http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924070596865

THE

CAMBRIDGE MODERN HISTORY

PLANNED BY the late LORD ACTON

REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY

EDITED BY

A. W. WARD Litt.D.

G. W. PROTHERO Litt.D. STANLEY LEATHES M.A.

VOLUME XI

THE GROWTH OF NATIONALITIES

PREFACE.

THE quarter of a century which, roughly speaking, is covered by this volume is remarkable as being an epoch of violent international and civic disturbance, interposed between two generations of almost unbroken peace—the period 1815-45, and that from 1871 to the present day. It is also, from the point of view of Universal History, the most important period since the Congress of Vienna. Indeed, the changes made in the map of Europe between 1859 and 1871 were in some respects greater and more permanent than the final results of the warfare which ended in that great pacification. The effects produced by the French Revolution and the reign of the first Napoleon in the domain of political ideas—especially in regard to notions of self­government and the spirit of nationality—were indeed immense and enduring. But the alterations which the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars made in the distribution of power and in international relations were too sweeping to last. They called forth a hostile reaction as overwhelming as the impulse which produced them; and the balance of power which resulted from the Congress of Vienna differed in no essential respects from that which existed before 1789.

The following generation saw some notable changes in political conditions—the overthrow of Legitimism in France; the separation of Holland and Belgium; the liberation of Greece from the Turk, and other reductions of Ottoman power. But, thirty years after the Congress, its work still remained almost intact. The revolutionary and nationalist efforts in Poland and Italy had failed ; the unitary movement in Germany had made little progress except in the Zollverein, the political effect of which was as yet hardly perceived; reform and reaction were still at grips in the Iberian peninsula; the obstinate conservatism of Mettemich continued to dominate Europe.

But with the Revolution of February a new stage in European development begins. The next four years (1848-52) were a period of

violent oscillation—not so much in international relations as in the domestic affairs of France, Italy, and central Europe. Already, for some years previously, the mutterings of the coming storm could be perceived by those who had ears to hear; but there was no apparent reason to suppose that the new efforts of political reformers and ardent nationalists would be more successful than those which had preceded them. Nor indeed were they, so far as superficial appearances went. The outbreak of 1848 was far more violent and more widespread than the movements of 1820 and 1830; but, though for some time the revolutionary element seemed to be gaining the upper hand, the tide ultimately turned and the reaction everywhere prevailed. The Austrian monarchy, after a severe struggle, not only reestablished itself in its own dominions but recovered its hold upon northern Italy. In Bohemia the rising spirit of Slav nationality led to a futile revolt; elsewhere in the Austrian dominions it served as a set-off against the Magyar; and, with the aid of Russia, the insurrection in Hungary was put down. Thus strengthened aiid encouraged, Francis Joseph had little difficulty in regaining the hegemony of Germany, and reducing Prussia at Olmiitz to her former secondary position. In France the Republic collapsed, more from its inherent weakness and the mistakes of its leaders, than from any active opposition; -and another Napoleon advanced, by rapid stages, from Presidency to Empire. This was the most notable change produced by the Revolution.of February; but two others had conse­quences ultimately as important. In Germany Prussia, in Italy Piedmont, had stood forth as the champions of national unity; and each had adopted a constitutional form of government. In their nationalist efforts both countries failed—Piedmont heroically, Prussia not without humilia­tion ; but each remained the centre of nationalist hopes. These events, combined with the aims and character of Napoleon III, the circum­stances of his accession, and the appearance, in Italy and Prussia, of two of the greatest statesmen of modem times, determined the course of European development during the next eighteen years (1852-70).

This period (that of the Second Empire) falls into two divisions, marked respectively by the rise and dominance, the decay and fall, of Napoleon’s power. Anxious to allay the fears excited by his name, he began by proclaiming the pacific intentions of the Empire. But he could not forget that military distinction was expected from a Napoleon, or disregard the conviction of Frenchmen that France ought to be the

arbiter of Europe. He therefore grasped the opportunity of self­assertion afforded by the state of Turkey and the question of the Holy Places, and, departing from the policy of Louis-Philippe, made war, in conjunction with Great Britain, on Russia in defence of the Turk. The internal dissensions and the vacillating policy of the British Ministry had left the initiative in the preliminary negotiations to Napoleon; and he retained it throughout the armed conflict which ended, to the dearly- bought advantage of the Allies, in the Treaty of Paris. That the Peace of 1856 was not more unfavourable to Russia was due to Napoleon’s desire to leave the way open for a complete reconciliation with the defeated Power.

With a reputation considerably enhanced both at home and abroad by this success, his throne apparently established, and the succession secured by the birth of a son, Napoleon now set about carrying into effect a policy which he conceived to be a heritage from his uncle and at the same time worthy of France—namely, the championship of oppressed nationalities. The most flagrant example of a nationality oppressed, and that which most nearly concerned France, was to be found in Italy. Hence the understanding with Sardinia, foreshadowed at the Conference of Paris,¹ which led to the war of 1859. The Peace of Villafranca left the work of emancipation incomplete and Napoleon’s promises only half fulfilled. When the Emperor retired, the work of liberating Italy was taken up by a stronger and more determined spirit, that of Cavour, whose vigorous and astute policy had, ever since the dark days of Novara, prepared his country for the coming struggle. The union of Italy was brought about by a skilful mixture of audacity and caution, of war and diplomacy, of action and reserve; and Cavour lived to see his work accomplished, save that at his death the Austrians were still in Venice, and a French garrison in Rome. Napoleon’s scheme of liberating an oppressed nationality had prospered far beyond his original intention or desire; and the annexation of Savoy and Nice hardly compensated for the closing of the door to French ambitions in the peninsula.

Cavour had used Napoleon in order to carry out his schemes for the union of Italy. Meanwhile, in the north, another great statesman was watching events and forming his plans for still more momentous action. In the year after Cavour’s death, Bismarck was called to power in Prussia. His first task was to forge the military weapon without which his policy of “ blood and iron ” could not hope to succeed. Abroad he recognised

the supreme importance to Prussia of a good understanding with her eastern neighbour; and the Polish insurrection of 1863 gave him the opportunity of cementing the friendship with Russia for which Prussia’s ■attitude in the Crimean War had paved the way. But Bismarck’s originality showed itself most momentously in the policy which he adopted towards Austria. In the debate between the parties of “Great” and “Little” Germany, Bismarck ruled the former decisively out of court. No longer obsequious to the traditions of the Holy Roman Empire, Prussia was to revive those of Frederick the Great and to strike boldly for the headship of Germany.        .

The revival in 1863 of the Schleswig-Holstein question, which had played an important part in the German movement of 1848, gave Bismarck the opportunity of putting this policy into execution, and of testing the capacities of his new army in the field. The duchies once taken from Denmark, it was not difficult to pick a quarrel with Austria over their tenure. Austria, attacked on two sides, was victorious at Custozza, but her crushing defeat at Koniggratz decided the German question against her; and Prussia, strengthened by annexations in northern Germany, became the unquestioned head of a new confedera­tion. As for Italy, though defeated, she had her reward in Venetia.

It was France—it has been well said—rather than Austria, that was beaten at Koniggratz; and Napoleon was not slow in perceiving that the result was one which menaced the power and even the security of France. He had vainly intervened in regard to Poland in 1863—an action which only served to alienate Russia. His refusal to interfere in the question of the duchies in the following year offended England without conciliating Germany. Meanwhile difficulties, at home and abroad, gathered round the Second Empire. In the Legislative Body an opposition, hardly perceptible at first, was gradually growing in numbers and influence. The ill-advised and unfortunate expedition to Mexico was draining his resources and undermining his influence. To the Emperor, then, it seemed increasingly necessary that France should obtain some compensation for the growth of her neighbours in territory and power. The compensation which he specially coveted lay on the left bank of the Rhine, or in Belgium. When the Seven Weeks’ War broke out, Napoleon looked to a prolonged struggle which would enable him to intervene between the exhausted combatants at his own price. But he was not prepared for action, and his hopes were dashed by the

rapid conclusion of peace. Subsequently he opened secret negotiations with Prussia, but Bismarck bluntly repelled the suggestions to which he had formerly appeared to listen, and made use of them to bring the States of southern Germany into a close military alliance with Prussia.

From this moment a conflict between France and Germany became practically inevitable. To the majority of Napoleon’s advisers it appeared essential that the consummation of German unity should at all costs be prevented. Bismarck looked to a war with France as the only way to its accomplishment. The conflict appeared likely to break out over the question of Luxemburg (1867); but Bismarck was not ready, nor did he regard the matter as one likely to enlist the ardent sympathy of the whole German nation. He accordingly accepted a compromise and awaited a better occasion. Meanwhile in France, the system of government was rapidly passing, under the increasing pressure of the parliamentary opposition, from an autocracy into a constitutional monarchy, without, however, any gain of popularity for the Emperor, whose concessions appeared due rather to weakness than generosity. The disastrous failure of his plans in Mexico diminished his resources, and dealt a heavy blow to his reputation.

Dreading a single-handed collision with Prussia, he sought to strengthen himself by alliances. His natural allies were Austria and Italy. With the object of winning over Victor Emmanuel, Napoleon made the Convention of September, and removed his troops from Rome. But Garibaldi was not to be restrained; and Mentana forged anew the fatal link which bound Napoleon to the Vatican. So long as French troops held the gates of Rome, there could be no alliance between France and Italy. Austria lent a more willing ear; and overtures made with the utmost secrecy at Vienna seemed to promise a hopeful result. Time however was needed for Austria to prepare; and time was not to be allowed.

Secret as the negotiations were, Bismarck was awake to the fact that a league against him was in contemplation, and he resolved to anticipate it. The Revolution in Spain and the difficulty of finding anyone to fill the vacant but precarious Spanish throne,’ gave him the opportunity of fastening a quarrel on France, which would appear to put that country in the wrong, and would give him that whole-hearted support in Germany which was requisite for a successful war. The last phase in the

c. M. H. XI.              ®

episode of the Hohenzollem candidature was so managed as to produce this twofold result; and the war for which Bismarck had so long been preparing burst on an astonished Europe. A series of overwhelming victories hurled the Empire to the ground; the heroic resistance of France was, with more difficulty, overcome; and Paris itself fell into the invaders’ hands. Already German unity—the great result at which Bismarck had aimed—had sprung from the triumph of combined Germanic effort; and the new Empire was proclaimed amid the painted victories of the Roi Soleil. In Paris the horrors of the Commune followed, like the fire after the earthquake, on the disasters of the war; and, when the Commune fell, royalist intrigues threatened and embarrassed the French Government. It was only slowly and with difficulty that the Third Republic established itself, and the maimed and shattered State recovered domestic repose. But the hegemony of Europe—if indeed Napoleon III had ever really possessed it—had definitively passed across the Rhine.

Directly connected with that nationalistic policy which is so striking a feature of the central story of this volume are the awakenings and developments of national spirit or enthusiasm in the life and literature of Italy, Germany, and Hungary, and also among the Slavonic races— fiechs, Poles, and Russians—to which attention is drawn in the following narrative. Much else of interest and importance—notably the Mutiny in India, the steady advance of British colonies towards self-government, the rapid progress of British trade, the awakening of Japan and the revolution in that country which substituted a highly organised modem State for a loose congeries of feudal principalities—is also to be told. The great contemporary events in America, the Civil War and the victory of the Northern States over slavery and the forces of disruption, have already been narrated in another volume.

It remains only for the Editors to acknowledge their debts to the distinguished scholars who have aided them in this portion of their enterprise. Sir Alfred Lyall, acting as the literary executor of the late Sir Spencer Walpole, gave final revision to Chapters XI and XII. The Bibliographies to these chapters were compiled by Professor J. H. Clapham (now Assistant Tutor of King’s College) to whom we are also indebted for valuable suggestions and criticisms with regard to these and other chapters in the present volume. In connexion with the same two chapters valuable information was given as to the Income Tax and Succession

Duty by Mr T. A. Prest, of Somerset House. To Mr R. W. Seton- Watson, who kindly read through Chapter XV, 1 and Chapter XXII, 4, we owe some valuable suggestions upon these sections. The latter section had the additional benefit of revision by Professor Askenazy, of Lemberg University. We are much indebted to Mr Ignatius Knaster for his services in connexion with this section. Dr Zsolt Beothy,, Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Budapest, gave valuable- assistance in Chapter XV, 3, and allowed some quotations from his own works to appear therein. Dr Eugen Horvdth, Professor in the Gyongyos: Gymnasium, Hungary, rendered assistance, especially in the Biblio­graphies to Chapters III, VI, VII, XV. To Professors H. Delbriick, of Berlin, and F. Meinecke, of Freiburg, the Editors owe special thanks for their counsel as to several of the chapters on recent German history.

In Chapter XXVII, 1, Mr E. A. Benians, Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, offered valuable suggestions. The Right Honourable Sir Charles Tupper revised the whole of Chapter XXVII, 2, and in­serted in it some new information derived from his own vast experience in Canadian politics. Chapter XXVII, 3 was carefully revised by Mr F. H. Keeling, Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge; and the accompanying Bibliography was in large part composed by him and by Mr T. A. Boose, Librarian of the Colonial Institute. It may be well to state that, though the lamented death of Professor Masi occurred before this volume was published, Chapters IV, XIV, and XIX had received the benefit of his final revision. The Index to this volume has been compiled by Mr H. G. Aldis, of Peterhouse and the University Library, who has also given other assistance.

Finally, we desire to state that, in consequence of the illness of one of our number, his editorial duties with regard to the present volume were, from an early stage in the progress of its chapters through the Press, undertaken by Mr H. W. V. Temperley, Fellow of Peterhouse. He has discharged the task which thus devolved upon him with conspicuous ability and devotion, and we desire to assure him of our cordial gratitude.

A. W. W.

G. W. P.

S. L.

November, 1908.

b 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

GREAT BRITAIN AND FREE TRADE.

(1841-52.)

By J. H. Clapham, M.A., Fellow and Assistant Tutor in History of King’s College.

PAGE

State of the country ..... ...      1

Peel’s Cabinet ...      2

Financial Reform. The Com Laws           3

Revival of the Income Tax       ib.

Laissez Faire. The Railways   • . .  4

Factory and Bank Acts    ib.

The Tractarian crisis               5

The Scottish Church       ib.

Its Disruption     ' .  6

Irish affairs ........... 7

O’Connell and Young Ireland  ib.

Peel’s Irish policy    8

The Com Laws        9

and the Potato Famine    10

Repeal of the Corn Laws ii.-ll

Irish Coercion Act           11

Peel’s fall....... ib.

Irish Famine . 12-13

Political unrest        13

Russell’s Cabinet     14

Commercial distress                       ib.

Sugar and Timber Duties. Navigation Laws ....                            15

Repeal of the Navigation Laws. Colonial policy . . .                 16

Foreign policies of Aberdeen and Palmerston ....                         16-7

The Churches ..........       18

The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill    19

Chartism....... ib.

Social legislation and conditions. Emigration ....                            20

Confusion and rearrangement of parties 21

CHAPTER II.

THE FALL OF CONSTITUTIONALISM IN FRANCE. (1840-8.)

By IiImile Bourgeois, Professor of History in the University of Paris.

PAOB

Results of the crisis of 1840 .......    22

Attitude of the bourgeoisie towards religion............................ 23

The Napoleonic cult 24

The National Guard                25

Evolution of the two chief parliamentary parties ...                 26

Religious influences 27

Parliamentary reform. The entente cordiaie with England .         28

Foreign policy and party disputes. The schism between the centres   29

Opposition between Thiers and Guizot   30

Right of Search Convention. Railway scheme ....                31

The Regency Act     32

Temporary retirement of Thiers . . ....    33

Guizot and the Congregations 34

Renewal of struggle between Guizot and Thiers . . .                ib.

French policy in Tahiti and Morocco ......                                35

Thiers seeks aid from Palmerston and Barrot . , . . .            36

Guizot, Thiers and Louis-Philippe  36-7

Dissolution of the Chambers   37

The situation in Europe and in France as affected by the Spanish

Marriages.. 38-9

Lamartine and the banquets   40

Political indecision of the French people ib.

Guizot’s internal and foreign policy        41

^4>i,esage& of storm .........        42

CHAPTER III.

LIBERALISM AND NATIONALITY IN GERMANY AND AUSTRIA.

(1840-8.)

By F. Meinecke, Professor of History in the University of Freiburg i. B.

Opposing tendencies in Germany           43

Austrian government at the centra 44

Liberal and National movements in Austria ....                            45

Bohemian demands ib.

Revolt of peasants in Galicia   46

Austria annexes Cracow. Nationality struggles in Hungary . 47

Situation of Prussia        ib.

Character and ideas of Frederick William IV ... .                           48

PAGE

His first measures   49

National movement in Prussia        50

Religious policy of Frederick William IV 51

The King’s friends   ib.

Connexion between religious and political movements . .            52

Political movements and leaders in Silesia and East Prussia, .    ib.

And in the Rhine Province      53

The Zollverein. List and national economy ....                              54

Frederick William’s constitutional ideas 55

Committees of the Provincial Diets ib.

Frederick William summons the Combined Diets ...                      56

His constitutional scheme       57

The Prussian Liberal Opposition     58

Liberal opinion in Germany    59

State of Saxony       ib.

Of Hanover and Baden   60

Of Wurtemberg. Disturbance in Bavaria ....                                61

Foreshadowings of revolution 62

Demand for a German National Parliament’ ....                              63

The King and Radowitz ........ ib.

Plan of Federal Reform and National Union . ’ . . .                         64

CHAPTER IV.

ITALY IN REVOLUTION.

(1846-9.)

By the late E. Masi, Professor of History in the University of Florence.

Revolution and Moderate Reform . . •

D’Azeglio’s I Oasi di Romagna ....

Gioberti’s Prolegomeni al Primato....

Pellegrino Rossi. Oongressi degli Scienxiati. .

Tuscany. Naples. Smaller States , . .

Piedmont

Death of Gregory XVI    

The new situation. Election of Pius IX . .

Character and education of Mastai . . •

His friendship with Pasolini. Liberal ideas .

Pius IX’s Amnesty; its effects in Italy . .

The Scientific and Agricultural Congresses . .

Further reforms of Pius IX. His popularity .

Roman plot     

Austrian occupation of Ferrara . . • •

Increased hostility to Austria. Piedmont . .

The Two Sicilies. Rome and Pius IX . .

Rising at Palermo. Constitutional edict at Naples Constitution granted at Rome. Outburst at Milan Retreat of Radetzky. Revolution at Venice .

Negotiations between Milan and Piedmont . .

66

67

68

69

70 ib.

71

72

73

74

75

76 ib.

77

78

79

80 81 82 ib.

PAGE

Republic of St Mark. Tuscany joins Piedmont ....            83

Situation in Rome. Manin’s reservation  84

Charles Albert moves on the Quadrilateral ....                            85

March and counter-march. Battle of Goito ....                            86

Radetzky overruns Venetia. Reaction at Naples ...                 87

Austrian negotiations. Charles Albert attacks Mantua . .   88

He is defeated. The Salasco armistice     89

Rossi and the Democratic party . . . . . . ■ 89-90

Murder of Rossi. Flight of the Pope 91

Tuscany. Sicily *&•

End of Sicilian Revolution. Piedmont and Austria ...                92

Battle of Novara      93

The catastrophe of the Revolutionary period . ■ . . .                      ib.

Mazzini and Garibaldi at Rome ...  ...     94

Tuscany crushed. Fall of Venice ......       95

CHAPTER V.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

(1848-52.)

By Professor ]±!mile Bourgeois.

The prohibited banquet   96

Effects of the riot of February 22    97

Guizot’s resignation and its results 98

February 23 and 24 ...            99

February 24... 100

Louis-Philippe abdicates . . ,   101

The deputies at the Corps Ligislatif        ib.

Lamartine and the Hotel de Ville ......    102

Formation of a Provisional Government 102-3

First steps of the Provisional Government............................ 103-4

Paris and the provinces          ib.

Demonstration of March 16. . . . . . . .     105

Foreign policy of Lamartine    106

Election of a Constituent Assembly. Ledru-Rollin and the

departments           107

The Provisional Government resigns      108

Moderates and Reformers. Effect of the Polish uprising . .   109

Attitude of the provinces                110

Attitude of Paris and change of opinion among workmen . .  Ill

Struggle between people and Government............................ 112

Conflict of June 24 and 25              .      ib.

Slaughter in the suburbs 113

Murder of the Archbishop of Paris  ib.

Suppression of the insurrection by Cavaignac -■ . . .    114

The Republican Constitution . . ....  115

Debates on the Constitution    116

Movement in favour of Louis Bonaparte 117

Louis Bonaparte elected President  118

PAOE

Relatione of Ministry and Assembly ...... 119

Parties in the Assembly ........ 120

The new Government and Rome .......     121

Oudinot sent to Italy .........    122

Attitude of the Assembly ib.

Louis Napoleon and the Conservatives   123

Results of the new elections    124

Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly 125

The “Roman campaign at home”     126

Attacks on the Democratic party    127

Louis Napoleon and the Holy See   128

The Prince President’s new Ministry      129

Falloux’ Education Act    130

Bye-elections in Paris and the departments ....                          131

Campaign against the Republicans 132

The new Ministers. Parties in the Chamber ....                          133

Constitutional revision rejected by Assembly ....                          134

Attitude of Louis Napoleon. The plot. Morny . . .                         135

The Coup d’etat              136

Events of December 3—8        ,. .    137

Effects of the Coup d'ttat        138

Victory of the Prince President       139

Measures for the “public safety”     140

Restoration of hereditary Empire   141

CHAPTER VI.

THE REVOLUTION AND THE REACTION IN GERMANY AND AUSTRIA. I.

(1848-9.)

By A. W. Ward, Litt.D., F.B.A., Master of Peterhouse.

Impending combination of national and radical ideas . . .     142

Early insurrectionary disturbances in Germany ....           143

National Parliament demanded. The Vorparlament . . .   144

The movement in Baden, Mainz and Hesse-Darmstadt . .         145

In Bavaria and Hesse-Cassel  I⁴⁶

In Frankfort and Nassau ........       147

In Wiirtemberg, Hanover and Saxony    148

In Saxony. Robert Blum .......  ib.

In Thuringia.... *49

In Anhalt. Mecklenburg  ¹⁶⁰

In Oldenburg and the Hanse Towns ..... 151

The Austrian Empire before the outbreak .....                      151-2

Beginning of the Vienna insurrection      ¹⁶³

Resignation and flight of Metternich ......                              154

Imperial manifesto of March 15      *&•

The new Ministry. Hungary. The Batthyany Ministry . .             155

Croatia _........

Movement in Prussia      *"•

■                  PAGE

Agitation at Berlin. The “March Days”   157-8

The King’s ride and proclamation. “Prussia merged in Germany” 159

The new Prussian Ministry                     160

The Schleswig-Holstein rising                161

Prussian intervention. “Dahlmann’s Constitution" . . .    162

Sittings of the Vorparlament  163

Baden. Posen. Opening of the Frankfort Parliament . .          164

Archduke John elected. Reichsverweser ......                               165

Ministers and parties at Frankfort. The Grundreahte . .       166

The Schleswig-Holstein War   167

The Malmoe Truce and the Frankfort Parliament . . .        168

Murder of Lichnowsky and Auerswald   169

Agitated condition of Vienna   170

Weakness of the Austrian Government. Pillersdorff . . .        171

The Hungarian Ministry and its legislation ....                           172

The Magyars ,and the Slavs. Attitude of Kossuth . . .            173

The Government Constitution 174

Central Political Committee. The Emperor’s departure . . 175 Committee of- Safety. Regency of Archduke John. Doblhoff’s

Ministry..... 176

Jellacid.. The Slav Congress at Prague   177

Windischgratz subdues the Prague insurrection ....       178

The Reichstag at Vienna . . . . . . . . 179

The Croatian Diet ......... ib.

The Hungarian Diet. Jellacid          180

Kossuth’s financial measures                  181

Imminence of the Austro-Hungarian conflict ....                           182

Batthyany. Jellagic invades Hungary     183

Hungarian preparations. Murder Ojf Lamberg ....            184

Austria declares war. Riots at Vienna     185

Insurrection at Vienna. Murder of Latour ....                               186

The Emperor at Olmutz ........ ib.

Investment of Vienna      187

Windischgratz before Vienna  188

Battle of Schwechat. Capture of Vienna. Arrests and executions 189

Schwarzenberg’s Ministry. Reichstag at Kremsier . . .          190

The new Constitution .........    ib.

The Prussian Government              191

The Prussian “National Assembly” and the King . . .                 192

The Brandenburg-Manteuffel Ministry   193

The National Assembly moved to Brandenburg ....       ib.

The new Prussian .Constitution. The “Central Power" . .  194

Austria and Germany            

Conflicting schemes of reorganisation     19g

The Prussian Circular Despatch .......     197

Constitutional reform and the Confederation ....                           198

Frederick William IV declines the Imperial Crown . . .               lflg

The National Assembly and the Reichsverweser ....  200

The Frankfort Constitution     201

CHAPTER VII.

THE REVOLUTION AND THE REACTION IN GERMANY AND AUSTRIA. II.

By Dr A. W. Wabd.

PAGE

Hungarian prospects at the end of 1848 .............................. 202

Gorgei. Hungarian Government at Debreczen ....         203

Advance of Schlick. Kossuth and Gorgei 204

Demhinski and Bern       . .    205

Slavonia and the Banat. Windischgratz’ failure . . .              206

Declaration of a Republic ........       207

Hungarian capture of Budapest. Russian intervention . .        208

Holy War proclaimed ...          209

Advance of Paskievich, and -of Haynau .....                               210

Battles of Szoreg, Segesvar and Temesvar............................ 211

Abdication and flight of Kossuth ......     212

The surrender of Vilagos 213

The retribution        214

The fugitives in Turkey   215

The Reaction in the Austrian Empire. Bach ....                           216

Transylvania and Croatia. The Austrian Constitution abolished j!17

Prussian attempts at German constitutional reform . . .              218

Insurrections in Baden and Saxony        219

The DreikBnigabundniaa and the Union............................ 220

The Gotha meeting. The Baden insurrection ....                           221

Breakdown of the Dreikonigsbiindniss ......                               222

Resignation of Beichsverweser. The Vierkdnigsbiindniss. Erfurt

Parliament . . . .,                         223

The Schleswig-Holstein War and negotiations ....       224

Peace of Berlin. End of Schleswig-Holstein War . . . 225 The Danish and Schleswig-Holstein Succession. The London

Protocol .......... 226

The Austro-Prussian dispute   227

The Hesse-Cassel question      228

The Hesse-Cassel crisis. Radowitz  229

The Prussian Government gives way      230

The Olmutz Punctation. Schwarzenberg and Manteuffel . .          231

The Dresden Conferences       232

The Austro-Prussian secret alliance        233

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ACHIEVEMENT OF SWISS FEDERAL UNITY.

By W. Oechsli, Professor of History in the University of Zurich.

Contrasts in Swiss history and life 234

Establishment of the Helvetian Republic . . . . .                            235

Results of the Act of Mediation (1803) .....                               236

The Federal Pact     236-7

.                 PAGE

Reaction. The Act of Neutralisation        238

Period of peace and recuperation    239

Effects of the July Revolution at Paris    240

Democratic reforms. Disturbances in Basel ....                           241

Schwyz-Neuchatel troubles. Contending Leagues . . .            242

Proposal to amend the Pact of 1816 ...... 243

Threatened intervention of Great Powers............................ 244

Dissolution of the League of Sarnen       ............................ 245

Disturbances concerning religion    246

The Aargau monasteries 247

Origin of the Sonderbund       248

Strife between Sonderbund and Federal Diet ....                   249

Fears of European intervention      260

Dufour defeats the Sonderbund      261

Proposed coercive measures against Switzerland ....       252

Constitutional reforms    253

Reform of the Federal Constitution 254

Difficulty with Prussia as to Neuchatel  265

Mediation of Napoleon. Reforms     256

Agitation for “Referendum” and “Initiative” ....                           257

Reform of the Federal Constitution 258

Industrial and commercial progress ...... 259

Railway development. Education. Science . . . .                            260

History. Literature. Arts 261

CHAPTER IX.

RUSSIA AND THE LEVANT.

(1)    Russia under Nicholas I.

By Geoffrey Deage, M.A., Christ Church, Oxford.

General character of the reign        262

Personality and policy of Nicholas  263

Legal reforms. Compilation of the Svod  264

Reforms of the administration. The army............................ 265

Reforms in finance. The Church ......      266

Education. The Censorship     267

Attempts to ameliorate the lot of the serfs ....                           268

Industrial progress         269

Industrial policy of the Government       270

Increase in industries and manufactures............................ 271

Cotton industry. Advance in Asia   272

Siberia. Central Asia. Caucasus      273

Results of the reign of Nicholas       274

(2) The Levant.

By E. C. Bi*ech, British Consul at Jerusalem.

The reforms of Abd-ul-Mejid .......   275

Organic Statute for Lebanon  276

Improvements in Turkish Law. Turco-Peraian frontier . .'   ib.

PAGE

Turkey and the Hungarian refugees. Moutenegro. Greece . 277

King Otho’s accession      278

Misgovemment of King Otho. Constitution granted . . .            279

The Greek “idea.” Turkish and British troubles . . .            280

British claims against Greece ....... 281

Condition of Moldo-Wallachia .               282

Russian influence in Moldo-Wallachia, effect of 1848 . . .             28S

Convention of Balta Liman. Servia ......  284

Unrest in Servia      285

CHAPTER X.

NAPOLEON III AND THE PERIOD OF PERSONAL GOVERNMENT.

(1852-9.)

By Albert Thomas, Agrege of the University of Paris.

The hereditary Empire, character of Napoleon Les Idies NapoUomiennes ....

The Constitution ......

Central Government. The Ministries . .

Local Government. Prefects . . .

Organisation of the Army. The Press .

Police and Press. Imperial Court . .

The imperial family. Napoleon’s marriage .

Parliamentary elections. The Chamber .

Powers of the Council of State and the Senate Relations with the Church ....

The Church obtains control of education .

Government attitude towards finance . .

Railways and agriculture ....

Government policy towards industry . .

Industrial developments : their effects . .

Social policy and legislation. . . .

Great public works. Paris ....

Paris and public opinion. The Republican party The Emperor’s foreign policy . . .

Causes and results of the Crimean War .

Piedmont and the conference at Plombieres Relations of Napoleon with England . .

286

287

288

289

290

291

292 29S

294

295

296

297

298

299

300

301

302

303

304

305

306

307

308

CHAPTER XI.

GREAT BRITAIN AND THE CRIMEAN WAR.

(1852-6.)

By the late Sir Spencer Walpole, K.C.B., Hon. D.C.L. Oxon.; LL.D. Edinburgh.

Lord Aberdeen’s new Ministry Gladstone’s first Budget . Financial policy of Gladstone

309

310

311

PAGE

Origin of disputes between France and Russia ....               312

Policy of Nicholas towards Turkey ......   313

Lord Stratford de Redcliffe and Turkey .....                              314

Effect of the "massacre” of Sinope  315

Divisions in the British Cabinet over the Eastern Question . 316

France and England declare war against Russia ....               317

Blockade of Sevastopol .         318

Actions before Sevastopol. Inkerman      ............................ 319

Sufferings of the British army. Fall of Aberdeen and accession

of Palmerston .........        320

Progress of the War. Negotiations for peace ....                          321

Failure of Buol’s proposals." Fall of Sevastopol ....         322

End of the War. Congress of Paris  323

Treaty of Paris. Results of the Crimean War ....                          324

CHAPTER XH.

GREAT BRITAIN, LAST YEARS OF WHIGGISM, PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.

(1856-68.)

By the late Sir Spenceb Walpole.

Palmerston’s Chinese policy    325

Divorce Act... 326

Effects of the Orsini Plot in England      327

Defeat of Palmerston. Derby Premier     328

Government of India Bill                329

Jewish disabilities   330

Palmerston regains power      331

Italian policy of Russell and Palmerston 332

The “ Panic of 1859.” The Volunteer movement . . .        333

Cobden’s Commercial Treaty with France............................ 334

Financial achievements of Gladstone. America ....            335

The Trent crisis. Death of the Prince Consort ....             336

The Alabama question. Schleswig-Holstein ....                          337

English policy in the Schleswig-Holstein question . . .           338

Movements for Reform. Gladstone’s Bill of 1866 . . .                 339

The Adullamites, Russell’s resignation    ib.

Parliamentary Reform. Attitude of the people ....               340

Disraeli’s first Parliamentary Reform Bill............................ 341

Disraeli’s Reform Bill. Disraeli and Gladstone ....          342

Ireland since 1845, genesis of Fenianism............................ 343

Fenian outrages. Gladstone and Disestablishment . . . 344

Abolition of Church Rate. General election of 1868. . .                  345

Material progress of the period       346

CHAPTER XIII.

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

.       (1840-70.)

By H. Walkeb, M.A., Balliol College, Oxford; LL.D. Glasgow; Professor of English Literature, St David’s College, Lampeter.

PAGE

Foreign literary influences during the period ....                            347

Carlyle. The Oxford Movement. . . . . . • 348

Newman and his influence      349

Landor. Tennyson           350-1

Nationalism..... 351

Celticism. Browning                352-3

Hood. Elizabeth Barrett Browning ......  363

Women poets: Christina Rossetti. Clough ....                                354

Matthew Arnold. Romantic influences    365

Romanticism in architecture and pair ting: Ruskin . . .                366

Pre-Raphaelite influences in literature and art . . . .                    367

Prose of the period: Balwer and Disraeli . . ...                             358

Contrasted influence of Dickens and Thackeray ....           359

Women novelists 360

Anthony Trollope. George Meredith       361

Periodical literature        362

Historians: Macaulay. Froude . . ., . . . . 363

Napier. Kiriglake. Carlyle       364

Revival of French literary influence. The idea of evolution .     365

CHAPTER XIV.

CAVOUR AND THE KINGDOM OF ITALY. (1849-61.)

By the late Professor E. Masi.

Victor Emmanuel II’s accession . . • •

Terms of peace after Novara . . . ■

The Siccardi Laws. Cavour ....

Death of Santarosa. Cavour head of the Cabinet Napoleon’s Coup d’ttat. Rattazzi’s attitude . .

Cavour Premier. Economic reforms . . .

Union of the Moderate Right and Left Centre parties Battle on the Chernaya. Piedmontese alliance with France and England . . • • _• • • • ■ Cavour at the Paris Congress. Francis . seph in Lombardy The Mazzinians at Genoa. The Orsini Plot . . . Conference of Plombieres. Lombardo-Venetia . . •

366

367

368

369

370

371

372

373

374

375

376

PAGE

The “Mantuan Trials.” Reaction in Tuscany. Guerrazzi .             377

Reaction at Rome    378

Political trials at Naples. Gladstone’s letters ....                           379

Naples and Sicily    380

The Duchies. Napoleon III and Austria   381

Different policies of Cavour and Napoleon............................. 382

War declared. Piedmontese and French victories. Magenta

and Solferino . . . . i 383

Napoleon proposes peace at Villafranca .....                               384

Preliminaries of Villafranca. Treaty of Zurich . . . .             385

Duchies and Florence declare for union with Piedmont . .            386

The Pope and the Congress. Cavour resumes office . . .                387

Piedmont and central Italy. Garihaldi in Sicily. . . .               388

Garibaldi at Naples. M erode at Rome    389

Victor Emmanuel and Garihaldi meet. Fall of Gaeta . .             390

“A free Church in a free State” ...... 391

Cavour’s negotiations with Rome. His death ....                           392

CHAPTER XV.

AUSTRIA, PRUSSIA, AND THE GERMANIC CONFEDERATION.

(1)   Reaction and Reorganisation.

(1852-62.)

By H. Friedjung, Ph.D., Professor of History in the University of Vienna.

Ascendancy of Schwarzenberg .......        393

Struggle over the German Zollverein      ib.

Bruck’s commercial policy . • • • ■ • • •                               394

Policy of Manteuffel in Prussia. The Junkers ....                           395

Stahl and Prussian Conservatism   396

The Kreuzzeitung and the Preussische Wochenblatt ...         ib.

Reaction in Prussia and other German States ....                397

Reaction in Austria .........       ib.

The Bach system fn Austria and Hungary............................ 398-9

Austrian rule in Hungary       400

Magyar resistance to Bach’s policy 401

Financial disorder ......... ib.

Austria and Russia  402

Isolation of Austria. Fall of Bach     403

Changes consequent on Bach’s fall. “October Charter" . .             404

Schmerling’s Ministry. Deak and his scheme ....                           405

The new era in Prussia   406

William I and Austria     407

Prussian and Austrian projects and diplomacy ....          408

Reorganisation of the Prussian army      409

Struggle between King and Parliament in Prussia. The Fortschritt 410

Bismarck ........... ib.

(2)   German Literature.

(1840-70.)

By K. Beeul, Litt.D., King’s College; Ph.D.; University Reader in German.

Period of calm and sustained effort . Political songs and ballads . . . . Political satire: Heine. Geibel. Herwegh

Ballads and songs  

The drama: Hebbel.

Tragedy and comedy:

Prose fiction: Tieck.

Prose fiction: Keller.

Ludwig .... Grillparzer . . . Historical romance: Alexis Storm. Freytag . . Heyse. Ludwig. Riehl. Raabe. Spielhagen Novelists: Scheffel. Reuter. General survey .

PAGE

411

412

413 ib.

414r-6

416

417

418

419

420

(3)   The National Spirit in Hungarian Literature. (1686-1900.)

By A. B. Yolland, M.A., Ph.D., Scholar of Sidney Sussex College; Professor Extraordinary of English Literature in the University of Budapest,

The new era of Hungarian literature . .

“French,” "Classical/’ and “Magyar” Schools. Karman. Csokonai. Kisfaludy. Kazinczy . Hungarian criticism. The drama: Charles Kisfaludy Vorosmarty. New Hungary: Szechenyi Novelists: J<5sika. Eotvos . . .

The drama. Szigligeti. Er.delyi. .

The lyric. Tompa and Petfifi . .

Arany and the Hungarian epic . .

Kalman T6th. Jdkai . • • •

General summary of development .

421

422

423

424

425 426-7

427

428

429

430

431

CHAPTER XVI.

BISMARCK AND GERMAN UNITY.

By G. Roloff, Ph.D., Privatdocent in the University of Berlin.

The keynote of Bismarck’s policy . .

Prussia’s position in Germany . . •

Bismarck and the Polish Revolution . •

Austria and the Frankfort assembly flf Prinfies Napoleon’s proposal for a congress rejected New Constitution for Schleswig-Holstein prpcla and enforced 0. M. H. XI.

oed

433

434

435

436

437

438

PAGE

Prussia resolves to act. withont the Confederation . . .   439

Austro-Prussian intervention in the duchies ....                           440

Truce. Conference of London   441

Prussia rejects the Aiigustenburg candidature ....       442

Austro-Prussian joint administration of duchies ....              443

Zollverein renewed. Fall of Rechberg      444

Convention of Gastein     445

Its reception... 446

Napoleon and Bismarck at Biarritz        ....... 447

Preparations for war .........     448

The war breaks ont 449

Action of the Confederation and withdrawal of Prussia . .           450

Bismarck’s risk       451

Langensalza. Movements of Benedek .....                               452

Battle of Koniggratz       453

The political situation after Koniggratz  454

Bismarck prevails in the negotiations ......                               455

Preliminaries of Nikolsburg            .      456

The south German States. French demands waived . . .              457

The North German Confederation          ....... 458-9

North German Federal Constitution adopted ....             460

The southern States. The Zollverein ..... 461

Renewed French demands. Luxemburg  462

The Hohenzollern candidature. France declares war . .       463

Effects of the French declaration of war in Germany’ . .            464

Union of north and south .......        465

King William of Prussia proclaimed German Emperor . .             466

CHAPTER XVII.

THE LIBERAL EMPIRE.

(1859-70.)

By Albebt Thomas.

The beginnings of trouble. The Emperor and Italy . , .                 467

Religious policy of Napoleon III              ........................ 468

The clerical opposition.           469

The Cohden Treaty         470

Liberal decrees of November 24      471

Result of the November decrees      472

Financial crisis. Clerical opposition ......  473

Concessions to the Catholics   474

Polish affairs. General election       475

Affairs in Mexico             475!

Danish question. The “ indispensable liberties ” ...            477

Renewal of the religious quarrel. Pius IX ....                               478

Schleswig-Holstein. Bismarck at Biarritz............................ 479

Effect of the “Six Weeks’ War”        480

Struggle between Ollivier and Rouher    481

Triumph of Rouher  482

PAGE

The Luxemburg question . . -  483

The Mexican disaster. Continental complications . . .   484

Mentana and its results ........ 485

Labour opposition           486

Military. reorganisation  487

Influence of the Press : Rochefort. Tenot 488

Progress of the Opposition      489

Constitutional reforms    490

Ollivier’s Ministry   491

Difficulties of Ollivier      492

Result of the Plebiscite    493

Prussian policy towards France      494

Steps leading-to war . .           495

Declaration of war  496

Battle of Sedan       497

Fall of the empire    ib.

Gambetta and his task    498

The Government of National Defence     499

Meeting of the National Assembly at Bordeaux ....           500

Condition of Paris   601

The new Government at Paris .......        502

The Paris and other Communes      503

The struggle in the provinces  504

The struggle in Paris       505

Results of the conflict      606

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE REACTION AGAINST ROMANTICISM IN FRENCH LITERATURE.

(1840-71.)

By Professor ]£mile Bourgeois.

Romanticism and the Oinacle .

Definition and types of Romanticism The evolution of Romanticism .

Early work of Victor Hugo .

The'ophile Gautier . . .

Alfred de Vigny ....

Alfred de Musset. Baudelaire .

Leconte de Lisle ....

The Romanticist drama: Scribe .

Augier    

Dumas fils ....

Labiche. Sardou . . •

Influence of the novel: George Sand Stendhal. Merime'e . . .

Balzac    

Feuillet. Flaubert . . •

History: Thierry. Michelet .

c 2

608

609

510

511

512

513

514

515

516

517

518

519

520 621

522

523

PAGE

Guizot. Tocqueville. Thiers. Lamartine ....                              624

Fustel de Coulanges . . . '. . . . • •   625

Criticism: Sajnte-Beuve          . .     ib.

Journalism. Philosophy: Victor Cousin    626

Renan. Taine    627

Art................ 628

General summary *b.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE COMPLETION OF ITALIAN UNITY.

(1) The Successors of Cavour.

(1861-70.)

By the late Professor E. Masi.

English opinion of Cavour       629

The kingdom of Italy obtains recognition............................ 630

Ricasoli’s policy in Church and State      631

Fall of Ricasoli. Premiership of Rattazzi 632

Relations between Garibaldi and Rattazzi............................ 633

Garibaldi wounded at Aspromonte . . . ., . .                              534

The Gonsorteria Ministry. Naples ......   635

The problem of brigandage in Naples ......                              636

The Pica Law ..........       537

Foreign politics . . . . . . . ib.

Improvement in finances. Industrial development . . .     538

Ministry of La Marmora . . .  539

Papal Syllabus ..........     ib.

ltalo-Prussian alliance against Austria. Custozza . . .          540

Acquisition of Venetia . .                 641

Rattazzi carries the confiscation of church property , . .           542

Garibaldi repulsed at Mentana .......       543

Vatican Council       ib.

Rome the capital of the Italian kingdom 544

(2)    The Literature of the Risqrqimentq and after. (1846-70.)

By C. Segb£, Professor in the University of Rome.

The poetry of the Bisorgimento       544

Various writers: Niccolini        545

Giusti............ 546

Prose: Gioberti. D’Azeglio       ib.

Prati. Aleardi . .              547

Political writings. Memoirs     <6.

Drama: Ferrari       548

Criticism: De Sanctis      if,,

Carducci’s early writings and influence  549

CHAPTER XX.

THE COURSE OF REVOLUTION IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.

(1845-71.)

By J. Fetzmaurice-Kelly, F.B.A., Corresponding Member of the Royal Spanish Academy.

PAGE

Ministries of Oldzaga and Gonzalez Bravo............................. 550-1

Arbitrary rule of Narvaez       551

The Constitution of 1845         .      552

The Queen’s marriage and foreign diplomacy ....          553

Fall of Narvaez       554

Isabel’s marriage and its effect               ......................... 554-5

Diplomatic dispute with England   556

Bulwer sent home. Triumph of Narvaez 557

Concordat. Proposed revision of the Constitution . . .      558

Ministerial difficulties and changes. San Luis ....                   559

Conspiracy of Canovas. Ministry of Espartero ....          560

Departure of Queen Cristina  561

Religious agitation . . . . . . . . •       *6-

O’Donnell’s new Ministry. His resignation ....                           562

New policy of O’Donnell  563

The “ Liberal Union.” Moroccan campaign ....                           564

Intervention in Mexico . . . . . . . .    565

O’Donnell and Prim. Dissolution of Liberal Union . . .               566

Madrid riots. Recall and resignation of O’Donnell . . .         567

Narvaez’ autocratic rule. Prim and the dynasty . . .            568

Gonzalez Bravo. Unpopularity of Queen Isabel ....                 569

Dethronement of Isabel. Provisional Government . . .     570

Prim in search of a king  571

Assassination of Prim      *&•

Reign of Amadeo I. Changes in Portugal 572

The Acto Additional. Pedro V. Fall of Saldanha . . .          573

Napoleon III humiliates Portugal. Luiz I . . . . .                            574

Republicanism and colonial expansion    575

CHAPTER XXI.

THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR.

(1870-1.)

By Major F. Maurice, General Staff Officer.

The European situation in 1870 . . The question of the Spanish Succession

The Prussian military system -              

Moltke’s plan of campaign . . • The French military system •. • Its defects    

576-7

578

579

580

581

582

PAGE

The affair of Saarbriicken       583

Advance of the 3rd German army. Battle of Worth . .                 584

Results of the battle of Worth 585

Advance of the 1st and 2nd German armies ....                           586

Battle of Spicheren . . .           587

The French fall back behind the Moselle 588

Battle of Colombey . . . . . . . .  589

The French retreat intercepted at Vionville . . . .                          590

The battles at Vionville and Mars-la-Tour............................ 591

Bazaine falls back on Metz ........    592

Battle of Gravelotte .........      593

Its effects....... 594

Formation of the army of Chalons  .       595

Macmahon’s march to the Meuse    596

The Germans close in      597

Battle of Sedan       698

Bazaine driven back at Noisseville ......  599

Revolution in Paris. Investment of the capital ....               600

The situation after the investment of Paris ....                           601

Organisation of resistance in the provinces ....                           602

The Germans lose Orleans . . '                603

Effect of the capture of Metz  604

Battle of Beaune la Rolande. Germans recapture Orleans . 605

Sortie from Paris            606

Situation in the provinces       ib.

Chanzy at Le Mans. Faidherbe’s advance on Amiens . .               607

Bombardment of Paris. Efforts of Gamhetta . . .                          608

Bourbaki’s troops disarmed in Switzerland . . . . .                        609

Defeat of Chanzy at Le Mans ....... 610

Failure of the last sortie from Paris        ............................ 611

Formal Treaty of Peace signed               ........................ 612

CHAPTER XXII.

RUSSIA AND THE LEVANT AFTER THE CRIMEAN WAR.

(1)   Russia and the Period of Reform.

By Geoffbey Deage, M.A,

Antecedents of Alexander II .         613

Emancipation of the serfs. Committee of enquiry . . .             614

Emancipation achieved   615

Effects of the Emancipation on the serfs 616

on the nobles.. 617

on industry.... 618

Railways and financial policy .......  619

Introduction of local self-government     620

Its results                . . .  621

Reform of the law Courts        622

Working of the legal reforms  623

PAGE

Reforms in the military and educational systems . . .            624

Growth of journalism and power of the Press ....                 625

Influence of Press Censorship 626

General results of the era of Reform       627

Discontent in Russia and Poland    628

Origin and effects of the Polish Revolution ....                          629

Growth of Nihilism 630

Foreign policy ib.

Russian conquest of Bokhara . ;      631

Reduction of Khiva and Khokand   632

Alaska........... ib.

Persia ...........         633

The Danubian Principalities   ib.

Russian foreign policy in Europe     634

(2)    The Balkan Lands.

By E. C. Blech.

Fanatical outbreaks against Christians Settlement of Syria. Montenegro .

Turkish relations with Greece and Egypt Origin of the Suez Canal The Church in Bulgaria Russia and the Black Sea Greek raid on Thessaly Misgovernment in Greece Deposition of King Otho Accession of King George Ionian Islands ceded .

The new Greek Constitution The Danubian Principalities,

Meeting of the Divans. Union of Moldo-Wallachia Roumania. Fall of Couza. Accession of Prince Charles Crisis in Roumania ....

Servia. Withdrawal of Turkish garrisons

635

636

637

638 ib.

639

640 ib.

641 ib.

642 ib.

643

644

645

646

647

(3)    Russian Literature. (1800-1900.)

By Geoffrey Drage, M.A.

Romanticism and Realism in Russian literature The Romanticists: Pushkin . . .

Lermontoff     

The Realists: Bielinski. Gogol . . Influence of Turgenieff and Dostoievski Tolstoi . . : ■ ■ • ■ Influence and character of his work

648 ib.

649 ib.

650

651

652

(4) National Influences in Bohemian and Polish Literature.

By R. Nisbet Bain, Assistant Librarian, British Museum.

PAGE!

The Cech nationality. The origin of Panslavism . . .        653

Josef Dobrowsky ..........  654

The discovery of the Griineberg ms ib.

Josef Jungmann .........    ib.

Frantisek Palacky   655

Kollar , .................. ib.

Cech political literature  656

Polish historical traditions      ib.

Polish parties: the “Reds,” Lelewel  65?

Dzieduszycki.. ib.

Alexander Vielopolski and the new Russian policy . . .                 658

The Grand Duke Constabtine and Poland .....                           659

Szujski and the Przeglgd Polski .           660

CHAPTER XXIII.

HOLLAND AND BELGIUM.

(1839-70.)

By the Rev. George Edmundson, M.A., formerly Fellow and Tutor of Brasenose College, Oxford.

(1)   Holland,

Holland in 1839 and 1840      

Abdication of William I. Accession of William II Effects of 1848. Revision of the fundamental Law William III. Thorbecke and the new Constitution Religious difficulties ....

The “April Movement” and its results . .

Death of Thorbecke ......

Progress of the Dutch colonies . . . .'

The new native policy ....

(2)   Belgium.

State of affairs in Belgium in 1839 . . . Industrial and financial crisis . , .

The Rogier Ministry and the Revolution of 1848

Education       

Liberation of the Scheldt ....

First years of Leopold II. Advanced Liberalism The Flemish National Movement . .

669

670

671

672 ib.

673

674

663

664

665 665-6

667 ib.

668

(3)   The Luxemburg Question.

PAGE

Luxemburg, 1815-50        674

Luxemburg under Prince Henfy (1850-79)............................ 676

(4)   Literature in the Netherlands.

(1800-70.)

Dutch and Flemish literature of the period                    . . ■ 675-6

CHAPTER XXIV.

(l)

SCANDINAVIA.

(1816-70.)

Sweden and Nobway.

By W. F. Redda^ay, M.A., FelloW of King’s College, and , Censor of Fitzwilliam HaU.

Character and influence of Bernadotte Internal difficulties of Sweden . . Relations of Sweden and Norway¹ . Norwegian policy of Charles XIV .

His foreign policy .... Swedish policy towards Russia and Denmark Domestic policy of Sweden . . , Growth of a Liberal Opposition . . Attack on the Crown in the Diet . National progress ....

Oscar I. Foreign and domestic policy Industrial progress . . • •

Charles XV     

Parliamentary reform in Sweden . . Suedo-Norwegian difficulties • •

677-8

679

680 681 682­683

684

685

686 ib.

687

688 ib.

689

690

(2)   Denmark.

By W. F. Reddaway, M.A.

Denmark under Frederick VI < . . . Growing difficulties in Schleswig-Holstein . . Enlightened policy of Christian VIII . . • The Schleswig-Holstein question. Frederick VII The Constitution of 1849 . . • • ■ Loss of Schleswig-Holstein...

691

692

693

694

695

(3)   Dano-Norwegian Literature.

(1815-65.)

By E. Gosse, M.A., LL.D., Librarian to the House of Lords.

PAGE

Germanising tendencies in Danish literature • . •                        697

Danish Poetry: Oehlenschlager. Grundtvig ....                           698

Heiberg. Andersen. Hertz       699

Beginnings of Norwegian national literature ....                           700

Welhaven. Munch   701

Norwegian Prose     *6.

The youth of Ibsen and Bjdmson     702

CHAPTER XXV.

ROME AND THE VATICAN COUNCIL.

(1846-70.)

By G. A. Fawkes, M.A., Balliol College, Oxford.

Character of Pius IX                       703

The Papal States at his accession ......    704

Pius IX and Reaction. Antonelli              ........................ 705

Progress of Reaction in Tuscany and Rome ....                           706

Growth of French Ultramontanism. De Maistre . . .             707

Political relations of the Papacy .......      708

Spanish Concordat . . . . . . . . .       709

Victor Emmanuel King of Italy .......       ib.

The Oxford Movement: Newman    710

Russia...                  711

Papal dogmas. Syllabus of 1864 . . : . .    712

History of dogma of Immaculate Conception ....                           713

Religious journalism. Development of Ultramontanism . . 714

Significance of Quanta Cura and the Syllabus ....            715

Effects of the Syllabus. . .               716

Opposition to the dogma of Infallibility . ' ' . . . .                          717

Origin and summoning of a General Council ....                           718

Controversial literature at the Council . . . . .                              719

Procedure at the Council                720

The Opposition grows weaker . . ■ . . . , .                               721

Dogma of Infallibility voted    722

Results of the Vatican Council 723

CHAPTER XXVI.

INDIA AND AFGHANISTAN.

(1815-69.)

By Sir W. Lee-Warner, K.C.S.I., Jate Scholar of St John’s College, Member of the Council of India.

_t               PAGE

The importance of the year 1816    724

League formed against the Pindaris       725

Gwalior and Indore States              .      726

First Burmese War 727

Treaty with the King of Ava   728

Capture of Bhartpur       729

Bentinck’s reforms .........        73®

Auckland’s appointment 731

Afghanistan and Persia   732

Course of the Afghan War       733

British retreat 734

Reoccupation of Kabul    735

War with Sind 736

Annexation of Sind  737

Gwalior and Lahore        738

First Sikh War . .            739

Peace with Lahore. Kashmir. The Multan rebellion . .             740

Second Sikh War    741

The Punjab annexed. Second Burmese War ....                          742

“Rule of lapse.” Oudh annexed        743

Dalhousie’s administrative reforms. Canning Governor-General.  744

Persian War. The Sepoys        745

Outbreak of the Mutiny  746

Capture of Delhi. Cawnpore massacre    ............................ 747

Siege, and two reliefs, of Lucknow . . . . . .                              748

The Mutiny quelled. The Queen’s Proclamation . . .    749

The Queen’s clause. Sanadg of adoption ....                              750

Transfer of the government of India to the Crown . . .              751

Viceroyalties of Elgin and Lawrence. Bhutan . . . .                       752

\byssinian War       - . .  753

Retrospect.....

CHAPTER XXVII.

GREAT BRITAIN AND HER COLONIES.

(1)    The New Colonial Policy.

(1840-70.)

By H. W. V. Temperley, M.A., Fellow and Assistant Tutor of Peterhouse.

The British Empire in 1840 and 1870 . . . . .                              754

Introductory. Lord Durham and Canada............................. 755

Origin of Durham’s colonial policy . • . • • •                              756

Durham’s Report on Canada ....

“Responsible Government”: Durham; Russell . Metcalfe’s difficulties in Canada. Earl Grey . Elgin in Canada. Australia. New Zealand . Extension of colonial self-government . . . Colonial trade policy. Repeal of Navigation Laws Relaxation of economic control . . ■ • Military defence. Imperial policy as a whole . General influences of the period . . . • Idealism of colonial policy . . . . i •

PAGE

757

758

759

760

761

762

763

764

765

766

(2)   The Federation of Canada.

By Stuart J. Reid, Litt.D., Durham.

Influence of Durham       766

Policy of Elgin 767

Achievements of Elgin. His successors . . . . •                             768

The Quebec Conference   769

Coalition Government     *&•

Conferences on Confederation ....... 770

Confederation achieved   771

Provisions of the new Constitution ......  772

Results of Confederation ........        773

The “Fathers of the Confederation” 774

Cartier. Macdonald. Growth of the Dominion . . . .        775

Newfoundland. Reciprocity Treaty 776

Red River rebellion. Canadian fiscal policy . • •                          777

Canadian education 778

(3)   The English and Dutch in South Afbica.

(1815-70.)        ,

By A. R. CoLauHouN, F.R.G.S.

Introductory. Missionary movement at the Cape . . .                 778

The affair of Schlachter’s Nek                779

Modifications in the Constitution. Native policy . . .                780

The Great Trek and its effects                 .... 781

“ Dingan’s Day.” Boers and British in Natal ....                           782

Battle of Boomplatz. Orange River Sovereignty . . .       783

Sand River Convention. Cape Colony Parliament . . .        784

The Transvaal and the Dutch Reformed Church . . .              785

The “Dopper” Church. Destruction of the Kosas . . .                786

Basutoland. The diamond fields             ........................ 787

Natal............. 788

General results of the period  ib.

Commercial Treaty between Portugal and the Transvaal . .      789

(4)   The Development op Australasia.

(1815-70.)

By J. D. Rogers, Barrister-at-Law, M.A., formerly Stowell Fellow of University College, Oxford.

The development of Australasia .....

Period of autocratic Governors. Exploration . .

Nominee Councils. Origin of Western Australia .

Origin of South Australia* Victoria, New Zealand .

Development of New Zealand

Convicts and squatters in Australia ....

Exploration. Advance in prosperity ....

New Zealand Constitution ......

Australian Constitutions. Land Acts ....

Victoria. Queensland. South and Western Australia Progress of New Zealand. Troubles with natives .

New Zealand native war .......

Movements for Australian Federation ....

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE FAR EAST.

(1816-71.)

(1) China and her Intercourse with Western Powers.

By the Right Hon. Sir E. M. Satow, G.C.M.G., Hon. LL.D., late British Minister at Peking.

Divisions in the history of the period .....                               802

Chinese attitude towards foreigners       803

Difficulties in the way of establishing relations ....            804

The mission of Napier     805

Elliot’s difficulties   806

The question of the opium trade             806-7

Decision of the English Cabinet .......      808

Attack on Canton. Mission of Pottinger  809

United States diplomacy in China  810

Cushing’s Treaty     811

French diplomacy    tb.

Foreign protection of religious missions  812

Chinese alarmed at the growth of missions ....                           813

The Tientsin massacre. Troubles at Canton ....                           814

Incident of the lorcha ^u Arrow ” .......      815

Blockade and occupation of Canton 816

The Tientsin Treaties      817

Second expedition to northern China ......                               818

Establishment of legations at Peking      819

The “Taiping” rebellion ........  820

PAGE

.       789

.       790

.       791

.       792

.       793

.       704

.       795

.       796

.       797

.       798

.       799

.       800

.       801

PAGE

Suppression of the rebellion    821

Views of Burlingame on China .......        822

General summary   823

(2)    Japan.

By Sir E. M. Satow.

Introductory retrospective . . .        823

Perry’s mission. Social conditions in Japan ....                          824

Political institutions. Tycoon and daimiBs............................ 825

Mikado and Court nobles . . . . . . . ■       826

The powers of the Council of State ......  827

Nariaki of Mito. Russian mission    828

Opinions of daimiBs. Perry’s Treaty ......                              829

British Admiral’s Treaty, i Russian Treaty............................ 830

Harris at Shimoda. He is invited to Yedo ....                              831

His negotiations      832

Harris' Treaty: ports to be opened          ........................ 833

Nariaki’s opposition 834

The Mikado refuses to sanction the Treaty ....                          835

Adoption of an heir to the Tycoon   836

Political situation at Kioto . ' .                837

Manabe’s mission to Kioto                      838

Difficulties of the Tycoon . .     839

The Treaties come into operation            840

Murder of Ii Kamon no Kami. Prussian Treaty . . .              841

Night attack on the British legation       842

The Russians at Tsushima      843

Political amnesty     844

Shimadzu Saburo’s mission to Yedo. Richardson killed . . 845

Kagoshima bombarded   846

"Hie Tycoon visits the Mikado at Kioto   ........... 847

Choshiu fires on foreign ships. Expedition against him . .        848

The Tycoon and the Mikado .......    849

Choshiu clan expelled from Kioto. Murder of Camus . .                850

The Tycoon again at Kioto. Choshiu clan attack the palace .  851

The Tycoon’s expeditions against Choshiu............................ 852

The powers of the Tycoon and the Mikado ....                          853

The Treaties sanctioned by the Mikado  854

Deaths of the Tycoon and the Mikado    855

Opening, of Hidgo   856

The Tycoon resigns; the Mikado resumes government . .        857

The Tycoon’s, attack on Kioto defeated   858

Progress of the civil war         . .    859

Imperialist triumph. Organisation of new government . .        860

Treatment of foreigners and Christian converts ....            861

A second capital established at Yedo      862

Further changes. Parliamentary assembly .....                         863

Abolition of the feudal .system        864

General summary   865

LIST OF BIBLIOGRAPHIES.

xl

CORRIGENDA.

p. 27, 1. 4. For Vicomte read Comte.

p. 35, 1. 8. For the Pomare, read Pomare, the.

p. 41, 1. 20 from bottom. For Glivre read Givrd.

p. 50, 1. 2. For Grolman read Grolmann.

p. 75, 1. 15 from bottom. For Montara read Mortara.

p. 80, 1. 15 from top. For Ruggero read Ruggiero.

p. 86, 1. 7 from bottom and p. 94, 1. 12 from bottom. For Montanara read Montanaro. p. 115, 1. 4 from top. For Freslou read Freslon. ib. 1. 17 from bottom. For Courmenin read Cormenin. p. 118, 11. 3 and 11 from bottom.

p. 127, 1. 14 from top.     • For MaUeviUe read MaleviUe.

p. 133, 1. 20 ,, ,,      ,

p. 150, 1. 6. For son read brother.

p. 247, 1. 5 and p. 248, 1. 7. For Siegwart read Siegwan. p. 264, 1. 5. For Count read Prince.

p. 444, 1. 14 from bottom and p. 448, 1. 1. For Mensdorf read MensdorfF. p. 634, 1. 14. For Milan re(td Michael.

CHAPTER I.

GREAT BRITAIN AND FREE TRADE.

(1841-52.)

John Wilson Croker said that in July, 1841, for “the first time in our history that he remembered the people had chosen the first minister for the Sovereign.” His testimony is not a proof; but without douht the majority of over eighty with which Peel came to power was in a special sense his own. The nation that had learnt to distrust the Whigs trusted him. In boroughs and counties, in the City and in Yorkshire, at Dublin and in Northumberland, strong candidates went down before his supporters. There was hard work for him to do, and his fitness for the trust was to be severely tested.

It was the census year. The returns showed no appreciable slackening in the growth of the population. The full truth about the “state of England question” was being steadily told to the rulers of England through their own commissioners and committees, by the Press and in fiction, by the voice of agitation and the noise of riot. Of the textile factories something had long been known. In February, 1841, Nassau Senior and his colleagues signed the report describing the long-drawn tragedy of the hand-loom weavers. Next year appeared the record of the darker tragedy of the women and children in the coal and iron mines, followed in 1843 by the longer, less notorious, but equally pitiful story of child-labour in all branches of manufacture. That same year a com­missioner sent down to South Staffordshire to find out why there had been tumultuous strikes at the collieries reported, among other things, that fifty-seven per cent, of deaths among the miners were due to accidents in the pits. Special Poor Law Commissioners brought to light the presence of children of all ages and hoth sexes in the nomadic agricultural gangs that facilitated the quick and economic working of the great farms of East Anglia and the fen country. Edwin Chadwick wrote unspeakable things about urban burials. In 1844 and 1845 reports on the state and health of the populous districts told how the many mill-dams on the Aire acted “ as a series of catch-pits for the sewage of 120,000 persons,” and how “in one part of Manchester the wants of upwards of 7000 people ” were “ supplied by thirty-three necessaries only.”

2

State of the country.—Peels Cabinet. [i84i-

From the harvest of 1838 to that of 1842 the price of wheat was higher than it had been for any equally long period since 1820. Owing to a combination of causes, foreign trade was absolutely stagnant. In most industries work was intermittent, and in hardly any were wages rising; while in such declining crafts as hand-loom weaving and frame­work knitting their fall was conspicuous. The Whig beginnings of factory legislation were but little less unpopular among those whom they were meant to help than the Whig poor law. Gaunt, new, workhouses —Bastilles they called them in the north—were full. In 1842 a heap of 150,000 tons of stone broken by paupers was to be seen at Leeds; at Paisley —not a large town—for many months 8—9000 souls were supported by charity. Chartists had preached a general strike for the Charter, and rioting seemed endemic. A single letter from the Home Secretary to the Queen (1842) reports “ vigorous measures ” at Preston; “ no lives lost ” at Blackburn; “ peace preserved” at Manchester; house-bumings in the Potteries; an attack by the mob on Huddersfield, and “some disturbance” at Warwick. No wonder the experience of his first year of office was burnt into Peel’s widened and liberalised mind, or that, even with his working-day of fifteen or sixteen hours, what he did in the way of domestic legislation was so small compared with what he had to leave undone.

The Cabinet was strong in experience and promise, in administrative capacity and in debate. Peel chose it almost without assistance. Wellington offered to lead the Lords without office, thus giving Peel, as he said, “a ready answer to all else who could not receive” places. Graham, Peel’s most trusted adviser and administrator and closest personal friend within the Cabinet, took the post of danger at the Home Office. The Admiralty and the Under-Secretaryship of the Board of Trade went to young men, Sidney Herbert and Gladstone. Stanley’s eminent but erratic talent and brilliant powers of debate were in a sense wasted as War and Colonial Secretary, at a time when, as Peel told Gladstone, “ the chief importance would attach to questions of finance.” Goulburn, at the Exchequer, was only Peel’s occasional mouthpiece. In the Lords, High Toryism was represented, among others, by Lyndhurst and Buckingham, Conservatism of Peel’s stamp by the Foreign Secretary, Aherdeen. Aberdeen had no Under-Secretary in the Commons, a fact which a rejected candidate for that post traced to Peel’s desire to face Palmerston himself. Perhaps he was right; for Sir Robert habitually kept his hand on the reins of all the offices.

A readjustment of the Corn Laws was only one aspect of the work of economical reform to which Peel rightly believed himself called; but the deathbed conversion of the Whigs, the state of the nation, the fears of the landowners, the activity and popularity of the Anti-Corn Law League, and the presence of Cobden in Parliament gave the corn question the first place in public interest. Nearly a hundred members of the Commons were ready to vote for repeal, and there was bitter

complaint at Westminster and in the country that no policy was in­dicated in the autumn of 1841. But a policy was maturing. Peel and Graham agreed with the League so far as to be resolved to quicken the purchasing power of the masses by lightening the taxes on their food. They sympathised with commercial freedom, but were not as yet prepared to throw the corn trade entirely open—for reasons both of principle and of party. Peel was convinced that Britain could never again dispense with foreign grain, save perhaps in years of exceptionally abundant harvest. The not ignoble dream of a self-sufficing land was for him finally dissolved. But knowing his followers, his “ inferior animals ” as Cobden called them, he would not suggest so drastic a change as he might himself have welcomed. He proposed merely a not very serious modi­fication of those sliding duties on corn that he had helped to establish in 1828. Even this offended many of hisi party, the more so as it did not stand alone. Buck igham left the Cabinet ; and the League denounced Peel savagely for insulting a starving people with a paltry concession.

The Com Bill was not the chief financial event of 1842. Whig finance had produced a series of deficits and lowered the national credit. Before taking office, Peel had decided that he must employ the sound method of reducing duties to irirease revenue—Pitt’s method and Huskisson’s—and that, to meet any resulting deficiency and prevent more deficits, the unpopular Income Tax must be temporarily revived. It was not a novel scheme. Peel was no inventor. A revived property tax had been approved in the Cabinet during Goderich’s short ministry; it had been favoured but feared by Althorp; its combination with a revised tariff had been explained by Sir Henry Parnell in 1830; and a belated attempt to raise revenue by lowering duties had been made by Baring in

1841,       in consequence of the great report of Hume’s Import Duties Committee in 1840. To Peel belongs the credit of the thing done—done amid the gloomy doubts of friends and the angry criticism of adversaries. With the tariff he only made a beginning in 1842. Most of the export duties were abolished. Moderate import duties replaced prohibitions, notably in the cases of cattle, meat, and other foodstuffs. The duties on raw materials were reduced, and so were most of the duties on partly manufactured or finished articles. Incidentally, this curtailed protection of manufactures was meant to justify the reduction of the food taxes.

In 1843 and 1844 the tariff policy of 1842 was pushed somewhat further. Canadian wheat was admitted at Is. instead of 5s. a quarter; and the last restrictions on the export of machinery were abolished in 1843. The great advance however was in 1845. By that time home and foreign trade had revived; there had been three satisfactory harvests; deficits had ceased; and Peel could act boldly. Hundreds of petty unremunerative duties disappeared; so did the export duties (except that on coal), and nearly all the raw material duties. To render these reductions safe, the Income Tax was renewed for three more years.

4

Laissez Faire. The Railways.

[1841-

Meanwhile, the exceptional treatment of com became more conspicuously anomalous, to the Minister as well as to the nation. Already in 1842 he was discussing the next move with Graham. Graham held that it must be the last—the move to “an open trade.” He thought it might safely be taken after two or three more sessions.

¹ In 1844, i?250,000,000 of consols were reduced from 3£ to 3J per cents. In 1845 the lucrative excise on glass was abandoned; and there were some other financial reforms in these three decisive years. Wholesale lowering of import duties involved a reduction in the amount of the preferences given to colonial produce; but the preferential principle was retained—in the case of Canadian com it was extended.

As events demonstrated the soundness of his financial policy, Peel’s sympathy with the economic doctrines of his Manchester critics increased. But he was not the man to put all measures of government to the test of general principles, and he never made laissez faire his watchword. No continuous thread of principle can be traced through the internal economic legislation of 1842-5. One watches the able, concrete, un­imaginative minds of the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary dealing with a series of separate problems, leaning no doubt towards laissez faire, but with no prejudice against state control; while around them the Convictions and passions of landowners and millowners and merchants influence their decisions on railway bills, factory bills, and bank bills.

When Peel had last been in office, during 1835, there was only one railway line that regularly carried passengers, the Liverpool and Manchester. In the late thirties and early forties successive sections of railway were opened along the great trunk routes of communication. By the end of 1843 nearly 2000 miles of line were available; and five years later the open mileage was 5007. Peel’s Ministry did not deal very successfully with this new and powerful social force. A small party in the country favoured state ownership; others wished the State to decide authoritatively where, when, and how lines should be built. Some control over existing lines was secured by the Act of 1844, that created the parliamentary train and gave the State the eventual right to purchase all the lines in the country. But, during the “railway mania” of 1845, an attempt made by Dalhousie, Gladstone’s successor at the Board of Trade, to introduce some order and method into the reckless iminess of railway projection was frustrated by Peel’s resolve to leave the final decision entirely to the Private Bill Committees of the House of Commons, which pursued no sort of consistent policy. Yet, in spite of injudicious and dishonest enterprises and vast waste of capital, the rapid construction of the railway network put new life into commerce and manufactures, gave much well-paid employment, and so helped to keep food prices higher than they had been ten years earlier.

Graham’s Factory Act of 1844 for the first time regulated the working hours of women and created the half-time system for children.

-1845] Factory and Bank Acts.—The Church.

5

It was bitterly attacked, on one side by the ten hours¹ party, on the other by the Manchester men. Next year print-works were brought under the factory law, the first non-textile works to be so treated. In 1842-3 Ashley had succeeded in passing the more revolutionary Act, which forbade child or female labour underground and laid the founda­tion of mine inspection, thanks to general disgust at the facts revealed in 1842. An attempt to associate important educational provisions with Graham’s Bill failed because the Nonconformists resented the privileged position assigned to the Church. In all these measures the Government was pushed forward, somewhat against its will, by the philanthropists of both parties and by those Tories who were glad to attack the interests and deride the humanitarian professions of the free-traders.

The Bank Acts of 1844-5, Peel’s handiwork, also raised bitter passions and controversies. They established the existing system of note issue for the United Kingdom, the regulation of the English notes being arranged so as to concentrate issue at the Bank of England. In Threadneedle Street issuing and general banking were to be kept apart. The Issue Department was to work automatically; it might issue £14,000,000 of notes against securities; beyond that point it must keep gold against every note created. Peel refused to make issue a govern­ment function, alleging that, in times of political stress, government notes are more likely to be distrusted and discredited than those of a strong private corporation. Besides regulating the Bank of England, he limited the issues of all other establishments, and stopped the creation of fresh issuing banks; for in every commercial crisis since 1760 the failure of innumerable small banks and the discredit of their notes had done untold harm.

Two of the great events in the religious history of the nineteenth century fell within the first four years of Peel’s ministry—the Tractarian crisis and the disruption of the Scottish Church. The former, at this time, was a movement on the religious plane, the latter, a movement about the line where the planes of religion and politics intersect. Though travelling in very different orbits, Tractarian and Free Church­man had this in common—each demanded great zeal of his Church and claimed for it high spiritual prerogatives. For many years the party that called itself Catholic, that the world called Tractarian or Puseyite, had been forming opinion in Oxford. Now, its members were beginning, though half consciously at first, to draw discordant conclusions from common premisses. But already in 1841, when Newman s tract on the Articles roused the academic rulers of Oxford and the episcopal Bench, their premisses—as the Times said—had “sunk deep into the heart pf the Church of England”; and, although the attacks of their enemies, the mismanagement of their ecclesiastical superiors, and the nature of their own principles drove some of the leaders from that Church in the years

OH. I.

6

The Scottish Church.

[1833-

that followed, those who remained continued to influence it profoundly, and by their zeal and devotion increased its vitality, extended its influence, emphasised those aspects of doctrine and ritual that it shares with episcopal communions, ancient and modem, and strengthened the barriers that separate it from the non-episcopal Churches. Once, in these years, the Oxford leaders had to face directly the eternal problem of the bounds of spiritual and temporal power, when their anger was roused by the cooperation of the Primate and the Crown with the royal head of the non-episcopal Prussian Church in establishing a Protestant Bishopric at Jerusalem; but the problem was not so forced upon them as it was upon Scottish churchmen in 1843.

In Scotland, as in England, the apathy and latitudinarianism of the eighteenth century had long been declining. By 1833—Newman’s date for the beginning of the Oxford movement—the party of orthodoxy, action and reform, led by Chalmers, had secured a majority in the General Assembly. Between 1835 and 1841 over 200 churches were built for the growing population; sects that had seceded in the days of apathy and Deism were received back into communion; discipline was more strictly enforced, candidates for ordination more severely tested. The ministers of the new churches and of all chapels of ease, as well as the Secession ministers, were given a full share in the work of the presbyteries and the Assembly. In 1834 the Assembly passed the so-called Veto Act, which led directly to the Disruption. It declared that a majority of communicant heads of households could veto the appointment of a minister by a lay patron. Behind this notable decision stood nearly three centuries of theological and political con­troversy. The Scottish Church had regarded its first alliance with the State as a union of equals; and this view, it was held, the Revolution Settlement (1690) had sanctioned. Since 1711, when the British Parlia­ment had revived the rights of patrons, the Assembly had repeatedly protested against this alleged breach of the Act of Union. Not that patrons had absolute rights; they could only require the presbytery of the district in which the vacant parish lay to take a duly qualified can­didate “ on his trials.” The presbytery might subsequently reject him without appeal as morally or doctrinally unfit. Under the Veto Act a candidate distasteful to the majority of the congregation became ipso facto unfit. The object was to make the old practice of a “call” from the people a necessary step in every appointment. The formal document known as a call had always been in use; now it was to become a living reality!

All this was done with the advice of the highest legal opinion in Scotland; and for four years it worked welL Then came a series of decisions in the Scotch Courts and the House of Lords adverse to the legality of the veto, coupled with general assertions by the judges of the supremacy of the civil over the ecclesiastical power in all such matters which set Scotland on fire. Aberdeen tried to make peace by Act of

Parliament; but his Bill was condemned by the Church and abandoned. By the end of 1841, the Courts had given damages against a presbytery for refusing to obey the law; and the Assembly had suspended a presbytery for obeying the Courts. Soon the Courts were to declare the pi nleges granted by the Assembly to Chapel and Secession ministers illegal; and the mere question of patronage was merged in the greater question of the spiritual rights of the Church. There were many schemes of conciliation; but on two points Peel and Graham stood fast. The Church Courts must cease to defy the law: in no case would they consent —as Graham put it—to transfer the right of patronage to “ a variable and irresponsible multitude,” for they feared ecclesiastical as much as political democracy. Rather than share the privileges of establishment on these terms, half the clergy of Scotland, after recording in the Claim of Right of 1842 their conviction that the Courts and not the Church had violated the Constitution, left the Assembly, their churches, and their manses in May, 1843, to found the Free Church. In the first year 500 churches were built; and the extent and vitality of the secession amazed statesmen who hardly understood the sources of its strength.

When the Tories carried Dublin in 1841, the defeated candidate was O’Connell. At that moment his fortunes and those of Repeal seemed gloomy. Until 1840 his alliance with the Whigs had checked his agitation, though in 1839 he founded a society significantly named the Precursors. Anticipating the return of the Tories to power, he called the Repeal Association into life in April, 1840; but at first its life was feeble. He had founded so many associations; he had so often used threats of Repeal to extort concessions from Government; he had so long cooperated with the Whigs and had made terms with them about the tithe; relations of his bad taken office under the Crown—these and other circumstances prevented rapid success. Only twelve Repealers went to Westminster in 1841, instead of the forty of 1832. But in November O’Connell was chosen Lord Mayor of Dublin, under the Whig Municipal Reform Act; and forty-seven of his sixty colleagues were Repealers. No Roman Catholic had ever sat on the City Council before. During his year of office active agitation was suspended; but his position and conduct revived his popularity, and preparations were made for a great movement in 1843.

A new force had arisen to aid, and later to thwart, O’Connell. On October 15,1842, appeared the first number of the Nation, the organ of a band of young men of both religions who were filled with a spirit of nationalism which was more literary, and therefore deeper and better founded, more fervid and more intemperate than that of O’Connell’s personal following. Led by Thomas Davis, John Blake Dillon and Charles Gavan Duffy, “ Young Ireland” laboured to weld together Catholic and Protestant and to revive among the people knowledge of its literature,

its heroes, and its wrongs. Their dream was first to waken the imagina­tion of Ireland and then to win her independence—if all other means failed, with the sword. Their passion, their praise of rebellion, their im­patience of the calculated methods of political agitation, their criticisms of O’Connell’s absolute control of the funds of the Repeal Association, their faith in things to which he was hostile or indifferent—Hsuch as the revival of the Irish language—made them from the first rather unwelcome allies; but for a time outward signs of dissension were few.

The old Liberator—he was now sixty-seven—proclaimed in January, 1843, that the new year was to be the year of Repeal. Next month his campaign opened with a great debate on Repeal in the Dublin Corpora­tion. Forthwith important recruits joined the Association; the people’s contribution to the cause, the Repeal Rent, rose from <£150 to <£700 a week; and the O’Connell Tribute, collected twice yearly at all the chapels in the land, that year exceeded <£20,000. The Association was admirably organised. Every parish had its Repeal Wardens, who directed operations and collected the Rent; in Repeal reading-rooms men read the Nation and the Freeman’s Journal; for a time Repeal Arbitration Courts settled quarrels and checked agrarian crime. In March began the great open-air meetings. O’Connell and his organisers were tireless; and the wonderful, but too short-lived, success of Father Mathew’s temperance movement enabled them, all through the summer, to collect and disperse hundreds of thousands of hearers in perfect order and peace.

Until May the Government remained passive. Then Peel proposed to revive in a modified form an Arms Act of 1835. He was, however, pressing conciliatory measures on De Grey, the Viceroy, and he dis­approved of the high-handed action of the Irish executive in removing from the Commission of the Peace O’Connell and thirty-three other Repealers. This step and the subsequent despatch of troops to Ireland drove the Repeal Rent up to £2200, made avowed Repealers of O’Hagan (the future Chancellor) and Smith O’Brien, and brought a note of violence into O’Connell’s speeches, which hitherto had been studiously constitutional. Remembering 1829, he tried to frighten Peel into concessions. He knew that it was hopeless to think of force; and when Peel, with both parties behind him in defence of the Union, stood firm, and when a great meeting at Clontarf was prohibited the day before it was to have been held, he submitted. Young Ireland wanted him to face the 60th Rifles, with ball in their pouches, and the guns of the warships that lay off shore at Clontarf. Possibly that was what the Government also wanted. This was in October. Within a few days O’Connell and an odd selection of his supporters were arrested. Early next year he was convicted of seditious conspiracy, before a well-packed jury, and was wildly cheered by the Whigs when he came to Parliament between the conviction and the sentence. In September, 1844, the

-1845]

Peels Irish policy.—The Corn Laws.

9

decision was reversed in the Lords by Denman’s vote, and' O’Connell left his easy confinement on a triumphal car. But his health was failing. In his absence Smith O’Brien had led the Association with success. On his return, his growing weakness, his dallyings with federalism in the shape of a subordinate Legislature at Dublin, and his steadfast resolve to avoid bloodshed at all costs, further shook the allegiance of his supporters. The Repeal Rent, the barometer of the cause, fell to a few hundreds a week.

Meanwhile Peel looked for measures of conciliation. The Union and the Established Church he would not touch. The land he hardly dared to touch. He sent over the Devon Commission to study the land law—its report is a monument to the defects of that law—and com­missioned Stanley to introduce in the Lords a modest measure for increasing security of tenure and giving some compensation to improving tenants in the future; but he let the Bill be strangled in committee by Irish landlords whom, in his private letters, he called “ shabby fellows.” A measure for extending the county franchise was also abandoned. But he legalised the endowment of the Roman Church with land; he increased the grant to Maynooth, which lost him Gladstone; and he established the Queen’s Colleges, the “godless colleges,” for the joint education of Catholic and Protestant. Graham wanted to see Dublin University thrown open to the Catholics, though he would have left Trinity College untouched. All these measures were honestly welcomed by Young Ireland. The last two were bitterly denounced by nearly every religious party in Britain, and by O’Connell and most of the Roman Catholic Bishops in Ireland.

In June, 1845, Villiers introduced his annual motion for the imme­diate repeal of the Com Laws. The inevitable criticisms of Peel and Graham were based mainly on one word—“forthwith.” Everyone realised the direction in which they were moving; and the loyalty of the country party was strained to breaking point. Two months later came rumours of a widespread failure of the potato crop; but until late in September official reports from Ireland were favourable. The Ministers had often been told that one bad harvest would overturn their law of

1842.       Peel had at last learnt that wages do not vary with the price of com; and he believed that an attempt to maintain the laws in face of some imminent danger would harm the landowners more than any other class. He intended to confess his changed opinions to his party and to discuss with them a fresh com policy in 1846. But, by the end of October, 1845, a short harvest and a failure of the potato crop throughout Europe were certain; how great a failure, was not yet known. So Peel told his Cabinet that grants to buy food for Ireland would probably be necessary, and that, if made, they must in his opinion be accompanied by the suspension or modification of the Corn Laws. He reminded them that Russia, Belgium, and Holland had suspended their corn duties, and

that several countries had prohibited the export of foodstuffs. They calked, disagreed, and separated. On November 6 he suggested tenta­tively that the ports should be opened by Order in Council; that Parlia­ment should be summoned to grant an indemnity; and that the Com Law should be revised after Christmas—a nominal duty being laid on maize and colonial com, and some sort of sliding scale being retained for other grains. The existing scale was working badly, owing to a defective method of calculating the a rerage prices which regulated the duties. Only Aberdeen, Graham and Herbert supported him. As a precautionary measure, he ordered the house of Baring to buy secretly £100,000 worth of maize in America; but he rejected a proposal, pressed on him from Ireland, for stopping the export of the fine Irish oat-crop of

1845.       On November 15 Professors Lindley and Lyon Playfair, who had been sent to Ireland to make enquiries, reported that half the potato crop was lost or rotten, and thaJt a quarter of what remained was wanted for seed. Now more than half the population of Ireland lived on potatoes. The Anti-Corn Law League had seized its chance and was working harder than ever. On the 22nd Lord John Russell in an open letter from Edinburgh declared himself on its side, and the crisis came.

Peel, though delayed by the divisions in his Cabinet, was determined to act. He was at this time disposed to suspend the laws himself and leave to the Whigt the “review of the whole question of agricultural protection ” which must follow suspension. But he held that the Govern­ment which suspended the laws bught also to put before Parliament some policy to be adopted after suspension, and to carry it out, if Parliament approved. For this purpose he suggested, on December 2, a system of annually dwindling duties, based on a sliding scale, to lead to perfect freedom. His colleagues, except Stanley and Buccleuch, agreed; but many agreed reluctantly, some urging him to resign. He did resign, and the Queen sent for Russell. Russell and his party were by no means eager for office. Many leading Whigs were not converts to repeal; they were in a minority in Parliament; and some could not bring themselves to trust Peel’s promises of support. Lord John himself trusted Peel, but did not trust Peel’s control of his followers’ votes. Eventually (December 18) he agreed to form a ministry, but threw up the task next day because Grey objected to Palmerston’s taking the Foreign Office.

Peel therefore came back, with the full support of the Queen, with all his Cabinet but Stanley, with Gladstone also and Ellenborough. Wellington preferred even repeal to a ministry of “Cobden and Co.,” and undertook to discipline the Lords. Peel felt stronger than ever, and decided to propose a measure involving ultimate repeal forthwith. Suspension, pending the decision of Parliament, was abandoned; why, is not quite clear. Possibly Peel hoped to carry his Bill so rapidly as to render it superfluous. He proposed that all corn duties, except a (hilling, should disappear in 1849. When wheat was under 48s., there

-i84e] Repeal of the Corn Lcwos.—Peel's fall.                                   11

was to be a 10j. duty; when it was 53$. of upwards, a 4?. duty. These rates were to fall annually. At existing prices this meant a 4s. duty. The budget, which followed this announcement, abolished the duties on all live animals and nearly every kind of meat, and reduced those on cheese, butter, and other foods. And, in order to demonstrate that Com Law repeal was only part of a general policy, many duties on manufactures were abolished and others greatly reduced.

Parliament met in January, 1846, and Peel soon perceived that the hope that he had entertained of carrying his party with him was false. For years he had been accumulating unpopularity. He could not charm and manage the ordinary party man. At times, believing that people “liked being governed,” he had stubbornly forced his followers to register his own opinions. His leadership was not based on affection, but on the belief that he was the ablest embodiment of Conservative principles. Those principles he had now, men said, betrayed—for the second time. The five months from January to June, 1846, were filled with a long series of bitter personal attacks on the Minister by the landed gentry, led by Lord George Bentinck, inspired by Disraeli, who, having sought office under Peel, had since begged favours at Peel’s hands and whose faith in Protection was at least doubtful. In the Lords Stanley con­ducted the attack with more moderation.

To the last, Ireland was Peel’s undoing. As the darkness of the coming famine deepened and food was seen leaving the ports, as there was little hope in the now disunited Repeal Association and the land igrievances remained untouched, agfarian crime broke out once more. Com Law repeal, introduced apparently as a palliative of Irish distress, was discussed for the most part from an English standpoint and at interminable length. Smith O’Brien said in the House that it was actually opposed to Ireland’s permanent interests, seeing that she ordinarily sent grain to the protected English market. Meanwhile she waited—the existing law not suspended—with ^100,000 worth of maize to be sold at cost price to guardians of the poor and relief associa­tions. This was followed by a grant for extraordinary public works. The maize flour, which proved an incalculable boon, began to be utilised in the south-west in March; though at first the unfamiliar stuff, “ Peel’s brimstone,” pleased no one. By that time its purveyor was asking Parliament for a new, and stem, coercion act. It passed the Lords; but in the Commons a combination of Whigs and Protectionists threw it out, some for love of Ireland, more for hatred of Peel. That was on June 26, the night that the Com and Customs Bills passed the Lords. Three days later Peel resigned, and Lord John Russell reigned in his stead.

Famine was tightening its grip on Ireland. July and August, the “ meal months,” when the old potatoes were exhausted and the new were not available, were always a time of Semi-starvation. The potatoes of 1845 lasted longer than had been expected; for the crop was heavy, the

CH. L.

12

The Irish Famine.

[1846-61

disease sporadic, and an early frost checked it. But by the beginning of June some districts had been without potatoes for weeks. Only the government meal depots kept down prices. Money to buy food came from employment on the public works—roads, for the most part, and harbours. In August 97,000 men were employed on them. Already it was known that the potato blight would be far more destructive than that of 1845; the oat and barley crops were deficient, the wheat crop a bare average. Famine was also beginning among the potato-fed crofters of the Highlands and the Isles; but the activity of most of the Scotch landlords, the experience that Government had gained in Ireland, and the well-organised charity of the rich and unstricken southern and eastern counties limited its evil consequences.

Charity gave generous aid for Ireland also; and Government had hoped to abstain from again coming into the food-markets as a buyer, for fear of discouraging private trade. But such abstinence proved impossible. The winter of 1846-7 saw the climax of the tragedy. Government was now giving money freely. All who could—there were but too many impotent—thronged the works to get “ the Queen’s pay.” Over 700,000 received it in March, 1847; and effectual control over the numbers or the work done had been lost. Ordinary agricultural opera­tions had nearly ceased. The new workhouses were overcrowded, though the people hated them. Father Mathew wrote bitterly of how women “ were forcibly deprived of their hair and clothed in the garb of guilty convicts.” In March and April the deaths in the workhouses alone exceeded 2500 a week; Starving Irish poured into England and died in thousands of famine fever. They crowded into emigrant ships, many dying on board or on arriving at their destinations. As one of these ships left Dublin, in June, 1847, it met the vessel that carried O’Connell’s body; and there rose from its deck the wail of the peasants for their dead leader and their lost home.

In January, 1847, Peel’s Com Law and the Navigation Laws were suspended, and the policy of relief works was condemned. Relief was henceforward to take the form of cooked rations and to be administered mainly through the Poor Law organisation. Hitherto outdoor relief had been prohibited in Ireland. From March to June the people were successfully drafted from the works. By August more than 8,000,000 were receiving the rations, and the workhouse mortality had been reduced by one-half. The com harvests of 1847 were satisfactory; food prices fell, and the potato disease was nearly exhausted. But so few potatoes had been planted that the winter of 1847-8 was again a time of great, though lessened, distress. So was the year 1849. While the wreckage of famine was being cleared away and relief for bankrupt land­lords and bankrupt Poor Law Unions was being arranged, the peasants emigrated steadily. The next census showed that the population had fallen from about 8,300,000 to less than 6,600,000 between 1845 and 1851.

1846-8]

Famine and political unrest.

IS

Political troubles and the continued failure of Parliament to deal satisfactorily with the land question had contributed to the emigration. The Whigs gave some Irishmen places and got some support from O’Connell while he lived; but there was no effective revival of the discriminating administration of 1835-9. The support given by the O’Connellites merely embittered the relations between that party and Young Ireland. In July, 1846, the final disruption came; the young men left the Association because they refused to pledge themselves never to use force to secure Repeal, Davis was dead; but more impatient and violent men carried on his work—Mitchel, a dreamy, passionate lawyer of thirty, and Meagher, a stormy orator of twenty-two. Smith O’Brien, disgusted with the irresolution of the O’Connellite rump, also sided with the seceders. Soon there were O’Connellite and O’Brienite faction fights. All this was in the height of the famine, when passions were easily roused. Moreover an untimely revival of an old agrarian trouble disposed hungry men to welcome violent counsels. Since about 1820, “ clearances ” had been in progress. As the old leases to middle­men fell in, many landowners, finding their estates overcrowded with cotters, cleared them and consolidated the holdings. The thing in itself was good; the manner of doing it could not have been worse. And this procedure was renewed, sometimes most wantonly, when famine distress gave legal warrant for evicting tenants who could not pay their rent. There were also evictions to relieve landlords of liability under the Poor Law. The year 1847 was filled, in certain counties, with the worst type of agrarian outrage. Under the advice of Lord Clarendon, their Viceroy, the Government passed a Coercion Act in the autumn. Russell sincerely desired to approach the land question; but he was not strong enough, nor were the times favourable. A compensation for improvements Bill and a suggested Bill to control evictions went into limbo in 1848.

The political ferment of 1848 filled the overwrought minds of the Irish leaders with dreams of a republic baptised in blood. Mitchel’s paper, the United Irishmcm, talked incessantly of pikes, barricades, bullet-making and vitriol. Revolutionary clubs sprang into life. Mpaghpr and O’Brien went to Paris to establish connexions with the successful republicans of France; but they were judiciously discouraged by Lamartine. The Government was at work, creating the crime of treason-felony and clearing for action. O’Brien and Meagher were tried for sedition, but escaped because each jury contained one Roman Catholic. A more judiciously constituted jury sent Mitchel to penal servitude for treason-felony. Later in the year Habeas Corpus was suspended; over a hundred nationalists were imprisoned by warrant; O’Brien, Dillon, and Meagher, foolish enough to surround themselves with a useless little body of armed men, were taken and transported.

All that Russell passed in the way of reforming legislation for Ireland was an extension of the franchise and Peel s favourite scheme for

14

Bussells Cabinet.—Commercial distress. [1846-52

facilitating the sale of, encumbered estates. This wa? ^;n.tended to intro­duce the British practices of land tenure. What, it- did was to complicate further the specifically Irish problems which its sponsors, even with the reports of the Devon Commission before them, persistently ignored.

The Russell ministry was lacking in constructive statesmanship and unsuccessfully, though ably, led. None of Peel’s friends, the Ministers of

1846,       would join, though they usually supported, the Government. The men who had done most to destroy the Corn Law were not even asked to join. There was a strong—a headstrong—man for the Foreign Office, for Grey withdrew his objection to Palmerston. Lord Grey himself did well at the Colonial Office. Others filled their posts creditably. But there was no one fit to continue Peel’s special work. At the Exchequer, Lord John’s attempt to play Peel to Sir Charles Wood’s Goulburn was decidedly unsuccessful. Lord John once admitted that he had no head for figures, and unfortunately the times required skilful finance. The worst of the railway speculation was over in June, 1846; but the steady, and for a time unremunerative, absorption of capital in rail way-building produced serious difficulties. Harvest failure in 1846 disorgarisec the produce markets, and caused an abnormal drain of gold from the United Kingdom to pay for the imported food. The slackening of purchasing power among the masses that comes with dear food depressed many branches of manufacture. Cotton, as well as grain, ran short. While the prices of food and cotton rose, those of most other staples fell. All through.the spring of 1847, the money-market was disturbed; and in May wheat fetched 115s. a quarter. An unexpectedly good harvest proved ruinous to dealers who had strained their credit to buy at such famine prices. In August, when wheat was at 64s., corn firms began to fail, then East India 'merchants, joint-stock banks, iron firms, cotton firms, and of course stock-brokers. Every weak spot in the trade of the country was probed. In October the new Bank Act had to be sus­pended, the Bank being empowered to exceed its legal note issue against securities, in order to ease the panic demand for money; and political troubles in 1848 prolonged the slow convalescence of trade.

National expenu'tu-e was meanwhile driven up by an alarm of war with France in 1847. Hence deficits and financial expedients. In 1848 Peel’s Income Tax was to expire. But, instead of abandoning, Wood and Russell proposed to raise it. There was vigorous opposition to this, and eventually they gave way. In 1851 and 1852 the Commons renewed it for one year only. But nevertheless the tax got established, as it were by accident. Some other sides of Whig finance showed more fore­sight. The obnoxious Brick Tax was abolished; the Stamp Duties were consolidated and reduced; an Inhabited House Duty took the place of

the insanitary Window Tax; the last export duty.—that on coal________

disappeared; the duty on coffee came down to 3d. a pound; and the huge differential duties on foreign timber and foreign sugar were lowered.

1838-49] Sugar and Timber Duties,—Navigation Laws. 15

These last were old occasions of controversy, much involved with party manoeuvres and the fates of Governments. Until 1842 the duties had been almost prohibitive and even those on colonial timber and sugar had been high. An attempt to reduce the tax on foreign sugar was the immediate cause of Melbourne’s fall. In 1844, Peel had forced on Parliament a reduction on non-slave-grown foreign sugars ; but the supply of these proved inadequate. So in 1846, after Peel’s fall, the “ free labour ” principle, which was half philanthropic half a concession to the West Indies, was dropped, and a scheme for the gradual equalisa­tion of all the duties substituted for it. Depression in the sugar colonies and the stubborn will of Bentinck, fighting each step towards free trade, wrung from the Government in 1848 an extension of the preferential period until 1854. In the case of timber, Wood endorsed a policy traced out by Peel. Peel had found the duties on foreign timber at 55s., and on colonial at 10s. 6d. a load; Wood left them at Is. 6d. and Is. respectively. These partial abandonments of the preierei itial prin­ciple were simply the outcome of a desire to relieve consumers. In the American colonie^ they were most unpopular.

Closely connected with them was the fall of the old Navigation Code. A long series of reciprocity treaties had stretched it greatly since Huskisson’s time. Direct trade with the treaty countries was practically open. In 1838 a very important concession affecting indirect trade had been made to Austria, by which her ships might carry freely between England and Danubian ports not on Austrian territory. Similar privi­leges had since been granted to the States of the Prussian Zollverem and to other countries. The Colonies were by this time allowed to trade direct with most foreign countries, the East Indies with any friendly Power. By special agreement, United States ships might even trade between the United Kingdom and India. But no foreign ship could carry between England and the Colonies, or from colony to colony. Goods could not even be sent from the Colonies in an “illegal” ship to be warehoused although not consumed here; yet they could be so sent from foreign countries. No Asian, African, or American produce could, as a general rule, be brought from any European port—Javan sugar or coffee from Rotterdam or cotton from Havre. Two years of controversy and committee reports preceded the final repealing Act of 1849. Opinions were very evenly balanced. The mercantile and manufacturing interests wanted complete freedom. Statesmen felt that the Code was in opposi­tion to the general trend of commercial legislation, and were much influenced by the facts that most of our commercial treaties were running out, and that foreign Powers were disinclined to renew them on the old terms. Some colonists who were losing fiscal preferences wished to be left free to ship their goods in what bottoms they pleased. The sea­board Colonies of North America, on the other hand, bitterly resented the proposal to allow the Yankees to share their profitable carrying

16 Repeal of the Navigation Laws-Colonial policy. [1846-52

trade with Britain and the West Indies. In England the shipping interest was almost unanimous against repeal; so was the old school of naval officers. But it was carried nevertheless; though proxies and the Bishops’ votes were needed to pass it in the Lords.

Besides opening the colonial trade, the Whigs greatly extended colonial self-government. They did so, to some extent, under pressure; they borrowed ideas and received abundant criticism from such veteran colonial reformers as Gibbon Wakefield and Molesworth; and they often offended the Colonies by the manner of their gifts. Yet, when all is said, theirs was a great achievement. New South Wales had been granted a measure of home rule in 1842. Under Russell and Grey, Victoria was created, and Constitutions given to all the Australian Colonies. These were short lived, just because of their most important feature—they were alterable on the initiative of the Colonies themselves. Grey also drafted a Constitution for New Zealand. Shortly after he left office, it was revised and applied with Wakefield’s assistance. In 1846 colonial legis­latures had for the first time been authorised to remove differential duties favouring British goods. This permission, coupled with self­government, was to give them a control of tariffs and trade such as Lord Durham had never contemplated. In England there was much indifference to all these things. Very many observers thought that self-government would develop into independence. But, as a class, the leading statesmen of the forties neither desired, nor even habitually anticipated, the dissolution of the imperial bond.

Between Aberdeen’s tenure of the Foreign Office and Palmerston’s the contrast is complete—Aberdeen reticent, not popular, pacific, considerate, in full sympathy with the Crown and trusted by his chief; Palmerston always in the public eye, reckless, masterful, distrusted by the Court—by all Courts—and enjoying a popularity that encouraged him to disregard the . leader whom he half expected in time to oust. Aberdeen’s chief works were the establishment of a good understanding with France and the settlement of accumulated difficulties with the. United States. Thiers and Palmerston had hrought France and England to the very brink of war in 1840. Press writers and professional diplo­matists on both sides were full of suspicions and jealousies. Aberdeen and Guizot, who were personal friends, laboured incessantly to remove causes of offence. But the work was heavy, and many Englishmen besides Palmerston thought that concessions were too habitually on Aberdeen’s side. With all their labour war came near in 1844, through once famous squabbles over Tahiti: and Morocco, which are elsewhere described. Though immediate danger was over, Peel was preparing to revive the militia ballot and strengthen the navy in 1845. Aberdeen, who disagreed with these warlike preparations, had spoken of resignation just before, in September, Irish affairs pushed all else aside.

1841-9] Foreign policies of Aberdeen arid Palmerston. 17

At that moment the western horizon also was dark, for the second time since 1841, Old disputes about the Canadian boundaries, the abuse of the right of search by our slaver-hunting cruisers, and other matters, were settled by the Ashburton Treaty of 1842, both sides making con­cessions. But the Oregon boundary dispute remained and produced a dangerous inflammation in 1845. Once more Aberdeen acted with pacific dignity; and Peel was able to announce that his proposals had been accepted intact, on the very day on which the Government was dissolved.

Then came Palmerston, full of contempt for his predecessor; and the foreign offices abroad grew uneasy. “ Palmerston,” said Rothschild of Paris in December, 1845, “has this drawback—he makes the funds fall all over Europe without giving us notice.” He did so now, though part of the blame lay with Guizot. Louis-Philippe had long been anxious to marry the young Queen Isabella of Spain to some Bourbon prince and her sister to his son the Due de Montpensier. Aberdeen had acquiesced in principle; and the French Government had promised both him and Queen Victoria not to press the Montpensier match until Isabella was married and a mother, stipulating however to Aberdeen that, if a marriage for either princess outside the House of Bourbon became imminent, they should be free of their pledge. Immediately on entering office, Palmerston, advised by Bulwer, our ambassador at Madrid, set himself definitely against Montpensier, and privately pressed the claims of another candidate to the hand of the Queen’s sister. Bresson, the French ambassador, had been intriguing in the opposite sense. Learn; g of Palmerston’s inten­tions, Guizot took up Bresson’s plan and arranged the two marriages to suit his master in August, 1846. In England the Court, the public, and the Press were furious; and, until the fall of Louis-Philippe in 1848, the Government was busy with plans for expenditure on the services and the revival of the militia.

While Europe was labouring in revolution, Palmerston’s self-confident activity was incessant, generous, and indiscreet. It won him the good opinion of the nation, and finally lost him his office. Wherever absolut­ism grew arrogant, there Palmerston’s agents took the side of freedom; in and out of season he instructed Governments in their constitutional duties. When Mettemich tried to unite the Powers against the nationalist movement that he foresaw in Italy, Palmerston resisted him and sent Lord Minto to Italy to proclaim England’s sympathy with reform. When the storm broke, he consistently supported the anti- Austrian party, telling Minto that “Italy ought to unite in a con­federacy,” and that “now was the time to strike.” He rejoiced in Austria’s temporary downfall, and, when Radetzky turned the tide, he worked hard in the Italian cause. He gave Spain lessons in the art of government, which led the Spaniards to give Bulwer his passports. In 1849 he tried vainly to avert Russian intervention in Hungary, and

18

Palmerston.—The Churches.      [i846-52

ordered our Minister at Vienna to express disgust at Austrian atrocities “openly and decidedly.” He supported the Sultan when the two Courts tried to force him to give up Kossuth and other political refugees. He allowed English arms to be sent to the rebel Sicilians. And, in extorting compensation from Greece over the notorious Don Pacifico in­cident, he was at least as anxious to school King Otho, who had absolutist leanings, as to win a diplomatic triumph for England and himself.

This Pacifico affair led to a formal parliamentary attack on Palmer­ston in June, 1850. He had already irritated Lord John and the Court by his habit of acting entirely on his own responsibility and his indiffer­ence to foreign susceptibilities. The Queen had censured him severely; the Prime Minister had made him apologise to the King of the Two Sicilies, and meant to remove him from the Foreign Office at the end of 1850. But he beat off the parliamentary attack with distinction, and Russell could hardly dismiss the man whose peroration, with its demand that no British subject should ever in vain say Civis Romanus mm, had stirred the whole people. Yet soon afterwards the Queen sent him a memorandum with definite rules for his relations with the Crown. Finally Russell removed him from office i^r December, 1851, because of fresh indiscretion and insubordination—not this time in a popular cause. He had expressed approval of Louis Napoleon’s coup d'etat of December 2, and had repeated his expressions, after the Queen and Russell had censured them, in a despatch that he submitted to neither.

The relations of the State with the Churches raised as great storms under Russell’s Government as under Peel’s. But the storm centre had moved south. Scotland was recovering from the shock of the Disruption. The Free Church grew strong and efficient. The Established Church also prospered, and the State conceded to it some of the privileges, though not the principles, for which the Disruption leaders had fought. In England Russell’s hatred of the “ Puseyites ” was a beginning of trouble. They disliked his episcopal nominations; and one of these—that of the latitudinarian Dr Hampden—raised a tumult of protest. Indignation rose higher when the Privy Council overrode the refusal of Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter, to institute to a crown living a clergyman named Gorham, who held Calvinistic views on baptism. This was an intru­sion into the spiritual sphere by a lay tribunal far more decisive than those which had broken up the Scottish Church. But, as the F.nglkTi Church had no corporate voice, repudiation of the Establishment was impossible, even had it been widely advocated—which it was not; for the English and Scottish views of the bounds of temporal authority differed. Many clergymen who held high views of Church prerogative seceded to Rome; but these were individual acts. The revival of Con­vocation in November, 1852, was the outward sign of the desire that corporate action should henceforth be possible. Two years earlier,

1842-52] The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill.—Chartism.

19

Pius IX’s creation of Roman bishoprics in England produced a widespread and fanatical outcry against Romanism and “Puseyism,” in which Russell joined. It led him to place on the statute book that monument of intolerance and bad statesmanship, the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, which in its final form forbade Roman Catholic Bishops to make use of those territorial titles which they have ever since employed.

Some contemporaries believed that Peel’s decision in 1845 saved his country from revolution three years later. This at least is certain—it helped to convince the labouring classes that Parliament was not altogether indifferent to their needs, and strengthened the hands of all who were working for peaceful reform. After 1842 militant Chartism steadily lost its hold on the best of the working-men. The Chartist leaders were always quarrelling. Feargus O’Connor’s Chartist Co­operative Land Society of 1845, which spent some £100,000 in an ill-considered attempt to bring the people back to the land, strained the resources and the loyalty of his followers. For some, faith in the political and even in the economic principles of the Anti-Corn Law Leaguers supplanted faith in the Charter. They learnt to cooperate with middle class Radicals for attainable political ends. Others threw them­selves into the new cooperative store movement, with its tangible advan­tages, or into bolder and less successful essays in cooperative production. The Trade Unions drew apart from organised Chartism as the years passed. They were becoming businesslike and opportunist, more interested in the improvement of their own organisation than in the bolder schemes of the Chartists, such as Bronterre O’Brien’s proposals for land national­isation. Some of the great existing Unions date from these years, as for example, the Amalgamated Engineers. Only the high prices and slack work of 1847 and the revolutionary contagion of 1848 gave the party of violence among the Chartists a momentary ascendancy. Even then their power was more apparent than real, and they proved miserably inefficient revolutionaries. The great demonstration of April 10, 1848, which was to have overawed Parliament, was an utter failure; and the subsequent riots in the north were unimportant. Next year O’Connor, who was responsible for the fiasco, found just fifteen members of Parliament willing to vote with him for the Charter. As a distinct movement, Chartism was dead; most of its principles, but not its exaggerated class-feeling, found a home in the left wing of the new Liberal party.

The repeal of the Com Laws by no means stood alone. There were many signs of a drawing together of “the two nations,” and some signs of an increasing faith in legislation as an engine of economic reform. In 1847 and 1850 the Ten Hours Acts met one of the chief grievances of the factory population, a grievance upon which Chartist orators had laid great stress. Private enterprise was making a humble beginning of housing reform. The first Act dealing with it—the Lodging House

20 Social legislation and conditions.—Emigration. [1840-52

Act—was passed in 1851. From 1847 to 1850 urban sanitation and burial abuses were at last seriously taken in hand, though too late to prevent a recurrence of cholera in 1849. The State added a little to its small contribution towards the cost of national education; and the con­nexion between the absence of universal schooling and the existence of child labour was rendered clear by the factory inspectors. The Mechanics’ Institutes had made some partial provision for adult education. In 1845 this was supplemented by the permission given to town councils to create museums; in 1850 the permission was extended to free libraries.

By that time urban wages were showing an upward movement in all but the dying crafts; though rural wages still continued at, or even below, the level of 1841. But the cost of living had declined, and, on the land, better cottages and more allotments were to be found. Rail­ways and steam navigation and free trade had stimulated every branch of industry; and, although the glorification of Britain’s industrial strength in the Great Exhibition of 1851 did not mark the beginning of an age of contentment and peace, it coincided with a marked increase not only in wealth but in well-bning. Moreover the immense emigration of the past decade, from Britain as well as Ireland, had checked the gloomy fears of Malthusians and eased the labour market. Some 337,000 emi­grants had left the United Kingdom in the three bad years 1840-2; 221,000 in 1842-5; and 130,000 in 1846. From 1847 to 1852 the number was never in any one year less than 248,000; and in 1852—after the great gold discoveries—it rose to 368,000. Many of the emigrants, British as well as Irish, carried bitter memories with them. The more capable and daring went; the more listless and timid remained. Thus the movement had its drawbacks, yet on the whole it was good.

Throughout the Russell Administration all the lines of party division were blurred. Peel had broken up the Tories and helped to break up the Whigs. Russell had not converted the whole Whig party to free trade. Many influential men would have preferred a protectionist to a Peelite alliance. Melbourne was a protectionist to the last. The manufacturing free-traders preferred Peel to the Whigs; and Cobden once begged him to lead a new middle class free trade party. Cobden and his friends owned no Whig allegiance and voted as they pleased; so did the Peelites. After Bentinck’s death in 1848, the protectionist Tories came under the control of Disraeli, who took in hand the task of weaning them from their extreme opinions, and more than once tried to secure the cooperation of some of Peel’s friends. For neither he nor Stanley ever thought mere dogmatic Protection an adequate foundation for a great political party.

Peel died suddenly and prematurely in July, 1850. He had been the greatest political power in the country, and had often saved the Govern­ment when in difficulties. But, in losing him, Russell also lost a possiple

1846-52] Confusion and rearrangement of parties.

21

rival. Had Palmerston fallen a year earlier, some at least of the Peelites might have joined Russell. As it was, they held aloof. The revival of the question of parliamentary reform and the “Papal aggression” of September, 1850, further complicated matters. Reform was popular among Russell’s more liberal adherents; and, after various parliamentary mishaps, he was beaten, in a nearly empty House, on a motion for extending the county franchise in February, 1851. During the debates he made a declaration in favour of some extension.

Russell resigned. Stanley was sent for, but refused office. Russell then tried, as so often before, to secure some Peelite assistance; but the Peelites unanimously condemned his anti-papal policy. Aberdeen was sent for and declined. Then Stanley tried to enlist Gladstone and others. He too failed. So Russell came back, no stronger than before. Towards the end of the year, when he was discussing Reform with his Cabinet, the rise of Louis Napoleon lost him Palmerston and threw the country into a war fever. On February 16, 1852, Palmerston cheerfully defeated the Government on an amendment to the little Militia Bill, with which they had hoped—and failed—to satisfy the public.

Stanley, now Lord Derby, the inevitable successor, held office until the general election in July by the courtesy of the Peelites. There was little legislation except a Militia Bill and a provisional budget, in introducing which Disraeli—now Chancellor of the Exchequer—praised Peel’s finance and did not mention corn. Derby’s short ministry is chiefly interesting through its influence on the rearrangement of parties. Had he repudiated Protection and been cautious abroad, he might have rallied Aberdeen, Gladstone, and Herbert. But there was no repudiation; and Malmesbury, his Foreign Secretary, seemed to them over-friendly with Napoleon. He had some hope of enlisting Palmerston; but Palmerston was thinking of the leadership. Graham was returning to his old Whig allegiance, with some able men at his back. Gladstone and the rest still dreamt of a purged Conservative party. That someone must join Derby, if he was not to fall, was clear; but no one joined.

There was a simple issue at the election—did the nation approve the commercial policy that Peel had begun and Russell had continued? Ministers had made it clear that they would stand by the decision of the electorate; but they were less clear as to what they wished that decision to be. Disraeli, like Peel before him, was preparing for a change of front and, in private, “had no great fear” of the Protectionists. The elections were numerically indecisive, against Protection decisive enough. When Palmerston proposed in place of a triumphant free trade motion of Villiers’ a gentler amendment, so drafted (by Graham) as to save the face of the Protectionists, it was carried by 468 to 63. But acceptance of the free trade principle could not save the Government. It fell on December 17, on a budget amendment—when through the night Gladstone struggled with Disraeli.

CHAPTER n.

THE FALL OF CONSTITUTIONALISM IN FRANCE.

(1840-8.)

The crisis of 1840 had nearly laid in ruins the July Monarchy, yet it was destined to live for another eight years, with such apparent stability, that it seemed unshakeable on the very eve of its downfall. The ability of Guizot who, during this period, bore the burden of power, is manifestly insufficient to explain so striking a phenomenon. It will be as well, therefore, to attempt a survey of the underlying causes which were sapping the regime of July in 1840, and also of those, possibly no less interesting, which kept it standing until the day when a shock, slight in itself, caused it first to tremble, and ultimately to collapse. Such an examination, moreover, will prepare the way for a clearer understanding of the different phases of the Republic of 1848 in its final metamorphosis into a Napoleonic Empire.

The crisis of 1840 produced certain elements which endangered the Government of Louis-Philippe, none of which, singly, was capable of seriously imperilling it, but of which the cumulative effect was great. An apparently trifling accident revealed the hidden weakness of the whole body politic; in a moment the movement assumed alarming proportions; and after three days, it proved fatal to the existing regime on February 24, 1848.

The least grave of these dangers would seem to have been the complete change in mental attitude of a large portion of the middle class at finding, or, at any rate, believing that the regime of 18S0 had proved false to all its promises. The upholders of this r&gvme had allowed the nation to believe, had indeed themselves believed, that the semi-revolution which had replaced Charles X by Louis-Philippe would provide safeguards alike for vested interests and for the national honour. Instead of this, the new regime appeared to the bourgeoisie to have done nothing of the kind. Even if property were safe, the national honour seemed compromised; and the supporters of the rigime were thus divided into two parties. On the one hand was a body of middle class

1840-8] Attitude of the bourgeoisie towards religion. 23

citizens, hitherto probably as much saturated with scepticism and Voltaireanism as the rest of their class, but whose behaviour now clearly showed a revival of religious belief. They sent their children to the Congregationist Schools, which subsisted side by side with the State University—then dominated by the philosophy of Victor Cousin—they devoured eagerly the violent pamphlets by which the clergy were attempting to destroy this particular philosophy as well as the Univer­sity monopoly. They cheered Lacordaire on his public assumption of the Dominican habit; they encouraged the Jesuits to reappear with heads held high despite the law; and, finally, they fostered the growth of innumerable congregations all over the country. In these and similar ways this section of the bourgeoisie showed its detachment from & regime which recognised in religion (since it preached resignation) a necessity for the populace, but which aimed at binding its ministers within the limits of the Concordat. But even in the remaining portion of the middle class, among whom still predominated a personal indifference towards religion, or at any rate a hatred of the Jesuits and of Ultra- montanism, there came about a peculiar transformation, which, following upon an almost feverish interest in things political, and especially in foreign affairs, showed itself in a kind of apathy, an indifference as profound as it was incredible, amounting even to an openly expressed contempt for all such questions. Though still greatly attached to the regime in whose stability they were personally interested, this section of the bourgeoisie seemed to think that, with a Government of such approved caution in face of a Europe indulgent so long as it was not provoked, there was nothing for them to do but to take advantage of the situation to increase their individual wealth and to make up, by the enjoyment of material pleasures, for the loss of the luxury of national pride. All desire for “glory” was henceforth incompatible with the maintenance of their own particular privilege. Hence questions relating to lucrative enterprises, Stock Exchange speculation, and the like, formed practically their sole preoccupation after 1840. The opportunities for personal enrichment were naturally numerous, owing to the introduction of novel inventions, new industrial processes, steam engines, railways, and the like. It was a misfortune that, speaking generally, the national morality was but little regarded, and that scandals soon broke out in connexion with concessions and bribery whereby the reputations of two ex-Ministers were dragged in the mire. Even Guizot and Thiers, the leaders of the two rival political parties, though their personal integrity was above reproach, were splashed with the same mud.

How strange an effect must all this have had upon those to whom the regime had brought nothing but misfortune—those who not only possessed no direct voice in the government of affairs but, by the very conditions of their social existence, saw themselves condemned to a life of complete inaction in perpetuity 1 What had become of those theoretic rights

24

The Napoleonic cult.

[1840-3

which had been reserved to them—equality with regard to employment, with regard to honours—of that Marshal’s baton which the Revolu­tion or, according to the popular notion, Napoleon had placed in their knapsacks? With a Government so pacific in intention, would actual opportunities ever offer themselves? Seeking consolation through the imagination, they were forced to fall back upon reminiscences of their grandfathers, distorted by the action of time and centring round the Napoleonic legend. The contrast afforded by the commonplaceness of their own time, by the work of authors and artists such as Victor Hugo, Seranger the song-writer, the painters Charlet and Raffet (whose works were extensively reproduced by lithography)—and even by the views of the political leaders themselves, such as Thiers, who at the Chateau of Versailles took first rank among the “ Napoleonisers ”—all helped to .^produce this legend in letters of fire. Not only Napoleon himself was deified, but those humble grenadiers, those “grognards”—whom his eagle eye had singled out from the crowd—were raised with him to the very pinnacle of greatness.

In very truth this Napoleonic cult, to which the Government sacri­ficed—as if in the hope of winning pardon for its own timidities abroad — seemed harmless enough for the moment. No imperial claimant assumed a menacing character—not even Louis Napoleon, whose somewhat foolish attempts in 1836-40 were almost unknown to the nation at large. More­over, since the cult found its most ardent worshippers in the provinces, which—being inaccessible to the influence of the Press—seemed politically unimportant, the Government was perhaps justified in its attitude of reassurance. But Ministers should have paid greater attention to the disillusions and disappointments of the working-classes, whose political discontent was beginning to be intensified by an added social dis­content. It is, in fact, from this period that we may date the first infiltrations of Socialism among the workers. True, this Socialism pre­sented at first no very dangerous appearance, consisting as it did of schemes for the radical reorganisation of society, which were either too "heoretit al or too purely doctrinaire to appeal readily to the great mass of the people. Moreover, there was too much contradiction among its exponents themselves. Proudhon preached Individualism, Cabet and Pierre Leroux Communism, Louis Blanc a mitigated and temporary system of socialistic workshops. Of all this the people in general grasped very little, inclining rather more to Louis Blanc’s theory of the “ right to work ”—which was to receive its first practical application in 1848—than to Proudhon’s maxim “ property is theft.” Socialism was in fact only making itself known through the medium of vague, general articles in a certain section of the Republican Press which, after 1840, devoted itself in particular to the “ amelioration of the working-man’s lot.” For example, such a paper as Le Journal du Peuple was remodelled in 1841, and, becoming La Reform in 1843, underwent a transformation

1840-8]

The National Gmard.

25

still more profound under the editorship of Flocon and Ribeyrolles, who were assisted by Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc.

Nevertheless the Socialist propaganda was still too limited in extent, too vague, and, in certain directions, even too lacking in seriousness, to appear anything but an exceedingly remote danger. Far more serious in reality was the attitude of the middle classes after 1840, for upon them depended the whole stability of the “ system.” We know how it was established—this system which claimed to have raised up the Sove­reignty of Reason upon the ruins of two chimeras: upon “Divine Right” and the “Sovereignty of the People,” which were embodied in the legitimate Monarchy and the Republic respectively. It was done by making tax-payers (who paid 500 francs in taxes) eligible for election as Parliamentary Deputies, by making those who paid 200 francs eligible as voters, and by allowing the rest no political rights whatever. To the lower middle classes, however, who appeared to be deprived of political importance by the smallness of their pecuniary resources, the Government had conceded both a favour and a right. After the Revolution of 1830, which they had themselves brought about, they were held worthy to fulfil the functions of police, in the interests of Liberalism and for the maintenance of order, as well as to assist the army in the work of national defence. The National Guard had thus become a fundamental institution of the Monarchy—an institution whose practical importance was all the greater from the fact that they could use their muskets against whom they pleased. The National Guard was perfectly aware of its position and of the importance of its role. As a matter of fact, its opinions were divided like its functions— half military and half police—or its recruitment—half from the popu­lace and half from the middle classes—or its. interests—half conservative and half revolutionary. It possessed, in fact, but empty honours, and the burdens, without the joys, of power. It may be that it urged the Government less insistently to stir up warlike passions than to avoid all possibilities of diplomatic humiliations; it may even be that it found less fault with the grounds of a pacific policy than with the manner in which that policy displayed itself to the world. But this did not in its eyes diminish the guilt of the Government, responsible as it was, alike for its outward behaviour and its underlying intentions.

Middle class discontent proceeded promptly to show itself in the acquittal of persons accused of political offences, and in hostile cries uttered by the National Guard during reviews held by the King, a circumstance which eventually obliged him to suspend these inspections and parades. Yet these facts were not regarded by the Government as of any special significance, and rightly so. For the middle classes, while judging the Government severely, might be trusted not to imagine or desire its overthrow. So great was their horror, both of the excesses of 1793 and of those of the ujicwji regime_} that, even at

26 Evolution of the two chief parliamentary parties. [i84o

the beginning of the “February Days,” the National Guard had no thought of this kind. Its purely passive role was then to paralyse the army, a role which was however equivalent to leaving the field clear to the enemies of the regime both secret and avowed.

But from the year 1840, to be precise, the suspicions aroused in the breasts of these former partisans of reaction and revolution showed a tendency to disappear. The two parties, influenced by the same crisis which so profoundly modified the whole spirit of France, simultaneously underwent an evolution which rendered both practically unrecognisable. The class which continued openly to attack the Government was so far changed that it no longer endeavoured to spread its propaganda beyond a clearly defined portion of the nation, whose necessities became practically its sole preoccupation. This was the case with the Legitimists, who were condemned henceforward to restrict their recruiting-fields to the nobility and their dependents. It was also the case with those Republicans who, struck by the importance which social'questions were assuming among the working-classes, subordinated to them all other problems. But the other faction of each of the two main parties adopted a wholly different line of conduct. While pretending to accept the existing form of government or perhaps in despair of changing it, the middle class Re­publicans, on the one hand, and the Catholic Legitimists, on the other, adopted tactics quite different from those which the Red Republicans and ultra-reactionaries had hitherto employed. The Republican organ-in-chief, Le National, formerly in the hands of Armand Carrel, allowed Marrast, who had returned from exile in 1840, to bring¹ over its supporters—Gamier-Pages junior, Arago, Carnot, Pagnerre, Goudchaux, Marie, and others—to an entirely new standpoint. This new departure consisted in transferring their opposition to legal ground, and in making electoral reform the first point in their programme. It was not that ultimate hopes were to be abandoned: they were to be postponed to a more propitious moment—or rather, the country was gradually to be led in the direction in which at present it declined to go. The Catholics, on their side, both Bishops and laity, hence­forward appear to have exclusively occupied themselves with the cause of religion; and, feeling that they had gained nothing by the association of their cause with that of the Legitimists, they came to an important decision. They, too, were willing to accept the existing form of govern­ment, only demanding in return one thing, liberty with regard to secondary education—a reform to which the Government had pledged itself on its accession to power but which it had only partially fulfilled. This question had been left unsettled after primary education had been arranged upon lines allowing both freedom and reform to various de­nominations. If only the University monopoly were destroyed, the clergy and the congregations could, by securing control over the education of the sons of that middle class which held the reins of power, eventually

1840-8]

Religious influences.

27

dominate the Government. The Bishops were gradually won over to this plan—their conversion being, curiously enough, due to a layman, a former friend of Lamennais and a staunch friend of Lacordaire, the Comte de Montalembert, who became proprietor of the great Catholic newspaper, L'Univers, in 1840, with the object of achieving this end. The suspicions harboured by one section of the upper, as well as of the lower, middle class towards a party hitherto deeply pledged to reaction gradually diminished and showed signs of disappearing altogether. At the same time, the distrust felt by the remaining section of those same classes in regard to the Liberal doctrines of progress began to subside, or at any rate gradually to lose its intensity, when they saw these same doctrines expounded with the literary and political moderation shown by Le National—so decisively contrasted with the habitual violence and crudity of La Riforme, in its daily accusations of treason against the “ Gentleman’s Newspaper.” As a matter of fact the two Republican organs both aimed at the downfall of the Monarchy—though they differed with regard to means and opportunities. These underground workings, these tactics which the future was to make clear, the men of the Left Centre, including even Thiers himself, failed to comprehend, still thinking that they could ally themselves with the one section while repudiating the other. Guizot, also, was deceived as to the Catholic designs, to the extent of making compromising promises to Montalembert and his friends without paying sufficient attention to their strange collaborators, such as Louis Veuillot, whom Montalembert made editor of L'Univers in 1843—a man fillpfl to overflowing with poisonous hatred towards the Monarchy of July.

Yet not even here must we look for the actual cause of that Monarchy’s fall. There had been no time for the propaganda of the middle class Republicans, nor for that of the Catholic laity, to produce their full effect before 1848. It was in fact to another and more internal malady that the regime was destined to succumb. Its fatal weakness, after 1840, lay in the fact that it was condemned to go on existing, or rather acting without any real incentive to action; and thus, by the medium of barren debates, of numberless internal dissensions, of rancorous and irreconcilable disputes between its leaders, all the con­tradictions and weaknesses inherent in the system were exposed to the public gaze. The regime had in fact no further raison d'etre—there was no longer anything to compel France to preserve either the Monarchy or the Monarch, useful as both had undoubtedly been to her in ridding her of the horrors of a foreign invasion. On the sole condition that France respected the treaties of 1815, it was easy to see that Europe would leave her free to repress her unruly elements as she pleased; yet it was at this precise juncture that the Government laid itself open to the charge of refusing all demands for reform, and, what was perhaps still more unexpected, declined to make any change in her foreign policy.

28 Parliamentary reform.—Entente cordiale. [1830-42

This surprising policy was due neither to the senility of Louis-Philippe nor to the inexplicable obstinacv of Guizot, but to the exigencies arising from the nature and origin of the system itself.

The nature of the tyranny exercised by circumstance over the rulers of France was well illustrated in the questions of electoral reform and the lowering of the franchise. By the confession that one of its lines of policy might conceivably be changed, a regime proclaiming itself as one of “ pure reason ” admitted that this particular line of policy had a purely arbitrary foundation, and could be altered without serious consequences. Directly the possibility of the arbitrary principle having a place in the system of government was allowed, that system was doomed. If, for instance, it was held sufficient to-day to lower the property qualification to 100 francs, to-morrow, under the pretext that in a country like France the title of “proprietor” was of extraordinarily wide application, it would be possible to demand universal suffrage, with its inevitable corollary in the sovereignty of numbers. Even economic reforms became impossible, as was clearly seen when, in 1842, the Government was obliged to abandon the idea of a Franco-Belgian Zollverem—an abandon­ment due as much to the protests of the great manufacturers, the actual pillars of the regime, as to those of Europe.

Ultimately, the same compulsion of circumstance also manifested itself in foreign policy. Ever since 1830 France had had it dinned into her that in her capacity of a parvenue among the nations—a parvenue, it is true, who in no way blushed at her title, but who, at the same time, did not care to run the risks involved in the overthrow of “Society”—she must absolutely find someone to act as sponsor for her in the European drawing-room. And was not this sponsor ready to. her hand in the shape of England who, according to a fallacious analogy common at the time, had passed through her own “Revolution of 1830” in 1688? Thus, even after the practically complete agreement reached with regard to the settlement of the. Belgian Kingdom (1833), which is described elsewhere, the entente cordiale still remained the Government’s main preoccupation and support. At the same time,, in the face of a hostile Europe, England had become the model to imitate and not to surpass. No< one took the trouble to observe that this presumably unchanging model was herself passing through a profound process of evolution, until the fact that she refused to play the part allotted to her in 1840 had forced itself upon the public attention. Moreover, the crisis revealed Europe as something quite different from the entity with which, until then, France had sup­posed herself to have been dealing. French policy,, both home and foreign, was seen to have been based on a miscalculation. Not only was it clearly impost .Hjle to count any longer upon England as sponsor to the Liberal Monarchy of France in the “society” of Europe, but the Government of July could no longer put itself forward as a happy mean,

1840-3] Foreign policy and party disputes.                                          29

as a reasonable compromise between the just aspirations of the French people and the hostile passions of Europe. In external as in internal policy the bourgeois Monarchy had, in fact, lost its raison d'etre.

But no one renounces existence of his own free will; therefore, the problem presenting itself after the crisis of 1840 was how to create anew by mere force of affirmation, or even of sincere conviction, the same European surroundings in which France had dwelt from 1815 to 1840,—the same bogey of a Grand Alliance, the same danger from another Waterloo. On this head all the overt partisans of the regime were in close accord; but it was impossible for them not to diverge as to the possibility of ignoring the crisis itself, and particularly the diplomatic insult inflicted upon France by England in 1840. The same fact was interpreted in different ways. The fall of the Whigs—so-called Liberals—and the triumph of the Tories—so-called Conservatives—in 1841, justified in Guizot’s eyes the rehabilitation of the entente cordiale; in those of Thiers, it condemned it. How greatly England herself was misunderstood it is unnecessary to state. But what is worth noting is that it was on this very question of the entente cordiale, and not upon questions of internal policy (in regard to which Thiers and Guizot were to remain in agreement for five years longer), that a double evolution took place in Government circles. To begin with, the coalition formed in 1839 between the two Centres and the Dynastic Left against the proceedings of the King and especially against his foreign policy, was broken up. While, on the one side, the alliance between Guizot’s Left Centre and the Dynastic Left became closer and more complete, on the other the Right Centre and Louis-Philippe were making mutual concessions, and concluding a bargain whereby each gained an equal advantage. The King obtained approval of his foreign policy from Thiers and the Right Centre by convincing them that it alone could save the rigime from a return to the levee en masse and from democratic reforms, if not from something worse. In return the King accepted the Right Centre’s parliamentary doctrines and respect for forms—a respect, however, more apparent than real, as the corruptions practised by Guizot were soon to demonstrate.

It should be noted that this schism between the two Centres was fraught with the gravest consequences for the fate of the Monarchy. It is true that at the present day one can hardly help smiling at the spectacle of two parties and two leaders—both equally devoted to the juste milieu—browbeating one another with accusations of “Revolu­tion” and “Counter-Revolution.” But this impression tends to disappear when one realises that between these two men and these two parties there lay not only bitter grudges and conflicting ambitions, but also, under the mask of common interests, two opposite philosophic and social conceptions of life. Starting from twe different points of view, the one envisaging the rights of the individual rather in his relation to sci”ety and the other occupying just the contrary standpoint, they had no clear

30

Opposition between Thiers and Guizot. [i83i-48

perception of their initial divergence, so long as it was merely a question of building up and consolidating the existing system of government. But, directly it became a question of defending it, this divergence became manifest, each turned his arms against the other, and in their mutual destructive antagonism they threatened to overthrow the two essential pillars upon which the Monarchy rested. Neither could do anything singly; each party was unable, either to maintain itself in power, or to conduct an effective opposition. Their forces were practically equal, their fate depended upon a party other than their own—a party more genuinely central than themselves—which combined all the con­tradictions inherent in them both and united them in the oddest wedlock. This was that ventre Ugislatif which aimed at reconciling the two antagonists, which rejected Thiers on account of his bellicose policy, but imposed that same policy upon Guizot; which accepted the entente cordOale in defiance of the one, but compelled the other to use it as an instrument for annoying England. This was that middle party which, dominated by motives in themselves irreconcilable, desired peace because it suited its material interests, but designed for such peace an aspect of victory, in order not to put the finishing touch to popular exasperation. It was because this Centre was, for both Guizot and Thiers, a source of support as vital as it was intangible that both turned elsewhere for reinforcements. The one looked more and more to the Right, almost to the camp of the Legitimists, the other more and more to the Left, almost to that of the Republicans, each hoping to retain control of the middle class, and the whole resulting, in 1848, in the spectacle of a discontented National Guard surrendering to the enemies of the rigime.

The history of the eight years after 1840 may be divided, under this aspect, into four periods: the first ending with the death of the Duke of Orleans and the passing of the Regency Act; the second with the conclusion of the entente cordiah', the third with its rupture; the fourth with the Revolution of February.

During the first period we find Thiers declaring, a propos of the Straits Convention, that Guizot had brought the regime into being solely for the purpose of diminishing French territory; Guizot retorted that Thiers had laid France open to the possibility of humiliation. But, while these mutual recriminations did au injury to the Monarchy of which neither antagonist dreamed, each had as yet only coquetted with those false friends, those new men, who were to be their undoing. While Guizot turned a blind eye upon the reestablishment of the Dominicans at Nancy, Thiers supported—half-heartedly it is true—a timid proposal of Odilon Barrot’s for electoral reform, by which those who served on juries were to be added to the electoral roll.

But the issue was not joined, as might have been at first supposed, on the. right of searching vessels suspected of carrying slaves. In 1831 and 1833 England and France had granted each other the reciprocal

I841-2] Right of Search Convention.—Railway scheme. 31

right of search, stipulating that the number of cruisers employed by one Power for the purpose should not be more than half as much again as the number employed by the other. A limit was thus placed on the right of search which the more numerous British vessels might exercise. This arrangement was to lapse, when the right of search was extended to the flags of other nations. In 1842 Guizot presented to Parliament a new Convention, signed on December 20, 1841, by Lord Aberdeen, following upon long antecedent pourparlers—a convention now not restricted to France and England, but including Austria, Prussia and Russia. As at least one of these was not properly a maritime Power, the clause limiting the number of cruisers exercising the right of search had to be abolished. Thus disappeared a precaution which France had thought it her duty to take, to prevent an unlimited exercise of the right of search by the British Fleet. In Parliament the Centre itself, or rather the public opinion of French ports—such as it was—pointed out how prejudicial such a convention might be both to French commerce and to the independence of the fleet, and it was by the mouth of a deputy, who passed for a Ministerialist, that this view found most vigorous expression. Surprised and not less disappointed at the attitude of the majority—that majority which only a few days before had approved his desire to revise the policy of a good understanding with Europe, while at the same time condemning Thiers’ attitude in the Straits question—Guizot promised not to ratify this convention without further consideration, though, at his own request and even supplication, other continental Powers had acceded to it. From these concessions, however, Thiers gained no triumph, since the Chamber showed no signs of a withdrawal of its confidence from the Ministry, though compelling it to alter its policy in the face of the whole of Europe. Before the end of the session Guizot had been forced by the majority in Parliament to give way completely, and to promise absolutely that he would not ratify the right of search—a necessity which he had hoped to be able to avoid.

Nevertheless, it was to satisfy the greed, the money-grubbing spirit, of this irremoveable Centre, as well as in the hope of distracting public attention that Guizot, on February 7, 1842, held out as a bait his vast railway scheme, conceived—as even the Journal des Debats admitted— “ to give free play to the Genius of Peace in its conflict with the Genius of War.” In very truth it ended by linking up Paris with such outlying points as Lille, Strassburg, Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Nantes and Cherbourg, and not only called forth all the sources of wealth contained in the soil, but concentrated them in the capital, and thus gave a giant impetus to the march of social and political reforms. Paying wholly insufficient attention to the disappointments and the scandals attendant on the handing over to private enterprise of such railways as were already constructed, Guizot contented himself with putting at the disposal of the State the land acquired, and left the construction of the

permanent way and the actual working of the railways in the hands of the great companies. If, by so doing, he thought to snatch from his rival an unique opportunity for winning over the majority, and at the same time to silence popular discontent, all the world now knows the depth of his miscalculation.

Neither Thiers nor Guizot had in fact so far any cause for self­congratulation, and the elections of 1842—owing to the apathy of the electorate—produced no radical change in the composition of the Chamber. Then came catastrophe, in the shape of the accident which cost the Duke of Orleans his life (July 13,1842), and in a moment eyes were opened to the essential weakness of the “system.” All had been foreseen in this “Reign of Reason ”—all but one thing: the Crown falling into the hands of a child. This event would not perhaps have been a serious matter before the crisis of 1840—the real catastrophe of the regime—but it became so after this. The whole problem of the July Monarchy was centred in a coffin. Either the Chamber alone ought to proclaim itself the constituent power and recognise its own right to elect the Regent where it liked—even to designate the young prince’s mother, if it chose to abrogate the Salic law; or this same Chamber ought merely to regard itself as called upon to settle a disputed point of law as a judicial tribunal. By its decision—either that the Salic law had been swept away, or that it had been preserved by the Revolution of 1830, together with the other laws of the anden regime—a funda­mental point which had remained in doubt for the last twelve years would find solution. And thereby, too, would be cleared away the uncertainty lying at the very foundation of the regime—the question as to whether the charter, and with it the constitutional system, dated from 1814 or from 1830. Was it a compromise between the rights of the King and the equal rights of the people? Was it imposed upon the former by the latter; and, in that case, was it capable of revocation and revision? Men’s minds were so shaken by the recent catastrophe that the problem seemed neither so simple, nor so complex, as in our statement of it. Alphonse de Lamartine, already moving on towards the Republic, pronounced in favour of the principles of 1830, on the pretext that those of 1814 would involve a return to the most obnoxious traditions of the ancien regime: a decision which sufficed to bring Odilon Barrot back to his earlier convictions. Thiers and Guizot, much against their own wishes, were compelled to unite by the necessity of defending this particular uncertainty—to which indeed the regime owed its birth. Happily for them personal factors decided the matter for the Deputies of the Centre or Ventre. The Due de Nemours—not much of a Liberal and rather unpopular—seemed to them a safeguard against any leanings to the “ Left ” on the part of the regime; and they preferred him to the Duchess of Orleans, who was too popular, and therefore too much inclined towards those Liberal concessions, which were obnoxious in the

1842-3]

Temporary retirement of Thiers.

SB

eyes of these middle class property owners. Thus the Regency Bill of 1842 became law. The Act tacitly maintained the Salic and other laws of the ancien rigime, and, by its ambiguity, gave equal satisfaction to both Thiers and Guizot.

Nevertheless, this law which should have brought them together did not long contribute to that end. Thiers, who had been forced to do violence to his own opinions in order to move in unity with his rival, and seeing him thereby firmly anchored to the buoy of power, grew weary of the struggle and, following the now stereotyped course of action, retired to his “ beloved studies.” He set to work upon his History of the Consulate, so as to contrast that period so fertile in its reforms and glorious in its victories with one of emptiness, selfishness and shame, during which, to use Lamartine’s phrase, “ la France s'ennuyait.” This retirement of Thiers was naturally not without its effect upon Guizot, who was in no wise disturbed by the insignificant opposition of Mole, and was satisfied at having disarmed his most redoubtable adversary. In his somewhat precipitate elation he forgot all the humiliation inflicted upon him by the Centre, when he tried to enter into closer relations with England. He undoubtedly undertook to denounce diplo­matically the treaties of 1831 and 1833; but he promised himself the accomplishment of something much better, i.e. the revival of the entente cordiale. Ever since 1842, despite contrary winds and tides, he had been working with this end in view, and had made to England an offer which she had coldly rejected—of concluding with her a bargain on the question of the Spanish marriages; a subject more fully discussed in the chapter on Spain. England, it was suggested, should abandon the candidature of Leopold Prince of Coburg to the hand of Isabella, and France that of the son of Louis-Philippe. There was no conceivable chance of England’s accepting such a proposal so long as Espartero, who was all too much under English influence, continued to support the Regency in Madrid. But in April, 1843, he was overthrown, and in September Queen Victoria landed at Eu, with Aberdeen and the Prince Consort, and, as described elsewhere, accepted Guizot’s proposals. This is not the place for us to ask what advantage England derived from this arrange­ment. To Guizot the matter was simple. He reestablished the entente vrdiale, wiping out, at the same stroke, all remaining traces of the affront of 1840; at the same time, he achieved a success of personal vanity and a particular satisfaction for his major ty in the preservation, as a possibility, of the eventual marriage of the Due de Montpensier to the Queen’s sister. In what he was later to call his “ archaic simplicity ” he conceived it to be of supreme importance to France, that no Prince of nominally English blood (as a matter of fact Prince Leopold was nearly related to the family of Lou>>:-Philippe) should reign, or even parade upon the steps of a throne, on the far side of the Pyrenees. He did not perceive the inherent contradiction between seeking an alliance with

34

Guizot and the Congregations.

[l843

“perfidious Albion,” and offering her as its basis a measure of precaution against her odious designs. However this may be, the landing at Eu, and the announcement of the new entente cordiale resounded suddenly through France like a flourish of trumpets.

If Guizot had paid more attention to the national temper, he could hardly have failed to note that, at this precise juncture, the enemies of the regime were completing their metamorphosis, and finally adopting those weapons to which his downfall was to be largely due. On the one hand, Montalembert was busy winning over the bishops to his tactics, and collaborating with Veuillot; on the other, Le National—more occupied with the question of national defence than of riots or revolution—was as eager to congratulate the Government on having fortified Paris, as to scold the Republicans of La Reforme for neglecting their most vital duties to their country.

Meanwhile an occasion, afforded by an outburst of public opinion which the actions of the Ministry had provoked, brought into almost savage relief the lack of internal harmony between the Right Centre and the Left, and the fundamental antagonism between their social philo­sophies. Guizot had not only offended one large portion of the nation by his foreign policy; he had estranged a further portion by his toleration of the unauthorised Congregations, and by the appeals and offers made to the Catholics. He had begged this suspected party to assist him in fighting the anarchical elements which were everywhere revealing themselves, as much in the political lassitude of the electors as in the outward quiet of the people—quiet which, considering the national tem­perament, was ominous. This was undoubtedly another imprudence, but a wellnigh unavoidable one, which had its immediate consequence in concentrating popular attention upon those religious passions whose existence the populace, if left to itself, might have forgotten. Even men sincerely attached to the Ministry—colleagues of Guizot such as Villemain, and the editors of the Journal des Debats, the leading minis­terial organ—began declaring that they saw everywhere the finger of the Jesuits. Liberals, or rather Republicans, such as Quinet and Michelet in their lectures at the College de France, caught the alarm and spread it broadcast. In truth the dissensions, both in the Chamber and in the Press, revealed a great confusion of ideas. In each party men’s minds were so divided on the subject of the Jesuits, or rather on that of educational liberty, which was so closely linked with it, that nothing of immediate gravity to the Government could for the moment arise; its seriousness was only to become manifest with time and when men’s ideas had grown clearer.

Thus the struggle between the two enemies began afresh, more ardently than before, and without any greater promise of victory to the one than to the other. Thiers had nothing but sarcasm for the entente cordiale-, but he could not induce the Centre to repudiate it. All he could persuade that

1842-5] French policy in Tahiti and Morocco.                          35

body to do was to restrict the range of the entente, to force Guizot into making a kind of amende honorable, and soon afterwards to try to compel him to extract from England measures unpalatable alike to that country and its Queen. Yet Guizot could hardly have paid less for the entente than by his refusal to annex Tahiti, and by insisting on the literal carrying out of the orders given to Admiral Dupetit-Thouars. The Admiral—instructed to occupy the Marquesas Isles—had taken upon himself to sign a treaty (September 9, 1842) with Pomare, Queen of Tahiti. This treaty, concluded in the absence of the Queen’s English adviser, the missionary Consul Pritchard, placed Tahiti in the position of a protected State. In November, 1843, Dupetit-Thouars returned to find that Pritchard had inspired the Queen with sentiments adverse to France. Accordingly he annexed the island and eventually expelled Pritchard (March, 1844). The news of his action had produced violent excitement in both England and France, and each nation de­manded satisfaction for the insults offered to her national pride. But the “ Tahiti stupidities,” as Louis-Philippe called them, were not worth a war with England, and Guizot was therefore reluctantly induced by the English Government to disavow the Admiral and his annexation projects, and to make a sort of reparation for the injury to Pritchard.

And, as to French relations with Morocco, the Ministry was surely right a thousand times over, in resting content with a victory on the Isly, and a bombardment of Tangier and Mogador, and in not wishing to add the immense difficulties of a struggle with Moroccan fanaticism to those France was already encountering in the resistance of the Algerians. The arrest of French progress in Morocco pleased England, and induced her to concede an official recognition of French definite establishment at Algiers. No doubt the future was to show the mistake France made in dealing with Morocco as if it were a duly constituted Empire; but this error was not apparent at the time or to the Opposition. On the contrary, all these arrangements were attacked by Thiers and his friends as involving injury to the national honour; and, unfortunately for the rigime, Guizot could not defend himself by revealing the secret aim of his policy, the crowning success he looked for as the result of his alliance with England. He therefore tried to strengthen his majority by certain concessions to the Right, more apparent than real. He authorised Villemain, in February, 1844, to bring in a Bill which was headed by the words “ Liberty of Education,” but which, since it proceeded to do away with that same “ liberty ” in practice, evoked a fresh outcry from bishops and laity alike. Even the Centre would not allow him to profit by this cleverly engineered move in the direction of the Right, but retorted by handing over to Thiers the report drawn up in defence of the University monopoly—not as justifiable in itself, but as taking into account “ the period and the country.”  _

Thus in the struggle at the beginning of 1845 neither Thiers nor

36 Thiers seeks aid from Palmerston and Barrot. [1844-5

Guizot had gained the upper hand. By this time both had grown weary of the narrow and obstinate dictation of the Centre, and each in his own fashion began to seek for some means of escape therefrom. The Treaty of May 29,1845, between England and France suppressed the unlimited right of search and replaced it by organising a joint Franco-English squadron for the purpose in question. Thus Guizot finally got rid of that question to which, as to a kind of clog, the Centre had bound him, and proceeded to make advances to the party of reaction, which, if not more sincere, were at least more marked than before. Comte de Salvandy was appointed Minister of Public Instruction in the place of Villemain, and reprimands were addressed to Michelet and Quinet for their lectures on the Jesuits. Thiers, on his side, used similar tactics, and violently interpellated the Government on its illegal and culpable toleration towards those religious Orders (i.e. the Jesuits) which the old Monarchy had expelled. Finding that the Centre did not really oppose it, and that the secret necessities of the regime demanded it, he even proceeded to attack his rival on the subject of the entente cordiale, and to seek allies in England itself. Since Guizot had come to an understanding with the English Tories, Thiers must needs cultivate relations with the Whigs; and with this view he entered, towards the end of 1844, into a correspondence with Palmerston, and went over to England in 1845, in order to get into closer touch with him.

At this juncture, while the veiled enemies of the July Monarchy— both Republicans and Catholics—were growing impatient, underground movements were making themselves felt in Europe, most of all in Germany and in Italy. In England the return of the Whigs to power seemed certain; and, since the fall of the Aberdeen Cabinet seemed imminent, Thiers followed up his foreign alliance with Palmerston with an alliance at home. On December 25,1845, he signed a formal treaty with Odilon Barrot, and through Barrot with the moderate Republicans, now called Parliamentary Radicals. In the event of Guizot’s fall, Thiers undertook to make room for Barrot and his friends in the Ministry, and also to support a proposal of electoral reform backed by Le National, which lowered the franchise to 100 francs, while at the same time giving voting rights to certain professions, in such a way as to double the electoral strength of the nation. At the same time—and this was a matter of graver import, and only explicable by his anger with Louis- Philippe—Thiers undertook not only to tackle the subject of parlia­mentary corruption, but also to discuss the question of the “personal power” of a King, who had “ betrayed the parliamentary system.¹’

In face of these combined attacks Guizot did not remain inactive. He countered Thiers’ alliance with the Radicals by his own alliance with the Catholics, to whom this time he was forced to offer a genuine quid pro quo. He allowed Salvandy to supersede the Royal Council of Public Instruction (wherein Cousin reigned supreme) in favour of a Council drawn

1845-e] Guizot, Thiers and Louis-PMUppe.

37

from different classes of the population, two-thirds of the members of which were to be renewed annually. To the Catholics and to the Pope, who had assisted in ridding him more or less effectually of the trouble­some Jesuit problem, he made what was tantamount to a solemn promise to grant liberty of education. Finally, he took his own precautions with regard to foreign affairs, that is to say, he planned a certain diplomatic victory over England. In order not to lose the unique advantage which he had counted upon deriving from the entente cordiale before Palmerston’s return to power, he hurried on the project of the marriage of the Due de Montpensier with the Infanta Louisa-Fernanda, and endeavoured to make it simultaneous with that of Queen Isabella with Don Francis of Asis, the Duke of Cadiz. This project was well under way at the end of 1845, though, in a second meeting between Queen Victoria and Louis-Philippe at Eu in 1845, renewed disclaimers had been made by Guizot. All his plans, as well as those of Thiers, were suspended in consequence of the somewhat unexpected patching-up of the English Tory Ministry for a further six months (December, 1845— June, 1846), during which period it was clearly necessary for Guizot, as the Minister in power, and Thiers as his rival in Opposition, to set about postponing the performance of the promises made to their allies at home. Thiers obtained a respite from Odilon Barrot, and delayed the introduction of his proposed electoral reform. Guizot felt himself justified in not immediately bringing the question of educa­tional liberty before the Chamber. The Ministers were “ forced to await the result of the new elections and their effect upon parliamentary majorities both in England and France,” and so forth. Nevertheless, the parliamentary session held on its way, unaffected by any such reasoning; and the only subjects of discussion were “corruption” and the “ personal power.” Thus Thiers and Guizot, with one eye on the future and the other upon those home allies likely to be useful in the coming electoral campaign, carried their inconsistency to the point of stripping the customary veil from the personality and practice of the King. The former accused him, in so many words, of reviving the spirit and methods of Charles X, and, in order to frighten him, pointed to the possibility of new barricades—thus reawakening in the country a memory which it would have been far better to let sleep. Guizot, on the other hand, supported the King in his refusal to surrender any of the royal prerogatives, asserting that he regarded them as “ sheet- anchors in the storms which the country might yet be called upon to face.” Such language, though apparently a defence of the monarch, really justified all hostile criticism, and invited France to lay the responsibility for every misfortune upon the Sovereign alone.

In July, 1846, the dissolution of the Chamber was announced. Beneath the activity of the parties in opposition and especially of their most hostile portion, a change was perceptible, too slight to

38 The situation in Europe and in France. [i846

bring about an alteration in the parliamentary balance, but enough to prove that there was something wrong with the frail mechanism which for sixteen years had triturated the fortunes both of the nation and the throne. The personnel of two sections of the Centre had suffered change, and one of them finally consented to follow Guizot on the question of educational liberty, while still stipulating that it should be denied to the interdicted religious Orders. The other accepted the principle of the advisability of reform—even of electoral reform, provided that it was carried out under the auspices, not of Thiers, but of Guizot. But this was by no means the most threatening storm-signal of this new time. At this precise moment everything outside Prance was under­going a process of transformation. It was not only manifest in England, which had just seen the triumphant return to power of Palmerston and the Whigs (June, 1846)—a return so desired by Thiers, so dreaded by Guizot. In Switzerland the capture of the Federal Council by the Radicals was complete, and official Europe was much alarmed by this ominous demonstration of the power of democracy. Germany also was profoundly agitated when the Schleswig-Holstein question entered upon an acute phase; while a similar wave of nation­alist sentiment was sweeping over Italy, shaken to its foundations by the election of Pio Nono. All nationalities, especially those suffering or believing themselves to be suffering from oppression, stirred simultane­ously as at a preconcerted signal—the people of Austria, the Danes, even the Poles whose national heart had seemed almost to have ceased beating. Everything in Europe, as in France, was in a state of ferment and restlessness.

As is inevitable at such times, dissension was everywhere. French Republicans and French Catholics were as hopelessly divided as to the end to be attained, as in regard to the means to be employed. Foreign nations, even the great mass of the French people themselves, hardly knew what they wanted, and only a little more clearly what they did not want. To Thiers and Guizot, seeking inspiration from events in England (which they were really as incapable of interpreting as of understanding Europe, or even France itself, at this moment of transition), the time seemed to have come when, in the interests of the Monarchy of the juste milieu, their trump-card must be played. Guizot, for his part, did not hesitate to break up the foreign entente to which he had hitherto devoted his efforts, in order to conceal from Thiers and Palmerston its main object, viz. the marriage of Isabella to Francis of Asis and the simultaneous union (since Maria Christina insisted upon it) of the Infanta to the Due de Montpensier. On October 10,1846, it was announced to the world that, in direct defiance of previous French pledges, these marriages would immediately take place. England, and Palmerston were furious, since, as it was believed that Isabella would never have a child by her husband, the Due de Montpensier might

1846-7]

Effect of the Spanish Marriages.

39

one day sit on the throne of Spain. But for this remote prospect England cared less than for the immediate insult to her national pride involved in Guizot’s breach of faith. The immediate effect was the severing of the entente cor diale, and the isolation of France in Europe.

Henceforward events followed one another so quickly that, at home as well as abroad, all was confusion. Palmerston, enraged at being tricked by Guizot in the affair of the Spanish marriages, tried to persuade Metternich that the presence of the Due de Montpensier in Madrid would reestablish that union between France and Spain which had existed under Louis XIV and Philip V. When this hope flickered out, he busied himself, regardless of the cost, in setting France against Austria, or Austria against France a propos of events in Switzerland and Italy. In every conceivable way, and by every conceivable means, he tried to wreck the France of Guizot and Louis-Philippe, even that of Thiers, by supplying weapons to their opponents. Metternich, who had taken advantage of the sudden coldness between France and England to annex Cracow, and, having just drawn upon himself an academic though indignant protest from Guizot, was not ashamed to disavow his whole past policy. He was now ready to seek the help of that very France whose susceptibilities he had trampled under foot, so that, aided by France’s King and by Guizot, he might the better fight revolution—and this time it was revolution indeed.

Finally, in France itself, there was a most interesting change of front on the part of both Republicans and Catholics. The Catholics, disgusted at seeing the Chamber reject once more the proposal for liberty of education (May, 1847), in spite of Guizot’s efforts, seemed disposed to listen to the overtures of the Republicans. For they not unnaturally thought that it could scarcely be more difficult to induce an electorate, based upon universal suffrage, to give them what they wanted, than it had proved to persuade one composed of small property-owners. The moderate Republicans, such as Marrast, Marie, Carnot, willing but a short while before to submit to Thiers’ evasions, now decided, in proportion as they realised his “hypocrisy” and his imperious need of their assistance, to impose harder conditions upon him. Suddenly, in the midst of all this the whole reputation for probity upon which this French middle class Government prided itself, which reputation Guizot’s morgue had largely helped to preserve, collapsed completely beneath the crushing weight of a number of notorious scandals. Teste, a former colleague of Guizot, was convicted of having sold to Cubieres, a former colleague of Thiers, a salt-mine concession for a considerable amount of hard cash. At the same time by way of violent contrast, men bankrupt in reputation were being whitewashed, thanks to the talents of enthusiastic advocates. These bankrupts were the men of the Terror and their advocates, men like Louis Blanc, Jules Michelet and Alphonse de Lamartine. The impassioned albeit

ch. u.

inaccurate Histoire des Girondins by Lamartine brought his publishers a success which was celebrated at Ma^on in July, 1847, by a colossal banquet to 6000 guests. In the face of such calamities to the regime it was inevitable that Thiers and Guizot should yield some ground to their allies, in the hope of recapturing it later on if they could.

Guizot was now forced to hasten the reconquest of Montalembert by proclaiming aloud from the tribune that “ for all the moral diseases of society religious faith and liberty are the sovereign remedies.” He asked from the Catholics only “a little patience” and he would give them their educational liberty. Thiers, for his part, half of his own free will and half from necessity, allowed his friends to sit side by side with Odilon Barrot and the Republicans at a whole campaign of banquets, designed to bring pressure to bear first upon public opinion and subsequently on the Government, with the view of precipitating electoral reform. Thiers, who hoped, though the expectation was a vain one, to conciliate Louis-Philippe, took no personal part in these banquets, the object of which, in his view, was to strengthen and steady the institutions of July. Unfortunately .for Thiers, Barrot was from the outset in a position to dictate his own terms to him. Barrot himself was soon forced to yield to the moderate Republicans, who in their turn were soon to give way before those of the advanced section. Starting with the omission of the royal toast, and then with that of the bald toast to the July Institutions, these banquets, originated in Paris with a view to the enlargement of a too restricted suffrage, were destined to pass by imperceptible degrees, as at Lille and Rouen, to the glorification of manhood suffrage by Ledru-Rollin. Nor was Guizot more fortunate in his alliances, though the theatre of his mortifications lay outside France. What advantage was it to him to be hand and glove with the Catholics, and to have risked checkmate against Palmerston in Switzerland, if the Church of Rome, which he had served so well there, was to elude him in Italy? Pope Pius IX paid no attention to him, and, at the very moment when the banquets were producing their greatest effect in France, gave rein in the Italian Peninsula to an immense movement towards freedom and unity, which was destined to shake all the monarchies of Europe to their foundations.

Everything should have warned Thiers and Guizot of their im­prudence ; but their positions, and the element of infatuation in their characters, ill-fitted them to understand what was going on in the hearts of nations. Their excuse must be sought in the confusion of ideas then prevalent everywhere, alike among the masses and among those who aspired to lead then—whether they were Catholics and Republicans as in France, or national patriots as in Germany and Italy. So great, for example, was the political indecision of the French people, powerless, for lack of a man to reestablish the one form of government which seemed at the moment to be suited to it, viz. the Empire, that neither

Catholics nor Republicans could' look forward to a lasting or even a possible victory. And this explains how it was that Thiers and Guizot, in spite of all their compromises with the Extreme Left and the Extreme Right, failed to take alarm, but continued to devote themselves unremit­tingly to their favourite idea—the taming of a rebellious majority.

At the beginning of 1848, Guizot, still believing in the possibility of isolating his rival from the Monarchical Centre for good and all, proposed to the Chamber that his Government should denounce those “ blind or hostile passions¹¹ which did not even recoil before the criminal idea of altering, in some degree, those institutions which had governed France so long without shock and without disturbance. Thiers had already defined his attitude at the end of 1847 in a discourse which was indeed a masterpiece of contradictions (not all of them intended). Extremely bold in parts, so as to make a powerful impression on the Centre, it was also extremely timid in others, since he still had to maintain his character of a possible Minister, acceptable alike to the King and to Mettemich. If he spoke, now of the painful necessity of respecting the treaties of 1815, now of the opposite necessity of recognising the movements towards unity of the Italian peoples, it was with the deliberate design of inviting the Centre to choose between him, Thiers, who prided himself upon his leanings towards Revolution, and Guizot, whom he accused of reverting to the ancien regime. Vain efforts on the part of both! The Centre repulsed Thiers and, for the moment, condescended to approve of Guizot’s foreign policy, and even to censure those “blind or hostile passions” which desired reforms. Yet immediately afterwards, by its mouthpiece, Desmousseaux de Givre, it was reproaching the Minister with having accomplished “ nothing! nothing! nothing!” And then these same deputies, as though afflicted with arnnesie, proceeded to demand the belated introduction of “ wise and moderate reforms.” What was this but incoherence in excelsis—absurdity reigning fatally supreme in a kingdom which prided itself upon being the Realm of Reason?

Moreover in January-February, 1848, while nothing in the state of things abroad justified Louis-Philippe and Guizot in arguing the existence of a dangerous social upheaval, neither was there anything to justify them in their threats of a counter-revolution. Austria and Metternich, bowing before accomplished facts, had seen constitutional governments erected at Naples, Florence and Turin, and a Liberal in the Chair of Saint Peter. The hour was approaching when the Monarchy of the juste milieu would have once and for all to reveal its true policy to a nation whose sentiments had profoundly changed since 1830.

Should the Monarchy fail thus to declare itself, it remained to be seen what incident would cause, and what would be the manner of, its downfall. A doubtful point of law had presided over its origin, and was now to preside over its end. The Opposition Dynastic as well as Republican—decided to hold a great banquet in Paris, to answer

42

Presages of storm.

[1848

the censure passed by Guizot upon its “blind or hostile passions.” But Hebert, the Minister of Justice, interpreting a legal enactment in heroic fashion, claimed the right to prohibit this banquet—a gage of defiance which the Opposition took up by simply asserting that the banquet would take place. Both sides proceeded to take up their positions. On the one side should have been the troops and also—it was thought— the National Guard; on the other the insurrectionary forces. But then* all of a sudden, both parties took fright. The Government had only a limited confidence in the National Guard and preferred not to put its loyalty to the test; the deputies ranged round Thiers did not feel sure enough of their Republican allies; Barrot himself had not sufficient confidence in the support of the populace.

A sort of tacit understanding was arranged between the Ministry and the Opposition, an incongruous compromise which threatened to reduce the conflict to the proportions of a farce. The banquet was to be announced for February 22, and the demonstrators were to be present, but without any display of military force and in obedience to a simple police order; they were then to disperse; after which the legal aspect of the question could be thrashed out in the Courts. Everything was admirably foreseen—except the numbers and the organisation of the demonstrating procession. Le National proceeded on its own responsi­bility to draw up the plan of a grandiose procession, wherein the various corporations, societies, groups, even the National Guard itself, should march in their appointed order. Could it be that the possibility of such a procession exceeding the limits, allowed by the Government, was also not wholly unforeseen ? The Ministry threatened to rescind its pledge, and to mobilise both the troops and the National Guard. The Opposition, becoming alarmed, decided during the night of February 21-22, 1848, that Le National and La Reforrrie should countermand the procession in their issues of the next morning, and peace seemed to reign once more. Accordingly, the morning of the 22nd duly arrived without any military precautions having been decided upon by the Government, just as no programme of action had been drawn up by the leaders of the hetero­geneous Opposition—Left Centre, Left Dynastic, middle class Republicans, Socialist Republicans. But, on that same morning, the mass of the people of Paris, who did not read the newspapers and were unwarned of the change of programme—urged on simply by curiosity and without any in­stigation from recognised leaders—took a decisive step. Hardly knowing what they wanted, but desiring to express their invincible dislike towards Guizot, the King and even Thiers himself—in fact towards all the beneficiaries of that regime which had exploited the credulity of the masses for eighteen years—the citizens thronged into the streets in unexpected numbers.

CHAPTER III.

LIBERALISM AND NATIONALITY IN GERMANY AND AUSTRIA.

(1840-8.)

In Germany and Austria the years 1840-7 are of special interest as the period in which the revolutionary storms of 1848-9 were preparing. An antiquated political condition was evidently hastening towards dissolution. It was obvious that an absolutist and bureaucratic system of government could not quench the fire of Liberal and national ideas, which continued to blaze forth with ever growing strength and intensity; nor could it help towards that minimum of agreement between rulers and ruled which is essential for the maintenance of stability in our complicated modem States. To attain to its full vigour, a State needs the support and approval of those national influences which contribute the most to its economic, social, and intellectual life. At that time these were to be found in the middle classes, among men of education and the more progressive citizens. But in this very class the opposition was strongly represented; and it was now spreading downward to the lower grades of the population, whose traditional devotion had hitherto been the main support of the ruling Houses in Germany and Austria.

Still the strength and significance of these opposing tendencies must not be gauged only by the elemental power with which they forced a way in 1848; we must estimate them from a more comprehensive stand­point. Though they overthrew the old Government regime, they did not destroy all the foundations on which it rested. It was no such easy matter to set aside the institutions built up by centuries of labour. The bureaucracy and the military system in particular, the two main supports of absolute monarchy, were so securely constituted that they survived the shock of the Revolution. Moreover the antagonistic tendencies of the middle and lower classes were still very far from undermining the remnant of loyalty to the dynasty. When, therefore, the national and Liberal demands at last compelled recognition from the Governments, important remnants of the old political regime were able, not only to survive, but also to attain to fresh and vigorous life. These facts must be kept in mind in noting the symptoms which characterise the overthrow of the old forces and the rise of the new ideas.

44

Austrian government at the centre.

[1815-48

We may begin with Austria, that Power which still held the actual hegemony in Germany. The system of government which prevailed after 1815 and is elsewhere described underwent no essential change during this period. But it could be maintained only in a form which hastened its internal decay. The Emperor Ferdinand, who succeeded to the throne in 1835, was good-natured and inoffensive, but mentally and physically insignificant. The real task of government was therefore undertaken, not by a regularly constituted regency, but through the further development of an existing organ of central government, com­posed of a small number of dignitaries, and known as the State Conference (Staatskonferenz). As representative of the Emperor, the Archduke Louis became President of this body in 1836, and in his absence Prince Mettemich took his place; the other regular members were the Archduke Francis Charles, and Count Kolowrat, who had charge of the finance department. Other members who could be summoned, when required, were the heads of the separate sections of the State Council (Staatsrat), and the Presidents of the so-called HofsteUen (Court offices), who were really the highest adn”' listrative authorities of the State. Even under the Emperor Francis I there had been a marked want of cooperation between these three bodies—the State Conference, the State Council, and the Court offices; and it now proved impossible to establish the missing connexion. The heads of sections of the State Council and the Presidents of the Court offices, who were only summoned now and then and for a special purpose to the meetings of the State Conference, remained in their former isolation.

On the other hand of the two officials permanently attached to the State Conference, Mettemich was already so overburdened with foreign affairs, and Kolowrat with the finances, that they had but little leisure for other state matters. Nor was it long before a bitter personal rivalry broke out between the two. As in adfition to this, Archduke Louis, partly from indolence partly from fear, opposed every innovation, it is not surprising that in the heart of the State a somnolent condition set in, and that mere routine and listless habit prevailed even more generally than before. In the forties the State Conference met less and less often. Mettemich was not unaware of the weakness of the administrative organisation; but he contented himself with his own peculiar domain, that of German and foreign policy, and with promulgating those maxims which helped even beyond the borders of Austria to maintain the con­dition of stagnation, so indispensable to the preservation of the existing Government.

Thus the system of political separation and the suppression of all political desires and tendencies of a Liberal character, remained in force; but the power necessary to maintain its full severity gradually declined. Though newspapers and pamphlets published in the country were still subject to strict censorship, there was no difficulty in introducing into

1840-8] Liberal and National movements in Austria. 45

Austria the Liberal literature of foreign countries, so long as care was taken to avoid any aggressive provocation of the police. All this litera­ture was eagerly consumed by the educated classes: while the young scholars and students steeped themselves in Radical ideas. Even the teachers in the universities, though nominally subject to the severest restrictions in regard to their teaching, could allow themselves con­siderable latitude, so long as they avoided touching on the dogmas of the Catholic Church. Under the shadow of a patriarchal police regime new life was sprouting upward in almost all directions; and even these tentative movements showed how serious were the problems that a modernised Austria would have to face, and what a disintegrating effect the idea of nationality must exercise upon its polity.

It is important to distinguish carefully two political movements: first, that which aimed mainly at Liberal and constitutional measures without affecting the essential character of the Austrian institutions; and, next, that which combined the Liberal demand for weakening the central State with the National claim for the emancipation of the individual nationality. The movement in the German lauds took, as might be expected, the former course in different parts, but it differed much in intensity. In the Alpine districts it was least developed; in Lower Austria and the capital Vienna the greatest activity was shown. It was indeed a noteworthy circumstance that the Assembly of Estates in Lower Austria began to evince some political zeal. During the last century the separate national assemblies, with the except'on of the Hungarian Parliament which is treated elsewhere, had entirely lost their pol ical significance. They might have their say in the revision of tariffs, and might even bring forward modest requests and representations, but in all other respects they were mere harmless shadows of their former selves. And practically they only represented the nobility. But now the Assembly of Estates in Lower Austria was beginning to seek support from the well-to-do and cultivated citizens of Vienna, in the hope of thus increasing its importance. Its representations to the Government grew in boldness, and though it expressed the one-sided interests of the landed gentry with a certain naivete, it also sent in complaints about general abuses, pressing for a more effectual parliamentary representation of the cities, and for various modem reforms in legislation and taxation. In this way the old Estates acquired a new significance.

The same thing happened in Bohemia. Here, too, the Diet was essentially representative of the land-owning nobility; but the memory of the old days, when the Estates had taken their share in the Govern­ment, was being awakened. They recalled the “ renovated Constitution ” established by the Emperor Ferdinand II in 1627, which had originally aimed at diminishing the power of the Assembly and increasing that of the King. Now that absolutism had made such advances, this Constitution had come to be regarded as a source of rights and as a

46 Bohemian demands-Revolt in Galicia and Cracow. [1815-47

documentary proof of their existence, and as such was once more brought to light. As a matter of form the Diet still voted the taxes, though this procedure was always treated by the Government as an empty formality. But since the beginning of the forties the Bohemian Diet had claimed the right to consider and, if need be, to refuse the proposals of the Government with regard to taxation. This claim resulted in animated discussions and disputes with the Government, notably during 1847. A very slight increase of taxation was required for the main­tenance of the municipal criminal courts (Stadtlcriminalgerichte), in Bohemia. The Government proposed to raise this by an increased land tax, to be levied in Bohemia alone; but the Parliament insisted that the expenses should be included in the general budget of the State, and vetoed the increased taxation. At that time the Government was still strong enough to disregard the protest of the Parliament and levy the tax in the form it preferred. The Bohemian Estates too must have felt that the basis of their old Constitution no longer sufficed to bring the fight with the Government and the bureaucracy to a successful issue. They too, like the corresponding class in Lower Austria, were trying to get into touch with the interests of the middle class. But they could draw upon an even stronger force by invoking the spirit of Cech nationality. At that time the Cechs were devoting energy and en­thusiasm to the study of their language, literature, and history, and were zealously cultivating the Pan-Slavonic idea of the interconnexion of all Slav peoples. Partly under the influence of romanticism, but still more with a view to establishing the independence and originality of Cech civilisation, zealous students like Palacky and Schafarik studied the ancient history of the Cechs and Slavs.

Events in Galicia at that time proved that the interconnexion between the Slav peoples had not attained to that ideal intimacy which the Cechs desired. The Polish revolutionary party, completely defeated in Russian Poland, had set its hopes on fresh risings in Galicia and the Prussian province of Posen; and the little State of Cracow, established as a neutralised free republic in 1815 and as the last survival of Polish autonomy, now became a centre of agitation and conspiracy. The neigh­bouring Powers, the original accomplices in the partition of Poland_________________

Russia, Austria and Prussia—had already, in the secret agreement of 1835, resolved to abolish the troublesome little republic and to incorporate it with Austria. In fact they had actually sent troops into the territory of Cracow, to suppress the agitation there in 1836. Ten years later the flames of revolution were rekindled at Cracow with greater force. Under the leadership of Mieroslawski, the Poles determined to declare their independence on February 14,1846, in Posen and Galicia simultaneously. The conspiracy in Posen was discovered before it broke out and was easily suppressed; but in Cracow and Galicia there was fighting in real earnest. Cracow itself was subdued early in March by the Austrian Colonel Benedek—the unfortunate commander-in-chief of 1866—who rallied to

1840-6] Austria annexes Cracow.—Situation of Prussia. 47

his side a number of peasants from Poland, especially from the Ruthenian district of Galicia, by allowing them to give full rein to their fierce hatred of their Polish landlords, whose country estates fell a prey to fire and plunder. Thus, with the silent connivance of the Austrian authorities, who felt themselves powerless to check the movement, one revolution was quelled by means of another. But the days of the free- state of Cracow were numbered. The European compact of 1815 was arbitrarily set aside, and in November, 1846, the two other Eastern Powers looked quietly on while Austria absorbed Cracow.

The struggle between the Ruthenian and Polish nationalities in Galicia was a prelude to that which Austria was to witness on a far larger scale in 1848, when the race hatred of the different nationalities broke out in full fury. Still in Galicia the political situation was comparatively simple, for the Polish magnates were struggling for emancipation, while the Ruthenian nationality naturally sought for support by attaching itself to the Austrian Government.' In Hungary matters were far more complicated and difficult. Here the Magyars were trying to extend their dominion over the Croats, who, for their part, desired to bring the Slovenes and Serbs in Hungary and Dalmatia under their banner. In deciding which to favour of the two nationalities, the Government found itself between Scylla and Charybdis. The Magyars were a very important political factor, on account of their greater autonomy, which they exer­cised in Parliament by a right of taxation by no means merely formal. Moreover they formed the only nationality within the Austrian borders destitute of any kindred branch beyond those borders with which to combine. Their policy and fortunes are treated in another chapter.

Prussia, the second of the great German Powers, unlike Austria, had no such subversive tendencies to contend against. The Polish troubles of 1846 affected only the outer circle of the Prussian kingdom, and were easily suppressed. Still, Prussia too had to be prepared for the contin­gencies of a general revolution, which would certainly bring with it' a fresh outbreak in Poland, and might endanger the Rhine provinces, her most westerly possession, which was as yet but imperfectly incorporated in the common State. Far more comprehensive and deep-seated were the difficulties involved in Prussia’s internal condition and in the general character of her relation to the Germanic Body, even in the years that preceded the outbreak of the Revolution. The accession of Frederick William IV on June 7,1840, is one of the most important landmarks in the Prussian and German history of the nineteenth century. It brought Prussia back again into the German movement, and restored her to the position of a living and active member of the whole German National life. The Zollverein had already woven close bonds round Prussia and the rest of Germany; and the feeling of unity promoted by the Wars of Liberation had nowhere quite died out. But complaints were general about the weakening of this sentiment in Prussia, for she

48 Character of Frederick William IF'.—His ideas. [i840

was returning to her former unyielding self-sufficiency, and, except with regard to the Zollverein, she had made herself unpleasantly conspicuous as an ally of Mettemich. Political life too manifested itself far more quietly and peaceably in Prussia, particularly in her old provinces, than in the turbulent south and west of Germany. This was in large measure due to the loyalty and veneration with which in his later years King Frederick William III had been regarded, notwithstanding his narrow­minded and even oppressive rigime A shadow had seemed to rest on Prussia; but everything was changed with the accession of a new ruler. The monarch, the Government, and the people of Prussia once more step out into the clear daylight of German national history.

This change was due to the peculiar character of the new King, to the vigorous internal life of the people and the State, and to the impetus given by Prussia’s political position in Germany and by the movements in other parts of Europe. The King’s peculiarity consisted less in recognising and utilising the strongest and most fruitful tendencies of his time, than in setting the whole in stronger motion. He had enough sympathy with the new movement to feel drawn towards many of its demands, and to give the impression of a man who might play the part of leader to his age and his people. It was an impression, and nothing more; for it soon became evident that an impassable gulf lay between his desires and those of the majority of his contemporaries. Still the King, who in contrast with his taciturn father, was a brilliant and eloquent speaker, ' was inspired in his utterances by so much enthusiasm, such deep personal feeling, and so peculiar an insight into life and politics, that he actually stirred up and roused the very persons opposed to him in principle.

Greater political freedom and stronger national unity were the chief desires both of his contemporaries and of himself, but his meaning was different from theirs. The only thing he had in common with them was his opposition to bureaucratic absolutism on the one hand, and on the other to the treaties of 1815 and the subsequent settlement of Germany, which did not suffice to satisfy the national wishes. The substitute he proposed for the former was, however, not the Constitutional State, which his contemporaries desired, but the rule of the Estates, which would revive the rights and prestige of the nobles and corporations, and reflect the mystic glories of a divinely consecrated and patriarchal monarchy. In place of the sober and grudging Act of Confederation, he dreamed of a revived Holy Roman Empire, in which he, the heir of Frederick the Great, would voluntarily submit himself to Austria, as the wearer of the crown of Charlemagne. This idea, which he confided in 1840 to his intimate friend Colonel Joseph von Radowitz, proves in itself that his policy was not primarily concerned with the domain of reality. Though he was proud of his Prussian Crown and wished to see Prussia occupy a distin­guished and prominent place in Europe, and himself play the part of a leader, a “ duke ” of the German forces, he was at least as much attracted

by the poetic splendour as by the actual power of the position. He was in fact a true romanticist, in the matter as well as the mode of his thought, and many of his ideas may be found in the pages of Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel, and Gorres. His romantic feeling shows itself in his passionate love for the German nation, but also in his readiness to sub­ordinate the individual interests of the separate States and nations to the idea of a universal community of European Christianity. It was shown in his desire to revive the Holy Roman Empire, which was to form the nucleus of a European league of peace, and in his growing enthusiasm for the idea of a new “ Holy Alliance,” and of a mutual combination against breach of the peace, revolution and violent change.

But, in spite of his fierce hatred of the French Revolution and all its consequences, he was too clever and large-minded to take pleasure in the detestable policy of repression and the persecution of popular leaders which had prevailed during the last decades. His reign began with a breath of freedom, by the restoration to his professorship at Bonn of the cruelly persecuted Ernst Moritz Arndt and the grant of an amnesty to the imprisoned demagogues; while of the seven Gottingen professors, who (as related in a previous volume) had been recently subjected to unfair treatment, the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm received appoint­ments at the Berlin Academy, and Dahlmann was called to a chair at Bonn (1842). In the beginning of 1841 he even reinstated Boyen as War Minister, which office he had been compelled to resign at the time of the Carlsbad decrees in 1819 on account of his Liberal tendencies. This did not mean that the King shared Boyen’s Liberal views, but that he honoured in him the faithful patriot, who had fought side by side with Schamhorst during the War of Liberation. Of course Boyen with his Liberal tendencies found himself in a position of much isolation in the King’s Council (1847), and, even in his own domain of army administra­tion, found it difficult to defend the popular and Liberal side of the military organisation, the Landwehr, against the aristocratic military spirit of the Prussian officers.

At any rate, Frederick William IV contrived to connect all these measures with the period which appealed most strongly to his own ideals, that of the War of Liberation. And the actual moment of his accession recalled these traditions and coincided with a striking develop­ment of national consciousness, aroused by the position of the various Powers and the fear lest France, checked in her other ambitions, should seek to compensate herself by conquering the left bank of the Rhine. It was at this time that Niklas Becker’s famous song of the Rhine, Sie sollen ihn nicht haben, den freien deutschen Rhevn, and Max Schnecken- burger’s song, Die Wacht am Rhein, were written. The King himself was full of great schemes in case of war resulting in the victory of the German arms; such as the reconquest of Elsass and Lothringen, the establishment of a Burgundian kingdom under an Austrian Archduke,

50

National movement in Prussia.

[1840-2

the inclusion of Holland and Switzerland in the German Union. In November, 1840, he sent Radowitz and General von Grolman, one of the ablest leaders of 1813, to Vienna, to draw up plans of campaign and to discuss the reform of the wretched military constitution of the German Confederation. But neither Austria nor the secondary States were disposed to undertake an effectual reform of the military organisation, which must inevitably increase Prussian influence. Consequently, when the fear of war had passed by, the result achieved was but small. An inspection of the contingents of the Union was introduced, and it was agreed to take in hand the long postponed erection of fortifications in southern Germany at Ulm and Rastatt.

Still, the national hopes, once reawakened in the German peoples, were never again completely lost. From this time forward till the Revolution of 1848 they swelled into an ever rising stream. Few persons had any consistent and clear conception of the form which a national united Germany should take, but the desire to achieve it was a very vivid reality. In this period of transition literary and philosophic were giving way to political and social interests, and even poetry and philosophy were transformed into weapons of attack. Bold young poets came forward with startling new songs touching on the events of the hour—Herwegh, Dingelstedt, Freiligrath, Prutz; and the Hegelian philosophy, which had formed the highest point of idealistic thought in Germany, had now to furnish the roads leading down again to reality. Thus the young Hegelians, with Arnold Ruge at their head, founded on Hegelian formulae the demands for universal, political, social, and intellectual advance in accordance with Liberal and Radical ideas. There was constant and varied activity in the literature of the day, and a young generation was growing up with great demands, ready to criticise without mercy all existing institutions and full of optimistic illusions.

Its first and chief demand was “ space in which a free spirit might find room to soar,” i.e. abolition of the censorial restrictions on poetry and literature, which had been established both by the Confederation and by the separate States. Frederick William for his part was quite ready to modify the system of the censorship. In 1841-2 he made it much less stringent, exempting works of more than twenty sheets in length; and in 1842 he established a chief Court of censorship, in order to maintain a regular legal safeguard in this domain. But when he found that the writers were abusing the new freedom, the mild censorial regime soon came to an end; and the only result was mutual anger and recrimi­nation between the Government and public opinion.

In religious matters the King pacified the quarrels with the Curia and the Prussian Catholics by considerable concessions. Though Arch­bishop Droste was not allowed to return to Cologne, Archbishop Dunin was reinstated in Posen (1840); and the dispute about mixed marriages was decided according to the views of the Church, while the “ Catholic

Section,” established in 1841 in the Prussian Ministry of Public Worship and composed of Catholic councillors, provided an effective organ within the Government for ultramontane ambitions. The King was blind to this danger, because his romantic views inspired him with deep respect for the ancient glory of the Roman Church, and drew him, despite his earnest Protestantism, towards the idea of the universal connexion between all faithful Christians. This made him tolerant towards all Christian denominations whose piety rested on firm dogma; but it also rendered him opposed and even intolerant towards all freer tendencies which sought to escape from dogmatic bondage. He suspected in them some revolutionary element; and, at that time, the camps in Germany were so divided that war was waged at the same time against political and ecclesiastical authorities. Indeed, the King’s circle of friends included the men who found in the aristocratic and patriarchal polity that which God had appointed and consecrated, the really “Christian Germanic” State, and the complement of their political ideals in a pietistic orthodoxy.

This group included, besides the Catholic Radowitz, General Leopold von Gerlach, his brother the eminent lawyer Ludwig von Gerlach, the Cabinet Minister General von Thile, Count Anton Stolberg, Baron Senfft von Pilsach and others. These “ Bible hussars,” some of whom even regarded dancing as a sinful pursuit, were all men of high character and refinement, but were regarded by public opinion with contemptuous dislike; and the King’s own rule soon confirmed the fears that had been felt as to this combination of politics and religion, and the aggressive encouragement of pietism. It was evident that an appearance of formal piety was now required of candidates for high state positions. Particular annoyance was caused in 1842 by the draft scheme for a new divorce law laid before the State Council by Ludwig von Gerlach, which aimed at modifying in a Puritanic sense the laxer customs of the national law. Public feeling ran so high that it became necessary to withdraw the essential clauses of this proposal, and the general feeling of mistrust was further strengthened by the administration of Eichhom, the Minister of Public Worship. He had rendered important services to his country in connexion with the establishment of the Zollverein, and was thoroughly sincere and personally disinclined to the narrow form of orthodoxy; but his bureaucratic prejudices and the pressure exercised by the pietistic entourage of the King led him to interfere unduly in Church and School matters, and to subject to discipline teachers and clerics with any tendency to Liberal views. His measures were especially directed against the “Friends of Light” party in the Church led by Uhlich, Rupp, and Urslivenus, which had been trying ever since 1841 to free the clergy from the necessity of subscribing to the dogmatic articles of faith. The King agreed with Eichhom that these undogmatic rationalists were en­titled to toleration, but not to a place within the Protestant national Church. The majority were compelled to leave it, and form “Free

62 Connexion between religious and political movements. [1840-6

Congregations” which also helped to foster political radicalism. The civil power was used—so contemporaries could not but think—in order to suppress free intellectual movement within the Church.

And yet it was the King’s ideal to restore liberty to the Protestant Church, and to hand over the power, which he exercised as summits episcopus, “ into the right hands ”; or, in other words, to create a revived apostolic ecclesiastical constitution, consisting of metropolitans, bishops, presbyters, pastors, laymen and eleemosynary deacons—a scheme which the King himself designated as a Midsummer Night’s Dream. His real inner purpose was the weakening of the lay and bureaucratic influence in the Church. Eichhom did in fact make an attempt at establishing the synods, and a Prussian general synod was actually convened at Berlin in 1846; but the King’s fantastic views combined with the split between parties and tendencies in the Church to render any permanent settlement on the new basis impossible. Thus the King’s ecclesiastical policy failed in its positive aims, though it secured the dominance of the orthodox and pietistic elements in the Prussian State. Nevertheless, it intensified ecclesiastical differences among the Protestants, embittered the minds of all broader thinkers, and helped in no slight degree to fan political discontent in the country.

The King’s opponents, the “ Friends of Light,” also suffered from a certain ineffectiveness, for, like contemporaneous Catholic Reformers, they lacked positive religious force and creative leaders. When in 1844 Bishop Amoldi of Trier exhibited the pretended seamless coat of Christ and encouraged pilgrimages to the sacred object, this caused so much annoyance even in Catholic circles, that “German Catholic” communities were founded under the leadership of a Silesian priest, Johannes Ronge. These however, after some faint flickerings of agitation, soon showed their inability to make any lasting impression on the masses of the Catholic people, and in 1859 they became incorporated with the “ free communities ” of the Protestant “ friends of light.”

The sympathetic excitement which all these religious and ecclesias­tical struggles aroused among the lower as well as the more educated classes was really a symptom of political dissatisfaction, the desire to abolish the absolutistic bureaucratic tutelage and feudal aristocratic influence, as well as to secure real liberty and a free Constitution. At this time three Prussian provinces were hotbeds of political and social unrest—Silesia, East Prussia, and the Rhinelands. In 1844 Silesia experienced a local revolution in the disturbances caused by the distressed weavers, which had to be put down by force of arms; and Heinrich Simon, a lawyer of Breslau, at the same time won a wide acceptance for his severe attack on the new laws regulating the discipline of officials. In East Prussia the movement was more theoretical and doctrinal, for here the freer conditions of the age of Kant and reform had remained alive even among the aristocracy and led to a distinctly Liberal royalism.

1840-4] Political movements and leaders inthe Rhine Province. 53

Here Theodor von Schon, Stein’s old colleague, had filled the post of Chief President till 1842 amid general satisfaction. In 1840 he had published, at first anonymously, his pamphlet Woher und Wohin? a pathetic plaint against the bureaucratic tutelage and an appeal for general Assembly of Estates of the Realm. He was seconded with even greater violence by Dr Johann Jacoby, whose pamphlet Vier Fragen beantwortet von einem Ostpreussen (Four questions answered by an East Prussian) involved him in a legal prosecution. Jacoby was a member of a group of young, for the most part Jewish, literary men and freethinkers, whose agitation originated at Konigsberg, where it found support even among the peaceable merchant class.

In the Prussian Rhine Province the movement was even more closely connected with economic and social questions. Here were combined the strongest contrasts, in a historic stratification, whose oldest and lowest stratum originated in the time when the Rhine was the “Priest’s lane of the Holy Roman Empire” and formed the Catholic element, which was already being transformed into modern Ultramontanism. Next came the democratic and levelling traditions and institutions of the French period. The Code NapoUon, the jury courts, the abolition of the economic and social contrasts between town and country, helped the mobile Rhinelander to feel himself superior to the inhabitants of the old provinces, and to grumble at the stiff Prussian officials, who ad­ministered his country according to antiquated principles. And it was just here, where the Russian State found its severest critics, that a group of merchants with Liberal tendencies and a wide political outlook was formed, who knew how to value the blessing of a great and strong State, and desired a closer union and agreement between the Rhinelands and old Prussia, and a liberalising of the Prussian State as a whole. The leaders of this party were David Hansemann, a merchant of Aachen, Ludwig Camphausen of Cologne, Hermann von Beckerath of Krefeld, and the young Gustav Mevissen. And here, as in Konigsberg, there was a light skirmishing corps of young Radical writers. The common organ of these various Liberal tendencies was the Rheinische Zeitung, which had but a short life (1842-3) and was soon suppressed on account of its daring language; but it has an historic interest because its editor, the young Karl Marx, at that time still occupied an intermediary position between the bourgeoisie, Hegelian philosophy, and Socialism.

At that time German socialism was still in the ideal and theoretical stage; but the conditions which were to cause its spread among the masses were even then preparing, for the capitalistic industries were expanding in the large and united economic domain created by the Zollverein. The Zollverein itself increased a little in extent by the accession of Luxemburg in 1842 and Brunswick in 1844; but the North Sea lands (Hanover, Oldenburg, and the Hanse towns) were unwilling to give up their free trade by sea, and preferred to remain outside it.

54 The Zollverdn.—List and national economy. [i84i-6

Even within the League there was often a violent clash of interests. The protectionists desired, especially in southern Germany and Saxony, to protect the home factories against English competition in wool, cotton, linen goods, and iron. They were opposed by the free-traders, who found support in Prussia both among the bureaucracy and those landowners who had not as yet been threatened by foreign competition. But these contests, in which the party in favour of protective tariffs achieved some victories in 1844 and 1846, were in themselves a token and proof of the increasing economic movement in Germany generally. During these years the first steamers went from Bremen to North America, aided by subsidies from Prussia, Bremen, and the United States. In 1841 Friedrich List developed views on a “ national system of political economy,” which went far beyond the ordinary arguments of the protectionists. In List’s view the future of German nationality was connected with the claims of the national economic life, and the aim of his teaching was to establish the connexion between national and political power and economic pro­sperity. It was at this time that the first proposals, immature enough, were made in favour of German colonisation, suggested in part by the increase in emigration during these years. But, above all, the new means of locomotion provided by the railway were eagerly exploited by the enterprise of private capital. Joint-stock companies for railway construction sprang up everywhere; but the speculation fever, to which they gave rise, aroused the alarm and provoked the interference of the bureaucracy, and all manner of hindrances and restrictions were put in their way (especially by the Companies Law of 1844). Everyone who attempted any bold enterprise must be prepared to have his steps ham­pered by off "laldora, which, no doubt with the very best intentions, and the desire to advance national prosperity as a whole, lacked the elasticity and understanding necessary to adapt itself to the requirements of a capitalistic system.

Thus the days of the purely bureaucratic system in Germany were numbered. Its last great achievement was the establishment of the Zollverein; but the effects of this very creation reached far beyond their original intention. The desire for parliamentary institutions in Prussia was reinforced by a fresh argument in the cumbrous economic methods of the bureaucracy. And now the State itself was compelled by the new economic requirements to satisfy the demand for a Constitution. The Government recognised the great advantage which the State would derive from constructing the railways itself, instead of leaving the +g«]r to private enterprise. One of the most necessary lines, partly required for military and strategic reasons, was a railway eastward from Berlin to Konigsberg; and private enterprise, alarmed by the Companies Act of 1844, did not venture to undertake its construction. If the State were to undertake the task, it could not accomplish it without borrowing. But, according to the Order of January 17, 1820, a loan could not be

issued without the consent and guarantee of the Prussian Parliament; which, accordingly, gave the King a new and strong impulse for sum­moning it.

His ideals of government by Parliament were of a great and glorious assembly of the empire—something very different from a modem par­liament on the French model, which was what the Liberals demanded. According to his Christian-Germanic doctrincs there was a marked distinction between government by the Estates and government by representation. The latter in his view led down to the slippery path of popular sovereignty, which regarded the people as a single unity. He for his part believed in a system of historically developed separate Estates, whose representatives must only guard and represent their own rights and those of their fellow Estates. He was resolved never to grant to any assembly a formal control over the government, which was to be exercised by the will of majorities. Of course it was impossible to limit the powers of an assembly of Estates, so that its members should repre­sent only their own rights and not deal also with the interests of the whole people. Still he made the attempt.

His plan, at any rate after 1830, was to unite in one great assembly all the members of the separate Diets, which had been established in each province since 1823, on a basis of class representation. But directly after his accession he was shown a testamentary draft of his father’s, which enjoined on his successors not to make any change in the Constitution without consulting the chief members of the royal House, and, should the levy of a fresh loan become necessary, to fulfil the promise of 1820 by summoning a small Committee partly from the representatives of the Provincial Diets and partly from members of the State Council, who were appointed by Crown nomination. Although this draft was not legally binding, it hampered his action, and there were loud demands among the Liberals for the fulfilment of the promise to grant a Constitution, made on May 22, 1815. This demand had already been made by the East Prussian Diet, when it assembled to offer him allegiance in 1840, and had aroused in him a conflict of feelings. He determined to go forward slowly, one step at a time, always animated by the one resolve not to grant too many concessions to the exacting Liberals. In 1841 some additional rights were very sparingly doled out to the Provincial Diets. Their chief right was to be the privilege of electing Committees, which were to meet in Berlin and help to discuss legislation for the whole kingdom. This was almost the same as a central representation of the Prussian people ; but at their first meeting in 1842 the long made it very clear that they were not to regard themselves as a mere popular assembly, “ representing the varying wind of opinion and the teaching of the moment.” Annoyed at this as well as at the ambiguous nature of their position, the Committees separated after achieving little of any importance.

56 Frederick William summons the Combined Diets. [i845-7

Among the King’s counsellors Boyen was at first the only one who worked for the Constitution with real and decisive conviction; after­wards, the same may be said of Bodelschwingh, especially after his appointment in 1845 to the Ministry of the Interior. The rest, no doubt, were also of opinion that something should be done to pacify the increasing discontent of the people; but they lacked real affection for the cause. A very dangerous opponent of constitutional rights was the Prince of Prussia, the King’s brother, afterwards Emperor William I, who regarded his father’s testamentary draft as the very last word to be spoken on this subject. In this view he was inspired not so much by obstinate absolutism as by anxiety lest the position of Prussia should be weakened by the effect that the institution of an assembly of this character might have upon Europe. On behalf of Austria Metternich also tried to stay the King’s arm, and warned him against experi­ments with the Estates. But all this resistance, though it served to hinder him for a time, did not avail to turn him from his romantic scheme; and, as we have seen, he was also actuated by a very practical motive—the necessity laid on the Prussian State of establishing some sort of popular representation in order to obtain a freer hand in financial matters. The King therefore resumed the deliberations about this question in 1845, and would not rest satisfied until his favourite plans were realised. At last even the Prince of Prussia felt constrained, from motives of loyalty, to yield to his brother’s wishes; but he declared solemnly: “A new Prussia will arise. The old Prussia goes to the grave with the publication of this law. May the new be as great and glorious in honour and fame, as the old has been.”

On February 3,1847, the Order summoning the Combined Diets was published. It was the King’s own political action, an attempt con­ceived on a large scale but poorly executed, meant to achieve something different and better than the model Constitutions of ordinary Liberalism, something original sprung from Prussian soil and suited to her special needs. The King hoped that Liberalism would be put to shame and conquered by a deeper political insight. In reality it was a mongrel creation, in which absolutist ideas were mingled with the old theories of the representation of classes and privileges, and in which modern con­stitutional principles received very inadequate recognition. The result was a most inharmonious medley. Even the external arrangement was incomplete, though an attempt at creating Upper Chambers was made, by choosing out 72 of the most aristocratic members of the combined Provincial Diets to form a special House of Lords. But this plan was not even carried through consistently, as it was arranged that this special committee was to deliberate sometimes apart and at others together with the rest of the House. In accordance with the Constitution of 1820, these combined bodies were to have the decision as to the raising of new state loans; they were to possess the right of petition for

internal matters, and a deliberative voice with regard to projects of law, though it was left to the discretion of the Government whether or not these should be laid before the Prussian Parliament. The most im­portant of its rights was therefore the voting of fresh taxes, while existing ones could not take place without their consent.

Even this concession was more than the orders and decrees of Har- denberg’s time had undertaken to give to the future Prussian Parliament. But in one respect it obtained less than had been promised. The decree of 1820 had declared that the Parliament should receive an annual state­ment of the amount of the nation’s debt, thus involving an annual meeting of the Estates. But this was just what the King, who feared the claims of the Parliament, did not mean to grant. He specially reserved the right in future to summon the Combined Diets only when any special occasion made it desirable, and devised an artificial means of satisfying the requirements of the 1820 order. A small standing deputation of eight members was to meet every year and examine the balance sheet relating to the state debts. Even state loans for military purposes were to be voted by this deputation and not by the Combined Parliament, though this arrangement cast an undeserved slur on the larger body. A still more artificial development of this parliamentary scheme was the retention of the Committees from the Provincial Diets created in 1842. These were to meet at regular intervals (once in four years) for the discussion of draft laws, though it rested with the Government to refer these at pleasure to the Combined Parliament, or, as before, to the separate Provincial Diets.

Such was the complicated scheme that the King now laid before his country. Yet, strangely enough, his aim had been to avoid the formalism and minuteness which he considered characteristic of Liberal Consti­tutions, and to substitute for it a living and personal understanding between the Prince and his people. There was a deep meaning in his words, when at the formal opening of Parliament in the White Hall of the castle of Berlin, on April 11, 1847, he addressed its members in a speech of fiery eloquence. “ Never,” said he, “ will I allow a written document to come between God in Heaven and this land in the character of a second Providence, to govern us with its formalities and take the place of ancient loyalty.” But the fantastic artist in him was misled by an illusion, which prevented him from realising that Constitutions, statutes, and settled rights are an absolute necessity of actual political life; and even he was obliged to limit his ideal picture by so many written agreements that, in the end, it was more artificial than the despised Constitutions of Western Europe.

This scheme, which was not meant to be a real Constitution, met with a decided opposition in the Combined Parliament, led by the Rhine­landers and East Prussians, who demanded full and absolute fulfilment of former promises, and above all regular sessions of the assembly.

They insisted that this could not be properly represented by the little standing committee of eight appointed to deal with the state debts. The King replied that he did not consider himself pledged to more than he tiad promised in his Charter of February 3, and would promise nothing except that the Combined Parliament should be summoned again in four years’ time. Two financial Bills were now introduced in the assembly, of which one guaranteed the land-rent banks, to relieve the peasants of the burdens on their land, while a second, and even more important, measure guaranteed a state loan for the construction of the Eastern railway. But the East Prussian deputies, in spite of their special provincial interest in this particular measure, thought that even this Bill must be postponed until the political demand for the fulfilment of the promises of 1820 had been granted. Both proposals were accordingly rejected by a large majority. At the end of the session on June 25, 1847, Parliament was required by the King’s word and the Charter of February 3 to elect the standing committees and financial deputation, the very bodies in fact which were to exercise the functions which the majority of the Parlia­ment claimed the right to exercise themselves. The Opposition therefore regarded these elections as a step by which they would dispossess them­selves of their rights. Of 499 members present only 284 took part in the elections without reservation, 157 with reservation, and 58 did not vote at all. Thus, though the committees were elected, the general result of the session was discontent and annoyance on all sides.

The whole Prussian people, as well as all non-Prussian Germany, was watching with the deepest interest this first attempt at combined and— in spite of the King’s dislike to the term—parliamentary government in Prussia. Some may have doubted whether the Opposition had acted with political wisdom; but no one could doubt the great intellectual gifts of its leaders, or the honest political enthusiasm of their following. Throughout the land the names of the Opposition speakers, George von Vincke, the stiff-necked Westphalian, the Pomeranian Count von Schwerin, Beckerath the Rhinelander, Hansemann, and many others, were held in honour. In face of such ability Bodelschwingh, the King’s Minister, had no easy task. But the hopes of the small and strictly Conservative minority were raised by the young Otto von Bismarck-Schonhausen, remarkable already for his firm and proud bearing, the originality and condensed force of his speeches, and his dauntless courage. He repre­sented the severest spirit of royalism and aristocracy, in face of a majority which though unquestionably loyal to the monarchy, and though in fact containing a large aristocratic element, was yet penetrated by the necessity for great constitutional concessions. But even the Rhine­landers, who formed the Extreme Left, were far removed from the conception of government by the people, and hoped to settle the Con­stitutional question by an “ agreement ” between Crown and Parliament.

Taken as a whole, the effect of the Combined Parliament on public opinion in Germany was to encourage all Liberal elements and also of

1845-7] Liberal opinion in Germany.—Saxony.

59

course the Radical parties, who regarded every moral victory achieved by Liberalism as a step towards their own future success. It happened that the years 1846 and 1847 brought bad harvests, high prices and great material distress throughout Germany. In the eastern provinces of Prussia the agrarian legislation of Hardenberg’s time had relieved the more well-to-do peasant class of some of its former burdens by trans­forming them into proprietors, but had degraded the smaller peasants into day-labourers, and put their land into the possession of the landlords. In other German States too many of the burdens of the old landlord system still existed in greater or lesser degree. In the south-west, where the ownership of the land had long been undergoing subdivision, the small owners were great sufferers during this time of famine. Still it would be a mistake to seek in these material troubles, which did not check the economic development of Germany as a whole, the main causes of the Revolution of 1848. These are to be found in the growing desire among all classes of the nation for a freer political and social activity, and in the growth of the idea of nationality and of the longing for a powerful united Germany among the better educated classes. As the representatives of culture aud intellectual ideals, they wished to rise above the bondage of absolutism and police government, above the particularism of fractional existence, into the higher and freer realms of German national life.

The increasing unrest of men’s minds may also be traced in the political conditions of the secondary and small States. In the kingdom of Saxony, under Frederick Augustus II (1836-54) agriculture and industry had been greatly developed by the Zollverein, though the occurrence of some industrial crises had disposed the working classes to give ear to democratic, and sometimes even socialistic, doctrines. At the same time we may observe, especially in Saxony, where the “German Catholic” congregations were so numerous, the great influence exercised by intellectual tendencies. Leipzig especially, where Robert Blum, at that time box-ofKce-keeper at a theatre, led the agitation, was a hotbed of freethought and democracy. The mistrust felt of a member of the Catholic dynasty, Prince John, who was unjustly suspected of Jesuit tendencies, gave rise to a street riot in Leipzig in August, 1845, which had to be put down by force of arms. Some symptoms of movement might even be observed m the most stagnant of the States bordering on Prussia, such as the grand duchies of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Strelitz, which were linked together by a common aristocratic con­stitution. Though members of the burgher class could acquire manorial estates, which conferred on them a seat in the Diet, the essential rights of their position were kept from them by the nobility. A desire to obtain these was making itself strongly manifest; and this agitation, though springing originally from the old class system, was tinged in the years before 1848 with modem Liberal ideas and demands.

60 Liberal movements in Hanover and Baden. [1831-47

In Hanover the coup d'Hat of King Ernest Augustus in 1837 (men­tioned in a previous volume) had aroused only passive annoyance in the calm and stolid population; but in the Diet, for all its reactionary transformation, occasional demands made themselves heard for a greater measure of political rights. Electoral Hesse was governed at that time by William II and his son Frederick William, who since 1831 had been joined with him as co-regent, both men of despotic views and repellent personality, whose private quarrels were a source of constant annoyance. When the Elector died in 1847, his successor would have arbitrarily repudiated the Constitution of 1831, had he not been restrained by the warnings of Prussia and Austria, who were anxious to avoid any new cause for provocation. The grand duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt (where Louis II reigned from 1830 to 1848) was spared these attacks on its Constitution of 1820. But here the greater political activity of the peoples in the south-west manifested itself, when in 1846 Heinrich von Gagem, the leader of the Hesse-Darmstadt Liberals, a man penetrated with German national ideals, returned to the Diet after ten years’ abstinence from political activity.

Far more violent was the political movement in the grand duchy of Baden. Radowitz, then Prussian ambassador at Carlsruhe, aptly remarked that the German secondary States of the older type, such as Hanover, Saxony and Bavaria, were sharply distinguished in their political aspirations from those of the newer type, like Baden and Wurtemberg. In the former the internal constitutional struggle re­tarded the development of the national German ideas; in the latter the national and the abstract Liberal ideas held an equal balance. The dangerous proximity of France helped to foster the national German idea in these south-western districts, where, up to 1806, the remains of an old-fashioned patriotism had still lingered. At the same time democratic ideas, brought over by political fugitives from France and Switzerland, penetrated to Baden; and, in 1844, Radowitz expressed his opinion that the whole subversive party in Germany regarded Baden as the region where the chief blows were being struck. The Grand Duke Leopold (1830-52) at one time resorted to Liberal policy, at another to police repression; and this confusion caused distraction and disturbance in the minds of the people. Here, as in the Rhinelands, the purely political contrasts were complicated by the presence of a strong Ultramontane element, especially in southern Baden. A proposal brought before the Diet towards the end of 1845 by the deputy Zittel for equal toleration of all Christian denominations (framed for the benefit of the “ German Catholics”) aroused a violent counter-agitation on the part of the Roman Catholics. The Government hoped to draw its own advantage out of these disputes, and, in the expectation of breaking up the Liberal Opposition, dissolved the Diet in February, 1846. But the Liberals won a brilliant electoral victory, and at the end of 1846 the Grand Duke consented to appoint

1846-8] Wiirtemberg.—Disturbance in Bavaria.                            61

a moderate Liberal Ministry under Bekk. This striking victory for the constitutional and parliamentary idea had another important effect; it marked the first separation in Germany between the Liberal and the Radical democratic parties, the former being led by Karl Mathy, Karl Theodor Welcker and Bassermann, the latter by Hecker, Struve and Itzstein. The former were prepared to abandon pure opposition and support the Government, the latter sought and found matter for fresh agitation among the lower classes of the town population in socialistic ideas and fanning the general hatred of the monarchy. We shall presently see that this parting of the ways in Baden prepared the events which marked the eve of the German Revolution.

In Wiirtemberg, the able and energetic King William I grasped the reins more tightly in his hands, and consistently kept down the Liberal demands for freedom, which he had himself favoured early in the twenties, in the hope of thus strengthening the influence and popularity of the south-German States. But even here the Liberal Opposition in the Diet grew more active after 1845; and the famine years 1846-7 led in May, 1847, to street disturbances in the capital, Stuttgart.

In Bavaria, King Louis, with his idealistic tendencies and his love for art and architecture, had, ever since the close of the thirties, been entirely under the influence of the Ultramontane party, and had, after 1837, governed through the clerical Ministry of Abel. A painful impression was created by the sight of the Protestant soldiers of the Bavarian army, kneeling before the host at Catholic processions. But the annoyance of the Protestant population at this religious compulsion strengthened the Liberal Opposition, and the lust of power displayed by the Ultra- montanes presently caused them to lose favour with the King. The actual circumstance which brought about the breach between the King and the Ultramontanes was an unfortunate one. In the autumn of 1846 he was drawn into an entanglement with the beautiful and fascinating Spanish dancer, Lola Montez, who played the part of a patroness of literature. The Ultramontanes were thus able to exclaim at the same time against the moral perversion of the old King and against the moral and political poison of Liberalism. The Abel Ministry protested against the King’s proposal to create Lola Montez a countess, and their con­sequent resignation (February, 1847) inflicted a severe blow on his prestige. As the new Ministers also refused to be at the beck and call of the arrogant dancer, the so-called Lola Ministry had to be appointed in 1847 under Prince Oettingen-Wallerstein. Fighting went on in the streets of Munich between the Ultramontane and the “ Lolamontane ” students, while the common people threw mud and stones at the actress when she appeared in public. Thereupon the King closed the University (February 9, 1848), but the people of Munich were so unanimous in their attitude that he was at last forced to give way and send the objectionable Lola out of the country (February 11, 1848). These

62

Foreshadowings of Revolution.  [i847-8

scandalous proceedings, occurring in the midst of a fanatically Ultra­montane though essentially loyal population, may have had no immediate revolutionary effect, but they certainly helped to weaken respect for the dynasties elsewhere in Germany and to prepare the ground in Munich for the events of March.

We may thus trace almost everywhere in Germany in the years before 1848, an increasing political unrest. At any rate in south-west Germany the scent of battle was in the air, and in the autumn of 1847 the various parties closed their ranks. On September 12, the Radicals of Baden assembled at Offenburg, under the leadership of Hecker and Struve, and the programme which they accepted may serve as a summary of the demands made by the advanced Left throughout Germany. These included the abolition of the reactionary federal laws (Bundesgesctze) of 1819 and 1832, which checked the utterance of political opinions, abso­lute religious toleration, Liberal laws regulating the right of assembly, and an oath of allegiance taken by the army to the constitution, for this, they hoped, would undermine the main support of the monarchy. They even proposed to substitute for the standing army a popular levy resembling a militia. The demand for popular representation in the Federal Diet (Bundestag) was to satisfy the democratic as well as the national tendency which even the Radicals shared. Other demands betray the influence of the socialist movement—a progressive income-tax, attempts to promote better relations between capital and labour, trial by jury, abolition of all privileges and finally substitution of govern­ment by the people for the rule of officials. The word Republic had not yet been uttered, but it was in the minds of the leaders, as was subsequently proved.

The National and moderate Liberal elements of Baden and western Germany generally founded an important organ in the summer of 1847, the Deutsche Zeitung, edited by the historian Gervinus at Heidelberg. It became the organ of that national and idealistic academic policy, which culminated in the hereditary empire party of 1848. They gave full recognition to the monarchical form of government and the separate German States, and they welcomed Prussia’s Combined Parliament with hopeful sympathy, as the first step towards constitutional principles. They showed a general interest in the political future of Prussia, based on the hope of winning a national reform of the German Confederation with the help of a Liberal Prussia. What aspect this reformed State would bear, and what place Prussia and Austria would occupy in it, were questions that were either set aside or but vaguely discussed.

The Assembly of this party had its first experiences of the difficulties they would have to encounter, when they met at Heppenheim on October 10, 1847. Here were present among others Mathy, Basser- mann, Heinrich von Gagem, Romer, the leader of the Wurtemberg Liberals, and Hansemann from Rhenish Prussia. Some, like Bassermann,

1847-8] Demand for a German National Parliament. 63

thought the course of events would lead to a popular assembly repre­senting the German people sitting side by side with a Federal Parlia­ment consisting of representatives of the Governments. This was what the Radicals had demanded at Offenburg, and Welcker had been asking for ever since 1831. But where was the use of a national Parliament side by side with a Congress of Government representatives, if there was no unifying national Central Power beside and above them ? Hansemann and Mathy therefore confined their efforts to the more modest and attainable plan of extending the Zollverein, and furnishing it with a Parliament of delegates from the Estates of the various States in the Confederation. This plan might have resulted in the foundation of a federal State under Prussian hegemony, within the frame of the old federal constitution. At the moment, however, the demand for a mere Zollverein Parliament did not attract the mass of the people, especially as Zollverein politics were just then complicated by the opposition bet veen Free Trade and Protection. Eventually Hansemann and Mathy also recog­nised this fact, and during the next few months all the Liberals of southern and western Germany adopted the common watchword which the Radicals had already made their own—the demand for a national German Parliament to sit side by side, and legislate concurrently, with the Federal Diet already established as the organ of the German Con­federation. On February 12, 1848, Bassermann brought forward a proposal in the Baden Chamber to work for this end; and the echo which his words found throughout Germany is another proof that the country was ready for the events of 1848.

Prussia itself had already entered on a path which led towards the views of the national party in southern and western Germany. Frederick William IV, as we know, had long been occupied with national dreams and fantasies, and desired at any rate to recall to life the German Federal Constitution, though on a conservative basis and with due regard to Austria’s historic position and importance in Germany. He met with a check, however, in the backwardness of Austria, for her traditional system shrank from every radical change in Germany, especially from utilising the national idea. In. the autumn of 1847 the King, by the advice of Radowitz, entered on a new policy. The failure of the Combined Parliament, and the rising flood of Nationalism and Liberalism suggested to him the idea of recovering his moral and political prestige by satisfying the national demand in a conservative and legitimate fashion. “ The most powerful force of the present time, that of Nationality, has become the most dangerous weapon in the hands of the enemies of rightful order.” Thus wrote Radowitz on November 20,1847, in a memorial which the King adopted as his programme. According to this plan the enemy was to be hoist with his own petard, and the needs of the German nation as a whole, and of the Prussian State in particular, were to be satisfied at the same time. The King and Radowitz therefore proposed that the

ca. in.

64 Plan of Federal Reform and National Union. [1846-8

Federal Diet of the Confederation, which had hitherto been so unfruitful of results, should take up new tasks in regard to the military organisation, legal protection, and material interests of the Confederation, and thereby inaugurate a comprehensive national legislation. But what was to be done if Austria, the natural opponent of an effective federal reform, should refuse her consent?

The actual consequence of an intensive federal reform must sooner or later transform the loose federation of States into a federal State. In the existing Confederation two great Powers, Austria and Prussia, had been able, though not harmoniously, to exist side by side; in a federal State this equality would become impossible. But Frederick William IV and Radowitz failed to realise this, though they were both inspired with ambition for Prussia, and hoped that a reform of the Confederation would raise her position in Germany and Europe. This desire to combine the incompatible, because it seemed such a beautiful dream, was characteristic of their romantic policy. “ May God in Heaven save me from any attempt to drive Austria out of the Confederation,” said the King in November, 1847; “ Germany without Trieste, Tyrol, and that glorious Archduchy would be worse than a face without a nose.” His friend Radowitz however was prepared, in case Austria and the Diet of the Confederation opposed the idea of reform, to go forward without her, and summon special associations of the States which desired reform, on the model of the Zollverein. But this was only to be a transition stage, and the restoration of the old community with Austria and all the German States was the final goal.

At the end of 1847 Radowitz went to Vienna to win Austria to the cause of federal reform. But events in Switzerland, as is elsewhere told, intervened, and took up, for the time being, the whole attention of the Prussian and Austrian Governments, and set the question of reform again in the background. The King however took it up again even before the outbreak of the February revolution in Paris (1848). Two events occurred to give it an impetus: the news of the proposal introduced by Bassermann on February 12, into the Baden Diet, and the death of Christian VIII of Denmark on January 20, 1„848. Radowitz, when consulted by the King, at once advised him to press forward German interests in the Schleswig-Holstein question, the origin and development of which is elsewhere described.

The Federal Parliament had already replied to the “ open letter ” of Christian VIII of Denmark, by a general reservation of rights (Sep­tember 17, 1846). Now, they were called on to defend these rights, and with them the German nationality in Schleswig, at the very moment when the whole German Confederation was feeling the inspiration of fresh national life. While undertaking these great and difficult tasks, they were drawn into the current of a revolutionary movement, which might either carry them along to their goal or involve them in destruction.

CHAPTER IV.

ITALY IN REVOLUTION.

(1846-9.)

The main revolutionary influences working in Italy just before the period 1846-9, were two: the one, the frankly Revolutionary doctrine of Mazzini; the other, that of Moderate Reform. Nothing is more indicative of the opposition between these policies, and at the same time of the fact that they had not then severed all connexion, than the agitation at Rimini in 1845, headed by Pietro Renzi. There we see an armed insurrection by the people, and side by side with it a Reform manifesto, issued by Luigi Carlo Farini of the Romagna and Giuseppe Montanelli of Tuscany, which renewed the demands for reforms first formulated by the Great Powers in their Memorandum of 1831. The authors hoped no doubt to gain the good-will of the Powers, or at least to involve them in some sort of moral complicity with the insurgents of the Romagna—a naive idea enough, as the event proved. The attempt indicates, however, a sense of the uselessness of previous efforts and sacrifices (as notably shown in the elsewhere described “ Bandiera ” incident, in 1844, the memory of which still burned in the hearts of all) and produced a consequent reaction of thought. A new policy was coming to the front, even among the most blinded of conspirators, which at last recognised that salvation must be looked for outside the narrowing influences of the Sette (Secret Societies): and Mazzini signi­ficantly repudiated any connexion with the agitation at Rimini in 1845.

The first and strongest impulse to political thought in the direction of Moderate Reform as against armed Revolution, was given by Vincenzo Gioberti’s Primaio morale e civile degli Italiani (1843); and following thereon came the works of Balbo, Torelli, Durando, Capponi, Galeotti, and d’Azeglio, which have been noticed elsewhere. In his Primaio Gioberti said nothing at all about the Austrians, and very

little and that little with reserve—about the Jesuits, lest his book

should be stopped in Lombardo-Venetia. To this the Liberals took no exception, seeing that hatred of the foreigner could be detected in every page, and that Gioberti’s conclusions were a clear call to arms which was intended to stir, and did in fact stir, Italy to its very depths. But, if he thought to mollify either the Austrians or the Jesuits, he was soon

66

D'Azeglio's I Casi di Romagna.

[1845-6

undeceived. Not only Austria, but even other Italian Governments, did their best to stop the circulation of the book, by seizing it and forbidding its sale; while the Jesuits were especially alarmed by the striking and unexpected impression it produced among the clergy. Thus it became a forbidden fruit which all wished to taste, even if they could not appreciate half of its metaphysical subtleties. So clearly was it understood that Italian independence was the principal thesis of Gioberti’s book, in spite of its astute omissions and skilful silences, that the writers who continued the discussion, with Balbo at their head, all addressed themselves explicitly to that point.

The man who took the principal part in exposing the flagrant con­tradiction between the proposals of the Moderate Reformers and the reckless and disconnected attempts of armed Revolution, was Massimo dAzeglio, then a student of painting in Rome. Travelling from that city by easy journeys through Umbria, the Marches, and Romagna, he collected a fund of observations, the substance of which, with his remarks thereon, he published in his celebrated work I Casi di Romagna (The Fortunes of Romagna). The literature of Reform stood to political events in the double relation of cause and effect; of those immediately following it was undoubtedly the direct cause, inasmuch as they were (in their earlier period, at least) mainly the work of the Moderate Reform party, to the formation of which literature had contributed so much. And in that literature there is probably no more widely known or popular work than I Casi di Romagna, with its friendly warnings to the party of con­spiracy, and its terrible indictment of the methods of Papal government. Of course it went full in the teeth of the traditions of Italian literature; it was Federalist, and Neo-Guelf; it aimed at making an ally, instead of an enemy, of that very Temporal Power of the Popes, which from Machiavelli to Victor Alfieri had been considered the principal bar to the reconstruction of the Italian nation. The literature of political reform culminates in I Casi di Romagna. Before publishing it, dAzeglio had communicated to King Charles Albert of Piedmont and Sardinia his impressions of the Romagna, and had informed him of the advice he had given to his Liberal friends, namely, to trust in Charles Albert as the only leader who possessed an Italian army strong enough to attempt anything useful and decisive. This secret conversation with Charles Albert is recorded by dAzeglio in his Ricordi (Recollections). The King replied to him calmly but firmly: “ Tell these gentlemen to keep still; there is nothing to be done at present; but they may rest assured that, when the opportunity occurs, my life, my sons’ lives, my arms, treasure, and all, will be expended for the cause of Italy.” Then he embraced and dismissed him. DAzeglio had not expected any such positive declaration from a Prince of so uncertain and secretive a temperament, and left his presence with emotion. Shortly afterwards I Casi di Romagna was published (January, 1846).

1845-6] Gioberti's Prolegomeni al Primato.

67

But for a short time, and by a sort of happy accident, its leading ideas appeared to be practically accepted; though they never really succeeded in becoming popular, in spite of d’Azeglio’s assertions to the contrary. Mazzinianism, on the other hand, the deadly enemy of the Moderate Reform programme, looking to the unification of Italy as its end and to open insurrection as its means, never ceased to justify its own existence to the popular mind. Nor did it cease to combat the exaggerations of the Federalists and Neo-Guelfs, and to deny their claim to be the completest and most logical exponents of a united Italy. But whatever may be said of the extraordinary variety of views which characterised the political literature of Italy at the end of 1846, there can be no doubt as to the effect that it produced, in forcing the question from the gloom and mystery of the conspirator’s cellar into the open fields of publicity. Here Mazzini had set the example by his publication of Giovme Italia (Young Italy).

This series of publications, their profound effect on public opinion, the calibre of their authors, and the moderation of the opinions put forth in them, were a sufficient proof to Europe in general—and to Austria in particular (to whom all this ferment of ideas was an abiding menace)— that the Italian question had now permeated every class in society. It was now impossible to put this new form of militant patriotism on the same level as Mazzinian conspiracies, or to throw it contemptuously aside with the ordinary formula of the pundits of reaction, that it was an affair of madmen, or of scoundrels. It would have been absurd thus to describe men like Gioberti, Balbo, d’Azeglio, or Capponi.

In 1845 Gioberti had published his Prolegomeni al Primato, which, though intended as a preface to the second edition of the Primato, is in fact a separate work; impulsive and impressionable, Gioberti not only practically renounced his idea of making the Papacy the pivot of Italian regeneration, but went further. He broke his armistice with the Jesuits, and roundly denounced them as the moths fretting the garment of Catholicism; and, though he had previously favoured an agreement between all Italian rulers, he now laid the Neapolitan Bourbons under the ban of the civilised world. What was it that had produced in him this change, involving a suggestion of inconsistency ?

It was caused by two facts: the one, the already mentioned execution of the brothers Bandiera in 1844; the other, the demeanour of the Jesuits in Switzerland, where, as is elsewhere described, they had shown themselves ready and willing to go even so far as civil war. And not in Switzerland only had they behaved thus, but also in Belgium, Italy, and France. In France, indeed, the struggle between the University of Paris and the Society of Jesus, between Liberals and Jesuits, reached such a pitch of bitterness and created so much popular excitement, that even the Conservative Minister, Guizot, had found it necessary to send a special envoy to Pope Gregory XVI to invite him to recall the Jesuits.

68 Pellegrino Rossi,—Congressi degli Scienziati. [1839-47

This envoy was Pellegrino Rossi, of Carrara, an Italian political exile naturalised in France, who had acquired a European reputation in science, literature, and statesmanship, and had risen by sheer genius to the highest offices, first in Switzerland, and later in France. By singular ability and tenacity Rossi succeeded in his difficult mission; he actually induced the General of the Jesuits, by his own act, to dissolve the French branch of the Society. As Minister of France, Pellegrino Rossi was present at the death of Gregory XVI and at the enthronement of the new Pope; and, while he never failed in his duty as the loyal interpreter of French policy, his heart was none the less that of a patriot and an Italian. On seeing Italy once more, after some thirty years of exile, “I cried,” he says, “like a child”; and he subsequently sent forth his son with his blessing to Lombardy as a volunteer against the Austrians. The like spirit appears in his public and private correspondence with Guizot, and in private letters written by him from Rome, after the revolution which dethroned Louis-Philippe.

Thus, on the eve of 1846, the positions of the Italian Liberals and their adversaries had gradually come to be determined by the following facts: the victory of Rossi over the Jesuits (although this directly concerned France alone); the unexpected attack on the Jesuits in Gioberti’s Prolegomeni, to which they had made haughty and unsparing replies; the indignation excited in Tuscany, even among Liberals, by certain Neo-Guelfic and pro-Papal tendencies of Gioberti and Balbo, to which Giusti had given expression; and, finally, the absolute irrecon­cilability between the Moderate- Reformers and the Revolutionary Mazzinists. Owing to these facts, the field of controversy was widened, and the air of Italy became so charged with electricity that at any moment a spark might cause a conflagration. The most practical idea of the Moderate Reformers was that the petty tyrants of Italy, together with the Pope, and Austria, could be far more effectively combated by constantly stirring public opinion, and by insisting on wide and open public discussion of the state of Italy, than by secret conspiracies and mere local revolts. Next to the Press and to the vigorous controversy carried on in print, their best allies were the Congressi degli Scienziati (Scientific Congresses), which had met regularly from 1839 to 1847, and which united as into one family through community of thought and study all cultivated Italians, who had been hitherto isolated in their various cities. At first the Italian Princes (including even Ferdinand II of Naples) not only permitted these Congresses, but took some pride in patronising them; but, as the Congresses became more and more an opportunity for political propaganda and for the development of Liberalism, they took fright. Austria, ever watchful, was specially alarmed; the Austrian Minister in Tuscany, in reporting on the Congress held in Florence in 1841, flatly called the Grand Duke a traitor; and Marshal Radetzky, who had commanded the Austrian troops in Lombardo-Venetia since 1833,

1824-47]

Tuscany.—Naples.

69

could see nothing but the cloven hoof of the devil of revolution in this Arcadia of Congresses.                         .

But even in Tuscany that period of “pacific beatitude,” which is held to have lasted from 1824 to 1847, was no longer quite undisturbed. Pietro Renzi, the leader of the revolt at Rimini in 1845, had been allowed to slip into France, whence he had returned to Tuscany; the Papal Government demanded his extradition, which the Tuscan authorities granted after some hesitation. Just at this moment Massimo d’Azeglio was passing his I Casi di Romagna through the press; and thus it happens that, while in the text he praises the Grand Duke for his humanity to the refugees of Romagna, he inveighs against him in a note for the surrender of Renzi. Another trouble befel the Grand Duke at Pisa, when the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, an off-shoot of the Jesuit system, asked permission to open homes and schools. This was contrary to the traditional policy of the grand duchy; moreover, a petition against the establishment of such an outpost of the Jesuits in Pisa had been drawn up by Giuseppe Montanelli, and signed by hundreds of people of mark. The authorities did in fact refuse their sanction, but they expelled d’Azeglio from Florence as a sort of compensation for the striking success of his book; a piece of gratuitous discourtesy, which made a greater scandal than the extradition of Renzi.

In 1845, Ferdinand II of Naples, who, with all his proverbial in­difference, was somewhat uneasy under the general storm of execration raised by the Bandiera executions, tried to figure as an enlightened ruler by graciously welcoming the Congresso degU Scienziati. The 1400 names on the list of that Congress show that the amateurs out­numbered the professionals, and that many attended for reasons very different from the mere love of science. The King had no objection to flattery from the Congress; but was none the less ready, on hearing of the agitation at Rimini, to lock up some of its leading political members; and it was only on a secret warning from the Minister, del Carretto, that these men secured safety by speedy flight. The Neapolitan Liberals on the whole favoured Mazzini’s old methods of conspiracy and partial and local rebellion, although his Giovine Italia had no great circulation among them; the famous Protesta del popolo delle due Sicilie (Protest of the People of the Two Sicilies) by Settembrini, in 1847, was their first utterance in favour of Reform on the lines of the Rimini manifesto. It should be remembered that, bad as the condition of the Neapolitan provinces was, that of Sicily was even worse. The consequent jealousy between the two peoples was fostered by the incom­petence of the authorities, and was afterwards productive of much evil to the cause of Italy as a whole.

The same condition of things existed in the smaller States; in Lucca, whose ruler was a madman; in Modena, under a petty tyrant; in Parma under the widow of Napoleon, dominated by a succession of

70    Piedmont.—Death of Gregory XVI. [1835-46

lovers and husbands who could at the best but rank as mere Austrian agents. Of course these rulers did not distinguish between Mazzinians and Reformers, between Revolution and Moderate Liberalism. Like Austria, they felt themselves equally threatened by both; and they trusted to Austrian aid against both, if necessary—with good reason, for Austria was the true sovereign of all Italy, outside the kingdom of Sardinia.

In Piedmont the case was different. On Charles Albert the writings on Reform, of Gioberti, Balbo, d’Azeglio and others, had produced a profound effect. He had always disliked Austria, and cherished the idea of expelling her from Italy by force of arms. The discovery of this secret by his new Foreign Secretary, Clemente Solaro della Margarita, in 1835, had caused him considerable annoyance. But others had discovered it also: Gioberti evidently refers to it in his Primato; Balbo, more explicitly, in his Speranze cT Italia; and even Niccolini, the tragic poet of Tuscany, openly called on Charles Albert to draw the sword. The revival of public confidence in the King, notwithstanding his conduct in the rebellion of 1821, and his indefensible severities in 1833, was marked; and the hopes of the Liberals once more centred in him. He did not at once lay aside the reserve and mystery he had adopted since his accession; but the effect was none the less visible, reviving the memories of his youth, and eliciting many expressions, spasmodic perhaps but none the less clear, which revealed his “ secret,” the fixed, deep-rooted purpose to which the rest of his life was to be devoted.

The state of affairs in Italy in 1846 may be thus summarised— Naples motionless under the tutelage of Austria (which, however, the King personally resented), and disturbed by a Liberal agitation, which he ferociously repressed; Lombardy and Venice, to all appearance sub­missive and contented, but with a Liberal ferment gradually alienating the higher classes from the Government and extending among the lower. In the Papal States deep-seated evils were openly denounced: in the duchies of Lucca, Parma, and Modena, there was an ever growing divergence between rulers and ruled. In Tuscany an administration was slowly losing its old repute owing to its new reactionary tendencies; it was menaced by a Liberal agitation, and by the intervention of a secret Press, which not only demanded Reform but threatened the person of the Grand Duke himself. Piedmont alone was sound; the people were devoted to the dynasty; and the King, who had at last taken up a position of decided resistance to the overbearing policy of Austria, was slowly but surely carrying out his internal reforms.

Such was the condition of Italy at the death of Gregory XVI, June 1,1846. The least that could happen, it was said, was that the Papal State generally and the turbulent Romagna in particular would be turned upside down; that Austria would then intervene; and that she would be opposed by France, according to her already declared intention. In fact, the conflagration might extend to all Europe.

1846] The new situation. Election of Pius IX. 71

In view of possibilities, Mettemich had ordered Radetzky, the Austrian Commander-in-chief in Italy, to be ready to reinforce the garrisons of Ferrara and to invade the Legations. France, on her side, warned Austria that her intervention would be followed by a French occupation of Civita Vecchia and Ancona. Mettemich, thus aware of the possibility of Revolution in the Papal State, was ready to meet it; but he was not prepared for a Pope of the type desired by Gioberti in his Primato. He had directed Count Liitzow, the Austrian Minister in Rome, who was an expert in Papal diplomacy, to manipulate the election of the new Pope in the Austrian interest. In short, he wanted a Pope with no appetite for novelties, and as devoted to Austria as had been Gregory XVI, who had never during his pontificate been guilty of any apostolic energy, except indeed against Russia; for the severity of his language to the Emperor Nicholas on his visit to Rome in 1845, on the subject of Catholic persecution in Poland, was long remembered.

Just at this time della Margarita, in the name of his Government, offered the Papal State the aid of Piedmontese troops, in case of disorder occurring on the death of the Pope and the election of his successor, thus anticipating the proposal, which some declared to be so novel and bold when Gioberti made it in 1849. Nothing could cause so much suspicion and irritation to Austria as the knowledge that the rulers of Italy were solving her internal problems on their own account, especially if this action took the shape of an intervention by Piedmont in the Papal States, at the request of the College of Cardinals. The offer of della Margarita had no result, and a serious darger was averted; for Piedmont might thus have found herself fighting on the same side as Austria, in the very probable event of a similar intervention by the latter. This might possibly have been agreeable to the personal opinions of della Margarita, but it would certainly have been repugnant to Charles Albert and his followers, and not less fatal to the future of an Italy which was to unite under the hegemony of Piedmont.

The fears of Mettemich and of della Margarita were groundless. Upon the death of Gregory XVI, amid the indifference or execrations of all, including even his intimates, no serious disorder ensued. The party of Moderate Reform was then in the ascendant, and the idea of provoking Austrian intervention by unconsidered agitation was abomi­nated by all. Action was confined to the presentation of petitions for Reform si<med by great numbers of citizens of the highest repute, the most noteworthy of which was that from Bologna, drawn up by Marco Minghetti. A lengthy Conclave had been expected; but a new Pope was in fact elected in forty-eight hours.

Cardinal Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, the new Pope, who assumed the name of Pius IX, belonged to a respected family of provincial nobility residing at Sinigaglia, in the Marches. Bom in 1792, he received his early education at the College of the Scolopi at

72

Character and education of Mastai.

[1792-1845

Volterra, but left the College owing to epileptic fits. Some traces of this terrible infirmity always remained in a nervous excitability and unreasoning impetuosity, which explain many incidents of his later life. The stories of the extraordinary promise, as of the romantic love affairs of his youth, are merely the fables of admirers, or the slanders of enemies. He returned to Sinigaglia in 1809, where he remained till the restoration of Pius VII in 1814. This was the period to which are assigned his supposed irregularity of life and relations with the Freemasons and the Carbonari. There is no proof that he was in any actual political con­nexion with the Revolutionary party, or that he even diverged to any great extent from his family traditions, which were purely clerical.

The future Pope left Sinigaglia (1814) for Rome to seek his fortunes under the wing of an uncle, Monsignor Paolino Mastai; for a short time he mingled in the mob of worldly ecclesiastics of that capital; but the influence of his mother’s sincere piety, and of his own excessive tendency to emotion, soon entirely changed the current of his life. After being refused admission to the Pope’s “ Noble Guard ” on the score of his weak health, he obtained a small post in the Orphanage known as that of Tata Giovanni (1816); and, accepting this success as a sign from Heaven, he took Holy Orders. In 1817 he went on a half-religious, half-diplo­matic mission to Chili; from which he did not return till 1825, when Leo XII nominated him to the Presidency of the Hospital of St Michael, promoting him two years later to the Archbishopric of Spoleto. There in 1831 he first came into contact with the Italian Revolution. General Sercognani, the leader of the revolutionary forces (in which the future Emperor of the French was serving) had retired to Spoleto, after having pushed forward as far as Otricoli; there he was persuaded by Mastai to throw down his arms and disband his troops.

In 1832 Mastai was translated to the see of Imola; and in 1840 was created a Cardinal, retaining his see. At Imola he witnessed a constant round of conspiracy, revolt, repression, Austrian intervention, imprisonments, banishments, sentences, and executions. He was unable to conceal his disgust, arid, in consequence of his open protests, he had the honour of being classed at the Court of Rome with Abbe Gregoire, of Revolutionary fame. Mastai resented this, and hence perhaps a remark of his in a letter to his friend Monsignor Polidori, on the occasion of the meeting of the three Cardinal Legates of Bologna, Ferrara, and Ravenna, at a political congress in November, 1845: “God help us! for the meeting of the three Eminences certainly will not! ” In these words there is a certain flavour of protest, as of an honest man in the midst of rogues, who seems to be losing heart and spirit at his own isolation and impotence for good in such an atmosphere of suspicion, distrust, and espionage.

At this period Mastai lived in close intimacy with Count Giuseppe Pasolini, an educated and thoughtful young Liberal, and his amiable wife, Antonietta Bassi, who resided near Imola. In this genial and sunny

1845-6] Masted's friendship with Pasolini. Liberal ideas. 73

environment Mastai’s cultivated temperament and aristocratic instincts found attraction and sympathy, while in the loyalty of the pair and the honesty of their intentions he felt a hitherto unknown confidence. They frequently discussed the logical and practical possibility of an agreement between religion and progress, between the Catholic faith and Liberal principles, and the incompatibility of the Italian aspirations with the methods practised by the Pope and by Austria. Thus Mastai was led to adopt, more or less, the ideas and principles of Moderate Reform, in opposition to retrograde absolutism, or Revolutionary Mazzinianism.

Probably Mastai had not given any special attention to these matters, or to the development of those ideas of conciliation which had formed part of the Liberal romanticism of 1830, and the revival of which was then unconsciously drawing the younger clergy into opposition to the >bscurantists and the Jesuits. But at the bottom of his heart he certainly then sympathised with the movement, whose scope had been widened by the literature of Reform until it dealt with all the problems of Italian politics. It was on this idea of conciliation that Gioberti, Balbo, and the other writers on Reform had based all their schemes for the redemption of Italy. Thus the Pasolini easily led on Cardinal Mastai to political questions, and brought him at last to regret bitterly the conditions of the time and to look forward to a happier future, for which nothing, as he thought, was needed but a little leniency and a little Christianity on the part of the rulers. His friends introduced him to Gioberti’s Primaio and Balbo’s Speranze d' Italia; d’Azeglio’s I Casi di Romagna he had already obtained from another friend of the house. Thus by the study of the Liberal Reform doctrines, combined with the sight of the horrors perpetrated under his eyes in Romagna, the Pope of 1846 grew out of the Bishop of Imola.

On Mastai’s departure to attend the Conclave in 1846, Count Pasolini expressed his hopes that he might have the opportunity, as Pope, of practising all the theories so often discussed; and the populace, seeing a dove flying round his carriage, affirmed that it was the Holy Ghost. Thus the foundation was being laid for the extraordinary legend of the liberty-loving Pope, which was destined later to mystify the world and to influence the mind of the Pope himself. The exact moment of his election was unpropitious to the ideas of Liberal Reform; there was a breath of reaction over all Europe, which would increase a thousandfold the difficulties of a Pope who wished to prove his good-will by actions. The entente cordiale between Louis-Philippe and England had been broken by the Spanish marriages, and the rupture had forced Louis-Philippe into the arms of Austria, whose policy was everywhere and always anti-Liberal.

The first actions of Pius IX were, under these circumstances, those of a man who did not know exactly where to begin. Luckily for him, he had the support and assistance of two excellent men: Canon Graziosi,

74 Pirn IX's Amnesty; its effects in Italy. [i846

a learned and enlightened ecclesiastic, and Monsignor Corboli Bussi, a man described by Minghetti as of so ardent a disposition that he would nowadays be called a Catholic Socialist. They and Pellegrino Rossi were the inspirers of that great political act, the Amnesty of July 16, 1846. It proclaimed the pardon of all political offenders and suspects, and made Pius IX, historically speaking, the father of the political resurrection of Italy. The enthusiasm caused by the Amnesty in Rome, in the provinces, in Italy generally, indeed in the world at large, was in­describable. • It was a spark falling upon a mass of inflammable stuff— a consideration which had not occurred to the Pope, when he yielded to the spontaneous dictates of his kindly nature. Among the people a yearning for change, for political and social reforms, had been growing since 1815, and had become irresistible since 1830. In Italy, where the need was greatest, Austria had been the mainstay of the reaction in its struggles with Liberal aspirations; and it was against Austria that any innovation, however small and insignificant, would naturally be held to be directed. But the Amnesty of Pius IX. was neither small nor insignificant; in spite of the safeguards surrounding it, it was in substance a rehabilitation of patriotism. It made a virtue of what had before been a crime, at a moment when through all Europe Reaction and Liberalism were in a state of opposition, and even of open conflict. A main clue to subsequent Italian history is to be found in the feet that Pius IX, unlike Mettemich, did not see that his Amnesty meant war with Austria, and the independence of Italy. The act was equivocal, and admitted of two constructions: and all that followed is, under ultimate analysis, only an exposure of this ambiguity, and of its elimination by the logic of facts. In this sense the Amnesty of Pius IX began the Italian Revolution.

The reforms of Pius IX after the Amnesty were slow to come, few, inadequate, and often inconsistent: the secularisation of the Government, the most urgent and the most desired of them, never got beyond the stage of a pious wish. The enthusiasm for the Pope however did not diminish; since a certain liberty existed for all except Jews. It lay indeed de facto, if not de jure, at the mercy of the rulers, but it was something which relieved the old wretched conditions, without creating new difficulties. Rossi judged the reforms of Pius IX very rightly, when he wrote to Guizot: “ This is not an ideal administration, but one that is still only an idea.” The Pope never acted except under the pressure of a popular demonstration; and so well did the people, and their tribune, Angelo Brunetti (dubbed Ciceruacchio), know this, that their demon­strations had become a permanent institution. Thus the Government was on a dangerous incline, which might lead to disaster on the first disagreement between people and sovereign. And yet, in the councils of reaction, Pius IX was already denounced as a Freemason and a Carbonaro, and the legitimacy of his election was denied—portents indicative of the

1846]       The Scientific and Agricultural Congresses. 75

dislike and alarm which his attitude inspired. Commenting on these events, Mettemich said to the Marquis Sauli, Sardinian Minister in Vienna: “We were prepared for everything except for a Liberal Pope; now we have got one, there is no answering for anything.”

Towards the close of 1846 the forecast of the great arbiter of European politics was beginning to be justified, and the ambiguity as to the meaning and purport of the Amnesty began to be apparent. Its effect was already assuming a more pronounced shape beyond the boundaries of the Papal State. Genoa was celebrating the centenary of the expulsion of the Austrians in 1746: in Milan there was solemn mourning over the death of Federigo Confalonieri, one of the martyrs of the Spielberg, who had expired in a village at the foot of St Gothard, on his return to Italy, whither he too had been attracted by the glimmer of the day-dawn on the dome of St Peter’s. The Scientific Congress in 1846 assumed so political an aspect that it was actually called a National Convention. It was there that the proposal was made for the above-mentioned centenary fete at Genoa, in which the whole of Italy was invited to take part; beacon-fires were to illuminate the whole range of the Apennines. Emphasis was thus laid on the point to which Home was still endeavouring to shut her eyes, the direct relation between Liberal Reform and the yearning for national inde­pendence; and della Margarita was not mistaken when, after a visit of enquiry to Rome, he wrote to King Charles Albert: “ The Revolution wants no making; it is made already! ”

In other Italian States, such as Tuscany, Lucca, Modena, and Parma this attitude had engendered an ever growing popular enthusiasm, which was rather of a frankly national and anti-Austrian, than of a merely reforming, temper; it had deeply stirred Naples and Sicily, while in Piedmont every opportunity was taken for patriotic demonstrations, ODe of the most important of these being the Agricultural Congress at Montara, which served the same purpose for Piedmont as the Scientific Congresses had served for Italy. King Charles Albert, foreseeing that Austria would put every obstacle in the way of a reforming Pope, looked forward with pleasure to war on his behalf, as the prospect harmonised with his own political and religious principles. Meanwhile he con­tinued to cany out reforms within his own kingdom ; he dismissed della Margarita; he showed less severity towards the political exiles, who were now returning home, and towards the Press; he gave the portfolio of Education to Marquis Cesare Alfieri di Sostegno, a man of reputed progressive tendencies; whom some even declared to be in secret com­munication with Liberals from Lombardy.       _      _ For, even in Lombardy and Venetia,the districts under direct Austrian rule, the period of comparative contentment, or at least of resignation, was closing. The rural population was perhaps indifferent, but the urban middle class was thoroughly hostile to Austria, and the nobility and

76

Further reforms of Pius IX.

[1846-7

clergy were gradually following their lead. The Liberal party was divided into Mazzinians, supporters of Charles Albert, and anti- Austrians pure and simple. The popular feeling was significantly shown in Milan on the occasion of the funeral of Federigo Confalonieri, and in Venetia by the protest against the official plans for the Venice- Milan railway. Among the signatories of this vigorous protest were Daniele Manin, Pietro Paleocapa, and Valentino Pasini, three of the leaders in the coming revolution. Meanwhile, the large circulation of the works of Gioberti and of other Reformers was giving the Government great uneasiness, as the question in Lombardo-Venetia was one not merely of Reform, but of Nationality. The popularity of these works could only mean the assertion of Nationality, and the expulsion of Austria. Every demonstration in favour of Pius IX, or of the system he was held to represent, meant further estrangement from Austria. These movements continued without interruption down to the meeting of the ninth and last Scientific Congress, held in Venice in 1847; when, in consequence of the inflammatory addresses then made, the two most prominent speakers, Daniele Manin and Nicolo Tommaseo, were arrested.

In Rome the slowness and inadequacy of the reforms were attributed to the secret influence of the Jesuits and the retrograde party, and prompted the cry first raised on March 10, 1847: “ Long live Pius IX —alone!” On April 21, the Pope sanctioned the formation of an Advisory Council (Consulta di Stato). The idea of an autocracy, tem­pered by the advice of a Council, had been favoured by Gioberti in his Primato, but only as a step towards Constitutional government; unfortunately, to Pius IX it meant the furthest limit of his reform. But the tide was rising from day to day; and it had now become difficult to stem it. In spite of the opposition of the Secretary of State, Cardinal Gizzi, arms were placed in the hands of the citizens by the formation of a Civic Guard, whereupon he resigned. The first anniversary of the Amnesty was now at hand, and the people were preparing to give it due honour. Suddenly, the word was passed round that Austria was in secret accord with the Cardinals of the Opposition, the Jesuits, and some of the worst cut-throats of Gregory XVI’s old police (who had been seen skulking about Rome), to foment disorders in Central Italy. Thus were to be created pretexts for intervention, and for giving a final blow to the whole Reform agitation, which Austria regarded as pure Revolution. On the rumour reaching Brunetti (Ciceruacchio), the popular tribune promptly stopped all preparations for the festival, summoned his most faithful adherents, arrested the best known of the Opposition, made shift in some way to arm the Civic Guard, and insisted on the resignation and banishment of Monsignor Grassellini, Governor of Rome, and the institution of a judicial enquiry. In fact, as Gioberti said in his pamphlet on the subject, “if ancient Rome could boast of its Cicero, modern Rome might be equally proud of its Ciceruacchio!”

1847]       Roman plot. Austrian occupation of Ferrara. 77

Had he then really saved Rome from another Catilinarian conspiracy P Clerical historians deny it absolutely, some asserting that the pretended plot was a popular delusion and exaggeration; others that it was a mere excuse for attacking the reactionaries. Two facts, however, support the allegation: the reactionary movements that took place in no less than ten Italian towns at the same date, and the sudden occupation of a part of Ferrara by Austrian troops on July 17, 1847. This had been preceded by an offer of armed intervention, first made by Metternich to Monsignor Viale-Prela, papal Nuncio in Vienna, and later by the Austrian Minister, Count Liitzow, to Cardinal Gizzi in Rome. Evidence of this offer exists in the correspondence of the two British representatives in Vienna and Florence with Lord Palmerston, and in that of Count Revel, Sardinian ambassador in London, with his own Government. After this offer was declined, Metternich tried to force intervention by pro­voking agitation in Central Italy. If the Pope asked for intervention, an end could be probably made of the whole movement on the pretext of restoring order; and, if the Pope could not be induced to summon the Austrians, then the invasion of Ferrara would so provoke the feelings of the nation as to make war inevitable. The “great” Roman plot therefore probably had a genuine existence, though it never got beyond the embryonic stage. At any rate, Metternich succeeded entirely in attaining his second object; for the Austrian occupation of Ferrara (July 17, 1847) hurried Italy prematurely into action. Together with the subsequent insurrection at Palermo, on January 12, 1848, which closes the period in which Reforms, and opens that in which Constitu­tions, were granted, the Ferrara occupation marks the beginning of actual warfare—in fact the opening of the Italian Revolution of 1848.

According to Radical and Republican historians, Pius IX was at this time in covert accord with Metternich; of this there is no proof, and the probabilities are against it. Metternich was obliged to admit the Pope’s protests against the occupation of Ferrara; and, if the Pope had been privy to the occupation, Metternich would surely have blurted out the secret. Instead of doing so, he repeated his arbitrary action; for a second armed demonstration of the Austrians against Ferrara took place on August 17. Pius IX thereupon repeated his protests; and Austria, while reserving all questions of law, was forced to give up the town and confine herself to the occupation of the fortress of Ferrara, according to the terms of the treaties of 1815. So far indeed was Metternich from being in secret league with the Pope, that, in a private letter written at this time, he charges Pius with being a Freemason and a Carbonaro, who had succeeded, Heaven knew how, in becoming Pope.

Metternich’s plans were thus ripening. Revolution and war were imminent; and he was ready to face both, for he possessed the superiority in force, and knew that the political situation in Europe would leave him a free hand. For France had broken with Great

Britain, and attached herself to Austria, through fear of isolation; she could not therefore carry her counsels of Reform in Italy so far as to offend her new ally. Great Britain, it is true, favoured Reform; for the rupture with France had in a measure forced her to accept the office of Defender of the Liberal faith, which France had inherited from the first Revolution. England had therefore encouraged the Pope and the other Italian Princes on the path of Reform, and had opened communications with the Papal Government, which were called semi­official to meet the religious scruples of Pius IX. Lord Minto had been sent on this mission; but he had given the Pope clearly to understand that, should the Reform movement degenerate into a provocation of Austria, England would not put out a finger to help. Prussia and Russia were naturally on the side of Austria, and delighted to see her preparing to put down the Revolution imminent in Italy. Mettemich had a free hand, and every reason to act with all speed, and hence the Roman plot, and the surprise of Ferrara.

- These two events, while increasing the popularity of Pius IX, accentuated the hostility felt towards Austria. On September 8,1847, Mazzini wrote a singular appeal to the Pope recalling his letter to Charles Albert in 1831, in which he exhorted him to bring about not only the unity of Italy, but also a reform in the Church. In Florence a demand was made for the formation of a Civic Guard, which the Grand Duke refused under orders from Vienna; later, a disturbance at Leghorn, in which the tempestuous romance-writer Guerrazzi was involved, forced him to grant it. At Leghorn a further demand had been made for a Constitution; in fact, the first Liberal Ministry in Tuscany was then formed, under the Marquis Ridolfi. In Piedmont the impulse to more resolute action was again given in the Agri­cultural Congress. At the meeting at Casale in Montferrat Count Castagnetto, the King’s private secretary, read a letter from his Majesty on the subject of the occupation of Ferrara, which was in fact a call to arms, and was welcomed as such with patriotic enthusiasm in Turin, Genoa, and throughout Piedmont. King Charles Albert indeed again fell back into the usual and characteristic state of indecision, which earned him at the time the name of King Tentenna (hesitating). He had undoubtedly determined on war; but he knew that the summoning of a Constitutional Assembly must be the prelude to it, and he feared this step would produce weakness and disorder. Hence with every disposition for war he still leaned for a moment towards peace. But henceforth the die was cast. Nothing could have better contributed to exasperate the popular feeling than the excesses recently committed by Austria in Lombardo-Venetia. Senseless as they were, Austria seemed unable to avoid them, any more than the Italian States could avoid being dragged, in spite of themselves, into the vortex of Liberal Reform, with its certain result of revolution and war.

1847-8] y The Two Sicilies.—Rome and Pius IX. 79

The movement initiated by Pius IX had made itself felt throughout all Italy, and sometimes with singular results; nowhere more so than in the Two Sicilies, where the political disturbances of the past, notably those of 1820, had left their record of continual plots and insurrections in the habits and history of the people. In July, 1847, the miseries and corruptions of the Bourbon regime were laid bare to the world in Settembrini’s terrible Protesta del popolo delle due Sicilie, by which Naples and Sicily seemed to signify their common intention of working in accord with the general movement of Italy. Indeed, in August, 1847, Messina and Reggio di Calabria did actually choose the same moment for rising; the combination promised well, but it was short-lived; and a repetition of the experiment by the Revolutionary committee of Naples, after the rising had been suppressed, was unsuccessful. A continuous series of popular demonstrations was then organised, on the model of those in Rome under Pius IX and in Florence under Leopold II, by which King Ferdinand II was to be frightened into Reform. The King appeared to be shaken; he was particularly affected by the protests of the Tuscan and Roman Press, and by an address from the Liberals of Rome and Piedmont, signed by Camillo di Cavour, Silvio Pellico, Carlo Alfieri di Sostegno and Michelangelo Caetani di Sermoneta, which called upon him to follow the example of the other Italian rulers by granting Reform. All that came of it, however, was the dismissal of the worst of his Ministers in favour of some of rather better repute. The Sicilians at this time broke off entirely from the Revolutionists of Naples, and determined to act on their own account; oddly enough, they began by giving public notice that an insurrection would take place on January 12, 1848. “ It would fall due,” they said, “ with the certainty of a pro­missory note.”^-

Pius IX in the meantime protested vehemently, that he desired no war with Austria, and that the formation of an Advisory Council marked the limit of his internal reforms. It was in vain, for everyone believed that he would yield to persuasion, or to the compulsion of facts. Before the close of the year the Council was inaugurated with extravagant ceremony, in order to mark that, in the opinion of the public, it, and it only, was the Government; and publicity was demanded for its proceedings as if it had been a real Parliament. The new municipality of Rome, constituted on a wide electoral basis, was already demanding a Constitution; a great popular demonstration was held; and a new administrative programme was put forth, which included the expulsion of the Jesuits, against whom the feeling of execration was strong. The Pope was torn this way and that between the demands of the people, and the warnings of the retrograde party as to the possible danger to religion. On January 2 and 3, 1848, the Austrians crushed the disturbances in Milan and other Lombard towns by the slaughter of defenceless citizens. The indignation excited

throughout Italy was eloquently expressed by d’Azeglio’s well-known pamphlet, Lutti di Lombardia; in Rome the obsequies of the victims were celebrated amid intense and universal emotion.

The rising in Palermo on January 12,1848, closed the era of Reform, and ushered in that of Revolution. Beginning in Palermo on the 12th, it was completely successful by the 27th, after a desperate and singularly ferocious struggle; a practically unarmed populace not only routed the garrison, but drove a relieving force from Naples into ignominious flight. In twenty-four days the whole island was free, except the fortress of Messina, which the Sicilians, with strange weakness, never succeeded in mastering during the Revolution. The King then consented to treat, and offered some concessions through the mediation of the English and French Ministers. The Sicilians haughtily declined every concession; they proclaimed without further ado the Constituzione del 1812 (Consti­tution of 1812), and appointed a provisional Government under Ruggero Settimo. On April 18 their two Houses of Parliament considered a resolution for the deposition of the Bourbon dynasty in Sicily.

The concessions, which the King of Naples was now offering to Sicily, he had already granted with a liberal hand to his mainland kingdom, under the stress of his disasters in Sicily and of the con­tinuous demonstrations in Naples. On January 29 he issued an edict formulating the basis of a Constitution. He was the first of Italian rulers to make this concession, and appears to have intended to precipitate by this means the purely Reform movement, and above all to punish Pius IX for causing confusion by his schemes of Reform. The Pope would now be forced to follow suit, together with the other Italian Princes, even those most dependent on Austria. The result was curious. The concessions granted in Naples were so extravagantly large, that the country, passing suddenly from the most rigid restriction to the wildest licence, fell headlong into a state of continuous anarchy, with which the three Liberal ministries, which succeeded one another in the hundred days or so of the new Constitution, were never able to cope.

The King of Naples was right in supposing that his action would force the hands of Leopold of Tuscany and the Pope. But Charles Albert, after long hesitation, came to an independent decision. Feeling certain that the Austrian war now imminent could not be safely under­taken unless he could gain over the Liberal opinion so powerful in Piedmont, he published a manifesto announcing the bases of the Con­stitution (Statuto), and formed a new Ministry under Cesare Balbo. The Manifesto was dated February 8, but was not formally promulgated till March 5. On February 17, a Statuto was also published in Tuscany.

Pius IX, on the other hand, tried to resist the torrent, but in vain. He had on February 10 published the allocution, containing the celebrated words, “God bless Italy”; which he repeated next

day, in addressing the people from the balcony of the Quirinal, amid the wildest enthusiasm. On both occasions he also made it perfectly clear that he would have nothing to do with a Constitution, with the expulsion of the Jesuits, or with war against Austria. Unfortunately, nobody listened to anything but his “ God bless Italy.” The Pope was tom different ways* now carried away by the tempest of events, now again intoxicated by the popular enthusiasm. At last, on March 10, he sanctioned the formation of a Ministry composed almost entirely of laymen, among whom were Marco Minghetti, Count Giuseppe Pasolini, and Giuseppe Galletti; on March 14,1848, he published a Constitution. The scheme had been concocted in great secrecy by a committee of clerics; and the Ministry, whose duty it would be to put it into force, knew nothing about it. The moment Pellegrino Rossi set eyes on this formless abortion, this confused network of powers and jurisdictions, all neutralising one another, he told the Pope, rather brutally, that it was simply “war between sovereign and people under legal forms.” The criticism was profound and worthy of its author, but it passed unnoticed amid the torrent of applause which greeted the Constitution.

The Revolution which hurled Louis-Philippe from his throne in France (February 24,1848) was received with no little exultation in Italy. Nobody drew an ominous lesson, for no one had observed that all four Italian Constitutions, including that granted by the Pope, were, after all, only more or less accurate copies of the French Constitution of 1830, which had just broken down under the shock of Revolution. The socialistic side of the French Revolution of 1848 had little or no counterpart in Italy; but its political influence powerfully encouraged the hopes and increased the audacity of the ultra-Radicals. Its effects were more immediately felt in Germany and in Austria; and,' on March 13, 1848, Vienna itself, the “faithful city,” rose. To Milan and Venice came one upon another, in quick succession, the announcements of the Revolution in Sicily, of the grant of a Constitution to four Italian States, of a Revolution and Republic in Paris, and finally, on March 17, 1848, of the Revolution in Vienna and the fall and flight of Metternich.

Upon this news the tempest burst; the people, who had been so long preparing for it, rose with a unanimity of patriotic feeling which sur­prised, not only Austria, but even the most sanguine of the revolutionists. In the face of imminent ruin, the Government of Lombardo-Venetia practically went to pieces. The Revolution of Milan began on the morning of March 18; and on the night of the 22nd Radetzky abandoned the city; There were five days of furious battle in the streets, in which numberless barricades were erected; against these were pitted from 18,000 to 20,000 troops, who, deafened by the constant clang of the bells, and prostrated by fatigue and hunger, finally lost all heart against the indomitable tenacity of their opponents. During the five glorious days (the Cinque Giornate) of conflict in Milan the Austrian army was faced, not merely

by the people, but by an entire nation. All classes were there, united in one single desire to free their country or die ; and this resolve carried them to victory. Fearing an extension of the movement into the rural districts, uncertain as to what was happening in Vienna, and dreading that the Piedmontese might hasten to the assistance of Milan, Radetzky retreated to his strategic base, the Quadrilateral, a district between the mountains and the sea, bounded by the Adige with its fortresses of Verona and Legnago on one side, and by the Mincio with those of Mantua and Peschiera on the other.

On March 22 Venice rose. The news of the Revolution in Vienna, which had reached the city on the evening of the 17th, had produced no immediate explosion. The first use that the Venetians made of the excitement produced by the news from Vienna and the conse­quent panic-stricken paralysis of the civil and military authorities, was to rush to the prisons and set free Manin and Tommaseo, who dissuaded them from extreme measures. But, on March 18, public feeling had reached such a pitch that the Governor, intending merely to trim his sails to the new breeze of Liberalism and Revolution that was blowing from Vienna, allowed the enrolment of a body of citizens not exceeding 200 or so, as a sort of Civic Guard for the protection of order. On the 20th and 21st the numbers enlisted were far beyond this limit; and the more cautious sought to profit by the opportunity to put the country in some sort of order, on the lines of the concessions made at Vienna, the corrected report of which had been welcomed, on the evening of the 19th, with satisfaction and even by some demonstrations. This was enough to confirm the civil and military authorities in their mistaken idea that conciliation was still possible. Conciliation was exactly what Manin and others would not hear of. Their plan was simply to get possession of the Arsenal, and proclaim the Republic of Saint Mark. On the 22nd Manin, at the head of the populace and the Civic Guard, captured the Arsenal, the Commandant of which had been killed in a mutiny. Having but few troops that they could trust, Palffy, Hie Governor, and Zichy, the Military Commandant, were forced to treat with Manin, the real leader of the Revolution, who persuaded them to capitulate, and to evacuate the town and the surrounding forts. Once more was heard—and this time without a dissentient voice—the old historic shout, “ Viva San Marco! ” and the Republic was proclaimed!

Although the envoys of the Provisional Government of Milan, which had been formed during the Cmque Giornate, insistently urged on Charles Albert the need for his prompt intervention in Lombardy, it was not till March 22 that, on the advice of his Ministers, he finally decided on war. On the 25th 5000 men crossed the Ticino in the direction of Milan; but the King did not reach Pavia before the 29th, six days after Radetzky’s retreat from Milan. The Marshal had thus time and leisure to reorganise his forces. The King had only 23,000 men under

his command; so that his inaction may be attributed, in some measure, to lack of preparation as well as to delay. But the main factors were his own temperament, self-sacrificing to the utmost, but incapable of taking swift decisions; the unforeseen suddenness of events; and, lastly, the fact that he was facing Austria alone, while she, though crippled by her internal conditions, was anything but isolated in Europe.

For Charles Albert the abstention or neutrality, counselled by England and France, was now impossible. All Piedmont was stirring. Volunteers were starting everywhere in small parties for the front. Camillo di Cavour, who was one day to be the statesman of the union of Italy, published in the Risorgimento his well-known article beginning “The hour of fate has struck for the Sardinian monarchy. One road only is open, that of immediate war.” If Charles Albert had but so resolved! Even the few days’ delay was both a military, and a political, blunder. The King’s failure to intervene, until the triumph of the Milanese in the Cinque Giornate was complete, cast an uncertainty upon his and their respective rights and obligations, which was increased by the general but very erroneous impression among the insurgents that, henceforth, they no longer stood in need of armed help. The existing divisions between parties in Milan, from the Moderate to the ultra-Radical, grew wider; the higher and wealthier classes still clung to the idea of union with Piedmont, while many others, and these the noisiest, inclined to a Republic. The two parties were about equal in strength ; and both were represented in the Provisional Govern­ment. It was determined, as a compromise, to leave the question of the new form of government to be decided at the close of the struggle. This was the worst possible solution, as it created a weak and confused condition at a very critical moment; and withal it was of absolutely no practical use, inasmuch as defeat would involve the return of Lombardy into the Austrian Empire, while success would mean the victory of monarchy under Charles Albert, who was after all the chief Power in Upper Italy. But the question was further complicated through the proclamation of the Republic of Saint Mark in Venice, which added one more to the existing subdivisions. There were Mazzinian Republicans in Milan ; Manin and Tommaseo were pure Republicans of the federalist type in Venice; and both struggled to realise their own special pro­grammes ; while the King, who was risking his all for Italy, alone had a force competent to fight against Austria. However much he might favour a war for national independence, it would be too much to expect of him that he should fight, without any regard for the interests of his own dynasty, simply to create one Republic in Milan and another in Venice.

All this made but a gloomy prelude to the war; and the union of Parma and Modena with Piedmont, which took place at once and almost without opposition, was not an equivalent compensation. The war thus begun put the Grand Duke Leopold II in a grave difficulty. Tuscany

was burning to take part in it; and the Grand Duke found it impossible either to resist or to divert the popular enthusiasm. On April 5, 1848, he accordingly declared war, alid despatched into Lombardy 3000 regulars and the same number of volunteers. On April 17 they crossed the Po under the command of General Cesare de Laugier.

'\The political situation in Rome at this time was most singular. The people and the Administration breathed war, and war only; the Sovereign opposed it. In defiance of him, however, troops and volunteers'left Rome in large numbers between March 23 and 30, and traversed the whole length of the Papal States on their way to the Po, being as they passed joined by others amid general enthusiasm. War was not indeed yet formally declared, though operations had commenced; the Austrian ambassador was still at his post in Rome; and the Pope had forbidden the troops to cross the frontier. In his allocution of March 30, 1848, the Pope appeared still to look forward to some pacific solution, trusting to his favourite scheme of a Lega degli Stati Italiani (League of Italian States). His main dread was that of a schism in Germany, a spectre with which diplomatists, Cardinals, and Jesuits were always trying to terrify him; and he wished therefore to throw off all responsibility for the war. But General Giovanni Durando, who commanded the Papal troops, forced his hand by a proclamation of April 5, 1848, written by d’Azeglio, which solemnly declared a crusade against the foreigner. The Pope was furious, and his Ministers would gladly have disowned Durando; but they were re­luctantly obliged to direct him to put himself at the disposal of Charles Albert. Volunteers were already crossing the frontier on their own account. Finally, on April 25, Durando crossed the Po, and took up a position between Ostiglia and Govemolo, thus forming, with the Tuscan forces, the right wing of the army investing Mantua.

Durando did not stay there long; Austria, with her usual tenacity^ though torn by intestine revolution, had sent a new army under Nugent, by way of the Camic Alps, to the aid of Radetzky, who was shut up in the Quadrilateral. This move obliged Manin to call for the help of Charles Albert, who thereupon, on April 30, 1848, ordered the Papal forces to prevent Nugent’s junction with Radetzky. Unfortunately Nugent had already reached Udine on the 22nd. The provinces of Venetia, threatened by this move, all favoured union with Piedmont; but Manin, when calling upon Charles Albert for assistance, had, like M ilan, proposed to reserve the question of the form of government till the close of the war. This proposal simply created a new cause of disagreement in Venetia; as a compromise it had been abandoned even in Lombardy; it ran counter to the general opinion in the duchies of Parma, Lucca, and Modena, where the popular vote had been for union with Piedmont, and in Tuscany and the Papal State; counter, lastly, to the essentially monarchical instincts of the Neapolitans, who were now

quarrelling with the Sicilians on this very question of separation. The net result of this dispute in any event was only so much loss of strength to the party of national independence in this hour of supreme need.

In the ever increasing anarchy of Naples, three Liberal ministries had followed one another: the third, presided over by Carlo Troia, favoured cooperation in the War of Independence. On March 29 200 volunteers had already been sent to the front, raised and com­manded by the Princess Christina Belgioioso, a Milanese lady and a characteristic specimen of the age both in her faults and in her virtues. In April a fleet was despatched to the Adriatic, and was fired on by the Sicilians as it passed Messina—a shameful deed, but in connexion with which may perhaps be noted the fact that barely one hundred of the Italian volunteers, who fought in the War of Independence, came from Sicily. The 40,000 Neapolitan troops told off for service in Upper Italy dwindled down to barely 14,000, commanded by the old insurgent, General Guglielmo Pepe; and so slow were their movements (designedly, no doubt) that the heads of their columns did not reach Bologna before May 14.

Charles Albert now moved on the Quadrilateral, where Radetzky had taken refuge, passed through Pavia and Cremona, but avoided Milan, which he did not propose to enter unless victorious. Overcoming the feeble Austrian resistance offered on the Mincio, he took post on its left bank, so as to cover Lombardy in case of defeat, and to keep in touch with the Papal and Neapolitan forces, which were to march on the Lower Po. He thus stood between the fortresses of Mantua and • Peschiera; and the subsequent affairs were little more than recon­naissances against one or other of these fortresses. At last Radetzky, with a view to the reestablishment of his communications with Peschiera, attacked the heights of Pastrengo on April 20; he was beaten, but retired without molestation. On his side, Charles Albert, deceived by a false assurance that Verona would immediately rise on the advance of the Piedmontese troops, moved on May 6 to Santa Lucia, within sight of Verona. Being repulsed with serious loss, he was obliged to con­centrate his attention on the siege of Peschiera.

No better fortune attended the volunteers of Lombardy. Few in number, without discipline, and badly led, they had first been directed to act on the Mincio on the left of the Piedmontese; they were then sent into Tyrol, to hinder the advance of reinforcements for Radetzky in Verona; thence they were recalled to Brescia partly for reorganisation, and partly from a fear that their presence in Tyrol might provoke the intervention of the Germanic Confederation. That the aid given by Lombardy was lacking both in quantity and quality was mainly owing to the unfortunate view held in Milan that the war had closed with the Cinque Giomate, and also by the paralysing uncertainty as to the eventual form of government, the decision on which had been suspended

chiefly by Mazzinian and Republican influence. The Provisional Govern­ment decided to remove this last obstacle at any cost, and at an Assembly of the People held on May 12 brought forward a resolution for union with Piedmont, which was ultimately carried in June. Venice subsequently followed this example, although the effect of Manin’s greatest blunder produced more delay and greater difficulty. She had given little material aid to the war, believing that Durando’s Papal troops, with the Neapolitan forces, were sufficient for their task; un­fortunately, the latter had not yet crossed the Po. Meanwhile Nugent advanced towards the Tagliamento, annoyed but not seriously hindered by the attacks of the inhabitants and of the Venetian volunteers; on May 3 he reached Conegliano, on May 5 he occupied Belluno.

At this juncture Durando was at Treviso, having been ordered thither by Charles Albert on April 29; where he was joined on May 6 by General Ferrari, with the Papal volunteers. In the uncertainty as to Nugent’s movements, the two generals should have remained in dose touch; but they scattered their forces on useless lines of defence. Ferrari found Nugent on May 9 at Comuda, and was driven back in complete disorder, thus leaving open the line of the Lower Piave. While Durando was hesitating whether to cover Treviso, or to defend the fords of the Brenta against the enemy, General Thum, who had succeeded Nugent, advanced with all speed and attacked Vicenza; though repulsed by the inhabitants with the aid of Durando, who had now come up, he was able to make good his junction with Radetzky at San Bonifazio, near Verona, on May 22.

Notwithstanding the success of the Austrians in thus effecting their main purpose, the continued resistance of Vicenza had restored heart to Durando’s mixed force of regulars and volunteers; and, if the Neapolitans, who had now reached a point between Bologna and Ferrara, had crossed the Po, joined Durando, and come into touch with the Piedmontese army, the result of the war might have been different. Radetzky would have thus been shut in between Mantua and Verona, with Peschiera on the verge of surrender, and his communications would have been threatened on the lines of Tyrol and of the Piave, where the revolt appeared to be extending. But Radetzky knew that the Neapolitans were not moving, and that he was faced by an army ex­tended over more than thirty miles. He therefore decided to force the Piedmontese right, composed of the Tuscans, cross the Mincio, and take the Piedmontese in the rear. Accordingly, on May 29, he drove in the Tuscans as far as Curtatone and Montanara. But their fierce resistance delayed him long enough to enable the Piedmontese to cross to the right bank of the Mincio, and win the battle of Goito on May 30. On the same day came the news that Peschiera had fallen. This was the most glorious day of the war. But Radetzky made better use of his defeat than Charles Albert of his victory. The King halted, while Radetzky hurried on and captured Vicenza, in spite of a vigorous defence, on June 10.

1848]                          Radetzky overruns Venetia.—Naples.           87

On the 14th Treviso fell; on the 15th Padua, Rovigo a little later. Of all Venetia, Venice amid her lagoons alone remained free.

The want of discipline among the Papal volunteers and their dispersal after Comuda were not due only to bad organisation, want of military spirit, and discord among their chiefs. A more powerful solvent existed in the Encyclical of April 29,1848, in which Pius IX, in answer to a specific request for his views from his lay ministry, solemnly denounced the war, and alike, as man and as Pope, disclaimed from thenceforth all part in the cause of Italy. Its effect in Rome, in Italy and in Europe generally, was calamitous, and certainly went beyond the intentions of its author. A report immediately spread among the Papal regulars and volunteers who had fought at Cornuda, that the Pope’s public repudiation of the war had deprived them of the benefit of the ordinary laws of warfare, and justified Austria in treating them as mere brigands, to whom no quarter was due; hence a general dis­couragement and disorganisation. The temporary success at Vicenza and the incorporation of what had been the Papal forces into the army of Charles Albert, at the instance of the Roman Ministry, somewhat revived their spirits; but the final capitulation of Vicenza in June precluded the majority of them from taking further part in the war, and the remainder took refuge in Venice, now the only place in Venetia where Austrian authority had not been restored.

The fifteenth of May—the day of the meeting of the Chambers in Naples—saw the beginning and the close of her Constitutional regime, and the end of her . share in the War of Independence. On this fatal day folly spread from the Council Chamber to the street; and barricades were everywhere erected, because the King had vetoed a proposal which Settembrini himself described as worthy of a tap-room, viz. that Parlia­ment should be opened without the tender of any oath of allegiance, and that the National Guard should garrison the forts of Naples. The Swiss regiments, ordered to patrol the streets in case of disorder, collided with the insurgents, and a conflict, beginning no one knew exactly how, resulted in a massacre. The populace then gave themselves up to the wildest excesses; the Chambers were prorogued, and then dissolved; on May 22 General Pepe, then at Bologna, was ordered to return to Naples with his troops; and Admiral de Cosa, who had already joined the Sardinian squadron before Trieste, was ordered to leave the Adriatic. Pepe and a few others declined to obey orders, crossed the Po, and entered Venice on June 13. The King did not im­mediately revoke the Constitution; but he made no further attempt to put it in force—which came to much the same thing. A curious legend treats this affair of May 15 as a mere act of provocation, concocted by the King and the Court camarilla in order to drown the new-born Constitution in blood, and to provide a pretext for the recall of the military forces ordered to the front against their own wishes.

But in truth, May 15 was only the outcome of the faults of all concerned; King, people, Liberals, Absolutists, secret societies, regular ■;roops, National Guard, Court, and Deputies were all to blame, especially the last-named, whose reckless chatter, unreasonable suspicions, and pedantic disputes, together with their general violence, gave the King all the pretext he wanted; if, indeed, the inability to put down the rebellion in Sicily were not sufficient pretext in itself.

After the defection of Pius IX, the loss of Vicenza, the retreat: of the Neapolitans, and the defeat of the Tuscans, Charles Albert found himself once more alone against Austria. Thus the idea of Federation, which had never taken any formal shape, became impossible. The revolution in Vienua, which had stimulated those of Milan and Venice, had no practical effect upon the issue., The negotiations, that took place in the course of the war, never so much as promised a hope of a favourable result. On June IS Wessenberg, the Foreign Minister in Vienna, made a proposal to the Provisional Government in Milan which practically amounted to an offer to repurchase Lombardy, apart from Venetia, at a price; but, as the Union with Piedmont had then been formally declared, this proposal came to nothing. Later Baron Hum- melauer went to London to obtain the mediation of England in a project for the creation of a large kingdom comprising Lombardo-Venetia, and the duchies of Parma, Lucca, and Modena, and united to Austria solely by the personal link of the Crown. England did not refuse her good offices, and indeed put forward a still larger proposal, which was provisionally accepted by Hummelauer; but, as it was not discussed at Vienna till the moment when Radetzky was preparing his second attack on Charles Albert, it had no result. The military party had, as usual, the last word in Vienna; and the kindly Emperor Ferdinand, who appeared to be in the way, was forced to abdicate (December 2, 1848) in favour of the present Emperor, Francis Joseph, who had gained his first military and political experience in the Italian campaign.

It is possible, indeed, that all these attempts at negotiation had no purpose but that of gaining time for the reinforcement of Radetzky. France took a languid part in the discussion; her object was to prevent the formation of a strong monarchy in Upper Italy, or in that event to obtain compensation by the cession of Nice and Savoy. Charles Albert at last determined to attack Mantua, with the view of forcing Radetzky out of Verona, whither he had returned with all speed immediately upon the capture of Vicenza. He marched on July IS; on the 18th, he occupied Govemolo after a successful action; but his line, stretching from Govemolo to Rivoli, now became too much extended, and was consequently weak at many points. Radetzky, who could now (July 22) dispose of 80,000 men, repeated the manoeuvre of Goito; he thrust back the Piedmontese left towards Peschiera, and then turned upon their centre. On July 24 the Piedmontese troops, brought up from the trenches before Mantua, marlt.

a flank attack ; but they were completely defeated at Custozza on the 25th, and driven across the Mincio. Charles Albert, instead of retreat­ing by the line of the Po, tried to cover Milan, before which he was again defeated (August 4). On his entrance into the city the populace rose, incited by noisy demagogues, and besieged him in the Greppi Palace (August 5), whence he was rescued with some difficulty. On August 6 the remnant of the Piedmontese army repassed the Ticino, and Radetzky reentered Milan. On August 9, at Vigevano, an armistice was concluded, generally known as the Salasco armistice, from the name of the gallant soldier who had the ill-luck to sign it. Its conditions were most rigorous, restoring everything to the status quo ante bellurn, with the exception of the city of Venice, which still maintained its resistance. After this disaster Charles Albert withdrew to Piedmont, and the whole situation throughout Italy was evidently changed.

The Austrians immediately marched on the Duchies; part of their forces, under Welden, entered the Papal States, advancing on Bologna. On May 4 the lay or Minghetti Ministry had resigned, in consequence of the Encyclical of April 29. The weak and ephemeral Ministry of Mamiani (May 4—Aug. 6) was succeeded by one under Count Edoardo Fabbri, under whom the disintegration of the State proceeded yet faster. On September 16,1848, Fabbri was succeeded by Count Pellegrino Rossi, the man whose illustrious life was to be the price of the last desperate effort to maintain the union between Pius IX and his people, between a Catholic Papacy and the cause of a free and independent Italy. With marvellous judgment and knowledge Rossi flung himself into the task of curbing the all-pervading anarchy, and of infusing fresh life into an administration which was already in dissolution. He met the hatred both of Clericals and demagogues in the open, concealed none of his proposals, never retreated, put his hand to everything, and promised reform everywhere; and all this without in any way threatening liberty, while allowing a scurrilous Press to go unmuzzled, and even taking part publicly in their controversies. His appointment took place on September 16; and he at once summoned the Chambers for November 15.

The foreign policy of Rossi is summed up in his attitude towards the eternal question of Italian Federation. Of this Pius IX was the most consistent supporter; next to him was the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who saw therein a means of reconciling his duties as an Austrian prince and as an Italian ruler; then came Naples, to whom it meant the possible submission of Sicily and a counterpoise to the dreaded ambition of Piedmont. Piedmont, on the other hand, had opposed Federation. Where views were so diverse, the idea of Federation was not practicable; that of union, which was then the monopoly of the Republicans, was not yet ripe. When Rossi took the question up, the war seemed almost decided. The great philosopher Antonio Rosmini had been sent to Rome on August 15, 1848, by the Piedmontese Ministry to discuss

Federazione (Federation). But the Ministry of Casati and Gioberti had given way, after the Salasco armistice, to that of Alfieri di Sostegno. Sostegno was unfavourable to Bosmini’s project, which involved a complete federative organisation of Italy; and all that he asked was assistance in the war, which, it was supposed, might soon be resumed. To this resumption of war Rossi was hostile, as involving a Federation without Naples, which, from a military point of view, was the strongest of the States; especially as any assistance from the Papal State was, at the moment, impossible. Rossi now put forward a vague counter-proposal for a “ League of Princes,” with which Rosmini’s scheme would not have been necessarily incompatible. But Rossi was too late; if the projected kingdom of Upper Italy, the dream of Charles Albert, was dead, any federal organisation was equally out of the question. Considering the events in Venice on August 11, 1848, and remembering that the union of Piedmont with the Duchies, Lombardy, and Venice was only legally completed on July 27,1848, we may reckon that the life of the Kingdom of Upper Italy lasted only a fortnight. With its disappearance, the idea of Federation under any form vanished beyond hope of realisation.

On July 27 the Statutory Union of Venetia and Piedmont was declared, Venice at last consenting: on August 6 the Commissioners of Charles Albert formally took over Venice. But on the 11th, when the news of the Salasco armistice arrived, they were expelled from the city, and Manin, who had retired into private life after the vote in favour of the Union, was restored to the dictatorship by acclamation. The defeat of King Charles Albert and the Salasco armistice closed the career of the Moderate Monarchist party. Henceforward the idea of a United Democratic Italy everywhere held the field. In Tuscany the Ridolfi Ministry was forced on August 18 to retire in favour of one headed by Gino Capponi, which appears to have resembled the Carlo Troia Ministry in Naples in many points; especially as both Ministers were e: .posed on one side to sovereigns of doubtful faith, and to the street-demagogues on the other. Leghorn now rose in insurrection. Montanelli was sent thither to exercise his influence, which was great on account of his service in the war, and his imprisonment; he there proclaimed an Assembled Costituente (Constituent Assembly) for Italy, a name which thence- forwards was the badge and rallying cry of the Revolution, signifying an Assembly with absolute power, much on the lines of the French Convention. On October 27 the Capponi Ministry was succeeded by the so-called Democratic Ministry under Montanelli and Guerrazzi.

To the torrent of demagogy, which had triumphed so easily in Tuscany, Rossi offered a firm resistance in Rome. The day of the opening of the Chambers was drawing near, and there were signs that the Democratic party were preparing on that day to strike a great blow. On what did Rossi rely for victory? The answer must be that he relied solely on himself. We may admire his courage; but it is clear that he

had misconceived the situation, and was suffering under an illusion, which, grand and even heroic as it was, could not but be fatal alike to him and to his cause. On the morning of November 15, 1848, he drove to the Palace of the Cancelleria for the purpose of opening Parliament; after leaving his carriage and ascending the first few steps of the staircase, he met his death at the hand of an assassin. On the day after the death of Rossi, a popular insurrection forced the Pope to call a Democratic Ministry under Monsignor Carlo Muzzarelli, of which Pietro Sterbini, one of the instigators of the murder, was a member. On November 25 the Pope fled from Rome and took refuge at Gaeta, whence he issued a Commission of Regency; but his Commissioners were unable to act, or even to meet. The Chambers replied by the appointment of a “Supreme Committee of State,” which decided to proceed to the election of a Constituent Assembly by universal suffrage. This Assembly met on February 5, 1849, and on the 9th proclaimed a Republic.

That matters did not proceed to so great a length in Tuscany was due to the resistance of Guerrazzi, a man who belonged to a class of his own, both in politics and literature. Montanelli and he were at first to all appearance in favour with the Grand Duke, who had not expressed any objection even to a Constituent Assembly. But on January 30 the Grand Duke withdrew to Siena; and retired on February 7 to Porto San Stefano. On the following day Mazzini appeared in Florence, but did not find the conditions propitious. A Triumvirate, consisting of Guerrazzi, Montanelli, and Mazzoni, had proclaimed a Constituent Assembly for Tuscany, and the Grand Duke on February 21 followed the example of the Pope by taking refuge at Gaeta. A Republic was not actually proclaimed in Florence; but Guerrazzi had all the power in his hands, and was ultimately, on March 28, 1849, appointed Dictator.

The Neapolitan King required no urging towards reaction; at any rate he had ample excuse for it in the disorders of his capital, in the refusal of the Sicilians to negotiate, and in the insurrections on the mainland after May 15, 1848. Had the Sicilians given any material aid to these insurrections, the face of things might have been changed; but they failed to do so. The Neapolitan Parliament, after a precarious existence, was finally dissolved on March 13,1849. The hour was now at hand for the Sicilians in their turn to pay the penalty of their many mistakes and of the insular selfishness which had led them to trust entirely to the protection of the English fleet in their waters, instead of arming in their own defence. On July 10, 1849, after reforming the Constitution of 1812 to such an extent that the monarchical power was well-nigh ex­tinguished under safeguards and provisos, they offered the Crown to the Duke of Genoa, second son of Charles Albert; he, however, declined it.

After the Piedmontese defeats and the Salasco armistice, the Bourbon King deemed the moment ripe for resolute action in Sicily; and, late in August, he launched an army under General Carlo Filangieri against

the rebellious island. Messina was captured amid horrors sufficient to awaken the conscience of Europe; from pure humanity, the French and British admirals in Sicilian waters intervened with proposals for a pacific solution. On September 11 the Bourbon, alarmed by this action, accepted the armistice; but the only result was to encourage the Sicilians to further resistance and defiance. The last scheme of settlement, known as the Ultimatum of Gaeta, dated February 26,1849, was rejected like the rest by the Sicilian Parliament on March 24. For all their brave words, the Sicilians made no serious provision for the war; their troops were few, badly armed, and ill-disciplined, and commanded by adven­turers, such as the Pole Mieroslawski. Having declared the armistice at an end, Filangieri captured Taormina on April 2 and Catania on the 7th ; other towns surrendered without fighting, and he entered Palermo on May 15. Such was the evil end of the Sicilian Revolution, which had hampered instead of aiding the war of national independence, and had had no small share in bringing about the final disasters.

From these disasters Piedmont was labouring hard to recover; the Ministry of Marquis Cesare Alfieri di Sostegno, who had unselfishly taken office on August 19, 1848, tried to stay the torrent of catastrophe by accepting the mediation of France and England. The two Powers suggested the renewal of negotiations on the basis of the old Hartig and Hummelauer proposals; but these had never been put forward quite seriously by Austria, and it was not likely that she would now accept them, when her arms were completely victorious, when Lombardy had been reoccupied, and when the only remaining resistance Was that of Venice. Austria fenced over the point at first, and tried to make mischief between the mediating Powers and Piedmont; but at last she refused to consider the old bases of negotiation, suggesting for a new basis the grant of Liberal institutions in Lombardo-Venetia, similar to those already granted in the rest of the Austrian empire. A Congress at Brussels was proposed, but Austria found plenty of excuses for not taking part in it: and finally, after Wessenberg had been succeeded at the Foreign Office in Vienna by the more unyielding Prince Schwarzenberg, she declared her intention of taking her stand purely and simply on the treaties of 1815. The part taken by France in all these negotiations had been neither frank nor creditable; that of Great Britain, though fruitless, was at any rate more honourable. Palmerston in particular, in his despatch of November 11, 1848, to Vienna, went fully into the errors and iniquities of Austria in her Italian policy; he looked into the future with sureness of vision, even prophesying that the return of a Bonaparte to power in France might result in the enfranchisement of Italy from the Austrian yoke by French assistance.

'Hie ill-success of the Anglo-French mediation increased the enmity and opposition to the Piedmontese Ministry, in spite of their efforts to reorganise and reinforce the army. Vienna had again risen in insur­

rection on October 6,1848, thus giving renewed vigour to the Hevolution in Hungary, which had now been in progress for some months. The Opposition in Piedmont naturally thought this an excellent opportunity for repudiating the Salasco armistice and renewing the war. Vincenzo Gioberti, whose support they had obtained, and who believed himself to be leading the Democratic party, though he was in fact only following their lead, publicly charged the Sostegno Ministry with having a concealed programme of peace at any price. AJfieri had now retired through ill-health, and had been succeeded by General Ettore Peirone, a man of the highest character, who afterwards died fighting heroically at Novara; that Ministry also resigned, on December 3, 1848. It was followed by Gioberti’s Democratic Ministry (to give it the title then in fashion), which soon discovered that to make war at that moment would be equally difficult and absurd; it therefore tried to revive the idea of a Federal Union of States, and to that end proposed that Piedmont should intervene for the restoration of the Pope and the Grand Duke of Tuscany. It was late in the day for such a policy; the reaction had already begun, and there was every risk that Piedmont also would be involved. Gioberti was repudiated by his own colleagues, and resigned. The Anglo-French mediation having likewise failed, the only issue from the impossible situation seemed to be to take the chances of war; and, on March 12, 1849, notice was given of the termination of the armistice. The Piedmontese army took the field under the Polish General Chrzanowsky; on March 23 they were defeated at Novara. Radetzky’s triumph was complete, the only powerful army now opposed to Austria was decisively beaten, and the war was at an end for Piedmont. Charles Albert, after in vain seeking death on the battle-field, abdicated in favour of his son, Victor Emmanuel II, thus removing any obstacle to peace that might attach to his own person. He then went into voluntary exile at Oporto in Portugal, where he died on July 28, 1849, a martyr to the cause of Italian independence.

Thus the final catastrophe of the Revolutionary period was on all sides rapidly approaching. In Rome Terenzio Mamiani tried to stem the advance of the tide, which was daily more threatening since the murder of Rossi and the flight of Pius IX. His efforts bear some tesemblances to those of Gioberti in Piedmont, but here also circum­stances were too strong. There were two unacknowledged dictatorships, the one that of the demagogues, exercised through Sterbini, once a party to the assassination of Rossi, now a Minister; the other that of the Reaction wielded by Cardinal Antonelli, ruling for Pius IX, who was at Gaeta. On February 7, 1849, the Pope and Cardinals formally applied for the intervention of all the Catholic Powers, though, by excepting the TTing of Sardinia, they incidentally negatived Gioberti’s plans for his intervention. On the other side, Giuseppe Mazzini, the Revolutionists, and the flower of the Italian volunteers all flocked to Rome; together

with Giuseppe Garibaldi, already famous for great deeds in America, and during the recent war in Upper Italy. On receiving the news of the disaster at Novara, the Republic had established a Triumvirate, consisting nominally of Mazzini, Saffi, and Armellini, but with the whole power in the hands of Mazzini, who wielded it with honesty and moderation.

France, Republican France, in whom Mazzini trusted so confidently, offered the Pope her intervention in Rome, on condition that she should act alone; and on April 25, 1849, a French force under Oudinot landed at Civita Vecchia on its way to Rome. The French, who had not expected any serious resistance in Rome, were soon undeceived. On April 30, 1849, Garibaldi repulsed them by sheer hard fighting; and he similarly drove back the Neapolitans on May 19. Oudinot concealed the extent of his defeat, and sent home for reinforcements. Thus between France and the Roman Republic there suddenly arose a question of military amour propre obscuring the political issues ; and this just at the moment when the President of the French Republic, for the confirmation of his own power and for the eventual restoration of the Empire, needed the whole support both of the army and the Church. In order to g in time, the French sent Ferdinand de Lesseps to Rome to treat for peace with Mazzini and the Assembly; and on May 17 an armistice was con­cluded. Lesseps no doubt acted in good faith, as did Mazzini; and they came to terms. But, as soon as the reactionary intrigues between Gaeta and the French headquarters were ripe, and the reinforcements had arrived, the terms were repudiated. Without even giving notice of the close of the armistice, the French suddenly assaulted Rome. Garibaldi and his forces made a heroic stand; but, on June 30, they were obliged to abandon the defence, and a number retreated with Garibaldi before the French entered the city. The life of the ill-starred Roman Republic under Mazzini had been precarious and, politically speaking, it earned small praise; but, as the death-struggle of Italians against foreign perfidy and violence, its record is glorious and its memory is still green.

At the date of the fall of Rome the Austrians had already invaded Tuscany. Guerrazzi the Dictator had already charged Cesare de Laugier (who had fought at Curtatone and Montanara) with treason, because, as an officer of the Grand Duke, he had tried to aid in his restoration. Now, however, Guerrazzi himself followed that example; for, while trying to keep the anarchical demagogy in bounds, he was also meditating the possible restoration of the Lorraine dynasty, with himself in the part of Monck. But the Moderates, who bore him no good will, and who still nursed some vain hopes of averting Austrian intervention, gave him no time to get the credit of such overtures. On April 11, 1849, in a burst of reaction, the Grand Duke was restored by a general vote, in which the municipality, the upper classes, and the peasants combined; and Guerrazzi was arrested, on the pretext of protecting him from the excited populace. The punishment of the city was bitter. On May 25,

after overcoming a slight resistance at Leghorn, the Austrians entered Florence. The Grand Duke gave it to be understood that the Austrian intervention was against his wishes; but General dAspre tore off the mask, by his proclamation dated Empoli, May 24, in which he declared that the Austrians had come at the specific request of the Grand Duke. Ten days of glorious struggle now took place at Brescia, the only one of the Lombard cities that had risen in support of Piedmont’s desperate renewal of the war in March, 1849. The attempt was put down with extraordinary ferocity by the Austrian General Haynau, who earned the nickname of “ General Hyena ”; and Brescia’s struggle may be looked upon as the epilogue of Charles Albert’s War of Italian Independence.

Thus Venice alone was left. After the defeat of Novara the Venetian Assembly resolved on resistance to the last, on the motion of Daniele Manin, whose grandeur and truthfulness of character is unsurpassed among Italian patriots. He proposed by keeping a strong hand upon demagogy to win the respect of all Europe, and by the moderation of his rule to throw into stronger light the lawlessness of Austria’s appeals to force; with a lofty faith in international equity, he hoped ultimately to force England and France, as the Liberal Powers, to accord to Venice their moral and material support, and thus to compel Austria to accede to her demands. His right-hand-man was Valentino Pasini, a diplo­matist who recalled the best type of the ambassadors of the Serene Republic; and whose admission to personal negotiation with Prince Schwarzenberg is sufficient proof of his diplomatic skill.

Venice did in fact resist to the last. On May 26,1849, the Austrians captured the fort of Malghera. From July 30 the city endured a ceaseless direct bombardment. On August 4 starvation and cholera stared them in the face. Unwilling to abuse the unlimited confidence of his people, Daniele Manin called an Assembly: on August 6 he was given full power to deal with the situation. After he had received a final and unfavourable answer from Pasini, who was negotiating at Vienna, and had learnt the news of the Russian intervention for the suppression of the Revolution in Hungary, his last hope disappeared. On August 11 he began to treat for the surrender of the city. On the 14th, the first reply was received from the Austrian commander, offering only the hardest conditions. The cholera was making havoc in town and fleet; only a section of the city still remained uninjured by the ceaseless bombardment, and the rush of the population into that section was aggravating the epidemic. In a short time starvation cut short all discussion, and unconditional surrender became inevitable. On August 24 Manin resigned all power into the hands of the municipal authorities, who negotiated the surrender; and on August 27 he departed into exile. With the fall of Venice all was at an end. The Pope and the Italian Princes were restored; France occupied Rome; the Austrians were dominant throughout the north; on all sides reaction triumphed.

CHAPTER Y.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

(1848-52.)

On January 27,1848, Alexis de Tocqueville, speaking in Parliament, questioned the Ministers of Louis-Philippe: “ Can you,” he asked, “ at this very moment count upon to-morrow ? Have you the smallest idea of what a year, a month, even a day may bring forth?” Guizot and his colleagues with their majority behind them smiled at the wan ing, for, although a heated debate followed on Tocqueville’s speech, there was nothing to show that it pointed to the fall of the Monarchy of July. For three years the Opposition under Thiers and Odilon Barrot had attacked, without weakening, the majority; and the Ministiy resolved to deal once for all with their opponents by putting down the existing system of appealing to the nation outside Parliament, both in Paris and in the provinces, through the medium of meetings and banquets. Early in 1848 Count Duchatel, the Minister of the Interior, with the approval of the King, “ and to put an end to a dangerous and reckless agitation,” prohibited a banquet, which was to have been given in the 12th arron- dissement of Paris, and held troops in readiness to enforce the prohibition if necessary. His action, which became known to the Deputies at a moment when the Opposition was once more Urging their grievances in the customary shape of an address to the Crown, stirred the anger of Guizot’s opponents, but there was nothing to show that the outburst heralded a revolution. A disturbance there might be, but in the absence of organisation it could be of no consequence; it might even afford Ministers a favourable opportunity for reducing the Opposition to im­potence and silence.

Events showed however how false were the calculations of Guizot and his friends and how true were Tocqueville’s words. On February 22,

1848,       the day fixed for the prohibited banquet, a considerable crowd of _; students, workmen, and shopkeepers—lookers-on and malcontents rather than rebels—assembled on the Place de la Madeleine in obedience to the summons of the Republican journals, Le National and La Riforme, for the purpose of protesting against the policy of Guizot. The gathering

had neither watchword nor leaders. Even the Opposition members had decided at the last moment to hold aloof; and the Republicans themselves —Louis Blanc and Ledru-Rollin—after issuing their appeal to the people began to dread the consequences. The result, however, of that one day was that an unarmed and excited mob compelled King Louis-Philippe, in spite of the 30,000 soldiers at his disposal, to dismiss the Guizot Ministry on February 23.

To all appearance nothing of much importance had happened on February 22; one or two scuffles on the boulevards and on the Place de la Concorde, a few barricades no sooner erected than pulled down, some customs barriers burnt in the suburbs—the disturbances seemed to be of far less moment than had been the case on previous occasions when the royal cause had triumphed. In point of fact, certain events, conclusive as evidence of what was going on, had, to the furtherance of the people’s cause, created sudden confusion in the Councils of the monarchy. The dragoons who should have cleared the approaches to the Corps Legislatif had on receiving their orders made it plain that they sympathised with the demonstrators, and the infantry on guard in the Avenue Marigny fell back as the demonstrators approached. From the very first the regular army under the half-hearted leadership of Sebastiani and Jacqueminot had declined to interfere; and, when—to supply its place— the Government, on the morning of February 23, appealed to the National Guard, the appeal was met by unmistakable signs not only of friendly neutrality but of active sympathy with the mob. The people, the army, and the National Guard, had as if by instinct come to a sudden understanding. The force upon which Guizot had counted for crushing the disturbance had disappeared, and the disturbance assumed the pro­portions of a revolution.

All this was the outcome of a gradual and obscure growth of ideas and sentiments which had for eight years been taking place in every class of the nation, and which had escaped the notice of statesmen too much engrossed in parliamentary struggles to watch the aspirations of the people. The subjects of debate in the Chambers at this juncture seemed to be mere questions of electoral reform: the lowering of the property qualification of deputies and electors, and certain measures framed to prevent the Ministry from creating a majority of paid functionaries. When however the people clamoured for “Reform” and for the dismissal of Guizot who was opposed to it, as fiercely as they had once denounced the “ Ordinances ” and Polignac, their passionate aspirations went far beyond the bounds of the wrangle between the Ministers and the Opposition. They called for the overthrow of a Government legally con­stituted perhaps, but unjust and dishonourable, set up for the benefit of a minority who, devoid of conscience and forgetful of their responsibilities, were enjoying the spoils of office and filling their pockets at the expense of the working classes at home and of the good name of the country

abroad. Frenchmen, whose minds had been stirred, in the Press, the pamphlets, the fiction, and the drama of the time, by the lessons drawn from the social evils around them, were angered at the combined resist­ance to their dream of internal progress and national greatness offered by the King, his Ministers, and Europe. From 1840 onwards, they looked upon the whole Government as one long conspiracy—the permanent betrayal of the country. The events of February 22 showed that there were many Frenchmen of this way of thinking among both the soldiers and the officers in the regular army, and that they were still more numerous in the National Guard.

The King at this juncture committed the grave blunder of imagining that, if he dismissed Guizot, he could with the help of his other Ministers ensure the continuance of the peaceful foreign policy which had been for eight years his chief aim and for which he held himself responsible as between France and Europe. Guizot bowed to the King’s decision, and, pale and calm, announced it to the Chambers at three o’clock on February 23. The Deputies, less disposed to submit to a disgrace which they felt to be inevitable and imminent, expressed their indigna­tion, and Mole made an attempt to rescue the doomed majority by a coalition with the Right Centre and Dufaure and Passy. Meanwhile, there happened one of those accidents which might have been foreseen— a collision on the Boulevard des Capucines between the mob who were emboldened by the fall of the Ministers and some troops under the orders of a loyalist officer. This incident was the signal for a general rising in the city; and, on the same evening, Mole abandoned the attempt to form a Ministry with the men who, during eight years, had shared the Government with Guizot. Thiers, for whom the King sent during the night, agreed to accept a position already so gravely compromised only on condition that the Chamber should be forthwith dismissed, and an Assembly called together resting on a wider franchise and more closely representative of the nation.

We should wonder at the repugnance of Louis-Philippe to comply with requirements so amply justified, if we did not call to mind the events of 1840, the dismissal by the King of his Minister because of the attempt of the latter to gratify the nation by an ambitious foreign policy, and, subsequently, that Minister’s strenuous and successful struggle with Guizot, and his active participation in the revival of the Napoleonic legend. When, at the nation’s bidding, the hour of revenge struck for Thiers, the old sovereign saw his system and his work swept away together with the Ministers and the Assembly that had helped him, no matter how, to maintain peace for eight years. The members of the royal family and the Court who were with the King on the night of February 23 noticed his dejection and his hesitation, the fatal inconsistency between his decisions and his acts. He stood almost alone, confronted by the whole of France; he was convinced that he was in the right and that the country

was in the wrong, and he saw that the only possibility of saving the Crown for himself and his children lay in the douhtful chances of a Civil War; his convictions urged him to employ force. The memories of the Revolution and the idea of a struggle with the nation at large held him back; he felt douhts as to his duty and his prospects of success; he was wearied out yet incapable of yielding. When he agreed to the demands of Thiers, he forced General Bugeaud upon him as Minister of War and thus coupled his concession with a defiance—surrendering and threatening simultaneously.

During the night which decided the fate of the monarchy, the revolutionaries had on their side found an organisation and leaders. The journalists and members of the democratic clubs * Louis Blanc, Felix Pyat, Goudchaux, Flocon, Bastide, Martin of Strassburg, Arago, Caussidiere, who had previously shown much hesitation, were unable, after the conflict on the Boulevard des Capucines, to resist the appeal of the excited populace. At the offices of La Reforme and Le National, in the committees and at the meetings of the secret societies, they had decided, relying on the complicity of the army and the National Guard, to seize the opportunity which presented itself. More than 1500 barricades were forthwith thrown up, and at some of them in the redoubtable centre quarter was displayed the red flag, the symbol of the social revolution. The insurgents provided themselves with firearms by plundering the gunsmiths’ shops and by seizing on the barracks and guard-rooms, while the manufacture of cartridges and bullets went on without intermission. Proclamations drawn up in haste and printed hy Proudhon conveyed to the combatants the order for a general attack; and by sunrise on the following day, February 24, all the central districts of the capital, from the Bastille to the Rue St Honore and from the Porte St Denis to the Pantheon, were in the possession of the insurgents. The proletariate of Paris, armed and already victorious, demanded, in the flush of combat, something more than a mere change in the political system: they demanded the inauguration of the promised era of justice, prosperity and glory. They were ready and resolved to force on a social revolution, throughout Europe if need were.

The appointment of General Bugeaud, moreover, and his military dispositions destroyed the effect which might have heen produced by entrusting Thiers and Odilon Barrot with the formation of a Ministry of the Left and by the dismissal of the Assembly. The members of the secret societies by whom the orders of the day were now issued called to mind the massacres of the Rue Transnonain and the pitiless nature of the repressive measures taken against them by the Due d’Isly. It was in vain that Odilon Barrot boldly traversed the boulevards arid the streets, in the hope of inspiring confidence and so reestablishing order. To his appeals and his speeches the defenders of the barricades answered with cries of “Down with Bugeaud,” “Down with Thiers,” “Down with

Louis-Philippe.” When Barrot returned to the Ministry he found there the Republican deputies, Pagnerre and Gamier-Pages, who demanded the abdication of the King. Guizot and the Chamber had fallen, and now the monarchy of July was itself in jeopardy.

The monarchy had now nothing left to rely on but military force; and this resource was suddenly to fail. When he took over the com­mand, Marshal Bugeaud had been startled by the state of the regular army; he found it demoralised and ill-supplied with provisions and military stores. He had however ordered General Bedeau with a force of 2000 men to clear the boulevards, General Sebastiani with a like force to make his way to and occupy the Hotel de Ville, General Duhot to hold his ground at the Bastille and Colonel Brunet to join forces at the Pantheon with General Renault. In spite of the formal orders of the Commander-in-chief to act and act quickly, all his lieutenants, apprehensive of the disaffection of the National Guard and of a possible conflict with it, shrank from the task. Duhot evacuated the Place de la Bastille and retired to Vincennes; Sebastiani retired with unnecessary haste from the Hotel de Ville, and Bedeau, after parleying on the boule­vard with the chiefs of the citizen soldiery, halted his troops and advised the Marshal to hand over the city to the National Guard.

From the very beginning the action of Bugeaud was paralysed by the hesitation of his colleagues and the advice of courtiers and Ministers. He wasted the decisive morning of February 24 in attempts at concilia­tion. At 10 o’clock he ordered all regular troops to retreat to the Carrousel and entrusted the maintenance of order to the citizen forces. The retreat amounted to a capitulation, and the army accepted it in that sense.

When the forces of General Bedeau withdrew from the boulevards as far as the Rue de la Paix, they abandoned their guns and ammunition waggons to the insurgents who surrounded them; and they looked on while the rebels helped themselves to ammunition and delivered a series of successful attacks on police stations and guard-rooms. By 10 o’clock the only building in Paris outside the Carrousel and the Tuileries which was left to the Government was the Palais Royal; it was h_Plrl by the Municipal Guard, but its position became more critical every hour. The supreme moment had arrived. If he was to regain the ground he had so rapidly lost, could the King in default of the army, whose inaction he had encouraged, count on the aid of that National Guard which in 1830 and since that time had helped him to stave off the republic ? In order to satisfy himself as to this, Louis-Philippe reviewed the guard in the Court of the Tuileries; and he reentered his palace with the sad conviction that his citizen-soldiers would leave him to struggle unaided with the mob.

These three victories gained by the people in swift succession over the Ministers, the Assembly, and the King himself drove him to a

1848]

Louis-Pkilippe abdicates.

101

resolution which as he believed would save the monarchy and his dynasty from destruction; at 1 o’clock on February 24 Louis-Philippe abdicated in favour of his grandson, the Comte de Paris. This solution which, without doubt, he submitted to rather than approved, had been sug­gested an hour before by politicians who had hoped that by sacrificing the King they would escape a republic, and it was supported by the princes (by Montpensier especially, who with his brothers had for a long time objected to the pacific policy of their father). The plan had how­ever been opposed by certain of his adherents more far-seeing than the others and by the Queen herself, who had shown great courage when the storm of the Revolution thundered at the gates of the Tuileries. It was in fact to the democracy of Paris that Louis-Philippe, deserted by his army and the National Guard, abandoned his Ministers, his family, and himself, on February 24, 1848.

For some hours two parliaments were sitting at Paris, two Assem­blies debating the fate of France and discussing a future which three days before, they had not dreamed of and for which they were in no sense prepared. One of these Assemblies which sat in the Salle St Jacques at the Hotel de Ville met spontaneously on the abdication of the King for the purpose of setting up a government in his place. The insurgents crowded thither during the afternoon and held a noisy sitting under the unacknowledged leadership of the advanced Republicans of La Reforme, Louis Blanc, the workman Albert, Martin of Strassburg and Flocon. The Assembly appointed as mayor of Paris Gamier-Pages and, following the tradition of 1792, took steps to subject all France to the authority of the revolutionary commune in the shape of a provisional government—a Committee of Public Safety, which had been created with the view of imposing the Republic and social reforms upon the whole of Europe. The other was the legal Assembly of representatives, the only lawful authority left standing indeed, but derelict after the storm; the Conservative majority was bewildered by the ruin of the Ministry which had created it; lie Liberal and Royalist minority was discouraged by the abdication of the King.

Louis-Philippe having abandoned the Tuileries, which were forthwith occupied by the insurgents, the deputies met at the Corps Legislatif. Without a Ministry at their head to prescribe a definite programme, they had neither the belief in their cause nor the community of aim which were necessary to enable them to frame for themselves a policy capable of resuscitating the monarchy; they were without any guarantee that their deliberations or their persons would be protected against the attacks of the victorious revolutionaries. At this juncture the President Sauzet might have played a decisive part; he had neither the necessary qualities nor the inclination to do so.

On the one side were the Duchesse d’Orleans, her son the heir of Louis-Philippe, and her brother-in-law the Due de Nemours, who had made

their way through the disturbed streets to invite the aid and authority of the Chamber, in bringing about the devolution of the Crown upon a minor and the creation of a Regency monarchical in form. On the other side were the Paris mob, which had surged from the street into the tribunes and the very precincts of the Chamber, with demands exactly contrary; it was between these opponents that the deputies were called upon to legislate—and, as they formed a collection of individuals rather than an organised body, they allowed their hands to be forced.

Lamartine, in secret agreement with the journalists of Le National, Marie, Marrast, and Cremieux, was preparing the way for the Republic by the creation of a Provisional Government on a plan devised in the office of that newspaper, and he was unwilling as yet to proclaim the fall of the House of Orleans or to propose the Republic prematurely. Dupin and Odilon Barrot, Royalists to the end, defended but feebly the cause of the Comte de Paris and of the Regency promised to the fallen King in exchange for his abdication. It was the conquerors of the Tuileries, students, Republican citizens, and Socialist workmen who in spite of the orders of General Gourgaud invaded the defenceless Assembly, swept away the President, the Royalist deputies, the Regent and the boy King, and gave monarchy its death-blow. Dupont de l’Eiire was chosen President on the spot; and the deputies who were exponents of the rights bf the people declared the final deposition of the Orleans family and placed the Provisional Government in the hands of Lamar­tine, Arago, Ledru-Rollin, Dupont de l’Eure, Gamier-Pages, Cr&nieux and Marie. They refrained from proclaiming the Republic,

There was a wide difference of origin, composition and aims between the gathering of the men of Paris who sat at the Hotel de Ville and the Assembly of French deputies who at the Corps Legislatif had voted fora Provisional Government. The one was actually the people in arms who had overturned the monarchy, swept away all other authority and sat in the direct exercise of their sovereign will; they were, however, the people of Paris and nothing more, working men and artisans eager to achieve social reforms and to revolutionise Europe. The other was a body of representatives chosen in part by the provinces, whose functions had been placed in suspense by the downfall of the parliamentary monarchy, politicians who were chiefly concerned in legalising their own position with the consent and by the help of the nation—more inclined to follow the opinion of the country than to move forward without its approbation, “de cimenter urn gouvemement solidemore desirous, finally, of order than of reform, of peace at home and abroad than of social changes or the advancement of theories.

If these two bodies with their divergent aims had continued to oppose each other as the people, the Ministers, and the Court had oppose I. each other for the last three days, the Revolution would not have come to an end on the evening of February 24. Lamartine,

however, and his colleagues in the Assembly had the courage and the sagacity, like Louis-Philippe in 1830, to demand the confirmation of their powers by the sovereign people at the Hotel de Ville. On their arrival there the representatives of the people who mistrusted them hesitated to comply. The Ministers finally gained their object by pro­claiming the Republic forthwith (subject to ratification by the people), and especially by admitting to power three Republicans, two of whom were socialists, as secretaries of the Provisional Government; the names of these men were added by the popular assembly to those of its friends Alarrast, Louis Blanc, and Albert, the working man. “ We have been appointed to the Chamber but not by the Chamber” was the phrase employed by Cremieux to describe this singular Constitution. It was the result of a bargain, •of a compromise between the deputies and the people of Paris, brought about and concluded by mutual concessions; on the one side was the establishment of a democratic republic and the promise of a movement of social reform ; on the other was the surrender of the sovereignty of the people following upon the surrender of the sovereignty of the King, into the hands of the Provisional Government.

Promises and mutual confidence formed the basis of that compromise which on a certain evening of 1848 for the second time founded the Republic at Paris. This fact explains the preponderating part in the settlement played by sentiments which found their highest expression in the eloquence of a poet—Lamartine. All classes of the nation, the provinces as well as the capital, shared during the first days of the new regime in one common dream of justice and benevolence. The rich, like the Rothschilds, subscribed for the wounded, and duchesses organised societies for the relief of the destitute. The poorer classes, although they had gained the upper hand, made no attempt to abuse their victory, abstaining from vengeance and plunder. Never was a revolution less blood-stained. The army which had avoided a conflict was invited to swear friendship with the triumphant mob; the clergy proclaimed the doctrine of Christian equality and fraternised with young and old beneath trees of liberty. The provinces made no complaint of changes about which they had not been consulted; they trusted Paris as Paris had trusted the Provisional Government. The political parties who migbt have cherished regrets or hopes became suddenly conscious of their own impotence, as they were swept away by a flood of enthusiasm.

These were the characteristics of a Revolution, the shortest and least violent that has ever taken place in France, but which carried with it a conviction of its irresistible force. These same qualities accounted too for the transitory nature of its results.

Once clothed with authority and made responsible for order, the Provisional Government hastened to organise the one with a view of ensuring the other. Since Guizot fell there had been no Ministry, and Lamartine at this juncture undertook Foreign Affairs, Ledru-Rollin the

Interior, Arago the Admiralty and provisionally the Ministry of War, it being necessary to recall General Cavaignac from Africa. Cremieux became Minister of Justice, and Marie of Public Works ; Finance, Public Instruction and Trade were respectively entrusted to Michel Goudchaux, Carnot, and Bethmont. Their first care was for Paris; measures were necessary to provide for the removal of the barricades and for the subsistence of the populace, who had been plunged into poverty by the events of February and the enforced idleness which followed. The officers in command of the army agreed to serve under General Bedeau, who had been placed at their head; General Duvivier, who had assisted at the capture of the Tuileries, reorganised the National Guard, and functionaries of all sorts, when invited to transfer their services to the Republic, accepted the situation. The new Ministry then, without further delay, turned its attention to the provinces and appointed Commissioners who were to carry its orders into each department and report on the position of affairs. In many cases the men, thus hastily chosen, injured rather than benefited the cause of the Republic. It was not however the country districts which first gave the Government cause for anxiety; danger threatened from close at hand, from the people of Paris whom it had already been necessary to reckon with, who mistrusted the Government and even their own representatives, associated with it in an incongruous task.  ,

It was to no purpose that on the very evening of February 24, the Government with a view to satisfying the popular eagerness for social reform had declared that the royal palace of the Tuileries should be turned into a national home for incapacitated working men, and that the civil list of Louis-Philippe should be employed in redeeming for destitute persons the goods which they had been compelled to pawn. On February 25 the revolutionaries, who had grown used to mob victories, marched to the Hotel de Ville with arms in their hands and bearing the red flag, the emblem of their claims and the terror of the propertied classes. Lamartine calmed them by dint of fair words and concessions, and persuaded them to retain as the National Flag the tricolour with a red rosette on the staff. Next, under pressure from his colleagues, particularly Louis Blanc, he pledged the future by a decree which proclaimed the right of all citizens to employment, cost what it might, under the inspection of the State or of associations authorised by it. It was only by this concession, extorted by the menace of a dangerous conflict, that he succeeded on this particular day in persuading the mob to disperse and in procuring for his Ministry a further extension of credit. “We have three months of misery in the service of the Republic before us,” said one of the popular orators to Lamartine on taking his leave; the promise implied was full of meaning, but it was never carried out. The Republic had restored to liberty the revolutionaries Blanqui, Barb&s, Huber, and Martin Bernard, imprisoned under the Monarchy of

July. The return of these men to Paris, their presence there in the midst of their adherents, and the tale of the sufferings they had endured, created so much excitement in the clubs of the Friends of the Revolu­tionaries (Amis du peuple de la Rivolution), which had just then been formed, that a fresh armed rising took place on February 28. The working men of Paris and their Socialist leaders demanded that as a practical sequel to the decree of February 25, a Ministry of Progress and Labour (Ministere du progres et du travail) should be created, whose duty it should be, in conjunction with one of their own number, to create and equip a centre for the organisation of labour. The Ministers parried this new attack by consenting to the appointment of a commission of enquiry—one more promise—which was to sit at the Luxembourg under the presidency of two of their members, Louis Blanc and Albert. The Government had already on February 27 made a show of fulfilling its previous promises by opening yards for the engagement of the un­employed as navvies—the first beginning of national workshops. It had moreover in the place of the Municipal Guard, which had become odious to the Parisians, enrolled, as a paid body of police, men who had been driven by want to volunteer for the service. These measures, condemned as acts of weakness by the propertied classes, by no means satisfied the Socialist artisans. In vain the mutual assurances of confidence and good will exchanged in a moment of enthusiasm between the Provisional Government and the people were renewed again and again. No sooner were they given than fresh claims were advanced.

On March 16 there was a demonstration organised by the bonnets a poil, the grenadiers of the National Guard, belonging to the well-to-do quarters who were indignant at the recent disbandment of their smartest battalions; and this sufficed to rouse once more the poorer inhabitants of the faubourgs who were dissatisfied and restless. A hundred thousand men marched past the Hotel de Ville and extorted a promise from the Government that the regular army should always be kept as far from Paris as possible. If on this occasion the Socialist leaders could have agreed amongst themselves to let loose the mob upon the Ministry, the social revolution so much desired by Blanqui and Barbes would have broken out and swept away Lamartine and his colleagues. Instead of this, there were divisions among the leaders of the working men; and Cabet, Raspail, and above all, Louis Blanc, managed to turn a dangerous riot into a peaceful demonstration, and so gained for a few days a greater hold than ever upon the Ministry. The Government survived this fresh crisis only through the intervention—the treason as it was called in the clubs—of Louis Blanc; but the important point was that it did survive the danger; and every week added, no matter with what difficulty, to its existence strengthened its position. Louis Blanc soon perceived this. He had hoped to have dominated the Ministry, which in the first instance had accepted his dictation with ill grace, but at the beginning of April, 1848,

Lamartine had managed to secure the all-important support of Ledru- Rollin, and within the Ministry, at all events, retained his supremacy. It was, however, only with the greatest difficulty that he had succeeded in securing for the country during these two months complete political liberty, liberty of the Press, the right of meeting—liberty in fact under every aspect, and in resisting at the same time the pressure of the social revolution.

His efforts had been equally great to maintain peaceful relations between the newly bom Republic and the European Powers. With Europe on the one side already ripe for revolution at the moment of the outbreak in Paris, and on the other the Parisian democrats who were inclined to follow the traditions of the Convention and make war on kings on behalf of their subjects, the Government had a difficult part to play; a dread of the revival of the Terror inclined them to peace, while they were anxious after the fall of Guizot to emphasise their sympathies with liberty. A number of foreigners who had taken refuge at Paris— Belgians, Poles, Germans, Italians, and Irish—found advocates and champions in the victors of the Tuileries, and also in certain of the Ministers whose enthusiasm they had aroused. The circular despatch addressed by Lamartine on March 7 to the Powers was necessarily, like the Government itself, a compromise, an undertaking not to intervene in the affairs of Europe coupled with a veiled threat of intervention aimed at those sovereigns who should check the natural growth of liberty within their own dominions: “the maintenance of the treaties of 1815 is irreconcilable with natural rights.” “ The circular is evidently a piece of patch-work put together by opposite parties in the Government. The one warlike and disturbing, the other peaceful and conciliatory. I should say that if you were to put the whole of it into a crucible and evaporate the gaseous parts and scum off the dross, you would find the rule to be peace and good fellowship with other Governments ” (Palmerston to Clarendon, March 9,1848). As a matter of fact, while the Revolution broke loose in Germany and Italy, the French Republic, which seemed to have prompted them, abstained under the guidance of Lamartine from any participation in the troubles at Berlin and Vienna. It even went so far as to discover and put a stop to the plottings of certain Frenchmen such as Delescluze with the “Risk Alls” (Risquons Tout) in Belgium and the Lyonnais in Savoy. This was hardly the Republic dreamed of by the revolutionaries of Paris, when on the evening of February 24 they proclaimed, as the consequence of their victory, a new era of liberty, and the brotherhood of all Europe. A dream, however, could be no safe guide for statesmen burdened with the destinies of France; and between them and the people of Paris there arose a fundamental antagonism—

the conflict of the ideal with the practical, of enthusiasm with reason___

which had its origin in the events at the Hotel de Ville on February 24, and which day by day grew more acute.

In these circumstances, France was called upon to elect a Constituent Assembly. Such a national council had been demanded, and promised from the first by the Provisional Government. On February 26, accord­ingly, it gave notice that a plebiscite for the Republic would be held immediately; while, on March 5, it summoned the constituencies to prepare for the elections on April 9. By the provisions of a decree drafted in conformity with a pledge given by Ledru-Rollin, “the suffrage was to be direct and universal; all Frenchmen over twenty-one years of age were to have a vote; and all Frenchmen over twenty-five were to be eligible for election. Voting was to be secret, by scrutin de liste according to departments.” This decree afterwards took its place as a law among the legal institutions of the country, and by it the French democracy, which, already in 1789, had acquired equality before the law, now obtained complete political equality also. The adoption of such a measure was a great event in the history of France, and in that of modem democracy; but, after fifty years of monarchical government and several centuries of political inexpe ience on the part of the nation, it was also a measure of which it was impossible to foretell the consequences. The results of such a step were specially mistrusted by the revolutionary leaders in Paris, Louis Blanc, Blanqui, and Albert, who would have preferred delaying the elections as their forerunners had done in 1793. They were perfectly at home in a revolutionary movement in Paris under their immediate con­trol ; but an appeal to the country would be a leap in the dark, a leap too, whatever the result, backed with all the sanction of the law. They protested therefore against the elections, and with redoubled vigour on March 17, when it became known that the Ministers, who were equally uneasy about the result of an appeal to the people, had decided to take roundabout steps to influence the choice of the electors. On March 8, Ledru-Rollin addressed a circular to his agents in the departments, in which he desired them to warn all under their rule against letting can­didates spring surprises on them and to mistrust those republicams du lendemain who, while pretending to be the friends of the new regime, were trying to make the electors forget the really sincere Republicans of former days. Although Ledru-Rollin was one of the most advanced members of the Government, this advice caused him to be accused of exerting undue official pressure, and at the same time aroused the indignation of the club orators, who demanded that the elections should be put off For the purpose of calming the agitators they were accordingly postponed till April 23, 1848.

The results of the contest, which were published on April 28 and 29, fully justified the forebodings of the Socialists, and, to a certain extent, those of the Ministers. Judged only in the light of the speeches of those elected, the returns, it is true, represented an almost unanimous devotion on the part of the country to the Republic and to social reform; but a glance at the personal character of the deputies produced a very

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The Provisional Government resigns.

[l848

different impression. In Paris itself, the Socialist leaders, Barbes, Leroux, and Raspail, together with all the Labour candidates, and the communists nominated by the commission at the Luxembourg, hardly obtained a fourth of the votes given to members of the Provisional Government; and the elections in the capital therefore supplied Lamartine and his colleagues with precisely that legal support of which they had hitherto felt the want in their campaign against violence and impatience. In the provinces, on the other hand, the election returns showed a very different state of affairs. Lamartine himself, it is true, was elected in ten. depart­ments ; but out of the eight-hundred and forty deputies who composed the new Assembly, a dangerous minority of a hundred and thirty were declared Legitimists, and at least a hundred, who had sat as Royalists in the Assemblies of the preceding reign, could be counted side by side with the members of Lamartine’s own party. Should these Royalists forget the crisis which had disunited them in 1830, and combine together against the Republic, their presence in the Assembly might easily become a peril to the new regime.

This double peril, consisting on the one hand of the discontent among the Socialist leaders, who were now deprived of their authority in Paris by the legalised power of the Assembly, and who on April 15, before the elections, had even attempted to excite another insurrection, and on the other hand of the large number of Royalists in the Assembly, who, though nominally Republicans, had by no means abandoned their former opinions, ought to have induced the Republican majority to form itself into a closely united party. That such a course was absolutely essential, if the party was to be successful in its endeavours to establish peace, and in its task of compelling the refractory and hot-headed sections of society to submit to the laws of a strong and organised Republic, was quite evident; but it was soon made clear that no such union would be attempted.

On May 8, in compliance with the law, the Provisional Government laid down its powers, and rendered its final account to the Constituent Assembly. As that body was incapable of exercising the executive power itself, it decided to establish an Executive Commission of five members, until after the Constitution had been voted. Lamartine advised the Moderate Republicans to permit some of the Democrats to hold office in this Commission, as they had formerly done in the Provisional Govern­ment; but all in vain. Moderates, such as Buchez, Marie, Pagnerre, Gamier-Pages, and the men belonging to the committee at the Palais National—Marrast and Marie—strained every nerve to exclude Ledru- Rollin, whose propagandist tendencies and leanings towards Socialism had alarmed them. It would indeed have taken little to induce them to form an alliance with Orleanists like Odilon Barrot. On May 9, when the vote on the Commission was taken, Ledru-Rollin’s exclusion, which would have provoked an immediate conflict, was only prevented by the most

strenuous exertions on the part of Lamartine, whose eloquent refusal to abandon his colleague cost him fifty votes and some of his popularity. On the following day, on the other hand, Louis Blanc called upon the Assembly and the Government to remember the people, and to nominate a Minister of Labour and Progress, thus further alarming the country at the projects of the revolutionary party.

From the very first, the Executive Government was caught between these tendencies to excess and reaction, and reduced to impotence. The two principal sections of the Republican party in the Assembly formed themselves into separate parties that were disunited and almost hostile to one another. Dupont de l’Eure presided over the Moderate Re­publicans at the Palais National; Ledru-Rollin and Flocon headed the Reform party, which went by the name of “ the committee of the Rue des Pyramides”; and Berryer, a celebrated Legitimist lawyer, led the Royalists, who affected the name of “ honest Republicans,” and met in the Rue de Poitiers. The whole Assembly also, by the five great committees into which it at once organised itself, was conspiring to curtail still further the power of the Commissioners entrusted with the government of France.

The consequences of such conduct soon became visible. By May 11, the popular agitators believed that circumstances were ripe for an enter­prise that would secure them the command of the streets. Their pretext was the foreign policy of the Government; for according to the Parisian democrats the business of a Republic was to make war on kings, and organise crusades for the assistance of enslaved or martyred nations. Their ideas, however, did not coincide with those of Lamartine, who insisted on maintaining a peaceful policy, and on observing strict neutrality in European quarrels. On May 13, accordingly, when the news of a Polish revolt, brutally suppressed by Prussian troops (May 5), became known in Paris, a long procession of workmen and students assembled in the Place de la Concorde, with shouts of “Vive la Pohgne.” On May 15, this procession met again outside the doors of the Corps Legislatif, in order that it might support a motion made by the deputy Wolowski in behalf of unhappy Poland. The Assembly itself was next invaded, and in a few moments became the prisoner of the people, who, by the mouths of Blanqui, Barbes, and Huber, proceeded to decree its dissolution, to establish a tax on the rich, and to declare war against the kings of Europe. Fortunately, the National Guards from the bourgeois quarters of the city and from the suburbs, who appeared upon the scene at the call and under the command of General Clement Thomas, arrived in time to set the deputies at liberty, to restore the independence of the Assembly, and to reestablish peace and order in the capital. The revolutionary leaders, Barbes and Blanqui, were now in their turn obliged to submit to the fate which they had designed for the members of the Assembly: the Provisional Government, for a moment master of the

Hotel de Ville, was driven out, the revolt was brought to an end, and the conspirators were imprisoned at Vincennes.

This episode, however, had further consequences. Not only did it accentuate the split in the Republican majority, but the more advanced members of that party were now held responsible for an act of violence which they had never encouraged. An accusation was brought against Louis Blanc, who was roughly handled by the National Guards, and narrowly escaped being arrested; Caussidiere, the chief commissioner of police, a friend of Ledru-Rollin’s, was obliged to send in his resignation; while Ledru-Rollin himself was looked upon as the accomplice of the rioters. The members of the committee at the Palais National, Marrast, Senart, Martin of Strassburg, and Pascal Duprat, who were delighted to have this opportunity of compromising their more advanced colleagues and of identifying them with the insurgents, intrigued busily against the Executive Commission, and even against Lamartine, in the hope of either obliging them to resign, or to give way before the reactionary campaign which was being meditated. To the detriment of the Republic they were unconsciously repeating the mistakes made by the Royalist majority of the two Centres when it overturned the throne of Louis-Philippe. By setting the two sections of their majority one against the other they were crippling their power, which could only become really strong through the union of their whole party.

This fact was clearly proved by the bye-elections on June 5, 1848. Almost all the candidates elected in Paris, and in some of the provinces, belonged to the parties hostile to the Executive Commission and to Lamartine’s Republic. The Parisian Socialists who had suffered in the April elections now obtained their revenge through the success of Pierre Leroux, Proudhon, Charles Lagrange, and Caussidiere. In four con­stituencies Royalists rejoiced over the election of Thiers, who had till now been excluded from the Constituent Assembly, but who now, in company with Changarnier, returned in triumph to public life. The event, however, charged with the most serious consequences for the future was the election of Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte in Paris and in three departments; for his success proved that a coalition had been effected between the discontented and the hopeful sections of society, and bore witness to an alliance among all those workmen, Conservatives, Liberals and patriots who were mutually disappointed with the home and foreign policy of the Republic. It showed that the Extreme Left and the Extreme Right, however mutually opposed, were ready to unite under a name recalling the glories of the past; while the other Republicans, under the guidance of Lamartine, were growing more and more divided.

On June 10, when the Government moved that a decree of banish­ment should be pronounced against Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the icy manner in which the Assembly received this proposal at once convinced Lamartine that his own power was at an end. Two-thirds of the

Assembly, consisting of the Socialists, the Royalists, and a large number of the Republicans, who were well pleased to do anything that damaged the Executive Commission, which they accused of weakness and of favouring the Revolutionists, voted that Louis Napoleon should be allowed to take his seat.

From this moment the Republic was without a Government, though it had never needed one more. Trade and business, which had already been injured by the February insurrection, were declining. The five per cent. Rente, which had been at par under the preceding regimes, now stood at only sixty-nine. Strikes and want of work had affected both workmen and employers. The collection of a supplementary tax of forty-five centimes, voted by the Assembly to supply the deficit, was earning trouble, and giving rise to riots in all parts of the country, at some of which cries of “ Vive FEmpereur'" were already to be heard. In the month of May also, those workmen in Paris whom the Republic had placed in the Ateliers nationalise, in order to secure the peace of society during a time of crisis, and in order to testify the new regime's sympathy for the labouring classes whom they hoped thus to preserve from the contagion of revolutionary doctrines, began to show an inclination to escape from Conservative influences, and to go over to Louis Blanc and the Socialists. More than 100,000 men whom the Government believed it had enrolled in the party of order now showed signs of preparing for a revolt; while their leader, ^mile Thomas, allowing himself to be influenced by the mob and by its doctrines, proposed a plan for the organisation of labour according to the methods of Louis Blanc, which he had till now rejected.

When first this change of opinion among the workmen became noticeable, the Government resolved to meet it by prompt action. On May 26 it dismissed Simile Thomas, the head of the Ateliers nationaux, and forced him to leave Paris; while, in concert with Trelat, the Minister of Public Works, it endeavoured to find some means of putting an end to the workshops themselves, of sending the younger workmen into the army, and of either discharging the others, or obliging them to work again for private employers. But it suddenly appeared to have thought better of this design, and instead of discharging all the workmen simultaneously, began to talk of getting rid of them by slow degrees. The Government had realised that it was face to face with a serious insurrection.

This new insurrection was too good an opportunity for weakening and disuniting the Republicans to be missed by their adversaries. In the Assembly, on May 28, during a sitting of the Labour Committee, presided over by Corbon, a Socialist workman, the Democrats combined with economists like Wolowski, and with the Royalists, in an attempt to force the Government to consent to a decree for the reorganisation or disbanding of the national workshops. The speeches made by some of

the deputies on this occasion, even more than the actual words of the decree, were of a kind certain to provoke hostility between the bour­geoisie and the labouring classes. Both Socialists and Conservatives wished to excite a disturbance; “ either organise labour or maintain order ” was the general cry. Under their orders the Assembly required the Government, now in a dilemma between the extreme parties, to dismiss the provincial workmen who had crowded into the workshops, and to pay any men whom they continued to employ by the piece instead of by the day. In vain Trelat and the Commission tried to postpone the passing of this decree. On May 30, June 11 and June 19 the Right repeated their demands. In Paris, ever since May 30, the people had been preparing for resistance. George Sand pointed out to Tocqueville the state of affairs among the workmen, and told him of their organisation, numbers, arms, and bitter feeling. “Do not,” she said, “ drive the people into the street by irritating them.” The Commission, with its usual prudence, endeavoured to repurchase the railways and to start the construction of lines on a large scale, for this measure would have at once enabled the State to provide work for the national work­shops and to send the unemployed away from Paris. But the Assembly refused its consent to this project, and on June 21 the Government was obliged to publish a decree abolishing the Ateliers nationaux. The younger workmen were to be compelled to enter the army, the rest to be sent into the provinces to make embankments. On the same evening, however, the workmen, with cries of “Vive Barbes” and “Vive NapoUon,” decided to make a demonstration in the Pantheon on the following day; and on June 23, barricades were erected in all the working-class districts. On that evening Lamartine, now resigned to a struggle which he saw was inevitable, and with which he perceived the Commission would be unable to cope, persuaded his colleagues to place unrestricted powers in the hands of the Minister for War, General Cavaignac. On June 24, accordingly, the Assembly, satisfied with having rendered powerless the Government which it had itself created on May 5, established a military dictatorship in the person of General Cavaignac for the purpose of putting down the insurrection; and at the same time requested the Executive Commission to resign.

This measure, which was proposed by Pascal Duprat with the consent of the Moderate Republicans and the men of the Committee at the Palais National, was apparently justified by the gravity of the approaching conflict. Indeed, the struggle which now broke out between the people and the Conservative Republicans, on June 23, 24, 25, and 26, was much longer and more sanguinary than the conflict with the monarchy in the preceding February. Both sides were ready to take the offensive; and General Cavaignac was much better prepared for resistance than Louis- Philippe had been. The populace had had both time and means to provide arms and ammunition; while the Minister for War, with the

assistance of Colonel Charras, had made all necessary preparations for overcoming the insurgents ; and had arranged a plan of campaign which was now successfully carried into operation by the concerted action of Generals Lamoriciere, Bedeau, Damesme and Duvivier. The compromise that had existed in Paris between the Republic and the labouring classes was now at an end. On the day when the Assembly denounced that precarious understanding the people rose era masse, without any incitement from conspirators, in the working-class districts round the Hotel de Ville, in the Bastille quarter, in the Faubourg St Antoine, and in the neigh­bourhood of the Pantheon and the Place d’ltalie. Veritable fortresses were set up by the insurgents, “with the regularity and skill of engineers,” for the purpose of regaining the Hotel de Ville from the bourgeouu The generals entrusted with the task of contending with the workmen for the possession of Paris, Cavaignac and especially Lamoriciere, also resolved to concentrate their forces in the districts which they already controlled, and to secure from thence first the Hotel de Ville and sub­sequently, one after another, the various strongholds of the insurrection. In the midst of this pitched battle, only a few deputies still endeavoured to carry messages of peace and conciliation to the barricades or the Assembly; but the people answered these well-meant efforts by firing at Lamartine, wounding Bixio, and killing Domes. From the tribune, meanwhile, some of the deputies reviled Victor Considerant and Duclerc.

A terrible battle ensued. On June 24 the troops, assisted by the National Guard and the Garde mobile, succeeded in occupying the Hotel de Ville and the central districts, while at the same time they drove the insurgents back into the faubourgs. On the 25th General Brea was killed while trying to surprise the great barricade set up by the people near the Banrriere de Vltalie, which was taken the same afternoon. On the same day all the northern districts were recovered from the insurgents. Finally, in the evening, after terrible bloodshed, the troops, which had now been reinforced by National Guards from all parts of France, succeeded in taking the Place de la Bastille, where the rebels had concentrated their forces. The Faubourg' St Antoine was now the only quarter unsubdued; but the conquest of this working-class district was a veiy difficult enter­prise, for its lofty houses and narrow streets were ill suited to military operations, while almost its entire population was fighting on the side of the workmen. The Archbishop of Paris (Mgr. Affre) bravely undertook a mission of pacification for the purpose of saving the army and people from another engagement that would inevitably lead to still worse bloodshed. He was struck down by a bullet, which was not, however, fired by an insurgent nor aimed at him, and it looked, at first, as if his life had not been sacrificed in vain, for the combatants now showed some inclination to lay down their arms. During the night conferences took place between Recurt, the Minister of the Interior, Adam, a Parisian official, and delegates from the Faubourg. The people required

a guarantee that a “ social Republic would be established” as the price of their submission. Cavaignac, however, demanded unconditional sur­render. At ten o’clock on June 26 he ordered an attack, which resulted in a complete victory. The Parisian workmen and army left 10,000 killed and wounded on the field of battle in this cruel struggle; while the number of officers, who fell during the insurrection, exceeded the number killed in any of the glorious victories of the First Empire.

This conflict left behind it a feeling of hatred between the Republic" and the people that nothing could efface. For a long time, the bour­geoisie dreaded a repetition of the insurrection which it had found so much difficulty in suppressing at Marseilles, Rouen and Bordeaux. No mercy was shown to the vanquished; special commissions were instituted for the purpose of securing culprits, who might otherwise have escaped punishment; Courts martial were set up; and on June 27, a large number of prisoners was sentenced to transportation from France. The people were forced to Submit to the will of their conquerors, but their hearts were filled with hatred. During the insurrection, which had thus extinguished the hopes of the populace, traces of an active Bonapartist propaganda were already noticeable, and that party now prepared to profit out of the misunderstandings produced by the civil strife—for the outbreak of which it was probably, in some degree, responsible.

The conclusipn of the social insurrection was a personal triumph for General Cavaignac, who had been responsible for its suppression. But, by August, 1848, the Republicans were entirely and hopelessly divided. After his last attempt to compose the differences among his party, Ledru-Rollin determined, with Flocon and Felix Pyat, to form an alliance with the defeated Socialists. On September 12, he pleaded, as Louis Blanc had done, for the right, to work; while on September 22, he celebrated the anniversary of the Revolution by a great banquet. Meanwhile Delescluze, the editor of the Republique democratiqite et sociale attempted to renew the alliance between the associations of the workmen and the Democrats. But, as Proudhon had just asked the Assembly to confiscate a third of all private property, such a proceeding was exactly the one most calculated to drive the Conservative Republicans into further reaction. This section of the party now permitted its allies of the Right, de Falloux, Thiers and Montalembert, to take measures com­pletely at variance with Republican principles; such as the abolition, after July 11, of the right to elect the mayors in Paris and the other large towns, decrees restricting the liberties of clubs and political associations, and a succession of repressive measures against the Press, which was obliged “in the intei'ests of property and the family,” to provide heavy securities and to submit to a tyrannical surveillance, while its spoliation and ruin were made a source of public profit. On July 15 the Manuel republicain, written by the philosopher Renouvier, was prohibited; and Carnot was obliged to retire from the Ministry because

he had defended a scheme for popular elementary education. Prom fear and necessity the Republicans agreed to these measures to the great joy of the Conservatives, partisans of Church and monarchy; who, on October 1,1848, in the persons of Dufaure, Vivien, and Freslou, began to make their way into the Ministry itself.

Under these conditions the Republican Constitution was passed by the Assembly during September and October, 1848. Though its object was to put the coping stone on a rigime for the advancement of justice, fraternity and peace, and, so to say, to inaugurate a new era, it was published all in a hurry, as the last act of a dream, that had been con­demned before realisation by the dissensions among the Republicans. Armand Marrast introduced the report of the Committee in the Assembly; and, in explaining the new law, he remembered rather his studies and his philosophy than the role of statesman that he had played in the Republican party since February, 1848. He offered the Assembly a theoretical scheme of Republicanism and social policy, the vagueness of which was little in harmony with the real state of parties. Revolutions, according to him, were justified by an inevitable law of progress; and he defined a regime resting on universal suffrage as a reign of equality explained by fraternity, as the condition most favourable to all liberty, whether of speech, of the Press, or of association, and as a pledge and binding promise to the disinherited and the poor.

On September 3, 1848, the Assembly, after a few amendments, decided almost unanimously to prefix a preamble to the Constitution conceived in a similar spirit, thus showing that it intended to proceed on the lines of Marrast and his committee. Tocqueville, who was a member of that committee, has left an account in his memoirs of his colleague’s deliberation and aims. The actual text of the Constitution was mainly drafted by a lawyer, Courmenin, but the other members of the committee containing journalists from all parties like Marrast, Vaulabelle, and Lamennais, Royalist statesmen like Dufaure and Barrot, and Moderate Republicans, differed so greatly in their opinions that they were only able to work together at all by evading real facts and fundamental questions. As Tocqueville observed, “ the Committee thought it best to preserve a semblance of harmony by keeping to superficial matters; it applied broad principles to small details; and it organised the whole machinery of the Government without due con­sideration, because it was desirous of avoiding any enquiry into the relative force of the various wheels.”

The Chamber, which was even more divided than its Committee, acted in the same manner. In the preamble to the Constitution it declared that by means of the Republic “ it would walk with greater freedom in the paths of progress and civilisation; would assure a more equal distribution of social burdens and advantages...and would enable all citizens to attain a higher standard of morality, prosperity, and

enlightenment by the help of laws and institutions.” It recognised that there were “ rights and duties prior to, and superior to, actual laws ”; but it did not enquire whether the actual laws which it was then passing were consistent with this vague and ill-defined code. It undertook “to respect foreign nationalities,” at the very moment when it was preparing to send a French expedition against the Roman people. It talked about “free popular education” while dismissing Carnot, and abandoning his projects. It announced, after closing the national workshops, that “ the State and the departments would establish public workshops for the benefit of the unemployed.” The unanimous issue of a written programme that for the present was quite unpractical, made the Assembly appear anxious to offer some amends for the real refusal of all its parties to grant any social and democratic reforms.

The clauses of the Constitution gave rise to much more debate. The lengthiest discussion was occupied with the question whether the legislative power should be vested in one or two Chambers. On September 27, Lamartine and Dupin, who were in favour of a single Chamber, only obtained a majority of 40 over Duvergier de Hauranne and Odilon Barret. Republicans, indeed, were beginning to fear that a dictator might possibly establish his supremacy by sowing dissensions between two Chambers; and they would therefore only consent to the institution of a Council of State, to be elected by the Assembly for the purpose of elaborating and discussing bills. If the whole Republican party had logically followed up this policy, it could have rejected the Committee’s proposal to place the executive power in the hands of a President to be elected directly by the people by universal suffrage. The Committee’s proposal would lead to the establishment of two rival powers, each with a similar origin, but neither with any means of legally controlling the other; and as any conflict between two such powers must inevitably result in a victory for the one commanding the army, the end could only be a dictatorship. A few Democrats like Jules Grevy and Flocon opposed the project; but Lamartine’s fears of a dictatorship were not strong enough to keep him from adopting it and upholding it in a vigorous debate. Eventually, by a majority of 500, the Assembly agreed to the institution of a President, to be nominated by the people, in­dependently of the Char,.her, like the President of the United States. There was this difference, however, that the French President’s Ministers, though chosen and appointed by himself, were to be responsible to the Assembly, and answerable with their chief to a high court of justice, whose members were to be selected each year from the Court of Cassation (October 7,1848). With the exception of some debates on administra­tive decentralisation, which occupied October 18 and 19, without arriving at any conclusion, there was no part of this Constitution, as it finally became law on October 23, which engaged the attention of the Assembly so earnestly as this question concerning the election of the President.

Meanwhile, on September 17,1848, the people had already declared for Louis Napoleon Bonaparte in five departments. Of these elections the most characteristic had been those in Paris, where two parties, the Moderate Republicans and the Social Democrats, had found themselves face to face. Fould and Raspail, the favourite candidates of these two parties, out of a total poll of 247,000, had hardly obtained together a greater number of votes than had been cast for the great Emperor’s nephew alone. As the months passed away, the heir of Napoleon continued to improve his position with the electors. In former clays he had not seemed destined to such good fortune, when his unsuccessful conspiracies against the July Monarchy had resulted in his imprisonment and exile. Since then, however, he had very prudently remained in England, allowing his friends to act for him; and their zeal and activity, noticeable alike in the Assembly, in the Press, and at popular centres and demonstrations, had advanced his cause, and gradually gained over the malcontents of all parties. The Socialists, enraged at the way they had been crushed after the June insurrection, now remembered how Louis Napoleon had written in their behalf at the end of the preceding reign. Others among the Democrats expected a vigorous foreign policy from a Napoleon, accompanied by a glorious Liberal propaganda, such as Monarchy and Republic had alike refused them. Finally, not a few Royalists underrated the influence of a man whom they believed to be of mediocre ability and unequal to the task of securing a triumph for his political and religious aspirations. The elections which took place on September 17 were an omen which Louis Napoleon perfectly understood. He at once came to take his seat in the Constituent Assembly, where he was unanimously received as the defender of order and the champion of democracy. While the Republicans were divided among themselves, and were becoming more and more undecided between the desires of the people on the one hand, and the reproaches of a Conservative bourgeoisie on the other, a union of extremists was being formed against them under the leadership of Louis Napoleon.

During the last month in which his Provisional Government held office, Cavaignac tried in vain to give some more definite pledges to the party of order. To this end he separated himself from the more moderate section of the Republican party, and made Dufaure, a Moderate Mon­archist, Minister of the Interior, with the result that he was accused of being a traitor by the Republicans on November 29; but all to no purpose. In the last days of November, in order to please and reassure the Catholics, who were alarmed by the Roman insurrection, which had brought about the assassination of the Minister Rossi, and was on the point of driving the Pope from Rome, Cavaignac took the step of appointing a special ambassador, Corcelles, and also organised an armed expedition at Toulon for the purpose of assisting the Pope. But neither these tardy concessions, nor the Minister’s efforts to win the

favour of the masses, who were summoned on December 10, 1848, to elect a President by universal suffrage, were able to prevent Frenchmen from declaring themselves for Louis Napoleon Bonaparte by an enormous majority. He was elected to hold office for four years, by more than five million votes, against one million and a half given to General Cavaignac. On December 20, the President of the Constituent Assembly administered the oath to the Prince President, as he was to be called for the future; an oath by which he undertook to remain faithful to the democratic Republic, and to perform all the duties required of him by the Constitution. “ Memories of the Napoleonic legend, dreams of a glorious future, the fear of communism and of a clerical propaganda, had deceived the mind of the people, and in consequence the Republic obtained a master.” The rule of the men of 1848 was over; and now the Moderates also had had their day, like the Montagnards, Radicals and Socialists who had been dismissed in the months of June and July.

A proof that this was the case was furnished without delay by the Government, which the new chief of the executive power selected on December 29. Constitutionally he should have chosen his Ministers from the groups possessing a majority in the Assembly; partly, that is to say, from the Moderate Republicans of the Left, and partly from the Conservatives or Republicans of the Right, the sometime Monarchists. He, however, did nothing of the kind. The Assembly indeed retained its Republican President, Armand Marrast, but every other Republican, however able, was driven from office. The names of Arago, Marie, Gamier-Pages, and Recurt were hardly even considered; and still less notice was taken of Senart, Bastide, Pagnerre, and Barthelemy St Hilaire, although they controlled four hundred out of the seven hundred votes in the Assembly. The Premiership was given to Odilon Barrot, a man never at heart a Republican, though he had overthrown the monarchy, as it were accidentally, while striving to overthrow Guizot, and who now consented to serve under the new regime, solely in order to gain power. Drouyn de Lhuys, a diplomatist who had made his fortune under Thiers, and had won a name for himself while opposing Guizot, was made Minister of Foreign Affairs; Tracy undertook the Navy; Hyppolite Passy became Minister of Finance, and Malleville, Minister of the Interior. All these men had been in the Government of Louis- Philippe. There were indeed only two blots on this Orleanist Cabinet: namely, Bixio, a Republican, who accepted office, in the hope of inducing the Government to help suffering Italy, and de Falloux, a Legitimist, who had been persuaded by his friends, and by the Abbe Dupanloup, to accept the portfolio of Education, in order that the supremacy of the Church might be established in that department. It was not long, how­ever, before the resignation of Bixio and Malleville made way for Leon Faucher, an old opponent of Guizot’s, who had worked for liberty with much ability under the July Monarchy, but who was now, at the risk of

sacrificing liberty, to devote all his former energy and talent to the defence of order against Socialism. Under these Ministers the Re­publicans were all ejected from office. Berger, a friend of Odilon Barrot, who had formerly been a member of the Dynastic Left, was made Prefect of the Seine; General Changamier became Commander-in-chief in Paris, and was also given the command of the National Guard,' although it was illegal for the same officer to hold both appointments. The Legion of Honour was placed in the hands of Marshal Molitor, a general of the Empire; and finally a rich pension, as it were, was found for Jerome Bonaparte, a brother of the great Napoleon, by his being solemnly installed at the Hotel des Invalides (January, 1849).

What control, however, could an Assembly representing a mere fraction of the electorate, and frequently holding diverse opinions, hope to exercise henceforth over a man supported by five million electors ? The powers wielded by the Constituent Assembly—never anything but provisional— were necessarily obsolete, now that the Constitution had become law; while the President’s power had acquired an additional strength since it rested on a definite form of government founded upon the Constitution. Ministers, indeed, still humoured the Assembly at times, but they often made it feel the superior strength of the master whom they represented. Now and then the Republicans offered a feeble resistance, and tried to come to an understanding with the Democrats whom they had formerly opposed. But a common fate awaited both parties. The life of the Republican Assembly had been prolonged, in spite of its last endeavours to avert the threatened dictatorship, in spite of a reaction among the Royalist party, and in spite of its ill-founded claim to remain sitting until all laws fundamentally necessary to the Constitution had been passed. But now, on January 29,1849, under the coercion of the troops quartered in Paris, mobilised for the purpose by Changamier, the Assembly was compelled to vote its own dissolution and agreed, by a majority of five, to retire so soon as it had passed laws for regulating the Council of State arid the responsibility of the Executive, an electoral law, and finally a Budget. The Republic did not, however, disappear abruptly, but still lingered on for several months after this decree.

Its adversaries, in the meantime, took care not to neglect the lesson to be drawn from the Republican dissensions which had been so helpful to their own manoeuvres. Perceiving that the days of the Constituent Asseihbly were numbered, they took measures for securing the control of the Assembly that would succeed it. Their first care was to form a united party; for their ranks included Orleanists who dreamt, like Thiers, of restoring the deposed monarchy; men who, like Faucher, Barrot and Dufaure, had visions of a bourgeois regime with a strong Government; declared Bonapartists, like Lucien Murat and Lucien Bonaparte; Legitimists, like Falloux; and even a very few Republicans. Though the past of these men differed as widely as their views, whether

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avowed or otherwise, a union was none the less swiftly effected between them by means of a Committee (Union electorate) which met in the Rue de Poitiers. The common ground on which all were ready to agree was undoubtedly a policy of “saving society” by supporting the Church of Rome, which was so admirably qualified, if only it was strong arid inde­pendent, to teach resignation and respect for authority to a turbulent people. In order to further this polity, subscriptions were collected in Paris and in the provinces; newspapers were subsidised and circulated; while pamphlets advocating the cause of religion and hostile to com­munism were distributed in town and county. “Woe to church towers if the Socialists win,” became the common watchword; and Montalembert, the eloquent leader of the Catholic parly, placing himself at the head of the association, called upon Liberty to unite with the Church for the purpose of, securing the safety of society.

It was Falloux, Montalembert’s friend and accomplice in the Prmce President’s Government, who now, under the pretence of giving freedom of conscience, became responsible for a law which handed over the training of the mind to the Church and the religious Orders. He had barely established himself as Minister of Education, for the purpose of carrying out this dieme, before he hastened to summon a special Parliamentary Commission on Education, whose appointed task was “to secure the freedom of the schools set up by the Republican Constitution” (January 4, 1849). Very few University men were appointed by the Minister to this Commission, which was mainly composed of Catholics, such as Dupanloup, de Melun, and de Riancey, under the presidency of fh’ers. Its first duty, in the opinion of Falloux, was to shelve the democratic scheme for a system of elementary education given and controlled by the State, in opposition to the private schools, which Carnot iiad proposed six months earlier in the Constituent Assembly. Secondly, though Thiers and Cousin opposed this, it was to withdraw from the State the monopoly of secondary schools in which the bour­geoisie were educated, and to sanction the establishment of Catholic schools, and of education by the religious Orders. At the very outset of these proceedings, however, the Catholics encountered a difficulty which had not been foreseen. Certain members of the Constituent Assembly, who had scruples about the work on which they were engaged^ endeavoured to oppose Falloux by b • aging forward an alternative scheme for popular instruction. On January 9, Jules Simon, in the name of the Education Commission, gave the Assembly an opportunity of frus­trating the plan formed by Falloux, the friend of Dupanloup and Lacordaire. This move was, however defeated, for although the Com­mission had been nominated by the Assembly, the Minister was strong enough to delay any examination of its proposals until the end of the session; and at the coming elections he expected to obtain a majority which would promote the influence of the Church with greater docility.

It was not only the position of the Church in France, however, but also her situation abroad, which is elsewhere described, that was arousing the attention and zeal of the Conservatives. Though Cavaignac had offered the Pope assistance, after his defeat in Rome by the Revolu­tionists, Pius IX had preferred to take refuge at Gaeta, under the protection of the King of Naples and of Austria; and thence he appealed for help to Europe, and the despotic Catholic Powers, rather than to France, where sympathy with schemes for a free Italy was believed to be current. In France, the Catholics desired to show their sympathy with the Holy See by restoring it unconditionally to its former position; while their chief Falloux had accepted office for the double purpose of establishing “religious liberty,” and of ensuring “the safety of the Pope in Italy.” Louis Veuillot, a man well qualified to give evidence on Catholic party history, relates how, previous to the election of Lapis Napoleon, Montalembert had made Falloux promise to intervene in Rome on behalf of the Pope.

But in January, 1849, the Prince President and his Ministers, Odilon Barrot and Drouyn de Lhuys, found it no easy matter to fulfil this promise. By the terms of the Constitution, which they had sworn to uphold, they were forbidden to interfere in quarrels between a sovereign and his people, and they had therefore no right to intervene between Pius IX and his rebellious subjects. It was hardly possible for Louis Napoleon to forget, or to make others forget, that, in 1831, he had him­self intrigued and fought in Rome for those liberties which Pius IX would not grant even now, when defeated and a fugitive. With the President’s consent, Drouyn de Lhuys suggested that a Congress should be summoned for the purpose of supporting the Pope; only making the condition that it should not be held in the King of Naples’ dominions, but in those of the King of Sardinia, who was at once a Catholic and a Liberal. But a fresh outbreak of hostilities, and the crushing defeat of Charles Albert at Novara, in March, 1849, soon obliged Louis Napoleon and his Ministers to abandon their temporising policy. The revolution in Rome grew more acute after the nomination of a Triumvirate, of which Mazzini was the violent and despotic leader. By the end of March, 1849, the Pope’s exile seemed likely to prove a lengthy and serious matter. Meanwhile Falloux, in the name of the Catholics, who were growing impatient, continually pressed for some definite action on the part of France. At length Drouyn de Lhuys took the first step forward, and decided to send de Rayneval and d’Harcourt to the conference of Catholic States at Gaeta. Afterwards, however, when .he saw that this conference seemed inclined to give Austria a mandate to intervene in Rome, he advised Louis Napoleon to take more decisive measures, and to despatch an army corps to Italy, capable at once of checking the Austrians on the Roman frontiers, and of striking a wholesome fear into the hearts of the rebel Republicans.

The traditional hatred of French Liberals for the Austria of Mettemich and Schwarzenberg, and their desire to dispute the possession of Italy with that nation, made Drouyn de Lhuys hope that he would be able to justify this enterprise in the eyes of the Constituent Assembly, in spite of its being apparently directed against the Romans; and, on April 16, he did in fact succeed in carrying his measure. On the other hand, he believed that this seeming attack upon the rebels would give the President a good opportunity of satisfying and reassuring the minds of the Catholics. The execution of this very delicate enterprise was entrusted to General Oudinot; who, though he was to refrain from attacking the rebels, received instructions “ to bring about the reestab­lishment of order,” on a basis in conformity with the legitimate rights of the people, while at the same time- forcing Rome into submission; and the Pope to accept a constitution. On August 29,1849, the French troops disembarked at Civita Vecchia. They encountered no resistance on first landing, for the Romans were uncertain whether the new arrivals came to defend them against Austria and the Neapolitans or to restore the Papacy to power. At first, the Pope rejoiced at the coming of these troops; but his satisfaction was mitigated when the French Envoys tried to force him to promise that he would grant indulgences and liberty to his subjects. It soon became evident that the French Government had been mistaken in believing that the mere presence of its troops would intimidate Mazzini or induce the Pope to give way. The arrival of General Oudinot in Italy only served to excite hostilities between the rival parties by making both contend for the assistance of France.

A choice between these parties soon became inevitable, nor could the decision of the French Commander be much in doubt. In the situation in which he found himself—a situation without a practicable solution—his only advisers were the diplomatists, d’Harcourt, de Rayneval and Forbin Janson; men who, both from inclination and from the position which they occupied, would naturally give Way to the influence of the Roman Catholic party, Forbin Janson indeed, on the word of a priest, Father Ventura, assured Oudinot that Mazzini’s faction in Rome was in a minority, and that the majority of the people there were hoping for his intervention. On April 30, accordingly, on the strength of this information, he risked an attack upon the city, and was defeated outside the gates of Rome. Without any actual orders, in defiance indeed of the decrees and instructions of the Constituent Assembly, he had declared war against the Roman Republic and his attempt had been a failure.

On May 7,1849, when this news became known in Paris, the indigna­tion among the Republican party fully equalled the joy experienced by the circle in the Rue de Poitiers. A stormy sitting in the Assembly showed, for an instant, how strong the Republicans might have been if they had only been united. The Moderates too—irritated at being

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dragged into a war against liherty—(although they had refused to fight for it), and indignant at the open violation of the Constitution, united their reproaches and their votes with those of the Radicals In a motion proposed by Senart, and carried by a majority of a hundred, Jules Favre and Ledru-Rollin both condemned the conduct of the Government. To appease this violent opposition, Drouyn de Lhuys offered to suspend hostilities against the Roman Republic; while on May 9, he hurriedly despatched Ferdinand de Lesseps to Italy, in the hope that the negotiations of a diplomatist of strong will and well-known Liberalism would be ahle to repair the mischief caused by Oudinot’s unfortunate attack. But whatever chance of success such a mission might have in Rome itself, it was condemned in France before it started;

But what did the wishes of a dying Assembly matter to the Catholics or the Conservatives ? Oudinot’s abrupt attack upon the Pope’s enemies was exactly what they wanted, and they were therefore certain to find excuses for it and to turn it to some good account. In the first place it was an excellent pledge to offer to the Catholic electors at the opening of the electoral campaign. The honour of the Church and of the French army required to he avenged; and Falloux had no difficulty in making the Prince President understand and acquiesce in the wishes of the Catholic party. The occurrence, indeed, supplied Louis Napoleon with an admirable opportunity of strengthening his own majority in the next Assembly. He now formed a closer alliance with the Conservatives for the purpose of ousting the Republicans; forbade his Minister to send reinforcements to General Oudinot; and caused Lesseps to convey the following message, which, on May 9, he also had published in the Presidential paper La Patrie, to that officer: “ Our military honour is at stake, I will not suffer it to receive any injury.” Copies of the letter containing these words were also distributed to every regiment “ for the purpose of attaching the army more closely to the chief of the State.” As the elections were imminent there can be no doubt that Louis Napoleon desired to increase his prestige by a show of zeal against the Roman insurgents. The furious indignation of the Republicans, who, on May 11, 1849, endeavoured to overthrow the Ministry, did not prevent Leon Faucher from sending to the Prifets (May 12) a list containing the names of those deputies who disapproved of the Roman expedition, in order that the electors might be urged not to vote for them. At the same time, emboldened by the knowledge that its desire to involve France in the defence of the Holy See was connived at by the Presidency, the Union Libirale, the organ of the association i l the Rue de Poitiers, did not scruple to apply such terms as “Socialist” and “Insur­gent” to even the most moderate Republicans, who were only desirous of maintaining French neutrality in the quarrel between the Pope and his subjects. “The honour of the country and of the army” was cleverly turned to account, and used for the advantage of the reactionary parties

by Louis Napoleon; and on May 18,1849, this fortunate phrase secured a victory at the elections.

At these elections the Conservatives won eighteen seats out of twenty-eight in Paris, while five hundred out of the seven hundred candidates recommended by the association in the Rue de Poitiers were successful in the provinces. The unanimity among the Republican party, which the Roman question had seemed for a moment to promote in the Assembly, had not been extended to the country. Moderate men like Arago, Bastide, Lamartine, Marrast, Carnot, and Jules Favre, had refiised to stand at the elections as members of the coalition that Ledru- Rollin, Madier de Montjau, and Greppo had endeavoured to form with the Socialists for the purpose of defending the Republic. In consequence, the Moderate Republicans were utterly crushed; and even the most popular man among them, Dupont de l’Eure, only obtained 40,000 votes out of 274,000. Their role was indeed over; and henceforth they disappeared among the Royalists who had succeeded in uniting them­selves with the Church and Louis Napoleon, or among those Democrats whose alliance they had formerly refused. An event of particular significance was the defeat of such a man as Lamartine, whose name and prestige had secured a majority for his party in 1848.

Though the defeat of these men was highly agreeable to General Cavaignac’s fortunate rival, and to the Conservative party, it did not, after all, mean the final extinction of the democratic Republic which they had desired to establish in France. In Paris, the Social Democrats had secured only 30,000 votes less than the Conservatives; while in the provinces, two hundred deputies, entirely devoted to Republican principles, had been returned to oppose the Conservatives in the new Assembly. When the Revolution had broken out in February, very few people had dreamed of realising Republican ideas; and the demo­cratic regime which had then been established, as if by chance, had not been supported by any definitely constituted party. But a year later, in 1849, in spite of the sanguinary conflicts which were agitating France and Europe, such a party was being insensibly formed by a rapprochement between statesmen who recognised the power and the rights of the people, and a people who began to perceive the uselessness of rioting and violence. This new force had been organised by Ledru-Rollin by means of banquets and popular committees. The communistic theories also, whose advocacy of confiscation had formerly caused so much alarm, had now been replaced by a Socialistic propaganda encouraging the formation of friendly societies among the lower classes, and urging them to engage in solid undertakings for the advancement of the general prosperity. The May elections were a real triumph for Ledru-Rollin, who was elected in five departments by two million votes. The depart­ments of the Est, Alsace, the Haute Saone, the Jura, the Saone et Loire, the Ain, the Rhone, the Isere, the Ardeche, and also several departments

of the Centre, such as the Loir et Cher, the Cher, the Nievre, and the Creuse, all pronounced themselves in favour of a Social Democratic Republic. Even in the army, as its generals themselves admitted, the party which was still strong in the Assembly and in certain districts, could reckon upon a considerable number of adherents; while Tocqueville observes that the Democrats, who had believed their cause utterly lost, were as much intoxicated with joy when their successes became known as if they had gained a majority at the elections.

During the last days of the Constituent Assembly, these Democrats had already made furious attacks upon the Government and the Con­servatives, who had leagued together for their destruction. On May 19, they had managed to reject a Bill brought forward by the Government for the purpose of legalising the position of General Changamier. On May 22, Ledru-Rollin and Sarrans had demanded vigorous action in defence of the liberties of the people, that is to say, a complete reversal of the policy of the Roman expedition. Had not General Changamier kept the troops then in Paris shut up in their barracks, they might even have succeeded in persuading the Assembly to declare itself en permanence, and in giving the signal for an armed resistance. The pretext, or motive, for such a proceeding on their part would have been the blow aimed by the President and his Ministers at the Constitution by their conduct in the Roman question. But on May 27, 1849, the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly had parted the combatants.

At Rome, meanwhile, all through this crisis Lesseps was ceaselessly trying to make the Romans submit to the Pope by promises of liberty and a Constitution. But, between General Oudinot on the one hand, who would not abandon his intention of entering the city by force, and Mazzini and Garibaldi on the other, who were firmly resolved to prevent him, his task was by no means easy. On May 16, nevertheless, he succeeded in obtaining an armistice from the French General; and on May 18, he persuaded the Roman Assembly to appoint some plenipoten­tiaries with views more moderate than Mazzini’s. But, on the following day, Mazzini and the violent party once more obtained the upper hand in Rome; while Oudinot insisted upon a renewal of hostilities, and became even more warlike after the arrival of General Vaillant from Paris, with orders to supersede him if he should give way. On May 24, however, after threatening the Romans with a definite rupture, a menace which was confirmed by an ultimatum delivered on May 29, Lesseps at length succeeded in signing a treaty with the Roman Republic, by which the city gates were to be opened to the French army, if it would promise to respect the rights of the nation.

On the very day on which Lesseps issued his ultimatum, he was curtly recalled by a telegram from Drouyn de Lhuys, as if he had ill- acquitted himself of his mission or failed in obedience. On June 1 an order was telegraphed to General Oudinot from Pans, contrary to his

;xpectations, to break off negotiations, to attack Rome, and to take it by storm. It was the effect of the pressure brought to bear at headquarters by d’Harcourt and de Rayneval, who advocated the im­mediate and unconditional' restoration of the Pope, and by the German Jesuits, who were financially supporting this French crusade. It was the consequence of the wishes which they had conveyed to Paris through a determined Catholic, Prince de La Tour, d’Auvergne. Lastly it was the welcome extended by the Ministry to the Catholic majority in the Legislative Assembly. The first sitting had been held on May 28; and already the Catholics were growing uneasy to find Odilon Barrot hesitating between them and the more moderate deputies of the Centre, such as Dufaure, Tocqueville, and Lanjuinais. It was to reassure them and quiet their apprehensions that the Prince President had sacrificed Rome and the convention signed by Lesseps. That diplomat returned in amazement to France, to be rewarded for his efforts by disavowal and censure for having failed to carry out his instructions; while General Oudinot began the siege of Rome on June 3, and on the 30th entered through the breach. A fortnight later, the Catholics saw the close of their cherished crusade: a solemn Te Deum was sung at St Peter’s celebrating the victory of, France over the Roman Republic, and the unconditional restoration of pontifical authority.

At the same time Falloux had hastened to lay on the table of the Legislative Assembly his Bill for liberty of instruction claimed by Catholics and religious communities for nearly twelve years (June 18). A week later a commission had already been appointed to investigate it; and, on July 3,1849, the Catholic majority, rejoicing just then in the return of the Pope to Rome, asserted their determination to carry through with the utmost speed “this Roman campaign at home,” as Montalembert called it. The Constitution, however, prescribed a pre­liminary enquiry by the Council of State, in the case of a law of such importance. But when it came to obtaining control of education in France and achieving their purposes, Falloux and the Catholic majority did not trouble themselves about constitutional forms, any more than they had done in their defence of the Pope.

The Catholic party had the power, and they meant to use or even abuse it. The fruitless attempt of Ledru-Rollin and Martin Bernard, on June 13, to stir the people of Paris to revolt furnished an excellent pretext to decimate the Democratic party by means of severe measures •^-arrests in Paris and in the provinces, prosecutions and a state of siege.. Banquets were forbidden, mutual benefit societies dissolved, and Republican school-teachers suspended or arbitrarily dismissed. These excessive measures of repression were as ill-judged as the abortive rising of June 13; besides, they overshot the mark. It became evident that this so-called vindication of order was to culminate¹ in the subjection of the nation to the Catholic party. This stimulated the

Republican propaganda: the prosecutions secured readers for such newspapers as Le National—whose editors, Duras and Jules Simon, were now disposed for an understanding with the Democrats—Le SiZcle, La Republique, UEvenement, prime mover in which last was Victor Hugo, and especially La Presse, which Iilmile de Girardin suddenly brought round again to the party of liberty, as public opinion shifted. In the country districts La Feuille du Village disseminated information among the peasants. The municipal and departmental elections more than anything else indicated the progress of this propaganda. None were more characteristic than the ballots of July 14: nineteen Socialist and Democratic deputies had been shut out from the Assembly by the High Court entrusted with the trial of the culprits of June 13. To supply their places the Union Lib&rale of the Rue de Poitiers had produced a list, mainly of Royalists like Malleville, Delessert, Ferdinand Barrot and Ducos, and of Moderates such as Lanjuinais and Boinvilliers, who always rallied round a Bonaparte. This list passed by only a very small majority over the Republican list, which mustered nearly 100,000 votes. So the strength of the Republican Opposition was growing.

The contending parties then were the Catholic Conservatives and the Republican Democrats, two vast bodies each disputing as to the power or tenets of the other; and, between the two, the Prince President at that time began by degrees to make his weight felt and to sketch out his own independent policy. His election and his fate, prior to the development tending to divide Catholics and Republicans into oppc. i _ue camps, had been determined by the movement which, on the strength of his name, had at the close of 1848 brought together the numerous adherents of Communism, and also the people who since the days of June bore a grudge against the Republican bourgeoisie. Louis Napoleon had no intention of being completely drawn over to the Right, nor of losing his influence with the masses, the peasantry, and the army by adopting a Catholic reactionary policy. Though he might propose to remain the guardian of order in the face of clubs, democratic Press, and mob, he did not wish to be the tool either of the Monarchy or of the Church. On the contrary the mode of operation best calculated to develop and assure his power in the country seemed to him that of striking the political mean. Between the rival parties, on various grounds so dis­tracting for France, an intermediate party must be interposed for which preparations had long since been made, and which was destined when the time should be ripe to supersede both in his interests. The history of the Legislative Assembly thus became to all appearances that of a , , , Catholic Republic contending with Liberal and popular Oppositions; in reality events were simply paving the way for a personal government.

From the outset, Louis Napoleon had clearly shown that he had no intention of joining the Monarchist and Catholic majority, since he had selected more Liberal Ministers such as Tocqueville, Lanjuinais,,and

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Louis Napoleon and the Holy See.

[l849

Dufaure, to the last of whom, on the model of Cavaignac, he had entrusted the Ministry of the Interior (June 2). After the capture of Rome the Ministry prorogued the Assembly from August 13 to September 30. People openly talked of a coup d'etat, which was precisely what took place—save that the President’s action was less serious than had been feared, though sufficiently so to furnish a lesson for the Catholics and a pledge for the Liberals. The opportunity was provided for him by the Roman question—the pivot on which the internal affairs of France just then turned. Louis Napoleon had restored the Pope by force: he wished it to be known that—as a former champion of the liberties of Rome—he would not suffer Pius IX and Antonelli to set up an absolutist regime once more, although a sort of white terror (terreur blanche) had already begun on July 15 in Rome. He sent his aide-de-camp, Edgar Ney, to remonstrate with the Pope; and finally, on August 18, he published Ney’s instructions, in the form of a letter compounded of expostulations and demands, which scandalised the Holy See. France, or rather her leader, dared to present a sort of ultimatum to the Holy See, embodying a total amnesty, lay administra­tion, and Liberal institutions. Pius IX, who could not dispense with the French troops, dared not show his anger by a refusal. In a brief of September 12, motu proprio, he promised reforms, but without really granting them. Instead of discharging his debt he signed a bill for payment at a remote date. Napoleon was not baffled by this dilatory reply: he insisted on his Ministers demanding from the Holy See an amendment to the pontifical brief, namely the voting of supplies by an elective assembly; but he had reckoned on a Ministry more amenable to his orders than to the will of the majority in the Assembly which controlled the Ministers.

When the Legislative met on October 1,1849, the Catholics did not seem inclined to approve or support the conditions imposed on the Holy See by the Prince President. “It would be an odious piece of inconsistency to force the will of a sovereign whose independence we were but now vindicating,” exclaimed Montalembert with enthusiastic applause from the majority. Odilon Barrot and his colleagues, yielding to Falloux’ influence and to fear, did not venture to question this. They declared, in agreement with Thiers, reporter to the commission, that after all the Pope’s brief was satisfactory and in compliance with the President’s letter. The Assembly approved by a large majority of the expeditionary corps remaining in Rome in the Pope’s service uncon­ditionally and even for the purpose of supporting a reactionary policy⁵; and thus they virtually pronounced against Louis Napoleon.

The President resolved on a decisive step, namely, the dismissal of a Ministry which had not upheld his policy of opposing the pretensions of the Catholic party. As early as May 30, 1849, he had commissioned Odilon Barrot “to secure Ministers who would be devoted to his own

1849-50]                    Louis Napoleon's new Ministry.                          129

person.” Barrot had shirked this task, preferring to retain his in­fluence in the Parliament. Without consulting the Assembly, the; President sent for General d’Hautpoul on October 31 and put him in office, giving him for coadjutors new men who were to be simply exponents of his own opinions and policy. These new Ministers were: Rouher for Justice, de Rayneval and then Ducos de La Hitte for Foreign Affairs, Ferdinand Barrot for the Interior, de Parieu for Public Instruc­tion, Fould for Finance. The message which he bade them read contained one passage which was a programme in itself: “No sooner were the dangers of the mob safely past than the parties were seen to raise their standards afresh, renew their rivalry, and alarm the country by sowing seeds of unrest broadcast. In the midst of this confusion France looks to the guiding hand, the will, and the standard of him whom she elected on December 10. That victory of December 10 in­volved a whole system, for the name of Napoleon is a programme in itself alone. Let us then exalt authority without detriment to true liberty.”

It was in point of fact a dictatorship, which began from October 81,

1849,       under pretext of “ exalting authority.” The most vigorous par­ticipator in the undertaking, whose talent and zeal were absolutely Jevoted to the President, was the Auvergne lawyer Rouher, who sought to find means for the satisfaction of his ambition in the establishment of a regime of authority. As Keeper of the Seals he did not scruple, for the undoing of the Republicans, to make “red, rabid, anarchist” criminals of them. For this piece of policy he made use of the administration of justice. The procureurs-generaux were bidden to give information every month against the organisation of the Democratic party, its newspapers, its associations, its dealings both open and secret, and even against those holders of office in the other departments who were suspected of half­heartedness or complicity. The Minister of War was equally zealous in his use of the gendarmerie, circulating orders for them to watch “itinerant demagogues,” and to give notice of all persons in authority and even school-teaehers favourable to subversive doctrines. On December 13,1849, the Minister of Public Instruction, Parieu, asked the Assembly while waiting for the voting of a law on education, that the school-teachers iii each department might be set under the control and at the disposal of the prefects. It was clear that, by the prosecution of the Republicans as anarchists, the presidential authority further aimed at setting up for itself in the country an army of officials, who should be perfectly amen­able to its designs and ready to fall in with them, whatever they might be.

On January 2, 1850, the Royalist and Catholic majority attempted an almost successful opposition to this plan. It was only by a majority of one vote that the Bill, putting the school-teachers under the control of the prefect¹;, was passed. Royalists and Catholics retaliated by opposing the Education Bill, which the Government had been adroit enough to delay and refer to the Council of State on November 7, 1849. The

President perceived the threat; the Assembly itself was dismayed by its audacity. On the advice of Dupin and Mole they agreed to a compromise, and voted for Parieu’s Bill, on condition that the Govern­ment pledged themselves to support at no distant date that Bill dear to the Catholics, the Education Bill drawn up by Falloux. This Bill, which in the history of French education has retained the name of “Falloux’ Act,” was finally passed on March 15, 1850.

The fundamental yet evident principle of this enactment was to confirm in the primary schools and extend to secondary education the right of all citizens to give instruction, and further to charge the State with the burden of providing national education—transferred to it by Napoleon I* when he created the University and the lycees, and by Guizot in his Act dealing with the schools in 1833. But for the Catholics, who thus secured the right of competing with the state schools, the law meant something very different. Primary, communal and depart­mental schools, the lycees, and the masters in these schools, were placed under the influence of the Church. Four archbishops, elected by their colleagues, were put by the Church on the governing body of the Univer­sity to inspect the programmes of lectures, to examine books, and to enquire into abuses. On the provincial academic Councils she placed two priests, one of them a bishop, to supervise the masters; and, lastly, she obtained for rural cures the right of inspection of schools themselves. At the same time the Act gave special facilities to those schools which the Catholic party proposed to found, availing itself of the liberty of competition for the religious communities, whose existence was not then, however, recognised in France. If it was a question of a primary school, the certificate of competency required from state masters or from inde­pendent professors was not required from members of the Church: if of a secondary school, where only state masters with degrees attesting considerable attainments were allowed to teach, no proof of learning was asked from the teachers in the case of Catholic schools. On granting their premises to free (i.e. Catholic) schools, the communes and departments were exempted from obedience to the law obliging them to provide education at their own expense. By means of such immnniti'ga Falloux’ Act, which proclaimed liberty as a natural right, was destined, above all else, to subject that very liberty to the influence and advance­ment of the Catholic clergy.

Louis Napoleon’s Government would have been satisfied with Parieu’s Act, passed on January 9,1850, which, under pretext of protecting the school-teachers from Socialistic doctrines, placed them at the Govern­ment’s discretion. It acquiesced in Falloux’ Act because it had been committed to it from the outset and, by going back on its word, it would have provoked a conflict with the Catholics in the Assembly, to the advantage of the Democratic party. The passing of these two Acts in succession produced a temporary compromise between the Prince

i85o] Bye-elections in Paris and the departments. 131

President and the Legislative, a provisional entente directed against their mutual enemies—Republicans, Liberals, Democrats, and Socialists. On March 15 this ill-assorted but useful compact seemed to them still more necessary, because the system of repression practised during the past year produced an effect on these enemies contrary to calculation* On March 10, five days before the passing of Falloux’ Act, the people of Paris and of the departments were summoned to a ballot, in order to fill the thirty-one vacancies in the Assembly. The Republican list, with men like Carnot, Vidal and de Flotte, was carried by a majority of a tVinnsanH votes over the list from the Rue de Poitiers supported by Louis Napoleon. In the provinces, eighteen Republicans were elected out of twenty-eight. This popular revulsion to Republicanism was due to the final completion and cementing of the union between Moderates, Radicals, and Socialists which was effected once a dictatorship seemed imminent and a clerical reaction to be feared. Henceforth the time could be foreseen when, by an inverse process to that which came about in 1848, Republicans of all shades of opinion would unite and regain the ground which their divisions had cost them, while the Union Liberate dissolved into partisans and opponents of Louis Napoleon.

This was the second decisive move in the policy of the Prince President. As he had imposed his will on the Catholic majority on October 81, 1849, so, on March 16, 1850, he opposed it to the progress of the Republican minority, which threatened to become a majority just as formidable to his ambition. Under pretext of protecting society, which he declared to be in danger, he made Pierre Jules Baroche Minister of the Interior. Baroche had attracted attention as magistrate by the zeal with which he had successively opposed Guizot and, after December 10, 1848, the Republicans. The personnel of the Second Empire was made up of Rouher, Fould and shortly afterwards Morny. Moreover it was amusing to see Baroche, one of those who had organised Radical banquets for the extension of the property qualification for the franchise, making ready with the same zeal to “rectify universal suffrage. Baroche threw himself heart and soul into this task, prosecuting news­papers and clubs; but just then a fresh election became necessary in Paris as Vidal, one of the candidates of March 10, chose to sit for his constituency in Alsace. Things went in favour of Eugene Sue, the popular writer, on April 28, 1850, thus contributing to the superiority of the Republican party. Baroche at once took in hand a scheme for “ rectifying universal suffrage,” suggested to the Conservatives by their defeat in Paris on March 10, which he introduced in the Assembly on May 8,1850. A committee, of which Leon Faucher was chosen reporter, decided in favour of this scheme on May 18. On May 31 the Ligislative did likewise, after stormy debates, in which Montalembert was accused by Victor Hugo of having abjured his whole past as a Liberal, and Thiers brought about his own recall to the people’s confidence. There

was an end of the matter. Nearly three million citizens found that they were deprived of their political rights on the pretext that they had not resided three years in one place, and were consequently “vagabonds,” or “anarchists” and “criminals,” if they had taken part in a club or secret society, or if they had been convicted before a political tribunal. Shortly afterwards clubs and public meetings even for election purposes were forbidden, for the future, by the Act of June 9, 1850.

Following on these enactments a regular reign of terror and perse­cution was deliberately inaugurated against the Republican party throughout France. The Administration of Justice under Rouher co­operated with the Executive under Baroche. House to house distribution of books or pamphlets, meetings and banquets, in any form, were for­bidden. The Republican representatives of the nation were reduced to receiving their constituents one at a time in caf&s watched by the police. Any gathering of people who might talk politics was eyed with suspicion by gendarmes, magistrates, and prefects. The houses of Republicans were searched daily. The smallest societies where Republicans met were signalised and broken up as secret societies. The Republican newspapers were hunted down and overwhelmed with lawsuits and fines. Officials, postmen, surveyors of roads, and school-teachers were dismissed on the slightest suspicion. Mayors, officers of the National Guard, and municipal councillors suffered a like fate so soon as information had been given against them. The cry of “ Vive la Republique" became an act of sedition, that of “Vive Napoleon" was commended and rewarded. Absurd as it may seem even the wearing of red in belts, ties, or caps became actionable.

These reactionary measures paralysed the Republican propaganda just when it was deprived of means of action in the Assembly. There was at that time some thought of a rising among many Democrats like Michel de Bourges and his friends the London exiles, Ledru-Rollin and others; but the more politic among them—Bernard, Lavergne, Grevy and Cavaignac—contented themselves with exercising the right of speaking in the Assembly. They denounced, at every opportunity, these glaring infringements of justice, hoping that an appeal to the country would before long give the nation a voice once more, and that justice would then be avenged. Patience being a virtue of the strong, the Democrats proved their strength by the practice of it. They desired their party to abstain from voting till 1852, in order to signify their intention and fixed determination to have no part in political institutions, which—for the time being—had no more than a superficial claim to legality. By their policy the Republicans gained this point, that, in face of their opponents who were taking advantage of power for their own ends, they remained the party of justice, of liberty as against absolutism, of established order as against the abettors of civil strife. Thus, despite persecution, they were nourished on something better than hopes. Soon the Royalists, in their turn, were struck in the person of Changamier, who was deprived

of the command of the army of Paris. On January 9, 1851, Louis Napoleon formed a Ministry of action, in which were included Rouher, Baroche, Fould, and Saint-Amaud, and Thiers was able to say to the Assembly: “The Empire is already in existence.’’

From 1851 onwards the whole question was not whether the Empire would come into being, but how, by legitimate means or by force. If it was to be accomplished legitimately, the Constitution would have to be modified, in particular Article 45 forbidding the reelection of the President after four years’ tenure of office. At the instigation of the Prefects the Conseils-generaux had since August, 1850, expressed them­selves in favour of the removal by the Assembly of this limit in the case of Louis Napoleon; some had even advocated a consulship for life. The President was, first of all, in favour of effecting this act of usurpation without violence, preferring to have the supreme power accorded to him rather than to seize it. After governing by an emergency Ministry, which he appointed on January 17, 1851, in place of his Ministry whose fall had been effected by the vote of the Assembly—after proving to the Assembly that he could dispense with it and was even then doing so—he offered the Royalists an opportunity of coming to an understanding with him. Those approached by him were, first of all, Odilon Barrot, Malle­ville and Tocqueville, subsequently Faucher and Buffet, all men who could never be expected to countenance violent measures. On April 10, 1851, they accepted his promise of loyal support from the presidency if they would faithfully endeavour to extort from the Assembly a vote approving the prolongation of his tenure of office. Such were Louis Napoleon’s efforts to secure a peaceful revision of the Constitution.

The new Ministers, among whom were Rouher, Baroche and Magne, left no stone unturned in their attempts to reconcile public opinion and even to utilise it in breaking down parliamentary opposition. Up till May 28, 1851, the time when the proposals desired by the Assembly were to be brought forward, the opinion of the country appeared favourable, especially in those departments in which the Bonapartist party had first been built up. The intentions of parties in the Chamber continued uncertain: the Republican party took their stand from the first. They could not pronounce in favour of pre­paring the way for a dictatorship, were it never so legal a one. The Monarchist party, who formed a majority, were disposed towards this solution, since they shared Berryer’s illusion that an entire revision would fully vindicate justice, and tend to bring about a restoration previously approved by such Orleanists as Mole. Uncompromising Orleanists like Thiers, who desired to overthrow Louis Napoleon and set aside the Comte de Chambord, allied with the Republicans to defeat absolutely the programme of the President and his Ministers. The partisans of Bonapartist power, already numerous in the Chamber, who constituted the party of the Elysee, were bestirring themselves on the other side and

to their joy discovered many politicians in the ranks of Legitimists and Orleanists, who were resigned to a prolongation of Louis Napoleon’s authority in order to avoid a coup d'etat and delay the irreparable. De Broglie came to terms with Leon Faucher on this point, and his influence was still great in Orleanist circles. Persigny, a friend of the Prince and a former Legitimist, tried to win Changamier’s concurrence on these grounds and by means of promises likely to appease his rancour.

In short, there was certainly a majority in favour of the legal solution, which the Prince President laid before the House. But, according to constitutional law, a majority for the revision was not sufflcient. The votes in favour had to be three-quarters of the total number of voters, and out of about 710 entitled to register their opinion over 180 (more than a quarter) were obdurate Republicans. Perhaps it was in order to win adherents in the group thus entitled to decide between dictator­ship and monarchy that Louis Napoleon went away to Lyons, and made a speech there on June 1, 1851, which was calculated to conciliate the Democrats. This produced no effect whatever: when on July 8 Tocqueville opened the debate on the revision with a favourable statement, Michel de Bourges and Victor Hugo declared that not a single Republican would vote for it. On July 19 the project of revision was thrown out by nearly 100 votes: “The Constitution will not be revised,” said a deputy, “ it can almost be said to have ceased to be.” After voting, the Assembly decided to rise as usual on August 10 for a recess of two months and a half—an interval which, in 1849 and 1850, the President had turned to such good account for the furtherance of his fortunes.

And did Louis Napoleon use it, as has been said, for the preparation this time of those violent measures, which seemed the sole expedient for maintaining his power, now that the attempt at a legal solution had been foiled? It was observed that Saint-Amaud, General Magnan, and Colonel Fleury were summoned to Paris. They were young officers from Africa, who were supposed to possess the energy and decision of youth needful for carrying out a coup de main. Maupas, Prefect of Haute Garonne and the Prince’s confidant, and Count Momy, who was a member of the family, and devoid of all scruple, were now more frequent visitors at the Elysee; and between August 11 and September 9, in the retirement of Saint-Cloud, they considered with Carlier, Prefect of Police, the question of the right moment and conduct of a coup d’etat. It seems for a time that the President demurred at making the final decision.

Tocqueville, who was his Minister, has said: “ Louis Napoleon was very vacillating in his plans. He was often seen to alter his course, advance, pause and then retire, greatly to his own loss: for the nation had chosen him to dare all things, and what it expected of him was valour and not discretion. He had always been much addicted to pleasure. His passion for common amusements and his taste for comfort had increased with the facilities of power. He let his energy thus become

daily enfeebled and his ambition abate and die away.” Up to the moment for attempting the final stroke the President hesitated between the desire to establish himself firmly in power without risking anything and the fear of losing that power if he risked nothing.

After contemplating the coup d'Hat for October, 1851, when he saw the Assembly on the point of resuming its sittings, he thought that he would make one last attempt on legal lines. He knew that it was only the stubborn opposition of the Republicans, which had in July baffled his desire to protract his authority, and he suddenly conceived of a device for appeasing them. He announced his intention of restoring the people to all their rights and of abrogating the electoral law of May 81, 1850j and he gave the grounds for his action in his message of November 4. “This restoration of universal suffrage affords one more chance of securing the revision.” But from October 12 the opposition of the Ministry, which resigned in a body rather than accept this challenge to the Conservative Assembly, and the certain opposition of that Assembly, induced the President to anticipate it. On October 27 he summoned de Maupas to the Prefecture of Police for Paris in these terms: “ Here I am on the edge of a ditch full of water; on the other side I see safety for the country. I need some men to help me across this ditch. Will you be one of them?” Maupas had accepted, and so above all had Saint-Amaud, who was to replace General Randon in the War Department. Lamoriciere had said of him: “ When you see Saint-Amaud a Minister, say: Here is the coup d'itat.'" The other Ministers, except Giraud and Fortoul, were men of no weight and behind them lurked Momy awaiting the critical moment, when he would assume the management of the conspiracy at the Ministry of the Interior. The plot was carried on in perfect secrecy during November, 1851, whilst the Assembly, which was reduced to the defensive, attempted at the instigation of its Quaestors to guarantee its own inviolability and existence by a law, empowering the Assembly’s President to claim the armed force and all authority. The Republicans had defeated this Quaestors’ Bill by a majority of one hundred. The Royalists had set aside the Electoral Bill approved by the Republicans. Members seemed incapable of combining for decisive effort Maupas, Persigny, Saint- Amaud, Momy and Mocquard, bringing Louis Napoleon’s final hesitations to an abrupt conclusion, laid their plans in profound secrecy during the last days of November.

First of all a decree was drawn up by Momy and mysteriously printed during the night of December 1-2, embodying a proclamation informing and advising the people of the dissolution of the Assembly and the restoration of universal suffrage, and convening the electors from December 14 to 21 for a plibiscite to decide about the revision of the Constitution. When the Parisians read these notices, they were con­fronted by the whole army of Paris called out in readiness to uphold

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The Coup d’etat of December.

[1851

them. The people’s representatives found the Palais Ugislatif occupied since dawn by two regiments of the line. They soon heard too that at sunrise the most prominent men among them, Royalist as well as Republican generals, had been taken to the prison of Mazas under the pretext of their having conspired against the State: those so treated were Bedeau, Changamier, Lamoriciere, Cavaignac, Leflo, Colonel Charras; Thiers and Roger du Nord of the Orleanist leaders; and of the Republicans Cholat, Valentin, Greppo, Nadaud, Miot, Baune and Lagrange. Warrants had at the same time been issued against seventy Republicans, journalists or members of Democratic societies, who were to be arrested “in order to make the Republic more sure,” as Louis Napoleon put it. In short, all the men, and the parties, who in July had opposed the revision of the Constitution, were rendered powerless under pretext of conspiracy, whether in the interests of crown or people. The manoeuvre had been rapidly executed and promised to be successful.

Such representatives of the people, however, as were still at large, tried under Berryer’s leadership to organise some form of legal opposition at the Mairie of the Tenth Arrondissement, in the quartier St Germain, where the Legitimist party reckoned its strongest adherents. Two hundred deputies of all parties met for a last sitting and proclaimed the fall of Louis Napoleon and the continuance of the Assembly, although they possessed no means of enforcing their decisions or the law of the land. At the orders of Maupas, General Forey cleared the hall and had these last supporters of legality conveyed between lines of soldiers to prison in some neighbouring barracks.

The Republican representatives had tried another expedient for resisting the establishment of a dictatorship. Camot, de Flotte, Jules Favre, Victor Hugo, Michel de Bourges, Madier de Montjau, and Schoelcher formed themselves into a committee of opposition and decided on a popular rising for December 3 in the Faubourg St Antoine. A few barricades were raised there and also near the Hailes. But the whole day passed off without any events of consequence. It was not till the evening, from seven o’clock till midnight, that a serious disturbance ensued on news arriving that Baudin had met his death on a barricade. Saint-Arnaud left things to take their course until the afternoon of the next day; then, when he had given his troops the needful time to rest and recuperate, he hurled his cavalry brigades on the boulevards against the artisan districts in the centre, drove the mob back, and over­whelmed it, so that in a few hours he was master of the situation. Blows had been dealt thick and fast, and no qftarter given; without warning an unarmed crowd of pedestrians and onlookers had been fired on with grape-shot on the Boulevard Poissoniere, and then the company had passed on at once to complete its work of brutal repression.

Morny had installed himself too, in hot haste, as Minister of the Interior. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte might be master of the Assembly and of Paris, but France was not yet at his feet. Momy, who was

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Events of December 3—8.

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devoid of scruples and full of energy and devotion for his cause, was the very man for this hazardous post. It was vital that everything should be prepared so that, when the people were summoned in a fort­night’s time to vote for the restoration of the Empire, they might not be overruled by the influence of Republican leaders, committees, and newspapers of which the progress, even in the rural districts, had been daily apparent during the past two years. Morny kindled the enthusiasm of his prefects and sub-prefects by despatches. In order to make ready for the great national plebiscite, he authorised them after December 4, 1851, to replace justices of the peace, mayors, and school­teachers, whose concurrence was not vouched for by an oath in writing. He ordered them to arrest instantly any person attempting to disturb the peace, and to suspend any newspaper that might damage their side by its polemics. On December 5 he requested the prefects to give information against sub-prefects not showing sufficient zeal in the performance of this task. On December 6 he forbade them for the future to let a single newspaper appear unless they had seen the proofs. “The Administration,” he said, “needed all its moral force to accomplish its work of regeneration and salvation.” On the 7th the Ministry had a list of the authors of disorder, and the leaders of the Socialist party drawn up in every part of France, and a decree of December 8 treated as convicts and criminals at common law “ all these rascally members of secret societies and unrecognised political associations.”

There was a twofold purpose in these terrorist measures: the framework and heads of the Republican organisation prepared in the departments, in view of the elections of 1852, must be speedily de­molished before the ballot to which France was summoned; and, on the other hand, the friends of law and order, both Conservatives and Royalists, must be persuaded by reason of impending anarchy to rally on the day of the voting to the policy of the Elysde. The risings which took place in Democratic centres in the provinces at the news of the Coup d'etat contributed towards this twofold object. The north made no move, and the east scarcely any beyond a few demonstrations rapidly quelled at Nancy and Strassburg. In the west it was the same thing. But at Montargis and at Bonny-sur-Loire there was fighting. In Allier the Democrats of Donjon seized the town of La Palisse. There was a riot at Poligny in the Jura, a bloody revolt in Nievre where the Democrats got possession of Clamecy and summoned their friends from Yonne to help them. The troops got the better of them on December 8. In the south the Republicans of Lavardac and Villeneuve advanced under arms against Agen, and those of Gers against Auch, while those of Herault, mustering hastily from the country, blockaded Beziers for three days. At Toulon there was quite a little army commanded by Duteil, which would perhaps have roused Provence to revolt if Marseilles had risen. For six days a provisional Government consisting of peasants actually

sat at Digne and governed the Basses-Alpes, formerly a Conservative district. These revolts, speedily quelled by the exertions of the prefects, generals and gendarmes incited by Momy, afforded evidence to the country of the grave danger—from which it had been preserved by the Coup d'etat—and some justification for the brutal repression of this “abominable vandalism of this jacquerie,” and for the declaration of a state of siege in thirty-two departments, one-third of France. From •that time it was a simple matter to implicate in proceedings against insurgents all Republicans whom it was desirable to banish immediately.

In Paris from December 4 the number of arrests amounted to 2100; and they continued during the following days. In Meurthe, between December 3 and 20, nearly 5000 of the “ reds ” were arrested. And of course the departments which had risen were most affected.

■ The time had now come when Momy, in view of the approaching verdict of France, could give his prefects the necessary instructions “ for ensuring the free and sincere expression of the will of the nation." Since they were delivered for the future from Republicans and party ai nosity (which would have perverted the real significance of the ballot) the Administration must not remain inactive and unmoved. It received orders to turn “ its energies to winning the day for the political opinion which had prompted the Coup d'etat, to circulating the President’s proclamations even in the remotest villages, to forming electoral com­mittees composed of honest men, who would undertake to enlighten the minds of the public, from the chief towns to the smallest hamlets, to fortify their spirit, and to convey the wishes of the prefects to the electors,” This circular of December 10, 1851, after the terrorist measures leading up to it, was the essential preliminary to a ballot manipulated by an energetic and unscrupulous Ministry. It contained a sentence which was at once a programme and an avowal. “ Liberty of conscience, but the resolute and consistent use of every allowable means of influence and persuasion, that is what I expect from you.”

Momy was not deceived in his expectation, and Louis Napoleon could congratulate himself on having called him in at the critical moment, when on December 21, 1851, France decided, by 7,500,000 votes against 640,000, to delegate to the Prince President the right of drawing up the Constitution. The nation abdicated its sovereignty, vesting all its rights in the person of the great Emperor’s nephew, remembering at the same time the fame which his House had won for France, and hoping for a strong and equally glorious Government. The people were weary of parliamentary struggles and the impotence of parties; they dreaded popular risings and longed for quiet and security. They were discouraged and helpless too, beneath a regime of administra­tive pressure and terrorism, which stifled every attempt at discussion and opposition. Louis Napoleon and his adherents celebrated this their first victory at Notre Dame on January 1, 1852, and by Te Deums in all the churches of France. And, while the President duly installed

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Victory of the Prince President.

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himself at the Tuileries, there to revive the memories of Napoleon’s Consulate, the eagles, symbolical of glory and power, appeared once more on the standards of France. There was very little room for doubt as to the form of Constitution which the Dictator was commissioned to draw up.

In order however to leave nothing to chance, he carried on with renewed severity that policy, of which the efficacy had been proved by the plebiscite of December 20. After December 31, 1851, Momy had the list sent in to him of persons arrested since the Coup d'etat, so that he might deal them a final blow and complete the sentence in good earnest. These measures for the “public safety” attacked the representa­tives of the people first of all: by the decree of January 9 eighteen deputies, of whom six were Republicans, were exiled for a period, and sixty-six for life, all of whom belonged to the Montagne; the five most dangerous of these were to be transported to Guiana; but, through the influence of George Sand, three of the sentences were commuted to banishment, namely, those of Greppo, Marc Dufraisse and Richardet. Mathe made his escape. Miot was sent to Lambessa. The Conservative deputies had almost all been released: there was nothing to fear from them after the voting of December 20. After the Democratic leaders, it was the turn of their constituents in the provinces, “the revolutionary ringleaders”—as they were termed in the circular of January 11,1852— the insurgents ill the recent risings and all opponents of the Government who threatened the peace. Regular lists of suspects were drawn up by Commissaries of the War Department, procureurs-generaux and prefects. All compromising information was welcomed; and arrests immediately began and were continued throughout the month of January, 1852, to the number, it is estimated, of nearly one hundred thousand.

Then, when all Democrats possessed of any energy, conviction or influence had been securely caught in the net which the authorities had spread so widely and so rapidly, a special Court of Justice was constituted to deal finally with the victims. “ The number of guilty persons and the fear of public strife,” Morny confessed in his circular, “did not allow of acting otherwise.” From January 18, 1852, it was decided that Commissions mioctes, consisting of prefects, procmreurs-generaux and officers, should try the prisoners in districts declared to be in a state of siege—if trial it could be called when the sentence was pronounced on information from the Government, in private, and without witnesses or counsel. These commissions determined on penalties, in accordance with a special code compiled for their use, namely, trial before a Court martial; transportation to Cayenne or Algeria, temporary or for life; relegation to some place in the interior; trial before a Court for the trial of misdemeanours (tribunal correctionnel); subjection to supervision. Under these conditions sentence was given summarily and rapidly. The records of the proceedings, as also the grounds of conviction, have been preserved and suffice to prove how many people innocent even

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Measures for the “public safety”

[1852

from a political point of view—were arrested, condemned and actually transported on the orders of officials anxious to show their zeal or even as a consequence of private animosities or unfounded suspicions. The official documents of the time give the number of persons sentenced as little short of 20,000—nearly 3000 to relegation to the interior, 10,000 to transportation to Algeria, and 6000 to supervision. But this total is incomplete: the numerous Republicans must not be forgotten who, to escape these stringent proceedings, underwent voluntary exile in Switzer­land, Belgium, England, and even the New World, or who remained in France because they were unable to flee, but had to leave their homes and conceal themselves at the sacrifice of their occupations and of other interests. By February, 1852, this piece of work was completed to the satisfaction of its instigators—a work which we can only regard as cruel and fatal to justice and liberty. George Sand’s words bear a melancholy testimony to the state of things: “ When you go into the provinces and see how crushed is the spirit, you must bear in mind that all the force lay in a few men now in prison, dead, or banished.”

In conclusion, the dictator could henceforth without risk give some semblance of legality to his power. On January 14, 1852, he promul­gated the Constitution on his own authority, having entrusted the task of drawing it up to his faithful Ministers Troplong, Persigny, Flahaut and Rouher chiefly. He offered it to the French nation as the fortunate and rightful heritage of the First Consul, a return too long delayed, “the only Constitution adapted to the social and administrative institutions of modem France, and calculated to secure the requisite liberties and the maintenance of Napoleonic principles.” He justified the institution of an untrammelled power, on the grounds of the pretended responsi­bility of the head of the State towards a people no longer possessed of newspapers, political liberty, or personal security. The fact is that he had grasped all the nation’s powers; the Ministers no longer constituted a parliamentary cabinet, but were appointed by him and removable at his pleasure alone; they had become mere instruments under his direction. The Council of State, chosen by him, formulated laws, but in private. The Senate, whose duty it was to revise the laws and propose fresh ones, and to interpret the Constitution, seemed to have some legislative authority; but the selection of every one of its members rested with the President and their salary was left to his dis­cretion. Since their sittings were not public, and as their sessions only lasted so long as their master chose, beginning and terminating at his orders, what independence or initiative was there actually left to the Senate ? The Senators were appointed on January 26,1852, the Coun­cillors of State, Admirals and Marshals on the 25th. Every precaution, legal and otherwise, was taken so that the sovereign, having the law in his own interests and without any other check, need not apprehend that one and only check, the Corps legislatif, which he had allowed to stand as a sort of last tribute to legality.

And such a Corps Ugislaiifl An assembly of two hundred and fifty members who had to swear themselves in before him in order to take their seats, who were elected by a ballot of the arrondissements to pass laws and arrange taxation, but who were obliged to refuse the public any account of their deliberations. They had to pass the Government’s Bills without possessing the right to modify them, and might not even bring forward a Bill themselves. They were not entitled to nominate their President, nor might they call in the Ministers to debate with them, nor ask questions. By the suppression of the right of address they were deprived of every expedient for obtaining a hearing with either the sovereign or the nation. In short, the annual voting of the budget was the sole power remaining to the representatives of the country. Louis Napoleon had however taken his precautions against this inadequate means of opposition: by the electoral decree of February 2, 1852, all categories of electors suspected of Republicanism were carefully debarred from the ballot (which, according to principle, was to be universal) and the right of determining the electoral divisions was conferred on the executive power. “ You must understand,” Momy wrote to the prefects on January 18, “how great an effect a more or less skilful adjustment of divisions will have on the election results.” “It is a serious business,” he added on January 20; “ the Government will not hesitate to recommend candidates directly to the choice of the electors.” And, while biding his time for absolutely forcing the vote of the electorate, the President on February 17 issued a decree relating to the Press, which entirely deprived the voters of political liberty, subjecting them to authorisation pure and simple, and to the suspension of the Government at his caprice, and even compelling them to insert officially communications of reports of the Ministers and their agents.

On March 29, 1852, the President, desirous of putting the Constitu­tion into force, installed the bodies, thus elected at his will and according to his orders. On that occasion he solemnly declared: “ The dictator­ship, entrusted to me by the people, terminates to-day.” But what had he done but force that dictatorship on the people, and continue it under the semblance of a Constitution ? His Minister and coadjutor, de Maupas, described this rigime more accurately when he termed it an absolute Government, which possessed no more than the name of Republic and of liberty. Even the name was soon lost. A fresh plibiscite was organised in a similar manner to those preceding it. The same measures of repression and intimidation were in the first instance adopted ; there were appeals from the head of the State to Conservatives and to Catholics in the provinces, which the President visited in September of that year; there was proscription of Democrats, and suppression of the Press. On November 21 and 22, 1852, came the final restoration of the hereditary Empire in the person of Napoleon III.

CHAPTER YI.

THE REVOLUTION AND THE REACTION IN GERMANY AND AUSTRIA. I.

(1848-9.)

It has been seen in an earlier chapter, how widespread had been the political unrest which in Germany preceded the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848. The leaders of the party of national reform had definitively adopted as an integral element of their programme of action the transformation of the decrepit Confederation into a federal State. The more radical political ideas, which during the last generation had found abundant utterance in the south-west, seemed about to coalesce with the desire for representative institutions that in 1847 had led to the summons of the Combined Prussian Diet. Were such & coalition to be actually brought about, it must overwhelm all attempts at resistance or evasion. It must stultify the wish of King Frederick William IV to force the growing national movement into the tortuous channel of his own semi-mystic designs; but it must also overwhelm the traditional attachment to territorial independence still strong in many of the minor States of the north. Its effect on Austria and the Austrian monarchy could not yet be definitively gauged; but the discontent which had accumulated here was partly due to racial and to economic causes of very long standing.

Still, the impulse to which the outbreak of both the German and the Austrian Revolution of 1848 was due, came, after all, from without and not from within; and Count Beust, who was generally aware from what quarter the wind blew, very properly scouts the notion that the earlier and more homogeneous of these two associated movements, unprece­dented in the suddenness of its outbreak and unparalleled in the swiftness of its spread, was of purely native origin^- The impotence of the chief continental Governments had for some time become manifest to the party of agitation spread over Europe. In 1846, the Polish Revolution had indeed been overthrown; but its fugitive germs had been scattered into many a region of future activity besides the hotbed of Paris. In 1847 had followed the overthrow of the Swiss Sonderbund, and the successful assertion of the principle of a direct appeal to a national numerical

1847-8] Early insurrectionary disturbances in Germany. 143

majority. In October, 1847, Mettemich diagnosed the condition of Austria by the remark that a mortal disease was upon the State which he had served for very nearly half a century; and the Italian troubles of the December and January ensuing went some way towards confirming his fears. When on February 22-4,1848, the crash came at Paris, the tremendous significance of these events was at once recognised by German political opinion among all sorts and conditions of men. In his London exile Ferdinand Freiligrath, whose dreams were haunted by the figure of the Holy Republic of the German nation, exulted in “this proud epoch of the world’s history.” And, a few days later, King Frederick William IV of Prussia, mindful, perhaps, of Neuchatel, appealed to Queen Victoria to join in a new quadruple alliance on behalf of the peace of the world.

The earliest actua? insurrectionary disturbances in Germany which followed on the February outbreak of the Revolution in France were on a siflall scale. But the rapidity of their succession and the ubiquity of their recurrence were amazing; and, in the words of Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, “ most astonishing of all was the total absence of any power of resistance on the part of the various Government authorities, and the helplessness with which one and all, high and low, allowed themselves to fall a prey, some to the most inept notions, and others to a paralysis of terror.” The movement, starting in the south-* west in the last day or two of February, was everywhere welcomed by a virtual consensus of the middle and more especially the professional classes, as well as by a large proportion of the Government officials of the several States. Addresses poured in from all quarters—the most notable being that to the Prussian Government drafted by the master- hand of Dahlmann and signed by nearly the whole professoriate of his University of Bonn; while the population of nearly every important town or princely “ Residenz ” assembled in more or less imposing numbers, to give voice to its demands. With the almost universal claims for freedom of the Press and the right of free assembly and petition was usually associated the demand for a national Parliament, through which the people at large should share in the government of a united Germany. Trial by jury, the arming of the people, the grant of a Constitution where it did not already exist, and the imposition on the State army of an oath of fidelity to it where it did, were other frequent demands; often the establishment of equality of rights between the several religious confessions was added, for the most part on behalf of the Jews; and before long the social grievances of the lower classes, whose political interests proper were few, made themselves heard. The workmen in the towns claimed a share in the profits of the manufacturers; and the peasants raised their perennial cry for the removal of feudal servitudes, and the abolition of the game laws. In the large majority of instances the fruit fell from the trembling tree at the first shock. The procedure was nearly everywhere the same—^roass-meetings, with “storm-petitions

ta the sovereign when forthcoming or to a Diet when at hand. But, though there was a great deal of clamour, there was little actual violence and hardly any bloodshed. The Governments readily changed the chiefs of their most prominent ministerial departments and made profuse promises of reforms; and they were equally prompt in undertaking to use their best endeavours for a fundamental change in the system of the existing Germanic Confederation.

The Heppenheim meeting of October 10,1847—the first of the kind whose proceedings were made public—had led to the concentration of Liberal effort, in the south-west at all events, upon the question of a German National Parliament. On the first news of the Paris disturb­ances, a motion on this subject was proposed in the Darmstadt Chamber on February 27, 1848, by Heinrich von Gagem. This ardent champion of parliamentary freedom and singularly high-minded man had from the first aimed at carrying a plan of constitutional reform by the support of a national representative body, elected by the people at large; and he now urged the Hesse-Darmstadt Government to take steps towards obtaining for Germany in the first instance a provisional head with a responsible Ministry for foreign and military affairs, and a National Parliament. A few days later, on March 5, a more or less self-consti­tuted committee of fifty-three leading Liberals, chiefly though not entirely from this part of Germany, met at Heidelberg, and agreed to the appointment of a Committee of seven members, to arrange for the summoning of a preliminary Parliament ( Vorparlament). On his return from this meeting, Heinrich von Gagem, who had in the interval been himself called to the head of the Hesse-Darmstadt Ministry, brought about an understanding with the Baden and Nassau Governments, by which his younger brother Max was commissioned to ask the cooperation of other German Governments in establishing a German Central Power, which should assume authority in conjunction with the proposed National Parliament (March). The success of the scheme was practically conditional on the readiness of the King of Prussia to assume the responsibility of a provisional German headship. Frederick William IV, however, had conceived a rival plan of a Congress of German Princes at Dresden. The gifted and high-minded Joseph Maria von Radowitz, who had long been deep in the King’s counsels, and of whose veracity there is no doubt, was afterwards anxious to prove that his master had been ready to place himself at the head of the German movement. But both Radowitz and the King, whatever the strength of their intentions, had to submit to the superior force of events. As for the old Diet at Frankfort, though, even to itself, its days were known to be numbered, it rose after a fashion to the situation by a vague appeal to the German nation (March 1) and by allowing each Government to deal as it chose with its Press. Meanwhile, the Vorparlament scheme was steadily carried on; and on March 81 this assembly actually met at Frankfort.

The grand duchy of Baden was the natural starting-point for the revolutionary movement which, once set on foot, seemed to progress almost automatically from State to State, and town to town. The Grand Duke Leopold had, as far back as 1846, introduced a strong Liberal element into his Administration, which was thus in substantial agreement with the constitutional views cherished by the parliamentary majority. But before long a potent ■ influence was exercised on the Opposition side by Friedrich Hecker, a talented advocate with a powerful demagogic vein, who soon shared the Radical leadership with Gustav Struve. Thus, while the Liberal majority followed the lead of those whose national aspirations had found expression in Bassermann’s motion in the Chamber noticed above, Hecker’s socialistic harangues on the one hand and the remnants of Baron von BlittersdorfTs anti-Liberal influence upon the administration on the other, made the political state of Baden extremely inflammable; in addition to which the grand duchy was in this veiy winter of 1847-8 threatened by material distress consequent upon an industrial crisis. Thus, when on February 27 the Paris news reached Mannheim (the centre of radical feeling in the State) a popular meeting was at once held; and an attempt made on March 1 to terrorise the Diet at Carlsruhe was only defeated by the presence of mind of Karl Mathy. By his advice the Government met the popular demands half-way, conceding liberty of the Press and the formation of a National Guard. But, while in the chief towns of the grand duchy the movement was still under some control, in the rural districts the peasantry began to rise against the landowners, and in the neighbourhood of the Lake of Constance a Republic was proclaimed. Mathy’s courageous behaviour among his electors at Constance helped to steady men’s heads; on March 23 the Second Chamber rallied to the Constitution; and, pending the meeting of the National Parliament, the revolutionary movement was arrested.

On the same day as that on which the French news reached Mannheim, it had filled Mainz. The famous metropolis, connected by recent tradi­tions with the memories of the First French Revolution, had since those turbulent days had to submit to the reactionary sway of the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, besides as a territorial fortress admitting a joint garrison of Austrians and Prussians—the latter much detested. In default of the immediate concession of the demands of a popular meeting held on March 4, a descent en masse upon Darmstadt had been intended, when on the following day it was announced that Grand Duke Ludwig II had adopted his son and namesake as his co-regent (a few months later, Ludwig III became Grand Duke by his father’s death) and called to the conduct of his-Gevemment Heinrich von Gagem, who learnt his appointment on his return from Heidelberg (March 5). It failed however to put an end to the Mainz unrest; and in May a deplorable disturbance took place, accompanied by some loss of life.

In the Bavarian capital the scandals of the Lola Montez regime might

have been expected to have ended with the departure of their heroine and the reopening of the University, the centre of opposition to her sway (February 11). But her creature, Berks, was still acting Minister of the Interior; and after, to quell popular agitation, Prince Wrede had been on the point of ordering the troops to fire on the crowd, a serious con­flict seemed inevitable (March 6). A royal proclamation, however, now appeared, promising the assembling of the Estates on March 16, for the discussion of the popular demands, including a National Parliament; “Bavaria’s King,” it was announced in his inimitable style, “takes pride in his Germanic manhood.” On the same day the Munich garrison, headed by the King’s younger son, Prince Luitpold, swore fidelity to the Bavarian Constitution. But Lola still hovered about the capital; and various ministerial changes ensued before on the 18th, rioting having recommenced, she was declared an alien and her most powerful agent, the head of the police, was dismissed. The Estates were awaiting the opening of their sittings and the capital was distracted between hopes and fears, when, late on March 20, two royal proclamations were affixed to the walls. In one of these, King Ludwig, while recording his faithful adherence to the Constitution and his conscientious stewardship of the public resources—“ as though I had been the servant of a free common­wealth,” announced his abdication; the other was signed by his son and successor Maximilian II, who declared his resolution to uphold lawful liberty in both Church and State. Some Liberal politicians were admitted into the Ministry ; and the new era began.

Bavaria was almost the only German State where the Revolution of 1848 was accompanied by a change of sovereign. In Hesse-Cassel, where a law-abiding population had to suffer from the arbitrary will of a succession of Electors, the Revolution found Frederick William I in a conflict with his subjects which he had long carried on as co-regent with his father William II, and had recommenced with fresh vigour since he had himself succeeded as Elector in November, 1847. Foiled in his attempt to prevent the officers of his army from taking the oath to the Constitution, which with the aid of his Minister Scheffer he was persistently striving to undermine, he had at the dose of the year appointed a Commission of revision, under whose care it would probably have bled to death, but for the effect of the news from France, which reached Cassel on February 29. After some hesitation, due to Scheffer’s illness, the Elector gave way under the pressure of a number of deputa­tions from Hanau and other places (March 6), and agreed to the dismissal of Scheffer, the appointment of some Liberal Ministers, and the convocation of the Estates. Further deputations resulted in a proclamation of freedom of the Press and other concessions, including that of full right of private religious worship to the Deutschkatholiken— seceders from the Church of Rome whose importance (with that of their apostle Ronge) was overrated at the time, but has since been perhaps

unduly disparaged. These concessions were not considered sufficient at Hanau, where on March 9 a popular meeting, swelled by many outsiders, determined upon a three days’ ultimatum to the Elector. On March 11 the Elector, greatly perturbed, more especially in view of the relative popularity of the rival Hesse-Darmstadt line, gave way once more and proclaimed his acceptance of a purely constitutional system of govern­ment. His Ministry was now thoroughly transformed; but as it neither enjoyed the Elector’s confidence nor satisfied the populace (a riot on April 9 led to the disbandment of the Elector’s lifeguards), more troubles were certain to follow.

At Frankfort, under a still essentially oligarchical system of govern­ment, the Jews within the city, and outside it the inhabitants of the rural districts, desired a removal of the restrictions resting upon them. In accordance with the permission given by the Diet on March 3, the Senate at once proclaimed the liberty of the Press; and, when further demands were made, they were for the most part granted. But some, including the removal of Jewish disabilities, were refused; and democratic excesses led to conservative counter-demonstrations. Meanwhile, the Diet hoisted the national black-red-and-gold standard in front of its palace, as though determined to put a patriotic face on its collapse.

From Mannheim and Carlsruhe the revolutionary movement quickly passed on into Nassau, where it took a new turn. On March 2 a popular meeting was held at Wiesbaden into which had poured an enormous number of peasants—it was said 30,000—well provisioned as if for a campaign. The one demand near to their hearts was that the private domains of the Duke—one of the wealthiest of German Princes—should be declared the property of the State. When, after some delay, Duke Adolf appeared among his subjects and promised to grant all their demands, he became for the nonce almost as popular as the 'able leader of the movement, a lawyer named Hergenhahn. But it was not to be expected that the peasants’ rising—for such it really was—would stop here. Not only did the peasants, when an amnesty had been pro­claimed for all offences against the game and forest laws, interpret this as licensing a general destruction of game and a free appropriation of all forest timber; but they possessed themselves of all communal offices, and carried on the work of local government, except that the payment of rates and taxes, and of rent payable to public receivers, had come to an end. While the Ministry under Baron von Dungem passively looked on, and the old Chambers had been dissolved, the real authority everywhere belonged to the Committees of Safety newly formed round the Central Committee at Wiesbaden. When at last a Second Chamber, elected on a new basis, assembled, it consisted half of peasants, half of officials. Hergenhahn, now chief of the Ministry, was left without enduring support, and in June, 1849, his resignation was accepted by the Duke. Notwithst mding the violent resistance of the Radicals, the days of

148 The movement in Wurtemberg,Hanover Saxony. [i848-9

reform were now ended, and by March, 1852, the revolutionary changes had been effectually “ revised.”

It has been noticed in an earlier chapter, how in Wurtemberg the intelligent system of government carried out for many years under King William, more especially through his very capable Minister Johannes von Schleyer, a strict constitutionalist, had ceased to satisfy the popular demands. The material prosperity of the kingdom had at last begun to diminish; and the economic distress had been increased by the dearth of 1847. Thus the malcontent element in the population had been further increased; though the Government, at the opening of the Wurtemberg Diet early in 1848, sought to ascribe this condition of things to the malign influence of immigrant revolutionary agitators. The arrival of the news from Paris accordingly led to disturbances, which were forcibly put down, and to the admission into the Ministry of Friedrich Romer, the actual originator of the-Heidelberg meeting of March 5, and a thoroughly independent politician of high~cEaracter. To the Ministry which included him and some other men of insight must be attributed the fact that Wurtemberg, though its action in regard to national German affairs was much hampered by the determined particularism of its King, weathered the storm in the two critical years 1848 and 1849.

Passing from the south-west to the north, one would hardly have expected that the kingdom of Hanover should have been involved to any serious extent in the revolutionary movement. For here the despotic rule of King Ernest Augustus—personally, in spite of everything, not an unpopular sovereign—had been able to repress the resTstarrce which it provoked in every quarter; and no Press deserving the name existed to be “freed.” Yet a public demonstration on March 17 induced the King, three days later, to consent to the appointment of a new Ministry, presided over by Count Alexander Levin von Bennigsen, and including, as its most important member, the eminent historian and publicist Johann Karl Bertram Stiive, burgomaster of Osnabriick. The Hanoverian legis­lature hereupon settled down to a revision of the Constitution of the kingdom on the more Liberal lines of that approjted in 1833; and the task was accomplished by September, 1849. On the other hand, the Government of Ernest Augustus, even more pertinaciously than that of William of Wurtemberg, opposed all attempts to bring about a constitutional unity for Germany at large.

In Saxony, since the Leipzig tumults of August, 1845, and the consequent adoption of a repressive policy by the Government, disquiet and discontent had continued to pervade the population. At a time when in Prussia the Combined Diet was at last presenting the spectacle of a representative assembly worthy of the name, in the little neighbour kingdom the Radicals had every pretext for declaring its existing Diet “incompetent.” Nowhere was the impotence of particularism more teenly felt than in Saxony, through which so much of the German

nation’s activity and intelligence circulated. Immediately on the arrival of the news of the Paris Revolution an address, in which all the sections of Liberalism concurred, was sent to King Frederick Augustus from Leipzig (March 2); and, this having been unfavourably received, a second, demanding the dismissal of the Ministry, was despatched amidst great agitation. Falkenstein, the unpopular Minister of the Interior, hereupon resigned; and, after the abolition of the censorship had been announced and the summoning of a new Diet promised, the whole of the Konneritz Ministry followed his example (March 13). Three days later, by which time the success of the Revolution at Vienna was unmistakable, the new Saxon Ministry took office—with Braun, the leader of the Opposition in the Second Chamber of the Diet, as its President, and von der Pfordten (formerly professor at Leipzig) and Oberlander (a town councillor of Zwickau) as Ministers for Foreign and Home Affairs respectively. Under Oberlander’s auspices a network of clubs, destined to exercise a notable influence upon the progress of the revolutionary movement in Germany, speedily overspread the kingdom. The most active and influential among these were the Vaterlandsvereine, which were, consciously or not, moving forward in the direction of a Republic. Their exemplar was the Leipzig club, where Robert Blum was long the protagonist—a copious orator and a master of both rapture and pathos, but often indefinite like the movement of which he assumed the direction, and self-consistent only in his abhorrence of government and Governments. In Saxony the progress of this kind of radicalism was surprisingly rapid, and took the new Liberal Government itself by surprise, so that the new electoral law promulgated by it resulted in Diets which altogether outstripped its policy. Thus, in February, 1849, the Braun Ministry finally resigned, and was reconstituted under Held; Baron von Beust, to oblige the King, taking the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. With this Ministry, too, the Chamber was speedily at issue on the subject of the publication of the German Constitution, and in April it was dissolved by the King, who though a moderate and reasonably minded Prince, was strongly attached to his sovereign rights. Thus affairs moved on to the final conflict between King and people in May, 1849, to which it will be necessary to refer below.

In Ernestine Saxony, and in the small Thuringian States in general, where for the most part much good-will existed between the potentates and their “ peoples,” the news of the February Revolution produced a flood of petitions and addresses as elsewhere. Little hesitation was anywhere shown before conceding the popular demands; indeed, at Greiz, Prince Henry XX of Reuss granted them before they were made. In the capital of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, whose public debt exceeded half a million of dollars and which could not boast a single railway, Prince Gunther affably declared that, even if fate were to force him to abdicate, he would still arrange so as to finish his days at home. In

150

A nhalt.—Mecklenburg.

other Thuringian towns the citizens joined with the military in putting down insurrectionary demonstrations, or performed this task themselves. The rising at Weimar was mainly inspired from the neighbouring Uni­versity of Jena, a time-honoured centre of academical agitation; more violent was that at Altenburg, where, after Hanoverian and Prussian troops had restored order, Duke Joseph abdicated in favour of his son George. In general, the more or less vague agitation for liberty ran its course in this part of Germany before the schemes for unity had taken definite shape. Nothing came of proposals for a union with the kingdom of Saxony, or for the establishment of a kingdom of Thuringia; and it may be noticed that, when at Frankfort (in November, 1848) a scheme of mediatisation was debated, nine of the Thuringian deputies voted against it, and only four in its favour. The spirit of Karl August of Weimar survived among many of the Thuringian Princes, and the Coburgers were by no means isolated in their political breadth of view. Thus these petty sovereigns were popular among their subjects; and in the days of the Reaction they showed little desire to undo the reforms accomplished in 1848 and 1849.

In Lippe-Detmold and Waldeck, as well as in the southern princi­pality of Hohenzollem-Hechingen, the petitions of the inhabitants were granted by the several Princes (March 9-10). The course of events in the Anhalt principalities, at that time still under three Governments, and more especially the history of the Bemburg revolution, are typical of an obstinate Kleinstaaterei by no means on the Thuringian pattern. The population of this petty State had long been misgoverned under an imbecile Duke by an extravagant camarilla, without a single non-official newspaper to open the eyes of the public; but now a responsible Ministry and constituent Diet were established. These soon quarrelled with one another; whereupon the Court left the country, and Duke Leopold IV of Dessau assumed his kinsman’s responsibilities by granting the Bemburgers a Constitution and summoning a fresh Diet for its revision. During an election riot (February 18, 1849), some thirteen persons were shot down by the military, which was hereupon superseded by Prussian troops; and soon afterwards the reaction began. In Dessau and Kothen, where a joint Diet sat and a common Constitution was confirmed by the Duke of Dessau, Prussian influence and Prussian military interference, to the satisfaction of King Frederick William IV who as the cousin of the Duchess took a great interest in Anhalt affairs, in the course of 1849 and 1850 undid most of the progress effected.

In the Mecklenburg grand duchies, long regarded as the impregnable fastness of feudal institutions and ideas, the movement of the spring of 1848 seized upon both burghers and peasantry as rapidly as elsewhere. At Schwerin the Grand Duke Frederick Francis II was moved to promise liberty of the Press, and to summon (for April 26) an extraordinaiy Diet, which, for the first time in Mecklenburg history, secured the same measure

i848-5i] Oldenburg.—The Hanse Towns.

151

of electoral rights to all classes of the population. Towards the close of the year deputies from both the g^and duchies met to draw up a common Constitution on a broadly democratic basis. But the combined efforts of the nobility of both duchies and of the Grand Duke George of Strelitz (Queen Louisa’s brother) prevailed over the willingness of his Schwerin kinsman to recognise this Constitution; and, both duchies having concluded military conventions with Prussia, the old character of the Mecklenburg rigvme was to a large extent restored by 1851.

In Oldenburg, in answer to the usual popular demands and disturb­ances, Minister Beaulieu quietly withdrew (his subordinate Hannibal Fischer being driven out of Birkenfeld by main force); and Grand Duke Paul Frederick Augustus was found ready to lay before a Diet sum­moned for the purpose (September) a draft Constitution, which assigned half the income from the domains to the State. Disturbances broke out in the free city of Bremen at the same time as in Oldenburg; and after a protracted deliberation a Constitution was adopted in March, 1849, in which the civic body was reformed on a broadly popular basis, without the oligarchical Senate being, however, ousted from its possession of the real power. In Hamburg, the question of constitutional reform had to be committed to an assembly elected by a general vote. But its conclusions failed to satisfy either side, and serious disturbances ensued which necessitated the calling in of Prussian troops (August, 1849), and at a later date of Austrian; so that more than a decade passed before (in 1860) a constitutional settlement was effected. In the third of the Hanse Towns, Liibeck, a proposal to revise the existing Constitution by providing for a wider popular representation, was withstood by the Senate, and ultimately led to an occupation of the city by Mecklenburg troops (October, 1848); but the revised Constitution came into force (December) and was not again altered in a reactionary sense till 1851.

The movements in the minor German States noted above, whatever their special antecedents, were actually brought about by the outbreak of the Paris February Revolution; but none of them could have gone so far as it did but for the success of the risings which shook the founda­tions of the two great German Powers, Austria and Prussia. And of these, again, the Berlin insurrection beyond all doubt derived a powerful immediate impulse from the upheaval which had preceded it, though only by a few days, at Vienna.

“—Tire general political condition of the Austrian monarchy has been briefly described in a previous chapter. A long period of peace had weakened instead of strengthened the authority of a Government whose purpose it had been to maintain the existing system of the State without any actual change. The spirit of constitutional freedom could not fail to penetrate into an empire of whose population something like half had for centuries enjoyed the right of a share in their own legisla­tion and taxation, though this right was not exercised under modem

constitutional forms, and though even in Hungary the executive was reserved to the Crown. It was impossible but that a desire for an effective system of representative Government and for the reforms which its establishment must bring with it should be cherished throughout the empire, though no opportunity was allowed for any expression of opinion on public affairs either by the Press or by public meetings. The Govern­ment was organised in Departments, often conducted with ability, and by officials of enlightened and even Liberal views, but out of touch with one another and subject to little control except in the last instance by the supreme authority of the State. This supreme authority was in the hands of an imbecile Emperor, guided by a State Conference consisting of four—Archduke Francis Charles, the heir to the throne, mentally little above the level of the reigning Emperor; Archduke Ludwig, the Emperor’s youngest brother, a conservative of the narrowest type, in favour of whose claims those of his liberal-minded elders Archdukes Charles and John had been accordingly passed over by their father; and the two Chancellors Metternich and Kolowrat, who were hardly on speaking terms with each other. Count Franz Kolowrat-Liebsteinsky, who was responsible for the control of home affairs, was wont to pose as a reformer in order to annoy his colleague. Metternich, in his turn, while quite awake to the expediency of internal changes, had long abandoned any effort to bring them gradually about, and confined his attention to maintaining the existing political system of Europe against all attempts to interfere with it. Thus he had at last settled down to the belief that the success which had so long attended his endeavours was destined to continue unbroken.

The year 1848 opened with no direct signs of troubles; though anxiety was caused by movements of troops and volunteers towards the Lombardo-Venetian frontier. Early in February there were disturbances at Padua; and, anti-Austrian demonstrations having followed at both Milan and Venice, martial law was proclaimed in Lombardo-Venetia (February 22). In Hungary and Transylvania the Conservative influence of the two Court Chancellors, Count George Apponyi and Baron Samuel Josika, seemed for the time at least to have arrested the progress of Kossuth’s agitation, to which the Moderate leaders of the Opposition gave only a half-hearted support. Galicia was quiet. In the German provinces of the monarchy there seemed nothing to cause alarm, except that the bad harvests of the last two years and the stagnation of business had led to disturbances among the unemployed, more especially in and about Vienna.

The news of the Paris Revolution, soon after it had reached Vienna, was followed by that of the popular movements in Baden and Wiirtem- berg, and of the rising at Neuchatel, which resulted in the expulsion of the Prussian officials and the establishment of a Provisional Govern­ment (March 1). The first symptoms of public excitement at Vienna

manifested themselves among the select body of political thinkers who met in the Politico-Juridical Club, and of whom Alexander Bach, a Vienna lawyer of great ability and courage, as well as of an ambition which soared above personal inconsistencies, was soon to come to the front; among the students of the University, who were to play so extremely prominent a part in the coming Revolution; and more especially on ’Change. During the whole of this period of Austrian history, financial interests came to the front with surprising rapidity; and it was, as we shall see, the doubts felt in the stability of the National Bank of Austria which as early as March 3 furnished Kossuth with the opportunity for insisting on the establishment of a separate Hungarian Ministry.

Metternich was by this time quite aware of the gravity of the general situation of the Empire. On March 4 Radowitz arrived at Vienna, where Metternich agreed to the King of Prussia’s proposal of a conference of Princes on German affairs at Dresden, and endeavoured to gain over his visitor to the idea of a common action on the part of the Eastern Powers in view of the approaching European crisis. He was full of anxiety; but though rumours of his and Archduke Ludwig’s resignation were already on foot, no question of any popular concessions seems to have been as yet entertained. On March 9 an address, upholding the principles of a self-dependent and centralised Austria, was drafted for presentation by the Lower Austrian Estates who were shortly to meet; and two days later another was passed in a popular meeting at Prague, on similar lines, but emphasising the fraternity and equality of rights existing between the German and 6ech nationalities.

Thus prefaced, the Vienna insurrection proper began characteristically by a demonstration in the University on Sunday, March 12, in which a petition of the well-known type was carried by acclamation and en­trusted to the care of two popular professors. Though it was graciously received by the Emperor, through the mediation of Kolowrat, a feverish agitation had now seized upon the capital; and the State Conference, following Mettemich’s advice, resolved to summon a meeting of delegates from the lawful Estates of the several provinces of the Empire to confer with a special Committee nominated by the Government. But such measures came too late. On the 13th the insurrection took more definite shape. Led by Adolf Fischhof, a young doctor of medicine, a popular deputation amidst great tumult gained admission to the Landhaus, where the Lower Austrian Estates were assembling, and whence they with difficulty made their way to the Hofburg. Before the heads of the State assembled there in council could arrive at any conclusion, a conflict had taken place in the Herrengasse between the troops and a densely packed crowd, and five lives had been lost. So great was the popular fury that Archduke Albrecht, the commander of the garrison, was persuaded to allow the civic guard to enter the Inner Town, where

154  Resignation and flight of Mettemich. [i848

it at once fraternised with the insurgents. Then, while in the suburbs fire was set to some manufactories, the mass of the population of the city surrounded the imperial residence, where the members of the State Conference and others were assembled under Archduke Ludwig, and whither University and civic deputations passed in, the populace itself in the evening invading parts of the palace. It was in circumstances so anarchical, in the midst of a hurly-burly of Archdukes, officials, and demos, that Mettemich, whose resignation had been demanded by the civic deputation, was apprised of the expediency of bowing to the storm. After a personal appeal, to which Archduke Ludwig made no adequate response, the Chancellor declared his readiness to resign, and at once drew up and despatched to the Emperor a dignified letter. On the following day (March 14) he and his faithful Princess escaped with some difficulty to Feldsberg in the Marchfeld, and thence to Olmiitz and Prague; nor were the later stages of his flight—to Dresden, and finally to London (which he did not reach till April 21)—devoid of danger or of suffering. His semi-official farewells to the Tsar and the King of Prussia were in keeping with the rest of his conduct: he had given way to a catastrophe which, though never, as he writes, a docteur a symptomes, he had long foreseen and which during nearly forty years he had done his best to avert. His constructive task was long over; and even at Court, in the circle of Archduchess Sophia, the consort of the heir to the throne, his persistence in the old methods had begun to arouse some impatience. The extraordinary coldness experienced by the fallen statesman was due partly to fear, partly to a mass of obloquy which to this day obscures his great services to the Peace of Europe.

While Kolowrat remained in place, and Mettemich’s own office was temporarily filled, the imperial manifesto issued on March 15 was put together, without ministerial advice, in a wrangle of Archdukes and other advisers round the sovereign. It promised a Constitution, abolished the censorship of the Press, established a National Guard, and announced a joint meeting of Estates, which would now have a new significance, for the coming July 3. It was rapturously received as the visible sign of the popular victory; and on the same day the Emperor was made to drive as if in token of his contentment through the capital, where all was exultation and confusion. On the 16th, though Prince Windischgratz, to whom on the 14th Archduke Albrecht had made over his powers, had proclaimed martial law, and carried it out in some of the suburbs, he left the city to its own devices; and the mob used its liberty to enter the house of the unpopular burgomaster, Ritter von Czapka, who fled for his life. A Committee of 24 citizens was appointed to conduct the business of the city. Inasmuch as the obnoxious head of the police, Count Sedlnitzky, had been dismissed and the force itself been reduced to inaction, such order as was preserved depended upon the exertions of this Committee, and more especially upon those of the new National Guard and the

armed students of the University. On March 19 the Emperor’s advisers at last summoned courage to issue an imperial edict directing all public authorities to maintain the existing laws and ordinances in so far as they had not been legally revoked; and on the following day the new Ministry, which had been several days in the making, was actually called into “ power.” Bach and Schmerling were astute enough to keep out of it; and its ultimate head was Baron von Pillersdorff, hitherto Kolowrat’s second-in-command, whose brief memoir of his Ministry shows him to have been well-intentioned and honest almost to simplicity. “Six men,” he writes, “ were now united in a single cabinet, who had never before exchanged opinions or concerted a political system”; and five of them speedily resigned. Among these were Count Kolowrat, who remained President of the Ministry for little more than a fortnight, when he retired into private life; Count Ficquelmont, who at an advanced age had taken the direction of foreign affairs, for which he had long been designed in the event of Mettemich leaving it vacant; and Baron von Kiibeck, whose experience of Austrian finance was probably unsurpassed, but who withdrew even sooner than Kolowrat.

The movement, which had first broken out at Vienna, had com­municated itself with the utmost speed to Linz, the chief town of Upper Austria; to Graz, the capital of Styria (where public feeling in the first instance directed itself against the Jesuits), though the demands of the Styrian Diet rapidly extended; to Salzburg, and to other important places in German Austria. Thence it passed with no less rapidity into the other parts of the monarchy; and from first to last the action of the new Government was complicated by a most varied series of deputations.

The address of the two Tables of the Hungarian Diet was brought to Vienna on the day on which the triumph of the Revolution had been formally acknowledged there (March 15) by the Palatine of Hungary, Archduke Stephen. The guidance of popular opinion, and the con­sequent control of the Diet, where the Magnates could not in the end hold out against the Lower Table, was rapidly passing out of the hands of the Moderate Constitutionalists, even out of those of Szechenyi, whose influence had been unrivalled, into those of Count Batthy&ny and Kossuth. The youthful Palatine, who had only in the previous year succeeded to his father’s dignity, had allowed himself to be gained over by these leaders, the drift of whose action he hardly perceived, and had consented to support the demand for a responsible Hungarian Ministry appointed by the Palatine, which the Diet had adopted on March 14. He was followed to Vienna by a large deputation of members (including Kossuth), and on the 17th was informed that the King agreed to the demand of the Hungarian Diet. No sooner had Archduke Stephen returned to Pressburg, than he announced the nomination of Batthy&ny as President of the Ministry. Meanwhile, on March 15, an enthusiastic popular gathering at Budapest had forced the Council of the absent

Palatine to grant the demands of the “People’s Charter,” embodying the “Twelve Points” recently drawn up by Joseph Iranyi, and in­cluding liberty of the Press and the establishment of a National Guard. At Vienna, the critical character of the concessions which the vehemence of the Hungarian nationalists and the impetuosity of the Palatine had brought to pass, was fully recognised; and it was sought to minimise them by attempting to reserve to the imperial Government the supreme military command and certain financial resources for the main­tenance of army and diplomacy, as well as to pledge Hungary to the taking over of part of the public debt. But it was not a moment in which the Government was able to press anything, and the law which practically pronounced the autonomy of Hungary was finally approved at Vienna (April). A brief period followed in which, as will be seen, much was done in the way of legislative reform to justify the measure which Kossuth and Batthy&ny had carried over the heads of Crown and nobility, and of all the Conservative and Moderate elements in the political life of the kingdom.

At Agram also, May 15 was a day of popular excitement, and in a great public meeting an address, approved on the morrow by the magistrature of the city, was voted, which called upon the Emperor to restore the ancient rights of “constitutional Croatia.” At Prague, a National Guard was . formed, and, pending the reorganisation of both Diet and City Council, a general “ Committee of St Wenceslas ” took it upon itself to prepare a national address for presentation to the Crown. Finally, in Galicia, whither of course the Vienna views penetrated latest, a deputation of nobles and citizens obtained from the imperial Com­missioner at Cracow, and from the Governor Count Francis Stadion at Lemberg, the release of political prisoners. But this most capable and courageous official and statesman refused to allow the arming of the population, and called out the entire garrison of the capital, in order to show that here at least the Government stood firm.

The cycle of these early revolutionary movements is completed by the course of events in Berlin. The Prussian like the Austrian Govern­ment had at first remained apparently passive spectators of the series of disturbances in the minor States; though at the beginning of March Frederick William IV is said to have had the intention of sending two army corps into the south-west. When, however, by March 15 the outbreak of the Revolution at Vienna and the flight of Mettemich became known at Berlin, there was great joy in popular and some satisfaction even in official spheres; but the Government seemed wholly at a loss how to act, and the King, who cherished a romantic veneration for the historical greatness of the House of Austria, was in the depths of despair. Everything seemed giving way around him. In the Prussian monarchy, there were signs of strong popular sympathy with the

Revolution. In the west—both in Westphalia and in the Rhine Province, where there was so much inflammable material to receive the sparks blowing across the frontier—savage assaults were made upon the country- houses of wealthy noblemen; and a great deputation was on its way from Cologne to assure the King that immediate reforms were indispensable. In the east, there was a disturbance at Breslau on March 5; and at Konigsberg in East Prussia a meeting was held on the following day, which commissioned Johann Jacoby, a Radical physician of great ability, and others to draft a petition demanding liberty of the Press and a National German Parliament. A riot followed on March 18, and wild rumours immediately arose that the Government intended to bring Russian troops across the frontier.

In Berlin itself March had opened with a succession of public meetings, and from the 13th onwards there was increasing friction with the military and the police. A considerable alien element— believed to have consisted chiefly of Rhinelanders and Poles—had found its way into the capital, where barricades were experimentally erected as early as March 15. On the following day the military had for the first time to give fire in order to clear the streets. March 17 seemed to pass quietly; but unfortunately the King’s Ministry was at this very time awaiting its dismissal. The high-minded and able Minister of the Interior, Ernst von Bodelschwingh, who had advised the summoning of the Combined Diet in 1847, had been unable to persuade the King to go further; and, distrusting his own influence as a public man, he had on March 15 again asked leave to resign. As a last service, he drafted a patent accelerating, in view of the great events at Vienna, the meeting of the Combined Diet, and insisting on the necessity of a Constitution, with a representative assembly, for Germany at large. On the fatal morning of March 18, Frederick William IV signed this patent, and at the same time an ordinance abolishing the censorship in Prussia. At noon the Ministers gave in their resignation. Count Albert von Alvensleben-Erxleben, a wealthy Conservative nobleman who had rendered excellent service to the State, and who long held an almost unique position at Court as adviser in cases of extreme difficulty, had been sent for; but, moved by a rooted distrust of the King’s methods of rule, he declined to serve, and suggested Count Adolf Heinrich von Amim-Boitzenburg. He was sent for in his turn and granted a day’s delay in which to make up his mind.