Son Limited 
 Private Library 
 
 Case 2>. Shelf .A ..?..
 
 LIBRARY
 
 MAIN CURRENTS OF EUROPEAN 
 HISTORY 
 
 1815-1915
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON - BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 
 DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 MAIN CURRENTS OF 
 
 1815-1915 
 
 BY 
 
 F. J. C. HEARNSHAW 
 
 M.A., LL.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN KING'S COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 
 AUTHOR OF " LEET JURISDICTION IN ENGLAND," " FREEDOM IN SERVICE," ITC. ETC. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1917
 
 COPYRIGHT
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF 
 MY DEAR AND ONLY SISTER 
 
 MARY AMELIA COBB DOWER 
 
 WHO ON 2JTH MAY 1916 PASSED 
 ; TO WHERE BEYOND THESE VOICES THERE IS PEACE
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE substance of these ten lectures was delivered 
 under the auspices of the London County Council 
 to a large audience of teachers during the autumn of 
 1916. 
 
 The purpose of the lectures was not what is 
 normally a proper function of lectures to excite 
 interest ; for the audience was already professionally 
 interested in the theme. Still less was it what is 
 rarely legitimate in lectures to impart detailed in- 
 formation ; for the audience was already in possession 
 of excellent text-books. The purpose was the lowly 
 one of reducing a complex and confused century to 
 comprehensible categories, of emphasising its dominant 
 characteristics, of rendering it more readily teachable. 
 
 In order to achieve this purpose the lecturer 
 divided the century chronologically into half a dozen 
 consecutive periods, and tried to find in each period 
 some single prevailing feature. No doubt this in- 
 volved an artificial simplification of the subject, just
 
 viii EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 as the tabulation of the seven primary colours involves 
 an unnatural disintegration of the indivisible unity of 
 the rainbow, and an inadequate presentation of its 
 splendour. But neither the tabulation of colours 
 in the one case, nor the classification of historic 
 phenomena in the other, need entail any departure 
 from the truth ; and it is hoped that the lectures, 
 if necessarily incomplete, were not misleading. 
 
 The lecturer further sought to give symmetry and 
 coherence to the record of the century by grouping 
 all its incidents round what seemed to him to have 
 been the grand progressive tendency of the period, 
 viz. the tendency towards the constitution of a lawful 
 Commonwealth of Europe composed of democratic 
 national states. The three controlling factors, or 
 " main currents," in this movement, as it appeared to 
 him, were, first, the underlying and inextinguishable 
 consciousness of unity inherited by the peoples of 
 the West from the Roman Empire and Mediaeval 
 Christendom ; secondly, the democratic impulse en- 
 gendered by the French Revolution ; and, thirdly, 
 the passion of nationality roused during the struggle 
 against Napoleon I. To each of these controlling 
 factors a preliminary lecture was devoted. The 
 remaining seven lectures traced the operation of the 
 three factors their action and interaction down to 
 the outbreak of the present great war. The tragedy
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 of the century, as it displayed itself from the point of 
 view here assumed, consisted in the frustration of the 
 beneficent movement towards a federated Continent 
 peacefully administered under recognised international 
 law by, first, the blind antagonism of reactionaries, 
 and, secondly, the mad perversity, much more fatal in 
 its results, of revolutionists idealogues and fanatics. 
 Democracy and nationality more than most good 
 causes have suffered from the follies of their friends. 
 
 The lectures were delivered extemporaneously, 
 with the aid of outlines exhibited on a blackboard. 
 At the close of the course, when the lecturer thought 
 that his work was done, a general wish was expressed 
 that he should put the lectures into writing for pur- 
 poses of reference. Accordingly he devoted his 
 scanty leisure during the opening months of the 
 present year to the dull task of slowly retracing in 
 melancholy solitude, pen in hand, the paths over 
 which he had lightly passed during the preceding 
 autumn in the inspiring company of his auditors. 
 He can only trust that the result is not too dis- 
 appointing and depressing. 
 
 In conclusion, he wishes to express his special 
 thanks to Sir Robert Blair, Education Officer to 
 the London County Council, without whose kind 
 encouragement and support the lectures would 
 have been neither delivered nor published ; and to
 
 x EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 Professor A. J. Grant, of the University of Leeds, 
 who, without necessarily endorsing the lecturer's 
 opinions, has carefully revised his proofs with a 
 view to the elimination of errors respecting matters 
 
 of fact. 
 
 F. J. C. HEARNSHAW. 
 
 KING'S COLLEGE, 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, 
 
 ^Jth May 1917,
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE ... vu 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 SECT. 
 
 1. History Teaching in England * 
 
 2. The Place of Recent History in Education . 7 
 
 3. Two Methods of Study . I2 
 
 4. The Unity of Europe . J 5 
 
 5. What are the Main Currents ? J 9 
 
 6. Text-Books . ..... 25 
 
 PART I 
 CONTROLLING FACTORS 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 DEMOCRACY AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 7. Arrival of the Third Estate . - 3* 
 
 8. The Third Estate in France 3 6 
 
 9. The French States-General . 4 1 
 
 10. Characteristics of the French Revolutipn . . 46 
 
 11. Course of the French Revolution . - 5 
 
 12. Effects of the French Revolution . 5^
 
 xii EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 NATIONALITY AND THE GREAT WARS 
 
 SECT. PAGE 
 
 13. Democracy and Nationality . . . .60 
 
 14. Causes of the Great Wars ... .65 
 
 15. The Revolutionary War, 1792-1802 . . .69 
 
 1 6. The Interval of Truce, 1802-3 -75 
 
 17. The Napoleonic War, 1803-14 . . . .79 
 
 1 8. Effects of the Great Wars . . . .84 
 
 19. The Fall of Napoleon . .88 
 
 20. The Congress of Vienna . . . . .93 
 
 21. The Course of the Negotiations . . . .97 
 
 22. The Hundred Days . '. 102 
 
 23. The Treaties of 1 8 1 5 . . . . . 107 
 
 24. The Vienna Settlement . . . . . 1 1 1 
 
 PART II 
 THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION 
 
 LECTURE IV 
 
 THE ERA OF THE CONGRESSES, 1815-22 
 
 25. The Holy Alliance and the Quadruple Alliance . .119 
 
 26. Reaction and Unrest, 1815-18 .... 123 
 
 27. The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle . . . .129 
 
 28. The European Upheaval, 1818-20 .... 133 
 
 29. The Congresses of Troppau, Laibach, and Verona . . 138 
 
 30. Break-up of the Concert of Europe . . . .143
 
 CONTENTS xiii 
 
 LECTURE V 
 
 THE ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS, 1822-30 
 SECT. PAGE 
 
 31. The Dawn of a New Age ..... 148 
 
 32. The Principle of Nationality . . . .152 
 
 33. Incipient National Movements .... 157 
 
 34. Greek Independence . . . . .161 
 
 35. Belgian Independence . . . . .166 
 
 36. The Breach in the Treaty System . . . . 170 
 
 LECTURE VI 
 
 THE ERA OF DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT, 1830-48 
 
 37. New Conditions and New Ideas . . . .176 
 
 38. Democratic Movements prior to 1830 . . . 180 
 
 39. The French Revolution of 1830 .... 185 
 
 40. Democratic Advance, 1830-48 . . . .183 
 
 41. The French Revolution of 1848 .... 195 
 
 42. The General Upheaval . . . . .199 
 
 LECTURE VII 
 
 THE ERA OF THE TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY, 1848-71 
 
 43. The Democratic Debacle ..... 204 
 
 44. The Second French Republic .... 209 
 
 45. The Empire of Napoleon III. .... 214 
 
 46. The Unification of Italy ..... 219 
 
 47. The Founding of the German Empire . . . 225 
 
 48. The Reconstruction of Central Europe . . . 230
 
 xiv EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 LECTURE VIII 
 
 THE ERA OF IMPERIAL EXPANSION, 1871-1901 
 SECT. PAGE 
 
 49. The Sequel to Sedan . . . . .236 
 
 50. The New Europe and its Problems . . . .241 
 
 51. The Eastern Question ..... 246 
 
 52. The Expansion of Europe ..... 252 
 
 53. The Exploitation of the World .... 257 
 
 54. The End of an Age ..... 262 
 
 LECTURE IX 
 
 THE ERA OF THE SCHISM OF EUROPE, 1901-14 
 
 55. International Politics after Sedan .... 268 
 
 56. The Triple Alliance ..... 273 
 
 57. The "Weltpolitik" of William II. . . . 277 
 
 58. The Triple Entente ..... 283 
 
 59. Excursions and Alarms . , . . . . 288 
 
 60. The Drift towards War ..... 294 
 
 LECTURE X 
 
 THE CRISIS OF 1914-15 
 
 61. The Situation in Germany ..... 300 
 
 62. German Preparations for War .... 305 
 
 63. The Response of the Entente Powers . . .311 
 
 64. The Serajevo Pretext . . . . .316 
 
 65. The Outbreak of War . . . .321 
 
 66. The Meaning of the War ..... 327
 
 CONTENTS xv 
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 SECT. PAGE 
 
 67. The Opening of the Conflict .... 333 
 
 68. The Problem of the Concert of Europe . . . 338 
 
 69. The Problem of Nationality .... 343 
 
 70. The Problem of Democracy .... 347 
 
 71. The Problem of Perpetual Peace . . . .351 
 
 72. The Problem of the Future of Hurnanity . . . 356 
 
 INDEX . . .... 361 
 
 MAPS 
 
 FACE PAGE 
 
 Europe according to the Settlement made at Vienna, 1815 . in 
 Europe at the Outbreak of the Great War, 1914 . . 321
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 i. HISTORY TEACHING IN ENGLAND 
 
 UNTIL recently the teaching of history in England 
 has run on narrowly restricted lines. In secondary 
 schools it has commonly been limited to classical 
 antiquity on the one hand, and to the mother- 
 country on the other. In each case it has been 
 treated rather as an appendage to linguistic studies 
 than as an independent subject, and in each case 
 it has stopped short just when it was becoming 
 historically most interesting and politically most 
 important. The reading of Greek history has been 
 carried precisely to the point when the conquests of 
 Alexander extended Greek influence over the world, 
 and then, because the Greek language lost its Attic 
 purity, it has been suspended. The story of Rome 
 has on the same principle been diligently studied in 
 countless seminaries of sound learning and religious 
 education down to the battle of Actium ; but then, 
 at the very crisis when Rome became imperial and 
 world-dominant, merely because the golden age of
 
 2 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 meticulous Latinity was over, the veil of ignorance 
 has been allowed to remain unrent. Similarly English 
 history which also has been too much regarded as 
 a literary subject, the handmaid of parsing and 
 analysis, the vehicle for the inculcation of a good 
 narrative style has not only persistently ignored 
 Wales Scotland and Ireland, but has remained almost 
 silent concerning the building of the British Empire 
 (incomparably the most important phenomenon of 
 the eighteenth century) and has generally stopped 
 short at 1815, the very date from which most of 
 the problems of modern international politics have 
 had their origin. 
 
 In elementary schools the case has been still worse. 
 Until 1900 history was an optional subject, and 
 an unpopular one, and as such was scarcely taught 
 at all. 1 Experience revealed to astute teachers and 
 managers the fact that it was a poor medium for the 
 earning of grants. In the rare schools where 
 attention was paid to it nothing beyond English 
 history in the narrowest sense of the term was ever 
 attempted unless the inculcation of legends con- 
 cerning such things as burning cakes, persevering 
 spiders, poisoned daggers, and undigested lampreys 
 be regarded as belonging rather to the realm of 
 cosmopolitan imagination. Since 1900 history has 
 
 1 Professor H. L. Withers, presenting a Memorandum on the Teaching of 
 History in London School in 1900, stated that only " about four children out of 
 every hundred took history as a class subject."
 
 INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 been compulsory : but its scope has remained almost 
 as restricted as before. The net result has been that 
 boys and girls have left school, whether secondary 
 or elementary, in lamentable ignorance of just those 
 departments of history which, from the point of 
 view of citizenship, it is most necessary thoy should 
 know. Nor have the universities, until the last few 
 years, done much to remedy this defect in general 
 education, even in the case of the small percentage 
 of students who carry on their historical reading 
 beyond their school years. They, too, have, con- 
 centrated too much on English history, and have 
 conspicuously avoided contact with anything that 
 happened in the nineteenth century. 1 
 
 The consequences have been serious. Just as 
 neglect of Welsh Scottish and Irish history has 
 allowed unnecessary barriers of ignorance and 
 prejudice to retard the complete unification of the 
 three kingdoms and the principality ; just as the 
 curious failure of our educationists to make use 
 of that most fascinating of all authentic historical 
 romances, the story of the expansion of England, 
 has helped to prevent that most urgent of all admini- 
 strative problems, the federation of the Empire, from 
 coming within the range of practical politics ; so 
 has neglect of Continental history in general, and 
 
 1 Cf. Dr. G. E. Prothero, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1904, 
 pp. 12-31. The younger universities, particularly those in the north of England, 
 have been the pioneers in the departure from this evil insular tradition.
 
 4 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 failure to follow the course of events in the nineteenth 
 century in particular, led to disastrous results. The 
 British democracy has remained ignorant of its 
 international responsibilities, unaware of its treaty- 
 obligations, blind to foreign sources of peril, un- 
 acquainted with the essential conditions of national 
 security and peace. There are some at the present 
 moment who are raising a cry for democratic control 
 of foreign policy. It is not power of control that 
 the British democracy lacks in respect of foreign 
 policy : its sovereignty is equally supreme in all 
 departments of state. What it lacks is interest and 
 knowledge. When on rare occasions it has been 
 moved by affairs abroad, and has given attention 
 to them, it has speedily and effectively manifested 
 its capacity for action. For instance, the general 
 elections of both 1880 and 1885 turned primarily 
 on questions of international and imperial politics : 
 in the first the democracy punished with overwhelm- 
 ing defeat Disraeli's truckling to the Turk ; in the 
 second it showed its equally severe condemnation of 
 Gladstone's incompetent handling of the problems 
 which had arisen in the Transvaal the Soudan 
 Egypt and Persia. In normal circumstances, how- 
 ever, the British electorate remains indifferent to 
 affairs that lie beyond the borders of domestic 
 policy ; nor do the leaders of the various parties 
 encourage their followers to impair their fighting 
 powers or mitigate their mutual animosities by
 
 INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 dwelling on concerns of general national interest 
 about which it might be possible and indeed necessary 
 that they should co-operate with their rivals. The 
 genius of party politics requires that every proposition 
 laid before the electorate, no matter how axiomatic, 
 should be couched in the form of a challenge to 
 mortal combat. Hence the permanent postulates 
 of British diplomacy, the clear and unchanging 
 essentials of imperial foreign policy, even the public 
 and long-contracted treaty-obligations of the govern- 
 ment are sealed mysteries to the mass of uninstructed 
 voters. Take the crucial question of the neutrality 
 of Belgium, which was the immediate cause of 
 Britain's entry into the present war. In this matter 
 there was no unsuspected entanglement of secret 
 diplomacy. From the time of the Norman Conquest 
 to the present day it has been the fixed preoccupation 
 of every English government to prevent the Low 
 Countries from passing into the hands of a potentially 
 hostile great power. It was for this end that Edward 
 III. fought Philip VI. of France, that Elizabeth 
 fought Philip II. of Spain, that William III. fought 
 the Grand Monarch, and George III. Napoleon. 
 The Congress of Vienna, 1815, laboured to secure 
 the independence of the Netherlands ; public treaties 
 of 1831, 1839, and 1870 to all of which Britain 
 was a party guaranteed Belgian neutrality. Yet 
 the British public remained ignorant of the whole 
 business, and when Germany precipitated the crisis
 
 6 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 of August 1914 by invading Belgium, popular 
 education in respect of our international obligations 
 and interests had to begin from the very rudiments. 
 It is not the machinations of secret diplomatists 
 but general ignorance and apathy that, except on 
 rare occasions, have prevented the democracy from 
 exercising control over foreign affairs. When one 
 considers how little the electorate knows of European 
 politics, and how little it cares about Continental 
 concerns ; when one observes, moreover, how un- 
 reasonable and bellicose uninformed public opinion 
 tends to become at times of excitement, one can 
 only feel thankful that hitherto democracy has been 
 content not to interfere. But it is urgently necessary, 
 both for the welfare of the Empire and the peace of 
 the world, that for the future the British people 
 should seriously and intelligently face their imperial 
 duties and their international responsibilities. In 
 order that they may do this, it is imperative that 
 their education should include much more history 
 than it has hitherto done, and history of a far wider 
 scope than has heretofore been common. They 
 must learn not only how the English constitution 
 and the existing social and economic conditions of 
 Britain came into being ; they must also be made 
 familiar with the inspiring but solemnising story of 
 the growth of the Empire, and with the leading 
 lines of the development of modern Europe. For 
 history serves three pre-eminent functions in the
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 education of the citizen : it provides a school of 
 political method ; it supplies an inexhaustible store 
 of examples and precedents ; and it furnishes in- 
 dispensable knowledge of the antecedents of present- 
 day problems. 1 
 
 2. THE PLACE OF RECENT HISTORY IN 
 EDUCATION 
 
 From the point of view of citizenship history 
 grows in importance in proportion as it approaches 
 the confines of the present day. Ancient history, it 
 is true, is peculiarly valuable as a school of political 
 method, because its problems have been worked out, 
 its heated controversies have cooled, its essential 
 factors have emerged, and can be studied at leisure 
 and without passion. 2 Mediaeval and early modern 
 histories are specially rich in examples and precedents ; 
 for the ages with which they deal were simpler and 
 more intelligible than our own ; their extant records 
 have been surveyed with some degree of complete- 
 ness ; their story can be told with some approxima- 
 tion to finality, and as to some of the lessons which 
 they teach there is a possibility of general agreement. 
 But if ancient history supplies a good training in 
 political method, and if mediaeval and early modern 
 
 1 For a fuller development of this thesis see The Place of History in Education 
 by F. J. C. Hearnshaw, published in History, Original Series, vol. i. no. i, 
 London, Francis Hodgson, 1912. 
 
 2 Cf. A. P. Stanley, The Eastern tkurch, Introductory Lecture.
 
 8 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 histories are full of useful political precedents, it is 
 precisely because they are divided by a wide gulf 
 from present-day controversies. The questions which 
 ages ago in the Athens of Pericles, the Rome of Caesar, 
 the Constantinople of Justinian, or the Florence of 
 Lorenzo de' Medici excited furious conflict can now 
 be examined with scientific detachment and calmness : 
 they do not directly affect the lives of those now 
 living. Valuable, however, as are the lessons to be 
 derived from these more remote periods of human 
 experience, it is on present-day controversies that 
 the citizen requires light, and it is for light on 
 present-day controversies that to history he primarily 
 turns. The only history that serves his purpose is 
 recent, even very recent, history. A knowledge of 
 the main currents of nineteenth-century history is 
 what he specially needs. 
 
 It is true that many problems, both of domestic 
 and foreign politics, are much older than the nine- 
 teenth century, and that the specialist who wishes to 
 trace them to their sources will have to search the 
 secrets of far earlier periods. The poor-law problem, 
 for example, has a continuous history from the time 
 of the Reformation onwards ; the Irish problem from 
 the days of the Wars of the Roses ; the Franco- 
 German frontier question from the ninth-century 
 Treaty of Verdun ; while the Eastern question of 
 to-day is but a phase of that perennial conflict 
 between Asia and Europe which has endured without
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 intermission from the age of Priam and Agamemnon 
 to our own. The man in the street, however, does 
 not want, and cannot be expected to acquire, informa- 
 tion concerning the distant causes and the more 
 remote phases of the practical problems with which 
 he is called upon to deal. For him, in most cases, 
 the essential facts lie within the limits of the century 
 immediately preceding his own time. This is 
 particularly true at the present moment respecting 
 the century 1815-1915 ; for, on the one hand, the 
 French .Revolution with its attendant wars which 
 culminated in the Treaties of Vienna, marked the 
 founding of a New Europe conspicuously different 
 from that which had preceded it ; while, on the other 
 hand, the outbreak of the present war equally clearly 
 indicated the end of the era inaugurated at Vienna 
 a hundred years before. 
 
 But, though from the civic standpoint the study 
 of this recent history is of vital importance, it must 
 be admitted that it is attended by peculiar difficulties. 
 The two chief of these are, first, the objective 
 difficulty of the complexity of the subject ; secondly, 
 the subjective difficulty of the prejudices of the 
 student. As to the first, the masses of materials of 
 all sorts that demand examination are so vast that 
 one tends to be overwhelmed by mere quantity ; 
 moreover, on most matters differences of opinion, 
 conflicts of evidence, incompleteness of information, 
 and even deliberate falsifications are so serious as to
 
 io EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 make the search for truth infinitely laborious ; 
 finally, the variety of subjects political, social, 
 economic, religious, literary, scientific, artistic, 
 philosophical that come within the scope of recent 
 history, all of them important, is so great that it 
 is a matter of extraordinary perplexity to discover 
 unifying principles, leading lines, main currents, 
 without which the accumulation of masses of detailed 
 information has no educational value whatsoever. 
 As to the second, or subjective, difficulty ; the fact 
 that the problems dealt with by the student in recent 
 history are the same as those which confront him as 
 a citizen in practical politics, makes it impossible for 
 him to approach them with that detachment of mind 
 which is necessary for the highest type of scientific 
 investigation. Political opinion inevitably warps 
 historical judgment. It is hard for the historical 
 student to be impartial towards nations who have 
 lately been, or who are now, at war with his 
 own ; it is not easy for him to be just to states- 
 men whose policy, he believes, has resulted in the 
 widespread calamities of the present ; it is beyond 
 human capacity for him to be sympathetic or wholly 
 equitable in examining movements whose current 
 operations he regards as mischievous. Similarly, he 
 cannot fail to be biassed in favour of peoples, parties, 
 politicians, and propensities whose present-day mani- 
 festations he approves. The utmost he can do is to 
 bear constantly in mind the fact that he is necessarily
 
 INTRODUCTION n 
 
 subject to these limiting prejudices, and that they 
 are most perverting where they are least suspected ; 
 to be ceaselessly on his guard against them, even 
 though he knows that he cannot entirely overcome 
 them ; and to realise that, owing to their inevitable 
 influence, his results must necessarily lack finality, 
 and can in the nature of things be regarded as no 
 more than an interim report pending the appearance, 
 generations hence, of the fully -informed and dis- 
 passionate revelation of how things actually occurred 
 wie es eigentlich gewesen war. Consideration of 
 these two inherent and unavoidable difficulties in 
 the study of recent history makes it evident that it 
 is a subject suitable only for mature intelligences. 
 It is particularly appropriate for students in uni- 
 versities, training colleges, adult schools, and tutorial 
 classes ; but in secondary and elementary schools it 
 is useless to attempt to teach it except in the highest 
 standards, and even there only by means of simplified 
 outlines. The idea, popular some years ago, of 
 teaching history backwards, of starting from the 
 present day and working towards prehistoric times, 
 showed an extraordinary ignorance of educational 
 psychology. The underlying assumption that a 
 child is familiar with the world he lives in, and 
 that the age of the tree-dwellers and the cave-men is 
 unknown to him, is an amazing perversion of fact. 
 It is precisely this strange, highly-articulated, hetero- 
 geneous, and ephemeral civilisation into which he is
 
 12 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 born that needs explaining and interpreting to him ; 
 he brings into it, as an inheritance from an im- 
 memorial ancestry, an uncanny familiarity with fairies 
 and genii, with wild men of the woods and com- 
 panionable beasts, with primitive ways of life and 
 the passions of rudimentary society. The policeman, 
 whom some would take as the centre from which his 
 civic education is to start, is a horrible and insoluble 
 mystery to him ; it is the giants who dwelt upon 
 the earth in the days before the flood who alone are 
 fully comprehensible. As he grows up, as his mind 
 expands, as his experience widens, he will find that 
 the culture - epochs of the world's history nicely 
 correspond to the stages of the development of his 
 intelligence. But, as I have already said, it is only 
 when he begins to attain the mental stature of the full- 
 grown man that the significance of recent history can 
 be grasped and the difficulties of its study overcome. 
 
 3. Two METHODS OF STUDY 
 
 There are two ways of dealing with recent 
 European history ; both are exemplified in well- 
 known modern text -books. The first way is to 
 take the countries of the Continent one by one, and 
 trace the development of each in turn ; the second 
 and more usual is to assume an international point 
 of view and treat the Continent as a whole. Mr. 
 E. Lipson in his valuable Europe in the Nineteenth
 
 INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 Century adopts the first. In his preface he says : 
 " The traditional method of writing European 
 history from the standpoint of international politics 
 has been discarded in this volume in favour of a 
 method of treatment which gives a concise and 
 connected account analytical rather than narrative 
 of the internal development of the chief European 
 states after the fall of Napoleon." \ This method, he 
 thinks, " is more helpful for students and general 
 readers." Professor C. M. Andrews of Yale Uni- 
 versity and M. Charles Seignobos of the University 
 of Paris apparently hold the same opinion, for they 
 have made the national principle the basis of their 
 respective works. 1 So, too, in the main have the 
 editors of the Cambridge Modern History. The 
 majority of writers, however, take the other point of 
 view. " The method of dealing with the history of 
 each nation separately and continuously has many 
 advantages," admits Mr. Sydney Herbert in the 
 preface to his excellent little handbook on Modern 
 Europe ; " but," he adds, " these were outweighed 
 in my mind by the desire to describe the forces 
 moulding Europe as a whole." I have no hesitation 
 in expressing my complete agreement with Mr. 
 Herbert and if he will allow me to do so in 
 taking my stand by his side. Like him, I freely 
 recognise that there are advantages to be gained by 
 
 1 C. M. Andrews, The Historical Development of Modern Europe, 1815-1891 , 
 C. Seignobos, A Political History of Europe since 1814,
 
 the disintegration of the history of Europe into the 
 histories of its constituent states. For one thing it 
 greatly simplifies the task of the writer ; for another 
 it emphasises the cardinal fact that each state has a 
 unity of its own, and, when it is a national state, 
 a quasi-organic unity, an individuality a spirit and a 
 soul ; it enables the distinctive characteristics of each 
 state to be indicated, the lines of its peculiar de- 
 velopment to be traced, the workings of its special 
 institutions to be explained, the nature of its 
 particular problems to be emphasised. But over 
 against these advantages has to be set the heavily 
 countervailing disadvantage that it obscures the real 
 and growing unity of Europe which was one of the 
 dominating features of nineteenth-century history. 
 No fact is in need of stronger or more constant 
 iteration than this. Particularly is that the case in 
 books written by English writers for English readers ; 
 for insularity is the besetting sin of the Briton, and 
 the history of his country has almost always been 
 presented to him without any indication of the count- 
 less links that connect it with the history of the 
 larger world beyond his narrow seas. It comes as 
 a revelation to him an immeasurably salutary and 
 indeed indispensably necessary revelation that the 
 currents that have moved in his domestic affairs have 
 been but local manifestations of the mighty tides that 
 have ebbed and flowed in the wider waters of the 
 Continent, and in the ocean of Humanity.
 
 INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 4. THE UNITY OF EUROPE 
 
 The impress of unity was first stamped upon 
 Europe by the Roman power. Britain France 
 Spain Portugal Italy the Netherlands Switzerland 
 South Germany Austria Hungary the Balkan States 
 and Rumania all comprise territories that enjoyed 
 the inestimable blessings of the Roman discipline, the 
 security of the Roman peace, the educative protection 
 of the Roman authority, the unifying influence of 
 the superb Roman administration, the centralising 
 attraction of the great cosmopolitan city where 
 dwelt the emperor, lord of the civilised world, whence 
 radiated the roads that linked to the common 
 metropolis the uttermost parts of the vast domain, 
 whither gravitated all that was most potent in all 
 lands. The consolidating effects of the Roman 
 law, the Latin language, the imperial religion, the 
 common administrative system were such that they 
 triumphantly survived the incursions of the barbarians 
 and the disruption of the empire. They were, more- 
 over, powerfully reinforced by the equitable principles 
 of the Stoic philosophy which taught that in the light 
 of Nature human distinctions vanish away, and later 
 by the universal philanthropy of the Christian faith 
 which proclaimed a brotherhood that recognised no 
 essential difference between Jew and Gentile, or even 
 between Roman and Barbarian. Thus when the 
 Roman empire passed away as a governing force in the
 
 1 6 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 West, its name and its influence endured, and indeed 
 still endure. For no country that has ever been 
 Roman has wholly lost its cosmopolitan consciousness, 
 its sense that it is but a part of a larger whole. It 
 is the lands that never passed beneath the beneficent 
 tutelage of Rome in particular Teutonic North- 
 Germany and Celtic Ireland wherein has grown and 
 flourished that self-bounded exclusive and intolerant 
 nationalism which has now plunged both the 
 Continent and the British Isles into war. 
 
 The Roman tradition of unity was carried through 
 the thousand years of the Middle Ages by the 
 Catholic Church. The peoples of Western Christen- 
 dom formed for religious purposes which were a 
 good deal more inclusive then than they are now 
 a single society. It was the Respublica Christiana ; 
 whose spiritual head was. the Pope, whose Councils 
 were oecumenical, whose monastic and military orders 
 were international, whose language and law were the 
 same throughout all lands, whose creed ritual and 
 mode of government were uniform and universal. 
 
 The Reformation, which was accompanied 
 though whether as cause or effect is matter of dispute 
 by the formation of the modern national states, 
 broke up the ecclesiastical unity of the Middle 
 Ages. But it did not destroy the idea of the oneness 
 of Christendom ; and efforts continued to be made 
 both by political theorists and by practical statesmen 
 to establish some sort of a Concert of Europe, to
 
 INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 maintain some sort of a balance of power, to secure 
 general recognition for some sort of international 
 law. This is not the place in which to treat of the 
 schemes of Sully, St. Pierre, Leibnitz, and Kant for 
 the founding of a Continental commonwealth ; nor is 
 it possible here to trace the laborious development of 
 an authoritative law of nations at the hands of a 
 succession of eminent jurists. 1 Suffice it to say that, 
 in spite of countless wars, the conception of the 
 community of Christendom the Christendom of 
 the Middle Ages together with its modern offshoots 
 continued more and more firmly to establish itself, 
 and increasingly to extend the sphere of its influence. 
 A western civilisation was developed in which the 
 factors common to all the constituent nations constantly 
 became larger more numerous and more important. 
 Law literature art science philosophy education 
 commerce and finance all grew to be international and 
 even cosmopolitan. 2 The peoples of Europe and their 
 kinsmen across the Atlantic were brought into ever 
 closer contact with one another by means of steadily 
 improving means of communication, by the spreading 
 habit of travel, and by the formation of numerous 
 international societies. In politics, too, it became 
 more and more the custom for the Powers to act in 
 
 1 Readers who wish to pursue these themes may be referred to W. O. 
 Manning, Law of Nations, 1875, and Ramsay Muir, Nationalism and Inter- 
 nationalism, 1916. 
 
 2 Cf. The Unity of Western Civilisation, a series of instructive essays, edited 
 by F. S. Marvin, 1915. 
 
 C
 
 1 8 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 concert, to meet in congresses, to deliberate in 
 common concerning matters of general interest, and 
 to take joint action. The nineteenth century which 
 began with the military federation of Europe against 
 Napoleon and ended with the pacific conference at 
 the Hague more than all its predecessors saw the 
 development of the international idea. The primacy 
 of the Great Powers became an accomplished fact ; 
 an earthly authority higher than that of the sovereign 
 independent state actually came into existence ; 
 the law of nations acquired a new and effective 
 guarantee ; joint protectorates were established over 
 small powers such as Belgium and Switzerland ; 
 countless questions (especially those relating to Eastern 
 Europe Asia Africa and Oceania), which in earlier 
 centuries undoubtedly would have led to war, were 
 settled by the means of joint diplomatic discussion. 
 There seemed good hope that a veritable Common- 
 wealth of Europe would be established, and that the 
 justice which it would administer would render 
 war between the civilised nations of the Continent 
 impossible. This is the fact that needs emphasising 
 if the significance of the century is to be understood ; 
 and it is precisely this fact which is occulted if 
 the history of the century is told in a series of 
 monographs on individual states. This also is the 
 fact that needs emphasising if the full meaning of 
 the tragedy of 1914, and the full guilt of Germany 
 in precipitating the war, are to be appreciated. For
 
 INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 the tragedy of 1914 lay in the destruction of the 
 Commonwealth of Europe ; and the unpardonable 
 crime of Germany was that, in her selfish lust for 
 world-dominion, she withdrew from the society of 
 her equals, plotted against them, rejected conference 
 and arbitration, violated international guarantees, 
 repudiated the jus gentium, and so undid at a blow 
 the work of a dozen generations of devoted seekers 
 after the ideal of a " Parliament of Man, a Federation 
 of the World." 
 
 Such being the case, in the lectures which follow I 
 deal with Europe as a whole, laying stress upon its 
 unity, concentrating attention on movements that 
 were common to all the great states of the Continent, 
 showing the action and reaction of each country on 
 the others, tracing the operation of a few dominant 
 ideas in all alike, revealing as far as possible the main 
 currents of the complex history of the century. 
 
 5. WHAT ARE THE MAIN CURRENTS? 
 
 An answer to the question, Of what nature 
 are the main currents of nineteenth-century history ? 
 involves a confession of faith on the part of 
 the respondent. He is compelled to state, ex- 
 plicitly or implicitly, what is his conception of 
 history to what school he belongs. Now modern 
 conceptions of history are very various, and rival 
 schools are numerous. There are, perhaps, still a
 
 20 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 few survivors of an older day to whom history is 
 a collection of biographies ; to them the prime 
 significance of the century would be found in the 
 careers of Napoleon Metternich Cavour Bismarck 
 and other outstanding men. Another class, repre- 
 sented by the authors of a recent Graphic History of 
 Modern Europe? concentrate their attention on 
 picturesque incidents (largely sanguinary), and regard 
 nothing as important which lacks the elements of 
 adventure and romance : to them the hundred years 
 are dominated by conquests fights for freedom 
 explorations and discoveries. Neither of these 
 groups of writers, whose works appeal primarily 
 to the man in the street or the boy in the holidays, 
 need be taken into serious account. But, besides 
 these, there are four schools of scientific historians 
 whose views command careful consideration. First 
 may be placed the intellectualists, led by Dsllinger 
 in Germany and Acton in England, to whom the 
 motive forces in human affairs are ideas religious 
 beliefs, political principles, philosophical conceptions, 
 scientific theories : to them the events of history 
 are merely external phenomena, manifestations of 
 spiritual energies ; and for them the main currents 
 of any period would have to be sought in the realms 
 of thought. A second school, specially associated 
 with the name of Professor Lamprecht of Leipsig, 
 emphasises what it calls the socio - psychological 
 
 1 Morris and Dawson, Graphic History of Modern Europe, London, 1916.
 
 INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 factors in historic causation ; points out the im- 
 potence of mind in conflict with appetite, and the 
 insignificance of the sentient individual as com- 
 
 o 
 
 pared with the insensate masses ; finds in national 
 character and its determinants the key to history's 
 secrets. Says an English disciple of this school : 
 "The great movements which history records have 
 in every case been irrational. They have come to 
 life not as the result of intellectual statement or appeal, 
 but always in obedience to forces at first so obscure, 
 and in the day of their power so complicated and 
 diverse that it is impossible to isolate them, or name 
 them, or relate them to man's average behaviour." l 
 A third important group of historians, of whom 
 Thorold Rogers was the pioneer in this country and 
 Roscher (followed by Marx, Wagner and Schmoller 
 in Germany), declare for an avowedly economic 
 interpretation of history : to them developments in 
 industry and commerce, movements in wages and 
 prices, changes in the condition of the people, social 
 evolution, are the significant things, and along these 
 lines they would look for the distinctive characteristics 
 of the nineteenth century. The fourth and last 
 school of historians, which includes the overwhelming 
 majority of the writers of all countries, holds that 
 the main currents of modern European history are 
 to be found within the realm of politics ; that the 
 life of the state is the central fact of the existing 
 
 1 J. A. Hutton in Hibbert Journal, July 1905.
 
 22 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 western civilisation, and that history is primarily a 
 record of the being and the doing of organised civic 
 communities. It is this last view which, with certain 
 qualifications, is adopted in the lectures that follow. 
 I say " with certain qualifications " because I have 
 no sympathy with that extreme form of this doctrine 
 which was held and illustrated by Freeman and 
 Seeley, the leaders of the English historical school 
 of a generation ago. To them history was merely 
 past politics, and past politics in the narrowest sense 
 of the term. They limited their purview to state 
 papers, and they had rigid and restricted conceptions 
 of the sphere and functions of the state. Thus their 
 writings necessarily ignored and excluded many 
 highly efficient factors religious moral intellectual 
 social economic in historic development. It was 
 against the restriction of their outlook upon human 
 affairs that John Richard Green's Short History of 
 the English People was an embodied protest. Never- 
 theless, although Green protested against the re- 
 striction of outlook, he did not change the point 
 of view. This to him remained political. It was, 
 as he tells us in his preface, because he perceived 
 that "constitutional progress has been the result 
 of social development," and because he recognised 
 that " political history is the outcome of social 
 changes," that he devoted " attention to the religious 
 intellectual and industrial progress of the nation." 
 He had, in fact, an ampler conception of the nature
 
 INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 and meaning of the state than his predecessors had 
 achieved. He anticipated in effect Professor Bernard 
 Bosanquet's declaration that " the state is not merely 
 the political fabric, but includes the entire hierarchy 
 of institutions by which life is determined, from the 
 family to the trade, and from the trade to the 
 church and the university," and that " it includes 
 all of them, not as the mere collection of the growths 
 of the country, but as the structures which gi-ve life 
 and meaning to the political whole, while receiving 
 from it mutual adjustment." 1 In this view political 
 movements constitutional changes, administrative 
 developments, legislative reforms, international agree- 
 ments, imperial expansions, peace and war are 
 the final outcome and the concentrated expression 
 of all the influences of all sorts that operate in 
 society. They are the supreme manifestation of 
 the spirit of the age. The writer, therefore, who 
 ./has to confine himself to depicting the leading char- 
 acteristics of a modern era, such as the nineteenth 
 century, and has to limit himself to indicating the 
 main currents of its history, will fix his attention 
 upon its political phenomena ; and he will" do so 
 because he knows not only that they are the most 
 significant things, but also that he cannot understand 
 or explain them without taking into account all 
 the dominant ideas, all the chief social changes, 
 all the principal economic developments, all the 
 
 1 Bosanquet, Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 150.
 
 2 4 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 effective religious revivals which have marked the 
 period. 
 
 Regarded from this political point of view, the 
 most striking feature of the century has already 
 been noted. It was the growth of the unity of 
 Europe, the building up, on the basis of a common 
 civilisation and by means of an expanding body of 
 international law morality and custom, of a common- 
 wealth of nations until at the end of the period 
 Germany wrecked the structure. The second feature 
 was the powerful operation of the spirit of nation- 
 ality, which emphasised the existence of divergences 
 within the European unity and insisted that the 
 members of the Continental commonwealth should 
 be national states a principle fatal to the existence of 
 the Austrian and Ottoman Empires. The third 
 feature was the growth of democracy, the varyingly 
 successful demand on the part of the Many who 
 constituted the national units, that they should 
 assume the control of their own destinies by means 
 of some form of representative government a form 
 of government most obnoxious to the militarist 
 despots of Central Europe. It is with these three 
 features the growth of the European community, 
 the development of nationality, the spread of 
 democracy that the ensuing lectures mainly deal. 1 
 
 1 The first three treat of their rise and development during the Revolutionary 
 and Napoleonic era ; the remaining seven trace their evolution during the suc- 
 ceeding century.
 
 INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 Those* who follow the line of study indicated in the 
 lectures will find that each of these three movements 
 was extremely complex, that each changed its 
 direction from time to time, and that each acted 
 and reacted upon the others, sometimes advancing 
 harmoniously with them, sometimes crossing them in 
 conflict. They will further discover that what at first 
 sight appear to have been separate movements as, 
 for example, cosmopolitanism and humanitarianism, 
 imperialism and militarism, socialism and syndicalism 
 were really tributary to the three main movements. 
 Thus cosmopolitanism was a visionary and undesirable 
 extension of internationalism ; imperialism was an 
 outcome of the potent national principle ; socialism 
 was affiliable to democracy. Finally, they will observe 
 that all these movements were allied in the most 
 intimate manner with the popular changes, the 
 economic revolutions, the scientific discoveries, the 
 mechanical inventions, the philosophical speculations, 
 the educational advances, the religious activities, 
 for which the century was so notable. 
 
 / 
 
 6. TEXT-BOOKS 
 
 These lectures are not intended to give detailed 
 information concerning the history of the nineteenth 
 century. They are intended, first, to furnish some 
 guidance as to general principles ; secondly, to 
 indicate sources of further knowledge.
 
 26 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 A table of the chief text-books in the English 
 language is appended, those specially recommended 
 being marked by an asterisk. Fuller bibliographies, 
 including text -books in foreign tongues, will be 
 found in the Cambridge Modern History and in 
 Dr. Hazen's Europe since 1815, (pp. 737-772). At 
 the end of each lecture lists of supplementary 
 references for further reading will be found. These 
 supplementary lists do not include references to any 
 books named in the general table here given. 
 
 It will be noted that the books in the subjoined 
 table are arranged in order of date of publication, 
 and, further, that a line of demarcation is drawn 
 between works published before and works published 
 after the outbreak of the war. These are matters 
 of considerable importance. On the one hand, new 
 information from state papers, memoirs, monographs, 
 and other sources is so constantly coming to light 
 that text-books on recent history tend rapidly to 
 become obsolete ; on the other hand, the outbreak 
 of the war has thrown such a flood of illumina- 
 tion upon the international politics of the past 
 half century that every previous judgment needs 
 reconsideration. The student is recommended to 
 study the period in at least two text-books, one 
 written before 1914 and one after. 
 
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 INTRODUCTION 
 
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 PART I 
 CONTROLLING FACTORS
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 DEMOCRACY AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 7. ARRIVAL OF THE THIRD ESTATE 
 
 UNTIL the outbreak of the present war the French 
 Revolution was generally recognised as the most 
 important event in modern European history. It 
 marked the definite entry of a new and dominant 
 force into Continental politics the force of the third 
 estate, the vanguard of the democracy. Ever since 
 the close of the Middle Ages this third estate had 
 been making its way towards the front : now it 
 broke down the last of the mediaeval barriers which 
 hitherto had prevented it from occupying the place 
 to which its members and its capacities gave it a 
 valid claim. 
 
 Mediaeval society had consisted of three grades, 
 viz. the prayers, the fighters, and the workers. 
 They had formed ideally a trinity in unity, for each 
 grade was supposed to perform its function not 
 only on its own behalf but also on behalf of the 
 whole Respublica Christiana. The circumstances 
 
 31
 
 32 EUROPEAN HISTORY i 
 
 however, of the long and distressful period of the 
 Middle Ages militated against the real equality 
 of the three orders, and gave uncontested pre- 
 eminence to the first and second over the third. The 
 clergy, by reason of the magnitude of their un- 
 contested supernatural claims, exercised indisputable 
 sway over the mind and conscience of a believing 
 Christendom, and by reason of their monopoly of 
 clerkship necessarily possessed an almost equal 
 ascendancy in the world of politics. The feudal 
 nobility, because of the lawlessness and insecurity of 
 the time, and because the art of war as then known 
 gave military supremacy to horse - riders armour- 
 wearers and castle - dwellers, had a monopoly of 
 material power. In other words, the first estate 
 controlled the moral and intellectual forces, the 
 second estate the physical and economic forces of 
 those dark centuries. That they did so was not due 
 to usurpation or tyranny or lust for dominion on 
 their part, but was inevitable in the circumstances. 
 For the commonalty, though numerous, was incapable 
 of either self-government or self-defence. Still, 
 barbaric superstitious undisciplined illiterate dis- 
 organised, still haunted by demons and oppressed by 
 brigands, a prey to superstitions and invading hordes, 
 it was wholly dependent on the tutelage of the clergy 
 and the protection of the warrior-lords. 
 
 With the Renaissance that is, with the advent 
 of that great period of transition from the mediaeval
 
 i DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION 33 
 
 to the modern which began in the thirteenth century 
 and extended to the sixteenth conditions changed. 
 The period of tutelage came to an end. The third 
 estate began to proclaim its independence. The 
 Church lost the monopoly of knowledge ; the lay 
 mind became educated emancipated and sceptical ; 
 the individual conscience grew active inquisitive and 
 rebellious. Similarly the advent of the pike the 
 cross-bow the long-bow and firearms revolutionised 
 the art of war and destroyed the military value of 
 both armour and castle. The protective suzerainty 
 of the feudal magnates, no longer either necessary or 
 effective, assumed the appearance of a tyranny to be 
 repudiated and thrown off. Courtrai Bannockburn 
 and Crecy were portentous triumphs of the third 
 estate, armed with the new weapons, over the second. 
 The third estate showed itself capable of self-defence, 
 and began to organise vigorous measures for the 
 security of life and property. At the same time as 
 these revolutionary changes in the political world, 
 and in the closest connection with them, industry 
 and commerce developed, wealth increased, towns 
 sprang up, definite artisan and merchant classes 
 came into existence classes so powerful and 
 important that even kings found it prudent to 
 make alliance with them and call them to parliament 
 and council. The third estate began to take its 
 place as a governing factor by the side of the first 
 and second. The third estate, however, in late 
 
 D
 
 34 EUROPEAN HISTORY i 
 
 mediaeval and early modern times, was but a small 
 and restricted order : it consisted, indeed, of little 
 more than a new urban aristocracy of merchant 
 princes, master-craftsmen, and lawyers. The mass 
 of the commonalty, the smaller artisans and the 
 peasants, were outside its effective limits : they 
 were passive members who remained impotent and 
 incapable. 
 
 The process of the emancipation and enfranchise- 
 ment of this passive proletariat was late and slow, 
 and it varied much from country to. country. It is 
 not, in fact, even yet complete. But, once again, it 
 must be clearly understood that its long exclusion 
 from power has not been primarily due to the 
 jealousy and oppression of the ruling orders, nor 
 yet to the pride and tyranny of kings ; it has been 
 fundamentally due to the fact that the peoples as a 
 whole, by reason of ignorance and inexperience, have 
 been unfitted to perform political functions. 
 
 The appearance of a politically - capable third 
 estate a small but wealthy potent and alert middle 
 class was first manifest in the mediaeval city-states 
 of Italy the Netherlands and Germany ; but the 
 communities in which it displayed its activities were 
 too small and unstable to maintain themselves in 
 the modern world of national states. Next England, 
 secure in its insularity, developed a powerful order 
 of merchants and lawyers, reinforced by yeomen and 
 country gentry an order which in the seventeenth
 
 i DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION 35 
 
 century was strong enough to overthrow the 
 monarchy, eject the clergy, dismiss the nobility, and 
 assume control of the state. The Great Rebellion 
 and its sequel, the Revolution of 1689, form together 
 the cardinal event in English history, and one that 
 has had the most far-reaching effect upon subsequent 
 Continental affairs. This effect, however, was not 
 immediately evident : indeed, for the space of a 
 hundred years it was limited to the region of political 
 ideas. The condition of Europe down to the close 
 of the eighteenth century was not such as to favour 
 the development of democracy. Constant wars and 
 rumours of wars necessitated the maintenance of 
 military monarchies with large standing armies. The 
 feudalised nobility was generally so numerous and 
 so firmly established that it was able to retain its 
 mediaeval ascendancy. The clergy, though they 
 lost their spiritual authority and ceased to command 
 either the intellectual or the moral respect of the 
 educated laity, succeeded through the support of kings 
 and aristocracies, and through their hold over the 
 illiterate, in clinging to the properties and privileges 
 which their predecessors had secured in the ages of 
 faith. The effective third estate, the bourgeoisie, 
 though growing in numbers in wealth in knowledge 
 in experience of practical affairs and in administrative 
 capacity, found itself excluded from social recognition 
 intellectual freedom and political influence. It was 
 an anomalous situation, a gross anachronism. Most
 
 36 EUROPEAN HISTORY i 
 
 revolutions are caused by anachronisms ; and it was 
 not new burdens but a new unwillingness to bear old 
 burdens that caused the outbreak in 1789. Continued 
 exclusion from power would in the eighteenth century 
 scarcely have been tolerable if monarchy had been 
 efficient, aristocracy public -spirited, the hierarchy 
 saintly : it was wholly insufferable where the king was 
 incompetent, nobles pleasure-seeking and unservice- 
 able, bishops unbelieving and immoral. Nowhere 
 was the anomaly so flagrant as it was in France. 
 In this country the monarchy, which had gathered 
 all political power into its own hands, was hopelessly 
 decadent and bankrupt ; the nobility, which had 
 ceased to perform any useful public functions, was 
 merely parasitic : the upper ranks of the clergy were 
 filled by men notoriously unspiritual. On the other 
 hand the third estate was more than ready to enter 
 upon its heritage of influence in state affairs, of social 
 equality and intellectual independence. Since it is 
 necessary that the condition of the third estate should 
 be clearly realised if the significance of the French 
 Revolution and its influence throughout the nine- 
 teenth century are to be accurately understood, a brief 
 indication of the essential facts must be attempted. 
 
 8. THE THIRD ESTATE IN FRANCE 
 
 Some historians of the French Revolution preface 
 their narrative of its lurid events by a description of
 
 i DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION 37 
 
 the deplorable situation of the peasantry of Europe 
 in general and France in particular at the close of 
 the eighteenth century. They imply, first, that the 
 peasantry was more oppressed and wretched then 
 than it had ever been before, and, secondly, that it 
 was the peasantry which, goaded beyond endurance by 
 its sufferings, made the Revolution. Neither of these 
 implications is correct. 
 
 First, as to the condition of the peasantry. True, 
 it was, according to modern standards, bad. But, on 
 the one hand, it was not worse than it had been in 
 previous periods : rather, under the influences of 
 scientific agriculture and of humanitarian sentiment, 
 it was steadily and even rapidly improving. On the 
 other hand, so far from being specially bad in France, 
 it was distinctly better there than it was in Germany 
 Italy Spain and Russia. The main grievances, of the 
 peasantry were that it bore a disproportionately heavy 
 share of the national taxation, that it was painfully 
 burdened with dues for the Church, and that it was 
 harassed by a number of vexatious feudal incidents. 
 It did not resent its exclusion from political power ; 
 for it had never regarded political power as part of its 
 heritage, and it had no knowledge of, or interest in, 
 affairs of state. Left to itself, though no doubt it 
 would have continued to murmur and complain against 
 the hardness of its lot, it certainly would not have 
 risen in rebellion. It had neither the capacity nor the 
 inclination for heroic action. Only when the Revolu-
 
 38 EUROPEAN HISTORY i 
 
 tion was in full progress did it tumultuously join in, 
 seizing the occasion to get rid of its burdens and 
 give vent to its passions. 
 
 Secondly, as to the makers of the Revolution. 
 It was not, as we have just remarked, the oppressed 
 peasantry with whom it originated. Nor yet was 
 it the much more active and energetic proletariat of 
 Paris and the other great towns ; though this mighty 
 anarchic mob early entered the arena and secured 
 control of events. No ; it was the enlightened 
 bourgeoisie to whom the revolutionary movement 
 was due. Save for a few stray nobles, such as 
 Lafayette and Mirabeau, and a few rare clerics, 
 such as Si6yes and Talleyrand, all the early leaders, 
 and most of the later ones, came from the middle 
 class the class of lawyers, doctors, philosophers, 
 men of science and letters, merchants, financiers. 
 This class, as a whole, held most of the wealth of 
 France ; it bore the main burden of taxation ; it 
 supplied the bulk of the frequent loans required 
 by the Government. Moreover, it suffered more 
 directly than any other through the inefficiency 
 obscurantism and corruption of the administration, 
 and it stood to lose more heavily than any other in the 
 event of that national bankruptcy which threatened 
 in 1789. It was this class that was specially moved 
 by the legends of the antique Romans, by the 
 example of the English commons of the seventeenth 
 century, and by the still more recent and more
 
 i DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION 39 
 
 striking object lesson of the revolt of the American 
 colonies against the British monarchy. This class 
 also had provided the fertile soil in which had 
 sprung in the eighteenth century a rich harvest of 
 disintegrating new ideas. It had read Montesquieu's 
 Esprit des Lois, and from its pages had imbibed a 
 :onception of the relativity of political institutions 
 fatal to the doctrine of the divine right of the 
 Bourbons ; it had laughed over the scathing satires 
 and droll stories of Voltaire, and had learned to share 
 the great sceptic's profound contempt both for 
 the clergy and the religion they professed ; it had 
 pondered the new gospel of equality proclaimed in 
 Rousseau's Contrat Social, and had become profoundly 
 convinced that there was no justification in the 
 nature of things for either the superiority assumed, 
 or the privileges enjoyed, by the first and second 
 estates. The Revolution in its early stages was 
 specially the work of this illuminated bourgeoisie. The 
 ideal at which it aimed at first was the modest and 
 prosaic one of a constitutional monarchy similar to 
 that established in England. It had no intention of 
 sharing any political power it might acquire with 
 either the urban or the rural masses. Said one of 
 its leading spokesmen, Sieyes : " Tous les habitants 
 d'un pays doivent y jouir des droits de citoyen 
 passif; tous ont droit a la protection de leur per- 
 sonne, de leur proprit6, de leur liberte, etc. ; mais 
 tous n'ont pas droit a prendre une part active dans
 
 4 o EUROPEAN HISTORY i 
 
 la formation des pouvoirs publics ; tous ne sont pas 
 citoyens actifs. . . . Tous peuventjouir des avantages 
 de la societ6 ; mais ceux-la seuls qui contribuent 
 a 1'etablissement public sont comme les vrais action- 
 naires de la grande entreprise sociale. Eux seuls 
 sont les veritables citoyens actifs, les veritables 
 membres de 1'association." l 
 
 This is an eminently respectable, even conservative, 
 sentiment, which Burke himself would not have 
 hesitated to accept. It pictures an active governing 
 third eutate of well-to-do, well-educated taxpayers. 
 It shows the bourgeoisie anxious to carry through a 
 moderate reform of the constitution on the lines 
 of the pacific English Revolution of 1689. It lays 
 down the common- sense, middle- class principle 
 that they who pay the piper shall call the tune. 
 Such was the attitude of the men who began the 
 Revolution. But those who begin a revolution are 
 rarely those who end it. It is much easier to 
 start the forces of change than it is to keep 
 control over them. The assault that the bourgeoisie 
 made upon the ramparts of the old regime opened 
 a breach through which poured unexpected floods 
 that in the end swept away the bourgeoisie itself, 
 together with king nobles and clergy. Let us 
 briefly note the causes and trace the course of the 
 cataclysm. 
 
 1 Siyes to the Committee of the Constitution, July 20, 1789 : quoted Aulard, 
 Revolution Frattfaise, p. 61.
 
 i DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION 4 i 
 
 9. THE FRENCH STATES-GENERAL 
 
 The strength of the bourgeoisie in all countries 
 has always been the power of the purse. It is a 
 power by no means discreditable to those who possess 
 it ; for its possession by a specific class marks out 
 that class as pre-eminently alert intelligent active 
 resourceful efficient. Moreover, the control of 
 money implies command of those means of education 
 and those sources of experience which fit the men 
 who enjoy them for public life. In England the 
 power of the purse sufficed at an early stage in 
 the national history to establish representatives of 
 the third estate in political authority. In the thir- 
 teenth century, under John and his successors, first 
 knights of the shire, then representatives of city and 
 borough communities, secured recognition as per- 
 manent factors in the great council of the realm. 
 From that period onward, though with many fluctua- 
 tions, the power of the third estate increased until 
 during the century following the Great Rebellion it 
 became dominant. The secret of its success lay in 
 the chronic poverty of the Crown. The maxim that 
 " the king should live of his own " was never 
 in time of war a practical policy ; from the 
 fifteenth century it ceased to be a reasonable ideal 
 even in time of peace. The monarch became 
 dependent upon parliamentary supplies, and in order 
 to secure them he was compelled to transfer to the
 
 42 EUROPEAN HISTORY i 
 
 commons more and more of his royal prerogative. 
 That the English commons were able without disaster 
 to the state to undertake the work of government was 
 due to the facts, first, that they had had a long tradi- 
 tion and experience of administration in local affairs ; 
 secondly, that they had learned much of the art of 
 rule in the conduct of voluntary associations such as 
 industrial guilds and merchant companies ; and, thirdly, 
 that sovereign power in politics was transferred to 
 them slowly by means of a process extending over 
 several centuries. The French tiers etat had enjoyed 
 none of these advantages. It formed but one of the 
 three houses that constituted the French States-General 
 (the counterpart of the English Parliament), and it 
 effected no sort of alliance with either the estate of 
 the nobles or the estate of the clergy. This was all 
 the more serious because the country gentry who in 
 England, through their representatives the knights 
 of the shire, amalgamated with the burgesses and 
 formed the main strength of the mediaeval House of 
 Commons ranked in France as the lower grade of 
 the nobility. Hence the tiers etat remained almost 
 purely urban and bourgeois. Then, again, the 
 growing and ultimately complete concentration of 
 the French administration, combined with the strict 
 control which the royal authority retained over all 
 industrial and commercial associations, prevented the 
 French commons from obtaining that apprenticeship 
 in affairs which is the indispensable preliminary of
 
 i DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION 43 
 
 successful political activity. Finally, and most fatal 
 of all to the development of an influential third 
 estate, the French king was so great a feudal lord, 
 and so richly endowed with permanent taxes, that to 
 the end of the seventeenth century he was easily able, 
 except on rare occasions, to live on his own resources. 
 Hence the mediaeval States-General never secured the 
 power of the purse ; and consequently never obtained 
 a share in legislation, never gained control over the 
 administration, never attained even to a fixed con- 
 stitution or an established position. In 1614 it 
 quietly dropped out of existence ; and with its 
 disappearance the third estate ceased to play any 
 part in the political life of France. 
 
 The eighteenth century, however, saw two move- 
 ments, quite distinct and separate, whose converging 
 courses brought them in 1789 to one and the same 
 point, thus precipitating the Revolution. On the 
 one hand, as we have already seen, the third estate 
 made an immense advance in wealth and enlighten- 
 ment ; it became prosperous cultivated sceptical 
 critical, resentful of the anachronistic privileges of the 
 other two estates and of its own continued exclusion 
 from society and office. On the other hand, the 
 autocratic state ceased to be self-supporting, ceased to 
 pay its way, ceased even to be able to raise loans, 
 ultimately ceased to be solvent. This is a fact 
 of vital importance. Fiscal causes lay at the root 
 of the Revolution.
 
 44 EUROPEAN HISTORY i 
 
 Let us note the main stages of the Bourbons' 
 road to ruin. The beginning of the downward 
 financial course must be ascribed to Louis XIV. : 
 the heavy expenses of his many wars, combined with 
 the reckless extravagance of himself and his court 
 exhausted the resources of both Crown and people. 
 The evil and incapable Louis XV. pursued all the 
 pernicious policies and practices of his predecessor, 
 and added to them a negligence in public affairs and 
 a corruption that at his death in 1774 left the 
 monarchy both impoverished and disgraced. Then 
 came the amiable but feeble and ill-fated Louis XVI. 
 to the throne. He found the state on the verge 
 of bankruptcy. The finances were in utter con- 
 fusion. No accurate accounts were kept ; none of 
 any sort were issued. All that was known was 
 that year after year income was inadequate to meet 
 expenditure, and that it had to be supplemented 
 by borrowing at increasingly monstrous rates of 
 usury. The only hope of a return to solvency lay 
 in a rigid economy, in a drastic purification of the 
 services, and in a courageous taxation of the privileged 
 orders of nobles and clergy, whose exemptions had 
 long ceased to have any justification on the ground 
 of public duties fulfilled. Louis XVI. was fortunate 
 in having among his ministers two financiers of 
 exceptional capacity, viz. Turgot the economist and 
 Necker the banker. Both of them realised the 
 gravity of the situation, and saw that the sole way
 
 i DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION 45 
 
 of salvation lay in retrenchment reform and reduction 
 of privilege. The king, however, had neither clear- 
 ness of intellect to grasp the problem presented to 
 him, nor strength of will to support, against the 
 opposition of court and council, his able and devoted 
 advisers. Turgot and Necker in turn were dismissed 
 when they made proposals unpalatable to the higher 
 orders, and their places were given to ministers who 
 were prepared to leave chaos undisturbed, abuses 
 unreformed, privilege unrestricted. The old and 
 fatal system of paying current expenses by means of 
 loans was resumed until it ceased to be possible to 
 raise any more. The final blow to French national 
 solvency was struck when Louis, against his better 
 judgment and against the warnings of all his prudent 
 advisers, was dragged into war with Britain on behalf 
 of the revolted American colonies. The French 
 Revolution was the immediate nemesis of this ad- 
 venture. Not only were the principles of rebellion 
 and the ideas of republicanism disseminated broadcast 
 through France, but at least a thousand million livres 
 (some 40,000,000 sterling) were added to the 
 already overwhelming public debt. Necker, called 
 back to office in order to deal with the almost in- 
 soluble financial problem, could do no more than 
 advise the calling of the States-General, in the hope 
 that this obsolete assembly might find some way out 
 of the impasse, either by gratifying and reassuring the 
 perturbed third estate so that it would once more
 
 46 EUROPEAN HISTORY i 
 
 open its money-bags, or by frightening and forcing 
 the unhelpful first and second estates so that they 
 would surrender their iniquitous claims to exemption 
 and provide new sources of supply. Hence the 
 summons to the States-General to meet in May 1789, 
 and hence the occasion which the bourgeoisie had long 
 and eagerly desired. 
 
 10. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 The French Revolution, which was inaugurated 
 by the meeting of the States - General on May 5, 
 1789, has often been compared to the English 
 Revolution of the seventeenth century. For Eng- 
 lish students, at any rate, the comparison is a 
 suggestive one. There are certain superficial re- 
 semblances between the two events, especially in 
 the financial causes, the rapid descent towards 
 violence and regicide, and the culmination in 
 military despotism. Charles I. is the counterpart of 
 Louis XVI., and Cromwell of Napoleon. Many 
 similarities in detail, moreover, are manifest, owing 
 to the fact that the French leaders carefully studied 
 English precedents and consciously imitated English 
 models. But, in spite of superficial resemblances, 
 the differences between the two movements are 
 essential and profound. 
 
 First, whereas the English Revolution was prim- 
 arily political, the French Revolution was primarily
 
 i DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION 47 
 
 social. What the Long Parliament attacked was the 
 Stuart autocracy : the enemies whom Pym and his 
 colleagues essayed to overthrow were Charles I. 
 himself and his ministers. On the other hand, the 
 majority of the States-General, and of the National 
 Assembly into which the States-General transmuted 
 itself, directed their assaults, not upon the monarchy 
 or its officials, but upon the anomalous privileges 
 of the upper classes. It was aristocratic monopoly 
 of place, exemption from taxation, right of feudal 
 exaction ; it was clerical immunity, sacerdotal juris- 
 diction, ecclesiastical extortion that were the objects 
 of their declared antagonism. To the king they 
 expressed and felt entire loyalty ; and- if Louis XVI. 
 had but possessed the capacity to lead a movement of 
 reform, all the later and more tragic phases of the 
 Revolution might have been avoided. He was 
 welcomed at first with enthusiastic acclamation by 
 the newly elected deputies of the third estate ; and it 
 was only when he showed by repeated lapses and 
 ineptitudes his inability to resist the reactionary 
 pressure of the court, or to keep his promises to 
 the people, that he became involved in the fate 
 of the privileged social orders. The republicanism 
 of the French Revolution was a late and secondary 
 development ; it owed its triumph to the failure of 
 Louis XVI. to rise to the height of his responsi- 
 bilities and opportunities. 
 
 Secondly, whereas the watchword of the English
 
 48 EUROPEAN HISTORY i 
 
 Revolution was " liberty," that of the French Revolu- 
 tion was " equality." True, the words la liberie 
 were often on French lips ; but their connotation was 
 different from that of their English counterpart. 
 They meant a deliverance from fetters which had 
 long ceased to bind Englishmen ; they expressed a 
 demand for the removal of rigid social barriers and 
 class restrictions, for the suppression of obsolete 
 feudalities, for the emancipation of serfs, for the 
 throwing of careers open to talents. They also 
 meant the breaking down of provincial exclusiveness, 
 the abolition of hindrances to internal freedom of 
 trade and communication, the recognition of the 
 policy of laissez faire and laissez aller. " Liberty," 
 in fact, was to the deputies of the third estate merely 
 a specialised form of that " equality " which it was 
 their main purpose to secure. When they had 
 attained to equality, they showed how little they 
 understood or cared for liberty, in the English sense 
 of the term, by establishing a more strict and all- 
 embracing subordination of the individual to the state 
 than had ever been known before, even in France. 
 
 Thirdly, whereas the English Revolution was 
 organised and carried through by practical men of 
 affairs men who, like Cromwell, had had wide 
 experience in local government, and men who, like 
 Pym, had had a long apprenticeship in mercantile 
 management, the French Revolution was engineered 
 by doctrinaires, idealogues, men of theories. The
 
 i DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION 49 
 
 English parliamentary leaders appealed to historic 
 precedent, and their series of petitions and enact- 
 ments constituted a Declaration of the Rights of 
 
 o 
 
 Englishmen rights traditional customary insular 
 limited and precise, demonstrable by legal evidence. 
 Quite otherwise, the orators of the French States- 
 General appealed to philosophic principle, and made 
 in universal terms a Declaration of the Rights of 
 Man rights abstract visionary intangible vague, 
 subject to endless controversy. The difference 
 between the English appeal to law and the French 
 appeal to reason manifested itself in a thousand 
 practical ways. The wilder spirits of the English 
 Revolution could always be silenced or ruled out of 
 court by the argument : It is not so in Magna Carta, 
 or it was not so in the days of Edward Confessor 
 and Alfred. The extremists of the French Revolution 
 could not be silenced at all : they were able to meet 
 abstract argument with abstract argument, and could 
 claim to be as high authorities as their more con- 
 servative opponents in the interpretation of " the 
 natural, the inalienable, the sacred rights of mankind." 
 Moreover, in France, neither moderates nor ex- 
 tremists had any practice in the conduct of public 
 business : they met as strangers to one another in 
 1789 ; they were not organised in parties ; they had 
 no recognised leaders ; their meetings were subject 
 to no known rules of procedure ; no precise agenda 
 concentrated their erratic energies. Neither king 
 
 E
 
 50 EUROPEAN HISTORY i 
 
 nor ministers were quick enough or wise enough to 
 seize the occasion and guide them into the paths of 
 business-like and useful activity. Hence inevitably 
 chaos supervened ; the moderates were overwhelmed 
 by the fanatics ; all restraints were cast aside ; the forces 
 of disorder were let loose, and France drifted into an 
 anarchy which ultimately could be suppressed only by 
 the military despotism of Napoleon. The Revolution 
 got entirely out of hand. It proved itself potent for 
 destruction, but incapable of distinguishing between 
 good and bad in either the institutions or the persons 
 among whom it ran amok, and powerless to build up 
 a new social and political order on the ruins of that 
 which it swept away. It will suffice for the purposes 
 of this course of lectures to indicate in the briefest 
 manner the chief stages in its tumultuous career. 
 
 ii. COURSE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 The French Revolution proper covered the five 
 years from the meeting of the States-General on May 
 5, 1789, to the death of Robespierre, the incarna- 
 tion of the evil genius of the movement, on July 
 28, 1794. Those who study the great upheaval in 
 detail will find it convenient to divide the period into 
 four nearly equal sections of some fifteen months each. 1 
 For our purpose, however, it is enough to indicate 
 
 1 (i) Constitutional Development, May lySg-July 1790. (z) Conspiracy 
 against the Constitution, July I7go-Autumn 1791. (3) Beginnings of Violence, 
 Autumn 1791 January 1793. (4) Reign of Terror, January 1793-July 1794.
 
 i DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION 51 
 
 broadly the process by which power gradually passed 
 from the hands of the prime movers of the Revolu- 
 tion into the hands of persons of whose very exist- 
 ence they were at first ignorant, of whose principles 
 they would have vehemently disapproved, and from 
 whose deeds they would have shrunk in horror. 
 
 The representatives of the third estate who 
 appeared at Versailles on May 5, 1789, were almost 
 without exception drawn from the bourgeoisie. The 
 careful researches of recent investigators have re- 
 vealed the fact that of the 621 members, no less 
 than 360 were lawyers. Next in importance to this 
 dominant company of the robe came a group of 130 
 monied men merchants bankers financiers. Of 
 the remainder, not more than ten can be assigned to 
 any class lower than the middle. The estate of the 
 clergy, whose representatives numbered 308 in all, in- 
 cluded some 200 cure's whose sympathies were rather 
 with the third estate than with their own privileged 
 superiors. The 285 nobles of the first estate formed 
 an almost solid phalanx in defence of their own order. 
 
 No sooner had the States-General assembled than 
 a confused but embittered constitutional struggle 
 began respecting the elementary but fundamental 
 question whether the three estates should meet 
 separately and decide disputed issues by a vote in 
 which any two estates would outweigh the third, 
 or should meet all together in one great gathering of 
 1214 equals and determine contested matters by a
 
 52 EUROPEAN HISTORY i 
 
 mere majority. It is clear that the question was 
 vital to the third estate ; and it is eloquent of the 
 ineptitude of Louis XVI. and his ministers, that they 
 should have allowed it to remain unanswered until 
 the States-General had actually assembled, and until 
 the problem had forced itself upon them as one that 
 could no longer be evaded. Even then at what, if 
 they had but known it, was the crisis of their fate 
 they hesitated and procrastinated so long that the 
 third estate took the decision out of their hands, and 
 on June 17, 1789 proclaimed itself, together with 
 such members of the other estates as should consent 
 to join it, the National Assembly. 1 It was a verit- 
 able Declaration of Independence on the part of 
 the third estate, and it was made still more emphatic 
 three days later by the famous Oath of the Tennis 
 Court, in which the newly constituted Assembly 
 vowed not to allow itself to be dissolved until it had 
 drawn up a constitution for France. The framing 
 of a new constitution thus became the prime occupa- 
 tion of the revolutionary third estate and its sup- 
 porters, and in recognition of this fact, on July 9, 
 they changed their designation from " National " to 
 " Constituent " Assembly. For over two years they 
 continued their labours, much obstructed by the 
 floods of their own oratory, and much bewildered 
 by the discussion of unfathomable problems of 
 
 1 The invitation to join the third estate was accepted by 149 clergy and 
 2 nobles.
 
 i DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION 53 
 
 abstract philosophy, until finally in the autumn of 
 1791 they produced the new scheme of government 
 according to which France should be ruled by a 
 Legislative Assembly of a single house, chosen by a 
 strictly limited electorate of " active citizens," i.e. 
 taxpayers. The king was to remain as nominal 
 head of the executive ; but in the matter of legisla- 
 tion he was to have neither initiative nor more than 
 suspensory veto. The way for this drastic change 
 in the French constitution was prepared by a series 
 of the most far-reaching reforms. The privileges of 
 nobles and clergy were swept away ; feudalism and 
 serfdom were suppressed ; game laws and manorial 
 jurisdiction were abolished ; tithes were repudiated ; 
 careers were opened to all ; the Declaration of the 
 Rights of Man was drawn up and issued ; the 
 mediasval provinces of France were displaced for pur- 
 poses of local government by a geographical system of 
 83 departments ; Church property was secularised 
 and a civil constitution of the clergy promulgated ; an 
 attempt was made to deal with the financial problems 
 which had been the original cause of the summons of 
 the States-General by the issue of a paper currency. 
 
 The king and his ministers looked on helpless 
 and inert while their authority was defied, their 
 traditional claims ignored, and their immemorial 
 prerogatives taken away. Far other, however, was 
 the attitude of the proud nobility, the haughty 
 hierarchy, and the indignant queen, the Austrian
 
 54 EUROPEAN HISTORY i 
 
 Marie Antoinette. They were not prepared to 
 surrender the heritage of ages without a blow. 
 First they gathered soldiers to overawe and suppress 
 the Assembly ; but portentous omen of the collapse 
 of the old regime the soldiers recognised their 
 kinship with the revolutionaries and made common 
 cause with them. Then they appealed to the 
 militarist monarchs of the Continent the rulers of 
 Austria Prussia Sardinia Spain and the sympathetic 
 aristocracies of other lands. Their appeals had a 
 tragical success : they brought upon France the 
 horrors of war, and precipitated the Reign of Terror. 
 Thus the selfish and unpatriotic machinations of the 
 privileged orders supplied what little was lacking, 
 through the inexperience and unpracticality of the 
 bourgeois idealogues, to plunge the country into 
 anarchy and strife. In the midst of the chaos the 
 doctrinaire third estate was supplanted by the violent 
 proletariat ; the limited middle-class monarchy of 
 the Constitution of 1791 was converted into the 
 republic of 1792 ; the peaceful development of a 
 new popular administration was stopped by the 
 outbreak of conflict and massacre. 
 
 The first serious symptom of the upheaval of the 
 masses was manifested in July 1789 when on news 
 that troops were being collected at Versailles, that 
 popular ministers were being dismissed, and that 
 the States -General were to be dissolved the Paris 
 mob rose, stormed the Bastille, and took possession
 
 i DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION 55 
 
 of the city. This event, which sent a thrill through- 
 out Europe, transporting lovers of liberty with joy 
 and causing despots to tremble, was speedily followed 
 by a general rising of the peasants against their 
 feudal lords a rising marked by awful scenes of 
 destruction and carnage. The self- emancipated 
 serfs, filled with fury and zeal, but wholly devoid 
 both of means of subsistence and of inclination to 
 seek them, flocked towards Paris and added their 
 turbulent and starving multitudes to the already 
 over-vast and ungovernable mob. On October 5-6 
 the hungry and leaderless crowds surged out from 
 Paris to Versailles and compelled king queen 
 court and assembly to return with them to the 
 city. Henceforth Paris increasingly dominated the 
 Revolution, until finally the civic Commune and the 
 Jacobin Club secured complete control. The Con- 
 stituent Assembly somehow contrived, though with 
 growing difficulty, to conduct its business with a 
 show of independence and order ; but its successor, 
 the Legislative Assembly, throughout its brief 
 existence (October 1791 to August 1792) lived in 
 obvious and chronic terror of the lawless hordes 
 that swarmed the gallery of its hall of assembly, 
 interrupted its debates, and applauded only the 
 extremest and most sanguinary utterances. In 
 August 1792 when the Prussians were advancing 
 on Paris with the avowed intention of restoring the 
 old regime and exterminating the revolutionaries
 
 56 EUROPEAN HISTORY i 
 
 the French monarchy was abolished and a republican 
 Convention established in its place. Next month, 
 under the influence of a panic fear of treachery and 
 betrayal to the foreign foe, the frightful September 
 massacres of nobles and clergy began. In January 
 1793 Louis XVI. was sent to the guillotine, to be 
 followed before the end of the year by the queen 
 and other members of the royal family. Then 
 the revolutionary republicans in mutual suspicion 
 and mortal hatred turned upon one another, and 
 each surviving group, as soon as it became the 
 most moderate of the diminishing survivors of the 
 holocaust, found itself marked down for annihilation 
 by its more bloodthirsty rivals. Thus in succession 
 Girondists, Hebertists, and Dantonists passed in not 
 unmerited ruin and perdition from the ghastly 
 scene. Finally, when Robespierre remained alone 
 and supreme, and as he was planning fresh pro- 
 scriptions to confirm his power, the threatened 
 victims of his fury banded themselves together with 
 the courage of despair and effected his overthrow 
 (July 28, 1794). The Revolution was over. 1 
 
 S 12. EFFECTS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 By the middle of 1794 every person, whether 
 royal noble clerical or bourgeois, who had been 
 
 1 From 1794. a reactionary movement began, the main stages of which were 
 marked by the establishment successively of (i) the Directory, 1795 ; (2) the 
 Consulate, 1799, reorganised 1802 ; (3) the Empire, 1804.
 
 i DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION 57 
 
 prominent in France five years before, when the 
 States-General met, had been swept away either by 
 death or exile. 1 Similarly all three estates alike had 
 disappeared from the political scene the feudal 
 seigneurs, the landed bishops, the well-to-do and 
 enlightened middle class. All had gone, and in their 
 place a new nation had arisen, an emancipated 
 proletariat, as yet anarchic leaderless and undisci- 
 plined, but full of the enthusiasm of inexperience, 
 the vigour of long-pent-up energies, and the large 
 visions of indomitable youth. The institutions of 
 the old regime had been abolished, and the ground 
 
 tJ ' O 
 
 cleared for a great reconstruction. The treaties 
 made by the Bourbons had been repudiated and a 
 challenge thrown down to all the governments of 
 Europe. Decrees had been issued proclaiming the 
 universality of the new French gospel of the Rights 
 of Man, urging other oppressed peoples to follow the 
 French example, and promising them aid. 
 
 The disappearance of the venerable French 
 monarchy, with its record of eight centuries of 
 unbroken succession and its tradition of unsurpassable 
 magnificence, filled all the potentates of Europe with 
 alarm. The sanguinary extermination of a great 
 and once all-powerful nobility ; the disestablishment 
 and spoliation, in total disregard of excommunications 
 and interdicts, of the dominant and authoritative 
 Church, threw into vehement antagonism all the 
 
 1 Unless Sieyes and Gregoire be regarded as exceptions.
 
 5 8 EUROPEAN HISTORY i 
 
 aristocracies and hierarchies of the Continent But 
 the opposition of despots feudal magnates and 
 prince-bishops was rapidly ceasing to be formidable. 
 They represented an expiring mediaeval order whose 
 day was obviously gone. Immeasurably more serious 
 and deplorable was the alienation of all the moderate 
 men of Europe from the Revolution. They had 
 welcomed the emancipation of the French nation 
 with generous enthusiasm. To liberal - minded 
 Englishmen the calling of the States - General had 
 appeared as the inauguration of a new era of con- 
 stitutional government and international good-will. 
 To the advanced thinkers of the Continent the 
 destruction of feudalism in its Bourbon citadel had 
 presented itself as an omen of the deliverance of the 
 whole of Europe from the effete institutions of the 
 Middle Ages. But everywhere eager sympathy had 
 given place to horror and loathing as control of the 
 revolutionary movement had passed from the hands 
 of reasonable men and had been secured by gang after 
 gang of murderous fanatics, each more extreme un- 
 balanced and sanguinary than its predecessor. Burke 
 had given voice to the general revulsion of feeling in 
 his Reflections on the French Revolution ; he had shown 
 that the movement which had begun so hopefully 
 had developed into a. cataclysm which threatened 
 to destroy the very foundations of civilisation. In 
 short, the excesses of the French revolutionists had 
 done more to ruin the cause of the Revolution than
 
 i DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION 59 
 
 all the hostilities of kings nobles and clergy combined. 
 They had antagonised and terrified that all-powerful 
 mass of moderate men, that balancing body of 
 sober opinion, whose support at one time they 
 possessed, and whose support was necessary for their 
 success. The result ensued that the emancipation 
 which the Revolution promised was postponed for a 
 whole generation, and that the thirty years of that 
 generation were filled by wars massacres devastations 
 and miseries unparalleled in all the preceding history 
 of Europe. Nevertheless, in spite of the unnecessary 
 agonies which the errors and crimes of the demagogues 
 brought upon Europe, the main work of the Revolu- 
 tion was accomplished. The democracy had arrived ; 
 it had proclaimed its principles in tones which would 
 never cease to be heard ; it had laid securely the 
 foundations of a new political and social order. 
 The first of the controlling principles of the nineteenth 
 century had come into potent operation. 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY TO LECTURE I 
 
 AULARD, F. V. A. Histoire politique de la Revolution Fran9aise. 
 CARLYLE, T. French Revolution. 
 LAVISSE ET RAMBAUD. Histoire ge"nerale, vol. viii. 
 ROSE, J. H. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era, 1789-1815. 
 SOREL, A. L'Europe et la Revolution Francaise. 
 STEPHENS, H. M. Europe, 1789-1815. 
 
 SYBEL, H. VON. Geschichte der Revolutionzeit, 1789-1800. (English 
 translation by W. C. Perry, History of the French Revolution.')
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 NATIONALITY AND THE GREAT WARS 
 
 8 17. DEMOCRACY AND NATIONALITY 
 o j 
 
 THE democratic idea as exhibited in the French 
 Revolution was summarised in the formula " Liberty, 
 Equality, Fraternity." We have seen that equality 
 was the fundamental conception of this formula, and 
 that liberty meant little more than one specialised 
 aspect thereof. The essential demands of the 
 revolutionists were equality of burdens, equality of 
 privileges, equality of powers, equality of opportunities 
 la carrier e ouverte a tous. The conception of 
 fraternity also was based upon that of equality. 
 But it was subordinate and weak ; it had little 
 restraining influence upon the operations of either 
 guillotine or sword. In so far, however, as it had 
 any meaning at all, it connoted a cosmopolitan 
 sentiment antagonistic to the idea of nationality, viz. 
 the idea of universal brotherhood. 
 
 Such a sentiment was entirely in accordance with 
 the Zeitgeist. The eighteenth century was a cosmo- 
 
 60
 
 ii NATIONALITY AND WAR 61 
 
 politan era. It was the age of reason in which 
 a cold and critical intellect demonstrated the ab- 
 surdity of the prejudices of patriotism ; it was 
 the epoch of the ascendancy of natural theology 
 and natural law, in the light of which the unity 
 of mankind was clearly revealed ; it was the period 
 of the growth of a humanitarianism and a philan- 
 thropy world- wide in scope and regardless of 
 conventional classifications ; it was the century which 
 saw the beginning of the grand general attack upon 
 slavery, and the inauguration of the mighty missionary 
 enterprises of Protestant Christendom whose avowed 
 object was the evangelisation of the globe and 
 the union of the whole race in one vast religious 
 organisation. The principle of nationality was treated 
 with the same contempt by politicians as were the 
 sundering dogmas of the divergent Christian sects 
 by philosophers. It was ignored in a long series 
 of secret family compacts made by dynastic monarchs ; 
 it was openly flouted in the partition and succession 
 treaties by which the century was rendered notable. 
 Scholars and men of affairs congratulated one another 
 upon being citizens of the world. In deed and in 
 discourse they displayed their emancipation from 
 the superstition of state - worship, their salvation 
 from " the vulgar vice of patriotism." Thus 
 Frederick the Great of Prussia surrounded himself 
 with foreigners and gave preference to French 
 books in his library ; thus Voltaire regarded him-
 
 62 EUROPEAN HISTORY n 
 
 self as equally at home in Paris Potsdam London 
 and Geneva ; thus Gibbon prided himself upon being 
 a European rather than an Englishman, and contem- 
 plated writing his Decline and Fall in French, the 
 universal language of polite Continental society. 
 Lessing gave expression to this prevailing cosmo- 
 politan sentiment when he said, " I have no conception 
 of the love of country, and it seems to me at best 
 a heroic fallacy which I am well content to be 
 without." In similar strain wrote Fichte whose 
 words are the more remarkable because he later 
 became so strong a champion of German nationality : 
 "The Christian Europeans are essentially but one 
 people ; they recognise this common Europe as 
 their one true Fatherland, and from one end of it 
 to the other pursue nearly the same purposes and 
 are actuated by similar motives." Even more 
 cosmopolitan was the social gospel of Rousseau, 
 whence came both the inspiration of the Revolution 
 and the principles of the Declaration of the Rights 
 of Man. 
 
 Thus the " fraternity " with which the Revolution 
 started was distinctly anti-national. It recognised 
 as brothers the down-trodden of all peoples, and 
 called upon them to rise against their governments, 
 to overthrow their oppressors with the aid of their 
 French comrades, and then to join the new republic 
 in a federation of the free. The response to this 
 appeal was by no means insignificant. In every
 
 ii NATIONALITY AND WAR 63 
 
 country in Europe particularly in the feudal states 
 of Germany and in the subjugated provinces of the 
 Austrian monarchy answering voices were heard. 
 " Corresponding Societies " and similar organisations 
 were formed for the purpose of maintaining sym- 
 pathetic communication with the French republicans, 
 and thus an international agitation was generated 
 which ignored political distinctions and seemed to 
 threaten the very existence of the national states 
 of the Continent. 
 
 All this is true ; and yet in spite of it, when in 
 1815 the revolutionary upheaval subsided, one of the 
 most prominent and most permanent of its effects 
 was found to be the establishment of this very anti- 
 fraternal principle of nationality as one of the great 
 controlling factors in European politics. What is 
 the explanation of the paradox ? How is it that a 
 movement which began with the most emphatic 
 assertion of cosmopolitan principles should have 
 ended by stamping indelibly on the Continent the 
 antagonistic principle of nationality a principle 
 which lays stress, not on elements and interests which 
 the peoples of the world have in common, but on 
 those which distinguish them the one from the 
 others ; not on the factors that unite but on those 
 that divide ; not on the general characteristics of 
 humanity that make for equality and fraternity, but 
 on differences of race language religion and tradition 
 that tend to inequality and alienation ? It is the
 
 64 EUROPEAN HISTORY n 
 
 purpose of this lecture to answer that question ; but 
 here and now the conclusion may with advantage be 
 indicated. The transformation was effected by the 
 great wars. They operated in two ways to the same 
 end. On the one hand they roused and inflamed 
 the national spirit in the French. Like the Saracens 
 in the seventh century, the French in the eighteenth 
 became united and inspired by the sense that they 
 were a peculiar people, the champions of a new 
 religion against an unbelieving world. Moreover, 
 as the struggle between the missionary armies of 
 the republic and the conscript forces of the old 
 monarchies progressed and as the French went 
 on from triumph to triumph, further bonds of 
 union among themselves, fresh sources of schism 
 from their neighbours developed. Incommunicable 
 memories of victories on a hundred battlefields, 
 a tradition of glory all their own, a consciousness 
 of the possession of powers and possibilities not 
 shared by others, a sense of superiority came to 
 divide them from their fellow-Europeans and to 
 make them a people apart. Finally, their easy and 
 numerous successes in the early days of the war 
 roused in them the old and evil lust of conquest and 
 world-dominion the heritage of the Bourbon regime 
 and their cosmopolitan ideals of liberty equality 
 and brotherhood were forgotten as they built up a 
 vast empire of subjugated nations, and established 
 themselves as lords of the Continent. On the other
 
 ii NATIONALITY AND WAR 65 
 
 hand the great wars quickened the dormant spirit 
 of nationality in the apathetic and divided peoples 
 who were drawn into them. At first they entered 
 the fight unwillingly, impelled by unpopular govern- 
 ments. For their own part they were to no small 
 degree fascinated by the noble sentiments of the 
 revolutionists, and were more disposed to welcome 
 the republican hosts as deliverers than to resist them 
 as invaders. But experience, as we shall see, brought 
 speedy and bitter disillusionment ; until finally, in one 
 country after another, a passion of patriotism was 
 aroused which left no room for rest till the alien 
 tyrants were expelled, and national independence 
 was secured. The spirit of nationality which was 
 so conspicuous a feature of European history in the 
 nineteenth century was in France the bequest of the 
 Revolutionary and Napoleonic tradition ; in the rest 
 of the Continent it was the heritage of the struggle 
 for liberation from the French yoke. 
 
 14. CAUSES OF THE GREAT WARS 
 
 The French Revolution during its early stages 
 seemed to be purely a domestic concern of the 
 French nation. It was, of course, regarded with the 
 most absorbed interest by all the potentates and 
 peoples of the West ; and such was its nature that 
 there was none who was not stirred by it to intense 
 emotion, whether of enthusiastic approbation or of 
 
 F
 
 66 EUROPEAN HISTORY n 
 
 horrified disgust. But neither devoted sympathisers 
 nor antipathetic reactionaries felt called upon to 
 interfere, or expected to be dragged into its vortex. 
 The French, moreover, on their part, at the beginning 
 were wholly engrossed with the problem of putting 
 their own house into disorder preparatory to the 
 rearrangement and reopening under entirely new 
 management. They had no idea that the eyes of 
 the world were upon them, or that what they were 
 doing concerned others besides themselves. This 
 attitude of aloofness, however, soon became im- 
 possible for both sides alike. The French were the 
 first to contemplate action beyond their own frontiers. 
 The theories by which they were inspired, and the 
 dogmas which they proclaimed in the Declaration of 
 the Rights of Man ', were general in their application ; 
 and the zealots of the Revolution, when once they 
 had secured the realisation of their ideas in their own 
 country, became eager to disseminate the truth in 
 other lands. Hence the opening up of correspond- 
 ence with kindred spirits in every country ; hence 
 the November Decrees of 1792 ; hence the forma- 
 tion of a widespread conspiracy which challenged 
 every monarchical government in Europe. Then, 
 again, the social and economic condition of France 
 almost necessitated war as the sole means of escape 
 from anarchy and utter exhaustion. The Revolution 
 had meant the cessation of industry and agriculture, 
 the suspension of law and administration, the break-
 
 ii NATIONALITY AND WAR 67 
 
 up of the social system, vast migrations of starving 
 populations, the congestion of the cities with desper- 
 ate rioters. The salvation of France depended on 
 getting for these undisciplined hordes something to 
 eat and something to do ; and these requisites could 
 be found only in regions beyond the French frontiers. 
 Said Marat in 1793, when the breach with Britain 
 threatened : " The war must come in order to rid 
 France of 300,000 armed brigands." Thus the 
 French precipitated the struggle, partly as a war of 
 political ideas, partly as a war of social and economic 
 necessity. But, as we have already seen, when once 
 started, it speedily assumed other aspects. It became 
 a war for the attainment of the Bourbon ideals of 
 the extension of French territory to the " natural 
 boundaries" of the Rhine the Alps and the Pyrenees ; 
 later it developed into a war of undisguised conquest 
 and aggrandisement whose limits ever receded as the 
 French advanced, until finally, under Napoleon, it 
 grew to be a war for world-dominion. 
 
 Long before this point was reached all the states 
 of Europe, one by one, had been compelled to abandon 
 their neutrality, and had been drawn into the struggle. 
 In general the monarchs and ministers of the old order 
 had recognised that their very existence depended 
 upon their taking action against the common foe ; 
 the aristocracies of every land had assumed the cause 
 of the French nobility, had welcomed the Emigres, 
 and had joined them in urging the suppression of the
 
 68 EUROPEAN HISTORY n 
 
 Revolution by armed force ; the Catholic Church, 
 indignant at the annexation of the papal enclave of 
 Avignon, horrified at the irreligion of the movement, 
 outraged by the spoliation of ecclesiastical property 
 and the murder of priests, had pronounced against the 
 Revolution and preached a crusade. In particular, 
 and first of all, the Emperor prepared for war in 
 order, if possible, to save his sister Marie Antoinette, 
 to restore Louis XVI. to . his authority, and to 
 prevent the French occupation of Belgium. The 
 French anticipated his declaration by beginning 
 hostilities in April 1792. The king of Sardinia 
 joined the Emperor in the hope vain as it proved 
 to be of securing his Transalpine province of 
 Savoy from capture. The king of Prussia next 
 came in, partly because he was bound by treaty to 
 Austria, 1 partly because he wished to defend the 
 principle of monarchy by divine right. Soon after- 
 wards, early in 1793, George III. of Britain and 
 William of Holland entered the coalition against the 
 French in alarm at the conquest of Belgium by the 
 revolutionists, and indignant at the opening of the 
 Scheldt to navigation in spite of its closure by inter- 
 national conventions. Finally, the king of Spain 
 completed the encirclement of the formidable republic 
 because he was a Bourbon, akin to Louis XVI. (who 
 
 1 He was a dull person, was Frederick William III. ; he had not learned the 
 " scrap of paper " theory of treaties. Nevertheless he had attained such standard 
 of efficiency in treachery as to hold that it was enough to fulfil treaties in the 
 letter, regardless of the spirit.
 
 ii NATIONALITY AND WAR 69 
 
 was executed January 21, 1793), and because he 
 feared the spread of the Revolution to his own 
 misgoverned and oppressed dominions. 
 
 Thus in the spring of 1793, four years after the 
 meeting of the States-General to discuss the financial 
 situation in France, Europe was ablaze with a war in 
 which six powers of the old type were struggling to 
 maintain the status quo, striving to keep the French 
 people within their treaty-boundaries, bending all 
 their energies to stamp out, or at least prevent the 
 spread of, a revolutionary doctrine and practice 
 which they felt was subversive of civilisation and 
 social order. In this war, however, although at first 
 sight the forces seemed unevenly weighted on one 
 side, they were as a matter of fact unevenly weighted 
 on the other. Appearances seriously belied realities. 
 It looked like an unequal conflict of one against six. 
 It was in reality the struggle of an emancipated, 
 inspired and indomitable nation against a feeble, 
 disunited ring of effete and unpopular governments. 
 The issue did not remain long in doubt. 
 
 15. THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR, 1792-1802 
 
 The war of the French Revolution lasted nine 
 years, and during that period passed through four 
 phases of approximately equal length. 1 
 
 1 The four phases of the Revolutionary War may be summarised as 
 follows :
 
 yo EUROPEAN HISTORY n 
 
 During the first of these phases (1792-95), in 
 spite of some early successes of a remarkable kind 
 gained before the hostile coalition was fully formed, 
 the French were on the defensive. Nevertheless, 
 these early successes which included the defeat of 
 the Prussians at Valmy, the rout of the Austrians at 
 Jemmappes, the occupations of Belgium and Savoy, 
 and a brilliant raid into Central Germany so filled 
 them with assurance of their power and confidence in 
 their ultimate victory, that they fought against their 
 numerous foes with unconquerable resolution. They 
 had, indeed, need of all their resolution and courage, 
 for the task which faced them in 1793 seemed to 
 be one of overwhelming magnitude. Against their 
 frontiers pressed a ring of foes cutting them off from 
 the outside world. Within their own borders three 
 great regions La Vendee, and the districts centring 
 respectively in Lyons and Toulon were in armed 
 revolt on behalf of Monarchy and Church, while 
 everywhere nobles and clergy were (or were suspected 
 to be) in friendly communication with the enemy. 
 In the circumstances the revolutionists, feeling that 
 nothing could make their situation and prospects 
 more desperate than they were, cast moderation to 
 the winds and struck everywhere with the energy of 
 recklessness. Throughout France itself the Reign 
 
 1. France on Defensive against the First Coalition, 1792-95. 
 
 2. France Aggressive against the two survivors of First Coalition, 1795-97. 
 
 3. Anglo-French Duel, 1797-99. 
 
 4. Second Coalition against France: deadlock and truce, 1799-1801.
 
 ii NATIONALITY AND WAR 71 
 
 of Terror exterminated alike the avowed foes and 
 the doubtful friends of the extremest republicanism. 
 On the frontiers armies of bankrupt fanatics, with 
 nothing but starvation behind them, under youthful 
 generals raised from the ranks for merit alone and 
 liable to be instantly superseded and remorselessly 
 punished for any failure, in furious onslaughts drove 
 back the invaders and carried the war into the 
 enemies' countries. Before the end of 1795 every 
 anti-republican force within the borders of France 
 itself had been destroyed by guillotine and sword ; 
 large districts of the Netherlands Germany and 
 Savoy had been annexed ; the unwieldy coalition of 
 six powers had been broken up. These were re- 
 markable achievements, and to contemporaries, 
 because they were entirely unexpected and inexplic- 
 able, they seemed even more remarkable than they 
 actually were. Moreover, during the winter of 
 1794-95 Holland was overrun, its stadholder driven 
 as a refugee to England, and its administration con- 
 verted into a republic named the Batavian Republic 
 under French protection; in April 1795 Prussia 
 was constrained to withdraw from the coalition in 
 order to be free to attend to the pressing business of 
 the partition of Poland; in July 1795 Spain was 
 fain to follow suit, exhausted by military expenditure 
 and alienated from Britain by her use of her 
 dominant sea-power; finally, early in 1796 Sardinia 
 was forced to make peace by a rapid and decisive
 
 72 EUROPEAN HISTORY n 
 
 campaign conducted by Napoleon Bonaparte. Of 
 the Allies of 1793 only Austria and Britain remained. 
 In these conditions the second phase of the 
 struggle began. The French, now relieved of their 
 most formidable dangers, were in a position to take 
 the offensive on a grand scale. On the one hand 
 they organised a great threefold attack upon Austria. 
 Jourdan with the army of the Meuse, Moreau with 
 the army of the Moselle, and Bonaparte with the 
 army of Italy were to converge upon Vienna. The 
 elaborately co-ordinated scheme broke down, it is 
 true, owing to Jourdan's defeat at the hands of the 
 Archduke Charles ; but Bonaparte alone, as the 
 result of his marvellous and flawless Italian campaign 
 of 1796, did more than all that was necessary. He 
 drove the Austrians out of Lombardy and forced 
 them to make a peace of his dictation at Campo 
 Formio (October 1797) ; he compelled the Pope to 
 surrender the northern portions of the Papal States 
 (Bologna, Ferrara, Romagna, etc.) and, adding them 
 to Lombardy, established a new Cisalpine Republic 
 in strict dependence on that of France. On the 
 other hand, while these dazzling successes were being 
 achieved on the Continent, a strong effort was made 
 to reduce Great Britain. The maritime aid of Spain 
 was secured ; the fleet of subjugated Holland was 
 fitted out, and a serious attempt was made to gain 
 the command of the sea in order to invade England 
 by way of Ireland (which at that time was seething
 
 ii NATIONALITY AND WAR 73 
 
 with rebellion). It was a critical year for Britain, 
 was 1797, for to add to her other perils the fleet on 
 which her salvation depended was mutinous. But 
 the mutiny was quelled in time, and the two naval 
 victories of St. Vincent and Camperdown removed the 
 immediate fear of invasion. Nevertheless for two years 
 after the withdrawal of Austria Britain all alone had to 
 face the menacing might of France and her subject- 
 allies. This period of the Anglo-French duel con- 
 stituted the third phase of the Revolutionary War. 
 
 It was during this phase that Bonaparte, now 
 (though nominally a servant of the Directory) the 
 controlling force in French policy, began to dream 
 his dreams of world-dominion. The power of Britain, 
 based on the wealth of commerce and on the com- 
 mand of the sea, alone imposed itself between the 
 leader of the French armies and the lordship of the 
 Earth. Since the British naval victories of 1797 
 had rendered a direct attack on the United Kingdom 
 impracticable, Bonaparte formulated a vast and 
 marvellous plan whose strangeness and magnitude 
 certainly succeeded in baffling all British forecasts 
 according to which he hoped to gain control of Egypt, 
 cut Britain's connection with the East, destroy her 
 overseas trade, stamp out her Indian Empire, and 
 so indirectly reduce her to submission. Incidentally 
 he hoped to be able to secure Syria and Asia Minor, 
 to evict the decadent Turk from Constantinople, and 
 to plant in the Levant a French dominion that would,
 
 74 EUROPEAN HISTORY n 
 
 in conjunction with the Western Republic, hold 
 Central Europe as in a vice. Three things frustrated 
 the realisation of the great design. The first was 
 Nelson's victory at Aboukir Bay ; the second was 
 Sidney Smith's defence of Acre ; the third was the 
 formation of a new coalition, which included Austria 
 Russia and Turkey, all of whom were thoroughly 
 alarmed by Bonaparte's oriental enterprises. Hence 
 in 1799 the European war broke out again. Bona- 
 parte hastened back from Egypt to become First 
 Consul, and to assume the continental command. 
 The fourth and last phase of the Revolutionary 
 struggle was inaugurated. 
 
 The second coalition proved to be even more 
 ephemeral and inefficient than the first. Russia, 
 disgusted by the conduct of her allies, withdrew in 
 a year, and actually organised against Great Britain 
 an armed neutrality which Nelson had to break up 
 in the battle of the Baltic (1801). Austria, defeated 
 at Marengo and Hohen linden, was forced once more 
 to make peace. By 1801 the struggle again had 
 concentrated itself into an Anglo-French duel an 
 incongruous conflict between a land-monster and a 
 sea-monster, neither of whom could inflict any serious 
 injury upon the other, but both of whom were ex- 
 hausting themselves by their efforts. In the circum- 
 stances the Peace of Amiens was made (1802). It 
 was an inconclusive peace which settled no principles 
 and solved no problems. It was a compromise
 
 ii NATIONALITY AND WAR 75 
 
 effected on the basis of an exchange of conquests, 
 and a recognition of the status quo. It stands in the 
 records of history as the classical example of a pre- 
 mature pacification big with the seeds of future 
 conflict. 
 
 16. THE INTERVAL OF TRUCE, 1802-3 
 
 The cessation of hostilities effected by the Peace 
 of Amiens lasted but fifteen months. The British 
 Government, it is true, under the mild and ostrich- 
 minded Addington, seriously believed that the bloody 
 and expensive business of fighting was over, that a 
 tolerable settlement of Europe had been arrived at, 
 and that Bonaparte would henceforth remain quietly 
 at home, a satisfied and good young man. The 
 British nation, too, profoundly ignorant of European 
 politics, regardless of the principles of the balance 
 of power, and utterly weary of the long war, shared 
 the optimistic illusions of their rulers ; in thousands 
 they swarmed oVer to the Continent to survey the 
 scenes of the concluded tragedy. It was indeed a 
 childlike faith which could suppose either that the 
 peoples of the Netherlands the Rhinelands and Italy 
 would be content to remain permanently under French 
 domination, or on the other hand that Bonaparte 
 would rest satisfied with a mere consulship at home 
 and with mere alliances abroad. Bonaparte, on his 
 side, was under no illusions. He deliberately entered 
 into the treaty of Amiens in order that with colonies
 
 76 EUROPEAN HISTORY n 
 
 recovered, troops released, seas reopened, stores re- 
 plenished, fleets refitted, armies reorganised, hostile 
 alliances dissolved, he might renew the war in con- 
 ditions that would offer a virtual certainty of success. 
 Scarcely was the ink of the treaty dry when Bonaparte 
 inaugurated a twofold movement, internally to con- 
 solidate and increase his personal power, externally to 
 enlarge the French dominion a twofold movement 
 which resulted on the one side in his own proclama- 
 tion as emperor in 1804, and on the other side in the 
 establishment of a French hegemony over the Con- 
 tinent. Into the details of Bonaparte's internal ad- 
 ministration it is not necessary, and it would not be 
 proper, here to enter. Enough to indicate the main 
 steps by which, though at peace, he extended French 
 authority over far larger regions of Europe than he 
 had been able to reduce in many years of war. First, 
 the Batavian Republic of the Netherlands was com- 
 pelled to admit into its fortresses French garrisons 
 whose presence constituted a practical annexation of 
 the Low Countries a most formidable menace to 
 British security and British commerce. Secondly, 
 the Cisalpine Republic of North Italy was persuaded 
 to elect Bonaparte as its president, so that its con- 
 formity to French policy was assured. Thirdly, the 
 Ligurian Republic, which had been constituted out 
 of Genoa and its environs, was induced to follow 
 the example of its neighbour and to appoint Bonaparte 
 as its "doge." Fourthly, in order to link together
 
 ji NATIONALITY AND WAR 77 
 
 these vassal republics and to secure the control of all 
 the western passes of the Alps, Piedmont was with- 
 out a shadow of right annexed, and the king of 
 Sardinia compelled to content himself with the insular 
 part of his territories. Fifthly, the Duke of Parma 
 was pressed into a cession of his duchy to France. 
 Sixthly, the Swiss Confederation, now hemmed in by 
 lands subject to the control of Bonaparte, was over- 
 awed into electing him " mediator," so that it virtually 
 became a member of his empire, and gave him com- 
 mand of all the mid -Alpine approaches to Italy. 
 Finally and this to Britain was the last aggravation 
 the French designs on Egypt were renewed. News 
 came that a so-called " commercial mission " had 
 made its appearance in the delta, and that under the 
 guise of trade an active anti-British political propa- 
 ganda was in progress. This was more than even 
 the peace - obsessed Addington could stand. The 
 British ambassador in Paris was instructed to ask for 
 explanations and assurances, and while doing so to 
 draw the attention of the French Government to that 
 disquieting increase of French power on the Continent 
 which had rapidly been effected under the forms of 
 republican elections. The negotiations, which speedily 
 became acrimonious, owing to Bonaparte's studied 
 insolence and persistent prevarication, ultimately 
 concluded with the definite demand on the part of 
 the British Government for the withdrawal of French 
 troops from the Netherlands, the evacuation of
 
 7 8 EUROPEAN HISTORY n 
 
 Switzerland, the grant of compensation to the king of 
 Sardinia, and the abandonment of political propaganda 
 in Egypt. On the refusal of Bonaparte to satisfy 
 these requirements, Addington definitely declined to 
 remove the British troops from Malta, as he should 
 have done under the terms of the treaty of Amiens : 
 he felt that if Bonaparte were about to renew his 
 oriental adventures Britain could not afford to weaken 
 her control over the Mediterranean. Bonaparte chose 
 to regard this breach of the treaty as an intolerable 
 example and an irrefragable proof of Britain's perfidy. 
 Hence he made it the pretext for the war which he 
 had long anticipated, and for which he now seemed to 
 be adequately prepared. Everything appeared to be 
 in his favour. He was incomparably stronger than 
 he had been when he made peace in 1802. In 
 addition to the reorganised resources of France 
 herself, he had at his disposal the men and the money 
 of the Netherlands Switzerland and most of Italy. 
 Spain, moreover, was too weak to resist him, and 
 was thus compelled to conform to his will. Britain, 
 on the other hand, found herself on the eve of 
 war with conquests surrendered, armies diminished, 
 defences neglected, alliances dissolved alone, and 
 with nothing except her fleets between herself and 
 destruction. 
 
 Thus the Napoleonic war began. On Britain's 
 side it was a desperate struggle for existence ; on 
 Bonaparte's side a resolute bid for world-dominion.
 
 ii NATIONALITY AND WAR 79 
 
 Gone from the French armies were all visionary 
 ideas of equality and brotherhood. Not liberation 
 but conquest was their purpose. Fired with a sense 
 of their own superiority, inspired by hatred of Albion, 
 they prepared to destroy the only obstacle which 
 blocked their way to universal suzerainty. 
 
 17. THE NAPOLEONIC WAR, 1 803-14 l 
 
 Bonaparte's simple and undisguised plan was an 
 invasion of England. 2 He assembled a large force 
 the " Army of England " at Boulogne, accumu- 
 lated vast stores of ammunition and supplies, prepared 
 an immense flotilla of transports, and then waited for 
 an opportunity to cross the few miles of water that 
 divided him from the white cliffs of Kent. His 
 requirements at the hands of Providence and the 
 French seamen were modest ; twenty - four hours 
 command of the Channel was all he asked. To 
 secure it he elaborated a subtle and complex 
 scheme. The main British fleets were to be decoyed 
 to Egypt and the East by a feigned renewal of the 
 abandoned oriental adventure ; then the French 
 squadrons, issuing from their bases at Brest, Rochefort 
 
 1 The main phases of the Napoleonic War may be summarised 
 
 1. Bonaparte's bid for world-dominion, 1803-7. 
 
 2. Zenith of Napoleon's Power, 1807-8. 
 
 3. Rise of National Resistances, 1808-13. 
 
 4. Overthrow of Napoleon, 1813-14. 
 
 2 Bonaparte denied this, it is true, after the plan had collapsed ; but no 
 credence need be placed on the denial. See Rose, Revolutionary and Napoleonic 
 Era, p. 156.
 
 8o EUROPEAN HISTORY n 
 
 and Toulon, were to effect a union at the West 
 Indian island of Martinique, and, returning thence to 
 European waters, were to surprise and overwhelm 
 the unsupported Channel fleet of Britain. The 
 British, realising the magnitude of the peril that 
 confronted them, made feverish preparations to meet 
 it. They recalled William Pitt to power, enrolled 
 the militia, raised volunteers, built martello towers, 
 held patriotic meetings, sung " Rule, Britannia ! " and 
 so on. But their real defence lay in Nelson's ships and 
 Pitt's diplomacy. It was the latter which came first 
 into effective operation. In April 1805 the founda- 
 tion of the third coalition against French aggression 
 was laid by an Anglo-Russian convention, according 
 to which the Tzar Alexander I. and the King of 
 England agreed to join forces in order to compel the 
 French to evacuate Italy Germany Holland and 
 Switzerland, to restore the King of Sardinia to his 
 Continental possessions, and to call an international 
 congress to settle the affairs of Europe. Bonaparte 
 (who had become the Emperor Napoleon in 1804) 
 replied by crowning himself King of Italy at Milan 
 (May 1805), and by formally annexing the Ligurian 
 Republic. These provocative measures helped to 
 drive Austria in the direction which Pitt desired, 
 and in July 1805 she joined the Anglo - Russian 
 alliance. Pitt strove hard to secure the adherence of 
 Prussia also ; but for half a year Napoleon kept the 
 feeble and greedy Frederick William III. from
 
 ii NATIONALITY AND WAR 81 
 
 decision by holding out to him the bait of Hanover. 
 From the moment when Austria entered the coalition 
 the immediate invasion of England became an im- 
 possibility. The camp at Boulogne was broken up 
 and the army transferred from the Channel coast to 
 the Rhine and the Danube. Not till October 21 
 (the day after Napoleon had secured his first great 
 military success over the Allies at Ulm) did Nelson's 
 opportunity come. By his decisive naval triumph 
 at Trafalgar he removed the fear of invasion from 
 the region of practicable operations, and made it 
 feasible for Britain to contemplate military enterprises 
 on the Continent. But if Britain thus secured in- 
 contestable command of the sea, so did Napoleon 
 in brief time establish indisputable control of the 
 Continent. On December 2, 1805, he crushed 
 Austria at Austerlitz and compelled her by the Treaty 
 of Pressburg to withdraw from the coalition, ceding 
 Venetia Istria and Dalmatia to Napoleon's kingdom 
 of Italy. Next year (1806), all too late, Prussia, 
 realising the insincerity of Napoleon's offers and the 
 menace of his power, declared war. On October 14 
 she was overwhelmed at Jena and Auerstadt ; on 
 October 27 Berlin was occupied by the French, and 
 the King and Queen of Prussia forced to seek the 
 protection of the Tzar. The year 1807 saw a 
 furious struggle on the Russian frontiers. A battle at 
 Eylau (February 8) was indecisive ; a second battle, 
 at Friedland (June 14), ended in a victory for
 
 82 EUROPEAN HISTORY n 
 
 Napoleon. By that time, however, the sentiments 
 of Alexander had changed. He was wroth with 
 Britain for her failure to support him in the Baltic, 
 and he was eager to divert his armies to conquests in 
 Turkey. Hence he met Napoleon in a personal 
 interview on the Niemen, and arranged with him the 
 Treaty of Tilsit (July 7, 1807), by which it was 
 agreed that Alexander should support Napoleon's 
 designs in the West, while Napoleon should leave to 
 Alexander a free hand in the East. 
 
 Napoleon, now triumphant over all his Continental 
 enemies, was at the zenith of his power. In many 
 ways he used his power beneficently : especially did 
 he give to divided and distracted Germany and 
 Italy a unity and efficiency of administration such as 
 they had never known before. Nevertheless, in the 
 arrogance of conquest and in the confidence of 
 illimitable might, he did things which roused against 
 him throughout Europe a passion of patriotic 
 antagonisms that eventually proved fatal to his 
 empire. First, regardless of national sentiments, 
 and careless even of French approval, he remodelled 
 the map of Europe to suit the interests of himself 
 and his family. Thus (beginning soon after Auster- 
 litz) he drove out the Neapolitan Bourbons and 
 conferred Naples as a kingdom on his brother Joseph ; 
 the Papal States he occupied and parcelled out 
 among his marshals ; the Batavian Republic he 
 converted into the kingdom of Holland for his
 
 H NATIONALITY AND WAR 83 
 
 brother Louis ; all the German States outside Prussia 
 and Austria he gathered together into a Confedera- 
 tion of the Rhine under his own control (thus 
 bringing to an end that] relic of the Middle Ages, 
 the Holy Roman Empire) ; the Polish provinces 
 of Prussia he cut away from the Hohenzollern 
 kingdom and made the nucleus of a subject Grand 
 Duchy of Warsaw ; finally, he overran and par- 
 titioned Portugal, and placed his brother Joseph 
 (transferred from Naples) upon the throne of Spain. 
 This transformation of the map of Europe was the 
 first cause of the national revolts which were to be his , 
 undoing. The second cause of these national revolts 
 was the introduction, by means of the Berlin Decrees 
 of 1806 and the Milan Decrees of 1807, the so-called 
 " Continental System," which was intended to sap 
 the strength of Britain by declaring a blockade of 
 her coasts and by excluding her commerce from the 
 whole of Europe. No doubt the system im- 
 perfectly though Napoleon was able to realise it 
 severely injured Britain ; but it pressed with even 
 greater hardship upon the nations subject to 
 Napoleon's despotic sway. It roused a widespread 
 disposition to revolt, even in France itself. Thirdly, 
 these same subject nations Italians Germans 
 Dutch Belgians Swiss Spaniards found themselves 
 called upon, in return for the benefits of Napoleon's 
 enlightened tyranny, to supply large and regular 
 drafts to the imperial armies, and to contribute
 
 84 EUROPEAN HISTORY n 
 
 increasingly heavy payments to the central treasury. 
 They began to doubt whether the advantages of 
 unity and good government were not purchased at 
 too high a rate when they involved loss of national 
 individuality, subordination to foreign control, com- 
 mercial ruin, financial exhaustion, and implication 
 in an alien military organisation whose activities 
 eventually extended from Madrid to Moscow. 
 
 In 1808 the era of national revolts began. The 
 wars that resulted were no longer the struggles of 
 unpopular governments allied against an emancipated 
 and united French nation, but the spontaneous rising 
 of oppressed peoples, made conscious by suffering of 
 their nationality, against an autocracy which had lost 
 the support of all the better sections of the French 
 nation itself. First Portuguese, then Spaniards, and 
 later Italians and Germans, all joined in the "Wars of 
 Liberation." Russia repudiated the Treaty of Tilsit 
 and came in (1812) ; Austria ventured once more to 
 risk her fortunes in a fight for freedom (1813). In the 
 "Battle of Nations" fought at Leipsig (October 1813) 
 a battle in which every European people except 
 the Turks was represented the power of Napoleon 
 was broken. In 1814 he was forced to abdicate. 
 
 1 8. EFFECTS OF THE GREAT WARS 
 
 It will have been evident, even from the cursory 
 survey of a crowded epoch which alone has been
 
 ii NATIONALITY AND WAR 85 
 
 possible in this lecture, how profoundly both France 
 and Europe had been transformed during the 
 course of the great wars. France had developed 
 from a liberal republic into a despotic empire ; she 
 had abandoned her cosmopolitan ideals of equality 
 and brotherhood for aggressively national ideals of 
 conquest and universal ascendancy ; she had ex- 
 changed the tricolour of freedom for the eagles of 
 imperial glory ; having emancipated herself, she had 
 sold herself to a master, and had by him been led 
 into adventures by means of which she had gained 
 the world but had lost her soul. 
 
 It was much easier for the Allies in their wars of 
 liberation to recover the world than it was for France 
 to regain her sacrificed ideals. The Napoleonic 
 tradition lingered developing, indeed, into a legend 
 and a myth. Not until France had passed through 
 the purging fires of 1870 was she delivered from 
 its fatal possession. It was a tradition that had in 
 it, we may freely admit, some noble elements ; it 
 was a tradition of unparalleled efficiency in govern- 
 ment, of the highest intellect applied to affairs of 
 State, of scrupulous impartiality and indiscriminate 
 justice, of sweeping and beneficent reform, of 
 brilliant achievement and dazzling success. But it 
 carried with it also memories of triumphant militar- 
 ism ; of victorious campaigns waged in many lands ; 
 of conquered countries, plundered cities, subjected 
 peoples. It fed in the French nation a spirit of over-
 
 86 EUROPEAN HISTORY n 
 
 weening pride, of insatiable ambition, of conscious 
 superiority a spirit which for two generations 
 kept them apart from their fellows in resentment 
 suspicion and dislike. 
 
 On the continent of Europe., and on its peoples, 
 the great wars also left indelible marks. First, 
 they swept away much useless mediaeval lumber, 
 particularly in Germany and Italy, and so rendered 
 the reconstruction of Europe on new lines possible. 
 The bogie of the Holy Roman Empire was for ever 
 laid ; the temporal power of the Papacy shaken to its 
 very foundations ; crowds of obsolete feudal lords 
 and prince-bishops hopefully extinguished. Secondly, 
 the peoples of Europe were roused as never before. 
 In the early stages of the war, as we have seen, 
 when dynasties and aristocracies contended un- 
 popularly against the Revolution for their own 
 purposes, the doctrine and example of the French 
 stirred far and wide the sympathetic fire of demo- 
 cratic zeal. A new age of freedom self-government 
 and cosmopolitan goodwill seemed to be dawning 
 upon the world. But as the struggle progressed, 
 and " liberation " at the hands of the French was 
 found to connote absorption into the Napoleonic 
 empire, loss of independence, government by alien 
 marshals, suppression of traditional institutions, ex- 
 ploitation to the interests of a group of upstart 
 Bonapartist dynasties the zeal for a European 
 fraternity under so masterful an elder brother gave
 
 ii NATIONALITY AND WAR 87 
 
 place to a passion of nationality. In each subjugated 
 country the dispossessed rulers and the oppressed 
 people were drawn together in defence of their 
 common heritage ; classes once privileged and classes 
 once enslaved were welded together incredibly by an 
 ardent longing for deliverance from a foreign yoke, 
 and determination to achieve it. The consequent 
 successful wars of liberation confirmed in each 
 participant nation the sense of unity, and excited 
 still further the flame of patriotism. The perils and 
 the triumphs of 1813-15 gave to Britons Russians 
 Swedes Germans Italians Spaniards Portuguese 
 new and glorious traditions which deepened the 
 consciousness of their individuality, and exalted the 
 value of their independence. In other words, the 
 second of the great controlling factors in nineteenth- 
 century history, nationality, had come into active 
 operation. 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY TO LECTURE II 
 
 All the books mentioned in the Supplementary Bibliography to 
 Lecture I. and in addition : 
 CHUQUET. Les Guerres de la Revolution. 
 COQUELLE, P. Napoleon and England. 
 FISHER, H. A. L. Bonapartism. 
 ROSE, J. H. Life of Napoleon. 
 SEELEY, J. R. Napoleon. 
 WORDSWORTH, W. Prelude.
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 THE COMMONWEALTH OF EUROPE AND THE 
 SETTLEMENT OF 1815 
 
 19. THE FALL OF NAPOLEON 
 
 THE beginning of 1814, in consequence of the 
 victory of the Allies at Leipsig and the triumph of 
 Wellington at Vittoria, saw the French reduced to the 
 defensive on their three " natural " frontiers of the 
 Rhine the Alps and the Pyrenees. The Napoleonic 
 empire was gone, but the Greater France remained ; 
 and the proud armies of the mighty war-lord were 
 determined to maintain it against a hostile world. 
 Never had the genius of Napoleon himself shown 
 itself so pre-eminent over the pedestrian intellects of 
 the opposing generals as it did in the campaign of 
 this year. The great commander divided his enemies, 
 defeated them in turn, reduced their plan of opera- 
 tions to chaos. But even he could not work miracles, 
 and in the end he was overwhelmed by sheer numbers. 
 The victory of the Allies at Pantin (March 30, 
 1814) opened the way to Paris ; the city capitulated ; 
 
 88
 
 in COMMONWEALTH OF EUROPE 89 
 
 Napoleon was forced to lay down his arms and 
 abdicate his throne (April n, 1814). 
 
 The first problem which the Allies had to face 
 related to the government of France. Now that 
 Napoleon was overthrown, what form of constitution 
 would give the surest guarantee against a repetition 
 of his imperialist adventures ? Napoleon himself had 
 hoped that by abdication he might win favour for his 
 son, the young " King of Rome," whose mother, the 
 Hapsburg Marie Louise, might be expected to obtain 
 Austrian influence on his behalf : but the Allies (and 
 many powerful groups in France as well) were resolute 
 to exclude the Corsican brood. Bernadotte, Crown 
 Prince of Sweden, considered that his services to the 
 cause of the Allies were such as to warrant his aspira- 
 tion to the French throne : his opinion, however, 
 was not shared by the potentates with whom the 
 decision rested. There were many in France who 
 looked for a restoration of the Republic as it had 
 flourished before Napoleon had prostituted it to his 
 military ambitions ; but the prevalent sentiment was 
 against so perilous an experiment. The one feasible 
 expedient that remained was the recall of the Bour- 
 bons, and, galling though this recall would necessarily 
 be both to those who had felt the thrill of 1789 and 
 to those who had shared the triumphs of the emperor, 
 it was felt that it offered the surest path to a stable 
 and enduring settlement. Accordingly, the brother 
 of the decapitated Louis XVI. an elderly and worn-
 
 90 EUROPEAN HISTORY m 
 
 out prince who had spent some twenty years in 
 harassed and impoverished exile in Germany Italy 
 Russia Poland and England successively was in- 
 vited to return to Paris as king by the grace of the 
 allied conquerors of his country. In order to mitigate 
 as much as possible the inevitable unpopularity of a 
 monarch thus imposed upon a humiliated nation, the 
 terms of peace granted to the French were of remark- 
 able leniency. A politic fiction was adopted, according 
 to which they were an innocent and peaceful people 
 who had been enslaved and misled by an unscrupulous 
 adventurer, and to whom the Allies had come as 
 beneficent deliverers, bringing back their rightful 
 king. Hence no indemnity was demanded ; not 
 even was the return of the plundered art-treasures 
 of Europe required ; the colonies were, with the 
 exception of a few islands vital to British sea-power, 
 restored ; nay, more, the territories annexed by the 
 French during the three years of the Revolution, 
 when Louis XVI. was nominally king (1789-92), 
 they were allowed to keep, and the frontiers of 
 France were generously fixed as they had existed on 
 November i, 1792. Such, in outline, were the 
 terms of the Treaty of Paris signed May 30, 1814. 
 Liberal as they were, however, in view of the com- 
 pleteness of the victory of the Allies, what impressed 
 the French most was the painful fact that they in- 
 volved the abandonment of the natural frontiers of 
 their country, the surrender to the Netherlands
 
 in COMMONWEALTH OF EUROPE 91 
 
 Germany Switzerland and Italy of territories which 
 had been regarded as for ever incorporated in France, 
 the evacuation by unbeaten troops of over fifty border 
 fortresses. The acceptance of these conditions by 
 the new king, little as he had had to do with formu- 
 lating them, and helpless as he was to secure their 
 modification, at once invested him with the odium 
 of a diminisher of the kingdom. Not only did his 
 restoration mean a repudiation of the principles of 
 the Revolution, it also denoted the sacrifice of the 
 fruits of a long series of glorious campaigns which 
 had been won during a period when the Bourbon 
 influence was wholly on the side of the defeated 
 enemies of France. 
 
 The early acts of the new king did nothing to 
 remove the disfavour with which his restoration was 
 received. On the contrary, they confirmed the view 
 of those who held that the Bourbons were incapable 
 of either learning or forgetting anything. They 
 showed that, although he had been compelled by the 
 allied powers to accept a constitution modelled on 
 that of England, the instincts of absolutism were 
 inherent to the Bourbon nature, and were ineradic- 
 able. He assumed the title " Louis XVIIL," thus 
 recognising the reign and the sovereignty by divine 
 right of his nephew " Louis XVII.," the uncrowned 
 son of Louis XVI., whose lamentable death at the age 
 of ten had been announced by the republican govern- 
 ment in 1795. He issued a charter in which he spoke
 
 92 EUROPEAN HISTORY m 
 
 of the new constitution as " granted " by his royal 
 grace, using words which suggested that he might 
 revoke it if it were found to work unpleasantly. 
 He dated this charter as in " the nineteenth 
 year " of his reign, thus treating the Revolution 
 as mere riot, its principles as exploded heresies, 
 and the Napoleonic regime as a vulgar usurpation. 
 He hauled down the tricolour under which French 
 citizen armies had marched for twenty years to 
 victories of unprecedented splendour, and hoisted 
 once more the white flag of the old regime associated 
 with aristocratic privilege and a long tradition of 
 defeat. He established a franchise for the newly 
 constituted Chamber of Deputies, which limited the 
 right to vote to some 100,000 well-to-do men. These 
 and other retrogressive acts all the more ominous 
 because perpetrated apparently in amiable uncon- 
 sciousness of their significance roused widespread 
 antipathy and antagonism to Louis, and competent 
 observers viewed with anxious apprehension the 
 unrest and disgust of France in general and Paris in 
 particular. The attention of Europe was, however, 
 for a time diverted from the internal affairs of the 
 Bourbon monarchy when in November 1814 the 
 plenipotentiaries of the Powers assembled at Vienna 
 for the resettlement of Europe.
 
 in COMMONWEALTH OF EUROPE 93 
 
 20. THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 
 
 Never since the break-up of mediaeval Christendom 
 had the Concert of Europe been so living a reality 
 as it was at the close of the great wars. Neither the 
 ambitions of Philip II. in the sixteenth century, nor 
 even the far more formidable designs of Louis XIV. 
 in the seventeenth century, had drawn the other 
 powers, threatened with subjugation, into so intimate 
 a union as had the menace of the Revolution and the 
 military oppression of Napoleon. The long duration 
 of the struggle, as well as the exceptional severity of 
 its nature, had welded the more permanent members 
 of the successive coalitions into something approach- 
 ing a confederation. The first coalition (179395), 
 it is true, had been little more than a panic-stricken 
 concourse of fortuitous atoms, soon dissipated by the 
 blasts of adversity. Even the second (1799-1801) 
 had been loose and incoherent ; its dissolution had 
 been due less to external pressure than to internal 
 dissensions. But as soon as the vague peril of the 
 Revolution had transformed itself into the imminent 
 spectre of Napoleonic conquest ; as soon as the war 
 against a novel system of doctrine had assumed the 
 more familiar and recognisable form of resistance to 
 the schemes of a would-be world-ruler, then the 
 alliance had become close and solid. Definite policy 
 and clearly formulated purposes had taken the place 
 of confused and aimless wrestlings with ghostly foes.
 
 94 EUROPEAN HISTORY in 
 
 Britain and Austria had been the basal and more 
 enduring elements in both the first and the second 
 coalition ; into the second coalition Russia also had 
 for a brief period entered. These three powers, 
 reinforced by Prussia, had constituted the permanent 
 nucleus of all the subsequent anti-Napoleonic com- 
 binations. 1 They had formed a Quadruple Alliance 
 between whose governments the most intimate con- 
 fidences had been exchanged, whose princes and 
 ministers had become united in close ties of 
 personal friendship, whose policies had been as- 
 similated to one another, whose armies had been 
 amalgamated, whose finances had been pooled at 
 least to the extent that all were replenished from 
 the common reservoir of the British taxpayer. 
 It was to these four powers that the overthrow 
 of Napokon had been due, and it was they who 
 had made arrangements for the assembling of the 
 Congress of Vienna. 
 
 On no previous occasion had so important a 
 diplomatic conference been held ; never before had 
 so many monarchs and ministers of the first rank 
 been collected together. Six reigning sovereigns 
 were present, including Francis I. of Austria, 
 Alexander I. of Russia, and Frederick William III. 
 of Prussia. Among the leading representative 
 members were Metternich, who, in virtue both of 
 
 1 The third coalition, 1805-7 j the fourth coalition, 1812-14 ; so also the later 
 fifth coalition, 1815.
 
 in COMMONWEALTH OF EUROPE 95 
 
 his position in Vienna and of the part which he had 
 played in the destruction of the Napoleonic empire, 
 presided over the congress and exercised a dominant 
 influence upon its deliberations ; Nesselrode, minister 
 of the Tzar ; Hardenberg, eminent for the work 
 which he, in conjunction with his colleague Stein, 
 had accomplished for the revival and liberation of 
 Prussia after the disaster of Jena ; Castlereagh and 
 Wellington who attended successively on behalf of 
 the British Regent. Most remarkable of all, 
 Talleyrand was present as representative of Louis 
 XVIII. His admission to the congress was due 
 to the acceptance of the same fiction as had secured 
 for the French such easy terms in the first Treaty of 
 Paris, viz. that not the French nation, still less their 
 exiled Bourbon kings, but only the Revolutionary 
 leaders and Napoleon, had been guilty of the great 
 attack upon the liberties of Europe. 
 
 The main tasks which lay before the pleni- 
 potentiaries when they met on November 3, 1814, 
 were five in number, viz., first, to erect a barrier 
 round France, so that if at any time the revolutionary 
 flame should break out again in that country it 
 might the more easily be prevented from spreading, 
 and so that if another Napoleon should arise to 
 excite once more French lust of conquest he might 
 find himself hemmed in by a ring of watchful powers 
 too strong to be lightly attacked ; secondly, to 
 provide a new constitution for Germany in place
 
 96 EUROPEAN HISTORY m 
 
 of the mediaeval figment of the Holy Roman Empire 
 of the German Nation which had been swept away 
 in the period of chaos and reconstruction that had 
 followed the battle of Austerlitz ; thirdly, to decide 
 the fates of (i) the Grand Duchy of Warsaw which 
 Napoleon had formed out of such parts of Poland 
 as had fallen into his power ; (2) Saxony whose 
 ruler, a traitor to the German cause, had fought 
 steadily on the side of Napoleon against the Allies 
 up to the battle of Leipsig ; and (3) Finland, which 
 Russia had absorbed from Sweden in 1809 ; fourthly, 
 to repartition Italy which, when it was nominally 
 divided between Napoleon and his brother Joseph, 
 or Napoleon and his general Murat, had more 
 nearly attained to unity than at any time since the 
 days of the Gothic dominion of Theodoric in the 
 sixth century ; finally, to penalise Denmark for her 
 antagonism to the Allies, and to reward Sweden for 
 the valuable aid she had rendered to Russia and 
 Prussia since 1812. 
 
 Several of these questions, and many minor ones, 
 had been dealt with in negotiations between indi- 
 vidual states before the congress assembled ; some 
 of them had actually been settled by treaty, subject 
 to the confirmation of the Powers as a whole. Thus 
 when Sweden in 1812 had offered her aid to Russia 
 she had stipulated for the acquisition of Norway, 
 and this stipulation the Treaty of Abo had con- 
 firmed. The Treaty of Kalisch (1813), which had
 
 in COMMONWEALTH OF EUROPE 97 
 
 brought Prussia into the fourth coalition, had con- 
 tained definite promises of compensation to her for 
 her losses of 1807. Similarly Austria in entering 
 the coalition a few months later had in the open 
 Treaty of Teplitz, supplemented by secret engage- 
 ments, received the assurance that her lost Tyrolese 
 and Dalmatian provinces should be restored to her 
 with important additions in Italy. The stadholder 
 of Holland had been led to hope not only for 
 restoration to his Dutch dominions, but also for 
 the subjection of Belgium to his authority ; the 
 King of Sardinia had been encouraged to expect, 
 besides the recovery of Savoy and Piedmont, the 
 cession of Nice and Genoa. 
 
 Thus the plenipotentiaries commenced their 
 negotiations not only with a long series of extremely 
 difficult problems to solve, but also with their hands 
 tied by a formidable tangle of public treaties and 
 private promises. These pre-existing treaties and 
 promises, together with certain prevailing principles 
 and prepossessions, largely determined the course of 
 the discussions and the ultimate decisions. 
 
 21. THE COURSE OF THE NEGOTIATIONS 
 
 We have already seen that the two great principles 
 which emerged from the changes and chances of the 
 Revolutionary and Napoleonic era were the principles 
 of democracy and nationality. But these principles, 
 
 H
 
 98 EUROPEAN HISTORY in 
 
 though potent among the peoples, and destined 
 immensely to increase in power during the century, 
 emerged thoroughly discredited in the eyes of all 
 ruling classes and most moderate men because of 
 their association with the excesses and the aggressions 
 of the French. The idea of the sovereignty of the 
 people had become indissolubly joined to memories 
 of September massacres and November decrees, 
 murders of monarchs and a long - drawn reign of 
 terror, anarchy and atheism, spoliation and blood. 
 Similarly, the national idea had acquired an evil 
 favour because its realisation in France under 
 Napoleon had been found to imply immeasurable 
 egoism, merciless selfishness, insatiable ambition, 
 incessant war, interminable conquest, ruthless sub- 
 jugation, and intolerable tyranny. The two principles 
 together democracy and nationality were summed 
 up at Vienna in one word of horror, the " Revolu- 
 tion," and it was the prime purpose of responsible 
 statesmen to adopt means and erect safeguards 
 which should prevent the " Revolution " from 
 breaking out again. Thus at this crisis in the affairs 
 of men, as has so frequently happened both before 
 and since, the cause of progress in which lay the best 
 hopes of humanity was found to have received its 
 most deadly blows from the hands of its friends. 
 In vain would reactionaries have resisted the mighty 
 movements towards emancipation and self- govern- 
 ment, towards the disintegration of dynastic empires
 
 in COMMONWEALTH OF EUROPE 99 
 
 and the formation of national states, if only the 
 leaders of these movements had in the days of their 
 power been wise and strong, if only they could have 
 kept themselves and their followers under control, 
 if only they could have refrained from doing evil in 
 the vain hope that good would come of it. As 
 it was, they were fallen and discredited, and the 
 principles for which they had agonised and sinned 
 were involved in their humiliation punishment and 
 disgrace. As opposed to the " Revolution," the 
 principles of authority and legitimacy were dominant 
 in the minds of the diplomats of the congress. 
 These principles involved the undoing of the work 
 of the preceding quarter-century, in so far as it was 
 possible to undo it ; the restoration of exiled rulers 
 and old regimes ; the reconstruction of the status 
 quo ante^ and the re - establishment of the balance 
 of power ; the revival of ultramontane Catholicism 
 and the suppression of religious particularism ; the 
 inauguration of a romantic reaction in every sphere 
 of thought and action. 
 
 The general acceptance of these anti-revolutionary 
 fundamentals by the plenipotentiaries at Vienna 
 reduced much of their work to. mere matter of 
 routine. The restorations in such countries as 
 Spain and Portugal, Naples and Piedmont, were 
 settled a 'priori^ and only questions of detail remained 
 to be arranged. There were a few problems, how- 
 ever, which could not be solved by the simple
 
 ioo EUROPEAN HISTORY m 
 
 application of a general formula, and these gave rise 
 to a controversy so long and acrimonious that at 
 one time the congress seemed likely to break up 
 and to give place to a new arbitrament of arms. 
 The most formidable of these controversial questions 
 related to the fates of Poland and Saxony. The 
 destinies of these countries were closely bound 
 together ; for under the Napoleonic regime both 
 lands had been governed by Napoleon's submissive 
 henchman Frederick Augustus I., and there was a 
 common sentiment among the representatives of the 
 Quadruple Alliance that he merited and should 
 receive exemplary punishment for his perfidy to 
 Europe in general and Germany in particular. As 
 to Poland, the armies of the Tzar had overrun it in 
 the course of the wars of liberation, had extinguished 
 the " Grand Duchy of Warsaw," had expelled the 
 Saxon administrators and the French garrisons, and 
 had established a Russian occupation. Alexander was 
 firmly resolved not to surrender his hold over the 
 conquered territory, although he was quite prepared 
 to grant it a separate constitution and to govern 
 it as a subject kingdom, linked by merely personal 
 ties to his Muscovite empire. The Western Powers, 
 on the other hand, particularly Austria and Britain, 
 dreaded the immense increase of Russian influence 
 in Central Europe which would necessarily accrue 
 from the Tzar's establishment in the Warsaw salient 
 between east Prussia in the north and Galicia in
 
 in COMMONWEALTH OF EUROPE 101 
 
 the south. Britain, if she could have had her way, 
 would have preferred to restore the autonomous 
 Polish kingdom of the period prior to the iniquitous 
 partitions of 1772-95 ; but she found so firm a 
 determination on the part of all the partitioners not 
 to surrender their acquisitions that she did not press 
 her views. Thus the only alternative to the Tzar's 
 scheme was a return in substance to the threefold 
 division between Russia Austria and Prussia as 
 completed in 1795; and this solution of the Polish 
 problem was insistently urged by the Western 
 Powers. Here was one serious bone of contention. 
 As to the second, viz. Saxony, the whole of this 
 kingdom was demanded by Frederick William III. 
 of Prussia as a reward for his services and a com- 
 pensation for his losses and surrenders. Austria, 
 however, had no wish to see Prussia without any 
 rival in northern Germany ; France was eager to 
 save her old ally from entire destruction ; the minor 
 princes of Germany were much concerned to prevent 
 the extinction of one of their number, and Britain in 
 the interests of Hanover supported them. Hence 
 Prussia discovered a strenuous antagonism to her 
 preposterous claim. Thus towards the close of 
 1814 a serious schism split the congress into two 
 hostile factions. Russia and Prussia drew together 
 in mutual support. Opposed to them, Austria, 
 Britain, and France formed a defensive alliance which 
 was actually embodied in a treaty on January 3,
 
 102 EUROPEAN HISTORY m 
 
 1815. Armies once more began to move towards 
 the debatable lands, and a new European conflict 
 seemed to be in sight. But at the last moment 
 moderate councils prevailed. The Tzar abandoned 
 his larger claims, agreed to restore to Austria and 
 Prussia most of the Polish territory which they had 
 held in 1795, and so was allowed to convert the 
 remainder into a constitutional kingdom under his 
 own sceptre. Prussia, in consideration of this 
 recovery of the major part of her lost Polish 
 territories was brought to consent to the retroces- 
 sion of rather more than three -fifths of Saxony 
 to Frederick Augustus. Thus in February 1815 
 outward harmony was restored in the congress, and 
 from that time rapid progress was made in the 
 general settlement. But the work was still in- 
 complete when, on March 4, news reached Vienna 
 that Napoleon had escaped from Elba. 
 
 22. THE HUNDRED DAYS 
 
 The dissensions which had riven the congress 
 during the autumn of 1814 had revealed the painful 
 fact that the unity of Europe was a very fragile 
 thing, that the international concert easily degenerated 
 into wrangling discord, and that the close cohesion 
 which had marked the Quadruple Alliance during 
 its last phases had been due rather to the external 
 pressure of fear than to any internal attraction.
 
 in COMMONWEALTH OF EUROPE 103 
 
 Only the peril of imminent war had restored super- 
 ficial harmony in the early weeks of 1815 ; the 
 supreme menace of the return of the common enemy 
 was necessary to re-establish cordial co-operation. 
 
 For several days after the escape of Napoleon had 
 been announced it remained uncertain where he 
 intended to put his fortune to the test. Talleyrand 
 expected to hear news of his landing in Italy which was 
 seething with discontent due to the restoration of the 
 mediaeval chaos that Napoleon had reduced to order. 
 But Metternich with accurate prevision declared his 
 belief that the emperor would stake everything upon 
 the recovery of France. It was a bolder move to 
 sail for Cannes than it would have been to slip across 
 the narrow strip of water that divided Elba from 
 the coast of Tuscany ; but it was the only move 
 that gave any prospect of ultimate success. Napoleon 
 had been kept informed by secret agents of the 
 growing unpopularity of Louis XVIII. and his court ; 
 he was aware of the schism in the Congress of 
 Vienna, and believed it to be so serious as to preclude 
 the possibility of the reconstitution of the Quadruple 
 Alliance ; he counted, moreover, upon the fact that 
 the Peace of Paris had released from internment in 
 the prisons of the Allies some quarter -million of 
 French troops who were still under the spell of his 
 name and genius. The events seemed to justify his 
 prescience and his courage. Though he landed with 
 but one thousand men, France was soon at his feet.
 
 io 4 EUROPEAN HISTORY m 
 
 The forces sent to arrest him went over to his side, 
 and on March 20 he made a triumphant entry into 
 Paris. Louis XVIII. and his satellites fled pre- 
 cipitately and disgracefully across the Belgian frontier, 
 and sought safety with the remnants of the armies 
 of the Allies still established there. The stage being 
 thus cleared, Napoleon, with that marvellous energy 
 and promptitude of decision which had always been 
 his distinguishing characteristic, set up a new empire. 
 It was markedly different from the old. The empire 
 overthrown in the wars of liberation had been a 
 military autocracy unmitigated and undisguised. 
 The new empire, it was announced, would stand 
 for peace, for democracy, for nationality, for social 
 reform. Napoleon hoped by these professions of 
 pacific purposes and liberal principles not only to 
 win the support of the large constitutional party in 
 France but also to conciliate British opinion, which 
 had been so conspicuously friendly to France and 
 antagonistic to Prussia and Russia in the recent 
 Vienna negotiations. Unfortunately, however, neither 
 Napoleon's pacifism nor his liberalism excited any 
 confidence. His mere presence, moreover, as ruler 
 of France threatened the whole structure of that 
 reconstituted Europe which was being so laboriously 
 framed by the congress. It was felt that the in- 
 dispensable condition of any permanent settlement at 
 Vienna must be the suppression of this new Revolu- 
 tion, and the punishment of this flagrant defiance of
 
 in COMMONWEALTH OF EUROPE 105 
 
 the Powers. Hence Napoleon was denounced by 
 the assembled diplomats as " the enemy and disturber 
 of the peace of the world " ; the Quadruple Alliance 
 was renewed, and each of the four signatories 
 engaged to provide and maintain 1 50,000 men " till 
 Bonaparte should have been rendered absolutely 
 incapable of stirring up further troubles." In these 
 circumstances with the prospect of the invasion of 
 France by 600,000 enemy forces fed by inexhaustible 
 reserves Napoleon realised that his only chance of 
 success lay in instant action. He had fewer than 
 300,000 regular troops available at the time, and to 
 use these effectively against the overwhelming masses 
 of his foes necessitated his attacking each of their 
 constituent armies in turn before they could effect a 
 junction with one another. At the beginning of 
 June 1815 the Russians and the Austrians were still 
 far away. The Prussians and the British, with their 
 Dutch and Belgian auxiliaries, were, however, draw- 
 ing together in the Low Countries. Before they 
 were able to concentrate and they were amazingly 
 lethargic in their movements Napoleon, skilfully 
 veiling his designs and striking with masterly sudden- 
 ness and severity, got in between them at Charleroi 
 and compelled them to prepare separately for battle. 
 By June 16 his genius had triumphed over all pre- 
 liminary difficulties, and had placed him in a position 
 of distinct military advantage. But from that point, 
 from some unexplained cause, his wonted mastery
 
 106 EUROPEAN HISTORY m 
 
 failed him. He made a simultaneous attack upon 
 the Prussians at Ligny and the British at Quatre- 
 Bras, instead of crushing the one before dealing with 
 the other. Although he drove the Prussians from 
 the field at the end of a long and desperate battle, 
 he neglected to follow up his partial victory by a 
 prompt pursuit, and he actually lost touch with the 
 retreating enemy so completely that he remained 
 unaware in which direction it had withdrawn. He 
 believed that it had retired eastward along the Meuse 
 towards its base at Liege, whereas its main forces 
 had moved northward to Wavre, keeping in close 
 communication with the British. The British for 
 their part had held their own at Quatre-Bras ; but 
 the retreat of the Prussians from Ligny had 
 necessitated their falling back to Waterloo, where 
 they took their stand to cover Brussels. Here 
 Napoleon (ignorant of the nearness of the Prussians) 
 resolved to overwhelm them with superior forces in 
 a gigantic frontal attack. Here Wellington (relying 
 on a positive assurance of Prussian aid from Wavre } 
 only thirteen miles away) determined to face the 
 terrific shock and to put the fate of Europe to the 
 test. On June 1 8 was fought the battle of Waterloo 
 one of the greatest and most decisive conflicts 
 of modern times. For several critical hours the 
 issue of the titanic struggle was in doubt ; but in 
 the end, as the long summer day drew to its 
 close, the curious errors of Napoleon, the stubborn
 
 in COMMONWEALTH OF EUROPE 107 
 
 fighting qualities of the British, and the arrival 
 (though extremely belated) of the Prussians turned 
 the decision into an irretrievable disaster for the 
 French. Napoleon fled from the stricken field to 
 Paris, where, for a second time, he abdicated. The 
 victorious Anglo-Prussian armies rapidly advanced 
 upon the capital ; to reinforce them, Austrian troops 
 crossed the Rhine, and Sardinian forces the Alps. 
 Realising the hopelessness of resistance, Paris capitu- 
 lated, and on July 8 readmitted Louis XVIII. 
 as king. 
 
 23. THE TREATIES OF 1815 
 
 It was no longer possible to maintain the fiction 
 of guilty government and innocent people which 
 had secured for the French such lenient terms in 
 the first Peace of Paris. The enthusiastic welcome 
 which Napoleon had everywhere received on his 
 triumphal progress from Grenoble to Paris in March 
 1815, and the marvellous rally to his standard in May, 
 rendered it ludicrous any more to contend that the 
 nation had been compelled against its will to bow 
 beneath the yoke of the tyrant, or that it had rejoiced 
 in the emancipation and restoration effected for it 
 by the Allies. For the wanton outbreak of the 
 Hundred Days not only the emperor but also the 
 country had to suffer. As to Napoleon, he was 
 sent into perpetual exile in St. Helena. As to
 
 io8 EUROPEAN HISTORY m 
 
 France, the second Treaty of Paris (November 20, 
 1815) reduced her to her boundaries of 1790, 
 installed an Allied army of occupation in her north- 
 eastern fortresses for a period not to exceed five years, 
 exacted from her an indemnity of 700,000,000 francs, 
 and compelled her to restore the works of art which the 
 Revolutionary and Napoleonic armies had tastefully 
 collected from the museums of the Continent. It 
 has been calculated that the Bonapartist adventure of 
 the Hundred Days cost France from first to last 
 no less a sum than 1,570,000,000 francs. Only 
 with the utmost difficulty did Wellington and 
 Castlereagh prevent the Prussian and Austrian re- 
 presentatives at Paris from enforcing the cession of 
 Alsace and Lorraine. 
 
 Before the second Peace of Paris closed the long 
 period of the great wars and restored tranquillity to 
 Europe, the Congress of Vienna had finished its 
 work and had embodied its main decisions in a so- 
 called Final Act (June 9, 1815). These decisions 
 may be summarised as follows : First, in order to 
 provide the barrier supposed to be necessary to 
 prevent the French from breaking out again, Belgium, 
 irrespective of the wishes of its inhabitants, was 
 joined to Holland under the government of the 
 Prince of Orange ; the Rhine Provinces of Germany, 
 regardless of the dominant Catholicism of their 
 peoples, were transferred to Protestant Prussia, which 
 was further strengthened by the acquisition of parts
 
 in COMMONWEALTH OF EUROPE 109 
 
 of Saxony and Poland ; the Swiss Confederation was 
 reorganised, and was reinforced by the addition of 
 the three new cantons of Valais Geneva and Neuf- 
 chatel ; finally Nice and Genoa, in spite of their 
 pronounced republicanism and in the face of their 
 vehement protests, were delivered into the hands 
 of the king of Sardinia to be joined to Savoy 
 and Piedmont. Secondly, Germany was provided 
 with a constitution the main features of which had 
 been agreed upon as the result of a long series 
 of conferences attended by representatives of the 
 various German states. A Bund or Confederation 
 was set up comprising thirty -nine members six 
 kingdoms, seven grand-duchies, nine duchies, eleven 
 principalities, four free cities, together with the two 
 territories of Holstein (attached to Denmark) and 
 Luxembourg (attached to Holland). Each of the 
 members was an international person, and the diet of 
 the Confederation, located at Frankfort -on -Main, 
 was no more than a permanent congress of diplo- 
 matic agents. Executive power was wholly lacking 
 to this loose and discordant simulacrum of a 
 government. Thirdly, Poland was repartitioned 
 between Austria Prussia and Russia, although not 
 quite on the lines of the divisions of 1772-95. 
 Alexander I. received rather more than his pre- 
 decessors had held, and he was allowed to form it 
 into a constitutional kingdom separate from Russia. 
 Russia, too, was confirmed in her possession of Finland,
 
 no EUROPEAN HISTORY in 
 
 Sweden finding compensation in the acquisition of 
 Norway. Of Saxony two-fifths were bestowed on 
 Prussia, the remaining three-fifths being restored to 
 the former king, Frederick Augustus. Fourthly, 
 Italy was parcelled out into eight sections as follows : 
 Austria recovered Lombardy and (as compensation 
 for her surrender of her Netherland and Rhenish 
 territories) received Venetia ; members of the Haps- 
 burg House were replanted in Tuscany Modena and 
 Parma ; the Bourbons returned to Naples and Lucca ; 
 the Pope was re-established in the States of the Church. 
 Fifthly, Denmark was punished for her support of 
 Napoleon by being deprived of Norway, which had 
 been under her rule since the Union of Kalmar 
 effected in 1397 ; Britain, on the other hand, was 
 allowed to take as her reward for her immense 
 exertions and sacrifices such outposts of empire as 
 Heligoland, Malta, the protectorate of the Ionian 
 Islands, Cape Colony, Ceylon, Trinidad, and the 
 Island of S. Lucia. 
 
 Other problems had been mooted at the congress, 
 but had been found too contentious to admit of 
 solution. One such problem was the question of 
 the Spanish-American colonies, which were in full 
 revolt against the attempts of the mother country to 
 reassert over them her authority extinct since the 
 battle of Trafalgar. Another related to the slave 
 trade, which Britain was anxious to suppress ; jealousy 
 of British sea-power, however, caused the congress
 
 in COMMONWEALTH OF EUROPE in 
 
 to hesitate to grant or recognise the necessary rights 
 of search, and it merely expressed its moral dis- 
 approval of the trade. A third was the Eastern 
 Question, which had been raised by an appeal of the 
 Greeks against the misgovernment of the Turks. 
 This involved matters far too vast and controversial 
 for the diplomats at Vienna even to consider, and 
 it was dismissed as being beyond the pale of their 
 jurisdiction. 
 
 Leaving, then, these too-risky problems to the 
 chances of the future, the monarchs and ministers dis- 
 persed, not dissatisfied with their accomplished work. 
 
 24. THE VIENNA SETTLEMENT 
 
 The settlement effected at Vienna in 1815 must 
 be regarded as the foundation of the European state 
 system of the nineteenth century. It has been 
 subjected to a great deal of adverse criticism, and in 
 view of the fact that every one of its main decisions 
 has been reversed, it is easy, from the standpoint of 
 subsequent events, to expose its defects. Some 
 writers, indeed, have gone so far as to contend that 
 the principal task of the hundred years following 
 the congress was to undo its work. Those who 
 adopt this hostile attitude assert that the diplomatists 
 who negotiated and concluded the Vienna treaties 
 were all of them representatives of the old regime, 
 dominated by eighteenth - century prejudices, im-
 
 ii2 EUROPEAN HISTORY in 
 
 pervious to the new ideas which were irresistibly 
 moulding the new age. They blame them for devo- 
 tion to the obsolete principles of " legitimacy " and 
 " balance of power " ; accuse them of subordinating 
 the interests of peoples to those of princes ; charge 
 them even with a selfish and unscrupulous scramble 
 for plunder, and specially condemn the Great Powers 
 for dispoiling and extinguishing the small. But, 
 above all, they indict them for their disregard of 
 historic antagonisms, as when they delivered over 
 Norway to Sweden and Genoa to Sardinia ; and for 
 their violation of the principle of nationality, as when 
 they joined Belgium to Holland and Venetia- 
 Lombardy to Austria. 
 
 In mitigation, however, of these unfavourable 
 judgments there is a good deal to be said. Nay, 
 more, the settlement can lay claim to a large treasury 
 of positive merit which must by no means be left 
 out of the account. It has already been noted l 
 that the building-up of the victorious coalition against 
 Napoleon during the years 1812-14 had involved 
 the making of so many treaty engagements that the 
 sphere of free action left to the congress was 
 extremely limited. Such doubtful measures as the 
 cessions of Norway to Sweden and Belgium to 
 Holland had been the subject of pledges before the 
 diplomatists met at Vienna, and to have revoked 
 the pledges would have meant not only a breach 
 
 1 See above, p. 96.
 
 in COMMONWEALTH OF EUROPE 113 
 
 of faith but also an inevitable renewal of the war. 
 Within the restricted limits wherein the free will 
 of the negotiators had play, a spirit of moderation 
 was shown, a desire to avoid violent changes, a 
 regard for the interests of Europe as a whole, that 
 were in marked contrast to the levity with which 
 Napoleon had removed landmarks and transported 
 princes. It is true that the congress made much of 
 " legitimacy " ; but it did so because it seemed to 
 promise the best hope of future stability. It is also 
 true that the conception of the " balance of power " 
 loomed large in all the discussions at Vienna ; but 
 the restoration of a European equilibrium appeared 
 to provide the only possible alternative to that 
 dominance of one power which it had been the 
 prime purpose of the Quadruple Alliance to destroy. 
 As to the alleged disregard by the diplomats of the 
 principle of nationality, two considerations have to 
 be borne in mind. The first is that in France, where 
 the national spirit had manifested its influence in 
 the most striking manner, it had displayed itself as 
 an evil genius of self-assertion and aggression which 
 it was eminently desirable to exorcise. The second 
 is that its manifestations in other countries, such as 
 Spain and Germany, were recent fitful and erratic, 
 and that there was little to suggest to political 
 observers of the time that the new passion of national 
 sentiment was more than a passing concomitant of 
 the wars of liberation, and nothing to cause them 
 
 i
 
 1 1 4 EUROPEAN HISTORY in 
 
 to realise that it was indeed the new vital and 
 formative principle that was to transmute the old 
 Europe of dynastic states to the new Europe of 
 homogeneous and self-conscious peoples. It would 
 be unjust to condemn the politicians because they 
 were not prophets. Certain is it, moreover, that if 
 they had been endowed with prophetic foresight in 
 1815, and if they had tried at that date to satisfy 
 the still embryonic national aspirations of the 
 inchoate folk of the Continent, they would have 
 precipitated a chaos of conflict compared with which 
 the Napoleonic wars would have been mere skirmishes. 
 Fortunately they were not seers and idealogues, but 
 able and prudent statesmen who kept before their 
 eyes the practical projects of restoring much-needed 
 peace to Europe after a quarter of a century of war, 
 and of providing means to maintain it. In these 
 supremely important purposes they were far from 
 unsuccessful. The system of equilibrium which 
 they contrived to set up preserved general tranquillity 
 among the Great Powers during a priceless forty 
 years a period of unprecedented material prosperity 
 and intellectual activity. Moreover, the resolution 
 which they adopted, in accordance with a stipulation 
 of the 1814 Treaty of Chaumont, to the effect that 
 in future periodical meetings of the Powers should 
 be held to consider the affairs of Europe as a whole, 
 marked an immense advance in the direction of inter- 
 national government and the organisation of a Con-
 
 in COMMONWEALTH OF EUROPE 115 
 
 tinental Commonwealth. There were some, indeed, 
 who wished to go even farther along the road towards 
 the constitution of a United States of Europe, and 
 formulated schemes for the erection of an authoritative 
 tribunal for the enforcement of international law, the 
 vindication of justice among peoples, and the preserva- 
 tion of perpetual peace. But though the time had 
 not come has it even yet come ? for the realisation 
 of this splendid dream, the achievement actually 
 accomplished was one of the first importance, viz. the 
 regularisation and organisation on a permanent basis 
 of the Concert of Europe, and the conversion of the 
 General Congress of the Powers, which hitherto had 
 been an instrument merely for the conclusion of wars, 
 into an instrument of equitable administration and 
 pacific control through long periods of tranquillity. 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY TO LECTURE III 
 
 DEBIDOUR, A. Histoire diplomatique de 1'Europe, vol. i. 
 FISHER, H. A. L. Bonapartism. 
 HERTSLET, E. Map of Europe by Treaty, vol. i. 
 KOCH AND SCHOELL. Histoire abregee des Traites de Paix. 
 LAVISSE AND RAMBAUD. Histoire gene>ale, vol. x. 
 MORRIS, W. O'C. The Campaign of 1815. 
 ROSE, J. H. Napoleon. 
 ROSE, J. H. Napoleonic Studies. 
 STERN, A. Geschichte Europas, 1815-1871, vol. i. 
 WEBSTER, C. K. England and the Polish-Saxon Problem at the 
 Congress of Vienna. (R. Hist. Soc. Trans., 1913.)
 
 PART II 
 THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION
 
 LECTURE IV 
 
 THE ERA OF THE CONGRESSES, l8l$-22 
 
 25. THE HOLY ALLIANCE AND THE QUADRUPLE 
 ALLIANCE 
 
 THE principles of the French Revolution had seemed 
 to foreshadow the formation of a cosmopolitan 
 democratic Commonwealth of Europe. The actual 
 outcome of the Revolution and the wars which it 
 had engendered was, however, something radically 
 different, viz. a monarchical and militant concert of 
 the Great Powers pledged to the cause of reaction. 
 The four States Britain Russia Austria Prussia 
 whose coalitions had secured the overthrow of 
 Napoleon, assumed possession of the place of 
 ascendancy vacated by him on his fall, and they 
 prepared to exercise over Europe as a whole the same 
 authority as he had made so effective. The objects 
 of their prime concern, as we have already seen, 
 were to keep watch upon France and prevent her 
 from breaking out again in revolution, to safe- 
 guard the treaties of 1815 as the immovable founda- 
 
 119
 
 120 EUROPEAN HISTORY iv 
 
 tion of the restored state system of the Continent, 
 and to preserve the peace of the Western world 
 against all persons and all influences that would 
 wantonly disturb it. Their united and unanimous 
 will to achieve these objects was embodied in a 
 formal Quadruple Alliance signed on November 20, 
 1815, simultaneously with the second Treaty of 
 Paris, whose terms it was the special function of 
 the allies to enforce. The high contracting parties 
 further agreed to meet from time to time " to 
 consult upon their common interests and to consider 
 the measures which at each of these periods shall 
 be considered the most salutary for the repose and 
 prosperity of nations, and for the maintenance of the 
 peace of Europe." In accordance with the arrange- 
 ments made on this occasion a joint army of occupa- 
 tion, drawn from the troops of the four Powers and 
 placed under the command of the Duke of Wellington, 
 took possession of the north-eastern fortresses of 
 France. The Concert of Europe began its sur- 
 veillance of France in particular and the Continent 
 in general. 
 
 The main purposes of the Quadruple Alliance 
 were entirely definite and precise, viz. to maintain 
 the treaties and to ensure the stability of the 
 European system established by them. But there 
 was room for considerable divergence of opinion 
 respecting the question of what might be regarded 
 as constituting a breach of the peace of Europe, and
 
 iv THE ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 121 
 
 also respecting the means which might properly be 
 employed by the four guaranteeing Powers to 
 preserve the peace. The three men whose opinion 
 at that time most mattered were Metternich, 
 Alexander I. of Russia, and Castlereagh. They 
 were all agreed that revolutionary agitations likely to 
 disturb the European equilibrium and the general 
 tranquillity should be suppressed. But beyond that 
 point their views diverged. Metternich represented 
 reaction in its extreme form. Regarding Continental 
 politics from the Austrian standpoint he was the 
 avowed and implacable enemy of both democracy 
 and nationality. He perceived that any concession 
 to the principle of popular government would be 
 fatal to the Hapsburg bureaucratic system, and that 
 any concession to the principle of nationality would 
 mean the disruption of the " ramshackle " Austrian 
 empire itself. Hence he was prepared to stamp out 
 the " Revolution " wherever it might manifest itself 
 and in whatever shape it might appear. Alexander 
 of Russia was at this stage of his erratic career much 
 more liberal than Metternich. He had played a 
 prominent part in compelling Louis XVIII. to grant 
 a constitution to France ; he himself had granted one 
 to Poland, and he had been foremost in insisting that 
 a promise of constitutions should be made by all the 
 German princes who entered the Confederation of 
 1815. Nevertheless, in spite of his liberal sympathies, 
 he was essentially anti-democratic and anti-national.
 
 122 EUROPEAN HISTORY iv 
 
 He held that constitutions to be valid must be volun- 
 tarily granted from above, not spontaneously generated 
 from below ; that they must be conceded by princes, 
 not rebelliously proclaimed by demagogues. Further, 
 he had no objection to interfering, in the name of 
 Europe, with the internal affairs of sovereign in- 
 dependent States. To Castlereagh, conservative and 
 apprehensive of revolution though he was, neither 
 of these principles was acceptable. The first in- 
 validated the English constitution, which had been 
 extorted from the Stuarts by means of successful 
 civil war ; the second justified the long intrigues 
 and frequent interventions of the Bourbons on behalf 
 of the exiled Jacobites, and threw doubt on the 
 Hanoverian title to the English crown. These were 
 serious divergences of principle, and they portended 
 the ultimate dissolution of the Concert of Europe. 
 But at first, and for some years, they were concealed 
 by the sense of unity and the desire for harmony 
 which sprang from a consciousness of common perils 
 past, common purposes achieved, and common 
 tasks to perform. Alexander, indeed, made a 
 strenuous and remarkable effort to confirm and 
 supplement the political bond which united the 
 members of the Quadruple Alliance to one another, 
 by proposing the conclusion of a reciprocal personal 
 and religious pact on the part of the princes of Europe 
 generally. On September 26, 1815, he announced 
 the terms of the " Holy Alliance," according to
 
 iv THE ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 123 
 
 which all rulers should pledge themselves in mutual 
 aid " to take for their sole guide the precepts of the 
 Christian religion," and "to strengthen themselves 
 every day more and more in the principles and 
 exercise of the duties which the Divine Saviour has 
 taught to mankind." To the imperial invitation to 
 take this pledge all the European potentates gave 
 an affirmative answer except the Pope, the -Sultan, 
 and the English Regent. But no one beside 
 Alexander himself and his friend Frederick William 
 of Prussia took the holy bond seriously. Metternich 
 regarded the whole business as " highfalutin 
 absurdity," yet advised his sovereign to sign it, so 
 as not to offend the Tzar. Castlereagh described it 
 as " a piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense," and, 
 being suspicious of the Tzar's intentions, he per- 
 suaded the Regent to evade committing himself by 
 writing a vague letter of general admiration. The 
 "Holy Alliance" (sad to say!) had no relation to 
 practical politics, and was inoperative from the day 
 of its inception to the day of Alexander's death 
 (1825), when it faded into oblivion. It was on 
 the Quadruple Alliance of November 1815 that the 
 Concert of Europe was based. 
 
 26. REACTION AND UNREST, 1815-18 
 
 Under the asgis of the Quadruple Alliance the 
 forces of reaction had it all their own way for three
 
 i2 4 EUROPEAN HISTORY iv 
 
 years. The ministers of the old and settled Powers 
 pursued a policy of stern repression of popular move- 
 ments ; the Bourbon kings of France Spain and 
 Naples returned from exile determined to restore 
 the antique regime in their respective realms ; the 
 petty princes of Italy and Germany resumed the 
 local tyrannies from which the French had expelled 
 them. Ludicrous but ominous stories began to be 
 told of the way in which all over the Continent the 
 historical clock was being set back. The King of 
 Sardinia, for instance, when he re-entered Turin wore 
 the old-fashioned garments in which he had made his 
 hasty departure nearly twenty years before, and as 
 soon as he had resettled himself in his palace he 
 restored, so far as he could, the functionaries who 
 had held office in those remote days ; he repealed 
 the legislation of the interim ; he destroyed the 
 botanic gardens which the French had planted, and 
 interdicted the use by his subjects of Napoleon's 
 great road over the Mont Cenis Pass. In a similar 
 spirit of obscurantism the Papacy abolished street 
 lamps from Rome ; Francis of Modena swept away 
 the reforms of a quarter of a century ; Ferdinand of 
 Spain re-established the Inquisition ; the Elector of 
 Hesse-Cassel claimed all the arrears of taxes which 
 he had not received during the ten years of his exile. 
 These absurd excesses of the smaller fry were 
 paralleled by the more serious measures of the 
 governments of the greater states. Metternich, the
 
 iv THE ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 
 
 incarnation of the reaction, developed throughout the 
 heterogeneous Austrian dominions, and especially in 
 the restless Italian provinces, a system of vigilant 
 espionage and remorseless repression. Alexander 
 displayed in all the Russias and in the newly- 
 constituted kingdom of Poland the principles and 
 practice of an eighteenth-century benevolent despot 
 albeit of one in whom, owing to the ingratitude 
 of his subjects, the despotism increasingly prevailed 
 over the benevolence. Castlereagh in England 
 clearly expressed the view that the time had not yet 
 come to imperil the stability of the constitution by 
 making any concessions to the demands of reformers, 
 and at his inspiration the Liverpool ministry passed 
 a series of measures the Five Acts of 1817, supple- 
 mented by the Seven Acts of 1819 under which 
 English liberty sank to a lower ebb than at any 
 period since the days of the Stuarts. In France, 
 too, reaction held sway. Ministers, like Talleyrand 
 and Fouch, who had held office under the Republic 
 and the Empire, no matter how great their services 
 in bringing about the Bourbon restoration, were dis- 
 missed. Marshal Ney and others who had assisted 
 Napoleon on his return from Elba were, in spite of 
 warnings and appeals, executed. Surviving regicides, 
 such as Carnot, the " organiser of victory " during the 
 glorious days of Bonaparte's early triumphs, were 
 driven into exile. The ultra-royalists of the South 
 in a " White Terror," which the Government did
 
 126 EUROPEAN HISTORY iv 
 
 little to restrain, fell upon the Republicans and the 
 Bonapartists, and exacted a bloody revenge for their 
 sufferings in the " Red Terror " of the opening years 
 of the revolutionary era. The electoral qualification 
 was raised, so that the franchise was retained by only 
 some 80,000 propertied persons. The liberty of the 
 press was restricted. Demands were even made for 
 the restoration of aristocratic privilege, ecclesiastical 
 lands, the Inquisition. Fortunately these extreme 
 demands of the ultra-royalists were resisted by Louis 
 XVIII., a prudent man who had no desire to go on 
 his travels again, and by the moderate and statesmanly 
 Due de Richelieu, who succeeded to the place and 
 power of Talleyrand as head of the administration. 
 Yet not even Louis XVIII. and Richelieu could con- 
 template concessions to the " Revolution." For, how- 
 ever much they might have wished "to nationalise 
 the monarchy," the allied army of occupation was 
 established in vigilant force on the north-east frontier 
 of the country, and there was no hope of its departure 
 unless France could show evidence of a return to the 
 ways of conservatism and repose. Hence, perforce, 
 France conformed to the " Metternich system." 
 
 It would be unjust to suppose that either the 
 originator or the supporters of the " Metternich 
 system " were actuated by sinister motives, that 
 they were unscrupulous plotters against the peoples 
 whom they governed. They sincerely believed that 
 the principles which they advocated and the measures
 
 iv THE ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 127 
 
 which they adopted were necessary for the salvation 
 of the nations from anarchy and bloodshed, from 
 
 " red ruin and the breaking up of laws." 
 
 Nor can it be denied that both the reckless words 
 and the sanguinary deeds of the pioneers of the 
 more liberal movements tended to confirm them in 
 their belief. They were further strengthened by 
 the Church wherein, by way of reaction from the 
 ostentatious irreligion of the Revolution, a remarkable 
 ultramontane revival manifested itself. 1 Similarly, 
 in the realms of art and literature, a powerful 
 " Romantic " renaissance showed the same tendency 
 to return to old paths, to revive the traditions of 
 the past, to obey venerable authorities, to eschew 
 doubtful and dangerous novelties. Even philosophy 
 abjured the Revolution ; the Utilitarians, radical 
 reformers though they were, condemned with a 
 vehemence that Burke himself could hardly have 
 exceeded the " anarchic fallacies " of the Rights of 
 Man. Everywhere reaction reigned. 
 
 But beneath the surface burned the fires of a 
 fierce unrest. The peoples who had felt the breath 
 of liberty could never contentedly remain subject 
 to external authority. The nations in whom the 
 passion of patriotism had been kindled could no 
 longer lie submissive under alien yokes. Democratic 
 
 1 One of the most notable expressions of this religious revival is Chateau- 
 briand's Genie du Chrhtianhme.
 
 128 EUROPEAN HISTORY iv 
 
 agitations manifested themselves in England, where 
 the eighteenth-century demands for parliamentary 
 reform and religious emancipation were revived ; in 
 the Latin countries of southern Europe, where the 
 Spanish " Constitution of 1812 " became the rallying 
 cry of the reformers ; l above all, in Germany, where 
 literary men, university professors, and associations 
 of students (Burchemchafteri) discoursed liberally, 
 and demonstrated freely, in a manner most alarming 
 to the potentates. Simultaneous with these demo- 
 cratic symptoms were national upheavals portending 
 serious eruptions in Lombardy-Venetia, in Poland, 
 in Norway, in Belgium, in Ireland. Added to these 
 causes of anxiety were new and ominous evidences 
 of social and economic uneasiness breakings of 
 machines, demands for repeal of combination laws, 
 agitations against corn laws, protests against en- 
 closures, calls for poor-law reform, claims for in- 
 surance against unemployment, attacks on landlords 
 and capitalists. 
 
 The golden age of rest and recuperation, of 
 goodwill and prosperity, which optimists had ex- 
 pected to follow the termination of the great wars, 
 had not come. The pessimism and cynicism of 
 Metternich seemed to be justified ; all the vigilance 
 of the Powers appeared to be needed to prevent the 
 
 1 This constitution, which was of an extremely revolutionary type, had been 
 proclaimed at Cadiz by the leaders of the opposition to Joseph Bonaparte. It 
 had been rescinded by Ferdinand VII. on his restoration in 1814. Cf. Cambridge 
 Modern History, vol. x. p. 206.
 
 iv THE ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 129 
 
 " Revolution " from breaking out once more. In 
 order that the Powers might survey the situation, 
 and might decide on concerted measures in respect 
 of it, they agreed to send representatives to a congress 
 to be held at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818. 
 
 27. THE CONGRESS OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE 
 
 The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle marked the 
 summit of Metternich's European influence. At 
 Vienna he had been thwarted and restrained by the 
 doctrinaire liberalism of Alexander I. But Alexander 
 came to the assembly of 1818 in a chastened and 
 penitent mood. He had been shocked by the 
 democratic demonstrations of the German students ; 
 he had been horrified by the discovery of secret 
 societies in his own army ; he had been outraged 
 by the revelation of a plot to kidnap himself on his 
 way to Aix. Hence he was fain to admit that 
 Metternich had been right when he declared that 
 to make any concessions to liberalism was to open 
 the floodgates to uncontrollable disorder. The 
 repentance of the Tzar left Metternich indisputably 
 dominant. He moulded the assembled monarchs 
 and ministers according to his will, and at the close 
 of the proceedings he was able to say with self- 
 congratulation that he " had never seen a prettier 
 little congress." 
 
 The first questions with which the plenipoten- 
 
 K
 
 130 EUROPEAN HISTORY iv 
 
 tiaries had to deal related to France. For three years 
 that country had been in probation under the 
 vigilant and suspicious eyes of the Quadruple 
 Alliance. She had fulfilled their requirements and 
 satisfied their tests. Her monarchy had shown 
 itself to be stable ; the ministry of the Due de 
 Richelieu had manifested a prudent conservatism 
 which seemed full of happy augury for the future. 
 Hence it appeared safe to withdraw the allied army 
 of occupation a thing ardently desired by the whole 
 French nation and to admit France as a returned 
 and reformed prodigal into the fraternity of the 
 Powers. This accordingly was done : on September 
 30 the evacuation was agreed to ; on November 4 
 Louis XVIII. was invited to join his brethren at 
 the congress. He was admitted to the sacred circle of 
 the Holy Alliance ; but at the same time, in order 
 to guard against all possible contingencies, the pre- 
 cautionary Quadruple Alliance was secretly renewed. 
 The second series of problems which came before 
 the congress related to Germany. The Confedera- 
 tion established in 1815, with its Diet of diplomatic 
 agents debating interminably at Frankfort-on-Main, 
 had already existed long enough to reveal itself to 
 the world as a complete and even ludicrous failure. 
 Its lack of experience and the absence of constitutional 
 precedents involved it in hopeless tangles of pro- 
 cedure ; its addiction to philosophy lured it into 
 labyrinths of abstract controversy ; its want of
 
 iv THE ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 131 
 
 executive power made its decisions, on the rare 
 occasions when it arrived at any, the laughing-stock 
 of the recalcitrant princes. Thus the congress was 
 called upon to consider and settle numerous particu- 
 larist difficulties which the Diet had been impotent 
 to solve. Such were the claims of the ruler of 
 Hesse-Cassel to the title of king ; the problem of 
 the succession in Baden ; the status of various 
 princes ; the boundaries of several contiguous statfes. 
 But far surpassing these in importance was the 
 problem of the suppression of the " Revolution " as 
 it had manifested itself in the press, in the lecture- 
 rooms of the universities, in the students' associa- 
 tions and the gymnastic societies, in various free 
 cities, and, above all, in the territories of the liberal 
 Grand Duke of Weimar, whose university of Jena 
 was the hotbed of democratic and national propa- 
 ganda. The congress itself disposed of most of the 
 particularist questions ; but as to the suppression of 
 the " Revolution " in Germany it took the fateful 
 step of leaving the two chief German Powers, Austria 
 and Prussia, to consult together and take the 
 necessary steps. This involved the virtual super- 
 session of the Diet in favour of a dual-control on 
 the part of the major states. The representatives of 
 these two states, Metternich of Austria and Harden- 
 berg of Prussia, whose minds were entirely in accord 
 with one another, made arrangements for a con- 
 ference on German affairs to be held later on ; but
 
 132 EUROPEAN HISTORY iv 
 
 meantime, before departing from Aix-la-Chapelle, 
 they had several European concerns to attend to. 
 
 At no congress were so many and various matters 
 brought up for discussion as at that of Aix-la-Chapelle. 
 The hegemony of the Great Powers seems to have 
 been generally recognised, and from every part of 
 Europe appeals came to the assembled diplomats as 
 to a High Court of Continental Jurisdiction. Of 
 these the most important were lodged by Denmark 
 and Spain respectively ; the former sought success- 
 fully for the enforcement upon Sweden of her treaty 
 obligations respecting Norway ; the latter begged 
 unavailingly for moral and material aid in the 
 reconquest of her revolted American Colonies. 
 Britain brought forward the matter of the slave- 
 trade ; but once more jealousy of British sea-power 
 prevented agreement upon a vigorous policy of 
 suppression. The kindred question of the extermina- 
 tion of the Barbary pirates, whose depredations 
 rendered the Mediterranean insecure, had similarly 
 to be shelved because of British unwillingness to 
 allow a Russian squadron to enter that sea to take 
 part in a joint enterprise. Thus even at the height 
 of Metternich's ascendancy, at the time when the 
 suzerainty of the Concert was most fully admitted, 
 and at the congress where the consciousness of 
 European unity was most profound, suspicions and 
 dissensions were evident. Serious divergencies of 
 interests and grave differences of opinion prevented
 
 iv THE ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 133 
 
 the settlement, and even the effective discussion, of 
 any really controversial problem. 
 
 In Germany, however, opposition to the Metter- 
 nich system was crushed out. As a sequel to the 
 Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, conferences of German 
 Powers were held in 1819 at Teplitz and Carlsbad 
 successively. Their outcome was to establish the 
 guardianship of the Confederation and the execution 
 of the decrees of its Diet in the hands of Austria and 
 Prussia ; to appoint curators over the universities ; 
 to dissolve the students' clubs and gymnastic societies ; 
 to strengthen the censorship of the press ; and to 
 appoint a commission to inquire into and suppress 
 secret conspiracies. In the " Carlsbad Decrees " 
 reaction reached its high-water mark. 
 
 28. THE EUROPEAN UPHEAVAL, 1818-20 
 
 Strengthened by the unanimity of the Congress of 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, the monarchs and ministers returned 
 to their respective countries resolute to suppress the 
 " Revolution." Throughout the Continent generally 
 a regime of unprecedented rigour was established and 
 maintained. In Germany, under the direct super- 
 intendence of Metternich, the Diet was controlled, 
 the universities crippled, liberal professors dismissed, 
 the press muzzled, bureaucracy made supreme. In 
 France the ultra -royalist and ultramontane party 
 continued to gain ground under the leadership of
 
 i 3 4 EUROPEAN HISTORY iv 
 
 the Comte d'Artois and the Comte de Villele, and a 
 successful struggle to restrict the franchise still further 
 (1820) prepared the way for the complete triumph 
 of reactionaries over moderates in 1 8 2 1 . In England 
 the Liverpool ministry, dominated by the masterful 
 personality of Castlereagh, pursued with increasing 
 severity its policy of repression unrelieved by reform ; 
 the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, the censorship 
 of the press made rigid, the holding of public meetings 
 restricted, the law of libel rendered more oppressive, 
 the possession of arms interdicted. In the Latin 
 countries of southern Europe countries where 
 political moderation is unknown and where no 
 thought of compromise or concession ever mitigates 
 the insensate determination of each extremist to get 
 his own way a veritable royalist reign of terror was 
 instituted ; espionage inquisition treachery imprison- 
 ment assassination execution, all played their part in 
 an orgy of religious persecution and veiled war of 
 extermination. 
 
 Increased reactionary repression, however, every- 
 where led to increased popular resistance ; from all 
 parts of Europe came reports of growing disorder, 
 spreading disaffection, multiplying excursions and 
 alarms. In northern Europe Germany France 
 England the governments were strong and prudent 
 enough to keep rebellion in check. But in southern 
 Europe Spain Portugal Naples folly and feeble- 
 ness on the part of the restored rulers co-operated
 
 iv THE ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 135 
 
 with violence and unreason on the part of the 
 oppressed populace to produce revolutionary out- 
 breaks of formidable proportions. Everywhere the 
 main demand was the same ; it was a democratic 
 demand for constitutions, for responsible ministries, 
 for extensions of franchise, for freedom of thought 
 and speech. Behind it, moreover, everywhere lay 
 vaguely formulated aspirations after larger social 
 equality and greater economic opportunity. Never- 
 theless, each country had, in addition to these general 
 demands and aspirations, its own peculiar problems, 
 and in each the manifestation of unrest had its own 
 special features. 
 
 In Germany the sense of national unity, stimulated 
 by the war of liberation, had declined. Particularism 
 had reasserted itself, and the progressive movement 
 had become broken up into a number of local agita- 
 tions for an extension of self-government. These 
 agitations were led by, and frequently limited to, 
 small coteries of intellectuals whose prime interests 
 lay in the realm of political theory democrats of the 
 chair, wordy idealogues devoid of practical common- 
 sense. Well do they deserve the contempt which 
 Treitschke has poured upon them, and rarely has the 
 cause of liberalism suffered more disservice than it 
 did at their incapable hands. In Bavaria Baden and 
 Wurtemberg, whose rulers actually granted constitu- 
 tions, they speedily made government impossible. 
 In Prussia Saxony Hanover and other North-
 
 136 EUROPEAN HISTORY iv 
 
 German states they passed from vehement words to 
 lawless deeds, and the murder of a reactionary jour- 
 nalist named Kotzebue on March 23, 1819 gave 
 the Powers who were represented at Carlsbad later in 
 the year a valid excuse for the severe measures of 
 repression which they adopted. The agitators were 
 crushed, and they had not deserved to succeed. 
 
 In France the progressive movement was much 
 more widespread and popular. It drew its supporters 
 from many and large bodies of men who still held 
 to the doctrines of the Declaration of the Rights of 
 Man, or who still regretted the downfall of the 
 enlightened plebiscitary empire of Napoleon. The 
 reasonable demand of these important and numerous 
 sections of the community for freedom and franchise 
 was one which could not be indefinitely postponed 
 without grave peril to the state ; but for the moment 
 the obstinacy of the ultra - royalist minority which 
 refused concessions was reinforced by the support 
 of moderates who dreaded the recurrence of violence 
 and the renewal of European intervention. Once 
 more, too, the extremists played into the hands of 
 their opponents : the murder of the Due de Berri, 
 heir prospective to the Crown, on February 13, 1820, 
 seemed to justify the alarm of the moderates and the 
 precautionary measures of the reactionaries. Hence 
 in France too the cause of repression prevailed. 
 
 In England industrial distress, agricultural depres- 
 sion, high prices, unemployment, heavy taxation,
 
 iv THE ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 137 
 
 corn laws, combined with steady refusal on the part 
 of both parliament and ministry to contemplate 
 alleviation or discuss reform, culminated in the 
 Peterloo riots of 1819 and the Cato-Street Conspiracy 
 of 1820. Both, however, were easily crushed, and 
 the government, still haunted by the terror of the 
 red spectre, pursued its retrogressive course. 
 
 In the south of Europe, however, a very different 
 kind of drama was unfolding itself. Here the 
 " Revolution " gained some alarming successes. In 
 Spain, on New Year's Day, 1820, troops destined 
 for the reconquest of the American Colonies rose in 
 revolt under Colonel Riego. The mutiny spread to 
 the rest of the army, and as a result the reactionary 
 Ferdinand VII., deprived of the mainstay of his 
 despotism, was compelled to grant a constitution, 
 suppress the Inquisition, and accept a liberal ministry. 
 A similar military rising in Portugal under Colonel 
 Sepulveda led to the overthrow of the regency and 
 necessitated the return from Brazil of the absentee 
 king, John VI. Before he was allowed to land 
 he too had to swear his acceptance of the radical 
 Spanish " Constitution of 1 8 12." Finally, in Naples, 
 the disaffection which had long been fomented and 
 organised by the secret society of the Carbonari 
 burst forth into rebellion under the leadership of 
 General Pepe. King Ferdinand 1., deserted by his 
 army, was constrained to surrender, and to proclaim 
 with a superfluity of oaths his adoption of the
 
 138 EUROPEAN HISTORY iv 
 
 popular though little understood " Constitution 
 of 1812." Having yielded, however, with extreme 
 reluctance, he appealed to Metternich for counsel 
 consolation and assistance. Hence the Congress of 
 Troppau. 
 
 29. THE CONGRESSES OF TROPPAU, LAIBACH, 
 AND VERONA 
 
 Metternich had viewed with grave anxiety the 
 successive outbreaks of revolution in the Latin 
 kingdoms of southern Europe during the course of 
 the year 1820. So long, indeed, as they had been 
 confined to the Spanish peninsula he had thought it 
 unnecessary and indeed imprudent to intervene. 
 His attitude of aloofness, however, had been due not 
 to any lack of antipathy to the constitutionalists, but 
 rather to the suspicious and disquieting eagerness of 
 Alexander I. to send a large Russian army across 
 Europe to the aid of the Spanish Royalists, and to 
 his obvious desire to secure the establishment of a 
 Russian fleet in the Mediterranean. Metternich 
 dreaded the Russians at the gates of the West even 
 more than he dreaded the revolutionists. Hence he 
 sent to Alexander a long and bewildering despatch in 
 which he argued that as the causes of the peninsular 
 risings were " material " and not " moral " there was 
 no call for the holy allies to intervene. Metternich 
 was always a remarkable adept in finding general
 
 iv THE ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 139 
 
 principles to fit particular cases ; he first decided the 
 policy which Austrian interests demanded, then he 
 sought for eternal and immutable laws, of which 
 that policy might seem to be the exemplification. 
 
 The subtle distinction, however, between material 
 and moral causes of rebellion was wholly irrelevant 
 to Austrian interests when the trouble spread from 
 Spain to Naples. Whatever the nature of the revolt, 
 it menaced the Austrian ascendancy in the Italian 
 peninsula too immediately to be allowed to prosper 
 and extend. Even before Ferdinand's appeal reached 
 him, Metternich had resolved that the Neapolitan 
 rising must be suppressed. He tried at first to 
 secure permission from the Powers for Austria to 
 take instant and individual action. To this course, 
 however, strong opposition was manifested from 
 several quarters, and Metternich had to postpone 
 operations pending the assembly of a congress which 
 was summoned to meet at Troppau in Silesia. 
 Having determined to adopt in respect of Naples 
 a policy diametrically opposite to that which he 
 had pursued in regard to Spain, viz. a policy of 
 intervention, he was compelled in the interval prior 
 to the gathering of the diplomats to discover or 
 invent a new general principle applicable to the 
 changed requirements of the situation. This new 
 general principle he announced in due course in a 
 memorandum remarkable for disingenuous skill. 
 He distinguished between revolutions initiated from
 
 EUROPEAN HISTORY iv 
 
 above and those initiated from below : the first, 
 however undesirable, were legitimate and could not 
 be interfered with ; the second were illegitimate and 
 ought to be suppressed. The Neapolitan revolution 
 was obviously of the infernal order. Castlereagh, on 
 behalf of the British Government, while not denying 
 the infernal nature of the rising or disputing Austria's 
 treaty-right to intervene to suppress it, definitely 
 declined to accept the new principle enunciated by 
 Metternich which, he contended, would widely 
 extend the scope and radically change the nature of 
 the Quadruple Alliance. He clearly recognised that 
 it was a principle under which the English revolution 
 of 1688 would stand condemned as illegitimate. 
 Thus was heard the first grave and unresolvable 
 discord in the Concert of Europe. When the 
 plenipotentiaries met at Troppau in October 1820 
 the dissonance was accentuated. True, the actual 
 decision respecting Naples was postponed by being 
 referred to an adjourned congress to be held at 
 Laibach in Carniola, whither Ferdinand was invited ; 
 but the crucial issue was forced by means of a 
 protocol, drawn up by the representatives of Austria 
 Russia and Prussia, which proclaimed the dogma 
 that "States that have undergone a change of 
 government due to revolution, the results of which 
 threaten other states, ipso facto cease to be members 
 of the European Alliance, and remain excluded from 
 it until their situation gives guarantees for legal order
 
 iv THE ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 141 
 
 and stability," and pledged the Powers " by peaceful 
 means, or, if need be, by arms to bring back the guilty 
 State into the bosom of the Great Alliance." Here 
 was a new principle justifying intervention a 
 doubtful distinction between internal changes that 
 have and those that have not .external results which 
 Castlereagh felt compelled emphatically to repudiate. 
 It was thus that, in a condition of acute dissension, 
 the congress dispersed to meet after Christmas at 
 Laibach. To Laibach in January 1821 came 
 Ferdinand of Naples to pour his complaints into the 
 sympathetic ears of Metternich and Alexander. 
 He had no difficulty in showing that the Neapolitan 
 revolution had originated from below and not from 
 above. Metternich was able with equal ease to 
 demonstrate that if successful its " external result " 
 would be the undermining of the Austrian dominion 
 in Italy. Hence, in spite of British protests, Austria 
 was commissioned by the congress to suppress the 
 revolution and to restore Ferdinand to his former 
 position. This she at once proceeded to do. Her 
 army entered Naples, defeated the constitutionalists 
 at Rieti on March 7, 1821, occupied the capital, 
 and re-established autocratic government. The 
 original purpose of the congresses of Troppau and 
 Laibach was accomplished. The plenipotentiaries, 
 however, lingered in Laibach until May in order to 
 discuss the affairs of Europe in general. Alexander 
 was now so submissive that it was a pleasure to
 
 i 4 2 EUROPEAN HISTORY tv 
 
 Metternich to talk to him. Before the conversations 
 came to an end it happened by a strange fatality 
 that two other revolutions broke out, one of which 
 added new and grave complications to the tangle 
 of Continental politics. The first of the two was 
 merely a military rising in Piedmont, exactly parallel 
 to the Neapolitan revolt. Officers of the army 
 demanded the inevitable "Constitution of 1812," 
 and, when King Victor Emmanuel I. refused it, 
 compelled him to resign. Here clearly was a 
 revolution started from below and likely to have 
 external consequences not less injurious to the 
 Austrian system in Italy than the Neapolitan 
 rebellion. Hence, in accordance with the principle 
 of the Troppau protocol, Austrian troops entered 
 Piedmont and crushed the revolt at Novara (April 
 8 , 1821). Under Austrian protection the reactionary 
 Charles Felix became King of Sardinia. 
 
 It was the second of the two outbreaks that 
 caused trouble. This was the national rising of the 
 Greeks against the Turks. It opened up so many 
 novel and dangerous problems that Metternich 
 thought it necessary at first to ignore it as lying 
 outside the scope of the Concert of Europe. Its 
 rapid and formidable spread, however, combined 
 with the interest which it excited in western Europe, 
 soon made the policy of the blind eye impossible. 
 A new congress became imperative. Two already 
 existing problems, moreover, had for some time been
 
 iv THE ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 143 
 
 growing in acuteness. These were the problems of 
 the unsuppressed democratic upheaval in Spain, and 
 the problem of the unrecovered Spanish colonies of 
 the New World. To consider these three questions 
 the Greek revolt, the Spanish revolution, and the 
 Latin-American insurrection the Congress of Verona 
 was called. 
 
 8 30. BREAK-UP OF THE CONCERT OF EUROPE 
 The Congress of Verona, which met in October 
 
 D 
 
 1822, saw the definite break-up of the Concert of 
 Europe, the catastrophic collapse of that system 
 of international control on the part of the Great 
 Powers which had been established in 181415 at 
 Chaumont Paris and Vienna. When the negotiators 
 first assembled it was the Greek question which 
 seemed most likely to cause a schism ; for the 
 interests of Russia in this problem were diametrically 
 opposed to those of Austria. To Russia the revolt 
 was a matter of religion ; it was the rising of a 
 persecuted Christian people of the orthodox com- 
 munion against an infidel tyranny. Hence Russian 
 sympathies were passionately on the side of the 
 Greeks. To Austria the revolt was a mere vulgar 
 rebellion against legitimate political authority. Hence 
 Austrian feeling was wholly on the side of the Sultan. 
 Alexander and Metternich, however, both recognised 
 the danger to the unity of Europe which a discussion 
 pf this disruptive Eastern question would involve.
 
 I 4 4 EUROPEAN HISTORY iv 
 
 Hence they decided that it should not be discussed. 
 It was declared to relate to concerns which lay 
 ' beyond the pale of civilisation," i.e. outside that 
 restricted sphere over which the Quadruple Alliance 
 played the part of Providence. For Metternich 
 this decision was a triumph ; it left the Turks free 
 to pursue their policy of extermination. For 
 Alexander it was a surrender ; it meant that he de- 
 liberately sacrificed the leadership of his own nation,,, 
 the headship of the Orthodox Church, and the very 
 existence of the Greeks, in order to maintain the 
 semblance of international harmony. The Eastern 
 question thus having been shelved, the congress 
 turned to the affairs of Spain, and it was concerning 
 these that the ultimate schism occurred. The 
 struggle in Spain between the constitutionalists and 
 the monarchists had degenerated into a ferocious 
 and sanguinary civil war destructive of all order 
 and good government. The French ministry, now 
 led by the reactionary and ultra-royalist Villele, 
 was eager to intervene on behalf of Ferdinand VII. 
 Britain, however, through her representative the 
 Duke of Wellington, at last took a firm stand. She 
 expressly declared herself to be opposed to any 
 interference in the internal affairs of a country, and 
 asserted the right of every people to determine its 
 own form of government. 1 The other members of 
 
 1 This policy was formulated by Castlereagh. Before the Congress of Verona 
 assembled Castlereagh died and was succeeded at the Foreign Office by George.
 
 iv THE ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 145 
 
 the congress were irritated and perturbed by Britain's 
 defection, but they were not deterred from pursuing 
 their policy of intervention. The French were 
 commissioned to cross the Pyrenees as mandatories 
 of the Powers and to reduce Spain to order under 
 the authority of its king. This the French did in 
 1823. Ferdinand was restored; the constitution 
 was suppressed ; the inquisition reintroduced, and 
 a reign of terror inaugurated. Britain, having 
 protested in vain, formally withdrew from the 
 congress, and the Concert of Europe was at an end. 
 
 The question of the revolted Spanish-American 
 colonies still remained for consideration and settle- 
 ment. Inspired and led by Bolivar " the Liberator," 
 first Columbia (of which Bolivar was proclaimed 
 president in 1821) and later Mexico Peru Buenos- 
 Ayres Chile, followed by the Central American 
 states, had set themselves up as sovereign republics. 
 France and Russia were eager to send expeditions 
 to the aid of the King of Spain, and Ferdinand, 
 for his part, was willing to make large concessions 
 of American territory to those who would aid 
 him in recovering his lost empire. France renewed 
 her ambition of dominion in the New World ; 
 Russia (to whom Alaska already belonged) formed 
 hopes of the acquisition of all the Canadian and 
 Californian littoral. Both Britain and the United 
 
 Canning. The new minister supported the principle of non-intervention with 
 even more determination than his predecessor. 
 
 L
 
 146 EUROPEAN HISTORY iv 
 
 States were thoroughly alarmed. They had alike 
 to face the possibility that their expanding peoples 
 might be cut off for ever from the Pacific, and that 
 the conflicts of the Seven Years' War might be 
 renewed. Hence the British minister, Canning, and 
 the American president, Monroe, agreed upon the 
 policy which in 1823 was formally promulgated as 
 the " Monroe Doctrine." The interference of the 
 European Powers in American affairs was interdicted. 
 Spain, thus deprived of the hope of external assistance 
 in the attempt to reconquer her revolted dominions, 
 soon had to acknowledge that the task of recovery 
 was beyond her strength. Before, however, Spain 
 was compelled to bow her pride to the inevitable 
 recognition of accomplished facts, the United States 
 and Britain, followed by France and the other 
 European Powers, had found that the interests of 
 commerce and the need to suppress piracy required 
 them to open diplomatic relations with the new 
 American republics. The action of Canning in 
 preventing European intervention in Spanish America 
 roused the most violent indignation not only in 
 the court of Ferdinand VII., but also in the wide 
 circles dominated by Metternich. To the Austrian 
 statesmen, striving to keep the Concert of Europe 
 together, the new controller of British policy 
 appeared to be a "malevolent meteor hurled by 
 an angry Providence upon Europe." Britain had, 
 indeed, definitely separated herself in respect of the
 
 iv THE ERA OF THE CONGRESSES 147 
 
 affairs of Spain and Latin America from her former 
 allies of the congresses of Vienna and Aix-la-Chapelle. 
 To Castlereagh, had he been alive, this separation 
 and renewed isolation would have seemed to be 
 a disaster. But Canning welcomed it. " Things 
 are getting back to a wholesome state again," he 
 said. For he recognised that the hegemony of the 
 Great Powers which had been established in the 
 interests of peace stability justice and law had 
 become under Metternich's control an instrument 
 of oppression and interference fatal to the free 
 development of every subject nation. 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY TO LECTURE IV 
 
 ALISON, SIR A. Lives of Lord Castlereagh and Sir Charles Stewart. 
 PHILLIPS, W. A. The Confederation of Europe, 1813-1823. 
 SANDEMAN, G. A. C. Life of Metternich. 
 SCHIEMANN, T. Geschichte Russlands, vol. L 
 TEMPERLEY, H. W. V. Life of Canning.
 
 LECTURE V 
 
 THE ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS, 1 822-30 
 
 31. THE DAWN OF A NEW AGE 
 
 THE year 1822 saw a remarkable change in the 
 European situation. The defection of Britain broke 
 up the Concert of Europe, and the break-up of. 
 the Concert of Europe removed an intolerable 
 incubus under which the Continent had begun to 
 groan and agonise. It is strange that so hopeful an 
 attempt to organise an international government as 
 that made in 1815 should in seven years have collapsed 
 in so execrable a failure ; it is sad that so sincere an 
 effort to curb the lawlessness of individual states and 
 the ambitions of militarist potentates should have 
 ended so soon in a more than Napoleonic tyranny ; it 
 is ominous that what had been originally a league of 
 peace could in 1822 be properly described by Canning 
 as a league " to bind Europe in chains." It is 
 important to ask what were the causes of this 
 catastrophic disruption of the Confederation of the 
 Continent particularly important now in view of 
 
 148
 
 v THE ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 149 
 
 the fact that the ravages of the present war and the 
 proved impotence of existing law to restrain anarchic 
 states have revived again dreams of a League of Peace 
 and hopes of a new advance " towards international 
 government." 
 
 The failure and the consequent dissolution of the 
 Concert of Europe, 1815-22, were due, first, to the 
 fact that the members of the Concert were legitimist 
 sovereigns and bureaucratic ministers who were out 
 of touch with, and indifferent to, the opinions and 
 aspirations of their subjects ; secondly, to the facts 
 that the Treaties of Vienna, to whose maintenance 
 they were committed, were not such as to provide 
 a satisfactory permanent constitution for Europe, 
 and that no arrangements had been made for the 
 revision or modification of these treaties ; thirdly, to 
 the fact that those who controlled the policy of 
 the Concert in particular, Metternich were filled 
 by an exaggerated and irrational dread of the 
 " Revolution " a dread which caused them to oppose 
 as subversive of stable government every popular 
 movement, and to suppress as schismatic every 
 national aspiration ; finally, to the fact that the 
 Powers had not been able to refrain from interference 
 in the internal affairs of states whose constitutional 
 development displeased them, and had even avowed 
 the principle of such interference as a dogma of their 
 system of governance. In brief, the Concert of 
 Europe as it existed from the Congress of Vienna to
 
 1 50 EUROPEAN HISTORY v 
 
 the Congress of Verona failed because it ignored 
 and resisted the growing forces of democracy and 
 nationality. We have seen that it had many reasons, 
 born of painful experience, to regard these forces 
 with hostility and alarm ; nevertheless there is ground 
 for infinite lamentation that there were none among 
 the leaders of Europe at this critical period to 
 perceive with prophetic insight that these were the 
 influences which were to mould the future, and to 
 recognise that it was the function of the statesman 
 
 o 
 
 not to resist them, but so to guide them as to turn 
 them from their evil work of blind destruction to the 
 work of building up a new and better world. At 
 this juncture, as so often in the history of mankind, 
 the principles of Order and Progress appeared to be 
 opposed to one another in irreconcilable conflict : 
 stability seemed to be incompatible with advance. In 
 1815 moderate opinion in Europe was so much 
 oppressed by a consciousness of the villainies and 
 barbarities which had been perpetrated in the name 
 of Progress during the revolutionary era that it 
 unhesitatingly gave its omnipotent support to the 
 cause of Order. By 1 822, however, Order had shown 
 itself to be so closely identified with stagnation 
 obscurantism reaction corruption cruelty and in- 
 quisitorial persecution that moderate opinion had 
 begun to recover its equilibrium. 
 
 It was in Britain, happy in her insularity and in 
 her comparatively liberal constitution, that the panic
 
 v THE ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 151 
 
 caused by the Revolution first passed away. The 
 return to political equanimity was indicated, on 
 the one hand by Canning's formal breach with 
 Metternich, on the other hand by a reconstruction 
 of the cabinet and the inauguration of a new 
 era of reform. Both of these events occurred in 
 1822. Britain's changed attitude in respect of both 
 foreign and domestic policy had a striking and 
 instantaneous effect upon the Continent, and indeed 
 upon the world at large. The leaders of progressive 
 causes, the advocates of change, the pioneers of new 
 ideas, the rebels and the revolutionaries, realised 
 instinctively and at once that the repressive Euro- 
 pean " Areopagus " (as Canning called it) which 
 for so long had crushed down every popular rising 
 had, owing to the defection of Britain, lost its 
 power to harm. Immediately far and wide a ferment 
 of agitations began, incalculable in number, infinite 
 in variety. There were democratic agitations for 
 a share in political power and extensions of the 
 franchise ; religious agitations for increase of tolera- 
 tion and removal of disabilities ; social agitations for 
 recognition of trade unions, repeal of anti-combina- 
 tion laws, improvement of factory conditions, reform 
 of the poor law ; economic agitations for removal of 
 corn duties and freedom of trade ; educational agita- 
 tions for elementary schools and for the general open- 
 ing of intellectual careers. But most marked of all 
 were the nationalist agitations, and it was these that
 
 152 EUROPEAN HISTORY v 
 
 gave to the following years, 1822-30, their distinctive 
 character. Some of them were premature and 
 abortive, it is true ; the time had not yet come for 
 Germany and Italy to attain to unity, or for Bohemia 
 Hungary Serbia and Bulgaria to secure autonomy. 
 But so many were carried through to a successful 
 issue that they effected a notable modification of 
 the political system of the globe. If we include the 
 Spanish - American republics and the Portuguese 
 empire of Brazil, we have to assign the origin of 
 about one dozen national states to this brief period 
 of eight years in the world's history. When we 
 consider that these new states constitute approxi- 
 mately one-fourth of the total number at present in 
 existence, we shall realise the preponderant import- 
 ance of the national movement at this time. To 
 the national movement, then, this lecture will be 
 devoted, the other significant movements of the 
 octave being reserved for consideration in the in- 
 troductory section of the next lecture. 
 
 32. THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY 
 
 What is the principle of nationality which has 
 had so potent an influence in moulding the modern 
 world ? It is almost as difficult to answer this 
 question as it is to say precisely what are such so- 
 called forces as electricity gravitation and chemical 
 cohesion, which play so important a part in the
 
 v THE ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 153 
 
 constitution of the physical universe. Dr. Holland 
 Rose in his recent book, Nationality in Modern History , 
 abandons the effort to discover a scientific connotation* 
 when he declares (p. 152) that "it is an instinct, 
 and cannot be exactly defined." Professor Ramsay 
 Muir in his brilliant essays on Nationalism and In- 
 ternationalism admits (p. 51) that "Nationality is an 
 elusive idea, difficult to define," but he rightly con- 
 siders that an attempt at definition must be made 
 unless the hope of understanding and interpreting 
 the meaning and significance of nineteenth-century 
 history is also itself to be given up. In his efforts 
 to arrive at a definition he wisely reduces the abstract 
 term " nationality " to its concrete basis " nation," 
 and asks, What are the distinctive marks of a 
 nation ? 
 
 Now thus stated the question is much easier of 
 approach, even if its ultimate solution is not appreci- 
 ably facilitated. For we are surrounded by nations, 
 and it is a matter of extreme simplicity to note what 
 appear to be their common features. Those nations 
 which first occur to our minds seem to be character- 
 ised by (i) the occupation of a specific geographical 
 area ; (2) a certain homogeneity of race; (3) a unity 
 of language; (4) some uniformity of religion, and (5) 
 a community of economic interests. A little further 
 reflection, however, calls to our thoughts instances of 
 peoples to whom the term " nation " cannot possibly 
 be denied, but who do not exhibit all or any of these
 
 154 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 marks. For example, the Jews have no country, 
 the English are heterogeneous in race, the Belgians 
 are bilingual, the Swiss are divided in religion, the 
 French have many and conflicting economic interests. 
 Not one of these marks, then, can be regarded as 
 essential. Nevertheless, this must be said : there 
 are limits beyond which geographical dispersion, 
 racial divergence, linguistic difference, religious 
 schism, and economic strife are fatal to national 
 sentiment. If the Jews have not a country now, 
 they once had one, and they long with a passionate 
 desire for its recovery and their own reunion therein. 
 Every nation, however heterogeneous in origin, is 
 brought by intermarriages some steps along the road 
 towards racial unity ; such alienation as separates 
 black from white in America is incompatible with 
 nationhood. Again, if it is possible for French- 
 speaking Belgians and those of Flemish tongue to 
 combine in an organic national state, that combina- 
 tion is feasible only because basal similarities of 
 structure and vocabulary make it easy for multitudes 
 of citizens to know both languages ; amalgamation 
 between peoples of dialects so diverse as, say, English 
 and Arabic is out of the question. Similarly, there 
 are sufficient common factors in Catholicism and 
 Protestantism to render practicable, if not easy, the 
 growth of a sense of unity ; between Christianity and 
 Islam, or Islam and Hinduism, the conflict is too grave 
 to permit the development of the national sentiment.
 
 v THE ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 155 
 
 These common geographical racial linguistic 
 and religious factors, then, must not be wholly 
 absent. Still, they are not the great essential thing. 
 What is that ? It is a common tradition, a common 
 will, and a common outlook. Professor Muir well 
 expresses one aspect of this truth when he says : " It 
 is probable that the most important of all nation- 
 moulding factors, the one indispensable factor which 
 must be present whatever else be lacking, is the 
 possession of a common tradition, a memory of 
 sufferings endured and victories won in common, 
 expressed in song and legend, in the dear names of 
 great personalities that seem to embody in themselves 
 the character and ideals of the nation, in the names 
 also of sacred places wherein the national memory 
 is enshrined. 1 Another aspect is indicated in a 
 definition by Mr. A. J. Toynbee, who says that a 
 nation " is simply a group of men inspired by a 
 common will to co-operate for certain purposes." 
 Taken by itself this definition is inadequate : it 
 suggests a co-operative society rather than a nation ; 
 for the purposes of a nation are not certain. But it 
 supplies an element lacking in Professor Muir's 
 analysis : it emphasises the fact that the vital 
 bonds of national union include not only memories 
 of the past, but also activities in the present and 
 hopes for the future. Hence, perhaps, we may 
 define nationality as that principle, compounded 
 
 1 Muir, Nationalism and Internationalism, p. 48.
 
 1 56 EUROPEAN HISTORY v 
 
 of past traditions present interests and future 
 aspirations, which gives to a people a sense of 
 organic unity, and separates them from the rest of 
 mankind. 
 
 The principle of nationality was not unknown in 
 the ancient world. The Hebrew people possessed 
 it strongly : it gave some sort of communion to the 
 Hellenes. Obscured and suppressed by the dominance 
 of imperial Rome, it emerged once more in the 
 Middle Ages. First England, then Scotland and 
 France, finally Spain and Portugal developed into 
 national states. It was indeed the emergence of 
 these national states and their triumph over the 
 Empire and the Papacy that marked the transition 
 from mediaeval to modern times. But, though the 
 national principle was thus potent from the period 
 of the Reformation, it was not until it had been 
 accentuated in France by the Revolution and in 
 Europe by the Napoleonic wars that it became 
 definitely formulated as a political dogma and promul- 
 gated as a gospel of revolt. Its formulation and 
 promulgation were largely the work of Italian 
 patriots who sought for the deliverance of their 
 country from a foreign yoke, and of German professors 
 who sought for the consolidation of their particularist 
 governments into a unitary state. But in 1822 the 
 day of the triumph of Italian and German nationality 
 was yet half a century distant. During the period 
 with which we are now concerned the national
 
 v THE ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 157 
 
 principle struggled and prevailed only in more humble 
 spheres. 
 
 33. INCIPIENT NATIONAL MOVEMENTS 
 
 The incipient and unsuccessful national move- 
 ments of the period 1822-30 manifested themselves 
 mainly within the limits of the four great empires 
 British Russian Austrian and Turkish, whose 
 organisation was so strong as to impose an insuper- 
 able barrier to the realisation of any separatist ideals 
 of which the rulers of those empires did not approve. 
 Within the British Empire, indeed, the principle of 
 nationality did not as a rule tend towards separatism. 
 In Canada, however, there was an Old French nation 
 whose loyalty was at the time strained to the breaking- 
 point, and in South Africa an Old Dutch nation which 
 found the English governance intolerable. But, gener- 
 ally, the inhabitants of British overseas dominions, 
 though developing distinct characteristics and be- 
 coming unmistakably new nations, desired no more 
 than self-government and permission to grow in their 
 own way. The transformation of the British Empire 
 from a unitary monarchy into a federation of free 
 states, which began in the agitations of this period, 
 clearly indicated the manner in which, if ever, the 
 Commonwealth of the world will have in the future 
 to be constituted. It will not be a cosmopolitan 
 pot-pourri ; it will be a union of sharply -defined
 
 1 58 EUROPEAN HISTORY v 
 
 autonomous nations. In Ireland the national move- 
 ment was (as it still remains) less auspicious. The 
 struggle for Catholic emancipation (secured in 1829) 
 and for the repeal of the Act of Union was accom- 
 panied by much hostility towards Great Britain, and 
 a distinct desire for entire separation. 
 
 Within the Russian Empire both Finland and 
 Poland were restless with unsatisfied national aspira- 
 tions. Finland wished for reunion with Sweden, 
 but remained outwardly quiet. Poland, on the other 
 hand, grew increasingly turbulent, until in 1830 
 it broke into open revolt and proclaimed its inde- 
 pendence. Alexander I. so long as he had lived had 
 striven to maintain the constitution which had been 
 granted in 1815, and to govern Poland as a kingdom 
 distinct from Russia on the lines of a western limited 
 monarchy. The hopeless factiousness of the Poles, 
 however, which had caused the ruin of their country 
 in the eighteenth century, frustrated his good inten- 
 tions, made liberal government an impossibility, and 
 necessitated the suspension of the constitution in 
 1823. Nicholas I., who succeeded in 1825, was an 
 autocrat by nature, and he had no love for either the 
 Poles or their charter of anarchy. The discovery of 
 a plot to assassinate him on the occasion of his 
 coronation in Warsaw did not tend to conciliate 
 him. Mutual irritation and suspicion, continually 
 growing during the first five years of the reign, 
 culminated on the part of the Poles in a military
 
 v THE ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 159 
 
 insurrection on November 29, 1830. The rebels 
 made a strenuous but ill-organised struggle for in- 
 dependence. In vain they appealed to liberal support 
 in Britain and France ; they received nothing beyond 
 sympathetic messages which merely served to aggra- 
 vate the malignity of the wrath of Nicholas. The 
 rising was suppressed with sanguinary completeness. 
 In 1832 the constitution was formally abrogated ; in 
 1847 Poland lost its last trace of autonomy by being 
 incorporated into Russia. 
 
 Within the " ramshackle empire " of Austria 
 half a dozen separate and mutually destructive 
 national movements were in progress. The Magyars 
 of Hungary demanded the official use of their own 
 language in 1825, and in 1828 asserted a claim to 
 political independence. They showed no sign, how- 
 ever, of conceding autonomy to the Southern Slavs 
 of Croatia Dalmatia and Salvonia who groaned 
 under their unsympathetic tyranny. Hence in these 
 regions a so-called " Illyrian " agitation sprang up 
 intensely hostile to Hungarian policy. The Northern 
 Slavs of Bohemia, stirred by the energies of their 
 southern kinsmen, revived the Czech language, 
 renewed the study of their national literature, and 
 (led by the historian Palacky) proclaimed the 
 mediaeval glories of their state. They, too, sought 
 to recover their lost rights of self-government. 
 In Galicia the Poles protested against the political 
 ascendancy of the Germans, while the Ruthenes
 
 i6o EUROPEAN HISTORY v 
 
 showed swelling resentment against the social and 
 economic dominance of the Poles. Above all, in 
 Lombardy and Venetia Italian patriots nourished 
 ideals and formulated schemes of an emancipated and 
 united peninsula purged of the hated White-coats. 
 
 Finally, within the Turkish empire the Christian 
 peoples began to show signs of late returning national 
 consciousness. The Rumanian principalities had 
 been virtually free from Turkish control since the 
 Russian Treaty of Kutchuk - Kainardji in 1774: 
 a desire for complete and acknowledged independ- 
 ence, however, found expression during this period, 
 especially amid the Russo - Turkish negotiations of 
 1829. Serbia was in active revolt against the Turks 
 in 1822, and by 1826, aided by Russia, she forced 
 the Turks to withdraw their garrisons and rest 
 content with a mere formal recognition of their 
 suzerainty. Albania and Montenegro both defied 
 the authority of the Sultan, and sought to secure the 
 status of independent principalities. Bulgaria alone, 
 too near Constantinople to run the risk of political 
 experiment, and too much crushed by Turkish 
 tyranny to respond readily to any vitalising influence, 
 remained impassive in the dawn. It was in Greece, 
 however, that the great bid for deliverance and 
 autonomy was made.
 
 v THE ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 161 
 
 34. GREEK. INDEPENDENCE 
 
 The people who called themselves Greeks or 
 Hellenes were at the time with which we are now 
 concerned divided into three main groups. First 
 came the Greeks of the Morea, a peasantry ignorant 
 oppressed brutalised addicted to brigandage and 
 murder, yet allowed by the Turkish Government 
 so large a measure of religious independence and 
 local autonomy as to retain some trace of political 
 sense and some rudiments of national organisation. 
 The second group was formed by the Greeks of the 
 islands, a prosperous and progressive commercial 
 community which taking advantage of the Russian 
 protectorate of 1774, the British occupation of 
 1798-1815, and the opportunities for trade offered 
 by the Continental blockade of Napoleon had 
 formed a large mercantile marine and had amassed 
 great wealth. The third section consisted of the 
 Greeks of the Dispersion, scattered throughout the 
 world, but chiefly settled in London Paris and other 
 Continental capitals. These were primarily men of 
 literary artistic and philosophical propensities, and for 
 the most part young men filled with revolutionary 
 enthusiasms. 
 
 The Greek national movement began as a 
 Hellenic literary revival in Paris. The poet Rhegas, 
 the scholar Korais, and their fellows, dwelling upon 
 the obvious fact that the language in which they 
 
 M
 
 1 62 EUROPEAN HISTORY v 
 
 conversed and wrote was, in spite of corruptions and 
 accretions, essentially that of the Athens of Pericles, 
 persuaded themselves that they and their country- 
 men were descendants of the great and memorable 
 men who had ruled a free and independent Hellas 
 in the glorious days of antiquity. It was an inspiring 
 hallucination leading them to dream of exploits 
 against the Turks similar to those which their pre- 
 decessors had wrought against the Persians. They 
 also remembered that Greek - speaking emperors 
 had reigned in Constantinople for a thousand years 
 before the Turk had seized the city, and that the 
 desecrated St. Sophia was the mother church of the 
 Orthodox religion. It was the mediaeval Byzantine 
 empire, indeed, rather than the ancient city state 
 that they wished to restore. The lofty aspirations 
 of the literary exiles awoke sympathetic ambitions 
 among the prosperous Greeks of the islands and 
 among their kinsmen in the ports of the Euxine and 
 Aegean seas. Aided by their excellent and far- 
 reaching commercial organisation, they founded in 
 1814 a militant Secret Society, the Hetaireia Philike, 
 whose objects were the deliverance of the Hellenic 
 race, the overthrow of the Turk, the recovery of 
 Constantinople, the revival of the Orthodox empire 
 of the East. 
 
 The position of the Greeks in the Turkish empire 
 was at that time far from unfavourable. It was, 
 indeed, one of peculiar privilege. Large measures
 
 v THE ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 163 
 
 of religious tolerance, political autonomy, and 
 commercial monopoly gave them opportunities for 
 self-realisation which may well have excited the 
 envy of Protestants in Spain, Poles in Prussia, or 
 Jews anywhere on the Continent. But there was no 
 security of tenure : all was held in virtue of the 
 unco venanted grace of the infidel barbarian who had 
 planted his military despotism in the city of Con- 
 stantine. The prosperity of the Greeks was that of 
 useful slaves whose activities are profitable to callous 
 lords. The Turkish law-courts afforded no protec- 
 tion against injustice ; no safeguards existed whereby 
 the incidence of limitless taxation could be avoided. 
 Contemptuous tolerance might at any moment give 
 place to remorseless persecution. It was a situation 
 intolerable for any people in whom a national con- 
 sciousness existed: The Greek aspirations after 
 emancipation from the Ottoman yoke were further 
 stimulated by the open encouragement of French and 
 English Hellenists, and by the religious sympathy of 
 Alexander I. whose foreign minister from 1815 to 
 1822 was the Greek Count Capodistrias. 
 
 The opportunity for rebellion seemed to present 
 itself in 1821, when a serious Albanian revolt under 
 Ali of Janina called to the shores of the Adriatic the 
 bulk of the Turkish forces. In March 1821 the Greeks 
 of the Danubian principalities (modern Rumania) 
 rose, hoping for Russian aid. It happened, however, 
 unhappily for the rebels, that the Congress of Laibach
 
 164 EUROPEAN HISTORY v 
 
 was in session at the moment. Alexander I., under 
 the influence of Metternich repudiated the insurrec- 
 tionists, and the Turks were thus enabled soon to 
 suppress the revolt. Next month a far more general 
 and formidable national uprising occurred in the 
 Morea. The Greeks of the islands lent it their 
 support, in particular the priceless assistance of their 
 fleets. The Greeks of the Dispersion hastened to 
 join their co-linguists. The Hellenists of western 
 Europe (including the English Lord Byron) volun- 
 teered so multitudinously on behalf of the cause of 
 classical restoration that the Sultan complained that 
 he was called upon to face, not merely a rebellion 
 of his subjects, but a European coalition as well. 
 The conflict was waged with unmitigated ferocity on 
 both sides ; in point of barbarity there was little to 
 choose between the brigands of the Morea and the 
 Ottoman soldiery. Neither side, however, could 
 gain a decided superiority over the other, and as the 
 war dragged its slow sanguinary course along in 
 sight of a spectant Europe, it became increasingly 
 difficult for the Powers to refrain from intervention. 
 Britain began to suffer much from injured trade ; 
 France felt the stirrings of its old crusading zeal ; but, 
 above all, Russia was outraged by the murders of the 
 Orthodox patriarch and many lesser dignitaries of the 
 Church, by studied insults to the Greek religion, by 
 wholesale massacres of Christians, and by frequent 
 seizures of vessels flying the Russian flag. Austria
 
 v THE ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 165 
 
 and Prussia alone of the Great Powers sympathised 
 with the Turk and wished him speedy success in the 
 restoration of order in his dominions. 
 
 From 1824 the situation of the Greeks changed 
 for the worse. Ali of Janina having been crushed 
 (1822), the Turkish army having been concentrated 
 and reorganised, auxiliary forces of Soudanese 
 fellaheen having been brought over to the Morea by 
 Mehemet Ali, Pasha of Egypt (1825), the Greeks, 
 in danger of total extinction, appealed to Christian 
 Europe for aid. A conference of the Powers was held 
 in London (July 1827), to consider the appeal. Russia 
 insisted on intervention to save the Greeks ; Austria 
 and Prussia opposed protested and withdrew ; 
 Britain and France, moved to some extent by humani- 
 tarian and religious considerations, but primarily 
 concerned to prevent isolated action by Russia, agreed 
 to join the Tzar in a joint cfemonstration. The battle 
 of Navarino (October 20, 1827) was the result. The 
 Sultan in response proclaimed a Holy War ; but he was 
 unable to resist the new pressure. The allied fleets 
 compelled Mehemet Ali to take his Soudanese 
 savages back to Egypt ; a French army occupied 
 the Morea ; Russian forces overran Thrace. Hence 
 by the Treaty of Adrianople (September 14, 1829) 
 the Sultan was constrained to acknowledge the inde- 
 pendence of Greece, which in 1832 became a sovereign 
 kingdom under Otto of Bavaria.
 
 1 66 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 35. BELGIAN INDEPENDENCE 
 
 The negotiators who in London, after the Sultan's 
 recognition of Greek independence, debated and 
 settled the status and constitution of the new national 
 kingdom were called upon, before they separated, to 
 deal with a new national problem not less urgent and 
 significant, viz. the revolt of the Belgians against 
 their union with the Dutch. In one respect this 
 raised an even graver question than that presented 
 by the Greek revolt ; for it involved one of the 
 leading provisions of the sacrosanct treaties of 1815. 
 Holland and Belgium (to which the bishopric of 
 Liege had been added) had been joined together 
 in the hands of William of Orange under the 
 guarantee of the Powers, in order that the kingdom 
 of the United Netherlands might form an effective 
 barrier against French' aggression in northern 
 Europe. The idea of bringing together these two 
 tiny peoples, who numbered only some six million 
 souls in all, 1 was in many ways an excellent one. 
 They had in former times been united under the 
 dukes of Burgundy and under the kings of 
 Spain ; there was close racial affinity, at any rate 
 between the Flemings and the Hollanders ; in 
 economic matters the agricultural and industrial 
 Belgians admirably supplemented the commercial 
 and maritime Dutch. Nevertheless, the union was 
 
 1 Dutch about two and a half million, Belgians about three and a half million.
 
 v THE ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 167 
 
 effected by the Powers in 1815 so arbitrarily and 
 tactlessly, with so total a disregard of Belgian 
 opinion, and with so aggravating an air of handing 
 over a derelict people as a prize to a good king, that 
 from the first the cause of the union was jeopardised. 
 Moreover, two centuries of separation alienation and 
 religious strife had generated frictions hatreds and 
 hostile traditions which only great mutual forbearance 
 could have lived down. Unfortunately neither of 
 the two peoples showed itself capable of forbearance. 
 Both of them sacrificed the great and obvious ad- 
 vantages of amalgamation and co-operation in order 
 to indulge old -standing rivalries and animosities. 
 The Belgians were restless turbulent obstructive 
 rebellious under the Orange administration ; the 
 Dutch were obstinate unsympathetic inconsiderate 
 tyrannical in the enforcement of their authority. 
 The constitution of the kingdom of the Netherlands 
 was itself largely to blame for the conflict between 
 the two nations ; for instead of establishing a dual 
 monarchy in which each part had a wide sphere of 
 self-government, it had set up a unitary state in 
 which the three and a half million Belgians had no 
 more power than the two and a half million Dutch. 
 In the actual working of the constitution they had 
 much less than equality. The seat of the ad- 
 ministration was placed at the Hague ; Dutch was 
 declared to be the official language ; six-sevenths of 
 the ministers, seven-eighths of the officers of the
 
 1 68 EUROPEAN HISTORY v 
 
 army, the immense majority of public servants of all 
 sorts were Hollanders. Taxation and fiscal policy 
 were regulated in the interests of the Dutch, regard- 
 less of the injury which resulted to Belgian industries. 
 Above all, Dutch antagonism to Catholicism led to 
 the enforcement of a policy of religious toleration 
 and secular education in Belgium which, however 
 enlightened and progressive, was intensely repugnant 
 to the religious opinion of that country. 
 
 These various grievances, real and imaginary, led 
 to the formation in Belgium of two separate groups 
 of antagonists to the Dutch ascendancy. The one 
 group consisted of Liberal politicians, inspired by the 
 democratic and anti - clerical ideas of the French 
 Revolution, who demanded for the Belgians equal 
 political rights and privileges with their co-partners. 
 The other group consisted of Catholic devotees whose 
 resistance was mainly directed against the Protestant 
 propaganda of the Calvinists. At first these two 
 groups were bitterly hostile to one another, and so 
 long as they remained so the dominance of the Dutch 
 was not endangered. But in 1828 they were recon- 
 ciled by means of a link of Liberal-Catholics ably 
 organised by Lacordaire and Lamennais, and from 
 that date an insurrection became a grave probability. 
 
 The event which precipitated the insurrection was 
 the French Revolution of July 1830, an account of 
 which will be given in the next lecture. Suffice it 
 here to say that the Bourbon despotism gradually
 
 built up by the ultra-Royalists was overthrown by a 
 rising in Paris, and that a constitutional monarchy 
 under Louis Philippe of the House of Orleans was 
 set up in its place.- This revolutionary triumph had 
 far-reaching effects throughout Europe. First among 
 these, in order both of time and of importance, was 
 the Belgian revolt which broke out in Brussels on 
 August 25, 1830. At the beginning of the insurrec- 
 tion the demand of its leaders was merely for self- 
 government within the limits of the united kingdom ; 
 but the refusal of the Dutch to make concessions, 
 and their attempt to stamp out the rebellion by force 
 of arms, led the Belgians to take up a more extreme 
 attitude, and on October 4, 1830, they proclaimed 
 their complete independence. This involved a 
 breach of the Vienna settlement and a defiance of 
 the Great Powers who had guaranteed it. Hence 
 the King of the Netherlands, unable with his 
 Dutch forces to reduce the rebels to submission, 
 appealed to the Concert of Europe. But the 
 Concert of Europe no longer existed. Hopeless 
 discords divided and distracted its former members. 
 They were already quarrelling fiercely over the 
 problem of Greece. The Belgian imbroglio threw 
 a new principle of conflict into their midst. Russia 
 and Prussia were eager for immediate intervention 
 on behalf of William of Orange and in support of 
 the treaties ; the outbreak of the Polish insurrection, 
 however, kept them from taking action. Austria
 
 1 70 EUROPEAN HISTORY v 
 
 was too much engrossed with troubles in Italy to 
 move in defence of the precious Vienna creation. 
 The new French government, on the other hand, 
 was enthusiastically and resolutely on the side of 
 the Belgians, and Britain (then ruled by Wellington) 
 shrank from the European war which any attempt 
 to coerce the Belgians would have involved. Hence 
 the Conference of London, in spite of the protests 
 of Russia Prussia and Holland, ended by recog- 
 nising the independence of Belgium and by conferring 
 its crown on Leopold of Coburg (1831). At first 
 the Dutch refused to accept this unexpected and 
 unwelcome decision ; but English and French forces 
 soon compelled their submission. Not till 1839 
 was formal recognition conceded by King William 
 who at the same time resigned his crown as an 
 indication of his undying resentment. The Powers 
 Britain France Austria Prussia Russia joined 
 in a guarantee of the neutrality and integrity of the 
 new Belgian kingdom. 
 
 36. THE BREACH IN THE TREATY SYSTEM 
 
 Thus in 1830 was made the first breach in the 
 elaborate and carefully co-ordinated treaty system 
 which the diplomats at Vienna fifteen years before 
 had intended to be the permanent constitution 
 of Europe. The principle of nationality which, 
 " beyond the pale of civilisation," had been actively
 
 v THE ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 171 
 
 at work dissolving the oriental despotism of the 
 Turks and securing the liberation of Rumanians 
 Serbians and Greeks ; that principle which beyond 
 the Atlantic had called into existence the new world 
 of the Latin -American republics to redress the 
 balance of the old world where autocracy had re- 
 established itself; that principle which had been vainly 
 agitating the spirits of Poles Finns Magyars and 
 Czechs, had at length secured a conspicuous triumph 
 within the consecrated circle wherein the Holy 
 Alliance had once been dominant. It was a triumph 
 due, first, to the pre-occupation of the reactionary 
 monarchs of Russia Austria and Prussia ; secondly, 
 to the support of the new and liberal bourgeois 
 regime in France ; and, thirdly, to the pacific 
 opportunism of Wellington, who always viewed 
 politics from a military standpoint and showed a 
 soldierly readiness to abandon principles whose 
 defence seemed likely to lead to disaster. The 
 event was one of resounding importance, not only 
 because it marked the beginning of the demolition 
 of the diplomatic Europe artificially constructed by 
 the treaties of 181215, an< ^ tne consequent re- 
 constitution of the Continent on national lines ; but 
 also because it displayed in a conspicuous and un- 
 mistakable manner the magnitude of the schisms and 
 dissensions which now separated the Great Powers 
 from one another, rendering their effective co- 
 operation impossible. As soon as the settlement
 
 172 EUROPEAN HISTORY v 
 
 of the Greek question had removed the one serious 
 source of friction between Russia and Austria, these 
 two Powers and Prussia drew together as a triple 
 alliance in defence of what remained of the treaty 
 system. Over against them France, under Louis 
 Philippe, placed herself openly on the side of the 
 " Revolution " ; avowed her sympathy with national 
 movements such as that of Belgium, and democratic 
 movements, such as that of Spain ; declared her 
 antagonism to the treaties of 1815 which had meant 
 for her so much humiliation and loss ; and proclaimed 
 that her new attitude was but a reversion to the 
 splendid but misunderstood policy of Bonaparte 
 an attempt to realise the great and liberal " Na- 
 poleonic Idea " which when announced by the far- 
 sighted emperor had been too apocalyptic to be 
 comprehended by a gross and retrogressive generation. 
 Britain speedily took her stand by the side of France, 
 resolute to encourage the national aspirations of 
 fettered peoples, and to oppose anti-democratic 
 interventions on the part of autocratic monarchs in 
 the internal affairs of states other than their own. 
 The resignation of the ultra-Tory Wellington in 
 1830, and the succession of the advanced-Whig 
 Grey severed the last links which bound Britain 
 to the party and policy of Metternich. Hence- 
 forth, during the crises and the conflicts of the 
 troubled 'thirties, Britain and France could be 
 counted on to maintain the causes of oppressed
 
 v THE ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 173 
 
 peoples and struggling proletariats against the forces 
 of reaction. 
 
 It was during this fateful period that the newly 
 emancipated American colonies, and the newly 
 constituted European states passed through the 
 crucial testing-time of their apprenticeship. As to 
 America, the year 1824 saw the definite recognition 
 by Britain and the United States of the independence 
 of Columbia (including Venezuela and New Granada) 
 Mexico and Buenos Ayres (the nucleus of the 
 Argentine Republic). Next year Peru , Bolivia 
 Chile and the Central American communities com- 
 pleted their emancipation and secured the status 
 of independent republics. The Portuguese depend- 
 ency of Brazil, determined to submit no longer to 
 European control, proclaimed its separation from its 
 mother country in 1822. It manifested, however, 
 no hostility to the not-unpopular reigning house of 
 Braganza and, instead of following the republican 
 precedents set by the Spanish rebels, it proclaimed 
 itself an empire, entirely friendly to Portugal, under 
 Pedro I., son of the Portuguese king, John VI. 
 The tactful mediation of Canning secured from the 
 distressed and offended mother country a recognition 
 of the daughter-empires' independence in 1825. As 
 to the new European kingdoms : Belgium prospered 
 greatly under the wise and constitutional rule of 
 Leopold I. once the husband of the English 
 princess Charlotte, and later the close friend and
 
 i 74 EUROPEAN HISTORY v 
 
 confidential adviser of Queen Victoria. The peace 
 and security which his just and strong rule maintained 
 allowed universities to be founded, schools to be 
 increased, railroads to be built, commerce to be 
 fostered, liberty of religion and freedom of press to 
 be introduced. The Belgian revolution of 1830 was 
 justified by a sequel of unprecedented progress. It 
 was otherwise in the case of Greece. The country was 
 poor, thinly populated, devoid of natural resources. 
 It had, moreover, been devastated by ten years of 
 the most savage and destructive warfare. The in- 
 habitants, lawless and turbulent, were unfitted for 
 constitutional government or indeed for civilised life 
 of any sort. Hence Otto of Bavaria, when in 1833 
 he arrived to take up the task which the Powers had 
 entrusted to him, found himself faced by almost 
 insuperable difficulties. He did not show conspicu- 
 ous prudence in meeting them ; in particular, he 
 alienated the sensitive citizens of Athens (the heirs of 
 the traditions of Demosthenes and Themistocles) by 
 filling his court with Germans and administering the 
 country through their agency. The conflicts to which 
 his conduct gave rise culminated in his deposition 
 and expulsion in 1862. But meantime the attention 
 of Europe had been diverted from the national affairs 
 of the Balkan Peninsula, and had been concentrated 
 upon the democratic upheaval which had torn and 
 shaken all the states of the Continent. To a cursory 
 survey of that upheaval we must next turn.
 
 v THE ERA OF NATIONAL REVOLTS 175 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY TO LECTURE V 
 
 BLOK, P. J. History of the Netherlands. (Putnam's Translation, 
 
 vol. v.) 
 
 MUIR, RAMSAY. Nationality and Internationalism. 
 PAXSON, F. L. The Independence of the South American Republics. 
 PHILLIPS, W. A. Greek War of Independence. 
 REDDAWAY, W. F. The Monroe Doctrine. 
 WALPOLE, SPENCER. History of England, 1815-1858. 
 EDMUNDSON, G. The Belgian Revolution (in Cambridge Modern 
 
 History, vol. x.).
 
 LECTURE VI 
 
 THE ERA OF DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT, 
 1830-48 
 
 37. NEW CONDITIONS AND NEW IDEAS 
 
 THE national movement of the period 1822-30, 
 dealt with in the preceding lecture, was accompanied 
 by a parallel democratic movement hardly inferior 
 to it in interest and importance. The relations 
 between the two movements were by no means 
 everywhere and always the same. In some countries, 
 as for example in Italy, the two were so harmonious 
 and so mutually helpful that it was rarely possible 
 to distinguish them : the passion of Lombardy for 
 the expulsion of the Austrians was largely due to 
 an eager desire for constitutional self-government ; 
 democratic advance implied national independence ; 
 it was not easy to say whether Mazzini and Garibaldi 
 were primarily patriots or primarily proclaimers of 
 the rights of peoples against princes. In other 
 countries, as for example in Belgium, democracy and 
 nationality were causes far removed from identity : 
 
 176
 
 vi DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 177 
 
 the strong Catholic party which strove with ardent 
 zeal to throw off the yoke of Protestant Holland 
 was by no means eager for a democratic fran- 
 chise which would have placed political power in 
 secularist hands. In some countries, as for example 
 in Austria - Hungary, the two movements were 
 actively oppugnant to one another : the Democrats 
 of Vienna who clamoured for a constitution were 
 the implacable enemies of Bohemian independence ; 
 the Magyars of Buda-Pesth who extolled political 
 liberty relentlessly repressed the national aspirations 
 of the Southern Slavs who groaned under their yoke. 
 Nevertheless, in spite of occasional and local clashes 
 such as these, the two movements were so much 
 the result of one and the same revolutionary impulse 
 that they in general aided one another and prepared 
 one another's way. * 
 
 The democratic movement, however, had, during 
 the period following the collapse of the Concert of 
 Europe, certain fresh and additional stimuli all its 
 own. The industrial revolution continued to exert 
 its disintegrating effects upon the old society. In 
 England, which had secured a long start in economic 
 development ahead of all other nations, these were 
 especially marked. Great concourses of wage-earn- 
 ing artisans were being drawn from scattered 
 country districts and planted as new communities 
 in hideous agglomerations of dwellings rapidly put 
 together in the neighbourhood of the coal-fields and 
 
 N
 
 i y8 EUROPEAN HISTORY vi 
 
 the iron-mines. The peaceful and picturesque old 
 England of quiet villages and sleepy market-towns 
 was being, displaced by a struggling and formless 
 new England of factories and warehouses with their 
 appendant mazes of mean streets. The new artisan 
 population, which lay for the most part outside the 
 existing political and religious organisations of the 
 country, began to regiment itself, in spite of legal 
 restrictions, into unions and societies which bade 
 fair to exercise a powerful influence in the direction 
 of democracy. Other countries followed the lead 
 given by England ; but their industrial development 
 was slow, and the organisation of their artisan 
 classes slower still. On the Continent, indeed, the 
 pioneers of the democratic movement were not the 
 hand-workers in their unions, but the thinkers in 
 their studies and the teachers in their lecture-rooms. 
 Continental democracy was therefore of the doctrinaire 
 order, rich in abstract principles, but hopelessly 
 divorced from experience and practicability. It still 
 concerned itself with theoretical " Rights of Man," 
 with philosophical bases of freedom, with ideal claims 
 to liberty of thought and speech, with airy and 
 inoperative generalisations. In England, on the 
 other hand, was evolved a democratic dogma of 
 an intensely practical and effective order, well fitted 
 to supply a working political creed to the new 
 industrial organisations which were coming into 
 being. This was the philosophical radicalism of
 
 vi DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 179 
 
 Jeremy Bentham and his circle that notable circle 
 which included James Mill, John Austin, George 
 Grote, and (with some reservations) John Stuart 
 Mill. Its basis was the utilitarian ethics elaborated 
 by Bentham ; its working principle was the maxim, 
 " the greatest good of the greatest number " ; its 
 first great object was the abolition of iniquitous 
 privileges and the levelling of inequalities ; its pro- 
 gramme included numerous and far-reaching reforms 
 in every department of life. The Westminster Re- 
 view, founded by Bentham in 1824, became the main 
 organ of its propaganda. The philosophical radicals 
 were optimistic enthusiasts ; for, though they had 
 no belief in God, and no illusions respecting the 
 benevolence of Nature, they had a profound faith 
 in the perfectibility of man. They held that man's 
 native vigour, if developed by education, made 
 effective by co-operation and voluntary association, 
 and provided with opportunities by means of judicious 
 legislation, could lift both the individual and the 
 race to the highest heights of felicity. They advo- 
 cated democratic self-government, not only because 
 they considered that the many were the best judges 
 of their own legislative requirements, but also because 
 they were convinced that participation in affairs 
 of community and state had an educative value 
 essential to the development of the perfect individual 
 man. The English philosophical radicals were 
 reformers and not revolutionists ; because, great as
 
 i8o EUROPEAN HISTORY vi 
 
 were the changes which they advocated, they accepted 
 the existing Constitution in its essentials, and merely 
 demanded modifications in its details and in its mode 
 of working. The Continental democrats, on the 
 other hand, were almost necessarily revolutionists. 
 They had to deal with governments that were 
 beyond reform, with bureaucracies that resisted all 
 changes, with despotisms consecrated to reaction. 
 For them there could be no hope of securing a 
 freedom which should slowly and peacefully broaden 
 down " from precedent to precedent." Theirs was 
 the more perilous task of striking down their 
 oppressors, of destroying the ancient regime, and 
 of constructing a new administration. It was a 
 perilous task because, as the events proved all too 
 often, it was by no means easy, having opened the 
 road to progress, to restore the order requisite for 
 its attainment. 
 
 38. DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENTS PRIOR TO 1830 
 
 On the Continent the period 1822-30 was one of 
 severe repression on the part of governments, of 
 grave and increasing unrest on the part of subjects. 
 In Britain, on the other hand, movements of reform, 
 started in the eighteenth century but suspended 
 during the era of revolution and war, began again to 
 display activity with the advent of a more liberal 
 element into Liverpool's ministry in 1822. Peel at
 
 vi DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 181 
 
 the Home Office revised the criminal code and 
 improved the police system ; Huskisson at the 
 Board of Trade hastened the removal of obsolete 
 mercantilist restrictions on freedom of exchange ; 
 Robinson at the Exchequer devoted himself to 
 financial reconstruction. But more important still, 
 although outside official circles, the long-suspended 
 agitation for parliamentary reform and extension of 
 the franchise was taken up once more and pushed on 
 with unprecedented vigour. So far back as the 
 early years of George III.'s reign, the need for a 
 radical reorganisation of the whole electoral system 
 had been evident. Schemes of reform had been 
 formulated by men so various as Chatham Wilkes 
 Richmond and Pitt. But nothing had been done 
 when the outbreak of revolution in France frightened 
 reformers and converted them into conservatives. 
 During the long years of peril and reaction Sir 
 Francis Burdett in the House of Commons prevented 
 the matter from wholly sinking into oblivion, but it 
 was not till 1821 that a revelation of flagrant and 
 general corruption in the Cornish constituency of 
 Grampound brought the question once more within 
 the sphere of practical politics. A .strong agitation 
 immediately commenced under the leadership of 
 Lord John Russell, which culminated in 1830 in the 
 overthrow of Wellington's ministry and the formation 
 of a cabinet under Earl Grey pledged to deal with 
 the problem.
 
 1 82 EUROPEAN HISTORY vi 
 
 In Germany the " Metternich System " reached 
 the height of its efficiency in the years that immedi- 
 ately followed the Carlsbad Conference, wherein 
 Austria and Prussia agreed to take joint action to 
 suppress throughout all the states of the Confederation 
 every manifestation of the " Revolution." Fortified 
 by this guarantee, the reactionary princes, prominent 
 among whom were William of Hesse -Cassel and 
 Antony of Saxony, rigorously repressed popular 
 demonstrations and punished agitators. The situation 
 in no two of the petty principalities was the same. 
 Hence the German democratic movement, in so far 
 as it passed beyond the limits of philosophic treatises 
 and academic lectures, became an unco-ordinated 
 particularist propaganda, doomed to futility. 
 
 In Italy the failure of the partial and premature 
 risings of 1821 was followed by a decade of 
 unparalleled tyranny on the part of the reinstated 
 autocrats. In Piedmont the whips with which Victor 
 Emmanuel I. had scourged constitutionalists gave 
 place to scorpions in the hand of his resolute ultra- 
 clerical successor, Charles Felix ; in Lombardy- 
 Venetia a system of espionage and terror drove into 
 exile all popular leaders who were fortunate enough 
 to escape the prison and the scaffold ; in Naples the 
 corrupt and incapable Bourbons proceeded to establish 
 among their turbulent and undisciplined people that 
 mode of administration which was later described as 
 a " negation of God " ; in the Papal States reactionary
 
 vi DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 183 
 
 cardinals vehemently struggled to maintain order by 
 force. Everywhere the counter-revolution reigned 
 supreme ; but its sole source of strength lay in the 
 Austrian army of occupation established in the 
 fortresses of the Quadrilateral (Verona, Mantua, 
 Peschiera, and Legnago) and fed by the lines that 
 linked it to Vienna over the Brenner Pass. Against 
 this force Italian nationalist-democrats could not at 
 this time openly contend. The wilder among them, 
 organised in secret societies, such as that of the 
 Carbonari, made such reply as they could by means 
 of riot conspiracy and assassination. 
 
 In the Peninsula constitutional struggles began 
 whose still- uncompleted ferocities have had the 
 effect of depriving both Spain and Portugal of 
 whatever importance they once had in the politics 
 of the world. As to Spain, Ferdinand VII., re- 
 stored by French arms to absolute power in 1823, 
 found in Calomarde a repressive minister after his 
 own heart. For ten years a period known as 
 the " Days of Calomarde " they waged unrelenting 
 war upon the advocates of the principles of 1 8 1 2. As 
 to Portugal, the more liberal but weaker John VI. 
 preserved some show of constitutional rule till his 
 death in 1826. Then broke out the embittered 
 civil war between the clerical reactionary party led 
 by his younger son, the regent Miguel, and the anti- 
 clerical progressive party which proclaimed his grand- 
 daughter, the girl-queen Maria, as their chief.
 
 i&4 EUROPEAN HISTORY vi 
 
 It was in France, however, the home of the 
 " Revolution," that the crucial conflict took place 
 between democracy and despotism. The ultra- 
 royalist ministry of Villele, established in 1821, 
 held office until 1828. So long as the cautious 
 and timid Louis XVIII. lived, he managed to keep 
 some check upon the dangerous desire of his 
 government to restore the privileged orders of 
 the old regime to the position which they had held 
 before 1789. But with his death in 1824 and the 
 accession of his reactionary brother, the Comte 
 d'Artois, as Charles X., the forces of the counter- 
 revolution had full sway. The army was purged 
 of officers who had served under Napoleon ; the 
 tmigrt nobles of the period of the Revolution were 
 compensated for their confiscated estates, and to 
 provide the requisite funds the interest on the 
 public funds was lowered from five to three per 
 cent ; the Jesuits were readmitted to the schools, 
 and the secularist Ecole Normale was closed ; the 
 censorship of the press was made more strict ; the 
 law of sacrilege was strengthened ; the bourgeois 
 National Guards were disbanded ; efforts were 
 made to tune the Chambers by means of a septennial 
 act, electoral regulations, and a free creation of 
 peers. In these circumstances an opposition, com- 
 pounded from many and various groups, gradually 
 formed itself, and events moved rapidly towards 
 a catastrophe.
 
 vi DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 185 
 
 4 
 
 39. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1830 
 
 The growing unpopularity of Villele and the 
 rising flood of antagonism to the retrogressive 
 policy of Charles X. were strikingly manifested 
 in 1828, when, in spite of strenuous efforts on the 
 part of court and ministry to manipulate the con- 
 stituencies, a liberal majority was returned to the 
 Chamber of Deputies. Villele felt compelled to 
 resign. The obstinate king, however, instead of 
 yielding to the clear indications of the general will, 
 placed in power the Vicomte de Martignac, a 
 member of Villele's party and a man actively 
 identified with its most obnoxious measures. 
 Martignac, it is true, when in office, felt it 
 necessary to moderate his policy ; he relaxed the 
 censorship, and he reduced the power of the Jesuits. 
 In doing so he merely succeeded in alienating the 
 ultras, without in the least conciliating the liberals. 
 After a year and a half of growing disaffection 
 Charles decided that it was " time to call a halt " to 
 concession ; time to end the hopeless attempt to 
 satisfy the radical Cerberus with sops, and to return 
 to a vigorous and whole-hearted policy of reaction. 
 u Concessions ruined Louis XVI.," said Charles. 
 Accordingly in August 1829 he dismissed the 
 temporising Martignac from office, and summoned 
 from the French embassy in England the Prince 
 de Polignac, a clericalist notorious as an ultra among
 
 1 86 EUROPEAN HISTORY vi 
 
 ultras. Wellington, when he heard of the appoint- 
 ment, at once recognised its sinister significance 
 and ventured to utter some solemn admonitions. 
 Even Metternich and the Tzar Nicholas were per- 
 turbed and sent messages advising caution. But 
 admonitions and messages of caution were wholly 
 disregarded. " There is no such thing as political 
 experience," Wellington was constrained to re- 
 mark ; " with the warning of James II. before 
 him, Charles X. is setting up a government of 
 priests, through priests, for priests." The estab- 
 lishment of Polignac in power was indeed per- 
 ceived by all the parties concerned to be a definite 
 challenge to mortal combat. Polignac frankly an- 
 nounced his programme to be " the reorganisation 
 of society, the restoration of their political influence 
 to the clergy, and the creation of a powerful and 
 privileged aristocracy." The new minister was 
 not blind to the peril of his position ; but he had 
 a policy from which he expected a triumphant 
 issue. The French nation, he had gathered from 
 a study of the career of Napoleon, preferred glory 
 to liberty ; they were willing to do without a 
 constitution provided they could have an empire. 
 In order, therefore, to distract attention from 
 domestic controversies he embarked on the ad- 
 venture of the conquest of Algeria an adventure 
 which veritably achieved much success, and indeed 
 laid securely the foundation of the present French
 
 vi DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 187 
 
 dominion over that region. Success, however, came 
 too late for Polignac's purpose. Before it displayed 
 itself, both the prince and his patron were gone. 
 The crisis in which they were hurled from power 
 was precipitated by the issue, on July 25, 1830, 
 of four ordinances of an extremely reactionary type : 
 the first dissolved the Chamber of Deputies ; the 
 second altered the franchise in a manner in- 
 tended to deprive liberals of all electoral influence ; 
 the third ordered new elections on the new 
 register ; the fourth suspended afresh the liberty 
 of the press. Even some of Polignac's colleagues 
 were apprehensive of the probable consequences of 
 the publication of these ordinances, and pointed 
 out to him disquieting similarities between his pro- 
 ceedings and those of the English Earl of Strafford. 
 But he was not to be turned from his purpose by 
 the doubtful lessons of history. 
 
 The lessons of history, however, played a prominent 
 part in determining the conduct of the opposition. 
 Among those who resolved to resist the ordinance 
 were Thiers and Guizot and Mignet, men to whom 
 the precedents of the English antagonism to the 
 Stuarts was a constant source of inspiration and 
 guidance. On July 26 they drew up a strongly 
 worded protest against the royal violation of the 
 chartered liberties of the French nation. Next 
 day the incensed populace began to make attack 
 on the houses of ministers and on public buildings.
 
 1 88 EUROPEAN HISTORY vi 
 
 The Government ordered out the troops ; but the 
 troops were inadequate in numbers to deal with 
 the rapidly increasing tumult ; their ammunition 
 became exhausted ; some of them deserted and joined 
 the rioters. On July 28 the Hotel de Ville was 
 stormed ; on July 29 the Louvre and the Tuileries 
 fell, and the royalist troops had to evacuate the 
 city. Recognising at last that he was face to face 
 not merely with a revolt but with a revolution, 
 Charles (who was at St. Cloud) tried to save the 
 situation by withdrawing the ordinances and dis- 
 missing Polignac. But if concessions had ruined 
 Louis XVI., they were not destined to save his 
 brother. Louis may have made them too soon : 
 Charles certainly made them too late. Already 
 a provisional Government had been set up in Paris, 
 and a National Guard had been enrolled under the 
 command of the elderly Lafayette, who as a young 
 man had held the same office in the revolution of 
 1789. There was in the capital a violent conflict 
 of opinion as to the form ot constitution which 
 should be adopted ; but all were agreed that the 
 Bourbons with their fleur-de-lis, their clerical en- 
 tourage, and their dogma of divine right should 
 go. Lafayette himself and the vast majority of 
 those who had organised and carried through the 
 revolution wished to restore the republic ; but 
 statesmen like Thiers, and men of affairs like 
 Laffitte, pointed out that the Powers would not
 
 vi DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 189 
 
 tolerate a repetition of 1789, and would certainly 
 intervene to suppress a revolutionary common- 
 wealth. The monarchical form of government, 
 they said, must be retained, no matter how re- 
 publican the spirit of the administration. Their 
 prudent opinion prevailed, and the followers of 
 Lafayette were persuaded to accept, as " king of 
 the French," Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, son 
 of the Jacobin "Philip EgaliteV' a man of liberal 
 traditions who himself had fought for republican 
 France under the tricolour flag at Jemmapes. Louis 
 Philippe, having taken a solemn constitutional oath, 
 was proclaimed on August 9. Five days later 
 Charles X. departed from Cherbourg for England. 
 
 40. DEMOCRATIC ADVANCE, 1830-48 
 
 The news of the July Revolution in France 
 created a profound sensation throughout Europe. 
 The autocrats of the Eastern monarchies were 
 horrified at this victorious recrudescence of the 
 revolutionary spirit which for fifteen years they had 
 striven so hard to suppress. At first it seemed 
 probable that, in spite of the cautious moderation of 
 the Orleanist leaders, hostile intervention would take 
 place. Nicholas I. of Russia was eager to lead his 
 armies to Paris, and he confidently counted on the 
 co-operation of Frederick William III. of Prussia : 
 only with difficulty did his ministers dissuade him
 
 i 9 o EUROPEAN HISTORY vi 
 
 from entering * on a political crusade which would 
 probably soon have embroiled the whole Continent. 
 Metternich used his influence in the same direction 
 of moderation ; for, much as he hated the new 
 bourgeois regime, he was too much occupied with 
 the affairs of Germany Italy and Greece to con- 
 template fresh engagements. Wellington in England 
 was not pleased at the change in the French govern- 
 ment ; but he objected on principle to intervention, 
 and in no event was he prepared to do anything to 
 restore the impossible Polignac to power. Hence 
 for the moment Louis Philippe escaped molestation 
 and obtained opportunity to attempt to establish 
 himself in the confidence and favour of a people the 
 majority of whom including Legitimists, Bona- 
 partists, and Republicans regarded him as a necessary 
 evil, a temporary compromise, a momentarily con- 
 venient but permanently undesirable stopgap. 
 
 The triumph of the revolution in France (even 
 though it was arrested half-way) had far-reaching 
 effects on neighbouring countries. Precisely four 
 weeks after the overthrow of Charles X. occurred 
 that national revolt of the Belgians against the 
 Dutch which has already been described. This was 
 followed in November of the same year by the ill- 
 advised and disastrous revolt of the Poles against the 
 rule of the Russian Tzar, the one beneficial effect 
 of which was experienced by the French and the 
 Belgians who were relieved by it of all lingering
 
 vi DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 191 
 
 apprehension of Russian intervention. Germany 
 and Italy also felt the stirrings of the revolutionary 
 impulse. In the one country, particularist revolts, 
 involving the falls of ministers and the resignation 
 of princes, led to the establishment of constitutions 
 in Hesse-Cassel (1830), Saxony (1831), Brunswick 
 (1832), and Hanover (1833). In the other country, 
 rebellions in the Papal States Parma and Modena 
 were all crushed with so much ease and with such 
 extreme severity by Austrian troops that Italian 
 patriots were forced to face the conclusion that the 
 liberation of Italy could not be effected without 
 assistance from without. 
 
 The most notable effect of the July Revolution, 
 however, was the change which it engendered in the 
 Concert of Europe, and the modification which it 
 introduced into the balance of the Powers. France 
 under Charles X. had been a consistent supporter 
 of the " Metternich System " ; under Louis Philippe 
 she became (especially during the decade, 1830-40) 
 an ally of Britain in defence of a more liberal policy. 
 She necessarily championed constitutional government 
 against despotic oppression ; she safeguarded Belgian 
 independence, expressed sympathy with Polish 
 struggles for emancipation, and encouraged Italy's 
 efforts to achieve national unity. Belgium, too, 
 under Leopold I. took her stand by the side of the 
 progressive Powers. The net result was a consider- 
 able diminution in the preponderance of the forces of
 
 1 92 EUROPEAN HISTORY vi 
 
 reaction in Europe, and a material increase in the 
 opportunities of unimpeded popular advance in all 
 lands. 
 
 Democracy did not fail to take advantage of the 
 occasions for progressive movement which presented 
 themselves during the succeeding eighteen years 
 (1830-48). The period was one of great material 
 prosperity. The rapid building of railways, the 
 increase of swift steamship communication, the 
 development of postal and telegraph services, a 
 luxurious outburst of labour-saving and wealth-pro- 
 ducing inventions raised the standard of life, restored 
 buoyancy and hope to the war-shattered Continent, 
 and engendered dreams of an era of universal happi- 
 ness and peace. Political idealists found inspiration 
 for new Utopias in the improving conditions of the 
 time. St. Simon (d. 1825) had already formulated the 
 theory of a society reorganised on an industrial 
 basis. Robert Owen elaborated his views in the 
 Book of the New Moral World (1834-1841), and 
 further tried in a succession of interesting though 
 unsuccessful experiments to exemplify in practice 
 the principles of co - operation and communism. 
 Joseph Proudhon in France (1840) asked the 
 formidable question " What is Property ? " and 
 answered it in a socialistic sense. Karl Marx, not 
 yet a disciple of Proudhon, advocated advanced demo- 
 cratic doctrine in the Rheinische Zeitung (1842-43) 
 until he was forced by reactionary pressure to seek
 
 vi DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 193 
 
 security in flight to Paris. Everywhere there was 
 movement among the masses movement engendered 
 not by despair but by hope, caused not by increasing 
 oppression but by the consciousness of the possession 
 of new powers and possibilities. 
 
 Great Britain witnessed in 1832 the notable 
 democratic triumph of the first Reform Act, which 
 swept away the mediaeval parliamentary system and 
 introduced an intelligible if still narrow popular 
 franchise, together with a more equitable distribution 
 of seats. This breach in the ramparts of privilege 
 was followed by a remarkable series of progressive 
 measures of which the Poor Law Act of 1834 and 
 the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 were the 
 most important. All these reforms, however, were 
 essentially middle-class in their benefits, and the still 
 unsatisfied aspirations of the artisans and labourers 
 found vent in the famous but futile Chartist 
 Agitation (1837-48). On the other hand, one 
 serious hindrance to the development of industry 
 and the prosperity of the artisan classes was removed 
 by the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. 
 
 Germany saw no great democratic triumphs during 
 this period, but witnessed increasingly grave unrest. 
 The "Metternich System," moreover, showed unmis- 
 takable signs of falling to pieces. Its eponymous 
 founder was growing old and weary ; the sense of 
 failure weighed upon him and sapped his vigour. 
 The autocrats, also, for whom he toiled, gave him 
 
 o
 
 i 9 4 EUROPEAN HISTORY vi 
 
 but little assistance, whether material or moral. 
 Ferdinand of Austria was feeble and vacillating to a 
 degree beyond remedy. Frederick William IV. of 
 Prussia who came to the throne in 1840 soon 
 showed himself to^e impulsive and incalculable, and 
 travelled rapidly along that road of eccentricity 
 which ultimately led him into the lunatic asylum. 
 As the system of repression weakened, democratic 
 demonstrations grew bolder. Notable among these 
 were the Hambach Festival of 1832, the protest of 
 the seven Gottingen professors in 1837, an< ^ open 
 conferences at Heppenheim and Heidelberg in 
 1847-48. 
 
 Italy, still held fast in the Austrian vice, was 
 able to show no more than movements preliminary 
 to emancipation. Charles Albert, who succeeded 
 the repressive Charles Felix in Piedmont in 1831, 
 had liberal leanings and a fixed resolution to secure 
 the expulsion of the Austrians from the peninsula. 
 Mazzini and his " Young Italy " party commenced 
 their active and powerful propaganda in 1835. 1 
 1846 the advent of a reforming and anti-Austrian 
 Pope, Pius IX., roused high the hopes of all Italian 
 patriots. The first symptoms of the great and 
 general European upheaval of 1848 came, indeed, 
 from Italy. At the beginning of the year Charles 
 Albert granted a constitution to his subjects and 
 agreed to lead them against the Austrians. In Naples 
 a successful rebellion shook to its very foundations
 
 vi DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 195 
 
 the despotic throne of " King Bomba," the Bourbon 
 Ferdinand II. 
 
 Once more, however, it was events in France that 
 induced the cataclysm. 
 
 41. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF i 
 
 The position of Louis Philippe, king of the 
 French, was, from the first, one of almost untenable 
 difficulty. The insurrection which placed him upon 
 the throne was " a revolution arrested half-way," 
 and he himself was a quartum quid. His sole 
 zealous supporters were the comparatively small 
 and politically weak community of the well-to-do 
 middle class. None of the great parties regarded 
 him with more than contemptuous toleration. To 
 the Legitimists he was the hated ex-Jacobin and 
 supplanter of Charles X. ; to the Bonapartists he 
 was the man who for the ten years 1804-14 had 
 been the implacable enemy of the great emperor ; 
 to the Republicans he was the consecrated obstruction 
 to the realisation of the ideals of 1789. Hence, 
 throughout the eighteen years of his troubled reign, 
 he was harassed by constant hostility intrigue and 
 treachery. In 1832 the Duchess of Berry^-daughter- 
 in-law of Charles X., and mother of the legitimist 
 heir the Comte de Chambord organised a Bourbon 
 revolt in La Vendee ; in 1 834 republican insurrections, 
 which were intended to inaugurate a new revolution,
 
 196 EUROPEAN HISTORY vi 
 
 broke out in Paris Lyons and other cities ; Louis 
 Napoleon, nephew of the emperor, made two separate 
 attempts one at Strassburg in 1836, the other at 
 Boulogne in 1840 to overthrow the July monarchy 
 and effect a Bonapartist restoration. Apart from 
 these overt attacks upon the Orleanist government, 
 no less than six efforts to assassinate Louis Philippe 
 himself were made during the course of the period. 
 
 In the vital matter of the determination of his 
 policy the bourgeois king found himself painfully 
 situated between the devil and the deep sea. On 
 the one side the revolutionists who had accepted him 
 as ruler expected him not only to maintain con- 
 stitutional government at home, but also actively 
 to support democratic and national movements 
 abroad : no sooner was he on the throne than they 
 clamoured for French intervention on behalf of 
 Belgium Poland and Italy. On the other hand, 
 the unfriendly Powers of Europe, who with difficulty 
 brought themselves to recognise Louis Philippe at 
 all, were ready at the first symptom of meddlesome- 
 ness to combine to drive him from his rickety throne. 
 In the circumstances he felt compelled to follow a 
 course of compromise, hesitating vacillating insincere 
 timorous a course which alienated by its inactivity 
 the liberals at home, and nevertheless alarmed by its 
 liberal loquacity the autocrats abroad. 
 
 The first two years of the reign (1830-32) were 
 occupied mainly by an embittered struggle between
 
 vi DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 197 
 
 the republicans and the constitutional monarchists 
 for ascendancy in the new administration. Finally 
 the republicans were routed ; Lafayette and Lafitte 
 compelled to retire ; and a strong conservative 
 ministry formed under the capable leadership of 
 Casimir Perier (1831). He, however, unfortunately 
 died after fourteen months of invaluable labour 
 which had definitely established the constitutionalists 
 in power. 
 
 The death of Casimir Perier was followed by 
 eight years of conflict (1832-40) between a 
 " whig " party led by Thiers whose main concern 
 was to reconcile the French nation to the Orleanist 
 monarchy, and a " tory " party led by Guizot whose 
 chief preoccupation was to render the Orleanist 
 monarchy acceptable to the European Powers. The 
 means by which Thiers and his friends hoped to 
 attain their end were, first, the carrying through of 
 liberal reforms in domestic affairs, and, secondly, the 
 recovery of influence in foreign affairs and the 
 attainment of glory abroad. Thiers himself was a 
 profound admirer of Bonaparte whose history he 
 later wrote in his great work on The Consulate and 
 the Empire and he felt that the best hope of the 
 establishment of the Orleanist dynasty to the respect 
 and affections of the French was that it should frankly 
 adopt the policy of the emperor (as the emperor 
 himself had expounded it from St. Helena after his 
 fall) and should proclaim itself as the realiser of the
 
 198 EUROPEAN HISTORY vi 
 
 " Napoleonic Idea." l In his search for glory, and 
 in conscious imitation of Napoleon, Thiers inter- 
 meddled in the affairs of Egypt, and all but succeeded 
 in involving his country in a war with a Quadruple 
 Alliance, consisting of Russia Britain Austria and 
 Prussia, pledged to prevent the disintegration of 
 Turkey. This led to his fall, and to the definite 
 establishment of Guizot in power (1840). 
 
 For the last eight years of the reign Guizot 
 maintained himself in office. He succeeded in 
 conciliating the autocrats by his cautious foreign 
 policy, and by his steady refusal to be drawn into 
 any adventures on behalf of popular movements in 
 other countries. 2 France, however, ceased to count 
 in the affairs of Europe, and the French nation was 
 bored and humiliated by the inactivity and impotence 
 of the government. The shade of Napoleon, invoked 
 by Thiers, was a constant reminder 'and rebuke. 
 Nor did Guizot's domestic policy tend to retrieve 
 his popularity : it was persistently and unintelligently 
 reactionary and repressive. 
 
 The opposition grew vehement and insistent ; 
 "dynastic reformers," led by Thiers, joined them- 
 selves to the ever-restless republicans, and demanded 
 drastic changes. They were reinforced by new and 
 
 1 In 1840. under the influence of this Napoleonic revival, the remains of the 
 Emperor were brought from St. Helena and buried with great demonstrations in 
 Les Invalides at Paris. 
 
 2 Great Britain, however, was alienated from France in 1846 by the policy 
 of Guizot and Louis Philippe in respect of the " Spanish marriages " 5 see Camb. 
 Mod. Hist. vol. xi. p. 554.
 
 vi DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 199 
 
 ominous allies in a large body of communists who 
 had pledged themselves to carry into operation the 
 visionary ideals of Louis Blanc's Organisation of 
 Labour. In order to suppress agitation Guizot 
 vigorously restricted the freedom of the press. His 
 assailants replied by arranging a series of banquets 
 at which inflammatory speeches were made. The 
 banquets were prohibited, and then the explosion 
 came. In February 1848 riots broke out in Paris. 
 Guizot fell from power. Still the tumult continued. 
 Louis Philippe, losing heart and fearing to lose head as 
 well, gave up the struggle in wholly needless despair. 
 His reign ended characteristically. Having abdi- 
 cated in favour of his grandson, he sent for a cab 
 and drove away for England. On reaching the 
 English shore in ordinary civilian garb, when asked 
 his name, he replied, " Mr. Smith." 
 
 His abdication and departure did not save the 
 dynasty. The Chambers, under pressure of the 
 Parisian mob, decided upon a republican constitution 
 and appointed a provisional government to carry 
 their decision into effect. 
 
 42. THE GENERAL UPHEAVAL 
 
 The news of the February Revolution in Paris 
 fell upon Europe like a bolt from the blue. To 
 ordinary observers of public affairs the Orleanist 
 monarchy had seemed entirely free from menace at
 
 200 EUROPEAN HISTORY vi 
 
 the dawn of 1 848 : the ministry had for eight years 
 been securely seated in power ; it commanded an 
 easy majority in the Chambers ; it was in high 
 favour with the most powerful monarchs of the 
 Continent ; no rumour of war disturbed the inter- 
 national air. Only those whose insight into French 
 politics was profound knew the rottenness of the 
 foundations on which the kingship of Louis Philippe 
 was erected. But, shaky as was the structure, it 
 need not have fallen in 1848 had either Guizot or 
 the king possessed any sort of capacity to meet a 
 crisis, or courage to brave peril. The February 
 Revolution was the nemesis of incompetence and 
 pusillanimity, rather than of oppression and un- 
 wisdom. 
 
 The very unexpectedness rapidity and complete- 
 ness of the democratic triumph, and of the transforma- 
 tion of France, had a cataclysmic effect throughout 
 Europe. Everywhere the long-rising but pent-up 
 floods of liberalism burst their barriers and deluged 
 the Continent. It was heterogeneous Austria, par- 
 ticularist Germany, and unrealised Italy that felt 
 their force most severely ; but no less than fifteen 
 separate revolts of some magnitude marked this 
 annus mirabilis of revolution 1848. First in 
 order of time and most significant of all, on March 
 13, Vienna, the very headquarters of the European 
 reaction and the home of the Holy Alliance, rose 
 in tumult, demanded a constitution, and surged in
 
 vi DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 201 
 
 furious attack upon Metternich. The once mighty 
 minister, controller of the Continent and supreme 
 representative of the anti-revolutionary regime, was 
 driven into panic-stricken flight : he escaped from 
 his palace in disguise, and made an unostentatious 
 exit from the city which he had so long dominated, 
 concealed amid the contents of a laundry-cart. He 
 did not stay his course until he reached England, 
 where he had an opportunity of comparing experi- 
 ences with Louis Philippe. The fall of Metternich 
 was an event of historic importance : it indicated the 
 end of an age, the passing away of an antiquated 
 system of government. Its effect was instantaneous. 
 Within a week Austria Germany and Italy were 
 ablaze. On March 15, spontaneously and inde- 
 pendently, but as though according to a prearranged 
 plan, Hungary was in revolt, demanding a " people's 
 charter " and national autonomy ; Bohemia was 
 tumultuously claiming a constitution and a responsible 
 ministry of its own ; Croatia and its Illyrian allies 
 were rising and arming to throw off the Magyar 
 yoke. On March 15, too, the Pope, deprived of 
 Austrian and French support, felt constrained to 
 grant a constitution to the States of the Church. 
 On March 18, Milan rose and expelled its Austrian 
 garrison ; on March 22, Venice followed its example 
 and proclaimed itself an independent republic once 
 more ; on March 23, Charles Albert of Sardinia, 
 deeming that the hour of Italy's deliverance had
 
 202 EUROPEAN HISTORY vi 
 
 come, declared war upon the shaken Hapsburg 
 power. 
 
 Meanwhile in Germany events not less notable 
 and startling were taking place. On that self-same 
 March 15 which saw such scenes of revolution in 
 Vienna Pressburg Prague and Rome, Berlin also broke 
 into rebellion and threw up barricades. For two days 
 the tumult increased, and then on the third Frederick 
 William IV. yielded. He accepted the principle of 
 constitutional government, not only for Prussia, but 
 also for Germany as a whole ; on the 2 1 st he went in 
 procession through the streets of his pacified capital 
 decked in the red black and gold emblems of the 
 triumphant Revolution ; finally he authorised the 
 sending out of summonses for a general German 
 National Parliament which should endeavour to frame 
 a new form of popular and centralised government 
 for the united folk of the Fatherland. Without 
 waiting, however, for the fruits of the "glorious 
 German Revolution " to mature, Bavaria drove its 
 absolutist king, Lewis I., to abdicate, and established a 
 liberal administration ; Baden demanded and secured 
 freedom of the press and the formation of a citizen 
 army ; Saxony forced its king to dismiss an un- 
 popular ministry, and inaugurate an era of reform. 
 Even the British Isles felt the influence of the Con- 
 tinental upheaval. In April the Chartist agitation 
 came to a head, and London prepared itself for a 
 gigantic demonstration and a possible civil war. In
 
 vi DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 203 
 
 July the " Young Ireland " movement, led by Smith 
 O'Brien, culminated in an armed insurrection. Not 
 for half a century had there been seen so great a 
 tumult of the peoples. The powers of reaction 
 seemed to be broken and routed. Everywhere 
 democracy appeared to be well on the way to 
 dominance. 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY TO LECTURE VI 
 
 DICKINSON, G. L. Revolution and Reaction in Modern France. 
 FISHER, H. A. L. The Republican Tradition in Europe. 
 MAURICE, C. E. The Revolutionary Movement of 1848. 
 THAYER, W. R. Dawn of Italian Independence. 
 THUREAU-DANGIN. Histoire de la Monarchic de Juillet. 
 WARD, A. W. Germany, 1815-1900, vol. i.
 
 LECTURE VII 
 
 THE ERA OF THE TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY, 
 1848-71 
 
 43. THE DEMOCRATIC D&B^CLE 
 
 FOR a few delirious weeks in 1848 the triumph of 
 democracy seemed to be assured. It looked as 
 though the Atlantic Ocean had definitely asserted its 
 superiority over Mrs. Partington's mop. Neverthe- 
 less the triumph declined into disaster, and the mop 
 emerged in the hands of a reinvigorated Mrs. 
 Partington to clean up the relics of a most appalling 
 mess. Democracy in the four years of its probation 
 (1848-52) discredited and disgraced itself; in the 
 end it fell not so much through the strength or 
 machinations of its enemies, as through its own in- 
 credible follies and vices. Its failure to rise to the 
 height of its opportunities, and particularly its failure 
 in Germany, was the cause of incalculable calamity to 
 Europe. It may indeed, as we shall see more fully 
 later on, be regarded as the remote source of the 
 great catastrophe of 1914. Democracy failed be- 
 
 204
 
 vii TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 205 
 
 cause once more, as in the four years of its former 
 trial (1789-93), it alienated by its violence, its lack 
 of prudence, its menace to order and property, its 
 garrulity incompetence and unpracticality, that mass 
 of moderate opinion which ultimately judges and 
 determines the fate of all forms of government 
 whatsoever. 
 
 In England the Chartist demonstration, after 
 having caused the utmost perturbation and appre- 
 hension, died out in a ludicrous fiasco. The 
 demonstrators, faced by a levy of 200,000 special 
 constables (among whom, by the way, was Louis 
 Napoleon, at that time a refugee in London) and by 
 reserves of troops under Wellington, discouraged 
 by inclement weather, and uncertain of themselves, 
 instead of taking their petition to Parliament in 
 formidable array, sent it inconspicuously in three 
 cabs and then unostentatiously withdrew into oblivion. 
 
 The more serious risings in the Austrian 
 dominions subsided amid scenes of bloodshed and 
 outrage, of which Prague Vienna and Budapest 
 were the main centres. The Bohemian revolution 
 seemed actually to have achieved its purpose and to 
 have secured from the emperor a grant of constitu- 
 tional autonomy, when (June 12, 1848) the extreme 
 doctrinaire liberals, dissatisfied with the settlement, 
 rose in mad fanatic fury, and so gave the Austrian 
 commander, Prince Windischgratz, an excuse to 
 crush the whole movement in slaughter a thing
 
 206 EUROPEAN HISTORY vii 
 
 which he did with decisive thoroughness on June 15. 
 Similarly, in Austria Proper democracy induced its 
 own destruction. On April 25, 1848, the emperor 
 conceded a constitution drawn up on the most 
 popular lines. Its basis was universal suffrage. 
 On this basis elections at once took place and resulted 
 in the return of a Slav majority. This was not at all 
 according to the expectations or intentions of the 
 Viennese advocates of democratic control. They 
 were not prepared in any circumstances to forfeit the 
 Teutonic ascendancy. Hence when the new Reichsrat 
 met on July 1 1, 1848, they soon reduced its proceed- 
 ings to chaos, roused the mob of the capital against 
 the Slavonic deputies, and established in the city a 
 reign of Germanic terror. Both the emperor and 
 the Slavs had to seek safety in flight ; Ferdinand 
 betook himself to Olmtltz (October 7, 1848), the 
 deputies to Prague. Then Windischgra'tz did unto 
 Vienna (October 28-30, 1848) what he had a few 
 months earlier done to the Bohemian capital, and all 
 reasonable men recognised the painful necessity of 
 his action. The Hungarian revolt, national as well 
 as democratic, was more formidable and more pro- 
 longed. It would certainly have been successful 
 but for the persistent refusal of the Magyars to grant 
 to the Croats the liberties which they demanded for 
 themselves. The Croats, accordingly, under their 
 own leader Jellacic, threw in their lot with the 
 Austrian government and helped it to crush the
 
 vii TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 207 
 
 rising of their oppressors. Even so, however, 
 the Magyars, inspired by Kossuth and well led by 
 GOrgei and other commanders, made a determined 
 fight for independence. Not until Russia sent an 
 army to the aid of Austria was the insurrection 
 crushed at Vilagos (August 14, 1849). ^ n the m idst 
 of these tumults the weak Emperor Ferdinand 
 resigned and handed over his crown to his nephew, 
 Francis Joseph (1848-1916), an apt pupil of 
 Metternich. 
 
 In Italy the collapse of the revolution was even 
 more disastrous and complete. At first three 
 patriotic parties, led respectively by the then liberal 
 Pope Pius IX., Charles Albert of Sardinia, and 
 Mazzini, combined for the expulsion of the 
 Austrians. But soon they broke their alliance and 
 turned their forces against one another. The Pope, 
 alarmed at the irreligion of the republicans and fear- 
 ful of the defection of Austria from the Catholic 
 fold, abandoned the national cause in April 1848 ; 
 Charles Albert mismanaged his campaign and 
 suffered such serious defeats at Custozza (July 25, 
 1848) and Novara (March 23, 1849) that he ^ 
 compelled to resign his crown ; Mazzini, who was 
 joined by Garibaldi, wasted his energies in a wild 
 experiment at republican government in no less a 
 city than Rome itself, whence the Pope had been 
 driven in November 1848. This brought the 
 French into the Peninsula as defenders of the Holy
 
 208 EUROPEAN HISTORY vn 
 
 See : Rome was recovered for the Pope (July 
 1849); Mazzini and Garibaldi were driven into 
 exile. The same month Venice was reconquered by 
 Austria, and with the suppression of its ill-starred 
 " Republic of St. Mark " the unhappy discordant 
 unco-ordinated Italian efforts after emancipation and 
 self-government came for a season to an end. 
 
 If the Italian failure was tragic, the German 
 failure was ridiculous. The National Parliament, 
 summoned as the result of the successful Berlin 
 rising of March 1848, met on May 18 at Frankfort- 
 on-Main. At once its academic members plunged 
 into interminable controversies respecting the abstract 
 " rights of the German people," the respective 
 merits of various types of constitution, the geo- 
 graphic limits of the regions to be included in the 
 new Teutonic union, and other kindred topics 
 (among which was that most complex of all diplomatic 
 puzzles, the Schleswig-Holstein problem). The 
 Parliament finally decided to establish a democratic 
 German Empire, the crown of which regardless of 
 the opposition of Austria and the minor powers 
 they offered to Frederick William IV. of Prussia. 
 The Prussian king, however, refused to exchange 
 his monarchy by divine right for an imperial 
 sovereignty derived from popular vote, and certain 
 to be repudiated by most of the other German 
 princes. Hence he made " the great refusal " which 
 destroyed the hope of the unification of Germany
 
 vii TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 209 
 
 by peaceful means. The German National Parlia- 
 ment dwindled out of existence, and nothing 
 remained but to restore the ineffective Confederation 
 of 1815. This accordingly was done in 1851. Said 
 an acute observer of the events of that critical period 
 a man then inconspicuous and unknown but 
 destined not long to remain so Otto von Bismarck 
 by name : " Not by speeches and resolutions of 
 majorities are the mighty problems of the age to be 
 solved, but by blood and iron." 
 
 44. THE SECOND FRENCH REPUBLIC 
 
 While in other countries democratic and national 
 movements were, one after another, coming to a 
 climax in catastrophe, in France also the new 
 republic was hastening along the road to ruin. The 
 revolution of February 1848 had been made ex- 
 clusively in Paris, and in that city the dominant 
 agency had been the irresponsible mob of discontented 
 artisans and visionary students, all alike inflamed 
 by the doctrines of the new socialism, and inspired 
 by fantastic hopes of a soon-to-be-regenerated world. 
 On the day on which Louis Philippe fell and the 
 Provisional Government organised itself in the 
 Palais Bourbon, this Parisian proletariat seized the 
 Hotel de Ville and instituted on its own account 
 a Committee of Public Safety, whose purpose was 
 to govern France, carry through the social revolution, 
 
 p
 
 210 EUROPEAN HISTORY vn 
 
 and extend the benefits of the new order to the whole 
 of the Continent. The leading members of the 
 Committee were Louis Blanc, Marrast, and a work- 
 man named Albert. The statement of their 
 principles showed how great a change had passed 
 over French democracy since 1789. The first 
 revolution had been idealistic, inspired by a passion 
 for equality, directed against privilege, essentially 
 individualist in its spirit. The second was material- 
 istic, inspired by a desire for better economic 
 conditions, directed against property, essentially 
 socialist. One of its more extreme representatives, 
 Marche by name, stated its aims in the following 
 words addressed to the Provisional Government : 
 " We demand the extermination of property and 
 capitalists ; the immediate installation of the pro- 
 letariat in community of goods ; the proscription of 
 bankers, the rich, the merchants, the bourgeois ; . . . 
 the acceptance of the red flag to signify to society 
 its defeat, to the people its victory ; to Paris the 
 terror, to all foreign governments invasion." This 
 was a formidable programme and one by no means 
 acceptable either to the parliamentary leaders or to 
 the majority of the bourgeoisie and peasant pro- 
 prietors of the country. It revealed the fact that 
 there was a profound schism of opinion in the land. 
 With two such separate governments established in 
 Paris the one moderate parliamentary constitu- 
 tional conservative middle - class in the Palais
 
 vii TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 211 
 
 Bourbon ; the other extremist tumultuary anarchic 
 proletarian at the H6tel de Ville instant civil war 
 seemed inevitable. For the moment the danger 
 was averted by Lamartine, leader of the parliamentary 
 group, who showed remarkable skill and promptitude 
 of action. He effected an amalgamation of the 
 two executives, brought Louis Blanc, Marrast, and 
 Albert into the provisional ministry of the Palais 
 Bourbon, and so healed the schism superficially. 
 But he did so only by making a complete surrender 
 to the socialists in the matter of principle ; by- 
 agreeing to recognise the " right to work " ; and by 
 promising to promote the setting up of " national 
 workshops." It was in essence an abdication of 
 authority, and it left supreme power in the hands of 
 the Paris mob, which exercised control over the 
 Provisional Government partly from within by 
 means of Louis Blanc and his colleagues, but mainly 
 from without by means of riotous demonstrations 
 and assaults. Then began a great experiment in 
 socialist reorganisation which in less than four 
 months brought France to the verge of economic 
 dissolution. The " national workshops " were set 
 up, and all who lacked occupation were invited to 
 present themselves on promise of employment, or at 
 any rate of wages. The response to the appeal wholly 
 exceeded the capacity of the organisers of labour to 
 deal with it. From all over the country turbulent and 
 dissatisfied men left useful avocations and flocked
 
 212 EUROPEAN HISTORY vn 
 
 to Paris to be maintained in insubordinate idleness 
 on doles extorted by heavy taxes levied on the 
 industrious peasantry. Before the end of May the 
 tributary crowd of state dependents in the " work- 
 shops" had swelled to 100,000 men, and their 
 presence had grown to be a grave menace to the 
 community. By this time, however, it had become 
 evident that, although the red flag was dominant 
 in Paris, the tricolour of the moderates had over- 
 whelming support in the provinces. The proclama- 
 tion of universal suffrage placed the ultimate control 
 of the situation in the hands of the peasantry of 
 France, and the socialists saw themselves likely to 
 be defeated by democracy. Hence, with a frank 
 and flagrant defiance of the democratic principle, and 
 once more by means of mob-violence, they strove 
 to procure the postponement of the appeal to the 
 people. The Provisional Government yielded as 
 usual to the pressure, but only so far as to put off 
 the election to April 23, 1848. They took some 
 courage from their realisation that the day of 
 deliverance was at hand. When the election took 
 place and the returns were sent in, it was found that 
 Lamartine and the moderates had swept the country, 
 and that Louis Blanc and the extremists were in 
 an impotent minority. The extremists were not, 
 however, prepared to accept their defeat at the polls, 
 and, hopeless of repairing it by constitutional means, 
 they once more essayed armed revolution (May 15).
 
 vu TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 213 
 
 But this time the Provisional Government backed 
 by the new assembly, strong in the knowledge of 
 the sanction of the nation as a whole, and supported 
 by the National Guard did not yield. It suppressed 
 the rising and replied to it by closing the " national 
 workshops " centres of laziness pauperisation 
 insurrection and corruption and by ordering the 
 return of the pensioners to their former places of 
 abode. The evil done could not, however, be so 
 easily undone. The pensioners refused to disband, 
 and on June 24 broke out in furious rebellion. For 
 three days Paris was the scene of a conflict more 
 deadly than any battle of the Napoleonic wars : the 
 rebels were in the end defeated, but only at a cost 
 of 10,000 casualties all told. The shock of this 
 appalling struggle, in which organised society fought 
 for its very existence against the incalculable terror 
 of anarchy, determined the nature of the republican 
 constitution adopted by the assembly. The assembly 
 decided, it is true, on a legislature of a single chamber 
 elected by universal suffrage ; but it balanced this by 
 a wholly separate and independent executive vested 
 for a term of four years in a president also directly 
 appointed by means of a plebiscite. To this office 
 of vast and unregulated power was chosen by a pre- 
 ponderant vote Louis Napoleon, son of the former 
 king of Holland and nephew of the great emperor. 
 The choice was significant. It indicated that the 
 party of order had triumphed over the party of
 
 2i 4 EUROPEAN HISTORY vn 
 
 progress : that the bourgeoisie and peasantry, terrified 
 by the menace of revolutionary socialism, and taking 
 advantage of the excesses of the socialists, had 
 asserted their ascendancy and acquired a long lease 
 of conservative influence. 
 
 45. THE EMPIRE OF NAPOLEON III. 
 
 Louis Napoleon owed his election to his name. 
 During the long reactionary years of the Bourbon 
 restoration, during the dull ingloripus middle-class 
 regime of Louis Philippe, the Napoleonic cult had 
 been developing. The great emperor had become 
 a hero of romance ; a legend had gathered round 
 him ; he had grown mystically into a tradition and 
 a symbol. He himself, in his captivity in St. Helena 
 (1815-22), had generated the cloudy nucleus of the 
 myth. In magnificent defiance of the records of 
 history he had announced that the principles on 
 which his empire ha^ been based, the ideas which 
 throughout his career he had striven to realise, were 
 democracy, nationality, peace, and religion. If he 
 had not always succeeded in making these principles 
 manifest in action, this was due to the constant 
 antagonism by which he was beset on the part of 
 perfidious Albion and her subsidised allies ! The 
 myth thus promulgated was developed into a 
 passionate cult in the writings of Thibaudeau, 
 Thiers, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, and above all
 
 vii TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 215 
 
 Louis Napoleon himself, who, in 1839, published 
 his notable book Des Idees Napoleoniennes. To the 
 four principles enunciated by the captive of St. 
 Helena these true believers added four others, viz. 
 glory, efficiency, social reform, and antagonism to 
 the treaties of 1815. The new president of the 
 Second Republic summed up not inadequately the 
 creed which he embodied when he said (October 31, 
 1849): "The name Napoleon is a complete pro- 
 gramme in itself: it stands for order, authority, 
 religion ; the welfare of the people at home, national 
 dignity abroad." To carry this programme into 
 effect, however, it was essential first of all to secure 
 the abrogation of that stipulation of the constitution 
 of 1848 which restricted the president's tenure of 
 office to four years : nothing could be done without 
 permanence of power. The formidable move in 
 the direction of autocracy which this implied was 
 strenuously opposed by the Legislative Chamber. 
 Louis Napoleon, therefore, having won the army 
 by a promise of glory, and the proletariat by a 
 promise of prosperity and reform, destroyed the 
 Chamber by a military coup d'etat (December 1 , 1851), 
 and secured a new constitution by means of a plebis- 
 cite which showed him to have seven and a half 
 million of supporters against 640,000 opponents. 
 In the new constitution the presidency was extended 
 to ten years and the power of the president was made 
 supreme over both executive and legislature. Little
 
 216 EUROPEAN HISTORY vii 
 
 but a change of name was required to transform the 
 reconstituted republic into an hereditary empire, 
 and this change was quietly effected by means of 
 another plebiscite a year later. The second empire 
 was proclaimed on December 2, 1852, the president 
 taking the title of "Napoleon III." a title which 
 implied recognition of the hereditary claim of the 
 great emperor's son, the Duke of Reichstadt (d. 1832), 
 to the title of " Napoleon II." 
 
 The new emperor was well aware of the fact that 
 he and his dynasty were only on probation ; that 
 he and it had been elevated by popular will ex- 
 pressly in order to carry out a programme, and 
 that permanence depended upon success. The 
 country demanded at home security from the red 
 peril, an orderly strong efficient administration ; 
 abroad it demanded a recovery of its lost hegemony 
 in Europe, a restoration of its vanished glory, a 
 vigorous foreign policy. The national spirit in 
 France manifested itself once again in an eager 
 desire for primacy on the Continent. Circumstances 
 at first enabled Napoleon to gratify this desire, and 
 for eight years all seemed to go well for him and 
 his house. He firmly suppressed socialist agitation, 
 encouraged industry and commerce, carried through 
 large and impressive public works, maintained a 
 brilliant and conspicuous court. In the interests of 
 the Catholic religion and in support of French in- 
 fluence in the East (seriously jeopardised by Louis
 
 vii TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 217 
 
 Philippe's ineptitude) he embarked on the Crimean 
 War, which terminated victoriously in a congress of 
 Paris (1856), the most important assembly held in 
 Europe since that of Vienna. The French capital 
 once more became the cynosure of Europe. In the 
 interests of nationality he effectively supported Serbia 
 and Rumania in their efforts to throw off the last 
 remains of their long subjection to the Turks ; 
 then, with still more spectacular success, he lent aid 
 to Italy to expel the Austrian intruder from the 
 Peninsula, led across the Alps an army which de- 
 feated the White-coats at Magenta and Solferino 
 (1859), and dictated to Francis Joseph terms of 
 peace according to which Lombardy and Parma 
 were cleared of the alien for ever and handed over 
 to the national kingdom of Sardinia. The glory 
 of 1797 seemed to have returned. The hated 
 treaties of 1815 were defied. Again France stood 
 forth as the arbiter of Europe. The sequel was 
 even more gratifying to French national pride. For 
 in order to secure Napoleon's consent to the entry 
 of Tuscany Modena and the Romagna into the 
 growing Sardinian monarchy, the bribe of Savoy and 
 Nice had to be offered. Accordingly in 1860 France 
 saw her borders enlarged and new provinces included 
 which gave her once again her natural frontier on 
 the Alps. In 1860 Napoleon stood at the height 
 of his prosperity and power. Superficial judges of 
 character and casual observers of affairs even jumped
 
 2i8 EUROPEAN HISTORY VH 
 
 to the conclusion that the new emperor was as great 
 as the old, and that the second empire was as 
 formidable as the first. This, however, was not 
 the view of the more acute and sober among Euro- 
 pean statesmen. Bismarck, for instance, had already 
 detected in Napoleon III. " a great though concealed 
 incompetence," and had perceived that his apparent 
 triumphs had been due to fortune rather than to 
 capacity. After 1860 fortune deserted him, and his 
 incompetence his muddle-headed ness, his infirmity 
 of will, his unscrupulousness, his meddlesomeness, 
 his rashness became patent to the world. The 
 " Napoleonic idea " had in fact become overloaded 
 with incompatibles. The emperor found ( himself 
 committed to principles which could not be reconciled 
 with one another. " L'empire c'est la paix," he 
 had announced ; but peace was inconsistent either 
 with glory or with the destruction of the treaties, 
 either with the extension of French frontiers or with 
 the establishment of a European hegemony. The 
 empire was based on the sovereignty of the people ; 
 but this could not in practice be harmonised with 
 concentration of all authority in the imperial hands. 
 The empire stood for nationality and so was pledged 
 to the furtherance both of German and Italian unity. 
 But, as Thiers pointed out, a united Germany would 
 be an unparalleled menace to French security ; and, 
 as the Empress Eugenie pointed out, a united Italy 
 would involve the spoliation of the Pope whom
 
 vii TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 219 
 
 Catholic France was bound to defend. Hence both 
 in respect of Germany and Italy Napoleon was torn 
 by conflicting forces which he could neither reconcile 
 nor control. From 1860 he lost his hold upon 
 affairs both at home and abroad. In France a liberal 
 agitation commenced to which he felt compelled to 
 make a series of concessions, fatal both to his power 
 and to the' Napoleonic theory. Abroad, he drifted 
 from one resounding failure to another. In 1863 
 the Poles urgently sought his aid in a national revolt 
 against the Tzar : he replied with fair and forceful 
 words which filled them with false hopes and alienated 
 the Tzar ; but he did not follow up his words by 
 acts, and the Tzar, treating his communications with 
 contempt, crushed the rebellion in blood. Next year 
 he intervened in Mexican affairs, and sent an army 
 across the Atlantic ; but the United States, as soon 
 as its own civil war was over, compelled the French 
 intruders to make a humiliated return to Europe. 
 It was in respect of Italy and Germany, however, 
 that his last and irremediable errors were perpetrated. 
 It was these errors that ended not only in his own 
 destruction, but in the ruin of his devoted country. 
 
 46. THE UNIFICATION OF ITALY 
 
 The tragic and unmitigated failure of the Italians 
 in 1 848-49 to expel the Austrians ; to effect the uni- 
 fication of their peninsula ; and to establish a popular
 
 220 EUROPEAN HISTORY vn 
 
 national government, made it clearly evident that a 
 change of policy and method was necessary. Up to 
 that time three rival schemes had contended with 
 one another for adoption ; but all alike had been 
 based on the assumption that Italy could accomplish 
 her own salvation. Italia fara da se. Mazzini had 
 dreamed of an emancipated Italy united in the form 
 of a democratic republic ; the pious Gioberti had 
 propounded a scheme according to which deliverance 
 should be secured by means of a federation of 
 states under the presidency of the Pope ; Sardinian 
 politicians had seen in their monarchy the only hope 
 of successful resistance to Austria. The events of 
 1848-49 had shown that not one of these schemes 
 republic, federation, or monarchy could be realised 
 without external aid. The man who first frankly 
 recognised this fact, and set himself with infinite skill 
 and tireless determination to secure the necessary aid, 
 was Count Cavour, whom the new Sardinian king, 
 Victor Emmanuel II., called to office in 1852. The 
 country to which he made his earliest approaches 
 was England ; but though he found the most cordial 
 sympathy among the people generally, and even 
 among such prominent statesmen as Palmerston 
 Russell and Gladstone, he soon perceived that no 
 active assistance was to be looked for there. Hence 
 he turned next to Napoleon III., who in his younger 
 days of wandering had actually been a carbonaro, 
 and had taken part in the abortive risings of 1830.
 
 vii TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 221 
 
 Napoleon, if his alliance could be secured, would 
 be invaluable as an aid in the expulsion of the 
 Austrians from Lombardy and Venetia. This, after 
 all, was the first and all-important step towards the 
 unification of Italy. Cavour realised, however, that 
 he would not be able to count upon Napoleon's 
 assistance, but rather would have to anticipate his 
 strenuous opposition, in the further steps that lay 
 beyond, viz., the annexation of the Papal States and 
 the absorption of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. 
 Carefully veiling, then, his ultimate designs, he 
 sought French aid against the Austrians. By a 
 stroke of diplomatic genius he offered to Napoleon 
 the support of Sardinian troops at a critical stage of 
 the Crimean War (January 1855), and Napoleon's 
 acceptance of the offer placed France heavily in 
 Sardinia's debt. The valuable services which the 
 Sardinian troops rendered in the Crimea enabled 
 Cavour to claim a prominent place in the peace 
 conference at Paris in 1856, and when there he took 
 the occasion of laying before Napoleon France and 
 the world at large a damning statement of Italy's 
 case against Austria. He followed this up by 
 persistent negotiations, conducted with masterly 
 ability, which culminated in the famous Compact of 
 Plombieres made with Napoleon on July 20, 1858. 
 According to the terms of this agreement, Napoleon 
 should aid Sardinia to expel the Austrians and to 
 reconstruct Italy as a federation of four states, viz.
 
 222 EUROPEAN HISTORY vn 
 
 (i) the kingdom of Sardinia enlarged by the addition 
 of Lombardy Venetia Parma Modena, etc. ; (2) a 
 kingdom of Central Italy which should include 
 Tuscany and Umbria ; (3) the Papal States ; (4) 
 the kingdom of Naples. Napoleon, as a reward for 
 his assistance, should receive Savoy and Nice. 
 Having secured this formal pledge of French co- 
 operation (which was cemented by the marriage of 
 Victor Emmanuel's daughter to Napoleon's cousin), 
 Cavour made it his business, first, to prepare for 
 war, and, secondly, to precipitate the conflict before 
 Napoleon should have time to change his mind. 
 He aggravated and alarmed Austria by, menacing 
 mobilisations, by press attacks, by hostile tariffs, by 
 active support of disaffection in Lombardy and 
 Venetia, until Francis Joseph, in an outburst of 
 reckless fury (strikingly similar to that which he 
 displayed more than half a century later in the case 
 of Serbia), ended the matter as Cavour wished by 
 sending an ultimatum demanding instant disarmament 
 (April 23, 1859). Sardinia proclaimed a state of 
 war on April 26, and France was constrained to 
 follow suit three days later. 
 
 The campaign of 1859 was soon concluded. 
 The Austrians were defeated at Magenta on June 4, 
 and thereby were compelled to evacuate Milan. 
 The allied armies, rapidly following up their initial 
 success, inflicted another crushing blow upon the 
 retreating foe at Solferino on June 24. The
 
 vii TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 223 
 
 Austrian power in the peninsula was broken and 
 the complete emancipation of Italy seemed to be 
 already accomplished. Then suddenly, without 
 consultation with Sardinia, Napoleon made peace 
 with Francis Joseph and withdrew, leaving the all- 
 but-finished work undone (Truce of Villafranca, 
 July 9, 1859). Three things, in truth, had happened 
 to give him pause and to fill him with apprehension. 
 First, spontaneous risings had taken place in Tuscany 
 Parma Modena and the Papal States, and Napoleon 
 saw that a united Italy under Victor Emmanuel, 
 and not a fourfold federation under the Pope, 
 would be achieved if the Austrians were utterly 
 expelled : therefore he decided to leave them in 
 Venetia. Secondly, the French clericals, strongly 
 supported by the Empress Eug6nie, had risen in 
 vehement protest against the threatened spoliation 
 of the papacy : therefore Napoleon decided that the 
 Papal States must be restored to the obedience of 
 Rome. Thirdly, the Prussians had begun a pre- 
 cautionary mobilisation on the Rhine (June 24, 
 1859), and Napoleon feared an attack on the eastern 
 frontier of France : therefore he felt it necessary to 
 make a speedy end of his Italian adventure and 
 hurry home. Hence the Truce of Villafranca, 
 according to which (i) Austria should keep Venetia 
 and the fortresses of the Quadrilateral ; (2) Sardinia 
 should acquire Lombardy and Parma ; but (3) 
 Tuscany and Modena should be restored to their
 
 224 EUROPEAN HISTORY vn 
 
 respective dukes and the revolted Romagna to the 
 Pope. When Cavour heard the terms of this 
 treacherous treaty he was mad with rage and despair. 
 Victor Emmanuel, however, took the matter more 
 coolly, realising that the determination of the future 
 of Italy had passed out of the hands of diplomatists 
 into the hands of the people. The event speedily 
 justified his equanimity. Tuscany Modena and the 
 Romagna refused to return to the sway of their 
 former rulers, and in face of their resolute resistance 
 both Austria and France had to acquiesce in their 
 absorption into the kingdom of Victor Emmanuel 
 (March 1860). Then occurred a revolt in Sicily 
 against the inefficient tyranny of the Bourbon, 
 Francis II. (April 1860). To the help of the 
 Sicilians went Garibaldi with his marvellous Thousand, 
 and before the end of September 1860 not only the 
 island but also the mainland kingdom of Naples 
 had achieved emancipation. Garibaldi was eager to 
 march on to Rome and conquer the Patrimony of 
 St. Peter ; but Cavour intervened to prevent a move 
 which would certainly have brought both France and- 
 Austria resistant into the field. By all-but-unanimous 
 plebiscites Sicily and Naples declared for union with 
 the kingdom of Italy, and on November 9, 1860, 
 Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi entered Naples 
 together in triumph and amid universal acclamation. 
 Only Venetia and Rome now remained outside the 
 kingdom ; but before they could be secured it was
 
 vii TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 225 
 
 necessary that on the one side Austria (the owner 
 of Venetia) and on the other side the Napoleonic 
 Empire (the protector of the temporal power of the 
 Papacy) should be overthrown. These necessary 
 preliminaries were accomplished as parerga by 
 Prussia. 
 
 47. THE FOUNDING OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE 
 
 V 
 
 While the kingdom of Sardinia under the guidance 
 of Cavour had been rapidly expanding into the 
 kingdom of Italy, at the same time north of the 
 Alps the kingdom of Prussia under the masterful 
 impulse of Bismarck had been taking the first steps 
 towards the founding of the German Empire. Both 
 Cavour and Bismarck had the same end in view, viz. 
 the unification into a national state of kindred peoples 
 long sundered by circumstances ; but in spirit and 
 in mode of operation they differed widely from one 
 another. Cavour (however unscrupulous and violent 
 he might be on occasion) was a liberal who sought 
 to give effect to the popular will, who worked where 
 possible by means of parliaments and plebiscites, who 
 was prepared to sacrifice the kingdom of Sardinia 
 and the metropolitical primacy of Turin if he might 
 thereby establish the united kingdom of Italy. 
 Bismarck was a reactionary, an enemy of democracy, 
 a despiser and oppressor of parliaments, a votary of 
 force and craft, a Prussian who was not prepared to 
 
 Q
 
 226 EUROPEAN HISTORY vn 
 
 merge Prussia in Germany, but was determined to 
 effect the unification of Germany by subjecting all 
 its rulers and peoples to Prussia. 
 
 On the collapse of the German National Parliament 
 and the resuscitation of the Confederation in 1851, 
 Bismarck had gone as a Prussian representative to 
 the Diet at Frankfort-on-Main. At Frankfort he 
 had remained for eight years, and while there had 
 come to the definite conclusion that " Germany is 
 too narrow for Austria and Prussia," and that con- 
 sequently the first move towards the unification of 
 the country under Prussian hegemony would have 
 to be the forcible ejection of Austria from the Bund. 
 He faced this conclusion without dismay ; but he 
 was not in a position to do anything towards carry- 
 ing it into effect until 1858, when the lunacy of the 
 feeble and Hapsburg-ridden Frederick William IV. 
 called his more resolute and independent brother 
 William to the regency. 1 Bismarck was soon 
 brought from Frankfort to act as informal adviser 
 to the regent ; in 1859 he was sent as minister to 
 Russia to secure the all-important neutrality of that 
 country in the impending conflict; in 1862 he was 
 transferred to Paris in order to bamboozle Napoleon 
 a task which he found supremely easy ; thence he 
 was recalled to Berlin (September 1862) to take office 
 as president of the cabinet and minister for foreign 
 
 1 He succeeded Frederick William IV. as king January 2, 1861, and became 
 first German emperor January 18, 1871.
 
 vii TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 227 
 
 affairs in the midst of a formidable constitutional 
 crisis on the issue of which the future of both 
 Germany and Europe hung. Shortly before his call 
 to Berlin he had paid a visit to London, and while 
 there had made a surprisingly frank confession of 
 his prospects and his programme to Benjamin Disraeli, 
 in whom he found a congenial spirit. " I shall soon 
 be compelled," he had said, " to undertake the 
 leadership of the Prussian government. My first 
 care will be, with or without the help of parliament, 
 to reorganise the army. The king has rightly set 
 himself this task. He cannot, however, carry it 
 through with his present councillors. When the 
 army has been brought to such a state as to command 
 respect, then I will take the first opportunity to 
 declare war with Austria, burst asunder the German 
 Confederation, bring the middle and smaller states 
 into subjection, and give Germany a national union 
 under the leadership of Prussia." It was the struggle 
 over the reorganisation of the army, indeed, which 
 brought Bismarck back to Berlin and placed him in 
 power. The regent, with the aid of Moltke and 
 Roon, had undertaken vast military schemes involv- 
 ing increase of forces, severer conscription, sterner 
 discipline, re-armament, new tactics and strategy. 
 The Prussian Diet, dominated by liberals, opposed 
 these schemes and refused to vote the necessary 
 credits. The struggle between the executive and 
 the legislature resolved itself into a constitutional
 
 228 EUROPEAN HISTORY vii 
 
 conflict of the first magnitude, in which the issue 
 at stake was no less a one than that which had been 
 fought out in England in the middle of the seven- 
 teenth century. William and Bismarck took up 
 the attitude of Charles I. and Straffbrd and resolved 
 to govern without, and in defiance of, the Diet. 
 Unhappily for Germany and for Europe, they 
 succeeded where Charles and Strafford had failed. 
 The feebleness factiousness short-sightedness and 
 garrulity of the Prussian liberals delivered the cause 
 of democracy and nationality into the hands of the 
 enemy. William and Bismarck carried through 
 their militarist schemes, regardless of opposition, 
 and careless of the fact that they were the worst 
 hated and most abused men in the Fatherland. 
 
 Then, having secured an invincible army, Bismarck 
 set to work to isolate Austria diplomatically, and to 
 find an occasion to attack her when isolated. From 
 his first entry into office he showed a steady and 
 evident anti-Austrian bias. He refused to admit 
 Austria to the Prussian Zollverein a customs-union 
 which since 1819 had been gradually giving an 
 economic unity to an increasingly large part of 
 Germany ; with unfriendly haste he recognised the 
 new kingdom of Italy and concluded a commercial 
 treaty with her ; he supported Russia in her suppres- 
 sion of the Polish rising of 1863, while Austria was 
 distinctly anti- Russian in sentiment ; he opposed 
 Austrian policy respecting Schleswig and Holstein ;
 
 vii TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 229 
 
 finally, he proposed a reform of the German con- 
 stitution, the fundamental feature of which was the 
 exclusion of Austria altogether. In 1864, it is true, 
 the two powers combined to crush Denmark and 
 wrest from her the two duchies; in 1865, further, 
 at Gastein an agreement was made between them, 
 according to which, pending a definitive settlement 
 of the fate of the duchies, Prussia should administer 
 Schleswig, while Austria should exercise authority in 
 Holstein. But Bismarck was only " papering over 
 the cracks " which portended the everlasting disrup- 
 tion, until such time as his military and diplomatic 
 preparations for the schism should be complete. 
 In 1866 the long anticipated moment arrived. 
 Napoleon III. had been persuaded to remain neutral, 
 lured apparently into fatuous quiescence by promises 
 (never put into writing and never meant to be kept) 
 of some " compensations " for France in Belgium or 
 on the Rhine, in case Prussia should gain an increase 
 of territory or power in Germany. 1 Italy was secured 
 as an active ally (April 8, 1866) by a binding engage- 
 ment to the effect that, in return for her assistance, she 
 should receive the coveted prize of Venetia. The 
 benevolent neutrality of Russia was assured. Austria 
 thus having been cut off from hope of external assist- 
 ance, Bismarck at once proceeded to complete his 
 
 1 The decisive interview between Bismarck and Napoleon III. occurred at 
 Biarritz on September 30, 1865. Exactly what transpired still remains, and 
 probably always will remain, a mystery.
 
 230 EUROPEAN HISTORY vn 
 
 military preparations and precipitate the quarrel. He 
 pressed on his scheme for the reorganisation of the 
 German Confederation with the exclusion of Austria, 
 and ostentatiously began to mobolise. Austria 
 replied by reopening the Schleswig-Holstein dispute 
 and by presenting an ultimatum (April 26, 1866) 
 demanding Prussian disarmament. The outbreak 
 of war was delayed by diplomacy for a few weeks, 
 but on June 12, ambassadors were mutually with- 
 drawn and armies set in motion. Within three 
 weeks Austria was utterly overthrown in the battle 
 of Sadowa or Koniggratz (July 2, 1866). 
 
 48. THE RECONSTRUCTION OF CENTRAL 
 EUROPE 
 
 The decisive and spectacular victory of Prussia 
 over Austria in 1866 had far-reaching effects not 
 only upon the two countries- primarily concerned, 
 but also upon France. The battle of Sadowa was 
 hardly less a defeat for Napoleon III. than it was 
 for Francis Joseph. It marked the bankruptcy of 
 the French emperor's crafty diplomacy, the end of 
 his influence in Europe, the beginning of the end of 
 his stability in France itself. He had calculated on 
 a long war, an evenly contested war, a war in which 
 Austria would ultimately be successful, a war which 
 would leave Germany more hopelessly weakened 
 and divided than ever, a war into the midst of which
 
 vii TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 231 
 
 he himself would eventually be able to descend as 
 a deus ex machina imposing terms and receiving 
 compensations. All his calculations were disarrayed 
 by the speedy and overwhelming triumph 'of the 
 reorganised Prussian army. At once he began to 
 bustle about seeking to repair his irremediable 
 errors : he strove to prevent the union of Germany 
 under Prussia ; he strove to become the medium 
 through which Venetia should be ceded to Italy ; he 
 strove to procure the promised compensations for 
 France ; he threatened intervention on behalf of 
 Austria. But Bismarck was incomparably more 
 than a match for him. Having defeated Austria 
 and having thus secured her exclusion from Germany, 
 he perceived that his policy was to make terms with 
 her at once, to treat her with the greatest possible 
 leniency, and to win her friendship and alliance at 
 the earliest feasible moment. With Austria as a 
 non-German Power he had no cause of quarrel 
 whatsoever. Hence he prevented the victorious 
 Prussian army (to its great chagrin) from inflicting 
 upon Vienna the humiliation of a triumphal entry, 
 and he made no demands for cessions of territory. 
 Pushing on negotiations with the utmost rapidity, 
 so as to conclude them before the agitated Napoleon 
 could make up his mind what to do in the matter 
 of meddling, he completed the Peace of Prague on 
 August 23, 1866. According to the terms of this 
 agreement (i) the Confederation of 1815 was dis-
 
 232 EUROPEAN HISTORY vn 
 
 solved, and Austria ceased to be counted as a German 
 power ; (2) Prussia was allowed to annex Schleswig- 
 Holstein Hanover Hesse and other small territories, 
 and, further, to organise all the German states north 
 of the Main into a North German Confederation 
 under her own headship ; (3) Italy was confirmed 
 in the occupation of Venetia but Venetia shorn of 
 the Trentino Istria and Dalmatia, the Italia irredenta 
 of modern times. Napoleon, utterly baffled by the 
 presentation of this accomplished settlement secured 
 not only without his aid but with entire disregard 
 of his opinion and in known opposition to his 
 wishes could only withdraw in disgust and rage to 
 seek for means to restore his shattered prestige and 
 to remove the new and formidable peril to French 
 security which his folly had permitted to take shape 
 in the North German Confederation. Bismarck was 
 under no illusions as to Napoleon's attitude, and 
 he clearly perceived that before any further steps 
 towards German national union could be taken the 
 power of Napoleon would have to be broken. 
 
 Whilst Bismarck was devoting his marvellous 
 abilities to the preparation of the Franco- Prussian 
 conflict which he felt to be necessary and intended 
 to procure at his own good time, Francis Joseph 
 of Austria was busily employed in reconstructing 
 his "ramshackle empire" which had been severely 
 shaken and disorganised by its simultaneous ejection 
 from Germany and from Italy. With the aid of
 
 vii TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 233 
 
 the Austrian minister Beust and the Hungarian 
 patriot Deak, he established the Dual Monarchy. 
 The terms of its constitution were contained in the 
 famous Atugletcht or Compromise, of 1867. Their 
 effect was that the Austrians admitted the Hungarians 
 to equal partnership in the supreme power, on the 
 understanding that they two should dominate and 
 exclude from control all the other races of the 
 empire. The anti - national and anti - democratic 
 character of the Hapsburg dominion was emphasised, 
 and Hapsburg policy was diverted from western 
 to eastern Europe. The Drang nach Osten was 
 inaugurated. 
 
 Western Europe, however, rather than the East 
 was the main concern of Bismarck during the period 
 1866-70, and indeed for many years after. His 
 business, which he accomplished with complete Success, 
 was (i) to keep Russia friendly and make sure that 
 she would not intervene in any Franco-Prussian 
 war : this he did by encouraging her designs against 
 Turkey Persia and Afghanistan, and by expressing his 
 consent to her repudiation of the Black Sea clauses 
 of the treaty of 1856 ; (2) to cultivate the friendship 
 of Austria-Hungary, so as to prevent her from seek- 
 ing revenge on Prussia by means of an alliance with 
 France : this he achieved by enlarging upon the Pan- 
 Slavonic peril by which both the Teutonic Powers 
 were threatened a peril which he said demanded 
 their closest co-operation ; (3) to keep Italy faithful
 
 234 EUROPEAN HISTORY vn 
 
 to the Prussian alliance : this he did by holding out 
 the supreme lure of Rome, which the troops of 
 Napoleon were holding for the Pope ; (4) to secure 
 the alliance of the South German States Bavaria, 
 Baden, Wurtemberg and Hesse - Darmstadt on 
 whose aid against the menacing ascendancy of 
 Prussia Napoleon confidently counted in case of a 
 Franco - Prussian war : this supremely important 
 but difficult alliance he procured by judicious revela- 
 tions of Napoleon's demands for " compensations " 
 at the expense of Germanic territory. Before 1870 
 France was isolated diplomatically, as Austria had 
 been in 1866, and then on the principle that " Prussia 
 strikes when Prussia's hour has struck," Bismarck 
 sought occasion for war. He had not to seek long 
 or far, for by that time the position of Napoleon 
 was so shaken in France that the dominating empress, 
 if not the pusillanimous emperor, felt that it could 
 be re-established only by a successful war. With 
 both sides, therefore, lusting for a fight the one in 
 confident hope, the other in necessitous despair 
 nothing but a pretext was required to set the armies 
 marching. This pretext was found in the Hohen- 
 zollern candidature for the then vacant Spanish throne 
 (July 1870). On July 14 war was declared, and by 
 September 2 the French forces were shattered, and 
 Napoleon himself a prisoner, at Sedan.
 
 vii TRIUMPH OF NATIONALITY 235 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY TO LECTURE VII 
 
 BOLTON KING. History of Italian Unity. 
 
 BOLTON KING. Mazzini. 
 
 DE LA GORGE. Histoire du Second Empire. 
 
 FISHER, H. A. L. Bonapartism. 
 
 FISHER, H. A. L. Republican Tradition in Europe. 
 
 HEADLAM, J. W. Bismarck. 
 
 JERROLD, B. Life of Napoleon III. 
 
 MAURICE, J. F. The Franco-German War. 
 
 SETON-WATSON, R. W. The Southern-Slav Question and the 
 
 Hapsburg Monarchy. 
 STILLMAN, W. J. The Union of Italy. 
 SYBEL, H. VON. BegrQndung des Deutschen Reichs. 
 THAYER, W. R. Cavour. 
 WICKHAM-STEED, H. The Hapsburg Monarchy.
 
 LECTURE VIII 
 
 THE ERA OF IMPERIAL EXPANSION, 
 1871-1901 
 
 49. THE SEQUEL TO SEDAN 
 
 FEW events in the world's history have had immediate 
 results more tremendous than those that flowed from 
 the military debacle of France which culminated in 
 the disaster of Sedan. First and foremost it was 
 fatal both to the Napoleonic idea and to the 
 Bonapartist dynasty. That idea, which professed to 
 connote amongst other things nationality efficiency 
 and peace, had in practice been found to mean 
 jealous antagonism to German and Italian unification, 
 corruption and incompetence beyond all precedent, 
 incessant wars and rumours of wars. That dynasty, 
 which had been called to the throne to restore French 
 prestige after the inglorious impotence of Louis 
 Philippe, had brought upon the country such crushing 
 calamities as she had never known since the days of 
 the mediaeval invasions. As soon as the news of Sedan 
 reached Paris (September 4, 1870), a spontaneous 
 
 236
 
 viii IMPERIAL EXPANSION 237 
 
 revolution overthrew the empire, and set up a pro- 
 visional government of national defence, to endeavour 
 to save France, as the Convention had saved it in 
 1792. It was called upon to face still further 
 military disasters the worst of which was the capitu- 
 lation of Bazaine at Metz in October ; it had to 
 endure the prolonged agony of the Siege of Paris 
 (September 19, 1870, to January 28, 1871); it was 
 compelled to convene a National Assembly to make 
 with victorious Germany the humiliating Peace of 
 Frankfort (May 10, 1871) which deprived France 
 of Alsace and Lorraine, and mulcted her of an in- 
 demnity equivalent to 200,000,000 sterling. No 
 sooner was peace concluded than the National 
 Assembly had to confront the red spectre of revolu- 
 tionary socialism once more, and to suppress "The 
 Commune in a desperate conflict which involved 
 a second Siege of Paris (May 21-28), and the 
 slaughter of over 17,000 of the communards. 1 It 
 accomplished its painful tasks, and, having appointed 
 Thiers " chief of the executive " (later " president "), 
 it proceeded, first, to restore the shattered prosperity 
 of France, and, secondly, to consider the form of a 
 permanent constitution. Thiers showed himself to 
 be a man of consummate ability, limitless energy, 
 and unextinguishable faith. Under him France 
 made a recovery more rapid and complete than men 
 
 1 Some authorities, e.g. Hanatoux, estimate the casualties at a much higher 
 figure : some say not less than 70,000.
 
 238 EUROPEAN HISTORY vm 
 
 had believed to be possible. Before the end of 1873 
 the indemnity was paid off; the country was cleared 
 of Germans ; universal military service was intro- 
 duced ; local government was reorganised ; the 
 frontier was refortified ; industry and credit were 
 revived. Thiers, however, thought it unwise to 
 press the problem of constitutional settlement to an 
 immediate solution, because Legitimists Orleanists 
 and Bonapartists, as well as Republicans, were active 
 and aggressive. All were prepared temporarily to 
 accept the provisional government, but none were 
 willing permanently to surrender their claims. Not 
 till 1875, when M'Mahon was president, was the 
 matter of the constitution decided. Then the Third 
 Republic was established, not because there was any 
 overwhelming enthusiasm for it, but because, in 
 view of the rivalries of the various dynastic groups, 
 it was the form of government which divided French- 
 men the least. 
 
 If Sedan destroyed the French Empire, it created 
 the German. What philosophical discussion and 
 parliamentary votes had not been able to achieve, 
 that Bismarck's policy of blood and iron had accom- 
 plished. The revelation of Napoleon's designs upon 
 German territory, the consciousness of the peril in 
 which small states would stand amid the newly 
 constituted Great Powers of Central Europe, pride 
 in the might and success of Prussia, and desire to 
 share her glory and prestige, overcame the reluctance
 
 vin IMPERIAL EXPANSION 239 
 
 of the South German States to sacrifice their in- 
 dependence. Bavaria Baden Wtirtemberg and 
 Hesse-Darmstadt entered the Germanic Confedera- 
 tion, and assisted in its conversion into a Federal 
 Empire. On January 18, 1871, at Versailles, the 
 new constitution was proclaimed, and William, King 
 of Prussia, assumed the additional title of German 
 Emperor. Thus militarism triumphed, and the 
 German nation, " drunk with victory," consoled itself 
 for the loss of freedom and self-government by the 
 thought that it had become dominant in Europe a 
 people before whom all rivals would tremble, and by 
 whom all foes could be trampled down. 
 
 The completion of Italy's unification was a 
 pendant to that of Germany. In the Franco- 
 Prussian struggle Italy had been fortunate enough to 
 " back the winner." At one time France might have 
 had her aid; but the indispensable condition which 
 Italy attached to her assistance was the withdrawal of 
 the French troops from Civita Vecchia, and Napoleon's 
 permission for the annexation of Rome and the Papal 
 States to the kingdom of Victor Emmanuel. " Better 
 the Prussians in Paris than the Piedmontese in Rome," 
 had said the Empress Eugenie ; and Napoleon, in fear 
 of losing the clerical prop of his tottering throne, 
 had felt it necessary to endorse her statement. 
 Hence Italy had turned to Bismarck, who had no 
 sort of objection to seeing the Pope despoiled of his 
 territories. The early reverses of the French in the
 
 2 4 o EUROPEAN HISTORY vm 
 
 war necessitated the recall of the Imperial troops 
 from the neighbourhood of Rome (August 19, 1870), 
 and scarcely had they departed when Italy announced 
 her intention of occupying her natural capital. In 
 vain the Pope protested ; in vain his feeble forces 
 resisted. On September 20, 1870, the Italian army 
 occupied the Eternal City, and the king took up his 
 abode at the Quirinal. 
 
 The Pope, still a sovereign independent potentate, 1 
 found his dominion restricted to two buildings with 
 the appurtenances thereof the smallest state in the 
 world. There he continued, and still continues, a 
 life-prisoner in his palace, to maintain a travesty of 
 government. His effective temporal power has 
 passed away. But by a curious coincidence, at the 
 very moment when his position as a secular ruler 
 was being destroyed, his position as a spiritual 
 monarch was being raised to a height of unpre- 
 cedented magnitude. For in 1869 had been 
 summoned the Vatican Council the first general 
 council held since that of Trent in the sixteenth 
 century and on July 18, 1870, by an all-but- 
 unanimous vote the Council had proclaimed the 
 dogma of papal infallibility. 
 
 1 By a printer's error the novel word "potentiate" appeared here in the first 
 proof. Professor Grant thinks that it might well be allowed to stand. I lack 
 courage, however, to leave it.
 
 vin IMPERIAL EXPANSION 241 
 
 50. THE NEW EUROPE AND ITS PROBLEMS 
 
 The changes effected in the international system 
 during the five years 1866-71 were so radical as 
 virtually to destroy the Old Europe of Metternich 
 and the Treaties, and to bring a New Europe into 
 existence. The Europe of 1871 had one advantage 
 over the Europe of 1815 in that it was founded 
 upon triumphant nationality ; Germany and Italy, 
 which in the Vienna Settlement had been reduced 
 to the condition of mere geographical expressions, 
 had achieved unity self-consciousness statehood. 
 Germany and Italy, that is to say, had attained 
 something of that organic completeness, that definite- 
 ness of boundary, that finality of structure to which 
 England France and Spain had arrived at the close 
 of the fifteenth century. This was so much to the 
 good ; for it meant the removal of numerous sources 
 of intrigue, and the elimination of causes which had for 
 many centuries disturbed the peace of the Continent 
 and retarded the progress of western civilisation. 
 Over against this advantage, however, had to be set 
 the facts that whereas the settlement of 1815 had 
 been international, that of 1871 was imposed by the 
 will of a single power ; and that whereas the Treaties 
 of Vienna were based on definite generally accepted 
 principles, that of Frankfort-on-Main was based on 
 the arrogant lawless and purely self-regarding will of 
 one over-victorious state. Not only did Germany 
 
 R
 
 242 EUROPEAN HISTORY vm 
 
 effect her national unification by means of force and 
 fraud, through aggressive war and lying diplomacy ; 
 she completed it with a contemptuous repudiation of 
 the claim to consideration of any nationality other 
 than her own. For military reasons she tore away 
 from France the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, 
 from Denmark the duchy of Schleswig ; just as for 
 the same reasons she had seized in the eighteenth 
 century, and continued to keep, the Polish dominion 
 of Posen. Thus the new German Empire included 
 not only Teutonic peoples welded together in con- 
 sciousness of kinship and in pride of victory, but 
 also subject French Danes and Poles restless in 
 their servitude and resentful of the pressure brought 
 to bear upon them to crush out their memories of 
 non-German ties. If then, as we have seen, Italian 
 unity was still incomplete because of the unredeemed 
 Trentino Istria and Dalmatia, so also for the 
 opposite reason was German unity incomplete because 
 of the forcible incorporation of unwilling aliens. 
 The existence of Italia irredenta kept alive the old 
 and deep-seated antagonism between Italy and 
 Austria ; the seizure of Alsace and Lorraine by 
 Germany filled France with a burning sense of 
 humiliation and wrong, inspired her with a passionate 
 longing for revenge, and prevented the dawn of any 
 hope of reconciliation. These facts then dominated 
 the New Europe of 1871 the indisputable supremacy 
 of Germany on the Continent, the temporary elimina-
 
 vin IMPERIAL EXPANSION 243 
 
 tion of France as a great power, the continued 
 hostility of Italy to Austria, the new and implacable 
 Franco - German antagonism generated by the 
 Prussian occupation of Alsace and Lorraine. The 
 European state system was disarrayed ; the Concert 
 of Europe destroyed ; the balance of power upset ; 
 the foreign policy of all the governments of the 
 Continent placed in need of readjustment. How 
 Bismarck and his contemporaries dealt with the 
 complex international situation I shall endeavour to 
 show in detail in the next lecture. Here I must 
 content myself with saying that more than a quarter 
 of a century was destined to elapse before the definite 
 outline of the readjusted state system began clearly 
 to shape itself in the Triple Alliance and the Triple 
 Entente. Meantime, while the statesmen of the 
 Continent were feeling their way cautiously towards 
 the new international order, three series of pressing 
 problems demanded their immediate attention. First, 
 they had to face a number of acute domestic questions 
 raised in their respective countries during the up- 
 heaval of the Prussian wars ; secondly, they had to 
 deal with the riddle of the Near East presented to 
 them for urgent solution by the growing national 
 consciousness of the Balkan peoples, by the develop- 
 ment of the Austrian Drang nach Osten, and by 
 Russia's countermove towards the Dardanelles and 
 the Mediterranean ; thirdly, they had to guide 
 and control a remarkable outburst of commercial
 
 244 EUROPEAN HISTORY vm 
 
 maritime and colonial activity which the peoples of 
 all the leading European nations simultaneously 
 displayed. 
 
 With domestic problems peculiar to the in- 
 dividual countries of Europe we are not concerned 
 in this course of lectures, except in so far as they 
 absorbed the attention of the statesmen of these 
 countries and so modified their activity in general t 
 continental concerns. Suffice it, therefore, to say that 
 each of the leading countries of Europe for some 
 time after 1871 found intense occupation in internal 
 affairs. France, for example, had to settle the form 
 of her constitution. As we have seen, it was not 
 until 1875 tnat sne organised the Republic. Not, 
 indeed, until Grevy succeeded M'Mahon as president 
 in 1879 did she cordially accept the new form of 
 government. A second source of serious trouble 
 and anxiety arose from the antagonism which early 
 manifested itself between the Republic and the 
 Catholic Church. The Church proclaimed itself 
 monarchical, legitimist, anti-republican ; and the 
 government, taking up the challenge, replied by 
 secularising education, expelling the Jesuits, dissolv- 
 ing religious orders, confiscating ecclesiastical pro- 
 perty, and finally (1905) repudiating the Concordat 
 which, since the days of Napoleon I., had regulated 
 the relations of church and state in France. A 
 third cause of unrest sprang from the spread of 
 socialistic doctrine and the formation of industrial
 
 vni IMPERIAL EXPANSION 245 
 
 unions and syndicates which were first recognised as 
 lawful associations in 1884. 
 
 In Germany, as in France, Catholicism and 
 socialism presented themselves as two of the most 
 dangerous disintegrants of the new order. To 
 Bismarck Catholicism at first seemed to be the more 
 formidable ; for it resented and resisted the trans- 
 ference of German hegemony from faithful Austria to 
 infidel Prussia, and it was resolute to keep control 
 of German education. Hence from 1872 to 1878 
 Bismarck exerted the immense power of the Prussian- 
 ised empire against the Church in the famous Kultur- 
 kampf. He was in the end baffled by the insuper- 
 able patience and unshakable resolution of his 
 antagonists, and in 1878 he was glad to effect a 
 reconciliation with the clergy in order that church 
 and state could combine against the common enemy 
 of a secular social democracy, which had adopted a 
 fighting creed from Karl Marx and a militant 
 organisation from Ferdinand Lassalle. Bismarck's 
 struggle against social democracy was conducted 
 with a good deal more skill and success than had 
 been his struggle against clericalism. He recognised 
 the justice of many of the demands of the enemy, 
 and sought to undermine the power of their leaders 
 by adopting and putting into effective operation 
 several of their most important proposals, e.g. state 
 insurance against sickness (1883), accident (1884), 
 and incapacity (1889). Nevertheless, in spite of
 
 246 EUROPEAN HISTORY vm 
 
 sops and concessions, the social democratic party 
 continued to grow at a remarkable rate. It was, 
 indeed, impossible that at the close of the nineteenth 
 century a great people, highly educated and keenly 
 interested in political affairs, should be content to 
 remain subject to a despotism however paternal 
 benevolent and efficient. So much engrossed was 
 Bismarck by his conflicts with clericalism and 
 socialism, and by his efforts to safeguard the infant 
 German Empire from attacks on the part of 
 European foes, that he regarded the re-emergence of 
 the Eastern Question in 1876 with comparative 
 indifference. It was not worth, he said, the bones 
 of a single Pomeranian grenadier. That attitude of 
 aloofness, however, was far from being shared by 
 either Russia or Austria, either Britain or France. 
 For several years the affairs of the Turkish Empire 
 occupied them to the subordination of all other 
 international problems. 
 
 51. THE EASTERN QUESTION 
 
 Eastern Europe, and in particular south-eastern 
 Europe, is several centuries behind western Europe 
 in its development. Its retardation has been due to 
 three main causes : first, the Slavonic peoples, who 
 form the basal element in its population, entered later 
 than the Teuton, and much later than the Celt, into 
 the heritage of the civilisation of the ancient world ;
 
 vin IMPERIAL EXPANSION 247 
 
 secondly, when the Slavonic peoples came into contact 
 with Greece and Rome both were decadent, and 
 consequently the East inherited and became subject 
 to the worst and not the best traditions of antiquity, 
 viz. Greek orthodoxy in religion and Roman 
 autocracy in politics ; thirdly, while western Europe 
 has been comparatively sheltered and peaceful, 
 eastern Europe has been exposed to a succession of 
 devastations and invasions (culminating sometimes in 
 lasting conquests and occupations) by the nomadic 
 hordes of Asiatic barbarians Huns Avars Bulgarians 
 Magyars Tartars and Turks. On the Balkan 
 Peninsula the incubus of the later degenerate Roman 
 Empire has lain specially heavily : from Vienna has 
 radiated the anti - national and anti - democratic 
 influence which the Hapsburgs represent as the 
 successors of the Western Cassars ; in Constantinople 
 have for four and a half centuries ruled the Turkish 
 sultans, who claim to have inherited the cosmopolitan 
 and despotic powers of the Byzantine emperors. 
 Even on the Balkans, however, the democratic 
 and national movements of the Revolutionary and 
 Napoleonic era in western Europe had their effects. 
 We have seen how they led to the revolt of the 
 Greeks and to the establishment of the Hellenic 
 kingdom. They caused Montenegro never fully 
 reduced by the Turks formally to proclaim her 
 independence in 1796. They encouraged Serbia to 
 rise in national rebellion in 1804 and to struggle in
 
 248 EUROPEAN HISTORY vin 
 
 desperate valour until, through Russian support, the 
 Convention of Akermann (1826) and the Treaty of 
 Adrianople (1829) reduced the Turkish control to a 
 merely nominal suzerainty. They spurred Rumania 
 to secure the extinction of the Phanariot rule (i 822), 1 
 the virtual expulsion of the Turks (1829), and the 
 full recognition of autonomy from the Powers 
 assembled in Paris at the close of the Crimean War 
 (1856). In face of these successful national revolts, 
 the Turks themselves abandoned their Byzantine 
 attitude and policy. They ceased to regard them- 
 selves as the rulers of an empire comprehensive 
 and tolerant, including within its limits Europeans 
 and Asiatics, Mohammedans and Christians, men 
 of various races and diverse creeds. Under the 
 guidance of Mahmoud II. (180939), a sultan of 
 remarkable prescience and ability, they converted 
 their cosmopolitan empire into an Asiatic national 
 state whose heart is Anatolia. This nationalised 
 Turkish state fiercely angry at its recent spoliations 
 and humiliations developed a new centralisation of 
 government, a new and immense conscript army, 
 and a new religious intolerance. The lot of the 
 subject Christian peoples who still remained beneath 
 the Turkish yoke became one of increasing hardship 
 and horror, particularly after the fatal Anglo-French 
 adventure of the Crimean War had destroyed the 
 
 1 " Phanariot " is a term applied to a Greek in the Turkish service. It 
 originally meant an inhabitant of the Phanar, or Greek, quarter of Constantinople.
 
 viii IMPERIAL EXPANSION 249 
 
 safeguard of Russian protection and had given a new 
 lease of immunity to the Sultan. The cries of the 
 Serbians of Bosnia and Herzegovina, of the Greeks 
 of Thessaly, of the Bulgarians of the central Balkans, 
 of the mixed races, of Macedonia, were poured into 
 the ears of the Powers. In vain were humanity and 
 reform pressed upon the Porte by the ambassadors of 
 the western states : the Turk gave promises freely, 
 but kept them not at all. In vain did the rulers of 
 Austria and Russia consult together in the hope of 
 finding some method of redress. In 1872 they met 
 in Berlin in the presence of their new colleague the 
 German emperor ; but all that the Dreikaiserbiindnis 
 of that occasion stipulated was that, whatever action 
 might be required in the East, it should be taken by 
 the three in common. 
 
 In these circumstances of European inactivity and 
 ineptitude the oppressed peoples took their fates into 
 their own hands and rose in desperate revolt. The 
 rising began in Herzegovina during the summer of 
 1875; in the autumn Bosnia came in; in 1876 
 Bulgaria entered. Serbia and Montenegro threw 
 in their lot with their oppressed fellows. The 
 Turks replied to this challenge by ferocious and 
 sanguinary repression. Their reorganised national 
 army easily asserted its ascendancy, and, inspired by 
 intense religious fanaticism, it inflicted upon both 
 the conquered foe and the crushed rebels the most 
 appalling barbarities. In particular the " Bulgarian
 
 250 EUROPEAN HISTORY vm 
 
 Atrocities" of 1876 sent. a thrill of horror through 
 Christendom. The Powers conferred together and 
 sent notes the most important of which was the 
 Andrassy Note of December 30, 1875 but tne 
 exasperated Turk repudiated or ignored them. 
 Then Russia urged European intervention (May 
 1876) ; but this most hopeful course was vetoed by 
 the unhappy opposition of the British prime minister, 
 Disraeli, who was possessed by an ineradicable 
 suspicion of Russian designs in the East, and by a 
 Semitic tenderness for the Turk. Hence negotia- 
 tions were resumed ; conferences were held in Con- 
 stantinople (December 1876) and London (March 
 1 877) ; more notes were sent to replenish the Turkish 
 waste-paper baskets. But nothing was done, and 
 meantime the ghastly programme of massacre and 
 spoliation was pursued with redoubled fury by the 
 Ottoman hordes. Finally, Russia, unable any longer 
 to stand aside and watch the extermination of the 
 Bulgarians, came to an understanding with Austria 
 and declared war (April 1877). 
 
 The Russo-Turkish war was a stern and protracted 
 struggle. The Turkish forces a nation in arms 
 fought with magnificent if fanatical valour. In 
 particular Osman Pasha's defence of Plevna (July- 
 December 1877), in spite of the fact that it was a 
 military mistake, won the reluctant admiration of 
 the world. But early in 1878 the overwhelming 
 masses of the Russian armies bore down resistance
 
 viii IMPERIAL EXPANSION 251 
 
 and compelled the Sultan to sue for peace. On 
 January 20 Adrianople fell, and Constantinople itself 
 lay at the mercy of the hosts of the Tzar. Then, 
 with the great prize actually under their eyes and all 
 but in their grasp, the Russian armies were stayed in 
 their triumphant progress. Disraeli announced that he 
 would regard a Russian occupation of Constantinople 
 as a casus belli ; Austria also prepared to intervene 
 to prevent complete Russian dominance in the Balkan 
 Peninsula. With infinite chagrin, therefore, the 
 Tzar paused and made with the Sultan the Treaty 
 of San Stefano (March 3, 1878), by which inter 
 alia the full independence of Serbia Montenegro 
 Rumania and Bulgaria was unconditionally conceded 
 by Turkey. The territorial arrangements of the 
 treaty, however, were unacceptable to Britain and 
 Austria, and to avoid a European war Russia was 
 constrained to submit them to revision in a congress 
 called at Bismarck's suggestion to meet at Berlin. 
 There, acting as " honest broker," Bismarck negoti- 
 ated the Treaty of Berlin (July 13, 1878), which 
 settled the status of the Balkan peoples for thirty 
 years. By this treaty the Turkish power in Europe 
 was resuscitated ; Bulgaria was reduced to less than 
 one -half ( of the area assigned to her in the San 
 Stefano arrangement ; Bosnia and Herzegovina were 
 placed under Austrian administration ; Russia, in 
 return for her vast efforts and sacrifices, received only 
 Bessarabia (taken from Rumania in exchange for the
 
 252 EUROPEAN HISTORY vm 
 
 conquered Dobrudsha) Batoum and Kars, together 
 with a small pecuniary indemnity. Filled with not 
 unnatural anger, specially directed against Disraeli 
 and his persistently Turkophile and anti- Russian 
 policy, Russia turned in disgust from the Near East 
 to pursue schemes of expansion, extremely alarming 
 to Britain, in Middle and Farther Asia. 
 
 52. THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE 
 
 In 1878 the relations of the European Powers to 
 one another, disturbed by the events of 1864-70, 
 seemed once again to be defined and established. 
 The Western Question had been solved, for the time 
 at any rate, by the Franco-Prussian War ; the Eastern 
 Question by the Congress of Berlin. All the leading 
 Continental statesmen, for one reason or another, 
 were anxious to avoid the reopening of awkward 
 problems of international politics. Consequently, 
 with singular unanimity^ they began to seek in 
 regions remote from Europe outlets for national 
 energy, spheres for imperial expansion, openings for 
 commercial and industrial enterprise. 
 
 Russia, as we have just seen, was spurred to great 
 activity by profound wrath at the frustration of her 
 Near Eastern designs. Not unjustly, she regarded 
 Great Britain as the prime cause of her recent dis- 
 appointment and discomfiture ; for it was, indeed, 
 a fixed principle of British policy, under Disraeli's
 
 vin IMPERIAL EXPANSION 253 
 
 determination, to prevent Russia from reaching the 
 Mediterranean, and from thus gaining power to menace 
 the Suez Canal and Anglo-Indian communications. 
 Russia, therefore, was strongly disposed to retaliate 
 by threatening India from the side of Central Asia, 
 and by causing the Indian Government as much 
 anxiety as possible in respect of its north-west 
 frontier. But other and deeper causes impelled 
 Russia eastward. The growth of her population, 
 the rapid development of her agriculture and dairy 
 farming, the increase of her industries under the 
 fostering care of German organisers, the extension 
 of her foreign commerce, all imperatively demanded 
 that she should have more ample access to open seas. 
 Hence, while westward she sought (to the alarm 
 of Sweden and Norway) an ice -free port on the 
 Atlantic, eastward she naturally groped her way 
 towards the Persian Gulf and towards the Middle 
 Pacific. The Russian advance into Asia became 
 marked soon after the close of the Crimean War. 
 A notable event in the Far East was the founding of 
 Vladivostok in 1858. In the central regions of the 
 Asiatic Continent the main stages of the Muscovite 
 progress were signalised by the occupations of 
 Tashkend (1864), Samarcand (1868), Khiva (1873), 
 and Khokand (1876). At the time of the Treaty 
 of Berlin the frontier of Afghanistan had been 
 reached. Only the turbulent and incalculable king- 
 dom of the Ameer lay between the Russian hosts and
 
 254 EUROPEAN HISTORY vin 
 
 the Khyber Pass, the immemorial gateway into the 
 Indian plains. Before the close of the year 1878, 
 the reception of a Russian mission by the Ameer, and 
 his refusal to receive a countervailing British mission, 
 led to the Anglo-Afghan War (1878-79), in which 
 Lord Roberts gained so great renown. Its effect 
 was to check Russian advance in the direction of 
 India by placing on the throne of Afghanistan an 
 Ameer bound by close -sties to Britain and heavily 
 subsidised by the Indian Government. Checked 
 however, in this region, Russia moved in another. 
 She completed the conquest of Turkestan in 1 8 8 1 , 
 occupied Merv in 1884, and reached Pendjeh in 
 1885, where again British antagonism brought her 
 to a pause. In 1891 she invaded the Pamirs, and 
 thus caused fresh friction with Britain, until a joint 
 commission in 1895 delimited here also the frontier 
 of the two empires. The year of the invasion of the 
 Pamirs saw the beginning of that great engineering 
 enterprise, the making of the Trans-Siberian Railway 
 (completed 1905). In 1898, too, by means which do 
 not bear ethical examination, Russia secured for a 
 season in Port Arthur the ice-free Pacific harbour 
 which she so much coveted. 
 
 While Russia was thus extending her power over 
 Asia, France was energetically occupied in building 
 up a colonial dominion, primarily in Africa. Bismarck 
 showed a benevolent interest in her enterprise, and 
 encouraged her to pursue it, partly because he wished
 
 vin IMPERIAL EXPANSION 255 
 
 to divert the attention of Frenchmen from Alsace- 
 Lorraine and schemes of revenge, partly because he 
 hoped and believed (rightly as the event proved) 
 that colonial activity in Africa would enbroil France 
 in disputes with both Italy and Britain, and so would 
 perpetuate her diplomatic isolation so desirable for 
 Germany's repose. Algeria had been French since 
 1830, and its development had been one of the 
 most creditable and enduring achievements of the 
 prosaic reign of Louis Philippe. In 1881 the 
 French occupied Tunis which Italy had earmarked 
 as her own share of the Turkish heritage whenever 
 the day of partition should come. The result was 
 thirty years of Franco - Italian unfriendliness a 
 triumph for German diplomacy. Soon afterwards 
 the peaceful penetration of Morocco began a 
 process which created acute dissension between 
 France and Spain until 1904 when an agreement as 
 to spheres of influence was reached. In 1891 the 
 Ivory Coast was occupied, in 1892 Dahomey, in 
 1895 Madagascar. Three years later (1898) the 
 arrival of a French mission at Fashoda on the 
 Upper Nile led to so grave a crisis in the relations 
 between Great Britain and France that war seemed 
 imminent. The approach of this great catastrophe, 
 however, and the evident satisfaction with which it 
 was anticipated in Germany, caused both the angry 
 Powers to pause and think. Their cogitations and 
 observations led them to perceive a new meaning
 
 256 EUROPEAN HISTORY vni 
 
 in German foreign policy, a sinister meaning which 
 turned their hearts to alliance rather than to 
 fratricidal strife. 
 
 Germany herself was late in entering the colonial 
 field. Bismarck, intent on serious problems of 
 domestic politics, and anxious, above all things, to 
 keep the newly constituted empire at peace until 
 it should have attained to organisation and self- 
 consciousness, discountenanced overseas adventures 
 and discouraged would-be settlers. " We do not 
 wish to colonise," he said, " nor can we do so. We 
 shall never possess a fleet. Nor are our workmen, 
 our lawyers, our retired soldiers worth anything for 
 colonisation." But the Zeitgeist was too strong 
 even for Bismarck. In 1882 the Deutscher Kolonial- 
 verein was founded, followed in 1884 by the Gesell- 
 schaft fiir deutsche Kolonisation, and the activities and 
 immense popularity of these two spontaneously- 
 generated bodies forced Bismarck's hand. Hence 
 he had to recognise and support the occupations of 
 " Luderitzland " (South West Africa), Togoland, 
 the Cameroons, and German East Africa, all of 
 which were annexed in 1884. Next year the 
 beginning of an extensive dominion in the Pacific 
 Ocean was made by the granting of imperial letters 
 of protection to a New Guinea Company which 
 gradually by purchase, by treaty, or by mere seizure 
 added island to island until, before the end of 
 the century, nearly a quarter of a million square
 
 vin IMPERIAL EXPANSION 257 
 
 kilometres of Pacific territory were under German 
 control. Finally, in 1897, Kiao-chau was "leased" 
 from China. 
 
 Italy, not to be outdone in the race for overseas 
 possessions, tried, but with disastrous results, to 
 establish authority over Ethiopia (1882) and Abys- 
 sinia (1896). Belgium, or rather her king, Leopold, 
 with much success although by means which shocked 
 humanity built up an empire on the Congo. Even 
 Austria conferred the name of her sovereign upon 
 an island, inhabited only by wild-fowl, in the Arctic 
 Ocean Franz-Joseph Land (1872). 
 
 53. THE EXPLOITATION OF THE WORLD 
 
 The eastward trend of Russia, together with the 
 colonial activity of France Italy Belgium and above 
 all Germany, roused Great Britain from a state of 
 curious apathy not to say antipathy towards 
 overseas dominions which had characterised her during 
 the century. The loss of the American colonies in 
 the reign of George III. had, in fact, filled her with 
 disgust for dependencies. She had found them but 
 sources of conflict humiliation and expense, and she 
 had unreservedly accepted Turgot's view that colonies, 
 like ripening fruit, are inevitably destined sooner or 
 later to drop from the parent stem. Disraeli was 
 merely expressing the common British opinion current 
 during the century that followed the revolt of the
 
 258 EUROPEAN HISTORY vin 
 
 American Plantations, when in 1852 he said, " These 
 wretched colonies will all be independent in a few 
 years, and they are a millstone round our necks." 
 
 It was Disraeli's own ministry (1874-80), how- 
 ever, which saw the change in the attitude of Britain 
 towards her overseas offspring ; and it was Disraeli 
 himself and his colleague, Lord Carnarvon, who 
 were among the pioneers of the new imperialism. 
 Circumstances, indeed, had been profoundly modified 
 between 1852 and 1880. Not only had Europe 
 been remodelled ; not only had the general scramble 
 for the unclaimed portions of the world begun ; but 
 an unprecedented rivalry in commerce and industry 
 had developed, a struggle to secure new markets 
 and fresh sources of raw materials. Moreover, the 
 opening up of rapid railway and steamship com- 
 munications, the extension of telegraphs and the 
 laying of ocean cables, the organisation of postal 
 services, and the dissemination of information by 
 means of newspapers all these things removed the 
 barriers of distance inaccessibility and ignorance 
 which in earlier days had been insuperable obstacles 
 to any sort of union or co-operation. In the changed 
 conditions the British mother-country and her colonies 
 began to view one another with less alien eyes, and 
 even fell to speculating whether ultimate separation 
 from one another was inevitable. They were further 
 spurred to serious effort to find some form of federal 
 unification by the growing militarism of the world.
 
 vin IMPERIAL EXPANSION 259 
 
 The immense increase in the size and power of the 
 armaments of the modern states, and the tendency 
 of non-moral supermen to the ruthless spoliation of 
 the weak, made both Britain and the Dominions 
 realise that the terminus of isolation would be ruin. 
 In 1883 Seeley pointed the moral in his splendid 
 lectures on The Expansion of England \ in 1884 
 the Imperial Federation League was inaugurated, 
 and henceforth all the more far-sighted of British 
 statesmen notably Lord Rosebery, Mr. W. E. 
 Forster, Sir Charles Dilke, and Mr. Joseph Chamber- 
 lain devoted anxious thought to the problem of how 
 to weld together in some organic bond the scattered 
 and heterogeneous fragments of the then-misnamed 
 " British Empire." 
 
 In 1884, however, the problem of imperial 
 federation was not the only question, nor indeed the 
 most pressing question, which confronted the British 
 Colonial Office. This was the very year in which, 
 as we have seen, Germany suddenly, with much 
 rattling of her formidable sabre, and with open 
 proclamation of large and menacing designs, planted 
 herself on four distinct and important sectors of 
 the African coast. The older colonising Powers 
 Britain France Spain Portugal and Belgium 
 were gravely perturbed by the advent of this mighty 
 and unexpected rival. They had, of course, no 
 right to resent the German entry ; but they wished 
 to set bounds, if possible, to the newcomer's ambitions.
 
 260 EUROPEAN HISTORY vin 
 
 Fortunately Bismarck was eminently moderate in 
 colonial matters, for they did not greatly interest 
 him. A conference was held at Berlin (1884-85), 
 and as the result of its sessions arrangements were 
 made for the partitioning of Africa into " spheres of 
 influence " of the various European Powers con- 
 cerned. Britain was not slow in staking out her 
 claims, although it was private enterprise rather than 
 official prescience that was the operative factor. 
 Bechuanaland was secured for Britain by John 
 Mackenzie (1884) ; Nigeria is the enduring memorial 
 of Joseph Thomson's energy (1885) ; Rhodesia 
 bears the name of the great empire-builder to whom 
 its acquisition was due (1889). IV^antime the 
 British hold over Egypt and the Soudan was being 
 strengthened, in spite of the temporary set-back 
 which was marked by the death of Gordon at 
 Khartoum (1885). Farther south, British East and 
 Central Africa were being developed a notable 
 addition to their territories being made when in 189^ 
 Zanzibar was secured from the German sphere in 
 exchange for the North Sea island of Heligoland. 
 Before the close of the nineteenth century the 
 European partition of Africa was nearly complete. 
 
 Simultaneously with this scramble for Africa, a 
 scramble for Oceania was going on. Germany 
 Britain and the United States were all busily engaged 
 in picking up unappropriated islands. Serious 
 conflict was threatened, particularly in the Samoan
 
 viii IMPERIAL EXPANSION 261 
 
 Archipelago where each of the three Powers obtained 
 a foothold. Finally, in 1900, an agreement was 
 reached, and Oceania, like Africa, was divided out 
 into spheres of influence. 
 
 From Oceania the idea of partitionment was 
 extended to the continent of Asia. Here, however, 
 it was not undeveloped forests or barbaric islands 
 that were in question, but the vast and apparently 
 derelict empire of China with over four hundred 
 millions of inhabitants. Not only did Russia seize 
 Port Arthur, Germany Kiao-chau, and Britain 
 Wei-hai-wei (1898), but the various Powers who at 
 the point of the sword were pushing their commercial 
 interests in China agreed to divide the populous 
 provinces of the empire into exclusive spheres for 
 mercantile exploitation. Two things occurred, how- 
 ever, to give them pause. One was the Boxer 
 rising of the Chinese themselves who strove, though 
 vainly, to expel the foreign devils (1898) ; the other 
 was the forceful and effective intervention of Japan 
 (1904), who had rapidly raised herself into the 
 position of a first-rate naval and military power 
 expressly in order that she might prevent the 
 European spoliation of Asia. 
 
 Not only upon Asia, but also upon South America, 
 did the enterprising European Powers cast longing 
 eyes. Germany, in particular, coveted Brazil, whither 
 annually large numbers of her citizens emigrated. 
 But over South America the United States stood as
 
 262 EUROPEAN HISTORY vm 
 
 a vigilant and formidable guardian. Not until the 
 Monroe policy of the great Republic should have 
 been challenged and defeated would it be possible 
 for Germany or any other Power to exploit any 
 portion of the New World. 
 
 54. THE END OF AN AGE 
 
 The year 1901 marked in a more than conventional 
 manner the end of an era in the World's history. 
 When the twentieth century dawned the Great 
 Powers had been for over a couple of decades at 
 peace with one another, and this long period of' 
 tranquillity had been characterised by unprecedented 
 material prosperity by marvellous scientific dis- 
 coveries, by wonderful mechanical inventions, by vast 
 increase in industrial efficiency, by unequalled elabora- 
 tion of commercial organisation, and (as we have 
 just seen) by extraordinary colonial activity. It had 
 also been notable for the energy and freedom of its 
 thought, for the extension of popular education, for 
 the cheapening of books and papers, for the hundred- 
 fold increase of reading, for the inestimable widening 
 of the circles within which intelligent interest in 
 social and political problems could be found. 
 
 Together with the termination of the nineteenth 
 century, however, the period of more or less secure 
 tranquillity came to a close. Menaces to peace began 
 to appear. These menaces to peace can be broadly
 
 vni IMPERIAL EXPANSION 263 
 
 classed under the two familiar heads of democracy and 
 nationality ; but each of the two in 1901 manifested 
 itself in forms which would have appeared strange in 
 1 850, forms which had been totally unknown in 1815. 
 First, as to democracy. In all the countries of Europe 
 the claim of the people to share more fully in 
 political power had, during the closing decades of the 
 nineteenth century, been strongly asserted and '' vehe- 
 mently pressed. In many it had secured important 
 recognition and noteworthy triumph. Britain, for 
 instance, had immensely extended the sphere of 
 popular control by means of the Ballot Act of 1872, 
 the Parliamentary Reform Act of 1884, the County 
 Councils Act- of 1888, and the Parish Councils Act 
 of 1894. Measures of enfranchisement, varying in 
 nature and degree, had been granted in Italy 1881, 
 France 1885, Spain 1890, Belgium 1893, Austria 
 1896. In Germany, more than in any other country, 
 the tide of democracy had been dammed ; but the 
 fact that there too it was rising was revealed with 
 unmistakable clearness to the autocratic government 
 by the steady increase of the socialist vote at elections 
 to the Reichstag a body eloquent if impotent. 1 
 
 1 The table showing the increase in the social-democratic vote is instructive. 
 It is roughly as follows : 
 
 1871 = 124,000 1874 = 352,000 
 1877 = 493)000 1881 = 312,000 
 1884 = 549,000 1887 = 763,000 
 1890 = 1,427,000 ^93 = 1,786,000 
 i . . . . 
 
 1912 = 4,250,000 (more than ^ of the total electoral vote).
 
 264 EUROPEAN HISTORY vni 
 
 But neither in Germany nor in any other country was 
 the prime aim of the democracy any longer political. 
 If the people .sought for votes and for influence in 
 the state, it was in order that they might exercise 
 control over social and economic conditions. No 
 more as a fortuitous concourse of isolated individuals 
 did they demand each for himself the "rights of 
 man " ; rather as members of powerful trade unions 
 industrial syndicates and co-operative societies did 
 they claim a larger share of that wealth in the 
 production of which they played so great a part. 
 Inspired by the unbalanced and largely erroneous 
 economic theories of Karl Marx, they girt up their 
 loins for the " class war," and the twentieth century 
 opened with ominous signs (which have grown 
 darker rather than lighter as the years have passed) 
 of the social revolution. 
 
 Secondly, as to nationality. Among peoples 
 whose national aspirations had remained unsatisfied 
 the old agitation for independence and self-govern- 
 ment continued, but raised to a higher pitch of 
 intensity by reason of the successes which the 
 national principle had achieved in Germany Italy 
 and the Balkan Peninsula during the preceding 
 period. Thus the dawn of the new century saw 
 Ireland Poland and Bohemia restless with unrealised 
 desire ; saw Alsace-Lorraine still holding out her 
 hands to France ; Scbleswig to Denmark ; Trentino 
 to Italy ; Slavonia to Serbia ; Transylvania to
 
 vin IMPERIAL EXPANSION 265 
 
 Rumania. But these were not the most disturbing 
 manifestations of nationality. Its most alarming 
 symptoms were displayed by those states which 
 had attained the goal of sovereign unity, and 
 particularly by new-made Germany. To some 
 extent in all European national states, but to a 
 marked degree in Germany, patriotism had developed 
 from love of country into love of more country ; 
 while in the colonies it had grown from passion 
 for the native land into passion for the lands of the 
 natives. In the case of the older colonising nations 
 this inflammation of the patriotic spirit although 
 it tended to cause grave oppression of aboriginal 
 races was comparatively harmless internationally ; 
 because all these nations, and notably Great Britain, 
 had vast tracts of magnificent undeveloped dominion 
 in which to operate. Not so in the case of Germany. 
 She had begun to colonise late and in a world already 
 for the most part occupied and portioned out. The 
 relics which she picked up and collected assiduously 
 during the closing years of the nineteenth century 
 proved to be sources of acute disappointment. In 
 vain she fostered them by her power, and lavished 
 upon them money equivalent to j 1 00,000,000 
 sterling. They did not prosper ; they did not pay ; 
 they did not answer the purposes for which they 
 had been annexed. Their prime object had been 
 to provide outlets for the surplus population of 
 Germany, which during this period was draining
 
 266 EUROPEAN HISTORY vm 
 
 away from the Fatherland at the average rate of 2000 
 a day. But they were too much " places in the 
 sun," too tropical, to be attractive to, or even 
 tolerable by, white men ; and (in spite of encourage- 
 ments profusely held out by the imperial govern- 
 ment) when the war broke out in 1914 the total 
 German population in all the colonies put together 
 was only 16,000 ! The second purpose of German 
 colonisation had been to provide markets for the 
 surplus products of Germany's over-protected and 
 over-prolific industries ; but although in area the 
 overseas dominions of Germany were more than 
 four times the size of the Fatherland itself, their 
 population consisted of a scanty twelve and a half 
 millions of impecunious savages, whose numbers and 
 whose wealth tended to diminish rather than increase 
 under the influence of German Kultur. The third 
 purpose of German expansion had been to secure 
 sources of raw material for German manufactures ; 
 but, though the rubber and the palm oil of the 
 equatorial African colonies, the diamonds of the 
 south-west, and the copra of the Pacific, were 
 valuable, the variety of products was not great, 
 while constant troubles with the natives kept the 
 quantity low. Hence in 1901 Germany was dis- 
 illusioned and full of dangerous jealousy.
 
 vin IMPERIAL EXPANSION 267 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY TO LECTURE VIII 
 
 BLUM, H. Das deutsche Reich zur Zeit Bismarcks. 
 
 BODLEY, J. E. C. France. 
 
 CURZON, Lord. Russia in Central Asia. 
 
 DOUGLAS, R. K. Europe and the Far East. 
 
 DRIAULT, E. La Question d'Orient. 
 
 GIORDANI, P. The German Colonial Empire. 
 
 JOHNSTON, H. H. History of the Colonisation of Africa. 
 
 LAWTON, F. The Third French Republic. 
 
 MUIR, RAMSAY. The Expansion of Europe. 
 
 SEELEY, J. R. The Expansion of England. 
 
 SKRINE, J. H. The Expansion of Russia.
 
 LECTURE IX 
 
 THE ERA OF THE SCHISM OF EUROPE, 1901-14 
 
 55. INTERNATIONAL POLITICS AFTER SEDAN 
 
 FROM 1901, in an ever-increasing degree, Germany 
 becarrfe a menace to the unity of Europe and the 
 peace of the World. Her unsatisfied colonial am- 
 bitions caused her to cast greedy and threatening 
 eyes upon the delectable dominions of Spain and 
 Portugal, Holland and Belgium, France and Britain. 
 The ominous growth of the social-democratic party 
 within her own borders, and the rising insistence of 
 the popular demand for political power, so seriously 
 alarmed her governing class that (like the Napoleonic 
 bureaucracy of 1870) they felt that a vigorous 
 foreign policy was the only alternative to a domestic 
 revolution. Further, the claims of her artificially 
 stimulated industry, her monopolistic commerce, her 
 subsidised mercantile marine, her speculative and 
 unsound finance, made the acquisition of new 
 markets, new dependencies, new outlets to the sea, 
 new spheres of enterprise, new sources of supply, 
 
 268
 
 ix 'THE SCHISM OF EUROPE 269 
 
 essential. Finally, her aggressive and incalculable 
 diplomacy accompanied by ostentatious* exhibitions 
 of mailed fists and shining armour turned her into 
 an intolerable neighbour and a source of constant 
 irritation and alarm to the Continent. 
 
 In order that we may understand the international 
 situation at the beginning of the twentieth century, 
 and may be able to appreciate the nature of the 
 German menace, it is necessary that we should revert 
 for a moment to the position of affairs immediately 
 after Sedan. As we have already seen, that battle 
 placed Prussia in a position of indisputable domin- 
 ance in Europe. It destroyed the balance of power 
 the peace - preserving equilibrium among the 
 Continental states and established a German 
 hegemony. No one was more fully and proudly 
 aware of this than Bismarck ; for he himself enjoyed 
 a regard and exerted an influence such as had 
 
 D 
 
 belonged to no individual in Europe since the fall of 
 Napoleon I. But Bismarck wisely and cautiously 
 wished to conceal, rather than to display, the fact of 
 Germany's ascendancy : because he perceived that 
 for some considerable period it would be insecure ; 
 knew that peace would be necessary for its establish- 
 ment ; and realised that it might easily be destroyed 
 during its early years by a hostile coalition. Time 
 and freedom from interruption were, moreover, 
 urgently necessary to him, in order that he might 
 deal with certain important matters of internal
 
 270 EUROPEAN HISTORY ix 
 
 politics, some of which we have already noted. He 
 had to face and surmount the persistent particularism 
 of the but-lately independent members of the new 
 federal empire ; had to persuade or force them to 
 merge themselves in the German nation ; had to 
 reduce them to subservience to the Prussian will. He 
 had, further, to meet and overcome the deep-seated 
 antipathy of the Catholic Church towards the new 
 Protestant substitute for the Holy Roman Empire, 
 the Germany whence the Hapsburgs had been expelled. 
 Again, he had to endeavour to soothe the swelling 
 Cerberus of socialism by means of sops laboriously 
 concocted from recipes contained in the Marxian 
 cookery book. In these circumstances of domestic 
 difficulty and anxiety he felt it necessary above 
 all things to maintain peace abroad, to calm the 
 natural fear of the other European states at the rise 
 of this mighty military empire in the heart of the 
 Continent, to persuade the World that Germany 
 with all her power was essentially pacific. This he 
 was able to do with all the more success because 
 after the Treaty of Frankfort he himself believed in 
 Germany's pacificism. He had, as a matter of fact, 
 accomplished and completed his great life-work in 
 1871 ; he had effected the unification of Germany 
 under Prussia. Henceforth his prime concern was 
 to conserve the product of his toil. After 1871 he 
 was as genuine a lover of peace as had been Robert 
 Wai pole in the critical years of the settlement of the
 
 ix THE SCHISM OF EUROPE 271 
 
 Hanoverian dynasty on the English throne. He 
 would have liked to be on terms of diplomatic 
 friendship with all the Powers, and it was a matter 
 of real regret to him that he had to recognise that 
 friendship with France was impossible. The Austro- 
 Prussian War of 1866 had left no rankling wounds 
 in the breast of the defeated, because Bismarck had 
 been able to prevent annexation of Austrian territory 
 and all unnecessary humiliation of the Hapsburgs. 
 Very different had it been in the case of the Franco- 
 Prussian War. The Prussians had had Jena to 
 revenge ; the military men had been determined to 
 have a new strategic frontier which should include 
 Strassburg Metz and, if possible, Belfort. Hence 
 the French had been spared no element of insult 
 or spoliation : their capital had been entered, their 
 provinces of Alsace-Lorraine taken from them, the 
 savings of their thrifty peasantry drained away to 
 fertilise German industry. In vain had Bismarck, 
 regardful of the future, urged some moderation upon 
 the victory-intoxicated militarists. They had prevailed 
 against him ; and so had left him and his successors 
 to face a France whose hatred was implacable, whose 
 passion for revenge undying, whose determination 
 to recover the lost provinces unshakable, whose 
 antagonism to Germany in every part of the globe 
 inevitable. Since,, then, Bismarck knew that the one 
 certain factor in all the international problems which 
 he would have to solve would be French hostility,
 
 272 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 he made it his principal business to keep France 
 isolated ; to prevent her from forming alliances ; 
 above all, to render it impossible for her to build 
 up a coalition antagonistic to the German Empire. 
 He managed this business with consummate skill and 
 with conspicuous success, to the immense immediate 
 advantage of Germany, but with disastrous results 
 to the Commonwealth of Europe. He sowed 
 dissensions, fostered hatreds, insinuated suspicions, 
 suggested policies which tended to conflict, set the 
 whole Continent by the ears, displayed a Macchia- 
 vellian patriotism devoid of moral scruple and 
 regardless of all save German interests. To obviate 
 a rapprochement between France and Russia a thing 
 which above all others he dreaded he encouraged 
 France to establish a republican rather than a 
 monarchical form of government. To alienate France 
 from Italy he supported the French annexation of 
 Tunis. To embroil France with Britain he favoured 
 the British occupation of Egypt. To prevent Austria 
 from being drawn into an anti-Prussian fellowship 
 with France he cultivated her friendship himself, and 
 found means to bind the Central Empires together 
 in the bonds of a close alliance. Throughout the 
 whole of the remainder of Bismarck's career as a 
 statesman (1871-90) France was kept solitary and 
 impotent.
 
 ix THE SCHISM OF EUROPE 273 
 
 56. THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE 
 
 The segregation of France in Europe may be 
 called the negative side of Bismarck's foreign policy. 
 But his policy had also a positive side. If he had a 
 horror of anti-Prussian coalitions, he had a counter- 
 vailing affection for alliances in which Prussia was 
 the dominant partner. The two Powers that he 
 was most anxious to have as friends were Austria 
 and Russia : the alliance of either of them with 
 France would have exposed Germany to grave peril ; 
 the alliance of both of them with France would have 
 been fatal. With Italy he did not concern himself 
 much ; she was weak from the military point of 
 view, and was much distracted by religious and social 
 dissensions. Nevertheless, he thought it worth while 
 to maintain the good relations of 1866 and 1870, 
 so as to prevent the natural gravitation of the Italians 
 towards the French, and to check any tendency 
 towards a recrudescence of the immemorial Austro- 
 Italian antagonism which might embarrass German 
 policy. As to Britain, he regarded her with dislike 
 mingled with contempt. He had nothing either to 
 hope or to fear from her. True, the court of Queen 
 Victoria was thoroughly German ; but it was German 
 of the obsolete musical and sentimental type, not 
 of the current blood-and-iron order. Bismarck 
 disliked the English form of government its 
 parliaments, its responsible ministries, its freedom 
 
 T
 
 274 EUROPEAN HISTORY ix 
 
 of political criticism. He resented the pious and 
 humanitarian influence which the English queen 
 brought to bear upon the old emperor (who was 
 not wholly impervious to moral considerations in 
 affairs of state), and the still more intimate control 
 which was exerted over the crown prince Frederick 
 by his English wife. The policy of English states- 
 men, however, caused him no alarm. Disraeli was 
 so emphatically anti-Russian that he could be trusted 
 to keep on good terms with the only Power capable 
 of checking Russia in Europe. As to Gladstone, 
 he was so feeble in foreign politics that he could be 
 ignored. Bismarck spoke of him as a " professor " ! 
 He could not have found a term expressive of more 
 profound contempt. " Professor Gladstone," he 
 said, in 1882, "perpetrates one piece of stupidity 
 after another. He has alienated the Turks ; he 
 commits follies in Afghanistan and at the Cape ; 
 he does not know how to manage Ireland. There 
 is nothing to be done with him." 
 
 Such were the general principles of Bismarck's 
 foreign policy. The following were their main 
 exemplifications. In 1872 Bismarck brought about 
 in Berlin a meeting of the three emperors, Alex- 
 ander II. of Russia, Francis Joseph of Austria, and 
 William I. of Germany. Under his guidance they 
 entered into an agreement which strikingly resembled 
 a renewal of the Holy Alliance of 1815. The 
 Dreikaiserbiindnis stipulated that the three autocrats
 
 ix THE SCHISM OF EUROPE 275 
 
 should act together first to suppress revolution, i.e. 
 nihilism in Russia, socialism in Germany, nationalism 
 in Austria-Hungary ; secondly, to delimit boundaries ; 
 thirdly, to settle the Eastern Question. This pact 
 entirely satisfied Bismarck, and he hoped that it 
 might always be possible for Germany to remain in 
 equally close and cordial alliance with both her 
 imperial neighbours. Three things, however, showed 
 him within the next three years that this hope would 
 be impossible of realisation. To begin with, he 
 found that Russian and Austrian interests in the 
 Balkans conflicted too sharply to permit of genuine 
 co-operation, and that Germany would have to 
 decide which of the two she would support at 
 Constantinople. Next he discovered that the Pan- 
 Slavonic movement, fostered by Russia, gravely 
 menaced both German authority in Posen and 
 Austro- Hungarian authority in Bohemia Galicia 
 Croatia and Slavonia. Finally, in 1875, ne was 
 made to realise, to his intense annoyance, that Russia 
 was not prepared to acquiesce in any further humilia- 
 tion or spoliation of France on the part of Germany. 
 In that year the remarkable recovery of France from 
 the blow of 1870-71 (which Germany had meant to 
 be, and had believed to be, destructive) roused the 
 wrath of the German militarists, and led by Moltke 
 they demanded another war which would enable 
 them to administer to France the coup de grdce. 
 Bismarck was not unprepared to yield to the soldiers
 
 276 EUROPEAN HISTORY ix 
 
 and to engineer a casus belli ; nor would he have been 
 deterred by the letters of protest and appeal which 
 Queen Victoria addressed to William I. Conditions 
 were radically changed, however, when at the height 
 of the crisis Alexander II. paid a special visit to 
 Berlin and reinforced the arguments of the English 
 lady with the more masculine ones of Russian dia- 
 lectic. France was saved from wanton attack ; but 
 Bismarck had learned the limits of Russian friendship. 
 Hence in 1878, at the Congress of Berlin, when he 
 officiated as a disinterested and " honest broker " 
 at the discussion of the Eastern Question, he did 
 not hesitate to further a settlement which gave to 
 Austria, who had done no fighting, advantages as 
 great as those which were allowed to Russia on 
 whom the heavy burden of the campaign had fallen. 
 Russia felt that she had been betrayed and deeply 
 wronged : her representatives went away from the 
 German capital in intense irritation and chagrin. 
 Bismarck perceived that the Dreikaiserbundnis was 
 at an end, and that the day of choice had come. 
 His course was quite clear. He drew nearer to 
 Austria, and in 1879 made with her the famous 
 Dual Alliance a defensive pact, expressly stated 
 to be an instrument of mutual guarantee against 
 Russia, which has endured as the fundamental fact 
 of European diplomacy from that day to the present 
 moment. The existence of this Alliance was kept 
 secret for some time, for fear lest knowledge of its
 
 ix THE SCHISM OF EUROPE 277 
 
 terms should irritate the Power against whom it was 
 directed into some hostile act. When knowledge 
 of it leaked out, Lord Salisbury, on behalf of Britain, 
 made one of those remarks which show how im- 
 possible it is for even the most able and well-in- 
 formed students of foreign affairs to estimate the 
 meaning of contemporary events. " To all those," 
 he said, " who care for the peace of Europe, and 
 take an interest in the independence of nations, I 
 would exclaim, ' A crowning mercy has been vouch- 
 safed to the world.' ' He was still more gratified 
 when in 1882 the Dual Alliance was converted into 
 the " Triplice " by the admittance of Italy, who 
 entered through anger at the French occupation of 
 Tunis ; through desire to counter the strong Catholic 
 agitation for the restoration of Rome to the Pope ; 
 and through fear of internal revolution. 
 
 57. THE " WELTPOLITIK. " OF WILLIAM II. 
 
 Although Bismarck had thus definitely allied 
 Germany with Austria as against Russia, he still 
 made it a cardinal principle of his policy to main- 
 tain good relations with Petrograd. He greatly 
 dreaded a conflict with the empire of the Tzar, 
 and was specially anxious to avoid any course of 
 action which would drive Russia into the arms 
 of France. Hence in 1884 he was glad to take 
 advantage of circumstances which caused both
 
 278 EUROPEAN HISTORY ix 
 
 Germany and Russia to apprehend British hostility 
 the one respecting African colonisation, the other 
 respecting Central Asian encroachments and to 
 effect with the Tzar a three years' " reinsurance 
 treaty," in which each Power promised the other 
 benevolent neutrality in case of war. This treaty 
 Bismarck renewed in 1887 ; but, when in 1890 the 
 time once more came round for its reconsideration, 
 Bismarck had fallen from power, and German 
 policy was in the hands of a young autocrat who 
 contemplated serious departures from Bismarckian 
 ideals. 
 
 William II. confident in the military might of 
 his empire, rendered doubly bold by the stability of 
 the Triple Alliance of which he was the controlling 
 head, and confronted only by a number of isolated 
 and mutually unfriendly Powers whose possible 
 opposition to his schemes he felt he could safely 
 disregard determined from the time of his accession 
 
 o 
 
 in 1888 to adopt a more aggressive and enterprising 
 policy than, under the guidance of Bismarck, either 
 his grandfather or his father had pursued. His 
 first utterance to his army had sounded an ominous 
 warning in the ears of the neighbours of Germany : 
 " I solemnly vow always to be mindful of the fact 
 that the eyes of my ancestors are looking down upon 
 me from the other world, and that one day I shall 
 have to render to them an account both of the glory 
 and the honour of the army." It was a weird idea,
 
 ix THE SCHISM OF EUROPE 279 
 
 this conception of a supplementary German Day of 
 Judgment devoted exclusively to Hohenzollern 
 military affairs ; but it was characteristic and 
 significant. From the beginning, in fact, the young 
 emperor cultivated enlarged and flattered his army, 
 because from the beginning he contemplated vast 
 schemes of Germanic expansion and world-dominion, 
 the success of which would ultimately depend on 
 military might. 
 
 The first of these schemes first in order both 
 of time and of importance was that which had 
 as its object the mastery of the East. He had 
 become possessed by the glamour of the Orient. 
 He perceived that in Asia Minor Syria and Persia, 
 those seats of ancient empire and immemorial 
 wealth, lay the key to the lordship of the Earth. 
 He believed (and everything indicates that he still 
 believes) that if he could, in conjunction with his 
 Austrian ally, secure control over Turkey, break 
 down the Serbo-Bulgarian barriers which divide the 
 Ottoman dominions from Central Europe, he could 
 establish a Germanic control over the World which 
 nothing could shake. Hence the significance of the 
 fact that the first of all European courts which he 
 visited after his accession was that of the ruler whom 
 neither his father nor his grandfather would have 
 dreamed of visiting in any circumstances : in 1889 
 he paid ostentatious homage to that sultan who 
 has been appropriately distinguished by a master of
 
 28o EUROPEAN .HISTORY ix 
 
 English phraseology as " Abdul the Damned " a 
 sultan called to " his infernal throne " by the party 
 of reaction and massacre, a despot whose career 
 throughout its whole horrible and abominable 
 course was an unbroken record of treachery and 
 bloodshed. Nine years later (1898) a second visit 
 to Constantinople revealed the inner meaning of the 
 Kaiser's eastern excursions. At a time when the 
 other Powers were vainly trying to bring pressure 
 upon the unspeakable Turk to restrain his atrocities 
 in Armenia, William II. proclaimed himself the 
 friend of the murderer, the protector of the Ottoman 
 empire, the patron of the Mohammedan religion 
 throughout the world, the ally of Allah. At the 
 same time he secured the secret prize of his apostasy, 
 the sultan's concession (openly announced in 1902) 
 of the right to construct the Bagdad Railway. On 
 the building of this railway, on the linking of it 
 with the systems of Vienna and Berlin, on the 
 consequent economic exploitation of the Orient, on 
 the ultimate political and military domination over 
 the Turkish empire, on the destruction of the 
 British power in Egypt, on the extension of German 
 influence to the Persian Gulf on these and on 
 other magnificent eastern projects the Kaiser's limit- 
 less ambition has mainly nourished itself. 1 He, of 
 
 1 Dr. Paul Rohrbach, a prominent Pan-German, in his book on the Bagdad 
 Railway, says : "The Bagdad Railway from the beginning was intended t unite 
 directly Constantinople and the military strong points of the Turkish Empire in 
 Asia Minor with Syria and the provinces of the Euphrates and the Tigris.
 
 ix THE SCHISM OF EUROPE 281 
 
 course, clearly realised that the accomplishment of 
 these designs would inevitably involve conflict with 
 Russia, and the reduction beneath the Teutonic 
 sway by one means or another of all the Balkan 
 peoples. Hence he laboured to render his army 
 equal to all the calls that could possibly be made 
 upon it. He did not want war. On the contrary, 
 he sincerely desired peace. But the peace which he 
 desired was a German peace, a peace which involved 
 complete acquiescence in the imperial policy on the 
 part of all other Powers, and entire submission to 
 the Teutonic will. 
 
 The second of the great schemes of William II. 
 was the building up of a really effective and valu- 
 able colonial empire. He had none of Bismarck's 
 indifference to overseas dominions ; he wanted 
 Germany's ascendancy in Europe to be matched by 
 an equal supremacy in the other continents of the 
 world. He regarded with extreme dissatisfaction 
 the position and prospects of the dependencies seized 
 by Germany in 1884 and the following years ; they 
 did not attract settlers ; they provided no important 
 markets ; they did not pay their own expenses. 
 He felt it to be monstrous that the Holy German 
 Nation, with its pre-eminent virtue and its inimitable 
 Kultur^ should be debarred from successful colonial 
 
 Naturally it was foreseen that the Bagdad Railway would supplement the Syrian 
 and Arabian railways in throwing troops in the direction of Egypt." Quoted, 
 Daily Chronicle, 1510 January 1917.
 
 282 EUROPEAN HISTORY ix 
 
 activity merely by the fact that other and less pro- 
 gressive peoples had iniquitously taken previous 
 possession of all the delectable parts of the world. 
 The French Morocco, the Portuguese Angola, the 
 British South- West Africa, the Belgian Congo, the 
 Brazilian Republic all these presented themselves as 
 desirable fields of German enterprise. But to get 
 any of them meant war or, at any rate, threat of war. 
 Hence the need of still more armaments, in order 
 that peace might be maintained without sacrifice of 
 prosperity. 
 
 It was these colonial ambitions of the Kaiser, these 
 demands of the great and growing expansionist 
 party whose policy he expressed and enforced, that 
 necessitated the inauguration of the third of his main 
 schemes, viz. the creation of a powerful battle fleet. 
 For the realisation of the German projects involved 
 the throwing down of a challenge to every maritime 
 Power in the world ; and the maintenance of an 
 overseas empire founded on spoliation implied the 
 establishment of that " freedom of the sea " which is 
 synonymous with exclusive German control. Hence 
 the significance of the utterances of the emperor : 
 " The trident must be in our hand " (1897) ; " Our 
 future lies upon the water" (1898) ; "Germany is 
 in bitter need of a strong fleet " owing to the lack 
 of which she was powerless to intervene in the South 
 African War. Hence the still more sinister signifi- 
 cance of the German Navy Laws of 1898 onward.
 
 ix THE SCHISM OF EUROPE 283 
 
 Not only, however, was the German navy needed 
 to back up the new aggressive colonial policy ; it 
 was also needed to support German commercial 
 expansion which was being carried out in an 
 aggressively militant spirit and by methods of acute 
 tariff warfare. In 1879 as the result of a severe 
 financial crisis, one of the unexpected fruits of the 
 French war indemnity Germany had commenced 
 her system of high protection with all its fatal 
 sequelae of over-production, under-selling, dumping 
 of goods, and destruction of rivals. Its pursuit 
 involved her in bitter struggles, and imposed upon 
 her the necessity of constantly opening up new and 
 exclusive markets. 
 
 But even beyond dominance in Europe, control 
 of the East, colonial supremacy, command of the 
 sea, and the monopoly of world-markets, the imperial 
 megalomania extended even to the establishment of 
 a general overlordship of the planet. Said the 
 Kaiser at the launching of a battleship in 1900 : 
 " The Ocean teaches us that on its waves and on its 
 most distant shores no great decision can any longer 
 be taken without Germany and without the German 
 Emperor." 
 
 58. THE TRIPLE ENTENTE 
 
 The activities of the Germans and the utterances 
 of their emperor during the closing decade of the
 
 284 EUROPEAN HISTORY ix 
 
 nineteenth century not unnaturally caused consider- 
 able alarm throughout the world at large. The 
 French were conscious of an incessant menace both 
 on their eastern frontier (across which the Germans 
 cast greedy eyes upon French coal and iron fields) 
 and in their colonies ; Russia became aware of an 
 adverse influence constantly thwarting her in the 
 Balkans, insidiously working in her own Baltic and 
 Polish provinces, making things more difficult ' for 
 her in the Far East ; Britain was compelled to 
 recognise that Kruger telegrams (1896), Navy Laws 
 (1898), and Bagdad Railway projects indicated the 
 rise of a new and deadly enemy to British peace 
 and security in the world, and also that German 
 commercial methods seriously threatened that trade 
 ascendancy which Britain had established early in the 
 century ; the United States could not remain blind 
 to the peril which lurked in the German penetration 
 of Brazil, 1 or in the tariff war which the German 
 Government was waging against American manu- 
 factures. 
 
 In 1888, the very year of William II. 's accession, 
 France and Russia began to draw together. Russia 
 was in need of money ; she found it more difficult 
 than it had formerly been to raise a loan in Berlin ; 
 the French financiers easily and willingly procured 
 
 1 At the outbreak of the war 350,000 Germans occupied 8000 square 
 miles of territory and formed the dominant element of the population of the 
 three southern states of Brazil, viz. S. Catalina, Parana, and Rio Grande. See 
 Fullerton, Problems of Power, p. 212.
 
 TX THE SCHISM OF EUROPE 285 
 
 for her 500,000,000 francs from the savings of their 
 thrifty countrymen. 1 The rapprochement thus com- 
 menced was rendered more close by the exchange 
 of naval courtesies : the French fleet visited Cron- 
 stadt in 1891 ; a Russian squadron returned the 
 visit at Toulon two years later. In 1896 the Tzar 
 Nicholas II. himself accepted an invitation to Paris ; 
 and when in 1897 the French President, M. Faure, 
 went as the Tzar's honoured guest to Petrograd, 
 no one was surprised to receive the formal announce- 
 ment that a Franco-Russian Alliance had been con- 
 cluded. The " nightmare coalition " against which 
 Bismarck had so long and successfully struggled had 
 actually come into existence. It was not, however, 
 merely fear of Germany that had driven France and 
 Russia together. At that date the two states were 
 also drawn towards one another by common antagon- 
 ism to Great Britain. 
 
 The position of Great Britain at the close of the 
 nineteenth century was one of isolation, described 
 by those who approved of it as " splendid," by 
 others as "dangerous." In 1899 the Boer War 
 broke out, and it revealed the fact that Britain had 
 not a friend in the world. At one time, indeed 
 soon after the " Black Week " of British reverses at 
 Stormberg Magersfontein and Colenso (December 
 
 1 In 1887 a Franco-German frontier incident, relating to a certain French 
 police commissioner named Schnaebele, had threatened to give Germany an 
 excuse to fall upon France. Alexander III. of Russia had intervened in the 
 interests of peace, and thereby had gratified France and irritated Germany.
 
 286 EUROPEAN HISTORY ix 
 
 1899) a Continental coalition against Britain 
 seemed probable. It was the German hostility that 
 was the most startling to the people of this country ; 
 for the supposed racial kinship of the two nations 
 and the close connections of their courts had 
 accustomed Anglo - Saxons to regard Germans as 
 cousins bound to them by " relations of sympathy 
 and friendship beyond all others." l But, however 
 intimate past associations may have been, there could 
 be no doubt respecting the energy of the German 
 detestation of Britain in 1899. Said the Ktilnische 
 Volkszeitung in December of that year : " If the 
 question were put in Berlin ' Which nation would 
 you like best to chastise ? ' ninety-eight per cent of 
 the residents in the capital would answer ' The 
 English.' ' Treitschke's successor, Professor Hans 
 Delbriick, confirmed this statement the next year 
 in the words : " The German nation, which once 
 celebrated with delight the memory of the Alliance 
 of Blttcher and Wellington at Waterloo, has now 
 directed its hate against England." The British 
 were amazed at this novel and mystej-ious exhibition 
 of antagonism. Many of them obstinately shut 
 their eyes to its significance. The more perceptive, 
 however, recognised the fact that Germany's new 
 policy of oriental adventure, colonial acquisition, 
 commercial aggrandisement, maritime expansion, and 
 quest for world-dominion, had indeed generated a 
 
 1 Lord Salisbury's Mansion House speech of gth November 1899.
 
 ix THE SCHISM OF EUROPE 287 
 
 fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between the 
 ideals purposes and interests of the two Teutonic 
 peoples. 
 
 The unfriendliness of Russia and France towards 
 Britain were at that date taken more as a matter of 
 course. As to Russia ; the friction of 1878 had been 
 perpetuated by clashes of policy respecting Penjdeh 
 (1885), Bulgaria (1886), the Pamirs (1891), and 
 China, where the Russian occupation of Port Arthur 
 in 1898 was a matter of grave dispute. Lord 
 Salisbury continued the traditional Russophobe 
 policy of Palmerston and Disraeli. As to France ; 
 old -standing causes of dissension kept the two 
 Channel Powers apart. Questions relating to New- 
 foundland, Egypt, Tunis, Nigeria, Siam, Madagascar 
 (annexed by France, 1896), and Fashoda (temporarily 
 occupied by French troops, 1898) kept the govern- 
 ments of London and Paris in a constant condition 
 of mutual irritation and opposition. 
 
 The critical situation of 1 899 and 1 900 Britannia 
 contra mundum warned the statesmen of this 
 country that the day of safe isolation was past. The 
 more prescient of them first among whom must be 
 placed King Edward VII. (who succeeded to the 
 throne in 1901) and Lord Lansdowne (Minister for 
 Foreign Affairs, 1900-1905) realised that, whereas 
 the new hostility of Germany to Britain was radical 
 and irremovable, the old quarrels with France and 
 Russia were mere anachronisms. Fortunately, in
 
 288 EUROPEAN HISTORY ix 
 
 both these countries eminent men were found who 
 shared this view. In France M. Delcass6, soon 
 after he accepted the portfolio of Foreign Affairs in 
 1898, said: "I should be sorry to leave office 
 before I had established a good understanding with 
 England." Before German pressure compelled his 
 resignation in 1905, a series of Anglo-French agree- 
 ments had removed the main causes of friction, and 
 had substituted the Entente Cordiale. In Russia, 
 Baron Isvolsky heartily welcomed the approaches of 
 Sir Edward Grey (Minister for Foreign Affairs, 
 1905-16), and, having settled with him trouble- 
 some questions relating to Thibet, Afghanistan, and 
 Persia, he prepared the way for the completion of 
 the Triple Entente in 1907. 
 
 59. EXCURSIONS AND ALARMS 
 
 By 1907 the natural reaction against Germany's 
 aggressive and menacing policy had manifested 
 itself. The three Powers most directly threatened, 
 viz. France Russia and Britain, had drawn together, 
 not into any formal coalition to which Germany 
 could legitimately object, but into a friendly associa- 
 tion whose powerful existence Germany could not 
 ignore. Germany, as a matter of fact, bitterly 
 resented the formation of the Triple Entente. She 
 realised that it tended to put a limit to her large 
 designs, and she determined to do her best to break
 
 ix THE SCHISM OF EUROPE 289 
 
 it up. She was the less careful concerning the 
 means which she employed to this end, because she 
 knew that Russia was temporarily in no condition 
 to go to war. Russia in 1904-5 had suffered a 
 serious defeat at the hands of Japan, and this had 
 been followed by a political upheaval within her 
 own borders which had still further weakened her. 
 Hence, even before the completion of the Triple 
 Entente, so early as 1905 (within a month of the 
 decisive Russian reverse at Mukden), the Kaiser had 
 subjected both the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1896 
 and the Anglo-French agreement of 1 904 to a crucial 
 test by going to Tangier within the French sphere 
 of influence in Morocco, ostentatiously neglecting to 
 consult France about his visit before making it, and 
 when in Tangier openly flouting French claims, 
 treating the sultan as an independent potentate, and 
 proclaiming his intention to protect German rights 
 in Morocco against all comers. This challenge 
 flung publicly in the face of France, with every 
 possible accompaniment of insult, was followed up 
 by a formal demand for an international convention 
 to discuss ab initio the Moroccan situation. Hence 
 the Algeciras Conference of 1906. This Conference 
 disappointed the Kaiser. Britain supported France 
 whole-heartedly ; Russia did the same, and she, 
 having now made peace with Japan, was no longer a 
 negligible factor in western politics ; Spain and Italy 
 
 opposed the extreme German claims ; even Austria 
 
 u
 
 290 EUROPEAN HISTORY ix 
 
 was so lukewarm in her support of her truculent 
 ally as to bring down upon herself the Kaiser's 
 anger, veiled in the form of thanks for her perform- 
 ance of the r61e of a " brilliant second " to Germany. 
 The upshot was that, on the one hand, the predominant 
 French interest in Morocco was recognised, and that, 
 on the other hand (an incomparably more important 
 thing), the strength of the bonds which linked 
 Britain and Russia to France were experimentally 
 demonstrated. The cordial co - operation of the 
 three Powers at Algeciras prepared the way for that 
 completion of the Triple Entente in 1907 which has 
 already been noted. 
 
 The second German challenge to the friends of 
 France came in 1909, this time in the form of a 
 direct ultimatum to Russia. The subject-matter of 
 the challenge related to concerns of vastly greater 
 moment to Germany than those which had been at 
 issue in 1905. They related to no less vital a 
 question than the control of the Balkans and the 
 opening of the Teutonic road to the East. In 1908 
 the Young Turk revolution which cast out Abdul 
 Hamid, and left his house empty swept and garnished, 
 ready for the entry of seven spirits worse than him- 
 self was followed swiftly by Bulgaria's declaration 
 of complete independence, and Austria's formal 
 annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The latter 
 a flagrant violation of the Treaty of Berlin, under 
 which Austria had accepted the trust of administering
 
 ix THE SCHISM OF EUROPE 291 
 
 the two provinces on behalf of Turkey and the 
 Powers roused a storm of anger in Serbia (who saw 
 herself forever cut off from her kindred Slavs in the 
 neighbouring regions), and led to strong protests 
 from Russia France and Britain. Serbia went so 
 far as to threaten war. This necessitated an 
 Austrian mobilisation, which in turn caused Russia 
 to move troops towards the Austrian frontier. A 
 serious clash seemed imminent. It was at this stage 
 that Germany intervened with dramatic effect. She 
 ranged herself by the side of Austria in " shining 
 armour," and informed Russia that any military 
 movement on her part would bring the German 
 armies down upon her. Since France and Britain 
 were not prepared to join Russia in a general 
 European war in defence of the Berlin settlement 
 of 1878, Russia was constrained in deep humilia- 
 tion to withdraw her support from Serbia, see the 
 Southern Slavs subjected to crushing indignities, 
 and look on impotently while the Central Empires 
 reaped the fruits of their diplomatic triumph, and 
 established their -control over Young Turkey. 
 
 The great success of the Teutonic blow to Russia 
 in 1909 encouraged the Kaiser to administer a 
 similar chastisement and warning to Britain in 1911. 
 Britain was at that time immersed in domestic con- 
 troversies so acute that in Germany's opinion they 
 precluded her from taking any cognisance of happen- 
 ings abroad. In those circumstances, on the pre-
 
 292 EUROPEAN HISTORY ix 
 
 tence that France was exceeding her mandate in 
 Morocco, and that German interests were menaced, 
 she sent a gunboat to Agadir, and manifested an 
 evident intention of converting that Atlantic port 
 into a German naval base. The threat to British 
 trade routes Mediterranean African and South 
 American was palpable. Not even the pacific 
 ministry then in power could tolerate it. The 
 British public temporarily composed its domestic 
 differences and prepared to unite for the defence 
 of its vital maritime interests. The unexpected 
 vigour of the British response to the German challenge 
 in 1911, combined with the firm stand made by 
 the French in support of their rights as recognised 
 at Algeciras, caused the departure of the gunboat 
 from Agadir and the closing of the incident. The 
 German navy was not yet in a condition to defy 
 the combined navies of France and Britain. The 
 face of Germany was saved by the tranference to 
 her, under the name of compensation for sur- 
 rendered claims, of a large and valuable tract of 
 the French Congo. In spite, however, of this un- 
 merited acquisition, the Pan-Germans were furious 
 at the withdrawal from Agadir. 1 Their wrath fell 
 
 1 The Pan-German League was founded in 1891. Within the next twenty 
 years it became the most powerful political organisation in Germany, having 
 over 200 branches throughout the Empire. An early revelation of its large 
 ambitions was given in an official publication, Grossdeutschland und Mittehuropa 
 urn das jfaAr jyjo, issued in 1895. This was supplemented in 1911 by De utsch- 
 land und Weltmacht, a massive volume of 850 pages. An enlightening statement 
 of Pan-German aims is presented in O. R. Tannenberg's Grossdeutschland die
 
 ix THE SCHISM OF EUROPE 293 
 
 primarily on Britain, the superiority of whose naval 
 power alone had prevented the final settlement with 
 France from being made. The words of Treitschke, 
 which long had been working in the German 
 mind, now generated an intoxication : " We have 
 reckoned with Austria and France ; the reckoning 
 with England has yet to come." The enigmatical 
 toast, Auf den Tag, drunk with increasing fre- 
 quency and fury, indicated the concentration of 
 Teutonic hatred upon the unsuspicious and pacific 
 Island Empire which blocked Germany's road to 
 world-dominion. But though the furor teutonicus 
 was vented in full flood upon Britain, neither France 
 on the one side nor the German Government on the 
 other side wholly escaped. There was intense re- 
 sentment that the " second-rate power " of the Re- 
 public should successfully have resisted the imperial 
 Colossus, and burning anger with the government that 
 had subjected itself to such humiliation. " Public 
 opinion," confidentially reported the French Military 
 Attache to his Chief in Paris, " public opinion has 
 forgiven neither them nor us. People are determined 
 that such a thing shall never happen again." The 
 prospects of the maintenance of European peace 
 were at the close of 1911 exceedingly remote. 
 
 sirbeit dts zoten Jahrhundcrts (1911 ; new edition, 1916). From this it appears 
 that the Pan-Germans claim (i) all lands inhabited by peoples of Germanic 
 stock, e.g. Holland and Denmark ; (z) all lands which have ever been 
 Germanic, e.g. Switzerland ; (3) all lands where Germans have settled, e.g. 
 Brazil ; (4) all regions that Germans want, e.g. the Universe.
 
 294 EUROPEAN HISTORY ix 
 
 Germany was in such a condition of war fever that 
 scarcely a pretext, real or imaginary, was needed to 
 cause her to run amok. The Kaiser, for his part, 
 was constrained to see that to disappoint his Chau- 
 vinists a second time would be as much as his 
 throne was worth. 
 
 60. THE DRIFT TOWARDS WAR 
 
 Such evidence as is at present available seems to 
 show that in 1911 the war party definitely gained 
 the ascendant in Berlin, and that the emperor and 
 the government recognised the impracticability of 
 their any longer holding it in check. Before the end 
 of the year there was published that classic exposition 
 of the creed and that lurid revelation of the purposes 
 of the German militarists, Bernhardi's Germany and 
 the Next War^ the very frenzy and wickedness of 
 which blinded readers in other countries to the awful 
 significance of the menace of the new Odinism. 
 The beginning of 1912 saw the passage through the 
 Reichstag of exceptional and sensational army and 
 navy bills making such immense and unprecedented 
 additions to the forces of the empire as alone were 
 sufficient to suggest the imminent precipitation of 
 war. The German government defended these 
 measures on the ground that the events of the 
 summer of 1911 had demonstrated their necessity. 
 Another cause of anxiety, moreover, emphasising this
 
 ix THE SCHISM OF EUROPE 295 
 
 necessity and calling for further military watchful- 
 ness, had arisen in the autumn of the same year, 
 when Italy to the great embarrassment of Austria 
 and Germany had picked a quarrel with Turkey 
 (that cherished protege of the Central Empires ; that 
 indispensable link with the East) and had taken 
 possession of Tripoli. Further, before this un- 
 welcome struggle between the two allies of Austria 
 and Germany was concluded, another and still more 
 disquieting conflict had begun, viz. the so-called 
 First Balkan War (October 1912). As the result 
 of one of the most brilliant diplomatic triumphs of 
 modern times, a group of patriotic 'Balkan states- 
 men notably M. Gu^chofF of Bulgaria and M. 
 Venezelos of Greece had effected an alliance of the 
 four Christian powers, Bulgaria Serbia Greece and 
 Montenegro, against their ancient common enemy. 
 The purpose of the alliance was primarily the 
 deliverance of Macedonia and Thrace from Ottoman 
 misgovernment. But there can be no doubt that 
 behind this immediate and avowed aim lay the 
 ulterior object of preventing any further increase 
 in the threatening Austro - German control of the 
 peninsula. The unexpectedly complete victory of 
 the Balkan allies, the disgracefully entire collapse of 
 the military organisation of the incompetent and 
 corrupt Young Turks, seemed to forebode the 
 establishment of a strong Christian federation in the 
 Balkans, and, therefore, the total frustration of the
 
 '296 EUROPEAN HISTORY ix 
 
 great Austro-German Drang nach Osten. It became, 
 therefore, a matter of vital concern to the diplo- 
 matists of the two Kaisers to break up the Balkan 
 league. Austria took the first step to this end by 
 announcing that in no circumstances could she allow 
 the Serbians to gain 'an outlet to the Adriatic, and 
 that Serbia would consequently have to evacuate 
 such parts of Albania as she had occupied. Serbia, 
 thus deprived of one of the main objects of her entry 
 into the war, viz. that access to the sea which was 
 essential to her economic development, was compelled 
 to ask Bulgaria for such a modification of the 
 Macedonian partition on which they had agreed 
 before the war as would give to the Serbs an outlet 
 to the Aegean. This request King Ferdinand 
 acting, it is said, under Austrian influence, and with 
 a definite promise of Austrian support in case of 
 trouble was injudicious enough to refuse. Thus 
 the relations between Serbia and Bulgaria, to the 
 
 O '. 
 
 great satisfaction of the Teutonic Powers, were 
 restored once more to their normal condition of 
 strain and antagonism. Russia, seeing with deep 
 regret the threatened disruption of the Balkan union, 
 endeavoured to intervene with offers of arbitration. 
 The situation seemed to be saved : the .Bulgarian 
 cabinet accepted the Russian offer and prepared to 
 send a representative to lay its case before the Tzar. 
 Unhappily, however, the king and the militarists, 
 incited by Austrian intrigue and confident of victory,
 
 ix THE SCHISM OF EUROPE 297 
 
 took the matter into their own hands and wrought 
 the ruin of the common Balkan cause by making a 
 sudden and treacherous attack upon the Serbian 
 forces (June 29, 1913). It was one of the most 
 lamentable and disastrous events of recent history. 
 For the Bulgarians themselves it was immediately 
 fatal. The Serbians defeated them ; the Austrians 
 failed them ; the Rumanians intervened and attacked 
 them ; the Turks renewed the war and took from 
 them the great prize of Adrianople. They were 
 compelled in humiliation and disgust to accept the 
 extremely hard and unfavourable terms of the Treaty 
 of Bucarest (August 10, 1913). Serbia secured the 
 whole of the disputed portion of Macedonia, and 
 (by arrangement with Greece) gained access to the 
 sea at Salonika. 
 
 The result of the Second Balkan War was a 
 matter of profound disappointment and disgust to 
 the Central Empires. It made their own interven- 
 tion to destroy the Treaty of Bucarest inevitable. 
 From the moment of its signature, there can now be 
 no doubt, they resolved on war and merely hesitated 
 respecting the time and pretext for its declaration. 
 Signer Giolitti, the Italian statesman, has made the 
 important disclosure that only three days after the 
 conclusion of the Bucarest Treaty (August 1913), 
 Austria sounded Italy as to her readiness to join the 
 other members of the Triple Alliance in an attack 
 on Serbia. Italy's reply that the Triple Alliance
 
 298 EUROPEAN HISTORY ix 
 
 was a defensive and not an aggressive one postponed 
 the projected assault. It did not, however, in the 
 least modify the purpose or change the policy of the 
 Central Empires. The elimination of the Serbian 
 barrier to Constantinople and Salonika had become 
 the first requirement of their statecraft. The fact 
 that active preparations for an early war had been 
 for some time going on in Germany is proved by a 
 most important secret Memorandum on the Strengthen- 
 ing of the German Army (dated Berlin, March 19, 
 I 9 I 3) a copy of which was procured by the French 
 military attache in Berlin : it prescribes methods by 
 which German public opinion can be educated to 
 regard " an offensive war " as " a necessity in order 
 to combat the provocations of our adversaries " ; 
 it urges the hampering of these adversaries by the 
 stirring up of rebellions in Russia Egypt Tunis 
 Algeria and Morocco ; it contains the assurance 
 that " neither ridiculous shriekings for revenge by 
 French Chauvinists, nor the Englishmen's gnashing of 
 teeth, nor the wild gestures of the Slavs will turn us 
 from our aim of protecting and extending Deutschtum 
 all the world over." * The Treaty of Bucarest con- 
 centrated the attention of the apostles of Deutschtum 
 upon the Balkan Peninsula, and the murder of the 
 Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Serajevo on June 28, 
 1914, gave a convenient pretext for the precipitation 
 of the long-projected conflict. 
 
 1 French Yellow Book, Cd. 7860, p. 130.
 
 ix THE SCHISM OF EUROPE 299 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY TO LECTURE IX 
 
 ANONYMOUS. J'Accuse. 
 
 BERNHARDI. Germany and the Next War. 
 
 CHERADAME, A. The Pan-German Plot. 
 
 FROBENIUS, H. The German Empire's Hour of Destiny. 
 
 FULLERTON, M. Problems of Power. 
 
 GIBBONS, H. A. The New Map of Europe. 
 
 NIPPOLD, A. German Chauvinism. 
 
 PROTHERO, G. W. German Opinion and Policy before the War. 
 
 ROSE, J. H. The Origins of the War. 
 
 TANNENBERG, O. R. Grossdeutschland; die Arbeit des zo ten Jahr- 
 
 hunderts. 
 USHER, R. G. Pan-Germanism.
 
 LECTURE X 
 
 THE CRISIS OF 1914-15 
 
 61. THE SITUATION IN GERMANY 
 
 THAT Germany deliberately prepared for, organised, 
 and precipitated the War of 1914 is no longer a 
 matter of speculation or argument. If it was ever in 
 doubt, all doubt has long since been submerged by 
 cumulative evidence. Everything confirms the truth 
 of the frank confessions made by Herr Maximilien 
 Harden in his injudicious organ, Die Zukunft, in 
 those early days of the War -when German victory 
 seemed secure. " Why not admit," said he, on 
 August i, 1914, "what is and must be the truth, 
 namely, that between Vienna and Berlin every- 
 thing was fully prepared ? We should be mere 
 slaves, unworthy of the men who achieved pre- 
 dominance in Germany, if fifty years after KOniggratz 
 things could be otherwise." Again a little later : 
 " Cease the pitiful attempts to excuse Germany's 
 action. Not as weak - minded blunderers have 
 
 300
 
 x THE CRISIS OF 1914-15 301 
 
 we undertaken the fearful risk of this war. We 
 wanted it." l 
 
 The fact which Herr Harden so freely admits, 
 or rather so triumphantly asserts, is indeed obvious. 
 Germany in 1914 wanted a war, was spoiling for a 
 war, was determined to have a war. Those various 
 causes of dissatisfaction irritation and unrest which 
 have already been indicated had all worked jointly 
 and severally to the same end, and a war which 
 was confidently expected to be short and decisively 
 victorious was regarded as the only way of escape 
 from international decline and domestic disaster. 
 
 First, in the sphere of foreign affairs it was clear 
 that German diplomacy had reached the limits 
 wherein success could be achieved by mere bluster 
 and bluff by the simple rattling of sabres, exhibition 
 of shining armour, and shaking of mailed fists. 
 Russia could not be expected to tolerate a repetition 
 of the humiliation of 1909 ; France had made her 
 last surrender in Morocco ; Britain had taken a 
 definite stand in refusing to allow the establishment 
 of a German naval base at the flank of her Atlantic 
 trade-routes. All three Powers, in alarm at German 
 truculence and in apprehension of Germany's swell- 
 ing armaments, were strengthening their defences 
 and making the task of their aggressive enemy less 
 
 1 Die Zukunji, quoted in Daily Chronicle, December 23, 1914. For similar 
 sentiments uttered in November 1914, see quotation given in Cheradame's Pan- 
 German Plot (English Translation), p. 9.
 
 302 EUROPEAN HISTORY x 
 
 easy of accomplishment. Even Belgium the viola- 
 tion of whose neutrality was threatened by the 
 development of German strategic railways, 1 and 
 openly projected in German military circles 2 had 
 begun to rearm her fortresses, and to call up her 
 citizens for general military training. Germany saw 
 that she must strike soon if she were to strike at all. 
 If through hesitation or feebleness she were to fail to 
 snatch the prize of world-dominion in 1914, it might 
 for ever elude her grasp ; for her prospective victims 
 were alarmed, and were equipping themselves for 
 resistance. The Serbian barrier to the East might 
 become impenetrable if its Russian buttress were 
 allowed to consolidate itself ; the necessary destruction 
 of France might be rendered too costly a process to 
 be undertaken if the open Belgian frontier were pro- 
 tected by anything more substantial than a German 
 treaty-guarantee. German diplomacy had, indeed, 
 brought Germany to the point beyond which no step 
 could be taken unless armed force should clear the path. 
 
 1 "If the German Chancellor wishes to know why there were conversations 
 on military subjects between British and Belgian officers, he may find one reason 
 in a fact well known to himself, namely, that Germany was establishing an 
 elaborate net - work of strategical railways leading from the Rhine to the 
 Belgian frontier, through a barren, thinly populated tract railways deliberately 
 constructed to permit of a sudden attack upon Belgium, such as was carried out 
 in August last" (Sir Edward, now Viscount, Grey, in Daily Chronicle, January 
 27, 1915). 
 
 2 Cf. Secret Memorandum on the Strengthening of the German Army, March 
 19, 1913, published in French Yellow Book, Cd. 7860, p. 133. H. S. Chamberlain 
 in his virulent Kricgaufs'dfze goes so far as to boast that " the whole of the present 
 plan of campaign dates in its very details back to old Moltke," who died in 
 1891. Cf. The Ravings of a Renegade, p. 94.
 
 x THE CRISIS OF 1914-15 303 
 
 A second cause leading to war was the colossal 
 and no longer to be concealed failure of the German 
 colonial empire. In spite of la\ish paternal nourish- 
 ment those wretched overseas dominions would not 
 come to any good. German emigrants would not 
 go to them ; the natives would not continue to live 
 and work for Germany in them ; they could not be 
 made to pay. 1 In order to cover the failure it was 
 necessary to seize from the older colonising nations 
 more attractive and more profitable regions. The 
 French colonies were those immediately coveted. In 
 January 1914 the Imperial Crown Prince, hoping to 
 secure British connivance, is reported to have said (in 
 one of those bursts of German confidence and candour 
 that did so much to conserve in this country the belief 
 in German innocence) to an English member of Parlia- 
 ment : " You could shut your eyes and let us take 
 the French colonies first of all. We want them." 2 
 The fact that Germany wanted them was confirmed 
 by the Imperial Chancellor in his conversation with 
 Sir Edward Goschen on the eve of the War : he 
 would give no assurances that Germany would not 
 take them ; he made the " infamous proposal " that 
 Britain should stand aside and see France despoiled 
 of her dependencies. It was, however, merely " first 
 
 1 The Balance-Sheet for 1914-15 shows receipts 78,494,769 marks, against 
 expenses 179,908,951 marks. See full Table, which indicates how receipts wer* 
 supplemented by loans and imperial subventions, in Giordani, The German 
 Colonial Empire, p. 150. 
 
 2 Mr. Ian Malcolm, M.P., War Pictures behind the Lines, p. 2.
 
 304 EUROPEAN HISTORY x 
 
 of all " that French property was desired. Already 
 large schemes had been formulated for the acquisition 
 of British dominions, beginning with South Africa. 1 
 With France and Britain overthrown, the work of 
 plundering the rest of the world would give no 
 trouble. 
 
 A third cause that tended to urge the German 
 Government to plunge into war was the alarming 
 growth of social democracy within the empire. In 
 the election of January 1912 the social democrats 
 secured 4,250,401 votes out of the aggregate of 
 12,198,337, and they were vehement in their demand 
 for increased influence in State affairs, for a reformed 
 franchise, and for improved economic conditions. 
 The Government saw that it would be compelled 
 to surrender its militant autocracy unless it could 
 divert this formidable proletariat (enrolled as a 
 conscript army) against foes other than itself. 
 
 The fourth and last main cause of Germany's 
 decision to wage vvar in 1914 was that her financial 
 industrial and commercial difficulties were such that 
 conquest supplemented by indemnities seemed to be 
 the best, if not the only way out of them. She 
 urgently needed capital, which her provocative 
 foreign policy made it increasingly hard for her to 
 borrow : she needed fresh sources of mineral supply, 
 .and specially coveted the coal and iron of Belgium 
 
 1 See Parliamentary Papers, Cd. 7874, and cf. Rose, Origins of the War, pp. 
 190-194.
 
 x THE CRISIS OF 1914-15 305 
 
 France and Luxemburg ; she needed new markets 
 for her goods in place of those which, in retaliation 
 for her own tariffs, were being closed to them. Said 
 a shrewd American observer in 1913: " There are 
 many indications that the German rulers may event- 
 ually come to regard war as the sole solution of the 
 life and death economic problems with which they 
 are confronted." * 
 
 62. GERMAN PREPARATIONS FOR WAR 
 
 We have just seen that four separate groups of 
 causes international colonial political economic 
 were all converging to precipitate a German war 
 upon the world. We have also noted how Austria 
 from 1913 lusted for a pretext to attack Serbia and 
 recover her lost ascendancy in the Balkans. We 
 know, too, that Turkey and Bulgaria both smarted 
 under the humiliations and losses of their recent 
 overthrow, and ardently desired recovery and re- 
 venge. In all these states of Central and Southern 
 Europe the war-fever burned high. It was Germany, 
 however, whose dominant will to fight determined 
 the issue ; it was her careful calculations that 
 decided that the summer of 1914 would be the time 
 to strike ; it was her elaborate and comprehensive 
 preparations that made victory (barring accidents) 
 secure. The German preparations for the pro- 
 
 1 Moreton Fullerton, Problems of Poiver, p. 225. 
 
 X
 
 306 EUROPEAN HISTORY x 
 
 jected war of 1914 may be classified under four 
 heads, viz. : (i) diplomatic ; (2) military and naval; 
 (3) financial; and (4) moral and intellectual, if 
 those last terms can appropriately be applied to 
 measures that were always immoral and generally 
 unintelligent. 
 
 I. Germany's diplomatic preparations for the War 
 of 1914 were markedly less complete and successful 
 than had been Bismarck's preparations for the wars 
 of 1864, 1866, and 1870. The military clique who 
 were organising the campaign seem to have been so 
 confident in the ability of their vast and well-equipped 
 armies to overcome all conceivable resistance that 
 they were comparatively indifferent as to who were 
 allies and who enemies. Not even was a serious 
 effort made to ensure the support of Italy, the third 
 member of the Triple Alliance itself. Turkey 
 Bulgaria and Rumania were left to decide their 
 course of action after the outbreak of hostilities. If 
 any really careful cultivation took place it was applied 
 to Switzerland and Belgium. The Kaiser visited 
 Switzerland in the autumn of 1912 and made himself 
 exceptionally amiable to the rulers of the Republic 
 whose territories covered the southern extremity of 
 the fortress-barrier of France. The King of the 
 Belgians was invited to Berlin in the autumn of 1913, 
 and every effort was made to impress him with the 
 irresistible might of Germany, and to make him feel 
 the folly of trying to thwart the German will. He
 
 x THE CRISIS OF 1914-15 307 
 
 was treated to some most indiscreet confidences, as 
 though he were already a secure ally of the Kaiser. 
 Said Moltke, the Chief of the General Staff, to him : 
 " This time we must settle the business [with France] 
 once for all, and Your Majesty can have no idea 
 of the irresistible enthusiasm which on that day will 
 sweep over the whole German people." l It was, 
 however, not to neutral countries like Switzerland 
 and' Belgium that Germany's main activities were 
 directed ; but to the countries of her prospective 
 enemies to Russia, France, Great Britain, Ireland, 
 Egypt, India, South Africa. The story of German 
 treachery and intrigue, of German guile and 
 corruption, which is being pieced together from 
 evidence coming from these and other lands is one 
 of the most amazing records of diabolical villainy 
 and ingenuity that human history has to show. But 
 it is a story as yet incomplete ; and to give even 
 such details as are now known would lead us too 
 far afield. 
 
 II. Military and naval preparation formed the 
 foundation of Germany's hope of decisive victory. 
 Her design was to fall suddenly and without warning 
 upon an unsuspecting and unready quarry, and to 
 overwhelm it speedily by mere mass of men and 
 material. An Army Act of 1913 provided that the 
 peace strength of the forces of the empire should 
 be raised to 870,000 (from 700,000) and its war 
 
 1 See also Headlam, England, Germany, and Europe, p. 13.
 
 308 EUROPEAN HISTORY x 
 
 strength to 5,500,000 (from about 5,000,000). 
 Austria simultaneously voted an extraordinary 
 ^28,000,000 to be expended on her army during 
 the first six months of 1914. The manufacture and 
 accumulation of war material kept pace with the 
 increase in the numbers of men. One munition 
 firm alone, the famous Krupp's of Essen, raised its 
 staff of workmen from 60,000 to 124,000 during 
 the two years 1911-13. With great secrecy were 
 made and stored up new and unprecedentedly power- 
 ful guns, such as would convert the most mighty 
 fortresses into deathtraps for their defenders. The 
 construction of dreadnoughts and submarines was 
 pushed forward under the inflated German Navy 
 Act of 1912. For the first time 1 5-inch guns 
 were put on the new battleships. The widening 
 and deepening of the Kiel Canal was hurried 
 on, so that by the middle of 1914 the largest 
 war vessels could pass at will and in security back- 
 wards and forwards between the North Sea and 
 the Baltic. Careful arrangements were made by 
 means of secret German agents throughout the 
 maritime countries of the world (including England 
 Scotland and Ireland) for the provisioning and 
 equipping of German cruisers and undersea- 
 boats in time of war. Large stores of food 
 and raw material were laid up, in view of 
 probable interruption of supplies in the latter part 
 of 1914.
 
 x THE CRISIS OF 1914-15 309 
 
 III. The financial measures of the German 
 Empire in 1913 gave the clearest of all possible 
 indications of the Government's expectation of 
 immediate war. In addition to the normal 
 42,000,000 required by the army, and the 
 22,000,000 demanded by the abnormal Navy Act 
 of 1912, a special levy on capital, calculated to 
 produce 52,000,000, was decreed for the spring 
 of 1914 this extra, unprecedented, and not repeat- 
 able exaction to be expended on permanent works 
 fortifications barracks and equipment. There can 
 be little doubt that when this levy was announced 
 the Prussian military party, which had now secured 
 control of the Kaiser and established ascendancy 
 over the civilian element in the administration, 
 had exactly fixed the late summer of 1914 as 
 the date for the bloody adventure the date by 
 which the loan would be collected, the army at its 
 maximum, the navy at its strongest, the Kiel 
 Canal completed, the harvest gathered, the mighty 
 armaments prepared, all things ready ; the date by 
 which none^ of the slow-moving precautions of 
 the menaced Powers would have matured. The 
 belligerent intentions of the Government were not 
 wholly veiled from the people. One careful 
 observer has placed it on record that in the 
 spring of 1914 "war was filling the thoughts of 
 private citizens of the Central Powers," and that 
 in particular the levy on capital had given rise to
 
 3 io EUROPEAN HISTORY x 
 
 the opinion that " war will come either this year or 
 not at all." l 
 
 IV. The training of public opinion was, in fact, 
 the . last and most remarkable means by which 
 Germany prepared for her projected act of treason 
 against the Commonwealth of Europe. The prin- 
 ciples of her procedure are laid down in that Army 
 Memorandum of March 19, 1913, from which 
 already several quotations have been made : " We 
 must allow the idea to sink into the minds of 
 our people that our armaments are an answer to 
 the armaments and policy of the French. We must 
 accustom them to think that an offensive war on 
 our part is a necessity, in order to combat the pro- 
 vocations of our adversaries." In accordance with 
 these principles, the servile press, supplied with heady 
 materials by the Pan-German propagandists, began to 
 devote its energies to inciting the war-fever in the 
 German proletariat ; to rousing their fear of the 
 Slav, to stirring their hate of the British, to deepen- 
 ing their contempt for the French, above all to 
 exalting their conceit of themselves. ^ War was 
 eulogised as " the sublimest and most sacred expres- 
 sion of human action " ; the German destiny to 
 dominate the world was declared ; the superiority 
 of German Kultur to all others asserted ; the 
 
 1 New Europe, vol. ii. p. 247. See also accumulated evidence given in Le 
 Mensonge du j aout 1914, published by Payot of Paris. 
 
 2 Cd. 7860, p. 131.
 
 x THE CRISIS OF 1914-15 311 
 
 invincible might and universal right of the Holy 
 German Nation proclaimed. Never before, outside 
 Bedlam, had there been such a chorus of lyrical 
 lunacy ; never so mad an outburst of criminal 
 megalomania. 1 
 
 63. THE RESPONSE OF THE ENTENTE POWERS 
 
 The Entente Powers did not take the Teutonic 
 menace seriously enough. The very excesses of its 
 pretensions, the profundities of its absurdities, the 
 magnitude of its blasphemous wickedness, blinded 
 them to the appalling dangers whtch it portended. 
 It was difficult to believe that a civilised state in the 
 twentieth century should make claims so ridiculous, 
 profess doctrines so immoral, contemplate actions so 
 atrocious. Nevertheless, there were in all countries 
 a few clear-sighted publicists who perceived the 
 realities of the situation and tried to rouse their 
 fellows to a consciousness of the imminent peril. In 
 England, for example, Lord Roberts, with noble 
 persistence and amid a storm of calumny and ridicule 
 from politicians and press, warned Britain that 
 against even her Germany was preparing war, and 
 that, regardless of justice or humanity, " Germany 
 would strike when Germany's hour had struck." 
 
 1 Dr. Nippold's Deutsche CAauvinismus (Berlin, 1913), gives no damnatory 
 extracts selected from " thousands of speeches and articles of a similar tenor." 
 This ante-bellum apocalypse may be compared with its post-bellum counterpart 
 revealed in Bang's Hurrah and Hallelujah !
 
 312 EUROPEAN HISTORY x 
 
 Professor J. A. Cramb, who as a pupil of Treitschke 
 knew the workings of the Pan-Teutonic mind, in a 
 series of notable lectures on Germany and England, 
 delivered in 1913, informed all such as were 
 prepared to hear what the purposes of the robber- 
 empire were. M. Paul Vergnet did the same for his 
 own country in France in Danger, and he was rein- 
 forced by M. Andr6 Cheradame, who in a succession 
 of books and articles made clear the meaning of the 
 Austro-German Drang nach Osten. From America 
 came the monitory revelations of Mr. R. C. Usher's 
 Pan -Germanism (1913), and the deliberate and 
 reasoned conclusion of Mr. Moreton Fullerton's 
 Problems of Power (1913), that " Germany constitutes 
 a danger to peace " ; while the veteran and far-sighted 
 Admiral Mahan added his weighty warning in the 
 words : " When Germany sets out to build a navy, 
 she is building that navy with a view to victory, not 
 to defeat, and the victory desired is over the British 
 navy. No German thinks of the German navy as 
 existing for any other purpose, and any Englishman 
 who cultivates doubt on the subject is merely 
 shutting his eyes to the obvious truth." 
 
 In spite, however, of the evidence of facts and 
 the admonitions of friends it was precisely to this 
 "obvious truth" that the majority of Britons, and 
 the whole body of their responsible rulers, shut their 
 eyes. They persuaded themselves that friction with 
 Germany was merely temporary, and due to specific
 
 x THE CRISIS OF 1914-15 313 
 
 removable causes ; they tried to conciliate Pan- 
 Germanism by. making concessions over such matters 
 as the Bagdad Railway ; they offered several small 
 saucers of milk to the hungry tiger. So far were 
 they from increasing the Army that they actually 
 reduced it, and left it inadequately supplied with 
 artillery, machine-guns, aircraft, and other essential 
 materials. When Germany made her great spurt 
 in ship construction they proposed to her a joint 
 " naval holiday," and only when she had declined 
 the guileless offer did they (amid a chorus of pro- 
 test from their usual supporters) make the irre- 
 ducible minimum of additions to the British fleet. 
 France, with her bitter memory of German invasion 
 and with her vulnerable land-frontier, was not so 
 impervious to the sense of danger as was Britain. 
 Her precautionary measures were less incomplete. 
 As a reply to the prodigious increase in the German 
 army made by the Act of May 1913, France in July 
 of the same year lowered the age of military service 
 from twenty-one to twenty, and extended the "dura- 
 tion of the service from two to three years. Russia 
 simultaneously raised the term of service throughout 
 her empire from three to three-and-a-quarter years, 
 and made efforts to improve her frontier defences. 
 
 In none of the Entente countries, however, were 
 defensive measures carried through with one tithe 
 of the energy and success with which offensive 
 measures were completed by the Central empires.
 
 3H EUROPEAN HISTORY x 
 
 This is to some extent explicable by the fact that 
 it is much easier to conspire to perform a definite 
 act at a prearranged time than it is to provide a 
 general safeguard against suspected but unknown 
 dangers. But the main causes of Entente lethargy 
 were, first, that in each country a powerful group of 
 pacificists and Germanophiles offered strenuous op- 
 position to any and every increase of armaments ; 
 secondly, that each of the three countries was 
 passing through a crisis in domestic politics which 
 gravely distracted its attention from the vital problem 
 of national security. " When the full secret history 
 of the present war comes to be written, it will be 
 found that more than one of the civil disturbances 
 that have taken place have been deliberately fostered 
 by German gold." Such are the words of Lord 
 Robert Cecil, Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 
 uttered in a speech delivered at Croydon on 
 September 9, 1915. Certain it is that with singular 
 simultaneity serious internal upheavals threatened 
 revolution or civil war in Russia, France, and even 
 the usually constitutional and peaceful Britain. In 
 Russia industrial troubles of the most aggravated 
 and implacable type culminated in July 1914 in the 
 proclamation of a general strike ; barricades were 
 actually being thrown up in Petrograd, and street 
 fighting was about to begin, when the diplomatic 
 crisis which precipitated the war supervened. In 
 France an embittered political conflict broke out as
 
 x THE CRISIS OF 1914-15 315 
 
 the result of the nauseous Caillaux scandal ; dis- 
 closures made in the Chambers (July 13, 1914) 
 concerning the flagrant unreadiness of the French 
 army for service led to strong suspicions and violent 
 allegations of treachery ; syndicalist opposition to 
 the new Army Act and to the authority of the State 
 generally portended a domestic crisis of the first 
 magnitude. As to Britain : first, the controversy 
 respecting the government of Ireland had reached 
 an impasse, and passions had been roused to so high 
 a pitch that German agents sent to Dublin to survey 
 the situation reported to the German Embassy in 
 London that civil war was certain, and that it would 
 prevent Britain for some time from taking part in 
 Continental affairs ; secondly, labour conflicts, which 
 for several years had been growing in gravity, were 
 working up towards such a combined strike of 
 railwaymen miners and transport operatives as 
 seemed likely to paralyse the community ; thirdly, 
 the female suffragists were adding their far from 
 negligible contribution to the prevailing lawlessness 
 and crime. The outlook in the early months of 
 1914 was indeed dark for the Entente Powers. It 
 therefore appeared to be uniquely favourable to the 
 success of the long-planned and assiduously-prepared 
 German attack. 1 
 
 1 The conditions laid down by Bernhardi in 1911 seemed to be in existence 
 in the middle of 1914 : 
 
 "When hostile states are weakened or hampered by affairs at home and 
 abroad, but its own warlike strength shows elements of superiority, it is im-
 
 316 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 64. THE SERAJEVO PRETEXT 
 
 Now that we know though even yet not fully 
 what Germany was planning and doing in the 
 course of the two years July 1912 to July 1914, it 
 is curious to compare the facts with the assurances 
 by means of which the political leaders of the 
 Entente nations soothed themselves and their 
 followers. In France and Russia there was, indeed, 
 some, though still inadequate, appreciation of 
 reality : but in Britain all was bland insouciance. 
 " Our relations with the German Government at 
 the moment are excellent," said the Secretary for 
 Foreign Affairs on July 10, 1912. A fortnight 
 later the Prime Minister added his guarantee to the 
 same gratifying assurance : " Our relations with the 
 great German Empire are at this moment, and I 
 feel sure are likely to remain, relations of amity and 
 goodwill." When on October 25 of that year 
 Lord Roberts uttered at Manchester his solemn 
 warning respecting Germany's preparations for war, 1 
 the President of the Board of Trade rebuked him 
 and said that " he would tender his apologies to 
 Germany for Lord Roberts' unjustifiable words 
 towards a friendly power." In 1913 the Cobden 
 
 perative to use the favourable circumstances to promote its own political aims. 
 The danger of war may be faced the more readily if there is good prospect that 
 great results may be obtained with comparatively small sacrifices." 
 1 Lord Roberts' Message to the Nation, Murray, 6d.
 
 x THE CRISIS OF 1914-15 317 
 
 Club issued a pamphlet entitled "The German Panic," 1 
 to which Lord Loreburn (till 1912 Lord Chancellor) 
 contributed a preface which concluded with the 
 prophetic dictum : " Time will show that Germans 
 have no aggressive designs against us, nor we against 
 them ; and then foolish people will cease to talk 
 of a future war between us which will never take 
 place." The Postmaster - General on January 15, 
 1914, comforted the people with the message : "At 
 this moment, happily, we are at amity with all the 
 world ; with Germany especially have our relations 
 been vastly improved. We live at peace and good- 
 will with the Great Empire across the North Sea." 
 So late as May 19, 1914, the President of the Board 
 of Education, speaking at the Guild-hall, said : 
 " In my lifetime the relations with Germany were 
 never more cordial than they are to-day." 
 
 It was precisely at the time when the President 
 of the Board of Education was laying this flattering 
 
 1 This pamphlet well repays reading at the present time in the light of 
 recent events. It affords a priceless example of the disastrous errors into which 
 the idealogue falls when he meddles with practical affairs. 
 
 2 Only after the outbreak of the War was there, so far as I am, aware, any 
 ministerial confession of uneasiness. Mr. Winston Churchill, First Lord of 
 the Admiralty, speaking at Liverpool on September 21, 1914, said : "We have 
 been made the subject in the last eight or nine years, just in the same way as 
 France was before 1870, and Austria before 1866, and Denmark before 1864, of 
 careful deliberate scientific military reconnaissance. Well, we knew all about 
 it." Similarly, Lord Haldane, referring to*he period when he was Minister for 
 War, made on November 17, 1915, the confession : "I was painfully conscious 
 that there was at least a chance of a terrible war, and I did all that in me lay 
 to bring home that information not where it would simply lead to mischief, but 
 to the minds of my colleagues and to those with whom I was working."
 
 3 i8 EUROPEAN HISTORY x 
 
 unction upon the souls of his auditors that the 
 German preparations for war were reaching com- 
 pletion, and that the first steps were being taken 
 to carry out the prearranged programme. In the 
 following enumeration the dates are the significant 
 things. In May 1914 German reservists were called 
 up from the Far East ; in June from Natal. 1 In 
 the same month also the German War OfHce prepared 
 for " exceptionally grand manoeuvres," involving the 
 mobilisation of 500,000 men, to take place in August 
 on the French frontier. It further began to provide 
 beds and hospital stores on an extensive scale. 2 On 
 June 14 orders were issued from Berlin to cruisers 
 overseas informing them of the means by which they 
 could procure supplies of coal in the event of war. 3 
 On June 15 contracts were entered into with 
 America for coaling cruisers at sea, in certain 
 specified localities, during the ensuing August and 
 September. 4 Not yet had the Serajevo crime been 
 committed, nor was any other pretext for war in 
 sight. After the murder of the Archduke on June 
 28, however, the warlike activities of Germany 
 redoubled in energy though still carried out in pro- 
 found secrecy, and beneath an ostentatious garb of 
 peacefulness. Throughout July bills on London were 
 drawn by German merchants for sums far in excess 
 
 * if 
 
 1 Professor H. M. Gwatkin in Cambridge Review, October 25, 1916. 
 
 2 H. W. Wilson in Nineteenth Century, June 1917. 
 
 3 Rose, The Origins of the War, p. 143. 
 
 4 Gwatkin, op. cit.
 
 x THE CRISIS OF 1914-15 319 
 
 of trade, such bills falling due after August i ; on 
 July 13 the Stock Exchange was puzzled by heavy 
 selling of Canadian-Pacific Railway shares in Berlin ; 
 and surprise was converted into " great commotion," 
 as Sir Edward Holden tells us, when, on July 18, 
 it became known that the Dresdner Bank was 
 disposing of its securities and advising its clients to 
 do the same. 1 On the same date (viz. July 15, 
 1914) the German ambassador at Constantinople, 
 Baron von Wangenheim, confided to his Italian 
 colleague the important information that Austria was 
 about to present to Serbia a Note so worded as to 
 render war inevitable. 2 The Note, as all the world 
 knows, was presented to Serbia on July 23, accom- 
 panied by an ultimation demanding unconditional 
 acceptance within forty- eight hours. The intention 
 of the Note, " to render war inevitable," was patent 
 on its face. 3 Sir Edward Grey rightly remarked to 
 the Austrian ambassador, who laid a copy before 
 him, that he had " never before seen one state 
 address to another independent state a document of 
 so formidable a character." In vain did Serbia offer 
 acceptance of all the main terms, and agree to leave 
 the question of the acceptance of the rest (which 
 virtually made Serbia a vassal of Austria-Hungary) 
 
 1 Sir Edward Holden, Chairman of the London City and Midland Bank, at 
 Cannon Street Hotel, January 29, 1915. 
 
 2 E. W. Hallifax in Hibbert Journal, April 1916, p. 497. 
 
 3 See British Diplomatic Correspondence, Cd. 7860, especially telegrams given 
 PP- H-IS-
 
 320 EUROPEAN HISTORY x 
 
 to the decision of the Hague Tribunal. In vain did 
 Russia plead for an extension of the time limit, and 
 for a softening of the severity of the Austrian 
 demands. In vain did Sir Edward Grey urge the 
 reference of the dispute to a European tribunal. 
 Austria declared war against Serbia on July 28. 
 The Central Empires were indeed out for war ; 
 Germany in particular showed a fixed determination 
 that nothing should render her matured preparations 
 null and void. Every move that promised peace 
 was countered by an insuperable German obstruc- 
 tion. 1 On July 31 before actual hostilities had 
 commenced, when even Austria seemed to pause on 
 the verge of the abyss, and when hopes of a pacific 
 solution of the crisis were renewed by the opening 
 of direct communications respecting Serbia between 
 Vienna and Petrograd Germany, who alone blocked 
 the path to peace, signified unmistakably her will to 
 fight by a cipher message (intended to be secret) 
 sent by wireless telegraphy to the great liner 
 Kronprinzessin Cecilie, then in mid-Atlantic : " War 
 has broken out wi^h England France and Russia. 
 Return to New York." The message was a lie. 
 War had not broken out on July 31 with any one 
 of the three Powers. Nor need it have broken out 
 
 1 The writer of that notable book Le Mensonge du j aout 1914 has collected 
 masses of evidence to show that German mobilisation actually began on July 21, 
 1914, and that on August I before the French mobilisation had commenced 
 the first line German armies were fully ready for war. 
 
 2 Gwatkin, op. cit.
 
 x THE CRISIS OF 1914-15 321 
 
 at all if Germany had desired peace.' She did not, 
 however, desire peace, and accordingly she forced 
 war upon, first, Russia (August i), secondly, France 
 (August 3), thirdly, Great Britain (August 4). 1 
 
 65. THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 
 
 Aristotle has remarked that political crises spring 
 apparently from trivial incidents, but really from 
 great causes. From the international point of view 
 the Serajevo crime was a trivial incident. True, it 
 was a dastardly deed, viewed ethically, and one that 
 rightly excited the intensest horror throughout the 
 civilised world. True, also, that viewed politically 
 it was an act of supreme folly ; for the murdered 
 archduke was the best friend the Slavs had in the 
 Hapsburg Empire so good a friend, indeed, as to 
 give some plausibility to the suspicion that, though the 
 hand of the slayer was Slavonic, the source of the crime 
 
 1 The following extract from the Australian Statesman, published in Melbourne 
 and Sydney, October I, 1914, furnishes an instructive supplement to the facts 
 noted in the text. " How thoroughly the Germans prepared for this war has 
 been shown in many ways, and it is also becoming increasingly clear to what an 
 extent their business men trading or having agencies in Australia were aware 
 that this war was coming. The coal which has enabled the Emden to prey on 
 British commerce was, there is reason to believe, obtained in Brisbane and New- 
 castle months ago, and sent away to an unknown destination, whence it could be 
 used for the purpose of enabling the Emden to sink British ships. It may not 
 be without significance, too, that all of the Sydney ironmongers were cleared 
 out of small arms a little while before the outbreak of war. It is perhaps still 
 more significant, as showing how well ostensibly peaceable firms knew what 
 was coming, that many German accounts with Australia were for the first time 
 allowed to fall into arrears towards the close of the first half of this year." 
 
 Y
 
 322 EUROPEAN HISTORY x 
 
 was Magyar. But internationally the incident had no 
 significance, for even if it could have been proved 
 (as it never has been) that the Serbian Government 
 or its officials were accomplices in the assassination, 
 diplomacy had in its hands the proper means of 
 redress, and Serbia made no attempt to evade a 
 judicial enquiry. It is needless, however, to labour 
 the point ; for, as we have seen, long before the 
 Serajevo outrage took place, the war had been 
 planned by Germany for the latter half of 1914. 
 Some pretext or other would have been discovered 
 or concocted so soon as ever the Kiel Canal was 
 completed (June 1914), the harvest gathered, the 
 levy on capital collected, the coal supply for distant 
 cruisers provided, reservists called in, the money 
 market organised. Said the Hamburger Nachrichten, 
 in one of those moments of frank revelation which 
 were commoner in the early days of the conflict than 
 they are now : " That the war must some day come 
 has been present to our minds for many years, and 
 for that reason we armed ourselves, and even in the 
 year of anniversary, 1913, we made willing sacrifices 
 to increase our strength." l 
 
 But, though the Serajevo outrage was the pretext 
 rather than the cause of the war, its selection showed 
 a good deal of that clumsy and naive cleverness 
 which is the peculiar characteristic of German 
 intrigue a transparent innocence in villainy which 
 
 1 Quoted in Westminster Gazette, August n, 1915.
 
 x THE CRISIS OF 1914-15 323 
 
 suggests comparisons with the methods of the 
 primitive savage or the vicious child. The 
 Germans were confident of the ability of the 
 combined forces of the Central Empires to crush 
 France and Russia in a single autumn campaign : 
 they expected to be in Paris within three weeks of 
 the outbreak of war, Petrograd within another six, 
 and (leaving a good margin for accidents) to be back 
 triumphant in the " dear Fatherland " in time for 
 Christmas Te Deums. All that was necessary for the 
 success of their scheme was that Britain should not 
 intervene within the first few weeks of the campaign, 
 and they thought it extremely unlikely that the pacific 
 British Government (which was notoriously anxious 
 for a good understanding with Germany, and averse 
 from Continental entanglements) would at once throw 
 itself into a struggle that seemed to concern Britain 
 so little as did this sordid Balkan squabble. Hence 
 Austria, with whom Britain was on excellent terms, 
 was put forward as the protagonist in the war, and 
 every effort was made to get the British ministry to 
 accept the German view that the matter concerned 
 Austria and Serbia alone, and that Austria was but 
 undertaking to inflict punishment on a guilty and 
 dangerous neighbour for an unusually atrocious 
 crime. 
 
 The British Government, however, was not to be 
 so easily deceived. It is true that it was blind to 
 the significance of the Austro-German Drang nach
 
 324 EUROPEAN HISTORY x 
 
 Osten? and that it did not realise how prominent a 
 place the actual conquest of Serbia occupied in the 
 programme of the Central Empires. But it was fully 
 aware that, however ostentatiously Austria might strut 
 on the front of the stage, Germany was the prime mover 
 of the whole tragic business, and that the Austrian 
 threat to Serbia was in reality a German challenge to 
 Russia, an ultimatum bidding her abandon her ancient 
 claim to protect the interests of her kinsmen and 
 fellow - Christians in the Balkan Peninsula, and to 
 surrender for ever her own hope of gaining free 
 access to the Mediterranean. It perceived, more- 
 over, that the German challenge to Russia involved 
 an immediate and mortal menace to France ; because 
 the Franco-Russian Alliance was such that any attack 
 upon one of the two allied Powers would become 
 a casus belli to the other, and in any war which 
 Germany might wage against France and Russia 
 simultaneously, the full weight of her first onslaught 
 would almost certainly fall upon France. The British 
 Government felt strongly and made it quite clear 
 to the German Government that Britain could not 
 possibly stand on one side and passively watch the 
 destruction of France, or even the rape of her colonial 
 possessions. The British Government, further 
 peace-loving and unsuspicious though it was knew 
 enough of German principles, German ambitions, and 
 
 1 An Anglo-German treaty making large concessions to Germany in the 
 matter of the Bagdad Railway was ready for signature when the war broke out.
 
 x THE CRISIS OF 1914-15 325 
 
 German methods to be acutely conscious that if Britain 
 were to hold aloof from this conflict, as France had 
 held aloof from the Austro-Prussian conflict of 1866, 
 her own Sedan would inevitably come in a very few 
 years. A sure and sound instinct warned Britain 
 that she had arrived, suddenly and unexpectedly, but 
 quite unmistakably, at the crisis of her fate and that 
 if she failed to aid her friends against the dastardly 
 assailant, her own doom would be and would justly 
 be sealed. 
 
 But even beyond the question of the destiny of the 
 Empire, the British Ministry recognised that the 
 future of the Commonwealth of Europe was at stake. 
 Sir Edward Grey, to his everlasting honour and in 
 splendid vindication of British policy, refused to 
 allow for a moment that the fate of even the smallest 
 and least reputable of European states was a matter 
 of indifference to Europe as a whole. He repudiated 
 the German contention that the penal subjugation of 
 Serbia was a matter that concerned Austria alone, 
 and he demanded that a conference of all the Powers, 
 or of representative Powers, should be called to 
 adjudicate the points at issue. He took from the 
 first a European position, and urged the claims of 
 Continental solidarity, concert, common action, 
 judicial procedure, law, and peace. Germany, in 
 repudiating her European citizenship and the reign 
 of law, in persisting in her determination to plunge 
 the Continent into war in pursuit of her own selfish
 
 326 EUROPEAN HISTORY x 
 
 interests, in sending her ultimatum to Russia 
 and so destroying the hope of a peaceful settle- 
 ment of the Austro-Serbia dispute in doing this 
 Germany made the great betrayal of the cause of 
 civilisation, and committed the unpardonable sin 
 against humanity which (beyond even the offence 
 against Serbia, the threat to France, and the menace 
 to the British Empire) made British intervention 
 against Germany an imperative duty. On Sunday, 
 August 2, then, when the British Cabinet met to 
 consider its course of action, it ought to have 
 declared for war and ought at once to have given 
 orders for the mobilisation and despatch of its 
 expeditionary force. It did not do so, however, 
 partly because of internal differences of view, partly 
 because of uncertainty respecting the trend of parlia- 
 mentary and public opinion. If Germany had been 
 prudent she could probably have kept both Cabinet 
 and country hesitating until intervention would have 
 been too late. 1 Happily for the cause of Europe and 
 the Allies, in her over-confidence and contempt, she 
 committed the incredible folly as well as unspeakable 
 crime of invading Belgium, in spite of her solemn 
 and repeatedly reiterated pledge to maintain its 
 neutrality. At length British intelligence was roused 
 to some apprehension of the German peril. A second 
 
 1 Cf. Cheradame, Pan-German Plot, p. 161 : " If England had tarried, if she had 
 tarried only for a few days, German landings in Normandy, Brittany, and as far 
 as Bordeaux would have been effected," and in that case " English intervention 
 would have proved futile."
 
 x THE CRISIS OF 1914-15 327 
 
 opportunity of salvation was offered to the Cabinet 
 on August 4, and this time it was not rejected. 
 
 66. THE MEANING OF THE WAR 
 
 The violation of Belgian neutrality by Germany 
 on August 4 was both a crime and an act of folly. 
 It was a crime of the most brutal and blackguardly 
 order the attack of a strong power upon a weak 
 one, an assault delivered without a pretence of 
 provocation or just cause, an outrage involving the 
 flagrant violation of solemn treaty-engagements, a 
 felon blow inflicted upon a ward to whom protection 
 and security had been guaranteed. It was more 
 (and, from the German point of view, worse) than 
 a crime : it was an act of suicidal folly. It made 
 immediate British intervention practicable and in- 
 deed inevitable. Little as the people of the United 
 Kingdom study history, and scanty as is their normal 
 interest in foreign politics, it was impossible for 
 them to remain blind to the dangers of a German 
 occupation of Antwerp and Ostend, and equally 
 impossible for them to continue indifferent to the 
 doings of a power who openly flouted treaties as 
 "scraps of paper," and showed a ruthless disregard 
 both of the principles of ethics and of the universal 
 rules of the code of hononr. If the Germans had 
 not, with all their perverted learning, remained 
 ignorant alike of the lessons of history and of the
 
 328 EUROPEAN HISTORY x 
 
 fundamental facts of British psychology, they could 
 not have perpetrated so fatal a stupidity as the 
 invasion of Belgium. If they had stood on the 
 defensive in the West and had launched their first 
 grand attack against Russia (whom they professed 
 to fear) British public opinion would certainly not 
 have sanctioned any participation in the war. If, 
 as an alternative, they had pursued the plan of cam- 
 paign which they actually adopted, viz. the plan of 
 defence in the East, and offence in the West, but 
 had been content from Metz and Strasburg to attack 
 the line of French fortresses (Belfort to Verdun), 
 trusting to their superior forces and their mighty 
 siege-guns- for success, it is equally certain that 
 British opinion would not have awakened to the 
 meaning of the crisis until it was too late for British 
 intervention to have modified the issue. As it 
 happened, by some miracle of madness, they did 
 precisely that deed of darkness which was necessary 
 instantly to convert the loosely-knit Triple Entente 
 into a rigid and invincible Triple Alliance pledged 
 not to dissolve itself until the criminal aggressor 
 should be defeated and punished. 
 
 The crime perpetrated against the helpless and 
 inoffensive Belgian people, with its accompanying 
 aggravations of treachery perfidy and brutality, and 
 with its immediate sequel of sanguinary atrocity 
 unparalleled in modern times, illuminated as by 
 lightning-flash the political horizon, and made clear
 
 x THE CRISIS OF 1914-15 329 
 
 the nature and magnitude of the menace to which 
 Christian civilisation was exposed by this belated but 
 most terrible outbreak of pagan barbarism. It 
 was seen that the ogre of Prussian militarism 
 threatened with destruction everything good for 
 which Europe had been striving since the over- 
 throw of Napoleon. First, the Commonwealth of 
 Europe, the Concert of the Powers, the growing 
 sense of solidarity and habit of joint action, the 
 increasing recognition of general interests, the 
 development of international institutions such as the 
 Hague Tribunal all were seen to be doomed to 
 extinction should Germany emerge victorious from 
 the war. Secondly, international Jaw, laboriously 
 formulated by a long line of jurists from the days 
 of Grotius to our own one of the most beneficent 
 creations of modern times, and the indispensable 
 foundation of any supra-national society that may 
 ever be constructed in the future this was perceived 
 to be abrogated and utterly abolished if a single 
 criminal state could defy it with impunity ; could 
 successfully refuse arbitration, repudiate treaties, 
 violate oaths, ignore Geneva Conventions and Hague 
 Declarations ; could profitably profess a total dis- 
 regard of all considerations except such as conduced 
 to its own selfish advantage. Thirdly, the smaller 
 states of Europe such as Serbia and Montenegro, 
 Holland and Belgium, Norway and Denmark with 
 their peculiar gifts, their cherished traditions, their
 
 330 EUROPEAN HISTORY x 
 
 languages and institutions, their individual contri- 
 butions to Western civilisation : the fate of these 
 was clearly marked out as sealed, if the monstrous 
 claims of the Pan-Germans should be established, 
 if the arrogant Kultur of Deutschland should ever 
 be in a position to impose its baleful incubus upon 
 a subjugated world. Fourthly, the idea of nationality 
 which throughout the nineteenth century had in- 
 creasingly manifested itself as the vital principle of 
 the stable and organic modern state : this active 
 determinant would obviously be transmuted from a 
 principle of permanence and peace into a principle 
 of constant disaffection and unrest if Germany 
 were to strengthen her hold over Alsatians Danes 
 and Poles, if the Teuton-Magyar ascendancy were 
 to be riveted more firmly than ever upon the 
 many peoples of the Dual Monarchy, and if the 
 unholy alliance of Kaiser and Sultan were to succeed 
 in crushing beneath an overwhelming military 
 coalition the nascent Balkan nations. Fifthly, 
 democracy, with all that it implies of self-govern- 
 ment, freedom from external compulsion, peaceful 
 evolution, and civic progress democracy itself 
 was seen to have come at last to death-grips with 
 its ancient enemy, militarism ; and the military 
 defeat of Germany was recognised to be the essential 
 preliminary to the emancipation of mankind from 
 the menace of ambitious emperors and Junker 
 megalomaniacs. Sixthly, the future development of
 
 x THE CRISIS OF 1914-15 331 
 
 all the Entente Powers, together with that of every 
 neutral state, was perceived to be in jeopardy should 
 Germany achieve her purpose of overthrowing the 
 balance of power and of establishing in its place her 
 own world-dominion ; for with Germany dominant 
 from Berlin to Bagdad, the British Empire in Africa 
 and Asia must melt away, Russia must be placed 
 in economic servitude to the rulers of the Dardanelles, 
 France must be reduced to impotence, and every 
 neutral state left to the mercy of invincible Teutonic 
 tyranny. Finally, behind all material interests, pro- 
 found moral issues were felt to be at stake. Just 
 as Burke realised that the revolutionary war at the 
 close of the eighteenth century was essentially a 
 struggle against an " armed doctrine," so did the 
 peoples of Europe instinctively recognise that their 
 supreme endeavour must be to purge the Continent 
 from the virus of the Teutonic theory of the State 
 from that diabolical perversion of all sound political 
 thinking which proclaims that the State is power, 
 that it is exempt from all moral restraints, that war 
 is its normal activity, and that war must be waged 
 with a ferocity that knows no mitigation of com- 
 passion. 
 
 Thus did the war of 1914 come as the natural 
 we must not, however, say inevitable culmination of 
 the two generations of European development which 
 succeeded the disappointments and disillusionments 
 of 1848-52. The failure of the democratic and
 
 332 EUROPEAN HISTORY x 
 
 national movements in Germany and Austria-Hungary 
 had committed the destinies of Central Europe into 
 the hands of hopelessly reactionary forces. Round 
 the despotisms of the two Kaisers gathered all the 
 influences that conflicted with freedom self-govern- 
 ment and progress. In 1914 these influences made 
 their bid for complete and final victory. Never before 
 had so great an issue been joined ; perhaps never again 
 will a war be waged in which so much is at stake. 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY TO LECTURE X 
 
 ALLEN, J. W. Germany and Europe. 
 
 ARCHER, W. The Thirteen Days (July 23 to August 4, 1914). 
 
 BARKER, E., AND OTHERS. Why We are at War. 
 
 BEYENS, BARON. L'Allemagne avant la Guerre. 
 
 Collected Documents relating to the European War (Cd. 7860). 
 
 HEADLAM, J. W. The History of the Twelve Days (July 24 to August 
 
 4, 1914). 
 
 NAMJER, L. B. Germany and Eastern Europe. 
 ROSE, J. H. The Origins of the War. 
 SETON- WATSON, R. W., AND OTHERS. The War and Democracy.
 
 EPILOGUE 
 67. THE OPENING OF THE CONFLICT 
 
 THE course of events has now been traced down to 
 the outbreak of the German War in August 1914. 
 Concerning the war itself little can here be said ; 
 for at the time of writing the issue still remains 
 in doubt, and many of the incidents of even the early 
 part of the conflict are veiled in obscurity. This 
 much, however, is clear : the German conspiracy in 
 its original form was not successful. Unexpectedly 
 it failed of the speedy triumph which its organisers 
 had regarded as secure. The hidden cause of the 
 failure has yet to be revealed. We can, it is true, 
 discern some of the factors which contributed to the 
 result : Leman's splendid defence of Liege ; the 
 prompt entry of Britain, the magnificent quality 
 of her small expeditionary force, the war -readiness 
 of her fleet ; the heroism and fine fighting fury of 
 the French ; the vigour of the Serbian resistance to 
 Austria ; the unanticipated rapidity of the Russian 
 mobilisation, and the embarrassing Russian in- 
 
 333
 
 334 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 vasion of East Prussia. But beyond these objective 
 obstacles to victory there was something else. There 
 was some inexplicable collapse on the German side ; 
 some break - down in the elaborate organisation ; 
 some incompetence of leadership on the part of the 
 Grand General Staff ; some failure of morale 
 among the Teutonic hordes ; some paralysing con- 
 sciousness of crime in those to whom honour was 
 not wholly dead ; something, whatever it may have 
 been, which at the critical moment shattered the 
 German scheme. The mystery of the Marne is 
 already the theme of keen controversy : it is probable 
 that the present generation will search in vain for its 
 complete unravelment. 
 
 Great and (from the military point of view) 
 disgraceful, however, as was the German failure to 
 
 o . 
 
 capture Paris in September 1914 a failure which 
 dislocated the whole Prussian programme it must 
 be recognised that the Grand General Staff made 
 a remarkable recovery from its disappointment and 
 disorganisation, and that with infinite resource and 
 resolution it formulated fresh plans and carried them 
 through with a formidable measure of success. 
 During the autumn of 1914 the German hold over 
 Belgium and the industrial North-East of France 
 was firmly established ; in 1915 Poland Lithuania 
 and the Baltic Provinces of Russia were overrun and 
 occupied; in 1916 most serious of all Serbia 
 and the Wallachian half of Rumania were brought
 
 EPILOGUE 335 
 
 under the control of the Central Empires. It is 
 true that in no single one of these cases was con- 
 quest quite so complete as it was hoped it would 
 be ; 1 nevertheless it was conquest on a scale so 
 considerable as to provide, if it could be retained, 
 a broad and adequate basis for Germany's future 
 world-dominion. It removed from the path of 
 German aggrandisement France Belgium Russia 
 Serbia Montenegro and Rumania, either by crippling 
 their resources, limiting their frontiers, or totally 
 destroying their independence ; it established the 
 German Empire in undisputed control over her 
 subject-allies Austria-Hungary Bulgaria and Turkey : 
 above all it opened the Teutonic road to the East 
 and provided a broad and unimpeded way by which 
 Deutschtum could penetrate and dominate Anatolia 
 Syria and Persia, and could prepare for the next 
 steps in the Pan-German advance, viz. the de- 
 struction of the British power in Egypt and in India. 
 After the successful Rumanian campaign of the 
 autumn of 1916 it became the supreme purpose of 
 the Government of Berlin to obtain a " German 
 peace " which, at whatever temporary sacrifice in 
 Belgium France Poland and Lithuania, should 
 secure the one vitally important matter, the German 
 ascendancy in the Near East. If this should be 
 
 1 In 1914 Ypres Calais and Boulogne eluded the German grasp; in 1915 
 the tide of victory stopped short of Riga ; in 1916 the Serbian and Rumanian 
 armies escaped annihilation.
 
 336 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 attained, Germany could rightly regard herself as 
 victorious, in spite of all her reverses in other fields, all 
 her miscalculations, all her sacrifices, all her colossal 
 and sanguinary losses. She would gain a base from 
 which every surrender could speedily be recovered, 
 every expenditure recouped, every loss made good. 
 
 Surely in vain, however, is the snare set in the 
 sight of any bird ! The eyes of the allied nations 
 have been opened to the magnitude and meaning of 
 the German plot. The fact that the key to the 
 whole situation lies in the Balkan Peninsula has at 
 last, although late, become evident to the world. It 
 is recognised that the idea of the Franco-British 
 expedition to Gallipoli was an inspiration of genius, 
 and that if only the attempt to realise it had been 
 more adequately planned and executed the issue of 
 the war might have been determined long ago. It 
 is essential that the Turk shall be expelled from 
 Europe, that the German hold over Bulgaria shall 
 be relaxed, that Serbia Montenegro and Rumania 
 shall be recovered and restored, that Russia shall 
 secure a free outlet to the Mediterranean, that all 
 the nationalities of South-Eastern Europe shall be 
 emancipated. Any peace which should leave intact 
 the dominance of the Central Empires over the 
 Balkans and Asia Minor would be a certain precursor 
 of further gigantic schemes of Germanic aggression, 
 and a fruitful source of wars even more frightful 
 than the one at present raging. This much, at least,
 
 EPILOGUE 337 
 
 has become clear, as the awful struggle has developed 
 and extended itself. 
 
 More than this, however, has become clear. To 
 the historian, at any rate, the great war appears to 
 be the culmination of all preceding events. To him 
 it seems as though all the problems of all the ages 
 had once more been opened and brought up for 
 final settlement. Russia's struggle to secure an 
 uninterrupted passage for her grainships through the 
 Dardanelles carries him back through memories of 
 countless conflicts of Ottomans Byzantines and 
 Hellenes to those remote days when, on precisely 
 the same issue, Hector and Achilles strove in heroic 
 combat 
 
 " Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy." 
 
 The clash of Turk and Briton in Syria and Mesopo- 
 tamia, round Gaza and Bagdad and amid many other 
 scenes famous in Scripture and romance, stands forth 
 as but the latest manifestation of that immemorial 
 antagonism between Europe and Asia, Occident and 
 Orient, which is the very central thread of history. 
 The swaying line of the eastern front where Russian 
 and German wrestle with one another in mortal 
 agony appears to be no other than the determination 
 of that implacable rivalry in which Slav and Teuton 
 have contended without break from prehistoric 
 times for the rich plains watered by the Oder and 
 the Vistula. Similarly the fierce incessant tumult 
 
 z
 
 338 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 in the Western theatre of war comes but as the 
 climax of that clamour for the revision of the Treaty 
 of Verdun, and the repartition of the heritage of 
 Charlemagne, which has embroiled France and 
 Germany for a thousand years. But it is as the 
 culmination of the great movements of the nine- 
 teenth century that the war especially impresses 
 itself upon his perception. 
 
 68. THE PROBLEM OF THE CONCERT OF 
 EUROPE 
 
 As we have already remarked, the war was 
 primarily caused by the determination of a single 
 state to establish its ascendancy over the others, to 
 destroy the Concert of Europe, to upset the Balance 
 of Power. Now the dominant characteristic of the 
 nineteenth century as was pointed out at length 
 in the Introduction to this course of Lectures 
 was precisely the growing consciousness of unity 
 among first the governments and secondly the 
 peoples of the Continent. The solidarity of Europe 
 which was strikingly manifested in the Holy 
 Alliance of the beginning of the period, was displayed 
 in a still more impressive manner by the second 
 Hague Conference held towards the end of the 
 period ( 1 907). The building of the Palace of Peace 
 in the Scheveningen Avenue at The Hague (com- 
 pleted 1913), to be the seat of a permanent court of
 
 EPILOGUE 339 
 
 arbitration and a base for the authoritative adminis- 
 tration of international law, gave rise to the hope 
 that a pacific commonwealth of peoples was gradually 
 coming into existence. But the very foundation of 
 that system of interpolitical equity which the Hague 
 tribunal embodies is the principle of the independence 
 and equality of states, irrespective of their size, power, 
 culture, or mode of government. The modern Jus 
 Gentium developed largely through the labours of 
 Dutch and Swiss publicists is the charter of liberties 
 to the small Powers, the code of abnegation to the 
 great. How grave then the offence of Germany ! It 
 is the fundamental principle of the Commonwealth 
 of Europe that she repudiates ; it is the authority 
 of the whole body of public law and international 
 morality that she defies. That enfant terrible of the 
 Fatherland, Maximilien Harden, frankly proclaims : 
 " We are waging war for ourselves alone." * It is 
 because Germany has not got all the seaports she 
 desires, all the coalmines markets and colonies she 
 covets, that she plunges the world into war, without 
 a pretence that she takes into consideration the 
 interests of any nation but herself. Her actions, as 
 well as the candid avowal of Herr Harden, are but 
 the logical conclusion of that perverted theory of 
 the State by means of which Treitschke and his 
 disciples have poisoned the minds of the last two 
 generations of their fellow-countrymen. The State 
 
 1 Die Zukunft, quoted in Daily Chronicle, December 23, 1914.
 
 340 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 is an end in itself ; it is unfettered by moral restraints ; 
 it has no obligations to any but its own subjects ; its 
 subjects have no duties save such as it sanctions ; 
 its highest activity is war ; its normal relation to 
 its fellow-states is one of hostility these are the 
 diabolical dogmas of nationality-gone-mad which have 
 cut Germany off from the communion of her equals, 
 have rendered futile the labours of the Hague 
 potentiaries, have thrown Europe back into the welter 
 of the later Middle Ages. Germany, in fact, is an 
 anachronism, and her Treitschke is Macchiavelli 
 reborn out of due season. The notions which inflate 
 the mind and inflame the imagination of the Kaiser 
 are exactly those which inspired Ferdinand of 
 Aragon, Henry of England, Louis of France, and 
 Cassar Borgia some four hundred years ago. The 
 unity which the Western kingdoms attained in 
 the fifteenth century was attained and that but 
 imperfectly by Germany only in the nineteenth ; 
 and Germany is now displaying in a world to which 
 she has come as a parvenu and an alien the obsolete 
 principles, the untimely passions and the no-longer- 
 tolerable wickednesses of the period of the Re- 
 naissance. The Hohenzollern dynasty, with its cult 
 of the All - Highest War - Lord, is a monstrous 
 survival of a mediaeval autocracy ; its claim to 
 sovereignty by right divine recalls the superstitious 
 sacro-sanctities against which Marsilio of Padua 
 protested in the distant days of Lewis the Bavarian ;
 
 EPILOGUE 341 
 
 its predatory ambitions are such as were proper only 
 to the princes of the lawless age which preceded the 
 development of the modern state-system ; its methods 
 of managing overseas dominions are the false and 
 fatal methods of the " old-colonial " school of the 
 early days of exploration and settlement methods 
 of oppression and exploitation long abandoned by all 
 governments that have had experience in the adminis- 
 tration of dependencies ; its manner of diplomacy is 
 the brutal braggadocio combined with the faithless 
 intrigue of the mediaeval brigand-chief ; above all, 
 its mode of waging war marks an awful and all-but- 
 incredible return to the abominations and atrocities 
 which prevailed (especially in Germany during the 
 Thirty Years' War) before the mitigating influence of 
 Grotius and his successors had begun to place some 
 restraint upon the worst excesses of infuriated force. 
 This war against the Hohenzollerns, then, is no 
 ordinary conflict of interests. It is the struggle of 
 the twentieth century against the sixteenth ; it is the 
 life-or-death battle of the modern democracies against 
 the last of the malevolent despots ; it is the effort 
 to save from destruction the best products of the 
 progressive human activities of the past four hundred 
 years ; it is the supreme endeavour of the people of 
 goodwill to restore the Balance of Power, recon- 
 stitute the Concert of Europe, and render possible 
 the formation at no hopelessly remote date of an 
 effective Commonwealth or Federation of Nations.
 
 342 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 In such a fight no compromise is possible ; and 
 amiable pacificists or weak sentimentalists who ex- 
 press a longing for peace without victory, and re- 
 conciliation without a decision, do not recognise the 
 fact that this is a conflict between light and darkness, 
 a war such as was waged in the primal dawn, a 
 struggle which can know no truce or termination 
 until the prince of the powers of the night, with all 
 his evil host, is hurled 
 
 " with hideous ruin and combustion down 
 To bottomless perdition." 
 
 If the German conspiracy and revolt against the 
 authority of Europe should succeed, nay, if it 
 should so much as escape complete disaster, then 
 indeed would the future be black ; for an incon- 
 clusive settlement could only mean the brief post- 
 ponement to other and still more sanguinary 
 battlefields of the uncompromisable issue whether 
 in the common affairs of the Continent the lawless 
 force of Germany or the forceful law of the Concert 
 of Europe shall prevail. 1 
 
 1 The issue Germany -versus Europe was unmistakably joined in respect of 
 the question of Belgian neutrality in August 1914. As Professor J. W. Allen 
 well says : " It was a question of European credit and of international law. 
 The common interests of Europe imperatively demand adherence to inter- 
 national treaties. To allow that a state may, in pursuit of private ends, 
 suddenly renounce a treaty to which it w^s a party with neutrals, at the very 
 moment when that treaty becomes operative, would be definitely to abandon 
 the assertion of European solidarity and to accept the German view of inter- 
 national relations. International law, through which the solidarity of Europe 
 finds expression, depends on strict observance of treaties. Already we have 
 reached a position in which the deliberate and unprovoked breach of treaties is 
 a crime against Europe " (Allen, Germany and Europe, p. 103).
 
 EPILOGUE 343 
 
 69. THE PROBLEM OF NATIONALITY 
 
 The self - regarding and consequence - damning 
 nationalism of Germany, which precipitated this war 
 and has been the cause of its worst horrors, shows 
 clearly the perils of a patriotism that has become 
 a monomania, and the menace of a national principle 
 that has ceased to have respect for any claims or 
 aspirations other than its own. Intoxicated with 
 the easy victories of 1864-71, exalted by a sense 
 of invincibility, obsessed by illusions respecting the 
 superiority of her own Kultur, filled with contempt 
 for the rest of the world, Germany deliberately set 
 out to Teutonise mankind. 1 In her, amid the 
 fumings and the foamings of the Pan -Germanic 
 League, the spirit of nationality reached the limits 
 of unreason : it became an arrogant racialism, an 
 insatiable greed, a brutal militarism, an incessant 
 provocative to war. It merited all the harsh things 
 that Lord Acton ever said about it. 2 Nevertheless, 
 in spite of the excesses of German nationalism, and 
 in spite of the fact that in other countries besides 
 Germany notably in Ireland the principle of 
 nationality has been made the basis of monstrous 
 
 1 Cf. H. S. Chamberlain, KriegaufsHfit,e, No. IV. : " Although Germany is 
 victorious in Europe, that is not an end to the struggle : the inhabitants of 
 other continents are there. . . . What a glorious prospect for the future of 
 humanity to be placed under the influence of Germany ! . . . There will be 
 no more important task than to enforce the German language on the world." 
 
 2 Cf. Acton, History of Freedom and Other Essays : "On Nationality," 1862.
 
 344 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 claims and disruptive conspiracies, it is the principle 
 on which alone a stable New Europe can be established. 
 The irrational egoisms of the Alldeuttcher Bund or 
 the Sinn Fein League are not of its essence. It 
 is not necessarily a seeker after ascendancy, or an 
 enemy of the human race. It can be a spirit of co- 
 operation rather than a spirit of competition, a spirit 
 of mutual help rather than one of mutual antagonism, 
 comprehensive not exclusive. In this more amiable 
 aspect it was conceived and depicted by Mazzini, 
 its great apostle in the nineteenth century : " In 
 principle," he said, " nationality ought to be to 
 humanity that which division of labour is in a 
 workshop, viz. the recognised symbol of association ; 
 the assertion of the individuality of a human group 
 called by its geographical position, its traditions, and 
 its language, to fulfil a special function in the 
 European work of civilisation." * 
 
 If on the one hand nationalism of the Germanic 
 type means selfishness separation schism and 
 solitude, which slowly fester into envy hatred 
 malice and ultimately war ; on the other hand 
 cosmopolitanism means chaos and anarchy. There 
 are differences among the groups into which the 
 human race is divided that it is madness to attempt 
 to ignore differences of colour, physical develop- 
 
 1 I quote this passage from Lipson, Europe in the Nineteenth Century, p. 264. 
 The idea constantly recurs in the writings of Mazzini. An interesting collection 
 of the relevant paragraphs is given in Giuseppe Calabro, La Dottrina Religiose- 
 Sociale nelle Opere di Mazzini, pp. 193234.
 
 EPILOGUE 345 
 
 ment, language, religious ideas, moral standards, 
 historical traditions, economic interests. Of these 
 differences the deepest and most enduring are those 
 which sort men out into nations. 1 The nation is the 
 largest and most comprehensive group of which a 
 man can be an effective member : it is as the active 
 citizen of a national state that he can render his 
 best service to humanity. The national state is 
 the sphere within which the individual naturally seeks 
 and finds the perfection of self-realisation and the 
 fulness of life. The principle of nationality, which 
 even in the fifteenth century was strong enough to 
 dissolve the cosmopolitan Respublica Christiana of 
 the Middle Ages, became in the course of the nine- 
 teenth century so dominantly powerful that it can no 
 longer be repressed without disruptive consequences. 
 Treaties that conflict with it will have to be revised ; 
 empires whose existence is incompatible with it will 
 have to be reorganised or swept away. No second 
 settlement of Vienna is conceivable. For experience 
 has shown that it is only national states that is 
 political organisms in which the sense of community 
 is vitally and transcendently strong that can 
 successfully deal with the complex and difficult social 
 economic and moral problems that to-day face all 
 modern governments. The satisfaction of national 
 
 1 The futility of the effort to substitute class-divisions for those based on 
 nationality has been strikingly demonstrated by the impotence and disintegra- 
 tion of the cosmopolitan socialistic societies during the war.
 
 346 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 desires, the formation of a polity coterminous with 
 a people, is the indispensable preliminary to both 
 peace and progress. 
 
 The present war which significantly was en- 
 gendered through Vienna, the European head- 
 quarters of anti-nationalism is the last and most 
 determined effort of the forces opposed to the 
 national principle to set up perpetual barriers to its 
 realisation. Austria-Hungary began the war in order 
 to prevent the unification of the Southern Slavs ; 
 Germany egged her on and supported her in order 
 that she at the same time might extend her dominance 
 over Dutch Belgians Danes Swiss French Poles and 
 other neighbouring peoples ; Turkey came in in 
 order that she might retain her hold over the subject 
 Christian races of her neo-Byzantine empire ; Bulgaria 
 cast her lot on the side of the enemies of nationalism 
 in order that she might establish herself in the position 
 of " the Prussia of the Balkans." The complete 
 defeat of these allied antagonists of nationality two 
 of them composite tryannies based on the oppression 
 of subject peoples ; two of them aggressive national 
 states bent on the subordination of their neighbours 
 their complete defeat is necessary in order that a 
 New Europe may be constructed wherein tranquillity 
 and pacific progress may be possible. Germany 
 must be brought to such a frame of mind or 
 body that she will restore Alsace-Lorraine to the 
 French, Schleswig to the Danes, Posen to the
 
 EPILOGUE 347 
 
 Poles. In Austria-Hungary the Teuton - Magyar 
 ascendancy must be brought to an end ; the Czechs 
 of Bohemia must attain at least internal autonomy 
 and external equality ; Poles Rumans Serbs 
 Ruthenes Croats must be allowed to reunite them- 
 selves to their respective kinsmen beyond the borders 
 of the Dual Monarchy. The Turk must be cleared 
 from Europe ; he must be condemned to lose -Arabia 
 and compelled with it to surrender his usurped head- 
 ship of the Mohammedan world ; Armenia, the scene 
 of his worst barbarities, must be delivered from his 
 yoke and placed under Russian protection ; Anatolia, 
 the natural home of the Asiatic nomad, must remain 
 to him as the sole relic of his mediaeval conquests ; 
 Bulgaria must be reduced to her place of due equality 
 among the Balkan powers. Only by means of some 
 such radical reconstruction of Europe on a national 
 basis can stability and security be looked for. 
 
 70. THE PROBLEM OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 As the great war drags on in its slow terrific 
 course it becomes increasingly evident that it is a 
 struggle not only between imperialism and nation- 
 ality, between dominion based on conquest and 
 polity developing from natural affinities, between 
 states compounded by force and states springing 
 organically from the soil of freedom ; but also a 
 struggle between democracy and autocracy. This
 
 34 8 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 aspect was obscured at first by the fact that Russia, 
 one of the Entente Powers, was apparently the most 
 autocratic of all the combatants engaged. Even at 
 first, however, this appearance did not correspond 
 with reality, and acute observers from the beginning 
 proclaimed the fundamental democracy of Russia, 
 in spite of its Tzardom and its bureaucracy. Said 
 Professor Allen : " I see a great deal of democracy in 
 Russia ; I do not see much of it in England. . . . 
 Russia is probably the -most democratic of all 
 European countries. ... At this moment it is not 
 so much against Germany as against Germanism that 
 Russia is fighting ; against Germanism not only in 
 Europe, but in herself. For Russia this is a war of 
 liberation a war to set free the great soul of Russia." 1 
 Similarly, the very theme of M. Wesselitsky's 
 notable book Russia and Democracy is that the 
 essential genius of the Slavonic folk is democratic, 
 and that all the gravest troubles in Muscovy during 
 the past couple of hundred years have been due to 
 the " German canker " of autocracy introduced by 
 the successors of Peter the Great. " The sharp 
 medicine of war," he concludes, " is rapidly and 
 thoroughly curing Russia of the German virus which 
 for two centuries has poisoned the organism of 
 that Empire. The Russian democracy is at last 
 coming to its own again." The fact which even 
 
 1 J. W. Allen, Germany and Europe (1914), pp. 111-112. 
 2 Wesselitsky, Russia and Democracy (1915), p. 86.
 
 EPILOGUE 349 
 
 in 1914-15 was evident to those who knew (though 
 not evident to the multitude) is now, owing to 
 the Revolution of March 1917, made patent to 
 the world. Russia stands revealed as the country 
 beyond all others wherein, through countless vicissi- 
 tudes of central administration, have ^remained un- 
 changed from time immemorial the spirit of local 
 self-government and the organisation of the primi- 
 tive autonomous village - community. Russia thus 
 obviously falls into line with Britain France and 
 Belgium as a champion of the democratic principle 
 against the attack of the panoplied despots. The 
 entry of the United States of America into the 
 conflict, on the side of the Allies, further emphasises 
 the growing prominence of the democratic issue. 
 President Wilson, indeed, in the great speech to 
 Congress in which he proclaimed to the world his 
 reasons for casting off neutrality and taking up arms, 
 laid prime stress upon the fact that at last had 
 been joined the crucial struggle between militarist 
 monarchs and industrial peoples a struggle which 
 the Transatlantic Republic could on no account 
 allow to be decided in any way save one. 
 
 This battle between democracy and autocracy is, 
 however, more than a duel between antagonistic 
 ideas : it is also a severe test of practical efficiency. 
 In the sphere of action, it must be admitted, de- 
 mocracy does not always display itself to advantage 
 as compared with its rival. In our survey of the
 
 350 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 history of the nineteenth century we have seen how 
 time and again it has been its own worst enemy, and 
 how by its own failures and follies it has brought 
 upon itself discredit and destruction. The French 
 Revolution perished of suicidal mania ; the anarchic 
 excesses of ttie Parisian demagogues of 1848 made 
 the usurpation of the third Napoleon easy if not 
 inevitable ; the paralysing garrulity of the German 
 democrats of the mid-nineteenth century, combined 
 with their hopeless ineptitude and unpracticality, 
 delivered the Fatherland, and with it the Continent, 
 into the control of the sinister efficiency of Bismarck 
 Moltke and Roon. Democracy, indeed, has the 
 defects of its merits. If it makes for freedom and 
 progress, it tends to do so at the expense of 
 consistency and order. In place of the concentrated 
 silent immediately-operative will of the despot or 
 the bureaucrat it substitutes the indeterminate con- 
 flicting debating compromising vacillating pro- 
 crastinating wills of a number of kaleidoscopic parties 
 or groups. Over against the knowledge and 
 experience of the expert it sets the ignorance and 
 gaucherie of the man-in-the-street. It was, no 
 doubt, the difficulty of informing, the danger of 
 alarming, the fear of alienating the British democracy 
 which caused the politicians of 191114 to conceal 
 the truth respecting the German peril, and pretend 
 that all was well ; it was the bitter rivalries of the 
 multitudinous French cliques, with the consequent
 
 EPILOGUE 351 
 
 incessant changes of ministries, that resulted in such 
 unreadiness and disorganisation in the French armies 
 (to say nothing of still graver evils) as were so 
 nearly fatal in the early days of the war ; it was the 
 struggle between Liberals and Clericals in Belgium 
 that in the end by postponing until too late the 
 introduction of universal military service, and by 
 deferring until it could not be accomplished the 
 refortifying of the frontier left her naked to her 
 enemies. 
 
 This war is destined to show whether democracy 
 can learn from its past errors, can recover from its 
 initial catastrophes, can organise efficiency out of 
 chaos, and can snatch victory out of the jaws of 
 defeat. The omens are good. Marvellous successes, 
 indeed, have already been achieved. Fortunately, 
 autocracy also has the defects of its qualities. Its 
 mechanical perfection is devoid of vitality. In 
 democracy and not in its foe is life and the promise 
 of life. 
 
 . 
 71. THE PROBLEM OF PERPETUAL PEACE 
 
 One reason why democracy is determined to gain 
 decisive victory in this present conflict is that it is 
 resolved for the future to hold in its own hands the 
 issues of peace and war. It does not propose to 
 allow either its own fate or the destiny of civilisation 
 to be at the mercy of a dynastic faction, a militarist
 
 352 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 clique, or a financiarcamarilla. This resolution does 
 not mean, or in the smallest degree imply, either 
 (<z) that democracy is inherently less warlike than 
 monarchy or aristocracy, or () that the present war 
 would have been avoided if democratic control 
 of foreign affairs had obtained in the belligerent 
 countries. Neither of these propositions would be 
 true. Human nature is the same in the democrat as 
 in the tyrant or the oligarch, and the democrat will 
 fight as readily as either of the other two, though 
 probably not for the same causes. If it is a fact that 
 from time to time unwilling and pacific peoples have 
 been dragged or driven into war by bellicose govern- 
 ments, it is equally a fact that at other times cautious 
 and reluctant governments (both autocratic and bureau- 
 cratic) have been forced into war by bellicose public 
 opinion, or have with difficulty held back a populace 
 less pacific than themselves. To mention only three 
 examples within the period covered by these lectures, 
 all coming from our own country : it was not a 
 sceptred soloist or a select diplomatic concert-party 
 that on the eve of the Russo-Turkish War sang the 
 heady song which gave the name of " Jingo " to our 
 language ; it was not the British democracy, but a 
 small group of highly placed diplomats (including 
 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert) who, at the cost 
 of great unpopularity, kept Britain from intervening 
 on the wrong side in the American Civil War ; it 
 was not the ministry but the mob which " maficked "
 
 EPILOGUE 353 
 
 in militant fury during the South African campaign. 
 No : the theory that peoples are peaceful while 
 governments are warlike is one of those baseless 
 figments of the imagination, one of those hopeless 
 illusions of the doctrinaire, which must be dismissed 
 before the first step can be taken towards the rational 
 discussion of the problem of a permanent peace. 
 Never was this theory more false than in regard to 
 the present war. In 1913 Mr. Moreton Fullerton 
 gave it as his judgment that " the German govern- 
 ment is pacific ; but German opinion bellicose." l 
 The terms " pacific " and " bellicose " are, of course, 
 as here used, merely relative expressions ; but there 
 can be no doubt that the Kaiser's determination to 
 fight was due in no small measure to the fact that 
 the German nation as a whole was eager for war, and 
 that resistance to its will would have imperilled the 
 imperial throne itself. Never was William II. more 
 entirely popular than he was at the beginning of 
 August 1914 ; never had he more perfectly repre- 
 sented the sentiments' of his subjects. 
 
 The causes which led the German nation to desire 
 war in 1914 have been set forth in the preceding 
 lectures. Suffice it here to repeat and to emphasise 
 the fact that one of the main determinants was the 
 firm conviction that for Germany at that date war 
 
 1 Fullerton, Problems of Po-wer, p. 227. Similarly p. 228 : " In Germany 
 not merely the Opposition but the Press have constantly reproached the 
 Government for its pusillanimity." 
 
 2 A
 
 354 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 would be synonymous with speedy and decisive 
 victory. It was this universal belief in the military 
 omnipotence of the Fatherland that made every 
 German so eager to fight, in order to enjoy a share 
 of the triumph and the plunder. In other words, 
 one of the prime causes of the war was that dis- 
 location of the European balance of power which 
 resulted from the series of Prussian conquests in the 
 years 1864-1871. The first essential, therefore, of 
 the restoration of conditions in which permanent 
 peace is possible t is t the re -establishment of that 
 dislocated equilibrium. 
 
 Few political expressions have, during the period 
 since the outbreak of the war, been the subject of 
 more ignorant and unintelligent criticism than this 
 expression, " the balance of power." The " poet 
 Shaw " is said by the German Chancellor to have 
 described it as "a hatching - oven for wars " ; 
 Mr. J. A. Hobson has spoken of it as "the core 
 of diplomatic falsehood " ; Mr. Arthur Ponsonby 
 has characterised it as " part of the hideous night- 
 mare of the past " ; the Bishop of Hereford has 
 condemned it as " a disgrace upon international 
 politics." The utterance of all this nonsense might 
 have been avoided if the speakers had taken the 
 trouble to find out either what the balance of power 
 is, or what it is not. It is not the rigid maintenance 
 of the status quo : it is not the ruthless seizure of 
 the quid pro quo ; it is merely " such a disposition of
 
 EPILOGUE 355 
 
 affairs that no Power can ever find itself in a position 
 to enjoy undisputed predominance and to impose 
 the law on others." l Its general principle is that 
 " there must be no single Power, or group of 
 Powers, dominated by a single will, so strong as to 
 be able to defy the rest of the world, and therefore 
 to be tempted by the prospect of world-supremacy." 
 Thus stated, it is axiomatic and elemental. Germany 
 was in 1914 and is still seeking precisely that 
 position of predominance defined by Vattel ; she is 
 that Power which has defied the rest of the world, 
 and has been tempted by the prospect of universal 
 sovereignty. There can, therefore, be no peace on 
 earth, and no prospect of peace, until Germany is 
 utterly defeated and her dream of world-supremacy 
 dispelled. 
 
 The second essential condition of a permanent 
 peace is that Europe shall be reorganised on some 
 such national lines as those which have been indicated 
 in a preceding section : only so will the settlement 
 which marks the close of this war have the elements 
 of stability. This again involves the complete 
 overthrow of Germany, and the disintegration of 
 its subject-allies Austria-Hungary and Turkey. 
 
 The third essential condition of a permanent 
 peace is that the economic necessities of all the 
 national states shall be satisfied, and in particular 
 
 1 Vattel, Le Droit des Gens (1758). Book iii. ch. iii. 47. 
 3 Professor Ramsay Muir in New Europe, No. 16, p. 66.
 
 356 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 that such conventions shall be concluded as shall 
 give to them that free access to the open sea which 
 is vital to their material prosperity. 1 
 
 The fourth essential condition of a permanent peace 
 is that some sort of International Government shall 
 be established legislative, executive, judiciary 
 capable of formulating a law of nations, capable of 
 enforcing it, capable of punishing such states as violate 
 it. On the possibility of constituting, not a League 
 of Peace (for peace is not the highest interest of 
 mankind), but a League of Law, depends the future 
 of humanity. 
 
 72. THE PROBLEM OF THE FUTURE OF 
 HUMANITY 
 
 Both the difficulty of setting up an international 
 authority, and the danger lest when it is set up it 
 may do more harm than good, are amply displayed 
 in the history of the period of the Congresses 
 (1815-22). We have seen how this early nine- 
 teenth-century attempt at the organisation of Europe 
 was vitiated and ruined by, first, the unsatisfactory 
 nature of the Vienna settlement on which it was 
 based ; secondly, the failure of the diplomats to 
 provide any constitutional means for the necessary 
 periodical revision and modification of the treaties ; 
 
 1 This important matter is admirably treated by A. J. Toynbee, Nationality 
 and the War, to which suggestive book the student is referred.
 
 EPILOGUE 357 
 
 i 
 
 thirdly, the antagonism of the monarchs and 
 ministers who formed the Concert of Europe to the 
 democratic and national aspirations of the peoples 
 whom they controlled ; and finally, the fatal deter- 
 mination of Metternich and his supporters to extend 
 the sphere of their international government from 
 the external relations of the States of the Continent 
 to their domestic affairs. All this, now so clear, is 
 full of warning and guidance for the present and 
 the future. 
 
 The task of the present and the hope of the 
 future consists in the formation of a confederacy of 
 nations pledged to maintain public justice and to 
 develop and enforce international law. Incidentally, 
 but merely as a secondary result of its chief activities, 
 such a confederacy will cause peace to prevail. Now, 
 the first condition of the formation of such a con- 
 federacy appears to be the completion of the long 
 process of the organisation of the Western World 
 on the principle of nationality. Those persons who 
 would disrupt the national state, who would dis- 
 integrate it into gilds and syndicates, who would 
 rearrange mankind on the basis of class-distinctions, 
 who would organise cosmopolitan fraternities and 
 pronounce them superior in their claims to kin and 
 country such persons are among the worst obstacles 
 to the formation of an international society. An inter- 
 national society can be formed only by the voluntary 
 union of a number of free and equal national states.
 
 358 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 
 
 Cosmopolitanism is the deadliest foe of inter- 
 nationalism : the landless man now as in the Middle 
 Ages (though with a different connotation of the word 
 " land ") is an outlaw and an enemy ; patriotism is 
 not a "vulgar vice," but the primary virtue of the good 
 European. 
 
 But no free and independent national state- 
 strong in patriotic sentiment and eager for self- 
 realisation along its own lines will join any con- 
 federacy or league if there is any prospect that its 
 domestic concerns will be the subject of external 
 interference. The second condition, then, of the 
 organisation of an international government is the 
 full and unqualified recognition of the principle 
 which Castlereagh and Canning vehemently (though 
 in their day vainly) urged against Metternich and 
 Alexander I., viz. that in the internal affairs of a 
 sovereign state no intervention whatsoever is allow- 
 able. The third condition is that in external affairs 
 that is in the mutual relation of state with state 
 the authority of the confederacy should be admitted, 
 its limits exactly defined, its decisions within those 
 limits irresistibly enforced by the whole united 
 power of all the members. This means that inter- 
 national law, which hitherto has been a mere classified 
 and annotated collection of ethical principles and 
 prevalent customs, shall be converted into an opera- 
 tive code enforceable by sanctions. It also means 
 that the Hague Tribunal (or some reconstituted
 
 EPILOGUE 359 
 
 counterpart of it), which hitherto has been a mere 
 fount of benevolent sentiment, shall be transmuted 
 into an effective Areopagus. . 
 
 The chief difficulty in the way of the organisation 
 of an international society is now, as it has been 
 during the past generation, and as it seems likely to 
 be for some time to come, the -attitude and behaviour 
 of Germany. Among Germany's worst offences 
 against Europe and humanity have been her viola- 
 tions of honour, her breaches of treaty-engagements, 
 her repudiations of both law and morality, her use of 
 barbarous methods of war which she in common with 
 all civilised nations had bound herself to abandon, 
 her shameless avowal that her own immediate 
 interests are the sole guide of her conduct and that, 
 for her, necessity knows no restraint. The early 
 successes of Germany in the war are to no small 
 extent due to her flagrant treachery. Her solemn 
 pledge to protect Belgium ; her solemn pledge not 
 to employ poison gas ; her solemn pledge to observe 
 the recognised rules of maritime warfare pledges all 
 of them wantonly broken gave her an immense 
 advantage over honourable opponents who placed 
 trust in German honour. Until Germany has 
 repented in dust and ashes for her perfidy and 
 villainy, until she has made restitution to her victims, 
 until she has given adequate guarantees for future 
 decency, she can never be admitted as a member of 
 any League of Law. As well might Judas unrepentant
 
 360 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 seek to recover membership of the apostolic band. 
 No League of Law, indeed, can be established until 
 this arch-anarchist is defeated, and compelled to make 
 reparation for her unspeakable crimes. When this 
 necessary vindication of justice is accomplished, the 
 rest will not be hard. For the League of Law is 
 already coming into existence as the world gradually 
 ranges itself on the side of the Triple Entente 
 against the criminal Germanic group. The entry 
 of America into the war is the event of decisive 
 importance. It assures ultimate victory to the forces 
 of the light, and it places permanently at the disposal 
 of the international authorities of the future powers 
 so vast that no criminal state or group of states will 
 be able to defy them. The best hope of the future 
 rests in the cementing, and the perpetuating for the 
 purpose of the maintenance of public law, of the 
 Great Alliance, which is at the present moment, at 
 awful cost of blood and treasure, rescuing civilisation 
 from the destroyer.
 
 INDEX 
 
 (Refer also to Table of Contents) 
 
 Abdul Hamid II., 280 
 Abo, Treaty of, 96 
 Aboukir Bay, Battle of, 74 
 Abyssinia, 257 
 Acre, 74 
 
 Addington, 75, 77 
 Adrianople, 251, 297 
 Treaty of, 165, 248 
 Africa, 260 
 Agadir, 292 
 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, Congress of, 129 
 Akermann, Conference of, 248 
 Albania, 160, 296 
 Albert, King of the Belgians, 306 
 Alexander I., Tzar of Russia, 80, 82, 
 
 94, 121, 125, 129, 138, 158, 163, 
 
 164, 358 
 
 Alexander II., Tzar of Russia, 276 
 Algeciras Conference, 289 
 Algeria, 186, 255 
 Ali of Janina, 163, 165 
 Alsace-Lorraine, 108, 237, 242, 264, 
 
 271 
 
 America, 45, 349 
 Amiens, Treaty of, 74, 78 
 Anatolia, 248 
 Andrassy Note, 250 
 Anglo-Afghan War, 254 
 Antony of Saxony, 182 
 Argentine Republic, 173 
 Armenia, 280 
 Artois, Comte d' (Charles X. of 
 
 France), 134, 184, 185, 189 
 Asia Minor, 73 
 Auerstadt, Battle of, 81 
 Ausgleich, 233 
 Austerlitz, Battle of, 81 
 
 Austria, 72, 233 
 Austro-Prussian War, 230, 271 
 
 Baden, 131, 135, 202, 234, 239 
 Bagdad Railway, 280, 284, 313 
 Balance of Power, 99, 112, 113, 341, 
 
 354 
 
 Ballot Act, 263 
 Baltic, Battle of, 74 
 Barbary Pirates, 132 
 Bastille, 54 
 
 Batavian Republic, 71, 76, 82 
 Batoum, 252 
 
 Bavaria, 135, 202, 234, 239 
 Bazaine, 237 
 Bechuanaland, 261 
 
 Belgium, 5, 68, 70, 97, 108, 166-170, 
 174, 190, 191, 302, 304, 306, 
 326, 327 
 
 Bentham, J., 179 
 Berlin, 81, 202 
 
 Conference (1884), 260 
 
 Congress (1878), 251, 252, 276 
 
 Decrees (1806), 83 
 Bernadotte, 89 
 Bernhardi, 294, 315 
 Berri, Duke of, 136 
 
 Duchess of, 195 
 Bessarabia, 251 
 
 Bismarck, 209, 218, 225, 260, 269-273 
 fBlanc, L., 199, 210-212 
 Boer War, 285 
 Bohemia, 159, 201 
 Bolivar, the Liberator, 145 
 Bolivia, 173 
 
 " Bomba " (Ferdinand II. of Naples), 
 '95
 
 362 
 
 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 Bonaparte. Ste Napoleon 
 
 Bosnia, 249, 251, 290 
 
 Bourgeoisie, the, 35, 38, 39-41, 51 
 
 Boxer Rising, 261 
 
 Brazil, 173, 261, 284 
 
 Brunswick, 191 
 
 Bucarest, Treaty of, 297-8 
 
 Buenos Ayres, 145, 173 
 
 Bulgaria, 249-251 
 
 Bund, the (German Confederation, 
 
 1815-1866), 109, 130 
 Burchenschaften, 128 
 Burdett, Sir F., 181 
 Burke, 58 
 Byron, 164 
 
 Caillaux, M., 315 
 
 Calomarde, 183 
 
 Cameroons, 256 
 
 Camperdown, 73 
 
 Campo Formio,- Treaty of, 72 
 
 Canada, 157 
 
 Canning, 145-148, 151, 173, 358 
 
 Capodistrias, 163 
 
 Carbonari, 137, 183 
 
 Carlsbad Decrees, 133 
 
 Carnarvon, Lord, 258 
 
 Carnot, 125 
 
 Casimir Perier, 197 
 
 Castlereagh, Lord, 95, 108, 121, 122, 
 
 125, 134, 140, 144, 358 
 Cato-Street Conspiracy, 137 
 Cavour, 220-225 
 Chamberlain, Joseph, 259 
 Charles X., King of France, 134, 184, 
 
 185, 189 
 Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, 194, 
 
 20 1, 207 
 Charles Felix, King of Sardinia, 142, 
 
 182 
 
 Chartists, 193, 202, 205 
 Chaumont, Treaty of, 1 14, 143 
 Chile, 145, 173 
 China, 261 
 
 Churchill, Winston, 317 
 Cisalpine Republic, 72, 76 *, 
 
 " Class War," 264 
 Colenso, Battle of, 285 
 Columbia, 145, 173 
 "Commonwealth of Europe," 18, 19, 
 
 119, 329 
 Commune, 55, 237 
 
 "Concert of Europe," 93, 115, 119, 
 120, 123, 142, 143, 145, 148, 
 
 H9, i9 x > 34-2 
 Concordat, 244 
 
 Confederation of the Rhine, 83 
 Constantinople, 73, 250' 
 Constituent Assembly, 52, 55 
 Constitution of 1812, the Spanish, 
 
 128, 137, 138, 142 
 Consulate, the, 56 
 Continental System, the, 83 
 Convention, the, 56 
 Corn Laws, repeal of the, 193 
 " Corresponding Societies," 63 
 Cosmopolitanism, 25 
 County Councils, 263 
 Crimean War, 217, 221, 248, 253 
 Croatia, 201 
 
 Crown Prince, the German, 303 
 Custozza, Battle of, 207 
 
 Dahomey, 255 
 
 Dantonists, 56 
 
 Dardanelles, 337 
 
 DelbrUck, Professor, 286 
 
 Delcasse, M., 288 
 
 Democracy, 24, 97, 347 
 
 Democratic Control, 4 
 
 Denmark, 96, no, 132, 229 
 
 Dilke, Sir C., 259 
 
 Directory, the, 56, 73 
 
 Disraeli, B. (Earl of Beaconsfield), 4, 
 
 237, 250-2, 257-8, 274 
 Dobrudsha, the, 252 
 Drang nach Osten, 233, 243. 296, 312, 
 
 323 
 
 Dreikaiscrbundnis, 249, 274, 276 
 Dual Alliance (1879), 276 
 Monarchy, 233 
 
 Eastern Question, in, 246 
 Edward VII., King of England, 287 
 
 Egypt, 73, 77, 78, 272 
 
 English Revolution (1689), 35, 40 
 
 Entente Cordiale, 288 
 
 Equality, 48, 60 
 
 Eretria, 257 
 
 Ethiopia, 257 
 
 Eugenie, Empress, 223, 239 
 
 Europe, unity of, 15, 1 8, 19, 24 
 
 Eylau, Battle of, 81
 
 INDEX 
 
 363 
 
 Fashoda, 255 
 
 Faure, Felix, 285 
 
 Ferdinand I., Emperor of Austria, 
 
 194, 206, 207 
 
 Ferdinand I. of Bulgaria, 296 
 Ferdinand I. of Naples, 137 
 Ferdinand II. of Naples, 195 
 Ferdinand VII. of Spain, 137, 144, 
 
 146, 183 
 Fichte, 62 
 
 Finland, 96, 109, 158 
 Five Acts, the, 125 
 Forster, W. E., 259 
 Fouch6, 125 
 
 Francis I., Emperor of Austria, 94 
 Francis II. of Naples, 224 
 Francis of Modena, 124 
 Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria, 
 
 207, 217, 222, 230 
 Franco-Prussian War, 234 
 Frankfort, Treaty of, 237 
 Franz Ferdinand, Archduke, 298, 318 
 Franz- Joseph Land, 257 
 Fraternity, 60-62 
 Frederick the Great, 61 
 Frederick William III., King of 
 
 Prussia, 80,94, IOI '^9 
 Frederick William IV., King of 
 
 Prussia, 194, 202, 208, 226 
 " Freedom of the Sea," 282 
 French Republic, the First, 56 
 
 the Second, 209 
 
 the Third, 244 
 French Revolution (1789), 31-59 
 
 (1830), 185-189 
 
 (1848), 195-199 
 Friedland*, Battle of, 81 
 
 Garibaldi, 176, 208, 224 
 Gastein, Convention of, 229 
 Geneva Convention, 329 
 Genoa, 76, 97, 109 
 George III., King of England, 68 
 German Army Act, 307 
 
 colonies, 256, 265 
 
 National Parliament, 208, 226 
 
 Navy Laws, 284 
 
 Zollverein, 228 
 Germany, 18, 71, 109, 225 
 Gibbon, 62 
 Gioberti, 220 
 Giolitti, 297 
 
 Girondists, 56 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., 4, 220, 274 
 
 Gordon, General, 260 
 
 GSrgei, A. von, 207 
 
 GOttingen professors, 194 
 
 Greece, 142, 160, 161-165 
 
 Grevy, M., 244 
 
 Grey, Earl, 172 
 
 Grey, Sir E. (Viscount), 288, 319, 325 
 
 GuechofF, M., 295 
 
 Guizot, M., 187, 197, 198, 200 
 
 Habeas Corpus Act, 134 
 
 Hague Conferences and Tribunals, 18, 
 
 320, 329, 338, 358 
 Haldane, Lord, 317 
 Hambach Festival, 194 
 Hanover, 81, 101, 135, 191 
 Harden, Max, 300, 339 
 Hardenberg, Prince, 95 
 Hebertists, 56 
 
 Heidelberg, Conference at, 194 
 Heligoland, 260 
 
 Heppenheim, Conference at, 194 
 Herzegovina, 249, 251, 290 
 Hesse-Cassel, 124, 131, 182, 191 
 Hesse-Darmstadt, 234, 239 
 Hetaireia Philike, 162 
 History, place in education, 7 
 
 schools of, 19-24 
 
 teaching of, I 
 Hohenlinden, Battle of, 74 
 Hohenzollern, House of, 234, 340 
 Holden, Sir E., 319 
 Holland, 71, 72, 82, 97, 108 
 Holstein, 229 
 Holy Alliance, 119, 122, 130, 338 
 
 Roman Empire, 83, 86, 96 
 Hungary, 159, 201, 206 
 Huskisson, W., 181 
 
 Illyria, 159 
 
 Imperial Federation League, 259 
 
 Inquisition, 126 
 
 Ireland, 72, 158 
 
 Isvolsky, M., 288 
 
 Italia irredenta, 232, 242 
 
 Italy, no, 219-225, 239 
 
 Ivory Coast, 255 
 
 Jacobin Club, 55 
 Japan, 261, 289
 
 3 6 4 
 
 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 Jellacic, Joseph, 206 
 
 Jemmappes, Battle of, 70 
 
 Jena, Battle of, 81 
 
 John VI., King of Portugal, 137, 
 
 J 73> l8 3 
 
 Joseph Bonaparte, 82, 83 
 Jourdan, Comte, 72 
 
 Kaltsch, Treaty of, 96 
 Kars, 252 
 Khartoum, 260 
 Khiva, 253 
 Khokand, 253 
 Khyber Pass, 254 
 Kiao-Chau, 257, 261 
 Kiel Canal, 308, 309, 322 
 Kfiniggratz, Battle of, 230 
 Korais, A., 161 
 Kossuth, L., 207 
 Kotzebue, A., 136 
 Kruger Telegram, the, 284 
 Kulturkampf, the, 245 
 
 Lacordaire, 168 
 
 Lafayette, Marquis, 38, 188, 197 
 
 Lafitte, J., 197 
 
 Laibach, Congress of, 138, 140, 141, 
 
 163 
 
 Lamartine, A., 211, 212 
 Lamennais, Abb6, 168 
 Lansdowne, Marquis, 287 
 Lassalle, F., 245 
 La Vend6e, 70, 195 
 League of Law, 356-360 
 
 of Peace, 149 
 
 Legislative Assembly, 53, 55 
 Legitimacy, principle of, 99, 112, 113 
 Leipsig, Battle of, 84, 88, 96 
 Leopold I., King of the Belgians, 170, 
 
 173, 191 
 Leopold II., King of the Belgians, 
 
 257 
 
 Lessing, 62 
 
 Lewis I., King of Bavaria, 202 
 Liberty, 48, 60 
 Liege, Siege of, 333 
 Ligny, Battle of, 1 06 
 Ligurian Republic, 76, 80 
 Liverpool, Lord, 125, 134 
 Lombardy, 72 
 London, Conferences of, 165, 170, 
 
 250 
 
 Loreburn, Lord, 317 
 Louis XIV., King of France, 44 
 Louis XV., King of France, 44 
 Louis XVI., King of France, 44, 46, 
 
 47, 52, 56, 68 
 
 "Louis XVII., King of France," 91 
 Louis XVIII., King of France, 89, 
 
 91, 103, 104, 107, 126, 184 
 Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland, 83 
 Louis Napoleon, 196, 205, 213. See 
 
 also Napoleon III. 
 Louis Philippe, King of the French, 
 
 169, !8 9 , 195-199, 236, 255 
 Liideritzland, 256 
 Luxemburg, 305 
 Lyons, 70 
 
 M'Mahon, Marshal, 238 
 
 Madagascar, 255 
 
 Magenta, Battle of, 217, 222 
 
 Magersfontein, Battle of, 285 
 
 Magyars, 159, 177, 206 
 
 Mahan, Admiral, 312 
 
 Mahmoud II., Sultan of Turkey, 248 
 
 Malta, 78 
 
 Marat, 67 
 
 Marche, 210 
 
 Marengo, Battle of, 74 
 
 Maria, Queen of Portugal, 183 
 
 Marie Antoinette, 54, 68 
 
 Marne, Battle of, 334 
 
 Marrast, 210, 211 
 
 Martignac, Vicomte, 185 
 
 Marx, Karl, 192, 245, 264 
 
 Mazzini, 176, 194, 207, 208, 220 
 
 Mehemet Ali, 165 
 
 Merv, 254 
 
 Mesopotamia, 337 
 
 Metternich, Prince, 94, 103, 121, 124, 
 
 138, 190, 201, 358 
 "Metternich System," the, 126, 182, 
 
 191, 193 
 
 Metz, capitulation of, 237 
 Mexico, 145, 173, 219 
 Mignet, M., 187 
 Miguel, Dom, 183 
 Milan, 201 
 
 Decrees, 83 
 Mirabeau, Comte, 38 
 Modena, 191, 224 
 Moltke, 227 
 Monroe Doctrine, 146, 262
 
 INDEX 
 
 365 
 
 Montenegro, 160, 247, 249 
 Montesquieu, Baron, 39 
 Morea, 164 
 Moreau, General, 72 
 Morocco, 255, 289 
 Mukden, Battle of, 289 
 Municipal Corporations Act, 193 
 Murat, 96 
 
 Naples, 82, 137, 139, 224 
 
 Napoleon I., 46, 72, 73, 75, 80, 102- 
 
 107 
 Napoleon III., 214-219, 220, 230, 
 
 239 
 "Napoleonic Idea," the, 85, 172, 
 
 198, 215, 218, 236 
 National Assembly, 52, 237 
 
 Workshops, 211 
 Nationality, 24, 61, 63, 65, 87, 97, 
 
 112, 113, 152-157, 343 
 Navarino, Battle of, 165 
 Necker, J., 44, 45 
 Nelson, Lord, 74 
 Nesselrode, Count, 95 
 Netherlands, 71, 77 
 New Granada, 173 
 New Guinea, 256 
 Ney, Marshal, 125 
 Nice, 97, 109, 217 
 Nicholas I., Tzar, 158, 189 
 Nicholas II., Tzar, 285 
 Nigeria, 260 
 
 North German Confederation, 232 
 Novara, first Battle of, 142 
 
 second Battle of, 207 
 November Decrees, 66 
 
 O'Brien, Smith, 203 
 
 Oceania, 260, 261 
 
 Orange, Prince of, 108 
 
 Osman Pasha, 250 
 
 Otto of Bavaria, King of Greece, 165, 
 
 Owen, Robert, 192 
 
 Palacky, F., 159 
 
 Palmerston, Lord, 220 
 
 Pamirs, 254 
 
 Pan-German Movement, 292, 312, 
 
 330. 343 
 
 Pan-Slavonic Movement, 275 
 Pantin, Battle of, 88 
 
 Papal infallibility, 240 
 
 States, 72, 82, 191 
 Paris, 88, 107 
 
 Siege of, 237 
 
 Treaty of (1814), 90, 103 
 (1815), 108, 120 
 (1856), 217, 221 
 Parish Councils Act, 263 
 Parma, 77, 191 
 Party politics, 5 
 Patriotism, 6r 
 Peace, problem of, 351-356 
 Pedro I., Emperor of Brazil, 173- 
 Peel, Sir R., 1 80 
 Pendjeh, 254 
 Pepe, General, 137 
 Peru, 145, 173 
 Peterloo riot, 137 
 Philosophical Radicals, 178 
 Piedmont, 77, 97, 109, 142 
 Pitt, William, 80 
 Pius IX., Pope, 194, 207 
 Plevna, 250 
 
 Plombieres, Compact of, 221 
 Poland, 71, 100, 101, 109, 158, 159, 
 
 190, 219, 228 
 Polignac, Prince, 185-187 
 Poor Law Act, 193 
 Port Arthur, 254, 261 
 Portugal, 83, 137 
 Posen, 242 
 
 Prague, Treaty of, 231 
 Pressburg, Treaty of, 81 
 Proudhon, J., 192 
 Prussia, 71, 108, 135 
 
 Quadrilateral, the, 183 
 Quadruple Alliance, the, 94, 100, 
 102, 103, 113, 119, 120, 123, 130 
 Quatre-Bras, Battle of, 1 06 
 
 "Red Terror," the, 126 
 
 Reform Acts (1832, 1867, 1884), 193, 
 
 263 
 
 Reformation, the, 16 
 Reichstag, the, 263 
 " Reign of Terror," the, 54, 70 
 Renaissance, the, 32 
 Respublica Christiana, the, 1 6, 31, 345 
 "Revolution," the, 98 
 Rhegas, 161 
 Rhodesia, 260
 
 3 66 
 
 EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 Richelieu, Duke of, 126, 130 
 
 Riego, Colonel, 137 
 
 Rieti, Battle of, 141 
 
 "Rights of Man," 49, 53, 57, 66, 127, 
 
 136 
 
 Roberts, Lord, 254, 311, 316 
 Robespierre, 56 
 
 Robinson (Lord Goderich), 181 
 Romagna, the, 224 
 Romanticism, 99, 127 
 Rome, 234, 240 
 
 King of, 89 
 Roon, Count, 227 
 Rosebery, Lord, 259 
 Rousseau, 39 
 Rumania, 1 60, 334 
 Russell, 1 8 1, 220 
 Russia, 74, 84, 207, 291, 348-9 
 Russo-Japanese War, 289 
 Russo-Turkish War, 250 
 Ruthenes, 159 
 
 Sadowa, Battle of, 230 
 
 St. Helena, 107 
 
 St. Mark, Republic of, 208 
 
 St. Simon, Count, 192 
 
 St. Vincent, Battle of, 73 
 
 Salisbury, Lord, 277 
 
 Salonika, 297 
 
 Samarcand, 253 
 
 Samoa, 260 
 
 San Stefano, Treaty of, 25 1 
 
 Sardinia, 68, 71, 77, 78, 80, 97, 109, 
 
 124 
 
 Savoy, 68, 70, 71, 97, 109, 217 
 Saxony, 96, 100, 109, no, 135, 182, 
 
 202 
 
 Scheldt, River, 68 
 Schleswig-Holstein, 228, 229, 242, 
 
 264 
 
 Sedan, Battle of, 234, 236, 238, 269 
 Seeley, Sir John, 259 
 September Massacres, 56 
 Sepulveda, Colonel, 137 
 Serajevo, crime of, 298, 316, 318, 
 
 321. 3" 
 
 Serbia, 160, 247, 249, 291, 334 
 Seven Acts, the, 125 
 Sieves, Abbe, 38, 39, 57 
 Sinn Fein League, 344 
 Slave trade, no, 132 
 Solferino, Battle of, 217, 222 
 
 South Africa, 157 
 
 Southern Slavs, 159, 177 
 
 Spain, 71, 72, 78, 83, 128, 132, 137, 
 
 143' 144. 
 
 Spanish America, no, 143 
 State, the, 23 
 States-General, the Frejich, 41, 42, 
 
 46, 50, 5*. 5 8 
 Stein, F. K., 95 
 Stormberg, Battle of, 285 
 Suez Canal, 253 
 Sweden, 96, no 
 Switzerland, 77, 78, 109, 306 
 Syria, 73, 337 
 
 Talleyrand, 38, 95, 103, 125 
 
 Tangier, 289 
 
 Tashkend, 253 
 
 Tennis Court, Oath of the, 52 
 
 Teplitz, Conference of, 133 
 
 Treaty of, 97 
 Thiers, L. A., 187, 188, 197, 198, 
 
 237-238 
 
 Third Estate, the, 31-36 
 Tilsit, Treaty of, 82, 84 
 Togoland, 256 
 Toulon, 70 
 
 Trafalgar, Battle of, 8 1 
 Trans-Siberian Railway, 254 
 Transylvania, 264 
 Treitschke, 135, 293, 339, 340 
 Trentino, 264 
 Triple Alliance, 243, 277 
 
 Entente, 243, 283, 288 
 Tripoli, 295 
 Troppau, Congress of, 138, 139, 140, 
 
 142 
 
 Tunis, 255, 272 
 Turgot, 44, 45 
 Turkestan, 254 
 Turkey, 73, 248 
 Turko-Italian War, 295 
 Tuscany, 224 
 
 Ulm, capitulation of, 8 1 
 Usher, 312 
 Utilitarians, 127 
 
 Valmy, Battle of, 70 
 Vatican Council, 240 
 Venezelos, D., 295 
 Venezuela, 173
 
 INDEX 
 
 367 
 
 Venice, 201, 208 
 
 Verdun, Treaty of (843), 338 
 
 Vergnet, P., 312 
 
 Verona, Congress of, 138, 143, 150 
 
 Victor Emmanuel I., King of Italy, 
 
 142 
 Victor Emmanuel II., King of Italy, 
 
 220, 224 
 
 Victoria, Queen of England, 273, 276 
 Vienna, Congress of, 93, 108 
 
 Treaty of, in, 143, 149, 241 
 Vilagos, Battle of, 207 
 Villafranca, Truce of, 223 
 Villele, Comte, 134, 144, 184 
 Vittoria, Battle of, 88 
 Vladivostok, 253 
 Voltaire, 39, 6 1 
 
 Wangenheim, Baron, 319 
 
 Warsaw, Grand Duchy of, 83, 96, 
 
 100 
 
 Waterloo, Battle of, 106 
 Wei-hai-wei, 261 
 
 Weimar, 131 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, 88, 95, 108, 
 
 120, 144, 172, 190 
 Western civilisation, 17 
 Westminster Review, 179 
 "White Terror," 125 
 William I., German Emperor, 226, 
 
 228, 239 
 William II., German Emperor, 277- 
 
 284, 353 
 
 William of Hesse-Cassel, 182 
 William of Holland, 68, 170 
 Wilson, President W., 349 
 WindischgrStz, Prince, 205, 206 
 Wurtemberg, 135, 234, 239 
 
 " Young Ireland," 203 
 " Young Italy," 194 
 "Young Turkey," 290, 295 
 
 Zanzibar, 260 
 
 Zollverein, the German, 228 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.
 
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