Book: History of Modern Europe 1792 1878

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There was also in the very fact that Europe had been restored to peace by
the united efforts of all the governments something adverse to the success
of a constitutional or a Liberal party in any State. Constitutional systems
had indeed been much praised at the Congress of Vienna; but the group of
men who actually controlled Europe in 1815, and who during the five
succeeding years continued in correspondence and in close personal
intercourse with one another, had, with one exception, passed their lives
in the atmosphere of absolute government, and learnt to regard the conduct
of all great affairs as the business of a small number of very eminent
individuals. Castlereagh, the one Minister of a constitutional State,
belonged to a party which, to a degree almost unequalled in Europe,
identified political duty with the principle of hostility to change. It is
indeed in the correspondence of the English Minister himself, and in
relation to subjects of purely domestic government in England, that the
community of thought which now existed between all the leading statesmen of
Europe finds its most singular exhibition. Both Metternich and Hardenberg
took as much interest in the suppression of Lancashire Radicalism, and in
the measures of coercion which the British Government thought it necessary
to pass in the year 1819, as in the chastisement of rebellious pamphleteers
upon the Rhine, and in the dissolution of the students' clubs at Jena. It
was indeed no very great matter for the English people, who were now close
upon an era of reform, that Castlereagh received the congratulations of
Vienna and Berlin for suspending the Habeas Corpus Act and the right of
public meeting, [305] or that Metternich believed that no one but himself
knew the real import of the shouts with which the London mob greeted Sir
Francis Burdett. [306] Neither the impending reform of the English Criminal
Law nor the emancipation of Irish Catholics resulted from the enlightenment
of foreign Courts, or could be hindered by their indifference. But on the
Continent of Europe the progress towards constitutional freedom was indeed
likely to be a slow and a chequered one when the Ministers of absolutism
formed so close and intimate a band, when the nations contained within them
such small bodies of men in any degree versed in public affairs, and when
the institutions on which it was proposed to base the liberty of the future
were so destitute of that strength which springs from connection with the
past.




CHAPTER XIV.


Movements in the Mediterranean States beginning in 1820--Spain from 1814 to
1820--The South American Colonies--The Army at Cadiz: Action of Quiroga
and Riego--Movement at Corunna--Ferdinand accepts the Constitution of
1812--Naples from 1815 to 1820--The Court-party, the Muratists, the
Carbonari--The Spanish Constitution proclaimed at Naples--Constitutional
movement in Portugal--Alexander's proposal with regard to Spain--The
Conference and Declaration of Troppau--Protest of England--Conference of
Laibach--The Austrians invade Naples and restore absolute Monarchy--
Insurrection in Piedmont, which fails--Spain from 1820 to 1822--Death of
Castlereagh--The Congress of Verona--Policy of England--The French invade
Spain--Restoration of absolute Monarchy, and violence of the reaction--
England prohibits the conquest of the Spanish Colonies by France, and
subsequently recognises their independence--Affairs in Portugal--Canning
sends troops to Lisbon--The Policy of Canning--Estimate of his place in the
history of Europe.


[The Mediterranean movements, beginning in 1820.]

When the guardians of Europe, at the end of the first three years of peace,
scanned from their council-chamber at Aix-la-Chapelle that goodly heritage
which, under Providence, their own parental care was henceforth to guard
against the assaults of malice and revolution, they had fixed their gaze
chiefly on France, Germany, and the Netherlands, as the regions most
threatened by the spirit of change. The forecast was not an accurate one.
In each of these countries Government proved during the succeeding years to
be much more than a match for its real or imaginary foes: it was in the
Mediterranean States, which had excited comparatively little anxiety, that
the first successful attack was made upon established power. Three
movements arose successively in the three southern peninsulas, at the time
when Metternich was enjoying the silence which he had imposed upon Germany,
and the Ultra-Royalists of France were making good the advantage which the
crime of an individual and the imprudence of a party had thrown into their
hands. In Spain and in Italy a body of soldiers rose on behalf of
constitutional government: in Greece a nation rose against the rule of the
foreigner. In all three countries the issue of these movements was, after a
longer or shorter interval, determined by the Northern Powers. All three
movements were at first treated as identical in their character, and all
alike condemned as the work of Jacobinism. But the course of events, and a
change of persons in the government of one great State, brought about a
truer view of the nature of the struggle in Greece. The ultimate action of
Europe in the affairs of that country was different from its action in the
affairs of Italy and Spain. It is now only remembered as an instance of
political recklessness or stupidity that a conflict of race against race
and of religion against religion should for a while have been confused by
some of the leading Ministers of Europe with the attempt of a party to make
the form of domestic government more liberal. The Hellenic rising had
indeed no feature in common with the revolutions of Naples and Cadiz; and,
although in order of time the opening of the Greek movement long preceded
the close of the Spanish movement, the historian, who has neither the
politician's motive for making a confusion, nor the protection of his
excuse of ignorance, must in this case neglect the accidents of chronology,
and treat the two as altogether apart.

[Spain between 1814 and 1820.]

King Ferdinand of Spain, after overthrowing the Constitution which he found
in existence on his return to his country, had conducted himself as if his
object had been to show to what lengths a legitimate monarch might abuse
the fidelity of his subjects and defy the public opinion of Europe. The
leaders of the Cortes, whom he had arrested in 1814, after being declared
innocent by one tribunal after another were sentenced to long terms of
imprisonment by an arbitrary decree of the King, without even the pretence
of judicial forms. Men who had been conspicuous in the struggle of the
nation against Napoleon were neglected or disgraced; many of the highest
posts were filled by politicians who had played a double part, or had even
served under the invader. Priests and courtiers intrigued for influence
over the King; even when a capable Minister was placed in power through the
pressure of the ambassadors, and the King's name was set to edicts of
administrative reform, these edicts were made a dead letter by the powerful
band who lived upon the corruption of the public service. Nothing was
sacred except the interest of the clergy; this, however, was enough to keep
the rural population on the King's side. The peasant, who knew that his
house would not now be burnt by the French, and who heard that true
religion had at length triumphed over its enemies, understood, and cared to
understand, nothing more. Rumours of kingly misgovernment and oppression
scarcely reached his ears. Ferdinand was still the child of Spain and of
the Church; his return had been the return of peace; his rule was the
victory of the Catholic faith.

[The nation satisfied: the officers discontented.]

But the acquiescence of the mass of the people was not shared by the
officers of the army and the educated classes in the towns. The overthrow
of the Constitution was from the first condemned by soldiers who had won
distinction under the government of the Cortes; and a series of military
rebellion, though isolated and on the smallest scale, showed that the
course on which Ferdinand had entered was not altogether free from danger.
The attempts of General Mina in 1814, and of Porlier and Lacy in succeeding
years, to raise the soldiery on behalf of the Constitution, failed, through
the indifference of the soldiery themselves, and the power which the
priesthood exercised in garrison-towns. Discontent made its way in the army
by slow degrees; and the ultimate declaration of a military party against
the existing Government was due at least as much to Ferdinand's absurd
system of favouritism, and to the wretched condition into which the army
had been thrown, as to an attachment to the memory or the principles of
constitutional rule. Misgovernment made the treasury bankrupt; soldiers and
sailors received no pay for years together; and the hatred with which the
Spanish people had now come to regard military service is curiously shown
by an order of the Government that all the beggars in Madrid and other
great towns should be seized on a certain night (July 23, 1816), and
enrolled in the army. [307] But the very beggars were more than a match for
Ferdinand's administration. They heard of the fate in store for them, and
mysteriously disappeared, so frustrating a measure by which it had been
calculated that Spain would gain sixty thousand warriors.

[Struggle of Spain with its colonies, 1810-1820.]

The military revolution which at length broke out in the year 1820 was
closely connected with the struggle for independence now being made by the
American colonies of Spain; and in its turn it affected the course of this
struggle and its final result. The colonies had refused to accept the rule
either of Joseph Bonaparte or of the Cortes of Cadiz when their legitimate
sovereign was dispossessed by Napoleon. While acting for the most part in
Ferdinand's name, they had engaged in a struggle with the National
Government of Spain. They had tasted independence; and although after the
restoration of Ferdinand they would probably have recognised the rights of
the Spanish Crown if certain concessions had been made, they were not
disposed to return to the condition of inferiority in which they had been
held during the last century, or to submit to rulers who proved themselves
as cruel and vindictive in moments of victory as they were incapable of
understanding the needs of the time. The struggle accordingly continued.
Regiment after regiment was sent from Spain, to perish of fever, of forced
marches, or on the field. The Government of King Ferdinand, despairing of
its own resources, looked around for help among the European Powers.
England would have lent its mediation, and possibly even armed assistance,
if the Court of Madrid would have granted a reasonable amount of freedom to
the colonies, and have opened their ports to British commerce. This,
however, was not in accordance with the views of Ferdinand's advisers.
Strange as it may appear, the Spanish Government demanded that the alliance
of Sovereigns, which had been framed for the purpose of resisting the
principle of rebellion and disorder in Europe, should intervene against its
revolted subjects on the other side of the Atlantic, and it implied that
England, if acting at all, should act as the instrument of the Alliance.
[308] Encouragement was given to the design by the Courts of Paris and St.
Petersburg. Whether a continent claimed its independence, or a German
schoolboy wore a forbidden ribbon in his cap, the chiefs of the Holy
Alliance now assumed the frown of offended Providence, and prepared to
interpose their own superior power and wisdom to save a misguided world
from the consequences of its own folly. Alexander had indeed for a time
hoped that the means of subduing the colonies might be supplied by himself;
and in his zeal to supplant England in the good graces of Ferdinand he sold
the King a fleet of war on very moderate terms. To the scandal of Europe
the ships, when they reached Cadiz, turned out to be thoroughly rotten and
unseaworthy. As it was certain that the Czar's fleet and the Spanish
soldiers, however holy their mission, would all go to the bottom together
as soon as they encountered the waves of the Atlantic, the expedition was
postponed, and the affairs of America were brought before the Conference of
Aix-la-Chapelle. The Envoys of Russia and France submitted a paper, in
which, anticipating the storm-warnings of more recent times, they described
the dangers to which monarchical Europe would be exposed from the growth of
a federation of republics in America; and they suggested that Wellington,
as "the man of Europe," should go to Madrid, to preside over a negotiation
between the Court of Spain and all the ambassadors with reference to the
terms to be offered to the Transatlantic States. [309] England, however, in
spite of Lord Castlereagh's dread of revolutionary contagion, adhered to
the principles which it had already laid down; and as the counsellors of
King Ferdinand declined to change their policy, Spain was left to subdue
its colonies by itself.

[Conspiracy in the Army of Cadiz.]

It was in the army assembled at Cadiz for embarkation in the summer of 1819
that the conspiracy against Ferdinand's Government found its leaders.
Secret societies had now spread themselves over the principal Spanish
towns, and looked to the soldiery on the coast for the signal of revolt.
Abisbal, commander at Cadiz, intending to make himself safe against all
contingencies, encouraged for awhile the plots of the discontented
officers: then, foreseeing the failure of the movement, he arrested the
principal men by a stratagem, and went off to Madrid, to reveal the
conspiracy to the Court and to take credit for saving the King's crown
(July, 1819). [310] If the army could have been immediately despatched to
America, the danger would possibly have passed away. This, however, was
prevented by an outbreak of yellow fever, which made it necessary to send
the troops into cantonments for several months. The conspirators gained
time to renew their plans. The common soldiers, who had hitherto been
faithful to the Government, heard in their own squalor and inaction the
fearful stories of the few sick and wounded who returned from beyond the
seas, and learnt to regard the order of embarkation as a sentence of death.
Several battalions were won over to the cause of constitutional liberty by
their commanders. The leaders imprisoned a few months before were again in
communication with their followers. After the treachery of Abisbal, it was
agreed to carry out the revolt without the assistance of generals or
grandees. The leaders chosen were two colonels, Quiroga and Riego, of whom
the former was in nominal confinement in a monastery near Medina Sidonia,
twenty miles east of Cadiz, while Riego was stationed at Cabezas, a few
marches distant on the great road to Seville. The first day of the year
1820 was fixed for the insurrection. It was determined that Riego should
descend upon the head-quarters, which were at Arcos, and arrest the
generals before they could hear anything of the movement, while Quiroga,
moving from the east, gathered up the battalions stationed on the road, and
threw himself into Cadiz, there to await his colleague's approach.

[Action of Quiroga and Riego, Jan.,1820.]

The first step in the enterprise proved successful. Riego, proclaiming the
Constitution of 1812, surprised the headquarters, seized the generals, and
rallied several companies to his standard. Quiroga, however, though he
gained possession of San Fernando, at the eastern end of the peninsula of
Leon, on which Cadiz is situated, failed to make his entrance into Cadiz.
The commandant, hearing of the capture of the head-quarters, had closed the
city gates, and arrested the principal inhabitants whom he suspected of
being concerned in the plot. The troops within the town showed no sign of
mutiny. Riego, when he arrived at the peninsula of Leon, found that only
five thousand men in all had joined the good cause, while Cadiz, with a
considerable garrison and fortifications of great strength, stood hostile
before him. He accordingly set off with a small force to visit and win over
the other regiments which were lying in the neighbouring towns and
villages. The commanders, however, while not venturing to attack the
mutineers, drew off their troops to a distance, and prevented them from
entering into any communication with Riego. The adventurous soldier,
leaving Quiroga in the peninsula of Leon, then marched into the interior of
Andalusia (January 27), endeavouring to raise the inhabitants of the towns.
But the small numbers of his band, and the knowledge that Cadiz and the
greater part of the army still held by the Government, prevented the
inhabitants from joining the insurrection, even where they received Riego
with kindness and supplied the wants of his soldiers. During week after
week the little column traversed the country, now cut off from retreat,
exhausted by forced marches in drenching rain, and harassed by far stronger
forces sent in pursuit. The last town that Riego entered was Cordova. The
enemy was close behind him. No halt was possible. He led his band, now
numbering only two hundred men, into the mountains, and there bade them
disperse (March 11).

[Corunna proclaims the Constitution Feb. 20.]

[Abisbal's defection March 4.]

With Quiroga lying inactive in the peninsula of Leon and Riego hunted from
village to village, it seemed as if the insurrection which they had begun
could only end in the ruin of its leaders. But the movement had in fact
effected its object. While the courtiers around King Ferdinand, unwarned by
the news from Cadiz, continued their intrigues against one another, the
rumour of rebellion spread over the country. If no great success had been
achieved by the rebels, it was also certain that no great blow had been
struck by the Government. The example of bold action had been set; the
shock given at one end of the peninsula was felt at the other; and a
fortnight before Riego's band dispersed, the garrison and the citizens of
Corunna together declared for the Constitution (February 20). From Corunna
the revolutionary movement spread to Ferrol and to all the other
coast-towns of Galicia. The news reached Madrid, terrifying the Government,
and exciting the spirit of insurrection in the capital itself. The King
summoned a council of the leading men around him. The wisest of them
advised him to publish a moderate Constitution, and, by convoking a
Parliament immediately, to stay the movement, which would otherwise result
in the restoration of the Assembly and the Constitution of 1812. They also
urged the King to abolish the Inquisition forthwith. Ferdinand's brother,
Don Carlos, the head of the clerical party, succeeded in preventing both
measures. Though the generals in all quarters of Spain wrote that they
could not answer for the troops, there were still hopes of keeping down the
country by force of arms. Abisbal, who was at Madrid, was ordered to move
with reinforcements towards the army in the south. He set out, protesting
to the King that he knew the way to deal with rebels. When he reached Ocana
he proclaimed the Constitution himself (March 4).

[Ferdinand accepts the Constitution 1812, March 9.]

It was now clear that the cause of absolute monarchy was lost. The ferment
in Madrid increased. On the night of the 6th of March all the great bodies
of State assembled for council in the King's palace, and early on the 7th
Ferdinand published a proclamation, stating that he had determined to
summon the Cortes immediately. This declaration satisfied no one, for the
Cortes designed by the King might be the mere revival of a mediaeval form,
and the history of 1814 showed how little value was to be attached to
Ferdinand's promises. Crowds gathered in the great squares of Madrid,
crying for the Constitution of 1812. The statement of the Minister of War
that the Guard was on the point of joining the people now overcame even the
resistance of Don Carlos and the confessors; and after a day wasted in
dispute, Ferdinand announced to his people that he was ready to take the
oath to the Constitution which they desired. The next day was given up to
public rejoicings; the book of the Constitution was carried in procession
through the city with the honours paid to the Holy Sacrament, and all
political prisoners were set at liberty. The prison of the Inquisition was
sacked, the instruments of torture broken in pieces. On the 9th the leaders
of the agitation took steps to make the King fulfil his promise. A mob
invaded the court and threshold of the palace. At their demand the
municipal council of 1814 was restored; its members were sent, in company
with six deputies chosen by the populace, to receive the pledges of the
King. Ferdinand, all smiles and bows, while he looked forward to the day
when force or intrigue should make him again absolute master of Spain, and
enable him to take vengeance upon the men who were humiliating, him, took
the oath of fidelity to the Constitution of 1812. [311] New Ministers were
immediately called to office, and a provisional Junta was placed by their
side as the representative of the public until the new Cortes should be
duly elected.

[Condition of Naples, 1815-1820.]

Tidings of the Spanish revolution passed rapidly over Europe, disquieting
the courts and everywhere reviving the hopes of the friends of popular
right. Before four months had passed, the constitutional movement begun in
Cadiz was taken up in Southern Italy. The kingdom of Naples was one of
those States which had profited the most by French conquest. During the
nine years that its crown was held by Joseph Bonaparte and Murat, the laws
and institutions which accompanied Napoleon's supremacy had rudely broken
up the ancient fixity of confusions which passed for government, and had
aroused no insignificant forces of new social life. The feudal tenure of
land, and with it something of the feudal structure of society, had passed
away: the monasteries had been dissolved; the French civil code, and a
criminal code based upon that of France, had taken the place of a thousand
conflicting customs and jurisdictions; taxation had been made, if not
light, yet equitable and simple; justice was regular, and the same for
baron and peasant; brigandage had been extinguished; and, for the first
time in many centuries, the presence of a rational and uniform
administration was felt over all the south of Italy. Nor on the restoration
of King Ferdinand had any reaction been permitted to take place like that
which in a moment destroyed the work of reform in Spain and in Westphalia.
England and Austria insisted that there should be neither vengeance nor
counterrevolution. Queen Marie Caroline, the principal agent in the
cruelties of 1799, was dead; Ferdinand himself was old and indolent, and
willing to leave affairs in the hands of Ministers more intelligent than
himself. Hence the laws and the administrative system of Murat remained on
the whole unchanged. [312] As in France, a Bourbon Sovereign placed himself
at the head of a political order fashioned by Napoleon and the Revolution.
Where changes in the law were made, or acts of State revoked, it was for
the most part in consequence of an understanding with the Holy See. Thus,
while no attempt was made to eject the purchasers of Church-lands, the
lands not actually sold were given back to the Church; a considerable
number of monasteries were restored; education was allowed to fall again
into the hands of the clergy; the Jesuits were recalled, and the Church
regained its jurisdiction in marriage-causes, as well as the right of
suppressing writings at variance with the Catholic faith.

[Hostility between the Court party and the Muratists.]

But the legal and recognised changes which followed Ferdinand's return by
no means expressed the whole change in the operation of government. If
there were not two conflicting systems at work, there were two conflicting
bodies of partisans in the State. Like the emigrants who returned with
Louis XVIII., a multitude of Neapolitans, high and low, who had either
accompanied the King in his exile to Sicily or fought for him on the
mainland in 1799 and 1806, now expected their reward. In their interest the
efficiency of the public service was sacrificed and the course of justice
perverted. Men who had committed notorious crimes escaped punishment if
they had been numbered among the King's friends; the generals and officials
who had served under Murat, though not removed from their posts, were
treated with discourtesy and suspicion. It was in the army most of all that
the antagonism of the two parties was felt. A medal was struck for service
in Sicily, and every year spent there in inaction was reckoned as two in
computing seniority. Thus the younger officers of Murat found their way
blocked by a troop of idlers, and at the same time their prospects suffered
from the honest attempts made by Ministers to reduce the military
expenditure. Discontent existed in every rank. The generals were familiar
with the idea of political change, for during the last years of Murat's
reign they had themselves thought of compelling him to grant a
Constitution: the younger officers and the sergeants were in great part
members of the secret society of the Carbonari, which in the course of the
last few years had grown with the weakness of the Government, and had now
become the principal power in the Neapolitan kingdom.

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