HISTORY OF EUROPE. CHAPTER I. GENERAL SKETCH OF THE WHOLE PERIOD FROM THE FALL OF NAPOLEON TO THE ACCESSION OF LOUIS NAPOLEON. cluded. 1 THE fall of Napoleon completed the first drama of the historical series arisResume of the ing out of the French Revolution. war just con- Democratic ambition had found its natural and inevitable issue in warlike achievement; the passions of the camp had succeeded those of the forum, and the conquest of all the continental monarchies had for a time apparently satiated the desires of an ambitious people. But the reaction was as violent as the action; in every warlike operation two parties are to be considered-the conqueror and the conquered. The rapacity, the insolence, the organized exactions of the French proved grievous in the extreme; and the hardship was felt as the more insupportable, when the administrative powers of Napoleon gave to them the form of a regular tribute, and conducted the riches of conquered Europe in a perennial stream to the Imperial treasury. A unanimous cry of indignation arose from every part of the Continent; a crusade commenced in all quarters, from the experienced suffering of mankind;-from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, the liberating warriors came forth, and the strength of an injured world collected, by a convulsive effort at the heart, to throw off the load which had oppressed it. Securely cradled amidst the waves, England, like her immortal chief at Waterloo, calmly awaited the hour when she might be called on to take the lead in the terrible strife; her energy, when it arrived, rivaled her former patience in privation, her fortitude in suffering; and the one only nation which, throughout the struggle, had been unconquered, at length stood foremost in the fight, and struck the final and decisive blow for the deliverance of the world. eration which was now mouldering in the grave. It is by the last impression that the durable opinions of mankind are formed; and effects had here succeeded each other so rapidly that the earlier ones were in a great measure forgotten. The conscription had caused the guillotine to be forgotten; grief for the loss of the frontier of the Rhine had obliterated that for the dissolution of the National Assembly. Men did not know that the first was the natural result of the last. There was little danger of France soon crossing the Rhine, but much of her reviving the opinions of Mirabeau and Sièyes. The first drama, where the military bore the prominent part, was ended; but the second, in which civil patriots were to be leading characters, and vehement political passions excited, was still to come; the Lager had terminated, but the Piccolomini was only beginning, and Wallenstein's Death had not yet commenced. 3. Every thing conspired to render the era subsequent to the fall of Napoleon as memorable for civil changes as that Causes which era itself had been for military tri- rendered it so umphs. Catherine of Russia had violent. said at the commencement of the Revolution, that the only way to prevent its principles spreading, and save Europe from civil convulsion, was to engage in war, and cause the national to supersede the social passions. The experiment. after a fearful struggle, succeeded; but it succeeded only for a time. War wore itself out; a contest of twenty years' duration at once drained away the blood and exhausted the treasures of Europe. The excitement, the animation, the mingled horrors and glories of military strife, were followed by a long period of repose, during which the social passions were daily gaining But the victory of nations did not terminate strength from the very magnitude of the contest 2. the war of opinion; the triumph of which had preceded it. The desire for excitearmies did not end the collision of ment continued, and the means of gratifying it thought. France was conquered, had ceased: the cannon of Leipsic and Waterone springing but the principles of her Revolution loo still resounded through the world, but no new passions. were not extirpated: they had cov-combats furnished daily materials for anxiety, ered her own soil with mourning, terror, or exultation. The nations were chained but they were too flattering to the pride of the human heart to be subdued but by many ages of suffering. The lesson taught by the subjugation of her power, the double capture of her capital, was too serious to be soon forgotten by het rulers; but the agony which had been previously felt by the people, had ended with a genVOL. I.-A The second drama was out of social to peace by the immensity of the sacrifices made in the preceding war: all governments had suffered so much during its continuance, that, like wounded veterans, they dreaded a renewal of the fight. During the many years of constrained repose which succeeded the battle of Waterloo, the vehement excitement occasioned by the Rev 4. Governments steadily declining in contentment, loyalty, and happiness-a strange combination, though one by no means unknown in private life, when all external appliances are favorable, but the heart is gnawed by a secret and ungratified passion. At length the general discontent rose to such a pitch that it became impossible to carry on the government; a coup d'état was attempted, to restore some degree of efficiency to the executive, but it was conducted by the "feeble arms of confessors and kings;" the army wavered in its duty; the Orleans family took advantage of the tumult, and the dynasty of the elder branch of the Bourbons was overthrown. 6. convulsion. olutionary wars continued; but, from default of the press, had no effect in diminishing the feelexternal, it turned to internal objects. Demo-ings thus excited in the minds of men, and which cratic came instead of military ambition; the only became, like all other concealed passions, social succeeded the national passions; the spirit more powerful from the difficulty of giving it exwas the same, but its field was changed. Mean-pression. France was daily increasing in wealth, while the blessed effect of long-continued peace, freedom, and material well-being, but it was as by allowing industry in every quarter to reap its fruits in quiet, was daily adding to the strength and energy, because augmenting the resources, of the middle class, in whom these feelings are ever the strongest, because they are the first to be promoted by a change; while, in a similar proportion, the power of government was daily declining, from the necessity of providing for the interest of the debts contracted during the preceding strife, and reducing the military forces which had so long averted its dangers or achieved its triumphs. The change in the ruling passions of mankind clearly appeared in the annals of nations, in the thirty years which now aimed at followed the fall of Napoleon. Govpeace, and the ernments had often great difficulties people clamorto contend with-not, however, with ed for war. each other, but with their subjects; many of them were overturned, not by foreign armies but by their own. Europe was often on the verge of a general war, but the danger of it arose, not, as in former days, from the throne, but from the cottage; the persons who urged it on were not kings or their ministers: they were the tribunes of the people. The chief efforts of governments in every country were directed to the preservation of that peace which the collision of so many interests, and the vehemence of such passions endangered: war was repeatedly threatened; but by the people, not by sovereigns. The sovereigns were successful; but their being so only augmented the dangers of their position, and increased the peril arising from the ardor of the social passions with which they had to contend; for every year of repose added to the strength of their opponents as much as it diminished their own. The preservation of peace, unbroken from 1815 to 1830, was fraught with immense blessings to Europe, and, had France which it been properly improved, might predisposed have been so to the cause of freeto the Revolu- dom throughout the world; but it proved fatal to the dynasty of the Restoration. From necessity as well as inclination from the recollection of the double capture of Paris, as well as conscious inability to conduct warlike operations, Louis XVIII. remained at peace; and no monarch who does so will long remain on the French throne. Death, and extreme prudence of conduct, alone saved him from dethronement. The whole history of the Restoration from 1815 to 1830, was that of one vast and ceaseless conspiracy against the Bourbons, existing rather in the hearts and minds, than in the measures and designs of men. No concessions to freedom, no moderation of government, no diminution of public burdens, could reconcile the people to a dynasty imposed on them by the stranger. One part of the people were dreaming of the past, another speculating on the future: all were dissatisfied with the present. The wars, the glories of the Empire, rose up in painful contrast to the peace and monotony of the present. Successive alterations of the elective constituency, and restrictions on 5. Causes in tion of 1830. That so great an event as the overthrow of a dynasty by a sudden urban insurrection, should have produced a great Causes which impression all over the world, was made England to have been expected; but it could share in the hardly have been anticipated it would have been attended by the effects which actually followed in Great Britain. But many causes had conspired, at that period, to prepare the public mind in England for change; and, what is very remarkable, these causes had arisen mainly from the magnitude of the successes with which the war had been attended. The great aristocratic party, whether in land or money, had been so triumphant that they deemed their power beyond the reach of attack; compromise, concession, or even consideration for their opponents, was out of the question. They neither considered their interests in legislation, nor had regard to their feelings in manner. The capital which had been realized during the war had been so great, the influence of the moneyed interest so powerful, that the legislature became affected by their desires. The Monetary Bill of 1819, before many years had elapsed, added fifty per cent to the value of money, and weight of debts and taxes, and took as much from the remuneration of industry. Hence a total change in the feelings, influences, and political relations of society. The territorial aristocracy was weak ened as much as the commercial was aggrandized; small landed proprietors were generally ruined from the fall of prices; the magnates stood forth in increased lustre from the enhanced value of their revenues. Industry was querulous, from long-continued suffering; wealth ambitious, from sudden exaltation. Political power was coveted in one class, from the excess of its riches; in another, from the depth of its misery. The emancipation of the Roman Catholics severed the last bond, that of a common religion, which had hitherto held together the different classes, and imprinted on the minds of a large and sincere class a thirst for vengeance, which overwhelmed every consideration of reason. The result of these concurring causes was that the institutions of England were essentially altered by the earthquake of 1830, and a new class elevated to supreme power by means, bloodless indeed, but scarcely less violent than the revolution which had overturned Charles X. The revolution of 1830 elevated the middle 7. countries. class to the direction of affairs, and the Reform | federacies the most opposite to the lasting policy Great effects in effect with supreme power in the 9. destinies of the human species, were still greater The first effect of this identity of feeling and 8. interest, in the class then for the first Political alli- time intrusted with the practical diance between rection of affairs in both countries, France and was a close political alliance beEngland, which fol- tween their governments, and an lowed this entire change in the foreign policy change. of Great Britain. To the vehement hostility and ceaseless rivalry of four centuries succeeded an alliance sincere and cordial at the time, though, like other intimacies founded on identity of passion, not of interest, it might be doubted whether it would survive the emotions which gave it birth. In the mean time, however, the effects of this alliance were novel, and in the highest degree important. When the lords of the earth and the sea united, no power in Europe ventured to confront them; the peace of Europe was preserved by their union. The Czar, in full march toward Paris, was arrested on the Vistula; he found ample employment for his arms in resisting the efforts of the Poles to restore their much-loved nationality. Austria and Prussia were too much occupied with the surveillance of the discontented in their own dominions to think of renewing the crusade of 1813; nor did they venture to do so when the forces of England were united to those of France. The consequence was that the march of revolution was unresisted in Western Europe, and an entire change was effected in the institutions and dynasties on the throne in its principal continental states. The Orleans family continued firmly, and to all appearance permanently, seated on the throne of France; Belgium was revolutionized, torn from the monarchy of the Netherlands, and the Cobourg family seated on its throne; the monarchies of Spain and Portugal were overturned, and a revolutionary dynasty of queens placed on their thrones, in direct violation Great and important as were these results of of the Treaty of Utrecht; while in the east of the social convulsions of France and Europe the last remnants of Polish nationality England in the first instance, they still greater were extinguished on the banks of the Vistula. sank into insignificance compared results of the Durable interests were overlooked, ancient al- to those which followed the change liances broken, long-estab ished rivalries forgot- in the commercial policy, and the policy of Enten in the fleeting passions of the moment. Con- increased stringency of the monetary 10. Free-trade gland of kindred in a large-and that the most ener getic-portion of the people in the Old World; while the latter has prepared for their reception ample seats-in which a kindred tongue and institutions prevail-in the New. period. laws of Great Britain. The effect of these all-3,300,000 square miles. A territory nine times important measures, from which so much was the size of old France was added to the devour. expected, and so little, save suffering, received, ing Republic in ten years. The conquests of was to augment to an extraordinary and unparal- Rome in ancient, of the English in India in leled degree the outward tendency of the British modern times, afford no parallel instance of rapid people. The agricultural population, especially and unbroken increase. Every thing indicates in Ireland, were violently torn up from the land that a vast migration of the human species is of their birth by woefu, suffering; a famine of going forward, and the family of Japhet in the the thirteenth appeared amid the population of course of being transferred from its native to its the nineteenth century; and to this terrible, but destined seats. To this prodigious movement transient, source of suffering, was superadded it is hard to say whether the disappointed energy the lasting discouragement arising from the vir- of democratic vigor in Europe, or the insatiable tual closing of the market of England to their spirit of Republican ambition in America, has produce, by the inundation of grain from foreign most contributed; for the first overcame all the states. When the barriers raised by human reg-attachments of home, and all the endearments ulations were thrown down, the eternal laws of nature appeared in full operation; the old and rich state can always undersell the young and poor one in manufactures, and is always undersold by it in agricultural produce. The fate of old Rome apparently was reserved for Great Britain; the harvests of Poland, the Ukraine, and America, began to prostrate agriculture in the British Isles as effectually as those of Sicily, Libya, and Egypt had done that of the old Patrimony of the Legions; and after the lapse of eighteen hundred years, the same effects appeared. The great cities flourished, but the country decayed; the exportation of human beings, and the importation of human food, kept up a gainful traffic in the seaport towns; but it was every day more and more gliding into the hands of the foreigners; and while exports and imports were constantly increasing, the mainstay of national strength, the cultivation of the soil was rapidly declining. The effects upon the strength, resources, and population of the empire, and the growth of its colonial possessions were equally, important. Europe, before the middle of the century, beheld with astonishment Great Britain, which, at the end of the war, had been self-supporting, importing ten millions of quarters of grain, being a full fifth of the national subsistence, and a constant stream of three hundred thousand emigrants annually leaving its shores. Its inhabitants, which for four centuries had been constantly increasing, declined a million in the five years from 1846 to 1850 in the two islands, and two million in Ireland, taken separately; three millions of quarters of wheat ceased to be raised in the British Islands;-but the foundation of a vast empire were laid in the Transatlantic and Australian wilds; and the annual addition of three hundred thousand souls to the European population of the New World, by immigration alone, had come almost to double the already marvelous rapidity of American increase. While this vast transferrence of the AngloSaxon and Celtic population to the embryo states of America and Australia was going forward, the United States of America were rapidly increasing in numbers and in extent of territory. The usual and fearful ambition of republican states there appeared in more than its usual proportions. During ten years, from 1840 to 1850, the inhabitants of the United States increased six millions: they had grown from eighteen to twenty-four millions. But the increase of its territory was still more extraordinary: it had been extended, during the same period, from somewhat above 2,000,000 to 11. Vast exten. sion of the United States of America. While this vast and unexampled exodus of the Anglo-Saxon race, across a wider 12. ocean than the Red Sea, and to a Vast increase greater promised land than that of of Russia durCanaan, was going forward, a cor- ing the same responding, and, in some respects, still more marvelous increase of the Sclavonic race in the Muscovite dominions took place. The immense dominions and formidable power of the Czar, which had received so vast an addition from the successful termination of the contest with Napoleon, was scarcely less augmented by the events of the long peace which. followed. The inhuman cruelty with which the Turks prosecuted the war with the Greeks, awakened the sympathies of the Christian world governments were impelled by their subjects into a crusade against the Crescent; and the battle of Navarino, which, for the first time in history, beheld the flags of England, France, and Russia side by side, at once ruined the Ottoman navy, and reft the most important prov inces of Greece from the dominions of Turkey. The inconceivable infatuation of the Turks, and their characteristic ignorance of the strength of the enemy whom they provoked, impelled them soon after into a war with Russia; and then the immeasurable superiority which the Cross had now acquired over the Crescent at once appeared. Varna, the scene of the bloody defeat of the French chivalry by the Janizaries of Bajazet, yielded to the scientific approaches of the Rus sians; the bastions of Erivan to the firm assault of Paskewitch; the barrier, hitherto insurmountable, of the Balkan, was passed by Diebitch, Adrianople fell; and the anxious intervention of the other European powers alone prevented the entire subjugation of Turkey, and the entry of the Muscovite battalions through the breach made by the cannon of Mahomet in the walls of Constantinople. 13. Great as were these results to the growth of Russia of the forced and long-continued pacification of Western Eu- Continued inrope, still more important were crease of Rusthose which followed its intestine sia from the convulsions. Every throe of the Revolutions revolutionary earthquake in France 1848. has tended to her ultimate advantage, and been attended by a great accession of territory or augmentation of influence. The Revolution of 1789, in its ultimate effec:s. brought of 1830 and |