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THE MAIN CURRENTS OF
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AN OUTLINE SKETCH • OF THE POLITICAL HISTORY
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AN OUTLINE SKETCH OF THE POLITICAL HISTORY
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EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
eA F?J. C/HEARNSHAW
M.A., LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN KING'S COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON ; AUTHOR OF "LEET JURISDICTION IN ENGLAND," "FREEDOM IN SERVICE," 'MAIN CURRENTS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1815-1915," "DEMOCRACY AT THE CROSSWAYS
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PREFACE
Two years ago the present writer published a book (now in its fourth impression) entitled Main Currents of European History, 1815-1915. It consisted of the substance of ten lectures delivered to teachers in the County of London. The very kind reception accorded both to the lectures and to the book by the teachers for whom they were intended has given rise to a demand for a pupils' book covering the same ground. The small volume now issued has been prepared in response to that demand. It is hoped that it may assist in making the leading lines of nineteenth- century history known in the upper classes of schools, in training colleges, in the circles of the Workers' Educational Association and the Home Heading Union, in Y.M.C.A. Institutes, in Army Classes — everywhere, in short, where people of mature intelligence gather for the study of subjects essential to the fulfilment of the functions of citizenship. Nineteenth-century European history is not a topic of education suitable for young children ; it is at once too complex, too controversial, and too incompletely determined. The present volume, which is an abridgement of an abridgement, assumes the possession of that knowledge of British, Colonial, and Foreign history which is usual in the case of intelligent students who have attended school at least up to the age of fourteen.
Although the present volume is in subject an abridge- ment of Main Currents, it has not been extracted from the
viii EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
larger book by means of scissors or constructed by means of paste. While for convenience of reference, and in order that the two works may be used side by side, the same capital and sectional headings have (except in the cases of the Introduction and the Epilogue) been preserved, the whole has been entirely rewritten, and a certain amount of fresh information has been incorporated. The Introduc- tion to Main Currents treated of the teaching of history, and it was felt that the matter was unsuitable for this pupils' book. The available space has therefore been employed to give a very rapid and summary sketch of European history prior to the period specially dealt with in the body of the book. Similarly, the Epilogue of Main Currens, which described the opening phases of the Great War, has been superseded by a new Epilogue wherein are indicated briefly various aspects of nineteenth-century history which, though important in themselves, do not come within the compass of the central narrative.
Every effort has been made to tell a story that shall have unity, continuity, movement, vitality. It has been arranged in chapters and sections which have been care- fully co-ordinated, and kept strictly uniform in length and difficulty. It is hoped that the attention paid to these technical details will greatly facilitate the use of the book by teachers in their classes, and leaders in their circles. No bibliographies, and but few references, have been given, as it is assumed that the teacher or leader will have Main Currents at hand for consultation. An Appendix of names and dates has been added in order to obviate the necessity of giving dynastic details in the text.
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON,
KING'S COLLEGE,
May 27, 1919.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
SECT. PAGE
1. The Study of World-History 1
2. The Roman Empire 3
3. Mediaeval Christendom 5
4. The Renaissance and the Reformation . . . . 7
5. The Modern State System 9
6. The Antecedents of the French Revolution ... 11
CHAPTER I
DEMOCRACY AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
7. Arrival of the Third Estate . . . . . .14
8. The Third Estate in France . . . . . .16
9. The French States-General 18
10. Characteristics of the French Revolution .... 20
11. The Course of the French Revolution .. .... 22
12. Effects of the French Revolution . 25
CHAPTER II
NATIONALITY AND THE GREAT WARS
13. Democracy and Nationality .27
14. Causes of the Great Wars 29
15. The ReTolutionary War, 1792-1802 31
ix
x EUKOPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTUKY
SECT. PAGE
16. The Interval of Truce, 1802-3 33
17. The Napoleonic War, 1803-14 35
18. Effects of the Great Wars . 37
CHAPTER III
THE SETTLEMENT OP 1815
19. The Fall of Napoleon 40
20. The Congress of Vienna 42
21. The Course of the Negotiations 44
22. The Hundred Days 46
23. The Treaties of 1815 48
24. The Vienna Settlement 50
CHAPTER IV
THE ERA OF THE CONGRESSES, 1815-1822
25. The Holy Alliance and the Quadruple Alliance ... 53
26. Reaction and Unrest, 1815-18 . . . . . .55
27. The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle 57
28. The European Upheaval, 1818-20 60
29. The Congresses of Troppau, Laibach, and Verona . . 62
30. Break-up of the Concert of Europe 65
CHAPTER V
THE ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS, 1822-1830
31. The Dawn of a New Age 68
32. The Principle of Nationality 70
33. Incipient National Movements ...... 72
34. Greek Emancipation .74
35. Belgian Independence ........ 77
36. The Breach in the Treaty System 79
CONTENTS xi
CHAPTER VI
THE EKA OF DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT, 1830-1848
SECT. PAGE
37. New Conditions and New Ideas 82
38. Democratic Movements before 1830 ..... 84
39. The French Revolution of 1830 86
40. Democratic Advance, 1830-48 89
41. The French Revolution of 1848 91
42. The General Upheaval, 1848 . .. . . . .93
CHAPTER VII
THE ERA OF THE TRIUMPH OP NATIONALITY, 1848-1871
43. The Democratic Debacle 96
44. The Second French Republic 99
45. The Empire of Napoleon III 101
46. The Unification of Italy 104
47. The Founding of the German Empire 106
48. The Reconstruction of Central Europe .... 109
CHAPTER VIII THE ERA OP IMPERIAL EXPANSION, 1871-1901
49. Sedan and its Sequel 112
50. The New Europe and its Problems 114
51. The Eastern Question 117
52. The Expansion of Europe 119
53. The Exploitation of the World 121
54. The End of an Age 124
v
CHAPTER IX
THE ERA OF THE SCHISM OP EUROPE, 1901-1914
55. International Politics after Sedan 127
56. Triple Alliance 129
57. The " Weltpolitik " of William II 182
58. The Triple Entente 134
59. Excursions and Alarms ........ 136
60. The Drift towards War 139
xii EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER X THE CRISIS OF 1914
SECT. PAGE
61. The Situation in Germany 142
62. German Preparations for War 144
63. The Response of the Entente Powers 147
64. The Serajevo Pretext 149
65. The Outbreak of War 151
66. The Meaning of the War 154
EPILOGUE
67. The Great War, 1914-1919 . . . • . . . .157
68. Political Developments outside Europe .... 159
69. Inventions and Discoveries .162
70. The Advance of Science ....... 164
71. The Spread of Education 166
72. Social Reform 168
APPENDIX
Chief European Rulers . 173
INDEX • 177
MAPS
FACING PAGE
Europe according to the Settlement made at Vienna, 1815 . 48 Europe at the Outbreak of the Great War . . , , .144
INTRODUCTION
§ 1. THE STUDY OF WORLD-HISTORY
ONE of the beneficent, if minor, results of the great war of 1914-18 has been the awakening among Britons of a new and lively interest in the affairs of the world at large. This awakening has been due to several causes. First, the war itself was the outcome of world-movements of which the masses of the people of this country were profoundly ignorant ; and it has become clear that, if knowledge had been greater, pacific precautions might have been more effective. Secondly, the long-continued operations of the war took to many and various regions of the globe, as members of expeditionary forces, unprecedented numbers of British islanders who had never before emerged from their native solitudes ; it revealed to them the marvels of lands which had hitherto been to them no more than meaningless names ; it brought them into contact with peoples great and old with whose antecedents they were entirely unacquainted ; it led them beneath the spell of alien civilisations redolent of the kindred charms of immemorial antiquity and complete novelty. Hence a curiosity has been excited which demands satisfaction. Thirdly, both the process of the war and the conclusion of the peace have made it abundantly evident that the days
1 B
2 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
of British insularity are over. The airship has permanently bridged the narrow sea which, " as a moat defensive to a house," in the old days kept these favoured shores secure in isolation " against the envy of less happier lands." The submarine has made doubtful the single guarantee of that mighty fleet which from Nelson's day to our own rendered both the invasion and the starvation of Britain impossible. The telegraph and the telephone, in their many develop- ments, have linked all the civilised peoples of the earth together in indissoluble unity. The eager desire of the whole world for the prevention of future war, and for the establishment of the peace of universal justice, has led to the organisation of an experimental League of Nations of which the British peoples, through their Governments, are prominent members. All these things indicate the growing solidarity of mankind, and make it obvious that if Britons are worthily to play their parts as protagonists in the new international society, they must greatly enlarge their acquaintance with their fellow - actors, and their knowledge of the general movement of the drama of the human race.
But though interest in world-history has thus been — somewhat late in the ages — aroused in this country, it does not follow that it should be directed indiscriminately to all the peoples of the globe, or to all the periods of their chequered careers. A principle of selection and concen- tration is necessary. It is not difficult to find one. The State in which a man lives is properly the centre of his interest ; it is normally the sphere of his highest activity ; it is the prime determinant of his character and his destiny ; it is the main medium through which he in turn performs his civic duties to mankind. Hence he studies the rest of the world from the standpoint of his own country, and he
INTRODUCTION 3
pays the more particular attention to those parts of it that have affected his country the more. Again, it is the civilisation of his own day that he is especially concerned to comprehend and interpret. Hence, passing cursorily over wholly alien cultures, he will study with the minuter care the sources whence the ideas and institutions of his own society have flowed, and he will bring within the range of his more extended researches just those other societies which share with his own the same heritage of the past. In short, to a Briton, world-history will be dominantly the history of Europe and of Christian civilisation.
§ 2. THE ROMAN EMPIRE
For an adequate comprehension of modern Europe, and of the Christian civilisation which has established itself in it and spread from it to the uttermost parts of the earth, it is necessary to go back along the annals of the past at least as far as the times of the Roman Empire. Because it was in the Roman Empire that were brought together for the first time, and co-ordinated into a single cultural unity, the three great operative forces by means of which the polity of the Western world has been constructed. These are the Latin law, the Greek philosophy, and the Christian religion.
The Latin genius was legal, administrative, political. No people, save perhaps the British, have shown so high a capacity as did the Romans for ruling subject nations, for incorporating alien systems of government, for con- ciliating hostile prejudices, for welding together incom- patibles. They established an Empire which extended from the Euphrates in the east to the Atlantic in the west, and from the Sahara Desert in the south to the Pictish Wall
4 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
in the north of Britain. Within these immense limits were included races of the utmost diversity — Ivernian, Celtic, Italic, Hellenic, Semitic, Turanian ; civilisations of every variety, from the ancient and decadent cultures of the Orient to the primitive pastoral barbarisms of the northern tribes ; religions of the most bewildering multiplicity — rude nature-worships of semi-savages, frigid systems of state ritual controlled by civic and political authority, emotional cults of Eastern mysteries. Yet, in spite of this manifold heterogeneity, Rome, for the first three centuries of the Christian era, held the multitudinous nations, peoples, and tongues together in almost unbroken peace, content- ment, and prosperity. No revolts disturbed the general tranquillity ; less than 400,000 troops sufficed to maintain order and guarantee security, and even these were for the most part stationed on the frontiers merely to prevent the encroachments of barbarians upon the ordered civility of the provinces. To all her free subjects Rome threw open her great offices, and even the tremendous autocracy of Caesar was placed within the reach of Spaniards, Illyrians, Asiatics, and the rest. In A.D. 212 the Roman citizenship, which in St. Paul's day had been the treasured privilege of the few, was made the common possession of all the free men of the Empire. A single splendid system of law administered an equal justice throughout the Latin world ; fine roads and unprecedented facilities for intercommunication linked the different regions of the Empire in social and economic unity. In short, upon the whole of her vast dominions Rome impressed a sense of solidarity and a consciousness of community which have never, from that day to this, been wholly effaced.
What Rome did in the legal and administrative sphere was confirmed by Greece in the sphere of philosophy and
INTRODUCTION 5
morals. Although Greece became politically subject to Rome, intellectually she established herself as her teacher and mistress. Of all the Greek philosophies the one which made the strongest and most successful appeal to the Romans of the early Empire was the Stoic philosophy which Zeno had first proclaimed to a band of enthusiastic disciples in the century before Christ in the painted colonnade at Athens. Among the fundamental tenets of the Stoic creed was the principle of the natural equality of man, and it served to emphasise and enforce the cosmopolitan unity which Rome was instituting among the 100,000,000 of her manifold population.
The same idea of the universal brotherhood of mankind was promulgated by the Christian religion, which during the fourth century of the present era became the official faith of the Empire.
§ 3. MEDIAEVAL CHRISTENDOM
The Roman Empire fell in the West during the fifth century, partly because of internal decay, and partly because it was no longer able, with diminishing population and resources, to hold in check the hordes of Teutonic barbarians who had long been pressing upon its frontiers. The Rhine barrier was broken in A.D. 406, and a swarm of Vandals, Alans, and Sueves poured through Gaul, whence they passed into Spain, and ultimately (the Vandals alone) into Africa. The Visigoths ravaged Italy during the years 408—11 and then traversed the Riviera into the valley of the Garonne, where they founded a kingdom round Toulouse. Before the end of the century the Ostrogoths under their king Theodoric established their dominion over the whole of Italy ; the Franks under Clovis founded a
6 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
strong monarchy in Northern Gaul ; the Burgundiaris planted themselves, first on the middle Rhine, later on the lower Rhone ; the Angles and Saxons began their conquest of the Roman province of Britain. Now the curious thing about these Teutonic kingdoms is this, that, though they brought all eSective Roman control to an end in Italy, Africa, Spain, Gaul, and Britain, they did not formally repudiate the Roman authority, or diminish the theoretical limits of the Imperial dominion. The Roman Empire still continued (till A.D. 1453) to flourish in the East, based upon the impregnable fortress of Constantinople. Mighty barbarian monarchs, like Theodoric and Clovis, were proud to accept from the Byzantine successor of Augustus Caesar the office of consul, or the dignity of patrician, and to rule over the provincials who formed the majority of their subjects with an admittedly delegated authority. Long after the Imperial administrative system had fallen into ruin in the West, the Roman law continued to be enforced by Teutonic chiefs in barbaric tribunals — in some regions, indeed, among which Italy stands first, it never became extinct at all. Above all, the Roman Catholic Church, the embodiment of the orthodox and universal religion of the Empire, with its vigorous organisation, its impressive ceremonial, its sharply formulated creed, and its effective appeals to faith and fear, remained intact amid the political chaos of the crumbling secular dominion of Rome. Priests succeeded to the ancient jurisdiction of magistrates ; bishops inherited the place and power of provincial governors ; the Pope of the eternal city acquired the prestige and authority that had once belonged to the vanished Caesar. The Roman Empire, indeed, did not perish in the West : it 'was transmuted by a process of mystical alchemy into the Roman Church. In course of time all the barbarian king-
INTRODUCTION 7
doins which succeeded in establishing themselves perman- ently within the ancient limits of the Empire were converted to the Roman Catholic type of Christianity, and by the year A.D. 1000 Mediaeval Christendom had come fully into being.
Mediaeval Christendom in many respects resembled and recalled Imperial Rome. It was centred in the same City of the Seven Hills ; its language was Latin ; its common law was based on the Jus Civile ; its divisions into patri- archates, archbishoprics, and episcopal dioceses corre- sponded almost exactly with the administrative system of the Empire as denned by Diocletian and Constantino . Like the secular Empire which it succeeded and displaced, its outstanding characteristic was its unity. The men of all the nations, kindreds, and tongues who came within the sacred circle of the Church were made to feel that what they had in common — saving faith, sacramental grace, priestly intercession, the treasure of the merits of the saints, Divine favour — was infinitely more important than differences of race or language or culture that tended to separate them into groups. Till the end of the Middle Ages Western Europe was one, and in its dominant aspect indivisible.
§ 4. THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION
Before the close of the Middle Ages, however, lines of future cleavage had become evident. The Teutonic tribes which from the fifth century onward had established them- selves within the Roman pale had each of them old and deep traditions of independence and autonomy. Some of them, e.g. the Anglo-Saxons, in spite of all the culture of Rome, clung to their ancestral dialects and resisted all the
8 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
attractions of Latin and Romance ; even the others, e.g. the Visigoths of the Peninsula and the Franks of Gaul, who surrendered their native speech and adopted the common tongue of the provincials, did so with differences that resulted in the creation of distinct modern languages. Again, each tribe had its own system of immemorial custom and sacred law, and this it retained and adminis- tered among its own people with jealous reverence — reserving the Roman law for Roman provincials and for clergy of the Roman Church. Thus in mediaeval Europe there existed, side by side with the universal Civil and Canon Laws, important bodies of local regulations, such as the. Leges Anglorum, the Lex Salica, and the Lex Burgun- dionum, which were the peculiar property of a single people, and the increasingly dominant code of a specific geographical region. In course of time other disruptive differences manifested themselves among the constituent elements of Christendom. Varieties of political organisation developed — monarchic, aristocratic, democratic ; conflicts of eco- nomic interests were engendered and became acute ; rivalries for exclusive control of favoured lands and import- ant seas sundered the European community into struggling sects. The decay of the central authority of the Roman Emperor in the fifth century left the hostile groups to fight their distracting quarrels out. In vain did the Roman Papacy, as the heir of the imperial tradition, seek to revive an effective cosmopolitan control. At first it appealed to the distant Byzantine Caesar to return and restore his rightful jurisdiction over the wasted West ; but the Byzan- tine Caesar had as much as he could do to maintain himself in the East against encircling foes. Secondly, it tried by the coronation of Charlemagne and his successors to re-create a Holy Roman Empire for the West, coterminous with the
INTRODUCTION 9
Catholic Church ; but the Holy Roman Empire proved to be an ineffective phantom, a new source of conflict rather than a bond of union. Finally, especially under such popes as Gregory VII. and Innocent III., it attempted to assume for itself supreme political as well as spiritual authority over Christendom ; but its pretensions were ultimately repudiated by recalcitrant kings, and the effort to enforce them did but hasten the final disruption of Christendom.
That final disruption, however, did not come so long as the unifying and universal Church retained its intellectual and religious ascendancy. The solidarity of. the Catholic priesthood held Europe together long after it had begun to break into schismatic political fragments. The cosmo- politanism of the monastic orders, the orders of crusading chivalry, and the orders of mendicant friars gave a cohesion to the Continent that endured through all the Ages of Faith. The maintenance of the Latin tongue as the common language of both worship and education pre- served the spiritual unity of Christendom : churchmen were at home in every country ; scholars were free of every university. Not till the Renaissance proclaimed the intellectual emancipation of man from clerical control, and not till the accompanying Reformation signalised the revolt of the peoples against the religious domination of Rome, was the unity of Europe utterly and irrevocably shattered.
§ 5. THE MODERN STATE SYSTEM
The gigantic upheaval of the Reformation, and of the religious wars to which it led, revealed the fact that during the later Middle Ages the prime political tendency had been towards the formation of national states. The typical divisions of the Christian community of Europe during the
10 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
central portion of the Middle Ages had been into social orders rather than into nations : it had been horizontal rather than vertical. The principles, however, of freedom and equality, deeply engrained in the Stoic philosophy, the Roman Jus Gentium, and the Christian religion, had tended to fuse the classes, which had at one time been marked by the rigidity and intractability of castes : slaves were raised from their low estate ; nobles were reduced from their place of pride. A consciousness of a common and conse- crated humanity was diffused. But at the same time that social barriers were being broken down, and class distinctions eliminated, the decay of the centralising and unifying powers of Papacy and Empire left the way open for the development of new schisms of a different kind. They were clue not to those radical divergences of blood and status which had made the social separations of the Ancient World — as they still do those of the East — so irreconcilable : they were due merely to the clash of political and economic interests, and to the formation of sectional linguistic, cultural, and traditional ties. The English peoples had, perhaps, been the first to become conscious of their nation- hood. It was especially during the course of the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) that all classes had become united in defence of this island, in zeal to secure the command of the Channel, in ambition to control the wool-markets of Flanders, in support of their monarch's visionary claims to the overlordship of Scotland and the throne of France. The aggressive nationality of the English had excited resistant patriotism in Scotland, whose peoples rallied as one man under the leadership first of the Bruces, then of the Stuarts, to maintain the independence of their country ; and in France where the rivalries of Orleanist nobles and Burgundian burghers were reconciled in a common struggle,
INTRODUCTION 11
ultimately successful, to expel the English invaders Simul- taneously with these national movements in England, France, and Scotland, was developing a kindred movement in the Iberian Peninsula where the diverse folk of Castile. Leon, Navarre, Aragon, and Catalonia were becoming welded into the Spanish nation in defence of the Cross against the Crescent, and in the effort to expel from their land the Moors who had been established therein from the beginning of the eighth century. In Germany and in Italy at this time national particularism was not so clearly marked as it was in Western Europe. For Germany was still the home of the titular Roman Empire, the claimant to the secular headship of the Christian world ; while Italy was still dominated by the cosmopolitan Papacy. By the institutions of the Empire and the Papacy, indeed, in Germany and in Italy the Middle Ages were protracted till the beginning of the nineteenth century : it was reserved to Napoleon to bring them to a close. In Western Europe, however, the Middle Ages came to an end when England, Scotland, France, and Spain attained to conscious nation- hood ; when each of them proclaimed itself a sovereign state, independent of all external control ; and when in each of them the Church itself became nationalised, whether it remained in communion with Rome, or whether it broke away in Protestant rebellion.
§ 6. THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
The establishment of the modern State System during the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was followed by a long period of grave disorders. The new political units, emancipated from all effective external control, were in relation to one another in a condition of " nature," that
12 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
is, of lawless savagery. They tended to fight with one another incessantly for ascendancy, or to join in preying upon their weaker neighbours. Not until some sort of a Balance of Power had been attained by means of dynastic and other alliances, and not until some sort of International Law had been evolved by jurists, and accepted by states- men, was it possible for peace to prevail. The first great wars of modern times were the struggles between France and Spain for dominance over Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands (1494-1559). Then followed the appalling wars of religion (1559-1648) in the course of which Europe was divided in hopeless schism between Protestant and Catholic groups of states, whose ecclesiastical allegiance was primarily determined by national and political considera- tions rather than by theological arguments. Next came a period of dynastic conflicts (1648-1748) — including the wars of the English, Spanish, Polish, and Austrian Succes- sions— during which kingdoms and peoples were treated as royal properties to be disposed of, like private estates or prize cattle, by inheritance, by marriage jointure, by gift, by exchange, by partition, or by mere conquest. These successive series of almost chronic wars had, of course, the effect of developing in all the countries concerned strong military castes, highly centralised administrations, and exceedingly despotic monarchies. But when in the eighteenth century comparative stability and peace had been attained — especially during the long interval of tranquillity that followed the conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession and Treaty of Utrecht (1713) — a change began to come over European society. Amid all the tumults of the recurrent conflicts, commercial and industrial classes had been springing up whose interests (though by no means always pacific) were widely different
INTRODUCTION 13
from those of the military nobilities and the supreme war-lords ; an intellectual aristocracy had been organising itself in dissent from the prevailing political and religious creeds, and in antagonism to the established organisations of Church and State ; above all, a numerous and oppressed proletariat had become conscious of its wrongs and clamorous for its rights. Only a little was needed to bring the system of autocratic monarchies and persecuting hier- archies crashing to the ground. That little was provided by the French Revolution of 1789.
CHAPTER I DEMOCRACY AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
§ 7. ARRIVAL OF THE THIRD ESTATE
THE French Revolution of the eighteenth century ranks with the seventeenth-century Great Rebellion in England and the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation in Germany as one of those prime outstanding events in European history which have had profound and enduring effects not only upon the country in which they have been enacted, but also upon the Continent at large. The Reformation broke the power of priests : the Rebellion sounded the death-knell of the autocracy of kings : the Revolution shattered the ascendancy of aristocracies. All three move- ments owed their initial success to the moral and intellectual leadership of a small, emancipated, and illuminated middle class ; but in each case behind the middle class there lay the immense silent force of a slowly advancing proletariat of artisans and peasants, the pressure of whose inarticulate influence became greater with each succeeding decade.
During the thousand years of the Middle Ages all spiritual authority had lain in the hands of the " first estate " of the clergy ; all military power in the hands of the " second estate " of the nobles. The clergy had exercised absolute and undisputed sway over the minds and consciences of the
14
ca. i DEMOCRACY & THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 15
peoples of Christendom. They had had the monopoly of such learning as had survived the disruption of the Roman Empire ; they were believed to possess, as heirs of Christ and the Apostles, supernatural gifts, which gave them control of the keys of death and hell. So long as their intellectual ascendancy continued unimpaired, and so long as their lofty claims to ghostly prerogatives were generally admitted, they remained established as the un- questioned guardians and tutors of a childlike world. On the whole, though they were subject to the limitations of their age, they used their enormous powers not ill. But the time came when the days of their tutorship were accomplished. With the Renaissance the laity of the " third estate " began to assert an independence of thought, and to display an energy of doubt, that shook off clerical control and in- augurated the age of secularity and science. Side by side with the mediaeval supremacy of the Church had been the military ascendancy of the nobles. Their impregnable castles, their strong defensive armour, their formidable weapons of assault, had made them, though few in numbers, unassailably dominant. The unarmed, undisciplined multi- tudes of the peasantry lay before them as grass before the reapers. But they too, like the clergy, had had their functions to perform, and their duties to fulfil, in the Middle Ages ; and, like the clergy, they had accomplished them with normal human fidelity. Their function had been to establish order in a period of extreme lawlessness, and to defend Christendom from successive hordes of infidel invaders — Hun, Avar, Saracen, Magyar, Viking. But about the time of the Renaissance their work too was completed. Strong national monarchies had been founded ; the reign of law had been inaugurated ; the power of the infidels broken. This change in circumstances synchron-
16 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY OH.
ised with an important change in the art of war. Gun- powder had come into common use during the fourteenth century, and as artillery and fire-arms superseded battering- rams and bows, the feudal castle and the armour-clad knight became anachronisms. The " third estate " re- covered its superiority on the field of battle. Gunpowder and the printing-press were the heralds of the new age.
§ 8. THE THIRD ESTATE IN FRANCE
In no European country did clericalism and feudalism linger so long as in France : the mediaeval alliance between France and the Papacy had been unusually close ; France had been the very home and hearth of the feudal aristo- cracy. Even in the eighteenth century ecclesiastical magnates and territorial nobles kept their ancient state. But also in no European country, during the eighteenth century, had the intellect of the " third estate " emanci- pated itself so completely from sacerdotal tutelage, or had so powerful a body of lawyers, doctors, merchants, and financiers risen to claim a share in political power.
Thus, on the one hand, the estates of the nobles and the clergy possessed many privileges — rights of jurisdiction, claims to dues and services, exemptions from taxation and from other public burdens. These privileges had at one time been not unreasonable ; for they had been the counter- parts and correlatives of onerous duties performed on behalf of the community. But the duties had been taken over by the bureaucracy of a highly centralised monarchy, and the privileges, thus dissociated from obligations, re- mained as a gross anachronism. On the other hand, while nobles and clergy had been steadily degenerating into obnoxious parasites, the ranks of the bourgeoisie had been
i DEMOCRACY & THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 17
swelling with a constant influx of wealthy men of business, well-educated advocates, sceptical philosophers, aggressive men of science. This enlightened and increasing middle class was excluded from all direct political power ; yet upon it fell the bulk of the burden of the national taxation, and it stood to suffer more than any other by the state - bankruptcy which (as we shall shortly see) threatened the country in 1789. It resented its condition of impotence ; it felt the most profound contempt for the incompetence of the aristocratic and clerical ministers of the decadent Bourbons ; its intellect — nourished on the writings of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau — rose in revolt against the dogmas of the divine right of kings, the in- fallibility of the Church, and the sanctity of privilege.
Below this select and cultured upper section of the third estate seethed the restless and turbulent masses of the urban proletariat, ignorant and unorganised, ready for riot and revolt. Beyond these again there lay, passive and inert, but filled with inarticulate resentments and the sense of immemorial wrong, the still vaster multitudes of the rural peasantry : they were either the descendants and re- presentatives of the primitive Celtic cultivators conquered early in the Christian era by the Franks, or the heirs of barbarian coloni settled in subject communities, or else still unenfranchised feudal serfs. They were oppressed by many burdens, and hampered by countless restrictions. Arthur Young, who travelled through France during the years 1787-89 in order to observe French agriculture, re- marked that some four-fifths, of the earnings of the peasants went in taxes to the State, tithes to the Church, and dues to the lords ; and further, that in some parts of the country the tenantry were still irritated and harassed by feudal obligations, such as those which required them to grind
c
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their corn at the lord's mill, to bake their bread in his oven, or to render forced and unpaid service on the lord's land at seed-time and harvest.
The French third estate, in short, throughout both its great and widely different sections — the prosperous and cultivated middle class, and the oppressed and ignorant proletariat of artisans and peasants — was restless and dis- satisfied at the close of the eighteenth century. Political causes brought the discontent to an explosive head in 1789.
§ 9. THE FRENCH STATES-GENERAL
Throughout the eighteenth century the finances of the French government were in an extremely precarious condition. Louis XIV. (1643-1715), a brilliant and ambitious monarch, had fairly launched his country on the current that drifted towards bankruptcy by a series of wanton wars of aggression. His successor, Louis XV. (1715-74), although not so warlike as Louis XIV., was grossly extravagant and corrupt in his domestic expendi- ture. Louis XVI., the king who was reigning when the Revolution broke out, was personally both peaceful and economical ; but he was feeble of intellect and weak of will, unable to comprehend the problems of government, incapable of restraining either the frivolities of his court or the follies of his ministers. Year after year, without any exceptions, the expenses of the state far exceeded its income. No one knew exactly how grave was the deficit, for no accurate accounts were kept, and none of any sort were published. All that was generally known was that at increasingly frequent intervals the moneyed members of the third estate were called upon to furnish loans in order to make it possible for the government to pay its
i DEMOCRACY & THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 19
vray at all. So serious was the financial position when Louis XVI. ascended the throne (1774) that he was advised to summon to his councils the greatest French economist of the day, A. R. J. Turgot, whom he soon appointed to the post of comptroller-general. Turgot at once recognised and made clear the fact that France was on the verge of utter bankruptcy. He accordingly insisted, on the one hand, upon rigid economies, and, on the other hand, upon the removal of the iniquitous exemptions and privileges of the nobles and the clergy. Turgot's proposals, which he pressed with a persistence that was patriotic rather than tactful, aroused the most intense antagonism at Court, and in 1776, on the demand of the Queen, Marie Antoinette, Turgot was dismissed.
That same fateful year the revolted English colonies in America issued their Declaration of Independence. To the French militarists, who were still smarting from the crush- ing defeat which they had suffered at Britain's hand in the Seven Years' War (1756-63), the occasion seemed to be golden for revenge. Hence, in spite of the warnings of the falling Turgot and of all prudent ministers, the government listened to the appeals of the American rebels and plunged into the prodigious expenses of the Transatlantic war. The War of American Independence — in which France played an increasingly prominent part, until she was able to dictate to Britain the terms of a humiliating peace at Paris and Versailles in 1783 — had three important effects upon France herself. First, it caused to be circulated in France a vast amount of literature which not only defended the war but also disseminated anti-monarchic and republican principles ; secondly, it trained and sent back to France a large number of men, e.g. the Marquis Lafayette, imbued with strong democratic and equalitarian ideas ; thirdly,
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it precipitated the long-threatened national bankruptcy. The successors of Turgot ceased to be able to raise any more loans on any terms whatsoever, even when they were needed to pay the arrears of interest on previous loans. Hence, as a last desperate resort, a capable Genevese banker, Necker, was called in to find some way out of the impasse. All he could do was to advise that the long-dormant States- General should be summoned, with full powers to deal with the critical situation.
§ 10. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
The French States-General was akin to the English Parliament. Both had reached their definite form about the same date (A.D. 1300) and both had had originally much the same functions and powers. But the courses of their subsequent developments had been strikingly different from one another. Whereas the English Parliament, in spite of ebbs and flows of fortune, had increased in strength until in the seventeenth century it had become the dominant power in the state, its French counterpart had declined into insignificance and impotence, until in 1614 it had alto- gether ceased to meet. This remarkable difference of fate was due to three main causes. First, whereas the English Parliament divided itself into two closely associated houses, the French States-General became congealed into three mutually exclusive estates — clergy, nobles, commons. Thus, while the English Commons were strengthened, and were intimately linked to the Lords, by the inclusion of the country gentry in their ranks, the French Third Estate remained weak in bourgeois isolation. There was no union or cohesion between the three estates in France : each played its own hand on its own behalf, and the monarchy
i DEMOCRACY & THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 21
sharped them all. Secondly, whereas the members of the English Parliament, both Lords and Commons, were generally men of affairs trained in local government, skilled in the management of large merchant companies, and or- ganised into compact and disciplined parties ; the members of the French assembly commonly lacked both adminis- trative experience and political organisation. Thirdly, and most important of all, whereas the English Parliament early in its career asserted and secured the " power of the purse," which enabled it steadily to increase its privileges and prerogatives, the French States-General never was in a position to do so. In the critical days of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the form of the government was being determined, the French king had possessed so large a revenue from feudal dues and permanent taxes that he had been independent of voted supplies. Hence the States-General had never been able to make " redress of grievances " an imperative mandate to a suppliant king, and grievances had not been redressed. Thus had the organs of representative government died out in France, and when in 1789, at Necker's instance, the States-General was summoned as from the grave, exactly a century and three-quarters had elapsed since it had fallen into the sleep of desuetude.
Just as the English Revolution of the seventeenth cen- tury may be dated from the meeting of the Long Parliament in November 1642, so may the French Revolution be regarded as having commenced with the assembly of the States-General in May 1789. There is a certain parallelism, interesting to English and French students if to no others, between the two Revolutions. Louis XVI., both in char- acter and destiny, recalls Charles I. ; the ideologues of 1789-1800 seem to be reincarnations of some of the
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extremer fanatics of 164=9-60 ; Napoleon and Cromwell, both products of the Revolution, appear as kindred clearers of the Revolutionary mess. But these resemblances are superficial ; the differences are profound. The English Revolution was political and religious, directed against the autocracy of the king and the Arminianism of the church ; the French Revolution was social and secular, directed against the privileged nobles and clergy. The one aimed at liberty, the other at equality ; the one was oligarchic, the other democratic ; the one was determined by pre- cedent, the other by principle. These fundamental differ- ences, however, manifested themselves but slowly as the French Revolution proceeded. We must briefly note the main stages of its process.
§ 11. THE COURSE OP THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
The French Revolution proper lasted from the assembling of the States-General on " May 5, 1789, to the death of Robespierre on July 28, 1794. During this period of five years the Revolution passed through four phases, each approximately fifteen months in length." (1) From May 5, 1789, to July 14, 1790 — in spite of two ominous tumultuary incidents, viz. the storming of the Bastille by the Paris mob, and the hunger-march of the women to Versailles — the movement was kept on constitutional lines. The States- Greneral transmuted itself into a National (later Constituent) Assembly ; abolished titles of nobility and feudal immuni- ties ; swept away tithes and pluralities ; liberated serfs ; opened civil and military appointments to all ; reorganised France in 83 departments ; introduced a civil constitution of the clergy which repudiated the Papal supremacy ; formulated a new scheme of government for the kingdom —
a scheme modelled on that of England and intended to convert the ancien regime of Bourbon autocracy into a limited monarchy of the Hanoverian type. The inaugura- tion of the new order was signalised on July 14, 1790, by a gigantic mass meeting of deputies from the recently instituted departments held in the Champ de Mars, on the site of the demolished Bastille. The king himself was present, adorned with Revolutionary favours, and every- where welcomed as the father of his emancipated people. The Revolution appeared to have been completed on the same peaceful and moderate lines as had marked the English settlement of 1689. (2) The next phase, however, July 1790 to October 1791, showed that the congratulations and rejoicings of the Champ de Mars had been premature. Even if the well-meaning but feeble king honestly accepted the changes effected by the Assembly, such was not the case with the humiliated queen, the dispossessed nobles, or the civilly constituted prelates. These relics of the shattered ancien regime first plotted with the army for the overthrow of the new government, and when the army failed them they entered into a conspiracy with the neighbouring potentates — in particular with the Emperor Leopold and the Kings of Prussia, Sardinia, and Spain — for the restora- tion of the Bourbon autocracy. The news of these machina- tions leaked out. Profound suspicions were aroused. The flight of Necker, a strong supporter of the Assembly and the Constitution, in September 1790, developed suspicion into a panic of apprehension. The death of Mirabeau, the great leader of the moderate constitutionalists, in April 1791, removed an invaluable steadying influence. Finally, the foolish and fatal attempted flight of the king and royal family, arrested at Varennes in June 1791, utterly destroyed all public confidence. The king was brought back to
Paris virtually a prisoner, and when, in October 1791, the first Legislative Assembly met under the new constitution, he found himself bereft of all effective power. (3) The third phase, October 1791 to January 1793, opened with the rapid approach of war. Within France the avowedly re- publican parties of the Girondists and Jacobins declared against the monarchy, and maintained that there could be no permanent settlement with the Bourbons on the throne. Outside France the autocratic powers — urged on by the French queen, the emigrant nobles, and the ultramontane clergy — prepared to restore the sovereignty of their perse- cuted brother. In the spring of 1792 war broke out, and soon France was invaded by Austrian and Prussian hosts. This was fatal to the monarchy. On August 10, 1792, Louis XVI. was deposed and a Republic established. Next month a general massacre of royalists began. The Prussians were checked at Valmy (September 20, 1792), and the Aus- trians decisively beaten at Jemmappes (November 6, 1792). On January 21, 1793, the unfortunate Louis XVI. was executed. (4) Then began the Reign of Terror, which continued with increasing horror and fury until queen and royal family, nobles, clergy, bourgeois, and even the more moderate proletarians had perished in one awful blood- bath. Finally, the madness bled itself out, and when in July 1794 Robespierre, the despot of the Terror, seemed to be established in undisputed sway, the threatened sur- vivors of the suppressed classes and parties banded them- selves together and secured his overthrow. From the death of the arch-terrorist on July 28, 1794, the reaction began to prevail.
r DEMOCRACY & THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 25
§ 12. EFFECTS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
The French Revolution which had begun as a moderate and constitutional movement on the part of an enlightened middle class to secure a share of political power, an equitable distribution of public burdens, a redress of intolerable grievances, and a removal of indefensible anachronisms, had gradually drifted until it had passed wholly beyond the control of those who had started it. The day of the storming of the Bastille (July 14, 1789) had given warning of the power of the proletariat ; the day on which the Parisian hunger-marchers brought king and queen, together with Court and Assembly, in tumultuary procession from Versailles to the capital marked the beginning of mob domination. More and more did the restless and reckless ochlocracy of the city, reinforced by multitudes of starving and desperate peasants from the broken-up feudal estates of the country, control the situation (by means of the Jacobin and other clubs, and through the Paris Commune), overawing the Assembly by violence, and urging the ministers to the extremest measures, until during the Reign of Terror the criminal lunacy of the dregs of the populace ruled supreme.
Europe looked on in amazement and growing alarm at the tragedy enacted before her eyes. At first the peoples of the Continent (as distinct from their generally unpopular governments), and in particular the peoples of Britain (as distinct from the Tory ministers), had regarded the revolt of the French third estate with sympathy and approval. The fall of the Bastille, for instance, sent a thrill of exulta- tion throughout the world : it was regarded as a symbolic event, typifying the passing of an evil age.
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Good was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very Heaven.
So sang Wordsworth, and he voiced the hope and enthusiasm of countless inarticulate reformers. Of course, from the first, and not unnaturally, monarchs hated, bureaucrats distrusted, and reactionaries denounced the whole move- ment. From the first, too, constitutional conservatives like Burke predicted the excesses which would be likely to flow from the relaxation of the bonds of immemorial authority. This antagonism on the part of the privileged possessors of power and the venerable devotees of pre- cedent was to have been expected ; and it did not count for much. What was infinitely deplorable was that the weak- ness of the moderates and the wicked folly of the extremists in France should have justified the hatred of the reaction- aries, and should have fulfilled the prophecies of the pessi- mists. The wild and sanguinary excesses of the Jacobins alienated the public opinion and outraged the conscience of the world ; they plunged the Continent into a twenty years' war ; they necessitated the submergence of anarchic liberty by the disciplinary despotism of Napoleon ; they discredited democracy and delayed its triumph for a couple of generations. Nevertheless, in spite of the wounds inflicted upon it in the house of its friends, the third estate had come to stay. In the French Revolution it made its effective and permanent entry into Continental politics. The principle of democracy which it represented, and the Rights of Man which it proclaimed, became controlling factors in the evolution of Europe in the nineteenth century.
CHAPTER II NATIONALITY AND THE GREAT WARS
§ 13. DEMOCRACY AND NATIONALITY
THE democracy of the French Revolution was at first cosmopolitan and not national in character. The watch- words of the Revolutionists were not only " liberty " and " equality," but also " fraternity," by which was under- stood a brotherhood of proletarians wide as humanity itself. No sooner had the revolutionary leaders established them- selves in France than they made a powerful appeal to the peoples of all the neighbouring monarchies to follow their example, join them in their great enterprise, and set up democratic republics in close association with their own. In the November Decrees of 1792 they publicly and osten- tatiously offered help to all oppressed proletarians every- where who would rise in rebellion against the tyrannies under which they groaned. The response to their appeals was by no means inconsiderable. In many countries, but especially among the disaffected populations of the Austrian Netherlands, the German principalities, the Italian duchies, and the Spanish monarchy, " Corresponding Societies " of some sort or other were organised, and a revolutionary propaganda inaugurated. Even in England there was a sympathetic movement. Members of Parliament favour-
27
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able to the Revolution formed themselves into a society called " The Friends of the People." Several avowedly republican associations came into existence throughout the country, and opened up an intimate correspondence with the Parisian clubs. Above all, Thomas Paine, repudiating the " vulgar vice " of patriotism, proclaimed the cosmo- politan " Rights of Man," crossed the Channel, joined the Girondists, entered the Convention, wrote and dedicated to Lafayette a scheme for a republican constitution for Britain and a permanent alliance between Britain and emancipated France. The barriers between nations seemed to be breaking down, and a cosmopolitan third estate appeared to be organising itself against the hitherto domin- ant monarchies, aristocracies, and hierarchies. Europe showed signs of transmutation from a vertical to a horizon- tal order of social stratification ; from a system of states to a system of classes. Thus, when the armies of the French Republic entered the Austrian Netherlands (modern Belgium) in 1793, they were everywhere hailed by the populace as saviours rather than as invading enemies. Even so late as 1806, when after Jena the victorious troops of Napoleon occupied Berlin, the citizens welcomed them with every mark of joy, looking upon them as emancipators who had freed them from the intolerable yoke of the arro- gant Junker bureaucracy.
This spirit of cosmopolitan brotherhood, however, did not endure. It was found that the fraternity of foreigners is much more evident when the said foreigners are at a distance than when they are near at hand. The militant brethren of the French Republic, who came to the oppressed peoples of the Continent in the guise of deliverers, remained as despots. The burden of the liberty which they imposed upon their emancipated friends was soon felt to be incom-
parably heavier than the load of the subjection which they had removed. The iniquity of the equality which they maintained was perceived to be immeasurably greater than the injustice of the privileges which they had swept away. They forced their own ideas upon resistant minds ; they established their own institutions among unwilling communities ; they levied enormous taxes for ends which they themselves determined ; they raised conscript hosts to fight in distant wars with which these hosts had no concern. Hence, gradually was aroused against the French a passion of hatred and antagonism which culminated in the Wars of Liberation, and in the revival of the spirit of nationality which became the second of the two great determining factors of nineteenth-century politics. Let us trace a little more in detail how this transition from social cosmopolitanism to national particularism took place.
§ 14. CAUSES OF THE GREAT WARS
The change in the attitude of the Continent towards the French and their Revolution took place as the result of, first, the domestic excesses of the Jacobins, and, second, the wars with which they afflicted the world. The French Revolution was regarded in its early stages, both by those who approved of it and by those who did not, as merely the affair of the French themselves. For three years the Revolutionists were left undisturbed to their task of re- organising their society and reconstructing their constitu- tion. Even at the end of that period (April 1792) it was they themselves, and not their enemies, who plunged the Continent into war. But by that time both sides were ready and eager for war, and it was a mere question of tactics who should make the first overt move. Two things
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in particular had brought the French into the niood lor battle. On the one hand, they had become filled with a burning missionary zeal for their new political gospel of " liberty, equality, and fraternity," similar to that fiery enthusiasm which in the seventh century had launched the Arabs against an unbelieving world on behalf of the creed of Allah and Mahomet. On the other hand, the economic condition of France had become so bad that it was impera- tively necessary to find sources of subsistence in neighbour- ing lands. Industry had died while artisans were struggling for political control, and were hunting down aristocrats, ecclesiastics, and bourgeois in order to keep the guillo- tine from stagnation. Agriculture had perished with the destruction of the feudal organisation, and with the issue of that decree of emancipation which had released the peasants in turbulent multitudes to seek the sanctuary of the towns, and to swell their hungry workless mobs. It was frankly confessed by the Jacobin ministers that the only possible method of dealing with the famishing and outrageous hordes which they found upon their hands was to collect them into armies, subject them to military discipline, put weapons into their hands, excite their missionary zeal, and then launch them across the frontiers to find employment in battle, and food in plunder.
But if in 1792 war was a necessity for Revolutionary France in order to relieve it from the pressure of otherwise insoluble economic problems, hardly less necessary was it for other reasons to the circumambient autocrats. They felt themselves menaced with imminent ruin and perdition by the spread of the revolutionary propaganda in their dominions, and by the activity of those associations among their subjects which were in correspondence with the Jacobin clubs. They deemed it needful to vindicate the
n NATIONALITY AND THE GREAT WARS 31
validity of numerous treaties formerly concluded with th« Bourbons and now repudiated by the Republican govern- ment. They held themselves bound in honour as well as in prudence to march to the aid of their brother, Louis XVI., in peril and distress, and to seek to rescue the unhappy Marie Antoinette, over whom was already hanging the horror of outrageous death. They were urged forward as to a holy crusade by the indignant Papacy, the persecuted clergy, and the dispossessed orders, all of whom cried aloud against the atheism of the Revolution, its immorality, its cruelty, its spoliation, its fathomless iniquity.
On April 20, 1792, Louis XVI. was compelled by his Girondist ministers formally to declare war upon his brother-in-law, the Emperor Leopold. Before the end of the summer Sardinia and Prussia were involved. Early in 1793, Britain, Holland, and Spain came in. France was hemmed in by a ring of foes.
§ 15. THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR, 1792-1802
When in 1792-93 the first coalition of six important Powers was formed to put a term to French aggression and to check the spread of revolution in Europe, the doom of the young Republic seemed to most competent observers to be sealed. On the one side were the disciplined forces of the most potent military monarchies of the day ; on the other side was a tumultuary horde of the ill-armed, half-starved, and untrained proletariat of a single nation. It appeared as though in such circumstances the issue could not long remain in doubt.
Events, however, speedily and emphatically belied prognostications. If the French armies were mere mobs; they were mighty with enthusiasm, desperate from neces-
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sity, invincible in resolution. If their opponents were formidable in numbers, organisation, and equipment, they were weak in mutual jealousies, in incompatible ambitions, in secret treacheries, in infirmities of will, and even (in the case of the rank and file) in scarcely concealed sympathy with the revolutionary propaganda which they were sent out to combat. Thus it came to pass that, though the French had to fight furiously against tremendous odds, in the end they prevailed, and completely broke the first coalition up. They overran and annexed Holland in the winter of 1794-95 ; compelled Prussia and Spain to withdraw from the coali- tion in 1795 (April-June) ; and finally forced Sardinia to make peace by a short but overwhelming campaign in the spring of 1796 — a campaign in which Napoleon Bonaparte, who had at the last moment been placed in command, laid the foundations of his military pre-eminence. The capitu- lation of Sardinia left only Austria and Britain in the field against the French.
In these circumstances the second phase of the war com- menced. The French were able to abandon the defensive and to launch aggressive attacks upon their two remaining enemies. The summer of 1796 saw a threefold invasion of Austria, which, although it did not go quite as had been intended, sufficed (thanks to Bonaparte's brilliant operations in Lombardy) to impose upon Austria the Peace of Campo- Formio (1797). Britain was left alone. Then the French turned to destroy their sole remaining foe. First, they essayed a direct invasion ; but this was foiled by the naval victories of Jarvis at St. Vincent (February 1797) and Duncan at Camperdown (October 1797). Next, under the inspiration of the gigantic imagination of Bonaparte, they planned an indirect attack, by way of Egypt, Syria, and India, which should sap the sources of British wealth and
ir NATIONALITY AND THE GREAT WARS 33
sea-power. The vast design was frustrated by Nelson's great victory in Aboukir Bay (August 1798), by Sidney Smith's marvellous defence of Acre (1799), and by Pitt's construction of a second coalition — of which Austria and Russia were the leading members — against the world- wide ambitions of the militarist French Republicans.
The formation of the second coalition brought Bonaparte back from Egypt to Europe, and inaugurated the closing phase of the Revolutionary war. Bonaparte's genius, combined with Allied ineptitude, soon dissolved the coali- tion : Russia withdrew in fury and disgust in 1800 ; Austria was once more forced to conclude a separate peace at Lune- ville in 1801 ; Britain, again reduced to solitary belligerence, was herself fain to seek a cessation of hostilities. The Peace of Amiens (March 1802) brought the long-drawn Revolutionary war to an end, and gave a period of much- desired tranquillity to the distracted and wasted Continent.
§ 16. THE INTERVAL OF TRUCE, 1802-3
During the course of the Revolutionary war the aims and ambitions of the French had considerably changed. The soldiers of the tricolour had entered into the struggle as champions of a great idea, and so long as the issue remained in doubt they had continued to be true to their early faith and first love. When, however, their Continental enemies had been beaten down, and when they stood victorious on fields far from home, the pure enthusiasm for the gospel of " liberty, equality, and fraternity," and the ardent zeal for the universal " rights of man," became mingled with less noble and more self -regarding passions — with greed of conquest, and with lust for world-dominion. Rousseau was supplanted by Bonaparte ; the ideal of
D
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cosmopolitan democracy was gradually abandoned in favour of the ideal of national ascendancy ; the Republic tended towards the Empire.
The Peace of Amiens, which the obtusely optimistic British Ministry had hoped would establish an enduring tranquillity, as a matter of fact settled nothing. It was a mere truce, and as such Bonaparte regarded it from the first. It left the French dominant indeed on the Continent, but with their desires for territorial aggrandisement wholly unsatisfied. It left Britain still supreme on the sea, and so an incessant and ubiquitous obstacle to the realisation of French ambitions. Thus, while Britain confidingly began to demobilise her armies, unman her fleets, surrender her conquests, dismantle her fortresses, and give herself to travel and to sport, Bonaparte with steady diligence and tireless energy pursued two lines of policy whose convergent end was world-dominion. First, he pursued the policy of centralisation and autocracy which culminated in his pro- clamation as the Emperor Napoleon in 1804. Secondly, on one pretext or another, he extended his authority over the peoples bordering on France until he became the ruler of a ring of subject states : the Batavian Republic of Holland, the Cisalpine Republic of North Italy, the Ligurian Republic of the Genoese littoral, the Helvetic Republic of Switzerland all passed under his control ; Piedmont and Parma were actually annexed to France ; new designs on Egypt were manifested. These last aroused to action even the apathetic and deluded British Ministry, of which the mild and sleepy Addington was chief. It made protests through its representative in Paris, and when these were ignored it presented an ultimatum in which (1) it demanded the withdrawal of French troops from the Netherlands and from Switzerland, the grant of compensation to the King
ii NATIONALITY AND THE GREAT WARS 35
of Sardinia in lieu of Piedmont, and the cessation of the Egyptian enterprise ; and (2) it announced its intention to postpone the evacuation of Malta, stipulated for in the Treaty of Amiens, until such time as the aggressive activity of the French in the Mediterranean should cease. This qualified refusal of the British Government to fulfil one of the engagements into which it had entered in 1802 was at once seized upon by Napoleon as an excellent pretext for war. He had all along intended war ; he had been pre- paring for it diligently — training men, collecting stores, forming alliances, mobilising the resources of the subject republics ; in May 1803 he proclaimed it. The odds were entirely on his side and he expected a speedy triumph. Britain was without allies, utterly unready, taken by surprise. Napoleon, on the other hand, was able to con- centrate for the single task of crushing Britain all the forces and supplies of France, the Netherlands, Switzer- land, and half of Italy. Spain, moreover, too weak and too cowardly to resist the imperious will of Bonaparte, was compelled to place her fleet at his disposal and to provide a money subsidy. Thus the Napoleonic war broke out.
§ 17. THE NAPOLEONIC WAR, 1803-14
The Napoleonic war, which its originator had expected would be a short one, as a matter of fact lasted more than ten years. Napoleon had anticipated that as its result he would be enthroned as Lord of the World on the ruins of a conquered Britain and a shattered British Empire. As a matter of fact, the result of the war was the reduction of his own Empire to the island of Elba. It is of the highest importance to discover and to realise what were the causes
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of this unexpected and truly amazing reversal of fortune, and this falsification of prophetic calculation.
For two years the war remained a duel between Mars and Neptune — between Napoleon bent on invading England with an immense conscript host encamped for that purpose at Boulogne (for whose passage he had pro- vided 2000 transports), and Britain, whose fleets under Nelson and his compeers kept the narrow seas, and refused to allow Napoleon even the twenty-four hours' command of the Channel which was all he asked from Providence. At the end of that time William Pitt, who had displaced the incapable Addington as Prime Minister, compelled Napoleon to abandon his projected invasion, by organising against him the third coalition, which during 1805 was joined in turn by Russia (April), Austria (July), and Prussia (November). The French camp at Boulogne was broken up in the summer of 1805, and the so-called " Army of England " was launched against the Austrians and Russians in the valley of the Danube. In the autumn of the same year Nelson rendered, any resumption of the project of invasion impossible by destroying the French and Spanish fleets off Trafalgar (October 21, 1805).
The third coalition served its primary purpose in saving England from the fear of invasion ; but its subsequent career was short and inglorious. Austria was decisively defeated at Austerlitz (December 2, 1805) and forced to make a disastrous peace at Pressburg. Prussia was over- whelmed at Jena and Auerstadt, fought simultaneously in 1806 (October 14) ; the Russians, as the result of battles foughtin 1807 at Eylau (Februarys) and Friedland (June 14), were brought into a mood for negotiation. In the summer of 1807 the Continent lay at the feet of Napoleon. Austria was dismembered ; Prussia in military occupation of the
n NATIONALITY AND THE GREAT WARS 37
French, her king and queen fugitives ; Russia so utterly disgusted at the feebleness and futility of the coalition that her Tsar, Alexander I., was eager for an accommodation with the invincible Emperor of the French. The two autocrats met at Tilsit (July 7, 1807) and entered into a compact for the division of the Western world into their two respective and exclusive spheres of influence.
Then Napoleon, at the height of his power, and in the arro- gance of illimitable pride, began to do things which gradually roused against him all the peoples of the Continent. First, for the aggrandisement of his family he carved from the subject states kingdoms for his brothers and principalities for his marshals : Joseph Bonaparte became King of Naples, and later of Spain ; Louis was made King of Holland ; Jerome of Westphalia : Germany and Italy were completely reconstructed, each being reduced to three political units. Secondly, for the destruction of his ancient and unassailable enemy, Britain, he formulated the " Con- tinental System " of boycott and blockade by which her commerce should be ruined. Britain was indeed hardly hit ; but the peoples of Europe, deprived of indispensable British goods, were hit still harder, and hardest of all by British measures of retaliation. Hence at length they rose in revolt against the Napoleonic domination and the " Wars of Liberation " began.
§ 18. EFFECTS OF THE GREAT WARS
Until in 1808 the Portuguese refused to tolerate the imposition of the " Continental System " upon their com- merce, and appealed to Britain to aid them in their resist- ance to the Napoleonic dictation, the policy of the British Cabinet had been to limit the active operations of the
38 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY OH.
British power to the sea, and to avoid entanglement in European campaigns. The appeal of the Portuguese caused the policy of exclusive navalism to be abandoned ; and the despatch of an army to Lisbon inaugurated a period of growing military activity which at length culminated in the decisive blow of Waterloo. Britain sent help to Portu- gal. Before the end of the same year Spain had asked and received aid in the task — destined to occupy her for five years — of expelling Joseph Bonaparte and the Napo- leonic garrisons. In both Portugal and Spain an intense passion of patriotism was roused by the strenuous struggle to throw off the alien yoke of the now wholly imperial French. The day of insurgent nationality had dawned. In 1809 Austria caught the infection and made a fierce but vain effort to recover her lost peoples and possessions. In 1812 Russia broke away from the fettering compact of Tilsit, and when Napoleon tried to punish her for her perfidy, destroyed his " grand army " amid the ruins of Moscow and the snows of the wintry retreat. This disaster to the military dictator was the signal for a general rising of the oppressed nations of the Continent. Prussians, Austrians, Italians, joined British, Portuguese, and Spaniards, and in two tremendous campaigns (1813-14) broke Napoleon's power, drove him from his vassal states, invaded France itself, and compelled him to abdicate. In 1815 he made a brilliant and disconcerting attempt to recover his lost empire ; but he never had a chance of ultimate success, and the debacle of Waterloo was merely a spectacular proof that the principle of nationality had triumphed over both the principle of cosmopolitan re- publicanism and the principle of imperial world-dominion. When, after the overthrow of Napoleon, the Allied armies of his conquerors occupied Paris, Europe had had experience
n NATIONALITY AND THE GREAT WARS 39
of more than twenty years of almost continuous war. This prolonged course of hostilities had had a deep and enduring effect upon all the principal belligerents. The French themselves had perhaps been affected most. They had been the originators of the conflict, and until in its closing two years they had had to contend against a world in arms, they had gained for themselves an almost unpre- cedented renown, and had achieved almost unparalleled triumphs. As they pondered upon the marvels of Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, and a hundred other victories, they were filled with a national pride and a sense of inherent military superiority which gave them a particularist patriotism that was the very antithesis of the cosmopolitan fraternity with which they had embarked on their adventures in 1792. Napoleon became to them a legend and a tradition from the obsession of whose glory they were not delivered until 1870. But if the consciousness of exclusive nationality was quickened in the French by their heritage of the Napoleonic prestige and the Napoleonic idea, not less vitally was the spirit of nationality roused among the peoples over whom Napoleon had established his dominion during the course of the Wars of Liberation. Portugal and Spain, Holland and Belgium, even Germany and Italy had become alive as never before to the reality of their nationhood. In short, the principle of nationality had become, almost equally with the principle of democracy, a leading and controlling factor in Continental politics.
CHAPTER III
THE SETTLEMENT OF 1815
§ 19. THE FALL OF NAPOLEON
THE final overthrow of Napoleon had been due to the dogged persistence with which Britain had formed and financed coalitions against him. Britain, alone among all the Powers of the world, had continued the struggle against French world-dominion even when, as after Tilsit, the struggle seemed hopeless, and the ascendancy of Napoleon appeared to be assured. British statesmen — at first Pitt and Burke, later Castlereagh and Canning — had perceived the magnitude of the issues at stake, and had recognised the fact that the triumph of either the Jacobins or Bonaparte would involve the disintegration of the British dominions. The first two anti-revolutionary coalitions (1793 and 1799) had been loose and fragile structures which had speedily crumbled, mainly owing to internal defects, under the pressure of adversity. The third (1805), although its fate was disastrous, had in it elements of more enduring strength, for it was composed of the four Powers — Britain, Austria, Russia, andJPrussia — whose permanent interests were most seriously menaced by Napoleon's grand designs. The fourth coalition (1812-14) consisted of the same quadruple alliance ; and so did the fifth, which in 1815 was suddenly
40
en. m THE SETTLEMENT OF 1815 41
and unexpectedly called into existence to wage the Hundred Days' campaign. Thus it came to pass that at the very time when the spirit of nationality was being stimulatedjto an intensity of passion never before known in Europe, the practice of internationally, the habit of co-operation, the idea of community of interest, of alliance, of something closely approaching confederation, was also being developed on the Continent. In other words, the " Concert of Europe " was coming into effective operation. The four Powers by whose combined exertions Napoleon was over- thrown assumed for a time that position of ascendancy from which he had been driven, and made it their business to restore the Continent, as far as was possible, to the conditions which had prevailed before the Revolutionary disturbance had begun. The minor Powers grouped themselves round the four protagonists.
The first work of the Concert, after the abdication of Napoleon in April 1814, was to decide what sort of govern- j ment should be set up in France. No less than four pro- I posals were mooted. The Bonapartists hoped that the abdication of Napoleon would be followed automatically by the recognition of " the King of Rome," son of the fallen Emperor and the Austrian Archduchess Marie Louise. The French soldier Bernadotte, recently adopted by Charles of Sweden as his heir, trusted that the part which he had played in the Wars of Liberation — for Sweden, through his influence, had been the first to join Russia in 1812 — would cause the Allies to place him on the throne of his native land. The French Republicans longed for the restoration of the Revolutionary constitution as it had existed before it had been perverted by militarism. None of these three possibilities, however, appealed to the dominant Powers. There remained a fourth plan which was strongly pressed
42 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CH.
by the astute Frenchman Talleyrand upon Alexander of Russia, and by Alexander upon the Concert. It was the re-establishment of the Bourbons upon their ancient throne, in recognition of the validity and sanctity of the general principle of " legitimacy." This proposal was adopted, and accordingly Louis XVIII. — brother of Louis XVI., who had perished in 1793, and uncle of the uncrowned " Louis XVII.," whose pathetic death in degradation had been announced in 1795 — was brought to Paris and set in the seat of authority. He was an amiable and incapable prince, who had spent twenty years in harassed and poverty- 'stricken exile in Germany, Italy, Russia, Poland, England. During the course of his extensive wanderings he had learned nothing, and he had forgotten nothing. His only idea on his return was to pick up the broken threads of the old regime.
§ 20. THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA
Having determined the form of the government of ! France, the Allies next turned to the settlement of the ' terms of peace. Since these terms would have to be accepted by the new French king, and since, if they were very stringent, they would gravely prejudice the restored monarchy in the eyes of its subjects at the outset of its career, they were made extraordinarily light. The theory was adopted that, though Napoleon and his marshals were guilty, the French nation was innocent ; that it had been misled and oppressed ; that the Allies had come to it as its deliverers from an alien yoke, and had restored to it its beloved Bourbons. Hence, in the Treaty of PariaJ (May 30, 1814) no indemnity was demanded, no return ofthe plundered art treasures of Europe was stipulated. Further, the boundaries of France were allowed to remain
m THE SETTLEMENT OF 1815 43
as they had existed on November 1, 1792 — that is, the French were permitted to keep their annexations of the three years 1789-92. Most of their colonies, too, were restored to them.
The settlement of France on these extremely generous lines having been completed, the Allies addressed them- selves to the much more complex and controversial task of the settlement of Europe. For this purpose it was arranged that plenipotentiaries should assemble at Vienna in the autumn of the same year (1814). The intervening six months were spent in assiduous preparations and in-^ trigues, and when on November 3 the Congress met in the Austrian capital a great deal of its work had already been subterraneously accomplished.
The Congress of Vienna was the most representative and important international conference that up to the time of its meeting had ever been held. It was attended by six reigning sovereigns — among whom Alexander I. of Russia, Francis I. of Austria, and Frederick William III. of Prussia were the most eminent — and by an immense number of ministers and diplomats of the first rank. The Austrian statesman, Metternich, acted as president ; Britain was represented by a mission at the head of which was placed, first Castlereagh, later Wellington ; Talleyrand was allowed to appear as spokesman, not of the defeated enemy, but of the restored Bourbons and their emancipated kingdom.
The five main problems which demanded the attention >f the Congress were as follows : (1) How to erect round France a barrier of powerful states, so that all fear of a repetition of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic adventures might be obviated ; (2) how to formulate a new con- stitution for Germany in place of the " Holy Roman
44 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY OH.
Empire " which after a thousand years of spectral existence! had in 1806 vanished for ever from the earth ; (3) how to! repartition Italy, which under Napoleon and his agents had been brought nearer to unity than at any time since Justinian destroyed the Ostrogothic kingdom in the sixth century ; (4) how to dispose of Poland and Finland, both of which had passed under new control during the war ; (5) how to punish Saxony and Denmark, whose rulers had adhered to Napoleon ; and how to reward Sweden and Britain, whose rulers had done much to accomplish his over- throw.
In dealing with these problems the guiding principles of the plenipotentiaries were legitimacy and precedent. By u the application of these principles some of the problems solved themselves automatically. Others had been pre- determined by a series of treaties concluded during the years 1812-14, in the course of the formation of the fourth coalition. Others again had been virtually settled by secret negotiation during the summer of 1814. But enough remained open to render the task of diplomacy very difficult, and to bring the concert of the Powers to the verge of dissolution.
§ 21. THE COURSE OF THE NEGOTIATIONS
The two questions concerning which the most embittered and protracted controversy raged at Vienna were those that centred round the fates of Saxony and Poland. These t questions were closely bound together, for during the later phases of the Napoleonic war the two countries had been under the government of one and the same ruler. Saxony was in North Germany the secular enemy of Prussia, by whom she had been ousted from her mediaeval ascendancy;
in THE SETTLEMENT OF 1815 45
just as in South Germany, for the same reason, Bavaria was the irreconcilable foe of Austria. During the war, when Austria and Prussia had been fighting for very existence against the victorious Bonaparte, Bavaria and Saxony had thrown themselves upon the French side and had profited by the discomfiture and dismemberment of their ancient Germanic rivals : Bavaria had received the Austrian Tyrol, while Saxony had acquired Prussian Poland, which had been converted into the " Grand Duchy of Warsaw " and placed under the rule of the Saxon king, Frederick Augustus I. When, after the Moscow campaign of 1812, fortune declared itself against Napoleon, Bavaria had been wise enough to read the signs of the times, and to make haste to come to terms with the prevailing Allies. While still her neutrality was valuable and important, she deserted Napoleon, aban- doned her spoils, and made an inglorious but protective peace with the winning side. Saxony, on the other hand, having " put her money on the wrong horse," kept it there. She clung to her faith in Napoleon's destiny, even when Kussian troops overran Poland, and even when Russian, Swedish, Prussian, and Austrian armies all converged upon Dresden and Leipzig for the decisive " battle of the nations " against the French. Not till all was lost, in October 1813, did Frederick Augustus try to save something out of the ruin by abandoning the shattered Bonapartist cause. In such circumstances of death-bed repentance he had no hope save in the uncovenanted mercies of his enemies, and these, so far as Frederick William of Prussia and Alexander of Russia were concerned, were very cruel. Alexander was determined to keep Poland (which his troops had conquered and were occupying) ; Frederick William was resolved to secure Saxony, in revenge for his injuries and in compensation for his losses (particularly
46 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY OH.
in Poland). These designs of Russia and Prussia caused the gravest alarm, and aroused the liveliest antagonism at Vienna. Austria was most unwilling (1) to see Russia dominant over Poland, and the Tsar established in might at the very entrance of her own indefensible Moravian gate ; (2) to see Prussia planted in uncontested supremacy in Northern Germany. Britain was eager to preserve Polish nationality, and, in the interests of Hanover, to prevent the overgrowing Prussian power. France wished, if possible, to save her long-faithful ally, Frederick Augustus, from total extinction. The minor German princes dreaded the precedent of the suppression and complete dispossession of one of the most eminent of their menaced fraternity. Hence at the Congress there was a general rally of all these Powers to refuse and resist the Russo-Prussian demand for Poland and Saxony. Since Alexander and Frederick William were obstinate and persistent, the quarrel drifted, in January 1815, to the verge of open schism and war. Then, however, they yielded, accepted a compromise, and resumed the suspended negotiations. Hardly had they done so when the startling news reached Vienna (March 4, 1815) that Napoleon had escaped from Elba.
§ 22. THE HUNDRED DAYS
Napoleon, after his abdication in April 1814, had been allowed to retire to the island of Elba, with the title of Emperor, and with an army of 200 men. The island was watched by a patrol of the Allied fleets. The fallen poten- tate, partly because he loved work and had a genius for administration as well as for war, partly because he wished to delude his captors into the belief that he was contented with his little lot, gave himself with amazing energy and
in THE SETTLEMENT OF 1815 47
success to the organisation of his microscopic empire. In less than a year he had evolved order and prosperity out of petty chaos, and had inaugurated beneficent reforms whose effects are not even yet exhausted. But he had never meant to remain in Elba. He had, indeed, chosen it in preference to his native Corsica, which was offered to him as an alternative, because it was nearer to the main- land, and more convenient for jumping off. He kept himself well informed concerning Continental politics, and as he heard of the deepening and widening schism in the ranks of the Allies at Vienna he thought that the time had come to make a bid for the recovery of his power. Accordingly, with great skill, extraordinary secrecy, and complete success, he formed a plan by means of which he evaded the watchful fleet, and on March 1 landed on the French coast near Cannes.
In France the government of Louis XVIII., never popular, had rapidly sunk into hatred and contempt. The emigrant nobles and the civilised prelates had returned and were demanding with alarming pertinacity the restora- tion of their confiscated lands and revenues. The franchise of the newly constituted Chamber of Deputies had been limited to about 100,000 members of the prosperous bourgeoisie. The glorious tricolour flag of the Republic and the Empire had been abandoned in favour of the ill-omened lilies of the old regime. From these and many other kindred causes it came to pass that when Napoleon dis- embarked on the Riviera he was greeted with a universal outburst of delirious welcome. The troops sent to arrest him went over to his side ; he was soon joined by thousands of veterans whom the Peace of Paris had released from the prison camps of the Allies ; Louis XVIII. and his satellites with conspicuous feebleness and cowardice fled before his
48 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY c
approach, and sought sanctuary with the English in Belgium ; on March 20 the Napoleonic Empire was re- established in the capital.
The Allies, although they did not suspend their diplo- matic activities at Vienna, turned their chief attention to the suppression of this unexpected menace to the accom- plishment of their work of European resettlement. The Quadruple Alliance was renewed, and each of the four Powers agreed to place 150,000 troops in the field, and to maintain them until " the disturber of the peace of the world " should have been utterly crushed. Napoleon, for his part, after he had made a vain attempt to assure the Allies that his policy was (and always had been !) entirely pacific and liberal, perceived that if he were to avoid being overwhelmed by superior numbers, he must strike instantly and hard upon his four enemies in turn before they could concentrate their forces. Hence with great rapidity and masterly skill he threw himself between the British and the Prussians who were seeking to effect a junction near Charleroi in Belgium (June 1815). But the odds were too great for him. Moreover, he made a series of military mistakes which' suggest some decline in his eminent genius for war. On June 18, 1815, he was irretrievably ruined by the reunited British and Prussian forces at Waterloo. He was sent to perpetual exile in St. Helena. The Allies once more occupied Paris.
§ 23. THE TREATIES OF 1815
Nine days before the battle of Waterloo was fought, the diplomats had concluded their discussions at Vienna, and had embodied the results of their prolonged negotia- tions in a unifying Final Act. The main terms of this
m THE SETTLEMENT OF 1815 49
extraordinarily important instrument — which was destined to remain the foundation of the international system of Europe down to the date oi the outbreak of the war of 1914 — were as follows. C^^) in order to provide the strong barrier supposed to be necessary to prevent the French from breaking out again, (1) Belgium was joined to Holland under the rule of the Prince of Orange ; (2) the Ehine Provinces of Germany were given to Prussia, \ which was still further strengthened by the acquisition of parts of Saxony and Poland ; (3) the Swiss Confederation was reorganised, and was reinforced by the addition of three new cantons, viz. Valais, Geneva, and Neufchatel ; (4) Nice and Genoa were placed as Transalpine outposts in the hands of the House of Savoy. CSecoodly1, a new con- stitution was provided for Germany. Since the Austrian Hapsburgs declined to take up again the burden of the " Holy Roman Empire," and since the German princes would not surrender their feeble independence, all that could be done was to organise a loose confederation of thirty -nine sovereign states, each of which was to maintain a permanent diplomatic agency at Frankfort-on-Main. This so-called Bund was a mere illusory substitute for a central Government. Thirdly, Poland was repartitioned (although not quite on the old lines) between Austria, Prussia, and the Tsar — the latter being allowed to convert his portion into a constitutional kingdom separate from the Russian Empire ; Saxony also was divided, two-fifths going to Prussia, three-fifths being restored to the penitent Frederick Augustus ; Finland was confirmed to Russia, which had annexed it in 1809 ; Sweden received Norway in compensa- tion for this loss of territory, fourthly, Italy was parcelled out into eight sections, viz. Lombardy and Venetia (to Austria) ; Tuscany, Modena, and Parma (to scions of the
E
50 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CH.
Hapsburg House) ; Naples and Lucca (to Bourbons), and the States of the Church (to the Pope). Fifthly, and finally, Denmark was punished for her adherence to the cause of Napoleon by being deprived of Norway, which had been under her rule since 1397 ; while (griftJtn> on the other hand, was allowed to keep, as a reward for her immense exertions and sacrifices, such odds and ends as Heligoland, Malta, Cape Colony, Ceylon, Trinidad, and St. Lucia. Her real and incalculably valuable gains were, of course, her re-established command of the sea, her freedom to expand in new worlds, her commercial opportunities in all the markets of the earth.
The settlement thus concluded at Vienna while as yet the fate of Napoleon was in the balance had to be supple- mented in respect of France when, after Waterloo, the Allied leaders reoccupied Paris. The easy terms of the first Treaty of Paris — based on the fiction of an innocent people beguiled and coerced by a guilty government — could not be repeated. The second Treaty of Paris (November 20, 1815) was necessarily severe. It (1) reduced France to her boundaries of 1790 ; (2) compelled her to admit and maintain an Allied army of occupation on her north-eastern frontier for a period not to exceed five years ; (3) required her temporarily to disband her own army ; (4) extorted from her an indemnity equivalent to some £28,000,000 ; ; and (5) insisted on her restoring to the museums and art j galleries of the Continent their plundered treasures.
§ 24. THE VIENNA SETTLEMENT
Such were the main lines of the famous " treaty system " of 1815 which was destined to determine the international politics of Europe for nearly a century. It embodied an
in THE SETTLEMENT OF 1815 51
attempt to restore the Continent, so far as was possible, to the conditions which had prevailed before the Kevolu- tionary earthquake and the Napoleonic flood had destroyed all landmarks and submerged both dynasties and peoples. The negotiators at Vienna and Paris were sincerely anxious to give to the world peace after a quarter of a century of devastating war, and stability after a period of incessant change. The adoption of the guiding principles of " legiti- macy " and " precedent " seemed to them to be the course best calculated to achieve their purpose. It involved, how-t ever, the repudiation of the principles of " nationality "I and " democracy," which were frequently in striking antagonism to the legitimacy that represented the ideals, and the precedent that represented the institutions of the dynastic and autocratic eighteenth century. But it is clear that the diplomats did not perceive that these two new principles had come to stay, and that they were fated to be the most potent and persistent of all the political forces operative throughout the nineteenth century. It is probable, moreover, that, if they had perceived the power- ful vitality of these principles, they would have felt it to be their duty to make even greater and more direct efforts to stamp them out of existence. For, taken together, these two principles connoted and constituted " The He volu- tion " which had kept Europe in a tumult for a whole generation. " Democracy " as developed by the French Revolutionists had displayed itself as a rapid descent into violence, spoliation, anarchy, atheism, and massacre. " Nationality," as fostered by the great wars, and as exploited by Napoleon, had identified itself with pride, oppression, aggressive war, conquest, and domination. The manifestations of the two principles in countries other than France (e.g. typically in Spain) had been too fitful
52 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CH. nv
and erratic to render it possible for statesmen to conclude either that they were safe for the world, or that it was their duty to make the world safe for them. Thus they had no hesitation in restoring autocratic monarchs to thrones from which they had long been excluded ; nor did they shrink, in their efforts to erect barriers, provide compensation, administer punishments, and adjudge re- wards, from, doing such violences to national sentiments/I as were involved in placing the Italians of Lombardy and Venetia under the Austrian yoke, in repartitioning Poland, \ in subjecting Nice and Genoa to Sardinia, in uniting! Belgium to Holland, and Norway to Sweden. All theseij arrangements were destined to be undone, with varying degrees of friction and conflict, during the course of the century 1815-1914. That fact seems to condemn them, and it certainly condemns the omission from the treaty settlement of 1815 of any arrangement for the revision or modification of the terms then agreed upon. But it must be remembered, first, that most of the anti-democratic and anti-national stipulations had been determined by sectional treaties before the Congress of Vienna met ; secondly, that no reconstruction of Europe made at that date could possibly have been satisfactory ; and thirdly, that the Vienna settlement, with all its faults, did actually give Europe peace during a priceless forty years.
CHAPTER IV
THE ERA OF THE CONGRESSES, 1815-1822
§ 25. THE HOLY ALLIANCE AND THE QUADRUPLE
ALLIANCE
THE " treaty system " of 1815 consisted of something over and above the territorial and dynastic arrangements made at the Congress of Vienna and the Conference of Paris. There were two other instruments, both concluded during the same year, which added another and unique feature to the settlement. These were the documents by means of which (1) the Holy Alliance was instituted in *^ September, and (2) the Quadruple Alliance was reorganised i and renewed on a permanent and pacific basis in November. These important and profoundly interesting instruments embodied attempts of two different sorts to provide safe- guards for the maintenance of the territorial and dynastic', arrangements just iriade ; to establish guarantees for the preservation of peace and tliS-isu^pression of revolution ; to " found a permanentsConcert of Europe.
The Holy Alliance was the exclusive creation of Alex- ander I. of Russia. This powerful, well-intentioned, but erratic ruler had inherited from his ancestors a strain of madness which by 1815 had been intensified by three things, viz. first, by a cankering consciousness of sin in
63
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respect of the indirect part which he had played in the murder of his father, the Tsar Paul, in 1801 ; secondly, by the doctrines of Rousseau and the Jacobins — distract- ingly incompatible with the principles and practice of the Russian autocracy — which had been instilled into him by his tutor La Harpe ; thirdly, by a disquieting religious mysticism, extremely discordant with the rigid formalism of Greek Orthodoxy, which on June 4, 1815, he caught from the Livonian Baroness von Kriidener. On September 26, 1815, in a mood of high evangelical exaltation, he proposed to his brethren, the sovereigns of Europe, a scheme accord- ing to which they should pledge themselves, in the interests of their subjects and of humanity at large, " to take for their sole guide the precepts of the Christian religion " and " to strengthen themselves every day more and more in the principles and exercise of the duties which the Divine Saviour has taught to mankind." The potentates of the Continent were much embarrassed by this unexpected proposal of the Tsar ; but, when their ministers told them that it did not mean anything, they all accepted it, with the exception of the Sultan of Turkey, the Pope, and the Prince Regent of England. The last named acted on the advice of Castlereagh, who not only regarded the so-called " Holy Alliance " as "a piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense," but also suspected that behind its elevated phraseology there lurked sinister designs against the liberties of the nations. Hence he persuaded the Prince to withhold his official signature, and to limit himself to a personal assurance to the Tsar and his colleagues of " his entire concurrence in the principles they had laid down of making the Divine Precepts of the Christian religion the invariable rule of their conduct, maxims which he would himself endeavour to practise."
iv ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 55
Castlereagh, having thus evaded the snare of " mysticism and nonsense," set himself to establish, as a counter- measure of practical politics, the permanent Quadruple Alliance of Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, which the Treaty of Chauniont had formally inaugurated in 1814. This purpose he achieved in an agreement which was signed by the representatives of the four Powers, simultaneously with the second Treaty of Paris, on November 20, 1815. By the terms of this important concordat it was arranged that the high contracting parties should meet periodically " to consult upon their common interests, and to consider the measures which on each of these occasions shall be regarded as the most salutary for the repose and prosperity of nations, and for the maintenance of the peace of the Continent." Thus was the Concert of Europe for the first time effectively organised as a pacific League of Nations.
§ 26. REACTION AND UNREST, 1815-18
The purpose of the Quadruple Alliance was just as restricted and precise as the purpose of the Holy Alliance had been vast and vague. It was to safeguard and super- vise the treaty settlement of 1815. The one thing on which Castlereagh most insisted, as against the nebulous benevol- ence of Alexander I., was an entirely unambiguous definite- ness. This he appeared to have secured, and for three years the machinery of the Quadruple Alliance worked smoothly and efficiently. Paris was its seat. Every morning at 11 o'clock the ministers of the four Powers met at the house of the British ambassador and discussed the affairs of the Continent and its dependencies. They agreed with one another very well ; their decisions were cordially supported by their respective governments ; behind them stood the
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irresistible force of Wellington's army of occupation with its limitless reserves. Never had Europe had so near an approach to international government.
Behind the superficial unanimity, however, and beneath the temporary harmony, there were, unhappily, funda- mental differences of principle and enduring sources of discord. In spite of all Castlereagh's efforts to obtain a precision of statement free from all uncertainty, the members of the Quadruple Alliance did not see eye to eye on the important question of the limits of their sphere of operation. Were they, or were they not, entitled to inter-, fere in the internal affairs of states whose governments h were menaced by revolution ? Russia, Austria, and Prussia v held that they were ; Britain, as represented by Castle- reagh, and later by Canning, held emphatically that they were not. Hence came a rift that in the end was destined to widen into an irreparable schism.
This rift, however, did not display itself during the three years 1815-18. During that critical period there was cordial co-operation, and there was plenty to do. Through- out Europe, on the part of the governments, reaction reigned supreme. The dread of " The Revolution "- that is, of all national or democratic movements — was intense. The dispossessed and long - exiled monarchs, nobles, and clergy came back to their former positions and properties determined to obliterate all traces of the night- mare horrors of the preceding quarter-century. The works of the French Republic and Empire, however useful, were destroyed. Thus, for example, Victor Emmanuel of Piedmont eradicated the Botanic Gardens which Napoleon had planted at Turin, and forbade his subjects to use the splendid military road which the imperial engineers had constructed over the Mont Cenis Pass ; the Pope removed
IV ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 57
the French street lamps from Rome ; Ferdinand of Spain re-established the Inquisition in his kingdom ; the Elector of Hesse-Cassel claimed ten years' arrears of taxes. More serious was the reaction in the larger states of the Quad- ruple Alliance and in France. Its leader and director was Metternich, who realised clearly and correctly that on the one hand the principle of nationality was a disrup- tive force which would split the Austrian Empire into a dozen antagonistic fragments, and that on the other hand the principle of democracy was an explosive force which J would blow the Hapsburg autocracy sky-high. Metternich I was whole-heartedly supported by the king and ministers of Prussia. Alexander of Russia was not at this time quite so illiberal as Metternich, nor was Castlereagh, who con- trolled British policy, quite so ready to interfere ; but they j both shared Metternich's apprehensions and supported ! his reactionary measures.
Reaction on the part of the governments, however, did but generate and augment unrest on the part of the peoples. In 1818 the situation was so serious that the governments of the four Powers determined to call a general congress to discuss ways and means of dealing with it. It was arranged that the congress should meet at Aix - la - Chapelle in September.
§ 27. THE CONGRESS OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE
Popular unrest had manifested itself in many forms, and with much violence, throughout every part of Europe during the years which divided the Congress of Aix-la- Chapelle from the Congress of Vienna. Even in England such tumultuary upheavals as the Spa Field riots (1816) and the march of the Blanketeers (1817) had supplemented
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the constitutional demand for an enlarged franchise and parliamentary reform. In the Latin kingdoms of Southern Europe vast volumes of fluid discontent had crystallised themselves into a solid and ponderous demand for the ultra-revolutionary Spanish " Constitution of 1812." In Italy, secret societies such as the Carbonari were active in organising revolt against the Austrian overlordship. In Germany, university professors, associations of students (Burchenschaften), and fraternities of literary men pro- mulgated political dogmas entirely subversive of the principles on which the settlement of 1815 had been based. Metternich felt that it was high time to secure the consent and co-operation of the Concert in the urgent task of suppressing revolutionary conspiracy in the south of the Continent, and revolutionary philosophy in the north.
There was another pressing matter, too, that required the attention of the Powers. While sober Germany had been rising into disorderly Liberalism, volatile France had been manifesting a most edifying return to stolidity and good behaviour. Louis XVIII. and his ministers were anxious above all things to free themselves and their country from the humiliation, inconvenience, and expense of the large heterogeneous army of occupation which under Wellington's command held all the north-eastern frontier of France in control. Hence they had made it their policy to display a conservatism and a reactionary zeal extremely gratifying to Metternich, and indicative to all the world of a complete recovery from the fevers of 1789. They had dismissed Republican officials, executed or exiled Bona- partist soldiers, limited the franchise to well-to-do bourgeois, restricted the freedom of the press. Thus when in 1818. the Due de Richelieu made a formal request that France
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should be relieved of the hostile army and admitted into the European Concert, it was felt that his petition deserved serious and favourable consideration. Many other ques- tions, important in themselves although subordinate to the two just mentioned, presented themselves to the notice of the associated Powers.
The Congress which assembled at Aix in the autumn of 1818 consisted in the main of the same monarchs and ministers as had conducted the debates at Vienna three years before. Metternich of Austria, Hardenberg of Prussia, Alexander of Russia, and Castlereagh of. Britain were again the protagonists. On behalf of France, however, when she was admitted to the inner circle, the versatile and patriotic but unscrupulous and incalculable Talleyrand no more appeared : he had been dismissed and disgraced, in spite of his services in 1815, because of the ineradicable redness of his early revolutionary record. In his place came the safe and sound Due de Richelieu. Metternich was even more dominant at Aix than he had been at Vienna ; for Alexander I. had been frightened out of his sentimental liberalism, and he no longer opposed reaction. Hence the Congress with ease and rapidity disposed of its main business. (1) It admitted France into the Concert of Europe and arranged for the evacuation of her territory ; (2) it settled various minor German problems, but delegated the larger task of suppressing " The Revolution " to Austria and Prussia ; (3) it listened to complaints made by Denmark against Sweden, and compelled the latter Power to conform to the conditions of the Treaty of Kiel ; (4) it listened, too, to the laments of Spain concerning her lost colonial empire, but decided that no action could then be taken ; (5) equally abortive were discussions respecting the suppression of the slave trade and the extermination
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of the Barbary pirates. Even at this Congress — the high- water mark of European unity — particularist interests impeded corporate action.
§ 28. THE EUROPEAN UPHEAVAL, 1818-20
The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle placed Metternich at the summit of his influence in Europe. The " conversion " of Alexander I. left the Austrian statesman without a rival on the Continent. Hardenberg was his devoted accomplice ; Castle; reagh his sincere if alert and anxious friend. He lost no time in carrying into effect the mandate of the Concert respect- ing Germany. He summoned conferences of the petty potentates which met successively at Teplitz and at Carlsbad during the year 1819. The outcome of their confabulations was the virtual supersession of the ineffective Diet of the Confederation, as set up in 1815, in favour of a dual control by Austria and Prussia. By the Carlsbad Decrees the two reactionary Powers were authorised to exercise supervision over the whole of Germany — to appoint curators over the universities, to dissolve the Burchenschaften and the gymnastic societies, to strengthen the censorship of the press, and to appoint a commission to inquire into and suppress secret conspiracies.
Not all the might of Metternich, however, could stamp out the fire of revolution even in submissive Germany ; still less in Europe at large. The Congress of Aix and the Conference of Carlsbad were followed by an unprecedented outburst of violent rebellion. In the north of the Continent the forces of order and government were still strong enough to hold it in check ; but in the south, beyond the Pyrenees and the Alps, it broke all the bounds which authority sought to impose upon it, and it reduced the Iberian and
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Italian peninsulas to a state of anarchy that impelled the reactionary members of the Concert to intervention.
First, as to the commotions in the North. In Germany, after the successful conclusion of the War of Liberation, the sense of national unity had declined, and particularism had reasserted itself. Each petty state developed some sort of a democratic agitation of its own. No effort was made to co-ordinate the movements or to harmonise the pro- grammes. In most cases the leaders were professors and philosophers — men of words and moods, devoid of practical ability and empty of common sense. Where — as in Bavaria, Baden, and Wiirtemberg — concessions were made to them, and they were admitted to the constitution, they speedily, by their loquacity and intractability, rendered government impossible. Where — as in Prussia, Saxony, and Hanover — their demands were refused, they fomented a violence which justified and elicited severe and effective measures of repression. Rarely has liberalism been worse served than by its unworthy German repre- sentatives in the early nineteenth century. In France, the reactionary policy of Louis XVIII. and Richelieu called forth a bitter antagonism alike from devotees of the " Rights of Man " and from enthusiasts for the cause of the exiled Emperor. The general discontent culminated in the murder, on February 13, 1820, of the Due de Berri, who stood in the direct line of succession to the French throne ; but this dastardly deed only strengthened the hands of authority and made repression easier. Similarly in England the Peterloo disturbance of 1819, and the Cato Street conspiracy of 1820, alarmed the nation as well as the government, and made it possible amid popular approval to pass and to enforce the severe restrictions of the notorious " Seven Acts."
Yc,
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As to the commotions in the South. These were of a much more formidable order. During the course of 1820, in Spain, in Portugal, in Naples, military rebels repudiated the authority of the established government, proclaimed the " Constitution of 1812," and successfully defied suppression. The disturbances in the Iberian peninsula, although they were viewed with intense antipathy and disgust by Metter- nich and his friends, did not seem to be near enough to their own spheres of influence to require immediate interven- tion. Far otherwise was it with the outbreak in Naples. This directly threatened the Austrian ascendancy in Italy. Hence, in order to decide what course of action should be pursued, a Congress was summoned to meet at Troppau in Silesia during October 1820.
§ 29. THE CONGEESSES OF TROPPAU, LAIBACH, AND VERONA
Metternich would have preferred to treat the Neapolitan rising as a purely Austrian concern, and to suppress it by instant and individual intervention. But Alexander of Russia would not listen to the suggestion. It was clearly, he said, a matter of general European interest : whatever Austria might do, she should do it, not on her own account, but as the mandatory of the concerted Powers. Alexander himself prepared to go to Troppau to maintain his view, and Metternich was constrained to seek for some general principle which should warrant immediate action on the part of the Quadruple Alliance in Naples, while deferring it in Spain and Portugal. The needed principle was formulated in the famous Protocol of Troppau which ran : " States that have undergone a change of government due to revolution the results of which threaten other states
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ipso facto cease to be members of the European Alliance, and remain excluded from it until their situation gives guarantees for legal order and stability." It further pledged the Powers " by peaceful means, or, if need be, by arms, to bring back the guilty state into the bosom of the Great Alliance." The Tsar afld the King of Prussia t felt no hesitation in accepting this formidable charter of interference. But Castlereagh, who was represented at the conference by his brother Charles Stewart, strongly objected, and emphatically protested against this recogni- tion of the right of corporate meddling with the internal affairs of sovereign states. The British opposition to the Protocol caused the most intense irritation at Troppau, but it was sufficient to cause the Congress to be adjourned to Laibach in Carniola in order that Ferdinand I., the outraged King of Naples, might attend and give his personal account of the revolution which had deprived him of all effective power. A serious schism in the Concert of Europe thus manifested itself in the autumn of 1820.
The schism was by no means healed when, in January 1821, the diplomats, together with Ferdinand of Naples, reassembled at Laibach. The British representative (from whom plenary powers had been withheld) continued to protest. His protests, however, were ostentatiously and even offensively ignored, and Austria was commissioned on behalf of the Concert — now reduced to the three autocracies of the Romanoffs, the Hapsburgs, and the Hohenzollerns — to crush the Neapolitan revolt. This she promptly and easily did. The rebels were defeated by the whitecoats at Rieti on March 7, 1821 ; the " Constitution of 1812 " was abolished ; Ferdinand I. was restored to his despotic sovereignty.
Revolution, however, was in the air. Before the
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diplomats had dispersed from Laibach, news reached them that two more upheavals had taken place. The first was in Piedjmpnt, where disgruntled soldiers, following precisely the Neapolitan model, proclaimed the " Constitution of 1812 " and compelled Victor Emmanuel I. to resign his crown. This eruption, though annoying, caused no em- barrassment at Laibach. No new principle was involved. Austria was requested to apply the remedy which had proved to be efficacious in the case of Naples. She did so. Her troops entered Piedmont, crushed the revolt at Novara on April 8, 182J, and placed the reactionary Charles Felix on the throne.
The second upheaval was a much more disquieting affair. It was th^ re volt of the Greeks against JJtie ^ultan. If, on the one hand, like the rebellions in Naples and Pied- mont, this was a rising of subjects against a sovereign ; on the other hand it was an outbreak of Christians against the Infidel, and as such it commended itself to the con- science of the Tsar and his Orthodox peoples. Metternich had some difficulty in checking Alexander's instinctive impulse to rush to the help of the faithful against the oppressor. He succeeded, however, in doing so for the moment by persuading him that the affairs of the Turkish Empire did not come within the scope of the Concert_of Europe. The Congress of Laibach then dispersed in the hope that the unrest in both the Balkan and the Iberian peninsula would settle down of its own accord. In neither case did it do so, and consequently the Congress of Verona became necessary.
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§ 30. BREAK-UP OP THE CONCERT OF EUROPE
The Congress of Verona — the last of the series held under the auspices of the Quadruple Alliance — met in October 1822 to consider three main problems. The first was the revolt of the Greeks which (as we shall see in the next chapter), far from having subsided, had spread widely to new regions of Turkish control, and had developed into a horrible war of mutual extermination. The second was the trouble in Spain which, having lasted for nearly three years, and having reduced that unhappy country to desti- tution and anarchy, seemed likely to spread across the Pyrenees and to embroil the Bourbon monarchy of France. The third was concerned with the Latin American colonies which, having attained to virtual independence during the Napoleonic war, were firmly resolved never to return beneath the yoke of Spain or Portugal.
The Greek problem seemed at first to be the most dangerous of the three. For it threatened a new schism in the Concert along the lines, not of politics, but of religion. Metternich was immovably resolved to give no countenance to rebellion so near to the Austrian frontiers, and he vehemently urged the Sultan to stamp out the revolt of his turbulent subjects by any means, however harsh. Alexander of Russia, on the contrary, as head of the Greek Church, was eager to find some way of deliverance for the persecuted champions of the Orthodox faith. Metternich's uncompromising hostility to the Greeks at once brought the Tsar to the parting of the roads : either he had to quarrel with Austria and so wreck the Concert of Europe, or he had to desert the Greeks and so abandon his claim to be the protector of the faithful. Faced by this dilemma, he chose the path of Christian renunciation, accepted
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Metternich's formula that the Greco-Turkish conflict lay " beyond the pale of civilisation " and so was no concern of the Powers assembled at Verona, and left the Greeks to their fate. The semblance of European unity was maintained.
The Spanish problem proved to be less amenable to settlement. For the Powers who were determined to intervene on behalf of the all-but-deposed Ferdinand VII. — chief among whom was France — found themselves in conflict with stronger wills and clearer minds than those of Alexander I. and his advisers, viz. the wills and minds of the British ministers, first Castlereagh, and later Wel- lington and Canning. One and all they were firmly resolved to pursue the traditional British policy of non-intervention in the internal affairs of foreign nations, and to maintain the principle that every people has the right to determine its own form of government. When, therefore, at Verona a definite proposal was made that the French should send an army across the Pyrenees to restore order in Spain, Britain presented a formal protest. In spite of the protest the commission was given to the French (who duly and effectively executed it in 1823). Hence Britain withdrew from the Congress, and the Concert of Europe was at an end.
This open rupture between Britain on the one side and the autocratic monarchies on the other made it easier for Canning, in conjunction with the American President Monroe, to take a stand hostile to the same Powers in respect of the revolted Latin colonies. Ferdinand of Spain was eager to secure European aid towards their reconquest. Russia, who already possessed Alaska and had hopes of obtaining all the Pacific littoral, was more than willing to give him the desired assistance. In these circumstances
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the American President, with the advice and assent of the British minister, promulgated the famous " Monroe Doc- trine " (1823) which warned European Powers against interference in the affairs of the New World. This doctrine or declaration was a charter of emancipation to the revolted dependencies of Spain and Portugal. One by one — e.g. Mexico 1824, Peru 1825, Brazil 1826 — they secured recog- nition as sovereign independent states, and began their career of unfettered self-determination. Canning and Monroe flattered themselves that they had " called a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old." Without any doubt the balance of the old was gone.
CHAPTER V THE ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS, 1822-1830
§ 31. THE DAWN OP A NEW AGE
THE withdrawal of Britain from the Congress of Verona was an event of resounding importance. It marked the deliverance of Europe from a tyranny which had begun to weigh upon it like a nightmare. In seven short years the Grand Alliance, which had begun as a noble league to enforce peace, to adminster justice, to suppress crime, to sanction law, had developed into an engine of the grossest oppression and the most vexatious intermeddling, whose destruction was necessary for the salvation of mankind. What were the causes of this sad and ominous decline ? They are not far to seek. The seeds of failure were, indeed, inherent in the Alliance from the first. To begin with, it was a league of autocrats and not of peoples ; it paid little regard to national prejudices or democratic aspirations. Secondly, it was committed to the maintenance of a treaty settlement which, though temporarily defensible, was intolerable as a permanency ; and it had provided itself " with no machinery for effecting necessary changes. Thirdly, - its members were filled with an irrational dread of " The
J
Revolution," and they suspected " The Revolution " in every popular movement, however natural and innocent it
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might be. Finally, it had never defined the sphere within which interference by extraneous power in the affairs of a self-governing community is allowable ; and as a conse- quence it had begun to meddle with the purely domestic concerns of the minor states of the Continent in a manner which to British publicists of all schools had appeared to be wholly insufferable.
Thus the Holy Alliance from which Alexander had hoped so much vanished into thin air ; and thus even the more solid Quadruple Treaty which Castlereagh had compacted as the foundation of an international government was riven in irremediable schism. The post-Napoleonic League of Nations, because of its incongruities, incompatibilities, and inconsistencies, split up into antagonistic groups, and left the peace of Europe once more dependent on the main- tenance of a doubtful balance of power. On the one side stood the autocratic potentates determined to enforce authority and to suppress revolution, even though to do so might involve the invasion of unconsenting states, the coercion of unwilling peoples, and the extinction of ancient liberties. On the other side stood Britain — soon to be joined by revolutionary France and emancipated Belgium — whose ministers held that the people who had expelled the Stuarts in 1688 and had set up the Hanoverians in 1714 could not possibly be parties in the denial to other peoples of similar rights of self-determination.
The British principle of non-interference in the internal
— — f * •
affairs of sovereign independent states was maintained even fiyljtatesmen so conservative as Castlereagh and Wellington. Still more emphatically and with more enthusiasm was it supported by a new group of less reactionary ministers who in 1822 began to leaven the antique administration which had been constructed under Lord Liverpool in 1812.
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In 1822 the panic caused by the French Revolution ceased to paralyse the British peoples. They began to show a lively interest once again in those reform movements which William Pitt had closed down from 1793 onward. Peel at the Home Office, Canning at the Foreign Office (in place of Castlereagh, who died by his own act in August 1822), Huskisson at the Board of Trade, Robinson at the Ex- chequer, all initiated a progressive policy. All of them, moreover, had some conception of the meaning of demo- cracy ; all of them had sympathy with the principle of nationality.
§ 32. THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY
The principle of nationality, although during the nine- teenth century it was the most potent of all the spiritual influences which determined the course of international politics, is a principle not easy to define. We see all around us peoples who call themselves nations, but among them the bonds of unity are in no two cases the same. The common marks of nationhood are (1) geographical con- tiguity, (2) racial affinity, (3) linguistic uniformity, (4) reli- gious similarity, and (5) economic community. But rarely are all these marks present at one and the same time, and no single one of them is present in every instance. Hence none of them can be regarded as fundamental and essential. The Jews are a nation, but they are scattered, without a country, over the face of the whole earth. The Belgians are a nation, but they are constituted out of two very different races. The Swiss are a nation, but among them four distinct languages are spoken. The Germans are a nation, but their religious divisions are old and deep. The French are a nation, but the divergence of economic interest
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between the capitalist bourgeoisie and the proletarian peasantry is profound.
If, then, we wish to find the secret of this subtle but most potent tie of nationality we have to seek beneath these superficial phenomena for underlying bonds of senti- mental affinity and spiritual kinship. Professor Ramsay Muir emphasises the immense importance of the possession of a common tradition, and there can be no doubt that the prime factor in the making of that most powerful and persistent of all nationalities, viz. the Jewish, was the memory of the serfdom of Egypt, the deliverance of Moses, the forty years' sojourn in the wilderness, the acquisition of the promised land, and the exclusive experience of the providence of Jehovah. Mr. A. J. Toynbee lays stress on the present possession of a common will, and it is evident that no nation can continue to exist as such unless the recollection of past glories is reinforced by the conscious- ness of a community of interest in the current day. Others, again, turn their eyes to the future and hold that the vital ties of nationality are to be found in the ideal realms of aspiration and hope, contending that communities of men, like bands of pilgrims, are welded together primarily by the common journeys which they take and the common goals which they seek to reach. In view of these considera- tions it may be defensible to define nationality as that principle, compounded^ past traditions, present Ant erests, and future aspirations, which gives to a people a sense of organic unity, and separates it from the rest of mankind.
It will be noticed that nationality is in one aspect a principle of unification, but in another a principle of dis- integration. On the one hand, it stands for an amalgama- tion and consolidation of primitive tribes and clans, and of mediaeval fiefs and provinces ; but, on the other hand,
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it denotes the disruption of humanity into separate if not antagonistic groups. It represents, in fact, a working compromise, achieved with infinite pain, between the unmitigated individualism of the primeval savage and the ideal cosmopolitanism of the Stoic philosopher and the Christian saint. It recognises the truth that man can exist and develop only in community, and it also recognises the opposite truth that as yet mankind-as-a-whole does not form a community. The nation is the largest and most varied community at present realisable. Nations are not necessarily hostile to one another. Rather are they, by nature and in idea, co-operative members of the Federation of the World.
§ 33. INCIPIENT NATIONAL MOVEMENTS
The modern European nations for the most part came into being during the later Middle Ages, and rose to the position of the primary political units with the decline of the Empire and the Papacy at the time of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Both statesmen and political philosophers, however, were slow to recognise the new organisation and to grasp the new idea. It was not indeed until the clarifying period of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars that the tremendous insurgence of nationality compelled politicians and thinkers alike to pay attention to the principle. It made a special appeal to Italian patriots eager to expel the alien Austrians from their peninsula, and to German professors who pondered the means by which a unitary German State could be reconstructed out of the thirty-nine petty kingdoms, princi- palities, and townships into which the authorities at Vienna had left Germany divided in 1815.
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But if the principle of nationality found its best ex- ponents in Italians like Mazzini and Germans like Fichte, it was not either in Italy or in Germany that the earliest national movements attained success. In both those countries the anti-national power of Austria, as directed and controlled by Metternich, was, until the middle of the nineteenth century, too strong to allow of any effective demonstration of the operation of the new force. It was in Greece and in Belgium that the first triumphant national revolts occurred. Before, however, we briefly trace their course, we will note in passing that these revolts were not isolated phenomena. Simultaneously with them in many parts of the Continent there were displays of national vitality and restlessness.
Within the United Kingdom — although England, Scot- land, and Wales showed as yet few signs of the reviving par- ticularism which they were destined to manifest before the close of the century — Ireland was seething with rebellion. The Union of 1800 had been forced upon her as an act of war. In 1803, under Emmet's lead, she had made a futile attempt to recover independence. Later, especially during the period of O'ConnelFs ascendancy, she had turned her energies to the more practicable task of securing Catholic emancipation ; but no sooner was this achieved (1829) than she once more resumed that agitation for Home Rule which culminated in the feeble and fatal rising of 1848.
Within the Russian Empire, Finland was full of agita- tion for reunion with Sweden, from whom she had been wrested in 1809, while Poland showed unmistakable signs of discontent with that subjection to the Tsar which had been imposed upon her at Vienna. Alexander I. had endeavoured to rule her justly as a parliamentary king, but the factiousness of the Polish nobles had compelled
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liiin to suspend the constitution in 1823. His successor, Nicholas I., had at first tried conciliation, but the response had been an attempt at assassination (1829). Then Nicholas reverted to a severity of repression which led to an unsuccessful Polish rebellion in 1830, to the definite abolition of the constitution in 1832, and to the complete absorption of Poland with the Russian autocracy in 1847.
Within the Austrian Empire various and conflicting nationalist upheavals were evident among the Magyars of Hungary, the Croats of Illyria, the Czechs of Bohemia, the Poles and the Ruthenes of Galicia, and the Italians of Lombardy and Venetia. But the time of the disintegra- tion of the Hapsburg despotism was not yet.
The Turkish Sultanate, on the other hand, was ripe for dissolution, and though Rumanians, Serbians, Albanians, and Bulgarians had still long to wait for complete emanci- pation, the day of the deliverance of the Greeks had dawned.
§ 34. GREEK EMANCIPATION
The Greeks within the Turkish Empire were the suc- cessors and representatives of that proud people who from the time of Constantine the Great for more than a thousand years had from the fastness of Byzantium exercised lord- ship over the East. Serbs and Bulgarians, Anatolians and Armenians had once been subject to them. They had been the builders of the metropolitan church of the Holy Wisdom, and to theologians of their race had been due the development of the dogmas of the Orthodox faith. They had memories, too, of still earlier glories in the Athens of Pericles and the Sparta of Leonidas. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, however, Byzantium had fallen beneath the Ottoman yoke, and the Greeks had become
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hewers of wood and drawers of water to an alien and infidel race. On the whole they had not been ill-treated, for the Turks are an easy-going and good-humoured folk until they are excited by fanaticism, or irritated by revolt. They had been left with large liberties of local self-govern- ment, and they had been permitted to enjoy many oppor- tunities of lucrative trade. But all their freedom and privileges were held on an insecure tenure. They could not count upon justice in Turkish courts. They were liable to limitless taxation at the hands of extortionate Pashas. As soon as the spirit of the French Revolution reached them and began to stir a kindred spirit within them they felt their position of uncovenanted vassalage and precarious felicity to be intolerable. During the opening decades of the nineteenth century three distinct movements of revolt manifested themselves. First, the more youthful, cultivated, and revolutionary of the Greeks went into voluntary exile, and from Paris and London conducted a propaganda that was intended to revive among their abject countrymen the pride of race, of language, and of historic tradition. Secondly, the prosperous merchants of the Levant formed themselves into a business-like fraternity — the Hetaireia Philike established in 1814, with Odessa as its headquarters — whose purpose was Hellenic emancipation. Thirdly, the peasants of the Morea — poor, ignorant, preda- tory, ferocious — began to dream of the extermination of their oppressors, and started secretly to organise themselves for its perpetration.
The opportunity for the Greek revolt seemed to present itself in 1821, when the Sultan's forces were wholly engrossed in the suppression of a formidable rising in Albania. First, the Greek outlanders in the Danubian principalities (modern Rumania), hoping for aid from their co-religionists in
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Russia, raised the standard of revolt. The Tsar Alexander, however, in 1821, was in no mood to encourage rebellion, even of a religious character. He held his people in check ; no help was sent ; the rising was speedily suppressed by the Turks. But before its last embers were stamped out the Morea was in a blaze. The Greek peasants of that penin- sula at once put themselves beyond the pale of reconcilia- tion by perpetrating a most appalling massacre of all the Turks — men, women, and children — on whom they could lay their hands. The Turks throughout the Ottoman Empire, roused to remorseless fury by the outrage, retali- ated in kind, and Europe was horrified by reports of awful atrocities, scandalous sacrileges, monstrous enormities of barbarity. At length Russia could be held in check no longer. Her government determined to intervene to vindicate the sanctity of the Orthodox Church, and to save a Christian nation from extinction. Britain and France, suspicious of Russian designs in the Near East, determined to join her in whatever action she might take. The fleets of the three Powers destroyed the Turkish and Egyptian navies in the harbour of Navarino (October 20, 1827) ; the Russian armies broke the Turkish military power in two strenuous campaigns ; the Sultan was compelled in the Treaty of Adrianople (September 14, 1829) to acknowledge the independence of the Greeks. The emancipated people formed themselves into a national state. They agreed, under the influence of the three protecting Powers, to adopt a monarchic type of government. The crown was offered to, and accepted by, Otto of Bavaria (1832).
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§ 35. BELGIAN INDEPENDENCE
The Conference which settled the fate and determined the constitution of the emancipated Greeks sat at London. Before it had completed its original task it was called upon to deal with a new and totally unexpected problem, viz. a revolt of the Belgians against the Dutch ascendancy. The Belgian problem was a more delicate and difficult one than even the Greek ; for not only did it divide the Great Powers along a new line of cleavage, but it also in- volved the question of the sacro-sanctity of the Vienna settlement of 1815. It was impossible to contend that the United Netherlands lay " outside the pale of civilisation." Their construction had been the very chef d'ceuvre of the diplomatists who at the close of the Napoleonic war had striven to erect round France an insuperable barrier against military aggression. The diplomatists, however, in con- structing the kingdom of the United Netherlands, had paid far too little attention to either the sentiments or the interests of the Belgians. The Belgians, it is true, had never been an independent nation ; they had always been subject to some master or other — Gallic, German, Burgun- dian, Spanish, Austrian. Moreover, at the time of the French Revolution they had shown far too much sympathy with the Girondists and the Jacobins, and had submitted far too readily to be incorporated in the regicide Republic. In the later days of the Napoleonic era they had, indeed, made some amends by deserting the falling cause of the French Emperor ; but in spite of that evidence of worldly wisdom the Allies had felt little inclination to pay much regard in the Vienna conferences to the wishes and aspira- tions of their newly developed patriotism. Hence they had been handed over on terms of distinct inferiority to the
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rule of the Dutchman William of Orange. The seat of the joint government remained fixed at The Hague ; Dutch continued to be the sole official language throughout the Orange monarchy ; most of the highest civil and military posts were reserved for Hollanders ; Calvinism was favoured at the expense of Catholicism ; fiscal policy was framed and taxation levied in the interests of Dutch commerce rather than of Belgian agriculture ; electoral power was so unevenly divided that the three and a half million inhabit- ants of the new provinces had no more influence than the two and a half million of the old.
In these circumstances antagonism to the Dutch ascend- ancy grew up round two separate centres in Belgium. The one was political, the other religious. First, Liberal publicists, filled with the democratic and national ideas engendered by the French Revolution, demanded for the Belgians equal rights and privileges with the Dutch. Secondly, Catholic zealots, fired with the old hatred of Calvinism, demanded the abolition of the specious toleration and the secular education by means of which the authority of the Roman priesthood was being undermined. For some years the two groups of anti-Orangemen remained distinct from one another, and even hostile to one another. But in 1828 they were fused through the mediation of a new Liberal-Catholic group, which acted as a link between them. From that date a revolt against Dutch rule became an imminent probability.
In 1830 the rising took place. It was the immediate sequel to a democratic revolution in Paris the story of which falls within the scope of the next chapter. The over- throw of the despotic Bourbons in France encouraged the Belgians to strike first for equality, then for complete in- dependence. In vain did William of Orange seek to sup-
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press the revolt with his Dutch forces ; in vain did he appeal to the Powers. Much as the rulers of Russia, Austria, and Prussia desired to aid him, they were prevented on the one hand by troubles in their own dominions, and on the other hand by the opposition of Britain and the new Orleanist monarchy in France. Hence the problem was referred to the Conference of London, and the Conference, in spite of vehement Dutch protests, decided to recognise Belgian independence. A new kingdom was established, and Leopold of Coburg was persuaded to accept its crown (1831). Not, however, till 1839 did William of Orange accord his recognition of the dismemberment of his monarchy, and then, having made his submission to fate, he resigned the Dutch throne.
§ 36. THE BREACH IN THE TREATY SYSTEM
The formidable feature of this disruption of the kingdom of the United Netherlands was, as has already been noted, that it involved a violation of that Vienna settlement which had been concluded as the permanent foundation of the New Europe to be constructed and guaranteed by the Concert of the Powers. That fundamental " treaty system " so carefully elaborated in 1815 lay in 1830 torn and shattered along three separate lines of schism. Britain had broken away from the " grand vicinage " of the Con- tinent in 1822 on the question of the self-determination of Spain ; Russia had dissociated herself from Austria and Prussia in 1827 in support of the Orthodox Greek religion ; finally, in 1830 France had declared against the autocrats of Russia, Austria, and Prussia on the issue of Belgian nationality. It was clear that for practical purposes the hegemony of the Great Powers which in 1815 had taken
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the place of the Napoleonic Empire had by 1830 ceased to exist. Although the monarchs and ministers of Europe continued from time to time to meet and to discuss the problems of the Continent, they no longer assembled as members of a single controlling " Areopagus," but as representatives of sovereign independent states. Canning's principle of " Each for himself and God " or the Devil — " for all," had supplanted the principle of the League of Nations of which Alexander of Russia had dreamed, and for which even Castlereagh had laboured.
Metternich was furious, and he vented his rage with especial virulence on Great Britain, the first deserter from the Quadruple Alliance, and on the memory of the British minister, George Canning, whom he denounced as " a malevolent meteor hurled by an angry Providence upon Europe." With scarcely less malignity did he regard France, when in 1830 she expelled the Bourbons once again, and set up the Liberal monarchy of Louis Philippe. He hated and despised the independent Belgian kingdom estab- lished under Leopold of Coburg in 1831. But he recognised that Britain, France, and Belgium were lost beyond hope to the cause of autocracy ; they had gone over to the side of " the Revolution," and could no more be counted on to maintain " the Treaties " or to oppose the rising tide of nationality and democracy. He therefore made it his business to draw tighter the links that bound together Austria, Prussia, and Russia in a close union against the disruptive influences whose operations he saw on all sides. Austria and Prussia were still working harmoniously within the German Confederation in the enforcement of the repressive policy defined by the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819 ; Austria and Russia had, after the settlement of the Greek
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question in 1829, no cause of quarrel, and the Tsar Nicholas I. was a despot after Metternich's own heart.
Thus about 1830 the Concert of Europe broke up into two antagonistic groups. On the one side was the Triple Alliance of the autocrats, while over against it stood the unorganised but growing assembly of the Liberal Powers. Britain was joined by France, France by Belgium, and all of them realised that beyond the Atlantic were coming into existence new states whose principles were wholly in accord with theirs. The United States, it is true, held aloof from European affairs behind the rampart of the Monroe Doctrine. But the new Spanish-American republics of Colombia, Mexico, Buenos Ayres, Fern, Bolivia, and Chile (all of which had secured recognition of independence in 1824-28), together with the constitutional Empire of Brazil (which severed its connection with Portugal in 1826), had imposed no such self-denying ordinance upon themselves, and progressive statesmen in Europe congratulated them- selves, as we have seen, that in recognising these emanci- pated colonies as sovereign states they had " called a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old."
CHAPTER VI
THE ERA OF DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT, 1830-1848
§ 37. NEW CONDITIONS AND NEW IDEAS
DURING the eight years (1822-30) which had elapsed since the dissolution of the Congress of Verona, side by side with the nationalist movement which had given birth to the kingdoms of Greece and Belgium, and had fostered the independence of the Latin communities of Central and Southern America, a democratic movement had been dis- playing itself and causing widespread agitation throughout Europe, even in states such as England and France where no unrealised national aspirations stirred the deeps of politics. In some countries, it is true, the democratic movement was closely associated with the—nationalist movement. In Italy, for instance, it was difficult to say whether such a leader as Hazard was primarily patriotic or^ primarily popularist. He preached with equal vehe- mence the independence of Italy and the sovereignty of the jtalian jpeople "; ^forboth involved the same things, viz the expulsion of the Austrians and the unification of the penin- sula into a singlejgpublic^ In other countries, however, the two movements were distinct and even antagonistic. In Austria there was a democratic agitation which was intensely anti-Slavonic in its character ; in Hungary there
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was a nationalist agitation which aimed at establishing the ascendancy of the Magyar minority over Croatian and Rumanian majorities.
The democratic movement, in short, generally drew its inspiration from sources other than those which excited the fervour of nationalism. It was due on the one hand to the spread of . education, to the cheapening of literature, and to the growth of the popular newspaper press. By these means were spread far and wide the doctrines of Rous- au and thej?rench Revolutionists, together with the still newer Ideas of Socialists such as St. Simon, Anarchists such as Proudhon, and Radicals such as Bentham. It was due on the other hand to the spread of the industrial revolution which continued to draw men from the country to the towns, to collect them together in factories and workshops, and to associate them (whether the law allowed it or not) in benefit clubs and trade unions.
On the Continent, where industry and commerce de- veloped late, the democratic movement was led by the intel- lectuals— by German professors, by Italian poets, by French philosophers. Itjgmained abstract, unpractical, idealistic, intransigent ; it spent its strength in interminable debate ; when it found itself in a position to realise its principles in action, it showed itself to be utterly devoid of either administrative capacity or that spirit of moderation which springs from experience of affairs. In Britain, on the other hand, even the Philosophical Radicals were for the most part men of business, and their utilitarian system, with its practical application of the principle of " the greatest good of the greatest number," was the most prosaic and material- istic of all speculative creeds. But more important than the Philosophical Radicals in the history of British demo- cracy were the Trade Unions, which first received legal
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recognition in 1824. The force which in 1832 made the demand for Parliamentary Reform irresistible was not the force of any abstract idea, but the force of organised labour moved by a sense of economic iniquity and social wrong.
Further, a second difference soon manifested itself between Continental and British democrats. The former, being unpractical ideologues, and having to deal with corrupt autocracies, became irreconcilable revolutionaries. The latter, being shrewd men of afiairs, and living under a parliamentary regime, however antiquated and debased, remained reformers who realised that the way of popular salvation lay, not along untried roads, but along the well- marked lines of ancient constitutional progress.
§ 38. DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENTS BEFORE 1830
In Britain, where the industrial revolution had had its origin, a strong democratic movement had revealed itself as early as the middle of the eighteenth century. In the first decade of George III.'s reign the anomalous Wilkes and the anonymous " Junius " had proclaimed the sove- reignty of the people, and had propounded radical schemes for the reform of parliament and the extension of the fran- chise. The agitation thus started — which was continued by such men as Fox, Cartwright, and Burdett — caused so much alarm in the ranks of the landed Tories and the mbnied Whigs that men so diverse as the Earl of Chatham, the Duke of Richmond, and William Pitt the younger, admitted the need of readjustment and formulated plans of recon- struction. Pitt, as Prime Minister, during the first decade of his long term of office (1783-1801), introduced several cautious measures of reform ; but he did not press them when he found that they met with an unfavourable recep-
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tion. Then came the French Revolution which, with the subsequent agitations and wars, scared Pitt and his col- leagues into a thorough conservatism, and for some thirty years every suggestion for change was treated as an attempt to subvert the constitution. But with the passing of the panic caused by the Revolution, and with the significant ministerial changes of 1822, the democratic movement re- vived and gathered strength. Trade Unions were legalised (1824), the severity of the criminal code was lightened, restrictions on industry and commerce (especially those due to the Navigation Acts) were removed, Catholic Emancipa- tion was conceded (1829), and the cause of Parliamentary Reform was officially adopted by the Whig party which had begun to fear permanent exclusion from power under the old regime. In 1830 the advent of Earl Grey to office indicated that the day of decision drew near.
On the Continent no such series of progressive reforms tended to obviate or mitigate the crash of impending revolu- tion. In Germany the national consciousness engendered by the Wars of Liberation grew faint, and particularism recovered its sway. Each petty principality went its own way, and the little bands of academic democrats in each of them doomed themselves to futility by their refusal to co- operate with their fellows in other states. Over all hung the repressive might of Austria and Prussia, while the vigilance of Metternich anticipated the first motions of revolt. In Italy Metternich was even more keenly alert ; for rest- lessness and rebellion were much more formidably evident among the inhabitants of the peninsula, who groaned under the alien yoke of Austria, than they were among the Ger- mans. An elaborate system of espionage was developed, which made life in Lombardy-Venetia intolerable to Italian patriots, while Austrian troops established in the northern
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fortresses kept the whole country in subjection. Charles Felix in Piedmont and Sardinia, Ferdinand the Bourbon in Naples and Sicily, the Papal Curia in the States of the Church, the petty Hapsburgs in their diminutive duchies — all pursued the policy of steady repression, trusting to Austrian support in case of need. Such of the repressed national-democrats as escaped prison or exile were driven to resort to a secret conspiracy which easily degenerated into sanguinary excess. Similarly in Spain reaction reached its height in the years following the French invasion of 1823. Liberty was suppressed ; the Inquisition was restored ; constitutional government was abolished. The " Days of Calomarde," covering the decade 1823-33, and named after the chief minister of the period, were notable even in that home of immemorial despotism for the ferocity of their tyranny. In Spain, no more than in Italy and Germany, could democracy lift its head. It was in France that the clash between insurgent liberalism and resistant authority resulted in revolution.
§ 39. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1830
So long as Louis XVIII. lived, reaction in France was kept within bounds. The restored king had something of the tact and prudence of the English Charles II., and he felt to the full the Stuart monarch's disinclination to go on his travels again. He realised that the fires which had caused the Revolution still burned fiercely, and that the only hope of their burning themselves out lay in the careful avoidance of stoking them with fresh grievances. He had some difficulty in holding his courtiers and his ministers in check ; his brother, Charles of Artois, constantly urged him to extreme measures of repression, while Villele, who
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became the head of his cabinet in 1821, showed an increas- ingly retrogressive spirit. Louis XVIIL, however, died in 1824, and his ultra-royalist and ultra-montane brother (the French counterpart of the English James II.) came to the throne as Charles X. Villele remained in office, and, freed now from the restraints of timid cautiousness, developed a policy which included the restriction of the franchise, the censorship of the press, the disbanding of the National Guard, the dismissal of Napoleonic officers, the readmission of Jesuits to the schools, and the granting of compensation to nobles of the old regime who had lost their estates during the revolutionary troubles.
These measures, and others like them, roused through- out France many and various oppositions which in 1828, notwithstanding all manipulations of the 'electoral roll, combined to return a decided anti-ministerial majority to the Chamber of Deputies. To the intense annoyance of Charles X., Villele insisted on resigning. But the resolute king did not allow this irritating defection to cause him to change his policy. He called to power one of Villele's colleagues, Martignac, and instructed him to pursue the straight reactionary path. Martignac did so, until even he took alarm at the ominous symptoms of revolt, and felt it necessary to make some concessions — such as the relaxa- tion of the censorship and the reduction of the power of the Jesuits. These concessions, however, were too small to conciliate the opposition ; they were only big enough to destroy Martignac's favour with the king. " Concessions ruined Louis XVI.," said Charles, and so saying he dis- missed Martignac, and called to the headship of the government a clericalist -reactionary, concerning whose intransigence there could be no question — the Prince de Polignac (August 1829).
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The appointment of Polignac was recognised in all quarters as a challenge to mortal combat between auto- cracy and revolution in France. The best friends of the Bourbon monarchy realised the extreme unwisdom of raising such a tremendous issue at such a time ; the Duke of Wellington, then Prime Minister to George IV., used the whole weight- of his great prestige and known sympathy with the Bourbons to warn the headstrong king of the perils of his course ; even Metternich and Nicholas I. of Russia, much as they desired the success of the counter- revolution, earnestly advised caution. But Charles X. had moved beyond the reach of argument or appeal. He was determined to bring matters to a decision, and he believed himself secure of triumph. Hence, under his inspiration, Polignac on July 25, 1830, issued four ordinances which were to inaugurate the new era of authoritarian rule. The first dissolved the Chamber of Deputies ; the second altered the franchise in a manner calculated to deprive Liberals of all electoral influence ; the third ordered new elections on the new register ; the fourth suspended afresh the liberty of the press. On July 26 the constitutional Liberals pre- sented a strong protest against the ordinances ; on July 27 the angry populace rose in revolt, and the government troops were both unable and unwilling to suppress them ; on July 28 the Hotel de Ville was stormed by the mob, and before the close of the 29th all Paris was in their hands. Then Charles X., who was at St. Cloud, yielded : he withdrew the ordinances and dismissed Polignac. His surrender came too late. Already a provisional government had been set up, and a new National Guard enrolled. The misguided king, finding his utterances unheeded, his service deserted, and his very existence ignored, packed up his baggage, made a leisurely journey
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to the coast, and crossed over to England (August 14, 1830).
§ 40. DEMOCRATIC ADVANCE, 1830-48
Of those who achieved the overthrow of Charles X. the large majority were republicans who wished to revive the Constitution of 1792. Cautious Liberals, however, among whom the historian Thiers was prominent — clearly perceiv- ing that if a republic were proclaimed the autocrats of Russia, Austria, and Prussia would instantly descend upon it and destroy it — strongly and successfully urged the estab- lishment of a limited monarchy. Their persuasions were all the more willingly listened to because the ideally-suitable king was ready to hand in Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, who was, on the one hand, a descendant of the Bourbon Louis XIII., but was on the other hand a son of the revolu- tionary " Philip Egalite," and himself a man who had fought for republican France under the tricolour at Jem- mappes. When approached, he declared his readiness to govern in accordance with the Constitution. Hence he was proclaimed " King of the French " on August 9. By the legitimate rnonarchs of Europe he was regarded with extreme disfavour. He took care, however, to comport himself with diplomatic correctness, and they were unable to find any excuse for an armed intervention in French affairs.
There was, moreover, another and even more potent cause for their abstinence from interference. The effect of the new French Revolution was immediately and powerfully felt in almost every part of the Continent, and the auto- crats had trouble enough to suppress sedition in their own territories, without adding to their burdens the task of
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restoring legitimacy in France. We have already seen how, precisely four weeks after the outbreak in Paris, the Belgian revolt for self-government began in Brussels ; and how in November of the same year (1830) the Poles rose in a wild and fatal effort to recover their independence. Simultaneously with these national risings popular agita- tions manifested themselves throughout Germany and in the heterogeneous dominions of the Hapsburgs, so that the governments of Prussia and Austria had their hands more than full of repressive work. In Germany order was at length restored, but not until constitutions had been wrung from the rulers of Hesse-Cassel (1830), Saxony (1831), Brunswick (1832), and Hanover (1833). But even then discussion and declamation did not die down : notable democratic demonstrations were made by political philo- sophers at Hambach in 1832, at Gottingen in 1837, at Hep- penheim in 1847, and at Heidelberg in 1848. The days of despotism in Germany appeared to be numbered. The disunited and down-trodden land seemed but to await the occasion for revolution, and the man. In Italy, on the other hand, although in 1830-31 actual rebellions broke out in the Papal States, Parma, and Modena, the " whitecoat " troops of the Austrian overlord were so easily and speedily successful in crushing them that clear-sighted Italian patriots were forped to perceive that the liberation and unification of the peninsula could not be effected without extraneous help. During the subsequent years the Italian cause was advanced by the accession of the Liberal, Charles Albert, to the throne of Piedmont and Sardinia in 1831, by the formation of the national - republican party of " Young Italy " in 1835, and by the election of an anti- Austrian pope, Pius IX., in 1846. Even in Great Britain the French Revolution of 1830 bore fruit. It warned
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Wellington and the extreme Tories of the danger of resist- ing the Reform Bill of 1832, and the passing of that decisive measure opened the way on the one hand to a whole series of constitutional and economic reforms, and on the other hand to the Chartist agitation which filled the first decade of Queen Victoria's reign (1837-48).
Everywhere in Europe during the years 1830-48 the democratic movement gathered strength. It was assisted by a growing intellectual ferment, in the stirring of which such notable men as Robert Owen, Pierre Proudhon, and Karl Marx took part. Industrial and commercial developments also aided it : railways, steamships, postal and telegraph services, mechanical inventions of all sorts, gave power to the proletariat and facilitated organisation. The day of destiny drew near.
§ 41. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
It was the year 1848 that saw the great and general democratic upheaval in Europe, and, as in 1830, the original outbreak occurred in France. Louis Philippe had never been able to make good the position into which he had been thrust on the expulsion of Charles X. No one had wanted him ; few respected him ; only a small middle-class minority continued to support him. All the great political groups were actively opposed to him : the Legitimists regarded him as a usurper, and intrigued for the restoration of the Comte de Chambord, grandson of Charles X. ; the Bonapartists hated him as the erstwhile implacable enemy of Napoleon I., and plotted with the great emperor's nephew, Louis Napoleon, for a re-estab- lishment of the imperial regime ; the Republicans looked upon the bourgeois monarchy which he had set up aa an
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unprincipled compromise with the ideals of 1789, and obstinately refused to acknowledge its permanence. Thus he was surrounded by enemies at home ; every few months for the first ten years of his reign he had to face a revolt of one group of his subjects or another ; six separate attempts to assassinate him were made. At the same time he was regarded with unfriendly eyes by the great Con- tinental Powers. To them he symbolised the recrudescence of the " Revolution." Only their preoccupation with their own troubles prevented their open refusal to recognise him. For some years only the sympathy of the Liberal ministry in Britain, and the fellow-feeling of the newly created monarch in Belgium, kept him and his government from moral isolation in Europe.
Louis Philippe was thus faced by two problems. The one was to conciliate the French people ; the other was to conciliate the European Powers. The supreme — and, as events proved, insuperable — difficulty of his task lay in the fact that the populace at home and the potentates abroad required diametrically opposite things. The domi- nant voice of the French nation demanded from the bour- geois king an active Liberalism which should not only rule constitutionally in domestic affairs, but should intervene decisively on behalf of national democracy in every country — such as Belgium, Poland, Italy-— in which it was at issue with despotism. The unanimous verdict of the autocrats of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, supported by the vote of many a minor prince, was that Louis Philippe could be tolerated only so long as he refrained from all attempt to deepen the revolution in France or to extend its scope to other lands.
During the first part of Louis Philippe's reign (1830-40) the extreme insecurity of the new king's position in France
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itself caused the control of affairs to fall into the hands of ministers — among whom Thiers was chief — whose main concern was to make Louis Philippe popular with his own subjects, and to invest him with prestige and glory. Hence they pursued an active foreign policy which in 1840 brought France face to face with a new Quadruple Alliance (Austria, Prussia, Russia, Britain) pledged to stop her meddlesome ambitions. Thiers and his colleagues had to resign power, and for the next eight years (1840-48) the policy of France was directed by a cabinet under the cautious and conservative Guizot, who made it his business to still the alarms of the reactionary powers by repression at home and inaction abroad. As a result of his ministrations Louis Philippe began to be regarded with almost fraternal tolera- tion by the upholders of the Metternich system. But, on the other hand, the French nation was irritated, humiliated, bored to desperation, by the inglorious, ineffective, and yet vexa- tious regime. At last, in February 1848, the prohibition of some political banquets organised by opponents of the government caused a sudden and totally unexpected outburst of long-pent-up fury. Both Guizot and Louis Philippe were overwhelmed with surprise and dismay. The one resigned, the other fled. The Orleanist monarchy vanished within a week, and almost at a breath.
§ 42. THE GENERAL UPHEAVAL, 1848
Rarely, if ever, has a government apparently stable and strong disappeared in so sudden and ignominious a collapse as did that of Louis Philippe and his minister Guizot within the week February 20-27, 1848. Even those who had caused the disaster were astounded and bewildered by the completeness of their success. They had aimed at con-
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stitutional reform, and they had unwittingly precipitated a revolution. While they were still debating how they should use the power which the feebleness and tearfulness of the bourgeois king and his literary adviser had unex- pectedly placed in their hands, they learned that the rever- beration of their blow was moving all the masses of the Continent, and shaking the thrones of all the autocrats. During the year no less than fifteen separate revolts of some magnitude marked the high-water line of the mid- century democratic flood.
On March 13 the very citadel of reaction was attacked and stormed, when the populace of Vienna rose against Metternich and demanded a constitution. Metternich, who seems to have been as little prepared for the outburst as had been Guizot, fled incontinently and never rested till the English Channel lay between him and his enemies. Two days later, as though according to a preconcerted plan, Hungary proclaimed its independence, Bohemia took up arms in order to secure rights of self-government, and Croatia rose in revolt against Magyar domination. The news of what was happening north of the Alps soon reached the Italian subjects of the Hapsburgs : oh March 18 the people of Milan in an outburst of sanguinary fury drove the Austrian garrison outside their walls ; on March 22 the Venetians followed their example and, remembering the mediaeval freedom and power of their ancestors, pro- claimed themselves independent as " The Republic of St. Mark." The Liberal Pope, Pius IX., always anti- Austrian in his sympathies, brought the Papal States into line with the new Italian movement by the grant of a constitution to his subjects. Charles Albert of Piedmont and Sardinia, judging from the signs of the times that the day of doom had arrived for the Hapsburgs, placed himself
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at the head of the national rising, and on March 23 declared war upon Austria.
It seemed, indeed, as though nothing could save the ramshackle Austrian Empire from dissolution. For Prussia, which would naturally have come to her aid in a revolutionary crisis of this sort, was in no better a case herself. On that same fateful March 15 which had seen revolts in Pressburg, Agram, and Prague, the city of Berlin had risen in tumultuary rebellion against the Hohen- zollern bureaucracy. The reigning king, Frederick William IV., was a ruler of weak will and unbalanced mind. In the presence of the rebels he vacillated and hesitated for two days. Then he surrendered, donned the revolutionary tricolour, promised a constitution for his own kingdom, and pledged himself to secure the summons of a National Parliament to consider the establishment of a democratic government for Germany as a whole. Several other German states — notably Bavaria, Baden, and Saxony — followed the example of Prussia and compelled their rulers to liberalise the administration.
Even Britain was not beyond the influence of the revolutionary tidal -wave which deluged the Continent. In 1848 the Chartist movement came to a head in a gigantic popular demonstration in London, while in Ireland the agitation against the Union culminated in an armed rebellion led by Smith O'Brien. Not for half a century had there been so general an upheaval. Democracy appeared to be on the verge of decisive triumph.
CHAPTER VII
THE ERA OF THE TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY, 1848-1871
§ 43. THE DEMOCRATIC DEBACLE
IN the spring of 1848 it seemed as though nothing short of a miracle could save autocracy in Central Europe. Its forces were broken ; its leaders were in captivity or flight ; its enemies were in possession of the seats of power. Yet in four years the almost - miraculous was accomplished. What the wisdom and prudence of the despots could not perform, that was achieved by the folly and incompetence of the democrats themselves. Everywhere they brought ruin upon their own cause by reason of their loquacity, their quarrelsomeness, their unpracticality.
In England the Chartist agitation died down in ludicrous failure. The threat of a violent pressure of the six points of the Charter x upon the Parliament by means of a demon- stration of 100,000 armed petitioners led to the enrolment of 200,000 special constables and the concentration of large reserves of troops in the neighbourhood of London. The precautions of the government, assisted by a providential deluge of rain on the appointed day, caused the demou-
1 The six points of the Charter were : manhood suffrage, equal electoral districts, vote by ballot, annual parliaments, payment of members, abolition of property qualification.
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strators to think better of their project. They stayed at home, and very soon the revival of trade and industry gave them more useful and lucrative employment.
In the Austrian dominions, on the other hand, pro- longed struggles accompanied by a great deal of bloodshed had to take place before the failure of the revolution fully displayed itself, and before the old order was restored under new men. The Bohemians were the first to collapse. Having secured from the Emperor Ferdinand a grant of national autonomy in April, and having summoned a Pan- Slavonic Congress at Prague in May, they displayed such extreme disorder and lawlessness that moderate Czechs joined with reactionary Austrians to crush out the whole national democratic rising in June. The Germans of Austria proper were the next to bring confusion upon themselves. Having received from the Emperor a highly democratic constitution, they were disgusted to find when it came into operation that it resulted in the return of a Slavonic majority to the new Reichsrath. This did not suit their Teutonic pride, and they rose against the Slavs with such sanguinary violence that not only did the Slavs flee for their lives, but the Emperor himself left Vienna in a panic. Then the soldiers, with the cordial approval of the Slavonic majority, came upon the scene, crushed the Viennese revolt, and suppressed the constitution. They did not, however, bring back the chicken-hearted and muddle-headed Ferdinand. They persuaded him to resign his crown in favour of his more resolute and less incapable nephew, Francis Joseph, whose long and chequered reign was destined to endure till November 21, 1916. Hungary refused to recognise Francis Joseph, and on April 14, 1849, proclaimed its complete independence. Inspired by Kossuth and brilliantly led by Gorgei, its patriotic troops
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defied all the Austrian attacks. Two things, however, proved fatal to the Magyars. First, they declined to con- cede to the Croats the national self-government which they sought for themselves ; hence the Croats threw their powerful aid on the Austrian side. Secondly, their menace to Galicia and the Ukraine brought the Tsar Nicholas into the field against them, and it was a Russian army that compelled them to capitulate at Vilagos on August 14, 1849.
In Italy the Pope soon abandoned the national cause, alarmed at the secularist and anti-Papal attitude of its leaders ; he was consequently driven from Rome in Nov- ember 1848, and a republic was proclaimed in the Eternal City. This injudicious proclamation, for which Mazzini was responsible, brought the French into the peninsula as defenders of the Holy See. Rome was recovered, the commonwealth extirpated, the Pope restored in July 1849. The same month saw the destruction of the Venetian republic by the troops of Austria. These disasters to the Italian cause at the hands of French and Austrian forces had been rendered possible first by the extreme secularity and republicanism of the national leaders; secondly, by the disunion among the Italian peoples, but thirdly and mainly by the disastrous defeats of Charles Albert of Sardinia on the fields of Custozza (July 1848) and Novara (March 1849). Before the end of 1849 the Austrian yoke was once again firmly riveted upon Italy.
Germany meantime was sinking back into the par- ticularism and chaos of the Bund of 1815. The National Parliament, which met at Frankfort-on-Main in May 1848, speedily lost itself in philosophical debates. In the spring of 1849, however, it reached sufficient unanimity to decide that Germany should be a democratic empire, and that its crown should be offered to Frederick "William IV. of Prussia.
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But the Prussian king declined the offer (April 21, 1849), and the Parliament, unable to agree upon anything more, gradually dwindled away. In 1851 Austria and Prussia combined to revive the Bund.
§ 44. THE SECOND FRENCH REPUBLIC
While democracy was burning itself out in Central Europe and Italy, in France also it was hastening towards self-extinction. The revolution of February 1848 had been a wholly Parisian performance, and in Paris the terror which had scared Guizot into resignation and Louis Philippe into flight had been furnished by a mob of artisans and students in whom the anarchism of Proudhon, the socialism of St. Simon, and the communism of Louis Blanc had roused a fanatical hatred of bourgeois government. These violent zealots — to whom the modern name of Bolshevist would be not inapplicable — aimed, not at a mere change of administration, but at an entire subversion of capitalist society. Hence, when Louis Philippe fled, and the respon- sible statesmen of France met the constitutional crisis by setting up a Provisional Government at the Palais Bourbon, the red revolutionaries seized the Hotel de Ville and installed there a rival authority, a Committee of Public Safety, of which the leading members were Louis Blanc himself, Marrast, and Albert. There was so little in common between the Provisional Government and the Proletarian Committee, and the latter was so fiery and intractable, that a civil war for the possession of Paris seemed inevitable. It was for a time prevented by the skill of Lamartine, a prominent member of the Palais Bourbon group, who per- suaded Louis Blanc, Marrast, and Albert to join the Pro- visional Government, and promised that the united strength
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of the new administration should be employed to carry into effect the communistic ideals of the Committee. Hence began a great experiment in social reconstruction which in less than four months brought France to the verge of economic ruin. The " right to work " was recognised, and was interpreted as the right to receive payment irrespective of production. " National workshops " were instituted in which the doing of nothing at the expense of the taxpayers was organised with minute elaboration. Soon some 100,000 idle and turbulent revolutionaries were being maintained in the capital on doles raised from the laborious peasantry of the provinces and the thrifty middle class. The Pro- visional Government was at the mercy of this mob.
The hope of deliverance lay in the general election, on the basis of universal suffrage, which the Provisional Government had proclaimed at the time of its formation. The Parisian mob realised this and did its best to prevent its being held. On April 23, 1848, however, the election actually took place, and it resulted in a decisive defeat of the Reds. The routed Communists refused to accept the verdict of the polls, and attempted another revolution (May 15). The Provisional Government, now confident of general support throughout France, suppressed the attempt, and then proceeded to close the demoralising " workshops " and order the return of the pensionaries to their former places of employment. This strong but necessary action led to another outbreak of extreme violence in Paris on June 24. For three days a battle raged in the streets of the capital which in fury and bloodshed exceeded every conflict of the Napoleonic wars : at least 10,000 combatants in all were killed or wounded. Ultimately government triumphed over anarchy ; and the tricolour over the red flag of revolution. But the awful struggle left a permanent
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mark upon the new republican constitution (November 1848). Although on the one hand a legislature based on universal suffrage was set up, on the other hand it was given no control over the executive. In order that the executive power might be strong enough and independent enough to deal effectively with the red peril, it was placed in the hands of a president chosen directly by a plebiscite. Like the president of the United States, he was to hold office for four years. The elections to the new legislative chamber resulted in the return of a compact anti-socialist majority. The presidential plebiscite placed the power of the Republic in the hands of Louis Napoleon.
§ 45. THE EMPIRE OF NAPOLEON III
Louis Napoleon was a nephew of the great Emperor. His father, Louis Bonaparte, had been for a few years (1806-10) puppet king of Holland in the Napoleonic Empire, but he had displeased Napoleon by some mani- festations of independence, and had been driven to resign the emblems of his monarchy. Louis Napoleon himself (born 1808), after the debacle of 1815, had spent an adven- turous youth in Switzerland, Italy (where he had aided the revolutions of 1830), America, and England (where he had been a special constable at the time of the Chartist agita- tion in 1848). He had grown up with the fixed conviction that he was a " man of destiny," and that his preordained work in life was to revive the fortunes of his family, to destroy the treaties of 1815, to restore the hegemony over Europe to France, and to realise the " Napoleonic idea." Twice during Louis Philippe's reign he had tried to fulfil his destiny by raising armed insurrections in France ; but on both occasions he had failed, and on the second he had
been captured and imprisoned. He escaped from prison, however, and, undeterred by adversity, pursued the course marked out by his star. The " Napoleonic idea " towards the realisation of which this star called him owed its incep- tion to the great Emperor himself, who from his exile in St. Helena had addressed to the world an apologia in which he proclaimed that the guiding principles of his career had been democracy, nationality, peace, and religion. Louis Napoleon adopted these principles as a family inheritance, and added four others which seemed to him to be required by the circumstances of his day : they were, antagonism to the settlement of 1815, glory, efficiency, social reform. When, therefore, he was elected first president of the Second Republic, he came to his new work with what he himself described as "a complete programme." He did not appear to perceive that his programme was overloaded with incompatible principles ; but he was keenly aware that he could not carry it out in the four years granted to him by the Constitution of 1848. He therefore made it his first task to get the Constitution changed, and to convert his transitory office into a permanent and hereditary posses- sion. Hence he cultivated the army by promises of glory and gain, and the populace by prospects of social and poli- tical reform ; and then, as soon as he felt strong enough, he carried through a coup d'etat (December 1851) which so greatly increased his power that he was able a year later (December 1852) to proclaim himself Emperor of the French. So skilfully had he contrived his conspiracy against the Constitution that his usurpation was confirmed by overwhelming plebiscitary votes.
The French nation, indeed, was eager for order at home and glory abroad. Hence it gave Louis Napoleon carte blanche to procure for it these boons. He clearly perceived
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that, as he had won his empire by promises, so he could keep it only by performances. For eighteen years his consequent performances kept the world in a fever of apprehension and anxiety. At home, he firmly suppressed socialist agitation, encouraged industry and commerce, carried through large and impressive public works, main- tained a brilliant and conspicuous court ; but he did it all in so autocratic a manner that he roused a vehement democratic opposition to his rule. Abroad, he intervened in Rome to restore the Papacy (1849) ; in the East to check Russian control over Turkey and the Holy Places (Crimean War, 1854-56) ; in Italy to expel the Austrians (1859) ; in Mexico to restore French influence in the New World (1864-67). His numerous excursions and still more numerous alarms, however, roused a general opposition before which he ultimately collapsed. The Tsar resented not only his support of the Turks, but also his manifestoes on behalf of the Poles ; the Emperor of Austria was furious at his interference in Italy ; the United States compelled his withdrawal from Mexico ; Italian Nationalists, including the King of Sardinia, were alienated by his patronage of the Papacy and by the presence of a French garrison in Rome ; the German rulers, including the King of Prussia, were irritated by his dictatorial meddlings in their affairs, and by his obvious intention to extend the dominions of the Empire to the Rhine. In order that we may see how these accumulating hostilities — combined with the weakening of his authority at home — finally resulted in the tragedy of 1870, it is necessary that we should briefly trace the con- temporary course of events in Italy and in Germany.
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§ 46. THE UNIFICATION OF ITALY
The virtual unification of Italy which Napoleon I. had effected, combined with the efficient administration which he had introduced into the long-misgoverned peninsula, had rendered the repartition of 1815, the reintroduction of the Austrians, and the restoration of the old misrulers, quite intolerable. Progressive and patriotic Italians were resolved upon three things : (1) The expulsion of the Austrians ; (2) the reunion of the nationjnto a single state ; and (3) the establishment of some form of democracy. They were all agreed in believing that Italy could achieve her own salvation : Italia fara da se was constantly on their lips. They were, however, by no means agreed as to the nature of the future constitution of emancipated Italy. Mazzini and Garibaldi were republicans ; Gioberti and other Liberal churchmen dreamed of a federated peninsula pre- sided over by the Pope ; Victor Emmanuel and the Pied- montese statesmen planned a monarchic reconstruction under the House of Savoy. Hence the Italians were hope- lessly divided into antagonistic groups, and as a consequence of the lack of co-operation the risings of 1822, 1830, and 1848 were sporadic, feeble, and ineffective. Their principal results were, first, to demonstrate the impracticability^ the schemes of Mazzini and. Gioberti ; and, secondly, to show that~evenThe more feasible project of the H&use of Savoy could not be accomplished without external aid.
The politician who earliest perceived the imperative need of foreign assistance was Count Cavour^ whom Victor Emmanuel called to office in 1852. He at once set to work to procure it. To begin with he tried England. He there found plenty of sympathy but no prospect of active help. Next he turned to the newly fledged French Empire,
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and there he secured what he wanted. Napoleon III. had in his young days been an Italian carbonaro ; he had taken part in the risings of 1830 ; the principle of nationality was included in the " Napoleonic idea," which inspired his policy ; above all, the prospect of intervention in Italy presented alluring possibilities of glory and aggrandisement. Cavour, however, bound Napoleon to the cause of Italy by stronger ties than those of sentiment and hope. He rendered him valuable military aid in the Crimean War (1855), and offered him as the price of successful assistance against the Austrians the cession of the two Alpine pro- vinces of Savoy and Nice. On these terms was concluded the Compact_of_Plombieres on JulyJjO, 1858^ The alliance thus effected was far from being an entente cordiale. Cavour was profoundly suspicious of Napoleon's good faith, while Napoleon, on his side, made it clear to Cavour that he could be no party to any scheme of Italian unification which involved the annexation of the Papal States. Cavour, therefore, had to limit his immediate programme to the expulsion of the Austrians and the acquisition of Northern Italy. Having secured the pledge of French assistance for this restricted but all-important purpose, he at once pro- ceeded to precipitate war with Austria. This he achieved in April 1859. Napoleon himself led an army into Italy, and seemed to repeat the triumphs of the great Bonaparte when he Touted the Austrians at Magenta and Solferino (June). But just when the expulsion of the Austrians from the peninsula appeared secure, Napoleon made a truce with them and left them in possession of Venetia (Truce of Villafranca, July 9, 1859). Several causes led him to this unexpected withdrawal ; the two most important were a revolt in the Papal States and a Prussian mobilisa- tion on the Rhine. He feared a clerical rising in France,
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and a German attack upon his eastern frontier. His with- drawal, however, did not stop the movement towards Italian unity. According to the terms agreed upon at Villafranca, Austria ceded Lombardy and Parma to Napo- leon, who transferred them to Sardinia. Tuscany, Modena, and the Papal Romagna at once proclaimed their resolve to join the new Italian kingdom, and both Austria and France had to concur in allowing their incorporation (March 1860). Immediately afterwards Sicily and Naples, with the help of Garibaldi and his immortal Thousand, expelled the Bourbons, and placed themselves under Victor Emmanuel. Before the end of 1 860 only Venetia with its Austrian garrison, and Rome with its French protectors, remained outside the sphere of the new Italian state which the policy of Cavour, the heroism of Garibaldi, and the statesmanship of Victor Emmanuel had created. The task of completing the unification of Italy was reserved for Prussia, who accomplished it incidentally as a by-product of the process of the unification of Germany.
§ 47. THE FOUNDING OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE
We have seen how the consciousness of unity which Germany had gained during her struggle against Napoleon had been lost during the dark days of the Metternich regime. The Confederation of 1815 comprised thirty-nine states, and in each of them particularism prevailed over nationalism. The two dominant Powers were Austria and Prussia, and when they were in agreement they were irresistible. For many years they worked harmoniously together, under the guidance of Metternich, for the sup- pression of the " revolution." But as time went on it became increasingly evident that their permanent interests were not identical. Austria — with its extensive
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Magyar, Czech, Croatian, and Italian dependencies — was primarily a non-German Power, and its only hope of re- taining its controlling influence in German affairs lay in the accentuation of the disunity of the Bund. Prussia, on the other hand, had shed Slavonic and gained Teutonic terri- tories in 1815, and her way of aggrandisement lay clearly along the line of German unification. So early as 1819 the economic needs of her scattered dominions made it neces- sary for her to conclude tariff agreements with her neigh- bours. Gradually other German states entered the con- venient customs union thus set up, and by 1833 a Zollyerein of seventeen members was in existence. Austria held aloof from this economic federation, partly because she despised trade, partly because she could not gain permission to bring her non-Germanic peoples into this purely Germanic association. Thus both political and economic differences tended to throw Austria and Prussia into hostility. While, however, Frederick William IV. of Prussia held control in his kingdom no actual breach occurred. Although dis- putes ran high concerning such questions as the reform of the German constitution and the fate of Schleswig-Holstein, in the end Frederick William yielded and Hapsburg policy prevailed. In the Prussian kingdom, however, was living a man who viewed Prussian subservience to Austria with disgust, recognised the fact that in Germany there was no room for the two monarchies, and faced without dismay the task of ejecting the Hapsburgs and elevating the Hohen- zollerns to supremacy. That man was Otto von Bismarck. His opportunity for action came in 1858 when Frederick William's reason broke down, and when William, the king's brother, assumed authority as Regent.1
1 William became King of Prussia in 1861 and first German Emperor in 1871. He died 1888.
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The Regent made it his first task, with the aid of Moltke and Roon, to reorganise the Prussian army. This work brought him into conflict with the Prussian Liberals, who refused to vote the necessary credits. Thus was pre- cipitated a constitutional struggle on which the fate of Prussia, Germany, and even Europe depended. Bismarck — who was at the time Prussian ambassador in Paris — was called to Berlin to fight the Liberals (September 1862), and after a sharp conflict he completely triumphed. He offered to the Prussian people glory instead of freedom, and to the German nation a unity effected by the Prussian army in place of the anarchy of self-determination. The offers were accepted and Bismarck proceeded by methods of " blood and iron " to accomplish the work which the National Parliament had failed to achieve. Having re- established the authority of the monarchy and the ministry within Prussia, and being assured by Moltke and Roon that the reorganising and re-weaponing of the army were com- pleted, he deliberately provoked the wars which were neces- sary for the fulfilment of his designs. First, in conjunction with Austria, he wrested Schleswig and Holstein from Denmark (1864). Then he quarrelled with Austria con- cerning the division and administration of the plundered provinces, exasperated her by proposals for a new German constitution from which she should be excluded, and finally drove her to declare war by menacing mobilisations. Bis- marck had taken great care to isolate Austria diplomatically, while Moltke and Roon had brought the Prussian army to a pitch of perfection that made victory secure. Within three weeks of her rash ultimatum Austria was utterly overthrown on the decisive field of Sadowa or Koniggratz (July 2, 1866).
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§ 48. THE RECONSTRUCTION OF CENTRAL EUROPE
In the Austro-Prussian war Italy had prudently thrown herself on to the side of Prussia. Bismarck had lured her into an alliance by the promise that Venetia should be her reward in case of victory. Hence the Peace of Prague (August 23, 1866), which concluded the short conflict, affected the Peninsular as well as the Central Powers. The main terms were : (1) The dissolution of the Confederation of 1815, and the withdrawal of Austria from Germany ; (2) the cession of Venetia to Victor Emmanuel, and the consequent withdrawal of Austria from Italy ; (3) the absorption by Prussia of Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Hesse, and other small German states. The acquisition of Venetia involved no organic change in the Italian mon- archy ; it merely concentrated the attention of Italian nationalists upon the Papal States, which alone remained, under the protection of Napoleon III., outside the limits of the kingdom of the House of Savoy. The other pro- visions of the Treaty of Prague, however, necessitated the complete reconstruction of Central Europe.
Austria, expelled from both Germany and Italy, and faced at home by the fierce unrest of her numerous subject non-Teutonic peoples, solved her constitutional problem by taking the Hungarians (the ablest and most turbulent of these peoples) into equal partnership, and by diverting the weight of their joint influence from Western to Eastern Europe. Thus was founded the Dual Monarchy (1867) wherein the Germans exercised ascendancy in Austria and the Magyars in Hungary, while the two combined for pur- poses of foreign policy and war. Prussia, for her part, used her resounding victory to weld all the states on her side of the Main into a North German Confederation over
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which she herself held dominant control. The South Ger- man States — Bavaria, "Wurtemburg, Baden, Hesse-Darm- stadt— deprived of their great colleague and ancient leader, Austria, held aloof in suspicion and alarm from the for- midable new union of the North. They tended to look to France as a possible protector against Prussia. The King of Bavaria in particular approached Napoleon III. with a view to mutual defence against the threatening might and the menacing ambition of the Hohenzollerns.
Napoleon III. was more than willing to receive advances from the South German rulers. For he realised that both his power and his prestige had been severely injured by the swift and decisive victory of Prussia over Austria. Before the war broke out he had intervened with a proposal that the points at issue should be referred to a European Congress ; but his proposal had been rejected by both the angry belligerents. During the war he had maintained a neutrality benevolent to Austria, of whose ultimate success he was confident, and the collapse of the Hapsburg power brought to the ground many airy castles which he had built on the basis of Austrian victory. After Sadowa he had contemplated active intervention on Austria's behalf, but he had been utterly baffled by the rapidity with which Bismarck had come to terms with his defeated enemy. Then he had demanded with threats from victorious Prussia " compensations " for France, in order that the disarrayed " Balance of Power " might be redressed — compensations on the Rhine, from Belgium, in Luxemburg. Bismarck had found means to have all these demands declined, and he had not troubled to be very polite in his dis- cussions with the French Emperor. He was glad, all the same, that the demands had been made, for he used them with consummate skill to detach the South German rulers
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from their contemplated French alliance. They were roused to an intense pitch of anger against Napoleon.
The French nation was greatly alarmed by the growth of Prussian power on its eastern frontier, and extremely irritated by the humiliating futility of Napoleon's diplo- macy. Henre Napoleon began to feel that he jspuld retrieve his position at home and abroad only by means of a triumphant^ war. Bismarck, on his side, recognised the fact that the unification of Germany could not be completed as long as the Napoleonic Empire remained hostile and undefeated. Victor Emmanuel, too, perceived that the overthrow of Napoleon was the necessary preliminary to the annexation of Rome and the Papal States to the kingdom of Italy. In these circumstances the European stage was set for conflict, and nothing but a pretext was needed to precipitate the Franco-Prussian War.
CHAPTER VIII
THE ERA OF IMPERIAL EXPANSION, 1871-1901
§ 49. SEDAN AND ITS SEQUEL
THE pretext which precipitated the Franco-Prussian War was provided by a controversy respecting the succession to the Spanish throne in 1870. A revolution in 1868 had driven the ill-living and misgoverning Queen Isabella to abdicate. During two succeeding years of strife many schemes for the settlement of the government were mooted, until finally influences hostile to France secured the offer of the crown to Leopold of Hohenzollern, a distant relative of the King of Prussia (July 4, 1870). The French, fearing to find themselves between a pair of Hohenzollern pincers, vehemently protested. The Prussians replied with a pro- vocative insolence which culminated in Bismarck's famous Ems telegram (July 13, 1870), and both sides rushed with frenzied animosity into war. Within seven weeks the conflict was decided. A single brief campaign revealed the rottenness of the Napoleonic regime, and brought the Emperor with his mishandled armies to the debacle of Sedan (September 1, 1870). After that irretrievable disaster the struggle still dragged on for half a year, pro- longed by the spontaneous rising of the French nation against the invading Germans ; but the capitulation of
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Metz in October, and the fall of Paris in the following January showed the hopelessness of resistance. Pre- liminaries of peace were signed on February 26, and the definitive Treaty of Frankfort was concluded on May 10, 1871. France was forced to surrender Alsace and Lorraine, and to pay an indemnity equivalent to £200,000,000 sterling.
The painful duty of accepting these humiliating and destructive terms of peace did not fall to Napoleon III. No sooner had the news of Sedan reached Paris than an irresistible revolution had swept away the corrupt and in- capable Empire, and had installed a Provisional Govern- ment of National Defence. This Government, of which Thiers became the dominant member, summoned a National Assembly, whose principal duties, after it had secured peace with Germany, were, first, to restore order in France, and particularly in Paris, where an awful outbreak of revolu- tionary socialism, known as " The Commune," threatened the total subversion of society ; and secondly, to provide a new and permanent constitution for the country. " The Commune " was soon suppressed, but only after a siege of Paris and a bloody conflict in which many thousands of lives were lost (May 1871). The settlement of the con- stitution was a longer and more difficult task. There were four parties in the state, viz. Bonapartists, Orleanists, Legitimists, and Republicans. Their rivalries, and especi- ally those of the three dynastic groups, seemed to be irreconcilable. Finally, in 1875, a Republican regime was established, not because it commanded a positive majority among the people, but because it excited the smallest amount of antagonism among the discurrent minorities.
The events which caused the fall of the French Empire prepared the way for the founding of the German. The
I
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South German States had been angered and alarmed by the disclosure of Napoleon III.'s designs ; they had shared the glory and gratifications of Prussia's triumphant campaign. In pride and thankfulness, and in anticipation of splendour and prosperity to come, they expressed their readiness to enter the confederation of which Prussia was head, and to assist in its transformation into a federal German Empire. Hence on January 18, 1871, at Versailles the king of Bavaria, on behalf of the assembled monarchs and magnates, offered to William of Prussia the mediaeval position and title of Kaiser.
Simultaneously with this unification of Germany oc- curred the completion of the unification of Italy. Napoleon III. was compelled by his early reverses to recall his protective troops from the Papal States (Aug. 19, 1870). King Victor Emmanuel at once set his armies in motion, and on September 20, in spite of papal protests and even of feeble resistance on the part of papal soldiers, he entered Rome as its conqueror and took up his royal residence at the Quirinal. By a curious coincidence the Pope thus lost his temporal dominions just nine weeks after the Vatican Council had recognised his unapproachable spiritual pre- eminence by proclaiming the dogma of his infallibility.
§ 50. THE NEW EUROPE AND ITS PROBLEMS
The simultaneous attainment of unity by Germany and Italy in 1870-71 marked a distinct turning-point in the history of Europe. The old Balance of Power was destroyed ; the Continent as constructed by Metternich was disarrayed ; the main provisions of the Treaties of 1815 were reduced to the condition of antiquarian curiosities. Many ancient and persistent causes of international conflict, due to
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the dissensions and diplomacies of the petty potentates on both sides of the Alps, were happily removed for ever. Two strong national states with efficient central govern- ments superseded the discordant medley of mediaeval survivals which for four centuries had kept, not only Germany and Italy themselves, but the whole Continent in a condition of constant unrest and insecurity. But if ancient causes of trouble were taken away, unfortunately new and formidable ones were brought into existence. The new national states — the German Empire and the Italian Kingdom — born after long travail out of due season — manifested the same ambition, aggressiveness, and greed as had marked England, France, and Spain when they had attained the corresponding stage of political development at the close of the fifteenth century. Both of them inherited, though by different channels, the imperial traditions of Rome. Italy turned acquisitive eyes not only upon Tren- tino, Istria, and Dalmatia (Italia irredenta), which the Hapsburgs continued to hold, but also upon Tunis, Tripoli, and the other territories of the Mediterranean littoral whence in old days the rulers of the Eternal City had drawn supplies and slaves. Germany for her part began to covet not only the possessions of her neighbours, but also wide dominions overseas. It was several years, however, before the newly unified peoples were in a position to display their predatory passions. For almost a decade after the crisis of 1871 problems of internal reconstruction and problems of Near-Eastern policy engrossed their attention.
For Italy the prime question was (as it still is) how to effect a reconciliation between Church and State. The Pope, outraged by the loss of his temporal sovereignty, retreated into the Vatican (whence from that day to this he has never emerged), and from the Vatican poured
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anathemas upon his impious supplanters. The " black internationals " of the papal party in Italy found a strange but increasingly powerful coadjutor in the army of the " red internationals " of revolutionary socialism, which made rapid progress in the industrial north, when it was discovered that Italian unity did not mean the immediate development of an earthly paradise, and when the policy of the new kingdom began to involve increased taxation. In these circumstances Italian statesmen, harassed from both right and left, tended to look longingly towards their quondam-enemy Austria, through whose aid they might hope to placate the Papacy and suppress the Revolutionaries.
The new German Empire, meantime, was passing through a somewhat similar conflict with the same two foes. The Catholic Church deeply deplored the expulsion from Germany of her faithful and obedient sons, the Austrian Hapsburgs, and the transference of the headship of all the German peoples to the Lutheran Hohenzollerns. She soon found herself in sharp conflict with Bismarck concerning the appointment of bishops, the administration of church properties, and the control of education. For six years (1872-78) raged the so-called KulturJcampf between the persecuting State and the disloyal Church. In the end a truce — a virflfcal victory for the Church — was effected, in order that both authoritarian bodies might combine to resist the growing menace of a secular social-democracy. But before this internal pacification had been completed Bismarck had been called upon to transfer his attention to an acute development of the chronic Eastern Question, and to act as " honest broker " in a controversy between Russia and the Western Powers which all but involved Europe in a general conflagration.
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§ 51. THE EASTERN QUESTION
Ever since the Crimean War and the Peace of Paris (1856) the principle of nationality, embittered by the fanaticism of hostile religions, had been causing a ferment in the Near East. The Christian peoples of the Balkan Peninsula under the influence of Western ideas had grown increasingly restless beneath the Turkish yoke. The Montenegrins had proclaimed their independence so early as 1796 ; the Greeks, as we have seen, had followed them in 1821 ; Serbia had, through the good offices of Russia, secured virtual autonomy in 1829 ; Rumania had obtained from the Powers assembled at Paris in 1856 full recogni- tion of her sovereignty. Herzegovina, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Rumelia, Macedonia, Thrace, Thessaly, however, all contained unredeemed populations whose cries for freedom and revenge reached and disturbed all the chancelleries of Europe. The Turks, on their side, had not taken all this racial and religious agitation in a recumbent posture. Astonished and exasperated by these novel and unwelcome manifestations of reviving life among the long-subject peoples of their dominions, they gradually abandoned the imperial, cosmopolitan, and tolerant traditions which they had inherited from the first Byzantine Sultans, and con- verted the Ottoman Empire into a national state devoted to the maintenance of Turkish ascendancy and Moslem supremacy. This formidable transmutation was mainly effected during the reign of the able Mahmoud II. (1809- 1839), who recentralised the government, restored the authority of the Sultan, revived religion, and regimented the Turks as a fanatical nation in arms. From that time the lot of the Christian peoples of the Near East became an increasingly hard one, and it grew to be wholly intolerable
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after France and Britain, in their fatally mistaken adventure of the Crimean War, prevented Russia fromvexercising certain rights of protection which she claimed to possess under old treaties. The Sultan, it is true, promised his good friends and allies, France and Britain, that he would reform his administration, mollify his rule, and apply the principles of civil and religious equality throughout his dominions. But the Sultan showed himself a past-master in the arts of evading promises, and postponing the performance of vows. In vain did Britain and France protest. In vain did the emperors of Austria, Russia, and Germany meet in Berlin to discuss joint action, and come to an agreement in the so-called Dreikaiserbundnis (1872). The Turk, unperturbed, pursued the bloody tenor of his way. Finally, the oppressed peoples, despairing of extraneous help, took their fates into their own hands, and rose in frenzied revolt.
The revolt began in Herzegovina in the summer of 1875 ; it soon spread to Bosnia and Bulgaria. In 1876 Serbia and Montenegro lent it their support. It was all to no effect. The Turkish forces speedily showed their overwhelming superiority to the chaotic levies of the rebels and the ill- equipped forces of their allies. The rising was crushed with merciless severity. Europe rang with the reports of the " Bulgarian atrocities " perpetrated by the Sultan's vic- torious hordes. Serbia and Montenegro seemed destined to fall once more under the Ottoman sway. Then, at last, the Powers intervened. Conferences were held at Con- stantinople (December 1876) and London (March 1877), but the Turk refused to give any adequate guarantees for either the cessation of his massacres or the reform of his mis- government. Hence Russia decided, come what might, to act on her own account. The Russo-Turkish War
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followed, from which, after a tremendous struggle, Russia ultimately emerged entirely triumphant. Within sight of Constantinople she dictated to the Porte the Treaty of San Stefano (March 3, 1878) whose terms signalised the virtual end of Turkish rule in Europe. But the Powers — led by the British Prime Minister, Disraeli — once again interfered to ruin Russia's work and to rehabilitate the Turk. Russia was compelled to submit the Treaty of San Stefano to a drastic revision, effected at a conference held at Berlin and presided over by Bismarck who, professing neutrality and indifference, offered to act as " honest broker." The resultant Treaty of Berlin (July 13, 1878) determined the politics of the Near East for a whole generation.
§ 52. THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE
The Treaty of Berlin (1) placed Herzegovina and Bosnia under Austrian administration ; (2) conceded independence to Bulgaria — but a Bulgaria less than one-half the size of the state defined in the Treaty of San Stefano ; (3) recog- nised the full sovereignty of Serbia, Montenegro, and Rumania, to each one of which it granted some fragments of territory taken from the Turk ; (4) allowed Russia to acquire Bessarabia from Rumania ; (5) restored Macedonia completely, and Rumelia partially, to Turkish authority. Russia was not unnaturally furious when she saw so much of her work undone, and so large a portion of the fruits of her hardly-won victory snatched from her grasp by the diplomatists. Upon Disraeli and Britain in particular the first force of her fury fell, and as a consequence, for a full thirty years British statesmen were doomed to find a hostile Russia in their path in whatsoever region of the . globe they made a move.
120 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY OH.
Russian antagonism to Britain, moreover, was far from being merely passive. Checked in the Near East, Russia began to manifest increased activity of expansion in the Middle and Far East, where her advance soon seemed to threaten the British dominion in India, and British influence in China and Japan. But though Russia rejoiced at the alarm which her Asiatic enterprises caused to the British Government, and although she made them as irritating as possible, they were by no means undertaken solely or even mainly as exhibitions of offended pride, or as acts of wanton aggression. Russia in the middle of the nineteenth century, under the strong and stable government of Nicholas I. and Alexander II., was rapidly growing in population ; improving in agriculture, dairy-farming, and industry ; expanding in commerce. It was imperatively necessary that she should gain fresh outlets from the land- locked masses of her enormous territories to the open seas. Hence she groped her way, not only southward towards the Mediterranean and westward towards the Atlantic, but also eastward towards the Persian Gulf and the Middle Pacific. In the very year of the Treaty of Berlin she came into conflict with British influence in Afghanistan ; in 1885 in Turkestan ; in 1891 in the Pamirs. In 1898 Japan was alarmed by her occupation of Port Arthur, as also by the opening of the Trans-Siberian Railway (1895- 1905), and by the consequent growth of Russian ascendancy in Manchuria.
While Russia was thus developing her eastern dominions and expanding towards the ocean, the other European peoples were, as though by a common impulse, seeking to found or to extend overseas empires. The unsettled con- dition of the European Continent, the growth of con- script armies, the increasing expenses of government, the
tin ERA OF IMPERIAL EXPANSION 121
development of industry and commerce, and the conflict of protective tariffs, made it appear to all of them desirable, if not absolutely necessary, to secure new sources of supplies, new recruiting grounds, new markets, in the yet unap- propriated parts of the world. France occupied Tunis (1881), the Ivory Coast (1891), Dahomey (1892), Mada- gascar (1895) ; she also commenced the peaceful penetra- tion of Morocco and Central Africa. Bismarck encouraged her in these distant enterprises, partly because they diverted her attention from Alsace-Lorraine and revenge, and partly because they tended to embroil her with Italy, Spain, and Britain. Italy had had her eye on Tunis, and when she was baulked of it by France she made great but unsuccessful efforts to establish her dominion in Ethiopia (1882) and Abyssinia (1896). Spain regarded Morocco as her own sphere of influence and much resented French interference. Britain, for her part, had been forced by circumstances to assume the protectorate of Egypt, and the appearance of a French expedition at Fashoda on the Nile in 1898 all but led to war between the two nations. The Power which profited by these activities and dissensions was the new German Empire, which thus gained leisure to get its constitution into working order, to settle its domestic problems, and to mark out the pathway of its future policy.
§ 53. THE EXPLOITATION OF THE WORLD
The German Empire, so long as Bismarck controlled its policy, took little interest either in the affairs of the Near East, or in the development of an overseas dominion. Bismarck, during the twenty years (1871-90) of his imperial chancellorship, was primarily concerned to conserve the great structure which he had created, by healing its
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internal schisms, and by preventing the formation of any Continental coalition against it. But round him grew up men of a younger generation who had not shared the agonies of the anxious years of German unification, and who did not realise the insecurity of the splendid edifice in which they had been brought up. These men were determined that Germany should take her place among the colonising nations, and that, though she was a late entrant into the field of overseas adventure, she should never rest until she occupied her proper place as the first of all imperial Powers. Two societies for promoting German colonisation were founded (1882 and 1884), and so great was the influx of members that Bismarck's hand was forced. In 1884 four separate settlements were made on the coasts of Africa — " Luderitzland " (S.W. Africa), Togoland, the Cameroons, and German East Africa. Next year the German appropria- tion of Pacific islands began. After the fall of Bismarck and the advent to power of the ambitious and Pan-Germanic emperor, William II., the activities of the colonisers re- doubled. Not only the untra versed forests of the Dark Continent and the barbaric archipelagos of Oceania, but also the thickly peopled provinces of derelict China, the undeveloped desolations of Syria and Mesopotamia, the rich prairies of Brazil — these and other vitally important regions of the world came to be spoken of as German reservations.
The older colonising peoples not unnaturally felt grave alarm at the appearance in their midst of this new, formid- able, and aggressive colleague or competitor.. They could not, of course, pretend that Germany had no right to follow the example which they themselves had set. All that they could attempt was to set bounds to her ambitions, and to prevent if possible a clash of claims which might result in
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war. The critical year, 1884, which saw the unexpected and portentous seizure by Germany of four portions of Africa, saw also the assembly of an international conference at Berlin whereat the Dark Continent was divided up into regional " spheres of influence " in order that each colonis- ing Power might be able to engage in the work of " civilisa- tion " without fear of coming into conflict with any of the rest. An immense stimulus was thereby given to African exploration and development. In 1900, when the Pacific Ocean had become the scene of a scramble for islands between Germany, Britain, and America, a similar division into " spheres " was arranged by the three states concerned. From Oceania the idea of partitionment was extended to Asia, and when commercial and financial rivalries began to manifest themselves among the European peoples who had dealings with China, a proposal was made that that great empire with its four hundred millions of inhabitants should also be parcelled out into " spheres " for mercantile exploitation. The realisation of the proposal was, however, prevented, partly by the Chinese themselves, who, by means of the Boxer rising, showed that there were limits beyond which the foreign devil could not safely go even in his dealings with the mild celestial ; partly by the Japanese, who rapidly developed a first-rate military and naval power expressly in order that they might put a term to the Euro- pean domination over Asia. What Japan began to do for the Far East, that the United States continued to do for America. The clear and reiterated proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine prevented for the time being any overt attempt on the part of Germany or any other Euro- pean Power to exploit America. Nevertheless, in spite of checks here and there, the dominance of the white race in the world, and particularly of its European branches, was
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strongly accentuated during this closing period of the nineteenth century.
§ 54. THE END OP AN AGE
The changes which passed over the world at the close of the nineteenth century did not leave Britain unaffected. On the contrary, she was compelled by them to reconsider the whole question of her colonial and foreign policy. Until far on in Victoria's reign she regarded the Russians and the French as her inevitable enemies, the Germans and the Austrians as her natural friends. At the same time she looked upon overseas dominions as a nuisance and a source of danger, and contemplated without alarm the prospect of their ultimate separation from the Mother- country. " These wretched colonies," said Disraeli in 1852, " will all be independent in a few years, and they are a millstone round our necks." In the next chapter I shall have to deal with the change in British foreign policy which marked the turn of the century. Here I must note the contemporaneous and closely associated change which occurred in the mutual relations between Britain and her overseas dependencies.
At the close of the nineteenth century the two most impressive and arresting facts in world-politics were, first, the immense and unprecedentedly rapid development of Russia and the United States in territory, in population, in resources, in wealth ; and, secondly, the rush of all the other Powers who wished to have places in the sun to build up colonial empires which, in size, population, and capacity, should bear some sort of proportion to the prodigious dominions of the Muscovite and the Yankee. It was clear that the day of small, isolated, self-sufficing political units
vm ERA OF IMPERIAL EXPANSION 125
was over, and that the day of large economic aggregates had dawned. The welding together of big federations like that of the United States ; the construction of vast empires like that of Russia ; the consolidation of widely scattered dominions and territories like those of Germany, France, and Britain, was rendered possible (and indeed necessary) by the marvellous development in means of communication of all sorts — railways, lines of steamships, postal and telegraphic services — which marked the last decades of the nineteenth century. Obstacles to union were removed at the very moment when union became above all things desirable and needful.
It was in the 'eighties that British statesmen became fully alive to the importance of the colonial problem. While Germany, France, Italy, and even Belgium and Austria, were diligently seeking to secure whatever un- appropriated fragments of the earth's surface still remained open to annexation, Britain began to realise that she had " in a fit of absence of mind," and almost against her will, come to be possessed of more than one-fifth of the land area of the globe, including the regions best suited to the habitation of the white races. All that was required was that a new policy should be instituted, and that the over- seas dominions, instead of being driven towards separation, should be drawn into a federal union with the Mother- country. This new policy was eloquently advocated by Seeley in his splendid lectures on The Expansion of England (1883). Its realisation was the avowed object of the Imperial Federation League (1884).
The desire of the Mother-country was reciprocated by the wiser and more far-sighted of the leaders in the colonies and dependencies. For separation and independence, although they might present attractions to ambitious
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politicians, also presented perils which at the beginning of the twentieth century seemed increasingly grave. One was the peril of revolutionary socialism. But nearer and more immediately formidable was the peril of German conquest. In the face of a danger such as this it might well be fatal to stand feeble and alone.
\
CHAPTER IX
THE ERA OP THE SCHISM OF EUROPE, 1901-1914
§ 55. INTERNATIONAL POLITICS AFTER SEDAN
THE German colonial empire, founded in 1884 and fostered with immense care and at lavish cost during the following sixteen years, was by 1901 an obvious failure. It had been founded for three main purposes : first, to absorb Germany's overflowing population, which had commenced to emigrate from the Fatherland at the average rate of 2000 a day ; secondly, to provide markets for the surplus products of Germany's over-protected and over-prolific industries ; and, thirdly, to furnish copious supplies of *cheap raw material for Germany's growing manufactures. In all three objects it had failed. It was situated in climates unattractive to white men, and its German population never exceeded 16,000 at any one time ; its native popula- tions, moreover, aggregated no more than twelve and a half millions, and their poverty and barbarity were such that they made no effective demand for commodities made in Germany ; finally, it lacked economic variety, and though it produced lavish supplies of such useful tropical substances as rubber, palm oil, and copra, it left Germany dependent for the greater part of the raw material of her manufactures upon an increasingly unfriendly and self-
127
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protective world. In these circumstances the real-politi- cians of the Fatherland began to cast lustful eyes upon the more desirable dominions of Spain and Portugal, Holland and Belgium, France and Britain. The inaugura- tion of a new and big naval programme in 1898 indicated a determination on the part of the German Government to demand and secure a " larger place in the sun," which meant (such is the ambiguity of figures of speech) overseas dominions not in the tropics. All this clearly portended war, and the necessity for war began to be assiduously instilled into the minds of the young Germans. Its chief apostle was Treitschke. "War," said he, "is the only remedy for ailing nations. The living God will see to it that war constantly returns as a dreadful medicine for the human race."
Germany, moreover, began to manifest other ailments than a feverish thirst for cool colonies. Internally she felt the ominous rumblings of a rising social-demo- cracy. Her industry, commerce, and finance displayed unmistakable symptoms of grave disorder, due to high protection and over-speculation. For all these diseases and uneasinesses war was prescribed by doctors of political philosophy as the only infallible remedy. The opening years of the twentieth century were, therefore, more and more disturbed by German demands and German menaces, by exhibitions of mailed fists and shining armour, by pro- vocative speeches and aggressive acts.
The truculent attitude and threatening behaviour of j , Germany in the period 1901-14 marked so complete a , departure from the deportment and mode of procedure ;j adopted by Bismarck during the period of his unquestioned ascendancy, 1871-84, that it behoves us, if we wish to under- stand the causes of the ultimate catastrophe of the Great
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War, to trace in outline the process of the change. The battle of Sedan placed Prussia in a position of obvious primacy in Germany, and Germany in a position of obvious primacy in Europe. Bismarck recognised these facts with intense satisfaction, and felt that his life's work was accom- plished. But he perceived that both the Prussian hegemony in Germany and the Germany hegemony in Europe were insecure ; that they needed time to settle ; that they might be overthrown by hostile coalitions ; that peace was the prime condition of their permanence. Hence within Germany he made it his business to soothe the particularism of the petty states who had surrendered their independence to the Empire ; to conciliate the Catholics who regretted the evicted Hapsburgs ; to placate the Social-Democrats and convert them from Marxian cosmopolitanism into Teutonic nationalism. All this required tranquillity and time. Similarly abroad, it was above all things necessary to convey the impression that the German Empire stood for piety and peace. Bismarck realised that the chief danger to peace came from France — humiliated, mulcted, despoiled. Hence his prime business was to prevent France from securing allies ; his second business, to secure them himself.
§ 56. (TRIPLE ALLIANC^
The means by which Bismarck contrived to keep France diplomatically isolated in the world during the whole twenty years of his Chancellorship (1871-90) reveal a statecraft of Machiavellian subtlety and unscrupulousness. What he .dreaded most of all was a Russo-Frankish alliance ; hence he encouraged the extremest autocracy in Russia, and the most advanced republicanism in France. Next to that he feared an Austro-Frankish combination : hence
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lie fostered clericalism in the one country and anti-clerical- ism in the other. In order to cause France to quarrel with Italy he incited her to seize Tunis. In order to prevent an Anglo-Frankish entente he supported, against French protests, the British occupation of Egypt. Throughout the whole of his ministry France found herself encircled by unfriendly Powers.
But while Bismarck was thus keeping France in diplom- atic solitude and military impotence, he was cautiously engaged in strengthening Germany by means of understand- ings and alliances. The two states about whose attitude he was most concerned were Russia and Austria. He realised that the hostility of either of them, in conjunction with that of France, would be dangerous to the German Empire, and that if by any chance they should both join the chronic foe the doom of the Empire would be sealed. The first positive idea of his foreign policy as Imperial Chancellor was a union of the three Emperors on the model of the Holy Alliance of 1815. In 1872, under his guiding hand, Alexander II. of Russia, Francis Joseph of Austria, and William I. of Germany, met in Berlin, breathed amiable sentiments of brotherhood and peace, and concluded the so-called Drevfcaiserbiindnis according to which they agreed to take common action respecting the " revolution " (i.e. nihilism, socialism, nationalism) at home, and the Near Eastern Question abroad. Bismarck congratulated him- self highly upon this harmonious settlement ; and justly so, for the Near Eastern Question was one concerning which Russia and Austria were, as we have seen, naturally divided by irreconcilable antagonisms. For three priceless years the cordial understanding between the three Kaisers gave Bismarck the sense of security which he needed in order to attend to the pressing problems of domestic
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reconstruction that confronted him — the problems of particularism, clericalism, and socialism. From 1875, however, he perceived (though he kept the perception to himself) that he would be compelled ultimately to choose between Austria and Russia, and that his policy would be to prefer Austria. This perception of 1875 came from the action of Alexander II., who used his influence with William I. to save France from a renewed invasion which the German General Staff desired because France showed unexpected signs of recovery from what had been intended to be the mortal blow of 1871. Bismarck intensely resented this interference with the operations of realpolitik, particu- larly as it foreshadowed a Russo-Frankish understanding. Next year the upheaval in the Balkan Peninsula, already described, revealed the deep antagonism of Russian and Austrian interests in the Near East. Bismarck had to decide which of the two he would foster and promote — the Teutonic Drang nach Osten or the conflicting Slavonic Drang nach Siiden. He did not hesitate one moment in making his decision. At the Conference of Berlin (1878), while professing to act as " honest broker," he threw the whole weight of his influence on to the Austrian side, with the result that Austria, who had struck no blow against the Turk, secured more of his heritage than Russia, who had borne the burden of the two years' war. The Russian representatives left Berlin at the close of the Conference in anger and disgust. Immediately afterwards (1879) Germany concluded with Austria a defensive alliance, specially directed against Russia, to which Italy was admitted in 1882. Thus came. into existence the Triple Alliance, which remained the dominant factor in the inter- national politics of the world down to 1914.
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§ 57 THE " WELTPOLITIK " OF WILLIAM II.
Although Bismarck was thus compelled by circum- stances in 1878-79 to make his choice between Russia and Austria, and although he showed quite clearly that in case of dispute he was on the Austrian side, nevertheless he continued to be as anxious as ever not to break with the Tsar. Hence the Austro-German treaty of 1879 was kept secret as long as possible, and when knowledge of it leaked out, it was explained away as a mere formality — an insur- ance precaution against a contingency which was never likely to arise. Moreover, Bismarck expressed his eager- ness to make a similar mutual-insurance agreement with Russia, and when in 1884 both the Kaiser and the Tsar found themselves in controversy with Britain concerning imperial questions — African in the one case, Central Asian in the other — a three years' treaty was actually con- cluded according to which each ruler promised the other to observe benevolent neutrality in case of war. This treaty was renewed in 1887, and Bismarck was preparing to renew it for a third term in 1890 when he was suddenly driven from the office whence he had dominated Europe for so long a time.
The spectacular fall of Bismarck was due to the advent upon the German throne of a young and ambitious Emperor, William II. The old Kaiser had died in March 1888. His son, Frederick, husband of the Princess Royal of England, honourable and pacific in character, had followed him to the grave after a reign of only three months. The pre- mature death of this enlightened Prince, whose English sympathies might well have enabled him to guide Germany along the lines of peaceful constitutional development, left the fate of the Empire, and to no small extent of the World,
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in the hands of a man of twenty-nine, mediaeval in his conviction of his divine right to rule, proud of his race and his rank, militarist in his instincts and confident in the invincible might of his army, restless in his activity, and limitless in the scope of his ambition. Even before his accession he had chafed at the ascendancy of Bismarck, and had not attempted to conceal his contempt for the old Chancellor's cautious policy. It is said that he gave him a princely warning of impending change by sending him a signed photograph of himself to which he had appended the legend " Cave, adsum," — Beware, I am coming ! After his accession the friction between the two soon became intolerable, and it was ended by the summary " dropping of the pilot."
Bismarck, as we have seen, had limited his concern almost exclusively to the Continent of Europe. He had devoted his energies since 1871 to strengthening the unity and increasing the stability of the German Empire, to keeping France isolated and impotent, to maintaining the Triple Alliance, to preserving good relations with Russia, to preventing the debilitating influence of Queen Victoria and Mr. Gladstone from undermining the German constitution. He had shown but little interest in the affairs of the Near East, and had even declared that the points at issue in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877 were not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier; he had been but languid in his support of the colonial enterprises of the Young Germans, and had loudly expressed the opinion that the Germans were not a colonising nation ; he had done little to foster overseas commerce, and had discountenanced naval and maritime adventures.
William II. soon changed all that. The very first of a long series of visits which he paid to the Courts of Europe
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after his accession was directed to Constantinople. There he displayed himself as the patron and protector of the Sultan, Abdul Hamid II. ; as the friend and ally of Allah ; as the defender of the faithful throughout the Moslem world. In return for his valuable support he received Turkish consent to his prosecution of vast schemes of Oriental exploitation and dominion, towards the realisa- tion of which the Bagdad Railway was to be the main material means. Side by side with his Eastern designs, he developed large plans of colonial expansion, which threatened Morocco, Angola, South Africa, the Congo, Brazil. Then in 1898, with the declaration that " the trident must be in our hand," he began the creation of a great War-Navy.
§ 58. THE TRIPLE ENTENTE
The restless activity of the young Kaiser, his arrogant and aggressive language, his reckless disregard alike of the feelings and the interests of all the non-Germans in the world, soon roused against him, and against the nation which gloried in his Pan-Ttutonism, a formidable and vigilant antagonism.
Russia was rendered suspicious by his refusal in 1890 to renew the " re-insurance " treaty of 1884. Her suspicions were increased when she found herself enmeshed in hostile German intrigue in the Balkans, in Poland, and in the Far East. France, simultaneously, was alarmed by a new truculence in German diplomacy, by military menaces on her frontiers, and by an insidious Prussian penetration of her colonies. This common Teutonic danger, combined with a common antagonism towards Britain — which was regarded during the whole of Victoria's reign as definitely
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pro-German — drew Russia and France together. Finan- cial accommodations, naval visits, interchanges of public courtesies, prepared the way for the formal announcement of a Russo-Frankish Alliance in 1897.
The weight of this new alliance very nearly fell in the first instance on Britain. For in 1898 Britain became in- volved in serious conflict both with Russia in respect of her seizure of Port Arthur and with France in respect of her occupation of Fashoda. Fortunately each of these conflicts was settled without war, but they left much ill- feeling behind them. Hence when in 1899 Britain became engaged in a struggle with the Dutch in South Africa, she found both France and Russia so strongly hostile to her that they even contemplated joint intervention on behalf of the Africanders. This hostility, though it caused un- easiness in Britain, did not cause surprise. But what did cause great amazement, and much indignation, was the fact that Germany also — the ancient and natural ally of this kindred country — manifested an even more intense and malignant hatred of Britain than did either of the other two then unfriendly Powers. The Germans openly expressed the most cordial sympathy with the Dutch, and the only reason why they did not actively intervene on their behalf was that they had no fleet — a deficiency which they proceeded with feverish haste to make good. The British people could not understand why the grandson of Queen Victoria should turn against them ; or why the German nation, whose cause they had so often championed, should, unprovoked, develop so ferocious an animosity. But of the fact there could be no sort of doubt. It was trumpeted by a thousand tongues — in press, from pulpit, on platform ; it was displayed in a thousand acts, both public and private. It was due, no doubt, to the circum-
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stance that, the United Kingdom having been in existence much longer than the Federal Empire, the British had, without intending it, planted themselves across the paths of Germany's expanding ambitions in commerce, colonisa- tion, maritime power, and Oriental dominion.
Be that as it may, Britain realised at the time of the conclusion of the Boer War and the death of Queen Victoria (1901) that her diplomatic isolation had become dangerous. She also realised that whereas German antagonism was new and vital, the antagonisms of France and Russia were merely historic and traditional. Hence she prudently hastened to reshape her foreign policy to suit the conditions of the new age. While doing her best to conciliate the Germans, she drew near to France, settled with her many old-standing causes of dispute (relating to Egypt, Tunis, Morocco, Nigeria, Siam, Madagascar, Newfoundland, etc.), and established in 1904 an entente cordiale ; then, through the good offices of France, she did the same to Russia, and by 1907 succeeded in reaching a similar agreement respect- ing long-disputed claims in Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet. Thus in 1907 the .Triple Entente was i
§ 59. EXCURSIONS AND ALARMS
The Triple Entente between Russia, France, and Britain had none of the substance and solidity of an Alliance. It was a mere state or condition of friendliness, and it was purposely prevented from developing into any more con- crete a tie lest it should be regarded as a challenge to the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy. But Ger- many, although she could not raise any formal objection to Britain's settlement of ancient quarrels with France and Russia — especially as Britain professed her eager desire
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to include Germany within the circle of her grandmotherly benevolence — nevertheless resented greatly the spirit of united antagonism to Teutonic ambitions which she felt had prompted the rapprochement. Hence she did her best to break up the Entente, and to prevent her own " en- circlement " by potential foes.
No sooner had Britain come to terms with France in 1904 than the Kaiser paid a visit to Tangier and ostenta- tiously flouted the French claims to the political protec- torate and commercial control of Morocco (1905). France was compelled to take up the challenge so publicly and provocatively thrown down, and to defend her rights in the Conference of Algeciras, specially called to decide the issue. She emerged triumphant from the ordeal. Britain stood by her ; so did Russia, although Russian aid was at the moment less valuable than usual owing to the recent defeat of Russia in the war with Japan ; Spain, too, opposed the extreme German demands ; even Austria and Italy, Germany's avowed allies, found themselves unable to defend the Kaiser's action. The Germans were furious at what they rightly regarded as a rebuff ; they were angry with Austria and Italy for their lack of enthusiasm ; they were disgusted at the demonstration which had been manifested to them of the strength of the Entente Cordiale.
Just as the Anglo-Frankish settlement of 1904 was followed by the Kaiser's challenge to France in 1905, so was the Anglo-Russian settlement of 1907 followed im- mediately by a German challenge to Russia. In 1908 occurred the Young Turkish revolution which drove Abdul Hamid from his throne, and established the so-called Committee of Union and Progress in power. This up- heaval had a swift sequel in the formal annexation of Bosnia
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and Herzegovina by Austria. Austria's action in thus appropriating trust property which she had been com- missioned to administer was a direct violation of the Treaty of Berlin. Britain, France, and Russia strongly protested against it as such. Serbia, however, did more than protest. The annexation touched her in a vital spot : it threatened the permanent frustration of her dream of a reunited Southern Slavonic nation. Hence she showed signs of fight. Austria prepared to defend her appropria- tions by arms. The Austrian mobilisation caused Russia to move. • Then it was that the Kaiser intervened with decisive effect. He informed the Tsar that any action against Austria would bring the German armies down upon his flank. The Tsar, finding that neither France nor Britain was prepared to enter into a general European war in defence of the Treaty of Berlin, was compelled to leave the Balkan peoples to their fate, and to see Austro- German influence establish itself in indisputable ascend- ancy in Constantinople.
The gratifying success of this blow against Russia en- couraged the Kaiser to further several of his darling pro- jects by another coup directed primarily against Britain, although it had the advantage of touching France as well. In July 1911 he sent a gunboat to Agadir on the Moroccan coast nominally in order " to protect German subjects and clients in those regions," but really in order to plant a German naval station permanently on the lines of the most vital British sea-communications. On this occasion, however, as in 1905, the Kaiser and his Pan-German in- citers had overreached themselves. Pacific as was Britain under Mr. Asquith in 1911, she was prepared to fight to maintain her maritime security. The German fleet was not yet ready to challenge the British ; hence the over-
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haaty Kaiser was constrained to recall his gunboat and abandon his Moroccan scheme.
§ 60. THE DRIFT TOWARDS WAR
Every effort was made by British diplomacy to soften the severity of the rebuff which Germany had brought upon herself by her reckless adventure at Agadir. France was persuaded to surrender to her aggressive enemy a large and valuable tract of the Congo region as a so-called compensation for the waiving of imaginary German claims in Morocco. But the Pan-Germans were at that time abnormally sensitive and truculent, and they raged at the check imposed upon their greater designs. No small part of their fury fell upon the Kaiser and his Government, both of whom they roundly accused of weakness and in- competence. It became clear that another diplomatic defeat such as that of 1911 would be followed by the overthrow of the administration, and probably by an irre- sistible demand that the Kaiser should resign his throne in favour of his eldest son, the fire-breathing Crown Prince. Everything points to the conclusion that in the autumn of 1911 the Kaiser and his ministers came to the decision that German policy — domestic, foreign, and colonial — de- manded war. It was no mere coincidence that there was published at this very time of destiny that classic of im- moral militarism, Bernhardi's Germany and the Next War, a manifesto intended to rouse the Teutonic tribes to that frenzy of blood-lust and land-greed that should make them eager for the impending conflict. This same autumn, too, occurred another event which warned the Austro-German war-makers that if they wanted a conflict they would do well to have it soon. That event was the Italian invasion
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of Tripoli and its conquest from the Turks. This incident was doubly obnoxious to the Teutonic Powers. On the one hand it weakened the Ottoman Empire which at that time they were diligently fostering and favouring in furtherance of their vast Oriental designs. On the other hand it indicated a new independence in Italian politics, an ominous indifference to Austro-German interests and opinions, a serious loosening of the bonds of the Triple Alliance. If they were to have Italy on their side, and not against them, in an international struggle, it would be prudent to precipitate the struggle quickly, while still the obligations of the Triple Alliance remained unrepudiated.
In these circumstances, at the beginning of 1912, the German Government secured the passage through the Reichstag of army and navy bills so exceptional in their magnitude and sensational in their character as clearly to intimate to the more watchful and anxious of European statesmen that Germany was bent on war. If in the opening months of 1912 there still lingered any hesitation in the minds of the Kaiser and his more sober advisers, it was removed during the course of the year by the extremely unwelcome results of the First Balkan War, which broke out in October. The four Christian peoples of the penin- sula— Bulgarians, Serbians, Greeks, Montenegrins — taking advantage of Turkey's preoccupation in Tripoli, composed their mutual quarrels, formed a Balkan League, fell upon Turkey and defeated her, driving her from every part of her European territory except the corner round Constan- tinople. As the permanent consolidation of a Christian federation in the Balkans would mean the entire frustra- tion of the Austro-German Drang nach Osten, the two Central Empires felt it to be imperatively necessary to break up the victorious league. This they did by stirring
ix ERA OF SCHISM OF EUROPE HI
up Bulgaria against Serbia and Greece, and by inciting her to make the sudden attack upon them which started the Second Balkan War (June 1913). They had confidently counted on a Bulgarian triumph in this fratricidal strife. But again they were disillusioned. Bulgaria was badly beaten, and was compelled to accept the humiliating Treaty of Bucarest (August 1913). Serbia, entirely alienated from both Austria and Germany, planted her enhanced power right across the Teutonic pathway to Constantinople and the East. To clear her out of the way nothing remained but for the Central Empires to wage war upon her them- selves. They diligently sought for a pretext which would enable them to demand the co-operation of Italy under the terms of the Triple Alliance. The pretext appeared to be given to them by the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Serajevo on June 28, 1914.
CHAPTER X
i THE CRISIS OF 1914
§ 61. THE SITUATION IN GERMANY
THE crime of Sarajevo directly affected Austria-Hungary only, but it was Germany which resolved that it should be exploited in order to precipitate the long-anticipated and much-needed war. Austria, it is true, burned with desire to settle her account once for all with Serbia, but she dared not make a move, the consequences of which she was well aware might well be world-wide, until she had received the assurance that Germany would back her whatever should betide. The international position of Germany, and the political situation in Germany, were indeed in the summer of 1914 both of them so unsatisfactory and precarious that nothing but immediate and swiftly-success- ful war seemed to give any prospect of effective relief.
In the first place, German foreign policy had brought Germany into so much disfavour, and her military menaces had created so grave a suspicion and irritation throughout the world, that she found her path to further merely- diplomatic triumphs blocked by a general passive resist- ance. She had reached the limits of success by bluster and bluff, by threats and rattling of sabres, by army manoeuvres and naval displays. Russia was not prepared
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to accept a second humiliation such as that inflicted upon her in 1909 ; France had made her last conceivable con- cession in Morocco ; Britain had become thoroughly alarmed at the increase of the German fleet, at the efforts of the German admiralty to secure bases in the Atlantic, and at the fulminations of the German Navy League. All three Powers were looking to their defences, were drawing nearer together, and were taking precautions which seemed likely to put a formidable barrier to further German aggressions. Even the neutralised states of Belgium and Switzerland had taken fright, and were busily engaged in strengthening their forces and fortifications. Germany could advance on the way of world-dominion only by means of violence, and even violence gave promise of success only if employed without delay.
Secondly, German colonial development demanded war. The German overseas territories secured in 1884 onward — four in Africa 1 and three on the Pacific 2 — were, from the point of view of their original purposes, conspicuous failures, no longer capable of being camouflaged by even the most skilfully disposed statistics. They did not attract German emigrants ; they did not provide markets for German manufactures ; they did not furnish Germany with an appreciable fragment of her essential raw materials ; they did not pay their way, but imposed a burden of some hundred million marks a year upon the Imperial exchequer. Unless her whole colonial adventure were to become ridiculous and disastrous, it was necessary for her to acquire some more delectable dominions. She seems to have cast her eyes first upon the colonies of France ; secondly upon those of Britain, in particular South Africa.
1 East Africa, Cameroon, Togoland, South-West Africa. 2 The New Guinea Group, Samoa, Kiao-Chou.
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A third cause inciting the German Imperial Government to war was the rapid growth of social-democracy within Germany itself. Year after year since 1871 the social- democratic vote had grown, until at the election for the Reichstag in January 1912 it had aggregated more than one-third of the whole — over four millions out of twelve. Just as Bismarck had smothered nineteenth-century German liberalism by means of the glories of the three wars of 1864—71, so did the Kaiser, his Junker tempters, and the Great General Staff hope to stifle the growing dis- content of the Teutonic masses by fresh military triumphs, thus postponing the necessity for making concessions to democracy at home by giving Germans the opportunity to extend Deutschtum by violence abroad.
Finally, German commerce and finance required war. Germany was desperately short of capital ; her truculence made it increasingly hard for her to borrow it ; she began to look to colossal war-indemnities as a short and easy way of getting it. The German tariff system necessitated large foreign markets ; but foreign markets were being closed rather than opened to the dumpers of the Father- land ; a war seemed to be the simplest method of breaking down hostile tariff-walls. German industry demanded enhanced supplies of coal and iron ; just beyond the frontiers of the Empire lay the rich stores of France, Luxemburg, and Belgium ; what more obvious than to go in force and take them ?
§ 62. GEEMAN PREPARATIONS FOB WAR
Thus in 1914, apart from all passing and particular causes for conflict, four persistent impulses were driving or drawing the German Imperial Government towards war.
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Strained international relations, frustrated colonial ambi- tions, the growing socialistic menace, impending economic disaster — all seemed to call for the drastic remedy which half a century earlier had been so effectively prescribed and prepared by Bismarck, and adminstered by Moltke. At the same time, too, Austria was lusting for a pretext to fall upon Serbia, in order to sweep her out of her pathways to the Mediterranean and the Bosphorus, and in order to punish her for provocations and insults which had been increasing year by year ever since the accession of the Karageorgevitch dynasty in 1903. Italy, the remaining member of the Triple Alliance, was not eager for war, having as much as she could do to assimilate Tripoli, keep her revolutionaries in order, and pay the enormous expenses of her excessive naval and military establishments. Ger- many realised in fact that Italy's future continuance in the Triple Alliance was very uncertain ; but she felt no doubt of her ability to compel her to perform her treaty obliga- tions, provided that the war were precipitated at an early date, and provided that it were so skilfully procured as to appear a defensive struggle forced upon a pair of pacific empires. Germany had good hope, moreover, that when once the war got going, and a few conspicuous successes had rewarded Teutonic science and prescience, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Rumania would all enter the arena in order to complete and share the triumph of the Kaisers.
In these circumstances German preparations for war, though kept as secret as possible, were extensive and thorough. From the autumn of 1912 they seem to have been deliberately directed towards a culmination in the summer of 1914. They were mainly of four kinds, viz. first, diplomatic ; secondly, military and naval ; thirdly, financial ; fourthly, moral and intellectual. (1) The diplo-
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matic preparations were addressed primarily to interested neutrals and to disaffected minorities in enemy countries. On the one hand, Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, and Den- mark were impressed with the magnitude of German might and the peril of resisting it ; on the other hand, in French Morocco, in Russian Poland, in British India, Egypt, South Africa, Ireland, German intrigue and German gold fomented rebellion. (2) But Germany placed her main confidence not in diplomacy but in military and naval invincibility. Everything was done to make speedy and overwhelming victory a certainty. An Army Act of 1913 increased the Teutonic host on its war footing from 5 to 5J millions ; the workmen at Krupp's armament works were raised in numbers from 60,000 in 1911 to 124,000 in 1913 ; novel and enormous guns were constructed with extreme secrecy ; new Dreadnoughts were launched, more heavily armed than any warships then afloat ; submarines of improved types were clandestinely constructed and crews trained to the highest condition of ruthless skill ; illicit naval bases were secured, and stored with supplies, among the venal coast populations of such countries as Ireland, Spain, and the Argentine Republic ; the Kiel Canal was widened and deepened. Everything was arranged so that German naval and military power should be at its maximum in the middle of 1914. (3) Towards the raising of large supplies of ready money available at the same critical time the energies of the Imperial financiers were directed. In addition to un- usually large naval and military estimates, a special levy on capital to the amount of £52,000,000 was made in the spring of 1914, and placed at the disposal of the war-lords. This levy — unprecedented and unrepeatable — clearly por- tended immediate hostilities, and raised in the minds of German citizens generally the exhilarating expectation of
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new triumphs at hand. (4) In order still further to elevate German hopes, excite German cupidity, inflame German anger, and exasperate German hate, the servile Press was tuned to sing the Pan-German and militarist lay. Nothing seemed to have been left to chance.
§ 63. THE RESPONSE OF THE ENTENTE POWERS
Preparations for war so numerous, so thorough, and so definite in their object, however strenous the effort to keep them concealed, could not fail to display themselves. Europe became alarmed at the obvious and general belli- gerency of Germany, as well as at the insidious and par- ticular campaign of calumny which Austria directed against the Southern Slavs. In all the threatened countries some sort of precautionary measures were taken. In no case, however, were they adequate. Their insufficiency was due partly to the fact that it is difficult to provide against perils the precise nature of which is unknown ; partly to the hope that the menace of war would die away once more as it had done in 1906, 1909, and 1912 ; partly to the un- willingness of the pacific peoples of the Entente to incur vast expense in military preparations ; and partly to a fear lest, if they were to attempt to develop a warlike strength comparable to that of the Central Empires they would merely precipitate the conflict which they desired to prevent. This last, undoubtedly, was one of the main considerations which led politicians of all parties in Britain to reject the proposals of Lord Roberts and the National Service League for a universal military service for purposes of defence. Britain contented herself, and tried to soothe herself into a sense of security, by making cautious additions to her Navy, accompanied by apologies to Germany, assurances of
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friendly consideration, and suggestions for a combined " naval holiday." Her regular Army, consisting of 380,000 men with some 640 guns — though fine in quality and eminently efficient for its work of policing the Empire — was so obviously out of scale with such vast Continental armies as that of Germany with its 5,500,000 men and 4000 guns, or Austria-Hungary with its 2,500,000 men and 2000 guns, that it was hopeless to try to adjust the balance. As a matter of fact, changes made in the British Army during the years 1912-14 actually reduced its scanty numbers. For the rest, the profoundly unwarlike and peace-loving British ministers did their utmost to conciliate and placate their alarming neighbour. They sent missions to Berlin ; they invited Germans of all sorts over here, and offered them lavish hospitality ; they poured upon them assurances of cousinly regard ; they made to them enormous con- cessions in Africa and the East ; they even withdrew all British opposition to the Berlin-Bagdad railway scheme which was clearly full of dangerous possibilities in the directions of Egypt and India. They succeeded* unfortun- ately, not in conciliating and placating Germany, but merely in creating an impression of illimitable softness and amiable feebleness. The Germans came to believe that in no circumstances would Britain fight, and that it would not much matter if she did. It was a belief which, more than any other of their errors, was to prove their undoing.
The other members of the Entente could not, like Britain, increase their sense of security by merely building ships, exchanging deputations, and making concessions. Their laud frontiers marched with those of the German Empire. France, therefore, in response to the large increase in the German Army, felt compelled, by an Act of July 1913, to increase the term of her military service from
x THE CRISIS OF 1914 U9
two years to three. At the same time she took steps to strengthen her fortifications on her north-eastern frontier, and to improve her artillery. Russia, on her side, extended her term of service, already three years, to three and a quarter, and began to pay earnest attention to the develop- ment of her wholly inadequate railway system. Even Belgium, thoroughly frightened by the many signs of military activity on both her frontiers — particularly the French fortifications and the German strategic railways — began hastily to put herself into a posture of defence. She introduced universal military service in June 1913. She also decided to re-arm her border fortresses with new guns, and with charming naivete placed the orders with Krupp's, who carefully inspected the fortresses, sent in estimates, de- manded and received payments in advance, but failed to deliver the goods before August 1914.
§ 64. THE SERAJEVO PRETEXT
The seven months which preceded the fateful August 1914 were full of anxieties and alarms for all European statesmen. Trouble was in the air. Every one felt that the accelerated " race for armaments " could not last much longer, but that it must end either in a general agreement to slacken the pace (of which there was not the slightest sign), or in a general crash of war (the premonitions of which became increasingly evident). In all the countries of the Entente, however, domestic disturbance rather than the growing international peril absorbed the attention of the leading politicians. By a singular and sinister coincidence Russia, France, and Britain became involved simultaneously in constitutional crises which in each case threatened to develop into civil war. In Russia acute industrial
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conflicts culminated in July 1914 in a general strike which looked like the first stage of a sanguinary revolution. In France the Government and even the Republic itself were discredited and endangered by the nauseous revelations of the Caillaux trial, while syndicalist antagonism to the new Army Act threatened to lead to defiance of the law and the disruption of the State. In Britain two problems which had long caused acute dissension had become inflamed beyond precedent to the heat of war : on the one hand, in Ireland Nationalists and Orangemen, drilled and armed, seemed about to seek a solution of their controversy re- specting Home Rule in open fight; on the other hand, labour unrest, which for several years had been growing in magnitude and violence, appeared likely to come to a head in the autumn in the most formidable upheaval ever known in this country. In all these disorders German influence is evident — German doctrine in Russia, German gold in France, German intrigue in Britain and Ireland. The fomenting of rebellion in enemy and neutral states was, indeed, an avowed and prominent part of the German preparation for war and world-dominion.
Such propaganda, corruption, and conspiracy were, however, but the negative elements in German pre-war activity. The positive preparations — the general nature of which we have already noticed — during these critical opening months of 1914 became particular and precise. Much accumulating evidence will have to be examined, tabulated, and interpreted before the full and damning demonstration of Germany's deliberate determination to go to war can be presented. But enough is already known to make her condemnation secure. In May she secretly summoned her reservists from the Far East ; in June from Natal. In June too — or ever the Serajevo crime had
x THE CRISIS OF 1914 151
been perpetrated — she began to get together beds and hospital stores on an extensive scale ; to make elaborate arrangements by means of which her cruisers could procure coal in distant oceans : to enter into contracts with American firms for large supplies unnecessary in peace. Before the end of that month of June 1914, when the widening and deepening of the Kiel Canal were completed, nothing was wanting for the inauguration of the anticipated war except a plausible pretext for its declaration.
The required pretext was provided by the assassination at the hands of Bosnian Slavs of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Dual Monarchy, on June 28 at Serajevo. This abominable crime was so opportune to the Austro-German purpose ; it was accompanied by so many suspicious circumstances ; it was so nicely calculated to alienate the sympathy of the civilised world from the devoted Serbs ; it removed, moreover, a personage whose succession was, because of his policy, so much dreaded by both Austrians and Hungarians, that there is no wonder that the theory has been advanced that it was the work of Austro-Hungarian agents provocateurs. Be that as it may, the Archduke was buried amid few signs of either honour or regret, and then without delay the diplomatic and military possibilities of his murder were exploited to the utmost.
§ 65. THE OUTBREAK OF WAR
On July 5 — just a week after the commission of the crime — there was held at Potsdam a Council, at which high Austrian officials are said to have been present, and at that Council, it is confidently asserted and it appears prob- able, the decision was made that the Serajevo murder should be used as a means for forcing a war upon Serbia —
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a war which should end in her annihilation and in the opening up to Austria and Germany of all the highroads to the East. The fact of the meeting of this cardinal Council was revealed in July 1917 by three German Socialist deputies at the Stockholm Conference ; and one of them (Herr Haase) subsequently repeated his remarks, amid scenes of angry denials and recriminations in the Reichstag. This revelation made by avowed pacifists and anti- nationalists would not carry much weight were it not confirmed from two other very different sources. First, Baron von Wangenheim, German Ambassador at Con- stantinople, on July 15 confided to his Italian colleague the important information that Austria was about to present to Serbia a note so worded as to render war inevitable ; and about the same date he had a conversation with Mr. Morgenthau, the American Minister to the Porte, in which he repeated in some detail the decisions of the Potsdam Council at which he himself had been present. Secondly, Prince Lichnowsky in his confidential Memorandum (published without his assent or knowledge in March 1918) speaks of " the decisive consultation at Potsdam on July 5," and complains bitterly that he was kept in the dark concerning it and its determinations. It is generally accepted that at this Council the general principles of the ultimatum which was to drive Serbia (and probably Russia) to war were agreed upon. It is at any rate certain that on July 18 they were known and approved by the diplomats of Berlin, for on that date Count Lerchenfeld, the Bavarian representative at the Imperial Court, sent to Munich a despatch in which the whole plot is laid bare : the ulti- matum is ready ; its presentation is delayed until the French President is gone to Russia, and the Kaiser on his summer cruise to Norway ; when presented it must lead
x THE CRISIS OF 19H 153
to war ; it is intended to lead to war, and action will so soon follow words that Serbia will be allowed no opportunity to offer satisfaction.
The Austro-Hungarian note to Serbia — agreed upon in substance at Potsdam on July 5, drawn up at Vienna in the middle of the month, held back for strategic reasons — was in the end presented to Serbia on July 23, with an intimation that, unless an entirely favourable reply were received within forty-eight hours, hostilities would at once begin. The demands made in the note were wholly incon- sistent with the continued existence of Serbia as an in- dependent state. They were never meant to be accepted, and if they had been accepted in their entirety, the Dual Monarchy was ready with further demands for precau- tionary occupation of territory and for indemnities for pretended wrongs, that would have forced the desired issue. Behind the Austrian ultimatum there stood the fixed and resolute German " will-to-war," and nothing that Serbia could have conceded would have made the smallest impression upon it. Serbia, indeed, in her reply (July 25), acting on the urgent entreaty of Russia, made an almost abject submission to her enemy, accepting all the main terms of the note, and agreeing to leave the question of the acceptance of the rest (which reduced her to a state of vassalage) to The Hague Tribunal. Within forty-five minutes after receiving this reply the Austro-Hungarian minister at Belgrade with his suite had severed diplomatic relations with Serbia and were on their way to Vienna. On the same day the Austro-Hungarian minister in Berlin had telegraphed to his Government that in German opinion " any postponement of military operations would be regarded as very dangerous in view of intervention by other Powers," and two days later (July 27), when Britain
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was making strenuous efforts to mediate, he wired again confidentially that " the German Government offers the most categorical assurance that it in no wise associates itself with these proposals, and that it is decidedly opposed to their being considered." The Dual Monarchy, thus assured of German support, compelled events to hasten their course, and headed straight for war. On July 28 the formal declaration was made, followed next day by the bombardment of Belgrade.
§ 66. THE MEANING OF THE WAR
During those critical five days, when Austria-Hungary backed by Germany was forcing war upon a reluctant world, what were the other Powers doing ? Each in its own way — and Russia and Britain with particular per- sistence and energy — they were struggling, first, to preserve the peace of Europe, and, secondly, to save Serbia from destruction. Russia for her part made it clear from the beginning that she could not view with indifference the fate of the small Slavonic state that looked to her for protection. She tried to secure from Austria an extension of the absurdly inadequate time allowed for discussion ; she tried to open up on her own account negotiations with Vienna in the hope of obtaining some mitigation of the impossible terms of the ultimatum ; she tried to get Ger- many to act as mediator and moderator. It was all in vain. Austria would not extend the time limit, and would not admit that Russia had any ground to meddle in a purely local dispute : Germany accepted the Austrian view of the situation, and, while openly professing to counsel moderation, secretly urged Austria to proceed swiftly to extremities. Britain — ably and nobly repre-
x THE CRISIS OF 1914 155
sented by Sir Edward Grey — at the very outset took up a European position, contended that a dispute which threatened the very existence of a nation could not be regarded as merely " local," but was one that vitally concerned the whole vicinage of the Continent. She there- fore proposed that a conference should be called to deal with the points at issue between Austria and Serbia, and in particular that Germany, France, Italy, and Great Britain should mediate between the antagonists. Germany declined to further the project for a conference, which accordingly had to be abandoned. She professed, however, to Britain that she was doing her best to restrain her ally. As a matter of fact she was inciting Austria to resist all appeals to reason or mercy.
Austria, as we have seen, under the vigilant and constant impulse of her powerful and truculent ally, took the fatal plunge into war on July 28. Russia's reply to this attack upon Serbia was an order for the mobilisation of all her army corps which faced the Austrian frontier (July 29). This limited Russian mobilisation did not suit the German General Staff, which wanted to use the bogey of a threatened Russian attack upon the German Empire as an excuse for a declaration of war. Hence a false report of a general German mobilisation was circulated in a special edition of a semi-official Berlin newspaper and allowed to remain uncontradicted until it was known that the Russian am- bassador had telegraphed the news to Petrograd (July 30). The news had the effect in Petrograd which it was intended to have. It called forth an order for the complete mobilisa- tion of the Russian forces (July 31). To this Germany responded by an ultimatum demanding demobilisation within twelve hours. This was — and was both meant and understood to be — a declaration of war, which automatic-
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ally came into being on the expiration of the German ultimatum at noon on August 1.
Germany's next concern was to get France in without delay ; for all her plans of campaign were based on the assumption that she could overwhelm France and destroy her armies before the slow-moving Russian hosts could prepare themselves for battle. Hence an ultimatum with an eighteen-hour time limit was launched against France, with further demands in reserve for the surrender of border fortresses if the first demands should prove to be in- sufficiently provocative. France, however, recognised both her duty and her danger. She knew that she must fight or must perish in dishonour. She did not hesitate, and on August 3 she found herself at war with Germany.
Germany now had got what she wanted. She did not want Great Britain at that stage of the conflict to join France and Russia ; nor did she expect that Great Britain would do so. Great Britain at that stage would probably not have done so — for Cabinet, Parliament, and nation were divided in opinion and bewildered with doubt — had not Germany resolved to attack France by way of Belgium. The German violation of Belgium put an end to British hesitation (August 4). The Cabinet decided on immediate intervention, and by that decision the World was saved.
EPILOGUE
§ 67. THE GREAT WAR, 1914-1919
THE story which I set out in briefest outline to tell is now told. I have traced the main course of the political evolu- tion of Europe from the French Revolution to the Great War. I bring my tale to an end with the outbreak of the war rather than with its conclusion, because, although at the time of writing the actual fighting is over, the issue determined, and the Peace Conference sitting, the tremendous events of the world-conflict are still too near to be seen in due proportion, in historic perspective, or with scientific detachment of spirit. The Central Empires have been decisively defeated : that is the outstanding fact. Their overweening ambitions have been humbled into the dust ; their long-concocted conspiracies have been frustrated ; their crimes and their sacrifices have alike been unavailing; they have broken themselves against the wills and the consciences of the free and democratic peoples of the world.
As we look back over the four years of the titanic struggle, during which for not one single day did the combatants relax their mortal grip, we can see that on more than one critical occasion the cause of the Allies was all but lost. When in 1914 the long-trained and well-equipped hosts of the invaders swept through Belgium on towards Pajis ;
157
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when in 1915 the Russian lines were broken and Poland was overrun ; when in 1916 Serbia and Rumania were crushed ; when in 1917 Italy suffered disaster ; and, finally, when in the spring of 1918 the defences of the West were smashed and the anxieties of 1914 were renewed — on all these occasions did an ultimate German victory appear probable. But the meaning of a German victory had from the first been too clearly evident to render its realisation tolerable, and as that meaning became emphasised by arrogant speech and brutal deed, one after another the outraged neutrals threw off their passivity and joined the hard-pressed Allies in their fight for life and liberty ; until finally the United States of America cast their immense moral and material weight into the scale, and rendered the ultimate discomfiture of the Central Empires secure. The issues at stake were seen to be so enormous that no nation that valued justice and honour could dare to stand aside and see them decided by default.
What were the issues in the war ? First, democracy, or the self-determination of free peoples, was at death-grip with military autocracy. Secondly, nationality, or the principle of the autonomous development of organic and self-conscious communities, was in conflict with the claim of a single Power to establish its dominion and enforce its " Kultur " throughout a subject earth. Thirdly, the Commonwealth of Europe, with its concomitant congresses and international law, was pitted against the immoral individualism of the Super-State. Fourthly, the freedom of the sea as created and maintained by the British and the Allied fleets was challenged by the lawless and merciless piracy of the raider and the submarine. Finally, the Hegelian theory of the state, as developed by such practical disciples as Treitschke and Bernhardi, was brought to the death-grapple with the
EPILOGUE 159
older and more humane ideals of Kant. The war was fundamentally and essentially a war of principles and ideals, a struggle of right against violence, a conflict — one might almost venture to say — between God and the Devil.
Rather, however, than dwell on the details of this gigantic Armageddon, which as yet loom too near and vast to be seen distinctly, I prefer to dwell in my Epilogue on a few of the notable features of the nineteenth century which have been necessarily omitted in my rapid survey. I have dwelt in this sketch only on political history, and even on that only in so far as it centred in Europe. The century, nevertheless, was important in many spheres other than political — although it is in the political sphere that the " main currents " have to be sought. Moreover, outside Europe many notable developments took place. I will conclude by indicating in a few broad lines some of the larger features of this setting to my picture.
§ 68. POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS OUTSIDE EUROPE
During the nineteenth century Europe expanded, while the World contracted. The World contracted in the sense that improved means of communication made its most distant parts readily and rapidly accessible as they had never been before. Europe expanded both in the sense that its peoples made themselves dominant over most of the other continents, and in the sense that its civilisation — its arts, sciences, inventions, political and religious ideas — triumphed in universal ascendency. Africa, the knowledge of whose geography beyond the coast-line was in 1800 almost limited to the Sahara Desert and the Mountains of the Moon, was by 1900 explored, mapped out, partitioned, conquered, exploited by aggressive and adventurous whites.
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Central Asia, with its teeming millions of yellow peoples, which in 1800 for the most part lay slumbering in im- memorial stagnation, was in 1900 disturbed and irritated by the too assiduous Occident which had long forced upon its half-awakened reluctance the mixed benefits of an alien culture, combined with the unmixed curse of a foreign devilry. Over the Siberian wastes of Northern Asia Russia made effective her long but nominal sway, and in 1900 was busy completing her great railway to Vladivostock — the link between the Baltic and the Pacific, and a large sector in the girdle of the Globe. In India the British power, which in 1800 was firmly founded in but few regions beyond the eastern seaboard and the valley of the Lower Ganges, i.e. from the Carnatic to Bengal, was by 1900 — with the general consent of the native populations and to their incal- culable advantage — extended over the vast inland regions of Oude, the Mahratta Principalities, the Deccan, Mysore ; and carried even beyond the Punjaub to the great mountain barrier on the north-west frontier of the peninsula. But most remarkable of all was the transformation of Japan. Until well past the middle of the nineteenth century Japan remained quiescent in mediaeval feudalism. Then, stimu- lated by contact with the Western World, alarmed at the encroachments of Occidental commerce, goaded to resent- ment and resistance by the claims of European potentates eager to secure dominion over her, she suddenly threw off the chains of custom and tradition, reorganised her society and her politics, armed herself with Western science, in- formed herself with modern ideas, and stood forth as a new Power capable of holding high debate with the Mightiest of the Earth. She first demonstrated to an astonished
EPILOGUE 161
world the reality of her revival, when in 1894 she inflicted a total defeat upon her colossal neighbour, China. But even this striking demonstration scarcely prepared Western politicians for the spectacle of 1904, when she beat off victoriously the assault of the hosts of the Eussian Empire itself, till then dreaded as invincible in virtue of their mere multitude.
Whilst Japan was thus in the latter half of the century revolutionising the politics of the Western Pacific — and even during the earlier half-century when Japan was still stag- nant in Asiatic mediaevalism — the Southern Pacific became the scene of restless European activity. The British in particular were energetic in planting themselves in Australia, in Tasmania, in New Zealand, and in many an island group. Everywhere, as they made settlements, they developed natural resources, civilised and evangelised the native peoples, introduced the advantages (not unmixed with dis- advantages) of the ordered rule of law. Meantime on the Eastern shores of the Pacific, the New World — discovered in the fifteenth century by European explorers in search of an open route to Asia — was being brought under human control with a rapidity and thoroughness unprecedented in history. The British pushed westward from their Canadian encampments on the St. Lawrence till they reached the Rocky Mountains and the Vancouver coast. The United States, who in 1803 acquired from France, the regions beyond the Mississippi, occupied these central solitudes swiftly, and soon covered them with populous cities. Later cessions from Mexico brought the States to the sea where the Californian gates open upon the boundless expanses of the island-studded ocean. Even South America, whence the Spanish and Portuguese garrisons were expelled in the 'twenties, made some progress in civilisation; although
M
162 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
owing to defects in climate and to the degeneracy of her mixed populations, she did not realise the richness of her inexhaustible resources.
§ 69. INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES
The prime causes of that unification of the world, and of that establishment of the dominance of Europe in the world, which so conspicuously marked the nineteenth century, undoubtedly were the immense improvements in means of communication effected during the period by European ingenuity, and the incalculable increase in mechanical power achieved by European skill. Even before the nineteenth century dawned the invention of gun- powder and the development of firearms had given the white man an incontestable superiority ove* men of the black and yellow races, whose weapons were primitive, and whose military organisation was barbaric. During the nineteenth century the discovery of new explosives, the creation of novel engines of war incomparably more effective than any known to Napoleon, the increase of armies, the strengthening of discipline, and the scientific determination of the principles of strategy and tactics, still further em- phasised and confirmed the Aryan lordship of the Globe.
But the unification of the Globe under the control of men of the white races Was not in the main a unification effected by force. It was the triumph of a civilisation rather than of an armed multitude ; it was accomplished by a peaceful permeation rather than by a succession of military expeditions. Western civilisation owed its success to its inherent merits, to the recognition of these merits by the peoples generally, and to the willing submission of man- kind at large to ideas perceived to be true and customs seen
EPILOGUE 163
to be salutary. In particular the unification of the Globe has been brought about by improvements in means of communication. In all these the developments of the nine- teenth century were remarkable and, taking them together, epoch-making. A.D. 1800, for all its vitality and eager activity, was still in the era of stage-coaches, sailing-ships, horse-couriers, and foot-messengers. It took a week to travel the length of Great Britain ; a month to cross the Atlantic ; half a year to reach Australia. News, moreover, could make its way no faster than could men and goods : the conclusion of peace, for instance, in 1802 had to be dated six months later for India than for Europe. The century, however, had advanced but to its second decade when the results of the series of great inventions began to display themselves. In 1812 the first steam-vessel, Bell's Comet, was launched upon the Clyde ; in 1820 the Irish Sea was crossed under steam, in 1825 the Atlantic ; in 1827 Calcutta was reached from London. Meantime experiments on land were solving the more difficult problem of railway loco- motion. In 1813 Blackett's " Puffing Billy " at Wylam in the Northumberland coalfield began to do something besides puff ; in 1814 George Stephenson put a moving engine on to the way at Killingworth. Passenger traffic was opened up between Stockton and Darlington in 1825 ; between Manchester and Liverpool in 1830 ; between London and Birmingham in 1838. After that a perfect frenzy of rail- way-making seized first England and then Europe. Within a decade both this country and the Continent were covered with a network of lines. The new railways were used to improve the old postal service : an immense step in advance was made in 1840 when the penny postage (irrespective of distance) was introduced, followed next year by the labour- economising and time-saving device of the prepaid postage-
M2
164 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
stamp. The same period saw the application of electricity to practical telegraphy. In 1837 the use of the Morse code enabled long-distance messages to be flashed along the wires ; in 1850 the first submarine cable was laid — the use of which seven years later, at the time" of the Mutiny, probably saved our Indian Empire from destruction. In 1866 the New World was linked to the Old by the first Atlantic line. The telephone dates from 1876 ; wireless telegraphy from 1896.
§ 70. THE ADVANCE OF SCIENCE
The marvellous improvements in means of communica- tion just enumerated were the outcome of physical and chemical researches carried on during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The close of the nineteenth century saw another series of experiments brought to a successful issue, and resulting in still further additions to the means of human transport. In 1885 Daimler made a working model of an internal combustion engine. This, when propelled by petrol — a potent spirit which chemists had succeeded in distilling from mineral oil — was made operative for motor vehicles in 1894. Early in the twentieth century, when the problem of aviation began to be solved, it was ready for transference to the new aeroplanes an<? airships. The first flight across the English Channel in the novel craft was made by Bleriot in 1909.
It is not too much to say that natural science has during the last hundred years completely transformed the condi- tions in which civilised man lives his life. Not only has it given him a command over his environment such as he never had before, and enabled him to subdue to his service forces which hitherto had been intractable ; it has also
EPILOGUE 165
opened his mind to a new view of the universe ; it has revealed to him secrets hidden from the foundation of the world ; it has quickened him to the necessity of re- examining old faiths in the light of novel facts,
Few sciences have shown a more marvellous and bene- ficent advance than has that of medicine. The text-books of a hundred years ago are compendia of superstitious quackery; descriptions of the surgical operations of the period, as recorded in such books as Warren's Diary of a Late Physician, are too ghastly to be tolerable by modern nerves. In 1846 Simpson discovered the use of anaesthetics, and began to employ them in surgery. In 1865 Lister effected a not less radical revolution by the introduction of the antiseptic method of the treatment of wounds. Pasteur at the same time was at work on his wonderful researches in preventive medicine, to apply which the famous Institute was founded in Paris in 1886.
But important as have been these applications of new knowledge to the relief of human pain and the prolongation of mortal life, even more important have been the dis- coveries made in pure science during the century under review. For the mind is greater than the body ; super- stition is more deadly than disease ; truth is of higher value than either health or happiness. Advance has been general all along the line. Mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, biology — these and others akin to them all have shared the common progress. They have aided one another in countless ways : the barriers between them have melted away ; they have become merged in one all- comprehensive revelation. In 1808 Dalton propounded his atomic theory, which, in spite of many modifications, has held its own as the fundamentally sound explanation of the constitution of matter. In 1830 Lyell published his Principles of
166 EUKOPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Geology, which not only displayed the process of the making of the earth, but also indicated the incalculable immensities of time which the process involved : it was a thought- stirring and imagination-rousing disclosure, comparable only to the unveiling of astronomical space by Copernicus in the sixteenth century. In 1847 Helmholtz revolutionised physics by the enunciation of the law of the conservation of energy. In 1859 Darwin not only transformed biology by the doctrine of progress by means of natural selection, but also did much to provide thinkers in all departments of knowledge with the master-key of the evolutionary idea.
§ 71. THE SPEEAD OP EDUCATION
One of the most striking and significant features of the nineteenth century was the fact that the new knowledge brought to light, and the vital ideas generated during its fruitful course, did not remain, as in all earlier ages, the exclusive possession of the select few, but became the heritage of the many. The nineteenth century was the dawn of the era of popular education. At the very be- ginning of the period Condorcet, the Girondin idealist (d. 1794), perceived that the principles of the French Revolution implied an educated proletariat, and that the sovereignty of an illiterate people could but end speedily in brutal tyranny and insane anarchy. He himself perished during the Terror, as a victim to the ignorant fury of the Jacobins, and as a sad exemplar of the truth of his warn- ings. When, however, the worst calamities of that tragic time were overpast, the work of the education of the rising democracy was undertaken with system and energy, and with a definite civic purpose, by more than one Continental government. France, as usual in things of the mind, was
EPILOGUE 167
the pioneer. Napoleon, as First Consul, took up the task of Condorcet. Elementary education, it is true, he left to the communes. But in 1802 he secured the passage of an Act improving the secondary schools (lycees) ; and in 1808 he brought into being his crowning institution, the Uni- versity of France with its seventeen Academies all con- trolled from Paris. Germany, meantime, crushed under the heel of Napoleon by the battles of Austerlitz and Jena, and by the supplementary treaties of Pressburg and Tilsit, began the revival of her national life with an intellectual renais- sance, one of the main incidents of which was the organisa- tion of the University of Berlin by Humboldt in 1809.
As for this country, whereas Scotland from the sixteenth century had had a well -organised system of parish schools whose stern and thorough training prepared the brighter boys of all ranks of life for the finishing and fortifying curriculum of one or other of the four Universities of the North, England in 1800 was still muddling on in voluntarism and chaos. Elementary schools there were none ; the old local grammar schools were stagnant and nearly empty ; the public schools were inefficient, obsolete, corrupt ; the two ancient Universities sunk in mediaeval sloth. In 1807 Mr. Whitbread, a Member of Parliament who was moved by the same ideas as were operative in contemporary France and Germany, brought in a Bill authorising the giving of elementary education at the public cost. The Bill was rejected, as were similar Bills in 1830 and 1833. Voluntary effort, however, thus cast upon its own resources, did not wholly fail. Ever since 1780, when Kobert Eaikes began his great work in Gloucester, something had been done in Sunday schools to lighten the darkness of the people. But more systematic, intensive, and continuous instruction was obviously necessary in the case of children. Hence
168 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
in 1811 the National Society began to establish regular day schools under the auspices of the Church of England ; in 1814 the British and Foreign Schools Association took up the work on non-sectarian lines. In 1833, on the occa- sion of the rejection of the Bill for State education already alluded to, the Government salved its conscience by making a grant in aid of the work of the voluntary organisations. It was a grant of only £20,000 ; but the habit of making a grant became annual, and year by year the amount of the grant increased. Hence followed in 1839 a government department and an inspectorate, whence issued in suc- ceeding years numerous minutes, regulations, and codes. In 1870 elementary education was made compulsory for all children between five and thirteen, and provision was made for the erection and maintenance of the necessary schools where none existed. In 1891 elementary education was made free. Meantime in other spheres of learning rapid progress was being made, and much-needed reforms were being carried through. The old and decayed Grammar Schools were revived and reorganised under the Endowed Schools Act of 1869 ; the Universities of Oxford and Cam- bridge were partially purged of anachronisms by Royal Commissions in 1850 and 1877 ; new Universities were founded and Colleges open to women ; Mechanics Institutes, Adult Schools, Workers' Educational Associations, and similar institutions sought to satisfy the growing hunger of the labouring classes for knowledge.
§ 72. SOCIAL REFORM
The slowly increasing, if still rudimentary, education of the masses of the population necessarily had a profound influence upon the social, political, and religious life of
EPILOGUE 169
Europe. When the proletariat could not read, it inevit- ably remained inert, vegetative, unorganised, uninspired. When it began to read ; when inexpensive newspapers gave it information ; when cheap books, printed in their tens of thousands, stirred it with new ideas, then it commenced to heave with agitation, and to seethe with indefinable discontent. Although the industrial revolution had brought some novel evils in its train, the social and economic condition of the people was not on the whole worse than it had been in earlier days. The picture of an older " Merrie England " which orators were pleased to present to credulous and uncritical audiences was a fig- ment of their excited imaginations. But if in the main — thanks to improved agriculture, mechanical invention, advancing science, widening philanthropy, and deepening religion — the lot of the proletariat was being steadily ameliorated, its slow betterment did not keep pace with the proper demands of the leaders of the awakening nations. The labouring classes, rural and urban, had been kept back not primarily by any conspiracy of other classes, nor by harsh laws and oppressive governments, but partly by circumstances over which no one had had control, and partly by an improvidence and an incontinence of their own which had frustrated all efforts of others to assist them. After the rousing call of the French Revolution, however, they began to be sensible of the appeal of the larger life, and to be conscious that the possibilities of the larger life existed around them. Literature gave them ideas ; newspapers provided them with vehicles for the expression of their grievances and their demands ; public meetings furnished occasions for demonstrations of determination and power ; organisation gave cohesion and weight to their scattered forces ; the gradual acquisition of political influence made
170 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
their mass-momentum effective. The social reform which resulted took many shapes. In England, for example, where the reforming impulse was the most moderate and constitutional, and therefore the most permanently suc- cessful, in 1802, the first of a long series of factory laws was passed for the improvement of the conditions of labour in mills ; in 1807 the slave trade was declared illegal, a preliminary step towards the total abolition of slavery a quarter of a century later ; in 1824 the trade unions were freed from the restrictions imposed upon them by the Anti- Combination Laws ; in 1834 a great Poor Law Act began to deal in a scientific and thorough manner with the prob- lem of poverty, which owing to lax administration during the preceding half-century had become a menace not only to the prosperity but even to the existence of the nation.
On the Continent, however, social reform was attempted with less happy results. The European peoples, long held subject to autocracy, had not received that training in representative government, or in local self -administration, which enabled the British folk to face new crises with the practical skill gained from old experience. They therefore tended more to be led astray by the wandering lights of abstract politicians and irresponsible theorists. Just as the "anarchic fallacies" of Rousseau had misled the Jacobins of the eighteenth century, so did the erroneous and dangerous dogmas of St. Simon, Proudhon, Marx, Bakunin, and Sorel conduct the eager pioneers of the nine- teenth century proletariat into wildernesses of economic folly, and into wasteful battlefields of suicidal class-war, As the twentieth century draws towards the close of its second decade, the prevalence of Syndicalism, Bolshevism, and Anarchism seems to give ground for the pessimism concerning the future of humanity which some profound
EPILOGUE 171
thinkers profess. Symptoms of moral decadence and social disintegration manifest themselves, apparently re- sembling those which portended the decline and fall of the Empire of Rome and the Civilisation of Antiquity. Those, however, who concentrate their attention on these gloomy aspects of the present day seem to me to be taking a need- lessly depressing view of the tendencies of the times. The symptoms which cause disquietude are not the tokens of old age and decay ; they are the wild and foolish excesses of new and inexperienced life. Never was the world younger ; never were men more active and alert ; never were novel ideas more numerous or more operative ; never was science more progressive ; never were saintly souls more resolute in pursuit of truth and right. We are surrounded not by emblems of failing powers, and failing capacities, but by innumerable evidences of the dawn of a new and greater Renaissance.
APPENDIX
CHIEF EUROPEAN RULERS
THB UNITED KINGDOM.
George III. George IV. William IV. . Victoria . Edward VII. . George V.
1760-1820 1820-1830 1830-1837 1837-1901 1901-1910 1910-
FRANCE.
Napoleon I. Louis XVIII. . Charles X. Louis Philippe
[Republic Napoleon III. .
[Republic
1804-1814
1814-1824
1824-1830
1830-1848
1848-1852]
1852-1870
1870- ]
PRUSSIA (GKEMANY).
Frederick William III. . Frederick William IV. William I. ...
„ German Emperor Frederick „ „
William II.
173
1797-1840
1840-1861
1861-18881
1871-1888J
1888
1888-1918
174 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY.
Francis I. Ferdinand I. . Francis Joseph Charles I.
1792-1835 1835-1848 1848-1916 1916-1918
RUSSIA.
Alexander I. . Nicholas I. Alexander II. . Alexander III. Nicholas II.
1801-1825 1825-1855 1855-1881 1881-1894 1894-1917
SARDINIA (ITALY).
Victor Emmanuel I. Charles Felix . Charles Albert Victor Emmanuel II.
King of Italy
Humbert,
Victor Emmanuel III.
1802-1821
1821-1831
1831-1849
1849-1878)
1861-1 878 /
1878-1900
1900-
NAPLES AND SICILY.
Ferdinand I. (restored) Francis I. Ferdinand II. . Francis II.
1815-1825 1825-1830 1830-1859 1859-1860
POPES.
Pius VII. Leo XII. Pius VIII. Gregory XVI. Pius IX. Leo XIII. Pius X. . Benedict XV.
1800-1823 1823-1829 1829-1830 1831-1846 1846-1878 1878-1903 1903-1914 1914-
CHIEF EUROPEAN RULERS
175
SERBIA.
Milosh Obrenovitch Milan Obrenovitch . Michael Obrenovitch Alexander Karageorgevitch Milosh Obrenovitch (restored) Michael Obrenovitch (restored) Milan Obrenovitch . Alexander Obrenovitch Peter Karageorgevitch
1817-1839
1839
1839-1842
1842-1859
1859
1860-1868
1868-1889
1889-1903
1903-
BULGARIA.
Alexander Ferdinand
1879-1887 1887-1918
GEEECE.
Otto George
Constantino Alexander
1832-1862 1863-1913 1913-1917 1917-
RtJMANIA.
Alexander Charles . Ferdinand-
1859-1866 1866-1914 1914-
TURKEY.
Selim III. Mustapha IV. . Mahmoud II. . Abdul Mejid . Abdul Aziz Murad V. Abdul Hamid II. Mohammed V.
1789-1807
1807-1808
1809-1839
1839-1861
1861-1876
1876
1876-1908
1909-
176 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY HOLLAND.
William I. William II. William III. Wilhelmina
1813-1840 1840-1849 1849-1890 1890-
BELCUUM.
Leopold I. Leopold II.
Albert
1831-1865 1865-1909 1909-
SPAIN.
Ferdinand VII. Isabella II.
[Interregnum Amadeus I.
[Republic Alfonso XII. . Maria Alfonso XIII.
1814-1833
1833-1868
1868-1870]
1870-1873
1873-1874]
1874-1885
1885-1886
1886-
SWBDBK AND NoBWAY.
Charles XIII. . Charles XIV. . Oscar I. Charles XV. . Oscar II.
1814-1818 1818-1844 1844-1859 1859-1872 1872-1905
DENMAKK.
Frederick VI. . Christian VIII. Frederick VII. Christian IX. Frederick VIII. Christian X. .
1808-1839 1839-1848 1848-1863 1863-1906 1906-1912 1912-
INDEX
Abdul Hamid II., 134, 137
Aboukir Bay, battle of, 33
Acre, 33
Addington, 34
Adrianople, Treaty of, 76
Africa, 122-3
Agadir, 138
Aix-la-Chapelle, 57, 60
Alexander I., 37, 43, 45, 46, 52, 53, 55,
57, 59, 60, 65, 66, 73, 76 Alexander II., 120, 130 Algeciras, Conference of, 137 America, 19, 67, 81, 161 Amiens, Treaty of, 33-35 Auerstadt, battle of, 36 Austerlitz, battle of, 36
Austria, 32, 36, 38, 40, 43, 46, 49, 55,
58, 62, 63, 74, 79, 90, 95, 07, 104, 106-8, 109, 119, 130, 153
Austro- Prussian War, 108-9
Bagdad Railway, 134 Balance of Power, 12, 110, 114 Balkan League, 140 Balkan Wars, 141 Barbarian invasions, 5 Barbary pirates, 60 Bastille, 25 Batavian Republic, 34 Bavaria, 45, 111 Belgium, 28, 49, 77-9, 156 Bentham, 83 Berlin, 95
Treaty of, 119, 13* Bernadotte, 41 Bernhardi, 139 Bern, Duke of, 61
Bismarck, 107, 112, 119, 121, 128-33,
145
Blanc, Louis, 99 Blanketeers, 57 Boer War, 136 Bosnia, 118, 137 Boulogne, 36 Brazil, 67
Bucharest, Treaty of, 141 Bulgaria, 74, 117, 118, 140-41 Burke, 26 Byzantine Empire, 6
Calomarde, 86
Camperdown, battle of, 23, 32
Campo-Formio, Treaty of, 32
Canning, 66, 70, 80
Canon Law, 8
Carlsbad Decrees, 60, 80
Castleieagh, 43, 54, 55, 56, 59,
66, 69
Cato Street Conspiracy, 61 Cavour, 104, 106 Chambord, Count of, 91 Charles X., 87, 88 Charles Albert, 94, 98 Charles Felix, 64 Chartists, 91, 95, 96 China, 123 Christian religion, 5 Cisalpine Republic, 34 Coalition, First, 31
Second, 33
Third, 36
Fourth, 40
Commune, the, 25, 113 Concert of Europe, 13, 65
177
178 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Constitution of 1812, the Spanish, 58,
62, 63, 64
Continental System, the, 37 Corresponding Societies, 27 Crimean War, 103, 118 Croats, 98 Custozza, 98
Democracy, 27, 51, 82 Denmark, 50, 59 Discoveries, 162 Disraeli, 119, 124 Dreikaiserbundnis, 118, 130 Dual Monarchy, 109
Eastern Question, 117-19, 130
Education, 166-8
Elba, 46
Ems telegram, 112
Entente Cordiale, 136
Eylau, battle of, 36
Fashoda, 135
Ferdinand I., Emperor, 97
Ferdinand I., King of Naples, 63
Ferdinand VII., King of Spain, 57, 66
Fichte, 73
Finland, 49, 73
Francis I., Emperor, 43
Francis Joseph, Emperor, 97, 130
Franco- Prussian War, 111-13
Frankfort, Treaty of, 113
Franz Ferdinand, Archduke, 141-2
Frederick William IIL, 43, 45, 63
Frederick William IV., 95, 98, 107
French Colonies, 121
French Republic, First, 24
Second, 99
Third, 113 French Revolution, First, 14, 20, 22
Second, 85, 86-9
Third, 91-3
Friedland, battle of, 36 " Friends of the People," 28
Garibaldi, 104, 106 German Army Act, 146
Colonies, 121-2, 127-9, 143-4
Confederation, 49, 60, 107
Empire, 114
National Parliament, 95, 99
Girondists, 24, 28, 31
Gladstone, 133
Gorgei, 97
Greece, 64, 74-6, 117
Grey, Sir E. (Viscount), 155
Guizot, 93
Hardenberg, 59, 60 Helvetic Republic, 34 Herzegovina, 118, 138 Hetaireia Philike, 75 Holy Alliance, 53, 69 " Hundred Days," 41 Hungary, 94, 109 Huskisson, 70
Inventions, 162 Ireland, 73, 95 Isabella of Spain, 112 Italy, 34, 35, 37, 39, 49, 64, 73, 85, 90, 94, 103, 104-6, 109, 111, 131, 140
Jacobins, 24, 26, 30 Japan, 123, 160 Jemmappes, battle of, 24 Jena, battle of, 28, 36 Jerome Bonaparte, 37 Joseph Bonaparte, 37
Kiel Canal, 146 Koniggratz, battle of, 108 Kossuth, 97 Kidturkampf, 116
Lafayette, 19
Laibach, Congress of, 63
Lamartine, 99
League of Nations, 2
Leopold I., King of the Belgians, 79-
80
Leopold II., Emperor, 23 Leopold of Hohenzollern, 112 Ligurian Republic, 34 Liverpool, Lord, 69 Louis XIV., 18 Louis XV., 18
Louis XVI., 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 31, 42 Louis XVII., 42
Louis XVIII., 42, 47, 68, 61, 86, 87 Louis Blanc, 99 Louis Bonaparte, 37
INDEX
179
Louis Napoleon. See Napoleon ILL Louis Philippe, 80, 89, 91-3 Luneville, Treaty of, 33
Magenta, battle of, 105
Mahmoud II., 117
Malta, 35
Marie Antoinette, 19
Martignac, 87
Marx, 91
Mazzini, 73, 82, 98, 104
Mediaeval Christendom, 5
Metternich, 57, 58, 64, 65, 73, 80, 85,
90, 106 Metz, 113 Mexico, 67, 103 Milan, 94 Mirabeau, 23 Moltke, 108
Monroe Doctrine, 67, 81, 123 Montenegro, 117 Montesquieu, 17 Morocco, 137-9
Naples, 50, 62, 63, 106 Napoleon I., 32-48 Napoleon III., 91, 101-13 " Napoleonic Idea," 102 Nationality, 27, 51, 70 " National Workshops," 100 Navarino, battle of, 76 Necker, 20, 21 Nelson, 33, 36 Netherlands, 32, 49, 77-9 Nicholas I., 74, 81, 98, 120 Norway, 49 Novara, first battle, 64
second battle, 98 " November Decrees," 27
Otto of Bavaria, King of Greece, 76 Owen, Robert, 91
Pacific Ocean, 161 Paine, T., 28 Papacy, 9
Papal States, 50, 56, 114 Paris, siege of, 113
Treaty of (1783), 19
Treaty of (1814), 42
Treaty of (1815), 50, 55
Parma, 34 Peel, 70
Peninsular War, 38 Peru, 67
Peterloo Riot, 61 Philosophical Radicals, 83 Piedmont, 34 Pitt, William, 33, 36 Pius IX., 90, 94 Plombieres, Compact of, 105 Poland, 44, 49, 73 Polignac, Prince, 87-8 Port Arthur, 135 Portugal, 37, 38 Potsdam Conference, 151-2 Prague, Treaty of, 109 Pressburg, Treaty of, 36 Proudhon, 83, 91
Prussia, 32, 49, 59, 95, 107, 109, 110, 112, 114
Quadruple Alliance, 53, 55, 62, 65,
Reformation, the, 7
Reign of Terror, the, 24
Renaissance, the, 7
Revolutionary War, the, 31
Pvieti, battle of, 63
" Righte of Man," 26, 28, 33
Robespierre, 24
Roman Catholic Church, 6
Empire, 3
Law, 8 Roon, 108 Rousseau, 17 Rumania, 117 Russia, 118, 120 Russo-French Alliance, 135 Russo-Turkish Wars, 76, 118, 133
Sadowa, battle of, 108 St. Simon, 83 St Vincent, battle of, 32 San Stefano, Treaty of, 119 Sardinia, 32, 106 Saxony, 44, 49 Schleswig-Holstein, 108, 109 Science, advance of, 164 Sedan, battle of, 112, 129
180 EUEOPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Serajevo, 141-2, 149, 150
Serbia, 117, 145
" Seven Acts," the, 61
Siberia, 160
Social Reform, 168-71
Solferino, battle of, 105
Spa Field Eiot, 57
Spain, 32, 38, 59, 66
Spanish America, 59, 66, 81
States-General, the French, 20
Sweden, 49
Switzerland, 34, 49
Talleyrand, 43 Teplitz, Congress of, 60 Thiere, 93, 113
Third Estate, 14, 15, 16, 20, 21 Tilsit, Treaty of, 37 Trafalgar, battle of, 36 Trans-Siberian Railway, 120 Triple Alliance, 129, 145
Entente, 136 Troppau, Congress of, 62 Turgot, 19 Turkey, 74, 117, 137
Utrecht, Treaty of, 12
Valmy, battle of, 24
Varennes, flight to, 23
Vatican Council, 114
Verona, Congress of, 65, 68
Victor Emmanuel I., 56
Victor Emmanuel II., 104, 106, 111,
114
Victoria, 91, 133, 135-6 Vienna, Congress of, 43-52 Vilagos, capitulation, 98 Villafranca, Treaty of, 105 Vfflele, 86, 87 Voltaire, 17
Wars of Liberation, 29, 37 Warsaw, Grand Duchy, 45 Waterloo, battle of, 38, 43, 48, 66,
69, 91
William I., 107, 130 William II., 132-4, 137-9, 152 William of Orange, 78, 79 World-History, Study of, 1
Young, A., 17
" Young Italy," 90
Zottverein, 107
THE END
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