HISTORYOFMODERN EUROPE1792-1878BYC. A. FYFFE, M. A. Barrister-at-Law; Fellow of University College, Oxford;Vice-President of the Royal Historical SocietyPOPULAR EDITIONWith MapsPREFACE. In acceding to the Publishers' request for a re-issue of the "History ofModern Europe, " in the form of a popular edition, I feel that I am onlyfulfilling what would have been the wish of the Author himself. A fewmanuscript corrections and additions found in his own copy of the work havebeen adopted in the present edition; in general, however, my attention inrevising each sheet for the press has been devoted to securing an accuratereproduction of the text and notes as they appeared in the previouseditions in three volumes. I trust that in this cheaper and more portableform the work will prove, both to the student and the general reader, evenmore 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 theform and character which they possess at the present moment. The outbreakof the Revolutionary War in 1792, terminating a period which now appearsfar removed from us, and setting in motion forces which have in our own dayproduced a united Germany and a united Italy, forms the naturalstarting-point of a history of the present century. I have endeavoured totell a simple story, believing that a narrative in which facts are chosenfor their significance, and exhibited in their real connection, may be madeto convey as true an impression as a fuller history in which the writer isnot forced by the necessity of concentration to exercise the same rigourtowards himself and his materials. The second volume of the work will bringthe 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 [1]In revising this volume for the second edition I have occupied myselfmainly with two sources of information--the unpublished Records of theEnglish Foreign Office, and the published works which have during recentyears resulted from the investigation of the Archives of Vienna. TheEnglish Records from 1792 to 1814, for access to which I have to express mythanks to Lord Granville, form a body of firsthand authority ofextraordinary richness, compass, and interest. They include the wholecorrespondence between the representatives of Great Britain at ForeignCourts and the English Foreign Office; a certain number of privatecommunications between Ministers and these representatives; a quantity ofreports from consuls, agents, and "informants" of every description; and inaddition to these the military reports, often admirably vivid and full ofmatter, sent by the British officers attached to the head-quarters of ourAllies in most of the campaigns from 1792 to 1814. It is impossible thatany one person should go through the whole of this material, which it tookthe Diplomatic Service a quarter of a century to write. I have endeavouredto master the correspondence from each quarter of Europe which, for thetime being, had a preponderance in political or military interest, leavingit when its importance became obviously subordinate to that of others; andalthough I have no doubt left untouched much that would repayinvestigation, I trust that the narrative has gained in accuracy from alabour which was not a light one, and that the few short extracts whichspace has permitted me to throw into the notes may serve to bring thereader nearer to events. At some future time I hope to publish a selectionfrom the most important documents of this period. It is strange that ourlearned Societies, so appreciative of every distant and trivial chronicleof the Middle Ages, should ignore the records of a time of such surpassinginterest, and one in which England played so great a part. No justconception can be formed of the difference between English statesmanshipand that of the Continental Courts in integrity, truthfulness, and publicspirit, until the mass of diplomatic correspondence preserved at London hasbeen studied; nor, until this has been done, can anything like an adequatebiography of Pitt be written. The second and less important group of authorities with which I have busiedmyself during the work of revision comprises the works of Hüffer, Vivenot, Beer, Helfert, and others, based on Austrian documents, along with theAustrian documents and letters that have been published by Vivenot. Thelast-named writer is himself a partizan, but the material which he hasgiven to the world is most valuable. The mystery in which the AustrianGovernment until lately enveloped all its actions caused some of these tobe described as worse than they really were; and I believe that in theFirst Edition I under-estimated the bias of Prussian and North-Germanwriters. Where I have seen reasons to alter any statements, I have done sowithout reserve, as it appears to me childish for any one who attempts towrite history to cling to an opinion after the balance of evidence seems tobe against it. The publication of the second volume of this work has beendelayed by the revision of the first; but I hope that it will appear beforemany months more. I must express my obligations to Mr. Oscar Browning, afellow-labourer in the same field, who not only furnished me with variouscorrections, but placed his own lectures at my disposal; and to Mr. AlfredKingston, whose unfailing kindness and courtesy make so great a differenceto those whose work lies in the department of the Record Office which isunder his care. London, 1883. PREFACE TO THE SECOND VOLUME. [2]In writing this volume I have not had the advantage of consulting theEnglish Foreign Office Records for a later period than the end of 1815. Arule not found necessary at Berlin and some other foreign capitals stillcloses to historical inquirers the English documents of the last seventyyears. Restrictions are no doubt necessary in the case of transactions ofrecent date, but the period of seventy years is surely unnecessarily long. Public interests could not be prejudiced, nor could individuals be evenremotely affected, by the freest examination of the papers of 1820 or 1830. The London documents of 1814-1815 are of various degrees of interest andimportance. Those relating to the Congress of Vienna are somewhatdisappointing. Taken all together, they add less to our knowledge on theone or two points still requiring elucidation than the recently-publishedcorrespondence of Talleyrand with Louis XVIII. The despatches from Italyare on the other hand of great value, proving, what I believe was notestablished before, that the Secret Treaty of 1815, whereby Austria gaineda legal right to prevent any departure from absolute Government at Naples, was communicated to the British Ministry and received its sanction. Thissanction explains the obscure and embarrassed language of Castlereagh in1820, which in its turn gave rise to the belief in Italy that England wasmore deeply committed to Austria than it actually was, and probablyoccasioned the forgery of the pretended Treaty of July 27, 1813, exposed invol. I. Of this work, p. 538, 2nd edit. [3] The papers from France andSpain are also interesting, though not establishing any new conclusions. While regretting that I have not been able to use the London archives laterthan 1815, I believe that it is nevertheless possible, without recourse tounpublished papers, to write the history of the succeeding thirty yearswith substantial correctness. There exist in a published form, apart fromdocuments printed officially, masses of first-hand material of undoubtedlyauthentic character, such as the great English collection known by thesomewhat misleading name of Wellington Despatches, New Series; or again, the collection printed as an appendix to Prokesch von Osten's History ofthe Greek Rebellion, or the many volumes of Gentz' Correspondence belongingto 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 collectionsbearing on particular events might be named, such as those in Guizot'sMémoires. Frequent references will show my obligation to the German seriesof historical works constituting the Leipzig Staatengeschichte, as well asto French authors who, like Viel-Castel, have worked with original sourcesof information before them. There exist in English literature singularlyfew works on this period of Continental history. A greater publicity was introduced into political affairs on the Continentby the establishment of Parliamentary Government in France in 1815, andeven by the attempts made to introduce it in other States. In England wehave always had freedom of discussion, but the amount of information madepublic by the executive in recent times has been enormously greater than itwas at the end of the last century. The only documents published at theoutbreak of the war of 1793 were, so far as I can ascertain, the well-knownletters of Chauvelin and Lord Grenville. During the twenty years' strugglewith France next to nothing was known of the diplomatic transactionsbetween England and the Continental Powers. But from the time of the ReformBill onwards the amount of information given to the public has beenconstantly increasing, and the reader of Parliamentary Papers in our ownday is likely to complain of diffusiveness rather than of reticence. Nevertheless the perusal of published papers can never be quite the samething as an examination of the originals; and the writer who first hasaccess to the English archives after 1815 will have an advantage over thosewho have gone before him. The completion of this volume has been delayed by almost every circumstanceadverse to historical study and production, including a severeParliamentary contest. I trust, however, that no trace of partisanship orunrest appears in the work, which I have valued for the sake of the mentaldiscipline which it demanded. With quieter times the third volume will, Itrust, 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 andEmigrants--War Policy of the Gironde--Provocations offered to France by thePowers--State of Central Europe in 1792--The Holy Roman Empire--Austria--Rule of the Hapsburgs--The Reforms of Maria Theresa and Joseph II. --Policyof Leopold II. --Government and Foreign Policy of Francis II. --Prussia--Government of Frederick William II. --Social Condition of Prussia--SecondaryStates of Germany--Ecclesiastical States--Free Cities--Knights--Weakness ofGermanyCHAPTER II. THE WAR, DOWN TO THE TREATIES OF BASLE AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THEDIRECTORY. French and Austrian Armies on the Flemish Frontier--Prussia enters theWar--Brunswick invades France--His Proclamation--Insurrection of Aug. 10 atParis--Massacres of September--Character of the War--Brunswick, checked atValmy, retreats--The War becomes a Crusade of France--Neighbours ofFrance--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 theMediterranean States--Condition of England--English Parties, how affectedby the Revolution--The Gironde and the Mountain--Austria recovers theNetherlands--The Allies invade France--La Vendée--Revolutionary System of1793--Errors of the Allies--New French Commanders and DemocraticArmy--Victories of Jourdan, Hoche, and Pichegru--Prussia withdrawing fromthe War--Polish Affairs--Austria abandons the Netherlands--Treaties ofBasle--France in 1795--Insurrection of 13 Vendémiaire--Constitution of1795--The Directory--Effect of the Revolution on the Spirit of Europe up to1795CHAPTER III. ITALIAN CAMPAIGNS: TREATY OF CAMPO FORMIO. Triple attack on Austria--Moreau, Jourdan--Bonaparte in Italy--Conditionof the Italian States--Professions and real intentions of Bonaparte and theDirectory--Battle of Montenotte--Armistice with Sardinia--Campaign inLombardy--Treatment of the Pope, Naples, Tuscany--Siege of Mantua--Castiglione--Moreau and Jourdan in Germany--Their retreat--Secret Treatywith Prussia--Negotiations with England--Cispadane Republic--Rise of theidea of Italian Independence--Battles of Arcola and Rivoli--Peace with thePope at Tolentino--Venice--Preliminaries of Leoben--The French inVenice--The French take the Ionian Islands and give Venice toAustria--Genoa--Coup d'état of 17 Fructidor in Paris--Treaty of CampoFormio--Victories of England at Sea--Bonaparte's project against EgyptCHAPTER IV. FROM THE CONGRESS OF RASTADT TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CONSULATE. Congress of Rastadt--The Rhenish Provinces ceded--Ecclesiastical States ofGermany suppressed--French Intervention in Switzerland--HelveticRepublic--The French invade the Papal States--Roman Republic--Expedition toEgypt--Battle of the Nile--Coalition of 1798--Ferdinand of Naples entersRome--Mack's defeats--French enter Naples--Parthenopean Republic--War withAustria and Russia--Battle of Stockach--Murder of the French Envoys atRastadt--Campaign in Lombardy--Reign of Terror at Naples--Austrian designsupon Italy--Suvaroff and the Austrians--Campaign in Switzerland--Campaignin Holland--Bonaparte returns from Egypt--Coup d'état of 18 Brumaire--Constitution of 1799--System of Bonaparte in France--Its effect on theinfluence of France abroadCHAPTER V. FROM MARENGO TO THE RUPTURE OF THE PEACE OF AMIENS. Overtures of Bonaparte to Austria and England--The War continues--Massenabesieged in Genoa--Moreau invades Southern Germany--Bonaparte crosses theSt. Bernard, and descends in the rear of the Austrians--Battle ofMarengo--Austrians retire behind the Mincio--Treaty between England andAustria--Austria continues the War--Battle of Hohenlinden--Peace ofLunéville--War between England and the Northern Maritime League--Battleof Copenhagen--Murder of Paul--End of the Maritime War--English Armyenters Egypt--French defeated at Alexandria--They capitulate at Cairo andAlexandria--Preliminaries of Peace between England and France signed atLondon, followed by Peace of Amiens--Pitt's Irish Policy and hisretirement--Debates on the Peace--Aggressions of Bonaparte during theContinental Peace--Holland, Italy, Switzerland--Settlement of Germanyunder French and Russian influence--Suppression of Ecclesiastical Statesand Free Cities--Its effects--Stein--France under the Consulate--TheCivil Code--The ConcordatCHAPTER VI. THE EMPIRE, TO THE PEACE OF PRESBURG. England claims Malta--War renewed--Bonaparte occupies Hanover, andblockades the Elbe--Remonstrances of Prussia--Cadoudal's Plot--Murderof the Duke of Enghien--Napoleon Emperor--Coalition of 1805--Prussiaholds aloof--State of Austria--Failure of Napoleon's Attempt to gainNaval Superiority in the Channel--Campaign in Western Germany--Capitulation of Ulm--Trafalgar--Treaty of Potsdam between Prussia andthe Allies--The French enter Vienna--Haugwitz sent to Napoleon withPrussian Ultimatum--Battle of Austerlitz--Haugwitz signs a Treaty ofAlliance with Napoleon--Peace--Treaty of Presburg--End of the HolyRoman Empire--Naples given to Joseph Bonaparte--Battle of Maida--TheNapoleonic Empire and Dynasty--Federation of the Rhine--State ofGermany--Possibility of maintaining the Empire of 1806CHAPTER VII. DEATH OF PITT, TO THE PEACE OF TILSIT. Death of Pitt--Ministry of Fox and Grenville--Napoleon forces Prussia intowar with England, and then offers Hanover to England--Prussia resolves onwar with Napoleon--State of Prussia--Decline of the Army--Southern Germanywith Napoleon--Austria neutral--England and Russia about to help Prussia, but not immediately--Campaign of 1806--Battles of Jena and Auerstädt--Ruinof the Prussian Army--Capitulation of Fortresses--Demands of Napoleon--TheWar continues--Berlin Decree--Exclusion of English goods from theContinent--Russia enters the war--Campaign in Poland and EastPrussia--Eylau--Treaty of Bartenstein--Friedland--Interview atTilsit--Alliance of Napoleon and Alexander--Secret Articles--Englishexpedition to Denmark--The French enter Portugal--Prussia after the Peaceof Tilsit--Stein's Edict of Emancipation--The Prussian Peasant--Reform ofthe Prussian Army, and creation of Municipalities--Stein's other projectsof Reform, which are not carried outCHAPTER VIII. SPAIN, TO THE FALL OF SARAGOSSA. Spain in 1806--Napoleon uses the quarrel between Ferdinand and Godoy--Heaffects to be Ferdinand's Protector--Dupont's Army enters Spain--Murat inSpain--Charles abdicates--Ferdinand King--Savary brings Ferdinand toBayonne--Napoleon makes both Charles and Ferdinand resign--Spirit of theSpanish Nation--Contrast with Germany--Rising of all Spain--The Notablesat Bayonne--Campaign of 1808--Capitulation of Baylen--Wellesley lands inPortugal--Vimieiro--Convention of Cintra--Effect of the Spanish Rising onEurope--War Party in Prussia--Napoleon and Alexander at Erfurt--Steinresigns, and is proscribed--Napoleon in Spain--Spanish Misgovernment--Campaign on the Ebro--Campaign of Sir John Moore--Corunna--Napoleonleaves Spain--Siege of Saragossa--Successes of the FrenchCHAPTER 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 GermanNation--Patriotic movement in Prussia--Expected Insurrection in NorthGermany--Plans of Campaign--Austrian Manifesto to the Germans--Rising ofthe Tyrolese--Defeats of the Archduke Charles in Bavaria--French inVienna--Attempts of Dörnberg and Schill--Battle of Aspern--Second passageof the Danube--Battle of Wagram--Armistice of Znaim--Austria waiting forEvents--Wellesley in Spain--He gains the Battle of Talavera, butretreats--Expedition against Antwerp fails--Austria makes Peace--Treaty ofVienna--Real Effects of the War of 1809--Austria after 1809--Metternich--Marriage of Napoleon with Marie Louise--Severance of Napoleon andAlexander--Napoleon annexes the Papal States, Holland, Le Valais, and theNorth German Coast--The Napoleonic Empire: its benefits and wrongs--TheCzar withdraws from Napoleon's Commercial System--War with Russiaimminent--Wellington in Portugal; Lines of Torres Vedras; Massena'sCampaign of 1810, and retreat--Soult in Andalusia--Wellington's Campaignof 1811--Capture of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz--SalamancaCHAPTER X. RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN, TO THE TREATY OF KALISCH. War approaching between France and Russia--Policy of Prussia--Hardenberg'sMinistry--Prussia forced into Alliance with Napoleon--Austrian Alliance--Napoleon's Preparations--He enters Russia--Alexander and Bernadotte--Planof Russians to fight a battle at Drissa frustrated--They retreat onWitepsk--Sufferings of the French--French enter Smolensko--Battle ofBorodino--Evacuation of Moscow--Moscow fired--The Retreat from Moscow--French at Smolensko--Advance of Russian Armies from North and South--Battleof Krasnoi--Passage of the Beresina--The French reach the Niemen--York'sConvention with the Russians--The Czar and Stein--Russian Army entersPrussia--Stein raises East Prussia--Treaty of Kalisch--Prussia declaresWar--Enthusiasm of the Nation--Idea of German Unity--The LandwehrCHAPTER XI. WAR OF LIBERATION, TO THE PEACE OF PARIS. The War of Liberation--Blücher crosses the Elbe--Battle of Lützen--TheAllies retreat to Silesia--Battle of Bautzen--Armistice--Napoleon intendsto intimidate Austria--Mistaken as to the Forces of Austria--Metternich'sPolicy--Treaty of Reichenbach--Austria offers its Mediation--Congress ofPrague--Austria enters the War--Armies and Plans of Napoleon and theAllies--Campaign of August--Battles of Dresden, Grosbeeren, the Katzbach, and Kulm--Effect of these Actions--Battle of Dennewitz--German Policy ofAustria favourable to the Princes of the Rhenish Confederacy--Frustratedhopes of German Unity--Battle of Leipzig--The Allies reach the Rhine--Offers of Peace at Frankfort--Plan of Invasion of France--Backwardness ofAustria--The Allies enter France--Campaign of 1814--Congress ofChâtillon--Napoleon moves to the rear of the Allies--The Allies advanceon Paris--Capitulation of Paris--Entry of the Allies--Dethronement ofNapoleon--Restoration of the Bourbons--The Charta--Treaty of Paris--Territorial effects of the War, 1792-1814--Every Power except France hadgained--France relatively weaker in Europe--Summary of the permanenteffects of this period on EuropeEND OF VOL. I. (ORIGINAL EDITION). CHAPTER XII. THE RESTORATION. The Restoration of 1814--Norway--Naples--Westphalia--Spain--The SpanishConstitution overthrown: victory of the clergy--Restoration in France--TheCharta--Encroachments of the nobles and clergy--Growing hostility to theBourbons--Congress of Vienna--Talleyrand and the Four Powers--The Polishquestion--The Saxon question--Theory of Legitimacy--Secret allianceagainst Russia and Prussia--Compromise--The Rhenish Provinces--Napoleonleaves Elba and lands in France--His declarations--Napoleon at Grenoble, at Lyons, at Paris--The Congress of Vienna unites Europe againstFrance--Murat's action in Italy--The Acte Additionnel--The Champ deMai--Napoleon takes up the offensive--Battles of Ligny, Quatre Bras, Waterloo--Affairs at Paris--Napoleon sent to St. Helena--Wellington andFouché--Arguments on the proposed cession of French territory--Treaty ofHoly Alliance--Second Treaty of Paris--Conclusion of the work of theCongress of Vienna--Federation of Germany--Estimate of the Congress ofVienna and of the Treaties of 1815--The Slave TradeCHAPTER XIII. THE PROGRESS OF REACTION. Concert of Europe after 1815--Spirit of the Foreign Policy of Alexander, ofMetternich, and of the English Ministry--Metternich's action in Italy, England's in Sicily and Spain--The Reaction in France--Richelieu and theNew Chamber--Execution of Ney--Imprisonments and persecutions--Conduct ofthe Ultra-Royalists in Parliament--Contests on the Electoral Bill and theBudget--The Chamber prorogued--Affair of Grenoble--Dissolution of theChamber--Electoral Law and Financial Settlement of 1817--Character of thefirst years of peace in Europe generally--Promise of a Constitution inPrussia--Hardenberg opposed by the partisans of autocracy andprivilege--Schmalz' Pamphlet--Delay of Constitutional Reform in Germany atlarge--The Wartburg Festival--Progress of Reaction--The Czar now inclinesto repression--Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle--Evacuation of France--Growinginfluence of Metternich in Europe--His action on Prussia--Murder ofKotzebue--The Carlsbad Conference and measures of repression inGermany--Richelieu and Decazes--Murder of the Duke of Berry--Progress ofthe reaction in France--General causes of the victory of reaction in EuropeCHAPTER XIV. THE MEDITERRANEAN MOVEMENTS OF 1820. Movements in the Mediterranean States beginning in 1820--Spain from1814 to 1820--The South American Colonies--The Army at Cadiz: Actionof Quiroga and Riego--Movement at Corunna--Ferdinand accepts theConstitution of 1812--Naples from 1815 to 1820--The Court-party, theMuratists, the Carbonari--The Spanish Constitution proclaimed atNaples--Constitutional movement in Portugal--Alexander's proposal withregard to Spain--The Conference and Declaration of Troppau--Protest ofEngland--Conference of Laibach--The Austrians invade Naples and restoreabsolute Monarchy--Insurrection in Piedmont, which fails--Spain from1820 to 1822--Death of Castlereagh--The Congress of Verona--Policy ofEngland--The French invade Spain--Restoration of absolute Monarchy, andviolence of the reaction--England prohibits the conquest of the SpanishColonies by France, and subsequently recognises their independence--Affairs in Portugal--Canning sends troops to Lisbon--The Policy ofCanning--Estimate of his place in the history of EuropeCHAPTER XV. GREECE AND EASTERN AFFAIRS. Condition of Greece: its Races and Institutions--The Greek Church--Communal System--The Ægæan Islands--The Phanariots--Greek intellectualrevival: Koraes--Beginning of Greek National Movement; Contact of Greecewith the French Revolution and Napoleon--The Hetæria Philike--Hypsilanti'sAttempt 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 ofChios--Failure of the Turks in the Campaign of 1822--Dissensions of theGreeks--Mahmud calls upon Mehemet Ali for Aid--Ibrahim conquers Crete andinvades the Murea--Siege of Missolonghi--Philhellenism in Europe--Russianproposal 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--Deathof Canning--Navarino--War between Russia and Turkey--Campaigns of 1828 and1829--Treaty of Adrianople--Capodistrias President of Greece--Leopoldaccepts and then declines the Greek Crown--Murder of Capodistrias--Otho, King of GreeceCHAPTER XVI. THE MOVEMENTS OF 1830. France before 1830--Reign of Charles X. --Ministry of Martignac--Ministryof Polignac--The Duke of Orleans--War in Algiers--The July Ordinances--Revolution of July--Louis Philippe King--Nature and effects of the JulyRevolution--Affairs in Belgium--The Belgian Revolution--The GreatPowers--Intervention, and establishment of the Kingdom of Belgium--Affairsof Poland--Insurrection at Warsaw--War between Russia and Poland--Overthrowof the Poles: End of the Polish Constitution--Affairs of Italy--Insurrection in the Papal States--France and Austria--AustrianIntervention--Ancona occupied by the French--Affairs of Germany--Prussia;the Zollverein--Brunswick, Hanover, Saxony--The Palatinate--Reaction inGermany--The exiles in Switzerland: Incursion into Savoy--Dispersion of theExiles--France under Louis Philippe: Successive risings--Period ofParliamentary activity--England after 1830: The Reform BillCHAPTER XVII. SPANISH AND EASTERN AFFAIRS. France and England after 1830--Affairs of Portugal--Don Miguel--Don Pedroinvades Portugal--Ferdinand of Spain--The Pragmatic Sanction--Death ofFerdinand: Regency of Christina--The Constitution--QuadrupleAlliance--Miguel and Carlos expelled from Portugal--Carlos entersSpain--The Basque Provinces--Carlist War: Zumalacarregui--The SpanishGovernment seeks French assistance, which is refused--Constitution of1837--End of the War--Regency of Espartero--Isabella Queen--Affairs ofthe Ottoman Empire--Ibrahim invades Syria; his victories--Rivalry ofFrance and Russia at Constantinople--Peace of Kutaya and Treaty of UnkiarSkelessi--Effect of this Treaty--France and Mehemet Ali--Commerce of theLevant--Second War between Mehemet and the Porte--Ottoman disasters--ThePolicy of the Great Powers--Quadruple Treaty without France--Ibrahimexpelled from Syria--Final Settlement--Turkey after 1840--Attemptedreforms of Reschid PashaCHAPTER XVIII. EUROPE BEFORE 1848. Europe during the Thirty-years' Peace--Italy and Austria--Mazzini--TheHouse of Savoy--Gioberti--Election of Pius IX. --Reforms expected--Revolution at Palermo--Agitation in Northern Italy--Lombardy--State ofthe Austrian Empire--Growth of Hungarian national spirit--The Magyarsand Slavs--Transylvania--Parties among the Magyars--Kossuth--The Slavicnational movements in Austria--The government enters on reforms inHungary--Policy of the Opposition--The Rural system of Austria--Insurrection in Galicia: the nobles and the peasants--Agrarianedict--Public opinion in Vienna--Prussia--Accession and character ofKing Frederick William IV. --Convocation of the United Diet--Itsdebates and dissolution--France--The Spanish Marriages--Reformmovement--Socialism--Revolution of February--End of the OrleanistMonarchyEND OF VOL. II. (ORIGINAL EDITION). CHAPTER XIX. THE MARCH REVOLUTION, 1848. Europe in 1789 and in 1848--Agitation in Western Germany before andafter the Revolution at Paris--Austria and Hungary--The March Revolutionat Vienna--Flight of Metternich--The Hungarian Diet--Hungary wins itsindependence--Bohemian movement--Autonomy promised to Bohemia--Insurrection of Lombardy--Of Venice--Piedmont makes war on Austria--Ageneral Italian war against Austria imminent--The March Days atBerlin--Frederick William IV. --A National Assembly promised--Schleswig-Holstein--Insurrection in Holstein--War between Germany andDenmark--The German Ante-Parliament--Republican Rising in Baden--Meetingof the German National Assembly at Frankfort--Europe generally in March, 1848--The French Provisional Government--The National Workshops--TheGovernment and the Red Republicans--French National Assembly--Riot ofMay 15--Measures against the National Workshops--The Four Days ofJune--Cavaignac--Louis Napoleon--He is elected to the Assembly--ElectedPresidentCHAPTER XX. THE PERIOD OF CONFLICT, DOWN TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SECOND FRENCHEMPIRE. Austria and Italy--Vienna from March to May--Flight of the Emperor--Bohemian National Movement--Windischgrätz subdues Prague--Campaign aroundVerona--Papal Allocution--Naples in May--Negotiations as to Lombardy--Reconquest of Venetia--Battle of Custozza--The Austrians enterMilan--Austrian Court and Hungary--The Serbs in Southern Hungary--SerbCongress at Carlowitz--Jellacic--Affairs of Croatia--Jellacic, the Courtand the Hungarian Movement--Murder of Lamberg--Manifesto of October 3--Vienna on October 6--The Emperor at Olmütz--Windischgrätz conquersVienna--The Parliament at Kremsier--Schwarzenberg Minister--Ferdinandabdicates--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 ofHungary--Declaration of Hungarian Independence--Russian Intervention--TheHungarian Summer Campaign--Capitulation of Vilagos--Italy--Murder ofRossi--Tuscany--The March Campaign in Lombardy--Novara--Abdication ofCharles Albert--Victor Emmanuel--Restoration in Tuscany--FrenchIntervention in Rome--Defeat of Oudinot--Oudinot and Lesseps--The Frenchenter Rome--The Restored Pontifical Government--Fall of Venice--Ferdinandreconquers Sicily--Germany--The National Assembly at Frankfort--TheArmistice of Malmö--Berlin from April to September--The Prussian Army--LastDays of the Prussian Parliament--Prussian Constitution granted byEdict--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 atErfurt--Action of Austria--Hesse-Cassel--The Diet of Frankfortrestored--Olmütz--Schleswig-Holstein--Germany after 1849--Austria after1851--France after 1848--Louis Napoleon--The October Message--Law Limitingthe Franchise--Louis Napoleon and the Army--Proposed Revision of theConstitution--The Coup d'Etat--Napoleon III. EmperorCHAPTER XXI. THE CRIMEAN WAR. England and France in 1851--Russia under Nicholas--The HungarianRefugees--Dispute between France and Russia on the Holy Places--Nicholasand the British Ambassador--Lord Stratford de Redcliffe--Menschikoff'sMission--Russian troops enter the Danubian Principalities--Lord Aberdeen'sCabinet--Movements of the Fleets--The Vienna Note--The Fleets pass theDardanelles--Turkish Squadron destroyed at Sinope--Declaration ofWar--Policy of Austria--Policy of Prussia--The Western Powers and theEuropean Concert--Siege of Silistria--The Principalities evacuated--Further objects of the Western Powers--Invasion of the Crimea--Battle ofthe Alma--The Flank March--Balaclava--Inkermann--Winter in theCrimea--Death of Nicholas--Conference of Vienna--Austria--Progress of theSiege--Plans of Napoleon III. --Canrobert and Pélissier--UnsuccessfulAssault--Battle of the Tchernaya--Capture of the Malakoff--Fall ofSebastopol--Fall of Kars--Negotiations for Peace--The Conference ofParis--Treaty of Paris--The Danubian Principalities--Continued discord inthe Ottoman Empire--Revision of the Treaty of Paris in 1871CHAPTER XXII. THE CREATION OF THE ITALIAN KINGDOM. Piedmont after 1849--Ministry of Azeglio--Cavour Prime Minister--Designsof Cavour--His Crimean Policy--Cavour at the Conference of Paris--Cavourand Napoleon III. --The Meeting at Plombières--Preparations in Italy--Treatyof January, 1859--Attempts at Mediation--Austrian Ultimatum--Campaign of1859--Magenta--Movement in Central Italy--Solferino--Napoleon andPrussia--Interview of Villafranca--Cavour resigns--Peace of Zürich--CentralItaly after Villafranca--The Proposed Congress--"The Pope and theCongress"--Cavour resumes office--Cavour and Napoleon--Union of the Duchiesand the Romagna with Piedmont--Savoy and Nice added to France--Cavour onthis cession--European opinion--Naples--Sicily--Garibaldi lands atMarsala--Capture of Palermo--The Neapolitans evacuate Sicily--Cavour andthe Party of Action--Cavour's Policy as to Naples--Garibaldi on themainland--Persano and Villamarina at Naples--Garibaldi at Naples--ThePiedmontese Army enters Umbria and the Marches--Fall of Ancona--Garibaldiand Cavour--The Armies on the Volturno--Fall of Gaeta--Cavour's Policywith regard to Rome and Venice--Death of Cavour--The Free Church in theFree StateCHAPTER XXIII. GERMAN ASCENDENCY WON BY PRUSSIA. Germany after 1858--The Regency in Prussia--Army-reorganisation--KingWilliam I. --Conflict between the Crown and the Parliament--Bismarck--Thestruggle continued--Austria from 1859--The October Diploma--Resistance ofHungary--The Reichsrath--Russia under Alexander II. --Liberation of theSerfs--Poland--The Insurrection of 1863--Agrarian measures in Poland--Schleswig-Holstein--Death of Frederick VII. --Plans of Bismarck--Campaignin Schleswig--Conference of London--Treaty of Vienna--England and NapoleonIII. --Prussia and Austria--Convention of Gastein--Italy--Alliance ofPrussia with Italy--Proposals for a Congress fail--War between Austria andPrussia--Napoleon III. --Königgrätz--Custozza--Mediation of Napoleon--Treaty of Prague--South Germany--Projects for compensation toFrance--Austria and Hungary--Deák--Establishment of the Dual System inAustria-HungaryCHAPTER XXIV. THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. Napoleon III. --The Mexican Expedition--Withdrawal of the French and deathof Maximilian--The Luxemburg Question--Exasperation in France againstPrussia--Austria--Italy--Mentana--Germany after 1866--The SpanishCandidature of Leopold of Hohenzollern--French declaration--Benedetti andKing William--Withdrawal of Leopold and demand for guarantees--The telegramfrom Ems--War--Expected Alliances of France--Austria--Italy--Prussianplans--The French army--Causes of French inferiority--Weissenburg--Wörth--Spicheren--Borny--Mars-la-Tour--Gravelotte--Sedan--The Republic proclaimedat Paris--Favre and Bismarck--Siege of Paris--Gambetta at Tours--The Armyof the Loire--Fall of Metz--Fighting at Orleans--Sortie of Champigny--TheArmies 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--RomeCHAPTER XXV. EASTERN AFFAIRS. France after 1871--Alliance of the Three Emperors--Revolt of Herzegovina--The Andrássy Note--Murder of the Consuls at Salonika--The BerlinMemorandum--Rejected by England--Abdul Aziz deposed--Massacres inBulgaria--Servia and Montenegro declare War--Opinion in England--Disraeli--Meeting of Emperors at Reichstadt--Servian Campaign--Declaration of theCzar--Conference at Constantinople--Its Failure--The London Protocol--Russia declares War--Advance on the Balkans--Osman at Plevna--Second Attackon Plevna--The Shipka Pass--Roumania--Third Attack on Plevna--Todleben--Fall of Plevna--Passage of the Balkans--Armistice--England--The Fleetpasses the Dardanelles--Treaty of San Stefano--England and Russia--SecretAgreement--Convention with Turkey--Congress of Berlin--Treaty ofBerlin--BulgariaMAPS. EUROPEAN STATES IN 1792CENTRAL EUROPE IN 1812MODERN EUROPE. CHAPTER I. Outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1792--Its immediate causes--Declaration of Pillnitz made and withdrawn--Agitation of the Priests andEmigrants--War Policy of the Gironde--Provocations offered to France bythe Powers--State of Central Europe in 1792--The Holy Roman Empire--Austria--Rule of the Hapsburgs--The Reforms of Maria Theresa and JosephII. --Policy of Leopold II. --Government and Foreign Policy of FrancisII. --Prussia--Government of Frederick William II. --Social condition orPrussia--Secondary States of Germany--Ecclesiastical States--FreeCities--Knights--Weakness of GermanyOn the morning of the 19th of April, 1792, after weeks of stormy agitationin Paris, the Ministers of Louis XVI. Brought down a letter from the Kingto the Legislative Assembly of France. The letter was brief butsignificant. It announced that the King intended to appear in the Hall ofAssembly at noon on the following day. Though the letter did not disclosethe object of the King's visit, it was known that Louis had given way tothe pressure of his Ministry and the national cry for war, and that adeclaration of war against Austria was the measure which the King was aboutto propose in person to the Assembly. On the morrow the public thronged thehall; the Assembly broke off its debate at midday in order to be inreadiness for the King. Louis entered the hall in the midst of deepsilence, and seated himself beside the President in the chair which was nowsubstituted for the throne of France. At the King's bidding GeneralDumouriez, Minister of Foreign Affairs, read a report to the Assembly uponthe relations of France to foreign Powers. The report contained a longseries of charges against Austria, and concluded with the recommendation ofwar. When Dumouriez ceased reading Louis rose, and in a low voice declaredthat he himself and the whole of the Ministry accepted the report read tothe 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. Itwas not three months since Louis himself had supplicated the Courts ofEurope for armed aid against his own subjects. The words which he nowuttered 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 fatalantagonism that existed between the nation and the King. After thePresident of the Assembly had made a short answer, Louis retired from thehall. The Assembly itself broke up, to commence its debate on the King'sproposal after an interval of some hours. When the House re-assembled inthe evening, those few courageous men who argued on grounds of nationalinterest and justice against the passion of the moment could scarcelyobtain a hearing. An appeal for a second day's discussion was rejected; thedebate abruptly closed; and the declaration of war was carried againstseven dissentient votes. It was a decision big with consequences for Franceand for the world. From that day began the struggle between RevolutionaryFrance and the established order of Europe. A period opened in which almostevery State on the Continent gained some new character from the aggressionsof France, from the laws and political changes introduced by the conqueror, or from the awakening of new forces of national life in the crisis ofsuccessful resistance or of humiliation. It is my intention to trace thegreat lines of European history from that time to the present, brieflysketching the condition of some of the principal States at the outbreak ofthe Revolutionary War, and endeavouring to distinguish, amid scenes ofever-shifting incident, the steps by which the Europe of 1792 has becomethe Europe of today. [First threats of foreign Courts against France, 1791. ]The first two years of the Revolution had ended without bringing Franceinto collision with foreign Powers. This was not due to any goodwill thatthe Courts of Europe bore to the French people, or to want of effort on thepart of the French aristocracy to raise the armies of Europe against theirown country. The National Assembly, which met in 1789, had cut at the rootsof the power of the Crown; it had deprived the nobility of their privilees, and laid its hand upon the revenues of the Church. The brothers of KingLouis XVI. , with a host of nobles too impatient to pursue a course ofsteady political opposition at home, quitted France, and wearied foreignCourts with their appeals for armed assistance. The absolute monarchs ofthe Continent gave them a warm and even ostentatious welcome; but theyconfined their support to words and tokens of distinction, and until thesummer of 1791 the Revolution was not seriously threatened with theinterference of the stranger. The flight of King Louis from Paris in June, 1791, followed by his capture and his strict confinement within theTuileries, gave rise to the first definite project of foreign intervention. [4] Louis had fled from his capital and from the National Assembly; hereturned, the hostage of a populace already familiar with outrage andbloodshed. For a moment the exasperation of Paris brought the Royal Familyinto real jeopardy. The Emperor Leopold, brother of Marie Antoinette, trembled for the safety of his unhappy sister, and addressed a letter tothe European Courts from Padua, on the 6th of July, proposing that thePowers should unite to preserve the Royal Family of France from popularviolence. Six weeks later the Emperor and King Frederick William II. OfPrussia met at Pillnitz, in Saxony. A declaration was published by the twoSovereigns, stating that they considered the position of the King of Franceto be matter of European concern, and that, in the event of all the othergreat Powers consenting to a joint action, they were prepared to supply anarmed force to operate on the French frontier. [Declaration of Pillnitz withdrawn. ]Had the National Assembly instantly declared war on Leopold and FrederickWilliam, its action would have been justified by every rule ofinternational law. The Assembly did not, however, declare war, and for agood reason. It was known at Paris that the manifesto was no more than adevice 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, wasin fact aware that England would be no party to any such coalition. He wasdetermined to do nothing that would force him into war; and it did notoccur to him that French politicians would understand the emptiness of histhreats as well as he did himself. Yet this turned out to be the case; andwhatever indignation the manifesto of Pillnitz excited in the mass of theFrench people, it was received with more derision than alarm by the men whowere cognisant of the affairs of Europe. All the politicians of theNational Assembly knew that Prussia and Austria had lately been on theverge of war with one another upon the Eastern question; they evenunderrated the effect of the French revolution in appeasing the existingenmities of the great Powers. No important party in France regarded theDeclaration of Pillnitz as a possible reason for hostilities; and thechallenge given to France was soon publicly withdrawn. It was withdrawnwhen Louis XVI. , by accepting the Constitution made by the NationalAssembly, placed himself, in the sight of Europe, in the position of a freeagent. 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 hehad been urged by the emigrants to refuse his assent, and to plunge thenation into civil war by an open breach with the Assembly. The franknesswith which Louis pledged himself to the Constitution, the seeming sincerityof his patriotism, again turned the tide of public opinion in his favour. His flight was forgiven; the restrictions placed upon his personal libertywere relaxed. Louis seemed to be once more reconciled with France, andFrance was relieved from the ban of Europe. The Emperor announced that thecircumstances which had provoked the Declaration of Pillnitz no longerexisted, and that the Powers, though prepared to revive the League iffuture occasion should arise, suspended all joint action in reference tothe internal affairs of France. [Priests and emigrants keep France in agitation. ]The National Assembly, which, in two years, had carried France so fartowards the goal of political and social freedom, now declared its workended. In the mass of the nation there was little desire for furtherchange. The grievances which pressed most heavily upon the common course ofmen's lives--unfair taxation, exclusion from public employment, monopoliesamong the townspeople, and the feudal dues which consumed the produce ofthe peasant--had been swept away. It was less by any general demand forfurther reform than by the antagonisms already kindled in the Revolutionthat France was forced into a new series of violent changes. The Kinghimself was not sincerely at one with the nation; in everything that mostkeenly touched his conscience he had unwillingly accepted the work of theAssembly. The Church and the noblesse were bent on undoing what had alreadybeen done. Without interfering with doctrine or ritual, the NationalAssembly had re-organised the ecclesiastical system of France, and hadenforced that supremacy of the State over the priesthood to which, throughout the eighteenth century, the Governments of Catholic Europe hadbeen steadily tending. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which wascreated by the National Assembly in 1790, transformed the priesthood from asociety of landowners into a body of salaried officers of the State, andgave 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 agreat part of the lower clergy into revolt. Their interests were hurt bythe sale of the Church lands; their consciences were wounded by the systemof popular election, which was condemned by the Pope. In half the pulpitsof France the principles of the Revolution were anathematised, and thevengeance of heaven denounced against the purchasers of the secularisedChurch lands. Beyond the frontier the emigrant nobles, who might havetempered the Revolution by combining with the many liberal men of theirorder who remained at home, gathered in arms, and sought the help offoreigners against a nation in which they could see nothing but rebelliousdependents of their own. The head-quarters of the emigrants were atCoblentz in the dominions of the Elector of Trèves. They formed themselvesinto regiments, numbering in all some few thousands, and occupiedthemselves with extravagant schemes of vengeance against all Frenchmen whohad 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 Assemblysent to the Legislature a body of men bent only on maintaining theadvantages already won, it would have been no easy task to preserve thepeace of France in the presence of the secret or open hostility of theCourt, the Church, and the emigrants. But the trial was not made. Theleading spirits among the new representatives were not men of compromise. In the Legislative Body which met in 1791 there were all the passions ofthe Assembly of 1789, without any of the experience which that Assembly hadgained. A decree, memorable among the achievements of political folly, hadprohibited members of the late Chamber from seeking re-election. The newLegislature was composed of men whose political creed had been drawn almostwholly from literary sources; the most dangerous theorists of the formerAssembly were released from Parliamentary restraints, and installed, likeRobespierre, as the orators of the clubs. Within the Chamber itself thedefenders of the Monarchy and of the Constitution which had just been givento France were far outmatched by the party of advance. The most conspicuousof the new deputies formed the group named after the district of theGironde, where several of their leaders had been elected. The oratorVergniaud, pre-eminent among companions of singular eloquence, thephilosopher Condorcet, the veteran journalist Brissot, gave to this partyan ascendancy in the Chamber and an influence in the country the moredangerous because it appeared to belong to men elevated above the ordinaryregions of political strife. Without the fixed design of turning themonarchy into a republic, the orators of the Gironde sought to carry therevolutionary movement over the barrier erected against it in theConstitution of 1791. From the moment of the opening of the Assembly it wasclear that the Girondins intended to precipitate the conflict between theCourt and the nation by devoting all the wealth of their eloquence to thesubjects which divided France the most. To Brissot and the men whofurnished the ideas of the party, it would have seemed a calamity that theConstitution of 1791, with its respect for the prerogative of the Crown andits tolerance of mediæval superstition, should fairly get underway. Inspite of Robespierre's prediction that war would give France a strongsovereign in the place of a weak one, the Girondins persuaded themselvesthat the best means of diminishing or overthrowing monarchical power inFrance was a war with the sovereigns of Europe; and henceforward theylaboured 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 protectionwhich the Elector of Trèves gave to the emigrant army at Coblentz was soflagrant a violation of international law that the Gironde had the supportof the whole nation when they called upon the King to demand the dispersalof the emigrants in the most peremptory form. National feeling was keenlyexcited by debates in which the military preparations of the emigrants andthe encouragement given to them by foreign princes were denounced with allthe energy of southern eloquence. On the 13th of December Louis declared tothe Electors of Trèves and Mainz that he would treat them as enemies unlessthe armaments within their territories were dispersed by January 15th; andat the same time he called upon the Emperor Leopold, as head of theGermanic body, to use his influence in bringing the Electors to reason. Thedemands of France were not resisted. On the 16th January, 1792, Louisinformed the Assembly that the emigrants had been expelled from theelectorates, and acknowledged the good offices of Leopold in effecting thisresult. The substantial cause of war seemed to have disappeared; butanother had arisen in its place. In a note of December 21st the AustrianMinister Kaunitz used expressions which implied that a league of the Powerswas still in existence against France. Nothing could have come moreopportunely for the war-party in the Assembly. Brissot cried for animmediate declaration of war, and appealed to the French nation tovindicate its honour by an attack both upon the emigrants and upon theirimperial protector. The issue depended upon the relative power of the Crownand the Opposition. Leopold saw that war was inevitable unless theConstitutional party, which was still in office, rallied for one lasteffort, and gained a decisive victory over its antagonists. In the hope ofturning public opinion against the Gironde, he permitted Kaunitz to send adespatch to Paris which loaded the leaders of the war-party with abuse, andexhorted the French nation to deliver itself from men who would bring uponit the hostility of Europe. (Feb. 17. ) [6] The despatch gave singular proofof the inability of the cleverest sovereign and the most experiencedminister of the age to distinguish between the fears of a timid cabinet andthe impulses of an excited nation. Leopold's vituperations might have hadthe intended effect if they had been addressed to the Margrave of Baden orthe Doge of Venice; addressed to the French nation and its popular Assemblyin 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 nationinto the arms of those whom he attacked. His despatch was received in theAssembly with alternate murmurs and bursts of laughter; in the clubs itexcited a wild outburst of rage. The exchange of diplomatic notes continuedfor 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 1stproduced no pause in the controversy. Delessart, the Foreign Minister ofLouis, was thrust from office, and replaced by Dumouriez, therepresentative 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 whenthe unhappy Louis was brought down to the Assembly by his Ministers, andcompelled to propose the declaration of war. [Pretended grounds of war. ][Expectation of foreign attack real among the French people; not real amongthe French politicians. ]It is seldom that the professed grounds correspond with the real motives ofa war; nor was this the case in 1792. The ultimatum of the AustrianGovernment demanded that compensation should be made to certain Germannobles whose feudal rights over their peasantry had been abolished inAlsace; that the Pope should be indemnified for Avignon and the Venaissin, which had been taken from him by France; and that a Government should beestablished at Paris capable of affording the Powers of Europe securityagainst the spread of democratic agitation. No one supposed the first twogrievances to be a serious ground for hostilities. The rights of the Germannobles in Alsace over their villagers were no doubt protected by thetreaties which ceded those districts to France; but every politician inEurope would have laughed at a Government which allowed the feudal systemto survive in a corner of its dominions out of respect for a settlement acentury and a half old: nor had the Assembly refused to these foreignseigneurs a compensation claimed in vain by King Louis for the nobles ofFrance. As to the annexation of Avignon and the Venaissin, a power which, like Austria, had joined in dismembering Poland, and had just made anunsuccessful attempt to dismember Turkey, could not gravely reproach Francefor incorporating a district which lay actually within it, and whoseinhabitants, or a great portion of them, were anxious to become citizens ofFrance. The third demand, the establishment of such a government as Austriashould deem satisfactory, was one which no high-spirited people could beexpected to entertain. Nor was this, in fact, expected by Austria. Leopoldhad no desire to attack France, but he had used threats, and would notsubmit to the humiliation of renouncing them. He would not have begun a warfor the purpose of delivering the French Crown; but, when he found that hewas himself certain to be attacked, he accepted a war with the Revolutionwithout regret. On the other side, when the Gironde denounced the league ofthe Kings, they exaggerated a far-off danger for the ends of their domesticpolicy. The Sovereigns of the Continent had indeed made no secret of theirhatred to the Revolution. Catherine of Russia had exhorted every Court inEurope to make war; Gustavus of Sweden was surprised by a violent death inthe midst of preparations against France; Spain, Naples, and Sardinia wereready to follow leaders stronger than themselves. But the statesmen of theFrench Assembly well understood the interval that separates hostile feelingfrom actual attack; and the unsubstantial nature of the danger to France, whether from the northern or the southern Powers, was proved by the veryfact that Austria, the hereditary enemy of France, and the country of thehated Marie Antoinette, was treated as the main enemy. Nevertheless, theCourts had done enough to excite the anger of millions of French people whoknew of their menaces, and not of their hesitations and reserves. The manwho composed the "Marseillaise" was no maker of cunningly-devised fables;the crowds who first sang it never doubted the reality of the dangers whichthe orators of the Assembly denounced. The Courts of Europe had heaped upthe fuel; the Girondins applied the torch. The mass of the French nationhad little means of appreciating what passed in Europe; they took theirfacts from their leaders, who considered it no very serious thing to plungea nation into war for the furtherance of internal liberty. Events were soonto pass their own stern and mocking sentence upon the wisdom of theGirondin statesmanship. [Germany follows Austria into the war. ][State of Germany. ]After voting the Declaration of War the French Assembly accepted amanifesto, drawn up by Condorcet, renouncing in the name of the Frenchpeople all intention of conquest. The manifesto expressed what wassincerely felt by men like Condorcet, to whom the Revolution was still toosacred a cause to be stained with the vulgar lust of aggrandisement. Butthe actual course of the war was determined less by the intentions withwhich the French began it than by the political condition of the Stateswhich bordered upon the French frontier. The war was primarily a war withAustria, but the Sovereign of Austria was also the head of Germany. TheGerman Ecclesiastical Princes who ruled in the Rhenish provinces had beenthe most zealous protectors of the emigrants; it was impossible that theyshould now find shelter in neutrality. Prussia had made an alliance withthe Emperor against France; other German States followed in the wake of oneor other of the great Powers. If France proved stronger than its enemy, there were governments besides that of Austria which would have to taketheir account with the Revolution. Nor indeed was Austria the power mostexposed 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 atlarge was the real area threatened by the war, and never was a politicalcommunity less fitted to resist attack than Germany at the end of theeighteenth century. It was in the divisions of the German people, and inthe rivalries of the two leading German governments, that France found itssurest support throughout the Revolutionary war, and its keenest stimulusto conquest. It will throw light upon the sudden changes that now began tobreak over Europe if we pause to make a brief survey of the state ofGermany at the outbreak of the war, to note the character and policy of itsreigning sovereigns, and to cast a glance over the circumstances which hadbrought 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 HolyRoman Empire. The members of this so-called Empire were, however, amultitude of independent States; and the chief of these States, Austria, combined with its German provinces a large territory which did not even inname form part of the Germanic body. The motley of the Empire was made upby governments of every degree of strength and weakness. Austria andPrussia possessed both political traditions and resources raising them tothe rank of great European Powers; but the sovereignties of the secondorder, such as Saxony and Bavaria, had neither the security of strength northe free energy often seen in small political communities; whilst in theremaining petty States of Germany, some hundreds in number, all public lifehad long passed out of mind in a drowsy routine of official benevolence oroppression. In theory there still existed a united Germanic body; inreality Germany was composed of two great monarchies in embittered rivalrywith one another, and of a multitude of independent principalities andcities whose membership in the Empire involved little beyond a liability tobe dragged into the quarrels of their more powerful neighbours. A Germannational feeling did not exist, because no combination existed uniting theinterests of all Germany. The names and forms of political union had comedown from a remote past, and formed a grotesque anachronism amid therealities of the eighteenth century. The head of the Germanic body heldoffice not by hereditary right, but as the elected successor of Charlemagneand the Roman Cæsars. Since the fifteenth century the imperial dignity hadrested with the Austrian House of Hapsburg; but, with the exception ofCharles V. , no sovereign of that House had commanded forces adequate to thecreation of a united German state, and the opportunity which then offereditself was allowed to pass away. The Reformation severed Northern Germanyfrom the Catholic monarchy of the south. The Thirty Years' War, terminatingin the middle of the seventeenth century, secured the existence ofProtestantism on the Continent of Europe, but it secured it at the cost ofGermany, which was left exhausted and disintegrated. By the Treaty ofWestphalia, A. D. 1648, the independence of every member of the Empire wasrecognised, and the central authority was henceforth a mere shadow. TheDiet of the Empire, where the representatives of the Electors, of thePrinces, and of the Free Cities, met in the order of the Middle Ages, sankinto 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 Circlesupplying in theory a contingent of troops; but this military organisationexisted only in letter. The greater and the intermediate States regulatedtheir armaments, as they did their policy, without regard to the Diet ofRatisbon; the contingents of the smaller sovereignties and free cities werein every degree of inefficiency, corruption, and disorder; and in spite ofthe courage of the German soldier, it could make little difference in aEuropean war whether a regiment which had its captain appointed by the cityof Gmünd, its lieutenant by the Abbess of Rotenmünster, and its ensign bythe Abbot of Gegenbach, did or did not take the field with numbers fiftyper cent. Below its statutory contingent. [7] How loose was the connectionsubsisting between the members of the Empire, how slow and cumbrous itsconstitutional machinery, was strikingly proved after the first inroads ofthe French into Germany in 1792, when the Diet deliberated for four weeksbefore calling out the forces of the Empire, and for five months beforedeclaring war. [Austria. ][Catholic policy of the Hapsburgs. ]The defence of Germany rested in fact with the armies of Austria andPrussia. The Austrian House of Hapsburg held the imperial title, andgathered around it the sovereigns of the less progressive German States. While the Protestant communities of Northern Germany identified theirinterests with those of the rising Prussian Monarchy, religious sympathyand the tradition of ages attached the minor Catholic Courts to thepolitical system of Vienna. Austria gained something by its patronage; itwas, however, no real member of the German family. Its interests were notthe interests of Germany; its power, great and enduring as it proved, wasnot based mainly upon German elements, nor used mainly for German ends. Thetitle of the Austrian monarch gave the best idea of the singular variety ofraces and nationalities which owed their political union only to theirsubmission to a common head. In the shorter form of state the reigningHapsburg was described as King of Hungary, Bohemia, Croatia, Slavonia, andGalicia; Archduke of Austria; Grand Duke of Transylvania; Duke of Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola; and Princely Count of Hapsburg and Tyrol. At theoutbreak of the war of 1792 the dominions of the House of Austria includedthe Southern Netherlands and the Duchy of Milan, in addition to the greatbulk of the territory which it still governs. Eleven distinct languageswere spoken in the Austrian monarchy, with countless varieties of dialects. Of the elements of the population the Slavic was far the largest, numberingabout ten millions, against five million Germans and three million Magyars;but neither numerical strength nor national objects of desire coloured thepolicy of a family which looked indifferently upon all its subject races asinstruments for its own aggrandisement. Milan and the Netherlands had comeinto the possession of Austria since the beginning of the eighteenthcentury, but the destiny of the old dominions of the Hapsburg House hadbeen fixed for many generations in the course of the Thirty Years' War. Inthat struggle, as it affected Austria, the conflict of the ancient and thereformed faith had become a conflict between the Monarchy, allied with theChurch, and every element of national life and independence, allied withthe Reformation. Protestantism, then dominant in almost all the Hapsburgterritories, was not put down without extinguishing the political libertiesof Austrian Germany, the national life of Bohemia, the spirit and ambitionof the Hungarian nobles. The detestable desire of the Emperor Ferdinand, "Rather a desert than a country full of heretics, " was only too wellfulfilled in the subsequent history of his dominions. In the Germanprovinces, except the Tyrol, the old Parliaments, and with them all traceof liberty, disappeared; in Bohemia the national Protestant nobility losttheir estates, or retained them only at the price of abandoning thereligion, the language, and the feelings of their race, until the countryof Huss passed out of the sight of civilised Europe, and Bohemiarepresented no more than a blank, unnoticed mass of tillers of the soil. InHungary, where the nation was not so completely crushed in the ThirtyYears' 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 ofnational independence. Two powers alone were allowed to subsist in theAustrian dominions, the power of the Crown and the power of the Priesthood;and, inasmuch as no real national unity could exist among the subjectraces, the unity of a blind devotion to the Catholic Church was enforcedover 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 tolose all its finer powers. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, inwhich no decade passed in England and France without the production of someliterary masterpiece, some scientific discovery, or some advance inpolitical reasoning, are marked by no single illustrious Austrian name, except that of Haydn the musician. When, after three generations of torporsucceeding the Thirty Years' War, the mind of North Germany awoke again inWinckelmann and Lessing, and a widely-diffused education gave to the middleclass some compensation for the absence of all political freedom, no traceof this revival appeared in Austria. The noble hunted and slept; the serftoiled heavily on; where a school existed, the Jesuit taught his schoolboysecclesiastical Latin, and sent them away unable to read theirmother-tongue. To this dull and impenetrable society the beginnings ofimprovement could only be brought by military disaster. The loss of Silesiain the first years of Maria Theresa disturbed the slumbers of theGovernment, and reform began. Although the old provincial Assemblies, except in Hungary and the Netherlands, had long lost all real power, theCrown had never attempted to create a uniform system of administration: thecollection of taxes, the enlistment of recruits, was still the business ofthe feudal landowners of each district. How such an antiquated order waslikely to fare in the presence of an energetic enemy was clearly enoughshown in the first attack made upon Austria by Frederick the Great. As thebasis of a better military organisation, and in the hope of arousing astronger national interest among her subjects, Theresa introduced some ofthe offices of a centralised monarchy, at the same time that she improvedthe condition of the serf, and substituted a German education and Germanschoolmasters for those of the Jesuits. The peasant, hitherto in many partsof the monarchy attached to the soil, was now made free to quit his lord'sland, and was secured from ejectment so long as he fulfilled his duty oflabouring for the lord on a fixed number of days in the year. Beyond thisTheresa's reform did not extend. She had no desire to abolish the feudalcharacter of country life; she neither wished to temper the sway ofCatholicism, nor to extinguish those provincial forms which gave to thenobles within their own districts a shadow of political independence. Herself conservative in feeling, attached to aristocracy, and personallydevout, Theresa consented only to such change as was recommended by hertrusted counsellors, and asked no more than she was able to obtain by thecharm of her own queenly character. [Joseph II. , 1780-1790. ]With the accession of her son Joseph II. In 1780 a new era began forAustria. The work deferred by Theresa was then taken up by a monarch whoseconceptions of social and religious reform left little for the boldestinnovators of France ten years later to add. There is no doubt that thecreation of a great military force for enterprises of foreign conquest wasan end always present in Joseph's mind, and that the thirst foruncontrolled despotic power never left him; but by the side of thesecoarser elements there was in Joseph's nature something of the true fire ofthe man who lives for ideas. Passionately desirous of elevating every classof his subjects at the same time that he ignored all their habits andwishes, Joseph attempted to transform the motley and priest-riddencollection of nations over whom he ruled into a single homogeneous body, organised after the model of France and Prussia, worshipping in the spiritof a tolerant and enlightened Christianity, animated in its relations ofclass to class by the humane philosophy of the eighteenth century. In thefirst year of his reign Joseph abolished every jurisdiction that did notdirectly emanate from the Crown, and scattered an army of officials fromOstend to the Dniester to conduct the entire public business of hisdominions 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 theState to every form of Christian worship, abolishing the exemption fromland-tax and the monopoly of public offices enjoyed by the nobility, transforming the Universities from dens of monkish ignorance into schoolsof secular learning, converting the peasant's personal service into arent-charge, and giving him in the officer of the Crown a protector and anarbiter in all his dealings with his lord. Noble and enlightened in hisaims, Joseph, like every other reformer of the eighteenth century, underrated the force which the past exerts over the present; he could seenothing but prejudice and unreason in the attachment to provincial customor time-honoured opinion; he knew nothing of that moral law which limitsthe success of revolutions by the conditions which precede them. What wasworst united with what was best in resistance to his reforms. The bigots ofthe University of Louvain, who still held out against the discoveries ofNewton, excited the mob to insurrection against Joseph, as the enemy ofreligion; the Magyar landowners in Hungary resisted a system whichextinguished the last vestiges of their national independence at the sametime that it destroyed the harsh dominion which they themselves exercisedover their peasantry. Joseph alternated between concession and the extremeof autocratic violence. At one moment he resolved to sweep away every localright that fettered the exercise of his power; then, after throwing theNetherlands into successful revolt, and forcing Hungary to the verge ofarmed resistance, he revoked his unconstitutional ordinances (January 28, 1790), and restored all the institutions of the Hungarian monarchy whichexisted at the date of his accession. [Leopold II. , 1790-1792. ]A month later, death removed Joseph from his struggle and his sorrows. Hissuccessor, Leopold II. , found the monarchy involved as Russia's ally in anattack upon Turkey; threatened by the Northern League of Prussia, England, and Holland; exhausted in finance; weakened by the revolt of theNetherlands; and distracted in every province by the conflict of theancient and the modern system of government, and the assertion of newsocial rights that seemed to have been created only in order to beextinguished. The recovery of Belgium and the conclusion of peace withTurkey were effected under circumstances that brought the adroit andguarded statesmanship of Leopold into just credit. His settlement of theconflict between the Crown and the Provinces, between the Church andeducation, between the noble and the serf, marked the line in which, forbetter or for worse, Austrian policy was to run for sixty years. Provincialrights, the privileges of orders and corporate bodies, Leopold restored;the personal sovereignty of his house he maintained unimpaired. In the moreliberal part of Joseph's legislation, the emancipation of learning fromclerical control, the suppression of unjust privilege in taxation, theabolition of the feudal services of the peasant, Leopold was willing tomake concessions to the Church and the aristocracy; to the spirit ofnational independence which his predecessor's aggression had excited inBohemia as well as in Hungary, he made no concession beyond the restorationof certain cherished forms. An attempt of the Magyar nobles to affixconditions to their acknowledgment of Leopold as King of Hungary wasdefeated; and, by creating new offices at Vienna for the affairs of Illyriaand Transylvania, and making them independent of the Hungarian Diet, Leopold showed that the Crown possessed an instrument against the dominantMagyar race in the Slavic and Romanic elements of the Hungarian Kingdom. [8] On the other hand, Leopold consented to restore to the Church itscontrol over the higher education, and to throw back the burden of taxationupon land not occupied by noble owners. He gave new rigour to thecensorship of the press; but the gain was not to the Church, to which thecensorship had formerly belonged, but to the Government, which now employedit as an instrument of State. In the great question of the emancipation ofthe serf Leopold was confronted by a more resolute and powerful body ofnobility in Hungary than existed in any other province. The right of thelord to fetter the peasant to the soil and to control his marriage Leopoldrefused to restore in any part of his dominions; but, while in parts ofBohemia he succeeded in maintaining the right given by Joseph to thepeasant to commute his personal service for a money payment, in Hungary hewas compelled to fall back upon the system of Theresa, and to leave thefinal settlement of the question to the Diet. Twenty years later thestatesman who emancipated the peasants of Prussia observed that Hungary wasthe only part of the Austrian dominions in which the peasant was not in abetter condition than his fellows in North Germany; [9] and so torpid wasthe humanity of the Diet that until the year 1835 the prison and theflogging-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'scharacter; yet his political aims were not low. During twenty-four years'government of Tuscany he had proved himself almost an ideal ruler in thepursuit of peace, of religious enlightenment, and of the materialimprovement of his little sovereignty. Raised to the Austrian throne, thecompromise which he effected with the Church and the aristocracy resultedmore from a supposed political necessity than from his own inclination. Solong as Leopold lived, Austria would not have wanted an intelligencecapable of surveying the entire field of public business, nor a willcapable of imposing unity of action upon the servants of State. To themisfortune of Europe no less than of his own dominions, Leopold was carriedoff by sickness at the moment when the Revolutionary War broke out. Anuneasy reaction against Joseph's reforms and a well-grounded dread of thenational movements in Hungary and the Netherlands were already theprincipal forces in the official world at Vienna; in addition to these camethe new terror of the armed proselytism of the Revolution. The successor ofLeopold, Francis II. , was a sickly prince, in whose homely andunimaginative mind the great enterprises of Joseph, amidst which he hadbeen 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 publiclife. The Government openly declared that all change should cease so longas the war lasted; even the pressing question of the peasant's relation tohis lord was allowed to remain unsettled by the Hungarian Diet, lest thespirit of national independence should find expression in its debates. Overthe whole internal administration of Austria the torpor of the days beforeTheresa seemed to be returning. Its foreign policy, however, bore no traceof this timorous, conservative spirit. Joseph, as restless abroad as athome, had shared the ambition of the Russian Empress Catherine, andtroubled Europe with his designs upon Turkey, Venice, and Bavaria. Theseand similar schemes of territorial extension continued to fill the minds ofAustrian courtiers and ambassadors. Shortly after the outbreak of war withFrance the aged minister Kaunitz, who had been at the head of the ForeignOffice during three reigns, retired from power. In spite of the firstpartition 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 shiftingattack. He had on the whole remained true to the principle of alliance withFrance and antagonism to Prussia; and when the revolution brought warwithin sight, he desired to limit the object of the war to the restorationof monarchical government in France. The conditions under which the youngEmperor and the King of Prussia agreed to turn the war to purposes ofterritorial aggrandisement caused Kaunitz, with a true sense of the fatalimport of this policy, to surrender the power which he had held for fortyyears. It was secretly agreed between the two courts that Prussia shouldrecoup itself for its expenses against France by seizing part of Poland. Onbehalf of Austria it was demanded that the Emperor should annex Bavaria, giving Belgium to the Elector as compensation. Both these schemes violatedwhat Kaunitz held to be sound policy. He believed that the interests ofAustria required the consolidation rather than the destruction of Poland;and he declared the exchange of the Netherlands for Bavaria to be, in theactual state of affairs, impracticable. [10] Had the coalition of 1792 beenframed on the principles advocated by Kaunitz, though Austria might nothave effected the restoration of monarchial power in France, the alliancewould not have disgracefully shattered on the crimes and infamies attendingthe second partition of Poland. From the moment when Kaunitz retired from office, territorial extensionbecame the great object of the Austrian Court. To prudent statesmen thescattered provinces and varied population of the Austrian State would havesuggested that Austria had more to lose than any European Power; to the menof 1792 it appeared that she had more to gain. The Netherlands might beincreased with a strip of French Flanders; Bavaria, Poland, and Italy wereall weak neighbours, who might be made to enrich Austria in their turn. Asort of magical virtue was attached to the acquisition of territory. If somany square miles and so many head of population were gained, whether ofalien or kindred race, mutinous or friendly, the end of all statesmanshipwas realised, and the heaviest sacrifice of life and industry repaid. Austria affected to act as the centre of a defensive alliance, and to fightfor the common purpose of giving a Government to France which would respectthe rights of its neighbours. In reality, its own military operations weretoo often controlled, and an effective common warfare frustrated, at onemoment by a design upon French Flanders, at another by the course of Polishor Bavarian intrigue, at another by the hope of conquests in Italy. Of allthe interests which centred in the head of the House of Hapsburg, the leastbefriended at Vienna was the interest of the Empire and of Germany. [Prussia. ]Nor, if Austria was found wanting, had Germany any permanent safeguard inthe rival Protestant State. Prussia, the second great German Power and theancient enemy of Austria, had been raised to an influence in Europe quiteout of proportion to its scanty resources by the genius of Frederick theGreat and the earlier Princes of the House of Hohenzollern. Its populationwas not one-third of that of France or Austria; its wealth was perhaps notsuperior to that of the Republic of Venice. That a State so poor in men andmoney should play the part of one of the great Powers of Europe waspossible only so long as an energetic ruler watched every movement of thatcomplicated machinery which formed both army and nation after the prince'sown type. Frederick gave his subjects a just administration of the law; hetaught them productive industries; he sought to bring education to theirdoors [11]; but he required that the citizen should account himself beforeall the servant of the State. Every Prussian either worked in the greatofficial hierarchy or looked up to it as the providence which was to directall his actions and supply all his judgments. The burden of taxationimposed by the support of an army relatively three times as great as thatof any other Power was wonderfully lightened by Frederick's economy: farmore serious than the tobacco-monopoly and the forage-requisitions, atwhich Frederick's subjects grumbled during his life-time, was the dangerthat a nation which had only attained political greatness by its obedienceto a rigorous administration should fall into political helplessness, whenthe clear purpose and all-controlling care of its ruler no longer animateda system which, without him, was only a pedantic routine. What in Englandwe are accustomed to consider as the very substance of national life, --themass of political interest and opinion, diffused in some degree amongst allclasses, at once the support and the judge of the servants of theState, --had in Prussia no existence. Frederick's subjects obeyed andtrusted their Monarch; there were probably not five hundred persons outsidethe public service who had any political opinions of their own. Prussia didnot possess even the form of a national representation; and, althoughcertain provincial assemblies continued to meet, they met only to receivethe instructions of the Crown-officers of their district. In the absence ofall public criticism, the old age of Frederick must in itself haveendangered the efficiency of the military system which had raised Prussiato its sudden eminence. [12] The impulse of Frederick's successor wassufficient to reverse the whole system of Prussian foreign policy, and toplunge the country in alliance with Austria into a speculative andunnecessary war. [Frederick William II. , 1786. ][Alliance with Austria against France, Feb. , 1792. ]On the death of Frederick in 1786, the crown passed to Frederick WilliamII. , his nephew. Frederick William was a man of common type, showy andpleasure-loving, interested in public affairs, but incapable of acting onany fixed principle. His mistresses gave the tone to political society. Aknot of courtiers intrigued against one another for the management of theKing; and the policy of Prussia veered from point to point as one unsteadyimpulse gave place to another. In countries less dependent than Prussiaupon the personal activity of the monarch, Frederick William's faults mighthave been neutralised by able Ministers; in Prussia the weakness of theKing was the decline of the State. The whole fabric of national greatnesshad been built up by the royal power; the quality of the public service, apart from which the nation was politically non-existent, was the qualityof its head. When in the palace profusion and intrigue took the place ofFrederick the Great's unflagging labour, the old uprightness, industry, andprecision which had been the pride of Prussian administration fell out offashion everywhere. Yet the frivolity of the Court was a less active causeof military decline than the abandonment of the first principles ofPrussian policy. [13] If any political sentiment existed in the nation, itwas 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 Frenchnobles, Frederick William allied himself with Austria (Feb. 1792), andthrew himself into the arms of his ancient enemy in order to attack anation which had not wronged him, he made an end of all zealous obedienceamongst his servants. Brunswick, the Prussian Commander-in-Chief, hated theFrench emigrants as much as he did the Revolution; and even the generalswho did not originally share Brunswick's dislike to the war recovered theirold jealousy of Austria after the first defeat, and exerted themselves onlyto get quit of the war at the first moment that Prussia could retire fromit without disgrace. The very enterprise in which Austria had consentedthat the Court of Berlin should seek its reward--the seizure of a part ofPoland--proved fatal to the coalition. The Empress Catherine was alreadylaying her hand for the second time upon this unfortunate country. It waseasy for the opponents of the Austrian alliance who surrounded KingFrederick William to contrast the barren effort of a war against Francewith the cheap and certain advantages to be won by annexation, in concertwith Russia, of Polish territory. To pursue one of these objects withvigour it was necessary to relinquish the other. Prussia was not richenough to maintain armies both on the Vistula and the Rhine. Nor, in theopinion of its rulers, was it rich enough to be very tender of its honouror 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 waspresent in most Continental States. The political independence of thenobility had long been crushed; the King's Government busied itself withevery detail of town and village administration; yet along with thisrigorous development of the modern doctrine of the unity and the authorityof the State there existed a social order more truly archaic than that ofthe Middle Ages at their better epochs. The inhabitants of Prussia weredivided into the three classes of nobles, burghers, and peasants, eachconfined to its own stated occupations, and not marrying outside its ownorder. The soil of the country bore the same distinction; peasant's landcould not be owned by a burgher; burgher's land could not be owned by anoble. No occupation was lawful for the noble, who was usually no more thana poor gentleman, but the service of the Crown; the peasant, even wherefree, might not practise the handicraft of a burgher. But the mass of thepeasantry in the country east of the Elbe were serfs attached to the soil;and the noble, who was not permitted to exercise the slightest influenceupon the government of his country, inherited along with his manor ajurisdiction and police-control over all who were settled within it. Frederick had allowed serfage to continue because it gave him in eachmanorial lord a task-master whom he could employ in his own service. Systemand obedience were the sources of his power; and if there existed among hissubjects one class trained to command and another trained to obey, it wasso much the easier for him to force the country into the habits of industrywhich he required of it. In the same spirit, Frederick officered his armyonly with men of the noble caste. They brought with them the habit ofcommand ready-formed; the peasants who ploughed and threshed at theirorders were not likely to disobey them in the presence of the enemy. It waspossible that such a system should produce great results so long asFrederick was there to guard against its abuses; Frederick gone, thedegradation of servitude, the insolence of caste, was what remained. Whenthe army of France, led by men who had worked with their fathers in thefields, hunted a King of Prussia amidst his capitulating grandees from thecentre to the verge of his dominions, it was seen what was the permanentvalue of a system which recognised in the nature of the poor no capacitybut one for hereditary subjection. The French peasant, plundered as he wasby the State, and vexed as he was with feudal services, knew no suchbondage as that of the Prussian serf, who might not leave the spot where hewas born; only in scattered districts in the border-provinces had serfagesurvived in France. It is significant of the difference in self-respectexisting in the peasantry of the two countries that the custom of strikingthe common soldier, universal in Germany, was in France no more than anabuse, practised by the admirers of Frederick, and condemned by the betterofficers themselves. [Minor States of Germany. ][Ecclesiastical States. ]In all the secondary States of Germany the government was an absolutemonarchy; though, here and there, as in Würtemberg, the shadow of the oldAssembly of the Estates survived; and in Hanover the absence of theElector, King George III. , placed power in the hands of a group of nobleswho ruled in his name. Society everywhere rested on a sharp division ofclasses similar in kind to that of Prussia; the condition of the peasantranging from one of serfage, as it existed in Mecklenburg, [15] to one ofcomparative freedom and comfort in parts of the southern and westernStates. The sovereigns differed widely in the enlightenment or selfishnessof their rule; but, on the whole, the character of government had changedfor the better of late years; and, especially in the Protestant States, efforts to improve the condition of the people were not wanting. Frederickthe Great had in fact created a new standard of monarchy in Germany. Fortyyears earlier, Versailles, with its unfeeling splendours, its glorificationof the personal indulgence of the monarch, had been the ideal which, with adue sense of their own inferiority, the German princes had done their bestto imitate. To be a sovereign was to cover acres of ground with stateapartments, to lavish the revenues of the country upon a troop ofmistresses and adventurers, to patronise the arts, to collect with the samecomplacency the masterpieces of ancient painting that adorn the DresdenGallery, or an array of valuables scarcely more interesting than the chestsof treasure that were paid for them. In the ecclesiastical States, headedby the Electorates of Mainz, Trèves, and Cologne, the affectations of adistinctive Christian or spiritual character had long been abandoned. Theprince-bishop and canons, who were nobles appointed from some otherprovince, lived after the gay fashion of the time, at the expense of a landin which they had no interest extending beyond their own lifetime. The onlyfeature distinguishing the ecclesiastical residence from that of one of theminor secular princes was that the parade of state was performed by monksin the cathedral instead of by soldiers on the drill-ground, and that eventhe pretence of married life was wanting among the flaunting harpies whofrequented a celibate Court. Yet even on the Rhine and on the Moselle theinfluence of the great King of Prussia had begun to make itself felt. Theintense and penetrating industry of Frederick was not within the reach ofevery petty sovereign who might envy its results; but the better spirit ofthe time was seen under some of the ecclesiastical princes in theencouragement of schools, the improvement of the roads, and a retrenchmentin courtly expenditure. That deeply-seated moral disease which resultedfrom centuries of priestly rule was not to be so lightly shaken off. In adistrict where Nature most bountifully rewards the industry of man, twenty-four out of every hundred of the population were monks, nuns, orbeggars. [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 andself-indulgence; fifty imperial cities, in most of which the once vigorousorganism of civic life had shrivelled to the type of the English rottenborough, did not exhaust the divisions of Germany. Several hundred Knightsof the Empire, owing no allegiance except to the Emperor, exercised, eachover a domain averaging from three to four hundred inhabitants, all therights of sovereignty, with the exception of the right to make war andtreaties. The districts in which this order survived were scattered overthe Catholic States of the south-west of Germany, where the knightsmaintained their prerogatives by federations among themselves and by thesupport of the Emperor, to whom they granted sums of money. There wereinstances in which this union of the rights of the sovereign and thelandlord was turned to good account; but the knight's land was usually thescene of such poverty and degradation that the traveller needed no guide toinform him when he entered it. Its wretched tracks interrupted the greatlines of communication between the Rhine and further Germany; its hovelswere the refuge of all the criminals and vagabonds of the surroundingcountry; for no police existed but the bailiffs of the knight, and the onlyjurisdiction was that of the lawyer whom the knight brought over from thenearest town. Nor was the disadvantage only on the side of those who werethus governed. The knight himself, even if he cherished some traditionalreverence for the shadow of the Empire, was in the position of a man whobelongs to no real country. If his sons desired any more active career thanthat of annuitants upon the family domains, they could obtain it only byseeking employment at one or other of the greater Courts, and byidentifying themselves with the interests of a land which they entered asstrangers. Such was in outline the condition of Germany at the moment when it wasbrought into collision with the new and unknown forces of the FrenchRevolution. A system of small States, which in the past of Greece and Italyhad produced the finest types of energy and genius, had in Germany resultedin the extinction of all vigorous life, and in the ascendancy of all thatwas stagnant, little, and corrupt. If political disorganisation, the decayof public spirit, and the absence of a national idea, are the signs ofimpending downfall, Germany was ripe for foreign conquest. The obsolete anddilapidated fabric of the Empire had for a century past been sustained onlyby the European tradition of the Balance of Power, or by the absence ofserious attack from without. Austria once overpowered, the Empire was readyto fall to pieces by itself: and where, among the princes or the people ofGermany, were the elements that gave hope of its renovation in any betterform of national life?CHAPTER II. French and Austrian armies on the Flemish frontier--Prussia enters thewar--Brunswick invades France--His Proclamation--Insurrection of Aug. 10at Paris--Massacres of September--Character of the war--Brunswick, checkedat Valmy, retreats--The War becomes a Crusade of France--Neighbours ofFrance--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 theMediterranean States--Condition of England--English Parties, how affectedby the Revolution--The Gironde and the Mountain--Austria recovers theNetherlands--The Allies invade France--La Vendée--Revolutionary System of1793--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 ofBasle--France in 1795--Insurrection of 13 Vendémiaire--Constitution of1795--The Directory--Effect of the Revolution on the spirit of Europe upto 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 Flemishfrontier. The first encounters were discreditable to the French soldiery, who took to flight and murdered one of their generals. The discouragementwith which the nation heard of these reverses deepened into sullenindignation against the Court, as weeks and months passed by, and theforces lay idle on the frontier or met the enemy only in triflingskirmishes which left both sides where they were before. If at this crisisof the Revolution, with all the patriotism, all the bravery, all themilitary genius of France burning for service, the Government conducted thewar with results scarcely distinguishable from those of a parade, thesuggestion of treason on the part of the Court was only too likely to beentertained. The internal difficulties of the country were increasing. TheAssembly had determined to banish from France the priests who rejected thenew ecclesiastical system, and the King had placed his veto upon theirdecree. He had refused to permit the formation of a camp of volunteers inthe neighbourhood of Paris. He had dismissed the popular Ministry forcedupon him by the Gironde. A tumult on the 20th of June, in which the mobforced their way into the Tuileries, showed the nature of the attackimpending upon the monarchy if Louis continued to oppose himself to thedemands of the nation; but the lesson was lost upon the King. Louis was aslittle able to nerve himself for an armed conflict with the populace as toreconcile his conscience to the Ecclesiastical Decrees, and he surrenderedhimself to a pious inertia at a moment when the alarm of foreign invasiondoubled revolutionary passion all over France. Prussia, in pursuance of atreaty made in February, united its forces to those of Austria. Fortythousand Prussian troops, under the Duke of Brunswick, the best ofFrederick's surviving generals, advanced along the Moselle. From Belgiumand the upper Rhine two Austrian armies converged upon the line ofinvasion; and the emigrant nobles were given their place among the forcesof the Allies. On the 25th of July the Duke of Brunswick, in the name of the Emperor andthe King of Prussia, issued a proclamation to the French people, which, butfor the difference between violent words and violent deeds, would have leftlittle to be complained of in the cruelties that henceforward stained thepopular cause. In this manifesto, after declaring that the Allies enteredFrance in order to deliver Louis from captivity, and that members of theNational Guard fighting against the invaders would be punished as rebelsagainst their king, the Sovereigns addressed themselves to the city ofParis and to the representatives of the French nation:--"The city of Parisand its inhabitants are warned to submit without delay to their King; toset that Prince at entire liberty, and to show to him and to all the RoyalFamily the inviolability and respect which the law of nature and of nationsimposes on subjects towards their Sovereigns. Their Imperial and RoyalMajesties will hold all the members of the National Assembly, of theMunicipality, and of the National Guard of Paris responsible for all eventswith their heads, before military tribunals, without hope of pardon. Theyfurther declare that, if the Tuileries be forced or insulted, or the leastviolence offered to the King, the Queen, or the Royal Family, and ifprovision be not at once made for their safety and liberty, they willinflict a memorable vengeance, by delivering up the city of Paris tomilitary execution and total overthrow, and the rebels guilty of suchcrimes to the punishment they have merited. " [17][Insurrection August 10, 1972. ]This challenge was not necessary to determine the fate of Louis. Since thecapture of the Bastille in the first days of the Revolution the NationalGovernment had with difficulty supported itself against the populace of thecapital; and, even before the foreigner threatened Paris with fire andsword, Paris had learnt to look for the will of France within itself. Asthe columns of Brunswick advanced across the north-eastern frontier, Dantonand the leaders of the city-democracy marshalled their army of the poor andthe desperate to overthrow that monarchy whose cause the invader had madehis own. The Republic which had floated so long in the thoughts of theGirondins was won in a single day by the populace of Paris, amid the roarof cannons and the flash of bayonets. On the 10th of August Danton letloose the armed mob upon the Tuileries. Louis quitted the Palace withoutgiving orders to the guard either to fight or to retire; but the guard wereignorant that their master desired them to offer no resistance, and onehundred and sixty of the mob were shot down before an order reached thetroops to abandon the Palace. The cruelties which followed the victory ofthe people indicated the fate in store for those whom the invader came toprotect. It is doubtful whether the foreign Courts would have made anyserious attempt to undo the social changes effected by the Revolution inFrance; but no one supposed that those thousands of self-exiled nobles whonow returned behind the guns of Brunswick had returned in order to taketheir 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 torepossess themselves of rights of which they had been despoiled, and totake vengeance upon the men who were responsible for the changes made inFrance since 1789. [18] In the midst of a panic little justified by thereal military situation, Danton inflamed the nation with his own passionatecourage and resolution; he unhappily also thought it necessary to asuccessful national defence that the reactionary party at Paris should beparalysed by a terrible example. The prisons were filled with personssuspected of hostility to the national cause, and in the first days ofSeptember many hundreds of these unfortunate persons were massacred bygangs of assassins paid by a committee of the Municipality. Danton did notdisguise his approval of the act. He had made up his mind that the work ofthe Revolution could only be saved by striking terror into its enemies, andby preventing the Royalists from co-operating with the invader. But themultitudes who flocked to the standards of 1792 carried with them thepatriotism 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 waragainst a privileged class attempting to recover by force the unjustadvantages that they had not been able to maintain, a war against theforeigner in defence of the right of the nation to deal with its owngovernment. Since the great religious wars there had been no cause sorooted 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 ownfree will. No conscription dragged the peasant to the frontier. Men lefttheir homes in order that the fruit of the poor man's labour should be hisown, in order that the children of France should inherit some betterbirthright than exaction and want, in order that the late-won sense ofhuman right should not be swept from the earth by the arms of privilege andcaste. It was a time of high-wrought hope, of generous and patheticself-sacrifice; a time that left a deep and indelible impression upon thosewho judged it as eye-witnesses. Years afterwards the poet Wordsworth, thenalienated from France and cold in the cause of liberty, could not recallwithout 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 Longwyand Verdun, covering the passage of the Meuse, had fallen after thebriefest resistance; the troops that could be collected before Brunswick'sapproach were too few to meet the enemy in the open field. Happily forFrance the slow advance of the Prussian general permitted Dumouriez tooccupy the difficult country of the Argonne, where, while waiting for hisreinforcements, he was able for some time to hold the invaders in check. Atlength Brunswick made his way past the defile which Dumouriez had chosenfor his first line of defence; but it was only to find the French posted insuch strength on his flank that any further advance would imperil his ownarmy. If the advance was to be continued, Dumouriez must be dislodged. Accordingly, on the 20th of September, Brunswick directed his artilleryagainst the hills of Valmy, where the French left was encamped. Thecannonade continued for some hours, but it was followed by no generalattack. The firmness of the French under Brunswick's fire made it clearthat they would not be displaced without an obstinate battle; and, disappointed of victory, the King of Prussia began to listen to proposalsof peace sent to him by Dumouriez. [20] A week spent in negotiation servedonly to strengthen the French and to aggravate the scarcity and sicknesswithin the German camp. Dissensions broke out between the Prussian andAustrian commanders; a retreat was ordered; and to the astonishment ofEurope the veteran forces of Brunswick fell back before the mutinoussoldiery and unknown generals of the Revolution, powerless to delay for asingle month the evacuation of France and the restoration of the fortresseswhich 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 inconsequence of the overthrow of the monarchy on August both, and hadordered the election of representatives to frame a constitution for France. The elections were held in the crisis of invasion, in the height ofnational indignation against the alliance of the aristocracy with theforeigner, and, in some districts, under the influence of men who had notshrunk from ordering the massacres in the prisons. At such a moment aConstitutional Royalist had scarcely more chance of election than adetected spy from the enemy's camp. The Girondins, who had been the partyof extremes in the Legislative Assembly, were the party of moderation andorder in the Convention. By their side there were returned men whose wholebeing seemed to be compounded out of the forces of conflict, men who, sometimes without conscious depravity, carried into political and socialstruggles that direct, unquestioning employment of force which hasordinarily been reserved for war or for the diffusion of religiousdoctrines. The moral differences that separated this party from the Girondewere at once conspicuous: the political creed of the two parties appearedat first to be much the same. Monarchy was abolished, and France declared aRepublic (Sept. 21). Office continued in the hands of the Gironde; but thevehement, uncompromising spirit of their rivals, the so-called party of theMountain, quickly made itself felt in all the relations of France toforeign Powers. The intention of conquest might still be disavowed, as ithad been five months before; but were the converts to liberty to be deniedthe right of uniting themselves to the French people by their own freewill? When the armies of the Republic had swept its assailants from theborder-provinces that gave them entrance into France, were those provincesto be handed back to a government of priests and nobles? The scruples whichhad condemned all annexation of territory vanished in that orgy ofpatriotism which followed the expulsion of the invader and the discoverythat the Revolution was already a power in other lands than France. Thenation that had to fight the battle of European freedom must appeal to thespirit of freedom wherever it would answer the call: the conflict withsovereigns must be maintained by arming their subjects against them inevery land. In this conception of the universal alliance of the nations, the Governments with which France was not yet at war were scarcelydistinguished from those which had pronounced against her. Thefrontier-lines traced by an obsolete diplomacy, the artificial guaranteesof treaties, were of little account against the living and inalienablesovereignty of the people. To men inflamed with the passions of 1792 anargument of international law scarcely conveyed more meaning than to Peterthe Hermit. Among the statesmen of other lands, who had no intention ofabandoning all the principles recognised as the public right of Europe, thelanguage now used by France could only be understood as the avowal ofindiscriminate aggression. [The neighbors of France. ]The Revolution had displayed itself in France as a force of union as wellas of division. It had driven the nobles across the frontier; it had tornthe clergy from their altars; but it had reconciled sullen Corsica; and byabolishing feudal rights it had made France the real fatherland of theTeutonic peasant in Alsace and Lorraine. It was now about to prove itsattractive power in foreign lands. At the close of the last century thenationalities of Europe were far less consolidated than they are atpresent; only on the Spanish and the Swiss frontier had France a neighbourthat could be called a nation. On the north, what is now the kingdom ofBelgium was in 1792 a collection of provinces subject to the House ofAustria. The German population both of the districts west of the Rhine andof those opposite to Alsace was parcelled out among a number of pettyprincipalities. Savoy, though west of the chain of the Alps and French inspeech, formed part of the kingdom of Piedmont, which was itself severed byhistory and by national character from the other States of Northern Italy. Along the entire frontier, from Dunkirk to the Maritime Alps, Francenowhere touched a strong, united, and independent people; and along thisentire frontier, except in the country opposite Alsace, the armedproselytism of the French Revolution proved a greater force than theinfluences on which the existing order of things depended. In the LowCountries, in the Principalities of the Rhine, in Switzerland, in Savoy, inPiedmont itself, the doctrines of the Revolution were welcomed by a more orless numerous class, and the armies of France appeared, though but for amoment, as the missionaries of liberty and right rather than as an invadingenemy. [Custine enters Mainz, Oct. 20. ]No sooner had Brunswick been brought to a stand by Dumouriez at Valmy thana French division under Custine crossed the Alsatian frontier and advancedupon Spires, where Brunswick had left large stores of war. The garrison wasdefeated in an encounter outside the town; Spires and Worms surrendered toCustine. 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 thecity to become its master. Brunswick had indeed apprehended the failure ofhis invasion of France, but he had never given a thought to the defence ofGermany; and, although the King of Prussia had been warned of thedefenceless state of Mainz, no steps had been taken beyond the payment of asum of money for the repair of the fortifications, which money theArchbishop expended in the purchase of a wood belonging to himself and theerection of a timber patchwork. On news arriving of the capture of Spires, the Archbishop fled, leaving the administration to the Dean, theChancellor, and the Commandant. The Chancellor made a speech, calling uponhis "beloved brethren" the citizens to defend themselves to the lastextremity, and daily announced the overthrow of Dumouriez and theapproaching entry of the Allies into Paris, until Custine's soldiersactually came into sight. [21] Then a council of war declared the city tobe untenable; and before Custine had brought up a single siege-gun thegarrison capitulated, and the French were welcomed into Mainz by thepartisans of the Republic (Oct. 20). With the French arms came the Frenchorganisation of liberty. A club was formed on the model of the Jacobin Clubof Paris; existing officers and distinctions of rank were abolished; andalthough the mass of the inhabitants held aloof, a Republic was finallyproclaimed, 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 Conventionfrom the design of attacking Austria in the Netherlands, which Dumouriezhad from the first pressed upon the Government. It was not three yearssince the Netherlands had been in revolt against the Emperor Joseph. In itsorigin the revolt was a reactionary movement of the clerical party againstJoseph's reforms; but there soon sprang up ambitions and hopes at variancewith the first impulses of the insurrection; and by the side of monks andmonopolists a national party came into existence, proclaiming thesovereignty of the people, and imitating all the movements of the FrenchRevolution. During the brief suspension of Austrian rule the popular andthe reactionary parties attacked one another; and on the restoration ofLeopold's authority in 1791 the democratic leaders, with a large body oftheir followers, took refuge beyond the frontier, looking forward to theoutbreak of war between Austria and France. Their partisans formed a Frenchconnection in the interior of the country; and by some strange illusion, the priests themselves and the close corporations which had been attackedby Joseph supposed that their interests would be respected by RevolutionaryFrance. [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 ofNovember, [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 deeplyaffected the relations of France to Great Britain, hitherto a neutralspectator of the war. A manifesto was published declaring that the Frenchnation offered its alliance to all peoples who wished to recover theirfreedom, and charging the generals of the Republic to give their protectionto all persons who might suffer in the cause of liberty (Nov. 19). A weeklater Savoy and Nice were annexed to France, the population of Savoy havingdeclared in favour of France and Sardinia. On the 15th of December theConvention proclaimed that social and political revolution was henceforthto accompany every movement of its armies on foreign soil. "In everycountry that shall be occupied by the armies of the French Republic"--suchwas the substance of the Decree of December 15th--"the generals shallannounce the abolition of all existing authorities; of nobility, ofserfage, of every feudal right and every monopoly; they shall proclaim thesovereignty of the people, and convoke the inhabitants in assemblies toform a provisional Government, to which no officer of a former Government, no noble, nor any member of the former privileged corporations shall beeligible. They shall place under the charge of the French Republic allproperty belonging to the Sovereign or his adherents, and the property ofevery civil or religious corporation. The French nation will treat asenemies any people which, refusing liberty and equality, desires topreserve its prince and privileged castes, or to make any accommodationwith them. "[England arms. ][The Schelde. ][Execution of Louis XVI. , Jan. 21, 1793. ]This singular announcement of a new crusade caused the Government of GreatBritain to arm. Although the decree of the Convention related only toStates with which France was at war, the Convention had in fact formedconnections with the English revolutionary societies; and the FrenchMinister of Marine informed his sailors that they were about to carry fiftythousand caps of liberty to their English brethren. No prudent statesmanwould treat a mere series of threats against all existing authorities asground for war; but the acts of the French Government showed that itintended to carry into effect the violent interference in the affairs ofother nations announced in its manifestoes. Its agents were stirring updissatisfaction in every State; and although the annexation of Savoy andthe occupation of the Netherlands might be treated as incidental to theconflict with Austria and Sardinia, in which Great Britain had pledgeditself to neutrality, other acts of the Convention were certainlyinfringements of the rights of allies of England. A series of Europeantreaties, oppressive according to our own ideas, but in keeping with theideas of that age, prohibited the navigation of the River Schelde, on whichAntwerp is situated, in order that the commerce of the North Sea might flowexclusively into Dutch ports. On the conquest of Belgium the FrenchGovernment gave orders to Dumouriez to send a flotilla down the river, andto declare Antwerp an open port in right of the law of nature, whichtreaties cannot abrogate. Whatever the folly of commercial restraints, thenavigation of the Schelde was a question between the Antwerpers and theDutch, and one in which France had no direct concern. The incident, thoughtrivial, was viewed in England as one among many proofs of the intention ofthe French to interfere with the affairs of neighbouring States at theirpleasure. In ordinary times it would not have been easy to excite muchinterest in England on behalf of a Dutch monopoly; but the feeling of thiscountry towards the French Revolution had been converted into a passionatehatred by the massacres of September, and by the open alliance between theConvention and the Revolutionary societies in England itself. Pitt indeed, whom the Parisians imagined to be their most malignant enemy, labouredagainst the swelling national passion, and hoped against all hope forpeace. Not only was Pitt guiltless of the desire to add this country to theenemies of France, but he earnestly desired to reconcile France withAustria, in order that the Western States, whose embroilment left EasternEurope at the mercy of Catherine of Russia, might unite to save both Polandand Turkey from falling into the hands of a Power whose steady aggressionthreatened Europe more seriously than all the noisy and outspokenexcitement of the French Convention. Pitt, moreover, viewed with deepdisapproval the secret designs of Austria and Prussia. [24] If the Frenchexecutive would have given any assurance that the Netherlands should not beannexed, or if the French ambassador, Chauvelin, who was connected withEnglish plotters, had been superseded by a trustworthy negotiator, it isprobable that peace might have been preserved. But when, on the executionof King Louis (Jan. 21, 1793), Chauvelin was expelled from England as asuspected 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 thereal ground of war was perfectly understood. France considered itselfentitled to advance the Revolution and the Rights of Man wherever its ownarms or popular insurrection gave it the command. England denied the rightof any Power to annul the political system of Europe at its pleasure. Nomore serious, no more sufficient, ground of war ever existed between twonations; yet the event proved that, with the highest justification for war, the highest wisdom would yet have chosen peace. England's entry into thewar converted it from an affair of two or three campaigns into a struggleof twenty years, resulting in more violent convulsions, more widespreadmisery, and more atrocious crimes, than in all probability would haveresulted even from the temporary triumph of the revolutionary cause in1793. But in both nations political passion welcomed impending calamity;and the declaration of war by the Convention on February 1st onlyanticipated the desire of the English people. Great Britain once committedto the struggle, Pitt spared neither money nor intimidation in his effortsto unite all Europe against France. Holland was included with England inthe French declaration of war. The Mediterranean States felt that the navyof England was nearer to them than the armies of Austria and Prussia; andbefore the end of the summer of 1793, Spain, Portugal, Naples, Tuscany, andthe Papal States had joined the Coalition. [French wrongly think England inclined to revolution. ]The Jacobins of Paris had formed a wrong estimate of the politicalcondition of England. At the outbreak of the war they believed that Englanditself was on the verge of revolution. They mistook the undoubteddiscontent of a portion of the middle and lower classes, which showeditself in the cry for parliamentary reform, for a general sentiment ofhatred towards existing institutions, like that which in France had sweptaway the old order at a single blow. The Convention received the addressesof English Radical societies, and imagined that the abuses of theparliamentary system under George III. Had alienated the whole nation. Whatthey had found in Belgium and in Savoy--a people thankful to receive theRights of Man from the soldiers of the Revolution--they expected to findamong the dissenting congregations of London and the factory-hands ofSheffield. The singular attraction exercised by each class in England uponthe one below it, as well as the indifference of the nation generally toall ideals, was little understood in France, although the Revolutions ofthe two countries bore this contrast on their face. A month after the fallof the Bastille, the whole system of class-privilege and monopoly hadvanished from French law; fifteen years of the English Commonwealth hadleft the structure of English society what it had been at the beginning. But political observation vanished in the delirium of 1793; and the Frenchonly discovered, when it was too late, that in Great Britain the Revolutionhad fallen upon an enemy of unparalleled stubbornness and inexhaustiblestrength. [The Whigs not democratic. ][Political condition of England. ]In the first Assembly of the Revolution it was usual to speak of theEnglish as free men whom the French ought to imitate; in the Convention itwas usual to speak of them as slaves whom the French ought to deliver. Theinstitutions of England bore in fact a very different aspect when comparedwith the absolute monarchy of the Bourbons and when compared with thedemocracy of 1793. Frenchmen who had lived under the government of a Courtwhich made laws by edict and possessed the right to imprison byletters-patent looked with respect upon the Parliament of England, itstrial by jury, and its freedom of the press. The men who had sent a king toprison and confiscated the estates of a great part of the aristocracy couldonly feel compassion for a land where three-fourths of the nationalrepresentatives were nominees of the Crown or of wealthy peers. Nor, inspite of the personal sympathy of Fox with the French revolutionarymovement, was there any real affinity between the English Whig party andthat which now ruled in the Convention. The event which fixed the characterof English liberty during the eighteenth century, the Revolution of 1688, had nothing democratic in its nature. That revolution was directed againsta system of Roman Catholic despotism; it gave political power not to themass of the nation, which had no desire and no capacity to exercise it, butto a group of noble families and their retainers, who, during the reigns ofthe first two Georges, added all the patronage and influence of the Crownto their social and constitutional weight in the country. The domestichistory of England since the accession of George III. Had turned chieflyupon the obstinate struggle of this monarch to deliver himself from alldependence upon party. The divisions of the Whigs, their jealousies, but, above all, their real alienation from the mass of the people whose rightsthey professed to defend, ultimately gave the King the victory, when, aftertwenty years of errors, be found in the younger Pitt a Minister capable ofuniting the interests of the Crown with the ablest and most patrioticliberal statesmanship. Bribes, threats, and every species of base influencehad 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 ofFox and North; but the real support of Pitt, whom the King placed in officewith a minority in the House of Commons, was the temper of the nationitself, wearied with the exclusiveness, the corruption, and theparty-spirit of the Whigs, and willing to believe that a popular Minister, even if he had entered upon power unconstitutionally, might do more for thecountry 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 ToryMinister confronted by a Whig Opposition, governed England on more liberalprinciples than any statesman who had held power during the eighteenthcentury. These years were the last of the party-system of England in itsoriginal form. The French Revolution made an end of that old distinction inwhich the Tory was known as the upholder of Crown-prerogative and the Whigas the supporter of a constitutional oligarchy of great families. Itcreated that new political antagonism in which, whether under the names ofWhig and Tory, or of Liberal and Conservative, two great parties havecontended, one for a series of beneficial changes, the other for thepreservation of the existing order. The convulsions of France and the dreadof revolutionary agitation in England transformed both Pitt and the Whigsby whom he was opposed. Pitt sacrificed his schemes of peaceful progress toforeign war and domestic repression, and set his face against the reform ofParliament which he had once himself proposed. The Whigs broke up into twosections, led respectively by Burke and by Fox, the one denouncing theviolence of the Revolution, and ultimately uniting itself with Pitt; theother friendly to the Revolution, in spite of its excesses, as the cause ofcivil and religious liberty, and identifying itself, under the healthyinfluence of parliamentary defeat and disappointment, with the defence ofpopular 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 saidto date from the day when the ancient friendship of Burke and Fox wasbitterly severed by the former in the House of Commons (May 6, 1791). Thecharter of the modern Conservative party was that appeal to the nationwhich Burke had already published, in the autumn of 1790, under the titleof "Reflections on the French Revolution. " In this survey of the politicalforces which he saw in action around him, the great Whig writer, who inpast times had so passionately defended the liberties of America and theconstitutional tradition of the English Parliament against the aggressionof George III. , attacked the Revolution as a system of violence and capricemore formidable to freedom than the tyranny of any Crown. He proved thatthe politicians and societies of England who had given it their sympathyhad given their sympathy to measures and to theories opposed to everyprinciple of 1688. Above all, he laid bare that agency of riot anddestructiveness 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 aneighbouring state: it was a denunciation of Jacobinism as fierce and aslittle qualified by political charity as were the maledictions of theHebrew prophets upon their idolatrous neighbours; and it was intended, likethese, to excite his own countrymen against innovations among themselves. It completely succeeded. It expressed, and it heightened, the alarm arisingamong the Liberal section of the propertied class, at first well inclinedto the Revolution; and, although the Whigs of the House of Commonspronounced in favour of Fox upon his first rupture with Burke, the tide ofpublic feeling, rising higher with every new outrage of the Revolution, soon invaded the legislature, and carried the bulk of the Whig party to theside of the Minister, leaving to Fox and his few faithful adherents thetask of maintaining an unheeded protest against the blind passions of war, and the increasing rigour with which Pitt repressed every symptom ofpopular 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 earliestacts of the Revolution displayed itself in a much stronger light after theoverthrow of the Monarchy by the insurrection of August 10th. That eventwas the work of men who commanded the Parisian democracy, not the work oforators and party-leaders in the Assembly. The Girondins had not hesitatedto treat the victory as their own, by placing the great offices of State, with one exception, in the hands of their leaders; they instantly foundthat the real sovereignty lay elsewhere. The Council of the Commune, orMunicipality, of Paris, whose members had seized their post at the momentof the insurrection, was the only administrative body that possessed thepower to enforce its commands; in the Ministries of State one will alonemade itself felt, that of Danton, whom the Girondins had unwillinglyadmitted to office along with themselves. The massacres of September threwinto full light the powerlessness of the expiring Assembly. For fivesuccessive days it was unable to check the massacres; it was unable tobring to justice the men who had planned them, and who called upon the restof France to follow their example. With the meeting of the Convention, however, the Girondins, who now regarded themselves as the legitimategovernment, and forgot that they owed office to an insurrection, expectedto reduce the capital to submission. They commanded an overwhelmingmajority in the new chamber; they were supported by the middle class in allthe great cities of France. The party of the Mountain embraced at firstonly the deputies of Paris, and a group of determined men who admitted nocriticism on the measures which the democracy of Paris had thoughtnecessary for the Revolution. In the Convention they were the assailed, notthe assailants. Without waiting to secure themselves by an armed force, theorators of the Gironde attempted to crush both the Municipality and thedeputies who ruled at the Clubs. They reproached the Municipality with themurders of September; they accused Robespierre of aiming at theDictatorship. It was under the pressure of these attacks that the party ofthe Mountain gathered its strength within the Convention, and that thepopulace of Paris transferred to the Gironde the passionate hatred which ithad hitherto borne to the King and the aristocracy. The gulf that laybetween the people and those who had imagined themselves to be its leadersburst into view. The Girondins saw with dismay that the thousands of hungryworkmen whose victory had placed them in power had fought for somethingmore tangible than Republican phrases from Tacitus and Plutarch. On oneside was a handful of orators and writers, steeped in the rhetoric and thecommonplace of ancient Rome, and totally strange to the real duties ofgovernment; on the other side the populace of Paris, such as centuries ofdespotism, privilege, and priestcraft had made it: sanguinary, unjust, vindictive; convulsed since the outbreak of the Revolution with everypassion that sways men in the mass; taught no conception of progress butthe overthrow of authority, and acquainted with no title to power but thatwhich 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 byidentifying themselves with the multitude. They declined to take eithercourse. Their audience was in the Assembly alone; their support in thedistant provinces. Paris, daily more violent, listened to men of anotherstamp. The Municipality defied the Government; the Mountain answered thethreats and invectives of the majority in the Assembly by displays ofpopular menace and tumult. In the eyes of the common people, who after somany changes of government found themselves more famished and moredestitute than ever, the Gironde was now but the last of a succession oftyrannies; its statesmen but impostors who stood between the people and theenjoyment of their liberty. Among the leaders of the Mountain, Danton aimed at the creation of acentral Revolutionary Government, armed with absolute powers for theprosecution of the war; and he attacked the Girondins only when theythemselves had rejected his support. Robespierre, himself the author oflittle beyond destruction, was the idol of those whom Rousseau's writingshad 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 itssubmission to the democracy of Paris. The Girondins in their hearts desiredto save the King; they voted for his death with the hope of maintainingtheir influence in Paris, and of clearing themselves from the charge oflukewarmness in the cause of the Revolution. But the sacrifice was as vainas it was dishonourable. The populace and the party of the Mountain tookthe act in its true character, as an acknowledgment of their own victory. Aseries of measures was brought forward providing for the poorer classes atthe expense of the wealthy. The Gironde, now forced to become the defendersof property, encountered the fatal charge of deserting the cause of thepeople; and from this time nothing but successful foreign warfare couldhave saved their party from ruin. [Defeat and treason of Dumouriez, March, 1793. ]Instead of success came inaction, disaster, and treason. The army ofFlanders lay idle during January and February for want of provisions andmaterials of war; and no sooner had Dumouriez opened the campaign againstHolland than he was recalled by intelligence that the Austrians had fallenupon his lieutenant, Miranda, at Maestricht, and driven the French armybefore them. Dumouriez returned, in order to fight a pitched battle beforeBrussels. He attacked the Austrians at Neerwinden (March 18), and suffereda repulse inconsiderable in itself, but sufficient to demoralise an armycomposed in great part of recruits and National Guards. [26] His defeatlaid Flanders open to the Austrians; but Dumouriez intended that it shouldinflict upon the Republic a far heavier blow. Since the execution of theKing, he had been at open enmity with the Jacobins. He now proposed to theAustrian commander to unite with him in an attack upon the Convention, andin re-establishing monarchy in France. The first pledge of Dumouriez'streason was the surrender of three commissioners sent by the Convention tohis camp; the second was to have been the surrender of the fortress ofCondé. But Dumouriez had overrated his influence with the army. Plainerminds than his own knew how to deal with a general who intrigues with theforeigner. Dumouriez's orders were disregarded; his movements watched; andhe fled to the Austrian lines under the fire of his own soldiers. Aboutthirty 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 thenorthern frontier. Almost at the same moment Custine was overpowered in thePalatinate; and the conquests of the previous autumn, with the exception ofMainz, were lost as rapidly as they had been won. Custine fell back uponthe lines of Weissenburg, leaving the defence of Mainz to a garrison of17, 000 men, which, alone among the Republican armies, now maintained itsreputation. In France itself civil war broke out. The peasants of LaVendée, a district destitute of large towns, and scarcely touched either bythe evils which had produced the Revolution or by the hopes which animatedthe rest of France, had seen with anger the expulsion of the parish priestswho 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 revoltthe simple Vendeans, who cared for nothing outside their own parishes, andpreferred to fight against their countrymen rather than to quit theirhomes. The priests and the Royalists fanned these village outbreaks into areligious war of the most serious character. Though poorly armed, andaccustomed to return to their homes as soon as fighting was over, theVendean peasantry proved themselves a formidable soldiery in the moment ofattack, and cut to pieces the half-disciplined battalions which theGovernment sent against them. On the north, France was now assailed by theEnglish as well as by the Austrians. The Allies laid siege to Condé andValenciennes, and drove the French army back in disorder at Famars. Eachdefeat was a blow dealt to the Government of the Gironde at Paris. Withforeign and civil war adding disaster to disaster, with the general to whomthe Gironde had entrusted the defence of the Republic openly betraying itto its enemies, the fury of the capital was easily excited against theparty charged with all the misfortunes of France. A threatening movement ofthe middle classes in resistance to a forced loan precipitated thestruggle. The Girondins were accused of arresting the armies of theRepublic in the midst of their conquests, of throwing the frontier open tothe foreigner, and of kindling the civil war of La Vendée. On the 31st ofMay a raging mob invaded the Convention. Two days later the representativesof France were surrounded by the armed forces of the Commune; thetwenty-four leading members of the Gironde were placed under arrest, andthe 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 toarms against Paris. Normandy, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Lyons, rose ininsurrection against the tyranny of the Mountain, and the Royalists of thesouth and west threw themselves into a civil war which they hoped to turnto their own advantage. But a form of government had now arisen in Francewell fitted to cope with extraordinary perils. It was a form of governmentin which there was little trace of the constitutional tendencies of 1789, one that had come into being as the stress of conflict threw into thebackground the earlier hopes and efforts of the Revolution. In the twoearlier Assemblies it had been a fixed principle that the representativesof the people were to control the Government, but were not to assumeexecutive powers themselves. After the overthrow of Monarchy on the 10thAugust, the Ministers, though still nominally possessed of powers distinctfrom the representative body, began to be checked by Committees of theConvention appointed for various branches of the public service; and inMarch, 1793, in order to meet the increasing difficulties of the war, aCommittee of Public Safety was appointed, charged with the duty ofexercising a general surveillance over the administration. In thisCommittee, 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 actwith effect. The growing ascendancy of the Mountain produced thatconcentration of force which the times required. The Committee was reducedin April to nine members, and in this form it ultimately became the supremecentral power. It was not until after the revolt of Lyons that theCommittee, exchanging Danton's influence for that of Robespierre, adoptedthe principle of Terror which has made the memory of their rule one of themost sinister in history. Their authority steadily increased. The membersdivided among themselves the great branches of government. One directed thearmy, another the navy, another foreign affairs; the signature of threemembers practically gave to any measure the force of law, for theConvention 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 themost energetic of the Mountain spread themselves over France, in parties oftwo and three, with the title of Commissioners of the Convention, and withpowers over-riding those of all the local authorities. They were originallyappointed for the purpose of hastening on the levy ordered by theConvention in March, but their powers were gradually extended over thewhole range of administration. Their will was absolute, their authoritysupreme. Where the councillors of the Departments or the municipal officerswere good Jacobins, the Commissioners availed themselves of localmachinery; where they suspected their principles, they sent them to thescaffold, and enforced their own orders by whatever means were readiest. They censured and dismissed the generals; one of them even directed themovements of a fleet at sea. What was lost by waste and confusion and bythe interference of the Commissioners in military movements was more thancounterbalanced by the vigour which they threw into all the preparations ofwar, and by the unity of purpose which, at the price of unsparingbloodshed, they communicated to every group where Frenchmen met together. [Local revolutionary system of 1793]But no individual energy could have sustained these dictatorships withoutthe support of a popular organisation. All over France a system ofrevolutionary government sprang up, which superseded all existinginstitutions just as the authority of the Commissioners of the Conventionsuperseded all existing local powers. The local revolutionaryadministration consisted of a Committee, a Club, and a Tribunal. [28] Ineach of 21, 000 communes a committee of twelve was elected by the people, and entrusted by the Convention, as the Terror gained ground, withboundless powers of arrest and imprisonment. Popular excitement wassustained by clubs, where the peasants and labourers assembled at the closeof their day's work, and applauded the victories or denounced the enemiesof the Revolution. A Tribunal with swift procedure and powers of life anddeath sat in each of the largest towns, and judged the prisoners who weresent to it by the committees of the neighbouring district. Such was thegovernment of 1793--an executive of uncontrolled power drawn from themembers of a single Assembly, and itself brought into immediate contactwith the poorest of the people in their assemblies and clubs. The balanceof interests which creates a constitutional system, the security of life, liberty, and property, which is the essence of every recognised socialorder, did not now exist in France. One public purpose, the defence of theRevolution, became the law before which all others lost their force. Treating all France like a town in a state of siege, the Government tookupon itself the duty of providing support for the poorest classes byenactments 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 tradersand producers consequently ceased to bring their goods to market, theCommissioners of the Convention were empowered to make requisition of acertain quantity of corn for every acre of ground. Property was thus placedat the disposal of the men who already exercised absolute political power. "The state of France, " said Burke, "is perfectly simple. It consists of buttwo descriptions, the oppressors and the oppressed. " It is in vain that theattempt has been made to extenuate the atrocious and senseless cruelties ofthis time by extolling the great legislative projects of the Convention, orpleading the dire necessity of a land attacked on every side by theforeigner, and rent with civil war. The more that is known of the Reign ofTerror, the more hateful, the meaner and more disgusting is the pictureunveiled. France was saved not by the brutalities, but by the energy, ofthe faction that ruled it. It is scarcely too much to say that the cause ofEuropean progress would have been less injured by the military overthrow ofthe Republic, by the severance of the border provinces from France and therestoration of some shadow of the ancient _régime_, than by the traditionsof horror which for the next fifty years were inseparably associated inmen'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 theautumn 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 thefortresses which were now besieged by the Allies. Condé surrendered to theAustrians on the 10th of July; Valenciennes capitulated to the Duke of Yorka fortnight later. In the east the fortune of war was no better. An attackmade on the Prussian army besieging Mainz totally failed; and on the 23rdof July this great fortress, which had been besieged since the middle ofApril, passed back into the hands of the Germans. On every side theRepublic seemed to be sinking before its enemies. Its frontier defences hadfallen before the victorious Austrians and English; Brunswick was ready toadvance 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 inthis crisis of misfortune that the Convention placed the entire malepopulation of France between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five at thedisposal of the Government, and turned the whole country into one great campand arsenal of war. Nor was there wanting a mind equal to the task ofgiving order to this vast material. The appointment of Carnot, an officerof engineers, to a seat on the Committee of Public Safety placed themilitary administration of France in the hands of a man who, as anorganiser, if not as a strategist, was soon to prove himself without equalin Europe. [The Allies seek each their separate ends. ]Nevertheless, it was to the dissensions and to the bad policy of the Alliesmore 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, theestablishment of a pacific Government in France, was subordinated toschemes of aggrandisement, known as the acquisition of just indemnities. While Prussia, bent chiefly on preventing the Emperor from gaining Bavariain exchange for Belgium, kept its own army inactive on the Rhine, [29]Austria, with the full approval of Pitt's Cabinet, claimed annexations inNorthern France, as well as Alsace, and treated the conquered town of Condéas Austrian territory. [30] Henceforward all the operations of the northernarmy were directed to the acquisition of frontier territory, not to thepursuit and overthrow of the Republican forces. The war was openlyconverted from a war of defence into a war of spoliation. It was a changewhich mocked the disinterested professions with which the Allies had takenup arms; in its military results it was absolutely ruinous. In face of theimmense levies which promised the French certain victory in a long war, theonly hope for the Allies lay in a rapid march to Paris; they preferred theextreme of division and delay. No sooner had the advance of their unitedarmies driven Custine from his stronghold at Famars, than the Englishcommander led off his forces to besiege Dunkirk, while the Austrians, underPrince Coburg, proceeded to invest Cambray and Le Quesnoy. The line of theinvaders thus extended from the Channel to Brunswick's posts at Landau, onthe border of Alsace; the main armies were out of reach of one another, andtheir strength was diminished by the corps detached to keep up theircommunications. The French held the inner circle; and the advantage whichthis gave them was well understood by Carnot, who now inspired the measuresof the Committee. In steadiness and precision the French recruits were nomatch for the trained armies of Germany; but the supply of them wasinexhaustible, and Carnot knew that when they were thrown in sufficientmasses upon the enemy their courage and enthusiasm would make amends fortheir inexperience. The successes of the Allies, unbroken from February toAugust, now began to alternate with defeats; the flood of invasion wasfirst slowly and obstinately repelled, then swept away before a victoriousadvance. [York driven from Dunkirk Sept. 8. ]It was on the British commander that the first blow was struck. The forcesthat could be detached from the French Northern army were not sufficient todrive York from before Dunkirk; but on the Moselle there were troopsengaged in watching an enemy who was not likely to advance; and theCommittee did not hesitate to leave this side of France open to thePrussians in order to deal a decisive stroke in the north. Before themovement was noticed by the enemy, Carnot had transported 30, 000 men fromMetz to the English Channel; and in the first week of September the Germancorps covering York was assailed by General Houchard with numbers doubleits own. The Germans were driven back upon Dunkirk; York only saved his ownarmy from destruction by hastily raising the siege and abandoning his heavyartillery. The victory of the French, however, was ill followed up. Houchard was sent before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and he paid with hislife for his mistakes. Custine had already perished, unjustly condemned forthe 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 andHouchard received their commands from the Committee of Public Safety. Thelevelling principle of the Reign of Terror left its effect on Francethrough its operation in the army, and through this almost alone. Itsexecutions produced only horror and reaction; its confiscations were soonreversed; but the creation of a thoroughly democratic army, the work of themen who overthrew the Gironde, gave the most powerful and abiding impulseto social equality in France. The first generals of the Revolution had beenofficers of the old army, men, with a few exceptions, of noble birth, who, like Custine, had enrolled themselves on the popular side when most oftheir companions quitted the country. These generals were connected withthe politicians of the Gironde, and were involved in its fall. The victoryof the Mountain brought men of another type into command. Almost all theleaders appointed by the Committee of Public Safety were soldiers who hadserved in the ranks. In the levies of 1792 and 1793 the officers of thenewly-formed battalions were chosen by the recruits themselves. Patriotism, energy of character, acquaintance with warfare, instantly brought men intoprominence. Soldiers of the old army, like Massena, who had reached middlelife with their knapsacks on their backs; lawyers, like the Breton Moreau;waiters at inns, like Murat, found themselves at the head of theirbattalions, and knew that Carnot was ever watching for genius and abilityto call it to the highest commands. With a million of men under arms, therewere many in whom great natural gifts supplied the want of professionaltraining. It was also inevitable that at the outset command shouldsometimes fall into the hands of mere busy politicians; but the characterof the generals steadily rose as the Committee gained the ascendancy over aknot of demagogues who held the War Ministry during the summer of 1793; andby the end of the year there was scarcely one officer in high command whohad not proved himself worthy of his post. In the investigation intoHouchard's conduct at Dunkirk, Carnot learnt that the victory had in factbeen won by Jourdan, one of the generals of division. Jourdan had begunlife as a common soldier fifteen years before. Discharged at the end of theAmerican War, he had set up a draper's shop in Limoges, his native town. Hejoined the army a second time on the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, andthe men of his battalion elected him captain. His ability was noticed; hewas made successively general of brigade and general of division; and, uponthe dismissal of Houchard, Carnot summoned him to the command of the Armyof the North. The Austrians were now engaged in the investment of Maubeuge. On the 15th of October Jourdan attacked and defeated their covering army atWattignies. His victory forced the Austrians to raise the siege, andbrought 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 waragainst its internal enemies without pause and without mercy. Lyonssurrendered in October; its citizens were slaughtered by hundreds in coldblood. Toulon had thrown itself into the hands of the English, andproclaimed King Louis XVII. It was besieged by land; but the operationsproduced no effect until Napoleon Bonaparte, captain of artillery, plannedthe capture of a ridge from which the cannon of the besiegers would commandthe English fleet in the harbour. Hood, the British admiral, now found hisposition hopeless. He took several thousands of the inhabitants on boardhis ships, and put out to sea, blowing up the French ships which he left inthe harbour. Hood had received the fleet from the Royalists in trust fortheir King; its destruction gave England command of the Mediterranean andfreed Naples from fear of attack; and Hood thought too little of theconsequences which his act would bring down upon those of the inhabitantsof Toulon whom he left behind. [31]The horrors that followed the entry of the Republican army into the citydid not prevent Pitt from including among the subjects of congratulation inthe King's Speech of 1794 "the circumstances attending the evacuation ofToulon. " It was perhaps fortunate for the Royalists in other parts ofFrance that they failed to receive the assistance of England. Help waspromised to the Vendeans, but it arrived too late. The appearance of Kleberat the head of the army which had defended Mainz had already turned thescale. Brave as they were, the Vendeans could not long resist trainedarmies. 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 theone 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 muchat 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 whenKing Frederick William and the Emperor concerted the autumn campaign of1792, the understanding was formed that Prussia, in return for its effortsagainst France, should be allowed to seize part of western Poland, if theEmpress Catherine should give her consent. With this prospect before it, the thoughts of the Prussian Government had been from the first busied morewith Poland, where it hoped to enter into possession, than with France, where it had only to fight Austria's battles. Negotiations on the Polishquestion had been actively carried on between Berlin and St. Petersburgduring the first months of the war; and in January, 1793, the EmpressCatherine had concluded a Treaty of Partition with King Frederick William, in virtue of which a Prussian army under General Mollendorf immediatelyentered western Poland. It was thought good policy to keep the terms ofthis treaty secret from Austria, as it granted a much larger portion ofPoland to Prussia than Austria was willing that it should receive. Twomonths passed before the Austrian Sovereign learnt how he had been treatedby his ally. He then denounced the treaty, and assumed so threatening anattitude that the Prussians thought it necessary to fortify the territorythat they had seized. [32] The Ministers who had been outwitted by theCourt of Berlin were dismissed; Baron Thugut, who from the first hadprophesied nothing but evil of the Prussian alliance, was called to power. The history of this statesman, who for the next eight years directed thewar-policy of Austria, and filled a part in Europe subordinate only tothose of Pitt and Bonaparte, has until a recent date been drawn chieflyfrom the representations of his enemies. Humbly born, scornful andinaccessible, Thugut was detested by the Viennese aristocracy; the Frenchemigrants hated and maligned him on account of his indifference to theircause; the public opinion of Austria held him responsible for unparalleledmilitary disasters; Prussian generals and ambassadors, whose reports haveformed the basis of Prussian histories, pictured him as a Satanicantagonist. It was long believed of Thugut that while ambassador atConstantinople he had sold the Austrian cypher to the French; that in 1794he prevented his master's armies from winning victories because he hadspeculated in the French funds; and that in 1799 he occasioned the murderof the French envoys at Rastadt, in order to recover documentsincriminating himself. Better sources of information are now opened, and astatesman, jealous, bitter, and over-reaching, but not without greatqualities of character, stands in the place of the legendary criminal. Itis 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 ofthe Emperor Joseph, were fatally in conflict with the defensive principleswhich Europe ought to have opposed to the aggressions of France. Evidenceexists 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 PapalLegations, the Republic of Genoa, Piedmont, and Bosnia; and to this listTuscany and Savoy ought probably to be added. But the charges broughtagainst Thugut of underhand dealings with France, and of the willingabandonment of German interests in return for compensation to Austria inItaly, rest on insufficient ground. Though, like every other politician atVienna and Berlin, he viewed German affairs not as a matter of nationalitybut in subordination to the general interests of his own Court, Thugutappears to have been, of all the Continental statesmen of that time, thesteadiest enemy of French aggression, and to have offered the longestresistance 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 alliancebetween Austria and Prussia was doomed. Others might perhaps have averted arupture; Thugut made no attempt to do so. The siege of Mainz was the lastserious operation of war which the Prussian army performed. The mission ofan Austrian envoy, Lehrbach, to the Prussian camp in August, 1793, and hisnegotiations on the Polish and the Bavarian questions, only widened thebreach between the two Courts. It was known that the Austrians wereencouraging the Polish Diet to refuse the cession of the provinces occupiedby Prussia; and the advisers of King Frederick William in consequencerecommended him to quit the Rhine, and to place himself at the head of anarmy in Poland. At the headquarters of the Allies, between Mainz and theAlsatian frontier, all was dissension and intrigue. The impetuosity of theAustrian general, Wurmser, who advanced upon Alsace without consulting theKing, was construed as a studied insult. On the 29th of September, afterinforming the allied Courts that Prussia would henceforth take only asubordinate part in the war, King Frederick William quitted the army, leaving orders with the Duke of Brunswick to fight no great battle. It wasin vain that Wurmser stormed the lines of Weissenburg (Oct. 13), andvictoriously pushed forward into Alsace. The hopes of a Royalistinsurrection in Strasburg proved illusory. The German sympathies shown by aportion of the upper and middle classes of Alsace only brought down uponthem a bloody vengeance at the hands of St. Just, commissioner of theConvention. The peasantry, partly from hatred of the feudal burdens of theold _régime_, partly from fear of St. Just and the guillotine, thronged tothe French camp. In place of the beaten generals came Hoche and Pichegru:Hoche, lately a common soldier in the Guards, earning by a humble industrylittle sums for the purchase of books, now, at the age of twenty-six, acommander more than a match for the wrangling veterans of Germany;Pichegru, six years older, also a man sprung from the people, once ateacher in the military school of Brienne, afterwards a private ofartillery in the American War. A series of harassing encounters took placeduring December. At length, with St. Just cheering on the Alsatian peasantsin the hottest of the fire, these generals victoriously carried theAustrian positions at Wörth and at Weissenburg (Dec. 23, 26). The Austriancommander declared his army to be utterly ruined; and Brunswick, who hadabstained from rendering his ally any real assistance, found himself asecond 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 theFrench Government: amongst the Allies it was viewed in various lights. TheEmpress Catherine, who had counted on seeing her troublesome Prussianfriend engaged with her detested French enemy, taunted the King of Prussiawith the loss of his personal honour. Austria, conscious of the antagonismbetween Prussian and Austrian interests and of the hollow character of theCoalition, would concede nothing to keep Prussia in arms. Pitt alone waswilling to make a sacrifice, in order to prevent the rupture of thealliance. The King of Prussia was ready to continue the struggle withFrance if his expenses were paid, but not otherwise. Accordingly, afterAustria had refused to contribute the small sum which Pitt asked, a bargainwas struck between Lord Malmesbury and the Prussian Minister Haugwitz, bywhich Great Britain undertook to furnish a subsidy, provided that 60, 000Prussian troops, under General Möllendorf, were placed at the disposal ofthe Maritime Powers. [35] It was Pitt's intention that the troops which hesubsidised should be massed with Austrian and English forces for thedefence of Belgium: the Prussian Ministry, availing themselves of anambiguous expression in the treaty, insisted on keeping them inactive uponthe Upper Rhine. Möllendorf wished to guard Mainz: other men of influencelonged to abandon the alliance with Austria, and to employ the whole ofPrussia's force in Poland. At the moment when Haugwitz was contracting toplace Möllendorf's army at Pitt's disposal, Poland had risen in revoltunder Kosciusko, and the Russian garrison which occupied Warsaw had beenoverpowered and cut to pieces. Catherine called upon the King of Prussiafor assistance; but it was not so much a desire to rescue the Empress froma momentary danger that excited the Prussian Cabinet as the belief that hervengeance would now make an absolute end of what remained of the Polishkingdom. The prey was doomed; the wisdom of Prussia was to be the first toseize and drag it to the ground. So large a prospect offered itself to thePower that should crush Poland during the brief paralysis of the Russianarms, that, on the first news of the outbreak, the King's advisers urgedhim instantly to make peace with France and to throw his whole strengthinto the Polish struggle. Frederick William could not reconcile himself tomaking peace with the Jacobins; but he ordered an army to march uponWarsaw, and shortly afterwards placed himself at its head (May, 1794). Whenthe King, who was the only politician in Prussia who took an interest inthe French war, thus publicly acknowledged the higher importance of thePolish campaign, his generals upon the Rhine made it their only object todo nothing which it was possible to leave undone without actuallyforfeiting the British subsidy. Instead of fighting, Möllendorf spent histime in urging other people to make peace. It was in vain that Malmesburyargued that the very object of Pitt's bargain was to keep the French out ofthe Netherlands: Möllendorf had made up his mind that the army should notbe committed to the orders of Pitt and the Austrians. He continued in thePalatinate, alleging that any movement of the Prussian army towards thenorth would give the French admittance to southern Germany. Pitt's hope ofdefending the Netherlands now rested on the energy and on the sincerity ofthe 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 Austrianand English allied forces had successfully laid siege to Landrecies, anddefeated the enemy in its neighbourhood. [36] Their advance, however, waschecked by a movement of the French Army of the North, now commanded byPichegru, towards the Flemish coast. York and the English troops wereexposed to the attack, and suffered a defeat at Turcoing. The decision ofthe campaign lay, however, not in the west of Flanders, but at the otherend of the Allies' position, at Charleroi on the Sambre, where a Frenchvictory would either force the Austrians to fall back eastwards, leavingYork to his fate, or sever their communications with Germany. This becameevident to the French Government; and in May the Commissioners of theConvention forced the generals on the Sambre to fight a series of battles, in which the French repeatedly succeeded in crossing the Sambre, and wererepeatedly driven back again. The fate of the Netherlands depended, however, on something beside victory or defeat on the Sambre. The Emperorhad come with Baron Thugut to Belgium in the hope of imparting greaterunity and energy to the allied forces, but his presence proved useless. Among the Austrian generals and diplomatists there were several who desiredto withdraw from the contest in the Netherlands, and to follow the exampleof Prussia in Poland. The action of the army was paralysed by intrigues. "Every one, " wrote Thugut, "does exactly as he pleases: there is absoluteanarchy and disorder. " [37] At the beginning of June the Emperor quittedthe army; the combats on the Sambre were taken up by Jourdan and 50, 000fresh troops brought from the army of the Moselle; and on the 26th of Junethe French defeated Coburg at Fleurus, as he advanced to the relief ofCharleroi, unconscious that Charleroi had surrendered on the day before. Even now the defence of Belgium was not hopeless; but after one council ofwar had declared in favour of fighting, a second determined on a retreat. It was in vain that the representatives of England appealed to the goodfaith and military honour of Austria. Namur and Louvain were abandoned; theFrench pressed onwards; and before the end of July the Austrian army hadfallen back behind the Meuse. York, forsaken by the allies, retirednorthwards before the superior forces of Pichegru, who entered Antwerp andmade himself master of the whole of the Netherlands up to the Dutchfrontier. [38][England disappointed by the Allies. ]Such was the result of Great Britain's well-meant effort to assist the twogreat military Powers to defend Europe against the Revolution. To the aimof the English Minister, the defence of existing rights against democraticaggression, most of the public men alike of Austria and Prussia were nowabsolutely indifferent. They were willing to let the French seize andrevolutionise any territory they pleased, provided that they themselvesobtained their equivalent in Poland. England was in fact in the position ofa man who sets out to attack a highway robber, and offers each of his armsto a pickpocket. The motives and conduct of these politicians were justlyenough described by the English statesmen and generals who were broughtinto closest contact with them. In the councils of Prussia, Malmesburydeclared that he could find no quality but "great and shabby art andcunning; ill-will, jealousy, and every sort of dirty passion. " From thehead quarters of Möllendorf he wrote to a member of Pitt's Cabinet: "Here Ihave 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 itan alliance with the Algerians, whom it is no disgrace to pay, or anyimpeachment of good sense to be cheated by. " To the Austrian commander theDuke of York addressed himself with royal plainness: "Your Serene Highness, the British nation, whose public opinion is not to be despised, willconsider 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 Austriancommander, was dismissed at the peremptory demand of Great Britain; hissuccessor, Clerfayt, after losing a battle on the Ourthe, offered nofurther resistance to the advance of the Republican army, and the campaignended in the capture of Cologne by the French, and the disappearance of theAustrians behind the Rhine. The Prussian subsidies granted by Englandresulted in some useless engagements between Möllendorf's corps in thePalatinate and a French army double its size, followed by the retreat ofthe Prussians into Mainz. It only remained for Great Britain to attempt tokeep the French out of Holland. The defence of the Dutch, after everythingsouth of the river Waal had been lost, Pitt determined to entrust to ablerhands than those of the Duke of York; but the presence of one high-bornblunderer more or less made little difference in a series of operationsconceived in indifference and perversity. Clerfayt would not, or could not, obey the Emperor's orders and succour his ally. City after city in Hollandwelcomed the French. The very elements seemed to declare for the Republic. Pichegru's army marched in safety over the frozen rivers; and, when theconquest of the land was completed, his cavalry crowned the campaign by thecapture of the Dutch fleet in the midst of the ice-bound waters of theTexel. The British regiments, cut off from home, made their way eastwardthrough the snow towards the Hanoverian frontier, in a state of prostratemisery which is compared by an eye-witness of both events to that of theFrench 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 Europewas concluded. The result of three years of war was that Belgium, Nice, andSavoy had been added to the territory of the Republic, and that Frencharmies were in possession of Holland, and the whole of Germany west of theRhine. In Spain and in Piedmont the mountain-passes and some extent ofcountry had been won. Even on the seas, in spite of the destruction of thefleet at Toulon, and of a heavy defeat by Lord Howe off Ushant on the 1stof June, 1794, the strength of France was still formidable; and the losseswhich she inflicted on the commercial marine of her enemies exceeded thosewhich she herself sustained. England, which had captured most of the FrenchWest Indian Islands, was the only Power that had wrested anything from theRepublic. The dream of suppressing the Revolution by force of arms hadvanished away; and the States which had entered upon the contest in levity, in fanaticism, or at the bidding of more powerful allies, found itnecessary to make peace upon such terms as they could obtain. Holland, inwhich a strong Republican party had always maintained connection withFrance, abolished the rule of its Stadtholder, and placed its resources atthe disposal of its conquerors. Sardinia entered upon abortivenegotiations. Spain, in return for peace, ceded to the Republic the Spanishhalf of St. Domingo (July 22, 1795). Prussia concluded a Treaty at Basle(April 5), which marked and perpetuated the division of Germany byproviding that, although the Empire as a body was still at war with France, the benefit of Prussia's neutrality should extend to all German Statesnorth of a certain line. A secret article stipulated that, upon theconclusion of a general peace, if the Empire should cede to France theprincipalities west of the Rhine, Prussia should cede its own territorylying 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 thehappiest issue for Europe had every Power been forced to accept itsconditions. The territory gained by France was not much more than the veryprinciple of the Balance of Power would have entitled it to demand, at amoment when Russia, victorious over the Polish rebellion, was proceeding tomake the final partition of Poland among the three Eastern Monarchies; and, with all its faults, the France of 1795 would have offered to Europe theexample of a great free State, such as the growth of the military spiritmade impossible after the first of Napoleon's campaigns. But the darkfuture was withdrawn from the view of those British statesmen who mostkeenly felt the evils of the present; and England, resolutely set againstthe course of French aggression, still found in Austria an ally willing tocontinue the struggle. The financial help of Great Britain, the Russianoffer of a large share in the spoils of Poland, stimulated the flaggingenergy of the Emperor's government. Orders were sent to Clerfayt to advancefrom the Rhine at whatever risk, in order to withdraw the troops of theRepublic from the west of France, where England was about to land a body ofRoyalists. Clerfayt, however, disobeyed his instructions, and remainedinactive till the autumn. He then defeated a French army pushing beyond theRhine, and drove back the besiegers of Mainz; but the British expeditionhad already failed, and the time was passed when Clerfayt's successes mighthave 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 Terrorhad ended in July, 1794, with the life of Robespierre. The men by whomRobespierre was overthrown were Terrorists more cruel and less earnest thanhimself, who attacked him only in order to save their own lives, andwithout the least intention of restoring a constitutional Government toFrance. An overwhelming national reaction forced them, however, torepresent themselves as the party of clemency. The reaction was indeed asimple outburst of human feeling rather than a change in political opinion. Among the victims of the Terror the great majority had been men of thelower or middle class, who, except in La Vendée and Brittany, were aslittle friendly to the old _régime_ as their executioners. Every class inFrance, with the exception of the starving city mobs, longed for security, and the quiet routine of life. After the disorders of the Republic amonarchical government naturally seemed to many the best guarantee ofpeace; but the monarchy so contemplated was the liberal monarchy of 1791, not the ancient Court, with its accessories of a landed Church andprivileged noblesse. Religion was still a power in France; but the peasant, with all his superstition and all his desire for order, was perfectly freefrom any delusions about the good old times. He liked to see his childrenbaptised; but he had no desire to see the priest's tithe-collector back inhis barn: he shuddered at the summary marketing of ConventionalCommissioners; but he had no wish to resume his labours on the fields ofhis late seigneur. To be a Monarchist in 1795, among the shopkeepers ofParis or the farmers of Normandy, meant no more than to wish for apolitical system capable of subsisting for twelve months together, andresting on some other basis than forced loans and compulsory sales ofproperty. But among the men of the Convention, who had abolished monarchyand passed sentence of death upon the King, the restoration of the Crownseemed the bitterest condemnation of all that the Convention had done forFrance, and a sentence of outlawry against themselves. If the will of thenation was for the moment in favour of a restored monarchy, the Conventiondetermined that its will must be overpowered by force or thwarted byconstitutional forms. Threatened alternately by the Jacobin mob of Parisand by the Royalist middle class, the Government played off one enemyagainst the other, until an ill-timed effort of the emigrant noblesse gaveto the Convention the prestige of a decisive victory over Royalists andforeigners combined. On the 27th of June, 1795, an English fleet landed theflower of the old nobility of France at the Bay of Quiberon in southernBrittany. It was only to give one last fatal proof of their incapacity thatthese unhappy men appeared once more on French soil. Within three weeksafter their landing, in a region where for years together the peasantry, led by their landlords, baffled the best generals of the Republic, thisinvading army of the nobles, supported by the fleet, the arms, and themoney of England, was brought to utter ruin by the discord of its ownleaders. Before the nobles had settled who was to command and who was toobey, General Hoche surprised their fort, beat them back to the edge of thepeninsula where they had landed, and captured all who were not killedfighting 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 wasengaged in discussing the political system which was to succeed its ownrule. A week earlier, the Committee appointed to draw up a new constitutionfor France had presented its report. The main object of the newconstitution in its original form was to secure France against a recurrenceof those evils which it had suffered since 1792. The calamities of the lastthree years were ascribed to the sovereignty of a single Assembly. A voteof the Convention had established the Revolutionary Tribunal, proscribedthe Girondins, and placed France at the mercy of eighty individualsselected by the Convention from itself. The legislators of 1795 desired aguarantee that no party, however determined, should thus destroy itsenemies by a single law, and unite supreme legislative and executive powerin its own hands. With the object of dividing authority, the executive was, in the new draft-constitution, made independent of the legislature, and thelegislature itself was broken up into two chambers. A Directory of fivemembers, chosen by the Assemblies, but not responsible except under actualimpeachment, was to conduct the administration, without the right ofproposing laws; a Chamber of five hundred was to submit laws to theapproval of a Council of two hundred and fifty Ancients, or men of middlelife; but neither of these bodies was to exercise any influence upon theactual government. One director and a third part of each of the legislativebodies 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 thatof the Royalists, who believed that a popular election would place them ina majority in the two new Assemblies. Such an event was, however, in theeyes of the Convention, the one fatal possibility that must be averted atevery cost. In the midst of the debates upon the draft-constitution therearrived the news of Hoche's victory at Quiberon. The Convention gainedcourage to add a clause providing that two-thirds of the new deputiesshould be appointed from among its own members, thus rendering a Royalistmajority 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 marchedagainst the Convention in the Tuileries. Their revolt was foreseen; thedefence of the Convention was entrusted to General Bonaparte, who met theattack of the Parisians in a style unknown in the warfare of the capital. Bonaparte's command of trained artillery secured him victory; but thestruggle of the 4th of October (13 Vendémiaire) was the severest that tookplace in Paris during the Revolution, and the loss of life in fightinggreater than on the day that overthrew the Monarchy. [The Directory, Oct. , 1795. ]The new Government of France now entered into power. Members of theConvention formed two-thirds of the new legislative bodies; the one-thirdwhich the country was permitted to elect consisted chiefly of men ofmoderate or Royalist opinions. The five persons who were chosen Directorswere all Conventionalists who had voted for the death of the King; Carnot, however, who had won the victories without sharing in the cruelties of theReign of Terror, was the only member of the late Committee of Public Safetywho was placed in power. In spite of the striking homage paid to the greatact of regicide in the election of the five Directors, the establishment ofthe Directory was accepted by Europe as the close of revolutionarydisorder. The return of constitutional rule in France was marked by adeclaration on the part of the King of England of his willingness to treatfor peace. A gentler spirit seemed to have arisen in the Republic. Althoughthe laws against the emigrants and non-juring priests were stillunrepealed, the exiles began to return unmolested to their homes. Liferesumed something of its old aspect in the capital. The rich and the gayconsoled themselves with costlier luxury for all the austerities of theReign of Terror. The labouring classes, now harmless and disarmed, weresharply taught that they must be content with such improvement in their lotas 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 tomake an estimate of the new influences which the French Revolution hadbrought into Europe, and of the effects which had thus far resulted fromthem. The opinion current among the French people themselves, that theRevolution gave birth to the modern life not of France only but of theWestern Continent generally, is true of one great set of facts; it isuntrue of another. There were conceptions in France in 1789 which madeFrance a real contrast to most of the Continental monarchies; there wereothers which it shared in common with them. The ideas of social, legal, andecclesiastical reform which were realised in 1789 were not peculiar toFrance; what was peculiar to France was the idea that these reforms were tobe effected by the nation itself. In other countries reforms had beeninitiated by Governments, and forced upon an unwilling people. Innovationsprang from the Crown; its agents were the servants of the State. Adistinct class of improvements, many of them identical with the changesmade by the Revolution in France, attracted the attention in a greater orless degree of almost all the Western Courts of the eighteenth century. Thecreation of a simple and regular administrative system; the reform of theclergy; the emancipation of the Church from the jurisdiction of the Pope, and of all orders in the State from the jurisdiction of the Church; theamelioration of the lot of the peasant; the introduction of codes of lawabolishing both the cruelties and the confusion of ancient practice, --allthese were purposes more or less familiar to the absolute sovereigns of theeighteenth century, whom the French so summarily described as benightedtyrants. It was in Austria, Prussia, and Tuscany that the civilising energyof the Crown had been seen in its strongest form, but even the Governmentsof Naples and Spain had caught the spirit of change. The religioustolerance which Joseph gave to Austria, the rejection of Papal authorityand the abolition of the punishment of death which Leopold effected inTuscany, were bolder efforts of the same political rationalism which inSpain minimised the powers of the Inquisition and in Naples attempted tofound a system of public education. In all this, however, there was notrace of the action of the people, or of any sense that a nation ought toraise itself above a state of tutelage. Men of ideas called uponGovernments to impose better institutions upon the people, not upon thepeople 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 thenation to create its reforms for itself. If the substance of many of theFrench revolutionary changes coincided with the objects of Austrian or ofTuscan reform, there was nothing similar in their method. In othercountries reform sprang from the command of an enlightened ruler; in Franceit started with the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and aimed at thecreation of local authority to be exercised by the citizens themselves. Thesource of this difference lay partly in the influence of England andAmerica upon French opinion, but much more in the existence within Franceof a numerous and energetic middle class, enriched by commerce, and keenlyinterested in all the speculation and literary activity of the age. Thiswas a class that both understood the wrongs which the other classesinflicted or suffered, and felt itself capable of redressing them. For theflogged and over-driven peasant in Naples or Hungary no ally existed butthe Crown. In most of those poor and backward States which made upmonarchical Europe, the fraction of the inhabitants which neither enjoyedprivilege nor stood in bondage to it was too small to think of forcingitself into power. The nobles sought to preserve their feudal rights: theCrown sought to reduce them; the nation, elsewhere than in France, did notintervene and lay hands upon power for itself, because the nation wasnothing but the four mutually exclusive classes of the landlords whocommanded, the peasants who served, the priests who idled, and the soldierswho fought. France differed from all the other monarchies of the Continentin possessing a public which blended all classes and was dominated by none;a public comprehending thousands of men who were familiar with the greatinterests of society, and who, whether noble or not noble, possessed thewealth 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 tobe the great principle of the Revolution. The French people themselvesbelieved the question at issue to be mainly between authority and popularright; the rest of Europe saw the Revolution under the same aspect. Hence, in those countries where the example of France produced politicalmovements, the effect was in the first instance to excite agitation againstthe Government, whatever might be the form of the latter. In England theagitation was one of the middle class against the aristocraticparliamentary system; in Hungary, it was an agitation of the nobles againstthe Crown; on the Rhine it was an agitation of the commercial classesagainst ecclesiastical rule. But in every case in which the reformingmovement was not supported by the presence of French armies, the terrorswhich succeeded the first sanguine hopes of the Revolution struck theleaders of these movements with revulsion and despair, and converted eventhe better Governments into engines of reaction. In France itself it wasseen that the desire for liberty among an enlightened class could notsuddenly transform the habits of a nation accustomed to accept everythingfrom authority. Privilege was destroyed, equality was advanced; but insteadof self-government the Revolution brought France the most absolute rule ithad ever known. It was not that the Revolution had swept by, leaving thingswhere they were before: it had in fact accomplished most of those greatchanges which lay the foundation of a sound social life: but the faculty ofself-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. AtLondon, Vienna, Naples, and Madrid, Governments gave up all other objectsin order to devote themselves to the suppression of Jacobinism. Pitt, whosenoble aims had been the extinction of the slave-trade, the reform ofParliament, and the advance of national intercourse by free trade, surrendered himself to men whose thoughts centred upon informers, GaggingActs, and constructive treasons, and who opposed all legislation upon theslave-trade because slaves had been freed by the Jacobins of theConvention. State trials and imprisonments became the order of the day; butthe reaction in England at least stopped short of the scaffold. At Viennaand 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 inMozart's last opera, [45] did not spare life when the threads of anythinglike a real conspiracy were placed in their hands. At Vienna terror wasemployed to crush the constitutional opposition of Hungary to the AustrianCourt. In Naples a long reign of cruelty and oppression began with thecreation of a secret tribunal to investigate charges of conspiracy made byinformers. In Mainz, the Archbishop occupied the last years of hisgovernment, after his restoration in 1793, with a series of brutalpunishments and tyrannical precautions. These were but instances of the effect which the first epoch of theRevolution produced upon the old European States. After a momentarystimulus to freedom it threw the nations themselves into reaction andapathy; it totally changed the spirit of the better governments, attachingto all liberal ideas the stigma of Revolution, and identifying the work ofauthority with resistance to every kind of reform. There were States inwhich this change, the first effect of the Revolution, was also its onlyone; States whose history, as in the case of England, is for a wholegeneration the history of political progress unnaturally checked and thrownout of its course. There were others, and these the more numerous, wherethe first stimulus and the first reaction were soon forgotten in new andpenetrating changes produced by the successive victories of France. Thenature 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 ofthe Italian States--Professions and real intentions of Bonaparte and theDirectory--Battle of Montenotte--Armistice with Sardinia--Campaign inLombardy--Treatment of the Pope, Naples, Tuscany--Siege of Mantua--Castiglione, Moreau and Jourdan in Germany Their retreat--Secret Treatywith Prussia--Negotiations with England--Cispadane Republic--Rise of theidea of Italian Independence--Battles of Arcola and Rivoli--Peace with thePope at Tolentino--Venice--Preliminaries of Leoben--The French inVenice--The French take the Ionian Islands and give Venice toAustria--Genoa--Coup d'état of 17 Fructidor in Paris--Treaty of CampoFormio--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 historypasses to a new scene. Hitherto the progress of French victory had been inthe direction of the Rhine: the advance of the army of the Pyrenees hadbeen cut short by the conclusion of peace with Spain; the army of Italy hadachieved little beyond some obscure successes in the mountains. It was theappointment of Napoleon Bonaparte to the command of the latter force, inthe spring of 1796, that first centred the fortunes of the Republic in theland beyond the Alps. Freed from Prussia by the Treaty of Basle, theDirectory was now able to withdraw its attention from Holland and from theLower Rhine, and to throw its whole force into the struggle with Austria. By the advice of Bonaparte a threefold movement was undertaken againstVienna, by way of Lombardy, by the valley of the Danube, and by the valleyof the Main. General Jourdan, in command of the army that had conquered theNetherlands, was ordered to enter Germany by Frankfort; Moreau crossed theRhine at Strasburg: Bonaparte himself, drawing his scanty supplies alongthe coast-road from Nice, faced the allied forces of Austria and Sardiniaupon the slopes of the Maritime Apennines, forty miles to the west ofGenoa. The country in which he was about to operate was familiar toBonaparte from service there in 1794; his own descent and language gave himsingular advantages in any enterprise undertaken in Italy. Bonaparte was noItalian at heart; but he knew at least enough of the Italian nature to workupon its better impulses, and to attach its hopes, so long as he needed thesupport of Italian opinion, to his own career of victory. [Condition of Italy. ]Three centuries separated the Italy of that day from the bright andvigorous Italy which, in the glow of its Republican freedom, had given somuch to Northern Europe in art, in letters, and in the charm of life. Along epoch of subjection to despotic or foreign rule, of commercialinaction, of decline in mind and character, had made the Italians of noaccount among the political forces of Europe. Down to the peace ofAix-la-Chapelle in 1748 their provinces were bartered between the Bourbonsand the Hapsburgs; and although the settlement of that date left no part ofItaly, except the Duchy of Milan, incorporated in a foreign empire, yet thecrown of Naples was vested in a younger branch of the Spanish Bourbons, andthe marriage of Maria Theresa with the Archduke Francis made Tuscany anappanage of the House of Austria. Venice and Genoa retained theirindependence and their republican government, but little of their ancientspirit. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Austrian influence wasdominant throughout the peninsula, Marie Caroline, the Queen and the rulerof Ferdinand of Naples, being the sister of the Emperor Leopold and MarieAntoinette. With the exception of Piedmont, which preserved a strongmilitary sentiment and the tradition of an active and patriotic policy, theItalian States were either, like Venice and Genoa, anxious to keepthemselves out of danger by seeming to hear and see nothing that passedaround them, or governed by families in the closest connection with thegreat reigning Houses of the Continent. Neither in Italy itself, nor in thegeneral course of European affairs during the Napoleonic period, wasanything determined by the sentiment of the Italian people. The peasantryat times fought against the French with energy; but no strong impulse, likethat of the Spaniards, enlisted the upper class of Italians either on theside of Napoleon or on that of his enemies. Acquiescence and submission hadbecome the habit of the race; the sense of national unity and worth, thepersonal 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 ofdecline. Its worst days had ended before the middle of the eighteenthcentury. The fifty years preceding the French Revolution, if they hadbrought nothing of the spirit of liberty, had in all other respects beenyears of progress and revival. In Lombardy the government of Maria Theresaand Joseph awoke life and motion after ages of Spanish torpor and misrule. Traditions of local activity revived; the communes were encouraged in theirworks of irrigation and rural improvement; a singular liberality towardspublic opinion and the press made the Austrian possessions the centre ofthe intellectual movement of Italy. In the south, progress began on the daywhen the last foreign Viceroy disappeared from Naples (1735), and KingCharles III. , though a member of the Spanish House, entered upon thegovernment of the two Sicilies as an independent kingdom. Venice and thePapal States alone seemed to be untouched by the spirit of material andsocial improvement, so active in the rest of Italy before the interest inpolitical life had come into being. Nor was the age without its intellectual distinction. If the literature ofItaly in the second half of the eighteenth century had little that recalledthe inspiration of its splendid youth, it showed at least a return toseriousness and an interest in important things. The political economistsof Lombardy were scarcely behind those of England; the work of the MilaneseBeccaria on "Crimes and Punishments" stimulated the reform of criminal lawin every country in Europe; an intelligent and increasing attention toproblems of agriculture, commerce, and education took the place of thefatuous gallantries and insipid criticism which had hitherto made up thelife 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 ofrugged independence and resistance to tyrannical power. Alfieri was neithera man of political judgment himself nor the representative of any realpolitical current in Italy; but the lesson which he taught to the Italians, the lesson of respect for themselves and their country, was the one whichItaly most of all required to learn; and the appearance of this manly andenergetic spirit in its literature gave hope that the Italian nation wouldnot long be content to remain without political being. [Social condition. ][Tuscany. ]Italy, to the outside world, meant little more than the ruins of the RomanForum, the galleries of Florence, the paradise of Capri and the Neapolitancoast; the singular variety in its local conditions of life gained littleattention from the foreigner. There were districts in Italy where thesocial order was almost of a Polish type of barbarism; there were otherswhere the rich and the poor lived perhaps under a happier relation than inany other country in Europe. The difference depended chiefly upon theextent to which municipal life had in past time superseded the feudal orderunder which the territorial lord was the judge and the ruler of his owndomain. In Tuscany the city had done the most in absorbing the landednobility; in Naples and Sicily it had done the least. When, during themiddle ages, the Republic of Florence forced the feudal lords whosurrounded it to enter its walls as citizens, in some cases it deprivedthem of all authority, in others it permitted them to retain a jurisdictionover their peasants; but even in these instances the sovereignty of thecity deprived the feudal relation of most of its harshness and force. Afterthe loss of Florentine liberty, the Medici, aping the custom of oldermonarchies, conferred the title of marquis and count upon men who preferredservitude to freedom, and accompanied the grant of rank with one ofhereditary local authority; but the new institutions took no deep hold oncountry life, and the legislation of the first Archduke of the House ofLorraine (1749) left the landed aristocracy in the position of mere countrygentlemen. [46] Estates were not very large: the prevalent agriculturalsystem was, as it still is, that of the _mezzeria_, a partnership betweenthe landlord and tenant; the tenant holding by custom in perpetuity, andsharing the produce with the landlord, who supplied a part of the stock andmaterials for farming. In Tuscany the conditions of the _mezzeria_ wereextremely favourable to the tenant; and if a cheerful country life under amild and enlightened government were all that a State need desire, Tuscanyenjoyed rare happiness. [Naples and Sicily. ][Piedmont. ]Far different was the condition of Sicily and Naples. Here the growth ofcity life had never affected the rough sovereignty which the baronsexercised over great tracts of country withdrawn from the civilised world. When Charles III. Ascended the throne in 1735, he found whole provinces inwhich there was absolutely no administration of justice on the part of theState. The feudal rights of the nobility were in the last degreeoppressive, the barbarism of the people was in many districts extreme. Outof two thousand six hundred towns and villages in the kingdom, there wereonly fifty that were not subject to feudal authority. In the manor of SanGennaro di Palma, fifteen miles from Naples, even down to the year 1786 theofficers of the baron were the only persons who lived in houses; thepeasants, two thousand in number, slept among the corn-ricks. [47] Charles, during his tenure of the Neapolitan crown, from 1735 to 1759, and theMinisters Tanucci and Caraccioli under his feeble successor Ferdinand IV. , enforced the authority of the State in justice and administration, andabolished some of the most oppressive feudal rights of the nobility; buttheir legislation, though bold and even revolutionary according to anEnglish standard, could not in the course of two generations transform asocial system based upon centuries of misgovernment and disorder. At theoutbreak of the French Revolution the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was, asit still in a less degree is, a land of extreme inequalities of wealth andpoverty, a land where great estates wasted in the hands of oppressive orindolent owners, and the peasantry, untrained either by remunerativeindustry or by a just and regular enforcement of the law, found no betterguide than a savage and fanatical priesthood. Over the rest of Italy theconditions of life varied through all degrees between the Tuscan and theNeapolitan type. Piedmont, in military spirit and patriotism far superiorto 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 andthe repression of all originality of thought and character drove the mostgifted of its children, like the poet Alfieri, to seek a home on some moreliberal soil. [Professions and real intentions of the Directory and Bonaparte, 1796. ]During the first years of the Revolution, an attempt had been made byFrench enthusiasts to extend the Revolution into Italy by means ofassociations in the principal towns; but it met with no great success. Acertain liberal movement arose among the young men of the upper classes atNaples, where, under the influence of Queen Marie Caroline, the Governmenthad now become reactionary; and in Turin and several of the Lombard citiesthe French were not without partisans; but no general disaffection likethat of Savoy existed east of the Alps. The agitation of 1789 and 1792 hadpassed by without bringing either liberty or national independence to theItalians. When Bonaparte received his command, that fervour of Republicanpassion which, in the midst of violence and wrong, had seldom been wantingin the first leaders of the Revolutionary War, had died out in France. Thepoliticians who survived the Reign of Terror and gained office in theDirectory repeated the old phrases about the Rights of Man and theLiberation of the Peoples only as a mode of cajolery. Bonaparte enteredItaly proclaiming himself the restorer of Italian freedom, but with thedeliberate purpose of using Italy as a means of recruiting the exhaustedtreasury of France. His correspondence with the Directory exposes withbrazen frankness this well-considered system of pillage and deceit, inwhich the general and the Government were cordially at one. On the furtherquestion, how France should dispose of any territory that might beconquered in Northern Italy, Bonaparte and the Directory had formed nounderstanding, and their purposes were in fact at variance. The Directorywished to conquer Lombardy in order to hand it back to Austria in returnfor the Netherlands; Bonaparte had at least formed the conception that anItalian State was possible, and he intended to convert either AustrianLombardy 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 thecoast-road connecting Nice and Genoa. Bonaparte's own army numbered 40, 000men; the force opposed to it consisted of 38, 000 Austrians, under Beaulieu, and a smaller Sardinian army, so placed upon the Piedmontese Apennines asto block the passes from the coast-road into Piedmont, and to threaten therear of the French if they advanced eastward against Genoa. The Piedmontesearmy drew its supplies from Turin, the Austrian from Mantua; to sever thetwo armies was to force them on to lines of retreat conducting them fartherand farther apart from one another. Bonaparte foresaw the effect which sucha separation of the two armies would produce upon the Sardinian Government. For four days he reiterated his attacks at Montenotte and Millesimo, untilhe 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 ofhis troops upon the Piedmontese, and drove them back to within thirty milesof Turin. The terror-stricken Government, anticipating an outbreak in thecapital itself, accepted an armistice from Bonaparte at Cherasco (April28), and handed over to the French the fortresses of Coni, Ceva, andTortona, which command the entrances of Italy. It was an unworthycapitulation for Turin could not have been taken before the Austriansreturned in force; but Bonaparte had justly calculated the effect of hisvictory; and the armistice, which was soon followed by a treaty of peacebetween France and Sardinia, ceding Savoy to the Republic, left him free tofollow the Austrians, untroubled by the existence of some of the strongestfortresses of Europe behind him. [Bridge of Lodi, May 10. ]In the negotiations with Sardinia Bonaparte demanded the surrender of thetown of Valenza, as necessary to secure his passage over the river Po. Having thus led the Austrian Beaulieu to concentrate his forces at thispoint, he suddenly moved eastward along the southern bank of the river, andcrossed at Piacenza, fifty miles below the spot where Beaulieu was awaitinghim. It was an admirable movement. The Austrian general, with the enemythreatening his communications, had to abandon Milan and all the countrywest 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 stormedthe bridge of Lodi at the head of his Grenadiers. The battle was sodisastrous to the Austrians that they could risk no second engagement, andretired upon Mantua and the line of the Mincio. [48][Bonaparte in Milan. Extortions. ]Bonaparte now made his triumphal entry into Milan (May 15). The splendourof his victories and his warm expressions of friendship for Italy excitedthe enthusiasm of a population not hitherto hostile to Austrian rule. A newpolitical movement began. With the French army there came all the partisansof 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 patrioticmeetings. It was of the utmost importance to Bonaparte that a Republicanparty should be organised among the better classes in the towns ofLombardy; for the depredations of the French army exasperated the peasants, and Bonaparte's own measures were by no means of a character to win himunmixed goodwill. The instructions which he received from the Directorywere extremely simple. "Leave nothing in Italy, " they wrote to him on theday of his entry into Milan, "which will be useful to us, and which thepolitical situation will allow you to remove. " If Bonaparte had felt anydoubt as to the meaning of such an order, the pillage of works of art inBelgium and Holland in preceding years would have shown him that it wasmeant to be literally interpreted. Accordingly, in return for the gift ofliberty, the Milanese were invited to offer to their deliverers twentymillion francs, and a selection from the paintings in their churches andgalleries. The Dukes of Parma and Modena, in return for an armistice, wererequired to hand over forty of their best pictures, and a sum of moneyproportioned to their revenues. The Dukes and the townspeople paid theircontributions with good grace: the peasantry of Lombardy, whose cattle wereseized in order to supply an army that marched without any stores of itsown, rose in arms, and threw themselves into Pavia, killing all the Frenchsoldiers who fell in their way. The revolt was instantly suppressed, andthe town of Pavia given up to pillage. In deference to the Liberal party ofItaly, 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 Napleswere in no condition to offer resistance; but with true military judgmentthe French general declined to move against this feeble prey until the armyof Austria, already crippled, was completely driven out of the field. Instead of crossing the Apennines, Bonaparte advanced against the Austrianpositions upon the Mincio. It suited him to violate the neutrality of theadjacent Venetian territory by seizing the town of Brescia. His example wasfollowed by Beaulieu, who occupied Peschiera, at the foot of the Lake ofGarda, and thus held the Mincio along its whole course from the lake toMantua. A battle was fought and lost by the Austrians half-way between thelake and the fortress. Beaulieu's strength was exhausted; he could meet theenemy 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 theconqueror was to make Venice pay for the crime of possessing territoryintervening between the eastern and western extremes of the Austriandistrict. Bonaparte affected to believe that the Venetians had permittedBeaulieu to occupy Peschiera before he seized upon Brescia himself. Heuttered terrifying threats to the envoys who came from Venice to excuse animaginary crime. He was determined to extort money from the VenetianRepublic; he also needed a pretext for occupying Verona, and for any futurewrongs. "I have purposely devised this rupture, " he wrote to the Directory(June 7th), "in case you should wish to obtain five or six millions offrancs from Venice. If you have more decided intentions, I think it wouldbe well to keep up the quarrel. " The intention referred to was thedisgraceful project of sacrificing Venice to Austria in return for thecession of the Netherlands, a measure based on plans familiar to Thugut asearly 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 nowfree to deal with southern Italy. He advanced into the States of theChurch, and expelled the Papal Legate from Bologna. Ferdinand of Naples, who had lately called heaven and earth to witness the fury of his zealagainst an accursed horde of regicides, thought it prudent to stayBonaparte's hand, at least until the Austrians were in a condition to renewthe war in Lombardy. He asked for a suspension of hostilities against hisown kingdom. The fleet and the sea-board of Naples gave it importance inthe struggle between France and England, and Bonaparte granted the king anarmistice on easy terms. The Pope, in order to gain a few months' truce, had to permit the occupation of Ferrara, Ravenna, and Ancona, and torecognise the necessities, the learning, the taste, and the virtue of hisconquerors by a gift of twenty million francs, five hundred manuscripts, ahundred pictures, and the busts of Marcus and Lucius Brutus. The rule ofthe Pope was unpopular in Bologna, and a Senate which Bonaparte placed inpower, pending the formation of a popular Government gladly took the oathof fidelity to the French Republic. Tuscany was the only State thatremained to be dealt with. Tuscany had indeed made peace with the Republica year before, but the ships and cargoes of the English merchants atLeghorn were surely fair prey; and, with the pretence of punishing insultsoffered by the English to the French flag, Bonaparte descended uponLeghorn, and seized upon everything that was not removed before hisapproach. Once established in Leghorn, the French declined to quit it. Byway of adjusting the relations of the Grand Duke, the English seized hisharbour 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 intoCentral Italy, Bonaparte returned. Towards the end of July an Austrianrelieving army, nearly double the strength of Bonaparte's, descended fromthe 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 defeatedand driven in; Bonaparte could only hope to save himself by collecting allhis forces at the foot of the lake, and striking at one or other of theAustrian armies before they effected their junction on the Mincio. Heinstantly broke up the siege of Mantua, and withdrew from every positioneast of the river. On the 30th of July, Quosdanovich was attacked andchecked at Lonato, on the west of the Lake of Garda. Wurmser, unaware ofhis colleague's repulse, entered Mantua in triumph, and then set out, expecting to envelop Bonaparte between two fires. But the French were readyfor his approach. Wurmser was stopped and defeated at Castiglione, whilethe western Austrian divisions were still held in check at Lonato. Thejunction of the Austrian armies had become impossible. In five days theskill of Bonaparte and the unsparing exertions of his soldiery had morethan retrieved all that appeared to have been lost. [50] The Austriansretired into the Tyrol, beaten and dispirited, and leaving 15, 000 prisonersin the hands of the enemy. Bonaparte now prepared to force his way into Germany by the Adige, infulfilment of the original plan of the campaign. In the first days ofSeptember he again routed the Austrians, and gained possession of Roveredoand Trent. Wurmser hereupon attempted to shut the French up in themountains by a movement southwards; but, while he operated withinsufficient forces between the Brenta and the Adige, he was cut off fromGermany, and only escaped capture by throwing himself into Mantua with theshattered remnant of his army. The road into Germany through the Tyrol nowlay open; but in the midst of his victories Bonaparte learnt that thenorthern armies of Moreau and Jourdan, with which he had intended toco-operate in an attack upon Vienna, were in full retreat. [Invasion of Germany by Moureau and Jourdan, June-Oct. 1796. ][The Archduke Charles overpowers Jourdan. ]Moreau's advance into the valley of the Danube had, during the months ofJuly and August, been attended with unbroken military and politicalsuccess. The Archduke Charles, who was entrusted with the defence of theEmpire, found himself unable to bring two armies into the field capable ofresisting those of Moreau and Jourdan separately, and he thereforedetermined to fall back before Moreau towards Nuremberg, orderingWartensleben, who commanded the troops facing Jourdan on the Main, toretreat in the same direction, in order that the two armies might throwtheir collected force upon Jourdan while still at some distance north ofMoreau. [51] The design of the Archduke succeeded in the end, but it openedGermany to the French for six weeks, and showed how worthless was themilitary constitution of the Empire, and how little the Germans had toexpect from one another. After every skirmish won by Moreau someneighbouring State abandoned the common defence and hastened to make itsterms with the invader. On the 17th of July the Duke of Würtembergpurchased an armistice at the price of four million francs; a week laterBaden gained the French general's protection in return for immense suppliesof food and stores. The troops of the Swabian Circle of the Empire, whowere ridiculed as "harlequins" by the more martial Austrians, dispersed totheir homes; and no sooner had Moreau entered Bavaria than the Bavariancontingent in its turn withdrew from the Archduke. Some consideration wasshown by Moreau's soldiery to those districts which had paid tribute totheir general; but in the region of the Main, Jourdan's army plunderedwithout distinction and without mercy. They sacked the churches, theymaltreated the children, they robbed the very beggars of their pence. Before the Archduke Charles was ready to strike, the peasantry of thiscountry, whom their governments were afraid to arm, had begun effectivereprisals of their own. At length the retreating movement of the Austriansstopped. Leaving 30, 000 men on the Lech to disguise his motions fromMoreau, Charles turned suddenly northwards from Neuburg on the [***] August, met Wartensleben at Amberg, and attacked Jourdan at this place with greatlysuperior numbers. Jourdan was defeated and driven back in confusion towardsthe Rhine. The issue of the campaign was decided before Moreau heard of hiscolleague's danger. It only remained for him to save his own army by askilful retreat. Jourdan's soldiers, returning through districts which theyhad devastated, suffered heavier losses from the vengeance of the peasantrythan from the army that pursued them. By the autumn of 1796 no Frenchmanremained beyond the Rhine. The campaign had restored the military spirit ofAustria and given Germany a general in whom soldiers could trust; but ithad also shown how willing were the Governments of the minor States tobecome the vassals of a foreigner, how little was wanting to convert thewestern 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 ofthe 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 definiteagreement to the cession of the left bank of the Rhine, and a stipulationthat Prussia should be compensated for her own loss by the annexation ofthe Bishopric of Münster. Prussia could not itself cede provinces of theEmpire: it could only agree to their cession. In this treaty, however, Prussia definitely renounced the integrity of the Empire, and accepted thesystem known as the Secularisation of Ecclesiastical States, the first steptowards an entire reconstruction of Germany. [52] The engagement was keptsecret both from the Emperor and from the ecclesiastical princes. In theirnegotiations with Austria the Directory were less successful. Although thelong series of Austrian disasters had raised a general outcry againstThugut's persistence in the war, the resolute spirit of the Minister neverbent; and the ultimate victory of the Archduke Charles more than restoredhis influence over the Emperor. Austria refused to enter into anynegotiation not conducted in common with England, and the Directory werefor the present foiled in their attempts to isolate England from theContinental Powers. It was not that Thugut either hoped or cared for thatrestoration of Austrian rule in the Netherlands which was the first objectof England's Continental policy. The abandonment of the Netherlands byFrance was, however, in his opinion necessary for Austria, as a steptowards the acquisition of Bavaria, which was still the cherished hope ofthe Viennese Government. It was in vain that the Directory suggested thatAustria should annex Bavaria without offering Belgium or any othercompensation to its ruler. Thugut could hardly be induced to listen to theFrench overtures. He had received the promise of immediate help from theEmpress Catherine; he was convinced that the Republic, already anxious forpeace, might by one sustained effort be forced to abandon all itsconquests; and this was the object for which, in the winter of 1796, armyafter army was hurled against the positions where Bonaparte kept his guardon the north of the still unconquered Mantua. [53][Malmesbury sent to Paris, Oct. , 1796. ]In England itself the victory of the Archduke Charles raised expectationsof peace. The war had become unpopular through the loss of trade withFrance, Spain, and Holland, and petitions for peace daily reachedParliament. Pitt so far yielded to the prevalent feeling as to enter intonegotiations with the Directory, and despatched Lord Malmesbury to Paris;but the condition upon which Pitt insisted, the restoration of theNetherlands to Austria, rendered agreement hopeless; and as soon as Pitt'sterms were known to the Directory, Malmesbury was ordered to leave Paris. Nevertheless, the negotiation was not a mere feint on Pitt's part. He waspossessed by a fixed idea that the resources of France were exhausted, andthat, in spite of the conquest of Lombardy and the Rhine, the Republic mustfeel itself too weak to continue the war. Amid the disorders ofRevolutionary finance, and exaggerated reports of suffering and distress, Pitt failed to recognise the enormous increase of production resulting fromthe changes which had given the peasant full property in his land andlabour, and thrown vast quantities of half-waste domain into the busy handsof middling and small proprietors. [54]Whatever were the resources of France before the Revolution, they were nowprobably 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 upBelgium without fighting for it, was wholly erroneous, and the FrenchGovernment 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 enterinto any engagements in the conquered provinces of Italy which might renderpeace with Austria more difficult. They had instructed Bonaparte to stir upthe Italians against their Governments, but this was done with the objectof paralysing the Governments, not of emancipating the peoples. They lookedwith dislike upon any scheme of Italian reconstruction which should bindFrance to the support of newly-formed Italian States. Here, however, thescruples of the Directory and the ambition of Bonaparte were in directconflict. Bonaparte intended to create a political system in Italy whichshould bear the stamp of his own mind and require his own strong hand tosupport it. In one of his despatches to the Directory he suggested theformation of a client Republic out of the Duchy of Modena, whererevolutionary movements had broken out. Before it was possible for theGovernment to answer him, he published a decree, declaring the populationof Modena and Reggio under the protection of the French army, and deposingall the officers of the Duke (Oct. 4). When, some days later, the answer ofthe Directory arrived, it cautioned Bonaparte against disturbing theexisting order of the Italian States. Bonaparte replied by uniting toModena the Papal provinces of Bologna and Ferrara, and by giving to theState 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 ofItalian independence, though foreign to the great mass of the nation, maybe said to have taken birth as one of those political hopes which wane andrecede, but do not again leave the world. A class of men who had turnedwith dislike from the earlier agitation of French Republicans in Italyrightly judged the continued victories of Bonaparte over the Austrians tobe the beginning of a series of great changes, and now joined therevolutionary movement in the hope of winning from the overthrow of the oldPowers some real form of national independence. In its origin the Frenchparty may have been composed of hirelings and enthusiasts. This ceased tobe the case when, after the passage of the Mincio, Bonaparte entered thePapal States. Among the citizens of Bologna in particular there were men ofweight and intelligence who aimed at free constitutional government, andchecked in some degree the more numerous popular party which merelyrepeated the phrases of French democracy. Bonaparte's own language andaction excited the brightest hopes. At Modena he harangued the citizensupon the mischief of Italy's divisions, and exhorted them to unite withtheir brethren whom he had freed from the Pope. A Congress was held atModena on the 16th of October. The representatives of Modena, Reggio, Bologna, and Ferrara declared themselves united in a Republic under theprotection of France. They abolished feudal nobility, decreed a nationallevy, and summoned a General Assembly to meet at Reggio two months later, in order to create the Constitution of the new Cispadane Republic. It wasin the Congress of Modena, and in the subsequent Assembly of Reggio (Dec. 23), that the idea of Italian unity and independence first awoke theenthusiasm of any considerable body of men. With what degree of sincerityBonaparte himself acted may be judged from the circumstance that, while heharangued the Cispadanes on the necessity of Italian union, he imprisonedthe Milanese who attempted to excite a popular movement for the purpose ofextending 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 theAustrians 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 indetail. Allvintzy, coming from the Piave, brought the French into extremedanger in a three days' battle at Arcola, but was at last forced to retreatwith heavy loss. Davidovich, who had been successful on the Adige, retiredon learning the overthrow of his colleague. Two months more passed, and theAustrians for the third time appeared on the Adige. A feint made belowVerona nearly succeeded in drawing Bonaparte away from Rivoli, between theAdige and Lake Garda, where Allvintzy and his main army were about to makethe assault; but the strength of Allvintzy's force was discovered before itwas too late, and by throwing his divisions from point to point withextraordinary rapidity, Bonaparte at length overwhelmed the Austrians inevery quarter of the battle-field. This was their last effort. Thesurrender of Mantua on the 2nd February, 1797, completed the Frenchconquest 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, whodeclared the truce broken, and a second time invaded the Papal territory. Ashow of resistance was made by the Roman troops; but the country was infact at the mercy of Bonaparte, who advanced as far as Tolentino, thirtymiles south of Ancona. Here the Pope tendered his submission. If the RomanCourt had never appeared to be in a more desperate condition, it had neverfound a more moderate or a more politic conqueror. Bonaparte was as freefrom any sentiment of Christian piety as Nero or Diocletian; but herespected the power of the Papacy over men's minds, and he understood theimmense advantage which any Government of France supported by thepriesthood would possess over those who had to struggle with its hostility. In his negotiations with the Papal envoys he deplored the violence of theFrench Executive, and consoled the Church with the promise of his ownprotection and sympathy. The terms of peace which he granted, although theygreatly diminished the ecclesiastical territory were in fact morefavourable than the Pope had any right to expect. Bologna, Ferrara, and theRomagna, which had been occupied in virtue of the armistice, were now cededby the Papacy. But conditions affecting the exercise of the spiritual powerwhich had been proposed by the Directory were withdrawn; and, beyond aprovision for certain payments in money, nothing of importance was added tothe stipulations of the armistice. The last days of the Venetian Republic were now at hand. It was in vainthat Venice had maintained its neutrality when all the rest of Italy joinedthe enemies of France; its refusal of a French alliance was made anunpardonable crime. So long as the war with Austria lasted, Bonaparteexhausted the Venetian territory with requisitions: when peace came withinview, it was necessary that he should have some pretext for seizing it orhanding it over to the enemy. In fulfilment of his own design of keeping aquarrel open, he had subjected the Government to every insult and wronglikely to goad it into an act of war. When at length Venice armed for thepurpose of protecting its neutrality, the organs of the invader called uponthe inhabitants of the Venetian mainland to rise against the oligarchy, andto throw in their lot with the liberated province of Milan. A Frenchalliance was once more urged upon Venice by Bonaparte: it was refused, andthe outbreak which the French had prepared instantly followed. Bergamo andBrescia, where French garrisons deprived the Venetian Government of allpower of defence, rose in revolt, and renounced all connection with Venice. The Senate begged Bonaparte to withdraw the French garrisons; itsentreaties drew nothing from him but repeated demands for the acceptance ofthe French alliance, which was only another name for subjection. Little asthe Venetians suspected it, the only doubt now present to Bonaparte waswhether he should add the provinces of Venetia to his own CispadaneRepublic or hand them over to Austria in exchange for other cessions whichFrance required. [Preliminaries of Leoben, April 18. ]Austria could defend itself in Italy no longer. Before the end of March themountain-passes into Carinthia were carried by Bonaparte. His army drovethe enemy before it along the road to Vienna, until both pursuers andpursued were within eighty miles of the capital. At Leoben, on the 7th ofApril, Austrian commander asked for a suspension of arms. It was granted, and negotiations for peace commenced. [58] Bonaparte offered the Venetianprovinces, but not the city of Venice, to the Emperor. On the 18th of Aprilpreliminaries of peace were signed at Leoben, by which, in return for theNetherlands and for Lombardy west of the river Oglio, Bonaparte secretlyagreed to hand over to Austria the whole of the territory of Venice uponthe mainland east of the Oglio, in addition to its Adriatic provinces ofIstria and Dalmatia. To disguise the act of spoliation, it was pretendedthat 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, anoutbreak took place at Verona, and three hundred French soldiers, includingthe sick in the hospital, perished by popular violence. The Venetian Senatedespatched envoys to Bonaparte to express their grief and to offersatisfaction; in the midst of the negotiations intelligence arrived thatthe commander of a Venetian fort had fired upon a French vessel and killedsome of the crew. Bonaparte drove the envoys from his presence, declaringthat he could not treat with men whose hands were dripping with Frenchblood. A declaration of war was published, charging the Senate with thedesign of repeating the Sicilian Vespers, and the panic which it wasBonaparte's object to inspire instantly followed. The Government threwthemselves upon his mercy. Bonaparte pretended that he desired no more thanto establish a popular government in Venice in the place of the oligarchy. His terms were accepted. The Senate consented to abrogate the ancientConstitution of the Republic, and to introduce a French garrison intoVenice. On the 12th of May the Grand Council voted its own dissolution. Peace was concluded. The public articles of the treaty declared that thereshould be friendship between the French and the Venetian Republics; thatthe sovereignty of Venice should reside in the body of the citizens; andthat the French garrison should retire so soon as the new Governmentannounced that it had no further need of its support. Secret articlesstipulated for a money payment, and for the usual surrender of works ofart; an indefinite expression relating to an exchange of territory wasintended to cover the surrender of the Venetian mainland, and the union ofBologna and Ferrara with what remained of Venice. The friendship andalliance of France, which Bonaparte had been so anxious to bestow onVenice, 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 greatdesire 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 onthe scene of the world, and resume, among the great nations, the rank towhich nature, destiny, and its own position call it. " This was for Venice;for the French Directory Bonaparte had a very different tale. "I hadseveral motives, " he wrote (May 19), "in concluding the treaty:--to enterthe city without difficulty; to have the arsenal and all else in ourpossession, in order to take from it whatever we needed, under pretext ofthe secret articles; . .. To evade the odium attaching to the Preliminariesof Leoben; to furnish pretexts for them, and to facilitate theirexecution. "[French seize Ionian islands. ][Venice to be given to Austria. ]As the first fruits of the Venetian alliance, Bonaparte seized upon Corfuand the other Ionian Islands. "You will start, " he wrote to GeneralGentili, "as quickly and as secretly as possible, and take possession ofall the Venetian establishments in the Levant. .. . If the inhabitantsshould be inclined for independence, you should flatter their tastes, andin 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 Italianterritory, Venice might still have remained a prominent city in Italy. Itwas sacrificed in order to gain the Rhenish Provinces for France. Bonapartehad returned to the neighbourhood of Milan, and received the Austrianenvoy, De Gallo, at the villa of Montebello. Wresting a forced meaning fromthe Preliminaries of Leoben, Bonaparte claimed the frontier of the Rhine, offering to Austria not only the territory of Venice upon the mainland, butthe city of Venice itself. De Gallo yielded. Whatever causes subsequentlyprolonged the negotiation, no trace of honour or pity in Bonaparte led himeven to feign a reluctance to betray Venice. "We have to-day had our firstconference on the definitive treaty, " he wrote to the Directory, on thenight of the 26th of May, "and have agreed to present the followingpropositions: the line of the Rhine for France; Salzburg, Passau for theEmperor; . .. The maintenance of the Germanic Body; . .. Venice for theEmperor. Venice, " he continued, "which has been in decadence since thediscovery of the Cape of Good Hope and the rise of Trieste and Ancona, canscarcely survive the blows we have just struck. With a cowardly andhelpless population in no way fit for liberty, without territory andwithout rivers, it is but natural that she should go to those to whom wegive 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 ofGenoa met with generous treatment. A revolutionary movement, long preparedby the French envoy, overthrew the ancient oligarchical Government; butdemocratic opinion and French sympathies did not extend below the middleclasses of the population; and, after the Government had abandoned its owncause, the charcoal-burners and dock-labourers rose in its defence, andattacked the French party with the cry of "Viva Maria, " and with figures ofthe Virgin fastened to their hats, in the place where their opponents worethe French tricolour. Religious fanaticism won the day; the old Governmentwas restored, and a number of Frenchmen who had taken part in the conflictwere thrown into prison. The imprisonment of the Frenchmen gave Bonaparte apretext for intervention. He disclaimed all desire to alter the Government, and demanded only the liberation of his countrymen and the arrest of theenemies of France. But the overthrow of the oligarchy had been longarranged with Faypoult, the French envoy; and Genoa received a democraticconstitution which place the friends of France in power (June 5). [France in 1797. ]While Bonaparte, holding Court in the Villa of Montebello, continued tonegotiate with Austria upon the basis of the Preliminaries of Leoben, events took place in France which offered him an opportunity of interferingdirectly in the government of the Republic. The elections which were toreplace one-third of the members of the Legislature took place in thespring of 1797. The feeling of the country was now much the same as it hadbeen in 1795, when a large Royalist element was returned for those seats inthe Councils which the Convention had not reserved for its own members. France desired a more equitable and a more tolerant rule. The Directory hadindeed allowed the sanguinary laws against non-juring priests and returningemigrants to remain unenforced; but the spirit and traditions of officialJacobinism were still active in the Government. The Directors themselveswere all regicides; the execution of the King was still celebrated by anational _fête_; offices, great and small, were held by men who had risenin the Revolution; the whole of the old gentry of France was excluded fromparticipation in public life. It was against this revolutionary class-rule, against a system which placed the country as much at the mercy of a fewdirectors and generals as it had been at the mercy of the ConventionalCommittee, that the elections of 1797 were a protest. Along with certainBourbonist conspirators, a large majority of men were returned who, thoughdescribed as Royalists, were in fact moderate Constitutionalists, anddesired only to undo that part of the Revolution which excluded wholeclasses of the nation from public life. [60][Opposition to the Directory. ]Such a party in the legislative body naturally took the character of anOpposition to the more violent section of the Directory. The Directorretiring in 1797 was replaced by the Constitutionalist Barthélemy, negotiator of the treaty of Basle; Carnot, who continued in office, tookpart with the Opposition, justly fearing that the rule of the Directorywould soon amount to nothing more than the rule of Bonaparte himself. Thefirst debates in the new Chamber arose upon the laws relating to emigrants;the next, upon Bonaparte's usurpation of sovereign power in Italy. On the23rd of June a motion for information on the affairs of Venice and Genoawas brought forward in the Council of Five Hundred. Dumolard, the mover, complained of the secrecy of Bonaparte's action, of the contempt shown byhim to the Assembly, of his tyrannical and un-republican interference withthe institutions of friendly States. No resolution was adopted by theAssembly; but the mere fact that the Assembly had listened to a hostilecriticism of his own actions was sufficient ground in Bonaparte's eyes tocharge it with Royalism and with treason. Three of the Directors, Barras, Rewbell, and Laréveillère, had already formed the project of overpoweringthe Assembly by force. Bonaparte's own interests led him to offer them hissupport. If the Constitutional party gained power, there was an end to hisown unshackled rule in Italy; if the Bourbonists succeeded, a differentclass of men would hold all the honours of the State. However feeble theGovernment of the Directory, its continuance secured his own presentascendency, and left him the hope of gaining supreme power when the publiccould 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 ofthe Bastille, Bonaparte issued a proclamation to his army declaring theRepublic to be threatened by Royalist intrigues. A banquet was held, andthe officers and soldiers of every division signed addresses to theDirectory full of threats and fury against conspiring aristocrats. "Indignation is at its height in the army, " wrote Bonaparte to theGovernment; "the soldiers are asking with loud cries whether they are to berewarded by assassination on their return home, as it appears all patriotsare 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 Directorshad no difficulty in deciding after such an exhortation as this; but, assoon as Bonaparte had worked up their courage, he withdrew into thebackground, and sent General Augereau, a blustering Jacobin, to Paris, torisk the failure or bear the odium of the crime. Augereau received themilitary command of the capital; the air was filled with rumours of animpending blow; but neither the majority in the Councils nor the twothreatened Directors, Carnot and Barthélemy, knew how to take measures ofdefence. On the night of the 3rd September (17 Fructidor) the troops ofAugereau surrounded the Tuileries. Barthélemy was seized at the Luxembourg;Carnot fled for his life; the members of the Councils, marching inprocession to the Tuileries early the next morning, were arrested ordispersed by the soldiers. Later in the day a minority of the Councils wasassembled to ratify the measures determined upon by Augereau and the threeDirectors. Fifty members of the Legislature, and the writers, proprietors, and editors of forty-two journals, were sentenced to exile; the electionsof forty-eight departments were annulled; the laws against priests andemigrants were renewed; and the Directory was empowered to suppress alljournals at its pleasure. This coup d'état was described as the suppressionof a Royalist conspiracy. It was this, but it was something more. It wasthe suppression of all Constitutional government, and all but the last stepto 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 withAustria and with England. Lord Malmesbury was now again in France, treatingfor peace with fair hopes of success, since the Preliminaries of Leoben hadremoved England's opposition to the cession of the Netherlands, thediscomfiture of the moderate party in the Councils brought his mission toan abrupt end. Austria, on the other hand, had prolonged its negotiationsbecause Bonaparte claimed Mantua and the Rhenish Provinces in addition tothe cessions agreed upon at Leoben. Count Ludwig Cobenzl, Austrianambassador at St. Petersburg, who had protected his master's interests onlytoo well in the last partition of Poland, was now at the head of theplenipotentiaries in Italy, endeavouring to bring Bonaparte back to theterms fixed in the Preliminaries, or to gain additional territory forAustria in Italy. The Jacobin victory at Paris depressed the Austrians asmuch as it elated the French leader. Bonaparte was resolved on concluding apeace that should be all his own, and this was only possible byanticipating an invasion of Germany, about to be undertaken by Augereau atthe head of the Army of the Rhine. It was to this personal ambition ofBonaparte that Venice was sacrificed. The Directors were willing thatAustria should receive part of the Venetian territory: they forbade theproposed cession of Venice itself. Within a few weeks more, the advance ofthe Army of the Rhine would have enabled France to dictate its own terms;but no consideration either for France or for Italy could induce Bonaparteto share the glory of the Peace with another. On the 17th of October hesigned the final treaty of Campo Formio, which gave France the frontier ofthe Rhine, and made both the Venetian territory beyond the Adige and Veniceitself the property of the Emperor. For a moment it seemed that the Treatymight be repudiated at Vienna as well as at Paris. Thugut protested againstit, because it surrendered Mantua and the Rhenish Provinces without gainingfor Austria the Papal Legations; and he drew up the ratification only atthe absolute command of the Emperor. The Directory, on the other hand, condemned the cession of Venice. But their fear of Bonaparte and their ownbad conscience left them impotent accessories of his treachery; and theFrench nation at large was too delighted with the peace to resent its baserconditions. [61][Treaty of Campo Formio, Oct. 17. ]By the public articles of the Treaty of Campo Formio, the Emperor ceded toFrance the Austrian possessions in Lombardy and in the Netherlands, andagreed to the establishment of a Cisalpine Republic, formed out of AustrianLombardy, the Venetian territory west of the Adige, and the districtshitherto composing the new Cispadane State. France took the Ionian Islands, Austria the City of Venice, with Istria and Dalmatia, and the Venetianmainland east of the Adige. For the conclusion of peace between France andthe Holy Roman Empire, it was agreed that a Congress should meet atRastadt; but a secret article provided that the Emperor should use hisefforts to gain for France the whole left bank of the Rhine, except a tractincluding the Prussian Duchies of Cleve and Guelders. With humorousduplicity the French Government, which had promised Prussia the Bishopricof Münster in return for this very district, now pledged itself to Austriathat Prussia should receive no extension whatever, and affected to excludethe Prussian Duchies from the Rhenish territory which was to be made overto France. Austria was promised the independent Bishopric of Salzburg, andthat portion of Bavaria which lies between the Inn and the Salza. Thesecular princes dispossessed in the Rhenish Provinces were to becompensated in the interior of the Empire by a scheme framed in concertwith France. [Austria sacrifices Germany. ]The immense advantages which the Treaty of Campo Formio gave to France--itsextension over the Netherlands and the Rhenish Provinces, and the virtualannexation of Lombardy, Modena, and the Papal Legations under the form of aclient republic--were not out of proportion to its splendid militarysuccesses. Far otherwise was it with Austria. With the exception of theArchduke's campaign of 1796, the warfare of the last three years hadbrought Austria nothing but a series of disasters; yet Austria gained bythe Treaty of Campo Formio as much as it lost. In the place of the distantNetherlands and of Milan it gained, in Venice and Dalmatia, a territorytouching its own, nearly equal to the Netherlands and Milan together inpopulation, and so situated as to enable Austria to become one of the navalPowers of the Mediterranean. The price which Austria paid was theabandonment of Germany, a matter which, in spite of Thugut's protests, disturbed the Court of Vienna as little as the betrayal of Venice disturbedBonaparte. The Rhenish Provinces were surrendered to the stranger; Germandistricts were to be handed over to compensate the ejected Sovereigns ofHolland and of Modena; the internal condition and order of the Empire wereto 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 firmnessin prolonging the war. Bonaparte ridiculed the men who, in the earlierspirit of the Revolution, desired to found a freer political system inEurope upon the ruins of Austria's power. "I have not drawn my support inItaly, " he wrote to Talleyrand (Oct. 7), "from the love of the peoples forliberty and equality, or at least but a very feeble support. The realsupport of the army of Italy has been its own discipline, . .. Above all, our promptitude in repressing malcontents and punishing those who declaredagainst us. This is history; what I say in my proclamations and speeches isa romance. .. . If we return to the foreign policy of 1793, we shall do soknowing that a different policy has brought us success, and that we have nolonger the great masses of 1793 to enrol in our armies, nor the support ofan 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 haveso dangerous an enemy off her hands. England required the whole forces ofthe Republic. "The present situation, " wrote Bonaparte, after the Peace ofCampo Formio, "offers us a good chance. We must set all our strength uponthe 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 Spanishand the Dutch navies, if they could be brought to the side of France, wouldmake France superior to Great Britain as a maritime Power. The conquest ofHolland had been planned by Carnot as the first step towards an invasion ofEngland. For a while these plans seemed to be approaching their fulfilment, Holland was won; Spain first made peace, and then entered into alliancewith the Directory (Aug. 1796). But each increase in the naval forces ofthe Republic only gave the admirals of Great Britain new material todestroy. The Spanish fleet was beaten by Jarvis off St. Vincent; even themutiny of the British squadrons at Spithead and the Nore, in the spring andsummer 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 ownsquadron joined the mutineers, continued the blockade with one ship besidehis 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 Dutchat 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 Bonaparteseriously entertained the project of invading England. The plan was at anyrate soon abandoned, and the preparations, which caused great alarm in theEnglish coast-towns, were continued only for the purpose of disguisingBonaparte's real design of an attack upon Egypt. From the beginning of hiscareer Bonaparte's thoughts had turned towards the vast and undefendedEast. While still little known, he had asked the French Government to sendhim to Constantinople to organise the Turkish army; as soon as Venice fellinto his hands, he had seized the Ionian Islands as the base for a futureconquest of the Levant. Every engagement that confirmed the superiority ofEngland upon the western seas gave additional reason for attacking herwhere her power was most precarious, in the East. Bonaparte knew thatAlexander had conquered the country of the Indus by a land-march from theMediterranean, and this was perhaps all the information which he possessedregarding the approaches to India; but it was enough to fix his mind uponthe conquest of Egypt and Syria, as the first step towards the destructionof the Asiatic Empire of England. Mingled with the design upon India was adream of overthrowing the Mohammedan Government of Turkey, and attackingAustria from the East with an army drawn from the liberated Christian racesof the Ottoman Empire. The very vagueness of a scheme of Eastern conquestmade it the more attractive to Bonaparte's genius and ambition. Nor wasthere any inclination on the part of the Government to detain the generalat home. The Directory, little concerned with the real merits or dangers ofthe enterprise, consented to Bonaparte's project of an attack upon Egypt, thankful for any opportunity of loosening the grasp which was now closingso firmly upon themselves. CHAPTER IV. Congress of Rastadt--The Rhenish Provinces ceded--Ecclesiastical States ofGermany 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 entersRome--Mack's defeats--French enter Naples--Parthenopean Republic--War withAustria and Russia--Battle of Stockach--Murder of the French Envoys atRastadt--Campaign in Lombardy--Reign of Terror at Naples--Austrian designsupon Italy--Suvaroff and the Austrians--Campaign in Switzerland--Campaignin Holland--Bonaparte returns from Egypt--Coup d'état of 18 Brumaire--Constitution of 1799--System of Bonaparte in France--Its effect on theinfluence of France abroad. [Congress of Rastadt, Nov. 1797. ]The public articles of the Treaty of Campo Formio contained only the termswhich had been agreed upon by France and Austria in relation to Italy andthe Netherlands: the conditions of peace between France and the GermanicBody, which had been secretly arranged between France and the two leadingPowers, were referred by a diplomatic fiction to a Congress that was toassemble at Rastadt. Accordingly, after Prussia and Austria had each signedan agreement abandoning the Rhenish Provinces, the Congress was dulysummoned. As if in mockery of his helpless countrymen, the Emperor informedthe members of the Diet that "in unshaken fidelity to the great principleof the unity and indivisibility of the German Empire, they were to maintainthe common interests of the Fatherland with noble conscientiousness andGerman steadfastness; and so, united with their imperial head, to promote ajust and lasting peace, founded upon the basis of the integrity of theEmpire and of its Constitution. " [62] Thus the Congress was convoked uponthe pretence of preserving what the two greater States had determined tosacrifice; while its real object, the suppression of the ecclesiasticalprincipalities and the curtailment of Bavaria, was studiously put out ofsight. [Rivalry of the Germans. ]The Congress was composed of two French envoys, of the representatives ofPrussia and Austria, and of a committee, numbering with their secretariesseventy-four persons, appointed by the Diet of Ratisbon. But the recognisednegotiators formed only a small part of the diplomatists who flocked toRastadt in the hope of picking up something from the wreck of the Empire. Every petty German sovereign, even communities which possessed no politicalrights at all, thought it necessary to have an agent on the spot, in orderto filch, if possible, some trifling advantage from a neighbour, or tocatch the first rumour of a proposed annexation. It was the saturnalia ofthe whole tribe of busybodies and intriguers who passed in Germany for menof state. They spied upon one another; they bribed the secretaries anddoorkeepers, they bribed the very cooks and coachmen, of the two omnipotentFrench envoys. Of the national humiliation of Germany, of the dishonourattaching to the loss of entire provinces and the reorganisation of whatremained at the bidding of the stranger, there seems to have been no sensein the political circles of the day. The collapse of the Empire was viewedrather as a subject of merriment. A gaiety of life and language prevailed, impossible among men who did not consider themselves as the spectators of acomedy. Cobenzl, the chief Austrian plenipotentiary, took his travels in afly, because his mistress, the _citoyenne_ Hyacinthe, had decamped with allhis carriages and horses. A witty but profane pamphlet was circulated, inwhich the impending sacrifice of the Empire was described in languageborrowed from the Gospel narrative, Prussia taking the part of JudasIscariot, Austria that of Pontius Pilate, the Congress itself being thechief priests and Pharisees assembling that they may take the Holy RomanEmpire by craft, while the army of the Empire figures as the "multitude whosmote upon their breasts and departed. " In the utter absence of any Germanpride or patriotism the French envoys not only obtained the territory thatthey required, but successfully embroiled the two leading Powers with oneanother, and accustomed the minor States to look to France for their ownpromotion at the cost of their neighbours. The contradictory pledges whichthe French Government had given to Austria and to Prussia caused it noembarrassment. To deceive one of the two powers was to win the gratitude ofthe other; and the Directory determined to fulfil its engagement to Prussiaat the expense of the bishoprics, and to ignore what it had promised toAustria at the expense of Bavaria. [Rhenish Provinces. ][Ecclesiastical States suppressed. ]A momentary difficulty arose upon the opening of the Congress, when itappeared that, misled by the Emperor's protestations, the Diet had onlyempowered its Committee to treat upon the basis of the integrity of theEmpire (Dec. 9). The French declined to negotiate until the Committee hadprocured full powers: and the prospects of the integrity of the Empire weremade clear enough a few days later by the entry of the French into Mainz, and the formal organisation of the Rhenish Provinces as four FrenchDepartments. In due course a decree of the Diet arrived, empowering theCommittee to negotiate at their discretion: and for some weeks after theinhabitants of the Rhenish Provinces had been subjected to the laws, themagistracy, and the taxation of France, the Committee deliberated upon theproposal for their cession with as much minuteness and as much impartialityas if it had been a point of speculative philosophy. At length the Frenchput an end to the tedious trifling, and proceeded to the question ofcompensation for the dispossessed lay Princes. This they proposed to effectby means of the disestablishment, or secularisation, of ecclesiasticalStates in the interior of Germany. Prussia eagerly supported the Frenchproposal, both with a view to the annexation of the great Bishopric ofMünster, and from ancient hostility to the ecclesiastical States asinstruments and allies of Catholic Austria. The Emperor opposed thedestruction of his faithful dependents; the ecclesiastical princesthemselves raised a bitter outcry, and demonstrated that the fall of theirorder would unloose the keystone of the political system of Europe; butthey found few friends. If Prussia coveted the great spoils of Münster, theminor sovereigns, as a rule, wore just as eager for the convents and abbeysthat broke the continuity of their own territories: only the feeblest ofall the members of the Empire, the counts, the knights, and the cities, felt a respectful sympathy for their ecclesiastical neighbours, and foresawthat in a system of annexation their own turn would come next. Theprinciple of secularisation was accepted by the Congress without muchdifficulty, all the energy of debate being reserved for the discussion ofdetails: arrangements which were to transfer a few miles of ground and halfa dozen custom-houses from some bankrupt ecclesiastic to some French-boughtduke excited more interest in Germany than the loss of the RhenishProvinces, and the subjection of a tenth part of the German nation to aforeign rule. [Austria determines on war, 1798. ]One more question was unexpectedly presented to the Congress. Afterproclaiming for six years that the Rhine was the natural boundary ofFrance, the French Government discovered that a river cannot be a militaryfrontier at all. Of what service, urged the French plenipotentiaries, wereStrasburg and Mainz, so long as they were commanded by the guns on theopposite bank? If the Rhine was to be of any use to France, France must beput in possession of the fortresses of Kehl and Castel upon the Germanside. Outrageous as such a demand appears, it found supporters among thevenal politicians of the smaller Courts, and furnished the Committee withmaterial for arguments that extended over four months. But the policy ofAustria was now taking a direction that rendered the resolutions of theCongress of very little importance. It had become clear that France wasinclining to an alliance with Prussia, and that the Bavarian annexationspromised to Austria by the secret articles of Campo Formio were to bewithheld. Once convinced, by the failure of a private negotiation inAlsace, that the French would neither be content with their gains of 1797, nor permit Austria to extend its territory in Italy, Thugut determined upona renewal of the war. [63] In spite of a powerful opposition at Court, Thugut's stubborn will still controlled the fortune of Austria: and theaggressions of the French Republic in Switzerland and the Papal States, atthe moment when it was dictating terms of peace to the Empire, gave onlytoo 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 ofRepublican freedom was so strong, or where the conditions of life were solevel, as in Switzerland; its inhabitants, however, were far from enjoyingcomplete political equality. There were districts which stood in therelation of subject dependencies to one or other of the ruling cantons: thePays de Vaud was governed by an officer from Berne; the valley of theTicino belonged to Uri; and in most of the sovereign cantons themselvesauthority was vested in a close circle of patrician families. Thus, although Switzerland was free from the more oppressive distinctions ofcaste, and the Governments, even where not democratic, were usually justand temperate, a sufficiently large class was excluded from politicalrights to give scope to an agitation which received its impulse from Paris. It was indeed among communities advanced in comfort and intelligence, anddivided from those who governed them by no great barrier of wealth andprestige, that the doctrines of the Revolution found a circulation whichthey could never gain among the hereditary serfs of Prussia or thepriest-ridden peasantry of the Roman States. As early as the year 1792 aFrench army had entered the territory of Geneva, in order to co-operatewith the democratic party in the city. The movement was, however, checkedby the resolute action of the Bernese Senate; and the relations of Franceto the Federal Government had subsequently been kept upon a friendlyfooting by the good sense of Barthélemy, the French ambassador at Berne, and the discretion with which the Swiss Government avoided every occasionof offence. On the conquest of Northern Italy, Bonaparte was brought intodirect connection with Swiss affairs by a reference of certain points indispute to his authority as arbitrator. Bonaparte solved the difficulty byannexing the district of the Valteline to the Cisalpine Republic; and fromthat time he continued in communication with the Swiss democratic leaderson the subject of a French intervention in Switzerland, the real purpose ofwhich was to secure the treasure of Berne, and to organise a government, like that of Holland and the Cisalpine Republic, in immediate dependenceupon 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 signalfor insurrection in the Pays de Vaud. The Senate of Berne summoned the Dietof the Confederacy to provide for the common defence: the oath offederation was renewed, and a decree was passed calling out the Federalarmy. It was now announced by the French that they would support theVaudois revolutionary party, if attacked. The Bernese troops, however, advanced; and the bearer of a flag of truce having been accidentallykilled, war was declared between the French Republic and the Government ofBerne. Democratic movements immediately followed in the northern andwestern cantons; the Bernese Government attempted to negotiate with theFrench invaders, but discovered that no terms would be accepted short ofthe entire destruction of the existing Federal Constitution. Hostilitiescommenced; and the Bernese troops, supported by contingents from most ofthe other cantons, offered a brave but ineffectual resistance to theadvance of the French, who entered the Federal capital on the 6th of March, 1798. The treasure of Berne, amounting to about £800, 000, accumulated byages of thrift and good management, was seized in order to provide forBonaparte's next campaign, and for a host of voracious soldiers andcontractors. A system of robbery and extortion, more shameless even thanthat practised in Italy, was put in force against the cantonal governments, against the monasteries, and against private individuals. In compensationfor the material losses inflicted upon the country, the new HelveticRepublic, one and indivisible, was proclaimed at Aarau. It conferred anequality of political rights upon all natives of Switzerland, andsubstituted for the ancient varieties of cantonal sovereignty a singlenational government, composed, like that of France, of a Directory and twoCouncils of Legislature. The towns and districts which had been hitherto excluded from a share ingovernment welcomed a change which seemed to place them on a level withtheir former superiors: the mountain-cantons fought with traditionalheroism in defence of the liberties which they had inherited from theirfathers; but they were compelled, one after another, to submit to theoverwhelming force of France, and to accept the new constitution. Yet, evennow, when peace seemed to have been restored, and the whole purpose ofFrance attained, the tyranny and violence of the invaders exhausted theendurance of a spirited people. The magistrates of the Republic wereexpelled from office at the word of a French Commission; hostages wereseized; at length an oath of allegiance to the new order was required as acondition for the evacuation of Switzerland by the French army. Revoltbroke out in Unterwalden, and a handful of peasants met the French army atthe village of Stanz, near the eastern shore of the Lake of Lucerne (Sept. 8). There for three days they fought with unyielding courage. Theirresistance inflamed the French to a cruel vengeance; slaughtered familiesand burning villages renewed, in this so-called crusade of liberty, thesavagery of ancient war. [French intrigues in Rome. ]Intrigues at Rome paved the way for a French intervention in the affairs ofthe Papal States, coincident in time with the invasion of Switzerland. Theresidence of the French ambassador at Rome, Joseph Bonaparte, was thecentre of a democratic agitation. The men who moved about him were in greatpart strangers from the north of Italy, but they found adherents in themiddle and professional classes in Rome itself, although the mass of thepoor people, as well as the numerous body whose salaries or profitsdepended upon ecclesiastical expenditure, were devoted to the priests andthe Papacy. In anticipation of disturbances, the Government orderedcompanies of soldiers to patrol the city. A collision occurred on the 28thDecember, 1797, between the patrols and a band of revolutionists, who, being roughly handled by the populace as well as by the soldiers, madetheir way for protection to the courtyard of the Palazzo Corsini, whereJoseph 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 theydesired. Joseph Bonaparte instantly left the city, and orders were sent toBerthier, chief of the staff in northern Italy, to march upon Rome. Berthier advanced amid the acclamations of the towns and the curses of thepeasantry, and entered Rome on the 10th of February, 1798. Events hadproduced in the capital a much stronger inclination towards change thanexisted on the approach of Bonaparte a year before. The treaty of Tolentinohad shaken the prestige of Papal authority; the loss of so many well-knownworks of art, the imposition of new and unpopular taxes, had excited asmuch hatred against the defeated government as against the extortionateconquerors; even among the clergy and their retainers the sale of a portionof the Church-lands and the curtailment of the old Papal splendours hadproduced alienation and discontent. There existed too within the ItalianChurch itself a reforming party, lately headed by Ricci, bishop of Pistoia, which claimed a higher degree of independence for the clergy, and condemnedthe assumption of universal authority by the Roman See. The ill-judgedexercise of the Pope's temporal power during the last six years had gainedmany converts to the opinion that the head of the Church would best performhis office if emancipated from a worldly sovereignty, and restored to hisoriginal position of the first among the bishops. Thus, on its approach toRome, the Republican army found the city ripe for revolution. On the 15thof February an excited multitude assembled in the Forum, and, afterplanting the tree of liberty in front of the Capitol, renounced theauthority of the Pope, and declared that the Roman people constituteditself a free Republic. The resolution was conveyed to Berthier, whorecognised the Roman Commonwealth, and made a procession through the citywith the solemnity of an ancient triumph. The Pope shut himself up in theVatican. His Swiss guard was removed, and replaced by one composed ofFrench soldiers, at whose hands the Pontiff, now in his eighty-first year, suffered unworthy insults. He was then required to renounce his temporalpower, and, upon his refusal, was removed to Tuscany, and afterwards beyondthe Alps to Valence, where in 1799 he died, attended by a solitaryecclesiastic. In the liberated capital a course of spoliation began, more thorough andsystematic than any that the French had yet effected. The riches of Romebrought 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 ofevery article that could be moved; the very fixtures were cut away, whenworth the carriage. On the first meeting of the National Institute in theVatican it was found that the doors had lost their locks; and when, byorder of the French, masses were celebrated in the churches in expiation ofthe death of Duphot, the patrols who were placed at the gates to preserveorder rushed in and seized the sacred vessels. Yet the general robbery wasfar less the work of the army than of the agents and contractors sent bythe Government. In the midst of endless peculation the soldiers were inwant of their pay and their food. A sense of the dishonour done to Francearose at length in the subordinate ranks of the army; and General Massena, who succeeded Berthier, was forced to quit his command in consequence ofthe protests of the soldiery against a system to which Massena hadconspicuously given his personal sanction. It remained to embody therecovered liberties of Rome in a Republican Constitution, which was, as amatter of course, a reproduction of the French Directory and Councils ofLegislature, under the practical control of the French general in command. What Rome had given to the Revolution in the fashion of classicalexpressions was now more than repaid. The Directors were styled Consuls;the divisions of the Legislature were known as the Senate and theTribunate; the Prætorship and the Quæstorship were recalled to life in theCourts 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 thehuman race. "[Expedition to Egypt, May, 1798. ]It was in the midst of these enterprises in Switzerland and Central Italythat the Directory assembled the forces which Bonaparte was to lead to theEast. The port of Expedition to embarkation was Toulon; and there, on the9th of May, 1798, Bonaparte took the command of the most formidablearmament that had ever left the French shores. Great Britain was still butfeebly represented in the Mediterranean, a detachment from St. Vincent'sfleet at Cadiz, placed under the command of Nelson, being the sole Britishforce in these waters. Heavy reinforcements were at hand; but in themeantime Nelson had been driven by stress of weather from his watch uponToulon. On the 19th of May the French armament put out to sea, itsdestination being still kept secret from the soldiers themselves. Itappeared before Malta on the 16th of June. By the treachery of the knightsBonaparte was put in possession of this stronghold, which he could not evenhave attempted to besiege. After a short delay the voyage was resumed, andthe fleet reached Alexandria without having fallen in with the English, whohad now received their reinforcements. The landing was safely effected, andAlexandria fell at the first assault. After five days the army advancedupon Cairo. At the foot of the Pyramids the Mameluke cavalry vainly threwthemselves upon Bonaparte's soldiers. They were repulsed with enormous losson their own side and scarcely any on that of the French. Their camp wasstormed; Cairo was occupied; and there no longer existed a force in Egyptcapable 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 Egyptiancapital was destined to be purchased by the utter destruction of his fleet. Nelson had passed the French in the night, when, after much perplexity, hedecided on sailing in the direction of Egypt. Arriving at Alexandria beforehis prey, he had hurried off in an imaginary pursuit to Rhodes and Crete. At length he received information which led him to visit Alexandria asecond time. He found the French fleet, numbering thirteen ships of theline and four frigates, at anchor in Aboukir Bay. [65] His own fleet wasslightly inferior in men and guns, but he entered battle with apresentiment of the completeness of his victory. Other naval battles havebeen fought with larger forces; no destruction was ever so complete as thatof the Battle of the Nile (August 1). Two ships of the line and twofrigates, out of the seventeen sail that met Nelson, alone escaped from hishands. Of eleven thousand officers and men, nine thousand were takenprisoners, or perished in the engagement. The army of Bonaparte was cut offfrom all hope of support or return; the Republic was deprived ofcommunication with its best troops and its greatest general. [Coalition of 1798. ]A coalition was now gathering against France superior to that of 1793 inthe support of Russia and the Ottoman Empire, although Spain was now on theside of the Republic, and Prussia, in spite of the warnings of the last twoyears, refused to stir from its neutrality. The death of the EmpressCatherine, and the accession of Paul, had caused a most serious change inthe prospects of Europe. Hitherto the policy of the Russian Court had beento embroil the Western Powers with one another, and to confine its effortsagainst the French Republic to promises and assurances; with Paul, after aninterval of total reaction, the professions became realities. [66] Nomonarch entered so cordially into Pitt's schemes for a renewal of theEuropean league; no ally had joined the English minister with a sincerityso like his own. On the part of the Ottoman Government, the pretences offriendship with which Bonaparte disguised the occupation of Egypt weretaken at their real worth. War was declared by the Porte; and a series ofnegotiations, carried on during the autumn of 1798, united Russia, England, Turkey, and Naples in engagements of mutual support against the FrenchRepublic. [Nelson at Naples, Sept. , 1798. ]A Russian army set out on its long march towards the Adriatic: the leviesof Austria prepared for a campaign in the spring of 1799; but to theEnglish Government every moment that elapsed before actual hostilities wasso much time given to uncertainties; and the man who had won the Battle ofthe Nile ridiculed the precaution which had hitherto suffered the French tospread their intrigues through Italy, and closed the ports of Sicily andNaples to his own most urgent needs. Towards the end of September, Nelsonappeared in the Bay of Naples, and was received with a delirium thatrecalled the most effusive scenes in the French Revolution. [67] In thecity of Naples, as in the kingdom generally, the poorest classes were thefiercest enemies of reform, and the steady allies of the Queen and thepriesthood against that section of the better-educated classes which hadbegun to hope for liberty. The system of espionage and persecution withwhich the sister of Marie Antoinette avenged upon her own subjects thesufferings of her kindred had grown more oppressive with every new victoryof the Revolution. In the summer of 1798 there were men languishing for thefifth year in prison, whose offences had never been investigated, and whoserelatives were not allowed to know whether they were dead or alive. A modeof expression, a fashion of dress, the word of an informer, consignedinnocent persons to the dungeon, with the possibility of torture. In themidst of this tyranny of suspicion, in the midst of a corruption which madethe naval and military forces of the kingdom worse than useless, KingFerdinand and his satellites were unwearied in their theatrical invocationsof the Virgin and St. Januarius against the assailants of divine right andthe conquerors of Rome. A Court cowardly almost beyond the example ofCourts, a police that had trained every Neapolitan to look upon hisneighbour as a traitor, an administration that had turned one of thehardiest races in Europe into soldiers of notorious and disgracefulcowardice--such were the allies whom Nelson, ill-fitted for politics by hissailor-like inexperience and facile vanity, heroic in his tenderness andfidelity, in an evil hour encouraged to believe themselves invinciblebecause they possessed his own support. On the 14th of November, 1798, KingFerdinand published a proclamation, which, without declaring war on theFrench, announced that the King intended to occupy the Papal States andrestore the Papal government. The manifesto disclaimed all intention ofconquest, and offered a free pardon to all compromised persons. Ten dayslater the Neapolitan army crossed the frontier, led by the Austriangeneral, Mack, who passed among his admirers for the greatest soldier inEurope. [68][Ferdinand enters Rome, Nov. 29. ]The mass of the French troops, about twelve thousand in number, lay in theneighbourhood of Ancona; Rome and the intermediate stations were held bysmall detachments. Had Mack pushed forward towards the Upper Tiber, hisinroad, 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 hisstrength 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 weakisolated columns towards the east of the peninsula, where the French werestrong enough to make a good defence. On the approach of the Neapolitans toRome, Championnet, the French commander, evacuated the city, leaving agarrison 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 the29th November. The restoration of religion was celebrated by the erectionof an immense cross in the place of the tree of liberty, by the immersionof several Jews in the Tiber, by the execution of a number of compromisedpersons whose pardon the King had promised, and by a threat to shoot one ofthe sick French soldiers in the hospital for every shot fired by the gunsof St. Angelo. [69] Intelligence was despatched to the exiled Pontiff ofthe discomfiture of his enemies. "By help of the divine grace, " wrote KingFerdinand, "and of the most miraculous St. Januarius, we have to-day withour army entered the sacred city of Rome, so lately profaned by theimpious, who now fly terror-stricken at the sight of the Cross and of myarms. Leave then, your Holiness, your too modest abode, and on the wings ofcherubim, like the virgin of Loreto, come and descend upon the Vatican, topurify it by your sacred presence. " A letter to the King of Piedmont, whohad already been exhorted by Ferdinand to encourage his peasants toassassinate French soldiers, informed him that "the Neapolitans, guided byGeneral Mack, had sounded the hour of death to the French, and proclaimedto Europe, from the summit of the Capitol, that the time of the Kings hadcome. "[Mack defeated by Championnet, Dec. 6-13. ]The despatches to Piedmont fell into the hands of the enemy, and the usualmodes of locomotion would scarcely have brought Pope Pius to Rome in timeto witness the exit of his deliverer. Ferdinand's rhapsodies were cut shortby the news that his columns advancing into the centre and east of thePapal States had all been beaten or captured. Mack, at the head of the mainarmy, now advanced to avenge the defeat upon the French at CivitaCastellana 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 ofmarch, his defeat by a handful of French soldiers on the north of Romeinvolved the loss of the country almost up to the gates of Naples. On thefirst rumour of Mack's reverses the Republican party at Rome declared forFrance. King Ferdinand fled; Championnet re-entered Rome, and, after a fewdays' delay, advanced into Neapolitan territory. Here, however, he foundhimself attacked by an enemy more formidable than the army which had beenorganised to expel the French from Italy. The Neapolitan peasantry, who, insoldiers' uniform and under the orders of Mack, could scarcely be broughtwithin sight of the French, fought with courage when an appeal to theirreligious passions collected them in brigand-like bands under leaders oftheir own. Divisions of Championnet's army sustained severe losses; theysucceeded, however, in effecting their junction upon the Volturno; and thestronghold of Gaeta, being defended by regular soldiers and not bybrigands, 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 lostbattles and abandoned fortresses, the Neapolitan Government if it hadpossessed a spark of courage, might still have overthrown the French army, which numbered only 18, 000 men. But the panic and suspicion which theGovernment had fostered among its subjects were now avenged upon itself. The cry of treachery was raised on every side. The Court dreaded aRepublican rising; the priests and the populace accused the Court ofconspiracy with the French; Mack protested that the soldiers were resolvedto be beaten; the soldiers swore that they were betrayed by Mack. On thenight of the 21st of December, the Royal Family secretly went on boardNelson's ship the _Vanguard_, and after a short interval they set sailfor Palermo, leaving the capital in charge of Prince Pignatelli, a courtierwhom no one was willing to obey. [70] Order was, however, maintained by acivic guard enrolled by the Municipality, until it became known that Mackand Pignatelli had concluded an armistice with the French, and surrenderedCapua and the neighbouring towns. Then the populace broke into wild uproar. The prisons were thrown open; and with the arms taken from the arsenal thelazzaroni formed themselves into a tumultuous army, along with thousands ofdesperate men let loose from the gaols and the galleys. The priests, hearing that negotiations for peace were opened, raised the cry of treasonanew; and, with the watchword of the Queen, "All the gentlemen areJacobins; only the people are faithful, " they hounded on the mob to riotand murder. On the morning of January 15th hordes of lazzaroni issued fromthe gates to throw themselves upon the French, who were now about ninemiles from the city; others dragged the guns down from the forts to defendthe streets. The Republican party, however, and that considerable bodyamong the upper class which was made Republican by the chaos into which theCourt, with its allies, the priests, and the populace, had thrown Naples, kept up communication with Championnet, and looked forward to the entranceof the French as the only means of averting destruction and massacre. By astratagem carried out on the night of the 20th they gained possession ofthe fort of St. Elmo, while the French were already engaged in a bloodyassault upon the suburbs. On the 23rd Championnet ordered the attack to berenewed. The conspirators within St. Elmo hoisted the French flag andturned their guns upon the populace; the fortress of the Carmine wasstormed by the French; and, before the last struggle for life and deathcommenced in the centre of the city, the leaders of the lazzaroni listenedto words of friendship which Championnet addressed to them in their ownlanguage, and, with the incoherence of a half-savage race, escorted hissoldiers with cries of joy to the Church of St. Januarius, whichChampionnet promised to respect and protect. [Parthenopean Republic. ]Championnet used his victory with a discretion and forbearance rare amongstFrench conquerors. He humoured the superstition of the populace; heencouraged the political hopes of the enlightened. A vehement revulsion offeeling against the fugitive Court and in favour of Republican governmentfollowed the creation of a National Council by the French general, and hisironical homage to the patron saint. The Kingdom of Naples was convertedinto the Parthenopean Republic. New laws, new institutions, discussed in arepresentative assembly, excited hopes and interests unknown in Naplesbefore. But the inevitable incidents of a French occupation, extortion andimpoverishment, with all their bitter effects on the mind of the people, were not long delayed. In every country district the priests were excitinginsurrection. The agents of the new Government, men with no experience inpublic affairs, carried confusion wherever they went. Civil war broke outin fifty different places; and the barbarity of native leaders ofinsurrection, like Fra Diavolo, was only too well requited by the Frenchcolumns 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 thearea of combat to southern Italy. Already the first division of the Russianarmy, led by Suvaroff, had reached Moravia, and the Court of Vienna wasonly awaiting its own moment for declaring war. So far were thenewly-established Governments in Rome and Naples from being able to assistthe French upon the Adige, that the French had to send troops to Rome andNaples to support the new Governments. The force which the French couldplace upon the frontier was inferior to that which two years of preparationhad given to Austria: the Russians, who were expected to arrive in Lombardyin April, approached with the confidence of men who had given to the Frenchnone of their recent triumphs. Nor among the leaders was personalsuperiority any longer markedly on the side of the French, as in the war ofthe First Coalition. Suvaroff and the Archduke Charles were a fair matchfor any of the Republican generals, except Bonaparte, who was absent inEgypt. The executive of France had deeply declined. Carnot was in exile;the work of organisation which he had pursued with such energy anddisinterestedness flagged under his mediocre and corrupt successors. Skilful generals and brave soldiers were never wanting to the Republic; butno single controlling will, no storm of national passion, inspired theGovernment with the force which it had possessed under the Convention, andwhich returned to it under Napoleon. A new character was given to the war now breaking out by the inclusion ofSwitzerland in the area of combat. In the war of the First Coalition, Switzerland had been neutral territory; but the events of 1798 had left theFrench in possession of all Switzerland west of the Rhine, and an Austrianforce subsequently occupied the Grisons. The line separating the combatantsnow ran without a break from Mainz to the Adriatic. The French armies werein continuous communication with one another, and the movements of eachcould be modified according to the requirements of the rest. On the otherhand, a disaster sustained at any one point of the line endangered everyother point; for no neutral territory intervened, as in 1796, to check alateral movement of the enemy, and to protect the communications of aFrench army in Lombardy from a victorious Austrian force in southernGermany. The importance of the Swiss passes in this relation was understoodand even overrated by the French Government; and an energy was thrown intotheir mountain warfare which might have produced greater results upon theplains. [The Archduke Charles defeats Jourdan at Stockach, March, 25. ]Three armies formed the order of battle on either side. Jourdan held theFrench command upon the Rhine; Massena in Switzerland; Scherer, the leastcapable of the Republican generals, on the Adige. On the side of theAllies, the Archduke Charles commanded in southern Germany; in Lombardy theAustrians were led by Kray, pending the arrival of Suvaroff and his corps;in Switzerland the command was given to Hotze, a Swiss officer who hadgained some distinction in foreign service. It was the design of the Frenchto push their centre under Massena through the mountains into the Tyrol, and by a combined attack of the central and the southern army to destroythe Austrians upon the upper Adige, while Jourdan, also in communicationwith the centre, drove the Archduke down the Danube upon Vienna. Early inMarch the campaign opened. Massena assailed the Austrian positions east ofthe head-waters of the Rhine, and forced back the enemy into the heart ofthe Orisons. Jourdan crossed the Rhine at Strasburg, and passed the BlackForest with 40, 000 men. His orders were to attack the Archduke Charles, whatever the Archduke's superiority of force. The French and the Austrianarmies met at Stockach, near the head of the Lake of Constance (March 25). Overwhelming numbers gave the Archduke a complete victory. Jourdan was notonly stopped in his advance, but forced to retreat beyond the Rhine. Whatever might be the fortune of the armies of Switzerland and Italy, allhope 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 overBaden, up to the gates of Rastadt, where, in spite of the war betweenFrance and Austria, the envoys of the minor German States still continuedtheir conferences with the French agents. On the 28th of April the Frenchenvoys, now three in number, were required by the Austrians to departwithin twenty-four hours. An escort, for which they applied, was refused. Scarcely had their carriages passed through the city gates when they wereattacked by a squadron of Austrian hussars. Two of French envoys the Frenchenvoys were murdered; the third left for dead. Whether this frightfulviolation of international law was the mere outrage of a drunken soldiery, as it was represented to be by the Austrian Government; whether it was toany extent occasioned by superior civil orders, or connected with Frenchemigrants living in the neighbourhood, remains unknown. Investigationsbegun by the Archduke Charles were stopped by the Cabinet, in order that amore public inquiry might be held by the Diet. This inquiry, however, nevertook place. In the year 1804 all papers relating to the Archduke'sinvestigation 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 theirenvoys would have cost Austria dear if Austria had now been the losingparty in the war; but, for the present, everything seemed to turn againstthe Republic. Jourdan had scarcely been overthrown in Germany before aruinous defeat at Magnano, on the Adige, drove back the army of Italy towithin a few miles of Milan; while Massena, deprived of the fruit of hisown victories by the disasters of his colleagues, had to abandon theeastern half of Switzerland, and to retire upon the line of the riverLimnat, Lucerne, and the Gothard. Charles now moved from Germany intoSwitzerland. Massena fixed his centre at Zürich, and awaited the Archduke'sassault. For five weeks Charles remained inactive: at length, on the 4th ofJune, he gave battle. After two days' struggle against greatly superiorforces, Massena was compelled to evacuate Zürich. He retreated, however, nofarther 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 theAustrians established themselves in the central passes of Switzerland, anddisaster 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 themiddle of April. His first battle was fought, and his first victory won, atthe passage of the Adda on the 25th of April. It was followed by thesurrender of Milan and the dissolution of the Cisalpine Republic. Moreau, who now held the French command, fell back upon Alessandria, intending tocover both Genoa and Turin; but a sudden movement of Suvaroff brought theRussians into the Sardinian capital before it was even known to be injeopardy. The French general, cut off from the roads over the Alps, threwhimself upon the Apennines above Genoa, and waited for the army which hadoccupied Naples, and which, under the command of Macdonald, was nowhurrying to his support, gathering with it on its march the troops that layscattered on the south of the Po. Macdonald moved swiftly through centralItaly, and crossed the Apennines above Pistoia in the beginning of June. His arrival at Modena with 20, 000 men threatened to turn the balance infavour of the French. Suvaroff, aware of his danger, collected all thetroops within reach with the utmost despatch, and pushed eastwards to meetMacdonald on the Trebbia. Moreau descended from the Apennines in the samedirection; but he had underrated the swiftness of the Russian general; and, before he had advanced over half the distance, Macdonald was attacked bySuvaroff on the Trebbia, and overthrown in three days of the most desperatefighting that had been seen in the war (June 18). [72][Naples. ]All southern Italy now rose against the Governments established by theFrench. Cardinal Ruffo, with a band of fanatical peasants, known as theArmy of the Faith, made himself master of Apulia and Calabria amid scenesof savage cruelty, and appeared before Naples, where the lazzaroni wereready to unite with the hordes of the Faithful in murder and pillage. Confident of support within the city, and assisted by some English andRussian vessels in the harbour, Ruffo attacked the suburbs of Naples on themorning of the 13th of June. Massacre and outrage continued within andwithout the city for five days. On the morning of the 19th, the Cardinalproposed a suspension of arms. It was accepted by the Republicans, who werein possession of the forts. Negotiations followed. On the 23rd conditionsof peace were signed by Ruffo on behalf of the King of Naples, and by therepresentatives of Great Britain and of Russia in guarantee for theirfaithful execution. It was agreed that the Republican garrison should marchout with the honours of war; that their persons and property should berespected; that those who might prefer to leave the country should beconveyed to Toulon on neutral vessels; and that all who remained at homeshould 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 toToulon, Nelson's fleet appeared in the Bay of Naples. Nelson declared thatin treating with rebels Cardinal Ruffo had disobeyed the King's orders, andhe pronounced the capitulation null and void. The polaccas, with theRepublicans crowded on board, were attached to the sterns of the Englishships, pending the arrival of King Ferdinand. On the 29th of June, AdmiralCaracciolo, who had taken office under the new Government, and on its fallhad attempted to escape in disguise, was brought a captive before Nelson. Nelson ordered him to be tried by a Neapolitan court-martial, and, in spiteof his old age, his rank, and his long service to the State, caused him tobe hanged from a Neapolitan ship's yard-arm, and his body to be thrown intothe sea. Some days later, King Ferdinand arrived from Palermo, and Nelsonnow handed over all his prisoners to the Bourbon authorities. A reign ofterror followed. Innumerable persons were thrown into prison. Courts-martial, or commissions administering any law that pleasedthemselves, sent the flower of the Neapolitan nation to the scaffold. Abovea hundred sentences of death were carried out in Naples itself:confiscation, exile, and imprisonment struck down thousands of families. Itwas peculiar to the Neapolitan proscriptions that a Government with thenames of religion and right incessantly upon its lips selected forextermination both among men and women those who were most distinguished incharacter, in science, and in letters, whilst it chose for promotion andenrichment those who were known for deeds of savage violence. The partborne by Nelson in this work of death has left a stain on his glory whichtime 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 Frenchrested their last hope of recovering Lombardy. The battle of the Trebbiascattered this hope to the winds, and left it only too doubtful whetherFrance could be saved from invasion. Suvaroff himself was eager to fallupon Moreau before Macdonald could rally from his defeat, and to drive himwestwards along the coast-road into France. It was a moment when thefortune of the Republic hung in the scales. Had Suvaroff been permitted tofollow his own counsels, France would probably have seen the remnant of herItalian armies totally destroyed, and the Russians advancing upon Lyons orMarseilles. The Republic was saved, as it had been in 1793, by thedissensions of its enemies. It was not only for the purpose of resistingFrench aggression that Austria had renewed the war, but for the purpose ofextending its own dominion in Italy. These designs were concealed fromRussia; 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 theAustrian Court. "The Emperor proposes to retain Piedmont, and to take allthat part of Savoy which is important in a military view. I have no doubtof his intention to keep Nice also, if he gets it, which will make the Varhis boundary with France. The whole territory of the Genoese Republic seemsto be an object of serious speculation . .. The Papal Legations will, I ampersuaded, be retained by the Emperor . .. I am not yet master of thedesigns on Tuscany. " [74] This was the sense in which Austria understoodthe phrase of defending the rights of Europe against French aggression. Itwas not, however, for this that the Czar had sent his army from beyond theCarpathians. Since the opening of the campaign Suvaroff had been inperpetual conflict with the military Council of Vienna. [75] Suvaroff wasbent upon a ceaseless pursuit of the enemy; the Austrian Council insistedupon the reduction of fortresses. What at first appeared as a meredifference of military opinion appeared in its true political characterwhen the allied troops entered Piedmont. The Czar desired with his wholesoul to crush the men of the Revolution, and to restore the governmentswhich France had overthrown. As soon as his troops entered Turin, Suvaroffproclaimed the restoration of the House of Savoy, and summoned allSardinian officers to fight for their King. He was interrupted by a letterfrom Vienna requiring him to leave political affairs in the hands of theViennese Ministry. [76] The Russians had already done as much in Italy asthe Austrian Cabinet desired them to do, and the first wish of Thugut wasnow to free himself from his troublesome ally. Suvaroff raged against theAustrian Government in every despatch, and tendered his resignation. Hiscomplaints inclined the Czar to accept a new military scheme, which wassupported by the English Government in the hope of terminating thecontention between Suvaroff and the Austrian Council. It was agreed at St. Petersburg that, as soon as the French armies were destroyed, the reductionof the Italian fortresses should be left exclusively to the Austrians; andthat Suvaroff, uniting with a new Russian army now not far distant, shouldcomplete 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 atthe same time upon Holland by a combined British and Russian force. If executed in its original form, this design would have thrown aformidable army upon France at the side of Franche Comté, where it is leastprotected by fortresses. But at the last moment an alteration in the planwas made at Vienna. The prospect of an Anglo-Russian victory in Hollandagain fixed the thoughts of the Austrian Minister upon Belgium, which hadbeen so lightly abandoned five years before, and which Thugut now hoped tore-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 cannotconsent that the Netherlands shall be disposed of without his ownconcurrence. " [77] The effect of this perverse and mischievous resolutionwas that the Archduke Charles received orders to send the greater part ofhis army from Switzerland to the Lower Rhine, and to leave only 25, 000 mento support the new Russian division which, under General Korsakoff, wasapproaching from the north to meet Suvaroff. The Archduke, as soon as thenew instructions reached him, was filled with the presentiment of disaster, and warned his Government that in the general displacement of forces anopportunity would be given to Massena, who was still above Zürich, tostrike a fatal blow. Every despatch that passed between Vienna and St. Petersburg now increased the Czar's suspicion of Austria. The Pope and theKing of Naples were convinced that Thugut had the same design upon theirown territories which had been shown in his treatment of Piedmont. [78]They appealed to the Czar for protection. The Czar proposed a EuropeanCongress, at which the Powers might learn one another's real intentions. The proposal was not accepted by Austria; but, while disclaiming all desireto despoil the King of Sardinia, the Pope, or the King of Naples, Thugutadmitted that Austria claimed an improvement of its Italian frontier, inother words, the annexation of a portion of Piedmont, and of the northernpart of the Roman States. The Czar replied that he had taken up arms inorder to check one aggressive Government, and that he should not permitanother to take its place. [Battle of Novi, Aug. 15. ]For the moment, however, the allied forces continued to co-operate in Italyagainst the French army on the Apennines covering Genoa. This army hadreceived reinforcements, and was now placed under the command of Joubert, one of the youngest and most spirited of the Republican generals. Joubertdetermined to attack the Russians before the fall of Mantua should add thebesieging army to Suvaroff's forces in the field. But the information whichhe received from Lombardy misled him. In the second week of August he wasstill unaware that Mantua had fallen a fortnight before. He descended fromthe mountains to attack Suvaroff at Tortona, with a force about equal toSuvaroff's own. On reaching Novi he learnt that the army of Mantua was alsobefore him (Aug. 15). It was too late to retreat; Joubert could only giveto his men the example of Republican spirit and devotion. Suvaroff himself, with Kray, the conqueror of Mantua, began the attack: the onset of a secondAustrian corps, at the moment when the strength of the Russians wasfailing, decided the day. Joubert did not live to witness the close of adefeat which cost France eleven thousand men. [79][Suvaroff goes into Switzerland. ]The allied Governments had so framed their plans that the most overwhelmingvictory could produce no result. Instead of entering France, Suvaroff wascompelled to turn back into Switzerland, while the Austrians continued tobesiege the fortresses of Piedmont. In Switzerland Suvaroff had to meet anenemy who was forewarned of his approach, and who had employed everyresource of military skill and daring to prevent the union of the twoRussian armies now advancing from the south and the north. Before Suvaroffcould leave Italy, a series of admirably-planned attacks had given Massenathe whole network of the central Alpine passes, and closed every avenue ofcommunication between Suvaroff and the army with which he hoped toco-operate. The folly of the Austrian Cabinet seconded the French general'sexertions. No sooner had Korsakoff and the new Russian division reachedSchaffhausen than the Archduke Charles, forced by his orders from Vienna, turned northwards (Sept. 3), leaving the Russians with no support butHotze's corps, which was scattered over six cantons. [80] Korsakoffadvanced to Zürich; Massena remained in his old position on the Uetliberg. It was now that Suvaroff began his march into the Alps, sorely harassed anddelayed by the want of the mountain-teams which the Austrians had promisedhim, and filled with the apprehension that Korsakoff would suffer someirreparable disaster before his own arrival. [Second Battle of Zürich, Sept. 26. ]Two roads lead from the Italian lakes to central Switzerland; one, startingfrom the head of Lago Maggiore and crossing the Gothard, ends on the shoreof Lake Lucerne; the other, crossing the Splügen, runs from the Lake ofComo to Reichenau, in the valley of the Rhine. The Gothard in 1799 was notpracticable for cannon; it was chosen by Suvaroff, however, for his ownadvance, with the object of falling upon Massena's rear with the utmostpossible speed. He left Bellinzona on the 21st of September, fought his wayin a desperate fashion through the French outposts that guarded the defilesof the Gothard, and arrived at Altorf near the Lake of Lucerne. Here it wasdiscovered that the westward road by which Suvaroff meant to strike uponthe 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 feetto the valley of the Muotta. Over this desolate region the Russians madetheir way; and the resolution which brought them as far as the Muotta wouldhave brought them past every other obstacle to the spot where they were tomeet their countrymen. But the hour was past. While Suvaroff was stillstruggling in the mountains, Massena advanced against Zürich, putKorsakoff's army to total rout, and drove it, with the loss of all itsbaggage and of a great part of its artillery, outside the area ofhostilities. [Retreat of Suvaroff. ]The first rumours of the catastrophe reached Suvaroff on the Muotta; hestill pushed on eastwards, and, though almost without ammunition, overthrewa corps commanded by Massena in person, and cleared the road over thePragel at the point of the bayonet, arriving in Glarus on the 1st ofOctober. Here the full extent of Korsakoff's disaster was made known tohim. To advance or to fall back was ruin. It only remained for Suvaroff'sarmy to make its escape across a wild and snow-covered mountain-tract intothe valley of the Rhine, where the river flows below the northern heightsof the Grisons. This exploit crowned a campaign which filled Europe withastonishment. The Alpine traveller of to-day turns with some distrust fromnarratives which characterise with every epithet of horror and dismayscenes which are the delight of our age; but the retreat of Suvaroff'sarmy, a starving, footsore multitude, over what was then an untroddenwilderness of rock, and through fresh-fallen autumn snow two feet deep, hadlittle in common with the boldest feats of Alpine hardihood. [81] It wasachieved with loss and suffering; it brought the army from a position ofthe utmost danger into one of security; but it was followed by no renewedattack. Proposals for a combination between Suvaroff and the ArchdukeCharles resulted only in mutual taunts and menaces. The co-operation ofRussia in the war was at an end. The French remained masters of the wholeof the Swiss territory that they had lost since the beginning of thecampaign. [British and Russian expedition against Holland Aug. 1799. ]In the summer months of 1799 the Czar had relieved his irritation againstAustria by framing in concert with the British Cabinet the plan for a jointexpedition against Holland. It was agreed that 25, 000 English and 17, 000Russian troops, brought from the Baltic in British ships, should attack theFrench in the Batavian Republic, and raise an insurrection on behalf of theexiled Stadtholder. Throughout July the Kentish coast-towns were alive withthe 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 RalphAbercromby. After tossing off the Dutch coast for a fortnight, the troopslanded at the promontory of the Helder. A Dutch corps was defeated on thesand-hills, and the English captured the fort of the Helder, commanding theTexel anchorage. Immediately afterwards a movement in favour of theStadtholder broke out among the officers of the Dutch fleet. The captainshoisted the Orange flag, and brought their ships over to the English. This was the first and the last result of the expedition. The Russiancontingent and a second English division reached Holland in the middle ofSeptember, and with them came the Duke of York, who now took the commandout of the hands of Abercromby. On the other side reinforcements dailyarrived from France, until the enemy's troops, led by General Brune, wereequal in strength to the invaders. A battle fought at Alkmaar on the 19thof September gave the Allies some partial successes and no permanentadvantage; and on the 3rd of October the Duke of York gained one of thoseso-called victories which result in the retreat of the conquerors. Neverwere there so many good reasons for a bad conclusion. The Russians movedtoo fast or too slow; the ditches set at nought the rules of strategy; itwas discovered that the climate of Holland was unfavourable to health, andthat the Dutch had not the slightest inclination to get back theirStadtholder. The result of a series of mischances, every one of which wouldhave been foreseen by an average midshipman in Nelson's fleet, or anaverage sergeant in Massena's army, was that York had to purchase a retreatfor the allied forces at a price equivalent to an unconditional surrender. He was allowed to re-embark on consideration that Great Britain restored tothe French 8, 000 French and Dutch prisoners, and handed over in perfectrepair all the military works which our own soldiers had erected at theHelder. Bitter complaints were raised among the Russian officers againstYork's conduct of the expedition. He was accused of sacrificing the Russianregiments in battle, and of courting a general defeat in order not toexpose his own men. The accusation was groundless. Where York was, treachery or bad faith was superfluous. York in command, the feeblest enemybecame invincible. Incompetence among the hereditary chiefs of the Englisharmy had become part of the order of nature. The Ministry, when taxed withfailure, obstinately shut their eyes to the true cause of the disaster. Parliament was reminded that defeat was the most probable conclusion of anymilitary operations that we might undertake, and that England ought not toexpect success when Prussia and Austria had so long met only withmisfortune. Under the command of Nelson, English sailors were indeedmanifesting that kind of superiority to the seamen of other nations whichthe hunter possesses over his prey; yet this gave no reason why foresightand daring should count for anything ashore. If the nation wished to seeits soldiers undefeated, it must keep them at home to defend their country. Even among the Opposition no voice was raised to protest against the systemwhich sacrificed English life and military honour to the dignity of theRoyal Family. The collapse of the Anglo-Russian expedition was viewed withmore equanimity in England than in Russia. The Czar dismissed hisunfortunate generals. York returned home, to run horses at Newmarket, tojob commissions with his mistress, and to earn his column at St. James'sPark. [Unpopularity of the Directory. ][Plans of Siéyès 1799. ]It was at this moment, when the tide of military success was alreadyturning in favour of the Republic, that the revolution took place whichmade Bonaparte absolute ruler of France. Since the attack of the Governmentupon the Royalists in Fructidor, 1797, the Directory and the factions hadcome no nearer to a system of mutual concession, or to a peacefulacquiescence in the will of a parliamentary majority. The Directory, assailed both by the extreme Jacobins and by the Constitutionalists, wasstill strong enough to crush each party in its turn. The elections of 1798, which strengthened the Jacobins, were annulled with as little scruple asthe Royalist elections in the preceding year; it was only when defeat inGermany and Italy had brought the Government into universal discredit thatthe Constitutionalist party, fortified by the return of a large majority inthe elections of 1799, dared to turn the attack upon the Directorsthemselves. The excitement of foreign conquest had hitherto shielded theabuses of Government from criticism; but when Italy was lost, when generalsand soldiers found themselves without pay, without clothes, withoutreinforcements, one general outcry arose against the Directory, and thenation resolved to have done with a Government whose outrages andextortions had led to nothing but military ruin. The disasters of France inthe spring of 1799, which resulted from the failure of the Government toraise the armies to their proper strength, were not in reality connectedwith the defects of the Constitution. They were caused in part by theshameless jobbery of individual members of the Administration, in part bythe absence of any agency, like that of the Conventional Commissioners of1793, to enforce the control of the central Government over the localauthorities, left isolated and independent by the changes of 1789. Faultsenough belonged, however, to the existing political order; and theConstitutionalists, who now for the second time found themselves with amajority in the Councils, were not disposed to prolong a system which fromthe first had turned their majorities into derision. A party grew up aroundthe Abbé Siéyès intent upon some change which should give France agovernment really representing its best elements. What the change was to befew could say; but it was known that Siéyès, who had taken a leading partin 1789, and had condemned the Constitution of 1795 from the moment when itwas sketched, had elaborated a scheme which he considered exempt from everyerror that had vitiated its predecessors. As the first step to reform, Siéyès himself was elected to a Directorship then falling vacant. Barrasattached himself to Siéyès; the three remaining Directors, who wereJacobins and popular in Paris, were forced to surrender their seats. Siéyèsnow only needed a soldier to carry out his plans. His first thought hadturned on Joubert, but Joubert was killed at Novi. Moreau scrupled to raisehis hand against the law; Bernadotte, a general distinguished both in warand in administration, declined to play a secondary part. Nor in fact wasthe support of Siéyès indispensable to any popular and ambitious soldierwho was prepared to attack the Government. Siéyès and his friends offeredthe alliance of a party weighty in character and antecedents; but therewere other well-known names and powerful interests at the command of anenterprising leader, and all France awaited the downfall of a Governmentwhose 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, returnedto Egypt, and received the first tidings from Europe which had reached himsince the outbreak of the war. He saw that his opportunity had arrived. Hedetermined to leave his army, whose ultimate failure was inevitable, and tooffer to France in his own person that sovereignty of genius and strengthfor which the whole nation was longing. On the 7th of October a despatchfrom Bonaparte was read in the Council of Five Hundred, announcing avictory over the Turks at Aboukir. It brought the first news that had beenreceived for many months from the army of Egypt; it excited an outburst ofjoyous enthusiasm for the general and the army whom a hated Government wasbelieved to have sent into exile; it recalled that succession of victorieswhich had been unchecked by a single defeat, and that Peace which had givenFrance a dominion wider than any that her Kings had won. While everythought was turned upon Bonaparte, the French nation suddenly heard thatBonaparte himself had landed on the coast of Provence. "I was sitting thatday, " says Béranger in his autobiography, "in our reading-room with thirtyor forty other persons. Suddenly the news was brought in that Bonaparte hadreturned from Egypt. At the words, every man in the room started to hisfeet and burst into one long shout of joy. " The emotion portrayed byBéranger was that of the whole of France. Almost everything that nowdarkens the early fame of Bonaparte was then unknown. His falsities, hiscold, unpitying heart were familiar only to accomplices and distantsufferers; even his most flagrant wrongs, such as the destruction ofVenice, were excused by a political necessity, or disguised as acts ofrighteous chastisement. The hopes, the imagination of France saw inBonaparte the young, unsullied, irresistible hero of the Republic. His famehad 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 thatit is not always given to a nation to choose the mode of its owndeliverance. From the moment that Bonaparte landed at Fréjus, he was masterof France. [Conspiracy of Siéyès and Bonaparte. ]Siéyès saw that Bonaparte, and no one else, was the man through whom hecould 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 thatneither Barras nor Bernadotte would help him to supreme power. Onceconvinced of this, Bonaparte closed with Siéyès' offers. It was agreed thatSiéyès and his friend Ducos should resign their Directorships, and that thethree remaining Directors should be driven from office. The Assemblies, orany part of them favourable to the plot, were to appoint a Triumviratecomposed of Bonaparte, Siéyès, and Ducos, for the purpose of drawing up anew Constitution. In the new Constitution it was understood, though withoutany definite arrangement, that Bonaparte and Siéyès were to be the leadingfigures. The Council of Ancients was in great part in league with theconspirators: the only obstacle likely to hinder the success of the plotwas a rising of the Parisian populace. As a precaution against attack, itwas determined to transfer the meeting of the Councils to St. Cloud. Bonaparte had secured the support of almost all the generals and troops inParis. His brother Lucien, now President of the Council of Five Hundred, hoped to paralyse the action of his own Assembly, in which the conspiratorswere in the minority. [Coup d'état, 18 Brumaire (Nov. 9), 1799. ]Early on the morning of the 9th of November (18 Brumaire), a crowd ofgenerals and officers met before Bonaparte's house. At the same moment aportion of the Council of Ancients assembled, and passed a decree whichadjourned the session to St. Cloud, and conferred on Bonaparte the commandover all the troops in Paris. The decree was carried to Bonaparte's houseand read to the military throng, who acknowledged it by brandishing theirswords. Bonaparte then ordered the troops to their posts, received theresignation of Barras, and arrested the two remaining Directors in theLuxembourg. During the night there was great agitation in Paris. The arrestof the two Directors and the display of military force revealed the truenature of the conspiracy, and excited men to resistance who had hithertoseen no great cause for alarm. The Councils met at St. Cloud at two on thenext day. The Ancients were ready for what was coming; the Five Hundredrefused to listen to Bonaparte's accomplices, and took the oath of fidelityto the Constitution. Bonaparte himself entered the Council of Ancients, andin violent, confused language declared that he had come to save theRepublic from unseen dangers. He then left the Assembly, and entered theChamber of the Five Hundred, escorted by armed grenadiers. A roar ofindignation greeted the appearance of the bayonets. The members rushed in amass upon Bonaparte, and drove him out of the hall. His brother now leftthe President's chair and joined the soldiers outside, whom he harangued inthe character of President of the Assembly. The soldiers, hithertowavering, were assured by Lucien's civil authority and his treacherouseloquence. The drums beat; the word of command was given; and the last freerepresentatives of France struggled through doorways and windows before thelevelled and advancing bayonets. [Siéyès' plan of Constitution. ]The Constitution which Siéyès hoped now to impose upon France had beenelaborated by its author at the close of the Reign of Terror. Designed atthat epoch, it bore the trace of all those apprehensions which gave shapeto the Constitution of 1795. The statutory outrages of 1793, the Royalistreaction shown in the events of Vendémiaire, were the perils from whichboth Siéyès and the legislators of 1795 endeavoured to guard the future ofFrance. It had become clear that a popular election might at any momentreturn a royalist majority to the Assembly: the Constitution of 1795averted this danger by prolonging the power of the Conventionalists; Siéyèsovercame it by extinguishing popular election altogether. He gave to thenation no right but that of selecting half a million persons who should beeligible to offices in the Communes, and who should themselves elect asmaller body of fifty thousand, eligible to offices in the Departments. Thefifty thousand were in their turn to choose five thousand, who should beeligible to places in the Government and the Legislature. The actualappointments were to be made, however, not by the electors, but by theExecutive. With the irrational multitude thus deprived of the power tobring back its old oppressors, priests, royalists, and nobles might safelydo their worst. By way of still further precaution, Siéyès proposed thatevery Frenchman who had been elected to the Legislature since 1789 shouldbe inscribed for ten years among the privileged five thousand. Such were the safeguards provided against a Bourbonist reaction. To guardagainst a recurrence of those evils which France had suffered from theprecipitate votes of a single Assembly, Siéyès broke up the legislatureinto as many chambers as there are stages in the passing of a law. Thefirst chamber, or Council of State, was to give shape to measures suggestedby the Executive; a second chamber, known as the Tribunate, was to discussthe measures so framed, and ascertain the objections to which they wereliable; the third chamber, known as the Legislative Body, was to decide insilence for or against the measures, after hearing an argument betweenrepresentatives of the Council and of the Tribunate. As a last impregnablebulwark against Jacobins and Bourbonists alike, Siéyès created a Senatewhose members should hold office for life, and be empowered to annul everylaw in which the Chambers might infringe upon the Constitution. It only remained to invent an Executive. In the other parts of hisConstitution, 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 GreatElector; the Elector, like an English king, appointing and dismissing theConsuls, but taking no active part in the administration himself. TheConsuls were to be respectively restricted to the affairs of peace and ofwar. Grotesque under every aspect, the Constitution of Siéyès was reallycalculated 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 everyelement in the State of the power to create sudden change. The members ofhis body politic, a Council that could only draft, a Tribunate that couldonly discuss, a Legislature that could only vote, Yes or No, were impotentfor mischief; and the nation itself ceased to have a political existence assoon as it had selected its half-million notables. [Siéyès and Bonaparte. ]So far, nothing could have better suited the views of Bonaparte; and up tothis point Bonaparte quietly accepted Siéyès' plan. But the general had hisown scheme for what was to follow. Siéyès might apportion the act ofdeliberation among debating societies and dumb juries to the full extent ofhis own ingenuity; but the moment that he applied his disintegrating methodto the Executive, Bonaparte swept away the flimsy reasoner, and set in themidst of his edifice of shadows the reality of an absolute personal rule. The phantom Elector, and the Consuls who were to be the Elector'stenants-at-will, corresponded very little to the power which France desiredto see at its head. "Was there ever anything so ridiculous?" criedBonaparte. "What man of spirit could accept such a post?" It was in vainthat Siéyès had so nicely set the balance. His theories gave to France onlythe pageants which disguised the extinction of the nation beneath a singlewill: the frame of executive government which the country received in 1799was that which Bonaparte deduced from the conception of an absolute centralpower. The First Consul summed up all executive authority in his ownperson. By his side there were set two colleagues whose only function wasto advise. A Council of State placed the highest skill and experience inFrance at the disposal of the chief magistrate, without infringing upon hissovereignty. All offices, both in the Ministries of State and in theprovinces, were filled by the nominees of the First Consul. No law could beproposed 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 thosegiven to it in the Consulate exhibited a direct contrast seldom foundoutside the region of abstract terms. Local customs, survivals of earlierlaw, such as soften the difference between England and the variousdemocracies of the United States, had no place in the sharp-cut types inwhich the political order of France was recast in 1791 and 1799. TheConstituent Assembly had cleared the field before it began to reconstruct. Its reconstruction was based upon the Rights of Man, identified with theprinciple of local self-government by popular election. It deduced a systemof communal administration so completely independent that France wasdescribed by foreign critics as partitioned into 40, 000 republics; and thecriticism was justified when, in 1793, it was found necessary to create anew central Government, and to send commissioners from the capital into theprovinces. In the Constitution of 1791, judges, bishops, officers of theNational Guard, were all alike subjected to popular election; the Ministerof War could scarcely move a regiment from one village to another withoutthe leave of the mayor of the commune. In the Constitution of 1799 allauthority was derived from the head of the State. A system ofcentralisation came into force with which France under her kings hadnothing to compare. All that had once served as a check upon monarchicalpower, the legal Parliaments, the Provincial Estates of Brittany andLanguedoc, the rights of lay and ecclesiastical corporations, had vanishedaway. In the place of the motley of privileges that had tempered theBourbon monarchy, in the place of the popular Assemblies of the Revolution, there sprang up a series of magistracies as regular and as absolute as theorders of military rank. [83] Where, under the Constitution of 1791, a bodyof local representatives had met to conduct the business of the Department, there was now a Préfet, appointed by the First Consul, absolute, like theFirst Consul himself, and assisted only by the advice of a nominatedcouncil, which met for one fortnight in the year. In subordination to thePréfet, an officer and similar council transacted the local business of theArrondissement. Even the 40, 000 Maires with their communal councils wereall appointed directly or indirectly by the Chief of the State. Thereexisted in France no authority that could repair a village bridge, or lightthe streets of a town, but such as owed its appointment to the centralGovernment. Nor was the power of the First Consul limited to theadministration. With the exception of the lowest and the highest members ofthe judicature, he nominated all judges, and transferred them at hispleasure to inferior or superior posts. Such was the system which, based to a great extent upon the preferences ofthe French people, fixed even more deeply in the national character thewillingness to depend upon an omnipresent, all-directing power. Through itsrational order, its regularity, its command of the highest science andexperience, this system of government could not fail to confer great andrapid benefits upon the country. It has usually been viewed by the Frenchthemselves as one of the finest creations of political wisdom. Incomparison with the self-government which then and long afterwards existedin England, the centralisation of France had all the superiority ofprogress and intelligence over torpor and self-contradiction. Yet a heavy, an incalculable price is paid by every nation which for the sake ofadministrative efficiency abandons its local liberties, and all that isbound up with their enjoyment. No practice in the exercise of public rightarmed a later generation of Frenchmen against the audacity of a commonusurper: no immortality of youth secured the institutions framed byNapoleon against the weakness and corruption which at some period undermineall despotisms. The historian who has exhausted every term of praise uponthe political system of the Consulate lived to declare, as Chief of theState himself, that the first need of France was the decentralisation ofpower. [84][State policy of Bonaparte. ]After ten years of disquiet, it was impossible that any Government could bemore welcome to the French nation than one which proclaimed itself therepresentative, not of party or of opinion, but of France itself. Nosection of the nation had won a triumph in the establishment of theConsulate; no section had suffered a defeat. In his own elevation Bonaparteannounced the close of civil conflict. A Government had arisen whichsummoned all to its service which would employ all, reward all, reconcileall. The earliest measures of the First Consul exhibited the policy ofreconciliation by which he hoped to rally the whole of France to his side. The law of hostages, under which hundreds of families were confined inretaliation for local Royalist disturbances, was repealed, and Bonapartehimself went to announce their liberty to the prisoners in the Temple. Great numbers of names were struck off the list of the emigrants, and theroad to pardon was subsequently opened to all who had not actually servedagainst their country. In the selection of his officers of State, Bonaparteshowed the same desire to win men of all parties. Cambacérès, a regicide, was made Second Consul; Lebrun, an old official of Louis XVI. , became hiscolleague. In the Ministries, in the Senate, and in the Council of Statethe nation saw men of proved ability chosen from all callings in life andfrom all political ranks. No Government of France had counted among itsmembers so many names eminent for capacity and experience. One qualityalone was indispensable, a readiness to serve and to obey. In thatintellectual greatness which made the combination of all the forces ofFrance a familiar thought in Bonaparte's mind, there was none of the moralgenerosity which could pardon opposition to himself, or tolerate energyacting under other auspices than his own. He desired to see authority inthe best hands; he sought talent and promoted it, but on the understandingthat it took its direction from himself. Outside this limit ability was hisenemy, not his friend; and what could not be caressed or promoted wastreated with tyrannical injustice. While Bonaparte boasted of the careerthat he had thrown open to talent, he suppressed the whole of theindependent journalism of Paris, and banished Mme. De Stael, whose guestscontinued to converse, when they might not write, about liberty. Equallypartial, equally calculated, was Bonaparte's indulgence towards the ancientenemies of the Revolution, the Royalists and the priests. He felt nothingof the old hatred of Paris towards the Vendean noble and the superstitiousBreton; he offered his friendship to the stubborn Breton race, whoseloyalty and piety he appreciated as good qualities in subjects; but failingtheir submission, he instructed his generals in the west of France to burndown their villages, and to set a price upon the heads of their chiefs. Justice, tolerance, good faith, were things which had no being forBonaparte outside the circle of his instruments and allies. [France ceases to excite democracy abroad, but promotes equality undermonarchical systems. ][Effect of Bonaparte's autocracy outside France. ]In the foreign relations of France it was not possible for the mostunscrupulous will to carry aggression farther than it had been alreadycarried; yet the elevation of Bonaparte deeply affected the fortunes of allthose States whose lot depended upon France. It was not only that a mindaccustomed to regard all human things as objects for its own disposal nowdirected an irresistible military force, but from the day when Francesubmitted to Bonaparte, the political changes accompanying the advance ofthe French armies took a different character. Belgium and Holland, theRhine Provinces, the Cisalpine, the Roman, and the Parthenopean Republics, had all received, under whatever circumstances of wrong, at least the formsof popular sovereignty. The reality of power may have belonged to Frenchgenerals and commissioners; but, however insincerely uttered, the call tofreedom excited hopes and aspirations which were not insincere themselves. The Italian festivals of emancipation, the trees of liberty, the rhetoricof patriotic assemblies, had betrayed little enough of the instinct forself-government; but they marked a separation from the past; and the periodbetween the years 1796 and 1799 was in fact the birth-time of those hopeswhich have since been realised in the freedom and the unity of Italy. Solong as France had her own tumultuous assemblies, her elections in thevillage and in the county-town, it was impossible for her to form republicsbeyond the Alps without introducing at least some germ of republicanorganisation and spirit. But when all power was concentrated in a singleman, when the spoken and the written word became an offence against theState, when the commotion of the old municipalities was succeeded by thesilence and the discipline of a body of clerks working round their chief, then the advance of French influence ceased to mean the support of popularforces against the Governments. The form which Bonaparte had given toFrance was the form which he intended for the clients of France. Hence inthose communities which directly received the impress of the Consulate, asin Bavaria and the minor German States, authority, instead of beingoverthrown, was greatly strengthened. Bonaparte carried beyond the Rhinethat portion of the spirit of the Revolution which he accepted at home, thesuppression of privilege, the extinction of feudal rights, the reduction ofall ranks to equality before the law, and the admission of all to thepublic service. But this levelling of the social order in the client-statesof France, and the establishment of system and unity in the place ofobsolete privilege, cleared the way not for the supremacy of the people, but for the supremacy of the Crown. The power which was taken away fromcorporations, from knights, and from ecclesiastics, was given, not to apopular Representative, but to Cabinet Ministers and officials ranged afterthe model of the official hierarchy of France. What the French had in thefirst epoch of their Revolution endeavoured to impart to Europe--the spiritof liberty and self-government--they had now renounced themselves. Thebelief in popular right, which made the difference between the changes of1789 and those attempted by the Emperor Joseph, sank in the storms of theRevolution. [Bonaparte legislates in the spirit of the reforming monarchs of the 18thcentury. ]Yet the statesmanship of Bonaparte, if it repelled the liberal anddisinterested sentiment of 1789, was no mere cunning of a Corsican soldier, or exploit of mediæval genius born outside its age. Subject to the fullestgratification of his own most despotic or most malignant impulse, Bonapartecarried into his creations the ideas upon which the greatest Europeaninnovators before the French Revolution had based their work. WhatFrederick and Joseph had accomplished, or failed to accomplish, wasrealised in Western Germany when its Sovereigns became the clients of theFirst Consul. Bonaparte was no child of the French Revolution; he was thelast and the greatest of the autocratic legislators who worked in an unfreeage. Under his rule France lost what had seemed to be most its own; it mostpowerfully advanced the forms of progress common to itself and the rest ofEurope. Bonaparte raised no population to liberty: in extinguishingprivilege and abolishing the legal distinctions of birth, in levelling allpersonal and corporate authority beneath the single rule of the State, heprepared the way for a rational freedom, when, at a later day, theGovernment of the State should itself become the representative of thenation's will. CHAPTER V. Overtures of Bonaparte to Austria and England--The War continues--Massenabesieged in Genoa--Moreau invades Southern Germany--Bonaparte crosses theSt. Bernard, and descends in the rear of the Austrians--Battle ofMarengo--Austrians retire behind the Mincio--Treaty between England andAustria--Austria continues the War--Battle of Hohenlinden--Peace ofLunéville--War between England and the Northern Maritime League--Battle ofCopenhagen--Murder of Paul--End of the Maritime War--English Army entersEgypt--French defeated at Alexandria--They capitulate at Cairo andAlexandria--Preliminaries of Peace between England and France signed atLondon, followed by Peace of Amiens--Pitt's Irish Policy and hisretirement--Debates on the Peace--Aggressions of Bonaparte during theContinental Peace--Holland, Italy, Switzerland--Settlement of Germany underFrench and Russian influence--Suppression of Ecclesiastical States and FreeCities--Its effects--Stein--France under the Consulate--The Civil Code--TheConcordat. [Overtures of Bonaparte to Austria and to England, 1799. ]The establishment of the Consulate gave France peace from the strife ofparties. Peace from foreign warfare was not less desired by the nation; andalthough the First Consul himself was restlessly planning the nextcampaign, it belonged to his policy to represent himself as the mediatorbetween France and Europe. Discarding the usual diplomatic forms, Bonaparteaddressed letters in his own name to the Emperor Francis and to King GeorgeIII. , deploring the miseries inflicted by war upon nations naturallyallied, and declaring his personal anxiety to enter upon negotiations forpeace. The reply of Austria which was courteously worded, produced an offeron the part of Bonaparte to treat for peace upon the basis of the Treaty ofCampo Formio. Such a proposal was the best evidence of Bonaparte's realintentions. Austria had re-conquered Lombardy, and driven the armies of theRepublic from the Adige to within a few miles of Nice. To propose a peacewhich should merely restore the situation existing at the beginning of thewar was pure irony. The Austrian Government accordingly declared itselfunable to treat without the concurrence of its allies. The answer ofEngland to the overtures of the First Consul was rough and defiant. Itrecounted the causes of war and distrust which precluded England fromnegotiating with a revolutionary Government; and, though not insisting onthe restoration of the Bourbons as a condition of peace, it stated that noguarantee for the sincerity and good behaviour of France would be soacceptable to Great Britain as the recall of the ancient family. [85]Few State papers have been distinguished by worse faults of judgment thanthis English manifesto. It was intended to recommend the Bourbons to Franceas a means of procuring peace: it enabled Bonaparte to represent England asviolently interfering with the rights of the French people, and theBourbons as seeking their restoration at the hand of the enemy of theircountry. The answer made to Pitt's Government from Paris was such as onehigh-spirited nation which had recently expelled its rulers might addressto another that had expelled its rulers a century before. France, it wassaid, had as good a right to dismiss an incapable dynasty as Great Britain. If Talleyrand's reply failed to convince King George that before restoringthe Bourbons he ought to surrender his own throne to the Stuarts, itsucceeded in transferring attention from the wrongs inflicted by France tothe pretensions advanced by England. That it affected the actual course ofevents there is no reason to believe. The French Government was wellacquainted with the real grounds of war possessed by England, in spite ofthe errors by which the British Cabinet weakened the statement of itscause. 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 Franceamidst vigorous but concealed preparations for the campaign which was todrive the Austrians from Italy. In Piedmont the Austrians spent months ininaction, which might have given them Genoa and completed the conquest ofItaly before Bonaparte's army could take the field. It was not until thebeginning of April that Melas, their general, assailed the French positionson the Genoese Apennines; a fortnight more was spent in mountain warfarebefore Massena, who now held the French command, found himself shut up inGenoa and blockaded by land and sea. The army which Bonaparte was about tolead into Italy lay in between Dijon and Geneva, awaiting the arrival ofthe First Consul. On the Rhine, from Strasburg to Schaffhausen, a force of100, 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 UpperDanube, and so rendering any attack through Switzerland upon thecommunications of Bonaparte's Italian force impossible. Moreau's army wasthe first to move. An Austrian force, not inferior to Moreau's own, laywithin the bend of the Rhine that covers Baden and Würtemberg. Moreaucrossed the Rhine at various points, and by a succession of ingeniousmanoeuvres led his adversary, Kray, to occupy all the roads through theBlack Forest except those by which the northern divisions of the Frenchwere actually passing. A series of engagements, conspicuous for the skillof the French general and the courage of the defeated Austrians, gaveMoreau possession of the country south of the Danube as far as Ulm, whereKray took refuge in his entrenched camp. Beyond this point Moreau'sinstructions forbade him to advance. His task was fulfilled by theseverance 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 Maythe First Consul himself arrived at Geneva, and assumed the command. Thecampaign upon which this army was now entering was designed by Bonaparte tosurpass everything that Europe had hitherto seen most striking in war. Thefeats of Massena and Suvaroff in the Alps had filled his imagination withmountain warfare. A victory over nature more imposing than theirs might, inthe present position of the Austrian forces in Lombardy, be made theprelude to a victory in the field without a parallel in its effects uponthe 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 ofthe Austrians. A single defeat would then cut the Austrians off from theircommunications with Mantua, and result either in the capitulation of theirarmy 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 acommander supplied with every resource of engineering material and skill;and by this road the army crossed the Alps. The cannons were taken fromtheir carriages and dragged up the mountain in hollowed trees; thousands ofmules transported the ammunition and supplies; workshops for repairs wereestablished on either slope of the mountain; and in the Monastery of St. Bernard there were stores collected sufficient to feed the soldiers as theyreached the summit during six successive days (May 15-20). The passage ofthe St. Bernard was a triumph of organisation, foresight, and goodmanagement; as a military exploit it involved none of the danger, none ofthe suffering, none of the hazard, which gave such interest to the campaignof Massena and Suvaroff. [Bonaparte cuts off the Austrian army from Eastern Lombardy. ]Bonaparte had rightly calculated upon the unreadiness of his enemy. Theadvanced guard of the French army poured down the valley of the Dora-Balteaupon 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 intoItaly. Melas himself, on the opening of the campaign, had followed a Frenchdivision to Nice, leaving General Ott in charge of the army investingGenoa. On reaching Turin he discovered the full extent of his peril, andsent orders to Ott to raise the siege of Genoa and to join him with everyregiment that he could collect. Ott, however, was unwilling to abandon theprey at this moment falling into his grasp. He remained stationary till the5th of June, when Massena, reduced to the most cruel extremities by famine, was forced to surrender Genoa to the besiegers. But his obstinate endurancehad the full effect of a battle won. Ott's delay rendered Melas powerlessto hinder the movements of Bonaparte, when, instead of marching upon Genoa, as both French and Austrians expected him to do, he turned eastward, andthrust his army between the Austrians and their own fortresses. Bonapartehimself entered Milan (June 2); Lannes and Murat were sent to seize thebridges over the Po and the Adda. The Austrian detachment guarding Piacenzawas overpowered; the communications of Melas with the country north of thePowere completely severed. Nothing remained for the Austrian commander butto 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 andAlessandria. Melas was at length joined by Ott at Alessandria, but soscattered were the Austrian forces, that out of 80, 000 men Melas had notmore 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 escapeto Genoa without an engagement. The Austrian general, however, who hadshared with Suvaroff the triumph over Joubert at Novi, resolved to stakeeverything upon a pitched battle. He awaited Bonaparte's approach atAlessandria. On the 12th of June Bonaparte advanced westward fromStradella. His anxiety lest Melas might be escaping from his handsincreased with every hour of the march that brought him no tidings of theenemy; and on the 13th, when his advanced guard had come almost up to thewalls of Alessandria without seeing an enemy, he could bear the suspense nolonger, and ordered Desaix to march southward towards Novi and hold theroad to Genoa. Desaix led off his division. Early the next morning thewhole army of Melas issued from Alessandria, and threw itself upon theweakened line of the French at Marengo. The attack carried everythingbefore it: at the end of seven hours' fighting, Melas, exhausted by hispersonal exertions, returned into Alessandria, and sent out tidings of acomplete victory. It was at this moment that Desaix, who had turned at thesound of the cannon, appeared on the field, and declared that, although onebattle had been lost, another might be won. A sudden cavalry-charge struckpanic into the Austrians, who believed the battle ended and the foeoverthrown. Whole brigades threw down their arms and fled; and ere the dayclosed a mass of fugitives, cavalry and infantry, thronging over themarshes of the Bormida, was all that remained of the victorious Austriancentre. The suddenness of the disaster, the desperate position of the army, cut off from its communications, overthrew the mind of Melas, and he agreedto an armistice more fatal than an unconditional surrender. The Austriansretired behind the Mincio, and abandoned to the French every fortress inNorthern Italy that lay west of that river. A single battle had producedthe result of a campaign of victories and sieges. Marengo was the mostbrilliant in conception of all Bonaparte's triumphs. If in its executionthe genius of the great commander had for a moment failed him, no mentionof the long hours of peril and confusion was allowed to obscure thesplendour of Bonaparte's victory. Every document was altered or suppressedwhich contained a report of the real facts of the battle. The descriptionsgiven to the French nation claimed only new homage to the First Consul'sinvincible 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 anysudden change in the policy of Austria was prevented by a treaty withEngland, binding Austria, in return for British subsidies, and for a secretpromise of part of Piedmont, to make no separate peace with France beforethe end of February, 1801. This treaty was signed a few hours before thearrival of the news of Marengo. It was the work of Thugut, who stillmaintained his influence over the Emperor, in spite of growing unpopularityand almost universal opposition. Public opinion, however, forced theEmperor 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 theconsent of England, conferences were held with the object of establishing anaval armistice between England and France. England, however, refused theconcessions demanded by the First Consul; and the negotiations were brokenoff in September. But this interval of three months had weakened theauthority of the Minister and stimulated the intrigues which at every greatcrisis paralysed the action of Austria. At length, while Thugut wasreceiving the subsidies of Great Britain and arranging for the mostvigorous prosecution of the war, the Emperor, concealing the transactionfrom his Minister, purchased a new armistice by the surrender of thefortresses 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 Septembergives some indication of the stormy scene which then passed in theEmperor's presence. Thugut tendered his resignation, which was accepted;and Lehrbach, the author of the new armistice, was placed in office. Butthe reproaches of the British ambassador forced the weak Emperor to rescindthis appointment on the day after it had been published to the world. Therewas no one in Vienna capable of filling the vacant post; and after a shortinterval the old Minister resumed the duties of his office, without, however, openly resuming the title. The remainder of the armistice wasemployed in strengthening the force opposed to Moreau, who now receivedorders to advance upon Vienna. The Archduke John, a royal strategist ofeighteen, was furnished with a plan for surrounding the French army andcutting it off from its communications. Moreau lay upon the Isar; theAustrians held the line of the Inn. On the termination of the armistice theAustrians advanced and made some devious marches in pursuance of theArchduke's enterprise, until a general confusion, attributed to theweather, caused them to abandon their manoeuvres and move straight againstthe enemy. On the 3rd of December the Austrians plunged into thesnow-blocked roads of the Forest of Hohenlinden, believing that they hadnothing near them but the rear-guard of a retiring French division. Moreauwaited until they had reached the heart of the forest, and then fell uponthem with his whole force in front, in flank, and in the rear. The defeatof the Austrians was overwhelming. What remained of the war was rather achase than a struggle. Moreau successively crossed the Inn, the Salza, andthe Traun; and on December 25th the Emperor, seeing that no effort of Pittcould keep Moreau out of Vienna, accepted an armistice at Steyer, andagreed 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 thenecessity for peace. Thugut was finally removed from power. Some resistancewas offered to the conditions proposed by Bonaparte, but these weredirected more to the establishment of French influence in Germany than tothe humiliation of the House of Hapsburg. Little was taken from Austria butwhat she had surrendered at Campo Formio. It was not by the cession ofItalian or Slavonic provinces that the Government of Vienna paid forMarengo and Hohenlinden, but at the cost of that divided German race whosemisfortune it was to have for its head a sovereign whose interests in theEmpire and in Germany were among the least of all his interests. The Peaceof Lunéville, [88] concluded between France and the Emperor on the 9th ofFebruary, 1801, without even a reference to the Diet of the Empire, placedthe minor States of Germany at the mercy of the French Republic. It left tothe House of Hapsburg the Venetian territory which it had gained in 1797;it required no reduction of the Hapsburg influence in Italy beyond theabdication of the Grand Duke of Tuscany; but it ceded to France, withoutthe disguises of 1797, the German provinces west of the Rhine, and itformally bound the Empire to compensate the dispossessed lay Sovereigns insuch a manner as should be approved by France. The French Republic was thusmade arbiter, as a matter of right, in the rearrangement of the maimed andshattered Empire. Even the Grand Duke of Tuscany, like his predecessor inejection, the Duke of Modena, was to receive some portion of the Germanrace for his subjects, in compensation for the Italians taken from him. Tosuch a pass had political disunion brought a nation which at that timecould 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 ofthe Allies to declare war, was left at the mercy of Bonaparte. Itscruelties and tyranny called for severe punishment; but the intercession ofthe Czar kept the Bourbons upon the throne, and Naples received peace uponno harder condition than the exclusion of English vessels from its ports. England was now left alone in its struggle with the French Republic. Norwas it any longer to be a struggle only against France and itsdependencies. The rigour with which the English Government had used itssuperiority at sea, combined with the folly which it had shown in theAnglo-Russian attack upon Holland, raised against it a Maritime Leagueunder the leadership of a Power which England had offended as a neutral andexasperated as an ally. Since the pitiful Dutch campaign, the Czar hadtransferred to Great Britain the hatred which he had hitherto borne toFrance. The occasion was skilfully used by Bonaparte, to whom, as asoldier, the Czar felt less repugnance than to the Government of advocatesand contractors which he had attacked in 1799. The First Consul restoredwithout ransom several thousands of Russian prisoners, for whom theAustrians and the English had refused to give up Frenchmen in exchange, andfollowed up this advance by proposing that the guardianship of Malta, whichwas now blockaded by the English, should be given to the Czar. Paul hadcaused himself to be made Grand Master of the Maltese Order of St. John ofJerusalem. His vanity was touched by Bonaparte's proposal, and a friendlyrelation was established between the French and Russian Governments. England, on the other hand, refused to place Malta under Russianguardianship, either before or after its surrender. This completed thebreach between the Courts of London and St. Petersburg. The Czar seized allthe English vessels in his ports and imprisoned their crews (Sept. 9). Adifference of long standing existed between England and the NorthernMaritime Powers, which was capable at any moment of being made a cause ofwar. The rights exercised over neutral vessels by English ships in time ofhostilities, though good in international law, were so oppressive that, atthe time of the American rebellion, the Northern Powers had formed aleague, known as the Armed Neutrality, for the purpose of resisting byforce the interference of the English with neutral merchantmen upon thehigh seas. Since the outbreak of war with France, English vessels had againpushed the rights of belligerents to extremes. The Armed Neutrality of 1780was accordingly revived under the auspices of the Czar. The League wassigned on the 16th of December, 1800, by Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. Somedays later Prussia gave in its adhesion. [89][Points at issue. ]The points at issue between Great Britain and the Neutrals were such asarise between a great naval Power intent upon ruining its adversary andthat larger part of the world which remains at peace and desires to carryon its trade with as little obstruction as possible. It was admitted on allsides that a belligerent may search a neutral vessel in order to ascertainthat 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 shipconveys 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 toprotect French property from a Power whose naval superiority makes captureupon the high seas its principal means of offence? England announces that aFrench port is in a state of blockade. Is a Swedish vessel, stopped whilemaking for the port in question, to be considered a lawful prize, when, ifit had reached the port, it would as a matter of fact have found no realblockade in existence? A Russian cargo of hemp, pitch, and timber isintercepted by an English vessel on its way to an open port in France. Isthe staple produce of the Russian Empire to lose its market as contrabandof 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 aneutral 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 theAdmiralty Court. Great Britain claimed the right to seize all Frenchproperty, in whatever vessel it might be sailing, and to confiscate, ascontraband of war, not only muskets, gunpowder, and cannon, but wheat, onwhich the provisioning of armies depended, and hemp, pitch, iron, andtimber, 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 toall goods on board, not being contraband of war; that the presence of avessel of State as convoy should exempt merchantmen from search; that noport should be considered in a state of blockade unless a competentblockading force was actually in front of it; and that contraband of warshould include no other stores than those directly available for battle. Considerations of reason and equity may be urged in support of everypossible theory of the rights of belligerents and neutrals; but the theoryof every nation has, as a matter of fact, been that which at the timeaccorded with its own interests. When a long era of peace had familiarisedGreat Britain with the idea that in the future struggles of Europe it wasmore likely to be a spectator than a belligerent, Great Britain acceptedthe 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, anylimitation of the rights of a belligerent appeared to every English juristto contradict the first principles of reason. Better to add a generalmaritime war to the existing difficulties of the country than to abandonthe exercise of its naval superiority in crippling the commerce of anadversary. The Declaration of armed Neutrality, announcing the intention ofthe Allied Powers to resist the seizure of French goods on board their ownmerchantmen, was treated in this country as a declaration of war. TheGovernment laid an embargo upon all vessels of the allied neutrals lying inEnglish ports (Jan. 14th, 1801), and issued a swarm of privateers againstthe trading ships making for the Baltic. Negotiations failed to lower thedemands of either side, and England prepared to deal with the navies ofRussia, Denmark, Sweden, and Prussia. [Battle of Copenhagen, April 2, 1801. ]At the moment, the concentrated naval strength of England made it more thana match for its adversaries. A fleet of seventeen ships of the line sailedfrom 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 theconfederate navies. The fleet reached the Sound. The Swedish batteriescommanding the Sound failed to open fire. Nelson kept to the eastern sideof the channel, and brought his ships safely past the storm of shot pouredupon them from the Danish guns at Elsinore. He appeared before Copenhagenat mid-day on the 30th of March. Preparations for resistance were made bythe Danes with extraordinary spirit and resolution. The whole population ofCopenhagen volunteered for service on the ships, the forts, and thefloating batteries. Two days were spent by the English in exploring theshallows of the channel; on the morning of the 2nd of April Nelson led hisships into action in front of the harbour. Three ran aground; the Danishfire 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 thesix Danish men-of-war and the whole of the floating batteries were disabledor sunk. The English themselves had suffered most severely from aresistance more skilful and more determined than anything that they hadexperienced from the French, and Nelson gladly offered a truce as soon ashis own victory was assured. The truce was followed by negotiation, and thenegotiation by an armistice for fourteen weeks, a term which Nelsonconsidered sufficient to enable him to visit and to overthrow the navies ofSweden 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 theNorthern Confederacy than the battle of Copenhagen itself. On the night ofthe 23rd of March the Czar of Russia was assassinated in his palace. Paul'styrannical violence, and his caprice verging upon insanity, had exhaustedthe patience of a court acquainted with no mode of remonstrance buthomicide. Blood-stained hands brought to the Grand Duke Alexander the crownwhich he had consented to receive after a pacific abdication. Alexanderimmediately reversed the policy of his father, and sent friendlycommunications both to the Government at London and to the commander of theBritish fleet in the Baltic. The maintenance of commerce with England wasin fact more important to Russia than the protection of its carrying trade. Nelson's attack was averted. A compromise was made between the twoGovernments, which saved Russia's interests, without depriving England ofits chief rights against France. The principles of the Armed Neutralitywere abandoned by the Government of St. Petersburg in so far as theyrelated to the protection of an enemy's goods by the neutral flag. GreatBritain continued to seize French merchandise on board whatever craft itmight be found; but it was stipulated that the presence of a ship of warshould exempt neutral vessels from search by privateers, and that no portshould be considered as in a state of blockade unless a reasonableblockading force was actually in front of it. The articles condemned ascontraband were so limited as not to include the flax, hemp, and timber, onwhose export the commerce of Russia depended. With these concessions theCzar was easily brought to declare Russia again neutral. The minor Powersof the Baltic followed the example of St. Petersburg; and the navalconfederacy which had threatened to turn the balance in the conflictbetween England and the French Republic left its only trace in theundeserved suffering of Denmark. [Affairs in Egypt. ]Eight years of warfare had left France unassailable in Western Europe, andEngland in command of every sea. No Continental armies could any longer beraised by British subsidies: the navies of the Baltic, with which Bonapartehad hoped to meet England on the seas, lay at peace in their ports. Egyptwas now the only arena remaining where French and English combatants couldmeet, and the dissolution of the Northern Confederacy had determined thefate of Egypt by leaving England in undisputed command of the approach toEgypt by sea. The French army, vainly expecting reinforcements, andattacked by the Turks from the east, was caught in a trap. Soon after thedeparture of Bonaparte from Alexandria, his successor, General Kleber, hadaddressed a report to the Directory, describing the miserable condition ofthe force which Bonaparte had chosen to abandon. The report was interceptedby the English, and the Government immediately determined to accept nocapitulation which did not surrender the whole of the French army asprisoners of war. An order to this effect was sent to the Mediterranean. Before, however, the order reached Sir Sidney Smith, the English admiralcooperating with the Turks, an agreement had been already signed by him atEl Arish, granting Kleber's army a free return to France (Feb. 24, 1800). After Kleber, in fulfilment of the conditions of the treaty, had withdrawnhis troops from certain positions, Sir Sidney Smith found himself compelledto inform the French General that in the negotiations of El Arish he hadexceeded his powers, and that the British Government insisted upon thesurrender of the French forces. Kleber replied by instantly giving battleto the Turks at Heliopolis, and putting to the rout an army six times asnumerous as his own. The position of the French seemed to be growingstronger 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, andtransferred the command to General Menou, one of the very few Frenchofficers of marked incapacity who held command at any time during the war. The British Government, as soon as it learnt what had taken place betweenKleber and Sir Sidney Smith, declared itself willing to be bound by theconvention of El Arish. The offer was, however, rejected by the French. Itwas clear that the Turks could never end the war by themselves; and theBritish Ministry at last came to understand that Egypt must be re-conqueredby 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 RalphAbercromby, landed at Aboukir Bay. According to the plan of the BritishGovernment, Abercromby's attack was to be supported by a Turkish corps fromSyria, and by an Anglo-Indian division brought from Ceylon to Kosseir, onthe Red Sea. The Turks and the Indian troops were, however, behind theirtime, and Abercromby opened the campaign alone. Menou had still 27, 000troops at his disposal. Had he moved up with the whole of his army fromCairo, he might have destroyed the English immediately after their landing. Instead of doing so, he allowed weak isolated detachments of the French tosink before superior numbers. The English had already gained confidence ofvictory when Menou advanced in some force in order to give battle in frontof Alexandria. The decisive engagement took place on the 21st of March. TheFrench were completely defeated. Menou, however, still refused toconcentrate his forces; and in the course of a few weeks 13, 000 Frenchtroops which had been left behind at Cairo were cut off from communicationwith the rest of the army. A series of attempts made by Admiral Ganteaumeto land reinforcements from France ended fruitlessly. Towards the end ofJune the arrival of a Turkish force enabled the English to surround theFrench in Cairo. The circuit of the works was too large to be successfullydefended; on the other hand, the English were without the heavy artillerynecessary for a siege. Under these circumstances the terms which hadoriginally been offered at El Arish were again proposed to General Belliardfor himself and the army of Cairo. They were accepted, and Cairo wassurrendered to the English on condition that the garrison should beconveyed back to France (June 27). Soon after the capitulation GeneralBaird reached Lower Egypt with an Anglo-Indian division. Menou with theremainder of the French army was now shut up in Alexandria. His forts andoutworks were successively carried; his flotilla was destroyed; and whenall hope of support from France had been abandoned, the army of Alexandria, which formed the remnant of the troops with which Bonaparte had won hisearliest victories in Italy, found itself compelled to surrender the laststronghold of the French in Egypt (Aug. 30). It was the first importantsuccess which had been gained by English soldiers over the troops of theRepublic; the first campaign in which English generalship had permitted thearmy 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 withdrawnAustria from the war, unofficial negotiations had begun between theGovernments of Great Britain and France. The object with which Pitt hadentered upon the war, the maintenance of the old European system againstthe aggression of France, was now seen to be one which England mustabandon. England had borne its share in the defence of the Continent. Ifthe Continental Powers could no longer resist the ascendancy of a singleState, England could not struggle for the Balance of Power alone. Thenegotiations of 1801 had little in common with those of 1796. Belgium, which had been the burden of all Pitt's earlier despatches, no longerfigured as an object of contention. The frontier of the Rhine, with thevirtual possession of Holland and Northern Italy, under the title of theBatavian, Ligurian, and Cisalpine Republics, was tacitly conceded toFrance. In place of the restoration of the Netherlands, the negotiators of1801 argued about the disposal of Egypt, of Malta, and of the colonieswhich Great Britain had conquered from France and its allies. Eventsdecided 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 wasin relation to the colonial claims of France that the two Governments foundit most difficult to agree. Great Britain, which had lost no territoryitself, had conquered nearly all the Asiatic and Atlantic colonies of theFrench Republic and of its Dutch and Spanish allies. In return for therestoration of Ceylon, the Cape of Good Hope, Guiana, Trinidad, and variousEast and West Indian settlements, France had nothing to offer to GreatBritain but peace. If peace, however, was to be made, the only possiblesettlement was by means of a compromise; and it was finally agreed thatEngland should retain Ceylon and Trinidad, and restore the rest of thecolonies which it had taken from France, Spain, and Holland. Preliminariesof peace embodying these conditions were signed at London on the 1st ofOctober, 1801. Hostilities ceased; but an interval of several monthsbetween the preliminary agreement and the conclusion of the final treatywas employed by Bonaparte in new usurpations upon the Continent, to whichhe forced the British Government to lend a kind of sanction in thecontinuance of the negotiations. The Government, though discontented, wasunwilling to treat these acts as new occasions of war. The conferences wereat length brought to a close, and the definitive treaty between France andGreat 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 resolutelystruggled for the freedom of Europe, was no longer in power when GreatBritain entered into negotiations with the First Consul. In the same weekthat Austria signed the Peace of Lunéville, Pitt had retired from office. The catastrophe which dissolved his last Continental alliance may possiblyhave disposed Pitt to make way for men who could treat for peace with abetter grace than himself, but the immediate cause of his retirement was anaffair of internal policy. Among the few important domestic measures whichPitt had not sacrificed to foreign warfare was a project for theLegislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland. Ireland had up to this timepossessed a Parliament nominally independent of that of Great Britain. Itspopulation, however, was too much divided to create a really nationalgovernment; and, even if the internal conditions of the country had beenbetter, the practical sovereignty of Great Britain must at that time haveprevented the Parliament of Dublin from being more than an agency ofministerial corruption. It was the desire of Pitt to give to Ireland, inthe place of a fictitious independence, that real participation in thepolitical life of Great Britain which has more than recompensed Scotlandand Wales for the loss of separate nationality. As an earnest oflegislative justice, Pitt gave hopes to the leaders of the Irish Catholicparty that the disabilities which excluded Roman Catholics from the Houseof Commons and from many offices in the public service would be no longermaintained. On this understanding the Catholics of Ireland abstained fromoffering to Pitt's project a resistance which would probably have led toits failure. A majority of members in the Protestant Parliament of Dublinaccepted the price which the Ministry offered for their votes. A series ofresolutions in favour of the Legislative Union of the two countries wastransmitted to England in the spring of 1800; the English Parliament passedthe Act of Union in the same summer; and the first United Parliament ofGreat Britain and Ireland assembled in London at the beginning of the year1801. [Pitt desires to emancipate the Catholics. ][Pitt resigns Feb. 1801. ][Addington Minister. ]Pitt now prepared to fulfil his virtual promise to the Irish Catholics. Ameasure obliterating the ancient lines of civil and religious enmity, andcalling to public life a class hitherto treated as alien and hostile to theState, would have been in true consonance with all that was best in Pitt'sown statesmanship. But the ignorant bigotry of King George III. Was excitedagainst him by men who hated every act of justice or tolerance to RomanCatholics; and it proved of greater force than the genius of the Minister. The old threat of the King's personal enmity was publicly addressed toPitt's colleague, Dundas, when the proposal for Catholic emancipation wasunder discussion in the Cabinet; and, with a just regard for his owndignity, Pitt withdrew from office (Feb. 5, 1801), unable to influence aSovereign who believed his soul to be staked on the letter of theCoronation Oath. The ablest members of Pitt's government, Grenville, Dundas, and Windham, retired with their leader. Addington, Speaker of theHouse of Commons, became Prime Minister, with colleagues as undistinguishedas himself. It was under the government of Addington that the negotiationswere begun which resulted in the signature of Preliminaries of Peace inOctober 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 thecession of the conquered colonies and the policy of granting France peaceon 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 aninevitable war; and perhaps even then the signs of Bonaparte's ambitionjustified those who, like Grenville, urged the nation to give no truce toFrance, and to trust to Bonaparte's own injustice to raise us up alliesupon the Continent. But, for the moment, peace seemed at least worth atrial. The modes of prosecuting a war of offence were exhausted; the costof the national defence remained the same. There were no more navies todestroy, no more colonies to seize; the sole means of injuring the enemywas by blockading his ports, and depriving him of his maritime commerce. Onthe other hand, the possibility of a French invasion required themaintenance of an enormous army and militia in England, and prevented anygreat reduction in the expenses of the war, which had already added twohundred millions to the National Debt. Nothing was lost by making peace, except certain colonies and military positions which few were anxious toretain. The argument that England could at any moment recover what she nowsurrendered was indeed a far sounder one than most of those which went toprove that the positions in question were of no real service. Yet even onthe latter point there was no want of high authority. It was Nelson himselfwho assured the House of Lords that neither Malta nor the Cape of Good Hopecould ever be of importance to Great Britain. [91] In the face of suchtestimony, the men who lamented that England should allow the adversary torecover any lost ground in the midst of a struggle for life or death, passed for obstinate fanatics. The Legislature reflected the generalfeeling of the nation; and the policy of the Government was confirmed inthe 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 andin the Baltic, it was generally felt that Pitt's retirement marked thesurrender of that resolute policy which had guided England since 1793. Whenonce the Preliminaries of Peace had been signed in London, Bonaparterightly judged that Addington would waive many just causes of complaint, rather than break off the negotiations which were to convert thePreliminaries into a definitive treaty. Accordingly, in his instructions toJoseph Bonaparte, who represented France at the conferences held at Amiens, the First Consul wrote, through Talleyrand, as follows:--"You are forbiddento entertain any proposition relating to the King of Sardinia, or to theStadtholder, or to the internal affairs of Batavia, of Helvetia, or theRepublic of Italy. None of these subjects have anything to do with thediscussions of England. " The list of subjects excluded from theconsideration of England was the list of aggressions by which Bonaparteintended to fill up the interval of Continental peace. In the Treaty ofLunéville, the independence of the newly-established republics in Holland, Switzerland, and Italy had been recognised by France. The restoration ofPiedmont to the House of Savoy had been the condition on which the Czarmade peace. But on every one of these points the engagements of France weremade only to be broken. So far from bringing independence to theclient-republics of France, the peace of Lunéville was but the introductionto a series of changes which brought these States directly into the handsof the First Consul. The establishment of absolute government in Franceitself entailed a corresponding change in each of its dependencies, and thecreation of an executive which should accept the First Consul's orders withas little question as the Prefect of a French department. Holland receivedits new constitution while France was still at war with England. Theexisting Government and Legislature of the Batavian Republic were dissolved(Sept. , 1801), and replaced by a council of twelve persons, each holdingthe office of President in turn for a period of three months, and by alegislature of thirty-five, which met only for a few days in the year. Thepower given to the new President during his office was enough, and not morethan enough, to make him an effective servant: a three-months' Minister andan Assembly that met and parted at the word of command were not likely toenter into serious rivalry with the First Consul. The Dutch peaceablyaccepted the constitution thus forced upon them; they possessed no means ofresistance, and their affairs excited but little interest upon theContinent. [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. Inobedience to orders sent from Paris to the Legislature of the CisalpineRepublic, a body of four hundred and fifty Italian representatives crossedthe Alps in the middle of winter in order to meet the First Consul atLyons, and to deliberate upon a constitution for the Cisalpine Republic. The constitution had, as a matter of fact, been drawn up by Talleyrand, andsent to the Legislature at Milan some months before. But it was not for thesake of Italy that its representatives were collected at Lyons, in thepresence of the First Consul, with every circumstance of nationalsolemnity. It was the most striking homage which Bonaparte could exact froma foreign race in the face of all France; it was the testimony that otherlands besides France desired Bonaparte to be their sovereign. When all theminor offices in the new Cisalpine Constitution had been filled, theItalians learnt that the real object of the convocation was to place thesceptre in Bonaparte's hands. They accepted the part which they foundthemselves forced to play, and offered to the First Consul the presidencyof the Cisalpine State (Jan. 25, 1802). Unlike the French Consulate, thechief magistracy in the new Cisalpine Constitution might be prolongedbeyond the term of ten years. Bonaparte had practically won the Crown ofLombardy; and he had given to France the example of a submission moreunqualified than its own. A single phrase rewarded the people who had thusplaced themselves in his hands. The Cisalpine Republic was allowed toassume the name of Italian Republic. The new title indicated the nationalhopes which had sprung up in Italy during the past ten years; it indicatedno real desire on the part of Bonaparte to form either a free or a unitedItalian nation. In the Cisalpine State itself, although a goodadministration and the extinction of feudal privileges made Bonaparte'sgovernment acceptable, patriots who asked for freedom ran the risk of exileor imprisonment. What further influence was exercised by France uponItalian soil was not employed for the consolidation of Italy. Tuscany wasbestowed by Bonaparte upon the Spanish Prince of Parma, and controlled byagents of the First Consul. Piedmont, which had long been governed byFrench 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 fromthe victories of French armies, nor could Bonaparte claim the presidency ofthe Helvetic State under the title of its founder. The struggles of theSwiss parties, however, placed the country at the mercy of France. Sincethe expulsion of the Austrians by Massena in 1799, the antagonism betweenthe Democrats of the town and the Federalists of the Forest Cantons hadbroken out afresh. A French army still occupied Switzerland; the Ministerof the First Consul received instructions to interfere with all parties andconsolidate none. In the autumn of 1801, the Federalists were permitted todissolve the central Helvetic Government, which had been created by theDirectory in 1798. One change followed another, until, on the 19th of May, 1802, a second Constitution was proclaimed, based, like that of 1798, oncentralising and democratic principles, and almost extinguishing the oldlocal independence of the members of the Swiss League. No sooner had Frenchpartisans created this Constitution, which could only be maintained byforce against the hostility of Berne and the Forest Cantons, than theFrench army quitted Switzerland. Civil war instantly broke out, and in thecourse of a few weeks the Government established by the French had lost allSwitzerland except the Pays de Vaud. This was the crisis for whichBonaparte had been waiting. On the 4th of October a proclamation appearedat Lausanne, announcing that the First Consul had accepted the office ofMediator of the Helvetic League. A French army entered Switzerland. Fifty-six deputies from the cantons were summoned to Paris; and, in thebeginning of 1803, a new Constitution, which left the central Governmentpowerless in the hands of France and reduced the national sovereignty tocantonal self-administration, placed Switzerland on a level with theBatavian and the Cisalpine dependencies of Bonaparte. The Rhone Valley, with the mountains crossed by the new road over the Simplon, was convertedinto a separate republic under the title of La Valais. The new chiefmagistrate of the Helvetic Confederacy entered upon his office with apension paid out of Bonaparte's secret police fund. [Settlement of Germany. ]Such was the nature of the independence which the Peace of Lunéville gaveto Holland, to Northern Italy, and to Switzerland. The re-organisation ofGermany, which was provided for by the same treaty, affected largerinterests, and left more permanent traces upon European history. In theprovinces ceded to France lay the territory of the ancient ecclesiasticalprinces 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 ofWiedrunkel, with a single village, owned territory upon the left bank ofthe Rhine; and for the dispossessed lay princes new territories had now tobe formed by the destruction of other ecclesiastical States in the interiorof 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 brokenoff: the only difference was that the French statesmen who controlled thepartition of ecclesiastical Germany now remained in Paris, instead ofcoming to the Rhine, to run the risk of being murdered by Austrian hussars. Scarcely was the Treaty of Lunéville signed when the whole company ofintriguers who had touted at Rastadt posted off to the French capital withtheir maps and their money-bags, the keener for the work when it becameknown that by common consent the Free Cities of the Empire were now to bethrown into the spoil. Talleyrand and his confidant Mathieu had no occasionto ask for bribes, or to manoeuvre for the position of arbiters in Germany. They were overwhelmed with importunities. Solemn diplomatists of the oldschool toiled up four flights of stairs to the office of the needysecretary, or danced attendance at the parties of the witty Minister. Theyhugged Talleyrand's poodle; they vied with one another in gaining a smilefrom the child whom he brought up at his house. [92] The shrewder of themfortified their attentions with solid bargains, and made it their principalcare not to be outbidden at the auction. Thus the game was kept up as longas there was a bishopric or a city in the market. This was the real process of the German re-organisation. A pretended onewas meanwhile enacted by the Diet of Ratisbon. The Diet deliberated duringthe 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 theEmperor Paul and deprived Bonaparte of the support of the Northern MaritimeLeague, could stimulate the German Powers to united action. The oldantagonism of Austria and Prussia paralysed the Diet. Austria sought aGerman indemnity for the dethroned Grand Duke of Tuscany; Prussia aimed atextending its influence into Southern Germany by the annexation of Würzburgand Bamberg. Thus the summer of 1801 was lost in interminable debate, untilBonaparte regained the influence over Russia which he had held before thedeath of Paul, and finally set himself free from all check and restraint byconcluding peace with England. [German policy of Bonaparte. ]No part of Bonaparte's diplomacy was more ably conceived or more likely toresult in a permanent empire than that which affected the secondary Statesof Germany. The rivalry of Austria and Prussia, the dread of Austrianaggression felt in Bavaria, the grotesque ambition of the petty sovereignsof Baden and Würtemburg, were all understood and turned to account in thepolicy which from this time shaped the French protectorate beyond theRhine. Bonaparte intended to give to Prussia such an increase of territoryupon the Baltic as should counterbalance the power of Austria; and for thispurpose he was willing to sacrifice Hanover or Mecklenburg: but he forbadePrussia's extension to the south. Austria, so far from gaining newterritory in Bavaria, was to be deprived of its own outlying possessions inWestern Germany, and excluded from all influence in this region. Bavaria, dependent upon French protection against Austria, was to be greatlystrengthened. Baden and Würtemberg, enriched by the spoil of littlesovereignties, of Bishoprics and Free Cities, were to look to France forfurther elevation and aggrandisement. Thus, while two rival Powers balancedone another upon the Baltic and the Lower Danube, the sovereigns of centraland western Germany, owing everything to the Power that had humbledAustria, would find in submission to France the best security for their owngains, 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 manyinterests, namely, the existence of a national sentiment among the Germansthemselves. But the peoples of Germany cared as little about a Fatherlandas their princes. To the Hessian and the Bavarian at the centre of theEmpire, Germany was scarcely more than it was to the Swiss or the Dutch, who had left the Empire centuries before. The inhabitants of the RhenishProvinces had murmured for a while at the extortionate rule of theDirectory; but their severance from Germany and their incorporation with aforeign race touched no fibre of patriotic regret; and after theestablishment of a better order of things under the Consulate theannexation to France appears to have become highly popular. [93] Among arace whose members could thus be actually conquered and annexed withoutdoing violence to their feelings Bonaparte had no difficulty in findingwilling allies. While the Diet dragged on its debates upon the settlementof the Empire, the minor States pursued their bargainings with the FrenchGovernment; and on the 14th of August, 1801, Bavaria signed the first ofthose treaties which made the First Consul the patron of Western Germany. Two months later a secret treaty between France and Russia admitted the newCzar, Alexander, to a share in the reorganisation of the Empire. TheGovernments of Paris and St. Petersburg pledged themselves to united actionfor 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 thesepetty princes to the Russian family enabled Bonaparte to present to theCzar, as a graceful concession, the very measure which most vitallyadvanced his own power in Germany. Alexander's intervention made resistanceon the part of Austria hopeless. One after another the German Sovereignssettled with their patrons for a share in the spoil; and on the 3rd ofJune, 1802, a secret agreement between France and Russia embodied the wholeof these arrangements, and disposed of almost all the Free Cities and theentire 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, towhich the Diet of Ratisbon had referred the work of re-organisation, beganits sessions, assisted by a French and a Russian representative. The Schemewhich had been agreed upon between France and Russia was produced entire;and in spite of the anger and the threats of Austria it passed theCommittee with no greater delay than was inseparable from everythingconnected with German affairs. The Committee presented the Scheme to theDiet: the Diet only agitated itself as to the means of passing the Schemewithout violating those formalities which were the breath of its life. Theproposed destruction of all the Ecclesiastical States, and of forty-fiveout of the fifty Free Cities, would extinguish a third part of the membersof the Diet itself. If these unfortunate bodies were permitted to vote uponthe measure, their votes might result in its rejection: if unsummoned, their absence would impair the validity of the resolution. By a masterpieceof conscientious pedantry it was agreed that the doomed prelates and citiesshould be duly called to vote in their turn, and that upon the mention eachname the answer "absent" should be returned by an officer. Thus, faithfulto its formalities, the Empire voted the destruction of its ancientConstitution; 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-ruleddistricts was generally wretched; heavy ignorance, beggary, and intolerancereduced life to a gross and dismal inertia. Except in their patronage ofmusic, the ecclesiastical princes had perhaps rendered no single service toGermany. The Free Cities, as a rule, were sunk in debt; the management oftheir affairs had become the perquisite of a few lawyers and privilegedfamilies. For Germany, as a nation, the destruction of these pettysovereignties was not only an advantage but an absolute necessity. Theorder by which they were superseded was not devised in the interest ofGermany itself; yet even in the arrangements imposed by the foreignerGermany gained centres from which the institutions of modern political lifeentered into regions where no public authority had yet been known beyondthe court of the bishop or the feudal officers of the manor. [95] Throughthe suppression of the Ecclesiastical States a Protestant majority wasproduced in the Diet. The change bore witness to the decline of Austrianand of Catholic energy during the past century; it scarcely indicated thefuture supremacy of the Protestant rival of Austria; for the real interestsof Germany were but faintly imaged in the Diet, and the leadership of therace was still open to the Power which should most sincerely identifyitself with the German nation. The first result of the changed character ofthe Diet was the confiscation of all landed property held by religious orcharitable bodies, even where these had never advanced the slightest claimto political independence. The Diet declared the whole of the land held inGermany by pious foundations to be at the disposal of the Governments forpurposes of religion, of education, and of financial relief. The more needycourts immediately seized so welcome an opportunity of increasing theirrevenues. Germany lost nothing by the dissolution of some hundreds ofmonasteries; the suppression of hospitals and the impoverishment ofUniversities was a doubtful benefit. Through the destruction of theEcclesiastical States and the confiscation of Church lands, the support ofan army of priests was thrown upon the public revenues. The Elector ofCologne, who had been an indifferent civil ruler, became a very prosperousclergyman on £20, 000 a year. All the members of the annexed or disendowedestablishments, down to the acolytes and the sacristans, were credited withannuities equal in value to what they had lost. But in the confusion causedby war the means to satisfy these claims was not always forthcoming; andthe ecclesiastical revolution, so beneficial on the whole to the publicinterest, was not effected without much severe and undeserved individualsuffering. [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 asurvival of the mixed religious and political form of the Holy Roman Empirethan important in the actual state of Europe. The temporal power now lostby the Church in Germany had been held in such sluggish hands that itseffect was hardly visible except in a denser prejudice and an idler lifethan prevailed under other Governments. The first consequence of itsdownfall was that a great part of Germany which had hitherto had nopolitical organisation at all gained the benefit of a regular system oftaxation, of police, of civil and of criminal justice. If harsh anddespotic, the Governments which rose to power at the expense of the Churchwere usually not wanting in the love of order and uniformity. Officers ofthe State administered a fixed law where custom and privilege had hithertobeen the only rule. Appointments ceased to be bought or inherited; tradesand professions were thrown open; the peasant was relieved of his heaviestfeudal burdens. Among the newly consolidated States, Bavaria was the onewhere the reforming impulse of the time took the strongest form. A newdynasty, springing from the west of the Rhine, brought something of thespirit of French liberalism into a country hitherto unsurpassed in WesternEurope for its ignorance and bigotry. [96] The Minister Montgelas, apolitician of French enlightenment, entered upon the same crusade againstfeudal and ecclesiastical disorder which Joseph had inaugurated in Austriatwenty years before. His measures for subjecting the clergy to the law, andfor depriving the Church of its control over education, were almostidentical with those which in 1790 had led to the revolt of Belgium; andthe Bavarian landowners now unconsciously reproduced all the mediævalplatitudes of the University of Louvain. Montgelas organised and levelledwith a remorseless common sense. Among his victims there was a class whichhad escaped destruction in the recent changes. The Knights of the Empire, with their village jurisdictions, were still legally existent; but toMontgelas such a class appeared a mere absurdity, and he sent his soldiersto disperse their courts and to seize their tolls. Loud lamentationassailed the Emperor at Vienna. If the dethroned bishops had bewailed theapproaching extinction of Christianity in Europe, the knights just asconvincingly deplored the end of chivalry. Knightly honour, now being sweptfrom the earth, was proved to be the true soul of German nationality, theinvisible support of the Imperial throne. For a moment the intervention ofthe Emperor forced Montgelas to withdraw his grasp from the sacred rentsand turnpikes; but the threatening storm passed over, and the example ofBavaria 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 Frenchthat the knights fell victims. Among the knights thus despoiled by the Dukeof Nassau was the Ritter vom Stein, a nobleman who had entered the Prussianservice in the reign of Frederick the Great, and who had lately been placedin high office in the newly-acquired province of Münster. Stein wasthoroughly familiar with the advantages of systematic government; the lossof his native parochial jurisdiction was not a serious one to a man who hadbecome a power in Prussia; and although domestic pride had its share inStein's resentment, the protest now published by him against theaggressions of the Duke of Nassau sounded a different note from that of hisorder generally. That a score of farmers should pay their dues and take offtheir hats to the officer of the Duke of Nassau instead of to the bailiffof 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 interestof French hirelings instead of in the interests of the German people wasjustly treated by Stein as a subject for patriotic anger. In his letter[97] to the Duke of Nassau, Stein reproached his own despoiler and thewhole tribe of petty princes with that treason to German interests whichhad won them the protection of the foreigner. He argued that the knightswere a far less important obstacle to German unity than those very princesto whom the knights were sacrificed; and he invoked that distant day whichshould give to Germany a real national unity, over knights and princesalike, under the leadership of a single patriotic sovereign. Stein's appealfound little response among his contemporaries. Like a sober man amongdrunkards, he seemed to be scarcely rational. The simple conception of anation sacrificing its internal rivalries in order to avert foreign rulewas folly to the politicians who had all their lives long been outwittingone another at Vienna or Berlin, or who had just become persons ofconsequence in Europe through the patronage of Bonaparte. Yet, if years ofintolerable suffering were necessary before any large party in Germany roseto the idea of German union, the ground had now at least been broken. Inthe changes that followed the Peace of Lunéville the fixity and routine ofGermany received its death-blow. In all but name the Empire had ceased toexist. Change and re-constitution in one form or another had becomefamiliar to all men's minds; and one real statesman at the least wasalready beginning to learn the lesson which later events were to teach tothe rest of the German race. [France, 1801-1804. ][Civil Code. ]Four years of peace separated the Treaty of Lunéville from the nextoutbreak of war between France and any Continental Power. They were yearsof extension of French influence in every neighbouring State; in Franceitself, years of the consolidation of Bonaparte's power, and of the declineof everything that checked his personal rule. The legislative bodies sankinto the insignificance for which they had been designed; everything thatwas suffered to wear the appearance of strength owed its vigour to thepersonal support of the First Consul. Among the institutions which datefrom this period, two, equally associated with the name of Napoleon, havetaken a prominent place in history, the Civil Code and the Concordat. Sincethe middle of the eighteenth century the codification of law had beenpursued with more or less success by almost every Government in Europe. InFrance the Constituent Assembly of 1789 had ordered the statutes, by whichit superseded the old variety of local customs, to be thus cast into asystematic form. A Committee of the Convention had completed the draft of aCivil Code. The Directory had in its turn appointed a Commission; but theproject still remained unfulfilled when the Directory was driven frompower. Bonaparte instinctively threw himself into a task so congenial tohis own systematising spirit, and stimulated the efforts of the bestjurists in France by his personal interest and pride in the work oflegislation. 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 anactive, though not always a beneficial, part. The draft of each chapter, asit left the Council of State, was submitted, as a project of Law, to theTribunate and to the Legislative Body. For a moment the free expression ofopinion in the Tribunate caused Bonaparte to suspend his work in impatientjealousy. The Tribunate, however, was soon brought to silence; and inMarch, 1804, France received the Code which has formed from that time tothe present the basis of its civil rights. [Napoleon as a legislator. ]When Napoleon declared that he desired his fame to rest upon the CivilCode, he showed his appreciation of the power which names exercise overmankind. It is probable that a majority of the inhabitants of WesternEurope believe that Napoleon actually invented the laws which bear hisname. As a matter of fact, the substance of these laws was fixed by thesuccessive Assemblies of the Revolution; and, in the final revision whichproduced the Civil Code, Napoleon appears to have originated neither morenor less than several of the members of his Council whose names have longbeen forgotten. He is unquestionably entitled to the honour of a greatlegislator, not, however, as one who, like Solon or like Mahomet, himselfcreated a new body of law, but as one who most vigorously pursued the workof consolidating and popularising law by the help of all the skilled andscientific minds whose resources were at his command. Though faulty inparts, the Civil Code, through its conciseness, its simplicity, and itsjustice, enabled Napoleon to carry a new and incomparably better socialorder 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 acorresponding form, the Law of Commerce, the Criminal Law, and the Rules ofCivil and of Criminal Process. [98] The whole remains a monument of thelegal energy of the period which began in 1789, and of the sagacity withwhich Napoleon associated with his own rule all the science and thereforming 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 thereconciliation with the Church of Rome effected by the Concordat. It was arestoration of religion similar to that restoration of political orderwhich made the public service the engine of a single will. The bishops andpriests, whose appointment the Concordat transferred from theircongregations to the Government, were as much instruments of the FirstConsul as his prefects and his gendarmes. The spiritual wants of thepublic, the craving of the poor for religious consolation, were made thepretext for introducing the new theological police. But the situation ofthe Catholic Church was in reality no worse in France at the commencementof the Consulate than its present situation in Ireland. The Republic hadindeed subjected the non-juring priests to the heaviest penalties, but theexercise of Christian worship, which, even in the Reign of Terror, had onlybeen interrupted by local and individual fanaticism, had long recovered theprotection of the law, services in the open air being alone prohibited. [99] Since 1795 the local authorities had been compelled to admit thereligious societies of their district to the use of church-buildings. Though the coup d'état of Fructidor, 1797, renewed the persecution ofnon-juring priests, it in no way checked the activity of the ConstitutionalChurch, now free from all connection with the Civil Government. While thenon-juring priests, exiled as political offenders, or theatrically adoringthe sacred elements in the woods, pretended that the age of the martyrs hadreturned to France, a Constitutional Church, ministering in 4, 000 parishes, unprivileged but unharassed by the State, supplied the nation with anearnest and respectable body of clergy. [100] But in the eyes of the FirstConsul everything left to voluntary association was so much lost to thecentral power. In the order of nature, peasants must obey priests, priestsmust obey bishops, and bishops must obey the First Consul. An alliance withthe Pope offered to Bonaparte the means of supplanting the popularorganisation of the Constitutional Church by an imposing hierarchy, rigidin its orthodoxy and unquestioning in its devotion to himself. In returnfor the consecration of his own rule, Bonaparte did not shrink frominviting the Pope to an exercise of authority such as the Holy See hadnever even claimed in France. The whole of the existing French Bishops, both the exiled non-jurors and those of the Constitutional Church, weresummoned to resign their Sees into the hands of the Pope; against all whorefused 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 Seeswere re-organised, and filled up by nominees of the First Consul. Theposition of the great body of the clergy was substantially altered in itsrelation to the Bishops. Episcopal power was made despotic, like all otherpower in France: thousands of the clergy, hitherto secure in their livings, were placed at the disposal of their bishop, and rendered liable to betransferred at the pleasure of their superior from place to place. TheConstitutional Church vanished, but religion appeared to be honoured bybecoming part of the State. [Results in Ultramontanism. ]In its immediate action, the Napoleonic Church served the purpose for whichit was intended. For some few years the clergy unflaggingly preached, prayed, and catechised to the glory of their restorer. In the greater cycleof religious change, the Concordat of Bonaparte appears in another light. However little appreciated at the time, it was the greatest, the mostcritical, victory which the Roman See has ever gained over the moreenlightened and the more national elements in the Catholic Church. Itconverted the Catholicism of France from a faith already far moreindependent than that of Fénélon and Bossuet into the Catholicism which inour own day has outstripped the bigotry of Spain and Austria in welcomingthe dogma of Papal infallibility. The lower clergy, condemned by the Stateto an intolerable subjection, soon found their only hope in an appeal toRome, and instinctively worked as the emissaries of the Roman See. TheBishops, who owed their office to an unprecedented exercise of Papal powerand to the destruction of religious independence in France, were not themen who could maintain a struggle with the Papacy for the ancient Gallicanliberties. In the resistance to the Papacy which had been maintained by theContinental Churches in a greater or less degree during the eighteenthcentury, France had on the whole taken the most effective part; but, fromthe time when the Concordat dissolved both the ancient and therevolutionary Church system of France, the Gallican tradition of the pastbecame as powerless among the French clergy as the philosophical liberalismof the Revolution. [So do the German changes. ]In Germany the destruction of the temporal power of the Church tendedequally to Ultramontanism. An archbishop of Cologne who governed half amillion subjects was less likely to prostrate himself before the PapalChair than an archbishop of Cologne who was only one among a regiment ofchurchmen. The spiritual Electors and Princes who lost their dominions in1801 had understood by the interests of their order something more tangiblethan a body of doctrines. When not hostile to the Papacy, they had usuallytreated it with indifference. The conception of a Catholic society exposedto persecution at the hands of the State on account of its devotion to Romewas one which had never entered the mind of German ecclesiastics in theeighteenth century. Without the changes effected in Germany by the Treatyof Lunéville, without the Concordat of Bonaparte, Catholic orthodoxy wouldnever have become identical with Ultramontanism. In this respect theopening years of the present century mark a turning-point in the relationof the Church to modern life. Already, in place of the old monarchicalGovernments, friendly on the whole to the Catholic Church, events werepreparing the way for that changed order with which the century seemsdestined 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, andblockades the Elbe--Remonstrances of Prussia--Cadoudal's Plot--Murder ofthe Duke of Enghien--Napoleon Emperor--Coalition of 1805--Prussia holdsaloof--State of Austria--Failure of Napoleon's attempt to gain navalsuperiority in the Channel--Campaign in Western Germany--Capitulation ofUlm--Trafalgar--Treaty of Potsdam between Prussia and the Allies--TheFrench enter Vienna--Haugwitz sent to Napoleon with Prussian Ultimatum--Battle of Austerlitz--Haugwitz signs a Treaty of Alliance withNapoleon--Peace--Treaty of Presburg--End of the Holy Roman Empire--Naples given to Joseph Bonaparte--Battle of Maida--The Napoleonic Empireand Dynasty--Federation of the Rhine--State of Germany--Possibility ofmaintaining 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 withBonaparte's aggressions during all the months of negotiation at Amiens;they had met his complaints against the abuse of the English press byprosecuting his Royalist libellers; throughout the Session of 1802 they hadupheld the possibility of peace against the attacks of their parliamentaryopponents. The invasion of Switzerland in the autumn of 1802, following theannexation of Piedmont, forced the Ministry to alter its tone. The King'sSpeech at the meeting of Parliament in November declared that the changesin operation on the Continent demanded measures of security on the part ofGreat Britain. The naval and military forces of the country were restoredto a war-footing; the evacuation of Malta by Great Britain, which hadhitherto been delayed chiefly through a misunderstanding with Russia, wasno longer treated as a matter of certainty. While the English Governmentstill wavered, a challenge was thrown down by the First Consul which forcedthem into decided action. The _Moniteur_ published on the 13th of January, 1803, a report upon Egypt by Colonel Sebastiani, pointing in the plainestterms to the renewal of French attacks upon the East. The BritishGovernment demanded explanations, and declared that until satisfaction wasgiven upon this point they should retain possession of Malta. Malta was infact appropriated by Great Britain as an equivalent for the Continentalterritory added to France since the end of the war. [101][War, May, 1803. ]It would have been better policy if, some months earlier, Bonaparte hadbeen required to withdraw from Piedmont or from Switzerland, under pain ofhostilities with England. Great Britain had as little technical right toretain Malta as Bonaparte had to annex Piedmont. The desire for peace had, however, led Addington's Government to remain inactive until Bonaparte'saggressions had become accomplished facts. It was now too late to attemptto undo them: England could only treat the settlement of Amiens assuperseded, and claim compensation on its own side. Malta was the positionmost necessary to Great Britain, in order to prevent Bonaparte fromcarrying out projects in Egypt and Greece of which the Government hadevidence independent of Sebastiani's report. The value of Malta, so latelydenied by Nelson, was now fully understood both in France and England. Nosooner had the English Ministry avowed its intention of retaining theisland than the First Consul declared himself compelled to take up arms inbehalf of the faith of treaties. Ignoring his own violations oftreaty-rights in Italy and Switzerland, Bonaparte declared the retention ofMalta by Great Britain to be an outrage against all Europe. He assailed theBritish Ambassador with the utmost fury at a reception held at theTuileries 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 untilBonaparte was driven from his throne. [Bonaparte and Hanover. ]So long as England was without Continental allies its warfare was limitedto the seizure of colonies and the blockade of ports: on the part of Francenothing could be effected against the island Power except by actualinvasion. There was, however, among the communities of Germany one which, in the arguments of a conqueror, might be treated as a dependency ofEngland, and made to suffer for its connection with the British Crown. Hanover had hitherto by common agreement been dissociated from the wars inwhich its Elector engaged as King of England; even the personal presence ofKing George II. At the battle of Dettingen had been held no ground forviolating its neutrality. Bonaparte, however, was untroubled by precedentsin a case where he had so much to gain. Apart from its value as a possibleobject of exchange in the next treaty with England, Hanover would serve asa means of influencing Prussia: it was also worth so many millions in cashthrough the requisitions which might be imposed upon its inhabitants. Theonly scruple felt by Bonaparte in attacking Hanover arose from thepossibility of a forcible resistance on the part of Prussia to theappearance of a French army in North Germany. Accordingly, before theinvasion began, General Duroc was sent to Berlin to inform the King of theFirst Consul's intentions, and to soothe any irritation that might be feltat 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 therecognised guardian of Northern Germany; every consideration of interestand of honour required that its Government should forbid the proposedoccupation of Hanover--if necessary, at the risk of actual war. Hanover inthe hands of France meant the extinction of German independence up to thefrontiers of the Prussian State. If, as it was held at Berlin, the cause ofGreat Britain was an unjust one, and if the connection of Hanover with theBritish Crown was for the future to make that province a scapegoat for theoffences of England, the wisest course for Prussia would have been todeliver Hanover at once from its French and from its English enemies byoccupying 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 aconscientious but a timid and spiritless being. Public affairs were in thehands of his private advisers, of whom the most influential were theso-called cabinet-secretaries, Lombard and Beyme, men credulously anxiousfor the goodwill of France, and perversely blind to the native force andworth which still existed in the Prussian Monarchy. [102] Instead ofdeclaring the entry of the French into Hanover to be absolutelyincompatible with the safety of the other North German States, KingFrederick William endeavoured to avert it by diplomacy. He tendered hismediation to the British Government upon condition of the evacuation ofMalta; and, when this proposal was bluntly rejected, he offered to theFirst Consul his personal security that Hanover should pay a sum of moneyin 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. Whilenegotiations were still proceeding, a French division, commanded by GeneralMortier, entered Hanover (May, 1803). The Hanoverian army was lost throughthe follies of the civil Government; the Duke of Cambridge, commander ofone of its divisions, less ingenious than his brother the Duke of York infinding excuses for capitulation, resigned his commission, and fled toEngland, along with many brave soldiers, who subsequently found in the armyof Great Britain the opportunity for honourable service which was denied tothem at home. Hanover passed into the possession of France, and for twoyears the miseries of French occupation were felt to the full. Extortionconsumed the homely wealth of the country; the games and meetings of thepeople were prohibited; French spies violated the confidences of privatelife; law was administered by foreign soldiers; the press existed only forthe purpose of French proselytism. It was in Hanover that the bitterness ofthat oppression was first felt which subsequently roused all North Germanyagainst a foreign master, and forced upon the race the long-forgottenclaims of patriotism and honour. [French blockade the Elbe. ][Vain remonstrance of Prussia. ]Bonaparte had justly calculated upon the inaction of the PrussianGovernment when he gave the order to General Mortier to enter Hanover; hisnext step proved the growth of his confidence in Prussia's impassivity. AFrench force was despatched to Cuxhaven, at the mouth of the Elbe, in orderto stop the commerce of Great Britain with the interior of Germany. TheBritish Government immediately informed the Court of Berlin that it shouldblockade the Elbe and the Weser against the ships of all nations unless theFrench soldiers withdrew from the Elbe. As the linen trade of Silesia andother branches of Prussian industry depended upon the free navigation ofthe Elbe, the threatened reprisals of the British Government raised veryserious questions for Prussia. It was France, not England, that had firstviolated the neutrality of the river highway; and the King of Prussia nowfelt himself compelled to demand assurances Bonaparte that the interests ofGermany should suffer no further injury at his hands. A letter was writtenby the King to the First Consul, and entrusted to the cabinet-secretary, Lombard, who carried it to Napoleon at Brussels (July, 1803). Lombard, theson of French parents who had settled at Berlin in the reign of Frederickthe Great, had risen from a humble station through his skill in expressionin the two languages that were native to him; and the accomplishments whichwould have made him a good clerk or a successful journalist made him in theeyes of Frederick William a counsellor for kings. The history of hismission to Brussels gives curious evidence both of the fascinationexercised by Napoleon over common minds, and of the political helplessnesswhich 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 hismission. Napoleon had infatuated him by the mere exercise of his personalcharm. "What I cannot describe, " said Lombard, in his report to the Kingrelating his interview with the First Consul, [103] "is the tone ofgoodness and noble frankness with which he expressed his reverence for yourMajesty's rights, and asked for that confidence from your Majesty which heso well deserves. " "I only wish, " he cried at the close of Napoleon'saddress, "that I could convey to the King, my master, every one of yourwords 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 athis hands. " Lombard's colleagues at Berlin were perhaps not stronger menthan the envoy himself, but they were at least beyond the range ofNapoleon's voice and glance, and they received this rhapsody with coldness. They complained that no single concession had been made by the First Consulupon the points raised by the King. Cuxhaven continued in French hands; theBritish inexorably blockaded the Germans upon their own neutral waters; andthe cautious statecraft of Prussia proved as valueless to Germany as theobstinate, speculating warfare of Austria. [Alexander displeased. ]There was, however, a Power which watched the advance of French dominioninto Northern Germany with less complaisance than the Germans themselves. The Czar of Russia had gradually come to understand the part allotted tohim by Bonaparte since the Peace of Lunéville, and was no longer inclinedto serve as the instrument of French ambition. Bonaparte's occupation ofHanover changed the attitude of Alexander into one of coldness anddistrust. Alexander saw and lamented the help which he himself had given toBonaparte in Germany: events that now took place in France itself, as wellas the progress of French intrigues in Turkey, [104] threw him into thearms of Bonaparte's enemies, and prepared the way for a new Europeancoalition. [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 forhis person; nothing was wanting to place the crown on his head but thediscovery of a plot against his life. Such a plot had been long andcarefully followed by the police. A Breton gentleman, Georges Cadoudal, hadformed the design of attacking the First Consul in the streets of Paris inthe midst of his guards. Cadoudal and his fellow-conspirators, includingGeneral Pichegru, were traced by the police from the coast of Normandy toParis: an unsuccessful attempt was made to lure the Count of Artois, andother royal patrons of the conspiracy, from Great Britain. When all theconspirators who could be enticed to France were collected within thecapital, the police, who had watched every stage of the movement, began tomake arrests. Moreau, the last Republican soldier of France, was chargedwith complicity in the plot. Pichegru and Cadoudal were thrown into prison, there to await their doom; Moreau, who probably wished for the overthrow ofthe Consular Government, but had no part in the design against Bonaparte'slife, [105] was kept under arrest and loaded with official calumny. Onesacrifice more remained to be made, in place of the Bourbon d'Artois, whobaffled the police of the First Consul beyond the seas. In the territory ofBaden, twelve miles from the French frontier, there lived a prince of theexiled house, the Duke of Enghien, a soldier under the first Coalitionagainst France, now a harmless dependent on the bounty of England. Frenchspies surrounded him; his excursions into the mountains gave rise to asuspicion that he was concerned in Pichegru's plot. This was enough to markhim for destruction. Bonaparte gave orders that he should be seized, brought to Paris, and executed. On the 15th of March, 1804, a troop ofFrench soldiers crossed the Rhine and arrested the Duke in his own house atEttenheim. They arrived with him at Paris on the 20th. He was taken to thefort of Vincennes without entering the city. On that same night acommission of six colonels sat in judgment upon the prisoner, whose gravewas already dug, and pronounced sentence of death without hearing a word ofevidence. 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 kindredin Bonaparte's own eyes the omen of a successful usurpation, it was not sowith Europe generally. One universal sense of horror passed over theContinent. The Court of Russia put on mourning; even the Diet of Ratisbonshowed signs of human passion at the indignity done to Germany by theseizure of the Duke of Enghien on German soil. Austria kept silent, butwatched the signs of coming war. France alone showed no pity. Before theDuke of Enghien had been dead a week, the Senate besought Napoleon to giveto France the security of a hereditary throne. Prefects, bishops, mayors, and councils with one voice repeated the official prayer. A resolution infavour 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 theSenate embodied the terms of the new Constitution; and on the 18th of May, without waiting for the sanction of a national vote, Napoleon assumed thetitle 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 substanceof power. Napoleon could not be vested with a more absolute authority thanhe already possessed; but the forms of republican equality vanished; andalthough the real social equality given to France by the Revolution wasbeyond reach of change, the nation had to put up with a bastard Court and afictitious aristocracy of Corsican princes, Terrorist excellencies, andJacobin dukes. The new dynasty was recognised at Vienna and Berlin: on thepart of Austria it received the compliment of an imitation. Three monthsafter the assumption of the Imperial title by Napoleon, the Emperor Francis(Emperor in Germany, but King in Hungary and Bohemia) assumed the title ofEmperor of all his Austrian dominions. The true reason for this act was thevirtual dissolution of the Germanic system by the Peace of Lunéville, andthe probability that the old Imperial dignity, if preserved in name, wouldsoon be transferred to some client of Napoleon or to Napoleon himself. Suchan apprehension was, however, not one that could be confessed to Europe. Instead of the ruin of Germany, the grandeur of Austria was made theostensible ground of change. In language which seemed to be borrowed fromthe scriptural history of Nebuchadnezzar, the Emperor Francis declaredthat, although no possible addition could be made to his own personaldignity, as Roman Emperor, yet the ancient glory of the Austrian House, thegrandeur of the principalities and kingdoms which were united under itsdominion, required that the Sovereigns of Austria should hold a title equalto that of the greatest European throne. A general war against Napoleon wasalready being proposed by the Court of St. Petersburg; but for the presentthe Corsican and the Hapsburg Cæsar exchanged their hypocriticalcongratulations. [106][Pitt again Minister, May, 1804. ][Coalition of 1805. ]Almost at the same time that Bonaparte ascended the throne, Pitt returnedto power in Great Britain. He was summoned by the general distrust felt inAddington's Ministry, and by the belief that no statesman but himself couldrally the Powers of Europe against the common enemy. Pitt was not long inframing with Russia the plan of a third Coalition. The Czar broke offdiplomatic intercourse with Napoleon in September, 1804, and induced theCourt of Vienna to pledge itself to resist any further extension of Frenchpower. Sweden entered into engagements with Great Britain. On the openingof Parliament at the beginning of 1805, King George III. Announced that anunderstanding existed between Great Britain and Russia, and asked ingeneral terms for a provision for Continental subsidies. In April, a treatywas signed at St. Petersburg by the representatives of Russia and GreatBritain, far more comprehensive and more serious in its provisions than anywhich had yet united the Powers against France. [107] Russia and Englandbound themselves to direct their efforts to the formation of a EuropeanLeague capable of placing five hundred thousand men in the field. GreatBritain undertook to furnish subsidies to every member of the League; nopeace was to be concluded with France but by common consent; conquestsmade by any of the belligerents were to remain unappropriated until thegeneral peace; and at the termination of the war a Congress was to fixcertain disputed points of international right, and to establish afederative European system for their maintenance and enforcement. As theimmediate objects of the League, the treaty specified the expulsion ofthe French from Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Northern Germany; there-establishment of the King of Sardinia in Piedmont, with an increase ofterritory; and the creation of a solid barrier against any futureusurpations of France. The last expression signified the union of Hollandand part of Belgium under the House of Orange. In this respect, as in theprovision for a common disposal of conquests and for the settlement ofEuropean affairs by a Congress, the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1805 definedthe policy actually carried out in 1814. Other territorial changes nowsuggested by Pitt, including the annexation of the Rhenish Provinces tothe Prussian Monarchy, were not embodied in the treaty, but became fromthis 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 thetitle of King of Italy from the Senate of the Italian Republic, and hadcrowned himself with the Iron Crown of Lombardy (March, 1805), theMinisters at Vienna would have preferred peace, if that had been possible;and their master reluctantly consented to a war against Napoleon when warin some form or other seemed inevitable. The policy of Prussia wasdoubtful. For two years past Napoleon had made every effort to inducePrussia to enter into alliance with himself. After the invasion of Hanoverhe had doubled his attentions to the Court of Berlin, and had sparednothing in the way of promises and assurances of friendship to win the Kingover to his side. The neutrality of Prussia was of no great service toFrance: its support would have been of priceless value, rendering anyattack upon France by Russia or Austria almost impossible, and thusenabling Napoleon to throw his whole strength into the combat with GreatBritain. In the spring of 1804, the King of Prussia, uncertain of thefriendship of the Czar, and still unconvinced of the vanity of Napoleon'sprofessions, had inclined to a defensive alliance with France. The news ofthe murder of the Duke of Enghien, arriving almost simultaneously with amessage of goodwill from St. Petersburg, led him to abandon this project ofalliance, but caused no breach with Napoleon. Frederick William adhered tothe temporising policy which Prussia had followed since 1795, and theForeign Minister, Haugwitz, who had recommended bolder measures, withdrewfor a time from the Court. [108] Baron Hardenberg, who had already acted ashis deputy, stepped into his place. Hardenberg, the negotiator of the peaceof Basle, had for the last ten years advocated a system of neutrality. Apolitician quick to grasp new social and political ideas, he was withoutthat insight into the real forces at work in Europe which, in spite oferrors in detail, made the political aims of Pitt, and of many far inferiormen, substantially just and correct. So late as the end of the year 1804, Hardenberg not only failed to recognise the dangers to which Prussia wasexposed from Napoleon's ambition, but conceived it to be still possible forPrussia to avert war between France and the Allied Powers by maintaining agood understanding with all parties alike. Hardenberg's neutrality excitedthe wrath of the Russian Cabinet. While Metternich, the Austrian ambassadorat Berlin, cautiously felt his way, the Czar proposed in the last resort toforce Prussia to take up arms. A few months more passed; and, whenhostilities were on the point of breaking out, Hanover was definitelyoffered to Prussia by Napoleon as the price of an alliance. Hardenberg, still believing that it lay within the power of Prussia, by means of aFrench alliance, both to curb Napoleon and to prevent a European war, urgedthe King to close with the offer of the French Emperor. [109] But the Kingshrank from a decision which involved the possibility of immediate war. Theoffer of Hanover was rejected, and Prussia connected itself neither withNapoleon nor his enemies. [State of Austria. The army. ]Pitt, the author of the Coalition of 1805, had formed the most sanguineestimate of the armaments of his allies. Austria was said to have enteredupon a new era since the peace of Lunéville, and to have turned to the bestaccount all the disasters of its former campaigns. There had indeed been nowant of fine professions from Vienna, but Pitt knew little of the realstate of affairs. The Archduke Charles had been placed at the head of themilitary administration, and entrusted with extraordinary powers; but thewhole force of routine and corruption was ranged against him. He wasdeceived by his subordinates; and after three years of reorganisation heresigned his post, confessing that he left the army no nearer efficiencythan it was before. Charles was replaced at the War Office by General Mack. Within six months this bustling charlatan imagined himself to have effectedthe reorganisation of which the Archduke despaired, [110] while he had infact only introduced new confusion into an army already hampered beyond anyin Europe by its variety of races and languages. [Political condition of Austria. ]If the military reforms of Austria were delusive, its political reformswere still more so. The Emperor had indeed consented to unite theMinisters, who had hitherto worked independently, in a Council of State;but here reform stopped. Cobenzl, who was now First Minister, understoodnothing but diplomacy. Men continued in office whose presence was aninsuperable bar to any intelligent action: even in that mechanical routinewhich, in the eyes of the Emperor Francis, constituted the life of theState, everything was antiquated and self-contradictory. In all thataffected the mental life of the people the years that followed the peace ofLunéville were distinctly retrograde. Education was placed more than everin the hands of the priests; the censorship of the press was given to thepolice; a commission was charged with the examination of all the booksprinted during the reign of the Emperor Joseph, and above two thousandworks, which had come into being during that brief period of Austrianliberalism, were suppressed and destroyed. Trade regulations were issuedwhich combined the extravagance of the French Reign of Terror with theignorance of the Middle Ages. All the grain in the country was ordered tobe sold before a certain date, and the Jews were prohibited from carryingon the corn-trade for a year. Such were the reforms described by Pitt inthe 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 duringthe last war. Even Thugut now thought a contest hopeless. The ArchdukeCharles argued to the end for peace, and entered upon the war with thepresentiment 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 Lombardyunder the Archduke Charles, while a second, under General Mack, enteredBavaria, and there awaited the arrival of the Russians, who were to unitewith it in invading France: British and Russian contingents were to combinewith the King of Sweden in Pomerania, and with the King of Naples inSouthern Italy. At the head-quarters of the Allies an impression prevailedthat Napoleon was unprepared for war. It was even believed that hischaracter had lost something of its energy under the influence of anImperial Court. Never was there a more fatal illusion. The forces of Francehad never been so overwhelming; the plans of Napoleon had never been workedout with greater minuteness and certainty. From Hanover to Strasburg massesof troops had been collected upon the frontier in readiness for the orderto march; and, before the campaign opened, the magnificent army ofBoulogne, which had been collected for the invasion of England, was throwninto 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 attackupon Great Britain. This attack, which in 1797 had been but lightlythreatened, had, upon the renewal of war with England in 1803, become theobject of Napoleon's most serious efforts. An army was concentrated atBoulogne sufficient to overwhelm the military forces of England, if once itcould reach the opposite shore. Napoleon's thoughts were centred on a planfor obtaining the naval superiority in the Channel, if only for the fewhours which it would take to transport the army from Boulogne to theEnglish coast. It was his design to lure Nelson to the other side of theAtlantic by a feigned expedition against the West Indies, and, during theabsence of the English admiral, to unite all the fleets at present lyingblockaded in the French ports, as a cover for the invading armament. Admiral Villeneuve was ordered to sail to Martinique, and, after theremeeting with some other ships, to re-cross the Atlantic with all possiblespeed, and liberate the fleets blockaded in Ferrol, Brest, and Rochefort. The junction of the fleets would give Napoleon a force of fifty sail in theBritish Channel, a force more than sufficient to overpower all thesquadrons which Great Britain could possibly collect for the defence of itsshores. Such a design exhibited all the power of combination which markedNapoleon's greatest triumphs; but it required of an indifferent marine theprecision and swiftness of movement which belonged to the land-forces ofFrance; it assumed in the seamen of Great Britain the same absence ofresource which Napoleon had found among the soldiers of the Continent. Inthe present instance, however, Napoleon had to deal with a man as farsuperior to all the admirals of France as Napoleon himself was to thegenerals of Austria and Prussia. Villeneuve set sail for the West Indies inthe spring of 1805, and succeeded in drawing Nelson after him; but, beforehe could re-cross the Atlantic, Nelson, incessantly pursuing the Frenchsquadron in the West-Indian seas, and at length discovering its departurehomewards at Antigua (June 13), had warned the English Government ofVilleneuve's movement by a message sent in the swiftest of the Englishbrigs. [112] The Government, within twenty-four hours of receiving Nelson'smessage, sent orders to Sir Robert Calder instantly to raise the blockadesof Ferrol and Rochefort, and to wait for Villeneuve off Cape Finisterre. Here Villeneuve met the English fleet (July 22). He was worsted in apartial engagement, and retired into the harbour of Ferrol. The pressingorders of Napoleon forced the French admiral, after some delay, to attemptthat movement on Brest and Rochefort on which the whole plan of theinvasion of England depended. But Villeneuve was no longer in a conditionto meet the English force assembled against him. He put back withoutfighting, and retired to Cadiz. All hope of carrying out the attack uponEngland was lost. [March of French armies on Bavaria, Sept. ]It only remained for Napoleon to avenge himself upon Austria through thearmy which was baulked of its English prey. On the 1st of September, whenthe Austrians were now on the point of crossing the Inn, the camp ofBoulogne was broken up. The army turned eastwards, and distributed itselfover all the roads leading from the Channel to the Rhine and the UpperDanube. Far on the north-east the army of Hanover, commanded by Bernadotte, moved as its left wing, and converged upon a point in Southern Germanyhalf-way between the frontiers of France and Austria. In the fables thatlong disguised the true character of every action of Napoleon, theadmirable order of march now given to the French armies appears as theinspiration of a moment, due to the rebound of Napoleon's genius afterlearning the frustration of all his naval plans. In reality, the employmentof the "Army of England" against a Continental coalition had always been analternative present to Napoleon's mind; and it was threateningly mentionedin 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 theChannel army was that Austria was able to occupy Bavaria withoutresistance. General Mack, who was charged with this operation, crossed theInn on the 8th of September. The Elector of Bavaria was known to besecretly hostile to the Coalition. The design of preventing his union withthe French was a correct one; but in the actual situation of the alliedarmies it was one that could not be executed without great risk. Thepreparations of Russia required more time than was allowed for them; noRussian troops could reach the Inn before the end of October; and, inconsequence, the entire force operating in Western Germany did not exceedseventy thousand men. Any doubts, however, as to the prudence of an advancethrough Bavaria were silenced by the assurance that Napoleon had to bringthe bulk of his army from the British Channel. [113] In ignorance of thereal movements of the French, Mack pushed on to the western limit ofBavaria, and reached the river Iller, the border of Würtemberg, where heintended 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 ofFrench troops, not only in front but to the east of his own position. With some misgiving as to the situation of the enemy, Mack neverthelessrefused to fall back from Ulm. Another week revealed the true state ofaffairs. Before the Russians were anywhere near Bavaria, the vanguard ofNapoleon's Army of the Channel and the Army of Hanover had crossedNorth-Western Germany, and seized the roads by which Mack had advancedfrom Vienna. Every hour that Mack remained in Ulm brought new divisionsof the French into the Bavarian towns and villages behind him. Escape wasonly possible by a retreat into the Tyrol, or by breaking through theFrench line while it was yet incompletely formed. Resolute action mightstill have saved the Austrian army; but the only energy that was shownwas shown in opposition to the general. The Archduke Ferdinand, who wasthe titular commander-in-chief, cut his way through the French with partof the cavalry; Mack remained in Ulm, and the iron circle closed aroundhim. At the last moment, after the hopelessness of the situation hadbecome clear even to himself, Mack was seized by an illusion that somegreat disaster had befallen the French in their rear, and that in thecourse of a few days Napoleon would be in full retreat. "Let no man utterthe word 'Surrender'"--he proclaimed in an order of October 15th--"theenemy is in the most fearful straits; it is impossible that he cancontinue more than a few days in the neighbourhood. If provisions runshort, we have three thousand horses to nourish us. " "I myself, " continuedthe general, "will be the first to eat horseflesh. " Two days later theinevitable capitulation took place; and Mack with 25, 000 men, fell into thehands of the enemy without striking a blow. A still greater number of theAustrians outside Ulm surrendered in detachments. [114][Trafalgar, Oct. 21. ][Effects. ]All France read with wonder Napoleon's bulletins describing the capture ofan entire army and the approaching presentation of forty Austrian standardsto the Senate at Paris. No imperial rhetoric acquainted the nation with anevent which, within four days of the capitulation of Ulm, inflicted aheavier blow on France than Napoleon himself had ever dealt to anyadversary. On the 21st of October Nelson's crowning victory of Trafalgar, won over Villeneuve venturing out from Cadiz, annihilated the combinedfleets of France and Spain. Nelson fell in the moment of his triumph; butthe work which his last hours had achieved was one to which years prolongedin glory could have added nothing. He had made an end of the power ofFrance upon the sea. Trafalgar was not only the greatest naval victory, itwas the greatest and most momentous victory won either by land or by seaduring the whole of the Revolutionary War. No victory, and no series ofvictories, of Napoleon produced the same effect upon Europe. Austria was inarms within five years of Marengo, and within four years of Austerlitz;Prussia was ready to retrieve the losses of Jena in 1813; a generationpassed after Trafalgar before France again seriously threatened England atsea. The prospect of crushing the British navy, so long as England had themeans to equip a navy, vanished: Napoleon henceforth set his hopes onexhausting England's resources by compelling every State on the Continentto exclude her commerce. Trafalgar forced him to impose his yoke upon allEurope, or to abandon the hope of conquering Great Britain. If nationallove and pride have idealised in our great sailor a character which, withits Homeric force and freshness, combined something of the violence and theself-love of the heroes of a rude age, the common estimate of Nelson's workin history is not beyond the truth. So long as France possessed a navy, Nelson sustained the spirit of England by his victories; his last triumphleft England in such a position that no means remained to injure her butthose 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 inGermany after Mack's catastrophe was such that nothing could keep the armyof 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 ofHanover, to order Bernadotte, its commander, to march through the Prussianterritory of Anspach, which lay on his direct route towards Ulm. It wassubsequently alleged by the Allies that Bernadotte's violation of Prussianneutrality had actually saved him from arriving too late to prevent Mack'sescape; but, apart from all imaginary grounds of reproach, the insultoffered to Prussia by Napoleon was sufficient to incline even FrederickWilliam to decided action. Some weeks earlier the approach of Russianforces to his frontier had led Frederick William to arm; the French had nowmore than carried out what the Russians had only suggested. When theoutrage was made known to the King of Prussia, that cold and reservedmonarch displayed an emotion which those who surrounded him had seldomwitnessed. [115] The Czar was forthwith offered a free passage for hisarmies through Silesia; and, before the news of Mack's capitulation reachedthe Russian frontier, Alexander himself was on the way to Berlin. Theresult of the deliberations of the two monarchs was the Treaty of Potsdam, signed on November 3rd. By this treaty Prussia undertook to demand fromNapoleon an indemnity for the King of Piedmont, and the evacuation ofGermany, Switzerland, and Holland: failing Napoleon's acceptance ofPrussia's mediation upon these terms, Prussia engaged to take the fieldwith 180, 000 men. [French enter Vienna, Nov. 13. ]Napoleon was now close upon Vienna. A few days after the capitulation ofUlm thirty thousand Russians, commanded by General Kutusoff, had reachedBavaria; but Mack's disaster rendered it impossible to defend the line ofthe Inn, and the last detachments of the Allies disappeared as soon asNapoleon's vanguard approached the river. The French pushed forth inoverpowering strength upon the capital. Kutusoff and the weakened Austrianarmy could neither defend Vienna nor meet the invader in the field. It wasresolved to abandon the city, and to unite the retreating forces on thenorthern side of the Danube with a second Russian army now enteringMoravia. On the 7th of November the Court quitted Vienna. Six days laterthe French entered the capital, and by an audacious stratagem of Murat'sgained possession of the bridge connecting the city with the north bank ofthe Danube, at the moment when the Austrian gunners were about to blow itinto the air. [116] The capture of this bridge deprived the allied army ofthe last object protecting it from Napoleon's pursuit. Vienna remained inthe possession of the French. All the resources of a great capital were nowadded to the means of the conqueror; and Napoleon prepared to follow hisretreating adversary beyond the Danube, and to annihilate him before hecould reach his supports. [The Allies and Napoleon in Moravia, Nov. ]The retreat of the Russian army into Moravia was conducted with great skillby General Kutusoff, who retorted upon Murat the stratagem practised at thebridge of Vienna, and by means of a pretended armistice effected hisjunction with the newly-arrived Russian corps between Olmütz and Brünn. Napoleon's anger at the escape of his prey was shown in the bitterness ofhis attacks upon Murat. The junction of the allied armies in Moravia had infact most seriously altered the prospects of the war. For the first timesince the opening of the campaign, the Allies had concentrated a forcesuperior in numbers to anything that Napoleon could bring against it. Itwas impossible for Napoleon, while compelled to protect himself on theItalian side, to lead more than 70, 000 men into Moravia. The Allies had now80, 000 in camp, with the prospect of receiving heavy reinforcements. Thewar, which lately seemed to be at its close, might now, in the hands of askilful general, be but beginning. Although the lines of Napoleon'scommunication with France were well guarded, his position in the heart ofEurope exposed him to many perils; the Archduke Charles had defeatedMassena at Caldiero on the Adige, and was hastening northwards; above all, the army of Prussia was preparing to enter the field. Every mile thatNapoleon advanced into Moravia increased the strain upon his resources;every day that postponed the decision of the campaign brought new strengthto his enemies. Merely to keep the French in their camp until a Prussianforce was ready to assail their communications seemed enough to ensure theAllies victory; and such was the counsel of Kutusoff, who made war in thetemper of the wariest diplomatist. But the scarcity of provisions wastelling 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 agreat 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 theallied army should march right round Napoleon's position near Brünn, andfight 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 afterNapoleon had divined the plans of his enemy, that Count Haugwitz, bearingthe demands of the Cabinet of Berlin, reached the French camp at Brünn. [118] Napoleon had already heard something of the Treaty of Potsdam, andwas aware that Haugwitz had started from Berlin. He had no intention ofmaking any of those concessions which Prussia required; at the same time itwas of vital importance to him to avoid the issue of a declaration of warby Prussia, which would nerve both Austria and Russia to the lastextremities. He therefore resolved to prevent Haugwitz by every possiblemethod from delivering his ultimatum, until a decisive victory over theallied armies should have entirely changed the political situation. ThePrussian envoy himself played into Napoleon's hands. Haugwitz had obtaineda disgraceful permission from his sovereign to submit to all Napoleon'swishes, if, before his arrival, Austria should be separately treating forpeace; and he had an excuse for delay in the fact that the militarypreparations of Prussia were not capable of being completed before themiddle of December. He passed twelve days on the journey from Berlin, andpresented himself before Napoleon on the 28th of November. The Emperor, after a long conversation, requested that he would proceed to Vienna andtransact business with Talleyrand. He was weak enough to permit himself tobe removed to a distance with his ultimatum to Napoleon undelivered. Whennext the Prussian Government heard of their envoy, he was sauntering inTalleyrand's drawing-rooms at Vienna, with the cordon of the French Legionof Honour on his breast, exchanging civilities with officials who politelydeclined to enter upon any question of business. [Austerlitz, Dec. 2. ][Armistice, Dec. 4. ]Haugwitz once removed to Vienna, and the Allies thus deprived of thecertainty that Prussia would take the field, Napoleon trusted that a singlegreat defeat would suffice to break up the Coalition. The movements of theAllies were exactly those which he expected and desired. He chose his ownpositions between Brünn and Austerlitz in the full confidence of victory;and on the morning of the 2nd of December, when the mists disappearedbefore a bright wintry sun, he saw with the utmost delight that the Russiancolumns were moving round him in a vast arc, in execution of theturning-movement of which he had forewarned his own army on the day before. Napoleon waited until the foremost columns were stretched far in advance oftheir supports; then, throwing Soult's division upon the gap left in thecentre of the allied line, he cut the army into halves, and crushed itssevered divisions at every point along the whole line of attack. TheAllies, although they outnumbered Napoleon, believed themselves to beoverpowered by an army double their own size. The incoherence of the alliedmovements was as marked as the unity and effectiveness of those of theFrench. It was alleged in the army that Kutusoff, the commander-in-chief, had fallen asleep while the Austrian Weyrother was expounding his plans forthe battle; a truer explanation of the palpable errors in the alliedgeneralship was that the Russian commander had been forced by the Czar tocarry out a plan of which he disapproved. The destruction in the ranks ofthe Allies was enormous, for the Russians fought with the same obstinacy asat the Trebbia and at Novi. Austria had lost a second army in addition toits capital; and the one condition which could have steeled its Governmentagainst all thoughts of peace--the certainty of an immediate Prussianattack upon Napoleon--had vanished with the silent disappearance of thePrussian envoy. Two days after the battle, the Emperor Francis met hisconqueror in the open field, and accepted an armistice, which involved thewithdrawal 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 negotiationbegun by Austria would possibly have been broken off if help had beengiven. But the Cabinet of Frederick William had itself determined to evadeits engagements; and as soon as the news of Austerlitz reached Vienna, Haugwitz had gone over heart and soul to the conqueror. While negotiationsfor peace were carried on between France and Austria, a parallelnegotiation was carried on with the envoy of Prussia; and even before theEmperor Francis gave way to the conqueror's demands, Haugwitz signed atreaty with Napoleon at Schönbrunn, by which Prussia, instead of attackingNapoleon, entered into an alliance with him, and received from him inreturn the dominion of Hanover (December 15, 1805). [119] Had Prussia beenthe defeated power at Austerlitz, the Treaty of Schönbrunn could not havemore completely reversed the policy to which King Frederick William hadpledged himself six weeks before. While Haugwitz was making his pact withNapoleon, Hardenberg had been arranging with an English envoy for thecombination of English and Russian forces in Northern Germany. [120]There were some among the King's advisers who declared that the treaty mustbe repudiated, and the envoy disgraced. But the catastrophe of Austerlitz, and the knowledge that the Government of Vienna was entering upon aseparate negotiation, had damped the courage of the men in power. Theconduct of Haugwitz was first excused, then supported, then admired. TheDuke of Brunswick disgraced himself by representing to the FrenchAmbassador in Berlin that the whole course of Prussian policy since thebeginning of the campaign had been an elaborate piece of dissimulation inthe interest of France. The leaders of the patriotic party in the armyfound themselves without influence or following; the mass of the nationlooked on with the same stupid unconcern with which it had viewed everyevent of the last twenty years. The King finally decided that the treaty bywhich Haugwitz had thrown the obligations of his country to the windsshould be ratified, with certain modifications, including one that shouldnominally 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 wasconcluded between France and Austria by the Treaty of Presburg [122](December 27). At the outbreak of the war Napoleon had declared to his armythat he would not again spare Austria, as he had spared her at Campo Formioand at Lunéville; and he kept his word. The Peace of Presburg left theAustrian State in a condition very different from that in which it hademerged from the two previous wars. The Treaty of Campo Formio had onlydeprived Austria of Belgium in order to replace it by Venice; theSettlement of Lunéville had only substituted French for Austrian influencein Western Germany: the Treaty that followed the battle of Austerlitzwrested from the House of Hapsburg two of its most important provinces, andcut 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 toBavaria; the outlying districts belonging to Austria in Western Germanywere ceded to Baden and to Würtemberg. Austria lost 28, 000 square miles ofterritory and 3, 000, 000 inhabitants. The Emperor recognised the sovereigntyand independence of Bavaria, Baden, and Würtemberg, and renounced allrights over those countries as head of the Germanic Body. The Electors ofBavaria and Würtemberg, along with a large increase of territory, receivedthe title of King. The constitution of the Empire ceased to exist even inname. It only remained for its chief, the successor of the Roman Cæsars, toabandon his title at Napoleon's bidding; and on the 6th of August, 1806, anAct, published by Francis II. At Vienna, made an end of the outworn anddishonoured fiction of a Holy Roman Empire. [Naples given to Joseph Bonaparte. ]Though Russia had not made peace with Napoleon, the European Coalition wasat an end. Now, as in 1801, the defeat of the Austrian armies left theNeapolitan Monarchy to settle its account with the conqueror. Naples hadstruck no blow; but it was only through the delays of the Allies that theNeapolitan army had not united with an English and a Russian force in anattack upon Lombardy. What had been pardoned in 1801 was now avenged uponthe Bourbon despot of Naples and his Austrian Queen, who from the first hadshown such bitter enmity to France. Assuming the character of a judge overthe sovereigns of Europe, Napoleon pronounced from Vienna that the House ofNaples had ceased to reign (Dec. 27, 1805). The sentence was immediatelycarried into execution. Ferdinand fled, as he had fled in 1798, to placehimself under the protection of the navy of Great Britain. The vacantthrone was given by Napoleon to his own brother, Joseph Bonaparte. Ferdinand, with the help of the English fleet, maintained himself inSicily. A thread of sea two miles broad was sufficient barrier against thePower which had subdued half the Continent; and no attempt was made eitherby Napoleon or his brother to gain a footing beyond the Straits of Messina. In Southern Italy the same fanatical movements took place among thepeasantry as in the previous period of French occupation. When the armiesof Austria and Russia were crushed, and the continent lay at the mercy ofFrance, Great Britain imagined that it could effect something againstNapoleon in a corner of Italy, with the help of some ferocious villagers. ABritish force, landing near Maida, on the Calabrian coast, in the summer of1806, had the satisfaction of defeating the French at the point of thebayonet, of exciting a horde of priests and brigands to fruitlessbarbarities, 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 thefirst of a series of appointments now made by Napoleon in the character ofEmperor of the West. He began to style himself the new Charlemagne; histhoughts and his language were filled with pictures of universalsovereignty; his authority, as a military despot who had crushed hisneighbours, became strangely confused in his own mind with that half-sacredright of the Cæsars from which the Middle Ages derived all subordinateforms of power. He began to treat the government of the different countriesof Western Europe as a function to be exercised by delegation from himself. Even the territorial grants which under the Feudal System accompaniedmilitary or civil office were now revived and the commander of a Frencharmy-corps or the chief of the French Foreign Office became the titularlord of some obscure Italian principality. [123] Napoleon's own family wereto reign in many lands, as the Bourbons and the Hapsburgs had reignedbefore them, but in strict dependence on their head. Joseph Bonaparte hadnot long been installed at Naples when his brother Louis was compelled toaccept the Crown of Holland. Jerome, for whom no kingdom was at presentvacant, was forced to renounce his American wife, in order that he mightmarry the daughter of the King of Würtemberg. Eugène Beauharnais, Napoleon's step-son, held the office of Viceroy of Italy; Murat, who hadmarried Napoleon's sister, had the German Duchy of Berg. Bernadotte, Talleyrand, and Berthier found themselves suzerains of districts whosenames were almost unknown to them. Out of the revenues of Northern Italy ayearly sum was reserved as an endowment for the generals whom the Emperorchose to raise to princely honours. [Federation of the Rhine. ]More statesmanlike, more practical than Napoleon's dynastic policy, was hisorganisation of Western Germany under its native princes as a dependency ofFrance. The object at which all French politicians had aimed since theoutbreak of the Revolutionary War, the exclusion of both Austria andPrussia from influence in Western Germany, was now completely attained. Thetriumph of French statesmanship, the consummation of two centuries ofGerman discord, was seen in the Act of Federation subscribed by the WesternGerman Sovereigns in the summer of 1806. By this Act the Kings of Bavariaand Würtemberg, the Elector of Baden, and thirteen minor princes, unitedthemselves, in the League known as the Rhenish Confederacy, under theprotection of the French Emperor, and undertook to furnish contingents, amounting to 63, 000 men, in all wars in which the French Empire shouldengage. Their connection with the ancient Germanic Body was completelysevered; the very town in which the Diet of the Empire had held itsmeetings was annexed by one of the members of the Confederacy. TheConfederacy itself, with a population of 8, 000, 000, became for all purposesof war and foreign policy a part of France. Its armies were organised byFrench officers; its frontiers were fortified by French engineers; itstreaties were made for it at Paris. In the domestic changes which tookplace within these States the work of consolidation begun in 1801 wascarried forward with increased vigour. Scores of tiny principalities whichhad escaped dissolution in the earlier movement were now absorbed by theirstronger neighbours. Governments became more energetic, more orderly, moreambitious. The princes who made themselves the vassals of Napoleon assumeda more despotic power over their own subjects. Old constitutional formswhich had imposed some check on the will of the sovereign, like the Estatesof Würtemberg, were contemptuously suppressed; the careless, ineffectiveroutine of the last age gave place to a system of rigorous precisionthroughout the public services. Military service was enforced in countrieshitherto free from it. The burdens of the people became greater, but theywere more fairly distributed. The taxes were more equally levied; justicewas made more regular and more simple. A career both in the army and theoffices of Government was opened to a people to whom the very conception ofpublic life had hitherto been unknown. [No national unity in Germany. ]The establishment of German unity in our own day after a victoriousstruggle with France renders it difficult to imagine the voluntarysubmission of a great part of the race to a French sovereign, or to excusea policy which, like that of 1806, appears the opposite of everythinghonourable and patriotic. But what seems strange now was not strange then. No expression more truly describes the conditions of that period than oneof 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; butall that truly constitutes a nation, the sense of common interest, a commonhistory, pride, and desire, Germany did not possess at all. Bavaria, thestrongest of the western States, attached itself to France from awell-grounded fear of Austrian aggression. To be conquered by Austria wasjust as much conquest for Bavaria as to be conquered by any other Power; itwas no step to German unity, but a step in the aggrandisement of the Houseof Hapsburg. The interests of the Austrian House were not the interests ofGermany any more than they were the interests of Croatia, or of Venice, orof Hungary. Nor, on the other hand, had Prussia yet shown a form ofpolitical life sufficiently attractive to lead the southern States todesire to unite with it. Frederick's genius had indeed made him the hero ofGermany, but his military system was harsh and tyrannical. In the actualcondition of Austria and Prussia, it is doubtful whether the population ofthe minor States would have been happier united to these Powers than undertheir own Governments. Conquest in any case was impossible, and there wasnothing to stimulate to voluntary union. It followed that the smallerStates were destined to remain without a nationality, until the violence ofsome foreign Power rendered weakness an intolerable evil, and forced uponthe 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. Hollandand Switzerland in past centuries detached themselves from the Empire, andbecame independent States, with the highest advantage to themselves. Identity of blood is no more conclusive reason for political union betweenHolstein and the Tyrol than between Great Britain and the United States ofAmerica. The conditions which determine both the true area and the truequality of German unity are, in fact, something more complex than anethnological law or an outburst of patriotic indignation against theFrench. Where local circumstances rendered it possible for a Germandistrict, after detaching itself from the race, to maintain a real nationallife and defend itself from foreign conquest, there it was perhaps betterthat the connection with Germany should be severed; where, as in the greatmajority of minor States, independence resulted only in militaryhelplessness and internal stagnation, there it was better that independenceshould give place to German unity. But the conditions of any tolerableunity were not present so long as Austria was the leading Power. Less wasimperilled in the future of the German people by the submission of thewestern States to France than would have been lost by their permanentincorporation 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 ofNaples, Napoleon's empire reached, but did not overpass, the limits withinwhich the sovereignty of France might probably have been long maintained. It has been usual to draw the line between the sound statesmanship and thehazardous enterprises of Napoleon at the Peace of Lunéville: a justerappreciation of the condition of Western Europe would perhaps includewithin the range of a practical, though mischievous, ideal the whole of thepolitical changes which immediately followed the war of 1805, and whichextended Napoleon's dominion to the Inn and to the Straits of Messina. Italy and Germany were not then what they have since become. The districtsthat lay between the Rhine and the Inn were not more hostile to theforeigner than those Rhenish Provinces which so readily accepted theirunion with France. The more enterprising minds in Italy found that theNapoleonic rule, with all its faults, was superior to anything that Italyhad known in recent times. If we may judge from the feeling with whichNapoleon was regarded in Germany down to the middle of the year 1806, andin Italy down to a much later date, the Empire then founded might have beenpermanently upheld, if Napoleon had abstained from attacking other States. No comparison can be made between the attractive power exercised by thesocial equality of France, its military glory, and its good administration, and the slow and feeble process of assimilation which went on within thedominions of Austria; yet Austria succeeded in uniting a greater variety ofraces than France sought to unite in 1806. The limits of a possible Francewere indeed fixed, and fixed more firmly than by any geographical line, inthe history and national character of two other peoples. France could notpermanently overpower Prussia, and it could not permanently overpowerSpain. But within a boundary-line drawn roughly from the mouth of the Elbeto the head of the Adriatic, that union of national sentiment and materialforce which checks the formation of empires did not exist. The trueturning-point in Napoleon's career was the moment when he passed beyond thepolicy which had planned the Federation of the Rhine, and roused by hisoppression the one State which was still capable of giving a national lifeto Germany. CHAPTER VII. Death of Pitt--Ministry of Fox and Grenville--Napoleon forces Prussia intoWar with England, and then offers Hanover to England--Prussia resolves onWar with Napoleon--State of Prussia--Decline of the Army--Southern Germanywith Napoleon--Austria Neutral--England and Russia about to help Prussia, but not immediately--Campaign of 1806--Battles of Jena and Auerstädt--Ruinof the Prussian Army--Capitulation of Fortresses--Demands of Napoleon--TheWar continues--Berlin Decree--Exclusion of English Goods from theContinent--Russia enters the War--Campaign in Poland and EastPrussia--Eylau--Treaty of Bartenstein--Friedland--Interview atTilsit--Alliance of Napoleon and Alexander--Secret Articles--EnglishExpedition to Denmark--The French enter Portugal--Prussia after the Peaceof Tilsit--Stein's Edict of Emancipation--The Prussian Peasant--Reform ofthe Prussian Army, and Creation of Municipalities--Stein's other Projectsof 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, thestatesman who had been the soul of every European coalition against Francewas carried to the grave. [124] Pitt passed away at a moment of the deepestgloom. His victories at sea appeared to have effected nothing; hiscombinations on land had ended in disaster and ruin. If during Pitt'slifetime a just sense of the greatness and patriotism of all his aimscondoned the innumerable faults of his military administration, thatpersonal ascendancy which might have disarmed criticism even after thedisaster of Austerlitz belonged to no other member of his Ministry. Hiscolleagues felt their position to be hopeless. Though the King attempted toset one of Pitt's subordinates in the vacant place, the prospects of Europewere too dark, the situation of the country too serious, to allow aMinistry to be formed upon the ordinary principles of party-organisation orin accordance with the personal preferences of the monarch. The nationcalled for the union of the ablest men of all parties in the work ofgovernment; 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 theCabinet, and yielding to Grenville the title of Premier. Addington receiveda place in the Ministry, and carried with him the support of a section ofthe 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 theintervention of foreign Powers in favour of the Bourbon monarchy: he hadpalliated the aggressions of the French Republic as the consequences ofunjust and unprovoked attack: even the extinction of liberty in Franceitself had not wholly destroyed his faith in the honour and the generosityof the soldier of the Revolution. In the brief interval of peace which in1802 opened the Continent to English travellers, Fox had been the guest ofthe First Consul. His personal feeling towards the French Government had init nothing of that proud and suspicious hatred which made negotiation sodifficult while Pitt continued in power. It was believed at Paris, and withgood reason, that the first object of Fox on entering upon office would bethe restoration of peace. Napoleon adopted his own plan in view of thechange likely to arise in the spirit of the British Cabinet. It was hishabit, wherever he saw signs of concession, to apply more violent means ofintimidation. In the present instance he determined to work upon thepacific leanings of Fox by adding Prussia to the forces arrayed againstGreat Britain. Prussia, isolated and discredited since the battle ofAusterlitz, might first be driven into hostilities with England, and thenbe made to furnish the very satisfaction demanded by England as the primarycondition 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 thearrival of Count Haugwitz at Paris for the purpose of obtaining somemodification in the treaty which he had signed on behalf of Prussia afterthe battle of Austerlitz. The principal feature in that treaty had been thegrant of Hanover to Prussia by the French Emperor in return for itsalliance. This was the point which above all others excited King FrederickWilliam's fears and scruples. He desired to retain Hanover, but he alsodesired to derive his title rather from its English owner than from itsFrench invader. It was the object of Haugwitz' visit to Paris to obtain analteration in the terms of the treaty which should make the Prussianoccupation of Hanover appear to be merely provisional, and reserve to theKing of England at least a nominal voice in its ultimate transfer. In fullconfidence that Napoleon would agree to such a change, the King of Prussiahad concealed the fact of its cession to himself by Napoleon, and publishedan untruthful proclamation, stating that, in the interests of theHanoverian people themselves, a treaty had been signed and ratified by theFrench and Prussian Governments, in virtue of which Hanover was placedunder the protection of the King of Prussia until peace should be concludedbetween Great Britain and France. The British Government receivedassurances of Prussia's respect for the rights of King George III. : thebitter truth that the treaty between France and Prussia contained no singleword reserving the rights of the Elector, and that the very idea ofqualifying the absolute cession of Hanover was an afterthought, lay hiddenin the conscience of the Prussian Cabinet. Never had a Government morecompletely placed itself at the mercy of a pitiless enemy. Count Haugwitz, on reaching Paris, was received by Napoleon with a storm of invectiveagainst the supposed partisans of England at the Prussian Court. Napoleondeclared that the ill faith of Prussia had made an end even of thatmiserable pact which had been extorted after Austerlitz, and insisted thatKing Frederick William should openly defy Great Britain by closing theports of Northern Germany to British vessels, and by declaring himselfendowed by Napoleon with Hanover in virtue of Napoleon's own right ofconquest. Haugwitz signed a second and more humiliating treaty embodyingthese conditions; and the Prussian Government, now brought into the depthsof contempt, but unready for immediate war, executed the orders of itsmaster. [125] A proclamation, stating that Prussia had received theabsolute dominion of Hanover from its conqueror Napoleon, gave the lie tothe earlier announcements of King Frederick William. A decree was publishedexcluding the ships of England from the ports of Prussia and from those ofHanover itself (March 28, 1806). It was promptly answered by the seizure offour hundred Prussian vessels in British harbours, and by the totalextinction 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. Thefirst condition required by Great Britain was the restitution of Hanover toKing George III. It was unhesitatingly granted by Napoleon. [127] Thus wasPrussia to be mocked of its prey, after it had been robbed of all itshonour. For the present, however, no rumour of this part of the negotiationreached Berlin. The negotiation itself, which dragged on through severalmonths, turned chiefly upon the future ownership of Sicily. Napoleon had inthe first instance agreed that Sicily should be left in the hands ofFerdinand of Naples, who had never been expelled from it by the French. Finding, however, that the Russian envoy d'Oubril, who had been sent toParis with indefinite instructions by the Emperor Alexander, was willing toseparate the cause of Russia from that of England, and to sign a separatepeace, Napoleon retracted his promise relating to Sicily, and demanded thatthis island should be ceded to his brother Joseph. D'Oubril signedPreliminaries on behalf of Russia on the 20th of July, and left the Englishnegotiator to obtain what terms he could. Fox had been willing to recognisethe order of things established by Napoleon on the Italian mainland; hewould even have ceded Sicily, if Russia had urged this in a jointnegotiation; but he was too good a statesman to be cheated out of Sicily bya mere trick. He recalled the English envoy from Paris, and waited for thejudgment of the Czar upon the conduct of his own representative. The Czardisavowed d'Oubril's negotiations, and repudiated the treaty which hebrought back to St. Petersburg. Napoleon had thus completely overreachedhimself, and, instead of severing Great Britain and Russia by separateagreements, had only irritated and displeased them both. The negotiationswent no further; their importance lay only in the effect which theyproduced upon Prussia, when Napoleon's offer of Hanover to Great Britainbecame 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'sfeet, Prussia had been subjected to an unbroken series of insults andwrongs. Murat, as Duke of Berg, had seized upon territory allotted toPrussia in the distribution of the ecclesiastical lands; the establishmentof a North German Confederacy under Prussian leadership was suggested byNapoleon himself, only to be summarily forbidden as soon as Prussiaattempted to carry the proposal into execution. There was scarcely acourtier in Berlin who did not feel that the yoke of the French had becomepast endurance; even Haugwitz himself now considered war as a question oftime. The patriotic party in the capital and the younger officers of thearmy bitterly denounced the dishonoured Government, and urged the King tostrike for the credit of his country. [128] In the midst of this deepeningagitation, a despatch arrived from Lucchesini, the Prussian Ambassador atParis (August 7), relating the offer of Hanover made by Napoleon to theBritish Government. For nearly three months Lucchesini had caught noglimpse of the negotiations between Great Britain and France; suddenly, onentering into conversation with the English envoy at a dinner-party, helearnt the blow which Napoleon had intended to deal to Prussia. Lucchesiniinstantly communicated with the Court of Berlin; but his despatch wasopened by Talleyrand's agents before it left Paris, and the FrenchGovernment was thus placed on its guard against the sudden explosion ofPrussian wrath. Lucchesini's despatch had indeed all the importance thatTalleyrand attributed to it. It brought that spasmodic access of resolutionto the irresolute King which Bernadotte's violation of his territory hadbrought in the year before. The whole Prussian army was ordered to preparefor war; Brunswick was summoned to form plans of a campaign; and appealsfor help were sent to Vienna, to St. Petersburg, and even to the hostileCourt of London. [Condition of Prussia. ][Ministers not in the King's Cabinet. ]The condition of Prussia at this critical moment was one which filled withthe deepest alarm those few patriotic statesmen who were not blinded bynational vanity or by slavery to routine. The foreign policy of Prussia in1805, miserable as it was, had been but a single manifestation of thehelplessness, the moral deadness that ran through every part of itsofficial and public life. Early in the year 1806 a paper was drawn up byStein, [129] exposing, in language seldom used by a statesman, thecharacter of the men by whom Frederick William was surrounded, anddeclaring that nothing but a speedy change of system could save thePrussian State from utter downfall and ruin. Two measures of immediatenecessity were specified by Stein, the establishment of a responsiblecouncil of Ministers, and the removal of Haugwitz and all his friends frompower. In the existing system of government the Ministers were not themonarch's confidential advisers. The Ministers performed their work inisolation from one another; the Cabinet, or confidential council of theKing, was composed of persons holding no public function, and free from allpublic responsibility. No guarantee existed that the policy of the countrywould be the same for two days together. The Ministers were often unawareof the turn that affairs had taken in the Cabinet; and the history ofHaugwitz' mission to Austerlitz showed that an individual might commit theState to engagements the very opposite of those which he was sent tocontract. The first necessity for Prussia was a responsible governingcouncil: with such a council, formed from the heads of the actualAdministration, the reform of the army and of the other branches of thepublic 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 ofNapoleon had revolutionised the art of war, was nothing but the army ofFrederick the Great grown twenty years older. [130] It was obvious to allthe world that its commissariat and marching-regulations belonged to a timewhen weeks were allowed for movements now reckoned by days; but there werecircumstances less conspicuous from the outside which had paralysed thevery spirit of soldiership, and prepared the way for a military collapse inwhich defeats in the field were the least dishonourable event. Old age hadrendered the majority of the higher officers totally unfit for militaryservice. In that barrack-like routine of officialism which passed inPrussia for the wisdom of government, the upper ranks of the army formed aspecies of administrative corps in time of peace, and received for theircivil employment double the pay that they could earn in actual war. Agedmen, with the rank of majors, colonels, and generals, mouldered in theoffices of country towns, and murmured at the very mention of a war, whichwould deprive them of half their salaries. Except in the case of certainprinces, who were placed in high rank while young, and of a few vigorouspatriarchs like Blücher, all the energy and military spirit of the army wasto be found in men who had not passed the grade of captain. The higherofficers were, on an average, nearly double the age of French officers ofcorresponding rank. [131] Of the twenty-four lieutenant-generals, eighteenwere over sixty; the younger ones, with a single exception, were princes. Five out of the seven commanders of infantry were over seventy; even thesixteen cavalry generals included only two who had not reached sixty-five. These were the men who, when the armies of Prussia were beaten in thefield, surrendered its fortresses with as little concern as if they hadbeen receiving the French on a visit of ceremony. Their vanity was aslamentable as their faint-heartedness. "The army of his Majesty, " saidGeneral Rüchel on parade, "possesses several generals equal to Bonaparte. "Faults of another character belonged to the generation which had grown upsince Frederick. The arrogance and licentiousness of the younger officerswas such that their ruin on the field of Jena caused positive joy to agreat part of the middle classes of Prussia. But, however hateful theirmanners, and however rash their self-confidence, the vices of these youngermen had no direct connection with the disasters of 1806. The gallants whosharpened their swords on the window-sill of the French Ambassador receiveda bitter lesson from the plebeian troopers of Murat; but they showedcourage in disaster, and subsequently gave to their country many officersof ability and honour. [Common soldiers. ]What was bad in the higher grades of the army was not retrieved by anyexcellence on the part of the private soldier. The Prussian army wasrecruited in part from foreigners, but chiefly from Prussian serfs, whowere compelled to serve. Men remained with their regiments till old age;the rough character of the soldiers and the frequency of crimes anddesertions occasioned the use of brutal punishments, which made themilitary service an object of horror to the better part of the middle andlower classes. The soldiers themselves, who could be flogged and drilledinto high military perfection by a great general like Frederick, felt asurly indifference to their present taskmasters, and were ready to desertin masses to their homes as soon as a defeat broke up the regimental musterand roll-call. A proposal made in the previous year to introduce thatsystem of general service which has since made Prussia so great a militarypower was rejected by a committee of generals, on the ground that it "wouldconvert the most formidable army of Europe into a militia. " But whetherPrussia entered the war with a militia or a regular army, under the men whoheld command in 1806 it could have met with but one fate. Neither soldierynor fortresses could have saved a kingdom whose generals knew only how tocapitulate. [Southern Germany. Execution of Palm, Aug. 26. ]All southern Germany was still in Napoleon's hands. As the probability of awar with Prussia became greater and greater, Napoleon had tightened hisgrasp upon the Confederate States. Publications originating among thepatriotic circles of Austria were beginning to appeal to the German peopleto unite against a foreign oppressor. An anonymous pamphlet, entitled"Germany in its Deep Humiliation, " was sold by various booksellers inBavaria, among others by Palm, a citizen of Nuremberg. There is no evidencethat Palm was even acquainted with the contents of the pamphlet; but as inthe case of the Duke of Enghien, two years before, Napoleon had required avictim to terrify the House of Bourbon, so now he required a victim toterrify those who among the German people might be inclined to listen tothe call of patriotism. Palm was not too obscure for the new Charlemagne. The innocent and unoffending man, innocent even of the honourable crime ofattempting to save his country, was dragged before a tribunal of Frenchsoldiers, and executed within twenty-four hours, in pursuance of theimperative orders of Napoleon (August 26). The murder was an unnecessaryone, for the Bavarians and the Würtembergers were in fact content with theyoke they bore; its only effect was to arouse among a patient andhome-loving class the doubt whether the German citizen and his family mightnot after all have some interest in the preservation of nationalindependence. [Austria neutral. England and Russia can give Prussia no prompt help. ]When, several years later, the oppressions of Napoleon had given to a greatpart of the German race at least the transient nobleness of a realpatriotism, the story of Palm's death was one of those that kindled thebitterest sense of wrong: at the time, it exercised no influence upon thecourse of political events. Southern Germany remained passive, and suppliedNapoleon with a reserve of soldiers: Prussia had to look elsewhere forallies. Its prospects of receiving support were good, if the war shouldprove a protracted one, but not otherwise. Austria, crippled by thedisasters of 1805, could only hope to renew the struggle if victory shoulddeclare against Napoleon. In other quarters help might be promised, but itcould not be given at the time and at the place where it was needed. TheCzar proffered the whole forces of his Empire; King George III. Forgave thedespoilers of his patrimony when he found that they really intended tofight the French; but the troops of Alexander lay far in the East, and theaction of England in any Continental war was certain to be dilatory andineffective. Prussia was exposed to the first shock of the war alone. Inthe existing situation of the French armies, a blow unusually swift andcrushing 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 theRhenish Confederate States, lay between the Main and the Inn. The lastweeks of peace, in which the Prussian Government imagined themselves to bedeceiving the enemy while they pushed forward their own preparations, wereemployed by Napoleon in quietly concentrating this vast force upon the Main(September, 1806). Napoleon himself appeared to be absorbed in friendlynegotiations with General Knobelsdorff, the new Prussian Ambassador atParis. In order to lull Napoleon's suspicions, Haugwitz had recalledLucchesini from Paris, and intentionally deceived his successor as to thereal designs of the Prussian Cabinet. Knobelsdorff confidentially informedthe 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 hislieutenants in Southern Germany executed those unobserved movements whichwere to collect the entire army upon the Upper Main. In the meantime theadvisers of King Frederick William supposed themselves to have madeeverything ready for a vigorous offensive. Divisions of the Prussian army, numbering nearly 130, 000 men, were concentrated in the neighbourhood ofJena, on the Saale. The bolder spirits in the military council pressed foran immediate advance through the Thuringian Forest, and for an attack uponwhat were supposed to be the scattered detachments of the French inBavaria. Military pride and all the traditions of the Great Frederickimpelled Prussia to take the offensive rather than to wait for the enemyupon the strong line of the Elbe. Political motives pointed in the samedirection, for the support of Saxony was doubtful if once the French werepermitted to approach Dresden. [Confusion of the Prussians. ]On the 23rd of September King Frederick William arrived at thehead-quarters of the army, which were now at Naumburg, on the Saale. Buthis presence brought no controlling mind to the direction of affairs. Councils of war held on the two succeeding days only revealed the discordand the irresolution of the military leaders of Prussia. Brunswick, thecommander-in-chief, sketched the boldest plans, and shrank from theresponsibility of executing them. Hohenlohe, who commanded the left wing, lost no opportunity of opposing his superior; the suggestions of officersof real ability, like Scharnhorst, chief of the staff, fell unnoticed amongthe wrangling of pedants and partisans. Brunswick, himself a man of greatintelligence though of little resolution, saw the true quality of the menwho surrounded him. "Rüchel, " he cried, "is a tin trumpet, Möllendorf adotard, Kalkreuth a cunning trickster. The generals of division are a setof stupid journeymen. Are these the people with whom one can make war onNapoleon? No. The best service that I could render to the King would be topersuade him to keep the peace. " [132] It was ultimately decided, after twodays of argument, that the army should advance through the ThuringianForest, while feints on the right and left deceived the French as to itsreal direction. The diplomatists, however, who were mad enough to thinkthat an ultimatum which they had just despatched to Paris would bringNapoleon on to his knees, insisted that the opening of hostilities shouldbe deferred till the 8th of October, when the term of grace which they hadgiven to Napoleon would expire. [Prussians at Erfurt, Oct. 4. ]A few days after this decision had been formed, intelligence arrived athead-quarters that Napoleon himself was upon the Rhine. Before theultimatum reached the hands of General Knobelsdorff in Paris, Napoleon hadquitted the capital, and the astonished Ambassador could only send theultimatum in pursuit of him after he had gone to place himself at the headof 200, 000 men. The news that Napoleon was actually in Mainz confounded thediplomatists in the Prussian camp, and produced an order for an immediateadvance. This was the wisest as well as the boldest determination that hadyet been formed; and an instant assault upon the French divisions on theMain might perhaps even now have given the Prussian army the superiority inthe first encounter. But some fatal excuse was always at hand to justifyBrunswick in receding from his resolutions. A positive assurance wasbrought into camp by Lucchesini that Napoleon had laid his plans forremaining on the defensive on the south of the Thuringian Forest. If thiswere true, there might yet be time to improve the plan of the campaign; andon the 4th of October, when every hour was of priceless value, the forwardmarch was arrested, and a new series of deliberations began at thehead-quarters at Erfurt. In the council held on the 4th of October, a totalchange in the plan of operations was urged by Hohenlohe's staff. Theycontended, and rightly, that it was the design of Napoleon to pass thePrussian army on the east by the valley of the Saale, and to cut it offfrom the roads to the Elbe. The delay in Brunswick's movements had in factbrought the French within striking distance of the Prussian communications. Hohenlohe urged the King to draw back the army from Erfurt to the Saale, oreven to the east of it, in order to cover the roads to Leipzig and theElbe. His theory of Napoleon's movements, which was the correct one, wasadopted by the council, and the advance into the Thuringian Forest wasabandoned; but instead of immediately marching eastwards with the wholearmy, the generals wasted two more days in hesitations and half-measures. At length it was agreed that Hohenlohe should take post at Jena, and thatthe mass of the army should fall back to Weimar, with the object ofstriking a blow at some undetermined point on the line of Napoleon'sadvance. [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 unboundedridicule and contempt, was now moving along the roads that lead fromBamberg and Baireuth to the Upper Saale. On the 10th of October, as thedivision of Lannes was approaching Saalfeld, it was attacked by PrinceLouis Ferdinand at the head of Hohenlohe's advanced guard. The attack wasmade against Hohenlohe's orders. It resulted in the total rout of thePrussian force. Though the numbers engaged were small, the loss ofmagazines and artillery, and the death of Prince Louis Ferdinand, the heroof the war-party, gave to this first repulse the moral effect of a greatmilitary disaster. Hohenlohe's troops at Jena were seized with panic;numbers of men threw away their arms and dispersed; the drivers ofartillery-waggons and provision-carts cut the traces and rode off withtheir horses. Brunswick, however, and the main body of the army, were nowat Weimar, close at hand; and if Brunswick had decided to fight a greatbattle at Jena, the Prussians might have brought nearly 90, 000 men intoaction. But the plans of the irresolute commander were again changed. Itwas resolved to fall back upon Magdeburg and the Elbe. Brunswick himselfmoved northwards to Naumburg; Hohenlohe was ordered to hold the French incheck at Jena until this movement was completed. Napoleon reached Jena. Hehad no intelligence of Brunswick's retreat, and imagined the mass of thePrussian army to be gathered round Hohenlohe, on the plateau before him. Hesent Davoust, with a corps 27, 000 strong, to outflank the enemy by a marchin the direction of Naumburg, and himself prepared to make the attack infront with 90, 000 men, a force more than double Hohenlohe's real army. Theattack was made on the 14th of October. Hohenlohe's army was dashed topieces by Napoleon, and fled in wild disorder. Davoust's weak corps, whichhad not expected to meet with any important forces until it fell uponHohenlohe'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 givento the Prussian commander an extraordinary chance of retrieving whatstrategy had lost. A battle conducted with common military skill would notonly have destroyed Davoust, but have secured, at least for the largerportion of the Prussian forces, a safe retreat to Leipzig or the Elbe. TheFrench general, availing himself of steep and broken ground, defeatednumbers nearly double his own through the confusion of his adversary, whosent up detachment after detachment instead of throwing himself uponDavoust with his entire strength. The fighting was as furious on thePrussian side as its conduct was unskilful. King Frederick William, who ledthe earlier cavalry charges, had two horses killed under him. Brunswick wasmortally wounded. Many of the other generals were killed or disabled. Thereremained, however, a sufficient number of unbroken regiments to preservesome order in the retreat until the army came into contact with the remnantof Hohenlohe's forces, flying for their lives before the cavalry of Murat. Then all hope was lost. The fugitive mass struck panic and confusion intothe retreating columns; and with the exception of a few regiments whichgathered round well-known leaders, the soldiers threw away their arms andspread over the country in headlong rout. There was no line of retreat, andno rallying-point. The disaster of a single day made an end of the Prussianarmy as a force capable of meeting the enemy in the field. A great part ofthe troops was captured by the pursuing enemy during the next few days. Theregiments which preserved their coherence were too weak to make any attemptto check Napoleon's advance, and could only hope to save themselves byescaping 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, hadarrived at the head-quarters of the King of Prussia, claiming therestoration of Hanover, and bearing an offer of the friendship and supportof Great Britain. At the moment when the Prussian monarchy was on the pointof being hurled to the ground, its Government might have been thoughtlikely to welcome any security that it should not be abandoned in itsutmost need. Haugwitz, however, was at head-quarters, dictating lyingbulletins, and perplexing the generals with ridiculous arguments of policyuntil the French actually opened fire. When the English envoy made knownhis arrival, he found that no one would transact business with him. Haugwitz had determined to evade all negotiations until the battle had beenfought. He was unwilling to part with Hanover, and he hoped that a victoryover Napoleon would enable him to meet Lord Morpeth with a boldercountenance on the following day. When that day arrived, Ministers anddiplomatists were flying headlong over the country. The King made hisescape to Weimar, and wrote to Napoleon, begging for an armistice; but thearmistice was refused, and the pursuit of the broken army was followed upwithout a moment's pause. The capital offered no safe halting-place; andFrederick William only rested when he had arrived at Graudenz, upon theVistula. 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 toits fate. The retreat was badly conducted; alternate halts and strainedmarches discouraged the best of the soldiers. As the men passed theirnative villages they abandoned the famishing and broken-spirited columns;and at the end of a fortnight's disasters Prince Hohenlohe surrendered tohis 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 thecatastrophe of Jena, was moving in the rear of Hohenlohe with aconsiderable force which his courage had gathered around him. On learningof Hohenlohe's capitulation, he instantly reversed his line of march, andmade for the Hanoverian fortress of Hameln, in order to continue the war inthe rear of the French. Overwhelming forces, however, cut off his retreatto the Elbe; he was hemmed in on the east and on the west; and nothingremained for him but to throw himself into the neutral town of Lübeck, andfight 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 abattle-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 drivenout, desperately fighting, and pent in between the Danish frontier and thesea. Here, surrounded by overpowering numbers, without food, withoutammunition, he capitulated on the 7th of November, after his courage andresolution had done everything that could ennoble both general and soldiersin 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 toDavoust, whose victory at Auerstädt had in fact far surpassed his own. Davoust entered Berlin without resistance on the 25th of October; Napoleonhimself went to Potsdam, and carried off the sword and the scarf that layupon the grave of Frederick the Great. Two days after Davoust, the Emperormade his own triumphal entry into the capital. He assumed the part of theprotector of the people against the aristocracy, ordering the formation ofa municipal body and of a civic guard for the city of Berlin. The militaryaristocracy he treated with the bitterest hatred and contempt. "I will makethat noblesse, " he cried, "so poor that they shall beg their bread. " Thedisaster of Jena had indeed fearfully punished the insolence with which theofficers of the army had treated the rest of the nation. The Guards weremarched past the windows of the citizens of Berlin, a miserable troop ofcaptives; soldiers of rank who remained in the city had to attend upon theFrench Emperor to receive his orders. But calamity was only beginning. Theoverthrow of Jena had been caused by faults of generalship, and cast nostain upon the courage of the officers; the surrender of the Prussianfortresses, which began on the day when the French entered Berlin, attachedthe utmost personal disgrace to their commanders. Even after thedestruction of the army in the field, Prussia's situation would not havebeen hopeless if the commanders of fortresses had acted on the ordinaryrules of military duty. Magdeburg and the strongholds upon the Oder weresufficiently armed and provisioned to detain the entire French army, and togive time to the King to collect upon the Vistula a force as numerous asthat 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'sdefences. The very object for which fortresses exist was forgotten; and thefact that one army had been beaten in the field was made a reason forpermitting the enemy to forestall the organisation of another. Spandausurrendered on the 25th of October, Stettin on the 29th. These were placesof no great strength; but the next fortress to capitulate, Küstrin on theOder, was in full order for a long siege. It was surrendered by the olderofficers, amidst the curses of the subalterns and the common soldiers: theartillerymen had to be dragged from their guns by force. Magdeburg, with agarrison of 24, 000 men and enormous supplies, fell before a French forcenot numerous enough to beleaguer it (Nov. 8). [Napoleon's demands. ]Neither Napoleon himself nor any one else in Europe could have foreseensuch conduct on the part of the Prussian commanders. The unexpected seriesof capitulations made him demand totally different terms of peace fromthose which he had offered after the battle of Jena. A week after thevictory, Napoleon had demanded, as the price of peace, the cession ofPrussia's territory west of the Elbe, with the exception of the town ofMagdeburg, and the withdrawal of Prussia from the affairs of Germany. Theseterms were communicated to King Frederick William; he accepted them, andsent Lucchesini to Berlin to negotiate for peace upon this basis. Lucchesini had scarcely reached the capital when the tidings arrived ofHohenlohe's capitulation, followed by the surrender of Stettin and Küstrin. The Prussian envoy now sought in vain to procure Napoleon's ratification ofthe terms which he had himself proposed. No word of peace could beobtained: an armistice was all that the Emperor would grant, and the termson which the armistice was offered rose with each new disaster to thePrussian arms. On the fall of Magdeburg becoming known, Napoleon demandedthat the troops of Prussia should retire behind the Vistula, and surrenderevery fortress that they still retained, with the single exception ofKönigsberg. Much as Prussia had lost, it would have cost Napoleon a secondcampaign to make himself master of what he now asked; but to such a depthhad the Prussian Government sunk, that Lucchesini actually signed aconvention at Charlottenburg (November 16), surrendering to Napoleon, inreturn for an armistice, the entire list of uncaptured fortresses, including Dantzig and Thorn on the Lower Vistula, Breslau, with the rest ofthe untouched defences of Silesia, Warsaw and Praga in Prussian Poland, andColberg 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 fromhis dominions as completely as if the last soldier of Prussia had gone intocaptivity. The patriotic party, headed by Stein, pleaded for the honour ofthe country against the miserable Cabinet which now sought to complete itswork of ruin. Assurances of support arrived from St. Petersburg. The Kingdetermined to reject the treaty, and to continue the war to the lastextremity. Haugwitz hereupon tendered his resignation, and terminated apolitical career disastrous beyond any recorded in modern times. For amoment, it seemed as if the real interests of the country were at length tobe recognised in the appointment of Stein to one of the three principaloffices of State. But the King still remained blind to the necessity ofunity in the government, and angrily dismissed Stein when he refused tohold the Ministry if representatives of the old Cabinet and of thepeace-party were to have places beside him. The King's act was illcalculated to serve the interests of Prussia, either at home or abroad. Stein was the one Minister on whom the patriotic party of Prussia and theGovernments of Europe could rely with perfect confidence. [134] Hisdismissal at this crisis proved the incurable poverty of FrederickWilliam's mental nature; it also proved that, so long as any hope remainedof saving the Prussian State by the help of the Czar of Russia, thepatriotic party had little chance of creating a responsible government athome. [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 apolitical system corresponding to that which he had imposed upon SouthernGermany after the victory of Austerlitz. The Houses of Brunswick andHesse-Cassel were deposed, in order to create a new client-kingdom ofWestphalia; Saxony, with Weimar and four other duchies, entered theConfederation of the Rhine. A measure more widely affecting the Continentof Europe dated from the last days of the Emperor's residence at thePrussian capital. On the 21st of November, 1806, a decree was published atBerlin prohibiting the inhabitants of the entire European territory alliedwith France from carrying on any commerce with Great Britain, or admittingany 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 theBritish Empire included everything from the Vistula to the southern pointof Dalmatia, with the exception of Denmark and Portugal and the Austrianport of Trieste. All property belonging to English subjects, allmerchandise of British origin, whoever might be the owner, was ordered tobe confiscated: no vessel that had even touched at a British port waspermitted to enter a Continental harbour. It was the fixed purpose ofNapoleon 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 Decreefell, however, more upon Napoleon's own subjects than upon Great Britain. The exclusion of British ships from the harbours of the allies of Francewas no more than the exercise of a common right in war; even the seizure ofthe property of Englishmen, though a violation of international law, boreat least an analogy to the seizure of French property at sea; but theconfiscation of the merchandise of German and Dutch traders, after it hadlain for weeks in their own warehouses, solely because it had been producedin the British Empire, was an act of flagrant and odious oppression. Thefirst result of the Berlin Decree was to fill the trading towns of NorthGermany with French revenue-officers and inquisitors. Peaceable tradesmenbegan to understand the import of the battle of Jena when French gendarmesthrew their stock into the common furnace, or dragged them to prison forpossessing a hogshead of Jamaica sugar or a bale of Leeds cloth. Themerchants who possessed a large quantity of English or colonial wares werethe heaviest sufferers by Napoleon's commercial policy: the public foundthe markets supplied by American and Danish traders, until, at a laterperiod, the British Government adopted reprisals, and prevented the shipsof neutrals from entering any port from which English vessels wereexcluded. Then every cottage felt the stress of the war. But if the fullconsequences of the Berlin Decree were delayed until the retaliation ofGreat Britain reached the dimensions of Napoleon's own tyranny, the Decreeitself marked on the part of Napoleon the assumption of a power in conflictwith the needs and habits of European life. Like most of the schemes ofNapoleon subsequent to the victories of 1806, it transgressed the limits ofpractical statesmanship, and displayed an ambition no longer raised abovemere tyranny by its harmony with forms of progress and with the bettertendencies of the age. [Napoleon and the Poles. ]Immediately after signing the Berlin Decree, Napoleon quitted the Prussiancapital (Nov. 25). The first act of the war had now closed. The PrussianState was overthrown; its territory as far as the Vistula lay at the mercyof the invader; its King was a fugitive at Königsberg, at the easternextremity of his dominions. The second act of the war began with therejection of the armistice which had been signed by Lucchesini, and withthe entry of Russia into the field against Napoleon. The scene ofhostilities was henceforward in Prussian Poland and in the Baltic Provincelying between the lower Vistula and the Russian frontier. Napoleon enteredPoland, as he had entered Italy ten years before, with the pretence ofrestoring liberty to an enslaved people. Kosciusko's name was fraudulentlyattached to a proclamation summoning the Polish nation to arms; andalthough Kosciusko himself declined to place any trust in the betrayer ofVenice, thousands of his countrymen flocked to Napoleon's standard, oranticipated his arrival by capturing and expelling the Prussian detachmentsscattered through their country. Promises of the restoration of Polishindependence were given by Napoleon in abundance; but the cause of Polandwas the last to attract the sympathy of a man who considered the sacrificeof the weak to the strong to be the first principle of all good policy. Tohave attempted the restoration of Polish independence would have been tomake permanent enemies of Russia and Prussia for the sake of an ally weakerthan either of them. The project was not at this time seriously entertainedby Napoleon. He had no motive to face a work of such enormous difficulty asthe creation of a solid political order among the most unpractical race inEurope. He was glad to enrol the Polish nobles among his soldiers; he knewthe value of their enthusiasm, and took pains to excite it; but, when thebattle 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 asa 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, inNovember, 1806, Napoleon entered Polish territory. Their movements wereslow, their numbers insufficient. At the moment when all the forces of theEmpire were required for the struggle against Napoleon, troops were beingsent into Moldavia against the Sultan. Nor were the Russian commandersanxious to save what still remained of the Prussian kingdom. The disastersof Prussia, like those of Austria at the beginning of the campaign of 1805, excited less sympathy than contempt; and the inclination of the Czar'sgenerals was rather to carry on the war upon the frontier of their owncountry than to commit themselves to a distant campaign with a despisedally. Lestocq, who commanded the remnant of the Prussian army upon theVistula, was therefore directed to abandon his position at Thorn and tomove eastwards. The French crossed the Vistula higher up the river; and bythe middle of December the armies of France and Russia lay opposite to oneanother in the neighbourhood of Pultusk, upon the Ukra and the Narew. Thefirst encounter, though not of a decisive character, resulted in theretreat of the Russians. Heavy rains and fathomless mud checked thepursuit. War seemed almost impossible in such a country and such a climate;and Napoleon ordered his troops to take up their winter quarters along theVistula, believing that nothing more could be attempted on either sidebefore 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 andhalf-mad Kamenski, [136] who had opened the campaign, to a general betterqualified to cope with Napoleon. Bennigsen, the new commander-in-chief, wasan active and daring soldier. Though a German by birth, his soldiership wasof that dogged and resolute order which suits the character of Russiantroops; and, in the mid-winter of 1806, Napoleon found beyond the Vistulasuch an enemy as he had never encountered in Western Europe. Bennigsenconceived the design of surprising the extreme left of the French line, where Ney's division lay stretched towards the Baltic, far to thenorth-east of Napoleon's main body. Forest and marsh concealed the movementof the Russian troops, and both Ney and Bernadotte narrowly escapeddestruction. Napoleon now broke up his winter quarters, and marched ingreat force against Bennigsen in the district between Königsberg and themouth of the Vistula. Bennigsen manoeuvred and retired until his troopsclamoured for battle. He then took up a position at Eylau, and waited forthe attack of the French. The battle of Eylau, fought in the midst ofsnowstorms on the 8th of February, 1807, was unlike anything that Napoleonhad ever yet seen. His columns threw themselves in vain upon the Russianinfantry. Augereau's corps was totally destroyed in the beginning of thebattle. The Russians pressed upon the ground where Napoleon himself stood;and, although the superiority of the Emperor's tactics at length turned thescale, and the French began a forward movement, their advance was stoppedby the arrival of Lestocq and a body of 13, 000 Prussians. At the close ofthe engagement 30, 000 men lay wounded or dead in the snow; the positions ofthe armies remained what they had been in the morning. Bennigsen'slieutenants urged him to renew the combat on the next day; but theconfusion of the Russian army was such that the French, in spite of theirlosses and discouragement, would probably have gained the victory in asecond battle; [137] and the Russian commander determined to fall backtowards Königsberg, content with having disabled the enemy and givenNapoleon such a check as he had never received before. Napoleon, who hadannounced his intention of entering Königsberg in triumph, fell back uponthe 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 Barrenstein between Russia, Prussia, England, and Sweden. April, 1807. ]The warfare of the next few months was confined to the reduction of thePrussian fortresses which had not yet fallen into the hands of the French. Dantzig surrendered after a long and difficult siege; the little town ofColberg upon the Pomeranian coast prolonged a defence as honourable to itsinhabitants as to the military leaders. Two soldiers of singularlydifferent character, each destined to play a conspicuous part in comingyears, first distinguished themselves in the defence of Colberg. Gneisenau, a scientific soldier of the highest order, the future guide of Blücher'svictorious campaigns, commanded the garrison; Schill, a cavalry officer ofadventurous daring, gathered round him a troop of hardy riders, andharassed the French with an audacity as perplexing to his militarysuperiors as to the enemy. The citizens, led by their burgomaster, threwthemselves into the work of defence with a vigour in striking contrast tothe general apathy of the Prussian people; and up to the end of the warColberg remained uncaptured. Obscure as Colberg was, its defence might havegiven a new turn to the war if the Government of Great Britain had listenedto the entreaties of the Emperor Alexander, and despatched a force to theBaltic to threaten the communications of Napoleon. The task was not adifficult one for a Power which could find troops, as England now did, tosend to Constantinople, to Alexandria, and to Buenos Ayres; but militaryjudgment was more than ever wanting to the British Cabinet. Fox had died atthe beginning of the war; his successors in Grenville's Ministry, thoughthey possessed a sound theory of foreign policy, [138] were not fortunatein its application, nor were they prompt enough in giving financial help totheir allies. Suddenly, however, King George quarrelled with his Ministersupon the ancient question of Catholic Disabilities, and drove them fromoffice (March 24). The country sided with the King. A Ministry came intopower, composed of the old supporters of Pitt, men, with the exception ofCanning and Castlereagh, of narrow views and poor capacity, headed by theDuke of Portland, who, in 1793, had given his name to the section of theWhig party which joined Pitt. The foreign policy of the new Cabinet, whichconcealed its total lack of all other statesmanship, returned to the lineslaid down by Pitt in 1805. Negotiations were opened with Russia for thedespatch of an English army to the Baltic; arms and money were promised tothe Prussian King. For a moment it seemed as if the Powers of Europe hadnever been united in so cordial a league. The Czar embraced the King ofPrussia in the midst of his soldiers, and declared with tears that the twoshould stand or fall together. The Treaty of Bartenstein, signed in April1807 pledged the Courts of St. Petersburg, Stockholm, and Berlin to a jointprosecution of the war, and the common conclusion of peace. Great Britainjoined the pact, and prepared to fulfil its part in the conflict upon theBaltic. But the task was a difficult one, for Grenville's Ministry haddispersed the fleet of transports; and, although Canning determined uponthe Baltic expedition in April, two months passed before the fleet wasready to sail. [Summer campaign in East Prussia, 1807. ][Battle of Friedland. ]In the meantime army upon army was moving to the support of Napoleon, fromFrance, from Spain, from Holland, and from Southern Germany. The fortressesof the Elbe and the Oder, which ought to have been his barrier, had becomehis base of operations; and so enormous were the forces at his command, that, after manning every stronghold in Central Europe, he was able at thebeginning of June to bring 140, 000 men into the field beyond the Vistula. The Russians had also received reinforcements, but Bennigsen's army wasstill weaker than that of the enemy. It was Bennigsen, nevertheless, whobegan the attack; and now, as in the winter campaign, he attempted tosurprise and crush the northern corps of Ney. The same general movement ofthe French army followed as in January. The Russian commander, outnumberedby the French, retired to his fortified camp at Heilsberg. After sustaininga bloody repulse in an attack upon this position, Napoleon drew Bennigsenfrom his lair by marching straight upon Königsberg. Bennigsen supposedhimself to be in time to deal with an isolated corps; he found himself faceto 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 (June14). The victory of Friedland brought the French into Königsberg. Bennigsenretired behind the Niemen; and on the 19th of June an armistice closed theoperations of the hostile forces upon the frontiers of Russia. [139]The situation of Bennigsen's army was by no means desperate. His men hadnot been surrounded; they had lost scarcely any prisoners; they felt nofear of the French. But the general exaggerated the seriousness of hisdefeat. Like most of his officers, he was weary of the war, and felt nosympathy with the motives which led the Emperor to fight for the commoncause of Europe. The politicians who surrounded Alexander urged him towithdraw Russia from a conflict in which she had nothing to gain. TheEmperor wavered. The tardiness of Great Britain, the continued neutralityof Austria, cast a doubt upon the wisdom of his own disinterestedness; andhe determined to meet Napoleon, and ascertain the terms on which Russiamight 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 ofTilsit, in the midstream of the river Niemen. The conversation, which isalleged to have been opened by Alexander with an expression of hatredtowards England, was heard by no one but the speakers. But whatever theeagerness or the reluctance of the Russian monarch to sever himself fromGreat Britain, the purpose of Napoleon was effected. Alexander surrenderedhimself to the addresses of a conqueror who seemed to ask for nothing andto offer everything. The negotiations were prolonged; the relations of thetwo monarchs became more and more intimate; and the issue of the strugglefor life or death was that Russia accepted the whole scheme of Napoleonicconquest, and took its place by the side of the despoiler in return for itsshare of the prey. It was in vain that the King of Prussia had rejectedNapoleon's offers after the battle of Eylau, in fidelity to his engagementstowards his ally. Promises, treaties, and pity were alike cast to thewinds. The unfortunate Frederick William received no more embraces; thefriend with whom he was to stand or fall bargained away the larger half ofhis dominions to Napoleon, and even rectified the Russian frontier at hisexpense. Prussia's continued existence in any shape whatever was describedas a concession made by Napoleon to Alexander. By the public articles ofthe Treaties of Tilsit, signed by France, Russia, and Prussia in the firstweek of July, the King of Prussia ceded to Napoleon the whole of hisdominions west of the Elbe, and the entire territory which Prussia hadgained in the three partitions of Poland, with the exception of a districtupon the Lower Vistula connecting Pomerania with Eastern Prussia. Out ofthe ceded territory on the west of the Elbe a Kingdom of Westphalia wascreated for Napoleon's brother Jerome; the Polish provinces of Prussia, with the exception of a strip made over to Alexander, were formed into theGrand-Duchy of Warsaw, and presented to Napoleon's vassal, the King ofSaxony. Russia recognised the Napoleonic client-states in Italy, Holland, and Germany. The Czar undertook to offer his mediation in the conflictbetween France and Great Britain; a secret article provided that, in theevent of Great Britain and France being at war on the ensuing 1st ofDecember, 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 Peacebetween the three Powers. These, however, contained but a small part of theterms agreed upon between the masters of the east and of the west. A secret Treaty of Alliance, distinct from the Treaty of Peace, was alsosigned by Napoleon and Alexander. In the conversations which won over theCzar to the cause of France, Napoleon had offered to Alexander the spoilsof Sweden and the Ottoman Empire. Finland and the Danubian provinces werenot too high a price for the support of a Power whose arms could paralyseAustria and Prussia. In return for the promise of this extension of hisEmpire, Alexander undertook, in the event of Great Britain refusing termsof peace dictated by himself, to unite his arms to those of Napoleon, andto force the neutral maritime Powers, Denmark and Portugal, to take part inthe struggle against England. The annexation of Moldavia and Wallachia tothe Russian Empire was provided for under the form of a French mediation. In the event of the Porte declining this mediation, Napoleon undertook toassist Russia to liberate all the European territory subject to the yoke ofthe Sultan, with the exception of Roumelia and Constantinople. A partitionof the liberated territory between France and Russia, as well as theestablishment of the Napoleonic house in Spain, probably formed the subjectrather of a verbal understanding than of any written agreement. [140]Such was this vast and threatening scheme, conceived by the man whose wholecareer had been one consistent struggle for personal domination, acceptedby the man who among the rulers of the Continent had hitherto shown thegreatest power of acting for a European end, and of interesting himself ina cause not directly his own. In the imagination of Napoleon, the nationalforces of the western continent had now ceased to exist. Austria excepted, there was no State upon the mainland whose army and navy were notprospectively in the hands of himself and his new ally. The commerce ofGreat Britain, already excluded from the greater part of Europe, was now tobe shut out from all the rest; the armies which had hitherto fought underBritish subsidies for the independence of Europe, the navies which hadpreserved their existence by neutrality or by friendship with England, weresoon to be thrown without distinction against that last foe. If even atthis moment an English statesman who had learnt the secret agreement ofTilsit might have looked without fear to the future of his country, it wasnot from any imperfection in the structure of Continental tyranny. Thefleets of Denmark and Portugal might be of little real avail againstEnglish seamen; the homes of the English people might still be as securefrom foreign invasion as when Nelson guarded the seas; but it was not fromany vestige of political honour surviving in the Emperor Alexander. WhereAlexander's action was of decisive importance, in his mediation betweenFrance and Prussia, he threw himself without scruple on to the side ofoppression. It lay within his power to gain terms of peace for Prussia aslenient as those which Austria had gained at Campo Formio and at Lunéville:he sacrificed Prussia, as he allied himself against the last upholders ofnational independence in Europe, in order that he might himself receiveFinland and the Danubian Provinces. [English expedition against Denmark, July, 1807. ]Two days before the signature of the Treaty of Tilsit the British troopswhich had once been so anxiously expected by the Czar landed in the islandof Rügen. The struggle in which they were intended to take their part wasover. Sweden alone remained in arms; and even the Quixotic pugnacity ofKing Gustavus was unable to save Stralsund from a speedy capitulation. Butthe troops of Great Britain were not destined to return without striking ablow. The negotiations between Napoleon and Alexander had scarcely begun, when secret intelligence of their purport was sent to the BritishGovernment. [141] It became known in London that the fleet of Denmark wasto be seized by Napoleon, and forced to fight against Great Britain. Canning and his colleagues acted with the promptitude that seldom failedthe 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 andRussia. [Bombardment of Copenhagen, Sept. 2. ]On the 28th of July a fleet with 20, 000 men on board set sail from theBritish coast. The troops landed in Denmark in the middle of August, andunited with the corps which had already been despatched to Rügen. TheDanish Government was summoned to place its navy in the hands of GreatBritain, in order that it might remain as a deposit in some British portuntil the conclusion of peace. While demanding this sacrifice of Danishneutrality, England undertook to protect the Danish nation and coloniesfrom the hostility of Napoleon, and to place at the disposal of itsGovernment every means of naval and military defence. Failing the surrenderof the fleet, the English declared that they would bombard Copenhagen. Thereply given to this summons was such as might be expected from a courageousnation exasperated against Great Britain by its harsh treatment of neutralships of commerce, and inclined to submit to the despot of the Continentrather than to the tyrants of the seas. Negotiations proved fruitless, andon the 2nd of September the English opened fire on Copenhagen. For threedays and nights the city underwent a bombardment of cruel efficiency. Eighteen hundred houses were levelled, the town was set on fire in severalplaces, and a large number of the inhabitants lost their lives. At lengththe commander found himself compelled to capitulate. The fleet was handedover to Great Britain, with all the stores in the arsenal of Copenhagen. Itwas 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 anarmament which had been taken from a people who were not our enemies, andby an attack which was not war, with more misgiving than applause. InEurope the seemingly unprovoked assault upon a weak neutral State excitedthe utmost indignation. The British Ministry, who were prevented frommaking public the evidence which they had received of the intention of thetwo Emperors, were believed to have invented the story of the SecretTreaty. The Danish Government denied that Napoleon had demanded theirco-operation; Napoleon and Alexander themselves assumed the air ofindignant astonishment. But the facts alleged by Canning and his colleagueswere correct. The conspiracy of the two Emperors was no fiction. The onlyquestion still remaining open--and this is indeed an essential one--relatesto the engagements entered into by the Danish Government itself. Napoleonin his correspondence of this date alludes to certain promises made to himby the Court of Denmark, but he also complains that these promises had notbeen fulfilled; and the context of the letter renders it almost certainthat, whatever may have been demanded by Napoleon, nothing more waspromised by Denmark than that its ports should be closed to Englishvessels. [142] Had the British Cabinet possessed evidence of thedetermination of the Danish Government to transfer its fleet to Napoleonwithout resistance, the attack upon Denmark, considered as virtually an actof war, would not have been unjust. But beyond an alleged expression ofNapoleon at Tilsit, no such evidence was even stated to have reachedLondon; and the undoubted conspiracy of the Emperors against Danishneutrality was no sufficient ground for an action on the part of GreatBritain which went so far beyond the mere frustration of their designs. Thesurrender of the Danish fleet demanded by England would have been anunqualified act of war on the part of Denmark against Napoleon; it was nomere guarantee for a continued neutrality. Nor had the British Governmentthe last excuse of an urgent and overwhelming necessity. Nineteen Danishmen-of-war would not have turned the scale against England. The memory ofTrafalgar might well have given a British Ministry courage to meet itsenemies by the ordinary methods of war. Had the forces of Denmark been farlarger than they actually were, the peril of Great Britain was not soextreme as to excuse the wrong done to mankind by an example encouragingall future belligerents to anticipate one another in forcing each neutralstate to take part with themselves. [Napoleon's demands upon Portugal. ]The fleet which Napoleon had meant to turn against this country now laysafe within Portsmouth harbour. Denmark, in bitter resentment, declared waragainst Great Britain, and rendered some service to the Continental Leagueby the attacks of its privateers upon British merchant-vessels in theBaltic. The second neutral Power whose fate had been decided by the twoEmperors at Tilsit received the summons of Napoleon a few days before theattack on Copenhagen. The Regent of Portugal himself informed the BritishGovernment that he had been required by Napoleon to close his ports toBritish vessels, to declare war on England, and to confiscate all Britishproperty within his dominions. Placed between a Power which could strip himof his dominions on land, and one which could despoil him of everything hepossessed beyond the sea, the Regent determined to maintain his ancientfriendship with Great Britain, and to submit to Napoleon only in so far asthe English Government would excuse him, as acting under coercion. Althougha nominal state of war arose between Portugal and England, the Regentreally acted in the interest of England, and followed the advice of theBritish Cabinet up to the end. [Treaty of Fontainebleau between France and Spain for the partition ofPortugal, Oct. 27. ]The end was soon to come. The demands of Napoleon, arbitrary and oppressiveas 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 meansfor extending his own dominion over the whole of the Spanish Peninsula. Anarmy-corps, under the command of Junot, had been already placed in thePyrenees. On the 12th of October Napoleon received the answer of the Regentof Portugal, consenting to declare war upon England, and only rejecting thedishonourable order to confiscate all English property. This single act ofresistance was sufficient for Napoleon's purpose. He immediately recalledhis 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 nextvictim, was for the moment employed as his accomplice. A treaty wasconcluded at Fontainebleau between Napoleon and King Charles IV. For thepartition of Portugal (Oct. 27). [143] In return for the cession of thekingdom of Etruria, which was still nominally governed by a member of theSpanish house, the King of Spain was promised half the Portuguese colonies, along with the title of Emperor of the Indies; the northern provinces ofPortugal were reserved for the infant King of Etruria, its southernprovinces for Godoy, Minister of Charles IV. ; the central districts were toremain in the hands of France, and to be employed as a means of regainingthe 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. Theconquest of Portugal was but a part of the conquest of the whole peninsula. But neither the Spanish Court nor the Spanish people suspected Napoleon'sdesign. Junot advanced without resistance through the intervening Spanishterritory, and pushed forward upon Lisbon with the utmost haste. The speedat which Napoleon's orders forced him to march reduced his army to utterprostration, and the least resistance would have resulted in its ruin. Butthe Court of Lisbon had determined to quit a country which they could nothope to defend against the master of the Continent. Already in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries the House of Braganza had beenfamiliar with the project of transferring the seat of their Government toBrazil; and now, with the approval of Great Britain, the Regent resolved tomaintain the independence of his family by flight across the Atlantic. AsJunot's troops approached the capital, the servants of the palace hastilystowed the royal property on ship-board. On the 29th of November, when theFrench were now close at hand, the squadron which bore the House ofBraganza to its colonial home dropped down the Tagus, saluted by the cannonof the English fleet that lay in the same river. Junot entered the capitala few hours later, and placed himself at the head of the Government withoutencountering any opposition. The occupation of Portugal was described byNapoleon as a reprisal for the bombardment of Copenhagen. It excited butlittle attention in Europe; and even at the Spanish Court the only feelingwas one of satisfaction at the approaching aggrandisement of the Bourbonmonarchy. The full significance of Napoleon's intervention in the affairsof 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 thePortuguese Royal Family than upon the fate of Prussia, the most cruellywronged of all the victims sacrificed by Alexander's ambition. Theunfortunate Prussian State, reduced to half its former extent, devastatedand 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 headof the Prussian Government the ablest and most patriotic statesman of theContinent. Since the spring of 1807 Baron Hardenberg had again been theleading Minister of Prussia, and it was to his counsel that the King'shonourable rejection of a separate peace after the battle of Eylau was due. Napoleon could not permit this Minister, whom he had already branded as apartisan of Great Britain, to remain in power; he insisted uponHardenberg's dismissal, and recommended the King of Prussia to summonStein, who was as yet known to Napoleon only as a skilful financier, likelyto 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 almostdictatorial power. The need of the most radical changes in the publicservices, as well as in the social order of the Prussian State, had beenbrought home to all enlightened men by the disasters of the war; and acommission, which included among its members the historian Niebuhr, hadalready sketched large measures of reform before Hardenberg quitted office. Stein's appointment brought to the head of the State a man immeasurablysuperior to Hardenberg in the energy necessary for the execution of greatchanges, and gave to those who were the most sincerely engaged in civil ormilitary reform a leader unrivalled in patriotic zeal, in boldness, and inpurity of character. The first great legislative measure of Stein was theabolition of serfage, and of all the legal distinctions which fixed withinthe limits of their caste the noble, the citizen, and the peasant. Insetting 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 indeedbut consummating a change which the progress of neighbouring States musthave forced upon Prussia, whoever held its government. The Decree wasframed upon the report of Hardenberg's Commission, and was published byStein within six days after his own entry upon office. Great as were thechanges involved in this edict of emancipation, it contained no more thanwas necessary to bring Prussia up to the level of the least advanced of thewestern Continental States. In Austria pure serfage had been abolished byMaria Theresa thirty years before; it vanished, along with most of thelegal distinctions of class, wherever the victories of France carried a newpolitical order; even the misused peasantry of Poland had been freed fromtheir degrading yoke within the borders of the newly-founded Duchy ofWarsaw. If Prussia was not to renounce its partnership in European progressand range itself with its barbarous eastern neighbour, that order whichfettered the peasant to the soil, and limited every Prussian to thehereditary occupations of his class could no longer be maintained. It isnot as an achievement of individual genius, but as the most vividexpression of the differences between the old and the new Europe, that thefirst 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; itpermitted the noble, the citizen, and the peasant to follow any calling; itabolished the rule which prevented land held by a member of one class frompassing into the hands of another class; it empowered families to freetheir estates from entail. Taken together, these enactments substitute thefree disposition of labour and property for the outworn doctrine whichPrussia had inherited from the feudal ages, that what a man is born that heshall live and die. The extinction of serfage, though not the mostprominent provision of the Edict, was the one whose effects were thesoonest felt. In the greater part of Prussia the marks of serfage, asdistinct from payments and services amounting to a kind of rent, were theobligation of the peasant to remain on his holding, and the right of thelord to take the peasant's children as unpaid servants into his house. Ageneral relation of obedience and command existed, as between an hereditarysubject and master, although the lord could neither exact an arbitraryamount of labour nor inflict the cruel punishments which had been common inPoland and Hungary. What the villein was in England in the thirteenthcentury, that the serf was in Prussia in the year 1806; and the changewhich in England gradually elevated the villein into the free copyholderwas that change which, so many centuries later, the Prussian legislatoreffected by one great measure. Stein made the Prussian peasant what theEnglish copyholder had become at the accession of Henry VII. , and what theFrench peasant had been before 1789, a free person, but one bound to renderfixed dues and service to the lord of the manor in virtue of the occupationof his land. These feudal dues and services, which the French peasant, accustomed for centuries before the Revolution to consider himself as thefull proprietor of the land, treated as a mere grievance and abuse, Steinconsidered to be the best form in which the joint interest of the lord andthe peasant could be maintained. It was reserved for Hardenberg, four yearslater, to free the peasant from all obligations towards his lord, and toplace him in unshackled proprietorship of two-thirds of his former holding, the lord receiving the remaining one-third in compensation for the loss offeudal dues. Neither Stein nor Hardenberg interfered with the right of thelord to act as judge and police-magistrate within the limits of his manor;and the hereditary legal jurisdiction, which was abolished in Scotland in1747, and in France in 1789, continued unchanged in Prussia down to theyear 1848. [Relative position of the peasant in Prussia and England. ]The history of Agrarian Reform upon the Continent shows how vast was theinterval of time by which some of the greatest social changes in Englandhad anticipated the corresponding changes in almost all other nations. Butif the Prussian peasant at the beginning of this century remained in theservile condition which had passed out of mind in Great Britain before theReformation, the early prosperity of the peasant in England was dearlypurchased by a subsequent decline which has made his present lot farinferior to that of the children or grandchildren of the Prussian serf. However heavy the load of the Prussian serf, his holding was at leastprotected by law from absorption into the domain of his lord. Beforesufficient capital had been amassed in Prussia to render landed property anobject of competition, the forced military service of Frederick had made ita rule of State that the farmsteads of the peasant class must remainundiminished in number, at whatever violence to the laws of the market orthe desires of great landlords. No process was permitted to take placecorresponding to that by which in England, after the villein had become thefree copyholder, the lord, with or without technical legal right, terminated the copyhold tenure of his retainer, and made the land as muchhis own exclusive property as the chairs and tables in his house. InPrussia, if the law kept the peasant on the land, it also kept the land forthe peasant. Economic conditions, in the absence of such control inEngland, worked against the class of small holders. Their earlyenfranchisement in fact contributed to their extinction. It would perhapshave been better for the English labouring class to remain bound by asemi-servile tie to their land, than to gain a free holding which the law, siding with the landlord, treated as terminable at the expiration ofparticular lives, and which the increasing capital of the rich made itsfavourite prey. It is little profit to the landless, resourceless Englishlabourer to know that his ancestor was a yeoman when the Prussian was aserf. Long as the bondage of the peasant on the mainland endured, prosperity came at last. The conditions which once distinguishedagricultural England from the Continent are now reversed. Nowhere on theContinent is there a labouring class so stripped and despoiled of allinterest in the soil, so sedulously excluded from all possibilities ofproprietorship, as in England. In England alone the absence of internalrevolution and foreign pressure has preserved a class whom a life spent intoil leaves as bare and dependent as when it began, and to whom the onlyboon which their country can offer is the education which may lead them toquit it. [Reform of Prussian Army. ][Short service. ]Besides the commission which had drafted the Edict of Emancipation, Steinfound a military commission engaged on a plan for the reorganisation of thePrussian army. The existing system forced the peasant to serve in the ranksfor twenty years, and drew the officers from the nobility, leaving theinhabitants of towns without either the duty or the right to enter the armyat all. Since the battle of Jena, no one doubted that the principle ofuniversal liability to military service must be introduced into Prussia; onthe other hand, the very disasters of the State rendered it impossible tomaintain an army on anything approaching to its former scale. With half itsterritory torn from it, and the remainder devastated by war, Prussia couldbarely afford to keep 40, 000 soldiers in arms. Such were the conditionslaid before the men who were charged with the construction of a newPrussian military system. Their conclusions, imperfect in themselves, andbut partially carried out in the succeeding years, have nevertheless beenthe basis of the latest military organisation of Prussia and of Europegenerally. The problem was solved by the adoption of a short period ofservice and the rapid drafting of the trained conscript into areserve-force. Scharnhorst, President of the Military Commission, to whommore than to any one man Prussia owed its military revival, proposed tomaintain an Active Army of 40, 000 men; a Reserve, into which soldiersshould pass after short service in the active army; a Landwehr, to beemployed only for the internal defence of the country; and a Landsturm, orgeneral arming of the population, for a species of guerilla warfare. Scharnhorst's project was warmly supported by Stein, who held a seat and avote on the Military Commission; and the system of short service, with aReserve, was immediately brought into action, though on a very limitedscale. The remainder of the scheme had to wait for the assistance ofevents. The principle of universal military obligation was first proclaimedin 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 ofthe peasant, though promoted by Stein's accession to power, did notoriginate in Stein himself; the distinctive work of Stein was a greatscheme of political reform. Had Stein remained longer in power, he wouldhave given to Prussia at least the beginnings of constitutional government. Events drove him from office when but a small part of his project wascarried into effect; but the project itself was great and comprehensive. Hedesigned to give Prussia a Parliament, and to establish a system ofself-government in its towns and country districts. Stein had visitedEngland in his youth. The history and the literature of England interestedhim beyond those of any other country; and he had learnt from England thatthe partnership of the nation in the work of government, so far fromweakening authority, animates it with a force which no despotic system canlong preserve. Almost every important State-paper written by Steindenounces the apathy of the civil population of Prussia, and attributes itto their exclusion from all exercise of public duties. He declared that thenation must be raised from its torpor by the establishment ofrepresentative government and the creation of free local institutions intown and country. Stein was no friend of democracy. Like every otherPrussian statesman he took for granted the exercise of a vigorousmonarchical power at the centre of the State; but around the permanentexecutive he desired to gather the Council of the Nation, checking at leastthe caprices of Cabinet-rule, and making the opinion of the people felt bythe monarch. Stein's Parliament would have been a far weaker body than theEnglish 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 thedisguise of despotism. The transaction of local business in the towns andcountry districts, which had hitherto belonged to officials of the Crown, Stein desired to transfer in part to bodies elected by the inhabitantsthemselves. The functions allotted to the new municipal bodies illustratedthe modest and cautious nature of Stein's attempt in the direction ofself-government, including no more than the care of the poor, thesuperintendence of schools, and the maintenance of streets and publicbuildings. Finance remained partly, police wholly, in the hands of thecentral Government. Equally limited were the powers which Stein proposed toentrust to the district councils elected by the rural population. Incomparison with the self-government of England or America, theself-government which Stein would have introduced into Prussia was of themost elementary character; yet his policy stood out in striking contrast tothat which in every client-state of Napoleon was now crushing out the lastelements of local independence under a rigid official centralisation. [Municipal reform alone carried out. ]Stein was indeed unable to transform Prussia as he desired. Of thelegislative, the municipal, and the district reforms which he had sketched, the municipal reform was the only one which he had time to carry out beforebeing driven from power; and for forty years the municipal institutionscreated by Stein were the only fragment of liberty which Prussia enjoyed. Avehement opposition to reform was excited among the landowners, andsupported by a powerful party at the Court. Stein was detested by thenobles whose peasants he had emancipated, and by the Berlin aristocracy, which for the last ten years had maintained the policy of friendship withFrance, and now declared the only safety of the Prussian State to lie inunconditional submission to Napoleon. The fire of patriotism, of energy, ofself-sacrifice, which burned in Stein made him no representative of thePrussian governing classes of his time. It was not long before thelandowners, who deemed him a Jacobin, and the friends of the French, whocalled him a madman, had the satisfaction of seeing the Minister sent intobanishment by order of Napoleon himself (Dec. , 1808). Stein left thegreater part of his work uncompleted, but he had not laboured in vain. Theyears of his ministry in 1807 and 1808 were the years that gatheredtogether everything that was worthiest in Prussia in the dawn of a nationalrevival, and prepared the way for that great movement in which, after aninterval of the deepest gloom, Stein was himself to light the nation to itsvictory. CHAPTER VIII. Spain in 1806--Napoleon uses the quarrel between Ferdinand and Godoy--Heaffects to be Ferdinand's protector--Dupont's army enters Spain--Murat inSpain--Charles abdicates--Ferdinand King--Savary brings Ferdinand toBayonne--Napoleon makes both Charles and Ferdinand resign--Spirit of theSpanish Nation--Contrast with Germany--Rising of all Spain--The Notables atBayonne--Campaign of 1808--Capitulation of Baylen--Wellesley lands inPortugal--Vimieiro--Convention of Cintra--Effect of the Spanish Rising onEurope--War Party in Prussia--Napoleon and Alexander at Erfurt--Steinresigns, and is proscribed--Napoleon in Spain--Spanish Misgovernment--Campaign on the Ebro--Campaign of Sir John Moore--Corunna--Napoleonleaves Spain--Siege of Saragossa--Successes of the French. [Spanish affairs, 1793-1806. ][Spain in 1806. ]Spain, which had played so insignificant a part throughout theRevolutionary War, was now about to become the theatre of events thatopened 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. Powerbelonged to the Queen and to her paramour Godoy, who for the last fourteenyears had so conducted the affairs of the country that every change in itspolicy had brought with it new disaster. In the war of the First CoalitionSpain had joined the Allies, and French armies had crossed the Pyrenees. In1796 Spain entered the service of France, and lost the battle of St. Vincent. At the Peace of Amiens, Napoleon surrendered its colony Trinidadto England; on the renewal of the war he again forced it into hostilitieswith Great Britain, and brought upon it the disaster of Trafalgar. Thisunbroken humiliation of the Spanish arms, combined with intolerableoppression and impoverishment at home, raised so bitter an outcry againstGodoy's government, that foreign observers, who underrated the loyalty ofthe Spanish people, believed the country to be on the verge of revolution. At the Court itself the Crown Prince Ferdinand, under the influence of hisNeapolitan wife, headed a party in opposition to Godoy and the supportersof French dominion. Godoy, insecure at home, threw himself the moreunreservedly into the arms of Napoleon, who bestowed upon him acontemptuous patronage, and flattered him with the promise of anindependent principality in Portugal. Izquierdo, Godoy's agent at Paris, received proposals from Napoleon which were concealed from the SpanishAmbassador; and during the first months of 1806 Napoleon possessed no moredevoted 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 betweenFrance and England involved the abandonment on the part of Napoleon of anyattack upon Portugal; and Napoleon now began to meet Godoy's inquiriesafter his Portuguese principality with an ominous silence. The nextintelligence received was that the Spanish Balearic Islands had beenoffered by Napoleon to Great Britain, with the view of providing anindemnity for Ferdinand of Naples, if he should give up Sicily to JosephBonaparte (July, 1806. ) This contemptuous appropriation of Spanishterritory, without even the pretence of consulting the Spanish Government, excited scarcely less anger at Madrid than the corresponding proposal withregard to Hanover excited at Berlin. The Court began to meditate a changeof policy, and watched the events which were leading Prussia to arm for thewar 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 theEnglish. This disaster produced the deepest impression, for the loss ofBuenos Ayres was believed, and with good reason, to be but the prelude tothe loss of the entire American empire of Spain. Continuance of the warwith England was certain ruin; alliance with the enemies of Napoleon was atleast not hopeless, now that Prussia was on the point of throwing its armyinto the scale against France. An agent was despatched by the SpanishGovernment to London (Sept. , 1806); and, upon the commencement ofhostilities by Prussia, a proclamation was issued by Godoy, which, withoutnaming any actual enemy, summoned the Spanish people to prepare for a waron behalf of their country. [Treaty of Fontainebleau, Oct. , 1807. ]Scarcely had the manifesto been read by the Spaniards when the Prussianarmy was annihilated at Jena. The dream of resistance to Napoleon vanishedaway; the only anxiety of the Spanish Government was to escape from theconsequences of its untimely daring. Godoy hastened to explain that hismartial proclamation had been directed not against the Emperor of theFrench, but against the Emperor of Morocco. Napoleon professed himselfsatisfied with this palpable absurdity: it appeared as if the events of thelast few months had left no trace on his mind. Immediately after the Peaceof Tilsit he resumed his negotiations with Godoy upon the old friendlyfooting, and brought them to a conclusion in the Treaty of Fontainebleau(Oct. , 1807), which provided for the invasion of Portugal by a French and aSpanish army, and for its division into principalities, one of which was tobe conferred upon Godoy himself. The occupation of Portugal was dulyeffected, and Godoy looked forward to the speedy retirement of the Frenchfrom 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 thetrue prize. Napoleon had gradually formed the determination of taking Spaininto his own hands, and the dissensions of the Court itself enabled him toappear upon the scene as the judge to whom all parties appealed. The CrownPrince Ferdinand had long been at open enmity with Godoy and his ownmother. So long as Ferdinand's Neapolitan wife was alive, her influencemade the Crown Prince the centre of the party hostile to France; but afterher death in 1806, at a time when Godoy himself inclined to join Napoleon'senemies, Ferdinand took up a new position, and allied himself with theFrench Ambassador, at whose instigation he wrote to Napoleon, solicitingthe hand of a princess of the Napoleonic House. [145] Godoy, though unawareof the letter, discovered that Ferdinand was engaged in some intrigue. KingCharles was made to believe that his son had entered into a conspiracy todethrone him. The Prince was placed under arrest, and on the 30th ofOctober, 1807, a royal proclamation appeared at Madrid, announcing thatFerdinand had been detected in a conspiracy against his parents, and thathe was about to be brought to justice along with his accomplices. KingCharles at the same time wrote a letter to Napoleon, of whose connectionwith Ferdinand he had not the slightest suspicion, stating that he intendedto exclude the Crown Prince from the succession to the throne of Spain. Nosooner had Napoleon received the communication from the simple King than hesaw himself in possession of the pretext for intervention which he had solong desired. The most pressing orders were given for the concentration oftroops on the Spanish frontier; Napoleon appeared to be on the point ofentering Spain as the defender of the hereditary rights of Ferdinand. Theopportunity, 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 andthe French Ambassador. Godoy, dismayed at finding Napoleon's hand in whathe had supposed to be a mere palace-intrigue, abandoned all thought ofproceeding further against the Crown Prince; and a manifesto announced thatFerdinand was restored to the favour of his father. Napoleon nowcountermanded the order which he had given for the despatch of the Rhenishtroops to the Pyrenees, and contented himself with directing GeneralDupont, the commander of an army-corps nominally destined for Portugal, tocross 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 werereceived with acclamations. It was universally believed that Napoleon hadespoused the cause of Ferdinand, and intended to deliver the Spanish nationfrom the detested rule of Godoy. Since the open attack made upon Ferdinandin the publication of the pretended conspiracy, the Crown Prince, who waspersonally as contemptible as any of his enemies, had become the idol ofthe people. For years past the hatred of the nation towards Godoy and theQueen had been constantly deepening, and the very reforms which Godoyeffected in the hope of attaching to himself the more enlightened classesonly served to complete his unpopularity with the fanatical mass of thenation. The French, who gradually entered the Peninsula to the number of80, 000, and who described themselves as the protectors of Ferdinand and ofthe true Catholic faith, were able to spread themselves over the northernprovinces without exciting suspicion. It was only when their commanders, bya series of tricks worthy of American savages, obtained possession of thefrontier citadels and fortresses, that the wiser part of the nation beganto entertain some doubt as to the real purpose of their ally. At the Courtitself and among the enemies of Ferdinand the advance of the French rousedthe utmost alarm. King Charles wrote to Napoleon in the tone of ancientfriendship; but the answer he received was threatening and mysterious. Theutterances which the Emperor let fall in the presence of persons likely toreport them at Madrid were even more alarming, and were intended to terrifythe Court into the resolution to take flight from Madrid. The capital onceabandoned by the King, Napoleon judged that he might safely take everythinginto his own hands on the pretence of restoring to Spain the governmentwhich 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 toassume the command in Spain. Not a word was said by Napoleon to him beforehis departure. His instructions first reached him at Bayonne; they were ofa military nature, and gave no indication of the ultimate political objectof his mission. Murat entered Spain on the 1st of March, knowing no morethan that he was ordered to reassure all parties and to commit himself tonone, but with full confidence that he himself was intended by Napoleon tobe the successor of the Bourbon dynasty. It was now that the Spanish Court, expecting the appearance of the French army in Madrid, resolved upon thatflight which Napoleon considered so necessary to his own success. Theproject was not kept a secret. It passed from Godoy to the Ministers ofState, and from them to the friends of Ferdinand. The populace of Madridwas inflamed by the report that Godoy was about to carry the King to adistance, in order to prolong the misgovernment which the French haddetermined to overthrow. A tumultuous crowd marched from the capital toAranjuez, 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, andcarried to the barracks amid the blows and curses of the populace. Theterrified King, who already saw before him the fate of his cousin, LouisXVI. , first published a decree depriving Godoy of all his dignities, andthen abdicated in favour of his son. On the 19th of March Ferdinand wasproclaimed King. [French enter Madrid, March 23. ]Such was the unexpected intelligence that met Murat as he approachedMadrid. The dissensions of the Court, which were to supply his ground ofintervention, had been terminated by the Spaniards themselves: in the placeof a despised dotard and a menaced favourite, Spain had gained a youthfulsovereign around whom all classes of the nation rallied with the utmostenthusiasm. Murat's position became a very difficult one; but he suppliedwhat was wanting in his instructions by the craft of a man bent uponcreating a vacancy in his own favour. He sent his aide-de-camp, Monthieu, to visit the dethroned sovereign, and obtained a protest from King CharlesIV. , declaring his abdication to have been extorted from him by force, andconsequently to be null and void. This document Murat kept secret; but hecarefully abstained from doing anything which might involve a recognitionof Ferdinand's title. On the 23rd of March the French troops enteredMadrid. Nothing had as yet become known to the public that indicated analtered policy on the part of the French; and the soldiers of Murat, as thesupposed friends of Ferdinand, met with as friendly a reception in Madridas in the other towns of Spain. On the following day Ferdinand himself madehis solemn entry into the capital, amid wild demonstrations of an almostbarbaric loyalty. [Savary brings Ferdinand to Bayonne, April, 1808. ]In the tumult of popular joy it was noticed that Murat's troops continuedtheir exercises without the least regard to the pageant that so deeplystirred the hearts of the Spaniards. Suspicions were aroused; theenthusiasm of the people for the French soldiers began to change intoirritation and ill-will. The end of the long drama of deceit was in factnow close at hand. On the 4th of April General Savary arrived at Madridwith instructions independent of those given to Murat. He was charged toentice the new Spanish sovereign from his capital, and to bring him, eitheras a dupe or as a prisoner, on to French soil. The task was not a difficultone. Savary pretended that Napoleon had actually entered Spain, and that heonly required an assurance of Ferdinand's continued friendship beforerecognising him as the legitimate successor of Charles IV. Ferdinand, headded, could show no greater mark of cordiality to his patron than byadvancing to meet him on the road. Snared by these hopes, Ferdinand set outfrom Madrid, in company with Savary and some of his own foolish confidants. On reaching Burgos, the party found no signs of the Emperor. They continuedtheir journey to Vittoria. Here Ferdinand's suspicions were aroused, and hedeclined to proceed farther. Savary hastened to Bayonne to report the delayto Napoleon. He returned with a letter which overcame Ferdinand's scruplesand induced him to cross the Pyrenees, in spite of the prayers of statesmenand the loyal violence of the simple inhabitants of the district. AtBayonne Ferdinand was visited by Napoleon, but not a word was spoken on theobject of his journey. In the afternoon the Emperor received Ferdinand andhis suite at a neighbouring château, but preserved the same ominoussilence. When the other guests departed, the Canon Escoiquiz, a member ofFerdinand's retinue, was detained, and learned from Napoleon's own lips thefate in store for the Bourbon Monarchy. Savary returned to Bayonne withFerdinand, and informed the Prince that he must renounce the crown ofSpain. [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 astubbornness not often shown by him in the course of his mean andhypocritical career. He was assailed not only by Napoleon but by thosewhose 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 hishumiliation. Ferdinand's parents attacked him with an indecency thatastonished even Napoleon himself; but the Prince maintained his refusaluntil news arrived from Madrid which terrified him into submission. Theirritation of the capital had culminated in an armed conflict between thepopulace and the French troops. On an attempt being made by Murat to removethe remaining members of the royal family from the palace, the capital hadbroken into open insurrection, and wherever French soldiers were foundalone or in small bodies they were massacred. (May 2. ) Some hundreds of theFrench perished; but the victory of Murat was speedy, and his vengeanceruthless. The insurgents were driven into the great central square of thecity, and cut down by repeated charges of cavalry. When all resistance wasover, numbers of the citizens were shot in cold blood. Such was theintelligence which reached Bayonne in the midst of Napoleon's struggle withFerdinand. There was no further need of argument. Ferdinand was informedthat if he withheld his resignation for twenty-four hours longer he wouldbe treated as a rebel. He yielded; and for a couple of country houses andtwo life-annuities the crown of Spain and the Indies was renounced infavour of Napoleon by father and son. [National spirit of the Spaniards. ]The crown had indeed been won without a battle. That there remained aSpanish nation ready to fight to the death for its independence was not acircumstance which Napoleon had taken into account. His experience had asyet taught him of no force but that of Governments and armies. In thelarger States, or groups of States, which had hitherto been the spoil ofFrance, the sense of nationality scarcely existed. Italy had felt it nodisgrace to pass under the rule of Napoleon. The Germans on both sides ofthe 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 ofcountry than the habit of obedience to government. England and Russia, where patriotism existed in the sense in which it existed in Spain, had asyet been untouched by French armies. Judging from the action of the Germansand the Italians, Napoleon might well suppose that in settling with theSpanish Government he had also settled with the Spanish people, or, at theworst, that his troops might have to fight some fanatical peasants, likethose who resisted the expulsion of the Bourbons from Naples. But theSpanish nation was no mosaic of political curiosities like the Holy RomanEmpire, and no divided and oblivious family like the population of Italy. Spain, as a single nation united under its King, had once played theforemost part in Europe: when its grandeur departed, its pride had remainedbehind: the Spaniard, in all his torpor and impoverishment, retained theimpulse of honour, the spirited self-respect, which periods of nationalgreatness leave behind them among a race capable of cherishing theirmemory. Nor had those influences of a common European culture, whichdirectly opposed themselves to patriotism in Germany, affected thehome-bred energy of Spain. The temper of mind which could find satisfactionin the revival of a form of Greek art when Napoleon's cavalry were scouringGermany, or which could inquire whether mankind would not profit by theremoval of the barriers between nations, was unknown among the Spanishpeople. Their feeling towards a foreign invader was less distant from thatof African savages than from that of the civilised and literary nationswhich had fallen so easy a prey to the French. Government, if it haddegenerated into everything that was contemptible, had at least failed toreduce the people to the passive helplessness which resulted from theperfection of uniformity in Prussia. Provincial institutions, thoughcorrupted, were not extinguished; provincial attachments and prejudicesexisted in unbounded strength. Like the passion of the Spaniard for hisnative district, his passion for Spain was of a blind and furiouscharacter. Enlightened conviction, though not altogether absent, had smallplace in the Spanish war of defence. Religious fanaticism, hatred of theforeigner, delight in physical barbarity, played their full part by theside 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 theinhabitants of Madrid, had become known in the Spanish cities before themiddle of May. On the 20th of the same month the _Gaceta_ announcedthe abdication of the Bourbon family. Nothing more was wanting to throwSpain into tumult. The same irresistible impulse seized provinces andcities separated by the whole breadth of the Peninsula. Withoutcommunication, and without the guidance of any central authority, theSpanish people in every part of the kingdom armed themselves against theusurper. Carthagena rose on the 22nd. Valencia forced its magistrates toproclaim King Ferdinand on the 23rd. Two days later the mountain-districtof Asturias, with a population of half a million, formally declared war onNapoleon, and despatched envoys to Great Britain to ask for assistance. Onthe 26th, Santander and Seville, on opposite sides of the Peninsula, joinedthe national movement. Corunna, Badajoz, and Granada declared themselves onthe Feast of St. Ferdinand, the 30th of May. Thus within a week the entirecountry was in arms, except in those districts where the presence of Frenchtroops rendered revolt impossible. The action of the insurgents waseverywhere the same. They seized upon the arms and munitions of warcollected in the magazines, and forced the magistrates or commanders oftowns to place themselves at their head. Where the latter resisted, or weresuspected of treachery to the national cause, they were in many cases putto death. Committees of Government were formed in the principal cities, andas many armies came into being as there were independent centres of theinsurrection. [Joseph Bonaparte made King. ][Napoleon's Assembly at Bayonne, June, 1808. ]Napoleon was in the meantime collecting a body of prelates and grandees atBayonne, under the pretence of consulting the representatives of theSpanish nation. Half the members of the intended Assembly received apersonal summons from the Emperor; the other half were ordered to be chosenby popular election. When the order, however, was issued from Bayonne, thecountry was already in full revolt. Elections were held only in thedistricts occupied by the French, and not more than twenty representativesso elected proceeded to Bayonne. The remainder of the Assembly, whichnumbered in all ninety-one persons, was composed of courtiers who hadaccompanied the Royal Family across the Pyrenees, and of any Spaniards ofdistinction upon whom the French could lay their hands. Joseph Bonapartewas brought from Naples to receive the crown of Spain. [147] On the 15th ofJune the Assembly of the Notables was opened. Its discussions followed theorder prescribed by Napoleon on all similar occasions. Articles disguisinga central absolute power with some pretence of national representation werelaid before the Assembly, and adopted without criticism. Except in theprivileges accorded to the Church, little indicated that the Constitutionof Bayonne was intended for the Spanish rather than for any other nation. Its political forms were as valuable or as valueless as those whichNapoleon had given to his other client States; its principles of socialorder were those which even now despotism could not dissever from Frenchsupremacy--the abolition of feudal services, equality of taxation, admission of all ranks to public employment. Titles of nobility werepreserved, the privileges of nobility abolished. One genuine act of homagewas rendered to the national character. The Catholic religion was declaredto 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, andreconciling his supremacy with the claims of the Church, peasants andtownspeople were flocking to arms at the call of the priests, who so littleappreciated the orthodoxy of their patron as to identify him in theirmanifestos with Calvin, with the Antichrist, and with Apollyon. [148] TheEmperor underrated the military efficiency of the national revolt, andcontented himself with sending his lieutenants to repress it, while hehimself, expecting a speedy report of victory, remained in Bayonne. Divisions of the French army moved in all directions against theinsurgents. Dupont was ordered to march upon Seville from the capital, Moncey upon Valencia; Marshal Bessières took command of a force intended todisperse the main army of the Spaniards, which threatened the roads fromthe Pyrenees to Madrid. The first encounters were all favourable to thepractised French troops; yet the objects which Napoleon set before hisgenerals were not achieved. Moncey failed to reduce Valencia; Dupont foundhimself outnumbered on passing the Sierra Morena, and had to retrace hissteps and halt at Andujar, where the road to Madrid leaves the valley ofthe Guadalquivir. Without sustaining any severe loss, the French divisionswere disheartened by exhausting and resultless marches; the Spaniardsgained new confidence on each successive day which passed withoutinflicting upon them a defeat. At length, however, the commanders of thenorthern army were forced by Marshal Bessières to fight a pitched battle atRio Seco, on the west of Valladolid (July 13th). Bessières won a completevictory, and gained the lavish praises of his master for a battle which, according to Napoleon's own conception, ended the Spanish war by securingthe 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 thecapital, which had never passed out of the hands of the French, but in thevery independence of the several provincial movements. Unlike Vienna andBerlin, Madrid might be held by the French without the loss being felt bytheir adversary; Cadiz, Corunna, Lisbon, were equally serviceable bases forthe insurrection. The victory of Marshal Bessières in the north preservedthe communication between France and Madrid, and it did nothing more. Itfailed to restore the balance of military force in the south of Spain, orto affect the operations of the Spanish troops which were now closing roundDupont upon the Guadalquivir. On the 15th of July Dupont was attacked atAndujar by greatly superior forces. His lieutenant, Vedel, knowing theSpaniards to be engaged in a turning movement, made a long march northwardsin order to guard the line of retreat. In his absence the position ofBaylen, immediately in Dupont's rear, was seized by the Spanish generalReding. Dupont discovered himself to be surrounded. He divided his armyinto two columns, and moved on the night of the 18th from Andujar towardsBaylen, in the hope of overpowering Reding's division. At daybreak on the19th the positions of Reding were attacked by the French. The strugglecontinued until mid-day, though the French soldiers sank exhausted withthirst and with the burning heat. At length the sound of cannon was heardin the rear. Castanos, the Spanish general commanding at Andujar, haddiscovered Dupont's retreat, and pressed behind him with troops fresh andunwearied by conflict. Further resistance was hopeless. Dupont had tonegotiate for a surrender. He consented to deliver up Vedel's division aswell as his own, although Vedel's troops were in possession of the road toMadrid, the Spanish commander promising, on this condition, that thecaptives should not be retained as prisoners of war in Spain, but bepermitted to return by sea to their native country. The entire army ofAndalusia, numbering 23, 000 men, thus passed into the hands of an enemywhom Napoleon had not believed to possess a military existence. Dupont'sanxiety to save something for France only aggravated the extent of thecalamity; for the Junta of Seville declined to ratify the terms of thecapitulation, and the prisoners, with the exception of the superiorofficers, were sent to the galleys at Cadiz. The victorious Spaniardspushed forwards upon Madrid. King Joseph, who had entered the city only aweek before, had to fly from his capital. The whole of the French troops inSpain were compelled to retire to a defensive position upon the Ebro. [Wellesley lands in Portugal, Aug. 1, 1808. ][Vimeiro, Aug. 21. ][Convention of Cintra, Aug. 30. ]The disaster of Baylen did not come alone. Napoleon's attack upon Portugalhad brought him within the striking-range of Great Britain. On the 1st ofAugust an English army, commanded by Sir Arthur Wellesley, landed on thePortuguese coast at the mouth of the Mondego. Junot, the first invader ofthe Peninsula, was still at Lisbon; his forces in occupation of Portugalnumbered nearly 30, 000 men, but they were widely dispersed, and he wasunable to bring more than 13, 000 men into the field against the 16, 000 withwhom Wellesley moved upon Lisbon. Junot advanced to meet the invader. Abattle was fought at Vimieiro, thirty miles north of Lisbon, on the 21st ofAugust. The victory was gained by the British; and had the first advantagebeen followed up, Junot's army would scarcely have escaped capture. But thecommand had passed out of Wellesley's hands. His superior officer, SirHarry Burrard, took up the direction of the army immediately the battleended, and Wellesley had to acquiesce in a suspension of operations at amoment when the enemy seemed to be within his grasp. Junot made the bestuse of his reprieve. He entered into negotiations for the evacuation ofPortugal, and obtained the most favourable terms in the Convention ofCintra, signed on the 30th of August. The French army was permitted toreturn to France with its arms and baggage. Wellesley, who had stronglycondemned the inaction of his superior officers after the battle of the21st, agreed with them that, after the enemy had once been permitted toescape, the evacuation of Portugal was the best result which the Englishcould obtain. [149] Junot's troops were accordingly conveyed to Frenchports at the expense of the British Government, to the great displeasure ofthe public, who expected to see the marshal and his army brought prisonersinto Portsmouth. The English were as ill-humoured with their victory as theFrench with their defeat. When on the point of sending Junot to acourt-martial for his capitulation, Napoleon learnt that the BritishGovernment had ordered its own generals to be brought to trial forpermitting 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 ofthe successful uprising of the Spanish people against Napoleon, and ofDupont's capitulation at Baylen, created the deepest impression in everycountry of Europe that still entertained the thought of resistance toFrance. The first great disaster had befallen Napoleon's arms. It had beeninflicted by a nation without a government, without a policy, without aplan beyond that of the liberation of its fatherland from the foreigner. What Coalition after Coalition had failed to effect, the patriotism andenergy of a single people deserted by its rulers seemed about toaccomplish. The victory of the regular troops at Baylen was but a part ofthat great national movement in which every isolated outbreak had had itsshare in dividing and paralysing the Emperor's force. The capacity ofuntrained popular levies to resist practised troops might be exaggerated inthe first outburst of wonder and admiration caused by the Spanish rising;but the difference made in the nature of the struggle by the spirit ofpopular resentment and determination was one upon which mistake wasimpossible. A sudden light broke in upon the politicians of Austria andPrussia, and explained the powerlessness of those Coalitions in which thewars had always been the affair of the Cabinets, and never the affair ofthe people. What the Spanish nation had effected for itself againstNapoleon was not impossible for the German nation, if once a nationalmovement like that of Spain sprang up among the German race. "I do notsee, " wrote Blücher some time afterwards, "why we should not thinkourselves as good as the Spaniards. " The best men in the Austrian andPrussian Governments began to look forward to the kindling of popularspirit as the surest means for combating the tyranny of Napoleon. Militarypreparations were pushed forward in Austria with unprecedented energy andon a scale rivalling that of France itself. In Prussia the party of Steindetermined upon a renewal of the war, and decided to risk the extinction ofthe Prussian State rather than submit to the extortions by which Napoleonwas completing the ruin of their country. It was among the patriots ofNorthern Germany that the course of the Spanish struggle excited thedeepest emotion, and gave rise to the most resolute purpose of striking forEuropean liberty. Since the nominal restoration of peace between France and Prussia by thecession of half the Prussian kingdom, not a month had passed without theinfliction of some gross injustice upon the conquered nation. Theevacuation of the country had in the first instance been made conditionalupon the payment of certain requisitions in arrear. While the amount ofthis sum was being settled, all Prussia, except Königsberg, remained in thehands of the French, and 157, 000 French soldiers lived at free quartersupon the unfortunate inhabitants. At the end of the year 1807 KingFrederick William was informed that, besides paying to Napoleon 60, 000, 000francs in money, and ceding domain lands of the same value, he mustcontinue to support 40, 000 French troops in five garrison-towns upon theOder. Such was the dismay caused by this announcement, that Stein quittedKönigsberg, now the seat of government, and passed three months at thehead-quarters of the French at Berlin, endeavouring to frame somesettlement less disastrous to his country. Count Daru, Napoleon'sadministrator in Prussia, treated the Minister with respect, and acceptedhis proposal for the evacuation of Prussian territory on payment of a fixedsum to the French. But the agreement required Napoleon's ratification, andfor 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 thevictories of the Spanish insurrection in the summer of 1808 forced theEmperor to draw in his troops from beyond the Elbe. He placed a bold frontupon his necessities, and demanded from the Prussian Government, as theprice of evacuation, a still larger sum than that which had been named inthe previous winter: he insisted that the Prussian army should be limitedto 40, 000 men, and the formation of the Landwehr abandoned; and he requiredthe support of a Prussian corps of 16, 000 men, in the event of hostilitiesbreaking out between France and Austria. Not even on these conditions wasPrussia offered the complete evacuation of her territory. Napoleon stillinsisted on holding the three principal fortresses on the Oder with agarrison of 10, 000 men. Such was the treaty proposed to the Prussian Court(September, 1808) at a time when every soldierly spirit thrilled with thetidings from Spain, and every statesman was convinced by the events of thelast few months that Napoleon's treaties were but stages in a progressionof wrongs. Stein and Scharnhorst urged the King to arm the nation for astruggle as desperate as that of Spain, and to delay only until Napoleonhimself was busied in the warfare of the Peninsula. Continued submissionwas ruin; revolt was at least not hopeless. However forlorn the conditionof Prussia, its alliances were of the most formidable character. Austriawas arming without disguise; Great Britain had intervened in the warfare ofthe Peninsula with an efficiency hitherto unknown in its militaryoperations; Spain, on the estimate of Napoleon himself, required an army of200, 000 men. Since the beginning of the Spanish insurrection Stein hadoccupied himself with the organisation of a general outbreak throughoutNorthern 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 popularinsurrection against the French in all the territories which they had takenfrom 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 thatAlexander, in spite of the Treaty of Tilsit, would not be unwilling to seethe storm burst upon Napoleon, and that in the event of another general warthe forces of Russia would more probably be employed against France than inits favour. The illusion was a fatal one. Alexander was still theaccomplice of Napoleon. For the sake of the Danubian Principalities, Alexander was willing to hold central Europe in check while Napoleoncrushed the Spaniards, and to stifle every bolder impulse in the simpleKing of Prussia. Napoleon himself dreaded the general explosion of Europebefore Spain was conquered, and drew closer to his Russian ally. Difficulties that had been placed in the way of the Russian annexation ofRoumania vanished. The Czar and the Emperor determined to display to allEurope the intimacy of their union by a festal meeting at Erfurt in themidst of their victims and their dependents. The whole tribe of vassalGerman sovereigns was summoned to the meeting-place; representativesattended from the Courts of Vienna and Berlin. On the 7th of OctoberNapoleon and Alexander made their entry into Erfurt. Pageants andfestivities required the attendance of the crowned and titled rabble forseveral days; but the only serious business was the settlement of a treatyconfirming the alliance of France and Russia, and the notification of theCzar to the envoy of the King of Prussia that his master must accept theterms demanded by Napoleon, and relinquish the idea of a struggle withFrance. [151] Count Goltz, the Prussian envoy, unwillingly signed thetreaty which gave Prussia but a partial evacuation at so dear a cost, andwrote to the King that no course now remained for him but to abandonhimself to unreserved dependence upon France, and to permit Stein and thepatriotic party to retire from the direction of the State. Unless the Kingcould summon up courage to declare war in defiance of Alexander, there was, in fact, no alternative left open to him. Napoleon had discovered Stein'splans for raising an insurrection in Germany several weeks before, and hadgiven vent to the most furious outburst of wrath against Stein in thepresence of the Prussian Ambassador at Erfurt. If the great struggle onwhich Stein's whole heart and soul were set was to be relinquished, ifSpain was to be crushed before Prussia moved an arm, and Austria was to beleft to fight its inevitable battle alone, then the presence of Stein atthe head of the Prussian State was only a snare to Europe, a peril toPrussia, and a misery to himself. Stein asked for and received hisdismissal. (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 thehigh-spirited patriot as soon as fresh victories had released Napoleon fromthe ill-endured necessity of self-control. On the 16th of December, whenMadrid had again passed into the possession of the French, an imperialorder appeared, which gave the measure of Napoleon's hatred of the fallenMinister. Stein was denounced as the enemy of the Empire; his property wasconfiscated; he was ordered to be seized by the troops of the Emperor orhis allies wherever they could lay their hands upon him. As in the days ofRoman tyranny, the west of Europe could now afford no asylum to the enemiesof the Emperor. Russia and Austria remained the only refuge of the exile. Stein escaped into Bohemia; and, as the crowning humiliation of thePrussian State, its police were forced to pursue as a criminal thestatesman whose fortitude had still made it possible in the darkest daysfor 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 inSpain without fear of any immediate attack from the side of Germany. Sincethe victory of Baylen the Spaniards had made little progress either towardsgood government or towards a good military administration. The provincialJuntas had consented to subordinate themselves to a central committeechosen from among their own members; but this new supreme authority, whichheld its meetings at Aranjuez, proved one of the worst governments thateven Spain itself had ever endured. It numbered thirty persons, twenty-eight of whom were priests, nobles, or officials. [152] Itsqualities were those engrained in Spanish official life. In legislation itattempted absolutely nothing but the restoration of the Inquisition and theprotection of Church lands; its administration was confined to a foolishinterference with the better generals, and the acquisition of enormoussupplies of war from Great Britain, which were either stolen by contractorsor allowed to fall into the hands of the French. While the members of theJunta discussed the titles of honour which were to attach to themcollectively and individually, and voted themselves salaries equal to thoseof Napoleon's generals, the armies fell into a state of destitution whichscarcely any but Spanish troops would have been capable of enduring. Theenergy of the humbler classes alone prolonged the military existence of theinsurrection; the Government organised nothing, comprehended nothing. Itspart in the national movement was confined to a system of begging andboasting, which demoralised the Spaniards, and bewildered the agents andgenerals of England who first attempted the difficult task of assisting theSpaniards to help themselves. When the approach of army after army, thelevies of Germany, Poland, Holland, and Italy, in addition to Napoleon'sown veteran troops of Austerlitz and Jena, gave to the rest of the worldsome idea of the enormous force which Napoleon was about to throw on toSpain, the Spanish Government could form no better design than to repeatthe 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 ofNovember, 1808. The victory of the Spaniards in the summer had forced theinvaders to retire into the district between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, andthe Ebro now formed the dividing-line between the hostile armies. It wasthe intention of Napoleon to roll back the extremes of the Spanish line tothe east and the west, and, breaking through its centre, to move straightupon Burgos and Madrid. The Spaniards, for their part, were not content toact upon the defensive. When Napoleon arrived at Vittoria on the 5th ofNovember, the left wing of the Spanish army under General Blake had alreadyreceived orders to move eastwards from the upper waters of the Ebro, and tocut the French off from their communication with the Pyrenees. The movementwas exactly that which Napoleon desired; for in executing it, Blake hadonly to march far enough eastwards to find himself completely surrounded byFrench divisions. A premature movement of the French generals themselvesalone saved Blake from total destruction. He was attacked and defeated atEspinosa, on the upper Ebro, before he had advanced far enough to lose hisline of retreat (Nov. 10); and, after suffering great losses, he succeededin leading off a remnant of his army into the mountains of Asturias. In thecentre, Soult drove the enemy before him, and captured Burgos. Of the armywhich was to have cleared Spain of the French, nothing now remained but acorps on the right at Tudela, commanded by Palafox. The destruction of thisbody was committed by the Emperor to Lannes and Ney. Ney was ordered totake a long march southwards in order to cut off the retreat of theSpaniards; he found it impossible, however, to execute his march within thetime prescribed; and Palafox, beaten by Lannes at Tudela, made good hisretreat into Saragossa. A series of accidents had thus saved the divisionsof the Spanish army from actual capture, but there no longer existed aforce capable of meeting the enemy in the field. Napoleon moved forwardfrom Burgos upon Madrid. The rest of his march was a triumph. The batteriesdefending the mountain-pass of Somo Sierra were captured by a charge ofPolish cavalry; and the capital itself surrendered, after a short artilleryfire, 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 atthe time when Napoleon broke in pieces the Spanish line of defence. On the14th of October Sir John Moore had assumed the command of 20, 000 Britishtroops at Lisbon. He was instructed to march to the neighbourhood ofBurgos, and to co-operate with the Spanish generals upon the Ebro. According to the habit of the English, no allowance was made for themovements of the enemy while their own were under consideration; and themountain-country which Moore had to traverse placed additional obstacles inthe way of an expedition at least a month too late in its starting. Moorebelieved it to be impossible to carry his artillery over the direct roadfrom Lisbon to Salamanca, and sent it round by way of Madrid, while hehimself advanced through Ciudad Rodrigo, reaching Salamanca on the 13th ofNovember. Here, while still waiting for his artillery, rumours reached himof 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 Moorecould get no trustworthy information from the Spanish authorities. Heremained for some time in suspense, and finally determined to retreat intoPortugal. Orders were sent to Sir David Baird, who was approaching withreinforcements from Corunna, to turn back towards the northern coast. Scarcely had Moore formed this decision, when despatches arrived fromFrere, the British agent at Madrid, stating that the Spaniards were aboutto defend the capital to the last extremity, and that Moore would beresponsible for the ruin of Spain and the disgrace of England if he failedto advance to its relief. To the great joy of his soldiers, Moore gaveorders for a forward march. The army advanced upon Valladolid, with theview of attacking the French upon their line of communication, while thesiege of the capital engaged them in front. Baird was again orderedsouthwards. It was not until the 14th of December, ten days after Madridhad passed into the hands of the French, that Moore received intelligenceof its fall. Neither the Spanish Government nor the British agent who hadcaused Moore to advance took the trouble to inform him of the surrender ofthe capital; he learnt it from an intercepted French despatch. From thesame despatch Moore learnt that to the north of him, at Saldanha, on theriver Carrion, there lay a comparatively small French force under thecommand of Soult. The information was enough for Moore, heart-sick at themockery to which his army had been subjected, and burning for decisiveaction. He turned northwards, and marched against Soult, in the hope ofsurprising him before the news of his danger could reach Napoleon in thecapital. [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 suspendedhis retreat on Portugal. Napoleon instantly divined the actual movement ofthe English, and hurried from Madrid against Moore at the head of 40, 000men. Moore had met Baird on the 20th at Mayorga; on the 23rd the unitedBritish divisions reached Sahagun, scarcely a day's march from Soult atSaldanha. Here the English commander learnt that Napoleon himself was onhis track. Escape was a question of hours. Napoleon had pushed across theGuadarama mountains in forced marches through snow and storm. Had hisvanguard been able to seize the bridge over the river Esla at Benaventebefore the English crossed it, Moore would have been cut off from allpossibility of escape. The English reached the river first and blew up thebridge. This rescued them from immediate danger. The defence of the rivergave Moore's army a start which rendered the superiority of Napoleon'snumbers of little effect. For a while Napoleon followed Moore towards thenorthern coast. On the 1st of January, 1809, he wrote an order which showedthat he looked upon Moore's escape as now inevitable, and on the next dayhe quitted the army, leaving to his marshals the honour of toiling afterMoore to the coast, and of seizing some thousands of frozen or drunkenBritish stragglers. Moore himself pushed on towards Corunna with a rapiditywhich was dearly paid for by the demoralisation of his army. The sufferingsand the excesses of the troops were frightful; only the rear-guard, whichhad to face the enemy, preserved soldierly order. At length Moore found itnecessary to halt and take up position, in order to restore the disciplineof his army. He turned upon Soult at Lugo, and offered battle for twosuccessive days; but the French general declined an engagement; and Moore, satisfied with having recruited his troops, continued his march uponCorunna. Soult still followed. On January 11th the English army reached thesea; but the ships which were to convey them back to England were nowhereto be seen. A battle was inevitable, and Moore drew up his troops, 14, 000in number, on a range of low hills outside the town to await the attack ofthe French. On the 16th, when the fleet had now come into harbour, Soultgave battle. The French were defeated at every point of their attack. Moorefell at the moment of his victory, conscious that the army which he had sobravely led had nothing more to fear. The embarkation was effected thatnight; 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 brotherJoseph again in possession of the capital, and an army of 300, 000 men underthe best generals of France engaged with the remnants of a defeated forcewhich had never reached half that number. No brilliant victories remainedto be won; no enemy remained in the field important enough to require thepresence of Napoleon. Difficulties of transit and the hostility of thepeople might render the subjugation of Spain a slower process than thesubjugation of Prussia or Italy; but, to all appearance, the ultimatesuccess of the Emperor's plans was certain, and the worst that lay beforehis lieutenants was a series of wearisome and obscure exertions against aninconsiderable foe. Yet, before the Emperor had been many weeks in Paris, areport reached him from Marshal Lannes which told of some strange form ofmilitary capacity among the people whose armies were so contemptible in thefield. The city of Saragossa, after successfully resisting its besiegers inthe summer of 1808, had been a second time invested after the defeats ofthe Spanish armies upon the Ebro. [153] The besiegers themselves weresuffering from extreme scarcity when, on the 22nd of January, 1809, Lannestook up the command. Lannes immediately called up all the troops withinreach, and pressed the battering operations with the utmost vigour. On the29th, 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 inpossession of the city. But the besiegers found that their real work wasonly beginning. The streets were trenched and barricaded; every dwellingwas converted into a fortress; for twenty days the French were forced tobesiege house by house. In the centre of the town the popular leaderserected a gallows, and there they hanged every one who flinched frommeeting the enemy. Disease was added to the horrors of warfare. In thecellars, where the women and children crowded in filth and darkness, amalignant pestilence broke out, which, at the beginning of February, raisedthe deaths to five hundred a day. The dead bodies were unburied; in thatpoisoned atmosphere the slightest wound produced mortification and death. At length the powers of the defenders sank. A fourth part of the town hadbeen won by the French; of the townspeople and peasants who were within thewalls at the beginning of the siege, it is said that thirty thousand hadperished; the remainder could only prolong their defence to fall in a fewdays more before disease or the enemy. Even now there were members of theJunta who wished to fight as long as a man remained, but they wereoutnumbered. On the 20th of February what was left of Saragossacapitulated. Its resistance gave to the bravest of Napoleon's soldiers animpression of horror and dismay new even to men who had passed throughseventeen years of revolutionary warfare, but it failed to retardNapoleon's armies in the conquest of Spain. No attempt was made to relievethe heroic or ferocious city. Everywhere the tide of French conquestappeared to be steadily making its advance. Soult invaded Portugal; incombination with him, two armies moved from Madrid upon the southern andthe south-western provinces of Spain. Oporto fell on the 28th of March; inthe same week the Spanish forces covering the south were decisively beatenat Ciudad Real and at Medellin upon the line of the Guadiana. The hopes ofEurope fell. Spain itself could expect no second Saragossa. It appeared asif the complete subjugation of the Peninsula could now only be delayed bythe mistakes of the French generals themselves, and by the untimely removalof that controlling will which had hitherto made every movement a stepforward in conquest. CHAPTER IX. Austria preparing for war--The war to be one on behalf of the GermanNation--Patriotic Movement in Prussia--Expected Insurrection in NorthGermany--Plans of Campaign--Austrian Manifesto to the Germans--Rising ofthe Tyrolese--Defeats of the Archduke Charles in Bavaria--French inVienna--Attempts of Dörnberg and Schill--Battle of Aspern--Second Passageof the Danube--Battle of Wagram--Armistice of Znaim--Austria waiting forevents--Wellesley in Spain--He gains the Battle of Talavera, butretreats--Expedition against Antwerp fails--Austria makes Peace--Treaty ofVienna--Real Effects of the War of 1809--Austria after 1809--Metternich--Marriage of Napoleon with Marie Louise--Severance of Napoleon andAlexander--Napoleon annexes the Papal States, Holland, La Valais, and theNorth German Coast--The Napoleonic Empire: Its Benefits and Wrongs--TheCzar withdraws from Napoleon's Commercial System--War with Russiaimminent--Wellington in Portugal: Lines of Torres Vedras; Massena'sCampaign of 1810, and retreat--Soult in Andalusia--Wellington's Campaignof 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 toParis with the utmost haste. He believed Austria to be on the point ofdeclaring war; and on the very day of his arrival at the capital he calledout the contingents of the Rhenish Federation. In the course of the nextfew weeks, however, he formed the opinion that Austria would either declinehostilities altogether, or at least find it impossible to declare warbefore the middle of May. For once the efforts of Austria outstripped thecalculations of her enemy. Count Stadion, the earnest and enlightenedstatesman who had held power in Austria since the Peace of Presburg, hadsteadily prepared for a renewal of the struggle with France. He wasconvinced that Napoleon would soon enter upon new enterprises of conquest, and still farther extend his empire at the expense of Austria, unlessattacked before Spain had fallen under his dominion. Metternich, nowAustrian Ambassador at Paris, reported that Napoleon was intending todivide Turkey as soon as he had conquered Spain; and, although he adviseddelay, he agreed with the Cabinet at Vienna that Austria must sooner orlater strike in self-defence. [154] Stadion, more sanguine, was onlyprevented from declaring war in 1808 by the counsels of the ArchdukeCharles and of other generals who were engaged in bringing the immense massof new levies into military formation. Charles himself attached littlevalue to the patriotic enthusiasm which, since the outbreak of the Spanishinsurrection, had sprung up in the German provinces of Austria. He saw theapproach of war with more apprehension than pleasure; but, however fainthis own hopes, he laboured earnestly in creating for Austria a force farsuperior to anything that she had possessed before, and infused into themass of the army that confident and patriotic spirit which he saw in othersrather than felt in himself. By the beginning of March, 1809, Austria had260, 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 thestruggle of the Spaniards had been a struggle for Spain. The animatedappeals of the Emperor's generals formed a singular contrast to the silencewith which the Austrian Cabinet had hitherto entered into its wars. TheHapsburg sovereign now stood before the world less as the inheritor of anancient empire and the representative of the Balance of Power than as thedisinterested champion of the German race. On the part of the Emperorhimself the language of devotion for Germany was scarcely more thanironical. Francis belonged to an age and to a system in which the idea ofnationality had no existence; and, like other sovereigns, he regarded hispossessions as a sort of superior property which ought to be defended byobedient domestic dogs against marauding foreign wolves. The same personalview of public affairs had hitherto satisfied the Austrians. It had beenenough for them to be addressed as the dutiful children of a wise andaffectionate father. The Emperor spoke the familiar Viennese dialect; hewas as homely in his notions and his prejudices as any beerseller in hisdominions; his subjects might see him at almost any hour of the day ornight; and out of the somewhat tough material of his character popularimagination had no difficulty in framing an idol of parental geniality andwisdom. Fifteen years of failure and mismanagement had, however, impairedthe beauty of the domestic fiction; and although old-fashioned Austrians, like Haydn, the composer of the Austrian Hymn, were ready to go down to thegrave invoking a blessing on their gracious master, the Emperor himself andhis confidants were shrewd enough to see that the newly-excited sense ofGerman patriotism would put them in possession of a force which they couldhardly evoke by the old methods. [Austrian Parties. ]One element of reality lay in the professions which were not for the mostpart meant very seriously. There was probably now no statesman in Austriawho any longer felt a jealousy of the power of Prussia. With Count Stadionand his few real supporters the restoration of Germany was a genuine anddeeply-cherished desire; with the majority of Austrian politicians theinterests of Austria herself seemed at least for the present to require theliberation of North Germany. Thus the impassioned appeals of the ArchdukeCharles to all men of German race to rise against their foreign oppressor, and against their native princes who betrayed the interests of theFatherland, gained the sanction of a Court hitherto very little inclined toform an alliance with popular agitation. If the chaotic disorder of theAustrian Government had been better understood in Europe, less importancewould have been attached to this sudden change in its tone. No one in thehigher ranks at Vienna was bound by the action of his colleagues. TheEmperor, though industrious, had not the capacity to enforce any coherentsystem of government. His brothers caballed one against another, andagainst the persons who figured as responsible ministers. State-papers werebrought by soldiers to the Emperor for his signature without the knowledgeof his advisers. The very manifestos which seemed to herald a new era forGermany owed most of their vigour to the literary men who were entrustedwith 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 wasuncertain. In the Rhenish Federation there were undoubted signs ofdiscontent with French rule among the common people; but the officialclasses were universally on the side of Napoleon, who had given them theirposts 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 greatconqueror, who organised them under the hands of his own generals, and gavethem the companionship of his own victorious legions. Little could beexpected from districts where to the mass of the population the old régimeof German independence had meant nothing more than attendance at themanor-court of a knight, or the occasional spectacle of a ducal wedding, ora deferred interest in the droning jobbery of some hereditarytown-councillor. In Northern Germany there was far more prospect of anational insurrection. There the spirit of Stein and of those who hadworked with him was making itself felt, in spite of the fall of theMinister. Scharnhorst's reforms had made the Prussian army a school ofpatriotism, and the work of statesmen and soldiers was promoted by men whospoke to the feelings and the intelligence of the nation. Literature lostits indifference to nationality and to home. The philosopher Fichte, thepoet Arndt, the theologian Schleiermacher pressed the claims of Germany andof the manlier virtues upon a middle class singularly open to literaryinfluences, singularly wanting in the experience and the impulses of activepublic life. [156] In the Kingdom of Westphalia preparations for aninsurrection against the French were made by officers who had served in thePrussian and the Hessian armies. In Prussia itself, by the side of manynobler agencies, the newly-founded Masonic society of the Tugendbund, orLeague of Virtue, made the cause of the Fatherland popular among thousandsto whom it was an agreeable novelty to belong to any society at all. Nospontaneous, irresistible uprising, like that which Europe had seen in theSpanish Peninsula, was to be expected among the unimpulsive population ofthe North German plains; but the military circles of Prussia were generallyin favour of war, and an insurrection of the population west of the Elbewas not improbable in the event of Napoleon's army being defeated byAustria in the field. King Frederick William, too timid to resolve upon warhimself, too timid even to look with satisfaction upon the bold attitude ofAustria, had every reason for striking, if once the balance should inclineagainst Napoleon: even against his own inclination it was possible that theardour of his soldiers might force him into war. [Plans of campaign. ]So strong were the hopes of a general rising in Northern Germany, that theAustrian Government to some extent based its plans for the campaign on thisevent. In the ordinary course of hostilities between France and Austria theline of operations in Germany is the valley of the Danube; but in preparingfor the war of 1809 the Austrian Government massed its forces in thenorth-west of Bohemia, with the object of throwing them directly uponCentral Germany. The French troops which were now evacuating Prussia werestill on their way westwards at the time when Austria was ready to open thecampaign. Davoust, with about 60, 000 men, was in Northern Bavaria, separated by a great distance from the nearest French divisions in Badenand on the Rhine. By a sudden incursion of the main army of Austria acrossthe Bohemian mountains, followed by an uprising in Northern Germany, Davoust and his scattered detachments could hardly escape destruction. Suchwas the original plan of the campaign, and it was probably a wise one inthe present exceptional superiority of the Austrian preparations over thoseof France. For the first time since the creation of the Consulate itappeared as if the opening advantages of the war must inevitably be uponthe side of the enemies of France. Napoleon had underrated both the energyand the resources of his adversary. By the middle of March, when theAustrians were ready to descend upon Davoust from Bohemia, Napoleon's firsttroops 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 andUlm filled anxious minds with the thought that the valley of the Danube wasinsufficiently defended; and on the 20th of March, when the army was on thepoint of breaking into Northern Bavaria, orders were given to divert theline of march to the south, and to enter the Rhenish Confederacy by theroads of the Danube and the Inn. Thus the fruit of so much energy, and ofthe enemy's rare neglectfulness, was sacrificed at the last moment. It wasnot until the 9th of April that the Austrian movement southward wascompleted, and that the army lay upon the line of the Inn, ready to attackNapoleon in the territory of his principal German ally. [Austrian manifesto to the Germans. ]The proclamations now published by the Emperor and the Archduke borestriking testimony to the influence of the Spanish insurrection in excitingthe sense of national right, and awakening the Governments of Europe to theforce which this placed in their hands. For the first time in history amanifesto was addressed "to the German nation. " The contrast drawn in theArchduke's address to his army between the Spanish patriots dying in thedefence of their country, and the German vassal-contingents dragged byNapoleon into Spain to deprive a gallant nation of its freedom, was one ofthe most just and the most telling that tyranny has ever given to theleaders of a righteous cause. [157] The Emperor's address "to the Germannation" breathed the same spirit. It was not difficult for the politiciansof the Rhenish Federation to ridicule the sudden enthusiasm for liberty andnationality shown by a Government which up to the present time had dreadednothing so much as the excitement of popular movements; but, howeverunconcernedly the Emperor and the old school of Austrian statesmen mightadopt patriotic phrases which they had no intention to remember when thestruggle was over, such language was a reality in the effect which itproduced upon the thousands who, both in Austria and other parts ofGermany, now for the first time heard the summons to unite in defence of acommon 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 ofApril. Besides the forces intended for the invasion of Bavaria, whichnumbered 170, 000 men, the Austrian Government had formed two smallerarmies, with which the Princes Ferdinand and John were to take up theoffensive in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and in Northern Italy. On every sideAustria was first in the field; but even before its regular forces couldencounter the enemy, a popular outbreak of the kind that the Government hadinvoked wrested from the French the whole of an important province. Whilethe army crossed the Inn, the Tyrolese people rose, and overpowered theFrench and Bavarian detachments stationed in their country. The Tyrol hadbeen taken from Austria at the Peace of Presburg, and attached toNapoleon's vassal kingdom of Bavaria. In geographical position and inrelationship of blood the Tyrolese were as closely connected with theBavarians as with the Austrians; and the annexation would probably havecaused no lasting discontent if the Bavarian Government had condescended totake some account of the character of its new subjects. Under the rule ofAustria the Tyrolese had enjoyed many privileges. They were exempt frommilitary service, except in their own militia; they paid few taxes; theypossessed forms of self-government which were at least popular enough to beregretted after they had been lost. The people adored their bishops andclergy. Nowhere could the Church exhibit a more winning example of unbrokenaccord between a simple people and a Catholic Crown. Protestantism and theunholy activities of reason had never brought trouble into the land. Thepeople believed exactly what the priests told them, and delighted in theinnumerable holidays provided by the Church. They had so little cupiditythat no bribe could induce a Tyrolese peasant to inform the French of anymovement; they had so little intelligence that, when their own courage andstout-heartedness had won their first battle, they persuaded one anotherthat they had been led by a Saint on a white horse. Grievances of asubstantial character were not wanting under the new Bavarian rule; but itwas less the increased taxation and the enforcement of military servicethat exasperated the people than the attacks made by the Government uponthe property and rights of the Church. Montgelas, the reforming Bavarianminister, treated the Tyrolese bishops with as little ceremony as theSwabian knights. The State laid claim to all advowsons; and upon therefusal of the bishops to give up their patronage, the bishops themselveswere banished and their revenues sequestrated. A passion for uniformity andcommon sense prompted the Government to revive the Emperor Joseph's edictsagainst pilgrimages and Church holidays. It became a police-offence to shutup a shop on a saint's day, or to wear a gay dress at a festival. Bavariansoldiers 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 sacredvessels were permitted to fall into the hands of the Jews. These were the wrongs that fired the simple Tyrolese. They could have bornethe visits of the tax-gatherer and the lists of conscription; they couldnot bear that their priests should be overruled, or that their observancesshould be limited to those sufficient for ordinary Catholics. Yet, with allits aspect of unreason, the question in the Tyrol was also part of thatlarger question whether Napoleon's pleasure should be the rule of Europeanlife, or nations should have some voice in the disposal of their ownaffairs. The Tyrolese were not more superstitious, and they were certaintymuch less cruel, than the Spaniards. They fought for ecclesiasticalabsurdities; but their cause was also the cause of national right, and theadmiration 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 theTyrolese peasantry, and planned the first movements of a nationalinsurrection. As soon as the Austrian army crossed the Inn, the peasantsthronged to their appointed meeting-places. Scattered detachments of theBavarians were surrounded, and on the 12th of April the main body of theTyrolese, numbering about 15, 000 men, advanced upon Innsbruck. The town wasinvested; the Bavarian garrison, consisting of 3, 000 regular troops, founditself forced to surrender after a severe engagement. On the next morning aFrench column, on the march from Italy to the Danube, approached Innsbruck, totally unaware of the events of the preceding day. The Tyrolese closedbehind it as it advanced. It was not until the column was close to the townthat its commander, General Brisson, discovered that Innsbruck had falleninto an enemy's hands. Retreat was impossible; ammunition was wanting for abattle; and Brisson had no choice but to surrender to the peasants, who hadalready proved more than a match for the Bavarian regular troops. TheTyrolese had done their work without the help of a single Austrianregiment. In five days the weak fabric of Bavarian rule had been thrown tothe ground. The French only maintained themselves in the lower valley ofthe Adige: and before the end of April their last positions at Trent andRoveredo 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 melancholycontrast to the activity of the mountaineers. In spite of the delay ofthree weeks in opening the campaign, Davoust had still not effected hisjunction with the French troops in Southern Bavaria, and a rapid movementof the Austrians might even now have overwhelmed his isolated divisions atRatisbon. Napoleon himself had remained in Paris till the last moment, instructing Berthier, the chief of the staff, to concentrate the vanguardat Ratisbon, if by the 15th of April the enemy had not crossed the Inn, butto draw back to the line of the Lech if the enemy crossed the Inn beforethat day. [158] The Archduke entered Bavaria on the 9th; but, instead ofretiring to the Lech, Berthier allowed the army to be scattered over anarea sixty miles broad, from Ratisbon to points above Augsburg. Davoust layat Ratisbon, a certain prey if the Archduke pushed forwards with vigour andthrust his army between the northern and the southern positions of theFrench. But nothing could change the sluggishness of the Austrian march. The Archduke was six days in moving from the Inn to the Isar; and beforethe order was given for an advance upon Ratisbon, Napoleon himself hadarrived at Donauwörth, and taken the command out of the hands of his feeblelieutenant. [Napoleon restores superiority of French, April 18, 19. ]It needed all the Emperor's energy to snatch victory from the enemy'sgrasp. Davoust was bidden to fall back from Ratisbon to Neustadt; the mostpressing orders were sent to Massena, who commanded the right at Augsburg, to push forward to the north-east in the direction of his colleague, beforethe Austrians could throw the mass of their forces upon Davoust's weakcorps. Both generals understood the urgency of the command. Davoust set outfrom 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 Augsburgnorth-eastwards, while Napoleon himself advanced into the mid-space betweenthe two generals, and brought the right and left wings of the French armyinto communication with one another. In two days after the Emperor'sarrival all the advantages of the Austrians were gone: the French, solately exposed to destruction, formed a concentrated mass in the presenceof a scattered enemy. The issue of the campaign was decided by themovements 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 seizedwith 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 Napoleonicwarfare filled the next three days with French victories and Austriandisasters. On April the 20th the long line of the Archduke's army was cutin halves by an attack at Abensberg. The left was driven across the Isar atLandshut; the right, commanded by the Archduke himself, was overpowered atEggmühl on the 22nd, and forced northwards. The unbroken mass of the Frencharmy now thrust itself between the two defeated wings of the enemy. Theonly road remaining open to the Archduke was that through Ratisbon to thenorth of the Danube. In five days, although no engagement of the firstorder had taken place between the French and Austrian armies, Charles hadlost 60, 000 men; the mass of his army was retreating into Bohemia, and theroad to Vienna lay scarcely less open than after Mack's capitulation at Ulmfour years before. A desperate battle fought against the advancing Frenchat Edelsberg by the weak divisions that had remained on the south of theDanube, proved that the disasters of the campaign were due to the faults ofthe general, not to the men whom he commanded. But whatever hopes ofultimate success might still be based on the gallant temper of the army, itwas impossible to prevent the fall of the capital. The French, leaving theArchduke on the north of the Danube, pressed forwards along the directroute from the Inn to Vienna. The capital was bombarded and occupied. Onthe 13th of May Napoleon again took up his quarters in the palace of theAustrian monarchs where he had signed the Peace of 1806. The divisionswhich had fallen back before him along the southern road crossed the Danubeat Vienna, and joined the Archduke on the bank of the river opposite thecapital. [Attempts of Dörnberg and Schill in Northern Germany, April, 1809. ]The disasters of the Bavarian campaign involved the sacrifice of all thathad resulted from Austrian victories elsewhere, and of all that might havebeen won by a general insurrection in Northern Germany. In Poland and inItaly the war had opened favourably for Austria. Warsaw had been seized;Eugene Beauharnais, the Viceroy of Italy, had been defeated by the ArchdukeJohn at Sacile, in Venetia; but it was impossible to pursue theseadvantages when the capital itself was on the point of falling into thehands of the enemy. The invading armies halted, and ere long the ArchdukeJohn commenced his retreat into the mountains. In Northern Germany nopopular uprising could be expected when once Austria had been defeated. Theonly movements that took place were undertaken by soldiers, and undertakenbefore the disasters in Bavaria became known. The leaders in this militaryconspiracy were Dörnberg, an officer in the service of King Jerome ofWestphalia, and Schill, the Prussian cavalry leader who had so brilliantlydistinguished himself in the defence of Colberg. Dörnberg had taken serviceunder Jerome with the design of raising Jerome's own army against him. Ithad been agreed by the conspirators that at the same moment Dörnberg shouldraise the Hessian standard in Westphalia, and Schill, marching from Berlinwith any part of the Prussian army that would follow him, should proclaimwar against the French in defiance of the Prussian Government. Dörnberg hadmade sure of the support of his own regiment; but at the last moment theplot was discovered, and he was transferred to the command of a body of menupon whom he could not rely. He placed himself at the head of a band ofpeasants, and raised the standard of insurrection. King Jerome's troops metthe solicitations of their countrymen with a volley of bullets. Dörnbergfled 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 reportsof Austrian victories upon the Danube, led out his regiment from Berlin asif for a day's manoeuvring, and then summoned his men to follow him inraising a national insurrection against Napoleon. The soldiers answeredSchill's eloquent words with shouts of applause; the march was continuedwestwards, and Schill crossed the Elbe, intending to fall upon thecommunications of Napoleon's army, already, as he believed, staggeringunder 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 ofDörnberg's ruin in Westphalia. All hope of success in the enterprise onwhich he had quitted Berlin was dashed to the ground. The possibility ofraising a popular insurrection vanished. Schill, however, had gone too farto recede; and even now it was not too late to join the armies ofNapoleon's enemies. Schill might move into Bohemia, or to some point on thenorthern coast where he would be within reach of English vessels. But inany case quick and steady decision was necessary; and this Schill could notattain. Though brave even to recklessness, and gifted with qualities whichmade him the idol of the public, Schill lacked the disinterestedness andself-mastery which calm the judgment in time of trial. The sudden ruin ofhis hopes left him without a plan. He wasted day after day in purposelessmarches, while the enemy collected a force to overwhelm him. His influenceover his men became impaired; the denunciations of the Prussian Governmentprevented other soldiers from joining him. At length Schill determined torecross the Elbe, and to throw himself into the coast town of Stralsund, inSwedish Pomerania. He marched through Mecklenburg, and suddenly appearedbefore Stralsund at moment when the French cannoneers in garrison werefiring a salvo in honour of Napoleon's entry into Vienna. A hand-to-handfight gave Schill possession of the town, with all its stores. For a momentit seemed as if Stralsund might become a second Saragossa; but the Frenchwere at hand before it was possible to create works of defence. Schill hadbut eighteen hundred men, half of whom were cavalry; he understood nothingof military science, and would listen to no counsels. A week after hisentry into Stralsund the town was stormed by a force four times morenumerous than its defenders. Capitulation was no word for the man who haddared to make a private war upon Napoleon; Schill could only set theexample of an heroic death. [159] The officers who were not so fortunate asto fall with their leader were shot in cold blood, after trial by a Frenchcourt-martial. Six hundred common soldiers who surrendered were sent to thegalleys of Toulon to sicken among French thieves and murderers. The crueltyof the conqueror, the heroism of the conquered, gave to Schill'sill-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 whichall the braver spirits of Germany now looked for the day of reckoning withtheir 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 ofVienna; but no peace was possible until the Austrian army, which lay uponthe opposite bank of the river, had been attacked and beaten. Four milesbelow 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 onlya hundred and fifty yards broad. It was here that Napoleon determined tomake the passage. The broad arm of the Danube, sheltered by the island fromthe enemy's fire, was easily bridged by boats; the passage from the islandto the northern bank, though liable to be disputed by the Austrians, wasfacilitated by the narrowing of the stream. On the 18th of May, Napoleon, supposing himself to have made good the connection between the island andthe southern bank, began to bridge the northern arm of the river. Hismovements were observed by the enemy, but no opposition was offered. On the20th a body of 40, 000 French crossed to the northern bank, and occupied thevillages of Aspern and Essling. This was the movement for which theArchduke 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 theAustrians above the island. The waters of the Danube were swollen by themelting of the snows, and at midday the bridges of the French over thebroad arm of the river were swept away. A little later, dense Austriancolumns were seen advancing upon the villages of Aspern and Essling, wherethe French, cut off from their supports, had to meet an overpowering enemyin front, with an impassable river in their rear. The attack began at fourin 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 atEssling. During the night the long bridges were repaired; forty thousandadditional troops moved across the island to the northern bank of theDanube; and the engagement was renewed, now between equal numbers, on thefollowing morning. Five times the village of Aspern was lost and won. Inthe midst of the struggle the long bridges were again carried away. Unableto break the enemy, unable to bring up any new forces from Vienna, Napoleonordered 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 Archdukecould have thrown his army across the narrow arm of the river and renewedthe engagement. But the Austrians were in no condition to follow up theirvictory. Their losses were enormous; their stores were exhausted. Themoments in which a single stroke might have overthrown the whole fabric ofNapoleon's power were spent in forced inaction. By the third day after thebattle of Aspern the communications between the island and the mainlandwere restored, and Napoleon's energy had brought the army out of immediatedanger. [Effect on Europe. ][Brunswick invades Saxony. ]Nevertheless, although the worst was averted, and the French now lay securein their island fortress, the defeat of Aspern changed the position ofNapoleon in the eyes of all Europe. The belief in his invincibility wasdestroyed; he had suffered a defeat in person, at the head of his finesttroops, from an enemy little superior in strength to himself. The disastersof the Austrians in the opening of the campaign were forgotten; everywherethe hopes of resistance woke into new life. Prussian statesmen urged theirKing to promise his support if Austria should gain one more victory. Otherenemies were ready to fall upon Napoleon without waiting for thiscondition. England collected an immense armament destined for an attackupon some point of the northern coast. Germany, lately mute and nerveless, gave threatening signs. The Duke of Brunswick, driven from his inheritanceafter his father's death at Jena, invaded the dominions of Napoleon'svassal, the King of Saxony, and expelled him from his capital. Popularinsurrections broke out in Würtemberg and in Westphalia, and proved therising force of national feeling even in districts where the cause ofGermany 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. Everyenergy of his mind was bent to the one great issue on which victorydepended, the passage of the Danube. His chances of success were stillgood, if the French troops watching the enemy between Vienna and theAdriatic could be brought up in time for the final struggle. The ArchdukeCharles was in no hurry for a battle, believing that every hour increasedthe probability of an attack upon Napoleon by England or Prussia, orinsurgent Germany. Never was the difference between Napoleon and his ablestadversaries more strikingly displayed than in the work which wasaccomplished by him during this same interval. He had determined that inthe next battle his army should march across the Danube as safely and asrapidly as it could march along the streets of Vienna. Two solid bridgeswere built on piles across the broad arm of the river; no less than sixbridges of rafts were made ready to be thrown across the narrow arm whenthe moment arrived for the attack. By the end of June all the outlyingdivisions of the French army had gathered to the great rallying-point; ahundred 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 vastmass in its passage and advance, was fixed down to the minutest details. Napoleon had decided to cross from the eastern, not from the northern sideof the island, and thus to pass outside the fortifications which theArchduke had erected on the former battlefield. Towards midnight on the 4thof July, in the midst of a violent storm, the six bridges were successivelyswung across the river. The artillery opened fire. One army corps afteranother, each drawn up opposite to its own bridge, marched to the northernshore, and by sunrise nearly the whole of Napoleon's force deployed on theleft bank of the Danube. The river had been converted into a great highway;the fortifications which had been erected by the Archduke were turned bythe eastward direction of the passage. All that remained for the Austriancommander was to fight a pitched battle on ground that was now at leastthoroughly familiar to him. Charles had taken up a good position on thehills that look over the village of Wagram. Here, with 130, 000 men, heawaited the attack of the French. The first attack was made in theafternoon after the crossing of the river. It failed; and the French armylay stretched during the night between the river and the hills, while theArchduke prepared to descend upon their left on the morrow, and to forcehimself between the enemy and the bridges behind them. [Battle of Wagram, July 5, 6. ][Armistice of Zuaim, July 12. ]Early on the morning of the 6th the two largest armies that had ever beenbrought face to face in Europe began their onslaught. Spectators from thesteeples of Vienna saw the fire of the French little by little receding ontheir left, and dense masses of the Austrians pressing on towards thebridges, on whose safety the existence of the French army depended. But erelong the forward movement stopped. Napoleon had thrown an overpoweringforce against the Austrian centre, and the Archduke found himself compelledto recall his victorious divisions and defend his own threatened line. Gradually the superior numbers of the French forced the enemy back. TheArchduke John, who had been ordered up from Presburg, failed to appear onthe field; and at two o'clock Charles ordered a retreat. The order of theAustrians was unbroken; they had captured more prisoners than they hadlost; their retreat was covered by so powerful an artillery that the Frenchcould make no pursuit. The victory was no doubt Napoleon's, but it was avictory that had nothing in common with Jena and Austerlitz. Nothing waslost by the Austrians at Wagram but their positions and the reputation oftheir general. The army was still in fighting-order, with the fortresses ofBohemia behind it. Whether Austria would continue the war depended on theaction of the other European Powers. If Great Britain successfully landedan armament in Northern Germany or dealt any overwhelming blow in Spain, ifPrussia declared war on Napoleon, Austria might fight on. If the otherPowers failed, Austria, must make peace. The armistice of Zuaim, concludedon the 12th of July, was recognised on all sides as a mere device to gaintime. There was a pause in the great struggle in the central Continent. Itsrenewal 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 inSpain. Sir Arthur Wellesley, who took command at Lisbon in the spring, haddriven Soult out of Oporto, and was advancing by the valley of the Tagusupon the Spanish capital. Some appearance of additional strength was givento him by the support of a Spanish army under the command of GeneralCuesta. Wellesley's march had, however, been delayed by the neglect and badfaith of the Spanish Government, and time had been given to Soult tocollect a large force in the neighbourhood of Salamanca, ready either tofall upon Wellesley from the north, or to unite with another French armywhich lay at Talavera, if its commander, Victor, had the wisdom to postponean engagement. The English general knew nothing of Soult's presence on hisflank: he continued his march towards Madrid along the valley of the Tagus, and finally drew up for battle at Talavera, when Victor, after retreatingbefore Cuesta to some distance, hunted back his Spanish pursuer to thepoint from which he had started. [161] The first attack was made by Victorupon the English positions at evening on the 27th of July. Next morning theassault was renewed, and the battle became general. Wellesley gained acomplete victory, but the English themselves suffered heavily, and the armyremained in its position. Within the next few days Soult was discovered tobe descending from the mountains between Salamanca and the Tagus. A forcesuperior to Wellesley's own threatened to close upon him from the rear, andto hem him in between two fires. The sacrifices of Talavera proved to havebeen made in vain. Wellesley had no choice but to abandon his advance uponthe Spanish capital, and to fall back upon Portugal by the roads south ofthe Tagus. In spite of the defeat of Victor, the French were the winners ofthe campaign. Madrid was still secure; the fabric of French rule in theSpanish Peninsula was still unshaken. The tidings of Wellesley's retreatreached Napoleon and the Austrian negotiators, damping the hopes ofAustria, and easing Napoleon's fears. Austria's continuance of the war nowdepended upon the success or failure of the long-expected descent of anEnglish army upon the northern coast of Europe. Three months before the Austrian Government declared war upon Napoleon, ithad acquainted Great Britain with its own plans, and urged the Cabinet todispatch an English force to Northern Germany. Such a force, landing at thetime of the battle of Aspern, would certainly have aroused both Prussia andthe country between the Elbe and the Maine. But the difference between amovement executed in time and one executed weeks and months too late wasstill unknown at the English War Office. The Ministry did not even begintheir preparations till the middle of June, and then they determined, inpursuance of a plan made some years earlier, to attack the French fleet anddocks at Antwerp, and to ignore that patriotic movement in Northern Germanyfrom 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 weeksafter the battle of Wagram, a fleet of thirty-seven ships of the line, withinnumerable transports and gunboats, set sail from Dover for the Schelde. Forty thousand troops were on board; the commander of the expedition wasthe Earl of Chatham, a court-favourite in whom Nature avenged herself uponGreat Britain for what she had given to this country in his father and hisyounger brother. The troops were landed on the island of Walcheren. Insteadof pushing forward to Antwerp with all possible haste, and surprising itbefore any preparations could be made for its defence, Lord Chatham placedhalf his army on the banks of various canals, and with the other halfproceeded to invest Flushing. On the 16th of August this unfortunate townsurrendered, after a bombardment that had reduced it to a mass of ruins. During the next ten days the English commander advanced about as manymiles, and then discovered that for all prospect of taking Antwerp he mightas well have remained in England. Whilst Chatham was groping about inWalcheren, the fortifications of Antwerp were restored, the fleet carriedup the river, and a mass of troops collected sufficient to defend the townagainst a regular siege. Defeat stared the English in the face. At the endof 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 notoriouslypestiferous that Napoleon had refused to permit a single French soldier toserve there on garrison duty, [162] an English army-corps, which might atleast have earned the same honour as Schill and Brunswick in NorthernGermany, was left to perish of fever and ague. When two thousand soldierswere in their graves, the rest were recalled to England. [Austria makes peace. ]Great Britain had failed to weaken or to alarm Napoleon; the King ofPrussia made no movement on behalf of the losing cause; and the AustrianGovernment unwillingly found itself compelled to accept conditions ofpeace. It was not so much a deficiency in its forces as the universaldistrust of its generals that made it impossible for Austria to continuethe war. The soldiers had fought as bravely as the French, but in vain. "Ifwe had a million soldiers, " it was said, "we must make peace; for we haveno one to command them. " Count Stadion, who was for carrying on the war tothe bitter end, despaired of throwing his own energetic courage into themen who surrounded the Emperor, and withdrew from public affairs. For weekafter week the Emperor fluctuated between the acceptance of Napoleon's hardconditions and the renewal of a struggle which was likely to involve hisown dethronement as well as the total conquest of the Austrian State. Atlength Napoleon's demands were presented in the form of an ultimatum. Inhis distress the Emperor's thoughts turned towards the Minister who, eightyears before, had been so strong, so resolute, when all around him wavered. Thugut, now seventy-six years old, was living in retirement. The Emperorsent one of his generals to ask his opinion on peace or war. "I thought tofind him, " reported the general, "broken in mind and body; but the fire ofhis spirit is in its full force. " Thugut's reply did honour to hisforesight: "Make peace at any price. The existence of the Austrian monarchyis at stake: the dissolution of the French Empire is not far off. " On the14th of October the Emperor Francis accepted his conqueror's terms, andsigned 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, tookfrom the Austrian Empire 50, 000 square miles of territory and more than4, 000, 000 inhabitants. Salzburg, with part of Upper Austria, was ceded toBavaria; Western Galicia, the territory gained by Austria in the finalpartition of Poland, was transferred to the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw; part ofCarinthia, with the whole of the country lying between the Adriatic and theSave as far as the frontier of Bosnia, was annexed to Napoleon's ownEmpire, under the title of the Illyrian Provinces. Austria was cut off fromthe sea, and the dominion of Napoleon extended without a break to theborders of Turkey. Bavaria and Saxony, the outposts of French sovereigntyin Central Europe, were enriched at the expense of the Power which hadcalled Germany to arms; Austria, which at the beginning of theRevolutionary War had owned territory upon the Rhine and exercised apredominating influence over all Italy, seemed now to be finally excludedboth from Germany and the Mediterranean. Yet, however striking the changeof frontier which gave to Napoleon continuous dominion from the Straits ofCalais to the border of Bosnia, the victories of France in 1809 brought intheir train none of those great moral changes which had hitherto made eachFrench conquest a stage in European progress. The campaign of 1796 hadaroused the hope of national independence in Italy; the settlements of 1801and 1806 had put an end to Feudalism in Western Germany; the victories of1809 originated nothing but a change of frontier such as the next war mightobliterate and undo. All that was permanent in the effects of the year 1809was due, not to any new creations of Napoleon, but to the spirit ofresistance which France had at length excited in Europe. The revolt of theTyrol, the exploits of Brunswick and Schill, gave a stimulus to Germanpatriotism which survived the defeat of Austria. Austria itself, thoughoverpowered, had inflicted a deadly injury upon Napoleon, by withdrawinghim from Spain at the moment when he might have completed its conquest, andby enabling Wellesley to gain a footing in the Peninsula. Napoleon appearedto have gathered a richer spoil from the victories of 1809 than from any ofhis previous wars; in reality he had never surrounded himself with so manydangers. Russia was alienated by the annexation of West Galicia to thePolish Grand Duchy of Warsaw; Northern Germany had profited by the examplesof courage and patriotism shown so largely in 1809 on behalf of theFatherland; Spain, supported by Wellesley's army, was still far fromsubmission. The old indifference which had smoothed the way for the earlierFrench conquests was no longer the characteristic of Europe. Theestrangement of Russia, the growth of national spirit in Germany and inSpain, involved a danger to Napoleon's power which far outweighed thevisible results of his victory. [Austria and the Tyrol. ]Austria itself could only acquiesce in defeat: nor perhaps would thepermanent interests of Europe have been promoted by its success. Thechampionship of Germany which it assumed at the beginning of the war wouldno doubt have resulted in the temporary establishment of some form ofGerman union under Austrian leadership, if the event of the war had beendifferent; but the sovereign of Hungary and Croatia could never be the truehead of the German people; and the conduct of the Austrian Government afterthe peace of 1809 gave little reason to regret its failure to revive aTeutonic Empire. No portion of the Emperor's subjects had fought for himwith such determined loyalty as the Tyrolese. After having been the firstto throw off the yoke of the stranger, they had again and again freed theircountry when Napoleon's generals supposed all resistance overcome; and inreturn for their efforts the Emperor had solemnly assured them that hewould never accept a peace which did not restore them to his Empire. Iffair dealing was due anywhere it was due from the Court of Austria to theTyrolese. Yet the only reward of the simple courage of these mountaineerswas that the war-party at head-quarters recklessly employed them as a meansof prolonging, hostilities after the armistice of Znaim, and that up to themoment when peace was signed they were left in the belief that the Emperormeant to keep his promise, Austria, however, could not ruin herself toplease the Tyrolese. Circumstances were changed; and the phrases ofpatriotism which had excited so much rejoicing at the beginning of the warwere now fallen out of fashion at Vienna. Nothing more was heard about therights of nations and the deliverance of Germany. Austria had made a greatventure and failed; and the Government rather resumed than abandoned itsnormal 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 bynational sympathies. France had been a cruel enemy; yet if there was aprospect of winning something for Austria by a French alliance, considerations of sentiment could not be allowed to stand in the way. Astatesman who, like Count Stadion, had identified the interests of Austriawith the liberation of Germany, was no fitting helmsman for the State inthe shifting course that now lay before it. A diplomatist was called topower who had hitherto by Napoleon's own desire represented the AustrianState at Paris. Count Metternich, the new Chief Minister, was the son of aRhenish nobleman who had held high office under the Austrian crown. Hisyouth had been passed at Coblentz, and his character and tastes were thosewhich in the eighteenth century had marked the court-circles of the littleRhenish Principalities, French in their outer life, unconscious of theinstinct of nationality, polished and seductive in that personal managementwhich passed for the highest type of statesmanship. Metternich had beenambassador at Dresden and at Berlin before he went to Paris. Napoleon hadrequested that he might be transferred to the Court of the Tuileries, onaccount of the marked personal courtesy shown by Metternich to the Frenchambassador at Berlin during the war between France and Austria in 1805. Metternich carried with him all the friendliness of personal intercoursewhich Napoleon expected in him, but he also carried with him a calm andpenetrating self-possession, and the conviction that Napoleon would giveEurope no rest until his power was greatly diminished. He served Austriawell at Paris, and in the negotiations for peace which followed the battleof Wagram he took a leading part. After the disasters of 1809, when war wasimpossible and isolation ruin, no statesman could so well serve Austria asone who had never confessed himself the enemy of any Power; and, with thefull approval of Napoleon, the late Ambassador at Paris was placed at thehead 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 ofsystem which was henceforward to guard Austria's interests. Before thegrass had grown over the graves at Wagram, the Emperor Francis waspersuaded to give his daughter in marriage to Napoleon. For some time pastNapoleon had determined on divorcing Josephine and allying himself to oneof the reigning houses of the Continent. His first advances were made atSt. Petersburg; but the Czar hesitated to form a connection which hissubjects would view as a dishonour; and the opportunity was seized by theless fastidious Austrians as soon as the fancies of the imperial suitorturned towards Vienna. The Emperor Francis, who had been bullied byNapoleon upon the field of Austerlitz, ridiculed and insulted in everyproclamation issued during the late campaign, gave up his daughter for whatwas called the good of his people, and reconciled himself to a son-in-lawwho had taken so many provinces for his dowry. Peace had not beenproclaimed four months when the treaty was signed which united the House ofBonaparte to the family of Marie Antoinette. The Archduke Charlesrepresented Napoleon in the espousals; the Archbishop of Vienna anointedthe bride with the same sacred oil with which he had consecrated thebanners of 1809; the servile press which narrated the wedding festivitiesfound no space to mention that the Emperor's bravest subject, the Tyroleseleader Hofer, was executed by Napoleon as a brigand in the interval betweenthe contract and the celebration of the marriage. Old Austrian families, members of the only aristocracy upon the Continent that still possessedpolitical weight and a political tradition, lamented the Emperor's consentto a union which their prejudices called a mis-alliance, and theirconsciences an adultery; but the object of Metternich was attained. Thefriendship between France and Russia, which had inflicted so much evil onthe Continent since the Peace of Tilsit, was dissolved; the sword ofNapoleon was turned away from Austria for at least some years; therestoration of the lost provinces of the Hapsburg seemed not impossible, now that Napoleon and Alexander were left face to face in Europe, and thealliance of Austria had become so important to the power which had hithertoenriched itself at Austria's expense. [Napoleon annexes Papal States, May, 1809. ]Napoleon crowned his new bride, and felt himself at length the equal of theHapsburgs and the Bourbons. Except in Spain, his arms were no longerresisted upon the Continent, and the period immediately succeeding thePeace of Vienna was that which brought the Napoleonic Empire to its widestbounds. Already, in the pride of the first victories of 1809, Napoleon hadcompleted his aggressions upon the Papal sovereignty by declaring theEcclesiastical States to be united to the French Empire (May 17, 1809). ThePope retorted upon his despoiler with a Bull of Excommunication; but thespiritual terrors were among the least formidable of those then active inEurope, and the sanctity of the Pontiff did not prevent Napoleon's soldiersfrom arresting him in the Quirinal, and carrying him as a prisoner toSavona. Here Pius VII. , was detained for the next three years. The RomanStates received the laws and the civil organisation of France. [164]Bishops and clergy who refused the oath of fidelity to Napoleon wereimprisoned or exiled; the monasteries and convents were dissolved; thecardinals and great officers, along with the archives and the wholeapparatus of ecclesiastical rule, were carried to Paris. In relation to thefuture of European Catholicism, the breach between Napoleon and Pius VII. , was a more important event than was understood at the time; its immediateand 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 anhonest effort to govern for the benefit of his subjects. He had endeavouredto lighten the burdens which Napoleon laid upon the Dutch nation, alreadydeprived of its colonies, its commerce, and its independence; and everyplea which Louis had made for his subjects had been treated by Napoleon asa breach of duty towards himself. The offence of the unfortunate King ofHolland became unpardonable when he neglected to enforce the orders ofNapoleon against the admission of English goods. Louis was summoned toParis, and compelled to sign a treaty, ceding part of his dominions andplacing his custom-houses in the hands of French officers. He returned toHolland, but affairs grew worse and worse. French troops overran thecountry; Napoleon's letters were each more menacing than the last; and atlength Louis fled from his dominions (July 1, 1810), and delivered himselffrom a royalty which had proved the most intolerable kind of servitude. Aweek 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 ofthe Valais was declared to have neglected the duty imposed upon it ofrepairing the road over the Simplon, and forfeited its independence. TheNorth German coast district, comprising the Hanse towns, Oldenburg, andpart of the Kingdom of Westphalia, was annexed to the French Empire, withthe alleged object of more effectually shutting out British goods from theports of the Elbe and the Weser. Hamburg, however, and most of theterritory now incorporated with France, had been occupied by French troopsever since the war of 1806, and the legal change in its position scarcelymade its subjection more complete. Had the history of this annexation beenwritten by men of the peasant-class, it would probably have been describedin terms of unmixed thankfulness and praise. In the Decree introducing theFrench principle of the free tenure of land, thirty-six distinct forms offeudal 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 theEmpire began at Lübeck on the Baltic, touched the Rhine at Wesel, andfollowed the river and the Jura mountains to the foot of the Lake ofGeneva; then, crossing the Alps above the source of the Rhone, it ran withthe rivers Sesia and Po to a point nearly opposite Mantua, mounted to thewatershed of the Apennines, and descended to the Mediterranean atTerracina. The late Ecclesiastical States were formed into the twoDepartments of the Tiber and of Trasimene; Tuscany, also divided intoFrench Departments, and represented in the French Legislative Body, gavethe title of Archduchess and the ceremonial of a Court to Napoleon's sisterEliza; the Kingdom of Italy, formed by Lombardy, Venice, and the countryeast of the Apennines as far south as Ascoli, belonged to Napoleon himself, but was not constitutionally united with the French Empire. On the east ofthe Adriatic the Illyrian Provinces extended Napoleon's rule to the bordersof Bosnia and Montenegro. Outside the frontier of this great Empire anorder of feudatories ruled in Italy, in Germany, and in Poland. Murat, Kingof Naples, and the client-princes of the Confederation of the Rhine, holding all Germany up to the frontiers of Prussia and Austria, as well asthe Grand-Duchy of Warsaw, were nominally sovereigns within their owndominions; but they held their dignities at Napoleon's pleasure, and thepopulation 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 wasdestined to receive at the hands of Napoleon. The fabric of his sovereigntywas raised upon the ruins of all that was obsolete and forceless upon thewestern Continent; the benefits as well as the wrongs or his supremacy werenow seen in their widest operation. All Italy, the northern districts ofGermany which were incorporated with the Empire, and a great part of theConfederate Territory of the Rhine, received in the Code Napoleon a lawwhich, to an extent hitherto unknown in Europe, brought social justice intothe daily affairs of life. The privileges of the noble, the feudal burdensof the peasant, the monopolies of the guilds, passed away, in mostinstances for ever. The comfort and improvement of mankind were vindicatedas the true aim of property by the abolition of the devices which convertthe soil into an instrument of family pride, and by the enforcement of afair division of inheritances among the children of the possessor. Legalprocess, both civil and criminal, was brought within the comprehension ofordinary citizens, and submitted to the test of publicity. These were amongthe fruits of an earlier enlightenment which Napoleon's supremacy bestowedupon a great part of Europe. The price which was paid for them was thesuppression of every vestige of liberty, the conscription, and theContinental blockade. On the whole, the yoke was patiently borne. TheItalians and the Germans of the Rhenish Confederacy cared little whatGovernment they obeyed; their recruits who were sent to be killed by theAustrians or the Spaniards felt it no especial hardship to fight Napoleon'sbattles. More galling was the pressure of Napoleon's commercial system andof the agencies by which he attempted to enforce it. In the hope of ruiningthe trade of Great Britain, Napoleon spared no severity against the ownersof anything that had touched British hands, and deprived the Continent ofits entire supply of colonial produce, with the exception of such as wasimported at enormous charges by traders licensed by himself. The possessionof English goods became a capital offence. In the great trading towns asystem of permanent terrorism was put in force against the merchants. Soldiers ransacked their houses; their letters were opened; spies doggedtheir steps. It was in Hamburg, where Davoust exercised a sort ofindependent sovereignty, that the violence and injustice of the Napoleoniccommercial system was seen in its most repulsive form; in the greater partof the Empire it was felt more in the general decline of trade and in amultitude of annoying privations than in acts of obtrusive cruelty. [166]The French were themselves compelled to extract sugar from beetroot, and tosubstitute chicory for coffee; the Germans, less favoured by nature, andless rapid in adaptation, thirsted and sulked. Even in such torpidcommunities as Saxony political discontent was at length engendered bybodily discomfort. Men who were proof against all the patriotic exaltationof Stein and Fichte felt that there must be something wrong in a systemwhich sent up the price of coffee to five shillings a pound, and reducedthe 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 theContinental system contributed to the fall of its author. Whatever thediscontent of these communities, they obeyed Napoleon as long as he wasvictorious, and abandoned him only when his cause was lost. Its realpolitical importance lay in the hostility which it excited between Franceand Russia. The Czar, who had attached himself to Napoleon's commercialsystem at the Peace of Tilsit, withdrew from it in the year succeeding thePeace of Vienna. The trade of the Russian Empire had been ruined by theclosure of its ports to British vessels and British goods. Napoleon hadbroken his promise to Russia by adding West Galicia to the Polish Duchy ofWarsaw; and the Czar refused to sacrifice the wealth of his subjects anylonger in the interest of an insincere ally. At the end of the year 1810 anorder was published at St. Petersburg, opening the harbours of Russia toall ships bearing a neutral flag, and imposing a duty upon many of theproducts of France. This edict was scarcely less than a direct challenge tothe French Emperor. Napoleon exaggerated the effect of his Continentalprohibitions upon English traffic. He imagined that the command of theEuropean coast-line, and nothing short of this, would enable him to exhausthis enemy; and he was prepared to risk a war with Russia rather than permitit to frustrate his long-cherished hopes. Already in the Austrian marriageNapoleon had marked the severance of his interests from those of Alexander. An attempted compromise upon the affairs of Poland produced only newalienation and distrust; an open affront was offered to Alexander in theannexation of the Duchy of Oldenburg, whose sovereign was a member of hisown family. The last event was immediately followed by the publication ofthe new Russian tariff. In the spring of 1811 Napoleon had determined uponwar. 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 ofdiplomatic intercourse were in consequence maintained for some time longerat Paris and St. Petersburg. But the true nature of the situation was shownby the immense levies that were ordered both in France and Russia; and therest of the year was spent in preparations for the campaign which wasdestined 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 elapsedbetween the Peace of Vienna and the outbreak of war with Russia, Napoleonhad no enemy in arms upon the Continent except in the Spanish Peninsula. Had the Emperor himself taken up the command in Spain, he would probablywithin a few months have crushed both the Spanish armies and their Englishally. A fatal error in judgment made him willing to look on from a distancewhilst his generals engaged with this last foe. The disputes with the Popeand the King of Holland might well have been adjourned for another year;but Napoleon felt no suspicions that the conquest of the Spanish Peninsulawas too difficult a task for his marshals; nor perhaps would it have beenso if Wellington had been like any of the generals whom Napoleon hadhimself encountered. The French forces in the Peninsula numbered over300, 000 men: in spite of the victory of Talavera, the English had beenforced to retreat into Portugal. But the warfare of Wellington was adifferent thing from that even of the best Austrian or Russian commanders. From the time of the retreat from Talavera he had foreseen that Portugalwould be invaded by an army far outnumbering his own; and he planned ascheme of defence as original, as strongly marked with true militaryinsight, as Napoleon's own most daring schemes of attack. Behind Lisbon arugged mountainous tract stretches from the Tagus to the sea: here, whilethe English army wintered in the neighbourhood of Almeida, Wellingtonemployed thousands of Portuguese labourers in turning the promontory intoone vast fortress. No rumour of the operation was allowed to reach theenemy. A double series of fortifications, known as the Lines of TorresVedras, followed the mountain-bastion on the north of Lisbon, and left nosingle point open between the Tagus and the sea. This was the barrier towhich Wellington meant in the last resort to draw his assailants, whilstthe 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 atAspern and Wagram, arrived in Spain, and took up the command of the armydestined for the conquest of Portugal. Ciudad Rodrigo was invested:Wellington, too weak to effect its relief, too wise to jeopardise his armyfor the sake of Spanish praise, lay motionless while this great fortressfell into the hands of the invader. In September, the French, 70, 000strong, entered Portugal. Wellington retreated down the valley of theMondego, devastating the country. At length he halted at Busaco and gavebattle (September 27). The French were defeated; the victory gave thePortuguese full confidence in the English leader; but other roads were opento the invader, and Wellington continued his retreat. Massena followed, andheard for the first time of the fortifications of Torres Vedras when he waswithin five days' march of them. On nearing the mountain-barrier, Massenasearched in vain for an unprotected point. Fifty thousand English andPortuguese regular troops, besides a multitude of Portuguese militia, werecollected behind the lines; with the present number of the French anassault was hopeless. Massena waited for reinforcements. It was with theutmost 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 tooweak to risk a pitched battle. Massena halted and took post at Santarem, onthe Tagus. Here, and in the neighbouring valley of the Zezere, hemaintained himself during the winter. But in March, 1811, reinforcementsarrived from England: Wellington moved forward against his enemy, and theretreat of the French began in real earnest. Massena made his waynorthwards, hard pressed by the English, and devastating the country withmerciless severity in order to retard pursuit. Fire and ruin marked thetrack of the retreating army; but such were the sufferings of the Frenchthemselves, both during the invasion and the retreat, that when Massenare-entered Spain, after a campaign in which only one pitched battle hadbeen 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, werein 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 endof 1810, an order reached him from Napoleon to move to the support ofMassena. Leaving Victor in command at Cadiz, Soult marched northwards, routed the Spaniards, and conquered the fortress of Badajoz, commanding thesouthern road into Portugal. Massena, however, was already in retreat, andSoult's own advance was cut short by intelligence that Graham, the Englishgeneral in Cadiz, had broken out upon the besiegers and inflicted a heavydefeat. Soult returned to Cadiz and resumed the blockade. Wellington, thusfreed from danger of attack from the south, and believing Massena to bethoroughly disabled, considered that the time had come for a forwardmovement into Spain. It was necessary for him to capture the fortresses ofAlmeida and Ciudad Rodrigo on the northern road, and to secure his owncommunications with Portugal by wresting back Badajoz from the French. Heleft a small force to besiege Almeida, and moved to Elvas to makearrangements with Beresford for the siege of Badajoz. But before theEnglish commander had deemed it possible, the energy of Massena hadrestored his troops to efficiency; and the two armies of Massena and Soultwere now ready to assail the English on the north and the south. Massenamarched against the corps investing Almeida. Wellington hastened back tomeet 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 advancedto the relief of Badajoz. He was overthrown by Beresford in the bloodyengagement of Albuera (May 16th); but his junction with the army of thenorth, which was now transferred from Massena to Marmont, forced theEnglish to raise the siege; and Wellington, after audaciously offeringbattle to the combined French armies, retired within the Portuguesefrontier, and marched northwards with the design of laying siege to CiudadRodrigo. Again outnumbered by the French, he was compelled to retire tocantonments 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 tokeep their armies long united, on account of the scarcity of food. Hiscalculations were correct, and at the close of the year 1811 the Englishwere 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 wasopened; it only remained to secure Portugal itself by the capture ofBadajoz. Wellington crossed the Tagus on the 8th of March, and completedthe investment of Badajoz ten days later. It was necessary to gainpossession of the city, at whatever cost, before Soult could advance to itsrelief. On the night of the 6th of April Wellington gave orders for theassault. The fury of the attack, the ferocity of the English soldiers inthe moment of their victory, have made the storm of Badajoz conspicuousamongst the most terrible events of war. But the purpose of Wellington waseffected; the base of the English army in Portugal was secured from allpossibility of attack; and at the moment when Napoleon was summoning hisveteran regiments from beyond the Pyrenees for the invasion of Russia, theEnglish commander, master of the frontier fortresses of Spain, waspreparing to overwhelm the weakened armies in the Peninsula, and to drivethe 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 ofopening the Russian campaign, that Wellington advanced against Marmont'spositions in the north of Spain and the French lines of communication withthe capital. Marmont fell back and allowed Wellington to pass Salamanca;but on reaching the Douro he turned upon his adversary, and by a successionof swift and skilful marches brought the English into some danger of losingtheir communications with Portugal. Wellington himself now retreated as faras Salamanca, and there gave battle (July 22). A decisive victory freed theEnglish army from its peril, and annihilated all the advantages gained byMarmont's strategy and speed. The French were so heavily defeated that theyhad to fall back on Burgos. Wellington marched upon Madrid. At his approachKing Joseph fled from the capital, and ordered Soult to evacuate Andalusia, and to meet him at Valencia, on the eastern coast. Wellington enteredMadrid amidst the wild rejoicing of the Spaniards, and then turnednorthwards to complete the destruction of the army which he had beaten atSalamanca. But the hour of his final success was not yet come. His advanceupon Madrid, though wise as a political measure, had given the Frenchnorthern army time to rally. He was checked by the obstinate defence ofBurgos; and finding the French strengthened by the very abandonment ofterritory which his victory had forced upon them, he retired to Portugal, giving to King Joseph a few months' more precarious enjoyment of hisvassal-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 hadproduced a political revolution as little foreseen by the Spaniards as byNapoleon himself when the conflict began. When, in 1808, the people hadtaken up arms for its native dynasty, the voices of those who demanded areform in the abuses of the Bourbon government had scarcely been heard amidthe tumult of loyal enthusiasm for Ferdinand. There existed, however, agroup of liberally-minded men in Spain; and as soon as the invasion of theFrench and the subsequent successes of the Spaniards had overthrown boththe old repressive system of the Bourbons and that which Napoleon attemptedto put in its place, the opinions of these men, hitherto scarcely knownoutside the circle of their own acquaintances, suddenly became a power inthe country through the liberation of the press. Jovellanos, an upright andlarge-minded statesman, who had suffered a long imprisonment in the lastreign in consequence of his labours in the cause of progress, nowrepresented in the Central Junta the party of constitutional reform. TheJunta itself acted with but little insight or sincerity. A majority of itsmembers neither desired nor understood the great changes in governmentwhich Jovellanos advocated; yet the Junta itself was an irregular andrevolutionary body, and was forced to appeal to the nation in order to holdits ground against the old legal Councils of the monarchy, which possessednot only a better formal right, but all the habits of authority. Thevictories of Napoleon at the end of 1808, and the threatening attitude bothof the old official bodies and of the new provincial governments which hadsprung up in every part of the kingdom, extorted from the Junta in thespring of 1809 a declaration in favour of the assembling of the Cortes, orNational Parliament, in the following year. Once made, the declarationcould not be nullified or withdrawn. It was in vain that the Junta, alarmedat the progress of popular opinions, restored the censorship of the press, and attempted to suppress the liberal journals. The current of politicalagitation swept steadily on; and before the end of the year 1809 theconflict of parties, which Spain was henceforward to experience in commonwith 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, andupheld the same theories of popular right, as the leaders of the Frenchnation twenty years before. Against them was ranged the whole force ofSpanish officialism, soon to be supported by the overwhelming power of theclergy. In the outset, however, the Liberals carefully avoided infringingon the prerogatives of the Church. Thus accommodating its policy to theCatholic spirit of the nation, the party of reform gathered strengththroughout the year 1809, as disaster after disaster excited the wrath ofthe people against both the past and the present holders of power. It wasdetermined by the Junta that the Cortes should assemble on the 1st ofMarch, 1810. According to the ancient usage of Spain, each of the ThreeEstates, the Clergy, the Nobles, and the Commons, would have beenrepresented in the Cortes by a separate assembly. The opponents of reformpressed for the maintenance of this mediæval order, the Liberals declaredfor a single Chamber; the Junta, guided by Jovellanos, adopted a middlecourse, and decided that the higher clergy and nobles should be jointlyrepresented by one Chamber, the Commons by a second. Writs of election hadalready been issued, when the Junta, driven to Cadiz by the advance of theFrench armies, and assailed alike by Liberals, by reactionists, and by citymobs, ended its ineffective career, and resigned its powers into the handsof a Regency composed of five persons (Jan. 30, 1810). Had the Regencyimmediately taken steps to assemble the Cortes, Spain would probably havebeen content with the moderate reforms which two Chambers, formed accordingto the plans of Jovellanos, would have been likely to sanction. TheRegency, however, preferred to keep power in its own hands and ignored thepromise 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 haveassembled, threw the Liberal party into the hands of men of extremes, andprepared the way for revolution instead of reform. It was only when thereport reached Spain that Ferdinand was about to marry the daughter of KingJoseph, and to accept the succession to the Spanish crown from the usurperhimself, that the Regency consented to convoke the Cortes. But it was nowno longer possible to create an Upper House to serve as a check upon thepopular Assembly. A single Chamber was elected, and elected in great partwithin the walls of Cadiz itself; for the representatives of districtswhere the presence of French soldiery rendered election impossible werechosen by refugees from those districts within Cadiz, amid the tumults ofpolitical 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 todeclare the sovereignty of the people, its next act to declare the freedomof the Press. In every debate a spirit of bitter hatred towards the oldsystem of government and of deep distrust towards Ferdinand himselfrevealed itself in the speeches of the Liberal deputies, although no one inthe Assembly dared to avow the least want of loyalty towards the exiledHouse. The Liberals knew how passionate was the love of the Spanish peoplefor their Prince; but they resolved that, if Ferdinand returned to histhrone, he should return without the power to revive the old abuses ofBourbon rule. In this spirit the Assembly proceeded to frame a Constitutionfor Spain. The Crown was treated as the antagonist and corrupter of thepeople; its administrative powers were jealously reduced; it was confrontedby an Assembly to be elected every two years, and the members of thisAssembly were prohibited both from holding office under the Crown, and frompresenting themselves for re-election at the end of their two years'service. To a Representative Body thus excluded from all possibility ofgaining any practical acquaintance with public affairs was entrusted notonly the right of making laws, but the control of every branch ofgovernment. 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 nowencompassing Cadiz, the Cortes of Spain proclaimed in the spring of theyear 1812. Its principles had excited the most vehement opposition withinthe Assembly itself; by the nation, or at least that part of it which wasin communication with Cadiz, it appeared to be received with enthusiasm. The Liberals, who had triumphed over their opponents in the debates in theAssembly, believed that their own victory was the victory of the Spanishpeople over the forces of despotism. But before the first rejoicings wereover, ominous signs appeared of the strength of the opposite party, and ofthe incapacity of the Liberals themselves to form any effective Government. The fanaticism of the clergy was excited by a law partly ratifying thesuppression of monasteries begun by Joseph Bonaparte; the enactments of theCortes regarding the censorship of religious writings threw the Church intoopen revolt. In declaring the freedom of the Press, the Cortes hadexpressly guarded themselves against extending this freedom to religiousdiscussion; the clergy now demanded the restoration of the powers of theInquisition, which had been in abeyance since the beginning of the war. TheCortes were willing to grant to the Bishops the right of condemning anywriting as heretical, and they were willing to enforce by means of theordinary tribunals the law which declared the Catholic religion to be theonly one permitted in Spain; but they declined to restore the jurisdictionof the Holy Office (Feb. , 1813). Without this engine for the suppression ofall mental independence the priesthood of Spain conceived its cause to belost. The anathema of the Church went out against the new order. Unitingwith the partisans of absolutism, whom Wellington, provoked by theextravagances of the Liberals, now took under his protection, the clergyexcited an ignorant people against its own emancipators, and awaited thetime when the return of Ferdinand, and a combination of all the interestshostile to reform, should overthrow the Constitution which the Liberalsfondly imagined to have given freedom to Spain. CHAPTER X. War approaching between France and Russia--Policy of Prussia--Hardenberg'sMinistry--Prussia forced into Alliance with Napoleon--Austrian Alliance--Napoleon's Preparations--He enters Russia--Alexander and Bernadotte--Planof the Russians to fight a Battle at Drissa frustrated--They retreat onWitepsk--Sufferings of the French--French enter Smolensko--Battle ofBorodino--Evacuation of Moscow--Moscow fired--The Retreat from Moscow--TheFrench 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 Armyenters Prussia--Stein raises East Prussia--Treaty of Kalisch--Prussiadeclares 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 thespring of 1811. The approach of the conflict was watched with the deepestanxiety by the two States of central Europe which still retained somedegree of independence. The Governments of Berlin and Vienna had been drawntogether by misfortune. The same ultimate deliverance formed the secrethope of both; but their danger was too great to permit them to combine inopen resistance to Napoleon's will. In spite of a tacit understandingbetween the two powers, each was compelled for the present to accept theconditions necessary to secure its own existence. The situation of Prussiain especial was one of the utmost danger. Its territory lay directlybetween the French Empire and Russia; its fortresses were in the hands ofNapoleon, its resources were certain to be seized by one or other of thehostile armies. Neutrality was impossible, however much desired by Prussiaitself; and the only question to be decided by the Government was whetherPrussia should enter the war as the ally of France or of Russia. Had theparty of Stein been in power, Prussia would have taken arms againstNapoleon at every risk. Stein, however, was in exile his friends, thoughstrong in the army, were not masters of the Government; the foreign policyof the country was directed by a statesman who trusted more to time andprudent management than to desperate resolves. Hardenberg had been recalledto office in 1810, and permitted to resume the great measures of civilreform which had been broken off two years before. The machinery ofGovernment was reconstructed upon principles that had been laid down byStein; agrarian reform was carried still farther by the abolition ofpeasant's service, and the partition of peasant's land between the occupantand his lord; an experiment, though a very ill-managed one, was made in theforms of constitutional Government by the convocation of three successiveassemblies of the Notables. On the part of the privileged orders Hardenbergencountered the most bitter opposition; his own love of absolute powerprevented him from winning popular confidence by any real approach towardsa Representative System. Nor was the foreign policy of the Minister of acharacter to excite enthusiasm. A true patriot at heart, he seemed at timesto be destitute of patriotism, when he was in fact only destitute of thepower to reveal his real motives. [Hardenburg's foreign policy, 1811. ]Convinced that Prussia could not remain neutral in the coming war, andbelieving some relief from its present burdens to be absolutely necessary, Hardenberg determined in the first instance to offer Prussia's support toNapoleon, demanding in return for it a reduction of the payments still dueto France, and the removal of the limits imposed upon the Prussian army. [169] The offer of the Prussian alliance reached Napoleon in the spring of1811: he maintained an obstinate silence. While the Prussian envoy at Parisvainly waited for an audience, masses of troops advanced from the Rhinetowards the Prussian frontier, and the French garrisons on the Oder wereraised far beyond their stipulated strength. In July the envoy returnedfrom Paris, announcing that Napoleon declined even to enter upon adiscussion of the terms proposed by Hardenberg. King Frederick Williamnow wrote to the Czar, proposing an alliance between Prussia and Russia. It was not long before the report of Hardenberg's military preparationsreached Paris. Napoleon announced that if they were not immediatelysuspended he should order Davoust to march on Berlin; and he presented acounter-proposition for a Prussian alliance, which was in fact one ofunqualified submission. The Government had to decide between accepting atreaty which placed Prussia among Napoleon's vassals, or certain war. Hardenberg, expecting favourable news from St. Petersburg, pronounced infavour of war; but the Czar, though anxious for the support of Prussia, had determined on a defensive plan of operations, and declared that hecould 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 theresponsibility of proclaiming a war for life or death, and a treaty wassigned which added the people of Frederick the Great to that ingloriouscrowd which fought at Napoleon's orders against whatever remained ofindependence and nationality in Europe. [170] (Feb. 24th, 1812. ) Prussiaundertook to supply Napoleon with 20, 000 men for the impending campaign, and to raise no levies and to give no orders to its troops withoutNapoleon's consent. Such was the bitter termination of all those patriotichopes and efforts which had carried Prussia through its darkest days. Hardenberg himself might make a merit of bending before the storm, and ofpreserving for Prussia the means of striking when the time should come; butthe simpler instincts of the patriotic party felt his submission to be thevery surrender of national existence. Stein in his exile denounced theMinister with unsparing bitterness. Scharnhorst resigned his post; many ofthe best officers in the Prussian army quitted the service of KingFrederick William in order to join the Russians in the last struggle forEuropean liberty. [Alliance of Austria with Napoleon. ]The alliance which Napoleon pressed upon Austria was not of the samehumiliating character as that which Prussia was forced to accept. BothMetternich and the Emperor Francis would have preferred to remain neutral, for the country was suffering from a fearful State-bankruptcy, and theGovernment had been compelled to reduce its paper money, in which all debtsand salaries were payable, to a fifth of its nominal value. Napoleon, however, insisted on Austria's co-operation. The family-relations of thetwo Emperors pointed to a close alliance, and the reward which Napoleonheld out to Austria, the restoration of the Illyrian provinces, was one ofthe utmost value. Nor was the Austrian contingent to be treated, like thePrussian, as a mere French army-corps. Its operations were to be separatefrom those of the French, and its command was to be held by an Austriangeneral, subordinate only to Napoleon himself. On these terms Metternichwas not unwilling to enter the campaign. He satisfied his scruples byinventing a strange diplomatic form in which Austria was still described asa neutral, although she took part in the war, [171] and felt as littlecompunction in uniting with France as in explaining to the Courts of St. Petersburg and Berlin that the union was a hypocritical one. The Sovereignwho was about to be attacked by Napoleon, and the Sovereigns who sent theirtroops to Napoleon's support, perfectly well understood one another'sposition. The Prussian corps, watched and outnumbered by the French, mighthave to fight the Russians because they could not help it; the Austrians, directed by their own commander, would do no serious harm to the Russiansso long as the Russians did no harm to them. Should the Czar succeed ingiving a good account of his adversary, he would have no difficulty incoming 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 andPrussia were signed early in the year 1812. During the next three monthsall Northern Germany was covered with enormous masses of troops andwaggon-trains, on their way from the Rhine to the Vistula. No expeditionhad ever been organised on anything approaching to the scale of theinvasion of Russia. In all the wars of the French since 1793 the enemy'scountry had furnished their armies with supplies, and the generals hadtrusted to their own exertions for everything but guns and ammunition. Sucha method could not, however, be followed in an invasion of Russia. Thecountry beyond the Niemen was no well-stocked garden, like Lombardy orBavaria. Provisions for a mass of 450, 000 men, with all the means oftransport for carrying them far into Russia, had to be collected at Dantzigand the fortresses of the Vistula. No mercy was shown to the unfortunatecountries whose position now made them Napoleon's harvest-field andstorehouse. Prussia was forced to supplement its military assistance withcolossal grants of supplies. The whole of Napoleon's troops upon the marchthrough Germany lived at the expense of the towns and villages throughwhich they passed; in Westphalia such was the ruin caused by militaryrequisitions that King Jerome wrote to Napoleon, warning him to fear thedespair 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 theVistula. Napoleon himself quitted Paris on the 9th of May, and received thehomage of the Austrian and Prussian Sovereigns at Dresden. The eastwardmovement of the army continued. The Polish and East Prussian districtswhich had been the scene of the combats of 1807 were again traversed byFrench columns. On the 23rd of June the order was given to cross the Niemenand enter Russian territory. Out of 600, 000 troops whom Napoleon hadorganised for this campaign, 450, 000 were actually upon the frontier. Ofthese, 380, 000 formed the central army, under Napoleon's own command, atKowno, on the Niemen; to the north, at Tilsit, there was formed a corps of32, 000, which included the contingent furnished by Prussia; the Austrians, under Schwarzenburg, with a small French division, lay to the south, on theborders of Galicia. Against the main army of Napoleon, the real invadingforce, the Russians could only bring up 150, 000 men. These were formed intothe First and Second Armies of the West. The First, or Northern Army, withwhich the Czar himself was present, numbered about 100, 000, under thecommand of Barclay de Tolly; the Second Army, half that strength, was ledby Prince Bagration. In Southern Poland and on the Lower Niemen the Frenchauxiliary corps were faced by weak divisions. In all, the Russians had only220, 000 men to oppose to more than double that number of the enemy. Theprincipal reinforcements which they had to expect were from the armieshitherto engaged with the Turks upon the Danube. Alexander found itnecessary to make peace with the Porte at the cost of a part of the spoilsof Tilsit. The Danubian provinces, with the exception of Bessarabia, wererestored to the Sultan, in order that Russia might withdraw its forces fromthe south. Bernadotte, Crown Prince of Sweden, who was threatened with theloss of his own dominions in the event of Napoleon's victory, concluded analliance with the Czar. In return for the co-operation of a Swedish army, Alexander undertook, with an indifference to national right worthy ofNapoleon himself, to wrest Norway from Denmark, and to annex it to theSwedish 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 crossedthe Niemen. It was unknown whether the French intended to advance uponMoscow or upon St. Petersburg; nor had any systematic plan of the campaignbeen adopted by the Czar. The idea of falling back before the enemy wasindeed familiar in Russia since the war between Peter the Great and CharlesXII. Of Sweden, and there was no want of good counsel in favour of adefensive warfare; [173] but neither the Czar nor any one of his generalsunderstood the simple theory of a retreat in which no battles at all shouldbe fought. The most that was understood by a defensive system was theoccupation of an entrenched position for battle, and a retreat to a secondline of entrenchments before the engagement was repeated. The actual courseof the campaign was no result of a profound design; it resulted from thedisagreements of the general's plans, and the frustration of them all. Itwas intended in the first instance to fight a battle at Drissa, on theriver Dwina. In this position, which was supposed to cover the roads bothto Moscow and St. Petersburg, a great entrenched camp had been formed, andhere the Russian army was to make its first stand against Napoleon. Accordingly, as soon as the French crossed the Niemen, both Barclay andBagration were ordered by the Czar to fall back upon Drissa. But themovements of the French army were too rapid for the Russian commanders toeffect their junction. Bagration, who lay at some distance to the south, was cut off from his colleague, and forced to retreat along the easternroad towards Witepsk. Barclay reached Drissa in safety, but he knew himselfto be unable to hold it alone against 300, 000 men. He evacuated the lineswithout waiting for the approach of the French, and fell back in thedirection taken by the second army. The first movement of defence had thusfailed, and the Czar now quitted the camp, leaving to Barclay the commandof 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 theFrench were in no condition for immediate pursuit. Before the army reachedthe Niemen the unparalleled difficulties of the campaign had become onlytoo clear. The vast waggon-trains broke down on the highways. The storeswere abundant, but the animals which had to transport them died ofexhaustion. No human genius, no perfection of foresight and care, couldhave achieved the enormous task which Napoleon had undertaken. In spite ofa year's preparations the French suffered from hunger and thirst from themoment that they set foot on Russian soil. Thirty thousand stragglers hadleft the army before it reached Wilna; twenty-five thousand sick were inthe hospitals; the transports were at an unknown distance in the rear. Atthe end of six days' march from the Niemen, Napoleon found himselfcompelled to halt for nearly three weeks. The army did not leave Wilna tillthe 16th of July, when Barclay had already evacuated the camp at Drissa. When at length a march became possible, Napoleon moved upon the UpperDwina, hoping to intercept Barclay upon the road to Witepsk; butdifficulties of transport again brought him to a halt, and the Russiancommander reached Witepsk before his adversary. Here Barclay drew up forbattle, 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 wasnowhere near the rallying-point, but had been driven back towardsSmolensko. 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 goodorder; and the two severed Russian armies at length effected their junctionat 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 theRussians had abandoned it (July 28). Barclay's escape was, for the French, a disaster of the first magnitude, since it extinguished all hope ofcrushing the larger of the two Russian armies by overwhelming numbers inone great and decisive engagement. The march of the French during the lasttwelve days showed at what cost every further step must be made. Sincequitting Wilna the 50, 000 sick and stragglers had risen to 100, 000. Feverand disease struck down whole regiments. The provisioning of the army wasbeyond all human power. Of the 200, 000 men who still remained, it mightalmost be calculated in how many weeks the last would perish. So fearfulwas the prospect that Napoleon himself thought of abandoning any furtheradvance until the next year, and of permitting the army to enter intowinter-quarters upon the Dwina. But the conviction that all Russianresistance would end with the capture of Moscow hurried him on. The armyleft Witepsk on the 13th of August, and followed the Russians to Smolensko. Here the entire Russian army clamoured for battle. Barclay stood alone inperceiving the necessity for retreat. The generals caballed against him;the soldiers were on the point of mutiny; the Czar himself wrote to expresshis impatience for an attack upon the French. Barclay neverthelesspersisted in his resolution to abandon Smolensko. He so far yielded to thearmy as to permit the rearguard to engage in a bloody struggle with theFrench when they assaulted the town; but the evacuation was completed undercover of night; and when the French made their entrance into Smolensko onthe next morning they found it deserted and in rums. The surrender ofSmolensko was the last sacrifice that Barclay could extort from Russianpride. He no longer opposed the universal cry for battle, and the retreatwas continued only with the intention of halting at the first strongposition. Barclay himself was surveying a battleground when he heard thatthe command had been taken out of his hands. The Czar had been forced bynational indignation at the loss of Smolensko to remove this able soldier, who was a Livonian by birth, and to transfer the command to Kutusotff, athorough Russian, whom a life-time spent in victories over the Turk hadmade, 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 Frenchadvance had already reduced the invaders to the number of the army opposedto them. As far as Smolensko the French had at least not suffered from thehostility of the population, who were Poles, not Russians; but on reachingSmolensko they entered a country where every peasant was a fanatical enemy. The villages were burnt down by their inhabitants, the corn destroyed, andthe cattle driven into the woods. Every day's march onward from Smolenskocost the French three thousand men. On reaching the river Moskwa in thefirst week of September, a hundred and seventy-five thousand out ofNapoleon's three hundred and eighty thousand soldiers were in thehospitals, or missing, or dead. About sixty thousand guarded the line ofmarch. The Russians, on the other hand, had received reinforcements whichcovered their losses at Smolensko; and although detachments had been sentto support the army of Riga, Kutusoff was still able to place over onehundred 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, onthe Moskwa, seventy miles west of the capital. At early morning on the 7ththe French advanced to the attack. The battle was, in proportion to itsnumbers, the most sanguinary of modern times. Forty thousand French, thirtythousand Russians were struck down. At the close of the day the French werein possession of the enemy's ground, but the Russians, unbroken in theirorder, had only retreated to a second line of defence. Both sides claimedthe victory; neither had won it. It was no catastrophe such as Napoleonrequired for the decision of the war, it was no triumph sufficient to saveRussia from the necessity of abandoning its capital. Kutusoff had sustainedtoo heavy a loss to face the French beneath the walls of Moscow. Peace wasno nearer for the 70, 000 men who had been killed or wounded in the fight. The French steadily advanced; the Russians retreated to Moscow, andevacuated the capital when their generals decided that they could notencounter the French assault. The Holy City was left undefended before theinvader. But the departure of the army was the smallest part of theevacuation. The inhabitants, partly of their own free will, partly underthe compulsion of the Governor, abandoned the city in a mass. No gloomy orexcited crowd, as at Vienna and Berlin, thronged the streets to witness theentrance of the great conqueror, when on the 14th of September Napoleontook possession of Moscow. His troops marched through silent and desertedstreets. In the solitude of the Kremlin Napoleon received the homage of afew foreigners, who alone could be collected by his servants to tender tohim the submission of the city. [Moscow fired. ]But the worst was yet to come. On the night after Napoleon's entry, firesbroke out in different parts of Moscow. They were ascribed at first toaccident; but when on the next day the French saw the flames gaining groundin every direction, and found that all the means for extinguishing fire hadbeen removed from the city, they understood the doom to which Moscow hadbeen devoted by its own defenders. Count Rostopchin, the governor, haddetermined on the destruction of Moscow without the knowledge of the Czar. The doors of the prisons were thrown open. Rostopchin gave the signal bysetting fire to his own palace, and let loose his bands of incendiariesover the city. For five days the flames rose and fell; and when, on theevening of the 20th, the last fires ceased, three-fourths of Moscow lay inruins. [Napoleon at Moscow, Sept. 14-Oct. 19. ]Such was the prize for which Napoleon had sacrificed 200, 000 men, andengulfed the weak remnant of his army six hundred miles deep in an enemy'scountry. Throughout all the terrors of the advance Napoleon had held fastto the belief that Alexander's resistance would end with the fall of hiscapital. The events that accompanied the entry of the French into Moscowshook his confidence; yet even now Napoleon could not believe that the Czarremained firm against all thoughts of peace. His experience in all earlierwars had given him confidence in the power of one conspicuous disaster tounhinge the resolution of kings. His trust in the deepening impression madeby the fall of Moscow was fostered by negotiations begun by Kutusoff forthe very purpose of delaying the French retreat. For five weeks Napoleonremained at Moscow as if spell-bound, unable to convince himself of hispowerlessness to break Alexander's determination, unable to face a retreatwhich would display to all Europe the failure of his arms and thetermination of his career of victory. At length the approach of winterforced him to action. It was impossible to provision the army at Moscowduring the winter months, even if there had been nothing to fear from theenemy. Even the mocking overtures of Kutusoff had ceased. The frightfulreality could no longer be concealed. On the 19th of October the order forretreat was given. It was not the destruction of Moscow, but the departureof its inhabitants, that had brought the conqueror to ruin. Above twothousand houses were still standing; but whether the buildings remained orperished made little difference; the whole value of the capital to Napoleonwas lost when the inhabitants, whom he could have forced to procuresupplies for his army, disappeared. Vienna and Berlin had been of suchincalculable service to Napoleon because the whole native administrationplaced itself under his orders, and every rich and important citizen becamea hostage for the activity of the rest. When the French gained Moscow, theygained 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 hisinstruments fled at his approach. The conflagration of Moscow acted uponall Europe as a signal of inextinguishable national hatred; as a militaryoperation, it neither accelerated the retreat of Napoleon nor added to themiseries 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, 000men. Reinforcements had come in during the occupation of the city, and thehealth 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 befound. Though but a fourth part of the army which entered Russia in thesummer, the army which left Moscow was still large enough to protect itselfagainst the enemy, if allowed to retreat through a fresh country; if forcedback upon the devastated line of its advance it was impossible for it toescape destruction. Napoleon therefore determined to make for Kaluga, onthe south of Moscow, and to endeavour to gain a road to Smolensko fardistant from that by which he had come. The army moved from Moscow in asouthern direction. But its route had been foreseen by Kutusoff. At the endof four days' march it was met by a Russian corps at Jaroslavitz. A bloodystruggle left the French in possession of the road: they continued theiradvance; but it was only to find that Kutusoff, with his full strength, hadoccupied a line of heights farther south, and barred the way to Kaluga. Theeffort of an assault was beyond the powers of the French. Napoleon surveyedthe enemy's position, and recognised the fatal necessity of abandoning themarch 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 increasedwith every march. Thirty thousand men were lost upon the road before apursuer appeared in sight. When, on the 2nd of November, the army reachedWiazma, it numbered no more than 65, 000 men. [Kutusoff follows by parallel road. ]Kutusoff was unadventurous in pursuit. The necessity of moving his armyalong a parallel road south of the French, in order to avoid starvation, diminished the opportunities for attack; but the general himself dislikedrisking his forces, and preferred to see the enemy's destruction effectedby the elements. At Wiazma, where, on the 3rd of November, the French werefor the first time attacked in force, Kutusoff's own delay alone saved themfrom total ruin. In spite of heavy loss the French kept possession of theroad, and secured their retreat to Smolensko, where stores of food had beenaccumulated, 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 6ththe long-delayed terrors of Russian winter broke upon the pursuers and thepursued. Snow darkened the air and hid the last traces of vegetation fromthe starving cavalry trains. The temperature sank at times to forty degreesof frost. Death came, sometimes in the unfelt release from misery, sometimes in horrible forms of mutilation and disease. Both armies wereexposed to the same sufferings; but the Russians had at least such succouras their countrymen could give; where the French sank, they died. The orderof war disappeared under conditions which made life itself the accident ofa meal or of a place by the camp-fire. Though most of the French soldierycontinued to carry their arms, the Guard alone kept its separate formation;the other regiments marched in confused masses. From the 9th to the 13th ofNovember these starving bands arrived one after another at Smolensko, expecting that here their sufferings would end. But the organisation fordistributing the stores accumulated in Smolensko no longer existed. Theperishing crowds were left to find shelter where they could; sacks of cornwere 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 newRussian armies were advancing from the north and the south to cut off theirretreat. From the Danube and from the Baltic Sea troops were pressingforward to their meeting-point upon the rear of the invader. Witgenstein, moving southwards at the head of the army of the Dwina, had overpowered theFrench corps stationed upon that river, and made himself master of Witepsk. The army of Bucharest, which had been toiling northwards ever since thebeginning of August, had advanced to within a few days' march of itsmeeting-point with the army of the Dwina upon the line of Napoleon'scommunications. Before Napoleon reached Smolensko he sent orders to Victor, who was at Smolensko with some reserves, to march against Witgenstein anddrive him back upon the Dwina. Victor set out on his mission. During theshort halt of Napoleon in Smolensko, Kutusoff pushed forward to the west ofthe French, and took post at Krasnoi, thirty miles farther along the roadby which Napoleon had to pass. The retreat of the French seemed to beactually cut off. Had the Russian general dared to face Napoleon and hisGuards, he might have held the French in check until the arrival of the twoauxiliary armies from the north and south enabled him to capture Napoleonand his entire force. Kutusoff, however, preferred a partial and certainvictory to a struggle with Napoleon for life or death. He permittedNapoleon and the Guard to pass by unattacked, and then fell upon the hinderdivisions of the French army. (Nov. 17. ) These unfortunate troops weresuccessively cut to pieces. Twenty-six thousand were made prisoners. Ney, with a part of the rear-guard, only escaped by crossing the Dnieper on theice. Of the army that had quitted Moscow there now remained but 10, 000combatants and 20, 000 followers. Kutusoff himself was brought to such astate of exhaustion that he could carry the pursuit no further, and enteredinto 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 remnantof Napoleon's army. Though aware that Napoleon was in retreat, they knewnothing of the calamities that had befallen him, and were struck withamazement when, in the middle of a forest, they met with what seemed morelike a miserable troop of captives than an army upon the march. Victor'ssoldiers of a mere auxiliary corps found themselves more than double theeffective strength of the whole army of Moscow. Their arrival again placedNapoleon at the head of 30, 000 disciplined troops, and gave the French agleam of victory in the last and seemingly most hopeless struggle in thecampaign. Admiral Tchitchagoff, in command of the army marching from theDanube, had at length reached the line of Napoleon's retreat, andestablished himself at Borisov, where the road through Poland crosses theriver Beresina. The bridge was destroyed by the Russians, and Tchitchagoffopened communication with Witgenstein's army, which lay only a few miles tothe north. It appeared as if the retreat of the French was now finallyintercepted, and the surrender of Napoleon inevitable. Yet even in thishopeless situation the military skill and daring of the French worked withsomething of its ancient power. The army reached the Beresina; Napoleonsucceeded in withdrawing the enemy from the real point of passage; bridgeswere thrown across the river, and after desperate fighting a great part ofthe army made good its footing upon the western bank (Nov. 28). But thelosses even among the effective troops were enormous. The fate of themiserable crowd that followed them, torn by the cannon-fire of theRussians, and precipitated into the river by the breaking of one of thebridges, has made the passage of the Beresina a synonym for the utmostdegree of human woe. [French reach the Niemen, Dec. 13. ]This was the last engagement fought by the army. The Guards still preservedtheir order: Marshal Ney still found soldiers capable of turning upon thepursuer with his own steady and unflagging courage; but the bulk of thearmy struggled forward in confused crowds, harassed by the Cossacks, andlaying down their arms by thousands before the enemy. The frost, which hadbroken up on the 19th, returned on the 30th of November with even greaterseverity. Twenty thousand fresh troops which joined the army between theBeresina and Wilna scarcely arrested the process of dissolution. On the 3rdof December Napoleon quitted the army. Wilna itself was abandoned with allits stores; and when at length the fugitives reached the Niemen, theynumbered little more than twenty thousand. Here, six months earlier, threehundred and eighty thousand men had crossed with Napoleon. A hundredthousand more had joined the army in the course of its retreat. Of all thishost, not the twentieth part reached the Prussian frontier. A hundred andseventy thousand remained prisoners in the hands of the Russians; a greaternumber had perished. Of the twenty thousand men who now beheld the Niemen, probably not seven thousand had crossed with Napoleon. In the presence of acatastrophe so overwhelming and so unparalleled the Russian generals mightwell be content with their own share in the work of destruction. Yet theevent proved that Kutusoff had done ill in sparing the extremest effort tocapture or annihilate his foe. Not only was Napoleon's own escape thepledge of continued war, but the remnant that escaped with him possessed amilitary value out of all proportion to its insignificant numbers. The bestof the army were the last to succumb. Out of those few thousands whoendured to the end, a very large proportion were veteran officers, whoimmediately 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 Europeon 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 stakethe lives of half a million more. The material power of Napoleon, thoughlargely, was not fatally diminished by the Russian campaign; it was throughits moral effect, first proved in the action of Prussia, that the retreatfrom Moscow created a new order of things in Europe. The Prussiancontingent, commanded by General von York, lay in front of Riga, where itformed 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 takeup arms against Macdonald. [174] York had no evidence, beyond the word ofthe Russian commander, of the extent of Napoleon's losses; and even if thefacts were as stated, it was by no means clear that the Czar might not beinclined to take vengeance on Prussia on account of its alliance withNapoleon. York returned a guarded answer to the Russian, and sent anofficer to Wilna to ascertain the real state of the French army. On the 8thof 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 uponhimself. York was a rigid soldier of the old Prussian type, dominated bythe idea of military duty. The act to which the Russian commander invitedhim, and which the younger officers were ready to hail as the liberation ofPrussia, might be branded by his sovereign as desertion and treason. Whatever scruples and perplexity might be felt in such a situation by aloyal and obedient soldier were felt by York. He nevertheless chose thecourse which seemed to be for his country's good; and having chosen it, heaccepted all the consequences which it involved. On the 30th of December aconvention was signed at Tauroggen, which, under the guise of a truce, practically withdrew the Prussian army from Napoleon, and gave the Russianspossession of Königsberg. The momentous character of the act was recognisedby Napoleon as soon as the news reached Paris. York's force was thestrongest military body upon the Russian frontier; united with Macdonald, it would have forced the Russian pursuit to stop at the Niemen; abandoningNapoleon, it brought his enemies on to the Vistula, and threatenedincalculable danger by its example to all the rest of Germany. For themoment, however, Napoleon could count upon the spiritless obedience of KingFrederick William. In the midst of the French regiments that garrisonedBerlin, the King wrote orders pronouncing York's convention null and void, and ordering York himself to be tried by court-martial. The news reachedthe loyal soldier: he received it with grief, but maintained his resolutionto act for his country's good. "With bleeding heart, " he wrote, "I burstthe bond of obedience, and carry on the war upon my own responsibility. Thearmy desires war with France; the nation desires it; the King himselfdesires 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, thoughnot so conspicuous, a part. Before the outbreak of the Russian war, theCzar had requested the exile Stein to come to St. Petersburg to aid himwith his counsels during the struggle with Napoleon. Stein gladly acceptedthe call; and throughout the campaign he encouraged the Czar in theresolute resistance which the Russian nation itself required of itsGovernment. So long as French soldiers remained on Russian soil, there wasindeed little need for a foreigner to stimulate the Czar's energies; butwhen the pursuit had gloriously ended on the Niemen, the case became verydifferent. Kutusoff and the generals were disinclined to carry the war intoGermany. The Russian army had itself lost three-fourths of its numbers;Russian honour was satisfied; the liberation of Western Europe might beleft to Western Europe itself. Among the politicians who surroundedAlexander, there were a considerable number, including the first ministerRomanzoff, who still believed in the good policy of a French alliance. These were the influences with which Stein had to contend, when thequestion arose whether Russia should rest satisfied with its own victories, or summon all Europe to unite in overthrowing Napoleon's tyranny. No recordremains of the stages by which Alexander's mind rose to the clear and firmconception of a single European interest against Napoleon; indicationsexist that it was Stein's personal influence which most largely affectedhis decision. Even in the darkest moments of the war, when the forces ofRussia seemed wholly incapable of checking Napoleon's advance, Stein hadnever abandoned his scheme for raising the German nation against Napoleon. The confidence with which he had assured Alexander of ultimate victory overthe invader had been thoroughly justified; the triumph which he hadpredicted had come with a rapidity and completeness even surpassing hishopes. For a moment Alexander identified himself with the statesman who, inthe midst of Germany's humiliation, had been so resolute, so far-sighted, so aspiring. [175] The minister of the peace-party was dismissed: Alexanderordered his troops to advance into Prussia, and charged Stein himself toassume the government of the Prussian districts occupied by Russian armies. Stein's mission was to arm the Landwehr, and to gather all the resources ofthe country for war against France; his powers were to continue until somedefinite arrangement should be made between the King of Prussia and theCzar. [Stein's commission from Alexander. ][Province of East Prussia arms, Jan. , 1813. ]Armed with this commission from a foreign sovereign, Stein appeared atKönigsberg on the 22nd of January, 1813, and published an order requiringthe governor of the province of East Prussia to convoke an assembly for thepurpose of arming the people. Stein would have desired York to appear asPresident of the Assembly; but York, like most of the Prussian officials, was alarmed and indignant at Stein's assumption of power in Prussia as therepresentative of the Russian Czar, and hesitated to connect himself withso revolutionary a measure as the arming of the people. It was only uponcondition that Stein himself should not appear in the Assembly that Yorkconsented to recognise its powers. The Assembly met. York entered thehouse, and spoke a few soul-stirring words. His undisguised declaration ofwar with France was received with enthusiastic cheers. A plan for theformation of a Landwehr, based on Scharnhorst's plans of 1808, was laidbefore the Assembly, and accepted. Forty thousand men were called to armsin a province which included nothing west of the Vistula. The nation itselfhad begun the war, and left its Government no choice but to follow. Stein'stask was fulfilled; and he retired to the quarters of Alexander, unwillingto mar by the appearance of foreign intervention the work to which thePrussian nation had now committed itself beyond power of recall. It was thefortune of the Prussian State, while its King dissembled before the Frenchin Berlin, to possess a soldier brave enough to emancipate its army, and acitizen bold enough to usurp the government of its provinces. FrederickWilliam forgave York his intrepidity; Stein's action was never forgiven bythe timid and jealous sovereign whose subjects he had summoned to armthemselves for their country's deliverance. [Policy of Hardenberg. ][Treaty of Kalisch, Feb. 27. ]The Government of Berlin, which since the beginning of the RevolutionaryWar had neither been able to fight, nor to deceive, nor to be honest, wasat length forced by circumstances into a certain effectiveness in all threeforms of action. In the interval between the first tidings of Napoleon'sdisasters and the announcement of York's convention with the Russians, Hardenberg had been assuring Napoleon of his devotion, and collectingtroops which he carefully prevented from joining him. [176] The desire ofthe King was to gain concessions without taking part in the war eitheragainst Napoleon or on his side. When, however, the balance turned moredecidedly against Napoleon, he grew bolder; and the news of York'sdefection, though it seriously embarrassed the Cabinet for the moment, practically decided it in favour of war with France. The messenger who wassent to remove York from his command received private instructions to fallinto the hands of the Russians, and to inform the Czar that, if his troopsadvanced as far as the Oder, King Frederick William would be ready toconclude an alliance. Every post that arrived from East Prussiastrengthened the warlike resolutions of the Government. At length the Kingventured on the decisive step of quitting Berlin and placing himself atBreslau (Jan. 25). At Berlin he was in the power of the French; at Breslauhe was within easy reach of Alexander. The significance of the journeycould not be mistaken: it was immediately followed by open preparation forwar with France. On February 3rd there appeared an edict invitingvolunteers to enrol themselves: a week later all exemptions from militaryservice were abolished, and the entire male population of Prussia betweenthe ages of seventeen and twenty-four was declared liable to serve. GeneralKnesebeck was sent to the headquarters of the Czar, which were now betweenWarsaw and Kalisch, to conclude a treaty of alliance. Knesebeck demandedsecurities for the restoration to Prussia of all the Polish territory whichit had possessed before 1806; the Czar, unwilling either to grant thiscondition or to lose the Prussian alliance, kept Knesebeck at his quarters, and sent Stein with a Russian plenipotentiary to Breslau to conclude thetreaty with Hardenberg himself. Stein and Hardenberg met at Breslau on the26th of February. Hardenberg accepted the Czar's terms, and the treaty, known as the Treaty of Kalisch, [177] was signed on the following day. Bythis treaty, without guaranteeing the restoration of Prussian Poland, Russia undertook not to lay down its arms until the Prussian State as awhole was restored to the area and strength which it had possessed before1806. For this purpose annexations were promised in Northern Germany. Withregard to Poland, Russia promised no more than to permit Prussia to retainwhat it had received in 1772, together with a strip of territory to connectthis district with Silesia. The meaning of the agreement was that Prussiashould abandon to Russia the greater part of its late Polish provinces, andreceive an equivalent German territory in its stead. The Treaty of Kalischvirtually surrendered to the Czar all that Prussia had gained in thepartitions of Poland made in 1793 and in 1795. The sacrifice was deemed amost severe one by every Prussian politician, and was accepted only as aless evil than the loss of Russia's friendship, and a renewed submission toNapoleon. No single statesman, not even Stein himself, appears to haveunderstood 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 ofa future united Germany. [French retreat to the Elbe. ]War was still undeclared upon Napoleon by King Frederick William, butthroughout the month of February the light cavalry of the Russians pushedforward unhindered through Prussian territory towards the Oder, and crowdsof volunteers, marching through Berlin on their way to the camps inSilesia, gave the French clear signs of the storm that was about to burstupon them. [178] The remnant of Napoleon's army, now commanded by EugeneBeauharnais, had fallen back step by step to the Oder. Here, resting on thefortresses, it might probably have checked the Russian advance; but theheart of Eugene failed; the line of the Oder was abandoned, and the retreatcontinued to Berlin and the Elbe. The Cossacks followed. On the 20th ofFebruary they actually entered Berlin and fought with the French in thestreets. The French garrison was far superior in force; but the appearanceof the Cossacks caused such a ferment that, although the alliance betweenFrance and Prussia was still in nominal existence, the French troopsexpected to be cut to pieces by the people. For some days they continued tobivouac in the streets, and as soon as it became known that a regularRussian 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 withtheir rear-guard. Some days later Witgenstein appeared with Russianinfantry. On March 17th York made his triumphal entry at the head of hiscorps, himself cold and rigid in the midst of tumultuous outbursts ofpatriotic joy. [King of Prussia declares war March 17. ]It was on this same day that King Frederick William issued his proclamationto the Prussian people, declaring that war had begun with France, andsummoning the nation to enter upon the struggle as one that must end eitherin victory or in total destruction. The proclamation was such as became amonarch conscious that his own faint-heartedness had been the principalcause of Prussia's humiliation. It was simple and unboastful, admittingthat the King had made every effort to preserve the French alliance, andascribing the necessity for war to the intolerable wrongs inflicted byNapoleon in spite of Prussia's fulfilment of its treaty-obligations. Theappeal to the great memories of Prussia's earlier sovereigns, and to theexample of Russia, Spain, and all countries which in present or in earliertimes had fought for their independence against a stronger foe, was worthyof the truthful and modest tone in which the King spoke of the misfortunesof 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 Prussianpeople. Seven years of suffering and humiliation had done their work. Theold apathy of all classes had vanished under the pressure of a bitter senseof wrong. If among the Court party of Berlin and the Conservativelandowners there existed a secret dread of the awakening of popular forces, the suspicion could not be now avowed. A movement as penetrating and asuniversal as that which France had experienced in 1792 swept through thePrussian State. It had required the experience of years of wretchedness, the intrusion of the French soldier upon the peace of the family, the sightof 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 theFatherland, before the Prussian nation caught that flame which hadspontaneously burst out in France, in Spain, and in Russia at the firstshock of foreign aggression. But the passion of the Prussian people, if ithad taken long to kindle, was deep, steadfast, and rational. It wasundisgraced by the frenzies of 1792, or by the religious fanaticism of theSpanish war of liberation; where religion entered into the struggle, itheightened the spirit of self-sacrifice rather than that of hatred to theenemy. Nor was it a thing of small moment to the future of Europe that inevery leading mind the cause of Prussia was identified with the cause ofthe whole German race. The actual condition of Germany warranted no suchconclusion, for Saxony, Bavaria, and the whole of the Rhenish Federationstill followed Napoleon: but the spirit and the ideas which became a livingforce when at length the contest with Napoleon broke out were those of menlike Stein, who in the depths of Germany's humiliation had created thebright and noble image of a common Fatherland. It was no more given toStein to see his hopes fulfilled than it was given to Mirabeau to establishconstitutional liberty in France, or to the Italian patriots of 1797 tocreate a united Italy. A group of States where kings like Frederick Williamand Francis, ministers like Hardenberg and Metternich, governed millions ofpeople totally destitute of political instincts and training, was not to besuddenly transformed into a free nation by the genius of an individual orthe patriotism of a single epoch. But if the work of German union was onewhich, even in the barren form of military empire, required the efforts oftwo more generations, the ideals of 1813 were no transient and ineffectivefancy. Time was on the side of those who called the Prussian monarchy thetrue centre round which Germany could gather. If in the sequel Prussia wasslow to recognise its own opportunities, the fault was less with patriotswho 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 thespirit shown by the nation. Scharnhorst's military system had given Prussia100, 000 trained soldiers ready to join the existing army of 45, 000. Thescheme 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 thatFrederick William issued his proclamation to the people, he decreed theformation of the Landwehr and the Landsturm. The latter force, which wasintended in case of necessity to imitate the peasant warfare of Spain andLa Vendée, had no occasion to act: the Landwehr, though its arming wasdelayed by the poverty and exhaustion of the country, gradually became amost formidable reserve, and sent its battalions to fight by the side ofthe regulars in some of the greatest engagements in the war. It was thewant of arms and money, not of willing soldiers, that prevented Prussiafrom instantly attacking Napoleon with 200, 000 men. The conscription wasscarcely 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 wasready to cross the Elbe immediately on the arrival of the Russians, and toopen the next campaign in the territory of Napoleon's allies of the RhenishFederation. CHAPTER XI. The War of Liberation--Blücher crosses the Elbe--Battle of Lützen--TheAllies retreat to Silesia--Battle of Bautzen--Armistice--Napoleon intendsto intimidate Austria--Mistaken as to the Forces of Austria--Metternich'sPolicy--Treaty of Reichenbach--Austria offers its Mediation--Congress ofPrague--Austria enters the War--Armies and Plans of Napoleon and theAllies--Campaign of August--Battles of Dresden, Grosbeeren, the Katzbach, and Kulm--Effect of these Actions--Battle of Dennewitz--German Policy ofAustria favourable to the Princes of the Rhenish Confederacy--FrustratedHopes of German Unity--Battle of Leipzig--The Allies reach the Rhine--Offers of Peace at Frankfort--Plan of Invasion of France--Backwardness ofAustria--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--TerritorialEffects of the War, 1792-1814--Every Power except France had gained--Francerelatively weaker in Europe--Summary of the Permanent Effects of thisPeriod on Europe. [Napoleon in 1813. ]The first three months of the year 1813 were spent by Napoleon in vigorouspreparation for a campaign in Northern Germany. Immediately after receivingthe news of York's convention with the Russians he had ordered a levy of350, 000 men. It was in vain that Frederick William and Hardenberg affectedto disavow the general as a traitor; Napoleon divined the nationalcharacter of York's act, and laid his account for a war against thecombined forces of Prussia and Russia. In spite of the catastrophe of thelast campaign, Napoleon was still stronger than his enemies. Italy and theRhenish Federation had never wavered in their allegiance; Austria, though acold ally, had at least shown no signs of hostility. The resources of anempire of forty million inhabitants were still at Napoleon's command. Itwas in the youth and inexperience of the new soldiers, and in the scarcityof good officers, [179] that the losses of the previous year showed theirmost visible effect. Lads of seventeen, commanded in great part by officerswho had never been through a campaign, took the place of the soldiers whohad fought at Friedland and Wagram. They were as brave as theirpredecessors, but they failed in bodily strength and endurance. Againstthem came the remnant of the men who had pursued Napoleon from Moscow, anda Prussian army which was but the vanguard of an armed nation. Nevertheless, Napoleon had no cause to expect defeat, provided that Austriaremained on his side. Though the Prussian nation entered upon the conflictin the most determined spirit, a war on the Elbe against Russia and Prussiacombined was a less desperate venture than a war with Russia alone beyondthe 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 theRussian frontier. Napoleon was massing troops on the Main, and preparingfor an advance in force, when the Prussians, commanded by Blücher, and someweak divisions of the Russian army, pushed forward to the Elbe. On the 18thof March the Cossacks appeared in the suburbs of Dresden, on the right bankof the river. Davoust, who was in command of the French garrison, blew uptwo arches of the bridge, and retired to Magdeburg: Blücher soon afterwardsentered Dresden, and called upon the Saxon nation to rise against Napoleon. But he spoke to deaf ears. The common people were indifferent; theofficials waited to see which side would conquer. Blücher could scarcelyobtain provisions for his army; he passed on westwards, and came into theneighbourhood of Leipzig. Here he found himself forced to halt, and to waitfor his allies. Though a detachment of the Russian army under Witgensteinhad already crossed the Elbe, the main army, with Kutusoff, was stilllingering at Kalisch on the Polish frontier, where it had arrived six weeksbefore. As yet the Prussians had only 50, 000 men ready for action; untilthe Russians came up, it was unsafe to advance far beyond the Elbe. Blüchercounted every moment lost that kept him from battle: the Russiancommander-in-chief, sated with glory and sinking beneath the infirmities ofa veteran, could scarcely be induced to sign an order of march. At lengthKutusoff's illness placed the command in younger hands. His strength failedhim during the march from Poland; he was left dying in Silesia; and on the24th of April the Czar and the King of Prussia led forward his veterantroops into Dresden. [Napoleon enters Dresden, May 14. ][Battle of Lützen, May 2. ]Napoleon was now known to be approaching with considerable force by theroads of the Saale. A pitched battle west of the Elbe was necessary beforethe Allies could hope to win over any of the States of the RhenishConfederacy; the flat country beyond Leipzig offered the best possiblefield for cavalry, in which the Allies were strong and Napoleon extremelydeficient. It was accordingly determined to unite all the divisions of thearmy with Blücher on the west of Leipzig, and to attack the French as soonas they descended from the hilly country of the Saale, and began theirmarch across the Saxon plain. The Allies took post at Lützen: the Frenchadvanced, and at midday on the 2nd of May the battle of Lützen began. Tillevening, victory inclined to the Allies. The Prussian soldiery fought withthe utmost spirit; for the first time in Napoleon's campaigns, the Frenchinfantry proved weaker than an enemy when fighting against them in equalnumbers. But the generalship of Napoleon turned the scale. Seventy thousandof the French were thrown upon fifty thousand of the Allies; the battle wasfought in village streets and gardens, where cavalry were useless; and atthe close of the day, though the losses on each side were equal, the Allieswere forced from the positions which they had gained. Such a result wasequivalent to a lost battle. Napoleon's junction with the army of Eugène atMagdeburg was now inevitable, unless a second engagement was fought andwon. No course remained to the Allies but to stake everything upon arenewed attack, or to retire behind the Elbe and meet the reinforcementsassembling in Silesia. King Frederick William declared for a second battle;[180] he was over-ruled, and the retreat commenced. Napoleon enteredDresden on May 14th. No attempt was made by the Allies to hold the line ofthe Elbe; all the sanguine hopes with which Blücher and his comrades hadadvanced to attack Napoleon within the borders of the Rhenish Confederacywere dashed to the ground. The Fatherland remained divided against itself. Saxony and the rest of the vassal States were secured to France by thevictory of Lützen; the liberation of Germany was only to be wrought byprolonged and obstinate warfare, and by the wholesale sacrifice of Prussianlife. [Armistice, June 4. ][Battle of Bautzen, May 21. ]It was with deep disappointment, but not with any wavering of purpose, thatthe allied generals fell back before Napoleon towards the Silesianfortresses. The Prussian troops which had hitherto taken part in the warwere not the third part of those which the Government was arming; newRussian divisions were on the march from Poland. As the Allies movedeastwards from the Elbe, both their own forces and those of Napoleongathered strength. The retreat stopped at Bautzen, on the river Spree; andhere, on the 19th of May, 90, 000 of the Allies and the same number of theFrench drew up in order of battle. The Allies held a long, broken chain ofhills behind the river, and the ground lying between these hills and thevillage of Bautzen. On the 20th the French began the attack, and won thepassage of the river. In spite of the approach of Ney with 40, 000 moretroops, the Czar and the King of Prussia determined to continue the battleon the following day. The struggle of the 21st was of the same obstinateand indecisive character as that at Lützen. Twenty-five thousand French hadbeen killed or wounded before the day was over, but the bad generalship ofthe Allies had again given Napoleon the victory. The Prussian and Russiancommanders were all at variance; Alexander, who had to decide in theircontentions, possessed no real military faculty. It was not for want ofbrave fighting and steadfastness before the enemy that Bautzen was lost. The Allies retreated in perfect order, and without the loss of a singlegun. Napoleon followed, forcing his wearied regiments to ceaselessexertion, in the hope of ruining by pursuit an enemy whom he could notoverthrow in battle. In a few more days the discord of the allied generalsand the sufferings of the troops would probably have made them unable toresist Napoleon's army, weakened as it was. But the conqueror himselfhalted in the moment of victory. On the 4th of June an armistice of sevenweeks arrested the pursuit, and brought the first act of the War ofLiberation to a close. [Napoleon and Austria. ]Napoleon's motive for granting this interval to his enemies, the most fatalstep in his whole career, has been vaguely sought among the general reasonsfor military delay; as a matter of fact, Napoleon was thinking neither ofthe condition of his own army nor of that of the Allies when he broke offhostilities, but of the probable action of the Court of Vienna. [181] "Ishall grant a truce, " he wrote to the Viceroy of Italy (June 2, 1813), "onaccount of the armaments of Austria, and in order to gain time to bring upthe Italian army to Laibach to threaten Vienna. " Austria had indeedresolved to regain, either by war or negotiation, the provinces which ithad lost in 1809. It was now preparing to offer its mediation, but it wasalso preparing to join the Allies in case Napoleon rejected its demands. Metternich was anxious to attain his object, if possible, without war. TheAustrian State was bankrupt; its army had greatly deteriorated since 1809;Metternich himself dreaded both the ambition of Russia and what heconsidered the revolutionary schemes of the German patriots. It was hisobject not to drive Napoleon from his throne, but to establish a Europeansystem in which neither France nor Russia should be absolutely dominant. Soon after the retreat from Moscow the Cabinet of Vienna had informedNapoleon, though in the most friendly terms, that Austria could not longerremain in the position of a dependent ally. [182] Metternich stated, andnot insincerely, that by certain concessions Napoleon might still count onAustria's friendship; but at the same time he negotiated with the alliedPowers, and encouraged them to believe that Austria would, under certaincircumstances, strike on their behalf. The course of the campaign of Maywas singularly favourable to Metternich's policy. Napoleon had not won adecided victory; the Allies, on the other hand, were so far from successthat Austria could set almost any price it pleased upon its alliance. Bythe beginning of June it had become a settled matter in the AustrianCabinet that Napoleon must be made to resign the Illyrian Provincesconquered in 1809 and the districts of North Germany annexed in 1810; butit was still the hope of the Government to obtain this result by peacefulmeans. Napoleon saw that Austria was about to change its attitude, but hehad by no means penetrated the real intentions of Metternich. He creditedthe Viennese Government with a stronger sentiment of hostility towardshimself than it actually possessed; at the same time he failed toappreciate the fixed and settled character of its purpose. He believed thatthe action of Austria would depend simply upon the means which he possessedto intimidate it; that, if the army of Italy were absent, Austria wouldattack him; that, on the other hand, if he could gain time to bring thearmy of Italy into Carniola, Austria would keep the peace. It was with thisbelief, and solely for the purpose of bringing up a force to menaceAustria, that Napoleon stayed his hand against the Prussian and Russianarmies after the battle of Bautzen, and gave time for the gathering of theimmense forces which were destined to effect his destruction. [Metternich offers Austria's mediation. ]Immediately after the conclusion of the armistice of June 4th, Metternichinvited Napoleon to accept Austria's mediation for a general peace. Thesettlement which Metternich contemplated was a very different one from thaton which Stein and the Prussian patriots had set their hopes. Austria waswilling to leave to Napoleon the whole of Italy and Holland, the frontierof the Rhine, and the Protectorate of Western Germany: all that wasrequired by Metternich, as arbiter of Europe, was the restoration of theprovinces taken from Austria after the war of 1809, the reinstatement ofPrussia in Western Poland, and the abandonment by France of theNorth-German district annexed in 1810. But to Napoleon the greater or lessextent of the concessions asked by Austria was a matter of no moment. Hewas determined to make no concessions at all, and he entered intonegotiations only for the purpose of disguising from Austria the realobject with which he had granted the armistice. While Napoleon affected tobe weighing the proposals of Austria, he was in fact calculating the numberof marches which would place the Italian army on the Austrian frontier;this once effected, he expected to hear nothing more of Metternich'sdemands. [Napoleon deceived as to the forces of Austria. ]It was a game of deceit; but there was no one who was so thoroughlydeceived as Napoleon himself. By some extraordinary miscalculation on thepart of his secret agents, he was led to believe that the forces of [***]whole force of Austria, both in the north and the south, amounted to only100, 000 men, [183] and it was on this estimate that he had formed his plansof intimidation. In reality Austria had double that number of men ready totake the field. By degrees Napoleon saw reason to suspect himself in error. On the 11th of July he wrote to his Foreign Minister, Maret, bitterlyreproaching him with the failure of the secret service to gain anytrustworthy information. It was not too late to accept Metternich's terms. Yet even now, when the design of intimidating Austria had proved an utterdelusion, and Napoleon was convinced that Austria would fight, and fightwith very powerful forces, his pride and his invincible belief in his ownsuperiority prevented him from drawing back. He made an attempt to enterupon a separate negotiation with Russia, and, when this failed, he resolvedto 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 27thof June, Austria had signed a treaty at Reichenbach, pledging itself tojoin the allied Powers in the event of Napoleon rejecting the conditions tobe proposed by Austria as mediator; and the conditions so to be proposedwere fixed by the same treaty. They were the following:--The suppression ofthe Duchy of Warsaw; the restoration to Austria of the Illyrian Provinces;and the surrender by Napoleon of the North-German district annexed to hisEmpire in 1810. Terms more hostile to France than these Austria declined toembody in its mediation. The Elbe might still sever Prussia from its Germanprovinces lost in 1807; Napoleon might still retain, as chief of theRhenish Confederacy, his sovereignty over the greater part of the Germanrace. [Austria enters the war, Aug. 10. ][Congress of Prague, July 15-Aug. 10. ]From the moment when these conditions were fixed, there was nothing whichthe 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'ssupport. But their fears were groundless. The counsels of Napoleon wereexactly those which his worst enemies would have desired him to adopt. War, and nothing but war, was his fixed resolve. He affected to entertainAustria's propositions, and sent his envoy Caulaincourt to a Congress whichAustria summoned at Prague; but it was only for the purpose of gaining afew more weeks of preparation. The Congress met; the armistice wasprolonged to the 10th of August. Caulaincourt, however, was given no powerto close with Austria's demands. He was ignorant that he had only been sentto Prague in order to gain time. He saw the storm gathering: unable tobelieve that Napoleon intended to fight all Europe rather than make theconcessions demanded of him, he imagined that his master still felt somedoubt 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 areply to Austria's ultimatum, Caulaincourt implored Napoleon not to deceivehimself 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 theCongress declared itself dissolved. Before the dawn of the next morning thearmy in Silesia saw the blaze of the beacon-fires which told thatnegotiation was at an end, and that Austria was entering the war on theside of the Allies. [184][Armies of Napoleon and the Allies. ]Seven days' notice was necessary before the commencement of actualhostilities. Napoleon, himself stationed at Dresden, held all the lowercourse of the Elbe; and his generals had long had orders to be ready tomarch on the morning of the 18th. Forces had come up from all parts of theEmpire, raising the French army at the front to 300, 000 men; but, for thefirst time in Napoleon's career, his enemies had won from a pause in warresults even surpassing his own. The strength of the Prussian and Russianarmies was now enormously different from what it had been at Lützen andBautzen. The Prussian Landwehr, then a weaponless and ill-clad militiadrilling in the villages, was now fully armed, and in great part at thefront. New Russian divisions had reached Silesia. Austria took the fieldwith a force as numerous as that which had checked Napoleon in 1809. At theclose of the armistice, 350, 000 men actually faced the French positionsupon the Elbe; 300, 000 more were on the march, or watching the Germanfortresses and the frontier of Italy. The allied troops operating againstNapoleon were divided into three armies. In the north, between Wittenbergand Berlin, Bernadotte commanded 60, 000 Russians and Prussians, in additionto his own Swedish contingent. Blücher was placed at the head of 100, 000Russians and Prussians in Silesia. The Austrians remained undivided, andformed, together with some Russian and Prussian divisions, the great armyof Bohemia, 200, 000 strong, under the command of Schwarzenberg. The plan ofthe campaign had been agreed upon by the Allies soon after the Treaty ofReichenbach had been made with Austria. It was a sound, though not a daringone. [Plan of the Allies. ]The three armies, now forming an arc from Wittenberg to the north ofBohemia, were to converge upon the line of Napoleon's communications behindDresden; if separately attacked, their generals were to avoid all hazardousengagements, and to manoeuvre so as to weary the enemy and preserve theirown general relations, as far as possible, unchanged. Blücher, as the mostexposed, was expected to content himself the longest with the defensive;the great army of Bohemia, after securing the mountain-passes betweenBohemia and Saxony, might safely turn Napoleon's position at Dresden, andso draw the two weaker armies towards it for one vast and combinedengagement in the plain of Leipzig. [Napoleon's plan of attack. ]In outline, the plan of the Allies was that which Napoleon expected them toadopt. His own design was to anticipate it by an offensive of extraordinarysuddenness and effect. Hostilities could not begin before the morning ofthe 18th of August; by the 21st or the 22nd, Napoleon calculated that heshould have captured Berlin. Oudinot, who was at Wittenberg with 80, 000men, had received orders to advance upon the Prussian capital at the momentthat 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, andparalyse the action of its army in the field. While Oudinot marched onBerlin, Blücher was to be attacked in Silesia, and prevented from renderingany assistance either on the north or on the south. The mass of Napoleon'sforces, centred at Dresden, and keeping watch upon the movements of thearmy of Bohemia, would either fight a great battle, or, if the Allies madea false movement, march straight upon Prague, the centre of Austria'ssupplies, and reach it before the enemy. All the daring imagination ofNapoleon's earlier campaigns displayed itself in such a project, which, ifsuccessful, would have terminated the war within ten days; but thisimagination was no longer, as in those earlier campaigns, identical withinsight into real possibilities. The success of Napoleon's plan involvedthe surprise or total defeat of Bernadotte before Berlin, the disablementof Blücher, and a victory, or a strategical success equivalent to avictory, over the vast army of the south. It demanded of a soldiery, inferior to the enemy in numerical strength, the personal superiority whichhad belonged to the men of Jena and Austerlitz, when in fact the Frenchregiments of conscripts had ceased to be a match for equal numbers of theenemy. But no experience could alter Napoleon's fixed belief in the fatuityof all warfare except his own. After the havoc of Borodino, after the evenstruggles of Lützen and Bautzen, he still reasoned as if he had before himthe armies of Brunswick and Mack. His plan assumed the certainty of successin each of its parts; for the failure of a single operation hazarded allthe rest, by requiring the transfer of reinforcements from armies alreadytoo weak for the tasks assigned to them. Nevertheless, the utmost thatNapoleon would acknowledge was that the execution of his design neededenergy. He still underrated the force which Austria had brought into thefield against him. Though ignorant of the real position and strength of thearmy in Bohemia, and compelled to wait for the enemy's movements beforestriking on this side, he already in imagination saw the war decided by thefall 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 fromWittenberg towards Berlin; Napoleon himself hurried into Silesia, intendingto deal Blücher one heavy blow, and instantly to return and place himselfbefore Schwarzenberg. On the 21st, and following days, the Prussian generalwas attacked and driven eastwards. Napoleon committed the pursuit toMacdonald, and hastened back to Dresden, already threatened by the advanceof the Austrians from Bohemia. Schwarzenberg and the allied sovereigns, assoon as they heard that Napoleon had gone to seek Blücher in Silesia, hadin fact abandoned their cautious plans, and determined to make an assaultupon Dresden with the Bohemian army alone. But it was in vain that theytried to surprise Napoleon. He was back at Dresden on the 25th, and readyfor the attack. Never were Napoleon's hopes higher than on this day. Hissuccess in Silesia had filled him with confidence. He imagined Oudinot tobe already in Berlin; and the advance of Schwarzenberg against Dresden gavehim the very opportunity which he desired for crushing the Bohemian army inone great battle, before it could draw support either from Blücher or fromBernadotte. Another Austerlitz seemed to be at hand. Napoleon wrote toParis that he should be in Prague before the enemy; and, while he completedhis defences in front of Dresden, he ordered Vandamme, with 40, 000 men, tocross the Elbe at Königstein, and force his way south-westwards on to theroads into Bohemia, in the rear of the Great Army, in order to destroy itsmagazines and menace its line of retreat on Prague. On August 26thSchwarzenberg's host assailed the positions of Napoleon on the slopes andgardens outside Dresden. Austrians, Russians, and Prussians all took partin the attack. Moreau, the victor of Hohenlinden, stood by the side of theEmperor Alexander, whom he had come to help against his own countrymen. Helived only to witness one of the last and greatest victories of France. Theattack was everywhere repelled: the Austrian divisions were not onlybeaten, but disgraced and overthrown. At the end of two days' fighting theAllies were in full retreat, leaving 20, 000 prisoners in the hands ofNapoleon. It was a moment when the hearts of the bravest sank, and whenhope itself might well vanish, as the rumour passed through the Prussianregiments that Metternich was again in friendly communication withNapoleon. But in the midst of Napoleon's triumph intelligence arrived whichrobbed it of all its worth. Oudinot, instead of conquering Berlin, had beendefeated by the Prussians of Bernadotte's army at Grossbeeren (Aug. 23), and driven back upon the Elbe. Blücher had turned upon Macdonald inSilesia, and completely overthrown his army on the river Katzbach, at thevery moment when the Allies were making their assault upon Dresden. It wasvain to think of a march upon Prague, or of the annihilation of theAustrians, when on the north and the east Napoleon's troops were meetingwith nothing but disaster. The divisions which had been intended to supportVandamme's movement from Königstein upon the rear of the Great Army wereretained in the neighbourhood of Dresden, in order to be within reach ofthe points where their aid might be needed. Vandamme, ignorant of hisisolation, was left with scarcely 40, 000 men to encounter the Great Army inits 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, heldtheir ground during the day; in the night, and after the battle hadrecommenced on the morrow, vast masses of the allied troops poured in. TheFrench fought desperately, but were overwhelmed. Vandamme himself was madeprisoner, with 10, 000 of his men. The whole of the stores and most of thecannon 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 almostextinguished the effects of its defeat at Dresden. Thanks to the successesof Blücher and of Bernadotte's Prussian generals, which prevented Napoleonfrom throwing all his forces on to the rear of the Great Army, Schwarzenberg's rash attack had proved of no worse significance than anunsuccessful raid. The Austrians were again in the situation assigned tothem in the original plan of the campaign, and capable of resuming theiradvance into the interior of Saxony: Blücher and the northern commandershad not only escaped separate destruction, but won great victories over theFrench: Napoleon, weakened by the loss of 100, 000 men, remained exactlywhere he had been at the beginning of the campaign. Had the triple movementby which he meant to overwhelm his adversaries been capable of execution, it would now have been fully executed. The balance, however, had turnedagainst 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 thedecisive period in the struggle of Europe against Napoleon. The attack bywhich he intended to prevent the junction of the three armies had beenmade, and had failed. Nothing now remained for him but to repeat the samemovements with a discouraged force against an emboldened enemy, or to quitthe line of the Elbe, and prepare for one vast and decisive encounter withall three armies combined. Napoleon drove from his mind the thought offailure; he ordered Ney to take command of Oudinot's army, and to lead itagain, in increased strength, upon Berlin; he himself hastened toMacdonald's beaten troops in Silesia, and rallied them for a new assaultupon Blücher. All was in vain. Ney, advancing on Berlin, was met by thePrussian general Billow at Dennewitz, and totally routed (Sept. 6):Blücher, finding that Napoleon himself was before him, skilfully avoidedbattle, and forced his adversary to waste in fruitless marches the briefinterval which he had [***] from his watch on Schwarzenberg. Each conflictwith the enemy, each vain and exhausting march, told that the superiorityhad passed from the French to their foes, and that Napoleon's retreat wasnow only a matter of time. "These creatures have learnt something, " saidNapoleon in the bitterness of his heart, as he saw the columns of Blüchermanoeuvring out of his grasp. Ney's report of his own overthrow atDennewitz sounded like an omen of the ruin of Waterloo. "I have beentotally defeated, " he wrote, "and do not yet know whether my army hasre-assembled. The spirit of the generals and officers is shattered. Tocommand in such conditions is but half to command. I had rather be a commongrenadier. "[Metternich. ][German policy of Stein and of Austria. ]The accession of Austria had turned the scale in favour of the Allies; itrested only with the allied generals themselves to terminate the warfareround Dresden, and to lead their armies into the heart of Saxony. For awhile the course of the war flagged, and military interests gave place topolitical. It was in the interval between the first great battles and thefinal advance on Leipzig that the future of Germany was fixed by the threeallied Powers. In the excitement of the last twelve months little thoughthad been given, except by Stein and his friends, to the political form tobe set in the place of the Napoleonic Federation of the Rhine. Stein, inthe midst of the Russian campaign, had hoped for a universal rising of theGerman people against Napoleon, and had proposed the dethronement of allthe German princes who supported his cause. His policy had received thegeneral approval of Alexander, and, on the entrance of the Russian armyinto Germany, a manifesto had been issued appealing to the whole Germannation, and warning the vassals of Napoleon that they could only savethemselves by submission. [185] A committee had been appointed by theallied sovereigns, under the presidency of Stein himself, to administer therevenues of all Confederate territory that should be occupied by the alliedarmies. Whether the reigning Houses should be actually expelled mightremain in uncertainty; but it was the fixed hope of Stein and his friendsthat those princes who were permitted to retain their thrones would bepermitted to retain them only as officers in a great German Empire, withoutsovereign rights either over their own subjects or in relation to foreignStates. The Kings of Bavaria and Würtemberg had gained their titles andmuch of their despotic power at home from Napoleon; their independence ofthe Head of Germany had made them nothing more than the instruments of aforeign conqueror. Under whatever form the central authority might berevived, Stein desired that it should be the true and only sovereign Powerin Germany, a Power to which every German might appeal against theoppression of a minor Government, and in which the whole nation should findits representative before the rest of Europe. In the face of such a centralauthority, whether an elected Parliament or an Imperial Council, the minorprinces could at best retain but a fragment of their powers; and such wasthe theory accepted at the allied head-quarters down to the time whenAustria proffered its mediation and support. Then everything changed. Theviews of the Austrian Government upon the future system of Germany were indirect opposition to those of Stein's party. Metternich dreaded the thoughtof popular agitation, and looked upon Stein, with his idea of a NationalParliament and his plans for dethroning the Rhenish princes, as littlebetter than the Jacobins of 1792. The offer of a restored imperial dignityin Germany was declined by the Emperor of Austria at the instance of hisMinister. With characteristic sense of present difficulties, and blindnessto the great forces which really contained their solution, Metternichargued that the minor princes would only be driven into the arms of theforeigner by the establishment of any supreme German Power. They wouldprobably desert Napoleon if the Allies guaranteed to them everything thatthey at present possessed; they would be freed from all future temptationto attach themselves to France if Austria contented itself with adiplomatic influence and with the ties of a well-constructed system oftreaties. In spite of the influence of Stein with the Emperor Alexander, Metternich's views prevailed. Austria had so deliberately kept itself inbalance during the first part of the year 1813, that the Allies were nowwilling to concede everything, both in this matter and in others, in returnfor its support. Nothing more was heard of the dethronement of theConfederate princes, or even of the limitation of their powers. It wasagreed by the Treaty of Teplitz, signed by Prussia, Russia, and Austria onSeptember 9th, that every State of the Rhenish Confederacy should be placedin a position of absolute independence. Negotiations were opened with theKing of Bavaria, whose army had steadily fought on the side of Napoleon inevery campaign since 1806. Instead of being outlawed as a criminal, he waswelcomed 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 receivedfrom Napoleon, except the Tyrol and the Austrian district on the Inn. Whathad been accorded to the King of Bavaria could not be refused to the restof Napoleon's vassals who were willing to make their peace with the Alliesin 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 ofAustria had been purchased. Austria had indeed made it possible to conquerNapoleon, but it had also made an end of all prospect of the union of theGerman nation. [Allies cross the Elbe, Oct. 3. ]Till the last days of September the position of the hostile armies roundDresden remained little changed, Napoleon unweariedly repeated his attacks, now on one side, now on another, but without result. The Allies on theirpart seemed rooted to the soil. Bernadotte, balanced between the desire toobtain Norway from the Allies and a foolish hope of being called to thethrone of France, was bent on doing the French as little harm as possible;Schwarzenberg, himself an indifferent general, was distracted by thecouncillors of all the three monarchs; Blücher alone pressed for decidedand rapid action. At length the Prussian commander gained permission tomarch northwards, and unite his army with Bernadotte's in a forwardmovement across the Elbe. The long-expected Russian reserves, led byBennigsen, reached the Bohemian mountains; and at the beginning of Octoberthe operation began which was to collect the whole of the allied forces inthe plain of Leipzig. Blücher forced the passage of the Elbe at Wartenburg. It was not until Napoleon learnt that the army of Silesia had actuallycrossed the river that he finally quitted Dresden. Then, hasteningnorthwards, he threw himself upon the Prussian general; but Blücher againavoided battle, as he had done in Silesia; and on the 7th of October hisarmy 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 tothe line of the Elbe, he could hold on no longer. In the frustration of allhis hopes there flashed across his mind the wild project of a marcheastwards to the Oder, and the gathering of all the besieged garrisons fora campaign in which the enemy should stand between himself and France; butthe dream lasted only long enough to gain a record. Napoleon ventured nomore than to send a corps back to the Elbe to threaten Berlin, in the hopeof tempting Blücher and Bernadotte to abandon the advance which they hadnow begun in co-operation with the great army of Schwarzenberg. From the10th to the 14th of October, Napoleon [***] at Düben, between Dresden andLeipzig, restlessly expecting to hear of Blücher's or Bernadotte's retreat. The only definite information that he could gain was that Schwarzenberg waspressing on towards the west. At length he fell back to Leipzig, believingthat Blücher, but not Bernadotte, was advancing to meet Schwarzenberg andtake part in a great engagement. As he entered Leipzig on October 14th thecannon 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 aroundthe city was 170, 000: about 15, 000 others lay within call. He placedMarmont and Ney on the north of Leipzig at the village of Möckern, to meetthe expected onslaught of Blücher; and himself, with the great mass of hisarmy, took post on the south, facing Schwarzenberg. On the morning of the16th, 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. Thebattle was an even one. The Austrians failed to gain ground: with one morearmy-corps Napoleon saw that he could overpower the enemy. He was stillwithout intelligence of Blücher's actual appearance in the north; and inthe rash hope that Blücher's coming might be delayed, he sent orders to Neyand Marmont to leave their positions and hurry to the south to throwthemselves upon Schwarzenberg. Ney obeyed. Marmont, when the order reachedhim, was actually receiving Blücher's first fire. He determined to remainand defend the village of Möckern, though left without support. York, commanding the vanguard of Blücher's army, assailed him with the utmostfury. A third part of the troops engaged on each side were killed orwounded before the day closed; but in the end the victory of the Prussianswas complete. It was the only triumph won by the Allies on this first dayof the battle, but it turned the scale against Napoleon. Marmont's corpswas destroyed; Ney, divided between Napoleon and Marmont, had rendered noeffective help to either. Schwarzenberg, saved from a great disaster, needed only to wait for Bernadotte and the Russian reserves, and to renewthe 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 thevain hope of receiving some friendly answer from his father-in-law, theAustrian Emperor, that he delayed making his retreat during the next day, while it might still have been unmolested. No answer was returned to hisletter. In the evening of the 17th, Bennigsen's army reached the field ofbattle. Next morning began that vast and decisive encounter known in thelanguage of Germany as "the battle of the nations, " the greatest battle inall authentic history, the culmination of all the military effort of theNapoleonic 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 Napoleonand the line of his retreat. As in the first engagement, the decisivesuccesses were those of Blücher, now tardily aided by Bernadotte, on thenorth; Schwarzenberg's divisions, on the south side of the town, foughtsteadily, but without gaining much ground. But there was no longer anydoubt as to the issue of the struggle. If Napoleon could not break theAllies in the first engagement, he had no chance against them now when theyhad been joined by 100, 000 more men. The storm of attack grew wilder andwilder: there were no new forces to call up for the defence. Before the daywas half over Napoleon drew in his outer line, and began to makedispositions for a retreat from Leipzig. At evening long trains of woundedfrom the hospitals passed through the western gates of the city along theroad towards the Rhine. In the darkness of night the whole army waswithdrawn from its positions, and dense masses poured into the town, untilevery street was blocked with confused and impenetrable crowds of cavalryand infantry. The leading divisions moved out of the gates before sunrise. As the throng lessened, some degree of order was restored, and the troopswhich Napoleon intended to cover the retreat took their places under thewalls of Leipzig. The Allies advanced to the storm on the morning of the19th. The French were driven into the town; the victorious enemy pressed ontowards the rear of the retreating columns. In the midst of the struggle anexplosion was heard above the roar of the battle. The bridge over theElster, 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. Themass of fugitives, driven from the streets of the town, found before theman impassable river. Some swam to the opposite bank or perished inattempting to do so; the rest, to the number of 15, 000, laid down theirarms. This was the end of the battle. Napoleon had lost in the three days40, 000 killed and wounded, 260 guns, and 30, 000 prisoners. The killed andwounded 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 wasin no condition to turn upon its pursuers. At each stage in the retreatthousands of fever-stricken wretches were left to terrify even the pursuingarmy with the dread of their infection. It was only when the French foundthe road to Frankfort blocked at Hanau by a Bavarian force that theyrallied to the order of battle. The Bavarians were cut to pieces; the roadwas opened; and, a fortnight after the Battle of Leipzig, Napoleon, withthe remnant of his great army, re-crossed the Rhine. Behind him the fabricof his Empire fell to the ground. Jerome fled from Westphalia; [186] theprinces of the Rhenish Confederacy came one after another to make theirpeace with the Allies; Bülow, with the army which had conquered Ney atDennewitz, marched through the north of Germany to the deliverance ofHolland. Three days after Napoleon had crossed the Rhine the Czar reachedFrankfort; 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 timeto re-consider their opinions, for, on the 9th, it was decided by therepresentatives of the Powers to send an offer of peace to Napoleon, andthe operations of the war were suspended by common consent. The conditionon which peace was offered to Napoleon was the surrender of the conquestsof France beyond the Alps and the Rhine. The Allies were still willing topermit the Emperor to retain Belgium, Savoy, and the Rhenish Provinces;they declined, however, to enter into any negotiation until Napoleon hadaccepted this basis of peace; and they demanded a distinct reply before theend 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 ofpower, returned indefinite answers. The month ended without the reply whichthe Allies required; and on the 1st of December the offer of peace wasdeclared to be withdrawn. It was still undecided whether the war shouldtake the form of an actual invasion of France. The memory of Brunswick'scampaign of 1792, and of the disasters of the first coalition in 1793, evennow exercised a powerful influence over men's minds. Austria was unwillingto drive Napoleon to extremities, or to give to Russia and Prussia theincreased influence which they would gain in Europe from the totaloverthrow of Napoleon's power. It was ultimately determined that the alliedarmies should enter France, but that the Austrians, instead of crossing thenorth-eastern frontier, should make a détour by Switzerland, and gain theplateau of Langres in Champagne, from which the rivers Seine, Marne, andAube, with the roads following their valleys, descend in the direction ofthe capital. The plateau of Langres was said to be of such strategicalimportance that its occupation by an invader would immediately forceNapoleon to make peace. As a matter of fact, the plateau was of nostrategical importance whatever; but the Austrians desired to occupy it, partly with the view of guarding against any attack from the direction ofItaly and Lyons, partly from their want of the heavy artillery necessaryfor besieging the fortresses farther north, [187] and from a justappreciation of the dangers of a campaign conducted in a hostile countryintersected by several rivers. Anything was welcomed by Metternich thatseemed likely to avert, or even to postpone, a struggle with Napoleon forlife or death. Blücher correctly judged the march through Switzerland to bemere procrastination. He was himself permitted to take the straight roadinto France, though his movements were retarded in order to keep pace withthe cautious steps of Schwarzenberg. On the last day of the year 1813 thePrussian general crossed the Rhine near Coblentz; on the 18th of January, 1814, the Austrian army, having advanced from Switzerland by Belfort andVesoul, reached its halting-place on the plateau of Langres. Here the marchstopped; and here it was expected that terms of peace would be proposed byNapoleon. [Wellington entering France from the south. ]It was not on the eastern side alone that the invader was now enteringFrance. Wellington had passed the Pyrenees. His last victorious march intothe north of Spain began on the day when the Prussian and Russian armieswere defeated by Napoleon at Bautzen (May 21, 1813). During the armisticeof Dresden, a week before Austria signed the treaty which fixed theconditions of its armed mediation, he had gained an overwhelming triumph atVittoria over King Joseph and the French army, as it retreated with all thespoils gathered in five years' occupation of Spain (June 21). A series ofbloody engagements had given the English the passes of the Pyrenees inthose same days of August and September that saw the allied armies closearound Napoleon at Dresden; and when, after the catastrophe of Leipzig, thewreck of Napoleon's host was retreating beyond the Rhine, Soult, thedefender of the Pyrenees, was driven by the British general from hisentrenchments 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 everysoil 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'sstrength, and the force no longer existed which could bar the way to itsgathered enemies. The armies placed upon the eastern frontier had to fallback before an enemy five times more numerous than themselves. Napoleon hadnot expected that the Allies would enter France before the spring. Withthree months given him for organisation, he could have made thefrontier-armies strong enough to maintain their actual positions; thewinter advance of the Allies compelled him to abandon the border districtsof France, and to concentrate his defence in Champagne, between the Marne, the Seine, and the Aube. This district was one which offered extraordinaryadvantages to a great general acting against an irresolute andill-commanded enemy. By holding the bridges over the three rivers, anddrawing his own supplies along the central road from Paris toArcis-sur-Aube, Napoleon could securely throw the bulk of his forces fromone side to the other against the flank of the Allies, while his ownmovements were covered by the rivers, which could not be passed except atthe bridges. A capable commander at the head of the Allies would haveemployed the same river-strategy against Napoleon himself, after conqueringone or two points of passage by main force; but Napoleon had nothing of thekind to fear from Schwarzenberg; and if the Austrian head-quarterscontinued to control the movements of the allied armies, it was even nowdoubtful 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 anyfurther advance into France, and argued that the army had already gainedall it needed by the occupation of the border provinces. It was only uponthe threat of the Czar to continue the war by himself that the Austriansconsented to move forward upon Paris. After several days had been lost indiscussion, the advance from Langres was begun. Orders were given toBlücher, who had pushed back the French divisions commanded by Marmont andMortier, and who was now near St. Dizier on the Marne, to meet the GreatArmy at Brienne. This was the situation of the Allies when, on the 25th ofJanuary, 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 thatBlücher was moving towards the Austrians; he hoped to hold the Prussiangeneral in check at St. Dizier, and to throw himself upon the heads ofSchwarzenberg'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, Blücherfell back towards Schwarzenberg. The allied armies effected their junction, and Blücher, now supported by the Austrians, turned and marched down theright bank of the Aube to meet Napoleon. Napoleon, though far outnumbered, accepted battle. He was attacked at La Rothière close above Brienne, anddefeated with heavy loss (Feb. 1). A vigorous pursuit would probably haveended the war; but the Austrians held back. Schwarzenberg believed peace tobe already gained, and condemned all further action as useless waste oflife. In spite of the protests of the Emperor Alexander, he allowedNapoleon to retire unmolested. Schwarzenberg's inaction was no mere errorin military judgment. There was a direct conflict between the Czar and theAustrian Cabinet as to the end to be obtained by the war. Alexander alreadyinsisted on the dethronement of Napoleon; the Austrian Government wouldhave been content to leave Napoleon in power if he would accept a peacegiving France no worse a frontier than it had possessed in 1791. Castlereagh, who had come from England, and Hardenberg were as yet inclinedto support Metternich's policy, although the whole Prussian army, thepublic opinion of Great Britain, and the counsels of Stein and all thebolder 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 thatnegotiations had been opened with Napoleon. Representatives of all thePowers assembled at Châtillon, in Burgundy; and there, towards the end ofJanuary, Caulaincourt appeared on behalf of France. The first sitting tookplace on the 5th of February; on the following day Caulaincourt receivedfull powers from Napoleon to conclude peace. The Allies laid down as thecondition of peace the limitation of France to the frontiers of 1791. HadCaulaincourt dared to conclude peace instantly on these terms, Napoleonwould have retained his throne; but he was aware that Napoleon had onlygranted him full powers in consequence of the disastrous battle of LaRothière, and he feared to be disavowed by his master as soon as the armyhad escaped from danger. Instead of simply accepting the Allies' offer, heraised questions as to the future of Italy and Germany. The moment waslost; 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 theSeine towards Troyes. Blücher was permitted to return to the Marne, and toadvance upon Paris by an independent line of march. He crossed the countrybetween the Aube and the Marne, and joined some divisions which he had leftbehind him on the latter river. But his dispositions were outrageouslycareless: his troops were scattered over a space of sixty miles fromChâlons westward, as if he had no enemy to guard against except the weakdivisions commanded by Mortier and Marmont, which had uniformly fallen backbefore his advance. Suddenly Napoleon himself appeared at the centre of thelong Prussian line at Champaubert. He had hastened northwards in pursuit ofBlücher with 30, 000 men, as soon as Schwarzenberg entered Troyes; and onFebruary 10th a weak Russian corps that lay in the centre of Blücher'scolumn was overwhelmed before it was known the Emperor had left the Seine. Then, turning leftwards, Napoleon overthrew the Prussian vanguard atMontmirail, and two days later attacked and defeated Blücher himself, whowas bringing up the remainder of his troops in total ignorance of the enemywith whom he had to deal. In four days Blücher's army, which numbered70, 000 men, had thrice been defeated in detail by a force of 30, 000. Blücher was compelled to fall back upon Châlons; Napoleon instantlyreturned to the support of Oudinot's division, which he had left in frontof Schwarzenberg. In order to relieve Blücher, the Austrians had pushedforward on the Seine beyond Montereau. Within three days after the battlewith Blücher, Napoleon was back upon the Seine, and attacking the heads ofthe Austrian column. On the 18th of February he gained so decisive avictory at Montereau that Schwarzenberg abandoned the advance, and fellback upon Troyes, sending word to Blücher to come southwards again and helphim to fight a great battle. Blücher moved off with admirable energy, andcame into the neighbourhood of Troyes within a week after his defeats uponthe Marne. But the design of fighting a great battle was given up. Thedisinclination of the Austrians to vigorous action was too strong to beovercome; and it was finally determined that Schwarzenberg should fall backalmost to the plateau of Langres, leaving Blücher to unite with the troopsof Bülow which had conquered Holland, and to operate on the enemy's flankand rear. [Congress of Châtillon resumed, Feb. 17-March 15. ]The effect of Napoleon's sudden victories on the Marne was instantly seenin the councils of the allied sovereigns. Alexander, who had withdrawn hisenvoy from Châtillon, could no longer hold out against negotiations withNapoleon. He restored the powers of his envoy, and the Congressre-assembled. But Napoleon already saw himself in imagination driving theinvaders beyond the Rhine, and sent orders to Caulaincourt to insist uponthe terms proposed at Frankfort, which left to France both the RhenishProvinces and Belgium. At the same time he attempted to open a privatenegotiation with his father-in-law the Emperor of Austria, and to detachhim from the cause of the Allies. The attempt failed; the demands now madeby Caulaincourt overcame even the peaceful inclinations of the AustrianMinister; and on the 1st of March the Allies signed a new treaty atChaumont, pledging themselves to conclude no peace with Napoleon that didnot restore the frontier of 1791, and to maintain a defensive allianceagainst France for a period of twenty years. [189] Caulaincourt continuedfor another fortnight at Châtillon, instructed by Napoleon to prolong thenegotiations, but forbidden to accept the only conditions which the Allieswere 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 ofBernadotte upon the Aisne. Since the Battle of Leipzig, Bernadotte himselfhad taken no part in the movements of the army nominally under his command. The Netherlands had been conquered by Bülow and the Russian generalWinzingerode, and these officers were now pushing southwards in order totake part with Blücher in a movement against Paris. Napoleon calculatedthat the fortress of Soissons would bar the way to the northern army, andenable him to attack and crush Blücher before he could effect a junctionwith his colleagues. He set out in pursuit of the Prussians, still hopingfor a second series of victories like those he had won upon the Marne. Butthe cowardice of the commander of Soissons ruined his chances of success. The fortress surrendered to the Russians at the first summons. Blücher metthe 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 itsdivisions which lay in the rear. The French followed, but the onlyadvantage gained by Napoleon was a victory over a detached Russian corps atCraonne. Marmont was defeated with heavy loss by a sally of Blücher fromhis strong position on the hill of Laon (March 10); and the Emperorhimself, unable to restore the fortune of the battle, fell back uponSoissons, and thence marched southward to throw himself again upon the lineof 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'svictory at Laon. His troops were so widely dispersed that Napoleon mighteven now have cut the line in halves had he known Schwarzenberg's realposition. But he made a détour in order to meet Oudinot's corps, and gavethe Austrians time to concentrate at Arcis-sur-Aube. Here, on the 20th ofMarch, Napoleon found himself in face of an army of 100, 000 men. His ownarmy was less than a third of that number; yet with unalterable contemptfor the enemy he risked another battle. No decided issue was reached in thefirst day's fighting, and Napoleon remained in position, expecting thatSchwarzenberg would retreat during the night. But on the morrow theAustrians were still fronting him. Schwarzenberg had at length learnt hisown real superiority, and resolved to assist the enemy no longer by awretched system of retreat. A single act of firmness on the part of theAustrian commander showed Napoleon that the war of battles was at an end. He abandoned all hope of resisting the invaders in front: it only remainedfor him to throw himself on to their rear, and, in company with thefrontier-garrisons and the army of Lyons, to attack their communicationswith Germany. The plan was no unreasonable one, if Paris could either havesustained a siege or have fallen into the enemy's hands without terminatingthe war. But the Allies rightly judged that Napoleon's power would beextinct from the moment that Paris submitted. They received theintelligence of the Emperor's march to the east, and declined to followhim. The armies of Schwarzenberg and Blücher approached one another, andmoved together on Paris. It was at Vitry, on March 27th, that Napoleonfirst discovered that the troops which had appeared to be following hiseastward movement were but a detachment of cavalry, and that the alliedarmies were in full march upon the capital. He instantly called up everydivision within reach, and pushed forward by forced marches for the Seine, hoping to fall upon Schwarzenberg's rear before the allied vanguard couldreach Paris. But at each hour of the march it became more evident that theenemy was far in advance. For two days Napoleon urged his men forward; atlength, unable to bear the intolerable suspense, he quitted the army on themorning of the 30th, and drove forward at the utmost speed along the roadthrough Fontainebleau to the capital. As day sank, he met reports of abattle already begun. When he reached the village of Fromenteau, fifteenmiles from Paris, at ten o'clock at night, he heard that Paris had actuallysurrendered. [Attack on Paris, March 30. ][Capitulation of Marmont. ][Allies enter Paris, March 31. ]The Allies had pressed forward without taking any notice of Napoleon'smovements, and at early morning on the 30th they had opened the attack onthe north-eastern heights of Paris. Marmont, with the fragments of a beatenarmy and some weak divisions of the National Guard, had but 35, 000 men tooppose to three times that number of the enemy. The Government had taken nosteps to arm the people, or to prolong resistance after the outside line ofdefence was lost, although the erection of barricades would have held theAllies in check until Napoleon arrived with his army. While Marmont foughtin the outer suburbs, masses of the people were drawn up on Montmartre, expecting the Emperor's appearance, and the spectacle of a great anddecisive battle. But the firing in the outskirts stopped soon after noon:it was announced that Marmont had capitulated. The report struck the peoplewith stupor and fury. They had vainly been demanding arms since earlymorning; and even after the capitulation unsigned papers were handed aboutby men of the working classes, advocating further resistance. [190] But thepeople no longer knew how to follow leaders of its own. Napoleon hadtrained France to look only to himself: his absence left the masses, whowere still eager to fight for France, helpless in the presence of theconqueror: there were enemies enough of the Government among the richerclasses to make the entry of the foreigner into Paris a scene of actual joyand exultation. To such an extent had the spirit of caste and the malignantdelight in Napoleon's ruin overpowered the love of France among the partyof the old noblesse, that upon the entry of the allied forces into Paris onthe 31st of March hundreds of aristocratic women kissed the hands, or thevery boots and horses, of the leaders of the train, and cheered theCossacks 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 ofChâtillon on the 18th of March, the Allies had determined to make hisdethronement a condition of peace. As the end approached, it was seen thatno successor was possible but the chief of the House of Bourbon, althoughAustria would perhaps have consented to the establishment of a Regencyunder the Empress Marie Louise, and the Czar had for a time entertained theproject of placing Bernadotte at the head of the French State. Immediatelyafter the entry into Paris it was determined to raise the exile LouisXVIII. To the throne. The politicians of the Empire who followed Talleyrandwere not unwilling to unite with the conquerors, and with the small partyof Royalist noblesse, in recalling the Bourbon dynasty. Alexander, who wasthe real master of the situation, rightly judged Talleyrand to be the manmost capable of enlisting the public opinion of France on the side of thenew order. He took up his abode at Talleyrand's house, and employed thisdexterous statesman as the advocate both of the policy of the Allies, andof the principles of constitutional liberty, which at this time Alexanderhimself sincerely befriended. A Provisional Government was appointed underTalleyrand's leadership. On the 2nd of April the Senate proclaimed thedethronement of Napoleon. On the 6th it published a Constitution, andrecalled the House of Bourbon. Louis XVIII. Was still in England: his brother, the Count of Artois, hadjoined the invaders in France and assumed the title of Lieutenant of theKingdom; but the influence of Alexander was necessary to force thisobstinate and unteachable man into anything like a constitutional position. The Provisional Government invited the Count to take up the administrationuntil the King's arrival, in virtue of a decree of the Senate. D'Artoisdeclined to recognise the Senate's competency, and claimed the Lieutenancyof the Kingdom as his brother's representative. The Senate refusing toadmit the Count's divine right, some unmeaning words were exchanged whend'Artois entered Paris; and the Provisional Government, disregarding theclaims of the Royal Lieutenant, continued in the full exercise of itspowers. At length the Czar insisted that d'Artois should give way. Thedecree of the Senate was accordingly accepted by him at the Tuileries onthe 14th of April; the Provisional Government retired, and a Council ofState was formed, in which Talleyrand still continued to exercise the realpowers of government. In the address made by d'Artois on this occasion, hestated that although the King had not empowered him to accept theConstitution made by the Senate on the 6th of April, he entertained nodoubt that the King would accept the principles embodied in thatConstitution, which were those of Representative Government, of the freedomof the press, and of the responsibility of ministers. A week afterd'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 aconstitutional system, had never permitted himself to question the divineright of the House of Bourbon to sovereign power. The exiles who surroundedhim were slow to understand the needs of the time. They recommended theKing to reject the Constitution. Louis made an ambiguous answer when theLegislative Body met him at Compiègne and invited an expression of theroyal policy. It was again necessary for the Czar to interfere, and toexplain to the King that France could no longer be an absolute monarchy. Louis, however, was a better arguer than the Count of Artois. He reasonedas a man whom the sovereigns of Europe had felt it their duty to restorewithout any request from himself. If the Senate of Napoleon, he urged, hadthe right to give France a Constitution, he himself ought never to havebeen brought from his peaceful English home. He was willing to grant a freeConstitution to his people in exercise of his own royal rights, but hecould not recognise one created by the servants of an usurper. Alexanderwas but half satisfied with the liberal professions of Louis: he did not, however, insist on his acceptance of the Constitution drawn up by theSenate, but he informed him that until the promises made by d'Artois wereconfirmed by a royal proclamation, there would be no entry into Paris. TheKing at length signed a proclamation written by Talleyrand, and made hisfestal entry into the capital on the 3rd of May. [Feeling of Paris. ]The promises of Louis himself, the unbroken courtesy and friendliness shownby the Allies to Paris since their victory a month before, had almostextinguished the popular feeling of hostility towards a dynasty which owedits recall to the overthrow of French armies. The foreign leadersthemselves had begun to excite a certain admiration and interest. Alexanderwas considered, and with good reason, as a generous enemy; the simplicityof the King of Prussia, his misfortunes, his well-remembered gallantry atthe Battle of Jena, gained him general sympathy. It needed but little onthe part of the returning Bourbons to convert the interest and curiosity ofParis into affection. The cortège which entered the capital with LouisXVIII. Brought back, in a singular motley of obsolete and of foreigncostumes, the bearers of many unforgotten names. The look of the Kinghimself, as he drove through Paris, pleased the people. The childlessfather of the murdered Duke of Enghien gained the pitying attention ofthose few who knew the face of a man twenty-five years an exile. But therewas one among the members of the returning families whom every heart inParis went out to meet. The daughter of Louis XVI. , who had shared thecaptivity of her parents and of her brother, the sole survivor of herdeeply-wronged house, now returned as Duchess of Angoulême. The uniquelymournful history of her girlhood, and her subsequent marriage with hercousin, the son of the Count of Artois, made her the natural object of awarmer sympathy than could attach to either of the brothers of Louis XVI. But adversity had imprinted its lines too deeply upon the features and thedisposition of this joyless woman for a moment's light to return. Her voiceand her aspect repelled the affection which thousands were eager to offerto her. Before the close of the first days of the restored monarchy, it wasfelt that the Bourbons had brought back no single person among them who wascapable 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 asthe work of France itself; Napoleon's fate could only be fixed by hisconquerors. After the fall of Paris, Napoleon remained at Fontainebleauawaiting events. The soldiers and the younger officers of his army werestill ready to fight for him; the marshals, however, were utterly weary, and determined that France should no longer suffer for the sake of a singleman. They informed Napoleon that he must abdicate. Yielding to theirpressure, Napoleon, on the 3rd of April, drew up an act of abdication infavour of his infant son, and sent it by Caulaincourt to the alliedsovereigns at Paris. The document was rejected by the Allies; Caulaincourtreturned with the intelligence that Napoleon must renounce the throne forhimself and all his family. For a moment the Emperor thought of renewingthe war; but the marshals refused their aid more resolutely than before, and, on the 6th of April, Napoleon signed an unconditional surrender of thethrone for himself and his heirs. He was permitted by the Allies to retainthe unmeaning title of Emperor, and to carry with him a body-guard and aconsiderable revenue to the island of Elba, henceforward to be hisprincipality and his prison. The choice of this island, within easy reachof 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 apromise made to Marmont that the liberty of the Emperor should berespected. Alexander was not left without warning of the probable effectsof his leniency. Sir Charles Stewart, military representative of GreatBritain at the allied head-quarters, urged both his own and the alliedGovernments to substitute some more distant island for Elba, if theydesired to save Europe from a renewed Napoleonic war, and France from themisery of a second invasion. The Allies, though not without misgivings, adhered to their original plan, and left it to time to justify thepredictions of their adviser. [Treaty of Paris, May 30. ]It was well known what would be the terms of peace, now that Napoleon wasremoved from the throne. The Allies had no intention of depriving France ofany of the territory that it had held before 1792: the conclusion of adefinitive Treaty was only postponed until the Constitution, whichAlexander required King Louis XVIII. To grant, had been drawn up by a royalcommission and approved by the King. On the 27th of May the draft of thisConstitution, known as the Charta, was laid before the King, and sanctionedby him; on the 30th, the Treaty of Paris was signed by the representativesof France and of all the great Powers. [191] France, surrendering all itsconquests, accepted the frontier of the 1st of January, 1792, with a slightaddition of territory on the side of Savoy and at points on its northernand eastern border. It paid no indemnity. It was permitted to retain allthe works of art accumulated by twenty years of rapine, except the trophiescarried from the Brandenburg Gate of Berlin and the spoils of the Libraryof Vienna. It received back nearly all the colonies which had been takenfrom it by Great Britain. By the clauses of the Treaty disposing of theterritory that had formed the Empire and the dependencies of Napoleon, Holland was restored to the House of Orange, with the provision that itsterritory should be largely increased; Switzerland was declaredindependent; it was stipulated that Italy, with the exception of theAustrian Provinces, should consist of independent States, and that Germanyshould remain distributed among a multitude of sovereigns, independent, butunited by a Federal tie. The navigation of the Rhine was thrown open. By aspecial agreement with Great Britain the French Government undertook tounite its efforts to those of England in procuring the suppression of theSlave-trade by all the Powers, and pledged itself to abolish theSlave-trade among French subjects within five years at the latest. For thesettlement of all European questions not included in the Treaty of Paris itwas 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 independentlyof France--should control the distributions of territory to be made at theCongress; that Austria should receive Venetia and all Northern Italy as faras the Ticino; that Genoa should be given to the King of Sardinia; and thatthe Southern Netherlands should be united into a single kingdom withHolland, and thus form a solid bulwark against France on the north. Nomention was made of Naples, whose sovereign, Murat, had abandoned Napoleonand allied himself with Austria, but without fulfilling in good faith theengagements into which he had entered against his former master. A nominalfriend of the Allies, he knew that he had played a double game, and thathis 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 theTreaty of Paris two at least of the great Powers saw the objects attainedfor which they had straggled so persistently through all the earlier yearsof the war, and which at a later time had appeared to pass almost out ofthe range of possibility. England saw the Netherlands once more convertedinto a barrier against France, and Antwerp held by friendly hands. Austriareaped the full reward of its cool and well-balanced diplomacy during thecrisis of 1813, in the annexation of an Italian territory that made it thereal mistress of the Peninsula. Castlereagh and every other Englishpolitician felt that Europe had done itself small honour in handing Veniceback to the Hapsburg; but this had been the condition exacted by Metternichat Prague before he consented to throw the sword of Austria into thetrembling scale; [193] and the Republican traditions both of Venice and ofGenoa counted for little among the statesmen of 1814, in comparison withthe 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 ofwarfare, was permitted to retain, for the benefit of a restored line ofkings, the whole of its ancient territory, and the spoil of all thegalleries and museums of Western Europe. It would have been no unnaturalwrong if the conquerors of 1814 had dealt with the soil of France as Francehad dealt with other lands; it would have been an act of bare justice torestore 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 whichNapoleon had extorted from conquered States. But the Courts were too wellsatisfied with their victory to enter into a strict account upon secondarymatters; and a prudent regard on the part of the Allies to the prospects ofthe House of Bourbon saved France from experiencing what it had inflictedupon 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 viewedwith a very different feeling in France and in all other countries. Europelooked with a kind of wonder upon its own generosity; France forgot theunparalleled provocations which it had offered to mankind, and onlyremembered that Belgium and the Rhenish Provinces had formed part of theRepublic and the Empire for nearly twenty years. These early conquests ofthe Republic, which no one had attempted to wrest from France since 1795, had undoubtedly been the equivalent for which, in the days of theDirectory, Austria had been permitted to extend itself in Italy, andPrussia in Germany. In the opinion of men who sincerely condemnedNapoleon's distant conquests, the territory between France and the Rhinewas no more than France might legitimately demand, as a counterpoise to thevast accessions falling to one or other of the Continental Powers out ofthe territory of Poland, Venice, and the body of suppressed States inGermany. Poland, excluding the districts taken from it before 1792, contained a population twice as great as that of Belgium and the RhenishProvinces together: Venice carried with it, in addition to a commandingprovince on the Italian mainland, the Eastern Adriatic Coast as far asRagusa. If it were true that the proportionate increase of power formed theonly solid principle of European policy, France sustained a grievous injuryin receiving back the limits of 1791, when every other State on theContinent was permitted to retain the territory, or an equivalent for theterritory, which it had gained in the great changes that took place between1791 and 1814. But in fact there had never been a time during the lasthundred and fifty years when France, under an energetic Government, had notpossessed a force threatening to all its neighbours. France, reduced to itsancient limits, was still the equal, and far more than the equal, of any ofthe Continental Powers, with all that they had gained during theRevolutionary War. It remained the first of European nations, though nolonger, as in the eighteenth century, the one great nation of the westerncontinent. Its efforts after universal empire had aroused other nationsinto life. Had the course of French conquest ceased before Napoleon graspedpower, France would have retained its frontier of the Rhine, and long haveexercised an unbounded influence over both Germany and Italy, through theincomparably juster and brighter social life which the Revolution, combinedwith all that France had inherited from the past, enabled it to display tothose countries. Napoleon, in the attempt to impose his rule upon allEurope, created a power in Germany whose military future was to be not lesssolid than that of France itself, and left to Europe, in the accord of hisenemies, a firmer security against French attack than any that the effortsof 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 thegenius and the ambition of a single man. But if, in the service ofNapoleon, France had exhausted its wealth, sunk its fleets, and sacrificeda million lives, only that it might lose all its earlier conquests, andresume limits which it had outgrown before Napoleon held his first command, it was not thus with the work which, for or against itself, France hadeffected in Europe during the movements of the last twenty years. In thecourse of the epoch now ending the whole of the Continent up to thefrontiers of Austria and Russia had gained the two fruitful ideas ofnationality and political freedom. There were now two nations in Europewhere before there had been but aggregates of artificial States. Germanyand Italy were no longer mere geographical expressions: in both countries, though in a very unequal degree, the newly-aroused sense of nationality hadbrought with it the claim for unity and independence. In Germany, Prussiahad set a great example, and was hereafter to reap its reward; in Italythere had been no State and no statesman to take the lead either inthrowing 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 actfor itself, the population of all Italy, except Naples, was parcelled outbetween Austria and the ancient dynasties; but the old days of passivesubmission to the foreigner were gone for ever, and time was to showwhether those were the dreamers who thought of a united Italy, or those whothought that Metternich's statesmanship had for ever settled the fate ofVenice and of Milan. [Desire for political liberty. ]The second legacy of the Revolutionary epoch, the idea of constitutionalfreedom, which in 1789 had been as much wanting in Spain, where nationalspirit was the strongest, as in those German States where it was theweakest, had been excited in Italy by the events of 1796 and 1798, in Spainby the disappearance of the Bourbon king and the self-directed struggle ofthe nation against the invader; in Prussia it had been introduced by theGovernment itself when Stein was at the head of the State. "It isimpossible, " wrote Lord Castlereagh in the spring of 1814, "not to perceivea great moral change coming on in Europe, and that the principles offreedom are in full operation. " [195] There was in fact scarcely a Court inEurope which was not now declaring its intention to frame a Constitution. The professions might be lightly made; the desire and the capacity forself-government might still be limited to a narrower class than the friendsof liberty imagined; but the seed was sown, and a movement had begun whichwas to gather strength during the next thirty years of European history, while one revolution after another proved that Governments could no longerwith safety disregard the rights of their subjects. [Social changes. ]Lastly, in all the territory that had formed Napoleon's Empire anddependencies, and also in Prussia, legal changes had been made in therights and relations of the different classes of society, so important asalmost to create a new type of social life. Within the Empire itself theCode Napoléon, conferring upon the subjects of France the benefits whichthe French had already won for themselves, had superseded a society restingon class-privilege, on feudal service, and on the despotism of custom, by asociety resting on equality before the law, on freedom of contract, and onthe unshackled ownership and enjoyment of land, whether the holderpossessed an acre or a league. The principles of the French Code, if notthe Code itself, had been introduced into Napoleon's kingdom of Italy, intoNaples, and into almost all the German dependencies of France. In Prussiathe reforms of Stein and Hardenberg had been directed, though less boldly, towards the same end; and when, after 1814, the Rhenish Provinces wereannexed to Prussia by the Congress of Vienna, the Government was wiseenough and liberal enough to leave these districts in the enjoyment of thelaws which France had given them, and not to risk a comparison between eventhe best Prussian legislation and the Code Napoleon. In other territory nowsevered from France and restored to German or Italian princes, attemptswere not wanting to obliterate the new order and to re-introduce theburdens and confusions of the old regime. But these reactions, even whereunopposed for a time, were too much in conflict with the spirit of the ageto gain more than a temporary and precarious success. The people had begunto know good and evil: examples of a free social order were too close athand to render it possible for any part of the western continent to relapsefor any very long period into the condition of the eighteenth century. [Limits. ]It was indeed within a distinct limit that the Revolutionary epoch effectedits work of political and social change. Neither England nor Austriareceived the slightest impulse to progress. England, on the contrary, suspended almost all internal improvement during the course of the war; thedomestic policy of the Austrian Court, so energetic in the reignimmediately preceding the Revolution, became for the next twenty years, except where it was a policy of repression, a policy of pure vacancy andinaction. But in all other States of Western Europe the period whichreached its close with Napoleon's fall left deep and lasting traces behindit. Like other great epochs of change, it bore its own peculiar character. It was not, like the Renaissance and the Reformation, a time when newworlds of faith and knowledge transformed the whole scope and conception ofhuman life; it was not, like our own age, a time when scientific discoveryand increased means of communication silently altered the physicalconditions of existence; it was a time of changes directly political intheir nature, and directly effected by the political agencies oflegislation and of war. In the perspective of history the Napoleonic agewill take its true place among other, and perhaps greater, epochs. Itselements of mere violence and disturbance will fill less space in the eyesof mankind; its permanent creations, more. As an epoch of purely politicalenergy, concentrating the work of generations within the compass of twentyfive years, it will perhaps scarcely find a parallel. CHAPTER XII. The Restoration of 1814--Norway--Naples--Westphalia--Spain--The SpanishConstitution overthrown: Victory of the Clergy--Restoration in France--TheCharta--Encroachments of the Nobles and Clergy--Growing Hostility to theBourbons--Congress of Vienna--Talleyrand and the Four Powers--The PolishQuestion--The Saxon Question--Theory of Legitimacy--Secret Alliance againstRussia and Prussia--Compromise--The Rhenish Provinces--Napoleon leaves Elbaand lands in France--His Declarations--Napoleon at Grenoble, at Lyon, atParis--The Congress of Vienna unites Europe against France--Murat's Actionin Italy--The Acte Additionnel--The Champ de Mai--Napoleon takes up theoffensive--Battles of Ligny, Quatre Bras, Waterloo--Affairs atParis--Napoleon sent to St. Helena--Wellington and Fouché--Arguments on theproposed Cession of French Territory--Treaty of Holy Alliance--SecondTreaty of Paris--Conclusion of the Work of the Congress of Vienna--Federation of Germany--Estimate of the Congress of Vienna and of theTreaties of 1815--The Slave Trade. Of all the events which, in the more recent history of mankind, have struckthe minds of nations with awe, and appeared to reveal in its directoperation a power overruling the highest human effort, there is none equalin grandeur and terror to the annihilation of Napoleon's army in theinvasion of Russia. It was natural that a generation which had seen Stateafter State overthrown, and each new violation of right followed by anapparent consolidation of the conqueror's strength, should view in thecatastrophe of 1812 the hand of Providence visibly outstretched for thedeliverance of Europe. [196] Since that time many years have passed. Perilswhich then seemed to envelop the future of mankind now appear in partillusory; sacrifices then counted cheap have proved of heavy cost. Thehistory of the two last generations shows that not everything was lost toEurope in passing subjection to a usurper, nor everything gained by thevictory of his opponents. It is now not easy to suppress the doubt whetherthe permanent interests of mankind would not have been best served byNapoleon's success in 1812. His empire had already attained dimensions thatrendered its ultimate disruption certain: less depended upon thepostponement or the acceleration of its downfall than on the order ofthings ready to take its place. The victory of Napoleon in 1812 would havebeen followed by the establishment of a Polish kingdom in the provincestaken from Russia. From no generosity in the conqueror, from no sympathy onhis part with a fallen people, but from the necessities of his politicalsituation, Poland must have been so organised as to render it the bulwarkof French supremacy in the East. The serf would have been emancipated. Thejust hatred of the peasant to the noble, which made the partition of 1772easy, and has proved fatal to every Polish uprising from that time to thepresent, would have been appeased by an agrarian reform executed withNapoleon's own unrivalled energy and intelligence, and ushered in withbrighter hopes than have at any time in the history of Poland lit the darkshades of peasant-life. The motives which in 1807 had led Napoleon to stayhis hand, and to content himself with half-measures of emancipation in theDuchy of Warsaw [197], could have had no place after 1812, when Russiaremained by his side, a mutilated but inexorable enemy, ever on the watchto turn to its own advantage the first murmurs of popular discontent beyondthe border. Political independence, the heritage of the Polish noble, mighthave been withheld, but the blessing of landed independence would have beenbestowed on the mass of the Polish people. In the course of some years thisrestored kingdom, though governed by a member of the house of Bonaparte, would probably have gained sufficient internal strength to survive thedownfall of Napoleon's Empire or his own decease. England, Austria, andTurkey would have found it no impossible task to prevent its absorption byAlexander at the re-settlement of Europe, if indeed the collapse of Russiahad not been followed by the overthrow of the Porte, and the establishmentof a Greek, a Bulgarian, and a Roumanian Kingdom under the supremacy ofFrance. By the side of the three absolute monarchs of Central and EasternEurope there would have remained, upon Napoleon's downfall, at least onepeople in possession of the tradition of liberty: and from the example ofPoland, raised from the deep but not incurable degradation of its sociallife, the rulers of Russia might have gained courage to emancipate theserf, without waiting for the lapse of another half-century and theoccurrence of a second ruinous war. To compare a possible sequence ofevents with the real course of history, to estimate the good lost and evilgot through events which at the time seemed to vindicate the moralgovernance of the world, is no idle exercise of the imagination. It mayserve to give caution to the judgment: it may guard us against an arbitraryand fanciful interpretation of the actual. The generation which witnessedthe fall of Napoleon is not the only one which has seen Providence in thefulfilment of its own desire, and in the storm-cloud of nature and historyhas traced with too sanguine gaze the sacred lineaments of human equity andlove. [Settlement of 1814. ][Norway. ][Naples. ]The Empire of Napoleon had indeed passed away. The conquests won by thefirst soldiers of the Republic were lost to France along with all thelatest spoils of its Emperor; but the restoration which was effected in1814 was no restoration of the political order which had existed on theContinent before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. The Powers whichhad overthrown Napoleon had been partakers, each in its own season, in thesystem 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 receivedbetween the years 1792 and 1806 an extension of territory in Poland andNorthern Germany that more than doubled its area. It was now no part of thepolicy of the victorious Courts to reinstate the governments which they hadthemselves dispossessed: the settlement of 1814, in so far as it deservedthe name of a restoration, was confined to the territory taken fromNapoleon and from princes of his house. Here, though the claims ofRepublics and Ecclesiastical Princes were forgotten, the titles of the olddynasties were freely recognised. In France itself, in the SpanishPeninsula, in Holland, Westphalia, Piedmont, and Tuscany, the banishedhouses resumed their sovereignty. It cost the Allies nothing to restorethese countries to their hereditary rulers, and it enabled them to describethe work of 1814 in general terms as the restoration of lawful governmentand national independence. But the claims of legitimacy, as well as ofnational right, were, as a matter of fact, only remembered where thereexisted no motive to disregard them; where they conflicted witharrangements of policy, they received small consideration. Norway, whichformed part of the Danish monarchy, had been promised by Alexander toBernadotte, Crown Prince of Sweden, in 1812, in return for his supportagainst Napoleon, and the bargain had been ratified by the Allies. As soonas Napoleon was overthrown, Bernadotte claimed his reward. It was in vainthat the Norwegians, abandoned by their king, declared themselvesindependent, and protested against being handed over like a flock of sheepby the liberators of Europe. The Allies held to their contract; a Britishfleet was sent to assist Bernadotte in overpowering his new subjects, andafter a brief resistance the Norwegians found themselves compelled tosubmit to their fate (April--Aug. , 1814). [198] At the other extremity ofEurope a second of Napoleon's generals still held his throne among therestored legitimate monarchs. Murat, King of Naples, had forsaken Napoleonin time to make peace and alliance with Austria. Great Britain, thoughentering into a military convention, had not been a party to this treaty;and it had declared that its own subsequent support of Murat would dependupon the condition that he should honourably exert himself in Italy againstNapoleon's forces. This condition Murat had not fulfilled. The BritishGovernment was, however, but gradually supplied with proofs of histreachery; nor was Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister, inclined to raisenew difficulties at Vienna by pressing the claim of Ferdinand of Sicily tohis territories on the mainland. [199] Talleyrand, on behalf of therestored Bourbons of Paris, intended to throw all his strength into adiplomatic attack upon Murat before the end of the Congress; but for thepresent 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 tosupport him in any attempt to regain his throne. [Restoration in Westphalia. ]The engagement of the Allies towards Bernadotte, added to the stipulationsof the Peace of Paris, left little to be decided by the Congress of Viennabeyond the fate of Poland, Saxony, and Naples, and the form of politicalunion to be established in Germany. It had been agreed that the Congressshould assemble within two months after the signature of the Peace ofParis: this interval, however, proved to be insufficient, and the autumnhad set in before the first diplomatists arrived at Vienna, and began theconferences which preceded the formal opening of the Congress. In themeantime a singular spectacle was offered to Europe by the Courts whoserestoration was the subject of so much official thanksgiving. Before KingLouis XVIII. Returned to Paris, the exiled dynasties had regained theirthrones in Northern Germany and in Spain. The process of reaction had begunin Hanover and in Hesse as soon as the battle of Leipzig had dissolved theKingdom of Westphalia and driven Napoleon across the Rhine. Hanover indeeddid not enjoy the bodily presence of its Sovereign: its character wasoligarchical, and the reaction here was more the affair of the privilegedclasses than of the Government. In Hesse a prince returned who was the veryembodiment of divine right, a prince who had sturdily fought against Frenchdemagogues in 1792, and over whose stubborn, despotic nature therevolutions of a whole generation and the loss of his own dominions sincethe battle of Jena had passed without leaving a trace. The Elector wasseventy years old when, at the end of the year 1813, his faithful subjectsdragged his carriage in triumph into the streets of Cassel. On the dayafter his arrival he gave orders that the Hessian soldiery who had beensent on furlough after the battle of Jena should present themselves, everyman in the garrison-town where he had stood on the 1st of November, 1806. Afew weeks later all the reforms of the last seven years were swept awaytogether. The Code Napoleon ceased to be the law of the land; the oldoppressive distinctions of caste, with the special courts for theprivileged orders, came again into force, in defiance of the spirit of theage. The feudal burdens of the peasantry were revived, the purchasers ofState-lands compelled to relinquish the land without receiving back any oftheir 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 wereannulled: every officer, every public servant resumed the station which hehad occupied on the 1st of November, 1806. The very pigtails and powder ofthe common soldier under the old regime were revived. [200][Restoration in Spain. ]The Hessians and their neighbours in North-Western Germany had from of oldbeen treated with very little ceremony by their rulers; and if theywelcomed back a family which had been accustomed to hire them out at somuch a head to fight against the Hindoos or by the side of the NorthAmerican Indians, it only proved that they preferred their nativetaskmasters to Jerome Bonaparte and his French crew of revellers andusurers. The next scene in the European reaction was a far more mournfulone. Ferdinand of Spain had no sooner re-crossed the Pyrenees in the springof 1814, than, convinced of his power by the transports of popularenthusiasm that attended his progress through Northern Spain, he determinedto overthrow the Constitution of 1812, and to re-establish the absolutemonarchy which had existed before the war. The courtiers and ecclesiasticswho gathered round the King dispelled any scruples that he might have feltin lifting his hand against a settlement accepted by the nation. Theyrepresented to him that the Cortes of 1812--which, whatever their faults, had been recognised as the legitimate Government of Spain by both Englandand Russia--consisted of a handful of desperate men, collected from thestreets of Cadiz, who had taken upon themselves to insult the Crown, to robthe Church, and to imperil the existence of the Catholic Faith. On theentry of the King into Valencia, the cathedral clergy expressed the wishesof their order in the address of homage which they offered to Ferdinand. "We beg your Majesty, " their spokesman concluded, "to take the mostvigorous measures for the restoration of the Inquisition, and of theecclesiastical system that existed in Spain before your Majesty'sdeparture. " "These, " replied the King, "are my own wishes, and I will notrest until they are fulfilled. " [201][Spanish Constitution overthrown. ]The victory of the clergy was soon declared. On the 11th of May the Kingissued a manifesto at Valencia, proclaiming the Constitution of 1812 andevery decree of the Cortes null and void, and denouncing the penalties ofhigh 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 pledgedhimself to summon new Cortes as soon as public order should be restored, tosubmit the expenditure to the control of the nation, and to maintaininviolate the security of person and property. It was a significant commentupon Ferdinand's professions of Liberalism that on the very day on whichthe proclamation was issued the censorship of the Press was restored. Butthe King had not miscalculated his power over the Spanish people. The samestorm of wild, unreasoning loyalty which had followed Ferdinand'sreappearance in Spain followed the overthrow of the Constitution. The massof the Spaniards were ignorant of the very meaning of political liberty:they adored the King as a savage adores his fetish: their passions were atthe call of a priesthood as brutish and unscrupulous as that which in 1798had excited the Lazzaroni of Naples against the Republicans of SouthernItaly. No sooner had Ferdinand set the example, by arresting thirty of themost distinguished of the Liberals, than tumults broke out in every part ofthe country against Constitutionalist magistrates and citizens. Mobs, headed by priests bearing the standard of the Inquisition, destroyed thetablets erected in honour of the Constitution of 1812, and burned Liberalwritings in bonfires in the market-places. The prisons were filled with menwho, 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, andthat Ferdinand fulfilled the wish of the majority of Spaniards inoverthrowing it. A wise and energetic sovereign would perhaps have allowedhimself to use this outburst of religious fanaticism for the purpose ofsubstituting some better order for the imprudent arrangements of 1812. Ferdinand, an ignorant, hypocritical buffoon, with no more notion ofpolitical justice or generosity than the beasts of the field, could onlysubstitute for the fallen Cortes a government by palace-favourites andconfessors. It was in vain, that the representatives of Great Britain urgedthe King to fulfil his constitutional promises, and to liberate the personswho had unjustly been thrown into prison. [202] The clergy were masters ofSpain and of the King: their influence daily outweighed even that ofFerdinand's own Ministers, when, under the pressure of financial necessity, the Ministers began to offer some resistance to the exorbitant demands ofthe priesthood. On the 23rd of May the King signed an edict restoring allmonasteries throughout Spain, and reinstating them in their lands. On the24th of June the clergy were declared exempt from taxation. On the 21st ofJuly the Church won its crowning triumph in the re-establishment of theInquisition. In the meantime the army was left without pay, in some placesactually 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; agricultureabandoned; innumerable villages were lying in ruins; the population wasbarbarised by the savage warfare with which for years past it had avengedits own sufferings upon the invader. Of all the countries of Europe, Spainwas the one in which the events of the Revolutionary epoch seemed to haveleft an effect most nearly approaching to unmixed evil. [Restoration in France. ]In comparison with the reaction in the Spanish Peninsula the reaction inFrance was sober and dignified. Louis XVIII. Was at least a scholar and aman of the world. In the old days, among companions whose names were nowalmost forgotten, he had revelled in Voltaire and dallied with thefashionable Liberalism of the time. In his exile he had played the kingwith some dignity; he was even believed to have learnt some politicalwisdom 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 aprofound philosopher, he was at least an accomplished epicurean. He hatedthe zealotry of his brother, the Count of Artois. He was more inclined toquiz the emigrants than to sacrifice anything on their behalf; and thewhole 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 theirbrethren were celebrating in Spain. The King, however, was unable to imparthis own indifference to the emigrants who returned with him, nor had heimagination enough to identify himself, as King of France, with themilitary glories of the nation and with the democratic army that had wonthem. Louis held high notions of the royal prerogative: this would not initself have prevented him from being a successful ruler, if he had beencapable of governing in the interest of the nation at large. There were fewRepublicans remaining in France; the centralised institutions of the Empireremained in full vigour; and although the last months of Napoleon's rulehad excited among the educated classes a strong spirit of constitutionalopposition, an able and patriotic Bourbon accepting his new position, andwielding power for the benefit of the people and not of a class, mightperhaps have exercised an authority not much inferior to that possessed bythe Crown before 1789. But Louis, though rational, was inexperienced andsupine. He was ready enough to admit into his Ministry and to retain inadministrative posts throughout the country men who had served underNapoleon; but when the emigrants and the nobles, led by the Count ofArtois, pushed themselves to the front of the public service, and treatedthe restoration of the Bourbons as the victory of their own order, the Kingoffered but a faint resistance, and allowed the narrowest class-intereststo discredit a monarchy whose own better traditions identified it not withan 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. In1791, it gave to the French a measure of representative government to whichthey had been strangers under Napoleon. It created two legislativechambers, the Upper House consisting of peers who were nominated by theCrown at its pleasure, whether for life-peerages or hereditary dignity; theLower House formed by national election, but by election restricted by sohigh a property-qualification [205] that not one person in two hundredpossessed a vote. The Crown reserved to itself the sole power of proposinglaws. In spite of this serious limitation of the competence of the twohouses, the Lower Chamber possessed, in its right of refusing taxes and ofdiscussing and rejecting all measures laid before it, a reality of powersuch as no representative body had possessed in France since the beginningof the Consulate. The Napoleonic nobility was placed on an equality withthe old noblesse of France, though neither enjoyed, as nobles, anythingmore than a titular distinction. [206] Purchasers of landed property soldby the State since the beginning of the Revolution were guaranteed in theirpossessions. The principles of religious freedom, of equality before thelaw, and of the admissibility of all classes to public employment, whichhad taken such deep root during the Republic and the Empire, were declaredto form part of the public law of France; and by the side of thesedeeply-cherished rights the Charta of King Louis XVIII. Placed, though in aqualified 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 toarrogate to itself any legal superiority over the mass of the Frenchnation. What was wanting in law might, however, in the opinion of the Countof Artois and his friends, be effected by administration. Of all theinstitutions of France the most thoroughly national and the most thoroughlydemocratic was the army; it was accordingly against the army that thenoblesse directed its first efforts. Financial difficulties made a largereduction in the forces necessary. Fourteen thousand officers and sergeantswere accordingly dismissed on half-pay; but no sooner had this measure ofeconomy been effected than a multitude of emigrants who had served againstthe Republic in the army of the Prince of Condé or in La Vendée wererewarded with all degrees of military rank. Naval officers who had quittedthe service of France and entered that of its enemies were reinstated withthe rank which they had held in foreign navies. [207] The tricolor, underwhich every battle of France had been fought from Jemappes to Montmartre, was superseded by the white flag of the House of Bourbon, under which noliving soldier had marched to victory. General Dupont, known only by hiscapitulation at Baylen in 1808, was appointed Minister of War. The ImperialGuard was removed from service at the Palace, and the so-called MilitaryHousehold of the old Bourbon monarchy revived, with the privileges and theinsignia belonging to the period before 1775. Young nobles who had neverseen a shot fired crowded into this favoured corps, where the musketeer andthe trooper held the rank and the pay of a lieutenant in the army. While inevery village of France some battered soldier of Napoleon cursed theGovernment that had driven him from his comrades, the Court revived atParis all the details of military ceremonial that could be gathered fromold almanacks, from the records of court-tailors, and from the memories ofdecayed gallants. As if to convince the public that nothing had happenedduring the last twenty-two years, the aged Marquis de Chansenets, who hadbeen Governor of the Tuileries on the 10th of August, 1792, and had thenescaped by hiding among the bodies of the dead, [208] resumed his place atthe 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 weresufficient to make the restored monarchy unpopular. Equally injurious wastheir behaviour in insulting the families of Napoleon's generals, inpersecuting men who had taken part in the great movement of 1789, and inintimidating the peasant-owners of land that had been confiscated and soldby the State. Nor were the priesthood backward in discrediting theGovernment of Louis XVIII. In the service of their own order. It might bevain to think of recovering the Churchlands, or of introducing theInquisition into France, but the Court might at least be brought to investitself with the odour of sanctity, and the parish-priest might be made asformidable a person within his own village as the mayor or the agent of thepolice-minister. Louis XVIII. Was himself sceptical and self-indulgent. This, however, did not prevent him from publishing a letter to the Bishopsplacing his kingdom under the especial protection of the Virgin Mary, andfrom escorting the image of the patron-saint through the streets of Parisin a procession in which Marshal Soult and other regenerate Jacobins of theCourt braved the ridicule of the populace by acting as candle-bearers. Another sign of the King's submission to the clergy was the publication ofan 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 ofinterference on the part of the clergy with national habits; and while itcaused no inconvenience to the rich, it inflicted substantial loss upon anumerous and voluble class of petty traders. The wrongs done to theFrench nation by the priests and emigrants who rose to power in 1814 wereindeed the merest trifle in comparison with the wrongs which it haduncomplainingly borne at the hands of Napoleon. But the glory of theEmpire, the strength and genius of its absolute rule, were gone. In itsplace there was a family which had been dissociated from France duringtwenty years, which had returned only to ally itself with an unpopularand dreaded caste, and to prove that even the unexpected warmth withwhich it had been welcomed home could not prevent it from becoming, atthe end of a few months, utterly alien and uninteresting. The indifferenceof the nation would not have endangered the Bourbon monarchy if the armyhad been won over by the King. But here the Court had excited thebitterest enmity. The accord which for a moment had seemed possible evento 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 thechanged feeling of the capital, of the gatherings of disbanded officers, of possible attacks upon the Tuileries. "The truth is, " he wrote, "thatthe King of France without the army is no King. " Wellington saw the moreimmediate danger: [210] he failed to see the depth and universality ofthe movement passing over France, which before the end of the year 1814had destroyed the hold of the Bourbon monarchy except in those provinceswhere it had always found support, and prepared the nation at large towelcome 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 theattention of the political world. At the end of September the centre ofEuropean interest passed to Vienna. The great council of the Powers, solong delayed, was at length assembled. The Czar of Russia, the Kings ofPrussia, Denmark, Bavaria, and Würtemberg, and nearly all the statesmen ofeminence in Europe, gathered round the Emperor Francis and his Minister, Metternich, to whom by common consent the presidency of the Congress wasoffered. Lord Castlereagh represented England, and Talleyrand France. Rasumoffsky and other Russian diplomatists acted under the immediatedirections of their master, who on some occasions even entered intopersonal 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 andattaches of the greater Courts, added to a host of petty princes and therepresentatives who came from the minor Powers, or from communities whichhad ceased to possess any political existence at all, crowded Vienna. Inorder to relieve the antagonisms which had already come too clearly intoview, Metternich determined to entertain his visitors in the mostmagnificent fashion; and although the Austrian State was bankrupt, and insome districts the people were severely suffering, a sum of about £10, 000a day was for some time devoted to this purpose. The splendour and thegaieties of Metternich were emulated by his guests; and the guardians ofEurope enjoyed or endured for months together a succession of fêtes, banquets, dances, and excursions, varied, through the zeal of Talleyrandto ingratiate himself with his new master, by a Mass of great solemnityon the anniversary of the execution of Louis XVI. [211] One incidentlights the faded and insipid record of vanished pageants and defunctgallantries. Beethoven was in Vienna. The Government placed the greatAssembly-rooms at his disposal, and enabled the composer to gratify aharmless humour by sending invitations in his own name to each of theSovereigns and grandees then in Vienna. Much personal homage, somesubstantial kindness from these gaudy creatures of the hour, made theperiod of the Congress a bright page in that wayward and afflicted lifewhose poverty has enriched mankind with such immortal gifts. [Talleyrand and the four Powers. ]The Congress had need of its distractions, for the difficulties which facedit were so great that, even after the arrival of the Sovereigns, it wasfound necessary to postpone the opening of the regular sittings untilNovember. By the secret articles of the Peace of Paris, the Allies hadreserved to themselves the disposal of all vacant territory, although theirconclusions required to be formally sanctioned by the Congress at large. The Ministers of Austria, England, Prussia, and Russia accordinglydetermined at the outset to decide upon all territorial questions amongthemselves, and only after their decisions were completely formed to submitthem to France and the other Powers. [212] Talleyrand, on hearing of thisarrangement, protested that France itself was now one of the Allies, anddemanded that the whole body of European States should at once meet in openCongress. The four Courts held to their determination, and began theirpreliminary 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 bondof common interest, the interest of union against France, was now lesspowerful than the impulse that made them seek the support of France againstone 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 orwithout some part of Russian Poland, into a Polish kingdom, attached to hisown crown: Talleyrand had determined, either on the question of Poland, oron the question of Saxony, which arose out of it, to break allied Europeinto halves, and to range France by the side of two of the great Powersagainst the two others. The course of events favoured for a while thedesign of the Minister: Talleyrand himself prosecuted his plan with anability which, but for the untimely return of Napoleon from Elba, wouldhave left France, without a war, the arbiter and the leading Power ofEurope. [Polish question. ]Since the Russian victories of 1812, the Emperor Alexander had made nosecret of his intention to restore a Polish Kingdom and a Polishnationality. [213] Like many other designs of this prince, the projectcombined a keen desire for personal glorification with a real generosity offeeling. Alexander was thoroughly sincere in his wish not only to make thePoles again a people, but to give them a Parliament and a freeConstitution. The King of Poland, however, was to be no independent prince, but Alexander himself: although the Duchy of Warsaw, the chief if not thesole component of the proposed new kingdom, had belonged to Austria andPrussia after the last partition of Poland, and extended into the heart ofthe Prussian monarchy. Alexander insisted on his anxiety to atone for thecrime of Catherine in dismembering Poland: the atonement, however, was tobe made at the sole cost of those whom Catherine had allowed to share thebooty. Among the other Governments, the Ministry of Great Britain wouldgladly 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 thefortress of Cracow, at any rate, should not fall into the hands of theCzar. Stein and Hardenberg, and even Alexander's own Russian counsellors, earnestly opposed the Czar's project, not only on account of the claims ofPrussia on Warsaw, but from dread of the agitation likely to be produced bya Polish Parliament among all Poles outside the new State. King FrederickWilliam, however, was unaccustomed to dispute the wishes of his ally; andthe Czar's offer of Saxony in substitution for Warsaw gave to the PrussianMinisters, who were more in earnest than their master, at least theprospect 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 ofRussia against Napoleon (Feb. 27th, 1813), the Czar had undertaken torestore the Prussian monarchy to an extent equal to that which it hadpossessed in 1805. It was known before the opening of the Congress that theCzar proposed to do this by handing over to King Frederick William thewhole of Saxony, whose Sovereign, unlike his colleagues in the RhenishConfederacy, had supported Napoleon up to his final overthrow at Leipzig. Since that time the King of Saxony had been held a prisoner, and hisdominions had been occupied by the Allies. The Saxon question had thusalready gained the attention of all the European Governments, and each ofthe Ministers now at Vienna brought with him some more or less distinctview upon the subject. Castlereagh, who was instructed to foster the unionof Prussia and Austria against Alexander's threatening ambition, waswilling that Prussia should annex Saxony if in return it would assist himin keeping Russia out of Warsaw: [215] Metternich disliked the annexation, but offered no serious objection, provided that in Western Germany Prussiawould keep to the north of the Main: Talleyrand alone made the defence ofthe King of Saxony the very centre of his policy, and subordinated allother aims to this. His instructions, like those of Castlereagh, gavepriority to the Polish question; [216] but Talleyrand saw that Saxony, notPoland, was the lever by which he could throw half of Europe on to the sideof France; and before the four Allied Courts had come to any singleconclusion, the French statesman had succeeded, on what at first passed fora subordinate point, in breaking up their concert. [Talleyrand's action on Saxony. ]For a while the Ministers of Austria, Prussia, and England appeared to beacting in harmony; and throughout the month of October all threeendeavoured to shake the purpose of Alexander regarding Warsaw. [217]Talleyrand, however, foresaw that the efforts of Prussia in this directionwould not last very long, and he wrote to Louis XVIII. Asking for hispermission to make a definite offer of armed assistance to Austria in caseof need. Events took the turn which Talleyrand expected. Early in Novemberthe King of Prussia completely yielded to Alexander, and ordered Hardenbergto withdraw his opposition to the Russian project. Metternich thus foundhimself abandoned on the Polish question by Prussia; and at the same momentthe answer of King Louis XVIII. Arrived, and enabled Talleyrand to assurethe Austrian Minister that, if resistance to Russia and Prussia shouldbecome necessary, he might count on the support of a French army. Metternich now completely changed his position on the Saxon question, andwrote to Hardenberg (Dec. 10) stating that, inasmuch as Prussia had chosento sacrifice Warsaw, the Emperor Francis absolutely forbade the annexationof more than a fifth part of the kingdom of Saxony. Castlereagh, disgustedwith the obstinacy of Russia and the subserviency of King FrederickWilliam, forgave Talleyrand for not supporting him earlier, and cordiallyentered into this new plan for thwarting the Northern Powers. The leadingmember of the late Rhenish Confederacy, the King of Bavaria, threw himselfwith eagerness into the struggle against Prussia and against German unity. In proportion as Stein and the patriots of 1813 urged the claims of Germannationality under Prussian leadership against the forfeited rights of aCourt which had always served on Napoleon's side, the politicians of theRhenish Confederacy declaimed against the ambition and the Jacobinism ofPrussia, and called upon Europe to defend the united principles ofhereditary right and of national independence in the person of the King ofSaxony. [Theory of Legitimacy. ]Talleyrand's object was attained. He had isolated Russia and Prussia, andhad drawn to his own side not only England and Austria but the whole bodyof 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 leagueof principle, and bind the Allies, in matters still remaining open, to thesupport of the interests of the House of Bourbon. Talleyrand had made histheory ready. In notes to Castlereagh and Metternich, [218] he declaredthat the whole drama of the last twenty years had been one great strugglebetween revolution and established right, a struggle at first betweenRepublicanism and Monarchy, afterwards between usurping dynasties andlegitimate dynasties. The overthrow of Napoleon had been the victory of theprinciple of legitimacy; the task of England and Austria was now to extendthe work of restitution to all Europe, and to defend the principle againstnew threatened aggressions. In the note to Castlereagh, Talleyrand added apractical corollary. "To finish the revolution, the principle of legitimacymust 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 wasbaseless. No one but Pitt had cared about the fate of the Bourbons; no onewould have hesitated to make peace with Napoleon, if Napoleon would haveaccepted terms of peace. The manifesto was not, however, intended to meet ascientific criticism. In the English Foreign Office it was correctlydescribed as a piece of drollery; and Metternich was too familiar with thelanguage of principles himself to attach much meaning to it in the mouth ofanyone else. Talleyrand, however, kept a grave countenance. With inimitablecomposure the old Minister of the Directory wrote to Louis XVIII. Lamentingthat Castlereagh did not appear to care much about the principle oflegitimacy, and in fact did not quite comprehend it; [219] and he added hisfear that this moral dimness on the part of the English Minister arose fromthe dealing of his countrymen with Tippoo Sahib. But for Europe atlarge, --for the English Liberal party, who looked upon the Saxons and thePrussians as two distinct nations, and for the Tories, who forgot thatNapoleon 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 towardsGerman unity, --Talleyrand's watchword was the best that could have beeninvented. His counsel prospered. On the 3rd of January, 1815, after a rashthreat of war uttered by Hardenberg, a secret treaty [220] was signed bythe representatives of France, England, and Austria, pledging these Powersto take the field, if necessary, against Russia and Prussia in defence ofthe principles of the Peace of Paris. The plan of the campaign was drawnup, the number of the forces fixed. Bavaria had already armed; Piedmont, Hanover, and even the Ottoman Porte, were named as future members of thealliance. [Compromise on Polish and Saxon questions. ][Prussia gains Rhenish Provinces. ]It would perhaps be unfair to the French Minister to believe that heactually desired to kindle a war on this gigantic scale. Talleyrand hadnot, like Napoleon, a love for war for its own sake. His object was ratherto raise France from its position as a conquered and isolated Power; tosurround it with allies; to make the House of Bourbon the representativesof a policy interesting to a great part of Europe; and, having thus undonethe worst results of Napoleon's rule, to trust to some future complicationfor the recovery of Belgium and the frontier of the Rhine. Nor wasTalleyrand's German policy adopted solely as the instrument of a passingintrigue. He appears to have had a true sense of the capacity of Prussia totransform Germany into a great military nation; and the policy of alliancewith Austria and protection of the minor States which he pursued in 1814was that which he had advocated throughout his career. The conclusion ofthe secret treaty of January 3rd marked the definite success of his plans. France was forthwith admitted into the council hitherto known as that ofthe Four Courts, and from this time its influence visibly affected theaction of Russia and Prussia, reports of the secret treaty having reachedthe Czar immediately after its signature. [221] The spirit of compromisenow began to animate the Congress. Alexander had already won a virtualdecision in his favour on the Polish question, but he abated something ofhis claims, and while gaining the lion's share of the Duchy of Warsaw, heultimately consented that Cracow, which threatened the Austrian frontier, should be formed into an independent Republic, and that Prussia shouldreceive the fortresses of Dantzic and Thorn on the Vistula, with thedistrict lying between Thorn and the border of Silesia. [222] This waslittle for Alexander to abandon; on the Saxon question the allies ofTalleyrand gained most that they demanded. The King of Saxony was restoredto his throne, and permitted to retain Dresden and about half of hisdominions. Prussia received the remainder. In lieu of a further expansionin Saxony, Prussia was awarded territory on the left bank of the Rhine, which, with its recovered Westphalian provinces, restored the monarchy toan area and population equal to that which it had possessed in 1805. Butthe dominion given to Prussia beyond the Rhine, though considered at thetime to be a poor equivalent for the second half of Saxony, was in realitya 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 elementinto the life of the State in striking contrast with the aristocratic andProtestant type predominant in the older Prussian provinces, --a Catholicpopulation, liberal in its political opinions, and habituated by twentyyears' union with France to the democratic tendencies of French sociallife. It gave to Prussia something more in common with Bavaria and theSouth, and qualified it, as it had not been qualified before, for itsfuture 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 ofEurope, were virtually settled before the end of the month of January. Early in February Lord Castlereagh left Vienna, to give an account of hislabours and to justify his policy before the English House of Commons. Hisplace at the Congress was taken by the Duke of Wellington. There remainedthe question of Naples, the formation of a Federal Constitution forGermany, and several matters of minor political importance, none of whichendangered the good understanding of the Powers. Suddenly the action of theCongress was interrupted by the most startling intelligence. On the nightof March 6th Metternich was roused from sleep to receive a despatchinforming him that Napoleon had quitted Elba. The news had taken eight daysto reach Vienna. Napoleon had set sail on the 26th of February. In thesilence of his exile he had watched the progress of events in France: hehad convinced himself of the strength of the popular reaction against thepriests and emigrants; and the latest intelligence which he had receivedfrom Vienna led him to believe that the Congress itself was on the point ofbreaking up. There was at least some chance of success in an attempt toregain his throne; and, the decision once formed, Napoleon executed it withcharacteristic audacity and despatch. Talleyrand, on hearing that Napoleonhad left Elba, declared that he would only cross into Italy and there raisethe standard of Italian independence: instead of doing this, Napoleon madestraight 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 thesquadron. On the 1st of March Napoleon landed at the bay of Jouan, threemiles to the west of Antibes. A detachment of his guards called upon thecommandant of Antibes to deliver up the town to the Emperor; the commandantrefused, 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 offollowing the coast road of Provence, which would have brought him toToulon and Marseilles, where most of the population were fiercely Royalist, [223] and where Massena and other great officers might have offeredresistance, Napoleon struck northwards into the mountains, intending todescend upon Lyons by way of Grenoble. There were few troops in thisdistrict, and no generals capable of influencing them. The peasantry ofDauphine were in great part holders of land that had been taken from theChurch and the nobles: they were exasperated against the Bourbons, and, like the peasantry of France generally, they identified the glory of thecountry which they loved with the name and the person of Napoleon. As thelittle band penetrated into the mountains the villagers thronged aroundthem, and by offering their carts and horses enabled Napoleon to marchcontinuously 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 theclose of the fifth day's march that Napoleon's mounted guard, pressing onin front of the marching column, encountered, in the village of La Mure, twenty miles south of Grenoble, a regiment of infantry wearing the whitecockade of the House of Bourbon. The two bodies of troops mingled andconversed in the street: the officer commanding the royal infantry fearingthe effect on his men, led them back on the road towards Grenoble. Napoleon's lancers also retired, and the night passed without furthercommunication. At noon on the following day the lancers, again advancingtowards Grenoble, found the infantry drawn up to defend the road. Theycalled 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 outNapoleon. The regiment was already wavering, the officer commanding hadalready given the order of retreat, when the men saw their Emperoradvancing towards them. They saw his face, they heard his voice: in anothermoment the ranks were broken, and the soldiers were pressing with shoutsand tears round the leader whom nature had created with such transcendentcapacity for evil, and endowed with such surpassing power of attractinglove. [Enters Grenoble, March 7. ][Declaration of his purpose. ]Everything was decided by this first encounter. "In six days, " saidNapoleon, "we shall be in the Tuileries. " The next pledge of victory cameswiftly. Colonel Labédoyère, commander of the 7th Regiment of the Line, hadopenly declared for Napoleon in Grenoble, and appeared on the road at thehead of his men a few hours after the meeting at La Mure. Napoleon reachedGrenoble the same evening. The town had been in tumult all day. The Préfetfled: the general in command sent part of his troops away, and closed thegates. On Napoleon's approach the population thronged the ramparts withtorches; the gates were burst open; Napoleon was borne through the town intriumph by a wild and intermingled crowd of soldiers and workpeople. Thewhole mass of the poorer classes of the town welcomed him with enthusiasm:the middle classes, though hostile to the Church and the Bourbons, saw tooclearly the dangers to France involved in Napoleon's return to feel thesame joy. [224] They remained in the background, neither welcoming Napoleonnor interfering with the welcome offered him by others. Thus the nightpassed. On the morning of the next day Napoleon received the magistratesand principal inhabitants of the town, and addressed them in terms whichformed the substance of every subsequent declaration of his policy. "He hadcome, " 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 rightswon in 1789 against a minority which sought to re-establish the privilegesof caste and the feudal burdens of the last century. France had made trialof the Bourbons: it had done well to do so; but the experiment had failed. The Bourbon monarchy had proved incapable of detaching itself from itsworst supports, the priests and nobles: only the dynasty which owed itsthrone 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 theTreaty of Paris and the frontiers of 1792. Freed from the necessities whichhad forced him in earlier days to found a military Empire, he recognisedand bowed to the desire of the French nation for constitutional government. He should henceforth govern only as a constitutional sovereign, and seekonly 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 theworkmen, who wished to see the nobles crushed, and it showed at least acomprehension of the feelings uppermost in the minds of the wealthier andmore educated middle classes, the longing for peace, and the aspirationtowards political liberty. It was also calculated to temper the unwelcomeimpression that an exiled ruler was being forced upon France by thesoldiery. The military movement was indeed overwhelmingly decisive, yet thepopular movement was scarcely less so. The Royalists were furious, butimpotent to act; thoughtful men in all classes held back, with sadapprehensions of returning war and calamity; [225] but from the time whenNapoleon left Grenoble, the nation at large was on his side. There wasnowhere an effective centre of resistance. The Préfets and other civilofficers appointed under the Empire still for the most part held theirposts; they knew themselves to be threatened by the Bourbonist reaction, but they had not yet been displaced; their professions of loyalty to LouisXVIII. Were forced, their instincts of obedience to their old master, evenif they wished to have done with him, profound. From this class, whosecowardice and servility find too many parallels in history, [226] Napoleonhad little to fear. Among the marshals and higher officers charged with thedefence of the monarchy, those who sincerely desired to serve the Bourbonsfound themselves powerless in the midst of their troops. Macdonald, whocommanded at Lyons, had to fly from his men, in order to escape being madea prisoner. The Count of Artois, who had come to join him, discovered thatthe only service he could render to the cause of his family was to takehimself out of sight. Napoleon entered Lyons on the 10th of March, and nowformally resumed his rank and functions as Emperor. His first edictsrenewed that appeal to the ideas and passions of the Revolution which hadbeen 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 ofLyons expelled from France every emigrant who had returned without thepermission of the Republic or the Emperor; they drove from the army thewhole mass of officers intruded by the Government of Louis XVIII. ; theyinvalidated every appointment and every dismissal made in the magistracysince the 1st of April, 1814; and, reverting to the law of the ConstituentAssembly of 1789, abolished all nobility except that which had beenconferred 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 Parisprotesting that Napoleon deserved to be confined in an iron cage, [227]found, when at some distance from Lyons, that the nation and army were onthe side of the Emperor, and proclaimed his own adherence to him in anaddress to his troops. The two Chambers of Legislature, which had beenprorogued, were summoned by King Louis XVIII. As soon as the news ofNapoleon's landing reached the capital. The Chambers met on the 13th ofMarch. The constitutionalist party, though they had opposed variousmeasures of King Louis' Government as reactionary, were sincerely loyal tothe Charta, and hastened, in the cause of constitutional liberty, to offerto the King their cordial support in resisting Bonaparte's militarydespotism. The King came down to the Legislative Chamber, and, in a sceneconcerted with his brother, the Count of Artois, made, with great dramaticeffect, a declaration of fidelity to the Constitution. Lafayette and thechiefs of the Parliamentary Liberals hoped to raise a sufficient force fromthe National Guard of Paris to hold Napoleon in check. The project, however, came to nought. The National Guard, which represented the middleclasses of Paris, was decidedly in favour of the Charta and ConstitutionalGovernment; but it had no leaders, no fighting-organisation, and nomilitary spirit. The regular troops who were sent out against Napoleonmounted the tricolor as soon as they were out of sight of Paris, and joinedtheir comrades. The courtiers passed from threats to consternation andhelplessness. On the night of March 19th King Louis fled from theTuileries. Napoleon entered the capital the next evening, welcomed withacclamations by the soldiers and populace, but not with that generalrejoicing which had met him at Lyons, and at many of the smaller townsthrough 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 Ministersof all the Great Powers, assembled at Vienna, published a manifestodenouncing Napoleon Bonaparte as the common enemy of mankind, and declaringhim an outlaw. The whole political structure which had been reared with somuch skill by Talleyrand vanished away. France was again alone, with allEurope combined against it. Affairs reverted to the position in which theyhad stood in the month of March, 1814, when the Treaty of Chaumont wassigned, which bound the Powers to sustain their armed concert againstFrance, if necessary, for a period of twenty years. That treaty was nowformally renewed. [228] The four great Powers undertook to employ theirwhole available resources against Bonaparte until he should be absolutelyunable to create disturbance, and each pledged itself to keep permanentlyin the field a force of at least a hundred and fifty thousand men. Thepresence of the Duke of Wellington at Vienna enabled the Allies to decidewithout delay upon the general plan for their invasion of France. It wasresolved to group the allied troops in three masses; one, composed of theEnglish and the Prussians under Wellington and Blücher, to enter France bythe Netherlands; the two others, commanded by the Czar and PrinceSchwarzenberg, to advance from the middle and upper Rhine. Nowhere wasthere the least sign of political indecision. The couriers sent by Napoleonwith messages of amity to the various Courts were turned back at thefrontiers with their despatches undelivered. It was in vain for the Emperorto attempt to keep up any illusion that peace was possible. After a briefinterval he himself acquainted France with the true resolution of hisenemies. The most strenuous efforts were made for defence. The old soldierswere called from their homes. Factories of arms and ammunition began theirhurried work in the principal towns. The Emperor organised with an energyand a command of detail never surpassed at any period of his life; thenature of the situation lent a new character to his genius, and evoked inthe organisation of systematic defence all that imagination and resourcewhich 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. Thepopulation of France, its National Guard, its _levée en masse_, aswell as its armies and its Emperor, was to drive the foreigner from Frenchsoil. Every operation of defensive warfare, from the accumulation ofartillery round the capital to the gathering of forest-guards andfree-shooters in the thickets of the Vosges and the Ardennes, occupied inits turn the thoughts of Napoleon. [229] Had France shared his resolutionor his madness, had the Allies found at the outset no chief superior totheir Austrian leader in 1814, the war on which they were now about toenter would have been one of immense difficulty and risk, its ultimateissue perhaps doubtful. [Campaign and fall of Murat, April, 1815]Before Napoleon or his adversaries were ready to move, hostilities brokeout in Italy. Murat, King of Naples, had during the winter of 1814 beenrepresented at Vienna by an envoy: he was aware of the efforts made byTalleyrand to expel him from his throne, and knew that the Government ofGreat Britain, convinced of his own treachery during the pretendedcombination with the Allies in 1814, now inclined to act with France. [230]The instinct of self-preservation led him to risk everything in raising thestandard of Italian independence, rather than await the loss of hiskingdom; and the return of Napoleon precipitated his fall. At the momentwhen Napoleon was about to leave Elba, Murat, who knew his intention, askedthe permission of Austria to move a body of troops through Northern Italyfor the alleged purpose of attacking the French Bourbons, who werepreparing to restore his rival, Ferdinand. Austria declared that it shouldtreat the entry either of French or of Neapolitan troops into NorthernItaly as an act of war. Murat, as soon as Napoleon's landing in Francebecame known, protested to the Allies that he intended to remain faithfulto them, but he also sent assurances of friendship to Napoleon, andforthwith invaded the Papal States. He acted without waiting for Napoleon'sinstructions, and probably with the intention of winning all Italy forhimself even if Napoleon should victoriously re-establish his Empire. Onthe 10th of April, Austria declared war against him. Murat pressed forwardand entered Bologna, now openly proclaiming the unity and independence ofItaly. The feeling of the towns and of the educated classes generallyseemed to be in his favour, but no national rising took place. After someindecisive encounters with the Austrians, Murat retreated. As he fell backtowards the Neapolitan frontier, his troops melted away. The enterpriseended in swift and total ruin; and on the 22nd of May an English andAustrian force took possession of the city of Naples in the name of KingFerdinand. Murat, leaving his family behind him, fled to France, and soughtin 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 itnecessary to give some satisfaction to that desire for liberty which wasagain so strong in France. He would gladly have deferred all politicalchange until victory over the foreigner had restored his own undisputedascendency over men's minds; he was resolved at any rate not to be harassedby a Constituent Assembly, like that of 1789, at the moment of his greatestperil; and the action of King Louis XVIII. In granting liberty by Chartagave him a precedent for creating a Constitution by an Edict supplementaryto the existing laws of the Empire. Among the Liberal politicians who haddeclared for King Louis XVIII. While Napoleon was approaching Paris, one ofthe most eminent was Benjamin Constant, who had published an articleattacking the Emperor with great severity on the very day when he enteredthe capital. Napoleon now invited Constant to the Tuileries, assured himthat he no longer either desired or considered it possible to maintain anabsolute rule in France, and requested Constant himself to undertake thetask of drawing up a Constitution. Constant, believing the Emperor to be insome degree sincere, accepted the proposals made to him, and, at the costof some personal consistency, entered upon the work, in which Napoleon byno means allowed him entire freedom. [232] The result of Constant's labourswas the Decree known as the Acte Additionnel of 1815. The leadingprovisions of this Act resembled those of the Charta: both professed toestablish a representative Government and the responsibility of Ministers;both contained the usual phrases guaranteeing freedom of religion andsecurity of person and property. The principal differences were that theChamber of Peers was now made wholly hereditary, and that the Emperorabsolutely refused to admit the clause of the Charta abolishingconfiscation as a penalty for political offences. On the other hand, Constant definitely extinguished the censorship of the Press, and providedsome real guarantee for the free expression of opinion by enacting thatPress-offences should be judged only in the ordinary Jury-courts. Constantwas sanguine enough to believe that the document which he had composedwould reduce Napoleon to the condition of a constitutional king. As aLiberal statesman, he pressed the Emperor to submit the scheme to aRepresentative Assembly, where it could be examined and amended. ThisNapoleon refused to do, preferring to resort to the fiction of a Plébiscitefor 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 thenopened in all the Departments, and the population of France, most of whomwere unable to read or write, were invited to answer Yes or No to thequestion whether they approved of Napoleon's plan for giving his subjectsParliamentary government. [The Chambers summoned for June. ]There would have been no difficulty in obtaining some millions of votes forany absurdity that the Emperor might be pleased to lay before the Frenchpeople; but among the educated minority who had political theories of theirown, the publication of this reform by Edict produced the worst possibleimpression. No stronger evidence, it was said, could have been given of theEmperor's insincerity than the dictatorial form in which he affected tobestow liberty upon France. Scarcely a voice was raised in favour of thenew Constitution. The measure had in fact failed of its effect. Napoleon'sobject was to excite an enthusiasm that should lead the entire nation, theeducated classes as well as the peasantry, to rally round him in a strugglewith the foreigner for life or death: he found, on the contrary, that hehad actually injured his cause. The hostility of public opinion was soserious that Napoleon judged it wise to make advances to the Liberal party, and sent his brother Joseph to Lafayette, to ascertain on what terms hemight gain his support. [233] Lafayette, strongly condemning the form ofthe Acte Additionnel, stated that the Emperor could only restore publicconfidence by immediately convoking the Chambers. This was exactly whatNapoleon desired to avoid, until he had defeated the English and Prussians;nor in fact had the vote of the nation accepting the new Constitution yetbeen given. But the urgency of the need overcame the Emperor's inclinationsand the forms of law. Lafayette's demand was granted: orders were issuedfor an immediate election, and the meeting of the Chambers fixed for thebeginning of June, a few days earlier than the probable departure of theEmperor to open hostilities on the northern frontier. [Elections. ]Lafayette's counsel had been given in sincerity, but Napoleon gained littleby following it. The nation at large had nothing of the faith in theelections which was felt by Lafayette and his friends. In some places not asingle person appeared at the poll: in most, the candidates were elected bya few scores of voters. The Royalists absented themselves on principle: thepopulation generally thought only of the coming war, and let the professedpoliticians conduct the business of the day by themselves. Among thedeputies chosen there were several who had sat in the earlier Assemblies ofthe Revolution; and, mingled with placemen and soldiers of the Empire, aconsiderable body of men whose known object was to reduce Napoleon's power. One interest alone was unrepresented--that of the Bourbon family, which solately seemed to have been called to the task of uniting the old and thenew France around itself. [Champ de Mai. ]Napoleon, troubling himself little about the elections, labouredincessantly at his preparations for war, and by the end of May two hundredthousand men were ready to take the field. The delay of the Allies, thoughnecessary, enabled their adversary to take up the offensive. It was theintention of the Emperor to leave a comparatively small force to watch theeastern frontier, and himself, at the head of a hundred and twenty-fivethousand men, to fall upon Wellington and Blücher in the Netherlands, andcrush them before they could unite their forces. With this object thegreater part of the army was gradually massed on the northern roads atpoints between Paris, Lille, and Maubeuge. Two acts of State remained to beperformed by the Emperor before he quitted the capital; the inauguration ofthe new Constitution and the opening of the Chambers of Legislature. Thefirst, which had been fixed for the 26th of May, and announced as a revivalof the old Frankish Champ de Mai, was postponed till the beginning of thefollowing month. On the 1st of June the solemnity was performed withextraordinary pomp and splendour, on that same Champ de Mars where, twenty-five years before, the grandest and most affecting of all thefestivals of the Revolution, the Act of Federation, had been celebrated byKing Louis XVI. And his people. Deputations from each of the constituenciesof France, from the army, and from every public body, surrounded theEmperor in a great amphitheatre enclosed at the southern end of the plain:outside there were ranged twenty thousand soldiers of the Guard and otherregiments; and behind them spread the dense crowd of Paris. When the totalof the votes given in the Plébiscite had been summed up and declared, theEmperor took the oath to the Constitution, and delivered one of hismasterpieces of political rhetoric. The great officers of State took theoath in their turn: mass was celebrated, and Napoleon, leaving the enclosedspace, 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 asense of sadness and disappointment passed over the whole assembly. Thespeech of the Emperor showed that he was still the despot at heart: theapplause 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 onthe night of the 11th of June Napoleon started for the northern frontier. The situation of the forces opposed to him in this his last campaignstrikingly resembled that which had given him his first Italian victory in1796. Then the Austrians and Sardinians, resting on opposite bases, coveredthe approaches to the Sardinian capital, and invited the assailant to breakthrough their centre and drive the two defeated wings along diverging andsevered paths of retreat. Now the English and the Prussians coveredBrussels, the English resting westward on Ostend, the Prussians eastward onCologne, and barely joining hands in the middle of a series of posts nearlyeighty miles long. The Emperor followed the strategy of 1796. He determinedto enter Belgium by the central road of Charleroi, and to throw his mainforce upon Blücher, whose retreat, if once he should be severed from hiscolleague, would carry him eastwards towards Liège, and place him outsidethe area of hostilities round Brussels. Blücher driven eastwards, Napoleonbelieved that he might not only push the English commander out of Brussels, but possibly, by a movement westwards, intercept him from the sea and cutoff his communication with Great Britain. [235][Situation of the armies. ]On the night of the 13th of June, the French army, numbering a hundred andtwenty-nine thousand men, had completed its concentration, and lay gatheredround Beaumont and Philippeville. Wellington was at Brussels; his troops, which consisted of thirty-five thousand English and about sixty thousandDutch, Germans, and Belgians, [236] guarded the country west of theCharleroi road as far as Oudenarde on the Scheldt. Blücher's headquarterswere at Namur; he had a hundred and twenty thousand Prussians under hiscommand, who were posted between Charleroi, Namur, and Liège. Both theEnglish and Prussian generals were aware that very large French forces hadbeen brought close to the frontier, but Wellington imagined Napoleon to bestill in Paris, and believed that the war would be opened by a forwardmovement of Prince Schwarzenberg into Alsace. It was also his fixedconviction that if Napoleon entered Belgium he would throw himself not uponthe Allied centre, but upon the extreme right of the English towards thesea. [237] In the course of the 14th, the Prussian outposts reported thatthe French were massed round Beaumont: later in the same day there wereclear signs of an advance upon Charleroi. Early next morning the attack onCharleroi began. The Prussians were driven out of it, and retreated in thedirection of Ligny, whither Blücher now brought up all the forces withinhis reach. It was unknown to Wellington until the afternoon of the 15ththat the French had made any movement whatever: on receiving the news oftheir advance, he ordered a concentrating movement of all his forceseastward, in order to cover the road to Brussels and to co-operate with thePrussian general. A small division of the British army took post at QuatreBras that night, and on the morning of the 16th Wellington himself rode toLigny, and promised his assistance to Blücher, whose troops were alreadydrawn 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 thefield of battle. Already, on returning to Quatre Bras in the afternoon, Wellington found his own troops hotly engaged. Napoleon had sent Ney alongthe road to Brussels to hold the English in check and, if possible, toenter the capital, while he himself, with seventy thousand men, attackedBlücher. The Prussian general had succeeded in bringing up a force superiorin number to his assailants; but the French army, which consisted in agreat part of veterans recalled to the ranks, was of finer quality than anythat Napoleon had led since the campaign of Moscow, and it was in vain thatBlücher and his soldiers met them with all the gallantry and even more thanthe fury of 1813. There was murderous hand-to-hand fighting in the villageswhere the Prussians had taken up their position: now the defenders, now theassailants gave way: but at last the Prussians, with a loss of thirteenthousand men, withdrew from the combat, and left the battlefield inpossession of the enemy. If the conquerors had followed up the pursuit thatnight, the cause of the Allies would have been ruined. The effort of battlehad, however, been too great, or the estimate which Napoleon made of hisadversary's rallying power was too low. He seems to have assumed thatBlücher must necessarily retreat eastwards towards Namur; while in realitythe Prussian was straining every nerve to escape northwards, and to restorehis severed communication with his ally. [Quatre Bras, June 16. ]At Quatre Bras the issue of the day was unfavourable to the French. Neymissed his opportunity of seizing this important point before it wasoccupied by the British in any force; and when the battle began the Britishinfantry-squares unflinchingly bore the attack of Ney's cavalry, and drovethem back again and again with their volleys, until successivereinforcements had made the numbers on both sides even. At the close of theday the French marshal, baffled and disheartened, drew back his troops totheir original position. The army-corps of General d'Erlon, which Napoleonhad placed between himself and Ney in order that it might act whereverthere was the greatest need, was first withdrawn from Ney to assist atLigny, and then, as it was entering into action at Ligny, recalled toQuatre Bras, where it arrived only after the battle was over. Its presencein 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; hislieutenant, Gneisenau, not only saved the army, but repaired, and more thanrepaired, all its losses by a memorable movement northwards that broughtthe Prussians again into communication with the British. Napoleon, after anunexplained inaction during the night of the 16th and the morning of the17th, committed the pursuit of the Prussians to Marshal Grouchy, orderinghim never to let the enemy out of his sight; but Blücher and Gneisenau hadalready made their escape, and had concentrated so large a body in theneighbourhood of Wavre, that Grouchy could not now have prevented a forcesuperior to his own from uniting with the English, even if he had known theexact movements of each of the three armies, and, with a true presentimentof 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 retreatnorthwards, moved on the 17th from Quatre Bras to Waterloo, now followed byNapoleon and the mass of the French army. At Waterloo he drew up forbattle, trusting to the promise of the gallant Prussian that he wouldadvance in that direction on the following day. Blücher, in so doing, exposed himself to the risk of having his communications severed and halfhis army captured, if Napoleon should either change the direction of hismain attack and bend eastwards, or should crush Wellington before thearrival of the Prussians, and seize the road from Brussels to Louvain witha victorious force. Such considerations would have driven a commander likeSchwarzenberg back to Liège, but they were thrown to the winds by Blücherand Gneisenau. In just reliance on his colleague's energy, Wellington, withthirty thousand English and forty thousand Dutch, Germans, and Belgians, awaited the attack of Napoleon, at the head of seventy-four thousandveteran soldiers. The English position extended two miles along the brow ofa gentle slope of cornfields, and crossed at right angles the great roadfrom Charleroi to Brussels; the château of Hugomont, some way down theslope on the right, and the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, on the high-roadin front of the left centre, served as fortified outposts. The Frenchformed on the opposite and corresponding slope; the country was so openthat, but for the heavy rain on the evening of the 17th, artillery couldhave 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, andunacquainted with the obstinacy of English troops, believed the victoryalready thrown into his hands by Wellington's hardihood. His plan was toburst through the left of the English line near La Haye Sainte, and thus todrive Wellington westwards and place the whole French army between its twodefeated enemies. The first movement was an assault on the buildings ofHugomont, made for the purpose of diverting Wellington from the true pointof attack. The English commander sent detachments to this outpostsufficient to defend it, but no more. After two hours' indecisive fightingand a heavy cannonade, Ney ordered D'Erlon's corps forward to the greatonslaught on the centre and left. As the French column pressed up theslope, General Picton charged at the head of a brigade. The English leaderwas among the first to fall, but his men drove the enemy back, and at thesame time the Scots Greys, sweeping down from the left, cut right throughboth the French infantry and their cavalry supports, and, charging far upthe opposite slope, reached and disabled forty of Ney's guns, before theywere in their turn overpowered and driven back by the French dragoons. TheEnglish lost heavily, but the onslaught of the enemy had totally failed, and thousands of prisoners remained behind. There was a pause in theinfantry combat; and again the artillery of Napoleon battered the Englishcentre, 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 wascarried, and vast masses of cavalry pressed up the English slope, and rodeover the plateau to the very front of the English line. Wellington sent nocavalry to meet them, but trusted, and trusted justly, to the patience andendurance of the infantry themselves, who, hour after hour, held theirground, unmoved by the rush of the enemy's horse and the terrible spectacleof havoc and death in their own ranks; for all through the afternoon theartillery of Napoleon poured its fire wherever the line was left open, orthe assault of the French cavalry rolled back. At last the approach of the Prussians visibly told. Napoleon had seen theirvanguard early in the day, and had detached Count Lobau with seven thousandmen to hold them in check; but the little Prussian corps gradually swelledto an army, and as the day wore on it was found necessary to reinforceCount Lobau with some of the finest divisions of the French infantry. Stillreports came in of new Prussian columns approaching. At six o'clockNapoleon prepared to throw his utmost strength into one grand final attackupon the British, and to sweep them away before the battle became generalwith their allies. Two columns of the Imperial Guard, supported by everyavailable regiment, moved from the right and left towards the Englishcentre. The column on the right, unchecked by the storm of Wellington'scannon-shot from front and flank, pushed to the very ridge of the Britishslope, and came within forty yards of the cross-road where the EnglishGuard lay hidden. Then Wellington gave the order to fire. The Frenchrecoiled; the English advanced at the charge, and drove the enemy down thehill, returning themselves for a while to their own position. The leftcolumn of the French Guard attacked with equal bravery, and met with thesame fate. Then, while the French were seeking to re-form at the bottom ofthe hill, Wellington commanded a general advance. The whole line of theBritish infantry and cavalry swept down into the valley; before them thebaffled 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 theattacking columns, remained firm together. Blücher, from the east, dealtthe death-blow, and, pressing on to the road by which the French wereescaping, turned the defeat into utter ruin and dispersion. The pursuit, which Wellington's troops were too exhausted to attempt, was carried onthroughout the night by the Prussian cavalry with memorable ardour andterrible success. Before the morning the French army was no more than arabble of fugitives. [Napoleon at Paris. ][Allies enter Paris, July 7. ]Napoleon fled to Philippeville, and made some ineffectual attempts boththere and at Laon to fix a rallying point for his vanished forces. FromLaon he hastened to Paris, which he reached at sunrise on the 21st. Hisbulletin describing the defeat of Waterloo was read to the Chambers on thesame morning. The Lower House immediately declared against the Emperor, anddemanded his abdication. Unless Napoleon seized the dictatorship his causewas lost. Carnot and Lucien Bonaparte urged him to dismiss the Chambers andto stake all on his own strong will; but they found no support among theEmperor's counsellors. On the next day Napoleon abdicated in favour of hisson. But it was in vain that he attempted to impose an absent successorupon France, and to maintain his own Ministers in power. It was equally invain that Carnot, filled with the memories of 1793, called upon theAssembly to continue the war and to provide for the defence of Paris. AProvisional Government entered upon office. Days were spent in inaction anddebate while the Allies advanced through France. On the 28th of June, thePrussians appeared on the north of the capital; and, as the Englishfollowed, they moved to the south of the Seine, out of the range of thefortifications with which Napoleon had covered the side of St. Denis andMontmartre. Davoust, with almost all the generals in Paris, declareddefence 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 thecapital and on the following day the Members of the Chamber of Deputies, onarriving at their Hall of Assembly, found the gates closed, and adetachment of soldiers in possession. France was not, even as a matter ofform, consulted as to its future government. Louis XVIII. Was summarilyrestored to his throne. Napoleon, who had gone to Rochefort with theintention of sailing to the United States, lingered at Rochefort untilescape was no longer possible, and then embarked on the British ship_Bellerophon_, commending himself, as a second Themistocles, to thegenerosity of the Prince Regent of England. He who had declared that thelives of a million men were nothing to him [238] trusted to the folly orthe impotence of the English nation to provide him with some agreeableasylum until he could again break loose and deluge Europe with blood. Butthe lesson of 1814 had been learnt. Some island in the ocean far beyond theequator formed the only prison for a man whom no European sovereign couldventure to guard, and whom no fortress-walls could have withdrawn from theattention of mankind. Napoleon was conveyed to St. Helena. There, until atthe end of six years death removed him, he experienced some trifling shareof the human misery that he had despised. [Wellington and Fouché. ]Victory had come so swiftly that the Allied Governments were unpreparedwith terms of peace. The Czar and the Emperor of Austria were still atHeidelberg when the battle of Waterloo was fought; they had advanced nofurther than Nancy when the news reached them that Paris had surrendered. Both now hastened to the capital, where Wellington was already exercisingthe authority to which his extraordinary successes as well as his greatpolitical superiority over all the representatives of the Allies thenpresent, entitled him. Before the entry of the English and Prussian troopsinto Paris he had persuaded Louis XVIII. To sever himself from the party ofreaction by calling to office the regicide Fouché, head of the existingProvisional Government. Fouché had been guilty of the most atrocious crimesat Lyons in 1793; he had done some of the worst work of each succeedinggovernment in France; and, after returning to his old place as Napoleon'sMinister of Police during the Hundred Days, he had intrigued as early aspossible for the restoration of Louis XVIII. , if indeed he had not heldtreasonable communication with the enemy during the campaign. His soleclaim to power was that every gendarme and every informer in France had atsome time acted as his agent, and that, as a regicide in office, he mightpossibly reconcile Jacobins and Bonapartists to the second return of theBourbon family. Such was the man whom, in association with Talleyrand, theDuke of Wellington found himself compelled to propose as Minister to LouisXVIII. The appointment, it was said, was humiliating, but it was necessary;and with the approval of the Count of Artois the King invited thisblood-stained eavesdropper to an interview and placed him in office. Needsubdued the scruples of the courtiers: it could not subdue the resentmentof that grief-hardened daughter of Louis XVI. Whom Napoleon termed the onlyman of her family. The Duchess of Angoulême might have forgiven the JacobinFouché the massacres at Lyons: she refused to speak to a Minister whom shetermed one of the murderers of her father. [Disagreement on terms of peace. ]Fouché had entered into a private negotiation with Wellington while theEnglish were on the outskirts of Paris, and while the authorised envoys ofthe Assembly were engaged elsewhere. Wellington's motive for recommendinghim to the King was the indifference or hostility felt by some of theAllies to Louis XVIII. Personally, which led the Duke to believe that ifLouis did not regain his throne before the arrival of the sovereigns hemight never regain it at all. [239] Fouché was the one man who could atthat moment throw open the road to the Tuileries. If his overtures wererejected, he might either permit Carnot to offer some desperate resistanceoutside Paris, or might retire himself with the army and the Assemblybeyond the Loire, and there set up a Republican Government. With Fouché andTalleyrand united in office under Louis XVIII. , there was no fear either ofa continuance of the war or of the suggestion of a change of dynasty on thepart of any of the Allies. By means of the Duke's independent action LouisXVIII. Was already in possession when the Czar arrived at Paris, andnothing now prevented the definite conclusion of peace but the disagreementof the Allies themselves as to the terms to be exacted. Prussia, which hadsuffered so bitterly from Napoleon, demanded that Europe should not asecond time deceive itself with the hollow guarantee of a Bourbonrestoration, but should gain a real security for peace by detaching Alsaceand Lorraine, as well as a line of northern fortresses, from the Frenchmonarchy. Lord Liverpool, Prime Minister of England, stated it to be theprevailing opinion in this country that France might fairly be stripped ofthe principal conquests made by Louis XIV. ; but he added that if Napoleon, who was then at large, should become a prisoner, England would waive apermanent cession of territory, on condition that France should be occupiedby foreign armies until it had, at its own cost, restored thebarrier-fortresses of the Netherlands. [240] Metternich for a while heldmuch the same language as the Prussian Minister: Alexander alone declaredfrom the first against any reduction of the territory of France, andappealed to the declarations of the Powers that the sole object of the warwas the destruction of Napoleon and the maintenance of the orderestablished 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 fromFrance were drawn at great length by diplomatists, but all that wasessential 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 Bourbonsin 1814 with an undiminished territory had not prevented France fromplacing itself at the end of a few months under the rule of the militarydespot whose life was one series of attacks on his neighbours: that theexpectation of long-continued peace, under whatever dynasty, was a vain oneso long as the French possessed a chain of fortresses enabling them at anymoment to throw large armies into Germany or the Netherlands: and finally, that inasmuch as Germany, and not England or Russia, was exposed to theseirruptions, Germany had the first right to have its interests consulted inproviding for the public security. On the other side, it was argued by theEmperor Alexander, and with far greater force by the Duke of Wellington, [241] that the position of the Bourbons would be absolutely hopeless iftheir restoration, besides being the work of foreign armies, wasaccompanied by the loss of French provinces: that the French nation, although it had submitted to Napoleon, had not as a matter of fact offeredthe resistance to the Allies which it was perfectly capable of offering:and that the danger of any new aggressive or revolutionary movement mightbe effectually averted by keeping part of France occupied by the Alliedforces until the nation had settled down into tranquillity under anefficient government. Notes embodying these arguments were exchangedbetween the Ministers of the great Powers during the months of July andAugust. The British Cabinet, which had at first inclined to the Prussianview, accepted the calm judgment of Wellington, and transferred itself tothe side of the Czar. Metternich went with the majority. Hardenberg, thusleft alone, abandoned point after point in his demands, and consented atlast that France should cede little more than the border-strips which hadbeen added by the Peace of 1814 to its frontier of 1791. Chambéry and therest of French Savoy, Landau and Saarlouis on the German side, Philippeville and some other posts on the Belgian frontier, were fixed uponas the territory to be surrendered. The resolution of the AlliedGovernments was made known to Louis XVIII. Towards the end of September. Negotiation on details dragged on for two months more, while France itselfunderwent a change of Ministry; and the definitive Treaty of Peace, knownas 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; toconsent to the occupation of its northern provinces by an Allied force of150, 000 men for a period not exceeding five years; and to defray the costof this occupation out of its own revenues. The works of art taken fromother nations, which the Allies had allowed France to retain in 1814, hadalready been restored to their rightful owners. No act of the conquerors in1815 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 thedefinitive conclusion of peace that a treaty was signed which has gained acelebrity in singular contrast with its real insignificance, the Treaty ofHoly Alliance. Since the terrible events of 1812 the Czar's mind had takena strongly religious tinge. His private life continued loose as before; hisdevotion was both very well satisfied with itself and a prey to mysticismand imposture in others; but, if alloyed with many weaknesses, it was atleast sincere, and, like Alexander's other feelings, it naturally soughtexpression in forms which seemed theatrical to stronger natures. Alexanderhad rendered many public acts of homage to religion in the intervals ofdiplomatic and military success in the year 1814; and after the secondcapture of Paris he drew up a profession of religious and political faith, embodying, as he thought, those high principles by which the Sovereigns ofEurope, delivered from the iniquities of Napoleon, were henceforth tomaintain the reign of peace and righteousness on earth. [242] Thisdocument, which resembled the pledge of a religious brotherhood, formed thedraft of the Treaty of the Holy Alliance. The engagement, as one binding onthe conscience, was for the consideration of the Sovereigns alone, not oftheir Ministers; and in presenting it to the Emperor Francis and KingFrederick William, the Czar is said to have acted with an air of greatmystery. The King of Prussia, a pious man, signed the treaty inseriousness; the Emperor of Austria, who possessed a matter-of-fact humour, said that if the paper related to doctrines of religion, he must refer itto his confessor, if to secrets of State, to Prince Metternich. What theconfessor may have thought of the Czar's political evangel is not known:the opinion delivered by the Minister was not a sympathetic one. "It isverbiage, " said Metternich; and his master, though unwillingly, signed thetreaty. With England the case was still worse. As the Prince Regent was notin Paris, Alexander had to confide the articles of the Holy Alliance toLord Castlereagh. Of all things in the world the most incomprehensible toCastlereagh was religious enthusiasm. "The fact is, " he wrote home to theEnglish Premier, "that the Emperor's mind is not completely sound. " [243]Apart, however, from the Czar's sanity or insanity, it was impossible forthe Prince Regent, or for any person except the responsible Minister, tosign a treaty, whether it meant anything or nothing, in the name of GreatBritain. Castlereagh was in great perplexity. On the one hand, he feared towound a powerful ally; on the other, he dared not violate the forms of theConstitution. A compromise was invented. The Treaty of the Holy Alliancewas not graced with the name of the Prince Regent, but the Czar received aletter declaring that his principles had the personal approval of thisgreat authority on religion and morality. The Kings of Naples and Sardiniawere 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. Twopotentates alone received no invitation from the Czar to enter the League:the Pope, because he possessed too much authority within the ChristianChurch, 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 besafely said, no single person connected with it, except the Czar and theKing of Prussia, thought without a smile. The common belief that thisTreaty formed the basis of a great monarchical combination against Liberalprinciples is erroneous; for, in the first place, no such combinationexisted before the year 1818; and, in the second place, the Czar, who wasthe author of the Treaty, was at this time the zealous friend of Liberalismboth in his own and in other countries. The concert of the Powers wasindeed provided for by articles signed on the same day as the Peace ofParis; but this concert, which, unlike the Holy Alliance, included England, was directed towards the perpetual exclusion of Napoleon from power, andthe maintenance of the established Government in France. The Allies pledgedthemselves to act in union if revolution or usurpation should againconvulse France and endanger the repose of other States, and undertook toresist with their whole force any attack that might be made upon the armyof occupation. The federative unity which for a moment Europe seemed tohave gained from the struggle against Napoleon, and the belief existing insome quarters in its long continuance, were strikingly shown in the lastarticle of this Quadruple Treaty, which provided that, after the holding ofa Congress at the end of three or more years, the Sovereigns or Ministersof all the four great Powers should renew their meetings at fixedintervals, for the purpose of consulting upon their common interests, andconsidering the measures best fitted to secure the repose and prosperity ofnations, and the continuance of the peace of Europe. [244][German Federation. ]Thus terminated, certainly without any undue severity, yet not without someloss to the conquered nation, the work of 1815 in France. In the meantimethe Congress of Vienna, though interrupted by the renewal of war, hadresumed and completed its labours. One subject of the first importanceremained unsettled when Napoleon returned, the federal organisation ofGermany. This work had been referred by the Powers in the autumn of 1814 toa purely German committee, composed of the representatives of Austria andPrussia and of three of the Minor States; but the first meetings of thecommittee only showed how difficult was the problem, and how little theinclination in most quarters to solve it. The objects with which statesmenlike Stein demanded an effective federation were thoroughly plain andpractical. They sought, in the first place, that Germany should be renderedcapable of defending itself against the foreigner; and in the second place, that the subjects of the minor princes, who had been made absolute rulersby Napoleon, should now be guaranteed against despotic oppression. Tosecure Germany from being again conquered by France, it was necessary thatthe members of the League, great and small, should abandon something oftheir separate sovereignty, and create a central authority with the soleright of making war and alliances. To protect the subjects of the minorprinces from the abuse of power, it was necessary that certain definitecivil rights and a measure of representative government should be assuredby Federal Law to the inhabitants of every German State, and enforced bythe central authority on the appeal of subjects against their Sovereigns. There was a moment when some such form of German union had seemed to beclose at hand, the moment when Prussia began its final struggle withNapoleon, and the commander of the Czar's army threatened the Germanvassals of France with the loss of their thrones (Feb. , 1813). But eventhen no statesman had satisfied himself how Prussia and Austria were tounite in submission to a Federal Government; and from the time when Austriamade terms with the vassal princes little hope of establishing a reallyeffective authority at the centre of Germany remained. Stein, at theCongress of Vienna, once more proposed to restore the title and thelong-vanished powers of the Emperor; but he found no inclination on thepart of Metternich to promote his schemes for German unity, while some ofthe minor princes flatly refused to abandon any fraction of theirsovereignty over their own subjects. The difficulties in the way ofestablishing a Federal State were great, perhaps insuperable; the statesmenanxious for it few in number; the interests opposed to it all butuniversal. Stein saw that the work was intended to be unsubstantial, andwithdrew himself from it before its completion. The Act of Federation, [245] which was signed on the 8th of June, created a Federal Diet, forbadethe members of the League to enter into alliances against the commoninterest, and declared that in each State, Constitutions should beestablished. But it left the various Sovereigns virtually independent ofthe League; it gave the nomination of members of the Diet to theGovernments absolutely, without a vestige of popular election; and itcontained no provision for enforcing in any individual State, whose rulermight choose to disregard it, the principle of constitutional rule. Whetherthe Federation would in any degree have protected Germany in case of attackby France or Russia is matter for conjecture, since a long period of peacefollowed the year 1815; but so far was it from securing liberty to theMinor States, that in the hands of Metternich the Diet, impotent for everyother purpose, became an instrument for the persecution of liberal opinionand 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; whenthese were at length disposed of, the Congress embodied the entire mass ofits resolutions in one great Final Act [246] of a hundred and twenty-onearticles, which was signed a few days before the battle of Waterloo wasfought. This Act, together with the second Treaty of Paris, formed thepublic law with which Europe emerged from the warfare of a quarter of acentury, and entered upon a period which proved, even more than it wasexpected to prove, one of long-lasting peace. Standing on the boundary-linebetween two ages, the legislation of Vienna forms a landmark in history. The provisions of the Congress have sometimes been criticised as if thatbody had been an assemblage of philosophers, bent only on advancing thecourse of human progress, and endowed with the power of subduing theselfish impulses of every Government in Europe. As a matter of fact theCongress was an arena where national and dynastic interests struggled forsatisfaction by every means short of actual war. To inquire whether theCongress accomplished all that it was possible to accomplish for Europe isto inquire whether Governments at that moment forgot all their ownambitions and opportunities, and thought only of the welfare of mankind. Russia would not have given up Poland without war; Austria would not havegiven up Lombardy and Venice without war. The only measures of 1814-15 inwhich the common interest was really the dominant motive were those adoptedeither with the view of strengthening the States immediately exposed toattack by France, or in the hope of sparing France itself the occasion fornew conflicts. The union of Holland and Belgium, and the annexation of theGenoese 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 theirhands free, and by these their foresight may fairly be judged. Of the unionof Belgium to Holland it is not too much to say that, although planned byPitt, and treasured by every succeeding Ministry as one of his wisestschemes, it was wholly useless and inexpedient. The tranquillity of WesternEurope was preserved during fifteen years, not by yoking togetherdiscordant nationalities, but by the general desire to avoid war; and assoon as France seriously demanded the liberation of Belgium from Holland, it had to be granted. Nor can it be believed that the addition of thehostile and discontented population of Genoa to the kingdom of Piedmontwould have saved that monarchy from invasion if war had again arisen. Theannexation of Genoa was indeed fruitful of results, but not of resultswhich Pitt and his successors had anticipated. It was intended tostrengthen the House of Savoy for the purpose of resistance to France:[247] it did strengthen the House of Savoy, but as the champion of Italyagainst Austria. It was intended to withdraw the busy trading city Genoafrom the influences of French democracy: in reality it brought a strongelement of innovation into the Piedmontese State itself, giving, on the onehand, a bolder and more national spirit to its Government, and, on theother hand, elevating to the ideal of a united Italy those who, like theGenoese Mazzini, were now no longer born to be the citizens of a freeRepublic. In sacrificing the ancient liberty of Genoa, the Congress itselfunwittingly began the series of changes which was to refute the famoussaying 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 onlyproves how little an average collection of statesmen can see into thefuture, the policy which, in spite of Waterloo, left France in possessionof an undiminished territory, does no discredit to the foresight, as itcertainly does the highest honour to the justice and forbearance ofWellington, whose counsels then turned the scale. The wisdom of theresolution has indeed been frequently impugned. German statesmen held then, and have held ever since, that the opportunity of disarming France once forall of its weapons of attack was wantonly thrown away. Hardenberg, when hisarguments for annexation of the frontier-fortresses were set aside, predicted that streams of blood would hereafter flow for the conquest ofAlsace and Lorraine, [248] and his prediction has been fulfilled. Yet noone perhaps would have been more astonished than Hardenberg himself, couldhe have known that fifty-five years of peace between France and Prussiawould precede the next great struggle. When the same period of peace shallhave followed the acquisition of Metz and Strasburg by Prussia, it will betime to condemn the settlement of 1815 as containing the germ of futurewars; till then, the effects of that settlement in maintaining peace areentitled to recognition. It is impossible to deny that the Allies, inleaving to France the whole of its territory in 1815, avoided inflictingthe most galling of all tokens of defeat upon a spirited and still mostpowerful nation. The loss of Belgium and the frontier of the Rhine waskeenly enough felt for thirty years to come, and made no insignificant partof the French people ready at any moment to rush into war; how much greaterthe power of the war-cry, how hopeless the task of restraint, if to theother motives for war there had been added the liberation of two of themost valued provinces of France. Without this the danger was great enough. Thrice at least in the next thirty years the balance seemed to be turningagainst the continuance of peace. An offensive alliance between France andRussia was within view when the Bourbon monarchy fell; the first years ofLouis Philippe all but saw the revolutionary party plunge France into warfor Belgium and for Italy; ten years later the dismissal of a Ministryalone prevented the outbreak of hostilities on the distant affairs ofSyria. Had Alsace and Lorraine at this time been in the hands of disunitedGermany, it is hard to believe that the Bourbon dynasty would not haveaverted, or sought to avert, its fall by a popular war, or that the victoryof Louis Philippe over the war-party, difficult even when there was noFrench soil to reconquer, would have been possible. The time indeed camewhen a new Bonaparte turned to enterprises of aggression the resourceswhich Europe had left unimpaired to his country; but to assume that thecessions proposed in 1815 would have made France unable to move, with orwithout allies, half a century afterwards, is to make a confident guess ina doubtful matter; and, with Germany in the condition in which it remainedafter 1815, it is at least as likely that the annexation of Alsace andLorraine would have led to the early reconquest of the Rhenish provinces byFrance, or to a war between Austria and Prussia, as that it would haveprolonged the period of European peace beyond that distant limit which itactually reached. [English efforts at the Congress to abolish the slave-trade. ]Among the subjects which were pressed upon the Congress of Vienna there wasone in which the pursuit of national interests and calculations of policybore 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 sogood a right to ask something of their allies, probably attached a deeperimportance to this question than to any in the whole range of Europeanaffairs, with the single exception of the personal overthrow of Napoleon. Since the triumph of Wiberforce's cause in the Parliament of 1807, and theextinction of English slave-traffic, the anger with which the nation viewedthis detestable cruelty, too long tolerated by itself, had become more andmore vehement and widespread. By the year 1814 the utterances of publicopinion were so loud and urgent that the Government, though free fromenthusiasm itself, was forced to place the international prohibition of theslave-trade in the front rank of its demands. There were politicians on theContinent credulous enough to believe that this outcry of the heart and theconscience of the nation was but a piece of commercial hypocrisy. Talleyrand, with far different insight, but not with more sympathy, spokeof the state of the English people as one of frenzy. [249] Something hadalready been effected at foreign courts. Sweden had been led to prohibitslave-traffic in 1813, Holland in the following year. Portugal had beenrestrained by treaty from trading north of the line. France had pledgeditself in the first Treaty of Paris to abolish the commerce within fiveyears. Spain alone remained unfettered, and it was indeed intolerable thatthe English slavers should have been forced to abandon their execrablegains only that they should fall into the hands of the subjects of KingFerdinand. It might be true that the Spanish colonies required a largersupply of slaves than they possessed; but Spain had at any rate not theexcuse that it was asked to surrender an old and profitable branch ofcommerce. It was solely through the abolition of the English slave-tradethat Spain possessed any slave-trade whatever. Before the year 1807 noSpanish ship had been seen on the coast of Africa for a century, except onein 1798 fitted out by Godoy. [250] As for the French trade, that had beenextinguished by the capture of Senegal and Goree; and along the twothousand miles of coast from Cape Blanco to Cape Formosa a legitimatecommerce with the natives was gradually springing up in place of thedesolating traffic in flesh and blood. It was hoped by the English peoplethat Castlereagh would succeed in obtaining a universal and immediateprohibition of the slave-trade by all the Powers assembled at Vienna. TheMinister was not wanting in perseverance, but he failed to achieve thisresult. France, while claiming a short delay elsewhere, professed itselfwilling, like Portugal, to abolish at once the traffic north of the line;but the Government on which England had perhaps the greatest claim, that ofSpain, absolutely refused to accept this restriction, or to bind itself toa final prohibition before the end of eight years. Castlereagh thenproposed that a Council of Ambassadors at London and Paris should becharged with the international duty of expediting the close of theslave-trade; the measure which he had in view being the punishment ofslave-dealing States by a general exclusion of their exports. Against thisSpain and Portugal made a formal protest, treating the threat as almostequivalent to one of war. The project dropped, and the Minister of Englandhad to content himself with obtaining from the Congress a solemncondemnation of the slave-trade, as contrary to the principles ofcivilisation 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 thathe could make no higher bid for its friendship than by abandoning thereserves made by Talleyrand at the Congress, and abolishing the Frenchslave-trade at once and for all. This was accomplished; and the Bourbonally of England, on his second restoration could not undo what had beendone by the usurper. Spain and Portugal alone continued to pursue--theformer country without restriction, the latter on the south of the line--acommerce branded by the united voice of Europe as infamous. The Governmentsof these countries alleged in their justification that Great Britain itselfhad resisted the passing of the prohibitory law until its colonies were farbetter supplied with slaves than those of its rivals now were. This wastrue, but it was not the whole truth. The whole truth was not known, thesincerity of English feeling was not appreciated, until, twenty yearslater, the nation devoted a part of its wealth to release the slave fromservitude, and the English race from the reproach of slave holding. Judgedby the West Indian Emancipation of 1833, the Spanish appeal to Englishhistory sounds almost ludicrous. But the remembrance of the long yearsthroughout which the advocates of justice encountered opposition in Englandshould temper the severity of our condemnation of the countries which stilldefended a bad interest. The light broke late upon ourselves: the darknessthat still lingered elsewhere had too long been our own. CHAPTER XIII. Concert of Europe after 1815--Spirit of the Foreign Policy of Alexander, ofMetternich, and of the English Ministry--Metternich's action in Italy, England's in Sicily and Spain--The Reaction in France--Richelieu and theNew Chamber--Execution of Ney--Imprisonments and persecutions--Conduct ofthe Ultra-Royalists in Parliament--Contests on the Electoral Bill and theBudget--The Chamber prorogued--Affair of Grenoble--Dissolution of theChamber--Electoral Law and Financial Settlement of 1817--Character of thefirst years of peace in Europe generally--Promise of a Constitution inPrussia--Hardenberg opposed by the partisans of autocracy andprivilege--Schmalz's Pamphlet--Delay of Constitutional Reform in Germany atlarge--The Wartburg Festival--Progress of Reaction--The Czar now inclinesto repression--Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle--Evacuation of France--Growinginfluence of Metternich in Europe--His action on Prussia--Murder ofKotzebue--The Carlsbad Conference and measures of repression inGermany--Richelieu and Decazes--Murder of the Duke of Berry--Progress ofthe reaction in France--General causes of the victory of reaction inEurope. [Concert of Europe regarding France. ]For nearly twenty years the career of Bonaparte had given to Europeanhistory the unity of interest which belongs to a single life. This unitydoes 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 thenewly-established order, for the thoughts of Governments to be withdrawnfrom foreign affairs, and the currents of national policy to fall at onceapart into separate channels. The Allied forces continued to occupy Francewith Wellington as commander-in-chief; the defence of the Bourbon monarchyhad been declared the cause of Europe at large; the conditions under whichthe numbers of the army of occupation might be reduced, or the period ofoccupation shortened, remained to be fixed by the Allies themselves. Francethus formed the object of a common European deliberation; nor was theconcert of the Powers without its peculiar organ. An International Councilwas created at Paris, consisting of the Ambassadors of the four greatCourts. The forms of a coalition were, for the first time, preserved afterthe conclusion of peace. Communications were addressed to the Government ofLouis XVIII. , in the name of all the Powers together. The Council ofAmbassadors met at regular intervals, and not only transacted businessrelating to the army of occupation and the payment of indemnities, butdiscussed the domestic policy of the French Government, and the situationof parties or the signs of political opinion in the Assembly and thenation. [Action of the Powers outside France. ]In thus watching over the restored Bourbon monarchy, the Courts of Europewere 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 minorcapitals of Europe each of the Great Powers had its own supposed intereststo pursue, or its own principles of government to inculcate. An age oftransition seemed to have begun. Constitutions had been promised in manyStates, and created in some; in Spain and in Sicily they had reached thethird stage, that of suppression. It was not likely that the statesmen whohad succeeded to Napoleon's power in Europe should hold themselves entirelyaloof from the affairs of their weaker neighbours, least of all when aneighbouring agitation might endanger themselves. In one respect theintentions of the British, the Austrian, and the Russian Governments wereidentical, and continued to be so, namely, in the determination tocountenance no revolutionary movement. Revolution, owing to the experienceof 1793, had come to be regarded as synonymous with aggressive warfare. Jacobins, anarchists, disturbers of the public peace, were only differentnames for one and the same class of international criminals, who wereindeed indigenous to France, but might equally endanger the peace ofmankind in other countries. Against these fomenters of mischief all theCourts were at one. [Alexander. ]Here, however, agreement ceased. It was admitted that between revolutionarydisturbance and the enjoyment of constitutional liberty a wide intervalexisted, and the statesmen of the leading Powers held by no means the sameviews as to the true relation between nations and their rulers. The mostliberal 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 berestored to independence and nationality, under the title of the Kingdom ofPoland; and before the end of the year he had granted it a Constitution, which created certain representative assemblies, and provided the newkingdom with an army and an administration of its own, into which no personnot a Pole could enter. The promised introduction of Parliamentary lifeinto Poland was but the first of a series of reforms dimly planned byAlexander, which was to culminate in the bestowal of a Constitution uponRussia itself, and the emancipation of the serf. [251] Animated by hopeslike these for his own people, hopes which, while they lasted, were notmerely sincere but ardent, Alexander was also friendly to the cause ofconstitutional government in other countries. Ambition mingled withdisinterested impulses in the foreign policy of the Czar. It was impossiblethat Alexander should forget the league into which England and Austria hadso lately entered against him. He was anxious to keep France on his side;he was not inclined to forego the satisfaction of weakening Austria bysupporting national hopes in Italy; [252] and he hoped to create somecounterpoise to England's maritime power by allying Russia with astrengthened and better-administered Spain. Agents of the Czar abounded inItaly and in Germany, but in no capital was the Ambassador of Russia moreactive than in Madrid. General Tatistcheff, who was appointed to this postin 1814, became the terror of all his colleagues and of the Cabinet ofLondon from his extraordinary activity in intrigue; but in relation to theinternal affairs of Spain his influence was beneficial; and it wasfrequently directed towards the support of reforming Ministers, whom KingFerdinand, if free from foreign pressure, would speedily have sacrificed tothe 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 itsfrontiers had been five times changed since 1792, had continued in aremarkable degree free from the impulse to internal change. The EmperorFrancis was the personification of resistance to progress; the Ministerowed his unrivalled position not more to his own skilful statesmanship inthe great crisis of 1813 than to a genuine accord with the feelings of hismaster. If Francis was not a man of intellect, Metternich was certainly aman of character; and for a considerable period they succeeded inimpressing the stamp of their own strongly-marked Austrian policy uponEurope. The force of their influence sprang from no remote source; it wasdue mainly to a steady intolerance of all principles not their own. Metternich described his system with equal simplicity and precision as anattempt neither to innovate nor to go back to the past, but to keep thingsas 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 workwhich, according to Metternich, ought never to have entered the world, but, having unfortunately gained admittance, made it the task of Governments toresist their influence by all available means. Stein and the leaders of thePrussian War of Liberation had agitated Germany with hopes of nationalunity, of Parliaments, and of the impulsion of the executive powers ofState by public opinion. Against these northern innovators, Metternich hadalready won an important victory in the formation of the FederalConstitution. The weakness and timidity of the King of Prussia made itprobable that, although he was now promising his subjects a Constitution, he might at no distant date be led to unite with other German Governmentsin a system of repression, and in placing Liberalism under the ban of theDiet. In Italy, according to the conservative statesman, the same dangersexisted and the same remedies were required. Austria, through theacquisition of Venice, now possessed four times as large a territory beyondthe Alps as it had possessed before 1792; but the population was no longerthe quiescent and contented folk that it had been in the days of MariaTheresa. Napoleon's kingdom and army of Italy had taught the peoplewarfare, and given them political aims and a more masculine spirit. Metternich's own generals had promised the Italians independence when theyentered the country in 1814; Murat's raid a year later had actually beenundertaken in the name of Italian unity. These were disagreeable incidents, and signs were not wanting of the existence of a revolutionary spirit inthe Italian provinces of Austria, especially among the officers who hadserved under Napoleon. Metternich was perfectly clear as to the duties ofhis Government. The Italians might have a Viceroy to keep Court at Milan, abody of native officials to conduct their minor affairs, and a mockCongregation or Council, without any rights, powers, or functions whatever;if this did not satisfy them, they were a rebellious people, and governmentmust be conducted by means of spies, police, and the dungeons of theSpielberg. [254][Scheme of an Austrian Protectorate over Italy. ]On this system, backed by great military force, there was nothing to fearfrom the malcontents of Lombardy and Venice: it remained for Metternich toextend the same security to the rest of the peninsula, and by a series oftreaties to effect the double end of exterminating constitutionalgovernment and of establishing an Austrian Protectorate over the entirecountry, from the Alps to the Sicilian Straits. The design was so ambitiousthat Metternich had not dared to disclose it at the Congress of Vienna; itwas in fact a direct violation of the Treaty of Paris, and of theresolution of the Congress, that Italy, outside the possessions of Austria, should consist of independent States. The first Sovereign over whom the netwas cast was Ferdinand of Naples. On the 15th of June, 1815, immediatelyafter the overthrow of Murat, King Ferdinand signed a Treaty of Alliancewith Austria, which contained a secret clause, pledging the King tointroduce no change into his recovered kingdom inconsistent with its ownold monarchical principles, or with the principles which had been adoptedby the Emperor of Austria for the government of his Italian provinces. [255] Ferdinand, two years before, had been compelled by Great Britain togrant Sicily a Constitution, and was at this very moment promising one toNaples. The Sicilian Constitution was now tacitly condemned; theNeapolitans were duped. By a further secret clause, the two contractingSovereigns undertook to communicate to one another everything that shouldcome to their knowledge affecting the security and tranquillity of theItalian peninsula; in other words, the spies and the police of Ferdinandwere now added to Metternich's staff in Lombardy. Tuscany, Modena, andParma entered into much the same condition of vassalage; but the scheme fora universal federation of Italy under Austria's leadership failed throughthe resistance of Piedmont and of the Pope. Pius VII. Resented the attemptsof Austria, begun in 1797 and repeated at the Congress of Vienna, todeprive the Holy See of Bologna and Ravenna. The King of Sardinia, thoughpressed by England to accept Metternich's offer of alliance, maintainedwith great decision the independence of his country, and found in thesupport of the Czar a more potent argument than any that he could havedrawn from treaties. [256][Spirit of England's foreign policy. ]The part played by the British Government at this epoch has been severelyjudged not only by the later opinion of England itself, but by thehistorical writers of almost every nation in Europe. It is perhapsfortunate for the fame of Pitt that he did not live to witness theaccomplishment of the work in which he had laboured for thirteen years. Theglory of a just and courageous struggle against Napoleon's tyranny remainswith Pitt; the opprobrium of a settlement hostile to liberty has fallen onhis successors. Yet there is no good ground for believing that Pitt wouldhave attached a higher value to the rights or inclinations of individualcommunities than his successors did in re-adjusting the balance of power;on the contrary, he himself first proposed to destroy the Republic ofGenoa, and to place Catholic Belgium under the Protestant Crown of Holland;nor was any principle dearer to him than that of aggrandising the House ofAustria as a counterpoise to the power of France. [257] The Ministry of1815 was indeed but too faithfully walking in the path into which Pitt hadbeen driven by the King and the nation in 1793. Resistance to France hadbecome the one absorbing care, the beginning and end of Englishstatesmanship. Government at home had sunk to a narrow and unfeelingopposition to the attempts made from time to time to humanise the mass ofthe people, to reform an atrocious criminal law, to mitigate the civilwrongs inflicted in the name and the interest of a State-religion. No onein the Cabinet doubted that authority, as such, must be wiser thaninexperienced popular desire, least of all the statesman who now, inconjunction with the Duke of Wellington, controlled the policy of GreatBritain upon the Continent. Lord Castlereagh had no sympathy with crueltyor oppression in Continental rulers; he had just as little belief in thevalue of free institutions to their subjects. [258] The nature of hisinfluence, which has been drawn sometimes in too dark colours, may befairly gathered from the course of action which he followed in regard toSicily and to Spain. [In Sicily. ]In Sicily the representative of Great Britain, Lord William Bentinck, hadforced King Ferdinand, who could not have maintained himself for an hourwithout the arms and money of England, to establish in 1813 a Parliamentframed on the model of our own. The Parliament had not proved a wise or acapable body, but its faults were certainly not equal to those of KingFerdinand, and its re-construction under England's auspices would have beenan affair of no great difficulty. Ferdinand, however, had always detestedfree institutions, and as soon as he regained the throne of Naples hedetermined to have done with the Sicilian Parliament. A correspondence onthe intended change took place between Lord Castlereagh and A'Court, theAmbassador who had now succeeded Lord William Bentinck. [259] That theBritish Government, which had protected the Sicilian Crown against Napoleonat the height of his power, could have protected the Sicilian Constitutionagainst King Ferdinand's edicts without detaching a single man-of-war'sboat, is not open to doubt. Castlereagh, however, who for years past hadbeen paying, stimulating, or rebuking every Government in Europe, and whohad actually sent the British fleet to make the Norwegians submit toBernadotte, now suddenly adopted the principle of non-intervention, anddeclared that, so long as Ferdinand did not persecute the Sicilians who atthe invitation of England had taken part in political life, or reduce theprivileges of Sicily below those which had existed prior to 1813, GreatBritain would not interfere with his action. These stipulations wereinserted in order to satisfy the House of Commons, and to avert the chargethat England had not only abandoned the Sicilian Constitution, butconsented to a change which left the Sicilians in a worse condition than ifEngland had never intervened in their affairs. Lord Castlereagh shut hiseyes to the confession involved, that he was leaving the Sicilians to aruler who, but for such restraint, might be expected to destroy everyvestige of public right, and to take the same bloody and unscrupulousrevenge upon his subjects which he had taken when Nelson restored him topower in 1799. [Action of England in Spain. ]The action of the British Government in Spain showed an equal readiness tocommit the future to the wisdom of Courts. Lord Castlereagh was madeacquainted with the Spanish Ferdinand's design of abolishing theConstitution on his return in the year 1814. "So far, " he replied, "as themere existence of the Constitution is at stake, it is impossible to believethat any change tranquilly effected can well be worse. " [260] In this casethe interposition of England would perhaps not have availed against areactionary clergy and nation: Castlereagh, was, moreover, deceived byFerdinand's professions that he had no desire to restore absolutegovernment. He credited the King with the same kind of moderation which hadled Louis XVIII. To accept the Charta in France, and looked forward to themaintenance of a constitutional régime, though under conditions morefavourable to the executive power and to the influence of the great landedproprietors and clergy. [261] Events soon proved what value was to beattached to the word of the King; the flood of reaction and vengeance brokeover the country; and from this time the British Government, halfconfessing and half excusing Ferdinand's misdeeds, exerted itself to checkthe outrages of despotism, and to mitigate the lot of those who were nowits victims. In the interest of the restored monarchies themselves, as muchas from a regard to the public opinion of Great Britain, the Ambassadors ofEngland urged moderation upon all the Bourbon Courts. This, however, wasalso done by Metternich, who neither took pleasure in cruelty, nor desiredto see new revolutions produced by the extravagances of priests andemigrants. It was not altogether without cause that the belief arose thatthere was little to choose, in reference to the constitutional liberties ofother States, between the sentiments of Austria and those of the Ministersof free England. A difference, however, did exist. Metternich actuallyprohibited the Sovereigns over whom his influence extended from grantingtheir subjects liberty: England, believing the Sovereigns to be moreliberal than they were, did not interfere to preserve constitutions fromdestruction. [Outrages of the Royalists in the south of France, June-August. ]Such was the general character of the influence now exercised by the threeleading 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 actionto the affairs of France, in which it possessed a substantial interest, inasmuch as the indemnities due from Louis XVIII. Had yet to be paid. Thepossibility of recovering these sums depended upon the maintenance of peaceand order in France; and from the first it was recognised by everyGovernment in Europe that the principal danger to peace and order arosefrom the conduct of the Count of Artois and his friends, the party ofreaction. The counterrevolutionary movement began in mere riot and outrage. No sooner had the news of the battle of Waterloo reached the south ofFrance than the Royalist mob of Marseilles drove the garrison out of thetown, and attacked the quarter inhabited by the Mameluke families whomNapoleon had brought from Egypt. Thirteen of these unfortunate persons, andabout as many Bonapartist citizens, were murdered. [262] A few weeks laterNismes was given over to anarchy and pillage. Religious fanaticism herestimulated the passion of political revenge. The middle class in Nismesitself and a portion of the surrounding population were Protestant, and hadhailed Napoleon's return from Elba as a deliverance from the ascendancy ofpriests, and from the threatened revival of the persecutions which they hadsuffered under the old Bourbon monarchy. The Catholics, who were much morenumerous, included the lowest class in the town, the larger landedproprietors of the district, and above half of the peasantry. Bands ofvolunteers had been formed by the Duke of Angoulême at the beginning of theHundred Days, in the hope of sustaining a civil war against Napoleon. Aftercapitulating to the Emperor's generals, some companies had been attacked byvillagers and hunted down like wild beasts. The bands now reassembled andentered Nismes. The garrison, after firing upon them, were forced to giveup their arms, and in this defenceless state a considerable number of thesoldiers were shot down (July 17). On the next day the leaders of the armedmob 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. TheGovernment acted slowly and feebly; the local authorities were intimidated;and, in spite of the remonstrances of Wellington and the RussianAmbassador, security was not restored until the Allies took the matter intotheir own hands, and a detachment of Austrian troops occupied theDepartment of the Gard. Other districts in the south of France witnessedthe same outbreaks of Royalist ferocity. Avignon was disgraced by themurder of Marshal Brune, conqueror of the Russians and English in the Dutchcampaign of 1799, an honest soldier, who after suffering Napoleon's neglectin the time of prosperity, had undertaken the heavy task of governingMarseilles during the Hundred Days. At Toulouse, General Ramel, himself aRoyalist, was mortally wounded by a band of assassins, and savagelymutilated 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, asa whole, with the Republican Reign of Terror twenty-two years earlier. Butthe comparison does little credit to the historical sense of those whosuggested it. The barbarities of 1815 were strictly local: shocking as theywere, they scarcely amounted in all to an average day's work of Carrier orFouché in 1794; and the action of the established Government, thoughculpably weak, was not itself criminal. A second and more dangerous stageof reaction began, however, when the work of popular vengeance closed. Elections for a new Chamber of Deputies were held at the end of August. TheLiberals and the adherents of Napoleon, paralysed by the disasters ofFrance and the invaders' presence, gave up all as lost: the Ministers ofLouis XVIII. Abstained from the usual electoral manoeuvres, Talleyrandthrough carelessness, Fouché from a desire to see parties evenly balanced:the ultra-Royalists alone had extended their organisation over France, andthrew themselves into the contest with the utmost passion and energy. Numerically weak, they had the immense forces of the local administrationon their side. The Préfets had gone over heart and soul to the cause of theCount of Artois, who indeed represented to them that he was acting underthe King's own directions. The result was that an Assembly was elected towhich France has seen only one parallel since, namely in the Parliament of1871, elected when invaders again occupied the country, and the despotismof a second Bonaparte had ended in the same immeasurable calamity. The bulkof the candidates returned were country gentlemen whose names had neverbeen heard of in public life since 1789, men who had resigned themselves toinaction and obscurity under the Republic and the Empire, and whose onepolitical idea was to reverse the injuries done by the Revolution to theircaste and to their Church. They were Royalists because a Bourbon monarchyalone could satisfy their claims: they called themselves ultra-Royalists, but they were so only in the sense that they required the monarchy torecognise no ally but themselves. They had already shown before Napoleon'sreturn that their real chief was the Count of Artois, not the King; in whatform their ultra-Royalism would exhibit itself in case the King should notsubmit 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 LiberalMinistry. The Count of Artois and the courtiers, who had been glad enoughto secure Fouché's services while their own triumph was doubtful, nowjoined in the outcry of the country gentlemen again this monster ofiniquity. Talleyrand promptly disencumbered himself of his old friend, andprepared to meet the new Parliament as an ultra-Royalist; but in the eyesof the victorious party Talleyrand himself, the married priest and thereputed accomplice in the murder of the Duke of Enghien, was little betterthan his regicide colleague; and before the Assembly met he was forced toretire from power. [Richelieu's Ministry, Sept. 1815. ]His successor, the Duc de Richelieu, was recommended to Louis XVIII. By theCzar. Richelieu had quitted France early in the Revolution, and, unlikemost of the emigrants, had played a distinguished part in the country whichgave him refuge. Winning his first laurels in the siege of Ismail underSuvaroff, he had subsequently been made Governor of the Euxine provinces ofRussia, and the flourishing town of Odessa had sprung up under his rule. His reputation as an administrator was high; his personal charactersingularly noble and disinterested. Though the English Government looked atfirst with apprehension upon a Minister so closely connected with the Czarof Russia, Richelieu's honesty and truthfulness soon gained him the respectof every foreign Court. His relation to Alexander proved of great serviceto 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 Assemblywhich represented nothing but the passions and the ideas of a reactionaryclass. But Richelieu had been too long absent from France to grasp thedetails 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 mostof his colleagues when he appointed them to their posts. The Ministry inconsequence was not at unity within itself. Some of its members, likeDecazes, were more liberal than their chief; others, like Clarke andVaublanc, old servants of Napoleon now turned ultra-Royalists, were eagerto make themselves the instruments of the Count of Artois, and to carryinto the work of government the enthusiasm of revenge which had alreadyfound voice in the elections. [Violence of the Chamber of 1815. ]The session opened on the 7th of October. Twenty-nine of the peers, who hadjoined Napoleon during the Hundred Days, were excluded from the House, andreplaced by adherents of the Bourbons; nevertheless the peers as a bodyopposed themselves to extreme reaction, and, in spite of Chateaubriand'ssanguinary harangues, supported the moderate policy of Richelieu againstthe majority of the Lower House. The first demand of the Chamber ofDeputies was for retribution upon traitors; [263] their first conflict withthe Government of Louis XVIII. Arose upon the measures which were broughtforward by the Ministry for the preservation of public security and thepunishment of seditious acts. The Ministers were attacked, not becausetheir measures were too severe, but because they were not severe enough. While taking power to imprison all suspected persons without trial, or toexpel them from their homes, Decazes, the Police-Minister, proposed topunish incitements to sedition by fines and terms of imprisonment varyingaccording to the gravity of the offence. So mild a penalty excited thewrath of men whose fathers and brothers had perished on the guillotine. Some cried out for death, others for banishment to Cayenne. When it waspointed out that the infliction of capital punishment for the mere attemptat sedition would place this on a level with armed rebellion, it wasanswered that a distinction might be maintained by adding in the lattercase 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 arevision of its measure. Transportation to Cayenne, but not death, wasultimately included among the penalties for seditious acts. The Minister ofJustice, M. Barbé-Marbois, who had himself been transported to Cayenne bythe Jacobins in 1797, was able to satisfy the Chamber from his ownexperience 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 totrial for high treason. A so-called Edict of Amnesty had been published bythe King on the 24th of July, containing the names of nineteen persons whowere to be tried by courts-martial on capital charges, and of thirty-eightothers who were to be either exiled or brought to justice, as the Chambermight determine. Ney was included in the first category. Opportunities forescape had been given to him by the Government, as indeed they had toalmost every other person on the list. King Louis XVIII. Well understoodthat his Government was not likely to be permanently strengthened by theexecution of some of the most distinguished men in France; the emigrants, however, and especially the Duchess of Angoulême, were merciless, and theEnglish Government acted a deplorable part. "One can never feel that theKing is secure on his throne, " wrote Lord Liverpool, "until he has dared tospill traitors' blood. " It is not that many examples would be necessary;but the daring to make a few will alone manifest any strength in theGovernment. [265] Labédoyère had already been executed. On the 9th ofNovember Ney was brought before a court-martial, at which Castlereagh andhis wife had the bad taste to be present. The court-martial, headed byNey's old comrade Jourdan, declared itself incompetent to judge a peer ofFrance accused of high treason, [266] Ney was accordingly tried before theHouse of Peers. The verdict was a foregone conclusion, and indeed the legalguilt of the Marshal could hardly be denied. Had the men who sat injudgment upon him been a body of Vendean peasants who had braved fire andsword for the Bourbon cause, the sentence of death might have beenpronounced with pure, though stern lips: it remains a deep disgrace toFrance that among the peers who voted not only for Ney's condemnation butfor his death, there were some who had themselves accepted office and payfrom Napoleon during the Hundred Days. A word from Wellington would stillhave saved the Marshal's life, but in interceding for Ney the Duke wouldhave placed himself in direct opposition to the action of his ownGovernment. When the Premier had dug the grave, it was not for Wellingtonto rescue the prisoner. It is permissible to hope that he, who had sovehemently reproached Blücher for his intention to put Napoleon to death ifhe should fall into his hands, would have asked clemency for Ney had heconsidered himself at liberty to obey the promptings of his own nature. Theresponsibility for Marshal Ney's death rests, more than upon any otherindividual, upon Lord Liverpool. On the 7th of December the sentence was executed. Ney was shot at earlymorning in an unfrequented spot, and the Government congratulated itselfthat it had escaped the dangers of a popular demonstration and heard thelast of a disagreeable business. Never was there a greater mistake. Nocrime committed in the Reign of Terror attached a deeper popular opprobriumto its authors than the execution of Ney did to the Bourbon family. Thevictim, a brave but rough half-German soldier, [267] rose in popular legendalmost to the height of the Emperor himself. His heroism in the retreatfrom Moscow became, and with justice, a more glorious memory than Davoust'svictory at Jena or Moreau's at Hohenlinden. Side by side with the thoughtthat the Bourbons had been brought back by foreign arms, the remembrancesank deep into the heart of the French people that this family had put todeath "the bravest of the brave. " It would have been no common good fortunefor Louis XVIII. To have pardoned or visited with light punishment a greatsoldier whose political feebleness had led him to an act of treason, condoned by the nation at large. Exile would not have made the transgressora martyr. But the common sense of mankind condemns Ney's execution: thepublic opinion of France has never forgiven it. [Amnesty Bill, Dec 8. ]On the day after the great example was made, Richelieu brought forward theAmnesty Bill of the Government in the House of Representatives. The King, while claiming full right of pardon, desired that the Chamber should beassociated with him in its exercise, and submitted a project of lawsecuring from prosecution all persons not included in the list published onJuly 24th. Measures of a very different character had already beenintroduced under the same title into the Chamber. Though the initiative inlegislation belonged by virtue of the Charta to the Crown, resolutionsmight be moved by members in the shape of petition or address, and underthis form the leaders of the majority had drawn up schemes for thewholesale proscription of Napoleon's adherents. It was proposed by M. LaBourdonnaye to bring to trial all the great civil and military officerswho, during the Hundred Days, had constituted the Government of theusurper; all generals, préfets, and commanders of garrisons, who had obeyedNapoleon before a certain day, to be named by the Assembly; and all votersfor the death of Louis XVI. Who had recognised Napoleon by signing the ActeAdditionnel. The language in which these prosecutions were urged was theecho of that which had justified the bloodshed of 1793; its violence wasdue partly to the fancy that Napoleon's return was no sudden and unexpectedact, but the work of a set of conspirators in high places, who were stillplotting 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'sown wishes, and recalled the example of forgiveness shown in the testamentof Louis XVI. The committee which was appointed to report on the projectsof amnesty brought up a scheme little different from that of LaBourdonnaye, and added to it the iniquitous proposal that civil actionsshould be brought against all condemned persons for the damages sustainedby the State through Napoleon's return. This was to make a mock of theclause in the Charta which abolished confiscation. The report of thecommittee caused the utmost dismay both in France itself and among therepresentatives of foreign Powers at Paris. The conflict between the men ofreaction 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 ofJanuary, 1816, the Chamber proceeded to discuss the Bill of the Governmentand the amendments of the committee. The debate lasted four days; it wasonly by the repeated use of the King's own name that the Ministerssucceeded in gaining a majority of nine votes against the two principalcategories of exception appended to the amnesty by their opponents. Theproposal to restore confiscation under the form of civil actions wasrejected by a much greater majority, but on the vote affecting theregicides the Government was defeated. This indeed was considered of nogreat moment. Richelieu, content with having averted measures which wouldhave exposed several hundred persons to death, exile, or pecuniary ruin, consented to banish from France the regicides who had acknowledgedNapoleon, along with the thirty-eight persons named in the second list ofJuly 24th. Among other well-known men, Carnot, who had rendered such greatservices to his country, went to die in exile. Of the seventeen companionsof Ney and Labédoyère in the first list of July 24th, most had escaped fromFrance; one alone suffered death. [269] But the persons originally excludedfrom the amnesty and the regicides exiled by the Assembly formed but asmall part of those on whom the vengeance of the Royalists fell; for it wasprovided that the amnesty-law should apply to no one against whomproceedings had been taken before the formal promulgation of the law. Theprisons were already crowded with accused persons, who thus remainedexposed to punishment; and after the law had actually passed the Chamber, telegraph-signals were sent over the country by Clarke, the Minister ofWar, ordering the immediate accusation of several others. One distinguishedsoldier at least, General Travot, was sentenced to death on proceedingsthus instituted between the passing and the promulgation of the law ofamnesty. [270] Executions, however, were not numerous except in the southof France, but an enormous number of persons were imprisoned or driven fromtheir homes, some by judgment of the law-courts, some by the exercise ofthe powers conferred on the administration by the law of Public Security. [271] The central government indeed had less part in this species ofpersecution than the Préfets and other local authorities, though withintheir own departments Clarke and Vaublanc set an example which others werenot slow to follow. Royalist committees were formed all over the country, and assumed the same kind of irregular control over the officials of theirdistricts as had been practised by the Jacobin committees of 1793. Thousands of persons employed in all grades of the public service, inschools and colleges as well as in the civil administration, in thelaw-courts as well as in the army and navy, were dismissed from theirposts. The new-comers were professed agents of the reaction; those who werepermitted to retain their offices strove to outdo their colleagues in theirrenegade zeal for the new order. It was seen again, as it had been seenunder the Republic and under the Empire, that if virtue has limits, servility has none. The same men who had hunted down the peasant forsheltering his children from Napoleon's conscription now hunted down thosewho were stigmatised as Bonapartists. The clergy threw in their lot withthe victorious party, and denounced to the magistrates their parishionerswho treated them with disrespect. [272] Darker pages exist in Frenchhistory than the reaction of 1815, none more contemptible. It is thedeepest condemnation of the violence of the Republic and the despotism ofthe Empire that the generation formed by it should have produced the classwho could exhibit, and the public who could tolerate, the prodigies ofbaseness which attended the second Bourbon restoration. [The reactionists adopt Parliamentary theory. ]Within the Chamber of Deputies the Ultra-Royalist majority had gainedParliamentary experience in the debates on the Amnesty Bill and the Law ofPublic Security: their own policy now took a definite shape, and tooutbursts of passion there succeeded the attempt to realise ideas. Hatredof the Revolution and all its works was still the dominant impulse of theAssembly; but whatever may have been the earlier desire of theUltra-Royalist noblesse, it was no longer their intention to restore thepolitical system that existed before 1789. They would in that case havedesired to restore absolute monarchy, and to surrender the power whichseemed at length to have fallen into the hands of their own class. WithArtois on the throne this might have been possible, for Artois, though heirto the crown, was still what he had been in his youth, the chief of aparty: with Louis XVIII. And Richelieu at the head of the State, theUltra-Royalists became the adversaries of royal prerogative and thechampions of the rights of Parliament. Before the Revolution the noblessehad possessed privileges; it had not possessed political power. TheConstitution of 1814 had unexpectedly given it, under representative forms, the influence denied to it under the old monarchy. New political vistasopened; and the men who had hitherto made St. Louis and Henry IV. Thesubject of their declamations, now sought to extend the rights ofParliament to the utmost, and to perpetuate in succeeding assemblies therule of the present majority. An electoral law favourable to the greatlanded proprietors was the first necessity. This indeed was but a means toan end; another and a greater end might be attained directly, therestoration of a landed Church, and of the civil and social ascendancy ofthe clergy. [Ecclesiastical schemes of the reaction. ]It had been admitted by King Louis XVIII. That the clause in the Chartarelating to elections required modification, and on this point theUltra-Royalists in the Chamber were content to wait for the proposals ofthe Government. In their ecclesiastical policy they did not maintain thesame reserve. Resolutions in favour of the State-Church were discussed inthe form of petitions to be presented to the Crown. It was proposed to makethe clergy, as they had been before the Revolution, the sole keepers ofregisters of birth and marriage; to double the annual payment made to themby the State; to permit property of all kinds to be acquired by the Churchby 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 schoolsand colleges throughout the country under the control of the Bishops. Onecentral postulate not only passed the Chamber, but was accepted by theGovernment and became law. Divorce was absolutely abolished; and for twogenerations after 1816 no possible aggravation of wrong sufficed in Franceto release either husband or wife from the mockery of a marriage-tie. Thepower to accept donations or legacies was granted to the clergy, subject, however, in every case to the approval of the Crown. The allowance made tothem out of the revenues of the State was increased by the amount ofcertain pensions as they should fall in, a concession which fell very farshort of the demands of the Chamber. In all, the advantages won for theChurch were scarcely proportioned to the zeal displayed in its cause. Themost important question, the disposal of the unsold Church lands, remainedto be determined when the Chamber should enter upon the discussion of theBudget. [Electoral Bill, Dec. 18, 1815. ]The Electoral Bill of the Government, from which the Ultra-Royalistsexpected so much, was introduced at the end of the year 1815. It showed ina singular manner the confusion of ideas existing within the Ministry as tothe 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, couldconceive of no relation between the executive and the legislative power butthat which exists between a substance and its shadow. It never entered hismind that the representative institutions granted by the Charta wereintended to bring an independent force to bear upon the Government, or thatthe nation should be treated as more than a fringe round the compact andlasting body of the administration. The language in which Vaublancintroduced his measure was grotesquely candid. Montesquieu, he said, hadpointed out that powers must be subordinate; therefore the electoral powermust be controlled by the King's Government. [273] By the side of theelectors in the Canton and the Department there was accordingly placed, inthe Ministerial scheme, an array of officials numerous enough to carry theelections, 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 theDepartment, who, with a similar contingent of officials, were to choose theDeputies. Re-affirming the principle laid down in the Constitution of 1795and repeated in the Charta, Vaublanc proposed that a fifth part of theAssembly should retire each year. [Counter-project of Villèle. ]If the Minister had intended to give the Ultra-Royalists the best possiblemeans of exalting the peculiar policy of their class into something like areal defence of liberty, he could not have framed a more fitting measure. The creation of constituent bodies out of mayors, crown-advocates, andjustices of the peace, was described, and with truth, as a mere Napoleonicjuggle. The limitation of the franchise to a fixed number of rich personswas condemned as illiberal and contrary to the spirit of the Charta: thesystem of yearly renovation by fifths, which threatened to curtail thereign of the present majority, was attributed to the dread of any completeexpression of public opinion. It was evident that the Bill of theGovernment would either be rejected or altered in such a manner as to giveit a totally different character. In the Committee of the Chamber whichundertook the task of drawing up amendments, the influence was first feltof a man who was soon to become the chief and guiding spirit of theUltra-Royalist party. M. De Villèle, spokesman of the Committee, had in hisyouth been an officer in the navy of Louis XVI. On the dethronement of theKing he had quitted the service, and settled in the Isle of Bourbon, wherehe gained some wealth and an acquaintance with details of business andfinance rare among the French landed gentry. Returning to France under theEmpire, he took up his abode near Toulouse, his native place, and was madeMayor of that city on Napoleon's second downfall. Villèle's politics gaineda strong and original colour from his personal experience and the characterof the province in which he lived. The south was the only part of Franceknown to him. There the reactionary movement of 1815 had been a reallypopular one, and the chief difficulty of the Government, at the end of theHundred Days, had been to protect the Bonapartists from violence. Villèlebelieved that throughout France the wealthier men among the peasantry wereas ready to follow the priests and nobles as they were in Provence and LaVendée. His conception of the government of the future was the rule of alanded aristocracy, resting, in its struggle against monarchicalcentralisation and against the Liberalism of the middle class, on theconservative and religious instincts of the peasantry. Instead of excludingpopular forces, Villèle welcomed them as allies. He proposed to lower thefranchise to one-sixth of the sum named in the Charta, and, while retaininga system of double-election, to give a vote in the primary assemblies toevery Frenchman paying annual taxes to the amount of fifty francs. Inconstituencies 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 wholecontrol the elections. In the interest of the present majority he rejectedthe system of renovation by fifths proposed by the Government, and demandedthat 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 thefirst trial. The districts in which the reaction of 1815 was popular werenot so large as he supposed: in the greater part of France the peasantrywould not have obeyed the nobles except under intimidation. This wassuspected by the majority, in spite of the confident language in which theyspoke of the will of the nation as identical with their own. Villèle'sboldness alarmed them: they anticipated that these great constituencies ofpeasants, if really left masters of the elections, would be more likely toreturn a body of Jacobins and Bonapartists than one of hereditarylandlords. It was not necessary, however, to sacrifice the well-soundingprinciple of a low franchise, for the democratic vote at the first stage ofthe elections might effectively be neutralised by putting the second stageinto the hands of the chief proprietors. The Assembly had in fact only toimitate the example of the Government, and to appoint a body of persons whoshould vote, as of right, by the side of the electors chosen in the primaryassemblies. The Government in its own interest had designated a troop ofofficials as electors: the Assembly, on the contrary, resolved that in theElectoral College of each Department, numbering in all about 150 persons, the fifty principal landowners of the Department should be entitled tovote, whether they had been nominated by the primary constituencies or not. Modified by this proviso, the project of Villèle passed the Assembly. TheGovernment saw that under the disguise of a series of amendments a measuredirectly antagonistic to their own had been carried. The franchise had beenaltered; the real control of the elections placed in the hands of the veryparty which was now in open opposition to the King and his Ministers. Nocompromise was possible between the law proposed by the Government and thatpassed by the Assembly. The Government appealed to the Chamber of Peers. The Peers threw out the amendments of the Lower House. A provisionalmeasure was then introduced by Richelieu for the sake of providing Francewith 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 becameevident that one or the other must fall. The Ministers of the Great Powersat Paris, who watched over the restored dynasty, debated whether or notthey should recommend the King to resort to the extreme measure of adissolution. [Contest on the Budget. ][The Chambers prorogued, April 29. ]The Electoral Bill was not the only object of conflict between Richelieu'sMinistry and the Chamber, nor indeed the principal one. The Budget excitedfiercer passions, and raised greater issues. It was for no mere scheme offinance that the Government had to fight, but against a violation of publicfaith which would have left France insolvent and creditless in the face ofthe Powers who still held its territory in pledge. The debt incurred by thenation since 1813 was still unfunded. That part of it which had been raisedbefore the summer of 1814 had been secured by law upon the unsold forestsformerly belonging to the Church, and upon the Communal lands whichNapoleon had made the property of the State: the remainder, which includedthe loans made during the Hundred Days, had no specified security. It wasnow proposed by the Government to place the whole of the unfunded debt uponthe same level, and to provide for its payment by selling the so-calledChurch forests. The project excited the bitterest opposition on the side ofthe Count of Artois and his friends. If there was one object which theclerical and reactionary party pursued with religious fervour, it was therestoration of the Church lands: if there was one class which they had noscruple in impoverishing, it was the class that had lent money to Napoleon. Instead of paying the debts of the State, the Committee of the Chamberproposed to repeal the law of September, 1814, which pledged the Churchforests, and to compel both the earlier and the later holders of theunfunded debt to accept stock in satisfaction of their claims, though thestock was worth less than two-thirds of its nominal value. The resolutionwas 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, refusedto recognise the withdrawal. Such a step was at once an insult and ausurpation of power. So great was the scandal and alarm caused by thescenes in the Chamber, that the Duke of Wellington, at the instance of theAmbassadors, presented a note to King Louis XVIII. Requiring him in plainterms to put a stop to the machinations of his brother. [274] Theinterference of the foreigner provoked the Ultra-Royalists, and failed toexcite energetic action on the part of King Louis, who dreaded the sourcountenance of the Duchess of Angoulême more than he did Wellington'sreproofs. In the end the question of a settlement of the unfunded debt wasallowed to remain open. The Government was unable to carry the sale of theChurch forests, the Chamber did not succeed in its project of confiscation. The Budget for the year, greatly altered in the interest of the landedproprietors, was at length brought into shape. A resolution of the LowerHouse restoring the unsold forests to the Church was ignored by the Crown;and the Government, having obtained the means of carrying on the publicservices, gladly abstained from further legislation, and on the 29th ofApril 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 imprisonmentand surveillance which prevailed in the Departments would be brought to anend. Vaublanc, the Minister of coercion, was removed from office. But thetroubles of France were not yet over. On the 6th of May, a rising ofpeasants took place at Grenoble. According to the report of GeneralDonnadieu, commander of the garrison, which brought the news to theGovernment, the revolt had only been put down after the most desperatefighting. "The corpses of the King's enemies, " said the General in hisdespatch, "cover all the roads for a league round Grenoble. " [275] It wassoon known that twenty-four prisoners had been condemned to death bycourt-martial, and sixteen of these actually executed: the court-martialrecommended the other eight to the clemency of the Government. But thedespatches of Donnadieu had thrown the Cabinet into a panic. Decazes, themost liberal of the Ministers, himself signed the hasty order requiring theremaining prisoners to be put to death. They perished; and when it was toolate the Government learnt that Donnadieu's narrative was a mass of thegrossest exaggerations, and that the affair which he had represented as aninsurrection of the whole Department was conducted by about 300 peasants, half of whom were unarmed. The violence and illegality with which theGeneral proceeded to establish a régime of military law soon brought himinto collision with the Government. He became the hero of theUltra-Royalists; but the Ministry, which was unwilling to make a publicconfession that it had needlessly put eight persons to death, had to bearthe odium of an act of cruelty for which Donnadieu was really responsible. The part into which Decazes had been entrapped probably strengthened thedetermination of this Minister, who was now gaining great influence overthe King, to strike with energy against the Ultra-Royalist faction. Fromthis time he steadily led the King towards the only measure which couldfree the country from the rule of the Count of Artois and thereactionists--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 asPolice-Minister gave him the opportunity of amusing the King with anecdotesand gossip much more congenial to the old man's taste than discussions onfinance or constitutional law. Louis came to regard Decazes almost as ason, and gratified his own studious inclination by teaching him English. The Minister's enemies said that he won the King's heart by taking privatelessons from some obscure Briton, and attributing his extraordinaryprogress to the skill of his royal master. But Decazes had a more effectiveretort than witticism. He opened the letters of the Ultra-Royalists andlaid them before the King. Louis found that these loyal subjects jestedupon his infirmities, called him a dupe in the hands of Jacobins, andgrumbled at him for so long delaying the happy hour when Artois shouldascend the throne. Humorous as Louis was, he was not altogether pleased toread that he "ought either to open his eyes or to close them for ever. " Atthe same time the reports of Decazes' local agents proved that theUltra-Royalist party were in reality weak in numbers and unpopularthroughout the greater part of the country. The project of a dissolutionwas laid before the Ministers and some of the King's confidants. Though theAmbassadors were not consulted on the measure, it was certain that theywould not resist it. No word of the Ministerial plot reached the rival campof Artois. The King gained courage, and on the 5th of September signed theOrdonnance which appealed from the Parliament to the nation, and, to theanger and consternation of the Ultra-Royalists, made an end of theintractable Chamber a few weeks before the time which had been fixed forits re-assembling. [Electoral law, 1817. ]France was well rid of a body of men who had been elected at a moment ofdespair, and who would either have prolonged the occupation of the countryby foreign armies, or have plunged the nation into civil war. The electionswhich followed were favourable to the Government. The questions fruitlesslyagitated in the Assembly of 1815 were settled to the satisfaction of thepublic in the new Parliament. An electoral law was passed, which, while itretained the high franchise fixed by the Charta, and the rule of renewingthe Chamber by fifths, gave life and value to the representative system bymaking the elections direct. Though the constituent body of all Francescarcely numbered under this arrangement a hundred thousand persons, it wasextensive enough to contain a majority hostile to the reactionary policy ofthe Church and the noblesse. The men who had made wealth by banking, commerce, or manufactures, the so-called higher bourgeoisie, greatlyexceeded in number the larger landed proprietors; and although they werenot usually democratic in their opinions, they were liberal, and keenlyattached to the modern as against the old institutions of France, inasmuchas their industrial interests and their own personal importance dependedupon the maintenance of the victory won in 1789 against aristocraticprivilege and monopoly. So strong was the hostility between the civicmiddle class and the landed noblesse, that the Ultra-Royalists in theChamber sought, as they had done in the year before, to extend thefranchise to the peasantry, in the hope of overpowering wealth withnumbers. The electoral law, however, passed both Houses in the form inwhich it had been drawn up by the Government. Though deemed narrow andoligarchical by the next generation, it was considered, and with justice, as a great victory won by liberalism at the time. The middle class of GreatBritain had to wait for fifteen years before it obtained anything like theweight in the representation given to the middle class of France by the lawof 1817. [Establishment of financial credit. ]Not many of the persons who had been imprisoned under the provisional actsof the last year now remained in confinement. It was considered necessaryto prolong the Laws of Public Security, and they were re-enacted, but undera much softened form. It remained for the new Chamber to restore thefinancial credit of the country by making some equitable arrangement forsecuring the capital and paying the interest of the unfunded debt. Projectsof repudiation now gained no hearing. Richelieu consented to make an annualallowance to the Church, equivalent to the rental of the Church forests;but the forests themselves were made security for the debt, and the powerof sale was granted to the Government. Pending such repayment of thecapital, the holders of unfunded debt received stock, calculated at itsreal, not at its titular, value. The effect of this measure was at onceevident. The Government was enabled to enter into negotiations for a loan, which promised it the means of paying the indemnities due to the foreignPowers. On this payment depended the possibility of withdrawing the army ofoccupation. Though Wellington at first offered some resistance, thirtythousand men were removed in the spring of 1817; and the Czar allowedRichelieu to hope that, if no further difficulties should arise, thecomplete evacuation of French territory might take place in the followingyear. [Character of the years 1816-18. ]Thus the dangers with which reactionary passion had threatened Franceappeared to be passing away. The partial renovation of the Chamber whichtook place in the autumn of 1817 still further strengthened the Ministry ofRichelieu and weakened the Ultra-Royalist opposition. A few more monthspassed, and before the third anniversary of Waterloo, the Czar was ready toadvise the entire withdrawal of foreign armies from France. An invitationwas issued to the Powers to meet in Conference at Aix-la-Chapelle. Therewas no longer any doubt that the five years' occupation, contemplated whenthe second Treaty of Paris was made, would be abandoned. The good will ofAlexander, the friendliness of his Ambassador, Pozzo di Borgo, who, as anative of Corsica, had himself been a French subject, and who now aspiredto become Minister of France, were powerful influences in favour of LouisXVIII. And his kingdom; much, however, of the speedy restoration ofconfidence was due to the temperate rule of Richelieu. The nation itself, far from suffering from Napoleon's fall, regained something of thespontaneous energy so rich in 1789, so wanting at a later period. The cloudof military disaster lifted; new mental and political life began; and underthe dynasty forced back by foreign arms France awoke to an activity unknownto it while its chief gave laws to Europe. Parliamentary debate offered themeans of legal opposition to those who bore no friendship to the Court:conspiracy, though it alarmed at the moment, had become the resort only ofthe obscure and the powerless. Groups of able men were gathering aroundrecognised leaders, or uniting in defence of a common political creed. ThePress, dumb under Napoleon except for purposes of sycophancy, graduallybecame a power in the land. Even the dishonest eloquence of Chateaubriand, enforcing the principles of legal and constitutional liberty on behalf of aparty which would fain have used every weapon of despotism in its owninterest, proved that the leaden weight that had so long crushed thoughtand 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 andprogress, it was not so with Europe generally. In England they were yearsof almost unparalleled suffering and discontent; in Italy the rule ofAustria grew more and more anti-national; in Prussia, though a vigorouslocal and financial administration hastened the recovery of theimpoverished land, the hopes of liberty declined beneath the revivingenergy of the nobles and the resistance of the friends of absolutism. WhenStein had summoned the Prussian people to take up arms for theirFatherland, he had believed that neither Frederick William nor Alexanderwould allow Prussia to remain without free institutions after the battlewas won. The keener spirits in the War of Liberation had scarcelydistinguished between the cause of national independence and that ofinternal liberty. They returned from the battlefields of Saxony and France, knowing that the Prussian nation had unsparingly offered up life and wealthat the call of patriotism, and believing that a patriot-king would rejoiceto crown his triumph by inaugurating German freedom. For a while the hopeseemed near fulfilment. On the 22nd of May, 1815, Frederick Williampublished an ordinance, declaring that a Representation of the Peopleshould be established. [276] For this end the King stated that the existingProvincial Estates should be re-organised, and new ones founded where noneexisted, and that out of the Provincial Estates the Assembly ofRepresentatives of the country should be chosen. It was added that acommission would be appointed, to organise under Hardenberg's presidencythe system of representation, and to draw up a written Constitution. Theright of discussing all legislative measures affecting person or propertywas promised to the Assembly. Though foreign affairs seemed to be directlyexcluded from parliamentary debate, and the language of the Edict suggestedthat the representative body would only have a consultative voice, withoutthe power either of originating or of rejecting laws, these reservationsonly showed the caution natural on the part of a Government divestingitself for the first time of absolute power. Guarded as it was, the schemelaid down by the King would hardly have displeased the men who had done themost to make constitutional rule in Prussia possible. [Resistance of feudal and autocratic parties. ]But the promise of Frederick William was destined to remain unfulfilled. Itwas no good omen for Prussia that Stein, who had rendered such gloriousservices to his country and to all Europe, was suffered to retire frompublic life. The old court-party at Berlin, politicians who had been forcedto make way for more popular men, landowners who had never pardoned theliberation of the serf, all the interests of absolutism and class-privilegewhich had disappeared for a moment in the great struggle for nationalexistence, gradually re-asserted their influence over the King, andundermined the authority of Hardenberg, himself sinking into old age amidcircumstances of private life that left to old age little of its honour. Todecide even in principle upon the basis to be given to the new PrussianConstitution would have taxed all the foresight and all the constructiveskill of the most experienced statesman; for by the side of the ancientdominion of the Hohenzollerns there were now the Rhenish and the SaxonProvinces, alien in spirit and of doubtful loyalty, in addition to Polishterritory and smaller German districts acquired at intervals between 1792and 1815. Hardenberg was right in endeavouring to link the Constitutionwith something that had come down from the past; but the decision that theGeneral Assembly should be formed out of the Provincial Estates wasprobably an injudicious one; for these Estates, in their present form, weremainly corporations of nobles, and the spirit which animated them was atonce the spirit of class-privilege and of an intensely strong localism. Hardenberg had not only occasioned an unnecessary delay by basing therepresentative system upon a reform of the Provincial Estates, but hadexposed himself to sharp attacks from these very bodies, to whom nothingwas more odious than the absorption of their own dignity by a GeneralAssembly. It became evident that the process of forming a Constitutionwould be a tedious one; and in the meantime the opponents of the popularmovement opened their attack upon the men and the ideas whose influence inthe war of Liberation appeared to have made so great a break between theGerman 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 ofScharnhorst, the re-organiser of the army. Schmalz, contradicting astatement which attributed to him a highly honourable part in the patrioticmovement of 1808, attacked the Tugendbund, and other political associationsdating from that epoch, in language of extreme violence. In the stiff andperemptory manner of the old Prussian bureaucracy, he denied that popularenthusiasm had anything whatever to do with the victory of 1813, [277]attributing the recovery of the nation firstly to its submission to theFrench alliance in 1812, and secondly to the quiet sense of duty withwhich, 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 themof intending to overthrow all established governments, and to force unityupon Germany by means of revolution, murder, and pillage. Stein was notmentioned by name, but the warning was given to men of eminence whoencouraged Jacobinical societies, that in such combinations the giants endby serving the dwarfs. Schmalz's pamphlet, which was written with astrength and terseness of style very unusual in Germany, made a deepimpression, and excited great indignation in Liberal circles. It wasanswered, among other writers, by Niebuhr; and the controversy thickeneduntil King Frederick William, in the interest of public tranquillity, ordered that no more should be said on either side. It was in accordancewith Prussian feeling that the King should thus interfere to stop thequarrels of his subjects. There would have been nothing unseemly in an actof impartial repression. But the King made it impossible to regard his actas of this character. Without consulting Hardenberg, he conferred adecoration upon the author of the controversy. Far-sighted men saw the truebearing of the act. They warned Hardenberg that, if he passed over thisslight, he would soon have to pass over others more serious, and urged himto insist upon the removal of the counsellors on whose advice the King hadacted. [278] But the Minister disliked painful measures. He probablybelieved that no influence could ever supplant his own with the King, andlooked too lightly upon the growth of a body of opponents, who, whether inopen or in concealed hostility to himself, were bent upon hindering thefulfilment 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 workof 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 tocollect opinions upon the form of representation required. Two years passedbefore even this preliminary operation began. In the meantime very littleprogress had been made towards the establishment of constitutionalgovernment 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 representativeinstitutions into actual working. In Hesse, the Elector summoned theEstates, only to dismiss them with contumely when they resisted hisextortions. In most of the minor States contests or negotiations took placebetween the Sovereigns and the ancient Orders, which led to little or noresult. The Federal Diet, which ought to have applied itself to thedetermination of certain principles of public right common to all Germany, remained inactive. Though hope had not yet fallen, a sense of discontentarose, especially among the literary class which had shown such enthusiasmin the War of Liberation. It was characteristic of Germany that the demandfor free government came not from a group of soldiers, as in Spain, notfrom merchants and men of business, as in England, but from professors andstudents, and from journalists, who were but professors in another form. The middle class generally were indifferent: the higher nobility, and theknights who had lost their semi-independence in 1803, sought for therestoration of privileges which were really incompatible with anyState-government whatever. The advocacy of constitutional rule and ofGerman unity was left, in default of Prussian initiative, to the ardentspirits of the Universities and the Press, who naturally exhibited in thetreatment of political problems more fluency than knowledge, and more zealthan discretion. Jena, in the dominion of the Duke of Weimar, became, onaccount of the freedom of printing which existed there, the centre of thenew Liberal journalism. Its University took the lead in the Teutonisingmovement which had been inaugurated by Fichte twelve years before in thedays of Germany's humiliation, and which had now received so vigorous animpulse from the victory won over the foreigner. [The Wartburg Festival, Oct. , 1817. ]On the 18th of October, 1817, the students of Jena, with deputations fromall the Protestant Universities of Germany, held a festival at Eisenach, tocelebrate the double anniversary of the Reformation and of the battle ofLeipzig. Five hundred young patriots, among them scholars who had beendecorated for bravery at Waterloo, bound their brows with oak-leaves, andassembled within the venerable hall of Luther's Wartburg Castle; sang, prayed, preached, and were preached to; dined; drank to German liberty, thejewel of life, to Dr. Martin Luther, the man of God, and to the Grand Dukeof Saxe-Weimar; then descended to Eisenach, fraternised with the Landsturmin the market-place, and attended divine service in the parish churchwithout mishap. In the evening they edified the townspeople withgymnastics, which were now the recognised symbol of German vigour, andlighted a great bonfire on the hill opposite the castle. Throughout theofficial part of the ceremony a reverential spirit prevailed; a few rashwords were, however, uttered against promise-breaking kings, and some ofthe 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 whatthey deemed un-German and illiberal writings. Among these was Schmalz'spamphlet. They also burnt a soldier's strait-jacket, a pigtail, and acorporal's cane, emblems of the military brutalism of past times which werenow being revived in Westphalia. [279] Insignificant as the whole affairwas, 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 thespot. Metternich, who saw conspiracy and revolution everywhere and ineverything, congratulated himself that his less sagacious neighbours wereat length awakening to their danger. The first result of the Wartburgscandal was that the Duke of Weimar had to curtail the liberties of hissubjects. Its further effects became only too evident as time went on. Itleft behind it throughout Germany the impression that there were forces ofdisorder at work in the Press and in the Universities which must be crushedat all cost by the firm hand of Government; and it deepened the anxietywith which King Frederick William was already regarding the promises ofliberty 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 theConferences at Aix-la-Chapelle. In the interval a more important personthan the King of Prussia went over to the side of reaction. Up to thesummer of 1818, the Czar appeared to have abated nothing of his zeal forconstitutional government. In the spring of that year, he summoned thePolish Diet; addressed them in a speech so enthusiastic as to alarm notonly the Court of Vienna but all his own counsellors; and stated in theclearest possible language his intention of extending the benefits of arepresentative system to the whole Russian Empire. [280] At the close ofthe brief session he thanked the Polish Deputies for their boldness inthrowing out a measure proposed by himself. Alexander's popular rhetoric atWarsaw might perhaps be not incompatible with a settled purpose to permitno encroachment on authority either there or elsewhere; but the change inhis tone was so great when he appeared at Aix-la-Chapelle a few monthsafterwards, that some strange and sudden cause has been thought necessaryto explain it. It is said that during the Czar's residence at Moscow, inJune, 1818, the revelation was made to him of the existence of a mass ofsecret societies in the army, whose aim was the overthrow of his ownGovernment. Alexander's father had died by the hands of murderers: his owntemperament, sanguine and emotional, would make the effects of such adiscovery, in the midst of all his benevolent hopes for Russia, poignant tothe last degree. It is not inconsistent either with his character or withearlier events in his personal history that the Czar should have yielded toa single shock of feeling, and have changed in a moment from the liberatorto the despot. But the evidence of what passed in his mind is wanting. Hearsay, conjecture, gossip, abound; [281] the one man who could have toldall has left no word. This only is certain, that from the close of the year1818, the future, hitherto bright with dreams of peaceful progress, becamein 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 tospread knowledge and liberty among mankind, but to defend existingauthority, and even authority that was oppressive and un-Christian, againstthe 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 GreatPowers assembled at Aix-la-Chapelle, and the Conferences began. The firstquestion to be decided was whether the Allied Army might safely bewithdrawn from France; the second, in what form the concert of Europeshould hereafter be maintained. On the first question there was nodisagreement: the evacuation of France was resolved upon and promptlyexecuted. The second question was a more difficult one. Richelieu, onbehalf of King Louis XVIII. , represented that France now stood on the samefooting as any other European Power, and proposed that the QuadrupleAlliance of 1815 should be converted into a genuine European federation byadding France to it as a fifth member. The plan had been communicated tothe English Government, and would probably have received its assent but forthe strong opposition raised by Canning within the Cabinet. Canning took agloomy but a true view of the proposed concert of the Powers. He foresawthat it would really amount to a combination of governments againstliberty. Therefore, while recognising the existing engagements of thiscountry, he urged that England ought to join in no combination except thatto which it had already pledged itself, namely, the combination made withthe definite object of resisting French disturbance. To combine with threePowers to prevent Napoleon or the Jacobins from again becoming masters ofFrance was a reasonable act of policy: to combine with all the Great Powersof Europe against nothing in particular was to place the country on theside of governments against peoples, and to involve England in anyenterprise of repression which the Courts might think fit to undertake. Canning's warning opened the eyes of his colleagues to the view which waslikely to be taken of such a general alliance by Parliament and by publicopinion. Lord Castlereagh was forbidden to make this country a party to anyabstract union of Governments. In memorable words the Prime Ministerdescribed the true grounds for the decision: "We must recollect in thewhole of this business, and ought to make our Allies feel, that the generaland European discussion of these questions will be in the BritishParliament. " [282] Fear of the rising voice of the nation, no longer forcedby military necessities to sanction every measure of its rulers, compelledLords Liverpool and Castlereagh to take account of scruples which were nottheir own. On the same grounds, while the Ministry agreed that Continentaldifficulties which might hereafter arise ought to be settled by a friendlydiscussion among the Great Powers, it declined to elevate this occasionaldeliberation into a system, and to assent to the periodical meeting of aCongress. Peace might or might not be promoted by the frequent gatheringsof Sovereigns and statesmen; but a council so formed, if permanent in itsnature, would necessarily extinguish the independence of every minor State, and hand over the government of all Europe to the Great Courts, if onlythey 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 thatdetermined the form in which the results of the Conference of 1818 wereembodied. In the first place the Quadruple Alliance against Frenchrevolution was renewed, and with such seriousness that the military centreswere fixed, at which, in case of any outbreak, the troops of each of theGreat Powers should assemble. [283] This Treaty, however, was kept secret, in order not to add to the difficulties of Richelieu. The publisheddocuments breathed another spirit. [284] Without announcing an actualalliance with King Louis XVIII. , the Courts, including England, declaredthat through the restoration of legitimate and constitutional monarchyFrance had regained its place in the councils of Europe, and that it wouldhereafter co-operate in maintaining the general peace. For this endmeetings of the sovereigns or their ministers might be necessary; suchmeetings 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 wouldthen be admitted to the sittings. In these guarded words the intention offorming a permanent and organised Court of Control over Europe wasdisclaimed. A manifesto, addressed to the world at large, declared that thesovereigns of the five great States had no other object in their union thanthe maintenance of peace on the basis of existing treaties. They had formedno new political combinations; their rule was the observance ofinternational law; their object the prosperity and moral welfare of theirsubjects. [Repressive tone of the Conference. ][Metternich and Austrian principles henceforth dominant. ]The earnestness with which the statesmen of 1818, while accepting theconditions laid down by England, persevered in the project of a jointregulation of European affairs may suggest the question whether the planwhich they had at heart would not in truth have operated to the benefit ofmankind. The answer is, that the value of any International Council dependsfirstly on the intelligence which it is likely to possess, and secondly onthe degree in which it is really representative. Experience proved that theCongresses which followed 1818 possessed but a limited intelligence, andthat they represented nothing at all but authority. The meeting atAix-la-Chapelle was itself the turning-point in the constitutional historyof Europe. Though no open declaration was made against constitutionalforms, every Sovereign and every minister who attended the Conference leftit with the resolution to draw the reins of government tighter. A note ofalarm had been sounded. Conspiracies in Belgium, an attempt on the life ofWellington, rumours of a plot to rescue Napoleon from St. Helena, combinedwith the outcry against the German Universities and the whispered talesfrom Moscow in filling the minds of statesmen with apprehensions. Thechange which had taken place in Alexander himself was of the most seriousmoment. Up to this time Metternich, the leader of European Conservatism, had felt that in the Czar there were sympathies with Liberalism andenlightenment which made the future of Europe doubtful. [285] To check thedissolution of existing power, to suppress all tendency to change, was thehabitual object of Austria, and the Czar was the one person who had seemedlikely to prevent the principles of Austria from becoming the law ofEurope. Elsewhere Metternich had little to fear in the way of opposition. Hardenberg, broken in health and ill-supported by his King, had ceased tobe a power. Yielding to the apprehensions of Frederick William, perhapswith the hope of dispelling them at some future time, he took his placeamong 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 merereflex of Austrian inaction and repression. [286] England, so long as itwas represented on the Continent by Castlereagh and Wellington, scarcelycounted for anything on the side of liberty. The sudden change in Alexanderremoved the one check that stood in Austria's way; and from this timeMetternich exercised an authority in Europe such as few statesmen have everpossessed. His influence, overborne by that of the Czar during 1814 and1815, struck root at the Conference of Aix-la-Chapelle, maintained itselfunimpaired during five eventful years, and sank only when the death of LordCastlereagh allowed the real voice of England once more to be heard, andCanning, too late to forbid the work of repression in Italy and in Spain, inaugurated, after an interval of forced neutrality, that worthier concertwhich 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 togive way, Metternich certainly proved himself one in 1818. Before the endof the Conference he delivered to Hardenberg and to the King of Prussia twopapers containing a complete set of recommendations for the management ofPrussian affairs. The contents of these documents were singular enough: itis still more singular that they form the history of what actually tookplace in Prussia during the succeeding years. Starting with the assumptionthat the party of revolution had found its lever in the promise of KingFrederick William to create a Representative System, Metternichdemonstrated in polite language to the very men who had made this promise, that any central Representation would inevitably overthrow the PrussianState; pointed out that the King's dominions consisted of seven Provinces;and recommended Frederick William to fulfil his promise only by giving toeach Province a Diet for the discussion of its own local concerns. Havingthus warned the King against creating a National Parliament, like thatwhich had thrown France into revolution in 1789, Metternich exhibited thespecific dangers of the moment and the means of overcoming them. Thesedangers were Universities, Gymnastic establishments, and the Press. "Therevolutionists, " he said, "despairing of effecting their aim themselves, have formed the settled plan of educating the next generation forrevolution. The Gymnastic establishment is a preparatory school forUniversity disorders. The University seizes the youth as he leaves boyhood, and gives him a revolutionary training. This mischief is common to allGermany, and must be checked by joint action of the Governments. Gymnasia, on the contrary, were invented at Berlin, and spring from Berlin. Forthese, palliative measures are no longer sufficient. It has become a dutyof State for the King of Prussia to destroy the evil. The whole institutionin every shape must be closed and uprooted. " With regard to the abuse ofthe Press, Metternich contented himself with saying that a difference oughtto be made between substantial books and mere pamphlets or journals; andthat the regulation of the Press throughout Germany at large could only beeffected by an agreement between Austria and Prussia. [287][Stourdza's pamphlet. ]With a million men under arms, the Sovereigns who had overthrown Napoleontrembled because thirty or forty journalists and professors pitched theirrhetoric rather too high, and because wise heads did not grow uponschoolboys' shoulders. The Emperor Francis, whose imagination had failed torise to the glories of the Holy Alliance, alone seems to have had somesuspicion of the absurdity of the present alarms. [288] The Czardistinguished himself by his zeal against the lecturers who were turningthe world upside down. As if Metternich had not frightened the Congressenough already, the Czar distributed at Aix-la-Chapelle a pamphletpublished by one Stourdza, a Moldavian, which described Germany as on thebrink of revolution, and enumerated half a score of mortal disorders whichracked that unfortunate country. The chief of all was the vicious system ofthe Universities, which instead of duly developing the vessel of theChristian State from the cradle of Moses, [289] brought up young men to bedespisers of law and instruments of a licentious Press. The ingeniousMoldavian, whose expressions in some places bear a singular resemblance tothose of Alexander, while in others they are actually identical withreflections of Metternich's not then published, went on to enlighten theGerman Governments as to the best means of rescuing their subjects fromtheir perilous condition. Certain fiscal and administrative changes werebriefly suggested, but the main reform urged was exactly that propounded byMetternich, the enforcement of a better discipline and of a morerigidly-prescribed course of study at the Universities, along with thesupervision of all journals and periodical literature. [The murder of Kotzebue, March 23, 1819. ]Stourdza's pamphlet, in which loose reasoning was accompanied by thecoarsest invective, would have gained little attention if it had dependedon its own merits or on the reputation of its author: it became a differentmatter when it was known to represent the views of the Czar. A vehement butnatural outcry arose at the Universities against this interference of theforeigner with German domestic affairs. National independence, it seemed, had been won in the deadly struggle against France only in order thatinternal liberty, the promised fruit of this independence, should besacrificed at the bidding of Russia. The Czar himself was out of reach: thevengeance of outraged patriotism fell upon an insignificant person who hadthe misfortune to be regarded as his principal agent. A dramatic authorthen famous, now forgotten, August Kotzebue, held the office of Russianagent in Central Germany, and conducted a newspaper whose object was tothrow ridicule on the national movement of the day, and especially on thoseassociations of students where German enthusiasm reached its climax. Manycircumstances embittered popular feeling against this man, and caused himto be regarded less as a legitimate enemy than as a traitor and anapostate. Kotzebue had himself been a student at Jena, and at one time hadturned liberal sentiments to practical account in his plays. Literaryjealousies and wounded vanity had subsequently alienated him from hiscountry, and made him the willing and acrid hireling of a foreign Court. The reports which, as Russian agent, he sent to St. Petersburg weredoubtless as offensive as the attacks on the Universities which hepublished in his journal; but it was an extravagant compliment to the manto imagine that he was the real author of the Czar's desertion fromLiberalism to reaction. This, however, was the common belief, and it costKotzebue dear. A student from Erlangen, Carl Sand, who had accompanied thestandard at the Wartburg festival, formed the silent resolve of sacrificinghis own life in order to punish the enemy of his country. Sand was a man ofpure and devout, though ill-balanced character. His earlier life marked himas 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 oftendied to free their country from Turkish oppression, and formed thedeplorable conclusion that by murdering a decayed dramatist he could strikesome great blow against the powers of evil. [290] He sought the unfortunateKotzebue in the midst of his family, stabbed him to the heart, and thenturned his weapon against himself. Recovering from his wounds, he wascondemned 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 atonce 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 apeaceful alliance of Sovereigns on religious principles, was not likely tomake allowance for a kind of piety that sent young rebels over the countryon missions of murder. The Austrian statesman was in Rome when the news ofKotzebue's assassination reached him. He saw that the time had come forunited action throughout Germany, and, without making any public utterance, drew up a scheme of repressive measures, and sent out proposals for agathering of the Ministers of all the principal German Courts. In thesummer he travelled slowly northwards, met the King of Prussia at Teplitz, in Bohemia, and shortly afterwards opened the intended Conference ofMinisters in the neighbouring town of Carlsbad. A number of innocentpersons had already, at his instigation, been arrested in Prussia and otherStates, under circumstances deeply discreditable to Government. Privatepapers were seized, and garbled extracts from them published in officialprints as proof of guilt. [291] "By the help of God, " Metternich wrote, "Ihope to defeat the German Revolution, just as I vanquished the conqueror ofthe world. The revolutionists thought me far away, because I was fivehundred leagues off. They deceived themselves; I have been in the midst ofthem, and now I am striking my blows. " [292] Metternich's plan was toenforce throughout Germany, by means of legislation in the Federal Diet, the principle which he had already privately commended to the King ofPrussia. There were two distinct objects of policy before him: the first, to prevent the formation in any German State of an assembly representingthe whole community, like the English House of Commons or the FrenchChamber of Deputies; the second, to establish a general system ofcensorship over the Press and over the Universities, and to create acentral authority, vested, as the representative of the Diet, withinquisitorial 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 beenrendered more difficult by recent acts of the Governments of Bavaria andBaden. A singular change had taken place in the relation between Prussiaand the Minor States which had formerly constituted the Federation of theRhine. When, at the Congress of Vienna, Prussian statesmen had endeavouredto limit the arbitrary rule of petty sovereigns by charging the Diet withthe protection of constitutional right over all Germany, the Kings ofBavaria and Würtemberg had stoutly refused to part with sovereign power. Tosubmit to a law of liberty, as it then seemed, was to lose their ownseparate existence, and to reduce themselves to dependence upon theJacobins of Berlin. This apprehension governed the policy of the MinorCourts from 1813 to 1815. But since that time events had taken anunexpected turn. Prussia, which once threatened to excite popular movementover all Germany in its own interest, had now accepted Metternich'sguidance, and made its representative in the Diet the mouthpiece ofAustrian interest and policy. It was no longer from Berlin but from Viennathat the separate existence of the Minor States was threatened. The twogreat Courts were uniting against the independence of their weakerneighbours. The danger of any popular invasion of kingly rights in the nameof German unity had passed away, and the safety of the lesser sovereignsseemed now to lie not in resisting the spirit of constitutional reform butin appealing to it. In proportion as Prussia abandoned itself toMetternich's direction, the Governments of the South-Western Statesfamiliarised themselves with the idea of a popular representation; and atthe very time when the conservative programme was being drawn up for theCongress 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 representationestablished was not merely provincial, according to Metternich's plan, orwholly on the principle of separate Estates or Orders, as before theRevolution, but to some extent on the type of England and France, where theLower Chamber, in theory, represented the public at large. This was enoughto make Metternich condemn the new Constitutions as radically bad andrevolutionary. [293] He was, however, conscious of the difficulty of makinga direct attack upon them. This task he reserved for a later time. Hispolicy at present was to obtain a declaration from the Diet which shouldprevent any other Government within the League from following in the samepath; while, by means of Press-laws, supervision of the Universities, and acentral commission of inquiry, he expected to make the position ofrebellious professors and agitators so desperate that the forces ofdisorder, themselves not deeply rooted in German nature, would presentlydisappear. [Conference of Carlsbad, Aug. , 1819. ]The Conference of Ministers at Carlsbad, which in the memory of the Germanpeople is justly associated with the suppression of their liberty for anentire generation, began and ended in the month of August, 1819. Thoughattended by the representatives of eight German Governments, it did littlemore than register the conclusions which Metternich had already formed. [294] The zeal with which the envoy of Prussia supported every repressivemeasure made it useless for the Ministers of the Minor Courts to offer anopen opposition. Nothing more was required than that the Diet shouldformally sanction the propositions thus privately accepted by all theleading Ministers. On the 20th of September this sanction was given. TheDiet, which had sat for three years without framing a single useful law, ratified all Metternich's oppressive enactments in as many hours. It wasordered that in every State within the Federation the Government shouldtake measures for preventing the publication of any journal or pamphletexcept after licence given, and each Government was declared responsible tothe Federation at large for any objectionable writing published within itsown territory. The Sovereigns were required to appoint civil commissionersat the Universities, whose duty it should be to enforce public order and togive a salutary direction to the teaching of the professors. They were alsorequired to dismiss all professors who should overstep the bounds of theirduty, and such dismissed persons were prohibited from being employed in anyother State. It was enacted that within fifteen days of the passing of thedecree an extraordinary Commission should assemble at Mainz to investigatethe origin and extent of the secret revolutionary societies whichthreatened the safety of the Federation. The Commission was empowered toexamine and, if necessary, to arrest any subject of any German State. Alllaw-courts and other authorities were required to furnish it withinformation and with documents, and to undertake all inquiries which theCommission might order. The Commission, however, was not a law-courtitself: its duty was to report to the Diet, which would then create suchjudicial 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 toraise to the rank of organic laws, and to incorporate with the Act of 1815, which formed the basis of the German Federation. The conferences ofMinisters were accordingly resumed after a short interval, but at Viennainstead of at Carlsbad. They lasted for several months, a strongeropposition being now made by the Minor States than before. A second body offederal law was at length drawn up, and accepted by the Diet on the 8th ofJune, 1820. [296] The most important of its provisions was that whichrelated to the Constitutions admissible within the German League. It wasdeclared that in every State, with the exception of the four free cities, supreme power resided in the Sovereign and in him alone, and that noConstitution might do more than bind the Sovereign to co-operate with theEstates in certain definite acts of government. [297]In cases where a Government either appealed for help against rebellioussubjects, or was notoriously unable to exert authority, the Diet chargeditself with the duty of maintaining public order. [The reaction in Prussia. ]From this time whatever liberty existed in Germany was to be found in theMinor States, in Bavaria and Baden, and in Würtemberg, which received aConstitution a few days before the enrolment of the decrees of Carlsbad. InPrussia the reaction carried everything before it. Humboldt, the best andmost liberal of the Ministers, resigned, protesting in vain against theignominious part which the King had determined to play. He was followed bythose of his colleagues whose principles were dearer to them than theirplaces. Hardenberg remained in office, a dying man, isolated, neglected, thwarted; clinging to some last hope of redeeming his promises to thePrussian people, yet jealous of all who could have given him true aid;dishonouring by tenacity of place a career associated with so much of hiscountry's glory, and ennobled in earlier days by so much fortitude in timeof evil. There gathered around the King a body of men who could see in thegreat patriotic efforts and reforms of the last decade nothing but anencroachment of demagogues on the rights of power. They were willing thatPrussia should receive its orders from Metternich and serve a foreign Courtin the work of repression, rather than that it should take its place at thehead of all Germany on the condition of becoming a free and constitutionalState. [298] The stigma of disloyalty was attached to all who had kindledpopular enthusiasm in 1808 and 1812. To have served the nation was to havesinned against the Government. Stein was protected by his great name fromattack, but not from calumny. His friend Arndt, whose songs and addresseshad so powerfully moved the heart of Germany during the War of Liberation, was subjected to repeated legal process, and, although unconvicted of anyoffence, was suspended from the exercise of his professorship for twentyyears. Other persons, whose fault at the most was to have worked for Germanunity, were brought before special tribunals, and after long trial eitherrefused a public acquittal or sentenced to actual imprisonment. Freeteaching, free discussion, ceased. The barrier of authority closed everyavenue of political thought. Everywhere the agent of the State prescribedan 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 wasmore energetically carried out in Prussia than elsewhere, was the existenceof a conspiracy or agitation for the overthrow of Governments and of thepresent constitution of the German League. It was stated that proofsexisted of the intention to establish by force a Republic one andindivisible, like that of France in 1793. But the very Commission which wasinstituted by the Carlsbad Ministers to investigate the origin and natureof this conspiracy disproved its existence. The Commission assembled atMainz, examined several hundred persons and many thousand documents, andafter two years' labour delivered a report to the Diet. The report wentback to the time of Fichte's lectures and the formation of the Tugendbundin 1808, traced the progress of all the students' associations and otherpatriotic societies from that time to 1820; and, while exhibiting in theworst possible light the aims and conduct of the advocates of German unity, acknowledged that scarcely a single proof had been discovered oftreasonable practice, and that the loyalty of the mass of the people wasitself a sufficient guarantee against the impulses of the evil-minded. [299] Such was the impression of triviality and imposture produced at theDiet by this report, that the representatives of several States proposedthat the Commission should forthwith be dissolved as useless andunnecessary. This, however, could not be tolerated by Metternich and hisnew disciples. The Commission was allowed to continue in existence, andwith it the regime of silence and repression. The measures which had beenaccepted at Carlsbad as temporary and provisional became more and more apart of the habitual system of government. Prosecutions succeeded oneanother; letters were opened; spies attended the lectures of professors andthe meetings of students; the newspapers were everywhere prohibited fromdiscussing German affairs. In a country where there were so many printersand so many readers journalism could not altogether expire. It was stillpermissible to give the news and to offer an opinion about foreign lands:and for years to come the Germans, like beggars regaling themselves withthe scents from rich men's kitchens, [300] followed every stage of thepolitical struggles that were agitating France, England, and Spain, whilethey were not allowed to express a desire or to formulate a grievance oftheir own. [Prussian Provincial Estates, June, 1823. ][Redeeming features of Prussian absolutism. ]In the year 1822 Hardenberg died. All hope of a fulfilment of the promisesmade in Prussia in 1815 had already become extinct. Not many months afterthe Minister's death, King Frederick William established the ProvincialEstates which had been recommended to him by Metternich, and announced thatthe creation of a central representative system would be postponed untilsuch time as the King should think fit to introduce it. This meant that theproject was finally abandoned; and Prussia in consequence remained withouta Parliament until the Revolution of 1848 was at the door. The ProvincialEstates, with which the King affected to temper absolute rule, met onlyonce in three years. Their function was to express an opinion upon localmatters when consulted by the Government: their enemies said that they werearistocratic and did harm, their partizans could not pretend that they didmuch good. In the bitterness of spirit with which, at a later time, thefriends of liberty denounced the betrayal of the cause of freedom by thePrussian Court, a darker colour has perhaps been introduced into thehistory of this period than really belongs to it. The wrongs sustained bythe Prussian nation have been compared to those inflicted by the despotismof Spain. But, however contemptible the timidity of King Frederick William, however odious the ingratitude shown to the truest friends of King andpeople, the Government of 1819 is not correctly represented in such aparallel. To identify the thousand varieties of wrong under the common nameof oppression, is to mistake words for things, and to miss thecharacteristic features which distinguish nations from one another. Thegreatest evils which a Government can inflict upon its subjects areprobably religious persecution, wasteful taxation, and the denial ofjustice in the daily affairs of life. None of these were present in Prussiaduring the darkest days of reaction. The hand of oppression fell heavily onsome of the best and some of the most enlightened men; it violatedinterests so precious as those of free criticism and free discussion ofpublic affairs; but the great mass of the action of Government was never onthe side of evil. The ordinary course of justice was still pure, theadministration conscientious and thrifty. The system of popular education, which for the first time placed Prussia in advance of Saxony and otherGerman States, dates from these years of warfare against liberty. Areactionary despotism built the schools and framed the laws whosereproduction in free England half a century later is justly regarded as thechief of all the liberal measures of our day. So strong, so lasting, wasthat vital tradition which made monarchy in Prussia an instrument for theexecution 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 inthe system of coercion which Metternich established in 1819. Patient asthe Germans were, loyal as they had proved themselves to Frederick Williamand to worse princes through good and evil, the galling disappointment ofnoble hopes, the silencing of the Press, the dissolution of societies, --calumnies, expulsions, prosecutions, --embittered many an honest mindagainst authority. The Commission of Mainz did not find conspirators, butit made them. As years went by, and all the means of legitimately workingfor the improvement of German public life were one after anotherextinguished, 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 enrolledthemselves against existing power, a new body of ideas supplanted the oldloyal belief in the regeneration of Germany by its princes. TheParliamentary struggles of France, the revolutionary movements in Italy andin Spain which began at this epoch, drew the imagination away from thatpictured restoration of a free Teutonic past which had proved so barren ofresult, and set in its place the idea of a modern universal or EuropeanLiberalism. The hatred against France, especially among the younger men, disappeared. A distinction was made between the tyrant Napoleon and thepeople who were now giving to the rest of the Continent the example of afree and animated public life, and illuminating the age with a politicalliterature so systematic and so ingenious that it seemed almost like apolitical philosophy. The debates in the French Assembly, the writings ofFrench publicists, became the school of the Germans. Paris regained inforeign eyes something of the interest that it had possessed in 1789. Eachvictory or defeat of the French popular cause awoke the joy or the sorrowof German Liberals, to whom all was blank at home: and when at length thethrone of the Bourbons fell, the signal for deliverance seemed to havesounded 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 andreaction, wavering in 1815, definitely fell to the side of reaction at theCongress of Aix-la-Chapelle. It remains to trace the course of events whichin France itself suspended the peaceful progress of the nation, and threwpower for some years into the hands of a faction which belonged to thepast. The measures carried by Decazes in 1817, which gave so muchsatisfaction to the French, were by no means viewed with the same approvaleither at London or at Vienna. The two principal of these were theElectoral Law, and a plan of military reorganisation which brought backgreat numbers of Napoleon's old officers and soldiers to the army. Richelieu, though responsible as the head of the Ministry, felt very gravefears as to the results of this legislation. He had already become anxiousand distressed when the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle met; and the eventswhich took place in France during his absence, as well as thecommunications which passed between himself and the foreign Ministers, convinced him that a change of internal policy was necessary. The busy mindof Metternich had already been scheming against French Liberalism. Alarmedat the energy shown by Decazes, the Austrian statesman had formed thedesign of reconciling Artois and the Ultra-Royalists to the King'sGovernment; and he now urged Richelieu, if his old opponents could bebrought to reason, to place himself at the head of a coalition of all theconservative elements in the State. [302] While the Congress ofAix-la-Chapelle was sitting, the partial elections for the year 1818, thesecond under the new Electoral Law, took place. Among the deputies returnedthere were some who passed for determined enemies of the Bourbonrestoration, especially Lafayette, whose name was so closely associatedwith the humiliations of the Court in 1789. Richelieu received the newswith dismay, and on his return to Paris took steps which ended in thedismissal of Decazes, and the offer of a seat in the Cabinet to Villèle, the Ultra-Royalist leader. But the attempted combination failed. Richelieuaccordingly withdrew from office; and a new Ministry was formed, of whichDecazes, who had proved himself more powerful than his assailants, was thereal though not the nominal chief. [Election of Grégoire, Sept. , 1819. ]The victory of the young and popular statesman was seen with extremedispleasure 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 KingLouis XVIII. Enabled Decazes to hold his own against the combinations ofhis opponents and the ill-will of all the most powerful men in Europe. Anattack made on the Electoral Law by the Upper House was defeated by thecreation of sixty new Peers, among whom there were several who had beenexpelled in 1815. But the forces of Liberalism soon passed beyond theMinister's own control, and his steady dependence upon Louis XVIII. Nowraised against him as resolute an opposition among the enemies of the Houseof Bourbon as among the Ultra-Royalists. In the elections of 1819 thecandidates of the Ministry were beaten by men of more pronounced opinions. Among the new members there was one whose victory caused great astonishmentand alarm. The ex-bishop Grégoire, one of the authors of the destruction ofthe old French Church in 1790, and mover of the resolution whichestablished the Republic in 1792, was brought forward from his retirementand elected Deputy by the town of Grenoble. To understand the panic causedby this election we must recall, not the events of the Revolution, but thelegends of them which were current in 1819. The history of Grégoire by nomeans justifies the outcry which was raised against him; his real actions, however, formed the smallest part of the things that were alleged orbelieved by his enemies. It was said he had applauded the execution of KingLouis XVI. , when he had in fact protested against it: [303] his courageousadherence to the character of a Christian priest throughout the worst daysof the Convention, his labours in organising the Constitutional Church whenthe choice lay between that and national atheism, were nothing, or worsethan nothing, in the eyes of men who felt themselves to be the despoiledheirs of that rich and aristocratic landed society, called the FeudalChurch, which Grégoire had been so active in breaking up. Unluckily forhimself, Grégoire, though humane in action, had not abstained from therhodomontades against kings in general which were the fashion in 1793. Louis XVIII. , forgetting that he had himself lately made the regicideFouché a Minister, interpreted Grégoire's election by the people ofGrenoble, to which the Ultra-Royalists had cunningly contributed, as athreat against the Bourbon family. He showed the displeasure usual with himwhen any slight was offered to his personal dignity, and drew nearer to hisbrother Artois and the Ultra-Royalists, whom he had hitherto shunned as hisfavourite Minister's worst enemies. Decazes, true to his character as theKing's friend, now confessed that he had gone too far in the legislation of1817, and that the Electoral Law, under which such a monster as Grégoirecould gain a seat, required to be altered. A project of law was sketched, designed to restore the preponderance in the constituencies to the landedaristocracy. Grégoire's election was itself invalidated; and the Ministerswho refused to follow Decazes in his new policy of compromise weredismissed 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 astronger Government than that of Louis XVIII. Into excesses of reaction. The heirs to the Crown next in succession to the Count of Artois were histwo sons, the Dukes of Angoulême and Berry. Angoulême was childless; theDuke of Berry was the sole hope of the elder Bourbon line, which, if heshould die without a son, would, as a reigning house, become extinct, theCrown of France not descending to a female. [304] The circumstance whichmade Berry's life so dear to Royalists made his destruction theall-absorbing purpose of an obscure fanatic, who abhorred the Bourbonfamily as the lasting symbol of the foreigner's victory over France. Louvel, a working man, had followed Napoleon to exile in Elba. Afterreturning to his country he had dogged the footsteps of the Bourbon princesfor years together, waiting for the chance of murder. On the night of the13th of February, 1820, he seized the Duke of Berry as he was leaving theOpera House, and plunged a knife into his breast. The Duke lingered forsome hours, and expired early the next morning in the presence of KingLouis 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 ofLouvel's intention. But it was impossible that political passion shouldawait the quiet investigation of a law-court. No murder ever produced astronger outburst of indignation among the governing classes, or was moreskilfully turned to the advantage of party. The Liberals felt that theircause was lost. While fanatical Ultra-Royalists, abandoning themselves to acredulity worthy of the Reign of Terror, accused Decazes himself ofcomplicity with the assassin, their leaders fixed upon the policy which wasto be imposed on the King. It was in vain that Decazes brought forward hisreactionary Electoral Law, and proposed to invest the officers of Statewith arbitrary powers of arrest and to re-establish the censorship of thePress. The Count of Artois insisted upon the dismissal of the Minister, asthe only consolation which could be given to him for the murder of his sonThe King yielded; and, as an Ultra-Royalist administration was not yetpossible, Richelieu unwillingly returned to office, assured by Artois thathis friends had no other desire than to support his own firm and temperaterule. [Progress of the reaction in France. ][Ultra-Royalist Ministry, Dec. , 1821. ][The Congregation. ]Returning to power under such circumstances, Richelieu became, in spite ofhimself, the Minister of reaction. The Press was fettered, the legalsafeguards of personal liberty were suspended, the electoral system wastransformed by a measure which gave a double vote to men of large property. So violent were the passions which this retrograde march of Governmentexcited, that for a moment Paris seemed to be on the verge of revolution. Tumultuous scenes occurred in the streets; but the troops, on whomeverything depended, obeyed the orders given to them, and the danger passedaway. The first elections under the new system reduced the Liberal party toimpotence, and brought back to the Chamber a number of men who had sat inthe reactionary Parliament of 1816. Villèle and other Ultra-Royalists wereinvited to join Richelieu's Cabinet. For awhile it seemed as if thepassions of Church and aristocracy might submit to the curb of a practicalstatesmanship, friendly, if not devoted, to their own interests. Butrestraint was soon cast aside. The Count of Artois saw the road to poweropen, and broke his promise of supporting the Minister who had taken officeat his request. Censured and thwarted in the Chamber of Deputies, Richelieuconfessed that he had undertaken a hopeless task, and bade farewell topublic life. King Louis, now nearing the grave, could struggle no longeragainst the brother who was waiting to ascend his throne. The next Ministrywas nominated not by the King but by Artois. Around Villèle, the real headof the Cabinet, there was placed a body of men who represented not the newFrance, or even that small portion of it which was called to exercise theactive rights of citizenship, but the social principles of a past age, andthat Catholic or Ultramontane revival which was now freshening the surfacebut not stirring the depths of the great mass of French religiousindifference. A religious society known as the Congregation, which hadstruck its first roots under the storm of Republican persecution, and grownup during the Empire, a solitary yet unobserved rallying-place for Catholicopponents of Napoleon's despotism, now expanded into a great organism ofgovernment. The highest in blood and in office sought membership in it: itspatronage raised ambitious men to the stations they desired, its hostilitymade itself felt against the small as well as against the great. The spiritwhich now gained the ascendancy in French government was clerical even morethan it was aristocratic. It was monarchical too, but rather from disliketo the secularist tone of Liberalism and from trust in the orthodoxy of theCount of Artois than from any fixed belief in absolutist principles. Theremight be good reason to oppose King Louis XVIII. ; but what priest, whatnoble, could doubt the divine right of a prince who was ready to compensatethe impoverished emigrants out of the public funds, and to commit the wholesystem 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 inopposition to the Bourbon Government, there had been no moral changecorresponding to that which made so great a difference between thegoverning authority of 1819 and that of 1822. Public opinion, thoughstrongly affected, was not converted into something permanently unlikeitself by the murder of the Duke of Berry. The courtiers, the devotees, thegreat ladies, who had laid a bold hand upon power, had not the nation ontheir side, although for a while the nation bore their sway submissively. But the fate of the Bourbon monarchy was in fact decided when Artois andhis confidants became its representatives. France might have forgotten thatthe Bourbons owed their throne to foreign victories; it could not begoverned in perpetuity by what was called the _Parti Prêtre_. Twentyyears taken from the burden of age borne by Louis XVIII. , twenty years ofpower given to Decazes, might have prolonged the rule of the restoredfamily perhaps for some generations. If military pride found smallsatisfaction in the contrast between the Napoleonic age and that whichimmediately succeeded it, there were enough parents who valued the blood oftheir children, there were enough speakers and writers who valued theliberty of discussion, enough capitalists who valued quiet times, for thenew order to be recognised as no unhopeful one. France has indeed seldomhad a better government than it possessed between 1816 and 1820, nor couldan equal period be readily named during which the French nation, as awhole, enjoyed greater happiness. [General causes of the victory of reaction in Europe. ]Political reaction had reached its full tide in Europe generally about fiveyears after the end of the great war. The phenomena were by no means thesame in all countries, nor were the accidents of personal influence withouta large share in the determination of events: yet, underlying alldifferences, we may trace the operation of certain great causes which werenot limited by the boundaries of individual States. The classes in whichany fixed belief in constitutional government existed were nowhere verylarge; outside the circle of state officials there was scarcely any one whohad had experience in the conduct of public affairs. In some countries, asin Russia and Prussia, the conception of progress towards self-governmenthad belonged in the first instance to the holders of power: it hadexercised the imagination of a Czar, or appealed to the understanding of aPrussian Minister, eager, in the extremity of ruin, to develop everyelement of worth and manliness existing within his nation. The cooling of awarm fancy, the disappearance of external dangers, the very agitation whicharose 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 andMinisters who for a moment had attached themselves to constitutionaltheories there stood the old privileged orders, or what remained of them, the true party of reaction, eager to fan the first misgivings and alarms ofSovereigns, and to arrest a development more prejudicial to their own powerand importance than to the dignity and security of the Crown. Further, there existed throughout Europe the fatal and ineradicable tradition of theconvulsions of the first Revolution, and of the horrors of 1793. No votaryof absolutism, no halting and disquieted friend of freedom, could ever beat a loss for images of woe in presaging the results of popularsovereignty; and the action of one or two infatuated assassins owed itswide influence on Europe chiefly to the ancient name and memory ofJacobinism. There was also in the very fact that Europe had been restored to peace bythe united efforts of all the governments something adverse to the successof a constitutional or a Liberal party in any State. Constitutional systemshad indeed been much praised at the Congress of Vienna; but the group ofmen who actually controlled Europe in 1815, and who during the fivesucceeding years continued in correspondence and in close personalintercourse with one another, had, with one exception, passed their livesin the atmosphere of absolute government, and learnt to regard the conductof all great affairs as the business of a small number of very eminentindividuals. 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 isindeed in the correspondence of the English Minister himself, and inrelation to subjects of purely domestic government in England, that thecommunity of thought which now existed between all the leading statesmen ofEurope finds its most singular exhibition. Both Metternich and Hardenbergtook as much interest in the suppression of Lancashire Radicalism, and inthe measures of coercion which the British Government thought it necessaryto pass in the year 1819, as in the chastisement of rebellious pamphleteersupon the Rhine, and in the dissolution of the students' clubs at Jena. Itwas indeed no very great matter for the English people, who were now closeupon an era of reform, that Castlereagh received the congratulations ofVienna and Berlin for suspending the Habeas Corpus Act and the right ofpublic meeting, [305] or that Metternich believed that no one but himselfknew the real import of the shouts with which the London mob greeted SirFrancis Burdett. [306] Neither the impending reform of the English CriminalLaw nor the emancipation of Irish Catholics resulted from the enlightenmentof foreign Courts, or could be hindered by their indifference. But on theContinent of Europe the progress towards constitutional freedom was indeedlikely to be a slow and a chequered one when the Ministers of absolutismformed so close and intimate a band, when the nations contained within themsuch small bodies of men in any degree versed in public affairs, and whenthe institutions on which it was proposed to base the liberty of the futurewere so destitute of that strength which springs from connection with thepast. CHAPTER XIV. Movements in the Mediterranean States beginning in 1820--Spain from 1814 to1820--The South American Colonies--The Army at Cadiz: Action of Quirogaand Riego--Movement at Corunna--Ferdinand accepts the Constitution of1812--Naples from 1815 to 1820--The Court-party, the Muratists, theCarbonari--The Spanish Constitution proclaimed at Naples--Constitutionalmovement in Portugal--Alexander's proposal with regard to Spain--TheConference and Declaration of Troppau--Protest of England--Conference ofLaibach--The Austrians invade Naples and restore absolute Monarchy--Insurrection in Piedmont, which fails--Spain from 1820 to 1822--Death ofCastlereagh--The Congress of Verona--Policy of England--The French invadeSpain--Restoration of absolute Monarchy, and violence of the reaction--England prohibits the conquest of the Spanish Colonies by France, andsubsequently recognises their independence--Affairs in Portugal--Canningsends troops to Lisbon--The Policy of Canning--Estimate of his place in thehistory 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 heritagewhich, under Providence, their own parental care was henceforth to guardagainst the assaults of malice and revolution, they had fixed their gazechiefly on France, Germany, and the Netherlands, as the regions mostthreatened by the spirit of change. The forecast was not an accurate one. In each of these countries Government proved during the succeeding years tobe much more than a match for its real or imaginary foes: it was in theMediterranean States, which had excited comparatively little anxiety, thatthe first successful attack was made upon established power. Threemovements arose successively in the three southern peninsulas, at the timewhen Metternich was enjoying the silence which he had imposed upon Germany, and the Ultra-Royalists of France were making good the advantage which thecrime of an individual and the imprudence of a party had thrown into theirhands. In Spain and in Italy a body of soldiers rose on behalf ofconstitutional government: in Greece a nation rose against the rule of theforeigner. In all three countries the issue of these movements was, after alonger or shorter interval, determined by the Northern Powers. All threemovements were at first treated as identical in their character, and allalike condemned as the work of Jacobinism. But the course of events, and achange of persons in the government of one great State, brought about atruer view of the nature of the struggle in Greece. The ultimate action ofEurope in the affairs of that country was different from its action in theaffairs of Italy and Spain. It is now only remembered as an instance ofpolitical recklessness or stupidity that a conflict of race against raceand of religion against religion should for a while have been confused bysome of the leading Ministers of Europe with the attempt of a party to makethe form of domestic government more liberal. The Hellenic rising hadindeed no feature in common with the revolutions of Naples and Cadiz; and, although in order of time the opening of the Greek movement long precededthe close of the Spanish movement, the historian, who has neither thepolitician's motive for making a confusion, nor the protection of hisexcuse 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 foundin existence on his return to his country, had conducted himself as if hisobject had been to show to what lengths a legitimate monarch might abusethe fidelity of his subjects and defy the public opinion of Europe. Theleaders of the Cortes, whom he had arrested in 1814, after being declaredinnocent by one tribunal after another were sentenced to long terms ofimprisonment by an arbitrary decree of the King, without even the pretenceof judicial forms. Men who had been conspicuous in the struggle of thenation against Napoleon were neglected or disgraced; many of the highestposts were filled by politicians who had played a double part, or had evenserved under the invader. Priests and courtiers intrigued for influenceover the King; even when a capable Minister was placed in power through thepressure of the ambassadors, and the King's name was set to edicts ofadministrative reform, these edicts were made a dead letter by the powerfulband who lived upon the corruption of the public service. Nothing wassacred except the interest of the clergy; this, however, was enough to keepthe rural population on the King's side. The peasant, who knew that hishouse would not now be burnt by the French, and who heard that truereligion had at length triumphed over its enemies, understood, and cared tounderstand, nothing more. Rumours of kingly misgovernment and oppressionscarcely reached his ears. Ferdinand was still the child of Spain and ofthe Church; his return had been the return of peace; his rule was thevictory of the Catholic faith. [The nation satisfied: the officers discontented. ]But the acquiescence of the mass of the people was not shared by theofficers of the army and the educated classes in the towns. The overthrowof the Constitution was from the first condemned by soldiers who had wondistinction under the government of the Cortes; and a series of militaryrebellion, though isolated and on the smallest scale, showed that thecourse on which Ferdinand had entered was not altogether free from danger. The attempts of General Mina in 1814, and of Porlier and Lacy in succeedingyears, to raise the soldiery on behalf of the Constitution, failed, throughthe indifference of the soldiery themselves, and the power which thepriesthood exercised in garrison-towns. Discontent made its way in the armyby slow degrees; and the ultimate declaration of a military party againstthe existing Government was due at least as much to Ferdinand's absurdsystem of favouritism, and to the wretched condition into which the armyhad been thrown, as to an attachment to the memory or the principles ofconstitutional rule. Misgovernment made the treasury bankrupt; soldiers andsailors received no pay for years together; and the hatred with which theSpanish people had now come to regard military service is curiously shownby an order of the Government that all the beggars in Madrid and othergreat towns should be seized on a certain night (July 23, 1816), andenrolled in the army. [307] But the very beggars were more than a match forFerdinand's administration. They heard of the fate in store for them, andmysteriously disappeared, so frustrating a measure by which it had beencalculated 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 wasclosely connected with the struggle for independence now being made by theAmerican colonies of Spain; and in its turn it affected the course of thisstruggle and its final result. The colonies had refused to accept the ruleeither of Joseph Bonaparte or of the Cortes of Cadiz when their legitimatesovereign was dispossessed by Napoleon. While acting for the most part inFerdinand's name, they had engaged in a struggle with the NationalGovernment of Spain. They had tasted independence; and although after therestoration of Ferdinand they would probably have recognised the rights ofthe Spanish Crown if certain concessions had been made, they were notdisposed to return to the condition of inferiority in which they had beenheld during the last century, or to submit to rulers who proved themselvesas cruel and vindictive in moments of victory as they were incapable ofunderstanding the needs of the time. The struggle accordingly continued. Regiment after regiment was sent from Spain, to perish of fever, of forcedmarches, or on the field. The Government of King Ferdinand, despairing ofits 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 tothe 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 allianceof Sovereigns, which had been framed for the purpose of resisting theprinciple of rebellion and disorder in Europe, should intervene against itsrevolted subjects on the other side of the Atlantic, and it implied thatEngland, 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 Germanschoolboy wore a forbidden ribbon in his cap, the chiefs of the HolyAlliance now assumed the frown of offended Providence, and prepared tointerpose their own superior power and wisdom to save a misguided worldfrom the consequences of its own folly. Alexander had indeed for a timehoped 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 soldthe King a fleet of war on very moderate terms. To the scandal of Europethe ships, when they reached Cadiz, turned out to be thoroughly rotten andunseaworthy. As it was certain that the Czar's fleet and the Spanishsoldiers, however holy their mission, would all go to the bottom togetheras soon as they encountered the waves of the Atlantic, the expedition waspostponed, and the affairs of America were brought before the Conference ofAix-la-Chapelle. The Envoys of Russia and France submitted a paper, inwhich, anticipating the storm-warnings of more recent times, they describedthe dangers to which monarchical Europe would be exposed from the growth ofa federation of republics in America; and they suggested that Wellington, as "the man of Europe, " should go to Madrid, to preside over a negotiationbetween the Court of Spain and all the ambassadors with reference to theterms to be offered to the Transatlantic States. [309] England, however, inspite of Lord Castlereagh's dread of revolutionary contagion, adhered tothe principles which it had already laid down; and as the counsellors ofKing Ferdinand declined to change their policy, Spain was left to subdueits colonies by itself. [Conspiracy in the Army of Cadiz. ]It was in the army assembled at Cadiz for embarkation in the summer of 1819that the conspiracy against Ferdinand's Government found its leaders. Secret societies had now spread themselves over the principal Spanishtowns, and looked to the soldiery on the coast for the signal of revolt. Abisbal, commander at Cadiz, intending to make himself safe against allcontingencies, encouraged for awhile the plots of the discontentedofficers: then, foreseeing the failure of the movement, he arrested theprincipal men by a stratagem, and went off to Madrid, to reveal theconspiracy to the Court and to take credit for saving the King's crown(July, 1819). [310] If the army could have been immediately despatched toAmerica, the danger would possibly have passed away. This, however, wasprevented by an outbreak of yellow fever, which made it necessary to sendthe troops into cantonments for several months. The conspirators gainedtime to renew their plans. The common soldiers, who had hitherto beenfaithful to the Government, heard in their own squalor and inaction thefearful stories of the few sick and wounded who returned from beyond theseas, and learnt to regard the order of embarkation as a sentence of death. Several battalions were won over to the cause of constitutional liberty bytheir commanders. The leaders imprisoned a few months before were again incommunication with their followers. After the treachery of Abisbal, it wasagreed to carry out the revolt without the assistance of generals orgrandees. The leaders chosen were two colonels, Quiroga and Riego, of whomthe former was in nominal confinement in a monastery near Medina Sidonia, twenty miles east of Cadiz, while Riego was stationed at Cabezas, a fewmarches distant on the great road to Seville. The first day of the year1820 was fixed for the insurrection. It was determined that Riego shoulddescend upon the head-quarters, which were at Arcos, and arrest thegenerals before they could hear anything of the movement, while Quiroga, moving from the east, gathered up the battalions stationed on the road, andthrew 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 theConstitution of 1812, surprised the headquarters, seized the generals, andrallied several companies to his standard. Quiroga, however, though hegained possession of San Fernando, at the eastern end of the peninsula ofLeon, on which Cadiz is situated, failed to make his entrance into Cadiz. The commandant, hearing of the capture of the head-quarters, had closed thecity gates, and arrested the principal inhabitants whom he suspected ofbeing concerned in the plot. The troops within the town showed no sign ofmutiny. Riego, when he arrived at the peninsula of Leon, found that onlyfive thousand men in all had joined the good cause, while Cadiz, with aconsiderable garrison and fortifications of great strength, stood hostilebefore him. He accordingly set off with a small force to visit and win overthe other regiments which were lying in the neighbouring towns andvillages. The commanders, however, while not venturing to attack themutineers, drew off their troops to a distance, and prevented them fromentering into any communication with Riego. The adventurous soldier, leaving Quiroga in the peninsula of Leon, then marched into the interior ofAndalusia (January 27), endeavouring to raise the inhabitants of the towns. But the small numbers of his band, and the knowledge that Cadiz and thegreater part of the army still held by the Government, prevented theinhabitants from joining the insurrection, even where they received Riegowith kindness and supplied the wants of his soldiers. During week afterweek the little column traversed the country, now cut off from retreat, exhausted by forced marches in drenching rain, and harassed by far strongerforces sent in pursuit. The last town that Riego entered was Cordova. Theenemy was close behind him. No halt was possible. He led his band, nownumbering only two hundred men, into the mountains, and there bade themdisperse (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 fromvillage to village, it seemed as if the insurrection which they had beguncould only end in the ruin of its leaders. But the movement had in facteffected its object. While the courtiers around King Ferdinand, unwarned bythe news from Cadiz, continued their intrigues against one another, therumour of rebellion spread over the country. If no great success had beenachieved by the rebels, it was also certain that no great blow had beenstruck by the Government. The example of bold action had been set; theshock given at one end of the peninsula was felt at the other; and afortnight before Riego's band dispersed, the garrison and the citizens ofCorunna together declared for the Constitution (February 20). From Corunnathe revolutionary movement spread to Ferrol and to all the othercoast-towns of Galicia. The news reached Madrid, terrifying the Government, and exciting the spirit of insurrection in the capital itself. The Kingsummoned a council of the leading men around him. The wisest of themadvised him to publish a moderate Constitution, and, by convoking aParliament immediately, to stay the movement, which would otherwise resultin the restoration of the Assembly and the Constitution of 1812. They alsourged the King to abolish the Inquisition forthwith. Ferdinand's brother, Don Carlos, the head of the clerical party, succeeded in preventing bothmeasures. Though the generals in all quarters of Spain wrote that theycould not answer for the troops, there were still hopes of keeping down thecountry by force of arms. Abisbal, who was at Madrid, was ordered to movewith reinforcements towards the army in the south. He set out, protestingto the King that he knew the way to deal with rebels. When he reached Ocañahe 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 fermentin Madrid increased. On the night of the 6th of March all the great bodiesof State assembled for council in the King's palace, and early on the 7thFerdinand published a proclamation, stating that he had determined tosummon the Cortes immediately. This declaration satisfied no one, for theCortes 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 toFerdinand's promises. Crowds gathered in the great squares of Madrid, crying for the Constitution of 1812. The statement of the Minister of Warthat the Guard was on the point of joining the people now overcame even theresistance of Don Carlos and the confessors; and after a day wasted indispute, Ferdinand announced to his people that he was ready to take theoath to the Constitution which they desired. The next day was given up topublic rejoicings; the book of the Constitution was carried in processionthrough the city with the honours paid to the Holy Sacrament, and allpolitical prisoners were set at liberty. The prison of the Inquisition wassacked, the instruments of torture broken in pieces. On the 9th the leadersof the agitation took steps to make the King fulfil his promise. A mobinvaded the court and threshold of the palace. At their demand themunicipal council of 1814 was restored; its members were sent, in companywith six deputies chosen by the populace, to receive the pledges of theKing. Ferdinand, all smiles and bows, while he looked forward to the daywhen force or intrigue should make him again absolute master of Spain, andenable him to take vengeance upon the men who were humiliating, him, tookthe oath of fidelity to the Constitution of 1812. [311] New Ministers wereimmediately called to office, and a provisional Junta was placed by theirside as the representative of the public until the new Cortes should beduly elected. [Condition of Naples, 1815-1820. ]Tidings of the Spanish revolution passed rapidly over Europe, disquietingthe courts and everywhere reviving the hopes of the friends of popularright. Before four months had passed, the constitutional movement begun inCadiz was taken up in Southern Italy. The kingdom of Naples was one ofthose States which had profited the most by French conquest. During thenine years that its crown was held by Joseph Bonaparte and Murat, the lawsand institutions which accompanied Napoleon's supremacy had rudely brokenup the ancient fixity of confusions which passed for government, and hadaroused no insignificant forces of new social life. The feudal tenure ofland, and with it something of the feudal structure of society, had passedaway: the monasteries had been dissolved; the French civil code, and acriminal code based upon that of France, had taken the place of a thousandconflicting customs and jurisdictions; taxation had been made, if notlight, yet equitable and simple; justice was regular, and the same forbaron and peasant; brigandage had been extinguished; and, for the firsttime in many centuries, the presence of a rational and uniformadministration was felt over all the south of Italy. Nor on the restorationof King Ferdinand had any reaction been permitted to take place like thatwhich in a moment destroyed the work of reform in Spain and in Westphalia. England and Austria insisted that there should be neither vengeance norcounterrevolution. Queen Marie Caroline, the principal agent in thecruelties of 1799, was dead; Ferdinand himself was old and indolent, andwilling to leave affairs in the hands of Ministers more intelligent thanhimself. Hence the laws and the administrative system of Murat remained onthe whole unchanged. [312] As in France, a Bourbon Sovereign placed himselfat 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 forthe most part in consequence of an understanding with the Holy See. Thus, while no attempt was made to eject the purchasers of Church-lands, thelands not actually sold were given back to the Church; a considerablenumber of monasteries were restored; education was allowed to fall againinto the hands of the clergy; the Jesuits were recalled, and the Churchregained its jurisdiction in marriage-causes, as well as the right ofsuppressing 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 byno means expressed the whole change in the operation of government. Ifthere were not two conflicting systems at work, there were two conflictingbodies of partisans in the State. Like the emigrants who returned withLouis XVIII. , a multitude of Neapolitans, high and low, who had eitheraccompanied the King in his exile to Sicily or fought for him on themainland in 1799 and 1806, now expected their reward. In their interest theefficiency of the public service was sacrificed and the course of justiceperverted. Men who had committed notorious crimes escaped punishment ifthey had been numbered among the King's friends; the generals and officialswho had served under Murat, though not removed from their posts, weretreated with discourtesy and suspicion. It was in the army most of all thatthe antagonism of the two parties was felt. A medal was struck for servicein Sicily, and every year spent there in inaction was reckoned as two incomputing seniority. Thus the younger officers of Murat found their wayblocked by a troop of idlers, and at the same time their prospects sufferedfrom the honest attempts made by Ministers to reduce the militaryexpenditure. Discontent existed in every rank. The generals were familiarwith the idea of political change, for during the last years of Murat'sreign they had themselves thought of compelling him to grant aConstitution: the younger officers and the sergeants were in great partmembers of the secret society of the Carbonari, which in the course of thelast few years had grown with the weakness of the Government, and had nowbecome the principal power in the Neapolitan kingdom. [The Carbonari. ]The origin of this society, which derived its name and its symbolism fromthe trade of the charcoal-burner, as Freemasonry from that of the builder, is uncertain. Whether its first aim was resistance to Bourbon tyranny after1799, or the expulsion of the French and Austrians from Italy, in the year1814 it was actively working for constitutional government in opposition toMurat, and receiving encouragement from Sicily, where Ferdinand was thenplaying the part of constitutional King. The maintenance of absolutegovernment by the restored Bourbon Court severed the bond which for a timeexisted between legitimate monarchy and conspiracy; and the lodges of theCarbonari, now extending themselves over the country with great rapidity, became so many centres of agitation against despotic rule. By the year 1819it was reckoned that one person out of every twenty-five in the kingdom ofNaples had joined the society. Its members were drawn from all classes, most numerously perhaps from the middle class in the towns; but evenpriests had been initiated, and there was no branch of the public servicethat had not Carbonari in its ranks. The Government, apprehending dangerfrom the extension of the sect, tried to counteract it by founding a rivalsociety of Calderari, or Braziers, in which every miscreant who before 1815had murdered and robbed in the name of King Ferdinand and the Catholicfaith received a welcome. But though the number of such persons was notsmall, the growth of this fraternity remained far behind that of its model;and the chief result of the competition was that intrigue and mysterygained a greater charm than ever for the Italians, and that all confidencein Government perished, under the sense that there was a hidden power inthe land which was only awaiting the due moment to put forth its strengthin revolutionary action. [Morelli's movement, July 2, 1820. ]After the proclamation of the Spanish Constitution, an outbreak in thekingdom of Naples had become inevitable. The Carbonari of Salerno, wherethe sect had its headquarters, had intended to rise at the beginning ofJune; their action, however, was postponed for some months, and it wasanticipated by the daring movement of a few sergeants belonging to acavalry regiment stationed at Nola, and of a lieutenant, named Morelli, whom they had persuaded to place himself at their head. Leading out asquadron of a hundred and fifty men in the direction of Avellino on themorning of July 2nd, Morelli proclaimed the Constitution. One of thesoldiers alone left the band; force or persuasion kept others to theStandard, though they disapproved of the enterprise. The inhabitants of thepopulous places that lie between Nola and Avellino welcomed the squadron, or at least offered it no opposition: the officer commanding at Avellinocame himself to meet Morelli, and promised him assistance. The bandencamped 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 spreadquickly over the surrounding country. The Carbonari were everywhereprepared for revolt; and before the Government had taken a single step inits own defence, the Constitution had been joyfully and peacefullyaccepted, 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 ofNaples. [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 theMinistry on that day, although Morelli and his band might have beencaptured in a few hours if any resolute officer, with a few trustworthytroops, had been sent against them. On the next morning, when the garrisonof Avellino had already joined the mutineers, and taken up a strongposition commanding the road from Naples, General Carrascosa was sent, notto reduce the insurgents--for no troops were given to him--but to pardon, to bribe, and to coax them into submission. [313] Carrascosa failed toeffect any good; other generals, who, during the following days, attemptedto attack the mutineers, found that their troops would not follow them, andthat the feeling of opposition to the Government, though it nowhere brokeinto lawlessness, was universal in the army as well as the nation. If thepeople generally understood little of politics, they had learnt enough todislike arbitrary taxation and the power of arbitrary arrest. Not a singlehand or voice was anywhere raised in defence of absolutism. Escaping fromNaples, where he was watched by the Government, General Pepe, who was atonce the chief man among the Carbonari and military commandant of theprovince in which Avellino lies, went to place himself at the head of therevolution. Naples itself had hitherto remained quiet, but on the night ofJuly 6th a deputation from the Carbonari informed the King that they couldno longer preserve tranquillity in the city unless a Constitution wasgranted. The King, without waiting for morning, published an edictdeclaring 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 employedthe device of a temporary abdication some years before in cajoling theSicilians; and the delay of eight days seemed unnecessary to ardent soulswho knew that a Spanish Constitution was in existence and did not know ofits defects in practice. There was also on the side of the Carbonari thetelling argument that Ferdinand, as a possible successor to his nephew, thechildless King of Spain, actually had signed the Spanish Constitution inorder to preserve his own contingent rights to that crown. What Ferdinandhad accepted as Infante of Spain he might well accept as King of Naples. The cry was therefore for the immediate proclamation of the SpanishConstitution of 1812. The court yielded, and the Duke of Calabria, asviceroy, published an edict making this Constitution the law of the kingdomof the Two Sicilies. But the tumult continued, for deceit was still feared, until the edict appeared again, signed by the King himself. Then all wasrejoicing. Pepe, at the head of a large body of troops, militia andCarbonari, made a triumphal entry into the city, and, in company withMorelli and other leaders of the military rebellion, was hypocriticallythanked by the Viceroy for his services to the nation. On the 13th of Julythe King, a hale but venerable-looking man of seventy, took the oath to theConstitution before the altar in the royal chapel. The form of words hadbeen written out for him; but Ferdinand was fond of theatrical acts ofreligion, and did not content himself with reading certain solemn phrases. Raising his eyes to the crucifix above the altar, he uttered aloud a prayerthat if the oath was not sincerely taken the vengeance of God might fallupon his head. Then, after blessing and embracing his sons, the venerablemonarch wrote to the Emperor of Austria, protesting that all that he didwas 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 beforethe combined action of soldiers and people. The Court of Lisbon hadmigrated to Brazil in 1807, when the troops of Napoleon first appeared uponthe Tagus, and Portugal had since then been governed by a Regency, actingin the name of the absent Sovereign. The events of the Peninsular War hadreduced Portugal almost to the condition of a dependency of Great Britain. Marshal Beresford, the English commander-in-chief of its army, kept hispost when the war was over, and with him there remained a great number ofEnglish officers who had led the Portuguese regiments in Wellington'scampaigns. The presence of these English soldiers was unwelcome, andcommercial rivalry embittered the natural feeling of impatience towards anally who remained as master rather than guest. Up to the year 1807 theentire trade with Brazil had been confined by law to Portuguese merchants;when, however, the Court had established itself beyond the Atlantic, it hadopened the ports of Brazil to British ships, in return for the assistancegiven by our own country against Napoleon. Both England and Brazil profitedby the new commerce, but the Portuguese traders, who had of old had themonopoly, were ruined. The change in the seat of government was in factseen to be nothing less than a reversal of the old relations between theEuropean country and its colony. Hitherto Brazil had been governed in theinterests of Portugal; but with a Sovereign fixed at Rio Janeiro, it wasalmost inevitable that Portugal should be governed in the interests ofBrazil. Declining trade, the misery and impoverishment resulting from along war, resentment against a Court which could not be induced to returnto 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. Conspiracieswere discovered as early as 1817, and the conspirators punished with allthe barbarous ferocity of the Middle Ages. Beresford, who had notsufficient tact to prevent the execution of a sentence ordering twelvepersons to be strangled, beheaded, and then burnt in the streets of Lisbon, found, during the two succeeding years, that the state of the country wasbecoming worse and worse. In the spring of 1820, when the Spanishrevolution had made some change in the neighbouring kingdom, either forgood or evil, inevitable, Beresford set out for Rio Janeiro, intending toacquaint the King with the real condition of affairs, and to use hispersonal efforts in hastening the return of the Court to Lisbon. Before hecould recross the Atlantic, the Government which he left behind him atLisbon had fallen. [Revolution at Oporto, August 1820. ]The grievances of the Portuguese army made it the natural centre ofdisaffection, but the military conspirators had their friends among allclasses. On the 24th of August, 1820, the signal of revolt was given atOporto. Priests and magistrates, as well as the town-population, unitedwith officers of the army in declaring against the Regency, and inestablishing a provisional Junta, charged with the duty of carrying on thegovernment in the name of the King until the Cortes should assemble andframe a Constitution. No resistance was offered by any of the civil ormilitary authorities at Oporto. The Junta entered upon its functions, andbegan by dismissing all English officers, and making up the arrears of paydue to the soldiers. As soon as the news of the revolt reached Lisbon, theRegency itself volunteered to summon the Cortes, and attempted toconciliate the remainder of the army by imitating the measures of the Juntaof Oporto. [315] The troops, however, declined to act against theircomrades, and on the 15th of September the Regency was deposed, and aprovisional Junta installed in the capital. Beresford, who now returnedfrom Brazil, was forbidden to set foot on Portuguese soil. The two rivalgoverning-committees of Lisbon and Oporto coalesced; and after an intervalof confusion the elections to the Cortes were held, resulting in the returnof a body of men whose loyalty to the Crown was not impaired by theirhostility to the Regency. The King, when the first tidings of theconstitutional movement reached Brazil, gave a qualified consent to thesummoning of the Cortes which was announced by the Regency, and promised toreturn to Europe. Beresford, continuing his voyage to England withoutlanding at Lisbon, found that the Government of this country had nodisposition 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 revolutionseffected in 1820 were undisgraced by the scenes of outrage which hadfollowed the capture of the Bastille and the overthrow of French absolutismthirty years before. [316] The gentler character of these southernmovements proved, however, no extenuation in the eyes of the leadingstatesmen of Europe: on the contrary, the declaration of soldiers in favourof a Constitution seemed in some quarters more ominous of evil than anyexcess 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 tomeditate intervention; and when it was known that Ferdinand had been forcedto accept the Constitution of 1812, he ordered his ambassadors to proposethat all the Great Powers, acting through their Ministers at Paris, shouldaddress a remonstrance to the representative of Spain, requiring the Cortesto disavow the crime of the 8th of March, by which they had been calledinto being, and to offer a pledge of obedience to their King by enactingthe most rigorous laws against sedition and revolt. [317] In that case, andin that alone, the Czar desired to add, would the Powers maintain theirrelations of confidence and amity with Spain. [England prevents joint diplomatic intervention. ]This Russian proposal was viewed with some suspicion at Vienna; it wasanswered with a direct and energetic negative from London. Canning wasstill in the Ministry. The words with which in 1818 he had protestedagainst a league between England and autocracy were still ringing in theears of his colleagues. Lord Liverpool's Government knew itself to beunpopular in the country; every consideration of policy as well as ofself-interest bade it resist the beginnings of an intervention which, ifconfined 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 beenthe nightmare of English statesmen ever since 1814, and in a secondoccupation of Spain by the very generals whom Wellington had spent so manyyears in dislodging. Castlereagh replied to the Czar's note in terms whichmade it clear that England would never give its sanction to a collectiveinterference with Spain. [318] Richelieu, the nominal head of the FrenchGovernment, felt too little confidence in his position to act without theconcurrence of Great Britain; and the crusade of absolutism against Spanishliberty was in consequence postponed until the victory of theUltra-Royalists at Paris was complete, and the overthrow of Richelieu hadbrought to the head of the French State a group of men who felt no scruplein 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 theforeigner did not extend to Italy, when in its turn the Neapolitanrevolution called a northern enemy into the field. Though the kingdom ofthe Two Sicilies was in itself much less important than Spain, theestablished order of the Continent was more directly threatened by a changein its government. No European State was exposed to the same danger from arevolution in Madrid as Austria from a revolution in Naples. The Czar hadinvoked the action of the Courts against Spain, not because his owndominions were in peril, but because the principle of monarchical right wasviolated: with Austria the danger pressed nearer home. The establishment ofconstitutional liberty in Naples was almost certain to be followed by aninsurrection in the Papal States and a national uprising in the Venetianprovinces; and among all the bad results of Austria's false position inItaly, one of the worst was that in self-defence it was bound to resistevery step made towards political liberty beyond its own frontier. Thedismay with which Metternich heard of the collapse of absolute governmentat Naples [319] was understood and even shared by the English Ministry, whoat 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 thenatural ally of England against the two aggressive Courts of Paris and St. Petersburg. It seemed perfectly right and natural to Lord Castlereagh thatAustria, when its own interests were endangered by the establishment ofpopular sovereignty at Naples, should intervene to restore King Ferdinand'spower; the more so as the secret treaty of 1815, by which Metternich hadbound this sovereign to maintain absolute monarchy, had been communicatedto the ambassador of Great Britain, and had received his approval. But theright to intervene in Italy belonged, according to Lord Castlereagh, toAustria alone. The Sovereigns of Europe had no more claim, as a body, tointerfere with Naples than they had to interfere with Spain. Therefore, while the English Government sanctioned and even desired the interventionof Austria, as a State acting in protection of its own interests againstrevolution in a neighbouring country, it refused to sanction any jointintervention of the European Powers, and declared itself opposed to themeeting 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 thrownan army into Southern Italy as soon as soldiers and stores could becollected, and have made an end of King Ferdinand's troubles forthwith. Itwas, however, impossible for him to disregard the wishes of the Czar, andto abandon all at once the system of corporate action, which was supposedto have done such great things for Europe. [321] A meeting of sovereignsand Ministers was accordingly arranged, and at the end of October theEmperor of Austria received the Czar and King Frederick William in thelittle town of Troppau, in Moravia. France had itself first recommended thesummoning of a Congress to deal with Neapolitan affairs, and it wasbelieved for a while that England would be isolated in its resistance to ajoint intervention. But before the Congress assembled, the firm language ofthe English Ministry had drawn Richelieu over to its side; [322] andalthough one of the two French envoys made himself the agent of theUltra-Royalist faction, it was not possible for him to unite his countrywith the three Eastern Courts. France, through the weakness of itsGovernment and the dissension between its representatives, counted fornothing at the Congress. England sent its ambassador from Vienna, but withinstructions to act as an observer and little more; and in consequence themeeting at Troppau resolved itself into a gathering of the three Easternautocrats and their Ministers. As Prussia had ceased to have anyindependent foreign policy whatever, Metternich needed only to make certainof the support of the Czar in order to range on his side the entire forceof 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 withoutsome effort. Alexander had watched with jealousy Metternich's recentassumption of a dictatorship over the minor German Courts; he had neveradmitted Austria's right to dominate in Italy; and even now some vestigesof his old attachment to liberal theories made him look for a bettersolution of the Neapolitan problem than in that restoration of despotismpure and simple which Austria desired. While condemning every attempt of apeople to establish its own liberties, Alexander still believed that insome countries sovereigns would do well to make their subjects a grant ofwhat he called sage and liberal institutions. It would have pleased himbest if the Neapolitans could have been induced by peaceful means toabandon their Constitution, and to accept in return certain charteredrights as a gift from their King; and the concurrence of the two WesternPowers might in this case possibly have been regained. This project of acompromise, by which Ferdinand would have been freed from his secretengagement with Austria, was exactly what Metternich desired to frustrate. He found himself matched, and not for the first time, against a statesmanwho was even more subtle than himself. This was Count Capodistrias, a Greekwho from a private position had risen to be Foreign Minister of Russia, andwas destined to become the first sovereign, in reality if not in title, ofhis native land. Capodistrias, the sympathetic partner of the Czar'searlier hopes, had not travelled so fast as his master along thereactionary road. He still represented what had been the Italian policy ofAlexander some years before, and sought to prevent the re-establishment ofabsolute rule at Naples, at least by the armed intervention of Austria. Metternich's first object was to discredit the Minister in the eyes of hissovereign. It is said that he touched the Czar's keenest fears in aconversation relating to a mutiny that had just taken place among thetroops at St. Petersburg, and so in one private interview cut the groundfrom under Capodistrias' feet; he also humoured the Czar by reviving thatmonarch's own favourite scheme for a mutual guarantee of all the Powersagainst revolution in any part of Europe. Alexander had proposed in 1818that the Courts should declare resistance to authority in any country to bea violation of European peace, entitling the Allied Powers, if they shouldthink fit, to suppress it by force of arms. This doctrine, which would haveempowered the Czar to throw the armies of a coalition upon London if theReform Bill had been carried by force, had hitherto failed to gaininternational acceptance owing to the opposition of Great Britain. It wasnow formally accepted by Austria and Prussia. Alexander saw the federativesystem 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, inthe case of Naples, this intervention should follow. It was determined toinvite King Ferdinand to meet his brother-sovereigns at Laibach, in theAustrian province of Carniola, and through him to address a summons to theNeapolitan people, requiring them, in the name of the three Powers, andunder threat of invasion, to abandon their Constitution. This determinationwas 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 theCourts of Europe (Dec. 8), embodying the doctrine of federativeintervention, and expressing a hope that England and France would approveits immediate application in the case of Naples. [324][Protest of England. ]There was no ground whatever for this hope with regard to England. On thecontrary, in proportion as the three Courts strengthened their union andinsisted on their claim to joint jurisdiction over Europe, they droveEngland away from them. Lord Castlereagh had at first promised the moralsupport of this country to Austria in its enterprise against Naples; butwhen this enterprise ceased to be the affair of Austria alone, and becamepart of the police-system of the three despotisms, it was no longerpossible for the English Government to view it with approval or even withsilence. The promise of a moral support was withdrawn: England declaredthat it stood strictly neutral with regard to Naples, and protested againstthe doctrine contained in the Troppau circular, that a change of governmentin any State gave the Allied Powers the right to intervene. [325]France made no such protest; but it was still hoped at Paris that anAustrian invasion of Southern Italy, so irritating to French pride, mightbe averted. King Louis XVIII. Endeavoured, but in vain, to act the part ofmediator, and to reconcile the Neapolitan House of Bourbon at once with itsown subjects and with the Northern Powers. [Conference at Laibach, Jan. , 1821. ]The summons went out from the Congress to King Ferdinand to appear atLaibach. It found him enjoying all the popularity of a constitutional King, surrounded by Ministers who had governed under Murat, exchangingcompliments with a democratic Parliament, lavishing distinctions upon themen who had overthrown his authority, and swearing to everything that wasset before him. As the Constitution prohibited the King from leaving thecountry without the consent of the Legislature, it was necessary forFerdinand to communicate to Parliament the invitation which he had receivedfrom the Powers, and to take a vote of the Assembly on the subject of hisjourney. Ferdinand's Ministers possessed some political experience; theyrecognised that it would be impossible to maintain the existingConstitution against the hostility of three great States, and hoped thatthe Parliament would consent to Ferdinand's departure on condition that hepledged himself to uphold certain specified principles of free government. A message to the Assembly was accordingly made public, in which the Kingexpressed his desire to mediate with the Powers on this basis. But theMinisters had not reckoned with the passions of the people. As soon as itbecame known that Ferdinand was about to set out, the leaders of theCarbonari mustered their bands. A host of violent men streamed into Naplesfrom the surrounding country. The Parliament was intimidated, and Ferdinandwas prohibited from leaving Naples until he had sworn to maintain theConstitution actually in force, that, namely, which Naples had borrowedfrom Spain. Ferdinand, whose only object was to escape from the country asquickly as possible, took the oath with his usual effusions of patriotism. He then set out for Leghorn, intending to cross from thence into NorthernItaly. No sooner had he reached the Tuscan port than he addressed a letterto each of the five principal sovereigns of Europe, declaring that his lastacts were just as much null and void as all his earlier ones. He made noattempt to justify, or to excuse, or even to explain his conduct; nor isthere the least reason to suppose that he considered the perjuries of aprince to require a justification. "These sorry protests, " wrote thesecretary of the Congress of Troppau, "will happily remain secret. NoCabinet 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 ofhis journey by a present of some Russian bears. His arrival was peculiarlyagreeable to Metternich, whose intentions corresponded exactly with hisown; and the fact that he had been compelled to swear to maintain theSpanish Constitution at Naples acted favourably for the Austrian Minister, inasmuch as it enabled him to say to all the world that negotiation was nowout of the question. [326] Capodistrias, brought face to face with failure, twisted about, according to his rival's expression, like a devil in holywater, but all in vain. It was decided that Ferdinand should be restored asabsolute monarch by an Austrian army, and that, whether the Neapolitansresisted or submitted, their country should be occupied by Austrian troopsfor some years to come. The only difficulty remaining was to vest KingFerdinand's conduct in some respectable disguise. Capodistrias, whennothing else was to be gained, offered to invent an entire correspondence, in which Ferdinand should proudly uphold the Constitution to which he hadsworn, and protest against the determination of the Powers to force thesceptre of absolutism back into his hand. [327] This device, however, wasthought 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 determinednot to tolerate an order of things sprung from revolution; that submissionalone would avert war; but that even in case of submission certainsecurities for order, meaning the occupation of the country by an Austrianarmy, would be exacted. The letter concluded with the usual promises ofreform 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 beengiven 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 theNeapolitans. The administration of the State was thoroughly disorganised;the agitation of the secret societies had destroyed all spirit of obedienceamong the soldiers; a great part of the army was absent in Sicily, keepingguard over a people who, under wiser management, might have doubled theforce which Naples now opposed to the invader. When the despotic governmentof Ferdinand was overthrown, the island of Sicily, or that part of it whichwas represented by Palermo, had claimed the separate political existencewhich it had possessed between 1806 and 1815, offering to remain united toNaples in the person of the sovereign, but demanding a National Parliamentand a National Constitution of its own. The revolutionary Ministers ofNaples had, however, no more sympathy with the wishes of the Sicilians thanthe Spanish Liberals of 1812 had with those of the American Colonists. Theyrequired the islanders to accept the same rights and duties as any otherprovince of the Neapolitan kingdom, and, on their refusal, sent over aconsiderable force and laid siege to Palermo. [328] The contest soon endedin the submission of the Sicilians, but it was found necessary to keeptwelve thousand troops on the island in order to prevent a new revolt. Thewhole regular army of Naples numbered little more than forty thousand; andalthough bodies of Carbonari and of the so-called Militia set out to jointhe colours of General Pepe and to fight for liberty, they remained for themost part a disorderly mob, without either arms or discipline. The invadingarmy of Austria, fifty thousand strong, not only possessed an immensesuperiority in organisation and military spirit, but actually outnumberedthe forces of the defence. At the first encounter, which took place atRieti, in the Papal States, the Neapolitans were put to the rout. Theirarmy melted away, as it had in Murat's campaign in 1815. Nothing was heardamong officers and men but accusations of treachery; not a single strongpoint was defended; and on the 24th of March the Austrians made their entryinto Naples. Ferdinand, halting at Florence, sent on before him the worstinstruments of his former despotism. It was indeed impossible for these mento renew, under Austrian protection, the scenes of reckless bloodshed whichhad followed the restoration of 1799; and a great number of compromisedpersons had already been provided with the means of escape. But the hand ofvengeance was not easily stayed. Courts-martial and commissions of judgesbegan in all parts of the kingdom to sentence to imprisonment and death. Anattempted insurrection in Sicily and some desperate acts of rebellion inSouthern Italy cost the principal actors their lives; and when an amnestywas at length proclaimed, an exception was made against those who were nowcalled 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 inchains to labour among felons. Hundreds of persons were left lying, condemned or uncondemned, in prison; others, in spite of the amnesty, weredriven from their native land; and that great, long-lasting stream offugitives now began to pour into England, which, in the early memories ofmany who are not yet old, has associated the name of Italian with the imageof an exile and a sufferer. [Insurrection in Piedmont, March 10. ]There was a moment in the campaign of Austria against Naples when theinvading army was threatened with the most serious danger. An insurrectionbroke out in Piedmont, and the troops of that country attempted to unitewith the patriotic party of Lombardy in a movement which would have thrownall Northern Italy upon the rear of the Austrians. In the first excess ofalarm, the Czar ordered a hundred thousand Russians to cross the Galicianfrontier, and to march in the direction of the Adriatic. It provedunnecessary, however, to continue this advance. The Piedmontese army wasdivided against itself; part proclaimed the Spanish Constitution, and, onthe abdication of the King, called upon his cousin, the Regent, CharlesAlbert of Carignano, to march against the Austrians; part adhered to therightful 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 NeapolitanCourt, refused to temporise with rebels, or to make any compromise with theConstitution. The scruples of the Prince of Carignano, after he had gonesome way with the military party of action, paralysed the movement ofNorthern Italy. Unsupported by Piedmontese troops, the conspirators ofMilan failed to raise any open insurrection. Austrian soldiers throngedwestwards from the Venetian fortresses, and entered Piedmont itself; thecollapse of the Neapolitan army destroyed the hopes of the bravestpatriots; and the only result of the Piedmontese movement was that thegrasp of Austria closed more tightly on its subject provinces, while themartyrs of Italian freedom passed out of the sight of the world, out of therange 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 toEurope that a people seeking its liberties elsewhere than in the grace andspontaneous generosity of its legitimate sovereign became a fit object ofattack for the armies of the three Great Powers. It will be seen in a laterchapter how Metternich persuaded the Czar to include under the anathemaissued by the Congress of Laibach (May, 1821) [330] the outbreak of theGreeks, which at this moment began, and how Lord Castlereagh supported theAustrian Minister in denying to these rebels against the Sultan all rightor claim to the consideration of Europe. Spain was for the present leftunmolested; but the military operations of 1821 prepared the way for asimilar crusade against that country by occasioning the downfall ofRichelieu's Ministry, and throwing the government of France entirely intothe 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 Austriasupreme in Italy. The Ultra-Royalists profited by the general discontent tooverthrow the Minister whom they had promised to support (Dec. , 1821); andfrom this time a war with Spain, conducted either by France alone or incombination with the three Eastern Powers, became the dearest hope of therank and file of the dominant faction. Villèle, their nominal chief, remained what he had been before, a statesman among fanatics, and desiredto 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 toprevent all intercourse with the Spanish districts afflicted with theyellow fever. This epidemic had passed away, but the number of the troopswas now raised to a hundred thousand. It was, however, the hope of Villèlethat hostilities might be averted unless the Spaniards should themselvesprovoke a combat, or, by resorting to extreme measures against KingFerdinand, should compel Louis XVIII. To intervene on behalf of hiskinsman. The more violent section of the French Cabinet, represented byMontmorency, the Foreign Minister, called for an immediate march on Madrid, or proposed to delay operations only until France should secure the supportof 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 thosewho longed to employ the arms of France in the royalist cause. The hopes ofpeaceful reform, which for the first few months after the revolution hadbeen shared even by foreign politicians at Madrid, had long vanished. Inthe moment of popular victory Ferdinand had brought the leaders of theCortes from their prisons and placed them in office. These men showed adignified forgetfulness of the injuries which they had suffered. Misfortunehad calmed their impetuosity, and taught them more of the real condition ofthe Spanish people. They entered upon their task with seriousness and goodfaith, and would have proved the best friends of constitutional monarchy ifFerdinand had had the least intention of co-operating with them loyally. But they found themselves encountered from the first by a double enemy. Theclergy, who had overthrown the Constitution six years before, intrigued oropenly declared against it as soon as it was revived; the more violent ofthe Liberals, with Riego at their head, abandoned themselves toextravagances like those of the club-orators of Paris in 1791, and didtheir best to make any peaceable administration impossible. After combatingthese anarchists, or Exaltados, with some success, the Ministry was forcedto call in their aid, when, at the instigation of the Papal Nuncio, theKing placed his veto upon a law dissolving most of the monasteries [331](Oct. , 1820). Ferdinand now openly combined with the enemies of theConstitution, and attempted to transfer the command of the army to one ofhis own agents. The plot failed; the Ministry sent the alarm over the wholecountry, and Ferdinand stood convicted before his people as a conspiratoragainst the Constitution which he had sworn to defend. The agitation of theclubs, which the Ministry had hitherto suppressed, broke out anew. A stormof accusations assailed Ferdinand himself. He was compelled at the end ofthe year 1820 to banish from Madrid most of the persons who had been hisconfidants; and although his dethronement was not yet proposed, he hadalready become, far more than Louis XVI. Of France under similarconditions, the recognised enemy of the revolution, and the suspectedpatron 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 1821heightened the fury of parties in Spain, encouraging the Serviles, orAbsolutists, in their plots, and forcing the Ministry to yield to the cryfor more violent measures against the enemies of the Constitution. In thesouth of Spain the Exaltados gained possession of the principal militaryand civil commands, and openly refused obedience to the centraladministration when it attempted to interfere with their action Seville, Carthagena, and Cadiz acted as if they were independent Republics and evenspoke of separation from Spain. Defied by its own subordinates in theprovinces, and unable to look to the King for any sincere support, themoderate governing party lost all hold upon the nation. In the Corteselected in 1822 the Exaltados formed the majority, and Riego was appointedPresident. Ferdinand now began to concert measures of action with theFrench Ultra-Royalists. The Serviles, led by priests, and supported byFrench money, broke into open rebellion in the north. When the session ofthe Cortes ended, the King attempted to overthrow his enemies by militaryforce. Three battalions of the Royal Guard, which had been withdrawn fromMadrid, 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. Thathe was a prisoner. Though the French King gave nothing more than goodcounsel, the Ultra-Royalists in the French Cabinet and in the army nowstrained every nerve to accelerate a war between the two countries. TheSpanish Absolutists seized the town of Seo d'Urgel, and there set up aprovisional government. Civil war spread over the northern provinces. TheMinistry, which was now formed of Riego's friends, demanded and obtainedfrom the Cortes dictatorial powers like those which the French Committee ofPublic Safety had wielded in 1793, but with far other result. Spain foundno Danton, no Carnot, at this crisis, when the very highest powers ofintellect and will would have been necessary to arouse and to arm a peoplefar less disposed to fight for liberty than the French were in 1793. Oneman alone, General Mina, checked and overthrew the rebel leaders of thenorth with an activity superior to their own. The Government, boastful andviolent in its measures, effected scarcely anything in the organisation ofa national force, or in preparing the means of resistance against thoseforeign 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 membersdetermined to renew their meeting in the following year, in order to decidewhether the Austrian army might then be withdrawn from Naples, and todiscuss other questions affecting their common interests. The progress ofthe Greek insurrection and a growing strife between Russia and Turkey hadsince then thrown all Italian difficulties into the shade. The Easternquestion stood in the front rank of European politics; next in importancecame the affairs of Spain. It was certain that these, far more than theoccupation of Naples, would supply the real business of the Congress of1822. England had a far greater interest in both questions than in theItalian negotiations of the two previous years. It was felt that the systemof abstention which England had then followed could be pursued no longer, and that the country must be represented not by some casual and wanderingdiplomatist, but by its leading Minister, Lord Castlereagh. The intentionsof the other Powers in regard to Spain were matter of doubt; it was thefixed policy of Great Britain to leave the Spanish revolution in Europe torun its own course, and to persuade the other Powers to do the same. Butthe difficulties connected with Spain did not stop at the Spanish frontier. The South American colonies had now in great part secured theirindependence. They had developed a trade with Great Britain which made itimpossible for this country to ignore their flag and the decisions of theirlaw courts. The British navigation-laws had already been modified byParliament in favour of their shipping; and although it was no business ofthe English Government to grant a formal title to communities which hadmade themselves free, the practical recognition of the American States bythe appointment of diplomatic agents could in several cases not be justlydelayed. Therefore, without interfering with any colonies which were stillfighting or still negotiating with Spain, the British Minister proposed toinform the Allied cabinets of the intention of this country to accreditagents to some of the South American Republics, and to recommend to themthe adoption of a similar policy. [Death of Castlereagh, Aug. 12, 1822. ]Such was the tenour of the instructions which, a few weeks before hisexpected departure for the Continent, Castlereagh drew up for his ownguidance, and submitted to the Cabinet and the King. [332] Had he lived tofulfil the mission with which he was charged, the recognition of the SouthAmerican 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, isassociated in popular belief with the traditions of a hated and outwornsystem of oppression. Two more years of life, two more years of change inthe relations of England to the Continent, would have given Castlereagh adifferent figure in the history both of Greece and of America. No Englishstatesman in modern times has been so severely judged. Circumstances, downto the close of his career, withheld from Castlereagh the opportunitieswhich fell to his successor; ties from which others were free made it hardfor him to accelerate the breach with the Allies of 1814. Antagonistsshowed Castlereagh no mercy, no justice. The man whom Byron disgracedhimself by ridiculing after his death possessed in a rich measure thequalities which, in private life, attract esteem and love. His public life, if tainted in earlier days by the low political morality of the time, rosehigh above that of every Continental statesman of similar rank, with thesingle exception of Stein. The best testimony to his integrity is theirritation which it caused to Talleyrand. [333] If the consciousness oflabour unflaggingly pursued in the public cause, and animated on the wholeby a pure and earnest purpose, could have calmed the distress of a breakingmind, the decline of Castlereagh's days might have been one of peace. Hiscountrymen 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 despondencyobscured the outlines of the real world, and struck chill into his heart. Death, self-invoked, brought relief to the over-wrought brain, and laidCastlereagh, 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 bandof statesmen who had begun their public life in the school of Pitt. Wellington undertook to represent England at the Congress of 1822, whichwas now about to open at Vienna. His departure was, however, delayed forseveral weeks, and the preliminary meeting, at which it had been intendedto transact all business not relating to Italy, was almost over before hisarrival. Wellington accordingly travelled on to Verona, where Italianaffairs were to be dealt with; and the Italian Conference, which theBritish Government had not intended to recognise, thus became the realCongress of 1822. Anxious as Lord Castlereagh had been on the question offoreign interference with Spain, he hardly understood the imminence of thedanger. In passing through Paris, Wellington learnt for the first time thata French or European invasion of Spain would be the foremost object ofdiscussion among the Powers; and on reaching Verona he made the unwelcomediscovery 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 likethat which had been issued against Naples by the three Courts at Troppau, but one even more formidable, since France might be expected in the presentcase to give its concurrence, which had been withheld before. France indeedoccupied, according to the absolutist theory of the day, the same positionin regard to a Jacobin Spain as Austria in regard to a Jacobin Naples, andmight perhaps claim to play the leading military part in the crusade ofrepression. But the work was likely to be a much more difficult one thanthat of 1821. The French troops, said the Czar, were not trustworthy; andthere was a party in France which might take advantage of the war toproclaim the second Napoleon or the Republic. King Louis XVIII. Could nottherefore be allowed to grapple with Spain alone. It was necessary that theprincipal force employed by the alliance should be one whose loyalty andmilitary qualities were above suspicion: the generals who had marched fromMoscow to Paris were not likely to fail beyond the Pyrenees: and a campaignof the Russian army in Western Europe promised to relieve the Czar of someof the discontent of his soldiers, who had been turned back after enteringGalicia in the previous year, and who had not been allowed to assist theirfellow-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. AndVillèle were determined under no circumstances to give Russian troops apassage through France. His knowledge of this fact enabled him to speakwith some confidence to Alexander. It was the earnest desire of the EnglishGovernment to avert war, and its first object was therefore to prevent theCongress, as a body, from sending an ultimatum to Spain. If all the Powersunited in a declaration like that of Troppau, war was inevitable; if Francewere left to settle its own disputes with its neighbour, English mediationmight possibly preserve peace. The statement of Wellington, that Englandwould rather sever itself from the great alliance than consent to a jointdeclaration against Spain, had no doubt its effect in preventing such adeclaration being proposed; but a still weightier reason against it was thedirect contradiction between the intentions of the French Government andthose 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 throughFrance, it was impossible that the Congress should threaten Spain with acollective attack. No great expenditure of diplomacy was thereforenecessary to prevent the summary framing of a decree against Spain likethat which had been framed against Naples two years before. In the firstdespatches which he sent back to England Wellington expressed his beliefthat the deliberations of the Powers would end in a decision to leave theSpaniards to themselves. [Course of the negotiation against Spain. ]But the danger was only averted in appearance. The impulse to war was toostrong among the French Ultra-Royalists for the Congress to keep silence onSpanish affairs. Villèle indeed still hoped for peace, and, unlike othermembers of his Cabinet, he desired that, if war should arise, France shouldmaintain entire freedom of action, and enter upon the struggle as anindependent Power, not as the instrument of the European concert. This didnot prevent him, however, from desiring to ascertain what assistance wouldbe forthcoming, if France should be hard pressed by its enemy. Instructionswere given to the French envoys at Verona to sound the Allies on thisquestion. [335] It was out of the inquiry so suggested that a negotiationsprang which virtually combined all Europe against Spain. The envoyMontmorency, acting in the spirit of the war party, demanded of all thePowers whether, in the event of France withdrawing its ambassador fromMadrid, they would do the same, and whether, in case of war, France wouldreceive their moral and material support. Wellington in his reply protestedagainst the framing of hypothetical cases; the other envoys answeredMontmorency's questions in the affirmative. The next step was taken byMetternich, who urged that certain definite acts of the Spanish people orGovernment ought to be specified as rendering war obligatory on France andits allies, and also that, with a view of strengthening the Royalist partyin Spain, notes ought to be presented by all the ambassadors at Madrid, demanding a change in the Constitution. This proposal was in its turnsubmitted to Wellington and rejected by him. It was accepted by the otherplenipotentiaries, and the acts of the Spanish people were specified onwhich war should necessarily follow. These were, the commission of any actof violence against a member of the royal family, the deposition of theKing, or an attempt to change the dynasty. A secret clause was added to thesecond part of the agreement, to the effect that if the Spanish Governmentmade no satisfactory answer to the notes requiring a change in theConstitution, all the ambassadors should be immediately withdrawn. A draftof the notes to be presented was sketched; and Montmorency, who thoughtthat he had probably gone too far in his stipulations, returned to Paris tosubmit the drafts to the King before handing them over to the ambassadorsat 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 hadcommitted France to the direction of the three Eastern Powers. There was nolikelihood that the Spanish Government would make the least concession ofthe kind required, and in that case France stood pledged, if the action ofMontmorency was ratified, to withdraw its ambassador from Madrid at once. Villèle accordingly addressed himself to the ambassadors at Paris, askingthat the despatch of the notes might be postponed. No notice was taken ofhis request: the notes were despatched forthwith. Roused by this slight, Villèle appealed to the King not to submit to the dictation of foreignCourts. Louis XVIII. Declared in his favour against all the rest of theCabinet, and Montmorency had to retire from office. But the decision of theKing meant that he disapproved of the negotiations of Verona as shacklingthe movements of France, not that he had freed himself from the influenceof the war-party. Chateaubriand, the most reckless agitator forhostilities, was appointed Foreign Minister. The mediation of Great Britainwas rejected; [336] and in his speech at the opening of the Chambers of1823, 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 theirnotes at Madrid demanding a change in the Constitution; and, afterreceiving a high-spirited answer from the Ministers, they had quitted thecountry. Canning, while using every diplomatic effort to prevent an unjustwar, had made it clear to the Spaniards that England could not render themarmed assistance. The reasons against such an intervention were indeedoverwhelming. Russia, Austria, and Prussia would have taken the fieldrather than have permitted the Spanish Constitution to triumph; andalthough, if leagued with Spain in a really national defence like that of1808, Great Britain might perhaps have protected the Peninsula against allthe Powers of Europe combined, it was far otherwise when the cause at stakewas one to which a majority of the Spanish nation had shown itself to beindifferent, and against which the northern provinces had actually taken uparms. The Government and the Cortes were therefore left to defendthemselves as best they could against their enemies. They displayed theirweakness by enacting laws of extreme severity against deserters, and byretiring, along with the recalcitrant King, from Madrid to Seville. On the7th of April the French troops, led by the Duke of Angoulême, crossed thefrontier. The priests and a great part of the peasantry welcomed them asdeliverers: the forces opposed to them fell back without striking a blow. As the invader advanced towards the capital, gangs of royalists, often ledby monks, spread such terror and devastation over the northern provincesthat the presence of foreign troops became the only safeguard for thepeaceable inhabitants. [337] Madrid itself was threatened by the corps of afreebooter named Bessières. The commandant sent his surrender to the Frenchwhile they were still at some distance, begging them to advance as quicklyas possible in order to save the city from pillage. The message hadscarcely been sent when Bessières and his bandits appeared in the suburbs. The governor drove them back, and kept the royalist mob within the city atbay for four days more. On the 23rd of May the advance-guard of the Frencharmy entered the capital. [Angoulême and the Regency, and the ambassadors. ]It had been the desire of King Louis XVIII. And Angoulême to save Spainfrom 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 handsof the Council of Castille, and a Regency came into power whose first actsshowed in what spirit the victory of the French was to be used. Edicts wereissued declaring all the acts of the Cortes affecting the monastic ordersto be null and void, dismissing all officials appointed since March 7, 1820, and subjecting to examination those who, then being in office, hadnot resigned their posts. [338] The arrival of the ambassadors of the threeEastern Powers encouraged the Regency in their antagonism to the Frenchcommander. It was believed that the Cabinet of Paris was unwilling torestore King Ferdinand as an absolute monarch, and intended to obtain fromhim the grant of institutions resembling those of the French Charta. Anysuch limitation of absolute power was, however, an object of horror to thethree despotic Courts. Their ambassadors formed themselves into a councilwith the express object of resisting the supposed policy of Angoulême. TheRegency grew bolder, and gave the signal for general retribution upon theLiberals by publishing an order depriving all persons who had served in thevoluntary militia since March, 1820, of their offices, pensions, andtitles. The work inaugurated in the capital was carried much further in theprovinces. The friends of the Constitution, and even soldiers who wereprotected by their capitulation with the French, were thrown into prison bythe new local authorities. The violence of the reaction reached such aheight that Angoulême, now on the march to Cadiz, was compelled to publishan ordinance forbidding arrests to be made without the consent of a Frenchcommanding officer, and ordering his generals to release the persons whohad been arbitrarily imprisoned. The council of ambassadors, blind in theirjealousy of France to the danger of an uncontrolled restoration, drew up aprotest against his ordinance, and desired that the officers of the Regencyshould 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 beencompelled by the appearance of the French on the Sierra Morena to retire toCadiz. As King Ferdinand refused to accompany them, he was declaredtemporarily insane, and forced to make the journey (June 12). Angoulême, following the French vanguard after a considerable interval, appearedbefore Cadiz in August, and sent a note to King Ferdinand, recommending himto publish an amnesty, and to promise the restoration of the mediævalCortes. It was hoped that the terms suggested in this note might beaccepted by the Government in Cadiz as a basis of peace, and so render anattack upon the city unnecessary. The Ministry, however, returned a defiantanswer 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 weekslater the city was bombarded. In reply to all proposals for negotiationAngoulême stated that he could only treat when King Ferdinand was withinhis own lines. There was not the least hope of prolonging the defence ofCadiz with success, for the combat was dying out even in those fewdistricts 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 ofSeptember he signed, as if with great satisfaction, an absolute anduniversal amnesty. [339] On the following day he was conveyed with hisfamily 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 intosight. Ferdinand had not been twelve hours in the French camp when, surrounded by monks and royalist desperadoes, he published a proclamationinvalidating every act of the constitutional Government of the last threeyears, on the ground that his sanction had been given under constraint. Thesame proclamation ratified the acts of the Regency of Madrid. As theRegency of Madrid had declared all persons concerned in the removal of theKing to Cadiz to be liable to the penalties of high treason, Ferdinand hadin fact ratified a sentence of death against several of the men from whomhe had just parted in friendship. [340] Many of these victims of the King'sperfidy were sent into safety by the French. But Angoulême was powerless toinfluence Ferdinand's policy and conduct. Don Saez, the King's confessor, was made First Secretary of State. On the 4th of October an edict wasissued banishing for ever from Madrid, and from the country fifty milesround it, every person who during the last three years had sat in theCortes, or who had been a Minister, counsellor of State, judge, commander, official in any public office, magistrate, or officer in the so-calledvoluntary militia. It was ordered that throughout Spain a solemn serviceshould be celebrated in expiation of the insults offered to the HolySacrament; that missions should be sent over the land to combat thepernicious and heretical doctrines associated with the late outbreak, andthat the bishops should relegate to monasteries of the strictest observancethe priests who had acted as the agents of an impious faction. [341] Thusthe war of revenge was openly declared against the defeated party. It wasin vain that Angoulême indignantly reproached the King, and that theambassadors of the three Eastern Courts pressed him to draw up at leastsome kind of amnesty. Ferdinand travelled slowly towards Madrid, sayingthat he could take no such step until he reached the capital. On the 7th ofNovember, Riego was hanged. Thousands of persons were thrown into prison, or compelled to fly from the country. Except where order was preserved bythe French, life and property were at the mercy of royalist mobs and thepriests who led them; and although the influence of the Russian statesmanPozzo di Borgo at length brought a respectable Ministry into office, thisonly roused the fury of the clerical party, and led to a cry for thedeposition of the King, and for the elevation of his more fanaticalbrother, Don Carlos, to the throne. Military commissions were instituted atthe beginning of 1824 for the trial of accused persons, and a pretendedamnesty, published six months later, included in its fifteen classes ofexception the participators in almost every act of the revolution. Ordinance followed upon ordinance, multiplying the acts punishable withdeath, and exterminating the literature which was believed to be the sourceof all religious and social heterodoxy. Every movement of life was watchedby the police; every expression of political opinion was made high treason. Young men were shot for being freemasons; women were sent to prison for tenyears for possessing a portrait of Riego. The relation of the restoredGovernment to its subjects was in fact that which belonged to a state ofcivil war. Insurrections arose among the fanatics who were now taking thename of the Carlist or Apostolic party, as well as among a despairingremnant of the Constitutionalists. After a feeble outbreak of the latter atTarifa, a hundred and twelve persons were put to death by the militarycommissions within eighteen days. [342] It was not until the summer of 1825that the jurisdiction of these tribunals and the Reign of Terror ended. [England prohibits the conquest of Spanish colonies by France or itsallies. ][England recognises the independence of the colonies. 1824-5. ]France had won a cheap and inglorious victory. The three Eastern Courts hadseen their principle of absolutism triumph at the cost of everything thatmakes government morally better than anarchy. One consolation remained forthose who felt that there was little hope for freedom on the Continent ofEurope. The crusade against Spanish liberty had put an end for ever to thepossibility of a joint conquest of Spanish America in the interest ofdespotism. 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 theallied monarchs should suppress the republican principle beyond the seas, Castlereagh had only stated that England could bear no part in such anenterprise; he had not said that England would effectually prevent othersfrom attempting it. This was the resolution by which Canning, isolated andbaffled by the conspiracy of Verona, proved that England could still dosomething to protect its own interest and the interests of mankind againsta league of autocrats. There is indeed little doubt that the independenceof the Spanish colonies would have been recognised by Great Britain soonafter the war of 1823, whoever might have been our Minister for ForeignAffairs, but this recognition was a different matter in the hands ofCanning from what it would have been in the hands of his predecessor. Thecontrast between the two men was one of spirit rather than of avowed rulesof action. Where Castlereagh offered apologies to the Continentalsovereigns, Canning uttered defiance [343] The treaties of 1815, whichconnected 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 spiteof them England has still its own policy, its own sympathies, its owntraditions. In face of the council of kings and its assumption of universaljurisdiction, he publicly described himself as an enthusiast for theindependence of nations. If others saw little evidence that France intendedto recompense itself for its services to Ferdinand by appropriating some ofhis rebellious colonies, Canning was quick to lay hold of every suspiciouscircumstance. At the beginning of the war of 1823 he gave a formal warningto the ambassador of Louis XVIII. That France would not be permitted tobring any of these provinces under its dominion, whether by conquest orcession. [344] When the war was over, he rejected the invitation ofFerdinand's Government to take part in a conference at Paris, where theaffairs 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 wasnow a matter of indifference, for the policy of England was fixed, and itwas useless to debate upon a conclusion that could not be altered. Britishconsular agents were appointed in most of the colonies before the close ofthe year 1823; and after some interval the independence of Buenos Ayres, Colombia, and Mexico were formally recognised by the conclusion ofcommercial treaties. "I called the New World into existence, " criedCanning, when reproached with permitting the French occupation of Spain, "in order to redress the balance of the Old. " The boast, famous in ourParliamentary history, has left an erroneous impression of the part reallyplayed by Canning at this crisis. He did not call the New World intoexistence; he did not even assist it in winning independence, as France hadassisted the United States fifty years before; but when this independencehad been won, he threw over it the aegis of Great Britain, declaring thatno other European Power should reimpose the yoke which Spain had not beenable to maintain. [Affairs in Portugal. ][Constitution granted by Petro, May, 1826. ]The overthrow of the Spanish Constitution by foreign arms led to a seriesof events in Portugal which forced England to a more direct intervention inthe Peninsula than had yet been necessary, and heightened the conflict thathad sprung up between its policy and that of Continental absolutism. Thesame parties and the same passions, political and religious, existed inPortugal as in Spain, and the enemies of the Constitution found the samesupport at foreign Courts. The King of Portugal, John VI. , was a weak butnot ill-meaning man; his wife, who was a sister of Ferdinand of Spain, andhis son Don Miguel were the chiefs of the conspiracy against the Cortes. InJune, 1823, a military revolt, arranged by Miguel, brought the existingform of government to an end: the King promised, however, when dissolvingthe Cortes, that a Constitution should be bestowed by himself uponPortugal; and he seems to have intended to keep his word. The ambassadorsof France and Austria were, however, busy in throwing hindrances in theway, and Don Miguel prepared to use violence to prevent his father frommaking 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 of1823 was passed in intrigues; in May, 1824, Miguel arrested the Ministersand surrounded the King's palace with troops. After several days ofconfusion King John made his escape to the British ships, and Miguel, whowas alternately cowardly and audacious, then made his submission, and wasordered to leave the country. King John died in the spring of 1826 withouthaving granted a Constitution. Pedro, his eldest son, had already been madeEmperor of Brazil; and, as it was impossible that Portugal and Brazil couldagain be united, it was arranged that Pedro's daughter, when of sufficientage, should marry her uncle Miguel, and so save Portugal from the danger ofa contested succession. Before renouncing the crown of Portugal, Pedrogranted a Constitution to that country. A Regency had already beenappointed by King John, in which neither the Queen-dowager nor Miguel wasincluded. [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 andunderstanding, this Prince met with the welcome due to a kinsman of theImperial house, and to a representative of the good cause of absolutism. Hewas received by Metternich with great interest, and his fortunes were takenunder the protection of the Austrian Court. In due time, it was hoped thissavage and ignorant churl would do yeoman's service to Austrian principlesin the Peninsula. But the Regency and the new Constitution of Portugal hadnot to wait for the tardy operation of Metternich's covert hostility. Thesoldiery who had risen at Miguel's bidding in 1823 now proclaimed him King, and deserted to Spanish soil. Within the Spanish frontier they werereceived by Ferdinand's representatives with open arms. The demands made bythe Portuguese ambassador at Madrid for their dispersion and for thesurrender of their weapons were evaded. The cause of these armed bands onthe frontier became the cause of the Clerical and Ultra-Royalist party overall Europe. Money was sent to them from France and Austria. They werejoined by troops of Spanish Carlists or Apostolicals; they were fed, clothed, and organised, if not by the Spanish Government itself, at leastby those over whose action the Spanish Government exercised control. [346]Thus raised to considerable military strength, they made incursions intoPortugal, and at last attempted a regular invasion. The Regency of Lisbon, justly treating these outrages as the act of the Spanish Government, andappealing to the treaties which bound Great Britain to defend Portugalagainst foreign attack, demanded the assistance of this country. More wasinvolved 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 occupiedby French armies, and that a war with Spain might, and probably would, involve a war with France, if not with other Continental Powers. But theEnglish Ministry waited only for the confirmation of the alleged facts bytheir own ambassador. The treaty-rights of Portugal were undoubted; thetemper of the English Parliament and nation, strained to the utmost by theevents of the last three years, was such that a war against Ferdinand andagainst the destroyers of Spanish liberty would have caused more rejoicingthan alarm. Nine days after the formal demand of the Portuguese arrived, four days after their complaint was substantiated by the report of ourambassador, Canning announced to the House of Commons that British troopswere actually on the way to Lisbon. In words that alarmed many of his ownparty, and roused the bitter indignation of every Continental Court, Canning warned those whose acts threatened to force England into war, thatthe war, if war arose, would be a war of opinion, and that England, howeverearnestly she might endeavour to avoid it, could not avoid seeing rankedunder her banner all the restless and discontented of any nation with whichshe might come into conflict. As for the Portuguese Constitution whichformed the real object of the Spanish attack, it had not, Canning said, been given at the instance of Great Britain, but he prayed that Heavenmight prosper it. It was impossible to doubt that a Minister who spokethus, and who, even under expressions of regret, hinted at any alliancewith the revolutionary elements in France and Spain, was formidably inearnest. The words and the action of Canning produced the effect which hedesired. The Government of Ferdinand discovered the means of checking theactivity of the Apostolicals: the presence of the British troops at Lisbonenabled the Portuguese Regency to throw all its forces upon the invadersand to drive them from the country. They were disbanded when theyre-crossed the Spanish frontier; the French Court loudly condemned theirimmoral enterprise; and the Constitution of Portugal seemed, at least forthe 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 whenMetternich could express a public hope that the three Eastern Powers wouldhave the approval of this country in their attack upon the Constitution ofNaples. 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 theContinent it was felt that the difference between the earlier and the laterspirit of our policy was summed up in the contrast between Canning andCastlereagh. It has become an article of historical faith thatCastlereagh's melancholy death brought one period of our foreign policy toa close and inaugurated another: it has been said that Canning liberatedEngland from its Continental connexions; it has even been claimed for himthat he performed for Europe no less a task than the dissolution of theHoly Alliance. [347] The figure of Canning is indeed one that will for everfill a great space in European history; and the more that is known of theopposition which he encountered both from his sovereign and from his greatrival Wellington, the greater must be our admiration for his clear, strongmind, and for the conquering force of his character. But the legend whichrepresents English policy as taking an absolutely new departure in 1822does not correspond to the truth of history. Canning was a member of theCabinet from 1816 to 1820; it is a poor compliment to him to suppose thathe either exercised no influence upon his colleagues or acquiesced in apolicy of which he disapproved; and the history of the Congress ofAix-la-Chapelle proves that his counsels had even at that time gained theascendant. The admission made by Castlereagh in 1820, after Canning hadleft the Cabinet, that Austria, as a neighbouring and endangered State, hada right to suppress the revolutionary constitution of Naples, wouldprobably not have gained Canning's assent; in all other points, the actionof our Government at Troppau and Laibach might have been his own. Canningloved to speak of his system as one of neutrality, and of non-interferencein that struggle between the principles of despotism and of democracy whichseemed to be spreading over Europe. He avowed his sympathy for Spain as theobject of an unjust and unprovoked war, but he most solemnly warned theSpaniards not to expect English assistance. He prayed that the Constitutionof Portugal might prosper, but he expressly disclaimed all connection withits origin, and defended Portugal not because it was a ConstitutionalState, but because England was bound by treaties to defend it againstforeign invasion. The arguments against intervention on behalf of Spainwhich Canning addressed to the English sympathisers with that country mighthave been uttered by Castlereagh; the denial of the right of foreign Powersto attack the Spanish Constitution, with which Castlereagh headed his owninstructions 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 largecorrection. The general relations existing between the Great Powers werebased, not on the ridiculous and obsolete treaty of Holy Alliance, but onthe Acts which were signed at the Conference of Aix-la-Chapelle. The firstof these was the secret Quadruple Treaty which bound England and the threeEastern Powers to attack France in case a revolution in that country shouldendanger the peace of Europe; the second was the general declaration of allthe five Powers that they would act in amity and take counsel with oneanother. From the first of these alliances Canning certainly did notwithdraw England. He would perhaps have done so in 1823 if the QuadrupleTreaty had bound England to maintain the House of Bourbon on the Frenchthrone; but it had been expressly stated that the deposition of theBourbons would not necessarily and in itself be considered by England asendangering the peace of Europe. This treaty remained in full force up toCanning's death; and if a revolutionary army had marched from Paris uponAntwerp, he would certainly have claimed the assistance of the threeEastern Powers. With respect to the general concert of Europe, establishedor confirmed by the declaration of Aix-la-Chapelle, this had always beenone of varying extent and solidity. Both France and England had heldthemselves aloof at Troppau. The federative action was strongest and mostmischievous not before but after the death of Castlereagh, and in theperiod that followed the Congress of Verona; for though the war againstSpain was conducted by France alone, the three Eastern Powers had virtuallymade themselves responsible for the success of the enterprise, and it wasthe influence of their ambassadors at Paris and Madrid which prevented anyrestrictions from being imposed upon Ferdinand's restored sovereignty. Canning is invested with a spurious glory when it is said that his actionin Spain and in Portugal broke up the league of the Continental Courts. Canning indeed shaped the policy of our own country with equal independenceand wisdom, but the political centre of Europe was at this time not Londonbut Vienna. The keystone of the European fabric was the union of Austriaand Russia, and this union was endangered, not by anything that could takeplace in the Spanish Peninsula, but by the conflicting interests of thesetwo great States in regard to the Ottoman Empire. From the moment when theTreaty of Paris was signed, every Austrian politician fixed his gaze uponthe roads leading to the Lower Danube, and anxiously noted the signs ofcoming war, or of continued peace, between Russia and the Porte. [348] Itwas the triumph of Metternich to have diverted the Czar's thoughts duringthe succeeding years from his grievances against Turkey, and to havebaffled the Russian diplomatists and generals who, like Capodistrias, sought to spur on their master to enterprises of Eastern conquest. At theCongress of Verona the shifting and incoherent manoeuvres of Austrianstatecraft can indeed only be understood on the supposition that Metternichwas thinking all the time less of Spain than of Turkey, and struggling atwhatever cost to maintain that personal influence over Alexander which hadhitherto prevented the outbreak of war in the East. But the antagonism solong suppressed broke out at last. The progress of the Greek insurrectionbrought Austria and Russia not indeed into war, but into the mostembittered hostility with one another. It was on this rock that theungainly craft which men called the Holy Alliance at length struck and wentto pieces. Canning played his part well in the question of the East, but hedid not create this question. There were forces at work which, without hisintervention, would probably have made an end of the despotic amities of1815. It is not necessary to the title of a great statesman that he shouldhave called into being the elements which make a new political orderpossible; it is sufficient praise that he should have known how to turnthem to account. CHAPTER XV. Condition of Greece: its Races and Institutions--The Greek Church--CommunalSystem--The Ægæan Islands--The Phanariots--Greek Intellectual Revival;Koraes--Beginning of Greek National Movement; Contact of Greece with theFrench Revolution and Napoleon--The Hetæria Philike--Hypsilanti's Attemptin the Danubian Provinces; its Failure--Revolt of the Morea: Massacres:Execution of Gregorius, and Terrorism at Constantinople--Attitude ofRussia, Austria, and England--Extension of the Revolt: Affairs atHydra--The Greek Leaders--Fall of Tripolitza--The Massacre of Chios--Failure of the Turks in the Campaign of 1822--Dissensions of theGreeks--Mahmud calls upon Mehemet Ali for Aid--Ibrahim conquers Crete andinvades the Morea--Siege of Missolonghi--Philhellenism in Europe--RussianProposal 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--Deathof Canning--Navarino--War between Russia and Turkey--Campaigns of 1828 and1829--Treaty of Adrianople--Capodistrias President of Greece--Leopoldaccepts 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 thiscentury peopled the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the Greek wasthat which had been least visibly affected by the political and militaryevents of the Napoleonic age. Servia, after a long struggle, had in theyear 1817 gained local autonomy under its own princes, although Turkishtroops still garrisoned its fortresses, and the sovereignty of the Sultanwas acknowledged by the payment of tribute. The Romanic districts, Wallachia and Moldavia, which, in the famous interview of Tilsit, Napoleonhad bidden the Czar to make his own, were restored by Russia to the Portein the Treaty of Bucharest in 1812, but under conditions which virtuallyestablished a Russian protectorate. Greece, with the exception of theIonian Islands, had neither been the scene of any military operations, norformed the subject of any treaty. Yet the age of the French Revolution andof the Napoleonic wars had silently wrought in the Greek nation the last ofa great series of changes which fitted it to take its place among the freepeoples of Europe. The signs were there from which those who could read thefuture might have gathered that the political resurrection of Greece wasnear at hand. There were some who, with equal insight and patriotism, sought during this period to lay the intellectual foundation for thatnational independence which they foresaw that their children would win withthe sword. [Greece in the eighteenth century. ]The forward movement of the Greek nation may be said, in general terms, tohave become visible during the first half of the eighteenth century. Serfage had then disappeared; the peasant was either a free-holder, or afarmer paying a rent in kind for his land. In the gradual and unobservedemancipation of the labouring class the first condition of national revivalhad already been fulfilled. The peasantry had been formed which, when theconflict with the Turk broke out, bore the brunt of the long struggle. Incomparison with the Prussian serf, the Greek cultivator at the beginning ofthe eighteenth century was an independent man: in comparison with theEnglish labourer, he was well fed and well housed. The evils to which theGreek population was exposed, wherever Greeks and Turks lived together, were those which brutalised or degraded the Christian races in everyOttoman province. There was no redress for injury inflicted by a Mohammedanofficial 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 theoffender could be brought to justice. The term by which the Turk describedhis Christian neighbour was "our rayah, " that is, "our subject. " AMohammedan landowner might terrorise the entire population around him, carry off the women, flog and imprison the men, and yet feel that he hadcommitted no offence against the law; for no law existed but the Koran, andno Turkish court of justice but that of the Kadi, where the complaint ofthe Christian passed for nothing. This was the monstrous relation that existed between the dominant and thesubject nationalities, not in Greece only, but in every part of the OttomanEmpire where Mohammedans and Christians inhabited the same districts. Thesecond great and general evil was the extortion practised by thetax-gatherers, and this fell upon the poorer Mohammedans equally with theChristians, except in regard to the poll-tax, or haratsch, the badge ofservitude, which was levied on Christians alone. All land paid tithe to theState; and until the tax-gatherer had paid his visit it was not permittedto 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 notbribe himself or his masters; for by merely postponing his visit he coulddestroy the value of the harvest. Round this central institution of tyrannyand waste, there gathered, except in the districts protected by municipalprivileges, every form of corruption natural to a society where the Stateheard no appeals, and made no inquiry into the processes employed by thoseto whom it sold the taxes. What was possible in the way of extortion wasbest seen in the phenomenon of well-built villages being left tenantless, and the population of rich districts dying out in a time of peace, withoutpestilence, without insurrection, without any greater wrong on the part ofthe Sultan's government than that normal indifference which permitted theexistence of a community to depend upon the moderation or the caprice ofthe 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 mixedTurkish and Christian society of the Ottoman Empire. On this background wehave now to trace the social and political features which stood out inGreek life, which preserved the race from losing its separate nationality, and which made the ultimate recovery of its independence possible. In thefirst outburst of sympathy and delight with which every generous heart inwestern Europe hailed the standard of Hellenic freedom upraised in 1821, the twenty centuries which separated the Greece of literature from theGreece of to-day were strangely forgotten. The imagination went straightback to Socrates and Leonidas, and pictured in the islander or the hillsmanwho rose against Mahmud II. The counterpart of those glorious beings whogave to Europe the ideals of intellectual energy, of plastic beauty, and ofpoetic truth. The illusion was a happy one, if it excited on behalf of abrave people an interest which Servia or Montenegro might have failed togain; but it led to a reaction when disappointments came; it gaveinordinate importance to the question of the physical descent of theGreeks; and it produced a false impression of the causes which had led upto the war of independence, and of the qualities, the habits, the bonds ofunion, which exercised the greatest power over the nation. These were, to agreat extent, unlike anything existing in the ancient world; they hadoriginated in Byzantine, not in classic Greece; and where the scenes of oldHellenic history appeared to be repeating themselves, it was due more tothe continuing influence of the same seas and the same mountains than tothe survival of any political fragments of the past. The Greek populationhad received a strong Slavonic infusion many centuries before. Morerecently, Albanian settlers had expelled the inhabitants from certaindistricts both in the mainland and in the Morea. Attica, Boeotia, Corinth, and Argolis were at the outbreak of the war of independence peopled in themain 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 Albaniancommunities in the west of the Morea, were Christians, not Mohammedans. Neighbourhood, commerce, identity of religion and similarity of localinstitutions were turning these Albanians into Greeks; and no community ofpure Hellenic descent played a greater part in the national war, orexhibited more of the maritime energy and daring which we associatepeculiarly with the Hellenic name, than the islanders of Hydra and Spetza, who had crossed from the Albanian parts of the Morea and taken possessionof these desert rocks not a hundred years before. The same phenomenon of anassimilation of Greeks and Albanians was seen in southern Epirus, theborder-ground between the two races. The Suliotes, Albanian mountaineers, whose military exploits form one of the most extraordinary chapters inhistory, showed signs of Greek influences before the Greek war ofindependence began, and in this war they made no distinction between theGreek cause and their own. Even the rule of the ferocious Ali Pasha atJanina had been favourable to the extension of Greek civilisation inEpirus. Under this Mohammedan tyrant Janina contained more schools thanAthens. The Greek population of the district increased; and in the sense ofa common religious antagonism to the Mohammedan, the Greek and the AlbanianChristians 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 ofthe Orthodox Eastern Church. Where, as in parts of Crete, the Greek adoptedMohammedanism, all the other elements of his nationality together did notprevent him from amalgamating with the Turk. The sound and popular forcesof the Church belonged to the lower clergy, who, unlike the priests of theRoman Church, were married and shared the life of the people. If ignorantand bigoted, they were nevertheless the real guardians of national spirit;and if their creed was a superstition rather than a religion, it at leastkept the Greeks in a wholesome antagonism to the superstition of theirmasters. The higher clergy stood in many respects in a different position. The Patriarch of Constantinople was a great officer of the Porte. Hisdignities and his civil jurisdiction had been restored and even enlarged bythe Mohammedan conquerors of the Greek Empire, with the express object ofemploying the Church as a means of securing obedience to themselves: and itwas quite in keeping with the history of this great office that, when theGreek national insurrection at last broke out, the Patriarch Gregorius IV. Should have consented, though unwillingly, to launch the curse of theChurch against it. The Patriarch gained his office by purchase, or throughintrigues at the Divan; he paid an enormous annual backsheesh for it; andhe was liable to be murdered or deposed as soon as his Mussulman patronslost favour with the Sultan, or a higher bid was made for his office by arival ecclesiastic. To satisfy the claims of the Palace the Patriarch wascompelled to be an extortioner himself. The bishoprics in their turn weresold in his ante-chambers, and the Bishops made up the purchase-money byfleecing their clergy. But in spite of a deserved reputation for venality, the Bishops in Greece exercised very great influence, both as ecclesiasticsand as civil magistrates. Whether their jurisdiction in lawsuits betweenChristians arose from the custom of referring disputes to their arbitrationor was expressly granted to them by the Sultan, they virtually displaced inall Greek communities the court of the Kadi, and afforded the merchant orthe farmer a tribunal where his own law was administered in his ownlanguage. Even a Mohammedan in dispute with a Christian would sometimesconsent to bring the matter before the Bishops' Court rather than enforcehis right to obtain the dilatory and capricious decision of an Ottomanjudge. [Communal organisation. ][The Morea. ]The condition of the Greeks living in the country that now forms theHellenic Kingdom and in the Ægæan Islands exhibited strong local contrasts. It was, however, common to all that, while the Turk held the powers ofState in his hand, the details of local administration in each districtwere left to the inhabitants, the Turk caring nothing about these mattersso long as the due amount of taxes was paid and the due supply of sailorsprovided. The apportionment of taxes among households and villages seems tohave been the germ of self-government from which several types of municipalorganisation, some of them of great importance in the history of the Greeknation, developed. In the Paschalik of the Morea the taxes were usuallyfarmed by the Voivodes, or Beys, the Turkish governors of the twenty-threeprovinces into which the Morea was divided. But in each village or townshipthe inhabitants elected officers called Proestoi, who, besides collectingthe taxes and managing the affairs of their own communities, met in adistrict-assembly, and there determined what share of the district-taxationeach community should bear. One Greek officer, called Primate, and oneMohammedan, called Ayan, were elected to represent the district, and totake part in the council of the Pasha of the Morea, who resided atTripolitza. [350] The Primates exercised considerable power. Createdoriginally by the Porte to expedite the collection of the revenue, theybecame a Greek aristocracy. They were indeed an aristocracy of no verynoble kind. Agents of a tyrannical master, they shared the vices of thetyrant and of the slave. Often farmers of the taxes themselves, obsequiousand intriguing in the palace of the Pasha at Tripolitza, grasping anddespotic in their native districts, they were described as a species ofChristian Turk. But whatever their vices, they saved the Greeks from beingleft without leaders. They formed a class accustomed to act in common, conversant with details of administration, and especially with themachinery for collecting and distributing supplies. It was this financialexperience of the Primates of the Morea which gave to the rebellion of theGreeks what little unity of organisation it exhibited in its earlieststage. [Northern Greece. The Armatoli and the Klephts. ]On the north of the Gulf of Corinth the features of the communal systemwere less distinct than in the Morea. There was, however, in themountain-country of Ætolia and Pindus a rough military organisation whichhad done great service to Greece in keeping alive the national spirit andhabits of personal independence. The Turks had found a local militiaestablished in this wild region at the time of their conquest, and had notinterfered with it for some centuries. The Armatoli, or native soldiery, recruited from peasants, shepherds, and muleteers, kept Mohammedaninfluences at a distance, until, in the eighteenth century, the Sultansmade it a fixed rule of policy to diminish their numbers and to reduce thepower of their captains. Before 1820 the Armatoli had become comparativelyfew and weak; but as they declined, bands of Klephts, or brigands, grew inimportance; and the mountaineer who was no longer allowed to practise armsas a guardian of order, enlisted himself among the robbers. Like thefreebooters of our own northern border, these brigands became the heroes ofsong. Though they plundered the Greek as well as the Mohammedan, thenational spirit approved their exploits. It was, no doubt, something, thatthe physical energy of the marauder and the habit of encountering dangershould not be wholly on the side of the Turk and the Albanian. But theinfluence of the Klephts in sustaining Greek nationality has beenoverrated. They had but recently become numerous, and the earlierorganisation of the northern Armatoli was that to which the sound andvigorous character of the Greek peasantry in these regions, the finest partof 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 wholehappy and prosperous. Some of these islands had no Turkish population; inothers the caprice of a Sultana, the goodwill of the Capitan Pasha whogoverned the Archipelago, or the judicious offer of a sum of money whenmoney was wanted by the Porte, had so lightened the burden of Ottomansovereignty, that the Greek island-community possessed more liberty thanwas to be found in any part of Europe, except Switzerland. The taxespayable to the central government, including the haratsch or poll-taxlevied on all Christians, had often been commuted for a fixed sum, whichwas raised without the interposition of the Turkish tax-gatherer. In Hydra, Spetza, and Psara, the so-called nautical islands, the supremacy of theTurk was felt only in the obligation to furnish sailors to the Ottomannavy, and in the payment of a tribute of about £100 per annum. Thegovernment of these three islands was entirely in the hands of theinhabitants. In Chios, though a considerable Mussulman population existedby the side of the Greek, there was every sign of peace and prosperity. Each island bore its own peculiar social character, and had its municipalinstitutions of more or less value. The Hydriote was quarrelsome, turbulent, quick to use the knife, but outspoken, honest in dealing, and anexcellent sailor. The picture of Chian life, as drawn even by those whohave judged the Greeks most severely, is one of singular beauty andinterest; the picture of a self-governing society in which the familytrained the citizen in its own bosom, and in which, while commerce enrichedall, the industry of the poor within their homes and in their gardens wasrefined by the practice of an art. The skill which gave its value to theembroidery and to the dyes of Chios was exercised by those who also workedthe hand-loom and cultivated the mastic and the rose. The taste and thelabour of man requited nature's gifts of sky, soil, and sea; and in thepursuit of occupations which stimulated, not deadened, the faculties of theworker, idleness and intemperance were alike unknown. [352] How bright ascene of industry, when compared with the grime and squalor of the Englishfactory-town, where the human and the inanimate machine grind out theiryearly mountains of iron-ware and calico, in order that the employer mayvie with his neighbours in soulless ostentation, and the workman consumehis 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 populationincluded, beyond the boundaries of the present Hellenic Kingdom, theislands adjacent to the coast of Asia Minor, Crete, and the Chalcidicpeninsula in Macedonia. But the activity of the race was not confinedwithin these limits. If the Greek was a subject in his own country, he wasmaster in the lands of some of his neighbours. A Greek might exercise powerover other Christian subjects of the Porte either as an ecclesiastic, or asthe delegate of the Sultan in certain fixed branches of the administration. The authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople was recognised over thewhole of the European provinces of Turkey, except Servia. The Bishops inall these provinces were Greeks; the services of the Church were conductedin 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. Inthings religious, and in that wide range of civil affairs which incommunities belonging to the Eastern Church appertains to the higherreligious office, the Greeks had in fact regained the ascendancy which theyhad possessed under the Byzantine Empire. The dream of the Churchman wasnot the creation of an independent kingdom of Greece, but the restorationof the Eastern Empire under Greek supremacy. When it was seen that the Slavand the Rouman came to the Greek for law, for commercial training, forreligious teaching, and looked to the Patriarch of Constantinople as theultimate judge of all disputes, it was natural that the belief should arisethat, when the Turk passed away, the Greek would step into his place. Butthe influence of the Greeks, great as it appeared to be, did not in realityreach below the surface, except in Epirus. The bishops were felt to beforeigners and extortioners. There was no real process of assimilation atwork, either in Bulgaria or in the Danubian Provinces. The slow andplodding Bulgarian peasant, too stupid for the Greek to think of him as arival, preserved his own unchanging tastes and nationality, sang to hischildren the songs which he had learnt from his parents, and forgot theGreek 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 intensehatred. [The Phanariot officials of the Porte. ][Greek Hospodars. ]Four great offices of the Ottoman Empire were always held by Greeks. Thesewere the offices of Dragoman, [354] or Secretary, of the Porte, Dragoman ofthe Fleet, and the governorships, called Hospodariates, of Wallachia andMoldavia. The varied business of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, theadministration of its revenues, the conduct of its law-courts, had drawn amultitude of pushing and well-educated Greeks to the quarter ofConstantinople called the Phanar, in which the palace of the Patriarch issituated. Merchants and professional men inhabited the same district. TheseGreeks of the capital, the so-called Phanariots, gradually made their wayinto the Ottoman administration as Turkish energy declined, and theconquering race found that it could no longer dispense with the weapons ofcalculation and diplomacy. The Treaty of Carlowitz, made in 1699, after theunsuccessful war in which the Turks laid siege to Vienna, was negotiated onbehalf of the Porte by Alexander Maurokordatos, a Chian by birth, who hadbecome physician to the Sultan and was virtually the Foreign Minister ofTurkey. His sons, Nicholas and Constantine, were made Hospodars ofWallachia and Moldavia early in the eighteenth century; and from this timeforward, until the outbreak of the Greek insurrection, the governorships ofthe Roumanian provinces were entrusted to Phanariot families. The resultwas that a troop of Greek adventurers passed to the north of the Danube, and seized upon every office of profit in these unfortunate lands. Therewere indeed individuals among the Hospodars, especially among theMaurokordati, who rendered good service to their Roumanian subjects; but onthe whole the Phanariot rule was grasping, dishonest, and cruel. [355] Itsimportance in relation to Greece was not that it Hellenised the Danubiancountries, for that it signally failed to do; but that it raised thestandard of Greek education, and enlarged the range of Greek thought, byopening a political and administrative career to ambitious men. Theconnection of the Phanariots with education was indeed an exceedingly closeone. Alexander Maurokordatos was the ardent and generous founder of schoolsfor the instruction of his countrymen in Constantinople as well as in othercities, and for the improvement of the existing language of Greece. Hisexample was freely followed throughout the eighteenth century. It is, indeed, one of the best features in the Greek character that the owner ofwealth has so often been, and still so often is, the promoter of theculture of his race. As in Germany in the last century, and in Hungary andBohemia at a more recent date, the national revival of Greece was precededby 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 ecclesiasticcommonplace of a pedantic age; and in the schools kept by the clergy beforethe eighteenth century the ancient language was taught only as a means ofimparting divinity. The educational movement promoted by men likeMaurokordatos had a double end; it revived the knowledge of the great ageof Greece through its literature, and it taught the Greek to regard thespeech which he actually used not as a mere barbarous patois which eachdistrict had made for itself, but as a language different indeed from thatof the ancient world, yet governed by its own laws, and capable ofperforming the same functions as any other modern tongue. It was now thatthe 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 oneswere renovated or transformed, education ceased to be merely literary. Inthe second half of the eighteenth century science returned in a humble formto the land that had given it birth, and the range of instruction waswidened by men who had studied law, physics, and moral philosophy atforeign Universities. Something of the liberal spirit of the inquirers ofWestern Europe arose among the best Greek teachers. Though no attack wasmade upon the doctrines of the Church, and no direct attack was made uponthe authority of the Sultan, the duty of religious toleration wasproclaimed in a land where bigotry had hitherto reigned supreme, and thepolitical freedom of ancient Greece was held up as a glorious ideal to aless happy age. Some of the higher clergy and of the Phanariot instrumentsof 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 politicalprogress of Greece might be endangered by ecclesiastical ill-will. But theattachment of the Greek people to the Church was so strong and so universalthat, although satire might be directed against the Bishops, a breach withthe Church formed no part of the design of any patriot. The antagonismbetween episcopal and national feeling, strongest about the end of theeighteenth century, declined during succeeding years, and had almostdisappeared 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 greatestpatriots. Koraes, known as the legislator of the Greek language, was bornin 1748, of Chian parents settled at Smyrna. The love of learning, combinedwith an extreme independence of character, made residence insupportable tohim in a land where the Turk was always within sight, and where fewopportunities existed for gaining wide knowledge. His parents permitted himto spend some years at Amsterdam, where a branch of their business wasestablished. Recalled to Smyrna at the age of thirty, Koraes almostabandoned human society. The hand of a beautiful heiress could not tempthim from the austere and solitary life of the scholar; and quitting hishome, he passed through the medical school of Montpellier, and settled atParis. He was here when the French Revolution began. The inspiration ofthat time gave to his vast learning and inborn energy a directly patrioticaim. For forty years Koraes pursued the work of serving Greece by the meansopen to the scholar. The political writings in which he addressed theGreeks themselves or appealed to foreigners in favour of Greece, admirableas they are, do not form the basis of his fame. The peculiar task of Koraeswas to give to the reviving Greek nation the national literature and theform of expression which every civilised people reckons among its mostcherished bonds of unity. Master, down to the minutest details, of theentire range of Greek writings, and of the history of the Greek languagefrom classical times down to our own century, Koraes was able to select theHellenic authors, Christian as well as Pagan, whose works were best suitedfor his countrymen in their actual condition, and to illustrate them as noone could who had not himself been born and bred among Greeks. This was oneside of Koraes' literary task. The other was to direct the language of thefuture Hellenic kingdom into its true course. Classical writing was stillunderstood by the educated in Greece, but the spoken language of the peoplewas something widely different. Turkish and Albanian influences hadbarbarised the vocabulary; centuries of ignorance had given play to everynatural irregularity of local dialect. When the restoration of Greekindependence came within view, there were some who proposed to reviveartificially each form used in the ancient language, and thus, without anyreal blending, to add the old to the new: others, seeing this to beimpossible, desired that the common idiom, corrupt as it was, should beaccepted as a literary language. Koraes chose the middle and the rationalpath. Taking the best written Greek of the day as his material, herecommended that the forms of classical Greek, where they were not whollyobsolete, should be fixed in the grammar of the language. While ridiculingthe attempt to restore modes of expression which, even in the writtenlanguage, had wholly passed out of use, he proposed to expunge all wordsthat were in fact not Greek at all, but foreign, and to replace them byterms formed according to the natural laws of the language. The Greek, therefore, which Koraes desired to see his countrymen recognise as theirlanguage, and which he himself used in his writings, was the written Greekof 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 theoryhas been proved by its complete success. The patois which, if it had beenrecognised as the language of the Greek kingdom, would now have madeHerodotus and Plato foreign authors in Athens, is indeed still preserved infamiliar conversation, but it is little used in writing and not taught inschools. A language year by year more closely approximating in its forms tothat of classical Greece unites the Greeks both with their past and amongthemselves, and serves as the instrument of a widening Helleniccivilization in the Eastern Mediterranean. The political object of Koraeshas been completely attained. No people in Europe is now prouder of itsnative tongue, or turns it to better account in education, than hiscountrymen. In literature, the renovated language has still its work beforeit. The lyric poetry that has been written in Greece since the time ofKoraes is not wanting, if a foreigner may express an opinion, in tendernessand grace The writer who shall ennoble Greek prose with the energy anddirectness 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 wasclosely connected with the development of their commerce, and this in itsturn was connected with events in the greater cycle of European history. Aperiod of comparative peace and order in the Levantine waters, followingthe final expulsion of the Venetians from the Morea in 1718, gave play tothe natural aptitude of the Greek islanders for coasting-trade. Then ships, still small and unfit to venture on long voyages, plied between theharbours in the Ægæan and in the Black Sea, and brought profit to theirowners in spite of the imposition of burdens from which not only many ofthe Mussulman subjects of the Sultan, but foreign nations protected bycommercial treaties, were free. It was at this epoch, after Venice had lostits commercial supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean, that Russia began toexercise a direct influence upon the fortunes of Greece. The EmpressCatherine had formed the design of conquering Constantinople, and intended, under the title of Protectress of the Christian Church, to use the Greeksas her allies. In the war which broke out between Russia and Turkey in1768, a Russian expeditionary force landed in the Morea, and the Greekswere persuaded to take up arms. The Moreotes themselves paid dearly for thetrust which they had placed in the orthodox Empress. They were virtuallyabandoned to the vengeance of their oppressors; but to Greece at large theconditions on which peace was made proved of immense benefit. The Treaty ofKainardji, signed in 1774, gave Russia the express right to makerepresentations at Constantinople on behalf of the Christian inhabitants ofthe Danubian provinces; it also bound the Sultan to observe certainconditions in his treatment of the Greek islanders. Out of these clauses, Russian diplomacy constructed a general right of interference on behalf ofany Christian subjects of the Porte. The Treaty also opened the Black Seato Russian ships of commerce, and conferred upon Russia the commercialprivileges of the most favoured nation. [357] The result of this compactwas a very remarkable one. The Russian Government permitted hundreds ofGreek shipowners to hoist its own flag, and so changed the footing of Greekmerchantmen in every port of the Ottoman Empire. The burdens which hadplaced the Greek trader at a disadvantage, when compared with theMohammedan, vanished. A host of Russian consular agents, often Greeksthemselves, was scattered over the Levant. Eager for opportunities ofattaching the Greeks to their Russian patrons, quick to make theirnewly-won power felt by the Turks, these men extracted a definite meaningfrom the clauses of the Treaty of Kainardji, by which the Porte had bounditself to observe the rights of its Christian subjects. The sense ofsecurity in the course of their business, no less than the emancipationfrom commercial fetters, gave an immense impulse to Greek traders. Theirships were enlarged; voyages, hitherto limited to the Levant, were extendedto England and even to America; and a considerable armament of cannon wasplaced on board each ship for defence against the attack of Algerianpirates. [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 andRussia, resulting in the cession of the district of Oczakoff on thenorthern shore of the Black Sea, made the Greeks both carriers and vendorsof the corn-export of Southern Russia. The city of Odessa was founded onthe ceded territory. The merchants who raised it to its sudden prosperitywere not Russians but Greeks; and in the course of a single generation manya Greek trading-house, which had hitherto deemed the sum of £3, 000 to be alarge capital, rose to an opulence little behind that of the great Londonfirms. Profiting by the neutrality of Turkey or its alliance with Englandduring a great part of the revolutionary war, the Greeks succeeded to muchof the Mediterranean trade that was lost by France and its dependencies. The increasing intelligence of the people was shown in the fact thatforeigners were no longer employed by Greek merchants as their travellingagents in distant countries; there were countrymen enough of their own whocould negotiate with an Englishman or a Dane in his own language. Therichest Greeks were no doubt those of Odessa and Salonica, not of Hellasproper; but even the little islands of Hydra and Spetza, the refuge of theMoreotes whom Catherine had forsaken in 1770, now became communities of nosmall wealth and spirit. Psara, which was purely Greek, formed with theseAlbanian colonies the nucleus of an Ægæan naval Power. The OttomanGovernment, cowed by its recent defeats, and perhaps glad to see the meansof increasing its resources, made no attempt to check the growth of theHellenic armed marine. Under the very eyes of the Sultan, the Hydriote andPsarian captains, men as venturesome as the sea-kings of ancient Greece, accumulated the artillery which was hereafter to hold its own against manyan Ottoman man-of-war, and to sweep the Turkish merchantmen from theÆgæan. Eighteen years before the Greek insurrection broke out, Koraes, calling the attention of Western Europe to the progress made by hiscountry, wrote the following significant words:--"If the Ottoman Governmentcould have foreseen that the Greeks would create a merchant-navy, composedof several hundred vessels, most of them regularly armed, it would havecrushed the movement at its commencement. It is impossible to calculate theeffects which may result from the creation of this marine, or the influencewhich it may exert both upon the destiny of the oppressed nation and uponthat of its oppressors. " [358] Like its classic sisterland in theMediterranean, Greece was stirred by the far-sounding voices of the FrenchRevolution. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, the revival of a supposedantique Republicanism, the victories of Hoche and Bonaparte, successivelykindled the enthusiasm of a race already restless under the Turkish yoke. France drew to itself some of the hopes that had hitherto been fixedentirely upon Russia. Images and ideas of classic freedom invaded thedomain where the Church had hitherto been all in all; the very sailorsbegan to call their boats by the names of Spartan and Athenian heroes, aswell as by those of saints and martyrs. In 1797 Venice fell, and Bonaparteseized its Greek possessions, the Ionian Islands. There was something ofthe forms of liberation in the establishment of French rule; theinhabitants of Zante were at least permitted to make a bonfire of thestately wigs worn by their Venetian masters. Great changes seemed to benear at hand. It was not yet understood that France fought for empire, notfor justice; and the man who, above all others, represented the earlyspirit of the revolution among the Greeks, the poet Rhegas, looked toBonaparte to give the signal for the rising of the whole of the Christianpopulations subject to Mohammedan rule. Rhegas, if he was not a wisepolitician, was a thoroughly brave man, and he was able to serve hiscountry as a martyr. While engaged in Austria in conspiracies against theSultan's Government, and probably in intrigues with Bernadotte, Frenchambassador at Vienna, he was arrested by the agents of Thugut, and handedover to the Turks. He was put to death at Belgrade, with five of hiscompanions, in May, 1798. The songs of Rhegas soon passed through everyhousehold in Greece. They were a precious treasure to his countrymen, andthey have immortalised his name as a patriot. But the work which he hadbegun languished for a time after his death. The series of events whichfollowed Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt extinguished the hope of theliberation of Greece by the French Republic. Among the higher Greek clergythe alliance with the godless followers of Voltaire was seen with nofavourable eye. The Porte was even able to find a Christian Patriarch toset his name to a pastoral, warning the faithful against the sin ofrebellion, and reminding them that, while Satan was creating the Lutheransand Calvinists, the infinite mercy of God had raised up the Ottoman Powerin order that the Orthodox Church might be preserved pure from the heresiesof 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 bythe vicissitudes of the Ionian Islands and by the growth of dominion of AliPasha in Albania than by the earlier revolutionary ideas. France wasdeprived of its spoils by the combined Turkish and Russian fleets in thecoalition of 1799, and the Ionian Islands were made into a Republic underthe protection of the Czar and the Sultan. It was in the nativeadministration of Corfu that the career of Capodistrias began. At the peaceof Tilsit the Czar gave these islands back to Napoleon, and Capodistrias, whose ability had gained general attention, accepted an invitation to enterthe Russian service. The islands were then successively beleaguered andconquered by the English, with the exception of Corfu; and after the fallof Napoleon they became a British dependency. Thus the three greatestPowers of Europe were during the first years of this century in constantrivalry on the east of the Adriatic, and a host of Greeks, some fugitives, some adventurers, found employment among their armed forces. The mostfamous chieftain in the war of liberation, Theodore Kolokotrones, a Klephtof the Morea, was for some years major of a Greek regiment in the pay ofEngland. In the meantime Ali Pasha, on the neighbouring mainland, neitherrested himself nor allowed any of his neighbours to rest. The Suliotes, vanquished after years of heroic defence, migrated in a body to the IonianIslands in 1804. Every Klepht and Armatole of the Epirote border had foughtat some time either for Ali or against him; for in the extension of hisviolent and crafty rule Ali was a friend to-day and an enemy to-morrowalike to Greek, Turk, and Albanian. When his power was at its height, Ali'scourt at Janina was as much Greek as it was Mohammedan: soldiers, merchants, professors, all, as it was said, with a longer or a shorter roperound 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 bethe military rivals of Kolokotrones in the Greek insurrection: Ali'sphysician, Dr. Kolettes, was gaining an experience and an influence amongthese men which afterwards placed him at the head of the Government. Forgood or for evil, it was felt that the establishment of a virtuallyindependent kingdom of Albania must deeply affect the fate of Greece; andwhen at length Ali openly defied the Sultan, and Turkish armies closedround his castle at Janina, the conflict between the Porte and its mostpowerful vassal gave the Greeks the signal to strike for their ownindependence. [The Hetæria Philike. ]The secret society, which under the name of Hetæria Philike, or associationof friends, inaugurated the rebellion of Greece, was founded in 1814, afterit had become clear that the Congress of Vienna would take no steps onbehalf of the Christian subjects of the Porte. The founders of this societywere traders of Odessa, and its earliest members seem to have been drawnmore from the Greeks in Russia and in the Danubian provinces than fromthose of Greece Proper. The object of the conspiracy was the expulsion ofthe Turk from Europe, and the re-establishment of a Greek Eastern Empire. It was pretended by the council of directors that the Emperor Alexander hadsecretly joined them; and the ingenious fiction was circulated that asociety for the preservation of Greek antiquities, for which Capodistriashad gained the patronage of the Czar and other eminent men at the Congressof Vienna, was in fact this political association in disguise. The realchiefs of the conspiracy always spoke of themselves as acting under theinstructions of a nameless superior power. They were as little troubled byscruple in thus deceiving their followers as they were in planning ageneral massacre of the Turks, and in murdering their own agents when theywished to have them out of the way. The ultimate design of the Hetæria wasan unsound one, and its operations were based upon an imposture; but inexciting the Greeks against Turkish rule, and in inspiring confidence inits own resources and authority, it was completely successful. In thecourse of six years every Greek of note, both in Greece itself and in theadjacent countries, had joined the association. The Turkish Government hadreceived warnings of the danger which threatened it, but disregarded themuntil revolt was on the point of breaking out. The very improvement in thecondition of the Christians, the absence of any crying oppression oroutrage in Greece during late years, probably lulled the anxieties ofSultan Mahmud, who, terrible as he afterwards proved himself, had nothitherto been without sympathy for the Rayah. But the history of France, noless than the history of Greece, shows that it is not the excess, but thesense, of wrong that produces revolution. A people may be so crushed byoppression as to suffer all conceivable misery with patience. It is whenthe pulse has again begun to beat strong, when the eye is fixed no longeron 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 chiefsof the Hetæria were compelled to seek at St. Petersburg for the Russianleader who had as yet existed only in their imagination. There was nodispute as to the person to whom the task of restoring the Eastern Empirerightfully belonged. Capodistrias, at once a Greek and Foreign Minister ofRussia, stood in the front rank of European statesmen; he was known to lovethe Greek cause; he was believed to possess the strong personal affectionof the Emperor Alexander. The deputies of the Hetæria besought him to placehimself at its head. Capodistrias, however, knew better than any other manthe force of those influences which would dissuade the Czar from assistingGreece. He had himself published a pamphlet in the preceding yearrecommending his countrymen to take no rash step; and, apart from allpersonal considerations, he probably believed that he could serve Greecebetter as Minister of Russia than by connecting himself with any dangerousenterprise. He rejected the offers of the Hetærists, who then turned to asoldier of some distinction in the Russian army, Prince AlexanderHypsilanti, a Greek exile, whose grandfather, after governing Wallachia asHospodar, had been put to death by the Turks for complicity with thedesigns of Rhegas. It is said that Capodistrias encouraged Hypsilanti toattempt the task which he had himself declined, and that he allowed him tobelieve that if Greece once rose in arms the assistance of Russia could notlong be withheld. [361] Hypsilanti, sacrificing his hopes of the recoveryof a great private fortune through the intercession of the Czar atConstantinople, placed himself at the head of the Hetæria, and entered upona career, for which, with the exception of personal courage proved in thecampaigns against Napoleon, he seems to have possessed no singlequalification. [The Herærist plan. ]In October, 1820, the leading Hetærists met in council at Ismail to decidewhether the insurrection against the Turk should begin in Greece itself orin the Danubian provinces. Most of the Greek officers in the service ofSutsos, the Hospodar of Moldavia, were ready to join the revolt. With theexception of a few companies serving as police, there were no Turkishsoldiers north of the Danube, the Sultan having bound himself by the Treatyof Bucharest to send no troops into the Principalities without the Czar'sconsent. It does not appear that the Hetærists had yet formed anycalculation as to the probable action of the Roumanian people: they hadcertainly 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 decidedthat 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 Roumanianpopulation. It was known that the mass of the people groaned under thefeudal oppression of the Boyards, or landowners, and that the Boyardsthemselves detested the government of the Greek Hospodars. A plan foundfavour among Hypsilanti's advisers that the Wallachian peasantry shouldfirst be called to arms by a native leader for the redress of their owngrievances, and that the Greeks should then step in and take control of theinsurrectionary movement. Theodor Wladimiresco, a Roumanian who had servedin the Russian army, was ready to raise the standard of revolt among hiscountrymen. It did not occur to the Hetærists that Wladimiresco might havea purpose of his own, or that the Roumanian population might prefer to seethe Greek adventure fail. No sovereign by divine right had a firmer beliefin his prerogative within his own dominions than Hypsilanti in his power tocommand or outwit Roumanians, Slavs, and all other Christian subjects ofthe 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 proclaimedthe abolition of feudal services, and marched with a horde of peasants uponBucharest. On the 16th of March the Hetærists began their own insurrectionby a deed of blood that disgraced the Christian cause. Karavias, aconspirator commanding the Greek troops of the Hospodar at Galatz, letloose his soldiers and murdered every Turk who could be hunted down. Hypsilanti crossed the Pruth next day, and appeared at Jassy with a fewhundred followers. A proclamation was published in which the Prince calledupon all Christian subjects of the Porte to rise, and declared that a greatEuropean Power, meaning Russia, supported him in his enterprise. Sutsos, the Hospodar, at once handed over all the apparatus of government, andsupplied the insurgents with a large sum of money. Two thousand armed men, some of them regular troops, gathered round Hypsilanti at Jassy. The roadsto the Danube lay open before him; the resources of Moldavia were at hisdisposal; and had he at once thrown a force into Galatz and Ibraila, hemight perhaps have made it difficult for Turkish troops to gain a footingon the north of the Danube. [The Czar disavows the movement. ]But the incapacity of the leader became evident from the moment when hebegan his enterprise. He loitered for a week at Jassy, holding court andconferring titles, and then, setting out for Bucharest, wasted three weeksmore upon the road. In the meantime the news of the insurrection, and ofthe 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 thismoment abandoning himself heart and soul to Metternich's reactionaryinfluence, and ordering his generals to make ready a hundred thousand mento put down the revolution in Piedmont. He received with dismay a letterfrom Hypsilanti invoking his aid in a rising which was first described inthe phrases of the Holy Alliance as the result of a divine inspiration, andthen exhibited as a master-work of secret societies and widespreadconspiracy. A stern answer was sent back. Hypsilanti was dismissed from theRussian service; he was ordered to lay down his arms, and a manifesto waspublished by the Russian Consul at Jassy declaring that the Czar repudiatedand condemned the enterprise with which his name had been connected. ThePatriarch of Constantinople, helpless in the presence of Sultan Mahmud, nowissued a ban of excommunication against the leader and all his followers. Some weeks later the Congress of Laibach officially branded the Greekrevolt as a work of the same anarchical spirit which had produced therevolutions of Italy and Spain. [363][The enterprise fails. ]The disavowal of the Hetærist enterprise by the Czar was fatal to itssuccess. Hypsilanti, indeed, put on a bold countenance and pretended thatthe public utterances of the Russian Court were a mere blind, and incontradiction to the private instructions given him by the Czar; but no onebelieved him. The Roumanians, when they knew that aid was not coming fromRussia, held aloof, or treated insurgents as enemies. Turkish troopscrossed the Danube, and Hypsilanti fell back from Bucharest towards theAustrian frontier. Wladimiresco followed him, not however to assist him inhis struggle, but to cut off his retreat and to betray him to the enemy. Itwas in vain that the bravest of Hypsilanti's followers, Georgakis, a Greekfrom Olympus, sought the Wallachian at his own headquarters, exposed histreason to the Hetærist officers who surrounded him, and carried him, adoomed man, to the Greek camp. Wladimiresco's death was soon avenged. TheTurks advanced. Hypsilanti was defeated in a series of encounters, and fledignobly from his followers, to seek a refuge, and to find a prison, inAustria. Bands of his soldiers, forsaken by their leader, sold their livesdearly in a hopeless struggle. At Skuleni, on the Pruth, a troop of fourhundred men refused to cross to Russian soil until they had given battle tothe enemy. Standing at bay, they met the onslaught of ten times theirnumber of pursuers. Georgakis, who had sworn that he would never fall aliveinto the enemy's hands, kept his word. Surrounded by Turkish troops in thetower of a monastery, he threw open the doors for those of his comrades whocould to escape, and then setting fire to a chest of powder, perished inthe explosion, together with his assailants. [Revolt of Morea, April 2, 1891. ]The Hetærist invasion of the Principalities had ended in total failure, andwith it there passed away for ever the dream of re-establishing the EasternEmpire under Greek ascendancy. But while this enterprise, planned in vainreliance upon foreign aid and in blind assumption of leadership over analien race, collapsed through the indifference of a people to whom theGreeks were known only as oppressors, that genuine uprising of the Greeknation, which, in spite of the nullity of its leaders, in spite of thecrimes, the disunion, the perversity of a race awaking from centuries ofservitude, was to add one more to the free peoples of Europe, broke out inthe 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 theMorea, anticipating a general rebellion of the Greeks, had summoned thePrimates of his province to Tripolitza, with the view of seizing them ashostages. The Primates of the northern district set out, but halted ontheir way, debating whether they should raise the standard of insurrectionor wait for events. While they lingered irresolutely at Kalavryta thedecision passed out of their hands, and the people rose throughout theMorea. The revolt of the Moreot Greeks against their oppressors was fromthe first, and with set purpose, a war of extermination. "The Turk, " theysang in their war-songs, "shall live no longer, neither in Morea nor in thewhole earth. " This terrible resolution was, during the first weeks of therevolt, carried into literal effect. The Turks who did not fly from theircountry-houses to the towns where there were garrisons or citadels todefend them, were attacked and murdered with their entire families, men, women and children. This was the first act of the revolution; and within afew weeks after the 2nd of April, on which the first outbreaks occurred, the open country was swept clear of its Ottoman population, which hadnumbered about 25, 000, and the residue of the lately dominant race wascollected within the walls of Patras, Tripolitza, and other towns, whichthe 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 Mohammedansreached Constantinople, striking terror into the politicians of the Turkishcapital, and rousing the Sultan Mahmud to a vengeance tiger-like in itsferocity, but deliberate and calculated like every bloody deed of thisresolute and able sovereign. Reprisals had already been made upon theGreeks at Constantinople for the acts of Hypsilanti, and a number ofinnocent persons had been put to death by the executioner, but no generalattack upon the Christians had been suggested, nor had the work ofpunishment passed out of the hands of the government itself. Now, however, the fury of the Mohammedan populace was let loose upon the infidel. TheSultan called upon his subjects to arm themselves in defence of theirfaith. Executions were redoubled; soldiers and mobs devastated Greeksettlements on the Bosphorus; and on the most sacred day of the GreekChurch a blow was struck which sent a thrill over Eastern Europe. ThePatriarch of Constantinople had celebrated the service which ushers in thedawn of Easter Sunday, when he was summoned by the Dragoman of the Porte toappear before a Synod hastily assembled. There an order of the Sultan wasread declaring Gregorius IV. A traitor, and degrading him from his office. The Synod was commanded to elect his successor. It did so. While the newArchbishop was receiving his investiture, Gregorius was led out, and washanged, still wearing his sacred robes, at the gate of his palace. His bodyremained during Easter Sunday and the two following days at the place ofexecution. It was then given to the Jews to be insulted, dragged throughthe streets, and cast into the sea. The Archbishops of Adrianople, Salonica, and Tirnovo suffered death on the same Easter Sunday. The body ofGregorius, floating in the waves, was picked up by a Greek ship and carriedto Odessa. Brought, as it was believed, by a miracle to Christian soil, therelics of the Patriarch received at the hands of the Russian government thefuneral honours of a martyr. Gregorius had no doubt had dealings with theHetærists; but he was put to death untried; and whatever may have been thereal extent of his offence, he was executed not for this but in order tostrike 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 atConstantinople 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 thesetowns were Greek, were put to the sack; thousands of the inhabitants wereslain by the armed mobs who held command, or were sold into slavery. It wasonly the fear of a war with Russia which at length forced Sultan Mahmud tostop these deeds of outrage and to restore some of the conditions ofcivilised life in the part of his dominions which was not in revolt. TheRussian army and nation would have avenged the execution of the Patriarchby immediate war if popular instincts had governed its ruler. Strogonoff, the ambassador at Constantinople, at once proposed to the envoys of theother Powers to unite in calling up war-ships for the protection of theChristians. Joint action was, however, declined by Lord Strangford, therepresentative of England, and the Porte was encouraged by the attitude ofthis politician to treat the threats of Strogonoff with indifference. Therewas an interval during which the destiny of a great part of Eastern Europedepended upon the fluctuations of a single infirm will. The Czar hadthoroughly identified himself while at Laibach with the principles and thepolicy of European conservatism, and had assented to the declaration inwhich Metternich placed the Greek rebellion, together with the Spanish andItalian insurrections, under the ban of Europe. Returning to St. Petersburg, Alexander, in spite of the veil that intercepts from everysovereign the real thoughts and utterances of his people, found himselfwithin the range of widely different influences. Russian passions were notroused by what might pass in Italy or Spain. The Russian priest, thesoldier, the peasant understood nothing of theories of federalintervention, and of the connection between Neapolitan despotism and thetreaties of 1815: but his blood boiled when he heard that the chief priestof his Church had been murdered by the Sultan, and that a handful of hisbrethren were fighting for their faith unhelped. Alexander felt to someextent the throb of national spirit. There had been a time in his life whena single hour of strong emotion or of overpowering persuasion had made himrenounce every obligation and unite with Napoleon against his own allies;and there were those who in 1821 believed that the Czar would as suddenlybreak loose from his engagements with Metternich and throw himself, with afanatical army and nation, into a crusade against the Turk. Sultan Mahmudhad himself given to the Russian party of action a ground for denouncinghim in the name of Russian honour and interests independently of all thatrelated to Greece. In order to prevent the escape of suspected persons, thePorte had ordered Russian vessels to be searched at Constantinople, and ithad forced all corn-ships coming from the Euxine to discharge their cargoesat the Bosphorus, under the apprehension that the corn-supplies of thecapital would be cut off by Greek vessels in command of the Ægæan. Further, Russia had by treaty the right to insist that the DanubianPrincipalities should be governed by their civil authorities, theHospodars, and not by Turkish Pashas, insurrection in Wallachia had beenput down, but the rule of Hospodars had not been restored; Turkishgenerals, at the head of their forces, still administered their provincesunder military law. On all these points Russia had at least the semblanceof grievances of its own. The outrages which shocked all Europe were notthe only wrong which Russian pride called upon the Czar to redress. Theinfluence of Capodistrias revived at St. Petersburg. A despatch was sent toConstantinople declaring that the Porte had begun a war for life or deathwith the Christian religion, and that its continued existence among thePowers of Europe must depend upon its undertaking to restore the churcheswhich had been destroyed, to guarantee the inviolability of Christianworship in the future, and to discriminate in its punishments between theinnocent and the guilty. Presenting ultimatum from his master, Strogonoff, in accordance with his instructions, demanded a written answer within eightdays. No such answer came. On the 27th of July the ambassador quittedConstantinople. War seemed to be on the point of breaking out. [Eastern policy of Austria. ]The capital where these events were watched with the greatest apprehensionwas Vienna. The fortunes of the Ottoman Empire have always been mostintimately connected with those of Austria; and although the long struggleof the House of Hapsburg with Napoleon and its wars in recent times withPrussia and with Italy have made the western aspect of Austrian policy moreprominent and more familiar than its eastern one, the eastern interests ofthe monarchy have always been at least as important in the eyes of itsactual rulers. Before the year 1720 Austria, not Russia, was the greatenemy of Turkey and the aggressive Power of the east of Europe. After 1780the Emperor Joseph had united with Catherine of Russia in a plan fordividing the Sultan's dominions in Europe, and actually waged a war forthis purpose. In 1795 the alliance, with the same object, had beenprospectively revived by Thugut; in 1809, after the Treaty of Tilsit, Metternich had determined in the last resort to combine with Napoleon andAlexander in dismembering Turkey, if all diplomatic means should fail toprevent a joint attack on the Porte by France and Russia. But thisresolution had been adopted by Metternich only as a matter of necessity, and in view of a combination which threatened to reduce Austria to theposition of a vassal State. Metternich's own definite and consistent policyafter 1814 was the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire. His statesmanshipwas, as a rule, governed by fear; and his fear of Alexander was second onlyto his old fear of Napoleon. Times were changed since Joseph and Thugutcould 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 duringnearly twenty years. Province after province had been severed from it, without, except in the Tyrol, raising a hand in its support; and when in1821 the Minister compared Austria's actual Empire and position in Europe, won and maintained in great part by his own diplomacy, with the ruin towhich a series of wars had brought it ten years before, he might well thankHeaven that international Congresses were still so much in favour with theCourts, and tremble at the clash of arms which from the remote Moreathreatened 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 ofRussia towards the Ægæan; but the growth of Russian power had been viewedwith alarm by English politicians since 1788, when Pitt had formed a triplealliance with Prussia and Holland for the purpose of defending the Porteagainst the attacks of Catherine and Joseph. The interest of Great Britainin the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire had not been laid down as aprinciple before that date, nor was it then acknowledged by the Whig party. It was asserted by Pitt from considerations relating to the Europeanbalance of power, not, as in our own times, with a direct reference toEngland's position in India. The course of events from 1792 to 1807 madeEngland and Russia for awhile natural allies; but this friendship wasturned into hostility by the Treaty of Tilsit; and although after a fewyears Alexander was again fighting for the same cause as Great Britain, andthe public opinion of this country enthusiastically hailed the issue of theMoscow campaign, English statesmen never forgot the interview upon theNiemen, and never, in the brightest moments of victory, regarded Alexanderwithout some secret misgivings. During the campaign of 1814 in France, Castlereagh's willingness to negotiate with Bonaparte was due in great partto the fear that Alexander's high-wrought resolutions would collapse beforeNapoleon could be thoroughly crushed, and that reaction would carry himinto a worse peace than that which he then disdained. [366] Thenegotiations at the Congress of Vienna brought Great Britain and Russia, asit has been seen, into an antagonism which threatened to end in the resortto arms; and the tension which then and for some time afterwards existedbetween the two governments led English Ministers to speak, certainly inexaggerated and misleading language, of the mutual hostility of the Englishand the Russian nations. From 1815 to 1821 the Czar had been jealouslywatched. It had been rumoured over and over again that he was preparing toinvade the Ottoman Empire; and when the rebellion of the Greeks broke out, the one thought of Castlereagh and his colleagues was that Russia must beprevented from throwing itself into the fray, and that the interests ofGreat Britain required that the authority of the Sultan should as soon aspossible 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 viewedby governments only as an unfortunate disturbance which was likely toexcite war between Russia and its neighbours, and to imperil the peace ofEurope at large. It may seem strange that the spectacle of a nation risingto assert its independence should not even have aroused the questionwhether its claims deserved to be considered. But to do justice at least tothe English Ministers of 1821, it must be remembered how terrible, howoverpowering, were the memories left by the twenty years of European warthat had closed in 1815, and at how vast a cost to mankind the regenerationof Greece would have been effected, if, as then seemed probable, it hadranged the Great Powers again in arms against one another, and re-kindledthe spirit of military aggression which for a whole generation had madeEurope the prey of rival coalitions. It is impossible to read the letter inwhich Castlereagh pleaded with the Czar to sacrifice his own glory andpopularity to the preservation of European peace, without perceiving inwhat profound earnestness the English statesman sought to avert the renewalof an epoch of conflict, and how much the apprehension of coming calamitypredominated in his own mind over the mere jealousy of an extension ofRussian power. [367] If Castlereagh had no thought for Greece itself, itwas because the larger interests of Europe wholly absorbed him, and becausehe lacked the imagination and the insight to conceive of a betteradjustment of European affairs under the widening recognition of nationalrights. The Minister of Austria, to whom at this crisis Castlereagh lookedas his natural ally, had no doubt the same dread of a renewed convulsion ofEurope, but in his case it was mingled with considerations of a muchnarrower kind. It is not correct to say that Metternich was indifferent tothe Greek cause; he actually hated it, because it gave a stimulus to theliberal movement of Germany. In his empty and pedantic philosophy of humanaction, Metternich linked together every form of national aspiration andunrest as something presumptuous and wanton. He understood nothing of thedebt that mankind owes to the spirit of freedom. He was just as ready todogmatise upon the wickedness of the English Reform Bill as he was to tracethe hand of Capodistrias in every tumult in Servia or the Morea: and evenif there had been no fear of Russian aggression in the background, he wouldinstinctively have condemned the Greek revolt when he saw that thelight-headed professors in the German Universities were beginning toagitate in its favour, and that the recalcitrant minor Courts regarded itwith 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 themaintenance of the existing order of things; and as it was certain thatsome satisfaction or other must be given to Russian pride, Metternich'scounsel was that the grievances of the Czar which were specifically Russianshould be clearly distinguished from questions relating to the independenceof Greece; and that on the former the Porte should be recommended to agreewith its adversary quickly, the good offices of Europe being employedwithin given limits on the Czar's behalf; so that, the Russian causes ofcomplaint being removed, Alexander might without loss of honour leave theGreeks to be subdued, and resume the diplomatic relations withConstantinople which had been so perilously severed by Strogonoff'sdeparture. It remained for the Czar to decide whether, as head of Russiaand protector of the Christians of the East, he would solve the EasternQuestion by his own sword, or whether, constant to the principle and idealof international action to which he had devoted himself since 1815, hewould commit his cause to the joint mediation of Europe, and accept suchsolution of the problem as his allies might attain. In the latter case itwas clear that no blow would be struck on behalf of Greece. For a year ormore the balance wavered; at length the note of triumph sounded in theAustrian Cabinet. Capodistrias, the representative of the Greek cause atSt. Petersburg, rightly measured the force of the opposing impulses in theCzar's mind. He saw that Alexander, interested as he was in Italy andSpain, would never break with that federation of the Courts which he hadhimself created, nor shake off the influences of legitimism which haddominated him since the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle. Submitting whencontention had become hopeless, and anticipating his inevitable fall by avoluntary retirement from public affairs, Capodistrias, still high incredit and reputation, quitted St. Petersburg under the form leave ofabsence, and withdrew to Geneva, there to await events, and to enjoy thedistinction of a patriot whom love for Greece had constrained to abandonone of the most splendid positions in Europe. Grave, melancholy, andaustere, as one who suffered with his country, Capodistrias remained inprivate life till the vanquished cause had become the victorious one, andthe 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 inthe year 1821, but the contest of arms was left, as Metternich desired, tothe Greeks and the Turks alone. The first act of the war was theinsurrection of the Morea: the second was the extension of thisinsurrection over parts of Continental Greece and the Archipelago, and itssummary extinction by the Turk in certain districts, which in consequenceremained for the future outside the area of hostilities, and so were notultimately included in the Hellenic Kingdom. Central Greece, that is, thecountry lying immediately north of the Corinthian Gulf, broke into revolt afew weeks later than the Morea. The rising against the Mohammedans wasdistinguished by the same merciless spirit: the men were generallymassacred; the women, if not killed, were for the most part sold intoslavery; and when, after an interval of three years, Lord Byron came toMissolonghi, he found that a miserable band of twenty-three captive womenformed the sole remnant of the Turkish population of that town. Thessaly, with some exceptions, remained passive, and its inaction was of the utmostservice to the Turkish cause; for Ali Pasha in Epirus was now beingbesieged by the Sultan's armies, and if Thessaly had risen in the rear ofthese troops, they could scarcely have escaped destruction. Khurshid, theOttoman commander conducting the siege of Janina, held firmly to his task, in spite of the danger which threatened his communications, and in spite ofthe circumstance that his whole household had fallen into the hands of theMoreot insurgents. His tenacity saved the border-provinces for the OttomanEmpire. No combination was effected between Ali and the Greeks, and at thebeginning of 1822 the Albanian chieftain lost both his stronghold and hislife. In the remoter district of Chalcidice, on the Macedonian coast, wherethe promontory of Athos and the two parallel peninsulas run out into theÆgæan, and a Greek population, clearly severed from the Slavic inhabitantsof the mainland, maintained its own communal and religious organisation, the national revolt broke out under Hetærist leaders. The monks of MountAthos, like their neighbours, took up arms. But there was little sympathybetween the privileged chiefs of these abbeys and the desperate men who hadcome to head the revolt. The struggle was soon abandoned; and, partly byforce of arms, partly by negotiation, the authority of the Sultan wasrestored without much difficulty throughout this region. [The Ægæan Islands. ]The settlements of the Ægæan which first raised the flag of Greekindependence were the so-called Nautical Islands, Hydra, Spetza, and Psara, where the absence of a Turkish population and the enjoyment of a century ofself-government had allowed the bold qualities of an energetic maritimerace to grow to their full vigour. Hydra and Spetza were close to the Greekcoast, Psara was on the farther side of the archipelago, almost within viewof Asia Minor; so that in joining the insurrection its inhabitants showedgreat heroism, for they were exposed to the first attack of any Turkishforce that could maintain itself for a few hours at sea, and the wholeadjacent mainland was the recruiting-ground of the Sultan. At Hydra therevolt against the Ottoman was connected with the internal struggles of thelittle community, and these in their turn were connected with the greateconomical changes of Europe which, at the opposite end of the continent, and in a widely different society, led to the enactment of the English CornLaws, and to the strife of classes which resulted from them. DuringNapoleon's wars the carrying-trade of most nations had become extinct;little corn reached England, and few besides Greek ships navigated theEuxine and Mediterranean. When peace opened the markets and the ports ofall nations, just as the renewed importation of foreign corn threatened tolower the profits of English farmers and the rents of English landlords, sothe reviving freedom of navigation made an end of the monopoly of theHydriote and Psarian merchantmen. The shipowners formed an oligarchy inHydra; the captains and crews of their ships, though they shared theprofits of each voyage, were excluded from any share in the government ofthe island. Failure of trade, want and inactivity, hence led to a politicalopposition. The shipowners, wealthy and privileged men, had no inclinationto break with the Turk; the captains and sailors, who had now nothing tolose, declared for Greek independence. There was a struggle in which forawhile nothing but the commonest impulses of need and rapacity came intoplay; but the greater cause proved its power: Hydra threw in its lot withGreece; 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 ofGreek independence possible. The three islands which led the way were soonfollowed by the wealthier and more populous Samos and by the greater partof the Archipelago. Crete, inhabited by a mixed Greek and Turkishpopulation, also took up arms, and was for years to come the scene of abloody and destructive warfare. [The Greek leaders. ]Within the Morea the first shock of the revolt had made the Greeks mastersof everything outside the fortified towns. The reduction of these placeswas at once undertaken by the insurgents. Tripolitza, lately the seat ofthe Turkish government, was the centre of operations, and in theneighbourhood of this town the first provisional government of the Greeks, called the Senate of Kaltesti, was established. Demetrius Hypsilanti, abrother of the Hetærist leader, whose failure in Roumania was not yetknown, landed in the Morea and claimed supreme power. He was tumultuouslywelcomed by the peasant-soldiers, though the Primates, who had hithertoheld undisputed sway, bore him no good will. Two other men became prominentat this time as leaders in the Greek war of liberation. These wereMaurokordatos, a descendant of the Hospodars of Wallachia--a politiciansuperior to all his rivals in knowledge and breadth of view, but wanting inthe faculty of action required by the times--and Kolokotrones, a type ofthe rough fighting Klepht; a mere savage in attainments, scarcely able toread or write, cunning, grossly avaricious and faithless, incapable ofappreciating either military or moral discipline, but a born soldier in hisown irregular way, and a hero among peasants as ignorant as himself. Therewas yet another, who, if his character had been equal to his station, wouldhave been placed at the head of the government of the Morea. This wasPetrobei, chief of the family of Mauromichalis, ruler of the ruggeddistrict of Maina, in the south-west of Peloponnesus, where the Turk hadnever established more than nominal sovereignty. A jovial, princely person, exercising among his clansmen a mild Homeric sway, Petrobei, surrounded byhis nine vigorous sons, was the most picturesque figure in Greece. But hehad no genius for great things. A sovereignty, which in other hands mighthave expanded to national dominion, remained with Petrobei a mere ornamentand curiosity; and the power of the deeply-rooted clan-spirit of the Mainaonly made itself felt when, at a later period, the organisation of a unitedHellenic State demanded its sacrifice. [Fall of Tripolitza, Oct. 5, 1821. ]Anarchy, egotism, and ill-faith disgraced the Greek insurrection from itsbeginning to its close. There were, indeed, some men of unblemished honouramong the leaders, and the peasantry in the ranks fought with the mostdetermined courage year after year; but the action of most of those whofigured as representatives of the people brought discredit upon thenational cause. Their first successes were accompanied by gross treacheryand cruelty. Had the Greek leaders been Bourbon kings, nurtured in all thesanctities of divine right, instead of tax-gatherers and cattle-lifters, truants from the wild school of Turkish violence and deceit, they could nothave perjured themselves with lighter hearts. On the surrender of Navarino, in August, 1821, after a formal capitulation providing for the safety ofits Turkish inhabitants, men, women, and children were indiscriminatelymassacred. The capture of Tripolitza, which took place two months later, was changed from a peaceful triumph into a scene of frightful slaughter bythe avarice of individual chiefs, who, while negotiations were pending, made their way into the town, and bargained with rich inhabitants to givethem protection in return for their money and jewels. The soldiery, who hadundergone the labours of the siege for six months, saw that their rewardwas being pilfered from them. Defying all orders, and in the absence ofDemetrius Hypsilanti, the commander-in-chief, they rushed upon thefortifications of Tripolitza, and carried them by storm. A general massacreof the inhabitants followed. For three days the work of carnage wascontinued in the streets and houses, until few out of a population of manythousands remained living. According to the testimony of Kolokotroneshimself, the roads were so choked with the dead, that as he rode from thegateway 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 Christiansand of Ottomans was perhaps on a level. The Greek revenged himself with theferocity of the slave who breaks his fetters; the Turk resorted towholesale massacre and extermination as the normal means of government introubled times. And as experience has shown that the savagery of theEuropean 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 thehistory of 1822 proved that the most devilish passions of the Greek were inthe end but a poor match for disciplined Turkish prowess in the work ofbutchery. It was no easy matter for the Sultan to requite himself for thesack of Tripolitza upon Kolokotrones and his victorious soldiers; but therewas a peaceful and inoffensive population elsewhere, which offered all theconditions for free, unstinted, and unimperilled vengeance which the Turkdesires. A body of Samian troops had landed in Chios, and endeavoured, butwith little success, to excite the inhabitants to revolt, the absence ofthe Greek fleet rendering them an almost certain prey to the Sultan'stroops on the mainland. The Samian leader nevertheless refused to abandonthe enterprise, and laid siege to the citadel, in which there was a Turkishgarrison. Before this fortress could be reduced, a relieving army of seventhousand Turks, with hosts of fanatical volunteers, landed on the island. The Samians fled; the miserable population of Chios was given up tomassacre. For week after week the soldiery and the roving hordes ofOttomans slew, pillaged, and sold into slavery at their pleasure. In partsof the island where the inhabitants took refuge in the monasteries, theywere slaughtered by thousands together; others, tempted back to their homesby the promulgation of an amnesty, perished family by family. The lot ofthose who were spared was almost more pitiable than of those who died. Theslave-markets of Egypt and Tunis were glutted with Chian captives. Thegentleness, the culture, the moral worth of the Chian community made itsfate the more tragical. No district in Europe had exhibited a civilisationmore free from the vices of its type: on no community had there fallen inmodern times so terrible a catastrophe. The estimates of the destruction oflife at Chios are loosely framed; among the lowest is that which sets thenumber of the slain and the enslaved at thirty thousand. The island, latelythronging with life and activity, became a thinly-populated place. After along period of depression and the slow return of some fraction of itsformer prosperity, convulsions of nature have in our own day again madeChios a ruin. A new life may arise when the Turk is no longer master of itsshores, 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 1822was a deep and lasting one, although it caused no immediate change in theaction of Governments. The general feeling of sympathy for the Greeks andhatred for the Turks, which ultimately forced the Governments to take up adifferent policy, was intensified by a brilliant deed of daring by which aGreek captain avenged the Chians upon their devastor, and by the unexpectedsuccess gained by the insurgents on the mainland against powerful armies ofthe Sultan. The Greek executive, which was now headed by Maurokordatos, hadbeen guilty of gross neglect in not sending over the fleet in time toprevent the Turks from landing in Chios. When once this landing had beeneffected, the ships which afterwards arrived were powerless to prevent themassacre, and nothing could be attempted except against the Turkish fleetitself. The instrument of destruction employed by the Greeks was thefire-ship, which had been used with success against the Turk in these samewaters in the war of 1770. The sacred month of the Ramazan was closing, andon the night of June 18, Kara Ali, the Turkish commander, celebrated thefestival of Bairam with above a thousand men on board his flag-ship. Thevessel was illuminated with coloured lanterns. In the midst of thefestivities, Constantine Kanaris, a Psarian captain, brought his fire-shipunobserved right up to the Turkish man-of-war, and drove his bowspritfirmly into one of her portholes; then, after setting fire to thecombustibles, he stepped quietly into a row-boat, and made away. A breezewas blowing, and in a moment the Turkish crew were enveloped in a mass offlames. The powder on board exploded; the boats were sunk; and the vessel, with its doomed crew, burned to the water-edge, its companions sheering offto save themselves from the shower of blazing fragments that fell allaround. Kara Ali was killed by a broken mast; a few of his men saved theirlives by swimming or were picked up by rescuers; the rest perished. Suchwas the consternation caused by the deed of Kanaris, that the Ottoman fleetforthwith quitted the Ægæan waters, and took refuge under the guns of theDardanelles. Kanaris, unknown before, became from this exploit a famous manin Europe. It was to no stroke of fortune or mere audacity that he owed hissuccess, but to the finest combination of nerve and nautical skill. Hisfeat, which others were constantly attempting, but with little success, toimitate, was repeated by him in the same year. He was the most brilliant ofGreek seamen, a simple and modest hero; and after his splendid achievementsin 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 prideof the Greek nation. [Double invasion of Greece 1822. ][Destruction of the Pilhellenes near Arta, July 16. ][Unsuccessful siege of Missolonghi, Nov. , 1822. ]The fall of the Albanian rebel, Ali Pasha, in the spring of 1822 made itpossible for Sultan Mahmud, who had hitherto been crippled by theresistance of Janina, to throw his whole land-force against the Hellenicrevolt; and the Greeks of the mainland, who had as yet had to deal onlywith scattered detachments or isolated garrisons, now found themselvesexposed to the attack of two powerful armies. Kurshid, the conqueror of AliPasha, took up his headquarters at Larissa in Thessaly, and from this basethe two invading armies marched southwards on diverging lines. The first, under Omer Brionis, was ordered to make its way through Southern Epirus tothe western entrance of the Corinthian Gulf, and there to cross into theMorea; the second, under Dramali, to reduce Central Greece, and enter theMorea by the isthmus of Corinth; the conquest of Tripolitza and the reliefof the Turkish coast-fortresses which were still uncaptured being theultimate end to be accomplished by the two armies in combination with oneanother and with the Ottoman fleet. Not less than fifty thousand men wereunder the orders of the Turkish commanders, the division of Dramali beingby far the larger of the two. Against this formidable enemy the Greekspossessed poor means of defence, nor were their prospects improved whenMaurokordatos, the President, determined to take a military command, and toplace himself at the head of the troops in Western Greece. There wereindeed urgent reasons for striking with all possible force in this quarter. The Suliotes, after seventeen years of exile in Corfu, had returned totheir mountains, and were now making common cause with Greece. They wereboth the military outwork of the insurrection, and the political linkbetween the Hellenes and the Christian communities of Albania, whose actionmight become of decisive importance in the struggle against the Turks. Maurokordatos rightly judged the relief of Suli to be the first and mostpressing duty of the Government. Under a capable leader this effort wouldnot have been beyond the power of the Greeks; directed by a politician whoknew nothing of military affairs, it was perilous in the highest degree. Maurokordatos, taking the command out of abler hands, pushed his troopsforward to the neighbourhood of Arta, mismanaged everything, and aftercommitting a most important post to Botzares, an Albanian chieftain ofdoubtful fidelity, left two small regiments exposed to the attack of theTurks in mass. One of these regiments, called the corps of Philhellenes, was composed of foreign officers who had volunteered to serve in the Greekcause as common soldiers. Its discipline was far superior to anything thatexisted among the Greeks themselves; and at its head were men who hadfought in Napoleon's campaigns. But this corps, which might have become thenucleus of a regular army, was sacrificed to the incapacity of the generaland the treachery of his confederate. Betrayed and abandoned by theAlbanian, the Philhellenes met the attack of the Turks gallantly, andalmost all perished. Maurokordatos and the remnant of the Greek troops nowretired to Missolonghi. The Suliotes, left to their own resources, wereonce more compelled to quit their mountain home, and to take refuge inCorfu. Their resistance, however, delayed the Turks for some months, and itwas not until the beginning of November that the army of Omer Brionis, after conquering the intermediate territory, appeared in front ofMissolonghi. Here the presence of Maurokordatos produced a better effectthan in the field. He declared that he would never leave the town as longas a man remained to fight the Turks. Defences were erected, and thebesiegers kept at bay for two months. On the 6th of January, 1823, Brionisordered an assault. It was beaten back with heavy loss; and the Ottomancommander, 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-fourthousand infantry and six thousand cavalry, the most formidable armamentthat had been seen in Greece since the final struggle between the Turks andVenetians in 1715. At the terror of his approach all hopes of resistancevanished. He marched through Boeotia and Attica, devastating the country, and reached the isthmus of Corinth in July, 1822. The mountain passes wereabandoned by the Greeks; the Government, whose seat was at Argos, dispersed; and Dramali moved on to Nauplia, where the Turkish garrison wason the point of surrendering to the Greeks. The entrance to the Morea hadbeen won; the very shadow of a Greek government had disappeared, and thedefinite suppression of the revolt seemed now to be close at hand. But twofatal errors of the enemy saved the Greek cause. Dramali neglected togarrison the passes through which he had advanced; and the commander of theOttoman fleet, which ought to have met the land-force at Nauplia, disobeyedhis instructions and sailed on to Patras. Two Greeks, at this crisis oftheir country's history, proved themselves equal to the call of events. Demetrius Hypsilanti, now President of the Legislature, refused to fly withhis colleagues, and threw himself, with a few hundred men, into theAcropolis of Argos. Kolokotrones, hastening to Tripolitza, called out everyman capable of bearing arms, and hurried back to Argos, where the Turkswere still held at bay by the defenders of the citadel. Dramali could nolonger think of marching into the interior of the Morea. The gallantry ofDemetrius had given time for the assemblage of a considerable force, andthe Ottoman general now discovered the ruinous effect of his neglect togarrison the passes in his rear. These were seized by Kolokotrones. Thesummer-drought threatened the Turkish army with famine; the fleet whichwould have rendered them independent of land-supplies was a hundred milesaway; and Dramali, who had lately seen all Greece at his feet, now foundhimself compelled to force his way back through the enemy to the isthmus ofCorinth. The measures taken by Kolokotrones to intercept his retreat wereskilfully planned, and had they been adequately executed not a man of theOttoman army would have escaped. It was only through the disorder and thecupidity of the Greeks themselves that a portion of Dramali's forcesucceeded in cutting its way back to Corinth. Baggage was plundered whilethe retreating enemy ought to have been annihilated, and divisions whichought to have co-operated in the main attack sought trifling successes oftheir own. But the losses and the demoralisation of the Turkish army wereas 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 handsperished 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 thereal character of the Greek national rising, and to the probability of itsultimate success. The forces of Turkey were exhausted for the moment, andduring the succeeding year no military operations could be undertaken bythe Sultan on anything like the same scale. It would perhaps have beenbetter for the Greeks themselves if the struggle had been more continuouslysustained. Nothing but foreign pressure could give unity to the efforts ofa race distracted by so many local rivalries, and so many personalambitions and animosities. Scarcely was the extremity of danger passed whencivil war began among the Greeks themselves. Kolokotrones set himself up inopposition to the Legislature, and seized on some of the strong places inthe Morea. This first outbreak of the so-called military party against thecivil authorities was, however, of no great importance. The Primates of theMorea took part with the representatives of the islands and of CentralGreece against the disturber of the peace, and an accommodation was soonarranged. Konduriottes, a rich ship-owner of Hydra, was made President, with Kolettes, a politician of great influence in Central Greece, as hisMinister. But in place of the earlier antagonism between soldier andcivilian, a new and more dangerous antagonism, that of district againstdistrict, now threatened the existence of Greece. The tendency of the newgovernment to sacrifice everything to the interest of the islands at oncebecame evident. Konduriottes was a thoroughly incompetent man, and madehimself ridiculous by appointing his friends, the Hydriote sea-captains, tothe highest military and civil posts. Rebellion again broke out, andKolokotrones was joined by his old antagonists, the Primates of the Morea. A serious struggle ensued, and the government, which was really conductedby Kolettes, displayed an energy that surprised both its friends and itsfoes. The Morea was invaded by a powerful force from Hydra. No mercy wasshown to the districts which supported the rebels. Kolokotrones wasthoroughly defeated, and compelled to give himself up to the Government. Hewas carried to Hydra and thrown into prison, where he remained until newperil 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 navyto effect any result whatever, the Sultan appears to have conceived a doubtwhether the subjugation of Greece might not in fact be a task beyond hisown unaided power. Even if the mainland were conquered, it was certain thatthe Turkish fleet could never reduce the islands, nor prevent the passageof 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 thecentral government, he now found himself compelled to apply to the mostdangerous of them all for assistance. Mehemet Ali, Pasha of Egypt, hadrisen to power in the disturbed time that followed the expulsion ofNapoleon's forces from Egypt. His fleet was more powerful than that ofTurkey. He had organised an army composed of Arabs, negroes, and fellahs, and had introduced into it, by means of French officers, the militarysystem and discipline of Europe. The same reform had been attempted inTurkey seventeen years before by Mahmud's predecessor, Selim III. , but ithad been successfully resisted by the soldiery of Constantinople, and Selimhad paid for his innovations with his life. Mahmud, silent and tenacious, had long been planning the destruction of the Janissaries, the mutinous anddegraded representatives of a once irresistible force, who would nowneither fight themselves nor permit their rulers to organise any moreeffective body of troops in their stead. It is possible that the Sultan mayhave believed that a victory won over the enemies of Islam by there-modelled forces of Egypt would facilitate the execution of his own plansof military reform; it is also possible that he may not have been unwillingto see his vassal's resources dissipated by a distant and hazardousenterprise. Not without some profound conviction of the urgency of thepresent need, not without some sinister calculation as to the means ofdealing with an eventual rival in the future, was the offer ofaggrandisement--if we may judge from the whole tenor of Sultan Mahmud'scareer and policy--made to the Pasha of Egypt by his jealous and far-seeingmaster. The Pasha was invited to assume the supreme command of the Ottomanforces by land and sea, and was promised the island of Crete in return forhis co-operation against the Hellenic revolt. Messages to this effectreached Alexandria at the beginning of 1824. Mehemet, whose ambition had nolimits, welcomed the proposals of his sovereign with ardour, and, whiledeclining the command for himself, accepted it on behalf of Ibrahim, hisadopted 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. Thearmy was raised to 90, 000 men, and new ships were added to the navy fromEnglish dockyards. A scheme was framed for the combined operation of theEgyptian and the Turkish forces which appeared to render the ultimateconquest of Greece certain. It was agreed that the island of Crete, whichis not sixty miles distant from the southern extremity of the Morea, shouldbe occupied by Ibrahim, and employed as his place of arms; thatsimultaneous or joint attacks should then be made upon the principalislands of the Ægæan; and that after the capture of these strongholds andthe destruction of the maritime resources of the Greeks, Ibrahim's troopsshould pass over the narrow sea between Crete and the Morea, and completetheir work by the reduction of the mainland, thus left destitute of allchance of succour from without. Crete, like Sicily, is a naturalstepping-stone between Europe and Africa; and when once the assistance ofEgypt was invoked by the Sultan, it was obvious that Crete became theposition which above all others it was necessary for the Greeks to watchand to defend. But the wretched Government of Konduriottes was occupiedwith its domestic struggles. The appeal of the Cretans for protectionremained unanswered, and in the spring of 1824 a strong Egyptian forcelanded on this island, captured its fortresses, and suppressed theresistance of the inhabitants with the most frightful cruelty. The base ofoperations had been won, and the combined attacks of the Egyptian andTurkish fleets upon the smaller islands followed. Casos, about thirty mileseast of Crete, was surprised by the Egyptians, and its populationexterminated. Psara was selected for the attack of the Turkish fleet. Sincethe beginning of the insurrection the Psariotes had been the scourge andterror of the Ottoman coasts. The services that they had rendered in theGreek navy had been priceless; and if there was one spot of Greek soilwhich ought to have been protected as long as a single boat's crew remainedafloat, it was the little rock of Psara. Yet, in spite of repeatedwarnings, the Greek Government allowed the Turkish fleet to pass theDardanelles unobserved, and some clumsy feints were enough to blind it tothe real object of an expedition whose aim was known to all Europe. Therewere ample means for succouring the islanders, as subsequent events proved;but when the Turkish admiral, Khosrew, with 10, 000 men on board, appearedbefore Psara, the Greek fleet was far away. The Psariotes themselves wereover-confident. They trusted to their batteries on land, and believed theirrocks to be impregnable. They were soon undeceived. While a corps ofAlbanians scaled the cliffs behind the town, the Turks gained a footing infront, and overwhelmed their gallant enemy by weight of numbers. No mercywas asked or given. Eight thousand of the Psarians were slain or carriedaway as slaves. Not more than one-third of the population succeeded inescaping 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 successfullyaccomplished, and if Khosrew had attacked Samos immediately after his firstvictory, this island would probably have fallen before help could arrive. But, like other Turkish commanders, Khosrew loved intervals of repose, andhe now sailed off to Mytilene to celebrate the festival of Bairam. In themeantime the catastrophe of Psara had aroused the Hydriote Government to asense of its danger. A strong fleet was sent across the Ægæan, and adequatemeasures were taken to defend Samos both by land and sea. The Turkish fleetwas attacked with some success, and though Ibrahim with the Egyptiancontingent now reached the coast of Asia Minor, the Greeks provedthemselves superior to their adversaries combined. The operations of theMussulman commanders led to no result; they were harassed and terrified bythe Greek fireships; and when at length all hope of a joint conquest ofSamos had been abandoned, and Ibrahim set sail for Crete to carry out hisown final enterprise alone, he was met on the high seas by the Greeks, anddriven back to the coast of Asia Minor. During the autumn of 1824 thedisasters of the preceding months were to some extent retrieved, and thesituation of the Egyptian fleet would have become one of some peril if theGreeks had maintained their guard throughout the winter. But theyunderrated the energy of Ibrahim, and surrendered themselves to the beliefthat he would not repeat the attempt to reach Crete until the followingspring. Careless, or deluded by false information, they returned to Hydra, and left the seas unwatched. Ibrahim saw his opportunity, and, setting sailfor Crete at the beginning of December, he reached it without falling inwith the enemy. [Ibrahim in the Morea, Feb. , 1825. ]The snowy heights of Taygetus are visible on a clear winter's day from theCretan coast; yet, with their enemy actually in view of them, the Greeksneglected 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. Hewas even able to return to Crete and bring over a second contingent ofsuperior strength before any steps were taken to hinder his movements. Thefate of the mainland was now settled. Ibrahim marched from Modon uponNavarino, defeated the Greek forces on the way, and captured the garrisonplaced in the Island of Sphakteria--the scene of the first famous surrenderof the Spartans--before the Greek fleet could arrive to relieve it. Theforts of Navarino then capitulated, and Ibrahim pushed on his victoriousmarch towards the centre of the Morea. It was in vain that the old chiefKolokotrones was brought from his prison at Hydra to take supreme command. The conqueror of Dramali was unable to resist the onslaught of Ibrahim'sregiments, recruited from the fierce races of the Soudan, and fightingwith the same arms and under the same discipline as the best troops inEurope. Kolokotrones was driven back through Tripolitza, and retired as theRussians had retired from Moscow, leaving a deserted capital behind him. Ibrahim gave his troops no rest; he hurried onwards against Nauplia, and onthe 24th of June reached the summit of the mountain-pass that looks downupon the Argolic Gulf. "Ah, little island, " he cried, as he saw the rock ofHydra stretched below him, "how long wilt thou escape me?" At Naupliaitself the Egyptian commander rode up to the very gates and scanned thedefences, which he hoped to carry at the first assault. Here, however, acheck awaited him. In the midst of general flight and panic, DemetriusHypsilanti was again the undaunted soldier. He threw himself with some fewhundreds of men into the mills of Lerna, and there beat back Ibrahim'svanguard when it attempted to carry this post by storm. The Egyptianrecognised that with men like these in front of him Nauplia could bereduced only by a regular siege. He retired for a while upon Tripolitza, and thence sent out his harrying columns, slaughtering and devastating inevery direction. It seemed to be his design not merely to exhaust theresources of his enemy but to render the Morea a desert, and to exterminateits population. In the very birthplace of European civilisation, it wassaid, this savage, who had already been nominated Pasha of the Morea, intended to extinguish the European race and name, and to found for himselfupon the ashes of Greece a new barbaric state composed of African negroesand fellaheen. That such design had actually been formed was denied by theTurkish government in answer to official inquiries, and its existence wasnot capable of proof. But the brutality of one age is the stupidity of thenext, and Ibrahim's violence recoiled upon himself. Nothing in the wholestruggle between the Sultan and the Greeks gave so irresistible an argumentto the Philhellenes throughout Europe, or so directly overcame the scruplesof Governments in regard to an armed intervention in favour of Greece, asIbrahim's alleged policy of extermination and re-settlement. The days werepast when Europe could permit its weakest member to be torn from it andadded to the Mohammedan world. [Siege of Missolongi, April, 1825-April, 1826. ]One episode of the deepest tragic interest yet remained in theTurko-Hellenic conflict before the Powers of Europe stepped in and struckwith weapons stronger than those which had fallen from dying hands. Thetown of Missolonghi was now beleaguered by the Turks, who had invadedWestern Greece while Ibrahim was overrunning the Morea. Missolonghi hadalready once been besieged without success; and, as in the case ofSaragossa, the first deliverance appears to have inspired the townspeoplewith the resolution, maintained even more heroically at Missolonghi than atthe Spanish city, to die rather than capitulate. From the time whenReschid, the Turkish commander, opened the second attack by land and sea inthe spring of 1825, the garrison and the inhabitants met every movement ofthe enemy with the most obstinate resistance. It was in vain that Reschidbroke through the defences with his artillery, and threw mass after massupon the breaches which he made. For month after month the assaults of theTurks were uniformly repelled, until at length the arrival of a Hydriotesquadron forced the Turkish fleet to retire from its position, and made thesituation of Reschid himself one of considerable danger. And now, as winterapproached, and the guerilla bands in the rear of the besiegers grew moreand more active, the Egyptian army with its leader was called from theMorea to carry out the task in which the Turks had failed. The Hydriotesea-captains had departed, believing their presence to be no longer needed;and although they subsequently returned for a short time, their serviceswere grudgingly rendered and ineffective. Ibrahim, settling down to hiswork at the beginning of 1826, conducted his operations with the utmostvigour, boasting that he would accomplish in fourteen days what the Turkscould not effect in nine months. But his veteran soldiers were thoroughlydefeated when they met the Greeks hand to hand; and the Egyptian, furiouswith his enemy, his allies, and his own officers, confessed thatMissolonghi could only be taken by blockade. He now ordered a fleet offlat-bottomed boats to be constructed and launched upon the lagoons thatlie between Missolonghi and the open sea. Missolonghi was thus completelysurrounded; and when the Greek admirals appeared for the last time andendeavoured to force an entrance through the shallows, they found thebesieger in full command of waters inaccessible to themselves, and afterone unsuccessful effort abandoned Missolonghi to its fate. In the thirdweek of April, 1826, exactly a year after the commencement of the siege, the supply of food was exhausted. The resolution, long made, that theentire population, men, women, and children, should fall by the enemy'ssword rather than surrender, was now actually carried out. On the night ofthe 22nd of April all the Missolonghiots, with the exception of those whomage, exhaustion, or illness made unable to leave their homes, were drawn upin bands at the city gates, the women armed and dressed as men, thechildren carrying pistols. Preceded by a body of soldiers, they crossed themoat under Turkish fire. The attack of the vanguard carried everythingbefore it, and a way was cut through the Turkish lines. But at this momentsome cry of confusion was mistaken by those who were still on the bridgesfor an order to retreat. A portion of the non-combatants returned into thetown, and with them the rearguard of the military escort. The leadingdivisions, however, continued their march forward, and would have escapedwith the loss of some of the women and children, had not treachery alreadymade the Turkish commander acquainted with the routes which they intendedto follow. They had cleared the Turkish camp, and were expecting to meetthe bands of Greek armatoli, who had promised to fall upon the enemy'srear, when, instead of friends, they encountered troop after troop ofOttoman cavalry and of Albanians placed in ambush along the road betweenMissolonghi and the mountains. Here, exhausted and surprised, they were cutdown without mercy, and out of a body numbering several thousand not morethan fifteen hundred men, with a few women and children, ultimately reachedplaces of safety. Missolonghi itself was entered by the Turks during thesortie. The soldiers who had fallen back during the confusion on thebridges, proved that they had not acted from cowardice. They foughtunflinchingly to the last, and three bands, establishing themselves in thethree powder magazines of the town, set fire to them when surrounded by theTurks, and perished in the explosion Some thousands of women and childrenwere 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 theAcropolis of Athens was in its turn the object of a long and arduous siege. The Government, which now held scarcely any territory on the mainlandexcept Nauplia, where it was itself threatened by Ibrahim, made the mostvigorous efforts to prevent the Acropolis from falling into Reschid'shands. All, however, was in vain. The English officers, Church andCochrane, who were now placed at the head of the military and naval forcesof Greece, failed ignominiously in the attacks which they made on Reschid'sbesieging army; and the garrison capitulated on June 5, 1827. But the timewas past when the liberation of Greece could be prevented by any Ottomanvictory. 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-interventionwas definitely abandoned by those Governments which were best able to carrytheir intentions into effect. If the struggle had ended during the firstthree years of the insurrection, no hand would have been raised to preventthe restoration of the Sultan's rule. Russia then lay as if spell-boundbeneath the diplomacy of the Holy Alliance; and although in the second yearof the war the death of Castlereagh and the accession of Canning to powerhad given Greece a powerful friend instead of a powerful foe within theBritish Ministry, it was long before England stirred from its neutrality. Canning indeed made no secret of his sympathies for Greece, and of hisdesire 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 wouldhave been useful or possible. Changes in the policy of other great Powersand in the situation of the belligerents themselves were, he considered, necessary before the influence of England could be successfully employed inestablishing 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 feltthroughout Western Europe as the struggle continued; and the vivid andromantic interest excited over the whole civilised world by the death ofLord Byron in 1823, among the people whom he had come to free, probablyserved the Greek cause better than all that Byron could have achieved hadhis life been prolonged. In France and England, where public opinion hadgreat influence on the action of the Government, as well as in Germany, where it had none whatever, societies were formed for assisting the Greekswith arms, stores, and money. The first proposal, however, for a jointintervention in favour of Greece came from St. Petersburg. The undisguisedgood-will of Canning towards the insurgents led the Czar's Government toanticipate that England itself might soon assume that championship of theGreek cause which Russia, at the bidding of Metternich and of Canning'spredecessor, had up to that time declined. If the Greeks were to bebefriended, it was intolerable that others should play the part of thepatron. Accordingly, on the 12th of January, 1824, a note was submitted inthe Czar's name to all the Courts of Europe, containing a plan for asettlement of the Greek question, which it was proposed that the greatPowers of Europe should enforce upon Turkey either by means of an armeddemonstration or by the threat of breaking off all diplomatic relations. According to this scheme, Greece, apart from the islands, was to be dividedinto three Principalities, each tributary to the Sultan and garrisoned byTurkish troops, but in other respects autonomous, like the Principalitiesof Moldavia and Wallachia. The islands were to retain their municipalorganisation as before. In one respect this scheme was superior to all thathave succeeded it, for it included in the territory of the Greeks bothCrete and Epirus; in all other respects it was framed in the interest ofRussia alone. Its object was simply to create a second group of provinces, like those on the Danube, which should afford Russia a constant opportunityfor interfering with the Ottoman Empire, and which at the same time shouldprevent the Greeks from establishing an independent and self-supportingState. The design cannot be called insidious, for its object was sopalpable that not a single politician in Europe was deceived by it; and avery simple ruse of Metternich's was enough to draw from the RussianGovernment an explicit declaration against the independence of Greece, which was described by the Czar as a mere chimera. But of all the partiesconcerned, the Greeks themselves were loudest in denounciation of theRussian plan. Their Government sent a protest against it to London, and wasassured by Canning in reply that the support of this country should neverbe given to any scheme for disposing of the Greeks without their ownconsent. Elsewhere the Czar's note was received with expressions ofpoliteness due to a Court which it might be dangerous to contradict; and aseries of conferences was opened at St. Petersburg for the purpose ofdiscussing propositions which no one intended to carry into execution. Though Canning ordered the British ambassador at St. Petersburg todissociate himself from these proceedings, the conferences dragged on, withlong adjournments, from the spring of 1824 to the summer of the followingyear. [371][Discontent and conspiracies in Russia. ]In the meantime a strong spirit of discontent was rising in the Russianarmy and nation. The religious feeling no less than the pride of the peoplewas deeply wounded by Alexander's refusal to aid the Greeks in theirstruggle, and by the pitiful results of his attempted diplomatic concert. Alone among the European nations the Russians understood the ecclesiasticalcharacter of the Greek insurrection, and owed nothing of their sympathywith it to the spell of classical literature and art. It is characteristicof the strength of the religious element in the political views of theRussian people, that the floods of the Neva which overwhelmed St. Petersburg in the winter of 1825 should have been regarded as a sign ofdivine anger at the Czar's inaction in the struggle between the Crescentand the Cross. But other causes of discontent were not wanting in Russia. Though Alexander had forgotten his promises to introduce constitutionalrule, 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 threeyears' occupation which followed it, returned from Western Europe withideas of social progress and of constitutional rights which they couldnever have gathered in their own country. And when the bright hopes whichhad been excited by the recognition of these same ideas by the Czar passedaway, and Russia settled down into the routine of despotism and corruption, the old unquestioning loyalty of the army was no longer proof against theworkings of the revolutionary spirit. In a land where legal means ofopposition to government and of the initiation of reform were whollywanting, discontent was forced into its most dangerous form, that ofmilitary conspiracy. The army was honeycombed with secret societies. Bothin the north and in the south of Russia men of influence worked among theyounger officers, and gained a strong body of adherents to their design ofestablishing a constitution by force. The southern army contained the mostresolute and daring conspirators. These men had definitely abandoned thehope of effecting any public reform as long as Alexander lived, and theydetermined to sacrifice the sovereign, as his father and others before himhad been sacrificed, to the political necessities of the time. If theevidence subsequently given by those implicated in the conspiracy is worthyof credit, a definite plan had been formed for the assassination of theCzar in the presence of his troops at one of the great reviews intended tobe held in the south of Russia in the autumn of 1825. On the death of themonarch a provisional government was at once to be established, and aconstitution proclaimed. [Death of the Czar, Dec. 1, 1825. ]Alexander, aware of the rising indignation of his people, and irritatedbeyond endurance by the failure of his diplomatic efforts, had dissolvedthe St. Petersburg Conferences in August, 1825, and declared that Russiawould henceforth act according to its own discretion. He quitted St. Petersburg and travelled to the Black Sea, accompanied by some of theleaders of the war-party. Here, plunged in a profound melancholy, consciousthat all his early hopes had only served to surround him with conspirators, and that his sacrifice of Russia's military interests to internationalpeace had only rendered his country impotent before all Europe, he stillhesitated to make the final determination between peace and war. A certainmystery hung over his movements, his acts, and his intentions. Suddenly, while all Europe waited for the signal that should end the interval ofsuspense, the news was sent out from a lonely port on the Black Sea thatthe Czar was dead. Alexander, still under fifty years of age, had welcomedthe illness which carried him from a world of cares, and closed a career inwhich anguish and disappointment had succeeded to such intoxicating gloryand such unbounded hope. Young as he still was for one who had reignedtwenty-four years, Alexander was of all men the most life-weary. Power, pleasure, excitement, had lavished on him hours of such existence as nonebut Napoleon among all his contemporaries had enjoyed. They had left himnothing but the solace of religious resignation, and the belief that aPower higher than his own might yet fulfil the purposes in which he himselfhad failed. Ever in the midst of great acts and great events, he had missedgreatness himself. Where he had been best was exactly where men inferior tohimself considered him to have been worst--in his hopes; and these hopes hehad himself abandoned and renounced. Strength, insight, unity of purpose, the qualities which enable men to mould events, appeared in him butmomentarily or in semblance. For want of them the large and fair horizon ofhis earlier years was first obscured and then wholly blotted out from hisview, till in the end nothing but his pietism and his generositydistinguished him from the politicians of repression whose instrument hehad become. [Military insurrection at St. Petersburg, Dec 26, 1825. ]The sudden death of Alexander threw the Russian Court into the greatestconfusion, for it was not known who was to succeed him. The heir to thethrone was his brother Constantine, an ignorant and brutal savage, who hadjust sufficient sense not to desire to be Czar of Russia, though heconsidered himself good enough to tyrannise over the Poles. Constantine hadrenounced his right to the crown some years before, but the renunciationhad not been made public, nor had the Grand Duke Nicholas, Constantine'syounger brother, been made aware that the succession was irrevocably fixedupon himself. Accordingly, when the news of Alexander's death reached St. Petersburg, and the document embodying Constantine's abdication was broughtfrom the archives by the officials to whose keeping it had been entrusted, Nicholas refused to acknowledge it as binding, and caused the troops totake the oath of allegiance to Constantine, who was then at Warsaw. Constantine, on the other hand, proclaimed his brother emperor. Aninterregnum of three weeks followed, during which messages passed betweenWarsaw and St. Petersburg, Nicholas positively refusing to accept the crownunless by his elder brother's direct command. This at length arrived, andon the 26th of December Nicholas assumed the rank of sovereign. But theinterval of uncertainty had been turned to good account by the conspiratorsat St. Petersburg. The oath already taken by the soldiers to Constantineenabled the officers who were concerned in the plot to denounce Nicholas asa usurper, and to disguise their real designs under the cloak of loyalty tothe legitimate Czar. Ignorant of the very meaning of a constitution, thecommon soldiers mutinied because they were told to do so; and it is saidthat they shouted the word Constitution, believing it to be the name ofConstantine's wife. When summoned to take the oath to Nicholas, the MoscowRegiment refused it, and marched off to the place in front of the SenateHouse, where it formed square, and repulsed an attack made upon it by theCavalry of the Guard. Companies from other regiments now joined themutineers, and symptoms of insurrection began to show themselves among thecivil population. Nicholas himself did not display the energy of characterwhich distinguished him through all his later life; on the contrary, hisattitude was for some time rather that of resignation than ofself-confidence. Whether some doubt as to the justice of his cause hauntedhim, or a trial like that to which he was now exposed was necessary tobring to its full strength the iron quality of his nature, it is certainthat the conduct of the new Czar during these critical hours gave to thosearound him little indication of the indomitable will which was hence forthto govern Russia. Though the great mass of the army remained obedient, itwas but slowly brought up to the scene of revolt. Officers of high rankwere sent to harangue the insurgents, and one of these, GeneralMiloradovitsch, a veteran of the Napoleonic campaigns, was mortally woundedwhile endeavouring to make himself heard. It was not until evening that theartillery was ordered into action, and the command given by the Czar tofire grape-shot among the insurgents. The effect was decisive. Themutineers fled before a fire which they were unable to return, and within afew minutes the insurrection was over. It had possessed no chief of anymilitary capacity; its leaders were missing at the moment when a forwardmarch or an attack on the palace of the Czar might have given them thevictory; and among the soldiers at large there was not the least desire totake part in any movement against the established system of Russia. Theonly effect left by the conspiracy within Russia itself was seen in therigorous and uncompromising severity with which Nicholas henceforwardenforced the principle of autocratic rule. The illusions of the previousreign were at an end. A man with the education and the ideas of adrill-sergeant and the religious assurance of a Covenanter was on thethrone; rebellion had done its worst against him; and woe to those who infuture should deviate a hair's breadth from their duty of implicitobedience 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 militaryinsurrection of 1825 disposed the new Czar to a more vigorous policyabroad. The conspirators, when on their trial, declared it to have beentheir 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 ontheir side. Nicholas himself had little or no sympathy for the Greeks. Theywere a democratic people, and the freedom which they sought to gain wasnothing but anarchy. "Do not speak of the Greeks, " he said to therepresentative of a foreign power, "I call them the rebels. " Nevertheless, little as Nicholas wished to serve the Greek democracy, both inclinationand policy urged him to make an end of his predecessor's faint-heartedsystem of negotiation, and to bring the struggle in the East to a summaryclose. Canning had already, in conversation with the Russian ambassador atLondon, discussed a possible change of policy on the part of the two rivalCourts. He now saw that time had come for establishing new relationsbetween Great Britain and Russia, and for attempting that co-operation inthe East which he had held to be impracticable during Alexander's reign. The Duke of Wellington was sent to St. Petersburg, nominally to offer theusual congratulations to the new sovereign, in reality to dissuade him fromgoing to war, and to propose either the separate intervention of England ora joint intervention by England and Russia on behalf of Greece. The missionwas successful. It was in vain that Metternich endeavoured to entangle thenew Czar in the diplomatic web that had so long held his predecessor. Thespell of the Holy Alliance was broken. Nicholas looked on the pastinfluence of Austria on the Eastern Question only with resentment; he wouldhear 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 Russiafixed the conditions under which the mediation of the former Power was tobe tendered to the Porte. Greece was to remain tributary to the Sultan; itwas, however, to be governed by its own elected authorities, and to becompletely independent in its commercial relations. The policy known in ourown day as that of bag-and-baggage expulsion was to be carried out in a farmore extended sense than that in which it has been advocated by more recentchampions of the subject races of the East; the Protocol of 1826stipulating for the removal not only of Turkish officials but of the entiresurviving Turkish population of Greece. All property belonging to theTurks, whether on the continent or in the islands, was to be purchased bythe Greeks. [373]Thus was the first step taken in the negotiations which ended in theestablishment of Hellenic independence. The Protocol, which had beensecretly signed, was submitted after some interval to the other Courts ofEurope. At Vienna it was received with the utmost disgust. Metternich hadat first declared the union of England and Russia to be an impossibility. When this union was actually established, no language was sufficientlystrong to express his mortification and his spite. At one moment hedeclared that Canning was a revolutionist who had entrapped the young andinexperienced Czar into an alliance with European radicalism; at another, that England had made itself the cat's-paw of Russian ambition. Not tillnow, he protested, could Europe understand what it had lost in Castlereagh. Nor did Metternich confine himself to lamentations. While hisrepresentatives at Paris and Berlin spared no effort to excite thesuspicion of those Courts against the Anglo-Russian project ofintervention, the Austrian ambassador at London worked upon King George'spersonal hostility to Canning, and conspired against the Minister with thatimportant section of the English aristocracy which was still influenced bythe traditional regard for Austria. Berlin, however, was the only fieldwhere Metternich's diplomacy still held its own. King Frederick William hadnot yet had time to acquire the habit of submission to the young CzarNicholas, and was therefore saved the pain of deciding which of two mastershe should obey. In spite of his own sympathy for the Greeks, he declined toconnect Prussia with the proposed joint-intervention, and remained passive, justifying this course by the absence of any material interests of Prussiain the East. Being neither a neighbour of the Ottoman Empire nor a maritimePower, 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 theinterests of the Legitimist party. Louis XVIII. Had died in 1824, and theCount of Artois had succeeded to the throne, under the title of Charles X. The principles of the Legitimists would logically have made them defendersof the hereditary rights of the Sultan against his rebellious subjects; butthe Sultan, unlike Ferdinand of Spain, was not a Bourbon nor even aChristian; and in a case where the legitimate prince was an infidel and therebels were Christians, the conscience of the most pious Legitimist mightwell recoil from the perilous task of deciding between the divine rights ofthe Crown and the divine rights of the Church, and choose, in so painful anemergency, the simpler course of gratifying the national love of action. There existed, both among Liberals and among Ultramontanes, a real sympathyfor Greece, and this interest was almost the only one in which all Frenchpolitical sections felt that they had something in common. Liberalsrejoiced 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 breachbetween Austria and Russia, and of the opportunity of allying France withthe latter Power. Thus the natural and disinterested impulse of the greaterpart of the public coincided exactly with the dictates of a far-seeingpolicy; and the Government, in spite of its Legitimist principles and ofsome assurances given to Metternich in person when he visited Paris in1825, determined to accept the policy of the Anglo-Russian intervention inthe East, and to participate in the active measures about to be taken bythe two Powers. The Protocol of St. Petersburg formed the basis of adefinitive treaty which was signed at London in July, 1827. By this actEngland, Russia, and France undertook to put an end to the conflict in theEast, which, through the injury done to the commerce of all nations, hadbecome a matter of European concern. The contending parties were to besummoned to accept the mediation of the Powers and to consent to anarmistice. Greece was to be made autonomous, under the paramountsovereignty of the Sultan; the Mohammedan population of the Greek provinceswas, as in the Protocol of St. Petersburg, to be entirely removed; and theGreeks were to enter upon possession of all Turkish property within theirlimits, paying an indemnity to the former owners. Each of the threecontracting Governments pledged itself to seek no increase of territory inthe East, and no special commercial advantages. In the secret articles ofthe treaty provisions were made for the case of the rejection by the Turksof the proposed offer of mediation. Should the armistice not be grantedwithin one month, the Powers agreed that they would announce to eachbelligerent their intention to prevent further encounters, and that theywould take the necessary steps for enforcing this declaration, without, however, taking part in hostilities themselves. Instructions in conformitywith the Treaty were to be sent to the Admirals commanding theMediterranean 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 haddefinitely broken from the policy of his predecessors, that policy which, for the sake of guarding against Russia's advance, had condemned theChristian races of the East to 1827. Eternal subjection to the Turk, andbound up Great Britain with the Austrian system of resistance to the veryprinciple and name of national independence. Canning was no blind friend toRussia. As keenly as any of his adversaries he appreciated the importanceof England's interests in the East; of all English statesmen of that timehe would have been the last to submit to any diminution of England's justinfluence or power. But, unlike his predecessors, he saw that there weregreat forces at work which, whether with England's concurrence or in spiteof it, would accomplish that revolution in the East for which the time wasnow come; and he was statesman enough not to acquiesce in the belief thatthe welfare of England was in permanent and necessary antagonism to themoral interests of mankind and the better spirit of the age. Therefore, instead of attempting to maintain the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, orholding aloof and resorting to threats and armaments while Russiaaccomplished the liberation of Greece by itself, he united with Russia inthis work, and relied on concerted action as the best preventive againstthe undue extension of Russia's influence in the East. In committingEngland to armed intervention, Canning no doubt hoped that the settlementof the Greek question arranged by the Powers would be peacefully acceptedby the Sultan, and that a separate war between Russia and the Porte, onthis or any other issue, would be averted. Neither of these hopes wasrealised. The joint-intervention had to be enforced by arms, and no soonerhad the Allies struck their common blow than a war between Turkey andRussia followed. How far the course of events might have been modified hadCanning's life not been cut short it is impossible to say; but whether hisstatesmanship might or might not have averted war on the Danube, thebalance of results proved his policy to have been the right one. Greece wasestablished as an independent State, to supply in the future a valuableelement of resistance to Slavic preponderance in the Levant; and theencounter between Russia and Turkey, so long dreaded, produced none ofthose disastrous effects which had been anticipated from it. On therelative value of Canning's statesmanship as compared with that of hispredecessors, the mind of England and of Europe has long been made up. Hestands among those who have given to this country its claim to the respectof mankind. His monument, as well as his justification, is the existence ofnational freedom in the East; and when half a century later a BritishGovernment reverted to the principle of nonintervention, as it had beenunderstood by Castlereagh, and declined to enter into any effectiveco-operation with Russia for the emancipation of Bulgaria, even then, whenthe precedent of Canning's action in 1827 stood in direct and glaringcontradiction to the policy of the hour, no effective attempt was made bythe leaders of the party to which Canning had belonged to impugn hisauthority, or to explain away his example. It might indeed be alleged thatCanning had not explicitly resolved on the application of force; but thosewho could maintain that Canning would, like Wellington, have used thelanguage of apology and regret when Turkish obstinacy had made itimpossible to effect the object of his intervention by any other means, hadindeed read the history of Canning's career in vain. [375][Intervention of the Admirals, Sept. , 1927. ]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 noavowed change in the execution of his plans. In accordance with theprovisions of the Treaty of London the mediation of the allied Powers wasat once tendered to the belligerents, and an armistice demanded. Thearmistice was accepted by the Greeks; it was contemptuously refused by theTurks. In consequence of this refusal the state of war continued, as itwould have been absurd to ask the Greeks to sit still and be massacredbecause the enemy declined to lay down his arms. The Turk being the partyresisting the mediation agreed upon, it became necessary to deprive him ofthe power of continuing hostilities. Heavy reinforcements had just arrivedfrom Egypt, and an expedition was on the point of sailing from Navarino, the gathering place of Ibrahim's forces, against Hydra, the capture ofwhich would have definitely made an end of the Greek insurrection. AdmiralCodrington, the commander of the British fleet, and the French Admiral DeRigny, were now off the coast of Greece. They addressed themselves toIbrahim, and required from him a promise that he would make no movementuntil further orders should arrive from Constantinople. Ibrahim made thispromise verbally on the 25th of September. A few days later, however, Ibrahim learnt that while he himself was compelled to be inactive, theGreeks, continuing hostilities as they were entitled to do, had won abrilliant 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 theEgyptian, whom he compelled to turn back by an energetic threat to sink hisfleet. Had the French and Russian contingents been at hand, Codringtonwould have taken advantage of Ibrahim's sortie to cut him off from allGreek harbours, and to force him to return direct to Alexandria, thuspeaceably accomplishing the object of the intervention. This, however, tothe misfortune of Ibrahim's seamen, the English admiral could not do alone. Ibrahim re-entered Navarino, and there found the orders of the Sultan forwhich it had been agreed that he should wait. These orders were dictated bytrue Turkish infatuation. They bade Ibrahim continue the subjugation of theMorea with the utmost vigour, and promised him the assistance of ReschidPasha, his rival in the siege of Missolonghi. Ibrahim, perfectly recklessof the consequences, now sent out his devastating columns again. No life, and nothing that could support life, was spared. Not only were the cropsravaged, but the fruit-trees, which are the permanent support of thecountry, were cut down at the roots. Clouds of fire and smoke from burningvillages showed the English officers who approached the coast in whatspirit the Turk met their proposals for a pacification. "It is supposedthat if Ibrahim remained in Greece, " wrote Captain Hamilton, "more than athird 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 faradvanced, and a winter blockade of Ibrahim's fleet was impossible. Amessage was sent to the Egyptian head-quarters, requiring that hostilitiesshould cease, that the Morea should be evacuated, and the Turko-Egyptianfleet return to Constantinople and Alexandria. In answer to this messagethere came back a statement that Ibrahim had left Navarino for the interiorof the country, and that it was not known where to find him. Nothing nowremained for the admirals but to make their presence felt. On the 18th ofOctober it was resolved that the English, French, and Russian fleets, whichwere now united, should enter the harbour of Navarino in battle order. Themovement was called a demonstration, and in so far as the admirals had notactually determined upon making an attack, it was not directly a hostilemeasure; but every gun was ready to open fire, and it was well understoodthat any act of resistance on the part of the opposite fleet would resultin hostilities. Codrington, as senior officer, took command of the alliedsquadron, and the instructions which he gave to his colleagues for theevent of a general engagement concluded with Nelson's words, that nocaptain 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 ofNavarino at noon on October 20, followed by the French and the Russians. The allied fleet advanced to within pistol-shot of the Ottoman ships andthere anchored. A little to the windward of the position assigned to theEnglish corvette _Dartmouth_ there lay a Turkish fire-ship. A requestwas 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 boatwas received with musketry fire. This was answered by the _Dartmouth_and by a French ship, and the battle soon became general. Codrington, stilldesirous to avoid bloodshed, sent his pilot to Moharem Bey, who commandedin Ibrahim's absence, proposing to withhold fire on both sides. Moharemreplied with cannon-shot, killing the pilot and striking Codrington's ownvessel. This exhausted the patience of the English admiral, who forthwithmade his adversary a mere wreck. The entire fleets on both sides were nowengaged. The Turks had a superiority of eight hundred guns, and fought withcourage. For four hours the battle raged at close quarters in theland-locked harbour, while twenty thousand of Ibrahim's soldiers watchedfrom 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 confusionand bad discipline of the Turkish fleet made it an easy prey. Vessel aftervessel was sunk or blown to pieces, and before evening fell the work of theallies was done. When Ibrahim returned from his journey on the followingday he found the harbour of Navarino strewed with wrecks and dead bodies. Four thousand of his seamen had fallen; the fleet which was to haveaccomplished 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. Theintervention of the Powers had been sudden and decisive beyond the mostsanguine hopes; and though this intervention might be intended to establishsomething less than the complete independence of Greece, the violence ofthe first collision bade fair to carry the work far beyond the boundsoriginally assigned to it. The attitude of the Porte after the news of thebattle of Navarino reached Constantinople was exactly that which its worstenemies might have desired. So far from abating anything in its resistanceto the mediation of the three Powers, it declared the attack made upon itsnavy to be a crime and an outrage, and claimed satisfaction for it from theambassadors of the Allied Powers. Arguments proved useless, and the uniteddemand for an armistice with the Greeks having been finally andcontemptuously refused, the ambassadors, in accordance with theirinstructions, quitted the Turkish capital (Dec. 8). Had Canning been stillliving, it is probable that the first blow of Navarino would have beenimmediately followed by the measures necessary to make the Sultan submit tothe Treaty of London, and that the forces of Great Britain would have beenapplied with sufficient vigour to render any isolated action on the part ofRussia both unnecessary and impossible. But at this critical moment aparalysis fell over the English Government. Canning's policy was so muchhis own, he had dragged his colleagues so forcibly with him in spite ofthemselves, that when his place was left empty no one had the courageeither to fulfil or to reverse his intentions, and the men who succeededhim acted as if they were trespassers in the fortress which Canning hadtaken by storm. The very ground on which Wellington, no less than Canning, had justified the agreement made with Russia in 1826 was the necessity ofpreventing Russia from acting alone; and when Russian and Turkish ships hadactually fought at Navarino, and war was all but formally declared, itbecame more imperative than ever that Great Britain should keep the mostvigorous hold upon its rival, and by steady, consistent pressure let it beknown to both Turks and Russians that the terms of the Treaty of London andno others must be enforced. To retire from action immediately after dealingthe Sultan one dire, irrevocable blow, without following up this stroke orattaining the end agreed upon--to leave Russia to take up the armedcompulsion where England had dropped it, and to win from its crippledadversary the gains of a private and isolated war--was surely the weakestof all possible policies that could have been adopted. Yet this was thepolicy followed by English Ministers during that interval of transition andincoherence that passed between Canning's death and the introduction of theReform Bill. [War between Russia and Turkey, April, 1828. ]By the Russian Government nothing was more ardently desired than a contestwith Turkey, in which England and France, after they had destroyed theTurkish fleet, should be mere on-lookers, debarred by the folly of thePorte itself from prohibiting or controlling hostilities between it and itsneighbour. There might indeed be some want of a pretext for war, since allthe points of contention between Russia and Turkey other than thoserelating to Greece had been finally settled in Russia's favour by a Treatysigned at Akerman in October, 1826. But the spirit of infatuation hadseized the Sultan, or a secret hope that the Western Powers would in thelast resort throw over the Court of St. Petersburg led him to hurry onhostilities by a direct challenge to Russia. A proclamation which readslike the work of some frantic dervish, though said to have been composed byMahmud himself, called the Mussulman world to arms. Russia was denounced asthe instigator of the Greek rebellion, and the arch-enemy of Islam. TheTreaty of Akerman was declared to have been extorted by compulsion and tohave been signed only for the purpose of gaining time. "Russia has impartedits own madness to the other Powers and persuaded them to make an allianceto free the Rayah from his Ottoman master. But the Turk does not count hisenemies. The law forbids the people of Islam to permit any injury to bedone to their religion; and if all the unbelievers together unite againstthem, they will enter on the war as a sacred duty, and trust in God forprotection. " This proclamation was followed by a levy of troops and theexpulsion of most of the Christian residents in Constantinople. Russianeeded no other pretext. The fanatical outburst of the Sultan was treatedby the Court of St. Petersburg as if it had been the deliberate expressionof some civilised Power, and was answered on the 26th of April, 1828, by adeclaration of war. In order to soften the effect of this step and to reapthe full benefit of its subsisting relations with France and England, Russia gave a provisional undertaking to confine its operations as abelligerent to the mainland and the Black Sea, and within the Mediterraneanto act still as one of the allied neutrals under the terms of the Treaty ofLondon. [Military condition of Turkey. ]The moment seized by Russia for the declaration of war was one singularlyfavourable to itself and unfortunate for its adversary. Not only had theTurkish fleet been destroyed by the neutrals, but the old Turkish force ofthe Janissaries had been destroyed by its own master, and the new-modelledregiments which were to replace it had not yet been organised. The Sultanhad determined in 1826 to postpone his long-planned military reform nolonger, and to stake everything on one bold stroke against the Janissaries. Troops enough were brought up from the other side of the Bosphorus to makeMahmud certain of victory. The Janissaries were summoned to contribute aproportion of their number to the regiments about to be formed on theEuropean pattern; and when they proudly refused to do so and raised thestandard of open rebellion they were cut to pieces and exterminated byMahmud's Anatolian soldiers in the midst of Constantinople. [377] Theprincipal difficulty in the way of a reform of the Turkish army was thusremoved and the work of reorganisation was earnestly taken in hand; butbefore there was time to complete it the enemy entered the field. Mahmudhad to meet the attack of Russia with an army greatly diminished in number, and confused by the admixture of European and Turkish discipline. Theresources of the empire were exhausted by the long struggle with Greece, and, above all, the destruction of the Janissaries had left behind it anexasperation which made the Sultan believe that rebellion might at anymoment break out in his own capital. Nevertheless, in spite of its inherentweakness and of all the disadvantages under which it entered into war, Turkey succeeded in prolonging its resistance through two campaigns, andmight, 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 theywere believed to be by all Europe. The destruction of Napoleon's army in1812 and the subsequent exploits of Alexander in the campaigns which endedin the capture of Paris had left behind them an impression of Russianenergy and power which was far from corresponding with the reality, andwhich, though disturbed by the events of 1828, had by no means vanished atthe time of the Crimean War. The courage and patience of the Russiansoldier were certainly not over-rated; but the progress supposed to havebeen made in Russian military organisation since the campaign of 1799, whenit was regarded in England and Austria as little above that of savages, wasfor the most part imaginary. The proofs of a radically bad system--scantynumbers, failing supplies, immense sickness--were never more conspicuousthan in 1828. Though Russia had been preparing for war for at least sevenyears, scarcely seventy thousand soldiers could be collected on the Pruth. The general was Wittgenstein, one of the heroes of 1812, but now a veteranpast effective work. Nicholas came to the camp to make things worse byheadstrong interference. The best Russian officer, Paskiewitsch, was put incommand of the forces about to operate in Asia Minor, and there, thrown onhis own resources and free to create a system of his own, he achievedresults in strong contrast to the failure of the Russian arms on theDanube. [Campaign of 1828. ]In entering on the campaign of 1828, it was necessary for the Czar to avoidgiving any unnecessary causes of anxiety to Austria, which had already madeunsuccessful attempts to form a coalition against him. The line ofoperations was therefore removed as far as possible from the Austrianfrontier; and after the Roumanian principalities had been peacefullyoccupied, the Danube was crossed at a short distance above the point whereits mouths divide (June 7). The Turks had no intention of meeting the enemyin a pitched battle; they confined themselves to the defence of fortresses, the form of warfare to which, since the decline of the military art inTurkey, the patience and abstemiousness of the race best fit them. Ibrailaand Silistria on the Danube, Varna and Shumla in the neighbourhood of theBalkans, were their principal strongholds; of these Ibraila was at oncebesieged by a considerable force, while Silistria was watched by a weakcontingent, and the vanguard of the Russian army pushed on through theDobrudscha towards the Black Sea, where, with the capture of the minorcoast-towns, it expected to enter into communication with the fleet. Thefirst few weeks of the campaign were marked by considerable successes. Ibraila capitulated on the 18th of June, and the military posts in theDobrudscha fell one after another into the hands of the invaders, who metwith no effective resistance in this district. But their serious work wasonly now beginning. The Russian army, in spite of its weakness, was dividedinto three parts, occupied severally in front of Silistria, Shumla, andVarna. At Shumla the mass of the Turkish army, under Omer Brionis, wasconcentrated. The force brought against it by the invader was inadequate toits task, and the attempts which were made to lure the Turkish army fromits entrenched camp into the open field proved unsuccessful. Thedifficulties of the siege proved so great that Wittgenstein after a whileproposed to abandon offensive operations at this point, and to leave a merecorps of observation before the enemy until Varna should have fallen. This, however, was forbidden by the Czar. As the Russians wasted away beforeShumla with sickness and fatigue, the Turks gained strength, and on the24th of September Omer broke out from his entrenchments and moved eastwardsto the relief of Varna. Nicholas again over-ruled his generals, and orderedhis cousin, Prince Eugene of Würtemberg, to attack the advancing Ottomanswith the troops then actually at his disposal. Eugene did so, and suffereda severe defeat. A vigorous movement of the Turks would probably have madean end of the campaign, but Omer held back at the critical moment, and onthe 10th of October Varna surrendered. This, however, was the only conquestmade by the Russians. The season was too far advanced for them either tocross the Balkans or to push forward operations against the uncapturedfortresses. Shumla and Silistria remained in the hands of their defenders, and the Russians, after suffering enormous losses in proportion to thesmallness of their numbers, withdrew to Varna and the Danube, to resume thecampaign in the spring of the following year. [378][Campaign of 1829. ]The spirits of the Turks and of their European friends were raised by theunexpected failure of the Czar's arms. Metternich resumed his efforts toform a coalition, and tempted French Ministers with the prospect ofrecovering the Rhenish provinces, but in vain. The Sultan begannegotiations, but broke them off when he found that the events of thecampaign had made no difference in the enemy's tone. The prestige of Russiawas in fact at stake, and Nicholas would probably have faced a war withAustria and Turkey combined rather than have made peace without restoringthe much-diminished reputation of his troops. The winter was thereforespent in bringing up distant reserves. Wittgenstein was removed from hiscommand; the Czar withdrew from military operations in which he had donenothing but mischief; and Diebitsch, a Prussian by birth and training, wasplaced at the head of the army, untrammelled by the sovereign presence orcounsels which had hampered his predecessor. The intention of the newcommander was to cross the Balkans as soon as Silistria should have fallen, without waiting for the capture of Shumla. In pursuance of this design thefleet was despatched early in the spring of 1829 to seize a port beyond themountain-range. Diebitsch then placed a corps in front of Silistria, andmade his preparations for the southward march; but before any progress hadbeen made in the siege the Turks themselves took the field. Reschid Pasha, now Grand Vizier, moved eastwards from Shumla at the beginning of Mayagainst the weak Russian contingent that still lay in winter quartersbetween that place and Varna. The superiority of his force promised himan easy victory; but after winning some unimportant successes, andadvancing to a considerable distance from his stronghold, he allowedhimself 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 theRussian commander, who hastened across Bulgaria on hearing of hiscolleague's peril, the choice of destroying their army, or of seizingShumla by a _coup-de-main_. Diebitsch determined upon attacking hisenemy in the open field, and on the 10th of June Reschid's army, attemptingto regain the roads to Shumla, was put to total rout at Kulewtscha. Afortnight later Silistria surrendered, and Diebitsch, reinforced by thetroops that had besieged that fortress, was now able to commence hismarch across the Balkans. [Crossing of the Balkans, July, 1829. ]Rumour magnified into hundreds of thousands the scanty columns which forthe first time carried the Russian flag over the Balkan range. Resistanceeverywhere collapsed. The mountains were crossed without difficulty, and onthe 19th of August the invaders appeared before Adrianople, whichimmediately surrendered. Putting on the boldest countenance in order toconceal his real weakness, Diebitsch now struck out right and left, andsent detachments both to the Euxine and the Aegean coast. The fleetco-operated with him, and the ports of the Black Sea, almost as far southas the Bosphorus, fell into the invaders' hands. The centre of the armybegan to march upon Constantinople. If the Sultan had known the realnumbers of the force which threatened his capital, a force not exceedingtwenty thousand men, he would probably have recognised that his assailant'sposition was a more dangerous one than his own. Diebitsch had advanced intothe heart of the enemy's country with a mere handful of men. Sickness wasdaily thinning his ranks; his troops were dispersed over a wide area fromsea to sea; and the warlike tribes of Albania threatened to fall upon hiscommunications from the west. For a moment the Sultan spoke of fightingupon the walls of Constantinople; but the fear of rebellion within his owncapital, the discovery of conspiracies, and the disasters sustained by hisarms 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 termswhich the Russian Government, aware of its own difficulties, was willing togrant. It would have been folly for the Czar to stimulate the growingsuspicion of England and to court the attack of Austria by prolonginghostilities; and although King Charles X. And the French Cabinet, revertingto the ideas of Tilsit, proposed a partition of the Ottoman Empire, and ageneral re-arrangement of the map of Europe which would have given Belgiumand the Palatinate to France, the plan was originated too late to produceany effect. [379] Russia had everything to lose and nothing to gain by aEuropean war. It had reduced Turkey to submission, and might fairly hope tomaintain its ascendency at Constantinople during coming years withoutmaking any of those great territorial changes which would have given itsrivals a pretext for intervening on the Sultan's behalf. Under the guise ofa generous forbearance the Czar extricated himself from a dangerousposition with credit and advantage. As much had been won as could bemaintained without hazard; and on the 14th of September peace was concludedin Adrianople. [Treaty of Adrianople, Sept. 14, 1829. ]The Treaty of Adrianople gave Russia a slight increase of territory inAsia, incorporating with the Czar's dominions the ports of Anapa and Potion the eastern coast of the Black Sea; but its most important provisionswere those which confirmed and extended the Protectorate exercised by theCzar over the Danubian Principalities, and guaranteed the commercial rightsof Russian subjects throughout the Ottoman Empire both by land and sea. Inorder more effectively to exclude the Sultan's influence from Wallachia andMoldavia, the office of Hospodar, hitherto tenable for seven years, was nowmade an appointment for life, and the Sultan specifically engaged to permitno interference on the part of his neighbouring Pashas with the affairs ofthese provinces. No fortified point was to be retained by the Turks on theleft bank of the Danube; no Mussulman was to be permitted to reside withinthe Principalities; and those possessing landed estates there were to sellthem within eighteen months. The Porte pledged itself never again to detainRussian ships of commerce coming from the Black Sea, and acknowledged thatsuch an act would amount to an infraction of treaties justifying Russia inhaving recourse to reprisals. The Straits of Constantinople and theDardanelles were declared free and open to the merchant ships of all Powersat peace with the Porte, upon the same conditions which were stipulated forvessels under the Russian flag. The same freedom of trade and navigationwas recognised within the Black Sea. All treaties and conventions hithertoconcluded between Turkey and Russia were recognised as in force, except inso far as modified by the present agreement. The Porte further gave itsadhesion to the Treaty of London relating to Greece, and to an Act enteredinto by the Allied Powers in March, 1829, for regulating the Greekfrontier. An indemnity in money was declared to be owing to Russia; and asthe amount of this remained to be fixed by mutual agreement, the means werestill left open to the Russian Government for exercising a gentle pressureat 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 frontierbetween the belligerents unchanged, exercised a two-fold influence upon thesettlement of Greece. On the one hand, by exciting the fears and suspicionsof Great Britain, it caused the Government of our own country, under theDuke of Wellington, to insist on the limitation of the Greek State to thenarrowest possible area; [381] on the other hand, by reducing Turkey itselfalmost to the condition of a Russian dependency, it led to the abandonmentof the desire to maintain the Sultan's supremacy in any form over theemancipated provinces, and resulted in the establishment of an absolutelyindependent Hellenic kingdom. An important change had taken place withinGreece itself just at the time when the allied Powers determined uponintervention. The parts of the local leaders were played out, and in April, 1827, Capodistrias, ex-Minister of Russia, was elected President for sevenyears. Capodistrias accepted the call. He was then, as he had beenthroughout the insurrection, at a distance from Greece; and before makinghis way thither, he visited the principal Courts of Europe, with the viewof ascertaining what moral or financial support he should be likely toreceive from them. His interview with the Czar Nicholas led to a clearstatement by that sovereign of the conditions which he expectedCapodistrias, in return for Russia's continued friendship, to fulfil. Greece was to be rescued from revolution: in other words, personal was tobe substituted for popular government. The State was to remain tributary tothe Sultan: that is, in both Greece and Turkey the door was to be kept openfor Russia's interference. Whether Capodistrias had any intention offulfilling the latter condition is doubtful. His love for Greece and hisown personal ambition prevented his regard for Russia, strong though thismight be, from making him the mere instrument of the Court of St. Petersburg; and while outwardly acquiescing in the Czar's decision thatGreece should remain a tributary State, he probably resolved from the firstto aim at establishing its complete independence. With regard to the Czar'sdemand that the system of local self-government should be superseded withinGreece itself by one of autocratic rule, Capodistrias was in harmony withhis 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 ofthe Russian Court when it was a question of arguing against Metternichabout the complete or the partial restoration of despotic rule in Italy, hehad no real acquaintance and no real sympathy with the action of freeinstitutions, and moved in the same circle of ideas as the autocraticreformers 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 thefortresses, and it was deemed necessary by the Allies to send a Frencharmy-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 burningTripolitza to the ground and sowing it with salt, and then withdrew. Thewar between Turkey and Russia had now begun. Capodistrias assisted theRussian fleet in blockading the Dardanelles, and thereby gained for himselfthe marked ill-will of the British Government. At a conference held inLondon by the representatives of France, England, and Russia, in November, 1828, it was resolved that the operations of the Allies should be limitedto the Morea and the islands. Capodistrias, in consequence of thisdecision, took the most vigorous measures for continuing the war againstTurkey. 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 theDanube, Capodistrias succeeded in reconquering Missolonghi and the wholetract of country immediately to the north of the Gulf of Corinth. ThePorte, in prolonging its resistance after the November conference, playedas usual into its enemy's hands. The negotiations at London were resumed ina spirit somewhat more favourable to Greece, and a Protocol was signed onthe 22nd of March, 1829, extending the northern frontier of Greece up to aline drawn from the Gulf of Arta to the Gulf of Volo. Greece, according tothis Protocol, was still to remain under the Sultan's suzerainty: its rulerwas to be a hereditary prince belonging to one of the reigning Europeanfamilies, 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 termsthus laid down, and for the fourteenth time its mediation was rejected. Butthe end was near at hand. Diebitsch crossed the Balkans, and it was in vainthat 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 leftboth Athens and Missolonghi Turkish territory. The principle of theadmission of the provinces north of the Gulf of Corinth within the HellenicState was established, and nothing remained for the friends of the Portebut to cut down to the narrowest possible area the district which had beenloosely indicated in the London Protocol. While Russia, satisfied with itsown successes against the Ottoman Empire and anxious to play the part ofpatron of the conquered, ceased to interest itself in Greece, theGovernment of Great Britain contested every inch of territory proposed tobe ceded to the new State, and finally induced the Powers to agree upon aboundary-line which did not even in letter fulfil the conditions of thetreaty. Northern Acarnania and part of Ætolia were severed from Greece, and the frontier was drawn from the mouth of the river Achelous to a spotnear Thermopylae. On the other hand, as Russian influence now appeared tobe firmly established and likely to remain paramount at Constantinople, theWestern Powers had no motive to maintain the Sultan's supremacy overGreece. This was accordingly by common consent abandoned; and the HellenicKingdom, confined within miserably narrow limits on the mainland, andincluding neither Crete nor Samos among its islands, was ultimately offeredin full sovereignty to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, the widower ofCharlotte, daughter of George IV. After some negotiations, in which Leopoldvainly asked for a better frontier, he accepted the Greek crown on the 11thof February, 1830. [Government of Capodistrias. ]In the meantime, Capodistrias was struggling hard to govern and to organiseaccording to his own conceptions a land in which every element of anarchy, ruin, and confusion appeared to be arrayed against the restoration ofcivilised life. The country was devastated, depopulated, and in some placesutterly barbarised. Out of a population of little more than a million, itwas reckoned that three hundred thousand had perished during the conflictwith the Turk. The whole fabric of political and social order had to beerected anew; and, difficult as this task would have been for the wisestruler, it was rendered much more difficult by the conflict betweenCapodistrias' own ideal and the character of the people among whom he hadto work. Communal or local self-government lay at the very root of Greeknationality. In many different forms this intense provincialism hadmaintained itself unimpaired up to the end of the war, in spite of nationalassemblies and national armaments. The Hydriote ship-owners, the Primatesof the Morea, the guerilla leaders of the north, had each a type of lifeand a body of institutions as distinct as the dialects which they spoke orthe saints whom they cherished in their local sanctuaries. If antagonisticin some respects to national unity, this vigorous local life hadnevertheless been a source of national energy while Greece had still itsindependence to win; and now that national independence was won, it mightwell have been made the basis of a popular and effective system ofself-government. But to Capodistrias, as to greater men of that age, theunity of the State meant the uniformity of all its parts; and, shutting hiseyes to all the obstacles in his path, he set himself to create anadministrative system as rigorously centralised as that which France hadreceived from Napoleon. Conscious of his own intellectual superiority overhis countrymen, conscious of his own integrity and of the sacrifice of allhis personal wealth in his country's service, he put no measure on hisexpressions of scorn for the freebooters and peculators whom he believed tomake up the Greek official world, and he both acted and spoke as if, in theliteral sense of the words, all who ever came before him were thieves androbbers. The peasants of the mainland, who had suffered scarcely less fromKlephts and Primates than from Turks, welcomed Capodistrias' levellingdespotism, and to the end his name was popular among them; but among theclasses which had supplied the leaders in the long struggle forindependence, and especially among the ship-owners of the Archipelago, whofelt the contempt expressed by Capodistrias for their seven years' effortsto be grossly unjust, a spirit of opposition arose which soon made itevident that Capodistrias would need better instruments than those which hehad 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 reachedCapodistrias that Leopold of Saxe-Coburg had been appointed King of Greece. The resolution made by the Powers in March, 1829, that the sovereign ofGreece should belong to some reigning house, had perhaps not whollydestroyed the hopes of Capodistrias that he might become Prince or Hospodarof Greece himself. There were difficulties in the way of filling thethrone, and these difficulties, after the appointment of Leopold, Capodistrias certainly did not seek to lessen. His subtlety, his command ofthe indirect methods of effecting a purpose, were so great and so habitualto him that there was little chance of his taking any overt step forpreventing Leopold's accession to the crown; there appears, however, to beevidence that he repressed the indications of assent which the Greeksattempted to offer to Leopold; and a series of letters written by him tothat prince was probably intended, though in the most guarded language, togive Leopold the impression that the task which awaited him was a hopelessone. Leopold himself, at the very time when he accepted the crown, waswavering in his purpose. He saw with perfect clearness that the territorygranted to the Greek State was too small to secure either its peace or itsindependence. The severance of Acarnania and Northern Ætolia meant theabandonment of the most energetic part of the Greek inland population, anda probable state of incessant warfare upon the northern frontier; therelinquishment of Crete meant that Greece, bankrupt as it was, mustmaintain a navy to protect the south coast of the Morea from Turkishattack. These considerations had been urged upon the Powers by Leopoldbefore he accepted the crown, and he had been induced for the moment towithdraw them. But he had never fully acquiesced in the arrangementsimposed upon him: he remained irresolute for some months; and at last, whether led to this decision by the letters of Capodistrias or by someother influences, he declared the conditions under which he was called uponto 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 toface with the task to which duty or ambition called him. The candidature ofLeopold had embittered the relations between Capodistrias and all whoconfronted him in Greece, for it gave him the means of measuring theirhostility to himself by the fervour of their addresses to this unknownforeigner. A dark shadow fell over his government. As difficultiesthickened and resistance grew everywhere more determined, the Presidentshowed himself harsher and less scrupulous in the choice of his means. Themen about him were untrustworthy; to crush them, he filled the offices ofgovernment with relatives and creatures of his own who were at oncetyrannous and incapable. Thwarted and checked, he met opposition byimprisonment and measures of violence, suspended the law-courts, andintroduced the espionage and the police-system of St. Petersburg. At lengtharmed rebellion broke out, and while Miaoulis, the Hydriote admiral, blewup the best ships of the Greek navy to prevent them falling into thePresident's hands, the wild district of Maina, which had never admitted theTurkish tax-gatherer, refused to pay taxes to the Hellenic State. Therevolt was summarily quelled by Capodistrias, and several members of thefamily of Mauromichalis, including the chief Petrobei, formerly feudalruler of Maina, were arrested. Some personal insult, imaginary or real, wasmoreover offered by Capodistrias to this fallen foe, after the aged motherof 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 sonand a nephew of Petrobei laid wait for the President, and as he entered theChurch of St. Spiridion at Nauplia on the 9th of October, 1831, apistol-shot and a blow from a yataghan laid him dead on the ground. He hadbeen warned that his life was sought, but had refused to make any change inhis 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 greatextent silenced criticism upon his government, and which have made his nameone of those most honoured by the Greek nation. His fall threw the countryinto anarchy. An attempt was made by his brother Augustine to retainautocratic power, but the result was universal dissension and theinterference of the foreigner. At length the Powers united in finding asecond sovereign for Greece, and brought the weary scene of disorder to aclose. Prince Otho of Bavaria was sent to reign at Athens, and with himthere came a group of Bavarian officials to whom the Courts of Europepersuaded themselves that the future of Greece might be safely entrusted. Afrontier somewhat better than that which had been offered to Leopold wasgranted to the new sovereign, but neither Crete, Thessaly, nor Epirus wasincluded within his kingdom. Thus hemmed in within intolerably narrowlimits, while burdened with the expenses of an independent state, alikeunable to meet the calls upon its national exchequer and to exclude theintrigues of foreign Courts, Greece offered during the next generationlittle that justified the hopes that had been raised as to its future. Butthe belief of mankind in the invigorating power of national independence isnot wholly vain, nor, even under the most hostile conditions, will theefforts of a liberated people fail to attract the hope and the envy ofthose branches of its race which still remain in subjection. Poor andinglorious as the Greek kingdom was, it excited the restless longings notonly of Greeks under Turkish bondage, but of the prosperous Ionian Islandsunder English rule; and in 1864 the first step in the expansion of theHellenic kingdom was accomplished by the transfer of these islands fromGreat Britain to Greece. Our own day has seen Greece further strengthenedand enriched by the annexation of Thessaly. The commercial and educationaldevelopment of the kingdom is now as vigorous as that of any State inEurope: in agriculture and in manufacturing industry it still lingers farbehind. Following the example of Cavour and the Sardinian statesmen whojudged no cost too great in preparing for Italian union, the rulers ofGreece burden the national finances with the support of an army and navyexcessive in comparison both with the resources and with the presentrequirements of the State. To the ideal of a great political future thematerial progress of the land has been largely sacrificed. Whether, in there-adjustment of frontiers which must follow upon the gradual extrusion ofthe Turk from Eastern Europe, Greece will gain from its expenditureadvantages proportionate to the undoubted evils which it has involved, thefuture alone can decide. CHAPTER XVI. France before 1830--Reign of Charles X. --Ministry of Martignac--Ministry ofPolignac--The Duke of Orleans--War in Algiers--The July Ordinances--Revolution of July--Louis Philippe King--Nature and Effects of the JulyRevolution--Affairs in Belgium--The Belgian Revolution--The GreatPowers--Intervention, and Establishment of the Kingdom of Belgium--Affairsof Poland--Insurrection at Warsaw--War between Russia and Poland--Overthrowof the Poles: End of the Polish Constitution--Affairs of Italy--Insurrection in the Papal States--France and Austria--AustrianIntervention--Ancona occupied by the French--Affairs of Germany--Prussia;the Zollverein--Brunswick, Hanover, Saxony--The Palatinate--Reaction inGermany--Exiles in Switzerland; Incursion into Savoy--Dispersion of theExiles--France under Louis Philippe: Successive Risings--Period ofParliamentary Activity--England after 1830: The Reform Bill. When the Congress of Vienna re-arranged the map of Europe after Napoleon'sfall, Lord Castlereagh expressed the opinion that no prudent statesmanwould forecast a duration of more than seven years for any settlement thatmight then be made. At the end of a period twice as long the Treaties of1815 were still the public law of Europe. The grave had peacefully closedover Napoleon; the revolutionary forces of France had given no sign ofreturning life. As the Bourbon monarchy struck root, and the elements ofopposition grew daily weaker in France, the perils that lately filled allminds appeared to grow obsolete, and the very Power against which theanti-revolutionary treaties of 1815 had been directed took its place, as ofnatural right, by the side of Austria and Russia in the struggle againstrevolution. The attack of Louis XVIII. Upon the Spanish Constitutionalistsmarked the complete reconciliation of France with the Continental dynastieswhich had combined against it in 1815; and from this time the Treaties ofChaumont and Aix-la-Chapelle, though their provisions might be stillunchallenged, ceased to represent the actual relations existing between thePowers. There was no longer a moral union of the Courts against a supposedFrench revolutionary State; on the contrary, when Eastern affairs reachedtheir crisis, Russia detached itself from its Hapsburg ally, and definitelyallied itself with France. If after the Peace of Adrianople any one Powerstood isolated, it was Austria; and if Europe was threatened by renewedaggression, it was not under revolutionary leaders or with revolutionarywatchwords, but as the result of an alliance between Charles X. And theCzar of Russia. After the Bourbon Cabinet had resolved to seek an extensionof French territory at whatever sacrifice of the balance of power in theEast, Europe could hardly expect that the Court of St. Petersburg wouldlong reject the advantages offered to it. The frontiers of 1815 seemedlikely to be obliterated by an enterprise which would bring Russia to theDanube and France to the Rhine. From this danger the settlement of 1815 wassaved by the course of events that took place within France itself. TheRevolution of 1830, insignificant in its immediate effects upon the Frenchpeople, largely influenced the governments and the nations of Europe; andwhile within certain narrow limits it gave a stimulus to constitutionalliberty, its more general result was to revive the union of the threeEastern Courts which had broken down in 1826, and to reunite the principalmembers of the Holy Alliance by the sense of a common interest against theLiberalism of the West. [Government of Charles X. , 1824-1827. ]In the person of Charles X. Reaction and clericalism had ascended theFrench throne. The minister, Villèle, who had won power in 1820 as therepresentative of the Ultra-Royalists, had indeed learnt wisdom while inoffice, and down to the death of Louis XVIII. In 1824 he had kept in checkthe more violent section of his party. But he now retained his post only atthe price of compliance with the Court, and gave the authority of his nameto measures which his own judgment condemned. It was characteristic ofCharles X. And of the reactionaries around him that out of trifling mattersthey provoked more exasperation than a prudent Government would havearoused by changes of infinitely greater importance. Thus in asacrilege-law which was introduced in 1825 they disgusted all reasonablemen by attempting to revive the barbarous mediæval punishment of amputationof the hand; and in a measure conferring some fractional rights upon theeldest son in cases of intestacy they alarmed the whole nation by apreamble declaring the French principle of the equal division ofinheritances to be incompatible with monarchy. Coming from a Governmentwhich had thus already forfeited public confidence, a law granting theemigrants a compensation of £40, 000, 000 for their estates which had beenconfiscated during the Revolution excited the strongest opposition, although, apart from questions of equity, it benefited the nation by forever setting at rest all doubt as to the title of the purchasers of theconfiscated lands. The financial operations by which, in order to providethe vast sum allotted to the emigrants, the national debt was convertedfrom a five per cent, to a three per cent, stock, alienated allstockholders and especially the powerful bankers of Paris. But more thanany single legislative act, the alliance of the Government with thepriestly order, and the encouragement given by it to monastic corporations, whose existence in France was contrary to law, offended the nation. TheJesuits were indicted before the law-courts by Montlosier, himself aRoyalist and a member of the old noblesse. A vehement controversy sprang upbetween the ecclesiastics and their opponents, in which the Court was notspared. The Government, which had lately repealed the law of censorship, now restored it by edict. The climax of its unpopularity was reached; itshold upon the Chamber was gone, and the very measure by which Villèle, whenat the height of his power, had endeavoured to give permanence to hisadministration, proved its ruin. He had abolished the system of partialrenovation, by which one-fifth of the Chamber of Deputies was annuallyreturned, and substituted for it the English system of septennialParliaments with general elections. In 1827 King Charles, believing hisMinisters to be stronger in the country than in the Chamber, exercised hisprerogative of dissolution. The result was the total defeat of theGovernment, and the return of an assembly in which the Liberal oppositionoutnumbered the partisans of the Court by three to one. Villèle's Ministrynow resigned. King Charles, unwilling to choose his successor from theParliamentary majority, thought for a moment of violent resistance, butsubsequently adopted other counsels, and, without sincerely intending tobow to the national will, called to office the Vicomte de Martignac, amember of the right centre, and the representative of a policy ofconciliation 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 betweenthe French nation and the elder Bourbon line was thrown away. Martignacbrought forward a measure of decentralisation conferring upon the localauthorities powers which, though limited, were larger than they hadpossessed at any time since the foundation of the Consulate; and heappealed to the Liberal sections of the Chamber to assist him in winning aninstalment of self-government which France might well have accepted withsatisfaction. But the spirit of opposition within the Assembly was toostrong for a coalition of moderate men, and the Liberals made the successof Martignac's plan impossible by insisting on concessions which theMinister was unable to grant. The reactionists were ready to combine withtheir opponents. King Charles himself was in secret antagonism to hisMinister, and watched with malicious joy his failure to control themajority in the Chamber. Instead of throwing all his influence on to theside of Martignac, and rallying all doubtful forces by the pronouncedsupport of the Crown, he welcomed Martignac's defeat as a proof of theuselessness of all concessions, and dismissed the Minister from office, declaring that the course of events had fulfilled his own belief in theimpossibility of governing in accord with a Parliament. The names of theMinisters who were now called to power excited anxiety and alarm not onlyin France but throughout the political circles of Europe. They were thenames of men known as the most violent and embittered partisans ofreaction; men whose presence in the councils of the King could mean nothingbut a direct attack upon the existing Parliamentary system of France. Atthe head was Jules Polignac, then French ambassador at London, a manhalf-crazed with religious delusions, who had suffered a long imprisonmentfor his share in Cadoudal's attempt to kill Napoleon, and on his return toFrance in 1814 had refused to swear to the Charta because it grantedreligious freedom to non-Catholics. Among the subordinate members of theMinistry were General Bourmont, who had deserted to the English atWaterloo, and La Bourdonnaye, the champion of the reactionary Terrorists in1816. [385][Prospects in 1830. The Orleanists. ]The Ministry having been appointed immediately after the close of thesession of 1829, an interval of several months passed before they werebrought face to face with the Chambers. During this interval the prospectof a conflict with the Crown became familiar to the public mind, though nogeneral impression existed that an actual change of dynasty was close athand. The Bonapartists were without a leader, Napoleon's son, their naturalhead, being in the power of the Austrian Court; the Republicans wereneither numerous nor well organised, and the fatal memories of 1793 stillweighed upon the nation; the great body of those who contemplatedresistance 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 breachof the Constitution. There was, however, a small and dexterous group ofpoliticians which, at a distance from all the old parties, schemed for thedethronement of the reigning branch of the House of Bourbon, and for theelevation of Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, to the throne. The chief ofthis intrigue was Talleyrand. Slighted and thwarted by the Court, the olddiplomatist watched for the signs of a falling Government, and when thefamiliar omens met his view he turned to the quarter from which itssuccessor was most likely to arise. Louis Philippe stood high in creditwith all circles of Parliamentary Liberals. His history had been a strangeand eventful one. He was the son of that Orleans who, after calling himselfÉgalité, and voting for the death of his cousin, Louis XVI. , had himselfperished during the Reign of Terror. Young Louis Philippe had been a memberof the Jacobin Club, and had fought for the Republic at Jemappes. Then, exiled and reduced to penury, he had earned his bread by teachingmathematics in Switzerland, and had been a wanderer in the new as well asin the old world. After awhile his fortunes brightened. A marriage with thedaughter of Ferdinand of Sicily restored him to those relations with thereigning houses of Europe which had been forfeited by his father, andinspired him with the hope of gaining a crown. During Napoleon's invasionof Spain he had caballed with politicians in that country who were inclinedto accept a substitute for their absent sovereign; at another time he hadentertained hopes of being made king of the Ionian Islands. After the peaceof Paris, when the allied sovereigns and their ministers visited England, Louis Philippe was sent over by his father-in-law to intrigue among themagainst Murat, and in pursuance of this object he made himself acquaintednot only with every foreign statesman then in London but with every leadingEnglish politician. He afterwards settled in France, and was reinstated inthe vast possessions of the House of Orleans, which, though confiscated, had not for the most part been sold during the Revolution. His position atParis under Louis XVIII. And Charles X. Was a peculiar one. Without takingany direct part in politics or entering into any avowed opposition to theCourt, he made his home, the Palais Royale, a gathering-place for all thatwas most distinguished in the new political and literary society of thecapital; and while the Tuileries affected the pomp and the ceremoniousnessof the old regime, the Duke of Orleans moved with the familiarity of acitizen among citizens. He was a clever, ready, sensible man, equal, as itseemed, to any practical task likely to come in his way, but in realityvoid of any deep insight, of any far-reaching aspiration, of any profoundconviction. His affectation of a straightforward middle-class genialitycovered a decided tendency towards intrigue and a strong love of personalpower. Later events indeed gave rise to the belief that, while professingthe utmost loyalty to Charles X. , Louis Philippe had been scheming to ousthim from his throne; but the evidence really points the other way, andindicates that, whatever secret hopes may have suggested themselves to theDuke, his strongest sentiment during the Revolution of 1830 was the fear ofbeing driven into exile himself, and of losing his possessions. He was notindeed of a chivalrous nature; but when the Crown came in his way, he wasguilty 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. Thespeech of King Charles at the opening of the session was resolute and eventhreatening. It was answered by an address from the Lower House, requestinghim to dismiss his Ministers. The deputation which presented this addresswas received by the King in a style that left no doubt as to hisintentions, and on the following day the Chambers were prorogued for sixmonths. It was known that they would not be permitted to meet again, andpreparations for a renewed general election were at once made with theutmost vigour by both parties throughout France. The Court unsparinglyapplied all the means of pressure familiar to French governments; itmoreover expected to influence public opinion by some striking success inarms or in diplomacy abroad. The negotiations with Russia for theacquisition of Belgium were still before the Cabinet, and a quarrel withthe Dey of Algiers gave Polignac the opportunity of beginning a war ofconquest in Africa. General Bourmont left the War Office, to wipe out theinfamy still attaching to his name by a campaign against the Arabs; and theGovernment trusted that, even in the event of defeat at the elections, thenation at large would at the most critical moment be rallied to its side byan announcement of the capture of Algiers. [Polignac's project. ]While the dissolution of Parliament was impending, Polignac laid before theKing a memorial expressing his own views on the courses open to Governmentin case of the elections proving adverse. The Charta contained a clausewhich, in loose and ill-chosen language, declared it to be the function ofthe King "to make the regulations and ordinances necessary for theexecution of the laws and for the security of the State. " These words, which no doubt referred to the exercise of the King's normal andconstitutional powers, were interpreted by Polignac as authorising the Kingto suspend the Constitution itself, if the Representative Assembly shouldbe at variance with the King's Ministers. Polignac in fact entertained thesame view of the relation between executive and deliberative bodies asthose Jacobin directors who made the _coup-d'état_ of Fructidor, 1797;and the measures which he ultimately adopted were, though in a softenedform, those adopted by Barras and Laréveillère after the Royalist electionsin the sixth year of the Republic. To suspend the Constitution was not, hesuggested, to violate the Charta, for the Charta empowered the sovereign toissue the ordinances necessary for the security of the State; and who butthe sovereign and his advisers could be the judges of this necessity? Thiswas simple enough; there was nevertheless among Polignac's colleagues somedoubt both as to the wisdom and as to the legality of his plans. KingCharles who, with all his bigotry, was anxious not to violate the letter ofthe Charta, brooded long over the clause which defined the sovereign'spowers. At length he persuaded himself that his Minister's interpretationwas the correct one, accepted the resignation of the dissentients withinthe Cabinet, and gave his sanction to the course which Polignacrecommended. [386][Elections of 1830. ]The result of the general election, which took place in June, surpassed allthe hopes of the Opposition and all the fears of the Court. The entire bodyof Deputies which had voted the obnoxious address to the Crown in March wasreturned, and the partisans of Government lost in addition fifty seats. TheCabinet, which had not up to this time resolved upon the details of itsaction, now deliberated upon several projects submitted to it, and, afterrejecting all plans that might have led to a compromise, determined todeclare the elections null and void, to silence the press, and to supersedethe existing electoral system by one that should secure the mastery of theGovernment both at the polling-booths and in the Chamber itself. All thiswas to be done by Royal Edict, and before the meeting of the newParliament. The date fixed for the opening of the Chambers had been placedas late as possible in order to give time to General Bourmont to win thevictory in Africa from which the Court expected to reap so rich a harvestof prestige. On the 9th of July news arrived that Algiers had fallen. Theannouncement, which was everywhere made with the utmost pomp, fell flat onthe country. The conflict between the Court and the nation absorbed allminds, and the rapturous congratulations of Bishops and Prefects scarcelymisled even the blind _côterie_ of the Tuileries. Public opinion wasno doubt with the Opposition; King Charles, however, had no belief that thepopulace of Paris, which alone was to be dreaded as a fighting body, wouldtake up arms on behalf of the middle-class voters and journalists againstwhom his Ordinances were to be directed. The populace neither read norvoted: why should it concern itself with constitutional law? Or why, in amatter that related only to the King and the Bourgeoisie, should it nottake part with the King against this new and bastard aristocracy whichlived on others' labour? Politicians who could not fight were troublesomeonly when they were permitted to speak and to write. There was force enoughat the King's command to close the gates of the Chamber of Deputies, and tobreak up the printing-presses of the journals; and if King Louis XVI. Hadat last fallen by the hands of men of violence, it was only because he hadmade concessions at first to orators and politicians. Therefore, withoutdreaming that an armed struggle would be the immediate result of theiraction, King Charles and Polignac determined to prevent the meeting of theChamber, and to publish, a week before the date fixed for its opening, theEdicts which were to silence the brawl of faction and to vindicatemonarchical 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 royalpermission; the second dissolved the Chamber of Deputies; the third raisedthe property-qualification of voters, established a system ofdouble-election, altered the duration of Parliaments, and re-enacted theobsolete clause of the Charta confining the initiative in all legislationto the Government. Other Ordinances convoked a Chamber to be elected underthe new rules, and called to the Council of State a number of the mostnotorious Ultra-Royalists and fanatics in France. Taken together, theOrdinances left scarcely anything standing of the Constitutional andParliamentary system of the day. The blow fell first on the press, and thefirst step in resistance was taken by the journalists of Paris, who, underthe leadership of the young Thiers, editor of the _National_, published a protest declaring that they would treat the Ordinances asillegal, and calling upon the Chambers and nation to join in thisresistance. For a while the journalists seemed likely to stand alone. Parisat large remained quiet, and a body of the recently elected Deputies, towhom the journalists appealed as representatives of the nation, provedthemselves incapable of any action or decision whatsoever. It was not fromthese timid politicians, but from a body of obscure Republicans, that theimpulse proceeded which overthrew the Bourbon throne. Unrepresented inParliament and unrepresented in the press, there were a few active men whohad handed down the traditions of 1792, and who, in sympathy with theCarbonari and other conspirators abroad, had during recent years foundedsecret societies in Paris, and enlisted in the Republican cause a certainnumber of workmen, of students, and of youths of the middle classes. Whilethe journalists discussed legal means of resistance, and the Deputiesawaited events, the Republican leaders met and determined upon armedrevolt. They were assisted, probably without direct concert, by theprinting firms and other employers of labour, who, in view of the generalsuspension of the newspapers, closed their establishments on the morning ofJuly 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 Parischanged. Crowds gathered, and revolutionary cries were raised. Marmont, whowas suddenly ordered to take command of the troops, placed them around theTuileries, and captured two barricades which were erected in theneighbourhood; but the populace was not yet armed, and no serious conflicttook place. In the evening Lafayette reached Paris, and the revolution hadnow a real, though not an avowed, leader. A body of his adherents metduring the night at the office of the _National_, and, in spite ofThiers' 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 placedthemselves in communication with all the district committees of Paris, andbegan the actual work of revolt by distributing arms. On the morning ofWednesday, July 28th, the first armed bands attacked and captured thearsenals and several private depots of weapons and ammunition. Barricadeswere erected everywhere. The insurgents swelled from hundreds to thousands, and, converging on the old rallying-point of the Commune of Paris, theyseized the Hôtel de Ville, and hoisted the tricolor flag on its roof. Marmont wrote to the King, declaring the position to be most serious, andadvising concession; he then put his troops in motion, and succeeded, aftera severe conflict, in capturing several points of vantage, and in expellingthe rebels from the Hôtel de Ville. [July 29. ]In the meantime the Deputies, who were assembled at the house of one oftheir number in pursuance of an agreement made on the previous day, gainedsufficient courage to adopt a protest declaring that in spite of theOrdinances they were still the legal representatives of the nation. Theymoreover sent a deputation to Marmont, begging him to put a stop to thefighting, and offering their assistance in restoring order if the Kingwould withdraw his Edicts. Marmont replied that he could do nothing withoutthe King's command, but he despatched a second letter to St. Cloud, urgingcompliance. The only answer which he received was a command to concentratehis troops and to act in masses. The result of this was that the positionswhich had been won by hard fighting were abandoned before evening, and thatthe troops, famished and exhausted, were marched back through the streetsof Paris to the Tuileries. On the march some fraternised with the people, others were surrounded and disarmed. All eastern Paris now fell into thehands of the insurgents; the middle-class, as in 1789 and 1792, remainedinactive, and allowed the contest to be decided by the populace and thesoldiery. Messages from the capital constantly reached St. Cloud, but theKing so little understood his danger and so confidently reckoned on thevictory of the troops in the Tuileries that he played whist as usual duringthe evening; and when the Duc de Mortemart, French Ambassador at St. Petersburg, arrived at nightfall, and pressed for an audience, the Kingrefused to receive him until the next morning. When morning came, the marchof the insurgents against the Tuileries began. Position after position fellinto their hands. The regiments stationed in the Place Vendôme abandonedtheir commander, and marched off to place themselves at the disposal of theDeputies. Marmont ordered the Swiss Guard, which had hitherto defended theLouvre, to replace them; and in doing so he left the Louvre for a momentwithout any garrison. The insurgents saw the building empty, and rushedinto it. From the windows they commanded the Court of the Tuileries, wherethe troops in reserve were posted; and soon after mid-day all was over. Afew isolated battalions fought and perished, but the mass of the soldierywith their commander fell back upon the Place de la Concorde, and thenevacuated Paris. [387]The Duke of Orleans was all this time in hiding. He had been warned thatthe Court intended to arrest him, and, whether from fear of the Court or ofthe 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 mostinfluential among the Deputies, were watching for an opportunity to bringforward his name; but their chances of success seemed slight. The Deputiesat large wished only for the withdrawal of the Ordinances, and were whollyaverse from a change of dynasty. It was only through the obstinacy of KingCharles himself, and as the result of a series of accidents, that the Crownpassed from the elder Bourbon line. King Charles would not hear ofwithdrawing the Ordinances until the Tuileries had actually fallen; he thengave way and charged the Duc de Mortemart to form a new Ministry, drawnfrom the ranks of the Opposition. But instead of formally repealing theEdicts by a public Decree, he sent two messengers to Paris to communicatehis change of purpose to the Deputies by word of mouth. The messengersbetook themselves to the Hôtel de Ville, where a municipal committee underLafayette had been installed; and, when they could produce no writtenauthority for their statements, they were referred by this committee to thegeneral body of Deputies, which was now sitting at Laffitte's house. TheDeputies also demanded a written guarantee. Laffitte and Thiers spoke infavour of the Duke of Orleans, but the Assembly at large was still willingto negotiate with Charles X. , and only required the presence of the Duc deMortemart himself, and a copy of the Decree repealing the Ordinances. [July 30. ]It was now near midnight. The messengers returned to St. Cloud, and werenot permitted to deliver their intelligence until the King awoke nextmorning. Charles then signed the necessary document, and Mortemart set outfor Paris; but the night's delay had given the Orleanists time to act, andbefore the King was up Thiers had placarded the streets of Paris with aproclamation extolling Orleans as the prince devoted to the cause of theRevolution, as the soldier of Jemappes, and the only constitutional Kingnow possible. Some hours after this manifesto had appeared the Deputiesagain assembled at Laffitte's house, and waited for the appearance ofMortemart. But they waited in vain. Mortemart's carriage was stopped on theroad from St. Cloud, and he was compelled to make his way on foot by a longcircuit and across a score of barricades. When he approached Laffitte'shouse, half dead with heat and fatigue, he found that the Deputies hadadjourned to the Palais Bourbon, and, instead of following them, he endedhis journey at the Luxemburg, where the Peers were assembled. His absencewas turned to good account by the Orleanists. At the morning session theproposition was openly made to call Louis Philippe to power; and when theDeputies reassembled in the afternoon and the Minister still failed topresent himself, it was resolved to send a body of Peers and Deputies toLouis Philippe to invite him to come to Paris and to assume the office ofLieutenant-General of the kingdom. No opposition was offered to thisproposal in the House of Peers, and a deputation accordingly set out tosearch for Louis Philippe at his country house at Neuilly. The prince wasnot to be found; but his sister, who received the deputation, undertookthat he should duly appear in Paris. She then communicated with her brotherin his hiding-place, and induced him, in spite of the resistance of hiswife, to set out for the capital. He arrived at the Palais Royale late onthe night of the 30th. Early the next morning he received a deputation fromthe Assembly, and accepted the powers which they offered him. Aproclamation was then published, announcing to the Parisians that in orderto save the country from anarchy and civil war the Duke of Orleans hadassumed the office of Lieutenant-General of the kingdom. [The Hôtel de Ville. ]But there existed another authority in Paris beside the Assembly ofRepresentatives, and one that was not altogether disposed to permit LouisPhilippe 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 satsurrounded by the armed mob which had captured the Tuileries two daysbefore. No single person who had fought in the streets had risked his lifefor the sake of making Louis Philippe king; in so far as the Parisians hadfought for any definite political idea, they had fought for the Republic. It was necessary to reconcile both the populace and the provisionalgovernment to the assumption of power by the new Regent; and with thisobject Louis Philippe himself proceeded to the Hôtel de Ville, accompaniedby an escort of Deputies and Peers. It was a hazardous moment when heentered the crowd on the Place de Grève; but Louis Philippe's readiness ofspeech stood him in good stead, and he made his way unhurt through thethrong into the building, where Lafayette received him. Compliments andpromises were showered upon this veteran of 1789, who presently appeared ona balcony and embraced Louis Philippe, while the Prince grasped thetricolor flag, the flag which had not waved in Paris since 1815. Thespectacle was successful. The multitude shouted applause; and the fewdetermined men who still doubted the sincerity of a Bourbon and demandedthe proclamation of the Republic were put off with the promise of anultimate appeal to the French people. [Charles X. ]In the meantime Charles X. Had withdrawn to Rambouillet, accompanied by themembers of his family and by a considerable body of troops. Here the newsreached him that Orleans had accepted from the Chambers the office ofLieutenant-General. It was a severe blow to the old king, who, while othersdoubted of Louis Philippe's loyalty, had still maintained his trust in thisprince's fidelity. For a moment he thought of retiring beyond the Loire andrisking a civil war; but the troops now began to disperse, and Charles, recognising that his cause was hopeless, abdicated together with theDauphin in favour of his grandson the young Chambord, then called Duc deBordeaux. He wrote to Louis Philippe, appointing him, as if on his owninitiative, Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, and required him to proclaimHenry V. King, and to undertake the government during the new sovereign'sminority. It is doubtful whether Louis Philippe had at this time formed anydistinct resolve, and whether his answer to Charles X. Was inspired by meregood nature or by conscious falsehood; for while replying officially thathe would lay the king's letter before the Chambers, he privately wrote toCharles X. That he would retain his new office only until he could safelyplace the Duc de Bordeaux upon the throne. Having thus soothed the oldman's pride, Louis Philippe requested him to hasten his departure from theneighbourhood of Paris; and when Charles ignored the message, he sent outsome bands of the National Guard to terrify him into flight. This devicesucceeded, and the royal family, still preserving the melancholy ceremonialof a court, moved slowly through France towards the western coast. AtCherbourg they took ship and crossed to England, where they were receivedas private persons. Among the British nation at large the exiled Bourbonsexcited but little sympathy. They were, however, permitted to take up theirabode 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 anyattraction to the old and failing chief of a fallen dynasty. He sought amore 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 byLouis Philippe in the Chamber of Deputies, which was convoked by him, asLieutenant-General of the Kingdom, on the 3rd of August. In addressing theDeputies, Louis Philippe stated that he had received a letter containingthe abdication both of the King and of the Dauphin, but he uttered nosingle word regarding the Duc de Bordeaux, in whose favour both hisgrandfather and his uncle had renounced their rights. Had Louis Philippementioned that the abdications were in fact conditional, and had hedeclared himself protector of the Duc de Bordeaux during his minority, there is little doubt that the legitimate heir would have been peaceablyaccepted both by the Chamber and by Paris. Louis Philippe himself had up tothis time done nothing that was inconsistent with the assumption of a mereRegency; the Chamber had not desired a change of dynasty; and, with theexception of Lafayette, the men who had actually made the Revolution boreas little goodwill to an Orleanist as to a Bourbon monarchy. But from thetime when Louis Philippe passed over in silence the claims of the grandsonof Charles X. , his own accession to the throne became inevitable. It wasleft to an obscure Deputy to propose that the crown should be offered toLouis Philippe, accompanied by certain conditions couched in the form ofmodifications of the Charta. The proposal was carried in the Chamber on the7th of August, and the whole body of representatives marched to the PalaisRoyale to acquaint the prince with its resolution. Louis Philippe, aftersome conventional expressions of regret, declared that he could not resistthe call of his country. When the Lower Chamber had thus disposed of thecrown, the House of Peers, which had proved itself a nullity throughout thecrisis, adopted the same resolution, and tendered its congratulations in asimilar fashion. Two days later Louis Philippe took the oath to the Chartaas 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 ofmankind. In comparison with the Revolution of 1789, the movement whichoverthrew the Bourbons in 1830 was a mere flutter on the surface. It wasunconnected with any great change in men's ideas, and it left no greatsocial or legislative changes behind it. Occasioned by a breach of theconstitution on the part of the Executive Government, it resulted mainly inthe transfer of administrative power from one set of politicians toanother: the alterations which it introduced into the constitution itselfwere of no great importance. France neither had an absolute Governmentbefore 1830, nor had it a popular Government afterwards. Instead of arepresentative of divine right, attended by guards of nobles and counselledby Jesuit confessors, there was now a citizen-king, who walked about thestreets of Paris with an umbrella under his arm and sent his sons to thepublic schools, but who had at heart as keen a devotion to dynasticinterests as either of his predecessors, and a much greater capacity forpersonal rule. The bonds which kept the entire local administration ofFrance in dependence upon the central authority were not loosened;officialism remained as strong as ever; the franchise was still limited toa mere fraction of the nation. On the other hand, within the administrationitself the change wrought by the July Revolution was real and lasting. Itextinguished the political power of the clerical interest. Not only werethe Bishops removed from the House of Peers, but throughout all departmentsof Government the influence of the clergy, which had been so strong underCharles X. , vanished away. The State took a distinctly secular colour. Thesystem of public education was regulated with such police-likeexclusiveness that priests who insisted upon opening schools of their ownfor Catholic teaching were enabled to figure as champions of civil libertyand of freedom of opinion against despotic power. The noblesse lostwhatever political influence it had regained during the Restoration. Thefew surviving Regicides who had been banished in 1815 were recalled toFrance, among them the terrorist Barrère, who was once more returned to theAssembly. But the real winners in the Revolution of 1830 were not the menof extremes, but the middle-class of France. This was the class which LouisPhilippe truly represented; and the force which for eighteen years keptLouis Philippe on the throne was the middle-class force of the NationalGuard of Paris. Against this sober, prosaic, unimaginative power therestruggled the hot and restless spirit which had been let loose by theoverthrow of the Bourbon dynasty, and which, fired at once with thepolitical ideal of a Republic, with dreams of the regeneration of Europe byFrench armies, and with the growing antagonism between the labouring classand the owners of property, threatened for awhile to overthrow thenewly-constituted monarchy in France, and to plunge Europe into war. Thereturn of the tricolor flag, the long-silenced strains of the Republic andthe Empire, the sense of victory with which men on the popular sidewitnessed the expulsion of the dynasty which had been forced upon Franceafter Waterloo, revived that half-romantic military ardour which hadundertaken the liberation of Europe in 1792. France appeared once more inthe eyes of enthusiasts as the deliverer of nations. The realities of thepast epoch of French military aggression, its robberies, its corruption, the execrations of its victims, were forgotten; and when one people afteranother took up the shout of liberty that was raised in Paris, andinsurrections broke out in every quarter of Europe, it was with difficultythat Louis Philippe and the few men of caution about him could prevent theFrench nation from rushing into war. [Affairs in Belgium. ]The State first affected by the events of July was the kingdom of theNetherlands. The creation of this kingdom, in which the Belgian provincesformerly subject to Austria were united with Holland to serve as aneffective barrier against French aggression on the north, had been one ofPitt's most cherished schemes, and it had been carried into effect tenyears after his death by the Congress of Vienna. National and religiousincongruities had been little considered by the statesmen of that day, andat the very moment of union the Catholic bishops of Belgium had protestedagainst a constitution which gave equal toleration to all religions underthe rule of a Protestant King. The Belgians had been uninterruptedly unitedwith France for the twenty years preceding 1814; the French language wasnot only the language of their literature, but the spoken language of theupper classes; and though the Flemish portion of the population was nearlyrelated to the Dutch, this element had not then asserted itself with thedistinctness and energy which it has since developed. The antagonismbetween the northern and the southern Netherlands, though not insuperable, was sufficiently great to make a harmonious union between the two countriesa work of difficulty, and the Government of The Hague had not taken theright course to conciliate its opponents. The Belgians, though morenumerous, were represented by fewer members in the National Assembly thanthe Dutch. Offices were filled by strangers from Holland; finance wasgoverned by a regard for Dutch interests; and the Dutch language was madethe official language for the whole kingdom. But the chief grievances wereundoubtedly connected with the claims of the clerical party in Belgium to amonopoly of spiritual power and the exclusive control of education. The onereally irreconcilable enemy of the Protestant House of Orange was theChurch; and the governing impulse in the conflicts which preceded thedissolution of the kingdom of the Netherlands in 1830 sprang from the sameclerical interest which had thrown Belgium into revolt against the EmperorJoseph forty years before. There was again seen the same strange phenomenonof a combination between the Church and a popular or even revolutionaryparty. For the sake of an alliance against a constitution distasteful toboth, the clergy of Belgium accepted the democratic principles of thepolitical Opposition, and the Opposition consented for a while to desistfrom their attacks upon the Papacy. The contract was faithfully observed onboth 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 betweenthe Belgians and their Government had been so violent that no great shockfrom outside was necessary to produce an outbreak. The convulsions of Pariswere at once felt at Brussels, and on the 25th of August the performance ofa revolutionary opera in that city gave the signal for the commencement ofinsurrection. From the capital the rebellion spread from town to townthroughout the southern Netherlands. The King summoned the Estates General, and agreed to the establishment of an administration for Belgium separatefrom that of Holland: but the storm was not allayed; and the appearance ofa body of Dutch troops at Brussels was sufficient to dispel the expectationof a peaceful settlement. Barricades were erected; a conflict took place inthe streets; and the troops, unable to carry the city by assault, retiredto the outskirts and kept up a desultory attack for several days. They thenwithdrew, and a provisional government, which was immediately established, declared the independence of Belgium. For a moment there appeared somepossibility that the Crown Prince of Holland, who had from the firstassumed the part of mediator, might be accepted as sovereign of thenewly-formed State; but the growing violence of the insurrection, theactivity of French emissaries and volunteers, and the bombardment ofAntwerp by the Dutch soldiers who garrisoned its citadel, made an end ofall such hopes. Belgium had won its independence, and its connection withthe 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 ContinentalStates threatened to involve all Europe in war. Though not actuallyeffected under the auspices of a French army, it was undoubtedly to someextent effected in alliance with the French revolutionary party. It brokeup a kingdom established by the European Treaties of 1814; and it was soclosely connected with the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy as to bescarcely distinguishable from those cases in which the European Powers hadpledged themselves to call their armies into the field. Louis Philippe, however, had been recognised by most of the European Courts as the onlypossible alternative to a French Republic; and a general dispositionexisted to second any sincere effort that should be made by him to preventthe French nation from rushing into war. This was especially the case withEngland; and it was to England that Louis Philippe turned for co-operationin the settlement of the Belgian question. Louis Philippe himself had everypossible reason for desiring to keep the peace. If war broke out, Francewould be opposed to all the Continental Powers together. Success was in thelast degree improbable; it could only be hoped for by a revival of therevolutionary methods and propaganda of 1793; and failure, even for amoment, would certainly cost him his throne, and possibly his life. Hisinterest no less than his temperament made him the strenuous, thoughconcealed, opponent of the war-party in the Assembly; and he found in theold diplomatist who had served alike under the Bourbons, the Republic, andthe Empire, an ally thoroughly capable of pursuing his own wise thoughunpopular policy of friendship and co-operation with England. Talleyrand, while others were crying for a revenge for Waterloo, saw that the firstnecessity for France was to rescue it from its isolation; and as at theCongress of Vienna he had detached Austria and England from the twonorthern Courts, so now, before attempting to gain any extension ofterritory, he sought to make France safe against the hostility of theContinent by allying it with at least one great Power. Russia had become anenemy instead of a friend. The expulsion of the Bourbons had given mortaloffence to the Czar Nicholas, and neither Austria nor Prussia was likely toenter into close relations with a Government founded upon revolution. England alone seemed a possible ally, and it was to England that the Frenchstatesman of peace turned in the Belgian crisis. Talleyrand, now nearlyeighty years old, came as ambassador to London, where he had served in1792. He addressed himself to Wellington and to the new King, William IV. , assuring them that, under the Government of Louis Philippe, France wouldnot seek to use the Belgian revolution for its own aggrandisement; and, with his old aptness in the invention of general principles to suit aparticular case, he laid down the principle of non-intervention as one thatought for the future to govern the policy of Europe. His efforts weresuccessful. So complete an understanding was established between France andEngland on the Belgian question, that all fear of an armed intervention ofthe Eastern Courts on behalf of the King of Holland, which would haverendered a war with France inevitable, passed away. The regulation ofBelgian affairs was submitted to a Conference at London. Hostilities werestopped, and the independence of the new kingdom was recognised inprinciple by the Conference before the end of the year. A Protocol definingthe frontiers of Belgium and Holland, and apportioning to each State itsshare in the national debt, was signed by the representatives of the Powersin January, 1831. [389][Leopold elected King, June 4. ]Thus far, a crisis which threatened the peace of Europe had been surmountedwith unexpected ease. But the first stage of the difficulty alone waspassed; it still remained for the Powers to provide a king for Belgium, andto gain the consent of the Dutch and Belgian Governments to the territorialarrangements drawn up for them. The Belgians themselves, with whom aconnection with France was popular, were disposed to elect as theirsovereign the Duc de Nemours, second son of Louis Philippe; and althoughLouis Philippe officially refused his sanction to this scheme, which in theeyes of all Europe would have turned Belgium into a French dependency, heprivately encouraged its prosecution after a Bonapartist candidate, the sonof Eugène Beauharnais, had appeared in the field. The result was that theDuc de Nemours was elected king on the 3rd of February, 1831. Against thisappointment the Conference of the Powers at London had already pronouncedits veto, and the British Government let it be understood that it wouldresist any such extension of French influence by force. Louis Philippe nowfinally refused the crown for his son, and, the Bonapartist candidate beingwithdrawn, the two rival Powers agreed in recommending Prince Leopold ofSaxe-Coburg, on the understanding that, if elected King of Belgium, heshould marry a daughter of Louis Philippe. The Belgians fell in with theadvice given them, and elected Leopold on the 4th of June. He accepted thecrown, subject to the condition that the London Conference should modify infavour of Belgium some of the provisions relating to the frontiers and tothe 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 theposition of the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg. This territory, though subject toAustria before the French Revolution, had always been treated as distinctfrom the body of the Austrian Netherlands. When, at the peace of 1814, itwas given to the King of Holland in substitution for the ancientpossessions of his family at Nassau, its old character as a member of theGerman federal union was restored to it, so that the King of Holland inrespect of this portion of his dominions became a German prince, and thefortress of Luxemburg, the strongest in Europe after Gibraltar, was liableto occupation by German troops. The population of the Duchy had, however, joined the Belgians in their revolt, and, with the exception of thefortress itself, the territory had passed into possession of the BelgianGovernment. In spite of this actual overthrow of Dutch rule, the Conferenceof London had attached such preponderating importance to the military andinternational relations of Luxemburg that it had excluded the whole of theDuchy from the new Belgian State, and declared it still to form part of thedominions of the King of Holland. The first demand of Leopold was for thereversal or modification of this decision, and the Powers so far gave wayas to substitute for the declaration of January a series of articles, inwhich the question of Luxemburg was reserved for future settlement. TheKing of Holland had assented to the January declaration; on hearing of itsabandonment, he took up arms, and threw fifty thousand men into Belgium. Leopold appealed to France for assistance, and a French army immediatelycrossed the frontier. The Dutch now withdrew, and the French in their turnwere recalled, after Leopold had signed a treaty undertaking to raze thefortifications of five towns on his southern border. The Conference againtook up its work, and produced a third scheme, in which the territory ofLuxemburg was divided between Holland and Belgium. This was accepted byBelgium, and rejected by Holland. The consequence was that a treaty wasmade between Leopold and the Powers; and at the beginning of 1832 thekingdom of Belgium, as defined by the third award of the Conference, wasrecognised by all the Courts, Lord Palmerston on behalf of Englandresolutely refusing to France even the slightest addition of territory, onthe ground that, if annexations once began, all security for thecontinuance of peace would be at an end. On this wise and firm policy theconcert of Europe in the establishment of the Belgian kingdom wassuccessfully maintained; and it only remained for the Western Powers toovercome the resistance of the King of Holland, who still held the citadelof Antwerp and declined to listen either to reason or authority. A Frencharmy corps was charged with the task of besieging the citadel; an Englishfleet blockaded the river Scheldt. After a severe bombardment the citadelsurrendered. Hostilities ceased, and negotiations for a definitivesettlement recommenced. As, however, the Belgians were in actual occupationof all Luxemburg with the exception of the fortress, they had no motive toaccelerate a settlement which would deprive them of part of their existingpossessions; on the other hand, the King of Holland held back through mereobstinacy. Thus the provisional state of affairs was prolonged for yearafter year, and it was not until April, 1839, that the final Treaty ofPeace between Belgium and Holland was executed. [Affairs of Poland. ]The consent of the Eastern Powers to the overthrow of the kingdom of theUnited Netherlands, and to the establishment of a State based upon arevolutionary movement, would probably have been harder to gain if in theautumn of 1830 Russia had been free to act with all its strength. But atthis moment an outbreak took place in Poland, which required theconcentration of all the Czar's forces within his own border. The conflictwas rather a war of one armed nation against another than the insurrectionof a people against its government. Poland--that is to say, the territorywhich had formerly constituted the Grand Duchy of Warsaw--had, by thetreaties of 1814, been established as a separate kingdom, subject to theCzar of Russia, but not forming part of the Russian Empire. It possessed anadministration and an army of its own, and the meetings of its Diet gave toit a species of parliamentary government to which there was nothinganalogous within Russia proper. During the reign of Alexander theconstitutional system of Poland had, on the whole, been respected; andalthough the real supremacy of an absolute monarch at St. Petersburg hadcaused the Diet to act as a body in opposition to the Russian Government, the personal connection existing between Alexander and the Poles hadprevented any overt rebellion during his own life-time. But with theaccession of Nicholas all such individual sympathy passed away, and thehard realities of the actual relation between Poland and the Court ofRussia came into full view. In the conspiracies of 1825 a great number ofPoles were implicated. Eight of these persons, after a preliminary inquiry, were placed on trial before the Senate at Warsaw, which, in spite of strongevidence of their guilt, acquitted them. Pending the decision, Nicholasdeclined to convoke the Diet: he also stationed Russian troops in Poland, and violated the constitution by placing Russians in all branches of theadministration. Even without these grievances the hostility of the mass ofthe Polish noblesse to Russia would probably have led sooner or later toinsurrection. The peasantry, ignorant and degraded, were but instruments inthe hands of their territorial masters. In so far as Poland had rights ofself-government, these rights belonged almost exclusively to the nobles, orlanded proprietors, a class so numerous that they have usually beenmistaken in Western Europe for the Polish nation itself. The so-calledemancipation of the serfs, effected by Napoleon after wresting the GrandDuchy of Warsaw from Prussia in 1807, had done little for the mass of thepopulation; 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 hewas before. The name of freedom appears in fact to have worked actualinjury to the peasant; for in the enjoyment of a pretended power of freecontract he was left without that protection of the officers of Statewhich, under the Prussian regime from 1795 to 1807, had shielded him fromthe tyranny of his lord. It has been the fatal, the irremediable bane ofPoland 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 Czarwhich this caste resented as unconstitutional were in part directed againstthe abuse of its own privileges; and although in 1830 a section of thenobles had learnt the secret of their country's fall, and were prepared togive the serf the real emancipation of proprietorship, no universal impulseworked in this direction, nor could the wrong of ages be undone in thetumult of war and revolution. [Insurrection at Warsaw, Nov. 29. ]A sharp distinction existed between the narrow circle of the highestaristocracy of Poland and the mass of the poor and warlike noblesse. Theformer, represented by men like Czartoryski, the friend of Alexander I. Andex-Minister of Russia, understood the hopelessness of any immediatestruggle with the superior power, and advocated the politic development ofsuch national institutions as were given to Poland by the constitution of1815, institutions which were certainly sufficient to preserve Poland fromabsorption by Russia, and to keep alive the idea of the ultimateestablishment of its independence. It was among the lesser nobility, amongthe subordinate officers of the army and the population of Warsaw itself, who jointly formed the so-called democratic party, that the spirit ofrevolt was strongest. Plans for an outbreak had been made during theTurkish war of 1828; but unhappily this opportunity, which might have beenused with fatal effect against Russia, was neglected, and it was left forthe French Revolution of 1830 to kindle an untimely and ineffective flame. The memory of Napoleon's campaigns and the wild voices of French democracyfilled the patriots at Warsaw with vain hopes of a military union withwestern Liberalism, and overpowered the counsels of men who understood thestate of Europe better. Revolt broke out on the 29th of November, 1830. ThePolish regiments in Warsaw joined the insurrection, and the Russian troops, under the Grand Duke Constantine, withdrew from the capital, where theirleader 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 Councilnominated by the Czar as King of Poland, and controlled by instructionsfrom a secretary at St. Petersburg. The chief of the Council was Lubecki, aPole devoted to the Emperor Nicholas. On the victory of the insurrection atWarsaw, the Council was dissolved and a provisional Government installed. Though the revolt was the work of the so-called democratic party, theinfluence of the old governing families of the highest aristocracy wasstill so great that power was by common consent placed in their hands. Czartoryski became president, and the policy adopted by himself and hiscolleagues was that of friendly negotiation with Russia. The insurrectionof November was treated not as the beginning of a national revolt, but as amere disturbance occasioned by unconstitutional acts of the Government. Solittle did the committee understand the character of the Emperor Nicholas, as to imagine that after the expulsion of his soldiers and the overthrow ofhis Ministers at Warsaw he would peaceably make the concessions required ofhim, and undertake for the future faithfully to observe the Polishconstitution. Lubecki and a second official were sent to St. Petersburg topresent these demands, and further (though this was not seriously intended)to ask that the constitution should be introduced into all the Russianprovinces which had once formed part of the Polish State. The receptiongiven to the envoys at the frontier was of an ominous character. They wererequired to describe themselves as officers about to present a report tothe Czar, inasmuch as no representatives of rebels in arms could bereceived into Russia. Lubecki appears now to have shaken the dust of Polandoff his feet; his colleague pursued his mission, and was admitted to theCzar's presence. Nicholas, while expressing himself in language of injuredtenderness, and disclaiming all desire to punish the innocent with theguilty, let it be understood that Poland had but two alternatives, unconditional submission or annihilation. The messenger who in themeanwhile carried back to Warsaw the first despatches of the envoy reportedthat the roads were already filled with Russian regiments moving on theirprey. [Diebitsch invades Poland, Feb. 1831. ]Six weeks of precious time were lost through the illusion of the PolishGovernment that an accommodation with the Emperor Nicholas was possible. Had the insurrection at Warsaw been instantly followed by a general levyand the invasion of Lithuania, the resources of this large province mightpossibly have been thrown into the scale against Russia. Though the mass ofthe Lithuanian population, in spite or several centuries of union withPoland, had never been assimilated to the dominant race, and remained inlanguage and creed more nearly allied to the Russians than the Poles, thenobles formed an integral part of the Polish nation, and possessedsufficient power over their serfs to drive them into the field to fight forthey knew not what. The Russian garrisons in Lithuania were not strong, andmight easily have been overpowered by a sudden attack. When once thepopulation of Warsaw had risen in arms against Nicholas, the onlypossibility of success lay in the extension of the revolt over the whole ofthe semi-Polish provinces, and in a general call to arms. But beside otherconsiderations which disinclined the higher aristocracy at Warsaw toextreme measures, they were influenced by a belief that the Powers ofEurope might intervene on behalf of the constitution of the Polish kingdomas established by the treaty of Vienna; while, if the struggle passedbeyond the borders of that kingdom, it would become a revolutionarymovement to which no Court could lend its support. It was not until theenvoy returned from St. Petersburg bearing the answer of the EmperorNicholas that the democratic party carried all before it, and all hopes ofa peaceful compromise vanished away. The Diet then passed a resolutiondeclaring that the House of Romanoff had forfeited the Polish crown, andpreparations began for a struggle for life or death with Russia. But thefirst moments when Russia stood unguarded and unready had been lost beyondrecall. Troops had thronged westwards into Lithuania; the garrisons in thefortresses had been raised to their full strength; and in February, 1831, Diebitsch took up the offensive, and crossed the Polish frontier with ahundred 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 hadto meet, was no contemptible foe. Among its officers there were many whohad served in Napoleon's campaigns; it possessed, however, no generalhabituated to independent command; and the spirit of insubordination andself-will, which had wrought so much ruin in Poland, was still ready tobreak out when defeat had impaired the authority of the nominal chiefs. Inthe first encounters the advancing Russian army was gallantly met; and, although the Poles were forced to fall back upon Warsaw, the lossessustained by Diebitsch were so serious that he had to stay his operationsand to wait for reinforcements. In March the Poles took up the offensiveand surprised several isolated divisions of the enemy; their general, however, failed to push his advantages with the necessary energy andswiftness; the junction of the Russians was at length effected, and on the26th of May the Poles were defeated after obstinate resistance in a pitchedbattle at Ostrolenka. Cholera now broke out in the Russian camp. BothDiebitsch and the Grand Duke Constantine were carried off in the midst ofthe campaign, and some months more were added to the struggle of Poland, hopeless as this had now become. Incursions were made into Lithuania andPodolia, but without result. Paskiewitch, the conqueror of Kars, was calledup to take the post left vacant by the death of his rival. New masses ofRussian troops came in place of those who had perished in battle and in thehospitals; and while the Governments of Western Europe lifted no hand onbehalf of Polish independence, Prussia, alarmed lest the revolt shouldspread into its own Polish provinces, assisted the operations of theRussian general by supplying stores and munition of war. Blow after blowfell upon the Polish cause. Warsaw itself became the prey of disorder, intrigue, and treachery; and at length the Russian army made its entranceinto the capital, and the last soldiers of Poland laid down their arms, orcrossed into Prussian or Austrian territory. The revolt had been rashly andunwisely begun: its results were fatal and lamentable. The constitution ofPoland was abolished; it ceased to be a separate kingdom, and became aprovince of the Russian Empire. Its defenders were exiles over the face ofEurope or forgotten in Siberia. All that might have been won by the gradualdevelopment of its constitutional liberties without breach with the Czar'ssovereignty was sacrificed. The future of Poland, like that of Russiaitself, now depended on the enlightenment and courage of the ImperialGovernment, and on that alone. The very existence of a Polish nationalityand language seemed for a while to be threatened by the measures ofrepression that followed the victory of 1831: and if it be true thatRussian autocracy has at length done for the Polish peasants what theirnative masters during centuries of ascendency refused to do, thisemancipation would probably not have come the later for the preservation ofsome relics of political independence, nor would it have had the less valueif unaccompanied by the proscription of so great a part of that class whichhad 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 theAustrian Government had been one of watchful neutrality. Its own Polishterritory was not seriously menaced with disturbance, for in a great partof Galicia the population, being of Ruthenian stock and belonging to theGreek Church, had nothing in common with the Polish and Catholic noblesseof their province, and looked back upon the days of Polish dominion as atime of suffering and wrong. Austria's danger in any period of Europeanconvulsion lay as yet rather on the side of Italy than on the East, and thevigour of its policy in that quarter contrasted with the equanimity withwhich it watched the struggle of its Slavic neighbours. Since thesuppression of the Neapolitan constitutional movement in 1821, theCarbonari and other secret societies of Italy had lost nothing of theiractivity. Their head-quarters had been removed from Southern Italy to thePapal States, and the numerous Italian exiles in France and elsewhere keptup a busy communication at once with French revolutionary leaders likeLafayette and with the enemies of the established governments in Italyitself. The death of Pope Pius VIII. , on November 30, 1830, and theconsequent paralysis of authority within the Ecclesiastical States, came atan opportune moment; assurances of support arrived from Paris; and theItalian leaders resolved upon a general insurrection throughout the minorPrincipalities on the 5th of February, 1831. Anticipating the signal, Menotti, chief of a band of patriots at Modena, who appears to have beenlured on by the Grand Duke himself, assembled his partisans on February 3. He was overpowered and imprisoned; but the outbreak of the insurrection inBologna, and its rapid extension over the northern part of the PapalStates, soon caused the Grand Duke to fly to Austrian territory, carryinghis prisoner Menotti with him, whom he subsequently put to death. The newPope, Gregory XVI. , had scarcely been elected when the report reached himthat Bologna had declared the temporal power of the Papacy to be at an end. Uncertain of the character of the revolt, he despatched Cardinal Benvenutinorthwards, to employ conciliation or force as occasion might require. TheLegate 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 Francehad repeatedly laid down as the future basis of European politics was thatof non-intervention. It had disclaimed any purpose of interfering with theaffairs of its neighbours, and had required in return that no foreignintervention should take place in districts which, like Belgium and Savoy, adjoined its own frontier. But there existed no real unity of purpose inthe councils of Louis Philippe. The Ministry had one voice for therepresentatives of foreign powers, another for the Chamber of Deputies, andanother for Lafayette and the bands of exiles and conspirators who wereunder his protection. The head of the government at the beginning of 1831was Laffitte, a weak politician, dominated by revolutionary sympathies andphrases, but incapable of any sustained or resolute action, and equallyincapable of resisting Louis Philippe after the King had concluded hisperformance of popular leader, and assumed his real character as the waryand self-seeking chief of a reigning house. Whether the actual course ofFrench policy would be governed by the passions of the streets or by thetimorousness of Louis Philippe was from day to day a matter of conjecture. The official answer given to the inquiries of the Austrian ambassador as tothe intentions of France in case of an Austrian intervention in Italy was, that such intervention might be tolerated in Parma and Modena, whichbelonged to sovereigns immediately connected with the Hapsburgs, but thatif it was extended to the Papal States war with France would be probable, and if extended to Piedmont, certain. On this reply Metternich, who sawAustria's own dominion in Italy once more menaced by the success of aninsurrectionary movement, had to form his decision. He could count on thesupport 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 presenceof the young Louis Bonaparte and his brother with the Italian insurgents asevidence of the Bonapartist character of the movement, and by hinting thatin 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 LouisPhilippe's throne would have collapsed as speedily as that of Louis XVIII. In 1814. Where weakness existed, Metternich was quick to divine it and totake advantage of it. He rightly gauged Louis Philippe. Taking at theirtrue value the threats of the French Government, he declared that it wasbetter for Austria to fall, if necessary, by war than by revolution; and, resolving at all hazards to suppress the Roman insurrection, he gave ordersto 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 ofthe Pope's Austrian deliverers was insignificant, and order was soonrestored. But all Europe expected the outbreak of war between Austria andFrance. The French ambassador at Constantinople had gone so far as to offerthe Sultan an offensive and defensive alliance, and to urge him to makepreparations for an attack upon both Austria and Russia on their southernfrontiers. A despatch from the ambassador reached Paris describing thewarlike overtures he had made to the Porte. Louis Philippe saw that if thisdespatch reached the hands of Laffitte and the war party in the Council ofMinisters the preservation of peace would be almost impossible. In concertwith Sebastiani, the Foreign Minister, he concealed the despatch fromLaffitte. 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 hehad taken in raising Louis Philippe to the throne. His successor wasCasimir Perier, a man of very different mould; resolute, clear-headed, andimmovably true to his word; a constitutional statesman of the strictesttype, intolerant of any species of disorder, and a despiser of popularmovements, but equally proof against royal intrigues, and as keen tomaintain the constitutional system of France against the Court on one sideand the populace on the other as he was to earn for France the respect offoreign powers by the abandonment of a policy of adventure, and the steadyadherence to the principles of international obligation which he had laiddown. Under his firm hand the intrigues of the French Government withforeign revolutionists ceased; it was felt throughout Europe that peace wasstill possible, and that if war was undertaken by France it would beundertaken only under conditions which would make any moral union of allthe great Powers against France impossible. The Austrian expedition intothe Papal States had already begun, and the revolutionary Government hadbeen suppressed; the most therefore that Casimir Perier could demand wasthat the evacuation of the occupied territory should take place as soon aspossible, and that Austria should add its voice to that of the other Powersin urging the Papal Government to reform its abuses. Both demands weregranted. For the first time Austria appeared as the advocate of somethinglike a constitutional system. A Conference held at Rome agreed upon ascheme of reforms to be recommended to the Pope; the prospects of peacegrew daily fairer; and in July, 1831, the last Austrian soldiers quittedthe 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 theintelligence and good-will necessary for carrying out the reforms on thepromise of which France had abstained from active intervention. If any suchhopes existed they were doomed to speedy disappointment. The apparatus ofpriestly maladministration was restored in all its ancient deformity. Anamnesty which had been promised by the Legate Benvenuti was disregarded, and the Pope set himself to strengthen his authority by enlisting new bandsof ruffians and adventurers under the standard of St. Peter. Againinsurrection broke out, and again at the Pope's request the Austrianscrossed the frontier (January, 1832). Though their appearance was fatal tothe cause of liberty, they were actually welcomed as protectors in townswhich had been exposed to the tender mercies of the Papal condottieri. There was no disorder, no severity, where the Austrian commandants heldsway; but their mere presence in central Italy was a threat to Europeanpeace; and Casimir Perier was not the man to permit Austria to dominate inItaly at its will. Without waiting for negotiations, he despatched a Frenchforce to Ancona, and seized this town before the Austrians could approachit. The rival Powers were now face to face in Italy; but Perier had nointention of forcing on war if his opponent was still willing to keep thepeace. Austria accepted the situation, and made no attempt to expel theFrench from the position they had seized. Casimir Perier, now on hisdeath-bed, defended the step that he had taken against the remonstrances ofambassadors and against the protests of the Pope, and declared the presenceof the French at Ancona to be no incentive to rebellion, but the mereassertion of the rights of a Power which had as good a claim to be incentral Italy as Austria itself. Had his life been prolonged, he wouldprobably have insisted upon the execution of the reforms which the Powershad urged upon the Papal government, and have made the occupation of Anconaan effectual means for reaching this end. But with his death the wrongs ofthe Italians themselves and the question of a reformed government in thePapal States gradually passed out of sight. France and Austria jealouslywatched one another on the debatable land; the occupation became a mereincident 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 JulyRevolution, in action and counter-action, is Germany. It has been seen thatin the southern German States an element of representative government, ifweak, yet not wholly ineffective, had come into being soon after 1815, andhad survived the reactionary measures initiated by the conference ofMinisters at Carlsbad. In Prussia the promises of King Frederick William tohis people had never been fulfilled. Years had passed since exaggeratedrumours of conspiracy had served as an excuse for withholding theConstitution. Hardenberg had long been dead; the foreign policy of thecountry had taken a freer tone; the rigours of the police-system haddeparted; but the nation remained as completely excluded from any share inthe government as it had been before Napoleon's fall. It had in fact becomeclear that during the lifetime of King Frederick William things must beallowed to remain in their existing condition; and the affection of thepeople for their sovereign, who had been so long and so closely united withPrussia in its sufferings and in its glories, caused a general willingnessto postpone the demand for constitutional reform until the succeedingreign. The substantial merits of the administration might moreover havereconciled a less submissive people than the Prussians to the absolutegovernment under which they lived. Under a wise and enlightened financialpolicy the country was becoming visibly richer. Obstacles to commercialdevelopment were removed, communications opened; and finally, by a seriesof treaties with the neighbouring German States, the foundations were laidfor that Customs-Union which, under the name of the Zollverein, ultimatelyembraced almost the whole of non-Austrian Germany. As one Principalityafter another attached itself to the Prussian system, the products of thevarious regions of Germany, hitherto blocked by the frontier dues of eachpetty State, moved freely through the land, while the costs attending thetaxation of foreign imports, now concentrated upon the external line offrontier, were enormously diminished. Patient, sagacious, and even liberalin its negotiations with its weaker neighbours, Prussia silently connectedwith itself through the ties of financial union States which had hithertolooked to Austria as their natural head. The semblance of political unionwas carefully avoided, but the germs of political union were neverthelesspresent in the growing community of material interests. The reputation ofthe 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 before1830, enough had already been done to affect public opinion; and thegeneral sense of material progress combined with other influences to closePrussia 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 thedefects of Prussian autocracy without any of its redeeming qualities. InBrunswick and in Hesse Cassel despotism existed in its most contemptibleform; the violence of a half-crazy youth in the one case, and the capricesof an obstinate dotard in the other, rendering authority a mere nuisance tothose who were subject to it. Here accordingly revolution broke out. Thethreatened princes had made themselves too generally obnoxious orridiculous for any hand to be raised in their defence. Their disappearanceexcited no more than the inevitable lament from Metternich; and in bothStates systems of representative government were introduced by theirsuccessors. In Hanover and in Saxony agitation also began in favour ofParliamentary rule. The disturbance that arose was not of a seriouscharacter, and it was met by the Courts in a conciliatory spirit. Constitutions were granted, the liberty of the Press extended, and trial byjury established. On the whole, the movement of 1830, as it affectednorthern Germany, was rationally directed and salutary in its results. Changes of real value were accomplished with a sparing employment ofrevolutionary means, and, in the more important cases, through the friendlyco-operation of the sovereigns with their subjects. It was not the fault ofthose who had asked for the same degree of liberty in northern Germanywhich the south already possessed, that Germany at large again experiencedthe miseries of reaction and repression which had afflicted it ten yearsbefore. [Movement in the Palatinate. ]Like Belgium and the Rhenish Provinces, the Bavarian Palatinate had fortwenty years been incorporated with France. Its inhabitants had grownaccustomed to the French law and French institutions, and had caughtsomething of the political animation which returned to France afterNapoleon's fall. Accordingly when the government of Munich, alarmed by theJuly Revolution, showed an inclination towards repressive measures, thePalatinate, severed from the rest of the Bavarian monarchy and in immediatecontact with France, became the focus of a revolutionary agitation. ThePress had already attained some activity and some influence in thisprovince; and although the leaders of the party of progress were still to agreat extent Professors, they had so far advanced upon the patriots of 1818as to understand that the liberation of the German people was not to beeffected by the lecturers and the scholars of the Universities. The designhad been formed of enlisting all classes of the public on the side ofreform, both by the dissemination of political literature and by theestablishment of societies not limited, as in 1818, to academic circles, but embracing traders as well as soldiers and professional men. Even thepeasant was to be reached and instructed in his interests as a citizen. Itwas thought that much might be effected by associating together all theOppositions in the numerous German Parliaments; but a more striking featureof the revolutionary movement which began in the Palatinate, and onestrongly distinguishing it from the earlier agitation of Jena and Erfurt, was its cosmopolitan character. France in its triumph and Poland in itsdeath-struggle excited equal interest and sympathy. In each the cause ofEuropean liberty appeared to be at stake. The Polish banner was saluted inthe Palatinate by the side of that of united Germany; and from that timeforward in almost every revolutionary movement of Europe, down to theinsurrection of the Commune of Paris in 1871, Polish exiles have beenactive 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 acertain willingness to meet the complaints of their subjects, and had inespecial relaxed the supervision exercised over the press. The fall ofWarsaw, which quieted so many alarms, and made the Emperor Nicholas oncemore a power outside his own dominions, inaugurated a period of reaction inGermany. The Diet began the campaign against democracy by suppressingvarious liberal newspapers, and amongst them the principal journal of thePalatinate. It was against this movement of regression that the agitationin the Palatinate and elsewhere was now directed. A festival, ordemonstration, was held at the Castle of Hambach, near Zweibrücken, atwhich a body of enthusiasts called upon the German people to unite againsttheir oppressors, and some even urged an immediate appeal to arms (May 27, 1832). Similar meetings, though on a smaller scale, were held in otherparts of Germany. Wild words abounded, and the connection of the Germanrevolutionists with that body of opponents of all established governmentswhich had its council-chamber at Paris and its head in Lafayette was openlyavowed. Weak and insignificant as the German demagogues were, theirextravagance gave to Metternich and to the Diet sufficient pretext forrevising the reactionary measures of 1819. Once more the subordination ofall representative bodies to the sovereign's authority was laid down by theDiet as a binding principle for every German state. The refusal of taxes byany legislature was declared to be an act of rebellion which would be metby the armed intervention of the central Powers. All political meetings andassociations were forbidden; the Press was silenced; the introduction ofGerman books printed abroad was prohibited, and the Universities were againplaced 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 authorityexercised by Metternich and his adherents in reaction bore down all theresistance that these courts could offer, and the hand of despotism felleverywhere heavily upon the party of political progress. The majority ofGerman Liberals, not yet prepared for recourse to revolutionary measures, submitted to the pressure of the times, and disclaimed all sympathy withillegal acts; a minority, recognising that nothing was now to be gained byconstitutional means, entered into conspiracies, and determined to liberateGermany by force. One insignificant group, relying upon the armedco-operation of Polish bands in France, and deceived by promises of supportfrom some Würtemberg soldiers, actually rose in insurrection at Frankfort. A guard-house was seized, and a few soldiers captured; but the citizens ofFrankfort stood aloof, and order was soon restored (April, 1833). It wasnot to be expected that the reactionary courts should fail to draw fulladvantage from this ill-timed outbreak of their enemies. Prussian troopsmarched into Frankfort, and Metternich had no difficulty in carryingthrough the Diet a decree establishing a commission to superintend and toreport upon the proceedings instituted against political offendersthroughout Germany. For several years these investigations continued, andthe campaign against the opponents of government was carried on withvarious degrees of rigour in the different states. About two thousandpersons altogether were brought to trial: in Prussia thirty-nine sentencesof death were pronounced, but not executed. In the struggle againstrevolution the forces of monarchy had definitely won the victory. Germanyagain experienced, as it had in 1819, that the federal institutions whichwere to have given it unity existed only for the purposes of repression. The breach between the nation and its rulers, in spite of the apparentfailure of the democratic party, remained far deeper and wider than it hadbeen before; and although Metternich, victor once more over the growingrestlessness of the age, slumbered on for another decade in fanciedsecurity, the last of his triumphs had now been won, and the next uprisingproved how blind was that boasted statesmanship which deemed the sources ofdanger exhausted when once its symptoms had been driven beneath thesurface. [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 againstgovernments, and who formed, in their community of interest and purpose, asort of obverse of the Holy Alliance, a federation of kings' enemies, aleague of principle and creed, in which liberty and human right stoodtowards established rule as light to darkness. As the grasp of authorityclosed everywhere more tightly upon its baffled foes, more and more ofthese men passed into exile. Among them was the Genoese Mazzini, who, aftersuffering imprisonment in 1831, withdrew to Marseilles, and there, incombination with various secret societies, planned an incursion into theItalian province of Savoy. It was at first intended that this enterpriseshould be executed simultaneously with the German rising at Frankfort. Delays, however, arose, and it was not until the beginning of the followingyear that the little army, which numbered more Poles than Italians, wasready for its task. The incursion was made from Geneva in February, 1834, and ended disastrously. [395] Mazzini returned to Switzerland, wherehundreds of exiles, secure under the shelter of the Republic, devisedschemes of attack upon the despots of Europe, and even rioted in honour offreedom in the streets of the Swiss cities which protected them. The effectof the revolutionary movement of the time in consolidating the alliance ofthe 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 atMünchengrätz in Bohemia in the previous autumn, and, in concert withPrussia, had resolved upon common principles of action if theirintervention should be required against disturbers of order. Notes were nowaddressed from every quarter to the Swiss Government, requiring theexpulsion of all persons concerned in enterprises against the peace ofneighbouring States. Some resistance to this demand was made by individualcantons; but the extravagance of many of the refugees themselves alienatedpopular sympathy, and the greater part of them were forced to quitSwitzerland and to seek shelter in England or in America. With thedispersion of the central band of exiles the open alliance which hadexisted between the revolutionists of Europe gradually passed away. Thebrotherhood of the kings had proved a stern reality, the brotherhood of thepeoples a delusive vision. Mazzini indeed, who up to this time had scarcelyemerged from the rabble of revolutionary leaders, was yet to prove howdeeply the genius, the elevation, the fervour of one man struggling againstthe powers of the world may influence the history of his age; but the firethat purified the fine gold charred and consumed the baser elements; and ofthose who had hoped the most after 1830, many now sank into despair, orgave 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 hisgovernment was inspired not so much by Republicanism as by a wild andinconsiderate sympathy with the peoples who were fighting for libertyelsewhere, and by a headstrong impulse to take up arms on their behalf. Thefamous decree of the Convention in 1792, which promised the assistance ofFrance to every nation in revolt against its rulers, was in fact the trueexpression 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 ofLouis Philippe against the honour of France that he allowed Poland andItaly to succumb without drawing his sword against their conquerors. ThatFrance would have had to fight the three Eastern Powers combined, if it hadallied itself with those in revolt against any one of the three, passed fornothing among the clamorous minority in the Chamber and among the oratorsof Paris. The pacific policy of Casimir Perier was misunderstood; it passedfor mere poltroonery, when in fact it was the only policy that could saveFrance from a recurrence of the calamities of 1815. There were other causesfor the growing unpopularity of the King and of his Ministers, but thefirst was their policy of peace. As the attacks of his opponents becamemore and more bitter, the government of Casimir Perier took more and moreof a repressive character. Disappointment at the small results produced inFrance 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 belaid at rest at the bidding of those who had profited by them, and aRepublican party gradually took definite shape and organisation. Tumultsucceeded tumult. In the summer of 1832 the funeral of General Lamarque, apopular soldier, gave the signal for insurrection at Paris. There wassevere fighting in the streets; the National Guard, however, proved true tothe king, and shared with the army in the honours of its victory. Repressive measures and an unbroken series of prosecutions againstseditious writers followed this first armed attack upon the establishedgovernment. The bitterness of the Opposition, the discontent of the workingclasses, far surpassed anything that had been known under Charles X. Thewhole country was agitated by revolutionary societies and revolutionarypropaganda. Disputes between masters and workmen, which, in consequence ofthe growth of French manufacturing industry, now became both frequent andimportant, began to take a political colour. Polish and Italian exilesconnected their own designs with attacks to be made upon the FrenchGovernment from within; and at length, in April, 1834, after the passing ofa law against trades-unions, the working classes of Lyons, who were onstrike against their employers, were induced to rise in revolt. Afterseveral days' fighting the insurrection was suppressed. Simultaneousoutbreaks took place at St. Etienne, Grenoble, and many other places in thesouth and centre of France; and on a report of the success of theinsurgents reaching Paris, the Republic was proclaimed and barricades wereerected. Again civil war raged in the streets, and again the forces ofGovernment gained the victory. A year more passed, during which theinvestigations into the late revolt and the trial of a host of prisonersserved rather to agitate than to reassure the public mind; and in thesummer of 1835 an attempt was made upon the life of the King so terribleand destructive in its effects as to amount to a public calamity. Aninfernal machine composed of a hundred gun-barrels was fired by a Corsicannamed Fieschi, as the King with a large suite was riding through thestreets of Paris on the anniversary of the Revolution of July. Fourteenpersons were killed on the spot, among whom was Mortier, one of the oldestof the marshals of France; many others were fatally or severely injured. The King, however, with his three sons, escaped unhurt, and the repressivelaws that followed this outrage marked the close of open revolutionaryagitation in France. Whether in consequence of the stringency of the newlaws, or of the exhaustion of a party discredited in public estimation bythe crimes of a few of its members and the recklessness of many more, theconstitutional monarchy of Louis Philippe now seemed to have finallyvanquished its opponents. Repeated attempts were made on the life of theKing, but they possessed for the most part little political significance. Order was welcome to the nation at large; and though in the growth of asocialistic theory and creed of life which dates from this epoch there laya danger to Governments greater than any purely political, Socialism was asyet the affair of thinkers rather than of active workers either in theindustrial or in the Parliamentary world. The Government had beaten itsenemies outside the Chamber. Within the Chamber, the parties of extremesceased to exercise any real influence. Groups were formed, and rivalleaders played against one another for office; but they were separated byno far-reaching differences of aim, and by no real antagonism ofconstitutional principle. During the succeeding years of Louis Philippe'sreign there was little visible on the surface but the normal rivalry ofparties under a constitutional monarchy. The middle-class retained itsmonopoly of power: authority, centralised as before, maintained its oldprestige in France, and softened opposition by judicious gifts of officeand emolument. Revolutionary passion seemed to have died away: and thetriumphs or reverses of party-leaders in the Chamber of Deputies succeededto 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 thepassing of the English Reform Bill is apt to suggest to those who look forthe operation of wide general causes in history that the English Reformmovement should be viewed as a part of the great current of politicalchange which then traversed the continent of Europe. But on a closerexamination this view is scarcely borne out by facts, and the coincidenceof the two epochs of change appears to be little more than accidental. Thegeneral unity that runs through the history of the more advancedcontinental states is indeed stronger than appears to a superficial readerof history; but this correspondence of tendency does not always embraceEngland; on the contrary, the conditions peculiar to England usuallypreponderate over those common to England and other countries, exhibitingat times more of contrast than of similarity, as in the case of theNapoleonic epoch, when the causes which drew together the western half ofthe continent operated powerfully to exclude our own country from thecurrent 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. Therevolution which overthrew Charles X. Did no doubt encourage and stimulatethe party of Reform in Great Britain; but, unlike the Belgian, the German, and the Italian movements, the English Reform movement would unquestionablyhave run the same course and achieved the same results even if the revoltagainst the ordinances of Charles X. Had been successfully repressed, andthe Bourbon monarchy had maintained itself in increased strength andreputation. A Reform of Parliament had been acknowledged to be necessaryforty years before. Pitt had actually proposed it in 1785, and but for theoutbreak of the French Revolution would probably have carried it intoeffect before the close of the last century. The development of Englishmanufacturing industry which took place between 1790 and 1830, accompaniedby the rapid growth of towns and the enrichment of the urban middle class, rendered the design of Pitt, which would have transferred therepresentation of the decayed boroughs to the counties alone, obsolete, andmade the claims of the new centres of population too strong to be resisted. In theory the representative system of the country was completelytransformed; but never was a measure which seemed to open the way to suchboundless possibilities of change so thoroughly safe and so thoroughlyconservative. In spite of the increased influence won by the wealthy partof the commercial classes, the House of Commons continued to be drawnmainly from the territorial aristocracy. Cabinet after Cabinet was formedwith scarcely a single member included in it who was not himself a man oftitle, or closely connected with the nobility: the social influence of rankwas not diminished; and although such measures as the Reform of MunicipalCorporations attested the increased energy of the Legislature, no party inthe House of Commons was weaker than that which supported the democraticdemands for the Ballot and for Triennial Parliaments, nor was the repeal ofthe Corn Laws seriously considered until famine had made it inevitable. That the widespread misery which existed in England after 1832, as theresult of the excessive increase of our population and the failure alike oflaw and of philanthropy to keep pace with the exigencies of a vastindustrial growth, should have been so quietly borne, proves how great wasthe success of the Reform Bill as a measure of conciliation betweenGovernment and people. But the crowning justification of the changes madein 1832, and the complete and final answer to those who had opposed them asrevolutionary, was not afforded until 1848, when, in the midst of Europeanconvulsion, the monarchy and the constitution of England remained unshaken. Bold as the legislation of Lord Grey appeared to men who had been broughtup amidst the reactionary influences dominant in England since 1793, theReform Bill belongs not to the class of great creative measures which haveinaugurated new periods in the life of nations, but to the class of thosewhich, while least affecting the general order of society, have mostcontributed to political stability and to the avoidance of revolutionarychange. CHAPTER XVII. France and England after 1830--Affairs of Portugal--Don Miguel--Don Pedroinvades Portugal--Ferdinand of Spain--The Pragmatic Sanction--Death ofFerdinand: Regency of Christina--The Constitution--Quadruple Alliance--Miguel and Carlos expelled from Portugal--Carlos enters Spain--The BasqueProvinces--Carlist War: Zumalacarregui--The Spanish Government seeks Frenchassistance, which is refused--Constitution of 1837--End of the War--Regencyof Espartero--Isabella Queen--Affairs of the Ottoman Empire--Ibrahiminvades Syria; his victories--Rivalry of France and Russia atConstantinople--Peace of Kutaya and Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi--Effect ofthis Treaty--France and Mehemet Ali--Commerce of the Levant--Second Warbetween Mehemet and the Porte--Ottoman disasters--The Policy of the GreatPowers--Quadruple Treaty without France--Ibrahim expelled from Syria--FinalSettlement--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 somedefinite interest; and to this rule the alliance which appeared to bespringing up between France and England after the changes of 1830 was noexception. In the popular view, the bond of union between the two Stateswas a common attachment to principles of liberty; and on the part of theWhig statesmen who now governed England this sympathy with freeconstitutional systems abroad was certainly a powerful force: but othermotives than mere community of sentiment combined to draw the twoGovernments together, and in the case of France these immediate interestsgreatly outweighed any abstract preference for a constitutional ally. LouisPhilippe had an avowed and obstinate enemy in the Czar of Russia, who hadbeen his predecessor's friend: the Court of Vienna tolerated usurpers onlywhere worse mischief would follow from attacking them; Prussia had nomotive for abandoning the connexions which it had maintained since 1815. Asthe union between the three Eastern Courts grew closer in consequence ofthe outbreak of revolution beyond the borders of France, a goodunderstanding with Great Britain became more and more obviously the rightpolicy for Louis Philippe; on the other hand, the friendship of Franceseemed likely to secure England from falling back into that isolatedposition which it had occupied when the Holy Alliance laid down the law toEurope, and averted the danger to which the Ottoman Empire, as well as thepeace of the world, had been exposed by the combination of French withRussian schemes of aggrandizement. If Canning, left without an ally inEurope, had called the new world into existence to redress the balance ofthe old, his Whig successors might well look with some satisfaction on thatshifting of the weights which had brought over one of the Great Powers tothe side of England, and anticipate, in the concert of the two greatWestern States, the establishment of a permanent force in European politicswhich should hold in check the reactionary influences of Vienna and St. Petersburg. To some extent these views were realised. A general relation offriendliness was recognised as subsisting between the Governments of Parisand London, and in certain European complications their intervention wasarranged in common. But even here the element of mistrust was seldomabsent; and while English Ministers jealously watched each action of theirneighbour, the French Government rarely allowed the ties of an informalalliance to interfere with the prosecution of its own views. Although downto the close of Louis Philippe's reign the good understanding betweenEngland and France was still nominally in existence, all real confidencehad then long vanished; and on more than one occasion the preservation ofpeace 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 combinedaction of France and England produced its first and most successful result. A second demand was made upon the Governments of the two constitutionalPowers by the conflicts which agitated the Spanish Peninsula, and whichwere stimulated in the general interests of absolutism by both the Austrianand the Russian Court. The intervention of Canning in 1826 on behalf of theconstitutional Regency of Portugal against the foreign supporters of DonMiguel, the head of the clerical and reactionary party, had not permanentlyrestored peace to that country. Miguel indeed accepted the constitution, and, after betrothing himself to the infant sovereign, Donna Maria, who wasstill with her father Pedro, in Brazil, entered upon the Regency which hiselder brother had promised to him. But his actions soon disproved theprofessions of loyalty to the constitution which he had made; and afterdissolving the Cortes, and re-assembling the mediæval Estates, he causedhimself to be proclaimed King (June, 1828). A reign of terror followed. Theconstitutionalists were completely crushed. Miguel's own brutal violencegave an example to all the fanatics and ruffians who surrounded him; andafter an unsuccessful appeal to arms, those of the adherents of Donna Mariaand the constitution who escaped from imprisonment or execution took refugein England or in the Azore islands, where Miguel had not been able toestablish his authority. Though Miguel was not officially recognised asSovereign by most of the foreign Courts, his victory was everywhere seenwith satisfaction by the partisans of absolutism; and in Great Britain, where the Duke of Wellington was still in power, the precedent of Canning'sintervention was condemned, and a strict neutrality maintained. Not onlywas all assistance refused to Donna Maria, but her adherents who had takenrefuge in England were prevented from making this country the basis of anyoperations against the usurper. [Invasion of Portugal by Pedro. July, 1832. ]Such was the situation of Portuguese affairs when the events of 1830brought an entirely new spirit into the foreign policy of both England andFrance. Miguel, however, had no inclination to adapt his own policy to thechange of circumstances; on the contrary, he challenged the hostility ofboth governments by persisting in a series of wanton attacks upon Englishand French subjects resident at Lisbon. Satisfaction was demanded, andexacted by force. English and French squadrons successively appeared in theTagus. 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 Frenchadmiral, finding some difficulty in obtaining redress, carried off the bestships of Don Miguel's navy. [396] A weightier blow was, however, soon tofall upon the usurper. His brother, the Emperor Pedro, threatened withrevolution in Brazil, resolved to return to Europe and to enforce therights of his daughter to the throne of Portugal. Pedro arrived in Londonin July, 1831, and was permitted by the Government to raise troops and tosecure the services of some of the best naval officers of this country. Thegathering place of his forces was Terceira, one of the Azore islands, andin the summer of 1832 a sufficiently strong body of troops was collected toundertake the reconquest of Portugal. A landing was made at Oporto, andthis city fell into the hands of Don Pedro without resistance. Miguel, however, now marched against his brother, and laid siege to Oporto. Fornearly a year no progress was made by either side; at length the arrival ofvolunteers from various countries, among whom was Captain Charles Napier, enabled Pedro to divide his forces and to make a new attack on Portugalfrom the south. Napier, in command of the fleet, annihilated the navy ofDon Miguel off St. Vincent; his colleague, Villa Flor, landed and marchedon Lisbon. The resistance of the enemy was overcome, and on the 28th ofJuly, 1833, Don Pedro entered the capital. But the war was not yet at anend, for Miguel's cause was as closely identified with the interests ofEuropean 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 turnwas given to events in the Peninsula by the death of Ferdinand, King ofSpain. [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 completesatisfaction to the fanatics of the clerical party. Some vestiges ofstatesmanship, some sense of political necessity, as well as the influenceof foreign counsellors, had prevented the Government of Madrid fromcompletely identifying itself with the monks and zealots who had firstrisen against the constitution of 1820, and who now sought to establish theabsolute 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 ofthe ferocious and implacable champions of mediæval bigotry. Under the nameof Apostolicals, these reactionaries had at times broken into openrebellion. Their impatience had, however, on the whole been restrained bythe knowledge that in the King's brother and heir, Don Carlos, they had anadherent whose devotion to the priestly cause was beyond suspicion, and whomight be expected soon to ascend the throne. Ferdinand had been thricemarried; he was childless; his state of health miserable; and his lifelikely to be a short one. The succession to the throne of Spain hadmoreover, since 1713, been governed by the Salic Law, so that even in theevent of Ferdinand leaving female issue Don Carlos would neverthelessinherit the crown. These confident hopes were rudely disturbed by themarriage of the King with his cousin Maria Christina of Naples, followed byan edict, known as the Pragmatic Sanction, repealing the Salic Law whichhad been introduced with the first Bourbon, and restoring the ancientCastilian custom under which women were capable of succeeding to the crown. A daughter, Isabella, was shortly afterwards born to the new Queen. On thelegality of the Pragmatic Sanction the opinions of publicists differed; itwas judged, however, by Europe at large not from the point of view ofantiquarian theory, but with direct reference to its immediate effect. Thethree Eastern Courts emphatically condemned it, as an interference withestablished monarchical right, and as a blow to the cause of Europeanabsolutism through the alliance which it would almost certainly producebetween the supplanters of Don Carlos and the Liberals of the SpanishPeninsula. [397] To the clerical and reactionary party at Madrid, itamounted to nothing less than a sentence of destruction, and the utmostpressure was brought to bear upon the weak and dying King with the objectof 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, andappointed Christina Regent during the continuance of his illness. DonCarlos, protesting against the violation of his rights, had betaken himselfto Portugal, where he made common cause with Miguel. His adherents had nointention of submitting to the change of succession. Their resentment wasscarcely restrained during Ferdinand's life-time, and when, in September, 1833, his long-expected death took place, and the child Isabella wasdeclared 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 thoseof the insurgents, and Don Carlos failed to take advantage of the firstoutburst of enthusiasm and to place himself at the head of his followers. He remained in Portugal, while Christina, as had been expected, drew nearerto the Spanish Liberals, and ultimately called to power a Liberal minister, Martinez de la Rosa, under whom a constitution was given to Spain by RoyalStatute (April 10, 1834). At the same time negotiations were opened withPortugal and with the Western Powers, in the hope of forming an alliancewhich should drive both Miguel and Carlos from the Peninsula. On the 22ndof April, 1834, a Quadruple Treaty was signed at London, in which theSpanish Government undertook to send an army into Portugal against Miguel, the Court of Lisbon pledging itself in return to use all the means in itspower to expel Don Carlos from Portuguese territory. England engaged toco-operate by means of its fleet. The assistance of France, if it should bedeemed necessary for the attainment of the objects of the Treaty, was to berendered in such manner as should be settled by common consent. Inpursuance of the policy of the Treaty, and even before the formalengagement was signed, a Spanish division under General Rodil crossed thefrontier and marched against Miguel. The forces of the usurper weredefeated. The appearance of the English fleet and the publication of theTreaty of Quadruple Alliance rendered further resistance hopeless, and onthe 22nd of May Miguel made his submission, and in return for a largepension renounced all rights to the crown, and undertook to quit thePeninsula for ever. Don Carlos, refusing similar conditions, went on boardan English ship, and was conducted to London. [398][Carlos appears in Spain. ]With respect to Portugal, the Quadruple Alliance had completely attainedits object; and in so far as the Carlist cause was strengthened by thecontinuance of civil war in the neighbouring country, this source ofstrength was no doubt withdrawn from it. But in its effect upon Don Carloshimself the action of the Quadruple Alliance was worse than useless. Whilefulfilling the letter of the Treaty, which stipulated for the expulsion ofthe two pretenders from the Peninsula, the English Admiral had removedCarlos from Portugal, where he was comparatively harmless, and had taken noeffective guarantee that he should not re-appear in Spain itself andenforce his claim by arms. Carlos had not been made a prisoner of war; hehad made no promises and incurred no obligations; nor could the BritishGovernment, after his arrival in this country, keep him in perpetualrestraint. Quitting England after a short residence, he travelled indisguise through France, crossed the Pyrenees, and appeared on the 10th ofJuly, 1834, at the headquarters of the Carlist insurgents in Navarre. [The Basque Provinces. ]In the country immediately below the western Pyrenees, the so-called BasqueProvinces, lay the chief strength of the Carlist rebellion. Theseprovinces, which were among the most thriving and industrious parts ofSpain, might seem by their very superiority an unlikely home for a movementwhich was directed against everything favourable to liberty, tolerance, andprogress in the Spanish kingdom. But the identification of the Basques withthe Carlist cause was due in fact to local, not to general, causes; and infighting to impose a bigoted despot upon the Spanish people, they were intruth fighting to protect themselves from a closer incorporation withSpain. Down to the year 1812, the Basque provinces had preserved more thanhalf of the essentials of independence. Owing to their position on theFrench frontier, the Spanish monarchy, while destroying all localindependence in the interior of Spain, had uniformly treated the Basqueswith the same indulgence which the Government of Great Britain has shown tothe Channel Islands, and which the French monarchy, though in a lessdegree, showed to the frontier province of Alsace in the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries. The customs-frontier of the north of Spain was drawnto the south of these districts. The inhabitants imported what they pleasedfrom France without paying any duties; while the heavy import-dues leviedat the border of the neighbouring Spanish provinces gave them theopportunity of carrying on an easy and lucrative system of smuggling. Thelocal administration remained to a great extent in the hands of the peoplethemselves; each village preserved its active corporate life; and theeffect of this survival of a vigorous local freedom was seen in theremarkable contrast described by travellers between the aspect of theBasque 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 theorder of the Spanish State, a series of exceptional privileges; and it wasinevitable that the framers of the Constitution of 1812, in their attemptto create a modern administrative and political system doing justice to thewhole of the nation, should sweep away the distinctions which had hithertomarked off one group of provinces from the rest of the community. Thecontinuance of war until the return of Ferdinand, and the overthrow of theConstitution, prevented the plans of the Cortes from being at that timecarried into effect; but the revolution of 1820 brought them into actualoperation, and the Basques found themselves, as a result of the victory ofLiberal principles, compelled to pay duties on their imports, robbed of theprofits of their smuggling, and supplanted in the management of their localaffairs by an army of officials from Madrid. They had gained by theConstitution little that they had not possessed before, and their losseswere immediate, tangible, and substantial. The result was, that althoughthe larger towns, like Bilbao, remained true to modern ideas, the countrydistricts, led chiefly by priests, took up arms on behalf of the absolutemonarchy, assisted the French in the restoration of despotism in 1823, andremained the permanent enemies of the constitutional cause. [399] On thedeath of Ferdinand they declared at once for Don Carlos, and rose inrebellion against the Government of Queen Christina, by which theyconsidered the privileges of the Basque Provinces and the interests ofCatholic orthodoxy to be alike threatened. [Carlist victories, 1834-5. ]There was little in the character of Don Carlos to stimulate the loyaltyeven of his most benighted partizans. Of military and political capacity hewas totally destitute, and his continued absence in Portugal when theconflict had actually begun proved him to be wanting in the naturalimpulses of a brave man. It was, however, his fortune to be served by asoldier of extraordinary energy and skill; and the first reverses of theCarlists were speedily repaired, and a system of warfare organised whichmade an end of the hopes of easy conquest with which the Government ofChristina had met the insurrection. Fighting in a worthless cause, andcommanding resources scarcely superior to those of a brigand chief, theCarlist leader, Zumalacarregui, inflicted defeat after defeat upon thegenerals who were sent to destroy him. The mountainous character of thecountry and the universal hostility of the inhabitants made the exertionsof a regular soldiery useless against the alternate flights and surprisesof men who knew every mountain track, and who gained information of theenemy's movements from every cottager. Terror was added by Zumalacarreguito all his other methods for demoralising his adversary. In the exercise ofreprisals he repeatedly murdered all his prisoners in cold blood, and gaveto the war so savage a character that foreign Governments at last feltcompelled to urge upon the belligerents some regard for the usages of thecivilised world. The appearance of Don Carlos himself in the summer of 1834raised still higher the confidence already inspired by the victories of hisgeneral. It was in vain that the old constitutionalist soldier, Mina, whohad won so great a name in these provinces in 1823, returned after longexile to the scene of his exploits. Enfeebled and suffering, he was nolonger able to place himself at the head of his troops, and he soon soughtto be relieved from a hopeless task. His successor, the War MinisterValdes, took the field announcing his determination to act upon a newsystem, and to operate with his troops in mass instead of pursuing theenemy's bands with detachments. The result of this change of tactics was adefeat more ruinous and complete than had befallen any of Valdes'predecessors. He with difficulty withdrew the remainder of his army fromthe insurgent provinces; and the Carlist leader master of the open countryup to the borders of Castile, prepared to cross the Ebro and to march uponMadrid. [400][Request to France for assistance, May, 1835. ]The Ministers of Queen Christina, who had up till this time professedthemselves confident in their power to deal with the insurrection, couldnow no longer conceal the real state of affairs. Valdes himself declaredthat the rebellion could not be subdued without foreign aid; and afterprolonged discussion in the Cabinet it was determined to appeal to Francefor armed assistance. The flight of Don Carlos from England had alreadycaused an additional article to be added to the Treaty of the QuadrupleAlliance, in which France undertook so to watch the frontier of thePyrenees that no reinforcements or munition of war should reach theCarlists from that side, while England promised to supply the troops ofQueen Christina with arms and stores, and, if necessary, to renderassistance with a naval force (18th August, 1834). The foreign suppliessent to the Carlists had thus been cut off both by land and sea; but moreactive assistance seemed indispensable if Madrid was to be saved fromfalling into the enemy's hands. The request was made to Louis Philippe'sGovernment to occupy the Basque Provinces with a corps of twelve thousandmen. Reasons of weight might be addressed to the French Court in favour ofdirect intervention. The victory of Don Carlos would place upon the throneof Spain a representative of all those reactionary influences throughoutEurope 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 tocombine with England in expelling Don Miguel from Portugal. On the otherhand, the experience gained from earlier military enterprises in Spainmight well deter even bolder politicians than those about Louis Philippefrom venturing upon a task whose ultimate issues no man could confidentlyforecast. Napoleon had wrecked his empire in the struggle beyond thePyrenees not less than in the march to Moscow: and the expedition of 1823, though free from military difficulties, had exposed France to thehumiliating responsibility for every brutal act of a despotism which, inthe very moment of its restoration, had scorned the advice of itsrestorers. The constitutional Government which invoked French assistancemight, moreover, at any moment give place to a democratic faction whichalready harassed it within the Cortes, and which, in its alliance with thepopulace in many of the great cities, threatened to throw Spain intoanarchy, or to restore the ill-omened constitution of 1812. But above all, the attitude of the three Eastern Powers bade the ruler of France hesitatebefore committing himself to a military occupation of Spanish territory. Their sympathies were with Don Carlos, and the active participation ofFrance in the quarrel might possibly call their opposing forces into thefield and provoke a general war. In view of the evident dangers arising outof the proposed intervention, the French Government, taking its stand onthat clause of the Quadruple Treaty which provided that the assistance ofFrance should be rendered in such manner as might be agreed upon by all theparties to the Treaty, addressed itself to Great Britain, inquiring whetherthis country would undertake a joint responsibility in the enterprise andshare with France the consequences to which it might give birth. LordPalmerston in reply declined to give the assurance required. He stated thatno objection would be raised by the British Government to the entry ofFrench troops into Spain, but that such intervention must be regarded asthe work of France alone, and be undertaken by France at its own peril. This answer sufficed for Louis Philippe and his Ministers. The SpanishGovernment was informed that the grant of military assistance wasimpossible, and that the entire public opinion of France would condemn sodangerous an undertaking. As a proof of goodwill, permission was given toQueen Christina to enrol volunteers both in England and France. Arms weresupplied; and some thousands of needy or adventurous men ultimately madetheir way from our own country as well as from France, to earn underColonel De Lacy Evans and other leaders a scanty harvest of profit orrenown. [Continuance of the war. ]The first result of the rejection of the Spanish demand for the directintervention of France was the downfall of the Minister by whom this demandhad been made. His successor, Toreno, though a well-known patriot, provedunable 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 centralgovernment had ceased to exist. Again the appeal for help was made to LouisPhilippe, and now, not so much to avert the victory of Don Carlos as tosave Spain from anarchy and from the constitution of 1812. Before an answercould arrive, Toreno in his turn had passed away. Mendizabal, a banker whohad been entrusted with financial business at London, and who had enteredinto friendly relations with Lord Palmerston, was called to office, as apolitician acceptable to the democratic party, and the advocate of a closeconnection with England rather than with France. In spite of the confidentprofessions of the Minister, and in spite of some assistance actuallyrendered by the English fleet, no real progress was made in subduing theCarlists, or in restoring administrative and financial order. The death ofZumalacarregui, who was forced by Don Carlos to turn northwards and besiegeBilbao instead of marching upon Madrid immediately after his victories, hadchecked the progress of the rebellion at a critical moment; but theGovernment, distracted and bankrupt, could not use the opportunity whichthus offered itself, and the war soon blazed out anew not only in theBasque Provinces but throughout the north of Spain. For year after year themonotonous struggle continued, while Cortes succeeded Cortes and factionsupplanted faction, until there remained scarcely an officer who had notlost 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 awhilebeen the representative of the popular cause, gradually identified herselfwith the interests opposed to democratic change; and although her name wasstill treated with some respect, and her policy was habitually attributedto the misleading advice of courtiers, her real position was wellunderstood at Madrid, and her own resistance was known to be the principalobstacle to the restoration of the Constitution of 1812. It was thereforedetermined 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, andcompelled her to sign an edict restoring the Constitution of 1812 until theCortes should establish that or some other. Scenes of riot and murderfollowed in the capital. Men of moderate opinions, alarmed at the approachof anarchy, prepared to unite with Don Carlos. King Louis Philippe, who hadjust consented to strengthen the French legion by the addition of somethousands of trained soldiers, now broke entirely from the Spanishconnection, and dismissed his Ministers who refused to acquiesce in thischange of policy. Meanwhile the Eastern Powers and all rational partisansof absolutism besought Don Carlos to give those assurances which wouldsatisfy the wavering mass among his opponents, and place him on the thronewithout the sacrifice of any right that was worth preserving. It seemed asif the opportunity was too clear to be misunderstood; but the obstinacy andnarrowness of Don Carlos were proof against every call of fortune. Refusingto enter into any sort of engagement, he rendered it impossible for men tosubmit to him who were not willing to accept absolutism pure and simple. Onthe other hand, a majority of the Cortes, whose eyes were now opened to thedangers around them, accepted such modifications of the Constitution of1812 that political stability again appeared possible (June, 1837). Thedanger of a general transference of all moderate elements in the State tothe side of Don Carlos was averted; and, although the Carlist armies tookup the offensive, menaced the capital, and made incursions into every partof Spain, the darkest period of the war was now over; and when, afterundertaking in person the march upon Madrid, Don Carlos swerved aside andultimately fell back in confusion to the Ebro, the suppression of therebellion became a certainty. General Espartero, with whom such distinctionremained as was to be gathered in this miserable war, forced back theadversary step by step, and carried fire and sword into the BasqueProvinces, employing a system of devastation which alone seemed capable ofexhausting the endurance of the people. Reduced to the last extremity, theCarlist leaders turned their arms against one another. The priestsexcommunicated the generals, and the generals shot the priests; andfinally, on the 14th September, after the surrender of almost all histroops to Espartero, Don Carlos crossed the French frontier, and theconflict which during six years had barbarised and disgraced the Spanishnation, 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 thecountry, she endeavoured in vain to govern by the aid of Ministers of herown choice. Her popularity had vanished away. The scandals of her privatelife gave just offence to the nation, and fatally weakened her politicalauthority. Forced by insurrection to bestow office on Espartero, as thechief of the Progressist party, she found that the concessions demanded bythis general were more than she could grant, and in preference tosubmitting to them she resigned the Regency, and quitted Spain (Oct. , 1840). Espartero, after some interval, was himself appointed Regent by theCortes. For two years he maintained himself in power, then in his turn hefell before the combined attack of his political opponents and the extrememen of his own party, and passed into exile. There remained in Spain nosingle person qualified to fill the vacant Regency, and in default of allother expedients the young princess Isabella, who was now in her fourteenthyear, was declared of full age, and placed on the throne (Nov. , 1843). Christina returned to Madrid. After some rapid changes of Ministry, a moredurable Government was formed from the Moderado party under GeneralNarvaez; and in comparison with the period that had just ended, the firstfew 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 thecapitulation of Maria Christina to the soldiery at La Granja in 1836 haddiminished the confidence placed in the King by the British Ministry; butit had not destroyed the relations of friendship existing between the twoGovernments. Far more serious causes of difference arose out of the courseof events in the East, and the extension of the power of Mehemet Ali, Viceroy of Egypt. The struggle between Mehemet and his sovereign, longforeseen, broke out in the year 1832. After the establishment of theHellenic Kingdom, the island of Crete had been given to Mehemet in returnfor his services to the Ottoman cause by land and sea. This concession, however, was far from satisfying the ambition of the Viceroy, and a quarrelwith Abdallah, Pasha of Acre, gave him the opportunity of throwing an armyinto Palestine without directly rebelling against his sovereign (Nov. , 1831). Ibrahim, in command of his father's forces, laid siege to Acre; andhad this fortress at once fallen, it would probably have been allowed bythe Sultan to remain in its conqueror's hands as an addition to his ownprovince, since the Turkish army was not ready for war, and it was nouncommon thing in the Ottoman Empire for one provincial governor to possesshimself of territory at the expense of another. So obstinate, however, wasthe defence of Acre that time was given to the Porte to make preparationsfor war; and in the spring of 1832, after the issue of a proclamationdeclaring Mehemet and his son to be rebels, a Turkish army led by HusseinPasha entered Syria. [Ibrahim conquers Syria and Asia Minor. ]Ibrahim, while the siege of Acre was proceeding, had overrun thesurrounding country. He was now in possession of all the interior ofPalestine, and the tribes of Lebanon had joined him in the expectation ofgaining relief from the burdens of Turkish misgovernment. The fall of Acre, while the relieving army was still near Antioch, enabled him to throw hisfull strength against his opponent in the valley of the Orontes. It was theintention of the Turkish general, whose forces, though superior in number, had not the European training of Ibrahim's regiments, to meet the assaultof the Egyptians in an entrenched camp near Hama. The commander of thevanguard, however, pushed forward beyond this point, and when far inadvance of the main body of the army was suddenly attacked by Ibrahim atHoms. Taken at a moment of complete disorder, the Turks were put to therout. Their overthrow and flight so alarmed the general-in-chief that hedetermined to fall back upon Aleppo, leaving Antioch and all the valley ofthe Orontes to the enemy. Aleppo was reached, but the governor, won over byIbrahim, closed the gates of the city against the famishing army, andforced Hussein to continue his retreat to the mountains which form thebarrier between Syria and Cilicia. Here, at the pass of Beilan, he wasattacked 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 centreof Asia Minor; the Egyptian, after advancing as far as Mount Taurus andoccupying the passes in this range, took up his quarters in the conqueredcountry in order to refresh his army and to await reinforcements. After twomonths' halt he renewed his march, crossed Mount Taurus and occupiedKonieh, the capital of this district. Here the last and decisive blow wasstruck. A new Turkish army, led by Reschid Pasha, Ibrahim's colleague inthe siege of Missolonghi, advanced from the north. Against his own advice, Reschid was compelled by orders from Constantinople to risk everything inan engagement. He attacked Ibrahim at Konieh on the 21st of December, andwas completely defeated. Reschid himself was made a prisoner; his armydispersed; the last forces of the Sultan were exhausted, and the road tothe 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 ofassistance wanting. The Emperor Nicholas had since the Treaty of Adrianopleassumed the part of the magnanimous friend; his belief was that the OttomanEmpire might by judicious management and without further conquest bebrought into a state of habitual dependence upon Russia; and before theresult of the battle of Konieh was known General Muravieff had arrived atConstantinople bringing the offer of Russian help both by land and sea, andtendering his own personal services in the restoration of peace. Mahmud hadto some extent been won over by the Czar's politic forbearance in theexecution of the Treaty of Adrianople. His hatred of Mehemet Ali was aconsuming passion; and in spite of the general conviction both of hispeople and of his advisers that no possible concession to a rebelliousvassal could be so fatal as the protection of the hereditary enemy ofIslam, he was disposed to accept the Russian tender of assistance. As apreliminary, Muravieff was sent to Alexandria with permission to cede Acreto Mehemet Ali, if in return the Viceroy would make over his fleet to theSultan. These were conditions on which no reasonable man could haveexpected that Mehemet would make peace; and the intention of the RussianCourt probably was that Muravieff's mission should fail. The envoy soonreturned to Constantinople announcing that his terms were rejected. Mahmudnow requested that Russian ships might be sent to the Bosphorus, and to thedismay of the French and English embassies a Russian squadron appearedbefore the capital. Admiral Roussin, the French ambassador, addressed aprotest to the Sultan and threatened to leave Constantinople. Hisremonstrances induced Mahmud to consent to some more serious negotiationbeing opened with Mehemet Ali. A French envoy was authorised to promise theViceroy the governorship of Tripoli in Syria as well as Acre; hisovertures, however, were not more acceptable than those of Muravieff, andMehemet openly declared that if peace were not concluded on his own termswithin six weeks, he should order Ibrahim, who had halted at Kutaya, tocontinue his march on the Bosphorus. Thoroughly alarmed at this threat, andbelieving that no Turkish force could keep Ibrahim out of the capital, Mahmud applied to Russia for more ships and also for troops. Again AdmiralRoussin urged upon the Sultan that if Syria could be reconquered only byRussian forces it was more than lost to the Porte. His arguments weresupported by the Divan, and with such effect that a French diplomatist wassent to Ibrahim with power to negotiate for peace on any terms. Preliminaries were signed at Kutaya under French mediation on the 10th ofApril, 1833, by which the Sultan made over to his vassal not only the wholeof Syria but the province of Adana which lies between Mount Taurus and theMediterranean. After some delay these Preliminaries were ratified byMahmud; and Ibrahim, after his dazzling success both in war and indiplomacy, commenced the evacuation of northern Anatolia. [Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, July, 1833. ]For the moment it appeared that French influence had decisively prevailedat Constantinople, and that the troops of the Czar had been summoned fromSebastopol only to be dismissed with the ironical compliments of those whowere 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 fearand irresolution, or whether they had to some extent proceeded from thedesire 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 encampedby the side of the Turks on the eastern shore of the Bosphorus; his shipslay below Constantinople. Here on the 8th of July a Treaty was signed atthe palace of Unkiar Skelessi, [401] in which Russia and Turkey enteredinto a defensive alliance of the most intimate character, each Powerpledging itself to render assistance to the other, not only against theattack of an external enemy, but in every event where its peace andsecurity might be endangered. Russia undertook, in cases where its supportshould be required, to provide whatever amount of troops the Sultan shouldconsider necessary both by sea and land, the Porte being charged with nopart of the expense beyond that of the provisioning of the troops. Theduration of the Treaty was fixed in the first instance for eight years. Asecret article, which, however, was soon afterwards published, declaredthat, in order to diminish the burdens of the Porte, the Czar would notdemand the material help to which the Treaty entitled him; while, insubstitution for such assistance, the Porte undertook, when Russia shouldbe 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 anytime before or since to that complete ascendency at Constantinople whichhas been the modern object of its policy. The success of its diplomatistshad in fact been too great; for, if the abstract right of the Sultan tochoose his own allies had not yet been disputed by Europe at large, theclause in the Treaty which related to the Dardanelles touched the interestsof every Power which possessed a naval station in the Mediterranean. By thepublic law of Europe the Black Sea, which until the eighteenth century wasencompassed entirely by the Sultan's territory, formed no part of the openwaters of the world, but a Turkish lake to which access was given throughthe Dardanelles only at the pleasure of the Porte. When, in the eighteenthcentury, Russia gained a footing on the northern shore of the Euxine, thiscarried with it no right to send war-ships through the straits into theMediterranean, nor had any Power at war with Russia the right to send afleet into the Black Sea otherwise than by the Sultan's consent. The Treatyof Unkiar Skelessi, in making Turkey the ally of Russia against all itsenemies, converted the entrance to the Black Sea into a Russian fortifiedpost, from behind which Russia could freely send forth its ships of warinto the Mediterranean, while its own ports and arsenals remained secureagainst attack. England and France, which were the States whose interestswere principally affected, protested against the Treaty, and stated theyreserved to themselves the right of taking such action in regard to it asoccasion might demand. Nor did the opposition rest with the protests ofdiplomatists. The attention both of the English nation and of itsGovernment was drawn far more than hitherto to the future of the OttomanEmpire. Political writers exposed with unwearied vigour, and not withoutexaggeration, the designs of the Court of St. Petersburg in Asia as well asin Europe; and to this time, rather than to any earlier period, belongs thefirst growth of that strong national antagonism to Russia which found itssatisfaction in the Crimean War, and which has by no means lost its powerat 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 tomaintain the Sultan's power in its integrity; France became in anincreasing degree the patron and the friend of Mehemet Ali. Since theexpedition of Napoleon to Egypt in 1798, which was itself the execution ofa design formed in the reign of Louis XVI. , Egypt had largely retained itshold on the imagination of the leading classes in France. Its monuments, its relics of a mighty past, touched a livelier chord among French men ofletters and science than India has at any time found among ourselves; andalthough the hope of national conquest vanished with Napoleon's overthrow, Egypt continued to afford a field of enterprise to many a civil andmilitary adventurer. Mehemet's army and navy were organised by Frenchofficers; he was surrounded by French agents and men of business; and afterthe conquest of Algiers had brought France on to the southern shore of theMediterranean, the advantages of a close political relation with Egypt didnot escape the notice of statesmen who saw in Gibraltar and Malta the moststriking evidences of English maritime power. Moreover the personal fame ofMehemet strongly affected French opinion. His brilliant military reforms, his vigorous administration, and his specious achievements in financecreated in the minds of those who were too far off to know the effects ofhis tyranny the belief that at the hands of this man the East might yetawaken to new life. Thus, from a real conviction of the superiority ofMehemet's rule over that of the House of Osman no less than fromconsiderations of purely national policy, the French Government, withoutany public or official bond of union, gradually became the acknowledgedsupporters of the Egyptian conqueror, and connected his interests withtheir own. [Rule of Mehemet and Ibrahim. ]Sultan Mahmud had ratified the Preliminaries of Kutaya with wrath in hisheart; and from this time all his energies were bent upon the creation of aforce which should wrest back the lost provinces and take revenge upon hisrebellious vassal. As eager as Mehemet himself to reconstruct his form ofgovernment upon the models of the West, though far less capable ofimpressing upon his work the stamp of a single guiding will, thwartedmoreover by the jealous interference of Russia whenever his reforms seemedlikely to produce any important result, he nevertheless succeeded inintroducing something of European system and discipline into his army underthe guidance of foreign soldiers, among whom was a man then little known, but destined long afterwards to fill Europe with his fame, the Prussianstaff-officer Moltke. On the other side Mehemet and Ibrahim knew well thatthe peace was no more than an armed truce, and that what had been won byarms could only be maintained by constant readiness to meet attack. Underpressure of this military necessity, Ibrahim sacrificed whatever sources ofstrength were open to him in the hatred borne by his new subjects to theTurkish yoke, and in their hopes of relief from oppression under his ownrule. Welcomed at first as a deliverer, he soon proved a heaviertask-master than any who had gone before him. The conscription wasrigorously enforced; taxation became more burdensome; the tribes who hadenjoyed a wild independence in the mountains were disarmed and reduced tothe level of their fellow-subjects. Thus the discontent which had sogreatly facilitated the conquest of the border-provinces soon turnedagainst the conqueror himself, and one uprising after another shookIbrahim's hold upon Mount Lebanon and the Syrian desert. The Sultan watchedeach outbreak against his adversary with grim joy, impatient for the momentwhen the re-organisation of his own forces should enable him to re-enterthe field and to strike an overwhelming blow. [The commerce of the Levant. ]With all its characteristics of superior intelligence in the choice ofmeans, the system of Mehemet All was in its end that of the genuineOriental despot. His final object was to convert as many as possible of hissubjects into soldiers, and to draw into his treasury the profits of thelabour of all the rest. With this aim he gradually ousted from their rightsof proprietorship the greater part of the land-owners of Egypt, and finallyproclaimed the entire soil to be State-domain, appropriating at pricesfixed by himself the whole of its produce. The natural commercialintercourse of his dominions gave place to a system of monopolies carriedon by the Government itself. Rapidly as this system, which was introducedinto the newly-conquered provinces, filled the coffers of Mehemet Ali, itoffered to the Sultan, whose paramount authority was still acknowledged, the means of inflicting a deadly injury upon him by a series of commercialtreaties with the European Powers, granting to western traders a freemarket throughout the Ottoman Empire. Resistance to such a measure wouldexpose 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 onwhich his military power depended. It was probably with this result inview, rather than from any more obvious motive, that in the year 1838 theSultan concluded a new commercial Treaty with England, which was soonfollowed by similar agreements with other States. [Campaign of Nissib, June, 1839. ]The import of the Sultan's commercial policy was not lost upon Mehemet, whohad already determined to declare himself independent. He saw that war wasinevitable, and bade Ibrahim collect his forces in the neighbourhood ofAleppo, while the generals of the Sultan massed on the upper Euphrates thetroops that had been successfully employed in subduing the wild tribes ofKurdistan. The storm was seen to be gathering, and the representatives offoreign Powers urged the Sultan, but in vain, to refrain from an enterprisewhich might shatter his empire. Mahmud was now a dying man. Exhausted byphysical excess and by the stress and passion of his long reign, he bore inhis heart the same unquenchable hatreds as of old; and while assuring theambassadors of his intention to maintain the peace, he despatched a letterto his commander-in-chief, without the knowledge of any single person, ordering him to commence hostilities. The Turkish army crossed the frontieron the 23rd of May, 1839. In the operations which followed, the advice andprotests of Moltke and the other European officers at head-quarters werepersistently disregarded. The Turks were outmanoeuvred and cut off fromtheir communications, and on the 24th of June the onslaught of Ibrahimswept them from their position at Nissib in utter rout. The whole of theirartillery 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 battleof Nissib was fought, and while the messenger who bore the news was stillin Anatolia, he expired, leaving the throne to his son, Abdul Medjid, ayouth of sixteen. Scarcely had the new Sultan been proclaimed when itbecame known that the Admiral, Achmet Fewzi, who had been instructed toattack the Syrian coast, had sailed into the port of Alexandria, and handedover 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 Empirerulerless and without defence by land or sea, contributed ultimately to itspreservation, inasmuch as it impelled the Powers to combined action, which, under less urgent pressure, would probably not have been attainable. On theannouncement of the exorbitant conditions of peace demanded by Mehemet, theambassadors addressed a collective note to the Divan, requesting that noanswer might be made until the Courts had arrived at some commonresolution. Soon afterwards the French and English fleets appeared at theDardanelles, nominally to protect Constantinople against the attack of theViceroy, in reality to guard against any sudden movement on the part ofRussia. This display of force was, however, not necessary, for the Czar, inspite of some expressions to the contrary, had already convinced himselfthat it was impossible to act upon the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi and tomake the protectorate of Turkey the affair of Russia alone. The tone whichhad been taken by the English Government during the last preceding yearsproved that any attempt to exercise exclusive power at Constantinople wouldhave been followed by war with Great Britain, in which most, if not all, ofthe European Powers would have stood on the side of the latter. Abandoningtherefore the hope of attaining sole control, the Russian Governmentaddressed itself to the task of widening as far as possible the existingdivergence between England and France. Nor was this difficult. The Cabinetof the Tuileries desired to see Mehemet Ali issue with increased strengthfrom the conflict, or even to establish his dynasty at Constantinople inplace of the House of Osman. Lord Palmerston, always jealous and suspiciousof Louis Philippe, refused to believe that the growth of Russian powercould be checked by dividing the Ottoman Empire, or that any system ofEastern policy could be safely based on the personal qualities of a rulernow past his seventieth year. [402] He had moreover his own causes ofdiscontent with Mehemet. The possibility of establishing an overland routeto India either by way of the Euphrates or of the Red Sea had lately beenengaging the attention of the English Government, and Mehemet had notimproved his position by raising obstacles to either line of passage. Itwas partly in consequence of the hostility of Mehemet, who was now masterof 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 anddrew nearer to its rival, France persisted in maintaining the claim ofthe Viceroy to extended dominion, the exclusion of France from theEuropean concert was the only possible result. There was no doubt as tothe attitude of the remaining Powers. Metternich, whether from genuinepedantry, or in order to avoid the expression of those fears of Russiawhich really governed his Eastern policy, repeated his threadbareplatitudes on the necessity of supporting legitimate dynasties againstrebels, and spoke of the victor of Konieh and Nissib as if he had been aSpanish constitutionalist or a recalcitrant German professor. The Courtof Berlin followed in the same general course. In all Europe Mehemet Alihad not a single ally, with the exception of the Government of LouisPhilippe. Under these circumstances it was of little avail to the Viceroythat his army stood on Turkish soil without a foe before it, and that theSultan's fleet lay within his own harbour of Alexandria. The intrigues bywhich he hoped to snatch a hasty peace from the inexperience of the youngSultan failed, and he learnt in October that no arrangement which hemight make with the Porte without the concurrence of the Powers would berecognised as valid. In the meantime Russia was suggesting to the EnglishGovernment one project after another for joint military action with theobject of driving Mehemet from Syria and restoring this province to thePorte; and at the beginning of the following year it was determined onMetternich's proposition that a Conference should forthwith be held inLondon for the settlement of Eastern affairs. The irreconcilabledifference between the intentions of France and those of the other Powersat once became evident. France proposed that all Syria and Egypt shouldbe given in hereditary dominion to Mehemet Ali, with no furtherobligation towards the Porte than the payment of a yearly tribute. Thecounter-proposal of England was that Mehemet, recognising the Sultan'sauthority, should have the hereditary government of Egypt alone, that heshould entirely withdraw from all Northern Syria, and hold Palestine onlyas an ordinary governor appointed by the Porte for his lifetime. To thisproposition all the Powers with the exception of France gave theirassent. Continued negotiation only brought into stronger relief theobstinacy of Lord Palmerston, and proved the impossibility of attainingcomplete agreement. At length, when it had been discovered that theFrench Cabinet was attempting to conduct a separate mediation, the FourPowers, without going through the form of asking for French sanction, signed on the 15th of July a Treaty with the Sultan pledging themselvesto enforce upon Mehemet Ali the terms arranged. The Sultan undertook inthe first instance to offer Mehemet Egypt in perpetuity and southernSyria 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 stillremained obstinate, that offer in its turn was to be withdrawn, and theSultan and the Allies were to take such measures as the interests of theOttoman Empire might require. [403][Warlike spirit in France, 1840. ]The publication of this Treaty, excluding France as it did from the concertof Europe, produced a storm of indignation at Paris. Thiers, who more thanany man had by his writings stimulated the spirit of aggressive warfareamong the French people and revived the worship of Napoleon, was now at thehead of the Government. His jealousy for the prestige of France, hiscomparative indifference to other matters when once the national honourappeared to be committed, his sanguine estimate of the power of hiscountry, rendered him a peculiarly dangerous Minister at the existingcrisis. It was not the wrongs or the danger of Mehemet Ali, but the slightoffered to France, and the revived League of the Powers which had humbledit in 1814, that excited the passion of the Minister and the nation. Syriawas forgotten; the cry was for the recovery of the frontier of the Rhine, and for revenge for Waterloo. New regiments were enrolled, the fleetstrengthened, and the long-delayed fortification of Paris begun. Thiershimself probably looked forward to a campaign in Italy, anticipating thatsuccessfully conducted by Napoleon III. In 1859, rather than to an attackupon Prussia; but the general opinion both in France itself and in otherstates was that, if war should break out, an invasion of Germany wasinevitable. The prospect of this invasion roused in a manner littleexpected the spirit of the German people. Even in the smaller states, andin the Rhenish provinces themselves, which for twenty years had shared thefortunes of France, and in which the introduction of Prussian rule in 1814had been decidedly unpopular, a strong national movement carried everythingbefore it; and the year 1840 added to the patriotic minstrelsy of Germany awar-song, written by a Rhenish citizen, not less famous than those of 1813and 1870. [404] That there were revolutionary forces smouldering throughoutEurope, from which France might in a general war have gained someassistance, the events of 1848 sufficiently proved; but to no singleGovernment would a revolutionary war have been fraught with more imminentperil than to that of France itself, and to no one was this conviction morehabitually present than to King Louis Philippe. Relying upon his influencewithin the Chamber of Deputies, itself a body representing the wealth andthe caution rather than the hot spirit of France, the King refused to readat the opening of the session in October the speech drawn up for him byThiers, and accepted the consequent resignation of the Ministry. Guizot, who was ambassador in London, and an advocate for submission to the will ofEurope, was called to office, and succeeded after long debate in gaining avote of confidence from the Chamber. Though preparations for war continued, a policy of peace was now assured. Mehemet Ali was left to his fate; andthe stubborn assurance of Lord Palmerston, which had caused so muchannoyance to the English Ministry itself, received a striking justificationin 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. WhilePrussia kept guard on the Rhine, and Russia undertook to protectConstantinople against any forward movement of Ibrahim, an Anglo-Austriannaval squadron combined with a Turkish land-force in attacking the Syriancoast-towns. The mountain-tribes of the interior were again in revolt. Armssupplied to them by the Allies, and the insurrection soon spread over thegreater part of Syria. Ibrahim prepared for an obstinate defence, but hisdispositions were frustrated by the extension of the area of conflict, andhe was unable to prevent the coast-towns from falling one after anotherinto the hands of the Allies. On the capture of Acre by Sir Charles Napierhe abandoned all hope of maintaining himself any longer in Syria, and madehis way with the wreck of his army towards the Egyptian frontier. Napierhad already arrived before Alexandria, and there executed a convention withthe Viceroy, by which the latter, abandoning all claim upon his otherprovinces, and undertaking to restore the Turkish fleet, was assured of thehereditary possession of Egypt. The convention was one which the Englishadmiral had no authority to conclude, but it contained substantially theterms which the Allies intended to enforce; and after Mehemet had made aformal act of submission to the Sultan, the hereditary government of Egyptwas conferred upon himself and his family by a decree published by theSultan and sanctioned by the Powers. This compromise had been proposed bythe French Government after the expiry of the twenty days named in theTreaty of July, and immediately before the fall of M. Thiers, butPalmerston would not then listen to any demand made under open or impliedthreats of war. Since that time a new and pacific Ministry had come intooffice; it was no part of Palmerston's policy to keep alive the antagonismbetween 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 agreater capacity for government than any Oriental of that age. It remainedfor the Powers to place upon record some authoritative statement of the lawrecognised by Europe with regard to the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. Russiahad already virtually consented to the abrogation of the Treaty of UnkiarSkelessi. It now joined with all the other Powers, including France, in adeclaration that the ancient rule of the Ottoman Empire which forbade thepassage of these straits to the war-ships of all nations, except when thePorte itself should be at war, was accepted by Europe at large. Russia thussurrendered its chance of gaining by any separate arrangement with Turkeythe permanent right of sending its fleets from the Black Sea into theMediterranean, and so becoming a Mediterranean Power. On the other hand, Sebastopol and the arsenals of the Euxine remained safe against the attackof any maritime Power, unless Turkey itself should take up arms against theCzar. 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 anopen question whether the removal of all international restrictions uponthe passage of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles would not be more to theadvantage of England than of its rival. This opinion, however, had not beenurged before the Crimean War, nor has it yet been accepted in our owncountry. [Turkey after 1840. ][Legislation of Reschid. ]The conclusion of the struggle of 1840 marked with great definiteness thereal position which the Ottoman Empire was henceforth to occupy in itsrelations to the western world. Rescued by Europe at large from thealternatives of destruction at the hands of Ibrahim or complete vassalageunder Russia, the Porte entered upon the condition nominally of anindependent European State, really of a State existing under the protectionof Europe, and responsible to Europe as well for its domestic government asfor its alliances and for the conduct of its foreign policy. The necessityof conciliating the public opinion of the West was well understood by theTurkish statesman who had taken the leading part in the negotiations whichfreed the Porte from dependence upon Russia. Reschid Pasha, the younger, Foreign Minister at the accession of the new Sultan, had gained in anunusual degree the regard and the confidence of the European Ministers withwhom, as a diplomatist, he had been brought into contact. As the author ofa wide system of reforms, it was his ambition so to purify and renovate theinternal administration of the Ottoman Empire that the contrasts which itpresented to the civilised order of the West should gradually disappear, and that Turkey should become not only in name but in reality a member ofthe European world. Stimulated no doubt by the achievements of Mehemet Ali, and anxious to win over to the side of the Porte the interest whichMehemet's partial adoption of European methods and ideas had excited on hisbehalf, Reschid in his scheme of reform paid an ostentatious homage to theprinciples of western administration and law, proclaiming the security ofperson and property, prohibiting the irregular infliction of punishment, recognising the civil rights of Christians and Jews, and transferring thecollection of taxes from the provincial governors to the officers of thecentral authority. The friends of the Ottoman State, less experienced thenthan now in the value of laws made in a society where there exists no powerthat can enforce them, and where the agents of government are themselvesthe most lawless of all the public enemies, hailed in Reschid's enlightenedlegislation the opening of a new epoch in the life of the Christian andOriental races subject to the Sultan. But the fall of the Minister before apalace-intrigue soon proved on how slight a foundation these hopes werebuilt. Like other Turkish reformers, Reschid had entered upon a hopelesstask; and the name of the man who was once honoured as the regenerator of agreat Empire is now almost forgotten. CHAPTER XVIII. Europe during the Thirty-years' Peace--Italy and Austria--Mazzini--TheHouse of Savoy--Gioberti--Election of Pius IX. --Reforms expected--Revolution at Palermo--Agitation in Northern Italy--Lombardy--State ofthe Austrian Empire--Growth of Hungarian National Spirit--The Magyars andSlavs--Transylvania--Parties among the Magyars--Kossuth--The SlavicNational Movements in Austria--The Government enters on Reform inHungary--Policy of the Opposition--The Rural System of Austria--Insurrection in Galicia: the Nobles and the Peasants--AgrarianEdict--Public Opinion in Vienna--Prussia--Accession and Character of KingFrederick William IV. --Convocation of the United Diet--Its Debates andDissolution--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 thiscentury is the sense of unrest. The long period of European peace whichbegan in 1815 was not one of internal repose; the very absence of thoseengrossing and imperious interests which belong to a time of warfare gavefreer play to the feelings of discontent and the vague longings for abetter political order which remained behind after the convulsions of therevolutionary epoch and the military rule of Napoleon had passed away. During thirty years of peace the breach had been widening between thoseGovernments which still represented the system of 1815, and the peoplesover whom they ruled. Ideas of liberty, awakenings of national sense, werefar more widely diffused in Europe than at the time of the revolutionarywar. The seed then prematurely forced into an atmosphere of storm andreaction had borne its fruit: other growths, fertilised or accelerated byWestern Liberalism, but not belonging to the same family, were springing upin unexpected strength, and in regions which had hitherto lain outside themovement of the modern world. New forces antagonistic to Government hadcome into being, penetrating an area unaffected by the constitutionalstruggles of the Mediterranean States, or by the weaker political effortsof Germany. In the homes of the Magyar and the Slavic subjects of Austria, so torpid throughout the agitation of an earlier time, the passion ofnationality was every hour gaining new might. The older popular causes, vanquished for the moment by one reaction after another, had silentlyestablished a far stronger hold on men's minds. Working, some in exile andconspiracy, others through such form of political literature as thejealousy of Governments permitted, the leaders of the democratic movementupon the Continent created a power before which the established order atlength succumbed. They had not created, nor was it possible under thecircumstances that they should create, an order which was capable of takingits place. [Italy. 1831-1848. ]Italy, rather than France, forms the central figure in any retrospect ofEurope immediately before 1848 in which the larger forces at work are notobscured by those for the moment more prominent. The failure of theinsurrection of 1831 had left Austria more visibly than before master overthe Italian people even in those provinces in which Austria was notnominally sovereign. It had become clear that no effort after reform couldbe successful either in the Papal States or in the kingdom of Naples solong as Austria held Lombardy and Venice. The expulsion of the foreignerwas therefore not merely the task of those who sought to give the Italianrace its separate and independent national existence, it was the task ofall who would extinguish oppression and misgovernment in any part of theItalian peninsula. Until the power of Austria was broken, it was vain totake up arms against the tyranny of the Duke of Modena or any othercontemptible oppressor. Austria itself had twice taught this lesson; and ifthe restoration of Neapolitan despotism in 1821 could be justified by thedisorderly character of the Government then suppressed, the circumstancesattending the restoration of the Pope's authority in 1831 had extinguishedAustria's claim to any sort of moral respect; for Metternich himself hadunited with the other European Courts in declaring the necessity forreforms in the Papal Government, and of these reforms, though a singleearnest word from Austria would have enforced their execution, not one hadbeen carried into effect. Gradually, but with increasing force as eachunhappy year passed by, the conviction gained weight among all men ofserious thought that the problem to be faced was nothing less than thedestruction of the Austrian yoke. Whether proclaimed as an article of faithor veiled in diplomatic reserve, this belief formed the common ground amongmen whose views on the immediate future of Italy differed in almost everyother particular. [Mazzini. ]Three main currents of opinion are to be traced in the ferment of ideaswhich preceded the Italian revolution of 1848. At a time not rich inintellectual or in moral power, the most striking figure among those whoare justly honoured as the founders of Italian independence is perhaps thatof Mazzini. Exiled during nearly the whole of his mature life, aconspirator in the eyes of all Governments, a dreamer in the eyes of theworld, Mazzini was a prophet or an evangelist among those whom hisinfluence led to devote themselves to the one cause of their country'sregeneration. No firmer faith, no nobler disinterestedness, ever animatedthe saint or the patriot; and if in Mazzini there was also something of thevisionary and the fanatic, the force with which he grasped the two vitalconditions of Italian revival--the expulsion of the foreigner and theestablishment of a single national Government--proves him to have been athinker of genuine political insight. Laying the foundation of his creeddeep in the moral nature of man, and constructing upon this basis a fabricnot of rights but of duties, he invested the political union with theimmediateness, the sanctity, and the beauty of family life. With him, tolive, to think, to hope, was to live, to think, to hope for Italy; and theItaly of his ideal was a Republic embracing every member of the race, purged of the priestcraft and the superstition which had degraded the manto the slave, indebted to itself alone for its independence, andconsolidated by the reign of equal law. The rigidity with which Mazziniadhered to his own great project in its completeness, and his impatiencewith any bargaining away of national rights, excluded him from the work ofthose practical politicians and men of expedients who in 1859 effected withforeign aid the first step towards Italian union; but the influence of histeaching and his organisation in preparing his countrymen for independencewas immense; and the dynasty which has rendered to United Italy serviceswhich Mazzini thought impossible, owes to this great Republican scarcelyless than to its ablest friends. [Hopes of Piedmont. ]Widely separated from the school of Mazzini in temper and intention was thegroup of politicians and military men, belonging mostly to Piedmont, wholooked to the sovereign and the army of this State as the one hope of Italyin its struggle against foreign rule. The House of Savoy, though foreign inits origin, was, and had been for centuries, a really national dynasty. Itwas, moreover, by interest and traditional policy, the rival rather thanthe friend of Austria in Northern Italy. If the fear of revolution had attimes brought the Court of Turin into close alliance with Vienna, theconnection had but thinly veiled the lasting antagonism of two Stateswhich, as neighbours, had habitually sought expansion each at the other'scost. Lombardy, according to the expression of an older time, was theartichoke which the Kings of Piedmont were destined to devour leaf by leaf. Austria, on the other hand, sought extension towards the Alps: it had in1799 clearly shown its intention of excluding the House of Savoy altogetherfrom the Italian mainland; and the remembrance of this epoch had led therestored dynasty in 1815 to resist the plans of Metternich for establishinga league of all the princes of Italy under Austria's protection. Thesovereign, moreover, who after the failure of the constitutional movementof 1821 had mounted the throne surrounded by Austrian bayonets, was nolonger alive. Charles Albert of Carignano, who had at that time played soambiguous a part, and whom Metternich had subsequently endeavoured toexclude from the succession, was on the throne. He had made his peace withabsolutism by fighting in Spain against the Cortes in 1823; and since hisaccession to the throne he had rigorously suppressed the agitation ofMazzini's partizans within his own dominions. But in spite of strongclerical and reactionary influences around him, he had lately shown anindependence of spirit in his dealings with Austria which raised him in theestimation of his subjects; and it was believed that his opinions had beendeeply affected by the predominance which the idea of national independencewas now gaining over that of merely democratic change. If the earliercareer of Charles Albert himself cast some doubt upon his personalsincerity, and much more upon his constancy of purpose, there was at leastin Piedmont an army thoroughly national in its sentiment, and capable oftaking the lead whenever the opportunity should arise for uniting Italyagainst the foreigner. In no other Italian State was there an effectivemilitary 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 thatrepresented in the writings of Gioberti, the depicter of a new and gloriousItaly, regenerated not by philosophic republicanism or the sword of atemporal monarch, but by the moral force of a reformed and reformingPapacy. The conception of the Catholic Church as a great Liberal power, strange and fantastic as it now appears, was no dream of an isolatedItalian enthusiast; it was an idea which, after the French Revolution of1830, and the establishment of a government at once anti-clerical andanti-democratic, powerfully influenced some of the best minds in France, and found in Montalembert and Lamennais exponents who commanded the ear ofEurope. If the corruption of the Papacy had been at once the spiritual andthe political death of Italy, its renovation in purity and in strengthwould be also the resurrection of the Italian people. Other lands hadsought, and sought in vain, to work out their problems under the guidanceof leaders antagonistic to the Church, and of popular doctrines divorcedfrom religious faith. To Italy belonged the prerogative of spiritual power. By this power, aroused from the torpor of ages, and speaking, as it hadonce spoken, to the very conscience of mankind, the gates of a gloriousfuture would be thrown open. Conspirators might fret, and politiciansscheme, but the day on which the new life of Italy would begin would bethat day when the head of the Church, taking his place as chief of afederation of Italian States, should raise the banner of freedom andnational right, and princes and people alike should follow theall-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 gossipingbarber, was not an alluring emblem of the Church of the future. But in 1846Pope Gregory XVI. , who for the last five years had been engaged in oneincessant struggle against insurgents, conspirators, and reformers, andwhose prisons were crowded with the best of his subjects, passed away. [405] His successor, Mastai Ferretti, Bishop of Imola, was elected underthe title of Pius IX. , after the candidate favoured by Austria had failedto secure the requisite number of votes (June 17). The choice of thiskindly and popular prelate was to some extent a tribute to Italian feeling;and for the next eighteen months it appeared as it Gioberti had reallydivined the secret of the age. The first act of the new Pope was thepublication of a universal amnesty for political offences. The prison doorsthroughout his dominions were thrown open, and men who had been sentencedto confinement for life returned in exultation to their homes. The actcreated a profound impression throughout Italy, and each good-humouredutterance of Pius confirmed the belief that great changes were at hand. Awild enthusiasm seized upon Rome. The population abandoned itself tofestivals in honour of the Pontiff and of the approaching restoration ofRoman liberty. Little was done; not much was actually promised; everythingwas believed. The principle of representative government was discerned inthe new Council of State now placed by the side of the College ofCardinals; a more serious concession was made to popular feeling in thepermission given to the citizens of Rome, and afterwards to those of theprovinces, to enrol themselves in a civic guard. But the climax ofexcitement was reached when, in answer to a threatening movement ofAustria, occasioned by the growing agitation throughout Central Italy, thePapal Court protested against the action of its late protector. By theTreaties of Vienna Austria had gained the right to garrison the citadel ofFerrara, though this town lay within the Ecclesiastical States. Placing anew interpretation on the expression used in the Treaties, the AustrianGovernment occupied the town of Ferrara itself (June 17th, 1847). Themovement was universally understood to be the preliminary to a newoccupation of the Papal States, like that of 1831; and the protests of thePope against the violation of his territory gave to the controversy aEuropean importance. The English and French fleets appeared at Naples; theKing of Sardinia openly announced his intention to take the field againstAustria if war should break out. By the efforts of neutral Powers acompromise on the occupation of Ferrara was at length arranged; but thepassions which had been excited were not appeased, and the Pope remained inpopular imagination the champion of Italian independence against Austria, as well as the apostle of constitutional Government and the rights of thepeople. [Revolution at Palermo, Jan. , 1848. ]In the meantime the agitation begun in Rome was spreading through the northand the south of the peninsula, and beyond the Sicilian Straits. Thecentenary of the expulsion of the Austrians from Genoa in December, 1746, was celebrated throughout central Italy with popular demonstrations whichgave Austria warning of the storm about to burst upon it. In the south, however, impatience under domestic tyranny was a far more powerful forcethan the distant hope of national independence. Sicily had never forgottenthe separate rights which it had once enjoyed, and the constitution givento it under the auspices of England in 1812. Communications passed betweenthe Sicilian leaders and the opponents of the Bourbon Government on themainland, and in the autumn of 1847 simultaneous risings took place inCalabria and at Messina. These were repressed without difficulty; but thefire smouldered far and wide, and on the 13th of January, 1848, thepopulation of Palermo rose in revolt. For fourteen days the conflictbetween the people and the Neapolitan troops continued. The city wasbombarded, but in the end the people were victorious, and a provisionalgovernment was formed by the leaders of the insurrection. One Sicilian townafter another followed the example of the capital, and expelled itsNeapolitan garrison. Threatened by revolution in Naples itself, KingFerdinand II. , grandson of the despot of 1821, now imitated the policy ofhis predecessor, and proclaimed a constitution. A Liberal Ministry wasformed, but no word was said as to the autonomy claimed by Sicily, andpromised, as it would seem, by the leaders of the popular party on themainland. After the first excitement of success was past, it became clearthat the Sicilians were as widely at variance with the newly-formedGovernment at Naples as with that which they had overthrown. [Agitation in Austrian Italy. ]The insurrection of Palermo gave a new stimulus and imparted more ofrevolutionary colour to the popular movement throughout Italy. Constitutions were granted in Piedmont and Tuscany. In the Austrianprovinces national exasperation against the rule of the foreigner grewdaily more menacing. Radetzky, the Austrian Commander-in-chief, had longforeseen the impending struggle, and had endeavoured, but not with completesuccess, to impress his own views upon the imperial Government. Verona hadbeen made the centre of a great system of fortifications, and the strengthof the army under Radetzky's command had been considerably increased, butit was not until the eleventh hour that Metternich abandoned the hope oftiding over difficulties by his old system of police and spies, andpermitted the establishment of undisguised military rule. In order toinjure the finances of Austria, a general resolution had been made by thepatriotic societies of Upper Italy to abstain from the use of tobacco, fromwhich the Government drew a large part of its revenue. On the first Sundayin 1848 Austrian officers, smoking in the streets of Milan, were attackedby the people. The troops were called to arms: a conflict took place, andenough blood was shed to give to the tumult the importance of an actualrevolt. In Padua and elsewhere similar outbreaks followed. Radetzky issueda general order to his troops, declaring that the Emperor was determined todefend his Italian dominion whether against an external or domestic foe. Martial law was proclaimed; and for a moment, although Piedmont gave signsof throwing itself into the Italian movement, the awe of Austria's militarypower hushed the rising tempest. A few weeks more revealed to an astonishedworld the secret that the Austrian State, so great and so formidable in theeyes 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 realassimilative power or any high intelligence in administration, that theHouse of Hapsburg owed, during the eighteenth century, the continued unionof that motley of nations or races which successive conquests, marriages, and treaties had brought under its dominion. The violence of the attackmade by the Emperor Joseph upon all provincial rights first re-awakened theslumbering spirit of Hungary; but the national movement of that time, whichexcited such strong hopes and alarms, had been succeeded by a long periodof stagnation, and during the Napoleonic wars the repression of everythingthat appealed to any distinctively national spirit had become more avowedlythan before the settled principle of the Austrian Court. In 1812 theHungarian Diet had resisted the financial measures of the Government. Theconsequence was that, in spite of the law requiring its convocation everythree years, the Diet was not again summoned till 1825. During theintermediate period, the Emperor raised taxes and levies by edict alone. Deprived of its constitutional representation, the Hungarian nobilitypursued its opposition to the encroachments of the Crown in the Sessions ofeach county. At these assemblies, to which there existed no parallel in thewestern and more advanced States of the Continent, each resident land-ownerwho belonged to the very numerous caste of the noblesse was entitled tospeak and to vote. Retaining, in addition to the right of free discussionand petition, the appointment of local officials, as well as a considerableshare in the actual administration, the Hungarian county-assemblies, handing down a spirit of rough independence from an immemorial past, wereprobably the hardiest relic of self-government existing in any of the greatmonarchical States of Europe. Ignorant, often uncouth in their habits, oppressive to their peasantry, and dominated by the spirit of race andcaste, the mass of the Magyar nobility had indeed proved as impervious tothe humanising influences of the eighteenth century as they had to thesolicitations of despotism. The Magnates, or highest order of noblesse, whoformed a separate chamber in the Diet, had been to some extentdenationalised; they were at once more European in their culture, and moresubmissive to the Austrian Court. In banishing political discussion fromthe Diet to the County Sessions, the Emperor's Government had intensifiedthe provincial spirit which it sought to extinguish. Too numerous to be wonover by personal inducements, and remote from the imperial agencies whichhad worked so effectively through the Chamber of Magnates, the lessernobility of Hungary during these years of absolutism carried the habit ofpolitical discussion to their homes, and learnt to baffle the imperialGovernment by withholding all help and all information from its subordinateagents. Each county-assembly became a little Parliament, and a centre ofresistance to the usurpation of the Crown. The stimulus given to thenational spirit by this struggle against unconstitutional rule was seen notless in the vigorous attacks made upon the Government on the re-assemblingof the Diet in 1825, than in the demand that Magyar, and not Latin asheretofore, should be the language used in recording the proceedings of theDiet, and in which communications should pass between the Upper and theLower House. [Magyars and Slavs. ]There lay in this demand for the recognition of the national language thegerm of a conflict of race against race which was least of all suspected bythose by whom the demand was made. Hungary, as a political unity, comprised, besides the Slavic kingdom of Croatia, wide regions in which theinhabitants were of Slavic or Roumanian race, and where the Magyar wasknown only as a feudal lord. The district in which the population at largebelonged to the Magyar stock did not exceed one-half of the kingdom. Forthe other races of Hungary, who were probably twice as numerous asthemselves, the Magyars entertained the utmost contempt, attributing tothem the moral qualities of the savage, and denying to them the possessionof any nationality whatever. In a country combining so many elementsill-blended with one another, and all alike subject to a German Court atVienna, Latin, as the language of the Church and formerly the language ofinternational communication, had served well as a neutral means ofexpression in public affairs. There might be Croatian deputies in the Dietwho could not speak Magyar; the Magyars could not understand Croatian; bothcould understand and could without much effort express themselves in thespecies of Latin which passed muster at Presburg and at Vienna. Yet nofreedom of handling could convert a dead language into a living one; andwhen the love of country and of ancient right became once more among theMagyars an inspiring passion, it naturally sought a nobler and morespontaneous utterance than dog-latin. Though no law was passed upon thesubject in the Parliament in which it was first mooted, speakers in theDiet of 1832 used their mother-tongue; and when the Viennese Governmentforbade the publication of the debates, reports were circulated inmanuscript through the country by Kossuth, a young deputy, who after thedissolution of the Diet in 1836 paid for his defiance of the Emperor bythree years' imprisonment. [Hungary after 1830. ][The Diet of 1832-36. ][Széchenyi. ]Hungary now seemed to be entering upon an epoch of varied and rapidnational development. The barriers which separated it from the Westernworld were disappearing. The literature, the ideas, the inventions ofWestern Europe were penetrating its archaic society, and transforming amovement which in its origin had been conservative and aristocratic intoone of far-reaching progress and reform. Alone among the opponents ofabsolute power on the Continent, the Magyars had based their resistance onpositive constitutional right, on prescription, and the settled usage ofthe past; and throughout the conflict with the Crown between 1812 and 1825legal right was on the side not of the Emperor but of those whom heattempted to coerce. With excellent judgment the Hungarian leaders hadduring these years abstained from raising any demand for reforms, appreciating the advantage of a purely defensive position in a combat witha Court pledged in the eyes of all Europe, as Austria was, to the defenceof legitimate rights. This policy had gained its end; the Emperor, afterthirteen years of conflict, had been forced to re-convoke the Diet, and toabandon the hope of effecting a work in which his uncle, Joseph II. , hadfailed. But, the constitution once saved, that narrow and exclusive body ofrights for which the nobility had contended no longer satisfied the needsor the conscience of the time. [406] Opinion was moving fast; the claims ofthe towns and of the rural population were making themselves felt; theagitation that followed the overthrow of the Bourbons in 1830 reachedHungary too, not so much through French influence as through the Polish warof independence, in which the Magyars saw a struggle not unlike their own, enlisting their warmest sympathies for the Polish armies so long as theykept the field, and for the exiles who came among them when the conflictwas over. By the side of the old defenders of class-privilege there arosemen imbued with the spirit of modern Liberalism. The laws governing therelation of the peasant to his lord, which remained nearly as they had beenleft by Maria Theresa, were dealt with by the Diet of 1832 in so liberal aspirit that the Austrian Government, formerly far in advance of Hungarianopinion on this subject, refused its assent to many of the measures passed. Great schemes of social and material improvement also aroused the publichopes in these years. The better minds became conscious of the real aspectof Hungarian life in comparison with that of civilised Europe--of itspoverty, its inertia, its boorishness. Extraordinary energy was thrown intothe work of advance by Count Széchenyi, a nobleman whose imagination hadbeen fired by the contrast which the busy industry of Great Britain and thepractical interests of its higher classes presented to the torpor of hisown country. It is to him that Hungary owes the bridge uniting its doublecapital at Pesth, and that Europe owes the unimpeded navigation of theDanube, which he first rendered possible by the destruction of the rocksknown as the Iron Gates at Orsova. Sanguine, lavishly generous, an ardentpatriot, Széchenyi endeavoured to arouse men of his own rank, the great andthe powerful in Hungary, to the sense of what was due from them to theircountry as leaders in its industrial development. He was no revolutionist, nor was he an enemy to Austria. A peaceful political future would best haveaccorded with his own designs for raising Hungary to its due place amongnations. [Transylvania. ]That the Hungarian movement of this time was converted from one of fruitfulprogress into an embittered political conflict ending in civil war was due, among other causes, to the action of the Austrian Cabinet itself. Whereverconstitutional right existed, there Austria saw a natural enemy. Theprovince of Transylvania, containing a mixed population of Magyars, Germans, and Roumanians, had, like Hungary, a Diet of its own, which Dietought to have been summoned every year. It was, however, not once assembledbetween 1811 and 1834. In the agitation at length provoked in Transylvaniaby this disregard of constitutional right, the Magyar element naturallytook the lead, and so gained complete ascendancy in the province. When theDiet met in 1834, its language and conduct were defiant in the highestdegree. It was speedily dissolved, and the scandal occasioned by itsproceedings disturbed the last days of the Emperor Francis, who died in1835, leaving the throne to his son Ferdinand, an invalid incapable of anyserious exertion. It soon appeared that nothing was changed in theprinciples of the Imperial Government, and that whatever hopes had beenformed of the establishment of a freer system under the new reign weredelusive. 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 theredelivered speeches against the Court which led to his being arrested andbrought to trial for high treason. His cause was taken up by the HungarianDiet, as one in which the rights of the local assemblies were involved. Theplea of privilege was, however, urged in vain, and the sentence of exilewhich was passed upon Count Wesselényi became a new source of contentionbetween 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, Kossuthundertook the direction of a Magyar journal at Pesth, which at once gainedan immense influence throughout the country. The spokesman of a newgeneration, Kossuth represented an entirely different order of ideas fromthose of the orthodox defenders of the Hungarian Constitution. They hadbeen conservative and aristocratic; he was revolutionary: their weapons hadbeen drawn from the storehouse of Hungarian positive law; his inspirationwas from the Liberalism of western Europe. Thus within the national partyitself there grew up sections in more or less pronounced antagonism to oneanother, though all were united by a passionate devotion to Hungary and byan unbounded faith in its future. Széchenyi, and those who with himsubordinated political to material ends, regarded Kossuth as a dangeroustheorist. Between the more impetuous and the more cautious reformers stoodthe recognised Parliamentary leaders of the Liberals, among whom Deák hadalready given proof of political capacity of no common order. In Kossuth'sjournal the national problems of the time were discussed both by hisopponents and by his friends. Publicity gave greater range as well asgreater animation to the conflict of ideas; and the rapid development ofopinion during these years was seen in the large and ambitious measureswhich occupied the Diet of 1843. Electoral and municipal reform, thecreation of a code of criminal law, the introduction of trial by jury, theabolition of the immunity of the nobles from taxation; all these, andsimilar legislative projects, displayed at once the energy of the time andthe influence of western Europe in transforming the political conceptionsof the Hungarian nation. Hitherto the forty-three Free Cities had possessedbut a single vote in the Diet, as against the sixty-three votes possessedby the Counties. It was now generally admitted that this anomaly could notcontinue; but inasmuch as civic rights were themselves monopolised by smallprivileged orders among the townsmen, the problem of constitutional reformcarried with it that of a reform of the municipalities. Hungary in shortwas now face to face with the task of converting its ancient system of therepresentation of the privileged orders into the modern system of arepresentation of the nation at large. Arduous at every epoch and in everycountry, this work was one of almost insuperable difficulty in Hungary, through the close connection with the absolute monarchy of Austria; throughthe existence of a body of poor noblesse, numbered at two hundred thousand, who, though strong in patriotic sentiment, bitterly resented any attackupon their own freedom from taxation; and above all through the variety ofraces in Hungary, and the attitude assumed by the Magyars, as the dominantnationality, towards the Slavs around them. In proportion as the energy ofthe Magyars and their confidence in the victory of the national causemounted high, so rose their disdain of all claims beside their own withinthe Hungarian kingdom. It was resolved by the Lower Chamber of the Diet of1843 that no language but Magyar should be permitted in debate, and that atthe end of ten years every person not capable of speaking the Magyarlanguage should be excluded from all public employment. The Magnatessoftened the latter provision by excepting from it the holders of merelylocal offices in Slavic districts; against the prohibition of Latin in theDiet the Croatians appealed to the Emperor. A rescript arrived from Viennaplacing a veto upon the resolution. So violent was the storm excited in theDiet itself by this rescript, and so threatening the language of thenational leaders outside, that the Cabinet, after a short interval, revokedits decision, and accepted a compromise which, while establishing Magyar asthe official language of the kingdom, and requiring that it should betaught even in Croatian schools, permitted the use of Latin in the Diet forthe next six years. In the meantime the Diet had shouted down every speakerwho began with the usual Latin formula, and fighting had taken place inAgram, 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 claimsbut those of one race. The same quickening breath which had stirred theMagyar nation to new life had also passed over the branches of the Slavicfamily within the Austrian dominions far and near. In Bohemia a revival ofinterest in the Czech language and literature, which began about 1820, hadin the following decade gained a distinctly political character. Societiesoriginally or professedly founded for literary objects had become thecentres of a popular movement directed towards the emancipation of theCzech elements in Bohemia from German ascendancy, and the restoration ofsomething of a national character to the institutions of the kingdom. Amongthe southern Slavs, with whom Hungary was more directly concerned, thenational movement first became visible rather later. Its earliestmanifestations took, just as in Bohemia, a literary or linguistic form. Projects for the formation of a common language which, under the name ofIllyrian, should draw together all the Slavic populations between theAdriatic 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 tothe Turkish Government, was abandoned in obedience to instructions fromVienna; and the movement first gained political importance when its scopewas limited to the Croatian and Slavonic districts of Hungary, and it wasendowed with the distinct task of resisting the imposition of Magyar as anofficial language. In addition to their representation in the Diet of theKingdom at Presburg, the Croatian landowners had their own Provincial Dietat Agram. In this they possessed not only a common centre of action, but anorgan of communication with the Imperial Government at Vienna, whichrendered them some support in their resistance to Magyar pretensions. Laterevents gave currency to the belief that a conflict of races in Hungary wasdeliberately stimulated by the Austrian Court in its own interest. But thewhole temper and principle of Metternich's rule was opposed to thedevelopment of national spirit, whether in one race or another; and thepatronage which the Croats appeared at this time to receive at Vienna wasprobably no more than an instinctive act of conservatism, intended tomaintain the balance of interests, and to reduce within the narrowestpossible limits such changes as might prove inevitable. [Agitation after 1843. ]Of all the important measures of reform which were brought before theHungarian Diet of 1843, one alone had become law. The rest were eitherrejected by the Chamber of Magnates after passing the Lower House, or werethrown out in the Lower House in spite of the approval of the majority, inconsequence of peremptory instructions sent to Presburg by the countyassemblies. The representative of a Hungarian constituency was not free tovote at his discretion; he was the delegate of the body of nobles whichsent him, and was legally bound to give his vote in accordance with theinstructions which he might from time to time receive. However zealous theLegislature itself, it was therefore liable to be paralysed by externalpressure as soon as any question was raised which touched the privileges ofthe noble caste. This was especially the case with all projects involvingthe expenditure of public revenue. Until the nobles bore their share oftaxation it was impossible that Hungary should emerge from a condition ofbeggarly need; yet, be the inclination of the Diet what it might, it wascontrolled by bodies of stubborn squires or yeomen in each county, whofully understood their own power, and stoutly forbade the passing of anymeasure which imposed a share of the public burdens upon themselves. Theimpossibility of carrying out reforms tinder existing conditions had beendemonstrated by the failures of 1843. In order to overcome the obstructionas well of the Magnates as of the county assemblies, it was necessary thatan appeal should be made to the country at large, and that a force ofpublic sentiment should be aroused which should both overmaster theexisting array of special interests, and give birth to legislation mergingthem for the future in a comprehensive system of really nationalinstitutions. To this task the Liberal Opposition addressed itself; andalthough large differences existed within the party, and the action ofKossuth, who now exchanged the career of the journalist for that of theorator, was little fettered by the opinions of his colleagues, the generalresult did not disappoint the hopes that had been formed. Politicalassociations and clubs took vigorous root in the country. The magic ofKossuth'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 throwall 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 wereinevitable; and at the instance of the more intelligent among theConservative party in Hungary the Imperial Government resolved to enter thelists with a policy of reform, and, if possible, to wrest the helm from themen who were becoming masters of the nation. In order to secure a majorityin the Diet, it was deemed requisite by the Government first to gain apredominant influence in the county-assemblies. As a preliminary step, mostof the Lieutenants of counties, to whose high dignity no practicalfunctions attached, were removed from their posts, and superseded by paidadministrators, appointed from Vienna. Count Apponyi, one of the mostvigorous of the conservative and aristocratic reformers, was placed at thehead of the Ministry. In due time the proposals of the Government were madepublic. They comprised the taxation of the nobles, a reform of themunicipalities, modifications in the land-system, and a variety of economicmeasures intended directly to promote the material development of thecountry. The latter were framed to some extent on the lines laid down bySzechenyi, who now, in bitter antagonism to Kossuth, accepted office underthe Government, and gave to it the prestige of his great name. It remainedfor the Opposition to place their own counter-proposals before the country. Differences within the party were smoothed over, and a manifesto, drawn upby Deák, gave statesmanlike expression to the aims of the national leaders. Embracing every reform included in the policy of the Government, it addedto them others which the Government had not ventured to face, and gave tothe 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 officersof the Crown. Thus while it enforced the taxation of the nobles, it claimedfor the Diet the right of control over every branch of the nationalexpenditure. It demanded increased liberty for the Press, and an unfetteredright of political association; and finally, while doing homage to theunity of the Crown, it required that the Government of Hungary should beone in direct accord with the national representation in the Diet, and thatthe habitual effort of the Court of Vienna to place this kingdom on thesame footing as the Emperor's non-constitutional provinces should beabandoned. With the rival programmes of the Government and the Oppositionbefore it, the country proceeded to the elections of 1847. Hopefulness andenthusiasm abounded on every side; and at the close of the year the Dietassembled from which so great a work was expected, and which was destinedwithin so short a time to witness, in storm and revolution, the passingaway of the ancient order of Hungarian life. [The Rural System of Hungary. ]The directly constitutional problems with which the Diet of Presburg had todeal were peculiar to Hungary itself, and did not exist in the other partsof the Austrian Empire. There were, however, social problems which were notless urgently forcing themselves upon public attention alike in Hungary andin those provinces which enjoyed no constitutional rights. The chief ofthese was the condition of the peasant-population. In the greater part ofthe Austrian dominions, though serfage had long been abolished, society wasstill based upon the manorial system. The peasant held his land subject tothe obligation of labouring on his lord's domain for a certain number ofdays in the year, and of rendering him other customary services: themanor-court, though checked by the neighbourhood of crown-officers, retained its jurisdiction, and its agents frequently performed duties ofpolice. Hence the proposed extinction of the so-called feudal tie, and theconversion of the semi-dependent cultivator into a freeholder bound only tothe payment of a fixed money-charge, or rendered free of all obligation bythe surrender of a part of his holding, involved in many districts theinstitution of new public authorities and a general reorganisation of theminor local powers. From this task the Austrian Government had shrunk inmere lethargy, even when, as in 1835, proposals for change had come fromthe landowners themselves. The work begun by Maria Theresa and Josephremained untouched, though thirty years of peace had given abundantopportunity for its completion, and the legislation of Hardenberg in 1810afforded 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 fromtheir slumbers. The party of action among the Polish refugees at Paris haddetermined to strike another blow for the independence of their country. Instead, however, of repeating the insurrection of Warsaw, it was arrangedthat the revolt should commence in Prussian and Austrian Poland, and thebeginning of the year 1846 was fixed for the uprising. In Prussia theGovernment crushed the conspirators before a blow could be struck. InAustria, though ample warning was given, the precautions taken wereinsufficient. General Collin occupied the Free City of Cracow, where therevolutionary committee had its headquarters; but the troops under hiscommand were so weak that he was soon compelled to retreat, and to awaitthe arrival of reinforcements. Meanwhile the landowners in the district ofTarnow in northern Galicia raised the standard of insurrection, and soughtto arm the country. The Ruthenian peasantry, however, among whom theylived, owed all that was tolerable in their condition to the protection ofthe Austrian crown-officers, and detested the memory of an independentPoland. Instead of following their lords into the field, they gaveinformation of their movements, and asked instructions from the nearestAustrian authorities. They were bidden to seize upon any persons whoinstigated them to rebellion, and to bring them into the towns. A war ofthe peasants against the nobles forthwith broke out. Murder, pillage, andincendiary fires brought both the Polish insurrection and its leaders to amiserable end. The Polish nobles, unwilling to acknowledge the humiliatingtruth that their own peasants were their bitterest enemies, charged theAustrian Government with having set a price on their heads, and with havinginstigated the peasants to a communistic revolt. Metternich, disgraced bythe spectacle of a Jacquerie raging apparently under his own auspices, insisted, in a circular to the European Courts, that the attack of thepeasantry upon the nobles had been purely spontaneous, and occasioned byattempts to press certain villagers into the ranks of the rebellion bybrute force. But whatever may have been the measure of responsibilityincurred by the agents of the Government, an agrarian revolution wasundoubtedly in full course in Galicia, and its effects were soon felt inthe rest of the Austrian monarchy. The Arcadian contentment of the ruralpopulation, 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 longevaded must at length be faced, the Government of Vienna prepared to dealwith the conditions of land-tenure by legislation extending over the wholeof the Empire. But the courage which was necessary for an adequate solutionof the difficulty nowhere existed within the official world, and the Edictwhich conveyed the last words of the Imperial Government on this vitalquestion contained nothing more than a series of provisions forfacilitating voluntary settlements between the peasants and their lords. Inthe quality of this enactment the Court of Vienna gave the measure of itsown weakness. The opportunity of breaking with traditions of impotence hadpresented itself and had been lost. Revolution was at the gates; and in theunsatisfied claim of the rural population the Government had handed over toits adversaries a weapon of the greatest power. [408][Vienna. ]In the purely German provinces of Austria there lingered whatever of thespirit of tranquillity was still to be found within the Empire. This, however, was not the case in the districts into which the influence of thecapital 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 takensomething 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 theorder of things as the river Danube, was not unconnected with this changein the public tone. So long as the old Emperor lived, all thought that wasgiven to political affairs was energy thrown away. By his death not onlyhad the State lost an ultimate controlling power, if dull, yet practisedand tenacious, but this loss was palpable to all the world. The void stoodbare and unrelieved before the public eye. The notorious imbecility of theEmperor Ferdinand, the barren and antiquated formalism of Metternich and ofthat entire system which seemed to be incorporated in him, made Governmentan object of general satire, and in some quarters of rankling contempt. Inproportion as the culture and intelligence of the capital exceeded that ofother towns, so much the more galling was the pressure of that part of thegeneral system of tutelage which was especially directed against theindependence of the mind. The censorship was exercised with grotesquestupidity. It was still the aim of Government to isolate Austria from theideas and the speculation of other lands, and to shape the intellectualworld of the Emperor's subjects into that precise form which traditionprescribed as suitable for the members of a well-regulated State. Inpoetry, the works of Lord Byron were excluded from circulation, wherecustom-house officers and market-inspectors chose to enforce the law; inhistory and political literature, the leading writers of modern times layunder the same ban. Native production was much more effectively controlled. Whoever wrote in a newspaper, or lectured at a University, or published awork of imagination, was expected to deliver himself of something agreeableto the constituted authorities, or was reduced to silence. Far as Viennafell short of Northern Germany in intellectual activity, the humiliationinflicted on its best elements by this life-destroying surveillance waskeenly felt and bitterly resented. More perhaps by its senile warfareagainst mental freedom than by any acts of direct political repression, theGovernment ranged against itself the almost unanimous opinion of theeducated classes. Its hold on the affection of the capital was gone. Stillquiescent, but ready to unite against the Government when opportunityshould arrive, there stood, in addition to the unorganised mass of themiddle ranks, certain political associations and students' societies, avigorous Jewish element, and the usual contingent furnished by poverty anddiscontent in every great city from among the labouring population. Military force sufficient to keep the capital in subjection was notwanting; but the foresight and the vigour necessary to cope with the firstonset 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 itsfoundation. With King Frederick William III. , whose long reign ended in1840, there departed the half-filial, half-spiritless acquiescence of thenation in the denial of the liberties which had been so solemnly promisedto it at the epoch of Napoleon's fall. The new Sovereign, Frederick WilliamIV. , ascended the throne amid high national hopes. The very contrast whichhis warm, exuberant nature offered to the silent, reserved disposition ofhis father impressed the public for awhile in his favour. In the moreshining personal qualities he far excelled all his immediate kindred. Hisartistic and literary sympathies, his aptitude of mind and readiness ofspeech, appeared to mark the man of a new age, and encouraged the beliefthat, in spite of the mediæval dreams and reactionary theories to which, as prince, he had surrendered himself, he would, as King, appreciate theneeds of the time, and give to Prussia the free institutions which thenation demanded. The first acts of the new reign were generously conceived. Political offenders were freely pardoned. Men who had suffered for theiropinions were restored to their posts in the Universities and the publicservice, or selected for promotion. But when the King approached theconstitutional question, his utterances were unsatisfactory. Thoughundoubtedly in favour of some reform, he gave no sanction to the idea of areally national representation, but seemed rather to seek occasions tocondemn it. Other omens of ill import were not wanting. Allying hisGovernment with a narrow school of theologians, the King offended men ofindependent mind, and transgressed against the best traditions of Prussianadministration. The prestige of the new reign was soon exhausted. Those whohad believed Frederick William to be a man of genius now denounced him as avaporous, inflated dilettante; his enthusiasm was seen to indicate nothingin particular; his sonorous commonplaces fell flat on second delivery. Notonly in his own kingdom, but in the minor German States, which looked toPrussia as the future leader of a free Germany, the opinion rapidly gainedground that Frederick William IV. Was to be numbered among the enemiesrather 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 aConstitution, it had been laid down that the representative body was tospring from the Provincial Estates, and that it was to possess, in additionto its purely consultative functions in legislation, a real power ofcontrol over all State loans and over all proposed additions to taxation. The interdependence of the promised Parliament and the Provincial Estateshad been seen at the time to endanger the success of Hardenberg's scheme;nevertheless, it was this conception which King Frederick William IV. Madethe very centre of his Constitutional policy. A devotee to the distantpast, he spoke of the Provincial Estates, which in their present form hadexisted only since 1823, as if they were a great national and historicinstitution which had come down unchanged through centuries. His firstexperiment was the summoning of a Committee from these bodies to considercertain financial projects with which the Government was occupied (1842). The labours of the Committee were insignificant, nor was its treatment atthe hands of the Crown Ministers of a serious character. Frederick William, however, continued to meditate over his plans, and appointed a Commissionto examine the project drawn up at his desire by the Cabinet. The agitationin favour of Parliamentary Government became more and more pressing amongthe educated classes; and at length, in spite of some opposition from hisbrother, the Prince of Prussia, afterwards Emperor of Germany, the Kingdetermined to fulfil his father's promise and to convoke a General Assemblyat Berlin. On the 3rd of February, 1847, there appeared a Royal Patent, which summoned all the Provincial Estates to the capital to meet as aUnited Diet of the Kingdom. The Diet was to be divided into two Chambers, the Upper Chamber including the Royal Princes and highest nobles, the Lowerthe representatives of the knights, towns, and peasants. The right oflegislation was not granted to the Diet; it had, however, the right ofpresenting petitions on internal affairs. State-loans and new taxes werenot, in time of peace, to be raised without its consent. No regularinterval was fixed for the future meetings of the Diet, and its financialrights were moreover reduced by other provisions, which enacted that aUnited Committee from the Provincial Estates was to meet every four yearsfor certain definite objects, and that a special Delegation was to sit eachyear 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 functionsconferred upon it, and the guarantees offered for Representative Governmentin the future, so little corresponded with the requirements of the nation, that the question was at once raised in Liberal circles whether theconcessions thus tendered by the King ought to be accepted or rejected. Thedoubt which existed as to the disposition of the monarch himself wasincreased by the speech from the throne at the opening of the Diet (April11). In a vigorous harangue extending over half an hour, King FrederickWilliam, while he said much that was appropriate to the occasion, denouncedthe spirit of revolution that was working in the Prussian Press, warned theDeputies that they had been summoned not to advocate political theories, but to protect each the rights of his own order, and declared that no poweron earth should induce him to change his natural relation to his peopleinto a constitutional one, or to permit a written sheet of paper tointervene like a second Providence between Prussia and the Almighty. Sovehement was the language of the King, and so uncompromising his tone, thatthe proposal was forthwith made at a private conference that the Deputiesshould quit Berlin in a body. This extreme course was not adopted; it wasdetermined instead to present an address to the King, laying before him inrespectful language the shortcomings in the Patent of February 3rd. In thedebate on this address began the Parliamentary history of Prussia. TheLiberal majority in the Lower Chamber, anxious to base their cause on somefoundation of positive law, treated the Edicts of Frederick William III. Defining the rights of the future Representative Body as actual statutes ofthe realm, although the late King had never called a Representative Bodyinto existence. From this point of view the functions now given toCommittees and Delegations were so much illegally withdrawn from the rightsof the Diet. The Government, on the other hand, denied that the Dietpossessed any rights or claims whatever beyond those assigned to it by thePatent of February 3rd, to which it owed its origin. In receiving theaddress of the Chambers, the King, while expressing a desire to see theConstitution further developed, repeated the principle already laid downby his Ministers, and refused to acknowledge any obligation outside thosewhich he had himself created. [Proceedings and Dissolution of the Diet. ]When, after a series of debates on the political questions at issue, theactual business of the Session began, the relations between the Governmentand the Assembly grew worse rather than better. The principal measuressubmitted were the grant of a State-guarantee to certain land-banksestablished for the purpose of extinguishing the rent-charges on peasants'holdings, and the issue of a public loan for the construction of railwaysby the State. Alleging that the former measure was not directly one oftaxation, the Government, in laying it before the Diet, declared that theyasked only for an opinion, and denied that the Diet possessed any right ofdecision. Thus challenged, as it were, to make good its claims, the Dietnot only declined to assent to this guarantee, but set its veto on theproposed railway-loan. Both projects were in themselves admitted to be tothe advantage of the State; their rejection by the Diet was an emphaticvindication of constitutional rights which the Government seemed indisposedto acknowledge. Opposition grew more and more embittered; and when, as apreliminary to the dissolution of the Diet, the King ordered its members toproceed to the election of the Committees and Delegation named in the Edictof 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 theKing was about to commit to other bodies. Indignant at this protest, theKing 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 theantagonism of purpose existing between the Sovereign and the nationalrepresentatives. Moderate men were alienated by the doctrines promulgatedfrom the Throne; and an experiment which, if more wisely conducted, mightpossibly at the eleventh hour have saved all Germany from revolution, leftthe Monarchy discredited and exposed to the attack of the most violent ofits foes. [Louis Philippe. ]The train was now laid throughout central Europe; it needed but a flashfrom Paris to kindle the fire far and wide. That the Crown which LouisPhilippe 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 toforeign observers during the earlier years of his reign. The period ofcomparative peace by which the first Republican movements after 1830 hadbeen succeeded, the busy working of the Parliamentary system, the keen andsuccessful pursuit of wealth which seemed to have mastered all otherimpulses in France, had made these fears a thing of the past. The OrleanistMonarchy had taken its place among the accredited institutions of Europe;its chief, aged, but vigorous in mind, looked forward to the future of hisdynasty, and occupied himself with plans for extending its influence or itssway beyond the limits of France itself. At one time Louis Philippe hadhoped to connect his family by marriage with the Courts of Vienna orBerlin; this project had not met with encouragement; so much the moreeagerly did the King watch for opportunities in another direction, anddevise plans for restoring the family-union between France and Spain whichhad been established by Louis XIV. And which had so largely influenced thehistory of Europe down to the overthrow of the Bourbon Monarchy. The Crownof Spain was now held by a young girl; her sister was the next insuccession; to make the House of Orleans as powerful at Madrid as it was atParis seemed under these circumstances no impossible task to a King and aMinister who, in the interests of the dynasty, were prepared to make somesacrifice of honour and good faith. [The Spanish Marriage, October, 1846. ]While the Carlist War was still continuing, Lord Palmerston had convincedhimself that Louis Philippe intended to marry the young Queen Isabella, ifpossible, to one of his sons. Some years later this project wasunofficially mentioned by Guizot to the English statesman, who at oncecaused it to be understood that England would not permit the union. Abandoning this scheme, Louis Philippe then demanded, by a misconstructionof the Treaty of Utrecht, that the Queen's choice of a husband should belimited to the Bourbons of the Spanish or Neapolitan line. To this claimLord Aberdeen, who had become Foreign Secretary in 1841, declined to givehis assent; he stated, however, that no step would be taken by England inantagonism to such marriage, if it should be deemed desirable at Madrid. Louis Philippe now suggested that his youngest son, the Duke ofMontpensier, should wed the Infanta Fernanda, sister of the Queen of Spain. On the express understanding that this marriage should not take place untilthe Queen should herself have been married and have had children, theEnglish Cabinet assented to the proposal. That the marriages should not besimultaneous was treated by both Governments as the very heart andsubstance of the arrangement, inasmuch as the failure of children by theQueen's marriage would make her sister, or her sister's heir, inheritor ofthe Throne. This was repeatedly acknowledged by Louis Philippe and hisMinister, Guizot, in the course of communications with the British Courtwhich extended over some years. Nevertheless, in 1846, the FrenchAmbassador at Madrid, in conjunction with the Queen's mother, MariaChristina, succeeded in carrying out a plan by which the conditions laiddown at London and accepted at Paris were utterly frustrated. Of theQueen's Spanish cousins, there was one, Don Francisco, who was known to bephysically unfit for marriage. To this person it was determined by MariaChristina and the French Ambassador that the young Isabella should beunited, her sister being simultaneously married to the Duke of Montpensier. So flagrantly was this arrangement in contradiction to the promises made atthe Tuileries, that, when intelligence of it arrived at Paris, LouisPhilippe declared for a moment that the Ambassador must be disavowed anddisgraced. Guizot, however, was of better heart than his master, and askedfor delay. In the very crisis of the King's perplexity the return of LordPalmerston to office, and the mention by him of a Prince of Saxe-Coburg asone of the candidates for the Spanish Queen's hand, afforded Guizot apretext for declaring that Great Britain had violated its engagementstowards the House of Bourbon by promoting the candidature of a Coburg. Inreality the British Government had not only taken no part in assisting thecandidature of the Coburg Prince, but had directly opposed it. This, however, was urged in vain at the Tuileries. Whatever may have been theoriginal intentions of Louis Philippe or of Guizot, the temptation ofsecuring the probable succession to the Spanish Crown was too strong to beresisted. Preliminaries were pushed forward with the utmost haste, and onthe 10th of October, 1846, the marriages of Queen Isabella and her sister, as arranged by the French Ambassador and the Queen-Mother, weresimultaneously solemnised at Madrid. [410][Louis Philippe and Guizot, 1847. ]Few intrigues have been more disgraceful than that of the SpanishMarriages; none more futile. The course of history mocked its ulteriorpurposes; its immediate results were wholly to the injury of the House ofOrleans. The cordial understanding between France and Great Britain, whichhad been revived after the differences of 1840, was now finally shattered, Louis Philippe stood convicted before his people of sacrificing a valuablealliance to purely dynastic ends; his Minister, the austere andsanctimonious Guizot, had to defend himself against charges which wouldhave covered with shame the most hardened man of the world. Thus strippedof its garb of moral superiority, condemned as at once unscrupulous andunpatriotic, the Orleanist Monarchy had to meet the storm of populardiscontent which was gathering over France as well as over neighbouringlands. For the lost friendship of England it was necessary to seek asubstitute in the support of some Continental Power. Throwing himself intothe reactionary policy of the Court of Vienna, Guizot endeavoured toestablish a diplomatic concert from which England should be excluded, asFrance had been in 1840. There were circumstances which gave somecountenance to the design. The uncompromising vigour with which LordPalmerston supported the Liberal movement now becoming so formidable inItaly made every absolute Government in Europe his enemy; and had time beengranted, the despotic Courts would possibly have united with France in somemore or less open combination against the English Minister. But the momentswere now numbered; and ere the projected league could take substance, thewhirlwind descended before which Louis Philippe and his Minister were thefirst to fall. [Demand for Parliamentary Reform. ]A demand for the reform of the French Parliamentary system had been madewhen Guizot was entering upon office in the midst of the Oriental crisis of1840. It had then been silenced and repressed by all the means at thedisposal of the Executive; King Louis Philippe being convinced that with amore democratic Chamber the maintenance of his own policy of peace would beimpossible. The demand was now raised again with far greater energy. Although the franchise had been lowered after the Revolution of July, itwas still so high that not one person in a hundred and fifty possessed avote, while the property-qualification which was imposed upon the Deputiesthemselves excluded from the Chamber all but men of substantial wealth. Moreover, there existed no law prohibiting the holders of administrativeposts under the Government from sitting in the Assembly. The consequencewas that more than one-third of the Deputies were either officials who hadsecured election, or representatives who since their election had acceptedfrom Government appointments of greater or less value. Though Parliamentarytalent abounded, it was impossible that a Chamber so composed could be therepresentative of the nation at large. The narrowness of the franchise, thewealth of the Deputies themselves, made them, in all questions affectingthe social condition of the people, a mere club of capitalists; theinfluence which the Crown exercised through the bestowal of officesconverted those who ought to have been its controllers into its dependents, the more so as its patronage was lavished on nominal opponents even morefreely than on avowed friends. Against King Louis Philippe the majority inthe Chamber had in fact ceased to possess a will of its own. It representedwealth; it represented to some extent the common-sense of France; but onall current matters of dispute it only represented the executive governmentin another form. So thoroughly had the nation lost all hope in the Assemblyduring the last years of Louis Philippe, that even the elections had ceasedto excite interest. On the other hand, the belief in the general prevalenceof corruption was every day receiving new warrant. A series of State-trialsdisclosed the grossest frauds in every branch of the administration, andproved that political influence was habitually used for purposes ofpecuniary gain. Taxed with his tolerance of a system scarcelydistinguishable from its abuses, the Minister could only turn to his ownnominees in the Chamber and ask them whether they felt themselvescorrupted; invited to consider some measure of Parliamentary reform, hescornfully asserted his policy of resistance. Thus, hopeless of obtainingsatisfaction either from the Government or from the Chamber itself, theleaders of the Opposition resolved in 1847 to appeal to the country atlarge; and an agitation for Parliamentary reform, based on the methodsemployed by O'Connell in Ireland, soon spread through the principal townsof France. [Socialism. ]But there were other ideas and other forces active among the labouringpopulation of Paris than those familiar to the politicians of the Assembly. Theories of Socialism, the property of a few thinkers and readers duringthe earlier years of Louis Philippe's reign, had now sunk deep among themasses, and become, in a rough and easily apprehended form, the creed ofthe poor. From the time when Napoleon's fall had restored to France itsfaculty of thought, and, as it were, turned the soldier's eyes again uponhis home, those questionings as to the basis of the social union which hadoccupied 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; theanswer was that of a later age. Kings, priests, and nobles had beenoverthrown, but misery still covered the world. In the teaching ofSaint-Simon, under the Restoration, religious conceptions blended with agreat industrial scheme; in the Utopia of Fourier, produced at the samefruitful period, whatever was valuable belonged to its suggestions inco-operative production. But whether the doctrine propounded was that ofphilosopher, or sage, or charlatan, in every case the same leading ideaswere visible;--the insufficiency of the individual in isolation, theindustrial basis of all social life, the concern of the community, or ofits supreme authority, in the organisation of labour. It was naturally inno remote or complex form that the idea of a new social order tookpossession of the mind of the workman in the faubourgs of Paris. He read inLouis Blanc, the latest and most intelligible of his teachers of the rightto labour, of the duty of the State to provide work for its citizens. Thiswas something actual and tangible. For this he was ready upon occasion totake up arms; not for the purpose of extending the franchise to anotherhandful of the Bourgeoisie, or of shifting the profits of government fromone set of place-hunters to another. In antagonism to the ruling Ministerthe Reformers in the Chamber and the Socialists in the streets might for amoment unite their forces: but their ends were irreconcilable, and theallies 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 Monarchyassembled. The speech from the Throne, delivered by Louis Philippe himself, denounced in strong terms the agitation for Reform which had been carriedon during the preceding months, though this agitation had, on the whole, been the work of the so-called Dynastic Opposition, which, while demandingelectoral reform, was sincerely loyal to the Monarchy. The King's wordswere a challenge; and in the debate on the Address, the challenge was takenup by all ranks of Monarchical Liberals as well as by the small Republicansection in the Assembly. The Government, however, was still secure of itsmajority. 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 onthe 22nd of February by the Reform-party in Western Paris. It was at firstdesired that by some friendly arrangement with the Government, which haddeclared the banquet illegal, the possibility of recourse to violenceshould be avoided. Misunderstandings, however, arose, and the Governmentfinally prohibited the banquet, and made preparations for meeting anydisturbance with force of arms. The Deputies, anxious to employ none butlegal means of resistance, now resolved not to attend the banquet; on theother hand, the Democratic and Socialist leaders welcomed a possibleopportunity for revolt. On the morning of the 22nd masses of men pouredwestwards from the workmen's quarter. The city was in confusion all day, and the erection of barricades began. Troops were posted in the streets; noserious attack, however, was made by either side, and at nightfall quietreturned. [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 inthe earlier years of his reign, the National Guard, which was drawnprincipally 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 thebattalions interposed between the regular troops and the populace andaverted a conflict, others proceeded to the Chamber with petitions forReform. Obstinately as Louis Philippe had hitherto refused all concession, the announcement of the threatened defection of the National Guard atlength convinced him that resistance was impossible. He accepted Guizot'sresignation, and the Chamber heard from the fallen Minister himself that hehad ceased to hold office. Although the King declined for awhile to committhe formation of a Ministry to Thiers, the recognised chief of theOpposition, and endeavoured to place a politician more acceptable tohimself in office, it was felt that with the fall of Guizot all realresistance to Reform was broken. Nothing more was asked by theParliamentary Opposition or by the middle-class of Paris. The victoryseemed to be won, the crisis at an end. In the western part of the capitalcongratulation and good-humour succeeded to the fear of conflict. Thetroops fraternised with the citizens and the National Guard; and whendarkness came on, the boulevards were illuminated as if for a nationalfestival. [Feb. 24th. ]In the midst, however, of this rejoicing, and while the chiefs of therevolutionary societies, fearing that the opportunity had been lost forstriking a blow at the Monarchy, exhorted the defenders of the barricadesto maintain their positions, a band of workmen came into conflict, accidentally or of set purpose, with the troops in front of the ForeignOffice. A volley was fired, which killed or wounded eighty persons. Placingthe dead bodies on a waggon, and carrying them by torchlight through thestreets in the workmen's quarter, the insurrectionary leaders called thepeople to arms. The tocsin sounded throughout the night; on the nextmorning the populace marched against the Tuileries. In consequence of thefall of the Ministry and the supposed reconciliation of the King with thePeople, whatever military dispositions had been begun had since beenabandoned. At isolated points the troops fought bravely; but there was nosystematic defence. Shattered by the strain of the previous days, anddismayed by the indifference of the National Guard when he rode out amongthem, the King, who at every epoch of his long life had shown suchconspicuous courage in the presence of danger, now lost all nerve and allfaculty of action. He signed an act of abdication in favour of hisgrandson, the Count of Paris, and fled. Behind him the victorious mob burstinto the Tuileries and devastated it from cellar to roof. The LegislativeChamber, where an attempt was made to proclaim the Count of Paris King, wasin its turn invaded. In uproar and tumult a Provisional Government wasinstalled at the Hôtel de Ville; and ere the day closed the news went outto Europe that the House of Orleans had ceased to reign, and that theRepublic had been proclaimed. It was not over France alone, it was over theContinent 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 andafter the Revolution at Paris--Austria and Hungary--The MarchRevolution at Vienna--Flight of Metternich--The Hungarian Diet--Hungarywins its independence--Bohemian movement--Autonomy promised to Bohemia--Insurrection of Lombardy--Of Venice--Piedmont makes war on Austria--Ageneral Italian war against Austria imminent--The March Days atBerlin--Frederick William IV. --A National Assembly promised--Schleswig-Holstein--Insurrection in Holstein--War between Germany andDenmark--The German Ante-Parliament--Republican rising in Baden--Meetingof the German National Assembly at Frankfort--Europe generally in March, 1848--The French Provisional Government--The National Workshops--TheGovernment and the Red Republicans--French National Assembly--Riot of May15--Measures against the National Workshops--The Four Days of June--Cavaignac--Louis Napoleon--He is elected to the Assembly--ElectedPresident. [Europe in 1789 and 1848. ]There were few statesmen living in 1848 who, like Metternich and like LouisPhilippe, could remember the outbreak of the French Revolution. To thosewho could so look back across the space of sixty years, a comparison of theEuropean movements that followed the successive onslaughts upon authorityin France afforded some measure of the change that had passed over thepolitical atmosphere of the Continent within a single lifetime. TheRevolution of 1789, deeply as it stirred men's minds in neighbouringcountries, had occasioned no popular outbreak on a large scale outsideFrance. The expulsion of Charles X. In 1830 had been followed by nationaluprisings in Italy, Poland, and Belgium, and by a struggle forconstitutional government in the smaller States of Northern Germany. Thedownfall of Louis Philippe in 1848 at once convulsed the whole of centralEurope. From the Rhenish Provinces to the Ottoman frontier there was nogovernment but the Swiss Republic that was not menaced; there was no racewhich did not assert its claim to a more or less complete independence. Communities whose long slumber had been undisturbed by the shocks of theNapoleonic period now vibrated with those same impulses which, since 1815, no pressure of absolute power had been able wholly to extinguish in Italyand Germany. The borders of the region of political discontent had beenenlarged; where apathy, or immemorial loyalty to some distant crown, hadlong 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 wasespecially 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 theright of self-government. Distinct as the ideas of national independenceand of constitutional liberty are in themselves, they were not distinct intheir operation over a great part of Europe in 1848; and this epoch will bewrongly conceived if it is viewed as no more than a repetition on a largescale of the democratic outbreak of Paris with which it opened. More wassought in Europe in 1848 than the substitution of popular for monarchicalor aristocratic rule. The effort to make the State one with the nationexcited wider interests than the effort to enlarge and equalise citizenrights; and it is in the action of this principle of nationality that wefind the explanation of tendencies of the epoch which appear at first viewto be in direct conflict with one another. In Germany a single race wasdivided under many Governments: here the national instinct impelled tounity. In Austria a variety of races was held together by one crown: herethe national instinct impelled to separation. In both these States, as inItaly, where the predominance of the foreigner and the continuance ofdespotic government were in a peculiar manner connected with one another, the efforts of 1848 failed; but the problems which then agitated Europecould not long be set aside, and the solution of them complete, in the caseof Germany and Italy, partial and tentative in the case of Austria, rendersthe succeeding twenty-five years a memorable period in European history. [Agitation in Western Germany. ]The sudden disappearance of the Orleanist monarchy and the proclamation ofthe Republic at Paris struck with dismay the Governments beyond the Rhine. Difficulties were already gathering round them, opposition among their ownsubjects was daily becoming more formidable and more outspoken. In WesternGermany 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 aGerman Parliament had been demanded: a Republican or revolutionary party, small but virulent, had also its own avowed policy and its recognisedorgans in the press. No sooner had the news of the Revolution at Parispassed the frontier than in all the minor German States the cry for reformbecame irresistible. Ministers everywhere resigned; the popular demandswere granted; and men were called to office whose names were identifiedwith the struggle for the freedom of the Press, for trial by jury, and forthe reform of the Federal Constitution. The Federal Diet itself, so longthe instrument of absolutism, bowed beneath the stress of the time, abolished the laws of censorship, and invited the Governments to sendCommissioners to Frankfort to discuss the reorganisation of Germany. It wasnot, however, at Frankfort or at the minor capitals that the conflictbetween authority and its antagonists was to be decided. Vienna, thestronghold of absolutism, the sanctuary from which so many interdicts hadgone forth against freedom in every part of Europe, was itself invaded bythe revolutionary spirit. The clear sky darkened, and Metternich foundhimself powerless before the storm. [Austria. ]There had been until 1848 so complete an absence of political life in theAustrian capital, that, when the conviction suddenly burst upon all mindsthat the ancient order was doomed, there were neither party-leaders toconfront the Government, nor plans of reform upon which any considerablebody of men were agreed. The first utterances of public discontent werepetitions drawn up by the Chamber of Commerce and by literary associations. These were vague in purport and far from aggressive in their tone. Asterner note sounded when intelligence reached the capital of theresolutions that had been passed by the Hungarian Lower House on the 3rd ofMarch, and of the language in which these had been enforced by Kossuth. Casting aside all reserve, the Magyar leader had declared that the reigningdynasty could only be saved by granting to Hungary a responsible Ministrydrawn from the Diet itself, and by establishing constitutional governmentthroughout the Austrian dominions. "From the charnel-house of the Viennesesystem, " he cried, "a poison-laden atmosphere steals over us, whichparalyses our nerves and bows us when we would soar. The future of Hungarycan never be secure while in the other provinces there exists a system ofgovernment in direct antagonism to every constitutional principle. Our taskit is to found a happier future on the brotherhood of all the Austrianraces, and to substitute for the union enforced by bayonets and police theenduring bond of a free constitution. " When the Hungarian Assembly had thustaken into its own hands the cause of the rest of the monarchy, it was notfor 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 acceptedand it was proposed that an address embodying this demand should be sent into the Emperor by the Provincial Estates of Lower Austria, whose meetinghappened to be fixed for the 13th of March. In the meantime the studentsmade themselves the heroes of the hour. The agitation of the cityincreased; rumours of State bankruptcy and of the impending repudiation ofthe paper currency filled all classes with the belief that some catastrophewas near at hand. [411][The March Revolution at Vienna. ]The Provincial Estates of Lower Austria had long fallen into suchinsignificance that in ordinary times their proceedings were hardly noticedby the capital. The accident that they were now to assemble in the midst ofa great crisis elevated them to a sudden importance. It was believed thatthe decisive word would be spoken in the course of their debates; and onthe morning of the 13th of March masses of the populace, led by aprocession of students, assembled round the Hall of the Diet. While thedebate proceeded within, street-orators inflamed the passions of the crowdoutside. The tumult deepened; and when at length a note was let down fromone of the windows of the Hall stating that the Diet were inclining tohalf-measures, the mob broke into uproar, and an attack was made upon theDiet Hall itself. The leading members of the Estates were compelled toplace themselves at the head of a deputation, which proceeded to theEmperor's palace in order to enforce the demands of the people. The Emperorhimself, who at no time was capable of paying serious attention tobusiness, remained invisible during this and the two following days; thedeputation was received by Metternich and the principal officers of State, who were assembled in council. Meanwhile the crowds in the streets becamedenser and more excited; soldiers approached, to protect the Diet Hall andto 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, themob who had stormed the Diet Hall hurled the shattered furniture from thewindows upon the soldiers' heads. A volley was now fired, which costseveral lives. At the sound of the firing still deeper agitation seized thecity. Barricades were erected, and the people and soldiers fought hand tohand. As evening came on, deputation after deputation pressed into thepalace to urge concession upon the Government. Metternich, who, almostalone in the Council, had made light of the popular uprising, now at lengthconsented to certain definite measures of reform. He retired into anadjoining room to draft an order abolishing the censorship of the Press. During his absence the cry was raised among the deputations that throngedthe Council-chamber, "Down with Metternich!" The old man returned, andfound himself abandoned by his colleagues. There were some among them, members of the Imperial family, who had long been his opponents; others whohad 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, andwithdrew, to place his resignation in the Emperor's hands. [Flight of Metternich. ]For thirty-nine years Metternich had been so completely identified with theAustrian system of government that in his fall that entire system seemed tohave vanished away. The tumult of the capital subsided on the mereannouncement of his resignation, though the hatred which he had excitedrendered it unsafe for him to remain within reach of hostile hands. He wasconveyed from Vienna by a faithful secretary on the night of the 14th ofMarch, and, after remaining for a few days in concealment, crossed theSaxon frontier. His exile was destined to be of some duration, but no exilewas ever more cheerfully borne, or sweetened by a profounder satisfactionat the evils which a mad world had brought upon itself by driving from itits one thoroughly wise and just statesman. Betaking himself in the generalcrash of the Continental Courts to Great Britain, which was still as safeas when he had visited it fifty-five years before, Metternich received akindly welcome from the Duke of Wellington and the leaders of Englishsociety; and when the London season was over he sought and found atBrighton something of the liveliness and the sunshine of his own southernhome. [412][The Hungarian Diet. ]The action of the Hungarian Diet under Kossuth's leadership had powerfullyinfluenced the course of events at Vienna. The Viennese outbreak in itsturn gave irresistible force to the Hungarian national movement. Up to the13th of March the Chamber of Magnates had withheld their assent from theresolution passed by the Lower House in favour of a national executive;they now accepted it without a single hostile vote; and on the 15th adeputation was sent to Vienna to lay before the Emperor an addressdemanding not only the establishment of a responsible Ministry but thefreedom of the Press, trial by jury, equality of religion, and a system ofnational education. At the moment when this deputation reached Vienna theGovernment was formally announcing its compliance with the popular demandfor a Constitution for the whole of the Empire. The Hungarians wereescorted in triumph through the streets, and were received on the followingday by the Emperor himself, who expressed a general concurrence with theterms of the address. The deputation returned to Presburg, and thePalatine, or representative of the sovereign in Hungary, the ArchdukeStephen, forthwith charged Count Batthyány, one of the most popular of theMagyar nobles, with the formation of a national Ministry. Thus far the Diethad been in the van of the Hungarian movement; it now sank almost intoinsignificance by the side of the revolutionary organisation at Pesth, where all the ardour and all the patriotism of the Magyar race glowed intheir native force untempered by the political experience of the statesmenwho were collected at Presburg, and unchecked by any of those influenceswhich belong to the neighbourhood of an Imperial Court. At Pesth therebroke out an agitation at once so democratic and so intensely national thatall considerations of policy and of regard for the Austrian Governmentwhich 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 theCentral Government by which the control of the Court over the Hungarianbody politic had been exercised. A list of Ministers was submitted andapproved, including not only those who were needed for the transaction ofdomestic business, but Ministers of War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs; andin order that the entire nation might rally round its Government, thepeasantry were at one stroke emancipated from all services attaching to theland, and converted into free proprietors. Of the compensation to be paidto the lords for the loss of these services, no more was said than that itwas 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 byKossuth were presented for the Emperor's ratification at Vienna. The fallof Metternich, important as it was, had not in reality produced that effectupon the Austrian Government which was expected from it by popular opinion. The new Cabinet at Vienna was drawn from the ranks of the officialhierarchy; and although some of its members were more liberally disposedthan their late chief, they had all alike passed their lives in thetraditions of the ancient system, and were far from intending to makethemselves the willing agents of revolution. These men saw clearly enoughthat the action of the Diet at Presburg amounted to nothing less than theseparation of Hungary from the Austrian Empire. With the Ministries of War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs established in independence of the centralgovernment, there would remain no link between Hungary and the HereditaryStates but the person of a titular, and, for the present time, an imbecilesovereign. Powerless and distracted, Metternich's successors looked in alldirections for counsel. The Palatine argued that three courses were open tothe Austrian Government. It might endeavour to crush the Hungarian movementby force of arms; for this purpose, however, the troops available wereinsufficient: or it might withdraw from the country altogether, leaving thepeasants to attack the nobles, as they had done in Galicia; this was adishonourable policy, and the action of the Diet had, moreover, secured tothe peasant everything that he could gain by a social insurrection: orfinally, the Government might yield for the moment to the inevitable, maketerms with Batthyány's Ministry, and quietly prepare for vigorousresistance when opportunity should arrive. The last method was that whichthe Palatine recommended; the Court inclined in the same direction, but itwas unwilling to submit without making some further trial of the temper ofits antagonists. A rescript was accordingly sent to Presburg, announcingthat the Ministry formed by Count Batthyány was accepted by the Emperor, but that the central offices which the Diet had abolished must bepreserved, and the functions of the Ministers of War and Finance be reducedto those of chiefs of departments, dependent on the orders of a higherauthority at Vienna. From the delay that had taken place in the despatch ofthis answer the nationalist leaders at Pesth and at Presburg had augured nogood result. Its publication brought the country to the verge of armedrevolt. Batthyány refused to accept office under the conditions named; thePalatine himself declared that he could remain in Hungary no longer. Terrified at the result of its own challenge, the Court now withdrew fromthe position that it had taken up, and accepted the scheme of the Diet inits integrity, stipulating only that the disposal of the army outsideHungary in time of war, and the appointment to the higher commands, shouldremain with the Imperial Government. [413][Bohemian movement. ][Autonomy promised. ]Hungary had thus made good its position as an independent State connectedwith Austria only through the person of its monarch. Vast and momentous aswas the change, fatal as it might well appear to those who could conceiveof no unity but the unity of a central government, the victory of theMagyars appears to have excited no feeling among the German Liberals atVienna but one of satisfaction. So odious, so detested, was the fallensystem of despotism, that every victory won by its adversaries was hailedas a triumph of the good cause, be the remoter issues what they might. Evenwhere a powerful German element, such as did not exist in Hungary itself, was threatened by the assertion of provincial claims, the Government couldnot hope for the support of the capital if it should offer resistance. Theexample of the Magyars was speedily followed by the Czechs in Bohemia. Forgotten and obliterated among the nationalities of Europe, the Czechs hadpreserved in their language, and in that almost alone, the emblem of theirnational independence. Within the borders of Bohemia there was so large aGerman population that the ultimate absorption of the Slavic element bythis wealthier and privileged body had at an earlier time seemed notunlikely. Since 1830, however, the Czech national movement had beengradually gaining ground. In the first days of the agitation of 1848 aneffort had been made to impress a purely constitutional form upon thedemands made in the name of the people of Prague, and so to render theunion of all classes possible. This policy, however, received its deathblowfrom the Revolution in Vienna and from the victory of the Magyars. Theleadership at Prague passed from men of position and experience, representing rather the intelligence of the German element in Bohemia thanthe patriotism of the Czechs, to the nationalist orators who commanded thestreets. An attempt made by the Cabinet at Vienna to evade the demandsdrawn up under the influence of the more moderate politicians resulted onlyin the downfall of this party, and in the tender of a new series of demandsof far more revolutionary character. The population of Prague werebeginning to organise a national guard; arms were being distributed;authority had collapsed. The Government was now forced to consent toeverything that was asked of it, and a legislative Assembly with anindependent local administration was promised to Bohemia. To this Assembly, as soon as it should meet, the new institutions of the kingdom were to besubmitted. [Insurrection of Lombardy, March 18. ]Thus far, if the authority of the Court of Vienna, had been virtuallyshaken off by a great part of its subjects, the Emperor had at least notseen these subjects in avowed rebellion against the House of Hapsburg, norsupported in their resistance by the arms of a foreign Power. South of theAlps the dynastic connection was openly severed, and the rule of Austriadeclared for ever at an end. Lombardy had since the beginning of the year1848 been held in check only by the display of great military force. TheRevolution at Paris had excited both hopes and fears; the Revolution atVienna was instantly followed by revolt in Milan. Radetzky, the Austriancommander, a veteran who had served with honour in every campaign sincethat against the Turks in 1788, had long foreseen the approach of an armedconflict; yet when the actual crisis arrived his dispositions had not beenmade for meeting it. The troops in Milan were ill placed; the offices ofGovernment were moreover separated by half the breadth of the city from themilitary head-quarters. Thus when on the 18th of March the insurrectionbroke out, it carried everything before it. The Vice-Governor, O'Donell, was captured, and compelled to sign his name to decrees handing over thegovernment of the city to the Municipal Council. Radetzky now threw hissoldiers upon the barricades, and penetrated to the centre of the city; buthe was unable to maintain himself there under the ceaseless fire from thewindows and the housetops, and withdrew on the night of the 19th to theline of fortifications. Fighting continued during the next two days in theoutskirts and at the gates of the city. The garrisons of all theneighbouring towns were summoned to the assistance of their general, butthe Italians broke up the bridges and roads, and one detachment alone outof all the troops in Lombardy succeeded in reaching Milan. A report nowarrived at Radetzky's camp that the King of Piedmont was on the marchagainst him. Preferring the loss of Milan to the possible capture of hisarmy, he determined to evacuate the city. On the night of the 22nd of Marchthe 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 inUpper Italy. [414][Insurrection of Venice. ][Piedmont makes war. ]Venice had already followed the example of the Lombard capital. The tidingsreceived from Vienna after the 13th of March appear to have completelybewildered both the military and the civil authorities on the Adriaticcoast. They released their political prisoners, among whom was DanielManin, an able and determined foe of Austria; they entered intoconstitutional discussions with the popular leaders; they permitted theformation of a national guard, and finally handed over to this guard thearsenals and the dockyards with all their stores. From this time all wasover. Manin proclaimed the Republic of St. Mark, and became the chief of aProvisional Government. The Italian regiments in garrison joined thenational cause; the ships of war at Pola, manned chiefly by Italiansailors, were only prevented from sailing to the assistance of the rebelsby batteries that were levelled against them from the shore. Thus without ablow being struck Venice was lost to Austria. The insurrection spreadwestwards and northwards through city and village in the interior, tillthere remained to Austria nothing but the fortresses on the Adige and theMincio, where Radetzky, deaf to the counsels of timidity, held his groundunshaken. The national rising carried Piedmont with it. It was in vain thatthe British envoy at Turin urged the King to enter into no conflict withAustria. On the 24th of March Charles Albert published a proclamationpromising his help to the Lombards. Two days later his troops enteredMilan. [415][General war against Austria, beginning in Italy. ]Austria had for thirty years consistently laid down the principle that itsown sovereignty in Upper Italy vested it with the right to control thepolitical system of every other State in the peninsula. It had twiceenforced this principle by arms: first in its intervention in Naples in1820, afterwards in its occupation of the Roman States in 1831. TheGovernment of Vienna had, as it were with fixed intention, made itimpossible that its presence in any part of Italy should be regarded as thepresence of an ordinary neighbour, entitled to quiet possession until somenew provocation should be given. The Italians would have proved themselvesthe simplest of mankind if, having any reasonable hope of military success, they had listened to the counsels of Palmerston and other statesmen whourged them not to take advantage of the difficulties in which Austria wasnow placed. The paralysis of the Austrian State was indeed the oneunanswerable argument for immediate war. So long as the Emperor retainedhis ascendency in any part of Italy, his interests could not permanentlysuffer the independence of the rest. If the Italians should chivalrouslywait until the Cabinet of Vienna had recovered its strength, it was quitecertain that their next efforts in the cause of internal liberty would beas ruthlessly crushed as their last. Every clearsighted patriot understoodthat the time for a great national effort had arrived. In some respects thepolitical condition of Italy seemed favourable to such united action. Sincethe insurrection of Palermo in January, 1848, absolutism had everywherefallen. Ministries had come into existence containing at least a fairproportion of men who were in real sympathy with the national feeling. Above all, the Pope seemed disposed to place himself at the head of apatriotic union against the foreigner. Thus, whatever might be the secretinclinations of the reigning Houses, they were unable for the moment toresist the call to arms. Without an actual declaration of war troops weresent northwards from Naples, from Florence, and from Rome, to take part, asit was supposed, in the national struggle by the side of the King ofPiedmont. Volunteers thronged to the standards. The Papal benedictionseemed for once to rest on the cause of manhood and independence. On theother hand, the very impetus which had brought Liberal Ministries intopower threatened to pass into a phase of violence and disorder. Theconcessions already made were mocked by men who expected to win all thevictories of democracy in an hour. It remained to be seen whether thereexisted in Italy the political sagacity which, triumphing over all localjealousies, could bend to one great aim the passions of the multitude andthe fears of the Courts, or whether the cause of the whole nation would bewrecked in an ignoble strife between demagogues and reactionists, betweenthe 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 onGermany. Though the Revolutionary movement was in full course on the eastof the Rhine before Metternich's fall, it received, especially at Berlin, agreat impetus from this event. Since the beginning of March the Prussiancapital had worn an unwonted aspect. In this city of military disciplinepublic meetings had been held day after day, and the streets had beenblocked by excited crowds. Deputations which laid before the King demandssimilar to those now made in every German town received halting and evasiveanswers. Excitement increased, and on the 13th of March encounters beganbetween the citizens and the troops, which, though insignificant, served toexasperate the people and its leaders. The King appeared to be waveringbetween resistance and concession until the Revolution at Vienna, whichbecame known at Berlin on the 15th of March, brought affairs to theircrisis. On the 17th the tumult in the streets suddenly ceased; it wasunderstood that the following day would see the Government eitherreconciled with the people or forced to deal with an insurrection on agreat scale. Accordingly on the morning of the 18th crowds made their waytowards the palace, which was surrounded by troops. About midday thereappeared a Royal edict summoning the Prussian United Diet for the 2nd ofApril, and announcing that the King had determined to promote the creationof a Parliament for all Germany and the establishment of ConstitutionalGovernment in every German State. This manifesto drew fresh masses towardsthe palace, desirous, it would seem, to express their satisfaction; itscontents, however, were imperfectly understood by the assembly already infront of the palace, which the King vainly attempted to address. Whencalled upon to disperse, the multitude refused to do so, and answered bycries for the withdrawal of the soldiery. In the midst of the confusion twoshots were fired from the ranks without orders; a panic followed, in which, for no known reason, the cavalry and infantry threw themselves upon thepeople. The crowd was immediately put to flight, but the combat was takenup by the population of Berlin. Barricades appeared in the streets;fighting continued during the evening and night. Meanwhile the King, whowas shocked and distressed at the course that events had taken, receiveddeputations begging that the troops might be withdrawn from the city. Frederick William endeavoured for awhile to make the surrender of thebarricades the condition for an armistice; but as night went on the troopsbecame exhausted, and although they had gained ground, the resistance ofthe people was not overcome. Whether doubtful of the ultimate issue of theconflict or unwilling to permit further bloodshed, the King gave way, andat daybreak on the 19th ordered the troops to be withdrawn. His intentionwas that they should continue to garrison the palace, but the order wasmisunderstood, and the troops were removed to the outside of Berlin. Thepalace was thus left unprotected, and, although no injury was inflictedupon its inmates, the King was made to feel that the people could nowcommand his homage. The bodies of the dead were brought into the court ofthe palace; their wounds were laid bare, and the King, who appeared in abalcony, was compelled to descend into the court, and to stand before themwith uncovered head. Definite political expression was given to the changedstate of affairs by the appointment of a new Ministry. [417]The conflict between the troops and the people at Berlin was described, andwith truth, as the result of a misunderstanding. Frederick William hadalready determined to yield to the principal demands of his subjects; noron the part of the inhabitants of Berlin had there existed any generalhostility towards the sovereign, although a small group of agitators, inpart foreign, had probably sought to bring about an armed attack on thethrone. Accordingly, when once the combat was broken off, there seemed tobe no important obstacle to a reconciliation between the King and thepeople. Frederick William chose a course which spared and even gratifiedhis own self-love. In the political faith of all German Liberals theestablishment of German unity was now an even more important article thanthe introduction of free institutions into each particular State. TheRevolution at Berlin had indeed been occasioned by the King's delay ingranting internal reform; but these domestic disputes might well beforgotten if in the great cause of German unity the Prussians saw theirKing rising to the needs of the hour. Accordingly the first resolution ofFrederick William, after quiet had returned to the capital, was to appearin public state as the champion of the Fatherland. A proclamation announcedon the morning of the 21st of March that the King had placed himself at thehead of the German nation, and that he would on that day appear onhorseback wearing the old German colours. In due time Frederick Williamcame 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 soodious to the Governments of Germany. As he passed through the streets hewas saluted as Emperor, but he repudiated the title, asserting with oathsand imprecations that he intended to rob no German prince of hissovereignty. At each stage of his theatrical progress he repeated toappropriate auditors his sounding but ambiguous allusions to the dutiesimposed upon him by the common danger. A manifesto, published at the closeof the day, summed up the utterances of the monarch in a somewhat lessrhetorical form. "Germany is in ferment within, and exposed from without todanger from more than one side. Deliverance from this danger can come onlyfrom the most intimate union of the German princes and people under asingle leadership. I take this leadership upon me for the hour of peril. Ihave to-day assumed the old German colours, and placed myself and my peopleunder the venerable banner of the German Empire. Prussia henceforth ismerged in Germany. " [418][National Assembly promised. ]The ride of the King through Berlin, and his assumption of the character ofGerman leader, however little it pleased the minor sovereigns, or gratifiedthe Liberals of the smaller States, who considered that such Nationalauthority ought to be conferred by the nation, not assumed by a prince, wassuccessful for the moment in restoring to the King some popularity amonghis own subjects. He could now without humiliation proceed with theconcessions which had been interrupted by the tragical events of the 18thof March. In answer to a deputation from Breslau, which urged that theChamber formed by the union of the Provincial Diets should be replaced by aConstituent Assembly, the King promised that a national RepresentativeAssembly should be convoked as soon as the United Diet had passed thenecessary electoral law. To this National Assembly the Government wouldsubmit measures securing the liberty of the individual, the right of publicmeeting and of associations, trial by jury, the responsibility ofMinisters, and the independence of the judicature. A civic militia was tobe formed, with the right of choosing its own officers, and the standingarmy was to take the oath of allegiance to the Constitution. Hereditaryjurisdictions and manorial rights of police were to be abolished; equalitybefore the law was to be universally enforced; in short, the entire schemeof reforms demanded by the Constitutional Liberals of Prussia was to becarried into effect. In Berlin, as in every other capital in Germany, thevictory of the party of progress now seemed to be assured. The Governmentno longer represented a power hostile to popular rights; and when, on the22nd of March, the King spontaneously paid the last honours to those whohad fallen in combat with his troops, as the long funeral procession passedhis palace, it was generally believed that his expression of feeling wassincere. [Schleswig-Holstein. ]In the passage of his address in which King Frederick William spoke of theexternal dangers threatening Germany, he referred to apprehensions whichhad for a while been current that the second French Republic would revivethe aggressive energy of the first. This fear proved baseless;nevertheless, for a sovereign who really intended to act as the champion ofthe German nation at large, the probability of war with a neighbouringPower was far from remote. The cause of the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein, which were in rebellion against the Danish Crown, excited the utmostinterest and sympathy in Germany. The population of these provinces, withthe exception of certain districts in Schleswig, was German; Holstein wasactually a member of the German Federation. The legal relation of theDuchies to Denmark was, according to the popular view, very nearly that ofHanover to England before 1837. The King of Denmark was also Duke ofSchleswig and of Holstein, but these were no more an integral portion ofthe Danish State than Hanover was of the British Empire; and the laws ofsuccession were moreover different in Schleswig-Holstein, the Crown beingtransmitted by males, while in Denmark females were capable of succession. On the part of the Danes it was admitted that in certain districts inHolstein the Salic law held good; it was, however, maintained that in theremainder of Holstein and in all Schleswig the rules of succession were thesame as in Denmark. The Danish Government denied that Schleswig-Holsteinformed a unity in itself, as alleged by the Germans, and that it possessedseparate national rights as against the authority of the King's Governmentat Copenhagen. The real heart of the difficulty lay in the fact that thepopulation of the Duchies was German. So long as the Germans as a racepossessed no national feeling, the union of the Duchies with the DanishMonarchy had not been felt as a grievance. It happened, however, that thegreat revival of German patriotism resulting from the War of Liberation in1813 was almost simultaneous with the severance of Norway from the DanishCrown, which compelled the Government of Copenhagen to increase veryheavily the burdens imposed on its German subjects in the Duchies. Fromthis time discontent gained ground, especially in Altona and Kiel, wheresociety was as thoroughly German as in the neighbouring city of Hamburg. After 1830, when Provincial Estates were established in Schleswig andHolstein, the German movement became formidable. The reaction, however, which marked the succeeding period generally in Europe prevailed in Denmarktoo, and it was not until 1844, when a posthumous work of Lornsen, theexiled leader of the German party, vindicated the historical rights of theDuchies, that the claims of German nationality in these provinces wereagain vigorously urged. From this time the separation of Schleswig-Holsteinfrom 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 answerto an address of the Danish Provincial Estates calling upon the King todeclare the unity of the Monarchy and the validity of the Danish law ofsuccession for all its parts, the Holstein Estates passed a resolution inNovember, 1844, that the Duchies were an independent body, governed by therule of male descent, and indivisible. After an interval of two years, during which a Commission examined the succession-laws, King Christianpublished a declaration that the succession was the same in Schleswig as inDenmark proper, and that, as regarded those parts of Holstein where adifferent rule of succession existed, he would spare no effort to maintainthe unity of the Monarchy. On this the Provincial Estates both of Schleswigand 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 appealwas made to the German Federal Diet. The Diet merely replied by adeclaration of rights; but in Germany at large the keenest interest wasaroused on behalf of these severed members of the race who were soresolutely struggling against incorporation with a foreign Power. Thedeputies themselves, passing from village to village, excited a strenuousspirit of resistance throughout the Duchies, which was met by the DanishGovernment with measures of repression more severe than any which it hadhitherto 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, KingChristian VIII. Died, leaving the throne to Frederick VII. , the last of themale line of his House. Frederick's first act was to publish the draft of aConstitution, in which all parts of the Monarchy were treated as on thesame footing. Before the delegates could assemble to whom the completion ofthis work was referred, the shock of the Paris Revolution reached the NorthSea ports. A public meeting at Altona demanded the establishment of aseparate constitution for Schleswig-Holstein, and the admission ofSchleswig into the German Federation. The Provincial Estates accepted thisresolution, and sent a deputation to Copenhagen to present this and otherdemands to the King. But in the course of the next few days a popularmovement at Copenhagen brought into power a thoroughly Danish Ministry, pledged to the incorporation of Schleswig with Denmark as an integral partof the Kingdom. Without waiting to learn the answer made by the King to thedeputation, the Holsteiners now took affairs into their own hands. AProvisional Government was formed at Kiel (March 24), the troops joined thepeople, and the insurrection instantly spread over the whole province. Asthe proposal to change the law of succession to the throne had originatedwith the King of Denmark, the cause of the Holsteiners was from one pointof view that of established right. The King of Prussia, accepting thepositions laid down by the Holstein Estates in 1844, declared that he woulddefend the claims of the legitimate heir by force of arms, and ordered histroops to enter Holstein. The Diet of Frankfort, now forced to express theuniversal will of Germany, demanded that Schleswig, as the sister State ofHolstein, should enter the Federation. On the passing of this resolution, the envoy who represented the Denmark. King of Denmark at the Diet, as Dukeof Holstein, quitted Frankfort, and a state of war ensued between Denmarkon 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 alreadycalled into being an organ for the expression of national sentiment, which, if without any legal or constitutional authority, was yet strong enough toimpose its will upon the old and discredited Federal Diet and upon most ofthe surviving Governments. At the invitation of a Committee, about fivehundred Liberals who had in one form or another taken part in publicaffairs assembled at Frankfort on the 30th of March to make the necessarypreparations for the meeting of a German national Parliament. ThisAssembly, which is known as the Ante-Parliament, sat but for five days. Itsresolutions, so far as regarded the method of electing the new Parliament, and the inclusion of new districts in the German Federation, were acceptedby the Diet, and in the main carried into effect. Its denunciation ofpersons concerned in the repressive measures of 1819 and subsequentreactionary epochs was followed by the immediate retirement of all membersof the Diet whose careers dated back to those detested days. But in themost important work that was expected from the Ante-Parliament, thesettlement of a draft-Constitution to be laid before the future NationalAssembly as a basis for its deliberations, nothing whatever wasaccomplished. The debates that took place from the 31st of March to the 4thof April were little more than a trial of strength between the Monarchicaland Republican parties. The Republicans, far outnumbered when theysubmitted a constitutional scheme of their own, proposed, after thisrepulse, that the existing Assembly should continue in session until theNational Parliament met; in other words, that it should take upon itselfthe functions and character of a National Convention. Defeated also on thisproposal, the leaders of the extreme section of the Republican party, strangely miscalculating their real strength, determined on armedinsurrection. Uniting with a body of German refugees beyond the Rhine, whowere themselves assisted by French and Polish soldiers of revolution, theyraised the Republican standard in Baden, and for a few days maintained ahopeless and inglorious struggle against the troops which were sent tosuppress them. Even in Baden, which had long been in advance of all otherGerman States in democratic sentiment, and which was peculiarly open toRepublican influences from France and Switzerland, the movement was notseriously supported by the population, and in the remainder of Germany itreceived no countenance whatever. The leaders found themselves ruined men. The best of them fled to the United States, where, in the great struggleagainst slavery thirteen years later, they rendered better service to theiradopted 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 aCommittee of Fifty, whose task it was to continue the work of preparationfor the National Assembly to which it had itself contributed so little. Onething alone had been clearly established, that the future Constitution ofGermany was not to be Republican. That the existing Governments could notbe safely ignored by the National Assembly in its work of founding the newFederal Constitution for Germany was clear to those who were not blinded bythe enthusiasm of the moment. In the Committee of Fifty and elsewhere planswere suggested for giving to the Governments a representation within theConstituent Assembly, or for uniting their representatives in a Chamberco-ordinate with this, so that each step in the construction of the newFederal order should be at once the work of the nation and of theGovernments. Such plans were suggested and discussed; but in the haste andinexperience of the time they were brought to no conclusion. The opening ofthe National Assembly had been fixed for the 18th of May, and this briefinterval had expired before the few sagacious men who understood thenecessity of co-operation between the Governments and the Parliament haddecided upon any common course of action. To the mass of patriots it wasenough that Germany, after thirty years of disappointment, had at last wonits national representation. Before this imposing image of the united race, Kings, Courts, and armies, it was fondly thought, must bow. Thus, in themidst of universal hope, the elections were held throughout Germany in itsutmost federal extent, from the Baltic to the Italian border; Bohemiaalone, where the Czech majority resisted any closer union with Germany, declining to send representatives to Frankfort. In the body of deputieselected there were to be found almost all the foremost Liberal politiciansof every German community; a few still vigorous champions of the time ofthe War of Liberation, chief among them the poet Arndt; patriots who in theevil days that followed had suffered imprisonment and exile; historians, professors, critics, who in the sacred cause of liberty have, likeGervinus, inflicted upon their readers worse miseries than ever theythemselves endured at the hands of unregenerate kings; theologians, journalists; in short, the whole group of leaders under whom Germanyexpected to enter into the promised land of national unity and freedom. NoImperial coronation ever brought to Frankfort so many honoured guests, orattracted to the same degree the sympathy of the German race. Greeted withthe cheers of the citizens of Frankfort, whose civic militia lined thestreets, the members of the Assembly marched in procession on the afternoonof the 18th of May from the ancient banqueting-hall of the Kaisers, wherethey had gathered, to the Church of St. Paul, which had been chosen astheir Senate House. Their President and officers were elected on thefollowing day. Arndt, who in the frantic confusion of the first meeting hadbeen unrecognised and shouted down, was called into the Tribune, but couldspeak only a few words for tears. The Assembly voted him its thanks for hisfamous song, "What is the German's Fatherland?" and requested that he wouldadd to it another stanza commemorating the union of the race at lengthvisibly realised in that great Parliament. Four days after the opening ofthe General Assembly of Frankfort, the Prussian national Parliament beganits 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. Acertain unity marks the memorable epoch known generally as the March Daysand the events immediately succeeding. Revolution is universal; it scarcelymeets with resistance; its views seem on the point of being achieved; thebaffled aspirations of the last half-century seem on the point of beingfulfilled. There exists no longer in Central Europe such a thing as anautocratic Government; and, while the French Republic maintains anunexpected attitude of peace, Germany and Italy, under the leadership ofold dynasties now penetrated with a new spirit, appear to be on the pointof achieving each its own work of Federal union and of the expulsion of theforeigner from its national soil. All Italy prepares to move under CharlesAlbert to force the Austrians from their last strongholds on the Mincio andthe Adige; all Germany is with the troops of Frederick William of Prussiaas they enter Holstein to rescue this and the neighbouring German provincefrom the Dane. In Radetzky's camp alone, and at the Court of St. Petersburg, the old monarchical order of Europe still survives. Howpowerful were these two isolated centres of anti-popular energy the worldwas soon to see. Yet they would not have turned back the tide of Europeanaffairs and given one more victory to reaction had they not had theirallies in the hatred of race to race, in the incapacity and the errors ofpeoples and those who represented them; above all, in the enormousdifficulties which, even had the generation been one of sages and martyrs, the political circumstances of the time would in themselves have opposed tothe 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 nationalindependence but for political and social interests, that the Revolutionmost rapidly ran its course and first exhausted its powers. On the flightof Louis Philippe authority had been entrusted by the Chamber of Deputiesto a Provisional Government, whose most prominent member was the orator andpoet Lamartine. Installed at the Hôtel de Ville, this Government had withdifficulty prevented the mob from substituting the Red Flag for theTricolor, and from proceeding at once to realise the plans of its ownleaders. The majority of the Provisional Government were Republicans of amoderate type, representing the ideas of the urban middle classes ratherthan those of the workmen; but by their side were Ledru Rollin, arhetorician dominated by the phrases of 1793, and Louis Blanc, whoconsidered all political change as but an instrument for advancing theorganisation of labour and for the emancipation of the artisan fromservitude, by the establishment of State-directed industries affordingappropriate employment and adequate remuneration to all. Among the firstproclamations of the Provisional Government was one in which, in answer toa petition demanding the recognition of the Right to Labour, they undertookto guarantee employment to every citizen. This engagement, the heaviestperhaps that was ever voluntarily assumed by any Government, was followedin a few days by the opening of national workshops. That in the midst of aRevolution which took all parties by surprise plans for the conduct of aseries of industrial enterprises by the State should have been seriouslyexamined was impossible. The Government had paid homage to an abstractidea; they were without a conception of the mode in which it was to berealised. What articles were to be made, what works were to be executed, noone knew. The mere direction of destitute workmen to the centres where theywere to be employed was a task for which a new branch of the administrationhad to be created. When this was achieved, the men collected proved uselessfor all purposes of industry. Their numbers increased enormously, rising inthe course of four weeks from fourteen to sixty-five thousand. TheRevolution had itself caused a financial and commercial panic, interruptingall the ordinary occupations of business, and depriving masses of men ofthe means of earning a livelihood. These, with others who had no intentionof working, thronged to the State workshops; while the certainty ofobtaining wages from the public purse occasioned a series of strikes ofworkmen against their employers and the abandonment of private factories. The chocks which had been intended to confine enrolment at the public worksto persons already domiciled in Paris completely failed; from all theneighbouring departments the idle and the hungry streamed into the capital. Every abuse incidental to a system of public relief was present in Paris inits most exaggerated form; every element of experience, of wisdom, ofprecaution, was absent. If, instead of a group of benevolent theorists, theexperiment of 1848 had had for its authors a company of millionairesanxious to dispel all hope that mankind might ever rise to a higher orderthan that of unrestricted competition of man against man, it could not havebeen 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 thatthe decision upon the form of Government to be established in France inplace of the Orleanist monarchy belonged rather to themselves than to thenation at large. They distrusted, and with good reason, the results of theGeneral Election which, by a decree of the Provisional Government, was tobe held in the course of April. A circular issued by Ledru Rollin, Ministerof the Interior, without the knowledge of his colleagues, to theCommissioners by whom he had replaced the Prefects of the Monarchy gave thefirst open indication of this alarm, and of the means of violence andintimidation by which the party which Ledru Rollin represented hoped toimpose its will upon the country. The Commissioners were informed in plainlanguage that, as agents of a revolutionary authority, their powers wereunlimited, and that their task was to exclude from election all persons whowere not animated by revolutionary spirit, and pure from any taint ofassociation with the past. If the circular had been the work of theGovernment, and not of a single member of it who was at variance with mostof his colleagues and whose words were far more formidable than hisactions, it would have clearly foreshadowed a return to the system of 1793. But the isolation of Ledru Rollin was well understood. The attitude of theGovernment generally was so little in accordance with the views of the RedRepublicans that on the 16th of April a demonstration was organised withthe object of compelling them to postpone the elections. The promptappearance in arms of the National Guard, which still represented themiddle classes of Paris, baffled the design of the leaders of the mob, andgave to Lamartine and the majority in the Government a decisive victoryover their revolutionary colleague. The elections were held at the timeappointed; and, in spite of the institution of universal suffrage, theyresulted in the return of a body of Deputies not widely different fromthose who had hitherto appeared in French Parliaments. The great majoritywere indeed Republicans by profession, but of a moderate type; and thesession had no sooner opened than it became clear that the relation betweenthe Socialist democracy of Paris and the National Representatives couldonly 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 declarethat the Provisional Government had deserved well of the country, and toreinstate most of its members in office under the title of an ExecutiveCommission. Ledru Rollin's offences were condoned, as those of a manpopular with the democracy, and likely on the whole to yield to theinfluence of his colleagues. Louis Blanc and his confederate, Albert, asreally dangerous persons, were excluded. The Jacobin leaders now proceededto organise an attack on the Assembly by main force. On the 15th of May theattempt was made. Under pretence of tendering a petition on behalf ofPoland, a mob invaded the Legislative Chamber, declared the Assemblydissolved, and put the Deputies to flight. But the triumph was of shortduration. The National Guard, whose commander alone was responsible for thefailure of measures of defence, soon rallied in force; the leaders of theinsurgents, some of whom had installed themselves as a ProvisionalGovernment at the Hôtel de Ville, were made captive; and after an intervalof a few hours the Assembly resumed possession of the Palais Bourbon. Thedishonour done to the national representation by the scandalous scenes ofthe 15th of May, as well as the decisively proved superiority of theNational Guard over the half armed mob, encouraged the Assembly to declareopen war against the so-called social democracy, and to decree theabolition of the national workshops. The enormous growth of theseestablishments, which now included over a hundred thousand men, threatenedto ruin the public finances; the demoralisation which they engenderedseemed likely to destroy whatever was sound in the life of the workingclasses of Paris. Of honest industry there was scarcely a trace to be foundamong 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 resortedto them, they had now become mere hives of disorder, where the resources ofthe State were lavished in accumulating a force for its own overthrow. Itwas necessary, at whatever risk, to extinguish the evil. Plans for thegradual dispersion of the army of workmen were drawn up by Committees anddiscussed by the Assembly. If put in force with no more than the necessarydelay, these plans might perhaps have rendered a peaceful solution of thedifficulty possible. But the Government hesitated, and finally, when adecision could no longer be avoided, determined upon measures more violentand more sudden than those which the Committees had recommended. On the21st of June an order was published that all occupants of the publicworkshops between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five must enlist in thearmy or cease to receive support from the State, and that the removal ofthe workmen who had come into Paris from the provinces, for whichpreparations 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. Thelegions of the national workshops were in themselves a half-organised forceequal in number to several army-corps, and now animated by something likethe spirit of military union. The revolt, which began on the morning of the23rd of June, was conducted as no revolt in Pans had ever been conductedbefore. The eastern part of the city was turned into a maze of barricades. Though the insurgents had not artillery, they were in other respects fairlyarmed. The terrible nature of the conflict impending now became evident tothe Assembly. General Cavaignac, Minister of War, was placed in command, and subsequently invested with supreme authority, the Executive Commissionresigning its powers. All the troops in the neighbourhood of Paris were atonce summoned to the capital, Cavaignac well understood that any attempt tohold 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 treatedParis as one great battle-field in which the enemy must be attacked in massand driven by main force from all his positions. At times the effortappeared almost beyond the power of the forces engaged, and the insurgents, sheltered by huge barricades and firing from the windows of houses, seemedlikely to remain masters of the field. The struggle continued for fourdays, but Cavaignac's artillery and the discipline of his troops at lastcrushed resistance; and after the Archbishop of Paris had been mortallywounded in a heroic effort to stop further bloodshed, the last bands of theinsurgents, driven back into the north-eastern quarter of the city, andthere attacked with artillery in front and flank, were forced to lay downtheir arms. [Fears left by the events of June. ]Such was the conflict of the Four Days of June, a conflict memorable as onein which the combatants fought not for a political principle or form ofGovernment, but for the preservation or the overthrow of society based onthe institution of private property. The National Guard, with someexceptions, fought side by side with the regiments of the line, braved thesame perils, and sustained an equal loss. The workmen threw themselves themore passionately into the struggle, inasmuch as defeat threatened themwith deprivation of the very means of life. On both sides acts of savagerywere committed which the fury of the conflict could not excuse. Thevengeance of the conquerors in the moment of success appears, however, tohave been less unrelenting than that which followed the overthrow of theCommune in 1871, though, after the struggle was over, the Assembly had noscruple in transporting without trial the whole mass of prisoners takenwith arms in their hands. Cavaignac's victory left the classes for whom hehad fought terror-stricken at the peril from which they had escaped, andalmost hopeless of their own security under any popular form of Governmentin the future. Against the rash and weak concessions to popular demandsthat had been made by the administration since February, especially in thematter of taxation and finance, there was now a deep, if not loudlyproclaimed, reaction. The national workshops disappeared; grants were madeby the Legislature for the assistance of the masses who were left withoutresource, but the money was bestowed in charitable relief or in the form ofloans to associations, not as wages from the State. On every side among theholders of property the cry was for a return to sound principles of financein the economy of the State, and for the establishment of a strong centralpower. [Cavaignac and Louis Napoleon. ][Louis Napoleon elected Deputy but resigns, June 14. ]General Cavaignac after the restoration of order had laid down the supremeauthority which had been conferred on him, but at the desire of theAssembly he continued to exercise it until the new Constitution should bedrawn up and an Executive appointed in accordance with its provisions. Events had suddenly raised Cavaignac from obscurity to eminence, and seemedto mark him out as the future ruler of France. But he displayed during thesix months following the suppression of the revolt no great capacity forgovernment, and his virtues as well as his defects made against hispersonal success. A sincere Republican, while at the same time a rigidupholder of law, he refused to lend himself to those who were, except inname, enemies of Republicanism; and in his official acts and utterances hespared the feelings of the reactionary classes as little as he would havespared those of rioters and Socialists. As the influence of Cavaignacdeclined, another name began to fill men's thoughts. Louis Napoleon, son ofthe Emperor's brother Louis, King of Holland, had while still in exile beenelected to the National Assembly by four Departments. He was as yet almostunknown except by name to his fellow-countrymen. Born in the Tuileries in1808, he had been involved as a child in the ruin of the Empire, and hadpassed into banishment with his mother Hortense, under the law thatexpelled from France all members of Napoleon's family. He had been broughtup at Augsburg and on the shores of the Lake of Constance, and as avolunteer in a Swiss camp of artillery he had gained some littleacquaintance with military life. In 1831 he had joined the insurgents inthe Romagna who were in arms against the Papal Government. The death of hisown elder brother, followed in 1832 by that of Napoleon's son, the Duke ofReichstadt, made him chief of the house of Bonaparte. Though far more of arecluse than a man of action, though so little of his own nation that hecould not pronounce a sentence of French without a marked German accent, and had never even seen a French play performed, he now became possessed bythe fixed idea that he was one day to wear the French Crown. A few obscureadventurers attached themselves to his fortunes, and in 1836 he appeared atStrasburg and presented himself to the troops as Emperor. The enterpriseended in failure and ridicule. Louis Napoleon was shipped to America by theOrleanist Government, which supplied him with money, and thought itunnecessary even to bring him to trial. He recrossed the Atlantic, made hishome in England, and in 1840 repeated at Boulogne the attempt that hadfailed at Strasburg. The result was again disastrous. He was now sentencedto perpetual imprisonment, and passed the next six years in captivity atHam, where he produced a treatise on the Napoleonic Ideas, and certainfragments on political and social questions. The enthusiasm for Napoleon, of which there had been little trace in France since 1815, was nowreviving; the sufferings of the epoch of conquest were forgotten; thesteady maintenance of peace by Louis Philippe seemed humiliating to youngand ardent spirits who had not known the actual presence of the foreigner. In literature two men of eminence worked powerfully upon the nationalimagination. The history of Thiers gave the nation a great stage-picture ofNapoleon's exploits; Béranger's lyrics invested his exile at St. Helenawith an irresistible, though spurious, pathos. Thus, little as the worldconcerned itself with the prisoner at Ham, the tendencies of the time wereworking in his favour; and his confinement, which lasted six years and wasterminated by his escape and return to England, appears to have deepenedhis brooding nature, and to have strengthened rather than diminished hisconfidence in himself. On the overthrow of Louis Philippe he visited Paris, but was requested by the Provisional Government, on the ground of theunrepealed law banishing the Bonaparte family, to quit the country. Heobeyed, probably foreseeing that the difficulties of the Republic wouldcreate better opportunities for his reappearance. Meanwhile the group ofunknown men who sought their fortunes in a Napoleonic restoration busilycanvassed and wrote on behalf of the Prince, and with such success that, inthe supplementary elections that were held at the beginning of June, heobtained a fourfold triumph. The Assembly, in spite of the efforts of theGovernment, pronounced his return valid. Yet with rare self-command thePrince still adhered to his policy of reserve, resigning his seat on theground that his election had been made a pretext for movements of which hedisapproved, while at the same time he declared in his letter to thePresident of the Assembly that if duties should be imposed upon him by thepeople 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. TheConstitution of the Republic was now being drawn up by the Assembly. TheExecutive Commission had disappeared in the convulsion of June; Cavaignacwas holding the balance between parties rather than governing himself. Inthe midst of the debates on the Constitution Louis Napoleon was againreturned elected, to the Assembly by the votes of five Departments. He sawthat he ought to remain no longer in the background, and, accepting thecall of the electors, he took his seat in the Chamber. It was clear that hewould become a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, and that thepopularity of his name among the masses was enormous. He had twicepresented himself to France as the heir to Napoleon's throne; he had neverdirectly abandoned his dynastic claim; he had but recently declared, inalmost threatening language, that he should know how to fulfil the dutiesthat the people might impose upon him. Yet with all these facts before itthe Assembly, misled by the puerile rhetoric of Lamartine, decided that inthe new Constitution the President of the Republic, in whom was vested theexecutive power, should be chosen by the direct vote of all Frenchmen, andrejected the amendment of M. Grevy, who, with real insight into the future, declared that such direct election by the people could only give France aDictator, and demanded that the President should be appointed not by themasses but by the Chamber. Thus was the way paved for Louis Napoleon'smarch to power. The events of June had dispelled any attraction that he hadhitherto felt towards Socialistic theories. He saw that France required anupholder of order and of property. In his address to the nation announcinghis candidature for the Presidency he declared that he would shrink from nosacrifice in defending society, so audaciously attacked; that he woulddevote himself without reserve to the maintenance of the Republic, and makeit his pride to leave to his successor at the end of four years authoritystrengthened, liberty unimpaired, and real progress accomplished. Behindthese generalities the address dexterously touched on the special wants ofclasses and parties, and promised something to each. The French nation inthe election which followed showed that it believed in Louis Napoleon evenmore than he did in himself. If there existed in the opinion of the greatmass any element beyond the mere instinct of self-defence against real orsupposed schemes of spoliation, it was reverence for Napoleon's memory. Outof seven millions of votes given, Louis Napoleon received above five, Cavaignac, who alone entered into serious competition with him, receivingabout a fourth part of that number. Lamartine and the men who ten monthsbefore had represented all the hopes of the nation now found but a handfulof supporters. Though none yet openly spoke of Monarchy, on all sides therewas the desire for the restoration of power. The day-dreams of the secondRepublic had fled. France had shown that its choice lay only between asoldier who had crushed rebellion and a stranger who brought no title toits 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--Campaignaround Verona--Papal Allocution--Naples in May--Negotiations as toLombardy--Reconquest of Venetia--Battle of Custozza--The Austrians enterMilan--Austrian Court and Hungary--The Serbs in Southern Hungary--SerbCongress at Carlowitz--Jellacic--Affairs of Croatia--Jellacic, the Courtand the Hungarian Movement--Murder of Lamberg--Manifesto of October 3Vienna on October 6--The Emperor at Olmütz--Windischgrätz conquersVienna--The Parliament at Kremsier--Schwarzenberg Minister--Ferdinandabdicates--Dissolution of the Kremsier Parliament--Unitary Edict--Hungary--The Roumanians in Transylvania--The Austrian Army occupiesPesth--Hungarian Government at Debreczin--The Austrians driven out ofHungary--Declaration of Hungarian Independence--Russian Intervention--The Hungarian Summer Campaign--Capitulation of Vilagos--Italy--Murder ofRossi--Tuscany--The March Campaign in Lombardy--Novara--Abdication ofCharles Albert--Victor Emmanuel--Restoration in Tuscany--FrenchIntervention in Rome--Defeat of Oudinot--Oudinot and Lesseps--The Frenchenter 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 PrussianArmy--Last days of the Prussian Parliament--Prussian Constitutiongranted by Edict--The German National Assembly and Austria--FrederickWilliam IV. Elected Emperor--He refuses the Crown--End of the NationalAssembly--Prussia attempts to form a separate Union--The UnionParliament at Erfurt--Action of Austria--Hesse Cassel--The Diet ofFrankfort restored--Olmütz--Schleswig-Holstein--Germany after 1849--Austria after 1851--France after 1848--Louis Napoleon--The OctoberMessage--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 contestbetween interests greater than those of Italy itself has been brought to anissue, and it may perhaps be truly said that in the struggle betweenestablished Governments and Revolution through out Central Europe in 1848the real turning point, if it can anywhere be fixed, lay rather in thefortunes of a campaign in Lombardy than in any single combination of eventsat Vienna or Berlin. The very existence of the Austrian Monarchy dependedon the victory of Radetzky's forces over the national movement at the headof which Piedmont had now placed itself. If Italian independence should beestablished upon the ruin of the Austrian arms, and the influence andexample of the victorious Italian people be thrown into the scale againstthe Imperial Government in its struggle with the separatist forces thatconvulsed every part of the Austrian dominions, it was scarcely possiblethat any stroke of fortune or policy could save the Empire of the Hapsburgsfrom dissolution. But on the prostration or recovery of Austria, asrepresented by its central power at Vienna, the future of Germany in greatpart depended. Whatever compromise might be effected between popular andmonarchical forces in the other German States if left free from Austria'sinterference, the whole influence of a resurgent Austrian power could notbut be directed against the principles of popular sovereignty and nationalunion. The Parliament of Frankfort might then in vain affect to fulfil itsmandate without reckoning with the Court of Vienna. All this was indeedobscured in the tempests that for a while shut out the political horizon. The Liberals of Northern Germany had little sympathy with the Italian causein the decisive days of 1848. Their inclinations went rather with thecombatant who, though bent on maintaining an oppressive dominion, wasnevertheless a member of the German race and paid homage for the moment toConstitutional rights. Yet, as later events were to prove, the fetterswhich crushed liberty beyond the Alps could fit as closely on to Germanlimbs; and in the warfare of Upper Italy for its own freedom the battle ofGerman 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 aConstitution. His successors in office, with a certain characteristicpedantry, devoted their studies to the Belgian Constitution of 1831; andafter some weeks a Constitution was published by edict for thenon-Hungarian part of the Empire, including a Parliament of two Chambers, the Lower to be chosen by indirect election, the Upper consisting ofnominees of the Crown and representatives of the great landowners. Theprovisions 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 handledthe Press grew ever more violent and more scurrilous. One strange result ofthe tutelage in which Austrian society had been held was that the studentsof the University became, and for some time continued to be, the mostimportant political body of the capital. Their principal rivals ininfluence were the National Guard drawn from citizens of the middle class, the workmen as yet remaining in the background. Neither in the Hall of theUniversity nor at the taverns where the civic militia discussed the eventsof the hour did the office-drawn Constitution find favour. On the 13th ofMay it was determined, with the view of exercising stronger pressure uponthe Government, that the existing committees of the National Guard and ofthe students should be superseded by one central committee representingboth bodies. The elections to this committee had been held, and itssittings had begun, when the commander of the National Guard declared suchproceedings to be inconsistent with military discipline, and ordered thedissolution of the committee. Riots followed, during which the students andthe mob made their way into the Emperor's palace and demanded from hisMinisters not only the re-establishment of the central committee but theabolition of the Upper Chamber in the projected Constitution, and theremoval of the checks imposed on popular sovereignty by a limited franchiseand the system of indirect elections. On point after point the Ministrygave way; and, in spite of the resistance and reproaches of the Imperialhousehold, they obtained the Emperor's signature to a document promisingthat for the future all the important military posts in the city should beheld by the National Guard jointly with the regular troops, that the lattershould never be called out except on the requisition of the National Guard, and that the projected Constitution should remain without force until itshould have been submitted for confirmation to a single ConstituentAssembly 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 inthe 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 hoursafterwards he fell under the sway of the Court party, and consented to flyfrom Vienna. On the 18th the Viennese learnt to their astonishment thatFerdinand was far on the road to the Tyrol. Soon afterwards a manifesto waspublished, stating that the violence and anarchy of the capital hadcompelled the Emperor to transfer his residence to Innsbruck; that heremained true, however, to the promises made in March and to theirlegitimate consequences; and that proof must be given of the return of theViennese to their old sentiments of loyalty before he could again appearamong them. A certain revulsion of feeling in the Emperor's favour nowbecame manifest in the capital, and emboldened the Ministers to take thefirst step necessary towards obtaining his return, namely the dissolutionof the Students' Legion. They could count with some confidence on thesupport of the wealthier part of the middle class, who were now becomingwearied of the students' extravagances and alarmed at the interruption ofbusiness caused by the Revolution; moreover, the ordinary termination ofthe academic year was near at hand. The order was accordingly given for thedissolution of the Legion and the closing of the University. But thestudents met the order with the stoutest resistance. The workmen poured infrom the suburbs to join in their defence. Barricades were erected, and theinsurrection of March seemed on the point of being renewed. Once more theGovernment gave way, and not only revoked its order, but declared itselfincapable of preserving tranquillity in the capital unless it shouldreceive the assistance of the leaders of the people. With the fullconcurrence of the Ministers, a Committee of Public Safety was formed, representing at once the students, the middle class, and the workmen; andit entered upon its duties with an authority exceeding, within the limitsof 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 inBohemia was daily becoming more bitter. The influence of the party ofcompromise, which had been dominant in the early days of March, haddisappeared before the ill-timed attempt of the German national leaders atFrankfort to include Bohemia within the territory sending representativesto the German national Parliament. By consenting to this incorporation theCzech population would have definitely renounced its newly asserted claimto nationality. If the growth of democratic spirit at Vienna wasaccompanied by a more intense German national feeling in the capital, thepopular movements at Vienna and at Prague must necessarily pass into arelation of conflict with one another. On the flight of the Emperorbecoming known at Prague, Count Thun, the governor, who was also the chiefof the moderate Bohemian party, invited Ferdinand to make Prague the seatof his Government. This invitation, which would have directly connected theCrown with Czech national interests, was not accepted. The rasherpoliticians, chiefly students and workmen, continued to hold their meetingsand to patrol the streets; and a Congress of Slavs from all parts of theEmpire, which was opened on the 2nd of June, excited national passionsstill further. So threatening grew the attitude of the students and workmenthat Count Windischgrätz, commander of the troops at Prague, prepared toact with artillery. On the 12th of June, the day on which the Congress ofSlavs broke up, fighting began. Windischgrätz, whose wife was killed by abullet, appears to have acted with calmness, and to have sought to arriveat some peaceful settlement. He withdrew his troops, and desisted from abombardment that he had begun, on the understanding that the barricadeswhich had been erected should be removed. This condition was not fulfilled. New acts of violence occurred in the city, and on the 17th Windischgrätzreopened fire. On the following day Prague surrendered, and Windischgrätzre-entered the city as Dictator. The autonomy of Bohemia was at an end. Thearmy had for the first time acted with effect against a popular rising; thefirst blow had been struck on behalf of the central power against therevolution which till now had seemed about to dissolve the Austrian Stateinto its fragments. [Campaign around Verona, April-May. ]At this point the dominant interest in Austrian affairs passes from thecapital and the northern provinces to Radetzky's army and the Italians withwhom it stood face to face. Once convinced of the necessity of a retreatfrom Milan, the Austrian commander had moved with sufficient rapidity tosave Verona and Mantua from passing into the hands of the insurgents. Hewas thus enabled to place his army in one of the best defensive positionsin Europe, the Quadrilateral flanked by the rivers Mincio and Adige, andprotected by the fortresses of Verona, Mantua, Peschiera, and Legnano. Withhis front on the Mincio he awaited at once the attack of the Piedmonteseand the arrival of reinforcements from the north-east. On the 8th of Aprilthe first attack was made, and after a sharp engagement at Goito thepassage of the Mincio was effected by the Sardinian army. Siege was nowlaid to Peschiera; and while a Tuscan contingent watched Mantua, the bulkof Charles Albert's forces operated farther northward with the view ofcutting off Verona from the roads to the Tyrol. This result was for amoment achieved, but the troops at the King's disposal were far too weakfor the task of reducing the fortresses; and in an attempt that was made onthe 6th of May to drive the Austrians out of their positions in front ofVerona, Charles Albert was defeated at Santa Lucia and compelled to fallback towards the Mincio. [425][Papal Allocution, April 29. ][Naples in May. ]A pause in the war ensued, filled by political events of evil omen forItaly. Of all the princes who had permitted their troops to marchnorthwards to the assistance of the Lombards, not one was acting in fullsincerity. The first to show himself in his true colours was the Pope. Onthe 29th of April an Allocution was addressed to the Cardinals, in whichPius disavowed all participation in the war against Austria, and declaredthat his own troops should do no more than defend the integrity of theRoman States. Though at the moment an outburst of popular indignation inRome forced a still more liberal Ministry into power, and Durando, thePapal general, continued his advance into Venetia, the Pope's renunciationof his supposed national leadership produced the effect which its authordesired, encouraging every open and every secret enemy of the Italiancause, and perplexing those who had believed themselves to be engaged in asacred as well as a patriotic war. In Naples things hurried far morerapidly to a catastrophe. Elections had been held to the Chamber ofDeputies, which was to be opened on the 15th of May, and most of themembers returned were men who, while devoted to the Italian national causewere neither Republicans nor enemies of the Bourbon dynasty, but anxious toco-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 despoticgovernment and abandoning the Italian cause. Disorder and agitationincreased from day to day; and after the Deputies had arrived in the cityand begun a series of informal meetings preparatory to the opening of theParliament, 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 agreedthat it should be submitted to the two Chambers for revision. He notified, however, to the Representatives on the eve of the opening of Parliamentthat they would be required to take an oath of fidelity to theConstitution. They urged that such an oath would deprive them of theirright of revision. The King, after some hours, consented to a change in theformula of the oath; but his demand had already thrown the city intotumult. Barricades were erected, the Deputies in vain endeavouring to calmthe rioters and to prevent a conflict with the troops. While negotiationswere still in progress shots were fired. The troops now threw themselvesupon the people; there was a struggle, short in duration, but sanguinaryand merciless; the barricades were captured, some hundreds of theinsurgents slain, and Ferdinand was once more absolute master of Naples. The Assembly was dissolved on the day after that on which it should havemet. Orders were at once sent by the King to General Pepe, commander of thetroops that were on the march to Lombardy, to return with his army toNaples. Though Pepe continued true to the national cause, and endeavouredto lead his army forward from Bologna in defiance of the King'sinstructions, his troops now melted away; and when he crossed the Po andplaced himself under the standard of Charles Albert in Venetia thereremained 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 receiveno considerable help from the Southern States in their struggle forfreedom, and that the promised league of the Governments in the nationalcause was but a dream from which there was a bitter awakening. Nor inNorthern Italy itself was there the unity in aim and action without whichsuccess was impossible. The Republican party accused the King and theProvisional Government at Milan of an unwillingness to arm the people;Charles Albert on his part regarded every Republican as an enemy. Onentering Lombardy the King had stated that no question as to the politicalorganisation of the future should be raised until the war was ended;nevertheless, before a fortress had been captured, he had allowed Modenaand Parma to declare themselves incorporated with the Piedmontese monarchy;and, in spite of Mazzini's protest, their example was followed by Lombardyand some Venetian districts. In the recriminations that passed between theRepublicans and the Monarchists it was even suggested that Austria hadfriends of its own in certain classes of the population. This was not theview taken by the Viennese Government, which from the first appears to haveconsidered its cause in Lombardy as virtually lost. The mediation of GreatBritain was invoked by Metternich's successors, and a willingness expressedto grant to the Italian provinces complete autonomy under the Emperor'ssceptre. Palmerston, in reply to the supplications of a Court which hadhitherto cursed his influence, urged that Lombardy and the greater part ofVenetia should be ceded to the King of Piedmont. The Austrian Governmentwould have given up Lombardy to their enemy; they hesitated to increase hispower to the extent demanded by Palmerston, the more so as the FrenchMinistry was known to be jealous of the aggrandisement of Sardinia, and todesire the establishment of weak Republics like those formed in 1796. Withdrawing from its negotiations at London, the Emperor's Cabinet nowentered into direct communication with the Provisional Government at Milan, and, without making any reference to Piedmont or Venice, offered completeindependence to Lombardy. As the union of this province with Piedmont hadalready been voted by its inhabitants, the offer was at once rejected. Moreover, even it the Italians had shown a disposition to compromise theircause and abandon Venice, Radetzky would not have broken off the combatwhile any possibility remained of winning over the Emperor from the sideof the peace-party. In reply to instructions directing him to offer anarmistice to the enemy, he sent Prince Felix Schwarzenberg to Innsbruck toimplore the Emperor to trust to the valour of his soldiers and to continuethe combat. Already there were signs that the victory would ultimately bewith Austria. Reinforcements had cut their way through the insurgentterritory and reached Verona; and although a movement by which Radetzkythreatened to sever Charles Albert's communications was frustrated by asecond engagement at Goito, and Peschiera passed into the besiegers' hands, this was the last success won by the Italians. Throwing himself suddenlyeastwards, Radetzky appeared before Vicenza, and compelled this city, withthe entire Papal army, commanded by General Durando, to capitulate. Thefall of Vicenza was followed June. July. By that of the other cities on theVenetian mainland till Venice alone on the east of the Adige defied theAustrian arms. As the invader pressed onward, an Assembly which Manin hadconvoked at Venice decided on union with Piedmont. Manin himself had beenthe most zealous opponent of what he considered the sacrifice of Venetianindependence. He gave way nevertheless at the last, and made no attempt tofetter the decision of the Assembly; but when this decision had been givenhe handed over the conduct of affairs to others, and retired for awhileinto 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 fromthe Austrians. Leaving half his army at Peschiera and farther north, heproceeded with the other half to blockade Mantua. Radetzky took advantageof the unskilful generalship of his opponent, and threw himself upon theweakly guarded centre of the long Sardinian line. The King perceived hiserror, and sought to unite with his the northern detachments, now separatedfrom 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 retreatacross the Mincio was conducted in fair order, but disasters sustained bythe northern division, which should have held the enemy in check, destroyedall hope, and the retreat then became a flight. Radetzky followed in closepursuit. Charles Albert entered Milan, but declared himself unable todefend the city. A storm of indignation broke out against the unhappy Kingamongst the Milanese, whom he was declared to have betrayed. The palacewhere he had taken up his quarters was besieged by the mob; his life wasthreatened; and he escaped with difficulty on the night of August 5th underthe protection of General La Marmora and a few faithful Guards. Acapitulation was signed, and as the Piedmontese army evacuated the cityRadetzky's troops entered it in triumph. Not less than sixty thousand ofthe inhabitants, according to Italian statements, abandoned their homes andsought refuge in Switzerland or Piedmont rather than submit to theconqueror's rule. Radetzky could now have followed his retreating enemywithout difficulty to Turin, and have crushed Piedmont itself under foot;but the fear of France and Great Britain checked his career of victory, andhostilities were brought to a close by an armistice at Vigevano on August9th. [427][The Austrian Court and Hungary. ]The effects of Radetzky's triumph were felt in every province of theEmpire. The first open expression given to the changed state of affairs wasthe return of the Imperial Court from its refuge at Innsbruck to Vienna. The election promised in May had been held, and an Assembly representingall the non-Hungarian parts of the Monarchy, with the exception of theItalian provinces, had been opened by the Archduke John, as representativeof the Emperor, on the 22nd of July. Ministers and Deputies united indemanding the return of the Emperor to the capital. With Radetzky andWindischgrätz within call, the Emperor could now with some confidence facehis students and his Parliament. But of far greater importance than thereturn of the Court to Vienna was the attitude which it now assumed towardsthe Diet and the national Government of Hungary. The concessions made inApril, inevitable as they were, had in fact raised Hungary to the positionof an independent State. When such matters as the employment of Hungariantroops against Italy or the distribution of the burden of taxation cameinto question, the Emperor had to treat with the Hungarian Ministry almostas if it represented a foreign and a rival Power. For some months thishumiliation had to be borne, and the appearance of fidelity to the newConstitutional law maintained. But a deep, resentful hatred against theMagyar cause penetrated the circles in which the old military and officialabsolutism of Austria yet survived; and behind the men and the policy stillrepresenting with some degree of sincerity the new order of things, theregathered the passions and the intrigues of a reaction that waited only forthe outbreak of civil war within Hungary itself, and the restoration ofconfidence to the Austrian army, to draw the sword against its foe. Already, while Italy was still unsubdued, and the Emperor was scarcely safein his palace at Vienna, the popular forces that might be employed againstthe 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 theattempt was first made to impose the Magyar language upon Croatia theIllyrian leader, Gai, had thus addressed the Assembly: "You Magyars are anisland in the ocean of Slavism. Take heed that its waves do not rise andoverwhelm you. " The agitation of the spring of 1848 first revealed in itsfull extent the peril thus foreshadowed. Croatia had for above a year beenin almost open mutiny, but the spirit of revolt now spread through thewhole of the Serb population of Southern Hungary, from the eastern limitsof Slavonia, [428] across the plain known as the Banat beyond the junctionof the Theiss and the Danube, up to the borders of Transylvania. The Serbshad been welcomed into these provinces in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies by the sovereigns of Austria as a bulwark against the Turks. Charters had been given to them, which were still preserved, promising thema distinct political administration under their own elected Voivode, andecclesiastical independence under their own Patriarch of the Greek Church. [429] These provincial rights had fared much as others in the AustrianEmpire. The Patriarch and the Voivode had disappeared, and the Banat hadbeen completely merged in Hungary. Enough, however, of Serb nationalityremained to kindle at the summons of 1848, and to resent with a suddenfierceness the determination of the Magyar rulers at Pesth that the Magyarlanguage, as the language of State, should thenceforward bind together allthe races of Hungary in the enjoyment of a common national life. The Serbshad demanded from Kossuth and his colleagues the restoration of the localand ecclesiastical autonomy of which the Hapsburgs had deprived them, andthe recognition of their own national language and customs. They found, orbelieved, that instead of a German they were now to have a Magyar lord, andone more near, more energetic, more aggressive. Their reply to Kossuth'sdefence of Magyar ascendency was the summoning of a Congress of Serbs atCarlowitz on the Lower Danube. Here it was declared that the Serbs ofAustria formed a free and independent nation under the Austrian sceptre andthe common Hungarian Crown. A Voivode was elected and the limits of hisprovince were defined. A National Committee was charged with the duty oforganising a Government and of entering into intimate connection with theneighbouring Slavic Kingdom of Croatia. [Jellacic in Croatia. ]At Agram, the Croatian capital, all established authority had sunk in thecatastrophe of March, and a National Committee had assumed power. Ithappened that the office of Governor, or Ban, of Croatia was then vacant. The Committee sent a deputation to Vienna requesting that the colonel ofthe first Croatian regiment, Jellacic, might be appointed. Without waitingfor the arrival of the deputation, the Court, by a patent dated the 23rd ofMarch, 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 daybefore the Hungarian Ministry entered upon its powers, have been consideredproof that a secret understanding existed from the first between Jellacicand the Court. No further evidence of this secret relation has, however, been made public, and the belief long current among all friends of theMagyar cause that Croatia was deliberately instigated to revolt against theHungarian Government by persons around the Emperor seems to rest on nosolid foundation. The Croats would have been unlike all other communitiesin the Austrian Empire if they had not risen under the national impulse of1848. They had been murmuring against Magyar ascendency for years past, andthe fire long smouldering now probably burst into flame here as elsewherewithout the touch of an incendiary hand. With regard to Jellacic's suddenappointment it is possible that the Court, powerless to check the Croatianmovement, may have desired to escape the appearance of compulsion byspontaneously conferring office on the popular soldier, who was at leastmore likely to regard the Emperor's interests than the lawyers anddemagogues around him. Whether Jellacic was at this time genuinelyconcerned for Croatian autonomy, or whether from the first, while heapparently acted with the Croatian nationalists his deepest sympathies werewith the Austrian army, and his sole design was that of serving theImperial Crown with or without its own avowed concurrence, it is impossibleto say. That, like most of his countrymen, he cordially hated the Magyars, is beyond doubt. The general impression left by his character hardlyaccords with the Magyar conception of him as the profound and far-sightedconspirator--he would seem, on the contrary, to have been a man easilyyielding to the impulses of the moment, and capable of playingcontradictory 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 tothe Emperor's personal engagements towards Hungary, and forthwith permittedthe Magyar officials to be driven out of the country. On the 2nd of May heissued an order forbidding all Croatian authorities to correspond with theGovernment at Pesth. Batthyány, the Hungarian Premier, at once hurried toVienna, and obtained from the Emperor a letter commanding Jellacic tosubmit to the Hungarian Ministry. As the Ban paid no attention to thismandate, General Hrabowsky, commander of the troops in the southernprovinces, 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 Croatiafor the 5th of June; the populace of Agram, on hearing of Hrabowsky'smission, burnt the Palatine in effigy. This was a direct outrage on theImperial family, and Batthyány turned it to account. The Emperor had justbeen driven from Vienna by the riot of the 15th of May. Batthyány soughthim at Innsbruck, and by assuring him of the support of his loyalHungarians against both the Italians and the Viennese obtained hissignature on June 10th to a rescript vehemently condemning the Ban's actionand suspending him from office. Jellacic had already been summoned toappear at Innsbruck. He set out, taking with him a deputation of Croats andSerbs, and leaving behind him a popular Assembly sitting at Agram, inwhich, besides the representatives of Croatia, there were seventy Deputiesfrom the Serb provinces. On the very day on which the Ban reachedInnsbruck, the Imperial order condemning him and suspending him from hisfunctions was published by Batthyány at Pesth. Nor was the situation madeeasier by the almost simultaneous announcement that civil war had brokenout on the Lower Danube, and that General Hrabowsky, on attempting tooccupy Carlowitz, had been attacked and compelled to retreat by the Serbsunder their national leader Stratimirovic. [431][Jellacic, the Court, and the Hungarian Government. ]It is said that the Emperor Ferdinand, during deliberations in council onwhich the fate of the Austrian Empire depended, was accustomed to occupyhimself with counting the number of carriages that passed from right andleft respectively under the windows. In the struggle between Croatia andHungary he appears to have avoided even the formal exercise of authority, preferring to commit the decision between the contending parties to theArchduke John, as mediator or judge. John was too deeply immersed in otherbusiness to give much attention to the matter. What really passed betweenJellacic and the Imperial family at Innsbruck is unknown. The officialrequest of the Ban was for the withdrawal or suppression of the rescriptsigned by the Emperor on June 10th. Prince Esterhazy, who represented theHungarian Government at Innsbruck, was ready to make this concession; butbefore the document could be revoked, it had been made public by Batthyány. With the object of proving his fidelity to the Court, Jellacic nowpublished an address to the Croatian regiments serving in Lombardy, entreating them not to be diverted from their duty to the Emperor in thefield by any report of danger to their rights and their nationality nearerhome. So great was Jellacic's influence with his countrymen that an appealfrom him of opposite tenor would probably have caused the Croatianregiments to quit Radetzky in a mass, and so have brought the war in Italyto an ignominious end. His action won for him a great popularity in thehigher ranks of the Austrian army, and probably gained for him, even if hedid not possess it before, the secret confidence of the Court. That someunderstanding now existed is almost certain, for, in spite of theunrepealed declaration of June 10th, and the postponement of the Archduke'sjudgment, Jellacic was permitted to return to Croatia and to resume hisgovernment. The Diet at Agram occupied itself with far-reaching schemes fora confederation of the southern Slavs; but its discussions were of nopractical effect, and after some weeks it was extinguished under the formof an adjournment. From this time Jellacic held dictatorial power. It wasunnecessary for him in his relations with Hungary any longer to keep up thefiction of a mere defence of Croatian rights; he appeared openly as thechampion of Austrian unity. In negotiations which he held with Batthyány atVienna during the last days of July, he demanded the restoration of singleMinistries for War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs for the whole AustrianEmpire. The demand was indignantly refused, and the chieftains of the tworival 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, hadbeen opened at Pesth on July 5th. Great efforts had been made, in view ofthe difficulties with Croatia and of the suspected intrigues between theBan and the Court party, to induce the Emperor Ferdinand to appear at Pesthin person. He excused himself from this on the ground of illness, but senta letter to the Parliament condemning not only in his own name but in thatof every member of the Imperial family the resistance offered to theHungarian Government in the southern provinces. If words bore any meaning, the Emperor stood pledged to a loyal co-operation with the HungarianMinisters in defence of the unity and the constitution of the HungarianKingdom as established by the laws of April. Yet at this very time theMinister of War at Vienna was encouraging Austrian officers to join theSerb insurgents. Kossuth, who conducted most of the business of theHungarian Government in the Lower Chamber at Pesth, made no secret of hishostility to the central powers. While his colleagues sought to avoid abreach with the other half of the Monarchy, it seemed to be Kossuth'sobject rather to provoke it. In calling for a levy of two hundred thousandmen to crash the Slavic rebellion, he openly denounced the VienneseMinistry and the Court as its promoters. In leading the debate upon theItalian War, he endeavoured without the knowledge of his colleagues tomake the cession of the territory west of the Adige a condition ofHungary's participation in the struggle. As Minister of Finance, he sparedneither word nor act to demonstrate his contempt for the financialinterests of Austria. Whether a gentler policy on the part of the mostpowerful statesman in Hungary might have averted the impending conflict itis vain to ask; but in the uncompromising enmity of Kossuth the AustrianCourt found its own excuse for acts in which shamelessness seemed almost torise into political virtue. No sooner had Radetzky's victories and the fallof Milan brought the Emperor back to Vienna than the new policy came intoeffect. The veto of the sovereign was placed upon the laws passed by theDiet at Pesth for the defence of the Kingdom. The Hungarian Government wasrequired to reinstate Jellacic in his dignities, to enter into negotiationsat Vienna with him and the Austrian Ministry, and finally to desist fromall military preparations against the rebellious provinces. In answer tothese demands the Diet sent a hundred of its members to Vienna to claimfrom the Emperor the fulfilment of his plighted word. The miserable manreceived them on the 9th of September with protestations of his sincerity;but even before the deputation had passed the palace-gates, there appearedin the official gazette a letter under the Emperor's own hand replacingJellacic in office and acquitting him of every charge that had been broughtagainst him. It was for this formal recognition alone that Jellacic hadbeen 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 hadbeen known as reformers in the early days of 1848; but the old order wasrepresented by Count Wessenberg, who had been Metternich's assistant at theCongress of Vienna, and by Latour, the War Minister, a soldier of highbirth whose career dated back to the campaign of Austerlitz. Whatevercontempt might be felt by one section of the Cabinet for the other, itsmembers were able to unite against the independence of Hungary as they hadunited against the independence of Italy. They handed in to the Emperor amemorial in which the very concessions to which they owed their ownexistence as a Constitutional Ministry were made a ground for declaring thelaws establishing Hungarian autonomy null and void. In a tissue oftransparent sophistries they argued that the Emperor's promise of aConstitution to all his dominions on the 15th of March disabled him fromassenting, without the advice of his Viennese Ministry, to the resolutionssubsequently passed by the Hungarian Diet, although the union betweenHungary and the other Hereditary States had from the first rested solely onthe person of the monarch, and no German official had ever pretended toexercise authority over Hungarians otherwise than by order of the sovereignas Hungarian King. The publication of this Cabinet memorial, which appearedin the journals at Pesth on the 15th of September, gave plain warning tothe Hungarians that, if they were not to be attacked by Jellacic and theAustrian army simultaneously, they must make some compromise with theGovernment at Vienna. Batthyány was inclined to concession, and afterresigning office in consequence of the Emperor's desertion he had alreadyre-assumed his post with colleagues disposed to accept his own pacificpolicy. Kossuth spoke openly of war with Austria and of a dictatorship. AsJellacic advanced towards Pesth, the Palatine took command of the Hungarianarmy and marched southwards. On reaching Lake Baloton, on whose southernshore the Croats were encamped, he requested a personal conference withJellacic, and sailed to the appointed place of meeting. But he waited invain for the Ban; and rightly interpreting this rejection of his overtures, he fled from the army and laid down his office. The Emperor now sentGeneral Lamberg from Vienna with orders to assume the supreme command alikeover the Magyar and the Croatian forces, and to prevent an encounter. Onthe success of Lamberg's mission hung the last chance of reconciliationbetween Hungary and Austria. Batthyány, still clinging to the hope ofpeace, set out for the camp in order to meet the envoy on his arrival. Lamberg, desirous of obtaining the necessary credentials from the HungarianGovernment, made his way to Pesth. There he found Kossuth and a Committeeof Six installed in power. Under their influence the Diet passed aresolution forbidding Lamberg to assume command of the Hungarian troops, and declaring him a traitor if he should attempt to do so. The reportspread through Pesth that Lamberg had come to seize the citadel and bombardthe town; and before he could reach a place of safety he was attacked andmurdered by a raging mob. It was in vain that Batthyány, who now laid downhis office, besought the Government at Vienna to take no rash step ofvengeance. The pretext for annihilating Hungarian independence had beengiven, and the mask was cast aside. A manifesto published by the Emperor onthe 3rd of October declared the Hungarian Parliament dissolved, and itsacts null and void. Martial law was proclaimed, and Jellacic appointedcommander of all the forces and representative of the sovereign. In thecourse of the next few days it was expected that he would enter Pesth asconqueror. [Manifesto of Oct. 3. ][Tumult of Oct. 6 at Vienna. Latour murdered. ]In the meantime, however confidently the Government might reckon onJellacic's victory, the passions of revolution were again breaking loose inVienna itself. Increasing misery among the poor, financial panics, thereviving efforts of professional agitators, had renewed the disturbances ofthe spring in forms which alarmed the middle classes almost as much as theholders of power. The conflict of the Government with Hungary broughtaffairs to a crisis. After discovering the uselessness of negotiations withthe Emperor, the Hungarian Parliament had sent some of its ablest membersto request an audience from the Assembly sitting at Vienna, in order thatthe representatives of the western half of the Empire might, even at thelast moment, have the opportunity of pronouncing a judgment upon the actionof the Court. The most numerous group in the Assembly was formed by theCzech deputies from Bohemia. As Slavs, the Bohemian deputies hadsympathised with the Croats and Serbs in their struggle against Magyarascendency, and in their eyes Jellacic was still the champion of a nationalcause. Blinded by their sympathies of race to the danger involved to allnationalities alike by the restoration of absolutism, the Czech majority, in spite of a singularly impressive warning given by a leader of the GermanLiberals, refused a hearing to the Hungarian representatives. The Magyars, repelled by the Assembly, sought and found allies in the democracy ofVienna itself. The popular clubs rang with acclamations for the cause ofHungarian freedom and with invectives against the Czech instruments oftyranny. In the midst of this deepening agitation tidings arrived at Viennathat Jellacic had been repulsed in his march on Pesth and forced to retirewithin the Austrian frontier. It became necessary for the VienneseGovernment to throw its own forces into the struggle, and an order wasgiven by Latour to the regiments in the capital to set out for the scene ofwarfare. This order had, however, been anticipated by the democraticleaders, 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 enforcethe departure of the troops, the regiments fired on one another (October6th). The battalions of the National Guard which rallied to the support ofthe Government were overpowered by those belonging to the working men'sdistricts. The insurrection was victorious; the Ministers submitted oncemore to the masters of the streets, and the orders given to the troops werewithdrawn. But the fiercer part of the mob was not satisfied with apolitical victory. There were criminals and madmen among its leaders who, after the offices of Government had been stormed and Latour had beencaptured, determined upon his death. It was in vain that some of thekeenest political opponents of the Minister sought at the peril of theirown lives to protect him from his murderers. He was dragged into the courtin front of the War Office, and there slain with ferocious and yetdeliberate barbarity. [433][The Emperor at Olmütz. ][Windischgrätz marches on Vienna. ]The Emperor, while the city was still in tumult, had in his usual fashionpromised that the popular demands should be satisfied; but as soon as hewas unobserved he fled from Vienna, and in his flight he was followed bythe Czech deputies and many German Conservatives, who declared that theirlives were no longer safe in the capital. Most of the Ministers gatheredround the Emperor at Olmütz in Moravia; the Assembly, however, continued tohold its sittings in Vienna, and the Finance Minister, apparently underinstructions from the Court, remained at his post, and treated the Assemblyas still possessed of legal powers. But for all practical purposes thewestern half of the Austrian Empire had now ceased to have any Governmentwhatever; and the real state of affairs was bluntly exposed in a manifestopublished by Count Windischgrätz at Prague on the 11th of October, inwhich, without professing to have received any commission from the Emperor, he announced his intention of marching on Vienna in order to protect thesovereign and maintain the unity of the Empire. In due course the Emperorratified the action of his energetic soldier; Windischgrätz was appointedto the supreme command over all the troops of the Empire with the exceptionof 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 owndissolution and the war openly levied against the country by the Court inalliance with Jellacic, the revolt of the capital seemed to bring a suddendeliverance from all danger. The Viennese had saved Hungary, and the Dietwas willing, if summoned by the Assembly at Vienna, to send its troops tothe defence of the capital. But the urgency of the need was not understoodon either side till too late. The Viennese Assembly, treating itself as alegitimate and constitutional power threatened by a group of soldiers whohad usurped the monarch's authority, hesitated to compromise its legalcharacter by calling in a Hungarian army. The Magyar generals on the otherhand were so anxious not to pass beyond the strict defence of their ownkingdom, that, in the absence of communication from a Viennese authority, they twice withdrew from Austrian soil after following Jellacic in pursuitbeyond the frontier. It was not until Windischgrätz had encamped withinsight of Vienna, and had detained as a rebel the envoy sent to him by theHungarian Government, that Kossuth's will prevailed over the scruples ofweaker men, and the Hungarian army marched against the besiegers. In themeantime Windischgrätz had begun his attack on the suburbs, which wereweakly defended by the National Guard and by companies of students andvolunteers, the nominal commander being one Messenhauser, formerly anofficer in the regular army, who was assisted by a soldier of far greatermerit than himself, the Polish general Bem. Among those who fought were twomembers of the German Parliament of Frankfort, Robert Blum and Fröbel, whohad been sent to mediate between the Emperor and his subjects, but hadremained at Vienna as combatants. The besiegers had captured the outskirtsof the city, and negotiations for surrender were in progress, when, on the30th of October, Messenhauser from the top of the cathedral tower sawbeyond the line of the besiegers on the south-east the smoke of battle, andannounced that the Hungarian army was approaching. An engagement had infact begun on the plain of Schwechat between the Hungarians and Jellacic, reinforced by divisions of Windischgrätz's troops. In a moment of wildexcitement the defenders of the capital threw themselves once more upontheir foe, disregarding the offer of surrender that had been already made. But the tide of battle at Schwechat turned against the Hungarians. Theywere compelled to retreat, and Windischgrätz, reopening his cannonade uponthe rebels who were also violators of their truce, became in a few hoursmaster of Vienna. He made his entry on the 31st of October, and treatedVienna as a conquered city. The troops had behaved with ferocity during thecombat in the suburbs, and slaughtered scores of unarmed persons. NoOriental tyrant ever addressed his fallen foes with greater insolence andcontempt for human right than Windischgrätz in the proclamations which, onassuming government, he addressed to the Viennese; yet, whatever might bethe number of persons arrested and imprisoned, the number now put to deathwas not great. The victims were indeed carefully selected; the mostprominent being Robert Blum, in whom, as a leader of the German Liberalsand a Deputy of the German Parliament inviolable by law, the AustrianGovernment struck ostentatiously at the Parliament itself and at Germandemocracy at large. [The Parliament at Kremsier, Nov. 22. ][Schwarzenberg Minister. ]In the subjugation of Vienna the army had again proved itself the realpolitical power in Austria; but the time had not yet arrived when absolutegovernment could be openly restored. The Bohemian deputies, fatally as theyhad injured the cause of constitutional rule by their secession fromVienna, were still in earnest in the cause of provincial autonomy, andwould vehemently have repelled the charge of an alliance with despotism. Even the mutilated Parliament of Vienna had been recognised by the Court asin lawful session until the 22nd of October, when an order was issuedproroguing the Parliament and bidding it re-assemble a month later atKremsier, in Moravia. There were indications in the weeks succeeding thefall of Vienna of a conflict between the reactionary and the more liberalinfluences surrounding the Emperor, and of an impending _coup d'etat_:but counsels of prudence prevailed for the moment; the Assembly waspermitted to meet at Kremsier, and professions of constitutional principlewere still made with every show of sincerity. A new Ministry, however, cameinto office, with Prince Felix Schwarzenberg at its head. Schwarzenbergbelonged to one of the greatest Austrian families. He had been ambassadorat Naples when the revolution of 1848 broke out, and had quitted the citywith words of menace when insult was offered to the Austrian flag. Exchanging diplomacy for war, he served under Radetzky, and was soonrecognised as the statesman in whom the army, as a political power, foundits own peculiar representative. His career had hitherto been illustratedchiefly by scandals of private life so flagrant that England and othercountries 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 asMinister of Austria to something of political greatness. Few statesmen havebeen more daring than Schwarzenberg; few have pushed to more excessivelengths the advantages to be derived from the moral or the materialweakness of an adversary. His rule was the debauch of forces respited intheir extremity for one last and worst exertion. Like the Roman Sulla, hegave to a condemned and perishing cause the passing semblance of restoredvigour, and died before the next great wave of change swept his creationsaway. [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. Theimbecility of the Emperor Ferdinand had long suggested his abdication ordethronement, and the time for decisive action had now arrived. He gladlywithdrew into private life: the crown, declined by his brother and heir, was passed on to his nephew, Francis Joseph, a youth of eighteen. Thisprince had at least not made in person, not uttered with his own lips, notsigned with his own hand, those solemn engagements with the Hungariannation which Austria was now about to annihilate with fire and sword. Hehad not moved in friendly intercourse with men who were henceforth doomedto the scaffold. He came to the throne as little implicated in the acts ofhis predecessor as any nominal chief of a State could be; as fitting aninstrument in the hands of Court and army as any reactionary faction coulddesire. Helpless and well-meaning, Francis Joseph, while his troops pouredinto Hungary, played for a while in Austria the part of a loyal observer ofhis Parliament; then, when the moment had come for its destruction, heobeyed his soldier-minister as Ferdinand had in earlier days obeyed thestudents, and signed the decree for its dissolution (March 4, 1849). TheAssembly, during its sittings at Vienna, had accomplished one importanttask: it had freed the peasantry from the burdens attaching to their landand converted them into independent proprietors. This part of its worksurvived it, and remained almost the sole gain that Austria derived fromthe struggle of 1848. After the removal to Kremsier, a Committee of theAssembly had been engaged with the formation of a Constitution for Austria, and the draft was now completed. In the course of debate something had beengained by the representatives of the German and the Slavic races in the wayof respect for one another's interests and prejudices; some politicalknowledge had been acquired; some approach made to an adjustment betweenthe claims of the central power and of provincial autonomy. If theConstitution sketched at Kremsier had come into being, it would at leasthave given to Western Austria and to Galicia, which belonged to this halfof 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 defectsfrom the monarchical point of view, this Constitution rested on thedivision of the Empire into two independent parts; it assumed theseparation of Hungary from the other Hereditary States; and of a separateHungarian Kingdom the Minister now in power would hear no longer. ThatHungary had for centuries possessed and maintained its rights; that, withthe single exception of the English, no nation in Europe had equalled theMagyars in the stubborn and unwearied defence of Constitutional law; that, in an age when national spirit was far less hotly inflamed, the EmperorJoseph had well-nigh lost his throne and wrecked his Empire in the attemptto subject this resolute race to a centralised administration, was nothingto Schwarzenberg and the soldiers who were now trampling upon revolution. Hungary was declared to have forfeited by rebellion alike its ancientrights and the contracts of 1848. The dissolution of the Parliament ofKremsier was followed by the publication of an edict affecting to bestow auniform and centralised Constitution upon the entire Austrian Empire. Allexisting public rights were thereby extinguished; and, inasmuch as the newConstitution, in so far as it provided for a representative system, nevercame into existence, but remained in abeyance until it was formallyabrogated in 1851, the real effect of the Unitary Edict of March, 1849, which professed to close the period of revolution by granting the samerights to all, was to establish absolute government and the rule of thesword throughout the Emperor's dominions. Provincial institutions giving tosome of the German and Slavic districts a shadowy control of their ownlocal affairs only marked the distinction between the favoured and thedreaded parts of the Empire. Ten years passed before freedom again camewithin sight of the Austrian peoples. [434][Hungary. ][The Roumanians in Transylvania. ]The Hungarian Diet, on learning of the transfer of the crown from Ferdinandto Francis Joseph, had refused to acknowledge this act as valid, on theground that it had taken place without the consent of the Legislature, andthat Francis Joseph had not been crowned King of Hungary. Ferdinand wastreated as still the reigning sovereign, and the war now became, accordingto the Hungarian view, more than ever a war in defence of establishedright, inasmuch as the assailants of Hungary were not only violators of asettled constitution but agents of a usurping prince. The whole nation wassummoned to arms; and in order that there might be no faltering atheadquarters, the command over the forces on the Danube was given byKossuth to Görgei, a young officer of whom little was yet known to theworld but that he had executed Count Eugène Zichy, a powerful noble, forholding communications with Jellacic. It was the design of the AustrianGovernment to attack Hungary at once by the line of the Danube and from thefrontier of Galicia on the north-east. The Serbs were to be led forwardfrom their border-provinces against the capital; and another race, whichcenturies of oppression had filled with bitter hatred of the Magyars, wasto be thrown into the struggle. The mass of the population of Transylvaniabelonged to the Roumanian stock. The Magyars, here known by the name ofSzeklers, and a community of Germans, descended from immigrants who settledin Transylvania about the twelfth century, formed a small but a privilegedminority, in whose presence the Roumanian peasantry, poor, savage, andabsolutely without political rights, felt themselves before 1848 scarcelyremoved from serfdom. In the Diet of Transylvania the Magyars held command, and in spite of the resistance of the Germans, they had succeeded incarrying an Act, in May, 1848, uniting the country with Hungary. This Acthad been ratified by the Emperor Ferdinand, but it was followed by awidespread insurrection of the Roumanian peasantry, who were alreadyasserting their claims as a separate nation and demanding equality withtheir oppressors. The rising of the Roumanians had indeed more of thecharacter of an agrarian revolt than of a movement for nationalindependence. It was marked by atrocious cruelty; and although the Hapsburgstandard was raised, the Austrian commandant, General Puchner, hesitatedlong before lending the insurgents his countenance. At length, in October, he declared against the Hungarian Government. The union of the regulartroops with the peasantry overpowered for a time all resistance. The townsfell under Austrian sway, and although the Szeklers were not yet disarmed, Transylvania seemed to be lost to Hungary. General Puchner received ordersto lead his troops, with the newly formed Roumanian militia, westward intothe Banat, in order to co-operate in the attack which was to overwhelm theHungarians 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 Austrianarmy, crossed the river Leitha, the border between German and Magyarterritory. Görgei, who was opposed to him, had from the first declared thatPesth must be abandoned and a war of defence carried on in Central Hungary. Kossuth, however, had scorned this counsel, and announced that he woulddefend Pesth to the last. The backwardness of the Hungarian preparationsand the disorder of the new levies justified the young general, who fromthis time assumed the attitude of contempt and hostility towards theCommittee of Defence. Kossuth had in fact been strangely served by fortunein his choice of Görgei. He had raised him to command on account of oneirretrievable act of severity against an Austrian partisan, and without anyproof of his military capacity. In the untried soldier he had found ageneral of unusual skill; in the supposed devotee to Magyar patriotism hehad found a military politician as self-willed and as insubordinate as anywho have ever distracted the councils of a falling State. Dissensions andmisunderstandings aggravated the weakness of the Hungarians in the field. Position after position was lost, and it soon became evident that theParliament and Government could remain no longer at Pesth. They withdrew toDebreczin beyond the Theiss, and on the 5th of January, 1849, Windischgrätzmade 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 butbeginning. The fortress of Comorn, on the upper Danube, remained in thehands of the Magyars; and by conducting his retreat northwards into amountainous country where the Austrians could not follow him Görgei gainedthe power either of operating against Windischgrätz's communications or ofcombining with the army of General Klapka, who was charged with the defenceof Hungary against an enemy advancing from Galicia. While Windischgrätzremained inactive at Pesth, Klapka met and defeated an Austrian divisionunder General Schlick which had crossed the Carpathians and was movingsouthwards towards Debreczin. Görgei now threw himself eastwards upon theline of retreat of the beaten enemy, and Schlick's army only escapedcapture by abandoning its communications and seeking refuge withWindischgrätz at Pesth. A concentration of the Magyar forces was effectedon the Theiss, and the command over the entire army was given by Kossuth toDembinski, a Pole who had gained distinction in the wars of Napoleon and inthe campaign of 1831. Görgei, acting as the representative of the officerswho had been in the service before the Revolution, had published an addressdeclaring that the army would fight for no cause but that of theConstitution as established by Ferdinand, the legitimate King, and that itwould accept no commands but those of the Ministers whom Ferdinand hadappointed. Interpreting this manifesto as a direct act of defiance, and asa warning that the army might under Görgei's command make terms on its ownauthority with the Austrian Government, Kossuth resorted to the dangerousexperiment of superseding the national commanders by a Pole who wasconnected with the revolutionary party throughout Europe. The act wasdisastrous in its moral effects upon the army; and, as a general, Dembinskientirely failed to justify his reputation. After permitting Schlick's corpsto escape him he moved forwards from the Theiss against Pesth. He was metby the Austrians and defeated at Kapolna (February 26). Both armies retiredto their earlier positions, and, after a declaration from the Magyargenerals that they would no longer obey his orders, Dembinski was removedfrom his command, though he remained in Hungary to interfere once more withevil 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 theConstitution merging all provincial rights in one centralised system waspublished by Schwarzenberg. The Croats, the Serbs, the Roumanians, who hadso credulously flocked to the Emperor's banner under the belief that theywere fighting for their own independence, at length discovered theirdelusion. Their enthusiasm sank; the bolder among them even attempted todetach their countrymen from the Austrian cause; but it was too late toundo what had already been done. Jellacic, now undistinguishable from anyother Austrian general, mocked the politicians of Agram who still babbledof Croatian autonomy: Stratimirovic, the national leader of the Serbs, sankbefore his rival the Patriarch of Carlowitz, a Churchman who preferredecclesiastical immunities granted by the Emperor of Austria to independencewon on the field of battle by his countrymen. Had a wiser or more generousstatesmanship controlled the Hungarian Government in the first months ofits activity, a union between the Magyars and the subordinate races againstViennese centralisation might perhaps even now have been effected. Butdistrust and animosity had risen too high for the mediators between Slavand Magyar to attain any real success, nor was any distinct promise ofself-government even now to be drawn from the offers of concession whichwere held out at Debreczin. An interval of dazzling triumph seemed indeedto justify the Hungarian Government in holding fast to its sovereignclaims. In the hands of able leaders no task seemed too hard for Magyartroops to accomplish. Bem, arriving in Transylvania without a soldier, created a new army, and by a series of extraordinary marches and surprisesnot only overthrew the Austrian and Roumanian troops opposed to him, butexpelled a corps of Russians whom General Puchner in his extremity hadinvited to garrison Hermannstadt. Görgei, resuming in the first week ofApril the movement in which Dembinski had failed, inflicted upon theAustrians 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 cutthem off from Vienna. It was in vain that the Austrian Government removedWindischgrätz from his command. His successor found that a force superiorto his own was gathering round him on every side. He saw that Hungary waslost; and leaving a garrison in the fortress of Buda, he led off his armyin haste from the capital, and only paused in his retreat when he hadreached the Austrian frontier. [Declaration of Hungarian Independence, April 19. ]The Magyars, rallying from their first defeats, had brilliantly achievedthe liberation of their land. The Court of Vienna, attempting in right ofsuperior force to overthrow an established constitution, had proved itselfthe inferior power; and in mingled exaltation and resentment it was naturalthat the party and the leaders who had been foremost in the nationalstruggle 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, theDiet declared that the House of Hapsburg had forfeited its throne, andproclaimed Hungary an independent State. No statement was made as to thefuture form of government, but everything indicated that Hungary, ifsuccessful in maintaining its independence, would become a Republic, withKossuth, who was now appointed Governor, for its chief. Even in therevolutionary severance of ancient ties homage was paid to the legal andconstitutional bent of the Hungarian mind. Nothing was said in theDeclaration of April 19th of the rights of man; there was no Parisiancommonplace on the sovereignty of the people. The necessity of Hungarianindependence was deduced from the offences which the Austrian House hadcommitted against the written and unwritten law of the land, offencescontinued through centuries and crowned by the invasion underWindischgrätz, by the destruction of the Hungarian Constitution in theedict of March 9th, and by the introduction of the Russians intoTransylvania. Though coloured and exaggerated by Magyar patriotism, thecharges made against the Hapsburg dynasty were on the whole in accordancewith historical fact; and if the affairs of States were to be guided by noother considerations than those relating to the performance of contracts, Hungary had certainly established its right to be quit of partnership withAustria and of its Austrian sovereign. But the judgment of history hascondemned Kossuth's declaration of Hungarian independence in the midst ofthe struggle of 1849 as a great political error. It served no usefulpurpose; it deepened the antagonism already existing between the Governmentand a large part of the army; and while it added to the sources of internaldiscord, it gave colour to the intervention of Russia as against arevolutionary cause. Apart from its disastrous effect upon the immediatecourse of events, it was based upon a narrow and inadequate view both ofthe needs and of the possibilities of the future. Even in the interests ofthe Magyar nation itself as a European power, it may well be doubtedwhether in severance from Austria such influence and such weight couldpossibly have been won by a race numerically weak and surrounded by hostilenationalities, as the ability and the political energy of the Magyars havesince won for them in the direction of the accumulated forces of theAustro-Hungarian Empire. [Russian intervention against Hungary. ]It has generally been considered a fatal error on the part of the Hungariancommanders that, after expelling the Austrian army, they did not at oncemarch upon Vienna, but returned to lay siege to the fortress of Buda, whichresisted long enough to enable the Austrian Government to reorganise and tomultiply its forces. But the intervention of Russia would probably havebeen fatal to Hungarian independence, even if Vienna had been captured anda democratic government established there for a while in opposition to theCourt at Olmütz. The plan of a Russian intervention, though thisintervention was now explained by the community of interest between Polishand Hungarian rebels, was no new thing. Soon after the outbreak of theMarch Revolution the Czar had desired to send his troops both into Prussiaand into Austria as the restorers of monarchical authority. His help wasdeclined on behalf of the King of Prussia; in Austria the project had beendiscussed at successive moments of danger, and after the overthrow of theImperial troops in Transylvania by Bem the proffered aid was accepted. TheRussians who then occupied Hermannstadt did not, however, enter the countryas combatants; their task was to garrison certain positions still held bythe Austrians, and so to set free the Emperor's troops for service in thefield. On the declaration of Hungarian independence, it became necessaryfor Francis Joseph to accept his protector's help without qualification ordisguise. An army of eighty thousand Russians marched across Galicia toassist the Austrians in grappling with an enemy before whom, whensingle-handed, they had succumbed. Other Russian divisions, while Austriamassed its troops on the Upper Danube, entered Transylvania from the southand east, and the Magyars in the summer of 1849 found themselves compelledto defend their country against forces three times more numerous than theirown. [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 strengthinto the scale, Kossuth saw that no ordinary operations of war couldpossibly avert defeat, and called upon his countrymen to destroy theirhomes and property at the approach of the enemy, and to leave to theinvader a flaming and devastated solitude. But the area of warfare was toovast for the execution of this design, even if the nation had been preparedfor 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 theEmperor of Austria had placed under the orders of General Haynau, a soldierwhose mingled energy and ferocity in Italy had marked him out as a fittingscourge for the Hungarians, and had won for him supreme civil as well asmilitary powers. Görgei naturally believed that the first object of theAustrian commander would be to effect a junction with the Russians, who, under Paskiewitsch, the conqueror of Kars in 1829, were now crossing theCarpathians; and he therefore directed all his efforts against the left ofthe Austrian line. While he was unsuccessfully attacking the enemy on theriver Waag north of Comorn, Haynau with the mass of his forces advanced onthe right bank of the Danube, and captured Raab (June 28th). Görgei threwhimself southwards, but his efforts to stop Haynau were in vain, and theAustrians occupied Pesth (July 11th). The Russians meanwhile were advancingsouthwards by an independent line of march. Their vanguard reached theDanube and the Upper Theiss, and Görgei seemed to be enveloped by theenemy. The Hungarian Government adjured him to hasten towards Szegedin andArad, where Kossuth was concentrating all the other divisions for a finalstruggle; but Görgei held on to his position about Comorn until his retreatcould only be effected by means of a vast detour northwards, and before hecould reach Arad all was lost. Dembinski was again in command. Charged withthe defence of the passage of the Theiss about Szegedin, he failed toprevent the Austrians from crossing the river, and on the 5th of August wasdefeated at Czoreg with heavy loss. Kossuth now gave the command to Bern, who had hurried from Transylvania, where overpowering forces had at lengthwrested victory from his grasp. Bern fought the last battle of the campaignat Temesvar. He was overthrown and driven eastwards, but succeeded inleading a remnant of his army across the Moldavian frontier and so escapedcapture. Görgei, who was now close to Arad, had some strange fancy that itwould dishonour his army to seek refuge on neutral soil. He turnednorthwards so as to encounter Russian and not Austrian regiments, andwithout striking a blow, without stipulating even for the lives of thecivilians in his camp, he led his army within the Russian lines at Vilagos, and surrendered unconditionally to the generals of the Czar. His own lifewas spared; no mercy was shown to those who were handed over as hisfellow-prisoners by the Russian to the Austrian Government, or who wereseized by Haynau as his troops advanced. Tribunals more resembling those ofthe French Reign of Terror than the Courts of a civilised Government sentthe noblest patriots and soldiers of Hungary to the scaffold. To the deepdisgrace of the Austrian Crown, Count Batthyány, the Minister of Ferdinand, was included among those whose lives were sacrificed. The vengeance of theconqueror seemed the more frenzied and the more insatiable because it hadonly been rendered possible by foreign aid. Crushed under an iron rule, exhausted by war, the prey of a Government which knew only how to employits subject-races as gaolers over one another, Hungary passed for someyears into silence and almost into despair. Every vestige of its oldconstitutional rights was extinguished. Its territory was curtailed by theseparation of Transylvania and Croatia; its administration was handed overto Germans from Vienna. A conscription, enforced not for the ends ofmilitary service but as the surest means of breaking the national spirit, enrolled its youth in Austrian regiments, and banished them to theextremities of the empire. No darker period was known in the history ofHungary since the wars of the seventeenth century than that which followedthe 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 Hungaryalone but on Italy also. The armistice made between Radetzky and the Kingof Piedmont at Vigevano in August, 1848, lasted for seven months, duringwhich the British and French Governments endeavoured, but in vain, toarrange terms of peace between the combatants. With military tyranny in itsmost brutal form crushing down Lombardy, it was impossible that CharlesAlbert should renounce the work of deliverance to which he had pledgedhimself. Austria, on the other hand, had now sufficiently recovered itsstrength to repudiate the concessions which it had offered at an earliertime, and Schwarzenberg on assuming power announced that the Emperor wouldmaintain Lombardy at every cost. The prospects of Sardinia as regarded helpfrom the rest of the Peninsula were far worse than when it took up arms inthe spring of 1848. Projects of a general Italian federation, of a militaryunion between the central States and Piedmont, of an Italian ConstituentAssembly, had succeeded one another and left no result. Naples had fallenback into absolutism; Rome and Tuscany, from which aid might still havebeen expected, were distracted by internal contentions, and hastening as itseemed towards anarchy. After the defeat of Charles Albert at Custozza, Pius IX. , who was still uneasily playing his part as a constitutionalsovereign, had called to office Pellegrino Rossi, an Italian patriot of anearlier time, who had since been ambassador of Louis Philippe at Rome, andby his connection with the Orleanist Monarchy had incurred the hatred ofthe Republican party throughout Italy. Rossi, as a vigorous and independentreformer, was as much detested in clerical and reactionary circles as hewas by the demagogues and their followers. This, however, profited himnothing; and on the 15th of November, as he was proceeding to the openingof the Chambers, he was assassinated by an unknown hand. Terrified by thiscrime, and by an attack upon his own palace by which it was followed, Piusfled to Gaeta and placed himself under the protection of the King ofNaples. A Constituent Assembly was summoned and a Republic proclaimed atRome, between which and the Sardinian Government there was so littlecommunity of feeling that Charles Albert would, if the Pope had acceptedhis protection, have sent his troops to restore him to a position ofsecurity. In Tuscany affairs were in a similar condition. The Grand Dukehad for some months been regarded as a sincere, though reserved, friend ofthe Italian cause, and he had even spoken of surrendering his crown if thisshould be for the good of the Italian nation. When, however, the Pope hadfled to Gaeta, and the project was openly avowed of uniting Tuscany withthe Roman States in a Republic, the Grand Duke, moved more by thefulminations of Pius against his despoilers than by care for his own crown, fled in his turn, leaving the Republicans masters of Florence. A miserableexhibition of vanity, riot, and braggadocio was given to the world by thepoliticians of the Tuscan State. Alike in Florence and in Rome all sense ofthe true needs of the moment, of the absolute uselessness of internalchanges of Government if Austria was to maintain its dominion, seemed tohave vanished from men's minds. Republican phantoms distracted the heartand the understanding; no soldier, no military administrator arose till toolate 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 inUpper 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 Albertscattered his forces from Lago Maggiore to Stradella on the south of thePo, hoping to move by the northern road upon Milan, Radetzky concentratedhis troops near Pavia, where he intended to cross the Ticino. In an evilmoment Charles Albert had given the command of his army to Chrzanowski, aPole, and had entrusted its southern division, composed chiefly of Lombardvolunteers, to another Pole, Ramorino, who had been engaged in Mazzini'sincursion into Savoy in 1833. Ramorino had then, rightly or wrongly, incurred the charge of treachery. His relations with Chrzanowski were ofthe worst character, and the habit of military obedience was as muchwanting to him as the sentiment of loyalty to the sovereign from whom hehad now accepted a command. The wilfulness of this adventurer made thePiedmontese army an easy prey. Ramorino was posted on the south of the Po, near its junction with the Ticino, but received orders on the commencementof hostilities to move northwards and defend the passage of the Ticino atPavia, breaking up the bridges behind him. Instead of obeying this order hekept his division lingering about Stradella. Radetzky, approaching theTicino at Pavia, found the passage unguarded. He crossed the river with themass of his army, and, cutting off Ramorino's division, threw himself uponthe flank of the scattered Piedmontese. Charles Albert, whose headquarterswere at Novara, hurried southwards. Before he could concentrate his troops, he was attacked at Mortara by the Austrians and driven back. The line ofretreat upon Turin and Alessandria was already lost; an attempt was made tohold Novara against the advancing Austrians. The battle which was fought infront of this town on the 23rd of March ended with the utter overthrow ofthe Sardinian army. So complete was the demoralisation of the troops thatthe cavalry were compelled to attack bodies of half-maddened infantry inthe 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 seekdeath. The reproaches levelled against him for the abandonment of Milan inthe previous year, the charges of treachery which awoke to new life themiserable record of his waverings in 1821, had sunk into the very depths ofhis being. Weak and irresolute in his earlier political career, harsh andilliberal towards the pioneers of Italian freedom during a great part ofhis reign, Charles had thrown his whole heart and soul into the finalstruggle of his country against Austria. This struggle lost, life hadnothing more for him. The personal hatred borne towards him by the rulersof Austria caused him to believe that easier terms of peace might begranted to Piedmont if another sovereign were on its throne, and hisresolution, in case of defeat, was fixed and settled. When night fell afterthe battle of Novara he called together his generals, and in their presenceabdicated his crown. Bidding an eternal farewell to his son VictorEmmanuel, who knelt weeping before him, he quitted the army accompanied bybut one attendant, and passed unrecognised through the enemy's guards. Heleft his queen, his capital, unvisited as he journeyed into exile. Thebrief residue of his life was spent in solitude near Oporto. Six monthsafter 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 himlike 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 stakehis throne, his life, the whole sum of his personal interests, for thenational cause; one dynasty whose sons knew no fear save that others shouldencounter death before them on Italy's behalf. Had the profoundeststatesmanship, the keenest political genius, governed the counsels ofPiedmont in 1849, it would, with full prescience of the ruin of Novara, have bidden the sovereign and the army strike in self-sacrifice their lastunaided blow. From this time there was but one possible head for Italy. Thefaults of the Government of Turin during Charles Albert's years of peacehad ceased to have any bearing on Italian affairs; the sharpest tongues nolonger repeated, the most credulous ear no longer harboured the slanders of1848; the man who, beaten and outnumbered, had for hours sat immovable infront 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 theSardinian army; the same honour and patriotism carried him safely past thelures which Austria set for the inheritor of a ruined kingdom, and gave inthe first hours of his reign an earnest of the policy which was to end inItalian union. It was necessary for him to visit Radetzky in his camp inorder to arrange the preliminaries of peace. There, amid flatteries offeredto him at his father's expense, it was notified to him that if he wouldannul the Constitution that his father had made, he might reckon not onlyon an easy quittance with the conqueror, but on the friendship and supportof Austria. This demand, though strenuously pressed in later negotiations, Victor Emmanuel unconditionally refused. He had to endure for a while thepresence of Austrian troops in his kingdom, and to furnish an indemnitywhich fell heavily on so small a State; but the liberties of his peopleremained intact, and the pledge given by his father inviolate. Amid theruin of all hopes and the bankruptcy of all other royal reputationsthroughout Italy, there proved to be one man, one government, in which theItalian people could trust. This compensation at least was given in thedisasters of 1849, that the traitors to the cause of Italy and of freedomcould not again deceive, nor the dream of a federation of princes againobscure the necessity of a single national government. In the fidelity ofVictor Emmanuel to the Piedmontese Constitution lay the pledge that whenItaly's next opportunity should arrive, the chief would be there who wouldmeet 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 ofTuscany was restored to his throne under an Austrian garrison, and his latedemocratic Minister, Guerazzi, who had endeavoured by submission to theCourt-party to avert an Austrian occupation, was sent into imprisonment. AtRome a far bolder spirit was shown. Mazzini had arrived in the first weekof March, and, though his exhortation to the Roman Assembly to forget theoffences of Charles Albert and to unite against the Austrians in Lombardycame too late, he was able, as one of a Triumvirate with dictatorialpowers, to throw much of his own ardour into the Roman populace in defenceof their own city and State. The enemy against whom Rome had to be defendedproved indeed to be other than that against whom preparations were beingmade. The victories of Austria had aroused the apprehension of the FrenchGovernment; and though the fall of Piedmont and Lombardy could not now beundone, it was determined by Louis Napoleon and his Ministers to anticipateAustria's restoration of the Papal power by the despatch of French troopsto Rome. All the traditions of French national policy pointed indeed tosuch an intervention. Austria had already invaded the Roman States from thenorth, and the political conditions which in 1832 had led so pacific aminister as Casimir Perier to occupy Ancona were now present in muchgreater force. Louis Napoleon could not, without abandoning a recognisedinterest and surrendering something of the due influence of France, havepermitted Austrian generals to conduct the Pope back to his capital and toassume the government of Central Italy. If the first impulses of theRevolution of 1848 had still been active in France, its intervention wouldprobably have taken the form of a direct alliance with the Roman Republic;but public opinion had travelled far in the opposite direction since theFour Days of June; and the new President, if he had not forgotten his ownyouthful relations with the Carbonari, was now a suitor for the solidfavours of French conservative and religious sentiment. His Ministers hadnot 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 thecontinuance of the Roman Republic was an impossibility. France, as aCatholic and at the same time a Liberal Power, might well, under thesecircumstances, address itself to the task of reconciling Roman liberty withthe inevitable return of the Holy Father to his temporal throne. Eventswere moving too fast for diplomacy; troops must be at once despatched, orthe next French envoy would find Radetzky on the Tiber. The misgivings ofthe Republican part of the Assembly at Paris were stilled by Frenchassurances of the generous intentions of the Government towards the Romanpopulations, and of its anxiety to shelter them from Austrian domination, President, Ministers, and generals resolutely shut their eyes to thepossibility that a French occupation of Rome might be resisted by force bythe Romans themselves; and on the 22nd of April an armament of about tenthousand men set sail for Civita Vecchia under the command of GeneralOudinot, 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 theauthorities at Civita Vecchia, stating that his troops came as friends, anddemanding that they should be admitted into the town. The Municipal Councildetermined not to offer resistance, and the French thus gained a footing onItalian soil and a basis for their operations. Messages came from Frenchdiplomatists in Rome encouraging the general to advance without delay. Themass of the population, it was said, would welcome his appearance; thedemocratic faction, if reckless, was too small to offer any seriousresistance, and would disappear as soon as the French should enter thecity. On this point, however, Oudinot was speedily undeceived. In reply toa military envoy who was sent to assure the Triumvirs of the benevolentdesigns of the French, Mazzini bluntly answered that no reconciliation withthe Pope was possible; and on the 26th of April the Roman Assembly calledupon the Executive to repel force by force. Oudinot now proclaimed a stateof siege at Civita Vecchia, seized the citadel, and disarmed the garrison. On the 28th he began his march on Rome. As he approached, energeticpreparations were made for resistance. Garibaldi, who had fought at thehead of a free corps against the Austrians in Upper Italy in 1848, had nowbrought some hundreds of his followers to Rome. A regiment of Lombardvolunteers, under their young leader Manara, had escaped after thecatastrophe of Novara, and had come to fight for liberty in its laststronghold on Italian soil. Heroes, exiles, desperadoes from all parts ofthe Peninsula, met in the streets of Rome, and imparted to its people avigour 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, foundhimself, without heavy artillery, in front of a city still sheltered by itsancient fortifications, and in the presence of a body of combatants moreresolute than his own troops and twice as numerous. He attacked on the30th, was checked at every point, and compelled to retreat towards CivitaVecchia, 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 nosmall stir in Paris and in the Assembly. The Government, which had declaredthat the armament was intended only to protect Rome against Austria, wasvehemently reproached for its duplicity, and a vote was passed demandingthat the expedition should not be permanently diverted from the endassigned to it. Had the Assembly not been on the verge of dissolution itwould probably have forced upon the Government a real change of policy. Ageneral election, however, was but a few days distant, and until the resultof this election should be known the Ministry determined to temporise. M. Lesseps, since famous as the creator of the Suez Canal, was sent to Romewith instructions to negotiate for some peaceable settlement. More honestthan his employers, Lesseps sought with heart and soul to fulfil his task. While he laboured in city and camp, the French elections for which thePresident and Ministers were waiting took place, resulting in the return ofa Conservative and reactionary majority. The new Assembly met on the 28thof May. In the course of the next few days Lesseps accepted terms proposedby the Roman Government, which would have precluded the French fromentering Rome. Oudinot, who had been in open conflict with the envoythroughout his mission, refused his sanction to the treaty, and thealtercations between the general and the diplomatist were still at theirheight when despatches arrived from Paris announcing that the powers givento Lesseps were at an end, and ordering Oudinot to recommence hostilities. The pretence of further negotiation would have been out of place with thenew Parliament. On the 4th of June the French general, now stronglyreinforced, 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 RomanRepublic could long defend itself. One hope remained, and that was in arevolution within France itself. The recent elections had united on the oneside all Conservative interests, on the other the Socialists and all themore extreme factions of the Republican party. It was determined that atrial of strength should first be made within the Assembly itself upon theRoman question, and that, if the majority there should stand firm, anappeal should be made to insurrection. Accordingly on the 11th of June, after the renewal of hostilities had been announced in Paris, Ledru Rollindemanded the impeachment of the Ministry. His motion was rejected, and thesignal was given for an outbreak not only in the capital but in Lyons andother cities. But the Government were on their guard, and it was in vainthat the resources of revolution were once more brought into play. GeneralChangarnier suppressed without bloodshed a tumult in Paris on June 13th;and though fighting took place at Lyons, the insurrection proved feeble incomparison with the movements of the previous year. Louis Napoleon and hisMinistry remained unshaken, and the siege of Rome was accordingly pressedto its conclusion. Oudinot, who at the beginning of the month had carriedthe positions held by the Roman troops outside the walls, opened fire withheavy artillery on the 14th. The defence was gallantly sustained byGaribaldi and his companions until the end of the month, when the breachesmade in the walls were stormed by the enemy, and further resistance becameimpossible. The French made their entry into Rome on the 3rd of July, Garibaldi leading his troops northwards in order to prolong the strugglewith the Austrians who were now in possession of Bologna, and, if possible, to reach Venice, which was still uncaptured. Driven to the eastern coastand 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 Piedmontand thence to America, to reappear in all the fame of his heroic deeds andsufferings 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 soeasy for the French Government to escape from the embarrassments of itsvictory. Liberalism was still the official creed of the Republic, and theprotection of the Roman population from a reaction under Austrian auspiceshad been one of the alleged objects of the Italian expedition. Nostipulation had, however, been made with the Pope during the siege as tothe future institutions of Rome; and when, on the 14th of July, therestorations of Papal authority was formally announced by Oudinot, Pius andhis Minister Antonelli still remained unfettered by any binding engagement. Nor did the Pontiff show the least inclination to place himself in thepower of his protectors. He remained at Gaeta, sending a Commission ofthree Cardinals to assume the government of Rome. The first acts of theCardinals dispelled any illusion that the French might have formed as tothe docility of the Holy See. In the presence of a French Republican armythey restored the Inquisition, and appointed a Board to bring to trial allofficials compromised in the events that had taken place since the murderof Rossi in November, 1848. So great was the impression made on publicopinion by the action of the Cardinals that Louis Napoleon considered itwell to enter the lists in person on behalf of Roman liberty; and in aletter to Colonel Ney, a son of the Marshal, he denounced in language ofgreat violence the efforts that were being made by a party antagonistic toFrance to base the Pope's return upon proscription and tyranny. Strong inthe support of Austria and the other Catholic Powers, the Papal Governmentat Gaeta received this menace with indifference, and even made thediscourtesy of the President a ground for withholding concessions. Of there-establishment of the Constitution granted by Pius in 1848 there was nowno question; all that the French Ministry could hope was to save somefragments in the general shipwreck of representative government, and toavert the vengeance that seemed likely to fall upon the defeated party. APontifical edict, known as the Motu Proprio, ultimately bestowed upon themunicipalities certain local powers, and gave to a Council, nominated bythe Pope from among the persons chosen by the municipalities, the right ofconsultation on matters of finance. More than this Pius refused to grant, and when he returned to Rome it was as an absolute sovereign. In itsefforts on behalf of the large body of persons threatened with prosecutionthe French Government was more successful. The so-called amnesty which waspublished by Antonelli with the Motu Proprio seemed indeed to have for itsobject the classification of victims rather than the announcement ofpardon; but under pressure from the French the excepted persons weregradually diminished in number, and all were finally allowed to escapeother penalties by going into exile. To those who were so driven from theirhomes 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 theRoman States, and the deeper the hostility of the educated classes to therestored power the more active became the system of repression. For libertyof person there was no security whatever, and, though the offences of 1848were now professedly amnestied, the prisons were soon thronged with personsarrested on indefinite charges and detained for an unlimited time withouttrial. Nor was Rome more unfortunate in its condition than Italy generally. The restoration of Austrian authority in the north was completed by thefall of Venice. For months after the subjugation of the mainland, Venice, where the Republic had again been proclaimed and Manin had been recalled topower, had withstood all the efforts of the Emperor's forces. Its hopes hadbeen raised by the victories of the Hungarians, which for a moment seemedalmost to undo the catastrophe of Novara. But with the extinction of allpossibility of Hungarian aid the inevitable end came in view. Cholera andfamine worked with the enemy; and a fortnight after Görgei had laid downhis arms at Vilagos the long and honourable resistance of Venice ended withthe entry of the Austrians (August 25th). In the south, Ferdinand of Napleswas again ruling as despot throughout the full extent of his dominions. Palermo, which had struck the first blow for freedom in 1848, had soonafterwards become the seat of a Sicilian Parliament, which deposed theBourbon dynasty and offered the throne of Sicily to the younger brother ofVictor Emmanuel. To this Ferdinand replied by a fleet to Messina, whichbombarded that city for five days and laid a great part of it in ashes. Hisviolence caused the British and French fleets to interpose, and hostilitieswere suspended until the spring of 1849, the Western Powers ineffectuallyseeking to frame some compromise acceptable at once to the Sicilians and tothe Bourbon dynasty. After the triumph of Radetzky at Novara and therejection by the Sicilian Parliament of the offer of a separateconstitution and administration for the island, Ferdinand refused to remainany longer inactive. His fleet and army moved southwards from Messina, anda victory won at the foot of Mount Etna over the Sicilian forces, followedby the capture of Catania, brought the struggle to a close. The Assembly atPalermo dispersed, and the Neapolitan troops made their entry into thecapital without resistance on the 15th of May. It was in vain that GreatBritain now urged Ferdinand to grant to Sicily the liberties which he hadhitherto professed himself willing to bestow. Autocrat he was, and autocrathe intended to remain. On the mainland the iniquities practised by hisagents seem to have been even worse than in Sicily, where at least someattempt was made to use the powers of the State for the purposes ofmaterial improvement. For those who had incurred the enmity of Ferdinand'sGovernment there was no law and no mercy. Ten years of violence andoppression, denounced by the voice of freer lands, had still to be borne bythe subjects of this obstinate tyrant ere the reckoning-day arrived, andthe deeply rooted jealousy between Sicily and Naples, which had wrought somuch ill to the cause of Italian freedom, was appeased by the fall of theBourbon 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 monarchicalorder and the forces of revolution in the Austrian empire and in thatMediterranean land whose destiny was so closely interwoven with that ofAustria. We have now to pass back into Germany, and to resume the historyof the German revolution at the point where the national movement seemed toconcentrate itself in visible form, the opening of the Parliament ofFrankfort on the 18th of May, 1848. That an Assembly representing theentire German people, elected in unbounded enthusiasm and comprising withinit nearly every man of political or intellectual eminence who sympathisedwith the national cause, should be able to impose its will upon thetottering Governments of the individual German States, was not an unnaturalbelief in the circumstances of the moment. No second Chamber representedthe interests of the ruling Houses, nor had they within the Assembly itselfthe organs for the expression of their own real or unreal claims. With allthe freedom of a debating club or of a sovereign authority like the FrenchConvention, the Parliament of Frankfort entered upon its work of mouldingGermany afresh, limited only by its own discretion as to what it shouldmake matter of consultation with any other power. There were thirty-sixGovernments in Germany, and to negotiate with each of these on the futureConstitution might well seem a harder task than to enforce a Constitutionon all alike. In the creation of a provisional executive authority therewas something of the same difficulty. Each of the larger States might, ifconsulted, resist the selection of a provisional chief from one of itsrivals; and though the risk of bold action was not denied, the Assembly, onthe instance of its President, Von Gagern, a former Minister ofHesse-Darmstadt, resolved to appoint an Administrator of the Empire by adirect vote of its own. The Archduke John of Austria, long known as anenemy of Metternich's system of repression and as a patron of the idea ofGerman union, was chosen Administrator, and he accepted the office. Prussiaand the other States acquiesced in the nomination, though the choice of aHapsburg prince was unpopular with the Prussian nation and army, and didnot improve the relations between the Frankfort Assembly and the Court ofBerlin. [443] Schmerling, an Austrian, was placed at the head of theArchduke's Ministry. [The National Assembly. May-Sept. ]In the preparation of a Constitution for Germany the Assembly could drawlittle help from the work of legislators in other countries. Belgium, whoseinstitutions were at once recent and successful, was not a Federal State;the founders of the American Union had not had to reckon with four kingsand to include in their federal territory part of the dominions of anemperor. Instead of grappling at once with the formidable difficulties ofpolitical organisation, the Committee charged with the drafting of aConstitution determined first to lay down the principles of civil rightwhich were to be the basis of the German commonwealth. There was somethingof the scientific spirit of the Germans in thus working out thesubstructure of public law on which all other institutions were to rest;moreover, the remembrance of the Decrees of Carlsbad and of the otherexceptional legislation from which Germany had so heavily suffered exciteda strong demand for the most solemn guarantees against arbitrary departurefrom settled law in the future. Thus, regardless of the absence of anymaterial 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 ofpersonal liberty and of equality before the law, and fashioned the order ofa 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 Rightswas still unfinished, when the Assembly was warned by an outbreak ofpopular violence in Frankfort itself of the necessity of hastening towardsa constitutional settlement. [The Armistice of Malmö, Aug. 26. ][Outrages at Frankfort, Sept. 18. ]The progress of the insurrection in Schleswig-Holstein against Danishsovereignty had been watched with the greatest interest throughout Germany;and in the struggle of these provinces for their independence the rightsand the honour of the German nation at large were held to be deeplyinvolved. As the representative of the Federal authority, King FrederickWilliam of Prussia had sent his troops into Holstein, and they arrivedthere in time to prevent the Danish army from following up its firstsuccesses and crushing the insurgent forces. Taking up the offensive, General Wrangel at the head of the Prussian troops succeeded in driving theDanes out of Schleswig, and at the beginning of May he crossed the borderbetween Schleswig and Jutland and occupied the Danish fortress ofFredericia. His advance into purely Danish territory occasioned thediplomatic intervention of Russia and Great Britain; and, to the deepdisappointment of the German nation and its Parliament, the King of Prussiaordered his general to retire into Schleswig. The Danes were in themeantime blockading the harbours and capturing the merchant-vessels of theGermans, as neither Prussia nor the Federal Government possessed a fleet ofwar. For some weeks hostilities were irresolutely continued in Schleswig, while negotiations were pursued in foreign capitals and various forms ofcompromise urged by foreign Powers. At length, on the 26th of August, anarmistice of seven months was agreed upon at Malmö in Sweden by therepresentatives of Denmark and Prussia, the Court of Copenhagen refusing torecognise the German central Government at Frankfort or to admit its envoyto the conferences. The terms of this armistice, when announced in Germany, excited the greatest indignation, inasmuch as they declared all the acts ofthe Provisional Government of Schleswig-Holstein null and void, removed allGerman troops from the Duchies, and handed over their government during theduration of the armistice to a Commission of which half the members were tobe appointed by the King of Denmark. Scornfully as Denmark had treated theAssembly of Frankfort, the terms of the armistice nevertheless required itssanction. The question was referred to a committee, which, under theinfluence of the historian Dahlmann, himself formerly an official inHolstein, pronounced for the rejection of the treaty. The Assembly, in ascene of great excitement, resolved that the execution of the measuresattendant on the armistice should be suspended. The Ministry in consequenceresigned, and Dahlmann was called upon to replace it by one under his ownleadership. He proved unable to do so. Schmerling resumed office, anddemanded that the Assembly should reverse its vote. Though in severancefrom Prussia the Central Government had no real means of carrying on a warwith Denmark, the most passionate opposition was made to this demand. Thearmistice was, however, ultimately ratified by a small majority. Defeatedin the Assembly, the leaders of the extreme Democratic faction alliedthemselves with the populace of Frankfort, which was ready for acts ofviolence. Tumultuous meetings were held; the deputies who had voted for thearmistice were declared traitors to Germany. Barricades were erected, andalthough the appearance of Prussian troops prevented an assault from beingmade on the Assembly, its members were attacked in the streets, and two ofthem murdered by the mob (Sept. 17th). A Republican insurrection was oncemore attempted in Baden, but it was quelled without difficulty. [444][Berlin, April-Sept. , 1848. ]The intervention of foreign Courts on behalf of Denmark had givenostensible ground to the Prussian Government for not pursuing the war withgreater resolution; but though the fear of Russia undoubtedly checked KingFrederick William, this was not the sole, nor perhaps the most powerfulinfluence that worked upon him. The cause of Schleswig-Hulstein was, inspite 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 anda constantly deepening antagonism. Since the meeting of the NationalAssembly at Berlin on the 22nd of May the capital had been the scene of analmost unbroken course of disorder. The Assembly, which was far inferior inability and character to that of Frankfort, soon showed itself unable toresist the influence of the populace. On the 8th of June a resolution wasmoved that the combatants in the insurrection of March deserved well oftheir country. Had this motion been carried the King would have dissolvedthe Assembly: it was outvoted, but the mob punished this concession to thefeelings of the monarch by outrages upon the members of the majority. ACivic Guard was enrolled from citizens of the middle class, but it provedunable to maintain order, and wholly failed to acquire the politicalimportance which was gained by the National Guard of Paris after therevolution of 1830. Exasperated by their exclusion from service in theGuard, the mob on the 14th of June stormed an arsenal and destroyed thetrophies of arms which they found there. Though violence reigned in thestreets the Assembly rejected a proposal for declaring the inviolability ofits members, and placed itself under the protection of the citizens ofBerlin. King Frederick William had withdrawn to Potsdam, where the leadersof reaction gathered round him. He detested his Constitutional Ministers, who, between a petulant king and a suspicious Parliament, were unable toeffect any useful work and soon found themselves compelled to relinquishtheir office. In Berlin the violence of the working classes, theinterruption of business, the example of civil war in Paris, inclined menof quiet disposition to a return to settled government at any price. Measures brought forward by the new Ministry for the abolition of thepatrimonial jurisdictions, the hunting-rights and other feudal privilegesof the greater landowners, occasioned the organisation of a league for thedefence of property, which soon became the focus of powerful conservativeinterests. Above all, the claims of the Archduke John, as Administrator ofthe Empire, to the homage of the army, and the hostile attitude assumedtowards the army by the Prussian Parliament itself, exasperated themilitary class and encouraged the king to venture on open resistance. Atumult having taken place at Schweidnitz in Silesia, in which severalpersons were shot by the soldiery, the Assembly, pending an investigationinto the circumstances, demanded that the Minister of War should publish anorder requiring the officers of the army to work with the citizens for therealisation of Constitutional Government; and it called upon all officersnot loyally inclined to a Constitutional system to resign their commissionsas a matter of honour. Denying the right of the Chamber to act as amilitary executive, the Minister of War refused to publish the orderrequired. The vote was repeated, and in the midst of threateningdemonstrations 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 thearmy had never for a moment wavered in its fidelity to the throne. Thesuccess of the insurrection of March 18th had been due to the paucity oftroops and the errors of those in command, not to any military disaffectionsuch as had paralysed authority in Paris and in the Mediterranean States. Each affront offered to the army by the democratic majority in the Assemblysupplied the King with new weapons; each slight passed upon the royalauthority deepened the indignation of the officers. The armistice of Malmöbrought back to the neighbourhood of the capital a general who was longingto crush the party of disorder, and regiments on whom he could rely; butthough there was now no military reason for delay, it was not until thecapture of Vienna by Windischgrätz had dealt a fatal blow at democracy inGermany that Frederick William determined to have done with his ownmutinous Parliament and the mobs by which it was controlled. DuringSeptember and October the riots and tumults in the streets of Berlincontinued. The Assembly, which had rejected the draft of a Constitutionsubmitted to it by the Cabinet, debated the clauses of one drawn up by aCommittee of its own members, abolished nobility, orders and titles, andstruck out from the style of the sovereign the words that described him asKing by the Grace of God. When intelligence arrived in Berlin that theattack of Windischgrätz upon Vienna had actually begun, popular passionredoubled. The Assembly was besieged by an angry crowd, and a resolution infavour of the intervention of Prussia was brought forward within the House. This was rejected, and it was determined instead to invoke the mediation ofthe Central Government at Frankfort between the Emperor and his subjects. But the decision of the Assembly on this and every other point was nowmatter of indifference. Events outstripped its deliberations, and with thefall of Vienna its own course was run. On the 2nd of November the Kingdismissed his Ministers and called to office the Count of Brandenburg, anatural son of Frederick William II. , a soldier in high command, and one ofthe most outspoken representatives of the monarchical spirit of the army. The meaning of the appointment was at once understood. A deputation fromthe Assembly conveyed its protest to the King at Potsdam. The King turnedhis back upon them without giving an answer, and on the 9th of November anorder was issued proroguing the Assembly, and bidding it to meet on the27th 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 intothe Assembly by the Ministers, who demanded that it should be obeyedimmediately and without discussion. The President allowing a debate tocommence, the Ministers and seventy-eight Conservative deputies left theHall. The remaining deputies, two hundred and eighty in number, then passeda resolution declaring that they would not meet at Brandenburg; that theKing had no power to remove, to prorogue, or to dissolve the Assemblywithout its own consent; and that the Ministers were unfit to hold office. This challenge was answered by a proclamation of the Ministers declaringthe further meeting of the deputies illegal, and calling upon the CivicGuard not to recognise them as a Parliament. On the following day GeneralWrangel and his troops entered Berlin and surrounded the Assembly Hall. Inreply to the protests of the President, Wrangel answered that theParliament had been prorogued and must disappear. The members peaceablyleft the Hall, but reassembled at another spot that they had selected inanticipation of expulsion; and for some days they were pursued by themilitary from one place of meeting to another. On the 15th of November theypassed a resolution declaring the expenditure of state funds and theraising of taxes by the Government to be illegal so long as the Assemblyshould not be permitted to continue its deliberations. The Ministry on itspart showed that it was determined not to brook resistance. The Civic Guardwas dissolved and ordered to surrender its arms. It did so without strikinga blow, and vanished from the scene, a memorable illustration of thepolitical nullity of the middle class in Berlin as compared with that ofParis. The state of siege was proclaimed, the freedom of the Press and theright of public meeting were suspended. On the 27th of November a portionof the Assembly appeared, according to the King's order, at Brandenburg, but the numbers present were not sufficient for the transaction ofbusiness. The presence of the majority, however, was not required, for theKing had determined to give no further legal opportunities to the men whohad defied him. Treating the vote of November 15th as an act of rebellionon the part of those concerned in it, the King dissolved the Assembly(December 5th), and conferred upon Prussia a Constitution drawn up by hisown advisers, with the promise that this Constitution should be subject torevision by the future representative body. Though the dissolution of theAssembly occasioned tumults in Breslau and Cologne it was not activelyresented by the nation at large. The violence of the fallen body during itslast weeks of existence had exposed it to general discredit; its vote ofthe 15th of November had been formally condemned by the Parliament ofFrankfort; and the liberal character of the new Constitution, which agreedin the main with the draft-Constitution produced by the Committee of theAssembly, disposed moderate men to the belief that in the conflict betweenthe King and the popular representatives the fault had not been on the sideof the sovereign. [The Frankfort Parliament and Austria, Oct. -Dec. ]In the meantime the Parliament of Frankfort, warned against longer delay bythe disturbances of September 17th, had addressed itself in earnest to thesettlement of the Federal Constitution of Germany. Above a host of minordifficulties two great problems confronted it at the outset. The first wasthe relation of the Austrian Empire, with its partly German and partlyforeign territory, to the German national State; the other was the natureof the headship to be established. As it was clear that the AustrianGovernment could not apply the public law of Germany to its Slavic andHungarian provinces, it was enacted in the second article of the FrankfortConstitution that where a German and a non-German territory had the samesovereign, the relation between these countries must be one of purelypersonal union under the sovereign, no part of Germany being incorporatedinto a single State with any non-German land. At the time when this articlewas drafted the disintegration of Austria seemed more probable than there-establishment of its unity; no sooner, however, had Prince Schwarzenbergbeen brought into power by the subjugation of Vienna, than he made it plainthat the government of Austria was to be centralised as it had never beenbefore. In the first public declaration of his policy he announced thatAustria would maintain its unity and permit no exterior influence to modifyits internal organisation; that the settlement of the relations betweenAustria and Germany could only be effected after each had gained some newand abiding political form; and that in the meantime Austria would continueto fulfil its duties as a confederate. [446] The interpretation put uponthis statement at Frankfort was that Austria, in the interest of its ownunity, preferred not to enter the German body, but looked forward to theestablishment of some intimate alliance with it at a future time. As theCourt of Vienna had evidently determined not to apply to itself the secondarticle of the Constitution, and an antagonism between German and Austrianpolicy came within view, Schmerling, as an Austrian subject, was induced toresign his office, and was succeeded in it by Gagern, hitherto President ofthe Assembly (Dec. 16th). [447][The Frankfort Parliament and Austria, Dec. , Jan. ]In announcing the policy of the new Ministry, Gagern assumed the exclusionof Austria from the German Federation. Claiming for the Assembly, as therepresentative of the German nation, sovereign power in drawing up theConstitution, he denied that the Constitution could be made an object ofnegotiation with Austria. As Austria refused to fulfil the conditions ofthe second article, it must remain outside the Federation; the Ministrydesired, however, to frame some close and special connection betweenAustria and Germany, and asked for authority to negotiate with the Court ofVienna for this purpose. Gagern's declaration of the exclusion of Austriaoccasioned a vehement and natural outburst of feeling among the Austriandeputies, and was met by their almost unanimous protest. Some days laterthere arrived a note from Schwarzenberg which struck at the root of allthat had been done and all that was claimed by the Assembly. Repudiatingthe interpretation that had been placed upon his words, Schwarzenbergdeclared that the affairs of Germany could only be settled by anunderstanding between the Assembly and the Courts, and by an arrangementwith Austria, which was the recognised chief of the Governments andintended to remain so in the new Federation. The question of the inclusionor exclusion of Austria now threw into the shade all the earlierdifferences 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 beexcluded, and of deputies from some of the smaller States who had begun todread Prussian domination. On the other side was the great body ofrepresentatives who set before all the cause of German national union, whosaw that this union would never be effected in any real form if it was madeto depend upon negotiations with the Austrian Court, and who held, with theMinister, that to create a true German national State without the Austrianprovinces was better than to accept a phantom of complete union in whichthe German people should be nothing and the Cabinet of Vienna everything. Though coalitions and intrigues of parties obscured the political prospectfrom day to day, the principles of Gagern were affirmed by a majority ofthe Assembly, and authority to negotiate some new form of connection withAustria, 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 theFederal headship. Some were for a hereditary Emperor, some for a Presidentor Board, some for a monarchy alternating between the Houses of Prussia andAustria, some for a sovereign elected for life or for a fixed period. Thefirst decision arrived at was that the head should be one of the reigningprinces of Germany, and that he should bear the title of Emperor. Againstthe hereditary principle there was a strong and, at first, a successfulopposition. Reserving for future discussion other questions relating to theimperial office, the Assembly passed the Constitution through the firstreading on February 3rd, 1849. It was now communicated to all the GermanGovernments, with the request that they would offer their opinions upon it. The four minor kingdoms--Saxony, Hanover, Bavaria, and Würtemberg--with oneconsent declared against any Federation in which Austria should not beincluded; the Cabinet of Vienna protested against the subordination of theEmperor of Austria to a central power vested in any other German prince, and proposed that the entire Austrian Empire, with its foreign as well asits German elements, should enter the Federation. This note was enough toprove that Austria was in direct conflict with the scheme of national unionwhich the Assembly had accepted; but the full peril of the situation wasnot perceived till on the 9th of March Schwarzenberg published theConstitution of Olmütz, which extinguished all separate rights throughoutthe Austrian Empire, and confounded in one mass, as subjects of the EmperorFrancis Joseph, Hungarians, Germans, Slavs and Italians. The import of theAustrian demand now stood out clear and undisguised. Austria claimed torange itself with a foreign population of thirty millions within the GermanFederation; in other words, to reduce the German national union to apartnership with all the nationalities of Central Europe, to throw theweight of an overwhelming influence against any system of freerepresentative government, and to expose Germany to war where no interestsbut those of the Pole or the Magyar might be at stake. So deep was theimpression made at Frankfort by the fall of the Kremsier Parliament and thepublication of Schwarzenberg's unitary edict, that one of the most eminentof the politicians who had hitherto opposed the exclusion of Austria--theBaden deputy Welcker--declared that further persistence in this coursewould be treason to Germany. Ranging himself with the Ministry, heproposed that the entire German Constitution, completed by a hereditarychieftainship, should be passed at a single vote on the second reading, andthat the dignity of Emperor should be at once offered to the King ofPrussia. Though the Assembly declined to pass the Constitution by a singlevote, it agreed to vote upon clause by clause without discussion. Thehereditary principle was affirmed by the narrow majority of four in a Houseof above five hundred. The second reading of the Constitution was completedon the 27th of March, and on the following day the election of thesovereign took place. Two hundred and ninety votes were given for the Kingof Prussia. Two hundred and forty-eight members, hostile to the hereditaryprinciple or to the prince selected, abstained from voting. [448][Frederick William IV. ]Frederick William had from early years cherished the hope of seeing somecloser union of Germany established under Prussian influence. But he dweltin 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 failedto perceive, what was palpable to men of far inferior endowments to hisown, that by setting Prussia at the head of the constitutional movement ofthe epoch he might at any time from the commencement of his reign haverallied 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 in1848, had he given promptly and with dignity what, after blood had beenshed in his streets, he had to give with humiliation, he would probablyhave been acclaimed Emperor on the opening of the Parliament of Frankfort, and have been accepted by the universal voice of Germany. But the odiumcast upon him by the struggle of March 18th was so great that in theelection of a temporary Administrator of the Empire in June no singlemember 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 1849Frederick William could not have assumed the office of Emperor of Germanywithout risk of a war with Austria, even had he been willing to accept thisoffice on the nomination of the Frankfort Parliament. But to accept theImperial Crown from a popular Assembly was repugnant to his deepestconvictions. Clear as the Frankfort Parliament had been, as a whole, fromthe taint of Republicanism or of revolutionary violence, it hadnevertheless 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 theprinces of Germany by any arrangement with the Assembly tendered the crownto Frederick William the case would have been different; a new Divine rightwould have emanated from the old, and conditions fixed by negotiationbetween the princes and the popular Assembly might have been endured. ThatFrederick William still aspired to German leadership in one form or anotherno one doubted; his disposition to seek or to reject an accommodation withthe Frankfort Parliament varied with the influences which surrounded him. The Ministry led by the Count of Brandenburg, though anti-popular in itsdomestic measures, was desirous of arriving at some understanding withGagern and the friends of German union. Shortly before the first reading ofthe Constitution at Frankfort, a note had been drafted in the BerlinCabinet admitting under certain provisions the exclusion of Austria fromthe Federation, and proposing, not that the Assembly should admit the rightof each Government to accept or reject the Constitution, but that it shouldmeet in a fair spirit such recommendations as all the Governments togethershould by a joint act submit to it. This note, which would have rendered anagreement between the Prussian Court and the Assembly possible, FrederickWilliam at first refused to sign. He was induced to do so (Jan. 23rd) byhis 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 FrankfortAssembly, and to divide Germany between Austria, Prussia, and the foursecondary kingdoms. Bunsen on his return found his work undone; the Kingrecoiled under Austrian pressure from the position which he had taken up, and sent a note to Frankfort on the 16th of February, which describedAustria as a necessary part of Germany and claimed for each separateGovernment the right to accept or reject the Constitution as it might thinkfit. Thus the acceptance of the headship by Frederick William under anyconditions compatible with the claims of the Assembly was known to bedoubtful when, on the 28th of March, the majority resolved to offer him theImperial Crown. The disposition of the Ministry at Berlin was indeed stillfavourable to an accommodation; and when, on the 2nd of April, the membersof the Assembly who were charged to lay its offer before Frederick Williamarrived at Berlin, they were received with such cordiality by Brandenburgthat 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 rudelydispelled these hopes. He declared that before he could accept the Crownnot only must he be summoned to it by the Princes of Germany, but theconsent of all the Governments must be given to the Constitution. In otherwords, he required that the Assembly should surrender its claims tolegislative supremacy, and abandon all those parts of the FederalConstitution of which any of the existing Governments disapproved. As itwas certain that Austria and the four minor kingdoms would never agree toany Federal union worthy of the name, and that the Assembly could not now, without renouncing its past, admit that the right of framing theConstitution lay outside itself, the answer of the King was understood toamount to a refusal. The deputation left Berlin in the sorrowful convictionthat their mission had failed; and a note which was soon afterwardsreceived at Frankfort from the King showed that this belief wascorrect. [449][The Frankfort Constitution rejected by the Governments. ]The answer of King Frederick William proved indeed much more than that hehad refused the Crown of Germany; it proved that he would not accept theConstitution which the Assembly had enacted. The full import of thisdetermination, and the serious nature of the crisis now impending overGermany, were at once understood. Though twenty-eight Governmentssuccessively accepted the Constitution, these were without exception pettyStates, and their united forces would scarcely have been a match for one ofits more powerful enemies. On the 5th of April the Austrian Cabinetdeclared the Assembly to have been guilty of illegality in publishing theConstitution, and called upon all Austrian deputies to quit Frankfort. ThePrussian Lower Chamber, elected under the King's recent edict, havingprotested against the state of siege in Berlin, and having passed aresolution in favour of the Frankfort Constitution, was forthwithdissolved. Within the Frankfort Parliament the resistance of Governmentsexcited a patriotic resentment and caused for the moment a union ofparties. Resolutions were passed declaring that the Assembly would adhereto the Constitution. A Committee was charged with the ascertainment ofmeasures to be adopted for enforcing its recognition; and a note wasaddressed to all the hostile Governments demanding that they should abstainfrom proroguing or dissolving the representative bodies within theirdominions with the view of suppressing the free utterance of opinions infavour of the Constitution. [End of the German National Assembly, June, 1849. ]On the ground of this last demand the Prussian official Press now began todenounce the Assembly of Frankfort as a revolutionary body. The situationof affairs daily became worse. It was in vain that the Assembly appealed tothe Governments, the legislative Chambers, the local bodies, the wholepeople, to bring the Constitution into effect. The moral force on which ithad determined to rely proved powerless, and in despair of conquering theGovernments by public opinion the more violent members of the democraticparty determined to appeal to insurrection. On the 4th of May a popularrising began at Dresden, where the King, under the influence of Prussia, had dismissed those of his Ministers who urged him to accept theConstitution, and had dissolved his Parliament. The outbreak drove the Kingfrom his capital; but only five days had passed when a Prussian army-corpsentered the city and crushed the rebellion. In this interval, short as itwas, there had been indications that the real leaders of the insurrectionwere fighting not for the Frankfort Constitution but for a Republic, andthat in the event of their victory a revolutionary Government, connectedwith French and Polish schemes of subversion, would come into power. InBaden this was made still clearer. There the Government of the Grand Dukehad actually accepted the Frankfort Constitution, and had ordered electionsto be held for the Federal legislative body by which the Assembly was to besucceeded. Insurrection nevertheless broke out. The Republic was openlyproclaimed; the troops joined the insurgents; and a Provisional Governmentallied itself with a similar body that had sprung into being with the helpof French and Polish refugees in the neighbouring Palatinate. Consciousthat these insurrections must utterly ruin its own cause, the FrankfortAssembly on the suggestion of Gagern called upon the Archduke John tosuppress them by force of arms, and at the same time to protect the freeexpression of opinion on behalf of the Constitution where threatened byGovernments. John, who had long clung to his office only to further theends of Austria, refused to do so, and Gagern in consequence resigned. Withhis fall ended the real political existence of the Assembly. In reply to aresolution which it passed on the 10th of May, calling upon John to employall the forces of Germany in defence of the Constitution, the Archdukeplaced a mock-Ministry in office. The Prussian Government, declaring thevote of the 10th of May to be a summons to civil war, ordered all Prussiandeputies to withdraw from the Assembly, and a few days later its examplewas imitated by Saxony and Hanover. On the 20th of May sixty-five of thebest known of the members, including Arndt and Dahlmann, placed on recordtheir belief that in the actual situation the relinquishment of the task ofthe Assembly was the least of evils, and declared their work at Frankfortended. Other groups followed them till there remained only the party of theextreme Left, which had hitherto been a weak minority, and which in nosense represented the real opinions of Germany. This Rump-Parliament, troubling itself little with John and his Ministers, determined to withdrawfrom Frankfort, where it dreaded the appearance of Prussian troops, intoWürtemberg, where it might expect some support from the revolutionaryGovernments of Baden and the Palatinate. On the 6th of June a hundred andfive deputies assembled at Stuttgart. There they proceeded to appoint agoverning Committee for all Germany, calling upon the King of Würtemberg tosupply them with seven thousand soldiers, and sending out emissaries tostir up the neighbouring population. But the world disregarded them. TheGovernment at Stuttgart, after an interval of patience, bade them begone;and on the 18th of June their hall was closed against them and they weredispersed by troops, no one raising a hand on their behalf. The overthrowof the insurgents who had taken up arms in Baden and the Palatinate was notso easy a matter. A campaign of six weeks was necessary, in which the armyof Prussia, led by the Prince of Prussia, sustained some reverses, beforethe Republican levies were crushed, and with the fall of Rastadt theinsurrection 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 highhopes and to which it had sent so much of what was noblest in itself, contrasted lamentably with the splendour of its opening. Whether a betterresult would have been attained if, instead of claiming supreme authorityin the construction of Federal union, the Assembly had from the firstsought the co-operation of the Governments, must remain matter ofconjecture. Austria would under all circumstances have been the greathindrance in the way; and after the failure of the efforts made atFrankfort to establish the general union of Germany, Austria was ablecompletely to frustrate the attempts which were now made at Berlin toestablish partial union upon a different basis. In notifying to theAssembly his refusal of the Imperial Crown, King Frederick William hadstated that he was resolved to place himself at the head of a Federation tobe formed by States voluntarily uniting with him under terms to besubsequently arranged; and in a circular note addressed to the GermanGovernments he invited such as were disposed to take counsel with Prussiato unite in Conference at Berlin. The opening of the Conference was fixedfor the 17th of May. Two days before this the King issued a proclamation tothe Prussian people announcing that in spite of the failure of the Assemblyof Frankfort a German union was still to be formed. When the Conferenceopened at Berlin, no envoys appeared but those of Austria, Saxony, Hanover, and Bavaria. The Austrian representative withdrew at the end of the firstsitting, the Bavarian rather later, leaving Prussia to lay such foundationsas it could for German unity with the temporising support of Saxony andHanover. A confederation was formed, known as the League of the ThreeKingdoms. An undertaking was given that a Federal Parliament should besummoned, and that a Constitution should be made jointly by this Parliamentand the Governments (May 26th). On the 11th of June the draft of a FederalConstitution was published. As the King of Prussia was apparently acting ingood faith, and the draft-Constitution in spite of some defects seemed toafford a fair basis for union, the question now arose among the leaders ofthe German national movement whether the twenty-eight States which hadaccepted the ill-fated Constitution of Frankfort ought or ought not toenter the new Prussian League. A meeting of a hundred and fifty ex-membersof the Frankfort Parliament was held at Gotha; and although greatindignation was expressed by the more democratic faction, it was determinedthat the scheme now put forward by Prussia deserved a fair trial. The wholeof the twenty-eight minor States consequently entered the League, whichthus embraced all Germany with the exception of Austria, Bavaria andWürtemberg. But the Courts of Saxony and Hanover had from the first beenacting with duplicity. The military influence of Prussia, and the fearwhich they still felt of their own subjects, had prevented them fromoffering open resistance to the renewed work of Federation; but they hadthroughout been in communication with Austria, and were only waiting forthe moment when the complete restoration of Austria's military strengthshould enable them to display their true colours. During the spring of1849, while the Conferences at Berlin were being held, Austria was stilloccupied with Hungary and Venice. The final overthrow of these enemiesenabled it to cast its entire weight upon Germany. The result was seen inthe action of Hanover and Saxony, which now formally seceded from theFederation. Prussia thus remained at the end of 1849 with no support butthat of the twenty-eight minor States. Against it, in open or in tacitantagonism to the establishment of German unity in any effective form, thefour 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 newLeague, assembled at Erfurt. In the meantime reaction had gone far in manya German State. In Prussia, after the dissolution of the Lower Chamber onApril 27th, 1849, the King had abrogated the electoral provisions of theConstitution so recently granted by himself, and had substituted for them asystem based on the representation of classes. Treating this act as abreach of faith, the Democratic party had abstained from voting at theelections, with the result that in the Berlin Parliament of 1850Conservatives, Reactionists, and officials formed the great majority. Therevision of the Prussian Constitution, promised at first as a concession toLiberalism, was conducted in the opposite sense. The King demanded thestrengthening of monarchical power; the Feudalists, going far beyond him, attacked the municipal and social reforms of the last two years, and soughtto lead Prussia back to the system of its mediæval estates. It was in themidst of this victory of reaction in Prussia that the Federal Parliament atErfurt began its sittings. Though the moderate Liberals, led by Gagern andother tried politicians of Frankfurt, held the majority in both Houses, astrong Absolutist party from Prussia confronted them, and it soon becameclear that the Prussian Government was ready to play into the hands of thisparty. The draft of the Federal Constitution, which had been made atBerlin, was presented, according to the undertaking of May 28th, 1849, tothe Erfurt Assembly. Aware of the gathering strength of the reaction and ofthe danger of delay, the Liberal majority declared itself ready to pass thedraft into law without a single alteration. The reactionary minoritydemanded that a revision should take place; and, to the scandal of all whounderstood the methods or the spirit of Parliamentary rule, the PrussianMinisters united with the party which demanded alterations in the projectwhich they themselves had brought forward. A compromise was ultimatelyeffected; but the action of the Court of Prussia and the conduct of itsMinisters throughout the Erfurt debates struck with deep despondency thosewho had believed that Frederick William might still effect the work inwhich the Assembly of Frankfort had failed. The trust in the King'ssincerity or consistence of purpose sank low. The sympathy of the nationalLiberal party throughout Germany was to a great extent alienated fromPrussia; while, if any expectation existed at Berlin that the adoption of areactionary policy would disarm the hostility of the Austrian Government tothe 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 ofPrussia to establish any new form of union in Germany, and had declaredthat it would recognise none of the conclusions of the Federal Parliamentof Erfurt. According to the theory now advanced by the Cabinet of Viennathe ancient Federal Constitution of Germany was still in force. All thathad happened since March, 1848, was so much wanton and futilemischief-making. The disturbance of order had at length come to an end, andwith the exit of the rioters the legitimate powers re-entered into theirrights. Accordingly, there could be no question of the establishment of newLeagues. The old relation of all the German States to one another under theascendency of Austria remained in full strength; the Diet of Frankfort, which had merely suspended its functions and by no means sufferedextinction, was still the legitimate central authority. That somemodifications might be necessary in the ancient Constitution was the mostthat Austria was willing to admit. This, however, was an affair not for theGerman people but for its rulers, and Austria accordingly invited all theGovernments to a Congress at Frankfort where the changes necessary might bediscussed. In reply to this summons, Prussia strenuously denied that theold Federal Constitution was still in existence. The princes of thenumerous petty States which were included in the new Union assembled atBerlin round Frederick William, and resolved that they would not attend theConference at Frankfort except under reservations and conditions whichAustria would not admit. Arguments and counter-arguments were exchanged;but the controversy between an old and a new Germany was one to be decidedby force of will or force of arms, not by political logic. The struggle wasto be one between Prussia and Austria, and the Austrian Cabinet had wellgauged the temper of its opponent. A direct summons to submission wouldhave roused all the King's pride, and have been answered by war. Beforedemanding from Frederick William the dissolution of the Union which he hadfounded, Schwarzenberg determined to fix upon a quarrel in which the Kingshould be perplexed or alarmed at the results of his own policy. Thedominant conviction in the mind of Frederick William was that of thesanctity of monarchical rule. If the League of Berlin could be committed tosome enterprise hostile to monarchical power, and could be charged with analliance with rebellion, Frederick William would probably falter in hisresolutions, and a resort to arms, for which, however, Austria was wellprepared, 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 tojoin the new Federation was the Electorate of Hesse-Cassel. The Electorwas, like his predecessors, a thorough despot at heart, and chafed underthe restrictions which a constitutional system imposed upon his rule. Acting under Austrian instigation, he dismissed his Ministers in the springof 1850, and placed in office one Hassenpflug, a type of the worst and mostviolent class of petty tyrants produced by the officialism of the minorGerman States. Hassenpflug immediately quarrelled with the Estates atCassel, and twice dissolved them, after which he proceeded to levy taxes byforce. The law-courts declared his acts illegal; the officers of the army, when called on for assistance, began to resign. The conflict between theMinister and the Hessian population was in full progress when, at thebeginning of September, Austria with its vassal Governments proclaimed there-establishment of the Diet of Frankfort. Though Prussia and most of thetwenty-eight States confederate with it treated this announcement as nulland void, the Diet, constituted by the envoys of Austria, the four minorKingdoms, and a few seceders from the Prussian Union, commenced itssittings. To the Diet the Elector of Hesse forthwith appealed for helpagainst his subjects, and the decision was given that the refusal of theHessian Estates to grant the taxes was an offence justifying theintervention of the central power. Fortified by this judgment, Hassenpflugnow ordered that every person offering resistance to the Government shouldbe tried by court-martial. He was baffled by the resignation of the entirebody of officers in the Hessian army; and as this completed thediscomfiture of the Elector, the armed intervention of Austria, asidentified with the Diet of Frankfort, now became a certainty. But to theprotection of the people of Hesse in their constitutional rights Prussia, as chief of the League which Hesse had joined, stood morally pledged. Itremained for the King to decide between armed resistance to Austria or thehumiliation of a total abandonment of Prussia's claim to leadership in anyGerman union. Conflicting influences swayed the King in one direction andanother. The friends of Austria and of absolutism declared that theemployment of the Prussian army on behalf of the Hessians would make theKing an accomplice of revolution: the bolder and more patriotic spiritsprotested against the abdication of Prussia's just claims and the evasionof its responsibilities towards Germany. For a moment the party of action, led by the Prince of Prussia, gained the ascendant. General Radowitz, theprojector of the Union, was called to the Foreign Ministry, and Prussiantroops entered Hesse. Austria now ostentatiously prepared for war. Frederick William, terrified by the danger confronting him, yet unwillingto yield all, sought the mediation of the Czar of Russia. Nicholas cameto Warsaw, where the Emperor of Austria and Prince Charles, brother ofthe King of Prussia, attended by the Ministers of their States, met him. The closest family ties united the Courts of St. Petersburg and Berlinbut the Russian sovereign was still the patron of Austria as he had beenin the Hungarian campaign. He resented the action of Prussia inSchleswig-Holstein, and was offended that King Frederick William had notpresented himself at Warsaw in person. He declared in favour of allAustria's demands, and treated Count Brandenburg with such indignity thatthe Count, a high-spirited patriot, never recovered from its effect. Hereturned to Berlin only to give in his report and die. Manteuffel, Minister of the Interior, assured the King that the Prussian army was soweak in numbers and so defective in organisation that, if it took thefield against Austria and its allies, it would meet with certain ruin. Bavarian troops, representing the Diet of Frankfort, now entered Hesse atAustria's bidding, and stood face to face with the Prussians. The momenthad come when the decision must be made between peace and war. At aCouncil held at Berlin on November and the peace-party carried the Kingwith them. Radowitz gave up office; Manteuffel, the Minister ofrepression within and of submission without, was set at the head of theGovernment. The meaning of his appointment was well understood, and witheach new proof of the weakness of the King the tone of the Court ofAustria became more imperious. On the 9th of November Schwarzenbergcategorically demanded the dissolution of the Prussian Union, therecognition of the Federal Diet, and the evacuation of Hesse by thePrussian troops. The first point was at once conceded, and in hollow, equivocating language Manteuffel made the fact known to the members ofthe Confederacy. The other conditions not being so speedily fulfilled, Schwarzenberg set Austrian regiments in motion, and demanded thewithdrawal of the Prussian troops from Hesse within twenty-four hours. Manteuffel begged the Austrian Minister for an interview, and, withoutwaiting for an answer, set out for Olmütz. His instructions bade him topress for certain concessions; none of these did he obtain, and he madethe necessary submission without them. On the 29th of November a conventionwas signed at Olmütz, in which Prussia recognised the German FederalConstitution of 1815 as still existing, undertook to withdraw all itstroops from Hesse with the exception of a single battalion, and consentedto the settlement of affairs both in Hesse and in Schleswig-Holstein by theFederal Diet. One point alone in the scheme of the Austrian statesman waswanting among the fruits of his victory at Olmütz and of the negotiationsat Dresden by which this was followed. Schwarzenberg had intended that theentire Austrian Empire should enter the German Federation; and if he hadhad to reckon with no opponents but the beaten and humbled Prussia, hewould have effected his design. But the prospect of a central EuropeanPower, with a population of seventy millions, controlled as this wouldvirtually be by the Cabinet of Vienna, alarmed other nations. Englanddeclared that such a combination would undo the balance of power in Europeand menace the independence of Germany; France protested in morethreatening terms; and the project fell to the ground, to be rememberedonly as the boldest imagination of a statesman for whom fortune, veilingthe 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 ofthe Germans towards national union, sank with the failure of these efforts;and in the final humiliation of Prussia it received what might well seemits death-blow. The armistice of Malmö, which was sanctioned by theAssembly of Frankfort in the autumn of 1848, lasted until March 26th, 1849. War was then recommenced by Prussia, and the lines of Düppel were stormedby its troops, while the volunteer forces of Schleswig-Holsteinunsuccessfully laid siege to Fredericia. Hostilities had continued forthree months, when a second armistice, to last for a year, andPreliminaries of Peace, were agreed upon. At the conclusion of thisarmistice, in July, 1850, Prussia, in the name of Germany, made peace withDenmark. The inhabitants of the Duchies in consequence continued the warfor themselves, and though defeated with great loss at Idstedt on the 24thof July, they remained unconquered at the end of the year. This was thesituation of affairs when Prussia, by the Treaty of Olmütz, agreed that therestored Federal Diet should take upon itself the restoration of order inSchleswig-Holstein, and that the troops of Prussia should unite with thoseof Austria to enforce its decrees. To the Cabinet of Vienna, the foe inequal measure of German national union and of every democratic cause, theSchleswig-Holsteiners were simply rebels in insurrection against theirSovereign. They were required by the Diet, under Austrian dictation, to laydown their arms; and commissioners from Austria and Prussia entered theDuchies to compel them to do so. Against Denmark, Austria, and Prussiatogether, it was impossible for Schleswig-Holstein to prolong itsresistance. The army was dissolved, and the Duchies were handed over to theKing of Denmark, to return to the legal status which was defined in theTreaties of Peace. This was the nominal condition of the transfer; but theDanish Government treated Schleswig as part of its national territory, andin the northern part of the Duchy the process of substituting Danish forGerman nationality was actively pursued. The policy of foreign Courts, little interested in the wish of the inhabitants, had from the beginning ofthe struggle of the Duchies against Denmark favoured the maintenance andconsolidation of the Danish Kingdom. The claims of the Duke ofAugustenburg, as next heir to the Duchies in the male line, were notconsidered worth the risk of a new war; and by a protocol signed at Londonon the 2nd of August, 1850, the Powers, with the exception of Prussia, declared themselves in favour of a single rule of succession in all partsof the Danish State. By a Treaty of the 8th of May, 1852, to which Prussiagave its assent, the pretensions of all other claimants to the disputedsuccession were set aside, and Prince Christian, of the House ofGlücksburg, was declared heir to the throne, the rights of the GermanFederation as established by the Treaties of 1815 being reserved. In spiteof this reservation of Federal rights, and of the stipulations in favour ofSchleswig and Holstein made in the earlier agreements, the Duchies appearedto be now practically united with the Danish State. Prussia, for a momenttheir champion, had joined with Austria in coercing their army, indissolving their Government, in annulling the legislation by which theParliament of Frankfort had made them participators in public rightsthenceforward to be the inheritance of all Germans. A page in the nationalhistory was obliterated; Prussia had turned its back on its ownprofessions; there remained but one relic from the time when the wholeGerman people seemed so ardent for the emancipation of its brethren beyondthe frontier. The national fleet, created by the Assembly of Frankfort forthe prosecution of the struggle with Denmark, still lay at the mouth of theElbe. But the same power which had determined that Germany was not to be anation had also determined that it could have no national maritimeinterests. After all that had passed, authority had little call to be niceabout appearances; and the national fleet was sold by auction, inaccordance with a decree of the restored Diet of Frankfort, in the summerof 1852. [453][Germany after 1849. ]It was with deep disappointment and humiliation that the Liberals ofGermany, and all in whom the hatred of democratic change had notoverpowered the love of country, witnessed the issue of the movement of1848. In so far as that movement was one directed towards national union ithad totally failed, and the state of things that had existed before 1848was restored without change. As a movement of constitutional and socialreform, it had not been so entirely vain; nor in this respect can it besaid that Germany after the year 1848 returned altogether to what it wasbefore it. Many of the leading figures of the earlier time re-appearedindeed with more or less of lustre upon the stage. Metternich thoughexcluded from office by younger men, beamed upon Vienna with the serenityof a prophet who had lived to see most of his enemies shot and of a martyrwho had returned to one of the most enviable Salons in Europe. No dynastylost its throne, no class of the population had been struck down withproscription as were the clergy and the nobles of France fifty yearsbefore. Yet the traveller familiar with Germany before the revolution foundthat 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 strokethe whole of the political, the social, the agrarian legislation of thepreceding time, as in some other periods of reaction. The nearest approachthat was made to this was in a decree of the Diet annulling the Declarationof Rights drawn up by the Frankfort Assembly, and requiring the Governmentsto bring into conformity with the Federal Constitution all laws andinstitutions made since the beginning of 1848. Parliamentary government wasthereby enfeebled, but not necessarily extinguished. Governments narrowedthe franchise, curtailed the functions of representative assemblies, filledthese with their creatures, coerced voters at elections; but, except inAustria, there was no open abandonment of constitutional forms. In someStates, as in Saxony under the reactionary rule of Count Beust, the systemof national representation established in 1848 was abolished and theearlier Estates were revived; in Prussia the two Houses of Parliamentcontinued 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 Liberalleaders at length withdrew in despair. The character which Government nowassumed in Prussia was indeed far more typical of the condition of Germanyat large than was the bold and uncompromising despotism of PrinceSchwarzenberg in Austria. Manteuffel, in whom the Prussian epoch ofreaction was symbolised, was not a cruel or a violent Minister; but hisrule was stamped with a peculiar and degrading meanness, more irritating tothose who suffered under it than harsher wrong. In his hands government wasa thing of eavesdropping and espionage, a system of petty persecution, aschool of subservience and hypocrisy. He had been the instrument at Olmützof such a surrender of national honour and national interests as fewnations have ever endured with the chances of war still untried. Thissurrender may, in the actual condition of the Prussian army, have beennecessary, but the abasement of it seemed to cling to Manteuffel and tolower all his conceptions of government. Even where the conclusions of hispolicy were correct they seemed to have been reached by some unworthyprocess. Like Germany at large, Prussia breathed uneasily under anoppression which was everywhere felt and yet was hard to define. Its bestelements were those which suffered the most: its highest intellectual andpolitical aims were those which most excited the suspicion of theGovernment. Its King had lost whatever was stimulating or elevated in hisillusions. From him no second alliance with Liberalism, no further efforton behalf of German unity, was to be expected: the hope for Germany and forPrussia, 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 andprestige. The contrast presented by Austria in 1848 and Austria in 1851 wasindeed one that might well arrest political observers. Its recovery had nodoubt been effected partly by foreign aid, and in the struggle with theMagyars a dangerous obligation had been incurred towards Russia; butscarred and riven as the fabric was within, it was complete and imposingwithout. Not one of the enemies who in 1848 had risen against the Court ofVienna now remained standing. In Italy, Austria had won back what hadappeared to be hopelessly lost; in Germany it had more than vindicated itsold claims. It had thrown its rival to the ground, and the full measure ofits ambition was perhaps even yet not satisfied. "First to humiliatePrussia, then to destroy it, " was the expression in which Schwarzenbergsummed up his German policy. Whether, with his undoubted firmness anddaring, the Minister possessed the intellectual qualities and theexperience necessary for the successful administration of an Empire builtup, as Austria now was, on violence and on the suppression of everynational force, was doubted even by his admirers. The proof, however, wasnot granted to him, for a sudden death carried him off in his fourth yearof power (April 5th, 1852). Weaker men succeeded to his task. The epoch ofmilitary and diplomatic triumph was now ending, the gloomier side of thereaction stood out unrelieved by any new succession of victories. Financialdisorder grew worse and worse. Clericalism claimed its bond from themonarchy which it had helped to restore. In the struggle of thenationalities of Austria against the central authority the Bishops had onthe whole thrown their influence on to the side of the Crown. The restoreddespotism owed too much to their help and depended too much on theircontinued goodwill to be able to refuse their demands. Thus the newcentralised administration, reproducing in general the uniformity ofgovernment attempted by the Emperor Joseph II. , contrasted with this in itssubservience to clerical power. Ecclesiastical laws and jurisdictions wereallowed to encroach on the laws and jurisdiction of the State; educationwas made over to the priesthood; within the Church itself the bishops wereallowed to rule uncontrolled. The very Minister who had taken office underSchwarzenberg as the representative of the modern spirit, to which theGovernment still professed to render homage, became the instrument of anact of submission to the Papacy which marked the lowest point to whichAustrian policy fell. Alexander Bach, a prominent Liberal in Vienna at thebeginning of 1848, had accepted office at the price of his independence, and surrendered himself to the aristocratic and clerical influences thatdominated the Court. Consistent only in his efforts to simplify the formsof government, to promote the ascendency of German over all other elementsin the State, to maintain the improvement in the peasant's conditioneffected by the Parliament of Kremsier, Bach, as Minister of the Interior, made war in all other respects on his own earlier principles. In the formerrepresentative of the Liberalism of the professional classes in Viennaabsolutism had now its most efficient instrument; and the Concordatnegotiated by Bach with the Papacy in 1855 marked the definite submissionof Austria to the ecclesiastical pretensions which in these years ofpolitical languor and discouragement gained increasing recognitionthroughout Central Europe. Ultramontanism had sought allies in manypolitical camps since the revolution of 1848. It had dallied in somecountries with Republicanism; but its truer instincts divined in thevictory of absolutist systems its own surest gain. Accommodations betweenthe Papacy and several of the German Governments were made in the yearssucceeding 1849; and from the centralised despotism of the Emperor FrancisJoseph the Church won concessions which since the time of Maria Theresa ithad 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 ofconcentration in its opening than in its close. In Italy it ends with thefall of Venice; in Germany the interest lingers till the days of Olmütz; inFrance there is no decisive break in the action until the Coup d'Etatwhich, at the end of the year 1851, made Louis Napoleon in all but nameEmperor of France. The six million votes which had raised Louis Napoleon tothe Presidency of the Republic might well have filled with alarm all whohoped for a future of constitutional rule; yet the warning conveyed by theelection seems to have been understood by but few. As the representative oforder and authority, as the declared enemy of Socialism, Louis Napoleon wason the same side as the Parliamentary majority; he had even been supportedin his candidature by Parliamentary leaders such as M. Thiers. His victorywas welcomed as a victory over Socialism and the Red Republic; he hadreceived some patronage from the official party of order, and it wasexpected that, as nominal chief of the State, he would act as theinstrument of this party. He was an adventurer, but an adventurer with solittle that was imposing about him, that it scarcely occurred to men ofinfluence in Paris to credit him with the capacity for mischief. His meanlook and spiritless address, the absurdities of his past, theinsignificance of his political friends, caused him to be regarded duringhis first months of public life with derision rather than with fear. TheFrench, said M. Thiers long afterwards, made two mistakes about LouisNapoleon: the first when they took him for a fool, the second when theytook him for a man of genius. It was not until the appearance of the letterto Colonel Ney, in which the President ostentatiously separated himselffrom his Ministers and emphasised his personal will in the direction of theforeign policy of France, that suspicions of danger to the Republic fromhis ambition arose. From this time, in the narrow circle of the Ministerswhom official duty brought into direct contact with the President, aconstant sense of insecurity and dread of some new surprise on his partprevailed, though the accord which had been broken by the letter to ColonelNey was for a while outwardly re-established, and the forms ofParliamentary government remained unimpaired. [Message of Oct. 31, 1849. ]The first year of Louis Napoleon's term of office was drawing to a closewhen a message from him was delivered to the Assembly which seemed toannounce an immediate attack upon the Constitution. The Ministry in officewas composed of men of high Parliamentary position; it enjoyed the entireconfidence of a great majority in the Assembly, and had enforced with atleast sufficient energy the measures of public security which the Presidentand the country seemed agreed in demanding. Suddenly, on the 31st ofOctober, the President announced to the Assembly by a message carried byone of his aides-de-camp that the Ministry were dismissed. The reasonassigned for their dismissal was the want of unity within the Cabinetitself; but the language used by the President announced much more than aministerial 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 onthat day was the victory of a system, for the name of Napoleon is in itselfa programme. It signifies order, authority, religion, national prosperitywithin; national dignity without. It is this policy, inaugurated by myelection, that I desire to carry to triumph with the support of theAssembly and of the people. " In order to save the Republic from anarchy, tomaintain the prestige of France among other nations, the President declaredthat he needed men of action rather than of words; yet when the list of thenew Ministers appeared, it contained scarcely a single name of weight. Louis Napoleon had called to office persons whose very obscurity had markedthem as his own instruments, and guaranteed to him the ascendency which hehad not hitherto possessed within the Cabinet. Satisfied with having giventhis proof of his power, he resumed the appearance of respect, if not ofcordiality, towards the Assembly. He had learnt to beware of precipitateaction; above two years of office were still before him; and he had nowdone enough to make it clear to all who were disposed to seek theirfortunes in a new political cause that their services on his behalf wouldbe welcomed, and any excess of zeal more than pardoned. From this timethere grew up a party which had for its watchword the exaltation of LouisNapoleon 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 actsand their utterances no one was responsible but themselves. They weredisavowed without compunction when their hardihood went too far; but theirventures brought them no peril, and the generosity of the President was notwanting 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; andmeasures of repression formed the common ground upon which Louis Napoleonand the Assembly met without fear of conflict. Certain elections which wereheld in the spring of 1850, and which gave a striking victory in Paris andelsewhere to Socialist or Ultra-Democratic candidates, revived the alarmsof the owners of property, and inspired the fear that with universalsuffrage the Legislature itself might ultimately fall into the hands of theRed Republicans. The principle of universal suffrage had been proclaimedalmost by accident in the midst of the revolution of 1848. It had beenembodied in the Constitution of that year because it was found already inexistence. No party had seriously considered the conditions under which itwas to be exercised, or had weighed the political qualifications of themass to whom it was so lightly thrown. When election after electionreturned to the Chamber men whose principles were held to menace societyitself, the cry arose that France must be saved from the hands of the vilemultitude; and the President called upon a Committee of the Assembly toframe the necessary measures of electoral reform. Within a week the work ofthe Committee was completed, and the law which it had drafted was broughtbefore the Assembly. It was proposed that, instead of a residence of sixmonths, a continuous residence of three years in the same commune should berequired of every voter, and that the fulfilment of this condition shouldbe proved, not by ordinary evidence, but by one of certain specified acts, such as the payment of personal taxes. With modifications of littleimportance the Bill was passed by the Assembly. Whether its real effect wasforeseen even by those who desired the greatest possible limitation of thefranchise is doubtful; it is certain that many who supported it believed, in their ignorance of the practical working of electoral laws, that theywere excluding from the franchise only the vagabond and worthless classwhich has no real place within the body politic. When the electoral listsdrawn up in pursuance of the measure appeared, they astounded all partiesalike. Three out of the ten millions of voters in France weredisfranchised. Not only the inhabitants of whole quarters in the greatcities but the poorer classes among the peasantry throughout France haddisappeared from the electoral body. The Assembly had at one blow convertedinto enemies the entire mass of the population that lived by the wages ofbodily labour. It had committed an act of political suicide, and had givento a man so little troubled with scruples of honour as Louis Napoleon thefatal opportunity of appealing to France as the champion of nationalsovereignty and the vindicator of universal suffrage against an Assemblywhich 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 atfour years, and it was enacted that the President should not be re-eligibleto his dignity. By the operation of certain laws imperfectly adjusted toone another, the tenure of office by Louis Napoleon expired on the 8th ofMay, 1852, while the date for the dissolution of the Assembly fell within afew weeks of this day. France was therefore threatened with the dangersattending the almost simultaneous extinction of all authority. The perilsof 1852 loomed only too visibly before the country, and Louis Napoleonaddressed willing hearers when, in the summer of 1850, he began to hint atthe necessity of a prolongation of his own power. The Parliamentary recesswas employed by the President in two journeys through the Departments; thefirst through those of the south-east, where Socialism was most active, andwhere his appearance served at once to prove his own confidence and toinvigorate the friends of authority; the second through Normandy, where theprevailing feeling was strongly in favour of firm government, andutterances could safely be made by the President which would have broughthim into some risk at Paris. In suggesting that France required his owncontinued presence at the head of the State Louis Napoleon was notnecessarily suggesting a violation of the law. It was provided by theStatutes of 1848 that the Assembly by a vote of three-fourths might order arevision of the Constitution; and in favour of this revision petitions werealready being drawn up throughout the country. Were the clause forbiddingthe re-election of the President removed from the Constitution, LouisNapoleon might fairly believe that an immense majority of the French peoplewould re-invest him with power. He would probably have been content with alegal re-election had this been rendered possible; but the Assembly showedlittle sign of a desire to smooth his way, and it therefore becamenecessary for him to seek the means of realising his aims in violation ofthe law. He had persuaded himself that his mission, his destiny, was torule France; in other words, he had made up his mind to run such risks andto sanction such crimes as might be necessary to win him sovereign power. With the loftier impulses of ambition, motives of a meaner kind stimulatedhim to acts of energy. Never wealthy, the father of a family thoughunmarried, he had exhausted his means, and would have returned to privatelife a destitute man, if not laden with debt. When his own resolutionflagged, there were those about him too deeply interested in his fortunesto 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 resortto make himself master of France, and the army had therefore to be won overto his personal cause. The generals who had gained distinction either inthe Algerian wars or in the suppression of insurrection in France werewithout exception Orleanists or Republicans. Not a single officer ofeminence was as yet included in the Bonapartist band. The President himselfhad never seen service except in a Swiss camp of exercise; beyond his namehe possessed nothing that could possibly touch the imagination of asoldier. The heroic element not being discoverable in his person or hiscareer, it remained to work by more material methods. Louis Napoleon hadlearnt many things in England, and had perhaps observed in the Englishelections of that period how much may be effected by the simple means ofmoney-bribes and strong drink. The saviour of society was not ashamed toorder the garrison of Paris double rations of brandy and to distributeinnumerable doles of half a franc or less. Military banquets were given, inwhich the sergeant and the corporal sat side by side with the higherofficers. Promotion was skilfully offered or withheld. As the generals ofthe highest position were hostile to Bonaparte, it was the easier to tempttheir subordinates with the prospect of their places. In the acclamationswhich greeted the President at the reviews held at Paris in the autumn of1850, in the behaviour both of officers and men in certain regiments, itwas seen how successful had been the emissaries of Bonapartism. TheCommittee which represented the absent Chamber in vain called the Ministerof War to account for these irregularities. It was in vain thatChangarnier, who, as commander both of the National Guard of Paris and ofthe first military division, seemed to hold the arbitrament betweenPresident and Assembly in his hands, openly declared at the beginning of1851 in favour of the Constitution. He was dismissed from his post; andalthough a vote of censure which followed this dismissal led to theresignation of the Ministry, the Assembly was unable to reinstateChangarnier in his command, and helplessly witnessed the authority which hehad 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 theConstitution which was so clearly threatened, and that was by subjectingthe Constitution itself to revision in order that Louis Napoleon mightlegally seek re-election at the end of his Presidency. An overwhelmingcurrent of public opinion pressed indeed in the direction of such a change. However gross and undisguised the initiative of the local functionaries inpreparing the petitions which showered upon the Assembly, the nationalcharacter of the demand could not be doubted. There was no other candidatewhose name carried with it any genuine popularity or prestige, or aroundwhom even the Parliamentary sections at enmity with the President couldrally. The Assembly was divided not very unevenly between Legitimists, Orleanists, and Republicans. Had indeed the two monarchical groups beenable to act in accord, they might have had some hope of re-establishing thethrone; and an attempt had already been made to effect a union, on theunderstanding that the childless Comté de Chambord should recognise thegrandson of Louis Philippe as his heir, the House of Orleans renouncing itsclaims during the lifetime of the chief of the elder line. These plans hadbeen frustrated by the refusal of the Comté de Chambord to sanction anyappeal to the popular vote, and the restoration of the monarchy wastherefore hopeless for the present. It remained for the Assembly to decidewhether it would facilitate Louis Napoleon's re-election as President by arevision of the Constitution or brave the risk of his violent usurpation ofpower. The position was a sad and even humiliating one for those who, whilethey could not disguise their real feeling towards the Prince, yet knewthemselves unable to count on the support of the nation if they shouldresist him. The Legitimists, more sanguine in temper, kept in view anultimate restoration of the monarchy, and lent themselves gladly to anypolicy which might weaken the constitutional safeguards of the Republic. The Republican minority alone determined to resist any proposal forrevision, and to stake everything upon the maintenance of the constitutionin its existing form. Weak as the Republicans were as compared with theother groups in the Assembly when united against them, they were yet strongenough to prevent the Ministry from securing that majority of three-fourthswithout which the revision of the Constitution could not be undertaken. Four hundred and fifty votes were given in favour of revision, two hundredand seventy against it (July 19th). The proposal therefore fell to theground, and Louis Napoleon, who could already charge the Assembly withhaving by its majority destroyed universal suffrage, could now charge itwith 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 thecircumstances of the _coup d'état_ which was to rid him of his adversariesand to make him master of France. [Preparations for the _coup d'état_. ]Louis Napoleon had few intimate confidants; the chief among these were hishalf-brother Morny, one of the illegitimate offspring of Queen Hortense, aman of fashion and speculator in the stocks; Fialin or Persigny, a personof humble origin who had proved himself a devoted follower of the Princethrough good and evil; and Fleury, an officer at this time on a mission inAlgiers. These were not men out of whom Louis Napoleon could form anadministration, but they were useful to him in discovering and winning oversoldiers and officials of sufficient standing to give to the execution ofthe conspiracy something of the appearance of an act of Government. Ageneral was needed at the War Office who would go all lengths inillegality. Such a man had already been found in St. Arnaud, commander of abrigade in Algiers, a brilliant soldier who had redeemed a disreputablepast by years of hard service, and who was known to be ready to treat hisFrench fellow-citizens exactly as he would treat the Arabs. As St. Arnaud'sname was not yet familiar in Paris, a campaign was arranged in the summerof 1851 for the purpose of winning him distinction. At the cost of somehundreds of lives St. Arnaud was pushed into sufficient fame; and afterreceiving congratulations proportioned to his exploits from the President'sown hand, he was summoned to Paris, in order at the right moment to be madeMinister of War. A troop of younger officers, many of whom gained alamentable celebrity as the generals of 1870, were gradually brought overfrom Algiers and placed round the Minister in the capital. The command ofthe army of Paris was given to General Magnan, who, though he preferred notto share in the deliberations on the _coup d'état_, had promised hiscooperation when the moment should arrive. The support, or at least theacquiescence, of the army seemed thus to be assured. The National Guard, which, under Changarnier, would probably have rallied in defence of theAssembly, 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 themost authentic information that exists on the _coup d'état_, had, while in an inferior station, made it his business to ingratiate himselfwith the President by sending to him personally police reports which oughtto have been sent to the Ministers. The objects and the character of M. Maupas were soon enough understood by Louis Napoleon. He promoted him tohigh 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 andwell-grounded confidence that, whatever the most perfidious ingenuity couldcontrive in turning the guardians of the law against the law itself, thatM. 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 inSeptember that a majority of the conspirators had then urged Louis Napoleonto strike the blow without delay, while the members of the Assembly werestill dispersed over France in the vacation. St. Arnaud, however, refusedhis assent, declaring that the deputies, if left free, would assemble at adistance from Paris, summon to them the generals loyal to the Constitution, and commence a civil war. He urged that, in order to avoid greatersubsequent risks, it would be necessary to seize all the leadingrepresentatives and generals from whom resistance might be expected, and tohold them under durance until the crisis should be over. This simultaneousarrest of all the foremost public men in France could only be effected at atime when the Assembly was sitting. St. Arnaud therefore demanded that the_coup d'état_ should be postponed till the winter. Another reason madefor delay. Little as the populace of Paris loved the reactionary Assembly, Louis Napoleon was not altogether assured that it would quietly witness hisown usurpation of power. In waiting until the Chamber should again be insession, he saw the opportunity of exhibiting his cause as that of themasses themselves, and of justifying his action as the sole means ofenforcing popular rights against a legislature obstinately bent on denyingthem. Louis Napoleon's own Ministers had overthrown universal suffrage. This might indeed be matter for comment on the part of the censorious, butit was not a circumstance to stand in the way of the execution of a greatdesign. Accordingly Louis Napoleon determined to demand from the Assemblyat the opening of the winter session the repeal of the electoral law of May31st, and to make its refusal, on which he could confidently reckon, theoccasion 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. AMinistry still subsisted which was not initiated in the President's designsnor altogether at his command. On his requiring that the repeal of the lawof May 31st should be proposed to the Assembly, the Cabinet resigned. Theway to the highest functions of State was thus finally opened for theagents of the _coup d'état_. St. Arnaud was placed at the War Office, Maupas at the Préfecture of Police. The colleagues assigned to them weretoo insignificant to exercise any control over their actions. At thereopening of the Assembly on the 4th of November an energetic message fromthe President was read. On the one hand he denounced a vast and perilouscombination of all the most dangerous elements of society which threatenedto overwhelm France in the following year; on the other hand he demanded, with certain undefined safeguards, the re-establishment of universalsuffrage. The middle classes were scared with the prospect of a Socialistrevolution; the Assembly was divided against itself, and the democracy ofParis flattered by the homage paid to the popular vote. With very littledelay a measure repealing the Law of May 31st was introduced into theAssembly. It was supported by the Republicans and by many members of theother groups; but the majority of the Assembly, while anxious to devisesome compromise, refused to condemn its own work in the unqualified form onwhich the President insisted. The Bill was thrown out by seven votes. Forthwith the rumour of an impending _coup d'etat_ spread throughParis. The Questors, or members charged with the safeguarding of theAssembly, moved the resolutions necessary to enable them to securesufficient military aid. Even now prompt action might perhaps have savedthe Chamber. But the Republican deputies, incensed by their defeat on thequestion of universal suffrage, plunged headlong into the snare set forthem by the President, and combined with his open or secret partisans toreject the proposition of the Questors. Changarnier had blindly vouched forthe fidelity of the army; one Republican deputy, more imaginative than hiscolleagues, bade the Assembly confide in their invisible sentinel, thepeople. Thus the majority of the Chamber, with the clearest warning ofdanger, insisted on giving the aggressor every possible advantage. If theimbecility 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 ofDecember 2nd. On the previous evening Louis Napoleon held a publicreception at the Elysée, his quiet self-possessed manner indicating nothingof the struggle at hand. Before the guests dispersed the President withdrewto his study. There the last council of the conspirators was held, and theyparted, each to the execution of the work assigned to him. The centralelement in the plan was the arrest of Cavaignac, of Changarnier and threeother generals who were members of the Assembly, of eleven civiliandeputies including M. Thiers, and of sixty-two other politicians ofinfluence. Maupas summoned to the Prefecture of Police in the dead of nighta sufficient number of his trusted agents, received each of them on hisarrival in a separate room, and charged each with the arrest of one of thevictims. The arrests were accomplished before dawn, and the leadingsoldiers and citizens of France met one another in the prison of Mazas. ThePalais Bourbon, the meeting-place of the Assembly, was occupied by troops. The national printing establishment was seized by gendarmes, and theproclamations of Louis Napoleon, distributed sentence by sentence todifferent compositors, were set in type before the workmen knew upon whatthey were engaged. When day broke the Parisians found the soldiers in thestreets, and the walls placarded with manifestoes of Louis Napoleon. Thefirst of these was a decree which announced in the name of the Frenchpeople that the National Assembly and the Council of State were dissolved, that universal suffrage was restored, and that the nation was convoked inits electoral colleges from the 14th to the 21st of December. The secondwas a proclamation to the people, in which Louis Napoleon denounced at oncethe monarchical conspirators within the Assembly and the anarchists whosought to overthrow all government. His duty called upon him to save theRepublic by an appeal to the nation. He proposed the establishment of adecennial executive authority, with a Senate, a Council of State, aLegislative Body, and other institutions borrowed from the Consulate of1799. If the nation refused him a majority of its votes he would summon anew Assembly and resign his powers; if the nation believed in the cause ofwhich his name was the symbol, in France regenerated by the Revolution andorganised by the Emperor, it would prove this by ratifying his authority. Athird proclamation was addressed to the army. In 1830 and in 1848 the armyhad been treated as the conquered, but its voice was now to be heard. Common glories and sorrows united the soldiers of France with Napoleon'sheir, and the future would unite them in common devotion to the repose andgreatness of their country. [Paris on Dec. 2. ]The full meaning of these manifestoes was not at first understood by thegroups who read them. The Assembly was so unpopular that the announcementof its dissolution, with the restoration of universal suffrage, pleasedrather than alarmed the democratic quarters of Paris. It was not until somehours had passed that the arrests became generally known, and that thefirst symptoms of resistance appeared. Groups of deputies assembled at thehouses of the Parliamentary leaders; a body of fifty even succeeded inentering the Palais Bourbon and in commencing a debate: they were, however, soon dispersed by soldiers. Later in the day above two hundred membersassembled at the Mairie of the Tenth Arrondissement. There they passedresolutions declaring the President removed from his office, and appointinga commander of the troops at Paris. The first officers who were sent toclear the Mairie flinched in the execution of their work, and withdrew forfurther orders. The Magistrates of the High Court, whose duty it was toorder the impeachment of the President in case of the violation of his oathto the Constitution, assembled, and commenced the necessary proceedings;but before they could sign a warrant, soldiers forced their way into thehall and drove the judges from the Bench. In due course General Foreyappeared with a strong body of troops at the Mairie, where the two hundreddeputies were assembled. Refusing to disperse, they were one and allarrested, and conducted as prisoners between files of troops to theBarracks of the Quai d'Orsay. The National Guard, whose drums had beenremoved by their commander in view of any spontaneous movement to arms, remained invisible. Louis Napoleon rode out amidst the acclamations of thesoldiery; and when the day closed it seemed as if Paris had resolved toaccept the change of Government and the overthrow of the Constitutionwithout 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 NationalRepresentation gradually roused a spirit of resistance. On the morning ofDecember 3rd the Deputy Baudin met with his death in attempting to defend abarricade which had been erected in the Faubourg St. Antoine. The artisansof eastern Paris showed, however, little inclination to take up arms onbehalf of those who had crushed them in the Four Days of June; theagitation was strongest within the Boulevards, and spread westwards towardsthe stateliest district of Paris. The barricades erected on the south ofthe Boulevards were so numerous, the crowds so formidable, that towards theclose of the day the troops were withdrawn, and it was determined thatafter a night of quiet they should make a general attack and end thestruggle at one blow. At midday on December 4th divisions of the armyconverged from all directions upon the insurgent quarter. The barricadeswere captured or levelled by artillery, and with a loss on the part of thetroops of twenty-eight killed, and a hundred and eighty wounded resistancewas overcome. But the soldiers had been taught to regard the inhabitants ofParis as their enemies, and they bettered the instructions given them. Maddened by drink or panic, they commenced indiscriminate firing in theBoulevards after the conflict was over, and slaughtered all who either inthe street or at the windows of the houses came within range of theirbullets. According to official admissions, the lives of sixteen civilianspaid for every soldier slain; independent estimates place far higher thenumber of the victims of this massacre. Two thousand arrests followed, andevery Frenchman who appeared dangerous to Louis Napoleon's myrmidons, fromThiers and Victor Hugo down to the anarchist orators of the wineshops, waseither transported, exiled, or lodged in prison. Thus was the Republicpreserved 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 characterthat Louis Napoleon drew from them the utmost profit. A certain fierce, blind Socialism had spread among the poorest of the rural classes in thecentre and south of France. In these departments there were isolatedrisings, accompanied by acts of such murderous outrage and folly that ageneral terror seized the surrounding districts. In the course of a fewdays the predatory bands were dispersed, and an unsparing chastisementinflicted on all who were concerned in their misdeeds; but the reports sentto Paris were too serviceable to Louis Napoleon to be left in obscurity;and these brutish village-outbreaks, which collapsed at the firstappearance of a handful of soldiers, were represented as the prelude to avast Socialist revolution from which the _coup d'etat_, and that alone, hadsaved France. Terrified by the re-appearance of the Red Spectre, the Frenchnation proceeded on the 20th of December to pass its judgment on theaccomplished usurpation. The question submitted for the _plebiscite_ was, whether the people desired the maintenance of Louis Napoleon's authorityand committed to him the necessary powers for establishing a Constitutionon the basis laid down in his proclamation of December 2nd. Seven millionvotes answered this question in the affirmative, less than one-tenth ofthat number in the negative. The result was made known on the last day ofthe year 1851. On the first day of the new year Louis Napoleon attended aservice of thanksgiving at Notre Dame, took possession of the Tuileries, and restored the eagle as the military emblem of France. He was now in allbut name an absolute sovereign. The Church, the army, the ever-servile bodyof the civil administration, waited impatiently for the revival of theImperial title. Nor was the saviour of society the man to shrink fromfurther responsibilities. Before the year closed the people was once morecalled upon to express its will. Seven millions of votes pronounced forhereditary 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 HungarianRefugees--Dispute between France and Russia on the Holy Places--Nicholasand the British Ambassador--Lord Stratford de Redcliffe--Menschikoff'sMission--Russian Troops enter the Danubian Principalities--Lord Aberdeen'sCabinet--Movements of the Fleets--The Vienna Note--The Fleets pass theDardanelles--Turkish Squadron destroyed at Sinope--Declaration ofWar--Policy of Austria--Policy of Prussia--The Western Powers and theEuropean Concert--Siege of Silistria--The Principalities evacuated--Furtherobjects of the Western Powers--Invasion of the Crimea--Battle of theAlma--The Flank March--Balaclava--Inkermann--Winter in the Crimea--Death ofNicholas--Conference of Vienna--Austria--Progress of the Siege--Plans ofNapoleon III. --Canrobert and Pélissier--Unsuccessful Assault--Battle of theTchernaya--Capture of the Malakoff--Fall of Sebastopol--Fall ofKars--Negotiations for Peace--The Conference of Paris--Treaty of Paris--The Danubian Principalities--Continued discord in the OttomanEmpire--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 ofmanufacturing industry, by the introduction of railroads, and by thevictory of the principle of Free Trade, had culminated in a spectacle soimpressive and so novel that to many it seemed the emblem and harbinger ofa new epoch in the history of mankind, in which war should cease, and therivalry of nations should at length find its true scope in the advancementof the arts of peace. The apostles of Free Trade had idealised the causefor which they contended. The unhappiness and the crimes of nations had, asthey held, been due principally to the action of governments, which plungedharmless millions into war for dynastic ends, and paralysed human energy bytheir own blind and senseless interference with the natural course ofexchange. Compassion for the poor and the suffering, a just resentmentagainst laws which in the supposed interest of a minority condemned themass of the nation to a life of want, gave moral fervour and elevation tothe teaching of Cobden and those who shared his spirit. Like others whohave been constrained by a noble enthusiasm, they had their visions; and intheir sense of the greatness of that new force which was ready to operateupon human life, they both forgot the incompleteness of their own doctrine, and under-estimated the influences which worked, and long must work, uponmankind in an opposite direction. In perfect sincerity the leader ofEnglish economical reform at the middle of this century looked forward to areign of peace as the result of unfettered intercourse between the membersof the European family. What the man of genius and conviction hadproclaimed the charlatan repeated in his turn. Louis Napoleon appreciatedthe charm which schemes of commercial development exercised upon thetrading classes in France. He was ready to salute the Imperial eagles asobjects of worship and to invoke the memories of Napoleon's glory whenaddressing soldiers; when it concerned him to satisfy the commercial world, he was the very embodiment of peace and of peaceful industry. "Certainpersons, " he said, in an address at Bordeaux, shortly before assuming thetitle of Emperor, "say that the Empire is war. I say that the Empire ispeace; for France desires peace, and when France is satisfied the world istranquil. We have waste territories to cultivate, roads to open, harboursto dig, a system of railroads to complete; we have to bring all our greatwestern ports into connection with the American continent by a rapidity ofcommunication which we still want. We have ruins to restore, false gods tooverthrow, truths to make triumphant. This is the sense that I attach tothe Empire; these are the conquests which I contemplate. " Never had theideal of industrious peace been more impressively set before mankind thanin the years which succeeded the convulsion of 1848. Yet the epoch on whichEurope 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 Powerswhich was not engaged in an armed struggle with its rivals. Nor were thewars of this period in any sense the result of accident, or disconnectedwith the stream of political tendencies which makes the history of the age. With one exception they left in their train great changes for which thetime was ripe, changes which for more than a generation had been therecognised objects of national desire, but which persuasion and revolutionhad equally failed to bring into effect. The Crimean War alone was barrenin positive results of a lasting nature, and may seem only to havepostponed, at enormous cost of life, the fall of a doomed and outwornPower. But the time has not yet arrived when the real bearing of theoverthrow of Russia in 1854 on the destiny of the Christian races of Turkeycan be confidently expressed. The victory of the Sultan's protectorsdelayed the emancipation of these races for twenty years; the victory, orthe unchecked aggression, of Russia in 1854 might possibly have closed tothem for ever the ways to national independence. [Russian policy under Nicholas. ]The plans formed by the Empress Catherine in the last century for therestoration of the Greek Empire under a prince of the Russian House hadlong been abandoned at St. Petersburg. The later aim of Russian policyfound its clearest expression in the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, extortedfrom Sultan Mahmud in 1833 in the course of the first war against MehemetAli. This Treaty, if it had not been set aside by the Western Powers, wouldhave made the Ottoman Empire a vassal State under the Czar's protection. Inthe concert of Europe which was called into being by the second war ofMehemet Ali against the Sultan in 1840, Nicholas had considered it hisinterest to act with England and the German Powers in defence of the Porteagainst its Egyptian rival and his French ally. A policy of moderation hadbeen imposed upon Russia by the increased watchfulness and activity nowdisplayed by the other European States in all that related to the OttomanEmpire. Isolated aggression had become impracticable; it was necessary forRussia to seek the countenance or support of some ally before venturing onthe 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 soundthe Court and Government, and to lay the foundation for concerted actionbetween Russia and England, to the exclusion of France, when circumstancesshould bring about the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, an event whichthe Czar believed to be not far off. Peel was then Prime Minister; LordAberdeen was Foreign Secretary. Aberdeen had begun his political career ina diplomatic mission to the Allied Armies in 1814. His feelings towardsRussia were those of a loyal friend towards an old ally; and theremembrance of the epoch of 1814, when the young Nicholas had madeacquaintance with Lord Aberdeen in France, appears to have given to theCzar a peculiar sense of confidence in the goodwill of the English Ministertowards himself. Nicholas spoke freely with Aberdeen, as well as with Peeland Wellington, on the impending fall of the Ottoman Empire. "We have, " hesaid, "a sick, a dying man on our hands. We must keep him alive so long asit is possible to do so, but we must frankly take into view allcontingencies. I wish for no inch of Turkish soil myself, but neither willI permit any other Power to seize an inch of it. France, which has designsupon Africa, upon the Mediterranean, and upon the East, is the only Powerto be feared. An understanding between England and Russia will preserve thepeace of Europe. " If the Czar pursued his speculations further into detail, of which there is no evidence, he elicited no response. He was heard withcaution, and his visit appears to have produced nothing more than theformal expression of a desire on the part of the British Government thatthe existing treaty-rights of Russia should be respected by the Porte, together with an unmeaning promise that, if unexpected events should occurin Turkey, Russia and England should enter into counsel as to the bestcourse 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 atmost times powerfully influenced him, did not avail himself of theprostration of the Continental Powers in 1848 to attack Turkey. He detestedrevolution, as a crime against the divinely ordered subjection of nationsto their rulers, and would probably have felt himself degraded had he, inthe spirit of his predecessor Catherine, turned the calamities of hisbrother-monarchs to his own separate advantage. It accorded better with hisproud nature, possibly also with the schemes of a far-reaching policy, forRussia to enter the field as the protector of the Hapsburgs against therebel Hungarians than for its armies to snatch from the Porte what thelapse of time and the goodwill of European allies would probably give toRussia at no distant date without a struggle. Disturbances at Bucharest andat Jassy led indeed to a Russian intervention in the DanubianPrincipalities in the interests of a despotic system of government; butRussia possessed by treaty protectorial rights over these Provinces. Themilitary occupation which followed the revolt against the Hospodars was thesubject of a convention between Turkey and Russia; it was effected by thearmies of the two Powers jointly; and at the expiration of two years theRussian forces were peacefully withdrawn. More serious were thedifficulties which arose from the flight of Kossuth and other Hungarianleaders into Turkey after the subjugation of Hungary by the allied Austrianand Russian armies. The Courts of Vienna and St. Petersburg united indemanding from the Porte the surrender of these refugees; the Sultanrefused to deliver them up, and he was energetically supported by GreatBritain, Kossuth's children on their arrival at Constantinople beingreceived and cared for at the British Embassy. The tyrannous demand of thetwo Emperors, the courageous resistance of the Sultan, excited the utmostinterest in Western Europe. By a strange turn of fortune, the Power whichat the end of the last century had demanded from the Court of Vienna theGreek leader Rhegas, and had put him to death as soon as he was handed overby the Austrian police, was now gaining the admiration of all free nationsas the last barrier that sheltered the champions of European liberty fromthe vengeance of despotic might. The Czar and the Emperor of Austria hadnot reckoned with the forces of public indignation aroused against them inthe West by their attempt to wrest their enemies from the Sultan's hand. They withdrew their ambassadors from Constantinople and threatened toresort to force. But the appearance of the British and French fleets at theDardanelles gave a new aspect to the dispute. The Emperors learnt that ifthey made war upon Turkey for the question at issue they would have tofight also against the Western Powers. The demand for the surrender of therefugees was withdrawn; and in undertaking to keep the principal of themunder surveillance for a reasonable period, the Sultan gave to the twoImperial 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 waswitnessed by the Czar with sympathy and admiration as a service to thecause of order; but the assumption of the Imperial title by the Princedispleased him exceedingly. While not refusing to recognise Napoleon III. , he declined to address him by the term (_mon frère_) usually employedby monarchs in writing to one another. In addition to the question relatingto the Hungarian refugees, a dispute concerning the Holy Places inPalestine threatened to cause strife between France and Russia. The samewave of religious and theological interest which in England produced theTractarian movement brought into the arena of political life in France anenthusiasm for the Church long strange to the Legislature and the governingcircles of Paris. In the Assembly of 1849 Montalembert, the spokesman ofthis militant Catholicism, was one of the foremost figures. Louis Napoleon, as President, sought the favour of those whom Montalembert led; and thesame Government which restored the Pope to Rome demanded from the Porte astricter enforcement of the rights of the Latin Church in the East. Theearliest Christian legends had been localised in various spots aroundJerusalem. These had been in the ages of faith the goal of countlesspilgrimages, and in more recent centuries they had formed the object oftreaties between the Porte and France. Greek monks, however, disputedwith Latin monks for the guardianship of the Holy Places; and as thepower of Russia grew, the privileges of the Greek monks had increased. The claims of the rival brotherhoods, which related to doors, keys, starsand lamps, might probably have been settled to the satisfaction of allparties within a few hours by an experienced stage-manager; in the handsof diplomatists bent on obtaining triumphs over one another they assumeddimensions that overshadowed the peace of Europe. The French and theRussian Ministers at Constantinople alternately tormented the Sultan inthe character of aggrieved sacristans, until, at the beginning of 1852, the Porte compromised itself with both parties by adjudging to eachrights which it professed also to secure to the other. A year more, spentin prevarications, in excuses, and in menaces, ended with the triumph ofthe French, with the evasion of the promises made by the Sultan toRussia, and with the discomfiture of the Greek Church in the person ofthe monks who officiated at the Holy Sepulchre and the Shrine of theNativity. [457][Nicholas and Sir H. Seymour, Jan. , Feb. , 1853. ]Nicholas treated the conduct of the Porte as an outrage upon himself. Aconflict which had broken out between the Sultan and the Montenegrins, andwhich now threatened to take a deadly form, confirmed the Czar in hisbelief that the time for resolute action had arrived. At the beginning ofthe year 1853 he addressed himself to Hamilton Seymour, British ambassadorat St. Petersburg, in terms much stronger and clearer than those which hehad used towards Lord Aberdeen nine years before. "The Sick Man, " he said, "was in extremities; the time had come for a clear understanding betweenEngland and Russia. The occupation of Constantinople by Russian troopsmight be necessary, but the Czar would not hold it permanently. He wouldnot permit any other Power to establish itself at the Bosphorus, neitherwould he permit the Ottoman Empire to be broken up into Republics to afforda refuge to the Mazzinis and the Kossuths of Europe. The DanubianPrincipalities were already independent States under Russian protection. The other possessions of the Sultan north of the Balkans might be placed onthe same footing. England might annex Egypt and Crete. " After making thiscommunication to the British ambassador, and receiving the reply thatEngland declined to enter into any schemes based on the fall of the TurkishEmpire and disclaimed all desire for the annexation of any part of theSultan's dominions, Nicholas despatched Prince Menschikoff toConstantinople, to demand from the Porte not only an immediate settlementof the questions relating to the Holy Places, but a Treaty guaranteeing tothe Greek Church the undisturbed enjoyment of all its ancient rights andthe benefit of all privileges that might be accorded by the Porte to anyother Christian communities. [458][The Claims of Russia. ]The Treaty which Menschikoff was instructed to demand would have placed theSultan and the Czar in the position of contracting parties with regard tothe entire body of rights and privileges enjoyed by the Sultan's subjectsof the Greek confession, and would so have made the violation of theserights in the case of any individual Christian a matter entitling Russia tointerfere, or to claim satisfaction as for the breach of a Treatyengagement. By the Treaty of Kainardjie (1774) the Sultan had indeed boundhimself "to protect the Christian religion and its Churches"; but thisphrase was too indistinct to create specific matter of Treaty-obligation;and if it had given to Russia any general right of interference on behalfof members of the Greek Church, it would have given it the same right inbehalf of all the Roman Catholics and all the Protestants in the Sultan'sdominions, a right which the Czars had never professed to enjoy. Moreover, the Treaty of Kainardjie itself forbade by implication any suchconstruction, for it mentioned by name one ecclesiastical building forwhose priests the Porte did concede to Russia the right of addressingrepresentations to the Sultan. Over the Danubian Principalities Russiapossessed by the Treaty of Adrianople undoubted protectorial rights; butthese Provinces stood on a footing quite different from that of theremainder of the Empire. That the Greek Church possessed by custom and byenactment privileges which it was the duty of the Sultan to respect, no onecontested: the novelty of Menschikoff's claim was that the observation ofthese rights should be made matter of Treaty with Russia. The importance ofthe demand was proved by the fact that Menschikoff strictly forbade theTurkish Ministers to reveal it to the other Powers, and that Nicholascaused the English Government to be informed that the mission of his envoyhad no other object than the final adjustment of the difficultiesrespecting 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 thehands of a subordinate officer. The Ambassador, Sir Stratford Canning, hadrecently returned to England. Stratford Canning, a cousin of the Premier, had been employed in the East at intervals since 1810. There had been aperiod in his career when he had desired to see the Turk expelled fromEurope as an incurable barbarian; but the reforms of Sultan Mahmud had at alater time excited his warm interest and sympathy, and as Ambassador atConstantinople from 1842 to 1852 he had laboured strenuously for theregeneration of the Turkish Empire, and for the improvement of thecondition of the Christian races under the Sultan's rule. His dauntless, sustained energy, his noble presence, the sincerity of his friendshiptowards the Porte, gave him an influence at Constantinople seldom, if ever, exercised by a foreign statesman. There were moments when he seemed to beachieving results of some value; but the task which he had attempted wasone that surpassed human power; and after ten years so spent as to win forhim the fame of the greatest ambassador by whom England has beenrepresented in modern times, he declared that the prospects of Turkishreform were hopeless, and left Constantinople, not intending to return. [460] Before his successor had been appointed, the mission of PrinceMenschikoff, the violence of his behaviour at Constantinople, and a rumourthat he sought far more than his ostensible object, alarmed the BritishGovernment. Canning was asked to resume his post. Returning toConstantinople as Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, he communicated on hisjourney with the Courts of Paris and Vienna, and carried with him authorityto order the Admiral of the fleet at Malta to hold his ships in readinessto sail for the East. He arrived at the Bosphorus on April 5th, learnt atonce the real situation of affairs, and entered into negotiation withMenschikoff. The Russian, a mere child in diplomacy in comparison with hisrival, suffered himself to be persuaded to separate the question of theHoly 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 advancinga new claim. The two being dissociated, Stratford had no difficulty innegotiating a compromise on the Holy Places satisfactory to the Czar'srepresentative; and the demand for the Protectorate over the GreekChristians now stood out unobscured by those grievances of detail withwhich it had been at first interwoven. Stratford encouraged the TurkishGovernment to reject the Russian proposal. Knowing, nevertheless, thatMenschikoff would in the last resort endeavour to intimidate the Sultanpersonally, he withheld from the Ministers, in view of this last peril, thestrongest of all his arguments; and seeking a private audience with theSultan on the 9th of May, he made known to him with great solemnity theauthority which he had received to order the fleet at Malta to be inreadiness to sail. The Sultan placed the natural interpretation on thisstatement, and ordered final rejection of Menschikoff's demand, though theRussian had consented to a modification of its form, and would now haveaccepted a note declaratory of the intentions of the Sultan towards theGreek Church instead of a regular Treaty. On the 21st of May Menschikoffquitted Constantinople; and the Czar, declaring that some guarantee must beheld 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, andspread themselves over Moldavia and Wallachia. (June 22nd. ) [461][English Policy. ]In the ordinary course of affairs the invasion of the territory of oneEmpire by the troops of another is, and can be nothing else than, an act ofwar, necessitating hostilities as a measure of defence on the part of thePower invaded. But the Czar protested that in taking the DanubianPrincipalities in pledge he had no intention of violating the peace; and asyet the common sense of the Turks, as well as the counsels that theyreceived from without, bade them hesitate before issuing a declaration ofwar. Since December, 1852, Lord Aberdeen had been Prime Minister ofEngland, at the head of a Cabinet formed by a coalition between followersof Sir Robert Peel and the Whig leaders Palmerston and Russell. [462] Therewas no man in England more pacific in disposition, or more anxious toremain on terms of honourable friendship with Russia, than Lord Aberdeen. The Czar had justly reckoned on the Premier's own forbearance; but he hadfailed to recognise the strength of those forces which, both within andwithout the Cabinet, set in the direction of armed resistance to Russia. Palmerston was keen for action. Lord Stratford appears to have taken it forgranted from the first that, if a war should arise between the Sultan andthe Czar in consequence of the rejection of Menschikoff's demand, GreatBritain would fight in defence of the Ottoman Empire. He had not statedthis in express terms, but the communication which he made to the Sultanregarding his own instructions could only have been intended to convey thisimpression. If the fleet was not to defend the Sultan, it was a mere pieceof deceit to inform him that the Ambassador had powers to place it inreadiness to sail; and such deceit was as alien to the character of LordStratford as the assumption of a virtual engagement towards the Sultan wasin keeping with his imperious will and his passionate conviction of theduty of England. From the date of Lord Stratford's visit to the Palace, although no Treaty or agreement was in existence, England stood bound inhonour, so long as the Turks should pursue the policy laid down by herenvoy, 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 andintentions of Great Britain would no doubt have been announced with suchdistinctness that the Czar could have fostered no misapprehension as to theresults of his own acts. Palmerston, as Premier, would probably haveadopted the same clear course, and war would either have been avoided bythis nation or have been made with a distinct purpose and on a definiteissue. But the Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen was at variance with itself. Aberdeen was ready to go to all lengths in negotiation, but he was notsufficiently master of his colleagues and of the representatives of Englandabroad to prevent acts and declarations which in themselves brought warnear; above all, he failed to require from Turkey that abstention fromhostilities on which, so long as negotiations lasted, England and the otherPowers which proposed to make the cause of the Porte their own oughtunquestionably to have insisted. On the announcement by the Czar that hisarmy was about to enter the Principalities, the British Governmentdespatched the fleet to Besika Bay near the entrance to the Dardanelles, and authorised Stratford to call it to the Bosphorus, in caseConstantinople should be attacked. [463] The French fleet, which had comeinto Greek waters on Menschikoff's appearance at Constantinople, took upthe same position. Meanwhile European diplomacy was busily engaged inframing schemes of compromise between the Porte and Russia. Therepresentatives of the four Powers met at Vienna, and agreed upon a notewhich, as they considered, would satisfy any legitimate claims of Russia onbehalf of the Greek Church, and at the same time impose upon the Sultan nofurther obligations towards Russia than those which already existed. [464]This note, however, was ill drawn, and would have opened the door to newclaims on the part of Russia to a general Protectorate not sanctioned byits authors. The draft was sent to St. Petersburg, and was accepted by theCzar. At Constantinople its ambiguities were at once recognised; and thoughLord Stratford in his official capacity urged its acceptance under aEuropean guarantee against misconstruction, the Divan, now under thepressure of strong patriotic forces, refused to accept the note unlesscertain changes were made in its expressions. France, England, and Austriaunited in recommending to the Court of St. Petersburg the adoption of theseamendments. The Czar, however, declined to admit them, and a Russiandocument, which obtained a publicity for which it was not intended, provedthat the construction of the note which the amendments were expresslydesigned to exclude was precisely that which Russia meant to place upon it. The British Ministry now refused to recommend the note any longer to thePorte. [465] Austria, while it approved of the amendments, did not considerthat their rejection by the Czar justified England in abandoning the noteas the common award of the European Powers; and thus the concert of Europewas interrupted, England and France combining in a policy which Austria andPrussia were not willing to follow. In proportion as the chances of jointEuropean action diminished, the ardour of the Turks themselves, and ofthose who were to be their allies, rose higher. Tumults, organised by theheads of the war-party, broke out at Constantinople; and although Stratfordscorned the alarms of his French colleagues, who reported that a massacreof the Europeans in the capital was imminent, he thought it necessary tocall up two vessels of war in order to provide for the security of theEnglish residents and of the Sultan himself. In England Palmerston and themen of action in the Cabinet dragged Lord Aberdeen with them. The FrenchGovernment pressed for vigorous measures, and in conformity with its desireinstructions were sent from London to Lord Stratford to call the fleet tothe Bosphorus, and to employ it in defending the territory of the Sultanagainst aggression. On the 22nd of October the British and French fleetspassed 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 weeksresolved upon war; and yet the possibilities of a diplomatic settlementwere not yet exhausted. Stratford himself had forwarded to Vienna the draftof an independent note which the Sultan was prepared to accept. This hadnot yet been seen at St. Petersburg. Other projects of conciliation filledthe desks of all the leading politicians of Europe. Yet, though the beliefgenerally existed that some scheme could be framed by which the Sultan, without sacrifice of his dignity and interest, might induce the Czar toevacuate the Principalities, no serious attempt was made to prevent theTurks from coming into collision with their enemies both by land and sea. The commander of the Russian troops in the Principalities having, on the10th of October, rejected an ultimatum requiring him to withdraw withinfifteen days, this answer was taken as the signal for the commencement ofhostilities. The Czar met the declaration of war with a statement that hewould abstain from taking the offensive, and would continue merely to holdthe Principalities as a material guarantee. Omar Pasha, the Ottomancommander in Bulgaria, was not permitted to observe the same passiveattitude. Crossing the Danube, he attacked and defeated the Russians atOltenitza. Thus assailed, the Czar considered that his engagement not toact on the offensive was at an end, and the Russian fleet, issuing fromSebastopol, attacked and destroyed a Turkish squadron in the harbour ofSinope on the southern coast of the Black Sea (November 30). The action wasa piece of gross folly on the part of the Russian authorities if they stillcherished the hopes of pacification which the Czar professed; but othersalso were at fault. Lord Stratford and the British Admiral, if they couldnot prevent the Turkish ships from remaining in the Euxine, where they wereuseless against the superior force of Russia, might at least in exercise ofthe powers given to them have sent a sufficient escort to prevent anencounter. But the same ill-fortune and incompleteness that had marked allthe diplomacy of the previous months attended the counsels of the Admiralsat the Bosphorus; and the disaster of Sinope rendered war between theWestern 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 theEmperor Nicholas as assuring their squadron at Sinope against attack; andso far was the Ottoman Admiral from being the victim of a surprise that hehad warned his Government some days before of the probability of his owndestruction. But to the English people, indignant with Russia since itsdestruction of Hungarian liberty and its tyrannous demand for the surrenderof the Hungarian refugees, all that now passed heaped up the intolerablesum of autocratic violence and deceit. The cannonade which was continuedagainst the Turkish crews at Sinope long after they had become defencelessgave to the battle the aspect of a massacre; the supposed promise of theCzar to act only on the defensive caused it to be denounced as an act offlagrant treachery; the circumstance that the Turkish fleet was lyingwithin one of the Sultan's harbours, touching as it were the territorywhich the navy of England had undertaken to protect, imparted to the attackthe character of a direct challenge and defiance to England. The cry roseloud for war. Napoleon, eager for the alliance with England, eager inconjunction with England to play a great part before Europe, even at thecost of a war from which France had nothing to gain, proposed that thecombined fleets should pass the Bosphorus and require every Russian vesselsailing on the Black Sea to re-enter port. His proposal was adopted by theBritish Government. Nicholas learnt that the Russian flag was swept fromthe Euxine. It was in vain that a note upon which the representatives ofthe Powers at Vienna had once more agreed was accepted by the Porte andforwarded to St. Petersburg (December 31). The pride of the Czar waswounded beyond endurance, and at the beginning of February he recalled hisambassadors from London and Paris. A letter written to him by NapoleonIII. , demanding in the name of himself and the Queen of England theevacuation of the Principalities, was answered by a reference to thecampaign of Moscow, Austria now informed the Western Powers that if theywould fix a delay for the evacuation of the Principalities, the expirationof which should be the signal for hostilities, it would support thesummons; and without waiting to learn whether Austria would also unite withthem in hostilities in the event of the summons being rejected, the Britishand 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. Theultimatum remained without an answer, and on the 27th of March England andFrance declared war. [Policy of Austria. ]The Czar had at one time believed that in his Eastern schemes he was sureof the support of Austria; and he had strong reasons for supposing himselfentitled to its aid. But his mode of thought was simpler than that of theCourt of Vienna. Schwarzenberg, when it was remarked that the interventionof Russia in Hungary would bind the House of Hapsburg too closely to itsprotector, had made the memorable answer, "We will astonish the world byour ingratitude. " It is possible that an instance of Austrian gratitudewould have astonished the world most of all; but Schwarzenberg's successorswere not the men to sacrifice a sound principle to romance. Two courses ofEastern policy have, under various modifications, had their advocates inrival schools of statesmen at Vienna. The one is that of expansionsouthward in concert with Russia; the other is that of resistance to theextension of Russian power, and the consequent maintenance of the integrityof the Ottoman Empire. During Metternich's long rule, inspired as this wasby a faith in the Treaties and the institutions of 1815, and by the dreadof every living, disturbing force, the second of these systems had beenconsistently followed. In 1854 the determining motive of the Court ofVienna was not a decided political conviction, but the certainty that if itunited with Russia it would be brought into war with the Western Powers. Had Russia and Turkey been likely to remain alone in the arena, anarrangement for territorial compensation would possibly, as on some otheroccasions, have won for the Czar an Austrian alliance. Combination againstTurkey was, however, at the present time, too perilous an enterprise forthe Austrian monarchy; and, as nothing was to be gained through the war, itremained for the Viennese diplomatists to see that nothing was lost and aslittle as possible wasted. The presence of Russian troops in thePrincipalities, where they controlled the Danube in its course between theHungarian frontier and the Black Sea, was, in default of some definiteunderstanding, a danger to Austria; and Count Buol, the Minister at Vienna, had therefore every reason to thank the Western Powers for insisting on theevacuation of this district. When France and England were burning to takeup arms, it would have been a piece of superfluous brutality towards theCzar for Austria to attach to its own demand for the evacuation of thePrincipalities the threat of war. But this evacuation Austria wasdetermined to enforce. It refused, as did Prussia, to give to the Czar theassurance of its neutrality; and, inasmuch as the free navigation of theDanube as far as the Black Sea had now become recognised as one of thecommercial interests of Germany at large, Prussia and the German Federationundertook to protect the territory of Austria, if, in taking the measuresnecessary to free the Principalities, it should itself be attacked byRussia. [467][Prussia. ]The King of Prussia, clouded as his mind was by political and religiousphantasms, had nevertheless at times a larger range of view than hisneighbours; and his opinion as to the true solution of the difficultiesbetween Nicholas and the Porte, at the time of Menschikoff's mission, deserved more attention than it received. Frederick William proposed thatthe rights of the Christian subjects of the Sultan should be placed byTreaty under the guarantee of all the Great Powers. This project wasopposed by Lord Stratford and the Turkish Ministers as an encroachment onthe Sultan's sovereignty, and its rejection led the King to write with someasperity to his ambassador in London that he should seek the welfare ofPrussia in absolute neutrality. [468] At a later period the King demandedfrom England, as the condition of any assistance from himself, a guaranteefor the maintenance of the frontiers of Germany and Prussia. He regardedNapoleon III. As the representative of a revolutionary system, and believedthat under him French armies would soon endeavour to overthrow the order ofEurope established in 1815. That England should enter into a close alliancewith this man excited the King's astonishment and disgust; and unless theCabinet of London were prepared to give a guarantee against any futureattack on Germany by the French Emperor, who was believed to be ready forevery political adventure, it was vain for England to seek Prussia's aid. Lord Aberdeen could give no such guarantee; still less could he gratify theKing's strangely passionate demand for the restoration of his authority inthe Swiss canton of Neuchâtel, which before 1848 had belonged in name tothe Hohenzollerns. Many influences were brought to bear upon the King fromthe side both of England and of Russia. The English Court and Ministers, strenuously supported by Bunsen, the Prussian ambassador, strove to enlistthe King in an active concert of Europe against Russia by dwelling on theduties of Prussia as a Great Power and the dangers arising to it fromisolation. On the other hand, the admiration felt by Frederick William forthe Emperor Nicholas, and the old habitual friendship between Prussia andRussia, gave strength to the Czar's advocates at Berlin. Schemes for areconstruction of Europe, which were devised by Napoleon, and supposed toreceive some countenance from Palmerston, reached the King's ear. [469] Heheard that Austria was to be offered the Danubian Provinces upon conditionof giving up northern Italy; that Piedmont was to receive Lombardy, and inreturn to surrender Savoy to France; that, if Austria should decline tounite actively with the Western Powers, revolutionary movements were to bestirred up in Italy and in Hungary. Such reports kindled the King's rage. "Be under no illusion, " he wrote to his ambassador; "tell the BritishMinisters in their private ear and on the housetops that I will not sufferAustria to be attacked by the revolution without drawing the sword in itsdefence. If England and France let loose revolution as their ally, be itwhere it may, I unite with Russia for life and death. " Bunsen advocated theparticipation of Prussia in the European concert with more earnestness thansuccess. While the King was declaiming against the lawlessness which wassupposed to have spread from the Tuileries to Downing Street, Bunsen, onhis own authority, sent to Berlin a project for the annexation of Russianterritory 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 itroused the King's own indignation. Bitter reproaches were launched againstthe authors of so felonious a scheme. Bunsen could no longer retain hisoffice. Other advocates of the Western alliance were dismissed from theirplaces, 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 verystrange one. All the Four Powers were agreed in demanding the evacuation ofthe Principalities by Russia, and in the resolution to enforce this, ifnecessary, by arms. Protocols witnessing this agreement were signed on the9th of April and the 23rd of May, [470] and it was moreover declared thatthe Four Powers recognised the necessity of maintaining the independenceand the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. But France and England, while theymade the presence of the Russians in the Principalities the avowed cause ofwar, had in reality other intentions than the mere expulsion of theintruder and the restoration of the state of things previously existing. Itwas their desire so to cripple Russia that it should not again be in acondition to menace the Ottoman Empire. This intention made it impossiblefor the British Cabinet to name, as the basis of a European league, thatsingle definite object for which, and for which alone, all the Powers werein May, 1854, ready to unite in arms. England, the nation and theGovernment alike, chose rather to devote itself, in company with France, tothe 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 Courtsmight or might not receive some armed assistance from Austria and Prussiano man could yet predict with confidence. That Austria would to some extentmake common cause with the Allies seemed not unlikely; that Prussia woulddo so there was no real ground to believe; on the contrary, fair warninghad been given that there were contingencies in which Prussia mightultimately be found on the side of the Czar. Striving to the utmost todiscover some principle, some object, or even some formula which mightexpand the purely defensive basis accepted by Austria and Prussia into acommon policy of reconstructive action, the Western Powers could obtainnothing more definite from the Conference at Vienna than the followingshadowy engagement:--"The Four Governments engage to endeavour in common todiscover the guarantees most likely to attach the existence of the OttomanEmpire to the general equilibrium of Europe. They are ready to deliberateas to the employment of means calculated to accomplish the object of theiragreement. " This readiness to deliberate, so cautiously professed, was aquality in which during the two succeeding years the Courts of Vienna andBerlin were not found wanting; but the war in which England and France nowengaged was one which they had undertaken at their own risk, and theydiscovered 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 yearhostilities of an indecisive character continued between the Turks and theRussians on the Danube. At the outbreak of the war Nicholas had consultedthe veteran Paskiewitsch as to the best road by which to march onConstantinople. Paskiewitsch, as a strategist, knew the danger to which aRussian force crossing the Danube would be exposed from the presence ofAustrian armies on its flank; as commander in the invasion of Hungary in1849 he had encountered, as he believed, ill faith and base dealing on thepart of his ally, and had repaid it with insult and scorn; he had learntbetter than any other man the military and the moral weakness of theAustrian Empire in its eastern part. His answer to the Czar's inquirieswas, "The road to Constantinople lies through Vienna. " But whateverbitterness 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 haveavoided the assistance of revolutionary allies; moreover, if the road toConstantinople lay through Vienna, it might be urged that the road toVienna lay through Berlin. The simpler plan was adopted of a march on theBalkans by way of Shumla, to which the capture of Silistria was to be theprelude. At the end of March the Russian vanguard passed the Danube at thelowest point where a crossing could be made, and advanced into theDobrudscha. In May the siege of Silistria was undertaken by Paskiewitschhimself. But the enterprise began too late, and the strength employed bothin the siege and in the field operations farther east was insufficient. TheTurkish garrison, schooled by a German engineer and animated by two youngEnglish officers, maintained a stubborn and effective resistance. Frenchand English troops had already landed at Gallipoli for the defence ofConstantinople, and finding no enemy within range had taken ship for Varnaon the north of the Balkans. Austria, on the 3rd of June, delivered itssummons requiring the evacuation of the Principalities. Almost at the sametime Paskiewitsch received a wound that disabled him, and was forced tosurrender his command into other hands. During the succeeding fortnight thebesiegers of Silistria were repeatedly driven back, and on the 22nd theywere compelled to raise the siege. The Russians, now hard pressed by anenemy whom they had despised, withdrew to the north of the Danube. Theretreating movement was continued during the succeeding weeks, until theevacuation of the Principalities was complete, and the last Russian soldierhad recrossed the Pruth. As the invader retired, Austria sent its troopsinto these provinces, pledging itself by a convention with the Porte toprotect them until peace should be concluded, and then to restore them tothe Sultan. [Further objects of the Western Powers. ]With the liberation of the Principalities the avowed ground of war passedaway; but the Western Powers had no intention of making peace withoutfurther concessions on the part of Russia. As soon as the siege ofSilistria was raised instructions were sent to the commanders of the alliedarmies at Varna, pressing, if not absolutely commanding, them to attackSebastopol, the headquarters of Russian maritime power in the Euxine. Thecapture of Sebastopol had been indicated some months before by NapoleonIII. As the most effective blow that could be dealt to Russia. It was fromSebastopol that the fleet had issued which destroyed the Turks at Sinope:until this arsenal had fallen, the growing naval might which pressed evenmore directly upon Constantinople than the neighbourhood of the Czar'sarmies by land could not be permanently laid low. The objects sought byEngland and France were now gradually brought into sufficient clearness tobe communicated to the other Powers, though the more precise interpretationof the conditions laid down remained open for future discussion. It wasannounced that the Protectorate of Russia over the Danubian Principalitiesand Servia must be abolished; that the navigation of the Danube at itsmouths must be freed from all obstacles; that the Treaty of July, 1841, relating to the Black Sea and the Dardanelles, must be revised in theinterest of the balance of power in Europe; and that the claim to anyofficial Protectorate over Christian subjects of the Porte, of whateverrite, must be abandoned by the Czar. Though these conditions, known as theFour Points, were not approved by Prussia, they were accepted by Austria inAugust, 1854, and were laid before Russia as the basis of any negotiationfor peace. The Czar declared in answer that Russia would only negotiate onsuch a basis when at the last extremity. The Allied Governments, measuringtheir enemy's weakness by his failure before Silistria, were determined toaccept nothing less; and the attack upon Sebastopol, ordered before theevacuation of the Principalities, was consequently allowed to take itscourse. [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 inlandfrom a point not far from the south-western extremity of the Crimea. Onemile from the open sea its waters divide, the larger arm still runningeastwards till it meets the River Tchernaya, the smaller arm, known as theMan-of-War Harbour, bending sharply to the south. On both sides of thissmaller harbour Sebastopol is built. To the seaward, that is from thesmaller harbour westwards, Sebastopol and its approaches were thoroughlyfortified. On its landward, southern, side the town had been open till1853, and it was still but imperfectly protected, most weakly on thesouth-eastern side. On the north of the Great Harbour Fort Constantine atthe head of a line of strong defences guarded the entrance from the sea;while on the high ground immediately opposite Sebastopol and commanding thetown there stood the Star Fort with other military constructions. Thegeneral features of Sebastopol were known to the Allied commanders; theyhad, 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 thelanding should be made in the Bay of Eupatoria, thirty miles north of thefortress. Here, on the 14th of September, the Allied forces, numberingabout thirty thousand French, twenty-seven thousand English, and seventhousand Turks, effected their disembarkation without meeting anyresistance. The Russians, commanded by Prince Menschikoff, lately envoy atConstantinople, had taken post ten miles further south on high groundbehind the River Alma. On the 20th of September they were attacked in frontby 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 theEnglish seemed to be rolled back. But it was renewed with ever increasingvigour, and before the French had made any impression on the Russian leftLord Raglan's troops had driven the enemy from their positions. Struck onthe flank when their front was already broken, outnumbered and badly led, the Russians gave up all for lost. The form of an orderly retreat wasmaintained only long enough to disguise from the conquerors thecompleteness of their victory. When night fell the Russian army abandoneditself to total disorder, and had the pursuit been made at once it couldscarcely have escaped destruction. But St. Arnaud, who was in the laststage of mortal illness, refused, in spite of the appeal of Lord Raglan, topress on his wearied troops. Menschikoff, abandoning the hope of checkingthe advance of the Allies in a second battle, and anxious only to preventthe capture of Sebastopol by an enemy supposed to be following at hisheels, retired into the fortress, and there sank seven of his war-ships asa 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 gunswere dragged from the ships to the bastions and redoubts. Then, when itappeared 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 wasundefended, Menschikoff determined to lead off the bulk of his army intothe interior of the Crimea, in order to keep open his communications withRussia, to await in freedom the arrival of reinforcements, and, ifSebastopol should not at once fall, to attack the Allies at his own timeand 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, theFrench probably less than half that number. On the morning after theengagement Lord Raglan proposed that the two armies should march straightagainst the fortifications lying on the north of the Great Harbour, andcarry these by storm, so winning a position where their guns would commandSebastopol itself. The French, supported by Burgoyne, the chief of theEnglish engineers, shrank from the risk of a front attack on works supposedto be more formidable than they really were, and induced Lord Raglan toconsent to a long circuitous march which would bring the armies right roundSebastopol to its more open southern side, from which, it was thought, anassault might be successfully made. This flank-march, which was one ofextreme risk, was carried out safely, Menschikoff himself having leftSebastopol, and having passed along the same road in his retreat into theinterior a little before the appearance of the Allies. Pushing southward, the English reached the sea at Balaclava, and took possession of theharbour there, accepting the exposed eastward line between the fortress andthe Russia is outside; the French, now commanded by Canrobert, continuedtheir march westwards round the back of Sebastopol, and touched the sea atKasatch Bay. The two armies were thus masters of the broken plateau which, rising westwards from the plain of Balaclava and the valley of theTchernaya, overlooks Sebastopol on its southern side. That the garrison, which now consisted chiefly of sailors, could at this moment have resistedthe onslaught of the fifty thousand troops who had won the battle of theAlma, the Russians themselves did not believe; [472] but once more theFrench staff, with Burgoyne, urged caution, and it was determined to waitfor the siege-guns, which were still at sea. The decision was a fatal one. While the Allies chose positions for their heavy artillery and slowlylanded and placed their guns, Korniloff and Todleben made thefortifications on the southern side of Sebastopol an effective barrierbefore 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 theships proved far more valuable on land. Three weeks of priceless time weregiven to leaders who knew how to turn every moment to account. When, on the17th of October, the bombardment which was to precede the assault onSebastopol began, the French artillery, operating on the south-west, wasoverpowered by that of the defenders. The fleets in vain thundered againstthe 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 shellupon Sebastopol as no fortress had yet withstood, the defences were stillunbroken. [Battle of Balaclava, Oct. 25. ]Menschikoff in the meantime had received the reinforcements which heexpected, and was now ready to fall upon the besiegers from the east. Hispoint of attack was the English port of Balaclava and the fortified roadlying somewhat east of this, which formed the outer line held by theEnglish and their Turkish supports. The plain of Balaclava is divided by alow ridge into a northern and a southern valley. Along this ridge runs thecauseway, which had been protected by redoubts committed to a weak Turkishguard. On the morning of the 25th the Russians appeared in the northernvalley. They occupied the heights rising from it on the north and east, attacked the causeway, captured three of the redoubts, and drove off theTurks, left to meet their onset alone. Lord Raglan, who watched theseoperations from the edge of the western plateau, ordered up infantry from adistance, but the only English troops on the spot were a light and a heavybrigade of cavalry, each numbering about six hundred men. The HeavyBrigade, under General Scarlett, was directed to move towards Balaclavaitself, which was now threatened. While they were on the march, a densecolumn of Russian cavalry, about three thousand strong, appeared above thecrest of the low ridge, ready, as it seemed, to overwhelm the weak troopsbefore them. But in their descent from the ridge the Russians halted, andScarlett with admirable courage and judgment formed his men for attack, andcharged full into the enemy with the handful who were nearest to him. Theycut their way into the very heart of the column; and before the Russianscould crush them with mere weight the other regiments of the same brigadehurled themselves on the right and on the left against the huge inert mass. The Russians broke and retreated in disorder before a quarter of theirnumber, leaving to Scarlett and his men the glory of an action whichranks with the Prussian attack at Mars-la-Tour in 1870 as the mostbrilliant cavalry operation in modern warfare. The squadrons of the LightBrigade, during the peril and the victory of their comrades, stoodmotionless, paralysed by the same defect of temper or intelligence incommand which was soon to devote them to a fruitless but ever-memorableact of self-sacrifice. Russian infantry were carrying off the cannon fromthe conquered redoubts on the causeway, when an aide-de-camp from thegeneral-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, whofrom his position could see neither the enemy nor the guns, believedhimself ordered to attack the Russian artillery at the extremity of thenorthern valley, and he directed the Light Brigade to charge in thisdirection. It was in vain that the leader of the Light Brigade, LordCardigan, warned his chief, in words which were indeed but too weak, thatthere was a battery in front, a battery on each flank, and that theground was covered with Russian riflemen. The order was repeated as thatof 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 waypast the guns and routed the enemy's cavalry behind them, the Englishpeople will never forget. [473][Battle of Inkermann, Nov. 5. ]The day of Balaclava brought to each side something of victory andsomething of failure. The Russians remained masters of the road that theyhad captured, and carried off seven English guns; the English, where theyhad met the enemy, proved that they could defeat overwhelming numbers. Notmany days passed before our infantry were put to the test which the cavalryhad so victoriously undergone. The siege-approaches of the French had beenrapidly advanced, and it was determined that on the 5th of November thelong-deferred assault on Sebastopol should be made. On that very morning, under cover of a thick mist, the English right was assailed by massivecolumns of the enemy. Menschikoff's army had now risen to a hundredthousand men; he had thrown troops into Sebastopol, and had planned thecapture of the English positions by a combined attack from Sebastopolitself, and by troops advancing from the lower valley of the Tchernayaacross the bridge of Inkermann. The battle of the 5th of November, on thepart of the English, was a soldier's battle, without generalship, withoutorder, without design. The men, standing to their ground whatever their ownnumber and whatever that of the foe, fought, after their ammunition wasexhausted, with bayonets, with the butt ends of their muskets, with theirfists and with stones. For hours the ever-surging Russian mass rolled inupon them; but they maintained the unequal struggle until the arrival ofFrench regiments saved them from their deadly peril and the enemy weredriven in confusion from the field. The Russian columns, marching right upto the guns, had been torn in pieces by artillery-fire. Their loss inkilled and wounded was enormous, their defeat one which no ingenuity coulddisguise. Yet the battle of Inkermann had made the capture of Sebastopol, as it had been planned by the Allies, impossible. Their own loss was toogreat, the force which the enemy had displayed was too vast, to leave anyhope that the fortress could be mastered by a sudden assault. The terribletruth soon became plain that the enterprise on which the armies had beensent had in fact failed, and that another enterprise of a quite differentcharacter, a winter siege in the presence of a superior enemy, a campaignfor which no preparations had been made, and for which all that was mostnecessary was wanting, formed the only alternative to an evacuation of theCrimea. [Storm of Nov. 14. ][Winter in the Crimea. ]On the 14th of November the Euxine winter began with a storm which sweptaway the tents on the exposed plateau, and wrecked twenty-one vesselsbearing stores of ammunition and clothing. From this time rain and snowturned the tract between the camp and Balaclava into a morass. The loss ofthe paved road which had been captured by the Russians three weeks beforenow told with fatal effect on the British army. The only communication withthe port of Balaclava was by a hillside track, which soon became impassableby carts. It was necessary to bring up supplies on the backs of horses; butthe horses perished from famine and from excessive labour. The men were toofew, too weak, too destitute of the helpful ways of English sailors, toassist in providing for themselves. Thus penned up on the bleak promontory, cholera-stricken, mocked rather than sustained during their benumbing toilwith rations of uncooked meat and green coffee-berries, the Britishsoldiery wasted away. Their effective force sank at midwinter to eleventhousand men. In the hospitals, which even at Scutari were more deadly tothose who passed within them than the fiercest fire of the enemy, ninethousand men perished before the end of February. The time indeed came whenthe very Spirit of Mercy seemed to enter these abodes of woe, and in thepresence 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 vanquishedroutine the grave had closed over whole regiments of men whom it had noright to claim. The sufferings of other armies have been on a greaterscale, but seldom has any body of troops furnished a heavier tale of lossand death in proportion to its numbers than the British army during thewinter of the Crimean War. The unsparing exposure in the Press of themismanagement under which our soldiers were perishing excited an outburstof indignation which overthrew Lord Aberdeen's Ministry and placedPalmerston in power. It also gave to Europe at large an impression thatGreat Britain no longer knew how to conduct a war, and unduly raised thereputation of the French military administration, whose shortcomings, greatas they were, no French journalist dared to describe. In spite of Alma andInkermann, the military prestige of England was injured, not raised, by theCrimean campaign; nor was it until the suppression of the Indian Mutinythat the true capacity of the nation in war was again vindicated before theworld. [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 havesaid when he heard of Menschikoff's last defeat, "Generals January andFebruary. " 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 thepolicy of Peter the Great, of Catherine, and of Nicholas. But the proudtone was meant rather for the ear of Russia than of Europe, since Nicholashad already expressed his willingness to treat for peace on the basis laiddown by the Western Powers in August, 1854. This change was not producedwholly by the battles of Alma and Inkermann. Prussia, finding itselfisolated in Germany, had after some months of hesitation given a diplomaticsanction to the Four Points approved by Austria as indispensable conditionsof peace. Russia thus stood forsaken, as it seemed, by its only friend, andNicholas could no longer hope to escape with the mere abandonment of thoseclaims which had been the occasion of the war. He consented to treat withhis enemies on their own terms. Austria now approached still more closelyto the Western Powers, and bound itself by treaty, in the event of peacenot being concluded by the end of the year on the stated basis, todeliberate with France and England upon effectual means for obtaining theobject of the Alliance. [475] Preparations were made for a Conference atVienna, from which Prussia, still declining to pledge itself to warlikeaction in case of the failure of the negotiations, was excluded. Thesittings of the Conference began a few days after the accession ofAlexander II. Russia was represented by its ambassador, Prince AlexanderGortschakoff, who, as Minister of later years, was to play so conspicuous apart in undoing the work of the Crimean epoch. On the first two Articlesforming the subject of negotiation, namely the abolition of the RussianProtectorate over Servia and the Principalities, and the removal of allimpediments to the free navigation of the Danube, agreement was reached. On the third Article, the revision of the Treaty of July, 1841, relatingto the Black Sea and the Dardanelles, the Russian envoy and therepresentatives of the Western Powers found themselves completely atvariance. Gortschakoff had admitted that the Treaty of 1841 must be sorevised as to put an end to the preponderance of Russia in the Black Sea;[476] but while the Western Governments insisted upon the exclusion ofRussian war-vessels from these waters, Gortschakoff would consent only tothe abolition of Russia's preponderance by the free admission of thewar-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 thirdArticle could be attained only by the specific means proposed by them, had brought forward a third scheme based partly upon the limitation ofthe Russian navy in the Euxine, partly upon the admission of war-ships ofother nations. This scheme was rejected by the Western Powers, whereuponAustria declared that its obligations under the Treaty of December 2nd, 1854, had now been fulfilled, and that it returned in consequence to theposition of a neutral. Great indignation was felt and was expressed at London and Paris at thisso-called act of desertion, and at the subsequent withdrawal of Austrianregiments from the positions which they had occupied in anticipation ofwar. It was alleged that in the first two conditions of peace Austria hadseen its own special interests effectually secured; and that as soon as theCourt of St. Petersburg had given the necessary assurances on these headsthe Cabinet of Vienna was willing to sacrifice the other objects of theAlliance and to abandon the cause of the Maritime Powers, in order toregain, with whatever loss of honour, the friendship of the Czar. Though itwas answered with perfect truth that Austria had never accepted theprinciple of the exclusion of Russia from the Black Sea, and was stillready to take up arms in defence of that system by which it considered thatRussia's preponderance in the Black Sea might be most suitably prevented, this argument sounded hollow to combatants convinced of the futility of allmethods for holding Russia in check except their own. Austria hadgrievously injured its own position and credit with the Western Powers. Onthe other hand it had wounded Russia too deeply to win from the Czar theforgiveness which it expected. Its policy of balance, whether bestdescribed as too subtle or as too impartial, had miscarried. It hadforfeited its old, without acquiring new friendships. It remained isolatedin Europe, and destined to meet without support and without an ally theblows 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 somerespects better towards the close of January, 1855, than they were when theConference of Vienna commenced its sittings six weeks later. Sardinia, under the guidance of Cavour, had joined the Western Alliance, and wasabout to send fifteen thousand soldiers to the Crimea. A new plan ofoperations, which promised excellent results, had been adopted atheadquarters. Up to the end of 1854 the French had directed their mainattack against the Flagstaff bastion, a little to the west of the head ofthe Man-of-War Harbour. They were now, however, convinced by Lord Raglanthat the true keystone to the defences of Sebastopol was the Malakoff, onthe 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 anarrow line, it seemed as if Sebastopol must soon fall. But at thebeginning of February a sinister change came over the French camp. GeneralNiel arrived from Paris vested with powers which really placed him incontrol of the general-in-chief; and though Canrobert was but partiallymade acquainted with the Emperor's designs, he was forced to sacrifice tothem much of his own honour and that of the army. Napoleon had determinedto come to the Crimea himself, and at the fitting moment to end by onegrand 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 coastof the Crimea, to march across the interior of the peninsula, to sweepMenschikoff's forces from their position above the Tchernaya, and tocomplete the investment of Sebastopol from the north. With this scheme ofoperations in view, all labour expended in the attack on Sebastopol fromthe south was effort thrown away. Canrobert, who had promised his mostvigorous co-operation to Lord Raglan, was fettered and paralysed by theEmperor's emissary at headquarters. For three successive months theRussians not only held their own, but by means of counter-approaches wonback from the French some of the ground that they had taken. The veryexistence of the Alliance was threatened when, after Canrobert and LordRaglan had despatched a force to seize the Russian posts on the Sea ofAzof, the French portion of this force was peremptorily recalled by theEmperor, in order that it might be employed in the march northwards acrossthe Crimea. At length, unable to endure the miseries of the position, Canrobert asked to be relieved of his command. He was succeeded by GeneralPélissier. Pélissier, a resolute, energetic soldier, one moreover who didnot owe his promotion to complicity in the _coup d'état_, flatlyrefused to obey the Emperor's orders. Sweeping aside the flimsy schemesevolved at the Tuileries, he returned with all his heart to the plan agreedupon by the Allied commanders at the beginning of the year; and from thistime, though disasters were still in store, they were not the result offaltering or disloyalty at the headquarters of the French army. The generalassault on the Malakoff and the Redan was fixed for the 18th of June. Itwas bravely met by the Russians; the Allies were driven back with heavyloss, and three months more were added to the duration of the siege. LordRaglan did not live to witness the last stage of the war. Exhausted by hislabours, heartsick at the failure of the great attack, he died on the 28thof June, leaving the command to General Simpson, an officer far hisinferior. As the lines of the besiegers approached nearer and nearer to theRussian fortifications, the army which had been defeated at Inkermannadvanced for one last effort. Crossing the Tchernaya, it gave battle on the16th of August. The French and the Sardinians, with little assistance fromthe British army, won a decisive victory. Sebastopol could hope no longerfor assistance from without, and on the 8th of September the blow which hadfailed in June was dealt once more. The French, throwing themselves ingreat strength upon the Malakoff, carried this fortress by storm, andfrustrated every effort made for its recovery; the British, attacking theRedan with a miserably weak force, were beaten and overpowered. But thefall of the Malakoff was in itself equivalent to the capture of Sebastopol. A few more hours passed, and a series of tremendous explosions made knownto the Allies that the Russian commander was blowing up his magazines andwithdrawing 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 ofthe 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 ahundred thousand men. An enterprise undertaken in the belief that it wouldbe accomplished in the course of a few weeks, and with no greater sacrificeof life than attends every attack upon a fortified place, had provedarduous and terrible almost beyond example. Yet if the Crimean campaign wasthe result of error and blindness on the part of the invaders, it wasperhaps even more disastrous to Russia than any warfare in which an enemywould have been likely to engage with fuller knowledge of the conditions tobe met. The vast distances that separated Sebastopol from the militarydepôts in the interior of Russia made its defence a drain of the mostfearful character on the levies and the resources of the country. What tensof thousands sank in the endless, unsheltered march without ever nearingthe sea, what provinces were swept of their beasts of burden, when everylarger shell fired against the enemy had to be borne hundreds of miles byoxen, the records of the war but vaguely make known. The total loss of theRussians should perhaps be reckoned at three times that of the Allies. Yetthe fall of Sebastopol was not immediately followed by peace. Thehesitation of the Allies in cutting off the retreat of the Russian army hadenabled its commander to retain his hold upon the Crimea; in Asia, thedelays of a Turkish relieving army gave to the Czar one last gleam ofsuccess in the capture of Kars, which, after a strenuous resistance, succumbed to famine on the 28th of November. But before Kars had fallennegotiations for peace had commenced. France was weary of the war. Napoleon, himself unwilling to continue it except at the price of Frenchaggrandisement on the Continent, was surrounded by a band of palacestock-jobbers who had staked everything on the rise of the funds that wouldresult from peace. It was known at every Court of Europe that the Allieswere completely at variance with one another; that while the Englishnation, stung by the failure of its military administration during thewinter, by the nullity of its naval operations in the Baltic, and by thefinal disaster at the Redan, was eager to prove its real power in a newcampaign, the ruler of France, satisfied with the crowning glory of theMalakoff, was anxious to conclude peace on any tolerable terms. Secretcommunications from St. Petersburg were made at Paris by Baron Seebach, envoy of Saxony, a son-in-law of the Russian Chancellor: the AustrianCabinet, still bent on acting the part of arbiter, but hopeless of theresults of a new Conference, addressed itself to the Emperor Napoleonsingly, and persuaded him to enter into a negotiation which was concealedfor a while from Great Britain. The two intrigues were simultaneouslypursued by our ally, but Seebach's proposals were such that even thewarmest friends of Russia at the Tuileries could scarcely support them, andthe Viennese diplomatists won the day. It was agreed that a note containingPreliminaries of Peace should be presented by Austria at St. Petersburg asits own ultimatum, after the Emperor Napoleon should have won from theBritish Government its assent to these terms without any alteration. TheAustrian project embodied indeed the Four Points which Britain had inprevious months fixed as the conditions of peace, and in substance itdiffered little from what, even after the fall of Sebastopol, Britishstatesmen were still prepared to accept; but it was impossible that ascheme completed without the participation of Britain and laid down for itspassive acceptance should be thus uncomplainingly adopted by itsGovernment. Lord Palmerston required that the Four Articles enumeratedshould be understood to cover points not immediately apparent on theirsurface, and that a fifth Article should be added reserving to the Powersthe right of demanding certain further special conditions, it beingunderstood that Great Britain would require under this clause only thatRussia should bind itself to leave the Åland Islands in the Baltic Seaunfortified. Modified in accordance with the demand of the BritishGovernment, the Austrian draft was presented to the Czar at the end ofDecember, with the notification that if it as not accepted by the 16th ofJanuary the Austrian ambassador would quit St. Petersburg. On the 15th aCouncil was held in the presence of the Czar. Nesselrode, who first gavehis opinion, urged that the continuance of the war would plunge Russia intohostilities with all Europe, and advised submission to a compact whichwould last only until Russia had recovered its strength or new relationshad arisen among the Powers. One Minister after another declared thatPoland, Finland, the Crimea, and the Caucasus would be endangered if peacewere not now made; the Chief of the Finances stated that Russia could notgo through another campaign without bankruptcy. [478] At the end of thediscussion the Council declared unanimously in favour of accepting theAustrian propositions; and although the national feeling was still infavour of resistance, there appears to have been one Russian statesmanalone, Prince Gortschakoff, ambassador at Vienna, who sought to dissuadethe Czar from making peace. His advice was not taken. The vote of theCouncil was followed by the despatch of plenipotentiaries to Paris, andhere, on the 25th of February, 1856, the envoys of all the Powers, with theexception of Prussia, assembled in Conference, in order to frame thedefinitive 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 eachcontested point he had to fight against the Russian and the French envoyscombined, so completely was the Court of the Tuileries now identified witha policy of conciliation and friendliness towards Russia. [480] Greatfirmness, great plainness of speech was needed on the part of the BritishGovernment, in order to prevent the recognised objects of the war frombeing surrendered by its ally, not from a conviction that they werevisionary or unattainable, but from unsteadiness of purpose and from thedesire to convert a defeated enemy into a friend. The end, however, was atlength 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 themercantile marine of every nation, were formally and in perpetuityinterdicted to the war-ships both of the Powers possessing its coasts andof all other Powers. The Czar and the Sultan undertook not to establish ormaintain upon its coasts any military or maritime arsenal. Russia ceded aportion of Bessarabia, accepting a frontier which excluded it from theDanube. The free navigation of this river, henceforth to be effectivelymaintained by an international Commission, was declared part of the publiclaw of Europe. The Powers declared the Sublime Porte admitted toparticipate in the advantages of the public law and concert of Europe, eachengaging 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 ofgeneral interest. The Sultan "having, in his constant solicitude for thewelfare of his subjects, issued a firman recording his generous intentionstowards the Christian population of his empire, [481] and havingcommunicated it to the Powers, " the Powers "recognised the high value ofthis communication, " declaring at the same time "that it could not, in anycase, give to them the right to interfere, either collectively orseparately, in the relations of the Sultan to his subjects, or in theinternal administration of his empire. " The Danubian Principalities, augmented by the strip of Bessarabia taken from Russia, were to continue toenjoy, under the suzerainty of the Porte and under the guarantee of thePowers, all the privileges and immunities of which they were in possession, no exclusive protection being exercised by any of the guaranteeingPowers. [482][Agreement of the Conference on rights of neutrals. ]Passing beyond the immediate subjects of negotiation, the Conferenceavailed itself of its international character to gain the consent of GreatBritain to a change in the laws of maritime war. England had alwaysclaimed, and had always exercised, the right to seize an enemy's goods onthe high sea though conveyed in a neutral vessel, and to search themerchant-ships of neutrals for this purpose. The exercise of this right hadstirred up against England the Maritime League of 1800, and was condemnedby nearly the whole civilised world. Nothing short of an absolute commandof the seas made it safe or possible for a single Power to maintain apractice which threatened at moments of danger to turn the whole body ofneutral States into its enemies. Moreover, if the seizure of belligerents'goods in neutral ships profited England when it was itself at war, itinjured England at all times when it remained at peace during the strugglesof other States. Similarly by the issue of privateers England inflictedgreat injury on its enemies; but its own commerce, exceeding that of everyother State, offered to the privateers of its foes a still richer booty. The advantages of the existing laws of maritime war were not altogether onthe side of England, though mistress of the seas; and in return for theabolition of privateering, the British Government consented to surrenderits sharpest, but most dangerous, weapon of offence, and to permit theproducts of a hostile State to find a market in time of war. The rule waslaid down that the goods of an enemy other than contraband of war shouldhenceforth be safe under a neutral flag. Neutrals' goods discovered on anenemy'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 ofhostilities have not yet been subjected to the strain of a war betweenEngland and any European State; its conclusions on all other subjects werebut too soon put to the test, and have one after another been foundwanting. If the Power which calls man into his moment of life could smileat the efforts and the assumptions of its creature, such smile might havebeen moved by the assembly of statesmen who, at the close of the CrimeanWar, affected to shape the future of Eastern Europe. They persuadedthemselves that by dint of the iteration of certain phrases they couldconvert the Sultan and his hungry troop of Pashas into the chiefs of aEuropean State. They imagined that the House of Osman, which in the stagesof a continuous decline had successively lost its sway over Hungary, overServia, over Southern Greece and the Danubian Provinces, and which wouldtwice within the last twenty-five years have seen its Empire dashed topieces by an Egyptian vassal but for the intervention of Europe, might bearrested in its decadence by an incantation, and be made strong enough andenlightened enough to govern to all time the Slavic and Greek populationswhich had still the misfortune to be included within its dominions. Recognising--so ran the words which read like bitter irony, but which weremeant for nothing of the kind--the value of the Sultan's promises ofreform, the authors of the Treaty of Paris proceeded, as if of set purpose, to extinguish any vestige of responsibility which might have been felt atConstantinople, and any spark of confidence that might still linger amongthe Christian populations, by declaring that, whether the Sultan observedor broke his promises, in no case could any right of intervention by Europearise. The helmsman was given his course; the hatches were battened down. If words bore any meaning, if the Treaty of Paris was not an elaboratepiece of imposture, the Christian subjects of the Sultan had for thefuture, whatever might be their wrongs, no redress to look for but in theexertion of their own power. The terms of the Treaty were in fact such asmight have been imposed if the Western Powers had gone to war with Russiafor some object of their own, and had been rescued, when defeated andoverthrown, by the victorious interposition of the Porte. All was hollow, all based on fiction and convention. The illusions of nations in time ofrevolutionary excitement, the shallow, sentimental commonplaces of libertyand fraternity have afforded just matter for satire; but no democraticplatitudes were ever more palpably devoid of connection with fact, moreflagrantly in contradiction to the experience of the past, or moreignominiously to be refuted by each succeeding act of history, than thedeliberate consecration of the idol of an Ottoman Empire as the crowningact 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 mostimpassioned, having indeed in the possession of India some excuse for theirfervour on behalf of any imaginable obstacle that would keep the Russiansout of Constantinople. The Emperor of the French had during the Conferencesat Paris revived his project of incorporating the Danubian Principalitieswith Austria in return for the cession of Lombardy, but the VienneseGovernment had declined to enter into any such arrangement. Napoleonconsequently entered upon a new Eastern policy. Appreciating the growingforce of nationality in European affairs, and imagining that in thechampionship of the principle of nationality against the Treaties of 1815he would sooner or later find means for the aggrandisement of himself andFrance, he proposed that the Provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia, whileremaining in dependence upon the Sultan, should be united into a singleState under a prince chosen by themselves. The English Ministry would nothear of this union. In their view the creation of a Roumanian Principalityunder a chief not appointed by the Porte was simply the abstraction fromthe Sultan of six million persons who at present acknowledged hissuzerainty, and whose tribute to Constantinople ought, according to LordClarendon, to be increased. [483] Austria, fearing the effect of aRoumanian national movement upon its own Roumanian subjects inTransylvania, joined in resistance to Napoleon's scheme, and the politicalorganisation of the Principalities was in consequence reserved by theConference of Paris for future settlement. Elections were held in thespring of 1857 under a decree from the Porte, with the result thatMoldavia, as it seemed, pronounced against union with the sister province. But the complaint at once arose that the Porte had falsified the popularvote. France and Russia had now established relations of such amity thattheir ambassadors jointly threatened to quit Constantinople if theelections were not annulled. A visit paid by the French Emperor to QueenVictoria, with the object of smoothing over the difficulties which hadbegun to threaten the Western alliance, resulted rather in increasedmisunderstandings between the two Governments as to the future of thePrincipalities than in any real agreement. The elections were annulled. Newrepresentative bodies met at Bucharest and Jassy, and pronounced almostunanimously for union (October, 1857). In the spring of 1858 the Conferenceof Paris reassembled in order to frame a final settlement of the affairs ofthe Principalities. It determined that in each Province there should be aHospodar elected for life, a separate judicature, and a separatelegislative Assembly, while a central Commission, formed by representativesof both Provinces, should lay before the Assemblies projects of law onmatters of joint interest. In accordance with these provisions, Assemblieswere elected in each Principality at the beginning of 1859. Their firstduty was to choose the two Hospodars, but in both Provinces a unanimousvote fell upon the same person, Prince Alexander Cuza. The efforts ofEngland and Austria to prevent union were thus baffled by the Roumanianpeople itself, and after three years the elaborate arrangements made by theConference were similarly swept away, and a single Ministry and Assemblytook the place of the dual Government. It now remained only to substitute ahereditary Prince for a Hospodar elected for life; and in 1866, on theexpulsion of Alexander Cuza by his subjects, Prince Charles ofHohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a distant kinsman of the reigning Prussiansovereign, was recognised by all Europe as Hereditary Prince of Roumania. The suzerainty of the Porte, now reduced to the bare right to receive afixed 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 inorder to judge of the foresight and the statesmanship of the authors of theTreaty of Paris. Scarcely a year passed without the occurrence of someevent that cast ridicule upon the fiction of a self-regenerated Turkey, andupon the profession of the Powers that the epoch of external interferencein its affairs was at an end. The active misgovernment of the Turkishauthorities themselves, their powerlessness or want of will to preventflagrant outrage and wrong among those whom they professed to rule, continued after the Treaty of Paris to be exactly what they had been beforeit. In 1860 massacres and civil war in Mount Lebanon led to the occupationof Syria by French troops. In 1861 Bosnia and Herzegovina took up arms. In1863 Servia expelled its Turkish garrisons. Crete, rising in the followingyear, fought long for its independence, and seemed for a moment likely tobe united with Greece under the auspices of the Powers, but it was finallyabandoned to its Ottoman masters. At the end of fourteen years from thesignature of the Peace of Paris, the downfall of the French Empire enabledRussia to declare that it would no longer recognise the provisions of theTreaty which excluded its war-ships and its arsenals from the Black Sea. Itwas for this, and for this almost alone, that England had gone through theCrimean War. But for the determination of Lord Palmerston to exclude Russiafrom the Black Sea, peace might have been made while the Allied armies werestill at Varna. This exclusion was alleged to be necessary in the interestsof Europe at large; that it was really enforced not in the interest ofEurope but in the interest of England was made sufficiently clear by theaction of Austria and Prussia, whose statesmen, in spite of the discoursesso freely addressed to them from London, were at least as much alive to theinterests of their respective countries as Lord Palmerston could be ontheir behalf. Nor had France in 1854 any interest in crippling the power ofRussia, or in Eastern affairs generally, which could be remotely comparedwith those of the possessors of India. The personal needs of Napoleon III. Made him, while he seemed to lead, the instrument of the British Governmentfor enforcing British aims, and so gave to Palmerston the momentary shapingof a new and superficial concert of the Powers. Masters of Sebastopol, theAllies had experienced little difficulty in investing their own conclusionswith the seeming authority of Europe at large; but to bring therepresentatives of Austria and Prussia to a Council-table, to hand them thepen to sign a Treaty dictated by France and England, was not to bind themto a policy which was not their own, or to make those things interests ofAustria and Prussia which were not their interests before. Thus when in1870 the French Empire fell, England stood alone as the Power concerned inmaintaining the exclusion of Russia from the Euxine, and this exclusion itcould enforce no longer. It was well that Palmerston had made the Treaty ofParis the act of Europe, but not for the reasons which Palmerston hadimagined. The fiction had engendered no new relation in fact; it did notprolong for one hour the submission of Russia after it had ceased to beconfronted in the West by a superior force; but it enabled Great Britain toretire without official humiliation from a position which it had conqueredonly through the help of an accidental Alliance, and which it was unable tomaintain 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 oncestamped with the seal of Europe the instrument of restraint upon Russia nowas decorously executed its release. Britain accepted what Europe would notresist; and below the slopes where lay the countless dead of three nationsSebastopol rose from its ruins, and the ensign of Russia floated once moreover its ships of war. CHAPTER XXII. Piedmont after 1849--Ministry of Azeglio--Cavour Prime Minister--Designs ofCavour--His Crimean Policy--Cavour at the Conference of Paris--Cavour andNapoleon III. --The Meeting at Plombières--Preparations in Italy--Treaty ofJanuary, 1859--Attempts at Mediation--Austrian Ultimatum--Campaign of1859--Magenta--Movement in Central Italy--Solferino--Napoleon and Prussia--Interview of Villafranca--Cavour resigns--Peace of Zürich--Central Italyafter Villafranca--The Proposed Congress--"The Pope and the Congress"--Cavour resumes office--Cavour and Napoleon--Union of the Duchies and theRomagna with Piedmont--Savoy and Nice added to France--Cavour on thiscession--European opinion--Naples--Sicily--Garibaldi lands at Marsala--Capture of Palermo--The Neapolitans evacuate Sicily--Cavour and the Partyof Action--Cavour's Policy as to Naples--Garibaldi on the Mainland--Persanoand Villamarina at Naples--Garibaldi at Naples--The Piedmontese Army entersUmbria and the Marches--Fall of Ancona--Garibaldi and Cavour--The Armies onthe Volturno--Fall of Gaeta--Cavour's Policy with regard to Rome andVenice--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 stoodout 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 ofreaction gained triumph after triumph. Its King had not the intellectualgifts of the maker of a great State, but he was one with whom thosepossessed of such gifts could work, and on whom they could depend. Withcertain grave private faults Victor Emmanuel had the public virtues ofintense patriotism, of loyalty to his engagements and to his Ministers, ofdevotion to a single great aim. Little given to speculative thought, he sawwhat it most concerned him to see, that Piedmont by making itself the homeof liberty could become the Master-State of Italy. His courage on thebattlefield, splendid and animating as it was, distinguished him less thananother kind of courage peculiarly his own. Ignorant and superstitious, hehad that rare and masculine quality of soul which in the anguish ofbereavement and on the verge of the unseen world remains proof against theappeal and against the terrors of a voice speaking with more than humanauthority. Rome, not less than Austria, stood across the path that led toItalian freedom, and employed all its art, all its spiritual force, to turnVictor Emmanuel from the work that lay before him. There were moments inhis life when a man of not more than common weakness might well haveflinched from the line of conduct on which he had resolved in hours ofstrength and of insight; there were times when a less constant mind mightwell have wavered and cast a balance between opposing systems of policy. Itwas not through heroic greatness that Victor Emmanuel rendered hispriceless services to Italy. He was a man not conspicuously cast in adifferent mould from many another plain, strong nature, but the qualitieswhich 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 throneof Piedmont, and numbering Cavour among his subjects, would have played thepart, the simple yet all momentous part, which Victor Emmanuel played sowell? The love and the gratitude of Italy have been lavished without stinton the memory of its first sovereign, who served his nation with qualitiesof so homely a type, and in whose life there was so much that neededpardon. The colder judgment of a later time will hardly contest the titleof Victor Emmanuel to be ranked among those few men without whom Italianunion 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, theGovernment and the Parliament of Turin addressed themselves to the work ofemancipating the State from the system of ecclesiastical privilege andclerical ascendency which had continued in full vigour down to the lastyear of Charles Albert's reign. Since 1814 the Church had maintained, orhad recovered, both in Piedmont and in the island of Sardinia, rights whichhad been long wrested from it in other European societies, and which wereout of harmony with the Constitution now taking root under Victor Emmanuel. The clergy had still their own tribunals, and even in the case of criminaloffences were not subject to the jurisdiction of the State. The Bishopspossessed excessive powers and too large a share of the Church revenues;the parochial clergy lived in want; monasteries and convents abounded. Itwas not in any spirit of hostility towards the Church that Massimod'Azeglio, whom the King called to office after Novara, commenced the workof reform by measures subjecting the clergy to the law-courts of the State, abolishing the right of sanctuary in monasteries, and limiting the power ofcorporations to acquire landed property. If the Papacy would have metVictor Emmanuel in a fair spirit his Government would gladly have avoided adangerous and exasperating struggle; but all the forces and the passions ofUltramontanism were brought to bear against the proposed reforms. Theresult was that the Minister, abandoned by a section of the Conservativeparty on whom he had relied, sought the alliance of men ready for a largerand bolder policy, and called to office the foremost of those from whom hehad received an independent support in the Chamber, Count Cavour. Enteringthe Cabinet in 1850 as Minister of Commerce, Cavour rapidly became themaster of all his colleagues. On his own responsibility he sought and wonthe support of the more moderate section of the Opposition, headed byRattazzi; and after a brief withdrawal from office, caused by divisionswithin the Cabinet, he returned to power in October, 1852, as PrimeMinister. [Cavour. ]Cavour, though few men have gained greater fame as diplomatists, had notbeen trained in official life. The younger son of a noble family, he hadentered the army in 1826, and served in the Engineers; but his sympathieswith the liberal movement of 1830 brought him into extreme disfavour withhis chiefs. He was described by Charles Albert, then Prince of Carignano, as the most dangerous man in the kingdom, and was transferred at theinstance of his own father to the solitary Alpine fortress of Bard. Toovigorous a nature to submit to inaction, too buoyant and too sagacious toresort to conspiracy, he quitted the army, and soon afterwards undertookthe management of one of the family estates, devoting himself to scientificagriculture on a large scale. He was a keen and successful man of business, but throughout the next twelve years, which he passed in fruitful privateindustry, his mind dwelt ardently on public affairs. He was filled with adeep discontent at the state of society which he saw around him inPiedmont, and at the condition of Italy at large under foreign and clericalrule. Repeated visits to France and England made him familiar with theinstitutions of freer lands, and gave definiteness to his political andsocial aims. [484] In 1847, when changes were following fast, he foundedwith some other Liberal nobles the journal _Risorgimento_, devoted tothe cause of national revival; and he was one of the first who called uponKing Charles Albert to grant a Constitution. During the stormy days of 1848he was at once the vigorous advocate of war with Austria and the adversaryof Republicans and Extremists who for their own theories seemed willing toplunge Italy into anarchy. Though unpopular with the mob, he was elected tothe Chamber by Turin, and continued to represent the capital after thepeace. Up to this time there had been little opportunity for the proof ofhis extraordinary powers, but the inborn sagacity of Victor Emmanuel hadalready discerned in him a man who could not remain in a subordinateposition. "You will see him turn you all out of your places, " the Kingremarked to his Ministers, as he gave his assent to Cavour's firstappointment 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 whichthe time required. Cavour threw into the work of government a passion andintelligence which soon produced results visible to all Europe. Hisdevotion to Italy was as deep, as all-absorbing, as that of Mazzinihimself, though the methods and schemes of the two men were in suchcomplete antagonism. Cavour's fixed purpose was to drive Austria out ofItaly by defeat in the battle-field, and to establish, as the first steptowards national union, a powerful kingdom of Northern Italy under VictorEmmanuel. In order that the military and naval forces of Piedmont might beraised to the highest possible strength and efficiency, he saw that theresources of the country must be largely developed; and with this object henegotiated commercial treaties with Foreign Powers, laid down railways, andsuppressed the greater part of the monasteries, selling their lands tocultivators, and devoting the proceeds of sale not to State-purposes but tothe payment of the working clergy. Industry advanced; the heavy pressure oftaxation was patiently borne; the army and the fleet grew apace. But thecause of Piedmont was one with that of the Italian nation, and it becameits Government to demonstrate this day by day with no faltering voice orhand. Protection and support were given to fugitives from Austrian andPapal tyranny; the Press was laid open to every tale of wrong; and when, after an unsuccessful attempt at insurrection in Milan in 1853, for whichMazzini and the Republican exiles were alone responsible, the AustrianGovernment sequestrated the property of its subjects who would not returnfrom Piedmont, Cavour bade his ambassador quit Vienna, and appealed toevery Court in Europe. Nevertheless, Cavour did not believe that Italy, even by a simultaneous rising, could permanently expel the Austrian armiesor conquer the Austrian fortresses. The experience of forty years pointedto the opposite conclusion; and while Mazzini in his exile still imaginedthat a people needed only to determine to be free in order to be free, Cavour schemed for an alliance which should range against the AustrianEmperor armed forces as numerous and as disciplined as his own. It wasmainly with this object that Cavour plunged Sardinia into the Crimean War. He was not without just causes of complaint against the Czar; but themotive with which he sent the Sardinian troops to Sebastopol was not thatthey might take vengeance on Russia, but that they might fight side by sidewith the soldiers of England and France. That the war might lead tocomplications still unforeseen was no doubt a possibility present toCavour's mind, and in that case it was no small thing that Sardinia stoodallied to the two Western Powers; but apart from these chances of thefuture, Sardinia would have done ill to stand idle when at any moment, asit seemed, Austria might pass from armed neutrality into active concertwith England and France. Had Austria so drawn the sword against Russiawhilst Piedmont stood inactive, the influence of the Western Powers mustfor some years to come have been ranged on the side of Austria in themaintenance of its Italian possessions, and Piedmont could at the best havelooked only to St. Petersburg for sympathy or support. Cavour was notscrupulous in his choice of means when the liberation of Italy was the endin view, and the charge was made against him that in joining the coalitionagainst Russia he lightly entered into a war in which Piedmont had nodirect concern. But reason and history absolve, and far more than absolve, the Italian statesman. If the cause of European equilibrium, for whichEngland and France took up arms, was a legitimate ground of war in the caseof these two Powers, it was not less so in the case of their ally; while ifthe ulterior results rather than the motive of a war are held to constituteits justification, Cavour stands out as the one politician in Europe whoseaims in entering upon the Crimean War have been fulfilled, not mocked, byevents. He joined in the struggle against Russia not in order to maintainthe Ottoman Empire, but to gain an ally in liberating Italy. The OttomanEmpire has not been maintained; the independence of Italy has beenestablished, and established by means of the alliance which Cavour gained. His Crimean policy is one of those excessively rare instances ofstatesmanship where action has been determined not by the driving andhalf-understood necessities of the moment, but by a distinct and trueperception of the future. He looked only in one direction, but in thatdirection he saw clearly. Other statesmen struck blindfold, or in theirvision of a regenerated Turkey fought for an empire of mirage. It may withsome reason be asked whether the order of Eastern Europe would now bedifferent if our own English soldiers who fell at Balaclava had beenallowed to die in their beds: every Italian whom Cavour sent to perish onthe Tchernaya or in the cholera-stricken camp died as directly for thecause of Italian independence as if he had fallen on the slopes of Custozzaor 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 inright of alliance by the side of the representatives of the great Powers;and when the main business of the Conference was concluded, Count Buol, theAustrian Minister, was forced to listen to a vigorous denunciation byCavour of the misgovernment that reigned in Central and Southern Italy, ofthe Austrian occupation which rendered this possible. Though the Frenchwere still in Rome, their presence might by courtesy be described as ameasure of precaution rendered necessary by the intrusion of the Austriansfarther north; and both the French and English plenipotentiaries at theConference supported Cavour in his invective. Cavour returned to Italywithout any territorial reward for the services that Piedmont had renderedto the Allies; but his object was attained. He had exhibited Austriaisolated and discredited before Europe; he had given to his country a voicethat it had never before had in the Councils of the Powers; he had produceda deep conviction throughout Italy that Piedmont not only could and wouldact with vigour against the national enemy, but that in its action it wouldhave the help of allies. From this time the Republican and Mazziniansocieties lost ground before the growing confidence in the House of Savoy, in its Minister and its army. [485] The strongest evidence of the effect ofCavour's Crimean policy and of his presence at the Conference of Paris wasseen in the action of the Austrian Government itself. From 1849 to 1856 itsrule in Northern Italy had been one not so much of severity as of brutalviolence. Now all was changed. The Emperor came to Milan to proclaim ageneral amnesty and to win the affection of his subjects. The sequestratedestates were restored to their owners. Radetzky, in his ninety-second year, was at length allowed to pass into retirement; the government of the swordwas declared at an end; Maximilian, the gentlest and most winning of theHapsburgs, was sent with his young bride to charm away the sad memories ofthe evil time. But it was too late. The recognition shown by the Lombardsof the Emperor's own personal friendliness indicated no reconciliation withAustria; and while Francis Joseph was still in Milan, King Victor Emmanuel, in the presence of a Lombard deputation, laid the first stone of themonument erected by subscriptions from all Italy in memory of those who hadfallen in the campaigns of 1848 and 1849, the statue of a foot-soldierwaving his sword towards the Austrian frontier. The Sardinian Pressredoubled its attacks on Austria and its Italian vassals. The Government ofVienna sought satisfaction; Cavour sharply refused it; and diplomaticrelations between the two Courts, which had been resumed since theConference 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 withGreat Britain, which had no objects of its own to seek in Italy; but whenhe found that the Government of London would not assist him by arms againstAustria, he drew closer to the Emperor Napoleon, and supported himthroughout his controversy with England and Austria on the settlement ofthe Danubian Principalities. Napoleon, there is no doubt, felt a realinterest in Italy. His own early political theories formed on a study ofthe Napoleonic Empire, his youthful alliance with the Carbonari, point to asympathy with the Italian national cause which was genuine if not profound, and which was not altogether lost in 1849, though France then acted as theenemy of Roman independence. If Napoleon intended to remould theContinental order and the Treaties of 1815 in the interests of France andof the principle of nationality, he could make no better beginning than bydriving Austria from Northern Italy. It was not even necessary for him todevise an original policy. Early in 1848, when it seemed probable thatPiedmont would be increased by Lombardy and part of Venetia, Lamartine hadlaid it down that France ought in that case to be compensated by Savoy, inorder to secure its frontiers against so powerful a neighbour as the newItalian State. To this idea Napoleon returned. Savoy had been incorporatedwith 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 oldlimits of the Alps and the Rhine, the direction of Savoy was by far theleast dangerous. Belgium could not be touched without certain loss of theEnglish alliance, with which Napoleon could not yet dispense; an attackupon the Rhenish Provinces would probably be met by all the German Powerstogether; in Savoy alone was there the chance of gaining territory withoutraising a European coalition against France. No sooner had the organisationof the Danubian Principalities been completed by the Conference which metin the spring of 1858 than Napoleon began to develop his Italian plans. Anattempt of a very terrible character which was made upon his life byOrsini, a Roman exile, though at the moment it threatened to embroilSardinia with France, probably stimulated him to action. In the summer of1858 he invited Cavour to meet him at Plombières. The negotiations whichthere passed were not made known by the Emperor to his Ministers; they werecommunicated by Cavour to two persons only besides Victor Emmanuel. Itseems that no written engagement was drawn up; it was verbally agreed thatif Piedmont could, without making a revolutionary war, and without exposingNapoleon to the charge of aggression, incite Austria to hostilities, Francewould act as its ally. Austria was then to be expelled from Venetia as wellas 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, togetherwith Naples and Rome, were to form an Italian Confederation under thepresidency of the Pope. France was to receive Savoy and possibly Nice. Amarriage between the King's young daughter Clotilde and the Emperor'scousin 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 anexceedingly difficult one. Not only had he to reckon with the irresolutionof Napoleon, and his avowed unwillingness to take up arms unless with theappearance of some good cause; but even supposing the goal of war reached, and Austria defeated, how little was there in common between Cavour's aimsfor Italy and the traditional policy of France! The first Napoleon hadgiven Venice to Austria at Campo Formio; even if the new Napoleon shouldfulfil his promise and liberate all Northern Italy, his policy in regard tothe centre and south of the Peninsula would probably be antagonistic to anyeffective union or to any further extension of the influence of the Houseof Savoy. Cavour had therefore to set in readiness for action nationalforces 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 ofthe Italian people should be governed not by the schemes which the Emperormight devise at Paris, but by the claims and the aspirations of Italyitself. It was necessary for him not only to encourage and subsidise theNational Society--a secret association whose branches in the other ItalianStates were preparing to assist Piedmont in the coming war, and to uniteItaly under the House of Savoy--but to enter into communication with someof the Republican or revolutionary party who had hitherto been at enmitywith all Crowns alike. He summoned Garibaldi in secrecy to Turin, and thereconvinced him that the war about to be waged by Victor Emmanuel was one inwhich he ought to take a prominent part. As the foremost defender of theRoman Republic and a revolutionary hero, Garibaldi was obnoxious to theFrench Emperor. Cavour had to conceal from Napoleon the fact that Garibaldiwould take the field at the head of a free-corps by the side of the Alliedarmies; he had similarly to conceal from Garibaldi that one result of thewar would be the cession of Nice, his own birthplace, to France. Thusplunged in intrigue, driving his Savoyards to the camp and raising fromthem the last farthing in taxation, in order that after victory they mightbe 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 ofmankind, Cavour staked all on the one great end of his being, theestablishment of Italian independence. Words like those which burst fromDanton in the storms of the Convention--"Perish my name, my reputation, sothat France be free"--were the calm and habitual expression of Cavour'sthought when none but an intimate friend was by to hear. [487] Such tasksas Cavour's are not to be achieved without means which, to a man noble inview as Cavour really was, it would have been more agreeable to leaveunemployed. Those alone are entitled to pronounce judgment upon him whohave made a nation, and made it with purer hands. It was well for Englishstatesmen and philanthropists, inheritors of a world-wide empire, toenforce the ethics of peace and to plead for a gentlemanlike frankness andself-restraint in the conduct of international relations. English women hadnot been flogged by Austrian soldiers in the market-place; the treaties of1815 had not consecrated a foreign rule over half our race. To Cavour thegreatest crime would have been to leave anything undone which mightminister 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 inthe spring of 1859. At the reception at the Tuileries on the 1st of Januaryhe addressed the Austrian ambassador in words that pointed to anapproaching conflict; a few weeks later a marriage-contract was signedbetween Prince Napoleon and Clotilde, daughter of Victor Emmanuel, and partof the agreement made at Plombières was embodied in a formal Treaty. Napoleon undertook to support Sardinia in a war that might arise from anyaggressive act on the part of Austria, and, if victorious, to add bothLombardy and Venetia to Victor Emmanuel's dominions. France was in returnto receive Savoy, the disposal of Nice being reserved till the restorationof peace. [489] Even before the Treaty was signed Victor Emmanuel hadthrown down the challenge to Austria, declaring at the opening of theParliament of Turin that he could not be insensible to the cry of sufferingthat rose from Italy. In all but technical form the imminence of war hadbeen announced, when, under the influence of diplomatists and Ministersabout him, and of a financial panic that followed his address to theAustrian ambassador, the irresolute mind of Napoleon shrank from itspurpose, and months more of suspense were imposed upon Italy and Europe, tobe terminated at last not by any effort of Napoleon's will but by the rashand impolitic action of Austria itself. At the instance of the Court ofVienna the British Government had consented to take steps towardsmediation. Lord Cowley, Ambassador at Paris, was sent to Vienna withproposals which, it was believed, might form the basis for an amicablesettlement of Italian affairs. He asked that the Papal States should beevacuated by both Austrian and French troops; that Austria should abandonthe Treaties which gave it a virtual Protectorate over Modena and Parma;and that it should consent to the introduction of reforms in all theItalian Governments. Negotiations towards this end had made some progresswhen they were interrupted by a proposal sent from St. Petersburg, at theinstance of Napoleon, that Italian affairs should be submitted to aEuropean Congress. Austria was willing under certain conditions to takepart in a Congress, but it required, as a preliminary measure, thatSardinia should disarm. Napoleon had now learnt that Garibaldi was to fightat the head of the volunteers for Victor Emmanuel. His doubts as to thewisdom of his own policy seem to have increased hour by hour; from Britain, whose friendship he still considered indispensable to him, he received themost urgent appeals against war; it was necessary that Cavour himselfshould visit Paris in order to prevent the Emperor from acquiescing inAustria's demand. In Cavour's presence Napoleon seems to have lost some ofhis fears, or to have been made to feel that it was not safe to provoke hisconfidant of Plombières; [490] but Cavour had not long left Paris when aproposal was made from London, that in lieu of the separate disarmament ofSardinia the Powers should agree to a general disarmament, the details tobe settled by a European Commission. This proposal received Napoleon'sassent. He telegraphed to Cavour desiring him to join in the agreement. Cavour could scarcely disobey, yet at one stroke it seemed that all hishopes when on the very verge of fulfilment were dashed to the ground, allhis boundless efforts for the liberation of Italy through war with Austrialost and thrown away. For some hours he appeared shattered by the blow. Strung to the extreme point of human endurance by labour scarcely remittedby day or night for weeks together, his strong but sanguine nature gaveway, and for a while the few friends who saw him feared that he would takehis own life. But the crisis passed: Cavour accepted, as inevitable, thecondition of general disarmament; and his vigorous mind had already begunto work upon new plans for the future, when the report of a decision madeat Vienna, which was soon confirmed by the arrival of an Austrianultimatum, threw him into joy as intense as his previous despair. Ignoringthe British proposal for a general disarmament, already accepted at Turin, the Austrian Cabinet demanded, without qualifications and under threat ofwar within three days, that Sardinia should separately disarm. It wasbelieved at Vienna that Napoleon was merely seeking to gain time; that aconflict was inevitable; and that Austria now stood better prepared forimmediate action than its enemies. Right or wrong in its judgment ofNapoleon's real intentions, the Austrian Government had undeniably takenupon itself the part of the aggressor. Cavour had only to point to his ownacceptance of the plan of a general disarmament, and to throw upon hisenemy the responsibility for a disturbance of European peace. His reply wastaken as the signal for hostilities, and on the 29th of April Austriantroops crossed the Ticino. A declaration of war from Paris followed withoutdelay. [491][Campaign of 1859. ][Battle of Magenta, June 4. ]For months past Austria had been pouring its troops into Northern Italy. Ithad chosen its own time for the commencement of war; a feeble enemy stoodbefore it, its more powerful adversary could not reach the field withoutcrossing the Alps or the mountain-range above Genoa. Everything pointed toa vigorous offensive on the part of the Austrian generals, and in Piedmontitself it was believed that Turin must fall before French troops couldassist in its defence. From Turin as a centre the Austrians could thenstrike with ease, and with superior numbers, against the detachments of theFrench army as they descended the mountains at any points in the semicirclefrom Genoa to Mont Cenis. There has seldom been a case where the necessityand the advantages of a particular line of strategy have been so obvious;yet after crossing the Ticino the Austrians, above a hundred thousandstrong, 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 thePiedmontese, whose headquarters were at Alessandria. Giulay now believedthat the Allies would strike upon his communications in the direction ofParma. The march of Bonaparte upon Piacenza in 1796, as well as thecampaign of Marengo, might well inspire this fear; but the real intentionof Napoleon III. Was to outflank the Austrians from the north and so togain Milan. Garibaldi was already operating at the extreme left of theSardinian line in the neighbourhood of Como. While the Piedmontesemaintained their positions in the front, the French from Genoa marchednorthwards behind them, crossed the Po, and reached Vercelli before theAustrians discovered their manoeuvre. Giulay, still lingering between theSesia and the Ticino, now called up part of his forces northwards, but notin time to prevent the Piedmontese from crossing the Sesia and defeatingthe troops opposed to them at Palestro (May 30). While the Austrians wereoccupied at this point, the French crossed the river farther north, andmoved eastwards on the Ticino. Giulay was thus outflanked and compelled tofall back. The Allies followed him, and on the 4th of June attacked theAustrian army in its positions about Magenta on the road to Milan. Theassault of Macmahon from the north gave the Allies victory after ahard-fought day. It was impossible for the Austrians to defend Milan; theyretired upon the Adda and subsequently upon the Mincio, abandoning allLombardy to the invaders, and calling up their troops from Bologna and theother occupied towns in the Papal States, in order that they might takepart in the defence of the Venetian frontier and the fortresses thatguarded it. [Movement in Central Italy. ]The victory of the Allies was at once felt throughout Central Italy. TheGrand Duke of Tuscany had already fled from his dominions, and theDictatorship for the period of the war had been offered by a ProvisionalGovernment to Victor Emmanuel, who, while refusing this, had allowed hisenvoy, Boncampagni, to assume temporary powers at Florence as hisrepresentative. The Duke of Modena and the Duchess of Parma now quittedtheir territories. In the Romagna the disappearance of the Austriansresulted in the immediate overthrow of Papal authority. Everywhere thedemand was for union with Piedmont. The calamities of the last ten yearshad taught their lesson to the Italian people. There was now nothing of thedisorder, the extravagance, the childishness of 1848. The populations whohad then been so divided, so suspicious, so easy a prey to demagogues, werenow watchful, self-controlled, and anxious for the guidance of the onlyreal national Government. As at Florence, so in the Duchies and in theRomagna, it was desired that Victor Emmanuel should assume theDictatorship. The King adhered to the policy which he had adopted towardsTuscany, avoiding any engagement that might compromise him with Europe orhis ally, but appointing Commissioners to enrol troops for the common waragainst Austria and to conduct the necessary work of administration inthose districts. Farini, the historian of the Roman States, was sent toModena; Azeglio, the ex-Minister, to Bologna. Each of these officersentered on his task in a spirit worthy of the time; each understood howmuch might be won for Italy by boldness, how much endangered or lost byuntimely scruples. [492][Battle of Solferino, June 24. ]In his proclamations at the opening of the war Napoleon had declared thatItaly must be freed up to the shore of the Adriatic. His address to theItalian people on entering Milan with Victor Emmanuel after the victory ofMagenta breathed the same spirit. As yet, however, Lombardy alone had beenwon. The advance of the allied armies was accordingly resumed after aninterval of some days, and on the 23rd of June they approached thepositions held by the Austrians a little to the west of the Mincio. FrancisJoseph had come from Vienna to take command of the army. His presenceassisted the enemy, inasmuch as he had no plan of his own, and wavered fromday to day between the antagonistic plans of the generals at headquarters. Some wished to make the Mincio the line of defence, others to hold theChiese some miles farther west. The consequence was that the army marchedbackwards and forwards across the space between the two rivers according asone or another general gained for the moment the Emperor's confidence. Itwas while the Austrians were thus engaged that the allied armies came intocontact with them about Solferino. On neither side was it known that thewhole force of the enemy was close at hand. The battle of Solferino, one ofthe bloodiest of recent times, was fought almost by accident. About ahundred and fifty thousand men were present under Napoleon and VictorEmmanuel; the Austrians had a slight superiority in force. On the north, where Benedek with the Austrian right was attacked by the Piedmontese atSan Martino, it seemed as if the task imposed on the Italian troops wasbeyond their power. Victor Emmanuel, fighting with the same courage as atNovara, 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 inkilled and wounded of fourteen thousand men. On the part of the Allies theslaughter 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 frontof him he saw the fortresses of the Quadrilateral, while new divisions werehastening from the north and east to the support of the still unbrokenAustrian army. He might well doubt whether, even against his presentantagonist alone, further success was possible. The fearful spectacle ofSolferino, heightened by the effects of overpowering summer heat, probablyaffected a mind humane and sensitive and untried in the experience of war. The condition of the French army, there is reason to believe, was fardifferent from that represented in official reports, and likely to make thecontinuance of the campaign perilous in the extreme. But beyond all this, the Emperor knew that if he advanced farther Prussia and all Germany mightat any moment take up arms against him. There had been a strong outburst ofsympathy for Austria in the south-western German States. Nationalpatriotism was excited by the attack of Napoleon on the chief of the Germansovereigns, and the belief was widely spread that French conquest in Italywould soon be followed by French conquest on the Rhine. Prussia hadhitherto shown reserve. It would have joined its arms with those of Austriaif its own claims to an improved position in Germany had been granted bythe Court of Vienna; but Francis Joseph had up to this time refused theconcessions demanded. In the stress of his peril he might at any momentclose with the offers which he had before rejected; even without a distinctagreement between the two Courts, and in mere deference to German publicopinion, Prussia might launch against France the armies which it hadalready brought into readiness for the field. A war upon the Rhine wouldthen be added to the war before the Quadrilateral, and from the risks ofthis double effort Napoleon might well shrink in the interest of France notless than of his own dynasty. He determined to seek an interview withFrancis Joseph, and to ascertain on what terms peace might now be made. Theinterview took place at Villafranca, east of the Mincio, on the 11th ofJuly. Francis Joseph refused to cede any part of Venetia without a furtherstruggle. He was willing to give up Lombardy, and to consent to theestablishment of an Italian Federation under the presidency of the Pope, ofwhich Federation Venetia, still under Austria's rule, should be a member;but he required that Mantua should be left within his own frontier, andthat the sovereigns of Tuscany and Modena should resume possession of theirdominions. To these terms Napoleon assented, on obtaining a verbalagreement that the dispossessed princes should not be restored by foreignarms. Regarding Parma and the restoration of the Papal authority in theRomagna no stipulations were made. With the signature of the Preliminariesof Villafranca, which were to form the base of a regular Treaty to benegotiated at Zürich, and to which Victor Emmanuel added his name withwords of reservation, hostilities came to a close. The negotiations atZürich, though they lasted for several months, added nothing of importanceto the matter of the Preliminaries, and decided nothing that had been leftin uncertainty. The Italian Federation remained a scheme which the twoEmperors, and they alone, undertook to promote. Piedmont entered into noengagement either with regard to the Duchies or with regard to Federation. Victor Emmanuel had in fact announced from the first that he would enter noLeague of which a province governed by Austria formed a part, and from thisresolution he never swerved. [493][Resignation of Cavour. ][Central Italy. ]Though Lombardy was gained, the impression made upon the Italians by thepeace of Villafranca was one of the utmost dismay. Napoleon had soconfidently and so recently promised the liberation of all Northern Italythat public opinion ascribed to treachery or weakness what was in truth anact of political necessity. On the first rumour of the negotiations Cavourhad 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 himas terrible to witness. [494] Napoleon had not the courage to face him;Victor Emmanuel bore for two hours the reproaches of his Minister, who hadnow completely lost his self-control. Cavour returned to Turin, and shortlyafterwards withdrew from office, his last act being the despatch of tenthousand muskets to Farini at Modena. In accordance with the terms ofpeace, instructions, which were probably not meant to be obeyed, were sentby Cavour's successor, Rattazzi, to the Piedmontese Commissioners inCentral Italy, bidding them to return to Turin and to disband any forcesthat they had collected. Farini, on receipt of this order, adroitlydivested himself of his Piedmontese citizenship, and, as an honoraryburgher of Modena, accepted the Dictatorship from his fellow-townsmen. Azeglio returned to Turin, but took care before quitting the Romagna toplace four thousand soldiers under competent leaders in a position toresist attack. It was not the least of Cavour's merits that he had gatheredabout 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 shownby the leaders of the national movement in Central Italy. Venetia was lostfor the present; but if Napoleon's promise was broken, districts which hehad failed or had not intended to liberate might be united with the ItalianKingdom. The Duke of Modena, with six thousand men who had remained true tohim, lay on the Austrian frontier, and threatened to march upon hiscapital. Farini mined the city gates, and armed so considerable a forcethat it became clear that the Duke would not recover his dominions withouta serious battle. Parma placed itself under the same Dictatorship withModena; in the Romagna a Provisional Government which Azeglio had leftbehind him continued his work. Tuscany, where Napoleon had hoped to find athrone for his cousin, pronounced for national union, and organised acommon military force with its neighbours. During the weeks that followedthe Peace of Villafranca, declarations signed by tens of thousands, thevotes of representative bodies, and popular demonstrations throughoutCentral Italy, showed in an orderly and peaceful form how universal was thedesire 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 adirect and immediate result beyond the creation of an Italian Kingdomincluding the whole of the territory north of the Po. The other steps inthe consolidation of Italy would, he believed, follow in their order. Theymight be close at hand, or they might be delayed for a while; but in theexpulsion of Austria, in the interposition of a purely Italian Statenumbering above ten millions of inhabitants, mistress of the fortresses andof a powerful fleet, between Austria and those who had been its vassals, the essential conditions of Italian national independence would have beenwon. For the rest, Italy might be content to wait upon time andopportunity. But the Peace of Villafranca, leaving Venetia in the enemy'shands, completely changed this prospect. The fiction of an ItalianFederation in which the Hapsburg Emperor, as lord of Venice, should forgethis Austrian interests and play the part of Italian patriot, was too grossto deceive any one. Italy, on these terms, would either continue to begoverned from Vienna, or be made a pawn in the hands of its Frenchprotector. What therefore Cavour had hitherto been willing to leave tofuture years now became the need of the present. "Before Villafranca, " inhis own words, "the union of Italy was a possibility; since Villafranca itis a necessity. " Victor Emmanuel understood this too, and saw the need foraction more clearly than Rattazzi and the Ministers who, on Cavour'swithdrawal in July, stepped for a few months into his place. The situationwas one that called indeed for no mean exercise of statesmanship. If Italywas not to be left dependent upon the foreigner and the reputation of theHouse of Savoy ruined, it was necessary not only that the Duchies of Modenaand Parma, but that Central Italy, including Tuscany and at least theRomagna, should be united with the Kingdom of Piedmont; yet theaccomplishment of this work was attended with the utmost danger. Napoleonhimself was hoping to form Tuscany, with an augmented territory, into arival Kingdom of Etruria or Central Italy, and to place his cousin on itsthrone. The Ultramontane party in France was alarmed and indignant at theoverthrow of the Pope's authority in the Romagna, and already called uponthe Emperor to fulfil his duties towards the Holy See. If the nationalmovement should extend to Rome itself, the hostile intervention of Francewas almost inevitable. While the negotiations with Austria at Zürich werestill proceeding, Victor Emmanuel could not safely accept the sovereigntythat was offered him by Tuscany and the neighbouring provinces, nor permithis cousin, the Prince of Carignano, to assume the regency which, duringthe period of suspense, it was proposed to confer upon him. Above all, itwas necessary that the Government should not allow the popular forces withwhich it was co-operating to pass beyond its own control. In the criticalperiod that followed the armistice of Villafranca, Mazzini approachedVictor Emmanuel, as thirty years before he had approached his father, andoffered his own assistance in the establishment of Italian union under theHouse of Savoy. He proposed, as the first step, to overthrow the NeapolitanGovernment by means of an expedition headed by Garibaldi, and to uniteSicily and Naples to the King's dominions; but he demanded in return thatPiedmont should oppose armed resistance to any foreign interventionoccasioned by this enterprise; and he seems also to have required that anattack should be made immediately afterwards upon Rome and upon Venetia. Tothese conditions the King could not accede; and Mazzini, confirmed in hisattitude of distrust towards the Court of Turin, turned to Garibaldi, whowas now at Modena. At his instigation Garibaldi resolved to lead anexpedition at once against Rome itself. Napoleon was at this very momentpromising reforms on behalf of the Pope, and warning Victor Emmanuelagainst the annexation even of the Romagna (Oct. 20th). At the risk ofincurring the hostility of Garibaldi's followers and throwing their leaderinto opposition to the dynasty, it was necessary for the SardinianGovernment to check him in his course. The moment was a critical one in thehistory of the House of Savoy. But the soldier of Republican Italy provedmore tractable than its prophet. Garibaldi was persuaded to abandon orpostpone an enterprise which could only have resulted in disaster forItaly; and with expressions of cordiality towards the King himself, and ofbitter contempt for the fox-like politicians who advised him, he resignedhis command and bade farewell to his comrades, recommending them, however, to remain under arms, in full confidence that they would ere long find abetter opportunity for carrying the national flag southwards. [495][The proposed Congress. ]Soon after the Agreement of Villafranca, Napoleon had proposed to theBritish Government that a Congress of all the Powers should assemble atParis in order to decide upon the many Italian questions which stillremained unsettled. In taking upon himself the emancipation of NorthernItaly Napoleon had, as it proved, attempted a task far beyond his ownpowers. The work had been abruptly broken off; the promised services hadnot been rendered, the stipulated reward had not been won. On the otherhand, forces had been set in motion which he who raised them could notallay; populations stood in arms against the Governments which theAgreement of Villafranca purported to restore; the Pope's authority in thenorthern part of his dominions was at an end; the Italian League over whichFrance and Austria were to join hands of benediction remained thelaughing-stock of Europe. Napoleon's victories had added Lombardy toPiedmont; for the rest, except from the Italian point of view, they hadonly thrown affairs into confusion. Hesitating at the first between hisobligations towards Austria and the maintenance of his prestige in Italy, perplexed between the contradictory claims of nationality and ofUltramontanism, Napoleon would gladly have cast upon Great Britain, or uponEurope at large, the task of extricating him from his embarrassment. Butthe Cabinet of London, while favourable to Italy, showed little inclinationto entangle itself in engagements which might lead to war with Austria andGermany in the interest of the French Sovereign. Italian affairs, it wasurged by Lord John Russell, might well be governed by the course of eventswithin Italy itself; and, as Austria remained inactive, the principle ofnon-intervention really gained the day. The firm attitude of the populationboth 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 forforeign intervention, told upon the mind of Napoleon and on the opinion ofEurope at large. Each month that passed rendered the restoration of thefallen Governments a work of greater difficulty, and increased theconfidence of the Italians in themselves. Napoleon watched and wavered. When the Treaty of Zürich was signed his policy was still undetermined. Bythe prompt and liberal concession of reforms the Papal Government mightperhaps even now have turned the balance in its favour. But the obstinatemind of Pius IX. Was proof against every politic and every generousinfluence. The stubbornness shown by Rome, the remembrance of Antonelli'sconduct towards the French Republic in 1849, possibly also the discovery ofa Treaty of Alliance between the Papal Government and Austria, at lengthovercame Napoleon's hesitation in meeting the national demand of Italy, andgave him courage to defy both the Papal Court and the French priesthood. Heresolved to consent to the formation of an Italian Kingdom under VictorEmmanuel including the northern part of the Papal territories as well asTuscany and the other Duchies, and to silence the outcry which this act ofspoliation would excite among the clerical party in France by theannexation 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 24thof December of a pamphlet entitled "The Pope and the Congress. " Thedoctrine advanced in this essay was that, although a temporal authority wasnecessary to the Pope's spiritual independence, the peace and unity whichshould surround the Vicar of Christ would be best attained when histemporal sovereignty was reduced within the narrowest possible limits. Romeand the territory immediately around it, if guaranteed to the Pope by theGreat Powers, would be sufficient for the temporal needs of the Holy See. The revenue lost by the separation of the remainder of the Papalterritories might be replaced by a yearly tribute of reverence paid by theCatholic Powers to the Head of the Church. That the pamphlet advocatingthis policy was written at the dictation of Napoleon was not made a secret. Its appearance occasioned an indignant protest at Rome. The Pope announcedthat he would take no part in the proposed Congress unless the doctrinesadvanced in the pamphlet were disavowed by the French Government. Napoleonin reply submitted to the Pope that he would do well to purchase theguarantee of the Powers for the remainder of his territories by giving upall claim to the Romagna, which he had already lost. Pius retorted that hecould 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 intrudershe would soon reconquer the rebellious province without the assistanceeither of France or of Austria. The attitude assumed by the Papal Courtgave Napoleon a good pretext for abandoning the plan of a EuropeanCongress, from which he could hardly expect to obtain a grant of Nice andSavoy. It was announced at Paris that the Congress would be postponed; andon the 5th of January, 1860, the change in Napoleon's policy was publiclymarked by the dismissal of his Foreign Minister, Walewski, and theappointment in his place of Thouvenel, a friend to Italian union. Ten dayslater 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 steeredsafely past some dangerous rocks; but he held the helm with an unsteady anduntrusted hand, and he appears to have displayed an unworthy jealousytowards Cavour, who, while out of office, had not ceased to render whatservices he could to his country. Cavour resumed his post, with the resolveto defer no longer the annexation of Central Italy, but with the heavyconsciousness that Napoleon would demand in return for his consent to thisunion the cession of Nice and Savoy. No Treaty entitled France to claimthis reward, for the Austrians still held Venetia; but Napoleon's troopslay at Milan, and by a march southwards they could easily throw Italianaffairs again into confusion, and undo all that the last six months hadeffected. Cavour would perhaps have lent himself to any Europeancombination which, while directed against the extension, of France, wouldhave secured the existence of the Italian Kingdom; but no such alternativeto the French alliance proved possible; and the subsequent negotiationsbetween Paris and Turin were intended only to vest with a certaindiplomatic propriety the now inevitable transfer of territory from theweaker to the stronger State. A series of propositions made from Londonwith the view of withdrawing from Italy both French and Austrian influenceled the Austrian Court to acknowledge that its army would not be employedfor the restoration of the sovereigns of Tuscany and Modena. Construingthis statement as an admission that the stipulations of Villafranca andZürich 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, leavingTuscany to form a separate Government. The establishment of so powerful akingdom on the confines of France was, he added, not in accordance with thetraditions of French foreign policy, and in self-defence France mustrectify its military frontier by the acquisition of Nice and Savoy (Feb. 24th). Cavour well understood that the mention of Tuscan independence, andthe qualified recognition of the Pope's rights in the Romagna, were no morethan suggestions of the means of pressure by which France might enforce thecessions it required. He answered that, although Victor Emmanuel could notalienate any part of his dominions, his Government recognised the samepopular rights in Savoy and Nice as in Central Italy; and accordingly thatif the population of these districts declared in a legal form their desireto be incorporated with France, the King would not resist their will. Having thus consented to the necessary sacrifice, and ignoring Napoleon'sreservations with regard to Tuscany and the Pope, Cavour gave orders that apopular 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 votingtook place early in March, and gave an overwhelming majority in favour ofunion. The Pope issued the major excommunication against the authors, abettors, and agents in this work of sacrilege, and heaped curses oncurses; but no one seemed the worse for them. Victor Emmanuel accepted thesovereignty that was offered to him, and on the 2nd of April the Parliamentof the united kingdom assembled at Turin. It had already been announced tothe inhabitants of Nice and Savoy that the King had consented to theirunion with France. The formality of a _plébiscite_ was enacted a fewdays later, and under the combined pressure of the French and SardinianGovernments the desired results were obtained. Not more than a few hundredpersons protested by their vote against a transaction to which it wasunderstood 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'ssurrender of the home of his race is well known. Above a year, however, hadpassed since the project had been accepted as the basis of the Frenchalliance; and if, during the interval of suspense after Villafranca, theKing had cherished a hope that the sacrifice might be avoided withoutprejudice either to the cause of Italy or to his own relations withNapoleon, Cavour had entertained no such illusions. He knew that thecession was an indispensable link in the chain of his own policy, thatpolicy which had made it possible to defeat Austria, and which, hebelieved, would lead to the further consolidation of Italy. Looking toRome, to Palermo, where the smouldering fire might at any moment blaze out, he could not yet dispense with the friendship of Napoleon, he could notprovoke the one man powerful enough to shape the action of France indefiance of Clerical and of Legitimist aims. Rattazzi might claim creditfor having brought Piedmont past the Treaty of Zürich without loss ofterritory; Cavour, in a far finer spirit, took upon himself theresponsibility for the sacrifice made to France, and bade the Parliament ofItaly pass judgment upon his act. The cession of the border-provincesovershadowed what would otherwise have been the brightest scene in Italianhistory for many generations, the meeting of the first North-ItalianParliament at Turin. Garibaldi, coming as deputy from his birthplace, Nice, uttered words of scorn and injustice against the man who had made him analien in Italy, and quitted the Chamber. Bitterly as Cavour felt, both nowand down to the end of his life, the reproaches that were levelled againsthim, he allowed no trace of wounded feeling, of impatience, of the sense ofwrong, to escape him in the masterly speech in which he justified hispolicy and won for it the ratification of the Parliament. It was not untila year later, when the hand of death was almost upon him, that fierce wordsaddressed to him face to face by Garibaldi wrung from him the impressiveanswer, "The act that has made this gulf between us was the most painfulduty of my life. By what I have felt myself I know what Garibaldi must havefelt. 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 extremedispleasure in Europe generally, and most of all in England. It directlyaffected the history of Britain by the stimulus which it gave to thedevelopment of the Volunteer Forces. Owing their origin to certaindemonstrations of hostility towards England made by the French army afterOrsini's conspiracy and the acquittal of one of his confederates in London, the Volunteer Forces rose in the three months that followed the annexationof Nice and Savoy from seventy to a hundred and eighty thousand men. Ifviewed as an indication that the ruler of France would not be content withthe frontiers of 1815, the acquisition of the Sub-Alpine provinces mightwith some reason excite alarm; on no other ground could their transfer bejustly condemned. Geographical position, language, commercial interests, separated Savoy from Piedmont and connected it with France; and though incertain parts of the County of Nice the Italian character predominated, this district as a whole bore the stamp not of Piedmont or Liguria but ofProvence. Since the separation from France in 1815 there had always been, both in Nice and Savoy, a considerable party which desired reunion withthat country. The political and social order of the Sardinian Kingdom hadfrom 1815 to 1848 been so backward, so reactionary, that the middle classesin the border-provinces looked wistfully to France as a land where theirown grievances had been removed and their own ideals attained. Theconstitutional system of Victor Emmanuel, and the despotic system of LouisNapoleon had both been too recently introduced to reverse in the minds ofthe greater number the political tradition of the preceding thirty years. Thus if there were a few who, like Garibaldi, himself of Genoese descentthough born at Nice, passionately resented separation from Italy, theyfound no considerable party either in Nice or in Savoy animated by the samefeeling. On the other hand, the ecclesiastical sentiment of Savoy renderedits transfer to France an actual advantage to the Italian State. The Papacyhad here a deeply-rooted influence. The reforms begun by Azeglio's Ministryhad been steadily resisted by a Savoyard group of deputies in the interestsof Rome. Cavour himself, in the prosecution of his larger plans, had alwaysbeen exposed to the danger of a coalition between this ultra-Conservativeparty and his opponents of the other extreme. It was well that in theconflict with the Papacy, without which there could be no such thing as aKingdom of United Italy, these influences of the Savoyard Church andNoblesse should be removed from the Parliament and the Throne. Honourableas the Savoyard party of resistance had proved themselves in Parliamentarylife, loyal and faithful as they were to their sovereign, they were yet nota part of the Italian nation. Their interests were not bound up with thecause of Italian union; their leaders were not inspired with the ideal ofItalian national life. The forces that threatened the future of the newState from within were too powerful for the surrender of a priest-governedand half-foreign element to be considered as a real loss. [Naples. ]Nice and Savoy had hardly been handed over to Napoleon when Garibaldi setout from Genoa to effect the liberation of Sicily and Naples. KingFerdinand 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 hisson Francis II. In consequence of the friendship shown by Ferdinand toRussia during the Crimean War, and of his refusal to amend his tyrannicalsystem of government, the Western Powers had in 1856 withdrawn theirrepresentatives from Naples. On the accession of Francis II. Diplomaticintercourse was renewed, and Cavour, who had been at bitter enmity withFerdinand, sought to establish relations of friendship with his son. In thewar against Austria an alliance with Naples would have been of value toSardinia as a counterpoise to Napoleon's influence, and this allianceCavour attempted to obtain. He was, however, unsuccessful; and after thePeace of Villafranca the Neapolitan Court threw itself with ardour intoschemes for the restoration of the fallen Governments and the overthrow ofPiedmontese authority in the Romagna by means of a coalition with Austriaand Spain and a counterrevolutionary movement in Italy itself. A rising onbehalf of the fugitive Grand Duke of Tuscany was to give the signal for themarch of the Neapolitan army northwards. This rising, however, was expectedin vain, and the great Catholic design resulted in nothing. Baffled in itslarger aims, the Bourbon Government proposed in the spring of 1860 tooccupy Umbria and the Marches, in order to prevent the revolutionarymovement from spreading farther into the Papal States. Against this Cavourprotested, and King Francis yielded to his threat to withdraw the Sardinianambassador from Naples. Knowing that a conspiracy existed for therestoration of the House of Murat to the Neapolitan throne, which wouldhave given France the ascendency in Southern Italy, Cavour now renewed hisdemand that Francis II. Should enter into alliance with Piedmont, acceptinga constitutional system of government and the national Italian policy ofVictor Emmanuel. But neither the summons from Turin, nor the agitation ofthe Muratists, nor the warnings of Great Britain that the Bourbon dynastycould only avert its fall by reform, produced any real change in the spiritof the Neapolitan Court. Ministers were removed, but the absolutist andanti-national system remained the same. Meanwhile Garibaldi was gatheringhis followers round him in Genoa. On the 15th of April Victor Emmanuelwrote to King Francis that unless his fatal system of policy wasimmediately abandoned the Piedmontese Government itself might shortly beforced to become the agent of his destruction. Even this menace provedfruitless; and after thus fairly exposing to the Court of Naples theconsequence of its own stubbornness, Victor Emmanuel let loose against itthe 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 inthe principal Sicilian towns. The old desire of the Sicilian Liberals forthe independence of the island had given place, under the influence of theevents of the past year, to the desire for Italian union. On theabandonment of Garibaldi's plan for the march on Rome in November, 1859, the liberation of Sicily had been suggested to him as a more feasibleenterprise, and the general himself wavered in the spring of 1860 betweenthe resumption of his Roman project and an attack upon the Bourbons ofNaples from the south. The rumour spread through Sicily that Garibaldiwould soon appear there at the head of his followers. On the 3rd of Aprilan attempt at insurrection was made at Palermo. It was repressed withoutdifficulty; and although disturbances broke out in other parts of theisland, the reports which reached Garibaldi at Genoa as to the spirit andprospects of the Sicilians were so disheartening that for a while he seemeddisposed to abandon the project of invasion as hopeless for the present. Itwas only when some of the Sicilian exiles declared that they would risk theenterprise without him that he resolved upon immediate action. On the nightof 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 hewould have preferred that Sicily should remain unmolested until someprogress had been made in the consolidation of the North Italian Kingdom, did not venture to restrain Garibaldi's movements, with which he was wellacquainted. He required, however, that the expedition should not touch atthe 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 responsibilityat the outset by the fiction of a sudden capture of the two merchant-ships, continued to spare Victor Emmanuel unnecessary difficulties by avoiding thefleet which was supposed to be on the watch for him off Cagliari inSardinia, and only interrupted his voyage by a landing at a desolate spoton the Tuscan coast in order to take up artillery and ammunition which werewaiting for him there. On the 11th of May, having heard from some Englishmerchantmen that there were no Neapolitan vessels of war at Marsala, hemade for this harbour. The first of his two ships entered it in safety anddisembarked her crew; the second, running on a rock, lay for some timewithin range of the guns of a Neapolitan war-steamer which was bearing uptowards the port. But for some unknown reason the Neapolitan commanderdelayed opening fire, and the landing of Garibaldi's followers was duringthis interval completed without loss. [498][Garibaldi captures Palermo, May 26. ]On the following day the little army, attired in the red shirts which areworn by cattle-ranchers in South America, marched eastwards from Marsala. Bands of villagers joined them as they moved through the country, and manyunexpected adherents were gained among the priests. On the third day'smarch Neapolitan troops were seen in position at Calatafimi. They wereattacked by Garibaldi, and, though far superior in number, were put to therout. The moral effects of this first victory were very great. TheNeapolitan commander retired into Palermo, leaving Garibaldi master of thewestern portion of the island. Insurrection spread towards the interior;the revolutionary party at Palermo itself regained its courage and preparedto co-operate with Garibaldi on his approach. On nearing the city Garibaldidetermined that he could not risk a direct assault upon the forces whichoccupied it. He resolved, if possible, to lure part of the defenders intothe mountains, and during their absence to throw himself into the city andto trust to the energy of its inhabitants to maintain himself there. Thisstrategy succeeded. While the officer in command of some of the Neapolitanbattalions, tempted by an easy victory over the ill-disciplined Sicilianbands opposed to him, pursued his beaten enemy into the mountains, Garibaldi with the best of his troops fought his way into Palermo on thenight of May 26th. Fighting continued in the streets during the next twodays, and the cannon of the forts and of the Neapolitan vessels in harbourineffectually bombarded the city. On the 30th, at the moment when theabsent battalions were coming again into sight, an armistice was signed onboard the British man-of-war _Hannibal_. The Neapolitan commander gaveup to Garibaldi the bank and public buildings, and withdrew into the fortsoutside the town. But the Government at Naples was now becoming thoroughlyalarmed; and considering Palermo as lost, it directed the troops to beshipped to Messina and to Naples itself. Garibaldi was thus left inundisputed possession of the Sicilian capital. He remained there for nearlytwo months, assuming the government of Sicily as Dictator in the name ofVictor Emmanuel, appointing Ministers, and levying taxes. Heavyreinforcements reached him from Italy. The Neapolitans, driven from theinterior as well as from the towns occupied by the invader, now held onlythe north-eastern extremity of the island. On the 20th of July Garibaldi, operating both by land and sea, attacked and defeated them at Milazzo onthe northern coast. The result of this victory was that Messina itself, with the exception of the citadel, was evacuated by the Neapolitans withoutresistance. Garibaldi, whose troops now numbered eighteen thousand, wasmaster of the island from sea to sea, and could with confidence lookforward 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 politicalcreeds which severed those whose devotion to Italy was the strongest cameclearly into view. This antagonism stood embodied in its extreme form inthe contrast between Mazzini and Cavour. Mazzini, handling moral andpolitical conceptions with something of the independence of amathematician, laid it down as the first duty of the Italian nation topossess itself of Rome and Venice, regardless of difficulties that might beraised from without. By conviction he desired that Italy should be aRepublic, though under certain conditions he might be willing to toleratethe monarchy of Victor Emmanuel. Cavour, accurately observing the play ofpolitical forces in Europe, conscious above all of the strength of thoseties which still bound Napoleon to the clerical cause, knew that there werelimits which Italy could not at present pass without ruin. The centre ofMazzini's hopes, an advance upon Rome itself, he knew to be an act ofself-destruction for Italy, and this advance he was resolved at all coststo prevent. Cavour had not hindered the expedition to Sicily; he had notconsidered it likely to embroil Italy with its ally; but neither had hebeen the author of this enterprise. The liberation of Sicily might bedeemed the work rather of the school of Mazzini than of Cavour. Garibaldiindeed was personally loyal to Victor Emmanuel; but around him there weremen who, if not Republicans, were at least disposed to make the grant ofSicily to Victor Emmanuel conditional upon the king's fulfilling the willof the so-called Party of Action, and consenting to an attack upon Rome. Under the influence of these politicians Garibaldi, in reply to adeputation expressing to him the desire of the Sicilians for union with theKingdom of Victor Emmanuel, declared that he had come to fight not forSicily alone but for all Italy, and that if the annexation of Sicily was totake place before the union of Italy was assured, he must withdraw his handfrom the work and retire. The effect produced by these words of Garibaldiwas so serious that the Ministers whom he had placed in office resigned. Garibaldi endeavoured to substitute for them men more agreeable to theParty of Action, but a demonstration in Palermo itself forced him tonominate Sicilians in favour of immediate annexation. The public opinion ofthe island was hostile to Republicanism and to the friends of Mazzini; norcould the prevailing anarchy long continue without danger of a reactionarymovement. Garibaldi himself possessed no glimmer of administrative faculty. After weeks of confusion and misgovernment he saw the necessity ofaccepting direction from Turin, and consented to recognise as Pro-Dictatorof the island a nominee of Cavour, the Piedmontese Depretis. Under theinfluence of Depretis a commencement was made in the work of political andsocial 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 anduntil the capture of Palermo, had affected to disavow and condemn theenterprise as one undertaken by individuals in spite of the Government, andat their own risk. The Piedmontese ambassador was still at Naples as therepresentative of a friendly Court; and in reply to the reproaches ofGermany and Russia, Cavour alleged that the title of Dictator of Sicily inthe name of Victor Emmanuel had been assumed by Garibaldi without theknowledge or consent of his sovereign. But whatever might be said toForeign Powers, Cavour, from the time of the capture of Palermo, recognisedthat the hour had come for further steps towards Italian union; and, without committing himself to any definite line of action, he began alreadyto contemplate the overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty at Naples. It was invain that King Francis now released his political prisoners, declared theConstitution of 1848 in force, and tendered to Piedmont the alliance whichhe had before refused. Cavour, in reply to his overtures, stated that hecould not on his own authority pledge Piedmont to the support of a dynastynow almost in the agonies of dissolution, and that the matter must awaitthe meeting of Parliament at Turin. Thus far the way had not beenabsolutely closed to a reconciliation between the two Courts; but after thevictory of Garibaldi at Milazzo and the evacuation of Messina at the end ofJuly Cavour cast aside all hesitation and reserve. He appears to havethought a renewal of the war with Austria probable, and now strained everynerve to become master of Naples and its fleet before Austria could takethe field. He ordered Admiral Persano to leave two ships of war to coverGaribaldi's passage to the mainland, and with one ship to proceed to Napleshimself, and there excite insurrection and win over the Neapolitan fleet tothe flag of Victor Emmanuel. Persano reached Naples on the 3rd of August, and on the next day the negotiations between the two Courts were brokenoff. On the 19th Garibaldi crossed from Sicily to the mainland. His marchupon 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 apopular movement in the city itself would force the King to take flight, sothat Garibaldi on his arrival would find the machinery of government, aswell as the command of the fleet and the army, already in the hands ofVictor Emmanuel's representatives. If war with Austria was reallyimpending, incalculable mischief might be caused by the existence of asemi-independent Government at Naples, reckless, in its enthusiasm for themarch on Rome, of the effect which its acts might produce on the Frenchalliance. In any case the control of Italian affairs could but half belongto the King and his Minister if Garibaldi, in the full glory of hisunparalleled exploits, should add the Dictatorship of Naples to theDictatorship of Sicily. Accordingly Cavour plied every art to acceleratethe inevitable revolution. Persano and the Sardinian ambassador, Villamarina, had their confederates in the Bourbon Ministry and in theRoyal Family itself. But their efforts to drive King Francis from Naples, and to establish the authority of Victor Emmanuel before Garibaldi'sarrival, were baffled partly by the tenacity of the King and Queen, partlyby the opposition of the committees of the Party of Action, who weredetermined that power should fall into no hands but those of Garibaldihimself. It was not till Garibaldi had reached Salerno, and the Bourbongenerals had one after another declined to undertake the responsibility ofcommand in a battle against him, that Francis resolved on flight. It wasnow feared that he might induce the fleet to sail with him, and even thathe might hand it over to the Austrians. The crews, it was believed, werewilling to follow the King; the officers, though inclined to the Italiancause, 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 thecapital had become known, Persano and Villamarina disguised themselves, andin company with their partisans mingled with the crews of the fleet, whomthey induced by bribes and persuasion to empty the boilers and to cripplethe engines of their ships. When, on the 6th, King Francis, havingannounced his intention to spare the capital bloodshed, went on board amail steamer and quitted the harbour, accompanied by the ambassadors ofAustria, Prussia, and Spain, only one vessel of the fleet of followed him. An urgent summons was sent to Garibaldi, whose presence was now desired byall parties alike in order to prevent the outbreak of disorders. Leavinghis troops at Salerno, Garibaldi came by railroad to Naples on the morningof the 7th, escorted only by some of his staff. The forts were stillgarrisoned by eight thousand of the Bourbon troops, but all idea ofresistance had been abandoned, and Garibaldi drove fearlessly through thecity in the midst of joyous crowds. His first act as Dictator was todeclare the ships of war belonging to the State of the Two Sicilies unitedto those of King Victor Emmanuel under Admiral Persano's command. Beforesunset the flag of Italy was hoisted by the Neapolitan fleet. The army wasnot to be so easily incorporated with the national forces. King Francis, after abandoning the idea of a battle between Naples and Salerno, hadordered the mass of his troops to retire upon Capua in order to make afinal 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 Naplescould not be anticipated by the establishment of Victor Emmanuel's ownauthority, Cavour recognised that bold and aggressive action on the part ofthe National Government was now necessity. Garibaldi made no secret or hisintention to carry the Italian arms to Rome. The time was past when thenational 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 PapalStates before Garibaldi could move from Naples, and, while winning forItaly the last foot of ground that could be won without an actual conflictwith France, to stop short at those limits where the soldiers of Napoleonwould certainly meet an invader with their fire. The Pope was still inpossession of the Marches, of Umbria, and of the territory between theApennines and the coast from Orvieto to Terracina. Cavour had good reasonto believe that Napoleon would not strike on behalf of the Temporal Poweruntil this last narrow district was menaced. He resolved to seize upon theMarches and Umbria, and to brave the consequences. On the day ofGaribaldi's entry into Naples a despatch was sent by Cavour to the PapalGovernment requiring, in the name of Victor Emmanuel, the disbandment ofthe foreign mercenaries who in the previous spring had plundered Perugia, and whose presence was a continued menace to the peace of Italy. Theannouncement now made by Napoleon that he must break off diplomaticrelations with the Sardinian Government in case of the invasion of thePapal States produced no effect. Cavour replied that by no other meanscould he prevent revolution from mastering all Italy, and on the 10th ofSeptember the French ambassador quitted Turin. Without waiting forAntonelli's answer to his ultimatum, Cavour ordered the King's troops tocross the frontier. The Papal army was commanded by Lamoricière, a Frenchgeneral who had gained some reputation in Algiers; but the resistanceoffered to the Piedmontese was unexpectedly feeble. The column whichentered Umbria reached the southern limit without encountering any seriousopposition except from the Irish garrison of Spoleto. In the Marches, whereLamoricière had a considerable force at his disposal, the dispersion of thePapal troops and the incapacity shown in their command brought the campaignto a rapid and inglorious end. The main body of the defenders was routed onthe Musone, near Loreto, on the 19th of September. Other divisionssurrendered, and Ancona alone remained to Lamoricière. Vigorously attackedin this fortress both by land and sea, Lamoricière surrendered after asiege of eight days. Within three weeks from Garibaldi's entry into Naplesthe Piedmontese army had completed the task imposed upon it, and VictorEmmanuel 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 hisentry into Naples, was falling more and more into the hands of the Party ofAction, and, while protesting his loyalty to Victor Emmanuel, was openlyannouncing that he would march the Party of on Rome whether the King'sGovernment permitted it or no. In Sicily the officials appointed by thisParty were proceeding with such violence that Depretis, unable to obtaintroops from Cavour, resigned his post. Garibaldi suddenly appeared atPalermo on the 11th of September, appointed a new Pro-Dictator, andrepeated to the Sicilians that their union with the Kingdom of VictorEmmanuel must be postponed until all members of the Italian family werefree. But even the personal presence and the angry words of Garibaldi werepowerless to check the strong expression of Sicilian opinion in favour ofimmediate and unconditional annexation. His visit to Palermo was answeredby the appearance of a Sicilian deputation at Turin demanding immediateunion, and complaining that the island was treated by Garibaldi's officerslike a conquered province. At Naples the rash and violent utterances of theDictator were equally condemned. The Ministers whom he had himselfappointed resigned. Garibaldi replaced them by others who were almostRepublicans, and sent a letter to Victor Emmanuel requesting him to consentto the march upon Rome and to dismiss Cavour. It was known in Turin that atthis very moment Napoleon was taking steps to increase the French force inRome, and to garrison the whole of the territory that still remained to thePope. Victor Emmanuel understood how to reply to Garibaldi's letter. Heremained true to his Minister, and sent orders to Villamarina at Naples incase Garibaldi should proclaim the Republic to break off all relations withhim and to secure the fleet. The fall of Ancona on September 28th brought atimely accession of popularity and credit to Cavour. He made the Parliamentwhich assembled at Turin four days later arbiter in the struggle betweenGaribaldi and himself, and received from it an almost unanimous vote ofconfidence. Garibaldi would perhaps have treated lightly any resolution ofParliament which conflicted with his own opinion: he shrank from a breachwith the soldier of Novara and Solferino. Now, as at other moments ofdanger, the character and reputation of Victor Emmanuel stood Italy in goodstead. In the enthusiasm which Garibaldi's services to Italy excited inevery patriotic heart, there was room for thankfulness that Italy possesseda sovereign and a statesman strong enough even to withstand its hero whenhis 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 theEuropean Powers would intervene in his behalf. The trustworthy part of hisarmy had gathered round the fortress of Capua on the Volturno, and therewere indications that Garibaldi would here meet with far more seriousresistance than he had yet encountered. While he was still in Naples, histroops, which had pushed northwards, sustained a repulse at Cajazzo. Emboldened by this success, the Neapolitan army at the beginning of Octoberassumed the offensive. It was with difficulty that Garibaldi, placinghimself again at the head of his forces, drove the enemy back to Capua. Butthe arms of Victor Emmanuel were now thrown into the scale. Crossing theApennines, and driving before him the weak force that was intended to barhis way at Isernia, the King descended in the rear of the Neapolitan army. The Bourbon commander, warned of his approach, moved northwards on the lineof the Garigliano, leaving a garrison to defend Capua. Garibaldi followedon 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 theKing, reserved on the part of Garibaldi, who saw in the King's suite themen by whom he had been prevented from invading the Papal States in theprevious year. In spite of their common patriotism the volunteers ofGaribaldi and the army of Victor Emmanuel were rival bodies, and therelations between the chiefs of each camp were strained and difficult. Garibaldi himself returned to the siege of Capua, while the King marchednorthwards against the retreating Neapolitans. All that was great inGaribaldi's career was now in fact accomplished. The politicians about himhad attempted at Naples, as in Sicily, to postpone the union with VictorEmmanuel's monarchy, and to convoke a Southern Parliament which should fixthe conditions on which annexation would be permitted; but, afterdiscrediting the General, they had been crushed by public opinion, and apopular vote which was taken at the end of October on the question ofimmediate union showed the majority in favour of this course to beoverwhelming. After the surrender of Capua on the 2nd of November, VictorEmmanuel made his entry into Naples. Garibaldi, whose request for theLieutenancy of Southern Italy for the space of a year with full powers wasrefused by the King, [502] declined all minor honours and rewards, anddeparted to his home, still filled with resentment against Cavour, andpromising his soldiers that he would return in the spring and lead them toRome and Venice. The reduction of Gaeta, where King Francis II. Had takenrefuge, and of the citadel of Messina, formed the last act of the war. TheFrench fleet for some time prevented the Sardinians from operating againstGaeta from the sea, and the siege in consequence made slow progress. It wasnot until the middle of January, 1861, that Napoleon permitted the Frenchadmiral to quit his station. The bombardment was now opened both by land andsea, and after a brave resistance Gaeta surrendered on the 14th ofFebruary. King Francis and his young Queen, a sister of the Empress ofAustria, were conveyed in a French steamer to the Papal States, and therebegan their life-long exile. The citadel of Messina, commanded by one ofthe few Neapolitan officers who showed any soldierly spirit, maintained itsobstinate defence for a month after the Bourbon flag had disappeared fromthe 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 withAustria, Italy with the exception of Rome and Venice was united underVictor Emmanuel. Of all the European Powers, Great Britain alone watchedthe creation of the new Italian Kingdom with complete sympathy andapproval. Austria, though it had made peace at Zürich, declined to renewdiplomatic intercourse with Sardinia, and protested against the assumptionby Victor Emmanuel of the title of King of Italy. Russia, the ancientpatron of the Neapolitan Bourbons, declared that geographical conditionsalone prevented its intervention against their despoilers. Prussia, thoughunder a new sovereign, had not yet completely severed the ties which boundit to Austria. Nevertheless, in spite of wide political ill-will, and ofthe passionate hostility of the clerical party throughout Europe, there waslittle probability that the work of the Italian people would be overthrownby external force. The problem which faced Victor Emmanuel's Government wasnot so much the frustration of reactionary designs from without as thedetermination of the true line of policy to be followed in regard to Romeand Venice. There were few who, like Azeglio, held that Rome might bepermanently left outside the Italian Kingdom; there were none who held thisof Venice. Garibaldi might be mad enough to hope for victory in a campaignagainst Austria and against France at the head of such a troop as hehimself could muster; Cavour would have deserved ill of his country if hehad for one moment countenanced the belief that the force which hadoverthrown the Neapolitan Bourbons could with success, or with impunity toItaly, measure itself against the defenders of Venetia or of Rome. Yet themind of Cavour was not one which could rest in mere passive expectancy asto the future, or in mere condemnation of the unwise schemes of others. Hisintelligence, so luminous, so penetrating, that in its utterances we seemat times to be listening to the very spirit of the age, ranged over widefields of moral and of spiritual interests in its forecast of the future ofItaly, and spent its last force in one of those prophetic delineationswhose breadth and power the world can feel, though a later time alone canjudge of their correspondence with the destined course of history. Venicewas less to Europe than Rome; its transfer to Italy would, Cavour believed, be effected either by arms or negotiations so soon as the German raceshould find a really national Government, and refuse the service which hadhitherto been exacted from it for the maintenance of Austrian interests. Itwas to Prussia, as the representative of nationality in Germany, thatCavour looked as the natural ally of Italy in the vindication of that partof the national inheritance which still lay under the dominion of theHapsburg. Rome, unlike Venice, was not only defended by foreign arms, itwas the seat of a Power whose empire over the mind of man was not the sportof military or political vicissitudes. Circumstances might cause France torelax its grasp on Rome, but it was not to such an accident that Cavourlooked for the incorporation of Rome with Italy. He conceived that the timewould arrive when the Catholic world would recognise that the Church wouldbest fulfil its task in complete separation from temporal power. Rome wouldthen assume its natural position as the centre of the Italian State; theChurch would be the noblest friend, not the misjudging enemy, of theItalian national monarchy. Cavour's own religious beliefs were perhaps lesssimple than he chose to represent them. Occupying himself, however, withinstitutions, not with dogmas, he regarded the Church in profoundearnestness as a humanising and elevating power. He valued its independenceso highly that even on the suppression of the Piedmontese monasteries hehad refused to give to the State the administration of the revenue arisingfrom the sale of their lands, and had formed this into a fund belonging tothe Church itself, in order that the clergy might not become salariedofficers of the State. Human freedom was the principle in which he trusted;and looking upon the Church as the greatest association formed by men, hebelieved that here too the rule of freedom, of the absence ofState-regulation, would in the end best serve man's highest interests. Withthe passing away of the Pope's temporal power, Cavour imagined that theconstitution of the Church itself would become more democratic, moreresponsive to the movement of the modern world. His own effort inecclesiastical reform had been to improve the condition and to promote theindependence of the lower clergy. He had hoped that each step in theirmoral and material progress would make them more national at heart; andthough this hope had been but partially fulfilled, Cavour had never ceasedto cherish the ideal of a national Church which, while recognising its Headin Rome, should cordially and without reserve accept the friendship of theItalian 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 thecommon moral interest of Italian nationality and the Catholic Church, thatCavour gave his last counsels to the Italian Parliament. He was not himselfto lead the nation farther towards the Promised Land. The immense exertionswhich he had maintained during the last three years, the indignation andanxiety caused to him by Garibaldi's attacks, produced an illness whichCavour's own careless habits of life and the unskilfulness of his doctorsrendered fatal. With dying lips he repeated to those about him the words inwhich he had summed up his policy in the Italian Parliament: "A free Churchin a free State. " [504] Other Catholic lands had adjusted by Concordatswith the Papacy the conflicting claims of temporal and spiritual authorityin such matters as the appointment of bishops, the regulation of schools, the family-rights of persons married without ecclesiastical form. Cavourappears to have thought that in Italy, where the whole nation was in asense Catholic, the Church might as safely and as easily be left to manageits own affairs as in the United States, where the Catholic community isonly one among many religious societies. His optimism, his sanguine andlarge-hearted tolerance, was never more strikingly shown than in thisfidelity to the principle of liberty, even in the case of those who for thetime declined all reconciliation with the Italian State. Whether Cavour'sideal was an impracticable fancy a later age will decide. The ascendencywithin the Church of Rome would seem as yet to have rested with theelements most opposed to the spirit of the time, most obstinately bent onsetting faith and reason in irreconcilable enmity. In place of thatdemocratic movement within the hierarchy and the priesthood which Cavouranticipated, absolutism has won a new crown in the doctrine of PapalInfallibility. Catholic dogma has remained impervious to the solvents whichduring the last thirty years have operated with perceptible success on thetheology of Protestant lands. Each conquest made in the world of thoughtand knowledge is still noted as the next appropriate object of denunciationby the Vatican. Nevertheless the cautious spirit will be slow to concludethat hopes like those of Cavour were wholly vain. A single generation maysee but little of the seed-time, nothing of the harvests that are yet toenrich mankind. And even if all wider interests be left out of view, enoughremains to justify Cavour's policy of respect for the independence of theChurch in the fact that Italy during the thirty years succeeding theestablishment of its union has remained free from civil war. Cavour waswont to refer to the Constitution which the French National Assemblyimposed upon the clergy in 1790 as the type of erroneous legislation. Hadhis own policy and that of his successors not been animated by a wiserspirit; had the Government of Italy, after overthrowing the Pope's temporalsovereignty, sought enemies among the rural priesthood and theircongregations, the provinces added to the Italian Kingdom by Garibaldiwould hardly have been maintained by the House of Savoy without a secondand severer struggle. Between the ideal Italy which filled the thoughts notonly of Mazzini but of some of the best English minds of that time--theland of immemorial greatness, touched once more by the divine hand andadvancing from strength to strength as the intellectual and moral pioneeramong nations--between this ideal and the somewhat hard and commonplacerealities of the Italy of to-day there is indeed little enough resemblance. Poverty, the pressure of inordinate taxation, the physical and moral habitsinherited from centuries of evil government, --all these have darkened in nocommon measure the conditions from which Italian national life has to bebuilt up. If in spite of overwhelming difficulties each crisis has hithertobeen surmounted; if, with all that is faulty and infirm, the omens for thefuture of Italy are still favourable, one source of its good fortune hasbeen the impress given to its ecclesiastical policy by the great statesmanto whom above all other men it owes the accomplishment of its union, andwho, while claiming for Italy the whole of its national inheritance, yetdetermined to inflict no needless wound upon the conscience of Rome. CHAPTER XXIII. Germany after 1858--The Regency in Prussia--Army re-organisation--KingWilliam I. --Conflict between the Crown and the Parliament--Bismarck--Thestruggle continued--Austria from 1859--The October Diploma--Resistance ofHungary--The Reichsrath--Russia under Alexander II. --Liberation of theSerfs--Poland--The Insurrection of 1863--Agrarian measures inPoland--Schleswig-Holstein--Death of Frederick VII. --Plans ofBismarck--Campaign in Schleswig--Conference of London--Treaty ofVienna--England and Napoleon III. --Prussia and Austria--Convention ofGastein--Italy--Alliance of Prussia with Italy--Proposals for a Congressfail--War between Austria and Prussia--Napoleon III. --Königgrätz--Custozza-Mediation of Napoleon--Treaty of Prague--South Germany--Projectsfor compensation to France--Austria and Hungary--Deák--Establishment ofthe 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, theGerman people believed themselves to have entered on a new political era. King Frederick William IV. , who, since 1848, had disappointed every hopethat had been fixed on Prussia and on himself, was compelled by mentaldisorder to withdraw from public affairs in the autumn of 1858. Hisbrother, Prince William of Prussia, who had for a year acted as the King'srepresentative, now assumed the Regency. In the days when King FrederickWilliam still retained some vestiges of his reputation the Prince ofPrussia 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 wasdisposed to tolerate, and even to treat with a certain respect, the humbleelements of constitutional government which he found in existence. Therewas more manliness in his nature than in that of his brother, more beliefin the worth of his own people. The espionage, the servility, the overdoneprofessions of sanctity in Manteuffel's régime displeased him, but most ofall he despised its pusillanimity in the conduct of foreign affairs. Hisheart indeed was Prussian, not German, and the destiny which created himthe first Emperor of united Germany was not of his own making nor of hisown seeking; but he felt that Prussia ought to hold a far greater stationboth 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 tooccupy was the task that lay before himself. During the twelve monthspreceding the Regency the retirement of the King had not been treated asmore than temporary, and the Prince of Prussia, though constantly atvariance with Manteuffel's Cabinet, had therefore not considered himself atliberty to remove his brother's advisers. His first act on the assumptionof the constitutional office of Regent was to dismiss the hated Ministry. Prince Antony of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was called to office, and postsin the Government were given to men well known as moderate Liberals. Thoughthe Regent stated in clear terms that he had no intention of forming aLiberal party-administration, his action satisfied public opinion. Thetroubles and the failures of 1849 had inclined men to be content with farless than had been asked years before. The leaders of the more advancedsections among the Liberals preferred for the most part to remain outsideParliamentary life rather than to cause embarrassment to the newGovernment; and the elections of 1859 sent to Berlin a body ofrepresentatives fully disposed to work with the Regent and his Ministers inthe 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 eventsthat established Italian independence, told powerfully upon public opinionthroughout Germany. Hopes that had been crushed in 1849 now revived. Withthe collapse of military despotism in the Austrian Empire the clouds ofreaction seemed everywhere to be passing away; it was possible once more tothink of German national union and of common liberties in which all Germansshould share. As in 1808 the rising of the Spaniards against Napoleon hadinspired Blücher and his countrymen with the design of a truly nationaleffort against their foreign oppressor, so in 1859 the work of Cavourchallenged the Germans to prove that their national patriotism and theirpolitical aptitude were not inferior to those of the Italian people. Menwho had been prominent in the National Assembly at Frankfort again met oneanother and spoke to the nation. In the Parliaments of several of the minorStates resolutions were brought forward in favour of the creation of acentral German authority. Protests were made against the infringement ofconstitutional rights that had been common during the last ten years;patriotic meetings and demonstrations were held; and a National Society, inimitation of that which had prepared the way for union with Piedmont inCentral and Southern Italy, was formally established. There was indeed nosuch preponderating opinion in favour of Prussian leadership as had existedin 1848. The southern States had displayed a strong sympathy with Austriain its war with Napoleon III. , and had regarded the neutrality of Prussiaduring the Italian campaign as a desertion of the German cause. Here therewere few who looked with friendly eye upon Berlin. It was in the minorstates of the north, and especially in Hesse-Cassel, where the strugglebetween the Elector and his subjects was once more breaking out, that thestrongest hopes were directed towards the new Prussian ruler, and themeasures 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 in1797, and had been present at the battle of Arcis-sur-Aube, the last foughtby Napoleon against the Allies in 1814. During forty years he had served onevery commission that had been occupied with Prussian military affairs; noman better understood the military organisation of his country, no man moreclearly recognised its capacities and its faults. The defective conditionof the Prussian army had been the principal, though not the sole, cause ofthe miserable submission to Austria at Olmütz in 1850, and of theabandonment of all claims to German leadership on the part of the Court ofBerlin. The Prince would himself have risked all chances of disaster ratherthan inflict upon Prussia the humiliation with which King Frederick Williamthen purchased peace; but Manteuffel had convinced his sovereign that thearmy could not engage in a campaign against Austria without ruin. Militaryimpotence was the only possible justification for the policy then adopted, and the Prince determined that Prussia should not under his own rule havethe same excuse for any political shortcomings. The work of reorganisationwas indeed begun during the reign of Frederick William IV. , through theenforcement of the three-years' service to which the conscript was liableby 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 improvementattempted in the organisation of the Landwehr. When in 1859 the order formobilisation was given in consequence of the Italian war, it was discoveredthat the Landwehr battalions were almost useless. The members of this forcewere mostly married men approaching middle life, who had been too longengaged in other pursuits to resume their military duties with readiness, and whose call to the field left their families without means of supportand chargeable upon the public purse. Too much, in the judgment of thereformers of the Prussian army, was required from men past youth, notenough from youth itself. The plan of the Prince Regent was therefore toenforce in the first instance with far more stringency the law imposing theuniversal obligation to military service; and, while thus raising theannual levy from 40, 000 to 60, 000 men, to extend the period of service inthe Reserve, into which the young soldier passed on the completion of histhree years with the colours, from two to four years. Asserting withgreater rigour its claim to seven years in the early life of the citizen, the State would gain, without including the Landwehr, an effective army offour hundred thousand men, and would practically be able to dispense withthe service of those who were approaching middle life, except in cases ofgreat urgency. In the execution of this reform the Government could on itsown authority enforce the increased levy and the full three years' servicein the standing army; for the prolongation of service in the Reserve, andfor the greater expenditure entailed by the new system, the consent ofParliament 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 wereaccepted by public opinion and by both Chambers of Parliament; it was, however, held by the Liberal leaders that the increase of expendituremight, without impairing the efficiency of the army, be avoided byreturning to the system of two-years service with the colours, which duringso long a period had been thought sufficient for the training of thesoldier. The Regent, however, was convinced that the discipline and theinstruction of three years were indispensable to the Prussian conscript, and he refused to accept the compromise suggested. The mobilisation of 1859had given him an opportunity for forming additional battalions; andalthough the Landwehr were soon dismissed to their homes the new formationwas retained, and the place of the retiring militiamen was filled byconscripts of the year. The Lower Chamber, in voting the sum required in1860 for the increased numbers of the army, treated this arrangement astemporary, 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 newregiments their names and colours. The year 1861 passed without bringingthe questions at issue between the Government and the Chamber of Deputiesto a settlement. Public feeling, disappointed in the reserved andhesitating policy which was still followed by the Court in German affairs, stimulated too by the rapid consolidation of the Italian monarchy, whichthe Prussian Government on its part had as yet declined to recognise, wasbecoming impatient and resentful. It seemed as if the Court of Berlin stillshrank from committing itself to the national cause. The general confidencereposed in the new ruler at his accession was passing away; and when in thesummer of 1861 the dissolution of Parliament took place, the electionsresulted in the return not only of a Progressist majority, but of amajority little inclined to submit to measures of compromise, or to shrinkfrom 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 impulseof public opinion, the Government was now beginning to adopt a morevigorous policy in German affairs, and to re-assert Prussia's claims toan independent leadership in defiance of the restored Diet of Frankfort. But the conflict with the Lower Chamber was not to be averted by revivedenergy abroad. The Army Bill, which was passed at once by the UpperHouse, was referred to a hostile Committee on reaching the Chamber ofDeputies, and a resolution was carried insisting on the right of therepresentatives of the people to a far more effective control over theBudget than they had hitherto exercised. The result of this vote was thedissolution of Parliament by the King, and the resignation of theMinistry, with the exception of General Roon, Minister of War, and two ofthe most conservative among his colleagues. Prince Hohenlohe, Presidentof the Upper House, became chief of the Government. There was now an openand undisguised conflict between the Crown and the upholders ofParliamentary rights. "King or Parliament" was the expression in whichthe newly-appointed Ministers themselves summed up the struggle. Theutmost pressure was exerted by the Government in the course of theelections which followed, but in vain. The Progressist Party returned inoverwhelming strength to the new Parliament; the voice of the countryseemed unmistakably to condemn the policy to which the King and hisadvisers were committed. After a long and sterile discussion in theBudget Committee, the debate on the Army Bill began in the Lower House onthe 11th of September. Its principal clauses were rejected by an almostunanimous vote. An attempt made by General Roon to satisfy his opponentsby a partial and conditional admission of the principle of two-years'service resulted only in increased exasperation on both sides. Hohenloheresigned, and the King now placed in power, at the head of a Ministry ofconflict, the most resolute and unflinching of all his friends, the mostcontemptuous 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 of1848. He had indeed held some obscure official posts before that epoch, butit 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 oneof two Deputies who refused to join in the vote of thanks to FrederickWilliam IV. For the Constitution which he had promised to Prussia. Bismarck, then thirty-three years old, was a Royalist of Royalists, thetype, as it seemed, of the rough and masterful Junker, or Squire, of theolder parts of Prussia, to whom all reforms from those of Stein downwardswere 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 tothe people; Bismarck had the courage to say so. When reaction came therewere naturally many, and among them King Frederick William, who wereinterested in the man who in the heyday of constitutional enthusiasm hadtreated the whole movement as so much midsummer madness, and had remainedfaithful to monarchical authority as the one thing needful for the PrussianState. Bismarck continued to take a prominent part in the Parliaments ofBerlin and Erfurt; it was not, however, till 1851 that he passed into theinner official circle. He was then sent as the representative of Prussia tothe restored Diet of Frankfort. As an absolutist and a conservative, brought up in the traditions of the Holy Alliance, Bismarck had in earlierdays looked up to Austria as the mainstay of monarchical order and thehistoric barrier against the flood of democratic and wind-driven sentimentwhich threatened to deluge Germany. He had even approved the surrender madeat Olmütz in 1850, as a matter of necessity; but the belief now grew strongin his mind, and was confirmed by all he saw at Frankfort, that Austriaunder Schwarzenberg's rule was no longer the Power which had been contentto share the German leadership with Prussia in the period before 1848, buta Power which meant to rule in Germany uncontrolled. In contact with therepresentatives of that outworn system which Austria had resuscitated atFrankfort, and with the instruments of the dominant State itself, Bismarcksoon learnt to detest the paltriness of the one and the insolence of theother. He declared the so-called Federal system to be a mere device foremploying the secondary German States for the aggrandisement of Austria andthe humiliation of Prussia. The Court of Vienna, and with it the Diet ofFrankfort, became in his eyes the enemy of Prussian greatness andindependence. During the Crimean war he was the vigorous opponent of analliance with the Western Powers, not only from distrust of France, andfrom regard towards Russia as on the whole the most constant and the mostnatural ally of his own country, but from the conviction that Prussia oughtto assert a national policy wholly independent of that of the Court ofVienna. That the Emperor of Austria was approaching more or less nearly tounion with France and England was, in Bismarck's view, a good reason whyPrussia should stand fast in its relations of friendship with St. Petersburg. [506] The policy of neutrality, which King Frederick Williamand Manteuffel adopted more out of disinclination to strenuous action thanfrom any clear political view, was advocated by Bismarck for reasons which, if they made Europe nothing and Prussia everything, were at least inspiredby a keen and accurate perception of Prussia's own interests in its presentand future relations with its neighbours. When the reign of FrederickWilliam ended, Bismarck, who stood high in the confidence of the newRegent, was sent as ambassador to St. Petersburg. He subsequentlyrepresented Prussia for a short time at the Court of Napoleon III. , and wasrecalled by the King from Paris in the autumn of 1862 in order to be placedat the head of the Government. Far better versed in diplomacy than inordinary administration, he assumed, together with the Presidency of theCabinet, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. [Bismarck and the Lower Chamber, 1862. ]There were now at the head of the Prussian State three men eminently suitedto work with one another, and to carry out, in their own rough and militaryfashion, the policy which was to unite Germany under the House ofHohenzollern. The King, Bismarck, and Roon were thoroughly at one in theiraim, the enforcement of Prussia's ascendency by means of the army. Thedesigns of the Minister, which expanded with success and which involved acertain daring in the choice of means, were at each new development so ablyveiled or disclosed, so dexterously presented to the sovereign, as toovercome his hesitation on striking into many an unaccustomed path. Roonand his workmen, who, in the face of a hostile Parliament and a hostilePress, had to supply to Bismarck what a foreign alliance and enthusiasticnational sentiment had supplied to Cavour, forged for Prussia a weapon ofsuch temper that, against the enemies on whom it was employed, noextraordinary genius was necessary to render its thrust fatal. It was nodoubt difficult for the Prime Minister, without alarming his sovereign andwithout risk of an immediate breach with Austria, to make his ulterior aimsso clear as to carry the Parliament with him in the policy of militaryreorganisation. Words frank even to brutality were uttered by him, but theysounded more like menace and bluster than the explanation of awell-considered plan. "Prussia must keep its forces together, " he said inone of his first Parliamentary appearances, "its boundaries are not thoseof a sound State. The great questions of the time are to be decided not byspeeches and votes of majorities but by blood and iron. " After theexperience of 1848 and 1850, a not too despondent political observer mightwell have formed the conclusion that nothing less than the militaryoverthrow of Austria could give to Germany any tolerable system of nationalgovernment, or even secure to Prussia its legitimate field of action. Thiswas the keystone of Bismarck's belief, but he failed to make his purposeand his motives intelligible to the representatives of the Prussian people. He was taken for a mere bully and absolutist of the old type. His personalcharacteristics, his arrogance, his sarcasm, his habit of banter, exasperated and inflamed. Roon was no better suited to the atmosphere of apopular assembly. Each encounter of the Ministers with the Chamberembittered the struggle and made reconciliation more difficult. TheParliamentary system of Prussia seemed threatened in its very existencewhen, after the rejection by the Chamber of Deputies of the clause in theBudget providing for the cost of the army-reorganisation, this clause wasrestored by the Upper House, and the Budget of the Government passed in itsoriginal form. By the terms of the Constitution the right of the UpperHouse in matters of taxation was limited to the approval or rejection ofthe Budget sent up to it from the Chamber of Representatives. It possessedno power of amendment. Bismarck, however, had formed the theory that in theevent of a disagreement between the two Houses a situation arose for whichthe Constitution had not provided, and in which therefore the Crown wasstill possessed of its old absolute authority. No compromise, nonegotiation between the two Houses, was, in his view, to be desired. He wasresolved to govern and to levy taxes without a Budget, and had obtained theKing's permission to close the session immediately the Upper House hadgiven its vote. But before the order for prorogation could be brought downthe President of the Lower Chamber had assembled his colleagues, and theunanimous vote of those present declared the action of the Upper House nulland void. In the agitation attending this trial of strength between theCrown, the Ministry and the Upper House on one side and the RepresentativeChamber 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 thespirit of combat, and received the most demonstrative proofs of popularsympathy and support. Representations of great earnestness were made to theKing, but they failed to shake in the slightest degree his confidence inhis Minister, or to bend his fixed resolution to carry out his militaryreforms to the end. The claim of Parliament to interfere with matters ofmilitary organisation in Prussia touched him in his most sensitive point. He declared that the aim of his adversaries was nothing less than theestablishment of a Parliamentary instead of a royal army. In perfectsincerity he believed that the convulsions of 1848 were on the point ofbreaking out afresh. "You mourn the conflict between the Crown and thenational representatives, " he said to the spokesman of an importantsociety; "do I not mourn it? I sleep no single night. " The anxiety, thedespondency of the sovereign were shared by the friends of Prussiathroughout Germany; its enemies saw with wonder that Bismarck in hisstruggle with the educated Liberalism of the middle classes did not shrinkfrom dalliance with the Socialist leaders and their organs. When Parliamentreassembled at the beginning of 1863 the conflict was resumed with evengreater 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 theirdismissal. The King refused to receive the deputation which was to presentthe address, and in the written communication in which he replied to it hesharply reproved the Assembly for their errors and presumption. It was invain that the Army Bill was again introduced. The House, while allowing theordinary military expenditure for the year, struck out the costs of thereorganisation, and declared Ministers personally answerable for the sumsexpended. Each appearance of the leading members of the Cabinet now becamethe signal for contumely and altercation. The decencies of debate ceased tobe observed on either side. When the President attempted to set some limitto the violence of Bismarck and Roon, and, on resistance to his authority, terminated the sitting, the Ministers declared that they would no longerappear in a Chamber where freedom of speech was denied to them. Affairscame to a deadlock. The Chamber again appealed to the King, and insistedthat reconciliation between the Crown and the nation was impossible so longas the present Ministers remained in office. The King, now thoroughlyindignant, charged the Assembly with attempting to win for itself supremepower, expressed his gratitude to his Ministers for their resistance tothis usurpation, and declared himself too confident in the loyalty of thePrussian people to be intimidated by threats. His reply was followed by theprorogation of the Assembly (May 26th). A dissolution would have been worsethan useless, for in the actual state of public opinion the Oppositionwould probably have triumphed throughout the country. It only remained forBismarck to hold his ground, and, having silenced the Parliament for awhile, to silence the Press also by the exercise of autocratic power. TheConstitution authorised the King, in the absence of the Chambers, topublish enactments on matters of urgency having the force of laws. Nosooner had the session been closed than an edict was issued empowering theGovernment, without resort to courts of law, to suppress any newspaperafter two warnings. An outburst of public indignation branded this returnto the principles of pure despotism in Prussia; but neither King norMinister was to be diverted by threats or by expostulations from hiscourse. The Press was effectively silenced. So profound, however, was thedistrust now everywhere felt as to the future of Prussia, and so deep theresentment against the Minister in all circles where Liberal influencespenetrated, that the Crown Prince himself, after in vain protesting againsta policy of violence which endangered his own prospective interests in theCrown, publicly expressed his disapproval of the action of Government. Forthis offence he was never forgiven. [Austria from 1859. ]The course which affairs were taking at Berlin excited the more bitterregret and disappointment among all friends of Prussia as at this very timeit seemed that constitutional government was being successfully establishedin the western part of the Austrian Empire. The centralised militarydespotism with which Austria emerged from the convulsions of 1848 had beenallowed ten years of undisputed sway; at the end of this time it hadbrought things to such a pass that, after a campaign in which there hadbeen but one great battle, and while still in possession of a vast army andan unbroken chain of fortresses, Austria stood powerless to move hand orfoot. It was not the defeat of Solferino or the cession of Lombardy thatexhibited the prostration of Austria's power, but the fact that while theconditions of the Peace of Zürich were swept away, and Italy was unitedunder Victor Emmanuel in defiance of the engagements made by Napoleon III. At Villafranca, the Austrian Emperor was compelled to look on with foldedarms. To have drawn the sword again, to have fired a shot in defence of thePope's temporal power or on behalf of the vassal princes of Tuscany andModena, would have been to risk the existence of the Austrian monarchy. TheState was all but bankrupt; rebellion might at any moment break out inHungary, which had already sent thousands of soldiers to the Italian camp. Peace at whatever price was necessary abroad, and at home the system ofcentralised despotism could no longer exist, come what might in its place. It was natural that the Emperor should but imperfectly understand at thefirst the extent of the concessions which it was necessary for him to make. He determined that the Provincial Councils which Schwarzenberg had promisedin 1850 should be called into existence, and that a Council of the Empire(Reichsrath), drawn in part from these, should assemble at Vienna, toadvise, though not to control, the Government in matters of finance. Sourgent, however, were the needs of the exchequer, that the Emperorproceeded at once to the creation of the Central Council, and nominated itsfirst 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 appearat Vienna unless some further guarantee was given for the restoration ofHungarian liberty was well known. The Emperor accordingly promised torestore the ancient county-organisation, which had filled so great a spacein Hungarian history before 1848, and to take steps for assembling theHungarian Diet. This, with the repeal of an edict injurious to theProtestants, opened the way for reconciliation, and the nominatedHungarians took their place in the Council, though under protest that theexisting arrangement could only be accepted as preparatory to the fullrestitution of the rights of their country. The Council continued insession during the summer of 1860. Its duties were financial; but theestablishment of financial equilibrium in Austria was inseparable from theestablishment of political stability and public confidence; and theCouncil, in its last sittings, entered on the widest constitutionalproblems. The non-German members were in the majority; and while allparties alike condemned the fallen absolutism, the rival declarations ofpolicy submitted to the Council marked the opposition which washenceforward to exist between the German Liberals of Austria and thevarious Nationalist or Federalist groups. The Magyars, uniting with thosewho had been their bitterest enemies, declared that the ancientindependence in legislation and administration of the several countriessubject to the House of Hapsburg must be restored, each country retainingits own historical character. The German minority contended that theEmperor should bestow upon his subjects such institutions as, while basedon the right of self-government should secure the unity of the Empire andthe force of its central authority. All parties were for a constitutionalsystem and for local liberties in one form or another; but while theMagyars and their supporters sought for nothing less than nationalindependence, the Germans would at the most have granted a uniform systemof provincial self-government in strict subordination to a centralrepresentative body drawn from the whole Empire and legislating for thewhole Empire. The decision of the Emperor was necessarily a compromise. Bya Diploma published on the 20th of October he promised to restore toHungary its old Constitution, and to grant wide legislative rights to theother States of the Monarchy, establishing for the transaction of affairscommon to the whole Empire an Imperial Council, and reserving for thenon-Hungarian members of this Council a qualified right of legislation forall the Empire except Hungary. [508][Hungary resists the establishment of a Central Council. ]The Magyars had conquered their King; and all the impetuous patriotism thathad 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 beencondemned to death in 1849 and who were living in exile; they swept awaythe existing law-courts, refused the taxes, and proclaimed the legislationof 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 thesincerity of his promises of reform, on which the nature of the provincialConstitutions which were published immediately after the Diploma of Octoberhad thrown some doubt. At the instance of his Hungarian advisers hedismissed the chief of his Cabinet, and called to office Schmerling, who, in 1848, had been Prime Minister of the German National Government atFrankfort. Schmerling at once promised important changes in the provincialsystems drawn up by his predecessor, but in his dealings with Hungary heproved far less tractable than the Magyars had expected. If the Hungarianshad recovered their own constitutional forms, they still stood threatenedwith the supremacy of a Central Council in all that related to themselvesin common with the rest of the Empire, and against this they rebelled. Butfrom the establishment of this Council of the Empire neither the Emperornor Schmerling would recede. An edict of February 26th, 1861, while it madegood the changes promised by Schmerling in the several provincial systems, confirmed the general provisions of the Diploma of October, and declaredthat the Emperor would maintain the Constitution of his dominions as nowestablished against an attack. [Conflict of Hungary with the Crown, 1861. ]In the following April the Provincial Diets met throughout the AustrianEmpire, and the Diet of the Hungarian Kingdom assembled at Pesth. The firstduty of each of these bodies was to elect representatives to the Council ofthe Empire which was to meet at Vienna. Neither Hungary nor Croatia, however, would elect such representatives, each claiming completelegislative independence, and declining to recognise any such externalauthority as it was now proposed to create. The Emperor warned theHungarian Diet against the consequences of its action; but the nationalspirit of the Magyars was thoroughly roused, and the County Assemblies viedwith one another in the violence of their addresses to the Sovereign. TheDiet, reviving the Constitutional difficulties connected with theabdication of Ferdinand, declared that it would only negotiate for thecoronation of Francis Joseph after the establishment of a HungarianMinistry and the restoration of Croatia and Transylvania to the HungarianKingdom. Accepting Schmerling's contention that the ancient constitutionalrights of Hungary had been extinguished by rebellion, the Emperor insistedon the establishment of a Council for the whole Empire, and refused torecede 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, anddeclared that Francis Joseph had rendered an agreement between the King andthe nation impossible. A dissolution followed. The County Assemblies tookup the national struggle. They in their turn were suppressed; theirofficers were dismissed, and military rule was established throughout theland, though with explicit declarations on the part of the King that it wasto last only till the legally existing Constitution could be brought intopeaceful 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 itsfunctions and increase in the number of its members made into a Parliamentof the Empire, assembled at Vienna. Its real character was necessarilyaltered by the absence of representatives from Hungary; and for some timethe Government seemed disposed to limit its competence to the affairs ofthe Cis-Leithan provinces; but after satisfying himself that no accord withHungary was possible, the Emperor announced this fact to the Assembly, andbade it perform its part as the organ of the Empire at large, withoutregard to the abstention of those who did not choose to exercise theirrights. The Budget for the entire Empire was accordingly submitted to theAssembly, and for the first time the expenditure of the Austrian State waslaid open to public examination and criticism. The first session of thisParliament lasted, with adjournments, from May, 1861, to December, 1862. Inlegislation it effected little, but its relations as a whole with theGovernment remained excellent, and its long-continued activity, unbroken bypopular disturbances, did much to raise the fallen credit of the AustrianState and to win for it the regard of Germany. On the close of the sessionthe Provincial Diets assembled, and throughout the spring of 1863 therivalry of the Austrian nationalities gave abundant animation to many alocal capital. In the next summer the Reichsrath reassembled at Vienna. Though Hungary remained in a condition not far removed from rebellion, theParliamentary system of Austria was gaining in strength, and indeed, as itseemed, at the expense of Hungary itself; for the Roumanian and Germanpopulation of Transylvania, rejoicing in the opportunity of detachingthemselves from the Magyars, now sent deputies to Vienna. While at Berlineach week that passed sharpened the antagonism between the nation and itsGovernment, and made the Minister's name more odious, Austria seemed tohave successfully broken with the traditions of its past, and to be fastearning for itself an honourable place among States of the constitutionaltype. One of the reproaches brought against Bismarck by the Progressist majorityin the Parliament of Berlin was that he had isolated Prussia both inGermany and in Europe. That he had roused against the Government of hiscountry the public opinion of Germany was true: that he had alienatedPrussia from all Europe was not the case; on the contrary, he hadestablished a closer relation between the Courts of Berlin and St. Petersburg than had existed at any time since the commencement of theRegency, and had secured for Prussia a degree of confidence and goodwill onthe part of the Czar which, in the memorable years that were to follow, served it scarcely less effectively than an armed alliance. Russia, sincethe Crimean War, had seemed to be entering upon an epoch of boundlesschange. The calamities with which the reign of Nicholas had closed hadexcited in that narrow circle of Russian society where thought had anyexistence a vehement revulsion against the sterile and unchanging system ofrepression, the grinding servitude of the last thirty years. From theEmperor downwards all educated men believed not only that the system ofgovernment, but that the whole order of Russian social life, must berecast. The ferment of ideas which marks an age of revolution was in fullcourse; but in what forms the new order was to be moulded, through whatprocesses Russia was to be brought into its new life, no one knew. Russiawas wanting in capable statesmen; it was even more conspicuously wanting inthe class of serviceable and intelligent agents of Government of the secondrank. Its monarch, Alexander II. , humane and well-meaning, was irresoluteand vacillating beyond the measure of ordinary men. He was not only devoidof all administrative and organising faculty himself, but so infirm ofpurpose that Ministers whose policy he had accepted feared to let him passout of their sight, lest in the course of a single journey or a singleinterview he should succumb to the persuasions of some rival politician. Inno country in Europe was there such incoherence, such self-contradiction, such absence of unity of plan and purpose in government as in Russia, whereall nominally depended upon a single will. Pressed and tormented by all therival influences that beat upon the centre of a great empire, Alexanderseems at times to have played off against one another as colleagues in thesame branch of Government the representatives of the most opposite schoolsof action, and, after assenting to the plans of one group of advisers, tohave committed the execution of these plans, by way of counterpoise, tothose who had most opposed them. But, like other weak men, he dreadednothing so much as the reproach of weakness or inconstancy; and in thecloud of half-formed or abandoned purposes there were some few to which heresolutely 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 theserfs had not been freed by Nicholas. That sovereign had long understoodthe necessity for the change, and in 1847 he had actually appointed aCommission to report on the best means of effecting it. The convulsions of1848, followed by the Hungarian and the Crimean Wars, threw the projectinto the background during the remainder of Nicholas's reign; but if thebelief of the Russian people is well founded, the last injunction of thedying Czar to his successor was to emancipate the serfs throughout hisempire. Alexander was little capable of grappling with so tremendous aproblem himself; in the year 1859, however, he directed a Commission tomake a complete inquiry into the subject, and to present a scheme ofemancipation. The labours of the Commission extended over two years; itsdiscussions were agitated, at times violent. That serfage must sooner orlater be abolished all knew; the points on which the Commission was dividedwere the bestowal of land on the peasants and the regulation of the villagecommunity. European history afforded abundant precedents in emancipation, and under an infinite variety of detail three types of the process ofenfranchisement were clearly distinguishable from one another. MariaTheresa, in liberating the serf, had required him to continue to render afixed amount of labour to his lord, and had given him on this conditionfixity of tenure in the land he occupied; the Prussian reformers had made adivision of the land between the peasant and the lord, and extinguished alllabour-dues; Napoleon, in enfranchising the serfs in the Duchy of Warsaw, had simply turned them into free men, leaving the terms of their occupationof land to be settled by arrangement or free contract with their formerlords. This example had been followed in the Baltic Provinces of Russiaitself by Alexander I. Of the three modes of emancipation, that based onfree contract had produced the worst results for the peasant; and thoughmany of the Russian landowners and their representatives in the Commissionprotested against a division of the land between themselves and their serfsas an act of agrarian revolution and spoliation, there were men in highoffice, and some few among the proprietors, who resolutely and successfullyfought for the principle of independent ownership by the peasants. Theleading spirit in this great work appears to have been Nicholas Milutine, Adjunct of the Minister of the Interior, Lanskoi. Milutine, who had drawnup the Municipal Charta of St. Petersburg, was distrusted by the Czar as arestless and uncompromising reformer. It was uncertain from day to daywhether the views of the Ministry of the Interior or those of theterritorial aristocracy would prevail; ultimately, however, underinstructions from the Palace, the Commission accepted not only theprinciple of the division of the land, but the system of communalself-government by the peasants themselves. The determination of the amountof land to be held by the peasants of a commune and of the fixed rent to bepaid to the lord was left in the first instance to private agreement; butwhere such agreement was not reached, the State, through arbiters electedat local assemblies of the nobles, decided the matter itself. The rent oncefixed, the State enabled the commune to redeem it by advancing a capitalsum to be recouped by a quit-rent to the State extending over forty-nineyears. The Ukase of the Czar converting twenty-five millions of serfs intofree proprietors, the greatest act of legislation of modern times, wassigned on the 3rd of March, 1861, and within the next few weeks was read inevery church of the Russian Empire. It was a strange comment on the systemof government in Russia that in the very month in which the edict waspublished both Lanskoi and Milutine, who had been its principal authors, were removed from their posts. The Czar feared to leave them in power tosuperintend the actual execution of the law which they had inspired. Insupporting them up to the final stage of its enactment Alexander hadstruggled against misgivings of his own, and against influences of vaststrength alike at the Court, within the Government, and in the Provinces. With the completion of the Edict of Emancipation his power of resistancewas exhausted, and its execution was committed by him to those who had beenits opponents. That some of the evils which have mingled with the good inRussian enfranchisement might have been less had the Czar resolutely stoodby the authors of reform and allowed them to complete their work inaccordance with their own designs and convictions, is scarcely open todoubt. [510][Poland, 1861, 1862. ]It had been the belief of educated men in Russia that the emancipation ofthe 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 itsEuropean neighbours. This belief was not fulfilled. Work of importance wasdone in the reconstruction of the judicial system of Russia, but in theother reforms expected little was accomplished. An insurrection which brokeout in Poland at the beginning of 1863 diverted the energies of theGovernment from all other objects; and in the overpowering outburst ofRussian patriotism and national feeling which it excited, domestic reforms, no less than the ideals of Western civilisation, lost their interest. Theestablishment of Italian independence, coinciding in time with the generalunsettlement and expectation of change which marked the first years ofAlexander's reign, had stirred once more the ill-fated hopes of the Polishnational leaders. From the beginning of the year 1861 Warsaw was the sceneof repeated tumults. The Czar was inclined, within certain limits, to apolicy of conciliation. The separate Legislature and separate army whichPoland had possessed from 1815 to 1830 he was determined not to restore;but he was willing to give Poland a large degree of administrativeautonomy, to confide the principal offices in its Government to natives, and generally to relax something of that close union with Russia which hadbeen enforced by Nicholas since the rebellion of 1831. But the concessionsof the Czar, accompanied as they were by acts of repression and severity, were far from satisfying the demands of Polish patriotism. It was in vainthat Alexander in the summer of 1862 sent his brother Constantine asViceroy to Warsaw, established a Polish Council of State, placed a Pole, Wielopolski, at the head of the Administration, superseded all the Russiangovernors of Polish provinces by natives, and gave to the municipalitiesand the districts the right of electing local councils; these concessionsseemed nothing, and were in fact nothing, in comparison with the nationalindependence which the Polish leaders claimed. The situation grew worse andworse. An attempt made upon the life of the Grand Duke Constantine duringhis entry into Warsaw was but one among a series of similar acts whichdiscredited the Polish cause and strengthened those who at St. Petersburghad from the first condemned the Czar's attempts at conciliation. At lengththe Russian Government took the step which precipitated revolt. A levy ofone in every two hundred of the population throughout the Empire had beenordered in the autumn of 1862. Instructions were sent from St. Petersburgto the effect that in raising this levy in Poland the country populationwere to be spared, and that all persons who were known to be connected withthe disorders in the towns were to be seized as soldiers. This terriblesentence against an entire political class was carried out, so far as itlay within the power of the authorities, on the night of January 14th, 1863. But before the imperial press-gang surrounded the houses of itsvictims a rumour of the intended blow had gone abroad. In the precedinghours, and during the night of the 14th, thousands fled from Warsaw and theother Polish towns into the forests. There they formed themselves intoarmed bands, and in the course of the next few days a guerilla warfarebroke out wherever Russian troops were found in insufficient strength oroff their guard. [511][Poland and Russia. ]The classes in which the national spirit of Poland lived were the so-callednoblesse, numbering hundreds of thousands, the town populations, and thepriesthood. The peasants, crushed and degraded, though not nominally inservitude, were indifferent to the national cause. On the neutrality, ifnot on the support, of the peasants the Russian Government could fairlyreckon; within the towns it found itself at once confronted by an invisiblenational Government whose decrees were printed and promulgated by unknownhands, and whose sentences of death were mercilessly executed against thosewhom it condemned as enemies or traitors to the national cause. Soextraordinary was the secrecy which covered the action of this NationalExecutive, that Milutine, who was subsequently sent by the Czar to examineinto the affairs of Poland, formed the conclusion that it had possessedaccomplices within the Imperial Government at St. Petersburg itself. ThePolish cause retained indeed some friends in Russia even after the outbreakof the insurrection; it was not until the insurrection passed the frontierof the kingdom and was carried by the nobles into Lithuania and Podoliathat the entire Russian nation took up the struggle with passionate andvindictive ardour as one for life or death. It was the fatal bane of Polishnationality that the days of its greatness had left it a claim upon vastterritories where it had planted nothing but a territorial aristocracy, andwhere the mass of population, if not actually Russian, was almostindistinguishable from the Russians in race and language, and belonged likethem to the Greek Church, which Catholic Poland had always persecuted. Forninety years Lithuania and the border provinces had been incorporated withthe Czar's dominions, and with the exception of their Polish landownersthey were now in fact thoroughly Russian. When therefore the nobles ofthese provinces declared that Poland must be reconstituted with the limitsof 1772, and subsequently took up arms in concert with the insurrectionaryGovernment at Warsaw, the Russian people, from the Czar to the peasant, felt the struggle to be nothing less than one for the dismemberment or thepreservation of their own country, and the doom of Polish nationality, atleast for some generations, was sealed. The diplomatic intervention of theWestern Powers on behalf of the constitutional rights of Poland under theTreaty of Vienna, which was to some extent supported by Austria, onlyprolonged a hopeless struggle, and gave unbounded popularity to PrinceGortschakoff, by whom, after a show of courteous attention during theearlier and still perilous stage of the insurrection, the interference ofthe Powers was resolutely and unconditionally repelled. By the spring of1864 the insurgents were crushed or exterminated. General Muravieff, theGovernor of Lithuania, fulfilled his task against the mutinous nobles ofthis province with unshrinking severity, sparing neither life nor fortuneso long as an enemy of Russia remained to be overthrown. It was at Wilna, the Lithuanian capital, not at Warsaw, that the terrors of Russianrepression were the greatest. Muravieff's executions may have been lessnumerous than is commonly supposed; but in the form of pecuniaryrequisitions and fines he undoubtedly aimed at nothing less than the utterruin 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 forall to establish a friend to Russia in every homestead of the kingdom bymaking the peasant owner of the land on which he laboured. Theinsurrectionary Government at the outbreak of the rebellion had attemptedto win over the peasantry by promising enactments to this effect, but noone had responded to their appeal. In the autumn of 1863 the Czar recalledMilutine 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 themeasures necessary to be taken for its future government and organisation. Milutine obtained the assistance of some of the men who had laboured mostearnestly with him in the enfranchisement of the Russian serfs; and in thecourse of a few weeks he returned to St. Petersburg, carrying with him thedraft of measures which were to change the face of Poland. He recommendedon the one hand that every political institution separating Poland from therest of the Empire should be swept away, and the last traces of Polishindependence utterly obliterated; on the other hand, that the peasants, asthe only class on which Russia could hope to count in the future, should bemade absolute and independent owners of the land they occupied. PrinceGortschakoff, who had still some regard for the opinion of Western Europe, and possibly some sympathy for the Polish aristocracy, resisted this daringpolicy; but the Czar accepted Milutine's counsel, and gave him a free handin the execution of his agrarian scheme. The division of the land betweenthe nobles and the peasants was accordingly carried out by Milutine's ownofficers under conditions very different from those adopted in Russia. Thewhole strength of the Government was thrown on to the side of the peasantand against the noble. Though the population was denser in Poland than inRussia, the peasant received on an average four times as much land; thecompensation made to the lords (which was paid in bonds which immediatelyfell to half their nominal value) was raised not by quit-rents on thepeasants' lands alone, as in Russia, but by a general land-tax fallingequally on the land left to the lords, who had thus to pay a great part oftheir own compensation: above all, the questions in dispute were settled, not as in Russia by arbiters elected at local assemblies of the nobles, butby officers of the Crown. Moreover, the division of landed property was notmade once and for all, as in Russia, but the woods and pastures remainingto the lords continued subject to undefined common-rights of the peasants. These common-rights were deliberately left unsettled in order that a sourceof contention might always be present between the greater and the lesserproprietors, and that the latter might continue to look to the RussianGovernment as the protector or extender of their interests. "We holdPoland, " 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 levellingpolicy, seems to have been a gentle and somewhat querulous invalid, and whowas shortly afterwards struck down by paralysis, to remain a helplessspectator of the European changes of the next six years, had no share inthat warfare against the language, the religion, and the national cultureof Poland with which Russia has pursued its victory since 1863. The publiclife of Poland he was determined to Russianise; its private and social lifehe would probably have left unmolested, relying on the goodwill of thegreat mass of peasants who owed their proprietorship to the action of theCzar. There were, however, politicians at Moscow and St. Petersburg whobelieved that the deep-lying instinct of nationality would for the firsttime be called into real life among these peasants by their very elevationfrom misery to independence, and that where Russia had hitherto had threehundred thousand enemies Milutine was preparing for it six millions. It wasthe dread of this possibility in the future, the apprehension that materialinterests might not permanently vanquish the subtler forces which pass fromgeneration to generation, latent, if still unconscious, where nationalityitself is not lost, that made the Russian Government follow up thepolitical destruction of the Polish noblesse by measures directed againstPolish nationality itself, even at the risk of alienating the class who forthe present were effectively won over to the Czar's cause. By the side ofits life-giving and beneficent agrarian policy Russia has pursued theodious system of debarring Poland from all means of culture and improvementassociated with the use of its own language, and has aimed at eventuallyturning the Poles into Russians by the systematic impoverishment andextinction of all that is essentially Polish in thought, in sentiment, andin expression. The work may prove to be one not beyond its power; and nocommon perversity on the part of its Government would be necessary to turnagainst Russia the millions who in Poland owe all they have of prosperityand independence to the Czar: but should the excess of Russianpropagandism, or the hostility of Church to Church, at some distant dateengender a new struggle for Polish independence, this struggle will be onegoverned 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 inthe years 1863 and 1864 the Court of St. Petersburg found itself confrontedwith affairs of such seriousness in Poland. From the opportunity which wasthen presented to him of obliging an important neighbour, and of profitingby that neighbour's conjoined embarrassment and goodwill, Bismarck drewfull advantage. He had always regarded the Poles as a mere nuisance inEurope, and heartily despised the Germans for the sympathy which they hadshown towards Poland in 1848. When the insurrection of 1863 broke out, Bismarck set the policy of his own country in emphatic contrast with thatof Austria and the Western Powers, and even entered into an arrangementwith Russia for an eventual military combination in case the insurgentsshould pass from one side to the other of the frontier. [513] Throughoutthe struggle with the Poles, and throughout the diplomatic conflict withthe Western Powers, the Czar had felt secure in the loyalty of the stubbornMinister at Berlin; and when, at the close of the Polish revolt, the eventsoccurred which opened to Prussia the road to political fortune, Bismarckreceived his reward in the liberty of action given him by the RussianGovernment. 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 ofContinental affairs by the death of Frederick VII. , King of Denmark, inNovember, 1863. Prussia had now at its head a statesman resolved to pursueto their extreme limit the chances which this complication offered to hisown country; and, more fortunate than his predecessors of 1848, Bismarckhad not to dread the interference of the Czar of Russia as the patron andprotector 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 theDanish Monarchy, and had pronounced Prince Christian of Glücksburg to beheir-presumptive to the whole dominions of the reigning King. The rights ofthe German Federation in Holstein were nevertheless declared to remainunprejudiced; and in a Convention made with Austria and Prussia before theyjoined in this Treaty, King Frederick VII. Had undertaken to conform tocertain rules in his treatment of Schleswig as well as of Holstein. TheDuke of Augustenburg, claimant to the succession in Schleswig-Holsteinthrough the male line, had renounced his pretensions in consideration of anindemnity paid to him by the King of Denmark. This surrender, however, hadnot received the consent of his son and of the other members of the Houseof Augustenburg, nor had the German Federation, as such, been a party tothe Treaty of London. Relying on the declaration of the Great Powers infavour of the integrity of the Danish Kingdom, Frederick VII. Had resumedhis attempts to assimilate Schleswig, and in some degree Holstein, to therest of the Monarchy; and although the Provincial Estates were allowed toremain in existence, a national Constitution was established in October, 1855, for the entire Danish State. Bitter complaints were made of thesystem of repression and encroachment with which the Government ofCopenhagen was attempting to extinguish German nationality in the borderprovinces; at length, in November, 1858, under threat of armed interventionby the German Federation, Frederick consented to exclude Holstein from theoperation of the new Constitution. But this did not produce peace, for theinhabitants of Schleswig, severed from the sister-province and now excitedby the Italian war, raised all the more vigorous a protest against theirown incorporation with Denmark; while in Holstein itself the Governmentincurred the charge of unconstitutional action in fixing the Budget withoutthe consent of the Estates. The German Federal Diet again threatened toresort to force, and Denmark prepared for war. Prussia took up the cause ofSchleswig in 1861; and even the British Government, which had hithertoshown far more interest in the integrity of Denmark than in the rights ofthe German provinces, now recommended that the Constitution of 1855 shouldbe abolished, and that a separate legislation and administration should begranted to Schleswig as well as to Holstein. The Danes, however, were benton preserving Schleswig as an integral part of the State, and theGovernment of King Frederick, while willing to recognise Holstein asoutside Danish territory proper, insisted that Schleswig should be includedwithin the unitary Constitution, and that Holstein should contribute afixed share to the national expenditure. A manifesto to this effect, published by King Frederick on the 30th of March, 1863, was the immediateground of the conflict now about to break out between Germany and Denmark. The Diet of Frankfort announced that if this proclamation were not revokedit should proceed to Federal execution, that is, armed intervention, against the King of Denmark as Duke of Holstein. Still counting uponforeign aid or upon the impotence of the Diet, the Danish Governmentrefused to change its policy, and on the 29th of September laid before theParliament at Copenhagen the law incorporating Schleswig with the rest ofthe Monarchy under the new Constitution. Negotiations were thus brought toa close, and on the 1st of October the Diet decreed the long-threatenedFederal 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 inforce, when, on the 15th of November, King Frederick VII. Died. For amoment it appeared possible that his successor, Prince Christian ofGlücksburg, might avert the conflict with Germany by withdrawing from theposition which his predecessor had taken up. But the Danish people andMinistry were little inclined to give way; the Constitution had passedthrough Parliament two days before King Frederick's death, and on the 18thof November it received the assent of the new monarch. German nationalfeeling was now as strongly excited on the question of Schleswig-Holsteinas it had been in 1848. The general cry was that the union of theseprovinces with Denmark must be treated as at an end, and their legitimateruler, Frederick of Augustenburg, son of the Duke who had renounced hisrights, be placed on the throne. The Diet of Frankfort, however, decided torecognise neither of the two rival sovereigns in Holstein until its ownintervention should have taken place. Orders were given that a Saxon and aHanoverian corps should enter the country; and although Prussia and Austriahad made a secret agreement that the settlement of the Schleswig-Holsteinquestion was to be conducted by themselves independently of the Diet, thetide of popular enthusiasm ran so high that for the moment the two leadingPowers considered it safer not to obstruct the Federal authority, and theSaxon and Hanoverian troops accordingly entered Holstein as mandatories ofthe 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 andaudacious statecraft and of the overmastering will of Bismarck; the nation, except through its valour on the battle-field, ceases to influence theshaping of its own fortunes. What the German people desired in 1864 wasthat Schleswig-Holstein should be attached, under a ruler of its own, tothe German Federation as it then existed; what Bismarck intended was thatSchleswig-Holstein, itself incorporated more or less directly with Prussia, should be made the means of the destruction of the existing Federal systemand of the expulsion of Austria from Germany. That another petty State, bound to Prussia by no closer tie than its other neighbours, should beadded to the troop among whom Austria found its vassals and itsinstruments, would have been in Bismarck's eyes no gain but actualdetriment to Germany. The German people desired one course of action;Bismarck had determined on something totally different; and with matchlessresolution 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 forit. The first point of conflict was the apparent recognition by Bismarck ofthe rights of King Christian IX. As lawful sovereign in the Duchies as wellas in the rest of the Danish State. By the Treaty of London Prussia hadindeed pledged itself to this recognition; but the German Federation hadbeen no party to the Treaty, and under the pressure of a vehement nationalagitation Bavaria and the minor States one after another recognisedFrederick of Augustenburg as Duke of Schleswig-Holstein. Bismarck wasaccused alike by the Prussian Parliament and by the popular voice ofGermany at large of betraying German interests to Denmark, of abusingPrussia'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, theGovernment of Berlin must recognise those treaty-obligations with which itsown legal title to a voice in the affairs of Schleswig was intimately boundup, and that the King of Prussia, not a multitude of irresponsible andill-informed citizens, must be the judge of the measures by which Germaninterests were to be effectually protected. His words made no singleconvert either in the Prussian Parliament or in the Federal Diet. AtFrankfort the proposal made by the two leading Powers that King Christianshould be required to annul the November Constitution, and that in case ofhis refusal Schleswig also should be occupied, was rejected, as involvingan acknowledgment of the title of Christian as reigning sovereign. AtBerlin the Lower Chamber refused the supplies which Bismarck demanded foroperations in the Duchies, and formally resolved to resist his policy byevery means at its command. But the resistance of Parliament and of Dietwere alike in vain. By a masterpiece of diplomacy Bismarck had secured thesupport and co-operation of Austria in his own immediate Danish policy, though but a few months before he had incurred the bitter hatred of theCourt of Vienna by frustrating its plans for a reorganisation of Germany bya Congress of princes at Frankfort, and had frankly declared to theAustrian ambassador at Berlin that if Austria did not transfer itspolitical centre to Pesth and leave to Prussia free scope in Germany, itwould find Prussia on the side of its enemies in the next war in which itmight be engaged. [515] But the democratic and impassioned character of theagitation in the minor States in favour of the Schleswig-Holsteiners andtheir Augustenburg pretender had enabled Bismarck to represent thismovement to the Austrian Government as a revolutionary one, and by adexterous appeal to the memories of 1848 to awe the Emperor's advisers intodirect concert with the Court of Berlin, as the representative ofmonarchical order, in dealing with a problem otherwise too likely to besolved by revolutionary methods and revolutionary forces. Count Rechberg, the Foreign Minister at Vienna, was lured into a policy which, afterdrawing 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 itmight have kept Prussia in check, and exposing it to the risk of a Europeanwar, 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 beexpelled alike from Germany and from what remained to it of Italy. But ofthe nature of the toils into which he was now taking the first fatal andirrevocable step Count Rechberg appears to have had no suspicion. A seemingcordiality united the Austrian and Prussian Governments in the policy ofdefiance to the will of all the rest of Germany and to the demands of theirown subjects. It was to no purpose that the Federal Diet vetoed theproposed summons to King Christian and the proposed occupation ofSchleswig. Austria and Prussia delivered an ultimatum at Copenhagendemanding the repeal of the November Constitution; and on its rejectiontheir troops entered Schleswig, not as the mandatories of the GermanFederation, 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 Danescould only make a brave but ineffectual resistance. Their first line ofdefence was the Danewerke, a fortification extending east and west towardsthe sea from the town of Schleswig. Prince Frederick Charles, who commandedthe Prussian right, was repulsed in an attack upon the easternmost part ofthis work at Missunde; the Austrians, however, carried some positions inthe centre which commanded the defenders' lines, and the Danes fell backupon the fortified post of Düppel, covering the narrow channel whichseparates the island of Alsen from the mainland. Here for some weeks theyheld the Prussians in check, while the Austrians, continuing the marchnorthwards, entered Jutland. At length, on the 18th of April, after severalhours of heavy bombardment, the lines of Düppel were taken by storm and thedefenders driven across the channel into Alsen. Unable to pursue the enemyacross this narrow strip of sea, the Prussians joined their allies inJutland, and occupied the whole of the Danish mainland as far as the LümFiord. The war, however, was not to be terminated without an attempt on thepart of the neutral Powers to arrive at a settlement by diplomacy. AConference was opened at London on the 20th of April, and after three weeksof negotiation the belligerents were induced to accept an armistice. As thetroops of the German Federation, though unconcerned in the militaryoperations of the two Great Powers, were in possession of Holstein, theFederal Government was invited to take part in the Conference. It wasrepresented by Count Beust, Prime Minister of Saxony, a politician who wassoon to rise to much greater eminence; but in consequence of the diplomaticunion of Prussia and Austria the views entertained by the Governments ofthe secondary German States had now no real bearing on the course ofevents, and Count Beust's earliest appearance on the great European stagewas 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 byBernstorff, the Prussian envoy, to the effect that Schleswig-Holsteinshould receive complete independence, the question whether King Christianor some other prince should be sovereign of the new State being reservedfor future settlement. To this the Danish envoys replied that even on thecondition of personal union with Denmark through the Crown they could notassent to the grant of complete independence to the Duchies. Raising theirdemand in consequence of this refusal, and declaring that the war had madean end of the obligations subsisting under the London Treaty of 1852, thetwo German Powers then demanded that Schleswig-Holstein should becompletely separated from Denmark and formed into a single State underFrederick of Augustenburg, who in the eyes of Germany possessed the bestclaim to the succession. Lord Russell, while denying that the acts ordefaults of Denmark could liberate Austria and Prussia from theirengagements made with other Powers in the Treaty of London, admitted thatno satisfactory result was likely to arise from the continued union of theDuchies with Denmark, and suggested that King Christian should make anabsolute cession of Holstein and of the southern part of Schleswig, retaining the remainder in full sovereignty. The frontier-line he proposedto draw at the River Schlei. To this principle of partition both Denmarkand the German Powers assented, but it proved impossible to reach anagreement on the frontier-line. Bernstorff, who had at first requirednearly all Schleswig, abated his demands, and would have accepted a linedrawn westward from Flensburg, so leaving to Denmark at least half theprovince, including the important position of Düppel. The terms thusoffered to Denmark were not unfavourable. Holstein it did not expect, andcould scarcely desire, to retain; and the territory which would have beentaken from it in Schleswig under this arrangement included few districtsthat were not really German. But the Government of Copenhagen, misled bythe support given to it at the Conference by England and Russia--a supportwhich was one of words only--refused to cede anything north of the town ofSchleswig. Even when in the last resort Lord Russell proposed that thefrontier-line should be settled by arbitration the Danish Government heldfast to its refusal, and for the sake of a few miles of territory plungedonce more into a struggle which, if it was not to kindle a European war ofvast dimensions, could end only in the ruin of the Danes. The expected helpfailed them. Attacked and overthrown in the island of Alsen, the Germanflag carried to the northern extremity of their mainland, they werecompelled to make peace on their enemies' terms. Hostilities were broughtto a close by the signature of Preliminaries on the 1st of August; and bythe Treaty of Vienna, concluded on the 30th of October, 1864, KingChristian ceded his rights in the whole of Schleswig-Holstein to thesovereigns of Austria and Prussia jointly, and undertook to recognisewhatever dispositions they might make of those provinces. [Great Britain and Napoleon III. ]The British Government throughout this conflict had played a sorry part, atone moment threatening the Germans, at another using language towards theDanes which might well be taken to indicate an intention of lending themarmed support. To some extent the errors of the Cabinet were due to therelation which existed between Great Britain and Napoleon III. It had up tothis time been considered both at London and at Paris that the Allies ofthe Crimea had still certain common interests in Europe; and in theunsuccessful intervention at St. Petersburg on behalf of Poland in 1863 theBritish and French Governments had at first gone hand in hand. But behindevery step openly taken by Napoleon III. There was some half-formed designfor promoting the interests of his dynasty or extending the frontiers ofFrance; and if England had consented to support the diplomatic concert atSt. Petersburg by measures of force, it would have found itself engaged ina war in which other ends than those relating to Poland would have been theforemost. Towards the close of the year 1863 Napoleon had proposed that aEuropean Congress should assemble, in order to regulate not only theaffairs of Poland but all those European questions which remainedunsettled. This proposal had been abruptly declined by the EnglishGovernment; and when in the course of the Danish war Lord Palmerston showedan inclination to take up arms if France would do the same, Napoleon wasprobably not sorry to have the opportunity of repaying England for itsrejection of his own overtures in the previous year. He had moreover hopesof obtaining from Prussia an extension of the French frontier either inBelgium or towards the Rhine. [517] In reply to overtures from London, Napoleon stated that the cause of Schleswig-Holstein to some extentrepresented the principle of nationality, to which France was friendly, andthat of all wars in which France could engage a war with Germany would bethe 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 latertime, when the war was over and the victors were about to divide the spoil, the British and French fleets ostentatiously combined in manoeuvres atCherbourg, this show of union deceived no one, least of all the resoluteand 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 yearsback; but all the world, except the Danes, knew that the fangs and theclaws were drawn, and that British foreign policy had become for the time athing of snarls and grimaces. [Intentions of Bismarck as to Schleswig-Holstein. ]Bismarck had not at first determined actually to annex Schleswig-Holsteinto Prussia. He would have been content to leave it under the nominalsovereignty of Frederick of Augustenburg if that prince would have placedthe entire military and naval resources of Schleswig-Holstein under thecontrol of the Government of Berlin, and have accepted on behalf of hisDuchies conditions which Bismarck considered indispensable to Germanunion under Prussian leadership. In the harbour of Kiel it was notdifficult to recognise the natural headquarters of a future German fleet;the narrow strip of land projecting between the two seas naturallysuggested the formation of a canal connecting the Baltic with the GermanOcean, and such a work could only belong to Germany at large or to itsleading Power. Moreover, as a frontier district, Schleswig-Holstein waspeculiarly exposed to foreign attack; certain strategical positionsnecessary for its defence must therefore be handed over to its protector. That Prussia should have united its forces with Austria in order to winfor the Schleswig-Holsteiners the power of governing themselves as theypleased, must have seemed to Bismarck a supposition in the highest degreepreposterous. He had taken up the cause of the Duchies not in theinterest of the inhabitants but in the interest of Germany; and byGermany he understood Germany centred at Berlin and ruled by the House ofHohenzollern. If therefore the Augustenburg prince was not prepared toaccept his throne on these terms, there was no room for him, and theprovinces must be incorporated with Prussia itself. That Austria wouldnot without compensation permit the Duchies thus to fall directly orindirectly under Prussian sway was of course well known to Bismarck; butso far was this from causing him any hesitation in his policy, that fromthe first he had discerned in the Schleswig-Holstein question a favourablepretext 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 hadentered Holstein as the mandatories of the Federal Diet were compelled toleave the country. A Provisional Government was established under thedirection of an Austrian and a Prussian Commissioner. Bismarck had met thePrince of Augustenburg at Berlin some months before, and had formed anunfavourable opinion of the policy likely to be adopted by him towardsPrussia. All Germany, however, was in favour of the Prince's claims, and atthe Conference of London these claims had been supported by the Prussianenvoy himself. In order to give some appearance of formal legality to hisown action, Bismarck had to obtain from the Crown-jurists of Prussia adecision that King Christian IX. Had, contrary to the general opinion ofGermany, been the lawful inheritor of Schleswig-Holstein, and that thePrince of Augustenburg had therefore no rights whatever in the Duchies. Asthe claims of Christian had been transferred by the Treaty of Vienna to thesovereigns of Austria and Prussia jointly, it rested with them to decidewho should be Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, and under what conditions. Bismarck announced at Vienna on the 22nd of February, 1865, the terms onwhich he was willing that Schleswig-Holstein should be conferred by the twosovereigns upon Frederick of Augustenburg. He required, in addition tocommunity of finance, postal system, and railways, that Prussian law, including the obligation to military service, should be introduced into theDuchies; that their regiments should take the oath of fidelity to the Kingof Prussia, and that their principal military positions should be held byPrussian troops. These conditions would have made Schleswig-Holstein in allbut name a part of the Prussian State: they were rejected both by the Courtof Vienna and by Prince Frederick himself, and the population ofSchleswig-Holstein almost unanimously declared against them. Both Austriaand the Federal Diet now supported the Schleswig-Holsteiners in whatappeared to be a struggle on behalf of their independence against Prussiandomination; and when the Prussian Commissioner in Schleswig-Holsteinexpelled the most prominent of the adherents of Augustenburg, his Austriancolleague published a protest declaring the act to be one of lawlessviolence. It seemed that the outbreak of war between the two rival Powerscould not long be delayed; but Bismarck had on this occasion moved toorapidly for his master, and considerations relating to the other EuropeanPowers made it advisable to postpone the rupture for some months. Anagreement was patched up at Gastein by which, pending an ultimatesettlement, the government of the two provinces was divided between theirmasters, Austria taking the administration of Holstein, Prussia that ofSchleswig, while the little district of Lauenburg on the south was madeover to King William in full sovereignty. An actual conflict between therepresentatives of the two rival governments at their joint headquarters inSchleswig-Holstein was thus averted; peace was made possible at least forsome months longer; and the interval was granted to Bismarck which wasstill required for the education of his Sovereign in the policy of bloodand iron, and for the completion of his own arrangements with the enemiesof Austria outside Germany. [518][Bismarck at Biarritz, Sept. , 1865. ]The natural ally of Prussia was Italy; but without the sanction of NapoleonIII. It would have been difficult to engage Italy in a new war. Bismarckhad therefore to gain at least the passive concurrence of the FrenchEmperor in the union of Italy and Prussia against Austria. He visitedNapoleon at Biarritz in September, 1865, and returned with the object ofhis journey achieved. The negotiation of Biarritz, if truthfully recorded, would probably give the key to much of the European history of the nextfive years. As at Plombières, the French Emperor acted without hisMinisters, and what he asked he asked without a witness. That Bismarckactually promised to Napoleon III. Either Belgium or any part of theRhenish Provinces in case of the aggrandisement of Prussia has been deniedby him, and is not in itself probable. But there are understandings whichprove to be understandings on one side only; politeness may bemisinterpreted; and the world would have found Count Bismarck unendurableif at every friendly meeting he had been guilty of the frankness with whichhe informed the Austrian Government that its centre of action must betransferred from Vienna to Pesth. That Napoleon was now scheming for anextension of France on the north-east is certain; that Bismarck treatedsuch rectification of the frontier as a matter for arrangement is hardly tobe doubted; and if without a distinct and written agreement Napoleon wascontent to base his action on the belief that Bismarck would not withholdfrom him his reward, this only proved how great was the disparity betweenthe aims which the French ruler allowed himself to cherish and his masteryof the arts by which alone such aims were to be realised. Napoleon desiredto see Italy placed in possession of Venice; he probably believed at thistime 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 onlyThe completion of Italian union but the purchase of French neutrality ormediation by the cession of German territory west of the Rhine. It was nopart of the duty of Count Bismarck to chill Napoleon's fancies or to teachhim political wisdom. The Prussian statesman may have left Biarritz withthe conviction that an attack on Germany would sooner or later follow thedisappointment 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 itselfshould choose to combine with him in war. [Italy, 1862-65. ]Since the death of Cavour the Italian Government had made no real progresstowards the attainment of the national aims, the acquisition of Rome andVenice. Garibaldi, impatient of delay, had in 1862 landed again in Sicilyand summoned his followers to march with him upon Rome. But the enterprisewas resolutely condemned by Victor Emmanuel, and when Garibaldi crossed tothe 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 treatedwith something of the distinction shown to a royal prisoner, and when hiswound 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 inthe fall of the Italian Minister. His successor, Minghetti, deemed itnecessary to arrive at some temporary understanding with Napoleon on theRoman question. The presence of French troops at Rome offended nationalfeeling, and made any attempt at conciliation between the Papal Court andthe Italian Government hopeless. In order to procure the removal of thisforeign garrison Minghetti was willing to enter into engagements whichseemed almost to imply the renunciation of the claim on Rome. By aConvention made in September, 1864, the Italian Government undertook not toattack the territory of the Pope, and to oppose by force every attack madeupon it from without. Napoleon on his part engaged to withdraw his troopsgradually from Rome as the Pope should organise his own army, and tocomplete the evacuation within two years. It was, however, stipulated in anArticle which was intended to be kept secret, that the capital of Italyshould be changed, the meaning of this stipulation being that Florenceshould receive the dignity which by the common consent of Italy ought tohave been transferred from Turin to Rome and to Rome alone. The publicationof this Article, which was followed by riots in Turin, caused the immediatefall of Minghetti's Cabinet. He was succeeded in office by General LaMarmora, under whom the negotiations with Prussia were begun which, afterlong uncertainty, resulted in the alliance of 1866 and in the finalexpulsion 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 forwardto the combination of Italy and Prussia against the common enemy; but hisplans ripened slowly. In the spring of 1865, when affairs seemed to bereaching a crisis in Schleswig-Holstein, the first serious overtures weremade by the Prussian ambassador at Florence. La Marmora answered that anydefinite proposition would receive the careful attention of the ItalianGovernment, but that Italy would not permit itself to be made a mereinstrument in Prussia's hands for the intimidation of Austria. Such cautionwas both natural and necessary on the part of the Italian Minister; and hisreserve seemed to be more than justified when, a few months later, theTreaty of Gastein restored Austria and Prussia to relations of friendship. La Marmora might now well consider himself released from all obligationstowards the Court of Berlin: and, entering on a new line of policy, he sentan envoy to Vienna to ascertain if the Emperor would amicably cede Venetiato Italy in return for the payment of a very large sum of money and theassumption by Italy of part of the Austrian national debt. Had thistransaction been effected, it would probably have changed the course ofEuropean history; the Emperor, however, declined to bargain away any partof his dominions, and so threw Italy once more into the camp of his greatenemy. In the meantime the disputes about Schleswig-Holstein broke outafresh. Bismarck renewed his efforts at Florence in the spring of 1866, with the result that General Govone was sent to Berlin in order to discusswith the Prussian Minister the political and military conditions of analliance. But instead of proposing immediate action, Bismarck stated toGovone that the question of Schleswig-Holstein was insufficient to justifya great war in the eyes of Europe, and that a better cause must be putforward, namely, the reform of the Federal system of Germany. Once more thesubtle Italians believed that Bismarck's anxiety for a war with Austria wasfeigned, and that he sought their friendship only as a means of extortingfrom the Court of Vienna its consent to Prussia's annexation of the DanishDuchies. There was an apparent effort on the part of the Prussian statesmanto avoid entering into any engagement which involved immediate action; thetruth being that Bismarck was still in conflict with the pacific influenceswhich surrounded the King, and uncertain from day to day whether his masterwould really follow him in the policy of war. He sought therefore to makethe joint resort to arms dependent on some future act, such as thesummoning of a German Parliament, from which the King of Prussia could notrecede if once he should go so far. But the Italians, apparently notpenetrating the real secret of Bismarck's hesitation, would be satisfiedwith no such indeterminate engagement; they pressed for action within alimited time; and in the end, after Austria had taken steps which went farto overcome the last scruples of King William, Bismarck consented to fixthree months as the limit beyond which the obligation of Italy to accompanyPrussia into war should not extend. On the 8th of April a Treaty ofoffensive and defensive alliance was signed. It was agreed that if the Kingof Prussia should within three months take up arms for the reform of theFederal system of Germany, Italy would immediately after the outbreak ofhostilities declare war upon Austria. Both Powers were to engage in thewar with their whole force, and peace was not to be made but by commonconsent, such consent not to be withheld after Austria should have agreedto 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 ofGastem. The experiment of an understanding with Austria, which King Williamhad deemed necessary, had been made, and it had failed; or rather, asBismarck expressed himself in a candid moment, it had succeeded, inasmuchas it had cured the King of his scruples and raised him to the proper pointof indignation against the Austrian Court. The agents in effecting thishappy result had been the Prince of Augustenburg, the population ofHolstein, and the Liberal party throughout Germany at large. In Schleswig, which the Convention of Gastein had handed over to Prussia, GeneralManteuffel, a son of the Minister of 1850, had summarily put a stop toevery expression of public opinion, and had threatened to imprison thePrince if he came within his reach; in Holstein the Austrian Government hadpermitted, if it had not encouraged, the inhabitants to agitate in favourof the Pretender, and had allowed a mass-meeting to be held at Altona onthe 23rd of January, where cheers were raised for Augustenburg, and thesummoning of the Estates of Schleswig-Holstein was demanded. This wasenough to enable Bismarck to denounce the conduct of Austria as an alliancewith revolution. He demanded explanations from the Government of Vienna, and the Emperor declined to render an account of his actions. Warlikepreparations now began, and on the 16th of March the Austrian Governmentannounced that it should refer the affairs of Schleswig-Holstein to theFederal Diet. This was a clear departure from the terms of the Conventionof Gastein, and from the agreement made between Austria and Prussia beforeentering into the Danish war in 1864 that the Schleswig-Holstein questionshould be settled by the two Powers independently of the German Federation. King William was deeply moved by such a breach of good faith; tears filledhis eyes when he spoke of the conduct of the Austrian Emperor; and thoughpacific influences were still active around him he now began to fall inmore cordially with the warlike policy of his Minister. The question atissue between Prussia and Austria expanded from the mere disposal of theDuchies to the reconstitution of the Federal system of Germany. In a notelaid before the Governments of all the Minor States Bismarck declared thatthe time had come when Germany must receive a new and more effectiveorganisation, and inquired how far Prussia could count on the support ofallies if it should be attacked by Austria or forced into war. It wasimmediately after this re-opening of the whole problem of Federal reform inGermany that the draft of the Treaty with Italy was brought to its finalshape by Bismarck and the Italian envoy, and sent to the Ministry atFlorence for its approval. [Austria offers Venice, May 5. ]Bismarck had now to make the best use of the three months' delay that wasgranted to him. On the day after the acceptance of the Treaty by theItalian Government, the Prussian representative at the Diet of Frankforthanded in a proposal for the summoning of a German Parliament, to beelected by universal suffrage. Coming from the Minister who had madeParliamentary government a mockery in Prussia, this proposal was scarcelyconsidered as serious. Bavaria, as the chief of the secondary States, hadalready expressed its willingness to enter upon the discussion of Federalreform, but it asked that the two leading Powers should in the meantimeundertake not to attack one another. Austria at once acceded to thisrequest, and so forced Bismarck into giving a similar assurance. Promisesof disarmament were then exchanged; but as Austria declined to stay thecollection of its forces in Venetia against Italy, Bismarck was able tocharge his adversary with insincerity in the negotiation, and preparationsfor war were resumed on both sides. Other difficulties, however, now cameinto view. The Treaty between Prussia and Italy had been made known to theCourt of Vienna by Napoleon, whose advice La Marmora had sought before itsconclusion, and the Austrian Emperor had thus become aware of his danger. He now determined to sacrifice Venetia if Italy's neutrality could be sosecured. 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 onbehalf of Victor Emmanuel if France and Italy would not prevent Austriafrom indemnifying itself at Prussia's expense in Silesia. Without a war, atthe price of mere inaction, Italy was offered all that it could gain by astruggle which was likely to be a desperate one, and which might end indisaster. La Marmora was in sore perplexity. Though he had formed a justerestimate of the capacity of the Prussian army than any other statesman orsoldier in Europe, he was thoroughly suspicious of the intentions of thePrussian Government; and in sanctioning the alliance of the previous monthhe had done so half expecting that Bismarck would through the prestige ofthis alliance gain for Prussia its own objects without entering into war, and then leave Italy to reckon with Austria as best it might. He wouldgladly have abandoned the alliance and have accepted Austria's offer ifItaly could have done this without disgrace. But the sense of honour wassufficiently strong to carry him past this temptation. He declined theoffer made through Paris, and continued the armaments of Italy, thoughstill with a secret hope that European diplomacy might find the means ofrealising the purpose of his country without war. [521][Proposals for a Congress. ]The neutral Powers were now, with various objects, bestirring themselves infavour of a European Congress. Napoleon believed the time to be come whenthe Treaties of 1815 might be finally obliterated by the joint act ofEurope. He was himself ready to join Prussia with three hundred thousandmen if the King would transfer the Rhenish Provinces to France. Demands, direct and indirect, were made on Count Bismarck on behalf of the Tuileriesfor cessions of territory of greater or less extent. These demands wereneither granted nor refused. Bismarck procrastinated; he spoke of theobstinacy of the King his master; he inquired whether parts of Belgium orSwitzerland would not better assimilate with France than a German province;he put off the Emperor's representatives by the assurance that he couldmore conveniently arrange these matters with the Emperor when he shouldhimself visit Paris. On the 28th of May invitations to a Congress wereissued by France, England, and Russia jointly, the objects of the Congressbeing defined as the settlement of the affairs of Schleswig-Holstein, ofthe differences between Austria and Italy, and of the reform of the FederalConstitution of Germany, in so far as these affected Europe at large. Theinvitation was accepted by Prussia and by Italy; it was accepted by Austriaonly under the condition that no arrangement should be discussed whichshould give an increase of territory or power to one of the States invitedto the Congress. This subtly-worded condition would not indeed haveexcluded the equal aggrandisement of all. It would not have rendered thecession of Venetia to Italy or the annexation of Schleswig-Holstein toPrussia impossible; but it would either have involved the surrender of theformer Papal territory by Italy in order that Victor Emmanuel's dominionsshould receive no increase, or, in the alternative, it would have entitledAustria to claim Silesia as its own equivalent for the augmentation of theItalian Kingdom. Such reservations would have rendered any efforts of thePowers to preserve peace useless, and they were accepted as tantamount to arefusal on the part of Austria to attend the Congress. Simultaneously withits answer to the neutral Powers, Austria called upon the Federal Diet totake the affairs of Schleswig-Holstein into its own hands, and convoked theHolstein Estates. Bismarck thereupon declared the Convention of Gastein tobe at an end, and ordered General Manteuffel to lead his troops intoHolstein. The Austrian commander, protesting that he yielded only tosuperior force, withdrew through Altona into Hanover. Austria at oncedemanded and obtained from the Diet of Frankfort the mobilisation of thewhole of the Federal armies. The representative of Prussia, declaring thatthis act of the Diet had made an end of the existing Federal union, handedin the plan of his Government for the reorganisation of Germany, andquitted Frankfort. Diplomatic relations between Austria and Prussia werebroken off on the 12th of June, and on the 15th Count Bismarck demanded ofthe sovereigns of Hanover, Saxony, and Hesse-Cassel, that they should onthat very day put a stop to their military preparations and accept thePrussian scheme of Federal reform. Negative answers being given, Prussiantroops 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 beforehimself since entering upon his Ministry, was attained; and, if hiscalculations 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 ofarms. But the process by which Bismarck had worked up to this result hadranged against him the almost unanimous opinion of Germany outside themilitary circles of Prussia itself. His final demand for the summoning of aGerman Parliament was taken as mere comedy. The guiding star of his policyhad hitherto been the dynastic interest of the House of Hohenzollern; andnow, when the Germans were to be plunged into war with one another, itseemed as if the real object of the struggle was no more than theannexation of the Danish Duchies and some other coveted territory to thePrussian Kingdom. The voice of protest and condemnation rose loud fromevery organ of public opinion. Even in Prussia itself the instances werefew where any spontaneous support was tendered to the Government. TheParliament of Berlin, struggling up to the end against the all-powerfulMinister, had seen its members prosecuted for speeches made within its ownwalls, and had at last been prorogued in order that its insubordinationmight not hamper the Crown in the moment of danger. But the meredisappearance of Parliament could not conceal the intensity of ill-willwhich the Minister and his policy had excited. The author of a fratricidalwar of Germans against Germans was in the eyes of many the greatest of allcriminals; and on the 7th of May an attempt was made by a young fanatic totake Bismarck's life in the streets of Berlin. The Minister owed thepreservation of his life to the feebleness of his assailant's weapon and tohis own vigorous arm. But the imminence of the danger affected King Williamfar more than Bismarck himself. It spoke to his simple mind of supernaturalprotection and aid; it stilled his doubts; and confirmed him in the beliefthat Prussia was in this crisis the instrument for working out theAlmighty's will. [Napoleon III. ]A few days before the outbreak of hostilities the Emperor Napoleon gavepublicity to his own view of the European situation. He attributed thecoming war to three causes: to the faulty geographical limits of thePrussian State, to the desire for a better Federal system in Germany, andto the necessity felt by the Italian nation for securing its independence. These needs would, he conceived, be met by a territorial rearrangement inthe north of Germany consolidating and augmenting the Prussian Kingdom; bythe creation of a more effective Federal union between the secondary GermanStates; and finally, by the incorporation of Venetia with Italy, Austria'sposition in Germany remaining unimpaired. Only in the event of the map ofEurope being altered to the exclusive advantage of one Great Power wouldFrance require an extension of frontier. Its interests lay in thepreservation of the equilibrium of Europe, and in the maintenance of theItalian Kingdom. These had already been secured by arrangements which wouldnot require France to draw the sword; a watchful but unselfish neutralitywas the policy which its Government had determined to pursue. Napoleon hadin fact lost all control over events, and all chance of gaining the RhenishProvinces, from the time when he permitted Italy to enter into the Prussianalliance without any stipulation that France should at its option beadmitted as a third member of the coalition. He could not ally himself withAustria against his own creation, the Italian Kingdom; on the other hand, he had no means of extorting cessions from Prussia when once Prussia wassure 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 toItaly whether Prussia should be victorious or overthrown, but as regardedFrance it had landed him in absolute powerlessness. He was unable to act onone side; he was not wanted on the other. Neutrality had become a matternot of choice but of necessity; and until the course of military eventsshould have produced some new situation in Europe, France might well bewatchful, but it could scarcely gain much credit for its disinterestedpart. [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 tothrow the mass of the Prussian forces southwards against Austria, leavingin the north only the modest contingent which was necessary to overcome theresistance of Hanover and Hesse-Cassel. Through the precipitancy of aPrussian general, who struck without waiting for his colleagues, theHanoverians gained a victory at Langensalza on the 27th of June; but otherPrussian regiments arrived on the field a few hours later, and theHanoverian army was forced to capitulate on the next day. The King made hisescape to Austria; the Elector of Hesse-Cassel, less fortunate, was made aprisoner of war. Northern Germany was thus speedily reduced to submission, and any danger of a diversion in favour of Austria in this quarterdisappeared. In Saxony no attempt was made to bar the way to the advancingPrussians. Dresden was occupied without resistance, but the Saxon armymarched southwards in good time, and joined the Austrians in Bohemia. ThePrussian forces, about two hundred and fifty thousand strong, now gatheredon the Saxon and Silesian frontier, covering the line from Pirna toLandshut. They were composed of three armies: the first, or central, armyunder Prince Frederick Charles, a nephew of the King; the second, orSilesian, army under the Crown Prince; the westernmost, known as the armyof the Elbe, under General Herwarth von Bittenfeld. Against these wereranged about an equal number of Austrians, led by Benedek, a general whohad gained great distinction in the Hungarian and the Italian campaigns. Ithad at first been thought probable that Benedek, whose forces lay aboutOlmütz, would invade Southern Silesia, and the Prussian line had thereforebeen extended far to the east. Soon, however, it appeared that theAustrians were unable to take up the offensive, and Benedek moved westwardsinto Bohemia. The Prussian line was now shortened, and orders were given tothe three armies to cross the Bohemian frontier and converge in thedirection of the town of Gitschin. General Moltke, the chief of the staff, directed their operations from Berlin by telegraph. The combined advance ofthe three armies was executed with extraordinary precision; and in a seriesof hard-fought combats extending from the 26th to the 29th of June theAustrians were driven back upon their centre, and effective communicationwas established between the three invading bodies. On the 30th the King ofPrussia, with General Moltke and Count Bismarck, left Berlin; on the 2nd ofJuly they were at headquarters at Gitschin. It had been Benedek's design toleave a small force to hold the Silesian army in check, and to throw themass of his army westwards upon Prince Frederick Charles and overwhelm himbefore he could receive help from his colleagues. This design had beenbaffled by the energy of the Crown Prince's attack, and by the superiorityof the Prussians in generalship, in the discipline of their troops, and inthe weapon they carried; for though the Austrians had witnessed in theDanish campaign the effects of the Prussian breech-loading rifle, they hadnot thought it necessary to adopt a similar arm. Benedek, though no greatbattle had yet been fought, saw that the campaign was lost, and wrote tothe Emperor on the 1st of July recommending him to make peace, forotherwise a catastrophe was inevitable. He then concentrated his army onhigh ground a few miles west of Königgrätz, and prepared for a defensivebattle on the grandest scale. In spite of the losses of the past week hecould still bring about two hundred thousand men into action. The threePrussian armies were now near enough to one another to combine in theirattack, and on the night of July 2nd the King sent orders to the threecommanders to move against Benedek before daybreak. Prince FrederickCharles, advancing through the village of Sadowa, was the first in thefield. For hours his divisions sustained an unequal struggle against theassembled strength of the Austrians. Midday passed; the defenders nowpressed down upon their assailants; and preparations for a retreat had beenbegun, when the long-expected message arrived that the Crown Prince wasclose 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 thefield of battle, at once decided the day. It was with difficulty that theAustrian commander prevented the enemy from seizing the positions whichwould have cut off his retreat. He retired eastwards across the Elbe with aloss of eighteen thousand killed and wounded and twenty-four thousandprisoners. His army was ruined; and ten days after the Prussians hadcrossed 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 successof the Austrian forces in Italy. La Marmora, who had given up his place atthe head of the Government in order to take command of the army, crossedthe Mincio at the head of a hundred and twenty thousand men, but wasdefeated by inferior numbers on the fatal ground of Custozza, and compelledto fall back on the Oglio. This gleam of success, which was followed by anaval victory at Lissa off the Istrian coast, made it easier for theAustrian Emperor to face the sacrifices that were now inevitable. Immediately after the battle of Königgrätz he invoked the mediation ofNapoleon III. , and ceded Venetia to him on behalf of Italy. Napoleon atonce tendered his good offices to the belligerents, and proposed anarmistice. His mediation was accepted in principle by the King or Prussia, who expressed his willingness also to grant an armistice as soon aspreliminaries of peace were recognised by the Austrian Court. In themeantime, while negotiations passed between all four Governments, thePrussians pushed forward until their outposts came within sight of Vienna. If in pursuance of General Moltke's plan the Italian generals had thrown acorps north-eastwards from the head of the Adriatic, and so struck at thevery heart of the Austrian monarchy, it is possible that the victors ofKöniggrätz might have imposed their own terms without regard to Napoleon'smediation, and, while adding the Italian Tyrol to Victor Emmanuel'sdominions, have completed the union of Germany under the House ofHohenzollern at one stroke. But with Hungary still intact, and the Italianarmy paralysed by the dissensions of its commanders, prudence bade thegreat statesman of Berlin content himself with the advantages which hecould reap without prolongation of the war, and without the risk ofthrowing Napoleon into the enemy's camp. He had at first required, asconditions of peace, that Prussia should be left free to annex Saxony, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, and other North German territory; that Austriashould wholly withdraw from German affairs; and that all Germany, less theAustrian Provinces, should be united in a Federation under Prussianleadership. To gain the assent of Napoleon to these terms, Bismarck hintedthat 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 annexingHanover, Nassau, and Hesse-Cassel, as conquered territory that lay betweenits own Rhenish Provinces and the rest of the kingdom; that Austria shouldcompletely withdraw from German affairs; that Germany north of the Main, together with Saxony, should be included in a Federation under Prussianleadership; and that for the States south of the Main there should bereserved the right of entering into some kind of national bond with theNorthern League. Austria escaped without loss of any of its non-Italianterritory; 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 ofthe Southern States, imagined himself to have broken Germany into halves, and to have laid the foundation of a South German League which should lookto France as its protector. On the other hand, Bismarck by his annexationof Hanover and neighbouring districts had added a population of fourmillions to the Prussian Kingdom, and given it a continuous territory; hehad forced Austria out of the German system; he had gained its sanction tothe Federal union of all Germany north of the Main, and had at least keptthe way open for the later extension of this union to the Southern States. Preliminaries of peace embodying these conditions and recognising Prussia'ssovereignty in Schleswig-Holstein were signed at Nicolsburg on the 26th ofJuly, and formed the basis of the definitive Treaty of Peace which wasconcluded at Prague on the 23rd of August. An illusory clause, added at theinstance of Napoleon, provided that if the population of the northerndistricts of Schleswig should by a free vote express the wish to be unitedwith 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 militaryaction was of an ineffective character, continued in arms for some weeksafter the battle of Königgrätz and the suspension of hostilities arrangedat Nicolsburg did not come into operation on their behalf till the 2nd ofAugust. Before that date their forces were dispersed and their power ofresistance broken by the Prussian generals Falckenstein and Manteuffel in aseries of unimportant engagements and intricate manoeuvres. The City ofFrankfort, against which Bismarck seems to have borne some personal hatred, was treated for a while by the conquerors with extraordinary and mostimpolitic harshness; in other respects the action of the PrussianGovernment towards these conquered States was not such as to render futureunion and friendship difficult. All the South German Governments, with thesingle exception of Baden, appealed to the Emperor Napoleon for assistancein the negotiations which they had opened at Berlin. But at the very momentwhen this request was made and granted Napoleon was himself demanding fromBismarck the cession of the Bavarian Palatinate and of the Hessiandistricts west of the Rhine. Bismarck had only to acquaint the King ofBavaria and the South German Ministers with the designs of their Frenchprotector in order to reconcile them to his own chastening, but notunfriendly, hand. The grandeur of a united Fatherland flashed upon mindshitherto impenetrable by any national ideal when it became known thatNapoleon was bargaining for Oppenheim and Kaiserslautern. Not only were theinsignificant questions as to the war-indemnities to be paid to Prussia andthe frontier villages to be exchanged promptly settled, but by a series ofsecret Treaties all the South German States entered into an offensive anddefensive alliance with the Prussian King, and engaged in case of war toplace their entire forces at his disposal and under his command. Thediplomacy of Napoleon III. Had in the end effected for Bismarck almost morethan his earlier intervention had frustrated, for it had made the SouthGerman Courts the allies of Prussia not through conquest or mere compulsionbut out of regard for their own interests. [526] It was said by theopponents of the Imperial Government in France, and scarcely withexaggeration, that every error which it was possible to commit had, in thecourse of the year 1866, been committed by Napoleon III. One crime, one actof madness, remained open to the Emperor's critics, to lash him and Franceinto 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 suggestionsof the French Emperor relating to the acquisition of Belgium were made tothe Prussian Government through secret agents, and that they were actuallyunknown, or known by mere hearsay, to Benedetti, the French Ambassador atBerlin. According to Prince Bismarck, these overtures had begun as early as1862, when he was himself Ambassador at Paris, and were then made verballyand in private notes to himself; they were the secret of Napoleon'sneutrality during the Danish war; and were renewed through relatives andconfidential agents of the Emperor when the struggle with Austria was seento be approaching. The ignorance in which Count Benedetti was kept of hismaster's private diplomacy may to some extent explain the extraordinarycontradictions between the accounts given by this Minister and by PrinceBismarck of the negotiations that passed between them in the periodfollowing the campaign of 1866, after Benedetti had himself been charged topresent the demands of the French Government. In June, while the Ambassadorwas still, as it would seem, in ignorance of what was passing behind hisback, he had informed the French Ministry that Bismarck, anxious for thepreservation of French neutrality, had hinted at the compensations thatmight be made to France if Prussia should meet with great success in thecoming war. According to the report of the Ambassador, made at the time, Count Bismarck stated that he would rather withdraw from public life thancede the Rhenish Provinces with Cologne and Bonn, but that he believed itwould be possible to gain the King's ultimate consent to the cession of thePrussian district of Trèves on the Upper Moselle, which district, togetherwith Luxemburg or parts of Belgium and Switzerland, would give France anadequate improvement of its frontier. The Ambassador added in his report, by way of comment, that Count Bismarck was the only man in the kingdom whowas disposed to make any cession of Prussian territory whatever, and that aunanimous and violent revulsion against France would be excited by theslightest indication of any intention on the part of the French Governmentto extend its frontiers towards the Rhine. He concluded his report with thestatement that, after hearing Count Bismarck's suggestions, he had broughtthe discussion to a summary close, not wishing to leave the PrussianMinister under the impression that any scheme involving the seizure ofBelgian or Swiss territory had the slightest chance of being seriouslyconsidered 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 weekslater, after the settlement of the Preliminaries at Nicolsburg, he wasordered to demand the cession of the Bavarian Palatinate, of the portion ofHesse-Darmstadt west of the Rhine, including Mainz, and of the strip ofPrussian territory on the Saar which had been left to France in 1814 buttaken from it in 1815. According to the statement of Prince Bismarck, whichwould seem to be exaggerated, this demand was made by Benedetti as anultimatum and with direct threats of war, which were answered by Bismarckin language of equal violence. In any case the demand was unconditionallyrefused, and Benedetti travelled to Paris in order to describe what hadpassed at the Prussian headquarters. His report made such an impression onthe Emperor that the demand for cessions on the Rhine was at onceabandoned, and the Foreign Minister, Drouyn de Lhuys, who had been disposedto enforce this by arms, was compelled to quit office. Benedetti returnedto Berlin, and now there took place that negotiation relating to Belgium onwhich not only the narratives of the persons immediately concerned, but thedocuments written at the time, leave so much that is strange andunexplained. According to Benedetti, Count Bismarck was keenly anxious toextend the German Federation to the South of the Main, and desired withthis object an intimate union with at least one Great Power. He sought inthe first instance the support of France, and offered in return tofacilitate the seizure of Belgium. The negotiation, according to Benedetti, failed because the Emperor Napoleon required that the fortresses inSouthern Germany should be held by the troops of the respective States towhich they belonged, while at the same time General Manteuffel, who hadbeen sent from Berlin on a special mission to St. Petersburg, succeeded ineffecting so intimate a union with Russia that alliance with France becameunnecessary. According to the counter-statement of Prince Bismarck, theplan now proposed originated entirely with the French Ambassador, and wasmerely a repetition of proposals which had been made by Napoleon during thepreceding four years, and which were subsequently renewed at intervals bysecret agents almost down to the outbreak of the war of 1870. PrinceBismarck has stated that he dallied with these proposals only because adirect refusal might at any moment have caused the outbreak of war betweenFrance 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 wasbroken off by the departure of both statesmen from Berlin in the beginningof autumn. [527][Prussia and North Germany after the war. ]The war of 1866 had been brought to an end with extraordinary rapidity; itsresults were solid and imposing. Venice, perplexed no longer by itsRepublican traditions or by doubts of the patriotism of the House of Savoy, prepared to welcome King Victor Emmanuel; Bismarck, returning from thebattle-field of Königgrätz, found his earlier unpopularity forgotten in theflood of national enthusiasm which his achievements and those of the armyhad evoked. A new epoch had begun; the antagonisms of the past were out ofdate; nobler work now stood before the Prussian people and its rulers thanthe perpetuation of a barren struggle between Crown and Parliament. By nonewas the severance from the past more openly expressed than by Bismarckhimself; by none was it more bitterly felt than by the old Conservativeparty in Prussia, who had hitherto regarded the Minister as their ownrepresentative. In drawing up the Constitution of the North GermanFederation, Bismarck remained true to the principle which he had laid downat Frankfort before the war, that the German people must be represented bya Parliament elected directly by the people themselves. In theincorporation of Hanover, Hesse-Cassel and the Danish Duchies with Prussia, he saw that it would be impossible to win the new populations to a loyalunion with Prussia if the King's Government continued to recognise nofriends but the landed aristocracy and the army. He frankly declared thatthe action of the Cabinet in raising taxes without the consent ofParliament had been illegal, and asked for an Act of Indemnity. TheParliament of Berlin understood and welcomed the message of reconciliation. It heartily forgave the past, and on its own initiative added the name ofBismarck to those for whose services to the State the King asked arecompense. The Progressist party, which had constituted the majority inthe last Parliament, gave place to a new combination known as the NationalLiberal party, which, while adhering to the Progressist creed in domesticaffairs, gave its allegiance to the Foreign and the German policy of theMinister. Within this party many able men who in Hanover and the otherannexed territories had been the leaders of opposition to their ownGovernments now found a larger scope and a greater political career. Morethan one of the colleagues of Bismarck who had been appointed to theiroffices in the years of conflict were allowed to pass into retirement, andtheir places were filled by men in sympathy with the National Liberals. With the expansion of Prussia and the establishment of its leadership in aGerman Federal union, the ruler of Prussia seemed himself to expand fromthe instrument of a military monarchy to the representative of a greatnation. [Hungary and Austria, 1865. ]To Austria the battle of Königgrätz brought a settlement of the conflictbetween the Crown and Hungary. The Constitution of February, 1861, hopefully as it had worked during its first years, had in the end fallenbefore the steady refusal of the Magyars to recognise the authority of asingle Parliament for the whole Monarchy. Within the Reichsrath itself theexample of Hungary told as a disintegrating force; the Poles, the Czechsseceded from the Assembly; the Minister, Schmerling, lost his authority, and was forced to resign in the summer of 1865. Soon afterwards an edict ofthe Emperor suspended the Constitution. Count Belcredi, who took office inSchmerling's place, attempted to arrive at an understanding with the Magyarleaders. The Hungarian Diet was convoked, and was opened by the King inperson before the end of the year. Francis Joseph announced his abandonmentof the principle that Hungary had forfeited its ancient rights byrebellion, and asked in return that the Diet should not insist uponregarding the laws of 1848 as still in force. Whatever might be the formalvalidity of those laws, it was, he urged, impossible that they should bebrought into operation unaltered. For the common affairs of the two halvesof the Monarchy there must be some common authority. It rested with theDiet to arrive at the necessary understanding with the Sovereign on thispoint, and to place on a satisfactory footing the relations of Hungary toTransylvania and Croatia. As soon as an accord should have been reached onthese subjects, Francis Joseph stated that he would complete hisreconciliation with the Magyars by being crowned King of Hungary. [Deák. ]In the Assembly to which these words were addressed the majority wascomposed of men of moderate opinions, under the leadership of Francis Deák. Deák had drawn up the programme of the Hungarian Liberals in the electionof 1847. He had at that time appeared to be marked out by his rarepolitical 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. Butthe violence of revolutionary methods was alien to his temperament. Afterserving in Batthyány's Ministry, he withdrew from public life on theoutbreak of war with Austria, and remained in retirement during thedictatorship of Kossuth and the struggle of 1849. As a loyal friend to theHapsburg dynasty, and a clear-sighted judge of the possibilities of thetime, he stood apart while Kossuth dethroned the Sovereign and proclaimedHungarian independence. Of the patriotism and the disinterestedness of Deákthere was never the shadow of a doubt; a distinct political faith severedhim from the leaders whose enterprise ended in the catastrophe which he hadforeseen, and preserved for Hungary one statesman who could, withoutrenouncing his own past and without inflicting humiliation on theSovereign, stand as the mediator between Hungary and Austria when the timefor reconciliation should arrive. Deák was little disposed to abateanything of what he considered the just demands of his country. It wasunder his leadership that the Diet had in 1861 refused to accept theConstitution which established a single Parliament for the whole Monarchy. The legislative independence of Hungary he was determined at all costs topreserve intact; rather than surrender this he had been willing in 1861 tosee negotiations broken off and military rule restored. But when FrancisJoseph, wearied of the sixteen years' struggle, appealed once more toHungary for union and friendship, there was no man more earnestly desirousto reconcile the Sovereign with the nation, and to smooth down theopposition to the King's proposals which arose within the Diet itself, thanDeák. [Scheme of Hungarian Committee, June 25, 1866. ]Under his influence a committee was appointed to frame the necessary basisof negotiation. On the 25th of June, 1866, the Committee gave in itsreport. It declared against any Parliamentary union with the Cis-Leithanhalf of the Monarchy, but consented to the establishment of commonMinistries for War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs, and recommended that theBudget necessary for these joint Ministries should be settled byDelegations from the Hungarian Diet and from the western Reichsrath. [528]The Delegations, it was proposed, should meet separately, and communicatetheir views to one another by writing. Only when agreement should not havebeen thus attained were the Delegations to unite in a single body, in whichcase 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 beenlong and anxious; it was not until the moment when the war with Prussia wasbreaking out that the Committee presented its report. The Diet was nowprorogued, but immediately after the battle of Königgrätz the Hungarianleaders were called to Vienna, and negotiations were pushed forward on thelines laid down by the Committee. It was a matter of no small moment to theCourt of Vienna that while bodies of Hungarian exiles had been preparing toattack the Empire both from the side of Silesia and of Venice, Deák and hisfriends had loyally abstained from any communication with the foreignenemies of the House of Hapsburg. That Hungary would now gain almostcomplete independence was certain; the question was not so much whetherthere should be an independent Parliament and Ministry at Pesth as whetherthere should not be a similarly independent Parliament and Ministry in eachof the territories of the Crown, the Austrian Sovereign becoming the headof a Federation instead of the chief of a single or a dual State. CountBelcredi, the Minister at Vienna, was disposed towards such a Federalsystem; he was, however, now confronted within the Cabinet by a rival whorepresented a different policy. After making peace with Prussia, theEmperor called to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Count Beust, who hadhitherto been at the head of the Saxon Government, and who had been therepresentative of the German Federation at the London Conference of 1864. Beust, while ready to grant the Hungarians their independence, advocatedthe retention of the existing Reichsrath and of a single Ministry for allthe Cis-Leithan parts of the Monarchy. His plan, which pointed to themaintenance of German ascendency in the western provinces, and which deeplyoffended the Czechs and the Slavic populations, was accepted by theEmperor: Belcredi withdrew from office, and Beust was charged, as Presidentof the Cabinet, with the completion of the settlement with Hungary (Feb. 7, 1867). Deák had hitherto left the chief ostensible part in the negotiationsto Count Andrássy, one of the younger patriots of 1848, who had beencondemned 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 thelast remaining difficulties. The King gratefully charged him with theformation of the Hungarian Ministry under the restored Constitution, butDeák declined alike all office, honours, and rewards, and Andrássy, who hadactually been hanged in effigy, was placed at the head of the Government. The Diet, which had reassembled shortly before the end of 1866, greeted thenational Ministry with enthusiasm. Alterations in the laws of 1848 proposedin accordance with the agreement made at Vienna, and establishing the threecommon Ministries with the system of Delegations for common affairs, werecarried by large majorities. [529] The abdication of Ferdinand, whichthroughout the struggle of 1849 Hungary had declined to recognise, was nowacknowledged as valid, and on the 8th of June, 1867, Francis Joseph wascrowned King of Hungary amid the acclamations of Pesth. The gift of moneywhich is made to each Hungarian monarch on his coronation Francis Joseph bya happy impulse distributed among the families of those who had fallen infighting against him in 1849. A universal amnesty was proclaimed, nocondition being imposed on the return of the exiles but that they shouldacknowledge the existing Constitution. Kossuth alone refused to return tohis country so long as a Hapsburg should be its King, and proudly clung toideas which were already those of the past. [Hungary since 1867. ]The victory of the Magyars was indeed but too complete. Not only were Beustand the representatives of the western half of the Monarchy so overmatchedby the Hungarian negotiators that in the distribution of the financialburdens of the Empire Hungary escaped with far too small a share, but inthe more important problem of the relation of the Slavic and Roumanianpopulations of the Hungarian Kingdom to the dominant race no adequate stepswere taken for the protection of these subject nationalities. That Croatiaand Transylvania should be reunited with Hungary if the Emperor and theMagyars were ever to be reconciled was inevitable; and in the case ofCroatia certain conditions were no doubt imposed, and certain local rightsguaranteed. But on the whole the non-Magyar peoples in Hungary were handedover to the discretion of the ruling race. The demand of Bismarck that thecentre of gravity of the Austrian States should be transferred from Viennato Pesth had indeed been brought to pass. While in the western half of theMonarchy 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 distractingcomplications, in Hungary the Magyar Government resolutely set itself tothe task of moulding into one the nationalities over which it ruled. Uniting the characteristic faults with the great qualities of a race markedout by Nature and ancient habit for domination over more numerous but lessaggressive neighbours, the Magyars have steadily sought to the best oftheir power to obliterate the distinctions which make Hungary in realitynot one but several nations. They have held the Slavic and the Roumanianpopulation within their borders with an iron grasp, but they have notgained their affection. The memory of the Russian intervention in 1849 andof the part then played by Serbs, by Croats and Roumanians in crushingMagyar independence has blinded the victors to the just claims of theseraces both within and without the Hungarian kingdom, and attached theirsympathy to the hateful and outworn empire of the Turk. But theindividuality of peoples is not to be blotted out in a day; nor, with allits striking advance in wealth, in civilisation, and in military power, hasthe Magyar State been able to free itself from the insecurity arising fromthe presence of independent communities on its immediate frontiersbelonging to the same race as those whose language and nationality it seeksto repress. CHAPTER XXIV. Napoleon III. --The Mexican Expedition--Withdrawal of the French and deathof Maximilian--The Luxemburg Question--Exasperation in France againstPrussia--Austria--Italy--Mentana--Germany after 1866--The Spanishcandidature of Leopold of Hohenzollern--French declaration--Benedetti andKing William--Withdrawal of Leopold and demand for guarantees--Thetelegram 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 ofParis--Gambetta at Tours--The Army of the Loire--Fall of Metz--Fightingat 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--TheCommune of Paris--Second siege--Effects of the war as to Russia andItaly--Rome. [Napoleon III. ]The reputation of Napoleon III. Was perhaps at its height at the end of thefirst ten years of his reign. His victories over Russia and Austria hadflattered the military pride of France; the flowing tide of commercialprosperity bore witness, as it seemed, to the blessings of a government atonce firm and enlightened; the reconstruction of Paris dazzled a generationaccustomed to the mean and dingy aspect of London and other capitals before1850, and scarcely conscious of the presence or absence of real beauty anddignity where it saw spaciousness and brilliance. The political faults ofNapoleon, the shiftiness and incoherence of his designs, his want of graspon reality, his absolute personal nullity as an administrator, were knownto some few, but they had not been displayed to the world at large. He haddone some great things, he had conspicuously failed in nothing. Had hisreign ended before 1863, he would probably have left behind him in popularmemory the name of a great ruler. But from this time his fortune paled. Therepulse of his intervention on behalf of Poland in 1863 by the RussianCourt, his petulant or miscalculating inaction during the Danish War of thefollowing year, showed those to be mistaken who had imagined that theEmperor must always exercise a controlling power in Europe. During theevents which formed the first stage in the consolidation of Germany hispolicy was a succession of errors. Simultaneously with the miscarriage ofhis European schemes, an enterprise which he had undertaken beyond theAtlantic, and which seriously weakened his resources at a time whenconcentrated strength alone could tell on European affairs, ended intragedy and disgrace. [The Mexican Project. ]There were in Napoleon III. , as a man of State, two personalities, twomental existences, which blended but ill with one another. There was thecontemplator of great human forces, the intelligent, if not deeplypenetrative, reader of the signs of the times, the brooder through longyears of imprisonment and exile, the child of Europe, to whom Germany, Italy, and England had all in turn been nearer than his own country; andthere was the crowned adventurer, bound by his name and position to gainfor France something that it did not possess, and to regard the greatnessof every other nation as an impediment to the ascendency of his own. Napoleon correctly judged the principle of nationality to be the dominantforce in the immediate future of Europe. He saw in Italy and in Germanyraces whose internal divisions alone had prevented them from being theformidable rivals of France, and yet he assisted the one nation to effectits union, and was not indisposed, within certain limits, to promote theconsolidation of the other. That the acquisition of Nice and Savoy, andeven of the Rhenish Provinces, could not in itself make up to France forthe establishment of two great nations on its immediate frontiers Napoleonmust have well understood: he sought to carry the principle ofagglomeration a stage farther in the interests of France itself, and toform some moral, if not political, union of the Latin nations, which shouldembrace under his own ascendency communities beyond the Atlantic as well asthose of the Old World. It was with this design that in the year 1862 hemade the financial misdemeanours of Mexico the pretext for an expedition tothat country, the object of which was to subvert the native RepublicanGovernment, and to place the Hapsburg Maximilian, as a vassal prince, onits throne. England and Spain had at first agreed to unite with France inenforcing the claims of the European creditors of Mexico; but as soon asNapoleon had made public his real intentions these Powers withdrew theirforces, 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 wasconnected with his attempt to break up the United States by establishingthe independence of the Southern Confederacy, then in rebellion, throughthe mediation of the Great Powers of Europe. So long as the Civil War inthe United States lasted, it seemed likely that Napoleon's enterprise inMexico would be successful. Maximilian was placed upon the throne, and theRepublican leader, Juarez, was driven into the extreme north of thecountry. But with the overthrow of the Southern Confederacy and therestoration of peace in the United States in 1865 the prospect totallychanged. The Government of Washington refused to acknowledge any authorityin Mexico but that of Juarez, and informed Napoleon in courteous terms thathis troops must be withdrawn. Napoleon had bound himself by Treaty to keeptwenty-five thousand men in Mexico for the protection of Maximilian. Hewas, however, unable to defy the order of the United States. Early in 1866he acquainted Maximilian with the necessities of the situation, and withthe approaching removal of the force which alone had placed him and couldsustain him on the throne. The unfortunate prince sent his consort, thedaughter of the King of the Belgians, to Europe to plead against this actof desertion; but her efforts were vain, and her reason sank under the justpresentiment of her husband's ruin. The utmost on which Napoleon couldventure was the postponement of the recall of his troops till the spring of1867. He urged Maximilian to abdicate before it was too late; but theprince refused to dissociate himself from his counsellors who stillimplored him to remain. Meanwhile the Juarists pressed back towards thecapital from north and south. As the French detachments were withdrawntowards the coast the entire country fell into their hands. The last Frenchsoldiers quitted Mexico at the beginning of March, 1867, and on the 15th ofMay, Maximilian, still lingering at Queretaro, was made prisoner by theRepublicans. He had himself while in power ordered that the partisans ofJuarez should be treated not as soldiers but as brigands, and that whencaptured they should be tried by court-martial and executed withintwenty-four hours. The same severity was applied to himself. He wassentenced 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 ofFrance and of his dynasty beyond the seas. The doom of Maximilian excitedthe compassion of Europe; a deep, irreparable wound was inflicted on thereputation of the man who had tempted him to his treacherous throne, whohad guaranteed him protection, and at the bidding of a superior power hadabandoned him to his ruin. From this time, though the outward splendour ofthe Empire was undiminished, there remained scarcely anything of thepersonal prestige which Napoleon had once enjoyed in so rich a measure. Hewas 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; hewas rather the gambler whom fortune was preparing to desert, the usurpertrembling for the future of his dynasty and his crown. Premature old ageand a harassing bodily ailment began to incapacitate him for personalexertion. He sought to loosen the reins in which his despotism held France, and to make a compromise with public opinion which was now declaringagainst him. And although his own cooler judgment set little store by anyaddition of frontier strips of alien territory to France, and he wouldprobably have been best pleased to pass the remainder of his reign inundisturbed inaction, he deemed it necessary, after failure in Mexico hadbecome inevitable, to seek some satisfaction in Europe for the injuredpride of his country. He entered into negotiations with the King of Hollandfor the cession of Luxemburg, and had gained his assent, when rumours ofthe transaction reached the North German Press, and the project passed fromout 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, haduntil 1866 formed a part of the German Federation; and although Bismarckhad not attempted to include it in his own North German Union, Prussiaretained by the Treaties of 1815 a right to garrison the fortress ofLuxemburg, and its troops were actually there in possession. The proposedtransfer of the Duchy to France excited an outburst of patriotic resentmentin the Federal Parliament at Berlin. The population of Luxemburg was indeednot wholly German, and it had shown the strongest disinclination to enterthe North German league; but the connection of the Duchy with Germany inthe past was close enough to explain the indignation roused by Napoleon'sproject among politicians who little suspected that during the previousyear Bismarck himself had cordially recommended this annexation, and thatup to the last moment he had been privy to the Emperor's plan. The PrussianMinister, though he did not affect to share the emotion of his countrymen, stated that his policy in regard to Luxemburg must be influenced by theopinion of the Federal Parliament, and he shortly afterwards caused it tobe understood at Paris that the annexation of the Duchy to France wasimpossible. As a warning to France he had already published the Treaties ofalliance between Prussia and the South German States, which had been madeat 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 behalfof Austria, suggested that Luxemburg should be united to Belgium, which inits turn should cede a small district to France. This arrangement, whichwould have been accepted at Berlin, and which, by soothing the irritationproduced in France by Prussia's successes, would possibly have averted thewar of 1870, was frustrated by the refusal of the King of Belgium to partwith any of his territory--Napoleon, disclaiming all desire for territorialextension, now asked only for the withdrawal of the Prussian garrison fromLuxemburg; but it was known that he was determined to enforce this demandby arms. The Russian Government proposed that the question should besettled by a Conference of the Powers at London. This proposal was acceptedunder certain conditions by France and Prussia, and the Conferenceassembled 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 underthe collective guarantee of the Powers. Prussia withdrew its garrison, andthe King of Holland, who continued to be sovereign of the Duchy, undertookto demolish the fortifications of Luxemburg, and to maintain it in thefuture as an open town. [531][Exasperation in France against Prussia. ]Of the politicians of France, those who even affected to regard theaggrandisement of Prussia and the union of Northern Germany withindifference or satisfaction were a small minority. Among these was theEmperor, who, after his attempts to gain a Rhenish Province had beenbaffled, sought to prove in an elaborate State-paper that France had wonmore than it had lost by the extinction of the German Federation asestablished in 1815, and by the dissolution of the tie that had boundAustria and Prussia together as members of this body. The events of 1866had, he contended, broken up a system devised in evil days for the purposeof uniting Central Europe against France, and had restored to the Continentthe freedom of alliances; in other words, they had made it possible for theSouth German States to connect themselves with France. If this illusion wasreally entertained by the Emperor, it was rudely dispelled by the discoveryof the Treaties between Prussia and the Southern States and by theirpublication in the spring of 1867. But this revelation was not necessary todetermine the attitude of the great majority of those who passed for therepresentatives of independent political opinion in France. The Ministersindeed were still compelled to imitate the Emperor's optimism, and a fewenlightened men among the Opposition understood that France must be contentto see the Germans effect their national unity; but the great body ofunofficial politicians, to whatever party they belonged, joined in thebitter outcry raised at once against the aggressive Government of Prussiaand the feeble administration at Paris, which had not found the means toprevent, or had actually facilitated, Prussia's successes. Thiers, who morethan any one man had by his writings popularised the Napoleonic legend andaccustomed the French to consider themselves entitled to a monopoly ofnational greatness on the Rhine, was the severest critic of the Emperor, the most zealous denouncer of the work which Bismarck had effected. It wasonly with too much reason that the Prussian Government looked forward to anattack by France at some earlier or later time as almost certain, andpressed forward the military organisation which was to give to Germany anarmy of unheard-of efficiency and strength. [France and Prussia after 1867. ]There appears to be no evidence that Napoleon III. Himself desired toattack Prussia so long as that Power should strictly observe thestipulations of the Treaty of Prague which provided for the independence ofthe South German States. But the current of events irresistibly impelledGermany to unity. The very Treaty which made the river Main the limit ofthe North German Confederacy reserved for the Southern States the right ofattaching themselves to those of the North by some kind of national tie. Unless the French Emperor was resolved to acquiesce in the gradualdevelopment of this federal unity until, as regarded the foreigner, theNorth and the South of Germany should be a single body, he could have noconfident hope of lasting peace. To have thus anticipated and accepted thefuture, to have removed once and for all the sleepless fears of Prussia bythe 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 andself-renouncing in appearance, for any chief of a rival nation. Napoleondid not take this course; on the other hand, not desiring to attack Prussiawhile it remained within the limits of the Treaty of Prague, he refrainedfrom seeking alliances with the object of immediate and aggressive action. The diplomacy of the Emperor during the period from 1866 to 1870 is indeedstill but imperfectly known; but it would appear that his efforts weredirected only to the formation of alliances with the view of eventualaction when Prussia should have passed the limits which the Emperor himselfor 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 supportwere those of Austria and Italy. Count Beust, now Chancellor of theAustrian Monarchy, was a bitter enemy to Prussia, and a rash andadventurous politician, to whom the very circumstance of his suddenelevation from the petty sphere of Saxon politics gave a certain levity andunconstraint in the handling of great affairs. He cherished the idea ofrecovering Austria's ascendency in Germany, and was disposed to repel theextension of Russian influence westwards by boldly encouraging the Poles toseek for the satisfaction of their national hopes in Galicia under theHapsburg 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 inHungary raised serious obstacles against the adoption of his own policy. Andrássy, the Hungarian Minister, while sharing Beust's hostility toRussia, declared that his countrymen had no interest in restoring Austria'sGerman connection, and were in fact better without it. In thesecircumstances the negotiations of the French and the Austrian Emperor wereconducted by a private correspondence. The interchange of letters continuedduring the years 1868 and 1869, and resulted in a promise made by Napoleonto support Austria if it should be attacked by Prussia, while the EmperorFrancis Joseph promised to assist France if it should be attacked byPrussia and Russia together. No Treaty was made, but a general assurancewas exchanged between the two Emperors that they would pursue a commonpolicy and treat one another's interests as their own. With the view offorming a closer understanding the Archduke Albrecht visited Paris inFebruary, 1870, and a French general was sent to Vienna to arrange the planof campaign in case of war with Prussia. In such a war, if undertaken bythe 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 eachof these States more of rancour than of good-will. La Marmora had from thebeginning to the end been unfortunate in his relations with Berlin. He hadentered into the alliance with suspicion; he would gladly have seen Venetiagiven to Italy by a European Congress without war; and when hostilitiesbroke out, he had disregarded and resented what he considered an attempt ofthe Prussian Government to dictate to him the military measures to bepursued. On the other hand, the Prussians charged the Italian Governmentwith having deliberately held back its troops after the battle of Custozzain pursuance of arrangements made between Napoleon and the Austrian Emperoron the voluntary cession of Venice, and with having endangered or minimisedPrussia's success by enabling the Austrians to throw a great part of theirItalian forces northwards. There was nothing of that comradeship betweenthe Italian and the Prussian armies which is acquired on the field ofbattle. The personal sympathies of Victor Emmanuel were strongly on theside of the French Emperor; and when, at the close of the year 1866, theFrench garrison was withdrawn from Rome in pursuance of the convention madein September, 1864, it seemed probable that France and Italy might soonunite in a close alliance. But in the following year the attempts of theGaribaldians to overthrow the Papal Government, now left without itsforeign defenders, embroiled Napoleon and the Italian people. Napoleon wasunable to defy the clerical party in France; he adopted the language ofmenace in his communications with the Italian Cabinet; and when, in theautumn of 1867, the Garibaldians actually invaded the Roman States, hedespatched a body of French troops under General Failly to act in supportof those of the Pope. An encounter took place at Mentana on November 3rd, in which the Garibaldians, after defeating the Papal forces, were put tothe 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 ofthe Government, the Prime Minister, M. Rouher, stated, with the mostpassionate emphasis that, come what might, Italy should never possessitself of Rome. "Never, " he cried, "will France tolerate such an outrage onits honour and its dignity. " [533][Napoleon and Italy after Mentana. ][Italy and Austria. ]The affair of Mentana, the insolent and heartless language in which GeneralFailly announced his success, the reoccupation of Roman territory by Frenchtroops, 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 allpossibility of a French alliance. Napoleon was indeed, as regarded Italy, in an evil case. By abandoning Rome he would have turned against himselfand his dynasty the whole clerical interest in France, whose confidence hehad already to some extent forfeited by his policy in 1860; on the otherhand, it was vain for him to hope for the friendship of Italy whilst hecontinued to bar the way to the fulfilment of the universal nationaldesire. With the view of arriving at some compromise he proposed a EuropeanConference on the Roman question; but this was resisted above all by CountBismarck, whose interest it was to keep the sore open; and neither Englandnor Russia showed any anxiety to help the Pope's protector out of hisdifficulties. Napoleon sought by a correspondence with Victor Emmanuelduring 1868 and 1869 to pave the way for a defensive alliance; but VictorEmmanuel was in reality as well as in name a constitutional king, andprobably could not, even if he had desired, have committed Italy toengagements disapproved by the Ministry and Parliament. It was made clearto Napoleon that the evacuation of the Papal States must precede any treatyof alliance between France and Italy. Whether the Italian Government wouldhave been content with a return to the conditions of the SeptemberConvention, or whether it made the actual possession of Rome the price of atreaty-engagement, is uncertain; but inasmuch as Napoleon was not atpresent prepared to evacuate Civita Vecchia, he could aim at nothing morethan some eventual concert when the existing difficulties should have beenremoved. The Court of Vienna now became the intermediary between the twoPowers who had united against it in 1859. Count Beust was free from theassociations which had made any approach to friendship with the kingdom ofVictor Emmanuel impossible for his predecessors. He entered intonegotiations at Florence, which resulted in the conclusion of an agreementbetween the Austrian and the Italian Governments that they would acttogether and guarantee one another's territories in the event of a warbetween France and Prussia. This agreement was made with the assent of theEmperor Napoleon, and was understood to be preparatory to an accord withFrance itself; but it was limited to a defensive character, and it impliedthat any eventual concert with France must be arranged by the two Powers incombination with one another. [534][Isolation of France. ]At the beginning of 1870 the Emperor Napoleon was therefore without anymore definite assurance of support in a war with Prussia than the promiseof the Austrian Sovereign that he would assist France if attacked byPrussia and Russia together, and that he would treat the interests ofFrance as his own. By withdrawing his protection from Rome Napoleon hadundoubtedly a fair chance of building up this shadowy and remote engagementinto a defensive alliance with both Austria and Italy. But perfectclearness and resolution of purpose, as well as the steady avoidance of allquarrels on mere incidents, were absolutely indispensable to the creationand the employment of such a league against the Power which alone it couldhave in view; and Prussia had now little reason to fear any such exerciseof statesmanship on the part of Napoleon. The solution of the Romanquestion, in other words the withdrawal of the French garrison from Romanterritory, could proceed only from some stronger stimulus than thedeclining force of Napoleon's own intelligence and will could now supply. This fatal problem baffled his attempts to gain alliances; and yet theisolation of France was but half acknowledged, but half understood; and ahost of rash, vainglorious spirits impatiently awaited the hour that shouldcall them to their revenge on Prussia for the triumphs in which it had notpermitted France to share. [Germany, 1867-1870. ]Meanwhile on the other side Count Bismarck advanced with what was mostessential in his relations with the States of Southern Germany--thecompletion of the Treaties of Alliance by conventions assimilating themilitary systems of these States to that of Prussia. A Customs-Parliamentwas established for the whole of Germany, which, it was hoped, would be theprecursor of a National Assembly uniting the North and the South of theMain. But in spite of this military and commercial approximation, theprogress towards union was neither so rapid nor so smooth as the patriotsof the North could desire. There was much in the harshness andself-assertion of the Prussian character that repelled the less disciplinedcommunities of the South. Ultramontanism was strong in Bavaria; andthroughout the minor States the most advanced of the Liberals were opposedto a closer union with Berlin, from dislike of its absolutist traditionsand the heavy hand of its Government. Thus the tendency known asParticularism was supported in Bavaria and Würtemberg by classes of thepopulation who in most respects were in antagonism to one another; norcould the memories of the campaign of 1866 and the old regard for Austriabe obliterated in a day. Bismarck did not unduly press on the work ofconsolidation. He marked and estimated the force of the obstacles which toorapid a development of his national policy would encounter. It is possiblethat he may even have seen indications that religious and other influencesmight imperil the military union which he had already established, and thathe may not have been unwilling to call to his aid, as the surest of allpreparatives for national union, the event which he had long believed to beinevitable 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 consequenceof a revolution in which General Prim had been the leading actor. It wasnot easy to discover a successor for the Bourbon Isabella; and after othercandidatures had been vainly projected it occurred to Prim and his friendsearly in 1869 that a suitable candidate might be found in Prince Leopold ofHohenzollern-Sigmaringen, whose elder brother had been made Prince ofRoumania, and whose father, Prince Antony, had been Prime Minister ofPrussia in 1859. The House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was so distantlyrelated to the reigning family of Prussia that the name alone preserved thememory of the connection; and in actual blood-relationship Prince Leopoldwas much more nearly allied to the French Houses of Murat and Beauharnais. But the Sigmaringen family was distinctly Prussian by interest andassociation, and its chief, Antony, had not only been at the head of thePrussian Administration himself, but had, it is said, been the first tosuggest the appointment of Bismarck to the same office. The candidature ofa Hohenzollern might reasonably be viewed in France as an attempt toconnect Prussia politically with Spain; and with so much reserve was thiscandidature at the first handled at Berlin that, in answer to inquiriesmade by Benedetti in the spring of 1869, the Secretary of State whorepresented Count Bismarck stated on his word of honour that thecandidature had never been suggested. The affair was from first to lastostensibly treated at Berlin as one with which the Prussian Government waswholly unconcerned, and in which King William was interested only as headof the family to which Prince Leopold belonged. For twelve months afterBenedetti's inquiries it appeared as if the project had been entirelyabandoned; it was, however, revived in the spring of 1870, and on the 3rdof July the announcement was made at Paris that Prince Leopold hadconsented to accept the Crown of Spain if the Cortes should confirm hiselection. [French Declaration, July 6. ]At once there broke out in the French Press a storm of indignation againstPrussia. The organs of the Government took the lead in exciting publicopinion. On the 6th of July the Duke of Gramont, Foreign Minister, declaredto the Legislative Body that the attempt of a Foreign Power to place one ofits Princes on the throne of Charles V. Imperilled the interests and thehonour of France, and that, if such a contingency were realised, theGovernment would fulfil its duty without hesitation and without weakness. The violent and unsparing language of this declaration, which had beendrawn up at a Council of Ministers under the Emperor's presidency, provedthat the Cabinet had determined either to humiliate Prussia or to takevengeance by arms. It was at once seen by foreign diplomatists, who duringthe preceding days had been disposed to assist in removing a reasonablesubject of complaint, how little was the chance of any peaceable settlementafter such a public challenge had been issued to Prussia in the Emperor'sname. One means of averting war alone seemed possible, the voluntaryrenunciation by Prince Leopold of the offered Crown. To obtain thisrenunciation became the task of those who, unlike the French Minister ofForeign Affairs, were anxious to preserve peace. [Ollivier's Ministry. ]The parts that were played at this crisis by the individuals who mostinfluenced the Emperor Napoleon are still but imperfectly known; but thereis no doubt that from the beginning to the end the Duke of Gramont, withshort intermissions, pressed with insane ardour for war. The Ministry nowin office had been called to their places in January, 1870, after theEmperor had made certain changes in the constitution in a Liberaldirection, and had professed to transfer the responsibility of power fromhimself to a body of advisers possessing the confidence of the Chamber. Ollivier, formerly one of the leaders of the Opposition, had accepted thePresidency of the Cabinet. His colleagues were for the most part men new toofficial life, and little able to hold their own against suchrepresentatives of unreformed Imperialism as the Duke of Gramont and theWar-Minister Leboeuf who sat beside them. Ollivier himself was one of thefew politicians in France who understood that his countrymen must becontent to see German unity established whether they liked it or not. Hewas entirely averse from war with Prussia on the question which had nowarisen; but the fear that public opinion would sweep away a LiberalMinistry which hesitated to go all lengths in patriotic extravagance ledhim to sacrifice his own better judgment, and to accept the responsibilityfor a policy which in his heart he disapproved. Gramont's rash hand wasgiven free play. Instructions were sent to Benedetti to seek the King ofPrussia at Ems, where he was taking the waters, and to demand from him, asthe only means of averting war, that he should order the HohenzollernPrince to revoke his acceptance of the Crown. "We are in great haste, "Gramont added, "for we must gain the start in case of an unsatisfactoryreply, and commence the movement of troops by Saturday in order to enterupon the campaign in a fortnight. Be on your guard against an answer merelyleaving the Prince of Hohenzollern to his fate, and disclaiming on the partof 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. Heinformed the King of the emotion that had been caused in France by thecandidature of the Hohenzollern Prince; he dwelt on the value to bothcountries of the friendly relation between France and Prussia; and, whilestudiously avoiding language that might wound or irritate the King, heexplained to him the requirements of the Government at Paris. The King hadlearnt beforehand what would be the substance of Benedetti's communication. He had probably been surprised and grieved at the serious consequenceswhich Prince Leopold's action had produced in France; and although he haddetermined not to submit to dictation from Paris or to order Leopold toabandon his candidature, he had already, as it seems, taken steps likely torender the preservation of peace more probable. At the end of aconversation with the Ambassador, in which he asserted his completeindependence as head of the family of Hohenzollern, he informed Benedettithat he had entered into communication with Leopold and his father, andthat he expected shortly to receive a despatch from Sigmaringen. Benedettirightly judged that the King, while positively refusing to meet Gramont'sdemands, was yet desirous of finding some peaceable way out of thedifficulty; and the report of this interview which he sent to Paris wasreally a plea in favour of good sense and moderation. But Gramont waslittle disposed to accept such counsels. "I tell you plainly, " he wrote toBenedetti on the next day, "public opinion is on fire, and will leave usbehind it. We must begin; we wait only for your despatch to call up thethree hundred thousand men who are waiting the summons. Write, telegraph, something definite. If the King will not counsel the Prince of Hohenzollernto resign, well, it is immediate war, and in a few days we are on theRhine. "[Leopold withdraws, July 12. ][Guarantee against renewal demanded. ][Benedetti and the King, July 13. ]Nevertheless Benedetti's advice was not without its influence on theEmperor and his Ministers. Napoleon, himself wavering from hour to hour, now inclined to the peace-party, and during the 11th there was a pause inthe military preparations that had been begun. On the 12th the efforts ofdisinterested Governments, probably also the suggestions of the King ofPrussia himself, produced their effects. A telegram was received at Madridfrom Prince Antony stating that his son's candidature was withdrawn. A fewhours later Ollivier announced the news in the Legislative Chamber atParis, and exchanged congratulations with the friends of peace, whoconsidered that the matter was now at an end. But this pacific conclusionlittle suited either the war-party or the Bonapartists of the old type, whogrudged to a Constitutional Ministry so substantial a diplomatic success. They at once declared that the retirement of Prince Leopold was a secondarymatter, and that the real question was what guarantees had been receivedfrom Prussia against a renewal of the candidature. Gramont himself, in aninterview with the Prussian Ambassador, Baron Werther, sketched a letterwhich he proposed that King William should send to the Emperor, statingthat in sanctioning the candidature of Prince Leopold he had not intendedto offend the French, and that in associating himself with the Prince'swithdrawal he desired that all misunderstandings should be at an endbetween the two Governments. The despatch of Baron Werther conveying thisproposition appears to have deeply offended King William, whom it reachedabout midday on the 13th. Benedetti had that morning met the King on thepromenade at Ems, and had received from him the promise that as soon as theletter which was still on its way from Sigmaringen should arrive he wouldsend for the Ambassador in order that he might communicate its contents atParis. The letter arrived; but Baron Werther's despatch from Paris hadarrived 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 writtencommunication had been received from Prince Leopold confirming hiswithdrawal, and that the matter was now at an end. Benedetti desired theaide-de-camp to inform the King that he was compelled by his instructionsto ask for a guarantee against a renewal of the candidature. Theaide-de-camp did as he was requested, and brought back a message that theKing gave his entire approbation to the withdrawal of the Prince ofHohenzollern, but that he could do no more. Benedetti begged for anaudience with His Majesty. The King replied that he was compelled todecline entering into further negotiation, and that he had said his lastword. Though the King thus refused any further discussion, perfect courtesywas observed on both sides; and on the following morning the King and theAmbassador, who were both leaving Ems, took leave of one another at therailway 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 wouldnot be given was now perfectly certain; yet, with the candidature of PrinceLeopold fairly extinguished, it was still possible that the cooler heads atParis might carry the day, and that the Government would stop short ofdeclaring war on a point on which the unanimous judgment of the otherPowers declared it to be in the wrong. But Count Bismarck was determinednot to let the French escape lightly from the quarrel. He had to do with anenemy 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 himover the precipice. Not many hours after the last message had passedbetween King William and Benedetti, a telegram was officially published atBerlin, stating, in terms so brief as to convey the impression of an actualinsult, that the King had refused to see the French Ambassador, and hadinformed him by an aide-de-camp that he had nothing more to communicate tohim. This telegram was sent to the representatives of Prussia at most ofthe European Courts, and to its agents in every German capital. Narrativesinstantly gained currency, and were not contradicted by the PrussianGovernment, that Benedetti had forced himself upon the King on thepromenade at Ems, and that in the presence of a large company the King hadturned his back upon the Ambassador. The publication of the allegedtelegram from Ems became known in Paris on the 14th. On that day theCouncil of Ministers met three times. At the first meeting the advocates ofpeace were still in the majority; in the afternoon, as the news from Berlinand the fictions describing the insult offered to the French Ambassadorspread abroad, the agitation in Paris deepened, and the Council decidedupon calling up the Reserves; yet the Emperor himself seemed still disposedfor peace. It was in the interval between the second and the third meetingof the Council, between the hours of six and ten in the evening, thatNapoleon finally gave way before the threats and importunities of thewar-party. The Empress, fanatically anxious for the overthrow of a greatProtestant Power, passionately eager for the military glory which alonecould insure the Crown to her son, won the triumph which she was sobitterly to rue. At the third meeting of the Council, held shortly beforemidnight, the vote was given for war. In Germany this decision had been expected; yet it made a deep impressionnot only on the German people but on Europe at large that, when thedeclaration of war was submitted to the French Legislative Body in the formof a demand for supplies, no single voice was raised to condemn the war forits criminality and injustice: the arguments which were urged against it byM. Thiers and others were that the Government had fixed upon a bad cause, and that the occasion was inopportune. Whether the majority of the Assemblyreally desired war is even now matter of doubt. But the clamour of ahundred madmen within its walls, the ravings of journalists andincendiaries, who at such a time are to the true expression of publicopinion what the Spanish Inquisition was to the Christian religion, paralysed the will and the understanding of less infatuated men. Ten votesalone were given in the Assembly against the grant demanded for war; toEurope at large it went out that the crime and the madness was that ofFrance as a nation. Yet Ollivier and many of his colleagues up to the lastmoment disapproved of the war, and consented to it only because theybelieved that the nation would otherwise rush into hostilities under areactionary Ministry who would serve France worse than themselves. Theyfound when it was too late that the supposed national impulse, which theyhad thought irresistible, was but the outcry of a noisy minority. Thereports of their own officers informed them that in sixteen alone out ofthe eighty-seven Departments of France was the war popular. In the otherseventy-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 bringinto the field was well known to Napoleon's Government. Benedetti had kepthis employers thoroughly informed of the progress of the North Germanmilitary organisation; he had warned them that the South German Stateswould most certainly act with the North against a foreign assailant; he haddescribed with great accuracy and great penetration the nature of the tiethat existed between Berlin and St. Petersburg, a tie which was closeenough to secure for Prussia the goodwill, and in certain contingencies thearmed support, of Russia, while it was loose enough not to involve Prussiain any Muscovite enterprise that would bring upon it the hostility ofEngland and Austria. The utmost force which the French militaryadministration reckoned on placing in the field at the beginning of thecampaign was two hundred and fifty thousand men, to be raised at the end ofthree weeks by about fifty thousand more. The Prussians, even withoutreckoning on any assistance from Southern Germany, and after allowing forthree army-corps that might be needed to watch Austria and Denmark, couldbegin the campaign with three hundred and thirty thousand. Army to army, the French thus stood according to the reckoning of their own War Officeoutnumbered at the outset; but Leboeuf, the War-Minister, imagined that theForeign Office had made sure of alliances, and that a great part of thePrussian Army would not be free to act on the western frontier. Napoleonhad in fact pushed forward his negotiations with Austria and Italy from thetime that war became imminent. Count Beust, while clearly laying it downthat Austria was not bound to follow France into a war made at its ownpleasure, nevertheless felt some anxiety lest France and Prussia shouldsettle their differences at Austria's expense; moreover from the victory ofNapoleon, assisted in any degree by himself, he could fairly hope for therestoration of Austria's ascendency in Germany and the undoing of the workof 1866. It was determined at a Council held at Vienna on the 18th of Julythat Austria should for the present be neutral if Russia should not enterthe war on the side of Prussia; but this neutrality was nothing more than astage towards alliance with France if at the end of a certain brief periodthe army of Napoleon should have penetrated into Southern Germany. In aprivate despatch to the Austrian Ambassador at Paris Count Beust pointedout that the immediate participation of Austria in the war would bringRussia into the field on King William's side. "To keep Russia neutral, " hewrote, "till the season is sufficiently advanced to prevent theconcentration of its troops must be at present our object; but thisneutrality is nothing more than a means for arriving at the real end of ourpolicy, the only means for completing our preparations without exposingourselves to premature attack by Prussia or Russia. " He added that Austriahad already entered into a negotiation with Italy with a view to the armedmediation of the two Powers, and strongly recommended the Emperor to placethe 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 thesenegotiations contradictory accounts are given by the persons concerned inthem. According to Prince Napoleon, Victor Emmanuel demanded possession ofRome and this was refused to him by the French Emperor, in consequence ofwhich the project of alliance failed. According to the Duke of Gramont, nomore was demanded by Italy than the return to the conditions of theSeptember Convention; this was agreed to by the Emperor, and it was inpursuance of this agreement that the Papal States were evacuated by theirFrench garrison on the 2nd of August. Throughout the last fortnight ofJuly, after war had actually been declared, there was, if the statement ofGramont is to be trusted, a continuous interchange of notes, projects, andtelegrams between the three Governments. The difficulties raised by Italyand Austria were speedily removed, and though some weeks were needed bythese Powers for their military preparations, Napoleon was definitelyassured of their armed support in case of his preliminary success. It wasagreed that Austria and Italy, assuming at the first the position of armedneutrality, should jointly present an ultimatum to Prussia in Septemberdemanding the exact performance of the Treaty of Prague, and, failing itscompliance with this summons in the sense understood by its enemies, thatthe two Powers would immediately declare war, their armies taking the fieldat latest on the 15th of September. That Russia would in that case assistPrussia was well known; but it would seem that Count Beust feared littlefrom his northern enemy in an autumn campaign. The draft of the Treatybetween Italy and Austria had actually, according to Gramont's statement, been accepted by the two latter Powers, and received its last amendments ina negotiation between the Emperor Napoleon and an Italian envoy, CountVimercati, at Metz. Vimercati reached Florence with the amended draft onthe 4th of August, and it was expected that the Treaty would be signed onthe following day. When that day came it saw the forces of the FrenchEmpire dashed to pieces. [538][Prussian Plans. ]Preparations for a war with France had long occupied the general staff atBerlin. Before the winter of 1868 a memoir had been drawn up by GeneralMoltke, containing plans for the concentration of the whole of the Germanforces, for the formation of each of the armies to be employed, and thepositions to be occupied at the outset by each corps. On the basis of thismemoir the arrangements for the transport of each corps from its depot tothe frontier had subsequently been worked out in such minute detail thatwhen, on the 16th of July, King William gave the order for mobilisation, nothing remained but to insert in the railway time-tables andmarching-orders the day on which the movement was to commence. Thisminuteness of detail extended, however, only to that part of Moltke's planwhich related to the assembling and first placing of the troops. The eventsof the campaign could not thus be arranged and tabulated beforehand; onlythe general object and design could be laid down. That the French wouldthrow themselves with great rapidity upon Southern Germany was consideredprobable. The armies of Baden, Würtemberg, and Bavaria were too weak, themilitary centres of the North were too far distant, for effectiveresistance to be made in this quarter to the first blows of the invader. Moltke therefore recommended that the Southern troops should withdraw fromtheir own States and move northwards to join those of Prussia in thePalatinate or on the Middle Rhine, so that the entire forces of Germanyshould be thrown upon the flank or rear of the invader; while, in the eventof the French not thus taking the offensive, France itself was to beinvaded by the collective strength of Germany along the line fromSaarbrücken to Landau, and its armies were to be cut off from theircommunications with Paris by vigorous movements of the invader in anortherly direction. [539][German mobilisation. ]The military organisation of Germany is based on the division of thecountry into districts, each of which furnishes at its own depôt a smallbut complete army. The nucleus of each such corps exists in time of peace, with its own independent artillery, stores, and material of war. On theorder 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 fullstrength. The completion of each corps at its own depôt is the first stagein the preparation for a campaign. Not till this is effected does themovement of troops towards the frontier begin. The time necessary for thefirst act of preparation was, like that to be occupied in transport, accurately determined by the Prussian War Office. It resulted from GeneralMoltke's calculations that, the order of mobilisation having been given onthe 16th of July, the entire army with which it was intended to begin thecampaign would be collected and in position ready to cross the frontier onthe 4th of August, if the French should not have taken up the offensivebefore that day. But as it was apprehended that part at least of the Frencharmy would be thrown into Germany before that date, the westward movementof the German troops stopped short at a considerable distance from theborder, in order that the troops first arriving might not be exposed to theattack of a superior force before their supports should be at hand. On theactual frontier there was placed only the handful of men required forreconnoitring, and for checking the enemy during the few hours that wouldbe necessary to guard against the effect of a surprise. [The French Army. ]The French Emperor was aware of the numerical inferiority of his army tothat of Prussia; he hoped, however, by extreme rapidity of movement topenetrate Southern Germany before the Prussian army could assemble, and so, while forcing the Southern Governments to neutrality, to meet on the UpperDanube the assisting forces of Italy and Austria. It was his design toconcentrate a hundred and fifty thousand men at Metz, a hundred thousand atStrasburg, and with these armies united to cross the Rhine into Baden;while a third army, which was to assemble at Châlons, protected thenorth-eastern frontier against an advance of the Prussians. A few daysafter the declaration of war, while the German corps were still at theirdepots in the interior, considerable forces were massed round Metz andStrasburg. All Europe listened for the rush of the invader and the firstswift notes of triumph from a French army beyond the Rhine; but week afterweek passed, and the silence was still unbroken. Stories, incredible tothose who first heard them, yet perfectly true, reached the Germanfrontier-stations of actual famine at the advanced posts of the enemy, andof French soldiers made prisoners while digging in potato-fields to keepthemselves alive. That Napoleon was less ready than had been anticipatedbecame clear to all the world; but none yet imagined the revelations whicheach 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 evento attempt the inroad into Southern Germany within the date up to which ithad any prospect of success. The design was abandoned, yet not in time toprevent the troops that were hurrying from the interior from being sentbackwards and forwards according as the authorities had, or had not, heardof the change of plan. Napoleon saw that a Prussian force was gathering onthe Middle Rhine which it would be madness to leave on his flank; heordered his own commanders to operate on the corresponding line of theLauter and the Saar, and despatched isolated divisions to the veryfrontier, still uncertain whether even in this direction he would be ableto act on the offensive, or whether nothing now remained to him but toresist the invasion of France by a superior enemy. Ollivier had stated inthe Assembly that he and his colleagues entered upon the war with a lightheart; he might have added that they entered upon it with bandaged eyes. The Ministers seem actually not to have taken the trouble to exchangeexplanations with one another. Leboeuf, the War-Minister, had taken itfor granted that Gramont had made arrangements with Austria which wouldcompel the Prussians to keep a large part of their forces in the interior. Gramont, in forcing on the quarrel with Prussia, and in his negotiationswith Austria, had taken it for granted that Leboeuf could win a series ofvictories at the outset in Southern Germany. The Emperor, to whom alone theentire data of the military and the diplomatic services of France wereopen, was incapable of exertion or scrutiny, purposeless, distracted withpain, half-imbecile. [Causes of French military inferiority. ]That the Imperial military administration was rotten to the core theterrible events of the next few weeks sufficiently showed. Men were in highplace whose antecedents would have shamed the better kind of brigand. Thedeficiencies of the army were made worse by the diversion of public fundsto private necessities; the looseness, the vulgar splendour, the basestandards of judgment of the Imperial Court infected each branch of thepublic services of France, and worked perhaps not least on those who werein military command. But the catastrophe of 1870 seemed to those whowitnessed it to tell of more than the vileness of an administration; inEngland, not less than in Germany, voices of influence spoke of the doomthat had overtaken the depravity of a sunken nation; of the triumph ofsimple manliness, of Godfearing virtue itself, in the victories of theGerman army. There may have been truth in this; yet it would require a nicemoral discernment to appraise the exact degeneracy of the French of 1870from the French of 1854 who humbled Russia, or from the French of 1859 whotriumphed at Solferino; and it would need a very comprehensive acquaintancewith the lower forms of human pleasure to judge in what degree thesinfulness of Paris exceeds the sinfulness of Berlin. Had the French beenas strict a race as the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae, as devout as theTyrolese who perished at Königgrätz, it is quite certain that, with thenumbers which took the field against Germany in 1870, with Napoleon III. Atthe head of affairs, and the actual generals of 1870 in command, the armiesof France could not have escaped destruction. [Cause of German Success. ]The main cause of the disparity of France and Germany in 1870 was in truththat Prussia had had from 1862 to 1866 a Government so strong as to be ableto force upon its subjects its own gigantic scheme of military organisationin defiance of the votes of Parliament and of the national will. In 1866Prussia, with a population of nineteen millions, brought actually into thefield three hundred and fifty thousand men, or one in fifty-four of itsinhabitants. There was no other government in Europe, with the possibleexception of Russia, which could have imposed upon its subjects, withoutrisking its own existence, so vast a burden of military service as thatimplied in this strength of the fighting army. Napoleon III. At the heightof his power could not have done so; and when after Königgrätz heendeavoured to raise the forces of France to an equality with those of therival Power by a system which would have brought about one in seventy ofthe population into the field, his own nominees in the Legislative Body, under pressure of public opinion, so weakened the scheme that the effectivenumbers of the army remained little more than they were before. The trueparallel to the German victories of 1870 is to be found in the victories ofthe French Committee of Public Safety in 1794 and in those of the firstNapoleon. A government so powerful as to bend the entire resources of theState to military ends will, whether it is one of democracy run mad, or ofa crowned soldier of fortune, or of an ancient monarchy throwing new vigourinto its traditional system and policy, crush in the moment of impactcommunities of equal or greater resources in which a variety of rivalinfluences limit and control the central power and subordinate military toother interests. It was so in the triumphs of the Reign of Terror over theFirst Coalition; it was so in the triumphs of King William over Austria andFrance. But the parallel between the founders of German unity and theorganisers of victory after 1793 extends no farther than to the sources oftheir success. Aggression and adventure have not been the sequels of thewar of 1870. The vast armaments of Prussia were created in order toestablish German union under the House of Hohenzollern, and they have beenemployed for no other object. It is the triumph of statesmanship, and ithas been the glory of Prince Bismarck, after thus reaping the fruit of awell-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, thegathering forces of the Germans, over three hundred and eighty thousandstrong, were still some distance behind the Lauter and the Saar. Napoleon, apparently without any clear design, had placed certain bodies of troopsactually on the frontier at Forbach, Weissenburg, and elsewhere, whileother troops, raising the whole number to about two hundred and fiftythousand, lay round Metz and Strasburg, and at points between these and themost advanced positions. The reconnoitring of the small German detachmentson the frontier was conducted with extreme energy: the French appear tohave made no reconnaissances at all, for when they determined at last todiscover what was facing them at Saarbrücken, they advanced withtwenty-five thousand men against one-tenth of that number. On the 2nd ofAugust Frossard's corps from Forbach moved upon Saarbrücken with theEmperor in person. The garrison was driven out, and the town bombarded, buteven now the reconnaissance was not continued beyond the bridge across theSaar which divides the two parts of the town. Forty-eight hours later thealignment of the German forces in their invading order was completed, andall was ready for an offensive campaign. The central army, commanded byPrince Frederick Charles, spreading east and west behind Saarbrücken, touched on its right the northern army commanded by General Steinmetz, onits left the southern army commanded by the Crown Prince, which covered thefrontier of the Palatinate, and included the troops of Bavaria andWürtemberg. The general direction of the three armies was thus fromnorthwest 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 ofthe Crown Prince in order to bring it more nearly to a level with thenorthern corps in the march into France. On the 4th of August the CrownPrince crossed the Alsatian frontier and moved against Weissenburg. TheFrench General Douay, who was posted here with about twelve thousand men, was neither reinforced nor bidden to retire. His troops met the attack ofan enemy many times more numerous with great courage; but the struggle wasa hopeless one, and after several hours of severe fighting the Germans weremasters of the field. Douay fell in the battle; his troops frustrated anattempt made to cut off their retreat, and fell back southwards towards thecorps of McMahon, which lay about ten miles behind them. The Crown Princemarched on in search of his enemy, McMahon, who could collect onlyforty-five thousand men, desired to retreat until he could gain somesupport; but the Emperor, tormented by fears of the political consequencesof the invasion, insisted upon his giving battle. He drew up on the hillsabout Wörth, almost on the spot where in 1793 Hoche had overthrown thearmies of the First Coalition. On the 6th of August the leading divisionsof the Crown Prince, about a hundred thousand strong, were within strikingdistance. The superiority of the Germans in numbers was so great thatMcMahon's army might apparently have been captured or destroyed with farless loss than actually took place if time had been given for the movementswhich the Crown Prince's staff had in view, and for the employment of hisfull strength. But the impetuosity of divisional leaders on the morning ofthe 6th brought on a general engagement. The resistance of the French wasof the most determined character. With one more army-corps--and the corpsof General Failly was expected to arrive on the field--it seemed as if theGermans might yet be beaten back. But each hour brought additional forcesinto action in the attack, while the French commander looked in vain forthe reinforcements that could save him from ruin. At length, when the lastdesperate charges of the Cuirassiers had shattered against the fire ofcannon and needle-guns, and the village of Froschwiller, the centre of theFrench position, had been stormed house by house, the entire army broke andfled in disorder. Nine thousand prisoners, thirty-three cannon, fell intothe hands of the conquerors. The Germans had lost ten thousand men, butthey had utterly destroyed McMahon's army as an organised force. Itsremnant disappeared from the scene of warfare, escaping by the westernroads in the direction of Châlons, where first it was restored to somedegree of order. The Crown Prince, leaving troops behind him to beleaguerthe smaller Alsatian fortresses, marched on untroubled through the northernVosges, and descended into the open country about Lunéville and Nancy, unfortified towns which could offer no resistance to the passage of anenemy. [Spicheren, Aug. 6. ]On the same day that the battle of Wörth was fought, the leading columns ofthe armies of Steinmetz and Prince Frederick Charles crossed the frontierat Saarbrücken. Frossard's corps, on the news of the defeat at Weissenburg, had withdrawn to its earlier positions between Forbach and the frontier: itheld the steep hills of Spicheren that look down upon Saarbrücken, and thewoods 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 onthe 6th; a delay of twenty-four hours would have enabled the Germans toenvelop or crush Frossard's corps with an overwhelming force. But theleaders of the foremost regiments threw themselves impatiently upon theFrench whom they found before them: other brigades hurried up to the soundof the cannon, until the struggle took the proportion of a battle, andafter hours of fluctuating success the heights of Spicheren were carried bysuccessive rushes of the infantry full in the enemy's fire. Why Frossardwas not reinforced has never been explained, for several French divisionslay at no great distance westward, and the position was so strong that, ifa pitched battle was to be fought anywhere east of Metz, few better pointscould have been chosen. But, like Douay at Weissenburg, Frossard was leftto 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 militarynecessities, 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 Augustcorresponded to the greatness of their actual military effects. There wasan 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 ithad escaped, breathed freely after weeks of painful suspense; the verycircumstance that the disproportion of numbers on the battle-field ofWörth was still unknown heightened the joy and confidence produced by theCrown 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 bornetheir full part. In Paris the consternation with which the news ofMcMahon's overthrow was received was all the greater that on the previousday reports had been circulated of a victory won at Landau and of thecapture of the Crown Prince with his army. The bulletin of the Emperor, briefly narrating McMahon's defeat and the repulse of Frossard, showed inits concluding words--"All may yet be retrieved"--how profound was thechange made in the prospects of the war by that fatal day. The truth wasat once apprehended. A storm of indignation broke out against theImperial Government at Paris. The Chambers were summoned. Ollivier, attacked alike by the extreme Bonapartists and by the Opposition, laiddown 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 wasjustly styled by all outside it. Levies were ordered, arms and storesaccumulated for the reserve-forces, preparations made for a siege ofParis itself. On the 12th the Emperor gave up the command which he hadexercised with such miserable results, and appointed Marshal Bazaine, oneof the heroes of the Mexican Expedition, General-in-Chief of the Army ofthe 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 Frenchheadquarters at Metz. The divisions of Prince Frederick Charles andSteinmetz did not immediately press forward; it was necessary to allow somedays for the advance of the Crown Prince through the Vosges; and duringthese days the French army about Metz, which, when concentrated, numberednearly two hundred thousand men, might well have taken the positionsnecessary for the defence of Moselle, or in the alternative might havegained several marches in the retreat towards Verdun and Châlons. Only asmall part of this body had as yet been exposed to defeat. It included init the very flower of the French forces, tens of thousands of troopsprobably equal to any in Europe, and capable of forming a most formidablearmy if united to the reserves which would shortly be collected at Châlonsor nearer Paris. But from the 7th to the 12th of August Napoleon, too cowedto take the necessary steps for battle in defence of the line of Moselle, lingered purposeless a id irresolute at Metz, unwilling to fall back fromthis fortress. It was not till the 14th that the retreat was begun. By thistime the Germans were close at hand, and their leaders were little disposedto let the hesitating enemy escape them. While the leading divisions of theFrench were crossing the Moselle, Steinmetz hurried forward his troops andfell upon the French detachments still lying on the south-east of Metzabout Borny and Courcelles. Bazaine suspended his movement of retreat inorder to beat back an assailant who for once seemed to be inferior instrength. At the close of the day the French commander believed that he hadgained a victory and driven the Germans off their line of advance; inreality he had allowed himself to be diverted from the passage of theMoselle at the last hour, while the Germans left under Prince FrederickCharles gained the river farther south, and actually began to cross it inorder to bar his retreat. [Mars-la-Tour, Aug. 15. ]From Metz westwards there is as far as the village of Gravelotte, which isseven miles distant, but one direct road; at Gravelotte the road forks, thesouthern arm leading towards Verdun by Vionville and Mars-la-Tour, thenorthern by Conflans. During the 15th of August the first of Bazaine'sdivisions moved as far as Vionville along the southern road; others cameinto the neighbourhood of Gravelotte, but two corps which should haveadvanced past Gravelotte on to the northern road still lay close to Metz. The Prussian vanguard was meanwhile crossing the Moselle southwards fromNoveant to Pont-a-Mousson, and hurrying forwards by lines converging on theroad taken by Bazaine. Down to the evening of the 15th it was not supposedat the Prussian headquarters that Bazaine could be overtaken and brought tobattle nearer than the line of the Meuse; but on the morning of the 16ththe cavalry-detachments which had pushed farthest to the north-westdiscovered that the heads of the French columns had still not passedMars-la-Tour. An effort was instantly made to seize the road and block theway before the enemy. The struggle, begun by a handful of combatants oneach side, drew to it regiment after regiment as the French battalionsclose at hand came into action, and the Prussians hurried up in wild hasteto support their comrades who were exposed to the attack of an entire army. The rapidity with which the Prussian generals grasped the situation beforethem, the vigour with which they brought up their cavalry over a distancewhich no infantry could traverse in the necessary time, and without amoment's hesitation hurled this cavalry in charge after charge against asuperior foe, mark the battle of Mars-la-Tour as that in which the militarysuperiority of the Germans was most truly shown. Numbers in this battle hadlittle to do with the result, for by better generalship Bazaine couldcertainly at any one point have overpowered his enemy. But while theGermans rushed like a torrent upon the true point of attack--that is thewesternmost--Bazaine by some delusion considered it his primary object toprevent the Germans from thrusting themselves between the retreating armyand Metz, and so kept a great part of his troops inactive about thefortress. The result was that the Germans, with a loss of sixteen thousandmen, remained at the close of the day masters of the road at Vionville, andthat the French army could not, without winning a victory and breakingthrough 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 toescape by the northern road, but instead of doing so he fell back onGravelotte and the heights between this and Metz, in order to fight apitched battle. The position was a well-chosen one; but by midday on the18th the armies of Steinmetz and Prince Frederick Charles were ranged infront of Bazaine with a strength of two hundred and fifty thousand men, andin the judgment of the King these forces were equal to the attack. Again, as at Wörth, the precipitancy of divisional commanders caused the sacrificeof whole brigades before the battle was won. While the Saxon corps withwhich Moltke intended to deliver his slow but fatal blow upon the enemy'sright flank was engaged in its long northward détour, Steinmetz pushed hisRhinelanders past the ravine of Gravelotte into a fire where no human beingcould survive, and the Guards, pressing forward in column over the smoothunsheltered slope from St. Marie to St. Privat, sank by thousands withoutreaching midway in their course. Until the final blow was dealt by theSaxon corps from the north flank, the ground which was won by the Prussianswas won principally by their destructive artillery fire: their infantryattacks had on the whole been repelled, and at Gravelotte itself it hadseemed for a moment as if the French were about to break the assailant'sline. But Bazaine, as on the 16th, steadily kept his reserves at a distancefrom the points where their presence was most required, and, according tohis own account, succeeded in bringing into action no more than a hundredthousand 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 theSaxons turned the defender's line, the French abandoned all their positionsand 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 theline was drawn around him in sufficient strength to resist any suddenattack. Steinmetz, who was responsible for a great part of the losssustained at Gravelotte, was now removed from his command; his army wasunited with that under Prince Frederick Charles as the besieging force, while sixty thousand men, detached from this great mass, were formed into aseparate army under Prince Albert of Saxony, and sent by way of Verdun toco-operate with the Crown Prince against McMahon. The Government at Parisknew 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 fallcould not be averted. One forlorn hope remained, to throw the army whichMcMahon was gathering at Châlons north-eastward to Bazaine's relief, thoughthe Crown Prince stood between Châlons and Metz, and could reach everypoint in the line of march more rapidly than McMahon himself. Napoleon hadquitted Metz on the evening of the 15th; on the 17th a council of war washeld at Châlons, at which it was determined to fall back upon Paris and toawait the attack of the Crown Prince under the forts of the capital. Nosooner was this decision announced to the Government at Paris than theEmpress telegraphed to her husband warning him to consider what would bethe effects of his return, and insisting that an attempt should be made torelieve Bazaine. [541] McMahon, against his own better judgment, consentedto the northern march. He moved in the first instance to Rheims in order toconceal his intention from the enemy, but by doing this he lost some days. On the 23rd, in pursuance of arrangements made with Bazaine, whosemessengers were still able to escape the Prussian watch, he set outnorth-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 theheadquarters at Bar-le-Duc on the 25th. Instantly the westward march of theCrown Prince was arrested, and his army, with that of the Prince of Saxony, was thrown northwards in forced marches towards Sedan. On reaching LeChesne, west of the Meuse, on the 27th, McMahon became aware of the enemy'spresence. He saw that his plan was discovered, and resolved to retreatwestwards before it was too late. The Emperor, who had attached himself tothe army, consented, but again the Government at Paris interfered withfatal effect. More anxious for the safety of the dynasty than for theexistence of the army, the Empress and her advisers insisted that McMahonshould continue his advance. Napoleon seems now to have abdicated allauthority and thrown to the winds all responsibility. He allowed the marchto be resumed in the direction of Mouzon and Stenay. Failly's corps, whichformed the right wing, was attacked on the 29th before it could reach thepassage of the Meuse at the latter place, and was driven northwards toBeaumont. Here the commander strangely imagined himself to be in security. He was surprised in his camp on the following day, defeated, and drivennorthwards towards Mouzon. Meanwhile the left of McMahon's army had crossedthe Meuse and moved eastwards to Carignan, so that his troops were severedby the river and at some distance from one another. Part of Failly's menwere made prisoners in the struggle on the south, or dispersed on the westof the Meuse; the remainder, with their commander, made a hurried anddisorderly escape beyond the river, and neglected to break down the bridgesby which they had passed. McMahon saw that if the advance was continued hisdivisions would one after another fall into the enemy's hands. He recalledthe troops which had reached Carignan, and concentrated his army aboutSedan to fight a pitched battle. The passages of the Meuse above and belowSedan were seized by the Germans. Two hundred and forty thousand men wereat Moltke's disposal; McMahon had about half that number. The task of theGermans was not so much to defeat the enemy as to prevent them fromescaping to the Belgian frontier. On the morning of September 1st, while onthe east of Sedan the Bavarians after a desperate resistance stormed thevillage of Bazeilles, Hessian and Prussian regiments crossed the Meuse atDonchéry several miles to the west. From either end of this line corpsafter corps now pushed northwards round the French positions, driving inthe enemy wherever they found them, and, converging under the eyes of thePrussian King, his general, and his Minister, each into its place in thearc of fire before which the French Empire was to perish. The movement wasas admirably executed as designed. The French fought furiously but in vain:the mere mass of the enemy, the mere narrowing of the once completedcircle, 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; theGermans had but to take one more step forward and the whole of theirbatteries would command the town. Towards evening there was a pause in thefiring, in order that the French might offer negotiations for surrender;but no sign of surrender was made, and the Bavarian cannon resumed theirfire, throwing shells into the town itself. Napoleon now caused a whiteflag to be displayed on the fortress, and sent a letter to the King ofPrussia, stating that as he had not been able to die in the midst of histroops, nothing remained for him but to surrender his sword into the handsof his Majesty. The surrender was accepted by King William, who added thatGeneral Moltke would act on his behalf in arranging terms of capitulation. General Wimpffen, who had succeeded to the command of the French army onthe disablement of McMahon by a wound, acted on behalf of Napoleon. Thenegotiations continued till late in the night, the French general pressingfor permission for his troops to be disarmed in Belgium, while Moltkeinsisted on the surrender of the entire army as prisoners of war. Fearingthe 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 theterms of surrender should be signed. At daybreak on September 2nd Napoleonsought the Prussian headquarters. He was met on the road by Bismarck, whoremained in conversation with him till the capitulation was completed onthe terms required by the Germans. He then conducted Napoleon to theneighbouring château of Bellevue, where King William, the Crown Prince, andthe Prince of Saxony visited him. One pang had still to be borne by theunhappy man. Down to his interview with the King, Napoleon had imaginedthat all the German armies together had operated against him at Sedan, andhe must consequently have still had some hope that his own ruin might havepurchased the deliverance of Bazaine. He learnt accidentally from the Kingthat Prince Frederick Charles had never stirred from before Metz. Aconvulsion of anguish passed over his face: his eyes filled with tears. There was no motive for a prolonged interview between the conqueror and theconquered, for, as a prisoner, Napoleon could not discuss conditions ofpeace. After some minutes of conversation the King departed for thePrussian headquarters. Napoleon remained in the château until the morningof the next day, and then began his journey towards the place chosen forhis 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 toeach successive report of evil the Government replied with lying boasts ofsuccess, until on the 3rd of September it was forced to announce acatastrophe far surpassing the worst anticipations of the previous days. With the Emperor and his entire army in the enemy's hands, no one supposedthat the dynasty could any longer remain on the throne: the only questionwas by what form of government the Empire should be succeeded. TheLegislative Chamber assembled in the dead of night; Jules Favre proposedthe deposition of the Emperor, and was heard in silence. The Assemblyadjourned for some hours. On the morning of the 4th, Thiers, who sought tokeep the way open for an Orleanist restoration, moved that a Committee ofGovernment should be appointed by the Chamber itself, and that elections toa new Assembly should be held as soon as circumstances should permit. Before this and other propositions of the same nature could be put to thevote, the Chamber was invaded by the mob. Gambetta, with most of theDeputies for Paris, proceeded to the Hôtel de Ville, and there proclaimedthe Republic. The Empress fled; a Government of National Defence came intoexistence, with General Trochu at its head, Jules Favre assuming theMinistry of Foreign Affairs and Gambetta that of the Interior. No hand wasraised in defence of the Napoleonic dynasty or of the institutions of theEmpire. The Legislative Chamber and the Senate disappeared without evenmaking an attempt to prolong their own existence. Thiers, without approvingof the Republic or the mode in which it had come into being, recommendedhis friends to accept the new Government, and gave it his own support. Onthe 6th of September a circular of Jules Favre, addressed to therepresentatives of France at all the European Courts, justified theoverthrow of the Napoleonic Empire, and claimed for the Government by whichit was succeeded the goodwill of the neutral Powers. Napoleon III. Wascharged 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 toexist. France only asked for a lasting peace. Such peace, however, mustleave the territory of France inviolate, for peace with dishonour would bebut the prelude to a new war of extermination. "Not an inch of our soilwill 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 hisantagonist's phrases; but as soon as the battle of Sedan was won it wassettled at the Prussian headquarters that peace would not be made withoutthe annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. Prince Bismarck has stated that hisown policy would have stopped at the acquisition of Strasburg: Moltke, however, and the chiefs of the army pronounced that Germany could not besecure against invasion while Metz remained in the hands of France, andthis opinion was accepted by the King. For a moment it was imagined thatthe victory of Sedan had given the conqueror peace on his own terms. Thishope, however, speedily disappeared, and the march upon Paris was resumedby the army of the Crown Prince without waste of time. In the third week ofSeptember the invaders approached the capital. Favre, in spite of hisdeclaration of the 6th, was not indisposed to enter upon negotiations; and, trusting to his own arts of persuasion, he sought an interview with theGerman Chancellor, which was granted to him at Ferrières on the 19th, andcontinued on the following day. Bismarck hesitated to treat the holders ofoffice in Paris as an established Government; he was willing to grant anarmistice in order that elections might be held for a National Assemblywith which Germany could treat for peace; but he required, as a conditionof the armistice, that Strasburg and Toul should be surrendered. Toul wasalready at the last extremity; Strasburg was not capable of holding out tendays longer; but of this the Government at Paris was not aware. Theconditions demanded by Bismarck were rejected as insulting to France, andthe war was left to take its course. Already, while Favre was negotiatingat 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 wasput to the rout and fled in panic. Versailles was occupied on the same day, and the line of investment was shortly afterwards completed around thecapital. [Siege of Paris, Sept. 19. ][Tours. ][Gambetta at Tours. ]The second act in the war now began. Paris had been fortified by Thiersabout 1840, at the time when it seemed likely that France might be engagedin war with a coalition on the affairs of Mehemet Ali. The forts were notdistant enough from the city to protect it altogether from artillery withthe lengthened range of 1870; they were sufficient, however, to render anassault out of the question, and to compel the besieger to rely mainly onthe slow operation of famine. It had been reckoned by the engineers of 1840that food enough might be collected to enable the city to stand atwo-months' siege; so vast, however, were the supplies collected in 1870that, with double the population, Paris had provisions for above fourmonths. In spite therefore of the capture and destruction of its armies thecause of France was not hopeless, if, while Paris and Metz occupied fourhundred thousand of the invaders, the population of the provinces shouldtake up the struggle with enthusiasm, and furnish after some months ofmilitary exercise troops more numerous than those which France had lost, toattack the besiegers from all points at once and to fall upon theircommunications. To organise such a national resistance was, however, impossible for any Government within the besieged capital itself. It wastherefore 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, whowas an aged lawyer, proved quite unequal to his task. His authority wasdisputed in the west and the south. Revolutionary movements threatened tobreak up the unity of the national defence. A stronger hand, a morecommanding 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 governmentof the provinces and the organisation of the national armies. The circle ofthe besiegers was now too closely drawn for the ordinary means of travel tobe possible. Gambetta passed over the German lines in a balloon, andreached Tours in safety, where he immediately threw his feeble colleaguesinto the background and concentrated all power in his own vigorous grasp. The effect of his presence was at once felt throughout France. There was anend of the disorders in the great cities, and of all attempts at rivalrywith the central power. Gambetta had the faults of rashness, of excessiveself-confidence, of defective regard for scientific authority in matterswhere he himself was ignorant: but he possessed in an extraordinary degreethe qualities necessary for a Dictator at such a national crisis:boundless, indomitable courage; a simple, elemental passion of love for hiscountry that left absolutely no place for hesitations or reserve in theprosecution of the one object for which France then existed, the war. Hecarried the nation with him like a whirlwind. Whatever share the militaryerrors of Gambetta and his rash personal interference with commanders mayhave had in the ultimate defeat of France, without him it would never havebeen known of what efforts France was capable. The proof of his capacitywas seen in the hatred and the fear with which down to the time of hisdeath he inspired the German people. Had there been at the head of the armyof Metz a man of one-tenth of Gambetta's effective force, it is possiblethat France might have closed the war, if not with success, at least withundiminished 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 underGeneral Werder by which it had been besieged, and enabled the Germans toestablish a civil Government in Alsace, the western frontier of the newProvince having been already so accurately studied that, when peace wasmade in 1871, the frontier-line was drawn not upon one of the earlierFrench maps but on the map now published by the German staff. It wasGambetta's first task to divide France into districts, each with its ownmilitary centre, its own army, and its own commander. Four such districtswere made: the centres were Lille, Le Mans, Bourges, and Besançon. AtBourges and in the neighbourhood considerable progress had already beenmade 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 besiegingarmy at Paris, and ordered to make himself master of Orleans. Von der Tannhastened southwards, defeated the French outside Orleans on the 11th ofOctober, and occupied this city, the French retiring towards Bourges. Gambetta removed the defeated commander, and set in his place GeneralAurelle de Paladines. Von der Tann was directed to cross the Loire anddestroy the arsenals at Bourges; he reported, however, that this task wasbeyond his power, in consequence of which Moltke ordered General Werderwith the army of Strasburg to move westwards against Bourges, afterdispersing the weak forces that were gathering about Besançon. Werder setout on his dangerous march, but he had not proceeded far when an army ofvery different power was thrown into the scale against the French levies onthe Loire. [Bazaine at Metz. ][Capitulation of Metz, Oct. 27. ]In the battle of Gravelotte, fought on the 18th of August, the Frenchtroops had been so handled by Bazaine as to render it doubtful whether hereally intended to break through the enemy's line and escape from Metz. Atwhat period political designs inconsistent with his military duty firsttook possession of Bazaine's thoughts is uncertain. He had played apolitical part in Mexico; it is probable that as soon as he found himselfat the head of the one effective army of France, and saw Napoleonhopelessly discredited, he began to aim at personal power. Before thedownfall of the Empire he had evidently adopted a scheme of inaction withthe object of preserving his army entire: even the sortie by which it hadbeen arranged that he should assist McMahon on the day before Sedan wasfeebly and irresolutely conducted. After the proclamation of the RepublicBazaine's inaction became still more marked. The intrigues of an adventurernamed Regnier, who endeavoured to open a negotiation between the Prussiansand the exiled Empress Eugénie, encouraged him in his determination to keephis soldiers from fulfilling their duty to France. Week after week passedby; a fifth of the besieging army was struck down with sickness; yetBazaine made no effort to break through, or even to diminish the number ofmen who were consuming the supplies of Metz by giving to separatedetachments the opportunity of escape. On the 12th of October, after thepretence of a sortie on the north, he entered into communication with theGerman headquarters at Versailles. Bismarck offered to grant a freedeparture to the army of Metz on condition that the fortress should beplaced in his hands, that the army should undertake to act on behalf of theEmpress, and that the Empress should pledge herself to accept the Prussianconditions of peace, whatever these might be. General Boyer was sent toEngland to acquaint the Empress with these propositions. They were declinedby her, and after a fortnight had been spent in manoeuvres for aBonapartist restoration. Bazaine found himself at the end of his resources. On the 27th the capitulation of Metz was signed. The fortress itself, withincalculable cannon and material of war, and an army of a hundred andseventy thousand men, including twenty-six thousand sick and wounded in thehospitals, passed into the hands of the Germans. [544][Bazaine. ]Bazaine was at a later time tried by a court-martial, found guilty of theneglect 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 alltime cling to his name. In the circumstances in which France was placed noeffort, no sacrifice of life could have been too great for the commander ofthe army at Metz. To retain the besiegers in full strength before thefortress would not have required the half of Bazaine's actual force. Ifhalf his army had fallen on the field of battle in successive attempts tocut their way through the enemy, brave men would no doubt have perished;but even had their efforts failed their deaths would have purchased forMetz the power to hold out for weeks or for months longer. The civilpopulation of Metz was but sixty thousand, its army was three times asnumerous; unlike Paris, it saw its stores consumed not by helpless millionsof women and children, but by soldiers whose duty it was to aid the defenceof their country at whatever cost. Their duty, if they could not cut theirway through, was to die fighting; and had they shown hesitation, which wasnot the case, Bazaine should have died at their head. That Bazaine wouldhave fulfilled his duty even if Napoleon III. Had remained on the throne ismore than doubtful, for his inaction had begun before the catastrophe ofSedan. His pretext after that time was that the government of France hadfallen into the hands of men of disorder, and that it was more importantfor his army to save France from the Government than from the invader. Hewas 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 ofparty to its banners: it might have been good enough for Marshal Bazaine. But France had to pay the penalty for the political, the moral indifferencewhich could acquiesce in the Coup d'État of 1851, in the servility of theEmpire, 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 FrederickCharles by which it was besieged fatally changed the conditions of theFrench war of national defence. Two hundred thousand of the victorioustroops of Germany under some of their ablest generals were set free toattack the still untrained levies on the Loire and in the north of France, which, with more time for organisation, might well have forced the Germansto raise the siege of Paris. The army once commanded by Steinmetz was nowreconstituted, and despatched under General Manteuffel towards Amiens;Prince Frederick Charles moved with the remainder of his troops towards theLoire. Aware that his approach could not long be delayed, Gambetta insistedthat Aurelle de Paladines should begin the march on Paris. The generalattacked Tann at Coulmiers on the 9th of November, defeated him, andre-occupied Orleans, the first real success that the French had gained inthe war. There was great alarm at the German headquarters at Versailles;the possibility of a failure of the siege was discussed; and forty thousandtroops were sent southwards in haste to the support of the Bavariangeneral. Aurelle, however, did not move upon the capital: his troops werestill unfit for the enterprise; and he remained stationary on the north ofOrleans, in order to improve his organisation, to await reinforcements, andto meet the attack of Frederick Charles in a strong position. In the thirdweek of November the leading divisions of the army of Metz approached, andtook post between Orleans and Paris. Gambetta now insisted that the effortshould be made to relieve the capital. Aurelle resisted, but was forced toobey. The garrison of Paris had already made several unsuccessful attacksupon the lines of their besiegers, the most vigorous being that of LeBourget on the 30th of October, in which bayonets were crossed. It wasarranged that in the last days of November General Trochu should endeavourto break out on the southern side, and that simultaneously the army of theLoire should fall upon the enemy in front of it and endeavour to force itsway to the capital. On the 28th the attack upon the Germans on the north ofOrleans began. For several days the struggle was renewed by one divisionafter another of the armies of Aurelle and Prince Frederick Charles. Victory remained at last with the Germans; the centre of the Frenchposition was carried; the right and left wings of the army were severedfrom one another and forced to retreat, the one up the Loire, the othertowards the west. Orleans on the 5th of December passed back into the handsof the Germans. The sortie from Paris, which began with a successful attackby General Ducrot upon Champigny beyond the Marne, ended after some days ofcombat 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 intohis hands without resistance; the conquerors pressed on westwards, and atDieppe troops which had come from the confines of Russia gazed for thefirst time upon the sea. But the Republican armies, unlike those which theGermans had first encountered, were not to be crushed at a single blow. Under the energetic command of Faidherbe the army of the North advancedagain 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 himback to Arras. But again, after a week's interval, Faidherbe pushedforward. On the 3rd of January he fell upon Goeben's weak division atBapaume, and handled it so severely that the Germans would on the followingday have abandoned their position, if the French had not themselves beenthe first to retire. Faidherbe, however, had only fallen back to receivereinforcements. After some days' rest he once more sought to gain the roadto Paris, advancing this time by the eastward line through St. Quentin. Infront of this town Goeben attacked him. The last battle of the army of theNorth was fought on the 19th of January. The French general endeavoured todisguise his defeat, but the German commander had won all that he desired. Faidherbe's army was compelled to retreat northwards in disorder; its partin 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 operationsof the Germans on the Loire. It was expected that Bourbaki and the eastwing of The Armies of the French army would soon re-appear at Orleans andendeavour to combine with Chanzy's troops. Gambetta, however, had formedanother plan. He considered that Chanzy, with the assistance of divisionsformed in Brittany, would be strong enough to encounter Prince FrederickCharles, and he determined to throw the army of Bourbaki, strengthened byreinforcements from the south, upon Germany itself. The design was a daringone, and had the two French armies been capable of performing the workwhich Gambetta required of them, an inroad into Baden, or even there-conquest of Alsace, would most seriously have affected the position ofthe Germans before Paris. But Gambetta miscalculated the power of young, untrained troops, imperfectly armed, badly fed, against a veteran enemy. Ina series of hard-fought struggles the army of the Loire under GeneralChanzy was driven back at the beginning of January from Vendome 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, theBreton regiments stationed on his right gave way; the Germans pressed roundhim, and gained possession of the town. Chanzy retreated towards Laval, leaving thousands of prisoners in the hands of the enemy, and saving onlythe debris of an army. Bourbaki in the meantime, with a numerous butmiserably equipped force, had almost reached Belfort. The report of hiseastward movement was not at first believed at the German headquartersbefore Paris, and the troops of General Werder, which had been engagedabout Dijon with a body of auxiliaries commanded by Garibaldi, were left tobear the brunt of the attack without support. When the real state ofaffairs became known Manteuffel was sent eastwards in hot haste towards thethreatened point. Werder had evacuated Dijon and fallen back upon Vesoul;part of his army was still occupied in the siege of Belfort. As Bourbakiapproached he fell back with the greater part of his troops in order tocover the besieging force, leaving one of his lieutenants to make a flankattack upon Bourbaki at Villersexel. This attack, one of the fiercest inthe war, delayed the French for two days, and gave Werder time to occupythe strong positions that he had chosen about Montbéliard. Here, on the15th of January, began a struggle which lasted for three days. The French, starving and perishing with cold, though far superior in number to theirenemy, were led with little effect against the German entrenchments. On the18th Bourbaki began his retreat. Werder was unable to follow him;Manteuffel with a weak force was still at some distance, and for a momentit seemed possible that Bourbaki, by a rapid movement westwards, mightcrush this isolated foe. Gambetta ordered Bourbaki to make the attempt: thecommander refused to court further disaster with troops who were not fit toface an enemy, and retreated towards Pontarlier in the hope of making hisway to Lyons. But Manteuffel now descended in front of him; divisions ofWerder's army pressed down from the north; the retreat was cut off; and theunfortunate French general, whom a telegram from Gambetta removed from hiscommand, attempted to take his own life. On the 1st of February, the wreckof his army, still numbering eighty-five thousand men, but reduced to theextremity 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 thelast unsuccessful sortie was made from Paris. There now remained provisionsonly for another fortnight; above forty thousand of the inhabitants hadsuccumbed to the privations of the siege; all hope of assistance from therelieving armies before actual famine should begin disappeared. On the 23rdof January Favre sought the German Chancellor at Versailles in order todiscuss the conditions of a general armistice and of the capitulation ofParis. The negotiations lasted for several days; on the 28th an armisticewas signed with the declared object that elections might at once be freelyheld for a National Assembly, which should decide whether the war should becontinued, or on what conditions peace should be made. The conditions ofthe armistice were that the forts of Paris and all their material of warshould be handed over to the German army; that the artillery of theenceinte should be dismounted; and that the regular troops in Paris should, as prisoners of war, surrender their arms. The National Guard werepermitted to retain their weapons and their artillery. Immediately upon thefulfilment of the first two conditions all facilities were to be given forthe 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 ofJanuary the Prussian flag waved over the forts of the French capital. Orders were sent into the provinces by the Government that elections shouldat once be held. It had at one time been feared by Count Bismarck thatGambetta would acknowledge no armistice that might be made by hiscolleagues at Paris. But this apprehension was not realised, for, whileprotesting against a measure adopted without consultation with himself andhis companions at Bordeaux, Gambetta did not actually reject the armistice. He called upon the nation, however, to use the interval for the collectionof new forces; and in the hope of gaining from the election an Assembly infavour of a continuation of the war, he published a decree incapacitatingfor election all persons who had been connected with the Government ofNapoleon III. Against this decree Bismarck at once protested, and at hisinstance it was cancelled by the Government of Paris. Gambetta thereuponresigned. The elections were held on the 8th of February, and on the 12ththe National Assembly was opened at Bordeaux. The Government of Defence nowlaid down its powers. Thiers--who had been the author of thosefortifications which had kept the Germans at bay for four months after theoverthrow of the Imperial armies; who, in the midst of the delirium ofJuly, 1870, had done all that man could do to dissuade the ImperialGovernment and its Parliament from war; who, in spite of his seventy years, had, after the fall of Napoleon, hurried to London, to St. Petersburg, toFlorence, to Vienna, in the hope of winning some support for France, --wasthe man called by common assent to the helm of State. He appointed aMinistry, called upon the Assembly to postpone all discussions as to thefuture Government of France, and himself proceeded to Versailles in orderto negotiate conditions of peace. For several days the old man struggledwith Count Bismarck on point after point in the Prussian demands. Bismarckrequired the cession of Alsace and Eastern Lorraine, the payment of sixmilliards of francs, and the occupation of part of Paris by the German armyuntil the conditions of peace should be ratified by the Assembly. Thiersstrove hard to save Metz, but on this point the German staff wasinexorable; he succeeded at last in reducing the indemnity to fivemilliards, and was given the option between retaining Belfort and sparingParis the entry of the German troops. On the last point his patriotismdecided without a moment's hesitation. He bade the Germans enter Paris, andsaved Belfort for France. On the 26th of February preliminaries of peacewere signed. Thirty thousand German soldiers marched into the ChampsElysées on the 1st of March; but on that same day the treaty was ratifiedby the Assembly at Bordeaux, and after forty-eight hours Paris was freedfrom the sight of its conquerors. The Articles of Peace provided for thegradual evacuation of France by the German army as the instalments of theindemnity, which were allowed to extend over a period of three years, should be paid. There remained for settlement only certain matters ofdetail, chiefly connected with finance; these, however, proved the objectof long and bitter controversy, and it was not until the 10th of May thatthe definitive Treaty of Peace was signed at Frankfort. [German Unity. ]France had made war in order to undo the work of partial union effected byPrussia in 1866: it achieved the opposite result, and Germany emerged fromthe war with the Empire established. Immediately after the victory of Wörththe Crown Prince had seen that the time had come for abolishing the line ofdivision which severed Southern Germany from the Federation of the North. His own conception of the best form of national union was a German Empirewith its chief at Berlin. That Count Bismarck was without plans for unitingNorth and South Germany it is impossible to believe; but the Minister andthe Crown Prince had always been at enmity; and when, after the battle ofSedan, they spoke together of the future, it seemed to the Prince as ifBismarck had scarcely thought of the federation of the Empire or of there-establishment of the Imperial dignity, and as if he was inclined to itonly under certain reserves. It was, however, part of Bismarck's system toexclude the Crown Prince as far as possible from political affairs, underthe strange pretext that his relationship to Queen Victoria would be abusedby the French proclivities of the English Court; and it is possible thathad the Chancellor after the battle of Sedan chosen to admit the Prince tohis confidence instead of resenting his interference, the differencebetween their views as to the future of Germany would have been seen to beone rather of forms and means than of intention. But whatever the share ofthese two dissimilar spirits in the initiation of the last steps towardsGerman union, the work, as ultimately achieved, was both in form and insubstance that which the Crown Prince had conceived. In the course ofSeptember negotiations were opened with each of the Southern States for itsentry into the Northern Confederation. Bavaria alone raised seriousdifficulties, and demanded terms to which the Prussian Government could notconsent. Bismarck refrained from exercising pressure at Munich, but invitedthe several Governments to send representatives to Versailles for thepurpose of arriving at a settlement. For a moment the Court of Munich drewthe sovereign of Würtemberg to its side, and orders were sent to the envoysof Würtemberg at Versailles to act with the Bavarians in refusing to signthe treaty projected by Bismarck. The Würtemberg Ministers hereupontendered their resignation; Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt signed the treaty, and the two dissentient kings saw themselves on the point of being excludedfrom United Germany. They withdrew their opposition, and at the end ofNovember the treaties uniting all the Southern States with the existingConfederation were executed, Bavaria retaining larger separate rights thanwere 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 nothingthat altered the title of its chief. Bismarck, however, had in the meantimeinformed the recalcitrant sovereigns that if they did not themselves offerthe Imperial dignity to King William, the North German Parliament would doso. At the end of November a letter was accordingly sent by the King ofBavaria to all his fellow-sovereigns, proposing that the King of Prussia, as President of the newly-formed Federation, should assume the title ofGerman Emperor. Shortly afterwards the same request was made by the samesovereign to King William himself, in a letter dictated by Bismarck. Adeputation from the North German Reichstag, headed by its President, Dr. Simson, who, as President of the Frankfort National Assembly, had in 1849offered the Imperial Crown to King Frederick William, expressed theconcurrence of the nation in the act of the Princes. It was expected thatbefore the end of the year the new political arrangements would have beensanctioned by the Parliaments of all the States concerned, and the 1st ofJanuary had been fixed for the assumption of the Imperial title. Sovigorous, however, was the opposition made in the Bavarian Chamber, thatthe ceremony was postponed till the 18th. Even then the final approvingvote had not been taken at Munich; but a second adjournment would have beenfatal to the dignity of the occasion; and on the 18th of January, in themidst of the Princes of Germany and the representatives of its armyassembled in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, King William assumed thetitle of German Emperor. The first Parliament of the Empire was opened atBerlin 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 theloss of its border provinces; the terrible drama of 1870 closed with civilwar. It is part of the normal order of French history that when anestablished Government is overthrown, and another is set in its place, thissecond Government is in its turn attacked by insurrection in Paris, and aneffort is made to establish the rule of the democracy of the capitalitself, or of those who for the moment pass for its leaders. It was so in1793, in 1831, in 1848, and it was so again in 1870. Favre, Trochu, and theother members of the Government of Defence had assumed power on thedownfall of Napoleon III. Because they considered themselves theindividuals best able to serve the State. There were hundreds of otherpersons in Paris who had exactly the same opinion of themselves; and when, with the progress of the siege, the Government of Defence lost itspopularity and credit, it was natural that ambitious and impatient men of alower political rank should consider it time to try whether Paris could notmake a better defence under their own auspices. Attempts were made beforethe end of October to overthrow the Government. They were repeated atintervals, but without success. The agitation, however, continued withinthe ranks of the National Guard, which, unlike the National Guard in thetime of Louis Philippe, now included the mass of the working class, and wasthe most dangerous enemy, instead of the support, of Government. Thecapitulation brought things to a crisis. Favre had declared that it wouldbe impossible to disarm the National Guard without a battle in the streets;at his instance Bismarck allowed the National Guard to retain theirweapons, and the fears of the Government itself thus prepared the way forsuccessful insurrection. When the Germans were about to occupy westernParis, the National Guard drew off its artillery to Montmartre and thereerected entrenchments. During the next fortnight, while the Germans werewithdrawing from the western forts in accordance with the conditions ofpeace, the Government and the National Guard stood facing one another ininaction; on the 18th of March General Lecomte was ordered to seize theartillery parked at Montmartre. His troops, surrounded and solicited by theNational Guard, abandoned their commander. Lecomte was seized, and, withGeneral Clément Thomas, was put to death. A revolutionary Central Committeetook possession of the Hôtel de Ville; the troops still remaining faithfulto the Government were withdrawn to Versailles, where Thiers had assembledthe Chamber. Not only Paris itself, but the western forts with theexception of Mont Valérien, fell into the hands of the insurgents. On the26th of March elections were held for the Commune. The majority of peacefulcitizens abstained from voting. A council was elected, which by the side ofcertain harmless and well-meaning men contained a troop of revolutionistsby 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 foughtin the sincere belief that their cause was that of municipal freedom; therewere others who believed, and with good reason, that the existence of theRepublic was threatened by a reactionary Assembly at Versailles; but themovement was on the whole the work of fanatics who sought to subvert everyauthority but their own; and the unfortunate mob who followed them, in sofar as they fought for anything beyond the daily pay which had been theironly means of sustenance since the siege began, fought for they knew notwhat. As the conflict was prolonged, it took on both sides a character ofatrocious violence and cruelty. The murder of Generals Lecomte and Thomasat the outset was avenged by the execution of some of the first prisonerstaken by the troops of Versailles. Then hostages were seized by theCommune. The slaughter in cold blood of three hundred National Guardssurprised at Clamart by the besiegers gave to the Parisians the example ofmassacre. When, after a siege of six weeks, in which Paris suffered farmore severely than it had suffered from the cannonade of the Germans, thetroops of Versailles at length made their way into the capital, humanity, civilisation, seemed to have vanished in the orgies of devils. Thedefenders, as they fell back, murdered their hostages, and left behind thempalaces, museums, the entire public inheritance of the nation in itscapital, in flames. The conquerors during several days shot down all whomthey took fighting, and in many cases put to death whole bands of prisonerswithout distinction. The temper of the army was such that the Government, even if it had desired, could probably not have mitigated the terrors ofthis vengeance. But there was little sign anywhere of an inclination tomercy. Courts-martial and executions continued long after the heat ofcombat was over. A year passed, and the tribunals were still busy withtheir work. Above ten thousand persons were sentenced to transportation orimprisonment 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 andin civil war were soon repaired; but from the battle of Wörth down to theoverthrow of the Commune France had been effaced as a European Power, andits effacement was turned to good account by two nations who were not itsenemies. Russia, with the sanction of Europe, threw off the trammels whichhad been imposed upon it in the Black Sea by the Treaty of 1856. Italygained possession of Rome. Soon after the declaration of war the troops ofFrance, after an occupation of twenty-one years broken only by an intervalof some months in 1867, were withdrawn from the Papal territory. Whatevermay have been the understanding with Victor Emmanuel on which Napoleonrecalled his troops from Civita Vecchia, the battle of Sedan set Italyfree; and on the 20th of September the National Army, after overcoming abrief show of resistance, entered Rome. The unity of Italy was at lastcompleted; Florence ceased to be the national capital. A body of lawspassed by the Italian Parliament, and known as the Guarantees, assured tothe Pope the honours and immunities of a sovereign, the possession of theVatican and the Lateran palaces, and a princely income; in the appointmentof Bishops and generally in the government of the Church a fulness ofauthority was freely left to him such as he possessed in no other Europeanland. But Pius would accept no compromise for the loss of his temporalpower. He spurned the reconciliation with the Italian people, which had nowfor the first time since 1849 become possible. He declared Rome to be inthe possession of brigands; and, with a fine affectation of disdain forVictor Emmanuel and the Italian Government, he invented, and sustained downto the end of his life, before a world too busy to pay much heed to hisperformance, the reproachful part of the Prisoner of the Vatican. CHAPTER XXV. France after 1871--Alliance of the Three Emperors--Revolt ofHerzegovina--The Andrássy Note--Murder of the Consuls at Salonika--TheBerlin Memorandum--Rejected by England--Abdul Aziz deposed--Massacres inBulgaria--Servia and Montenegro declare War--Opinion in England--Disraeli--Meeting of Emperors at Reichstadt--Servian Campaign--Declarationof the Czar--Conference at Constantinople--Its Failure--The LondonProtocol--Russia declares War--Advance on the Balkans--Osman atPlevna--Second Attack on Plevna--The Shipka Pass--Roumania--Third attackon Plevna--Todleben--Fall of Plevna--Passage of the Balkans--Armistice--England--The Fleet passes the Dardanelles--Treaty of San Stefano--Englandand Russia--Secret Agreement--Convention with Turkey--Congress ofBerlin--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 soilliberated from the foreigner before the period fixed by the Treaty ofFrankfort. The efforts of a reactionary Assembly were kept in check by M. Thiers; the Republic, as the form of government which divided Frenchmen theleast, was preferred by him to the monarchical restoration which might havewon France allies at some of the European Courts. For two years Thiersbaffled or controlled the royalist majority at Versailles which sought toplace the Comté de Chambord or the chief of the House of Orleans on thethrone, and thus saved his country from the greatest of all perils, therenewal of civil war. In 1873 he fell before a combination of hisopponents, and McMahon succeeded to the Presidency, only to find that theroyalist cause was made hopeless by the refusal of the Comté de Chambord toadopt the Tricolour flag, and that France, after several years of trial, definitely preferred the Republic. Meanwhile, Prince Bismarck had known howto frustrate all plans for raising a coalition against victorious Germanyamong the Powers which had been injured by its successes, or whoseinterests were threatened by its greatness. He saw that a Bourbon or aNapoleon on the throne of France would find far more sympathy andconfidence at Vienna and St. Petersburg than the shifting chief of aRepublic, and ordered Count Arnim, the German Ambassador at Paris, whowished to promote a Napoleonic restoration, to desist from all attempts toweaken the Republican Government. At St. Petersburg, where after themisfortunes of 1815 France had found its best friends, the German statesmanhad as yet little to fear. Bismarck had supported Russia in undoing theTreaty of Paris; in announcing the conclusion of peace with France, theGerman Emperor had assured the Czar in the most solemn language that hisservices in preventing the war of 1870 from becoming general should neverbe forgotten; and, whatever might be the feeling of his subjects, AlexanderII. Continued to believe that Russia could find no steadier friend than theGovernment of Berlin. [Alliance of the three Emperors. ]With Austria Prince Bismarck had a more difficult part to play. He couldhope for no real understanding so long as Beust remained at the head ofaffairs. But the events of 1870, utterly frustrating Beust's plans for acoalition against Prussia, and definitely closing for Austria all hope ofrecovering its position within Germany, had shaken the Minister's position. Bismarck was able to offer to the Emperor Francis Joseph the sincere andcordial friendship of the powerful German Empire, on the condition thatAustria should frankly accept the work of 1866 and 1870. He had dissuadedhis master after the victory of Königgrätz from annexing any Austrianterritory; he had imposed no condition of peace that left behind it alasting exasperation; and he now reaped the reward of his foresight. Francis Joseph accepted the friendship offered him from Berlin, anddismissed Count Beust from office, calling to his place the HungarianMinister Andrássy, who, by conviction as well as profession, welcomed theestablishment of a German Empire, and the definite abandonment by Austriaof its interference in German affairs. In the summer of 1872 the threeEmperors, accompanied by their Ministers, met in Berlin. No formal alliancewas made, but a relation was established of sufficient intimacy to insurePrince Bismarck against any efforts that might be made by France to gain anally. For five years this so-called League of the three Emperors continuedin more or less effective existence, and condemned France to isolation. Inthe apprehension of the French people, Germany, gorged with the fivemilliards but still lean and ravenous, sought only for some new occasionfor war. This was not the case. The German nation had entered unwillinglyinto the war of 1870; that its ruler, when once his great aim had beenachieved, sought peace not only in word but in deed the history ofsubsequent years has proved. The alarms which at intervals were raised atParis and elsewhere had little real foundation; and when next the peace ofEurope 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 sufferingsand the destruction of life which it involved, was yet no senseless duelbetween two jealous nations, but one of the most fruitful in results of allmodern wars, rescuing whole provinces from Ottoman dominion, and leavingbehind it in place of a chaos of outworn barbarism at least the elementsfor 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 inBosnia conflicts broke out between Christians and Mohammedans. Theinsurrection was vigorously, though privately, supported by Servia andMontenegro, and for some months baffled all the efforts made by the Portefor its suppression. Many thousands of the Christians, flying from adevastated land and a merciless enemy, sought refuge beyond the Austrianfrontier, and became a burden upon the Austrian Government. The agitationamong the Slavic neighbours and kinsmen of the insurgents threatened thepeace of Austria itself, where Slav and Magyar were almost as ready to fallupon one another as Christian and Turk. Andrássy entered intocommunications with the Governments of St. Petersburg and Berlin as to theadoption of a common line of policy by the three Empires towards the Porte;and a scheme of reforms, intended to effect the pacification of theinsurgent provinces, was drawn up by the three Ministers in concert withone another. This project, which was known as the Andrássy Note, and whichreceived the approval of England and France, demanded from the Porte theestablishment of full and entire religious liberty, the abolition of thefarming of taxes, the application of the revenue produced by directtaxation in Bosnia and Herzegovina to the needs of those provincesthemselves, the institution of a Commission composed equally of Christiansand Mohammedans to control the execution of these reforms and of thosepromised by the Porte, and finally the improvement of the agrariancondition of the population by the sale to them of waste lands belonging tothe State. The Note demanding these reforms was presented in Constantinopleon the 31st of January, 1876. The Porte, which had already been lavish ofpromises to the insurgents, raised certain objections in detail, butultimately declared itself willing to grant in substance the concessionswhich were specified by the Powers. [546][Murder of the Consuls at Salonika, May 6. ]Armed with this assurance, the representatives of Austria now endeavouredto persuade the insurgents to lay down their arms and the refugees toreturn to their homes. But the answer was made that promises enough hadalready been given by the Sultan, and that the question was, not what morewas to be written on a piece of paper, but how the execution of thesepromises was to be enforced. Without some guarantee from the Great Powersof Europe the refugees refused to place themselves again at the mercy ofthe Turk, and the leaders in Herzegovina refused to disband their troops. The conflict broke out afresh with greater energy; the intervention of thePowers, far from having produced peace, roused the fanatical passions ofthe Mohammedans both against the Christian rayahs and against the foreignerto whom they had appealed. A wave of religious, of patriotic agitation, ofpolitical disquiet, of barbaric fury, passed over the Turkish Empire. Onthe 6th of May the Prussian and the French Consuls at Salonika wereattacked and murdered by the mob. In Smyrna and Constantinople there werethreatening movements against the European inhabitants; in Bulgaria, theCircassian settlers and the hordes of irregular troops whom the Governmenthad recently sent into that province waited only for the first sign of anexpected insurrection to fall upon their prey and deluge the land withblood. [The Berlin Memorandum, May 13. ]As soon as it became evident that peace was not to be produced by CountAndrássy's Note, the Ministers of the three Empires determined to meet oneanother with the view of arranging further diplomatic steps to be taken incommon. Berlin, which the Czar was about to visit, was chosen as themeeting-place; the date of the meeting was fixed for the second week inMay. It was in the interval between the despatch of Prince Bismarck'sinvitation and the arrival of the Czar, with Prince Gortschakoff and CountAndrássy, that intelligence came of the murder of the Prussian and FrenchConsuls at Salonika. This event gave a deeper seriousness to thedeliberations now held. The Ministers declared that if the representativesof two foreign Powers could be thus murdered in broad daylight in apeaceful town under the eyes of the powerless authorities, the Christiansof the insurgent provinces might well decline to entrust themselves to anexasperated enemy. An effective guarantee for the execution of the promisesmade by the Porte had become absolutely necessary. The conclusions of theMinisters were embodied in a Memorandum, which declared that an armisticeof two months must be imposed on the combatants; that the mixed Commissionmentioned in the Andrássy Note must be at once called into being, with aChristian native of Herzegovina at its head; and that the reforms promisedby the Porte must be carried out under the superintendence of therepresentatives of the European Powers. If before the end of the armisticethe Porte should not have given its assent to these terms, the ImperialCourts declared that they must support these diplomatic efforts by measuresof a more effective character. [547][England alone rejects the Berlin Memorandum. ]On the same day that this Memorandum was signed, Prince Bismarck invitedthe British, the French, and Italian Ambassadors to meet the Russian andthe Austrian Chancellors at his residence. They did so. The Memorandum wasread, and an urgent request was made that Great Britain France, and Italywould combine with the Imperial Courts in support of the Berlin Memorandumas they had in support of the Andrássy Note. As Prince Gortschakoff andAndrássy were staying in Berlin only for two days longer, it was hoped thatanswers might be received by telegraph within forty-eight hours. Withinthat time answers arrived from the French and Italian Governments acceptingthe Berlin Memorandum; the reply from London did not arrive till five dayslater; it announced the refusal of the Government to join in the courseproposed. Pending further negotiations on this subject, French, German, Austrian, Italian, and Russian ships of war were sent to Salonika toenforce satisfaction for the murder of the Consuls. The Cabinet of London, declining to associate itself with the concert of the Powers, and statingthat Great Britain, while intending nothing in the nature of a menace, could not permit territorial changes to be made in the East without its ownconsent, 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 ofthe Christian subjects of the Porte or its effect on European politics. Now, however, a series of events began which excited the interest and eventhe passion of the English people in an extraordinary degree. The fermentin Constantinople was deepening. On the 29th of May the Sultan Abdul Azizwas deposed by Midhat Pasha and Hussein Avni, the former the chief of theparty of reform, the latter the representative of the older Turkishmilitary and patriotic spirit which Abdul Aziz had incensed by hissubserviency to Russia. A few days later the deposed Sultan was murdered. Hussein Avni and another rival of Midhat were assassinated by a desperadoas they sat at the council; Murad V. , who had been raised to the throne, proved imbecile; and Midhat, the destined regenerator of the Ottoman Empireas many outside Turkey believed, grasped all but the highest power in theState. Towards the end of June reports reached western Europe of therepression of an insurrection in Bulgaria with measures of atrociousviolence. Servia and Montenegro, long active in support of their kinsmenwho were in arms, declared war. The reports from Bulgaria, at first vague, took more definite form; and at length the correspondents of German as wellas English newspapers, making their way to the district south of theBalkans, found in villages still strewed with skeletons and human remainsthe terrible evidence of what had passed. The British Ministry, relyingupon the statements of Sir H. Elliot, Ambassador at Constantinople, atfirst denied the seriousness of the massacres: they directed, however, thatinvestigations should be made on the spot by a member of the Embassy; andMr. Baring, Secretary of Legation, was sent to Bulgaria with this duty. Baring's report confirmed the accounts which his chief had refused tobelieve, and placed the number of the victims, rightly or wrongly, at notless than twelve thousand. [548][Opinion in England. ]The Bulgarian massacres acted on Europe in 1876 as the massacre of Chioshad acted on Europe in 1822. In England especially they excited the deepesthorror, and completely changed the tone of public opinion towards the Turk. Hitherto the public mind had scarcely been conscious of the questions thatwere at issue in the East. Herzegovina, Bosnia, Bulgaria, were not familiarnames like Greece; the English people hardly knew where these countrieswere, or that they were not inhabited by Turks. The Crimean War had leftbehind it the tradition of friendship with the Sultan; it needed somelightning-flash, some shock penetrating all ranks of society, to dispelonce and for all the conventional idea of Turkey as a community resemblinga European State, and to bring home to the English people the truecondition of the Christian races of the Balkan under their Ottoman masters. But this the Bulgarian massacres effectively did; and from this time thegreat mass of the English people, who had sympathised so strongly with theItalians and the Hungarians in their struggle for national independence, were not disposed to allow the influence of Great Britain to be used forthe perpetuation of Turkish ascendency over the Slavic races. There islittle doubt that if in the autumn of 1876 the nation had had theopportunity of expressing its views by a Parliamentary election, it wouldhave insisted on the adoption of active measures in concert with the Powerswhich were prepared to force reform upon the Porte. But the Parliament of1876 was but two years old; the majority which supported the Government wasstill unbroken; and at the head of the Cabinet there was a man gifted withextraordinary tenacity of purpose, with great powers of command overothers, and with a clear, cold, untroubled apprehension of the line ofconduct which he intended to pursue. It was one of the strangest featuresof this epoch that a Minister who in a long career had never yet exercisedthe slightest influence upon foreign affairs, and who was not himselfEnglish by birth, should have impressed in such an extreme degree the stampof his own individuality upon the conduct of our foreign policy; that heshould have forced England to the very front in the crisis through whichEurope was passing; and that, for good or for evil, he should have reversedthe tendency which since the Italian war of 1859 had seemed ever to bedrawing England further and further away from Continental affairs. [Disraeli. ]Disraeli's conception of Parliamentary politics was an ironical one. It hadpleased the British nation that the leadership of one of its greatpolitical parties should be won by a man of genius only on the condition ofaccommodating himself to certain singular fancies of his contemporaries;and for twenty years, from the time of his attacks upon Sir Robert Peel forthe abolition of the corn-laws down to the time when he educated his partyinto the democratic Reform Bill of 1867, Disraeli with an excellent gracesuited 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 powerfulmajority in both Houses of Parliament and of a submissive Cabinet, theantics ended; the epoch of statesmanship, and of statesmanship based on theleader's own individual thought not on the commonplace of public creeds, began. At a time when Cavour was rice-growing and Bismarck unknown outsidehis own county, Disraeli had given to the world in Tancred his visions ofEastern Empire. Mysterious chieftains planned the regeneration of Asia by anew crusade of Arab and Syrian votaries of the one living faith, andlightly touched on the transfer of Queen Victoria's Court from London toDelhi. Nothing indeed is perfect; and Disraeli's eye was favoured with suchextraordinary perceptions of the remote that it proved a little uncertainin its view of matters not quite without importance nearer home. He thoughtthe attempt to establish Italian independence a misdemeanour; he listenedto Bismarck's ideas on the future of Germany, and described them as thevapourings of a German baron. For a quarter of a century Disraeli haddazzled and amused the House of Commons without, as it seemed, drawinginspiration from any one great cause or discerning any one of the politicalgoals towards which the nations of Europe were tending. At length, however, the time came for the realisation of his own imperial policy; and beforethe Eastern question had risen conspicuously above the horizon in Europe, Disraeli, as Prime Minister of England, had begun to act in Asia andAfrica. He sent the Prince of Wales to hold Durbars and to hunt tigersamongst the Hindoos; he proclaimed the Queen Empress of India; he purchasedthe Khedive's shares in the Suez Canal. Thus far it had been uncertainwhether there was much in the Minister's policy beyond what was theatricaland picturesque; but when a great part of the nation began to ask forintervention on behalf of the Eastern Christians against the Turks, theyfound out that Disraeli's purpose was solid enough. Animated by a deepdistrust and fear of Russia, he returned to what had been the policy ofTory Governments in the days before Canning, the identification of Britishinterests with the maintenance of Ottoman power. If a generation ofsentimentalists were willing to sacrifice the grandeur of an Empire totheir sympathies with an oppressed people, it was not Disraeli who would betheir instrument. When the massacre of Batak was mentioned in the House ofCommons, he dwelt on the honourable qualities of the Circassians; wheninstances of torture were alleged, he remarked that an oriental peoplegenerally terminated its connection with culprits in a more expeditiousmanner. [549] There were indeed Englishmen enough who loved their countryas well as Disraeli, and who had proved their love by sacrifices whichDisraeli had not had occasion to make, who thought it humiliating that thegreatness of England should be purchased by the servitude and oppression ofother races, and that the security of their Empire should be deemed to reston so miserable a thing as Turkish rule. These were considerations to whichDisraeli did not attach much importance. He believed the one thing needfulto be the curbing of Russia; and, unlike Canning, who held that Russiawould best be kept in check by England's own armed co-operation with it inestablishing the independence of Greece, he declined from the first toentertain any project of imposing reform on the Sultan by force, doubtingonly to what extent it would be possible for him to support the Sultan inresistance to other Powers. According to his own later statement he wouldhimself, had he been left unfettered, have definitely informed the Czarthat if he should make war upon the Porte England would act as its ally. Public opinion in England, however, rendered this course impossible. Theknife of Circassian and Bashi-Bazouk had severed the bond with GreatBritain which had saved Turkey in 1854. Disraeli--henceforward Earl ofBeaconsfield--could only utter grim anathemas against Servia for presumingto draw the sword upon its rightful lord and master, and chide thoseimpatient English who, like the greater man whose name is associated withBeaconsfield, considered that the world need not be too critical as to themeans 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 ofwar by Servia and Montenegro were followed by the closer union of thethree Imperial Courts. The Czar and the Emperor Francis Joseph, withtheir Ministers, met at Reichstadt in Bohemia on the 8th of July. According to official statements the result of the meeting was that thetwo sovereigns determined upon non-intervention for the present, andproposed only to renew the attempt to unite all the Christian Powers in acommon policy when some definite occasion should arise. Rumours, however, which proved to be correct, went abroad that something of the nature ofan eventual partition of European Turkey had been the object ofnegotiation. A Treaty had in fact been signed providing that if Russiashould liberate Bulgaria by arms, Austria should enter into possession ofBosnia and Herzegovina. The neutrality of Austria had virtually beenpurchased at this price, and Russia had thus secured freedom of action inthe event of the necessary reforms not being forced upon Turkey by theconcert of Europe. Sooner perhaps than Prince Gortschakoff had expected, the religious enthusiasm of the Russian people and their sympathy fortheir kinsmen and fellow-believers beyond the Danube forced the Czar intovigorous action. In spite of the assistance of several thousands ofRussian volunteers and of the leadership of the Russian GeneralTchernaieff, the Servians were defeated in their struggle with the Turks. The mediation of England was in vain tendered to the Porte on the onlyterms on which even at London peace was seen to be possible, themaintenance of the existing rights of Servia and the establishment ofprovincial autonomy in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria. After a briefsuspension of hostilities in September war was renewed. The Servians weredriven from their positions; Alexinatz was captured, the road to Belgradelay open, and the doom of Bulgaria seemed likely to descend upon theconquered Principality. The Turks offered indeed a five months' armistice, which would have saved them the risks of a winter campaign and enabledthem to crush their enemy with accumulated forces in the followingspring. This, by the advice of Russia, the Servians refused to accept. Onthe 30th of October a Russian ultimatum was handed in at Constantinopleby the Ambassador Ignatieff, requiring within forty-eight hours the grantto Servia of an armistice for two months and the cessation of hostilities. The Porte submitted; and wherever Slav and Ottoman stood facing oneanother in arms, in Herzegovina and Bosnia as well as Servia andMontenegro, 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 ofOctober and the close connection between Russia and the Servian causejustified the anxiety of the British Government. This anxiety the Czarsought to dispel by a frank declaration of his own views. On the 2nd ofNovember he entered into conversation with the British Ambassador, Lord A. Loftus, and assured him on his word of honour that he had no intention ofacquiring Constantinople; that if it should be necessary for him to occupypart of Bulgaria his army would remain there only until peace was restoredand the security of the Christian population established; and, generally, that he desired nothing more earnestly than a complete accord betweenEngland and Russia in the maintenance of European peace and the improvementof the condition of the Christian population in Turkey. He stated, however, with perfect clearness that if the Porte should continue to refuse thereforms demanded by Europe, and the Powers should put up with its continuedrefusal, Russia would act alone. Disclaiming in words of great earnestnessall desire for territorial aggrandisement, he protested against thesuspicion with which his policy was regarded in England, and desired thathis words might be made public in England as a message of peace. [551] LordDerby, then Foreign Secretary, immediately expressed the satisfaction withwhich the Government had received these assurances; and on the followingday an invitation was sent from London to all the European Powers proposinga Conference at Constantinople, on the basis of a common recognition of theintegrity of the Ottoman Empire, accompanied by a disavowal on the part ofeach of the Powers of all aims at aggrandisement or separate advantage. Inproposing this Conference the Government acted in conformity with theexpressed desire of the Czar. But there were two voices within the Cabinet. Lord Beaconsfield, had it been in his power, would have informed Russiacategorically that England would support the Sultan if attacked. This thecountry and the Cabinet forbade: but the Premier had his own opportunitiesof utterance, and at the Guildhall Banquet on the 9th of November, six daysafter the Foreign Secretary had acknowledged the Czar's message offriendship, and before this message had been made known to the Englishpeople, Lord Beaconsfield uttered words which, if they were not idlebluster, could have been intended only as a menace to the Czar or as anappeal 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 entersinto conflict in a righteous cause, her resources are inexhaustible. She isnot a country that when she enters into a campaign has to ask herselfwhether she can support a second or a third campaign. She enters into acampaign 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 Constantinoplewas accepted by all the Powers, and accepted on the bases specified. LordSalisbury, then Secretary of State for India, was appointed to representGreat Britain in conjunction with Sir H. Elliot, its Ambassador. TheMinister made his journey to Constantinople by way of the Europeancapitals, and learnt at Berlin that the good understanding between theGerman Emperor and the Czar extended to Eastern affairs. Whether theBritish Government had as yet gained any trustworthy information on theTreaty 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 fairerprospect of the solution of the Eastern question by the establishment ofsome form of autonomy in the Christian provinces than there had been at anyprevious time. The Porte itself recognised the serious intention of thePowers, and, in order to forestall the work of the Conference, prepared ascheme of constitutional reform that far surpassed the wildest claims ofHerzegovinian or of Serb. Nothing less than a complete system ofParliamentary Government, with the very latest ingenuities from France andBelgium, 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 isnot impossible; but with the mass of Palace-functionaries at Constantinopleit 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 theconstitution had come into nominal existence to be exactly what it had beenbefore. The very terms of the constitution must have been unintelligible toall but those who had been employed at foreign courts. The Government mightas well have announced its intention of clothing the Balkans with the floraof the deep sea. [Demands settled at the Preliminary Conference, Dec. 11-21. ]In the second week of December the representatives of the six Great Powersassembled at Constantinople. In order that the demands of Europe should bepresented to the Porte with unanimity, they determined to hold a series ofpreliminary meetings with one another before the formal opening of theConference and before communicating with the Turks. At these meetings, after Ignatieff had withdrawn his proposal for a Russian occupation ofBulgaria, complete accord was attained. It was resolved to demand thecession 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, whoseterms of office should be for five years, and whose nomination should besubject to the approval of the Powers; the confinement of Turkish troops tothe fortresses; the removal of the bands of Circassians to Asia; andfinally the execution of these reforms under the superintendence of anInternational Commission, which should have at its disposal a corps of sixthousand gendarmes to be enlisted in Switzerland or Belgium. By thesearrangements, while the Sultan retained his sovereignty and the integrityof the Ottoman Empire remained unimpaired, it was conceived that theChristian population would be effectively secured against Turkish violenceand caprice. [The Turks refuse the demands of the Conference, Jan. 20, 1877. ]All differences between the representatives of the European Powers havingbeen removed, the formal Conference was opened on the 23rd of Decemberunder the presidency of the Turkish Foreign Minister, Savfet Pasha. Theproceedings had not gone far when they were interrupted by the roar ofcannon. Savfet explained that the new Ottoman constitution was beingpromulgated, and that the salvo which the members of the Conference heardannounced the birth of an era of universal happiness and prosperity in theSultan's dominions. It soon appeared that in the presence of this greatpanacea there was no place for the reforming efforts of the ChristianPowers. Savfet declared from the first that, whatever concessions might bemade on other points, the Sultan's Government would never consent to theestablishment of a Foreign Commission to superintend the execution of itsreforms, nor to the joint action of the Powers in the appointment of thegovernors of its provinces. It was in vain argued that without suchforeign control Europe possessed no guarantee that the promises and thegood intentions of the Porte, however gratifying these might be, would becarried into effect. Savfet replied that by the Treaty of 1856 the Powershad declared the Ottoman Empire to stand on exactly the same footing asany other great State in Europe, and had expressly debarred themselvesfrom interfering, under whatever circumstances, with its internaladministration. The position of the Turkish representative at theConference was in fact the only logical one. In the Treaty of Paris thePowers had elaborately pledged themselves to an absurdity; and thisTreaty the Turk was never weary of throwing in their faces. But thesituation was not one for lawyers and for the interpretation ofdocuments. The Conference, after hearing the arguments and thecounter-projects of the Turkish Ministers, after reconsidering its owndemands and modifying these in many important points in deference toOttoman wishes, adhered to the demand for a Foreign Commission and for aEuropean control over the appointment of governors. Midhat, who was nowGrand Vizier, summoned the Great Council of the Empire, and presented toit the demands of the Conference. These demands the Great Councilunanimously rejected. Lord Salisbury had already warned the Sultan whatwould be the results of continued obstinacy; and after receiving Midhat'sfinal reply the ambassadors of all the Powers, together with the envoyswho had been specially appointed for the Conference, quittedConstantinople. [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 forwar. The Czar had left the world in no doubt as to his own intentions incase of the failure of the European Concert; it only remained for him toascertain whether, after the settlement of a definite scheme of reform bythe Conference and the rejection of this scheme by the Porte, the Powerswould or would not take steps to enforce their conclusion. Englandsuggested that the Sultan should be allowed a year to carry out his goodintentions: Gortschakoff inquired whether England would pledge itself toaction if, at the end of the year, reform was not effected; but no suchpledge was forthcoming. With the object either of discovering somearrangement in which the Powers would combine, or of delaying the outbreakof war until the Russian preparations were more advanced and the seasonmore favourable, Ignatieff was sent round to all the European Courts. Hevisited England, and subsequently drew up, with the assistance of CountSchouvaloff, Russian Ambassador at London, a document which gained theapproval of the British as well as the Continental Governments. Thisdocument, 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 statedthat the Powers intended to watch carefully by their representatives overthe manner in which these promises were carried into effect; that if theirhopes should be once more disappointed they should regard the condition ofaffairs as incompatible with the interests of Europe; and that in such casethey would decide in common upon the means best fitted to secure thewell-being of the Christian population and the interests of general peace. Declarations relative to the disarmament of Russia, which it was now theprincipal object of the British Government to effect, were added. There wasindeed so little of a substantial engagement in this Protocol that it wouldhave been surprising had Russia disarmed without obtaining some furtherguarantee for the execution of reform. But weak as the Protocol was, it wasrejected by the Porte. Once more the appeal was made to the Treaty ofParis, once more the Sultan protested against the encroachment of thePowers on his own inviolable rights. Lord Beaconsfield's Cabinet even nowdenied that the last word had been spoken, and professed to entertain somehope in the effect of subsequent diplomatic steps; but the rest of Europeasked and expected no further forbearance on the part of Russia. The armyof operations already lay on the Pruth: the Grand Duke Nicholas, brother ofthe Czar, was appointed to its command; and on the 24th of April theRussian 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 ofRoumania. A convention signed before the outbreak of hostilities gave tothe Russian army a free passage through this territory, and Roumaniasubsequently entered the war as Russia's ally. It was not, however, untilthe 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 LowerDanube into the Dobrudscha, two were retained in Roumania as a reserve, andfour crossed the river in the neighbourhood of Sistowa, in order to enterupon the Bulgarian campaign. It was the desire of the Russians to throwforward the central part of their army by the line of the river Jantra uponthe Balkans; with their left to move against Rustchuk and the Turkisharmies in the eastern fortresses of Bulgaria; with their right to captureNicopolis, and guard the central column against any flank attack from thewest. But both in Europe and in Asia the Russians had underrated the powerof their adversary, and entered upon the war with insufficient forces. Advantages won by their generals on the Armenian frontier while theEuropean army was still marching through Roumania were lost in the courseof the next few weeks. Bayazid and other places that fell into the hands ofthe Russians at the first onset were recovered by the Turks under MukhtarPasha; and within a few days after the opening of the European campaign theRussian divisions in Asia were everywhere retreating upon their ownfrontier. The Bulgarian campaign was marked by the same rapid successes ofthe invader at the outset, to be followed, owing to the same insufficiencyof force, by similar disasters. Encountering no effective opposition on theDanube, the Russians pushed forward rapidly towards the Balkans by the lineof the Jantra. The Turkish army lay scattered in the Bulgarian fortresses, from Widdin in the extreme west to Shumla at the foot of the EasternBalkans. It was considered by the Russian commanders that two army-corpswould be required to operate against the Turks in Eastern Bulgaria, whileone corps would be enough to cover the central line of invasion from thewest. There remained, excluding the two corps in reserve in Roumania andthe corps holding the Dobrudscha, but one corps for the march on theBalkans and Adrianople. The command of the vanguard of this body was givento General Gourko, who pressed on into the Balkans, seized the Shipka Pass, and descended into Southern Bulgaria (July 15). The Turks were driven fromKesanlik 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 ancientBulgarian capital, about half-way between the Danube and the Balkans. Twoarmy-corps, commanded by the Czarewitch, moved eastwards against Rustchukand the so-called Turkish army of the Danube, which was gathering behindthe lines of the Kara Lom; another division, under General Krudener, turnedwestward and captured Nicopolis with its garrison. Lovatz and other pointslying westward of the Jantra were occupied by weak detachments; but sobadly were the reconnaissances of the Russians performed in this directionthat they were unaware of the approach of a Turkish army from Widdin, thirty-five thousand strong, till this was close on their flank. Before theRussians 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 Russiansattacked him at Plevna: they were defeated with considerable loss, andafter a few days one of Osman's divisions, pushing forward upon theinvader's central line, drove them out of Lovatz. The Grand Duke now sentreinforcements to Krudener, and ordered him to take Plevna at all costs. Krudener's strength was raised to thirty-five thousand; but in the meantimenew Turkish regiments had joined Osman, and his troops, now numbering aboutfifty thousand, had been working day and night entrenching themselves inthe heights round Plevna which the Russians had to attack. The assault wasmade on the 30th of July; it was beaten back with terrible slaughter, theRussians leaving a fifth of their number on the field. Had Osman taken upthe offensive and the Turkish commander on the Lom pressed vigorously uponthe invader's line, it would probably have gone ill with the Russian armyin Bulgaria. Gourko was at once compelled to abandon the country south ofthe Balkans. His troops, falling back upon the Shipka Pass, were thereattacked from the south by far superior forces under Suleiman Pasha. TheOttoman commander, prodigal of the lives of his men and trusting to mereblindfold violence, hurled his army day after day against the Russianpositions (Aug. 20-23). There was a moment when all seemed lost, and theRussian soldiers sent to their Czar the last message of devotion from menwho were about to die at their post. But in the extremity of peril therearrived a reinforcement, weak, but sufficient to turn the scale against theill-commanded Turks. Suleiman's army withdrew to the village of Shipka atthe southern end of the pass. The pass itself, with the entrance fromnorthern 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 couldnot carry on the campaign with their existing forces. Two army-corps werecalled up which were guarding the coast of the Black Sea; several otherswere mobilised in the interior of Russia, and began their journey towardsthe Danube. So urgent, however, was the immediate need, that the Czar wascompelled to ask help from Roumania. This help was given. Roumanian troops, excellent in quality, filled up the gap caused by Krudener's defeats, andthe whole army before Plevna was placed under the command of the RoumanianPrince Charles. At the beginning of September the Russians were again readyfor action. Lovatz was wrested from the Turks, and the division which hadcaptured 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 desperatestruggle, stormed the Grivitza redoubt. On the south Skobeleff carried thefirst Turkish position, but could make no impression on their second lineof defence. Twelve thousand men fell on the Russian side before the day wasover, and the main defences of the Turks were still unbroken. On the morrowthe Turks took up the offensive. Skobeleff, exposed to the attack of a farsuperior foe, prayed in vain for reinforcements. His men, standing in thepositions that they had won from the Turks, repelled one onslaught afteranother, but were ultimately overwhelmed and driven from the field. At theclose of the second day's battle the Russians were everywhere beaten backwithin their own lines, except at the Grivitza redoubt, which was itselfbut an outwork of the Turkish defences, and faced by more formidable workswithin. The assailants had sustained a loss approaching that of the Germansat Gravelotte with an army one-third of the Germans' strength. Osman wasstronger than at the beginning of the campaign; with what sacrifices Russiawould 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 militaryadministration and the quality of its chiefs. The soldiers had foughtheroically; divisional generals like Skobeleff had done all that man coulddo in such positions; the faults were those of the headquarters and theofficers by whom the Imperial Family were surrounded. After the thirdcatastrophe, public opinion called for the removal of the authors of thesedisasters and the employment of abler men. Todleben, the defender ofSebastopol, who for some unknown reason had been left without a command, was now summoned to Bulgaria, and virtually placed at the head of the armybefore Plevna. He saw that the stronghold of Osman could only be reduced bya regular siege, and prepared to draw his lines right round it. For a timeOsman kept open his communications with the south-west, and heavy trains ofammunition and supplies made their way into Plevna from this direction; butthe investment was at length completed, and the army of Plevna cut off fromthe world. In the meantime new regiments were steadily pouring intoBulgaria from the interior of Russia. East of the Jantra, after manyalternations of fortune, the Turks were finally driven back behind theriver Lom. The last efforts of Suleiman failed to wrest the Shipka Passfrom its defenders. From the narrow line which the invaders had with suchdifficulty held during three anxious months their forces, accumulating dayby day, spread out south and west up to the slopes of the Balkans, ready toburst over the mountain-barrier and sweep the enemy back to the walls ofConstantinople when once Plevna should have fallen and the army whichbesieged it should be added to the invader's strength. At length, in thesecond week of December, Osman's supply of food was exhausted. Victor inthree battles, he refused to surrender without one more struggle. On the10th of December, after distributing among his men what there remained ofprovisions, he made a desperate effort to break out towards the west. Hiscolumns dashed in vain against the besieger's lines; behind him his enemiespressed forward into the positions which he had abandoned; a ring of firelike that of Sedan surrounded the Turkish army; and after thousands hadfallen in a hopeless conflict, the general and the troops who for fivemonths had held in check the collected forces of the Russian Empiresurrendered 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 toRussia's military capacity, the energy that marked its close made amendsfor what had gone before. Winter was descending in extreme severity: theBalkans were a mass of snow and ice; but no obstacle could now bar theinvader's march. Gourko, in command of an army that had gathered to thesouth-west of Plevna, made his way through the mountains above Etropol inthe last days of December, and, driving the Turks from Sophia, pressed ontowards Philippopolis and Adrianople. Farther east two columns crossed theBalkans by bye-paths right and left of the Shipka Pass, and then, converging on Shipka itself, fell upon the rear of the Turkish army whichstill blocked the southern outlet. Simultaneously a third corps marcheddown the pass from the north and assailed the Turks in front. After afierce struggle the entire Turkish army, thirty-five thousand strong, laiddown its arms. There now remained only one considerable force between theinvaders and Constantinople. This body, which was commanded by Suleiman, held the road which runs along the valley of the Maritza, at a pointsomewhat to the east of Philippopolis. Against it Gourko advanced from thewest, while the victors of Shipka, descending due south through Kesanlik, barred the line of retreat towards Adrianople. The last encounter of thewar took place on the 17th of January. Suleiman's army, routed anddemoralised, succeeded in making its escape to the Ægean coast. Pursuit wasunnecessary, for the war was now practically over. On the 20th of Januarythe Russians made their entry into Adrianople; in the next few days theiradvanced guard touched the Sea of Marmora at Rodosto. [Armistice, Jan. 31. ]Immediately after the fall of Plevna the Porte had applied to the EuropeanPowers for their mediation. Disasters in Asia had already warned it not todelay submission too long; for in the middle of October Mukhtar Pasha hadbeen driven from his positions, and a month later Kars had been taken bystorm. The Russians had subsequently penetrated into Armenia and hadcaptured the outworks of Erzeroum. Each day that now passed brought theOttoman Empire nearer to destruction. Servia again declared war; theMontenegrins made themselves masters of the coast-towns and ofborder-territory north and south; Greece seemed likely to enter into thestruggle. Baffled in his attempt to gain the common mediation of thePowers, the Sultan appealed to the Queen of England personally for her goodoffices in bringing the conflict to a close. In reply to a telegram fromLondon, the Czar declared himself willing to treat for peace as soon asdirect communications should be addressed to his representatives by thePorte. On the 14th of January commissioners were sent to the headquartersof the Grand Duke Nicholas at Kesanlik to treat for an armistice and forpreliminaries of peace. The Russians, now in the full tide of victory, werein no hurry to agree with their adversary. Nicholas bade the Turkish envoysaccompany him to Adrianople, and it was not until the 31st of January thatthe 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 atthe outbreak of the war that Great Britain would remain neutral unless itsown interests should be imperilled, and it had defined these interests withdue clearness both in its communications with the Russian Ambassador and inits statements in Parliament. It was laid down that Her Majesty'sGovernment could not permit the blockade of the Suez Canal, or theextension of military operations to Egypt; that it could not witness withindifference the passing of Constantinople into other hands than those ofits present possessors; and that it would entertain serious objections toany material alterations in the rules made under European sanction for thenavigation of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. [552] In reply to Lord Derby'snote which formulated these conditions of neutrality Prince Gortschakoffhad repeated the Czar's assurance that the acquisition of Constantinoplewas excluded from his views, and had promised to undertake no militaryoperation in Egypt; he had, however, let it be understood that, as anincident of warfare, the reduction of Constantinople might be necessarylike that of any other capital. In the Queen's speech at the opening ofParliament, Ministers stated that the conditions on which the neutrality ofEngland was founded had not hitherto been infringed by either belligerent, but that, should hostilities be prolonged, some unexpected occurrence mightrender it necessary to adopt measures of precaution, measures which couldnot be adequately prepared without an appeal to the liberality ofParliament. From language subsequently used by Lord Beaconsfield'scolleagues, it would appear that the Cabinet had some apprehension that theRussian army, escaping from the Czar's control, might seize and attemptpermanently to hold Constantinople. On the 23rd of January orders were sentto Admiral Hornby, commander of the fleet at Besika Bay, to pass theDardanelles, and proceed to Constantinople. Lord Derby, who saw nonecessity for measures of a warlike character until the result of thenegotiations at Adrianople should become known, now resigned office; but onthe reversal of the order to Admiral Hornby he rejoined the Cabinet. On the28th of January, after the bases of peace had been communicated by CountSchouvaloff to the British Government but before they had been actuallysigned, the Chancellor of the Exchequer moved for a vote of £6, 000, 000 forincreasing the armaments of the country. This vote was at first vigorouslyopposed on the ground that none of the stated conditions of England'sneutrality had been infringed, and that in the conditions of peace betweenRussia and Turkey there was nothing that justified a departure from thepolicy which England had hitherto pursued. In the course of the debates, however, a telegram arrived from Mr. Layard, Elliot's successor atConstantinople, stating that notwithstanding the armistice the Russianswere pushing on towards the capital; that the Turks had been compelled toevacuate Silivria on the Sea of Marmora; that the Russian general was aboutto occupy Tchataldja, an outpost of the last line of defence not thirtymiles from Constantinople; and that the Porte was in great alarm, andunable to understand the Russian proceedings. The utmost excitement wascaused at Westminster by this telegram. The fleet was at once ordered toConstantinople. Mr. Forster, who had led the opposition to the vote ofcredit, sought to withdraw his amendment; and although on the followingday, with the arrival of the articles of the armistice, it appeared thatthe Russians were simply moving up to the accepted line of demarcation, andthat the Porte could hardly have been ignorant of this when Layard'stelegram was despatched, the alarm raised in London did not subside, andthe 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 isinvariably made a condition that positions shall be handed over to it whichit does not at the moment occupy, but which it might reasonably expect tohave conquered within a certain date, had hostilities not been suspended. The armistice granted to Austria by Napoleon after the battle of Marengoinvolved the evacuation of the whole of Upper Italy; the armistice whichBismarck offered to the French Government of Defence at the beginning ofthe siege of Paris would have involved the surrender of Strasburg and ofToul. In demanding that the line of demarcation should be carried almost upto the walls of Constantinople the Russians were asking for no more thanwould certainly have been within their hands had hostilities been prolongedfor a few weeks, or even days. Deeply as the conditions of the armisticeagitated the English people, it was not in these conditions, but in theconditions of the peace which was to follow, that the true cause ofcontention between England and Russia, if cause there was, had to be found. Nevertheless, the approach of the Russians to Gallipoli and the lines ofTchataldja, followed, as it was, by the despatch of the British fleet toConstantinople, brought Russia and Great Britain within a hair's breadth ofwar. It was in vain that Lord Derby described the fleet as sent only forthe protection of the lives and property of British subjects. Gortschakoff, who was superior in amenities of this kind, replied that the RussianGovernment had exactly the same end in view, with the distinction that itsprotection would be extended to all Christians. Should the British fleetappear at the Bosphorus, Russian troops would, in the fulfilment of acommon duty of humanity, enter Constantinople. Yielding to this threat, Lord Beaconsfield bade the fleet halt at a convenient point in the Sea ofMarmora. On both sides preparations were made for immediate action. Theguns on our ships stood charged for battle; the Russians strewed theshallows with torpedoes. Had a Russian soldier appeared on the heights ofGallipoli, had an Englishman landed on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, war would at once have broken out. But after some weeks of extreme dangerthe perils of mere contiguity passed away, and the decision between peaceand war was transferred from the accidents of tent and quarter deck to thedeliberations of statesmen assembled in Congress. [Treaty of San Stefano, Mar. 3. ]The bases of Peace which were made the condition of the armistice grantedat Adrianople formed with little alteration the substance of the Treatysigned by Russia and Turkey at San Stefano, a village on the Sea ofMarmora, on the 3rd of March. By this Treaty the Porte recognised theindependence of Servia, Montenegro, and Roumania, and made considerablecessions of territory to the two former States. Bulgaria was constituted anautonomous tributary Principality, with a Christian Government and anational militia. Its frontier, which was made so extensive as to includethe greater part of European Turkey, was defined as beginning near Midia onthe Black Sea, not sixty miles from the Bosphorus; passing thence westwardsjust to the north of Adrianople; descending to the Ægean Sea, and followingthe coast as far as the Thracian Chersonese; then passing inland westwards, so as barely to exclude Salonika; running on to the border of Albaniawithin fifty miles of the Adriatic, and from this point following theAlbanian border up to the new Servian frontier. The Prince of Bulgaria wasto be freely elected by the population, and confirmed by the Porte with theassent of the Powers; a system of administration was to be drawn up by anAssembly of Bulgarian notables; and the introduction of the new system intoBulgaria with the superintendence of its working was to be entrusted fortwo years to a Russian Commissioner. Until the native militia wasorganised, Russian troops, not exceeding fifty thousand in number, were tooccupy the country; this occupation, however, was to be limited to a termapproximating to two years. In Bosnia and Herzegovina the proposals laidbefore the Porte at the first sitting of the Conference of 1876 were to beimmediately introduced, subject to such modifications as might be agreedupon between Turkey, Russia, and Austria. The Porte undertook to applyscrupulously in Crete the Organic Law which had been drawn up in 1868, taking into account the previously expressed wishes of the nativepopulation. An analogous law, adapted to local requirements, was, afterbeing communicated to the Czar, to be introduced into Epirus, Thessaly, andthe other parts of Turkey in Europe for which a special constitution wasnot provided by the Treaty. Commissions, in which the native population wasto be largely represented, were in each province to be entrusted with thetask of elaborating the details of the new organisation. In Armenia theSultan undertook to carry into effect without further delay theimprovements and reforms demanded by local requirements, and to guaranteethe security of the Armenians from Kurds and Circassians. As an indemnityfor the losses and expenses of the war the Porte admitted itself to beindebted to Russia in the sum of fourteen hundred million roubles; but inaccordance with the wishes of the Sultan, and in consideration of thefinancial embarrassments of Turkey, the Czar consented to accept insubstitution for the greater part of this sum the cession of the Dobrudschain Europe, and of the districts of Ardahan, Kars, Batoum, and Bayazid inAsia. As to the balance of three hundred million roubles left due toRussia, the mode of payment or guarantee was to be settled by anunderstanding between the two Governments. The Dobrudscha was to be givenby the Czar to Roumania in exchange for Bessarabia, which this State was totransfer to Russia. The complete evacuation of Turkey in Europe was to takeplace within three months, that of Turkey in Asia within six months, fromthe conclusion of peace. [554][Congress proposed. ][Opposite purposes of Russia and England. ]It had from the first been admitted by the Russian Government thatquestions affecting the interests of Europe at large could not be settledby a Treaty between Russia and Turkey alone, but must form the subject ofEuropean agreement. Early in February the Emperor of Austria had proposedthat a European Conference should assemble at his own capital. It wassubsequently agreed that Berlin, instead of Vienna, should be the place ofmeeting, and instead of a Conference a Congress should be held, that is, aninternational assembly of the most solemn form, in which each of the Powersis represented not merely by an ambassador or an envoy, but by its leadingMinisters. But the question at once arose whether there existed in the mindof the Russian Government a distinction between parts of the Treaty of SanStefano bearing on the interests of Europe generally and parts whichaffected no States but Russia and Turkey; and whether, in this case, Russiawas willing that Europe should be the judge of the distinction, or, on thecontrary, claimed for itself the right of withholding portions of theTreaty from the cognisance of the European Court. In accepting theprinciple of a Congress, Lord Derby on behalf of Great Britain made it acondition that every article of the Treaty without exception should be laidbefore the Congress, not necessarily as requiring the concurrence of thePowers, but in order that the Powers themselves might in each case decidewhether their concurrence was necessary or not. To this demand PrinceGortschakoff offered the most strenuous resistance, claiming for Russia theliberty of accepting, or not accepting, the discussion of any question thatmight be raised. It would clearly have been in the power of the RussianGovernment, had this condition been granted, to exclude from theconsideration of Europe precisely those matters which in the opinion ofother States were most essentially of European import. Phrases ofconciliation were suggested; but no ingenuity of language could shade overthe difference of purpose which separated the rival Powers. Every day thechances of the meeting of the Congress seemed to be diminishing, theapproach of war between Russia and Great Britain more unmistakable. LordBeaconsfield called out the Reserves and summoned troops from India; eventhe project of seizing a port in Asia Minor in case the Sultan should fallunder Russian influence was discussed in the Cabinet. Unable to reconcilehimself to these vigorous measures, Lord Derby, who had long been atvariance with the Premier, now finally withdrew from the Cabinet (March28). He was succeeded in his office by the Marquis of Salisbury, whosecomparison of his relative and predecessor to Titus Oates revived theinterest of the diplomatic world in a now forgotten period of Englishhistory. [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 GreatBritain to the Treaty of San Stefano. It was pointed out that a strongSlavic State would be created under the control of Russia, possessingimportant harbours upon the shores of the Black Sea and the Archipelago, and giving to Russia a preponderating influence over political andcommercial relations on both those seas; that a large Greek populationwould be merged in a dominant Slavic majority; that by the extension ofBulgaria to the Archipelago the Albanian and Greek provinces left to theSultan would be severed from Constantinople; that the annexation ofBessarabia and of Batoum would make the will of the Russian Governmentdominant over all the vicinity of the Black Sea; that the acquisition ofthe strongholds of Armenia would place the population of that provinceunder the immediate influence of the Power that held these strongholds, while through the cession of Bayazid the European trade from Trebizond toPersia would become liable to be arrested by the prohibitory barriers ofthe Russian commercial system. Finally, by the stipulation for an indemnitywhich it was beyond the power of Turkey to discharge, and by the referenceof the mode of payment or guarantee to a later settlement, Russia hadplaced it in its power either to extort yet larger cessions of territory, or to force Turkey into engagements subordinating its policy in all thingsto 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 Treatyof San Stefano, taken in a mass, threatened the peace and the interests ofEurope, and therefore, whatever might be advanced for or against individualstipulations of the Treaty, that the Treaty as a whole, and not clausesselected by one Power, must be submitted to the Congress if the examinationwas not to prove illusory. This was a just line of argument. Neverthelessit was natural to suppose that some parts of the Treaty must be moredistasteful than others to Great Britain; and Count Schouvaloff, who wassincerely desirous of peace, applied himself to the task of discoveringwith what concessions Lord Beaconsfield's Cabinet would be satisfied. Hefound that if Russia would consent to modifications of the Treaty inCongress excluding Bulgaria from the Aegean Sea, reducing its area on thesouth and west, dividing it into two provinces, and restoring the Balkansto the Sultan as a military frontier, giving back Bayazid to the Turks, andgranting to other Powers besides Russia a voice in the organisation ofEpirus, Thessaly, and the other Christian provinces of the Porte, Englandmight be induced to accept without essential change the other provisions ofSan Stefano. On the 7th of May Count Schouvaloff quitted London for St. Petersburg, in order to lay before the Czar the results of hiscommunications with the Cabinet, and to acquaint him with the state ofpublic opinion in England. On his journey hung the issues of peace or war. Backed by the counsels of the German Emperor, Schouvaloff succeeded in hismission. The Czar determined not to risk the great results already securedby insisting on the points contested, and Schouvaloff returned to Londonauthorised to conclude a pact with the British Government on the generalbasis which had been laid down. On the 30th of May a secret agreement, inwhich the above were the principal points, was signed, and the meeting ofthe Congress for the examination of the entire Treaty of San Stefano wasnow assured. But it was not without the deepest anxiety and regret thatLord Beaconsfield consented to the annexation of Batoum and the Armenianfortresses. He obtained indeed an assurance in the secret agreement withSchouvaloff that the Russian frontier should be no more extended on theside of Turkey in Asia; but his policy did not stop short here. By aConvention made with the Sultan on the 4th of June, Great Britain engaged, in the event of any further aggression by Russia upon the Asiaticterritories of the Sultan, to defend these territories by force of arms. The Sultan in return promised to introduce the necessary reforms, to beagreed upon by the two Powers, for the protection of the Christian andother subjects of the Porte in these territories, and further assigned theIsland of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by England. It wasstipulated by a humorous after-clause that if Russia should restore toTurkey its Armenian conquests, Cyprus would be evacuated by England, andthe 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 Salisburyrepresented Great Britain, opened on the 13th of June. Though thecompromise between England and Russia had been settled in general terms, the arrangement of details opened such a series of difficulties that theCongress seemed more than once on the point of breaking up. It was mainlydue to the perseverance and wisdom of Prince Bismarck, who transferred thediscussion of the most crucial points from the Congress to private meetingsof his guests, and who himself acted as conciliator when Gortschakofffolded up his maps or Lord Beaconsfield ordered a special train, that thework was at length achieved. The Treaty of Berlin, signed on the 13th ofJuly, confined Bulgaria, as an autonomous Principality, to the countrynorth of the Balkans, and diminished the authority which, pending theestablishment of its definitive system of government, would by the Treatyof San Stefano have belonged to a Russian commissioner. The portion ofBulgaria south of the Balkans, but extending no farther west than thevalley of the Maritza, and no farther south than Mount Rhodope, was formedinto a Province of East Roumelia, to remain subject to the direct politicaland military authority of the Sultan, under conditions of administrativeautonomy. The Sultan was declared to possess the right of erectingfortifications both on the coast and on the land-frontier of this province, and of maintaining troops there. Alike in Bulgaria and in Eastern Roumeliathe period of occupation by Russian troops was limited to nine months. Bosnia and Herzegovina were handed over to Austria, to be occupied andadministered by that Power. The cessions of territory made to Servia andMontenegro in the Treaty of San Stefano were modified with the object ofinterposing a broader strip between these two States; Bayazid was omittedfrom the ceded districts in Asia, and the Czar declared it his intention toerect Batoum into a free port, essentially commercial. At the instance ofFrance the provisions relating to the Greek Provinces of Turkey weresuperseded by a vote in favour of the cession of part of these Provinces tothe Hellenic Kingdom. The Sultan was recommended to cede Thessaly and partof Epirus to Greece, the Powers reserving to themselves the right ofoffering their mediation to facilitate the negotiations. In other respectsthe provisions of the Treaty of San Stefano were confirmed withoutsubstantial change. [Comparison of the two Treaties. ]Lord Beaconsfield returned to London, bringing, as he said, peace withhonour. It was claimed, in the despatch to our Ambassadors whichaccompanied the publication of the Treaty of Berlin, that in this Treatythe cardinal objections raised by the British Government to the Treaty ofSan Stefano had found an entire remedy. "Bulgaria, " wrote Lord Salisbury, "is now confined to the river-barrier of the Danube, and consequently hasnot only ceased to possess any harbour on the Archipelago, but is removedby more than a hundred miles from the neighbourhood of that sea. On theEuxine the important port of Bourgas has been restored to the Government ofTurkey; and Bulgaria retains less than half the sea-board originallyassigned to it, and possesses no other port except the roadstead of Varna, which can hardly be used for any but commercial purposes. The replacementunder Turkish rule of Bourgas and the southern half of the sea-board on theEuxine, and the strictly commercial character assigned to Batoum, havelargely obviated the menace to the liberty of the Black Sea. The politicaloutposts of Russian power have been pushed back to the region beyond theBalkans; the Sultan's dominions have been provided with a defensiblefrontier. " It was in short the contention of the English Government thatwhile Russia, in the pretended emancipation of a great part of EuropeanTurkey by the Treaty of San Stefano, had but acquired a new dependency, England, by insisting on the division of Bulgaria, had baffled this planand restored to Turkey an effective military dominion over all the countrysouth of the Balkans. That Lord Beaconsfield did well in severing Macedoniafrom 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 guaranteefor good government, every successive year made more plain; the wisdom ofhis treatment of Bulgaria itself must, in the light of subsequent events, remain matter for controversy. It may fairly be said that in dealing withBulgaria English statesmen were, on the whole, dealing with the unknown. Nevertheless, had guidance been accepted from the history of the otherBalkan States, analogies were not altogether wanting or altogether remote. During the present century three Christian States had been formed out ofwhat had been Ottoman territory: Servia, Greece, and Roumania. Not one ofthese had become a Russian Province, or had failed to develop and maintaina distinct national existence. In Servia an attempt had been made to retainfor the Porte the right of keeping troops in garrison. This attempt hadproved a mistake. So long as the right was exercised it had simply been asource of danger and disquiet, and it had finally been abandoned by thePorte itself. In the case of Greece, Russia, with a view to its owninterests, had originally proposed that the country should be divided intofour autonomous provinces tributary to the Sultan: against this the Greekshad protested, and Canning had successfully supported their protest. Eventhe appointment of an ex-Minister of St. Petersburg, Capodistrias, as firstPresident of Greece in 1827 had failed to bring the liberated country underRussian influence; and in the course of the half-century which had sinceelapsed it had become one of the commonplaces of politics, accepted byevery school in every country of Western Europe, that the Powers hadcommitted a great error in 1833 in not extending to far larger dimensionsthe Greek Kingdom which they then established. In the case of Roumania, theBritish Government had, out of fear of Russia, insisted in 1856 that theprovinces of Moldavia and Wallachia should remain separate: the result wasthat the inhabitants in defiance of England effected their union, and thatafter a few years had passed there was not a single politician in Englandwho regarded their union otherwise than with satisfaction. If historytaught anything in the solution of the Eastern question, it taught that theeffort to reserve for the Sultan a military existence in countries whichhad passed from under his general control was futile, and that the bestbarrier against Russian influence was to be found not in the division butin the strengthening and consolidation of the States rescued from Ottomandominions. It was of course open to English statesmen in 1878 to believe that all thathad hitherto passed in the Balkan Peninsula had no bearing upon theproblems of the hour, and that, whatever might have been the case withGreece, Servia, and Roumania, Bulgaria stood on a completely differentfooting, and called for the application of principles not based on theexperience of the past but on the divinations of superior minds. Should thehistory of succeeding years bear out this view, should the Balkans become atrue military frontier for Turkey, should Northern Bulgaria sink to thecondition of a Russian dependency, and Eastern Roumelia, in severance fromits enslaved kin, abandon itself to a thriving ease behind the garrisons ofthe reforming Ottoman, Lord Beaconsfield will have deserved the fame of astatesman whose intuitions, undimmed by the mists of experience, penetratedthe secret of the future, and shaped, because they discerned, the destinyof nations. It will be the task of later historians to measure the exactperiod after the Congress of Berlin at which the process indicated by LordBeaconsfield came into visible operation; it is the misfortune of thosewhose view is limited by a single decade to have to record that in everyparticular, with the single exception of the severance of Macedonia fromthe Slavonic Principality, Lord Beaconsfield's ideas, purposes andanticipations, in so far as they related to Eastern Europe, have hithertobeen contradicted by events. What happened in Greece, Servia, and Roumaniahas happened in Bulgaria. Experience, thrown to the winds by EnglishMinisters in 1878, has justified those who listened to its voice. Thereexists no such thing as a Turkish fortress on the Balkans; Bourgas no morebelongs to the Sultan than Athens or Belgrade; no Turkish soldier has beenable to set foot within the territory whose very name, Eastern Roumelia, was to stamp it as Turkish dominion. National independence, a living forcein Greece, in Servia, in Roumania, has proved its power in Bulgaria too. The efforts of Russia to establish its influence over a people liberated byits arms have been repelled with unexpected firmness. Like the dividedmembers of Roumania, the divided members of Bulgaria have effected theirunion. In this union, in the growing material and moral force of theBulgarian State, Western Europe sees a power wholly favourable to its ownhopes for the future of the East, wholly adverse to the extension ofRussian rule: and it has been reserved for Lord Beaconsfield's colleague atthe Congress of Berlin, regardless of the fact that Bulgaria north of theBalkans, not the southern Province, created that vigorous military andpolitical organisation which was the precursor of national union, toexplain that in dividing Bulgaria into two portions the English Ministersof 1878 intended to promote its ultimate unity, and that in subjecting thesouthern half to the Sultan's rule they laid the foundation for itsultimate 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. Theacquisition 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 undertakingcontinue to be very unpopular. It is openly said that one half of thetreasure was uselessly spent at Reichenbach, and that the other half willbe spent on the present occasion, and that the sovereign will be reduced tohis former level of Margrave of Brandenburg. " Eden, from Berlin; June 19, 1792. Records: Prussia, vol. 151. "He (Möllendorf) reprobated the alliancewith Austria, condemning the present interference in the affairs of Franceas ruinous, and censuring as undignified and contrary to the most importantinterests of this country the leaving Russia sole arbitress of the fate ofPoland. He, however, said, what every Prussian without any exception ofparty will say, that this country can never acquiesce in the establishmentof a good government in Poland, since in a short time it would rise to avery decided superiority, " _Id. _, July 17. Mr. Cobden's theory thatthe partition of Poland was effected in the interest of good governmentmust have caused some surprise at Berlin. [15] The condition of Mecklenburg is thus described in a letter written byStein during a journey in 1802:--"I found the aspect of the country ascheerless as its misty northern sky; great estates, much of them in pastureor fallow; an extremely thin population; the entire labouring class underthe yoke of serfage; stretches of land attached to solitary ill-builtfarmhouses; in short, a monotony, a dead stillness, spreading over thewhole country, an absence of life and activity that quite overcame myspirits. The home of the Mecklenburg noble, who weighs like a load on hispeasants instead of improving their condition, gives me the idea of the denof some wild beast, who devastates even thing about him, and surroundshimself with the silence of the grave. " Pertz, Leben Stein, i. 192. For amore 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 atBrussels, and Sir J. Murray, our military attaché with Brunswick's army (inRecords: Flanders, vol. 221) are instructive: "The conduct of the armyunder the Princes of France is universally reprobated. Their appearance indress, 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 theydiscover on every occasion is far more serious. Wherever they have passed, they have exercised acts of cruelty, in banishing and severely punishingthose persons who, though probably culpable, had yet been left untouched bythe Prussian commanders. To such an extent has this been carried that thecommander at Verdun would not suffer any Frenchman (emigrant) to pass anight in the town without a special permission. " Sept. 21. After thefailure of the campaign, Elgin writes of the emigrants: "They every-whereadded to the cruelties for some of which several hussars had been executed:carried to its extent the vengeance threatened in the Duke of Brunswick'sDeclaration, in burning whole villages where a shot was fired on them: andon the other hand by their self-sufficiency, want of subordination andpersonal disrespect, have drawn upon themselves the contempt of thecombined armies. " Oct. 6. So late as 1796, the exile Louis XVIII. Declaredhis intention to restore the "property and rights" (i. E. Tithes, feudaldues, etc. ) of the nobles and clergy, and to punish the men who had"committed offences. " See Letter to Pichegru, May 4, 1796, in ManuscritInédit de Louis XVIII. , p. 464. [19] Wordsworth, Prelude, book ix. [20] The correspondence is in Ranke, Ursprung und Beginn, p. 371. Such wasthe famine in the Prussian camp that Dumouriez sent the King of Prussiatwelve loaves, twelve pounds of coffee, and twelve pounds of sugar. Theofficial account of the campaign is in the _Berlinische Zeitung_ ofOct. 11, 1792. [21] Forster, Werke, vi. 386. [22] "The very night the news of the late Emperor's (Leopold's) deatharrived here (Brussels), inflammatory advertisements and invitations to armwere distributed. " One culprit "belonged to the Choir of St. Gudule: hechose the middle of the day, and in the presence of many people posted up apaper in the church, exhorting to a general insurrection. The remainder ofthis strange production was the description of a vision he pretended tohave seen, representing the soul of the late emperor on its way to jointhat of Joseph, already suffering in the other world. " Col. Gardiner, March20, 1792. Records: Flanders, vol. 220. [23] Elgin, from Brussels, Nov. 6. "A brisk cannonade has been heard thiswhole forenoon in the direction of Mons. It is at this moment somewhatdiminished, though not at an end" Nov. 7. "Several messengers have arrivedfrom camp in the course of the night, but all the Ministers (I have seenthem all) deny having received one word of detail. .. . Couriers have beensent this night in every direction to call in all the detachments on thefrontiers. .. . The Government is making every arrangement for quittingBrussels: their papers are already prepared, their carriages ready. " . .. Then a PS. "A cannonade is distinctly heard again. .. . All the emigrantsnow here are removing with the utmost haste. " Nov. 9th. "The confusionthroughout 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 andBerlin to discover, if possible, the real designs of aggrandisement held bythose Courts. Mr. Straton, at Vienna, got wind of the agreement againstPoland. "I requested Count Philip Cobenzl" (the Austrian Minister) "that hewould have the goodness to open himself confidentially to me on the preciseobject which the two allied Courts might have in contemplation. This, however, the Count was by no means disposed to do; on the contrary, he wentround the compass of evasion in order to avoid a direct answer. Butdetermined as I was to push the Austrian Minister, I heaped question onquestion, until I forced him to say, blushing, and with evident signs ofembarrassment, 'Count Stadion' (Ambassador at London) 'will be able tosatisfy the curiosity of the British Minister, to whatever point it may bedirected. '" Jan. 20, 1793. Records: Austria, vol. 32. Stadion accordinglyinformed Lord Grenville of the Polish and Bavarian plans. Grenvilleexpressed his concern and regret at the aggression on Poland, and gavereasons against the Bavarian exchange. To our envoy with the King ofPrussia Grenville wrote: "It may possibly be the intention of the Courts toadopt a plan of indemnifying themselves for the expense of the war by freshacquisitions in Poland, and carrying into execution a new partition of thatcountry. You will not fail to explain in the most distinct and pointedmanner his Majesty's entire disapprobation of such a plan, and hisdetermination on no account to concur in any measures which may tend to thecompletion of a design so unjust in itself. " Jan. 4, 1793. Records: Army inGermany, vol. 437. At Vienna Cobenzl declared, Feb. 9, that Austria couldnot now "even manifest a wish to oppose the projects of Prussia in Poland, as in that case his Prussian Majesty would probably withdraw his assistancefrom the French war; nay, perhaps even enter into an alliance with thatnation and invade Bohemia. " Records: Austria, vol. 32. [25] Auckland, ii. 464. Papers presented to Parliament, 1793. Mr. OscarBrowning, in _Fortnightly Review_, Feb. , 1883. [26] Von Sybel, ii. 259. Thugut, Vertrauliche Briefe, i. 17. Letters fromBrussels, 23rd March in Records: Flanders, vol. 222. "The Huzars are inmotion all round, so that we hope to have them here to-morrow. Most of theFrench troops who arrived last, and which are mostly peasants armed withpikes, are returning home, besides a great number of their volunteers. "24th March. "At this moment we hear the cannon. The French have just had itcry'd in the town that all the tailors who are making coats for the armymust bring them made or unmade, and be paid directly. .. . They beat thedrums to drown the report of the cannon. .. . You have not a conception ofthe confusion in the town. .. . This moment passed four Austrians with theirheads cut to pieces, and one with his eye poked out. The French areretiring by the Porte d'Anderlecht. " Ostend, April 4th. "This day, beforetwo of the clock, twenty-five Austrian huzars enter'd the town while theinhabitants 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 theexecution of that exchange involves the ruin of his family, and he is themore sore about it that by the qualified consent which he has given to itstaking place he has precluded himself from opposing it by arms. Accordingly, every idle story which arrives from Munich which tends torevive this apprehension makes an impression which I am unable, at thefirst moment, to efface. " Lord Yarmouth, from the Prussian camp, Aug. 12, 1793, Records: Army in Germany, 437. "Marquis Lucchesini, the effectualdirector, is desirous of avoiding every expense and every exertion of thetroops; of leaving the whole burden of the war on Austria and the othercombined Powers; and of seeing difficulties multiply in the arrangementswhich the Court of Vienna may wish to form I do not perceive any objectbeyond this; no desire of diminishing the power of France; no system orfeeling 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 toEden, Sept. 7th, 1793, Records: Austria, vol. 34: a most importanthistorical document, setting out the principles of alliance between Englandand Austria. Austria, if it will abandon the Bavarian exchange, may claimannexations on the border of the Netherlands, in Alsace and Lorraine, andin 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 strengthenitself by acquisitions on the French frontier. The Emperor must see withpleasure the relative increase of the naval and commercial resources ofthis country beyond those of France. " In the face of this paper, it cannotbe maintained that the war of 1793 was, after the first few months, purelydefensive on England's part; though no doubt Pitt's notion of an indemnitywas fair and modest in comparison with the schemes and acts of his enemy. [31] The first mention of Bonaparte's name in any British documentoccurs in an account of the army of Toulon sent to London in Dec. 1793by a spy. "Les capitaines d'artillérie, élévé dans cet état, connoissentleur service et ont tous du talens. Ils préféroient l'employer pour unemeilleure cause. .. . Le sixtèrne, nommé Bonaparte, trés republicain, aété tué sous les murs de Toulon. " Records: France, vol. 599. Austriaundertook to send 5, 000 troops from Lombardy to defend Toulon, but brokeits engagement. "You will wait on M. Thugut (the Austrian Minister) andclaim in the most peremptory terms the performance of this engagement. It would be very offensive to his Majesty that a request made sorepeatedly on his part should be neglected; but it is infinitely more soto see that, when this country is straining every nerve for the commoncause, a body of troops for the want of which Toulon may possibly atthis moment be lost, have remained inactive at Milan. You will admit ofno further excuses. " Grenville to Eden, Nov. 24, 1793. Thugut's writtenanswer was, "The Emperor gave the order of march at a moment when thetown of Toulon had no garrison. Its preservation then seemed matter ofpressing necessity, but now all inquietude on this score has happilydisappeared. The troops of different nations already assembled at Toulonput the place out of all danger. " Records: Austria, vol. 35. [32] Häusser, i. 482. "La Prusse, " wrote Thugut at this time, "parviendraau moyen de son alliance à nous faire plus de mal qu'elle ne nous a faitpar les guerres les plus sanglantes. " Briefe, i. 12, 15. Thugut evenproposed that England should encourage the Poles to resist. Eden, April15; Records: Austria, vol. 33. [33] The English Government found that Thugut was from the firstindifferent to their own aim, the restoration of the Bourbons, orestablishment of some orderly government in France. In so far as heconcerned himself with the internal affairs of France, he hoped rather forcontinued dissension, as facilitating the annexation of French territory byAustria. "Qu'on profite de ce conflit des partis en France pour tâcher dese rendre mâitre des forteresses, afin de faire la loi au parti qui auraprévalu, et l'obliger d'acheter la paix et la protection de l'empereur, enlui 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 Austrianheadquarters, from July 17 to Nov. 22, 1793, give a lively picture both ofthe military operations and of the political intrigues of this period. Theyare accompanied by the MS. Journal of the Austrian army from Sept. 15 toDec. 14, each copy apparently with Wurmser's autograph, and by the originalletter of the Prussian Minister, Lucchesini, to Lord Yarmouth, announcingthe withdrawal of Prussia from the war, "M. De Lucchesini read it to mevery 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 armyappears to continue much what it has hitherto been, vigorous andpersevering where (as in villages and woods) the local advantages are of anature to supply the defects of military science; weak and helpless beyondbelief where cavalry can act, and manoeuvres are possible. .. . The magazinesof the army are stored, and the provisions regularly given out to thetroops, and good in quality. Indeed, it is singular to observe in all thevillages where we have been forward forage, etc. , in plenty, and all thecountry cultivated as usual. The inhabitants, however, have retired withthe French army; and to that degree that the tract we have lately takenpossession of is absolutely deserted. .. . The execution of Danton hasproduced no greater effect in the army than other executions, and we havefound many papers on those who fell in the late actions treating it withridicule, and as a source of joy. " Records: Flanders, 226. "I am in hopesto hear from you on the subject of the French prisoners, as to where I amto apply for the money I advance for their subsistence. They are a greatnumber of them almost naked, some entirely so. It is absolutely shocking tohumanity to see them. I would purchase some coarse clothing for those thatare in the worst state, but know not how far I should be authorised. Theyare mostly old men and boys. " Consul Harward, at Ostend, March 4th, _id_. [37] These events are the subject of controversy. See Hüffer, Oestreich undPreussen, p. 62 Von Sybel, iii. 138. Vivenot, Clerfayt, p. 38. The oldbelief, defended by Von Sybel, was that Thugut himself had determined uponthe evacuation of Belgium, and treacherously deprived Coburg of forces forits defence. But, apart from other evidence, the tone of exasperation thatruns through Thugut's private letters is irreconcilable with this theory. Lord Elgin, whose reports are used by Von Sybel, no doubt believed thatThugut was playing false; but he was a bad judge, being in the hands ofThugut's opponents, especially General Mack, whom he glorifies in the mostabsurd way. The other English envoy in Belgium, Lord Yarmouth, reported infavour of Thugut's good faith in this matter, and against militaryintriguers. Records: Army in Germany, vol. 440. A letter of PrinceWaldeck's in Thugut, i. 387, and a conversation between Mack and Sir MortonEden, on Feb. 3rd, 1797, reported by the latter in Records: Austria, vol. 48, appear to fix the responsibility for the evacuation of Belgium on thesetwo generals, Waldeck and Mack, and on the Emperor's confidential militaryadviser, 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 bedin them. So general a panic I never witnessed. " June 30th. --"To remain herealone would be a wanton sacrifice. God knows 'tis an awful stroke to me toleave a place just as I began to be comfortably settled. " Consul Harward:Records: Army in Germany, vol. 440. "All the English are arrested inOstend; the men are confined in the Capuchin convent, and the women in theConvent des Soeurs Blancs. All the Flamands from the age of 17 to 32 areforced to go for soldiers. At Bruges the French issued an order for 800 mento present themselves. Thirty only came, in consequence of which they ranga bell on the Grand Place, and the inhabitants thinking that it was someordinance, quitted their houses to hear it, when they were surrounded bythe 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'sdismissal a _sine qua non_ of the continuance of English co-operation. Instructions to Lord Spencer, July 19, 1794. Records: Austria, 36. But forthe Austrian complaints against the English, see Vivenot, Clerfayt, p. 50. [40] Schlosser, xv. 203: borne out by the Narrative of an Officer, printedin 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 dePrusse, " wrote the Empress Catherine, "est une méchante bête et un grandcochon. " 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 thestrength of the Royalist movement in France. "I cannot let your servantreturn without troubling you with these few lines to conjure you to useevery possible effort to give life and vigour to the Austrian Government atthis critical moment. Strongly as I have spoken in my despatch of thepresent state of France, I have said much less than my information, drawnfrom various quarters, and applying to almost every part of France, wouldfairly warrant. We can never hope that the circumstances, as far as theyregard the state of France, can be more favourable than they now are. ForGod's sake enforce these points with all the earnestness which I am sureyou will feel upon them. " Grenville to Eden, April 17, 1795; Records:Austria, vol. 41. After the failure of the expedition, the BritishGovernment made the grave charge against Thugut that while he wasofficially sending Clerfayt pressing orders to advance, he secretly toldhim to do nothing. "It is in vain to reason with the Austrian Ministers onthe folly and ill faith of a system which they have been under thenecessity of concealing from you, and which they will probably endeavour todisguise" 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 severalletters 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, "TheSamnites and the Lucanians could not have shown so horrible a spectacle, because they had no feudal laws. " Galanti's book gives perhaps the best ideaof the immense task faced by monarchy in the eighteenth century in itsstruggle against what he justly calls "gli orrori del governo feudale. "Nothing but a study of these details of actual life described byeye-witnesses can convey an adequate impression of the completeness and themisery of the feudal order in the more backward countries of Europe tillfar down in the eighteenth century. There is a good anonymous account ofSicily in 1810 in Castlereagh, 8, 317. [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 thediscord 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 bebeat in order to bring about a peace promised in January last. " "Beaulieuwas more violent than ever against his generals who have occasioned thefailure of his plans. He said nine of them were cowards. I believe some ofthem are ill-affected to the cause. " June 15. --"Many of the officerscomfort themselves with thinking that defeat must force peace, and othersexpress themselves in terms of despair. " July 25, --Beaulieu told Grahamthat if Bonaparte had pushed on after the battle of Lodi, he might havegone straight into Mantua. The preparations for defence were made later. [49] Thugut, Briefe i. 107. A correspondence on this subject was carried onin 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 PrinceKaunitz, the ex-minister, heard that a courier had arrived from StPetersburg, and demanded the despatch at the Foreign Office "like adictator. " It was given to him. "Ainsi, " says Thugut, "adieu au secret quidepuis un an a été conservé avec tant de soins!"[50] Wurmser's reports are in Vivenot, Clerfayt, p. 477. Graham's dailydespatches from the Austrian head-quarters give a vivid picture of theseoperations, and of the sudden change from exultation to despair. Aug. 1. --"I have the honour to inform your lordship that the siege of Mantua israised, the French having retreated last night with the utmostprecipitation. " Aug. 2. --"The Austrians are in possession of all the Frenchmortars and cannon, amounting to about 140, with 190, 000 shells and bombs;the loss of the Imperial army is inconsiderable. " Aug. 5. --"The rout ofthis day has sadly changed the state of affairs. There are no accounts ofGeneral Quosdanovich. " Aug. 9. --"Our loss in men and cannon was muchgreater than was imagined. I had no idea of the possibility of the extentof such misfortunes as have overwhelmed us" Aug. 17. --"It is scarcelypossible to describe the state of disorder and discouragement that prevailsin 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 offinding language adequate to convey a just idea of the discontent of theofficers with General Wurmser. From generals to subalterns the universallanguage is 'qu'il faut faire la paix, car nous ne savons pas faire laguerre. '" Aug. 18. --"Not only the commander-in-chief, but the greatestnumber of the generals are objects of contempt and ridicule. " Aug. 27. --"Ido not exaggerate when I say that I have met with instances of down-rightdotage. " "It was in general orders that wine should be distributed to themen previous to the attack of the 29th. There was some difficulty ingetting it up to Monte Baldo. General Bayolitzy observed that 'it did notsignify, for the men might get the value in money afterwards. ' The menmarched at six in the evening without it, to attack at daybreak, andreceived four kreutzers afterwards. This is a fact I can attest. In actionI saw officers sent on urgent messages going at a foot's pace: they saythat their horses are half starved, and that they cannot afford to killthem. "[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 in1796, 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 tohave given up the project of the Bavarian exchange in deference to England. He admitted, however, soon afterwards, that he had again been pressing theKing of Prussia to consent to it, but said that this was a ruse, intendedto make Prussia consent to Austria's annexing a large piece of Franceinstead. Eden, Sept. , 1793; Records: Austria, vol. 34. The incident showsthe difficulty of getting at the truth in diplomacy. [54] Yet the Government had had warning of this in a series of strikingreports 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 arpentqui ne soit ensemencé, sauf dans les lieux où opèrent les arméesbelligérantes. Cette culture universelle a été forcée par les Directrices làoù on ne la faisait pas volontairement. " June 8, 1794; Records: Flanders, vol. 226. Elgin had established a line of spies from Paris to the Belgianfrontier. Every one of these persons was arrested by the Revolutionaryauthorities. Elgin then fell in with the writer of the above, whose name isconcealed, and placed him on the Swiss frontier. He was evidently a personthoroughly familiar with both civil and military administration. He appearsto have talked to every Frenchman who entered Switzerland; and his reportscontain far the best information that readied England during the Reign ofTerror, contradicting the Royalists, who said that the war was only kept upby terrorism. He warned the English Government that the French nation in amass was on the side of the Revolution, and declared that the downfall ofRobespierre and the terrorists would make no difference in the prosecutionof 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, formedthe plan of annexing Bologna and Ferrara to Austria, and said that if thisresult could be achieved, the French attack upon the Papal States would beno bad matter. See the instructions to Allvintzy, in Vivenot, Clerfayt, p. 511, which also contain the first Austrian orders to imprison Italianinnovators, 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 alsoknown to the enemy, as a cadet of Strasoldo's regiment, who was carryingthe duplicate, had been taken prisoner, and having been seen to swallow aball of wax, in which the order was wrapped up, he was immediately put todeath and the paper taken out of his stomach. " Eden, Jan. , 1797; Records:Austria, vol. 48. Colonel Graham, who had been shut up in Mantua sinceSept. 10, escaped on Dec 17, and restored communication between Wurmser andAllvintzy. He was present at the battle of Rivoli, which is described inhis despatches. [57] "We expect every hour to hear of the entry of the Neapolitan troopsand the declaration of a religious war. Every preparation has been made forsuch an event. " Graves to Lord Grenville, Oct. 1, 1796; Records; Rome, vol. 56. [58] "The clamours for peace have become loud and importunate. His ImperialMajesty is constantly assailed by all his Ministers, M. De Thugut aloneexcepted, and by all who approach his person. Attempts are even made toalarm him with a dread of insurrection. In the midst of these calamities M. De Thugut retains his firmness of mind, and continues to struggle againstthe united voice of the nobility and the numerous and trying adversitiesthat press upon him. " Eden, April 1. "The confusion at the army exceeds thebounds of belief. Had Bonaparte continued his progress hither (Vienna), nodoubt is entertained that he might have entered the place withoutopposition. That, instead of risking this enterprise, he should havestopped and given the Austrians six days to recover from their alarm and toprepare for defence, is a circumstance which it is impossible to accountfor. " April 12. "He" (Mack) "said that when this place was threatened bythe enemy, Her Imperial Majesty broke in upon the Emperor while inconference with his Minister, and, throwing herself and her children at hisfeet, determined His Majesty to open the negotiation which terminated inthe shameful desertion of his ally. " Aug. 16; Records: Austria, vols. 49, 50. Thugut subsequently told Lord Minto that if he could have laid his handupon £500, 000 in cash to stop the run on the Bank of Vienna, the war wouldhave been continued, in which case he believed he would have surroundedBonaparte'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 deNapoleon, ii. 188. Miot de Melito, ch. Vi. [61] Martens, Traités, vi. 420; Thugut, Briefe, ii. 64. These lettersbreathe a fire and passion rare among German statesmen of that day, andshow the fine side of Thugut's character. The well-known story of thedestruction of Cobenzl's vase by Bonaparte at the last sitting, with thewords, "Thus will I dash the Austrian Monarchy to pieces, " is mythical. Cobenzl's own account of the scene is as follows;--"Bonaparte, excited bynot having slept for two nights, emptied glass after glass of punch. When Iexplained with the greatest composure, Bonaparte started up in a violentrage, and poured out a flood of abuse, at the same time scratching his nameillegibly 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 theconference-room itself, and left us. Until he was in the street hecontinued to vociferate in a manner that could only be ascribed tointoxication, though Clarke and the rest of his suite, who were waiting inthe hall, did their best to restrain him. " "He behaved as if he had escapedfrom 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 upthis document had not been made acquainted with the secret clauses. [63] "Tout annonce qu'il sera de toute impossibilité de finir avec cesgueux 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 etillustre nation! Que je vous suis obligée, reconnaissante! J'ai pleuré etembrassé mes enfans, mon mari. Si jamais on fait un portrait du braveNelson je le veux avoir dans ma chambre. Hip, Hip, Hip, Ma chère Miladi jesuis folle de joye. " Queen of Naples to Lady Hamilton, Sept. 4, 1798;Records: Sicily, vol. 44. The news of the overwhelming victory of the Nileseems literally to have driven people out of their senses at Naples. "LadyHamilton fell apparently dead, and is not yet (Sept 25) perfectly recoveredfrom her severe bruises. " Nelson Despatches, 3, 130. On Nelson's arrival, "up flew her ladyship, and exclaiming, 'O God, is it possible?' she fellinto my arms more dead than alive. " It has been urged in extenuation ofNelson's subsequent cruelties that the contagion of this frenzy, followingthe effects of a severe wound in the head, had deprived his mind of itsbalance. "My head is ready to split, and I am always so sick. " Aug. 10. "Itrequired 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. , ofthis time. Mack had been a famous character since the campaign of 1793. Elgin's letters to Lord Grenville from the Netherlands, private as well aspublic, are full of extravagant praise of him. In July, 1796, Graham writesfrom the Italian army: "In the opinion of all here, the greatest general inEurope is the Quartermaster Mack, who was in England in 1793. Would to Godhe was marching, and here now. " Mack, on the other hand, did not grudgeflattery to the English:--"Je perdrais partout espoir et patience si jen'avais pas vu pour mon bonheur et ma consolation l'adorable Triumvirat"(Pitt, Grenville, Dundas) "qui surveille à Londres nos affaires. Soyez, moncher ami, l'organe de ma profonde vénération envers ces Ministresincomparables. " Mack to Elgin, 23. Feb. , 1794. The British Government wasconstantly pressing Thugut to make Mack commander-in chief. Thugut, who hadformed a shrewd notion of Mack's real quality, gained much obloquy by hissteady refusal. [69] Signed by Mack. Colletta, p. 176. Mack's own account of the campaignis 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 abroadof the intention of the Royal Family to make their escape. However, thesecret was so well kept that we contrived to get their Majesties' treasurein jewels and money, to a very considerable extent, on board of H. M. Shipthe _Vanguard_ the 20th of December, and Lord Nelson went on the nextnight by a secret passage into the Palace, and brought off in his boatstheir Sicilian Majesties and all the Royal Family. It was not discovered atNaples, until very late at night, that the Royal Family had escaped. .. . Onthe morning of Christmas Day, some hours before we got into Palermo, PrinceAlbert, one of their Majesties' sons, six years of age, was, either fromfright or fatigue, taken with violent convulsions, and died in the arms ofLady Hamilton, the Queen, the Princesses, and women attendants being insuch 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 theallied head-quarters at Piacenza, June 23, in Records: Italian States, vol. 58. Bentinck arrived a few days before this battle; his despatches coverthe whole North-Italian campaign from this time. [73] Nelson Despatches, iii. 447; Sir W. Hamilton's Despatch of July 14, inRecords: Sicily, vol. 45. Helfert, Königin Karolina, p. 38. Details of theproscription in Colletta, v. 6. According to Hamilton, some of theRepublicans in the forts had actually gone to their homes before Nelsonpronounced the capitulation void. "When we anchored in the Bay, the 24th ofJune, the capitulation of the castles had in some measure taken place. Fourteen large polacks had taken on board out of the castles the mostconspicuous and criminal of the Neapolitan rebels that had chosen to go toToulon; the others had already been permitted to return to their homes. " Ifthis is so, Nelson's pretext that the capitulation had not been executedwas a mere afterthought. Helfert is mistaken in calling the letter orproclamation of July 8th repudiating the treaty, a forgery. It is perfectlygenuine. It was published by Nelson in the King's name, and is enclosed inHamilton's despatch. Hamilton's exultations about himself and his wife, andtheir share in these events, are sorry reading. "In short, Lord Nelson andI, with Emma, have carried affairs to this happy crisis. Emma is really theQueen's bosom friend. .. . You may imagine, when we three agree, what realbusiness is done. .. . At least I shall end my diplomatical careergloriously, as you will see by what the King of Naples writes from thisship to his Minister in London, owing the recovery of his kingdom to theKing's fleet, and Lord Nelson and me. " (Aug. 4, _id_. ) Hamilton states thenumber of persons in prison at Naples on Sept. 12 to be above eightthousand. [74] Castlereagh, iv. ; Records: Austria, 56. Lord Minto had just succeededSir Morton Eden as ambassador. The English Government was willing to grantthe House of Hapsburg almost anything for the sake "of strengthening thatbarrier which the military means and resources of Vienna can alone opposeagainst 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 tothe Hapsburgs as Bonaparte had been to hand over Venice; in fact, theylooked forward to the destruction of the Genoese State with avowedpleasure, because it easily fell under the influence of France. Theirprincipal anxiety was that if Austria "should retain Venice and Genoa andpossibly acquire Leghorn, " it should grant England an advantageouscommercial treaty. Grenville to Minto, Feb. 8, 1800; Castlereagh, v. 3-11. [75] Lord Mulgrave to Grenville, Sept. 12, 1799; Records: Army ofSwitzerland, vol. 80. "Suvaroff opened himself to me in the most unreservedmanner. He began by stating that he had been called at a very advancedperiod of life from his retirement, where his ample fortune and honoursplaced him beyond the allurement of any motives of interest. Attachment tohis sovereign and zeal for his God inspired him with the hope and theexpectation of conquests. He now found himself under very differentcircumstances. He found himself surrounded by the parasites or spies ofThugut, men at his devotion, creatures of his power: an army bigoted to adefensive system, afraid even to pursue their successes when that systemhad permitted them to obtain any; he had to encounter the further check ofa 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 hadtouched a very delicate point. M. De Thugut's manner changed instantly fromthat of coolness and civility to a great show of warmth attended with somesharpness. He became immediately loud and animated, and expressed chagrinat the invitation sent to the King of Sardinia. .. . He considers theconquest of Piedmont as one made by Austria of an enemy's country. Hedenies that the King of Sardinia can be considered as an ally or as afriend, or even as a neuter; and, besides imputing a thousand instances ofill-faith to that Court, relies on the actual alliance made by it with theFrench Republic by which the King of Sardinia had appropriated to himselfpart of the Emperor's dominions in Lombardy, an offence which, I perceive, will not be easily forgotten. .. . I mention these circumstances to show thedegree of passion which the Court of Vienna mixes with this discussion. "Minto answered Thugut's invective with the odd remark "that perhaps in thepresent extraordinary period the most rational object of this war was torestore the integrity of the moral principle both in civil and politicallife, and that this principle of justice should take the lead in his mindof those considerations of temporary convenience which in ordinary timesmight not have escaped his notice. " Thugut then said "that the Emperor ofRussia had desisted from his measure of the King of Sardinia's immediaterecall, leaving the time of that return to the Emperor. " On the margin ofthe despatch, against this sentence, is written in pencil, in LordGrenville's handwriting, "I am persuaded this is not true. "[77] Miliutin, 3, 117. And so almost verbatim in a conversation describedin Eden's despatch, Aug. 31 Records: Austria, vol. 55. "M. De Thugut'sanswer was evidently dictated by a suspicion rankling in his mind that theNetherlands might be made a means of aggrandisement for Prussia. Hisjealousy and aversion to that Power are at this moment more inveterate thanI have before seen them. It is probable that he may have some idea ofestablishing there the Great Duke of Tuscany. "[78] Thugut's territorial policy did actually make him propose to abolishthe 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 theNational Church, as in England. I said that as a Protestant, I could not besupposed to think the authority of the Bishop of Rome necessary; but thatin the present state of religious opinion, and considering the onlyalternative in those matters, viz. The subsistence of the Roman Catholicfaith or the extinction of Christianity itself, I preferred, though aProtestant, the Pope to the Goddess of Reason. However, the mind of BaronThugut is not open to any reasoning of a general nature when it is put incompetition with conquest or acquisition of territory. " Minto to Grenville, Oct. 22, 1799; Records: Austria, vol. 57. The suspicions of Austria currentat the Neapolitan Court are curiously shown in the Nelson Correspondence. Nelson writes to Minto (Aug. 20) at Vienna: "For the sake of the civilisedworld, let us work together, and as the best act of our lives manage tohang Thugut . .. As you are with Thugut, your penetrating mind will discoverthe villain in all his actions. .. . That Thugut is caballing. .. . Pray keepan eye upon the rascal, and you will soon find what I say is true. Let ushang these three miscreants, and all will go smooth. " Suvaroff was not morecomplimentary. "How can that desk-worm, that night-owl, direct an army fromhis 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 Lordshipfor the appearance of this despatch" (it is on thin Italian paper andalmost illegible): "we" (_i. E. _, Suvaroff's staff) "have had the misfortuneto have had our baggage plundered by the Cossacks. "[80] Every capable soldier saw the ruinous mischief of the Archduke'swithdrawal. "Not only are all prospects of our making any progress inSwitzerland at an end, but the chance of maintaining the position nowoccupied is extremely precarious. The jealousy and mistrust that existsbetween the Austrians and Russians is inconceivable. I shall not pretend tooffer an opinion on what might be the most advantageous arrangement for thearmy of Switzerland, but it is certain that none can be so bad as thatwhich at present exists. " Colonel Crauford, English military envoy, Sept. 5, 1799; Records: Army of Switzerland, vol. 79. The subsequent Operationsof Korsakoff are described in despatches of Colonel Ramsay and LordMulgrave, _id_. Vol. 80, 81, Conversations with the Archduke Charlesin those of Mr. Wickham, _id_. Vol. 77. [81] The despatches of Colonel Clinton, English attaché with Suvaroff, arein singular contrast to the highly-coloured accounts of this retreat commonin histories. Of the most critical part he only says: "On the 6th the armypassed the Panix mountain, which the snow that had fallen during the lastweek had rendered dangerous, and several horses and mules were lost on themarch. " He expresses the poorest opinion of Suvaroff and his officers: "TheMarshal is entirely worn out and incapable of any exertion: he will notsuffer 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 itslicentiousness. His honesty is now his only remaining good quality. "Records: Army of Switzerland, vol. 80. The elaborate plan for Suvaroff'sand Korsakoff's combined movements, made as if Switzerland had been an opencountry and Massena's army a flock of sheep, was constructed by theAustrian colonel Weyrother, the same person who subsequently planned thebattle 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 aconsiderable subsidy for a vigorous prosecution of the war at the verymoment when he was clandestinely and in person making the most abjectsubmission to the common enemy. Baron Thugut was all yesterday under thegreatest 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 ofinfamy and folly. I never saw him or any other man so affected as he waswhen he communicated this transaction to me to-day. I said that thesefortresses being demanded as pledges of sincerity, the Emperor should havegiven on the same principle the arms and ammunition of the army. BaronThugut added that after giving up the soldiers' muskets, the clothes wouldbe required off their backs, and that if the Emperor took pains to acquaintthe world that he would not defend his crown, there would not be wantingthose who would take it from his head, and perhaps his head with it. Hebecame so strongly affected that, in laying hold of my hand to express thestrong concern he felt at the notion of having committed me and abused theconfidence I had reposed in his counsels, he burst into tears and literallywept. I mention these details because they confirm the assurance that everypart of these feeble measures has either been adopted against his opinionor executed surreptitiously and contrary to the directions he had given. "After the final collapse of Austria, Minto writes of Thugut: "He never fora moment lost his presence of mind or his courage, nor ever bent to weakand unbecoming counsels. And perhaps this can be said of him alone in thiswhole 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 thedog. The waltz was introduced about this time at Paris by Frenchmenreturning from Germany, which gave occasion to the _mot_ that theFrench 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, withthe Procès Verbal of the Council of State and the principal reports, speeches, etc. , made in the Tribunate and the Legislative Bodies, is tobe found in the work of Baron Locré, "La Legislation de la France, "published at Paris in 1827. Locré was Secretary of the Council of Stateunder the Consulate and the Empire, and possessed a quantity of recordswhich had not been published before 1827. The Procès Verbal, thoughperhaps not always faithful, contains the only record of Napoleon's ownshare in the discussions of the Council of State. [99] The statement, so often repeated, that the Convention prohibitedChristian worship, or "abolished Christianity, " in France, is a fiction. Throughout the Reign of Terror the Convention maintained the State Churchas established by the Constituent Assembly in 1791. Though the salaries ofthe clergy fell into arrear, the Convention rejected a proposal to ceasepaying them. The non-juring priests were condemned by the Convention totransportation, and were liable to be put to death if they returned toFrance. But where churches were profaned, or constitutional priestsmolested, it was the work of local bodies or of individual Conventionalistson 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 Reignof Terror ended, the Convention adopted the proposal which it had rejectedbefore, and abolished the State salary of the clergy (Sept. 20th, 1794). This merely placed all sects on a level. But local fanatics were still busyagainst religion; and the Convention accordingly had to pass a law (Feb. 23, 1795), forbidding all interference with Christian services. This lawrequired 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-juringpriests were not now enforced, and a number of churches in Paris wereactually given up to non-juring priests. The Directory was inclined torenew the persecution of this class in 1796, but the Assemblies would notpermit it; and in July, 1797, the Council of Five Hundred passed a motiontotally abolishing the legal penalties of non-jurors. This was immediatelyfollowed by the coup d'état of Fructidor. [100] Grégoire, Mémoires, ii. 87. Annales de la Religion, x. 441;Pressensé, L'Eglise et la Revolution, p. 359. [101] Papers presented to Parliament, 1802-3, p. 95. [102] "The King and his Ministers are in the greatest distress andembarrassment. The latter do not hesitate to avow it, and the King has forthe last week shown such evident symptoms of dejection that the leastobservant could not but remark it. He has expressed himself most feelinglyupon the unfortunate predicament in which he finds himself. He wouldwelcome the hand that should assist him and the voice that should give himcourage 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 theother leading persons of Berlin in F. Jackson's despatches of this date. The charge of gross personal immorality made against Lombard is broughtagainst almost every German public man of the time in the writings ofopponents. History and politics are, however, a bad tribunal of privatecharacter. [104] Fournier, Gentz und Cobenzl, p. 79. Beer, Zehn Jahre, p. 49. Thedespatches of Sir J. Warren of this date from St. Petersburg (Records:Russia, vol. 175) are full of plans for meeting an expected invasion of theMorea and the possible liberation of the Greeks by Bonaparte. They give theimpression that Eastern affairs were really the dominant interest withAlexander 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'stitle was burnt in the presence of the French ambassador. The Austriantitle was assumed on August 10, but the publication was delayed a day onaccount 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 andHaugwitz in the Deutsche Allgemeine Biographie. [109] Hardenberg, v. 167. Hardenberg was meanwhile representing himself tothe British and Russian envoys as the partisan of the Allies. "He declaredthat he saw it was become impossible for this country to remain neutral, and that he should unequivocally make known his sentiments to that effectto the King. He added that if the decision depended upon himself, Russianeed 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 immenseforce 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 misunderstandingamong the generals had reached such a pitch that no communication tookplace between Ferdinand and Mack but in writing. Mack openly attributed hiscalamities to the ill-will and opposition of the Archduke and the rest ofthe generals. The Archduke accuses Mack of ignorance, of madness, ofcowardice, and of treachery. The consternation which prevails here (Vienna)is at the highest pitch. The pains which are taken to keep the public inthe dark naturally increase the alarm. Not a single newspaper has beendelivered for several days past except the wretched _Vienna. Gazette_. The Emperor is living at a miserable country-house, in order, as peoplesay, that he may effect his escape. Every bark on the Danube has been putin requisition by the Government. The greatest apprehensions prevail onaccount of the Russians, of whose excesses loud complaints are made. Theirarrival here is as much dreaded as that of the French. Cobenzl andCollenbach are in such a state of mind as to render them totally unfit forall business. " Cobenzl was nevertheless still able to keep up his jocularstyle in asking the ambassador for the English subsidies:--"Vous êtesmalade, je le suis aussi un peu, mais ce qui est encore plus malade quenous deux ce sont nos finances; ainsi pour l'amour de Dieu dépêchez vous denous donner vos deux cent mille livres sterlings. Je vous embrasse de toutmon 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 Hardenbergwas with the King of Prussia. His Prussian Majesty was very violentlyaffected by it, and in the first moment of anger ordered M. De Hardenbergto return to Berlin and immediately to dismiss the French ambassador. Aftera little reflection, however, he said that that measure should bepostponed. "[116] Rapp, Mémoires, p. 58. Beer, p. 188. [117] "The scarcity of provisions had been very great indeed. Muchdiscouragement had arisen in consequence, and a considerable degree ofinsubordination, which, though less easy to produce in a Russian army thanin any other, is, when it does make its appearance, most prejudicial, wasbeginning to manifest itself in various ways. The bread waggons werepillaged on their way to the camp, and it became very difficult to repressthe excesses of the troops. "--Report of General Ramsay, Dec. 10; Records:Austria, vol. 78. [118] Hardenberg, ii. 345, Haugwitz had just become joint Foreign Ministerwith Hardenberg. [119] Haugwitz' justification of himself, with Hardenberg's comments uponit, is to be seen in Hardenberg, v. 220. But see also, for Hardenberg's ownbad 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 dayLord Harrowby called on Hardenberg. "He told me that in a council of warheld since the arrival of the first accounts of the disaster, it had beendecided to order a part of the Prussian army to march into Bohemia. Theseevents, he said, need not interrupt our negotiations. " Then, on the 12thcame the news of the armistice: Harrowby saw Hardenberg that evening. "Iwas struck with something like irritation in his manner, with a sort ofreference to the orders of the King, and with an expression which droppedfrom him that circumstances might possibly arise in which Prussia couldlook only to her own defence and security. I attributed this in a greatdegree to the agitation of the moment, and I should have pushed thequestion to a point if the entrance of Count Metternich and M. D'Alopeushad not interrupted me. .. . Baron Hardenberg assured us that the militarymovements of the Prussian army were proceeding without a moment's loss oftime. " On the 25th Haugwitz arrived with his treaty. Hardenberg thenfeigned illness. "Baron Hardenberg was too ill to see me, or, as far as Icould learn, any other person; and it has been impossible for me todiscover 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. [Transcriber's Note: A corner had been torn from the page in our printcopy. A [***] sometimes indicates several missing words. ][124] The story of Pitt's "Austerlitz look" preceding his death is soimpressive and so well known that I cannot resist giving the real factsabout the reception of the news of Austerlitz in England. There were fourEnglishmen who were expected to witness the battle, Sir A. Paget, ambassador at Vienna, Lord L. Gower, ambassador with the Czar, LordHarrington and General Ramsay, military envoys. Of these, Lord Harringtonhad left England too late to reach the armies; Sir A. Paget sat [***]despatches at Olmütz without hearing the firing, and on going out alter the[***] astonished to fall in with the retreating army; Gower was too far in[***] General Ramsay unfortunately went off on that very day to get some[***] no Englishman witnessed the awful destruction that took [***] thatreached England, quite misrepresented [***] decisive one. Pitt actuallythought at first [***] to his policy, and likely to encourage [***] asDecember 20th the following [***] "Even supposing the advantage of [***]must have been obtained with a loss which cannot have left his force in acondition to contend with the army of Prussia and at the same time to makehead against the Allies. If on the other hand it should appear that theadvantage has been with the Allies, there is every reason to hope thatPrussia will come forward with vigour to decide the contest. " Records:Prussia, vol. 196. It was the surrender of Ulm which really gave Pitt theshock attributed to Austerlitz. The despatch then written--evidently fromPitt's dictation--exhorting the Emperor to do his duty, is the mostimpassioned and soul-stirring thing in the whole political correspondenceof the time. [125] Hardenberg, ii. 463. Hardenberg, who, in spite of his weak andambiguous conduct up to the end of 1805, felt bitterly the disgracefulposition in which Prussia had placed itself, now withdrew from office. "Ireceived this morning a message from Baron Hardenberg requesting me to callon him. He said that he could no longer remain in office consistently withhis honour, and that he waited only for the return of Count Haugwitz togive up to him the management of his department. 'You know, ' he said, 'myprinciples, 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 beaccessory to this measure. You know, probably, that I was an advocate forthe acquisition of Hanover, but I wished it upon terms honourable to bothparties. I thought it a necessary bulwark to cover the Prussian dominions, and I thought that the House of Hanover might have been indemnifiedelsewhere. But now, ' he added, 'j'abhorre les moyens infames par lesquelsnous faisons cette acquisition. Nous pourrions rester les amis de Bonapartesans être ses esclaves. ' He apologised for this language, and said I mustnot consider it as coming from a Prussian Minister, but from a man whounbosomed himself to his friend. .. . I have only omitted the distressingpicture of M. De Hardenberg's agitation during this conversation. Hebewailed the fate of Prussia, and complained of the hardships he hadundergone for the last three months, and of the want of firmness andresolution in his Prussian Majesty. He several times expressed the hopethat his Majesty's Government and that of Russia would make some allowancesfor the situation of this country. They had the means, he said, to do it aninfinity of mischief. The British navy might destroy the Prussian commerce, and a Russian army might conquer some of her eastern provinces; butBonaparte would be the only gainer, as thereby Prussia would be throwncompletely 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 along defence of his conduct, alleging grounds of necessity. Mr. Jacksonsaid that there could be no accommodation with England till the noteexcluding British vessels was reversed. "M. De Haugwitz immediatelyrejoined, 'I was much surprised when I found that that note had beendelivered to you. ' 'How, ' I said, 'can _you_ be surprised who was theauthor of the measures that give rise to it?' The only answer I receivedwas, 'Ah! ne dites pas cela. ' He observed that it would be worthconsidering whether our refusal to acquiesce in the present state of thingsmight not bring about one still more disastrous. I smiled, and asked if Iwas to understand that a Prussian army would take a part in the threatenedinvasion of England. He replied that he did not now mean to insinuate anysuch thing, but that it might be impossible to answer forevents. "--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 Berlinto abstain, under severe penalties, from speaking of the state of publicaffairs. This order was given in consequence of the very general and loudexpressions of dissatisfaction which issued from all classes of people, butparticularly from the military, at the recent conduct of the Government;for it has been in contemplation to publish an edict prohibiting the publicat large from discussing questions of state policy. The experience of avery few days must convince the authors of this measure of the reverse oftheir expectation, the satires and sarcasms upon their conduct havingbecome more universal than before. "--Jackson's Despatch, March 22, _id_. "On Thursday night the windows of Count Haugwitz' house werecompletely demolished by some unknown person. As carbine bullets werechiefly made use of for the purpose, it is suspected to have been done bysome of the garrison. The same thing had happened some nights before, butthe Count took no notice of it. Now a party of the police patrol thestreet"--_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 ofmajor is given in Henckel von Donnersmarck, Erinnerungen, with their yearsof 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 deNapoleon, xiii. 150. [133] Hopfner, ii. 390. Hardenberg, iii. 230. [134] "Count Stein, the only man of real talents in the administration, hasresigned or was dismissed. He is a considerable man, of great energy, character, and superiority of mind, who possessed the public esteem in ahigh degree, and, I have no doubt, deserved it. .. . During the negotiationfor an armistice, the expenses of Bonaparte's table and household at Berlinwere defrayed by the King of Prussia. Since that period one of theMinisters called upon Stein, who was the chief of the finances, to pay300, 000 crowns on the same account. Stein refused with strong expressionsof indignation. The King spoke to him: he remonstrated with his Majesty inthe most forcible terms, descanted on the wretched humiliation of such meanconduct, and said that he never could pay money on such an account unlesshe had the order in writing from his Majesty. This order was given a fewdays 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 hasnot 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 firstattack, he took off his coat and waistcoat, put all his stars and ribbonsover his shirt, and ran about the streets of Pultusk encouraging thesoldiers, over whom he is said to have great influence. "--Lord Hutchinson'sDespatch, 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 wasto relinquish the attempt to raise coalitions of half-hearted Governmentsagainst France by means of British subsidies, but to give help to Stateswhich 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'sreports, containing curious details about the Russians, and some personalmatter about Napoleon in a letter from an inhabitant of Eylau; alsoGneisenau's appeal to Mr. Canning from Colberg). [140] Bignon, vi. 342. [141] Papers presented to Parliament, 1808, p. 106. The intelligencereached 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 theinformation, but it must have been some one very near the Czar, for itpurported to give the very words used by Napoleon in his interview withAlexander 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. Theinformant was probably one of the authors of the English alliance of 1805. [142] Napoleon to Talleyrand, July 31, 1807. He instructs Talleyrand toenter into certain negotiations with the Danish Minister, which would bemeaningless if the Crown Prince had already promised to hand over thefleet. The original English documents, in Records: Denmark, vols. 196, 197, really show that Canning never considered that he had any proof of theintentions of Denmark, and that he justified his action only by theinability 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 toNapoleon see Metternich's paper of December 4, in Beer, p. 516. It seemsthat Napoleon wished to involve the Czar in active measures againstAustria, 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 Jérôme, 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. ParliamentaryPapers, 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 thisTreaty was captured by the Russians with other of Napoleon's papers duringthe retreat from Moscow, and a draft of it sent to London, which remains inthe Records. [171] Metternich, i. 122. [172] Mémoires de Jérome, v. 247. [173] Bogdanowitsch, i. 72; Chambray, i. 186. Sir R. Wilson, Invasion ofRussia, 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, seeCorrespondance de Napoléon, 27 Avril, 1813. [180] Henckel von Donnersmarck, p. 187. The battles of Lützen, Bautzen, andLeipzig are described in the despatches of Lord Cathcart, who witnessedthem 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 andaction during the armistice is based upon the following letters printed inthe 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 ofNapoleon's error as to the strength of the Austrian force is confirmed byMetternich, 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'sdespatch 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' continuedfighting at Leipzig, followed by fourteen days' forced marches in the worstweather, in order to understand the reasons that made some reposeabsolutely necessary. The total loss of the Austrians alone, since the 10thof August, at the time of our arrival at Frankfort, was 80, 000 men. We wereentirely unprovided with heavy artillery, the nearest battery train nothaving advanced further than the frontiers of Bohemia. " It was thought fora moment that the gates of Strasburg and Huningen might be opened bybribery, and the Austrian Government authorised the expenditure of amillion florins for this purpose; in that case the march into Switzerlandwould have been abandoned. The bribing plan, however, broke down. --LordAberdeen'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 togive an opinion, I have stated that the British Government did not declinetreating with Bonaparte. " "The Czar said he observed my view of thequestion 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 probableconsequences of his duplicity. Bentinck had, however, to be careful in hislanguage, 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 violenceto my feelings to incur any degree of obligation to an individual whom I soentirely despise. But I feel it my duty not to betray any appearance of aspirit of animosity. " To Murat he wrote on the same day: "The sword of agreat captain is the most flattering present which a soldier can receive. It is with the highest gratitude that I accept the gift, Sire, which youhave done me the honour to send. "--Records: Sicily, Vol. 98. [193] Treaties of Teplitz, Sept. 9, 1813. In Bianchi, Storia Documentatadella Diplomazia Europea, i. 334, there is a long protest addressed byMetternich to Castlereagh on May 26, 1814, referring with great minutenessto a number of clauses in a secret Treaty signed by all the Powers atPrague on July 27, 1813, and ratified at London on August 23, givingAustria the disposal of all Italy. This protest, which has been accepted asgenuine in Reuchlin's Geschichte Italiens and elsewhere, is, with thealleged secret Treaty, a forgery. My grounds for this statement are asfollows:--(1) There was no British envoy at Prague in July, 1813. (2) Theprivate as well as the official letters of Castlereagh to Lord Cathcart ofSept. 13 and 18, and the instructions sent to Lord Aberdeen during Augustand September, prove that no joint Treaty existed up to that date, to whichboth England and Austria were parties. Records: Russia, 207, 209 A. Austria, 105. (3) Lord Aberdeen's reports of his negotiations withMetternich after this date conclusively prove that almost all Italianquestions, including even the Austrian frontier, were treated as matters tobe decided by the Allies in common. While Austria's right to apreponderance in upper Italy is admitted, the affairs of Rome and Naplesare always treated as within the range of English policy. [194] The originals of the Genoese and Milanese petitions for independenceare in Records: Sicily, Vol. 98. "The Genoese universally desire therestoration of their ancient Republic. They dread above all otherarrangements their annexation to Piedmont, to the inhabitants of whichthere have always existed a peculiar aversion. "--Bentick's Despatch, April27, 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 andMinisters then visiting England. His own curious account of hisproceedings, with the secret sign for the Prince Regent, given him by LouisXVIII. , who was afraid to write anything, is in _id. _, vol. 99. [200] Wippermann, Kurhessen, pp. 9-13. In Hanover torture was restored, andoccasionally practised till the end of 1818: also the punishment of deathby 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 electedwho did not pay £40 per annum in direct taxes, --so large a sum, that theCharta provided for the case of there not being fifty persons in adepartment eligible. [206] Fourteen out of Napoleon's twenty marshals and three-fifths of hisSenators were called to the Chamber of Peers. The names of the excludedSenators will be found in Vaulabelle, ii. 100; but the reader must not takeVaulabelle'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, tothe 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-moneydealings, it has been supposed that Wellington understood the Frenchpeople. On the contrary, he often showed great want of insight, both in hisacts and in his opinions, when the finer, and therefore more statesmanlike, sympathies were in question. Thus, in the delicate position of ambassadorof a victorious Power and counsellor of a restored dynasty, he bitterlyoffended the French country-population by behaving like a _grand seigneur_before 1789, and hunting with a pack of hounds over their young corn. Thematter was so serious that the Government of Louis XVIII. Had to insist onWellington stopping his hunts. (Talleyrand et Louis XVIII. , p. 141. ) Thiswant of insight into popular feeling, necessarily resulted in someportentous blunders: _e. G. , _ all that Wellington could make ofNapoleon's return from Elba was the following:--"He has acted upon false orno information, and the King will destroy him without difficulty and in ashort 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 toNapoleon's son, then a child five years old, is described in a passage ofsingular 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 hadruined the trade of the ports. See the report of Marshal Brune, in Daudet, La Terreur Blanche, p. 173, and the striking picture of Marseilles inThiers, xviii. 340, drawn from his own early recollections. Bordeaux wasRoyalist 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, inthe _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 twocourtiers alleged that Ney said he "would bring back Napoleon in an ironcage. " 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 forbiddinghim to come to Paris is wrongly dated April 19; probably for May 29. TheEnglish documents relating to Ferdinand's return to Naples, with theoriginals of many proclamations, etc. , are in Records: Sicily, vols. 103, 104. They are interesting chiefly as showing the deep impression made onEngland 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 veryinexperienced staff. " (Despatches, xii. 358. ) So, even after his victory, he writes:--"I really believe that, with the exception of my old Spanishinfantry, 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 fromBlücher, than if he had known Napoleon's actual plan. But the severance ofthe English from the sea required to be guarded against as much as a defeatof Blücher. The Duke never ceased to regard it as an open question whetherNapoleon ought not to have thrown his whole force between Brussels and thesea. (_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. 201. The second article is themost characteristic:--"Les trois Princes . .. Confessant que la nationChrétienne dont eux et leurs peuples font partie n'a réellement d'autreSouverain 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 sefortifier chaque jour davantage dans les principes et l'exercice desdevoirs que le Divin Sauveur a enseignés aux hommes. "[243] Wellington, S. D. , xi. 175. The account which Castlereagh gives ofthe Czar's longing for universal peace appears to refute the theory thatAlexander had some idea of an attack upon Turkey in thus unitingChristendom. According to Castlereagh, Metternich also thought that "it wasquite clear that the Czar's mind was affected, " but for the singular reasonthat "peace and goodwill engrossed all his thoughts, and that he had foundhim of late friendly and reasonable on all points" (_Id_. ) There was, however, a strong popular impression at this time that Alexander was on thepoint 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 hadGenoa. But the fear arising that Russia would not permit Austria'sextension to the Mediterranean, an alteration was made, whereby Austria waspromised half of Piedmont, Genoa to go to the King of Sardinia incompensation. [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, allpreaching 'Constitution and liberal principles, ' and all endeavouring todirect the eyes of the independents towards the North. .. . A copy of theinstructions sent to the Russian Minister here has fallen into the hands ofthe 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 bysome of his English apologists in high place, namely the fear that if ideasof nationality should spring up, the non-German components of the Austrianmonarchy, viz. , Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia, etc. , would break off and becomeindependent States. But there is not a word in Metternich's writings whichshows that this apprehension had at this time entered his mind. Togeneralise 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 "Cartesegrete della polizia Austriaca, " consisting of police-reports which fellinto the hands of the Italians at Milan in 1848. [255] Bianchi, Storia Documentata, i. 208. The substance of this secretclause was communicated to A'Court, the English Ambassador at Naples. "Ihad no hesitation in saying that anything which contributed to the goodunderstanding now prevailing between Austria and Naples, could not butprove extremely satisfactory to the British Government. " A'Court toCastlereagh, July 18, 1815. Records: Sicily, vol. 104. [256] Letters in Reuchlin, Geschichte Italiens, i. 71. The Holy Alliancewas turned to better account by the Sardinian statesmen than by theNeapolitans. "Apres s'être allié, " wrote the Sardinian Ambassador at St. Petersburg, "en Jesus-Christ notre Sauveur parole de vie, pourquoi et àquel propos s'allier en Metternich?"[257] See the passages from Grenville's letters quoted in pp. 125, 126 ofthis 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 betteror happier. .. . I am sure it is better to retard than accelerate theoperation 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 modifiedunder the influence of the English Ambassador. Instructions to A'Court, March 14, 1814, marked "Most Secret"; Records: Sicily, vol. 99. A'Courthimself detested the Constitution. "I conceive the Sicilian people to betotally 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 themain principles of a constitutional régime, it is possible that he mayextinguish the existing arrangement with impunity, and re-establish onemore consistent with the efficiency of the executive power, and which mayrestore the great landed proprietors and the clergy to a due share ofauthority. " Castlereagh, id. [262] Daudet, La Terreur Blanche, p. 186. The loss of the troops was ahundred. The stories of wholesale massacres at Marseilles and other placesare fictions. [263] See the Address, in _Journal des Débats_, 15 Octobre: "Nousoserons solliciter humblement la rétribution nécessaire, " etc. For thegeneral 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 inmany of Lord Liverpool's letters. [266] Procès du Maréchal Ney, i. 212. [267] Ney was not, however, a mere fighting general. The Military Studiespublished in English in 1833 from his manuscripts prove this. They aboundin acute remarks, and his estimate of the quality of the German soldier, ata time when the Germans were habitually beaten and despised, is verystriking. He urges that when French infantry fight in three ranks, thecharge should be made after the two front ranks have fired, without waitingfor the third to fire. "The German soldier, formed by the severestdiscipline, is cooler than any other. He would in the end obtain theadvantage in this kind of firing if it lasted long. " (P. 100. ) Ney'sparents 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 _Journaldes Débits_, 19 Novembre: "Pour arrêter leurs trames criminelles, il fautdes fers, des bourreaux, des supplices. La mort, la mort seule peuteffrayer leurs complices et mettre fin à leurs complots, " etc. The journalsabound with similar speeches. [269] General Mouton-Duvernet. Several were sentenced to death in theirabsence; some were acquitted on the singular plea that they had becomesubjects of the Empire of Elba, and so could not be guilty of treason tothe 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 tobe clear, that his prosecution began at the same late date. Duvergier deHauranne, iii. 335. [271] The highest number admitted by the Government to have been imprisonedat any one time under the Law of Public Security was 319, in addition to750 banished from their homes or placed under surveillance. No one hascollected statistics of the imprisonments by legal sentence. The old storythat there were 70, 000 persons in prison is undoubtedly an absurdexaggeration; but the numbers given by the Government, even if true at anyone moment, afford no clue to the whole number of imprisonments, for asfast as one person gets out of prison in France in a time of politicalexcitement, another is put in. The writer speaks from personal experience, having been imprisoned in 1871. Any one who has seen how these affairs areconducted will know how ridiculous it would be to suppose that the centralgovernment has information of every case. [272] See, _e. G. _, the Pétition aux Deux Chambres, 1816, at thebeginning 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 ofthe Professors who took part in it (Kieser, Das Wartburgfest, 1818). It isso silly that it is hard to believe it to have been written by a grown-upman. He says of the procession to the Wartburg, "There have indeed beenprocessions that surpassed this in outward glory and show; but in innersignificant value it cannot yield to any. " But making allowance for theauthor's personal weakness of head, his book is a singular and instructivepicture of the mental condition of "Young Germany" and its teachers at thattime--a subject that caused such extravagant anxiety to Governments, and soseriously affected the course of political history. It requires some effortto get behind the ridiculous side of the students' Teutonism; but therewere elements of reality there. Persons familiar with Wales will be struckby the resemblance, both in language and spirit, between the scenes of 1818and the religious meetings or the Eisleddfodau of the Welsh, a resemblancenot accidental, but resulting from similarity of conditions, viz. , a realsusceptibility to religious, patriotic, and literary ideas among a peopleunacquainted with public or practical life on a large scale. But thevigorous political action of the Welsh in 1880, when the landed interestthroughout the Principality lost seats which it had held for centuries, surprised only those who had seen nothing but extravagance in the chapeland the field-meeting. Welsh ardour, hitherto in great part undirected, then had a practical effect because English organisation afforded it amodel: German ardour in 1817 proved sterile because it had no such exampleat 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 inthis despatch is of the greatest value, bringing out in a way in which noofficial documents do the conservative and repressive tone of theConference. The prevalent fear had been that Alexander would break with hisold Allies and make a separate league with France and Spain. See alsoCastlereagh, xii. 47. [286] "I could write you a long letter about the honour which the Prussianspay to everything Austrian, our whole position, our measures, our language. Metternich has fairly enchanted them. " Gentz, Nachlasse [Osten], i. 52. [287] Metternich, iii. 171. [288] See his remarks in Metternich, iii. 269; an oasis of sense in thisdesert of Commonplace. [289] Stourdza, Denkschrift, etc. , p. 31. The French original is not in theBritish 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 yearin an earnest festal spirit, knowing well that the Christmas which I havecelebrated will be my last. If our strivings are to result in anything, ifthe cause of mankind is to succeed in our Fatherland, if all is not to beforgotten, all our enthusiasm spent in vain, the evildoer, the traitor, thecorrupter 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 mylife at stake? O God, I pray only for the right clearness and courage ofsoul, 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 ofcertain short notes made by the King of Prussia, about 1808, on theuselessness of a _levée en masse_. One of these notes was asfollows:--"As soon as a single clergyman is shot" (_i. E. _ by theFrench) "the thing would come to an end. " These words were published in thePrussian 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 Statemight claim sovereign power as representing the people. If, for instance, the Bavarian Lower House had asserted that it represented the sovereigntyof the people, and that the King was simply the first magistrate in theState, this would have been an offence against Federal law, and haveentitled the Diet--_i. E. _ Metternich--to armed interference. TheGerman State-papers of this time teem with the constitutional distinctionbetween a Representative Assembly (_i. E. _ assembly representingpopular sovereignty) and an Assembly of Estates (_i. E. _, of particularorders with limited, definite rights, such as the granting of a tax). Intechnical language, the question at issue was the true interpretation ofthe phrase _Landständische Verfassungen_, used in the 13th article ofthe 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 timerecommends a systematic underhand rivalry with Austria, in preparation foran ultimate breach. Few State-papers exhibit more candid and cynicalcunning. [299] Ilse, Politische Verfolgungen, p. 31. [300] The comparison is the Germans' own, not mine. "'How savoury a thinroast 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 Ipassed 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 havebegun to discover real revolutionary societies about 1824. There is a longlist of persons remanded for trial in their several States, in Ilse, p. 595, with the verdicts and the sentences passed upon them, which vary froma 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 Francesucceeded, Grégoire would have left a great name in religious history. Napoleon, by one of the most fatal acts of despotism, extinguished asociety likely, from its democratic basis and its association with a greatmovement of reform, to become the most liberal and enlightened of allChurches, and left France to be long divided between Ultramontane dogma anda coarse kind of secularism. The life of Grégoire ought to be written inEnglish. From the enormous number of improvements for which he laboured, his biography would give a characteristic picture of the finer side of thegeneration 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 upamid the storm of politics, to know what is the precise meaning of a shoutof triumph like those which now burst from Burdett and Co. He may have readof it, but I have seen it with my eyes. I was living at the time of theFederation 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. "Lesefforts unanimes de ces mêmes Puissances ont détruit le systèmedévastateur, d'où naquit la rébellion Américaine; mais il leur restaitencore 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 theAustrians. "La conduite de ce malheureux souverain n'a été, dès lecommencement 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 àrétablir les intérêts!" Ferdinand was guilty of such monstrous perjuriesand cruelties that the reader ought to be warned not to think of him as asaturnine and Machiavellian Italian. He was a son of the Bourbon CharlesIII. 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 grotesquecomic element runs through his life, and through every picture drawn bypersons in actual intercourse with him. The following, from one ofBentinck's despatches of 1814 (when Ferdinand had just heard that Austriahad promised to keep Murat in Naples), is very characteristic: "I found hisMajesty very much afflicted and very much roused. He expressed hisdetermination never to renounce the rights which God had given him. .. . Hesaid he might be poor, but he would die honest, and his children should nothave to reproach him for having given up their rights. He was the son ofthe honest Charles III. . .. He was his unworthy offspring, but he wouldnever disgrace his family. .. . On my going away he took me by the hand, andsaid he hoped I should esteem him as he did me, and begged me to take aPheasant pye to a gentleman who had been his constant shooting companion. "Records, Sicily, vol. 97. Ferdinand was the last sovereign who habituallykept 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 thesame 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 chezl'Empereur pour le mettre au fait de ces tristes circonstances. Depuis queje le connais, je ne l'ai jamais vu aussi frappé d'aucun événement qu'ill'était hier avant son départ. "[320] Castlereagh, xii. 311. [321] Gentz, D. I. , ii. 76. Metternich, iii. 395. "Our fire-engines werenot full in July, otherwise we should have set to work immediately. "[322] Gentz, ii. 85. Gentz was secretary at the Congress of Troppau, as hehad been at Vienna and Aix-la-Chapelle. His letters exhibit the Austrianand absolutist view of all European politics with striking clearness. Hespeaks 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 adoptersans le concours de l'Angleterre et de la France un système tel que lesbesoins 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 in1815. The reader will have seen that it took five years of reaction tocreate a definitive agreement among the monarchs to intervene againstpopular changes in other States, and that the principles of any operativeleague planned by Alexander in 1815 would have been largely different fromthose which he actually accepted in 1820. The Alexander who designed theHoly Alliance was the Alexander who had forced Louis XVIII. To grant theCharta. [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 Duvergierde Hauranne, vi. 93. The Life of Canning by his secretary, Stapleton, though it is a work of some authority on this period, is full ofmisstatements about Castlereagh. Stapleton says that Castlereagh took nonotice of the Troppau circular of December 8 until it had been for morethan a month in his possession, and suggests that he would never haveprotested at all but for the unexpected disclosure of the circular in aGerman newspaper. As a matter of fact, the first English protest againstthe Troppau doctrine, expressed in a memorandum, "très long, très positif, assez dur même, et assez tranchant dans son langage, " was handed in to theCongress on December 16 or 19, along with a very unwelcome note toMetternich. There is some gossip of another of Canning's secretaries inGreville's Memoirs, i. 105, to the effect that Castlereagh's privatedespatches to Troppau differed in tone from his official ones, which wereonly written "to throw dust in the eyes of Parliament. " It is sufficient toread the Austrian documents of the time, teeming as they do with vexationand disappointment at England's action, to see that this is a fiction. [326] Had Ferdinand's first proposals been accepted by the NeapolitanParliament, France and England, it was thought, might have insisted on acompromise at Laibach. "Les Gouvernements de France et d'Angleterreauraient fortement insisté sur l'introduction d'un regime constitutionnelet représentatif, régime que la Cour de Vienne croit absolumentincompatible avec la position des États de l'Italie, et avec la sureté deses propres États. " Gentz, D. I. , ii. 110. [327] Gentz, Nachlasse (P. Osten), i. 67. Lest the reader should take aprejudice against Capodistrias for his cunning, I ought to mention herethat he was a man of austere disinterestedness in private life, and one ofthe 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 whichtempt most men. The contrast between his personal goodness and hisunscrupulousness 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 mieprigioni, 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 Wellingtonprove it. These papers, supplemented by the narrative of Duvergier deHauranne, drawn from the French documents which he specifies, are theauthority for the history of the Congress. Canning's celebrated speech ofApril, 1823, is an effective _ex parte_ composition rather than ahistorical summary. The reader who goes to the originals will be struck bythe immense superiority of Wellington's statements over those of all theContinental statesmen at Verona, in point, in force, and in good sense, aswell as in truthfulness. The Duke, nowhere appears to greater advantage. [337] Report of Angoulême, Duvergier d'Hauranne, vii. "Là où sont nostroupes, nous maintenons la paix avec beaucoup de peine; mais là où nousne sommes pas, on massacre, on brûle, on pille, on vole. Les corpsEspagnols, se disant royalistes, ne cherchent qu'à voler et à piller. "[338] Decretos del Rey Fernando, vii. 35, 50, 75. This process, which wasafterwards extended even to common soldiers, was called Purificacion. Committees were appointed to which all persons coming under the law had tosend in detailed evidence of correct conduct in and since 1820, signed bysome well-known royalists. But the committees also accepted any letters ofdenunciation that might be sent to them, and were bound by law to keep themsecret, so that in practice the Purificacion became a vast system ofanonymous 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 mostastonishing of all Ferdinand's devout utterances. "My soul is confoundedwith the horrible spectacle of the sacrilegious crimes which impiety hasdared to commit against the Supreme Maker of the universe. The ministers ofChrist have been persecuted and sacrificed; the venerable successor of St. Peter has been outraged; the temples of the Lord have been profaned anddestroyed; the Holy Gospel depreciated; in fine, the inestimable legacywhich Jesus Christ gave in his last supper to secure our eternal felicity, the Sacred Host, has been trodden under foot. My soul shudders, and willnot be able to return to tranquillity until, in union with my children, myfaithful subjects, I offer to God holocausts of piety, " etc. But for somespecimens of Ferdinand's command of the vernacular, of a very differentcharacter, see Wellington, N. S. , ii. 37. [342] Revolution d'Espagne, examen critique (Paris, 1836), p. 151, from thelists in the Gaceta de Madrid. The Gaceta for these years is wanting fromthe copy in the British Museum, and in the large collection in that libraryof historical and periodical literature relating to Spain I can find nofirst hand authorities for the judicial murders of these years. Nothingrelating to the subject was permitted to be printed in Spain for many yearsafterwards The work cited in this note, though bearing a French title, andpublished at Paris in 1836, was in fact a Spanish book written in 1824. Thecritical inquiry which has substantiated many of the worst traditions ofthe French Reign of Terror from local records still remains to beundertaken for this period of Spanish history. [343] See e. G. , Stapleton, Canning and his Times p. 378. Wellington oftensuggested the use of less peremptory language. Despatches, i. 134, 188[***], Metternich wrote as follows on hearing at Vienna of Castlereagh'sdeath: "Castlereagh was the only man in his country who had gained anyexperience in foreign affairs. He had learned to understand me. He wasdevoted to me in heart and spirit, not only from personal inclination, butfrom conviction. I awaited him here as my second self. " iii. 391. Metternich, however, was apt to exaggerate his influence over the EnglishMinister. It was a great surprise to him that Castlereagh, after gainingdecisive majorities in the House of Commons on domestic questions in 1820, in no wise changed the foreign policy expressed in the protest against theDeclaration 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 Tyrolesewriter, that the modern Greeks were the descendants of Slavonic invaders, with scarcely a drop of Greek blood in their veins. Fallmerayer wasbelieved by some good scholars to have proved that the old Greek race hadutterly perished. More recent inquiries have discredited both Fallmerayerand his authorities, and tend to establish the conclusion that, except incertain limited districts, the Greeks left were always numerous enough toabsorb the foreign incomers. (Hopf, Griechenland; in Etsch and Gruber'sEncyklopädie, vol. 85, p. 100. ) The Albanian population of Greece in 1820is reckoned at about one-sixth. [350] Maurer, Das Griechische Volk, i. 64. [351] The Greek songs illustrate the conversion of the Armatole into theKlepht in the age preceding the Greek revolution. Thus, in the fine balladcalled "The Tomb of Demos, " which Goethe has translated, the dying mansays--[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 thatI 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 thatin 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 hisportrait, will be found in the Lettres Inédites de Coray, Paris, 1877. Thevehicle of expression usually chosen by Koraes for addressing hiscountrymen was the Preface (written in modern Greek) to the edition of anancient author. The second half of the Preface to the Politics ofAristotle, 1822, is a good specimen of his political spirit and manner. Itwas separately edited by the Swiss scholar, Orelh, with a translation, forthe benefit of the German Philhellenes. Among the principal linguisticprefaces are those to Heliodorus 1804, and the Prodromos, or introduction, to the series of editions called Bibliotheca Græca, begun in 1805, andpublished at the expense of the brothers Zosimas of Odessa Most of theeditions published by Koraes bear on their title page a statement of thepatriotic purpose of the work, and indicate the persons who bore theexpense. The edition of the Ethics, published immediately after themassacre of Chios, bears the affecting words 'At the expense of those whohave so cruelly suffered in Chios. ' The costly form of these editions, someof which contain fine engravings, seems somewhat inappropriate for worksintended for national instruction. Koraes, however, was not in a hurry. Hethought, at least towards the close of his life, that the Greeks ought tohave gone through thirty years more of commercial and intellectualdevelopment before they drew the sword. They would in that case, hebelieved, have crushed Turkey by themselves and have prevented the Greekkingdom from becoming the sport of European diplomacy. Much miscellaneousinformation on Greek affairs before 1820 (rather from the Phanariot pointof view) will be found, combined with literary history in the Cours deLittérature Grecque of Rhizos Neroulos, 1827. The more recent treatise of RRhankabes on the same subject (also in French, Paris, 1877) exhibits whatappears to be characteristic of the modern Greeks, the inability todistinguish 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 toa learned society in Paris, in January, 1803, is one of the most luminousand 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 HolySepulchre, " p. 13. This curious work, in which the Patriarch at last breaksout into doggrel, has found its way to the British Museum. It was answeredby 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 tothe tract of Eugenios Bulgaris on religious toleration. That was writtenabout thirty years before. [360] Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, ch, v. 36, 37. [361] Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Geschichte Griechenlands, i. 145, from thepapers of Hypsilanti's brother. Otherwise in Prokesch-Osten, Abfall derGriechen, 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, GeschichteGriechenlands, 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 atIschl on July 30th. "Prince Metternich was taking an excursion, in which, unfortunately I could not accompany him. I at once sent Francis after himwith this important letter, which he received at a spot where the name ofthe Capitan Pasha had probably never been heard before. The prince sooncame back to me; and (_pianissimo_ in order that the friends of Greecemight not hear it) we congratulate one another on the event, which may verywell 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;Willington, 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 saythat Canning never contemplated the possibility of armed action because aclause in the Treaty of 1827 made the formal stipulation that thecontracting Powers would not "take part in the hostilities between thecontending parties. " How, except by armed force, could the Allies "prevent, in so far as might be in their power, all collision between the contendingparties, " which, in the very same clause, they undertook to do? And whatwas the meaning of the stipulation that they should "transmit instructionsto their Admirals conformable to these provisions"? Wellington himself, _before_ the battle of Navarino, condemned the Treaty of London on thevery ground that it "specified means of compulsion which were neither morenor less than measures of war;" and he protested against the statement thatthe treaty arose directly out of the Protocol of St. Petersburg, which washis own work. Wellington, N. S. , iv. 137, 221. [376] Bourchier's Codrington, ii. 6[***]. Admiralty Despatches, Nov. 10, 1807, 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 Saxonyand 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. StatePapers, 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, Révolutionde 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. Bulwers 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. StatePapers, 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 plusdangereuse; Don Carlos représente le principe Monarchique aux prises avecla 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, Werkeiii. 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. MehmedAli, 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 OttomanEmpire, and thought that with ten years of peace it might again become arespectable Power. "All that we hear about the decay of the Turkish Empireand its being a dead body or a sapless trunk, and so forth, is pure andunadulterated 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. " Thewords of the much finer song "Die Wacht am Rhein" were also written at thistime--by Schneckenburger, a Würtemberg man; but the music by which they areknown 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 fromtaxation, but any taxable land purchased by a noble thereupon becametax-free. The attempt of the Government to abolish this latter injusticeevoked a storm of anger in the Diet of 1825, and still more in the countryassemblies, some of the latter even resolving that such law, if passed, feythe 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 undKlagen 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, wasnow annexed by Austria with the consent of Russia and Prussia, and againstthe protests of England and France. [409] Reden des Koenigs Friedrich Wilhelm IV. , p. 17. Ranke's F. W, IV. InAllg. Deutsche Biog. Biedermann, Dreissig Jahre, i. 186. [410] Guizot, viii. 101, Palmerston, iii. 194. Parl. Papers, 1847. Martin'sPrince 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; Irányiet Chassin, Révolution de Hongrie, i. 128. [412] Metternich, viii. 181. The animation of his remarks on all sorts ofpoints in English life is wonderful. After a halt at Brussels and at hisJohannisburg estate Metternich returned to Vienna in 1852, and, though notrestored to office, resumed his great position in society. He lived throughthe Crimean War, on which he wrote numerous memoranda, for whose use itdoes not appear. Even on the outbreak of war with France in 1859 he wasstill busy with his pen. He survived long enough to hear of the battle ofMagenta, but was spared the sorrow of witnessing the creation of theKingdom of Italy. He died on the 11th of June, 1859, in his eighty-seventhyear. Metternich was not the only statesman present at the Congress ofVienna who lived to see the second Napoleonic Empire. Nesselrode, theRussian Chancellor, lived till 1862; Czartoryski, who was Foreign Ministerof Russia at the time of the battle of Austerlitz, till 1861. [413] Adlerstein, Archiv des Ungarischen Ministeriums, i. 27; Irányi etChassin, i. 184; Springer, ii. 219. [414] Casati Nuove Rivelazioni, ii. 72. Schönhals, Campagnes d'ltalie de1848 et 1849 p. 72. Cattaneo, Insurrezione di Milano, p. 29. Parl. Pap. 1849, lvii. (2) 210, 333. Senneidawind, 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 timedescribed his ride through Berlin as "a comedy which he had been made toplay. " The bombast at any rate was all his own. [419] Droysen und Samwer, Schleswig-Holstein, p. 220. Bunsen, Memoir onSchleswig-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 DreissigJahre, i. 278. Radowitz, Werke, ii. 36. [421] Actes du Gouvernement Provisoire, p. 12. Louis Blanc, RévélatìonsHistoriques, i. 135. Gamier Pagès, Révolution de 1848, vi 108, viii 148. Émile Thomas, Histoire des Ateliers Nationaux, p. 93. [422] Barret, Mémoires, ii. 103. Caussidière, Mémoires, p. 117. GamierPagès, 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] Oeuvres 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. Pillersdorfif, Nachlass, 93. Helfert, iv. 142. Schfönhais, 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 toacknowledge the armistice, and detached itself from Sardinia, restoringManin to power. [428] Slavonia itself was attached to Croatia; Dalmatia also was claimed asa member of this triple Kingdom under the Hungarian Crown in virtue ofancient rights, though since its annexation in 1797 it had been governeddirectly from Vienna, and in 1848 was represented in the Reichstag ofVienna, 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 conversationbetween Jellacic and Batthyány, said to have been narrated to Kossuth bythe latter. If authentic, this certainly proves Jellacic to have used theSlavic agitation from the first solely for Austrian ends. See alsoVitzthuin, p. 207. [431] Adlerstein, Archiv, i. 146. 156. Klapká, Erinnerungen, p. 30. Irányiet 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. Irányiet Chassin, ii. 98. [434] Codex der neuen Gesetze, i. 37. Helfert, iv. (3) 321. [435] Revolutionskrieg in Siebenburgen i. 30. Helfert, ii. 207. Bratiano etIrányi, Lettres Hongro-Roumaines, Adlerstein, ii. 105. [436] Klapka, Erinnerungen, p. 56. Helfert, iv. 199; Görgei, Leben undWirken, i. 145. Adlerstein, iii. 576, 648. [437] Helfert, iv. (2) 326. Klapka, War in Hungary, i. 23. Irányi etChassin, 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 ciRamorino, 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 ErnstII. , Ausmeinem Leben, i. 313. Biedermann, i. 306. Beseier, 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 meaneither its duties as an ally or its duties as a member of the GermanFederation. The obscurity was probably intentional. [447] Verhandlungen der National Versammlung, vi. 4225. Haym, DeutscheNational 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. ErnstII. , 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. Oeuvres de Napoleon III. , iii. 271. Barrot, iv. 21. Granier de Cassagnac, Chute de Louis Philippe, ii. 128; Récitcomplet, p. 1. Jerrold, Napoleon III. , iii. 203. Tocqueville, Corresp. Ii. 176. [455] Stockman, 396. Eastern Papers (_i. E. _, Parliamentary Papers, 1854, vol. 71), part 6. Malmesbury, Memoirs of an ex-Minister, i. 402; thelast probably inaccurate. Diplomatic Study of the Crimean War, i. 11. Thiswork is a Russian official publication, and, though loose anduntrustworthy, 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 isaltogether up for the present. It is impossible for me to conceal that themain object of my stay here is almost hopeless. " Even Palmerston, in therare moments when he allowed his judgment to master his prepossessions onthis subject, expressed the same view. He wrote on November 24, 1850, warning Reschid Pasha "the Turkish Empire is doomed to fall by the timidityand irresolution of its Sovereign and of its Ministers; and it is evidentwe shall ere long have to consider what other arrangements may be set up inits place. " Stratford left Constantinople on leave in June, 1852, butresigned his Embassy altogether in January, 1853. (Lane Poole, Life ofStratford 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 naturallyexercised great influence in foreign affairs. The Foreign Secretary wasLord 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 defensivealliance, covering also the case of Austria incurring attack through anadvance into the Principalities. In the event of Russia annexing thePrincipalities or sending its troops beyond the Balkans the alliance was tobe 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 Prussiawrote thus to Bunsen (the italics, capitals, and exclamations are his own):"All direct help which England _in unchristian folly!!!!!!_ gives TOISLAM AGAINST CHRISTIANS! will have (besides God's avenging judgment [hear!hear!]) no other effect than to bring what is now Turkish territory at asomewhat later period under Russian dominion" (Briefwechsel, p. 317). Thereader may think that the insanity to which Frederick William succumbed wasalready mastering him; but the above is no rare specimen of his epistolarystyle. [469] The Treaty of alliance between France and England, to which Prussiawas asked to accede, contained, however, a clause pledging the contractingparties "under no circumstance to seek to obtain from the war any advantageto themselves. "[470] Eastern Papers, viii. I. [471] Eastern Papers, xi. 3. Ashley's Palmerston, ii. 60. For thenavigation of the mouths of the Danube, see Diplomatic Study, ii. 39. Russia, which had been in possession of the mouths of the Danube since theTreaty of Adrianople, and had undertaken to keep the mouths clear, hadallowed the passage to become blocked and had otherwise prevented trafficdescending, 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 followinglecture to the unfortunate Bunsen:--"You little thought that, at the verymoment when you were writing to me, one of the noblest of men, one of thegrandest forms in history, one of the truest hearts, and at the same timeone of the greatest rulers of this narrow world, was called from faith tosight. I thank God on my knees that He deemed me worthy to be, in the bestsense of the word, his [Nicholas'] friend, and to remain true to him. You, dear Bunsen, thought differently of him, and you will now painfully confessthis before your conscience, most painfully of all the truth (which allyour letters in these late bad times have unfortunately shown me but tooplainly), that _you hated him_. You hated him, not as a man, but asthe representative of a principle, that of violence. If ever, redeemed likehim 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 toyou. "--Briefwechsel, p. 325. Frederick William seems to have forgotten tosend the same pious wishes to the Poles in Siberia. [475] Parliamentary Papers, 1854-5, vol. 55, p. 1, Dec. 2, 1854. Ashley'sPalmerston, 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 itbecame necessary to revise the Treaty of July, 1841, of which Prussia hadbeen one of the signatories. [480] "In the course of the deliberation, whenever our [Russian]plenipotentiaries found themselves in the presence of insurmountabledifficulties, they appealed to the personal intervention of this sovereign[Napoleon], and had only to congratulate themselves on theresult. "--Diplomatic Study, ii. 377. [481] Three pages of promises. Eastern Papers, xvii. One was keptfaithfully. "To accomplish these objects, means shall be sought to profitby the science, the art, _and the funds_ of Europe. " One of thedrollest of the prophecies of that time is the congratulatory address ofthe Missionaries to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, _id_. 1882. --"TheImperial Hatti-sheriff has convinced us that our fond expectations arelikely to be realised. The light will shine upon those who have long sat indarkness; and blest by social prosperity and religious freedom, themillions of Turkey will, we trust, be seen ere long sitting peacefullyunder their own vine and fig-tree. " So they were, and with poor LordStratford'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. Chuala), 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 thistime 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, LaMarmora, p. 204. [487] "In mezzo alle piu angosciose crisi politiche, esclamava nellesolitudine delle sue stanze; 'Perisca il mio nome, perisca la mia fama, purche l'Italia sia, '" Artom (Cavour's secretary), Cavour in Parlameuto:introd. P. 46. [488] La Farina Epistolaria, ii. 56, 81, 137, 426. The interview withGaribaldi; Cavour, Letiere, 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 PrinceConsort, v. 31, that there was no Treaty, is untrue. [490] Bianchi, Politique de Cavour, p. 328, where is Cavour's indignantletter to Napoleon. The last paragraph of this seems to convey a veiledthreat to publish the secret negotiations. [491] Cavour, Lettere, iii. Introd. P. 115; iii. 29. Bianchi, Politique deCavour, 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, Epistolaria, ii. 172. Parliamentary Papers, 1859, xxxiii. 391, 470. [493] Cavour, Lettere, iii. Introd. 212, iii. 107. Bianchi, Politique deCavour, p. 319. Bianchi, Diplomazia, viii. 145, 198. Massari, VittorioEmanuele, 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 hisDiary in MS. To Azeglio, and asked his advice on publishing it. Azeglioreferred to Cavour's saying, "If we did for ourselves what we are doing forItaly, we should be sad blackguards, " and begged Persano to let his secretsbe 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 hisambassador 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, liberachiesa in libero stato' Ce furent ses dernières paroles. " Account of thedeath of Cavour by his niece, Countess Alfieri, in La Rive, Cavour, p. 319. [505] Berichte uber der Militair etat, p. 669. Schulthess, EuropaischerGeschichts 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 principalmatters in which Bismarck was concerned. It is perhaps, from the Germanpoint of view, the most important repertory of authorities for the period1862-1885. [508] Sammlung der Staatsacten Oesterreichs (1861), pp. 2, 33. Drei JahreVerfassungstreit, 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), apparentlyquoting actual words uttered by Bismarck. Bismarck's account of theconversation (id. 80) tones it down to a demand that Austria should notencroach 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, describingNapoleon's Belgian project, which dated from the time when he was himselfambassador at Paris in 1862, gives this as the explanation of Napoleon'spolicy in 1864. The Commercial Treaty with Prussia and friendly personalrelations with Bismarck also influenced Napoleon's views. See Bismarck'sspeech 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 todeclare war not only on Austria but on all German Governments which shouldjoin it. King William, who had still some compunction in calling in Italianarms against the Fatherland, struck out these words. [521] La Marmora, Un po piú 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, Italianambassador at Paris, reported that Napoleon's ideas on the objects to beattained by a Congress were as follows:--Venetia to Italy, Silesia toAustria; the Danish Duchies and other territory in North Germany toPrussia; the establishment of several small States on the Rhine underFrench protection; the dispossessed German princes to be compensated inRoumania. La Marmora, p. 228. Napoleon III. Was pursuing in a somewhataltered form the old German policy of the Republic and the Empire--namely, the balancing of Austria and Prussia against one another, and theestablishment 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'sUn po più di luce, p. 242, and his Segreti di Stato, p. 274. Govone'sdespatches strongly confirm the view that Bismarck was more than a merepassive listener to French schemes for the acquisition of Belgium. That heoriginated the plan is not probable; that he encouraged it seems to mequite certain, unless various French and Italian documents unconnected withone another are forgeries from beginning to end. On the outbreak of the warof 1870 Bismarck published the text of the draft-treaty discussed in 1866providing for an offensive and defensive alliance between France andPrussia, and the seizure of Belgium by France. The draft was in Benedetti'shandwriting, and written on paper of the French Embassy. Benedetti statedin answer that he had made the draft at Bismarck's dictation. This mightseem very unlikely were it not known that the draft of the Treaty betweenPrussia and Italy in 1866 was actually so written down by Barral, theItalian 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 ReserveForces, and a Finance Ministry for its own separate finance. Thus theMinistry of Foreign Affairs was the only one of the three common Ministrieswhich 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 betweenBeust and Gramont in _Le Temps_, Jan. 11-16, 1873. [533] Rothan, La France en 1867, ii. 316. Reuchlin, v. 547. Two historicalexpressions belong to Mentana: the "Never, " of M. Rouher, and "TheChassepots 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 andhad proposed an alliance to Victor Emmanuel, who had accepted it for theprice of Rome. Mazzini offered to employ revolutionary means to frustratethis plan, and asked for money and arms. Bismarck showed caution, but didnot altogether disregard the communication. Politica Segreta Italiana, p. 339. [535] Benedetti, Ma Mission, p. 319, July 7. Gramont, La France et laPrusse, 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, inRevue de France, April 17, 1878. (Signed Andreas Memor. ) Ollivier, L'Egliseet l'Ètat, 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 thathe made war not on France but on the Imperial Dynasty. King William hadnever stated anything of the kind. His proclamation on entering France, towhich Favre appears to have referred, merely said that the war was to hewaged against the French army, and not against the inhabitants, who, solong as they kept quiet, would not be molested. [544] Deutsch-Französiche Krieg, vol. III. , p. 104. Bazaine, p. 166. Procèsde Bazaine, vol. Ii. , p. 219. Regnier, p. 20. Hahn, ii. , 171. [545] Hahn, ii. 216. Valfrey, Diplomatie du Gouvernement de la DéfenseNationale, ii. 51. Hertsier, 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 thepassage on "the barbarous anarchic despotism" of Turkey in his Reflectionson the French Revolution, p. 150, Clar. Edit. Burke lived and died inBeaconsfield, and his grave is there. There seems, however, to be noevidence for the story that he was about to receive a peerage with thetitle 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 theend of the work. (2) Sidenotes have been placed in brackets prior to theparagraph in which they occur. (3) In a few places (all in the footnotes)the text in our print copy was illegible and has been marked with a [***]. (4) The spelling in the print copy was not always consistent. Irregularwords in the original (e. G. , "ascendent, " "Christain, " and "Würtemburg")have been retained whenever possible. ]