Chapter XIV (2)

There was little reason to fear any serious resistance on the part of the Neapolitans. The administration of the State was thoroughly disorganised; the agitation of the secret societies had destroyed all spirit of obedience among the soldiers; a great part of the army was absent in Sicily, keeping guard over a people who, under wiser management, might have doubled the force which Naples now opposed to the invader. When the despotic government of Ferdinand was overthrown, the island of Sicily, or that part of it which was represented by Palermo, had claimed the separate political existence which it had possessed between 1806 and 1815, offering to remain united to Naples in the person of the sovereign, but demanding a National Parliament and a National Constitution of its own. The revolutionary Ministers of Naples had, however, no more sympathy with the wishes of the Sicilians than the Spanish Liberals of 1812 had with those of the American Colonists. They required the islanders to accept the same rights and duties as any other province of the Neapolitan kingdom, and, on their refusal, sent over a considerable force and laid siege to Palermo. [328] The contest soon ended in the submission of the Sicilians, but it was found necessary to keep twelve thousand troops on the island in order to prevent a new revolt. The whole regular army of Naples numbered little more than forty thousand; and although bodies of Carbonari and of the so-called Militia set out to join the colours of General Pepe and to fight for liberty, they remained for the most part a disorderly mob, without either arms or discipline. The invading army of Austria, fifty thousand strong, not only possessed an immense superiority in organisation and military spirit, but actually outnumbered the forces of the defence. At the first encounter, which took place at Rieti, in the Papal States, the Neapolitans were put to the rout. Their army melted away, as it had in Murat's campaign in 1815. Nothing was heard among officers and men but accusations of treachery; not a single strong point was defended; and on the 24th of March the Austrians made their entry into Naples. Ferdinand, halting at Florence, sent on before him the worst instruments of his former despotism. It was indeed impossible for these men to renew, under Austrian protection, the scenes of reckless bloodshed which had followed the restoration of 1799; and a great number of compromised persons had already been provided with the means of escape. But the hand of vengeance was not easily stayed. Courts-martial and commissions of judges began in all parts of the kingdom to sentence to imprisonment and death. An attempted insurrection in Sicily and some desperate acts of rebellion in Southern Italy cost the principal actors their lives; and when an amnesty was at length proclaimed, an exception was made against those who were now called the deserters, and who were lately called the Sacred Band, of Nola, that is to say, the soldiers who had first risen for the Constitution. Morelli, who had received the Viceroy's treacherous thanks for his conduct, was executed, along with one of his companions; the rest were sent in chains to labour among felons. Hundreds of persons were left lying, condemned or uncondemned, in prison; others, in spite of the amnesty, were driven from their native land; and that great, long-lasting stream of fugitives now began to pour into England, which, in the early memories of many who are not yet old, has associated the name of Italian with the image of an exile and a sufferer.

[Insurrection in Piedmont, March 10.]

There was a moment in the campaign of Austria against Naples when the invading army was threatened with the most serious danger. An insurrection broke out in Piedmont, and the troops of that country attempted to unite with the patriotic party of Lombardy in a movement which would have thrown all Northern Italy upon the rear of the Austrians. In the first excess of alarm, the Czar ordered a hundred thousand Russians to cross the Galician frontier, and to march in the direction of the Adriatic. It proved unnecessary, however, to continue this advance. The Piedmontese army was divided against itself; part proclaimed the Spanish Constitution, and, on the abdication of the King, called upon his cousin, the Regent, Charles Albert of Carignano, to march against the Austrians; part adhered to the rightful heir, the King's brother, Charles Felix, who was absent at Modena, and who, with an honesty in strong contrast to the frauds of the Neapolitan Court, refused to temporise with rebels, or to make any compromise with the Constitution. The scruples of the Prince of Carignano, after he had gone some way with the military party of action, paralysed the movement of Northern Italy. Unsupported by Piedmontese troops, the conspirators of Milan failed to raise any open insurrection. Austrian soldiers thronged westwards from the Venetian fortresses, and entered Piedmont itself; the collapse of the Neapolitan army destroyed the hopes of the bravest patriots; and the only result of the Piedmontese movement was that the grasp of Austria closed more tightly on its subject provinces, while the martyrs of Italian freedom passed out of the sight of the world, out of the range of all human communication, buried for years to come in the silent, unvisited prison of the North. [329]

[The French Ultra-Royalists urging attack on Spain.]

Thus the victory of absolutism was completed, and the law was laid down to Europe that a people seeking its liberties elsewhere than in the grace and spontaneous generosity of its legitimate sovereign became a fit object of attack for the armies of the three Great Powers. It will be seen in a later chapter how Metternich persuaded the Czar to include under the anathema issued by the Congress of Laibach (May, 1821) [330] the outbreak of the Greeks, which at this moment began, and how Lord Castlereagh supported the Austrian Minister in denying to these rebels against the Sultan all right or claim to the consideration of Europe. Spain was for the present left unmolested; but the military operations of 1821 prepared the way for a similar crusade against that country by occasioning the downfall of Richelieu's Ministry, and throwing the government of France entirely into the hands of the Ultra-Royalists. All parties in the French Chamber, whether they condemned or approved the suppression of Neapolitan liberty, censured a policy which had kept France in inaction, and made Austria supreme in Italy. The Ultra-Royalists profited by the general discontent to overthrow the Minister whom they had promised to support (Dec., 1821); and from this time a war with Spain, conducted either by France alone or in combination with the three Eastern Powers, became the dearest hope of the rank and file of the dominant faction. Villèle, their nominal chief, remained what he had been before, a statesman among fanatics, and desired to maintain the attitude of observation as long as this should be possible. A body of troops had been stationed on the southern frontier in 1820 to prevent all intercourse with the Spanish districts afflicted with the yellow fever. This epidemic had passed away, but the number of the troops was now raised to a hundred thousand. It was, however, the hope of Villèle that hostilities might be averted unless the Spaniards should themselves provoke a combat, or, by resorting to extreme measures against King Ferdinand, should compel Louis XVIII. to intervene on behalf of his kinsman. The more violent section of the French Cabinet, represented by Montmorency, the Foreign Minister, called for an immediate march on Madrid, or proposed to delay operations only until France should secure the support of the other Continental Powers.

[Spain from 1820 to 1822.]

[Ferdinand plots with the Serviles against the Constitution.]

The condition of Spain in the year 1822 gave ample encouragement to those who longed to employ the arms of France in the royalist cause. The hopes of peaceful reform, which for the first few months after the revolution had been shared even by foreign politicians at Madrid, had long vanished. In the moment of popular victory Ferdinand had brought the leaders of the Cortes from their prisons and placed them in office. These men showed a dignified forgetfulness of the injuries which they had suffered. Misfortune had calmed their impetuosity, and taught them more of the real condition of the Spanish people. They entered upon their task with seriousness and good faith, and would have proved the best friends of constitutional monarchy if Ferdinand had had the least intention of co-operating with them loyally. But they found themselves encountered from the first by a double enemy. The clergy, who had overthrown the Constitution six years before, intrigued or openly declared against it as soon as it was revived; the more violent of the Liberals, with Riego at their head, abandoned themselves to extravagances like those of the club-orators of Paris in 1791, and did their best to make any peaceable administration impossible. After combating these anarchists, or Exaltados, with some success, the Ministry was forced to call in their aid, when, at the instigation of the Papal Nuncio, the King placed his veto upon a law dissolving most of the monasteries [331] (Oct., 1820). Ferdinand now openly combined with the enemies of the Constitution, and attempted to transfer the command of the army to one of his own agents. The plot failed; the Ministry sent the alarm over the whole country, and Ferdinand stood convicted before his people as a conspirator against the Constitution which he had sworn to defend. The agitation of the clubs, which the Ministry had hitherto suppressed, broke out anew. A storm of accusations assailed Ferdinand himself. He was compelled at the end of the year 1820 to banish from Madrid most of the persons who had been his confidants; and although his dethronement was not yet proposed, he had already become, far more than Louis XVI. of France under similar conditions, the recognised enemy of the revolution, and the suspected patron of every treason against the nation.

[The Ministry between the Exaltados and Serviles, 1821.]

[Attempted coup d'état, July 6, 1822.]

[Royalists revolt in the north.]

The attack of the despotic Courts on Naples in the spring of 1821 heightened the fury of parties in Spain, encouraging the Serviles, or Absolutists, in their plots, and forcing the Ministry to yield to the cry for more violent measures against the enemies of the Constitution. In the south of Spain the Exaltados gained possession of the principal military and civil commands, and openly refused obedience to the central administration when it attempted to interfere with their action Seville, Carthagena, and Cadiz acted as if they were independent Republics and even spoke of separation from Spain. Defied by its own subordinates in the provinces, and unable to look to the King for any sincere support, the moderate governing party lost all hold upon the nation. In the Cortes elected in 1822 the Exaltados formed the majority, and Riego was appointed President. Ferdinand now began to concert measures of action with the French Ultra-Royalists. The Serviles, led by priests, and supported by French money, broke into open rebellion in the north. When the session of the Cortes ended, the King attempted to overthrow his enemies by military force. Three battalions of the Royal Guard, which had been withdrawn from Madrid, received secret orders to march upon the capital (July 6, 1822), where Ferdinand was expected to place himself at their head. They were, however, met and defeated in the streets by other regiments, and Ferdinand, vainly attempting to dissociate himself from the action of his partisans, found his crown, if not his life, in peril. He wrote to Louis XVIII. that he was a prisoner. Though the French King gave nothing more than good counsel, the Ultra-Royalists in the French Cabinet and in the army now strained every nerve to accelerate a war between the two countries. The Spanish Absolutists seized the town of Seo d'Urgel, and there set up a provisional government. Civil war spread over the northern provinces. The Ministry, which was now formed of Riego's friends, demanded and obtained from the Cortes dictatorial powers like those which the French Committee of Public Safety had wielded in 1793, but with far other result. Spain found no Danton, no Carnot, at this crisis, when the very highest powers of intellect and will would have been necessary to arouse and to arm a people far less disposed to fight for liberty than the French were in 1793. One man alone, General Mina, checked and overthrew the rebel leaders of the north with an activity superior to their own. The Government, boastful and violent in its measures, effected scarcely anything in the organisation of a national force, or in preparing the means of resistance against those foreign armies with whose attack the country was now plainly threatened.

[England and the Congress of 1822.]

When the Congress of Laibach broke up in the spring of 1821. its members determined to renew their meeting in the following year, in order to decide whether the Austrian army might then be withdrawn from Naples, and to discuss other questions affecting their common interests. The progress of the Greek insurrection and a growing strife between Russia and Turkey had since then thrown all Italian difficulties into the shade. The Eastern question stood in the front rank of European politics; next in importance came the affairs of Spain. It was certain that these, far more than the occupation of Naples, would supply the real business of the Congress of 1822. England had a far greater interest in both questions than in the Italian negotiations of the two previous years. It was felt that the system of abstention which England had then followed could be pursued no longer, and that the country must be represented not by some casual and wandering diplomatist, but by its leading Minister, Lord Castlereagh. The intentions of the other Powers in regard to Spain were matter of doubt; it was the fixed policy of Great Britain to leave the Spanish revolution in Europe to run its own course, and to persuade the other Powers to do the same. But the difficulties connected with Spain did not stop at the Spanish frontier. The South American colonies had now in great part secured their independence. They had developed a trade with Great Britain which made it impossible for this country to ignore their flag and the decisions of their law courts. The British navigation-laws had already been modified by Parliament in favour of their shipping; and although it was no business of the English Government to grant a formal title to communities which had made themselves free, the practical recognition of the American States by the appointment of diplomatic agents could in several cases not be justly delayed. Therefore, without interfering with any colonies which were still fighting or still negotiating with Spain, the British Minister proposed to inform the Allied cabinets of the intention of this country to accredit agents to some of the South American Republics, and to recommend to them the adoption of a similar policy.

[Death of Castlereagh, Aug. 12, 1822.]

Such was the tenour of the instructions which, a few weeks before his expected departure for the Continent, Castlereagh drew up for his own guidance, and submitted to the Cabinet and the King. [332] Had he lived to fulfil the mission with which he was charged, the recognition of the South American Republics, which adds so bright a ray to the fame of Canning, would probably have been the work of the man who, more than any other, is associated in popular belief with the traditions of a hated and outworn system of oppression. Two more years of life, two more years of change in the relations of England to the Continent, would have given Castlereagh a different figure in the history both of Greece and of America. No English statesman in modern times has been so severely judged. Circumstances, down to the close of his career, withheld from Castlereagh the opportunities which fell to his successor; ties from which others were free made it hard for him to accelerate the breach with the Allies of 1814. Antagonists showed Castlereagh no mercy, no justice. The man whom Byron disgraced himself by ridiculing after his death possessed in a rich measure the qualities which, in private life, attract esteem and love. His public life, if tainted in earlier days by the low political morality of the time, rose high above that of every Continental statesman of similar rank, with the single exception of Stein. The best testimony to his integrity is the irritation which it caused to Talleyrand. [333] If the consciousness of labour unflaggingly pursued in the public cause, and animated on the whole by a pure and earnest purpose, could have calmed the distress of a breaking mind, the decline of Castlereagh's days might have been one of peace. His countrymen would have recognised that, if blind to the rights of nations, Castlereagh had set to foreign rulers the example of truth and good faith. But the burden of his life was too heavy to bear. Mists of despondency obscured the outlines of the real world, and struck chill into his heart. Death, self-invoked, brought relief to the over-wrought brain, and laid Castlereagh, with all his cares, in everlasting sleep.

[Canning Foreign Secretary. Wellington deputed to the Congress, Sept., 1822.]

[Congress of Verona, Oct., 1822.]

The vacant post was filled by Canning, by far the most gifted of the band of statesmen who had begun their public life in the school of Pitt. Wellington undertook to represent England at the Congress of 1822, which was now about to open at Vienna. His departure was, however, delayed for several weeks, and the preliminary meeting, at which it had been intended to transact all business not relating to Italy, was almost over before his arrival. Wellington accordingly travelled on to Verona, where Italian affairs were to be dealt with; and the Italian Conference, which the British Government had not intended to recognise, thus became the real Congress of 1822. Anxious as Lord Castlereagh had been on the question of foreign interference with Spain, he hardly understood the imminence of the danger. In passing through Paris, Wellington learnt for the first time that a French or European invasion of Spain would be the foremost object of discussion among the Powers; and on reaching Verona he made the unwelcome discovery that the Czar was bent upon sending a Russian army to take part, as the mandatary of Europe, in overthrowing the Spanish Constitution. Alexander's desire was to obtain a joint declaration from the Congress like that which had been issued against Naples by the three Courts at Troppau, but one even more formidable, since France might be expected in the present case to give its concurrence, which had been withheld before. France indeed occupied, according to the absolutist theory of the day, the same position in regard to a Jacobin Spain as Austria in regard to a Jacobin Naples, and might perhaps claim to play the leading military part in the crusade of repression. But the work was likely to be a much more difficult one than that of 1821. The French troops, said the Czar, were not trustworthy; and there was a party in France which might take advantage of the war to proclaim the second Napoleon or the Republic. King Louis XVIII. could not therefore be allowed to grapple with Spain alone. It was necessary that the principal force employed by the alliance should be one whose loyalty and military qualities were above suspicion: the generals who had marched from Moscow to Paris were not likely to fail beyond the Pyrenees: and a campaign of the Russian army in Western Europe promised to relieve the Czar of some of the discontent of his soldiers, who had been turned back after entering Galicia in the previous year, and who had not been allowed to assist their fellow-believers in Greece in their struggle against the Sultan. [334]

[No joint declaration by made by the Congress against Spain.]

Wellington had ascertained, while in Paris, that King Louis XVIII. and Villèle were determined under no circumstances to give Russian troops a passage through France. His knowledge of this fact enabled him to speak with some confidence to Alexander. It was the earnest desire of the English Government to avert war, and its first object was therefore to prevent the Congress, as a body, from sending an ultimatum to Spain. If all the Powers united in a declaration like that of Troppau, war was inevitable; if France were left to settle its own disputes with its neighbour, English mediation might possibly preserve peace. The statement of Wellington, that England would rather sever itself from the great alliance than consent to a joint declaration against Spain, had no doubt its effect in preventing such a declaration being proposed; but a still weightier reason against it was the direct contradiction between the intentions of the French Government and those of the Czar. If the Czar was determined to be the soldier of Europe, while on the other hand King Louis absolutely denied him a passage through France, it was impossible that the Congress should threaten Spain with a collective attack. No great expenditure of diplomacy was therefore necessary to prevent the summary framing of a decree against Spain like that which had been framed against Naples two years before. In the first despatches which he sent back to England Wellington expressed his belief that the deliberations of the Powers would end in a decision to leave the Spaniards to themselves.

[Course of the negotiation against Spain.]

But the danger was only averted in appearance. The impulse to war was too strong among the French Ultra-Royalists for the Congress to keep silence on Spanish affairs. Villèle indeed still hoped for peace, and, unlike other members of his Cabinet, he desired that, if war should arise, France should maintain entire freedom of action, and enter upon the struggle as an independent Power, not as the instrument of the European concert. This did not prevent him, however, from desiring to ascertain what assistance would be forthcoming, if France should be hard pressed by its enemy. Instructions were given to the French envoys at Verona to sound the Allies on this question. [335] It was out of the inquiry so suggested that a negotiation sprang which virtually combined all Europe against Spain. The envoy Montmorency, acting in the spirit of the war party, demanded of all the Powers whether, in the event of France withdrawing its ambassador from Madrid, they would do the same, and whether, in case of war, France would receive their moral and material support. Wellington in his reply protested against the framing of hypothetical cases; the other envoys answered Montmorency's questions in the affirmative. The next step was taken by Metternich, who urged that certain definite acts of the Spanish people or Government ought to be specified as rendering war obligatory on France and its allies, and also that, with a view of strengthening the Royalist party in Spain, notes ought to be presented by all the ambassadors at Madrid, demanding a change in the Constitution. This proposal was in its turn submitted to Wellington and rejected by him. It was accepted by the other plenipotentiaries, and the acts of the Spanish people were specified on which war should necessarily follow. These were, the commission of any act of violence against a member of the royal family, the deposition of the King, or an attempt to change the dynasty. A secret clause was added to the second part of the agreement, to the effect that if the Spanish Government made no satisfactory answer to the notes requiring a change in the Constitution, all the ambassadors should be immediately withdrawn. A draft of the notes to be presented was sketched; and Montmorency, who thought that he had probably gone too far in his stipulations, returned to Paris to submit the drafts to the King before handing them over to the ambassadors at Paris for transmission to Madrid.

[Villèle and Montmorency.]

[Speech of Louis XVIII., Jan. 27, 1823.]

It was with great dissatisfaction that Villèle saw how his colleague had committed France to the direction of the three Eastern Powers. There was no likelihood that the Spanish Government would make the least concession of the kind required, and in that case France stood pledged, if the action of Montmorency was ratified, to withdraw its ambassador from Madrid at once. Villèle accordingly addressed himself to the ambassadors at Paris, asking that the despatch of the notes might be postponed. No notice was taken of his request: the notes were despatched forthwith. Roused by this slight, Villèle appealed to the King not to submit to the dictation of foreign Courts. Louis XVIII. declared in his favour against all the rest of the Cabinet, and Montmorency had to retire from office. But the decision of the King meant that he disapproved of the negotiations of Verona as shackling the movements of France, not that he had freed himself from the influence of the war-party. Chateaubriand, the most reckless agitator for hostilities, was appointed Foreign Minister. The mediation of Great Britain was rejected; [336] and in his speech at the opening of the Chambers of 1823, King Louis himself virtually published the declaration of war.

[England in 1823.]

[French invasion of Spain, April, 1823.]

The ambassadors of the three Eastern Courts had already presented their notes at Madrid demanding a change in the Constitution; and, after receiving a high-spirited answer from the Ministers, they had quitted the country. Canning, while using every diplomatic effort to prevent an unjust war, had made it clear to the Spaniards that England could not render them armed assistance. The reasons against such an intervention were indeed overwhelming. Russia, Austria, and Prussia would have taken the field rather than have permitted the Spanish Constitution to triumph; and although, if leagued with Spain in a really national defence like that of 1808, Great Britain might perhaps have protected the Peninsula against all the Powers of Europe combined, it was far otherwise when the cause at stake was one to which a majority of the Spanish nation had shown itself to be indifferent, and against which the northern provinces had actually taken up arms. The Government and the Cortes were therefore left to defend themselves as best they could against their enemies. They displayed their weakness by enacting laws of extreme severity against deserters, and by retiring, along with the recalcitrant King, from Madrid to Seville. On the 7th of April the French troops, led by the Duke of Angoulême, crossed the frontier. The priests and a great part of the peasantry welcomed them as deliverers: the forces opposed to them fell back without striking a blow. As the invader advanced towards the capital, gangs of royalists, often led by monks, spread such terror and devastation over the northern provinces that the presence of foreign troops became the only safeguard for the peaceable inhabitants. [337] Madrid itself was threatened by the corps of a freebooter named Bessières. The commandant sent his surrender to the French while they were still at some distance, begging them to advance as quickly as possible in order to save the city from pillage. The message had scarcely been sent when Bessières and his bandits appeared in the suburbs. The governor drove them back, and kept the royalist mob within the city at bay for four days more. On the 23rd of May the advance-guard of the French army entered the capital.

[Angoulême and the Regency, and the ambassadors.]

It had been the desire of King Louis XVIII. and Angoulême to save Spain from the violence of royalist and priestly fanaticism. On reaching Madrid, Angoulême intended to appoint a provisional, government himself; he was, however, compelled by orders from Paris to leave the election in the hands of the Council of Castille, and a Regency came into power whose first acts showed in what spirit the victory of the French was to be used. Edicts were issued declaring all the acts of the Cortes affecting the monastic orders to be null and void, dismissing all officials appointed since March 7, 1820, and subjecting to examination those who, then being in office, had not resigned their posts. [338] The arrival of the ambassadors of the three Eastern Powers encouraged the Regency in their antagonism to the French commander. It was believed that the Cabinet of Paris was unwilling to restore King Ferdinand as an absolute monarch, and intended to obtain from him the grant of institutions resembling those of the French Charta. Any such limitation of absolute power was, however, an object of horror to the three despotic Courts. Their ambassadors formed themselves into a council with the express object of resisting the supposed policy of Angoulême. The Regency grew bolder, and gave the signal for general retribution upon the Liberals by publishing an order depriving all persons who had served in the voluntary militia since March, 1820, of their offices, pensions, and titles. The work inaugurated in the capital was carried much further in the provinces. The friends of the Constitution, and even soldiers who were protected by their capitulation with the French, were thrown into prison by the new local authorities. The violence of the reaction reached such a height that Angoulême, now on the march to Cadiz, was compelled to publish an ordinance forbidding arrests to be made without the consent of a French commanding officer, and ordering his generals to release the persons who had been arbitrarily imprisoned. The council of ambassadors, blind in their jealousy of France to the danger of an uncontrolled restoration, drew up a protest against his ordinance, and desired that the officers of the Regency should be left to work their will.

[The Cortes at Cadiz.]

[Ferdinand liberated, Oct. 1.]

After spending some weeks in idle debates at Seville, the Cortes had been compelled by the appearance of the French on the Sierra Morena to retire to Cadiz. As King Ferdinand refused to accompany them, he was declared temporarily insane, and forced to make the journey (June 12). Angoulême, following the French vanguard after a considerable interval, appeared before Cadiz in August, and sent a note to King Ferdinand, recommending him to publish an amnesty, and to promise the restoration of the mediæval Cortes. It was hoped that the terms suggested in this note might be accepted by the Government in Cadiz as a basis of peace, and so render an attack upon the city unnecessary. The Ministry, however, returned a defiant answer in the King's name. The siege of Cadiz accordingly began in earnest. On the 30th of August the fort of the Trocadero was stormed; three weeks later the city was bombarded. In reply to all proposals for negotiation Angoulême stated that he could only treat when King Ferdinand was within his own lines. There was not the least hope of prolonging the defence of Cadiz with success, for the combat was dying out even in those few districts of Spain where the constitutional troops had fought with energy. Ferdinand himself pretended that he bore no grudge against his Ministers, and that the Liberals had nothing to fear from his release. On the 30th of September he signed, as if with great satisfaction, an absolute and universal amnesty. [339] On the following day he was conveyed with his family across the bay to Angoulême's head-quarters.

[Violence of the Restoration.]

The war was over: the real results of the French invasion now came into sight. Ferdinand had not been twelve hours in the French camp when, surrounded by monks and royalist desperadoes, he published a proclamation invalidating every act of the constitutional Government of the last three years, on the ground that his sanction had been given under constraint. The same proclamation ratified the acts of the Regency of Madrid. As the Regency of Madrid had declared all persons concerned in the removal of the King to Cadiz to be liable to the penalties of high treason, Ferdinand had in fact ratified a sentence of death against several of the men from whom he had just parted in friendship. [340] Many of these victims of the King's perfidy were sent into safety by the French. But Angoulême was powerless to influence Ferdinand's policy and conduct. Don Saez, the King's confessor, was made First Secretary of State. On the 4th of October an edict was issued banishing for ever from Madrid, and from the country fifty miles round it, every person who during the last three years had sat in the Cortes, or who had been a Minister, counsellor of State, judge, commander, official in any public office, magistrate, or officer in the so-called voluntary militia. It was ordered that throughout Spain a solemn service should be celebrated in expiation of the insults offered to the Holy Sacrament; that missions should be sent over the land to combat the pernicious and heretical doctrines associated with the late outbreak, and that the bishops should relegate to monasteries of the strictest observance the priests who had acted as the agents of an impious faction. [341] Thus the war of revenge was openly declared against the defeated party. It was in vain that Angoulême indignantly reproached the King, and that the ambassadors of the three Eastern Courts pressed him to draw up at least some kind of amnesty. Ferdinand travelled slowly towards Madrid, saying that he could take no such step until he reached the capital. On the 7th of November, Riego was hanged. Thousands of persons were thrown into prison, or compelled to fly from the country. Except where order was preserved by the French, life and property were at the mercy of royalist mobs and the priests who led them; and although the influence of the Russian statesman Pozzo di Borgo at length brought a respectable Ministry into office, this only roused the fury of the clerical party, and led to a cry for the deposition of the King, and for the elevation of his more fanatical brother, Don Carlos, to the throne. Military commissions were instituted at the beginning of 1824 for the trial of accused persons, and a pretended amnesty, published six months later, included in its fifteen classes of exception the participators in almost every act of the revolution. Ordinance followed upon ordinance, multiplying the acts punishable with death, and exterminating the literature which was believed to be the source of all religious and social heterodoxy. Every movement of life was watched by the police; every expression of political opinion was made high treason. Young men were shot for being freemasons; women were sent to prison for ten years for possessing a portrait of Riego. The relation of the restored Government to its subjects was in fact that which belonged to a state of civil war. Insurrections arose among the fanatics who were now taking the name of the Carlist or Apostolic party, as well as among a despairing remnant of the Constitutionalists. After a feeble outbreak of the latter at Tarifa, a hundred and twelve persons were put to death by the military commissions within eighteen days. [342] It was not until the summer of 1825 that the jurisdiction of these tribunals and the Reign of Terror ended.

[England prohibits the conquest of Spanish colonies by France or its allies.]

[England recognises the independence of the colonies. 1824-5.]

France had won a cheap and inglorious victory. The three Eastern Courts had seen their principle of absolutism triumph at the cost of everything that makes government morally better than anarchy. One consolation remained for those who felt that there was little hope for freedom on the Continent of Europe. The crusade against Spanish liberty had put an end for ever to the possibility of a joint conquest of Spanish America in the interest of despotism. The attitude of England was no longer what it had been in 1818. When the Czar had proposed at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle that the allied monarchs should suppress the republican principle beyond the seas, Castlereagh had only stated that England could bear no part in such an enterprise; he had not said that England would effectually prevent others from attempting it. This was the resolution by which Canning, isolated and baffled by the conspiracy of Verona, proved that England could still do something to protect its own interest and the interests of mankind against a league of autocrats. There is indeed little doubt that the independence of the Spanish colonies would have been recognised by Great Britain soon after the war of 1823, whoever might have been our Minister for Foreign Affairs, but this recognition was a different matter in the hands of Canning from what it would have been in the hands of his predecessor. The contrast between the two men was one of spirit rather than of avowed rules of action. Where Castlereagh offered apologies to the Continental sovereigns, Canning uttered defiance [343] The treaties of 1815, which connected England so closely with the foreign courts, were no work of his; though he sought not to repudiate them, he delighted to show that in spite of them England has still its own policy, its own sympathies, its own traditions. In face of the council of kings and its assumption of universal jurisdiction, he publicly described himself as an enthusiast for the independence of nations. If others saw little evidence that France intended to recompense itself for its services to Ferdinand by appropriating some of his rebellious colonies, Canning was quick to lay hold of every suspicious circumstance. At the beginning of the war of 1823 he gave a formal warning to the ambassador of Louis XVIII. that France would not be permitted to bring any of these provinces under its dominion, whether by conquest or cession. [344] When the war was over, he rejected the invitation of Ferdinand's Government to take part in a conference at Paris, where the affairs of South America were to be laid before the Allied Powers. [345] What these Powers might or might not think on the subject of America was now a matter of indifference, for the policy of England was fixed, and it was useless to debate upon a conclusion that could not be altered. British consular agents were appointed in most of the colonies before the close of the year 1823; and after some interval the independence of Buenos Ayres, Colombia, and Mexico were formally recognised by the conclusion of commercial treaties. "I called the New World into existence," cried Canning, when reproached with permitting the French occupation of Spain, "in order to redress the balance of the Old." The boast, famous in our Parliamentary history, has left an erroneous impression of the part really played by Canning at this crisis. He did not call the New World into existence; he did not even assist it in winning independence, as France had assisted the United States fifty years before; but when this independence had been won, he threw over it the aegis of Great Britain, declaring that no other European Power should reimpose the yoke which Spain had not been able to maintain.

[Affairs in Portugal.]

[Constitution granted by Pedro, May, 1826.]

The overthrow of the Spanish Constitution by foreign arms led to a series of events in Portugal which forced England to a more direct intervention in the Peninsula than had yet been necessary, and heightened the conflict that had sprung up between its policy and that of Continental absolutism. The same parties and the same passions, political and religious, existed in Portugal as in Spain, and the enemies of the Constitution found the same support at foreign Courts. The King of Portugal, John VI., was a weak but not ill-meaning man; his wife, who was a sister of Ferdinand of Spain, and his son Don Miguel were the chiefs of the conspiracy against the Cortes. In June, 1823, a military revolt, arranged by Miguel, brought the existing form of government to an end: the King promised, however, when dissolving the Cortes, that a Constitution should be bestowed by himself upon Portugal; and he seems to have intended to keep his word. The ambassadors of France and Austria were, however, busy in throwing hindrances in the way, and Don Miguel prepared to use violence to prevent his father from making any concession to the Liberals. King John, in fear for his life, applied to England for troops; Canning declined to land soldiers at Lisbon, but sent a squadron, with orders to give the King protection. The winter of 1823 was passed in intrigues; in May, 1824, Miguel arrested the Ministers and surrounded the King's palace with troops. After several days of confusion King John made his escape to the British ships, and Miguel, who was alternately cowardly and audacious, then made his submission, and was ordered to leave the country. King John died in the spring of 1826 without having granted a Constitution. Pedro, his eldest son, had already been made Emperor of Brazil; and, as it was impossible that Portugal and Brazil could again be united, it was arranged that Pedro's daughter, when of sufficient age, should marry her uncle Miguel, and so save Portugal from the danger of a contested succession. Before renouncing the crown of Portugal, Pedro granted a Constitution to that country. A Regency had already been appointed by King John, in which neither the Queen-dowager nor Miguel was included.

[Desertion of Portuguese soldiery, 1826.]

[Spain permits the deserters to attack Portugal.]

[Canning sends troops to Lisbon, Dec., 1826.]

Miguel had gone to Vienna. Although a sort of Caliban in character and understanding, this Prince met with the welcome due to a kinsman of the Imperial house, and to a representative of the good cause of absolutism. He was received by Metternich with great interest, and his fortunes were taken under the protection of the Austrian Court. In due time, it was hoped this savage and ignorant churl would do yeoman's service to Austrian principles in the Peninsula. But the Regency and the new Constitution of Portugal had not to wait for the tardy operation of Metternich's covert hostility. The soldiery who had risen at Miguel's bidding in 1823 now proclaimed him King, and deserted to Spanish soil. Within the Spanish frontier they were received by Ferdinand's representatives with open arms. The demands made by the Portuguese ambassador at Madrid for their dispersion and for the surrender of their weapons were evaded. The cause of these armed bands on the frontier became the cause of the Clerical and Ultra-Royalist party over all Europe. Money was sent to them from France and Austria. They were joined by troops of Spanish Carlists or Apostolicals; they were fed, clothed, and organised, if not by the Spanish Government itself, at least by those over whose action the Spanish Government exercised control. [346] Thus raised to considerable military strength, they made incursions into Portugal, and at last attempted a regular invasion. The Regency of Lisbon, justly treating these outrages as the act of the Spanish Government, and appealing to the treaties which bound Great Britain to defend Portugal against foreign attack, demanded the assistance of this country. More was involved in the action taken by Canning than a possible contest with Spain; the seriousness of the danger lay in the fact that Spain was still occupied by French armies, and that a war with Spain might, and probably would, involve a war with France, if not with other Continental Powers. But the English Ministry waited only for the confirmation of the alleged facts by their own ambassador. The treaty-rights of Portugal were undoubted; the temper of the English Parliament and nation, strained to the utmost by the events of the last three years, was such that a war against Ferdinand and against the destroyers of Spanish liberty would have caused more rejoicing than alarm. Nine days after the formal demand of the Portuguese arrived, four days after their complaint was substantiated by the report of our ambassador, Canning announced to the House of Commons that British troops were actually on the way to Lisbon. In words that alarmed many of his own party, and roused the bitter indignation of every Continental Court, Canning warned those whose acts threatened to force England into war, that the war, if war arose, would be a war of opinion, and that England, however earnestly she might endeavour to avoid it, could not avoid seeing ranked under her banner all the restless and discontented of any nation with which she might come into conflict. As for the Portuguese Constitution which formed the real object of the Spanish attack, it had not, Canning said, been given at the instance of Great Britain, but he prayed that Heaven might prosper it. It was impossible to doubt that a Minister who spoke thus, and who, even under expressions of regret, hinted at any alliance with the revolutionary elements in France and Spain, was formidably in earnest. The words and the action of Canning produced the effect which he desired. The Government of Ferdinand discovered the means of checking the activity of the Apostolicals: the presence of the British troops at Lisbon enabled the Portuguese Regency to throw all its forces upon the invaders and to drive them from the country. They were disbanded when they re-crossed the Spanish frontier; the French Court loudly condemned their immoral enterprise; and the Constitution of Portugal seemed, at least for the moment, to have triumphed over its open and its secret enemies.

[The policy of Canning.]

The tone of the English Government had indeed changed since the time when Metternich could express a public hope that the three Eastern Powers would have the approval of this country in their attack upon the Constitution of Naples. In 1820 such a profession might perhaps have passed for a mistake; in 1826 it would have been a palpable absurdity. Both in England and on the Continent it was felt that the difference between the earlier and the later spirit of our policy was summed up in the contrast between Canning and Castlereagh. It has become an article of historical faith that Castlereagh's melancholy death brought one period of our foreign policy to a close and inaugurated another: it has been said that Canning liberated England from its Continental connexions; it has even been claimed for him that he performed for Europe no less a task than the dissolution of the Holy Alliance. [347] The figure of Canning is indeed one that will for ever fill a great space in European history; and the more that is known of the opposition which he encountered both from his sovereign and from his great rival Wellington, the greater must be our admiration for his clear, strong mind, and for the conquering force of his character. But the legend which represents English policy as taking an absolutely new departure in 1822 does not correspond to the truth of history. Canning was a member of the Cabinet from 1816 to 1820; it is a poor compliment to him to suppose that he either exercised no influence upon his colleagues or acquiesced in a policy of which he disapproved; and the history of the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle proves that his counsels had even at that time gained the ascendant. The admission made by Castlereagh in 1820, after Canning had left the Cabinet, that Austria, as a neighbouring and endangered State, had a right to suppress the revolutionary constitution of Naples, would probably not have gained Canning's assent; in all other points, the action of our Government at Troppau and Laibach might have been his own. Canning loved to speak of his system as one of neutrality, and of non-interference in that struggle between the principles of despotism and of democracy which seemed to be spreading over Europe. He avowed his sympathy for Spain as the object of an unjust and unprovoked war, but he most solemnly warned the Spaniards not to expect English assistance. He prayed that the Constitution of Portugal might prosper, but he expressly disclaimed all connection with its origin, and defended Portugal not because it was a Constitutional State, but because England was bound by treaties to defend it against foreign invasion. The arguments against intervention on behalf of Spain which Canning addressed to the English sympathisers with that country might have been uttered by Castlereagh; the denial of the right of foreign Powers to attack the Spanish Constitution, with which Castlereagh headed his own instructions for Verona, might have been written by Canning.

[Canning and the European concert.]

The statements that Canning withdrew England from the Continental system, and that he dissolved the Holy Alliance, cannot be accepted without large correction. The general relations existing between the Great Powers were based, not on the ridiculous and obsolete treaty of Holy Alliance, but on the Acts which were signed at the Conference of Aix-la-Chapelle. The first of these was the secret Quadruple Treaty which bound England and the three Eastern Powers to attack France in case a revolution in that country should endanger the peace of Europe; the second was the general declaration of all the five Powers that they would act in amity and take counsel with one another. From the first of these alliances Canning certainly did not withdraw England. He would perhaps have done so in 1823 if the Quadruple Treaty had bound England to maintain the House of Bourbon on the French throne; but it had been expressly stated that the deposition of the Bourbons would not necessarily and in itself be considered by England as endangering the peace of Europe. This treaty remained in full force up to Canning's death; and if a revolutionary army had marched from Paris upon Antwerp, he would certainly have claimed the assistance of the three Eastern Powers. With respect to the general concert of Europe, established or confirmed by the declaration of Aix-la-Chapelle, this had always been one of varying extent and solidity. Both France and England had held themselves aloof at Troppau. The federative action was strongest and most mischievous not before but after the death of Castlereagh, and in the period that followed the Congress of Verona; for though the war against Spain was conducted by France alone, the three Eastern Powers had virtually made themselves responsible for the success of the enterprise, and it was the influence of their ambassadors at Paris and Madrid which prevented any restrictions from being imposed upon Ferdinand's restored sovereignty.

Canning is invested with a spurious glory when it is said that his action in Spain and in Portugal broke up the league of the Continental Courts. Canning indeed shaped the policy of our own country with equal independence and wisdom, but the political centre of Europe was at this time not London but Vienna. The keystone of the European fabric was the union of Austria and Russia, and this union was endangered, not by anything that could take place in the Spanish Peninsula, but by the conflicting interests of these two great States in regard to the Ottoman Empire. From the moment when the Treaty of Paris was signed, every Austrian politician fixed his gaze upon the roads leading to the Lower Danube, and anxiously noted the signs of coming war, or of continued peace, between Russia and the Porte. [348] It was the triumph of Metternich to have diverted the Czar's thoughts during the succeeding years from his grievances against Turkey, and to have baffled the Russian diplomatists and generals who, like Capodistrias, sought to spur on their master to enterprises of Eastern conquest. At the Congress of Verona the shifting and incoherent manoeuvres of Austrian statecraft can indeed only be understood on the supposition that Metternich was thinking all the time less of Spain than of Turkey, and struggling at whatever cost to maintain that personal influence over Alexander which had hitherto prevented the outbreak of war in the East. But the antagonism so long suppressed broke out at last. The progress of the Greek insurrection brought Austria and Russia not indeed into war, but into the most embittered hostility with one another. It was on this rock that the ungainly craft which men called the Holy Alliance at length struck and went to pieces. Canning played his part well in the question of the East, but he did not create this question. There were forces at work which, without his intervention, would probably have made an end of the despotic amities of 1815. It is not necessary to the title of a great statesman that he should have called into being the elements which make a new political order possible; it is sufficient praise that he should have known how to turn them to account.