[Russian aid offered to the Sultan.]

[Peace of Kutaya, April, 1833.]

In this extremity the Sultan looked around for help; nor were offers of assistance wanting. The Emperor Nicholas had since the Treaty of Adrianople assumed the part of the magnanimous friend; his belief was that the Ottoman Empire might by judicious management and without further conquest be brought into a state of habitual dependence upon Russia; and before the result of the battle of Konieh was known General Muravieff had arrived at Constantinople bringing the offer of Russian help both by land and sea, and tendering his own personal services in the restoration of peace. Mahmud had to some extent been won over by the Czar's politic forbearance in the execution of the Treaty of Adrianople. His hatred of Mehemet Ali was a consuming passion; and in spite of the general conviction both of his people and of his advisers that no possible concession to a rebellious vassal could be so fatal as the protection of the hereditary enemy of Islam, he was disposed to accept the Russian tender of assistance. As a preliminary, Muravieff was sent to Alexandria with permission to cede Acre to Mehemet Ali, if in return the Viceroy would make over his fleet to the Sultan. These were conditions on which no reasonable man could have expected that Mehemet would make peace; and the intention of the Russian Court probably was that Muravieff's mission should fail. The envoy soon returned to Constantinople announcing that his terms were rejected. Mahmud now requested that Russian ships might be sent to the Bosphorus, and to the dismay of the French and English embassies a Russian squadron appeared before the capital. Admiral Roussin, the French ambassador, addressed a protest to the Sultan and threatened to leave Constantinople. His remonstrances induced Mahmud to consent to some more serious negotiation being opened with Mehemet Ali. A French envoy was authorised to promise the Viceroy the governorship of Tripoli in Syria as well as Acre; his overtures, however, were not more acceptable than those of Muravieff, and Mehemet openly declared that if peace were not concluded on his own terms within six weeks, he should order Ibrahim, who had halted at Kutaya, to continue his march on the Bosphorus. Thoroughly alarmed at this threat, and believing that no Turkish force could keep Ibrahim out of the capital, Mahmud applied to Russia for more ships and also for troops. Again Admiral Roussin urged upon the Sultan that if Syria could be reconquered only by Russian forces it was more than lost to the Porte. His arguments were supported by the Divan, and with such effect that a French diplomatist was sent to Ibrahim with power to negotiate for peace on any terms. Preliminaries were signed at Kutaya under French mediation on the 10th of April, 1833, by which the Sultan made over to his vassal not only the whole of Syria but the province of Adana which lies between Mount Taurus and the Mediterranean. After some delay these Preliminaries were ratified by Mahmud; and Ibrahim, after his dazzling success both in war and in diplomacy, commenced the evacuation of northern Anatolia.

[Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, July, 1833.]

For the moment it appeared that French influence had decisively prevailed at Constantinople, and that the troops of the Czar had been summoned from Sebastopol only to be dismissed with the ironical compliments of those who were most anxious to get rid of them. But this was not really the case. Whether the fluctuations in the Sultan's policy had been due to mere fear and irresolution, or whether they had to some extent proceeded from the desire to play off one Power against another, it was to Russia, not France, that his final confidence was given. The soldiers of the Czar were encamped by the side of the Turks on the eastern shore of the Bosphorus; his ships lay below Constantinople. Here on the 8th of July a Treaty was signed at the palace of Unkiar Skelessi, [401] in which Russia and Turkey entered into a defensive alliance of the most intimate character, each Power pledging itself to render assistance to the other, not only against the attack of an external enemy, but in every event where its peace and security might be endangered. Russia undertook, in cases where its support should be required, to provide whatever amount of troops the Sultan should consider necessary both by sea and land, the Porte being charged with no part of the expense beyond that of the provisioning of the troops. The duration of the Treaty was fixed in the first instance for eight years. A secret article, which, however, was soon afterwards published, declared that, in order to diminish the burdens of the Porte, the Czar would not demand the material help to which the Treaty entitled him; while, in substitution for such assistance, the Porte undertook, when Russia should be at war, to close the Dardanelles to the war-ships of all nations.

[Effect of this Treaty.]

By the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, Russia came nearer than it has at any time before or since to that complete ascendency at Constantinople which has been the modern object of its policy. The success of its diplomatists had in fact been too great; for, if the abstract right of the Sultan to choose his own allies had not yet been disputed by Europe at large, the clause in the Treaty which related to the Dardanelles touched the interests of every Power which possessed a naval station in the Mediterranean. By the public law of Europe the Black Sea, which until the eighteenth century was encompassed entirely by the Sultan's territory, formed no part of the open waters of the world, but a Turkish lake to which access was given through the Dardanelles only at the pleasure of the Porte. When, in the eighteenth century, Russia gained a footing on the northern shore of the Euxine, this carried with it no right to send war-ships through the straits into the Mediterranean, nor had any Power at war with Russia the right to send a fleet into the Black Sea otherwise than by the Sultan's consent. The Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, in making Turkey the ally of Russia against all its enemies, converted the entrance to the Black Sea into a Russian fortified post, from behind which Russia could freely send forth its ships of war into the Mediterranean, while its own ports and arsenals remained secure against attack. England and France, which were the States whose interests were principally affected, protested against the Treaty, and stated they reserved to themselves the right of taking such action in regard to it as occasion might demand. Nor did the opposition rest with the protests of diplomatists. The attention both of the English nation and of its Government was drawn far more than hitherto to the future of the Ottoman Empire. Political writers exposed with unwearied vigour, and not without exaggeration, the designs of the Court of St. Petersburg in Asia as well as in Europe; and to this time, rather than to any earlier period, belongs the first growth of that strong national antagonism to Russia which found its satisfaction in the Crimean War, and which has by no means lost its power at the present day.

[France and Mehemet Ali.]

In desiring to check the extension of Russia's influence in the Levant, Great Britain and France were at one. The lines of policy, however, followed by these two States were widely divergent. Great Britain sought to maintain the Sultan's power in its integrity; France became in an increasing degree the patron and the friend of Mehemet Ali. Since the expedition of Napoleon to Egypt in 1798, which was itself the execution of a design formed in the reign of Louis XVI., Egypt had largely retained its hold on the imagination of the leading classes in France. Its monuments, its relics of a mighty past, touched a livelier chord among French men of letters and science than India has at any time found among ourselves; and although the hope of national conquest vanished with Napoleon's overthrow, Egypt continued to afford a field of enterprise to many a civil and military adventurer. Mehemet's army and navy were organised by French officers; he was surrounded by French agents and men of business; and after the conquest of Algiers had brought France on to the southern shore of the Mediterranean, the advantages of a close political relation with Egypt did not escape the notice of statesmen who saw in Gibraltar and Malta the most striking evidences of English maritime power. Moreover the personal fame of Mehemet strongly affected French opinion. His brilliant military reforms, his vigorous administration, and his specious achievements in finance created in the minds of those who were too far off to know the effects of his tyranny the belief that at the hands of this man the East might yet awaken to new life. Thus, from a real conviction of the superiority of Mehemet's rule over that of the House of Osman no less than from considerations of purely national policy, the French Government, without any public or official bond of union, gradually became the acknowledged supporters of the Egyptian conqueror, and connected his interests with their own.

[Rule of Mehemet and Ibrahim.]

Sultan Mahmud had ratified the Preliminaries of Kutaya with wrath in his heart; and from this time all his energies were bent upon the creation of a force which should wrest back the lost provinces and take revenge upon his rebellious vassal. As eager as Mehemet himself to reconstruct his form of government upon the models of the West, though far less capable of impressing upon his work the stamp of a single guiding will, thwarted moreover by the jealous interference of Russia whenever his reforms seemed likely to produce any important result, he nevertheless succeeded in introducing something of European system and discipline into his army under the guidance of foreign soldiers, among whom was a man then little known, but destined long afterwards to fill Europe with his fame, the Prussian staff-officer Moltke. On the other side Mehemet and Ibrahim knew well that the peace was no more than an armed truce, and that what had been won by arms could only be maintained by constant readiness to meet attack. Under pressure of this military necessity, Ibrahim sacrificed whatever sources of strength were open to him in the hatred borne by his new subjects to the Turkish yoke, and in their hopes of relief from oppression under his own rule. Welcomed at first as a deliverer, he soon proved a heavier task-master than any who had gone before him. The conscription was rigorously enforced; taxation became more burdensome; the tribes who had enjoyed a wild independence in the mountains were disarmed and reduced to the level of their fellow-subjects. Thus the discontent which had so greatly facilitated the conquest of the border-provinces soon turned against the conqueror himself, and one uprising after another shook Ibrahim's hold upon Mount Lebanon and the Syrian desert. The Sultan watched each outbreak against his adversary with grim joy, impatient for the moment when the re-organisation of his own forces should enable him to re-enter the field and to strike an overwhelming blow.

[The commerce of the Levant.]

With all its characteristics of superior intelligence in the choice of means, the system of Mehemet All was in its end that of the genuine Oriental despot. His final object was to convert as many as possible of his subjects into soldiers, and to draw into his treasury the profits of the labour of all the rest. With this aim he gradually ousted from their rights of proprietorship the greater part of the land-owners of Egypt, and finally proclaimed the entire soil to be State-domain, appropriating at prices fixed by himself the whole of its produce. The natural commercial intercourse of his dominions gave place to a system of monopolies carried on by the Government itself. Rapidly as this system, which was introduced into the newly-conquered provinces, filled the coffers of Mehemet Ali, it offered to the Sultan, whose paramount authority was still acknowledged, the means of inflicting a deadly injury upon him by a series of commercial treaties with the European Powers, granting to western traders a free market throughout the Ottoman Empire. Resistance to such a measure would expose Mehemet to the hostility of the whole mercantile interest of Europe; submission to it would involve the loss of a great part of that revenue on which his military power depended. It was probably with this result in view, rather than from any more obvious motive, that in the year 1838 the Sultan concluded a new commercial Treaty with England, which was soon followed by similar agreements with other States.

[Campaign of Nissib, June, 1839.]

The import of the Sultan's commercial policy was not lost upon Mehemet, who had already determined to declare himself independent. He saw that war was inevitable, and bade Ibrahim collect his forces in the neighbourhood of Aleppo, while the generals of the Sultan massed on the upper Euphrates the troops that had been successfully employed in subduing the wild tribes of Kurdistan. The storm was seen to be gathering, and the representatives of foreign Powers urged the Sultan, but in vain, to refrain from an enterprise which might shatter his empire. Mahmud was now a dying man. Exhausted by physical excess and by the stress and passion of his long reign, he bore in his heart the same unquenchable hatreds as of old; and while assuring the ambassadors of his intention to maintain the peace, he despatched a letter to his commander-in-chief, without the knowledge of any single person, ordering him to commence hostilities. The Turkish army crossed the frontier on the 23rd of May, 1839. In the operations which followed, the advice and protests of Moltke and the other European officers at head-quarters were persistently disregarded. The Turks were outmanoeuvred and cut off from their communications, and on the 24th of June the onslaught of Ibrahim swept them from their position at Nissib in utter rout. The whole of their artillery and stores fell into the hands of the enemy: the army dispersed. Mahmud did not live to hear of the catastrophe. Six days after the battle of Nissib was fought, and while the messenger who bore the news was still in Anatolia, he expired, leaving the throne to his son, Abdul Medjid, a youth of sixteen. Scarcely had the new Sultan been proclaimed when it became known that the Admiral, Achmet Fewzi, who had been instructed to attack the Syrian coast, had sailed into the port of Alexandria, and handed over the Turkish fleet to Mehemet Ali himself.

[Relations of the Powers to Mehemet.]

[Quadruple Treaty without France. July, 1840.]

The very suddenness of these disasters, which left the Ottoman Empire rulerless and without defence by land or sea, contributed ultimately to its preservation, inasmuch as it impelled the Powers to combined action, which, under less urgent pressure, would probably not have been attainable. On the announcement of the exorbitant conditions of peace demanded by Mehemet, the ambassadors addressed a collective note to the Divan, requesting that no answer might be made until the Courts had arrived at some common resolution. Soon afterwards the French and English fleets appeared at the Dardanelles, nominally to protect Constantinople against the attack of the Viceroy, in reality to guard against any sudden movement on the part of Russia. This display of force was, however, not necessary, for the Czar, in spite of some expressions to the contrary, had already convinced himself that it was impossible to act upon the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi and to make the protectorate of Turkey the affair of Russia alone. The tone which had been taken by the English Government during the last preceding years proved that any attempt to exercise exclusive power at Constantinople would have been followed by war with Great Britain, in which most, if not all, of the European Powers would have stood on the side of the latter. Abandoning therefore the hope of attaining sole control, the Russian Government addressed itself to the task of widening as far as possible the existing divergence between England and France. Nor was this difficult. The Cabinet of the Tuileries desired to see Mehemet Ali issue with increased strength from the conflict, or even to establish his dynasty at Constantinople in place of the House of Osman. Lord Palmerston, always jealous and suspicious of Louis Philippe, refused to believe that the growth of Russian power could be checked by dividing the Ottoman Empire, or that any system of Eastern policy could be safely based on the personal qualities of a ruler now past his seventieth year. [402] He had moreover his own causes of discontent with Mehemet. The possibility of establishing an overland route to India either by way of the Euphrates or of the Red Sea had lately been engaging the attention of the English Government, and Mehemet had not improved his position by raising obstacles to either line of passage. It was partly in consequence of the hostility of Mehemet, who was now master of a great part of Arabia, and of his known devotion to French interests, that the port of Aden in the Red Sea was at this time occupied by England. If, while Russia accepted the necessity of combined European action and drew nearer to its rival, France persisted in maintaining the claim of the Viceroy to extended dominion, the exclusion of France from the European concert was the only possible result. There was no doubt as to the attitude of the remaining Powers. Metternich, whether from genuine pedantry, or in order to avoid the expression of those fears of Russia which really governed his Eastern policy, repeated his threadbare platitudes on the necessity of supporting legitimate dynasties against rebels, and spoke of the victor of Konieh and Nissib as if he had been a Spanish constitutionalist or a recalcitrant German professor. The Court of Berlin followed in the same general course. In all Europe Mehemet Ali had not a single ally, with the exception of the Government of Louis Philippe. Under these circumstances it was of little avail to the Viceroy that his army stood on Turkish soil without a foe before it, and that the Sultan's fleet lay within his own harbour of Alexandria. The intrigues by which he hoped to snatch a hasty peace from the inexperience of the young Sultan failed, and he learnt in October that no arrangement which he might make with the Porte without the concurrence of the Powers would be recognised as valid. In the meantime Russia was suggesting to the English Government one project after another for joint military action with the object of driving Mehemet from Syria and restoring this province to the Porte; and at the beginning of the following year it was determined on Metternich's proposition that a Conference should forthwith be held in London for the settlement of Eastern affairs. The irreconcilable difference between the intentions of France and those of the other Powers at once became evident. France proposed that all Syria and Egypt should be given in hereditary dominion to Mehemet Ali, with no further obligation towards the Porte than the payment of a yearly tribute. The counter-proposal of England was that Mehemet, recognising the Sultan's authority, should have the hereditary government of Egypt alone, that he should entirely withdraw from all Northern Syria, and hold Palestine only as an ordinary governor appointed by the Porte for his lifetime. To this proposition all the Powers with the exception of France gave their assent. Continued negotiation only brought into stronger relief the obstinacy of Lord Palmerston, and proved the impossibility of attaining complete agreement. At length, when it had been discovered that the French Cabinet was attempting to conduct a separate mediation, the Four Powers, without going through the form of asking for French sanction, signed on the 15th of July a Treaty with the Sultan pledging themselves to enforce upon Mehemet Ali the terms arranged. The Sultan undertook in the first instance to offer Mehemet Egypt in perpetuity and southern Syria for his lifetime. If this offer was not accepted within ten days, Egypt alone was to be offered. If at the end of twenty days Mehemet still remained obstinate, that offer in its turn was to be withdrawn, and the Sultan and the Allies were to take such measures as the interests of the Ottoman Empire might require. [403]

[Warlike spirit in France, 1840.]

The publication of this Treaty, excluding France as it did from the concert of Europe, produced a storm of indignation at Paris. Thiers, who more than any man had by his writings stimulated the spirit of aggressive warfare among the French people and revived the worship of Napoleon, was now at the head of the Government. His jealousy for the prestige of France, his comparative indifference to other matters when once the national honour appeared to be committed, his sanguine estimate of the power of his country, rendered him a peculiarly dangerous Minister at the existing crisis. It was not the wrongs or the danger of Mehemet Ali, but the slight offered to France, and the revived League of the Powers which had humbled it in 1814, that excited the passion of the Minister and the nation. Syria was forgotten; the cry was for the recovery of the frontier of the Rhine, and for revenge for Waterloo. New regiments were enrolled, the fleet strengthened, and the long-delayed fortification of Paris begun. Thiers himself probably looked forward to a campaign in Italy, anticipating that successfully conducted by Napoleon III. in 1859, rather than to an attack upon Prussia; but the general opinion both in France itself and in other states was that, if war should break out, an invasion of Germany was inevitable. The prospect of this invasion roused in a manner little expected the spirit of the German people. Even in the smaller states, and in the Rhenish provinces themselves, which for twenty years had shared the fortunes of France, and in which the introduction of Prussian rule in 1814 had been decidedly unpopular, a strong national movement carried everything before it; and the year 1840 added to the patriotic minstrelsy of Germany a war-song, written by a Rhenish citizen, not less famous than those of 1813 and 1870. [404] That there were revolutionary forces smouldering throughout Europe, from which France might in a general war have gained some assistance, the events of 1848 sufficiently proved; but to no single Government would a revolutionary war have been fraught with more imminent peril than to that of France itself, and to no one was this conviction more habitually present than to King Louis Philippe. Relying upon his influence within the Chamber of Deputies, itself a body representing the wealth and the caution rather than the hot spirit of France, the King refused to read at the opening of the session in October the speech drawn up for him by Thiers, and accepted the consequent resignation of the Ministry. Guizot, who was ambassador in London, and an advocate for submission to the will of Europe, was called to office, and succeeded after long debate in gaining a vote of confidence from the Chamber. Though preparations for war continued, a policy of peace was now assured. Mehemet Ali was left to his fate; and the stubborn assurance of Lord Palmerston, which had caused so much annoyance to the English Ministry itself, received a striking justification in the face of all Europe.

[Ibrahim expelled from Syria, Sept.-Nov., 1840.]

[Final settlement, Feb., 1841.]

[The Dardanelles.]

The operations of the Allies against Mehemet Ali had now begun. While Prussia kept guard on the Rhine, and Russia undertook to protect Constantinople against any forward movement of Ibrahim, an Anglo-Austrian naval squadron combined with a Turkish land-force in attacking the Syrian coast-towns. The mountain-tribes of the interior were again in revolt. Arms supplied to them by the Allies, and the insurrection soon spread over the greater part of Syria. Ibrahim prepared for an obstinate defence, but his dispositions were frustrated by the extension of the area of conflict, and he was unable to prevent the coast-towns from falling one after another into the hands of the Allies. On the capture of Acre by Sir Charles Napier he abandoned all hope of maintaining himself any longer in Syria, and made his way with the wreck of his army towards the Egyptian frontier. Napier had already arrived before Alexandria, and there executed a convention with the Viceroy, by which the latter, abandoning all claim upon his other provinces, and undertaking to restore the Turkish fleet, was assured of the hereditary possession of Egypt. The convention was one which the English admiral had no authority to conclude, but it contained substantially the terms which the Allies intended to enforce; and after Mehemet had made a formal act of submission to the Sultan, the hereditary government of Egypt was conferred upon himself and his family by a decree published by the Sultan and sanctioned by the Powers. This compromise had been proposed by the French Government after the expiry of the twenty days named in the Treaty of July, and immediately before the fall of M. Thiers, but Palmerston would not then listen to any demand made under open or implied threats of war. Since that time a new and pacific Ministry had come into office; it was no part of Palmerston's policy to keep alive the antagonism between England and France; and he readily accepted an arrangement which, while it saved France from witnessing the total destruction of an ally, left Egypt to a ruler who, whatever his faults, had certainly shown a greater capacity for government than any Oriental of that age. It remained for the Powers to place upon record some authoritative statement of the law recognised by Europe with regard to the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. Russia had already virtually consented to the abrogation of the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi. It now joined with all the other Powers, including France, in a declaration that the ancient rule of the Ottoman Empire which forbade the passage of these straits to the war-ships of all nations, except when the Porte itself should be at war, was accepted by Europe at large. Russia thus surrendered its chance of gaining by any separate arrangement with Turkey the permanent right of sending its fleets from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean, and so becoming a Mediterranean Power. On the other hand, Sebastopol and the arsenals of the Euxine remained safe against the attack of any maritime Power, unless Turkey itself should take up arms against the Czar. Having regard to the great superiority of England over Russia at sea, and to the accessibility and importance of the Euxine coast towns, it is an open question whether the removal of all international restrictions upon the passage of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles would not be more to the advantage of England than of its rival. This opinion, however, had not been urged before the Crimean War, nor has it yet been accepted in our own country.

[Turkey after 1840.]

[Legislation of Reschid.]

The conclusion of the struggle of 1840 marked with great definiteness the real position which the Ottoman Empire was henceforth to occupy in its relations to the western world. Rescued by Europe at large from the alternatives of destruction at the hands of Ibrahim or complete vassalage under Russia, the Porte entered upon the condition nominally of an independent European State, really of a State existing under the protection of Europe, and responsible to Europe as well for its domestic government as for its alliances and for the conduct of its foreign policy. The necessity of conciliating the public opinion of the West was well understood by the Turkish statesman who had taken the leading part in the negotiations which freed the Porte from dependence upon Russia. Reschid Pasha, the younger, Foreign Minister at the accession of the new Sultan, had gained in an unusual degree the regard and the confidence of the European Ministers with whom, as a diplomatist, he had been brought into contact. As the author of a wide system of reforms, it was his ambition so to purify and renovate the internal administration of the Ottoman Empire that the contrasts which it presented to the civilised order of the West should gradually disappear, and that Turkey should become not only in name but in reality a member of the European world. Stimulated no doubt by the achievements of Mehemet Ali, and anxious to win over to the side of the Porte the interest which Mehemet's partial adoption of European methods and ideas had excited on his behalf, Reschid in his scheme of reform paid an ostentatious homage to the principles of western administration and law, proclaiming the security of person and property, prohibiting the irregular infliction of punishment, recognising the civil rights of Christians and Jews, and transferring the collection of taxes from the provincial governors to the officers of the central authority. The friends of the Ottoman State, less experienced then than now in the value of laws made in a society where there exists no power that can enforce them, and where the agents of government are themselves the most lawless of all the public enemies, hailed in Reschid's enlightened legislation the opening of a new epoch in the life of the Christian and Oriental races subject to the Sultan. But the fall of the Minister before a palace-intrigue soon proved on how slight a foundation these hopes were built. Like other Turkish reformers, Reschid had entered upon a hopeless task; and the name of the man who was once honoured as the regenerator of a great Empire is now almost forgotten.



CHAPTER XVIII.

Europe during the Thirty-years' Peace—Italy and Austria—Marzini—The House of Savoy—Gioberti—Election of Pius IX.—Reforms expected— Revolution at Palermo—Agitation in Northern Italy—Lombardy—State of the Austrian Empire—Growth of Hungarian National Spirit—The Magyars and Slavs—Transylvania—Parties among the Magyars—Kossuth—The Slavic National Movements in Austria—The Government enters on Reform in Hungary—Policy of the Opposition—The Rural System of Austria— Insurrection in Galicia: the Nobles and the Peasants—Agrarian Edict—Public Opinion in Vienna—Prussia—Accession and Character of King Frederick William IV.—Convocation of the United Diet—Its Debates and Dissolution—France—The Spanish Marriages—Reform Movement—Socialism— Revolution of February—End of the Orleanist Monarchy.

The characteristic of Continental history during the second quarter of this century is the sense of unrest. The long period of European peace which began in 1815 was not one of internal repose; the very absence of those engrossing and imperious interests which belong to a time of warfare gave freer play to the feelings of discontent and the vague longings for a better political order which remained behind after the convulsions of the revolutionary epoch and the military rule of Napoleon had passed away. During thirty years of peace the breach had been widening between those Governments which still represented the system of 1815, and the peoples over whom they ruled. Ideas of liberty, awakenings of national sense, were far more widely diffused in Europe than at the time of the revolutionary war. The seed then prematurely forced into an atmosphere of storm and reaction had borne its fruit: other growths, fertilised or accelerated by Western Liberalism, but not belonging to the same family, were springing up in unexpected strength, and in regions which had hitherto lain outside the movement of the modern world. New forces antagonistic to Government had come into being, penetrating an area unaffected by the constitutional struggles of the Mediterranean States, or by the weaker political efforts of Germany. In the homes of the Magyar and the Slavic subjects of Austria, so torpid throughout the agitation of an earlier time, the passion of nationality was every hour gaining new might. The older popular causes, vanquished for the moment by one reaction after another, had silently established a far stronger hold on men's minds. Working, some in exile and conspiracy, others through such form of political literature as the jealousy of Governments permitted, the leaders of the democratic movement upon the Continent created a power before which the established order at length succumbed. They had not created, nor was it possible under the circumstances that they should create, an order which was capable of taking its place.

[Italy. 1831-1848.]

Italy, rather than France, forms the central figure in any retrospect of Europe immediately before 1848 in which the larger forces at work are not obscured by those for the moment more prominent. The failure of the insurrection of 1831 had left Austria more visibly than before master over the Italian people even in those provinces in which Austria was not nominally sovereign. It had become clear that no effort after reform could be successful either in the Papal States or in the kingdom of Naples so long as Austria held Lombardy and Venice. The expulsion of the foreigner was therefore not merely the task of those who sought to give the Italian race its separate and independent national existence, it was the task of all who would extinguish oppression and misgovernment in any part of the Italian peninsula. Until the power of Austria was broken, it was vain to take up arms against the tyranny of the Duke of Modena or any other contemptible oppressor. Austria itself had twice taught this lesson; and if the restoration of Neapolitan despotism in 1821 could be justified by the disorderly character of the Government then suppressed, the circumstances attending the restoration of the Pope's authority in 1831 had extinguished Austria's claim to any sort of moral respect; for Metternich himself had united with the other European Courts in declaring the necessity for reforms in the Papal Government, and of these reforms, though a single earnest word from Austria would have enforced their execution, not one had been carried into effect. Gradually, but with increasing force as each unhappy year passed by, the conviction gained weight among all men of serious thought that the problem to be faced was nothing less than the destruction of the Austrian yoke. Whether proclaimed as an article of faith or veiled in diplomatic reserve, this belief formed the common ground among men whose views on the immediate future of Italy differed in almost every other particular.

[Mazzini.]

Three main currents of opinion are to be traced in the ferment of ideas which preceded the Italian revolution of 1848. At a time not rich in intellectual or in moral power, the most striking figure among those who are justly honoured as the founders of Italian independence is perhaps that of Mazzini. Exiled during nearly the whole of his mature life, a conspirator in the eyes of all Governments, a dreamer in the eyes of the world, Mazzini was a prophet or an evangelist among those whom his influence led to devote themselves to the one cause of their country's regeneration. No firmer faith, no nobler disinterestedness, ever animated the saint or the patriot; and if in Mazzini there was also something of the visionary and the fanatic, the force with which he grasped the two vital conditions of Italian revival—the expulsion of the foreigner and the establishment of a single national Government—proves him to have been a thinker of genuine political insight. Laying the foundation of his creed deep in the moral nature of man, and constructing upon this basis a fabric not of rights but of duties, he invested the political union with the immediateness, the sanctity, and the beauty of family life. With him, to live, to think, to hope, was to live, to think, to hope for Italy; and the Italy of his ideal was a Republic embracing every member of the race, purged of the priestcraft and the superstition which had degraded the man to the slave, indebted to itself alone for its independence, and consolidated by the reign of equal law. The rigidity with which Mazzini adhered to his own great project in its completeness, and his impatience with any bargaining away of national rights, excluded him from the work of those practical politicians and men of expedients who in 1859 effected with foreign aid the first step towards Italian union; but the influence of his teaching and his organisation in preparing his countrymen for independence was immense; and the dynasty which has rendered to United Italy services which Mazzini thought impossible, owes to this great Republican scarcely less than to its ablest friends.

[Hopes of Piedmont.]

Widely separated from the school of Mazzini in temper and intention was the group of politicians and military men, belonging mostly to Piedmont, who looked to the sovereign and the army of this State as the one hope of Italy in its struggle against foreign rule. The House of Savoy, though foreign in its origin, was, and had been for centuries, a really national dynasty. It was, moreover, by interest and traditional policy, the rival rather than the friend of Austria in Northern Italy. If the fear of revolution had at times brought the Court of Turin into close alliance with Vienna, the connection had but thinly veiled the lasting antagonism of two States which, as neighbours, had habitually sought expansion each at the other's cost. Lombardy, according to the expression of an older time, was the artichoke which the Kings of Piedmont were destined to devour leaf by leaf. Austria, on the other hand, sought extension towards the Alps: it had in 1799 clearly shown its intention of excluding the House of Savoy altogether from the Italian mainland; and the remembrance of this epoch had led the restored dynasty in 1815 to resist the plans of Metternich for establishing a league of all the princes of Italy under Austria's protection. The sovereign, moreover, who after the failure of the constitutional movement of 1821 had mounted the throne surrounded by Austrian bayonets, was no longer alive. Charles Albert of Carignano, who had at that time played so ambiguous a part, and whom Metternich had subsequently endeavoured to exclude from the succession, was on the throne. He had made his peace with absolutism by fighting in Spain against the Cortes in 1823; and since his accession to the throne he had rigorously suppressed the agitation of Mazzini's partizans within his own dominions. But in spite of strong clerical and reactionary influences around him, he had lately shown an independence of spirit in his dealings with Austria which raised him in the estimation of his subjects; and it was believed that his opinions had been deeply affected by the predominance which the idea of national independence was now gaining over that of merely democratic change. If the earlier career of Charles Albert himself cast some doubt upon his personal sincerity, and much more upon his constancy of purpose, there was at least in Piedmont an army thoroughly national in its sentiment, and capable of taking the lead whenever the opportunity should arise for uniting Italy against the foreigner. In no other Italian State was there an effective military force, or one so little adulterated with foreign elements.

[Hopes of the Papacy.]

A third current of opinion in these years of hope and of illusion was that represented in the writings of Gioberti, the depicter of a new and glorious Italy, regenerated not by philosophic republicanism or the sword of a temporal monarch, but by the moral force of a reformed and reforming Papacy. The conception of the Catholic Church as a great Liberal power, strange and fantastic as it now appears, was no dream of an isolated Italian enthusiast; it was an idea which, after the French Revolution of 1830, and the establishment of a government at once anti-clerical and anti-democratic, powerfully influenced some of the best minds in France, and found in Montalembert and Lamennais exponents who commanded the ear of Europe. If the corruption of the Papacy had been at once the spiritual and the political death of Italy, its renovation in purity and in strength would be also the resurrection of the Italian people. Other lands had sought, and sought in vain, to work out their problems under the guidance of leaders antagonistic to the Church, and of popular doctrines divorced from religious faith. To Italy belonged the prerogative of spiritual power. By this power, aroused from the torpor of ages, and speaking, as it had once spoken, to the very conscience of mankind, the gates of a glorious future would be thrown open. Conspirators might fret, and politicians scheme, but the day on which the new life of Italy would begin would be that day when the head of the Church, taking his place as chief of a federation of Italian States, should raise the banner of freedom and national right, and princes and people alike should follow the all-inspiring voice.

[Election of Pius IX., June, 1846.]

[Reforms expected from Pius.]

[Ferrara, June, 1847.]

A monk, ignorant of everything but cloister lore, benighted, tyrannical, the companion in his private life of a few jolly priests and a gossiping barber, was not an alluring emblem of the Church of the future. But in 1846 Pope Gregory XVI., who for the last five years had been engaged in one incessant struggle against insurgents, conspirators, and reformers, and whose prisons were crowded with the best of his subjects, passed away. [405] His successor, Mastai Ferretti, Bishop of Imola, was elected under the title of Pius IX., after the candidate favoured by Austria had failed to secure the requisite number of votes (June 17). The choice of this kindly and popular prelate was to some extent a tribute to Italian feeling; and for the next eighteen months it appeared as it Gioberti had really divined the secret of the age. The first act of the new Pope was the publication of a universal amnesty for political offences. The prison doors throughout his dominions were thrown open, and men who had been sentenced to confinement for life returned in exultation to their homes. The act created a profound impression throughout Italy, and each good-humoured utterance of Pius confirmed the belief that great changes were at hand. A wild enthusiasm seized upon Rome. The population abandoned itself to festivals in honour of the Pontiff and of the approaching restoration of Roman liberty. Little was done; not much was actually promised; everything was believed. The principle of representative government was discerned in the new Council of State now placed by the side of the College of Cardinals; a more serious concession was made to popular feeling in the permission given to the citizens of Rome, and afterwards to those of the provinces, to enrol themselves in a civic guard. But the climax of excitement was reached when, in answer to a threatening movement of Austria, occasioned by the growing agitation throughout Central Italy, the Papal Court protested against the action of its late protector. By the Treaties of Vienna Austria had gained the right to garrison the citadel of Ferrara, though this town lay within the Ecclesiastical States. Placing a new interpretation on the expression used in the Treaties, the Austrian Government occupied the town of Ferrara itself (June 17th, 1847). The movement was universally understood to be the preliminary to a new occupation of the Papal States, like that of 1831; and the protests of the Pope against the violation of his territory gave to the controversy a European importance. The English and French fleets appeared at Naples; the King of Sardinia openly announced his intention to take the field against Austria if war should break out. By the efforts of neutral Powers a compromise on the occupation of Ferrara was at length arranged; but the passions which had been excited were not appeased, and the Pope remained in popular imagination the champion of Italian independence against Austria, as well as the apostle of constitutional Government and the rights of the people.

[Revolution at Palermo, Jan., 1848.]

In the meantime the agitation begun in Rome was spreading through the north and the south of the peninsula, and beyond the Sicilian Straits. The centenary of the expulsion of the Austrians from Genoa in December, 1746, was celebrated throughout central Italy with popular demonstrations which gave Austria warning of the storm about to burst upon it. In the south, however, impatience under domestic tyranny was a far more powerful force than the distant hope of national independence. Sicily had never forgotten the separate rights which it had once enjoyed, and the constitution given to it under the auspices of England in 1812. Communications passed between the Sicilian leaders and the opponents of the Bourbon Government on the mainland, and in the autumn of 1847 simultaneous risings took place in Calabria and at Messina. These were repressed without difficulty; but the fire smouldered far and wide, and on the 13th of January, 1848, the population of Palermo rose in revolt. For fourteen days the conflict between the people and the Neapolitan troops continued. The city was bombarded, but in the end the people were victorious, and a provisional government was formed by the leaders of the insurrection. One Sicilian town after another followed the example of the capital, and expelled its Neapolitan garrison. Threatened by revolution in Naples itself, King Ferdinand II., grandson of the despot of 1821, now imitated the policy of his predecessor, and proclaimed a constitution. A Liberal Ministry was formed, but no word was said as to the autonomy claimed by Sicily, and promised, as it would seem, by the leaders of the popular party on the mainland. After the first excitement of success was past, it became clear that the Sicilians were as widely at variance with the newly-formed Government at Naples as with that which they had overthrown.

[Agitation in Austrian Italy.]

The insurrection of Palermo gave a new stimulus and imparted more of revolutionary colour to the popular movement throughout Italy. Constitutions were granted in Piedmont and Tuscany. In the Austrian provinces national exasperation against the rule of the foreigner grew daily more menacing. Radetzky, the Austrian Commander-in-chief, had long foreseen the impending struggle, and had endeavoured, but not with complete success, to impress his own views upon the imperial Government. Verona had been made the centre of a great system of fortifications, and the strength of the army under Radetzky's command had been considerably increased, but it was not until the eleventh hour that Metternich abandoned the hope of tiding over difficulties by his old system of police and spies, and permitted the establishment of undisguised military rule. In order to injure the finances of Austria, a general resolution had been made by the patriotic societies of Upper Italy to abstain from the use of tobacco, from which the Government drew a large part of its revenue. On the first Sunday in 1848 Austrian officers, smoking in the streets of Milan, were attacked by the people. The troops were called to arms: a conflict took place, and enough blood was shed to give to the tumult the importance of an actual revolt. In Padua and elsewhere similar outbreaks followed. Radetzky issued a general order to his troops, declaring that the Emperor was determined to defend his Italian dominion whether against an external or domestic foe. Martial law was proclaimed; and for a moment, although Piedmont gave signs of throwing itself into the Italian movement, the awe of Austria's military power hushed the rising tempest. A few weeks more revealed to an astonished world the secret that the Austrian State, so great and so formidable in the eyes of friend and foe, was itself on the verge of dissolution.

[Austria.]

[Affairs in Hungary.]

It was to the absence of all stirring public life, not to any real assimilative power or any high intelligence in administration, that the House of Hapsburg owed, during the eighteenth century, the continued union of that motley of nations or races which successive conquests, marriages, and treaties had brought under its dominion. The violence of the attack made by the Emperor Joseph upon all provincial rights first re-awakened the slumbering spirit of Hungary; but the national movement of that time, which excited such strong hopes and alarms, had been succeeded by a long period of stagnation, and during the Napoleonic wars the repression of everything that appealed to any distinctively national spirit had become more avowedly than before the settled principle of the Austrian Court. In 1812 the Hungarian Diet had resisted the financial measures of the Government. The consequence was that, in spite of the law requiring its convocation every three years, the Diet was not again summoned till 1825. During the intermediate period, the Emperor raised taxes and levies by edict alone. Deprived of its constitutional representation, the Hungarian nobility pursued its opposition to the encroachments of the Crown in the Sessions of each county. At these assemblies, to which there existed no parallel in the western and more advanced States of the Continent, each resident land-owner who belonged to the very numerous caste of the noblesse was entitled to speak and to vote. Retaining, in addition to the right of free discussion and petition, the appointment of local officials, as well as a considerable share in the actual administration, the Hungarian county-assemblies, handing down a spirit of rough independence from an immemorial past, were probably the hardiest relic of self-government existing in any of the great monarchical States of Europe. Ignorant, often uncouth in their habits, oppressive to their peasantry, and dominated by the spirit of race and caste, the mass of the Magyar nobility had indeed proved as impervious to the humanising influences of the eighteenth century as they had to the solicitations of despotism. The Magnates, or highest order of noblesse, who formed a separate chamber in the Diet, had been to some extent denationalised; they were at once more European in their culture, and more submissive to the Austrian Court. In banishing political discussion from the Diet to the County Sessions, the Emperor's Government had intensified the provincial spirit which it sought to extinguish. Too numerous to be won over by personal inducements, and remote from the imperial agencies which had worked so effectively through the Chamber of Magnates, the lesser nobility of Hungary during these years of absolutism carried the habit of political discussion to their homes, and learnt to baffle the imperial Government by withholding all help and all information from its subordinate agents. Each county-assembly became a little Parliament, and a centre of resistance to the usurpation of the Crown. The stimulus given to the national spirit by this struggle against unconstitutional rule was seen not less in the vigorous attacks made upon the Government on the re-assembling of the Diet in 1825, than in the demand that Magyar, and not Latin as heretofore, should be the language used in recording the proceedings of the Diet, and in which communications should pass between the Upper and the Lower House.

[Magyars and Slavs.]

There lay in this demand for the recognition of the national language the germ of a conflict of race against race which was least of all suspected by those by whom the demand was made. Hungary, as a political unity, comprised, besides the Slavic kingdom of Croatia, wide regions in which the inhabitants were of Slavic or Roumanian race, and where the Magyar was known only as a feudal lord. The district in which the population at large belonged to the Magyar stock did not exceed one-half of the kingdom. For the other races of Hungary, who were probably twice as numerous as themselves, the Magyars entertained the utmost contempt, attributing to them the moral qualities of the savage, and denying to them the possession of any nationality whatever. In a country combining so many elements ill-blended with one another, and all alike subject to a German Court at Vienna, Latin, as the language of the Church and formerly the language of international communication, had served well as a neutral means of expression in public affairs. There might be Croatian deputies in the Diet who could not speak Magyar; the Magyars could not understand Croatian; both could understand and could without much effort express themselves in the species of Latin which passed muster at Presburg and at Vienna. Yet no freedom of handling could convert a dead language into a living one; and when the love of country and of ancient right became once more among the Magyars an inspiring passion, it naturally sought a nobler and more spontaneous utterance than dog-latin. Though no law was passed upon the subject in the Parliament in which it was first mooted, speakers in the Diet of 1832 used their mother-tongue; and when the Viennese Government forbade the publication of the debates, reports were circulated in manuscript through the country by Kossuth, a young deputy, who after the dissolution of the Diet in 1836 paid for his defiance of the Emperor by three years' imprisonment.

[Hungary after 1830.]

[The Diet of 1832-36.]

[Szechenyi.]

Hungary now seemed to be entering upon an epoch of varied and rapid national development. The barriers which separated it from the Western world were disappearing. The literature, the ideas, the inventions of Western Europe were penetrating its archaic society, and transforming a movement which in its origin had been conservative and aristocratic into one of far-reaching progress and reform. Alone among the opponents of absolute power on the Continent, the Magyars had based their resistance on positive constitutional right, on prescription, and the settled usage of the past; and throughout the conflict with the Crown between 1812 and 1825 legal right was on the side not of the Emperor but of those whom he attempted to coerce. With excellent judgment the Hungarian leaders had during these years abstained from raising any demand for reforms, appreciating the advantage of a purely defensive position in a combat with a Court pledged in the eyes of all Europe, as Austria was, to the defence of legitimate rights. This policy had gained its end; the Emperor, after thirteen years of conflict, had been forced to re-convoke the Diet, and to abandon the hope of effecting a work in which his uncle, Joseph II., had failed. But, the constitution once saved, that narrow and exclusive body of rights for which the nobility had contended no longer satisfied the needs or the conscience of the time. [406] Opinion was moving fast; the claims of the towns and of the rural population were making themselves felt; the agitation that followed the overthrow of the Bourbons in 1830 reached Hungary too, not so much through French influence as through the Polish war of independence, in which the Magyars saw a struggle not unlike their own, enlisting their warmest sympathies for the Polish armies so long as they kept the field, and for the exiles who came among them when the conflict was over. By the side of the old defenders of class-privilege there arose men imbued with the spirit of modern Liberalism. The laws governing the relation of the peasant to his lord, which remained nearly as they had been left by Maria Theresa, were dealt with by the Diet of 1832 in so liberal a spirit that the Austrian Government, formerly far in advance of Hungarian opinion on this subject, refused its assent to many of the measures passed. Great schemes of social and material improvement also aroused the public hopes in these years. The better minds became conscious of the real aspect of Hungarian life in comparison with that of civilised Europe—of its poverty, its inertia, its boorishness. Extraordinary energy was thrown into the work of advance by Count Szechenyi, a nobleman whose imagination had been fired by the contrast which the busy industry of Great Britain and the practical interests of its higher classes presented to the torpor of his own country. It is to him that Hungary owes the bridge uniting its double capital at Pesth, and that Europe owes the unimpeded navigation of the Danube, which he first rendered possible by the destruction of the rocks known as the Iron Gates at Orsova. Sanguine, lavishly generous, an ardent patriot, Szechenyi endeavoured to arouse men of his own rank, the great and the powerful in Hungary, to the sense of what was due from them to their country as leaders in its industrial development. He was no revolutionist, nor was he an enemy to Austria. A peaceful political future would best have accorded with his own designs for raising Hungary to its due place among nations.

[Transylvania.]

That the Hungarian movement of this time was converted from one of fruitful progress into an embittered political conflict ending in civil war was due, among other causes, to the action of the Austrian Cabinet itself. Wherever constitutional right existed, there Austria saw a natural enemy. The province of Transylvania, containing a mixed population of Magyars, Germans, and Roumanians, had, like Hungary, a Diet of its own, which Diet ought to have been summoned every year. It was, however, not once assembled between 1811 and 1834. In the agitation at length provoked in Transylvania by this disregard of constitutional right, the Magyar element naturally took the lead, and so gained complete ascendancy in the province. When the Diet met in 1834, its language and conduct were defiant in the highest degree. It was speedily dissolved, and the scandal occasioned by its proceedings disturbed the last days of the Emperor Francis, who died in 1835, leaving the throne to his son Ferdinand, an invalid incapable of any serious exertion. It soon appeared that nothing was changed in the principles of the Imperial Government, and that whatever hopes had been formed of the establishment of a freer system under the new reign were delusive. The leader of the Transylvanian Opposition was Count Wesselenyi, himself a Magnate in Hungary, who, after the dissolution of the Diet, betook himself to the Sessions of the Hungarian counties, and there delivered speeches against the Court which led to his being arrested and brought to trial for high treason. His cause was taken up by the Hungarian Diet, as one in which the rights of the local assemblies were involved. The plea of privilege was, however, urged in vain, and the sentence of exile which was passed upon Count Wesselenyi became a new source of contention between the Crown and the Magyar Estates. [407]

[Parties among the Magyars.]

[The Diet of 1843.]

The enmity of Government was now a sufficient passport to popular favour. On emerging from his prison under a general amnesty in 1840, Kossuth undertook the direction of a Magyar journal at Pesth, which at once gained an immense influence throughout the country. The spokesman of a new generation, Kossuth represented an entirely different order of ideas from those of the orthodox defenders of the Hungarian Constitution. They had been conservative and aristocratic; he was revolutionary: their weapons had been drawn from the storehouse of Hungarian positive law; his inspiration was from the Liberalism of western Europe. Thus within the national party itself there grew up sections in more or less pronounced antagonism to one another, though all were united by a passionate devotion to Hungary and by an unbounded faith in its future. Szechenyi, and those who with him subordinated political to material ends, regarded Kossuth as a dangerous theorist. Between the more impetuous and the more cautious reformers stood the recognised Parliamentary leaders of the Liberals, among whom Deak had already given proof of political capacity of no common order. In Kossuth's journal the national problems of the time were discussed both by his opponents and by his friends. Publicity gave greater range as well as greater animation to the conflict of ideas; and the rapid development of opinion during these years was seen in the large and ambitious measures which occupied the Diet of 1843. Electoral and municipal reform, the creation of a code of criminal law, the introduction of trial by jury, the abolition of the immunity of the nobles from taxation; all these, and similar legislative projects, displayed at once the energy of the time and the influence of western Europe in transforming the political conceptions of the Hungarian nation. Hitherto the forty-three Free Cities had possessed but a single vote in the Diet, as against the sixty-three votes possessed by the Counties. It was now generally admitted that this anomaly could not continue; but inasmuch as civic rights were themselves monopolised by small privileged orders among the townsmen, the problem of constitutional reform carried with it that of a reform of the municipalities. Hungary in short was now face to face with the task of converting its ancient system of the representation of the privileged orders into the modern system of a representation of the nation at large. Arduous at every epoch and in every country, this work was one of almost insuperable difficulty in Hungary, through the close connection with the absolute monarchy of Austria; through the existence of a body of poor noblesse, numbered at two hundred thousand, who, though strong in patriotic sentiment, bitterly resented any attack upon their own freedom from taxation; and above all through the variety of races in Hungary, and the attitude assumed by the Magyars, as the dominant nationality, towards the Slavs around them. In proportion as the energy of the Magyars and their confidence in the victory of the national cause mounted high, so rose their disdain of all claims beside their own within the Hungarian kingdom. It was resolved by the Lower Chamber of the Diet of 1843 that no language but Magyar should be permitted in debate, and that at the end of ten years every person not capable of speaking the Magyar language should be excluded from all public employment. The Magnates softened the latter provision by excepting from it the holders of merely local offices in Slavic districts; against the prohibition of Latin in the Diet the Croatians appealed to the Emperor. A rescript arrived from Vienna placing a veto upon the resolution. So violent was the storm excited in the Diet itself by this rescript, and so threatening the language of the national leaders outside, that the Cabinet, after a short interval, revoked its decision, and accepted a compromise which, while establishing Magyar as the official language of the kingdom, and requiring that it should be taught even in Croatian schools, permitted the use of Latin in the Diet for the next six years. In the meantime the Diet had shouted down every speaker who began with the usual Latin formula, and fighting had taken place in Agram, the Croatian capital, between the national and the Magyar factions.

[The Slavic national movements.]

It was in vain that the effort was made at Presburg to resist all claims but those of one race. The same quickening breath which had stirred the Magyar nation to new life had also passed over the branches of the Slavic family within the Austrian dominions far and near. In Bohemia a revival of interest in the Czech language and literature, which began about 1820, had in the following decade gained a distinctly political character. Societies originally or professedly founded for literary objects had become the centres of a popular movement directed towards the emancipation of the Czech elements in Bohemia from German ascendancy, and the restoration of something of a national character to the institutions of the kingdom. Among the southern Slavs, with whom Hungary was more directly concerned, the national movement first became visible rather later. Its earliest manifestations took, just as in Bohemia, a literary or linguistic form. Projects for the formation of a common language which, under the name of Illyrian, should draw together all the Slavic populations between the Adriatic and the Black Sea, occupied for a while the fancy of the learned; but the more ambitious part of this design, which had given some umbrage to the Turkish Government, was abandoned in obedience to instructions from Vienna; and the movement first gained political importance when its scope was limited to the Croatian and Slavonic districts of Hungary, and it was endowed with the distinct task of resisting the imposition of Magyar as an official language. In addition to their representation in the Diet of the Kingdom at Presburg, the Croatian landowners had their own Provincial Diet at Agram. In this they possessed not only a common centre of action, but an organ of communication with the Imperial Government at Vienna, which rendered them some support in their resistance to Magyar pretensions. Later events gave currency to the belief that a conflict of races in Hungary was deliberately stimulated by the Austrian Court in its own interest. But the whole temper and principle of Metternich's rule was opposed to the development of national spirit, whether in one race or another; and the patronage which the Croats appeared at this time to receive at Vienna was probably no more than an instinctive act of conservatism, intended to maintain the balance of interests, and to reduce within the narrowest possible limits such changes as might prove inevitable.

[Agitation after 1843.]

Of all the important measures of reform which were brought before the Hungarian Diet of 1843, one alone had become law. The rest were either rejected by the Chamber of Magnates after passing the Lower House, or were thrown out in the Lower House in spite of the approval of the majority, in consequence of peremptory instructions sent to Presburg by the county assemblies. The representative of a Hungarian constituency was not free to vote at his discretion; he was the delegate of the body of nobles which sent him, and was legally bound to give his vote in accordance with the instructions which he might from time to time receive. However zealous the Legislature itself, it was therefore liable to be paralysed by external pressure as soon as any question was raised which touched the privileges of the noble caste. This was especially the case with all projects involving the expenditure of public revenue. Until the nobles bore their share of taxation it was impossible that Hungary should emerge from a condition of beggarly need; yet, be the inclination of the Diet what it might, it was controlled by bodies of stubborn squires or yeomen in each county, who fully understood their own power, and stoutly forbade the passing of any measure which imposed a share of the public burdens upon themselves. The impossibility of carrying out reforms tinder existing conditions had been demonstrated by the failures of 1843. In order to overcome the obstruction as well of the Magnates as of the county assemblies, it was necessary that an appeal should be made to the country at large, and that a force of public sentiment should be aroused which should both overmaster the existing array of special interests, and give birth to legislation merging them for the future in a comprehensive system of really national institutions. To this task the Liberal Opposition addressed itself; and although large differences existed within the party, and the action of Kossuth, who now exchanged the career of the journalist for that of the orator, was little fettered by the opinions of his colleagues, the general result did not disappoint the hopes that had been formed. Political associations and clubs took vigorous root in the country. The magic of Kossuth's oratory left every hearer a more patriotic, if not a wiser man; and an awakening passion for the public good seemed for a while to throw all private interests into the shade.

[Government Policy of Reform.]

[Programme of the Opposition.]

It now became plain to all but the blindest that great changes were inevitable; and at the instance of the more intelligent among the Conservative party in Hungary the Imperial Government resolved to enter the lists with a policy of reform, and, if possible, to wrest the helm from the men who were becoming masters of the nation. In order to secure a majority in the Diet, it was deemed requisite by the Government first to gain a predominant influence in the county-assemblies. As a preliminary step, most of the Lieutenants of counties, to whose high dignity no practical functions attached, were removed from their posts, and superseded by paid administrators, appointed from Vienna. Count Apponyi, one of the most vigorous of the conservative and aristocratic reformers, was placed at the head of the Ministry. In due time the proposals of the Government were made public. They comprised the taxation of the nobles, a reform of the municipalities, modifications in the land-system, and a variety of economic measures intended directly to promote the material development of the country. The latter were framed to some extent on the lines laid down by Szechenyi, who now, in bitter antagonism to Kossuth, accepted office under the Government, and gave to it the prestige of his great name. It remained for the Opposition to place their own counter-proposals before the country. Differences within the party were smoothed over, and a manifesto, drawn up by Deak, gave statesmanlike expression to the aims of the national leaders. Embracing every reform included in the policy of the Government, it added to them others which the Government had not ventured to face, and gave to the whole the character of a vindication of its own rights by the nation, in contrast to a scheme of administrative reform worked out by the officers of the Crown. Thus while it enforced the taxation of the nobles, it claimed for the Diet the right of control over every branch of the national expenditure. It demanded increased liberty for the Press, and an unfettered right of political association; and finally, while doing homage to the unity of the Crown, it required that the Government of Hungary should be one in direct accord with the national representation in the Diet, and that the habitual effort of the Court of Vienna to place this kingdom on the same footing as the Emperor's non-constitutional provinces should be abandoned. With the rival programmes of the Government and the Opposition before it, the country proceeded to the elections of 1847. Hopefulness and enthusiasm abounded on every side; and at the close of the year the Diet assembled from which so great a work was expected, and which was destined within so short a time to witness, in storm and revolution, the passing away of the ancient order of Hungarian life.

[The Rural System of Hungary.]

The directly constitutional problems with which the Diet of Presburg had to deal were peculiar to Hungary itself, and did not exist in the other parts of the Austrian Empire. There were, however, social problems which were not less urgently forcing themselves upon public attention alike in Hungary and in those provinces which enjoyed no constitutional rights. The chief of these was the condition of the peasant-population. In the greater part of the Austrian dominions, though serfage had long been abolished, society was still based upon the manorial system. The peasant held his land subject to the obligation of labouring on his lord's domain for a certain number of days in the year, and of rendering him other customary services: the manor-court, though checked by the neighbourhood of crown-officers, retained its jurisdiction, and its agents frequently performed duties of police. Hence the proposed extinction of the so-called feudal tie, and the conversion of the semi-dependent cultivator into a freeholder bound only to the payment of a fixed money-charge, or rendered free of all obligation by the surrender of a part of his holding, involved in many districts the institution of new public authorities and a general reorganisation of the minor local powers. From this task the Austrian Government had shrunk in mere lethargy, even when, as in 1835, proposals for change had come from the landowners themselves. The work begun by Maria Theresa and Joseph remained untouched, though thirty years of peace had given abundant opportunity for its completion, and the legislation of Hardenberg in 1810 afforded precedents covering at least part of the field.

[Insurrection in Galicia, Feb., 1846.]

[Rural Edict, Dec., 1845.]

At length events occurred which roused the drowsiest heads in Vienna from their slumbers. The party of action among the Polish refugees at Paris had determined to strike another blow for the independence of their country. Instead, however, of repeating the insurrection of Warsaw, it was arranged that the revolt should commence in Prussian and Austrian Poland, and the beginning of the year 1846 was fixed for the uprising. In Prussia the Government crushed the conspirators before a blow could be struck. In Austria, though ample warning was given, the precautions taken were insufficient. General Collin occupied the Free City of Cracow, where the revolutionary committee had its headquarters; but the troops under his command were so weak that he was soon compelled to retreat, and to await the arrival of reinforcements. Meanwhile the landowners in the district of Tarnow in northern Galicia raised the standard of insurrection, and sought to arm the country. The Ruthenian peasantry, however, among whom they lived, owed all that was tolerable in their condition to the protection of the Austrian crown-officers, and detested the memory of an independent Poland. Instead of following their lords into the field, they gave information of their movements, and asked instructions from the nearest Austrian authorities. They were bidden to seize upon any persons who instigated them to rebellion, and to bring them into the towns. A war of the peasants against the nobles forthwith broke out. Murder, pillage, and incendiary fires brought both the Polish insurrection and its leaders to a miserable end. The Polish nobles, unwilling to acknowledge the humiliating truth that their own peasants were their bitterest enemies, charged the Austrian Government with having set a price on their heads, and with having instigated the peasants to a communistic revolt. Metternich, disgraced by the spectacle of a Jacquerie raging apparently under his own auspices, insisted, in a circular to the European Courts, that the attack of the peasantry upon the nobles had been purely spontaneous, and occasioned by attempts to press certain villagers into the ranks of the rebellion by brute force. But whatever may have been the measure of responsibility incurred by the agents of the Government, an agrarian revolution was undoubtedly in full course in Galicia, and its effects were soon felt in the rest of the Austrian monarchy. The Arcadian contentment of the rural population, which had been the boast, and in some degree the real strength, of Austria, was at an end. Conscious that the problem which it had so long evaded must at length be faced, the Government of Vienna prepared to deal with the conditions of land-tenure by legislation extending over the whole of the Empire. But the courage which was necessary for an adequate solution of the difficulty nowhere existed within the official world, and the Edict which conveyed the last words of the Imperial Government on this vital question contained nothing more than a series of provisions for facilitating voluntary settlements between the peasants and their lords. In the quality of this enactment the Court of Vienna gave the measure of its own weakness. The opportunity of breaking with traditions of impotence had presented itself and had been lost. Revolution was at the gates; and in the unsatisfied claim of the rural population the Government had handed over to its adversaries a weapon of the greatest power. [408]

[Vienna.]

In the purely German provinces of Austria there lingered whatever of the spirit of tranquillity was still to be found within the Empire. This, however, was not the case in the districts into which the influence of the capital extended. Vienna had of late grown out of its old careless spirit. The home in past years of a population notoriously pleasure-loving, good-humoured, and indifferent to public affairs, it had now taken something of a more serious character. The death of the Emperor Francis, who to the last generation of Viennese had been as fixed a part of the order of things as the river Danube, was not unconnected with this change in the public tone. So long as the old Emperor lived, all thought that was given to political affairs was energy thrown away. By his death not only had the State lost an ultimate controlling power, if dull, yet practised and tenacious, but this loss was palpable to all the world. The void stood bare and unrelieved before the public eye. The notorious imbecility of the Emperor Ferdinand, the barren and antiquated formalism of Metternich and of that entire system which seemed to be incorporated in him, made Government an object of general satire, and in some quarters of rankling contempt. In proportion as the culture and intelligence of the capital exceeded that of other towns, so much the more galling was the pressure of that part of the general system of tutelage which was especially directed against the independence of the mind. The censorship was exercised with grotesque stupidity. It was still the aim of Government to isolate Austria from the ideas and the speculation of other lands, and to shape the intellectual world of the Emperor's subjects into that precise form which tradition prescribed as suitable for the members of a well-regulated State. In poetry, the works of Lord Byron were excluded from circulation, where custom-house officers and market-inspectors chose to enforce the law; in history and political literature, the leading writers of modern times lay under the same ban. Native production was much more effectively controlled. Whoever wrote in a newspaper, or lectured at a University, or published a work of imagination, was expected to deliver himself of something agreeable to the constituted authorities, or was reduced to silence. Far as Vienna fell short of Northern Germany in intellectual activity, the humiliation inflicted on its best elements by this life-destroying surveillance was keenly felt and bitterly resented. More perhaps by its senile warfare against mental freedom than by any acts of direct political repression, the Government ranged against itself the almost unanimous opinion of the educated classes. Its hold on the affection of the capital was gone. Still quiescent, but ready to unite against the Government when opportunity should arrive, there stood, in addition to the unorganised mass of the middle ranks, certain political associations and students' societies, a vigorous Jewish element, and the usual contingent furnished by poverty and discontent in every great city from among the labouring population. Military force sufficient to keep the capital in subjection was not wanting; but the foresight and the vigour necessary to cope with the first onset of revolution were nowhere to be found among the holders of power.

[Prussia.]

[Frederick William IV., 1840.]

At Berlin the solid order of Prussian absolutism already shook to its foundation. With King Frederick William III., whose long reign ended in 1840, there departed the half-filial, half-spiritless acquiescence of the nation in the denial of the liberties which had been so solemnly promised to it at the epoch of Napoleon's fall. The new Sovereign, Frederick William IV., ascended the throne amid high national hopes. The very contrast which his warm, exuberant nature offered to the silent, reserved disposition of his father impressed the public for awhile in his favour. In the more shining personal qualities he far excelled all his immediate kindred. His artistic and literary sympathies, his aptitude of mind and readiness of speech, appeared to mark the man of a new age, and encouraged the belief that, in spite of the mediaeval dreams and reactionary theories to which, as prince, he had surrendered himself, he would, as King, appreciate the needs of the time, and give to Prussia the free institutions which the nation demanded. The first acts of the new reign were generously conceived. Political offenders were freely pardoned. Men who had suffered for their opinions were restored to their posts in the Universities and the public service, or selected for promotion. But when the King approached the constitutional question, his utterances were unsatisfactory. Though undoubtedly in favour of some reform, he gave no sanction to the idea of a really national representation, but seemed rather to seek occasions to condemn it. Other omens of ill import were not wanting. Allying his Government with a narrow school of theologians, the King offended men of independent mind, and transgressed against the best traditions of Prussian administration. The prestige of the new reign was soon exhausted. Those who had believed Frederick William to be a man of genius now denounced him as a vaporous, inflated dilettante; his enthusiasm was seen to indicate nothing in particular; his sonorous commonplaces fell flat on second delivery. Not only in his own kingdom, but in the minor German States, which looked to Prussia as the future leader of a free Germany, the opinion rapidly gained ground that Frederick William IV. was to be numbered among the enemies rather than the friends of the good cause.

[United Diet convoked at Berlin, Feb. 3, 1847.]

In the Edicts by which the last King of Prussia had promised his people a Constitution, it had been laid down that the representative body was to spring from the Provincial Estates, and that it was to possess, in addition to its purely consultative functions in legislation, a real power of control over all State loans and over all proposed additions to taxation. The interdependence of the promised Parliament and the Provincial Estates had been seen at the time to endanger the success of Hardenberg's scheme; nevertheless, it was this conception which King Frederick William IV. made the very centre of his Constitutional policy. A devotee to the distant past, he spoke of the Provincial Estates, which in their present form had existed only since 1823, as if they were a great national and historic institution which had come down unchanged through centuries. His first experiment was the summoning of a Committee from these bodies to consider certain financial projects with which the Government was occupied (1842). The labours of the Committee were insignificant, nor was its treatment at the hands of the Crown Ministers of a serious character. Frederick William, however, continued to meditate over his plans, and appointed a Commission to examine the project drawn up at his desire by the Cabinet. The agitation in favour of Parliamentary Government became more and more pressing among the educated classes; and at length, in spite of some opposition from his brother, the Prince of Prussia, afterwards Emperor of Germany, the King determined to fulfil his father's promise and to convoke a General Assembly at Berlin. On the 3rd of February, 1847, there appeared a Royal Patent, which summoned all the Provincial Estates to the capital to meet as a United Diet of the Kingdom. The Diet was to be divided into two Chambers, the Upper Chamber including the Royal Princes and highest nobles, the Lower the representatives of the knights, towns, and peasants. The right of legislation was not granted to the Diet; it had, however, the right of presenting petitions on internal affairs. State-loans and new taxes were not, in time of peace, to be raised without its consent. No regular interval was fixed for the future meetings of the Diet, and its financial rights were moreover reduced by other provisions, which enacted that a United Committee from the Provincial Estates was to meet every four years for certain definite objects, and that a special Delegation was to sit each year for the transaction of business relating to the National Debt. [409]

[King Frederick William and the Diet.]

The nature of the General Assembly convoked by this Edict, the functions conferred upon it, and the guarantees offered for Representative Government in the future, so little corresponded with the requirements of the nation, that the question was at once raised in Liberal circles whether the concessions thus tendered by the King ought to be accepted or rejected. The doubt which existed as to the disposition of the monarch himself was increased by the speech from the throne at the opening of the Diet (April 11). In a vigorous harangue extending over half an hour, King Frederick William, while he said much that was appropriate to the occasion, denounced the spirit of revolution that was working in the Prussian Press, warned the Deputies that they had been summoned not to advocate political theories, but to protect each the rights of his own order, and declared that no power on earth should induce him to change his natural relation to his people into a constitutional one, or to permit a written sheet of paper to intervene like a second Providence between Prussia and the Almighty. So vehement was the language of the King, and so uncompromising his tone, that the proposal was forthwith made at a private conference that the Deputies should quit Berlin in a body. This extreme course was not adopted; it was determined instead to present an address to the King, laying before him in respectful language the shortcomings in the Patent of February 3rd. In the debate on this address began the Parliamentary history of Prussia. The Liberal majority in the Lower Chamber, anxious to base their cause on some foundation of positive law, treated the Edicts of Frederick William III. defining the rights of the future Representative Body as actual statutes of the realm, although the late King had never called a Representative Body into existence. From this point of view the functions now given to Committees and Delegations were so much illegally withdrawn from the rights of the Diet. The Government, on the other hand, denied that the Diet possessed any rights or claims whatever beyond those assigned to it by the Patent of February 3rd, to which it owed its origin. In receiving the address of the Chambers, the King, while expressing a desire to see the Constitution further developed, repeated the principle already laid clown by his Ministers, and refused to acknowledge any obligation outside those which he had himself created.

[Proceedings and Dissolution of the Diet.]

When, after a series of debates on the political questions at issue, the actual business of the Session began, the relations between the Government and the Assembly grew worse rather than better. The principal measures submitted were the grant of a State-guarantee to certain land-banks established for the purpose of extinguishing the rent-charges on peasants' holdings, and the issue of a public loan for the construction of railways by the State. Alleging that the former measure was not directly one of taxation, the Government, in laying it before the Diet, declared that they asked only for an opinion, and denied that the Diet possessed any right of decision. Thus challenged, as it were, to make good its claims, the Diet not only declined to assent to this guarantee, but set its veto on the proposed railway-loan. Both projects were in themselves admitted to be to the advantage of the State; their rejection by the Diet was an emphatic vindication of constitutional rights which the Government seemed indisposed to acknowledge. Opposition grew more and more embittered; and when, as a preliminary to the dissolution of the Diet, the King ordered its members to proceed to the election of the Committees and Delegation named in the Edict of February 3rd, an important group declined to take part in the elections, or consented to do so only under reservations, on the ground that the Diet, and that alone, possessed the constitutional control over finance which the King was about to commit to other bodies. Indignant at this protest, the King absented himself from the ceremony which brought the Diet to a close (June 26th). Amid general irritation and resentment the Assembly broke up. Nothing had resulted from its convocation but a direct exhibition of the antagonism of purpose existing between the Sovereign and the national representatives. Moderate men were alienated by the doctrines promulgated from the Throne; and an experiment which, if more wisely conducted, might possibly at the eleventh hour have saved all Germany from revolution, left the Monarchy discredited and exposed to the attack of the most violent of its foes.