(SornpU ICaui i>rlynol IGihtara Cornell University Library D 359.H43 3 1924 024 835 617 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924024835617 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Price 7s. 6Cl. net. THE MAIN CURRENTS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY 1815-1915 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. SPECTATOR.— '^ Pi. valuable and thoughtful volume." NEW EC/ROPE. — "A very interesting panorama of Europe in the nineteenth century. . . . Cannot fail to do an immense amount of good." . DAILY TELEGRAPH.—'' V3\\x3h\% and intensely interesting." DAILY iVlffWi".— "Interesting and worth reading." OUTLOOK.—" One of the best text-books on the subject that have been written." PALL MALL GAZETTE.—" ProkssorHearnshaw's brilliant new book." THE HEAR EAST.~"'We can recommend no more stimulating introduction to the subject than that which Professor Hearnshaw has provided." SCHOOL WORLD.—" Decidedly useful and sugges- tive. . . . These printed lectures retain- what must have been their original charm." SCOTSMAN.— "This book may be confidently re- commended as a trenchant, skilful, and frequently illumin- ative piece of work." GLASGOW HERALD.— "ExceWent reading for the intelligent^ man who, not being a professional student of history, wishes to trace the growth of the convulsion^ that has rent the world." BELFAST NEWS LETTER.— " A hook of great interest and importance to students of the history and inter- national relations of Europe." SOUTHERN DAILY ECHO.— "A vital book; in- tensely helpful to those who desire to understand the events leading up to the war." MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED, ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON, W.C.2. AN OUTLINE SKETCH OF THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON ■ BOMBAY • CALCUTTA • MADRAS MELHOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK ■ BOSTON • CHICAGO DALLAS . SAN FBANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd, TORONTO AN OUTLINE SKETCH OF THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 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-I915," "DEMOCRACY AT THE CROSSWAYS ETC. ETC. MACMILLAN AND CO.. LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1919 ^UO^^I COPYRIGHT TO MY OLD TRIENDS AND FELLOW-STUDENTS OF THE workers' educational association AND THE ADULT schools UNION IN HAMPSHIRE AND NORTHUMBERLAND PREFACE Two years ago the present writer published a book (now in its fourth impression) entitled Main Cwrents of European History, 1815-1916. 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 Beading 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 Cwrents, 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 worts 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 diflSculty. 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. Univeesitt of Lot^don, King's Colleoe, May 27, 1919. CONTENTS INTKODUCTION S&CT. PAGE 1. The Study of World-History ■ 1 2. The Roman Empire 3 3. Mediaeval Christendom S 4. The Renaissance and the Refoi'mation 7 5. The Modern State System 9 6. The Antecedents of the French Revolution . . .11 CHAPTEK I Dbmooraoy 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 CHAPTEK II Nationality and the Great Wars 13. Democracy and Nationality 27 14. Causes of the Great Wars 29 16. The RevoIuUonary War, 1792-1802 31 X EUEOPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY BECT. PASS 16. The Interval of Truce, 1802-3 33 17. The Napoleonic War, 1803-14 35 18. Efifeets of the Great Wars 37 CHAPTEE III The Settlement of 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 CHAPTEE IV The Era op the Conqhbsses, 1815-1822 25. The Holy Alliance and the Quadruple Alliance ... 53 26. Reaction and Unrest, 1815-18 55 27. The Congress of Aix-la-Ohapelle 67 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 CHAPTEE V The Era op 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 CHAPTEE VI The Eha 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 of Nationality, 1848-1871 43. The' Democratic DibScle 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 Empii-e .... 106 48. The Reconstruction of Central Europe .... 109 CHAPTER VIII The Era of 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 CHAPTER IX The Era of the Schism of Europe, 1901-1914 55. International Politics after Sedan 127 56. Triple Alliance 129 57. The "Weltpolitik" of William II 182 68. 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 or 1914 61. The Situation in Gei-many . 62. German Preparations for "War 63. The Eesponse of the Entente Powers 64. The Serajevo Pretext . 65. The Outbreak of War . 66. The Meaning of the War . 142 144 147 149 151 154 EPILOGUE 67. The Great War, 1914-1919 167 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 FACINO FAQE 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-Histoey 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 speU 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 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 estabUshment 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 difiScult 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 Britishj 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 CENTUEY 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, lUyrians, 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 morale. Although Greece became politieally subject to Rome, intellectually she established herself as hei 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 monarcliy in Northern Graul ; the Burgundians 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 efieotive 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 Theodorio 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 doms 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 defined by Diocletian and Constantine. 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 Anglarum, the Lex Salica, and the Lex Bwgun- 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 Emijire 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 agcendanoy. The solidarity of the CathoHc 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 EUEOPE 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 imifying powers of Papacy and Empire left the way open for the development of new schisms of a different kind. They were due 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 Unguistic, 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 Englisli 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 efEort 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 «till 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 op 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 fiist 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, Uke 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. Ofily 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. CHAPTBR I democracy and the french revolution § 7. Arrival op the Third Estate The French Revolution of tke eighteenth century lanks with the seventeenth-century Great Rebellion in England and the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation in Gtermany as one of those prime outstanding events in European history which have had profound and enduring efiects 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 U OH. I DEMOCRACY & THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 15 peoples of Christendom. They had had the monopoly of such learning as had survived the disruption of the Roman Empire ; they were believed to possess, as heirs of Christ and the Apostles, supernatural gifts, which gave them control of the keys of death and hell. So long as their intellectual ascendancy continued unimpaired, and so long as their lofty claims to ghostly prerogatives were generally admitted, they remained established as the un- questioned guardians and tutors of a childlike world. On the whole, though they were subject to the limitations of their age, they used their enormous powers not ill. But the time came when the days of their tutorship were accomplished. With the Renaissance the laity of the " third estate " began to assert an independence of thought, and to display an energy of doubt, that shook off clerical control and in- augurated the age of secularity and science. Side by side with the mediaeval supremacy of the Church had been the military ascendancy of the nobles. Their impregnable castles, their strong defensive armour, their formidable weapons of assault, had made them, though few in numbers, unassailably dominant. The unarmed, undisciplined multi- tudes of the peasantry lay before them as grass before the reapers. But they' too, like the clergy, had had their functions to perform, and their duties to fulfil, in the Middle Ages ; and, like the clergy, they had accomplished them with normal human fidelity. Their function had been to establish order in a period of extreme lawlessness, and to defend Christendom from successive hordes of infidel invaders — Hun, Avar, Saracen, Magyar, Viking. But about the time of the Renaissance their work too was completed. Strong national monarchies had been founded -, the reign of law had been inaugurated ; the power of the infidels broken. This change in circumstances synchron- 16 EUKOPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY oh. ised with an important change in the art of war. Gun- powder had come into common use during the fourteenth century, and as artillery and fire-arms superseded battering- rams and bows, the feudal castle' and the armour-clad knight became anachronisms. The " third estate " re- covered its superiority on the field of battle. Gunpowder and the printing-press were the heralds of the new age. § 8. The Third Estate in Feance In no European country did clericaUsm 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 poUtical 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 coimtry the tenantry were still irritated and harassed- by feudal obligations, such as those which required them to grind 18 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ch. 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 Fbbnch 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 bn 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 prder to make it possible for the government to pay its I DEMOCRACY & THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 19 way 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 humiUating peace at Paris and Versailles in 1783 — had three important efiects 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 repubUcan 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, 20 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ch 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 coidd 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 EngUsh ParUament. 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 decUned into insignificance and impotence, until in 1614 it had alto- gether ceased to meet. This remarkable difference of fate wa^ 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, whUe 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 ParUament 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 paralleUsm, 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 22 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ch. extremer fanatics of 1649-60 ; Napoleon and Cromwell, both products of the Revolution, appear as kindred clearers of the Revolutionary mess. But these resemblances are superficial ; the difEerenoes 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 Couesb of 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- General 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— I DEMOCRACY & THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 23 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 tii» 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 Chajnp 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 dispoesessed 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 constitutionaUsts, 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 24 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY oh. Paria virtually a prisoner, and when, in October 1791, the first Legislative Assembly met under the new constitution, he found himself bereft of all efEective 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 — ^uiged 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. 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 pubUc 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 eztremest 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 symboUc event, typifying the passing of an evil age. 26 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY oh. i Good wail 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 coxmtless 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 proclaimfd, 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 aU 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 especiaUy among the disaiEected populations of the Austrian Netherlands, the German principalities, the Italian duchies, and the Spanish monarchy, " Corresponding Societies " of some sort oi other were oigamaed, and a revolutionary propaganda inaugurated. Even in England there was a sympathetic movement. Members of Parliament favour- 27 28 EUEOPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY oh. 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 cosmopohtan 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- NATIONALITY AND THE GREAT WARS 29 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 poUtics. Let us trace a little more in detail how this transition from social cosmopolitanism to national particularism took place. § 14. Causes of the Geeat Waks 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 aflSicted 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 30 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ch. in particular had brought the French into the mood for 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 reUeve 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 the 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 immoraUty, 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 Wak, 1792-1802 Whenin 1792-93 the first coalition of siximportant 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- 32 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY ch 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 coaUtion up. They overran and annexed Holland in the winter of 1794-95; compelled Prussia and Spain to withdraw from the coaU- 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 II NATIONALITY AND THE GREAT WAES 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 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 imsatisfied. It left Britain still supreme on the sea, and so an incessant and ubiquitous obstacle to the reaUaation 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 poUcy whose convergent end was world-dominion. First, he pursued the pohoy of centraUsation 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 Repubhc of Holland, the Cisalpine Republic of North Italy, the Ligurian Repubhc of the Genoese littoral, the Helvetic Repubhc 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 n NATIONALITY AND THE GREAT WARS 35 of Sardinia in lieu of Piedmont, and the cessation of tie Egyptian enterprise ; and (2) it announced its intention to postpone tte 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 rpfusal 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 diUgently — ^training men, collecting stores, forming alliances, mobUising 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 Wab, 1803-14 The Napoleonic war, which its originator had expected woidd 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 oh. 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 organisiag against him the third coalition, which during 1805 was joined in turn by Russia (AprU), 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 WAE8 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 Gkeat 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 ch. British power to the sea, and to avoid entanglement in European campaigns. The appeal of the Portuguese caused the policy of exclusive navalism to he ahandoned ; and the despatch of an army to Lishon 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 ofE the aUen yoke of the now whoUy imperial French. The day of insurgent nationality had dawned. In 1809 Austria caught the infection and made a fierce but . vain efEort 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, ItaUans, 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 briUiant 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 AUied 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 efEect 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, AusterUtz, 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 nationaUty 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 nationahty had become, almost equally with the principle of democracy, a leading and controlling factor in Continental politics. CHAPTEE 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, and Prussia — 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 OP 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 stimulated to an intensity of passion never before known in Europe, the practice of internationality, 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 pther 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 Eevolutionary 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- ment should be set up in France. No less than four pro- posals were mooted. The Bonapartists hoped that the abdication of Napoleon would be followed automatically by the recognition of " the King of Eome," 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 Frencliman Talleyrand upon Alexander of Russia, and by Alexander upon tbe 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 Paris (May 30, 1814) no indemnity was demanded, no return of the plundered art treasures of Europe was stipulated. Further, the boundaries of Prance were allowed to remain Ill THE SETTLEMENT OP 1815 43 as they had existed onNovember 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 AlUes 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 of 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 ch. Empire " wMch after a thousand years of spectral existence tad in 1806 vanislied for ever from tie 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 O^trogothic 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 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 diflB.cult, 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 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; THE SETTLEMENT OF 181^ 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 Eussian 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 EUEOPE 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 aU 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 .&i 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 ui THE SETTLEMENT OF 1815 47 Bucoeas 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 pohtics, 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 skUI, 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 Eepubhc and the Empire had been abandoned in favour of the iU-omened Ulies 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 satelUtes with conspicuous feebleness q.nd cowardice fled before his 48 EUEOPB IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ch. approach, and sought sanctuary with the English in Belgium; on March 20 the Napoleonic Empire was re- established in the capital. The AlUes, 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 AUiance 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 poUcy 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 of the outbreak of the war of 1914; — ^were as follows. First, 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 Khine 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. Secondly, a new con- stitution was provided for Germany. Since the Austrian Hapsburgs declined to take up again the burden of the " Holy Koman 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 Bussia, 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 EUEOPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY oh. Hapsburg House) ; Naples and Lucca (to Bourbons), and the States of the Cburch. (to tte 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 Britain, on the other hand, was allowed to keep, as a reward for her immense exertions and sacrifices, such odds and ends as HeUgoland, 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 galleries of the Continent their plundered treasures. § 24. The Vienna Settlement Such were the main lines of th^ famous " treaty system " of 1815 which was destined to determine the international politics of Europe for nearly a century. It embodied an m THE SETTLEMENT OF 1815 , 51 attempt to restore the Continent, so far as was possible, to the conditions which had prevailed before the Revolu- 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- ever, the repudiation of the principles of " nationality " 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 efEorts to stamp them out of existence. For, taken together, these two principles connoted and constituted " The Revolu- 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 oh. m 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 efiorts to erect barriers, provide compensation, administer punishments, and adjudge re- wards, from doing such violences to national sentiments as were involved in placing the Itahans 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 these 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 eea op the congresses, 1815-1822 § 25. The Holy Alliance and the Quadbuple 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 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 made ; to establish guarantees for the preservation of peace and the suppression of revolution ; to found a permanent Concert 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 53 54 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY on. respect of the indirect part wUcli 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 formaUsm of Greek Orthodoxy, which on June 4, 1815, he caught from the Livonian Baroness von Krudener. 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 AlUance " 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 Umit 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 reUgion 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 Chaumont 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 Uneest, 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 56 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ch. irresistible force of Wellington's army of occupation with its limitless reserves. Never tad 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 afEairs of states whose governments were menaced by revolution ? Russia, Austria, and Prussia 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 jv ERA OP 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 Mettemich, who realised clearly and correctly that on the one hand the principle of nationality was a disrup- tive force which woidd split the Austrian Empire into a dozen antagonistic fragments, and that on the other hand the principle of democracy was an explosive force which would blow the Hapsburg autocracy sky-high. Metternich 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 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- ChapeUe from the Congress of Vienna. Even in England such timiultuary 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 enlaiged franchise and parliamentary reform. In the Latin kingdoms of Southern Europe vast volumes of fluid discontent had crystallised themselves into a sohd 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 ia 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 gratifjring to Metternich, and indicative to all the world of a complete recovery from the fevers of 1789. They had dismissed Republican ofiB.cials, 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 tte 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 EUEOPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ch. of the Barbary pirates. Even at tMs 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 TepUtz 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 aU 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 efEort 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 Wtirtemberg — 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 measxires 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." 62 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY oh. 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 Teoppau, Laibach, AND Veeona 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 Usten 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 and the King of Prussia 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 ofiensively ignored, and Austria was commissioned on behalf of the Concert — now reduced to the three autocracies of the Romanoffs, the Hapsburgs, and the HohenzoUerns — 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 64 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY oh. diplomats had dispersed from Laibach, news reached them that two more upheavals had taken place. The first was in Piedmont, 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, 1821, and placed the reactionary Charles Felix on the throne. The second upheaval was a much more disquieting affair. It was the 'revolt of the Greeks against the Sultan. 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 itseH 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 afiairs 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. [V ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 65 § 30. Break-up of the Concert of Edrope 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 shaU 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 coimtry 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, ia 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 aU the Pacific littoral, was more than willing to give him the desired assistance. In these circumstancea 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 lea^e 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 Revolution," and they suspected " The Revolution " in every popular movement, however natural and innocent it OH. y 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 maimer 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 affairs of sovereign independent states was maintained even by statesmen 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. 70 EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY oh. 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 meanrag of demo- cracy ; aU of them had sympathy with the principle of nationality. § 32. The Principle of Nationality The principle of nationality, although duriag 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 y ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 71 between the capitalist howgeoisie 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 deUverance 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 conamon 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 nationaUty as that principle, compounded of past traditions, present interests,