[Sidenote: Death of George III.]

[Sidenote: Queen Caroline's trial]

[Sidenote: Death of the Queen]

Another more trying scandal engrossed public attention in England. On January 29, old King George III. had at last sunk into his grave. His son, George IV., became king, and began his rule with the same Ministry under Lord Liverpool that had served him as Prince Regent. The new king's first public act was to call for a bill for the divorce of his wife, Caroline of Brunswick. The Cabinet refused to favor such a bill. On April 23, Parliament met. The King sent "a green bag" to each House of Parliament, containing a mass of testimony and accusations concerning the queen's conduct with her Italian chamberlain, Pergami. On June 6, Queen Caroline arrived from Italy. Having been refused passage on a royal ship, she chartered a vessel of her own. This bold step was taken to imply innocence. She was received with great popular demonstrations in her favor. Before a secret committee of Parliament, Queen Caroline offset the King's charges against her by laying stress on his own well-known failings as a husband. On July 5, Lord Liverpool introduced a bill of "Pains and Penalties" to dissolve the marriage of Queen Caroline. Her trial was taken up by the House of Lords, where she was defended by Lord Brougham. To this day the proceedings of the trial are remembered as one of the most outrageous scandals in England. The feelings thereby engendered in the people have been immortalized in the trenchant writings of Thackeray. Before the trial was concluded, Lord Liverpool's bill was brought up for the third time in Parliament. It passed by a majority of a few votes. With so slender an indorsement, the Ministry had cause to tremble for its existence. Lord Liverpool prevailed upon the King to recede from his extreme position, and, succeeding in this, moved for the abandonment of the bill. The trial was quashed. Queen Caroline died shortly afterward.

[Sidenote: The Missouri Compromise]

[Sidenote: Cabinet in a quandary]

In America, public feeling was no less excited. The occasion for this was the first serious clash of the Northern and Southern factions of the United States over what was known as the Missouri Compromise. On February 18, the Missouri Compromise bill passed the Senate, and on March 2 the House. It admitted Missouri as a slave State, and prohibited slavery north of parallel 36 deg. 30', the southern line of Missouri. Henry Clay declared that it settled the slavery question "forever." The bill went to the President. There was still another compromise, and that was in the Cabinet. The President asked advice on two points. The first point was whether Congress had a Constitutional right to prohibit slavery in a Territory. The Cabinet agreed that the right existed. Then the question arose whether the section prohibiting slavery "forever" referred only to the territorial condition, or whether it also applied when the Territory became a State. The Cabinet, with the exception of Adams, agreed that "forever" applied only to the territorial condition; Adams held that "forever" meant literally forever, in State as well as in Territory. In order to escape this dilemma it was proposed that the question of "forever," as relating to States, should be avoided; and that the only question should be, whether the section prohibiting slavery in the Territories forever was Constitutional. The order of proceeding was reversed; Mr. Adams was to reply in the affirmative without giving his reasons, while the others were to explain in writing that the provision was Constitutional; but "forever" meant only while the territorial condition existed. With this understanding the bill was signed. It is plain now that in the unsettled point the whole pith and meaning of the Missouri Compromise was contained, as the country learned fully and decisively thirty-five years afterward.

[Sidenote: Monroe elected President]

New issues then came to the front—protection, internal improvements, and recognition of the South American republics. Presently, in order to preserve the balance of power between slavery and freedom, it was enacted that Maine was to be admitted on March 15, making twelve free and twelve slave holding States. A bill was passed pronouncing the maritime slave trade piracy. On October 20, Spain ratified the treaty ceding Florida. Congress reassembled in November. James Monroe and John Quincy Adams were the opposing candidates for the Presidency. Monroe received 231 electoral votes; Adams received one from a New Hampshire elector who voted in sympathy with a popular sentiment that Washington should stand alone in the high honor of a unanimous choice.

[Sidenote: Quinine]

In this year the great fever drug quinine was first clearly separated and identified by Drs. Pelletier and Caventou, who were spurred on to their labors by the previous experiments with the drug by Drs. Gomez and Lambert. In its crude form the bark of the chinchona tree had been used for its medical properties since times immemorial.

[Sidenote: Homeopathy]

It was about this time that the German physician Hahnemann's theory of homeopathy caused general discussion among medical practitioners and laymen. Hahnemann's first thesis was that many diseases could most quickly be eradicated by similar effects—fever with fever, poison with anti-poison. This theory of "like with like"—the Greek homoia homoiois—was accordingly named by him homeopathy. It was most fully expressed in his "Dogma of Rational Healing" and in the later treatise "Chronic Ailments and their Homeopathic Cure." These books created such a widespread sensation that they were at once translated into several languages and ran through a great number of editions. As a matter of course, Hahnemann's peculiar theories were violently combated by his fellow practitioners.

[Sidenote: Hydropathy]

Almost at the same time with the rise of the new science of homeopathy came Vincenz Priessnitz's innovation of hydropathy or water cure. He established his first sanitarium at Grafenberg, his birthplace, and in the face of vehement medical opposition soon won government recognition for his sanitarium. Similar water-cure establishments were erected by many imitators and followers in Germany and elsewhere.

[Sidenote: Convention of Troppau]

[Sidenote: Intervention in Naples]

Late in the year Emperor Alexander of Russia and Metternich came together to settle on the counter strokes to be delivered against the revolutionists of Spain and southern Italy. When Metternich first heard of the fall of absolute government in Naples he was dismayed. Gentz, who saw him at that time, has left this record: "Prince Metternich went to-day to inform the Emperor of the sad events in Naples. As long as I know him I have never seen him so upset by any event." Metternich had reason to feel alarmed. A revolution in Naples was almost sure to be followed by an Italian uprising in the Austrian possessions of Venice and an insurrection in the Papal States. Had Metternich felt free to follow his own devices, he would forthwith have marched an Austrian army into southern Italy to put an end to the troubles there. With all his exasperation he did not feel free to cut loose from joint action with the Czar and with the other sovereigns of Europe. Thus it came that the summer was spent in arranging for another conference of the allied monarchs. They met on October 20, at Troppau in Moravia. The Emperors of Austria and Russia and the King of Prussia received one another in state. The envoys of England and France were found to be in accord against armed intervention in southern Italy. The other powers determined to proceed on their course without them. Metternich's diplomatic dealings with the Czar were greatly hampered by the clever intrigues of Count Capodistrias, Alexander's foreign minister. For once Metternich found himself matched by a diplomat even more subtle than himself. In the end, he prevailed over Capodistrias sufficiently to overcome Alexander's scruples against harsh measures in Naples. It was determined to invite King Ferdinand to meet the sovereigns at Leibach, in Austria, and to address a summons to the Neapolitans commanding them to abandon their constitution, under threat of immediate invasion. Accordingly a note was issued from Troppau to all the courts of Europe, embodying the doctrine of federative intervention, as applied to Naples.

[Sidenote: King Ferdinand's duplicity]

As soon as King Ferdinand received the summons he prepared to leave Naples. The populace became aroused, and angry crowds surrounded the palace. Ferdinand was not allowed to leave Naples until he had once more sworn on his honor to maintain the constitution borrowed from Spain. The King took this oath as readily as he did the other. Then he journeyed northward. Half way, at Leghorn, he sent letters to each of the five principal sovereigns of Europe declaring his last declaration just as null and void as his previous perjuries. His double-dealing was rather too much even for the Holy Alliance. As Gentz, the secretary of the Congress, expressed himself in private: "The conduct of this wretched sovereign, since the beginning of his troubles, has been nothing but a tissue of weaknesses and lies. Happily they will remain secret. No Cabinet will care to draw them from the graveyard of its archives. Till then there is not much harm done."

[Sidenote: Benjamin West]

Benjamin West, the celebrated American-English artist, died at London in his eighty-second year. At the opening of the Eighteenth Century, West was in the forefront of the agitation that grew out of his contested succession to Sir Joshua Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy. Wearied with these quarrels he visited Paris, where he studied the newly pillaged masterpieces at the Louvre. He resigned from the Royal Academy, but was almost unanimously re-elected. It was then that he painted his famous "Christ Healing the Sick." His later works failed to attain the success of his earlier historical paintings. When West died, his reputation had declined appreciably, still a public funeral at St. Paul's Cathedral was accorded to him, a unique honor for an American.



1821

[Sidenote: Congress of Leibach]

[Sidenote: Naples under duress]

The Congress of Leibach met in January. It was attended by the representatives of Russia, Austria, Prussia, England, France, Sardinia and Modena. When King Ferdinand of Naples arrived he was received by the Emperors of Russia and Austria in person. It was predetermined that absolute government in Naples should be restored by Austrian arms. The only problem remaining to diplomacy was to put a respectable face on King Ferdinand's dishonor. Capodistrias offered to make up some fictitious correspondence in which Ferdinand was proudly to uphold the constitution which he had sworn to support, and to yield protestingly to the powers only after actual threats of war. The device was rejected as too transparent. Moreover, the old king scarcely cared how his conduct appeared to his subjects. A letter was sent in his name to his son, the acting-viceroy, stating that the Powers were determined not to tolerate the order of things sprung from revolution, and that certain securities for peace would have to be given. The reference to securities meant the occupation of the country by an Austrian army. The letter reached Naples on February 9. Three days before the Austrian troops had received their orders to cross the Po.

[Sidenote: Battle of Rieti]

[Sidenote: Revolt of Piedmont]

The invading army of Austria was 50,000 strong. The Neapolitan soldiers numbered a little more than 40,000, of whom 12,000 were in Sicily engaged at Palermo in suppressing a counter revolution for home rule. At the first encounter at Rieti in the Papal territory, the Neapolitans under General Pepe were utterly routed. Their forces melted away, as they did when Murat made his last stroke for Italy and Napoleon. Not a single strong point was defended. On March 24, the Austrians entered Naples. Then came a moment of danger. Rebellion broke out in Piedmont, and an attempt was made to unite the troops of Piedmont with those of Lombardy. The King of Piedmont rather than sign the Spanish Constitution abdicated his throne. On the refusal of the King's brother, Charles Felix, to recognize a constitution, his cousin Charles Albert of Carignano was made the regent and commander of the troops. He advanced so cautiously that the conspirators at Milan dared not follow suit with a revolution of their own. In the meanwhile the Czar had ordered 100,000 Russians to march in the direction of the Adriatic. The Austrian forces advanced westward from the Venetian strongholds, and, brushing aside all resistance, entered Piedmont.

[Sidenote: End of Italian revolution]

[Sidenote: Silvio Pellico]

The victory of absolutism in Italy was complete. Courts-martial sat all over Italy. Morelli, the officer who had led out the so-called sacred band of Nola, was shot. His followers were expressly excluded from all amnesty acts. An attempted insurrection in Sicily cost the conspirators their lives. Hundreds of persons were cast into prison, or were marched off to distant fortresses in Austria. It was at this time that Silvio Pellico, the author of the famous "Prison Records," was sent to the dungeon of Spielberg. Then began that long stream of fugitives to England and America.

[Sidenote: Revolt in Brazil]

[Sidenote: Mexican independence]

[Sidenote: San Martin's Campaign]

The Holy Alliance, sitting at Leibach, thought the time was ripe to pronounce its anathema against all peoples seeking their liberties elsewhere than in the grace of their legitimate sovereigns. Yet the spirit of revolt was abroad, and its flames continued to flicker up at widely separated points. On February 26, the Portuguese troops in Brazil rose in revolt. The king, still residing at Rio Janeiro, was compelled to appoint a new Ministry pledged to give to both Portugal and Brazil a new representative system. In Mexico, General Iturbide, at the same time, issued a pronunciamiento, containing his so-called "Plan of Iguala," which proposed independence for Mexico under a Spanish Bourbon prince. Several rebel leaders acquiesced in this, and forced the Spanish viceroy to resign. Juan O'Donoju became acting-viceroy. He signed a treaty with Iturbide virtually accepting the plan. The people of Buenos Ayres profited by the military troubles in Brazil to throw in their lot with that of the Argentine Republic. Their popular idol, San Martin, meanwhile was leading his victorious troops from Chile into Peru. Lima, one of the greatest Spanish strongholds in South America, was threatened by the revolutionists.

[Sidenote: War in Annam]

[Sidenote: Taouk-Wang]

At the other end of the earth, the new force of national feeling showed itself in popular uprisings. In distant Annam the death of Emperor Gia-Long, followed by a bloody struggle for the succession between his sons, incited the people to a national demonstration against the encroachments of the French in Tonquin. In China the new Emperor Taouk-Wang was enthroned. He was the first to throw his whole personal influence against the evils of the opium trade inflicted upon China by English merchants since 1800.

[Sidenote: Philike Hetairia]

[Sidenote: Ypsilanti]

[Sidenote: Vladimiresco]

In Greece and in the Balkans the people rose against the yoke of Turkey. The plan of the Philike Hetairia—i.e. Patriotic Association—was to begin their revolution on the Danube, so as to induce Russia to take a hand in their favor. They believed that Capodistrias, the Prime Minister of Russia, himself a Greek, would win the Czar to their cause. Unfortunately for them, Metternich's influence proved stronger than that of the Greek Minister. Capodistrias deemed it advisable to publish a pamphlet warning his countrymen against any rash step. Failing to win the open support of Capodistrias, the Hetairists turned to Prince Alexander Ypsilanti, a Greek exile serving in the Russian army. Ypsilanti agreed to raise the standard of revolt in Moldavia. It was arranged that Theodore Vladimiresco, a Roumanian who had served in the Russian army, was to call his countrymen to arms against the Turk. Then the Greeks were to step in, and the help of Russia was to be invoked.

[Sidenote: Rising of Roumania]

In February, Vladimiresco proclaimed the abolition of feudal servitude in Roumania, and marched with a horde of peasants upon Bucharest. Early in March, the Greek troops at Galatz, let loose by their commander, Karavias, massacred the Turkish population of that town.

Ypsilanti, waiting on the Russian frontier, crossed the Pruth and appeared at Jassee with a few hundred followers. A proclamation was issued, calling upon all Christians to rise against the Crescent. Ypsilanti went so far as to declare that "a great European power," meaning Russia, was "pledged to support him." The Greek Hospodar of Jassee immediately surrendered the government, and supplied a large sum of money. Troops to the number of 2,000 gathered around Ypsilanti. The road to the Danube lay open.

[Sidenote: Ypsilanti repudiated]

[Sidenote: Death of Vladimiresco]

[Sidenote: Georgakis]

Ypsilanti wasted valuable time loitering at Jassee. A month was lost before he reached Bucharest. He delayed partly on account of his expectations of Russian help in response to a letter he had written to the Czar. The delay proved fatal to him. The Czar, now wholly under the influence of Metternich, sent a stern answer from Leibach. Ypsilanti was dismissed from the Russian service. The Russian consul at Jassee issued a manifesto that Russia repudiated and condemned Ypsilanti's enterprise. The Patriarch of Constantinople was made to issue a ban of excommunication against the rebels. In an official note of the Powers, the Congress of Leibach branded the Greek revolt as a token of the same spirit which had produced the revolution of Italy and Spain. Turkish troops crossed the Danube. The Roumanian peasants, seeing no help from Russia, held aloof. Vladimiresco plotted against the Greeks. It was in vain that brave Georgakis captured the traitor at his own headquarters and carried him to his death in the Greek camp. Ypsilanti was defeated in his first encounter with the Turks. He retired before them toward the Austrian frontier. In the end he fled across the border and was promptly made a prisoner in Austria. His followers dearly sold their lives. At Skuleni, 400 of them under Georgakis made a last stand on the Pruth. They were surrounded by ten times their number. Georgakis refused to surrender. Bidding his followers flee, at the moment when the Turks broke in the doors, he blew himself up in the monastery of Skuleni.

[Sidenote: Revolt of Morea]

[Sidenote: Gregorios hanged]

At the news of Ypsilanti's uprising in Moldavia the entire Greek population of the Morea rose against the Turk. From the outset, the Moreotes waged a war of extermination. They massacred all Turks, men, women and children. Within a few weeks the open country was swept clear of its Mohammedan population. The fugitive Turks were invested within the walls of Tripolitza, Patras, and other strong towns. Sultan Mahmud took prompt vengeance. A number of innocent Greeks at Constantinople were strangled by his executioners. The fury of the Moslem was let loose on the Infidel. All Greek settlements along the Bosphorus were burned. But the crowning stroke came on Easter Sunday, the most sacred day of the Greek Church. The Patriarch of Constantinople, while he was celebrating service, was summoned away by the dragoman of the Porte. At the order of the Sultan he was haled before a hastily assembled synod and there degraded from his office as a traitor. The synod was commanded to elect his successor. While the trembling prelates did their bidding, Patriarch Gregorios was led out in his sacred robes and hanged at the gate of his palace. His body remained hanging throughout the Easter celebration, and was then given to the Jews to be dragged through the streets and cast into the Bosphorus. A similar fate befell the Greek archbishops of Salonica, Tirnovo, and Adrianople. The body of Gregorios floating in the sea was picked up by a Greek ship and carried to Odessa. This return to Christian soil of the remains of the Patriarch was hailed as a miracle in Russia. Gregorios was solemnly buried by the Russian Government as a martyr.

[Sidenote: Russia aroused]

[Sidenote: The Czar found wanting]

If the will of the Russian people had been carried out, the Russian army and nation would have avenged the murder of their high-priest by an immediate war upon the Turks. Strogonov, the Russian Ambassador at Constantinople, at once proposed to his diplomatic colleagues to join him in calling for warships to protect the Christians there. Lord Stranford, the British Ambassador, refused to accede to this proposition. Single-handed, Strogonov presented an ultimatum to the Sultan demanding the restoration of Christian churches and the Porte's protection for Christian worship. A written answer was exacted within eight days. Encouraged by England's attitude, the Sultan ignored Strogonov's requests. On July 27, the Russian Ambassador left Constantinople. To the amazement of his moujiks, the Czar did not declare war. The councils of Prince Metternich prevailed. With the help of the representatives of England, Metternich persuaded the Czar to view the rebellion of Greece as a mere unfortunate disturbance. Any countenance of it, he argued, would imperil the peace of Europe.

[Sidenote: Rising of the Greeks]

[Sidenote: Ali Pasha]

[Sidenote: Moreote campaign]

[Sidenote: Petrobei]

[Sidenote: Kolokotrones]

[Sidenote: Maurokordatos]

[Sidenote: Massacre of Navarino]

[Sidenote: Sack of Tripolitza]

The murder of the Greek Patriarch was followed by risings of the Greeks throughout continental Greece and the Archipelago. Here, as in the Morea, the cause of Greek freedom was disgraced by massacres, and indignities to Turkish women. The Sultan's troops, led by able commanders, retaliated in kind. Khurshid, with a large Turkish army, besieged Janina. He held firmly to his task, even after his whole household fell into the hands of the Moreotes. The Greeks in Thessaly failed to rise, and thus the border provinces were saved for the Ottoman Empire. The risings in remoter districts were soon quelled. In Epirus, Ali Pasha, the Albanian chieftain, was surrounded by overwhelming numbers and lost his life. On the Macedonian coast the Hetairist revolt, in which the monks of Mount Athos took part, proved abortive. Moreover, the desultory warfare on water carried on by the islanders of Hydra, Spetza, and Psara served only to annoy the Turks. The real campaign was waged in the Morea, where Tripolitza, the seat of the Turkish Government, was besieged by the insurgents. Demetrios Ypsilanti, Prince Alexander's brother, landed on the coast and was welcomed as a leader by the peasants in arms. Three other leaders rose to prominence. First, in the eyes of the people, came Petrobei, chief of the family of Mauromichalis. Surrounded by his nine sons, this sturdy chieftain appeared like one of the old Homeric kings. Second in popular favor was Kolokotrones, a typical modern Clepht, cunning and treacherous, but a born soldier. The ablest political leader was Maurokordatos, a man of some breadth of view and foresight, but over-cautious as a general. The early insurgent successes were marred by bad faith and gross savagery. On the surrender of Navarino, in August, a formal capitulation was signed, safeguarding the lives of the Turkish inhabitants. In the face of this compact the victorious Greeks put men, women and children to the sword. Two months later the Turkish garrison of Tripolitza, after sustaining a siege of six months, began negotiations for surrender. In the midst of the truce, the Greek soldiery got wind of a secret bargain of their leaders to extend protection for private gain. In defiance of the officers, the peasant soldiers stormed Tripolitza and scaled the walls. Then followed three days of indiscriminate looting and carnage. By thousands, the Turks, with their women and children, were slaughtered. Kolokotrones himself records how he rode from the gateway to the citadel of Tripolitza, his horse's hoofs touching nothing but human bodies.

[Sidenote: Philhellenism]

The Greek struggle for independence aroused conflicting emotions in Europe. The passionate sympathy of the Russians rested wholly on their religious bonds. The more enlightened Philhellenes of France and Germany affected to see in this struggle a revival of the ancient Greek spirit that blazed forth at Thermopylae and Marathon. For this same reason, perhaps, Metternich and his colleagues in the Holy Alliance looked upon the Greek revolution with an evil eye. Any cause espoused by the hot-headed liberals at the universities in those days of itself became obnoxious to the reactionary rulers of the German and Austrian states.

[Sidenote: Lord Byron's Greek lyrics]

The sympathy with the Greeks was most pronounced in England. There the stirring lyrics of Lord Byron had reached the height of their popularity. His songs of Greece and Greek freedom were justly regarded as among his best. It was but a short time before this that the poet, to use his own phrase, had awakened one morning to find himself famous. Now his Greek songs were hailed by the whole world as classics. Notable among them were the "Isles of Greece," embodied in the third canto of his "Don Juan" with the famous stanza:

The mountains look on Marathon— And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone I dreamed that Greece might still be free.

And the equally celebrated lines from "The Bride of Abydos":

Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime? Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime!

[Sidenote: Death of Keats]

[Sidenote: Byron's satire]

[Sidenote: Keats's work]

In English literary annals this year was marked furthermore by the death of John Keats. He was but twenty-five, still in the first flush of his genius. Keats was buried in Rome, where he died. On his gravestone is the epitaph composed by himself: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." It was generally assumed in England that the poet's death was caused by his anguish over the merciless criticisms of "Blackwood's Magazine" and the "Quarterly Review." Lord Byron was unkind enough to exploit this notion in his "Don Juan":

John Keats, who was killed off by one critique, Just as he really promised something great If not intelligible, without Greek Contrived to talk about the gods of late Much as they might have been supposed to speak. Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate; 'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.

As a matter of fact Keats died of consumption. The ravages of this disease in his case were accelerated by his feverish passion for poetry, his love affair with Fanny Brawne, financial embarrassments, and only to a slight extent by the inevitable disappointment arising from adverse criticisms. What Byron did for modern Greece in England, Keats may be said to have done for ancient Greece. The beautiful songs of Greece, embodied in "Endymion" and "Hyperion," no less than the enthusiastic odes and sonnets in praise of Hellenic works of art, opened the eyes of many of the contemporaries of Keats to the enduring beauties of Greece. It was in his exquisite "Ode to a Grecian Urn," that Keats expressed his poetical master passion for beauty:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.



[Sidenote: "Adonais"]

Shortly after Keats's death appeared one of the most beautiful of Shelley's longer poems—"Adonais," written as an elegy on the death of Keats:

I weep for Adonais—he is dead. Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head! And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, And teach them thine own sorrow! Say. "With me Died Adonais; till the Future dares Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity."

[Sidenote: Wilhelm Meister]

[Sidenote: Rise of romantic literature]

[Sidenote: Victor Hugo]

Other literary events of the year were the publication of Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister's Wander Jahre," and of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin's first long poem, "Ruslan and Ludmilla." In this epic, written during Pushkin's early banishment to Bessarabia, an old Russian theme of the heroic times of Kiev was treated much after the manner of Byron's romantic examples. In France the romantic period in literature was inaugurated by young Victor Hugo, who, but the year before, had been crowned as "Maitre des jeux floraux" for a prize poem on Henri IV. Now Chateaubriand, in his journal "Le Conservateur," welcomed him as "Un enfant sublime." By his own romantic followers Hugo was hailed as chief of their poetic "Bataillon Sacre." During the same year the poet, then barely nineteen, married Mademoiselle Foucher, a girl of fifteen.

[Sidenote: Death of Napoleon]

The most important event of the year for Frenchmen was the death of Napoleon Bonaparte at Longwood, in St. Helena. He died on May 5, after taking the holy sacrament. He left a last will with several codicils. In it Napoleon made the following declarations:

[Sidenote: Napoleon's will]

"I die in the Apostolical and Roman religion, in the bosom of which I was born more than fifty years ago. It is my wish that my ashes may repose on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people whom I have loved so well. I have always had reason to be pleased with my dearest wife, Maria Louisa. I retain for her, to the last moment, the most tender sentiments. I beseech her to watch, in order to preserve my son from the snares which yet environ his infancy. I recommend to my son never to forget that he was born a French prince, and never to allow himself to become an instrument in the hands of the triumvirs who oppress the nations of Europe: he ought never to fight against France, or to injure her in any manner; he ought to adopt my motto—Everything for the French people. I die prematurely, assassinated by the English oligarchy and its tool. The English nation will not be slow in avenging me. The two unfortunate results of the invasions of France, when she had still so many resources, are to be attributed to the treason of Marmont, Augereau, Talleyrand, and Lafayette. I forgive them—may the posterity of France forgive them as I do! I pardon Louis for the libel he published in 1820; it is replete with false assertions and falsified documents. I disavow the 'Manuscript of St. Helena,' and other works, under the title of 'Maxims, Sayings,' etc., which persons have been pleased to publish for the last six years. Such are not the rules which have guided my life. I caused the Duc d'Enghien to be arrested and tried because that step was essential to the safety, interest and honor of the French people, when the Comte d'Artois was maintaining, by his own confession, sixty assassins at Paris. Under similar circumstances I should act in the same way."

[Sidenote: The bequests]

To his son and immediate relatives, Napoleon left most of his personal effects. Among his relatives and favorite followers he distributed a sum of 6,000,000 francs, left in the hands of his bankers at the time of his flight from Paris; likewise the proceeds of a possible sale of his confiscated crown jewels. Count Lavalette and the children of Labedoyere were remembered with bequests of 100,000 and 50,000 francs, respectively. The final clauses were:

"To be distributed among such proscribed persons as wander in foreign countries, whether they be French, Italians, Belgians, Dutch, Spanish, or inhabitants of the departments of the Rhine, under the directions of my executors, one hundred thousand francs. To be distributed among those who suffered amputation, or were severely wounded at Ligny or Waterloo, who may be still living, according to lists drawn up by my executors. The Guards shall be paid double, those of the Island of Elba quadruple, two hundred thousand francs."

[Sidenote: Cantillon remembered]

A curious bequest was that of 10,000 francs to Cantillon, a French subaltern, who was tried and acquitted for the attempted assassination of the Duke of Wellington in Paris on February 11, 1818. Napoleon thus explained this bequest:

[Sidenote: Last fling at Wellington]

"Cantillon had as much right to assassinate that oligarchist as the latter had to send me to perish upon the rock of St. Helena. Wellington, who proposed this outrage, attempted to justify it by pleading the interest of Great Britain. Cantillon, if he had really assassinated that lord, would have pleaded the same excuse, and been justified by the same motive—the interest of France—to get rid of this general, who, moreover, by violating the capitulation of Paris, had rendered himself responsible for the blood of the martyrs Ney, Labedoyere, etc., and for the crime of having pillaged the museums, contrary to the text of the treaties."

This last legacy was not paid until 1855, when Napoleon III. discharged it.

[Sidenote: Fall of Richelieu's Ministry]

[Sidenote: Villele Prime Minister]

Late in the year the Ministry of Duc de Richelieu succumbed to the machinations of Comte d'Artois. Before his resignation, Richelieu complained to the Count, reminding him of his promises of support at the first formation of the Cabinet. "The fact is, my dear Duke," replied Monsieur, "if you allow me to say so, you have taken my words too literally. And then the circumstances at that time were so different." The Prime Minister rose abruptly and sought out the King. "Monsieur has broken his word of honor," he said, "he has broken his word as a gentleman." "What would you have me do?" said Louis XVIII. "He conspired against Louis XVI.; he conspires against me; he will conspire against himself." The explosion of a barrel of gunpowder in the royal palace raised apprehensions of another painful scene, like that preceding the fall of the Ministry of Decazes. Richelieu resigned, and Villele took his place. Chateaubriand was sent to London as Ambassador. While Parliamentary government in France labored thus under the onslaughts of the Royalist plotters in the Chambers, the so-called Era of Good Feeling in America was continued under the second administration of President Monroe.

[Sidenote: Inauguration of Monroe]

[Sidenote: Missouri admitted to Statehood]

The 4th of March fell on a Sunday, and Monroe was the first President to be inaugurated on the 5th. Missouri was admitted conditionally, and, on August 10, the President proclaimed its admission as the twenty-fourth State amid a tempest of political excitement. The contest over the slavery question was now supposed to be forever settled. In the debates of 1821, the House stood firmly against Missouri's admission as a slave State, and the Senate was equally determined that the colored citizens of other States should be denied citizenship in Missouri if the people so desired. At last it came to a conference committee. It was decided that the State should be admitted, as soon as its Legislature would agree that the section of the Constitution in question should not be construed as authorizing a law excluding any citizens of other States from the immunities and privileges to which they were entitled under the Constitution. The Legislature of Missouri gave this pledge, but it remained open whether free negroes and mulattoes were citizens in other States, and whether they were to be made citizens in Missouri. In the admission of Missouri there was for the first time an unmixed issue on the question of a free government or a slave-holding government in the United States. Doubtful dealings on the part of the Senators from Indiana and Illinois were followed by an attempt to make these States both slave-holding States, in face of the binding law of the Ordinance of 1787. A popular movement led by Governor Edward Coles of Illinois defeated this project.

[Sidenote: Liberia]

[Sidenote: Junius Brutus Booth]

On May 5, the territory of Liberia was secured on the west coast of Africa, and a colony was founded for the repatriation of negro slaves, with Monrovia for a capital. During this same period Junius Brutus Booth made his first appearance in America, as Richard III., at Richmond. Late in the year the remains of Andre, the British officer who was shot as a spy during the American Revolution, were placed on a British ship for interment in Westminster Abbey.



1822

[Sidenote: Greek independence declared]

[Sidenote: Sack of Chios]

[Sidenote: Kanaris' exploit]

Greek independence was declared on January 27. After the fall of Ali Pasha in February, the Sultan was able to turn his undivided attention to the Greek revolt. In March, a body of Samian revolutionists landed in Chios and incited the islanders to rise against the Turk. They laid siege to the citadel held by a Turkish garrison. Had the fleet of the Hydriotes helped them, they might have prevailed. As it was they rendered themselves a prey to the Turkish troops on the mainland. An army of nearly 10,000 Turks landed in Chios, and relieved the besieged garrison. Then the fanatical Moslems were let loose on the gentle inhabitants of the little island. Thousands were put to the sword. The slave markets of Northern Africa were glutted with Chian women and children. Within a month the once lovely island was a ruined waste. All Greece and Europe was filled with horror. Maurokordatos, now at the head of Greek affairs, was bitterly blamed for not sending over a fleet to save Chios. One single Greek took it into his hands to avenge his countrymen. The Turks were celebrating their sacred month of Ramazan. On the night of June 18, the festival of Biram, the Turkish fleet, under command of Kara Ali, was illuminated with colored lanterns. On that night Constantine Kanaris, a sea-captain from Psara, drove a fire-ship into the midst of the Turkish fleet. Sailing close up to the admiral's flagship he thrust his bowsprit into one of the portholes. Then setting fire to the pitch and resin on board his ship, he dropped into his small boat and pulled away. A breeze fanned the flames, and in a moment the big Turkish man-of-war was afire. The powder magazine blew up and the lifeboats went up in flames. The burning rigging fell down upon the doomed crew, and the admiral was struck down on his poop-deck. The ship was burned to the water's edge. The Turkish fleet scattered before the shower of blazing sparks, and was only brought together under the guns of the Dardanelles. This exploit made Kanaris the hero of Greece. Within the same year he repeated the feat.

[Sidenote: Morea reinvaded]

[Sidenote: End of Philhellene corps]

[Sidenote: Defence of Argos]

[Sidenote: Turks demoralized]

The Sultan had thrown his whole land force into the Greek mainland. Khurshid, after his defeat of Ali Pasha, marched to Larissa, in Thessaly. Thence two armies, 50,000 strong, under Bramali and Homer Brionis converged upon the Morea. In the face of so formidable an invasion, Maurokordatos took the field himself. He mismanaged things badly. At Arta he sacrificed his choicest regiment, the famous corps of Philhellenes, composed of foreign officers and commanded by men who had won distinction in Napoleon's campaigns. They were cut down almost to a man. Maurokordatos fell back to Missolonghi. In the meanwhile Dramalis with 25,000 foot and 6,000 horse penetrated into the Morea. The Greek Government at Argos dispersed. All would have been lost for the Greeks had Dramalis not neglected to cover the mountain passes behind him. While he marched on to Nauplia, the Greek mountaineers rose behind him. Demetrios Ypsilanti, the acting-president of Greece, with a few hundred followers threw himself into Argos. There he held the Acropolis against the Turkish rearguard. Kolokotrones, calling out the last men from Tripolitza, relieved Ypsilanti at Argos. The mountain passage was seized. Dramalis had to give up his conquest of the Morea, and fight his way back to the Isthmus of Corinth. Without supplies and harassed by hostile peasant forces the Turkish army became badly demoralized. Thousands were lost on the way. Dramalis himself died from over-exposure. The remainder of his army melted away at Corinth under the combined effects of sickness and drought.

[Sidenote: Capodistrias resigns]

A decisive turn in the Greek war for independence was reached. Europe realized that the revolt had grown to the proportions of a national war. Popular sympathy in Russia became more clamorous. Capodistrias, the Russian Prime Minister, rightly measured the force of this long pent-up feeling. Unable to move the Czar, who still floundered in the toils of the Holy Alliance, Capodistrias withdrew from public affairs and retired to Geneva.

[Sidenote: Suicide of Castlereagh]

[Sidenote: Canning]

[Sidenote: Iturbide Emperor of Mexico]

[Sidenote: Battle of Pichincha]

[Sidenote: San Martin retires]

[Sidenote: Battle of Junin]

[Sidenote: Ayacucho]

[Sidenote: Independence of Brazil]

In England, the suicide of Castlereagh brought Canning once more into prominence. Robert Peel was made Home Secretary. Canning's long retirement after the fiasco of his American policy, and his breach with Castlereagh, had served to chasten this statesman. As leader of the opposition, he had learned to reckon with the forces of popular feeling. When he returned to power in 1822, he was no longer an ultra-conservative, but a liberal. He now made no disguise of his sympathies with the cause of Greece, and with the struggle for independence in South and Central America. There the course of freedom had gathered so much momentum that it was plain to all that Spain could never prevail without help from others. In Mexico, upon the refusal of Ferdinand VII. to accept the separate crown of Mexico, General Iturbide proclaimed himself emperor. On May 19, he assumed the dignity. As Augustine I., he was crowned in the Cathedral of Mexico in July. At the same time San Martin and Bolivar met at Guayaquil to dispose of the destinies of South America. San Martin had just succeeded in liberating Peru, and had made his triumphal entry into Lima. Bolivar had brought aid to Ecuador, and established independence there. Jose de Sucre, whom Bolivar called the "soul of his army," defeated the Spaniards in the famous battle of Pichincha, fought at a height of 10,200 feet above the sea. When Bolivar and San Martin met on July 25, San Martin announced his determination to give a free field to Bolivar. The two men parted at a great public love-feast at which San Martin toasted Bolivar as the "liberator of Colombia." In his farewell address he said: "The presence of a fortunate general in the country which he has conquered is detrimental to the state. I have won the independence of Peru, and I now cease to be a public man." Speaking privately of Bolivar, he said: "He is the most extraordinary character of South America; one to whom difficulties but add strength." With his daughter Mercedes, San Martin retired to Europe, to dwell there in obscurity and poverty. Bolivar, with Generals Sucre, Miller and Cordova, assembled a great liberating army at Juarez. After a preliminary victory at Junin, Bolivar returned to Lima to assume the reigns of government, while his generals pushed on against the forces of the Spanish viceroy. Late in the year a decisive battle was fought at Ayacucho. The revolutionists charged down the mountain ridges upon the Spaniards in the plain, and utterly routed them. The viceroy himself was wounded, with 700 of his men, while 1,400 Spaniards were killed outright. In these casualties the unusual disparity between killed and wounded reveals the unsparing ferocity of the fight. In Brazil a peaceful revolution was effected in September. After the return of Juan VI. to Portugal his son Dom Pedro reigned as regent. On September 7, he yielded to the demands of his American subjects, and proclaimed the independence of Brazil. He was declared constitutional emperor of Brazil on October 12, and was crowned as such shortly afterward at Rio Janeiro.

[Sidenote: Discontent in Spain]

[Sidenote: Foreign aid invoked]

The South American colonies had now in great part secured independence. Spain was thereby robbed of her best resources. As financial distress became more widespread, the spirit of discontent rose. The King's plottings with the extreme Royalists of France lost him the confidence of his subjects. In the south the triumphant party of the so-called Exaltados refused obedience to the central administration. The municipal governments of Cadiz, Cartagena and Seville took the tone of independent republics. In the north, the Serviles, instigated by French agitators and their money, broke into open rebellion. After the adjournment of the Cortes, Ferdinand attempted to make a stroke for himself. The Royal Guards were ordered to march from Aranjuez to Madrid to place themselves under the King's personal command. The people took alarm, and several regiments of disaffected soldiers were induced to head off the guards. A fight ensued in the streets of Madrid. The guards were scattered. The King found himself a prisoner in his own palace. He wrote to Louis XVIII. that his crown was in peril. The Bourbon sympathizers in the north at once seized the town of Seo d'Urgel, and set up a provisional government. Civil war spread over Spain. Napoleon's final prophecy that Bourbon rule would end in the ruin of Spain, and the loss of all the best colonies was near fulfilment. It was then that the Continental powers of Europe proposed to interfere on behalf of the Spanish monarchy. The death of old Minister Hardenberg in Berlin did not loosen Metternich's hold on Prussia. Emperor Alexander hoped to conciliate his army, burning to fall upon the Turk, by treating them to a light campaign in Spain. In France, the Spanish war party likewise had the upper hand.

[Sidenote: Monroe Doctrine]

Nothing could save Spain; but Spanish South and Central America presented another issue. The new republics had developed a thriving trade with Great Britain and the United States of America, which made it impossible for these countries to ignore their flags. In America, Henry Clay on the floor of Congress, had already urged the recognition of South American independence. In his annual message to Congress in 1822 President Monroe took up the question. On behalf of the United States he declared that, the American continents were henceforth not to be considered a subject for further colonization by any European power. "In the war between Spain and her colonies," said President Monroe, "the United States will continue to observe the strictest neutrality.... With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great considerations and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny by any European power, in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States."

[Sidenote: Jefferson's indorsement]

[Sidenote: Canning's part]

[Sidenote: Fyffe's comment]

It was the famous Monroe Doctrine, a doctrine that in its substance, if not in words, had already served as the guiding star of Thomas Jefferson's and Madison's foreign policy. It is related that President Monroe, applying to Thomas Jefferson for his opinion on the matter, was surprised at the positive nature of the reply which he received. "Our first and fundamental maxim," said Jefferson, "should be never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe; our second, never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with cis-Atlantic affairs." At the same time that America thus flung down her gauntlet to Europe, Canning, on behalf of the British Ministry, proposed to inform the allied Cabinets of England's intention to accredit envoys to the South American republics. Assured of the support of the United States, and of Great Britain as well, South America could feel free to work out her own destiny. This was the master-stroke of Canning's career. When brought to bay afterward in Parliament, he could proudly boast: "I called the New World into being, in order to redress the balance of the Old." To Americans Canning's boast has ever seemed to rest on a flimsy foundation. As Fyffe, the English historian of modern Europe, has justly said, "The boast, famous in our Parliamentary history, has left an erroneous impression of the part really played by Canning at this crisis. He did not call the New World into existence; he did not even assist it in winning independence, as France had assisted the United States fifty years before; but when this independence had been won, he threw over it the aegis of Great Britain, declaring that no other European power should reimpose the yoke which Spain had not been able to maintain."

[Sidenote: Death of Shelley]

At the time that Canning made British liberalism respected abroad, literary England suffered another irreparable loss by the death of Percy Bysshe Shelley. The last few weeks had been spent by Shelley in Italy in the company of Trelawney, Williams and Lord Byron. Before this Maurokordatos, now battling in Greece, had been their constant companion. In June Leigh Hunt arrived. Shelley and Williams set out in a boat to meet him at Leghorn. The long parted friends met there. On July 8, Shelley and Williams set sail for the return voyage to Lerici. Their boat was last seen ten miles out at sea off Reggio. Then the haze of a summer storm hid it from view. Ten days later Shelley's body was washed ashore near Reggio. It was identified by a volume of Sophocles and of Keats's poems found on his person. In the presence of Byron, Trelawney and Leigh Hunt, Shelley's remains were cremated on the shore. His ashes were buried in the same burial ground with Keats, hard by the pyramid of Caius Cestius in Rome.

[Sidenote: Lyric quality of his work]

[Sidenote: Shelley's career]

[Sidenote: Shelley's threnody]

Shelley's poetry belongs primarily to the Revolutionary epoch in modern history. Though he wrote several long narrative poems and one great tragedy, he was above all a lyric poet—according to some the greatest lyric poet of England. His life, like his poetry, was almost untrammelled by convention. Both gave great offence to the stricter elements of English society. In some respects Shelley was peculiarly unfortunate. At the age of eighteen, after his expulsion from Oxford University, he married Harriet Westbrook, a girl of sixteen, and then found himself unable to support her. Later he abandoned her and eloped with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. Within a year his first wife committed suicide, and, three weeks later, Shelley married Mary Godwin. The tragedy stirred up much feeling among his friends. Among others the poet-laureate, Southey, remonstrated with Shelley. Shelley replied: "I take God to witness, if such a Being is now regarding both you and me, and I pledge myself, if we meet, as perhaps you expect, before Him after death, to repeat the same in His presence—that you accuse me wrongfully. I am innocent of ill, either done or intended." Next came Shelley's trouble with the Chancery. Lord-Chancellor Elden refused to give to Shelley the custody of his own children on the ground that Shelley's professed opinions and conduct were such as the law pronounced immoral. Shelley replied with his famous poetical curse "To the Lord Chancellor." While the poem stands as a masterpiece of lyric invective it did not mend matters for Shelley in England. In many of his other poems his detractors saw nothing but the glorification of revolution, incest, and atheism. When he wrote a satirical drama on so delicate a subject as the unhappy affairs of Queen Caroline, even his publisher turned against him. Yet the charm and beauty of Shelley's purely lyric pieces was such that he must ever stand as one of the foremost poets of England. Either his "Adonais" or the beautiful "Ode to the West Wind," would alone have perpetuated his name in English letters. One of Shelley's most exquisite pieces, written shortly before his death, has come to stand as the poet's own threnody:

"When the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies dead— When the cloud is scattered The rainbow's glory is shed. When the lute is broken, Sweet tones are remembered not; When the lips have spoken, Loved accents are soon forgot.

As music and splendor Survive not the lamp and the lute, The heart's echoes render No song when the spirit is mute, No song but sad dirges, Like the wind through a ruined cell, Or the mournful surges That ring the dead seaman's knell."

[Sidenote: Revival of letters]

[Sidenote: Golden age of music]

During this same year Thomas de Quincey published his "Confessions of an Opium Eater," a masterpiece of balanced prose. In other parts of the world, likewise, it was a golden period for literature. In France, Victor Hugo published his "Odes et Poesies Diverses," a collection of early poems which contained some of his most charming pieces. The rising Swedish poet, Tegner, brought out his "Children of the Last Supper." In Germany, Heinrich Heine, then still a student at Bonn, issued his earliest verses. For Germany this was no less a golden age of music. Beethoven, though quite deaf, was still the greatest of living composers. His great Choral Symphony, the ninth in D minor, was produced during this year, as was his Solemn Mass in D major. As a virtuoso he was rivalled by Hummel, who at this time gave to the world his famous Septet, accepted by himself as his masterwork. Two other German composers so distinguished themselves that they were invited to London to conduct the Philharmonic accompaniments. They were Carl Maria von Weber, who had just brought out his brilliant opera, "Der Freischuetz," and Ludwig Spohr, who performed in London his new Symphony in D minor. Of other composers there were Franz Schubert, whose melodious songs and symphonies won him the recognition of the Esterhazys and of Beethoven. Among those whose career was but beginning were Jacob Meyerbeer, a fellow pupil with Weber under Abbe Vogler at Vienna, and Felix Mendelssohn, the precocious pupil of the famous pianist Moscheles.

[Sidenote: Death of Herschel]

Sir Frederick William Herschel, the greatest modern astronomer, died at Slough in England. Herschel was born in 1738 at Hanover. He was a musician of rare skill and a self-taught mathematician of great ability. In 1757, he deserted the band of Hanoverian Guards in which he played the oboe, although a mere boy, and fled to England, where he taught music and achieved success as a violinist and organist. His studies in sound and harmony led him to take up optics; and from optics to astronomy the step was short. Dissatisfied with the crude instruments of his time, he made his own telescopes; for it was his ambition to be not a mere star-gazer, but an earnest student of the heavens. By day, he and his brother and sister ground specula; by night he observed the heavens. His astronomical work includes a careful study of variable stars; an attempt to explain the relation of sun-spots to terrestrial phenomenae; the determination that the periods of rotation of various satellites, like the rotation of our own moon, are equal to the times of their revolutions about their primaries; and the discovery of the planet Uranus and two of its satellites, and of the sixth and seventh satellites of Saturn. His greatest work was his study of binary stars and the demonstration of his belief that the law of gravitation is universal in its application. His labors were invariably systematic, and were characterized by dogged, Teutonic perseverance. His discoveries were never purely accidental, but were made in accordance with a well-conceived plan.

[Sidenote: Death of Canova]

Late in the autumn news came from Venice that Canova, the celebrated sculptor, had died. Antonio Canova was born in 1757 at Passaguo near Treviso. He was first an apprentice to a statuary in Bassano, from whom he went to the Academy of Venice, where he had a brilliant career. In 1779 he was sent by the Senate of Venice to Rome, and there produced his Theseus and the Slain Minotaur. In 1783, Canova undertook the execution of the tomb of Pope Clement XIV., a work similar to the tomb of Pope Clement XIII. His fame rapidly increased. He established a school for the benefit of young Venetians, and among other works produced the well-known Hebe and the colossal Hercules hurling Lichas into the sea. In 1797, Canova finished the model of the celebrated tomb of the Archduchess Christina of Austria. Napoleon called the rising sculptor to France, and he there executed the famous nude portrait of Napoleon now preserved in Milan. After his return to Italy he fashioned his Perseus with the Head of Medusa at Rome. When the Belvidere Apollo was carried off to France, this piece of statuary was thought not unworthy of the classic Apollo's place and pedestal in the Vatican. Among the later works of Canova are the colossal group of Theseus Killing the Minotaur, a Paris, and a Hector. After Napoleon's second fall in 1815, Canova was commissioned by the Pope to demand the restoration of the works of art carried from Rome. He went to Paris and succeeded in his mission. At his return to Rome in 1816, the Pope created him Marquis of Orchia, with a pension of 3,000 scudi, and his name was entered into the Golden Book at the Capitol. His closing years were spent in Venice. There he died October 13, 1822.

[Sidenote: Congress of Verona]

[Sidenote: England slighted]

Upon Canning's accession to the Ministry in England, Wellington was appointed representative of Great Britain at the Congress of Powers convened at Vienna. The unsettled state of public opinion kept Wellington in England and later at Paris. He did not join the Congress until after its adjournment to Verona, to dispose of purely Italian affairs. Thus it happened that the supplementary meetings at Verona became the real European Congress of 1822. With the Neapolitan problem practically settled, and the Greek war with Turkey at a standstill, the situation in Spain was the most vital issue. The Czar of Russia and Metternich were determined not to tolerate the Constitution of the Spanish liberals. Alexander hoped to make good Russia's non-intervention in Greece by marching a victorious army into Spain. The extreme Royalists of France, on the other hand, were so bent on accomplishing this task themselves that they were resolved not to permit any Russian troops to pass through France. With the spectre of a general European war thus looming on the horizon, England endeavored to hold the balance for peace. Acting under the instructions of Canning, Wellington declared that England would rather set herself against the great alliance than consent to joint intervention in Spain. In his despatches to Canning, Wellington expressed his belief that this would result in a decision to leave the Spaniards to themselves. The only result was that England was left out of the affair altogether, as she had been in the case of Naples. It was partly owing to this international slight that Canning put his foot down so firmly in behalf of Portugal and the South American colonies.

[Sidenote: French attitude toward Spain]

At the Congress of Verona, Metternich once more won the day. With this backing, the French envoys, Montmorency and Chateaubriand, in defiance of their home instructions, committed France to war with Spain. An agreement was reached that, in default of radical changes in the Spanish Constitution, France and her allies would resort to intervention. On the part of England, Wellington rejected this proposal, but all the other powers consented. When the French Ambassadors returned to France, their Prime Minister, Villele, vented his dissatisfaction by repudiating his envoys. He addressed himself to the foreign Ambassadors at Paris with a request that the allies' demands on Spain be postponed. Montmorency at once resigned. No notice was taken of Villele's request except by England. The King himself went over to the war party and appointed Chateaubriand his Minister of Foreign Affairs. Great Britain's tentative offer of mediation was summarily rejected by France. To Villele, King Louis XVIII. thus explained his attitude: "Louis XIV. destroyed the Pyrenees; I shall not allow them to be raised again. He placed my house on the throne of Spain; I shall not allow it to fall."



1823

[Sidenote: French invasion of Spain]

The Spanish Government was resolved to maintain the national independence of Spain. It would make no concession. The French Ambassador in Madrid was recalled. At the opening of the French Chambers in January, the King himself announced his decision: "I have ordered the recall of my Minister. One hundred thousand Frenchmen, commanded by a prince of my family, whom I fondly call my son, are ready to march with a prayer to the God of St. Louis that they may preserve the throne of Spain to the grandson of Henri IV. They shall save that fair kingdom from ruin and reconcile it to Europe." By the middle of March, the Duke of Angouleme and his staff left Paris. On April 7, the French vanguard crossed the Bidassoa, and the Duke entered Irun, welcomed by Spanish royalists. About the same time the Cortes and Constitutional Ministry left Madrid, and compelled King Ferdinand VII. to accompany them to Seville. The forces of the Spanish Government fell back without striking a blow. Bands of freebooters calling themselves royalists went pillaging throughout the northern provinces. The commandant of Madrid felt constrained to beg the French to hasten their advance lest the city fall a prey to the freebooters. Already the looting of the suburbs had begun, when the French entered the Spanish capital on the 24th of May. A regency was appointed under the Duke of Infantado. The Continental powers sent accredited representatives to Madrid. Meanwhile the Cortes withdrew to Cadiz. King Ferdinand refused to accompany them; so they suspended his powers and appointed a regency over his head. The French prepared to lay siege to Cadiz.

[Sidenote: Revolution in Portugal]

[Sidenote: Independence of Central America]

[Sidenote: The South American struggle]

Civil war broke out in Spain. Across the border in Portugal, Dom Miguel, the second son of the absent king, excited a counter revolution. This state of affairs in the Peninsula gave a finishing stroke to the royal cause in America. In Central America, the revolutionists of Costa Rica and Guatemala, who had made common cause with Mexico, proclaimed their independence. In Mexico, Santa Anna proclaimed the republic at Vera Cruz. Emperor Iturbide, who felt his throne tottering beneath him, retired, and was banished from Mexico with an annuity. His sympathizers in Costa Rica were overthrown in a battle at Ochomoco. On the first day of July, Costa Rica was united with its neighboring States in the federation of Central America. Nor had Peru been idle. Two royalist armies under Santa Cruz had entered the upper provinces. During the summer months they overran the country between La Paz and Oruro. But in early autumn they were forced back by the revolutionists under Bolivar, who entered Lima on September 1, and had himself proclaimed dictator of Peru. In Brazil, during this interval, the Constitutional Assembly had been convoked in accordance with Dom Pedro's promise. Under the leadership of the two Andrade brothers the delegates insisted on the most liberal of constitutions. Dom Pedro's first attempt to suppress the liberal leaders was foiled by the Assembly. Finally he dissolved the contentious assembly and exiled the Andrade brothers to France. In the provinces of Pernambuco and Ceara a republic was proclaimed. Rebellion broke out in Cisplatina.

[Sidenote: Warring factions in Spain]

[Sidenote: Siege of Cadiz]

In Spain, the two opposing regencies vied with each other in retaliatory measures. Odious persecutions were instituted on both sides. In vain the Duke of Angouleme tried to restrain the reprisals of the Spanish royalists. In August he appeared before Cadiz. He called upon King Ferdinand to publish an amnesty and restore the medieval Cortes. But the Spanish Ministry, in the King's name, sent a defiant answer. Cadiz was thereupon besieged. On August 30, the French stormed the fort of the Trocadero. Three weeks later the city was bombarded. For the Spanish liberals, the cause had become hopeless. The French refused all terms but the absolute liberation of the King. On Ferdinand's assurance that he bore no grudge against his captors, the liberals agreed to release him. At last, on the 30th of September, Ferdinand signed a proclamation of absolute and universal amnesty. Next day he was taken across the bay to the French headquarters. The Cortes dissolved.

[Sidenote: Release of Ferdinand VII.]

The Duke of Angouleme received King Ferdinand with misgivings. Already he had written to France: "What most worries the liberals is the question of guarantees. They know that the King's word is utterly worthless, and that in spite of his promises he may very well hang every one of them." Angouleme's first interview confirmed his impression. In reply to his demand for a general pardon, Ferdinand pointed to the ragged mob shouting in front of his windows, and said: "You hear the will of the people." Angouleme wrote to Villele: "This country is about to fall back into absolutism. I have conscientiously done my part, and shall only express my settled conviction that every foolish act that can be done will be done."

[Sidenote: Royalist reprisals]

[Sidenote: Riego executed]

Within twelve hours Ferdinand annulled all acts of the Constitutional Government during the preceding three years. By approving an act of the regency of Madrid, which declared all those who had taken part in the removal of the King to be traitors, Ferdinand practically signed the death warrant of those men whom he had just left with fair promises on his lips. Even before reaching Madrid, Ferdinand VII. banished for life from Madrid and from the country fifty miles around it every person who had served the government in Spain during the last three years. Don Saez, the King's confessor, was made Secretary of State. He revived the Inquisition, and ordered the prosecution of all those concerned in the pernicious and heretical doctrines associated with the late outbreak. Ferdinand justified his acts with a royal pronunciamiento containing this characteristic passage: "My soul is confounded with the horrible spectacle of the sacrilegious crimes which impiety has dared to commit against the Supreme Maker of the universe.... My soul shudders and will not be able to return to tranquillity, until, in union with my children, my faithful subjects, I offer to God holocausts of piety." Thousands of persons were imprisoned, or forced to flee the country. On November 7, Riego was hanged. Young men were shot for being Freemasons. Women were sent to the galleys for owning pictures of Riego.

The Duke of Angouleme was indignant and would have nothing more to do with the King. In a parting letter of remonstrance he wrote: "I asked your Majesty to give an amnesty, and grant to your people some assurance for the future. You have done neither the one nor the other. Since your Majesty has recovered your authority, nothing has been heard of on your part but arrests and arbitrary edicts. Anxiety, fear, and discontent begin to spread everywhere." Angouleme returned to France thoroughly disenchanted with the cause for which he had drawn his sword.

[Sidenote: The French elections]

In France, as in England, the return of absolute rule in Spain was viewed with extreme disfavor by the Liberals. The success of the French arms, to be sure, gave the government an overwhelming majority at the elections. The voice of the Liberals was heard, however, in the first debate over the Spanish war. Manuel, a Liberal deputy, denounced foreign intervention in Spain. He said: "Can any one be ignorant that the misfortunes of the Stuarts in England were caused by nothing so much as the assistance granted them by France—an assistance foreign to the Parliament and to the people. The Stuarts would have avoided the fate that overtook them had they sought their support within the nation." For this alleged defence of regicide Manuel was excluded from the Chambers. On his refusal to give up his constitutional rights, he was forcibly ejected by the National Guards. "It is an insult to the National Guard," exclaimed the venerable Lafayette. In spite of the momentary triumph of the Royalists, Guizot's final verdict on French intervention in Spain expresses the true attitude of France:

[Sidenote: Guizot's verdict]

"The war was not popular in France; in fact, it was unjust, because unnecessary. The Spanish revolution, in spite of its excesses, exposed France and the Restoration to no serious risk; and the intervention was an attack upon the principle of the legitimate independence of States. It really produced neither to Spain nor France any good result. It restored Spain to the incurable and incapable despotism of Ferdinand VII., without putting a stop to the revolutions; it substituted the ferocities of the absolutist populace for that of the anarchical populace. Instead of confirming the influence of France beyond the Pyrenees, it threw the King of Spain into the arms of the absolutist powers, and delivered up the Spanish Liberals to the protection of England."

During this year in France occurred the deaths of Dumouriez, the famous general of the Revolution, and of Marshal Davoust, the hero of Eckmuehl, Auerstaedt, and a score of other victories won during the Napoleonic campaigns. At Rome, Pope Pius VII., the one time prisoner of Napoleon, died in old age, and was succeeded by Pope Leo XII.

[Sidenote: Death of Jenner]

[Sidenote: Vaccination]

Dr. Edward J. Jenner, the great English surgeon and originator of vaccination, died in the same year at London. Jenner was led to his great discovery by the remark of an old peasant woman: "I can't catch smallpox, for I have had cowpox." In 1796, Jenner performed the first vaccination on a boy patient, James Phipps, whom he subsequently endowed with a house and grounds. The scientific results of this experiment and those that followed were embodied by Jenner in his "Inquiry into the causes and effects of the variolae vaccinae," published on the eve of the Nineteenth Century. Unlike so many other medical innovations, Jenner's epoch-making cure for the dread disease of smallpox won him almost instant general renown. Parliament, in 1802, voted him a national reward of L10,000, and a few years later added another gift of L20,000. After his death a public monument was erected to Jenner's memory on Trafalgar Square.

[Sidenote: Amherst Governor in India]

In India, Lord Hastings retired from the governorship at Calcutta and was succeeded by Lord Amherst. At the time of his accession to office, Dutch influence had already become paramount in Borneo, whereas the British were firmly settled in Singapore.

[Sidenote: American letters]

In North America it was a year of industrial progress. On October 8, the first boat passed through the new Erie Canal from Rochester to New York. In Brooklyn the first three-story brick houses were built and the paving of streets was begun. The new system of numbering houses came in vogue. The earliest steam printing press was set up in New York and issued its first book. The manufacture of pins was begun, and wine in marketable quantities was first made in Cincinnati. American letters saw the appearance of Cooper's novels, "The Pioneers" and the "Pilot." Halleck published his famous poem, "Marco Bozarris." During this year an American squadron under Commodore Porter put an end to piracy and freebooting in the West Indies. On the first day of December the Eighteenth Congress met and Henry Clay was once more elected Speaker of the House.



1824

[Sidenote: American high tariff]

[Sidenote: Southern ascendency waning]

In January, a protective tariff bill was introduced in the American Congress. It was opposed by the South and by New England. On May 22, Congress, by a majority of five in the House and four in the Senate, passed Clay's measure. The average rate of tariff was thirty-seven per cent. Before the passage of the bill England had been importing goods more cheaply than Americans could manufacture them. American manufacturers could now sell their goods at a profit. Even then there were believers in free trade, who held that the country would naturally produce that which was prohibited, and that the productions which were brought into existence by taxation put a portion of the people into unprofitable employment, advantageous only to the manufacturers. But the Middle and Western States, with the aid of the representatives from the manufacturing districts of New England, were strong enough to give the tariff a small majority. From 1824 the imposition of protective duties has been the bone of contention of the two great political parties in America. The economical struggle between protection and free trade has since gone on with varying features. Political leadership in the United States was passing from the South to the North. New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio were fast pushing to the front. Buffalo had 20,000 population; and other interior towns were growing rapidly. Millions of acres of valuable lands were put under cultivation in the central and western counties of New York and Pennsylvania and in Ohio; manufacturing industries multiplied. From a sparsely inhabited country in 1800, Ohio had grown, in 1824, to be the fifth State in population.

[Sidenote: American letters]

American letters were enriched in this year by Irving's "Tales of a Traveller," Paulding's "John Bull," Bancroft's "Politics in Ancient Greece," and Verplanck's "Revealed Religion."

[Sidenote: South American republics recognized]

During the first session of Congress a special message from President Monroe recommended the establishment of intercourse with the new independent States of South America—Venezuela, New Granada, Buenos Ayres, Chile and Peru. Congress voted for recognition by an overwhelming majority, and the President signed the bill. The United States was the first among the civilized powers to welcome the new republics.

The struggle for independence in South America was furthered more than ever by the unsatisfactory state of affairs on the Peninsula. In Spain the return of absolute rule was still followed by a reign of terror. The people there relapsed into medieval barbarism.

[Sidenote: Portuguese Constitution triumphant]

[Sidenote: Growth of republican sentiment]

[Sidenote: Iturbide shot]

[Sidenote: Santa Anna in power]

In Portugal, the revolution stirred up by Dom Miguel ended with the expulsion of that prince from Lisbon. His father, Dom Pedro, in Brazil, thought it wise to recognize the liberal constitution imposed upon him by his people. In the other Latin-American countries the people rebelled against one-man rule. In Chile, General O'Higgins was forced to resign his dictatorship and a provisional Triumvirate assumed the government. At Lima, Bolivar found his powers curtailed. Mariano Prado was elected president. The feeling against imperialism was so strong in Central America that all the smaller States joined in confederation to ward off this danger threatening them from Mexico. The Junta of San Salvador went so far as to pass a resolution favoring annexation by the United States of North America in case the Mexican imperialists crossed its borders. Eventually San Salvador, together with Nicaragua and Costa Rica, joined the Central American Union. The first Congress in Costa Rica elected Juan Mora president. In Mexico, in the meantime, a strong provisional government was established by Santa Anna. Ex-Emperor Iturbide, who in defiance of his exile returned to Mexico, was arrested as he landed at Sota la Marina in July. He was taken to the capital, tried, condemned, and shot. As he faced death he said: "Mexicans, I die because I came to help you. I die gladly, because I die among you. I die not as a traitor, but with honor." With Iturbide out of the way, Santa Anna established a government strong enough to accomplish the annexation of California. Henceforth there was no danger of a return to Spanish rule. In England, Canning followed Monroe with an absolute recognition of the independent governments in America.

[Sidenote: Death of Byron]

[Sidenote: Rhegas' hymn]

By this time public opinion in England had been aroused in behalf of the Greeks still struggling for their independence from the yoke of Turkey. A powerful impetus was given to this feeling by the tragic death of Lord Byron in Greece. A few months before the poet had sailed from Genoa for Greece to take active part in the war for freedom. He died of fever at Missolonghi on April 19, at the age of thirty-six. One of his last poems was a spirited translation of Rhegas' famous Greek national hymn:

Sons of the Greeks, arise! The glorious hour shines forth, And, worthy of such ties, Display who gave us worth!

Sons of Greeks! let us go In arms against the foe, Till their hated blood shall flow In a river past our feet.

Then manfully despise The Turkish tyrant's yoke, Let your country see you rise, Till all her chains are broke.

Brave shades of chiefs and sages, Behold the coming strife! Greeks of past ages, Oh, start again to life!

At the sound of my trumpet, Break your sleep, join with me! And the seven-hill'd city seek, Fight, and win, till we are free!

[Sidenote: Goethe on Byron]

[Sidenote: Mazzini's verdict]

[Sidenote: Shelley's estimate]

[Sidenote: Symonds' judgment]

[Sidenote: Byron's best works]

Byron's death served the Greek cause better perhaps than all he could have achieved had his life been prolonged. It caused a greater stir throughout Continental Europe than it did in England. In truth Byron's poetry was more appreciated by the world at large than by his countrymen—a literary anomaly that has prevailed even to the end of the Nineteenth Century. Goethe said of Byron after his death: "The English may think of Byron as they please; but this is certain, that they can show no poet who is to be compared with him. He is different from all the others, and for the most part greater." Mazzini, many years later, concluded his famous essay on Byron and Goethe with this vindication of the English poet's claim: "The day will come when Democracy will remember all that it owes to Byron. England too, will, I hope, one day remember the mission—so entirely English, yet hitherto overlooked by her—which Byron fulfilled on the Continent; the European cast given by him to English literature, and the appreciation and sympathy for England which he awakened among us." Shelley, who knew Byron intimately, has given perhaps the best expression to the English view of him. He said of him in 1822: "The coarse music which he produced touched a chord to which a million hearts responded.... Space wondered less at the swift and fair creations of God when he grew weary of vacancy, than I at this spirit of an angel in the mortal paradise of a decaying body." To most Englishmen of his day, Byron, like Shelley, appeared as a monster of impious wickedness. Unlike Shelley, he attained thereby the vogue of the forbidden. His earliest poems achieved what the French call a succes de scandal. His satire, "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," brought to the youthful poet a notoriety amounting to fame. After the publication of the first two cantos of "Childe Harold," in 1812, according to his own phrase, he awoke to find himself famous, and became a spoiled child of society. Trelawney has recorded that Byron was what London in the days of the Prince Regent made him. One of Byron's ablest critics, Symonds, has put this even more strongly: "His judgment of the world was prematurely warped, while his naturally earnest feelings were overlaid with affectations and prejudices which he never succeeded in shaking off.... It was his misfortune to be well born, but ill bred, combining the pride of a peer with the self-consciousness of a parvenu." Byron's life in London between 1812 and 1816 certainly increased his tendency to cynicism, as did his divorce from his wife. While these experiences distorted his personal character, they supplied him, however, with much of the irony wrought into his masterpiece, "Don Juan." His poetic genius derived its strongest stimulus from his imbittered domestic life and from his travels in Spain, Italy and Greece. This twofold character of the poet it is that is revealed in his best poems, "Childe Harold" and "Don Juan." He used both works as receptacles for the most incongruous ideas. "If things are farcical," he once said to Trelawney, "they will do for 'Don Juan'; if heroical, you shall have another canto of 'Childe Harold.'" This means of disposing of his poetic ideas accounts for the great volume of Byron's verse as well as for its inequality. That "Don Juan" was never finished cannot therefore be regretted.

[Sidenote: His last verses]

Byron's last verses were lines written on January 22, 1824, at Missolonghi. To one of his English military associates in the expedition of Lepanto he remarked: "You were complaining that I never write any poetry now. This is my birthday, and I have just finished something which, I think, is better than what I usually write." They were the famous lines, "On this Day I complete my Thirty-sixth Year":

'Tis time the heart should be unmoved, Since others it hath ceased to move; Yet, though I cannot be beloved, Still let me love!

My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone!

* * * * *

Awake! (not Greece—she is awake!) Awake my spirit! Think through whom Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake, And then strike home!

If thou regret'st thy youth, why live? The land of honorable death Is here—Up, to the field, and give Away thy breath!

Seek out—less often sought than found— A soldier's grave, for thee the best! Then look around, and choose thy ground, And take thy rest!

[Sidenote: Russian suzerainty rejected by Greeks]

[Sidenote: Ibrahim invades Greece]

[Sidenote: Sack of Psara]

When Byron died, Missolonghi had been delivered from its first siege. Greece was plunged in civil war. Kolokotrones, who set himself up against the government of Konduriottes and Kolletes, was overthrown and lodged in a prison on the island of Hydra. An offer of Russian intervention at the price of Russian suzerainty was rejected by the Greeks. Encouraged by this, the Sultan appealed to his vassal, Mehemet Ali of Egypt, to help him exterminate the Greeks. The island of Crete was held out to Mehemet Ali as a prize. The ambitious ruler of Egypt responded with enthusiasm. He raised an army of 90,000 men and a fleet, and sent them forth under the command of his adopted son Ibrahim. Early in the spring the Egyptian expedition landed in Crete and all but exterminated its Greek population. The island of Kossos was next captured; and its inhabitants were butchered. In July, the Turkish fleet took advantage of the Greek Government's weakness to make a descent upon Psara, one of the choicest islands of Greece. In spite of desperate resistance, the citadel of Psara was stormed, and the Psariotes were put to the sword. Thousands were slain, while the women and children were carried off as slaves. How little the miseries of the Greeks affected the rulers of Europe may be gathered from this bright side light on Metternich given by his secretary Gentz:

[Sidenote: Metternich's comment]

[Sidenote: Defeat of Turkish fleet]

"Prince Metternich was taking an excursion, in which unfortunately I could not accompany him. I at once sent a letter after him from Ischl with the important news of the Psariote defeat.... The prince soon came back to me; and (pianissimo, in order that friends of Greece might not hear it) we congratulated one another on the event, which may very well prove the beginning of the end for the Greek insurrection." The Greeks, instead of desponding, were aroused to fiercer resistance than ever. A Hydriote fleet foiled Ibrahim Pasha's attempt on Samos. When he tried to return to Crete his fleet was beaten back with a signal reverse. Finally, late in the year, the Egyptians succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the Hydriote sea-captains, and regained their base of supplies in Crete.

[Sidenote: Burmese war]

[Sidenote: Siege of Rangoon]

[Sidenote: British checked at Donabew]

While Canning's Ministry was still preparing the ground for European intervention in Greece, the British Government in India found itself with another native war on its hands. In 1822, the Burmese leader Bundula had invaded the countries between Burma and Bengal. The Burmese conquered the independent principalities of Assam and Munipore, and threatened Cachar. Next Bundula invaded British territory and cut off a detachment of British sepoys. It was evident that the Burmese were bent on the conquest of Bengal. Lord Amherst, who had assumed charge early in 1824, sent an expedition against them under Sir Archibald Campbell. The resistance of the Burmese was despicable. The British soldiers nowhere found foes worthy of their steel. In May, the British expedition, having marched straight to Burma, occupied the capital Rangoon, which was found deserted and denuded of all supplies. Ill fed and far from succor, the British had to spend a rainy season there. Taking advantage of their precarious position, Bundula returned late in the year with an army of 60,000 men. The Englishmen were besieged. In December they made a successful sortie and stormed the Burmese stockades. Bundula with the remains of his army was driven up the banks of the river Irawaddy. They made a stand at Donabew, some forty miles from Rangoon, where they held the British in check.

[Sidenote: German letters]

The rest of the world throughout this year lay in profound peace. In Germany the rulers of the various principalities were allowed to continue their reigns undisturbed. Only in Brunswick the assumption of the government by Charles Frederick William met with the disapproval of the German Diet. Although pronounced incapable of reigning, he succeeded none the less in clinging to his throne. A more important event for the enlightened element in Germany was the appearance of the first of Leopold von Ranke's great histories of the Romance and Teutonic peoples. In the realm of poetry a stir was created by the publication of Rueckert's and Boerne's lyrics, and Heinrich Heine's "Alamansor" and "Ratcliffe."

[Sidenote: French literature]

[Sidenote: Clericals in the ascendant]

[Sidenote: Chateaubriand dismissed]

[Sidenote: Death of Louis XVIII.]

In France, Lamartine brought out his "Death of Socrates," and Louis Thiers published the first instalments of his great "History of the French Revolution." Simultaneously there appeared Francois Mignet's "History of the French Revolution." While these historians were expounding the lessons of this great regeneration of France, the Royalists in the Chambers did their best to undo its work. After the ejection of Manuel from the Chambers, and the Ministers' consequent appeal to the country, the elections were so manipulated by the government that only nineteen Liberal members were returned to the Chambers. Immediate advantage was taken of this to favor the Clericals and returned Emigrees, and to change the laws so as to elect a new House every seven years, instead of one-fifth part of the Chamber each year. Monseigneur Frayssinous, the leader of the Clericals, was made Minister of Public Instruction. The friction between Prime Minister Villele and Chateaubriand was ended by Villele's summary dismissal of Chateaubriand as Foreign Minister. Chateaubriand at once became the most formidable opponent of the Ministry in the "Journal des Debats," and in the Chamber of Peers. At this stage of public affairs Louis XVIII. died, on September 16, with the ancient pomp of royalty. Before he expired he said, pointing to his bed: "My brother will not die in that bed." The old King's prophecy was based on the character of the French people as much as on that of his brother. Indeed, Louis XVIII. was the only French ruler during the Nineteenth Century who died as a sovereign in his bed. He was duly succeeded by his brother, Count of Artois, who took the title "Charles X." and retained Villele as Minister of France.



1825

[Sidenote: Charles X.]

Charles X. was crowned King of France in the Cathedral of Rheims. His first public measure was the appropriation of a million francs to indemnify the French Royalists, whose lands had been confiscated during the French Revolution. Next came the proposal of a law on sacrilege, and one for primogeniture. Both bills were strenuously opposed by the Liberals. Broglie exclaimed: "What you are now preparing is a social and political revolution, a revolution against the revolution which changed France nearly forty years ago." Old Lafayette was glad to leave the country to visit North America.

[Sidenote: American election contest]

[Sidenote: John Quincy Adams President]

[Sidenote: Henry Clay rewarded]

[Sidenote: Changes in American politics]

[Sidenote: Adams's first message]

In the United States the election of 1824 had to be decided by the House of Representatives. For the Presidency the candidates were Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Crawford and Clay, and for the Vice-Presidency Calhoun, Sanford, Macon, Jackson, Van Buren and Clay. They all belonged to the Democratic-Republican party. Jackson had received the highest number of electoral votes—99 were for him and 84 for Adams. Calhoun, as candidate for Vice-President, led with 182 votes. In the House of Representatives Clay, as leader, opposed Jackson. Adams was declared President, with Calhoun for Vice-President. The electoral vote of thirteen States was given to Adams, while Jackson received seven. John Quincy Adams was then fifty-eight years of age. Washington had made him Minister to The Hague, and then to Lisbon, and in 1797 his father, then President, sent him as Minister to Berlin. In 1803, he was United States Senator. Six years later he was Minister to Russia. During both of Monroe's terms he was Secretary of State. Upon his inauguration as President, Adams made Clay Secretary of State. Wirt, McLean and Southard were retained in the Cabinet. The adherents of Jackson declared that a bargain had been made between Clay and Adams, who then paid Clay they alleged for his support in the "scrub race" for the Presidency. Randolph characterized the supposed arrangement as a "bargain between the Puritan and the Black Leg," and in consequence was challenged by Clay to fight a duel. Neither was injured. The election was followed by an immediate reorganization of political parties, on the question of supporting Adams's administration. Whether the successor of Adams should be a Northerner or a Southerner was the question at issue. His opponents were slave-holders and their Northern friends; his supporters, the antagonists of the Democratic party, whether known as National Republican, Whig or Republican party, all of which terms were in use. For the first time the new Congress, under the reapportionment, represented the entire population of the country, with New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio in the lead. In the Senate were men of brilliant promise. Clay was still a leader, and so was Webster, in the rising majesty of his renown. The contest between the parties was narrowed down to two great issues—internal improvements under national auspices and tariff for the protection of manufactures. President Adams in his first message gave opportunity for concerted opposition. He took advanced ground in favor of national expenditure on internal improvements, and urged the multiplication of canals, the endowment of a national university, expenditures for scientific research, and the erection of a national observatory. He announced that an invitation had been accepted from the South American states to a conference at Panama, in regard to the formation of a political and commercial league between the two Americas. The Senate requested President Adams to give it information "touching the principles and practice of the Spanish-American states, or any of them—in regard to negro slavery." The subject was debated for almost the entire session. When enough had been said to show that slavery must not be interfered with, the delegates were nominated and an appropriation was made. The delegates never went.

[Sidenote: Erie Canal completed]

[Sidenote: Beneficial results]

On November 4, the first boat travelling along the new Erie Canal reached New York. Through the efforts of De Witt Clinton, the State of New York without Congressional aid had completed the great Erie Canal. Its annual tolls were found to amount to half its cost. The financial and commercial results of the great work were immediate and manifest. The cost of carrying freight between Albany and New York was reduced from the 1820 rate of $88 per ton, to $22.50, and soon to $6.50. Travel was no less facilitated, so that it was possible for emigrants to reach Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin cheaply. These fertile States grew accordingly in population. In 1825 the Capitol at Washington was nearly completed; the outer walls proved to be uninjured by the fire of 1814. The foundation of the central building had been laid in 1818, and this edifice was now completed on its original plan.

[Sidenote: Lafayette visits America]

The American visit of the old Marquis de la Fayette—to give him his French name—was celebrated with national rejoicings. Years ago, when he left the American republic after its independence was achieved, it was a poor, weak and struggling nation. Its prosperity and increasing power now amazed him. The thirteen colonies along the coast had increased to twenty-four independent, growing and progressive commonwealths, reaching a thousand miles westward from the sea. Lafayette was the nation's guest for a year. On June 17, 1825, just fifty years after the battle of Bunker Hill, he laid the cornerstone of the obelisk which commemorates that battle in Boston. On this same occasion Daniel Webster made one of his great speeches. Lafayette returned to France in the American frigate "Brandywine," named in honor of the first battle in which Lafayette fought and was wounded half a century before. Congress presented him with a gift of $200,000 in money, and with a township of land in recognition of the disinterested services of his youth.

[Sidenote: Argentine Republic]

Shortly before President Adams accepted the invitation to send North American representatives to the proposed Congress of Panama, thirteen independent States joined at Buenos Ayres in a powerful confederation and formed the Republic of Argentine. A national constitution was adopted and Rivadiera elected President. The new republic was soon called upon to prove its mettle in the war levied against it by Brazil for the possession of Uruguay. In the end Uruguay remained a part of Argentina. Brazil had previously achieved its complete independence from the mother country by assuming the public debt of Portugal, amounting to some ten million dollars. England gave its official recognition to these new changes of government as it had to the others.

[Sidenote: Burmese reverses]

[Sidenote: New British acquisitions]

The British war against the Burmese was nearly over. Early in the year the British forces left at Rangoon advanced up the river Irawaddy toward Donabew. The first attempt to take this stronghold was repulsed, whereupon the British settled down to a regular siege. While trying to get the range with their mortars the gunners succeeded in killing Bundula, the chieftain of the Burmese. His brother flinched from the command of the army and was promptly beheaded. The Burmese forces went to pieces. The British proceeded to Prome, and inflicted another crushing defeat on the remaining detachments of the Burmese army. At the approach of the British column the Burmese rulers at Ava became frantic. All the demented women that could be found in and about Ava were gathered together and conducted to the front that they might bewitch the English. When this measure proved ineffectual, Prince Tharawadi tried to stem the British approach, but could not get his followers to face the enemy. All the country from Rangoon to Ava was under British control. The Burmese came to terms. As a result of the conflict the territories of Assam, Arrakan and Tenaserim were ceded to the British.

[Sidenote: Crisis in Bhurtpore]

[Sidenote: Summary British dealings]

While the British were still in the midst of this campaign a crisis occurred in Bhurtpore. The sudden death of the Rajah there left no successor to the throne but an infant son of seven. He was proclaimed Rajah under the guardianship of his uncle. A cousin of the dead king won over the army of Bhurtpore, and putting the uncle to death imprisoned the little Rajah. Sir David Ochterlony, the aged British Resident at Delhi, interfered in behalf of the little prince and advanced British troops into Bhurtpore. His measures were repudiated by Lord Amherst. Sir David took the rebuff so much to heart that he resigned his appointment. Within two months after his retirement the old soldier died in bitterness of soul. The sequel vindicated his judgment. In defiance of the British Government, the usurper of Bhurtpore rallied around him all the dissatisfied spirits of the Mahrattas, Pindarees, Jats and Rajputs. Lord Amherst was forced to retreat to Vera. The British army under Lord Combermere crossed the border and pushed through to Bhurtpore. The heavy mud walls of the capital had to be breached with mines. The usurper was deposed and put out of harm's way in a British prison. With the restoration of the infant Prince in Bhurtpore, all danger of another great Indian rising seemed at end.