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THE CRIMES 
 
 11 
 
 HOUSE OF HAPSBURG 
 
 ITS OWN LIEGE SUBJECTS. 
 
 F. W. NEW MAN, 
 
 FORMERLY FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD; ANJ) AUTHOR OF 
 " A HISTORY OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY." 
 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 JOHN CHAPMAN, 142, STtiAND. 
 
 M.0CCC.1.UI. 
 

 LONDON : 
 PRINTED BY WOODFALL AND KINDER, 
 
 ANGEL COURT, SKINNER STREET. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The following pages had been compiled to be published in a 
 channel in which the writer's name would have been superfluous. 
 I now think it proper to avow myself, not because there is here 
 any original research, for there is none ; but to guarantee, in 
 some degree, to the reader, that the statement of broad facts is 
 faithful. Original research is excellent in calm times ; but after 
 the recent horrors, it is but reasonable to trust more to the 
 standard historians than to any new researches concerning 
 ancient affairs. In respect to them, I have acted the part of a 
 mere extractor and abridger from common books, chiefly from 
 Archdeacon Coxe's House of Austria, Robertson's Charles V., 
 and Grattan's History of the Netherlands. On the recent events 
 I will only say, that I have taken pains to inform myself aright 
 from various sources. The Hungarian facts are now quite 
 beyond dispute, and the Austrian organs are wise enough to 
 avoid the argument. 
 
 FRANCIS W. NEWMAN. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. — What is Political Crime ? 
 
 . 1 
 
 II. — Rise of the House of Austria 
 
 . 3 
 
 III. — Castile ...... 
 
 . 5 
 
 IV. — Valencia and Aragon . 
 
 . 9 
 
 V. — Bohemia .... 
 
 . U 
 
 VI. — Protestant Gtermany . 
 
 . 20 
 
 VII. — Hereditary States of Austria 
 
 . 24 
 
 VIII. — Netherlands .... 
 
 . 25 
 
 IX. — Belgium . 
 
 . 32 
 
 X. — Protestants and Moors of Spain 
 
 . 33 
 
 XI. — Austrian Poland 
 
 . 35 
 
 XII. — Hungary .... 
 
 . 38 
 
 XIII. — Croats and Serbs 
 
 . 47 
 
 XIV. — The Stadion Constitution 
 
 . 48 
 
 XV. — Austrian Italy .... 
 
 . 49 
 
 XVI.— Sicily ..... 
 
 . 54 
 
 XVII. — What is all this to England ? 
 
 . ,55 
 
THE CRIMES 
 
 OF THE 
 
 HOUSE OF AUSTRIA 
 
 AGAINST ITS OWN LIEGE SUBJECTS. 
 
 I.— WHAT IS POLITICAL CEIME ? 
 
 From causes which we cannot here stop to analyze, neither 
 Religion nor Philosophy has succeeded in carrying private morality 
 into public life. All great empires have been born in crime. 
 Every dynasty, and every republic, lies open to so many grave 
 imputations, that official men and soldiers are apt to look on 
 princes and statesmen, like the gods of Paganism, as free from 
 moral restraints. Since war has become a profession, a few of 
 its atrocities have been lessened ; but if we except this, the 
 morality of international statesmanship in general is no higher 
 now than among the old Greeks and Komans. In such a state 
 of things it may seem absurd to censure any one power in par- 
 ticular. 
 
 Nor do we for a moment imagine that in any class of political 
 crime, the House of Austria is the sole offender. The House of 
 Bourbon preceded it in personal wickednesses ; the House of 
 Bonaparte seems anxious not to be behind it; the House of 
 Stuart tried to imitate it, but failed ; the petty tyrants of Ger- 
 many and Italy have been often as criminal. But the Hapsburg 
 princes have been signal for the extraordinary number of similar 
 offences, and the high development of the freedom which they 
 crushed. Among them it is not one preternaturally wicked 
 man who has done the foul deeds, and left a clear field to the 
 
 B 
 
2 WHAT IS POLITICAL CRIME? 
 
 dynasty : many treacherous emperors of the Austrian House have 
 been personally amiable. We do not overlook the fact, that the 
 guilt of kings is shared by their ministers ; though it is impossi- 
 ble to exculpate a monarch from the acts of his servants, when 
 those servants are not imposed on him by a parliament, but are 
 maintained by him against the people and its organs. When 
 a wicked policy is hereditary in a court, and sustains itself 
 under better and worse princes alike, this is the greatest of all 
 testimonies that the dynasty is incurably evil; 
 
 Does some reader forbid us to bring the deeds of statesmen to 
 the tests of pure religion or refined philosophy ? Well : let us 
 then try them by the notions of old Paganism. Let it be 
 imagined for a moment, that every nation is allowed to treat 
 foreigners as a natural prey, — that there is no moral bond pre- 
 existing between nation and nation, or primitively between 
 family and family, — but that all moral obligation rises out of 
 treaties, oaths, and laws. The Greek Xenopbon, travelling 
 through a foreign country, urged his comrades not to make 
 treaties of amity with the people, because this would be. an 
 obstacle to replenishing the soldiers' empty pockets by slaughter 
 and plunder. Who will say that Xenophon's code of morality 
 was too elevated to apply to the princes of our age, and to their 
 Jesuit instructors ? No beginning of national life, ever so rude, 
 is possible, without some sense that Law and Oaths are sacred, 
 and eminently those oaths which are taken by an official Pro- 
 tector. The crime which history charges against the House of 
 Austria, is not merely that they bave waged unjust and cruel 
 wars against foreigners, (that is guilt too common here to 
 touch ;) but that having been freely accepted to protect the laws 
 and liberties of a large number of nations, they have in every 
 instance played the part of a guardian who murders his ward. 
 Such a charge does not take for granted that in every contro- 
 versy between a King and a Nation the king is necessarily alone 
 in the wrong ; but solely that no lawlessness of individuals will 
 justify the official guardian of the laws" in extinguishing law. 
 The House of Hapsburg was the constitutional ruler over 
 nations once the freest in Europe : over Austria, the Nether- 
 lands, Castile, Aragon, Sicily, Bohemia, Hungary, the German 
 empire ; — to say nothing of Lombardy and Polish Galicia, which 
 were conquered provinces. In every instance except Sicily 
 (which after all is no real exception) the Austrian dynasty 
 flagrantly betrayed its solemn trust ; and, — generally by open 
 violence and perfidious ferocity, else by gradual encroachments, 
 — has annihilated the fundamental compact on which its royal 
 
RISE OF THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA. 6 
 
 dignity was founded. Such a tissue of conduct, even in the 
 judgment of a Greek, or Punic, or Eoman heathen was impious 
 and execrable crime. The holders of power so gained were re- 
 garded as self-outlawed, — hateful to gods, and deserving of no 
 defence from men. We proceed to give some details of these 
 events. 
 
 II.— BISE OF THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA. 
 
 The eminence of the House of Austria begins with the cele- 
 brated Kudolf, count of Hapsburg, who was elected King of the 
 Eomans, (or heir-presumptive to the German empire,) in 1273, 
 and shortly after, emperor; a high dignity which at that time 
 bound together the Sovereign States of Germany, much as the 
 United States of America are now bound together by their 
 Congress and President. The emperor was elected for life, 
 yet the tendency was always strong to elect continually out of 
 the same royal house ; and the great energy with which Eudolf 
 rescued Germany from the licence of anarchical barons, was 
 rewarded by the permanent elevation of his descendants. 
 
 These princes, like all others, encroached and invaded wher- 
 ever they were able, and with no small success : — using their 
 hereditary dominions to support their imperial pretensions, and 
 their imperial powers to extend their hereditary authority. But 
 the vast aggrandizement of the House of Austria has depended, 
 primarily upon royal marriages, and secondarily, upon dread of 
 the Turks. 
 
 1. A well-known Latin epigram celebrated the matrimonial 
 alliances of the House of Hapsburg in the following words : 
 
 " Wars, let others wage ! but thou, lucky Austria, marry ! 
 For the kingdoms which Mars gives to others, Venus gives to thee." 
 
 This, as history, is strictly true, which will appear from the fol- 
 lowing summary. — Mary of Burgundy, sole daughter of Charles 
 the Rash, was only eighteen when her father was slain, who was 
 sovereign of the Netherlands, Burgundy, Artois, and Franche 
 Comte. Immediately after, she gave her hand and kingdom fin 
 1477) to the Austrian Maximilian, afterwards Emperor, first of 
 that name. — The elective crowns of Bohemia and of Hungary 
 had been united in one sovereign. The kingdom of Bohemia 
 included Moravia, Silesia and Lusatia; the dependencies of 
 Hungary were Bosnia, Servia, Croatia, Sclavonia, Transylvania, 
 
 B 2 
 
4 EISE OF THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA. 
 
 part of Wallachia, and Moldavia. Various treaties and family 
 compacts (wholly invalid in law) had been made between the 
 House of Austria and the Bohemo-Hungarian dynasty, to fa- 
 vour the union of all the crowns ; and alarm, of the Turks made 
 this desire natural and venial in the eastern powers, which 
 had to bear the brunt of their attack. Maximilian induced 
 Ladislaus, king of Hungary and Bohemia, to contract a double 
 marriage with the House of Hapsburg, by the union of Louis 
 and Anne, son and daughter of Ladislaus, to two of Maximi- 
 lian's grandchildren. This marriage was indeed opposed by the 
 elective king of Poland, Sigismund, brother of Ladislaus ; but 
 Maximilian constrained his assent by giving another grand- 
 daughter in marriage to Christian II., king of Denmark, Norway 
 and Sweden ; as also by intrigues with the Teutonic knights and 
 with the Grand Duke of Muscovy. — Moreover, in the second 
 year of his imperial authority, Maximilian, being a widower, 
 had disgusted the German sovereigns by marrying the sister of 
 the Duke of Milan, for the sake of her large dowry, and for the 
 chances of adding the Milanese to the dominions of his family. 
 So well did he understand the weapons of his warfare. 
 
 Meanwhile the crowns of south-western Europe were simi- 
 larly consolidated. Sardinia had been conquered by a king of 
 Aragon. The throne of Sicily, being vacant, was first filled by 
 a prince of Aragon, with the goodwill of the Sicilians ; next, on 
 his premature death, a tacit union of the crowns of Sicily and 
 Aragon took place in 1412, after the King of Aragon had ex- 
 pressly stipulated that the separate constitution and independence 
 of Sicily should be preserved. Ferdinand of Aragon, inherit- 
 ing both crowns, married Isabella, queen of Castile ; and thus 
 strengthened, conquered the rest of Spain and the kingdom of 
 Naples, so as to unite under his throne all Spain, Sardinia, Sicily, 
 and half of Italy. 
 
 Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, was married to 
 Philip the Handsome, son of Maximilian and of Mary of Bur- 
 gundy. By this union, the crowns of Spain, Sicily and Naples 
 were added to the House of Hapsburg. The sons born of the 
 marriage were Charles of Ghent and Ferdinand the First of 
 Hapsburg. Charles inherited the thrones of two grandfathers 
 and two grandmothers, and $as elected emperor of Germany. 
 Ferdinand became archduke of 'Austria by his brother's affec- 
 tion, and was elected to the crowns of Bohemia, Hungary, and 
 at length of Germany, in consequence of the terror which the 
 Turks inspired. This deserves a few words of explanation. 
 
 2. Despotism which is transitional often performs the task of 
 
CASTILE. 5 
 
 blending the heterogeneous elements of a nation, and fusing it 
 into a single nationality, out of which grows patriotism and 
 strength. But all history testifies that permanent despotism 
 causes decay. We must not, then, wonder that the Turkish 
 power, now so despised, was dreadful to all Europe three and 
 four centuries ago. Its actual resources of men and of wealth 
 have declined, while those of Christendom have vastly increased ; 
 moreover, its own belief in its destiny has received the severest 
 moral wounds. 
 
 Louis, king of Hungary and Bohemia, fell with the flower of 
 the Hungarian nobility by the arms of Solyman the Magnificent, 
 in the fatal battle of'Mohacs, Aug. 29th, 1526. The moral 
 effect on all Europe was immense. Dread of the Turks over- 
 powered in the minds of the Hungarian and Bohemian peers 
 their well-founded jealousy of the House of Hapsburg ; so that 
 Ferdinand of Austria was elected to both crowns. Of the 
 details we shall afterwards speak. 
 
 Nothing is commoner, than that public danger threatening 
 from a foreign power induces nations to lend great military force 
 into the hand of some king or general ; and nothing, alas ! is 
 commoner, than perfidy in the Trustee of power. The same 
 drama was acted on a greater scale in the history of the House 
 of Austria. 
 
 III.— CASTILE. 
 
 Charles of Ghent, son of Philip and Joanna, was born in the 
 year 1500 of our era. When only 16 years old, he usurped 
 royal power in Spain ; while his mother, — queen in her own 
 right, — was swallowed up in grief at his father's death. The 
 usurpation was inwardly resented, but led to no public resist- 
 ance. — In the third year afterwards, he was elected emperor of 
 Germany, to the deepest dissatisfaction of leading Spaniards, 
 who foreboded the evil results, yet dreaded a convulsive struggle, 
 if they attempted to forbid such a union of crowns. 
 
 A statement of grievances had been already laid before him, 
 and redress had been claimed. The principal cities of Castile 
 now insisted on a reply to their demands, before he should 
 quit the country. He had spent prematurely the first donative 
 voted to him by the Cortes ; and as he was exceedingly in want 
 of money, he was forced to summon them anew. But, in order 
 to withdraw it from the watchful eye of the Castilian public, he 
 
6 CASTILE. 
 
 summoned the Cortes (or Parliament) contrary to all usage, in 
 the remote Spanish province of Galicia ; and there, by whatever 
 influences, to the amazement of the country, obtained a second 
 cc free gift" before the time was passed for paying the first, and 
 without redressing a single grievance. Having got the money, 
 he cared no more for his people ; but departed to receive the 
 imperial crown, illegally leaving a Fleming, cardinal Adrian, as 
 his viceroy in Spain. 
 
 The cities of Toledo and Segovia were irritated by these 
 unconstitutional proceedings into acts of violence; whereupon 
 the Fleming at once proceeded against them in battle array, 
 as if they had been foreign enemies. His troops reduced the 
 town of Segovia to ashes ; upon which the public rage against 
 him as a foreign usurper aroused the people everywhere into 
 warlike resistance. A great convention of the Commons took 
 place, and a general Junta or Association was organized. The 
 young Emperor hereupon wrote letters of great gentleness and 
 concession to the Commons, exhorting them to lay down their 
 arms, and specially promising that in future no public office 
 should be conferred upon any but native Castilians. But at 
 the same time, he sent other letters to the nobles, exciting them 
 to oppose the Commons ; and, unhappily for the nobles them- 
 selves, as well as for Spain, he succeeded in winning them over 
 to his cause. 
 
 The grievances of which the Commons complained, — con- 
 densed by Robertson, — are remarkable, as showing how similar 
 they have been in all Europe. After a long preamble concerning 
 the various calamities under which the nation groaned, in con- 
 sequence of the errors and corruption in government, they 
 notice the exemplary patience with which the people had endured 
 them, until at last duty forced them to provide in a legal manner 
 for their own safety and that of the constitution : for this pur- 
 pose they demanded, 1 . that the King would, like all his pre- 
 decessors, reside in Spain ; 2. that he would not marry without 
 the consent of the Cortes; 3. that if ever obliged to leave the 
 kingdom, he would make no foreigner regent; 4. that he should 
 bring in no Flemings or other foreigners round his person ; 
 5. that no foreign troops should, on any pretence whatever, 
 be introduced into the kingdom; 6. that none but natives 
 should be capable of holding any office or benefice in Church or 
 State; 7. that no foreigner should be naturalized by the King's 
 sole authority ; 8. that free quarters shall not be granted to 
 soldiers or King ? s servants, for more than six days, and that, only 
 when the Court is in a progress ; 9. that -all the taxes shall be 
 
CASTILE. 7 
 
 replaced as they were at the death of Queen Isabella; 10. that 
 all new offices since created by the mere authority of the Crown 
 shall be abolished; 11. that the subsidy granted by the late 
 Cortes in Galicia shall not be exacted; 12. that the Crown shall 
 not interfere in elections; 13. that no member of the Cortes 
 shall receive office or pension from the King ; 14. that the bribes 
 given or promised at that Cortes shall be revoked ; 15. that in all 
 future Cortes each city shall send one representative of the 
 clergy, one of the gentry, and one of the Commons, each to be ' 
 elected by his own order ; 16. that each constituency shall pay 
 a competent indemnification to its representative; 17. that the 
 Cortes shall assemble once in three years at least, whether sum- 
 moned by the King or not, and shall then at once proceed to busi- 
 ness ; 18. that judges shall have fixed salaries ; 19. that no grant 
 of the goods of persons accused shall be valid, if given before 
 sentence was pronounced against them; 20. that gold, silver 
 and jewels shall not be sent out of the kingdom ; 21. that the 
 then Archbishop of Toledo, being a foreigner, shall be compelled 
 to resign. 
 
 To all these demands it is probable that the nobles heartily 
 acceded ; but the Commons, regarding the crisis important for 
 confirming the public liberties, which manifestly had as yet been 
 insufficiently defended, made other claims which the nobles were 
 too selfish to endure. Generally, it was demanded that all privi- 
 leges which the nobles had obtained to the prejudice of the Com- 
 mons, should be revoked ; and in particular, 1. that the govern- 
 ment of cities or towns be not put [by the act of the Crown] 
 into the hands of noblemen ; 2. that the possessions of the nobility 
 be subject to all public taxes in the same manner as those of the 
 commons ; 3. that inquiry be made into the management of the 
 Crown estates in past years; and that if the King do not in 30 
 days appoint competent auditors, it shall be lawful for the Cortes 
 to appoint them ; 4. that indulgence shall not be proclaimed in 
 the kingdom without leave of the Cortes, and that the money 
 thence arising shall be faithfully employed in the Turkish wars ; 
 5. that prelates absent from their dioceses more than half the year 
 shall forfeit their revenues during their absence ; 6. that ecclesias- 
 tical judges shall not exact greater fees than those in the secular 
 courts. 
 
 Finally it was demanded that the King should ratify all the 
 proceedings of the Commons, as good constitutional service; 
 should pass an amnesty for any excesses into which the cities 
 had been hurried by zeal; should solemnly swear to the articles, 
 and neoer solicit pope or prelate to absolve him from his oath. 
 
O CASTILE. 
 
 It is of great interest to read these details, because they show 
 how opposite to revolutionary were the principles of the Com- 
 mons ; how distinct and well specified are their demands, how 
 free from highflown and dangerous generalizations. 
 
 Nevertheless, the deputies appointed to lay this Bill of Eights 
 before the King, were warned that they could not do so without 
 endangering their lives. Upon their return with this news, the 
 excitement was great, and the Commons resolved to arm the 
 whole country. But the nobles also armed their vassals, who 
 were more accustomed to war. Dread of fratricidal conflict led 
 to negotiations. The Commons hereupon fell into division : 
 some were for concessions to the nobles, and the rest then 
 began to doubt what was to be the prize of victory. Some of 
 the cities were won over to the nobles, and in consequence only 
 the more violent counsels prevailed among the rest. But the 
 nobles with the royal party defeated the army of the Commons, 
 and the popular cause was ruined. The consequences are thus 
 told by the historian : * 
 
 " The Cortes still continued to make a part of the Castilian 
 Constitution, and was summoned to meet whenever the King 
 stood in need of money ; but instead of adhering to their ancient 
 and cautious form of examining and redressing public grievances 
 before they proceeded to grant any supply, the more courtly 
 custom of voting a donative in the first place was introduced ; 
 and the Sovereign, having obtained all that he wanted, never 
 allowed them to enter into any inquiry, or to attempt any refor- 
 mation injurious to his authority. The privileges which the 
 cities had enjoyed were gradually circumscribed or abolished ; 
 their commerce began from this period to decline ; and becoming 
 less wealthy and populous, they lost that power and influence 
 which they had acquired in the Cortes." 
 
 But the termination of these events was not till seventeen 
 years later. In 1539 Charles held a Cortes at Toledo to demand 
 a general excise on commodities, in order to discharge his enor- 
 mous war-debts. But the Spaniards already felt themselves 
 oppressed with a load of taxes unknown to their ancestors ; and 
 the nobles in particular inveighed against imposts which would 
 fall upon them, and thus violate the distinguishing right of their 
 Order. Alas ! in their shortsightedness they had made the Em- 
 peror their master by fighting his battle against the just demands 
 of the Commons. He now unceremoniously dispensed with the 
 presence of the nobility at the Cortes ; and summoned only the 
 
 * Robertson, book iii.; year 1522. 
 
VALENCIA AND ARAGON. 9 
 
 36 representatives of 18 cities. This assembly was too feeble to 
 withstand any commands of the Emperor, and became thence- 
 forward a mere screen of despotism. Charles, who had essen- 
 tially subverted the constitution of the Cortes, tried to disguise 
 the breach of his oath by this shadowy assembly. Thus were 
 the public liberties of Castile destroyed by their King. Courtly 
 disputants may talk about the " rights of conquest ;" but such 
 phraseology merely assimilates kings to robbers, and exhibits 
 their cause as that of lawlessness and selfwill. 
 
 IV.— VALENCIA AND AKAGON. 
 
 No royalty in Europe was restricted by wiser laws or by 
 popular liberties earlier developed than Aragon, to which Va- 
 lencia and Catalonia had been united. Popular representation 
 (says Hallam) was more ancient in Aragon, than in any Euro- 
 pean monarchy. The heir to the crown was not permitted to 
 asssume the name of king, or exercise any royal authority, until 
 he had knelt to pronounce the coronation oath, administered to 
 him by the Chief Justice. Eoyalty was not conceived of as an 
 inherent superiority of blood, but as an official superiority gua- 
 ranteed for mutual benefit under mutual responsibilities. This 
 was strikingly denoted by the very words of the Oath of Alle- 
 giance which followed the Coronation Oath, and is almost rude 
 and minatory in its very promise of loyalty. " We, 5 ' was the 
 response of the Chief Justice to the King, in the name of all 
 the barons, — " We, tclio are separately as good as you, and 
 collectively more powerful than you, promise obedience to your 
 government, if you maintain our rights and liberties; but if 
 not, not." A fundamental article provided for deposing the 
 king, if unfaithful. The Chief Justice was irremovable by the 
 king, and had (as the English Judges) full power to interpret 
 law, and overrule illegal acts of the executive Government, espe- 
 pecially in the matter of false imprisonment. After this it will 
 readily be conceived, that the whole Aragonese system was as 
 far as that of modern England from enduring the thought that 
 the King was superior to the law. Nevertheless, in the kingdom 
 of Valencia, which was united to that of Aragon, the power of 
 the nobles over the commonalty appears to have been oppres- 
 sive, and presently gave a handle to despotism. When young 
 Charles of Ghent was about to receive the imperial crown of 
 
 B 3 
 
iO VALENCIA AND ARAGON. 
 
 Germany, he sent a proxy to hold the Cortes at Valencia, and 
 request " a free gift" of them; but they replied that by the fun- 
 damental laws they were not allowed to acknowledge an absent 
 king, nor to grant him any subsidy. Hereupon, Charles, in- 
 stead of listening or inquiring into the law, seized the opportu- 
 nity of an insurrection of the populace against the domination 
 of the nobility, and authorized the revolters to continue in arms. 
 His edict gave a vast impetus to the popular movement. The 
 multitude expelled the nobles, elected their own magistrates, 
 and formed an association of " Brotherhood" which committed 
 wild excesses.* It is striking to observe, at that early period 
 the development in the House of Austria of this unprincipled 
 tendency to foster anarchical violence, with a view to overturn 
 the barriers of law. It is the old policy of false demagogues 
 who are seeking to become tyrants ; but, except in this House, it 
 is rarely seen in the actual occupants of royalty. 
 
 The " Brotherhood" not only drove out the nobles from most 
 of the cities, but proceeded to plunder their houses, waste their 
 lands, and assault their castles. The nobles took up arms in 
 self-defence, and two years of inveterate civil war (1520 & 1521) 
 scourged the country. At last, when the royal party had suc- 
 ceeded against the Commons in Castile, Charles threw himself 
 into the scale of the Yalencian nobility, and with them crushed 
 the deluded populace. 
 
 The kingdom of Valencia was so united to that of Aragon, 
 that its constitution could not be avowedly invaded while that 
 of Aragon stood. It was undermined greatly by this civil war, 
 which the King first excited and then quelled ; having punished 
 the nobles and middle classes by means of the lower people, 
 and finally made the former owe their deliverance to him. Yet 
 it was reserved for his son Philip II. to finish the work thus 
 begun. 
 
 Philip, as historians tell us, had been a party to the assassi- 
 nation of Escovedo, secretary to his half brother, Don John of 
 Austria : whose death soon after was likewise thought suspi- 
 cious. Antonio Perez, the secretary and confidant of Philip, 
 who was supposed to know these and other shameful transac- 
 tions, being persecuted by the King's jealousy, escaped into his 
 native Aragon ; and when there arrested by the King's orders, 
 appealed to the law of the land. The Chief Justice, as was his 
 duty, claimed for him a public trial before his own court ; to 
 evade which, the King had Perez accused of heresy by the In- 
 
 * Robertson, Charles V., book i. ; year 1522. 
 
BOHEMIA. 11 
 
 quisition. But the Justice would not surrender him to that 
 arbitrary tribunal. The Marquess of Almenara, the King's 
 minister, broke open the prison by violence to seize him, and 
 died by the rough usage which befel him, in the tumult which 
 he had provoked. 
 
 Upon this Philip ordered a Castilian army to invade Aragon. 
 By such an extravagant illegality, which in fact made him a 
 public enemy, the Aragonese were roused to resistance. The 
 Chief Justice called the people to arms, and the priests exhorted 
 them in the same cause ; but the nobility shamefully deserted 
 the public liberties, and the royal general overbore the untrained 
 levies of the Commons. Upon this Philip wrote to him with his 
 own hand, and without the countersignature of any minister : — 
 " As soon as you receive this, you are to proceed to imprison 
 " and execute the Chief Justice, Don Juan de Lanuza ; and let 
 " me hear of his execution as §oon as of his imprisonment." The 
 order was literally obeyed ; and thenceforward the constitution 
 of Aragon was an empty name. A pretence and form of it in- 
 deed remained under the House of Austria, and the formal abo- 
 lition of the liberties of Aragon and Valencia was reserved for 
 Philip Y. in the eighteenth century, the first Bourbon king of 
 Spain. But no one imagines that any real liberty or security 
 for the dearest rights of man continued in Aragon after Philip's 
 invasion of his kingdom with foreign forces. The shadow of 
 a constitution which he left did but remind the nation of his 
 perfidy. 
 
 V.— BOHEMIA. 
 
 Ferdinand, brother of the Emperor Charles, was freely chosen 
 to fill the elective throne of Bohemia, and also of Hungary, in 
 the year 1526. He had in the first instance imprudently 
 claimed both Crowns, in virtue especially of the private family- 
 compact with the late king Louis, his wife's brother and his 
 sister's husband ; but the Estates (or Parliament) of Bohemia, 
 alarmed at such pretensions, scrupulously enforced every legal 
 ceremony that might put beyond a doubt the freedom of their 
 choice. A Coronation being always attended with pomp and 
 display, the oath attached to it is liable to be treated by princes 
 as a mere form. In the vain hope of inventing a covenant purely 
 personal, the Bohemians, (as the Hungarians after them,) exacted, 
 previous to coronation, the royal signature to a written Charter, 
 
12 BOHEMIA. 
 
 which Historians name a Reversal* In this deed, the new King 
 avowed that he had received the crown, not by any previous 
 right, but by a gratuitous and voluntary election. In his letter 
 of thanks to the Estates, he promised to observe the Religious 
 Compacts, to raise no foreigners to any office of State, to govern 
 the kingdom according to ancient laws and customs, and to reside 
 at Prague.f He soon afterwards repaired to Iglau, took the 
 solemn Coronation Oath, and proceeded forthwith to break his 
 engagements. 
 
 His first great palpable breach of faith was in becoming an 
 absentee from Bohemia for ten full years ; which of itself made 
 constitutional government by a foreigner and a new king almost 
 impossible. After he had concluded a peace with the Turks 
 and had nothing to fear from abroad, he not only committed the 
 illegality of restoring the archiepiscopal see of Prague, hereby 
 violating the Eeligious Compacts, but was daring enough for- 
 mally to recant the Reversal, and claimed to be Hereditary sove- 
 reign, in virtue of his marriage, and of the family- compacts. J 
 This of course produced the greatest indignation : but the Bo- 
 hemians, though then as free as any nation in the world, knew 
 not how to proceed against an impudence so startling. Royal 
 perfidy cannot possibly be punished by anything short of de- 
 position, and nations always suffer long and much, before they 
 can agree to apply this remedy. 
 
 Ferdinand was emboldened by his impunity, and by his brother's 
 successful annihilation of the liberties of Castile. That brother was 
 now engaged in a similar project against the religious liberties of 
 Germany, and asked aid from Ferdinand. The Diet of Bohemia, 
 in 1546, granted to the King a large levy of troops to defend the 
 country against the Turks or other public enemies ; upon which, 
 the King compelled them to invade the territories of the elector 
 of Saxony, the dearest foreign friend of Bohemia. This was a 
 direct breach of the constitution, which vested in the Estates the 
 right to make war. He followed it up by an edict, ordering new 
 levies of men at his own will, and declaring that all who dis- 
 obeyed it " should, according to the laws of the land, be deprived 
 " of their honours, lives and property." The passive resistance of 
 the nation forced him nevertheless to convene a Diet, from which 
 by flatteries, by false pretences, and by rescinding his illegal 
 edict, he gained partial concessions. But no sooner was this 
 
 * Robertson, Charles V., book iv. The Deed (says Coxe) is preserved in 
 Groldastus de Privileges Bohemiae, App. 206. 
 f Coxe, ch. 33. X Coxe, ch. 34. 
 
BOHEMIA. 13 
 
 achieved, than he endeavoured again to send the Bohemian 
 armies against Saxony, and bring his brother's armies into 
 Bohemia ; and thereby at last forced his people to stand on their 
 defence. The delegates then plainly told him, that the Estates 
 had certain information of a design to overturn the constitution, 
 destroy the kingdom, and extirpate the language of Bohemia. 
 
 In the midst of this armed neutrality came the startling news 
 that the Emperor Charles had defeated and dethroned the Elector 
 of Saxony, which removed the immediate matter of controversy, 
 and caused in the popular league an incipient break-up. The 
 Estates were alarmed, and passed a dutiful vote, that as the war 
 was now concluded, and as they fully confided in his gracious 
 promise not to introduce foreign troops into Bohemia, they were 
 willing to dismiss their levies ; and on the next day they issued 
 orders to their commander to this effect. 
 
 Only a short time before, Ferdinand had been at their mercy. 
 He had violated his oaths, and had attempted to act tyrannically ; 
 they had shown their power, but had not used it. This (it 
 seems) is an unpardonable sin to a king. Ferdinand seized the 
 moment (July 2nd, 1547) to bring his brother's armies into 
 Prague, — itself an act of perjury. He established a reign of terror 
 by executions, imprisonments, banishments, confiscations ; dis- 
 armed the people, and loaded them with arbitrary and exorbitant 
 taxes; remodelled at pleasure the political rights of all the 
 Bohemian towns but three ; terrified the Diet by bloody execu- 
 tions beneath their eyes, before proceeding to business ; passed 
 what laws he pleased : bade the public carnifex, between the 
 blows dealt to his victims, to proclaim Ferdinand " their Here- 
 ditary Lord ;" destroyed freedom of the press, brought in Jesuits, 
 and gave over to them the public education. 
 
 Having thus by a tissue of perjury and murder changed Bo- 
 hemia from an elective into a hereditary monarchy, "he restored 
 tranquillity, (says Archdeacon Coxe, the favouring historian 
 whom we closely follow,) and suppressed the factions of a volatile 
 and turbulent people ; yet he at the same time depressed that 
 energy of mind and military ardour, which are inseparable 
 from a free government and are fostered by civil contests, and 
 checked that active commercial spirit which flourishes in the 
 consciousness of independence. From this cause the towns, 
 which had hitherto been remarkable for their commerce, 
 wealth, and population, exhibited under his reign the first 
 symptoms of decline; and the Bohemians began to lose that 
 military fame, which had rendered them the example and the 
 terror of Europe" 
 
14 BOHEMIA. 
 
 But this was only the beginning of sorrows to Bohemia. 
 Their constitution was not yet formally destroyed ; it had only 
 been remade at the pleasure of the King, and the fatal House of 
 Austria been riveted round their necks. The Ferdinand who 
 was guilty of these deeds, is praised by historians as an amiable 
 man, exemplary in private life, and the best sovereign of this 
 dynasty, except his son Maximilian II. 
 
 But Eudolf II., son of Maximilian, a pupil of the Jesuits, 
 convulsed all his dominions by his fanatical efforts to extirpate 
 Protestantism, with equal disregard to natural justice and mercy, 
 as to the laws and his oaths. Bohemia had her full share of his 
 atrocity, which ended in his deposition by his brother Matthias. 
 One episode of Budolf's Bohemian proceedings deserves to be 
 here mentioned, from its striking similarity to the recent trea- 
 cherous dealings of Austria with Jellachich. 
 
 Eudolf, when alarmed at the treason of his brother Matthias, 
 suddenly became gracious towards the Bohemian Protestants, 
 and courted the good-will of the Estates. They demanded and 
 obtained full toleration,* and redress of numerous grievances, 
 July 5th, 1609 ; but in the very next year he violated his engage- 
 ments. A great insurrection of Bohemia followed ; and Henry IV. 
 of Prance prepared to invade Germany, in favour of the Protes- 
 tants. On May 14th, 1610, Henry fell opportunely by the stroke 
 of an assassin, and the French war was stopped. Eudolf now, 
 by means of his brother Leopold, sent in a general named Bame'e, 
 with 16,000 men, who desolated Upper Austria and Bohemia. 
 It was impossible to conceal that this was a shameful plot of the 
 Emperor's, and that his aim was, to annul the Eeligious Privi- 
 leges, which he had of late so solemnly re-enacted with fresh 
 sanctions. To withhold the Bohemians from immediate action, 
 Eudolf, in the Diet at Prague, " called God to witness that the 
 " irruption was without his knowledge or consent," recommended 
 the adoption of vigorous measures against Ramee, and sent a 
 herald commanding Leopold to withdraw his troops. Leopold 
 affected innocence equal to that of his brother, and threw the 
 blame on Eamee. A truce and a treaty was made. Leopold 
 lulled the Bohemians into security, and then by aid of massacre 
 took military possession of Prague during the festivities which 
 celebrated the peace. Nevertheless he was repulsed and his 
 crime useless. Eudolf found he could no longer cloak his 
 
 * To the Royal Edict a singular clause was annexed, by which Rudolf 
 declared all future ordinances to be null, whether from him or his successors, 
 which should attempt to change or abrogate the act of toleration. — Coxe, 
 ch. 44. 
 
BOHEMIA. 15 
 
 treachery, and avowed himself the patron of Leopold and of 
 Ramee. But the rage of the Bohemians was roused, universal 
 levies took place, the Moravians joined them, Matthias had won 
 over the Hungarians, and Eudolf was deposed. 
 
 Matthias was unable to justify his own usurpation, except by 
 avowing that the right of transferring the crown was inherent in 
 the Estates. Accordingly, on the 23rd of May, 1611, he was 
 glad to be chosen king with all the forms of an elective monarchy, 
 and confirmed all the old rights and privileges of the nation, 
 civil and religious. Bohemia seemed for a moment to have 
 recovered her inalienable liberties, even under the House of 
 Hapsburg. 
 
 Nevertheless, it was no part of Matthias's intention to allow 
 to the Bohemians either full religious freedom or the elective 
 monarchy. When his health was sinking he introduced his 
 nephew Ferdinand to the Estates at Prague, with the following 
 words : " As I and my brothers are without children, I deem it 
 necessary for the advantage of Bohemia that my kinsman Fer- 
 dinand be proclaimed and crowned king : I therefore request 
 you to fix a day for the confirmation of this appointment." 
 Erom a dread of civil war the Estates acceded, although Ferdi- 
 nand was personally much feared by the Protestants ; but the 
 pretence that the King was still allowing their right to elect, was 
 pleaded to overcome scruples. In other affairs Matthias was a 
 far better prince than either his predecessor or his successor ; but 
 in forcing such a successor upon the Bohemians, he bequeathed 
 to them misery and national ruin. 
 
 Ferdinand instantly broke his coronation oath by interfering 
 with the Government in the lifetime of Matthias. His ministers 
 were selected for their bigotry, and one of them plainly declared 
 that executions and confiscations were necessary, " to restore 
 tranquillity," and to overthrow the Eoyal Edict, which they main 
 tained not to be binding, because it had been obtained by force. 
 At the same time it became known that Ferdinand had made a 
 secret treaty with Spain to transfer the crown ultimately to the 
 Spanish branch of the family. This deed, at once illegal and 
 traitorous, was in itself enough to justify his deposition in the 
 court of conscience. The attempt of the Court to restrict the 
 freedom of Protestant worship was resolutely resisted in its first 
 steps, since "warning so plain had been given, that the practical 
 intolerance of the Crown would increase up to the full measure 
 of the weakness of the people ; and the dreadful Thirty Years' 
 War began in 16.18, in spite of Matthias's endeavours to control 
 the prince whom he had raised. Matthias had persecuted Lu- 
 
16 BOHEMIA. 
 
 therans and Calvinists in Bohemia, leaving only the older Pro- 
 testants, the successors of Huss, unmolested; but he foresaw 
 the horrors of the new war, which was already begun in earnest. 
 He convoked the Estates at Vienna ; but in reply to his request 
 for succours and subsidies, he was met with demands for the redress 
 of grievances, aud with just reproaches for plunging into a war 
 against Bohemia without their consent. He met with no better 
 success even from the Catholics of the German Empire, who 
 shuddered at the coming calamities, and strongly urged him to 
 eifect a reconciliation at all events. He resolved to do so ; over- 
 ruled his nephew Eerdiuand, and summoned the insurgents to 
 negotiation ; but his broken strength failed under the exaspera- 
 ation endured from his nephew, and under the humiliation of the 
 Crown. He expired before the pacification could be effected. 
 
 Eerdinand, now uncontrolled, took on himself unhesitatingly 
 the entire responsibility and guilt of the war, which all parties 
 so abhorred and deprecated. He made indeed an attempt to 
 deceive the insurgents, by a letter, which solemnly promised that 
 he would fulfil all the engagements which he had made at his 
 coronation : but his acts at the same time disproved his words. 
 They therefore refused the truce which he had asked in order to 
 gain time, declared him to have forfeited the throne, and elected 
 Frederick the elector Palatine, king of Bohemia. In the decisive 
 step of deposing Eerdinand, the Estates of Bohemia, Moravia, 
 Silesia, and Lusatia combined. It was strictly a national and 
 unanimous proceeding. 
 
 Unhappily for Bohemia, the new king, though amiable and 
 esteemed, was not equal to his difficult position. He is re- 
 proached with having made alliance with the Sultan of Turkey, 
 who was too distant to help him ; and by this act he is said to 
 have disgusted the German Protestants. It is rather to be feared 
 that they wanted an excuse for not aiding him ; for which selfish- 
 ness they presently paid dearly. Ferdinand's experienced gene- 
 rals, with the aid of 20,000 Spaniards^ defeated Frederick in 
 the battle of the White Mountain, near Prague, which decided 
 the fate of Bohemia, and excited Ferdinand, now emperor of 
 Germany, to still wider projects against German liberty. 
 
 Prague had no choice but to admit the Austro-Spanish armies, 
 and obtained exemption from plunder, but no political compact. 
 They were disarmed, and the Estates w r ere forced to take an 
 unconditional oath of allegiance. For three months no severity 
 whatever followed. The principal insurgents were deceived by 
 this apparent lenity, and came out from their hiding-places. When 
 the dissimulation of Ferdinand had thus obtained its object, he 
 
BOHEMIA. 17 
 
 suddenly arrested 40 principal persons in the night (Jan. 21st, 
 1621) and executed 23 of them, confiscating their property also. 
 The rest he banished or condemned to perpetual imprisonment. 
 Proscription and confiscation was published against the chiefs 
 who had fled the country ; and, more monstrous still, an Edict 
 commanded that all landholders who had taken any part in the 
 late attempt to uphold the laws against tyrannical usurpation, 
 should come forward and accuse themselves, under the threat of 
 severest vengeance if any who declined were afterwards con- 
 victed. Many who had been too timid to join in the insurrec- 
 tion were believed to have been driven by the same timidity to 
 a false self-accusation. Above 700 nobles and knights, having 
 thus registered their own guilt, were at once expelled from their 
 property by this king, whose avowed aim was the ruin and extir- 
 pation of Protestants. 
 
 After this, he might have had peace, with full power over 
 Bohemia. But he could not be satisfied without vengeance on 
 his rival Frederick, whom he resolved to ruin, though German 
 liberty must perish with him. He lawlessly proscribed Frederick 
 and his adherents by a bare imperial Edict : declared their terri- 
 tory forfeited and divided among Catholic princes, and the 
 electoral rights of the Palatinate transferred to the Catholic duke 
 of Bavaria. By such an assumption of despotic power, he ulti- 
 mately forced the German Protestants into arms against him ; 
 and as he had aid from Spain, they too needed foreign alliances. 
 Denmark was at first their chief support ; and since for some 
 years Ferdinand carried on the war to a disadvantage, he was forced 
 to delay farther cruelties against Bohemia; but in 1628, when 
 his able general Waldstein had retrieved his affairs in Germany, 
 and Bethlem Gabor, the great Prince of Transylvania, made 
 peace with him in Hungary, Ferdinand judged that the time 
 was come to destroy for ever the religion, nationality and 
 language of Bohemia. 
 
 We shall describe his proceedings in the very words of Arch- 
 deacon Coxe. He ejected all the preachers, schoolmasters and 
 professors, and delivered up the churches to monks, whom he 
 had collected indiscriminately from all quarters of Europe. He 
 prohibited all who were not Catholics from exercising any trade 
 or handicraft ; laid the severest fines on all who preserved even 
 in secret the slightest remnant of their former worship, declared 
 Protestant marriages and baptisms null, and wills made by Pro- 
 testants invalid. He even drove the poor, the sick, and the 
 distressed from the almshouses and hospitals. 
 
 In the capital, the Protestant burghers were expelled wdth 
 
18 BOHEMIA. 
 
 their wives and families, and the poorer orders compelled to 
 become Catholics. The other towns, and even the remotest 
 villages, were visited by missionary deputations of Jesuits and 
 Capuchin friars, accompanied by a military force. Houses were 
 pillaged, men imprisoned, women and children exposed to all 
 the outrages of the soldiery. Some were massacred without 
 mercy, some hunted to the woods and mountains, some dragged 
 to processions and masses with every species of insult and 
 cruelty : and any who resisted were racked, mutilated and put 
 to death with tortures too shocking to describe. 
 
 In the midst of these horrors Ferdinand repaired to Prague 
 to publish his clemency. He declared that he confirmed to the 
 Estates their power of taxation and other civil privileges ; but 
 he abolished their right to elect a king, and nominated and 
 crowned his own son as his successor. He forbade the use of 
 the Bohemian tongue in any public transaction, and formally 
 abrogated the Koyal Edict of Toleration, by swearing to which 
 he had attained the Crown himself. He restored the order of 
 the Catholic clergy to its Middle-Age dignity, avowed that 
 he would not tolerate a Protestant in the land, and formally 
 banished all who did not in a specified time avow their ad- 
 herence to the Catholic Church. By this act he drove out 
 of the kingdom 30,000 families, with all theti servants and 
 retainers, including the most learned, the richest, and most 
 industrious portion of the community ; and thus inflicted on 
 Bohemia a wound, from which (says Coxe) the country has 
 never recovered. 
 
 Though Coxe is as favourable to the House of Austria, as 
 it is possible for an Englishman, a Protestant Archdeacon, and 
 a man of humanity to be, exaggeration of these horrors will 
 always be suspected in a Protestant writer. Coxe, therefore, 
 has thought fit to fortify himself by the following ample sum- 
 mary from a Catholic historian, a subject of the House of 
 Austria. 
 
 " The records of history scarcely furnish an example of such 
 a change as Bohemia underwent during the reign of Ferdinand 
 II. In 1620, except only the monks and a few of the nobility, 
 the whole country was entirely Protestant : at the death of Fer- 
 dinand it was, in appearance at least, Catholic. Till the battle 
 of the White Mountain the Estates enjoyed more exclusive 
 privileges than the Parliament of England. They enacted laws, 
 imposed taxes, contracted alliances, declared war and peace, 
 and chose or confirmed their kings ; but all these they now 
 lost. Previous to that period the Bohemians were considered 
 
BOHEMIA. 19 
 
 as a warlike nation. The annals of history recorded : ' The 
 Bohemians took the field ; the Bohemians stormed the fortifi- 
 cations ; the Bohemians gained the victory :' but they are now 
 blended with other peoples and are no longer distinguished as 
 a nation. Till this fatal period the Bohemians were daring, 
 undaunted, enterprizing, emulous of fame : now they have lost 
 all their courage, their national pride, their enterprizing spirit. 
 They fled before the Swedes like sheep, or suffered themselves 
 to be trampled under foot. The German language was used by 
 the monks in their sermons, and became general among nobles 
 and citizens, who grew ashamed of their native speech, as the 
 tongue of villagers and peasants. The arts and sciences sank 
 beyond recovery. During the period which immediately followed 
 the banishment of the Protestants, Bohemia scarcely produced 
 one man eminent in any branch of learning. The Caroline 
 University was under the direction of the Jesuits, or suppressed : 
 by order of the Pope all promotions were stopped, and no 
 academical honours conferred. A few patriots, both among the 
 clergy and laity, murmured openly, though ineffectually. The 
 greater part of the schools were conducted by Jesuits and other 
 monkish orders, who taught nothing but bad Latin. It cannot 
 be denied, that several of the Jesuits were men of great learn- 
 ing and science, but their system was, to keep the people in 
 ignorance. Agreeably to this principle, they gave their scholars 
 the rind only, and kept to themselves the pulp of literature. 
 They travelled from town to town and house to house, examin- 
 ing all the books ; which eveiy householder was forced to pro- 
 duce. The greater part they confiscated and burnt ; so that a 
 Bohemian book and a rare book are synonymous terms. They 
 thus endeavoured to extinguish the ancient literature of the 
 country, laboured to persuade the students, that, before the in- 
 troduction of their Order into Bohemia, nothing but ignorance 
 prevailed, and carefully concealed the learned labours, and even the 
 names, of our ancestors. Such was their despotism, that only 
 after the extinction of their Order was it possible to publish the 
 collections and writings of the patriotic Balbinus on the litera- 
 ture of the ancient Bohemians. In a word, from this period the 
 history of Bohemia ceases, and the history of every other nation 
 in Bohemia begins." 
 
 Such is the reward that Bohemia reaped from electing 
 monarchs of the House of Hapsburg. 
 
20 
 
 VI.— PKOTESTANT GERMANY. 
 
 The complicated system of the German Empire makes it hard 
 to exhibit briefly the legal aspect of the contests between the 
 Emperors of the House of Hapsburg, and the upholders of Con- 
 stitutional liberty. In this subject, therefore, the general moral 
 Yiew takes the lead of the purely constitutional question. 
 
 It must however be understood, that the German Princes 
 were sovereign in their own States, and, in the days of the 
 Emperor Charles Y. (Charles of Ghent), had but recently re- 
 nounced the right of separate war and peace. The Emperor, 
 who was elected by seven of them, represented Germany-/ to the 
 foreigner ; and, like the President of the United States, held a 
 most important and honourable office : but his functions were as 
 jealously limited. Nor only so : but the Diet also was rather 
 to be compared to the American Congress than to an English 
 Parliament : for its control was by no means unlimited over 
 the separate States, which had complete internal jurisdiction. 
 
 Until 1486 every State made peace and war at pleasure, and 
 war of State against State was legal. In that year a ten years' 
 peace was proclaimed; and in 1495 they all agreed, in a Diet 
 at Worms, for ever to abolish separate war. It was not till 
 1512 that the central organization was completed, which united 
 all Germany. The States however had only effected union, by 
 a definite treaty : they had not submitted to subjection, renounced 
 sovereignty, nor thrown down their internal liberties to be tram- 
 pled on by a majority of the Diet. 
 
 The doctrines of Luther spread rapidly from 1517 to 1521, 
 in which year the young Emperor Charles, — who on his acces- 
 sion greatly needed the support of the Pope, — prevailed on a 
 Diet at Worms to sanction a decree which he issued against 
 Luther : but the Elector of Saxony refused to execute it. A few 
 years after, the Emperor fell into a violent quarrel with the Pope ; 
 and in 1526 gave a great impulse to the Eeformation, by pub- 
 lishing a manifesto which taxed him with ingratitude, ambition, 
 and deceit, and threatened to appeal from him to a general 
 Council. Nor did he confine himself to words. His generals 
 took Koine by storm, held possession of it for months, and 
 inflicted upon the innocent Eomans everything that avarice, 
 cruelty, and brutal lust can perpetrate. They besieged the Pope 
 in the Castle of St. Angelo, and at length forced him to sur- 
 render. Charles hypocritically went into mourning at the event, 
 and ordered public prayers and processions in Spain for the re- 
 
PROTESTANT GERMANY. 21. 
 
 covery of the Pope's liberty, which, by an order to his generals, 
 he could have immediately granted. 
 
 In a Diet of the Empire held at Spires, June 25th, 1526, an 
 Act was passed which was regarded equivalent to a recognition 
 of Protestantism. The doctrines of Luther had affected princes 
 as well as their subjects, and were embraced zealously in many 
 of the free cities. About one half of the Germanic body had 
 declared itself free from the Papal See, and while Charles was 
 at war with Eome, he was well pleased at this circumstance. 
 But when his Castilian Parliament positively refused him more 
 money, and he could not maintain his armies, he condescended 
 to accept a ransom of the Pope; and in 1529 entered into close 
 alliance with him. After this, he perceived that by becoming 
 the champion of the Papacy he would have its influence to aid 
 him in usurping power in Germany, where it was manifest that 
 Catholicism would soon die out, if not saved by royal violences. 
 — Having summoned another Diet at Spires, he demanded of it 
 by his commissioners to prohibit all farther religious reform, and 
 to authorize his decree against Luther. Pive Princes and four- 
 teen free Cities solemnly protested against this decree, as unjust 
 and impious. Hence their name Protestants. 
 
 Charles made another attempt in the Diet at Augsburg to 
 induce the Reformers to surrender their convictions peaceably ; 
 but when that proved impossible, he prevailed on a majority of 
 the Diet to issue a Decree condemning Protestantism, forbidding 
 toleration of its teachers, enacting severe penalties against it, 
 and commanding all orders of men to assist with their persons 
 and fortunes in executing this decree. Such as refused to obey 
 it were declared incapable of acting as judges, or of appearing as 
 parties in the Imperial Chamber, the supreme Court of Judicature 
 in the Empire. 
 
 In this decree, stimulated by Emperor and Pope, the Diet 
 usurped the right of deposing and outlawing sovereign princes 
 and free cities, if they did not fulfil its persecuting edicts. The 
 Protestant States, who knew that this Emperor had but a few 
 years back overthrown the liberties of his Castilian subjects, saw 
 at once that he would not hesitate to bring in foreign troops 
 against them: they therefore formed in 1530 the League of 
 Smalkald, for mutual defence against all aggressors. 
 
 When prosecutions began in the Imperial Chamber against 
 some of them on religious grounds, the League sent ambas- 
 sadors into Prance and England. Charles did not dare as yet to 
 encounter civil war in Germany, but he was safe, as knowing 
 that the league would only stand on the defence. However, in 
 
22 PROTESTANT GERMANY. 
 
 1535 it received more members. It then contained the Princes 
 of Saxony, Brunswick, Hesse, Wirtemberg, Pomerania, Anhalt, 
 Mansfield and Nassau : also twenty-four free cities, which ranked 
 as princes : and the league was renewed for ten years. 
 
 The Emperor justly deprecated the division and weakening 
 of Germany which such a state of things occasioned. That it 
 was in his power to terminate it by abandoning the effort to 
 enforce uniformity in religion, did not occur to him; because 
 the only sort of unity or of strength which he desired, was that 
 of subjection to his absolute will. In 1540 the celebrated 
 Council of Trent uttered sentences of condemnation against 
 Protestants ; the Pope excommunicated and deposed the Arch- 
 bishop of Cologne, an independent prince, and one of the 
 Electors to the empire; and it soon was manifested beyond 
 question, that it was the intention of the Emperor to carry out 
 this sentence and crush the League of Smalkald. The Pro- 
 testants with amazing celerity raised a great and well-appointed 
 army, of 70,000 foot, 15,000 horse, 120 cannon, 800 ammu- 
 nition waggons, 8000 beasts of burden, and 6000 pioneers: and 
 this came from but a part of their number. Charles was 
 aghast, having no force to meet them ; but they were too de- 
 fensive and too moderate to succeed ; and he instantly under- 
 stood his advantage. To a temperate and candid manifesto from 
 them, Charles replied by declaring them rebels and outlaws, 
 confiscating their goods, absolving their subjects from allegiance, 
 and making it meritorious to invade their territories. 
 
 These circumstances show, on which side the moral right lay. 
 On legal questions, such as : — what were the limits of the 
 Diet's authority, — good men may possibly have differed. But 
 no candid person can question, that the Protestants were acting 
 from conscience, and in the cause of reasonable freedom, while 
 Charles was actuated only by personal ambition. The Emperor 
 moreover violated the laws and his solemn oaths, by calling in 
 Papal troops, Spaniards, Flemings, Bohemians, and Hunga- 
 rians. — The confederates suffered disadvantage from divided 
 authority ; and the treacherous Maurice of Saxony, for the bribe 
 of his father-in-law's electoral dignities, stipulated to aid the 
 Emperor. The insurgents suffered the usual penalty of modera- 
 tion in those who are forced to oppose a tyrannical prince. 
 Having been unwilling to strike while they were strong, they 
 gave time for his intrigues, and fell unconditionally into his 
 power. The dissolution of the League of Smalkald, and the 
 dethronement, next year, of the Princes of Saxony and Hesse, 
 were fatal blows to the liberty of all Germany. But as Charles 
 
PROTESTANT GERMANY. 23 
 
 was no bigot, and, however haughty and unfeeling, too politic 
 to be needlessly cruel, his usurpation and perjury appear small in 
 comparison to the atrocities of the princes who were reared under 
 Jesuit tuition. 
 
 Nevertheless, the presumption and haughtiness which his suc- 
 cesses developed in him, disgusted and terrified his own sup- 
 porters. In consequence, Maurice of Saxony was able to extort 
 from him the treaty of Passau, in 1552; which to a certain 
 extent regained the Protestant liberties ; and gave rise to the 
 Eeligious Peace, settled by the Diet of 1555. We may here 
 mention, that it secured for all Princes and States of the Empire 
 the right to tolerate or prohibit either religion within their own 
 territories : and in so far, each State was independent of the 
 Diet and of the Emperor. 
 
 Ferdinand I. and Maximilian II. were very tolerant in reli- 
 gious matters, on which the whole history of Germany turned. 
 But Eudolf, a nurseling of the Jesuits, violated the Eeligious 
 Peace, and convulsed all his dominions, as was above said. He 
 suppressed Protestantism in the hereditary provinces of Austria, 
 and thenceforward his House, except in one generation, has been 
 the great enemy of religious freedom. 
 
 Not to be tedious, it may here suffice to remark, that the reli- 
 gious liberties of Germany were saved from the House of Hapsburg 
 only at the cost of the calamitous Thirty Years' War, and with the 
 aid of Denmark, Sweden and Prance. To estimate the slaugh- 
 ters of this war, is difficult : — it has been said, that in whole 
 provinces, two thirds of the population were exterminated. Much 
 less is it possible to value the demoralization which it inflicted ; 
 its destruction of national feelings and character, and its damage 
 to all intellectual interests. It was the gift of the House of Haps- 
 burg to Germany. Some of the horrible details of cruelty to- 
 wards women and children which are reported in this war, move 
 a reader's incredulity : but concerning the hideous atrocities 
 perpetrated at the sack of Magdeburg by the Imperial armies, 
 with the express sanction of the Imperial general Tilly, whose 
 conduct was approved by the Court, — there is no possibility of 
 doubting. 
 
 In the peace of Westphalia, which terminated the war, a. d. 
 1648, it was stipulated, among other things, that the Diet should 
 not decide by a majority, but by amicable accommodation; 1. in 
 all causes of religion; 2. in all affairs in which Germany could 
 not be considered as single and indivisible; 3. in all affairs in 
 which Protestants and Catholics voted collectively on opposite 
 sides. — This indicates that the Diet had been made the tool and 
 
24 HEREDITAKY STATES OF AUSTRIA. 
 
 screen of the Emperor's usurpations : and constitutionally, it 
 distinguishes this struggle from the others in which the House 
 of Hapsburg has engaged. — Moreover, the Sovereignty of the 
 States was acknowledged, as well as their right to form alliances 
 among themselves and with foreign States, provided that none 
 were concluded against the Emperor or the Empire. All the 
 sovereigns were put under an obligation, not to persecute their 
 subjects who professed a religion different from their own : 
 except that Ferdinand III. indignantly rejected this stipulation 
 for Austria. — Finally, through the persecuting tendencies of 
 this House, Germany has been hindered from coalescing into a 
 single political community : in struggling for that first great ne- 
 cessary of life, — Religious Freedom, — she has been forced to 
 insist on upholding to an undesirable extent the independence 
 of her small sovereignties. Everywhere the House of Haps- 
 burg has done its utmost to secure, that men shall have no 
 alternative between disorganization and its absolutism, between 
 atheism and popery. 
 
 VII.— HEREDITARY STATES OF AUSTRIA. 
 
 It is rather an intricate history to trace the annihilation of the 
 liberties of Austria; and after all that we have written on Ger- 
 many, it is less important to follow out details. Abundantly 
 evident is it, that Austria once, like Spain, Bohemia, and Hun- 
 gary, had its free institutions, and that these have been long de- 
 stroyed by the uniform treachery of the dynasty. 
 
 It was mentioned that in the opening of the Thirty Years' War 
 the Estates at Vienna positively refused supplies to the Emperor 
 Matthias, and reproached him for plunging into a war with 
 Bohemia without their consent. At that time we see that they 
 retained the full power of an English* House of Commons. 
 Ferdinand II., a few years after, abolished by force the Protes- 
 tant worship in his hereditary dominions, with his usual severity. 
 "We do not know whether this would have been sanctioned by 
 the Estates, but it appears that he refused to summon them. 
 During the Thirty Years' War, even the German Diet seems to 
 have been suspended, until near to the close,* except that which 
 was assembled to elect Ferdinand III. to the Empire. We have 
 
 * Coxe, ch. 57, in fine. 
 
NETHERLANDS. 25 
 
 stated that this sovereign, at the peace of Westphalia, inflexibly 
 refused to tolerate Protestantism in his dominions. He suc- 
 ceeded in farther breaking down the power and spirit of the 
 Viennese Estates. In the next generation, the Estates had 
 become accustomed to identify Catholicism with their own inte- 
 rests, and with their sovereign. There was no opposition, " they 
 were tranquil and loyal, and granted subsidies," says Coxe, " with 
 cheerfulness and alacrity." The dangerous invasion of the 
 Turks also insured the ardent unanimity of all Austria. 
 
 The authority of the Estates of Austria could in no case 
 have been maintained against the Crown, when it was manifest 
 that their resistance to the will of the sovereign would simply 
 have led to their violent extinction by his foreigu forces. Hence 
 in Vienna, as formerly in Castile and Aragon, the Parliament 
 became nothing but a shadow and a blind for the despotism. 
 This state of things continued until a recent period. It was in 
 1845-7, that a learned writer, Doblhoff, ventured to call public 
 attention to the ancient rights of the Parliament; and in 1847 
 the same man was employed, as Minister of the Crown, to aid 
 in reorganizing the constitutional liberties. This was but a per-* 
 iidious temporizing on the part of the dynasty. A court cabal, 
 headed by the Archduchess Sophia, mother of the present Em- 
 peror, plotted, from the day on which the new constitution was 
 conceded, to overthrow it by treachery and by force of arms. 
 This was done in October of the same year, by means of 
 Windischgratz and Jellachich. Vienna was bombarded and 
 taken by storm, men were shot in heaps, every vestige of freedom 
 was annihilated anew, and pure military violence enthroned. 
 For more than a year Vienna w T as kept under martial law ; and 
 the rule of lawless force still continues in the very capital of the 
 Austrian monarchy. 
 
 VIII.— NETHERLANDS. 
 
 We have stated how, by the marriage of Maximilian to Mary of 
 Burgundy, the House of Austria gained a claim to her father's 
 realms. Maximilian obtained actual possession of the Nether- 
 lands and of Eranche Comte : but the rest of Mary's dominions 
 were seized and kept by the rapacious Louis XL of Erance. 
 Maximilian was never able to recover Burgundy, but Artois was 
 at length ceded to him by Charles VIII., son of Louis. 
 
 The Low Countries, from the earliest times, were distinguished 
 
 c 
 
26 Netherlands. 
 
 by a free spirit. The local privileges of the towns, which had 
 been reserved by the burghers in submitting to the dukes of 
 Burgundy, were remarkably great. Maximilian, by violating 
 them immediately on Ms wife's death, raised up a civil war, in 
 which he was made prisoner : and in spite of the interference of 
 the Pope and of the German powers — (for he was then " King 
 of the Romans," or heir apparent to the Empire) — he was 
 forced to concede everything to his subjects, both privileges and 
 amnesty. Maximilian was not a dark and malignant man ; but 
 he learned from his contemporary, Louis XI. of France, to steal 
 in like a fox, and devour like a tiger ; a lesson which his poste- 
 rity have faithfully retained. 
 
 Having called in the Emperor, with 40,000 men, he endea- 
 voured to break loose from his recent solemn engagements, and 
 establish a rule of force : but the valour of the Elemings and the 
 military talents of Philip of Cleves thwarted him, and he was 
 forced to a new compromise. Elanders paid him a subsidy, but 
 held fast her political rights. 
 
 When Maximilian succeeded to the Empire, his minor son, the 
 handsome Philip, was left in the Netherlands as the nominal 
 ruler ; and since he was popular, kind, and too young to inter- 
 fere, the States prospered much under his inactivity. He lived 
 to have children, but died prematurely ; his sister Margaret was 
 named regent, and proved vigorous and sensible. The misfor- 
 tunes of the people date from the era, when young Charles of 
 Ghent, now emperor, proscribed " heretics" in the Low Countries, 
 and violated the law by appointing functionaries for the express 
 purpose of their pursuit and punishment. Thus did the House 
 of Hapsburg, here, as everywhere else, begin, by its lawlessness, 
 an atrocious contest. 
 
 During the war of 1539, in which Charles had involved all 
 his dominions against France, the people of Ghent, suspecting 
 misappropriation of the funds which they had furnished for the 
 campaign, oifered to march themselves against the enemy, instead 
 of paying a further subsidy. When this was abruptly rejected 
 by the Government, the people regarded it as a mark that it 
 claimed to tax them at its pleasure, and riotous or seditious pro- 
 tests followed. But so little idea of revolt was there in this, 
 that when Charles came in person to Ghent, he was at once 
 admitted. In fact, Ghent being his native town, he was per- 
 sonally very popular there. — He forthwith arbitrarily beheaded 
 27 persons as traitors, withdrew the principal privileges of the 
 city at his own will, and built a citadel to hold it in check for 
 the future. In Ghent no one dared to murmur ; but elsewhere 
 
NETHERLANDS. 27 
 
 deep feeling showed itself, when the king, the sworn guardian 
 of law, put men to death without trial, and perjuriously destroyed 
 the permanent institutions of the country. 
 
 Towards the end of his life, Charles redoubled his severities 
 against the Protestants in the Netherlands, and introduced a 
 modified form of the Inquisition; thus laying the foundation 
 for the horrors of his son's reign. 
 
 The freedom of the Netherlands had led to extraordinary 
 industry, wealth, commerce, intelligence, and Protestantism. 
 Literature, poetry, and art were also highly advanced, when in 
 1555 Philip II. succeeded his father. Philip had been born 
 and bred in Spain, trained in Romish and despotic principles : 
 he had only once visited the Low Countries, and was then dis- 
 gusted by their cordial manliness. He at first concealed his 
 designs, and induced the Estates to vote subsidies to him, some 
 of which were to be paid by instalments through nine years. 
 But in four years' time, his deeply-laid plans for overthrowing 
 pnblic liberty being discerned, the Estates replied to a new 
 demand of his, by petitioning that he would " diminish the 
 taxes, withdraw his foreign troops, and entrust no official em- 
 ployments to foreigners." But the execution of heretics went 
 on, and the country was roused to indignation. The Spanish 
 soldiers, whom Philip had promised to withdraw in three months, 
 were not withdrawn for two years, and had meanwhile ravaged 
 a part of Zealand with open hostility. 
 
 In 1561, Philip and the Pope, without consulting the Estates 
 or Towns, took on them to reorganize the free Belgian Church, 
 appointing 18 nominees of the King for Bishops, instead of 
 four ecclesiastically elected ; with other arbitrary enactments 
 which aimed to put the whole wealth of the abbeys at the dis- 
 posal of the King. He would not assemble the Estates, and 
 the people had no organs of resistance. The new bishops in- 
 stantly assumed power, and began a terrible persecution of 
 heresy. 
 
 In 1564, Philip abated his violence for some months, and in 
 appearance sacrificed an unpopular minister, — the foreigner, 
 Cardinal Granville, — probably in the hope of lulling vigilance 
 and damping enthusiasm : for in the same year he suddenly 
 sent out the fiercest edicts against heresy, and ordered the 
 decree of the Council of Trent to be published through the 
 17 Provinces. Even the new bishops were disgusted with such 
 an invasion of their constitutional rights ; and Philip proceeded 
 to establish the Inquisition, with orders to burn alive, bury alive, 
 and destroy secretly. This dreadful tribunal, against all law, 
 
 c 2 
 
28 NETHERLANDS, 
 
 and without any pretence of law, was brought into vigorous 
 action in the beginning of 1566. Frightful insurrections fol- 
 lowed, consisting frequently of a street-war of the most desperate 
 kind, against these secret kidnappers and murderers. 
 
 On the 10th of February the nobility rose, and an avowed 
 public resistance commenced, but a change of dynasty was not yet 
 thought of. Bands of peasants and low persons, excited to frenzy 
 by the Inquisition, betook themselves to image-breaking, and 
 other bloodless excesses. Four hundred churches were pillaged 
 in a very short time ; and though the Prince of Orange and 
 Count Egmont and other patriot-lords made some terrible ex- 
 amples of summary vengeance on such robbers, Philip now 
 fancied that he had a moral justification for any sort or amount 
 of vengeance, and began that dreadful war which raged without 
 cessation for 40 years. 
 
 Yalenciennes was first besieged by the royal troops, and 
 captured after 36 hours' bombardment. The confederacy was 
 dissolved by dissensions, and royal despotism momentarily vic- 
 torious. Swarms of refugees were driven into Germany and 
 England, and the celebrated Duke of Alva in the summer of 
 1567 entered the Low Countries with a veteran Spanish army, 
 bent on rooting out heresy by military executions. Counts 
 Egmont and Horn, who had refused to become revolutionists 
 and foolishly imagined that their loyalty made them safe, were 
 arrested, and in the next year were publicly beheaded. 
 
 Alva had established a special tribunal of 12 members, called 
 by him, the Council of Troubles, and by the people the Council 
 of Blood. Without regard to form or law, rank, sex or age, it 
 condemned and punished at pleasure. Hanging, beheading, 
 quartering, burning, were every-day spectacles. Confiscations 
 only increased the avarice of Alva and his satellites. With 
 capricious despotism, he forbade marriage, as well as emigra- 
 tion, without his special leave. All emigrant lords were sum- 
 moned, and their property confiscated for non-appearance. At 
 length, when, by the departure of Philip's sister the Duchess of 
 Parma, Alva was left uncontrolled, the people were driven by 
 frenzy to become banditti and pirates, till the land was deso- 
 lated with carnage and ruin. Alva himself boasted that his 
 executioners had put to death 18,000 Netherlanders. 
 
 It is not possible here to detail, how William of Nassau, 
 prince of Orange, from small beginnings, rallied his unhappy 
 countrymen. The struggle became horrible. The Netherlanders 
 were not united, or their success would have been earlier. The 
 Catholics were roused chiefly by Alva's illegal taxation, but were 
 
NETHERLANDS. 29 
 
 often thrown back on to the side of Spain by dread of the in- 
 tense Protestantism which his cruelties had evoked. When 
 Haerlem had revolted, the Spaniards lost 10,000 men in the 
 siege, and seven months of time; arid on capturing it by famine, 
 butchered or drowned 2000 men of the garrison. Reprisals 
 naturally followed. Resistance became more stubborn than ever, 
 and at last, in 1573, Philip recalled Alva, proclaimed an amnesty, 
 and expected submission. 
 
 It was too late. To trust him was impossible, and two more 
 years of horror followed ; but when in 1575 the mild and tolerant 
 Emperor Maximilian II. attempted mediation with his cousin, 
 Philip's deputies, after gaining three months time by pretended 
 deliberations, refused any toleration for Protestants, and the 
 war recommenced with implacable violence. The royal troops 
 openly revolted. On the 3rd of November, 1576, Antwerp was 
 sacked and burnt by Spanish mutineers. For three days, carnage 
 and pillage went on. More than 500 private mansions were 
 burnt; 7000 citizens perished by sword, water, or fire. The 
 Government at last, ashamed and horrified at the danger to 
 which it was itself exposed from its own troops, proscribed 
 the mutineers and called on all loyal subjects to aid in destroy- 
 ing them. It summoned the States General; which (the viceroy 
 having died suddenly) assumed command in the name of the 
 King, and the Pacification or Ghent followed, by which 
 Liberty and the Constitution appeared to be regained. One 
 of the articles of this treaty was, the expulsion of all Spanish sol- 
 diers and other foreigners. 
 
 Philip's new representative, Don John of Austria, affected at 
 first the greatest moderation, and confirmed the pacification ; but 
 instantly proceeded to undermine it by treachery. His uncon- 
 stitutional claims first gave alarm ; next, his letters to Philip, 
 intercepted and published by the King of Prance, made notorious 
 the usual perfidy of the House of Hapsburg. In consequence, 
 the civil war revived in 1578, with new carnage. Even the 
 Emperor Rudolf II. and the Pope were horrified, and offered 
 mediation ; but as Philip obstinately refused toleration of here- 
 tics, reconciliation was impossible. The Prince of Orange had 
 already formed on Jan. 29th, 1579, the famous Union of Utrecht, 
 in which five Protestant Princes cemented themselves indisso- 
 lubly ; but without alluding to Philip. But the next year, on 
 Sept. 29th, after Philip's final refusal of toleration, the Estates 
 of the United Provinces renounced the sovereignty of Spain, 
 and virtually commenced the Dutch Eepublic. 
 
 Philip's revenge, was, to issue a ban against the Prince of 
 
30 NETHERLANDS. 
 
 Orange, in which he " proscribes him as a public pest," and 
 promises to whoever will deliver him up, dead or alive , " in 
 lands or money, at his choice, — the sum of 25,000 golden 
 crowns ; — to grant a free pardon to such person for all former 
 offences of what kind soever ; — and to invest him with letters 
 patent of Nobility." This was published on the 15th 
 June. 
 
 He had calculated rightly. A first assassin sent a pistol 
 bullet through the Prince's face from side to side, and was 
 instantly killed by the guards. The papers found on him, and 
 evidence there elicited, proved that he held a bond from Philip 
 for 28,000 ducats and other advantages, in case of his crime 
 being successful. But the Prince recovered. A second assassin, 
 in 1584, sent three balls into his body, and killed him almost on 
 the spot. This man was a fanatical Catholic. By his own 
 avowal he had received, not absolution only, but encouragement 
 from ministers of his church, and an original letter is extant 
 from the Prince of Parma to Philip, in which the Prince declares 
 himself an accomplice in the deed. Philip was suspected by his 
 contemporaries to have afterwards poisoned this very Prince of 
 Parma, as previously his brother Don John of Austria. Such 
 tales can seldom be tested; but their currency is a dreadful 
 proof of the morality then known to exist in the Imperial Court. 
 — The children of William's assassin received the money and 
 rewards which Philip had promised. 
 
 The crime of political assassination is common to all despotic 
 oligarchies, whether called monarchical or aristocratic ; but in 
 modern European History, no dynasty is more stained with it 
 than the Austrian. No sooner did Austria obtain her first foot- 
 ing in Hungary, than the Court assassinated, first the Italian 
 Gritti, and next the Hungarian Cardinal Martinuzzi ; although 
 to the latter, Ferdinand I. was indebted for the sovereignty of 
 Eastern Hungary and for the celebrated crown of St. Stephen. 
 The Cardinal's ear, remarkable for a tuft of hair, was sent to 
 Eerdinand by the assassin, in proof of his fidelity. — The second 
 Eerdinand in like manner, having twice owed his safety and 
 crown in the Thirty Years' War to the talents of his general 
 Waldstein, was so irritated at that great man's advocating (on 
 purely political grounds) some humanity towards Protestants, 
 that he suspected him of treason, dishonoured him, and when the 
 effects of this orythe army were feared, assassinated him. The 
 Court published a manifesto, justifying the deed, and executed 
 many other persons, in pretence that a great conspiracy was to 
 be quelled. Down even to recent times there is too full ground to 
 
NETHERLANDS. 31 
 
 believe that this atrocious mode of proceeding has been pursued, 
 against no less signal a victim than the Archduke Alexander, 
 palatine of Hungary. This prince was blown up in his summer- 
 house by fireworks, in 1795; being at that time notoriously 
 under the displeasure of his brother, the young Emperor Francis, 
 because of his avowed determination to respect the Hungarian 
 Constitution, to which he had made oath. 
 
 On the deposition of Philip, the Duke of Anjou was elected 
 Protector of the Netherlands and duke of Brabant, Lothier, 
 Limbourg, and Gruelders. He consented to recognize William 
 as sovereign in Holland and Zealand, and as lord of Friesland, 
 though under homage to the Duke of Anjou. But the new 
 protector was presently discontented with his limited powers, 
 and conspired with his French officers against the liberty of the 
 Flemings. He attempted to seize the principal towns by a 
 coup-de-main, but succeeded only at Dunkirk and Termonde. 
 He assaulted Antwerp in person, and was repulsed with dis- 
 graceful loss. So terminated his career in the Netherlands, 
 before the murder of the Prince of Orange, whose career was 
 cut short before he could sign the Capitulation by which the 
 Estates would have recognized him as their independent sove- 
 reign. 
 
 The Prince of Parma renewed the war in the name of Philip, 
 and within a year had reconquered what we now call Belgium, 
 The depopulation of the country was fearful. Hundreds of vil- 
 lages had been abandoned to the wolves. Packs of dogs, run 
 wild, hunted down brutes and men. Fields, woods, roads, were 
 frequently undistinguishable ; for trees, weeds, and grass were 
 mingled confusedly. 
 
 On the other hand, Holland gathered up all its energies, 
 and prepared anew for war : nevertheless Antwerp was taken 
 after a siege of 14 months. The Dutch got succour from our 
 Elizabeth, which did them little direct service ; although, by 
 diverting Philip's anger against England and engaging him to 
 send the celebrated Armada to invade us, it exhausted the 
 energies of Spain. Immediately after, Philip implicated himself 
 in the civil war of France, to keep down the " twice-lapsed 
 heretic " Henry of Navarre. Meanwhile, Prince Maurice of 
 Orange made full use of the time thus gained. The English 
 fleets pressed hard upon Spain. Philip was declining in years, 
 health, and spirits, and Holland at last recovered itself. It has 
 since remained independent : but the Spaniards continued their 
 warlike efforts with great obstinacy, bloodshed, and desolation, 
 after the death of Philip, until 1607 ; when, after two years' 
 
32 BELGIUM. 
 
 negotiation, a truce for 12 years was arranged on the 9th of 
 April, 1609, under the guarantee of Prance and England. 
 
 So at last ended the hostilities of the House of Austria against 
 their own people in the Netherlands, who escaped the usual 
 slavery which that House inflicts, only by so powerful a diver- 
 sion as that of England and Erance. 
 
 IX.— BELGIUM. 
 
 The result of the Eorty Years' War was to separate the his- 
 tory of Belgium from that of Holland. Philip, a little before his 
 death, gave his daughter Isabella in marriage to the Archduke 
 Albert, brother of the Emperor Eudolf, and with her as dowry 
 the kingdom of the Netherlands. Albert got and 'kept the 
 southern provinces, but could not reconquer the Dutch Bepublic. 
 Thus Belgium remained under the House of Austria. It re- 
 verted to the Spanish branch by the death of Isabella without 
 children, and remained as the Spanish Netherlands until the 
 peace of Utrecht, in 1713, when, theBourbon dynasty having fixed 
 itself in Spain, Belgium was recognized as properly Austrian. In 
 this interval Belgium had suffered far less by wars than Holland, 
 and its governors had learned by the proximity of Holland the 
 danger of drawing the reins too tight. The Empress Maria 
 Theresa was also very popular in Belgium; but her son the 
 Emperor Joseph, of Hapsburg-Lorraine, aiming at beneficial 
 results by lawless means, tried to rule despotically by Edicts, 
 and roused at once the bigotry and the free spirit of the Belgians. 
 Insurrection followed, and in 1790 seven revolted provinces de- 
 clared the House of Austria to have forfeited its sovereignty, 
 and assumed the title of the United Belgian States. 
 
 Belgium on this occasion had acted with a precipitation and 
 excitement beyond all previous precedent ; nor do we for a moment 
 compare the grievances inflicted on them by Joseph II. to that 
 which Holland, Bohemia, Castile, Aragon, Germany, Hungary, 
 had endured from sovereigns of this House without actually dis- 
 owning its sway. But it is certainly remarkable to see the des- 
 potic tendency so inveterate in this family, that Joseph, a man of 
 genius and of excellent intentions, stirred up civil war in both 
 Belgium and Hungary by his violent mode of proceeding. 
 
PROTESTANTS AND MOORS OF SPAIN, 33 
 
 X.— PEOTESTANTS AND MOOES OE SPAIN. 
 
 The account already given of Philip II. 's behaviour to Protes- 
 tants in the Netherlands, will enable the reader to infer how he 
 was likely to deal in Spain, and we may speak of that more 
 briefly. Philip's return to his native land, in 1559, was cele- 
 brated by a vast number of Acts of Faith, as the surrender of 
 heretics to be burnt by the Inquisition was named. On a single 
 day, it was believed, from two to three thousand persons in all 
 parts of Spain were simultaneously arrested, and disappeared 
 for ever ; it being generally uncertain whether they were killed 
 or in prison. The nature of the despotism makes it impossible 
 to get authentic details ; but the archives of the " Holy Office," 
 which have been brought to light in this century, furnish the fol- 
 lowing result : — 
 
 The total amount of persons executed' by the Inquisition 
 in Spain alone, during the three centuries of its existence there, 
 is 32,000 persons burnt, and 291,000 condemned to perpetual 
 imprisonment, the galleys, or other penalties. 
 
 But we pass from Protestants to Moors. Philip first disarmed 
 the Moors, as a precaution. He next forbade them to speak 
 the Moorish language, or continue anything of a Mohammedan 
 exterior : especially their women were ordered to show their 
 faces in public unveiled. The Moors, chiefly of Granada, betook 
 themselves to petitions, remonstrances, and protestations of 
 loyalty ; but Philip was obstinate, and drove them into rebellion. 
 Don John of Austria at length subdued the revolt ; upon which 
 Philip sold the prisoners for slaves, and dispersed the rest of the 
 Moors into the old provinces of Spain. None remained congre- 
 gated or in their original seats, but the Moors of Valencia, who 
 had not joined in the insurrection, and who were protected by 
 the nobles of Valencia, as valuable vassals. 
 
 But they were not to remain unmolested. In the next cen- 
 tury Philip III. listened to the Archbishop of Valencia, who 
 complained that the skill, industry, and frugality of the Valencian 
 Moors enabled them to live and thrive and monopolize commerce 
 and wealth ; as a remedy for which, he advised to sell into 
 foreign slavery all who were above seven years of age, and educate 
 the children as real Christians. The landlords of Valencia 
 warmly defended their vassals, but the determination of the 
 Court was fixed ; and no sooner was the truce with Holland 
 signed, in 1609, than preparations were made for expelling the 
 whole body. In vain did the Valencian nobles implore and. 
 
 c3 
 
34 PROTESTANTS AND MOORS OF SPAIN. 
 
 protest ; the fatal edict came forth. Only six families in every 
 hundred were allowed to be temporarily retained by such nobles, 
 in order to instruct their Christian successors how to manage 
 drains, aqueducts, rice grounds, sugarworks,and other businesses ; 
 and besides these, children under four years of age might remain. 
 But the Moors in indignation refused to leave their children or 
 to instruct the Christians in their arts. 
 
 The first band of exiles, about 20,000, reached Africa safely, 
 and were kindly received ; but various calamities fell on the rest. 
 Many were shipwrecked, many robbed and murdered by their 
 crews, many were slain when landed on the Barbary coast. It 
 is computed that 100,000 perished in some of these modes. In 
 Spain about 30,000 had escaped to the mountains. War was 
 made on these, and they were quickly subdued. Three thousand 
 were forthwith put to death, the children under seven years of age 
 were given as prize money for the soldiers to sell, and the rest 
 were transported to Africa. All these horrors were perpetrated 
 on dutiful, valuable subjects, who were not even pretended 
 to have committed any crime, who professed the Catholic religion 
 at the order of the Court, — and whose sole offences were, that 
 they were of a different race, and were particularly industrious 
 and intelligent. 
 
 But this was not all. The transportation had been very ex- 
 pensive ; Philip therefore taxed all the remaining Moors until he 
 had got enough to pay the expense of transporting them also ; 
 and then he finished his work. Some few Moors were supposed 
 to have concealed themselves, and a prize therefore was set on 
 their heads, as if they had been wolves. In this way did Philip 
 in the course of a few months expel at least a million of in- 
 dustrious, ingenious, innocent, loyal subjects. 
 
 When such were the proceedings of the House of Austria to- 
 wards Spain, we cahnot wonder that Spain has been on the de- 
 cline for more than three centuries. Her decline may be dated 
 in fact from the day when Charles of Ghent, their first sovereign 
 of that House, made war on the constitution of Castile ; though 
 the impulse to prosperity which the old free institutions had 
 given, disguised for a generation the insidious mischief of des- 
 potism. The decay was manifested before Philip II. was dead ; 
 and ruin is hardly too strong a word for the state of things 
 which Philip III. induced. 
 
AUSTRIAN POLAND. 35 
 
 XI.— AUSTRIAN POLAND. 
 
 The greatest crime of the eighteenth century was the partition 
 of Poland, by the joint force of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, 
 with the aid of a weak king who had been forced on to the 
 throne of Poland by the intrigues and violence of Russia. In 
 this infamous plot the religious Empress-Queen Maria Theresa 
 would at first take no part ; but at length, on finding that to 
 oppose it was Quixotic, while to be neutral was to incur guilt 
 and lose its payment, she became an eager partner to the con- 
 spiracy, and claimed Polish Gralicia as part qf the kingdom of 
 Hungary, to which it once belonged. 
 
 Yet in fact, after conquering it by force, she held it by force, 
 and did not reunite it to Hungary, nor impart to it any of the 
 Hungarian freedom. It might be wrong to speak of the House 
 of Hapsburg as violating any express engagements, oaths, or 
 treaties, with their Galician subjects ; who appear, from the day 
 of the conquest, to have been pressed down under pure military 
 domination. Reciprocally, however, since no moral union has 
 arisen between these Poles and the House of Austria, they are 
 surely justified in shaking off such a yoke whenever they are 
 able. 
 
 The miseries of Poland rose out of the fact that the com- 
 monalty was enthralled to a caste of military nobles ; and all 
 attempts at reform were embarrassed by the intrigues and violence 
 of Russia, who extorted a treaty, which, under the name of pro- 
 tecting the rights of the republic, gave her a pretext to forbid 
 their reforming the injustices of their own institutions. Gali- 
 cia partook in this misery. Indeed the commonalty are largely 
 of a different race, called Ruthenians ; who have no happy and 
 patriotic traditions concerning the ancient Polish freedom. The 
 Polish nobility has long understood the evil and danger hence 
 arising ; but since Austria, as a fixed part of her policy, keeps 
 up enmities between the different races and classes in her em- 
 pire, it has been impossible for the Polish nobles to destroy 
 offensive feudalism, unless they could first get rid of Austrian 
 interference. 
 
 In the year 1846 a conspiracy was formed, the nature and 
 extent of which is differently represented. Some call it a com- 
 munistic scheme originating in Cracow, — supposed to have been 
 got up by Austrian spies, — and highly offensive to the landed 
 proprietors of Galicia. Others say that it was really an exten- 
 
86 AUSTRIAN POLAND. 
 
 sive plan for renewing Polish independence, in which the land- 
 holders were largely concerned, and that the Austrian Govern- 
 ment had gained a certain knowledge of it.* The latter account 
 appears by far the more probable : but, whatever the cause, the 
 acts of the Austrians are not doubtful. They sent agents among 
 the Euthenian peasantry, to spread abroad the tale that Austria 
 had for three years abolished forced labour, but that the nobility 
 continued to enforce it, and were contemplating a massacre of 
 the peasants : in turn the Government offered them headmoney 
 for the wholesale slaughter of their nobility. The bribe was 
 successful. Without the trouble of a war Prince Metternich's 
 cabinet procured the assassination of all the principal men who 
 were (or were believed to be) planning revolution ; and paid the 
 price of blood openly to the assassins. To obtain accurate de- 
 tails is of course difficult, when the accounts given by the suf- 
 fering class are derided as ex parte statements, and the dynasty 
 is wise enough to remain wholly silent. It has, however, been 
 stated publicly and without contradiction, that the Austrian 
 ministry entrusted the management of this butchery to Szela, a 
 man who was in prison for setting lire to his father's house, and 
 for another horrible crime. He was set at liberty with other con- 
 victs ; and disguised soldiers were put under his command. Ten 
 shillings were offered for bringing in a nobleman dead, and five 
 shillings for one alive. A list which was made out, of the per- 
 sons massacred, contained "1484 names ; but it is uncertain whe- 
 ther this was complete. Females and children were among the 
 murdered, and an Englishman, by name Pox. 
 
 Thus to the middle of the nineteenth century, even w 7 hen not 
 inflamed by religious bigotry, the House of Hapsburg nourishes 
 enmity, cupidity, and ferocious murder, rather than allow a 
 foreign people to escape from its yoke, — a people conquered by 
 its lawless conspiracy, — a people which has never owed to it any 
 allegiance. Even supposing that to endeavour to escape from 
 such a yoke were in itself a moral treason, deserving of death, yet 
 the atrocity of confounding innocent and guilty by the general 
 proscription of a whole order of men, — the atrocity of demo- 
 ralizing a whole peasantry by holding out a pecuniary bribe to 
 assassination, — is a form of wickedness, on which it does not 
 appear that Eussia has yet ventured ; a form of wickedness, 
 which perhaps is not to be paralleled in the annals of modern 
 Europe, except in the proceedings of the same dynasty under 
 
 * A dispatch of Metternich avows that the Government knew of the 
 conspiracy, and purposely did not check it, in order to cut off all the 
 Hydra's heads at one blow. 
 
AUSTRIAN POLAND. 37 
 
 Rudolf II., as narrated above, and again in 1848 against Hun- 
 gary. 
 
 It is not unimportant, to contrast the measure dealt out to 
 dynasties and to peoples by the public men and journalists of 
 England. When questions were put in our Parliament con- 
 cerning the Galician massacres, the Queen's ministry replied in 
 uncertain phrases of general incredulity ; in consequence of 
 which our journalists chose to treat the whole as a silly story 
 hastily believed by an English nobleman whose name is indis- 
 solubly associated with sympathy for oppressed Poland. Time 
 passed on, and other subjects filled the public interest : in con- 
 sequence few of us to this day are aware that the guilt of the 
 Austrian Government in Galicia is a horrible reality. We need 
 not ask, what would have been said, if such a massacre had been 
 perpetrated voluntarily by the peasants, or had been stimulated 
 by a republican faction. We need not refer to hypothesis, or 
 step back to the September massacres of the first Erench revo- 
 lutions; for we can refer to recent fact. In 1848 three men 
 were killed by exasperated multitudes, Count Latour in Vienna, 
 Count Lamberg in Pest, Count Eossi in Rome. What was the 
 guilt of Rossi according to Roman law, must here be left doubt- 
 ful : certain it is, that the populace and liberal party of Rome 
 believed him to be morally guilty of high treason against law 
 and liberty. Latour was a high criminal, undeserving of mercy 
 before any just tribunal. He had secretly stimulated rebels and 
 robbers to invade Hungary, to burn the villages, to slaughter 
 and torture the people. He had publicly on his word of ho- 
 nour disowned Jellachich, to whom he was privately sending 
 ammunition, money, officers, and orders. As Austrian minister 
 of war, he had given secret instructions to the Austrian officers 
 in the Hungarian army, to fight feebly against the Serbian, ma- 
 rauders, and rather to sacrifice the lives of their troops than gain 
 any decisive advantage over the murderous enemy. Latour' s 
 treachery was come to light, and all Yienna knew it. He had 
 ordered the German armies to march against Hungary, when 
 the news arrived that his protege Jellachich was on the march 
 against Yienna. The Yiennese populace discerned that he was 
 attempting to crush the liberties of Hungary by German, and of 
 Yienna by Croatian, levies; they rose infuriated, and hanged 
 Latour in the street. A third slaughter was that of the Hun- 
 garian Count Lamberg, who at the mission of the Austrian 
 dynasty accepted the unlawful and treasonable duty of becoming 
 military dictator of Hungary, to put himself at the head of the 
 volunteers who were assembling to repel Jellachich. The popu- 
 
38 HUNGARY. 
 
 lace of Pest, discerning that this was a new attempt to play into 
 the hand of the public enemy, killed Lamberg on his way to 
 occupy the fortress of Buda. 
 
 Because Bossi was stabbed in Bome, therefore, Boman liber- 
 ties are to be annihilated, and a temporal Papacy to be kept on 
 the shoulders of the Bomans by the aid of foreign armies. 
 Because Latour was hanged in Yienna, that city is to be bom- 
 barded, its citizens butchered in heaps, and the constitution, to 
 which the Emperor had given solemn assent, is to be ignored. 
 Because Lamberg was slain on the bridge of Buda Pest, all 
 Hungary is to be laid waste by Eusso- Austrian power, its ancient 
 law prostrate, its indisputable rights exploded. Such is the logic 
 of leading journalists and of our stock-exchange : is it possible to 
 believe it to be that of the Queen's ministry also ? 
 
 Even after the mmsacres of Galicia to ere perfectly well known, 
 not one court in Europe protested against them, not one royal 
 or diplomatic person withdrew from amity and courtesy with the 
 murderers. If " Eed " republicans in the crudeness of passion 
 kill a few eminently guilty men who cannot be reached by form 
 of law, our respectable classes and our statesmen shudder at 
 popular wickedness, and look on it as a justification of any 
 amount of royal violence. But if an Austrian cabinet arms 
 nightly assassins to butcher families in their homes, the news is 
 first denied and derided, then prudently hushed up ; finally our 
 ministry avow that whatever weakens the Austrian dynasty would 
 be a European calamity. 
 
 XII.— HUNGABY. 
 
 Under this word a vast subject remains, which must be too 
 summarily treated. 
 
 Castile and Aragon lost their liberties by a single campaign, 
 so entirely were they surrounded by the overwhelming force of 
 their legal guardian. Bohemia, though hemmed in between Ger- 
 many and Hungary, was overpowered not at one effort, but by 
 tw T o wars. But Hungary, on the eastern frontier of Christendom, 
 with the fortress land of Transylvania and the marshes of the 
 Teiss as its defence, struggled for three centuries against the 
 perfidious dynasty. To tell all its crimes in these few pages is 
 impossible. 
 
 Ferdinand of Austria was freely elected king of Hungary in 
 
HUNGARY. 39 
 
 1526-7; and from that date to 1826-7 he and his royal de- 
 scendants perpetually broke the Coronation Oath on many most 
 cardinal points. To use the recent words of Count Teleki, all 
 the sovereigns of this dynasty have been perjured, except Leo- 
 pold II, who reigned only 18 months, and Joseph II., who, in 
 order to evade the oath, refused to be crowned, and thereby 
 made himself a foreign usurper and not a legitimate king. All 
 his acts were for this reason declared invalid by himself on his 
 deathbed. 
 
 The pertinacious breaches of the Coronation Oath, were prin- 
 cipally the following ; 1. protracted non-residence in Hungary. 
 Against the positive words of the law, all the kings of this line 
 were permanent absentees, and most of them never lived a week 
 on Hungarian soil. Unfaithfulness on this point is that which 
 estranged them, and eminently led to all their other offences. 
 2. The appointing of foreigners to civil and military office. 
 This has been done flagrantly and perpetually, in spite of per- 
 petual remonstrance. 3. Introducing of foreign troops, making 
 public treaties , and declaring war, without leave of the Diet. 4. 
 Neglecting to summon the Diet once in every three years at least. 
 5. Oppression of the Protestants, against specific treaties. 
 
 This violation of law and oaths was carried out in admi- 
 nistrative details in a great variety of instances, even at the best 
 time ; nevertheless the fortune of Hungary has been; very dif- 
 ferent under different kings ; and we proceed to mark out the 
 general distinctions. 
 
 The three hundred years, from 1526 to 1826, is divisible into 
 two periods at 1712, which is the year of the peace of Satmar. 
 The first period, from 1526 to 1712, is one of civil war against 
 the kings so frequent as to be almost unceasing. The suffer- 
 ings from foreign soldiery were great, even in peace, from the 
 beginning of the Austrian sway : horrible desolation followed 
 under Eudolf II., a pupil of the Jesuits, and continued as long 
 as Jesuits had the educating of the Austrian princes. In this 
 long period of 186 years the liberties of Hungary were saved 
 by a twofold support, — first, by great princes of Transylvania, 
 men of genius and wisdom, as well as of unchanging reso- 
 lution ; — secondly, by the Turks ; who, though hostile to Hun- 
 gary as Christian, were soon discovered to be far milder masters 
 than the House of Hapsburg. — In the beginning of those times 
 fifteen-sixteenths of the Magyars were Protestant. The Turks 
 did not interfere with their religion: Rudolf II. and Ferdi- 
 nand II. tried to murder every Protestant whom they could not 
 convert. — The Turks did not interfere with local self-°;ovem- 
 
40 HUNGARY. 
 
 ment, but were satisfied with moderate tribute and nominal 
 homage : the Austrians could be satisfied with nothing short of 
 rooting out all the institutions of Hungary, local as well as reli- 
 gious. — The Turks observe treaties as faithfully as any nation of 
 Christendom : the Austrians in that whole period never observed 
 the treaties by which again and again and again they made peace 
 with Hungary. Yet the English apologists of Austria* talk of 
 her as having saved Hungary from the Turkish yoke ! 
 
 Besides the aid from the Transylvanian princes and the Turks, 
 the Hungarians had relief in the attacks made on Austria by the 
 French power. The victories of Blenheim and Eamilies went 
 far to seal the doom of Hungary under the feet of Austria. 
 But the Jesuits had fallen into disgrace, and the heir apparent 
 of the Hapsburgs had been educated under other tuition. For 
 the first time the Hungarians experienced generous treatment 
 from that House, under Joseph I. who, preferring a loyal people 
 to one conquered, crushed and resisting, madef with them the 
 celebrated peace of Satmar, which confirmed their ancient law and 
 liberties, and gave to his dynasty the loyal obedience of the 
 Hungarians for another full century. This peace was negotiated 
 with the cognizance and by the mediation of an English and of 
 a Dutch Ambassador. 
 
 It may be here proper to indicate what are the proofs of this 
 fact, since an English Foreign Minister has recently avowed that 
 England knoivs nothing of Hungary hut as part of the Austrian 
 Empire. In Archdeacon Coxe's History of the House of Austria, 
 ch. 79, which treats of the years from 1705 to 1711, we read: — 
 "Joseph I. redoubled his efforts to pacify the insurgents [i.e. 
 the Hungarian nation]. He opened a new negotiation through 
 the intervention of the English and Butch ministers, at Tirnau, 
 &c." No farther details appear in Coxe, but in Dr. J. A. Eess- 
 ler's German History of Hungary, vol. 9, p. 584, and in Prince 
 Eakotzy's Histoire des Revolutions en Hongrie, vol. 2, pp. 341- 
 346, we find the following facts. The preliminaries for the peace, 
 as Coxe states, began at Tirnau (or Nagy Szombat), which was in 
 1705 ; on the 13th October the conferences were opened be- 
 tween Count Wratislaw (chancellor of Bohemia) and Archbishop 
 Paul Szechenyi, as representatives of the Emperor Joseph I. and 
 
 * Tn fact, the deplorable misgovernment of Hungary by Austria almost 
 led to the conquest of both countries by the Turks. Vienna was saved from 
 them, only by Sobiesky, king of Poland, a.d. 1683, who thereby enabled 
 Leopold I. to inflict horrible miseries on Hungary. The " Bloody Shambles" 
 of Eperies were held in 1687. 
 
 f The treaty was not actually signed till after the death of Joseph. 
 
HUNGARY. 41 
 
 the Counts Bercsenyi and Csaky as delegates of the Hungarian 
 " Confederation/' as the provisional Government of Hungary 
 called itself. Coxe has explained its organization. All the peers, 
 prelates, and representatives of the counties and cities of insur- 
 gent Hungary assembled in Diet at Szecseny, and after religious 
 ceremonies from the Archbishop of Gran, instituted a Confederacy 
 similar to that of Poland. The administration was confided to 
 a Senate of 24 members, Kakotzy was elected Leader and ele- 
 vated on a buckler by the principal peers : after which an oath 
 of fidelity was taken, and a vow not to conclude peace until 
 their ancient rights were restored. As Mediator at the Con- 
 ference, the English Government sent the Earl of Sunderland, 
 then ambassador, to the Emperor, and Sir George Stepney, the 
 secretary to the embassy ; also the Dutch Government sent their 
 ambassador Baron Eechteren, and Heer Hamel Bruyninx. It 
 deserves particular remark, that the Confederation objected to 
 the credentials of the Earl of Sunderland, as implying censure 
 of the irfsurgent Hungarians ; since in them Queen Anne as- 
 signed as a reason for her mediation her wish to stop farther 
 bloodshed in an inglorious struggle. The credentials were ac- 
 cordingly altered by the English Government, which finally 
 assumed a place as mediating between two independent powers. 
 The negotiations continued for five or six years. When they 
 had been broken off, in the winter of 1705-6, the Mediators 
 took the initiative themselves, in a note of Jan. 15th, 1706, to 
 exhort the Emperor and the Confederation to renew the nego- 
 tiation. In conclusion the Mediators did not indeed pretend to 
 guarantee the Hungarian constitution : being Maritime Powers, 
 this was not desired of them. But undoubtedly they had full 
 official cognizance of the terms of the reconciliation; — they 
 knew that the Emperor submitted to recognize the whole ancient 
 constitution of Hungary, and all its laws passed with legitimate 
 formalities ; and they have been perfectly aware that the House 
 of Austria cannot violate the treaty of Satmar, without de- 
 throning itself in Hungary, and putting the English Government 
 in the same position towards insurgent Hungary now, as it was 
 in 1705-12. 
 
 In 1687 the Hungarian Diet (under military compulsion, it 
 seems) had voted to make the crown hereditary in the male line ; 
 and this was not disturbed by the peace of Satmar. But the 
 heir of the crown still was not king until he had been legiti- 
 mately crowned, which implied his first taking the Coronation 
 Oath. Besides this, ever since 1622, the Hungarians have 
 forced their kings, prior to coronation, to execute a Charter, or, 
 
42 HUNGARY. 
 
 as it is called, an Inaugural Diploma, (a document in some respect 
 similar to the Bohemian Reversal^) which was a personal cove- 
 nant of every king with the nation. Yet neither has this had 
 any effect. Maria Theresa saved her kingdoms from a conspiracy 
 of the great powers, by the zealous enthusiasm of the Hun- 
 garians, in 1741, yet she too was false. In her long reign she 
 summoned the Diet but three times, and, against oath, ruled by 
 Edicts. She renewed a solemn law, that the ministers of state 
 both for internal and for foreign affairs should be Hungarians ; 
 but she made her Hungarian ministry a sham and a blind, and 
 ruled by means of her Austrian cabinet. This Queen subtly 
 undermined and corrupted Hungarian self-government and Hun- 
 garian religion : her whole policy was directed to evade the law, 
 where she did not dare openly to defy it. Her son Joseph II. 
 went further. He refused to take the Coronation Oath, and 
 usurped power without that solemn engagement. He suppressed 
 the municipalities and county institutions of Hungary, and 
 introduced a centralized system of paid German officials, of 
 course by means of foreign troops. When at last the much- 
 enduring Hungarians rose to resist usurpations so undisguised, 
 Joseph did not dare to persevere, since in Belgium and against 
 Turkey he was alike unprosperous. On his deathbed, in 1790, 
 he retracted all his offensive ordinances. His brother Leopold 
 II. pacified the nation by solemn renewals of the Constitution 
 with additional guarantees.* His wise administration during a 
 short reign of 18 months roused enthusiasm for the Crown, 
 and effectually dissipated all jealousy of its encroachments. 
 
 But Leopold was suddenly cut off, as is not doubted, by 
 domestic poison, and as the Hungarians have suspected, — in 
 order to introduce the old imperial policy. His young son 
 Francis, under evil guidance, and terrified by the scenes of re- 
 publican Paris, soon recommenced illegal arrests, illegal sen- 
 tences, and cruel executions. Yet Hungary nobly supported 
 him against France. But when the Diet, in 1807, inveighed 
 
 * The constitutional laws to which Leopold gave consent, were virtually 
 a renewal of solemn treaty between the nation and the dynasty. Among 
 others : " Hungary, with its appanages, is a free and independent kingdom, 
 that is, compromised with no other kingdom or people, and to be governed by 
 its hereditary king, when legitimately crowned, after its own peculiar laws 
 and customs, and not after the fashion of the other provinces." Also : " His 
 Majesty will call in Hungarians to the very Ministry of State, and will treat 
 of internal affairs by means of Hungarians, and foreign affairs with an ad- 
 mixture of Hungarians." Also : " No taxes or service shall be levied with- 
 out permission of the Diet, except during foreign invasion. Diets shall be 
 held at least once in three years." 
 
HUNGARY. 43 
 
 against maladministration of the finances, and moved in favour 
 of Free Trade, — and again, in 1812, protested against the 
 Austrian State-Bankruptcy, — Francis resolved to get rid of the 
 constitution. The war came to an end, and he summoned no 
 more Diets until compelled, after 13 years' interval. Meanwhile, 
 he had done or attempted numerous illegalities, especially that 
 of raising men and money by his edict. In 1824 he became terri- 
 fied by the aspect of things, and in 1825 a Diet was summoned; 
 and in this one respect the law was thenceforward observed until 
 1848. In consequence, that was a period of legal warfare by 
 open constitutional means for the destruction of the many ille- 
 galities in which the Court still persisted. In fact, a large part 
 of the duty of the Diet still consisted in opposing encroachments 
 of the prerogative, and complaining that the law was not en- 
 forced by the ministry. This was in itself a great hindrance to 
 internal reform, by occupying time and energy. But besides, 
 it was the craft of the Crown to impede all reform which would 
 content the un-Magyar population and cement them into a single 
 nationality. By Edicts, now and then, good measures were 
 sought to be enforced : then the Diets and Aristocracy and 
 County Assemblies had either to submit to a precedent highly 
 dangerous to constitutional liberty, or to expose themselves to 
 the imputation of being hostile to all reform. Even smaller 
 improvements of the law were thwarted or vetoed by the Crown, 
 unless the Diet were willing to purchase them by assenting to 
 some evil principle. Thus at quite a recent period a veto was 
 put on a bill for expediting the adjudicature of commercial 
 transactions, unless the judges were made mere nominees of the 
 Crown, without any of their usual responsibility. Nor was it 
 possible for the "nobiles,"* or patricians, to tax themselves for 
 roads, bridges, and other material improvements ; for every such 
 bill was thwarted by the Crown insisting that all the proceeds 
 of the new taxes should be made over to it irresponsibly : and 
 the Hungarians had proof in their vast Crown Estates, (which 
 were all unprofitable in Austrian hands,) that to vote money to 
 the Crown was useless. The Austrian ministry used the Crown 
 Estates of Hungary as a job of patronage for themselves ; re- 
 proached the Hungarians for the backward state of their country; 
 refused to allow its improvement, unless they (a purely foreign 
 body) had the doing of it ; and lastly, by their scribes and jour- 
 
 * The "nobiles" were a class who paid no direct taxes, but were liable 
 to personal service in war. These must not be confounded with the " mag- 
 nates," or peers. 
 
44 HUNGARY. 
 
 nalists did not cease to poison the mind of Europe with the 
 idea of Hungarian " barbarism." 
 
 A. series of valuable laws were prepared by the Opposition in 
 the autumn of 1847; and several of them had been carried, 
 when the French Eepublic broke ou the world in Feb. 1848. 
 The Hungarians immediately feared a new war of the despotic 
 powers against France, and a recurrence of their old miseries ; — 
 the Crown ruling without Diets, and excusing itself by its pre- 
 tended privilege to raise troops and taxes when there was danger 
 of invasion. All felt that an onward move was essential, to 
 secure their hereditary laws. 
 
 The timid Conservatives of the Diet, who desired the same 
 measures as the Opposition, but, from long experience of the 
 desperate atrocity of the Court, feared to press it too hard, now 
 felt sure that the dynasty would give way to their just demands. 
 The Galician massacres had exceedingly terrified the selfish part 
 of the great proprietors, and made all to feel the extreme 
 importance of terminating feudal quarrels. In consequence, 
 the whole Diet came over to the side of the Opposition, and 
 Batthyanyi and Kossuth found themselves leaders of a united 
 nation. Kossuth proposed a petition to the king, which was 
 carried unanimously, to restore that political condition which 
 had subsisted when Hungary elected its first king of the House 
 of Hapsburg, viz. by re-establishing parliamentary power in the 
 other kingdoms — Bohemia and Vienna. All felt that the ex- 
 tinction of liberty in them was the permanent cause of mischief 
 to Hungary ; and a large deputation from both Chambers carried 
 the petition to Vienna, where an unforeseen result quickened the 
 deliberations of the Court. The Viennese took heart at the 
 events of Paris and the debates in Hungary, and made insurrec- 
 tion : the same had also taken place in Italy : the tottering 
 dynasty gladly crept beneath the shadow of Kossuth, and gave 
 solemn assent to the splendid series of legislative and adminis- 
 trative reforms. 
 
 But while making oath to Hungary, the royal 'House was 
 plotting to break the oath; and betook themselves as in Galicia 
 to ferocious craft. Agents were sent to stimulate the Serbs to 
 make murderous inroads into Hungary. Jellachich was made 
 Governor of Croatia before Batthyanyi had received the formal in- 
 vestment as premier, and then it was pretended that Batthyanyi' s 
 concurrence was not needed. Jellachich preached French repub- 
 licanism, stirred up the Croats to rebel, used military terrorism 
 to pack the Croatian provincial Assembly with men hostile to 
 Hungary, and raised an army to march against the Hungarian 
 
HUNGARY. 45 
 
 capital. It was for some time a mystery why the Hungarian 
 troops were so very ill led against the murderous Serbs : this 
 was afterwards explained, when they found the Serbs to be under 
 the command of Austrian officers, with the Emperor's commis- 
 sion. On July 2nd the Palatine Archduke Stephen opened 
 the new Diet in the King's name ; denounced the Serbian and 
 Croatian movements as revolts, and exhorted the Diet to take 
 active measures for suppressing them. With the least possible 
 delay they voted bills for raising money and troops; but after 
 two months had been spent in various ways, the King put his 
 veto on the bills, without assigning any reason, though a deputa- 
 tion of 100 members of the Diet went to Vienna to implore his 
 assent. It was already manifest to all that the Court was 
 perfidious. The generals in the Hungarian army had been 
 tampered with to tight feebly against the Serbs. Jellachich, 
 who had been proclaimed a rebel, was now declared to have 
 " proved his unalterable fidelity to the House of Hapsburg ; " 
 finally, his despatches to Latour were intercepted, which revealed 
 everything even to the populace of Yienna. 
 
 When dangers so extreme surrounded Hungary, — when her 
 trained troops were nearly all abroad, and her generals (reared 
 in Austrian service) proved treacherous, — when the heart of 
 Batthyanyi failed, and all feared the fate of Bohemia, — one 
 man saved the honour of Hungary, and with her honour her 
 whole future. Kossuth called the people to arms. Volunteers 
 assembled, defeated Jellachich, captured his rearguard of 10,000 
 men, with stores and ammunition ; raised Hungary into enthu- 
 siasm, but drove the perjured Hapsburgs into still more head- 
 long courses. 
 
 On the arrival of the news, orders were sent to the Austrian 
 forces to invade Hungary from all sides. A royal rescript was 
 signed by Ferdinand on October 3rd which dissolved the Diet, 
 forbade all action of the municipalities, superseded all tribunals 
 by martial law, and made Jellachich civil and military 
 governor of Hungary, vesting in him an expressly -unlimited 
 despotism, and giving him 'power of life and death. Such an act, 
 even from the legitimately-crowned king of Hungary, was not 
 merely in all parts null and void, but was equivalent ipso facto 
 to an abdication, since it was a rescinding of that constitution 
 which made him king : yet the Hungarians did not, even so, 
 declare the crown forfeited ; they merely prepared to resist the 
 illegality. 
 
 The war which followed is in itself a history. The barbarous 
 burnings, slaughterings, and tortures inflicted by the Serbs were 
 
46 HUNGARY. 
 
 presently backed up by similar ferocities of the Wallacks in 
 Transylvania, stirred up by Austrian officers. Yet the devoted 
 self-sacrifice of Hungary triumphed. In March, 1849, seven great 
 victories were won by them in the open field against the trained 
 armies and the most experienced generals of Austria. In April 
 the host of 150,000 men which had invaded the country was 
 everywhere in rapid retreat, shattered and disorganized. 
 
 King Ferdinand was an imbecile, little removed from an 
 idiot ; but he was morally too good for the convenience of the 
 dynasty. He had refused in November to sign the commis- 
 sions for invading Hungary, because such an act was a breach 
 of his Coronation Oath. — He had in consequence been dethroned 
 by a secret cabal, his abdication having been extorted from him 
 by his family and some of the cabinet. The same conspirators 
 placed on the throne his young nephew Erancis Joseph, a pupil 
 of the Jesuits, who being only 18 years old, and having taken 
 no Coronation Oath, would be a pliant tool of the " camarilla/' 
 or secret cabinet. Moreover the Czar Nicholas had been impor- 
 tuned to give aid in Transylvania, if requisite ; and in prepara- 
 tion for this, he violated the neutrality of Turkey by invading 
 Moldavia and Wallachia in November and December, 1848. 
 Soon after, when Bern gained successes in Transylvania, the 
 Eussians entered with 20,000 men; all of whom were shortly 
 driven out again. The Austrian cabinet pretended to the 
 European powers that the Eussians had not come at their invita- 
 tion, but at the request of the Saxon towns of Transylvania, to 
 save them from Bern's " atrocities," and not with any political 
 object, but solely " in the cause of humanity." This pretence 
 was admitted so courteously * by France and England, that 
 Eussia perfectly discerned she would meet no impediment from 
 either power. 
 
 Early in April it was notorious that the Eussian armies were 
 on their march, at the avowed invitation of the Hapsburgs. 
 The Hungarian nation, having already victoriously earned its 
 independence, proclaimed that House to have forfeited the crown, 
 and made Kossuth governor during the continuance of the 
 struggle. Even with the aid of Serbs and Croats and the entire 
 disposable force of Eussia, Austria could not have been saved 
 without the treachery of the Hungarian general Gorgey, who 
 might have dictated peace in Yienna before the Eussians could 
 have time to enter. But perfidy has triumphed. The House of 
 
 * The Russian armies had occupied the Turkish provinces before the 
 Saxon towns had ever heard the name of Bern, and a month before Kossuth 
 sent him on his mission into Transylvania. 
 
CROATS AND SERBS. 47 
 
 Austria has consummated the darling object of her ambition, — 
 to annihilate the laws and liberty of Hungary. Nobody now 
 knows what is law there. If a man is arrested in his bed and 
 carried to prison by night, it is a political offence in his wife to 
 tell next day that he has been so treated. Eights of property, 
 rights of law, rights of religion, rights of speech, are all gone : 
 the taxgatherer, the hangman, and the soldier domineer over the 
 nation which in 1809 resisted the enticing of Napoleon I. to 
 forsake their unworthy king. 
 
 XIII.— CEOATS AND SEBBS. 
 
 The reader may be at a loss to imagine, by what ingenuity 
 the Austrian cabinet induced the Croats and Serbs to act so fierce 
 and dreadful a part against Hungary. These races have been 
 purposely kept in barbarism by Austria, in order to furnish her 
 with an unlimited supply of soldiers, who are pressed into her 
 armies by conscription ; and along what is called " the military 
 frontier " were deprived of all the liberties of Hungary. This 
 illegality was one of the standing grievances perpetually com- 
 plained of by the Diet: yet the Austrian officers and agents 
 had so long laid the blame of every evil on the " tyranny of the 
 proud Magyars," that the ignorant people believed it. The 
 Serbs are of the Greek Church, and have been protected by the 
 Hungarian Diet from the persecutions of Catholic Austria ; yet 
 a Serbian patriarch, from hostility of religion and race, proved 
 a supple tool to the Hapsburgs in stirring up the fierce and wild 
 people to deeds of blood and plunder. 
 
 But it was necessary also to act on their political ambition. 
 Jellachich, as we have said, at the mission of the Austrian ca- 
 binet preached " Liberty, Fraternity, Equality," in Croatia, 
 promising to the silly Croats that they, instead of " the proud 
 Magyars," should be the dominant race in Hungary, — and this, 
 at a moment when the Diet had just extorted Ferdinand's assent 
 to laws which put all races on a perfect* equality. Similar 
 
 * The use of the Magyar language in the Hungarian Diet was no viola- 
 tion of equality; for some one language was necessary to be selected. In 
 former days it was Latin, which, being a dead language, was much harder 
 to acquire than the Magyar ; and was sustained by the Austrians merely 
 because it impeded eloquence and persuasion, and stopped all reform. The 
 Croats did not object to the use of Magyar in the Central Diet; but when 
 
48 THE STADION CONSTITUTION. 
 
 absurdities deceived the Serbs. Instead of being subjected to 
 the Diet of Hungary, they were to be a nation of themselves, 
 in direct communication with the great Emperor at Yienna, and 
 were to be free from the dishonour of waiting on the good plea- 
 sure of a Hungarian ministry. In the firm belief that Austria 
 was eager to strengthen their nationality and their local privi- 
 leges, and exalt them above the Magyars, these rude nations 
 entered upon their fratricidal missions, — the Serbs ferociously, 
 the Croats stupidly. Civil Croatia has many educated classes, 
 and the Croatian provincial Assembly well understood the true 
 state of things. Jellachich could do nothing with it, till he had 
 reconstituted it by violence ; his partizans were the young re- 
 publicans, or the uneducated boors. The Serbs are a more ener- 
 getic race, but more entirely barbarous. 
 
 No sooner was the war ended, than both nations discovered 
 that they had been made cats-paws. The exaltation promised 
 them by Austria proved to be community of depression : every 
 particle of freedom which they previously enjoyed has been 
 taken away, and at last they understand that the Magyars were 
 their friends and protectors. This is a lesson which will not be 
 lost upon them at the next commotion. 
 
 XIV.— THE STADION CONSTITUTION. 
 
 The Bohemians have been similarly deluded. By the machi- 
 nations of the Austrian cabinet they also were seduced into the 
 stupid idea, that the Hapsburgs were willing to establish a con- 
 stitutional rule, in which the Sclavonic element would prevail. 
 By playing on this Bohemian vanity, the cabinet controlled the 
 votes of the Viennese Parliament, in, August and September, 
 1848, and prevented it from espousing the cause of Hungary 
 against the treacherous Austrian ministers, or even receiving a 
 communication from the Hungarian Diet which appealed to it as 
 mediator. The Bohemians were amused by the promise of a 
 
 Latin was laid aside, they wished to use the Croatian, and not the Magyar, 
 in their own province ; and this, after long debates, was finally conceded to 
 them by the Diet. It had previously been refused to them by the Crown. 
 
 Englishmen do not think they are oppressive to Wales, in claiming that 
 English, and not Welsh, shall be talked in the London Parliament. That 
 German and English journalists make it a great sin in the Magyars, to have 
 " oppressed the Croatian language," testifies how little argument that side 
 has. 
 
AUSTRIAN ITALY. 49 
 
 new and comprehensive constitution, which would fuse all Hun- 
 gary into the Austrian Empire, and give an enormous prepon- 
 derance to the Sclavonic races ; among which the Bohemian, as 
 the most highly educated, would forsooth be dominant. 
 
 This constitution was given to the world, — on paper, in the 
 opening of March, 1849, having been signed by the young Em- 
 peror after the battle of Kapolna (Feb.), which was lost by 
 Gorgey's disobedience, and was accepted as the final blow to 
 Magyar liberty. This paper-constitution is known by the name 
 of Count Stadion, then Austrian Home Secretary. It provided a 
 Parliament at Yienna, in which Italians, Austrians, Bohemians, 
 Galicians, Magyars, Croats, Serbs, Wallacks, &c, &c, should sit 
 together. The Sclavonians were told that they would have a 
 clear majority in it, and the Magyars were assured that it was a 
 far better constitution than the old one of which they were so 
 absurdly enamoured. All municipalities were abolished, and 
 bureaucracy made universal ; so that Hungary would be governed 
 by German paid officials. 
 
 This absurd and arbitrary scheme, commencing with the 
 avowal " Hungary exists no longer,' ' roused those Magyars who 
 previously had been lukewarm, — the ultra-tories of Hungary : 
 but it prolonged the delusion of the Bohemians, who indeed 
 well deserved to be cheated. This constitution did its work, in 
 keeping the Bohemians firm to Austria until the Austro-Eussian 
 armies had annihilated the liberty of Hungary. Nothing more 
 was said of the constitution for near two years ; and then, — 
 the young Emperor proclaimed its abolition ! 
 
 Thu3 Austria cheats her foolish tools equally with her legal 
 and loyal subjects, and proclaims to all Europe that a weapon 
 of her rule is low trickery as well as fierce perfidy. The bom- 
 bardment of Prague had been forgiven by the Bohemians, in 
 their eagerness for Sclavonic supremacy. It remains to be seen 
 what new bait for their credulity the craft of the Hapsburgs will 
 invent. 
 
 XV.— AUSTRIAN ITALY. 
 
 In the year 1508, Maximilian I., in the infamous league 
 of Cambuay, agreed to divide the territories of Venice, his 
 ally, with his enemy Louis XII. of France. The Pope and the 
 King of Naples took their share in the spoil. By this measure 
 the House of Austria got possession of Dalmatia. 
 
 D 
 
50 AUSTRIAN ITALY. 
 
 The Milanese territory fell into the grasp of Charles of Ghent, 
 — in the era at which Italy was placarded to all Europe as the 
 prize of the strongest, — and it continued with the Spanish 
 Hapsburgs until their race was superseded by the Bourbons on 
 the throne of Spain. After the war of the Spanish succession, 
 the great powers decided (a.d. 1713) that Austria must have 
 the Milanese. She has kept it for her own convenience ever 
 since. 
 
 In the French republican war, the Austrian and the French 
 armies trespassed at pleasure on the neutral territory of Venice, 
 and plundered it alternately. In 1797 Bonaparte made with 
 Austria the league of Campo Formio, by which Austria ceded 
 to «France both Belgium and the Milanese, and received in com- 
 pensation — half the possessions of Venice, a power whose neu- 
 trality they had forcibly compromised. Environed by their joint 
 forces, Venice could not resist. The Austrians, on entering, 
 banished all persons known for patriotism and spirit, as if they 
 had been rebels against a legitimate Government. In the close 
 of 1805, they were forced to yield to Bonaparte both Venetia 
 and Dalmatia : nevertheless, on the fall of Bonaparte, when the 
 French troops had been expelled by the active exertions of the 
 Italians, Austria marched-in her armies and occupied these 
 territories as her inalienable right. 
 
 Now for the first time, as far as we are aware, she assumed 
 constitutional pretences towards Italy. It was indeed the re- 
 newed age of fictitious constitutionalism. England was at the 
 height of her reputation. Her inexhaustible resources, the un- 
 changeableness of her policy, the safety and grandeur of her 
 Crown, seemed ail to be linked with her parliamentary constitu- 
 tion. By promising a renewal of the ancient national rights, 
 modified only by new necessities, the German princes had re- 
 animated their people. Sicily still retained her old, but reformed, 
 Parliament : similar institutions were promised to Naples and 
 Piedmont, and Austria felt the need of hypocrisy in the Lom- 
 bardo-Venetian kingdom. In effect, England did give to France 
 under the restored Bourbons a parliamentary Government, and 
 Alexander guaranteed a highly-liberal constitution to the king- 
 dom of Poland ; which made it decorous for us to accept and 
 sign the Treaty of Vienna. At that crisis, the voice of England, 
 if it had been raised against the treachery of the kings, would 
 have armed all Germany, Poland, and Italy. To win our con- 
 sent was essential to Austria, Prussia, and Russia, and it proved 
 very easy. 
 
 Austria at this time engaged to govern Lombardy and Venetia 
 
AUSTRIAN ITALY. 51 
 
 as Italian nationalities constitutionally united to her crown, and 
 drew up into schedule, as a sort of Charter, the constitution 
 which was to be established. The army was to be strictly na- 
 tional, all the officers as well as privates being Italians, except 
 a few of the chief generals. The entire of the civil service also 
 were to be Italians, except the viceroys and a few eminent offi- 
 cials. The National Universities were to be under Italian Pro- 
 fessors. There were to be Eepresentative Assemblies with 
 freedom of speech, and the right of receiving petitions against 
 any malversations of the Executive. Freedom of the press was 
 guaranteed under fixed legal regulations. In short, it was pro- 
 claimed, that the National Independence, which had been op- 
 pressed by Napoleon, was now to be recovered. 
 
 Besides all this, the Austrian dynasty won for itself at that 
 crisis the active support of the nobility of Lombardy, by pro- 
 mising to them definite privileges which might not be secured, 
 if, by heading a purely republican movement, they were to expel 
 the Austrians. The English plenipotentiary was easily amused 
 by verbal promises, and possibly only wanted an excuse for 
 gratifying the imperial friends who showered on him presents of 
 diamonds. 
 
 But no sooner was Austria in full possession, than the Italians 
 discovered that every single promise was a trick and a falsehood. 
 The executive Government indeed was for five or six years mild. 
 The press and speech were practically free and many personal 
 favours were shown to individual nobles ; but not one of the 
 institutions guaranteed to them was established. Like the "Sta- 
 dion Constitution," they were never intended to exist, except on 
 paper. The nobility were the first to be discontented, — as uni- 
 formly happens with those whom Austria makes her tools ; and 
 in 1820, when constitutional revolt broke out in Naples and 
 Sicily, the Italian patricians of the north began to plot similar 
 movements. In 1821 was the arrest of Silvio Pellico, Confalo- 
 nieri, and other noblemen ; and thenceforward the rule of Austria 
 has been one of undisguised military violence. 
 
 The Italian movements for freedom, during 1846 and 1847, 
 under the auspices of Pope Pius IX., reached Lombardy as well 
 as Naples, Sicily, Tuscany, and Sardinia. The people of Milan 
 endeavoured to coerce the Government into liberal measures by 
 the most inoffensive of all forms of battle, — by abstaining from 
 tobacco, snuff, and the lottery, which brought revenue into the 
 imperial coffers. Marshal Radetsky, the Austrian commander, 
 avowed the doctrine that " three days of bloodshed yield thirty 
 years of peace," and in order to infuriate ' the soldiery, a hand- 
 
52 AUSTRIAN ITALY. 
 
 bill full of insults and threats against them was concocted and 
 printed by the police, which purported to be from the Milanese. 
 On the 3rd of January, cigars and brandy were abundantly given 
 to the soldiers, who at last in the evening, when sufficiently 
 drunk, were sent out into the streets with drawn swords, and at- 
 tacked whomever they met. Sixty-one persons were carried off, 
 severely or mortally wounded, to the hospitals ; the police having 
 previously given orders to prepare carriages and beds. Some of 
 the sufferers, who recovered, were doomed to inprisonment as 
 malefactors, — probably because they would otherwise have been 
 thenceforward dangerous enemies. The Marquess D'Azeglio, 
 since prime minister of Sardinia, adds : " I at first believed it to 
 be a calumny, — until I was forced to admit the fact, — that the 
 wounds of the prisoners remained undressed ; in consequence of 
 which, two of them died of gangrene, and the rest underwent 
 extreme danger." 
 
 Five days afterwards, another military outrage was committed 
 in Pavia, and others in other garrisons ; this being, it seems, the 
 Austrian mode of quelling the spirit of insurrection. But natu- 
 rally, when the French revolution came in February, the result 
 was, an uprising in Lombardy. Vienna was simultaneously re- 
 volutionized. Eadetsky, who had been beaten out of Milan, 
 received orders from Vienna to make peace. He disobeyed 
 orders, rightly judging that the royal House would thank him for 
 opposing a ministry which they had unwillingly accepted. Yet 
 even so late as July, the Hapsburgs kept up their renewed pre- 
 texts of constitutionalism and nationality. On the 22nd of that 
 month, the Archduke John opened the assembly at Vienna in the 
 name of the Emperor, with a speech breathing amity and good- 
 will towards all parts of the Empire, and said of Italy in per- 
 ticular :* "The war in Italy is not directed against the liberties 
 of the people of that country. Its real object is, to maintain the 
 honour of the Austrian arms in presence of the Italian Powers, 
 at the same time recognizing their nationality." The result 
 shows, that this, as on every other occasion, was a mere cheat 
 and a blind, intended at the moment to win over a party among 
 the Italians, as also among Hungarians and Bohemians, — to 
 
 * The Hungarian Diet, and Kossuth personally, have been reproached by 
 opposite parties on opposite grounds, in the matter of the Hungarian levies 
 against Italy. Lord Ponsonby, and our official underlings and journals, 
 attack the Hungarians for not giving troops against Italy ; Liberals (includ- 
 ing even Mr. Walter Kelly) have attacked them for giving troops. These 
 opposite accusations may surely neutralize one another. The real facts are 
 too complicated to be accurately stated in the compass of a note. 
 
AUSTRIAN ITALY. 53 
 
 satisfy the constitutional aspirations still dominant in Vienna, 
 and to separate England from sympathy with the Sardinian arms. 
 Possibly the Archduke John was personally sincere; but in such 
 a dynasty, the good intentions of one prince are powerless. — To 
 tell the horrors that Austria has since perpetrated, is here im- 
 possible and needless. But her first act on entering Milan is a 
 comment on her respect for Italian nationality. An edict was 
 issued that all the men found iu Milan between 18 and 40 years, 
 after 8 o'clock in the evening, should be immediately enrolled 
 in the Croat regiments, and sent across the mountains. Less 
 than 12 hours was allowed for those who preferred exile and 
 destitution. After this we cannot wonder that the Italian exiles 
 are counted by tens of thousands. 
 
 All diplomacy is false and unjust, which pretends that the 
 Austrian dynasty is a legitimate Government in Lombardy. A 
 power, which dates its possession of a country from a century 
 back without any growth of loyal sentiment ; — which in the last 
 38 years has made itself more and more hated by every class ; a 
 power which has falsified every solemn and public declaration, 
 and stands only by overwhelming armies of foreign soldiery, — 
 which affects moral sanctions no longer and believes in no alle- 
 giance, — is simply at tear with the nation, and is in military 
 occupation of its territory. Foreign statesmanship, which dis- 
 guises this fact and bestows names of moral dignity on military 
 oppression, tends to accumulate hatred against all royal persons 
 as mutual supporters of one another without any regard to moral 
 right or wrong. 
 
 When a nation is crushed by foreign armies, as northern Italy 
 now by Austria, any third power strong enough to interfere in 
 favour of the oppressed needs no other moral justification than 
 to point to the bare state of the facts. But if its own diplomacy 
 has disguised those facts, it becomes exceedingly hard for it so 
 to act as justice, humanity, and farsighted wisdom require. The 
 strength of despots is in diplomacy, through which they paralyze 
 the support of right by its only possible guardians. Since the days 
 of Demosthenes and of Philip of Macedon, it has been notorious 
 to all educated men, that the despot, who communicates his 
 counsels to none, who is master of the whole resources of his 
 nation, who pursues his plans undeviatingly but secretly, — has 
 infinite advantages over free States both in negotiation and in 
 the first outbreak of war. The only means of resisting him, is 
 by rallying popular enthusiasm. But this is made difficult or 
 impossible by free States, when they are so senseless as to allow 
 any communications with him to be secret. 
 
 d 2 
 
54 
 
 XVI.— SICILY. 
 
 A few words on Sicily are here appropriate, though that 
 country has long ceased to be an Austrian possession. Its 
 calamities nevertheless recommenced from a marriage of its king 
 into the House of Austria. 
 
 After the war of the Spanish succession, the moral dignity of 
 the Sicilians was severely wounded by the mode in which they 
 were handed from Spain to Savoy and from Savoy to Austria at 
 the pleasure of the great powers : and in 1734, when the Bour- 
 bon Philip Y. of Spain reconquered Naples, the Sicilians aided 
 him to expel the Austrians from Sicily also. His son, Don 
 Carlos, was received gladly as king of Naples and of Sicily, — 
 two crowns, with two nationalities, — and with him begins the 
 constitutional reign of the Bourbons over "the two Sicilies," as 
 the kingdoms were called. Sicily had retained all her ancient 
 institutions, which date as far back as those of England ; and 
 from 1734 till nearly the end of the century she advanced in 
 slow but steady improvement and general prosperity. The fatal 
 change came, when her king Ferdinand married Caroline of 
 Austria, and by the influence of the Emperor "Francis com- 
 menced attacks on the Constitution. It was saved, first, by the 
 vigour of the Sicilians, and secondly, by the arms of England, 
 w r ho, after the marriage of Napoleon with Maria Louisa of 
 Austria, discerned that the King of Sicily was become a mere 
 tool of France. We therefore aided the nation against the King 
 of Sicily ; and after many months' negotiation, the King in 1812 
 took solemn oath to certain reforms and a new charter adapted 
 to strengthen the public liberties. When Ave withdrew 7 from the 
 island on the fall of Napoleon, our ambassador issued a pro- 
 clamation that England was the ally and friend of the Sicilian 
 nation, and the protectress and supporter of the recent reform. 
 Nevertheless, immediately after the Congress of Vienna, in con- 
 sequence of a secret treaty between Austria and Naples, the 
 King overthrew the constitution and reigned despotically. Eng- 
 land did not even protest! In 1820 Sicily rose against her 
 usurping King ; so did Naples ; and constitutional royalty was 
 re-established. But Austria, in fulfilment of the secret treaty, 
 marched her armies in, and overthrew the liberty of both the 
 Sicilies. Again England neither interfered, nor protested, nor 
 lessened her demonstrations of friendship to either power. 
 
55 
 
 XVII.— WHAT IS ALL THIS TO ENGLAND? 
 
 In answer to the question, What is all this to us ? we may 
 consider what England has done in the matter, — what she might 
 have done, — how she is already affected, — and what threatens 
 her in the future. But lest these topics make a volume in them- 
 selves, we must be extremely concise. 
 
 1. We have done much to establish the power of Austria, 
 without once taking or asking any guarantee that the power 
 should be well used : we therefore are not unentangled in her 
 guilt. We played a principal part in winning for Austria, the 
 battle of Blenheim, — which enabled her to recover her position 
 in Hungary, — and soon after, in winning the battle of Ra- 
 milies ; without which she could not have conquered the Mila- 
 nese. We were mediators between her and Hungary in the 
 treaty of Satmar, a.d. 1712, which reconciled Hungary to her 
 crown, and guaranteed the Hungarian constitution. We were 
 ardent allies to Maria Theresa, when the formidable conspiracy 
 was made to despoil her of her crowns. In those wars our 
 Government contracted a great debt, for the sake of Austria, on 
 w T hich our nation has ever since been paying yearly interest. In 
 the great war against Erance, we lent to Austria seventeen millions 
 sterling, not a shilling of which has been repaid. If we dealt 
 with her as unceremoniously as with Lahore or Birmah, we 
 might take possession of Lombardy and Venice in order to repay 
 ourselves. We became parties to the treaty of Vienna, seduced 
 (willingly or unwillingly) by fair words which promised con- 
 stitutions. We thus gave our influence (at that moment im- 
 mense) to establish Austria in Venice and in another slice of 
 Poland, — territories lawlessly seized during the Erench war, 
 without any shadow of historical right. It avails not to say 
 that we were not able to expel any of the invaders from Italy or 
 Poland at that moment : there was nothing to force our pleni- 
 potentiary to sign the treaty. By signing it we gave our assent 
 to a worse despotism than Napoleon's, and, through the devo- 
 tion of our statesmen to routine, we have disabled ourselves to 
 this day for supporting European liberty and law. 
 
 2. "What might England have done?" Many people seem 
 to fancy that we were powerless ! — Not to run too far back, let 
 us confine the question to the last five years. It is then safe to 
 reply: 
 
 a. Our ministry might have published in the spring of 1848 
 the despatches of Mr. Blackwell, our envoy at Presburg ; which 
 iu fact did not come to light till months after the fall of 
 
56 . WHAT IS ALL THIS TO ENGLAND? 
 
 Hungary, when elicited from the ministry by a motion in Par- 
 liament. — If they had been given to the public as soon as re- 
 ceived, the English nation would have understood the cause of 
 Hungary and the treacheries of Austria a full year earlier. If 
 our foreign minister had, in his place in Parliament, expounded 
 to us the happy event, that in the East of Europe a new Eng- 
 land had arisen, — a free but royalist nation, warmly loving the 
 example and the very name of England, — a nation which (in the 
 words of the Archduke Charles) " sought for reform only by 
 legal and constitutional means," — so that while we looked with 
 terrible interest on France, we were able to regard Hungary with 
 cordial and joyful sympathy ; — our aristocracy would have been 
 put into a totally different temper of mind, our journalists would 
 never have misled the public, Hungary would have rallied to 
 England, and Austrian ministers might have been arrested in 
 their headlong career before the fatal months of September and 
 October. 
 
 b. When the news arrived in October, 1848, that a royal re- 
 script had arbitrarily annihilated the whole constitution of Hun- 
 gary, which had been settled by our mediation at the peace of 
 Satmar, and that a schism had reopened between Hungary and the 
 Austrian crown ; we might have sent a special envoy to the Hun- 
 garian Diet, with the avowed object of endeavouring to readjust 
 the broken treaty. The moral weight of this would possibly 
 have constrained the wicked members of the Austrian cabinet 
 to resign ; for it would have been at once felt impossible to 
 disguise their guilt from all Europe. The most respectable 
 man among tbem, Count Stadion, left the ministry rather than 
 consent to call in the Russians; and went mad irrecoverably, 
 when he saw Austria thus cast beneath the feet of the Czar. 
 Who shall say that our moral support of Hungary might not 
 have made Stadion prime minister instead of Schwarzenberg ? 
 
 c. When it farther was announced that F.erdinand had abdicated 
 in favour of his nephew, but that the Hungarians suspected 
 fraud, and in any case held his deed to be invalid in law, (since 
 he had no power to alter the succession to the crown, or give 
 away the rights of his own possible children,) — we might have 
 directed our ambassador to suspend his relations w r ith the cabi- 
 net of Vienna, not as renouncing amity with Austria, but as 
 denoting our uncertainty what, or where, Austria was. If Fer- 
 dinand's act was valid in Austria and invalid in Hungary, this 
 was a voluntary dissolution of the union of the crowns. And if 
 we found an opinion to prevail, that Ferdinand was removed 
 because he would not violate his Coronation Oath, we might 
 
WHAT IS ALL THIS TO ENGLAND? . 57 
 
 have protested in the face of all Europe against an affair so 
 damaging to the moral influences of all royalty. At any rate 
 we knew certainly that young Francis Joseph, if admissible to 
 the royal dignity, could not legally exercise it in Hungary until 
 legitimately crowned. And since Hungary was the only* great 
 constitutional royalty remaining, we had every reason of interest, 
 sympathy, and honour to induce us to acknowledge provisionally 
 her separate independence as a nation legitimately struggling 
 for hereditary rights. — Had we done this, we might still have 
 continued our attempts to effect a reconciliation, and have con- 
 ceded to the Hungarians the same public traffic with us as was 
 lawful to the Austrians. Our example would have been eagerly 
 followed by the United States, and very probably by General 
 Cavaignac ; or even by his successor, — who in the early period 
 of his career would not have wished to seem less attached to 
 public liberties than aristocratic England. In all probability 
 this would have forced the Austrians to peace ; but if not, it 
 would have insured victory to the Hungarians. 
 
 Instead of this, our minister did nothing until August, 1849, 
 and then wrote a meek letter, offering to Austria to mediate, 
 when the Eussian forces were already on the Theiss ! He simply 
 received an exceedingly insulting reply. 
 
 d. We might have protested against Eussia invading the Da- 
 nubian provinces of Turkey in November and December, 1848, to 
 the sore displeasure of the Sultan. If, besides this, we had sent 
 an ambassador to acknowledge the Hungarian Diet, it is highly 
 doubtful whether the Eussians would have ventured even on 
 their first entrance of Transylvania, or whether the Sultan would 
 have let them cross his frontier. 
 
 e. After Hungary had triumphantly beaten Austrians and Eus- 
 sians out, and had proclaimed the perfidious dynasty to have 
 forfeited the crown for ever, we might have recognized Hun- 
 gary as alike de facto and de jure independent ; and have warned 
 the Czar that we should regard a new invasion of Hungary as 
 a breach of the law of nations, to which we could not be in- 
 different. The United States would have joined us in this, and 
 Eussia would not have interfered the second time. 
 
 /. When Kossuth in April, 1 849, wrote to ask the English Go- 
 vernment to give a dynasty to Hungary, we might have accepted 
 his ambassador, and at least have entered into negotiations. 
 
 * Next in importance, and nearer to us in claims, was Sicily. Each is 
 now destroyed, with its ancient nobility, and its ancient constitution. No 
 old constitution survives in Europe, similar to that of England ! Will either 
 Whigs or Tories tell us, that such a result strengthens the throne of Victoria, 
 or the Peerage of England \ 
 
58 WHAT IS ALL THIS TO ENGLAND? 
 
 Instead of this, our ministry refused to listen, and replied — (the 
 words are written in the blue book) — that England knows no- 
 thing of Hungary except as "part of the Austrian Empire"! 
 Of course this meant, as "attached to the Austrian Crown;" 
 for the name Empire is very recent, and never has included Hun- 
 gary. If our well-read and highly-experienced ministers can 
 possibly have been ignorant either of the peace of Satmar or 
 of the pacification by Leopold II., yet they were assuredly 
 aware that the Treaty of Vienna did not bargain away Hungary 
 to the crown of Austria and pledge the British Government to 
 such a union. It barely recognized an existing fact of noto- 
 rious Hungarian law, — namely, that the emperor of Austria was 
 also legitimate king of Hungary : which left it open to us to 
 inquire, whether the same state of facts still continues. But we 
 resolved not to entertain the question, and, apparently, still 
 so resolve. 
 
 g. So much we all know might have been done, if there had 
 been a will. Ministers of State are farther aware, whether or not 
 the dread of our supporting Sardinia and Yenice with active force, 
 and occupying the port of Fiume for the Hungarian Diet, might 
 not have been plied so judiciously on the Austrian cabinet early 
 in 1849 as to constrain them to make peace and send the Bus- 
 sian armies home. On such topics private men are not al- 
 lowed to speak too confidently, yet we cannot help having our 
 strong opinions. At any rate, never will unbiassed history be- 
 lieve, lhat in 1848, when the Austrian dynasty was on the brink 
 of destruction, it was not in the power of Great Britain to con- 
 trol the male and female conspirators who wielded the name of 
 the Austrian Empire to the ruin of its independence. Never 
 shall we be believed to have wished so well to liberty, as to the 
 name and shadow of Hapsburg. Never will it be possible to 
 acquit our tremblingly-conservative Government of having so 
 dreaded the fall of an old injustice, and the possible rise of a 
 just novelty, as to prefer to see despotism triumph by the final 
 wreck of royal honour and loyal love, with the undisputed as- 
 cendency of the Czar of Siberia on the banks of the Shine and 
 the frontier of Piedmont. 
 
 3. Now from all these dreadful events what results are come 
 upon England ? 
 
 First, a degradation of the idea of Royalty. — The ancient* 
 conception of a king was noble and glorious, as the freely-ac- 
 
 * The mutuality of the bond between King and People was, in old days, 
 expressed by the word Liege. He was their " liege-lord," they were his 
 ■' liege-men." Liege is said to be related to League, as Bound is to Bond. 
 But the modern word, " Subjects," assimilates liege-men to conquered slaves. 
 
WHAT IS ALL THIS TO ENGLAND? 59 
 
 cepted guardian of Law, the sacred embodiment of Eight, the 
 symbol and means of the Nation's Unity, its representative to 
 the foreigner, and its central object of honour. Towards a king 
 who is conceived to fulfil this idea, all Patriotism rallies, and 
 Loyalty (or love of Law) becomes identified with devotion to the 
 royal person and dynasty. But now, our official rulers recognize 
 as kings and emperors, co-ordinate to our own sovereign, those 
 who notoriously have no moral sanction whatever, — violent in- 
 vaders, hated oppressors, perfidious usurpers. It cannot be too 
 much pondered by English royalists, that he who exalts robbers 
 into princes degrades princes into robbers. If our aristocracy, 
 during coming events, play into the hands of despotism, they 
 may open a gulf between the lovers of freedom in England and 
 the devotees of false royalty, which will swallow up the throne 
 of Queen Victoria's children. 
 
 Next, we have seen foreign conspiracy to overthrow lawful 
 constitutions, adopted into European policy as a fixed principle. 
 The precedent of a king, by his own forces, destroying the law 
 which he is appointed to uphold, is sufficiently dreadful and 
 alarming to all free nations. But since our confirmation of the 
 later partitions of Poland in the Congress of Vienna, the un- 
 holy Alliance has systematized its work. By combining to 
 quench liberty, they have overthrown law and right in Sicily, in 
 Naples, in Spain, in Cracow, in Eome, in Hungary, in Hesse 
 Cassel, — we might add, in all Germany. — Who can deny, that 
 the liberties of every constitutional State are hereby seriously 
 brought into peril? Especially since, by the overthrow of 
 Hungary, all Austria is now converted into a satrapy of Eussia. 
 
 4. Does any one ask, what threatens us in the future ? 
 Nothing is clearer. "We have to dread, first, Eussian and Aus- 
 trian influence on the Stock Exchange, to make all our moneyed 
 men prefer any or every subversion of right, though pregnant 
 with final ruin to England, rather than a resistance which would 
 lower the value of their stock by 2 per cent. We have next to 
 fear the rage of the millions against moneyed men, and an enor- 
 mous growth of doctrinaire Eepublicanism and Communism in 
 various forms. We have to expect philosophical journalists ex- 
 patiating on the advantages of dismembering the Ottoman do- 
 minions, and materialist friends of peace swelling the despotic 
 influence. If despotism prevails in Europe, we shall have to 
 fight a singlehanded war against its combined force, or resign 
 our liberties and our Protestantism : but if despotism is over- 
 thrown in Europe, and we have not displayed genuine sympathy 
 with freedom, we have to tremble lest it cause civil war in Ire- 
 
60 WHAT IS ALL THIS TO ENGLAND? 
 
 land and in the Colonies, and rouse a strong republican feeling 
 in England itself. Such are the dangers encompassing England 
 from her unfaithfulness to law and liberty, especially in 1848 
 and 1849. 
 
 In those years it was not too late to save European freedom 
 by mere diplomacy : now, to act by mere diplomacy is little else 
 than treachery. If we desire to set up Constitutional Royalties, 
 we must subdue the obstacles by arms, not by words. If by 
 military and naval force we were to free Italy and Hungary, and 
 make to those nations a present of liberty, they would, no doubt, 
 accept it gladly in our English form. But unless we mean to 
 go to this effort, we have no moral claim to dictate to the 
 nations of the Continent what form their freedom, when they can 
 gain it, shall assume. Unless it is to be won by our arms, it 
 will now be necessarily republican ; hence, to feel hostility to 
 republicanism is now to feel hostility to freedom and in fact, to 
 side with the despots, whom all the while we disgust by our 
 freedom of speech. If, after sitting still while the great his- 
 torical Constitutions of Europe were lawlessly and perfidiously 
 destroyed, we begin to fight a new diplomatic war for Constitu- 
 tional Eoyalty, we shall, as hitherto, earn the hatred of Princes 
 and of Nations alike, and encounter severe dangers, whichever 
 of the two combatants is ultimately victorious. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Printed by Woodfall and Kinder, Angel Court, Skinner Street, Londdn. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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