Chapter I: Indo-European (3)

Instead of Europe remaining at peace the year 1792 saw the beginning of a series of wars which did not come to a final conclusion till the battle of Waterloo. While the east of Europe was engaged in war, and while the Triple Alliance was busy attempting to restore peace to Europe, the French Revolution had broken out in 1789. The assistance given by France to the American colonists had brought the country to bankruptcy, and no course was left to Louis XVI. except to summon the states-general in May 1789. In that year a revolution against the reforms of Joseph II. had taken place in the Netherlands, and a revolution was being prepared in Poland for the overthrow of the aristocratic constitution and for the establishment of an hereditary monarchy. At first the revolution in France was entirely occupied with internal reforms, but after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in September 1791 the Girondists, whose influence became paramount, determined by the advice of Brissot to insist upon a policy of menace towards the Empire which would inevitably lead to war. War would, they hoped, result in the downfall of monarchy in France. On the other hand, Lafayette and his party advocated war on the ground that it would strengthen the cause of monarchy. In April 1792 war was accordingly declared upon Austria, then in alliance with Prussia. After a short period of failure the French in September won the battle of Valmy, and in November the battle of Jemappes. French armies advanced to the Rhine, Belgium was occupied, the Scheldt was declared open, and Holland was threatened. In consequence of the danger to Holland, Pitt adopted a warlike tone, and in February 1793 France declared war upon Great Britain. In that war Spain, Sardinia and Tuscany joined, so that France was practically fighting all Europe. Nevertheless, owing to the want of union among the allies, to the Polish questions which distracted Prussia and Austria, and to the determination and patriotism of all classes in France, the allies were discomfited and the league of powers broken up in 1795, when the treaties of Basel were made. Only Great Britain, Austria and Sardinia remained in arms against France, which was till 1799 ruled by the Directory. The next few years witnessed a series of most startling events. The successes of Napoleon Bonaparte in the Italian campaigns of 1797 and 1798 led to the peace of Cherasco with Sardinia, and the peace of Campo Formio with Austria. Only Great Britain remained at war with France. In 1799, taking advantage of the absence of Napoleon in Egypt, the Second Coalition was formed by Russia, Great Britain and Austria. Though the French were driven from Italy, Massena defeated the Russians in Switzerland, and the English were forced to retire from Holland. The return of Napoleon from Egypt was followed by the establishment of the Consulate in November 1799, by the overthrow of the Austrians at Marengo and Hohenlinden, by the treaty of Luneville with the emperor, and by the treaty of Amiens in 1802 with the English government. (See FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS.)

The German Revolution.

Up to this point the Revolution may be said to have benefited Europe and to have shaken to its base the 18th-century ideas of government. During the years succeeding the peace of Campo Formio a revolution was effected in Germany. The Holy Roman Empire had become an anachronism, and as soon as France became possessed of the left bank of the Rhine it was obvious that the imperial constitution required revision. The jealousies existing among the German princes and the overthrow of Austria at Austerlitz enabled Napoleon to carry out a revolution in Germany according to his own ideas. At first, in 1804, new arrangements were made with regard to the character and formation of the diet. The constitution of that assembly was so altered that a Protestant majority free from Austrian influence was now assured. The middle states, such as Prussia, Baden, Bavaria, Wuerttemberg and Hanover, received additions of territory, taken either from the ecclesiastical states or from the lands belonging to the imperial knights. After Austerlitz Napoleon in 1806 established the Confederation of the Rhine, and the Holy Roman Empire came finally to an end. A great European revolution had now been effected, but much remained to be done before a feeling of nationality could be aroused among the people of central Europe.

The causes of Napoleon's success.

Napoleon aims at the destruction of Great Britain.

Already before the peace of Amiens Pitt had tried to stir up national feeling in Austria and Prussia, the means which he suggested for opposing Napoleon being in great measure those which were adopted in 1813 and 1814. But during Pitt's lifetime central Europe was not moved by any feeling of nationality or of patriotism. During the war of the Second Coalition in 1799 Austria had acted without any regard for her allies, while Prussia, from motives of jealousy of and from want of confidence in Austria, had refused to move. It was not till the small states which hitherto had formed independent units had been destroyed and Austria and Prussia trampled under foot by Napoleon that a strong national spirit in Germany was evoked. Until the treaty of Tilsit had been signed in 1807 there was no visible growth of a national uprising in any part of Europe. During the intervening years Prussia had been crushed at Jena and her kingdom cut short (1806), while Alexander I. of Russia, after a fierce campaign against Napoleon, had agreed in 1807 to the treaty of Tilsit, which apparently placed Europe at the feet of France and Russia. Napoleon was, as he thought, now in a position to bring about the humiliation of Great Britain. Already in November 1806, realizing that he could not ruin England by direct invasion, he had issued the first Berlin Decree, which ordered the exclusion of British goods from the continent. The Continental System necessitated by the victory of Trafalgar was thus definitely set up. After Tilsit he proposed to become supreme in the Baltic, and, by securing the dependence of Spain and Portugal, to dominate the Mediterranean, and to resume his plans for conquests in the East, and for the destruction of the British power in India. Thus the effects of the British naval victories of the Nile and Trafalgar would be completely nullified, the Mediterranean would be closed to British ships, Great Britain's Indian possessions would be lost, and Great Britain herself would be forced by starvation into surrender. Fortunately for Europe various circumstances hindered the realization of these ambitious schemes. Alexander, who feared that the French emperor, desired Constantinople, never proved a very helpful ally, the measures taken by Great Britain seriously interfered with Napoleon's schemes, and, before he had subjugated Spain, first Austria in 1809 and then Russia in 1812 offered an active resistance to his projects. The first note of opposition to Napoleon's plans was struck by Canning, when in 1807 he carried off the Danish fleet to England. Then the British fleet conveyed to Brazil in safety the Portuguese royal family when Portugal was invaded by Junot, while the surrender of 30,000 French troops at Baylen in July 1808, which was followed in August by the convention of Cintra, indicated that Spanish patriotism was, when roused, as effective as in the days of the Spanish Succession War. Austria was the first country to follow the example of Spain, and though she was defeated at Wagram and forced to accept Napoleon's hard terms, the national feeling aroused in Germany in 1809 rapidly developed. But Napoleon was apparently unconscious of the growth and importance of a national sentiment in any of the subject countries. In 1810 he had married Marie Louise of Austria, on the 20th of March 1811 a son was born to him, and he now seems to have resolved upon the establishment of a strictly hereditary empire with Paris its capital and Rome its second city. In extent, his empire would be vaster than that of Charlemagne, and the pope was to be completely subordinate to the emperor. This conception of the establishment of a reformed Holy Roman Empire with its centre at Paris did not appear unrealizable in 1811 when everything seemed to favour the new Charlemagne. Napoleon's power was apparently securely established, and during the years 1810 and 1811 he was again returning to his vast oriental designs. A sudden check, however, was about to be placed upon his ambitious schemes.

The triumph of "nationality."

The establishment of French influence in Italy and Germany had stirred up in both countries a national feeling, the growth of which was encouraged by the example of Spain. No greater mistake was ever made by Napoleon than when, ignoring the strength of the Spanish resistance, and the development of a national movement in Germany, he resolved to enter upon the Russian campaign and to march to Moscow. Unconsciously Napoleon "had called into vigorous life the forces of Democracy and Nationality in Germany and Italy." The failure of the Moscow campaign led at once to a national rising in Prussia, and as soon as Austria had united her forces with those of Prussia and Russia, the overthrow of Napoleon at Leipzig in October 1813 was the result, and "the imperial yoke was shaken from the neck of the German people." Napoleon's wars had roused feelings of patriotism in Italy, Germany, Russia and Spain. It was at least realized by the nations of continental Europe, what had long been apparent to Englishmen, that a nation to be strong must be united. To "the subversive cosmopolitanism" of the French Revolution was now opposed the modern idea of nationality, against which the Napoleonic legions hurled themselves in vain. (See NAPOLEON I.; NAPOLEONIC CAMPAIGNS; FRENCH REVOLUTION; ALEXANDER I, EMPEROR OF RUSSIA; METTERNICH.) (A. Hl.)

Reconstruction of Europe.

Congress of Vienna, 1814-1815.

The downfall of Napoleon involved that of the political system of Europe which he had constructed. The changes wrought by the revolutionary period in the old states system were, however, too profound to admit of any attempt at a complete restoration, even had the interests of the allied powers been consistent with such a course. The object of the four great powers in whose hands the settlement of Europe now lay, was rather, after taking precautions to confine France within her "legitimate boundaries," to arrange such a "just equilibrium" in Europe that no individual state should for the future be in a position to overset the balance of power. The first object was to be attained by the re-establishment of the ancient dynasty in France, as a guarantee to Europe against a renewal of the revolutionary propaganda; the second was the work of the congress of Vienna, by which, between September 1814 and June 1815, the reconstruction of Europe was taken in hand. The opening of the congress, in which for the first time all Europe seemed to be united for the friendly settlement of common interests, was hailed as the dawn of a new era. In a sense it was so; but hardly in the manner nor to the degree that some had hoped. In its councils the arts of the old diplomacy, still inspired by the traditional principles or lack of principles, were directed to the old ends; and the world, as though the popular upheaval of the Revolution had never been, was treated as real estate to be parcelled out by the executors of Napoleon's empire among sovereigns by divine right, regardless of the wishes of the populations, which figured in the protocols merely as numbers to be balanced and bartered one against the other.

This process of "dividing the spoils," as Gentz called it, was naturally pregnant with possibilities of quarrels. Of these the most dangerous was that provoked by the resolution of the emperor Alexander I. at all costs to keep the former grand-duchy of Warsaw for himself, while compensating Prussia for the loss of some of her Polish territories by the annexation to her of all Saxony. The deadlock caused by the stubborn insistence on this plan, which the other great powers were equally determined to frustrate, all but led to war, and by a secret treaty signed on the 3rd of January 1815, Great Britain, France, and Austria agreed to make common cause in that event against Russia and Prussia. It needed Napoleon's return from Elba (March 1815) to remind the powers that their particular interests must still be subordinated to those of Europe. The common peril restored the broken harmony; and while the armies of the Alliance were closing in for the final struggle with the French emperor, the congress hurried on its deliberations, and on the 9th of June 1815, a few days before the battle of Waterloo, by which Napoleon's power was finally shattered, the Final Act, embodying the treaties of Vienna, was signed.

Territorial adjustments of the Vienna treaties.

The territorial arrangements thus effected were for half a century the basis of the states system of Europe, and the treaties in which they were defined the charter of international relations. It was in central Europe, where Napoleon's policy had most profoundly affected the pre-revolutionary system, that the greatest changes were made. No attempt, indeed, was made to restore the Holy Roman Empire, in spite of the protest of the pope against the failure to re-establish "the centre of political unity"; but the Confederation of the Rhine having come to an end, Germany was reconstituted as a confederation of sovereign states, in which all the former members of the Empire which had survived the revolutionary epoch found a place (see GERMANY). Austria, in virtue of the imperial tradition of the house of Habsburg, received the presidency of the federal diet; but the bulk of her territories lay outside the frontiers of the Confederation, and the non-German character of the Habsburg monarchy was accentuated by the other arrangements at the congress. In Italy Lombardo-Venetia was erected into a kingdom under the Austrian crown; while the dynastic settlements in the other Italian states tended to make Austrian influence supreme in the peninsula (see ITALY). In return for this, Austria surrendered her claim to her former possessions in the Low Countries, which were annexed to the crown of Holland, so as to form, under the title of the United Netherlands, an efficient barrier to French aggression northwards. The function of defender of Germany on the Rhine frontier which Austria thus abandoned was assigned to Prussia, an arrangement pregnant with momentous issues. In compensation for her disappointment in the matter of Saxony, half of which was ultimately restored to the dynasty of Wettin, she received a large accession of territory in the Rhine provinces, carved partly out of the suppressed kingdom of Westphalia, partly out of the former ecclesiastical states, and comprising the imperial city of Aix-la-Chapelle and the former electorate of Cologne. To Prussia also was conceded the right to garrison the federal fortress of Luxemburg.

Of the other German states, Bavaria, which alone was sufficiently powerful to be of any great importance in the general affairs of Europe, reaped the reward of her timely defection from the cause of her protector Napoleon. She had, indeed, to restore to Austria the territories annexed to her at the expense of the Habsburg monarchy by the French emperor: Tirol, the Quarters of the Inn and of the Hausruck, and part of Salzburg. But she received ample compensation elsewhere, notably the former Bavarian Palatinate with a strip of territory to connect it with Bavaria proper. The right to garrison the federal fortress of Mainz was also ultimately conceded to her. Bavaria was thus placed in a position to continue her traditional policy of aiming at the position of a European great power and holding the balance between Austria and Prussia (see BAVARIA: _History_). The two other German states whose elevation to kingdoms had symbolized a similar ambition, Saxony and Wuerttemberg, were henceforth relegated to a position of third-rate importance; Saxony depended for her very existence on the rivalry of her more powerful neighbours: Wuerttemberg protested in vain against the dictatorship of the great powers to which she was forced to submit. Finally, the electorate of Hanover, partly out of compliment to the king of Great Britain, partly because with the abolition of the Holy Empire the title elector had fallen obsolete, was elevated to a kingdom. The request of the elector of Hesse for a similar concession in his case was refused by the powers assembled at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818.

Of great importance were the changes effected in the north and east of Europe. The affairs of the Ottoman empire, which the treaty of Bucharest (1812) between Russia and Turkey had left in a very unsatisfactory condition, were not dealt with by the congress, in spite of the efforts of Great Britain to bring them into discussion. But the concessions made to the emperor Alexander elsewhere represented a notable advance in the European position of Russia. The possession of Finland, conquered from the Swedes in 1808, was confirmed to her; and, above all, the erection of the former grand-duchy of Warsaw into a constitutional kingdom of Poland under the Russian crown not only thrust the Muscovite power like a wedge into the heart of Germany, but seemed to threaten the Polish possessions of Austria and Prussia by setting up a quasi-independent Poland as a centre of attraction to the scattered elements of the Polish nation; though in the sequel the establishment of the city of Cracow and its territory as an independent republic, to avoid the difficult question of its assignment elsewhere, proved a more fruitful source of nationalist unrest. In the north the settlement confirmed by the congress marked the definite withdrawal of the Scandinavian Powers from any active influence on the affairs of the continent. Alone of the _parvenu_ monarchs of the Napoleonic age Bernadotte retained the crown of Sweden, to which, by the treaty of Kiel, that of Norway had been added. On the other hand, by the cession of Swedish Pomerania to Prussia, Sweden finally withdrew from the southern shores of the Baltic. The Scandinavian states ceased henceforth to play any determining part in European politics. In the south, on the other hand, the restoration of Savoy and Piedmont to Victor Emmanuel I., king of Sardinia, and the incorporation in his dominions of the territories of the former republic of Genoa, were factors pregnant with mighty issues. The object of this increase of the power of the house of Savoy was but to erect a barrier against any possible renewal of French aggression in Italy; in effect it established the nucleus of the power which was to struggle successfully with Austria for the hegemony of Italy.

The gains of Great Britain in Europe were comparatively small, though by no means unimportant. By the retention of Malta she secured her power in the Mediterranean, and this was further increased by the treaty of Paris (November 5, 1815), by which the powers recognized her protectorate over the Ionian Islands. (See VIENNA, CONGRESS OF.)

The powers and France.

But for the episode of the Hundred Days, France would have emerged from the congress with recovered prestige and mistress of at least some of the territorial gains of the revolutionary wars; though Napoleon had thrown away, during the negotiations at Chatillon, the chance of preserving for her her "natural frontiers" of the Rhine, the Alps and the Pyrenees. After Napoleon's second downfall she was in serious danger of dismemberment, for which the German powers clamoured as essential to their safety. That Louis XVIII. continued to rule over the territories "handed down to him by his ancestors" was due to the magnanimity, or policy, of the emperor Alexander I. (q.v.), and the commonsense of Castlereagh and Wellington, who saw well that the "just equilibrium," which it was their object to establish, could not be secured if France were unduly weakened, and that peace could never be preserved if the French people were left to smart under a sense of permanent injury. By the second peace of Paris, signed on the 20th of November 1815, France retained her traditional boundaries. The unsatisfied ambition to secure her "national frontiers" was to bear troublesome fruit later.

That the treaties embodied in the Final Act of Vienna represented a settlement of all outstanding questions was believed by nobody. They had been negotiated for weary months in an atmosphere of diplomatic and feminine intrigue; they had been concluded in a hurry, under the influence of the panic caused by Napoleon's return from Elba. To Friedrich von Gentz they were at best but "partial arrangements," useful as forming an authoritative basis for the establishment of a more complete and satisfactory system. The history of the international politics of Europe for the years immediately succeeding the congress of Vienna is that of the attempt to establish such a system.

Treaty of Nov. 20, 1815, and the Concert of Europe.

The Holy Alliance.

England and the Concert.

After a quarter of a century of almost ceaseless wars, what Europe needed above all things was peace and time to recuperate. This conviction was common to all the powers who had inherited Napoleon's dictatorship in Europe; but on the question of the method by which peace should be secured, and the principles which should guide their action, a fateful divergence of view soon became apparent within their councils. All were agreed that France still represented the storm centre of Europe; and a second treaty, signed on the 20th of November 1815, renewed the provisions of the treaty of Chaumont, in view of any fresh outburst of the French revolutionary spirit. But the new treaty went further. By its 6th article it was declared that "in order to consolidate the intimate tie that unites the four sovereigns for the happiness of the world, the High Contracting Powers have agreed to renew at fixed intervals ... meetings consecrated to great common objects and to the examination of such measures as at each of these epochs shall be judged most salutary for the peace and prosperity of the nations and for the maintenance of the peace of Europe." This was the formal charter of the concert of the great powers by which for the next seven years Europe was governed, a concert to which the name "Holy Alliance" has been commonly but erroneously applied. The Holy Alliance, drawn up by the emperor Alexander I., and signed by him, the emperor Francis, and King Frederick William III. of Prussia on the 26th of September 1815, represented a different and conflicting ideal. Actually it was not a treaty at all, but at best a declaration of principles to which any Christian could subscribe, at worst--to quote Castlereagh--"a piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense" from the political point of view (see HOLY ALLIANCE). It gained its sole political importance from the persistent efforts of the tsar and his ministers to replace the committee of the great powers, established by the treaty of the 20th of November, by a "Universal Union" of all the powers, great and small, who had signed the Holy Alliance, and thus to establish that "Confederation of Europe" of which the autocratic idealist had borrowed the conception from the theorists of the 18th century (see ALEXANDER I., emperor of Russia). It was clear from the first that any attempt to set up such a central government of Europe under a "universal guarantee" would imperil the independence of the sovereign states; and from the first Great Britain, represented by Castlereagh, protested against it. She would consent to take common action on the basis of the treaties she had actually signed, consulting with her allies on each case as it arose; but to vague and general engagements she refused to commit herself. The attitude of Austria and Prussia was from the outset less clear. Metternich was torn between dread of revolution and dread of Russia; the Holy Alliance, though essentially "verbiage," might be useful in holding the imperial Jacobin in check; the "universal guarantee" could not but be discouraging to the "sects"; on the other hand, the extreme willingness of the tsar to march 200,000 Russians for any "European" purpose in any direction convenient or inconvenient to Austria, was--to say the least--disconcerting. Frederick William III., on the other hand, though he too had signed the Holy Alliance with reluctance, in moments of panic saw in the "universal guarantee" his best defence against the renewed attack by France which was his nightmare. In effect, owing to the firm attitude of Castlereagh at the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, "the transparent soul of the Holy Alliance" never received a body, though attempts were subsequently made at the congresses of Troppau, Laibach and Verona to apply some of its supposed principles--attempts that led to the definitive breach of Great Britain with the Alliance.

Congress of Aix-la-Chappell, 1818

The highwater-mark of the activity of the Allies as a central government for Europe was reached at the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (q.v.) in 1818. France was now admitted to the Alliance, the objects of which were reaffirmed by a public declaration to which she adhered; but at the same time a secret treaty renewed the compact of Chaumont between the four other powers. Certain questions outstanding from the congress of Vienna were referred for settlement to a ministerial conference to meet at Frankfort in the following year. The treaty which was the result of this conference was signed on the 20th of July 1819. The bulk of it was concerned with territorial settlements in Germany: between Austria and Bavaria, and Bavaria and Baden; but some of the articles arranged for the cession of the border fortresses Philippeville and Mariembourg to the Netherlands, defined the frontiers of Savoy, and settled the reversion of the Italian duchies held by the empress Marie Louise.

Alexander I. of Russia and Metternich.

Congress and protocol of Troppau, 1820.

Meanwhile the balance of forces within the European concert had shown a tendency to shift. At the outset the restless activity of the emperor Alexander, his incalculable idealism, and his hardly veiled ambitions had drawn Austria and Great Britain together in common suspicion of an influence that threatened to be little less disturbing to the world's peace than that of Napoleon. But at Aix Metternich had begun to realize that, in the long-run, the system of repression which he held to be essential to the stability of the European, and above all of the Austrian, polity would receive little effective aid from Great Britain, fettered as she was by constitutional forms; while Alexander, alarmed at the discovery of revolutionary plots against his person, had already shown gratifying signs of repentance. The "Jacobin" propaganda of the tsar's agents continued, it is true, especially in Italy; and, in spite of the murder of the dramatist Kotzebue, as a Russian emissary, by the fanatical "Bursche" Karl Sand, Alexander joined with Castlereagh in protesting against the reactionary policy embodied in the Carlsbad Decrees of October 1819. But the murder of the duke of Berri on the 13th of February 1820 completed the Russian autocrat's "conversion." At the congress of Troppau, which met in the autumn of the same year, he was a "changed man," committed henceforth heart and soul to Metternich and his policy. The outcome of this new understanding was the famous Troppau Protocol, published to the world on the 19th of November 1820, and signed by Austria, Prussia and Russia. The immediate occasion of this manifesto was the military insurrection, under General Pepe, at Naples, by which the Spanish constitution of 1812 had been forced on the king (see NAPLES: _History_). But the protocol embodied a general principle involving issues infinitely more important than any arising out of this particular question. "States which have undergone a change of government due to revolution," it declared, "the results of which threaten other states, _ipso facto_ cease to be members of the European alliance, and remain excluded from it till their situation gives guarantees for legal order and stability. If, owing to such alterations, immediate danger threatens other states, the powers bind themselves, by peaceful means, or if need be by arms, to bring back the guilty state into the bosom of the Great Alliance."

This was, in effect, an attempt to apply the principle of the Carlsbad Decrees to all the world; and, had the attempt succeeded, all Europe would have been turned into a confederation on the model of that of Germany; for a political alliance, charged with the safeguarding of the territorial settlement defined by treaty, would have been substituted a central diet of the great powers, armed with undefined authority; and the sovereign independence of the nations would have been at an end. To any such principle, and therefore to the protocol in which it was embodied, Great Britain offered an uncompromising opposition. In vain Metternich urged upon Castlereagh that the protocol was but the logical conclusion drawn from premises to which he was already committed; for, if the alliance was to be effective in maintaining peace, it must interfere wherever and whenever peace should be threatened, and therefore to crush internal revolutions which could not but have an external result. The logic was perfect; the proposition that on which every "project of peace" must eventually break. Castlereagh's reply was, in brief, that Great Britain could never admit a principle which she would not in any circumstances allow to be applied in her own case.

First rift in the alliance.

Congress of Laibach, 1821.

The absence of the signatures of Great Britain and France from the Troppau protocol marked the first rift in the alliance, a rift that was soon to develop into a breach. For the time, indeed, the crack was "papered over." Castlereagh was prepared to leave Austria a free hand to deal with the risings in Naples and Piedmont, since she had treaty rights in the former case and her interests, as an Italian power, were threatened in both. Great Britain was even represented at the congress which reassembled at Laibach in January 1821, though Lord Stewart, the ambassador at Vienna, was not armed with full powers. Castlereagh had approved of the invitation sent to the king of Naples to attend the congress, as implying "negotiation," an improvement on the dictatorial attitude of the protocol. But everything in the conferences tended still further to shatter the unstable foundations of the alliance. Capo d'Istria, as though the debates of Aix-la-Chapelle had never been, raised once more the spectre of the "Universal Union" which Castlereagh believed he had laid for ever. Metternich, anxious to prove to the Italian Liberals that the tsar was no longer their friend, welcomed the demonstration, and Prussia followed obediently in Austria's wake. "It is clear," wrote Lord Stewart, "that a Triple Understanding has been created which binds the parties to carry forward their own views in spite of any difference of opinion which may exist between them and the two great constitutional governments." (See TROPPAU and LAIBACH.)

Effect of revolution in Spain.

Congress of Verona, 1822.

But the narrower "Holy Alliance" of the three autocratic monarchies, as opposed to the two western constitutional monarchies, was not in fact destined to take shape till after the Paris revolution of 1830. Several factors delayed the process, notably the revolt of the Greeks against the Ottoman rule, and the Spanish question, which latter formed the main subject of discussion at the congress of Verona in 1822. In the Eastern Question the interests of Austria and Great Britain were identical; both desired to maintain the integrity of Turkey; both saw that this integrity was in the greatest peril owing to the possible intervention of the Orthodox tsar in favour of his co-religionists in revolt; and both agreed that the best means of preventing such intervention was to bind the Russian emperor to the European concert by using his devotion to the principles of the Holy Alliance. At Verona, however, the Eastern question was entirely overshadowed by that of Spain, and in this matter the views of Great Britain were diametrically opposed to those of the other powers of the alliance. She shared indeed with France and Austria the strenuous objection to the emperor Alexander's proposal to march 150,000 Russians into Piedmont in order to deal with Jacobinism whether in France or Spain; but she protested equally strenuously against the counter-proposal of France, which was ultimately adopted, that a French army should march into Spain to liberate the king from his constitutional fetters in the name of Europe. George Canning, carrying on the tradition of Castlereagh, once more protested, through Wellington, as British plenipotentiary at the congress, against the whole principle of intervention; and when, in spite of the British protest, the other powers persisted, the breach of Great Britain with the continental alliance was proclaimed to all the world. When, on the 7th of April 1823, the French army under the duke of Angouleme crossed the Bidassoa, the great experiment of governing Europe through a central committee of the great powers was at an end. (See VERONA, CONGRESS OF; ALEXANDER I.; LONDONDERRY, ROBERT STEWART, 2ND MARQUESS OF; CANNING, GEORGE.)

End of the "Confederation of Europe."

Principle of nationality.

Henceforth, though the treaties survived, and with them the principle of the concert on which they were based, "Europe" as a diplomatic conception tends to sink into the background and to be replaced by the old international anarchy of the 18th century. To Canning this development seemed wholly welcome. He applied to the rivalry of states the Liberal principle of free competition as the sole condition of healthy growth. "Villele is a minister of thirty years ago," he wrote to Bagot on the 3rd of January 1823, "no revolutionary scoundrel: but constitutionally hating England, as Choiseul and Vergennes used to hate us, and so things are getting back to a wholesome state again. Every nation for itself, and God for us all." But the essential difference between the rivalries of the 18th and 19th centuries was in the conception of the "nation." To Canning, as to the diplomatists of the congress of Vienna, "nation" was synonymous with "state," and national boundaries were those defined by the treaties, which Canning was as bent on preserving as any of his reactionary contemporaries. The conception of the divine right of every nationality to readjust political frontiers to suit its own ideals was as foreign to him as to Metternich. Yet this principle of nationality, which was destined during the 19th century to wreck the political structure consecrated at Vienna, and to leave to the succeeding age a host of unsolved and insoluble problems, found in Canning its earliest champion in the higher councils of Europe. The recognition of the independence of the South American republics and of the belligerent rights of the Greek insurgents were both in the first instance motived by the particular interests of Great Britain; but they were none the less hailed as concessions to the principles of nationality, to which they gave an impetus which was destined to continue till the face of Europe had been transformed.

Europe and the revolt of Greece.

Economic progress; rise of the middle classes.

Revolutions of 1830.

This in fact constitutes the main significance for Europe of the War of Greek Independence, which lasted from the first rising of the Greeks in the Morea in 1821 till the signature of the treaty of London on the 7th of May 1832 (see GREEK INDEPENDENCE, WAR OF; TURKEY: _History_). Its actual outcome, so far as the political structure of Europe was concerned, was but to add an insignificant kingdom to the European states system. But its moral effect was immense. The sacrosanctity of the _status quo_ had been violated, and violated with the active aid of three of the powers of the continental alliance: Russia, France and Great Britain. Metternich was right when he said that, in principle, there was no difference between the Greek insurgents and any other "rebels against legitimate authority," and the Liberals of all Europe, forced into inactivity by the Austrian police system, hailed in the Greeks the champions of their own cause. Philhellenism, beyond its proper enthusiasm, served as a convenient veil for agitations that had little concern with Greece. Other forces making for political change were simultaneously at work. The peace secured by the concert of the powers had given free play to the mechanical and industrial innovations that heralded the marvellous economic revolution of the coming age; wealth increased rapidly, and with it the influence and the ambition of the middle classes. The revolution of July 1830, which established the _bourgeois_ monarchy in France, marked their first triumph. In countries less economically advanced, e.g. Germany and Italy, the attempt to follow French example ended in failure; but the revolt of the Belgians, for reasons partly economic and partly national, against the domination of the Dutch, resulted in the establishment of the independent kingdom of Belgium--the first actual breach in the territorial settlement of 1815. In Great Britain the agitation of the disfranchised middle classes, which seemed to threaten a violent revolution, ended in 1832 in the passing of the Reform Bill and their admission to political power. (See FRANCE; GERMANY; ITALY; BELGIUM; ENGLISH HISTORY.)

The easy success of the revolutions in the west of Europe had been due, not to any reluctance of the reactionary powers to interfere on the basis of the old agreements, but to their preoccupation with the national revolt in Poland (q.v.). In view of this, and of the attitude of Great Britain, they had to recognize the title of Louis Philippe as king of the French, merely stipulating that he should guarantee to maintain the treaties. In spite of the overthrow of the legitimate dynasty in France, and of the partition of the kingdom of the Netherlands, the territorial settlement of Vienna remained, after the revolution of 1830, substantially intact. Outside the limits of the treaties, however, fateful changes were in progress. These were determined, broadly speaking, by the two main questions that dominated international politics between the years 1831 and 1841: (1) the antagonism between the western constitutional powers, France and Great Britain, and the eastern autocratic powers, Russia, Austria and Prussia; and (2) the crisis in the Eastern question resulting from the revolt of Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt, against the Porte.

Anglo-French "entente."

The strained relations between Great Britain and France, resulting from the French policy of aggression in the Spanish peninsula, which had more than once brought the two powers to the verge of war, had been eased before the fall of the government of Charles X. The peril of a French hegemony over the vast colonial empire of Spain had been forestalled by Canning's recognition of the independence of the South American republics; the intrigues of France in favour of the partisans of Dom Miguel in Portugal had been checkmated by a politic breach, on behalf of the Portuguese Liberals, of the British principle of non-intervention, and finally the chief cause of offence had been removed, in 1827, by the withdrawal of the French army of occupation from Spain. In the Greek question the two powers had acted cordially in concert; and this good understanding even the French conquest of Algiers in 1830, which laid the foundations of the French empire in Africa, had not availed to shatter; for the eyes of the Tory ministry were still fixed on France as the potential focus of revolutionary propaganda, and any over-sea possessions she might acquire were, in Wellington's opinion, so many hostages for her good behaviour given to British sea-power. The results of the July revolution in Paris were accepted by Great Britain so soon as it became clear that Louis Philippe stood for peace and not for revolutionary aggression; the armed intervention of France in favour of the Belgians in August 1831 was stopped by the firm language of Palmerston; the French occupation of Ancona, as a countermove to Austrian aggressions in Italy, was accepted as "an incident of the balance of power"; and the intention of the king of the French to abide by the treaties, which became clearer with the consolidation of his power at home, paved the way for that _entente_ between the two Liberal powers which lasted until 1840.

The constitutional v. the autocratic powers.

The Eastern question, Mehemet Ali.

Conventions of Muenchengraetz and Berlin, 1833.

The cleavage between the fundamental principles of the two groups of autocratic and constitutional powers was not only apparent in their general attitude towards constitutional and national movements, but affected also the position taken up by them during the crisis of the Eastern question evoked by the revolt of Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt, a crisis by which between 1839 and 1841 all other diplomatic issues were overshadowed. (See MEHEMET ALI.) During the Greek revolt the efforts of Austria had been directed to preventing a Russian attack upon Turkey; these efforts had failed, and Metternich's worst fears seemed to be realized when the Russo-Turkish campaigns of 1828-29 issued in the treaty of Adrianople (September 14, 1829) and the apparently complete vassalage of the sultan to the tsar. But when, in 1832, Sultan Mahmud appealed in his despair to the emperor Nicholas to save him from ruin at the hands of the Egyptian rebels, and, as the result, the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi (July 8, 1833) seemed to place definitely in the hands of Russia the keys of the Black Sea, it was left to France and Great Britain to give voice to the protest of Europe. Austria, alarmed by the revolutionary movements of 1830, accepted the fact of Russian preponderance at Constantinople, rather than risk a breach with the autocrat who was now the main pillar of the Holy Alliance. The emperor Nicholas, for his part, was equally prepared to surrender some of his ambitions in the East for the sake of the common cause, the more so since to Russian statesmen the maintenance of Turkey in a condition of weakness and dependence now seemed preferable to any attempt to break it up. The result of these dispositions was the convention of Muenchengraetz (September 18, 1833) between Russia, Austria and Prussia, by which the three powers undertook to guarantee the integrity of the Ottoman empire. In the following month a secret convention was signed at Berlin between the same powers (October 15), reaffirming the right of the powers to intervene in the internal affairs of a friendly state at the request of its legitimate sovereign, a right with which no third power would be allowed to interfere, such interference to be regarded by the three powers as an act of hostility directed against all of them.

The Tsar Nicholas I. and Palmerston.

Affairs of Spain and Portugal. Quadruple Alliance of 1834.

This reconstitution of the "Holy Alliance" on a narrower basis was the work of the emperor Nicholas, whose masterful personality had by this time quite overshadowed the influence of Metternich in the councils of the autocratic powers. There was no formal breach of the Grand Alliance; the "treaties" remained in force; but the French revolution of 1830 had produced a practical disruption which was every day accentuated by the attitude of the British government under the influence of Palmerston. For Palmerston had now become "the firebrand of Europe," openly proclaiming his contempt for international law and equally openly posing as the protector of "oppressed nationalities." "If these two powers (France and England)," wrote the tsar to King Frederick William of Prussia, "have the courage to profess loudly rebellion and the overturn of all stability, we ought to have the right and the courage to support Divine right." This deep cleavage of principles was immediately exhibited in the attitude of the powers towards the troubles in the Spanish peninsula. In September 1833 Ferdinand VII. of Spain died, and, under the Pragmatic Sanction, his daughter Isabella succeeded under the regency of Queen Christina; in July, Dom Miguel, the absolutist pretender to the throne of Portugal, had made himself master of Lisbon. In Spain Don Carlos, Ferdinand's brother, claimed the crown as the legitimate heir, and began the long agony of the Carlist wars; in Portugal the constitutionalists upheld in arms the rights of Queen Maria da Gloria (see SPAIN and PORTUGAL). Carlists and Miguelists, making common cause, had the moral support of the allies of Muenchengraetz; while France and Great Britain took the side of the Liberals. A formal alliance between the two western powers, proposed by Talleyrand, was indeed refused by Palmerston, who had no wish to commit Great Britain to an irrevocable breach with Austria and Russia, and was suspicious of the ambitions of France in Spain; but ultimately a triple alliance between Great Britain, Spain and Portugal---with the object of restoring order in the peninsula--was converted, under pressure from the French government, into the Quadruple Alliance of the 22nd of April 1834.

Nicholas I. and Great Britain.

Breach of Anglo-French "entente" 1840.

The _entente_ implied by this formal instrument was, however, more apparent than real. When, in the spring of 1835, Queen Christina applied to the Allies for help against a renewed Carlist rising, Palmerston's suspicions were again aroused by the somewhat naive suggestion of Thiers that France should once more intervene as in 1823, a suggestion that was firmly rejected. Palmerston's counter-proposal of an English expedition met with as little favour in Paris. The Anglo-French _entente_ was proving but a "cardboard alliance," as Wellington called it; and the emperor Nicholas, to whom the existence of Louis Philippe as king of the French was at once a sacrilege and a menace, began with a good hope to work for its destruction. The fears roused by the Reform Act of 1832 had been belied by its results; the conservative temper of the British electorate had restored to Great Britain the prestige of a legitimate power; and the pledge of the tsar's renewed confidence and goodwill was the visit of the cesarevich (afterwards the emperor Alexander II.) to the English court in 1839. This was not without its effect on the public sentiment; but the triumph of the tsar's diplomacy was due to fresh complications in the Eastern question, due to the renewed effort of Sultan Mahmud to crush the hated viceroy of Egypt. These events will be found outlined in the article MEHEMET ALI. Here it will suffice to say that the convention of London of the 15th of July 1840, signed by Great Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia without calling France into counsel, marked the definite breach of the Anglo-French _entente_, a breach which was but imperfectly healed by the Straits' Convention signed by all the powers on the 13th of July 1841.

Great Britain and France.

The Straits' Convention was hailed by Count Nesselrode, the Russian foreign secretary, as having re-established "the federative system of the European states on its old basis." This was true, in so far as it created yet another precedent for the concerted action of the European powers, and once more consecrated the right of "Europe" to decide in common on questions of first-rate international importance. But the divergence of interests and principles within the concert were too great to be healed by the settlement of a single issue, however important, and this divergence increased as events moved towards the revolutionary outbreaks of 1848. When, in 1846, the independent republic of Cracow was suppressed by agreement of the three autocratic powers, on the ground that it had become a dangerous centre of revolutionary agitation, it was Great Britain and France that protested against an arbitrary infraction of the treaties by the very governments which had laid the greatest stress upon their sanctity. The _entente_ between the two Liberal powers had been patched up after the closure of the Egyptian Question; it was cemented by visits of Queen Victoria and the prince consort to the Chateau d'Eu (1843 and 1845), and of King Louis Philippe to Windsor (1844); and it survived, in spite of several causes of friction, notably the crisis in Morocco (q.v.), until 1846, when the affair of the Spanish Marriages brought it to a somewhat dramatic conclusion.

The "Spanish Marriages."

The "February Revolution," 1848.

The attempt to secure the succession to the Spanish throne for his descendants by pressing on the marriage of the duke of Montpensier with the infanta Luisa, before that of the young queen Isabella had been proved to be fruitful in children, was on the part of Louis Philippe more than a breach of faith with Great Britain (how deeply it was resented may be learnt from Queen Victoria's letters); it was a breach of faith with the revolution that had made him king. Since 1840, indeed, the whole tendency of the king's policy had been to revert to the traditional standpoint of the Bourbons; internally, "resistance" to the growing claims of the democracy; externally, dynastic ambition. But in endeavouring to win the goodwill of the reactionary powers he only succeeded in losing that of the classes of his own people on which his authority was based. In 1847 he joined with the three autocratic powers in supporting the clerical and reactionary _Sonderbund_ in Switzerland, in defiance of the protests of Great Britain and the attitude of the majority of Frenchmen. When, in February 1848, the revolution broke out in Paris, the _bourgeois_ monarchy, utterly discredited, fell without a struggle (see FRANCE and LOUIS PHILIPPE).

Revolution of 1848 outside France.

The revolution in Paris was not the cause of the political upheaval which in the year 1848 convulsed Europe from Ireland to the banks of the Danube; it had indeed been preceded by the triumph of Liberalism in Switzerland, by successful revolutions in Naples and Palermo, and by the grant of a constitution in Piedmont; but flaming up as it were in the revolutionary centre of Europe, it acted as the beacon signal for the simultaneous outbreak of movements which, though long prepared, might but for this have been detached and spasmodic. It was this simultaneity which gave to the revolutions of 1848 their European character and their formidable force. They were the outcome of various, dissimilar and sometimes contradictory impulses--political, social, racial. In France the issue resolved itself into a struggle between the new working-class ideal of Socialism and the _bourgeois_ ideal of the great Revolution; in England the Chartist movement presented, in a less degree, the same character; in Germany, in the Austrian empire, in Italy, on the other hand, the dominant motives were constitutional and nationalist, and of these two the latter became in the end the determining factor. The events of the different revolutions are described elsewhere (see FRANCE; AUSTRIA; GERMANY; HUNGARY; ITALY). From the point of view of Europe such unity as they possessed was due to their being, so far as Central Europe was concerned, directed against the system of "stability" associated with the name Metternich. In hatred of this system German, Czech, Magyar, and Italian were united; Kossuth's great speech of the 3rd of March echoed far beyond the frontiers of Hungary; the fall of Metternich (March 13) was a victory, not only for the populace of Vienna, but for all the peoples and races which had worn the Austrian fetters. It was the signal for revolutions in Hungary (the passing of the "March Laws"), in Bohemia, in Prussia (March 15), in Milan; on the 23rd of March, Charles Albert of Sardinia, placing himself at the head of the Italian national movement, declared war against Austria. Against a movement so widespread and apparently inspired by a common purpose the governments were powerless. The collapse of the Austrian administration, of which the inherent rottenness was now revealed, involved that of those reactionary powers which had leaned upon it. One by one they accepted what seemed to be the inevitable; even Pope Pius IX. sent troops to fight under the banner of St Peter for the Italian cause; while in Berlin Frederick William IV., wrapped in the gold and black colours of imperial Germany, posed as the leader of "the glorious German revolution." When, on the 18th of May, the parliament of United Germany was opened at Frankfort, it seemed as though pan-German dreams were on the threshold of realization; while in Italy, early in the same month, Lombardy, Modena, Parma and Piacenza declared by plebiscites for incorporation in the north Italian kingdom, Venice following suit on the 4th of June. A profound modification of the European states system seemed inevitable.

Causes of the failure of the revolutionary movements.