Gornell University Library Dthaca, New York BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 Cornell Universi Tea PALMERSTON AND THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, MANAGER LONDON : FETTER LANE, E.C. 4 NEW YORK : G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS BOMBAY cancur | MACMILLAN AND CO., Lrp. MADRAS TORONTO: J. M. DENT AND SONS, Lp. TOKYO: MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PALMERSTON AND THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION A DISSERTATION WHICH WAS AWARDED THE PRINCE CONSORT PRIZE 1914 BY CHARLES SPROXTON, B.A., M.C. CAPTAIN, YORKSHIRE REGIMENT FELLOW OF PETERHOUSE CAMBRIDGE _ AT. THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1gr9 PREFATORY NOTE | THE PRINCE Consort Prize (founded in 1883 from the Prince Consort Memorial Fund) was awarded in 1914 to Arthur William Tedder, B.A. of Magdalene, and Charles Sproxton, B.A. of Peterhouse. Charles Sproxton’s Dissertation, which follows, has been printed, in accordance with the Regulations, at the expense of the University. But the Syndics of the Press have kindly allowed a Memoir of Captain Sproxton, contributed to The Cambridge Review by his tutor and friend, Captain H. W. V. Temperley, Fellow of his College, to be prefixed to the Essay, and I have added a few biographical data. The Syndics have, also, allowed the reproduction of an excellent photograph of | our late Junior Fellow, found among his books, which have been placed as a memorial of him in our College Library. We have to thank the Editor of The Cambridge Review for allowing the reprint of the Memoir. And I desire also to express my ‘gratitude to Dr J. Holland Rose, University Reader in Modern History, who acted as Examiner for the Prince Consort Prize in 1914, for allowing me, in looking through the Dissertation for the Press, to refer to the valuable MS notes made by him in the course of his reading it. No attempt has been made to introduce any alteration into vi PREFATORY NOTE text or footnotes, except where there could be no doubt that it would have had the immediate assent of the writer of the Essay. Even his invariable use of ‘English’ and ‘England’—where ‘British’ and ‘Great Britain’ would have been more correct— _ has not been changed. The German quotations I have thought it advisable to translate into English. More important alterations or enlargements it seemed best.to forego, so that this essay might _ remain entirely the work of the historical scholar whom we have lost and of whom it must form the only memorial in print. His friends had reason for hoping that he might have a share in the writing of the history of the present war; but he has died as one of its heroes. A. W. W. PETERHOUSE, . All Souls’ Day, 1918. CHARLES SPROXTON CHARLES, the son of Mr Arthur Sproxton, now of Lee Street, Holderness Road, Hull, and formerly of Salt End, Medon, was born in 1890, and educated at the Municipal (Boulevard) School, Hull, where he twice won the Royal Geographical Society’s Medal. He entered into residence at Peterhouse in October, 1909, with an East Riding Major Scholarship, and obtained, soon after, a College Exhibition in History, to which study he had from the first resolved to devote himself. His Tutor in History was Mr H. W. V. Temperley, Fellow and Assistant Tutor of the College. In 1911 he gained a Foundation Scholarship, and, having in the same year obtained a First Class in Part I of the Historical Tripos and followed this up with another First Class in Part II of the same Tripos in I912, graduated B.A. and was appointed a Hugo de Balsham (Research) Student of the College. He had carried off the Gladstone Memorial Prize, and in 1914 he obtained one of the Prince Consort Memorial prizes. Charles Sproxton, who was in the O.T.C. at Cambridge, received his first commission within a month after the declaration of war. He was promoted Lieutenant in Alexandra and Princess of Wales’s Own Yorkshire Regiment in April, 1915, and Captain in June, 1916. He was twice wounded—in May, 1915 and in June, 1916—and was mentioned in despatches. in November, I9g15, having previously received the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry and resource, viii CHARLES SPROXTON in July and August of that year, at Walverghem and near Armentiéres. He came home on sick leave in the summer of 1916, and returned to active service as Adjutant of his Battalion. He fell on July roth, 1917, at the Western Front. The younger historians have suffered as much as or more than almost any other branch of learning at Cambridge. At least it is striking to think that a small society of twelve resident members is now reduced by one half. It were an invidious task to say which of these is most missed, but certainly there was an end to bright promise of achievement when Charles Sproxton died. He was interesting because he passed through life with a sort of mild serenity, always wondering but never astonished at what it brought him. Born and bred in Yorkshire, accustomed from birth to the wild moors round his native home and to the stern objectivity of northern character, he was suddenly translated to Cambridge. He came up with a County Council Scholarship and very soon developed his- torical gifts of remarkable power. The word ‘developed’ is perhaps misleading; for his mind resembled a cave, which revealed something ‘that was hidden, if you penetrated it in the right way. He did not give the teacher the idea of developing intellect or imagination, but of revealing it. His power of observation was not trained or expanded by his study—study simply enabled scales to fall from his eyes. He obtained a first in both parts of the Historical Tripos, and was Hugo de -Balsham Research Scholar at Peterhouse, Gladstone and Prince Consort Prizeman and finally Fellow of his College. There was a sort of mild inevitability about CHARLES SPROXTON ix his success which surprised those who did not know him well, but which his friends perfectly understood. His characteristics were those of a nature shy and retiring to outward view, but intense and imaginative within. The freedom and joy of college life appealed to him, for he breathed an air and a life which he had not hitherto known and to which his nature instinctively responded. In pure historical work he made his mark by a fellowship dissertation on the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, on its diplomatic side, to write which he delved deep in the records; among other things, he discovered that a German book professedly based on the British records, which ‘had deceived at least one distinguished British historian, was a forgery. His forecast was afterwards verified and accepted by the Record Office, and characteristically he neither claimed nor received . any credit for the discovery. His essay was marked by sound research, historic grasp and a real eye for diplomatic’ motive. Like all young men’s work it offered itself to criticism on some sides, but it was a study of extraordinary promise and undoubted originality. It deserves to be published and, if it is, will fill a gap in our knowledge of the Palmerstonian epoch. Yet, though he possessed rare historical attain- ments, I believe that the chief influences upon him were literary and religious. His imagination was almost medieval in its wealth and in its simplicity. Francis Thompson was his King of Poets, who had said the last word in imagery and style. Indeed this writer appealed to him in his moods of mysticism, as well as by his manner. Unquestionably his own style and thought were thus greatly influenced, and a series of sonnets which he wrote, though full of x CHARLES SPROXTON originality, bears unmistakable traces of Thompson. In the same way the Anglican Church, with its’ medieval and mystic traditions, appealed to him as did the Catholic to Thompson. Father Figgis was one of those who, both by writings and personal intercourse, had the deepest influence upon him. He was one who loved mysticism for its own sake, just as he loved style. Words which flushed and glowed or fell like music, a faith which burned and thrilled, these were part of his emotional nature. His dreamy temperament led him to pensiveness and reflection, and one hardly thought of him as capable of action. Yet those who knew him best could again have told a tale. When on a visit to the Lakes he astonished all his companions by his physical endurance, as afterwards in the trenches he bore hardships without a murmur, perhaps almost without realising that they were such. There were those, too, who heard him speak in the college societies, who knew that his nature contained un- expected fires. Those who heard it will never forget one speech, in which he spoke of Mohammedanism as ‘“‘the religion I reverence most after my own,” or a meeting at the Historical Society in which he poured scorn on the doctrine that ‘‘ nothing succeeds like success.”’ Thus it was that, when the war came, he had no doubt about his choice. He did not enlist, as some did, because it was a duty, but because he considered it a privilege. In his eyes the war was a holy one because a crusade against evil. Germany must be made to abandon for ever the unblest doc- trine that Right was Might. There is little more to tell, for the rest is, alas,: already an old story among our young men, a story of hardships cheerfully borne and bravery modestly CHARLES SPROXTON xi concealed. Though he was mentioned in despatches for gallantry and received the Military Cross, one could never get any account of the incident from him. There was still plenty of humour left in him; for instance, after he had been in hospital with jaundice, he wrote: “Trench warfare, after the Cambridge climate, is the most enervating thing I know.” Yet there was always the impatience to do something. “England is a dreary place now, and I was really pleased when my sick leave ended. I spent two happy nights in Peterhouse, but Cambridge is no more than a melancholy haunt.” It was again the old story—the overpowering emotion had made one whose natural bent was towards thought im- patient to distinguish himself by action. The Cam- bridge and the England which he loved now stood between him and France. It was in France that he wished to be, and it is France which holds him now. H. W. V. T. The Essay Palmerston and the Hungarian Revolution is based, for the most part, on the Foreign Office records in Chancery Lane; and in every case where use has been made of these records, either in paraphrase or quotation, the source is indicated in footnotes. Not a few have appeared in print before, chiefly in Government publica- tions. In such cases, reference has been made to the relevant Blue or White Books; but, where the printed copy differs materially from the MS original, I have used the latter, and as a rule noted the variation in my foot- notes. Secondary authorities have been freely employed, but not without an attempt to appraise their worth as ‘sources,’ and never without sufficient indication of the use made of them either in the text or in the footnotes. I have had no opportunity of working in ne archives either at Vienna or Buda-Pest. C. SPROXTON. PALMERSTON AND THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION | “En fait d’histoire Ceiba il ny a de vrai que ce guion n'écrit point.” Van DE WEvER. PALMERSTON AND THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION. HE men who guided the larger destinies of Europe during the ‘“‘storm-years” 1848 and 1849, were scarcely equal to the tasks which they were called upon, voluntarily or involuntarily, to accomplish; for these years do not merely bisect the century, they are its watershed. On the far side lie benevolent despotism and the state-system; on this ‘side, democracy and nationalities. The period from the Congress of Vienna to the Civic Guard of Pius IX and the Hungarian Diet of 1847 is, in a very real sense, the fine flower of the eighteenth century. Territorial frontiers may have been shifted some- what, old institutions rebaptised; but the spirit is the same: Joseph II would never have dared to do all that the Congresses did, and Guizot always speaks like a minister of Louis XV. The first French Revolution was only perceptible through the completeness of ~ the reaction; so efficaciously had the body politic been purged that, outwardly at any rate, it appeared more immuné from the revolutionary taint than it had in 1788. Then, with incredible swiftness, the house of reaction collapsed, and long flames of I—2 4 PALMERSTON AND THE rebellion shot across Europe from the Atlantic to Bessarabia, from Posen to the shores of Sicily, almost outrunning the telegraph which announced their approach. And this, to use an outworn term, is the “foundation” of modern Europe. The actors, with a few exceptions (and these chiefly south of the Alps), are not cast in a heroic mould: Viennese schoolboys, preferring a Katzenmusik by night tocarefully pruned lectures on political science at more seasonable hours ; older, but scarcely more erudite, students, proclaim- ing the divine right of a people whose history and culture they had just manufactured; the degenerate ’48 breed of sansculottes, and Magyar honveds, magni- fying some slight skirmish between outposts into a Cannae or Waterloo. This is one of the reasons why the European Revolution of 1848 will never be so well known as the French Revolution of sixty years earlier, although the judgment passed by the cautious Springer upon the March-days of Vienna holds good for the greater part of Europe, in spite of the fact that he was speaking of Austria only: We may take various views about the vitality of the new Austria which they tried to set up on the ruins of the old; but there can be no conflict of opinion that in the March-days the old Austria fell completely, justly, and for ever, and that all who have held power since 1848, without distinction, take their stand upon the Revolution!, t 1 “Ueber die Lebensfahigkeit des neuen Oesterreich, welches auf den Triimmern des alten zu errichten versucht wurde, kann man verschiedener Ansicht sein; dass aber in den Marztagen das alte Oecstevreich vollsta@ndig, mit Recht und fur immer zu Grunde ging, alle Machthaber seit 1848 ohne Unter- HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION 5 4 During such momentous times, Palmerston, alone of those who were at the head of affairs, realised fully what the contemporary phenomena meant, whence ~ they were derived, and to what profitable ends they might be utilised; he alone perceived that after the Volkerfruhling the political harvesting would not be as those that had gene before. This is not chauvin- istic over-estimation; Palmerston is indeed the out- standing figure of 1848-9, a giant among his fellows, not because his proportions are in truth gigantic when measured by the tape of world-history, but because the Ficquelmonts and Drouyn de Lhuys are so very dwarfish. The space which divides him from Pitt, the disciple from the master, is the whole dis- tance between the high-water mark of common-sense and the snow-line of genius. But the times were crying out fora little undiluted common-sense, which, © as Lamartine discovered, thay well be more fitted than genius to cope with revolution. Genius would never have made such gross miscalculations about the future as did Palmerston; but it would doubtless have dealt less vigorously with the present: short- sightedness is a virtue in some crises. ‘Palmerston, then, was not a great man; but he was the right man. Sir Stratford Canning, had he - had any gifts of oratory, would have made a better Foreign Secretary ; Schwarzenberg and Czar Nicholas were his equals as statesmen, while Lamartine and schied auf die Revolution als thre Basis fussen, dariiber herrscht kein Zwiespalt der Meinungen.’’ Springer, Geschichte Oester- veichs seit dem Wiener Frieden, vol. 11. pp. 194-6, and footnote. (Leipzig, 1865.) 6 PALMERSTON AND THE Mazzini were incomparably greater as men. And, if Palmerston judged the phenomena of his time accur- ately, and proceeded to take the steps he actually took, he was indebted to his country’s geographical position no less than to his own innate common- sense. Not seldom has the Channel proved itself more potent than the personal element as a maker of history, and but for it many a Downing Street transgressor might have died repentant. Palmerston was on the right side of the Channel for the véle he chose to play during the Revolution; and, standing outside the universal ferment, he got a better view of it. It is a comfortable pastime to read the Mene Tekel on a neighbour’s wall, to “rain homilies” at Vienna and point the moral of governmental misdeeds in Athens, when one has nothing worse to face at home than potato famines in Ireland and Chartist signa- tories who have only a parchment existence. For his interference abroad Palmerston has been censured everywhere; at home, he frightened his colleagues and was found intolerable in exalted circles, while subsequent historians, such as Spencer Walpole and Sir Theodore Martin, cannot condemn too plainly his insolence and effrontery. Abroad, of course, he is still Lord Feuerbrand, and the European “ umpire.” In the English universities we are apologetic and indignant by turns, when speaking of the English Foreign Secretary who appointed himself tutor in Weltpolitik and lecturer in international ethics. The accusation is on the whole unjust, and the worst that can be said of Palmerston is that he was no HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION / 7 diplomat in the nicer shades of the term. “In diplomacy,” said de Tocqueville, ‘‘you must always write, even when you know nothing and wish to say nothing”; and he might have added that in nine cases out of ten you must take good care that you do not say anything. That was not Palmerston’s way, and, except in rare moments of supremely correct behaviour, he usually did say something very unambiguously. Poor Lord Ponsonby, our ambas- sador at Vienna, the friend of Metternich and disciple of Talleyrand, told Lord John Russell that ‘he had received from Palmerston letters which are not to be submitted to by any man?’’; and Palmerston was usually more brusque and less polite with foreign Courts than with his own servants, in spite of the watchful eye and ready pencil of Queen Victoria. To be impolite and insulting in diplomacy is a mistake; but it was Palmerston’s only mistake. Impartial readers must admit that the kings and princes whom ee Palmerston called fools and knaves were not far from > being such. A large section of the country—including the Queen and the Prince Consort—complained in 1849-50 that his brusquerte and habit of straight talking had left us without an ally in Europe. Palmerston replied that right and justice were; stronger than troops of armed men, and his admirers may assert that the alliances were worthless, especi- ally at the price at which they were to be purchased. 1 Spencer Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell, vol. 11. p. 48 footnote. 2 Speech of July 21st, 1849, Debate on Russian Invasion of Hungary, House of Commons. Hansard, cvil. pp. 786-817. 8 PALMERSTON AND THE Palmerston, it has been said, judged the move-. ments of 1848 at their proper value. He did not fall into panic fear at what was happening, and many of his despatches are filled with the undisguised note of jubilation of a prophet justified in his prophesying at the last. He knew that the end of social order had not come in England, and, in spite of barricades and fugitive royalty, believed that the same was true of Europe. There was probably only one man, ‘apart from himself, on whose judgment he placed any reliance, and that man strongly corroborated this belief.. Before he took up his fifth residence in iv Constantinople in 1848, Sir Stratford Canning had been sent as itinerant ambassador to most of the -Courts which lay between Ostend and the Golden Horn. He saw shivering burghers relieve the guard with white-gloved students in a deserted Berlin, and witnessed nocturnal disturbances at Vienna; and yet he wrote home his firm belief that Central Europe was sound at heart. What was true of Germany was true of the rest of Europé; and, if there was trouble ahead, it was the fault not of the peoples, but of the Courts. Napoleon had been finally overthrown, not by princes and statesmen, but by the citizen, the student and the artisan; not by diplomacy, but by the nascent force of nationality. And what had been the reward for the generation which lay between Waterloo and the Smoke-riots at Milan? There had been no reward: the novel sensa- tion of a national self-consciousness, and all the hundred forms of a better life that it meant, had HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION 9 been protocolled out of existence at Troppau and Carlsbad. Not only had the doors of government been banged in the face of the citizen and artisan who had fought at Leipzig, but a despotism more brutal, and a delation more searching, than any that characterised the empire of Napoleon, intruded upon the innermost recesses of their private life. ‘Do you think,” asked the Prince of Prussia, afterwards King and Kaiser Wilhelm, “that if the nations had known in 1813 that of all their struggling no reality, but only the remembrance, would remain—do you think anybody would have made sacrifices so great?” All the time social conditions were improvifig; inventors were never more active; banks were multiplying in great and small cities; commercial companies were being floated everywhere. The excluded classes were now something more than illiterate, half-starved peasants; they were travelled, prosperous, and had some sort of education. Whatever they might think at the Hofburg, humanity no longer began with barons. Such a state of things could not last for ever; apathy became discontent, discontent grew into disorder, and unless the Governments yielded, dis- order would convert itself into revolution. In England the Government had yielded as early as 1832, and, in addition to the Reform Bill, there was a widely-read Press, and, for the artisans, some trades-union activity. Institutions which had been so beneficial in England would have similar salutary effects if applied to the European Continent—that is the whole statement of Palmerston’s position, both before and after the outbreak. To PALMERSTON AND THE He once told the Master of Trinity that no man ought to be doctored against his will: half his official ' life was spent in doctoring governments against their will. The student of the Foreign Office records for the later ’forties grows weary, in spite of Palmerston’s crisp logic and sharply-etched metaphors, of the eternal prescription to the ailing but recalcitrant . » foreigner: ‘If you would but turn constitutional and copy our institutions, you might be as happy and prosperous, and sleep as soundly in your bed, as we in England.” The advice was perfectly sound, and, had it been taken and acted upon in the spirit in which it was given, much disaster would certainly have been avoided. It is quite obvious from the Memoirs of Metternich that he, too, diagnosed the disease correctly and knew the remedy that should be . applied. It would have been as well for his reputation had he never disclosed the fact. Thus Palmerston was no revolutionary, but honestly believed that political institutions which had proved themselves of sterling worth in the United Kingdom might with advantage be imported into Europe, and that, in any case, the old forms of government, as they had been fashioned under the auspices of the Holy Alliance, were no longer possible. But however liberal and humane he might be, however frankly his sympathies might be enlisted on the side of oppressed nationalities, Palmerston was still Foreign Secretary, and in that capacity his chief duty was the maintenance of the Balance of Power.. It might happen that humane considerations and the maintenance of the Balance of Power did not HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION 11 always go hand in hand. In that case, the duty of a British statesman clearly was to look to the latter first. Charity and diplomacy, indeed, usually seemed identical while Palmerston was at the Foreign Office; and a despatch protesting against ‘‘Bomba’s” latest piece of cruelty, or the annexation of Cracow, or arguing in favour of the asylum extended by the Swiss to political refugees, was equally justified by the doctrine of the Evangelists and by the doctrine of the Balance of Power. To this rule there was one Lf _great exception, and that exception was ‘the revolu- , tion in Hungary: why it should have been an excep- tion will be seen after a short résumé of Palmerston’s ideas of the Balance of Power has been attempted. And here the fear of Russian preponderance is the * salient fact. Once that is comprehended, the maze is threaded easily enough. Palmerston feared Russia, and in doing so proved himself to be a man of his generation. It is hard for us now to think ourselves back into the forty years that separate the Moscow campaign from the campaign in the Crimea, and to realise the position which the Czar occupied during that period in the eyes of the other European mon- archs and statesmen. The rout of the Grande Armée, and the entry of Alexander I into Paris remained unforgotten—-Russia had repaid her ancient debt to Western civilization with interest. But it was not merely the part played by Russia in the closing years of the Napoleonic Wars that invested her with a strength and grandeur which she did not in truth possess. Even so recently as sixty years ago, Russia 12 PALMERSTON AND THE was, comparatively speaking, unknown, and there- fore held for magnificent. Her enormous mileage, her untold millions of fanatically loyal serfs, the unplumbed depths of the Slavonic character—these struck the imagination of the West, while the real weaknesses of the Muscovite polity remained un- discovered. There was something un-European about it all, something terrible; the saviour of the West might one day become its destroyer. This may seem exaggerated language as applied to a time within the memory of men still living, but. it describes an actual state of affairs. De Tocqueville, the sanest of thinkers, firmly believed, on the eve of the Crimean War, that ‘“‘our West is threatened, sooner or later, to fall under the yoke or at least under the direct and irresistible influence of the Czars”’; and, French- man though he was, he thought that German unity should be fostered as a barrier between the threaten- ing East and the threatened West. In 1846, Hummelauer told Stockmar that “without Russia there would be no longer an Austrian State®.”” In England the same sentiment is displayed time after time in Parliamentary debates and in dozens of forgotten pamphlets; the strength and extent of the idea are perhaps best gauged from the writings of its chief opponent, Cobden. Already, in 1848, Panslavism—a Panslavism the headquarters of which were in St Petersburg—was a force in diplomacy, 1 Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville, edited by the Comte de Tocqueville, p. 350. (London, 1896.) 2 Stockmar, Memoirs, vol. 11. p. 360. The conversation took place after the Cracow affair. HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION 13 and was to be the compensation to Russia for the failure of the Holy Alliance. It will be seen that this was at least one of the motives for the Russian inter- vention in Hungary in the spring months of 1849. Side by side with the Panslavy schemes in Russian _ Official circles went the hope of a Byzantine future; v in the West at any rate, the Czar was always supposed to have one eye fixed on the dome of St Sofia and the finest commercial and strategical position in the world. There was always a Constantine in the family to remind the Romanoffs of their ultimate destiny, and, since there was a real religious justification for the idea, it was popular with the masses. The imperial epigram had long been public property: ‘The Ottoman Empire is dead; we have only to arrange for its funeral’’—and the Czar meant to be sole heir. The fear of Russian aggrandisement in the Balkans — underlay the whole of Stratford Canning’s later work | at Constantinople, and there is no reason for believing that the ambassador’s anti-Russian counsels to Palmerston and the Porte were the result of personal pique,.and not of genuine dread of the designs of the Czar and his ministers. How real the danger was may be seen from a despatch of Canning’s sent home in the early weeks of 1849, which encloses some extracts from a book printed in Moscow, and intended to be circulated in the European provinces of Turkey. The chief extract is as follows: “Destroy quickly the!” Empire of Hagar, infamous as it is and detestable to Heaven, and give it to the orthodox Emperor; fortify the true believers, raise up the Christian race, and do 14 PALMERSTON AND THE not withdraw from us Thy great mercy!.’”” The next day, in a private letter to Palmerston, Canning. hints that the appearance of a fleet in the Archipelago would have a very good influence on the course of events in the Balkans. This was over half a year before the question of the refugees crepped up, and contemporaneous with the first incursion of ‘the Russian troops into Transylvania, which involved a violation of Turkish territory. ‘‘If the Russians are only bullying,” he writes, ‘‘a little more determina- tion will keep them in order. If they have great schemes in view, it will be more necessary to check them. This is worthy of prompt and serious thought. The appearance of a combined squadron in these latitudes of force sufficient to go further if necessary, would probably set all to rights; and if one might hope that, spite of Cobden, the public would go with you against an exposed system of encroachment, hypocrisy, and despotic reaction, would not the establishments at home escape a severe trial, and the peace of Europe have a better chance of being secured....? “In conversation with General Aupick,” French minister at the Porte, “the other day, I found that he was entertaining the idea of a visit to the Dar- danelles by a combined squadron, and I am inclined 1 The Book was a book of psalms and prayers, and the extracts are given in a French translation: it begins, “Au nom du Pere, du Fils, etc. Par ordre du Trés-Auguste et Trés- Puissant Empereur Nicholas, etc. et avec la bénédiction du Saint Synode....Imprimé & Moscou au mots d’avril, 1848.” Canning to Palmerston, Feb. 4th, 1849. HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION 15 to think that he has written home about it, though not perhaps in an official form. Though not dissenting from him, I was careful not to encourage him in any exaggerated views, though, in truth, there is enough in our present appearances here to warrant the apprehension of circumstances requiring a strong demonstration in favour of the Porte and our Oriental policy1.”” One of Canning’s most cherished aims was to ameliorate the condition of the Christian subjects of the Sultan; he discovered that Russian intrigue was striving to dissuade his friends in the Council of the Porte from following his counsels in the matter, because it was not to their interests that the Christians of the Balkan Peninsula should be contented under the rule of Islam. Equally clear and convincing is a despatch written by the English chargé d'affaires at St Petersburg after a conversation he had had with the Russian chancellor, Count Nesselrode, on the affairs of the Turkish Empire. I may observe that what has struck me most in the © various conversations which I have had with Count Nesselrode and other persons, with regard to this subject, 1 Canning to Palmerston, Feb. 5th, 1849, Private Letter. This was not the first time that Canning had hinted at the appearance of an English fleet in the Archipelago. On November 2oth of the previous year he had written home that Russia was so dictatorial and encroaching that it might be advisable for the whole or part of our Mediterranean Fleet (probably in conjunction with the French) to demonstrate in the Levant and Archipelago. No English war-vessel had been there for some time, and Russia had taken advantage of this to assure the Sultan that the moral support of the Western Powers was wanting. Nov. zoth, 1849. © 16 ‘ PALMERSTON AND THE is that they never discuss it without evincing uncon- sciously a latent conviction that the Turkish Empire merely exists from the sufferance and magnanimity of the Emperor; and that any suspicion therefore, which may be thrown on His Imperial Majesty’s policy towards the Porte, is calling in question the self-denial, to which that power is indebted for her existence; and that opposition, _on the part of a Foreign Government, to arrangements which Russia may wish to. concert with the Turkish Authorities...is an absolute interference with the just rights of His Imperial Majesty. As they are aware that such pretensions will not be admitted by Europe, and more particularly by the Government of Her Majesty, they do not proclaim them; but, it appears to me, they consider Her Majesty’s Government, by the course which they are pursuing in Turkey, to be raising questions on technicalities and endeavouring to fence by legal sub- tilties a falling Empire, which nothing could prevent the Emperor, if he thought fit, from annexing to his dominions. What is perhaps more surprising, I have found some of my colleagues not. altogether free from similar impres- sions...}. i Palmerston was in no sense of the word a fanatical hater of Russia. He had ample opportunity of opening the old wound that was Poland, on any day of the year, and would have been cheered to the echo by almost any crowd in the British Isles. He did not do so: “The Government will never do any- thing underhand or ungentlemanlike on those matters,’ he said?. But he did fear Russia, and 1 Buchanan to Palmerston, March 13th, 1849. 2 Palmerston to Lord Bloomfield, April r1th, 1848, Bloom- field Papers. HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION 17 nowhere so much as in the Near East. Consequently; he recognised it to be his duty to find a barrier to the encroachments of Russia westwards and south- wards. In spite of her manifold transgressions against Albion and common-sense, in spite of her unfaith- fulness and obstinacy, Austria was essentially and necessarily the ally of England against Russia; if Russian aggrandisement threatened the well-being of England a thousand miles away, how much more did it threaten that of Austria, which lay right athwart the path which the Czars had marked out for themselves! That which was dearest to the heart of the Russian statesmen, ran straight counter to the interests of Viennese diplomacy. If Constantinople became once again the capital of the Orthodox faith, Austria would be little more than a Russian enclave; if the Panslavic ideal were realised according to the wishes attributed to Nicholas and Count Nesselrode, Austria would lose some of her fairest provinces. The Austrian Government could not be ignorant of the fact that their Servian subjects were. already coquetting with Russia}, and a pro-Russian agitation would be much more dangerous to the integrity of 1 “T received last night a confidential communication from Aali Pasha [Turkish minister for foreign affairs] to the following effect; the Servians of Austria, equally discontented with the Governments of Vienna and of Hungary, wish to separate themselves from the Empire, and either to incorporate their population with that of Turkish Servia under the autho- rity of the Porte, or to throw themselves entirely into the arms of Russia.’”” This was not a piece of diplomatic gossip. ‘The intelligence has been conveyed to the Porte as well by the Pasha of Belgrade as by the Servian Government.”’ Canning to Palmerston, Nov. 3rd, 1848. Ss. P, 2 13 PALMERSTON AND THE the Austrian Empire than the revolution in Hun- gary. Not only was Austria the chief ally of England against Russia, she was the only one. Germany indeed”has as good reasons as Austria to fear the expansion of Russia; but then Germany did not yet exist. Palmerston was sagacious enough to recognise that a United Germany must appear some day, and that when it did appear it ought to be the ally of England, since the two countries would have two common foes—Russia and France. But he was too good a Liberal to foster a Germany united on the commercial principles of the Zollverein, and told the Prince Consort that “any English Ministry would be thought to have much neglected its duty, and to have sacrificed the commercial interests of the country, if it did not make every proper effort to persuade the States of North Germany, who have not joined the Zollvereim, to continue to refrain from doing so}.’’ Meanwhile, Germany was not united, and if Frederick William did anything at all, it ‘would most probably be. what his august relative at St Petersburg told him to do. Nor could France be relied upon. Nominally, we were the friends of that country; but it was a singular friendship, the result of necessity rather than of choice, of outward cir- cumstances rather than of an indwelling cordial understanding between the two countries. Their agents abroad appraised the “‘friendship” at head- quarters at its proper worth, and carried on wretched 2 Martin, Life of the Prince Consort, vol. 11. pp. 447-8. HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION 19 diplomatic squabbles in every quarter of the globe. And as the revolutionary movement spent its force, or was ruthlessly suppressed, the position of France| was indeed a difficult one. After the Government had definitely broken with the “red fool-fury,” after Cavaignac had restored order, and the reins of government had been handed to Louis Napoleon, the Administration was reduced to lead a “petty life, from day to day”; it could not heartily cooperate with the restorers of order abroad, for that function “i belonged to Russia, and the Left at home was ‘still powerful, and had to. be placated. It could not join the innovators, for they were hopelessly incapable, and to support them abroad meant to fall beneath their blows at home. So the Government, if with an ill grace, must needs accept the “sterile goodwill of the English,” and ‘remain haughty, while it ceased to be preponderant.’”” In any case, the Prince- President had special reasons of his own for dealing tenderly with Russian susceptibilities, as will be seen later, and Palmerston was still smarting from the reverse he had suffered in the matter of the Spanish marriages, and the whole position of affairs in the Iberian Peninsula. With the conciliatory Aberdeen: at the Foreign Office, a hearty cooperation of the two Governments would have been difficult enough , to engineer; with “‘ce tevrible Lord Palmerston” — : “