of Russia, insisted in 1856 that the
provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia should remain separate: the result was
that the inhabitants in defiance of England effected their union, and that
after a few years had passed there was not a single politician in England
who regarded their union otherwise than with satisfaction. If history
taught anything in the solution of the Eastern question, it taught that the
effort to reserve for the Sultan a military existence in countries which
had passed from under his general control was futile, and that the best
barrier against Russian influence was to be found not in the division but
in the strengthening and consolidation of the States rescued from Ottoman
dominions.

It was of course open to English statesmen in 1878 to believe that all that
had hitherto passed in the Balkan Peninsula had no bearing upon the
problems of the hour, and that, whatever might have been the case with
Greece, Servia, and Roumania, Bulgaria stood on a completely different
footing, and called for the application of principles not based on the
experience of the past but on the divinations of superior minds. Should the
history of succeeding years bear out this view, should the Balkans become a
true military frontier for Turkey, should Northern Bulgaria sink to the
condition of a Russian dependency, and Eastern Roumelia, in severance from
its enslaved kin, abandon itself to a thriving ease behind the garrisons of
the reforming Ottoman, Lord Beaconsfield will have deserved the fame of a
statesman whose intuitions, undimmed by the mists of experience, penetrated
the secret of the future, and shaped, because they discerned, the destiny
of nations. It will be the task of later historians to measure the exact
period after the Congress of Berlin at which the process indicated by Lord
Beaconsfield came into visible operation; it is the misfortune of those
whose view is limited by a single decade to have to record that in every
particular, with the single exception of the severance of Macedonia from
the Slavonic Principality, Lord Beaconsfield's ideas, purposes and
anticipations, in so far as they related to Eastern Europe, have hitherto
been contradicted by events. What happened in Greece, Servia, and Roumania
has happened in Bulgaria. Experience, thrown to the winds by English
Ministers in 1878, has justified those who listened to its voice. There
exists no such thing as a Turkish fortress on the Balkans; Bourgas no more
belongs to the Sultan than Athens or Belgrade; no Turkish soldier has been
able to set foot within the territory whose very name, Eastern Roumelia,
was to stamp it as Turkish dominion. National independence, a living force
in Greece, in Servia, in Roumania, has proved its power in Bulgaria too.
The efforts of Russia to establish its influence over a people liberated by
its arms have been repelled with unexpected firmness. Like the divided
members of Roumania, the divided members of Bulgaria have effected their
union. In this union, in the growing material and moral force of the
Bulgarian State, Western Europe sees a power wholly favourable to its own
hopes for the future of the East, wholly adverse to the extension of
Russian rule: and it has been reserved for Lord Beaconsfield's colleague at
the Congress of Berlin, regardless of the fact that Bulgaria north of the
Balkans, not the southern Province, created that vigorous military and
political organisation which was the precursor of national union, to
explain that in dividing Bulgaria into two portions the English Ministers
of 1878 intended to promote its ultimate unity, and that in subjecting the
southern half to the Sultan's rule they laid the foundation for its
ultimate independence.






[1] Chapters I. to XI. of this Edition.

[2] Chapters XII. to XVIII. of this Edition.

[3] Page 362 of this Edition.

[4] Ranke, Ursprung und Beginn der Revolutionskriege, p. 90. Vivenot,
Quellen zur Geschichte der Kaiserpolitik Oesterreichs, i. 185, 208.

[5] Von Sybel, Geschichte der Revolutionszeit, i. 289.

[6] Vivenot, Quellen, i. 372. Buchez et Roux, xiii. 340, xiv. 24.

[7] Häusser, Deutsche Geschichte, i. 88. Vivenot, Herzog Albrecht, i. 78.

[8] Springer, Geschichte Oesterreichs, i. 46.

[9] Pertz, Leben Stein, ii. 402. Paget, Travels in Hungary, i. 131.

[10] Ranke, Ursprung und Beginn, p. 256. Vivenot, Quellen, i. 133, 165. The
acquisition of Bavaria was declared by the Austrian Cabinet to be the
_summum bonum_ of the monarchy.

[11] Biedermann, Deutschland im Achtzehnten Jahrhundert, iv. 1144.

[12] Carlyle, Friedrich, vi. 667.

[13] Häusser, i. 197. Hardenberg (Ranke), i. 139. Von Sybel, i. 272.

[14] "The connection with the House of Austria and the present undertaking
continue to be very unpopular. It is openly said that one half of the
treasure was uselessly spent at Reichenbach, and that the other half will
be spent on the present occasion, and that the sovereign will be reduced to
his former level of Margrave of Brandenburg." Eden, from Berlin; June 19,
1792. Records: Prussia, vol. 151. "He (Möllendorf) reprobated the alliance
with Austria, condemning the present interference in the affairs of France
as ruinous, and censuring as undignified and contrary to the most important
interests of this country the leaving Russia sole arbitress of the fate of
Poland. He, however, said, what every Prussian without any exception of
party will say, that this country can never acquiesce in the establishment
of a good government in Poland, since in a short time it would rise to a
very decided superiority," _Id._, July 17. Mr. Cobden's theory that
the partition of Poland was effected in the interest of good government
must have caused some surprise at Berlin.

[15] The condition of Mecklenburg is thus described in a letter written by
Stein during a journey in 1802:--"I found the aspect of the country as
cheerless as its misty northern sky; great estates, much of them in pasture
or fallow; an extremely thin population; the entire labouring class under
the yoke of serfage; stretches of land attached to solitary ill-built
farmhouses; in short, a monotony, a dead stillness, spreading over the
whole country, an absence of life and activity that quite overcame my
spirits. The home of the Mecklenburg noble, who weighs like a load on his
peasants instead of improving their condition, gives me the idea of the den
of some wild beast, who devastates even thing about him, and surrounds
himself with the silence of the grave." Pertz, Leben Stein, i. 192. For a
more cheerful description of Münster, see _id._, i. 241.

[16] Perthes, Staatsleben, p. 116. Rigby, Letters from France, p. 215.

[17] Buchez et Roux, xvi. 279. One of the originals of this declaration,
handed to the British ambassador, is in the London Records: Prussia, vol.
151.

[18] The accounts of the emigrants sent to England by Lord Elgin, envoy at
Brussels, and Sir J. Murray, our military attaché with Brunswick's army (in
Records: Flanders, vol. 221) are instructive: "The conduct of the army
under the Princes of France is universally reprobated. Their appearance in
dress, in attendants, in preparations, is ridiculous. As an instance,
however trivial, it may be mentioned that on one of the waggons was written
_Toilette de Monsieur_. The spirit of vengeance, however, which they
discover on every occasion is far more serious. Wherever they have passed,
they have exercised acts of cruelty, in banishing and severely punishing
those persons who, though probably culpable, had yet been left untouched by
the Prussian commanders. To such an extent has this been carried that the
commander at Verdun would not suffer any Frenchman (emigrant) to pass a
night in the town without a special permission." Sept. 21. After the
failure of the campaign, Elgin writes of the emigrants: "They everywhere
added to the cruelties for some of which several hussars had been executed:
carried to its extent the vengeance threatened in the Duke of Brunswick's
Declaration, in burning whole villages where a shot was fired on them: and
on the other hand by their self-sufficiency, want of subordination and
personal disrespect, have drawn upon themselves the contempt of the
combined armies." Oct. 6. So late as 1796, the exile Louis XVIII. declared
his intention to restore the "property and rights" (i.e. tithes, feudal
dues, etc.) of the nobles and clergy, and to punish the men who had
"committed offences." See Letter to Pichegru, May 4, 1796, in Manuscrit
Inédit de Louis XVIII., p. 464.

[19] Wordsworth, Prelude, book ix.

[20] The correspondence is in Ranke, Ursprung und Beginn, p. 371. Such was
the famine in the Prussian camp that Dumouriez sent the King of Prussia
twelve loaves, twelve pounds of coffee, and twelve pounds of sugar. The
official account of the campaign is in the _Berlinische Zeitung_ of
Oct. 11, 1792.

[21] Forster, Werke, vi. 386.

[22] "The very night the news of the late Emperor's (Leopold's) death
arrived here (Brussels), inflammatory advertisements and invitations to arm
were distributed." One culprit "belonged to the Choir of St. Gudule: he
chose the middle of the day, and in the presence of many people posted up a
paper in the church, exhorting to a general insurrection. The remainder of
this strange production was the description of a vision he pretended to
have seen, representing the soul of the late emperor on its way to join
that of Joseph, already suffering in the other world." Col. Gardiner, March
20, 1792. Records: Flanders, vol. 220.

[23] Elgin, from Brussels, Nov. 6. "A brisk cannonade has been heard this
whole forenoon in the direction of Mons. It is at this moment somewhat
diminished, though not at an end" Nov. 7. "Several messengers have arrived
from camp in the course of the night, but all the Ministers (I have seen
them all) deny having received one word of detail.... Couriers have been
sent this night in every direction to call in all the detachments on the
frontiers.... The Government is making every arrangement for quitting
Brussels: their papers are already prepared, their carriages ready." ...
Then a PS. "A cannonade is distinctly heard again.... All the emigrants
now here are removing with the utmost haste." Nov. 9th. "The confusion
throughout the country is extreme. The roads are covered with emigrants,
and persons of these provinces flying from the French armies," Records:
Flanders, vol. 222.

[24] In Nov. 1792, Grenville ordered the English envoys at Vienna and
Berlin to discover, if possible, the real designs of aggrandisement held by
those Courts. Mr. Straton, at Vienna, got wind of the agreement against
Poland. "I requested Count Philip Cobenzl" (the Austrian Minister) "that he
would have the goodness to open himself confidentially to me on the precise
object which the two allied Courts might have in contemplation. This,
however, the Count was by no means disposed to do; on the contrary, he went
round the compass of evasion in order to avoid a direct answer. But
determined as I was to push the Austrian Minister, I heaped question on
question, until I forced him to say, blushing, and with evident signs of
embarrassment, 'Count Stadion' (Ambassador at London) 'will be able to
satisfy the curiosity of the British Minister, to whatever point it may be
directed.'" Jan. 20, 1793. Records: Austria, vol. 32. Stadion accordingly
informed Lord Grenville of the Polish and Bavarian plans. Grenville
expressed his concern and regret at the aggression on Poland, and gave
reasons against the Bavarian exchange. To our envoy with the King of
Prussia Grenville wrote: "It may possibly be the intention of the Courts to
adopt a plan of indemnifying themselves for the expense of the war by fresh
acquisitions in Poland, and carrying into execution a new partition of that
country. You will not fail to explain in the most distinct and pointed
manner his Majesty's entire disapprobation of such a plan, and his
determination on no account to concur in any measures which may tend to the
completion of a design so unjust in itself." Jan. 4, 1793. Records: Army in
Germany, vol. 437. At Vienna Cobenzl declared, Feb. 9, that Austria could
not now "even manifest a wish to oppose the projects of Prussia in Poland,
as in that case his Prussian Majesty would probably withdraw his assistance
from the French war; nay, perhaps even enter into an alliance with that
nation and invade Bohemia." Records: Austria, vol. 32.

[25] Auckland, ii. 464. Papers presented to Parliament, 1793. Mr. Oscar
Browning, in _Fortnightly Review_, Feb., 1883.

[26] Von Sybel, ii. 259. Thugut, Vertrauliche Briefe, i. 17. Letters from
Brussels, 23rd March in Records: Flanders, vol. 222. "The Huzars are in
motion all round, so that we hope to have them here to-morrow. Most of the
French troops who arrived last, and which are mostly peasants armed with
pikes, are returning home, besides a great number of their volunteers."
24th March. "At this moment we hear the cannon. The French have just had it
cry'd in the town that all the tailors who are making coats for the army
must bring them made or unmade, and be paid directly.... They beat the
drums to drown the report of the cannon.... You have not a conception of
the confusion in the town.... This moment passed four Austrians with their
heads cut to pieces, and one with his eye poked out. The French are
retiring by the Porte d'Anderlecht." Ostend, April 4th. "This day, before
two of the clock, twenty-five Austrian huzars enter'd the town while the
inhabitants were employed burning the tree of liberty."

[27] Mortimer-Ternaux, vii. 412.

[28] Berriat-St.-Prix, La Justice Révolutionnaire, introd.

[29] "The King of Prussia has been educated in the persuasion that the
execution of that exchange involves the ruin of his family, and he is the
more sore about it that by the qualified consent which he has given to its
taking place he has precluded himself from opposing it by arms.
Accordingly, every idle story which arrives from Munich which tends to
revive this apprehension makes an impression which I am unable, at the
first moment, to efface." Lord Yarmouth, from the Prussian camp, Aug. 12,
1793, Records: Army in Germany, 437. "Marquis Lucchesini, the effectual
director, is desirous of avoiding every expense and every exertion of the
troops; of leaving the whole burden of the war on Austria and the other
combined Powers; and of seeing difficulties multiply in the arrangements
which the Court of Vienna may wish to form I do not perceive any object
beyond this; no desire of diminishing the power of France; no system or
feeling for crushing the opinions, the doctrines, of that country." Elgin,
May 17. Records: Flanders, vol. 223.

[30] Auckland, iii. 24. Thugut, Vertrauliche Briefe, i. 13. Grenville to
Eden, Sept. 7th, 1793, Records: Austria, vol. 34: a most important
historical document, setting out the principles of alliance between England
and Austria. Austria, if it will abandon the Bavarian exchange, may claim
annexations on the border of the Netherlands, in Alsace and Lorraine, and
in the intermediate parts of the frontier of France. England's indemnity
"must be looked for in the foreign settlements and colonies of France....
His Majesty has an interest in seeing the House of Austria strengthen
itself by acquisitions on the French frontier. The Emperor must see with
pleasure the relative increase of the naval and commercial resources of
this country beyond those of France." In the face of this paper, it cannot
be maintained that the war of 1793 was, after the first few months, purely
defensive on England's part; though no doubt Pitt's notion of an indemnity
was fair and modest in comparison with the schemes and acts of his enemy.

[31] The first mention of Bonaparte's name in any British document
occurs in an account of the army of Toulon sent to London in Dec. 1793
by a spy. "Les capitaines d'artillérie, élévé dans cet état, connoissent
leur service et ont tous du talens. Ils préféroient l'employer pour une
meilleure cause.... Le sixtèrne, nommé Bonaparte, trés republicain, a
été tué sous les murs de Toulon." Records: France, vol. 599. Austria
undertook to send 5,000 troops from Lombardy to defend Toulon, but broke
its engagement. "You will wait on M. Thugut (the Austrian Minister) and
claim in the most peremptory terms the performance of this engagement.
It would be very offensive to his Majesty that a request made so
repeatedly on his part should be neglected; but it is infinitely more so
to see that, when this country is straining every nerve for the common
cause, a body of troops for the want of which Toulon may possibly at
this moment be lost, have remained inactive at Milan. You will admit of
no further excuses." Grenville to Eden, Nov. 24, 1793. Thugut's written
answer was, "The Emperor gave the order of march at a moment when the
town of Toulon had no garrison. Its preservation then seemed matter of
pressing necessity, but now all inquietude on this score has happily
disappeared. The troops of different nations already assembled at Toulon
put the place out of all danger." Records: Austria, vol. 35.

[32] Häusser, i. 482. "La Prusse," wrote Thugut at this time, "parviendra
au moyen de son alliance à nous faire plus de mal qu'elle ne nous a fait
par les guerres les plus sanglantes." Briefe, i. 12, 15. Thugut even
proposed that England should encourage the Poles to resist. Eden, April
15; Records: Austria, vol. 33.

[33] The English Government found that Thugut was from the first
indifferent to their own aim, the restoration of the Bourbons, or
establishment of some orderly government in France. In so far as he
concerned himself with the internal affairs of France, he hoped rather for
continued dissension, as facilitating the annexation of French territory by
Austria. "Qu'on profite de ce conflit des partis en France pour tâcher de
se rendre mâitre des forteresses, afin de faire la loi au parti qui aura
prévalu, et l'obliger d'acheter la paix et la protection de l'empereur, en
lui cedant telle partie de ses conquêtes que S.M. jugera de sa covenance."
Briefe, i. 13.

[34] The despatches of Lord Yarmouth from the Prussian and Austrian
headquarters, from July 17 to Nov. 22, 1793, give a lively picture both of
the military operations and of the political intrigues of this period. They
are accompanied by the MS. journal of the Austrian army from Sept. 15 to
Dec. 14, each copy apparently with Wurmser's autograph, and by the original
letter of the Prussian Minister, Lucchesini, to Lord Yarmouth, announcing
the withdrawal of Prussia from the war, "M. de Lucchesini read it to me
very hastily, and seemed almost ashamed of a part of its contents."
Records: Army in Germany, vols. 437, 438, 439.

[35] Hardenberg (Ranke), i. 181, Vivenot, Herzog Albrecht, i. 10.

[36] Elgin reports after this engagement, May 1st, 1794--"The French army
appears to continue much what it has hitherto been, vigorous and
persevering where (as in villages and woods) the local advantages are of a
nature to supply the defects of military science; weak and helpless beyond
belief where cavalry can act, and manoeuvres are possible.... The magazines
of the army are stored, and the provisions regularly given out to the
troops, and good in quality. Indeed, it is singular to observe in all the
villages where we have been forward forage, etc., in plenty, and all the
country cultivated as usual. The inhabitants, however, have retired with
the French army; and to that degree that the tract we have lately taken
possession of is absolutely deserted.... The execution of Danton has
produced no greater effect in the army than other executions, and we have
found many papers on those who fell in the late actions treating it with
ridicule, and as a source of joy." Records: Flanders, 226. "I am in hopes
to hear from you on the subject of the French prisoners, as to where I am
to apply for the money I advance for their subsistence. They are a great
number of them almost naked, some entirely so. It is absolutely shocking to
humanity to see them. I would purchase some coarse clothing for those that
are in the worst state, but know not how far I should be authorised. They
are mostly old men and boys." Consul Harward, at Ostend, March 4th,
_id_.

[37] These events are the subject of controversy. See Hüffer, Oestreich und
Preussen, p. 62 Von Sybel, iii. 138. Vivenot, Clerfayt, p. 38. The old
belief, defended by Von Sybel, was that Thugut himself had determined upon
the evacuation of Belgium, and treacherously deprived Coburg of forces for
its defence. But, apart from other evidence, the tone of exasperation that
runs through Thugut's private letters is irreconcilable with this theory.
Lord Elgin, whose reports are used by Von Sybel, no doubt believed that
Thugut was playing false; but he was a bad judge, being in the hands of
Thugut's opponents, especially General Mack, whom he glorifies in the most
absurd way. The other English envoy in Belgium, Lord Yarmouth, reported in
favour of Thugut's good faith in this matter, and against military
intriguers. Records: Army in Germany, vol. 440. A letter of Prince
Waldeck's in Thugut, i. 387, and a conversation between Mack and Sir Morton
Eden, on Feb. 3rd, 1797, reported by the latter in Records: Austria, vol.
48, appear to fix the responsibility for the evacuation of Belgium on these
two generals, Waldeck and Mack, and on the Emperor's confidential military
adviser, Rollin.

[38] "Should the French come they will find this town perfectly empty.
Except my own, I do not think there are three houses in Ostend with a bed
in them. So general a panic I never witnessed." June 30th.--"To remain here
alone would be a wanton sacrifice. God knows 'tis an awful stroke to me to
leave a place just as I began to be comfortably settled." Consul Harward:
Records: Army in Germany, vol. 440. "All the English are arrested in
Ostend; the men are confined in the Capuchin convent, and the women in the
Convent des Soeurs Blancs. All the Flamands from the age of 17 to 32 are
forced to go for soldiers. At Bruges the French issued an order for 800 men
to present themselves. Thirty only came, in consequence of which they rang
a bell on the Grand Place, and the inhabitants thinking that it was some
ordinance, quitted their houses to hear it, when they were surrounded by
the French soldiers, and upwards of 1,000 men secured, gentle and simple,
who were all immediately set to work on the canals." Mr. W. Poppleton,
Flushing, Sept. 4. Records: Flanders, vol. 227.

[39] Malmesbury, ii. 125. Von Sybel, iii. 168. Grenville made Coburg's
dismissal a _sine qua non_ of the continuance of English co-operation.
Instructions to Lord Spencer, July 19, 1794. Records: Austria, 36. But for
the Austrian complaints against the English, see Vivenot, Clerfayt, p. 50.

[40] Schlosser, xv. 203: borne out by the Narrative of an Officer, printed
in Annual Register, 1795, p. 143.

[41] Vivenot, Herzog Albrecht, iii. 59, 512. Martens, Recueil des Traités,
vi. 45, 52. Hardenberg, i. 287. Vivenot, Clerfayt, p. 32. "Le Roi de
Prusse," wrote the Empress Catherine, "est une méchante bête et un grand
cochon." Prussia made no attempt to deliver the unhappy son of Louis XVI.
from his captivity.

[42] The British Government had formed the most sanguine estimate of the
strength of the Royalist movement in France. "I cannot let your servant
return without troubling you with these few lines to conjure you to use
every possible effort to give life and vigour to the Austrian Government at
this critical moment. Strongly as I have spoken in my despatch of the
present state of France, I have said much less than my information, drawn
from various quarters, and applying to almost every part of France, would
fairly warrant. We can never hope that the circumstances, as far as they
regard the state of France, can be more favourable than they now are. For
God's sake enforce these points with all the earnestness which I am sure
you will feel upon them." Grenville to Eden, April 17, 1795; Records:
Austria, vol. 41. After the failure of the expedition, the British
Government made the grave charge against Thugut that while he was
officially sending Clerfayt pressing orders to advance, he secretly told
him to do nothing. "It is in vain to reason with the Austrian Ministers on
the folly and ill faith of a system which they have been under the
necessity of concealing from you, and which they will probably endeavour to
disguise" Grenville to Eden, Oct., 1795; _id_., vol. 43. This charge,
repeated by historians, is disproved by Thugut's private letters. Briefe,
i. 221, _seq_. No one more bitterly resented Clerfayt's inaction.

[43] The documents relating to the expedition to Quiberon, with several
letters of D'Artois, Charette, and the Vendean leaders, are in Records:
France, vol. 600.

[44] Von Sybel, iii. 537. Buchez et Roux, xxxvi. 485.

[45] For the police interpretation of the _Zauberflöte_, see Springer,
Geschichte Oesterreichs, vol. i. p. 49.

[46] Zobi, Storia Civile della Toscana, i. 284.

[47] Galanti, Descrizione delle Sicilie, 1786, i. 279. He adds, "The
Samnites and the Lucanians could not have shown so horrible a spectacle,
because they had no feudal laws." Galanti's book gives perhaps the best
idea of the immense task faced by monarchy in the eighteenth century in
its struggle against what he justly calls "gli orrori del governo
feudale." Nothing but a study of these details of actual life described by
eye-witnesses can convey an adequate impression of the completeness and the
misery of the feudal order in the more backward countries of Europe till
far down in the eighteenth century. There is a good anonymous account of
Sicily in 1810 in Castlereagh, 8, 217.

[48] Correspondance de Napoleon, i. 260. Botta, lib. vi. Despatches of Col.
Graham, British attaché with the Austrian army, in Records: Italian States,
vol. 57. These most interesting letters, which begin on May 19, show the
discord and suspicion prevalent from the first in the Austrian army.
"Beaulieu has not met with cordial co-operation from his own generals,
still less from the Piedmontese. He accuses them of having chosen to be
beat in order to bring about a peace promised in January last." "Beaulieu
was more violent than ever against his generals who have occasioned the
failure of his plans. He said nine of them were cowards. I believe some of
them are ill-affected to the cause." June 15.--"Many of the officers
comfort themselves with thinking that defeat must force peace, and others
express themselves in terms of despair." July 25,--Beaulieu told Graham
that if Bonaparte had pushed on after the battle of Lodi, he might have
gone straight into Mantua. The preparations for defence were made later.

[49] Thugut, Briefe i. 107. A correspondence on this subject was carried on
in cypher between Thugut and Ludwig Cobenzl, Austrian Ambassador at St.
Petersburg in 1793-4. During Thugut's absence in Belgium, June, 1794,
Cobenzl sent a duplicate despatch, not in cypher, to Vienna. Old Prince
Kaunitz, the ex-minister, heard that a courier had arrived from St
Petersburg, and demanded the despatch at the Foreign Office "like a
dictator." It was given to him. "Ainsi," says Thugut, "adieu au secret qui
depuis un an a été conservé avec tant de soins!"

[50] Wurmser's reports are in Vivenot, Clerfayt, p. 477. Graham's daily
despatches from the Austrian head-quarters give a vivid picture of these
operations, and of the sudden change from exultation to despair. Aug.
1.--"I have the honour to inform your lordship that the siege of Mantua is
raised, the French having retreated last night with the utmost
precipitation." Aug. 2.--"The Austrians are in possession of all the French
mortars and cannon, amounting to about 140, with 190,000 shells and bombs;
the loss of the Imperial army is inconsiderable." Aug. 5.--"The rout of
this day has sadly changed the state of affairs. There are no accounts of
General Quosdanovich." Aug. 9.--"Our loss in men and cannon was much
greater than was imagined. I had no idea of the possibility of the extent
of such misfortunes as have overwhelmed us" Aug. 17.--"It is scarcely
possible to describe the state of disorder and discouragement that prevails
in the army. Were I free from apprehension, about the fate of my letter"
(he had lost his baggage and his cypher in it), "I should despair of
finding language adequate to convey a just idea of the discontent of the
officers with General Wurmser. From generals to subalterns the universal
language is 'qu'il faut faire la paix, car nous ne savons pas faire la
guerre.'" Aug. 18.--"Not only the commander-in-chief, but the greatest
number of the generals are objects of contempt and ridicule." Aug. 27.--"I
do not exaggerate when I say that I have met with instances of down-right
dotage." "It was in general orders that wine should be distributed to the
men previous to the attack of the 29th. There was some difficulty in
getting it up to Monte Baldo. General Bayolitzy observed that 'it did not
signify, for the men might get the value in money afterwards.' The men
marched at six in the evening without it, to attack at daybreak, and
received four kreutzers afterwards. This is a fact I can attest. In action
I saw officers sent on urgent messages going at a foot's pace: they say
that their horses are half starved, and that they cannot afford to kill
them."

[51] Grundsätze (Archduke Charles), ii. 202. Bulletins in Wiener Zeitung,
June-Oct., 1796.

[52] Martens, vi. 59.

[53] This seems to me to be the probable truth about Austria's policy in
1796, of which opposite views will be found in Häusser, vol. ii. ch. 1-3,
and in Hüffer, Oestreich und Preussen, p. 142. Thugut professed in 1793 to
have given up the project of the Bavarian exchange in deference to England.
He admitted, however, soon afterwards, that he had again been pressing the
King of Prussia to consent to it, but said that this was a ruse, intended
to make Prussia consent to Austria's annexing a large piece of France
instead. Eden, Sept., 1793; Records: Austria, vol. 34. The incident shows
the difficulty of getting at the truth in diplomacy.

[54] Yet the Government had had warning of this in a series of striking
reports sent by one of Lord Elgin's spies during the Reign of Terror.
"Jamais la France ne fut cultivée comme elle l'est. Il n'y a pas un arpent
qui ne soit ensemencé, sauf dans les lieux où opèrent les armées
belligérantes. Cette culture universelle a été forcée par les Directrices là
où on ne la faisait pas volontairement." June 8, 1794; Records: Flanders,
vol. 226. Elgin had established a line of spies from Paris to the Belgian
frontier. Every one of these persons was arrested by the Revolutionary
authorities. Elgin then fell in with the writer of the above, whose name is
concealed, and placed him on the Swiss frontier. He was evidently a person
thoroughly familiar with both civil and military administration. He appears
to have talked to every Frenchman who entered Switzerland; and his reports
contain far the best information that readied England during the Reign of
Terror, contradicting the Royalists, who said that the war was only kept up
by terrorism. He warned the English Government that the French nation in a
mass was on the side of the Revolution, and declared that the downfall of
Robespierre and the terrorists would make no difference in the prosecution
of the war. The Government seems to have paid no attention to his reports,
if indeed they were ever read.

[55] Correspondance de Napoleon, ii. 28. Thugut, about this time, formed
the plan of annexing Bologna and Ferrara to Austria, and said that if this
result could be achieved, the French attack upon the Papal States would be
no bad matter. See the instructions to Allvintzy, in Vivenot, Clerfayt, p.
511, which also contain the first Austrian orders to imprison Italian
innovators, the beginning of Austria's later Italian policy.

[56] Wurmser had orders to break out southwards into the Papal States.
"These orders he (Thugut) knew had reached the Marshal, but they were also
known to the enemy, as a cadet of Strasoldo's regiment, who was carrying
the duplicate, had been taken prisoner, and having been seen to swallow a
ball of wax, in which the order was wrapped up, he was immediately put to
death and the paper taken out of his stomach." Eden, Jan., 1797; Records:
Austria, vol. 48. Colonel Graham, who had been shut up in Mantua since
Sept. 10, escaped on Dec 17, and restored communication between Wurmser and
Allvintzy. He was present at the battle of Rivoli, which is described in
his despatches.

[57] "We expect every hour to hear of the entry of the Neapolitan troops
and the declaration of a religious war. Every preparation has been made for
such an event." Graves to Lord Grenville, Oct. 1, 1796; Records; Rome, vol.
56.

[58] "The clamours for peace have become loud and importunate. His Imperial
Majesty is constantly assailed by all his Ministers, M. de Thugut alone
excepted, and by all who approach his person. Attempts are even made to
alarm him with a dread of insurrection. In the midst of these calamities M.
de Thugut retains his firmness of mind, and continues to struggle against
the united voice of the nobility and the numerous and trying adversities
that press upon him." Eden, April 1. "The confusion at the army exceeds the
bounds of belief. Had Bonaparte continued his progress hither (Vienna), no
doubt is entertained that he might have entered the place without
opposition. That, instead of risking this enterprise, he should have
stopped and given the Austrians six days to recover from their alarm and to
prepare for defence, is a circumstance which it is impossible to account
for." April 12. "He" (Mack) "said that when this place was threatened by
the enemy, Her Imperial Majesty broke in upon the Emperor while in
conference with his Minister, and, throwing herself and her children at his
feet, determined His Majesty to open the negotiation which terminated in
the shameful desertion of his ally." Aug. 16; Records: Austria, vols. 49,
50. Thugut subsequently told Lord Minto that if he could have laid his hand
upon £500,000 in cash to stop the run on the Bank of Vienna, the war would
have been continued, in which case he believed he would have surrounded
Bonaparte's army.

[59] The cession of the Rhenish Provinces was not, as usually stated,
contained in the Preliminaries. Corr. de Napoleon, 2, 497; Hüffer, p. 259,
where the details of the subsequent negotiations will be found.

[60] Gohier, Mémoires i. Carnot, Réponse à Bailleul. Correspondance de
Napoleon, ii. 188. Miot de Melito, ch. vi.

[61] Martens, Traités, vi. 420; Thugut, Briefe, ii. 64. These letters
breathe a fire and passion rare among German statesmen of that day, and
show the fine side of Thugut's character. The well-known story of the
destruction of Cobenzl's vase by Bonaparte at the last sitting, with the
words, "Thus will I dash the Austrian Monarchy to pieces," is mythical.
Cobenzl's own account of the scene is as follows;--"Bonaparte, excited by
not having slept for two nights, emptied glass after glass of punch. When I
explained with the greatest composure, Bonaparte started up in a violent
rage, and poured out a flood of abuse, at the same time scratching his name
illegibly at the foot of the statement which he had handed in as protocol.
Then without waiting for our signatures, he put on his hat in the
conference-room itself, and left us. Until he was in the street he
continued to vociferate in a manner that could only be ascribed to
intoxication, though Clarke and the rest of his suite, who were waiting in
the hall, did their best to restrain him." "He behaved as if he had escaped
from a lunatic asylum. His own people are all agreed about this." Hüffer,
Oestreich und Preussen, p. 453.

[62] Häusser, Deutsche Geschichte, ii. 147. Vivenot, Rastadter Congress, p.
17. Von Lang, Memoiren, i. 33. It is alleged that the official who drew up
this document had not been made acquainted with the secret clauses.

[63] "Tout annonce qu'il sera de toute impossibilité de finir avec ces
gueux de Français autrement que par moyens de fermeté." Thugut, ii. 105.
For the negotiation at Seltz, see Historische Zeitschrift, xxiii. 27.

[64] Botta, lib. xiii. Letters of Mr. J. Denham and others in Records:
Sicily, vol. 44.

[65] Nelson Despatches, iii. 48.

[66] Bernhardi, Geschichte Russlands, ii. 2, 382.

[67] "Quel bonheur, quelle gloire, quelle consolation pour cette grande et
illustre nation! Que je vous suis obligée, reconnaissante! J'ai pleuré et
embrassé mes enfans, mon mari. Si jamais on fait un portrait du brave
Nelson je le veux avoir dans ma chambre. Hip, Hip, Hip, Ma chère Miladi je
suis folle de joye." Queen of Naples to Lady Hamilton, Sept. 4, 1798;
Records: Sicily, vol. 44. The news of the overwhelming victory of the Nile
seems literally to have driven people out of their senses at Naples. "Lady
Hamilton fell apparently dead, and is not yet (Sept 25) perfectly recovered
from her severe bruises." Nelson Despatches, 3, 130. On Nelson's arrival,
"up flew her ladyship, and exclaiming, 'O God, is it possible?' she fell
into my arms more dead than alive." It has been urged in extenuation of
Nelson's subsequent cruelties that the contagion of this frenzy, following
the effects of a severe wound in the head, had deprived his mind of its
balance. "My head is ready to split, and I am always so sick." Aug. 10. "It
required all the kindness of my friends to set me up." Sept. 25.

[68] Sir W. Hamilton's despatch, Nov. 28, in Records: Sicily, vol. 44,
where there are originals of most of the Neapolitan proclamations, etc., of
this time. Mack had been a famous character since the campaign of 1793.
Elgin's letters to Lord Grenville from the Netherlands, private as well as
public, are full of extravagant praise of him. In July, 1796, Graham writes
from the Italian army: "In the opinion of all here, the greatest general in
Europe is the Quartermaster Mack, who was in England in 1793. Would to God
he was marching, and here now." Mack, on the other hand, did not grudge
flattery to the English:--"Je perdrais partout espoir et patience si je
n'avais pas vu pour mon bonheur et ma consolation l'adorable Triumvirat"
(Pitt, Grenville, Dundas) "qui surveille à Londres nos affaires. Soyez, mon
cher ami, l'organe de ma profonde vénération envers ces Ministres
incomparables." Mack to Elgin, 23. Feb., 1794. The British Government was
constantly pressing Thugut to make Mack commander-in chief. Thugut, who had
formed a shrewd notion of Mack's real quality, gained much obloquy by his
steady refusal.

[69] Signed by Mack. Colletta, p. 176. Mack's own account of the campaign
is in Vivenot, Rastadter Congress, p. 83.

[70] Nelson, iii. 210: Hamilton's despatch, Dec. 28, 1798, in Records;
Sicily, vol. 44. "It was impossible to prevent a suspicion getting abroad
of the intention of the Royal Family to make their escape. However, the
secret was so well kept that we contrived to get their Majesties' treasure
in jewels and money, to a very considerable extent, on board of H.M. ship
the _Vanguard_ the 20th of December, and Lord Nelson went on the next
night by a secret passage into the Palace, and brought off in his boats
their Sicilian Majesties and all the Royal Family. It was not discovered at
Naples, until very late at night, that the Royal Family had escaped.... On
the morning of Christmas Day, some hours before we got into Palermo, Prince
Albert, one of their Majesties' sons, six years of age, was, either from
fright or fatigue, taken with violent convulsions, and died in the arms of
Lady Hamilton, the Queen, the Princesses, and women attendants being in
such confusion as to be incapable of affording any assistance."

[71] See Helfert, Der Rastatter Gesandtenmord, and Sybel's article thereon,
in Hist. Zeitschrift, vol. 32.

[72] Danilevsky-Miliutin, ii. 214. Despatch of Lord W. Bentinck from the
allied head-quarters at Piacenza, June 23, in Records: Italian States, vol.
58. Bentinck arrived a few days before this battle; his despatches cover
the whole North-Italian campaign from this time.

[73] Nelson Despatches, iii. 447; Sir W. Hamilton's Despatch of July 14, in
Records: Sicily, vol. 45. Helfert, Königin Karolina, p. 38. Details of the
proscription in Colletta, v. 6. According to Hamilton, some of the
Republicans in the forts had actually gone to their homes before Nelson
pronounced the capitulation void. "When we anchored in the Bay, the 24th of
June, the capitulation of the castles had in some measure taken place.
Fourteen large polacks had taken on board out of the castles the most
conspicuous and criminal of the Neapolitan rebels that had chosen to go to
Toulon; the others had already been permitted to return to their homes." If
this is so, Nelson's pretext that the capitulation had not been executed
was a mere afterthought. Helfert is mistaken in calling the letter or
proclamation of July 8th repudiating the treaty, a forgery. It is perfectly
genuine. It was published by Nelson in the King's name, and is enclosed in
Hamilton's despatch. Hamilton's exultations about himself and his wife, and
their share in these events, are sorry reading. "In short, Lord Nelson and
I, with Emma, have carried affairs to this happy crisis. Emma is really the
Queen's bosom friend.... You may imagine, when we three agree, what real
business is done.... At least I shall end my diplomatical career
gloriously, as you will see by what the King of Naples writes from this
ship to his Minister in London, owing the recovery of his kingdom to the
King's fleet, and Lord Nelson and me." (Aug. 4, _id_.) Hamilton states the
number of persons in prison at Naples on Sept. 12 to be above eight
thousand.

[74] Castlereagh, iv.; Records: Austria, 56. Lord Minto had just succeeded
Sir Morton Eden as ambassador. The English Government was willing to grant
the House of Hapsburg almost anything for the sake "of strengthening that
barrier which the military means and resources of Vienna can alone oppose
against the future enterprises of France." Grenville to Minto, May 13,
1800. Though they felt some regard for the rights of the King of Piedmont,
Pitt and Grenville were just as ready to hand over the Republic of Genoa to
the Hapsburgs as Bonaparte had been to hand over Venice; in fact, they
looked forward to the destruction of the Genoese State with avowed
pleasure, because it easily fell under the influence of France. Their
principal anxiety was that if Austria "should retain Venice and Genoa and
possibly acquire Leghorn," it should grant England an advantageous
commercial treaty. Grenville to Minto, Feb. 8, 1800; Castlereagh, v. 3-11.

[75] Lord Mulgrave to Grenville, Sept. 12, 1799; Records: Army of
Switzerland, vol. 80. "Suvaroff opened himself to me in the most unreserved
manner. He began by stating that he had been called at a very advanced
period of life from his retirement, where his ample fortune and honours
placed him beyond the allurement of any motives of interest. Attachment to
his sovereign and zeal for his God inspired him with the hope and the
expectation of conquests. He now found himself under very different
circumstances. He found himself surrounded by the parasites or spies of
Thugut, men at his devotion, creatures of his power: an army bigoted to a
defensive system, afraid even to pursue their successes when that system
had permitted them to obtain any; he had to encounter the further check of
a Government at Vienna averse to enterprise, etc."

[76] Miliutin, 2, 20, 3, 186; Minto, Aug. 10, 1799; Records: Austria, vol.
56. "I had no sooner mentioned this topic (Piedmont) than I perceived I had
touched a very delicate point. M. de Thugut's manner changed instantly from
that of coolness and civility to a great show of warmth attended with some
sharpness. He became immediately loud and animated, and expressed chagrin
at the invitation sent to the King of Sardinia.... He considers the
conquest of Piedmont as one made by Austria of an enemy's country. He
denies that the King of Sardinia can be considered as an ally or as a
friend, or even as a neuter; and, besides imputing a thousand instances of
ill-faith to that Court, relies on the actual alliance made by it with the
French Republic by which the King of Sardinia had appropriated to himself
part of the Emperor's dominions in Lombardy, an offence which, I perceive,
will not be easily forgotten.... I mention these circumstances to show the
degree of passion which the Court of Vienna mixes with this discussion."
Minto answered Thugut's invective with the odd remark "that perhaps in the
present extraordinary period the most rational object of this war was to
restore the integrity of the moral principle both in civil and political
life, and that this principle of justice should take the lead in his mind
of those considerations of temporary convenience which in ordinary times
might not have escaped his notice." Thugut then said "that the Emperor of
Russia had desisted from his measure of the King of Sardinia's immediate
recall, leaving the time of that return to the Emperor." On the margin of
the despatch, against this sentence, is written in pencil, in Lord
Grenville's handwriting, "I am persuaded this is not true."

[77] Miliutin, 3, 117. And so almost verbatim in a conversation described
in Eden's despatch, Aug. 31 Records: Austria, vol. 55. "M. de Thugut's
answer was evidently dictated by a suspicion rankling in his mind that the
Netherlands might be made a means of aggrandisement for Prussia. His
jealousy and aversion to that Power are at this moment more inveterate than
I have before seen them. It is probable that he may have some idea of
establishing there the Great Duke of Tuscany."

[78] Thugut's territorial policy did actually make him propose to abolish
the Papacy not only as a temporal Power, but as a religious institution.
"Baron Thugut argued strongly on the possibility of doing without a Pope,
and of each sovereign taking on himself the function of head of the
National Church, as in England. I said that as a Protestant, I could not be
supposed to think the authority of the Bishop of Rome necessary; but that
in the present state of religious opinion, and considering the only
alternative in those matters, viz. the subsistence of the Roman Catholic
faith or the extinction of Christianity itself, I preferred, though a
Protestant, the Pope to the Goddess of Reason. However, the mind of Baron
Thugut is not open to any reasoning of a general nature when it is put in
competition with conquest or acquisition of territory." Minto to Grenville,
Oct. 22, 1799; Records: Austria, vol. 57. The suspicions of Austria current
at the Neapolitan Court are curiously shown in the Nelson Correspondence.
Nelson writes to Minto (Aug. 20) at Vienna: "For the sake of the civilised
world, let us work together, and as the best act of our lives manage to
hang Thugut ... As you are with Thugut, your penetrating mind will discover
the villain in all his actions.... That Thugut is caballing.... Pray keep
an eye upon the rascal, and you will soon find what I say is true. Let us
hang these three miscreants, and all will go smooth." Suvaroff was not more
complimentary. "How can that desk-worm, that night-owl, direct an army from
his dusky nest, even if he had the sword of Scanderbeg?" (Sept. 3.)

[79] Miliutin, iii. 37; Bentinck, Aug. 16, from the battle-field; Records:
Italian States, vol. 58. His letter ends "I must apologise to your Lordship
for the appearance of this despatch" (it is on thin Italian paper and
almost illegible): "we" (_i.e._, Suvaroff's staff) "have had the misfortune
to have had our baggage plundered by the Cossacks."

[80] Every capable soldier saw the ruinous mischief of the Archduke's
withdrawal. "Not only are all prospects of our making any progress in
Switzerland at an end, but the chance of maintaining the position now
occupied is extremely precarious. The jealousy and mistrust that exists
between the Austrians and Russians is inconceivable. I shall not pretend to
offer an opinion on what might be the most advantageous arrangement for the
army of Switzerland, but it is certain that none can be so bad as that
which at present exists." Colonel Crauford, English military envoy, Sept.
5, 1799; Records: Army of Switzerland, vol. 79. The subsequent Operations
of Korsakoff are described in despatches of Colonel Ramsay and Lord
Mulgrave, _id_. vol. 80, 81, Conversations with the Archduke Charles
in those of Mr. Wickham, _id_. vol. 77.

[81] The despatches of Colonel Clinton, English attaché with Suvaroff, are
in singular contrast to the highly-coloured accounts of this retreat common
in histories. Of the most critical part he only says: "On the 6th the army
passed the Panix mountain, which the snow that had fallen during the last
week had rendered dangerous, and several horses and mules were lost on the
march." He expresses the poorest opinion of Suvaroff and his officers: "The
Marshal is entirely worn out and incapable of any exertion: he will not
suffer the subject of the indiscipline of his army to be mentioned to him.
He is popular with his army because he puts no check whatever in its
licentiousness. His honesty is now his only remaining good quality."
Records: Army of Switzerland, vol. 80. The elaborate plan for Suvaroff's
and Korsakoff's combined movements, made as if Switzerland had been an open
country and Massena's army a flock of sheep, was constructed by the
Austrian colonel Weyrother, the same person who subsequently planned the
battle of Austerlitz. On learning the plan from Suvaroff, Lord Mulgrave,
who was no great genius, wrote to London demonstrating its certain failure,
and predicting almost exactly the events that took place.

[82] Miot de Melito, ch. ix. Lucien Bonaparte, Révolution de Brumaire, p.
31.

[83] Law of Feb. 17, 1800 (28 Pluviöse, viii.).

[84] M. Thiers, Feb. 21, 1872.

[85] Parl. Hist, xxxiv. 1198. Thugut, Briefe ii. 445.

[86] Memorial du Dépôt de la Guerre, 1826, iv. 268. Bentinck's despatch,
June 16; Records: Italian States, vol. 59.

[87] Thugut, Briefe ii. 227, 281, 393; Minto's despatch, Sept. 24, 1800;
Records: Austria, vol. 60. "The Emperor was in the act of receiving a
considerable subsidy for a vigorous prosecution of the war at the very
moment when he was clandestinely and in person making the most abject
submission to the common enemy. Baron Thugut was all yesterday under the
greatest uneasiness concerning the event which he had reason to apprehend,
but which was not yet certain. He still retained, however, a slight hope,
from the apparent impossibility of anyone's committing such an act of
infamy and folly. I never saw him or any other man so affected as he was
when he communicated this transaction to me to-day. I said that these
fortresses being demanded as pledges of sincerity, the Emperor should have
given on the same principle the arms and ammunition of the army. Baron
Thugut added that after giving up the soldiers' muskets, the clothes would
be required off their backs, and that if the Emperor took pains to acquaint
the world that he would not defend his crown, there would not be wanting
those who would take it from his head, and perhaps his head with it. He
became so strongly affected that, in laying hold of my hand to express the
strong concern he felt at the notion of having committed me and abused the
confidence I had reposed in his counsels, he burst into tears and literally
wept. I mention these details because they confirm the assurance that every
part of these feeble measures has either been adopted against his opinion
or executed surreptitiously and contrary to the directions he had given."
After the final collapse of Austria, Minto writes of Thugut: "He never for
a moment lost his presence of mind or his courage, nor ever bent to weak
and unbecoming counsels. And perhaps this can be said of him alone in this
whole empire." Jan. 3, 1801, _id._

[88] Martens, vii. 296.

[89] Koch und Schoell, Histoire des Traités, vi. 6. Nelson Despatches, iv.
299.

[90] De Clercq, Traités de la France i. 484.

[91] Parl. Hist., Nov. 3, 1801.

[92] Gagern, Mein Antheil, i. 119. He protests that he never carried the
dog. The waltz was introduced about this time at Paris by Frenchmen
returning from Germany, which gave occasion to the _mot_ that the
French had annexed even the national dance of the Germans.

[93] Perthes, Politische Zustände, i. 311.

[94] Koch und Schoell, vi. 247. Beer, Zehn Jahre Oesterreichischer Politik,
p. 35 Häusser, ii. 398.

[95] Perthes, Politische Zustände, ii. 402, _seq_.

[96] Friedrich, Geschichte des Vatikanischen Konzils, i. 27, 174.

[97] Pertz, Leben Stein, i. 257. Seeley's Stein, i. 125.

[98] The first-hand account of the formation of the Code Napoleon, with
the Procès Verbal of the Council of State and the principal reports,
speeches, etc., made in the Tribunate and the Legislative Bodies, is to
be found in the work of Baron Locré, "La Legislation de la France,"
published at Paris in 1827. Locré was Secretary of the Council of State
under the Consulate and the Empire, and possessed a quantity of records
which had not been published before 1827. The Procès Verbal, though
perhaps not always faithful, contains the only record of Napoleon's own
share in the discussions of the Council of State.

[99] The statement, so often repeated, that the Convention prohibited
Christian worship, or "abolished Christianity," in France, is a fiction.
Throughout the Reign of Terror the Convention maintained the State Church
as established by the Constituent Assembly in 1791. Though the salaries of
the clergy fell into arrear, the Convention rejected a proposal to cease
paying them. The non-juring priests were condemned by the Convention to
transportation, and were liable to be put to death if they returned to
France. But where churches were profaned, or constitutional priests
molested, it was the work of local bodies or of individual Conventionalists
on mission, not of the law. The Commune of Paris shut up most, but not all,
of the churches in Paris. Other local bodies did the same. After the Reign
of Terror ended, the Convention adopted the proposal which it had rejected
before, and abolished the State salary of the clergy (Sept. 20th, 1794).
This merely placed all sects on a level. But local fanatics were still busy
against religion; and the Convention accordingly had to pass a law (Feb.
23, 1795), forbidding all interference with Christian services. This law
required that worship should not be held in a distinctive building (_i.e._
church), nor in the open air. Very soon afterwards the Convention (May 23)
permitted the churches to be used for worship. The laws against non-juring
priests were not now enforced, and a number of churches in Paris were
actually given up to non-juring priests. The Directory was inclined to
renew the persecution of this class in 1796, but the Assemblies would not
permit it; and in July, 1797, the Council of Five Hundred passed a motion
totally abolishing the legal penalties of non-jurors. This was immediately
followed by the coup d'état of Fructidor.

[100] Grégoire, Mémoires, ii. 87. Annales de la Religion, x. 441;
Pressensé, L'Eglise et la Révolution, p. 359.

[101] Papers presented to Parliament, 1802-3, p. 95.

[102] "The King and his Ministers are in the greatest distress and
embarrassment. The latter do not hesitate to avow it, and the King has for
the last week shown such evident symptoms of dejection that the least
observant could not but remark it. He has expressed himself most feelingly
upon the unfortunate predicament in which he finds himself. He would
welcome the hand that should assist him and the voice that should give him
courage to extricate himself."--F. Jackson's despatch from Berlin, May 16,
1803; Records; Prussia, vol. 189.

[103] Häusser ii. 472. There are interesting accounts of Lombard and the
other leading persons of Berlin in F. Jackson's despatches of this date.
The charge of gross personal immorality made against Lombard is brought
against almost every German public man of the time in the writings of
opponents. History and politics are, however, a bad tribunal of private
character.

[104] Fournier, Gentz und Cobenzl, p. 79. Beer, Zehn Jahre, p. 49. The
despatches of Sir J. Warren of this date from St. Petersburg (Records:
Russia, vol. 175) are full of plans for meeting an expected invasion of the
Morea and the possible liberation of the Greeks by Bonaparte. They give the
impression that Eastern affairs were really the dominant interest with
Alexander in his breach with France.

[105] Miot de Melito, i. 16. Savary, ii. 32.

[106] A protest handed in at Vienna by Louis XVIII. against Napoleon's
title was burnt in the presence of the French ambassador. The Austrian
title was assumed on August 10, but the publication was delayed a day on
account of the sad memories of August 10, 1792. Fournier, p. 102. Beer, p.
60.

[107] Papers presented to Parliament, 28th January, 1806, and 5th May,
1815.

[108] Hardenberg, ii. 50: corrected in the articles on Hardenberg and
Haugwitz in the Deutsche Allgemeine Biographie.

[109] Hardenberg, v. 167. Hardenberg was meanwhile representing himself to
the British and Russian envoys as the partisan of the Allies. "He declared
that he saw it was become impossible for this country to remain neutral,
and that he should unequivocally make known his sentiments to that effect
to the King. He added that if the decision depended upon himself, Russia
need entertain no apprehension as to the part he should take."--Jackson,
Sept. 3, 1805; Records: Prussia, vol. 194.

[110] Gentz, Schriften, iii. 60, Beer, 132, 141. Fournier, 104. Springer,
i. 64.

[111] Rustow, Krieg von, 1805, p. 55.

[112] Nelson Despatches, vi. 457.

[113] "The reports from General Mack are of the most satisfactory nature,
and the apprehensions which were at one time entertained from the immense
force which Bonaparte is bringing into Germany gradually decrease."--Sir A.
Paget's Despatch from Vienna, Sept, 18; Records: Austria, vol. 75.

[114] Rustow, p. 154. Schönhals, Krieg von, 1805, p. 33. Paget's despatch,
Oct. 25; Records: Austria, vol. 75. "The jealousy and misunderstanding
among the generals had reached such a pitch that no communication took
place between Ferdinand and Mack but in writing. Mack openly attributed his
calamities to the ill-will and opposition of the Archduke and the rest of
the generals. The Archduke accuses Mack of ignorance, of madness, of
cowardice, and of treachery. The consternation which prevails here (Vienna)
is at the highest pitch. The pains which are taken to keep the public in
the dark naturally increase the alarm. Not a single newspaper has been
delivered for several days past except the wretched _Vienna. Gazette_.
The Emperor is living at a miserable country-house, in order, as people
say, that he may effect his escape. Every bark on the Danube has been put
in requisition by the Government. The greatest apprehensions prevail on
account of the Russians, of whose excesses loud complaints are made. Their
arrival here is as much dreaded as that of the French. Cobenzl and
Collenbach are in such a state of mind as to render them totally unfit for
all business." Cobenzl was nevertheless still able to keep up his jocular
style in asking the ambassador for the English subsidies:--"Vous êtes
malade, je le suis aussi un peu, mais ce qui est encore plus malade que
nous deux ce sont nos finances: ainsi pour l'amour de Dieu dépêchez vous de
nous donner vos deux cent mille livres sterlings. Je vous embrasse de tout
mon coeur,"--Cobenzl to Paget, enclosed in _id_.

[115] Hardenberg, ii. 268. Jackson, Oct. 7. Records: Prussia, vol. 195.
"The intelligence was received yesterday at Potsdam, while M. de Hardenberg
was with the King of Prussia. His Prussian Majesty was very violently
affected by it, and in the first moment of anger ordered M. de Hardenberg
to return to Berlin and immediately to dismiss the French ambassador. After
a little reflection, however, he said that that measure should be
postponed."

[116] Rapp, Mémoires, p. 58. Beer, p. 188.

[117] "The scarcity of provisions had been very great indeed. Much
discouragement had arisen in consequence, and a considerable degree of
insubordination, which, though less easy to produce in a Russian army than
in any other, is, when it does make its appearance, most prejudicial, was
beginning to manifest itself in various ways. The bread waggons were
pillaged on their way to the camp, and it became very difficult to repress
the excesses of the troops."--Report of General Ramsay, Dec. 10; Records:
Austria, vol. 78.

[118] Hardenberg, ii. 345, Haugwitz had just become joint Foreign Minister
with Hardenberg.

[119] Haugwitz' justification of himself, with Hardenberg's comments upon
it, is to be seen in Hardenberg, v. 220. But see also, for Hardenberg's own
bad faith, _id._ i. 551.

[120] Lord Harrowby's despatch from Berlin, Dec. 7; Records: Prussia, vol.
196. The news of Austerlitz reached Berlin on the night of Dec. 7. Next day
Lord Harrowby called on Hardenberg. "He told me that in a council of war
held since the arrival of the first accounts of the disaster, it had been
decided to order a part of the Prussian army to march into Bohemia. These
events, he said, need not interrupt our negotiations." Then, on the 12th
came the news of the armistice: Harrowby saw Hardenberg that evening. "I
was struck with something like irritation in his manner, with a sort of
reference to the orders of the King, and with an expression which dropped
from him that circumstances might possibly arise in which Prussia could
look only to her own defence and security. I attributed this in a great
degree to the agitation of the moment, and I should have pushed the
question to a point if the entrance of Count Metternich and M. d'Alopeus
had not interrupted me.... Baron Hardenberg assured us that the military
movements of the Prussian army were proceeding without a moment's loss of
time." On the 25th Haugwitz arrived with his treaty. Hardenberg then
feigned illness. "Baron Hardenberg was too ill to see me, or, as far as I
could learn, any other person; and it has been impossible for me to
discover what intelligence is brought by Count Haugwitz."

[121] Lefebvre, Histoire des Cabinets, ii. 217.

[122] Martens, viii. 388; viii. 479. Beer, p. 232.

[123] Correspondence de Napoleon, xii. 253.

[124] The story of Pitt's "Austerlitz look" preceding his death is so
impressive and so well known that I cannot resist giving the real facts
about the reception of the news of Austerlitz in England. There were
four Englishmen who were expected to witness the battle, Sir A. Paget,
ambassador at Vienna, Lord L. Gower, ambassador with the Czar, Lord
Harrington and General Ramsay, military envoys. Of these, Lord
Harrington had left England too late to reach the armies; Sir A. Paget
sat writing despatches at Olmütz without hearing the firing, and on
going out after the post left, was astonished to fall in with the
retreating army; Gower was too far in the rear; and General Ramsay
unfortunately went off on that very day to get some new passes. In
consequence no Englishman witnessed the awful destruction that took
place; and Paget's despatch, the first that reached England, quite
misrepresented the battle, treating the defeat as not a decisive one.
Pitt actually thought at first that the effect of the battle was
favourable to his policy, and likely to encourage Prussia in its
determination to fight. So late as December 20th the following
instructions were sent to Harrowby at Berlin: "Even supposing the
advantage of the day to have been decidedly with Bonaparte, it must
have been obtained with a loss which cannot have left his force in a
condition to contend with the army of Prussia and at the same time to
make head against the Allies. If on the other hand it should appear
that the advantage has been with the Allies, there is every reason to
hope that Prussia will come forward with vigour to decide the contest."
Records: Prussia, vol. 196. It was the surrender of Ulm which really
gave Pitt the shock attributed to Austerlitz. The despatch then
written--evidently from Pitt's dictation--exhorting the Emperor to do
his duty, is the most impassioned and soul-stirring thing in the whole
political correspondence of the time.

[125] Hardenberg, ii. 463. Hardenberg, who, in spite of his weak and
ambiguous conduct up to the end of 1805, felt bitterly the disgraceful
position in which Prussia had placed itself, now withdrew from office. "I
received this morning a message from Baron Hardenberg requesting me to call
on him. He said that he could no longer remain in office consistently with
his honour, and that he waited only for the return of Count Haugwitz to
give up to him the management of his department. 'You know,' he said, 'my
principles, and the efforts that I have made in favour of the good cause;
judge then of the pain that I must experience when I am condemned to be
accessory to this measure. You know, probably, that I was an advocate for
the acquisition of Hanover, but I wished it upon terms honourable to both
parties. I thought it a necessary bulwark to cover the Prussian dominions,
and I thought that the House of Hanover might have been indemnified
elsewhere. But now,' he added, 'j'abhorre les moyens infames par lesquels
nous faisons cette acquisition. Nous pourrions rester les amis de Bonaparte
sans être ses esclaves.' He apologised for this language, and said I must
not consider it as coming from a Prussian Minister, but from a man who
unbosomed himself to his friend.... I have only omitted the distressing
picture of M. de Hardenberg's agitation during this conversation. He
bewailed the fate of Prussia, and complained of the hardships he had
undergone for the last three months, and of the want of firmness and
resolution in his Prussian Majesty. He several times expressed the hope
that his Majesty's Government and that of Russia would make some allowances
for the situation of this country. They had the means, he said, to do it an
infinity of mischief. The British navy might destroy the Prussian commerce,
and a Russian army might conquer some of her eastern provinces; but
Bonaparte would be the only gainer, as thereby Prussia would be thrown
completely into his arms."--F. Jackson's despatch from Berlin, March 27,
1806; Records: Prussia, vol. 197.

[126] On the British envoy demanding his passports, Haugwitz entered into a
long defence of his conduct, alleging grounds of necessity. Mr. Jackson
said that there could be no accommodation with England till the note
excluding British vessels was reversed. "M. de Haugwitz immediately
rejoined, 'I was much surprised when I found that that note had been
delivered to you.' 'How,' I said, 'can _you_ be surprised who was the
author of the measures that give rise to it?' The only answer I received
was, 'Ah! ne dites pas cela.' He observed that it would be worth
considering whether our refusal to acquiesce in the present state of things
might not bring about one still more disastrous. I smiled, and asked if I
was to understand that a Prussian army would take a part in the threatened
invasion of England. He replied that he did not now mean to insinuate any
such thing, but that it might be impossible to answer for
events."--Jackson's Despatch, April 25. _id._

[127] Papers presented to Parliament, 1806, p. 63.

[128] "An order has been issued to the officers of the garrison of Berlin
to abstain, under severe penalties, from speaking of the state of public
affairs. This order was given in consequence of the very general and loud
expressions of dissatisfaction which issued from all classes of people, but
particularly from the military, at the recent conduct of the Government;
for it has been in contemplation to publish an edict prohibiting the public
at large from discussing questions of state policy. The experience of a
very few days must convince the authors of this measure of the reverse of
their expectation, the satires and sarcasms upon their conduct having
become more universal than before."--Jackson's Despatch, March 22,
_id_. "On Thursday night the windows of Count Haugwitz' house were
completely demolished by some unknown person. As carbine bullets were
chiefly made use of for the purpose, it is suspected to have been done by
some of the garrison. The same thing had happened some nights before, but
the Count took no notice of it. Now a party of the police patrol the
street"--_Id_., April 27.

[129] Pertz, i. 331. Seeley, i. 271.

[130] Hopfner, Der Krieg von 1806, i. 48.

[131] A list of all Prussian officers in 1806 of and above the rank of
major is given in Henckel von Donnersmarck, Erinnerungen, with their years
of service. The average of a colonel's service is 42 years; of a major's,
35.

[132] Müffling, Aus Meinem Leben, p. 15. Hopfner, i. 157. Correspondence de
Napoleon, xiii. 150.

[133] Hopfner, ii. 390. Hardenberg, iii. 230.

[134] "Count Stein, the only man of real talents in the administration, has
resigned or was dismissed. He is a considerable man, of great energy,
character, and superiority of mind, who possessed the public esteem in a
high degree, and, I have no doubt, deserved it.... During the negotiation
for an armistice, the expenses of Bonaparte's table and household at Berlin
were defrayed by the King of Prussia. Since that period one of the
Ministers called upon Stein, who was the chief of the finances, to pay
300,000 crowns on the same account. Stein refused with strong expressions
of indignation. The King spoke to him: he remonstrated with his Majesty in
the most forcible terms, descanted on the wretched humiliation of such mean
conduct, and said that he never could pay money on such an account unless
he had the order in writing from his Majesty. This order was given a few
days after the conversation."--Hutchinson's Despatch, Jan. 1, 1807;
Records: Prussia, vol. 200.

[135] Corr. Nap. xiii. 555.

[136] "It is still doubtful who commands, and whether Kamensky has or has
not given up the command. I wrote to him on the first moment of my arrival,
but have received no answer from him. On the 23rd, the day of the first
attack, he took off his coat and waistcoat, put all his stars and ribbons
over his shirt, and ran about the streets of Pultusk encouraging the
soldiers, over whom he is said to have great influence."--Lord Hutchinson's
Despatch, Jan. 1, 1807; Records: Prussia, vol. 200.

[137] Hutchinson's letter, in Adair, Mission to Vienna, p. 373.

[138] For the Whig foreign policy, see Adair, p. 11-13. Its principle was
to relinquish the attempt to raise coalitions of half-hearted Governments
against France by means of British subsidies, but to give help to States
which of their own free will entered into war with Napoleon.

[139] The battle of Friedland is described in Lord Hutchinson's despatch
(Records: Prussia, vol. 200--in which volume are also Colonel Sonntag's
reports, containing curious details about the Russians, and some personal
matter about Napoleon in a letter from an inhabitant of Eylau; also
Gneisenau's appeal to Mr. Canning from Colberg).

[140] Bignon, vi. 342.

[141] Papers presented to Parliament, 1808, p. 106. The intelligence
reached Canning on the 21st of July. Canning's despatch to Brook Taylor,
July 22; Records: Denmark, vol. 196. It has never been known who sent the
information, but it must have been some one very near the Czar, for it
purported to give the very words used by Napoleon in his interview with
Alexander on the raft. It is clear, from Canning's despatch of July 22,
that this conversation and nothing else had up till then been reported. The
informant was probably one of the authors of the English alliance of 1805.

[142] Napoleon to Talleyrand, July 31, 1807. He instructs Talleyrand to
enter into certain negotiations with the Danish Minister, which would be
meaningless if the Crown Prince had already promised to hand over the
fleet. The original English documents, in Records: Denmark, vols. 196, 197,
really show that Canning never considered that he had any proof of the
intentions of Denmark, and that he justified his action only by the
inability of Denmark to resist Napoleon's demands.

[143] Cevallos, p. 73.

[144] Pertz, ii. 23. Seeley, i. 430.

[145] Cevallos, p. 13. Baumgarten, Geschichte Spaniens, i. 131.

[146] Escoiquiz, Exposé, p. 57, 107.

[147] Miot de Melito, ii. ch. 7. Murat was made King of Naples.

[148] Baumgarten, i. 242.

[149] Wellington Despatches, iii. 135.

[150] Häusser, iii. 133. Seeley, i. 480.

[151] For the striking part played at Erfurt by Talleyrand in opposition to
Napoleon see Metternich's paper of December 4, in Beer, p. 516. It seems
that Napoleon wished to involve the Czar in active measures against
Austria, but was thwarted by Talleyrand.

[152] Baumgarten i. 311.

[153] Napier, ii. 17.

[154] Metternich, ii. 147.

[155] Gentz, Tagebücher, i. 60.

[156] Steffens, vi. 153. Mémoires du Roi Jérome, iii. 340.

[157] Beer, p. 370. Häusser, iii. 278.

[158] Correspondance de Napoleon, xviii. 459, 472. Gentz, Tagebücher, i.
120, Pelet, Mémoires sur la Guerre de 1809, i. 223.

[159] "Je n'ai jamais vu d'affaire aussi sanglante et aussi meurtrière."
Report of the French General, Mémoires de Jérome, iv. 109.

[160] See Arndt's Poem on Schill. Gedichte, i. 328 (ed. 1837).

[161] Wellington Despatches, iv. 533. Sup. Desp. vi. 319, Napier, ii. 357.

[162] Correspondance de Napoleon: Décision, Mai 23, 1806. Parliamentary
Papers, 1810, p. 123, 697.

[163] Beer, p. 445, Gentz, Tagebücher, i. 82, 118.

[164] Correspondance de Napoleon, xix. 15, 265.

[165] Corresp. de Napoleon, xxiii. 62, Décret, 9 Déc., 1811.

[166] Mémoires de Jérome, v. 185.

[167] Wellington Supplementary Despatches, vi. 41. Napier, iii. 250.

[168] Baumgarten, Geschichte Spaniens, i. 405.

[169] Hardenberg (Ranke), iv. 268. Häusser, iii. 535. Seeley, ii. 447.

[170] Martens, Nouveau Recueil, i. 417. A copy, or the original, of this
Treaty was captured by the Russians with other of Napoleon's papers during
the retreat from Moscow, and a draft of it sent to London, which remains in
the Records.

[171] Metternich, i. 122.

[172] Mémoires de Jérome, v. 247.

[173] Bogdanowitsch, i. 72; Chambray, i. 186. Sir R. Wilson, Invasion of
Russia, p. 15.

[174] Droysen, Leben des Grafen York. I. 394.

[175] Pertz, iii. 211, _seq_. Seeley, iii. 21.

[176] Oncken, Oesterreich und Preussen, i. 28.

[177] Martens, N.R., III. 234. British and Foreign State Papers
(Hertslet), i. 49.

[178] For Breslau in February, see Steffens, 7. 69.

[179] For the difference between the old and the new officers, see
Correspondance de Napoléon, 27 Avril, 1813.

[180] Henckel von Donnersmarck, p. 187. The battles of Lützen, Bautzen, and
Leipzig are described in the despatches of Lord Cathcart, who witnessed
them in company with the Czar and King Frederick William. Records: Russia,
207, 209.

[181] The account given in the following pages of Napoleon's motives and
action during the armistice is based upon the following letters printed in
the twenty-fifth volume of the Correspondence:--To Eugène, June 2, July 1,
July 17, Aug. 4; to Maret, July 8; to Daru, July 17; to Berthier, July 23;
to Davoust, July 24, Aug. 5; to Ney, Aug. 4, Aug. 12. The statement of
Napoleon's error as to the strength of the Austrian force is confirmed by
Metternich, i. 150.

[182] Oncken, i. 80.

[183] Napoleon to Eugène, 1st July, 1813.

[184] Metternich, i. 163.

[185] Häusser, iv. 59. One of the originals is contained in Lord Cathcart's
despatch from Kalisch, March 28th, 1813. Records: Russia, Vol. 206.

[186] Mémoires de Jérome, vi. 223.

[187] "Your lordship has only to recollect the four days' continued
fighting at Leipzig, followed by fourteen days' forced marches in the worst
weather, in order to understand the reasons that made some repose
absolutely necessary. The total loss of the Austrians alone, since the 10th
of August, at the time of our arrival at Frankfort, was 80,000 men. We were
entirely unprovided with heavy artillery, the nearest battery train not
having advanced further than the frontiers of Bohemia." It was thought for
a moment that the gates of Strasburg and Huningen might be opened by
bribery, and the Austrian Government authorised the expenditure of a
million florins for this purpose; in that case the march into Switzerland
would have been abandoned. The bribing plan, however, broke down.--Lord
Aberdeen's despatches, Nov. 24, Dec. 25, 1813. Records; Austria, 107.

[188] Castlereagh's despatch from Langres, Jan. 29, 1814. Records:
Continent, Vol. II.: "As far as I have hitherto felt myself called on to
give an opinion, I have stated that the British Government did not decline
treating with Bonaparte." "The Czar said he observed my view of the
question was different from what he believed prevailed in England"
(_id._ Feb. 16). See Southey's fine Ode on the Negotiations of 1814.

[189] British and Foreign State Papers, I. 131.

[190] Béranger, Biographie, ed. duod., p. 354.

[191] British and Foreign State Papers, I. 151.

[192] Lord W. Bentinck, who was with Murat, warned him against the probable
consequences of his duplicity. Bentinck had, however, to be careful in his
language, as the following shows. Murat having sent him a sword of honour,
he wrote to the English Government, May 1, 1814: "It is a severe violence
to my feelings to incur any degree of obligation to an individual whom I so
entirely despise. But I feel it my duty not to betray any appearance of a
spirit of animosity." To Murat he wrote on the same day: "The sword of a
great captain is the most flattering present which a soldier can receive.
It is with the highest gratitude that I accept the gift, Sire, which you
have done me the honour to send."--Records: Sicily, Vol. 98.

[193] Treaties of Teplitz, Sept. 9, 1813. In Bianchi, Storia Documentata
della Diplomazia Europea, i. 334, there is a long protest addressed by
Metternich to Castlereagh on May 26, 1814, referring with great minuteness
to a number of clauses in a secret Treaty signed by all the Powers at
Prague on July 27, 1813, and ratified at London on August 23, giving
Austria the disposal of all Italy. This protest, which has been accepted as
genuine in Reuchlin's Geschichte Italiens and elsewhere, is, with the
alleged secret Treaty, a forgery. My grounds for this statement are as
follows:--(1) There was no British envoy at Prague in July, 1813. (2) The
private as well as the official letters of Castlereagh to Lord Cathcart of
Sept. 13 and 18, and the instructions sent to Lord Aberdeen during August
and September, prove that no joint Treaty existed up to that date, to which
both England and Austria were parties. Records: Russia, 207, 209 A.
Austria, 105. (3) Lord Aberdeen's reports of his negotiations with
Metternich after this date conclusively prove that almost all Italian
questions, including even the Austrian frontier, were treated as matters to
be decided by the Allies in common. While Austria's right to a
preponderance in upper Italy is admitted, the affairs of Rome and Naples
are always treated as within the range of English policy.

[194] The originals of the Genoese and Milanese petitions for independence
are in Records: Sicily, Vol. 98. "The Genoese universally desire the
restoration of their ancient Republic. They dread above all other
arrangements their annexation to Piedmont, to the inhabitants of which
there have always existed a peculiar aversion."--Bentinck's Despatch, April
27, 1814, _id._

[195] Castlereagh, x. 18.

[196] As Arndt, Schriften, ii. 311, Fünf oder sechs Wunder Gottes.

[197] Bernhardi, Geschichte Russlands, iii. 26.

[198] Parl. Debates, xxvii. 634, 834.

[199] Wellington, Sup. Des., x. 468; Castlereagh, x. 145. Records, Sicily,
vol. 97. The future King Louis Philippe was sent by his father-in-law,
Ferdinand, to England, to intrigue against Murat among the Sovereigns and
Ministers then visiting England. His own curious account of his
proceedings, with the secret sign for the Prince Regent, given him by Louis
XVIII., who was afraid to write anything, is in _id._, vol. 99.

[200] Wippermann, Kurhessen, pp. 9-13. In Hanover torture was restored, and
occasionally practised till the end of 1818: also the punishment of death
by breaking on the wheel. See Hodgskin, Travels, ii. 51, 69.

[201] Baumgarten, Geschichte Spaniens, ii. 30, Wellington, D., xii. 27; S.
D., ix. 17.

[202] Wellington, S.D., ix. 328.

[203] Compare his cringing letter to Pichegru in Manuscrit de Louis XVIII.,
p. 463, with his answer in 1797 to the Venetian Senate, in Thiers.

[204] _Moniteur_, 5 Juin. British and Foreign State Papers, 1812-14,
ii. 960.

[205] The payment of £13 per annum in direct taxes. No one could be elected
who did not pay £40 per annum in direct taxes,--so large a sum, that the
Charta provided for the case of there not being fifty persons in a
department eligible.

[206] Fourteen out of Napoleon's twenty marshals and three-fifths of his
Senators were called to the Chamber of Peers. The names of the excluded
Senators will be found in Vaulabelle, ii. 100; but the reader must not take
Vaulabelle's history for more than a collection of party-legends.

[207] Ordonnance, in _Moniteur_, 26 Mai.

[208] This poor creature owed his life, as he owes a shabby immortality, to
the beautiful and courageous Grace Dalrymple Elliot. Journal of Mrs. G.D.
Elliot, p. 79.

[209] Carnot, Mémoire adressé au Roi, p. 20.

[210] Wellington Despatches, xii. 248. On the ground of his ready-money
dealings, it has been supposed that Wellington understood the French
people. On the contrary, he often showed great want of insight, both in his
acts and in his opinions, when the finer, and therefore more statesmanlike,
sympathies were in question. Thus, in the delicate position of ambassador
of a victorious Power and counsellor of a restored dynasty, he bitterly
offended the French country-population by behaving like a _grand seigneur_
before 1789, and hunting with a pack of hounds over their young corn. The
matter was so serious that the Government of Louis XVIII. had to insist on
Wellington stopping his hunts. (Talleyrand et Louis XVIII., p. 141.) This
want of insight into popular feeling, necessarily resulted in some
portentous blunders: _e.g.,_ all that Wellington could make of
Napoleon's return from Elba was the following:--"He has acted upon false or
no information, and the King will destroy him without difficulty and in a
short time." Despatches, xii. 268.

[211] A good English account of Vienna during the Congress will be found in
"Travels in Hungary," by Dr. R. Bright, the eminent physician. His visit to
Napoleon's son, then a child five years old, is described in a passage of
singular beauty and pathos.

[212] British and Foreign State Papers, 1814-15, p. 554, _seq_.
Talleyrand et Louis XVIII., p. 13. Kluber, ix. 167. Seeley's Stein, iii.
248. Gentz, Dépêches Inédites, i. 107. Records: Continent, vol. 7, Oct. 2.

[213] Bernhardi, i. 2; ii. 2, 661.

[214] Wellington, S.D., ix. 335.

[215] Wellington, S.D., ix. 340. Records: Continent, vol. 7, Oct. 9, 14.

[216] Talleyrand, p. 74. Records, _id.,_ Oct. 24, 25.

[217] Wellington, S.D., ix. 331. Talleyrand, pp. 59, 82, 85, 109. Klüber,
vii. 21.

[218] British and Foreign State Papers, 1814-15, p. 814. Klüber, vii. 61.

[219] Talleyrand, p. 281.

[220] B. and F. State Papers, 1814-15, ii. 1001.

[221] Castlereagh did not contradict them. Records: Cont., vol. 10, Jan. 8.

[222] British and Foreign State Papers, 1814-15, p. 642. Seeley's Stein,
iii. 303. Talleyrand, Preface, p. 18.

[223] Chiefly, but not altogether, because Napoleon's war with England had
ruined the trade of the ports. See the report of Marshal Brune, in Daudet,
La Terreur Blanche, p. 173, and the striking picture of Marseilles in
Thiers, xviii. 340, drawn from his own early recollections. Bordeaux was
Royalist for the same reason.

[224] Berriat-St. Prix, Napoléon à Grenoble, p. 10.

[225] Béranger, Biographie, p. 373, ed. duod.

[226] See their contemptible addresses, as well as those of the army, in
the _Moniteur_, from the 10th to the 19th of March to Louis XVIII.,
from the 27th onwards to Napoleon.

[227] _i.e._, Because he had abused his liberty. On Ney's trial two
courtiers alleged that Ney said he "would bring back Napoleon in an iron
cage." Ney contradicted, them. Procès de Ney, ii. 105, 113.

[228] British and Foreign State Papers, 1814-15, ii. 443.

[229] Correspondance de Napoleon, xxviii. 171, 267, etc.

[230] British and Foreign State Papers, 1814-15, ii. 275. Castlereagh, ix.
512, Wellington, S.D., ix. 244. Records: Continent, vol. 12, Feb. 26.

[231] Correspondance de Napoléon, xxviii. 111, 127. The order forbidding
him to come to Paris is wrongly dated April 19; probably for May 29. The
English documents relating to Ferdinand's return to Naples, with the
originals of many proclamations, etc., are in Records: Sicily, vols. 103,
104. They are interesting chiefly as showing the deep impression made on
England by Ferdinand's cruelties in 1799.

[232] Benjamin Constant, Mémoire sur les Cent Jours.

[233] Lafayette, Mémoires, v. 414.

[234] Miot de Melito, iii. 434.

[235] Napoleon to Ney; Correspondance, xxviii. 334.

[236] "I have got an infamous army, very weak and ill-equipped, and a very
inexperienced staff." (Despatches, xii. 358.) So, even after his victory,
he writes:--"I really believe that, with the exception of my old Spanish
infantry, I have got not only the worst troops but the worst-equipped army,
with the worst staff that was ever brought together." (Despatches, xii.
509.)

[237] Therefore he kept his forces more westwards, and further from
Blücher, than if he had known Napoleon's actual plan. But the severance of
the English from the sea required to be guarded against as much as a defeat
of Blücher. The Duke never ceased to regard it as an open question whether
Napoleon ought not to have thrown his whole force between Brussels and the
sea. (_Vide_ Memoir written in 1842 Wellington, S.D., ix. 530.)

[238] Metternich, i., p. 155.

[239] Wellington Despatches, xii. 649.

[240] Wellington, S.D., xi. 24, 32. Maps of projected frontiers, Records:
Cont., vol 23.

[241] Despatches, xii. 596. Seeley's Stein, iii. 332.

[242] B. and F. State Papers, 1815-16, iii. 211. The second article is the
most characteristic:--"Les trois Princes ... confessant que la nation
Chrétienne dont eux et leurs peuples font partie n'a réellement d'autre
Souverain que celui à qui seul appartient en propriété la puissance ...
c'est-à-dire Dieu notre Divin Sauveur Jésus Christ, le Verbe du Très Haut,
la parole de vie: leurs Majestés recommandent ... à leurs peuples ... de se
fortifier chaque jour davantage dans les principes et l'exercice des
devoirs que le Divin Sauveur a enseignés aux hommes."

[243] Wellington, S.D., xi. 175. The account which Castlereagh gives of
the Czar's longing for universal peace appears to refute the theory that
Alexander had some idea of an attack upon Turkey in thus uniting
Christendom. According to Castlereagh, Metternich also thought that "it was
quite clear that the Czar's mind was affected," but for the singular reason
that "peace and goodwill engrossed all his thoughts, and that he had found
him of late friendly and reasonable on all points" (_Id_.) There was,
however, a strong popular impression at this time that Alexander was on the
point of invading Turkey. (Gentz, D.I., i. 197.)

[244] B. and F. State Papers, 1815-16, iii. 273. Records; Continent, vol.
30.

[245] Klüber, ii. 598.

[246] Klüber, vi. 12. It covers, with its appendices, 205 pages.

[247] In the first draft of the secret clauses of the Treaty of June 14,
1800, between England and Austria (see p. 150), Austria was to have had
Genoa. But the fear arising that Russia would not permit Austria's
extension to the Mediterranean, an alteration was made, whereby Austria was
promised half of Piedmont, Genoa to go to the King of Sardinia in
compensation.

[248] Pertz, Leben Steins, iv 524.

[249] Talleyrand, p. 277.

[250] B. and F. State Papers, 1815-16, p. 928.

[251] Bernhardi, iii. 2, 10, 666.

[252] "We are now inundated with Russian agents of various descriptions,
some public and some secret, but all holding the same language, all
preaching 'Constitution and liberal principles,' and all endeavouring to
direct the eyes of the independents towards the North.... A copy of the
instructions sent to the Russian Minister here has fallen into the hands of
the Austrians." A'Court (Ambassador at Naples) to Castlereagh, Dec. 7,
1815, Records: Sicily, 104.

[253] A profound reason has been ascribed to Metternich's conservatism by
some of his English apologists in high place, namely the fear that if ideas
of nationality should spring up, the non-German components of the Austrian
monarchy, viz., Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia, etc., would break off and become
independent States. But there is not a word in Metternich's writings which
shows that this apprehension had at this time entered his mind. To
generalise his Italian policy of 1815 into a great prophetic statesmanship,
is to interpret the ideas of one age by the history of the next.

[254] In Moravia. For the system of espionage, see the book called "Carte
segrete della polizia Austriaca," consisting of police-reports which fell
into the hands of the Italians at Milan in 1848.

[255] Bianchi, Storia Documentata, i. 208. The substance of this secret
clause was communicated to A'Court, the English Ambassador at Naples. "I
had no hesitation in saying that anything which contributed to the good
understanding now prevailing between Austria and Naples, could not but
prove extremely satisfactory to the British Government." A'Court to
Castlereagh, July 18, 1815. Records: Sicily, vol. 104.

[256] Letters in Reuchlin, Geschichte Italiens, i. 71. The Holy Alliance
was turned to better account by the Sardinian statesmen than by the
Neapolitans. "Apres s'être allié," wrote the Sardinian Ambassador at St.
Petersburg, "en Jesus-Christ notre Sauveur parole de vie, pourquoi et à
quel propos s'allier en Metternich?"

[257] See the passages from Grenville's letters quoted in pp. 125, 126 of
this work.

[258] Castlereagh, x. 18. "The danger is that the transition" (to liberty)
"may be too sudden to ripen into anything likely to make the world better
or happier.... I am sure it is better to retard than accelerate the
operation of this most hazardous principle which is abroad."

[259] B. and F. State Papers, 1816-17, p. 553. Metternich, iii. 80.
Castlereagh had at first desired that the Constitution should be modified
under the influence of the English Ambassador. Instructions to A'Court,
March 14, 1814, marked "Most Secret"; Records: Sicily, vol. 99. A'Court
himself detested the Constitution. "I conceive the Sicilian people to be
totally and radically unfit to be entrusted with political power." July 23,
1814, id.

[260] Castlereagh, x. 25.

[261] "If his Majesty announces his determination to give effect to the
main principles of a constitutional régime, it is possible that he may
extinguish the existing arrangement with impunity, and re-establish one
more consistent with the efficiency of the executive power, and which may
restore the great landed proprietors and the clergy to a due share of
authority." Castlereagh, id.

[262] Daudet, La Terreur Blanche, p. 186. The loss of the troops was a
hundred. The stories of wholesale massacres at Marseilles and other places
are fictions.

[263] See the Address, in _Journal des Débats_, 15 Octobre: "Nous
oserons solliciter humblement la rétribution nécessaire," etc. For the
general history of the Session, see Duvergier de Hauranne, iii. 257;
Viel-Castal, iv. 139; Castlereagh's severe judgment of Artois. Records:
Cont., 28, Sept. 21.

[264] _Journal des Débats_, 29 October.

[265] Wellington, S.D., xi. 95. This self-confident folly is repeated in
many of Lord Liverpool's letters.

[266] Procès du Maréchal Ney, i. 212.

[267] Ney was not, however, a mere fighting general. The Military Studies
published in English in 1833 from his manuscripts prove this. They abound
in acute remarks, and his estimate of the quality of the German soldier, at
a time when the Germans were habitually beaten and despised, is very
striking. He urges that when French infantry fight in three ranks, the
charge should be made after the two front ranks have fired, without waiting
for the third to fire. "The German soldier, formed by the severest
discipline, is cooler than any other. He would in the end obtain the
advantage in this kind of firing if it lasted long." (P. 100.) Ney's
parents appear to have been Würtemberg people who had settled in Alsace.
The name was really Neu (New).

[268] See the extracts from La Bourdonnaye's printed speech in _Journal
des Débats_, 19 Novembre: "Pour arrêter leurs trames criminelles, il faut
des fers, des bourreaux, des supplices. La mort, la mort seule peut
effrayer leurs complices et mettre fin à leurs complots," etc. The journals
abound with similar speeches.

[269] General Mouton-Duvernet. Several were sentenced to death in their
absence; some were acquitted on the singular plea that they had become
subjects of the Empire of Elba, and so could not be guilty of treason to
the King of France.

[270] The sentence was commuted by the King to twelve years' imprisonment.
General Chartran was actually shot. It is stated, though it appears not to
be clear, that his prosecution began at the same late date. Duvergier de
Hauranne, iii. 335.

[271] The highest number admitted by the Government to have been imprisoned
at any one time under the Law of Public Security was 319, in addition to
750 banished from their homes or placed under surveillance. No one has
collected statistics of the imprisonments by legal sentence. The old story
that there were 70,000 persons in prison is undoubtedly an absurd
exaggeration; but the numbers given by the Government, even if true at any
one moment, afford no clue to the whole number of imprisonments, for as
fast as one person gets out of prison in France in a time of political
excitement, another is put in. The writer speaks from personal experience,
having been imprisoned in 1871. Any one who has seen how these affairs are
conducted will know how ridiculous it would be to suppose that the central
government has information of every case.

[272] See, _e.g._, the Pétition aux Deux Chambres, 1816, at the
beginning of P.L. Courier's works.

[273] _Journal des Débats_, 19 Decembre, 1815.

[274] Wellington, S.D., xi 309.

[275] Despatch in Duvergier de Hauranne, iii. 441.

[276] Pertz, Leben Steins, iv. 428.

[277] Schmalz, Berichtigung, etc., p. 14.

[278] Pertz, Leben Steins, v. 23.

[279] A curious account of the festival remains, written by Kieser, one of
the Professors who took part in it (Kieser, Das Wartburgfest, 1818). It is
so silly that it is hard to believe it to have been written by a grown-up
man. He says of the procession to the Wartburg, "There have indeed been
processions that surpassed this in outward glory and show; but in inner
significant value it cannot yield to any." But making allowance for the
author's personal weakness of head, his book is a singular and instructive
picture of the mental condition of "Young Germany" and its teachers at that
time--a subject that caused such extravagant anxiety to Governments, and so
seriously affected the course of political history. It requires some effort
to get behind the ridiculous side of the students' Teutonism; but there
were elements of reality there. Persons familiar with Wales will be struck
by the resemblance, both in language and spirit, between the scenes of 1818
and the religious meetings or the Eisleddfodau of the Welsh, a resemblance
not accidental, but resulting from similarity of conditions, viz., a real
susceptibility to religious, patriotic, and literary ideas among a people
unacquainted with public or practical life on a large scale. But the
vigorous political action of the Welsh in 1880, when the landed interest
throughout the Principality lost seats which it had held for centuries,
surprised only those who had seen nothing but extravagance in the chapel
and the field-meeting. Welsh ardour, hitherto in great part undirected,
then had a practical effect because English organisation afforded it a
model: German ardour in 1817 proved sterile because it had no such example
at hand.

[280] See the speech in Bernhardi, iii. 669.

[281] Gentz, D.I., ii. 87, iii. 72.

[282] Castlereagh, xii. 55, 62.

[283] Wellington, S.D., xii. 835.

[284] B. and F. State Papers, 1818-19, vi. 14.

[285] Gentz, D.I., i. 400. Gentz, the confidant and adviser of Metternich,
was secretary to the Conference at Aix-la-Chapelle. His account of it in
this despatch is of the greatest value, bringing out in a way in which no
official documents do the conservative and repressive tone of the
Conference. The prevalent fear had been that Alexander would break with his
old Allies and make a separate league with France and Spain. See also
Castlereagh, xii. 47.

[286] "I could write you a long letter about the honour which the Prussians
pay to everything Austrian, our whole position, our measures, our language.
Metternich has fairly enchanted them." Gentz, Nachlasse [Osten], i. 51.

[287] Metternich, iii. 171.

[288] See his remarks in Metternich, iii. 269: an oasis of sense in this
desert of Commonplace.

[289] Stourdza, Denkschrift, etc., p. 31. The French original is not in the
British Museum.

[290] The extracts from Sand's diaries, published in a little book in 1821
(Tagebücher, etc.), form a very interesting religious study. The last,
written on Dec. 31, 1818, is as follows:--"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 evildoer, 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" (p.
174). The reference to the Greeks is in a letter in the English memoir, p.
40.

[291] The papers of the poet Arndt were seized. Among them was a copy of
certain short notes made by the King of Prussia, about 1808, on the
uselessness of a _levée en masse_. One of these notes was as
follows:--"As soon as a single clergyman is shot" (_i.e._ by the
French) "the thing would come to an end." These words were published in the
Prussian official paper as an indication that Arndt, worse than Sand,
advocated murdering clergymen! Welcker, Urkunden, p. 89.

[292] Metternich, iii. 217, 258.

[293] Metternich, iii. 268.

[294] The minutes of the Conference are in Welcker, Urkunden, p. 104,
_seq_. See also Weech, Correspondenzen.

[295] Protokolle der Bundesversammlung, 8, 266. Nauwerck, Thätigkeit, etc.,
2, 287.

[296] Ægidi, Der Schluss-Acte, ii. 362, 446.

[297] Article 57. The intention being that no assembly in any German State
might claim sovereign power as representing the people. If, for instance,
the Bavarian Lower House had asserted that it represented the sovereignty
of the people, and that the King was simply the first magistrate in the
State, this would have been an offence against Federal law, and have
entitled the Diet--_i.e._ Metternich--to armed interference. The
German State-papers of this time teem with the constitutional distinction
between a Representative Assembly (_i.e._ assembly representing
popular sovereignty) and an Assembly of Estates (_i.e._, of particular
orders with limited, definite rights, such as the granting of a tax). In
technical language, the question at issue was the true interpretation of
the phrase _Landständische Verfassungen_, used in the 13th article of
the original Act of Federation.

[298] See, in Welcker, Urkunden, p. 356, the celebrated paper called
"Memorandum of a Prussian Statesman, 1822," which at the same time
recommends a systematic underhand rivalry with Austria, in preparation for
an ultimate breach. Few State-papers exhibit more candid and cynical
cunning.

[299] Ilse, Politische Verfolgungen, p. 31.

[300] The comparison is the Germans' own, not mine. "'How savoury a thin
roast veal is!' said one Hamburg beggar to another. 'Where did you eat it?'
said his friend, admiringly. 'I never ate it at all, but I smelt it as I
passed a great man's house while the dog was being fed.'" (Ilse, p. 57.)

[301] The Commission at Mainz went on working until 1827. It seems to have
begun to discover real revolutionary societies about 1824. There is a long
list of persons remanded for trial in their several States, in Ilse, p.
595, with the verdicts and the sentences passed upon them, which vary from
a few months' to nineteen years' imprisonment.

[302] Metternich, iii. 168; and see Wellington, S.D., xii. 878.

[303] Grégoire, Mémoires, i. 411. Had the Constitutional Church of France
succeeded, Grégoire would have left a great name in religious history.
Napoleon, by one of the most fatal acts of despotism, extinguished a
society likely, from its democratic basis and its association with a great
movement of reform, to become the most liberal and enlightened of all
Churches, and left France to be long divided between Ultramontane dogma and
a coarse kind of secularism. The life of Grégoire ought to be written in
English. From the enormous number of improvements for which he laboured,
his biography would give a characteristic picture of the finer side of the
generation of 1789.

[304] The late Count of Chambord, or Henry V., son of the Duke of Barry,
was born some months after his father's death.

[305] Castlereagh, xii. 162, 259. "The monster Radicalism still lives,"
Castlereagh sorrowfully admits to Metternich.

[306] Metternich, iii. 369. "A man must be like me, born and brought up
amid the storm of politics, to know what is the precise meaning of a shout
of triumph like those which now burst from Burdett and Co. He may have read
of it, but I have seen it with my eyes. I was living at the time of the
Federation of 1789. I was fifteen, and already a man."

[307] Baumgarten, Geschichte Spaniens, ii. 175.

[308] See the note of Fernan Nuñez, in Wellington, S. D., xii. 582. "Les
efforts unanimes de ces mêmes Puissances ont détruit le système
dévastateur, d'où naquit la rébellion Américaine; mais il leur restait
encore à le détruire dans l'Amérique Espagnole."

[309] Wellington, S.D., xii. 807.

[310] Jullian, Précis Historique, p. 78.

[311] Historia de la vida de Fernando VII., ii. 158.

[312] Carrascosa, Mémoires, p. 25; Colletta, ii. 155.

[313] Carrascosa p. 44.

[314] Gentz. D.I., ii. 108, 122. It was rather too much even for the
Austrians. "La conduite de ce malheureux souverain n'a été, dès le
commencement des troubles, qu'un tissu de faiblesse et de duplicité," etc.
"Voilà l'allié que le ciel a mis entre nos mains, et dont nous avons à
rétablir les intérêts!" Ferdinand was guilty of such monstrous perjuries
and cruelties that the reader ought to be warned not to think of him as a
saturnine and Machiavellian Italian. He was a son of the Bourbon Charles
III. of Spain. His character was that of a jovial, rather stupid farmer,
whom a freak of fortune had made a king from infancy. A sort of grotesque
comic element runs through his life, and through every picture drawn by
persons in actual intercourse with him. The following, from one of
Bentinck's despatches of 1814 (when Ferdinand had just heard that Austria
had promised to keep Murat in Naples), is very characteristic: "I found his
Majesty very much afflicted and very much roused. He expressed his
determination never to renounce the rights which God had given him.... He
said he might be poor, but he would die honest, and his children should not
have to reproach him for having given up their rights. He was the son of
the honest Charles III. ... he was his unworthy offspring, but he would
never disgrace his family.... On my going away he took me by the hand, and
said he hoped I should esteem him as he did me, and begged me to take a
Pheasant pye to a gentleman who had been his constant shooting companion."
Records, Sicily, vol. 97. Ferdinand was the last sovereign who habitually
kept a professional fool, or jester, in attendance upon him.

[315] British and Foreign State Papers, vii. 361, 995.

[316] Except in Sicily, where, however, the course of events had not the
same publicity as on the mainland.

[317] Verbatim from the Russian Note of April 18. B. and F. State Papers,
vii. 943.

[318] Parliamentary Debates, N.S., viii. 1136.

[319] Gentz, D.I., ii. 70. "M. le Prince Metternich s'est rendu chez
l'Empereur pour le mettre au fait de ces tristes circonstances. Depuis que
je le connais, je ne l'ai jamais vu aussi frappé d'aucun événement qu'il
l'était hier avant son départ."

[320] Castlereagh, xii. 311.

[321] Gentz, D.I., ii. 76. Metternich, iii. 395. "Our fire-engines were
not full in July, otherwise we should have set to work immediately."

[322] Gentz, ii. 85. Gentz was secretary at the Congress of Troppau, as he
had been at Vienna and Aix-la-Chapelle. His letters exhibit the Austrian
and absolutist view of all European politics with striking clearness. He
speaks of the change in Richelieu's action as disagreeable but not fatal.
"Ces pruderies politiques sont sans doute lâcheuses.... La Russie,
l'Autriche, et la Prusse, heureusement libres encore dans leurs mouvements,
et assez puissantes pour soutenir ce qu'elles arrêtent, pourraient adopter
sans le concours de l'Angleterre et de la France un système tel que les
besoins du moment le demandent." The description of the three despotisms as
"happily free in their movements" is very characteristic of the time.

[323] This is the system conveniently but incorrectly named Holy Alliance,
from its supposed origination in he unmeaning Treaty of Holy Alliance in
1815. The reader will have seen that it took five years of reaction to
create a definitive agreement among the monarchs to intervene against
popular changes in other States, and that the principles of any operative
league planned by Alexander in 1815 would have been largely different from
those which he actually accepted in 1820. The Alexander who designed the
Holy Alliance was the Alexander who had forced Louis XVIII. to grant the
Charta.

[324] Castlereagh, xii. 330.

[325] Metternich, iii. 394. B. and F. State Papers, viii. 1160. Gentz, D.I.,
ii. 112. The best narrative of the Congress of Troppau is in Duvergier
de Hauranne, vi. 93. The Life of Canning by his secretary, Stapleton,
though it is a work of some authority on this period, is full of
misstatements about Castlereagh. Stapleton says that Castlereagh took no
notice of the Troppau circular of December 8 until it had been for more
than a month in his possession, and suggests that he would never have
protested at all but for the unexpected disclosure of the circular in a
German newspaper. As a matter of fact, the first English protest against
the Troppau doctrine, expressed in a memorandum, "très long, très positif,
assez dur même, et assez tranchant dans son langage," was handed in to the
Congress on December 16 or 19, along with a very unwelcome note to
Metternich. There is some gossip of another of Canning's secretaries in
Greville's Memoirs, i. 105, to the effect that Castlereagh's private
despatches to Troppau differed in tone from his official ones, which were
only written "to throw dust in the eyes of Parliament." It is sufficient to
read the Austrian documents of the time, teeming as they do with vexation
and disappointment at England's action, to see that this is a fiction.

[326] Had Ferdinand's first proposals been accepted by the Neapolitan
Parliament, France and England, it was thought, might have insisted on a
compromise at Laibach. "Les Gouvernements de France et d'Angleterre
auraient fortement insisté sur l'introduction d'un régime constitutionnel
et représentatif, régime que la Cour de Vienne croit absolument
incompatible avec la position des États de l'Italie, et avec la sûreté de
ses propres États." Gentz, D.I., ii. 110.

[327] Gentz, Nachlasse (P. Osten), i. 67. Lest the reader should take a
prejudice against Capodistrias for his cunning, I ought to mention here
that he was a man of austere disinterestedness in private life, and one of
the few statesmen of the time who did not try to make money by politics.
His ambition, which was very great, rose above all the meaner objects which
tempt most men. The contrast between his personal goodness and his
unscrupulousness in diplomacy will become more clear later on.

[328] Colletta, ii. 230. Bianchi, Diplomazia, ii. 47.

[329] Gualterio, Ultimi Rivolgimenti, iii. 46. Silvio Pellico, Le mie
prigioni, ch. 57.

[330] B. and F. State Papers, viii. 1203.

[331] Baumgarten, ii. 325.

[332] Wellington Despatches, N.S., i. 284.

[333] Talleyrand et Louis XVIII., p. 333.

[334] Wellington, i. 343.

[335] Duvergier de Hauranne, vii. 140.

[336] Canning denied that it was offered, but the despatches in Wellington
prove it. These papers, supplemented by the narrative of Duvergier de
Hauranne, drawn from the French documents which he specifies, are the
authority for the history of the Congress. Canning's celebrated speech of
April, 1823, is an effective _ex parte_ composition rather than a
historical summary. The reader who goes to the originals will be struck by
the immense superiority of Wellington's statements over those of all the
Continental statesmen at Verona, in point, in force, and in good sense, as
well as in truthfulness. The Duke, nowhere appears to greater advantage.

[337] Report of Angoulême, Duvergier d'Hauranne, vii. "Là où sont nos
troupes, nous maintenons la paix avec beaucoup de peine; mais là où nous
ne sommes pas, on massacre, on brûle, on pille, on vole. Les corps
Espagnols, se disant royalistes, ne cherchent qu'à voler et à piller."

[338] Decretos del Rey Fernando, vii. 35, 50, 75. This process, which was
afterwards extended even to common soldiers, was called Purificacion.
Committees were appointed to which all persons coming under the law had to
send in detailed evidence of correct conduct in and since 1820, signed by
some well-known royalists. But the committees also accepted any letters of
denunciation that might be sent to them, and were bound by law to keep them
secret, so that in practice the Purificacion became a vast system of
anonymous persecution.

[339] Historia de la vida de Fernando VII., 1842, iii. 152.

[340] Decretos del Rey Fernando, vii. 45.

[341] Decretos, vii. 154. The preamble to this law is perhaps the most
astonishing of all Ferdinand's devout utterances. "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. The ministers of
Christ have been persecuted and sacrificed; the venerable successor of St.
Peter has been outraged; the temples of the Lord have been profaned and
destroyed; the Holy Gospel depreciated; in fine, the inestimable legacy
which Jesus Christ gave in his last supper to secure our eternal felicity,
the Sacred Host, has been trodden under foot. 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," etc. But for some
specimens of Ferdinand's command of the vernacular, of a very different
character, see Wellington, N.S., ii. 37.

[342] Revolution d'Espagne, examen critique (Paris, 1836), p. 151, from the
lists in the Gaceta de Madrid. The Gaceta for these years is wanting from
the copy in the British Museum, and in the large collection in that library
of historical and periodical literature relating to Spain I can find no
first hand authorities for the judicial murders of these years. Nothing
relating to the subject was permitted to be printed in Spain for many years
afterwards The work cited in this note, though bearing a French title, and
published at Paris in 1836, was in fact a Spanish book written in 1824. The
critical inquiry which has substantiated many of the worst traditions of
the French Reign of Terror from local records still remains to be
undertaken for this period of Spanish history.

[343] See e.g., Stapleton, Canning and his Times p. 378. Wellington often
suggested the use of less peremptory language. Despatches, i. 134,
188. Metternich wrote as follows on hearing at Vienna of Castlereagh's
death: "Castlereagh was the only man in his country who had gained any
experience in foreign affairs. He had learned to understand me. He was
devoted to me in heart and spirit, not only from personal inclination, but
from conviction. I awaited him here as my second self." iii. 391.
Metternich, however, was apt to exaggerate his influence over the English
Minister. It was a great surprise to him that Castlereagh, after gaining
decisive majorities in the House of Commons on domestic questions in 1820,
in no wise changed the foreign policy expressed in the protest against the
Declaration of Troppau.

[344] Stapleton, Political Life of Canning, ii. 18.

[345] Wellington, i. 188.

[346] Parl Hist., 12th Dec., 1826.

[347] Stapleton, Life of Canning, i. 134. Martineau, p. 144.

[348] Gentz, Nachlasse (Osten), ii. 165.

[349] About the year 1830 the theory was started by Fallmerayer, a Tyrolese
writer, that the modern Greeks were the descendants of Slavonic invaders,
with scarcely a drop of Greek blood in their veins. Fallmerayer was
believed by some good scholars to have proved that the old Greek race had
utterly perished. More recent inquiries have discredited both Fallmerayer
and his authorities, and tend to establish the conclusion that, except in
certain limited districts, the Greeks left were always numerous enough to
absorb the foreign incomers. (Hopf, Griechenland; in Etsch and Gruber's
Encyklopädie, vol. 85, p. 100.) The Albanian population of Greece in 1820
is reckoned at about one-sixth.

[350] Maurer, Das Griechische Volk, i. 64.

[351] The Greek songs illustrate the conversion of the Armatole into the
Klepht in the age preceding the Greek revolution. Thus, in the fine ballad
called "The Tomb of Demos," which Goethe has translated, the dying man
says--

[Transcriber's Note: The following has been transliterated from the Greek]

  Kai pherte ton pneumatikon na m' exomologaisae
  na tun eipo ta krimata osa cho kamomena
  trianta chroni armatolos, c'eicosi echo klephtaes.

"Bring the priest that he may shrive me; that I may tell him the sins that
I have committed, thirty years an Armatole and twenty years a Klepht."
--Fauriel, Chants Populaires, i. 56.

[352] Finlay, Greece under Ottoman Domination, p. 284.

[353] Kanitz, Donau-Bulgarien, i. 123.

[354] Literally, _Interpreter_; the old theory of the Turks being that
in their dealings with foreign nations they had only to receive petitions,
which required to be translated into Turkish.

[355] Zallonos, [Transliterated Greek] Pragmateia peri ton phanarioton,
p. 71. Kagalnitchau, La Walachie, i. 371.

[356] A French translation of the Autobiography of Koraes, along with his
portrait, will be found in the Lettres Inédites de Coray, Paris, 1877. The
vehicle of expression usually chosen by Koraes for addressing his
countrymen was the Preface (written in modern Greek) to the edition of an
ancient author. The second half of the Preface to the Politics of
Aristotle, 1822, is a good specimen of his political spirit and manner. It
was separately edited by the Swiss scholar, Orelh, with a translation, for
the benefit of the German Philhellenes. Among the principal linguistic
prefaces are those to Heliodorus 1804, and the Prodromos, or introduction,
to the series of editions called Bibliotheca Græca, begun in 1805, and
published at the expense of the brothers Zosimas of Odessa Most of the
editions published by Koraes bear on their title page a statement of the
patriotic purpose of the work, and indicate the persons who bore the
expense. The edition of the Ethics, published immediately after the
massacre of Chios, bears the affecting words 'At the expense of those who
have so cruelly suffered in Chios.' The costly form of these editions, some
of which contain fine engravings, seems somewhat inappropriate for works
intended for national instruction. Koraes, however, was not in a hurry. He
thought, at least towards the close of his life, that the Greeks ought to
have gone through thirty years more of commercial and intellectual
development before they drew the sword. They would in that case, he
believed, have crushed Turkey by themselves and have prevented the Greek
kingdom from becoming the sport of European diplomacy. Much miscellaneous
information on Greek affairs before 1820 (rather from the Phanariot point
of view) will be found, combined with literary history in the Cours de
Littérature Grecque of Rhizos Neroulos, 1827. The more recent treatise of R
Rhankabes on the same subject (also in French, Paris, 1877) exhibits what
appears to be characteristic of the modern Greeks, the inability to
distinguish between mere passable performances and really great work.

[357] Zinkeisen, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches, v. 959.

[358] Koraes, Mémoire sur l'état actual de la civilization de la Grèce:
republished in the Lettres Inédites, p. 464. This memoir, read by Koraes to
a learned society in Paris, in January, 1803, is one of the most luminous
and interesting historical sketches ever penned.

[359] [Greek text: Didaskalia Patrikæ], by, or professing to be by,
Anthimos, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and printed "at the expense of the Holy
Sepulchre," p. 13. This curious work, in which the Patriarch at last breaks
out into doggrel, has found its way to the British Museum. It was answered
by Koraes. For the effect of Rhegas' songs on the people, see Fauriel, ii.
18. Mr. Finlay seems to be mistaken in calling Anthimos' book an answer to
the tract of Eugenios Bulgaris on religious toleration. That was written
about thirty years before.

[360] Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, ch, v. 36, 37.

[361] Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Geschichte Griechenlands, i. 145, from the
papers of Hypsilanti's brother. Otherwise in Prokesch-Osten, Abfall der
Griechen, i. 13.

[362] Cordon, Greek Revolution, i. 96.

[363] B. and F, State Papers, viii. 1203.

[364] Finlay, i. 187; Gordon, i. 203; K. Mendelssohn, Geschichte
Griechenlands, i. 191; Prokesch-Osten, Abfall der Griechen, i. 20.

[365] Metternich, iii. 622, 717; Prokewh-Ostett, i. 231, 303. B. and F.
State Papers, viii. 1247.

[366] Records, Continent, iii.

[367] Castlereagh, viii. 16; Metternich, iii. 504.

[368] Kolokotrones, [Transliterated Greek] Aiaegaesis Symbanton, p. 82;
Tricoupis, [Transliterated Greek] Historia, i. 61, 92.

[369] Gordon, i. 388; Finlay, i. 330; Mendelssohn, i. 269.

[370] Gordon ii. 138. The news of this catastrophe reached Metternich at
Ischl on July 30th. "Prince Metternich was taking an excursion, in which,
unfortunately I could not accompany him. I at once sent Francis after him
with this important letter, which he received at a spot where the name of
the Capitan Pasha had probably never been heard before. The prince soon
came back to me; and (_pianissimo_ in order that the friends of Greece
might not hear it) we congratulate one another on the event, which may very
well prove _le commencement de la fin_ for the Greek insurrection."
(Gentz.)

[371] Prokesch-Osten, i. 253, iv. 63. B. and F. State Papers, xii. 902.
Stapleton, Canning, p. 496 Metternich, 127. Wellington, N.S. ii. 372-396.

[372] Korff, Accession of Nicholas, p. 253; Herzen, Russische Verschwörung,
p. 106; Mendelssohn, i. 396. Schnitzler, Histoire Intime, i. 195.

[373] B. and F. State Papers, xiv. 630; Metternich, iv. 161, 212, 320, 372;
Wellington, N.S., ii. 85, 148, 244; Gentz, D.I., iii. 315.

[374] B. and F. State Papers, xiv. 632; xvii. 20; Wellington, N.S., iv. 57.

[375] Parl. Deb., May 11, 1877. Nothing can be more misleading than to say
that Canning never contemplated the possibility of armed action because a
clause in the Treaty of 1827 made the formal stipulation that the
contracting Powers would not "take part in the hostilities between the
contending parties." How, except by armed force, could the Allies "prevent,
in so far as might be in their power, all collision between the contending
parties," which, in the very same clause, they undertook to do? And what
was the meaning of the stipulation that they should "transmit instructions
to their Admirals conformable to these provisions"? Wellington himself,
_before_ the battle of Navarino, condemned the Treaty of London on the
very ground that it "specified means of compulsion which were neither more
nor less than measures of war;" and he protested against the statement that
the treaty arose directly out of the Protocol of St. Petersburg, which was
his own work. Wellington, N.S., iv. 137, 221.

[376] Bourchier's Codrington, ii. 62. Admiralty Despatches, Nov. 10,
1827, Parl. Deb., Feb. 14, 1828.

[377] Rosen, Geschichte der Türkei, i. 57.

[378] Moltke, Russisch-Turkische Feldzug, p. 226. Rosen, i. 67.

[379] Viel-Castel, xx. 16. Russia was to have had the Danubian Provinces;
Austria was to have had Bosnia and Servia; Prussia was to have had Saxony
and Holland; the King of Holland was to have reigned at Constantinople.

[380] Hertslet, Map of Europe by Treaty, ii. 813. Rosen, i. 108.

[381] Wellington, N. S, iv. 297.

[382] Mendelssohn, Graf Capodistrias, p. 64.

[383] B. and F. State Papers, xvii. p. 132. Prokesch-Osten, v. 136.

[384] Stockmar, i. 80; Mendelssohn; Capodistrias, p. 272. B. and F. State
Papers, xvii. 453.

[385] Viel-Castel, xix. 574. Duvergier de Hauranne, x. 85.

[386] Procès des ex-Ministres, i. 189.

[387] Lafayette, vi. 383. Marmont, viii. 238. Dupin, Révolution de Juillet,
p. 7. Odilon Barrot, i. 105. Sarrans, Lafayette, i. 217. Berard, Révolution
de 1830, p. 60. Hillebrand, Die Juli-Revolution, p. 87.

[388] Juste, Révolution Belge, i. 85. Congrès National, i. 134.

[389] Wellington, N.S. vii. 309. B. and F. State Papers, xviii. 761.
Metternich, v. 44. Hillebrand, Geschichte Frankreichs, i. 171. Stockmar, i.
143. Bulwer's Palmerston, ii. 5. Hertslet, Map of Europe, iii. 81.

[390] Smitt, Geschichte des Polnischen Aufstandes, i. 112. Spazier,
Geschichte des Aufstandes, i. 177. Leiewel, Histoire de Pologne, i. 300.

[391] Leroy-Beaulieu, Milutine, p. 199; L'Empire des Tsars, i. 380.
Leiewel, Considérations, p. 317.

[392] Bianchi, Ducati Estensi, i. 54. La Farina, v. 241. Farini, i. 34.

[393] Bianchi, Diplomazia, iii. 48. Metternich, iv. 121. Hillebrand,
Geschichte Frankreichs, i. 206. Haussonville, i. 32. B. and F. State
Papers, xix. 1429. Guizot, Mémoires, ii. 290.

[394] Ilse, Untersuchungen, p. 262. Metternich, v. 347. Biedermann,
Dreissig Jahre, i. 6.

[395] Mazzini, Scritti, iii. 310. Simoni, Conspirations Mazziniennes, p.
53. Metternich, v. 526. B. and F. State Papers, xxiv. 979.

[396] B. and F. State Papers, xviii. 196. Palmerston, i. 300.

[397] "La Reine Isabelle est la Révolution incarnée dans sa forme la plus
dangereuse; Don Carlos représente le principe Monarchique aux prises avec
la Révolution pure." Metternich, v. 615. B. and F. State Papers, xviii.
1365; xxii. 1394. Baumgarten, iii. 65.

[398] Hertslet, Map of Europe, ii. 941. Miraflores, Memorias, i. 39.
Guizot, iv. 86. Palmerston ii. 180.

[399] Essai historique sur les Provinces Basques, p. 58. W. Humboldt, Werke
iii. 213.

[400] Henningsen, Campaign with Zumalacarregui, i. 93. Burgos, Anales, ii.
110. Baumgarten, iii. 257.

[401] Rosen, i. 158. Prokesch von Osten, Kleine Schriften, vii. 56. Mehmed
Ali, p. 17. Hillebrand, i. 514 Metternich, v. 481. B. and F. State Papers,
xx. 1176; xxii. 140.

[402] Palmerston understood little about the real condition of the Ottoman
Empire, and thought that with ten years of peace it might again become a
respectable Power. "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." Bulwer's Palmerston, ii. 299.

[403] Hertslet, Map of Europe, ii. 1008. Rosen, ii. 3. Guizot, v. 188.
Prokesch-Osten, Mehmed Ali, p. 89. Palmerston, ii. 356. Hillebrand, ii.
357. Greville Memoirs, 2nd part, vol. i. 297.

[404] "Sie sollen ihn nicht haben
       Den freien Deutschen Rhein."

By Becker; answered by De Musset's "Nous avons eu votre Rhin Allemand." The
words of the much finer song "Die Wacht am Rhein" were also written at this
time--by Schneckenburger, a Würtemberg man; but the music by which they are
known was not composed till 1854.

[405] Farini, i. 153. Azeglio, Corresp. Politique, p. 24; Casi di Romagna,
p. 47.

[406] Down to 1827 not only was all land inherited by nobles free from
taxation, but any taxable land purchased by a noble thereupon became
tax-free. The attempt of the Government to abolish this latter injustice
evoked a storm of anger in the Diet of 1825, and still more in the country
assemblies, some of the latter even resolving that such law, if passed, fey
the Diet, would be null and void.

[407] Horváth, Fünfundzwanzig Jahre, i. 408. Springer, i. 466. Gerando,
Esprit Public, 173. Kossuth, Gessammelte Werke, i. 29. Beschwerden und
Klagen der Slaven in Ungarn, 39.

[408] Das Polen-Attentat, 1846, p. 203. Verhältnisse in Galizien, p. 57.
Briefe eines Polnischen Edelmannes, p. 31. Metternich, vii. 196. Cracow,
which had been made an independent Republic by the Congress of Vienna, was
now annexed by Austria with the consent of Russia and Prussia, and against
the protests of England and France.

[409] Reden des Koenigs Friedrich Wilhelm IV., p. 17. Ranke's F. W, IV. in
Allg. Deutsche Biog. Biedermann, Dreissig Jahre, i. 186.

[410] Guizot, viii. 101, Palmerston, iii. 194. Parl. Papers, 1847. Martin's
Prince Consort, i. 341.

[411] Metternich, vii. 538, 603; Vitzthum, Berlin und Wien, 1845-62, p. 78;
Kossuth Werke (1850), ii. 78; Pillersdorff, Rückblicke, p. 22; Reschauer,
Das Jahr 1848, i. 191; Springer, Geschichte Oesterreichs, ii. 185; Irányi
et Chassin, Révolution de Hongrie, i. 128.

[412] Metternich, viii. 181. The animation of his remarks on all sorts of
points in English life is wonderful. After a halt at Brussels and at his
Johannisburg estate Metternich returned to Vienna in 1852, and, though not
restored to office, resumed his great position in society. He lived through
the Crimean War, on which he wrote numerous memoranda, for whose use it
does not appear. Even on the outbreak of war with France in 1859 he was
still busy with his pen. He survived long enough to hear of the battle of
Magenta, but was spared the sorrow of witnessing the creation of the
Kingdom of Italy. He died on the 11th of June, 1859, in his eighty-seventh
year. Metternich was not the only statesman present at the Congress of
Vienna who lived to see the second Napoleonic Empire. Nesselrode, the
Russian Chancellor, lived till 1862; Czartoryski, who was Foreign Minister
of Russia at the time of the battle of Austerlitz, till 1861.

[413] Adlerstein, Archiv des Ungarischen Ministeriums, i. 27; Irányi et
Chassin, i. 184; Springer, ii. 219.

[414] Casati Nuove Rivelazioni, ii. 72. Schönhals, Campagnes d'Italie de
1848 et 1849, p. 72. Cattaneo, Insurrezione di Milano, p. 29. Parl. Pap.
1849, lvii. (2) 210, 333. Schneidawind, Feldzug in 1848, i. 30.

[415] Manin, Documents laissés, i. 106. Perlbach, Manin, p. 14. Contarini,
Memoriale Veneto, p. 10. Rovani, Manin, p. 25. Parliamentary Papers, 1849,
lvii. (a) 267.

[416] Bianchi, Diplomazia Europea, v. 183. Farini, Stato Romano, ii. 16.
Parl. Papers, 1849, lvii. 285, 297, 319. Pasolini, Memorie, p. 91.

[417] Die Berliner März-Revolution, p. 55. Ausführliche Beschreibung, p. 3.
Amtliche Berichte, p. 16. Stahr, Preussische Revolution, i. 91. S. Stern,
Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes, p. 58. Stern was an eye-witness at Berlin,
though not generally a good authority.

[418] "Preussen geht fortan in Deutschland auf." Reden Friedrich Wilhelms,
p. 9. In conversation with Bassermann Frederick William at a later time
described his ride through Berlin as "a comedy which he had been made to
play." The bombast at any rate was all his own.

[419] Droysen und Samwer, Schleswig-Holstein, p. 220. Bunsen, Memoir on
Schleswig-Holstein, p. 25. Schleswig-Holstein, Uebersichtliche Darstellung,
p 51. On the other side, Noten zur Beleuchtung, p. 12.

[420] Verhandlungen der National-versammlung, i. 25. Biedermann Dreissig
Jahre, i. 278. Radowitz, Werke, ii. 36.

[421] Actes du Gouvernement Provisoire, p. 12. Louis Blanc, Révélations
Historiques, i. 135. Gamier Pagès, Révolution de 1848, vi 108, viii. 148.
Émile Thomas, Histoire des Ateliers Nationaux, p. 93.

[422] Barrot, Mémoires, ii. 103. Caussidière, Mémoires, p. 117. Garnier
Pagès, x. 419. Normanby, Year of Revolution, i. 389. Granier de Cassagnac,
Chute de Louis Philippe, i. 359. De la Gorce, Seconde République, i. 273.
Falloux, Mémoires, i. 328.

[423] Œuvres de Napoleon III., iii. 13, 24. Granier de Cassagnac, ii. 16.
Jerrold, Napoleon III., ii. 393.

[424] Vitzthum, Wien, p. 108. Springer, ii. 293. Pillersdorff, Rückblicke,
p. 68; Nachlass, p. 118. Reschauer, ii. 176. Dunder, October Revolution, p.
5. Ficquelmont, Aufklärungen, p. 65.

[425] Schönhals, p. 117. Farini, ii. 9. Parl. Pap., 1849, lvii. 352.

[426] Ficquelmont p. 6. Pillersdorff, Nachlass, 93. Helfert, iv. 142.
Schönhais, p. 177. Parliamentary Papers, _id_. 332, 472, 597. Contarini,
p. 67. Azeglio, Operazioni del Durando, p. 6. Manin, Documents, i. 289.
Bianchi, Diplomazia, v. 257. Pasolini, p. 100.

[427] Parliamentary Papers, 1849 lviii p. 128. Venice refused to
acknowledge the armistice, and detached itself from Sardinia, restoring
Manin to power.

[428] Slavonia itself was attached to Croatia; Dalmatia also was claimed as
a member of this triple Kingdom under the Hungarian Crown in virtue of
ancient rights, though since its annexation in 1797 it had been governed
directly from Vienna, and in 1848 was represented in the Reichstag of
Vienna, not in that of Pesth.

[429] The real meaning of the Charters is, however, contested. Springer,
ii. 281. Adlerstein, Archiv, i. 166. Helfert, ii. 255. Irányi et Chassin,
i. 236. Die Serbische Wolwodschaftsfrage, p. 7.

[430] But see Kossuth, Schriften (1880, ii. 215), for a conversation
between Jellacic and Batthyány, said to have been narrated to Kossuth by
the latter. If authentic, this certainly proves Jellacic to have used the
Slavic agitation from the first solely for Austrian ends. See also
Vitzthuin, p. 207.

[431] Adlerstein, Archiv, i. 146, 156. Klapka, Erinnerungen, p. 30. Irányi
et Chassin, i. 344. Serbische Bewegung, p. 106.

[432] Irányi et Chassin, ii. 56. Codex der neuen Gesetze (Pesth), i. 7.

[433] Adlerstein, ii. 296. Helfert, Geschichte Oesterreichs, i. 79, ii.
192. Dunder, p. 77. Springer, ii. 520. Vitzthum, p. 143. Kossuth, Schriften
(1881), ii. 284. Reschauer, ii. 563. Pillersdorff, Nachlass, p. 163. Irányi
et Chassin, ii. 98.

[434] Codex der neuen Gesetze, i. 37. Helfert, iv. (3) 321.

[435] Revolutionskrieg in Siebenburgen i. 30. Helfert, ii. 207. Bratiano et
Irányi, Lettres Hongro-Roumaines, Adlerstein, ii. 105.

[436] Klapka, Erinnerungen, p. 56. Helfert, iv. 199; Görgei, Leben und
Wirken, i. 145. Adlerstein, iii. 576, 648.

[437] Helfert, iv. (2) 326. Klapka, War in Hungary, i. 23. Irányi et
Chassin, ii. 534. Görgei, ii. 54.

[438] Klapka, War, ii. 106. Erinnerungen, 58. Görgei, ii. 378. Kossuth,
Schriften (1880), ii. 291. Codex der neuen Gesetze, i. 75, 105.

[439] Farini, ii. 404. Parl. Pap., 1849. lvii. 607; lviii. (2) 117.
Bianchi, Diplomazia, vi. 67. Gennarelli, Sventure, p. 29. Pasolini, p. 139.

[440] Schönhals, p. 332. Parl. Pap., 1849, lviii. (2) 216. Bianchi,
Politica Austriaca, p. 134. Lamarmora, Un Episodie, p. 175. Portafogli ci
Ramorino, p. 41. Ramorino was condemned to death, and executed.

[441] Garibaldi, Epistolario, i. 33. Del Vecchio, L'assedio di Roma, p. 30.
Vaillant, Siége de Rome, p. 12. Bianchi, Diplomazia, vi. 213. Guerzoni,
Garibaldi, i. 266. Granier de Cassagnac, ii. 59. Lesseps, Mémoire, p. 61.
Barrot, iii 191. Discours de Napoleon 3rd, p. 38.

[442] Manin, Documents, ii. 340. Perlbach, Manin, p. 37. Gennarelli,
Governo Pontificio, i. 32. Contarini, p. 224.

[443] Verhandlungen der National Versammlung. i. 576 Radowitz, Werke, iii.
369. Briefwechsel Friedrich Wilhelms, p. 205. Biedermann, Dreissig Jahre,
i. 295.

[444] Verhandlungen der National Versammlung, ii. 1877, 2185. Herzog Ernst
II., Aus meinem Leben, i. 313. Biedermann, i. 306. Beseler, Erlebtes, p. 68.
Waitz, Friede mit Dänemark. Radowitz, iii. 406.

[445] Briefwechsel Friedrich Wilhelms, p. 184. Wagener, Erlebtes, p. 28.
Stahr, Preussische Revolution, i. 453.

[446] _Seine Bundespflichten:_ an ambiguous expression that might mean
either its duties as an ally or its duties as a member of the German
Federation. The obscurity was probably intentional.

[447] Verhandlungen der National Versammlung, vi. 4225. Haym, Deutsche
National Versammlung, ii. 112. Radowitz, iii. 459. Helfert, iv. 62.

[448] Verhandlungen, viii. 6093. Beseler, p. 82. Helfert, iv. (3) 390,
Haym, ii. 317, Radowitz, v. 477.

[449] Briefwechsel Friedrich Wilhelms, pp. 233, 269. Beseler, 87.
Biedermann, i. 389. Wagener, Politik Friedrich Wilhelm IV., p. 56. Ernst
II., i. 329.

[450] Verhandlungen, etc., ix. 6695, 6886. Haym, in. 185. Barnberger,
Erlebnisse, p. 6.

[451] Verhandlungen zu Erfurt, i. 114; ii. 143. Biedermann, i. 469.
Radowitz, ii. 138.

[452] Der Fürsten Kongress, p. 13. Reden Friedrich Wilhelms, iv pp. 55, 69.
Konferenz der Verbundeten, 1850, pp. 26, 53. Beust, Erinnerungen, i. 115,
Ernst II., i. 525. Duncker, Vier Monate, p. 41.

[453] Ernst II., i. 377. Hertslet, Map of Europe, ii. 1106, 1129, 1151.
Parl. Papers, 1864, lxiii., p. 29; 1804, lxv., pp. 30, 187.

[454] Maupas, Mémoires, i. 176. Œuvres de Napoleon III., iii. 271. Barrot,
iv. 21. Granier de Cassagnac, Chute de Louis Philippe, ii. 128; Récit
complet, p. 1. Jerrold, Napoleon III., iii. 203. Tocqueville, Corresp. ii.
176.

[455] Stockmar, 396. Eastern Papers (_i.e._, Parliamentary Papers,
1854, vol. 71), part 6. Malmesbury, Memoirs of an ex-Minister, i. 402; the
last probably inaccurate. Diplomatic Study of the Crimean War, i. 11. This
work is a Russian official publication, and, though loose and
untrustworthy, is valuable as showing the Russian official view.

[456] Ashley's Palmerston, ii. 142. Lane Poole, Stratford de Redcliffe, ii.
191.

[457] Eastern Papers, i. 55. Diplomatic Study, i. 121.

[458] Eastern Papers, v. 2, 19.

[459] Eastern Papers, i. 102. Admitted in Diplomatic Study, i. 163.

[460] He writes thus, April 5, 1851:--"The great game of improvement is
altogether up for the present. It is impossible for me to conceal that the
main object of my stay here is almost hopeless." Even Palmerston, in the
rare moments when he allowed his judgment to master his prepossessions on
this subject, expressed the same view. He wrote on November 24, 1850,
warning Reschid Pasha "the Turkish Empire is doomed to fall by the timidity
and irresolution of its Sovereign and of its Ministers; and it is evident
we shall ere long have to consider what other arrangements may be set up in
its place." Stratford left Constantinople on leave in June, 1852, but
resigned his Embassy altogether in January, 1853. (Lane Poole, Life of
Stratford de Redcliffe, ii. 112, 215.)

[461] Eastern Papers, i. 253, 339. Lane Poole, Stratford, ii. 248.

[462] Palmerston had accepted the office of Home Secretary, but naturally
exercised great influence in foreign affairs. The Foreign Secretary was
Lord Clarendon.

[463] Eastern Papers, i. 210, ii. 116. Ashley's Palmerston, ii. 23.

[464] Eastern Papers, ii. 23.

[465] Eastern Papers, ii. 86, 91, 103.

[466] Eastern Papers, ii. 203, 227, 299.

[467] Treaty of April 20, 1854, and Additional Article, Eastern Papers, ix.
61. The Treaty between Austria and Prussia was one of general defensive
alliance, covering also the case of Austria incurring attack through an
advance into the Principalities. In the event of Russia annexing the
Principalities or sending its troops beyond the Balkans the alliance was to
be offensive.

[468] Briefwechsel F. Wilhelms mit Bunsen, p. 310. Martin's Prince Consort,
iii. 39. On November 20, after the Turks had begun war, the King of Prussia
wrote thus to Bunsen (the italics, capitals, and exclamations are his own):
"All direct help which England _in unchristian folly!!!!!!_ gives TO
ISLAM AGAINST CHRISTIANS! will have (besides God's avenging judgment [hear!
hear!]) no other effect than to bring what is now Turkish territory at a
somewhat later period under Russian dominion" (Briefwechsel, p. 317). The
reader may think that the insanity to which Frederick William succumbed was
already mastering him; but the above is no rare specimen of his epistolary
style.

[469] The Treaty of alliance between France and England, to which Prussia
was asked to accede, contained, however, a clause pledging the contracting
parties "under no circumstance to seek to obtain from the war any advantage
to themselves."

[470] Eastern Papers, viii. I.

[471] Eastern Papers, xi. 3. Ashley's Palmerston, ii. 60. For the
navigation of the mouths of the Danube, see Diplomatic Study, ii. 39.
Russia, which had been in possession of the mouths of the Danube since the
Treaty of Adrianople, and had undertaken to keep the mouths clear, had
allowed the passage to become blocked and had otherwise prevented traffic
descending, in order to keep the Black Sea trade in its own hands.

[472] See, however, Burgoyne's Letter to the _Times_, August 4, 1868,
in Kinglake, iv. 465. Rousset, Guerre de Crimée, i. 280.

[473] Statements of Raglan, Lucan, Cardigan; Kinglake, v. 108, 402.

[474] On the death of Nicholas, the King of Prussia addressed the following
lecture to the unfortunate Bunsen:--"You little thought that, at the very
moment when you were writing to me, one of the noblest of men, one of the
grandest forms in history, one of the truest hearts, and at the same time
one of the greatest rulers of this narrow world, was called from faith to
sight. I thank God on my knees that He deemed me worthy to be, in the best
sense of the word, his [Nicholas'] friend, and to remain true to him. You,
dear Bunsen, thought differently of him, and you will now painfully confess
this before your conscience, most painfully of all the truth (which all
your letters in these late bad times have unfortunately shown me but too
plainly), that _you hated him_. You hated him, not as a man, but as
the representative of a principle, that of violence. If ever, redeemed like
him through simple faith in Christ's blood, you see him in eternal peace,
then remember what I now write to you: '_You will beg his pardon_.
Even here, my dear friend, may the blessing of repentance be granted to
you."--Briefwechsel, p. 325. Frederick William seems to have forgotten to
send the same pious wishes to the Poles in Siberia.

[475] Parliamentary Papers, 1854-5, vol. 55, p. 1, Dec. 2, 1854. Ashley's
Palmerston, ii. 84.

[476] Eastern Papers, Part 13, 1.

[477] Kinglake, vii. 21. Rousset, ii. 35, 148.

[478] Diplomatic Study, ii. 361. Martin, Prince Consort, iii. 394.

[479] Prussia was admitted when the first Articles had been settled, and it
became necessary to revise the Treaty of July, 1841, of which Prussia had
been one of the signatories.

[480] "In the course of the deliberation, whenever our [Russian]
plenipotentiaries found themselves in the presence of insurmountable
difficulties, they appealed to the personal intervention of this sovereign
[Napoleon], and had only to congratulate themselves on the
result."--Diplomatic Study, ii. 377.

[481] Three pages of promises. Eastern Papers, xvii. One was kept
faithfully. "To accomplish these objects, means shall be sought to profit
by the science, the art, _and the funds_ of Europe." One of the
drollest of the prophecies of that time is the congratulatory address of
the Missionaries to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, _id_. 1882.--"The
Imperial Hatti-sheriff has convinced us that our fond expectations are
likely to be realised. The light will shine upon those who have long sat in
darkness; and blest by social prosperity and religious freedom, the
millions of Turkey will, we trust, be seen ere long sitting peacefully
under their own vine and fig-tree." So they were, and with poor Lord
Stratford's fortune, among others, in their pockets.

[482] All verbatim from the Treaty. Parl. Papers, 1856, vol 61, p. 1.

[483] Martin, Prince Consort, iii. 452. Poole, Stratford, ii. 356.

[484] Berti, Cavour avanti 1848, p. 110. La Rive, Cavour, p. 58. Cavour,
Lettere (ed. Chiala), introd. p. 73.

[485] Cavour, Lettere (Chiala), ii. introd. p. 187. Guerzoni, Garibaldi, i.
412. Manin, the Ex-President of Venice, now in exile, declared from this
time for the House of Savoy. Garibaldi did the same.

[486] Cavour, Lettere (Chiala), ii. introd. pp. 289, 324; iii. introd. p.
i. Bianchi, Diplomazia, vii. 1, Mazade, Cavour, p. 187, Massari, La
Marmora, p. 204.

[487] "In mezzo alle piu angosciose crisi politiche, esclamava nelle
solitudine delle sue stanze; 'Perisca il mio nome, perisca la mia fama,
purche l'Italia sia,'" Artom (Cavour's secretary), Cavour in Parlamento:
introd. p. 46.

[488] La Farina Epistolario, ii. 56, 81, 137, 426. The interview with
Garibaldi; Cavour, Lettere, id. introd. p. 297. Garibaldi, Epistolario, i.
55.

[489] Cavour, Lettere (Chiala), iii. introd. p. 32. Bianchi, Diplomazia,
viii. II. The statement of Napoleon III. to Lord Cowley, in Martin Prince
Consort, v. 31, that there was no Treaty, is untrue.

[490] Bianchi, Politique de Cavour, p. 328, where is Cavour's indignant
letter to Napoleon. The last paragraph of this seems to convey a veiled
threat to publish the secret negotiations.

[491] Cavour, Lettere, iii. introd. p. 115; iii. 29. Bianchi, Politique de
Cavour, p. 333. Bianchi, Diplomazia, vii. 61. Massari, Cavour, p. 314.
Parliamentary Papers, 1859, xxxii. 204, 262. Mérimée, Lettres à Panizzi, i.
21. Martin, Prince Consort, iv. 427.

[492] La Farina, Epistolario, ii. 172. Parliamentary Papers, 1859, xxxiii.
391, 470.

[493] Cavour, Lettere, iii. introd. 212, iii. 107. Bianchi, Politique de
Cavour, p. 319. Bianchi, Diplomazia, viii. 145, 198. Massari, Vittorio
Emanuele, ii. 32. Kossuth, Memories p. 394. Parl. Pap. 1859, xxxii. 63,
1860, lxviii. 7. La Farina Epist, ii. 190. Ollivier, L'Église et l'État,
ii. 452.

[494] Arrivabene, Italy under Victor Emmanuel, i. 268.

[495] Cavour, Lettere, iii. introd. 301. Bianchi, viii. 180. Garibaldi,
Epist., i. 79. Guerzoni, i. 491. Reuchlin, iv. 410.

[496] Cavour, Lettere, iv. introd. 20. Bianchi, Politique, p. 354. Bianchi,
Diplomazia, viii. 256. Parliamentary Papers, 1860, lxvii. 203; lxviii. 53.

[497] Cavour in Parlamento, p. 536.

[498] Garibaldi, Epist., i. 97. Persano, Diario, i. 14. Le Farina, Epist.,
ii. 324. Guerzoni, ii. 23. Parliamentary Papers, 1860, lxviii. 2. Mundy,
H.M.S. _Hannibal_ at Palermo, p. 133.

[499] Cavour, Lettere, iii. introd. 269. La Farina, Epist., ii. 336.
Bianchi, Politique, p. 366. Persano, Diario, i. 50, 72, 96.

[500] Bianchi, Politique, p. 377. Persano, ii. p. 1-102. Persano sent his
Diary in MS. to Azeglio, and asked his advice on publishing it. Azeglio
referred to Cavour's saying, "If we did for ourselves what we are doing for
Italy, we should be sad blackguards," and begged Persano to let his secrets
be secrets, saying that since the partition of Poland no confession of such
"colossal blackguardism" had been published by any public man.

[501] Bianchi, Politique, p. 383. Persano, iii. 61. Bianchi, Diplomazia,
viii. 337, Garibaldi, Epist., i. 127.

[502] "Le Roi répondit tout court: 'C'est impossible.'" Cavour to his
ambassador at London, Nov. 16, in Bianchi, Politique, p. 386. La Farina,
Epist., ii. 438. Persano, iv. 44, Guerzoni, ii. 212.

[503] Cavour in Parlamento, p. 630. Azeglio, Correspondance Politique, p.
180. La Rive, p. 313. Berti, Cavour avanti 1848, p. 302.

[504] "Le comte le reconnu, lui serra la main et dit: 'Frate, frate, libera
chiesa in libero stato.' Ce furent ses dernières paroles." Account of the
death of Cavour by his niece, Countess Alfieri, in La Rive, Cavour, p. 319.

[505] Berichte über der Militair etat, p. 669. Schulthess, Europaischer
Geschichts Kalender, 1862, p. 122.

[506] Poschinger, Preussen im Bundestag ii. 69, 97; iv. 178. Hahn,
Bismarck, i. 608.

[507] Hahn, Fürst Bismarck, i. 66. This work is a collection of documents,
speeches, and letters not only by Bismarck himself but on all the principal
matters in which Bismarck was concerned. It is perhaps, from the German
point of view, the most important repertory of authorities for the period
1862-1885.

[508] Sammlung der Staatsacten Oesterreichs (1861), pp. 2, 33. Drei Jahre
Verfassungstreit, p. 107.

[509] Sammlung der Staatsacten, p. 89. Der Ungarische Reichstag 1861, pp.
3, 194, 238. Arnold Forster, Life of Deák, p. 141.

[510] Celestin, Russland, p. 3. Leroy-Beaulieu, L'Empire des Tsars, i. 400.
Homme d'État Russe, p. 73. Wallace, Russia, p. 485.

[511] Raczynski, Mémoires sur la Pologne, p. 14. B. and F. State Papers,
1862-63, p. 769.

[512] Leroy-Beaulieu, Homme d'État Russe, p. 259.

[513] Hahn, i. 112. Verhandl des Preuss, Abgeord. über Polen, p. 45.

[514] Parliamentary Papers, 1864, vol. lxiv. pp. 28, 263. Hahn, Bismarck,
i. 165.

[515] From Rechberg's despatch of Feb 28, 1863 (in Hahn, i. 84), apparently
quoting actual words uttered by Bismarck. Bismarck's account of the
conversation (id. 80) tones it down to a demand that Austria should not
encroach on Prussia's recognised joint-leadership in Germany.

[516] B. and F. State Papers, 1863-4, p. 173. Beust, Erinnerungen, i. 136.

[517] Bismarck's note of July 29th, 1870, in Hahn, i. 506, describing
Napoleon's Belgian project, which dated from the time when he was himself
ambassador at Paris in 1862, gives this as the explanation of Napoleon's
policy in 1864. The Commercial Treaty with Prussia and friendly personal
relations with Bismarck also influenced Napoleon's views. See Bismarck's
speech of Feb. 21st, 1879, on this subject, in Hahn, iii. 599.

[518] Hahn, Bismarck, i. 271, 318. Oesterreichs Kämpfe in 1866, i. 8.

[519] B. and F. State Papers, 1864-65, p. 460.

[520] La Marmora, Un po più di luce, pp. 109, 146. Jacini, Due Anni, p.
154. Hahn, i. 377. In the first draft of the Treaty Italy was required to
declare war not only on Austria but on all German Governments which should
join it. King William, who had still some compunction in calling in Italian
arms against the Fatherland, struck out these words.

[521] La Marmora, Un po più di luce, p. 204. Hahn, i. 402.

[522] Hahn, Bismarck, i. 425. Hahn, Zwei Jahre, p. 60. Oesterreichs Kämpfe,
i. 30.

[523] Discours de Napoleon III., p. 456. On May 11th, Nigra, Italian
ambassador at Paris, reported that Napoleon's ideas on the objects to be
attained by a Congress were as follows:--Venetia to Italy, Silesia to
Austria; the Danish Duchies and other territory in North Germany to
Prussia; the establishment of several small States on the Rhine under
French protection; the dispossessed German princes to be compensated in
Roumania. La Marmora, p. 228. Napoleon III. was pursuing in a somewhat
altered form the old German policy of the Republic and the Empire--namely,
the balancing of Austria and Prussia against one another, and the
establishment of a French protectorate over the group of secondary States.

[524] Oesterreichs Kämpfe, ii. 341. Prussian Staff, Campaign of 1866
(Hozier), p. 167.

[525] Hahn, i. 476. Benedetti, Ma Mission en Prusse, p. 186. Reuchlin, v.
457. Massari, La Marmora, p. 350.

[526] Hahn, i. 501, 505.

[527] Benedetti, p. 191. Hahn, i. 508; ii. 328, 635. See also La Marmora's
Un po più di luce, p. 242, and his Segreti di Stato, p. 274. Govone's
despatches strongly confirm the view that Bismarck was more than a mere
passive listener to French schemes for the acquisition of Belgium. That he
originated the plan is not probable; that he encouraged it seems to me
quite certain, unless various French and Italian documents unconnected with
one another are forgeries from beginning to end. On the outbreak of the war
of 1870 Bismarck published the text of the draft-treaty discussed in 1866
providing for an offensive and defensive alliance between France and
Prussia, and the seizure of Belgium by France. The draft was in Benedetti's
handwriting, and written on paper of the French Embassy. Benedetti stated
in answer that he had made the draft at Bismarck's dictation. This might
seem very unlikely were it not known that the draft of the Treaty between
Prussia and Italy in 1866 was actually so written down by Barral, the
Italian Ambassador, at Bismarck's dictation.

[528] Regelung der Verhältnisse, p. 4. Ausgleich mit Ungarn, p. 9.

[529] Hungary retained a Ministry of National Defence for its Reserve
Forces, and a Finance Ministry for its own separate finance. Thus the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs was the only one of the three common Ministries
which covered the entire range of a department.

[530] They had indeed been discovered by French agents in Germany. Rothan,
L'Affaire du Luxembourg, p. 74.

[531] Hahn, i. 658. Rothan, Luxembourg, p. 246. Correspondenzen des K.K.
Minist. des Aüssern, 1868, p. 24. Parl. Pap., 1867, vol. lxxiv., p. 427.

[532] Sorel, Histoire Diplomatique, i. 38. But see the controversy between
Beust and Gramont in _Le Temps_, Jan. 11-16, 1873.

[533] Rothan, La France en 1867, ii. 316. Reuchlin, v. 547. Two historical
expressions belong to Mentana: the "Never," of M. Rouher, and "The
Chassepots have done wonders," of General Failly.

[534] Sorel, i. 40. Hahn, i. 720. Immediately after Mentana, on Nov. 17,
1867, Mazzini wrote to Bismarck and to the Prussian ambassador at Florence,
Count Usedom, stating that Napoleon had resolved to make war on Prussia and
had proposed an alliance to Victor Emmanuel, who had accepted it for the
price of Rome. Mazzini offered to employ revolutionary means to frustrate
this plan, and asked for money and arms. Bismarck showed caution, but did
not altogether disregard the communication. Politica Segreta Italiana, p.
339.

[535] Benedetti, Ma Mission, p. 319, July 7. Gramont, La France et la
Prusse, p. 61.

[536] Sorel, Histoire Diplomatique, i. 197.

[537] Hahn, ii. 69. Sorel, i. 236.

[538] Prince Napoleon, in Revue des Deux Mondes, April 1, 1878; Gramont, in
Revue de France, April 17, 1878. (Signed Andreas Memor.) Ollivier, L'Église
et l'État, ii. 473. Sorel, i. 245.

[539] Der Deutsch Französische Krieg, 1870-71 (Prussian General Staff), i.
72.

[540] Bazaine, L'Armée du Rhin, p. 74.

[541] Papiers Sécrets du Second Empire (1875), pp. 33, 240.

[542] Diary of the Emperor Frederick, Sept. 3.

[543] Favre's circular alleged that the King of Prussia had declared that
he made war not on France but on the Imperial Dynasty. King William had
never stated anything of the kind. His proclamation on entering France, to
which Favre appears to have referred, merely said that the war was to be
waged against the French army, and not against the inhabitants, who, so
long as they kept quiet, would not be molested.

[544] Deutsch-Französiche Krieg, vol. III., p. 104. Bazaine, p. 166. Procès
de Bazaine, vol. ii., p. 219. Regnier, p. 20. Hahn, ii., 171.

[545] Hahn, ii. 216. Valfrey, Diplomatie du Gouvernement de la Défense
Nationale, ii. 51. Hertslet, Map of Europe, iii. 1912, 1954.

[546] Parl. Pap. 1876, vol. lxxxiv., pp. 74, 96.

[547] Parl. Pap. 1876, vol. lxxxiv., p. 183.

[548] Parl. Pap. 1877, vol. xc., p. 143.

[549] Parl. Deb. July 10, 1876, verbatim.

[550] See Burke's speech on the Russian armament, March 29, 1791, and the
passage on "the barbarous anarchic despotism" of Turkey in his Reflections
on the French Revolution, p. 150, Clar. edit. Burke lived and died in
Beaconsfield, and his grave is there. There seems, however, to be no
evidence for the story that he was about to receive a peerage with the
title of Beaconsfield, when the death of his son broke all his hopes.

[551] Parl. Pap. 1877, vol. xc., p. 642; 1878, vol. lxxxi., p. 679.

[552] Parl. Pap. 1877, vol. lxxxix., p. 135.

[553] Parl. Pap. 1878, vol. lxxxi., pp. 661, 725. Parl. Deb., vol.
ccxxxvii.

[554] The Treaty, with Maps, is in Parl. Pap. 1878, vol. lxxxiii. p. 239.

[555] Parl. Pap. 1878, vl. lxxxii., p. 3. _Globe_, May 31, 1878. Hahn,
iii. 116.






[Transcriber's Note: (1) Footnotes have been numbered and collected at the
end of the work. (2) Sidenotes have been placed in brackets prior to the
paragraph in which they occur. 
(3) The spelling in the print copy was not always consistent. Irregular
words in the original (e.g., "Christain" and "Würtemburg")
have been retained whenever possible.]











End of Project Gutenberg's History of Modern Europe 1792-1878, by C. A. Fyffe