France after 1871-Alliance of the Three Emperors-Revolt of Herzegovina-The AndrÁssy Note-Murder of the Consuls at Salonika-The Berlin Memorandum-Rejected by England-Abdul Aziz deposed-Massacres in Bulgaria-Servia and Montenegro declare War-Opinion in England- Disraeli-Meeting of Emperors at Reichstadt-Servian Campaign-Declaration of the Czar-Conference at Constantinople-Its Failure-The London Protocol-Russia declares War-Advance on the Balkans-Osman at Plevna-Second Attack on Plevna-The Shipka Pass-Roumania-Third attack on Plevna-Todleben-Fall of Plevna-Passage of the Balkans-Armistice- England-The Fleet passes the Dardanelles-Treaty of San Stefano-England and Russia-Secret Agreement-Convention with Turkey-Congress of Berlin-Treaty of Berlin-Bulgaria. [France after 1871.] The storm of 1870 was followed by some years of European calm. France, recovering with wonderful rapidity from the wounds inflicted by the war, paid with ease the instalments of its debt to Germany, and saw its soil liberated from the foreigner before the period fixed by the Treaty of Frankfort. The efforts of a reactionary Assembly were kept in check by M. Thiers; the Republic, as the form of government which divided Frenchmen the least, was preferred by him to the monarchical restoration which might have won France allies at some of the European Courts. For two years Thiers baffled or controlled the royalist majority at Versailles which sought to place the ComtÉ de Chambord or the chief of the House of Orleans on the throne, and thus saved his country from the greatest of all perils, the renewal of civil war. In 1873 he fell before a combination of his opponents, and McMahon succeeded to the Presidency, only to find that the royalist cause was made hopeless by the refusal of the ComtÉ de Chambord to adopt the Tricolour flag, and that France, after several years of trial, definitely preferred the Republic. Meanwhile, Prince Bismarck had known how to frustrate all plans for raising a coalition against victorious Germany among the Powers which had been injured by its successes, or whose interests were threatened by its greatness. He saw that a Bourbon or a Napoleon on the throne of France would find far more sympathy and confidence at Vienna and St. Petersburg than the shifting chief of a Republic, and ordered Count Arnim, the German Ambassador at Paris, who wished to promote a Napoleonic restoration, to desist from all attempts to weaken the Republican Government. At St. Petersburg, where after the misfortunes of 1815 France had found its best friends, the German statesman had as yet little to fear. Bismarck had supported Russia in undoing the Treaty of Paris; in announcing the conclusion of peace with France, the German Emperor had assured the Czar in the most solemn language that his services in preventing the war of 1870 from becoming general should never be forgotten; and, whatever might be the feeling of his subjects, Alexander II. continued to believe that Russia could find no steadier friend than the Government of Berlin. [Alliance of the three Emperors.] With Austria Prince Bismarck had a more difficult part to play. He could hope for no real understanding so long as Beust remained at the head of affairs. But the events of 1870, utterly frustrating Beust's plans for a coalition against Prussia, and definitely closing for Austria all hope of recovering its position within Germany, had shaken the Minister's position. Bismarck was able to offer to the Emperor Francis Joseph the sincere and cordial friendship of the powerful German Empire, on the condition that Austria should frankly accept the work of 1866 and 1870. He had dissuaded his master after the victory of KÖniggrÄtz from annexing any Austrian territory; he had imposed no condition of peace that left behind it a lasting exasperation; and he now reaped the reward of his foresight. Francis Joseph accepted the friendship offered him from Berlin, and dismissed Count Beust from office, calling to his place the Hungarian Minister AndrÁssy, who, by conviction as well as profession, welcomed the establishment of a German Empire, and the definite abandonment by Austria of its interference in German affairs. In the summer of 1872 the three Emperors, accompanied by their Ministers, met in Berlin. No formal alliance was made, but a relation was established of sufficient intimacy to insure Prince Bismarck against any efforts that might be made by France to gain an ally. For five years this so-called League of the three Emperors continued in more or less effective existence, and condemned France to isolation. In the apprehension of the French people, Germany, gorged with the five milliards but still lean and ravenous, sought only for some new occasion for war. This was not the case. The German nation had entered unwillingly into the war of 1870; that its ruler, when once his great aim had been achieved, sought peace not only in word but in deed the history of subsequent years has proved. The alarms which at intervals were raised at Paris and elsewhere had little real foundation; and when next the peace of Europe was broken, it was not by a renewal of the struggle on the Vosges, but by a conflict in the East, which, terrible as it was in the sufferings and the destruction of life which it involved, was yet no senseless duel between two jealous nations, but one of the most fruitful in results of all modern wars, rescuing whole provinces from Ottoman dominion, and leaving behind it in place of a chaos of outworn barbarism at least the elements for a future of national independence among the Balkan population. [Revolt of Herzegovina, Aug., 1875.] [AndrÁssy Note, Jan. 31, 1876.] In the summer of 1875 Herzegovina rose against its Turkish masters, and in Bosnia conflicts broke out between Christians and Mohammedans. The insurrection was vigorously, though privately, supported by Servia and Montenegro, and for some months baffled all the efforts made by the Porte for its suppression. Many thousands of the Christians, flying from a devastated land and a merciless enemy, sought refuge beyond the Austrian frontier, and became a burden upon the Austrian Government. The agitation among the Slavic neighbours and kinsmen of the insurgents threatened the peace of Austria itself, where Slav and Magyar were almost as ready to fall upon one another as Christian and Turk. AndrÁssy entered into communications with the Governments of St. Petersburg and Berlin as to the adoption of a common line of policy by the three Empires towards the Porte; and a scheme of reforms, intended to effect the pacification of the insurgent provinces, was drawn up by the three Ministers in concert with one another. This project, which was known as the AndrÁssy Note, and which received the approval of England and France, demanded from the Porte the establishment of full and entire religious liberty, the abolition of the farming of taxes, the application of the revenue produced by direct taxation in Bosnia and Herzegovina to the needs of those provinces themselves, the institution of a Commission composed equally of Christians and Mohammedans to control the execution of these reforms and of those promised by the Porte, and finally the improvement of the agrarian condition of the population by the sale to them of waste lands belonging to the State. The Note demanding these reforms was presented in Constantinople on the 31st of January, 1876. The Porte, which had already been lavish of promises to the insurgents, raised certain objections in detail, but ultimately declared itself willing to grant in substance the concessions which were specified by the Powers. [546] [Murder of the Consuls at Salonika, May 6.] Armed with this assurance, the representatives of Austria now endeavoured to persuade the insurgents to lay down their arms and the refugees to return to their homes. But the answer was made that promises enough had already been given by the Sultan, and that the question was, not what more was to be written on a piece of paper, but how the execution of these promises was to be enforced. Without some guarantee from the Great Powers of Europe the refugees refused to place themselves again at the mercy of the Turk, and the leaders in Herzegovina refused to disband their troops. The conflict broke out afresh with greater energy; the intervention of the Powers, far from having produced peace, roused the fanatical passions of the Mohammedans both against the Christian rayahs and against the foreigner to whom they had appealed. A wave of religious, of patriotic agitation, of political disquiet, of barbaric fury, passed over the Turkish Empire. On the 6th of May the Prussian and the French Consuls at Salonika were attacked and murdered by the mob. In Smyrna and Constantinople there were threatening movements against the European inhabitants; in Bulgaria, the Circassian settlers and the hordes of irregular troops whom the Government had recently sent into that province waited only for the first sign of an expected insurrection to fall upon their prey and deluge the land with blood. [The Berlin Memorandum, May 13.] As soon as it became evident that peace was not to be produced by Count AndrÁssy's Note, the Ministers of the three Empires determined to meet one another with the view of arranging further diplomatic steps to be taken in common. Berlin, which the Czar was about to visit, was chosen as the meeting-place; the date of the meeting was fixed for the second week in May. It was in the interval between the despatch of Prince Bismarck's invitation and the arrival of the Czar, with Prince Gortschakoff and Count AndrÁssy, that intelligence came of the murder of the Prussian and French Consuls at Salonika. This event gave a deeper seriousness to the deliberations now held. The Ministers declared that if the representatives of two foreign Powers could be thus murdered in broad daylight in a peaceful town under the eyes of the powerless authorities, the Christians of the insurgent provinces might well decline to entrust themselves to an exasperated enemy. An effective guarantee for the execution of the promises made by the Porte had become absolutely necessary. The conclusions of the Ministers were embodied in a Memorandum, which declared that an armistice of two months must be imposed on the combatants; that the mixed Commission mentioned in the AndrÁssy Note must be at once called into being, with a Christian native of Herzegovina at its head; and that the reforms promised by the Porte must be carried out under the superintendence of the representatives of the European Powers. If before the end of the armistice the Porte should not have given its assent to these terms, the Imperial Courts declared that they must support these diplomatic efforts by measures of a more effective character. [547] [England alone rejects the Berlin Memorandum.] On the same day that this Memorandum was signed, Prince Bismarck invited the British, the French, and Italian Ambassadors to meet the Russian and the Austrian Chancellors at his residence. They did so. The Memorandum was read, and an urgent request was made that Great Britain France, and Italy would combine with the Imperial Courts in support of the Berlin Memorandum as they had in support of the AndrÁssy Note. As Prince Gortschakoff and AndrÁssy were staying in Berlin only for two days longer, it was hoped that answers might be received by telegraph within forty-eight hours. Within that time answers arrived from the French and Italian Governments accepting the Berlin Memorandum; the reply from London did not arrive till five days later; it announced the refusal of the Government to join in the course proposed. Pending further negotiations on this subject, French, German, Austrian, Italian, and Russian ships of war were sent to Salonika to enforce satisfaction for the murder of the Consuls. The Cabinet of London, declining to associate itself with the concert of the Powers, and stating that Great Britain, while intending nothing in the nature of a menace, could not permit territorial changes to be made in the East without its own consent, despatched the fleet to Besika Bay. [Abdul Aziz deposed, May 29.] [Massacres in Bulgaria.] [Servia and Montenegro declare war, July 2.] Up to this time little attention had been paid in England to the revolt of the Christian subjects of the Porte or its effect on European politics. Now, however, a series of events began which excited the interest and even the passion of the English people in an extraordinary degree. The ferment in Constantinople was deepening. On the 29th of May the Sultan Abdul Aziz was deposed by Midhat Pasha and Hussein Avni, the former the chief of the party of reform, the latter the representative of the older Turkish military and patriotic spirit which Abdul Aziz had incensed by his subserviency to Russia. A few days later the deposed Sultan was murdered. Hussein Avni and another rival of Midhat were assassinated by a desperado as they sat at the council; Murad V., who had been raised to the throne, proved imbecile; and Midhat, the destined regenerator of the Ottoman Empire as many outside Turkey believed, grasped all but the highest power in the State. Towards the end of June reports reached western Europe of the repression of an insurrection in Bulgaria with measures of atrocious violence. Servia and Montenegro, long active in support of their kinsmen who were in arms, declared war. The reports from Bulgaria, at first vague, took more definite form; and at length the correspondents of German as well as English newspapers, making their way to the district south of the Balkans, found in villages still strewed with skeletons and human remains the terrible evidence of what had passed. The British Ministry, relying upon the statements of Sir H. Elliot, Ambassador at Constantinople, at first denied the seriousness of the massacres: they directed, however, that investigations should be made on the spot by a member of the Embassy; and Mr. Baring, Secretary of Legation, was sent to Bulgaria with this duty. Baring's report confirmed the accounts which his chief had refused to believe, and placed the number of the victims, rightly or wrongly, at not less than twelve thousand. [548] [Opinion in England.] The Bulgarian massacres acted on Europe in 1876 as the massacre of Chios had acted on Europe in 1822. In England especially they excited the deepest horror, and completely changed the tone of public opinion towards the Turk. Hitherto the public mind had scarcely been conscious of the questions that were at issue in the East. Herzegovina, Bosnia, Bulgaria, were not familiar names like Greece; the English people hardly knew where these countries were, or that they were not inhabited by Turks. The Crimean War had left behind it the tradition of friendship with the Sultan; it needed some lightning-flash, some shock penetrating all ranks of society, to dispel once and for all the conventional idea of Turkey as a community resembling a European State, and to bring home to the English people the true condition of the Christian races of the Balkan under their Ottoman masters. But this the Bulgarian massacres effectively did; and from this time the great mass of the English people, who had sympathised so strongly with the Italians and the Hungarians in their struggle for national independence, were not disposed to allow the influence of Great Britain to be used for the perpetuation of Turkish ascendency over the Slavic races. There is little doubt that if in the autumn of 1876 the nation had had the opportunity of expressing its views by a Parliamentary election, it would have insisted on the adoption of active measures in concert with the Powers which were prepared to force reform upon the Porte. But the Parliament of 1876 was but two years old; the majority which supported the Government was still unbroken; and at the head of the Cabinet there was a man gifted with extraordinary tenacity of purpose, with great powers of command over others, and with a clear, cold, untroubled apprehension of the line of conduct which he intended to pursue. It was one of the strangest features of this epoch that a Minister who in a long career had never yet exercised the slightest influence upon foreign affairs, and who was not himself English by birth, should have impressed in such an extreme degree the stamp of his own individuality upon the conduct of our foreign policy; that he should have forced England to the very front in the crisis through which Europe was passing; and that, for good or for evil, he should have reversed the tendency which since the Italian war of 1859 had seemed ever to be drawing England further and further away from Continental affairs. [Disraeli.] Disraeli's conception of Parliamentary politics was an ironical one. It had pleased the British nation that the leadership of one of its great political parties should be won by a man of genius only on the condition of accommodating himself to certain singular fancies of his contemporaries; and for twenty years, from the time of his attacks upon Sir Robert Peel for the abolition of the corn-laws down to the time when he educated his party into the democratic Reform Bill of 1867, Disraeli with an excellent grace suited himself to the somewhat strange parts which he was required to play. But after 1874, when he was placed in office at the head of a powerful majority in both Houses of Parliament and of a submissive Cabinet, the antics ended; the epoch of statesmanship, and of statesmanship based on the leader's own individual thought not on the commonplace of public creeds, began. At a time when Cavour was rice-growing and Bismarck unknown outside his own county, Disraeli had given to the world in Tancred his visions of Eastern Empire. Mysterious chieftains planned the regeneration of Asia by a new crusade of Arab and Syrian votaries of the one living faith, and lightly touched on the transfer of Queen Victoria's Court from London to Delhi. Nothing indeed is perfect; and Disraeli's eye was favoured with such extraordinary perceptions of the remote that it proved a little uncertain in its view of matters not quite without importance nearer home. He thought the attempt to establish Italian independence a misdemeanour; he listened to Bismarck's ideas on the future of Germany, and described them as the vapourings of a German baron. For a quarter of a century Disraeli had dazzled and amused the House of Commons without, as it seemed, drawing inspiration from any one great cause or discerning any one of the political goals towards which the nations of Europe were tending. At length, however, the time came for the realisation of his own imperial policy; and before the Eastern question had risen conspicuously above the horizon in Europe, Disraeli, as Prime Minister of England, had begun to act in Asia and Africa. He sent the Prince of Wales to hold Durbars and to hunt tigers amongst the Hindoos; he proclaimed the Queen Empress of India; he purchased the Khedive's shares in the Suez Canal. Thus far it had been uncertain whether there was much in the Minister's policy beyond what was theatrical and picturesque; but when a great part of the nation began to ask for intervention on behalf of the Eastern Christians against the Turks, they found out that Disraeli's purpose was solid enough. Animated by a deep distrust and fear of Russia, he returned to what had been the policy of Tory Governments in the days before Canning, the identification of British interests with the maintenance of Ottoman power. If a generation of sentimentalists were willing to sacrifice the grandeur of an Empire to their sympathies with an oppressed people, it was not Disraeli who would be their instrument. When the massacre of Batak was mentioned in the House of Commons, he dwelt on the honourable qualities of the Circassians; when instances of torture were alleged, he remarked that an oriental people generally terminated its connection with culprits in a more expeditious manner. [549] There were indeed Englishmen enough who loved their country as well as Disraeli, and who had proved their love by sacrifices which Disraeli had not had occasion to make, who thought it humiliating that the greatness of England should be purchased by the servitude and oppression of other races, and that the security of their Empire should be deemed to rest on so miserable a thing as Turkish rule. These were considerations to which Disraeli did not attach much importance. He believed the one thing needful to be the curbing of Russia; and, unlike Canning, who held that Russia would best be kept in check by England's own armed co-operation with it in establishing the independence of Greece, he declined from the first to entertain any project of imposing reform on the Sultan by force, doubting only to what extent it would be possible for him to support the Sultan in resistance to other Powers. According to his own later statement he would himself, had he been left unfettered, have definitely informed the Czar that if he should make war upon the Porte England would act as its ally. Public opinion in England, however, rendered this course impossible. The knife of Circassian and Bashi-Bazouk had severed the bond with Great Britain which had saved Turkey in 1854. Disraeli-henceforward Earl of Beaconsfield-could only utter grim anathemas against Servia for presuming to draw the sword upon its rightful lord and master, and chide those impatient English who, like the greater man whose name is associated with Beaconsfield, considered that the world need not be too critical as to the means of getting rid of such an evil as Ottoman rule. [550] [Meeting and Treaty of Reichstadt, July 8.] [The Servian Campaign, July-Oct.] [Russian enforces an armistice, Oct. 30.] The rejection by England of the Berlin Memorandum and the proclamation of war by Servia and Montenegro were followed by the closer union of the three Imperial Courts. The Czar and the Emperor Francis Joseph, with their Ministers, met at Reichstadt in Bohemia on the 8th of July. According to official statements the result of the meeting was that the two sovereigns determined upon non-intervention for the present, and proposed only to renew the attempt to unite all the Christian Powers in a common policy when some definite occasion should arise. Rumours, however, which proved to be correct, went abroad that something of the nature of an eventual partition of European Turkey had been the object of negotiation. A Treaty had in fact been signed providing that if Russia should liberate Bulgaria by arms, Austria should enter into possession of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The neutrality of Austria had virtually been purchased at this price, and Russia had thus secured freedom of action in the event of the necessary reforms not being forced upon Turkey by the concert of Europe. Sooner perhaps than Prince Gortschakoff had expected, the religious enthusiasm of the Russian people and their sympathy for their kinsmen and fellow-believers beyond the Danube forced the Czar into vigorous action. In spite of the assistance of several thousands of Russian volunteers and of the leadership of the Russian General Tchernaieff, the Servians were defeated in their struggle with the Turks. The mediation of England was in vain tendered to the Porte on the only terms on which even at London peace was seen to be possible, the maintenance of the existing rights of Servia and the establishment of provincial autonomy in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria. After a brief suspension of hostilities in September war was renewed. The Servians were driven from their positions; Alexinatz was captured, the road to Belgrade lay open, and the doom of Bulgaria seemed likely to descend upon the conquered Principality. The Turks offered indeed a five months' armistice, which would have saved them the risks of a winter campaign and enabled them to crush their enemy with accumulated forces in the following spring. This, by the advice of Russia, the Servians refused to accept. On the 30th of October a Russian ultimatum was handed in at Constantinople by the Ambassador Ignatieff, requiring within forty-eight hours the grant to Servia of an armistice for two months and the cessation of hostilities. The Porte submitted; and wherever Slav and Ottoman stood facing one another in arms, in Herzegovina and Bosnia as well as Servia and Montenegro, there was a pause in the struggle. [Declaration of the Czar, Nov. 2.] [England proposes a Conference.] The imminence of a war between Russia and Turkey in the last days of October and the close connection between Russia and the Servian cause justified the anxiety of the British Government. This anxiety the Czar sought to dispel by a frank declaration of his own views. On the 2nd of November he entered into conversation with the British Ambassador, Lord A. Loftus, and assured him on his word of honour that he had no intention of acquiring Constantinople; that if it should be necessary for him to occupy part of Bulgaria his army would remain there only until peace was restored and the security of the Christian population established; and, generally, that he desired nothing more earnestly than a complete accord between England and Russia in the maintenance of European peace and the improvement of the condition of the Christian population in Turkey. He stated, however, with perfect clearness that if the Porte should continue to refuse the reforms demanded by Europe, and the Powers should put up with its continued refusal, Russia would act alone. Disclaiming in words of great earnestness all desire for territorial aggrandisement, he protested against the suspicion with which his policy was regarded in England, and desired that his words might be made public in England as a message of peace. [551] Lord Derby, then Foreign Secretary, immediately expressed the satisfaction with which the Government had received these assurances; and on the following day an invitation was sent from London to all the European Powers proposing a Conference at Constantinople, on the basis of a common recognition of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, accompanied by a disavowal on the part of each of the Powers of all aims at aggrandisement or separate advantage. In proposing this Conference the Government acted in conformity with the expressed desire of the Czar. But there were two voices within the Cabinet. Lord Beaconsfield, had it been in his power, would have informed Russia categorically that England would support the Sultan if attacked. This the country and the Cabinet forbade: but the Premier had his own opportunities of utterance, and at the Guildhall Banquet on the 9th of November, six days after the Foreign Secretary had acknowledged the Czar's message of friendship, and before this message had been made known to the English people, Lord Beaconsfield uttered words which, if they were not idle bluster, could have been intended only as a menace to the Czar or as an appeal to the war-party at home:-"Though the policy of England is peace, there is no country so well prepared for war as our own. If England enters into conflict in a righteous cause, her resources are inexhaustible. She is not a country that when she enters into a campaign has to ask herself whether she can support a second or a third campaign. She enters into a campaign which she will not terminate till right is done." [Project of Ottoman Constitution.] The proposal made by the Earl of Derby for a Conference at Constantinople was accepted by all the Powers, and accepted on the bases specified. Lord Salisbury, then Secretary of State for India, was appointed to represent Great Britain in conjunction with Sir H. Elliot, its Ambassador. The Minister made his journey to Constantinople by way of the European capitals, and learnt at Berlin that the good understanding between the German Emperor and the Czar extended to Eastern affairs. Whether the British Government had as yet gained any trustworthy information on the Treaty of Reichstadt is doubtful; but so far as the public eye could judge, there was now, in spite of the tone assumed by Lord Beaconsfield, a fairer prospect of the solution of the Eastern question by the establishment of some form of autonomy in the Christian provinces than there had been at any previous time. The Porte itself recognised the serious intention of the Powers, and, in order to forestall the work of the Conference, prepared a scheme of constitutional reform that far surpassed the wildest claims of Herzegovinian or of Serb. Nothing less than a complete system of Parliamentary Government, with the very latest ingenuities from France and Belgium, was to be granted to the entire Ottoman Empire. That Midhat Pasha, who was the author of this scheme, may have had some serious end in view is not impossible; but with the mass of Palace-functionaries at Constantinople it was simply a device for embarrassing the West with its own inventions; and the action of men in power, both great and small, continued after the constitution had come into nominal existence to be exactly what it had been before. The very terms of the constitution must have been unintelligible to all but those who had been employed at foreign courts. The Government might as well have announced its intention of clothing the Balkans with the flora of the deep sea. [Demands settled at the Preliminary Conference, Dec. 11-21.] In the second week of December the representatives of the six Great Powers assembled at Constantinople. In order that the demands of Europe should be presented to the Porte with unanimity, they determined to hold a series of preliminary meetings with one another before the formal opening of the Conference and before communicating with the Turks. At these meetings, after Ignatieff had withdrawn his proposal for a Russian occupation of Bulgaria, complete accord was attained. It was resolved to demand the cession of certain small districts by the Porte to Servia and Montenegro; the grant of administrative autonomy to Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria; the appointment in each of these provinces of Christian governors, whose terms of office should be for five years, and whose nomination should be subject to the approval of the Powers; the confinement of Turkish troops to the fortresses; the removal of the bands of Circassians to Asia; and finally the execution of these reforms under the superintendence of an International Commission, which should have at its disposal a corps of six thousand gendarmes to be enlisted in Switzerland or Belgium. By these arrangements, while the Sultan retained his sovereignty and the integrity of the Ottoman Empire remained unimpaired, it was conceived that the Christian population would be effectively secured against Turkish violence and caprice. [The Turks refuse the demands of the Conference, Jan. 20, 1877.] All differences between the representatives of the European Powers having been removed, the formal Conference was opened on the 23rd of December under the presidency of the Turkish Foreign Minister, Savfet Pasha. The proceedings had not gone far when they were interrupted by the roar of cannon. Savfet explained that the new Ottoman constitution was being promulgated, and that the salvo which the members of the Conference heard announced the birth of an era of universal happiness and prosperity in the Sultan's dominions. It soon appeared that in the presence of this great panacea there was no place for the reforming efforts of the Christian Powers. Savfet declared from the first that, whatever concessions might be made on other points, the Sultan's Government would never consent to the establishment of a Foreign Commission to superintend the execution of its reforms, nor to the joint action of the Powers in the appointment of the governors of its provinces. It was in vain argued that without such foreign control Europe possessed no guarantee that the promises and the good intentions of the Porte, however gratifying these might be, would be carried into effect. Savfet replied that by the Treaty of 1856 the Powers had declared the Ottoman Empire to stand on exactly the same footing as any other great State in Europe, and had expressly debarred themselves from interfering, under whatever circumstances, with its internal administration. The position of the Turkish representative at the Conference was in fact the only logical one. In the Treaty of Paris the Powers had elaborately pledged themselves to an absurdity; and this Treaty the Turk was never weary of throwing in their faces. But the situation was not one for lawyers and for the interpretation of documents. The Conference, after hearing the arguments and the counter-projects of the Turkish Ministers, after reconsidering its own demands and modifying these in many important points in deference to Ottoman wishes, adhered to the demand for a Foreign Commission and for a European control over the appointment of governors. Midhat, who was now Grand Vizier, summoned the Great Council of the Empire, and presented to it the demands of the Conference. These demands the Great Council unanimously rejected. Lord Salisbury had already warned the Sultan what would be the results of continued obstinacy; and after receiving Midhat's final reply the ambassadors of all the Powers, together with the envoys who had been specially appointed for the Conference, quitted Constantinople. [The London Protocol, Mar. 31.] [The Porte rejects the Protocol.] [Russia declares war, April 24.] Russia, since the beginning of November, had been actively preparing for war. The Czar had left the world in no doubt as to his own intentions in case of the failure of the European Concert; it only remained for him to ascertain whether, after the settlement of a definite scheme of reform by the Conference and the rejection of this scheme by the Porte, the Powers would or would not take steps to enforce their conclusion. England suggested that the Sultan should be allowed a year to carry out his good intentions: Gortschakoff inquired whether England would pledge itself to action if, at the end of the year, reform was not effected; but no such pledge was forthcoming. With the object either of discovering some arrangement in which the Powers would combine, or of delaying the outbreak of war until the Russian preparations were more advanced and the season more favourable, Ignatieff was sent round to all the European Courts. He visited England, and subsequently drew up, with the assistance of Count Schouvaloff, Russian Ambassador at London, a document which gained the approval of the British as well as the Continental Governments. This document, known as the London Protocol, was signed on the 31st of March. After a reference to the promises of reform made by the Porte, it stated that the Powers intended to watch carefully by their representatives over the manner in which these promises were carried into effect; that if their hopes should be once more disappointed they should regard the condition of affairs as incompatible with the interests of Europe; and that in such case they would decide in common upon the means best fitted to secure the well-being of the Christian population and the interests of general peace. Declarations relative to the disarmament of Russia, which it was now the principal object of the British Government to effect, were added. There was indeed so little of a substantial engagement in this Protocol that it would have been surprising had Russia disarmed without obtaining some further guarantee for the execution of reform. But weak as the Protocol was, it was rejected by the Porte. Once more the appeal was made to the Treaty of Paris, once more the Sultan protested against the encroachment of the Powers on his own inviolable rights. Lord Beaconsfield's Cabinet even now denied that the last word had been spoken, and professed to entertain some hope in the effect of subsequent diplomatic steps; but the rest of Europe asked and expected no further forbearance on the part of Russia. The army of operations already lay on the Pruth: the Grand Duke Nicholas, brother of the Czar, was appointed to its command; and on the 24th of April the Russian Government issued its declaration of war. [Passage of the Danube, June 27.] [Advance on the Balkans, July.] [Gourko south of the Balkans, July 15.] Between the Russian frontier and the Danube lay the Principality of Roumania. A convention signed before the outbreak of hostilities gave to the Russian army a free passage through this territory, and Roumania subsequently entered the war as Russia's ally. It was not, however, until the fourth week of June that the invaders were able to cross the Danube. Seven army-corps were assembled in Roumania; of these one crossed the Lower Danube into the Dobrudscha, two were retained in Roumania as a reserve, and four crossed the river in the neighbourhood of Sistowa, in order to enter upon the Bulgarian campaign. It was the desire of the Russians to throw forward the central part of their army by the line of the river Jantra upon the Balkans; with their left to move against Rustchuk and the Turkish armies in the eastern fortresses of Bulgaria; with their right to capture Nicopolis, and guard the central column against any flank attack from the west. But both in Europe and in Asia the Russians had underrated the power of their adversary, and entered upon the war with insufficient forces. Advantages won by their generals on the Armenian frontier while the European army was still marching through Roumania were lost in the course of the next few weeks. Bayazid and other places that fell into the hands of the Russians at the first onset were recovered by the Turks under Mukhtar Pasha; and within a few days after the opening of the European campaign the Russian divisions in Asia were everywhere retreating upon their own frontier. The Bulgarian campaign was marked by the same rapid successes of the invader at the outset, to be followed, owing to the same insufficiency of force, by similar disasters. Encountering no effective opposition on the Danube, the Russians pushed forward rapidly towards the Balkans by the line of the Jantra. The Turkish army lay scattered in the Bulgarian fortresses, from Widdin in the extreme west to Shumla at the foot of the Eastern Balkans. It was considered by the Russian commanders that two army-corps would be required to operate against the Turks in Eastern Bulgaria, while one corps would be enough to cover the central line of invasion from the west. There remained, excluding the two corps in reserve in Roumania and the corps holding the Dobrudscha, but one corps for the march on the Balkans and Adrianople. The command of the vanguard of this body was given to General Gourko, who pressed on into the Balkans, seized the Shipka Pass, and descended into Southern Bulgaria (July 15). The Turks were driven from Kesanlik and Eski Sagra, and Gourko's cavalry, a few hundreds in number, advanced to within two days' march of Adrianople. [Osman occupies Plevna, July 19.] [First engagement at Plevna, July 20.] [Second battle at Plevna, July 30.] [The Shipka Pass, Aug. 20-23.] The headquarters of the whole Russian army were now at Tirnova, the ancient Bulgarian capital, about half-way between the Danube and the Balkans. Two army-corps, commanded by the Czarewitch, moved eastwards against Rustchuk and the so-called Turkish army of the Danube, which was gathering behind the lines of the Kara Lom; another division, under General Krudener, turned westward and captured Nicopolis with its garrison. Lovatz and other points lying westward of the Jantra were occupied by weak detachments; but so badly were the reconnaissances of the Russians performed in this direction that they were unaware of the approach of a Turkish army from Widdin, thirty-five thousand strong, till this was close on their flank. Before the Russians could prevent him, Osman Pasha, with the vanguard of this army, had occupied the town and heights of Plevna, between Nicopolis and Lovatz. On the 20th of July, still unaware of their enemy's strength, the Russians attacked him at Plevna: they were defeated with considerable loss, and after a few days one of Osman's divisions, pushing forward upon the invader's central line, drove them out of Lovatz. The Grand Duke now sent reinforcements to Krudener, and ordered him to take Plevna at all costs. Krudener's strength was raised to thirty-five thousand; but in the meantime new Turkish regiments had joined Osman, and his troops, now numbering about fifty thousand, had been working day and night entrenching themselves in the heights round Plevna which the Russians had to attack. The assault was made on the 30th of July; it was beaten back with terrible slaughter, the Russians leaving a fifth of their number on the field. Had Osman taken up the offensive and the Turkish commander on the Lom pressed vigorously upon the invader's line, it would probably have gone ill with the Russian army in Bulgaria. Gourko was at once compelled to abandon the country south of the Balkans. His troops, falling back upon the Shipka Pass, were there attacked from the south by far superior forces under Suleiman Pasha. The Ottoman commander, prodigal of the lives of his men and trusting to mere blindfold violence, hurled his army day after day against the Russian positions (Aug. 20-23). There was a moment when all seemed lost, and the Russian soldiers sent to their Czar the last message of devotion from men who were about to die at their post. But in the extremity of peril there arrived a reinforcement, weak, but sufficient to turn the scale against the ill-commanded Turks. Suleiman's army withdrew to the village of Shipka at the southern end of the pass. The pass itself, with the entrance from northern Bulgaria, remained in the hands of the Russians. [Roumania.] [Third battle of Plevna, Sept 11-12.] After the second battle of Plevna it became clear that the Russians could not carry on the campaign with their existing forces. Two army-corps were called up which were guarding the coast of the Black Sea; several others were mobilised in the interior of Russia, and began their journey towards the Danube. So urgent, however, was the immediate need, that the Czar was compelled to ask help from Roumania. This help was given. Roumanian troops, excellent in quality, filled up the gap caused by Krudener's defeats, and the whole army before Plevna was placed under the command of the Roumanian Prince Charles. At the beginning of September the Russians were again ready for action. Lovatz was wrested from the Turks, and the division which had captured it moved on to Plevna to take part in a great combined attack. This attack was made on the 11th of September under the eyes of the Czar. On the north the Russians and Roumanians together, after a desperate struggle, stormed the Grivitza redoubt. On the south Skobeleff carried the first Turkish position, but could make no impression on their second line of defence. Twelve thousand men fell on the Russian side before the day was over, and the main defences of the Turks were still unbroken. On the morrow the Turks took up the offensive. Skobeleff, exposed to the attack of a far superior foe, prayed in vain for reinforcements. His men, standing in the positions that they had won from the Turks, repelled one onslaught after another, but were ultimately overwhelmed and driven from the field. At the close of the second day's battle the Russians were everywhere beaten back within their own lines, except at the Grivitza redoubt, which was itself but an outwork of the Turkish defences, and faced by more formidable works within. The assailants had sustained a loss approaching that of the Germans at Gravelotte with an army one-third of the Germans' strength. Osman was stronger than at the beginning of the campaign; with what sacrifices Russia would have to purchase its ultimate victory no man could calculate. [Todleben besieges Plevna.] [Fall of Plevna, Dec. 10.] The three defeats at Plevna cast a sinister light upon the Russian military administration and the quality of its chiefs. The soldiers had fought heroically; divisional generals like Skobeleff had done all that man could do in such positions; the faults were those of the headquarters and the officers by whom the Imperial Family were surrounded. After the third catastrophe, public opinion called for the removal of the authors of these disasters and the employment of abler men. Todleben, the defender of Sebastopol, who for some unknown reason had been left without a command, was now summoned to Bulgaria, and virtually placed at the head of the army before Plevna. He saw that the stronghold of Osman could only be reduced by a regular siege, and prepared to draw his lines right round it. For a time Osman kept open his communications with the south-west, and heavy trains of ammunition and supplies made their way into Plevna from this direction; but the investment was at length completed, and the army of Plevna cut off from the world. In the meantime new regiments were steadily pouring into Bulgaria from the interior of Russia. East of the Jantra, after many alternations of fortune, the Turks were finally driven back behind the river Lom. The last efforts of Suleiman failed to wrest the Shipka Pass from its defenders. From the narrow line which the invaders had with such difficulty held during three anxious months their forces, accumulating day by day, spread out south and west up to the slopes of the Balkans, ready to burst over the mountain-barrier and sweep the enemy back to the walls of Constantinople when once Plevna should have fallen and the army which besieged it should be added to the invader's strength. At length, in the second week of December, Osman's supply of food was exhausted. Victor in three battles, he refused to surrender without one more struggle. On the 10th of December, after distributing among his men what there remained of provisions, he made a desperate effort to break out towards the west. His columns dashed in vain against the besieger's lines; behind him his enemies pressed forward into the positions which he had abandoned; a ring of fire like that of Sedan surrounded the Turkish army; and after thousands had fallen in a hopeless conflict, the general and the troops who for five months had held in check the collected forces of the Russian Empire surrendered to their conqueror. [Crossing of the Balkans, Dec. 25-Jan. 8.] [Capitulation of Shipka, Jan. 9.] [Russians enter Adrianople, Jan. 20, 1878.] If in the first stages of the war there was little that did credit to Russia's military capacity, the energy that marked its close made amends for what had gone before. Winter was descending in extreme severity: the Balkans were a mass of snow and ice; but no obstacle could now bar the invader's march. Gourko, in command of an army that had gathered to the south-west of Plevna, made his way through the mountains above Etropol in the last days of December, and, driving the Turks from Sophia, pressed on towards Philippopolis and Adrianople. Farther east two columns crossed the Balkans by bye-paths right and left of the Shipka Pass, and then, converging on Shipka itself, fell upon the rear of the Turkish army which still blocked the southern outlet. Simultaneously a third corps marched down the pass from the north and assailed the Turks in front. After a fierce struggle the entire Turkish army, thirty-five thousand strong, laid down its arms. There now remained only one considerable force between the invaders and Constantinople. This body, which was commanded by Suleiman, held the road which runs along the valley of the Maritza, at a point somewhat to the east of Philippopolis. Against it Gourko advanced from the west, while the victors of Shipka, descending due south through Kesanlik, barred the line of retreat towards Adrianople. The last encounter of the war took place on the 17th of January. Suleiman's army, routed and demoralised, succeeded in making its escape to the Ægean coast. Pursuit was unnecessary, for the war was now practically over. On the 20th of January the Russians made their entry into Adrianople; in the next few days their advanced guard touched the Sea of Marmora at Rodosto. |
[Armistice, Jan. 31.] Immediately after the fall of Plevna the Porte had applied to the European Powers for their mediation. Disasters in Asia had already warned it not to delay submission too long; for in the middle of October Mukhtar Pasha had been driven from his positions, and a month later Kars had been taken by storm. The Russians had subsequently penetrated into Armenia and had captured the outworks of Erzeroum. Each day that now passed brought the Ottoman Empire nearer to destruction. Servia again declared war; the Montenegrins made themselves masters of the coast-towns and of border-territory north and south; Greece seemed likely to enter into the struggle. Baffled in his attempt to gain the common mediation of the Powers, the Sultan appealed to the Queen of England personally for her good offices in bringing the conflict to a close. In reply to a telegram from London, the Czar declared himself willing to treat for peace as soon as direct communications should be addressed to his representatives by the Porte. On the 14th of January commissioners were sent to the headquarters of the Grand Duke Nicholas at Kesanlik to treat for an armistice and for preliminaries of peace. The Russians, now in the full tide of victory, were in no hurry to agree with their adversary. Nicholas bade the Turkish envoys accompany him to Adrianople, and it was not until the 31st of January that the armistice was granted and the preliminaries of peace signed. [England.] [Vote of Credit, Jan. 28-Feb. 8.] [Fleet passes the Dardanelles, Feb. 6.] While the Turkish envoys were on their journey to the Russian headquarters, the session of Parliament opened at London. The Ministry had declared at the outbreak of the war that Great Britain would remain neutral unless its own interests should be imperilled, and it had defined these interests with due clearness both in its communications with the Russian Ambassador and in its statements in Parliament. It was laid down that Her Majesty's Government could not permit the blockade of the Suez Canal, or the extension of military operations to Egypt; that it could not witness with indifference the passing of Constantinople into other hands than those of its present possessors; and that it would entertain serious objections to any material alterations in the rules made under European sanction for the navigation of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. [552] In reply to Lord Derby's note which formulated these conditions of neutrality Prince Gortschakoff had repeated the Czar's assurance that the acquisition of Constantinople was excluded from his views, and had promised to undertake no military operation in Egypt; he had, however, let it be understood that, as an incident of warfare, the reduction of Constantinople might be necessary like that of any other capital. In the Queen's speech at the opening of Parliament, Ministers stated that the conditions on which the neutrality of England was founded had not hitherto been infringed by either belligerent, but that, should hostilities be prolonged, some unexpected occurrence might render it necessary to adopt measures of precaution, measures which could not be adequately prepared without an appeal to the liberality of Parliament. From language subsequently used by Lord Beaconsfield's colleagues, it would appear that the Cabinet had some apprehension that the Russian army, escaping from the Czar's control, might seize and attempt permanently to hold Constantinople. On the 23rd of January orders were sent to Admiral Hornby, commander of the fleet at Besika Bay, to pass the Dardanelles, and proceed to Constantinople. Lord Derby, who saw no necessity for measures of a warlike character until the result of the negotiations at Adrianople should become known, now resigned office; but on the reversal of the order to Admiral Hornby he rejoined the Cabinet. On the 28th of January, after the bases of peace had been communicated by Count Schouvaloff to the British Government but before they had been actually signed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer moved for a vote of £6,000,000 for increasing the armaments of the country. This vote was at first vigorously opposed on the ground that none of the stated conditions of England's neutrality had been infringed, and that in the conditions of peace between Russia and Turkey there was nothing that justified a departure from the policy which England had hitherto pursued. In the course of the debates, however, a telegram arrived from Mr. Layard, Elliot's successor at Constantinople, stating that notwithstanding the armistice the Russians were pushing on towards the capital; that the Turks had been compelled to evacuate Silivria on the Sea of Marmora; that the Russian general was about to occupy Tchataldja, an outpost of the last line of defence not thirty miles from Constantinople; and that the Porte was in great alarm, and unable to understand the Russian proceedings. The utmost excitement was caused at Westminster by this telegram. The fleet was at once ordered to Constantinople. Mr. Forster, who had led the opposition to the vote of credit, sought to withdraw his amendment; and although on the following day, with the arrival of the articles of the armistice, it appeared that the Russians were simply moving up to the accepted line of demarcation, and that the Porte could hardly have been ignorant of this when Layard's telegram was despatched, the alarm raised in London did not subside, and the vote of credit was carried by a majority of above two hundred. [553] [Imminence of war with England.] When a victorious army is, without the intervention of some external Power, checked in its work of conquest by the negotiation of an armistice, it is invariably made a condition that positions shall be handed over to it which it does not at the moment occupy, but which it might reasonably expect to have conquered within a certain date, had hostilities not been suspended. The armistice granted to Austria by Napoleon after the battle of Marengo involved the evacuation of the whole of Upper Italy; the armistice which Bismarck offered to the French Government of Defence at the beginning of the siege of Paris would have involved the surrender of Strasburg and of Toul. In demanding that the line of demarcation should be carried almost up to the walls of Constantinople the Russians were asking for no more than would certainly have been within their hands had hostilities been prolonged for a few weeks, or even days. Deeply as the conditions of the armistice agitated the English people, it was not in these conditions, but in the conditions of the peace which was to follow, that the true cause of contention between England and Russia, if cause there was, had to be found. Nevertheless, the approach of the Russians to Gallipoli and the lines of Tchataldja, followed, as it was, by the despatch of the British fleet to Constantinople, brought Russia and Great Britain within a hair's breadth of war. It was in vain that Lord Derby described the fleet as sent only for the protection of the lives and property of British subjects. Gortschakoff, who was superior in amenities of this kind, replied that the Russian Government had exactly the same end in view, with the distinction that its protection would be extended to all Christians. Should the British fleet appear at the Bosphorus, Russian troops would, in the fulfilment of a common duty of humanity, enter Constantinople. Yielding to this threat, Lord Beaconsfield bade the fleet halt at a convenient point in the Sea of Marmora. On both sides preparations were made for immediate action. The guns on our ships stood charged for battle; the Russians strewed the shallows with torpedoes. Had a Russian soldier appeared on the heights of Gallipoli, had an Englishman landed on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, war would at once have broken out. But after some weeks of extreme danger the perils of mere contiguity passed away, and the decision between peace and war was transferred from the accidents of tent and quarter deck to the deliberations of statesmen assembled in Congress. [Treaty of San Stefano, Mar. 3.] The bases of Peace which were made the condition of the armistice granted at Adrianople formed with little alteration the substance of the Treaty signed by Russia and Turkey at San Stefano, a village on the Sea of Marmora, on the 3rd of March. By this Treaty the Porte recognised the independence of Servia, Montenegro, and Roumania, and made considerable cessions of territory to the two former States. Bulgaria was constituted an autonomous tributary Principality, with a Christian Government and a national militia. Its frontier, which was made so extensive as to include the greater part of European Turkey, was defined as beginning near Midia on the Black Sea, not sixty miles from the Bosphorus; passing thence westwards just to the north of Adrianople; descending to the Ægean Sea, and following the coast as far as the Thracian Chersonese; then passing inland westwards, so as barely to exclude Salonika; running on to the border of Albania within fifty miles of the Adriatic, and from this point following the Albanian border up to the new Servian frontier. The Prince of Bulgaria was to be freely elected by the population, and confirmed by the Porte with the assent of the Powers; a system of administration was to be drawn up by an Assembly of Bulgarian notables; and the introduction of the new system into Bulgaria with the superintendence of its working was to be entrusted for two years to a Russian Commissioner. Until the native militia was organised, Russian troops, not exceeding fifty thousand in number, were to occupy the country; this occupation, however, was to be limited to a term approximating to two years. In Bosnia and Herzegovina the proposals laid before the Porte at the first sitting of the Conference of 1876 were to be immediately introduced, subject to such modifications as might be agreed upon between Turkey, Russia, and Austria. The Porte undertook to apply scrupulously in Crete the Organic Law which had been drawn up in 1868, taking into account the previously expressed wishes of the native population. An analogous law, adapted to local requirements, was, after being communicated to the Czar, to be introduced into Epirus, Thessaly, and the other parts of Turkey in Europe for which a special constitution was not provided by the Treaty. Commissions, in which the native population was to be largely represented, were in each province to be entrusted with the task of elaborating the details of the new organisation. In Armenia the Sultan undertook to carry into effect without further delay the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements, and to guarantee the security of the Armenians from Kurds and Circassians. As an indemnity for the losses and expenses of the war the Porte admitted itself to be indebted to Russia in the sum of fourteen hundred million roubles; but in accordance with the wishes of the Sultan, and in consideration of the financial embarrassments of Turkey, the Czar consented to accept in substitution for the greater part of this sum the cession of the Dobrudscha in Europe, and of the districts of Ardahan, Kars, Batoum, and Bayazid in Asia. As to the balance of three hundred million roubles left due to Russia, the mode of payment or guarantee was to be settled by an understanding between the two Governments. The Dobrudscha was to be given by the Czar to Roumania in exchange for Bessarabia, which this State was to transfer to Russia. The complete evacuation of Turkey in Europe was to take place within three months, that of Turkey in Asia within six months, from the conclusion of peace. [554] [Congress proposed.] [Opposite purposes of Russia and England.] It had from the first been admitted by the Russian Government that questions affecting the interests of Europe at large could not be settled by a Treaty between Russia and Turkey alone, but must form the subject of European agreement. Early in February the Emperor of Austria had proposed that a European Conference should assemble at his own capital. It was subsequently agreed that Berlin, instead of Vienna, should be the place of meeting, and instead of a Conference a Congress should be held, that is, an international assembly of the most solemn form, in which each of the Powers is represented not merely by an ambassador or an envoy, but by its leading Ministers. But the question at once arose whether there existed in the mind of the Russian Government a distinction between parts of the Treaty of San Stefano bearing on the interests of Europe generally and parts which affected no States but Russia and Turkey; and whether, in this case, Russia was willing that Europe should be the judge of the distinction, or, on the contrary, claimed for itself the right of withholding portions of the Treaty from the cognisance of the European Court. In accepting the principle of a Congress, Lord Derby on behalf of Great Britain made it a condition that every article of the Treaty without exception should be laid before the Congress, not necessarily as requiring the concurrence of the Powers, but in order that the Powers themselves might in each case decide whether their concurrence was necessary or not. To this demand Prince Gortschakoff offered the most strenuous resistance, claiming for Russia the liberty of accepting, or not accepting, the discussion of any question that might be raised. It would clearly have been in the power of the Russian Government, had this condition been granted, to exclude from the consideration of Europe precisely those matters which in the opinion of other States were most essentially of European import. Phrases of conciliation were suggested; but no ingenuity of language could shade over the difference of purpose which separated the rival Powers. Every day the chances of the meeting of the Congress seemed to be diminishing, the approach of war between Russia and Great Britain more unmistakable. Lord Beaconsfield called out the Reserves and summoned troops from India; even the project of seizing a port in Asia Minor in case the Sultan should fall under Russian influence was discussed in the Cabinet. Unable to reconcile himself to these vigorous measures, Lord Derby, who had long been at variance with the Premier, now finally withdrew from the Cabinet (March 28). He was succeeded in his office by the Marquis of Salisbury, whose comparison of his relative and predecessor to Titus Oates revived the interest of the diplomatic world in a now forgotten period of English history. [Circular of April 1.] The new Foreign Secretary had not been many days in office when a Circular, despatched to all the Foreign Courts, summed up the objections of Great Britain to the Treaty of San Stefano. It was pointed out that a strong Slavic State would be created under the control of Russia, possessing important harbours upon the shores of the Black Sea and the Archipelago, and giving to Russia a preponderating influence over political and commercial relations on both those seas; that a large Greek population would be merged in a dominant Slavic majority; that by the extension of Bulgaria to the Archipelago the Albanian and Greek provinces left to the Sultan would be severed from Constantinople; that the annexation of Bessarabia and of Batoum would make the will of the Russian Government dominant over all the vicinity of the Black Sea; that the acquisition of the strongholds of Armenia would place the population of that province under the immediate influence of the Power that held these strongholds, while through the cession of Bayazid the European trade from Trebizond to Persia would become liable to be arrested by the prohibitory barriers of the Russian commercial system. Finally, by the stipulation for an indemnity which it was beyond the power of Turkey to discharge, and by the reference of the mode of payment or guarantee to a later settlement, Russia had placed it in its power either to extort yet larger cessions of territory, or to force Turkey into engagements subordinating its policy in all things to that of St. Petersburg. [Count Schouvaloff.] [Secret agreement, May 30th.] [Convention with Turkey, June 4.] [Cyprus.] It was the object of Lord Salisbury to show that the effects of the Treaty of San Stefano, taken in a mass, threatened the peace and the interests of Europe, and therefore, whatever might be advanced for or against individual stipulations of the Treaty, that the Treaty as a whole, and not clauses selected by one Power, must be submitted to the Congress if the examination was not to prove illusory. This was a just line of argument. Nevertheless it was natural to suppose that some parts of the Treaty must be more distasteful than others to Great Britain; and Count Schouvaloff, who was sincerely desirous of peace, applied himself to the task of discovering with what concessions Lord Beaconsfield's Cabinet would be satisfied. He found that if Russia would consent to modifications of the Treaty in Congress excluding Bulgaria from the Aegean Sea, reducing its area on the south and west, dividing it into two provinces, and restoring the Balkans to the Sultan as a military frontier, giving back Bayazid to the Turks, and granting to other Powers besides Russia a voice in the organisation of Epirus, Thessaly, and the other Christian provinces of the Porte, England might be induced to accept without essential change the other provisions of San Stefano. On the 7th of May Count Schouvaloff quitted London for St. Petersburg, in order to lay before the Czar the results of his communications with the Cabinet, and to acquaint him with the state of public opinion in England. On his journey hung the issues of peace or war. Backed by the counsels of the German Emperor, Schouvaloff succeeded in his mission. The Czar determined not to risk the great results already secured by insisting on the points contested, and Schouvaloff returned to London authorised to conclude a pact with the British Government on the general basis which had been laid down. On the 30th of May a secret agreement, in which the above were the principal points, was signed, and the meeting of the Congress for the examination of the entire Treaty of San Stefano was now assured. But it was not without the deepest anxiety and regret that Lord Beaconsfield consented to the annexation of Batoum and the Armenian fortresses. He obtained indeed an assurance in the secret agreement with Schouvaloff that the Russian frontier should be no more extended on the side of Turkey in Asia; but his policy did not stop short here. By a Convention made with the Sultan on the 4th of June, Great Britain engaged, in the event of any further aggression by Russia upon the Asiatic territories of the Sultan, to defend these territories by force of arms. The Sultan in return promised to introduce the necessary reforms, to be agreed upon by the two Powers, for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these territories, and further assigned the Island of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by England. It was stipulated by a humorous after-clause that if Russia should restore to Turkey its Armenian conquests, Cyprus would be evacuated by England, and the Convention itself should be at an end. [555] [Congress of Berlin, June 13-July 13.] [Treaty of Berlin, July 13.] The Congress of Berlin, at which the Premier himself and Lord Salisbury represented Great Britain, opened on the 13th of June. Though the compromise between England and Russia had been settled in general terms, the arrangement of details opened such a series of difficulties that the Congress seemed more than once on the point of breaking up. It was mainly due to the perseverance and wisdom of Prince Bismarck, who transferred the discussion of the most crucial points from the Congress to private meetings of his guests, and who himself acted as conciliator when Gortschakoff folded up his maps or Lord Beaconsfield ordered a special train, that the work was at length achieved. The Treaty of Berlin, signed on the 13th of July, confined Bulgaria, as an autonomous Principality, to the country north of the Balkans, and diminished the authority which, pending the establishment of its definitive system of government, would by the Treaty of San Stefano have belonged to a Russian commissioner. The portion of Bulgaria south of the Balkans, but extending no farther west than the valley of the Maritza, and no farther south than Mount Rhodope, was formed into a Province of East Roumelia, to remain subject to the direct political and military authority of the Sultan, under conditions of administrative autonomy. The Sultan was declared to possess the right of erecting fortifications both on the coast and on the land-frontier of this province, and of maintaining troops there. Alike in Bulgaria and in Eastern Roumelia the period of occupation by Russian troops was limited to nine months. Bosnia and Herzegovina were handed over to Austria, to be occupied and administered by that Power. The cessions of territory made to Servia and Montenegro in the Treaty of San Stefano were modified with the object of interposing a broader strip between these two States; Bayazid was omitted from the ceded districts in Asia, and the Czar declared it his intention to erect Batoum into a free port, essentially commercial. At the instance of France the provisions relating to the Greek Provinces of Turkey were superseded by a vote in favour of the cession of part of these Provinces to the Hellenic Kingdom. The Sultan was recommended to cede Thessaly and part of Epirus to Greece, the Powers reserving to themselves the right of offering their mediation to facilitate the negotiations. In other respects the provisions of the Treaty of San Stefano were confirmed without substantial change. [Comparison of the two Treaties.] Lord Beaconsfield returned to London, bringing, as he said, peace with honour. It was claimed, in the despatch to our Ambassadors which accompanied the publication of the Treaty of Berlin, that in this Treaty the cardinal objections raised by the British Government to the Treaty of San Stefano had found an entire remedy. "Bulgaria," wrote Lord Salisbury, "is now confined to the river-barrier of the Danube, and consequently has not only ceased to possess any harbour on the Archipelago, but is removed by more than a hundred miles from the neighbourhood of that sea. On the Euxine the important port of Bourgas has been restored to the Government of Turkey; and Bulgaria retains less than half the sea-board originally assigned to it, and possesses no other port except the roadstead of Varna, which can hardly be used for any but commercial purposes. The replacement under Turkish rule of Bourgas and the southern half of the sea-board on the Euxine, and the strictly commercial character assigned to Batoum, have largely obviated the menace to the liberty of the Black Sea. The political outposts of Russian power have been pushed back to the region beyond the Balkans; the Sultan's dominions have been provided with a defensible frontier." It was in short the contention of the English Government that while Russia, in the pretended emancipation of a great part of European Turkey by the Treaty of San Stefano, had but acquired a new dependency, England, by insisting on the division of Bulgaria, had baffled this plan and restored to Turkey an effective military dominion over all the country south of the Balkans. That Lord Beaconsfield did well in severing Macedonia from the Slavic State of Bulgaria there is little reason to doubt; that, having so severed it, he did ill in leaving it without a European guarantee for good government, every successive year made more plain; the wisdom of his treatment of Bulgaria itself must, in the light of subsequent events, remain matter for controversy. It may fairly be said that in dealing with Bulgaria English statesmen were, on the whole, dealing with the unknown. Nevertheless, had guidance been accepted from the history of the other Balkan States, analogies were not altogether wanting or altogether remote. During the present century three Christian States had been formed out of what had been Ottoman territory: Servia, Greece, and Roumania. Not one of these had become a Russian Province, or had failed to develop and maintain a distinct national existence. In Servia an attempt had been made to retain for the Porte the right of keeping troops in garrison. This attempt had proved a mistake. So long as the right was exercised it had simply been a source of danger and disquiet, and it had finally been abandoned by the Porte itself. In the case of Greece, Russia, with a view to its own interests, had originally proposed that the country should be divided into four autonomous provinces tributary to the Sultan: against this the Greeks had protested, and Canning had successfully supported their protest. Even the appointment of an ex-Minister of St. Petersburg, Capodistrias, as first President of Greece in 1827 had failed to bring the liberated country under Russian influence; and in the course of the half-century which had since elapsed it had become one of the commonplaces of politics, accepted by every school in every country of Western Europe, that the Powers had committed a great error in 1833 in not extending to far larger dimensions the Greek Kingdom which they then established. In the case of Roumania, the British Government had, out of fear of Russia, insisted in 1856 that the provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia should remain separate: the result was that the inhabitants in defiance of England effected their union, and that after a few years had passed there was not a single politician in England who regarded their union otherwise than with satisfaction. If history taught anything in the solution of the Eastern question, it taught that the effort to reserve for the Sultan a military existence in countries which had passed from under his general control was futile, and that the best barrier against Russian influence was to be found not in the division but in the strengthening and consolidation of the States rescued from Ottoman dominions. It was of course open to English statesmen in 1878 to believe that all that had hitherto passed in the Balkan Peninsula had no bearing upon the problems of the hour, and that, whatever might have been the case with Greece, Servia, and Roumania, Bulgaria stood on a completely different footing, and called for the application of principles not based on the experience of the past but on the divinations of superior minds. Should the history of succeeding years bear out this view, should the Balkans become a true military frontier for Turkey, should Northern Bulgaria sink to the condition of a Russian dependency, and Eastern Roumelia, in severance from its enslaved kin, abandon itself to a thriving ease behind the garrisons of the reforming Ottoman, Lord Beaconsfield will have deserved the fame of a statesman whose intuitions, undimmed by the mists of experience, penetrated the secret of the future, and shaped, because they discerned, the destiny of nations. It will be the task of later historians to measure the exact period after the Congress of Berlin at which the process indicated by Lord Beaconsfield came into visible operation; it is the misfortune of those whose view is limited by a single decade to have to record that in every particular, with the single exception of the severance of Macedonia from the Slavonic Principality, Lord Beaconsfield's ideas, purposes and anticipations, in so far as they related to Eastern Europe, have hitherto been contradicted by events. What happened in Greece, Servia, and Roumania has happened in Bulgaria. Experience, thrown to the winds by English Ministers in 1878, has justified those who listened to its voice. There exists no such thing as a Turkish fortress on the Balkans; Bourgas no more belongs to the Sultan than Athens or Belgrade; no Turkish soldier has been able to set foot within the territory whose very name, Eastern Roumelia, was to stamp it as Turkish dominion. National independence, a living force in Greece, in Servia, in Roumania, has proved its power in Bulgaria too. The efforts of Russia to establish its influence over a people liberated by its arms have been repelled with unexpected firmness. Like the divided members of Roumania, the divided members of Bulgaria have effected their union. In this union, in the growing material and moral force of the Bulgarian State, Western Europe sees a power wholly favourable to its own hopes for the future of the East, wholly adverse to the extension of Russian rule: and it has been reserved for Lord Beaconsfield's colleague at the Congress of Berlin, regardless of the fact that Bulgaria north of the Balkans, not the southern Province, created that vigorous military and political organisation which was the precursor of national union, to explain that in dividing Bulgaria into two portions the English Ministers of 1878 intended to promote its ultimate unity, and that in subjecting the southern half to the Sultan's rule they laid the foundation for its ultimate independence.
Chapters I. to XI. of this Edition.
Chapters XII. to XVIII. of this Edition.
Page 362 of this Edition.
Ranke, Ursprung und Beginn der Revolutionskriege, p. 90, Vivenot, Quellen zur Geschichte der Kaiserpolitik Oesterreichs, i. 185, 208.
Von Sybel, Geschichte der Revolutionszeit, i. 289.
Vivenot, Quellen, i. 372. Buchez et Roux, xiii. 340, xiv. 24.
HÄusser, Deutsche Geschichte, i. 88. Vivenot, Herzog Albrecht, i. 78.
Springer, Geschichte Oesterreichs, i. 46.
Pertz, Leben Stein, ii. 402. Paget, Travels in Hungary, i. 131.
Ranke, Ursprung und Beginn, p. 256. Vivenot, Quellen, i. 133, 165. The acquisition of Bavaria was declared by the Austrian Cabinet to be the summum bonum of the monarchy.
Biedermann, Deutschland im Achtzehnten Jahrhundert, iv. 1144.
Carlyle, Friedrich, vi. 667.
HÄusser, i. 197. Hardenberg (Ranke), i. 139. Von Sybel, i. 272.
"The connection with the House of Austria and the present undertaking continue to be very unpopular. It is openly said that one half of the treasure was uselessly spent at Reichenbach, and that the other half will be spent on the present occasion, and that the sovereign will be reduced to his former level of Margrave of Brandenburg." Eden, from Berlin; June 19, 1792. Records: Prussia, vol. 151. "He (MÖllendorf) reprobated the alliance with Austria, condemning the present interference in the affairs of France as ruinous, and censuring as undignified and contrary to the most important interests of this country the leaving Russia sole arbitress of the fate of Poland. He, however, said, what every Prussian without any exception of party will say, that this country can never acquiesce in the establishment of a good government in Poland, since in a short time it would rise to a very decided superiority," Id., July 17. Mr. Cobden's theory that the partition of Poland was effected in the interest of good government must have caused some surprise at Berlin.
The condition of Mecklenburg is thus described in a letter written by Stein during a journey in 1802:-"I found the aspect of the country as cheerless as its misty northern sky; great estates, much of them in pasture or fallow; an extremely thin population; the entire labouring class under the yoke of serfage; stretches of land attached to solitary ill-built farmhouses; in short, a monotony, a dead stillness, spreading over the whole country, an absence of life and activity that quite overcame my spirits. The home of the Mecklenburg noble, who weighs like a load on his peasants instead of improving their condition, gives me the idea of the den of some wild beast, who devastates even thing about him, and surrounds himself with the silence of the grave." Pertz, Leben Stein, i. 192. For a more cheerful description of MÜnster, see id., i. 241.
Perthes, Staatsleben, p. 116. Rigby, Letters from France, p. 215.
Buchez et Roux, xvi. 279. One of the originals of this declaration, handed to the British ambassador, is in the London Records: Prussia, vol. 151.
The accounts of the emigrants sent to England by Lord Elgin, envoy at Brussels, and Sir J. Murray, our military attachÉ with Brunswick's army (in Records: Flanders, vol. 221) are instructive: "The conduct of the army under the Princes of France is universally reprobated. Their appearance in dress, in attendants, in preparations, is ridiculous. As an instance, however trivial, it may be mentioned that on one of the waggons was written Toilette de Monsieur. The spirit of vengeance, however, which they discover on every occasion is far more serious. Wherever they have passed, they have exercised acts of cruelty, in banishing and severely punishing those persons who, though probably culpable, had yet been left untouched by the Prussian commanders. To such an extent has this been carried that the commander at Verdun would not suffer any Frenchman (emigrant) to pass a night in the town without a special permission." Sept. 21. After the failure of the campaign, Elgin writes of the emigrants: "They every-where added to the cruelties for some of which several hussars had been executed: carried to its extent the vengeance threatened in the Duke of Brunswick's Declaration, in burning whole villages where a shot was fired on them: and on the other hand by their self-sufficiency, want of subordination and personal disrespect, have drawn upon themselves the contempt of the combined armies." Oct. 6. So late as 1796, the exile Louis XVIII. declared his intention to restore the "property and rights" (i.e. tithes, feudal dues, etc.) of the nobles and clergy, and to punish the men who had "committed offences." See Letter to Pichegru, May 4, 1796, in Manuscrit InÉdit de Louis XVIII., p. 464.
Wordsworth, Prelude, book ix.
The correspondence is in Ranke, Ursprung und Beginn, p. 371. Such was the famine in the Prussian camp that Dumouriez sent the King of Prussia twelve loaves, twelve pounds of coffee, and twelve pounds of sugar. The official account of the campaign is in the Berlinische Zeitung of Oct. 11, 1792.
Forster, Werke, vi. 386.
"The very night the news of the late Emperor's (Leopold's) death arrived here (Brussels), inflammatory advertisements and invitations to arm were distributed." One culprit "belonged to the Choir of St. Gudule: he chose the middle of the day, and in the presence of many people posted up a paper in the church, exhorting to a general insurrection. The remainder of this strange production was the description of a vision he pretended to have seen, representing the soul of the late emperor on its way to join that of Joseph, already suffering in the other world." Col. Gardiner, March 20, 1792. Records: Flanders, vol. 220.
Elgin, from Brussels, Nov. 6. "A brisk cannonade has been heard this whole forenoon in the direction of Mons. It is at this moment somewhat diminished, though not at an end" Nov. 7. "Several messengers have arrived from camp in the course of the night, but all the Ministers (I have seen them all) deny having received one word of detail.... Couriers have been sent this night in every direction to call in all the detachments on the frontiers.... The Government is making every arrangement for quitting Brussels: their papers are already prepared, their carriages ready." ... Then a PS. "A cannonade is distinctly heard again.... All the emigrants now here are removing with the utmost haste." Nov. 9th. "The confusion throughout the country is extreme. The roads are covered with emigrants, and persons of these provinces flying from the French armies," Records: Flanders, vol. 222.
In Nov. 1792, Grenville ordered the English envoys at Vienna and Berlin to discover, if possible, the real designs of aggrandisement held by those Courts. Mr. Straton, at Vienna, got wind of the agreement against Poland. "I requested Count Philip Cobenzl" (the Austrian Minister) "that he would have the goodness to open himself confidentially to me on the precise object which the two allied Courts might have in contemplation. This, however, the Count was by no means disposed to do; on the contrary, he went round the compass of evasion in order to avoid a direct answer. But determined as I was to push the Austrian Minister, I heaped question on question, until I forced him to say, blushing, and with evident signs of embarrassment, 'Count Stadion' (Ambassador at London) 'will be able to satisfy the curiosity of the British Minister, to whatever point it may be directed.'" Jan. 20, 1793. Records: Austria, vol. 32. Stadion accordingly informed Lord Grenville of the Polish and Bavarian plans. Grenville expressed his concern and regret at the aggression on Poland, and gave reasons against the Bavarian exchange. To our envoy with the King of Prussia Grenville wrote: "It may possibly be the intention of the Courts to adopt a plan of indemnifying themselves for the expense of the war by fresh acquisitions in Poland, and carrying into execution a new partition of that country. You will not fail to explain in the most distinct and pointed manner his Majesty's entire disapprobation of such a plan, and his determination on no account to concur in any measures which may tend to the completion of a design so unjust in itself." Jan. 4, 1793. Records: Army in Germany, vol. 437. At Vienna Cobenzl declared, Feb. 9, that Austria could not now "even manifest a wish to oppose the projects of Prussia in Poland, as in that case his Prussian Majesty would probably withdraw his assistance from the French war; nay, perhaps even enter into an alliance with that nation and invade Bohemia." Records: Austria, vol. 32.
Auckland, ii. 464. Papers presented to Parliament, 1793. Mr. Oscar Browning, in Fortnightly Review, Feb., 1883.
Von Sybel, ii. 259. Thugut, Vertrauliche Briefe, i. 17. Letters from Brussels, 23rd March in Records: Flanders, vol. 222. "The Huzars are in motion all round, so that we hope to have them here to-morrow. Most of the French troops who arrived last, and which are mostly peasants armed with pikes, are returning home, besides a great number of their volunteers." 24th March. "At this moment we hear the cannon. The French have just had it cry'd in the town that all the tailors who are making coats for the army must bring them made or unmade, and be paid directly.... They beat the drums to drown the report of the cannon.... You have not a conception of the confusion in the town.... This moment passed four Austrians with their heads cut to pieces, and one with his eye poked out. The French are retiring by the Porte d'Anderlecht." Ostend, April 4th. "This day, before two of the clock, twenty-five Austrian huzars enter'd the town while the inhabitants were employed burning the tree of liberty."
Mortimer-Ternaux, vii. 412.
Berriat-St.-Prix, La Justice RÉvolutionnaire, introd.
"The King of Prussia has been educated in the persuasion that the execution of that exchange involves the ruin of his family, and he is the more sore about it that by the qualified consent which he has given to its taking place he has precluded himself from opposing it by arms. Accordingly, every idle story which arrives from Munich which tends to revive this apprehension makes an impression which I am unable, at the first moment, to efface." Lord Yarmouth, from the Prussian camp, Aug. 12, 1793, Records: Army in Germany, 437. "Marquis Lucchesini, the effectual director, is desirous of avoiding every expense and every exertion of the troops; of leaving the whole burden of the war on Austria and the other combined Powers; and of seeing difficulties multiply in the arrangements which the Court of Vienna may wish to form I do not perceive any object beyond this; no desire of diminishing the power of France; no system or feeling for crushing the opinions, the doctrines, of that country." Elgin, May 17. Records: Flanders, vol. 223.
Auckland, iii. 24. Thugut, Vertrauliche Briefe, i. 13. Grenville to Eden, Sept. 7th, 1793, Records: Austria, vol. 34: a most important historical document, setting out the principles of alliance between England and Austria. Austria, if it will abandon the Bavarian exchange, may claim annexations on the border of the Netherlands, in Alsace and Lorraine, and in the intermediate parts of the frontier of France. England's indemnity "must be looked for in the foreign settlements and colonies of France.... His Majesty has an interest in seeing the House of Austria strengthen itself by acquisitions on the French frontier. The Emperor must see with pleasure the relative increase of the naval and commercial resources of this country beyond those of France." In the face of this paper, it cannot be maintained that the war of 1793 was, after the first few months, purely defensive on England's part; though no doubt Pitt's notion of an indemnity was fair and modest in comparison with the schemes and acts of his enemy.
The first mention of Bonaparte's name in any British document occurs in an account of the army of Toulon sent to London in Dec. 1793 by a spy. "Les capitaines d'artillÉrie, ÉlÉvÉ dans cet État, connoissent leur service et ont tous du talens. Ils prÉfÉroient l'employer pour une meilleure cause.... Le sixtÈrne, nommÉ Bonaparte, trÉs republicain, a ÉtÉ tuÉ sous les murs de Toulon." Records: France, vol. 599. Austria undertook to send 5,000 troops from Lombardy to defend Toulon, but broke its engagement. "You will wait on M. Thugut (the Austrian Minister) and claim in the most peremptory terms the performance of this engagement. It would be very offensive to his Majesty that a request made so repeatedly on his part should be neglected; but it is infinitely more so to see that, when this country is straining every nerve for the common cause, a body of troops for the want of which Toulon may possibly at this moment be lost, have remained inactive at Milan. You will admit of no further excuses." Grenville to Eden, Nov. 24, 1793. Thugut's written answer was, "The Emperor gave the order of march at a moment when the town of Toulon had no garrison. Its preservation then seemed matter of pressing necessity, but now all inquietude on this score has happily disappeared. The troops of different nations already assembled at Toulon put the place out of all danger." Records: Austria, vol. 35.
HÄusser, i. 482. "La Prusse," wrote Thugut at this time, "parviendra au moyen de son alliance À nous faire plus de mal qu'elle ne nous a fait par les guerres les plus sanglantes." Briefe, i. 12, 15. Thugut even proposed that England should encourage the Poles to resist. Eden, April 15; Records: Austria, vol. 33.
The English Government found that Thugut was from the first indifferent to their own aim, the restoration of the Bourbons, or establishment of some orderly government in France. In so far as he concerned himself with the internal affairs of France, he hoped rather for continued dissension, as facilitating the annexation of French territory by Austria. "Qu'on profite de ce conflit des partis en France pour tÂcher de se rendre mÂitre des forteresses, afin de faire la loi au parti qui aura prÉvalu, et l'obliger d'acheter la paix et la protection de l'empereur, en lui cedant telle partie de ses conquÊtes que S.M. jugera de sa covenance." Briefe, i. 13.
The despatches of Lord Yarmouth from the Prussian and Austrian headquarters, from July 17 to Nov. 22, 1793, give a lively picture both of the military operations and of the political intrigues of this period. They are accompanied by the MS. journal of the Austrian army from Sept. 15 to Dec. 14, each copy apparently with Wurmser's autograph, and by the original letter of the Prussian Minister, Lucchesini, to Lord Yarmouth, announcing the withdrawal of Prussia from the war, "M. de Lucchesini read it to me very hastily, and seemed almost ashamed of a part of its contents." Records: Army in Germany, vols. 437, 438, 439.
Hardenberg (Ranke), i. 181, Vivenot, Herzog Albrecht, i. 10.
Elgin reports after this engagement, May 1st, 1794-"The French army appears to continue much what it has hitherto been, vigorous and persevering where (as in villages and woods) the local advantages are of a nature to supply the defects of military science; weak and helpless beyond belief where cavalry can act, and manoeuvres are possible.... The magazines of the army are stored, and the provisions regularly given out to the troops, and good in quality. Indeed, it is singular to observe in all the villages where we have been forward forage, etc., in plenty, and all the country cultivated as usual. The inhabitants, however, have retired with the French army; and to that degree that the tract we have lately taken possession of is absolutely deserted.... The execution of Danton has produced no greater effect in the army than other executions, and we have found many papers on those who fell in the late actions treating it with ridicule, and as a source of joy." Records: Flanders, 226. "I am in hopes to hear from you on the subject of the French prisoners, as to where I am to apply for the money I advance for their subsistence. They are a great number of them almost naked, some entirely so. It is absolutely shocking to humanity to see them. I would purchase some coarse clothing for those that are in the worst state, but know not how far I should be authorised. They are mostly old men and boys." Consul Harward, at Ostend, March 4th, id.
These events are the subject of controversy. See HÜffer, Oestreich und Preussen, p. 62 Von Sybel, iii. 138. Vivenot, Clerfayt, p. 38. The old belief, defended by Von Sybel, was that Thugut himself had determined upon the evacuation of Belgium, and treacherously deprived Coburg of forces for its defence. But, apart from other evidence, the tone of exasperation that runs through Thugut's private letters is irreconcilable with this theory. Lord Elgin, whose reports are used by Von Sybel, no doubt believed that Thugut was playing false; but he was a bad judge, being in the hands of Thugut's opponents, especially General Mack, whom he glorifies in the most absurd way. The other English envoy in Belgium, Lord Yarmouth, reported in favour of Thugut's good faith in this matter, and against military intriguers. Records: Army in Germany, vol. 440. A letter of Prince Waldeck's in Thugut, i. 387, and a conversation between Mack and Sir Morton Eden, on Feb. 3rd, 1797, reported by the latter in Records: Austria, vol. 48, appear to fix the responsibility for the evacuation of Belgium on these two generals, Waldeck and Mack, and on the Emperor's confidential military adviser, Rollin.
"Should the French come they will find this town perfectly empty. Except my own, I do not think there are three houses in Ostend with a bed in them. So general a panic I never witnessed." June 30th.-"To remain here alone would be a wanton sacrifice. God knows 'tis an awful stroke to me to leave a place just as I began to be comfortably settled." Consul Harward: Records: Army in Germany, vol. 440. "All the English are arrested in Ostend; the men are confined in the Capuchin convent, and the women in the Convent des Soeurs Blancs. All the Flamands from the age of 17 to 32 are forced to go for soldiers. At Bruges the French issued an order for 800 men to present themselves. Thirty only came, in consequence of which they rang a bell on the Grand Place, and the inhabitants thinking that it was some ordinance, quitted their houses to hear it, when they were surrounded by the French soldiers, and upwards of 1,000 men secured, gentle and simple, who were all immediately set to work on the canals." Mr. W. Poppleton, Flushing, Sept. 4. Records: Flanders, vol. 227.
Malmesbury, ii. 125. Von Sybel, iii. 168. Grenville made Coburg's dismissal a sine qua non of the continuance of English co-operation. Instructions to Lord Spencer, July 19, 1794. Records: Austria, 36. But for the Austrian complaints against the English, see Vivenot, Clerfayt, p. 50.
Schlosser, xv. 203: borne out by the Narrative of an Officer, printed in Annual Register, 1795, p. 143.
Vivenot, Herzog Albrecht, iii. 59, 512. Martens, Recueil des TraitÉs, vi. 45, 52. Hardenberg, i. 287. Vivenot, Clerfayt, p. 32. "Le Roi de Prusse," wrote the Empress Catherine, "est une mÉchante bÊte et un grand cochon." Prussia made no attempt to deliver the unhappy son of Louis XVI. from his captivity.
The British Government had formed the most sanguine estimate of the strength of the Royalist movement in France. "I cannot let your servant return without troubling you with these few lines to conjure you to use every possible effort to give life and vigour to the Austrian Government at this critical moment. Strongly as I have spoken in my despatch of the present state of France, I have said much less than my information, drawn from various quarters, and applying to almost every part of France, would fairly warrant. We can never hope that the circumstances, as far as they regard the state of France, can be more favourable than they now are. For God's sake enforce these points with all the earnestness which I am sure you will feel upon them." Grenville to Eden, April 17, 1795; Records: Austria, vol. 41. After the failure of the expedition, the British Government made the grave charge against Thugut that while he was officially sending Clerfayt pressing orders to advance, he secretly told him to do nothing. "It is in vain to reason with the Austrian Ministers on the folly and ill faith of a system which they have been under the necessity of concealing from you, and which they will probably endeavour to disguise" Grenville to Eden, Oct., 1795; id., vol. 43. This charge, repeated by historians, is disproved by Thugut's private letters. Briefe, i. 221, seq. No one more bitterly resented Clerfayt's inaction.
The documents relating to the expedition to Quiberon, with several letters of D'Artois, Charette, and the Vendean leaders, are in Records: France, vol. 600.
Von Sybel, iii. 537. Buchez et Roux, xxxvi. 485.
For the police interpretation of the ZauberflÖte, see Springer, Geschichte Oesterreichs, vol. i. p. 49.
Zobi, Storia Civile della Toscana, i. 284.
Galanti, Descrizione delle Sicilie, 1786, i. 279. He adds, "The Samnites and the Lucanians could not have shown so horrible a spectacle, because they had no feudal laws." Galanti's book gives perhaps the best idea of the immense task faced by monarchy in the eighteenth century in its struggle against what he justly calls "gli orrori del governo feudale." Nothing but a study of these details of actual life described by eye-witnesses can convey an adequate impression of the completeness and the misery of the feudal order in the more backward countries of Europe till far down in the eighteenth century. There is a good anonymous account of Sicily in 1810 in Castlereagh, 8, 317.
Correspondance de Napoleon, i. 260. Botta, lib. vi. Despatches of Col. Graham, British attachÉ with the Austrian army, in Records: Italian States, vol. 57. These most interesting letters, which begin on May 19, show the discord and suspicion prevalent from the first in the Austrian army. "Beaulieu has not met with cordial co-operation from his own generals, still less from the Piedmontese. He accuses them of having chosen to be beat in order to bring about a peace promised in January last." "Beaulieu was more violent than ever against his generals who have occasioned the failure of his plans. He said nine of them were cowards. I believe some of them are ill-affected to the cause." June 15.-"Many of the officers comfort themselves with thinking that defeat must force peace, and others express themselves in terms of despair." July 25,-Beaulieu told Graham that if Bonaparte had pushed on after the battle of Lodi, he might have gone straight into Mantua. The preparations for defence were made later.
Thugut, Briefe i. 107. A correspondence on this subject was carried on in cypher between Thugut and Ludwig Cobenzl, Austrian Ambassador at St. Petersburg in 1793-4. During Thugut's absence in Belgium, June, 1794, Cobenzl sent a duplicate despatch, not in cypher, to Vienna. Old Prince Kaunitz, the ex-minister, heard that a courier had arrived from St Petersburg, and demanded the despatch at the Foreign Office "like a dictator." It was given to him. "Ainsi," says Thugut, "adieu au secret qui depuis un an a ÉtÉ conservÉ avec tant de soins!"
Wurmser's reports are in Vivenot, Clerfayt, p. 477. Graham's daily despatches from the Austrian head-quarters give a vivid picture of these operations, and of the sudden change from exultation to despair. Aug. 1.-"I have the honour to inform your lordship that the siege of Mantua is raised, the French having retreated last night with the utmost precipitation." Aug. 2.-"The Austrians are in possession of all the French mortars and cannon, amounting to about 140, with 190,000 shells and bombs; the loss of the Imperial army is inconsiderable." Aug. 5.-"The rout of this day has sadly changed the state of affairs. There are no accounts of General Quosdanovich." Aug. 9.-"Our loss in men and cannon was much greater than was imagined. I had no idea of the possibility of the extent of such misfortunes as have overwhelmed us" Aug. 17.-"It is scarcely possible to describe the state of disorder and discouragement that prevails in the army. Were I free from apprehension, about the fate of my letter" (he had lost his baggage and his cypher in it), "I should despair of finding language adequate to convey a just idea of the discontent of the officers with General Wurmser. From generals to subalterns the universal language is 'qu'il faut faire la paix, car nous ne savons pas faire la guerre.'" Aug. 18.-"Not only the commander-in-chief, but the greatest number of the generals are objects of contempt and ridicule." Aug. 27.-"I do not exaggerate when I say that I have met with instances of down-right dotage." "It was in general orders that wine should be distributed to the men previous to the attack of the 29th. There was some difficulty in getting it up to Monte Baldo. General Bayolitzy observed that 'it did not signify, for the men might get the value in money afterwards.' The men marched at six in the evening without it, to attack at daybreak, and received four kreutzers afterwards. This is a fact I can attest. In action I saw officers sent on urgent messages going at a foot's pace: they say that their horses are half starved, and that they cannot afford to kill them."
GrundsÄtze (Archduke Charles), ii. 202. Bulletins in Wiener Zeitung, June-Oct., 1796.
Martens, vi. 59.
This seems to me to be the probable truth about Austria's policy in 1796, of which opposite views will be found in HÄusser, vol. ii. ch. 1-3, and in HÜffer, Oestreich und Preussen, p. 142. Thugut professed in 1793 to have given up the project of the Bavarian exchange in deference to England. He admitted, however, soon afterwards, that he had again been pressing the King of Prussia to consent to it, but said that this was a ruse, intended to make Prussia consent to Austria's annexing a large piece of France instead. Eden, Sept., 1793; Records: Austria, vol. 34. The incident shows the difficulty of getting at the truth in diplomacy.
Yet the Government had had warning of this in a series of striking reports sent by one of Lord Elgin's spies during the Reign of Terror. "Jamais la France ne fut cultivÉe comme elle l'est. Il n'y a pas un arpent qui ne soit ensemencÉ, sauf dans les lieux oÙ opÈrent les armÉes belligÉrantes. Cette culture universelle a ÉtÉ forcÉe par les Directrices lÀ oÙ on ne la faisait pas volontairement." June 8, 1794; Records: Flanders, vol. 226. Elgin had established a line of spies from Paris to the Belgian frontier. Every one of these persons was arrested by the Revolutionary authorities. Elgin then fell in with the writer of the above, whose name is concealed, and placed him on the Swiss frontier. He was evidently a person thoroughly familiar with both civil and military administration. He appears to have talked to every Frenchman who entered Switzerland; and his reports contain far the best information that readied England during the Reign of Terror, contradicting the Royalists, who said that the war was only kept up by terrorism. He warned the English Government that the French nation in a mass was on the side of the Revolution, and declared that the downfall of Robespierre and the terrorists would make no difference in the prosecution of the war. The Government seems to have paid no attention to his reports, if indeed they were ever read.
Correspondance de Napoleon, ii. 28. Thugut, about this time, formed the plan of annexing Bologna and Ferrara to Austria, and said that if this result could be achieved, the French attack upon the Papal States would be no bad matter. See the instructions to Allvintzy, in Vivenot, Clerfayt, p. 511, which also contain the first Austrian orders to imprison Italian innovators, the beginning of Austria's later Italian policy.
Wurmser had orders to break out southwards into the Papal States. "These orders he (Thugut) knew had reached the Marshal, but they were also known to the enemy, as a cadet of Strasoldo's regiment, who was carrying the duplicate, had been taken prisoner, and having been seen to swallow a ball of wax, in which the order was wrapped up, he was immediately put to death and the paper taken out of his stomach." Eden, Jan., 1797; Records: Austria, vol. 48. Colonel Graham, who had been shut up in Mantua since Sept. 10, escaped on Dec 17, and restored communication between Wurmser and Allvintzy. He was present at the battle of Rivoli, which is described in his despatches.
"We expect every hour to hear of the entry of the Neapolitan troops and the declaration of a religious war. Every preparation has been made for such an event." Graves to Lord Grenville, Oct. 1, 1796; Records; Rome, vol. 56.
"The clamours for peace have become loud and importunate. His Imperial Majesty is constantly assailed by all his Ministers, M. de Thugut alone excepted, and by all who approach his person. Attempts are even made to alarm him with a dread of insurrection. In the midst of these calamities M. de Thugut retains his firmness of mind, and continues to struggle against the united voice of the nobility and the numerous and trying adversities that press upon him." Eden, April 1. "The confusion at the army exceeds the bounds of belief. Had Bonaparte continued his progress hither (Vienna), no doubt is entertained that he might have entered the place without opposition. That, instead of risking this enterprise, he should have stopped and given the Austrians six days to recover from their alarm and to prepare for defence, is a circumstance which it is impossible to account for." April 12. "He" (Mack) "said that when this place was threatened by the enemy, Her Imperial Majesty broke in upon the Emperor while in conference with his Minister, and, throwing herself and her children at his feet, determined His Majesty to open the negotiation which terminated in the shameful desertion of his ally." Aug. 16; Records: Austria, vols. 49, 50. Thugut subsequently told Lord Minto that if he could have laid his hand upon £500,000 in cash to stop the run on the Bank of Vienna, the war would have been continued, in which case he believed he would have surrounded Bonaparte's army.
The cession of the Rhenish Provinces was not, as usually stated, contained in the Preliminaries. Corr. de Napoleon, 2, 497; HÜffer, p. 259, where the details of the subsequent negotiations will be found.
Gohier, MÉmoires i. Carnot, RÉponse À Bailleul. Correspondance de Napoleon, ii. 188. Miot de Melito, ch. vi.
Martens, TraitÉs, vi. 420; Thugut, Briefe, ii. 64. These letters breathe a fire and passion rare among German statesmen of that day, and show the fine side of Thugut's character. The well-known story of the destruction of Cobenzl's vase by Bonaparte at the last sitting, with the words, "Thus will I dash the Austrian Monarchy to pieces," is mythical. Cobenzl's own account of the scene is as follows;-"Bonaparte, excited by not having slept for two nights, emptied glass after glass of punch. When I explained with the greatest composure, Bonaparte started up in a violent rage, and poured out a flood of abuse, at the same time scratching his name illegibly at the foot of the statement which he had handed in as protocol. Then without waiting for our signatures, he put on his hat in the conference-room itself, and left us. Until he was in the street he continued to vociferate in a manner that could only be ascribed to intoxication, though Clarke and the rest of his suite, who were waiting in the hall, did their best to restrain him." "He behaved as if he had escaped from a lunatic asylum. His own people are all agreed about this." HÜffer, Oestreich und Preussen, p. 453.
HÄusser, Deutsche Geschichte, ii. 147. Vivenot, Rastadter Congress, p. 17. Von Lang, Memoiren, i. 33. It is alleged that the official who drew up this document had not been made acquainted with the secret clauses.
"Tout annonce qu'il sera de toute impossibilitÉ de finir avec ces gueux de FranÇais autrement que par moyens de fermetÉ." Thugut, ii. 105. For the negotiation at Seltz, see Historische Zeitschrift, xxiii. 27.
Botta, lib. xiii. Letters of Mr. J. Denham and others in Records: Sicily, vol. 44.
Nelson Despatches, iii. 48.
Bernhardi, Geschichte Russlands, ii. 2, 382.
"Quel bonheur, quelle gloire, quelle consolation pour cette grande et illustre nation! Que je vous suis obligÉe, reconnaissante! J'ai pleurÉ et embrassÉ mes enfans, mon mari. Si jamais on fait un portrait du brave Nelson je le veux avoir dans ma chambre. Hip, Hip, Hip, Ma chÈre Miladi je suis folle de joye." Queen of Naples to Lady Hamilton, Sept. 4, 1798; Records: Sicily, vol. 44. The news of the overwhelming victory of the Nile seems literally to have driven people out of their senses at Naples. "Lady Hamilton fell apparently dead, and is not yet (Sept 25) perfectly recovered from her severe bruises." Nelson Despatches, 3, 130. On Nelson's arrival, "up flew her ladyship, and exclaiming, 'O God, is it possible?' she fell into my arms more dead than alive." It has been urged in extenuation of Nelson's subsequent cruelties that the contagion of this frenzy, following the effects of a severe wound in the head, had deprived his mind of its balance. "My head is ready to split, and I am always so sick." Aug. 10. "It required all the kindness of my friends to set me up." Sept. 25.
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Sir W. Hamilton's despatch, Nov. 28, in Records: Sicily, vol. 44, where there are originals of most of the Neapolitan proclamations, etc., of this time. Mack had been a famous character since the campaign of 1793. Elgin's letters to Lord Grenville from the Netherlands, private as well as public, are full of extravagant praise of him. In July, 1796, Graham writes from the Italian army: "In the opinion of all here, the greatest general in Europe is the Quartermaster Mack, who was in England in 1793. Would to God he was marching, and here now." Mack, on the other hand, did not grudge flattery to the English:-"Je perdrais partout espoir et patience si je n'avais pas vu pour mon bonheur et ma consolation l'adorable Triumvirat" (Pitt, Grenville, Dundas) "qui surveille À Londres nos affaires. Soyez, mon cher ami, l'organe de ma profonde vÉnÉration envers ces Ministres incomparables." Mack to Elgin, 23. Feb., 1794. The British Government was constantly pressing Thugut to make Mack commander-in chief. Thugut, who had formed a shrewd notion of Mack's real quality, gained much obloquy by his steady refusal.
Signed by Mack. Colletta, p. 176. Mack's own account of the campaign is in Vivenot, Rastadter Congress, p. 83.
Nelson, iii. 210: Hamilton's despatch, Dec. 28, 1798, in Records; Sicily, vol. 44. "It was impossible to prevent a suspicion getting abroad of the intention of the Royal Family to make their escape. However, the secret was so well kept that we contrived to get their Majesties' treasure in jewels and money, to a very considerable extent, on board of H.M. ship the Vanguard the 20th of December, and Lord Nelson went on the next night by a secret passage into the Palace, and brought off in his boats their Sicilian Majesties and all the Royal Family. It was not discovered at Naples, until very late at night, that the Royal Family had escaped.... On the morning of Christmas Day, some hours before we got into Palermo, Prince Albert, one of their Majesties' sons, six years of age, was, either from fright or fatigue, taken with violent convulsions, and died in the arms of Lady Hamilton, the Queen, the Princesses, and women attendants being in such confusion as to be incapable of affording any assistance."
See Helfert, Der Rastatter Gesandtenmord, and Sybel's article thereon, in Hist. Zeitschrift, vol. 32.
Danilevsky-Miliutin, ii. 214. Despatch of Lord W. Bentinck from the allied head-quarters at Piacenza, June 23, in Records: Italian States, vol. 58. Bentinck arrived a few days before this battle; his despatches cover the whole North-Italian campaign from this time.
Nelson Despatches, iii. 447; Sir W. Hamilton's Despatch of July 14, in Records: Sicily, vol. 45. Helfert, KÖnigin Karolina, p. 38. Details of the proscription in Colletta, v. 6. According to Hamilton, some of the Republicans in the forts had actually gone to their homes before Nelson pronounced the capitulation void. "When we anchored in the Bay, the 24th of June, the capitulation of the castles had in some measure taken place. Fourteen large polacks had taken on board out of the castles the most conspicuous and criminal of the Neapolitan rebels that had chosen to go to Toulon; the others had already been permitted to return to their homes." If this is so, Nelson's pretext that the capitulation had not been executed was a mere afterthought. Helfert is mistaken in calling the letter or proclamation of July 8th repudiating the treaty, a forgery. It is perfectly genuine. It was published by Nelson in the King's name, and is enclosed in Hamilton's despatch. Hamilton's exultations about himself and his wife, and their share in these events, are sorry reading. "In short, Lord Nelson and I, with Emma, have carried affairs to this happy crisis. Emma is really the Queen's bosom friend.... You may imagine, when we three agree, what real business is done.... At least I shall end my diplomatical career gloriously, as you will see by what the King of Naples writes from this ship to his Minister in London, owing the recovery of his kingdom to the King's fleet, and Lord Nelson and me." (Aug. 4, id.) Hamilton states the number of persons in prison at Naples on Sept. 12 to be above eight thousand.
Castlereagh, iv.; Records: Austria, 56. Lord Minto had just succeeded Sir Morton Eden as ambassador. The English Government was willing to grant the House of Hapsburg almost anything for the sake "of strengthening that barrier which the military means and resources of Vienna can alone oppose against the future enterprises of France." Grenville to Minto, May 13, 1800. Though they felt some regard for the rights of the King of Piedmont, Pitt and Grenville were just as ready to hand over the Republic of Genoa to the Hapsburgs as Bonaparte had been to hand over Venice; in fact, they looked forward to the destruction of the Genoese State with avowed pleasure, because it easily fell under the influence of France. Their principal anxiety was that if Austria "should retain Venice and Genoa and possibly acquire Leghorn," it should grant England an advantageous commercial treaty. Grenville to Minto, Feb. 8, 1800; Castlereagh, v. 3-11.
Lord Mulgrave to Grenville, Sept. 12, 1799; Records: Army of Switzerland, vol. 80. "Suvaroff opened himself to me in the most unreserved manner. He began by stating that he had been called at a very advanced period of life from his retirement, where his ample fortune and honours placed him beyond the allurement of any motives of interest. Attachment to his sovereign and zeal for his God inspired him with the hope and the expectation of conquests. He now found himself under very different circumstances. He found himself surrounded by the parasites or spies of Thugut, men at his devotion, creatures of his power: an army bigoted to a defensive system, afraid even to pursue their successes when that system had permitted them to obtain any; he had to encounter the further check of a Government at Vienna averse to enterprise, etc."
Miliutin, 2, 20, 3, 186; Minto, Aug. 10, 1799; Records: Austria, vol. 56. "I had no sooner mentioned this topic (Piedmont) than I perceived I had touched a very delicate point. M. de Thugut's manner changed instantly from that of coolness and civility to a great show of warmth attended with some sharpness. He became immediately loud and animated, and expressed chagrin at the invitation sent to the King of Sardinia.... He considers the conquest of Piedmont as one made by Austria of an enemy's country. He denies that the King of Sardinia can be considered as an ally or as a friend, or even as a neuter; and, besides imputing a thousand instances of ill-faith to that Court, relies on the actual alliance made by it with the French Republic by which the King of Sardinia had appropriated to himself part of the Emperor's dominions in Lombardy, an offence which, I perceive, will not be easily forgotten.... I mention these circumstances to show the degree of passion which the Court of Vienna mixes with this discussion." Minto answered Thugut's invective with the odd remark "that perhaps in the present extraordinary period the most rational object of this war was to restore the integrity of the moral principle both in civil and political life, and that this principle of justice should take the lead in his mind of those considerations of temporary convenience which in ordinary times might not have escaped his notice." Thugut then said "that the Emperor of Russia had desisted from his measure of the King of Sardinia's immediate recall, leaving the time of that return to the Emperor." On the margin of the despatch, against this sentence, is written in pencil, in Lord Grenville's handwriting, "I am persuaded this is not true."
Miliutin, 3, 117. And so almost verbatim in a conversation described in Eden's despatch, Aug. 31 Records: Austria, vol. 55. "M. de Thugut's answer was evidently dictated by a suspicion rankling in his mind that the Netherlands might be made a means of aggrandisement for Prussia. His jealousy and aversion to that Power are at this moment more inveterate than I have before seen them. It is probable that he may have some idea of establishing there the Great Duke of Tuscany."
Thugut's territorial policy did actually make him propose to abolish the Papacy not only as a temporal Power, but as a religious institution. "Baron Thugut argued strongly on the possibility of doing without a Pope, and of each sovereign taking on himself the function of head of the National Church, as in England. I said that as a Protestant, I could not be supposed to think the authority of the Bishop of Rome necessary; but that in the present state of religious opinion, and considering the only alternative in those matters, viz. the subsistence of the Roman Catholic faith or the extinction of Christianity itself, I preferred, though a Protestant, the Pope to the Goddess of Reason. However, the mind of Baron Thugut is not open to any reasoning of a general nature when it is put in competition with conquest or acquisition of territory." Minto to Grenville, Oct. 22, 1799; Records: Austria, vol. 57. The suspicions of Austria current at the Neapolitan Court are curiously shown in the Nelson Correspondence. Nelson writes to Minto (Aug. 20) at Vienna: "For the sake of the civilised world, let us work together, and as the best act of our lives manage to hang Thugut ... As you are with Thugut, your penetrating mind will discover the villain in all his actions.... That Thugut is caballing.... Pray keep an eye upon the rascal, and you will soon find what I say is true. Let us hang these three miscreants, and all will go smooth." Suvaroff was not more complimentary. "How can that desk-worm, that night-owl, direct an army from his dusky nest, even if he had the sword of Scanderbeg?" (Sept. 3.)
Miliutin, iii. 37; Bentinck, Aug. 16, from the battle-field; Records: Italian States, vol. 58. His letter ends "I must apologise to your Lordship for the appearance of this despatch" (it is on thin Italian paper and almost illegible): "we" (i.e., Suvaroff's staff) "have had the misfortune to have had our baggage plundered by the Cossacks."
Every capable soldier saw the ruinous mischief of the Archduke's withdrawal. "Not only are all prospects of our making any progress in Switzerland at an end, but the chance of maintaining the position now occupied is extremely precarious. The jealousy and mistrust that exists between the Austrians and Russians is inconceivable. I shall not pretend to offer an opinion on what might be the most advantageous arrangement for the army of Switzerland, but it is certain that none can be so bad as that which at present exists." Colonel Crauford, English military envoy, Sept. 5, 1799; Records: Army of Switzerland, vol. 79. The subsequent Operations of Korsakoff are described in despatches of Colonel Ramsay and Lord Mulgrave, id. vol. 80, 81, Conversations with the Archduke Charles in those of Mr. Wickham, id. vol. 77.
The despatches of Colonel Clinton, English attachÉ with Suvaroff, are in singular contrast to the highly-coloured accounts of this retreat common in histories. Of the most critical part he only says: "On the 6th the army passed the Panix mountain, which the snow that had fallen during the last week had rendered dangerous, and several horses and mules were lost on the march." He expresses the poorest opinion of Suvaroff and his officers: "The Marshal is entirely worn out and incapable of any exertion: he will not suffer the subject of the indiscipline of his army to be mentioned to him. He is popular with his army because he puts no check whatever in its licentiousness. His honesty is now his only remaining good quality." Records: Army of Switzerland, vol. 80. The elaborate plan for Suvaroff's and Korsakoff's combined movements, made as if Switzerland had been an open country and Massena's army a flock of sheep, was constructed by the Austrian colonel Weyrother, the same person who subsequently planned the battle of Austerlitz. On learning the plan from Suvaroff, Lord Mulgrave, who was no great genius, wrote to London demonstrating its certain failure, and predicting almost exactly the events that took place.
Miot de Melito, ch. ix. Lucien Bonaparte, RÉvolution de Brumaire, p. 31.
Law of Feb. 17, 1800 (28 PluviÖse, viii.).
M. Thiers, Feb. 21, 1872.
Parl. Hist, xxxiv. 1198. Thugut, Briefe ii. 445.
Memorial du DÉpÔt de la Guerre, 1826, iv. 268. Bentinck's despatch, June 16; Records: Italian States, vol. 59.
Thugut, Briefe ii. 227, 281, 393; Minto's despatch, Sept. 24, 1800; Records: Austria, vol. 60. "The Emperor was in the act of receiving a considerable subsidy for a vigorous prosecution of the war at the very moment when he was clandestinely and in person making the most abject submission to the common enemy. Baron Thugut was all yesterday under the greatest uneasiness concerning the event which he had reason to apprehend, but which was not yet certain. He still retained, however, a slight hope, from the apparent impossibility of anyone's committing such an act of infamy and folly. I never saw him or any other man so affected as he was when he communicated this transaction to me to-day. I said that these fortresses being demanded as pledges of sincerity, the Emperor should have given on the same principle the arms and ammunition of the army. Baron Thugut added that after giving up the soldiers' muskets, the clothes would be required off their backs, and that if the Emperor took pains to acquaint the world that he would not defend his crown, there would not be wanting those who would take it from his head, and perhaps his head with it. He became so strongly affected that, in laying hold of my hand to express the strong concern he felt at the notion of having committed me and abused the confidence I had reposed in his counsels, he burst into tears and literally wept. I mention these details because they confirm the assurance that every part of these feeble measures has either been adopted against his opinion or executed surreptitiously and contrary to the directions he had given." After the final collapse of Austria, Minto writes of Thugut: "He never for a moment lost his presence of mind or his courage, nor ever bent to weak and unbecoming counsels. And perhaps this can be said of him alone in this whole empire." Jan. 3, 1801, id.
Martens, vii. 296.
Koch und Schoell, Histoire des TraitÉs, vi. 6. Nelson Despatches, iv. 299.
De Clercq, TraitÉs de la France i. 484.
Parl. Hist., Nov. 3, 1801.
Gagern, Mein Antheil, i. 119. He protests that he never carried the dog. The waltz was introduced about this time at Paris by Frenchmen returning from Germany, which gave occasion to the mot that the French had annexed even the national dance of the Germans.
Perthes, Politische ZustÄnde, i. 311.
Koch und Schoell, vi. 247. Beer, Zehn Jahre Oesterreichischer Politik, p. 35 HÄusser, ii. 398.
Perthes, Politische ZustÄnde, ii. 402, seq.
Friedrich, Geschichte des Vatikanischen Konzils, i. 27, 174.
Pertz, Leben Stein, i. 257. Seeley's Stein, i. 125.
The first hand account of the formation of the Code Napoleon, with the ProcÈs Verbal of the Council of State and the principal reports, speeches, etc., made in the Tribunate and the Legislative Bodies, is to be found in the work of Baron LocrÉ, "La Legislation de la France," published at Paris in 1827. LocrÉ was Secretary of the Council of State under the Consulate and the Empire, and possessed a quantity of records which had not been published before 1827. The ProcÈs Verbal, though perhaps not always faithful, contains the only record of Napoleon's own share in the discussions of the Council of State.
The statement, so often repeated, that the Convention prohibited Christian worship, or "abolished Christianity," in France, is a fiction. Throughout the Reign of Terror the Convention maintained the State Church as established by the Constituent Assembly in 1791. Though the salaries of the clergy fell into arrear, the Convention rejected a proposal to cease paying them. The non-juring priests were condemned by the Convention to transportation, and were liable to be put to death if they returned to France. But where churches were profaned, or constitutional priests molested, it was the work of local bodies or of individual Conventionalists on mission, not of the law. The Commune of Paris shut up most, but not all, of the churches in Paris. Other local bodies did the same. After the Reign of Terror ended, the Convention adopted the proposal which it had rejected before, and abolished the State salary of the clergy (Sept. 20th, 1794). This merely placed all sects on a level. But local fanatics were still busy against religion; and the Convention accordingly had to pass a law (Feb. 23, 1795), forbidding all interference with Christian services. This law required that worship should not be held in a distinctive building (i.e. church), nor in the open air. Very soon afterwards the Convention (May 23) permitted the churches to be used for worship. The laws against non-juring priests were not now enforced, and a number of churches in Paris were actually given up to non-juring priests. The Directory was inclined to renew the persecution of this class in 1796, but the Assemblies would not permit it; and in July, 1797, the Council of Five Hundred passed a motion totally abolishing the legal penalties of non-jurors. This was immediately followed by the coup d'État of Fructidor.
GrÉgoire, MÉmoires, ii. 87. Annales de la Religion, x. 441; PressensÉ, L'Eglise et la Revolution, p. 359.
Papers presented to Parliament, 1802-3, p. 95.
"The King and his Ministers are in the greatest distress and embarrassment. The latter do not hesitate to avow it, and the King has for the last week shown such evident symptoms of dejection that the least observant could not but remark it. He has expressed himself most feelingly upon the unfortunate predicament in which he finds himself. He would welcome the hand that should assist him and the voice that should give him courage to extricate himself."-F. Jackson's despatch from Berlin, May 16, 1803; Records; Prussia, vol. 189.
HÄusser ii. 472. There are interesting accounts of Lombard and the other leading persons of Berlin in F. Jackson's despatches of this date. The charge of gross personal immorality made against Lombard is brought against almost every German public man of the time in the writings of opponents. History and politics are, however, a bad tribunal of private character.
Fournier, Gentz und Cobenzl, p. 79. Beer, Zehn Jahre, p. 49. The despatches of Sir J. Warren of this date from St. Petersburg (Records: Russia, vol. 175) are full of plans for meeting an expected invasion of the Morea and the possible liberation of the Greeks by Bonaparte. They give the impression that Eastern affairs were really the dominant interest with Alexander in his breach with France.
Miot de Melito, i. 16. Savary, ii. 32.
A protest handed in at Vienna by Louis XVIII. against Napoleon's title was burnt in the presence of the French ambassador. The Austrian title was assumed on August 10, but the publication was delayed a day on account of the sad memories of August 10, 1792. Fournier, p. 102. Beer, p. 60.
Papers presented to Parliament, 28th January, 1806, and 5th May, 1815.
Hardenberg, ii. 50: corrected in the articles on Hardenberg and Haugwitz in the Deutsche Allgemeine Biographie.
Hardenberg, v. 167. Hardenberg was meanwhile representing himself to the British and Russian envoys as the partisan of the Allies. "He declared that he saw it was become impossible for this country to remain neutral, and that he should unequivocally make known his sentiments to that effect to the King. He added that if the decision depended upon himself, Russia need entertain no apprehension as to the part he should take."-Jackson, Sept. 3, 1805; Records: Prussia, vol. 194.
Gentz, Schriften, iii. 60, Beer, 132, 141. Fournier, 104. Springer, i. 64.
Rustow, Krieg von 1805, p. 55.
Nelson Despatches, vi. 457.
"The reports from General Mack are of the most satisfactory nature, and the apprehensions which were at one time entertained from the immense force which Bonaparte is bringing into Germany gradually decrease."-Sir A. Paget's Despatch from Vienna, Sept, 18; Records: Austria, vol. 75.
Rustow, p. 154. SchÖnhals, Krieg von 1805, p. 33. Paget's despatch, Oct. 25; Records: Austria, vol. 75. "The jealousy and misunderstanding among the generals had reached such a pitch that no communication took place between Ferdinand and Mack but in writing. Mack openly attributed his calamities to the ill-will and opposition of the Archduke and the rest of the generals. The Archduke accuses Mack of ignorance, of madness, of cowardice, and of treachery. The consternation which prevails here (Vienna) is at the highest pitch. The pains which are taken to keep the public in the dark naturally increase the alarm. Not a single newspaper has been delivered for several days past except the wretched Vienna. Gazette. The Emperor is living at a miserable country-house, in order, as people say, that he may effect his escape. Every bark on the Danube has been put in requisition by the Government. The greatest apprehensions prevail on account of the Russians, of whose excesses loud complaints are made. Their arrival here is as much dreaded as that of the French. Cobenzl and Collenbach are in such a state of mind as to render them totally unfit for all business." Cobenzl was nevertheless still able to keep up his jocular style in asking the ambassador for the English subsidies:-"Vous Êtes malade, je le suis aussi un peu, mais ce qui est encore plus malade que nous deux ce sont nos finances; ainsi pour l'amour de Dieu dÉpÊchez vous de nous donner vos deux cent mille livres sterlings. Je vous embrasse de tout mon coeur,"-Cobenzl to Paget, enclosed in id.
Hardenberg, ii. 268. Jackson, Oct. 7. Records: Prussia, vol. 195. "The intelligence was received yesterday at Potsdam, while M. de Hardenberg was with the King of Prussia. His Prussian Majesty was very violently affected by it, and in the first moment of anger ordered M. de Hardenberg to return to Berlin and immediately to dismiss the French ambassador. After a little reflection, however, he said that that measure should be postponed."
Rapp, MÉmoires, p. 58. Beer, p. 188.
"The scarcity of provisions had been very great indeed. Much discouragement had arisen in consequence, and a considerable degree of insubordination, which, though less easy to produce in a Russian army than in any other, is, when it does make its appearance, most prejudicial, was beginning to manifest itself in various ways. The bread waggons were pillaged on their way to the camp, and it became very difficult to repress the excesses of the troops."-Report of General Ramsay, Dec. 10; Records: Austria, vol. 78.
Hardenberg, ii. 345, Haugwitz had just become joint Foreign Minister with Hardenberg.
Haugwitz' justification of himself, with Hardenberg's comments upon it, is to be seen in Hardenberg, v. 220. But see also, for Hardenberg's own bad faith, id. i. 551.
Lord Harrowby's despatch from Berlin, Dec. 7; Records: Prussia, vol. 196. The news of Austerlitz reached Berlin on the night of Dec. 7. Next day Lord Harrowby called on Hardenberg. "He told me that in a council of war held since the arrival of the first accounts of the disaster, it had been decided to order a part of the Prussian army to march into Bohemia. These events, he said, need not interrupt our negotiations." Then, on the 12th came the news of the armistice: Harrowby saw Hardenberg that evening. "I was struck with something like irritation in his manner, with a sort of reference to the orders of the King, and with an expression which dropped from him that circumstances might possibly arise in which Prussia could look only to her own defence and security. I attributed this in a great degree to the agitation of the moment, and I should have pushed the question to a point if the entrance of Count Metternich and M. d'Alopeus had not interrupted me.... Baron Hardenberg assured us that the military movements of the Prussian army were proceeding without a moment's loss of time." On the 25th Haugwitz arrived with his treaty. Hardenberg then feigned illness. "Baron Hardenberg was too ill to see me, or, as far as I could learn, any other person; and it has been impossible for me to discover what intelligence is brought by Count Haugwitz."
Lefebvre, Histoire des Cabinets, ii. 217.
Martens, viii. 388; viii. 479. Beer, p. 232.
Correspondence de Napoleon, xii. 253.
[Transcriber's Note: A corner had been torn from the page in our print copy. A [***] sometimes indicates several missing words.]
The story of Pitt's "Austerlitz look" preceding his death is so impressive and so well known that I cannot resist giving the real facts about the reception of the news of Austerlitz in England. There were four Englishmen who were expected to witness the battle, Sir A. Paget, ambassador at Vienna, Lord L. Gower, ambassador with the Czar, Lord Harrington and General Ramsay, military envoys. Of these, Lord Harrington had left England too late to reach the armies; Sir A. Paget sat [***] despatches at OlmÜtz without hearing the firing, and on going out alter the [***] astonished to fall in with the retreating army; Gower was too far in [***] General Ramsay unfortunately went off on that very day to get some [***] no Englishman witnessed the awful destruction that took [***] that reached England, quite misrepresented [***] decisive one. Pitt actually thought at first [***] to his policy, and likely to encourage [***] as December 20th the following [***] "Even supposing the advantage of [***] must have been obtained with a loss which cannot have left his force in a condition to contend with the army of Prussia and at the same time to make head against the Allies. If on the other hand it should appear that the advantage has been with the Allies, there is every reason to hope that Prussia will come forward with vigour to decide the contest." Records: Prussia, vol. 196. It was the surrender of Ulm which really gave Pitt the shock attributed to Austerlitz. The despatch then written-evidently from Pitt's dictation-exhorting the Emperor to do his duty, is the most impassioned and soul-stirring thing in the whole political correspondence of the time.
Hardenberg, ii. 463. Hardenberg, who, in spite of his weak and ambiguous conduct up to the end of 1805, felt bitterly the disgraceful position in which Prussia had placed itself, now withdrew from office. "I received this morning a message from Baron Hardenberg requesting me to call on him. He said that he could no longer remain in office consistently with his honour, and that he waited only for the return of Count Haugwitz to give up to him the management of his department. 'You know,' he said, 'my principles, and the efforts that I have made in favour of the good cause; judge then of the pain that I must experience when I am condemned to be accessory to this measure. You know, probably, that I was an advocate for the acquisition of Hanover, but I wished it upon terms honourable to both parties. I thought it a necessary bulwark to cover the Prussian dominions, and I thought that the House of Hanover might have been indemnified elsewhere. But now,' he added, 'j'abhorre les moyens infames par lesquels nous faisons cette acquisition. Nous pourrions rester les amis de Bonaparte sans Être ses esclaves.' He apologised for this language, and said I must not consider it as coming from a Prussian Minister, but from a man who unbosomed himself to his friend.... I have only omitted the distressing picture of M. de Hardenberg's agitation during this conversation. He bewailed the fate of Prussia, and complained of the hardships he had undergone for the last three months, and of the want of firmness and resolution in his Prussian Majesty. He several times expressed the hope that his Majesty's Government and that of Russia would make some allowances for the situation of this country. They had the means, he said, to do it an infinity of mischief. The British navy might destroy the Prussian commerce, and a Russian army might conquer some of her eastern provinces; but Bonaparte would be the only gainer, as thereby Prussia would be thrown completely into his arms."-F. Jackson's despatch from Berlin, March 27, 1806; Records: Prussia, vol. 197.
On the British envoy demanding his passports, Haugwitz entered into a long defence of his conduct, alleging grounds of necessity. Mr. Jackson said that there could be no accommodation with England till the note excluding British vessels was reversed. "M. de Haugwitz immediately rejoined, 'I was much surprised when I found that that note had been delivered to you.' 'How,' I said, 'can you be surprised who was the author of the measures that give rise to it?' The only answer I received was, 'Ah! ne dites pas cela.' He observed that it would be worth considering whether our refusal to acquiesce in the present state of things might not bring about one still more disastrous. I smiled, and asked if I was to understand that a Prussian army would take a part in the threatened invasion of England. He replied that he did not now mean to insinuate any such thing, but that it might be impossible to answer for events."-Jackson's Despatch, April 25. id.
Papers presented to Parliament, 1806, p. 63.
"An order has been issued to the officers of the garrison of Berlin to abstain, under severe penalties, from speaking of the state of public affairs. This order was given in consequence of the very general and loud expressions of dissatisfaction which issued from all classes of people, but particularly from the military, at the recent conduct of the Government; for it has been in contemplation to publish an edict prohibiting the public at large from discussing questions of state policy. The experience of a very few days must convince the authors of this measure of the reverse of their expectation, the satires and sarcasms upon their conduct having become more universal than before."-Jackson's Despatch, March 22, id. "On Thursday night the windows of Count Haugwitz' house were completely demolished by some unknown person. As carbine bullets were chiefly made use of for the purpose, it is suspected to have been done by some of the garrison. The same thing had happened some nights before, but the Count took no notice of it. Now a party of the police patrol the street"-Id., April 27.
Pertz, i. 331. Seeley, i. 271.
Hopfner, Der Krieg von 1806, i. 48.
A list of all Prussian officers in 1806 of and above the rank of major is given in Henckel von Donnersmarck, Erinnerungen, with their years of service. The average of a colonel's service is 42 years; of a major's, 35.
MÜffling, Aus Meinem Leben, p. 15. Hopfner, i. 157. Correspondence de Napoleon, xiii. 150.
Hopfner, ii. 390. Hardenberg, iii. 230.
"Count Stein, the only man of real talents in the administration, has resigned or was dismissed. He is a considerable man, of great energy, character, and superiority of mind, who possessed the public esteem in a high degree, and, I have no doubt, deserved it.... During the negotiation for an armistice, the expenses of Bonaparte's table and household at Berlin were defrayed by the King of Prussia. Since that period one of the Ministers called upon Stein, who was the chief of the finances, to pay 300,000 crowns on the same account. Stein refused with strong expressions of indignation. The King spoke to him: he remonstrated with his Majesty in the most forcible terms, descanted on the wretched humiliation of such mean conduct, and said that he never could pay money on such an account unless he had the order in writing from his Majesty. This order was given a few days after the conversation."-Hutchinson's Despatch, Jan. 1, 1807; Records: Prussia, vol. 200.
Corr. Nap. xiii. 555.
"It is still doubtful who commands, and whether Kamensky has or has not given up the command. I wrote to him on the first moment of my arrival, but have received no answer from him. On the 23rd, the day of the first attack, he took off his coat and waistcoat, put all his stars and ribbons over his shirt, and ran about the streets of Pultusk encouraging the soldiers, over whom he is said to have great influence."-Lord Hutchinson's Despatch, Jan. 1, 1807; Records: Prussia, vol. 200.
Hutchinson's letter, in Adair, Mission to Vienna, p. 373.
For the Whig foreign policy, see Adair, p. 11-13. Its principle was to relinquish the attempt to raise coalitions of half-hearted Governments against France by means of British subsidies, but to give help to States which of their own free will entered into war with Napoleon.
The battle of Friedland is described in Lord Hutchinson's despatch (Records: Prussia, vol. 200-in which volume are also Colonel Sonntag's reports, containing curious details about the Russians, and some personal matter about Napoleon in a letter from an inhabitant of Eylau; also Gneisenau's appeal to Mr. Canning from Colberg).
Bignon, vi. 342.
Papers presented to Parliament, 1808, p. 106. The intelligence reached Canning on the 21st of July. Canning's despatch to Brook Taylor, July 22; Records: Denmark, vol. 196. It has never been known who sent the information, but it must have been some one very near the Czar, for it purported to give the very words used by Napoleon in his interview with Alexander on the raft. It is clear, from Canning's despatch of July 22, that this conversation and nothing else had up till then been reported. The informant was probably one of the authors of the English alliance of 1805.
Napoleon to Talleyrand, July 31, 1807. He instructs Talleyrand to enter into certain negotiations with the Danish Minister, which would be meaningless if the Crown Prince had already promised to hand over the fleet. The original English documents, in Records: Denmark, vols. 196, 197, really show that Canning never considered that he had any proof of the intentions of Denmark, and that he justified his action only by the inability of Denmark to resist Napoleon's demands.
Cevallos, p. 73.
Pertz, ii. 23. Seeley, i. 430.
Cevallos, p. 13. Baumgarten, Geschichte Spaniens, i. 131.
Escoiquiz, ExposÉ, p. 57, 107.
Miot de Melito, ii. ch. 7. Murat was made King of Naples.
Baumgarten, i. 242.
Wellington Despatches, iii. 135.
HÄusser, iii. 133. Seeley, i. 480.
For the striking part played at Erfurt by Talleyrand in opposition to Napoleon see Metternich's paper of December 4, in Beer, p. 516. It seems that Napoleon wished to involve the Czar in active measures against Austria, but was thwarted by Talleyrand.
Baumgarten i. 311.
Napier, ii. 17.
Metternich, ii. 147.
Gentz, TagebÜcher, i. 60.
Steffens, vi. 153. MÉmoires du Roi JÉrome, iii. 340.
Beer, p. 370. HÄusser, iii. 278.
Correspondance de Napoleon, xviii. 459, 472. Gentz, TagebÜcher, i. 120, Pelet, MÉmoires sur la Guerre de 1809, i. 223.
"Je n'ai jamais vu d'affaire aussi sanglante et aussi meurtriÈre." Report of the French General, MÉmoires de JÉrÔme, iv. 109.
See Arndt's Poem on Schill. Gedichte, i. 328 (ed. 1837).
Wellington Despatches, iv. 533. Sup. Desp. vi. 319, Napier, ii. 357.
Correspondance de Napoleon: DÉcision, Mai 23, 1806. Parliamentary Papers, 1810, p. 123, 697.
Beer, p. 445, Gentz, TagebÜcher, i. 82, 118.
Correspondance de Napoleon, xix. 15, 265.
Corresp. de Napoleon, xxiii. 62, DÉcret, 9 DÉc., 1811.
MÉmoires de JÉrome, v. 185.
Wellington Supplementary Despatches, vi. 41. Napier, iii. 250.
Baumgarten, Geschichte Spaniens, i. 405.
Hardenberg (Ranke), iv. 268. HÄusser, iii. 535. Seeley, ii. 447.
Martens, Nouveau Recueil, i. 417. A copy, or the original, of this Treaty was captured by the Russians with other of Napoleon's papers during the retreat from Moscow, and a draft of it sent to London, which remains in the Records.
Metternich, i. 122.
MÉmoires de JÉrome, v. 247.
Bogdanowitsch, i. 72; Chambray, i. 186. Sir R. Wilson, Invasion of Russia, p. 15.
Droysen, Leben des Grafen York. I. 394.
Pertz, iii. 211, seq. Seeley, iii. 21.
Oncken, Oesterreich und Preussen, i. 28.
Martens, N.R., III. 234. British and Foreign State Papers (Hertslet), i. 49.
For Breslau in February, see Steffens, 7. 69.
For the difference between the old and the new officers, see Correspondance de NapolÉon, 27 Avril, 1813.
Henckel von Donnersmarck, p. 187. The battles of LÜtzen, Bautzen, and Leipzig are described in the despatches of Lord Cathcart, who witnessed them in company with the Czar and King Frederick William. Records: Russia, 207, 209.
The account given in the following pages of Napoleon's motives and action during the armistice is based upon the following letters printed in the twenty-fifth volume of the Correspondence:-To EugÈne, June 2, July 1, July 17, Aug. 4; to Maret, July 8; to Daru, July 17; to Berthier, July 23; to Davoust, July 24, Aug. 5; to Ney, Aug. 4, Aug. 12. The statement of Napoleon's error as to the strength of the Austrian force is confirmed by Metternich, i. 150.
Oncken, i. 80.
Napoleon to EugÈne, 1st July, 1813.
Metternich, i. 163.
HÄusser, iv. 59. One of the originals is contained in Lord Cathcart's despatch from Kalisch, March 28th, 1813. Records: Russia, Vol. 206.
MÉmoires de JÉrome, vi. 223.
"Your lordship has only to recollect the four days' continued fighting at Leipzig, followed by fourteen days' forced marches in the worst weather, in order to understand the reasons that made some repose absolutely necessary. The total loss of the Austrians alone, since the 10th of August, at the time of our arrival at Frankfort, was 80,000 men. We were entirely unprovided with heavy artillery, the nearest battery train not having advanced further than the frontiers of Bohemia." It was thought for a moment that the gates of Strasburg and Huningen might be opened by bribery, and the Austrian Government authorised the expenditure of a million florins for this purpose; in that case the march into Switzerland would have been abandoned. The bribing plan, however, broke down.-Lord Aberdeen's despatches, Nov. 24, Dec. 25, 1813. Records; Austria, 107.
Castlereagh's despatch from Langres, Jan. 29, 1814. Records: Continent, Vol. II.: "As far as I have hitherto felt myself called on to give an opinion, I have stated that the British Government did not decline treating with Bonaparte." "The Czar said he observed my view of the question was different from what he believed prevailed in England" (id. Feb. 16). See Southey's fine Ode on the Negotiations of 1814.
British and Foreign State Papers, I. 131.
BÉranger, Biographie, ed. duod., p. 354.
British and Foreign State Papers, I. 151.
Lord W. Bentinck, who was with Murat, warned him against the probable consequences of his duplicity. Bentinck had, however, to be careful in his language, as the following shows. Murat having sent him a sword of honour, he wrote to the English Government, May 1, 1814: "It is a severe violence to my feelings to incur any degree of obligation to an individual whom I so entirely despise. But I feel it my duty not to betray any appearance of a spirit of animosity." To Murat he wrote on the same day: "The sword of a great captain is the most flattering present which a soldier can receive. It is with the highest gratitude that I accept the gift, Sire, which you have done me the honour to send."-Records: Sicily, Vol. 98.
Treaties of Teplitz, Sept. 9, 1813. In Bianchi, Storia Documentata della Diplomazia Europea, i. 334, there is a long protest addressed by Metternich to Castlereagh on May 26, 1814, referring with great minuteness to a number of clauses in a secret Treaty signed by all the Powers at Prague on July 27, 1813, and ratified at London on August 23, giving Austria the disposal of all Italy. This protest, which has been accepted as genuine in Reuchlin's Geschichte Italiens and elsewhere, is, with the alleged secret Treaty, a forgery. My grounds for this statement are as follows:-(1) There was no British envoy at Prague in July, 1813. (2) The private as well as the official letters of Castlereagh to Lord Cathcart of Sept. 13 and 18, and the instructions sent to Lord Aberdeen during August and September, prove that no joint Treaty existed up to that date, to which both England and Austria were parties. Records: Russia, 207, 209 A. Austria, 105. (3) Lord Aberdeen's reports of his negotiations with Metternich after this date conclusively prove that almost all Italian questions, including even the Austrian frontier, were treated as matters to be decided by the Allies in common. While Austria's right to a preponderance in upper Italy is admitted, the affairs of Rome and Naples are always treated as within the range of English policy.
The originals of the Genoese and Milanese petitions for independence are in Records: Sicily, Vol. 98. "The Genoese universally desire the restoration of their ancient Republic. They dread above all other arrangements their annexation to Piedmont, to the inhabitants of which there have always existed a peculiar aversion."-Bentick's Despatch, April 27, 1814, id.
Castlereagh, x. 18.
As Arndt, Schriften, ii. 311, FÜnf oder sechs Wunder Gottes.
Bernhardi, Geschichte Russlands, iii. 26.
Parl. Debates, xxvii. 634, 834.
Wellington, Sup. Des., x. 468; Castlereagh, x. 145. Records, Sicily, vol. 97. The future King Louis Philippe was sent by his father-in-law, Ferdinand, to England, to intrigue against Murat among the Sovereigns and Ministers then visiting England. His own curious account of his proceedings, with the secret sign for the Prince Regent, given him by Louis XVIII., who was afraid to write anything, is in id., vol. 99.
Wippermann, Kurhessen, pp. 9-13. In Hanover torture was restored, and occasionally practised till the end of 1818: also the punishment of death by breaking on the wheel. See Hodgskin, Travels, ii. 51, 69.
Baumgarten, Geschichte Spaniens, ii. 30, Wellington, D., xii. 27; S. D., ix. 17.
Wellington, S.D., ix. 328.
Compare his cringing letter to Pichegru in Manuscrit de Louis XVIII., p. 463, with his answer in 1797 to the Venetian Senate, in Thiers.
Moniteur, 5 Juin. British and Foreign State Papers, 1812-14, ii. 960.
The payment of £13 per annum in direct taxes. No one could be elected who did not pay £40 per annum in direct taxes,-so large a sum, that the Charta provided for the case of there not being fifty persons in a department eligible.
Fourteen out of Napoleon's twenty marshals and three-fifths of his Senators were called to the Chamber of Peers. The names of the excluded Senators will be found in Vaulabelle, ii. 100; but the reader must not take Vaulabelle's history for more than a collection of party-legends.
Ordonnance, in Moniteur, 26 Mai.
This poor creature owed his life, as he owes a shabby immortality, to the beautiful and courageous Grace Dalrymple Elliot. Journal of Mrs. G.D. Elliot, p. 79.
Carnot, MÉmoire adressÉ au Roi, p. 20.
Wellington Despatches, xii. 248. On the ground of his ready-money dealings, it has been supposed that Wellington understood the French people. On the contrary, he often showed great want of insight, both in his acts and in his opinions, when the finer, and therefore more statesmanlike, sympathies were in question. Thus, in the delicate position of ambassador of a victorious Power and counsellor of a restored dynasty, he bitterly offended the French country-population by behaving like a grand seigneur before 1789, and hunting with a pack of hounds over their young corn. The matter was so serious that the Government of Louis XVIII. had to insist on Wellington stopping his hunts. (Talleyrand et Louis XVIII., p. 141.) This want of insight into popular feeling, necessarily resulted in some portentous blunders: e.g., all that Wellington could make of Napoleon's return from Elba was the following:-"He has acted upon false or no information, and the King will destroy him without difficulty and in a short time." Despatches, xii. 268.
A good English account of Vienna during the Congress will be found in "Travels in Hungary," by Dr. R. Bright, the eminent physician. His visit to Napoleon's son, then a child five years old, is described in a passage of singular beauty and pathos.
British and Foreign State Papers, 1814-15, p. 554, seq. Talleyrand et Louis XVIII., p. 13. Kluber, ix. 167. Seeley's Stein, iii. 248. Gentz, DÉpÊches InÉdites, i. 107. Records: Continent, vol. 7, Oct. 2.
Bernhardi, i. 2; ii. 2, 661.
Wellington, S.D., ix. 335.
Wellington, S.D., ix. 340. Records: Continent, vol. 7, Oct. 9, 14.
Talleyrand, p. 74. Records, id., Oct. 24, 25.
Wellington, S.D., ix. 331. Talleyrand, pp. 59, 82, 85, 109. KlÜber, vii. 21.
British and Foreign State Papers, 1814-15, p. 814. KlÜber, vii. 61.
Talleyrand, p. 281.
B. and F. State Papers, 1814-15, ii. 1001.
Castlereagh did not contradict them. Records: Cont., vol. 10, Jan. 8.
British and Foreign State Papers, 1814-15, p. 642. Seeley's Stein, iii. 303. Talleyrand, Preface, p. 18.
Chiefly, but not altogether, because Napoleon's war with England had ruined the trade of the ports. See the report of Marshal Brune, in Daudet, La Terreur Blanche, p. 173, and the striking picture of Marseilles in Thiers, xviii. 340, drawn from his own early recollections. Bordeaux was Royalist for the same reason.
Berriat-St. Prix, NapolÉon À Grenoble, p. 10.
BÉranger, Biographie, p. 373, ed. duod.
See their contemptible addresses, as well as those of the army, in the Moniteur, from the 10th to the 19th of March to Louis XVIII., from the 27th onwards to Napoleon.
i.e., Because he had abused his liberty. On Ney's trial two courtiers alleged that Ney said he "would bring back Napoleon in an iron cage." Ney contradicted, them. ProcÈs de Ney, ii. 105, 113.
British and Foreign State Papers, 1814-15, ii. 443.
Correspondance de Napoleon, xxviii. 171, 267, etc.
British and Foreign State Papers, 1814-15, ii. 275. Castlereagh, ix. 512, Wellington, S.D., ix. 244. Records: Continent, vol. 12, Feb. 26.
Correspondance de NapolÉon, xxviii. 111, 127. The order forbidding him to come to Paris is wrongly dated April 19; probably for May 29. The English documents relating to Ferdinand's return to Naples, with the originals of many proclamations, etc., are in Records: Sicily, vols. 103, 104. They are interesting chiefly as showing the deep impression made on England by Ferdinand's cruelties in 1799.
Benjamin Constant, MÉmoire sur les Cent Jours.
Lafayette, MÉmoires, v. 414.
Miot de Melito, iii. 434.
Napoleon to Ney; Correspondance, xxviii. 334.
"I have got an infamous army, very weak and ill-equipped, and a very inexperienced staff." (Despatches, xii. 358.) So, even after his victory, he writes:-"I really believe that, with the exception of my old Spanish infantry, I have got not only the worst troops but the worst-equipped army, with the worst staff that was ever brought together." (Despatches, xii. 509.)
Therefore he kept his forces more westwards, and further from BlÜcher, than if he had known Napoleon's actual plan. But the severance of the English from the sea required to be guarded against as much as a defeat of BlÜcher. The Duke never ceased to regard it as an open question whether Napoleon ought not to have thrown his whole force between Brussels and the sea. (Vide Memoir written in 1842 Wellington, S.D., ix. 530.)
Metternich, i., p. 155.
Wellington Despatches, xii. 649.
Wellington, S.D., xi. 24, 32. Maps of projected frontiers, Records: Cont., vol 23.
Despatches, xii. 596. Seeley's Stein, iii. 332.
B. and F State Papers, 1815-16, iii. 201. The second article is the most characteristic:-"Les trois Princes ... confessant que la nation ChrÉtienne dont eux et leurs peuples font partie n'a rÉellement d'autre Souverain que celui À qui seul appartient en propriÉtÉ la puissance ... c'est-À-dire Dieu notre Divin Sauveur JÉsus Christ, le Verbe du TrÈs Haut, la parole de vie: leurs MajestÉs recommandent ... À leurs peuples ... de se fortifier chaque jour davantage dans les principes et l'exercice des devoirs que le Divin Sauveur a enseignÉs aux hommes."
Wellington, S.D., xi. 175. The account which Castlereagh gives of the Czar's longing for universal peace appears to refute the theory that Alexander had some idea of an attack upon Turkey in thus uniting Christendom. According to Castlereagh, Metternich also thought that "it was quite clear that the Czar's mind was affected," but for the singular reason that "peace and goodwill engrossed all his thoughts, and that he had found him of late friendly and reasonable on all points" (Id.) There was, however, a strong popular impression at this time that Alexander was on the point of invading Turkey. (Gentz, D.I., i. 197.)
B. and F. State Papers, 1815-16, iii. 273. Records; Continent, vol. 30.
KlÜber, ii. 598.
KlÜber, vi. 12. It covers, with its appendices, 205 pages.
In the first draft of the secret clauses of the Treaty of June 14, 1800, between England and Austria (see p. 150), Austria was to have had Genoa. But the fear arising that Russia would not permit Austria's extension to the Mediterranean, an alteration was made, whereby Austria was promised half of Piedmont, Genoa to go to the King of Sardinia in compensation.
Pertz, Leben Steins, iv 524.
Talleyrand, p. 277.
B. and F. State Papers, 1815-16, p. 928.
Bernhardi, iii. 2, 10, 666.
"We are now inundated with Russian agents of various descriptions, some public and some secret, but all holding the same language, all preaching 'Constitution and liberal principles,' and all endeavouring to direct the eyes of the independents towards the North.... A copy of the instructions sent to the Russian Minister here has fallen into the hands of the Austrians." A'Court (Ambassador at Naples) to Castlereagh, Dec. 7, 1815, Records: Sicily, 104.
A profound reason has been ascribed to Metternich's conservatism by some of his English apologists in high place, namely the fear that if ideas of nationality should spring up, the non-German components of the Austrian monarchy, viz., Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia, etc., would break off and become independent States. But there is not a word in Metternich's writings which shows that this apprehension had at this time entered his mind. To generalise his Italian policy of 1815 into a great prophetic statesmanship, is to interpret the ideas of one age by the history of the next.
In Moravia. For the system of espionage, see the book called "Carte segrete della polizia Austriaca," consisting of police-reports which fell into the hands of the Italians at Milan in 1848.
Bianchi, Storia Documentata, i. 208. The substance of this secret clause was communicated to A'Court, the English Ambassador at Naples. "I had no hesitation in saying that anything which contributed to the good understanding now prevailing between Austria and Naples, could not but prove extremely satisfactory to the British Government." A'Court to Castlereagh, July 18, 1815. Records: Sicily, vol. 104.
Letters in Reuchlin, Geschichte Italiens, i. 71. The Holy Alliance was turned to better account by the Sardinian statesmen than by the Neapolitans. "Apres s'Être alliÉ," wrote the Sardinian Ambassador at St. Petersburg, "en Jesus-Christ notre Sauveur parole de vie, pourquoi et À quel propos s'allier en Metternich?"
See the passages from Grenville's letters quoted in pp. 125, 126 of this work.
Castlereagh, x. 18. "The danger is that the transition" (to liberty) "may be too sudden to ripen into anything likely to make the world better or happier.... I am sure it is better to retard than accelerate the operation of this most hazardous principle which is abroad."
B. and F. State Papers, 1816-17, p. 553. Metternich, iii. 80. Castlereagh had at first desired that the Constitution should be modified under the influence of the English Ambassador. Instructions to A'Court, March 14, 1814, marked "Most Secret"; Records: Sicily, vol. 99. A'Court himself detested the Constitution. "I conceive the Sicilian people to be totally and radically unfit to be entrusted with political power." July 23, 1814, id.
Castlereagh, x. 25.
"If his Majesty announces his determination to give effect to the main principles of a constitutional rÉgime, it is possible that he may extinguish the existing arrangement with impunity, and re-establish one more consistent with the efficiency of the executive power, and which may restore the great landed proprietors and the clergy to a due share of authority." Castlereagh, id.
Daudet, La Terreur Blanche, p. 186. The loss of the troops was a hundred. The stories of wholesale massacres at Marseilles and other places are fictions.
See the Address, in Journal des DÉbats, 15 Octobre: "Nous oserons solliciter humblement la rÉtribution nÉcessaire," etc. For the general history of the Session, see Duvergier de Hauranne, iii. 257; Viel-Castal, iv. 139; Castlereagh's severe judgment of Artois. Records: Cont., 28, Sept. 21.
Journal des DÉbats, 29 October.
Wellington, S.D., xi. 95. This self-confident folly is repeated in many of Lord Liverpool's letters.
ProcÈs du MarÉchal Ney, i. 212.
Ney was not, however, a mere fighting general. The Military Studies published in English in 1833 from his manuscripts prove this. They abound in acute remarks, and his estimate of the quality of the German soldier, at a time when the Germans were habitually beaten and despised, is very striking. He urges that when French infantry fight in three ranks, the charge should be made after the two front ranks have fired, without waiting for the third to fire. "The German soldier, formed by the severest discipline, is cooler than any other. He would in the end obtain the advantage in this kind of firing if it lasted long." (P. 100.) Ney's parents appear to have been WÜrtemberg people who had settled in Alsace. The name was really Neu (New).
See the extracts from La Bourdonnaye's printed speech in Journal des DÉbits, 19 Novembre: "Pour arrÊter leurs trames criminelles, il faut des fers, des bourreaux, des supplices. La mort, la mort seule peut effrayer leurs complices et mettre fin À leurs complots," etc. The journals abound with similar speeches.
General Mouton-Duvernet. Several were sentenced to death in their absence; some were acquitted on the singular plea that they had become subjects of the Empire of Elba, and so could not be guilty of treason to the King of France.
The sentence was commuted by the King to twelve years' imprisonment. General Chartran was actually shot. It is stated, though it appears not to be clear, that his prosecution began at the same late date. Duvergier de Hauranne, iii. 335.
The highest number admitted by the Government to have been imprisoned at any one time under the Law of Public Security was 319, in addition to 750 banished from their homes or placed under surveillance. No one has collected statistics of the imprisonments by legal sentence. The old story that there were 70,000 persons in prison is undoubtedly an absurd exaggeration; but the numbers given by the Government, even if true at any one moment, afford no clue to the whole number of imprisonments, for as fast as one person gets out of prison in France in a time of political excitement, another is put in. The writer speaks from personal experience, having been imprisoned in 1871. Any one who has seen how these affairs are conducted will know how ridiculous it would be to suppose that the central government has information of every case.
See, e.g., the PÉtition aux Deux Chambres, 1816, at the beginning of P.L. Courier's works.
Journal des DÉbats, 19 Decembre, 1815.
Wellington, S.D., xi 309.
Despatch in Duvergier de Hauranne, iii. 441.
Pertz, Leben Steins, iv. 428.
Schmalz, Berichtigung, etc., p. 14.
Pertz, Leben Steins, v. 23.
A curious account of the festival remains, written by Kieser, one of the Professors who took part in it (Kieser, Das Wartburgfest, 1818). It is so silly that it is hard to believe it to have been written by a grown-up man. He says of the procession to the Wartburg, "There have indeed been processions that surpassed this in outward glory and show; but in inner significant value it cannot yield to any." But making allowance for the author's personal weakness of head, his book is a singular and instructive picture of the mental condition of "Young Germany" and its teachers at that time-a subject that caused such extravagant anxiety to Governments, and so seriously affected the course of political history. It requires some effort to get behind the ridiculous side of the students' Teutonism; but there were elements of reality there. Persons familiar with Wales will be struck by the resemblance, both in language and spirit, between the scenes of 1818 and the religious meetings or the Eisleddfodau of the Welsh, a resemblance not accidental, but resulting from similarity of conditions, viz., a real susceptibility to religious, patriotic, and literary ideas among a people unacquainted with public or practical life on a large scale. But the vigorous political action of the Welsh in 1880, when the landed interest throughout the Principality lost seats which it had held for centuries, surprised only those who had seen nothing but extravagance in the chapel and the field-meeting. Welsh ardour, hitherto in great part undirected, then had a practical effect because English organisation afforded it a model: German ardour in 1817 proved sterile because it had no such example at hand.
See the speech in Bernhardi, iii. 669.
Gentz, D.I., ii. 87, iii. 72.
Castlereagh, xii. 55, 62.
Wellington, S.D., xii. 835.
B. and F. State Papers, 1818-19, vi. 14.
Gentz, D.I., i. 400. Gentz, the confidant and adviser of Metternich, was secretary to the Conference at Aix-la-Chapelle. His account of it in this despatch is of the greatest value, bringing out in a way in which no official documents do the conservative and repressive tone of the Conference. The prevalent fear had been that Alexander would break with his old Allies and make a separate league with France and Spain. See also Castlereagh, xii. 47.
"I could write you a long letter about the honour which the Prussians pay to everything Austrian, our whole position, our measures, our language. Metternich has fairly enchanted them." Gentz, Nachlasse (Osten), i. 52.
Metternich, iii. 171.
See his remarks in Metternich, iii. 269; an oasis of sense in this desert of Commonplace.
Stourdza, Denkschrift, etc., p. 31. The French original is not in the British Museum.
The extracts from Sand's diaries, published in a little book in 1821 (TagebÜcher, etc.), form a very interesting religious study. The last, written on Dec. 31, 1818, is as follows:-"I meet the last day of this year in an earnest festal spirit, knowing well that the Christmas which I have celebrated will be my last. If our strivings are to result in anything, if the cause of mankind is to succeed in our Fatherland, if all is not to be forgotten, all our enthusiasm spent in vain, the evildoer, the traitor, the corrupter of youth must die. Until I have executed this, I have no peace; and what can comfort me until I know that I have with upright will set my life at stake? O God, I pray only for the right clearness and courage of soul, that in that last supreme hour I may not be false to myself" (p. 174). The reference to the Greeks is in a letter in the English memoir, p. 40.
The papers of the poet Arndt were seized. Among them was a copy of certain short notes made by the King of Prussia, about 1808, on the uselessness of a levÉe en masse. One of these notes was as follows:-"As soon as a single clergyman is shot" (i.e. by the French) "the thing would come to an end." These words were published in the Prussian official paper as an indication that Arndt, worse than Sand, advocated murdering clergymen! Welcker, Urkunden, p. 89.
Metternich, iii. 217, 258.
Metternich, iii. 268.
The minutes of the Conference are in Welcker, Urkunden, p. 104, seq. See also Weech, Correspondenzen.
Protokolle der Bundesversammlung, 8, 266. Nauwerck, ThÄtigkeit, etc., 2, 287.
Ægidi, Der Schluss-Acte, ii. 362, 446.
Article 57. The intention being that no assembly in any German State might claim sovereign power as representing the people. If, for instance, the Bavarian Lower House had asserted that it represented the sovereignty of the people, and that the King was simply the first magistrate in the State, this would have been an offence against Federal law, and have entitled the Diet-i.e. Metternich-to armed interference. The German State-papers of this time teem with the constitutional distinction between a Representative Assembly (i.e. assembly representing popular sovereignty) and an Assembly of Estates (i.e., of particular orders with limited, definite rights, such as the granting of a tax). In technical language, the question at issue was the true interpretation of the phrase LandstÄndische Verfassungen, used in the 13th article of the original Act of Federation.
See, in Welcker, Urkunden, p. 356, the celebrated paper called "Memorandum of a Prussian Statesman, 1822," which at the same time recommends a systematic underhand rivalry with Austria, in preparation for an ultimate breach. Few State-papers exhibit more candid and cynical cunning.
Ilse, Politische Verfolgungen, p. 31.
The comparison is the Germans' own, not mine. "'How savoury a thin roast veal is!' said one Hamburg beggar to another. 'Where did you eat it?' said his friend, admiringly. 'I never ate it at all, but I smelt it as I passed a great man's house while the dog was being fed.'" (Ilse, p. 57.)
The Commission at Mainz went on working until 1827. It seems to have begun to discover real revolutionary societies about 1824. There is a long list of persons remanded for trial in their several States, in Ilse, p. 595, with the verdicts and the sentences passed upon them, which vary from a few months' to nineteen years' imprisonment.
Metternich, iii. 168; and see Wellington, S.D., xii. 878.
GrÉgoire, MÉmoires, i. 411. Had the Constitutional Church of France succeeded, GrÉgoire would have left a great name in religious history. Napoleon, by one of the most fatal acts of despotism, extinguished a society likely, from its democratic basis and its association with a great movement of reform, to become the most liberal and enlightened of all Churches, and left France to be long divided between Ultramontane dogma and a coarse kind of secularism. The life of GrÉgoire ought to be written in English. From the enormous number of improvements for which he laboured, his biography would give a characteristic picture of the finer side of the generation of 1789.
The late Count of Chambord, or Henry V., son of the Duke of Barry, was born some months after his father's death.
Castlereagh, xii. 162, 259. "The monster Radicalism still lives," Castlereagh sorrowfully admits to Metternich.
Metternich, iii. 369. "A man must be like me, born and brought up amid the storm of politics, to know what is the precise meaning of a shout of triumph like those which now burst from Burdett and Co. He may have read of it, but I have seen it with my eyes. I was living at the time of the Federation of 1789. I was fifteen, and already a man."
Baumgarten, Geschichte Spaniens, ii. 175.
See the note of Fernan NuÑez, in Wellington, S. D, xii 582. "Les efforts unanimes de ces mÊmes Puissances ont dÉtruit le systÈme dÉvastateur, d'oÙ naquit la rÉbellion AmÉricaine; mais il leur restait encore À le dÉtruire dans l'AmÉrique Espagnole."
Wellington, S.D., xii. 807.
Jullian, PrÉcis Historique, p. 78.
Historia de la vida de Fernando VII., ii. 158.
Carrascosa, MÉmoires, p. 25; Colletta, ii. 155.
Carrascosa p. 44.
Gentz. D.I., ii. 108, 122. It was rather too much even for the Austrians. "La conduite de ce malheureux souverain n'a ÉtÉ, dÈs le commencement des troubles, qu'un tissu de faiblesse et de duplicitÉ," etc. "VoilÀ l'alliÉ que le ciel a mis entre nos mains, et dont nous avons À rÉtablir les intÉrÊts!" Ferdinand was guilty of such monstrous perjuries and cruelties that the reader ought to be warned not to think of him as a saturnine and Machiavellian Italian. He was a son of the Bourbon Charles III. of Spain. His character was that of a jovial, rather stupid farmer, whom a freak of fortune had made a king from infancy. A sort of grotesque comic element runs through his life, and through every picture drawn by persons in actual intercourse with him. The following, from one of Bentinck's despatches of 1814 (when Ferdinand had just heard that Austria had promised to keep Murat in Naples), is very characteristic: "I found his Majesty very much afflicted and very much roused. He expressed his determination never to renounce the rights which God had given him.... He said he might be poor, but he would die honest, and his children should not have to reproach him for having given up their rights. He was the son of the honest Charles III. ... he was his unworthy offspring, but he would never disgrace his family.... On my going away he took me by the hand, and said he hoped I should esteem him as he did me, and begged me to take a Pheasant pye to a gentleman who had been his constant shooting companion." Records, Sicily, vol. 97. Ferdinand was the last sovereign who habitually kept a professional fool, or jester, in attendance upon him.
British and Foreign State Papers, vii. 361, 995.
Except in Sicily, where, however, the course of events had not the same publicity as on the mainland.
Verbatim from the Russian Note of April 18. B. and F. State Papers, vii. 943.
Parliamentary Debates, N.S., viii. 1136.
Gentz, D.I., ii. 70. "M. le Prince Metternich s'est rendu chez l'Empereur pour le mettre au fait de ces tristes circonstances. Depuis que je le connais, je ne l'ai jamais vu aussi frappÉ d'aucun ÉvÉnement qu'il l'Était hier avant son dÉpart."
Castlereagh, xii. 311.
Gentz, D.I., ii. 76. Metternich, iii. 395. "Our fire-engines were not full in July, otherwise we should have set to work immediately."
Gentz, ii. 85. Gentz was secretary at the Congress of Troppau, as he had been at Vienna and Aix-la-Chapelle. His letters exhibit the Austrian and absolutist view of all European politics with striking clearness. He speaks of the change in Richelieu's action as disagreeable but not fatal. "Ces pruderies politiques sont sans doute lÂcheuses.... La Russie, l'Autriche, et la Prusse, heureusement libres encore dans leurs mouvements, et assez puissantes pour soutenir ce qu'elles arrÊtent, pourraient adopter sans le concours de l'Angleterre et de la France un systÈme tel que les besoins du moment le demandent." The description of the three despotisms as "happily free in their movements" is very characteristic of the time.
This is the system conveniently but incorrectly named Holy Alliance, from its supposed origination in he unmeaning Treaty of Holy Alliance in 1815. The reader will have seen that it took five years of reaction to create a definitive agreement among the monarchs to intervene against popular changes in other States, and that the principles of any operative league planned by Alexander in 1815 would have been largely different from those which he actually accepted in 1820. The Alexander who designed the Holy Alliance was the Alexander who had forced Louis XVIII. to grant the Charta.
Castlereagh, xii. 330.
Metternich, iii. 394. B. and F. State Papers, viii. 1160. Gentz, D. I., ii. 112. The best narrative of the Congress of Troppau is in Duvergier de Hauranne, vi. 93. The Life of Canning by his secretary, Stapleton, though it is a work of some authority on this period, is full of misstatements about Castlereagh. Stapleton says that Castlereagh took no notice of the Troppau circular of December 8 until it had been for more than a month in his possession, and suggests that he would never have protested at all but for the unexpected disclosure of the circular in a German newspaper. As a matter of fact, the first English protest against the Troppau doctrine, expressed in a memorandum, "trÈs long, trÈs positif, assez dur mÊme, et assez tranchant dans son langage," was handed in to the Congress on December 16 or 19, along with a very unwelcome note to Metternich. There is some gossip of another of Canning's secretaries in Greville's Memoirs, i. 105, to the effect that Castlereagh's private despatches to Troppau differed in tone from his official ones, which were only written "to throw dust in the eyes of Parliament." It is sufficient to read the Austrian documents of the time, teeming as they do with vexation and disappointment at England's action, to see that this is a fiction.
Had Ferdinand's first proposals been accepted by the Neapolitan Parliament, France and England, it was thought, might have insisted on a compromise at Laibach. "Les Gouvernements de France et d'Angleterre auraient fortement insistÉ sur l'introduction d'un regime constitutionnel et reprÉsentatif, rÉgime que la Cour de Vienne croit absolument incompatible avec la position des États de l'Italie, et avec la suretÉ de ses propres États." Gentz, D.I., ii. 110.
Gentz, Nachlasse (P. Osten), i. 67. Lest the reader should take a prejudice against Capodistrias for his cunning, I ought to mention here that he was a man of austere disinterestedness in private life, and one of the few statesmen of the time who did not try to make money by politics. His ambition, which was very great, rose above all the meaner objects which tempt most men. The contrast between his personal goodness and his unscrupulousness in diplomacy will become more clear later on.
Colletta, ii. 230. Bianchi, Diplomazia, ii. 47.
Gualterio, Ultimi Rivolgimenti, iii. 46. Silvio Pellico, Le mie prigioni, ch. 57.
B. and F. State Papers, viii. 1203.
Baumgarten, ii. 325.
Wellington Despatches, N.S., i. 284.
Talleyrand et Louis XVIII., p. 333.
Wellington, i. 343.
Duvergier de Hauranne, vii. 140.
Canning denied that it was offered, but the despatches in Wellington prove it. These papers, supplemented by the narrative of Duvergier de Hauranne, drawn from the French documents which he specifies, are the authority for the history of the Congress. Canning's celebrated speech of April, 1823, is an effective ex parte composition rather than a historical summary. The reader who goes to the originals will be struck by the immense superiority of Wellington's statements over those of all the Continental statesmen at Verona, in point, in force, and in good sense, as well as in truthfulness. The Duke, nowhere appears to greater advantage.
Report of AngoulÊme, Duvergier d'Hauranne, vii. "LÀ oÙ sont nos troupes, nous maintenons la paix avec beaucoup de peine; mais lÀ oÙ nous ne sommes pas, on massacre, on brÛle, on pille, on vole. Les corps Espagnols, se disant royalistes, ne cherchent qu'À voler et À piller."
Decretos del Rey Fernando, vii. 35, 50, 75. This process, which was afterwards extended even to common soldiers, was called Purificacion. Committees were appointed to which all persons coming under the law had to send in detailed evidence of correct conduct in and since 1820, signed by some well-known royalists. But the committees also accepted any letters of denunciation that might be sent to them, and were bound by law to keep them secret, so that in practice the Purificacion became a vast system of anonymous persecution.
Historia de la vida de Fernando VII., 1842, iii. 152.
Decretos del Rey Fernando, vii. 45.
Decretos, vii. 154. The preamble to this law is perhaps the most astonishing of all Ferdinand's devout utterances. "My soul is confounded with the horrible spectacle of the sacrilegious crimes which impiety has dared to commit against the Supreme Maker of the universe. The ministers of Christ have been persecuted and sacrificed; the venerable successor of St. Peter has been outraged; the temples of the Lord have been profaned and destroyed; the Holy Gospel depreciated; in fine, the inestimable legacy which Jesus Christ gave in his last supper to secure our eternal felicity, the Sacred Host, has been trodden under foot. My soul shudders, and will not be able to return to tranquillity until, in union with my children, my faithful subjects, I offer to God holocausts of piety," etc. But for some specimens of Ferdinand's command of the vernacular, of a very different character, see Wellington, N.S., ii. 37.
Revolution d'Espagne, examen critique (Paris, 1836), p. 151, from the lists in the Gaceta de Madrid. The Gaceta for these years is wanting from the copy in the British Museum, and in the large collection in that library of historical and periodical literature relating to Spain I can find no first hand authorities for the judicial murders of these years. Nothing relating to the subject was permitted to be printed in Spain for many years afterwards The work cited in this note, though bearing a French title, and published at Paris in 1836, was in fact a Spanish book written in 1824. The critical inquiry which has substantiated many of the worst traditions of the French Reign of Terror from local records still remains to be undertaken for this period of Spanish history.
See e.g., Stapleton, Canning and his Times p. 378. Wellington often suggested the use of less peremptory language. Despatches, i. 134, 188[***], Metternich wrote as follows on hearing at Vienna of Castlereagh's death: "Castlereagh was the only man in his country who had gained any experience in foreign affairs. He had learned to understand me. He was devoted to me in heart and spirit, not only from personal inclination, but from conviction. I awaited him here as my second self." iii. 391. Metternich, however, was apt to exaggerate his influence over the English Minister. It was a great surprise to him that Castlereagh, after gaining decisive majorities in the House of Commons on domestic questions in 1820, in no wise changed the foreign policy expressed in the protest against the Declaration of Troppau.
Stapleton, Political Life of Canning, ii. 18.
Wellington, i. 188.
Parl Hist., 12th Dec., 1826.
Stapleton, Life of Canning, i. 134. Martineau, p. 144.
Gentz, Nachlasse (Osten), ii. 165.
About the year 1830 the theory was started by Fallmerayer, a Tyrolese writer, that the modern Greeks were the descendants of Slavonic invaders, with scarcely a drop of Greek blood in their veins. Fallmerayer was believed by some good scholars to have proved that the old Greek race had utterly perished. More recent inquiries have discredited both Fallmerayer and his authorities, and tend to establish the conclusion that, except in certain limited districts, the Greeks left were always numerous enough to absorb the foreign incomers. (Hopf, Griechenland; in Etsch and Gruber's EncyklopÄdie, vol. 85, p. 100.) The Albanian population of Greece in 1820 is reckoned at about one-sixth.
Maurer, Das Griechische Volk, i. 64.
The Greek songs illustrate the conversion of the Armatole into the Klepht in the age preceding the Greek revolution. Thus, in the fine ballad called "The Tomb of Demos," which Goethe has translated, the dying man says-
[Transcriber's Note: The following has been transliterated from the Greek]
Kai pherte ton pneumatikon na m' exomologaisae
na tun eipo ta krimata osa cho kamomena
trianta chroni armatolos, c'eicosi echo klephtaes.
"Bring the priest that he may shrive me; that I may tell him the sins that I have committed, thirty years an Armatole and twenty years a Klepht." -Fauriel, Chants Populaires, i. 56.
Finlay, Greece under Ottoman Domination, p. 284.
Kanitz, Donau-Bulgarien, i. 123.
Literally, Interpreter; the old theory of the Turks being that in their dealings with foreign nations they had only to receive petitions, which required to be translated into Turkish.
Zallonos, (Transliterated Greek) Pragmateia peri ton phanarioton, p. 71. Kagalnitchau, La Walachie, i. 371.
A French translation of the Autobiography of Koraes, along with his portrait, will be found in the Lettres InÉdites de Coray, Paris, 1877. The vehicle of expression usually chosen by Koraes for addressing his countrymen was the Preface (written in modern Greek) to the edition of an ancient author. The second half of the Preface to the Politics of Aristotle, 1822, is a good specimen of his political spirit and manner. It was separately edited by the Swiss scholar, Orelh, with a translation, for the benefit of the German Philhellenes. Among the principal linguistic prefaces are those to Heliodorus 1804, and the Prodromos, or introduction, to the series of editions called Bibliotheca GrÆca, begun in 1805, and published at the expense of the brothers Zosimas of Odessa Most of the editions published by Koraes bear on their title page a statement of the patriotic purpose of the work, and indicate the persons who bore the expense. The edition of the Ethics, published immediately after the massacre of Chios, bears the affecting words 'At the expense of those who have so cruelly suffered in Chios.' The costly form of these editions, some of which contain fine engravings, seems somewhat inappropriate for works intended for national instruction. Koraes, however, was not in a hurry. He thought, at least towards the close of his life, that the Greeks ought to have gone through thirty years more of commercial and intellectual development before they drew the sword. They would in that case, he believed, have crushed Turkey by themselves and have prevented the Greek kingdom from becoming the sport of European diplomacy. Much miscellaneous information on Greek affairs before 1820 (rather from the Phanariot point of view) will be found, combined with literary history in the Cours de LittÉrature Grecque of Rhizos Neroulos, 1827. The more recent treatise of R Rhankabes on the same subject (also in French, Paris, 1877) exhibits what appears to be characteristic of the modern Greeks, the inability to distinguish between mere passable performances and really great work.
Zinkeisen, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches, v. 959.
Koraes, MÉmoire sur l'État actual de la civilization de la GrÈce: republished in the Lettres InÉdites, p. 464. This memoir, read by Koraes to a learned society in Paris, in January, 1803, is one of the most luminous and interesting historical sketches ever penned.
(Greek text: Didaskalia PatrikÆ), by, or professing to be by, Anthimos, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and printed "at the expense of the Holy Sepulchre," p. 13. This curious work, in which the Patriarch at last breaks out into doggrel, has found its way to the British Museum. It was answered by Koraes. For the effect of Rhegas' songs on the people, see Fauriel, ii. 18. Mr. Finlay seems to be mistaken in calling Anthimos' book an answer to the tract of Eugenios Bulgaris on religious toleration. That was written about thirty years before.
Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, ch, v. 36, 37.
Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Geschichte Griechenlands, i. 145, from the papers of Hypsilanti's brother. Otherwise in Prokesch-Osten, Abfall der Griechen, i. 13.
Cordon, Greek Revolution, i. 96.
B. and F, State Papers, viii. 1203.
Finlay, i. 187; Gordon, i. 203; K. Mendelssohn, Geschichte Griechenlands, i. 191; Prokesch-Osten, Abfall der Griechen, i. 20.
Metternich, iii. 622, 717; Prokewh-Ostett, i. 231, 303. B. and F. State Papers, viii. 1247.
Records, Continent, iii.
Castlereagh, viii. 16; Metternich, iii. 504.
Kolokotrones, (Transliterated Greek) Aiaegaesis Symbanton, p. 82; Tricoupis, (Transliterated Greek) Historia, i. 61, 92.
Gordon, i. 388; Finlay, i. 330; Mendelssohn, i. 269.
Gordon ii. 138. The news of this catastrophe reached Metternich at Ischl on July 30th. "Prince Metternich was taking an excursion, in which, unfortunately I could not accompany him. I at once sent Francis after him with this important letter, which he received at a spot where the name of the Capitan Pasha had probably never been heard before. The prince soon came back to me; and (pianissimo in order that the friends of Greece might not hear it) we congratulate one another on the event, which may very well prove le commencement de la fin for the Greek insurrection." (Gentz.)
Prokesch-Osten, i. 253, iv. 63. B. and F. State Papers, xii. 902. Stapleton, Canning, p. 496 Metternich, 127. Wellington, N.S. ii. 372-396.
Korff, Accession of Nicholas, p. 253; Herzen, Russische VerschwÖrung, p. 106; Mendelssohn, i. 396. Schnitzler, Histoire Intime, i. 195.
B. and F. State Papers, xiv. 630; Metternich, iv. 161, 212, 320, 372; Willington, N.S., ii. 85, 148, 244; Gentz, D.I., iii. 315.
B. and F. State Papers, xiv. 632; xvii. 20; Wellington, N.S., iv. 57.
Parl. Deb., May 11, 1877. Nothing can be more misleading than to say that Canning never contemplated the possibility of armed action because a clause in the Treaty of 1827 made the formal stipulation that the contracting Powers would not "take part in the hostilities between the contending parties." How, except by armed force, could the Allies "prevent, in so far as might be in their power, all collision between the contending parties," which, in the very same clause, they undertook to do? And what was the meaning of the stipulation that they should "transmit instructions to their Admirals conformable to these provisions"? Wellington himself, before the battle of Navarino, condemned the Treaty of London on the very ground that it "specified means of compulsion which were neither more nor less than measures of war;" and he protested against the statement that the treaty arose directly out of the Protocol of St. Petersburg, which was his own work. Wellington, N.S., iv. 137, 221.
Bourchier's Codrington, ii. 6[***]. Admiralty Despatches, Nov. 10, 1807, Parl. Deb., Feb. 14, 1828.
Rosen, Geschichte der TÜrkei, i. 57.
Moltke, Russisch-Turkische Feldzug, p. 226. Rosen, i. 67.
Viel-Castel, xx. 16. Russia was to have had the Danubian Provinces; Austria was to have had Bosnia and Servia; Prussia was to have had Saxony and Holland; the King of Holland was to have reigned at Constantinople.
Hertslet, Map of Europe by Treaty, ii. 813. Rosen, i. 108.
Wellington, N. S, iv. 297.
Mendelssohn, Graf Capodistrias, p. 64.
B. and F. State Papers, xvii. p. 132. Prokesch-Osten, v. 136.
Stockmar, i. 80; Mendelssohn; Capodistrias, p. 272. B. and F. State Papers, xvii. 453.
Viel-Castel, xix. 574. Duvergier de Hauranne, x. 85.
ProcÈs des ex-Ministres, i. 189.
Lafayette, vi. 383. Marmont, viii. 238. Dupin, RÉvolution de Juillet, p. 7. Odilon Barrot, i. 105. Sarrans, Lafayette, i. 217. Berard, RÉvolution de 1830, p. 60. Hillebrand, Die Juli-Revolution, p. 87.
Juste, RÉvolution Belge, i. 85. CongrÈs National, i. 134.
Wellington, N.S. vii. 309. B. and F. State Papers, xviii. 761. Metternich, v. 44. Hillebrand, Geschichte Frankreichs, i. 171. Stockmar, i. 143. Bulwers Palmerston, ii. 5. Hertslet, Map of Europe, iii. 81.
Smitt, Geschichte des Polnischen Aufstandes, i. 112. Spazier, Geschichte des Aufstandes, i. 177. Leiewel, Histoire de Pologne, i. 300.
Leroy-Beaulieu, Milutine, p. 199; L'Empire des Tsars, i. 380. Leiewel, ConsidÉrations, p. 317.
Bianchi, Ducati Estensi, i. 54. La Farina, v. 241. Farini, i. 34.
Bianchi, Diplomazia, iii. 48. Metternich, iv. 121. Hillebrand, Geschichte Frankreichs, i. 206. Haussonville, i. 32. B. and F. State Papers, xix. 1429. Guizot, MÉmoires, ii. 290.
Ilse, Untersuchungen, p. 262. Metternich, v. 347. Biedermann, Dreissig Jahre, i. 6.
Mazzini, Scritti, iii. 310. Simoni, Conspirations Mazziniennes, p. 53. Metternich, v. 526. B. and F. State Papers, xxiv. 979.
B. and F. State Papers, xviii. 196. Palmerston, i. 300.
"La Reine Isabelle est la RÉvolution incarnÉe dans sa forme la plus dangereuse; Don Carlos reprÉsente le principe Monarchique aux prises avec la RÉvolution pure." Metternich, v. 615. B. and F. State Papers, xviii. 1365; xxii. 1394. Baumgarten, iii. 65.
Hertslet, Map of Europe, ii. 941. Miraflores, Memorias, i. 39. Guizot, iv. 86. Palmerston ii. 180.
Essai historique sur les Provinces Basques, p. 58. W. Humboldt, Werke iii. 213.
Henningsen, Campaign with Zumalacarregui, i. 93. Burgos, Anales, ii. 110. Baumgarten, iii. 257.
Rosen, i. 158. Prokesch von Osten, Kleine Schriften, vii. 56. Mehmed Ali, p. 17. Hillebrand, i. 514 Metternich, v. 481. B. and F. State Papers, xx. 1176; xxii. 140.
Palmerston understood little about the real condition of the Ottoman Empire, and thought that with ten years of peace it might again become a respectable Power. "All that we hear about the decay of the Turkish Empire and its being a dead body or a sapless trunk, and so forth, is pure and unadulterated nonsense." Bulwer's Palmerston, ii. 299.
Hertslet, Map of Europe, ii. 1008. Rosen, ii. 3. Guizot, v. 188. Prokesch-Osten, Mehmed Ali, p. 89. Palmerston, ii. 356. Hillebrand, ii. 357. Greville Memoirs, 2nd part, vol. i. 297.
"Sie sollen ihn nicht haben
Den freien Deutschen Rhein."
By Becker; answered by De Musset's "Nous avons eu votre Rhin Allemand." The words of the much finer song "Die Wacht am Rhein" were also written at this time-by Schneckenburger, a WÜrtemberg man; but the music by which they are known was not composed till 1854.
Farini, i. 153. Azeglio, Corresp. Politique, p. 24; Casi di Romagna, p. 47.
Down to 1827 not only was all land inherited by nobles free from taxation, but any taxable land purchased by a noble thereupon became tax-free. The attempt of the Government to abolish this latter injustice evoked a storm of anger in the Diet of 1825, and still more in the country assemblies, some of the latter even resolving that such law, if passed, fey the Diet, would be null and void.
HorvÁth, FÜnfundzwanzig Jahre, i. 408. Springer, i. 466. Gerando, Esprit Public, 173. Kossuth, Gessammelte Werke, i. 29. Beschwerden und Klagen der Slaven in Ungarn, 39.
Das Polen-Attentat, 1846, p. 203. VerhÄltnisse in Galizien, p. 57. Briefe eines Polnischen Edelmannes, p. 31. Metternich, vii. 196. Cracow, which had been made an independent Republic by the Congress of Vienna, was now annexed by Austria with the consent of Russia and Prussia, and against the protests of England and France.
Reden des Koenigs Friedrich Wilhelm IV., p. 17. Ranke's F. W, IV. in Allg. Deutsche Biog. Biedermann, Dreissig Jahre, i. 186.
Guizot, viii. 101, Palmerston, iii. 194. Parl. Papers, 1847. Martin's Prince Consort, i. 341.
Metternich, vii. 538, 603; Vitzthum, Berlin und Wien, 1845-62, p. 78; Kossuth Werke (1850), ii. 78; Pillersdorff, RÜckblicke, p. 22; Reschauer, Das Jahr 1848, i. 191; Springer, Geschichte Oesterreichs, ii. 185; IrÁnyi et Chassin, RÉvolution de Hongrie, i. 128.
Metternich, viii. 181. The animation of his remarks on all sorts of points in English life is wonderful. After a halt at Brussels and at his Johannisburg estate Metternich returned to Vienna in 1852, and, though not restored to office, resumed his great position in society. He lived through the Crimean War, on which he wrote numerous memoranda, for whose use it does not appear. Even on the outbreak of war with France in 1859 he was still busy with his pen. He survived long enough to hear of the battle of Magenta, but was spared the sorrow of witnessing the creation of the Kingdom of Italy. He died on the 11th of June, 1859, in his eighty-seventh year. Metternich was not the only statesman present at the Congress of Vienna who lived to see the second Napoleonic Empire. Nesselrode, the Russian Chancellor, lived till 1862; Czartoryski, who was Foreign Minister of Russia at the time of the battle of Austerlitz, till 1861.
Adlerstein, Archiv des Ungarischen Ministeriums, i. 27; IrÁnyi et Chassin, i. 184; Springer, ii. 219.
Casati Nuove Rivelazioni, ii. 72. SchÖnhals, Campagnes d'ltalie de 1848 et 1849 p. 72. Cattaneo, Insurrezione di Milano, p. 29. Parl. Pap. 1849, lvii. (2) 210, 333. Senneidawind, Feldzug in 1848, i. 30.
Manin, Documents laissÉs, i. 106. Perlbach, Manin, p. 14. Contarini, Memoriale Veneto, p. 10. Rovani, Manin, p. 25. Parliamentary Papers, 1849, lvii. (a) 267.
Bianchi, Diplomazia Europea, v. 183. Farini, Stato Romano, ii. 16. Parl. Papers, 1849, lvii. 285, 297, 319. Pasolini, Memorie, p. 91.
Die Berliner MÄrz-Revolution, p. 55. AusfÜhrliche Beschreibung, p. 3. Amtliche Berichte, p. 16. Stahr, Preussische Revolution, i. 91. S. Stern, Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes, p. 58. Stern was an eye-witness at Berlin, though not generally a good authority.
"Preussen geht fortan in Deutschland auf." Reden Friedrich Wilhelms, p. 9. In conversation with Bassermann Frederick William at a later time described his ride through Berlin as "a comedy which he had been made to play." The bombast at any rate was all his own.
Droysen und Samwer, Schleswig-Holstein, p. 220. Bunsen, Memoir on Schleswig-Holstein, p. 25. Schleswig-Holstein, Uebersichtliche Darstellung, p 51. On the other side, Noten zur Beleuchtung, p. 12.
Verhandlungen der National-versammlung, i. 25. Biedermann Dreissig Jahre, i. 278. Radowitz, Werke, ii. 36.
Actes du Gouvernement Provisoire, p. 12. Louis Blanc, RÉvÉlatÌons Historiques, i. 135. Gamier PagÈs, RÉvolution de 1848, vi 108, viii 148. Émile Thomas, Histoire des Ateliers Nationaux, p. 93.
Barret, MÉmoires, ii. 103. CaussidiÈre, MÉmoires, p. 117. Gamier PagÈs, x. 419. Normanby, Year of Revolution, i. 389. Granier de Cassagnac, Chute de Louis Philippe, i. 359. De la Gorce, Seconde RÉpublique, i. 273. Falloux, MÉmoires, i. 328.
Oeuvres de Napoleon III., iii. 13, 24. Granier de Cassagnac, ii. 16. Jerrold, Napoleon III., ii. 393.
Vitzthum, Wien, p. 108. Springer, ii. 293. Pillersdorff, RÜckblicke, p. 68; Nachlass, p. 118. Reschauer, ii. 176. Dunder, October Revolution, p. 5. Ficquelmont, AufklÄrungen, p. 65.
SchÖnhals, p. 117. Farini, ii. 9. Parl. Pap., 1849, lvii. 352.
Ficquelmont p. 6. Pillersdorfif, Nachlass, 93. Helfert, iv. 142. SchfÖnhais, p. 177. Parliamentary Papers, id. 332, 472, 597. Contarini, p. 67. Azeglio, Operazioni del Durando, p. 6. Manin, Documents, i. 289. Bianchi, Diplomazia, v. 257. Pasolini, p. 100.
Parliamentary Papers, 1849 lviii p. 128. Venice refused to acknowledge the armistice, and detached itself from Sardinia, restoring Manin to power.
Slavonia itself was attached to Croatia; Dalmatia also was claimed as a member of this triple Kingdom under the Hungarian Crown in virtue of ancient rights, though since its annexation in 1797 it had been governed directly from Vienna, and in 1848 was represented in the Reichstag of Vienna, not in that of Pesth.
The real meaning of the Charters is, however, contested. Springer, ii. 281. Adlerstein, Archiv, i. 166. Helfert, ii. 255. IrÁnyi et Chassin, i. 236. Die Serbische Wolwodschaftsfrage, p. 7.
But see Kossuth, Schriften (1880, ii. 215), for a conversation between Jellacic and BatthyÁny, said to have been narrated to Kossuth by the latter. If authentic, this certainly proves Jellacic to have used the Slavic agitation from the first solely for Austrian ends. See also Vitzthuin, p. 207.
Adlerstein, Archiv, i. 146. 156. KlapkÁ, Erinnerungen, p. 30. IrÁnyi et Chassin, i. 344. Serbische Bewegung, p. 106.
IrÁnyi et Chassin, ii. 56. Codex der neuen Gesetze (Pesth), i. 7.
Adlerstein, ii. 296. Helfert, Geschichte Oesterreichs, i. 79, ii. 192. Dunder, p. 77. Springer, ii. 520. Vitzthum, p. 143. Kossuth, Schriften (1881), ii. 284. Reschauer, ii. 563. Pillersdorff, Nachlass, p. 163. IrÁnyi et Chassin, ii. 98.
Codex der neuen Gesetze, i. 37. Helfert, iv. (3) 321.
Revolutionskrieg in Siebenburgen i. 30. Helfert, ii. 207. Bratiano et IrÁnyi, Lettres Hongro-Roumaines, Adlerstein, ii. 105.
Klapka, Erinnerungen, p. 56. Helfert, iv. 199; GÖrgei, Leben und Wirken, i. 145. Adlerstein, iii. 576, 648.
Helfert, iv. (2) 326. Klapka, War in Hungary, i. 23. IrÁnyi et Chassin, ii. 534. GÖrgei, ii. 54.
Klapka, War, ii. 106. Erinnerungen, 58. GÖrgei, ii. 378. Kossuth, Schriften (1880), ii. 291. Codex der neuen Gesetze, i. 75, 105.
Farini, ii. 404. Parl. Pap., 1849. lvii. 607; lviii. (2) 117. Bianchi, Diplomazia, vi. 67. Gennarelli, Sventure, p. 29. Pasolini, p. 139.
SchÖnhals, p. 332. Parl. Pap., 1849, lviii. (2) 216. Bianchi, Politica Austriaca, p. 134. Lamarmora, Un Episodie, p. 175. Portafogli ci Ramorino, p. 41. Ramorino was condemned to death, and executed.
Garibaldi, Epistolario, i. 33. Del Vecchio, L'assedio di Roma, p. 30. Vaillant, SiÉge de Rome, p. 12. Bianchi, Diplomazia, vi. 213. Guerzoni, Garibaldi, i. 266. Granier de Cassagnac, ii. 59. Lesseps, MÉmoire, p. 61. Barrot, iii 191, Discours de Napoleon 3rd, p. 38.
Manin, Documents, ii. 340. Perlbach, Manin, p. 37. Gennarelli, Governo Pontificio, i. 32. Contarini, p. 224.
Verhandlungen der National Versammlung. i. 576 Radowitz, Werke, iii. 369. Briefwechsel Friedrich Wilhelms, p. 205. Biedermann, Dreissig Jahre, i. 295.
Verhandlungen der National Versammlung, ii. 1877, 2185. Herzog Ernst II., Ausmeinem Leben, i. 313. Biedermann, i. 306. Beseier, Erlebtes, p. 68. Waitz, Friede mit DÄnemark. Radowitz, iii. 406.
Briefwechsel Friedrich Wilhelms, p. 184. Wagener, Erlebtes, p. 28. Stahr, Preussische Revolution, i. 453.
Seine Bundespflichten: an ambiguous expression that might mean either its duties as an ally or its duties as a member of the German Federation. The obscurity was probably intentional.
Verhandlungen der National Versammlung, vi. 4225. Haym, Deutsche National Versammlung, ii. 112. Radowitz, iii. 459. Helfert, iv. 62.
Verhandlungen, viii. 6093. Beseler, p. 82. Helfert, iv. (3) 390, Haym, ii. 317, Radowitz, v. 477.
Briefwechsel Friedrich Wilhelms, pp. 233, 269. Beseler, 87. Biedermann, i. 389. Wagener, Politik Friedrich Wilhelm IV., p. 56. Ernst II., i. 329.
Verhandlungen, etc., ix. 6695, 6886. Haym, in. 185. Barnberger, Erlebnisse, p. 6.
Verhandlungen zu Erfurt, i. 114; ii. 143. Biedermann, i. 469. Radowitz, ii. 138.
Der FÜrsten Kongress, p. 13. Reden Friedrich Wilhelms, iv pp. 55, 69. Konferenz der Verbundeten, 1850, pp. 26, 53. Beust, Erinnerungen, i. 115, Ernst II., i. 525. Duncker, Vier Monate, p. 41.
Ernst II., i. 377. Hertslet, Map of Europe, ii. 1106, 1129, 1151. Parl. Papers, 1864, lxiii., p. 29; 1804, lxv., pp. 30, 187.
Maupas, MÉmoires, i. 176. Oeuvres de Napoleon III., iii. 271. Barrot, iv. 21. Granier de Cassagnac, Chute de Louis Philippe, ii. 128; RÉcit complet, p. 1. Jerrold, Napoleon III., iii. 203. Tocqueville, Corresp. ii. 176.
Stockman, 396. Eastern Papers (i.e., Parliamentary Papers, 1854, vol. 71), part 6. Malmesbury, Memoirs of an ex-Minister, i. 402; the last probably inaccurate. Diplomatic Study of the Crimean War, i. 11. This work is a Russian official publication, and, though loose and untrustworthy, is valuable as showing the Russian official view.
Ashley's Palmerston, ii. 142. Lane Poole, Stratford de Redcliffe, ii. 191.
Eastern Papers, i. 55. Diplomatic Study, i. 121.
Eastern Papers, v. 2, 19.
Eastern Papers, i. 102. Admitted in Diplomatic Study, i. 163.
He writes thus, April 5, 1851:-"The great game of improvement is altogether up for the present. It is impossible for me to conceal that the main object of my stay here is almost hopeless." Even Palmerston, in the rare moments when he allowed his judgment to master his prepossessions on this subject, expressed the same view. He wrote on November 24, 1850, warning Reschid Pasha "the Turkish Empire is doomed to fall by the timidity and irresolution of its Sovereign and of its Ministers; and it is evident we shall ere long have to consider what other arrangements may be set up in its place." Stratford left Constantinople on leave in June, 1852, but resigned his Embassy altogether in January, 1853. (Lane Poole, Life of Stratford de Redcliffe, ii. 112, 215.)
Eastern Papers, i. 253, 339. Lane Poole, Stratford, ii. 248.
Palmerston had accepted the office of Home Secretary, but naturally exercised great influence in foreign affairs. The Foreign Secretary was Lord Clarendon.
Eastern Papers, i. 210, ii. 116. Ashley's Palmerston, ii. 23.
Eastern Papers, ii. 23.
Eastern Papers, ii. 86, 91, 103.
Eastern Papers, ii. 203, 227, 299.
Treaty of April 20, 1854, and Additional Article, Eastern Papers, ix. 61. The Treaty between Austria and Prussia was one of general defensive alliance, covering also the case of Austria incurring attack through an advance into the Principalities. In the event of Russia annexing the Principalities or sending its troops beyond the Balkans the alliance was to be offensive.
Briefwechsel F. Wilhelms mit Bunsen, p. 310. Martin's Prince Consort, iii. 39. On November 20, after the Turks had begun war, the King of Prussia wrote thus to Bunsen (the italics, capitals, and exclamations are his own): "All direct help which England in unchristian folly!!!!!! gives TO ISLAM AGAINST CHRISTIANS! will have (besides God's avenging judgment {hear! hear!}) no other effect than to bring what is now Turkish territory at a somewhat later period under Russian dominion" (Briefwechsel, p. 317). The reader may think that the insanity to which Frederick William succumbed was already mastering him; but the above is no rare specimen of his epistolary style.
The Treaty of alliance between France and England, to which Prussia was asked to accede, contained, however, a clause pledging the contracting parties "under no circumstance to seek to obtain from the war any advantage to themselves."
Eastern Papers, viii. I.
Eastern Papers, xi. 3. Ashley's Palmerston, ii. 60. For the navigation of the mouths of the Danube, see Diplomatic Study, ii. 39. Russia, which had been in possession of the mouths of the Danube since the Treaty of Adrianople, and had undertaken to keep the mouths clear, had allowed the passage to become blocked and had otherwise prevented traffic descending, in order to keep the Black Sea trade in its own hands.
See, however, Burgoyne's Letter to the Times, August 4, 1868, in Kinglake, iv. 465. Rousset, Guerre de CrimÉe, i. 280.
Statements of Raglan, Lucan, Cardigan; Kinglake, v. 108, 402.
On the death of Nicholas, the King of Prussia addressed the following lecture to the unfortunate Bunsen:-"You little thought that, at the very moment when you were writing to me, one of the noblest of men, one of the grandest forms in history, one of the truest hearts, and at the same time one of the greatest rulers of this narrow world, was called from faith to sight. I thank God on my knees that He deemed me worthy to be, in the best sense of the word, his (Nicholas') friend, and to remain true to him. You, dear Bunsen, thought differently of him, and you will now painfully confess this before your conscience, most painfully of all the truth (which all your letters in these late bad times have unfortunately shown me but too plainly), that you hated him. You hated him, not as a man, but as the representative of a principle, that of violence. If ever, redeemed like him through simple faith in Christ's blood, you see him in eternal peace, then remember what I now write to you: 'You will beg his pardon. Even here, my dear friend, may the blessing of repentance be granted to you."-Briefwechsel, p. 325. Frederick William seems to have forgotten to send the same pious wishes to the Poles in Siberia.
Parliamentary Papers, 1854-5, vol. 55, p. 1, Dec. 2, 1854. Ashley's Palmerston, ii. 84.
Eastern Papers, Part 13, 1.
Kinglake, vii. 21. Rousset, ii. 35, 148.
Diplomatic Study, ii. 361. Martin, Prince Consort, iii. 394.
Prussia was admitted when the first Articles had been settled, and it became necessary to revise the Treaty of July, 1841, of which Prussia had been one of the signatories.
"In the course of the deliberation, whenever our (Russian) plenipotentiaries found themselves in the presence of insurmountable difficulties, they appealed to the personal intervention of this sovereign (Napoleon), and had only to congratulate themselves on the result."-Diplomatic Study, ii. 377.
Three pages of promises. Eastern Papers, xvii. One was kept faithfully. "To accomplish these objects, means shall be sought to profit by the science, the art, and the funds of Europe." One of the drollest of the prophecies of that time is the congratulatory address of the Missionaries to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, id. 1882.-"The Imperial Hatti-sheriff has convinced us that our fond expectations are likely to be realised. The light will shine upon those who have long sat in darkness; and blest by social prosperity and religious freedom, the millions of Turkey will, we trust, be seen ere long sitting peacefully under their own vine and fig-tree." So they were, and with poor Lord Stratford's fortune, among others, in their pockets.
All verbatim from the Treaty. Parl. Papers, 1856, vol 61, p. 1.
Martin, Prince Consort, iii. 452. Poole, Stratford, ii. 356.
Berti, Cavour avanti 1848, p. 110. La Rive, Cavour, p. 58. Cavour, Lettere (ed. Chuala), introd. p. 73.
Cavour, Lettere (Chiala), ii. introd. p. 187. Guerzoni, Garibaldi, i. 412. Manin, the Ex-President of Venice, now in exile, declared from this time for the House of Savoy. Garibaldi did the same.
Cavour, Lettere (Chiala), ii. introd. pp. 289, 324; iii. introd. p. i. Bianchi, Diplomazia, vii. 1, Mazade, Cavour, p. 187, Massari, La Marmora, p. 204.
"In mezzo alle piu angosciose crisi politiche, esclamava nelle solitudine delle sue stanze; 'Perisca il mio nome, perisca la mia fama, purche l'Italia sia,'" Artom (Cavour's secretary), Cavour in Parlameuto: introd. p. 46.
La Farina Epistolaria, ii. 56, 81, 137, 426. The interview with Garibaldi; Cavour, Letiere, id. introd. p. 297. Garibaldi, Epistolario, i. 55.
Cavour, Lettere (Chiala), iii. introd. p. 32. Bianchi, Diplomazia, viii. II. The statement of Napoleon III. to Lord Cowley, in Martin Prince Consort, v. 31, that there was no Treaty, is untrue.
Bianchi, Politique de Cavour, p. 328, where is Cavour's indignant letter to Napoleon. The last paragraph of this seems to convey a veiled threat to publish the secret negotiations.
Cavour, Lettere, iii. introd. p. 115; iii. 29. Bianchi, Politique de Cavour, p. 333. Bianchi, Diplomazia, vii. 61. Massari, Cavour, p. 314. Parliamentary Papers, 1859, xxxii. 204, 262. MÉrimÉe, Lettres À Panizzi, i. 21. Martin, Prince Consort, iv. 427.
La Farina, Epistolaria, ii. 172. Parliamentary Papers, 1859, xxxiii. 391, 470.
Cavour, Lettere, iii. introd. 212, iii. 107. Bianchi, Politique de Cavour, p. 319. Bianchi, Diplomazia, viii. 145, 198. Massari, Vittorio Emanuele, ii. 32. Kossuth, Memories p. 394. Parl. Pap. 1859, xxxii. 63, 1860, lxviii. 7. La Farina Epist, ii. 190. Ollivier, L'Église et l'État, ii. 452.
Arrivabene, Italy under Victor Emmanuel, i. 268.
Cavour, Lettere, iii. introd. 301. Bianchi, viii. 180. Garibaldi, Epist., i. 79. Guerzoni, i. 491. Reuchlin, iv. 410.
Cavour, Lettere, iv. introd. 20. Bianchi, Politique, p. 354. Bianchi, Diplomazia, viii. 256. Parliamentary Papers, 1860, lxvii. 203; lxviii. 53.
Cavour in Parlamento, p. 536.
Garibaldi, Epist., i. 97. Persano, Diario, i. 14. Le Farina, Epist., ii. 324. Guerzoni, ii. 23. Parliamentary Papers, 1860, lxviii. 2. Mundy, H.M.S. Hannibal at Palermo, p. 133.
Cavour, Lettere, iii. introd. 269. La Farina, Epist., ii. 336. Bianchi, Politique, p. 366. Persano, Diario, i. 50, 72, 96.
Bianchi, Politique, p. 377. Persano, ii. p. 1-102. Persano sent his Diary in MS. to Azeglio, and asked his advice on publishing it. Azeglio referred to Cavour's saying, "If we did for ourselves what we are doing for Italy, we should be sad blackguards," and begged Persano to let his secrets be secrets, saying that since the partition of Poland no confession of such "colossal blackguardism" had been published by any public man.
Bianchi, Politique, p. 383. Persano, iii. 61. Bianchi, Diplomazia, viii. 337, Garibaldi, Epist., i. 127.
"Le Roi rÉpondit tout court: 'C'est impossible.'" Cavour to his ambassador at London, Nov. 16, in Bianchi, Politique, p. 386. La Farina, Epist., ii. 438. Persano, iv. 44, Guerzoni, ii. 212.
Cavour in Parlamento, p. 630. Azeglio, Correspondance Politique, p. 180. La Rive, p. 313. Berti, Cavour avanti 1848, p. 302.
"Le comte le reconnu, lui serra la main et dit: 'Frate, frate, libera chiesa in libero stato' Ce furent ses derniÈres paroles." Account of the death of Cavour by his niece, Countess Alfieri, in La Rive, Cavour, p. 319.
Berichte uber der Militair etat, p. 669. Schulthess, Europaischer Geschichts Kalender, 1862, p. 122.
Poschinger, Preussen im Bundestag ii. 69, 97; iv. 178. Hahn, Bismarck, i. 608.
Hahn, FÜrst Bismarck, i. 66. This work is a collection of documents, speeches, and letters not only by Bismarck himself but on all the principal matters in which Bismarck was concerned. It is perhaps, from the German point of view, the most important repertory of authorities for the period 1862-1885.
Sammlung der Staatsacten Oesterreichs (1861), pp. 2, 33. Drei Jahre Verfassungstreit, p. 107.
Sammlung der Staatsacten, p. 89. Der Ungarische Reichstag 1861, pp. 3, 194, 238. Arnold Forster, Life of DeÁk, p. 141.
Celestin, Russland, p. 3. Leroy-Beaulieu, L'Empire des Tsars, i. 400. Homme d'État Russe, p. 73. Wallace, Russia, p. 485.
Raczynski, MÉmoires sur la Pologne, p. 14. B. and F. State Papers, 1862-63, p. 769.
Leroy-Beaulieu, Homme d'État Russe, p. 259.
Hahn, i. 112. Verhandl des Preuss, Abgeord. Über Polen, p. 45.
Parliamentary Papers, 1864, vol. lxiv. pp. 28, 263. Hahn, Bismarck, i. 165.
From Rechberg's despatch of Feb 28, 1863 (in Hahn, i. 84), apparently quoting actual words uttered by Bismarck. Bismarck's account of the conversation (id. 80) tones it down to a demand that Austria should not encroach on Prussia's recognised joint-leadership in Germany.
B. and F. State Papers, 1863-4, p. 173. Beust, Erinnerungen, i. 136.
Bismarck's note of July 29th, 1870, in Hahn, i. 506, describing Napoleon's Belgian project, which dated from the time when he was himself ambassador at Paris in 1862, gives this as the explanation of Napoleon's policy in 1864. The Commercial Treaty with Prussia and friendly personal relations with Bismarck also influenced Napoleon's views. See Bismarck's speech of Feb. 21st, 1879, on this subject, in Hahn, iii. 599.
Hahn, Bismarck, i. 271, 318. Oesterreichs KÄmpfe in 1866, i. 8.
B. and F. State Papers, 1864-65, p. 460.
La Marmora, Un po piÙ di luce, pp. 109, 146, Jacini, Due Anni, p. 154. Hahn, i. 377. In the first draft of the Treaty Italy was required to declare war not only on Austria but on all German Governments which should join it. King William, who had still some compunction in calling in Italian arms against the Fatherland, struck out these words.
La Marmora, Un po piÚ di luce, p. 204. Hahn, i. 402.
Hahn, Bismarck, i. 425. Hahn, Zwei Jahre, p. 60. Oesterreichs KÄmpfe, i. 30.
Discours de Napoleon III., p. 456. On May 11th, Nigra, Italian ambassador at Paris, reported that Napoleon's ideas on the objects to be attained by a Congress were as follows:-Venetia to Italy, Silesia to Austria; the Danish Duchies and other territory in North Germany to Prussia; the establishment of several small States on the Rhine under French protection; the dispossessed German princes to be compensated in Roumania. La Marmora, p. 228. Napoleon III. was pursuing in a somewhat altered form the old German policy of the Republic and the Empire-namely, the balancing of Austria and Prussia against one another, and the establishment of a French protectorate over the group of secondary States.
Oesterreichs KÄmpfe, ii. 341. Prussian Staff, Campaign of 1866 (Hozier), p. 167.
Hahn, i. 476. Benedetti, Ma Mission en Prusse, p. 186. Reuchlin, v. 457. Massari, La Marmora, p. 350.
Hahn, i. 501, 505.
Benedetti, p. 191. Hahn, i. 508; ii. 328, 635. See also La Marmora's Un po piÙ di luce, p. 242, and his Segreti di Stato, p. 274. Govone's despatches strongly confirm the view that Bismarck was more than a mere passive listener to French schemes for the acquisition of Belgium. That he originated the plan is not probable; that he encouraged it seems to me quite certain, unless various French and Italian documents unconnected with one another are forgeries from beginning to end. On the outbreak of the war of 1870 Bismarck published the text of the draft-treaty discussed in 1866 providing for an offensive and defensive alliance between France and Prussia, and the seizure of Belgium by France. The draft was in Benedetti's handwriting, and written on paper of the French Embassy. Benedetti stated in answer that he had made the draft at Bismarck's dictation. This might seem very unlikely were it not known that the draft of the Treaty between Prussia and Italy in 1866 was actually so written down by Barral, the Italian Ambassador, at Bismarck's dictation.
Regelung der VerhÄltnisse, p. 4. Ausgleich mit Ungarn, p. 9.
Hungary retained a Ministry of National Defence for its Reserve Forces, and a Finance Ministry for its own separate finance. Thus the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was the only one of the three common Ministries which covered the entire range of a department.
They had indeed been discovered by French agents in Germany. Rothan, L'Affaire du Luxembourg, p. 74.
Hahn, i. 658. Rothan, Luxembourg, p. 246. Correspondenzen des K.K. Minist. des AÜssern, 1868, p. 24. Parl. Pap., 1867, vol. lxxiv., p. 427.
Sorel, Histoire Diplomatique, i. 38. But see the controversy between Beust and Gramont in Le Temps, Jan. 11-16, 1873.
Rothan, La France en 1867, ii. 316. Reuchlin, v. 547. Two historical expressions belong to Mentana: the "Never," of M. Rouher, and "The Chassepots have done wonders," of General Failly.
Sorel, i. 40. Hahn, i. 720. Immediately after Mentana, on Nov. 17, 1867, Mazzini wrote to Bismarck and to the Prussian ambassador at Florence, Count Usedom, stating that Napoleon had resolved to make war on Prussia and had proposed an alliance to Victor Emmanuel, who had accepted it for the price of Rome. Mazzini offered to employ revolutionary means to frustrate this plan, and asked for money and arms. Bismarck showed caution, but did not altogether disregard the communication. Politica Segreta Italiana, p. 339.
Benedetti, Ma Mission, p. 319, July 7. Gramont, La France et la Prusse, p. 61.
Sorel, Histoire Diplomatique, i. 197.
Hahn, ii. 69. Sorel, i. 236.
Prince Napoleon, in Revue des Deux Mondes, April 1, 1878; Gramont, in Revue de France, April 17, 1878. (Signed Andreas Memor.) Ollivier, L'Eglise et l'Ètat, ii. 473. Sorel, i. 245.
Der Deutsch FranzÖsische Krieg, 1870-71 (Prussian General Staff), i. 72.
Bazaine, L'ArmÉe du Rhin, p. 74.
Papiers SÉcrets du Second Empire (1875), pp. 33, 240.
Diary of the Emperor Frederick, Sept. 3.
Favre's circular alleged that the King of Prussia had declared that he made war not on France but on the Imperial Dynasty. King William had never stated anything of the kind. His proclamation on entering France, to which Favre appears to have referred, merely said that the war was to he waged against the French army, and not against the inhabitants, who, so long as they kept quiet, would not be molested.
Deutsch-FranzÖsiche Krieg, vol. III., p. 104. Bazaine, p. 166. ProcÈs de Bazaine, vol. ii., p. 219. Regnier, p. 20. Hahn, ii., 171.
Hahn, ii. 216. Valfrey, Diplomatie du Gouvernement de la DÉfense Nationale, ii. 51. Hertsier, Map of Europe, iii. 1912, 1954.
Parl. Pap. 1876, vol. lxxxiv., pp. 74, 96.
Parl. Pap. 1876, vol. lxxxiv., p. 183.
Parl. Pap. 1877, vol. xc., p. 143.
Parl. Deb. July 10, 1876, verbatim.
See Burke's speech on the Russian armament, March 29, 1791, and the passage on "the barbarous anarchic despotism" of Turkey in his Reflections on the French Revolution, p. 150, Clar. edit. Burke lived and died in Beaconsfield, and his grave is there. There seems, however, to be no evidence for the story that he was about to receive a peerage with the title of Beaconsfield, when the death of his son broke all his hopes.
Parl. Pap. 1877, vol. xc., p. 642; 1878, vol. lxxxi., p. 679.
Parl. Pap. 1877, vol. lxxxix., p. 135.
Parl. Pap. 1878, vol. lxxxi., pp. 661, 725. Parl. Deb., vol. ccxxxvii.
The Treaty, with Maps, is in Parl. Pap. 1878, vol. lxxxiii. p. 239.
Parl. Pap. 1878, vl. lxxxii., p. 3. Globe, May 31, 1878. Hahn, iii. 116.
Transcriber's Note:
(1) Footnotes have been numbered and collected at the end of the work.
(2) Sidenotes have been placed in brackets prior to the paragraph in which they occur.
(3) In a few places (all in the footnotes) the text in our print copy was illegible and has been marked with a [***].
(4) The spelling in the print copy was not always consistent. Irregular words in the original (e.g., "ascendent," "Christain," and "WÜrtemburg") have been retained whenever possible.
