The Development of Modern Europe Volume II E-Book

James Robinson

• Herausgeber: Jovian Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 565

Beschreibung

When, in 1792, the Austrian and Prussian armies had advanced toward Paris with the object of freeing Louis XVI from the restrictions placed upon him by the National Assembly, the French, roused to fury, had deposed and executed a ruler who was convicted of plotting with foreign powers to maintain his authority. In 1814 the allies placed on the throne the brother of Louis XVI, a veteran emigre, who had openly derided the Revolution and had been intriguing with other European powers for nearly twenty years to gain the French crown. Yet there was no demonstration of anger on the part of the nation, no organized opposition to the new king. The French were still monarchical at heart and had quietly submitted to the rule of Napoleon, which was no less despotic than that of Louis XIV.

Leseprobe

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN EUROPE VOLUME II

James Robinson and Charles Beard

JOVIAN PRESS

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Copyright © 2017 by James Robinson and Charles Beard

Published by Jovian Press

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ISBN: 9781537817316

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EUROPE AFTER THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

REVOLUTION OF 1848 IN FRANCE

REVOLUTION OF 1848,—AUSTRIA, GERMANY, ITALY

THE UNIFICATION OF ITALY

FORMATION OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE AND THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN UNION

THE GERMAN EMPIRE

FRANCE UNDER THE THIRD REPUBLIC

POLITICAL REFORMS IN ENGLAND

SOCIAL REFORMS IN ENGLAND

THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

TURKEY AND THE EASTERN QUESTION

THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

EUROPE AFTER THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA

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THE RESTORATION IN FRANCE AND THE REVOLUTION OF 1830

When, in 1792, the Austrian and Prussian armies had advanced toward Paris with the object of freeing Louis XVI from the restrictions placed upon him by the National Assembly, the French, roused to fury, had deposed and executed a ruler who was convicted of plotting with foreign powers to maintain his authority. In 1814 the allies placed on the throne the brother of Louis XVI, a veteran emigre, who had openly derided the Revolution and had been intriguing with other European powers for nearly twenty years to gain the French crown. Yet there was no demonstration of anger on the part of the nation, no organized opposition to the new king. The French were still monarchical at heart and had quietly submitted to the rule of Napoleon, which was no less despotic than that of Louis XIV.

There was, however, no danger that Louis XVIII would undo the great work of the Revolution and of Napoleon. He was no fanatic like his younger brother, the count of Artois. In his youth he had delighted in Voltaire and the writings of the philosophers; he had little sympathy for the Church party, and six years’ residence in England had given him some notion of liberal institutions. His sixty years, his corpulence, his gout, and a saving sense of humor prevented him from undertaking any wild schemes of reaction which might be suggested to him by the emigrant nobles, who now returned to France in great numbers. Even if he had been far more inclined to absolutism than he was, he could hardly have been tempted to alter the administration which Napoleon had devised with a view of securing control of everything and everybody. The prefects and subprefects, the codes, the Church as organized under the Concordat of 1801, the Legion of Honor, the highly centralized University, even the new nobility which Napoleon had created, were all retained with little or no change.

The Constitutional Charter which he issued in June, 1814, was indeed a much more liberal form of government than that which Napoleon had permitted the French to enjoy. It is true that it shocked the sensibilities of the liberals by declaring that the whole authority in France resided not in the people, but in the person of the king. The constitution was therefore not an expression of the wishes of the nation, but was granted to his subjects by the king of his own free will “in view of the expectations of enlightened Europe.” Nevertheless the king bound himself by a solemn oath to observe the limitations on his power which it prescribed.

In the organization of the government the Charter suggests in some ways the English constitution. The power of making laws was vested in the king and a parliament consisting of two chambers, a house of peers chosen by the king, and a chamber of deputies elected by the wealthier citizens. The king alone could propose laws, but the chambers were empowered to petition the sovereign to lay before them any specific measure which they thought desirable. Provision was made for the annual assembling of the chambers, and they were given the right to impeach the royal ministers. Limited as this legislature was, it nevertheless possessed a greater control over taxation and lawmaking than any which had existed under Napoleon’s rule.

In addition to establishing representative government, the Charter guaranteed almost all the great principles of reform laid down in the first Declaration of the Rights of Man. It proclaimed that all men were equal before the law and equally eligible to offices in the government and the army; taxation was to be apportioned according to the wealth of each citizen; personal and religious liberty was assured, although the Roman Catholic faith was to be the religion of the State; freedom of the press was guaranteed, but subject to such laws as might be passed for the purpose of checking the abuses of that freedom.

In view of what France had suffered it might have been supposed that the moderation of the restored monarch and his enlightened measures would have pacified the distracted kingdom; but the granting of a constitution could not bring back that quiet submission to the royal will that had existed in the days of Louis XV. The interest of the people in public questions had been aroused by the Revolution, and quite naturally they differed among themselves on current issues, such as the amount of power the king should really be permitted to exercise, the extension of the right to vote to the poorer classes, the authority of the clergy, the position of the ancient nobility, and the like. In this way political parties developed.

The reactionary group, known as the ultra-royalists, was composed largely of emigrant nobles and clergy, who believed that their personal and sacred rights had been outraged by the revolutionists. They therefore wished to undo the work of the past twenty-five years and to restore the old régime in its entirety. They clamored for greater power for the clergy, for the restriction of the liberal press, for the king’s absolute control over his ministers, and for the restoration of the property that they had lost during the Revolution. This party, though small in numbers, was composed of zealots whose bitterness had waxed strong through long nursing abroad and, with the king’s brother, the count of Artois, at their head, they constituted an active and influential minority.

The most valuable and effective support for the king, however, came from a more moderate group of royalists who had learned something during the last quarter of a century. They knew that the age of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette could not return, and consequently they urged the faithful observance of the Charter and sought, on the one hand, to induce the reactionary nobility and clergy to accept the results of the Revolution and, on the other hand, to reconcile the people to the restored monarchy. These moderates did not propose, however, to weaken the power of the king in any way by allowing the chamber of deputies to control the ministers, as the House of Commons did in England, or by extending the franchise. The two royalist parties -extreme and moderate -doubtless made up the greater portion of the nation; at all events, they carried the election of 1815 by a large majority.

A third party was composed of liberals who, though loyal to the king, did not regard the Charter as containing the last word on French liberties. They favored a reduction of the amount of property which a man was required to own in order to vote, and they maintained that the king should be guided by ministers responsible to the chambers.

Finally there was a large group of persons who were irreconcilable enemies of the Bourbons and everything savoring of Bourbonism. Among them were the Bonapartists, soldiers of Napoleon, who remembered the glories of Austerlitz and Wagram and were angered by the prestige suddenly given to hundreds of Frenchmen who had borne arms against their country, but who now crowded around the king to receive offices, rewards, and honors. While Napoleon lived they longed for his return, and after his death in 1821, they placed their hopes upon his youthful son, “Napoleon II,” as they called him.

On the other hand, there were the republicans, who detested Bonapartism no less than Bourbonism and longed to see a restoration of the republic of 1792. In 1824 they formed a secret society for the purpose of overthrowing the monarchy, declaring that might was not right, and that the nation was entitled to choose its own ruler, whereas Louis XVIII had been foisted on the French people by the armed powers of Europe.

As long as Louis XVIII lived, the party loyal to him grew stronger. Though a thorough believer in divine right, he was determined not to endanger his crown by arbitrary measures which would increase the numbers in the opposing parties, and at the time of his death in 1824 the restored Bourbon line seemed to have triumphed completely over its enemies. Had his brother, who succeeded him as Charles X, been equally wise he, too, might have retained the throne until his death. But he frankly declared that he would rather chop wood than be king on the same terms as the king of England. He had already shown his real character by the zeal with which he labored for the ultra-royalist cause during his brother’s reign, and had received the name of “King of the Emigres.” The high office to which he was called meant to him merely an opportunity to restore the crown, the nobles, and the clergy to the rights and powers which they had enjoyed before the Revolution.

An old-fashioned law was passed in 1826, providing a penalty of death for offenders guilty of profaning the sacred vessels in a church or of insulting the Host. Though this law was not enforced and was principally designed to show that the State was a defender of the Church, it aroused great bitterness. A bishop was made Grand Master of the University and teachers were subjected to the oversight of the clergy. Monastic corporations were still prohibited by law, but thousands of monks had flocked back to France and the Jesuits were especially active under the favor and encouragement of the king. A royal edict restoring rigid supervision of the press was designed to stifle opposition to the new measures. The duke of Wellington declared that “Charles X is setting up a government by priests, through priests, and for priests.”

Seeing the clergy rapidly regaining their former prestige, the nobles who had suffered losses during the Revolution set about recovering their estates. But these had long been broken up and sold, often in very small parcels, so that a restoration of the ancient family domains would have displaced enough peasants and landlords to constitute a formidable political party. Under these circumstances they had to content themselves with forcing through a measure appropriating a thousand million francs as indemnity for their losses.

As might have been anticipated, these measures aroused violent antagonism. At the elections of 1827 the opposition party, composed of the various discontented elements, was victorious but this ominous warning was not heeded by the king. Charles X confided the direction of the government to ultra-royalist ministers and prorogued the chambers for remonstrating. This only served to strengthen popular resistance, and the elections of 1830 resulted in a decided addition to the number of deputies opposed to the king’s policy.

Before this newly elected parliament met, Charles determined upon a bold stroke. Acting under a provision of the Charter which empowered him to make regulations for the security of the realm, he and his ministers issued a series of ordinances infringing the freedom of the press and the political rights of the chambers and of the voters. The first ordinance suspended the liberty of the press and provided that no newspaper or journal should be published without the government’s authorization. Other ordinances reduced the number of voters by making the payment of a land tax a qualification, thus excluding merchants and manufacturers; revived the clause of the Charter confining the initiation of laws to the king, -a provision which had been neglected in practice; and dissolved the newly elected chamber before a single session had been held. These ordinances practically destroyed the last vestiges of constitutional government and left the French people without any guarantee against absolutism.

The day following the promulgation of these ordinances, July 26, 1830, the Paris journalists published the following protest, which became the signal for open resistance to the king: ,"Since the government has violated the law, we are under no obligation to obey it; we shall endeavor to publish our papers without asking permission of the censors. The government has this day lost the character of legality which gave it the right to demand obedience. For our part we shall resist it; it is for France to judge how far her resistance shall extend.” The Paris deputies in the parliament also declared that the king’s ordinances were illegal and calculated to throw the whole state into confusion.

Protests, however, do not make a revolution. The journalists could print resolutions easier than carry them out, and the ensuing revolt which brought about the overthrow of Charles X was not their work but that of the fearless though small republican party which faithfully cherished the traditions of 1792, but had been regarded as insignificant by the government. On July 27 they began tearing up the paving stones for barricades, behind which they could defend themselves in the narrow streets against the police and soldiers. The king, who was at his country residence at St. Cloud, regarded the insurrection as a mere street fight which the troops could easily put down, and played whist in the evening according to his custom.

But on July 29 the entire city of Paris was in the hands of the insurgents. The king, now realizing the seriousness of the situation, opened negotiations with the deputies and promised to repeal the obnoxious ordinances. It was, however, too late for concessions; a faction of wealthy bankers and business men was busily engaged in an intrigue to place upon the throne

Louis Philippe, a prince of the royal house, who had long been known as a believer in the more moderate principles of the Revolution.

Louis Philippe was the son of that duke of Orleans who had supported the popular cause in the early days of the first revolution and had finally been executed as a “suspect” during the Reign of Terror. The son had been identified with the Jacobins and had fought in the army of the republic at Valmy and Jemappes. He was later exiled, but did not join the ranks of the allies against France because he could not get the officer’s commission which he desired. He then visited America and on his return to England became reconciled with Louis XVIII. When he returned to France after the restoration he did not, however, join the reactionary party, but sought popular favor by professing democratic opinions, affecting the airs of a plain citizen, entertaining bankers and financiers at his home in Paris, and sending his children to ordinary schools instead of employing private tutors. He was therefore the logical candidate of those who wished to preserve the monarchy and yet establish the middle class in power in place of the nobles and clergy.

As the first step toward making Louis Philippe king, the deputies in Paris appointed him lieutenant general of the realm. Charles X, despairing of his ability to retain the crown for himself, abdicated in favor of his grandson, the duke of Bordeaux. He then charged Louis Philippe with the task of proclaiming the young duke as King Henry V, and fled with his family to England. Though this arrangement might very well have met the approval of the nation at large, Louis Philippe was not inclined to execute the order of Charles X. On the contrary, he began to seek the favor of the republicans who had done the actual fighting and had already formed a provisional government with the aged Lafayette at its head.

This committee occupied the City Hall and was surrounded by the insurgents who supported it. Louis Philippe forced his way through the throng and, in a conference with Lafayette, won him over to his cause by fair promises. The two men then went out on a balcony and Lafayette embraced his companion before the crowd as a sign of their good understanding, while the duke on his part showed his sympathy for liberal doctrines by waving the tricolored flag, -the banner of the Revolution, which had not been unfurled in Paris since the last days of Napoleon. The hopes of the republicans who had borne the brunt of the Revolution were now at an end, for they realized that they formed too small a party to prevent Louis Philippe’s accession to the throne.

Louis Philippe, as lieutenant general, convoked the Chamber of Deputies on August 3 and announced the abdication of Charles X, carefully omitting any allusion to the fact that the dethroned king had indicated his grandson as his successor.

Four days later the Chamber of Deputies passed a resolution -which was ratified by the Chamber of Peers -calling Louis Philippe to the throne as King of the French; he accepted their invitation, declaring that “he could not resist the call of his country.”

The deposition of Charles X and the accession of Louis Philippe did not seem to require the convocation of a constitutional convention to draft a new constitution. So the parliament undertook to make the necessary changes in the existing Charter which Louis XVIII had granted, and required the new king to accept it before his coronation. The preamble of the Charter was suppressed because it wounded “national dignity in appearing to grant to Frenchmen the rights which essentially belonged to them.” The clause under which the July ordinances were issued was altered so that the king had no power to suspend the laws. Freedom of the press and the responsibility of the ministers to the Legislative Assembly were expressly proclaimed. Lastly, the provision establishing the Roman Catholic religion as the religion of the state was stricken out.

In reality, however, the revolution of 1830 made few innovations. One king had been exchanged for another who professed more liberal views, but the government was no more democratic than before. The right to vote was still limited to the few wealthy taxpayers, and government by clergy and nobility had given place to government by bankers, speculators, manufacturers, and merchants. The bishops were excluded from the Chamber of Peers, as were also many nobles, because they would not take the oath of allegiance to the new sovereign. While no change was made in the Church as settled under the Concordat of 1801, the influence of the clergy in politics was greatly reduced. The tricolored flag of the Revolution was adopted as the national flag, instead of the white banner of the Bourbons, but France was still a monarchy, and the labors of the republicans in organizing the insurrection had gone for naught.

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE KINGDOM OF BELGIUM

The revolution of 1830 in France was the signal for an outbreak in the former Austrian Netherlands, where many grievances had developed since the Congress of Vienna united the region with the Dutch Netherlands under the rule of William of Orange. In the first place, the inhabitants of his southern provinces were dissatisfied with William’s government. He had granted a constitution to his entire kingdom on the model of the French Charter, but many people objected to his making the ministers responsible to himself instead of to the parliament, and also to the restricted suffrage which excluded all but the richest men from the right to vote. Although the southern provinces had over a million more inhabitants than the Dutch portion of the kingdom, they had only an equal number of representatives. Moreover the Dutch monopolized most of the offices and conducted the government in their own interests.

There were religious difficulties, too. The southern provinces were Catholic, the northern, mainly Protestant. The king was a Protestant, and took advantage of his position to convert Catholics to his own faith; he instituted Protestant inspectors for Catholic schools and founded a college of philosophy at Louvain, where all candidates for the priesthood were compelled to study.

Louis Philippe had been seated on his throne only a few days when the agitation over these grievances broke out into open revolt at Brussels. The revolution spread; a provisional government was set up; and on October 4, 1830, it declared: “The province of Belgium, detached from Holland by force, shall constitute an independent state.” The declaration was soon followed by the meeting of a congress to establish a permanent form of government. This assembly drew up a constitution based on the idea of the sovereignty of the people, and decided that the head of the new government should be a king constrained by oath to observe the laws adopted by the people. The Belgians were therefore very much in the same position as the English in 1688 when they made William of Orange their king on their own terms. They finally chose as their sovereign Leopold of Coburg, and in July, 1831, he was crowned king of the new state.

FORMATION OF THE GERMAN CONFEDERATION

The chief effects of the Napoleonic occupation of Germany were three in number. First, the consolidation of territory that followed the cession of the left bank of the Rhine to France had, as has been explained, done away with the ecclesiastical states, the territories of the knights, and most of the free towns. Only thirty-eight German states, including four free towns, were left when the Congress of Vienna took up the question of forming a confederation to replace the defunct Holy Roman Empire.

Secondly, the external and internal conditions of Prussia had been so changed as to open the way for it to replace Austria as the controlling power in Germany. A great part of the Slavic possessions gained in the last two partitions of Poland had been lost, but as an indemnity Prussia had received half of the kingdom of Saxony, in the very center of Germany, and also the Rhine provinces, where the people were thoroughly imbued with the revolutionary doctrines that had prevailed in France. Prussia now embraced all the various types of people included in the German nation and was comparatively free from the presence of non-German races. In this respect it offered a marked contrast to the heterogeneous and mongrel population of its great rival, Austria.

The internal changes in Prussia were no less remarkable. The reforms carried out after Jena by the distinguished minister Stein and his successor, Hardenberg, had done for Prussia somewhat the same service that the first National Assembly had done for France. The abolition of the feudal social castes and the liberation of the serfs made the economic development of the country possible. The reorganization of the whole military system prepared the way for Prussia’s great victories in 1866 and 1870, which led to the formation of a new German Empire under her headship.

Thirdly, the agitations of the Napoleonic period had aroused the national spirit. The appeal to the people to aid in the freeing of their country from foreign oppression, and the idea of their participation in a government based upon a written constitution, had produced widespread discontent with the old absolute monarchy.

When the form of union for the German states came up for discussion at the Congress of Vienna, two different plans were advocated. Prussia’s representatives submitted a scheme for a firm union like that of the United States, in which the central government should control the individual states in all matters of general interest. This idea was successfully opposed by Metternich, supported by the other German rulers. Austria realized that her possessions, as a whole, could never be included in any real German union, for even in the western portion of her territory there were many Slavs, while in Hungary and the southern provinces there were practically no

Germans at all. On the other hand, she felt that she might be the leader in a very loose union in which all the members should be left practically independent. Her ideal of a union of sovereign princes under her own headship was almost completely realized in the constitution adopted.

The confederation was not a union of the various countries involved, but of “The Sovereign Princes and Free Towns of Germany,” including the emperor of Austria and the king of Prussia for such of their possessions as were formerly included in the German Empire; the king of Denmark for Holstein; and the king of the Netherlands for the grand duchy of Luxemburg. The union thus included two sovereigns who were out-and-out foreigners, and, on the other hand, did not include all the possessions of its two most important members.

The assembly of the confederation was a diet which met at Frankfort. It was composed (as was perfectly logical), not of representatives of the people, but of plenipotentiaries of the rulers who were members of the confederation. The diet had very slight powers, for it could not interfere in the domestic affairs of the states, and the delegates who composed it could not vote as they pleased, since they bad to obey the instructions of the rulers who appointed them, and refer all important questions to their respective sovereigns. So powerless and so dilatory was this assembly that it became the laughing-stock of Europe.

The members of the confederation reserved to themselves the right of forming alliances of all kinds, but pledged themselves to make no agreement prejudicial to the safety of the union or of any of its members, and not to make war upon any member of the confederation on any pretense whatsoever. The constitution could not be amended without the approval of all the governments concerned. In spite of its obvious weaknesses, the confederation of 1815 lasted for half a century, until Prussia finally expelled Austria from the union by arms, and began the formation of the present German federation.

The liberal and progressive party in Germany was sadly disappointed by the failure of the Congress of Vienna to weld Germany into a really national state. They were troubled, too, by the delay of the king of Prussia in granting the constitution that he had promised to his subjects. Other indications were not wanting that the German princes were not yet ready to give up their former despotic power and adopt the principles of the French Revolution advocated by the liberals. The “League of Virtue” which had been formed after the disastrous battle of Jena to arouse and keep alive the zeal of the nation for expelling the invader, began to be reinforced, about 1815, by student associations organized by those who had returned to their studies after the war of independence. The students denounced the reactionary party in their meetings, and drank to the freedom of Germany.

On October 18, 1817, they held a celebration in the Wartburg to commemorate both Luther’s revolt and the anniversary of the battle of Leipzig. Speeches were made in honor of the brave who had fallen in the war of independence, and of the grand duke of Weimar, who was the first of the North German princes to give his people a constitution. The day closed with the burning of certain reactionary pamphlets.

This innocent burst of enthusiasm excited great apprehension in the minds of the conservative statesmen of Europe, of whom Metternich was, of course, the leader. The murder by Sand, a fanatical student, of a journalist, Kotzebue, who was supposed to have influenced the Tsar to desert his former liberal policy, cast further discredit upon the liberal party. It also gave Metternich an opportunity to emphasize the terrible results which he anticipated would come from the students’ associations, liberal governments, and the freedom of the press.

The extreme phase in the progress of reaction in Germany was reached when, with this murder as an excuse, Metternich called together the representatives of the larger states of the confederation at Carlsbad in August, 1819. Here a series of resolutions were drawn up with the aim of checking the free expression of opinions hostile to existing institutions, and of discovering and bringing to justice the revolutionists who were supposed to exist in dangerous numbers. These “Carlsbad Resolutions” were laid before the diet of the confederation by Austria and adopted, though not without protest.

They provided that there should be a special official in each university to watch the professors. Should any of them be found “abusing, their legitimate influence over the youthful mind and propagating harmful doctrines hostile to the public order or subversive of the existing governmental institutions,” the offenders were to lose their positions. The General Students’ Union, which was suspected of being too revolutionary, was to be suppressed. Moreover no newspaper, magazine, or pamphlet was to go to press without the previous approval of government officials, who were to determine whether it contained anything tending to foster discontent with the government. Lastly, a special commission was appointed to investigate the revolutionary conspiracies which Metternich and his sympathizers supposed to exist throughout Germany.

The attack upon the freedom of the press, and especially the interference with the liberty of teaching in the great institutions of learning which were already becoming the home of the highest scholarship in the world, scandalized all the progressive spirits in Germany. Yet no successful protest was raised, and Germany as a whole acquiesced for a generation in Metternich’s system of discouraging reform of all kinds.

Nevertheless important progress was made in southern Germany. As early as 1818 the king of Bavaria granted his people a constitution in which he stated their rights and admitted them to a share in the government by establishing a parliament. His example was followed within two years by the rulers of Baden, Würtemberg, and Hesse. Another change for the better was the gradual formation of a customs union, which permitted goods to be sent freely from one German state to another without the payment of duties at each boundary line. This yielded some of the advantages of a political union. This economic confederation, of which Prussia was the head and from which Austria was excluded, was a harbinger of the future German Empire.

RESTORATION IN SPAIN AND ITALY

The restoration in Spain was more violent and thoroughgoing than in any other country involved in the revolutionary conflicts. Napoleon’s efforts to keep his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne had led to a war which had continued to bring misery and demoralization upon the country until the autumn of 1812, when Wellington drove the invaders beyond the Pyrenees. During this entire period the Spanish people steadily resisted French dominion and maintained the semblance of an independent government in the form of a Junta, or improvised assembly, which was loyal to the Bourbon, Ferdinand VII, one of the most despicable of modern princes. However, it was impossible for the junta to maintain intact the system which had existed prior to the Revolution. In the disorder, press censorship was relaxed, Spanish officers and soldiers came into contact with Frenchmen and Englishmen, and political questions were discussed in Spain as never before. Napoleon himself had struck a severe blow at the old régime, as has already been noted, by abolishing the feudal dues and the internal customs lines, reducing convents to one third their former number, suppressing the Inquisition, and establishing freedom of industry.

It was under these conditions that the Spanish people, deprived of their legitimate sovereign, undertook to frame a constitution of their own. The junta in 1809 summoned the Cortes, or national parliament, which met in the autumn of the following year and adopted, in 1812, a constitution on the model of the French constitution of 1791. Knowing the devotion of the people to the monarchy, it did not abolish the kingly power, but proclaimed the sovereignty of the nation and reduced royal authority to a shadow by requiring that it be exercised through a ministry. The legislature was to consist of a single chamber to be elected biennially by universal suffrage. While declaring Catholicism to be the only religion of the nation, the constitution abolished press censorship, feudal obligations, and the privileges of the nobility.

When Ferdinand VII (who had spent the previous six years in France surrounded by Napoleon’s guards) was, in 1814, restored to power by the strength of English arms, he repudiated entirely this liberal government. He declared that the Cortes which had drawn up this instrument had usurped his rights by imposing on his people “an anarchical and seditious constitution based on the democratic principles of the French Revolution.” He accordingly annulled it and proclaimed those who continued to support it guilty of high treason and worthy of death. With the old absolute government, he restored the Inquisition, feudal privileges, and the religious orders. The Jesuits returned, the press was strictly censored, free speech repressed, monastic property returned to the former owners, and the liberals were imprisoned in large numbers, or executed.

The Congress of Vienna left Italy, as Metternich observed, merely “a geographical expression”; it had no political unity whatever. Lombardy and Venetia, in the northern part, were in the hands of Austria, while Parma, Modena, and Tuscany belonged to members of the Austrian family. In the south the considerable kingdom of Naples was ruled over by a branch of the Spanish Bourbons. In the center, cutting the peninsula in twain, were the Papal States, which extended north to the Po. The presence of Austria, and the apparent impossibility of inducing the Pope to submit to any government but his own, seemed to preclude all hope of making Italy into a true nation. Yet fifty years later the kingdom of Italy, as it now appears on the map of Europe, came into existence through the final exclusion of Austria from the peninsula and the conquest of the States of the Church by Victor Emmanuel.

Although Napoleon had governed Italy despotically he had introduced many important reforms. The vestiges of the feudal régime had vanished at his approach; he had established political equality and an orderly administration, and had forwarded public improvements. Moreover he had held out the hope of a united Italy, from which the foreign powers who had plagued and distracted her for centuries should be banished. But his unscrupulous use of Italy to advance his personal ambitions disappointed those who at first had received him with enthusiasm, and they came to look for his downfall as eagerly as did the nobility and the dispossessed clergy, whose hopes were centered in Austria. It became clear to the more thoughtful Italians that Italy must look to herself and her own resources if she were ever to become an independent European state.

The king of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel I, entered his capital of Turin on May 20, 1814, amid great rejoicing, but immediately proceeded to destroy with a stroke of his pen all the reforms which the Revolution had accomplished in Piedmont during his absence. He gave back to the nobility their ancient feudal rights and jurisdictions, and reinstated them in their former military commands; he restored to the clergy their property, their courts, and their press censorship. The penalty of death for profaning the sacrament was revived; religious freedom abolished; the university placed under clerical supervision; and books savoring of liberal philosophy locked up in the libraries. So bitter was the hatred of revolutionary principles that a botanical garden at Turin was destroyed because it had been planted by the French; and the municipal council was able to save a bridge which the French had built only by erecting a church nearby.

The same reactionary policy was adopted in the States of the Church, where, in 1814, an edict was issued which abolished French legislation and restored the old order. In the zeal to destroy the work of the French, root and branch, vaccination and street lighting at Rome were abolished as revolutionary innovations. The government which had been placed in the hands of laymen was again turned over to the ecclesiastics. The Inquisition was reintroduced and over two thousand monasteries and convents reestablished.

The restoration in the kingdom of Naples was not so thorough as in other parts of Italy. French law was retained; the nobles were not reinvested with their feudal rights; the number of bishoprics and convents remained reduced; and the Church was given back only that part of its former property which had not been sold. The king, however, refused to drive along a street that Murat had laid out, and stopped the Pompeian excavations which French scientists had been carrying on.

In Lombardy and Venetia, where Austrian sovereignty was established, the reforms instituted during the Napoleonic Period were practically nullified. In order securely to fasten their government on these provinces, the Austrians instituted a public and secret police system which constantly interfered with individual liberty in the most arbitrary fashion; moreover the courts and the administration were largely in the hands of the hated “Germans.” Although the Austrian sovereign did not restore the ancient feudal exactions of the nobility, he introduced customs duties which were regarded by his Italian subjects as quite as galling.

In addition to his Lombardo-Venetian kingdom in the northern part of Italy, the Austrian emperor enjoyed a protectorate over Modena; by treaty the duke of Tuscany practically surrendered his duchy to him; Maria Louisa of Parma turned the administration of her domain over to his officers; and Ferdinand of Naples was bound to him in a defensive and offensive alliance. In short only Sardinia and the Papal States retained their freedom from “German” domination.

Though dismembered and subjected to a foreign yoke, the Italy of 1815 was not the Italy which Napoleon had found when he first entered it at the head of the French army in 1796. Despite the restoration, traces of the Revolution were everywhere apparent, not only in law and government but, above all, in the minds of men. National aspirations had been awakened which the Austrian police could not stamp out; Italians, high and low, came to know and appreciate French reforms at first hand, though they might loathe the memory of Napoleon as a conqueror and a tyrant.

THE SPANISH-AMERICAN COLONIES AND THE REVOLUTION OF 1820

The very thoroughness with which Metternich’s ideas were carried out in the Mediterranean states led to renewed attempts on the part of the liberals to abolish despotism. It was not, therefore, in Germany or France, as the allies had feared, but in Spain and then in Italy, that the spirit of revolution was first to reawaken.

Spain itself was, of course, but a small part of the vast Spanish empire, which included Mexico (and the regions to the northwest later acquired by the United States), Central America, and large portions of South America, besides her island possessions. The Spanish colonies had from the first been the victims of the selfish commercial policy of the mother country, which forced them to carry on all their trade with one or two favored Spanish ports. That enlightened despot, Charles III, had somewhat reduced the restrictions upon trade by permitting free intercourse between the colonies and all the Spanish ports; as a result, the commerce of the Spanish dependencies increased nearly sevenfold from 1778 to 1788. The advantages of greater freedom and the success of the North American colonies in throwing off the yoke of England both served to suggest ideas of independence; these suddenly developed into downright revolt when the news reached the colonies that Napoleon had placed his brother on the Spanish throne and proposed to control the Spanish commerce in his own interests.

Beginning in 1810, the colonies of Mexico, New Granada (now Colombia), Venezuela, Peru, Buenos Ayres, and Chile, while they still professed to be loyal to Ferdinand VII, took their government into their own hands, drove out the former Spanish agents, and finally rejected Spanish rule altogether. At first the revolt was put down with great cruelty, but in 1817, under the leadership of Bolivar, Venezuela won its independence, and during the following five years the Spaniards lost New Granada, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Mexico, and lastly (1825) Upper Peru, which was renamed Bolivia after its liberator.

Ever since his restoration Ferdinand VII had been sending thousands of men to die of fever and wounds in the vain attempt to subdue the insurgents. He had called upon the other powers to help him, on the ground that his colonies were guilty of the revolutionary crimes which it was to the interest of all the allied monarchs to aid in suppressing. He was disappointed however. England did not wish to lose the profitable trade which had grown up with the South American ports since they were freed from the restrictions of the mother country. The Tsar expressed his sympathy for Ferdinand, but gave him no further aid than to sell him a fleet of unseaworthy vessels.

At last (January, 1820), the soldiers who were waiting in Cadiz to be sent to America, well aware of the sufferings of the regiments which had preceded them, were easily aroused to revolt by two adventurous officers who had become disgusted with Ferdinand’s tyranny and incapacity. The revolutionists proclaimed the restoration of the constitution of 1812, which Ferdinand had abolished on his return. Their call was answered by the liberals in the larger towns, including Madrid, where a mob surrounded the palace (March 9), and forced the king to take the oath to the constitution. The people also broke into the prison of the reestablished Inquisition, and destroyed the instruments of torture that they found there. But Ferdinand had no idea of keeping his oath, and simply bent before what he believed to be a passing storm.

News of the Spanish revolt spread quickly throughout Italy, where the spirit of insurrection had been at work among the secret societies which had everywhere been organized. These societies assumed strange names, practiced mysterious rites, and plotted darkly in the name of Italian liberty and independence. By far the most noted of them was that of the Carbonari, i.e. charcoal burners. Its objects were personal liberty, constitutional government, and national independence and unity; these it undertook to promote by agitation, conspiracy, and, if necessary, revolution.

The Italian agitators had a superstitious respect for a constitution; they appear to have regarded it not so much as a form of government to be carefully adapted to the needs of a particular country and time, as a species of talisman which would bring liberty and prosperity to its happy possessor. So when the Neapolitans heard that the king of Spain had been forced by an insurrection to accept a constitution, they made the first attempt on the part of the Italian people to gain constitutional liberty by compelling their king (July, 1820) to agree to accept this same Spanish constitution of 1812. However, at the same time that he was invoking the vengeance of God upon his own head should he violate his oath of fidelity, the king of Naples was casting about for foreign assistance to suppress the revolution and enable him to return to his former ways.

He had not long to wait. The alert Metternich invited Russia, Prussia, France, and England to unite, in order to check the development of “revolt and crime.” He declared that the liberal movement would prove “not less tyrannical and fearful” in its results than that against which the allies had earlier combined. “Revolution” appeared to him and his conservative sympathizers as a fearful disease that not only destroyed those whom it attacked directly, but spread contagion wherever it appeared. Therefore, prompt and severe measures of quarantine, and even of violent extirpation, were justified, in view of the necessity of stamping out the devastating plague. In addition to his detestation of revolution, Metternich entertained an especial contempt for the Neapolitans. He exclaimed on hearing the news of the revolt, “A semi-barbarous people, of absolute ignorance and boundless credulity, hot-blooded as the Africans, a people that can neither read nor write, whose last word is the dagger -such a people offers fine material for constitutional principles!”

Under these circumstances a congress of the powers was called at Troppau in October, 1820, to consider the European situation. England and France refused to participate formally on the ground that the revolutions were domestic concerns and did not justify international intervention. Austria, Russia, and Prussia, however, drew up a protocol in which they declared the indisputable right of the powers to take common measures of safety against states in which government was overthrown by rebellion.

Another conference was called at Laibach in January, 1821, for the purpose of taking practical measures to restore absolutism in southern Italy. To this conference King Ferdinand of Naples was summoned. After taking renewed oaths to maintain the constitution which he had granted his people, he started northward, but on the way to Laibach he repudiated his promises to his subjects, and at the conference heartily concurred in the plan to send an Austrian army to Naples to abolish the noxious constitution. In March this decision was carried out with no considerable resistance on the part of the Neapolitan revolutionists, who were thoroughly disorganized. The leaders of the revolt were executed, imprisoned, or exiled, and the king freed from the embarrassments of the constitution.

While the Austrian forces were moving southward toward Naples an insurrection broke out in Piedmont. The Italian patriots there planned to combine with the discontented subjects of Austria in Lombardy and free their country by attacking the rear of the Austrian army. There were, however, plenty of Austrian troops in Venetia to suppress this movement promptly. All hopes for reform in Italy now seemed at an end.

Meanwhile the revolution in Spain had developed into a civil war. Ferdinand VII was supported in his opposition to reform by the clergy and other friends of the old system. The representatives of the great powers, Russia, Austria, Prussia, France, and England, met at Verona in 1822 to discuss their common interests and decide what should be done about Spain. The Tsar was eager to send an army into Spain to aid Ferdinand to rid himself of the obnoxious constitution which had been forced upon him, but France made it clear that she would not permit a Russian army to cross her territory. England refused to interfere in any way; so finally it was left to Louis XVIII, urged on by the clerical and ultra-royalist party, to send an army across the Pyrenees “with the purpose of maintaining a descendant of Henry IV on the throne of Spain.” This interference in the affairs of a neighboring nation which was struggling for constitutional government disgusted the French liberals, who saw that France, in intervening in favor of Ferdinand VII, was doing just what Prussia and Austria had attempted in 1792 in the interests of Louis XVI. But, unlike the duke of Brunswick, the French commander easily defeated the revolutionists and placed Ferdinand in a position to stamp out his enemies in such a ferocious and bloodthirsty manner that his French allies were heartily ashamed of him.

While France was helping to restore absolutism in Spain the Spanish colonies, as we have seen, were rapidly winning their independence, encouraged by the United States and England. At the Congress of Verona all the powers except England were anxious to discuss a plan by which they might aid Spain to get the better of her rebellious colonies, since it was the fixed purpose of the allies to suppress “rebellion in whatever place and under whatever form it might show itself.”

The threats of Metternich and his friends led President Monroe, in his message to Congress, December, 1823, to call attention to the dangers of intervention as practiced by the European alliance of great powers, and clearly stated what has since become famous as the “Monroe Doctrine,” namely, “We owe it therefore to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and these powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared their independence and have maintained it, and whose independence we have on great consideration and on just principles acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power, in any other light than a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition towards the United States.”

About the same time the English foreign secretary, Canning, informed the French ambassador in London that any attempt to bring the Spanish colonies again under their former submission to Spain would prove unsuccessful, and that while

England would remain neutral in the troubles between the mother country and her American dominions, the intervention of a third party would constitute a cause for action on the part of the English government. Toward the close of 1824 England recognized the independence of Buenos Ayres, Mexico, and Colombia and paid no heed to the remonstrance of the continental powers that such an action “tended to encourage the revolutionary spirit which it had been found so difficult to restrain in Europe.”

Portugal A word may be said here of Spain’s little neighbor Portugal. It will be remembered that when Napoleon dispatched his troops thither in 1807 the royal family fled across the Atlantic to their colony of Brazil. After the expulsion of the French by the English, the government was placed in the hands of an English general, Beresford, who ruled so despotically that he stirred up a revolt in 1820, at the time when the insurrection in Spain was in progress. The insurgents demanded the return of the royal family from Brazil and the granting of a constitution. The king, John VI, accordingly set sail for Portugal, leaving his elder son, Pedro, to represent him in Brazil.

King John died shortly after his return, and Pedro, yielding his rights to his daughter, Maria da Gloria, granted the Portuguese a charter in 1826. Pedro’s brother, Miguel, then started a civil war to gain the throne for himself, but after several years of discord he was driven out of the kingdom in 1834.

It will have become apparent that Metternich’s international police system, designed to prevent innovation and revolution, was for all practical purposes a failure. The action of Great Britain and the United States had weakened it. The struggle of the Greek revolutionists against Turkey for independence, which finally involved Russia in a war with the Sultan and ended in victory for the Greeks, demonstrated that even Russia would not hesitate to aid and abet revolution if she could thereby advance her own interests. The climax was reached in 1830 by the revolution in France described above, which deposed the older Bourbon line and established a liberal government, thus violating the fundamental principles for which Metternich had fought with so much determination. In fact the Holy Alliance, as such, never accomplished any great work, and it went to pieces as much through its own inherent weakness as through the growth of revolutionary spirit.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

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INVENTION OF MACHINERY FOR SPINNING AND WEAVING

In the preceding chapters we have reviewed the startling changes and reforms introduced by the leaders of the French Revolution and by Napoleon Bonaparte, the reconstruction of Europe at the Congress of Vienna, and finally the chief modifications of these arrangements which occurred during the following generation. These were mainly the work of statesmen, warriors, and diplomats, -who have certainly done their part in making Europe what it is to-day. But a still more fundamental revolution than that which has been described had begun in England before the meeting of the Estates General. The chief actors in this never stirred an assembly by their fiery denunciation of abuses, or led an army to victory, or conducted a clever diplomatic negotiation. On the contrary, their attention was concentrated upon the homely operations of everyday life, -the house-wife drawing out her thread with distaff or spinning wheel, the slow work of the weaver at his primitive loom, the miner struggling against the water which threatened to flood his mine. They busied themselves perseveringly with wheels, cylinders, bands, and rollers, patiently combining and recombining them, until, after many discouragements, they made discoveries destined to alter the habits, ideas, and prospects of the great mass of the people far more profoundly than all the edicts of the National Assembly and all the conquests of Napoleon taken together.

The Greeks and Romans, notwithstanding their refined civilization, had shown slight aptitude for mechanical invention, and little had been added to their stock of human appliances before the opening of the eighteenth century. In the time of Louis XIV, when inventors were already becoming somewhat numerous, especially in England, the people of western Europe for the most part continued to till their fields, weave their cloth, and saw and plane their boards by hand, much as the ancient Egyptians had done. Merchandise was still transported in slow, lumbering carts, and letters were as long in passing from London to Rome as in the reign of Constantine. Could a peasant, a smith, or a weaver of the age of Cæsar Augustus have visited France or England eighteen hundred years later, he would have recognized the familiar flail, forge, and hand loom of his own day.

Suddenly, however, a series of ingenious devices were invented, which in a few generations eclipsed the achievements of ages and revolutionized every branch of industry. These serve to explain the world in which we live, with its busy cities, its gigantic factories filled with complicated machinery, its commerce and vast fortunes, its trades unions and labor parties, its bewildering variety of plans for bettering the lot of the great mass of the people. The story of the substitution for the distaff of the marvelous spinning machine with its swiftly flying fingers, of the development of the locomotive and the ocean steamer which bind together the uttermost parts of the earth, of the perfecting press, producing a hundred thousand newspapers an hour, of the marvels of the telegraph and the telephone, -this story of mechanical invention is in no way inferior in fascination and importance to the more familiar history of kings, parliaments, wars, treaties, and constitutions.

The revolution in manufacture during the past two centuries may perhaps be best illustrated by the improvements in the methods of spinning and weaving wool and cotton, which are so important to our welfare and comfort. The main operations had remained essentially the same from the time when men first began to substitute coarse woven garments for the skins of animals, down to the eighteenth century.

The wool was first “carded,” that is, cleaned and straightened out by means of “cards,” or wooden combs some five inches long. The next step was to twist it into thread, fine or coarse as the quality of the cloth demanded. This was accomplished by means of the distaff and spindle, -two very simple implements which may be seen in almost any historical museum, or even in actual use in out of the-way places of Europe. The spinner held under her arm a bunch of carded wool fixed to the distaff; then with her fingers she drew out and twisted a few inches of the fiber, and attached it to a hook, or notch, in the end of a short stick called the spindle, which she permitted to swing down freely, whirling like a top as it went. She fed out the fiber gradually, and when three or four feet were properly twisted she would unhook the end of the thread from the top of the spindle and wind the thread on the lower part of it. She would then begin a new length at the point where the finished thread merged into the loose fiber on her distaff.

If one examines a bit of cloth, whether it be the finest silk Weaving or the coarsest burlap, he will find that it is made up of threads running lengthwise, known as the warp, and shorter threads called the weft, running in and out across the warp and at right angles to it. Weaving had from time immemorial been carried on by means of a very simple loom constructed as follows: Two rollers were fixed horizontally, some four or five feet apart, in a frame, and the threads of the warp, laid close together, were wound on one of the rollers. The loose ends were then attached to the second roller, fixed in the frame near the stool where the weaver sat. The cross thread, or weft, was then wound on a stick called the shuttle, which, in the seventeenth-century loom, was simply a notched piece of wood. This primitive shuttle required two men to work it, one to start it on one side, and another to pull it out and start it back again from the other side.

Now in order to interlace the threads of the weft with those of the warp, the long threads composing the warp were attached alternately to two wooden bars, i.e. every other thread was attached to one of the bars, and the remaining threads to the other bar. This enabled the weaver to raise the alternate threads by lifting one of the bars; then the shuttle would be thrown across; he would then lower this set of threads and raise the other, and the shuttle would be thrown back. In this way the first thread of the weft went over the first thread of the warp, under the second, and so on. The next thread of the weft went under the first thread of the warp, over the second, and so on, thus producing the fabric. There was a simple device for pushing the threads of the weft close together as the work progressed.

Early in the eighteenth century a number of English workmen were busy trying to improve the implements for making cloth and finally, in 1738, John Kay, of Bury in Lancashire, invented a contrivance which enabled a weaver, without any assistant, to drive the shuttle back and forth, even through a wide strip, by means of a handle placed conveniently in front of his stool. By this invention one weaver could now do the work of two, and consequently the demand for woolen and cotton thread to be worked into cloth rapidly increased; indeed, the weavers could now work much faster than the spinners who supplied them with yarn and thread, and it became imperative to discover some quicker method of spinning.