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THE MAIN CURRENTS OF
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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-
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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
34 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CH.
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
36 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cm.
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
58 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CH.
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
iv ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 59
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
60 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CH.
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
iv ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 61
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,
62 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
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
iv ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 63
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.
iv ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 65
§ 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
66 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY OH.
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
iv ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 67
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
68
en. v ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 69
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
v ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 71
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.
v ERA OP NATIONAL REVOLTS 73
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
v ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 75
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).
v ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 77
§ 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-
v ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 79
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
v ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 81
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
82
OH. vi ERA OF DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 83
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-
vi ERA OF DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 85
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
vi ERA OF DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 87
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
vr ERA OF DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 89
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
vr ERA OF DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 91
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
vi ERA OF DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 93
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
vr ERA OF DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 95
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.
96
CH. vn ERA OF TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 97
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.
vn ERA OF TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 99
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
vii EKA OF TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 101
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
vn ERA OF TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 103
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,
vii EEA OF TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 105
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
vii ERA OF TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 107
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).
viz ERA OF TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 109
§ 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
vii ERA OF TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 111
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
112
CH. vni ERA OF IMPERIAL EXPANSION 113
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
vni ERA OF IMPERIAL EXPANSION 115
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
116 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CH.
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.
vni ERA OF IMPERIAL EXPANSION 117
§ 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
118 EUEOPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY OH.
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
viii ERA OF IMPERIAL EXPANSION 119
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.
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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
vni EEA OF IMPEEIAL EXPANSION 123
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
124 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CH.
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
126 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CH. vin
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
128 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CH.
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
ix ERA OF SCHISM OF EUROPE 129
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
130 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CH.
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
ix ERA OF SCHISM OF EUROPE 131
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.
132 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CH.
§ 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,
ix ERA OF SCHISM OF EUROPE 133
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
134 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY on.
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
ix ERA OF SCHISM OF EUROPE 135
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-
136 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CH.
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
ix ERA OF SCHISM OF EUROPE 137
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
138 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CH.
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-
ix ERA OF SCHISM OF EUROPE 139
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
HO EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CH.
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
142
OH. x THE CRISIS OF 1914 143
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.
144 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CH.
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.
THE CRISIS OF 19H 145
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-
146 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CH.
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
x THE CKISIS OF 1914 147
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
154 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CH.
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-
156 EUEOPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY OH. x
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
Printed ' ly R. & R- CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh-
Hearnshaw, John Fossey Cobb
An outline sketch of the
political history of Europe
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
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