Class. Book_ JA Goijyriglrt}^°_ Qo, r COPyRIGHT DEPOSIT. EUROPE >3^% IN STORM AND CALM TWENTY YEARS' EXPERIENCES AND REMINISCENCES OF AN AMERICAN JOURNALIST SKETCHES AND RECORDS OF NOTED EVENTS, CELEBRATED PERSONS AND PLACES, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS IN FRANCE, SPAIN, GERMANY, GREAT BRITAIN, HOLLAND, BELGIUM, AUSTRIA, HUNGARY, ROUMANIA, TURKEY-IN-EUROPE, SWITZERLAND, AND ITALY EDWARD KING AUTHOR OF "THE GREAT SOUTH, " FRENCH POLITICAL LEADERS, "ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT,' ETC., ETC. ■U Over One IliinJicJ Ulifsirations from Designs made ex/ress/y for this Work hv Felix Regamey, Paris V^^^ Published by C. A. NICHOLS & COMPANY SPRINGFIELD, MASS. 18S5 Copyright, 1885. Bt C. a. NICHOLS & CO. AU riglitu reserved. r,^6 ^ C, INTRODUCTION IF tlie courteous reader will take the trouble to j^ass in review his memo- ries of 1867 he will probalily discover that it was at that period that the current of travel from America to Europe assumed large proportions, and tliat a consequent increase of interest in European afl'airs was felt ])y the whole American public. Up to the completion of the Atlantic cable tiiat public had but spasmodic fits of curiosity as to events beyond the seas, and it had been so passionately absorbed in the strengthening and asserting of its own national life in the midst of the throes of the great civil war, that it thought of Europe only as a stately pleasui-e-ground, filled with ancient castles, rivers fringed with picturesque ruins, and sovereigns wiio disposed, pretty much at their will, of the lives of soldiers who occasionally fought each other amid much pomp and pageantry. The amateur student, the nuin of letters, the painter, and the millionaire, who had lived for a few }'ears in Madrid, or Paris, or London, seemed to acquire in the eyes of their fellow- townsmen, wiien they I'eturned, an added romantic cluirm, from tl;e fact that they had ))een to Europe. Conscientious tourists have, perhaps, l)een less numerous and less painstaking in their observation in the past few years than in the days before I80O or 1848, when those who travelled at all travelled by packet and by stage-coach, and enlivened the accounts of their experiences with many references to their perils on flood and Held, and their vicissitudes by nights in country inns. But after the calile was laid, and the panorama of Europe's events passed under the daily notice of the most omnivorous readers in the wor^, there was an annual rush to Europe, and he or she who had not been across seas felt a certain lack in education which it M'as a trifle humiliating to admit. It seemed, also, to those who had been to Europe to study the movements of its varied populations, or to witness the strange march of its variegated history, as if the Old World had entered upon a new process of evolution ; VI INTRODUCTION. wherens it was merely jo2:' aloiia- as before : onl}- iiom- the events which hadheeii hut va<;uel_y heard of, or tohl of hnig after they had transpired, were at once recited for tlie l)enetit of Americans witli a niimitencss and attention to detail whicli were not accorded them even in the eonntries where they took place. Tiie cahle made tlie appetite for 01d-"\Vorld news so keen that the American jnihiic presently found itself better infoinned as to what was occnr- riny in Paris — e\eu as to the tittle-tattle of social circles — than al)Out the same class of affairs or y-ossip in Xew Yorl^ (u- Piiiladelj)hia. Whole colonies of newly enriched Americans settled in Londmi, in Paris, in Vienna, and iu all the cities which, by their historic prestige fir by their local charm, exercised powerful attraction upon tiiose wiio jiad large means at their connnand. The American, witli his open jiurse and genial manners, took the place in the respect of the foreign landlord and shopkeeper which was so long held l)y the English nobleman, -wilii his post-chaise and his passion for St. Juiien. Euro})e was pleased with its new visitors, flattered at their undisguised delight, and, while it now and then laughed at their easy atti- tude and their extreme frankness, it welcomed them as one always wel- comes those who bring jiroHt in their train. At this same jieriod, when the American had awaken(ul or renewed his interest in the |)arent lands from which his composite nationality had sprung, the Old World was entering upon a season of terrilde storm, interspersed, it is true, with fitful calm, but storm (juickly recurrent, violent, and sweeping in its results. Europe had apparently settled down, after the wars of 1S.")4— 5."). and of l.S.')ll, to unintcrrui)ted enjoyment of the rest which the "party of order," in all the Continental countries, had endeavored to inaugurate after 1848. The era of conferences and expositions seemed almost to indicate the relinquishment of the old policy of [)lunder, partition, and political gambling. Secular enemies protested their future eternity of friendship ; emjiires talked of founding themselves upon peace; small nations smiled in their fuicied security; and the "balance of power" was still believed in even liy so clever a man as M. Thiers. But suddenly the face of the European world was changed. The gr^at movement of unification — the su])lime work of this last half of the nine- teenth century — was begun in earnest. Out of the sands of Brandenburg stepped the unifiers of Germany ; Austria lost her foothold in Italy, her c INTRODUCTION. Vll supreme influence in the Germanic States ; Sadowa was fought ; the l)alance of power was ahnost a forgotten iUusion ; the policy of compensation so long talked of was scattered to the winds ; the military strength of France was broken; the English in their insular fortress treml)led lest their own pecu- liar position might he changed ; the German Emperor was crowned in Versailles ; the kingdom of Italy took l)ack its rightful heritage of Rome ; the temporal power of the Pope was broken ; the Republic and its attendant reforms were declared in France and Spain ; and the Powers of the North appeared no longer shadowy, but gigantic and imposing real forms, asserting with emphasis and might their future supremac3^ England, with her vast domain scattered through the seas, seemed happily free from the entanglements of })olitics upon the Continent, and found consola- tion in the development of her so-called Imperial policy, waiting an early opportunity of asserting her ecjuality with these new masters of the European situation. The great storm of the war of 1^70-71, in wliich the French empire and the last vestiges of monai'chy in France disappeared ; the triumphs and the exactions of the Germans ; the swift uprising to im- portance of the Italians, — were things which upset all European calculations. The forward movement for the division into large States — movement so long checked by consummate statesmen, — ^ had ])egun in earnest, and was to be carried on with l:>ut trifling interruption henceforward. Then came the enormous cataclysm of the Connnune, — the final and terrible eflbrt of Socialism on the soil of France ; after which the gaunt spectre took up her northward march, soon to terrify the Germans, flushed with their victories, and the Russians busy with their ambitious plans for conquest in Euroi)e and Asia. After this there was a lull, soon succeeded hy another storm, — the great convulsion out of which were born new kingdoms, new nations in South-Eastern Europe ; and then it was that England, seeing her oppor- tunity, — perhaps using it with hesitation and too feebly, yet seeing and seizing it, — maintained the place which she might have lost. The ashes of national feeling in the scattered States in the South-East, which had so long l)een tributary to the Turk, were fanned into flames. The work of revolt was quick and hardy. The sympathy of England was keen, far- reaching, strong. There was a race between Russia and Great Britain for mastery and prestige in the Balkan peninsula. The revolution in the Herzegovina and in Bosnia, the successful war in Servia, the exposure of V i i i IXTR D UCTION. the outraires in PmliriU'w. were followed liv tiie (laiek descent of a i)owci-ful arm}' from the North. The oreat Eusso-Tiirkish war of LSTT was ))egiin; and tlien it was seen that the Eastern Question, whieh had been so long derided as an antique fossil, to he looked at, taken to pieces now and again, and relegated to the comfortal)le ol)seurity where it was tliought to belong, was thenceforth a vital, all-important factor in European politics. The hand of England was raised to prevent the complete triumpii of the conquering liussians ; Constantinople was saved from the invader; hut both those who wisiied to invade it and tiiose who desired to protect it recognized that its fate nuist soon be sealed. Bulgaria, so long prostrate, rose to a principality ; lioumania and Servia became kingdoms ; Roumelia, almost a — Russian i)rovinc(\ Greece sprang to arms, and took Thessaly from the Turks. The Emperors of the North already hinted at an alliance with the mysterious empire, whose name means the Empire of the East, "Anslria Ltfdix,'' — one day, periiai)s, to be " Fortunate Austria ; " and the Latin States, alarmed, disgustc