Book: History of Modern Europe 1792 1878

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[Alexander in 1818.]

Twelve months passed between the Wartburg festival and the beginning of the
Conferences at Aix-la-Chapelle. In the interval a more important person
than the King of Prussia went over to the side of reaction. Up to the
summer of 1818, the Czar appeared to have abated nothing of his zeal for
constitutional government. In the spring of that year, he summoned the
Polish Diet; addressed them in a speech so enthusiastic as to alarm not
only the Court of Vienna but all his own counsellors; and stated in the
clearest possible language his intention of extending the benefits of a
representative system to the whole Russian Empire. [280] At the close of
the brief session he thanked the Polish Deputies for their boldness in
throwing out a measure proposed by himself. Alexander's popular rhetoric at
Warsaw might perhaps be not incompatible with a settled purpose to permit
no encroachment on authority either there or elsewhere; but the change in
his tone was so great when he appeared at Aix-la-Chapelle a few months
afterwards, that some strange and sudden cause has been thought necessary
to explain it. It is said that during the Czar's residence at Moscow, in
June, 1818, the revelation was made to him of the existence of a mass of
secret societies in the army, whose aim was the overthrow of his own
Government. Alexander's father had died by the hands of murderers: his own
temperament, sanguine and emotional, would make the effects of such a
discovery, in the midst of all his benevolent hopes for Russia, poignant to
the last degree. It is not inconsistent either with his character or with
earlier events in his personal history that the Czar should have yielded to
a single shock of feeling, and have changed in a moment from the liberator
to the despot. But the evidence of what passed in his mind is wanting.
Hearsay, conjecture, gossip, abound; [281] the one man who could have told
all has left no word. This only is certain, that from the close of the year
1818, the future, hitherto bright with dreams of peaceful progress, became
in Alexander's view a battle-field between the forces of order and anarchy.
The task imposed by Providence on himself and other kings was no longer to
spread knowledge and liberty among mankind, but to defend existing
authority, and even authority that was oppressive and un-Christian, against
the madness that was known as popular right.

[Conferences of Aix-la-Chapelle, Oct., 1818.]

[France evacuated.]

[Proposed Quintuple Alliance.]

[Canning.]

At the end of September, 1818, the Sovereigns or Ministers of the Great
Powers assembled at Aix-la-Chapelle, and the Conferences began. The first
question to be decided was whether the Allied Army might safely be
withdrawn from France; the second, in what form the concert of Europe
should hereafter be maintained. On the first question there was no
disagreement: the evacuation of France was resolved upon and promptly
executed. The second question was a more difficult one. Richelieu, on
behalf of King Louis XVIII., represented that France now stood on the same
footing as any other European Power, and proposed that the Quadruple
Alliance of 1815 should be converted into a genuine European federation by
adding France to it as a fifth member. The plan had been communicated to
the English Government, and would probably have received its assent but for
the strong opposition raised by Canning within the Cabinet. Canning took a
gloomy but a true view of the proposed concert of the Powers. He foresaw
that it would really amount to a combination of governments against
liberty. Therefore, while recognising the existing engagements of this
country, he urged that England ought to join in no combination except that
to which it had already pledged itself, namely, the combination made with
the definite object of resisting French disturbance. To combine with three
Powers to prevent Napoleon or the Jacobins from again becoming masters of
France was a reasonable act of policy: to combine with all the Great Powers
of Europe against nothing in particular was to place the country on the
side of governments against peoples, and to involve England in any
enterprise of repression which the Courts might think fit to undertake.
Canning's warning opened the eyes of his colleagues to the view which was
likely to be taken of such a general alliance by Parliament and by public
opinion. Lord Castlereagh was forbidden to make this country a party to any
abstract union of Governments. In memorable words the Prime Minister
described the true grounds for the decision: "We must recollect in the
whole of this business, and ought to make our Allies feel, that the general
and European discussion of these questions will be in the British
Parliament." [282] Fear of the rising voice of the nation, no longer forced
by military necessities to sanction every measure of its rulers, compelled
Lords Liverpool and Castlereagh to take account of scruples which were not
their own. On the same grounds, while the Ministry agreed that Continental
difficulties which might hereafter arise ought to be settled by a friendly
discussion among the Great Powers, it declined to elevate this occasional
deliberation into a system, and to assent to the periodical meeting of a
Congress. Peace might or might not be promoted by the frequent gatherings
of Sovereigns and statesmen; but a council so formed, if permanent in its
nature, would necessarily extinguish the independence of every minor State,
and hand over the government of all Europe to the Great Courts, if only
they could agree with one another.

[Declarations and Secret Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.]

It was the refusal of England to enter into a general league that
determined the form in which the results of the Conference of 1818 were
embodied. In the first place the Quadruple Alliance against French
revolution was renewed, and with such seriousness that the military centres
were fixed, at which, in case of any outbreak, the troops of each of the
Great Powers should assemble. [283] This Treaty, however, was kept secret,
in order not to add to the difficulties of Richelieu, The published
documents breathed another spirit. [284] Without announcing an actual
alliance with King Louis XVIII., the Courts, including England, declared
that through the restoration of legitimate and constitutional monarchy
France had regained its place in the councils of Europe, and that it would
hereafter co-operate in maintaining the general peace. For this end
meetings of the sovereigns or their ministers might be necessary; such
meetings would, however, be arranged by the ordinary modes of negotiation,
nor would the affairs of any minor State be discussed by the Great Powers,
except at the direct invitation of that State, whose representatives would
then be admitted to the sittings. In these guarded words the intention of
forming a permanent and organised Court of Control over Europe was
disclaimed. A manifesto, addressed to the world at large, declared that the
sovereigns of the five great States had no other object in their union than
the maintenance of peace on the basis of existing treaties. They had formed
no new political combinations; their rule was the observance of
international law; their object the prosperity and moral welfare of their
subjects.

[Repressive tone of the Conference.]

[Metternich and Austrian principles henceforth dominant.]

The earnestness with which the statesmen of 1818, while accepting the
conditions laid down by England, persevered in the project of a joint
regulation of European affairs may suggest the question whether the plan
which they had at heart would not in truth have operated to the benefit of
mankind. The answer is, that the value of any International Council depends
firstly on the intelligence which it is likely to possess, and secondly on
the degree in which it is really representative. Experience proved that the
Congresses which followed 1818 possessed but a limited intelligence, and
that they represented nothing at all but authority. The meeting at
Aix-la-Chapelle was itself the turning-point in the constitutional history
of Europe. Though no open declaration was made against constitutional
forms, every Sovereign and every minister who attended the Conference left
it with the resolution to draw the reins of government tighter. A note of
alarm had been sounded. Conspiracies in Belgium, an attempt on the life of
Wellington, rumours of a plot to rescue Napoleon from St. Helena, combined
with the outcry against the German Universities and the whispered tales
from Moscow in filling the minds of statesmen with apprehensions. The
change which had taken place in Alexander himself was of the most serious
moment. Up to this time Metternich, the leader of European Conservatism,
had felt that in the Czar there were sympathies with Liberalism and
enlightenment which made the future of Europe doubtful. [285] To check the
dissolution of existing power, to suppress all tendency to change, was the
habitual object of Austria, and the Czar was the one person who had seemed
likely to prevent the principles of Austria from becoming the law of
Europe. Elsewhere Metternich had little to fear in the way of opposition.
Hardenberg, broken in health and ill-supported by his King, had ceased to
be a power. Yielding to the apprehensions of Frederick William, perhaps
with the hope of dispelling them at some future time, he took his place
among the alarmists of the day, and suffered the German policy of Prussia,
to which so great a future lay open a few years before, to become the mere
reflex of Austrian inaction and repression. [286] England, so long as it
was represented on the Continent by Castlereagh and Wellington, scarcely
counted for anything on the side of liberty. The sudden change in Alexander
removed the one check that stood in Austria's way; and from this time
Metternich exercised an authority in Europe such as few statesmen have ever
possessed. His influence, overborne by that of the Czar during 1814 and
1815, struck root at the Conference of Aix-la-Chapelle, maintained itself
unimpaired during five eventful years, and sank only when the death of Lord
Castlereagh allowed the real voice of England once more to be heard, and
Canning, too late to forbid the work of repression in Italy and in Spain,
inaugurated, after an interval of forced neutrality, that worthier concert
which established the independence of Greece.

[Metternich's advice to Prussia, 1818.]

If it is the mark of a clever statesman to know where to press and where to
give way, Metternich certainly proved himself one in 1818. Before the end
of the Conference he delivered to Hardenberg and to the King of Prussia two
papers containing a complete set of recommendations for the management of
Prussian affairs. The contents of these documents were singular enough: it
is still more singular that they form the history of what actually took
place in Prussia during the succeeding years. Starting with the assumption
that the party of revolution had found its lever in the promise of King
Frederick William to create a Representative System, Metternich
demonstrated in polite language to the very men who had made this promise,
that any central Representation would inevitably overthrow the Prussian
State; pointed out that the King's dominions consisted of seven Provinces;
and recommended Frederick William to fulfil his promise only by giving to
each Province a Diet for the discussion of its own local concerns. Having
thus warned the King against creating a National Parliament, like that
which had thrown France into revolution in 1789, Metternich exhibited the
specific dangers of the moment and the means of overcoming them. These
dangers were Universities, Gymnastic establishments, and the Press. "The
revolutionists," he said, "despairing of effecting their aim themselves,
have formed the settled plan of educating the next generation for
revolution. The Gymnastic establishment is a preparatory school for
University disorders. The University seizes the youth as he leaves boyhood,
and gives him a revolutionary training. This mischief is common to all
Germany, and must be checked by joint action of the Governments. Gymnasia,
on the contrary, were invented at Berlin, and spring from Berlin. For
these, palliative measures are no longer sufficient. It has become a duty
of State for the King of Prussia to destroy the evil. The whole institution
in every shape must be closed and uprooted." With regard to the abuse of
the Press, Metternich contented himself with saying that a difference ought
to be made between substantial books and mere pamphlets or journals; and
that the regulation of the Press throughout Germany at large could only be
effected by an agreement between Austria and Prussia. [287]

[Stourdza's pamphlet.]

With a million men under arms, the Sovereigns who had overthrown Napoleon
trembled because thirty or forty journalists and professors pitched their
rhetoric rather too high, and because wise heads did not grow upon
schoolboys' shoulders. The Emperor Francis, whose imagination had failed to
rise to the glories of the Holy Alliance, alone seems to have had some
suspicion of the absurdity of the present alarms. [288] The Czar
distinguished himself by his zeal against the lecturers who were turning
the world upside down. As if Metternich had not frightened the Congress
enough already, the Czar distributed at Aix-la-Chapelle a pamphlet
published by one Stourdza, a Moldavian, which described Germany as on the
brink of revolution, and enumerated half a score of mortal disorders which
racked that unfortunate country. The chief of all was the vicious system of
the Universities, which instead of duly developing the vessel of the
Christian State from the cradle of Moses, [289] brought up young men to be
despisers of law and instruments of a licentious Press. The ingenious
Moldavian, whose expressions in some places bear a singular resemblance to
those of Alexander, while in others they are actually identical with
reflections of Metternich's not then published, went on to enlighten the
German Governments as to the best means of rescuing their subjects from
their perilous condition. Certain fiscal and administrative changes were
briefly suggested, but the main reform urged was exactly that propounded by
Metternich, the enforcement of a better discipline and of a more
rigidly-prescribed course of study at the Universities, along with the
supervision of all journals and periodical literature.

[The murder of Kotzebue, March 23, 1819.]

Stourdza's pamphlet, in which loose reasoning was accompanied by the
coarsest invective, would have gained little attention if it had depended
on its own merits or on the reputation of its author: it became a different
matter when it was known to represent the views of the Czar. A vehement but
natural outcry arose at the Universities against this interference of the
foreigner with German domestic affairs. National independence, it seemed,
had been won in the deadly struggle against France only in order that
internal liberty, the promised fruit of this independence, should be
sacrificed at the bidding of Russia. The Czar himself was out of reach: the
vengeance of outraged patriotism fell upon an insignificant person who had
the misfortune to be regarded as his principal agent. A dramatic author
then famous, now forgotten, August Kotzebue, held the office of Russian
agent in Central Germany, and conducted a newspaper whose object was to
throw ridicule on the national movement of the day, and especially on those
associations of students where German enthusiasm reached its climax. Many
circumstances embittered popular feeling against this man, and caused him
to be regarded less as a legitimate enemy than as a traitor and an
apostate. Kotzebue had himself been a student at Jena, and at one time had
turned liberal sentiments to practical account in his plays. Literary
jealousies and wounded vanity had subsequently alienated him from his
country, and made him the willing and acrid hireling of a foreign Court.
The reports which, as Russian agent, he sent to St. Petersburg were
doubtless as offensive as the attacks on the Universities which he
published in his journal; but it was an extravagant compliment to the man
to imagine that he was the real author of the Czar's desertion from
Liberalism to reaction. This, however, was the common belief, and it cost
Kotzebue dear. A student from Erlangen, Carl Sand, who had accompanied the
standard at the Wartburg festival, formed the silent resolve of sacrificing
his own life in order to punish the enemy of his country. Sand was a man of
pure and devout, though ill-balanced character. His earlier life marked him
as one whose whole being was absorbed by what he considered a divine call.
He thought of the Greeks who, even in their fallen estate, had so often
died to free their country from Turkish oppression, and formed the
deplorable conclusion that by murdering a decayed dramatist he could strike
some great blow against the powers of evil. [290] He sought the unfortunate
Kotzebue in the midst of his family, stabbed him to the heart, and then
turned his weapon against himself. Recovering from his wounds, he was
condemned to death, and perished, after a year's interval, on the scaffold,
calling God to witness that he died for Germany to be free.

[Action of Metternich.]

The effects of Sand's act were very great, and their real nature was at
once recognised. Hardenberg, the moment that he heard of Kotzebue's death,
exclaimed that a Prussian Constitution had now become impossible.
Metternich, who had thought the Czar mad because he desired to found a
peaceful alliance of Sovereigns on religious principles, was not likely to
make allowance for a kind of piety that sent young rebels over the country
on missions of murder. The Austrian statesman was in Rome when the news of
Kotzebue's assassination reached him. He saw that the time had come for
united action throughout Germany, and, without making any public utterance,
drew up a scheme of repressive measures, and sent out proposals for a
gathering of the Ministers of all the principal German Courts. In the
summer he travelled slowly northwards, met the King of Prussia at Teplitz,
in Bohemia, and shortly afterwards opened the intended Conference of
Ministers in the neighbouring town of Carlsbad. A number of innocent
persons had already, at his instigation, been arrested in Prussia and other
States, under circumstances deeply discreditable to Government. Private
papers were seized, and garbled extracts from them published in official
prints as proof of guilt. [291] "By the help of God," Metternich wrote, "I
hope to defeat the German Revolution, just as I vanquished the conqueror of
the world. The revolutionists thought me far away, because I was five
hundred leagues off. They deceived themselves; I have been in the midst of
them, and now I am striking my blows." [292] Metternich's plan was to
enforce throughout Germany, by means of legislation in the Federal Diet,
the principle which he had already privately commended to the King of
Prussia. There were two distinct objects of policy before him: the first,
to prevent the formation in any German State of an assembly representing
the whole community, like the English House of Commons or the French
Chamber of Deputies; the second, to establish a general system of
censorship over the Press and over the Universities, and to create a
central authority, vested, as the representative of the Diet, with
inquisitorial powers.

[The South-Western States become constitutional as Prussia relapses.]

[Bavarian Constitution, May 26, 1818.]

The first of these objects, the prevention of general assemblies, had been
rendered more difficult by recent acts of the Governments of Bavaria and
Baden. A singular change had taken place in the relation between Prussia
and the Minor States which had formerly constituted the Federation of the
Rhine. When, at the Congress of Vienna, Prussian statesmen had endeavoured
to limit the arbitrary rule of petty sovereigns by charging the Diet with
the protection of constitutional right over all Germany, the Kings of
Bavaria and Wuertemberg had stoutly refused to part with sovereign power. To
submit to a law of liberty, as it then seemed, was to lose their own
separate existence, and to reduce themselves to dependence upon the
Jacobins of Berlin. This apprehension governed the policy of the Minor
Courts from 1813 to 1815. But since that time events had taken an
unexpected turn. Prussia, which once threatened to excite popular movement
over all Germany in its own interest, had now accepted Metternich's
guidance, and made its representative in the Diet the mouthpiece of
Austrian interest and policy. It was no longer from Berlin but from Vienna
that the separate existence of the Minor States was threatened. The two
great Courts were uniting against the independence of their weaker
neighbours. The danger of any popular invasion of kingly rights in the name
of German unity had passed away, and the safety of the lesser sovereigns
seemed now to lie not in resisting the spirit of constitutional reform but
in appealing to it. In proportion as Prussia abandoned itself to
Metternich's direction, the Governments of the South-Western States
familiarised themselves with the idea of a popular representation; and at
the very time when the conservative programme was being drawn up for the
Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, the King of Bavaria published a Constitution.
Baden followed after a short interval, and in each of these States,
although the Legislature was divided into two Chambers, the representation
established was not merely provincial, according to Metternich's plan, or
wholly on the principle of separate Estates or Orders, as before the
Revolution, but to some extent on the type of England and France, where the
Lower Chamber, in theory, represented the public at large. This was enough
to make Metternich condemn the new Constitutions as radically bad and
revolutionary. [293] He was, however, conscious of the difficulty of making
a direct attack upon them. This task he reserved for a later time. His
policy at present was to obtain a declaration from the Diet which should
prevent any other Government within the League from following in the same
path; while, by means of Press-laws, supervision of the Universities, and a
central commission of inquiry, he expected to make the position of
rebellious professors and agitators so desperate that the forces of
disorder, themselves not deeply rooted in German nature, would presently
disappear.

[Conference of Carlsbad, Aug., 1819.]

The Conference of Ministers at Carlsbad, which in the memory of the German
people is justly associated with the suppression of their liberty for an
entire generation, began and ended in the month of August, 1819. Though
attended by the representatives of eight German Governments, it did little
more than register the conclusions which Metternich had already formed.
[294] The zeal with which the envoy of Prussia supported every repressive
measure made it useless for the Ministers of the Minor Courts to offer an
open opposition. Nothing more was required than that the Diet should
formally sanction the propositions thus privately accepted by all the
leading Ministers. On the 20th of September this sanction was given. The
Diet, which had sat for three years without framing a single useful law,
ratified all Metternich's oppressive enactments in as many hours. It was
ordered that in every State within the Federation the Government should
take measures for preventing the publication of any journal or pamphlet
except after licence given, and each Government was declared responsible to
the Federation at large for any objectionable writing published within its
own territory. The Sovereigns were required to appoint civil commissioners
at the Universities, whose duty it should be to enforce public order and to
give a salutary direction to the teaching of the professors. They were also
required to dismiss all professors who should overstep the bounds of their
duty, and such dismissed persons were prohibited from being employed in any
other State. It was enacted that within fifteen days of the passing of the
decree an extraordinary Commission should assemble at Mainz to investigate
the origin and extent of the secret revolutionary societies which
threatened the safety of the Federation. The Commission was empowered to
examine and, if necessary, to arrest any subject of any German State, All
law-courts and other authorities were required to furnish it with
information and with documents, and to undertake all inquiries which the
Commission might order. The Commission, however, was not a law-court
itself: its duty was to report to the Diet, which would then create such
judicial machinery as might be necessary. [295]

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