Chapter IV

IMMEDIATE suggestion for Cooper's first
novel with a European setting, The Erxvo (1831),
Jl came from a brief stay in Venice in the spring of
1830 and a reading of Venetian history; but its scope and
avowed message must have been influenced by immediate
European events of the last half of 1830—the July Revolu-
tion in France that overthrew Charles X and made Louis
Philippe king, the Belgian revolution against the Dutch, and
the Polish insurrection against the Czar. Cooper was con-
nected by sympathy and personal interest with this sudden
turn of history. His friend Lafayette was again the great man
of the moment. Lafayette had assured the French people
that they might have liberty through a citizen-king, "a
throne surrounded by republican institutions." He had se-
cretly encouraged the Poles and after the revolt broke out
urged intervention on their behalf. Cooper was further
linked with Poland by his friendship with Adam Mickie-
wicz, the Polish patriot and poet, whom he had met the year
before in Rome.

In the long and dreary course of the Polish revolt Cooper

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