[Affairs of Poland.]

The consent of the Eastern Powers to the overthrow of the kingdom of the United Netherlands, and to the establishment of a State based upon a revolutionary movement, would probably have been harder to gain if in the autumn of 1830 Russia had been free to act with all its strength. But at this moment an outbreak took place in Poland, which required the concentration of all the Czar's forces within his own border. The conflict was rather a war of one armed nation against another than the insurrection of a people against its government. Poland—that is to say, the territory which had formerly constituted the Grand Duchy of Warsaw—had, by the treaties of 1814, been established as a separate kingdom, subject to the Czar of Russia, but not forming part of the Russian Empire. It possessed an administration and an army of its own, and the meetings of its Diet gave to it a species of parliamentary government to which there was nothing analogous within Russia proper. During the reign of Alexander the constitutional system of Poland had, on the whole, been respected; and although the real supremacy of an absolute monarch at St. Petersburg had caused the Diet to act as a body in opposition to the Russian Government, the personal connection existing between Alexander and the Poles had prevented any overt rebellion during his own life-time. But with the accession of Nicholas all such individual sympathy passed away, and the hard realities of the actual relation between Poland and the Court of Russia came into full view. In the conspiracies of 1825 a great number of Poles were implicated. Eight of these persons, after a preliminary inquiry, were placed on trial before the Senate at Warsaw, which, in spite of strong evidence of their guilt, acquitted them. Pending the decision, Nicholas declined to convoke the Diet: he also stationed Russian troops in Poland, and violated the constitution by placing Russians in all branches of the administration. Even without these grievances the hostility of the mass of the Polish noblesse to Russia would probably have led sooner or later to insurrection. The peasantry, ignorant and degraded, were but instruments in the hands of their territorial masters. In so far as Poland had rights of self-government, these rights belonged almost exclusively to the nobles, or landed proprietors, a class so numerous that they have usually been mistaken in Western Europe for the Polish nation itself. The so-called emancipation of the serfs, effected by Napoleon after wresting the Grand Duchy of Warsaw from Prussia in 1807, had done little for the mass of the population; for, while abolishing the legal condition of servitude, Napoleon had given the peasant no vestige of proprietorship in his holding, and had consequently left him as much at the mercy of his landlord as he was before. The name of freedom appears in fact to have worked actual injury to the peasant; for in the enjoyment of a pretended power of free contract he was left without that protection of the officers of State which, under the Prussian regime from 1795 to 1807, had shielded him from the tyranny of his lord. It has been the fatal, the irremediable bane of Poland that its noblesse, until too late, saw no country, no right, no law, outside itself. The very measures of interference on the part of the Czar which this caste resented as unconstitutional were in part directed against the abuse of its own privileges; and although in 1830 a section of the nobles had learnt the secret of their country's fall, and were prepared to give the serf the real emancipation of proprietorship, no universal impulse worked in this direction, nor could the wrong of ages be undone in the tumult of war and revolution.

[Insurrection at Warsaw, Nov. 29.]

A sharp distinction existed between the narrow circle of the highest aristocracy of Poland and the mass of the poor and warlike noblesse. The former, represented by men like Czartoryski, the friend of Alexander I. and ex-Minister of Russia, understood the hopelessness of any immediate struggle with the superior power, and advocated the politic development of such national institutions as were given to Poland by the constitution of 1815, institutions which were certainly sufficient to preserve Poland from absorption by Russia, and to keep alive the idea of the ultimate establishment of its independence. It was among the lesser nobility, among the subordinate officers of the army and the population of Warsaw itself, who jointly formed the so-called democratic party, that the spirit of revolt was strongest. Plans for an outbreak had been made during the Turkish war of 1828; but unhappily this opportunity, which might have been used with fatal effect against Russia, was neglected, and it was left for the French Revolution of 1830 to kindle an untimely and ineffective flame. The memory of Napoleon's campaigns and the wild voices of French democracy filled the patriots at Warsaw with vain hopes of a military union with western Liberalism, and overpowered the counsels of men who understood the state of Europe better. Revolt broke out on the 29th of November, 1830. The Polish regiments in Warsaw joined the insurrection, and the Russian troops, under the Grand Duke Constantine, withdrew from the capital, where their leader had narrowly escaped with his life. [390]

[Attempted negotiation with the Czar.]

The Government of Poland had up to this time been in the hands of a Council nominated by the Czar as King of Poland, and controlled by instructions from a secretary at St. Petersburg. The chief of the Council was Lubecki, a Pole devoted to the Emperor Nicholas. On the victory of the insurrection at Warsaw, the Council was dissolved and a provisional Government installed. Though the revolt was the work of the so-called democratic party, the influence of the old governing families of the highest aristocracy was still so great that power was by common consent placed in their hands. Czartoryski became president, and the policy adopted by himself and his colleagues was that of friendly negotiation with Russia. The insurrection of November was treated not as the beginning of a national revolt, but as a mere disturbance occasioned by unconstitutional acts of the Government. So little did the committee understand the character of the Emperor Nicholas, as to imagine that after the expulsion of his soldiers and the overthrow of his Ministers at Warsaw he would peaceably make the concessions required of him, and undertake for the future faithfully to observe the Polish constitution. Lubecki and a second official were sent to St. Petersburg to present these demands, and further (though this was not seriously intended) to ask that the constitution should be introduced into all the Russian provinces which had once formed part of the Polish State. The reception given to the envoys at the frontier was of an ominous character. They were required to describe themselves as officers about to present a report to the Czar, inasmuch as no representatives of rebels in arms could be received into Russia. Lubecki appears now to have shaken the dust of Poland off his feet; his colleague pursued his mission, and was admitted to the Czar's presence. Nicholas, while expressing himself in language of injured tenderness, and disclaiming all desire to punish the innocent with the guilty, let it be understood that Poland had but two alternatives, unconditional submission or annihilation. The messenger who in the meanwhile carried back to Warsaw the first despatches of the envoy reported that the roads were already filled with Russian regiments moving on their prey.

[Diebitsch invades Poland, Feb. 1831.]

Six weeks of precious time were lost through the illusion of the Polish Government that an accommodation with the Emperor Nicholas was possible. Had the insurrection at Warsaw been instantly followed by a general levy and the invasion of Lithuania, the resources of this large province might possibly have been thrown into the scale against Russia. Though the mass of the Lithuanian population, in spite or several centuries of union with Poland, had never been assimilated to the dominant race, and remained in language and creed more nearly allied to the Russians than the Poles, the nobles formed an integral part of the Polish nation, and possessed sufficient power over their serfs to drive them into the field to fight for they knew not what. The Russian garrisons in Lithuania were not strong, and might easily have been overpowered by a sudden attack. When once the population of Warsaw had risen in arms against Nicholas, the only possibility of success lay in the extension of the revolt over the whole of the semi-Polish provinces, and in a general call to arms. But beside other considerations which disinclined the higher aristocracy at Warsaw to extreme measures, they were influenced by a belief that the Powers of Europe might intervene on behalf of the constitution of the Polish kingdom as established by the treaty of Vienna; while, if the struggle passed beyond the borders of that kingdom, it would become a revolutionary movement to which no Court could lend its support. It was not until the envoy returned from St. Petersburg bearing the answer of the Emperor Nicholas that the democratic party carried all before it, and all hopes of a peaceful compromise vanished away. The Diet then passed a resolution declaring that the House of Romanoff had forfeited the Polish crown, and preparations began for a struggle for life or death with Russia. But the first moments when Russia stood unguarded and unready had been lost beyond recall. Troops had thronged westwards into Lithuania; the garrisons in the fortresses had been raised to their full strength; and in February, 1831, Diebitsch took up the offensive, and crossed the Polish frontier with a hundred and twenty thousand men.

[Campaign in Poland, 1831.]

[Capture of Warsaw, Sept. 8, 1831.]

The Polish army, though far inferior in numbers to the enemy which it had to meet, was no contemptible foe. Among its officers there were many who had served in Napoleon's campaigns; it possessed, however, no general habituated to independent command; and the spirit of insubordination and self-will, which had wrought so much ruin in Poland, was still ready to break out when defeat had impaired the authority of the nominal chiefs. In the first encounters the advancing Russian army was gallantly met; and, although the Poles were forced to fall back upon Warsaw, the losses sustained by Diebitsch were so serious that he had to stay his operations and to wait for reinforcements. In March the Poles took up the offensive and surprised several isolated divisions of the enemy; their general, however, failed to push his advantages with the necessary energy and swiftness; the junction of the Russians was at length effected, and on the 26th of May the Poles were defeated after obstinate resistance in a pitched battle at Ostrolenka. Cholera now broke out in the Russian camp. Both Diebitsch and the Grand Duke Constantine were carried off in the midst of the campaign, and some months more were added to the struggle of Poland, hopeless as this had now become. Incursions were made into Lithuania and Podolia, but without result. Paskiewitch, the conqueror of Kars, was called up to take the post left vacant by the death of his rival. New masses of Russian troops came in place of those who had perished in battle and in the hospitals; and while the Governments of Western Europe lifted no hand on behalf of Polish independence, Prussia, alarmed lest the revolt should spread into its own Polish provinces, assisted the operations of the Russian general by supplying stores and munition of war. Blow after blow fell upon the Polish cause. Warsaw itself became the prey of disorder, intrigue, and treachery; and at length the Russian army made its entrance into the capital, and the last soldiers of Poland laid down their arms, or crossed into Prussian or Austrian territory. The revolt had been rashly and unwisely begun: its results were fatal and lamentable. The constitution of Poland was abolished; it ceased to be a separate kingdom, and became a province of the Russian Empire. Its defenders were exiles over the face of Europe or forgotten in Siberia. All that might have been won by the gradual development of its constitutional liberties without breach with the Czar's sovereignty was sacrificed. The future of Poland, like that of Russia itself, now depended on the enlightenment and courage of the Imperial Government, and on that alone. The very existence of a Polish nationality and language seemed for a while to be threatened by the measures of repression that followed the victory of 1831: and if it be true that Russian autocracy has at length done for the Polish peasants what their native masters during centuries of ascendency refused to do, this emancipation would probably not have come the later for the preservation of some relics of political independence, nor would it have had the less value if unaccompanied by the proscription of so great a part of that class which had once been held to constitute the Polish nation. [391]

[Insurrection in the Papal States, Feb., 1831.]

During the conflict on the banks of the Vistula, the attitude of the Austrian Government had been one of watchful neutrality. Its own Polish territory was not seriously menaced with disturbance, for in a great part of Galicia the population, being of Ruthenian stock and belonging to the Greek Church, had nothing in common with the Polish and Catholic noblesse of their province, and looked back upon the days of Polish dominion as a time of suffering and wrong. Austria's danger in any period of European convulsion lay as yet rather on the side of Italy than on the East, and the vigour of its policy in that quarter contrasted with the equanimity with which it watched the struggle of its Slavic neighbours. Since the suppression of the Neapolitan constitutional movement in 1821, the Carbonari and other secret societies of Italy had lost nothing of their activity. Their head-quarters had been removed from Southern Italy to the Papal States, and the numerous Italian exiles in France and elsewhere kept up a busy communication at once with French revolutionary leaders like Lafayette and with the enemies of the established governments in Italy itself. The death of Pope Pius VIII., on November 30, 1830, and the consequent paralysis of authority within the Ecclesiastical States, came at an opportune moment; assurances of support arrived from Paris; and the Italian leaders resolved upon a general insurrection throughout the minor Principalities on the 5th of February, 1831. Anticipating the signal, Menotti, chief of a band of patriots at Modena, who appears to have been lured on by the Grand Duke himself, assembled his partisans on February 3. He was overpowered and imprisoned; but the outbreak of the insurrection in Bologna, and its rapid extension over the northern part of the Papal States, soon caused the Grand Duke to fly to Austrian territory, carrying his prisoner Menotti with him, whom he subsequently put to death. The new Pope, Gregory XVI., had scarcely been elected when the report reached him that Bologna had declared the temporal power of the Papacy to be at an end. Uncertain of the character of the revolt, he despatched Cardinal Benvenuti northwards, to employ conciliation or force as occasion might require. The Legate fell into the hands of the insurgents; the revolt spread southwards; and Gregory, now hopeless of subduing it by the forces at his own command, called upon Austria for assistance. [392]

[Attitude of France.]

The principle which, since the Revolution of July, the government of France had repeatedly laid down as the future basis of European politics was that of non-intervention. It had disclaimed any purpose of interfering with the affairs of its neighbours, and had required in return that no foreign intervention should take place in districts which, like Belgium and Savoy, adjoined its own frontier. But there existed no real unity of purpose in the councils of Louis Philippe. The Ministry had one voice for the representatives of foreign powers, another for the Chamber of Deputies, and another for Lafayette and the bands of exiles and conspirators who were under his protection. The head of the government at the beginning of 1831 was Laffitte, a weak politician, dominated by revolutionary sympathies and phrases, but incapable of any sustained or resolute action, and equally incapable of resisting Louis Philippe after the King had concluded his performance of popular leader, and assumed his real character as the wary and self-seeking chief of a reigning house. Whether the actual course of French policy would be governed by the passions of the streets or by the timorousness of Louis Philippe was from day to day a matter of conjecture. The official answer given to the inquiries of the Austrian ambassador as to the intentions of France in case of an Austrian intervention in Italy was, that such intervention might be tolerated in Parma and Modena, which belonged to sovereigns immediately connected with the Hapsburgs, but that if it was extended to the Papal States war with France would be probable, and if extended to Piedmont, certain. On this reply Metternich, who saw Austria's own dominion in Italy once more menaced by the success of an insurrectionary movement, had to form his decision. He could count on the support of Russia in case of war; he knew well the fears of Louis Philippe, and knew that he could work on these fears both by pointing to the presence of the young Louis Bonaparte and his brother with the Italian insurgents as evidence of the Bonapartist character of the movement, and by hinting that in the last resort he might himself let loose upon France Napoleon's son, the Duke of Reichstadt. now growing to manhood at Vienna, before whom Louis Philippe's throne would have collapsed as speedily as that of Louis XVIII. in 1814. Where weakness existed, Metternich was quick to divine it and to take advantage of it. He rightly gauged Louis Philippe. Taking at their true value the threats of the French Government, he declared that it was better for Austria to fall, if necessary, by war than by revolution; and, resolving at all hazards to suppress the Roman insurrection, he gave orders to the Austrian troops to enter the Papal States.

[Austrians suppress Roman revolt, March, 1831.]

[Casimir Perier, March, 1831.]

The military resistance which the insurgents could offer to the advance of the Pope's Austrian deliverers was insignificant, and order was soon restored. But all Europe expected the outbreak of war between Austria and France. The French ambassador at Constantinople had gone so far as to offer the Sultan an offensive and defensive alliance, and to urge him to make preparations for an attack upon both Austria and Russia on their southern frontiers. A despatch from the ambassador reached Paris describing the warlike overtures he had made to the Porte. Louis Philippe saw that if this despatch reached the hands of Laffitte and the war party in the Council of Ministers the preservation of peace would be almost impossible. In concert with Sebastiani, the Foreign Minister, he concealed the despatch from Laffitte. The Premier discovered the trick that had been played upon him, and tendered his resignation. It was gladly accepted by Louis Philippe. Laffitte quitted office, begging pardon of God and man for the part that he had taken in raising Louis Philippe to the throne. His successor was Casimir Perier, a man of very different mould; resolute, clear-headed, and immovably true to his word; a constitutional statesman of the strictest type, intolerant of any species of disorder, and a despiser of popular movements, but equally proof against royal intrigues, and as keen to maintain the constitutional system of France against the Court on one side and the populace on the other as he was to earn for France the respect of foreign powers by the abandonment of a policy of adventure, and the steady adherence to the principles of international obligation which he had laid down. Under his firm hand the intrigues of the French Government with foreign revolutionists ceased; it was felt throughout Europe that peace was still possible, and that if war was undertaken by France it would be undertaken only under conditions which would make any moral union of all the great Powers against France impossible. The Austrian expedition into the Papal States had already begun, and the revolutionary Government had been suppressed; the most therefore that Casimir Perier could demand was that the evacuation of the occupied territory should take place as soon as possible, and that Austria should add its voice to that of the other Powers in urging the Papal Government to reform its abuses. Both demands were granted. For the first time Austria appeared as the advocate of something like a constitutional system. A Conference held at Rome agreed upon a scheme of reforms to be recommended to the Pope; the prospects of peace grew daily fairer; and in July, 1831, the last Austrian soldiers quitted the Ecclesiastical States. [393]

[Second Austrian intervention, Jan., 1832.]

[French occupy Ancona, February, 1832.]

It now remained to be seen whether Pope Gregory and his cardinals had the intelligence and good-will necessary for carrying out the reforms on the promise of which France had abstained from active intervention. If any such hopes existed they were doomed to speedy disappointment. The apparatus of priestly maladministration was restored in all its ancient deformity. An amnesty which had been promised by the Legate Benvenuti was disregarded, and the Pope set himself to strengthen his authority by enlisting new bands of ruffians and adventurers under the standard of St. Peter. Again insurrection broke out, and again at the Pope's request the Austrians crossed the frontier (January, 1832). Though their appearance was fatal to the cause of liberty, they were actually welcomed as protectors in towns which had been exposed to the tender mercies of the Papal condottieri. There was no disorder, no severity, where the Austrian commandants held sway; but their mere presence in central Italy was a threat to European peace; and Casimir Perier was not the man to permit Austria to dominate in Italy at its will. Without waiting for negotiations, he despatched a French force to Ancona, and seized this town before the Austrians could approach it. The rival Powers were now face to face in Italy; but Perier had no intention of forcing on war if his opponent was still willing to keep the peace. Austria accepted the situation, and made no attempt to expel the French from the position they had seized. Casimir Perier, now on his death-bed, defended the step that he had taken against the remonstrances of ambassadors and against the protests of the Pope, and declared the presence of the French at Ancona to be no incentive to rebellion, but the mere assertion of the rights of a Power which had as good a claim to be in central Italy as Austria itself. Had his life been prolonged, he would probably have insisted upon the execution of the reforms which the Powers had urged upon the Papal government, and have made the occupation of Ancona an effectual means for reaching this end. But with his death the wrongs of the Italians themselves and the question of a reformed government in the Papal States gradually passed out of sight. France and Austria jealously watched one another on the debatable land; the occupation became a mere incident of the balance of power, and was prolonged for year after year, until, in 1838, the Austrians having finally withdrawn all their troops, the French peacefully handed over the citadel of Ancona to the Holy See.

[Prussia in 1830.]

[The Zollverein, 1828-1836.]

The arena in which we have next to follow the effects of the July Revolution, in action and counter-action, is Germany. It has been seen that in the southern German States an element of representative government, if weak, yet not wholly ineffective, had come into being soon after 1815, and had survived the reactionary measures initiated by the conference of Ministers at Carlsbad. In Prussia the promises of King Frederick William to his people had never been fulfilled. Years had passed since exaggerated rumours of conspiracy had served as an excuse for withholding the Constitution. Hardenberg had long been dead; the foreign policy of the country had taken a freer tone; the rigours of the police-system had departed; but the nation remained as completely excluded from any share in the government as it had been before Napoleon's fall. It had in fact become clear that during the lifetime of King Frederick William things must be allowed to remain in their existing condition; and the affection of the people for their sovereign, who had been so long and so closely united with Prussia in its sufferings and in its glories, caused a general willingness to postpone the demand for constitutional reform until the succeeding reign. The substantial merits of the administration might moreover have reconciled a less submissive people than the Prussians to the absolute government under which they lived. Under a wise and enlightened financial policy the country was becoming visibly richer. Obstacles to commercial development were removed, communications opened; and finally, by a series of treaties with the neighbouring German States, the foundations were laid for that Customs-Union which, under the name of the Zollverein, ultimately embraced almost the whole of non-Austrian Germany. As one Principality after another attached itself to the Prussian system, the products of the various regions of Germany, hitherto blocked by the frontier dues of each petty State, moved freely through the land, while the costs attending the taxation of foreign imports, now concentrated upon the external line of frontier, were enormously diminished. Patient, sagacious, and even liberal in its negotiations with its weaker neighbours, Prussia silently connected with itself through the ties of financial union States which had hitherto looked to Austria as their natural head. The semblance of political union was carefully avoided, but the germs of political union were nevertheless present in the growing community of material interests. The reputation of the Prussian Government, no less than the welfare of the Prussian people, was advanced by each successive step in the extension of the Zollverein; and although the earlier stages alone had been passed in the years before 1830, enough had already been done to affect public opinion; and the general sense of material progress combined with other influences to close Prussia to the revolutionary tendencies of that year.

[Insurrections in Brunswick and Cassel.]

[Constitutions in Hanover and Saxony, 1830-1833.]

There were, however, other States in northern Germany which had all the defects of Prussian autocracy without any of its redeeming qualities. In Brunswick and in Hesse Cassel despotism existed in its most contemptible form; the violence of a half-crazy youth in the one case, and the caprices of an obstinate dotard in the other, rendering authority a mere nuisance to those who were subject to it. Here accordingly revolution broke out. The threatened princes had made themselves too generally obnoxious or ridiculous for any hand to be raised in their defence. Their disappearance excited no more than the inevitable lament from Metternich; and in both States systems of representative government were introduced by their successors. In Hanover and in Saxony agitation also began in favour of Parliamentary rule. The disturbance that arose was not of a serious character, and it was met by the Courts in a conciliatory spirit. Constitutions were granted, the liberty of the Press extended, and trial by jury established. On the whole, the movement of 1830, as it affected northern Germany, was rationally directed and salutary in its results. Changes of real value were accomplished with a sparing employment of revolutionary means, and, in the more important cases, through the friendly co-operation of the sovereigns with their subjects. It was not the fault of those who had asked for the same degree of liberty in northern Germany which the south already possessed, that Germany at large again experienced the miseries of reaction and repression which had afflicted it ten years before.

[Movement in the Palatinate.]

Like Belgium and the Rhenish Provinces, the Bavarian Palatinate had for twenty years been incorporated with France. Its inhabitants had grown accustomed to the French law and French institutions, and had caught something of the political animation which returned to France after Napoleon's fall. Accordingly when the government of Munich, alarmed by the July Revolution, showed an inclination towards repressive measures, the Palatinate, severed from the rest of the Bavarian monarchy and in immediate contact with France, became the focus of a revolutionary agitation. The Press had already attained some activity and some influence in this province; and although the leaders of the party of progress were still to a great extent Professors, they had so far advanced upon the patriots of 1818 as to understand that the liberation of the German people was not to be effected by the lecturers and the scholars of the Universities. The design had been formed of enlisting all classes of the public on the side of reform, both by the dissemination of political literature and by the establishment of societies not limited, as in 1818, to academic circles, but embracing traders as well as soldiers and professional men. Even the peasant was to be reached and instructed in his interests as a citizen. It was thought that much might be effected by associating together all the Oppositions in the numerous German Parliaments; but a more striking feature of the revolutionary movement which began in the Palatinate, and one strongly distinguishing it from the earlier agitation of Jena and Erfurt, was its cosmopolitan character. France in its triumph and Poland in its death-struggle excited equal interest and sympathy. In each the cause of European liberty appeared to be at stake. The Polish banner was saluted in the Palatinate by the side of that of united Germany; and from that time forward in almost every revolutionary movement of Europe, down to the insurrection of the Commune of Paris in 1871, Polish exiles have been active both in the organisation of revolt and in the field.

[Reaction in Germany.]

Until the fall of Warsaw, in September, 1831, the German governments, uncertain of the course which events might take in Europe, had shown a certain willingness to meet the complaints of their subjects, and had in especial relaxed the supervision exercised over the press. The fall of Warsaw, which quieted so many alarms, and made the Emperor Nicholas once more a power outside his own dominions, inaugurated a period of reaction in Germany. The Diet began the campaign against democracy by suppressing various liberal newspapers, and amongst them the principal journal of the Palatinate. It was against this movement of regression that the agitation in the Palatinate and elsewhere was now directed. A festival, or demonstration, was held at the Castle of Hambach, near Zweibruecken, at which a body of enthusiasts called upon the German people to unite against their oppressors, and some even urged an immediate appeal to arms (May 27, 1832). Similar meetings, though on a smaller scale, were held in other parts of Germany. Wild words abounded, and the connection of the German revolutionists with that body of opponents of all established governments which had its council-chamber at Paris and its head in Lafayette was openly avowed. Weak and insignificant as the German demagogues were, their extravagance gave to Metternich and to the Diet sufficient pretext for revising the reactionary measures of 1819. Once more the subordination of all representative bodies to the sovereign's authority was laid down by the Diet as a binding principle for every German state. The refusal of taxes by any legislature was declared to be an act of rebellion which would be met by the armed intervention of the central Powers. All political meetings and associations were forbidden; the Press was silenced; the introduction of German books printed abroad was prohibited, and the Universities were again placed under the watch of the police (July, 1832). [394]

[Attempt at Frankfort, April, 1833.]

If among the minor sovereigns of Germany there were some who, as in Baden, sincerely desired the development of free institutions, the authority exercised by Metternich and his adherents in reaction bore down all the resistance that these courts could offer, and the hand of despotism fell everywhere heavily upon the party of political progress. The majority of German Liberals, not yet prepared for recourse to revolutionary measures, submitted to the pressure of the times, and disclaimed all sympathy with illegal acts; a minority, recognising that nothing was now to be gained by constitutional means, entered into conspiracies, and determined to liberate Germany by force. One insignificant group, relying upon the armed co-operation of Polish bands in France, and deceived by promises of support from some Wuertemberg soldiers, actually rose in insurrection at Frankfort. A guard-house was seized, and a few soldiers captured; but the citizens of Frankfort stood aloof, and order was soon restored (April, 1833). It was not to be expected that the reactionary courts should fail to draw full advantage from this ill-timed outbreak of their enemies. Prussian troops marched into Frankfort, and Metternich had no difficulty in carrying through the Diet a decree establishing a commission to superintend and to report upon the proceedings instituted against political offenders throughout Germany. For several years these investigations continued, and the campaign against the opponents of government was carried on with various degrees of rigour in the different states. About two thousand persons altogether were brought to trial: in Prussia thirty-nine sentences of death were pronounced, but not executed. In the struggle against revolution the forces of monarchy had definitely won the victory. Germany again experienced, as it had in 1819, that the federal institutions which were to have given it unity existed only for the purposes of repression. The breach between the nation and its rulers, in spite of the apparent failure of the democratic party, remained far deeper and wider than it had been before; and although Metternich, victor once more over the growing restlessness of the age, slumbered on for another decade in fancied security, the last of his triumphs had now been won, and the next uprising proved how blind was that boasted statesmanship which deemed the sources of danger exhausted when once its symptoms had been driven beneath the surface.

[Conspirators and exiles.]

[Dispersion of the Swiss exiles, 1834.]

In half the states of Europe there were now bodies of exasperated, uncompromising men, who devoted their lives to plotting against governments, and who formed, in their community of interest and purpose, a sort of obverse of the Holy Alliance, a federation of kings' enemies, a league of principle and creed, in which liberty and human right stood towards established rule as light to darkness. As the grasp of authority closed everywhere more tightly upon its baffled foes, more and more of these men passed into exile. Among them was the Genoese Mazzini, who, after suffering imprisonment in 1831, withdrew to Marseilles, and there, in combination with various secret societies, planned an incursion into the Italian province of Savoy. It was at first intended that this enterprise should be executed simultaneously with the German rising at Frankfort. Delays, however, arose, and it was not until the beginning of the following year that the little army, which numbered more Poles than Italians, was ready for its task. The incursion was made from Geneva in February, 1834, and ended disastrously. [395] Mazzini returned to Switzerland, where hundreds of exiles, secure under the shelter of the Republic, devised schemes of attack upon the despots of Europe, and even rioted in honour of freedom in the streets of the Swiss cities which protected them. The effect of the revolutionary movement of the time in consolidating the alliance of the three Eastern Powers, so rudely broken by the Greek War of Liberation, now came clearly into view. The sovereigns of Russia and Austria had met at Muenchengraetz in Bohemia in the previous autumn, and, in concert with Prussia, had resolved upon common principles of action if their intervention should be required against disturbers of order. Notes were now addressed from every quarter to the Swiss Government, requiring the expulsion of all persons concerned in enterprises against the peace of neighbouring States. Some resistance to this demand was made by individual cantons; but the extravagance of many of the refugees themselves alienated popular sympathy, and the greater part of them were forced to quit Switzerland and to seek shelter in England or in America. With the dispersion of the central band of exiles the open alliance which had existed between the revolutionists of Europe gradually passed away. The brotherhood of the kings had proved a stern reality, the brotherhood of the peoples a delusive vision. Mazzini indeed, who up to this time had scarcely emerged from the rabble of revolutionary leaders, was yet to prove how deeply the genius, the elevation, the fervour of one man struggling against the powers of the world may influence the history of his age; but the fire that purified the fine gold charred and consumed the baser elements; and of those who had hoped the most after 1830, many now sank into despair, or gave up their lives to mere restless agitation and intrigue.

[Difficulties of Louis Philippe.]

[Insurrections, 1832-1834.]

[Repressive Laws, Sept., 1835.]

It was in France that the revolutionary movement was longest maintained. During the first year of Louis Philippe's rule the opposition to his government was inspired not so much by Republicanism as by a wild and inconsiderate sympathy with the peoples who were fighting for liberty elsewhere, and by a headstrong impulse to take up arms on their behalf. The famous decree of the Convention in 1792, which promised the assistance of France to every nation in revolt against its rulers, was in fact the true expression of what was felt by a great part of the French nation in 1831; and in the eyes of these enthusiasts it was the unpardonable offence of Louis Philippe against the honour of France that he allowed Poland and Italy to succumb without drawing his sword against their conquerors. That France would have had to fight the three Eastern Powers combined, if it had allied itself with those in revolt against any one of the three, passed for nothing among the clamorous minority in the Chamber and among the orators of Paris. The pacific policy of Casimir Perier was misunderstood; it passed for mere poltroonery, when in fact it was the only policy that could save France from a recurrence of the calamities of 1815. There were other causes for the growing unpopularity of the King and of his Ministers, but the first was their policy of peace. As the attacks of his opponents became more and more bitter, the government of Casimir Perier took more and more of a repressive character. Disappointment at the small results produced in France itself by the Revolution of July worked powerfully in men's minds. The forces that had been set in motion against Charles X. were not to be laid at rest at the bidding of those who had profited by them, and a Republican party gradually took definite shape and organisation. Tumult succeeded tumult. In the summer of 1832 the funeral of General Lamarque, a popular soldier, gave the signal for insurrection at Paris. There was severe fighting in the streets; the National Guard, however, proved true to the king, and shared with the army in the honours of its victory. Repressive measures and an unbroken series of prosecutions against seditious writers followed this first armed attack upon the established government. The bitterness of the Opposition, the discontent of the working classes, far surpassed anything that had been known under Charles X. The whole country was agitated by revolutionary societies and revolutionary propaganda. Disputes between masters and workmen, which, in consequence of the growth of French manufacturing industry, now became both frequent and important, began to take a political colour. Polish and Italian exiles connected their own designs with attacks to be made upon the French Government from within; and at length, in April, 1834, after the passing of a law against trades-unions, the working classes of Lyons, who were on strike against their employers, were induced to rise in revolt. After several days' fighting the insurrection was suppressed. Simultaneous outbreaks took place at St. Etienne, Grenoble, and many other places in the south and centre of France; and on a report of the success of the insurgents reaching Paris, the Republic was proclaimed and barricades were erected. Again civil war raged in the streets, and again the forces of Government gained the victory. A year more passed, during which the investigations into the late revolt and the trial of a host of prisoners served rather to agitate than to reassure the public mind; and in the summer of 1835 an attempt was made upon the life of the King so terrible and destructive in its effects as to amount to a public calamity. An infernal machine composed of a hundred gun-barrels was fired by a Corsican named Fieschi, as the King with a large suite was riding through the streets of Paris on the anniversary of the Revolution of July. Fourteen persons were killed on the spot, among whom was Mortier, one of the oldest of the marshals of France; many others were fatally or severely injured. The King, however, with his three sons, escaped unhurt, and the repressive laws that followed this outrage marked the close of open revolutionary agitation in France. Whether in consequence of the stringency of the new laws, or of the exhaustion of a party discredited in public estimation by the crimes of a few of its members and the recklessness of many more, the constitutional monarchy of Louis Philippe now seemed to have finally vanquished its opponents. Repeated attempts were made on the life of the King, but they possessed for the most part little political significance. Order was welcome to the nation at large; and though in the growth of a socialistic theory and creed of life which dates from this epoch there lay a danger to Governments greater than any purely political, Socialism was as yet the affair of thinkers rather than of active workers either in the industrial or in the Parliamentary world. The Government had beaten its enemies outside the Chamber. Within the Chamber, the parties of extremes ceased to exercise any real influence. Groups were formed, and rival leaders played against one another for office; but they were separated by no far-reaching differences of aim, and by no real antagonism of constitutional principle. During the succeeding years of Louis Philippe's reign there was little visible on the surface but the normal rivalry of parties under a constitutional monarchy. The middle-class retained its monopoly of power: authority, centralised as before, maintained its old prestige in France, and softened opposition by judicious gifts of office and emolument. Revolutionary passion seemed to have died away: and the triumphs or reverses of party-leaders in the Chamber of Deputies succeeded to the harassing and doubtful conflict between Government and insurrection.

[The English Reform movement.]

The near coincidence in time between the French Revolution of 1830 and the passing of the English Reform Bill is apt to suggest to those who look for the operation of wide general causes in history that the English Reform movement should be viewed as a part of the great current of political change which then traversed the continent of Europe. But on a closer examination this view is scarcely borne out by facts, and the coincidence of the two epochs of change appears to be little more than accidental. The general unity that runs through the history of the more advanced continental states is indeed stronger than appears to a superficial reader of history; but this correspondence of tendency does not always embrace England; on the contrary, the conditions peculiar to England usually preponderate over those common to England and other countries, exhibiting at times more of contrast than of similarity, as in the case of the Napoleonic epoch, when the causes which drew together the western half of the continent operated powerfully to exclude our own country from the current influences of the time, and made the England of 1815, in opinion, in religion, and in taste much more insular than the England of 1780. The revolution which overthrew Charles X. did no doubt encourage and stimulate the party of Reform in Great Britain; but, unlike the Belgian, the German, and the Italian movements, the English Reform movement would unquestionably have run the same course and achieved the same results even if the revolt against the ordinances of Charles X. had been successfully repressed, and the Bourbon monarchy had maintained itself in increased strength and reputation. A Reform of Parliament had been acknowledged to be necessary forty years before. Pitt had actually proposed it in 1785, and but for the outbreak of the French Revolution would probably have carried it into effect before the close of the last century. The development of English manufacturing industry which took place between 1790 and 1830, accompanied by the rapid growth of towns and the enrichment of the urban middle class, rendered the design of Pitt, which would have transferred the representation of the decayed boroughs to the counties alone, obsolete, and made the claims of the new centres of population too strong to be resisted. In theory the representative system of the country was completely transformed; but never was a measure which seemed to open the way to such boundless possibilities of change so thoroughly safe and so thoroughly conservative. In spite of the increased influence won by the wealthy part of the commercial classes, the House of Commons continued to be drawn mainly from the territorial aristocracy. Cabinet after Cabinet was formed with scarcely a single member included in it who was not himself a man of title, or closely connected with the nobility: the social influence of rank was not diminished; and although such measures as the Reform of Municipal Corporations attested the increased energy of the Legislature, no party in the House of Commons was weaker than that which supported the democratic demands for the Ballot and for Triennial Parliaments, nor was the repeal of the Corn Laws seriously considered until famine had made it inevitable. That the widespread misery which existed in England after 1832, as the result of the excessive increase of our population and the failure alike of law and of philanthropy to keep pace with the exigencies of a vast industrial growth, should have been so quietly borne, proves how great was the success of the Reform Bill as a measure of conciliation between Government and people. But the crowning justification of the changes made in 1832, and the complete and final answer to those who had opposed them as revolutionary, was not afforded until 1848, when, in the midst of European convulsion, the monarchy and the constitution of England remained unshaken. Bold as the legislation of Lord Grey appeared to men who had been brought up amidst the reactionary influences dominant in England since 1793, the Reform Bill belongs not to the class of great creative measures which have inaugurated new periods in the life of nations, but to the class of those which, while least affecting the general order of society, have most contributed to political stability and to the avoidance of revolutionary change.



CHAPTER XVII.

France and England after 1830—Affairs of Portugal—Don Miguel—Don Pedro invades Portugal—Ferdinand of Spain—The Pragmatic Sanction—Death of Ferdinand: Regency of Christina—The Constitution—Quadruple Alliance— Miguel and Carlos expelled from Portugal—Carlos enters Spain—The Basque Provinces—Carlist War: Zumalacarregui—The Spanish Government seeks French assistance, which is refused—Constitution of 1837—End of the War—Regency of Espartero—Isabella Queen—Affairs of the Ottoman Empire—Ibrahim invades Syria; his victories—Rivalry of France and Russia at Constantinople—Peace of Kutaya and Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi—Effect of this Treaty—France and Mehemet Ali—Commerce of the Levant—Second War between Mehemet and the Porte—Ottoman disasters—The Policy of the Great Powers—Quadruple Treaty without France—Ibrahim expelled from Syria—Final Settlement—Turkey after 1840—Attempted reforms of Reschid Pasha.

[France and England after 1830.]

Alliances of opinion usually cover the pursuit on one or both sides of some definite interest; and to this rule the alliance which appeared to be springing up between France and England after the changes of 1830 was no exception. In the popular view, the bond of union between the two States was a common attachment to principles of liberty; and on the part of the Whig statesmen who now governed England this sympathy with free constitutional systems abroad was certainly a powerful force: but other motives than mere community of sentiment combined to draw the two Governments together, and in the case of France these immediate interests greatly outweighed any abstract preference for a constitutional ally. Louis Philippe had an avowed and obstinate enemy in the Czar of Russia, who had been his predecessor's friend: the Court of Vienna tolerated usurpers only where worse mischief would follow from attacking them; Prussia had no motive for abandoning the connexions which it had maintained since 1815. As the union between the three Eastern Courts grew closer in consequence of the outbreak of revolution beyond the borders of France, a good understanding with Great Britain became more and more obviously the right policy for Louis Philippe; on the other hand, the friendship of France seemed likely to secure England from falling back into that isolated position which it had occupied when the Holy Alliance laid down the law to Europe, and averted the danger to which the Ottoman Empire, as well as the peace of the world, had been exposed by the combination of French with Russian schemes of aggrandizement. If Canning, left without an ally in Europe, had called the new world into existence to redress the balance of the old, his Whig successors might well look with some satisfaction on that shifting of the weights which had brought over one of the Great Powers to the side of England, and anticipate, in the concert of the two great Western States, the establishment of a permanent force in European politics which should hold in check the reactionary influences of Vienna and St. Petersburg. To some extent these views were realised. A general relation of friendliness was recognised as subsisting between the Governments of Paris and London, and in certain European complications their intervention was arranged in common. But even here the element of mistrust was seldom absent; and while English Ministers jealously watched each action of their neighbour, the French Government rarely allowed the ties of an informal alliance to interfere with the prosecution of its own views. Although down to the close of Louis Philippe's reign the good understanding between England and France was still nominally in existence, all real confidence had then long vanished; and on more than one occasion the preservation of peace between the two nations had been seriously endangered.

[Affairs of Portugal, 1826-1830.]

It was in the establishment of the kingdom of Belgium that the combined action of France and England produced its first and most successful result. A second demand was made upon the Governments of the two constitutional Powers by the conflicts which agitated the Spanish Peninsula, and which were stimulated in the general interests of absolutism by both the Austrian and the Russian Court. The intervention of Canning in 1826 on behalf of the constitutional Regency of Portugal against the foreign supporters of Don Miguel, the head of the clerical and reactionary party, had not permanently restored peace to that country. Miguel indeed accepted the constitution, and, after betrothing himself to the infant sovereign, Donna Maria, who was still with her father Pedro, in Brazil, entered upon the Regency which his elder brother had promised to him. But his actions soon disproved the professions of loyalty to the constitution which he had made; and after dissolving the Cortes, and re-assembling the mediaeval Estates, he caused himself to be proclaimed King (June, 1828). A reign of terror followed. The constitutionalists were completely crushed. Miguel's own brutal violence gave an example to all the fanatics and ruffians who surrounded him; and after an unsuccessful appeal to arms, those of the adherents of Donna Maria and the constitution who escaped from imprisonment or execution took refuge in England or in the Azore islands, where Miguel had not been able to establish his authority. Though Miguel was not officially recognised as Sovereign by most of the foreign Courts, his victory was everywhere seen with satisfaction by the partisans of absolutism; and in Great Britain, where the Duke of Wellington was still in power, the precedent of Canning's intervention was condemned, and a strict neutrality maintained. Not only was all assistance refused to Donna Maria, but her adherents who had taken refuge in England were prevented from making this country the basis of any operations against the usurper.

[Invasion of Portugal by Pedro. July, 1832.]

Such was the situation of Portuguese affairs when the events of 1830 brought an entirely new spirit into the foreign policy of both England and France. Miguel, however, had no inclination to adapt his own policy to the change of circumstances; on the contrary, he challenged the hostility of both governments by persisting in a series of wanton attacks upon English and French subjects resident at Lisbon. Satisfaction was demanded, and exacted by force. English and French squadrons successively appeared in the Tagus. Lord Palmerston, now Foreign Secretary in the Ministry of Earl Grey, was content with obtaining a pecuniary indemnity for his countrymen, accompanied by a public apology from the Portuguese Government: the French admiral, finding some difficulty in obtaining redress, carried off the best ships of Don Miguel's navy. [396] A weightier blow was, however, soon to fall upon the usurper. His brother, the Emperor Pedro, threatened with revolution in Brazil, resolved to return to Europe and to enforce the rights of his daughter to the throne of Portugal. Pedro arrived in London in July, 1831, and was permitted by the Government to raise troops and to secure the services of some of the best naval officers of this country. The gathering place of his forces was Terceira, one of the Azore islands, and in the summer of 1832 a sufficiently strong body of troops was collected to undertake the reconquest of Portugal. A landing was made at Oporto, and this city fell into the hands of Don Pedro without resistance. Miguel, however, now marched against his brother, and laid siege to Oporto. For nearly a year no progress was made by either side; at length the arrival of volunteers from various countries, among whom was Captain Charles Napier, enabled Pedro to divide his forces and to make a new attack on Portugal from the south. Napier, in command of the fleet, annihilated the navy of Don Miguel off St. Vincent; his colleague, Villa Flor, landed and marched on Lisbon. The resistance of the enemy was overcome, and on the 28th of July, 1833, Don Pedro entered the capital. But the war was not yet at an end, for Miguel's cause was as closely identified with the interests of European absolutism as that of his brother was with constitutional right, and assistance both in troops and money continued to arrive at his camp. The struggle threatened to prove a long and obstinate one, when a new turn was given to events in the Peninsula by the death of Ferdinand, King of Spain.

[Death of Ferdinand, Sept., 1833.]

Since the restoration of absolute Government in Spain in 1823, Ferdinand, in spite of his own abject weakness and ignorance, had not given complete satisfaction to the fanatics of the clerical party. Some vestiges of statesmanship, some sense of political necessity, as well as the influence of foreign counsellors, had prevented the Government of Madrid from completely identifying itself with the monks and zealots who had first risen against the constitution of 1820, and who now sought to establish the absolute supremacy of the Church. The Inquisition had not been restored, and this alone was enough to stamp the King as a renegade in the eyes of the ferocious and implacable champions of mediaeval bigotry. Under the name of Apostolicals, these reactionaries had at times broken into open rebellion. Their impatience had, however, on the whole been restrained by the knowledge that in the King's brother and heir, Don Carlos, they had an adherent whose devotion to the priestly cause was beyond suspicion, and who might be expected soon to ascend the throne. Ferdinand had been thrice married; he was childless; his state of health miserable; and his life likely to be a short one. The succession to the throne of Spain had moreover, since 1713, been governed by the Salic Law, so that even in the event of Ferdinand leaving female issue Don Carlos would nevertheless inherit the crown. These confident hopes were rudely disturbed by the marriage of the King with his cousin Maria Christina of Naples, followed by an edict, known as the Pragmatic Sanction, repealing the Salic Law which had been introduced with the first Bourbon, and restoring the ancient Castilian custom under which women were capable of succeeding to the crown. A daughter, Isabella, was shortly afterwards born to the new Queen. On the legality of the Pragmatic Sanction the opinions of publicists differed; it was judged, however, by Europe at large not from the point of view of antiquarian theory, but with direct reference to its immediate effect. The three Eastern Courts emphatically condemned it, as an interference with established monarchical right, and as a blow to the cause of European absolutism through the alliance which it would almost certainly produce between the supplanters of Don Carlos and the Liberals of the Spanish Peninsula. [397] To the clerical and reactionary party at Madrid, it amounted to nothing less than a sentence of destruction, and the utmost pressure was brought to bear upon the weak and dying King with the object of inducing him to undo the alleged wrong which he had done to his brother. In a moment of prostration Ferdinand revoked the Pragmatic Sanction; but, subsequently, regaining some degree of strength, he re-enacted it, and appointed Christina Regent during the continuance of his illness. Don Carlos, protesting against the violation of his rights, had betaken himself to Portugal, where he made common cause with Miguel. His adherents had no intention of submitting to the change of succession. Their resentment was scarcely restrained during Ferdinand's life-time, and when, in September, 1833, his long-expected death took place, and the child Isabella was declared Queen under the Regency of her mother, open rebellion broke out, and Carlos was proclaimed King in several of the northern provinces.

[The Regency and the Carlists.]

[Quadruple Treaty, April 22, 1834.]

[Miguel and Carlos removed, May, 1834.]

For the moment the forces of the Regency seemed to be far superior to those of the insurgents, and Don Carlos failed to take advantage of the first outburst of enthusiasm and to place himself at the head of his followers. He remained in Portugal, while Christina, as had been expected, drew nearer to the Spanish Liberals, and ultimately called to power a Liberal minister, Martinez de la Rosa, under whom a constitution was given to Spain by Royal Statute (April 10, 1834). At the same time negotiations were opened with Portugal and with the Western Powers, in the hope of forming an alliance which should drive both Miguel and Carlos from the Peninsula. On the 22nd of April, 1834, a Quadruple Treaty was signed at London, in which the Spanish Government undertook to send an army into Portugal against Miguel, the Court of Lisbon pledging itself in return to use all the means in its power to expel Don Carlos from Portuguese territory. England engaged to co-operate by means of its fleet. The assistance of France, if it should be deemed necessary for the attainment of the objects of the Treaty, was to be rendered in such manner as should be settled by common consent. In pursuance of the policy of the Treaty, and even before the formal engagement was signed, a Spanish division under General Rodil crossed the frontier and marched against Miguel. The forces of the usurper were defeated. The appearance of the English fleet and the publication of the Treaty of Quadruple Alliance rendered further resistance hopeless, and on the 22nd of May Miguel made his submission, and in return for a large pension renounced all rights to the crown, and undertook to quit the Peninsula for ever. Don Carlos, refusing similar conditions, went on board an English ship, and was conducted to London. [398]

[Carlos appears in Spain.]

With respect to Portugal, the Quadruple Alliance had completely attained its object; and in so far as the Carlist cause was strengthened by the continuance of civil war in the neighbouring country, this source of strength was no doubt withdrawn from it. But in its effect upon Don Carlos himself the action of the Quadruple Alliance was worse than useless. While fulfilling the letter of the Treaty, which stipulated for the expulsion of the two pretenders from the Peninsula, the English Admiral had removed Carlos from Portugal, where he was comparatively harmless, and had taken no effective guarantee that he should not re-appear in Spain itself and enforce his claim by arms. Carlos had not been made a prisoner of war; he had made no promises and incurred no obligations; nor could the British Government, after his arrival in this country, keep him in perpetual restraint. Quitting England after a short residence, he travelled in disguise through France, crossed the Pyrenees, and appeared on the 10th of July, 1834, at the headquarters of the Carlist insurgents in Navarre.

[The Basque Provinces.]

In the country immediately below the western Pyrenees, the so-called Basque Provinces, lay the chief strength of the Carlist rebellion. These provinces, which were among the most thriving and industrious parts of Spain, might seem by their very superiority an unlikely home for a movement which was directed against everything favourable to liberty, tolerance, and progress in the Spanish kingdom. But the identification of the Basques with the Carlist cause was due in fact to local, not to general, causes; and in fighting to impose a bigoted despot upon the Spanish people, they were in truth fighting to protect themselves from a closer incorporation with Spain. Down to the year 1812, the Basque provinces had preserved more than half of the essentials of independence. Owing to their position on the French frontier, the Spanish monarchy, while destroying all local independence in the interior of Spain, had uniformly treated the Basques with the same indulgence which the Government of Great Britain has shown to the Channel Islands, and which the French monarchy, though in a less degree, showed to the frontier province of Alsace in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The customs-frontier of the north of Spain was drawn to the south of these districts. The inhabitants imported what they pleased from France without paying any duties; while the heavy import-dues levied at the border of the neighbouring Spanish provinces gave them the opportunity of carrying on an easy and lucrative system of smuggling. The local administration remained to a great extent in the hands of the people themselves; each village preserved its active corporate life; and the effect of this survival of a vigorous local freedom was seen in the remarkable contrast described by travellers between the aspect of the Basque districts and that of Spain at large. The Fueros, or local rights, as the Basques considered them, were in reality, when viewed as part of the order of the Spanish State, a series of exceptional privileges; and it was inevitable that the framers of the Constitution of 1812, in their attempt to create a modern administrative and political system doing justice to the whole of the nation, should sweep away the distinctions which had hitherto marked off one group of provinces from the rest of the community. The continuance of war until the return of Ferdinand, and the overthrow of the Constitution, prevented the plans of the Cortes from being at that time carried into effect; but the revolution of 1820 brought them into actual operation, and the Basques found themselves, as a result of the victory of Liberal principles, compelled to pay duties on their imports, robbed of the profits of their smuggling, and supplanted in the management of their local affairs by an army of officials from Madrid. They had gained by the Constitution little that they had not possessed before, and their losses were immediate, tangible, and substantial. The result was, that although the larger towns, like Bilbao, remained true to modern ideas, the country districts, led chiefly by priests, took up arms on behalf of the absolute monarchy, assisted the French in the restoration of despotism in 1823, and remained the permanent enemies of the constitutional cause. [399] On the death of Ferdinand they declared at once for Don Carlos, and rose in rebellion against the Government of Queen Christina, by which they considered the privileges of the Basque Provinces and the interests of Catholic orthodoxy to be alike threatened.

[Carlist victories, 1834-5.]

There was little in the character of Don Carlos to stimulate the loyalty even of his most benighted partizans. Of military and political capacity he was totally destitute, and his continued absence in Portugal when the conflict had actually begun proved him to be wanting in the natural impulses of a brave man. It was, however, his fortune to be served by a soldier of extraordinary energy and skill; and the first reverses of the Carlists were speedily repaired, and a system of warfare organised which made an end of the hopes of easy conquest with which the Government of Christina had met the insurrection. Fighting in a worthless cause, and commanding resources scarcely superior to those of a brigand chief, the Carlist leader, Zumalacarregui, inflicted defeat after defeat upon the generals who were sent to destroy him. The mountainous character of the country and the universal hostility of the inhabitants made the exertions of a regular soldiery useless against the alternate flights and surprises of men who knew every mountain track, and who gained information of the enemy's movements from every cottager. Terror was added by Zumalacarregui to all his other methods for demoralising his adversary. In the exercise of reprisals he repeatedly murdered all his prisoners in cold blood, and gave to the war so savage a character that foreign Governments at last felt compelled to urge upon the belligerents some regard for the usages of the civilised world. The appearance of Don Carlos himself in the summer of 1834 raised still higher the confidence already inspired by the victories of his general. It was in vain that the old constitutionalist soldier, Mina, who had won so great a name in these provinces in 1823, returned after long exile to the scene of his exploits. Enfeebled and suffering, he was no longer able to place himself at the head of his troops, and he soon sought to be relieved from a hopeless task. His successor, the War Minister Valdes, took the field announcing his determination to act upon a new system, and to operate with his troops in mass instead of pursuing the enemy's bands with detachments. The result of this change of tactics was a defeat more ruinous and complete than had befallen any of Valdes' predecessors. He with difficulty withdrew the remainder of his army from the insurgent provinces; and the Carlist leader master of the open country up to the borders of Castile, prepared to cross the Ebro and to march upon Madrid. [400]

[Request to France for assistance, May, 1835.]

The Ministers of Queen Christina, who had up till this time professed themselves confident in their power to deal with the insurrection, could now no longer conceal the real state of affairs. Valdes himself declared that the rebellion could not be subdued without foreign aid; and after prolonged discussion in the Cabinet it was determined to appeal to France for armed assistance. The flight of Don Carlos from England had already caused an additional article to be added to the Treaty of the Quadruple Alliance, in which France undertook so to watch the frontier of the Pyrenees that no reinforcements or munition of war should reach the Carlists from that side, while England promised to supply the troops of Queen Christina with arms and stores, and, if necessary, to render assistance with a naval force (18th August, 1834). The foreign supplies sent to the Carlists had thus been cut off both by land and sea; but more active assistance seemed indispensable if Madrid was to be saved from falling into the enemy's hands. The request was made to Louis Philippe's Government to occupy the Basque Provinces with a corps of twelve thousand men. Reasons of weight might be addressed to the French Court in favour of direct intervention. The victory of Don Carlos would place upon the throne of Spain a representative of all those reactionary influences throughout Europe which were in secret or in open hostility to the House of Orleans, and definitely mark the failure of that policy which had led France to combine with England in expelling Don Miguel from Portugal. On the other hand, the experience gained from earlier military enterprises in Spain might well deter even bolder politicians than those about Louis Philippe from venturing upon a task whose ultimate issues no man could confidently forecast. Napoleon had wrecked his empire in the struggle beyond the Pyrenees not less than in the march to Moscow: and the expedition of 1823, though free from military difficulties, had exposed France to the humiliating responsibility for every brutal act of a despotism which, in the very moment of its restoration, had scorned the advice of its restorers. The constitutional Government which invoked French assistance might, moreover, at any moment give place to a democratic faction which already harassed it within the Cortes, and which, in its alliance with the populace in many of the great cities, threatened to throw Spain into anarchy, or to restore the ill-omened constitution of 1812. But above all, the attitude of the three Eastern Powers bade the ruler of France hesitate before committing himself to a military occupation of Spanish territory. Their sympathies were with Don Carlos, and the active participation of France in the quarrel might possibly call their opposing forces into the field and provoke a general war. In view of the evident dangers arising out of the proposed intervention, the French Government, taking its stand on that clause of the Quadruple Treaty which provided that the assistance of France should be rendered in such manner as might be agreed upon by all the parties to the Treaty, addressed itself to Great Britain, inquiring whether this country would undertake a joint responsibility in the enterprise and share with France the consequences to which it might give birth. Lord Palmerston in reply declined to give the assurance required. He stated that no objection would be raised by the British Government to the entry of French troops into Spain, but that such intervention must be regarded as the work of France alone, and be undertaken by France at its own peril. This answer sufficed for Louis Philippe and his Ministers. The Spanish Government was informed that the grant of military assistance was impossible, and that the entire public opinion of France would condemn so dangerous an undertaking. As a proof of goodwill, permission was given to Queen Christina to enrol volunteers both in England and France. Arms were supplied; and some thousands of needy or adventurous men ultimately made their way from our own country as well as from France, to earn under Colonel De Lacy Evans and other leaders a scanty harvest of profit or renown.

[Continuance of the war.]

The first result of the rejection of the Spanish demand for the direct intervention of France was the downfall of the Minister by whom this demand had been made. His successor, Toreno, though a well-known patriot, proved unable to stem the tide of revolution that was breaking over the country. City after city set up its own Junta, and acted as if the central government had ceased to exist. Again the appeal for help was made to Louis Philippe, and now, not so much to avert the victory of Don Carlos as to save Spain from anarchy and from the constitution of 1812. Before an answer could arrive, Toreno in his turn had passed away. Mendizabal, a banker who had been entrusted with financial business at London, and who had entered into friendly relations with Lord Palmerston, was called to office, as a politician acceptable to the democratic party, and the advocate of a close connection with England rather than with France. In spite of the confident professions of the Minister, and in spite of some assistance actually rendered by the English fleet, no real progress was made in subduing the Carlists, or in restoring administrative and financial order. The death of Zumalacarregui, who was forced by Don Carlos to turn northwards and besiege Bilbao instead of marching upon Madrid immediately after his victories, had checked the progress of the rebellion at a critical moment; but the Government, distracted and bankrupt, could not use the opportunity which thus offered itself, and the war soon blazed out anew not only in the Basque Provinces but throughout the north of Spain. For year after year the monotonous struggle continued, while Cortes succeeded Cortes and faction supplanted faction, until there remained scarcely an officer who had not lost his reputation or a politician who was not useless and discredited.

[Constitution of 1837.]

[End of the war, Sept., 1839.]

The Queen Regent, who from the necessities of her situation had for awhile been the representative of the popular cause, gradually identified herself with the interests opposed to democratic change; and although her name was still treated with some respect, and her policy was habitually attributed to the misleading advice of courtiers, her real position was well understood at Madrid, and her own resistance was known to be the principal obstacle to the restoration of the Constitution of 1812. It was therefore determined to overcome this resistance by force; and on the 13th of August, 1836, a regiment of the garrison of Madrid, won over by the Exaltados, marched upon the palace of La Granja, invaded the Queen's apartments, and compelled her to sign an edict restoring the Constitution of 1812 until the Cortes should establish that or some other. Scenes of riot and murder followed in the capital. Men of moderate opinions, alarmed at the approach of anarchy, prepared to unite with Don Carlos. King Louis Philippe, who had just consented to strengthen the French legion by the addition of some thousands of trained soldiers, now broke entirely from the Spanish connection, and dismissed his Ministers who refused to acquiesce in this change of policy. Meanwhile the Eastern Powers and all rational partisans of absolutism besought Don Carlos to give those assurances which would satisfy the wavering mass among his opponents, and place him on the throne without the sacrifice of any right that was worth preserving. It seemed as if the opportunity was too clear to be misunderstood; but the obstinacy and narrowness of Don Carlos were proof against every call of fortune. Refusing to enter into any sort of engagement, he rendered it impossible for men to submit to him who were not willing to accept absolutism pure and simple. On the other hand, a majority of the Cortes, whose eyes were now opened to the dangers around them, accepted such modifications of the Constitution of 1812 that political stability again appeared possible (June, 1837). The danger of a general transference of all moderate elements in the State to the side of Don Carlos was averted; and, although the Carlist armies took up the offensive, menaced the capital, and made incursions into every part of Spain, the darkest period of the war was now over; and when, after undertaking in person the march upon Madrid, Don Carlos swerved aside and ultimately fell back in confusion to the Ebro, the suppression of the rebellion became a certainty. General Espartero, with whom such distinction remained as was to be gathered in this miserable war, forced back the adversary step by step, and carried fire and sword into the Basque Provinces, employing a system of devastation which alone seemed capable of exhausting the endurance of the people. Reduced to the last extremity, the Carlist leaders turned their arms against one another. The priests excommunicated the generals, and the generals shot the priests; and finally, on the 14th September, after the surrender of almost all his troops to Espartero, Don Carlos crossed the French frontier, and the conflict which during six years had barbarised and disgraced the Spanish nation, reached its close.

[End of the Regency, Isabella, Queen, Nov., 1843.]

The triumph of Queen Christina over her rivals was not of long duration. Confronted by a strong democratic party both in the Cortes and in the country, she endeavoured in vain to govern by the aid of Ministers of her own choice. Her popularity had vanished away. The scandals of her private life gave just offence to the nation, and fatally weakened her political authority. Forced by insurrection to bestow office on Espartero, as the chief of the Progressist party, she found that the concessions demanded by this general were more than she could grant, and in preference to submitting to them she resigned the Regency, and quitted Spain (Oct., 1840). Espartero, after some interval, was himself appointed Regent by the Cortes. For two years he maintained himself in power, then in his turn he fell before the combined attack of his political opponents and the extreme men of his own party, and passed into exile. There remained in Spain no single person qualified to fill the vacant Regency, and in default of all other expedients the young princess Isabella, who was now in her fourteenth year, was declared of full age, and placed on the throne (Nov., 1843). Christina returned to Madrid. After some rapid changes of Ministry, a more durable Government was formed from the Moderado party under General Narvaez; and in comparison with the period that had just ended, the first few years of the new reign were years of recovery and order.

[War between Mehemet Ali and the Porte, 1832.]

The withdrawal of Louis Philippe from his engagements after the capitulation of Maria Christina to the soldiery at La Granja in 1836 had diminished the confidence placed in the King by the British Ministry; but it had not destroyed the relations of friendship existing between the two Governments. Far more serious causes of difference arose out of the course of events in the East, and the extension of the power of Mehemet Ali, Viceroy of Egypt. The struggle between Mehemet and his sovereign, long foreseen, broke out in the year 1832. After the establishment of the Hellenic Kingdom, the island of Crete had been given to Mehemet in return for his services to the Ottoman cause by land and sea. This concession, however, was far from satisfying the ambition of the Viceroy, and a quarrel with Abdallah, Pasha of Acre, gave him the opportunity of throwing an army into Palestine without directly rebelling against his sovereign (Nov., 1831). Ibrahim, in command of his father's forces, laid siege to Acre; and had this fortress at once fallen, it would probably have been allowed by the Sultan to remain in its conqueror's hands as an addition to his own province, since the Turkish army was not ready for war, and it was no uncommon thing in the Ottoman Empire for one provincial governor to possess himself of territory at the expense of another. So obstinate, however, was the defence of Acre that time was given to the Porte to make preparations for war; and in the spring of 1832, after the issue of a proclamation declaring Mehemet and his son to be rebels, a Turkish army led by Hussein Pasha entered Syria.

[Ibrahim conquers Syria and Asia Minor.]

Ibrahim, while the siege of Acre was proceeding, had overrun the surrounding country. He was now in possession of all the interior of Palestine, and the tribes of Lebanon had joined him in the expectation of gaining relief from the burdens of Turkish misgovernment. The fall of Acre, while the relieving army was still near Antioch, enabled him to throw his full strength against his opponent in the valley of the Orontes. It was the intention of the Turkish general, whose forces, though superior in number, had not the European training of Ibrahim's regiments, to meet the assault of the Egyptians in an entrenched camp near Hama. The commander of the vanguard, however, pushed forward beyond this point, and when far in advance of the main body of the army was suddenly attacked by Ibrahim at Homs. Taken at a moment of complete disorder, the Turks were put to the rout. Their overthrow and flight so alarmed the general-in-chief that he determined to fall back upon Aleppo, leaving Antioch and all the valley of the Orontes to the enemy. Aleppo was reached, but the governor, won over by Ibrahim, closed the gates of the city against the famishing army, and forced Hussein to continue his retreat to the mountains which form the barrier between Syria and Cilicia. Here, at the pass of Beilan, he was attacked by Ibrahim, outmanoeuvred, and forced to retreat with heavy loss (July 29). The pursuit was continued through the province of Cilicia. Hussein's army, now completely demoralised, made its escape to the centre of Asia Minor; the Egyptian, after advancing as far as Mount Taurus and occupying the passes in this range, took up his quarters in the conquered country in order to refresh his army and to await reinforcements. After two months' halt he renewed his march, crossed Mount Taurus and occupied Konieh, the capital of this district. Here the last and decisive blow was struck. A new Turkish army, led by Reschid Pasha, Ibrahim's colleague in the siege of Missolonghi, advanced from the north. Against his own advice, Reschid was compelled by orders from Constantinople to risk everything in an engagement. He attacked Ibrahim at Konieh on the 21st of December, and was completely defeated. Reschid himself was made a prisoner; his army dispersed; the last forces of the Sultan were exhausted, and the road to the Bosphorus lay open before the Egyptian invader.