Book: History of Modern Europe 1792 1878

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[Ferdinand at Laibach.]

[Demands of the Allies on Naples.]

Ferdinand reached Laibach, where the Czar rewarded him for the fatigues of
his journey by a present of some Russian bears. His arrival was peculiarly
agreeable to Metternich, whose intentions corresponded exactly with his
own; and the fact that he had been compelled to swear to maintain the
Spanish Constitution at Naples acted favourably for the Austrian Minister,
inasmuch as it enabled him to say to all the world that negotiation was now
out of the question. [326] Capodistrias, brought face to face with failure,
twisted about, according to his rival's expression, like a devil in holy
water, but all in vain. It was decided that Ferdinand should be restored as
absolute monarch by an Austrian army, and that, whether the Neapolitans
resisted or submitted, their country should be occupied by Austrian troops
for some years to come. The only difficulty remaining was to vest King
Ferdinand's conduct in some respectable disguise. Capodistrias, when
nothing else was to be gained, offered to invent an entire correspondence,
in which Ferdinand should proudly uphold the Constitution to which he had
sworn, and protest against the determination of the Powers to force the
sceptre of absolutism back into his hand. [327] This device, however, was
thought too transparent. A letter was sent in the King's name to his son,
the Duke of Calabria, stating that he had found the three Powers determined
not to tolerate an order of things sprung from revolution; that submission
alone would avert war; but that even in case of submission certain
securities for order, meaning the occupation of the country by an Austrian
army, would be exacted. The letter concluded with the usual promises of
reform and good government. It reached Naples on the 9th of February, 1821.
No answer was either expected or desired. On the 6th the order had been
given to the Austrian army to cross the Po.

[State of Naples and Sicily.]

[The Austrians enter Naples, March 24, 1821.]

[Third Neapolitan restoration.]

There was little reason to fear any serious resistance on the part of the
Neapolitans. The administration of the State was thoroughly disorganised;
the agitation of the secret societies had destroyed all spirit of obedience
among the soldiers; a great part of the army was absent in Sicily, keeping
guard over a people who, under wiser management, might have doubled the
force which Naples now opposed to the invader. When the despotic government
of Ferdinand was overthrown, the island of Sicily, or that part of it which
was represented by Palermo, had claimed the separate political existence
which it had possessed between 1806 and 1815, offering to remain united to
Naples in the person of the sovereign, but demanding a National Parliament
and a National Constitution of its own. The revolutionary Ministers of
Naples had, however, no more sympathy with the wishes of the Sicilians than
the Spanish Liberals of 1812 had with those of the American Colonists. They
required the islanders to accept the same rights and duties as any other
province of the Neapolitan kingdom, and, on their refusal, sent over a
considerable force and laid siege to Palermo. [328] The contest soon ended
in the submission of the Sicilians, but it was found necessary to keep
twelve thousand troops on the island in order to prevent a new revolt. The
whole regular army of Naples numbered little more than forty thousand; and
although bodies of Carbonari and of the so-called Militia set out to join
the colours of General Pepe and to fight for liberty, they remained for the
most part a disorderly mob, without either arms or discipline. The invading
army of Austria, fifty thousand strong, not only possessed an immense
superiority in organisation and military spirit, but actually outnumbered
the forces of the defence. At the first encounter, which took place at
Rieti, in the Papal States, the Neapolitans were put to the rout. Their
army melted away, as it had in Murat's campaign in 1815. Nothing was heard
among officers and men but accusations of treachery; not a single strong
point was defended; and on the 24th of March the Austrians made their entry
into Naples. Ferdinand, halting at Florence, sent on before him the worst
instruments of his former despotism. It was indeed impossible for these men
to renew, under Austrian protection, the scenes of reckless bloodshed which
had followed the restoration of 1799; and a great number of compromised
persons had already been provided with the means of escape. But the hand of
vengeance was not easily stayed. Courts-martial and commissions of judges
began in all parts of the kingdom to sentence to imprisonment and death. An
attempted insurrection in Sicily and some desperate acts of rebellion in
Southern Italy cost the principal actors their lives; and when an amnesty
was at length proclaimed, an exception was made against those who were now
called the deserters, and who were lately called the Sacred Band, of Nola,
that is to say, the soldiers who had first risen for the Constitution.
Morelli, who had received the Viceroy's treacherous thanks for his conduct,
was executed, along with one of his companions; the rest were sent in
chains to labour among felons. Hundreds of persons were left lying,
condemned or uncondemned, in prison; others, in spite of the amnesty, were
driven from their native land; and that great, long-lasting stream of
fugitives now began to pour into England, which, in the early memories of
many who are not yet old, has associated the name of Italian with the image
of an exile and a sufferer.

[Insurrection in Piedmont, March 10.]

There was a moment in the campaign of Austria against Naples when the
invading army was threatened with the most serious danger. An insurrection
broke out in Piedmont, and the troops of that country attempted to unite
with the patriotic party of Lombardy in a movement which would have thrown
all Northern Italy upon the rear of the Austrians. In the first excess of
alarm, the Czar ordered a hundred thousand Russians to cross the Galician
frontier, and to march in the direction of the Adriatic. It proved
unnecessary, however, to continue this advance. The Piedmontese army was
divided against itself; part proclaimed the Spanish Constitution, and, on
the abdication of the King, called upon his cousin, the Regent, Charles
Albert of Carignano, to march against the Austrians; part adhered to the
rightful heir, the King's brother, Charles Felix, who was absent at Modena,
and who, with an honesty in strong contrast to the frauds of the Neapolitan
Court, refused to temporise with rebels, or to make any compromise with the
Constitution. The scruples of the Prince of Carignano, after he had gone
some way with the military party of action, paralysed the movement of
Northern Italy. Unsupported by Piedmontese troops, the conspirators of
Milan failed to raise any open insurrection. Austrian soldiers thronged
westwards from the Venetian fortresses, and entered Piedmont itself; the
collapse of the Neapolitan army destroyed the hopes of the bravest
patriots; and the only result of the Piedmontese movement was that the
grasp of Austria closed more tightly on its subject provinces, while the
martyrs of Italian freedom passed out of the sight of the world, out of the
range of all human communication, buried for years to come in the silent,
unvisited prison of the North. [329]

[The French Ultra Royalists urging attack on Spain.]

Thus the victory of absolutism was completed, and the law was laid down to
Europe that a people seeking its liberties elsewhere than in the grace and
spontaneous generosity of its legitimate sovereign became a fit object of
attack for the armies of the three Great Powers. It will be seen in a later
chapter how Metternich persuaded the Czar to include under the anathema
issued by the Congress of Laibach (May, 1821) [330] the outbreak of the
Greeks, which at this moment began, and how Lord Castlereagh supported the
Austrian Minister in denying to these rebels against the Sultan all right
or claim to the consideration of Europe. Spain was for the present left
unmolested; but the military operations of 1821 prepared the way for a
similar crusade against that country by occasioning the downfall of
Richelieu's Ministry, and throwing the government of France entirely into
the hands of the Ultra-Royalists. All parties in the French Chamber,
whether they condemned or approved the suppression of Neapolitan liberty,
censured a policy which had kept France in inaction, and made Austria
supreme in Italy. The Ultra-Royalists profited by the general discontent to
overthrow the Minister whom they had promised to support (Dec., 1821); and
from this time a war with Spain, conducted either by France alone or in
combination with the three Eastern Powers, became the dearest hope of the
rank and file of the dominant faction. Villele, their nominal chief,
remained what he had been before, a statesman among fanatics, and desired
to maintain the attitude of observation as long as this should be possible.
A body of troops had been stationed on the southern frontier in 1820 to
prevent all intercourse with the Spanish districts afflicted with the
yellow fever. This epidemic had passed away, but the number of the troops
was now raised to a hundred thousand. It was, however, the hope of Villele
that hostilities might be averted unless the Spaniards should themselves
provoke a combat, or, by resorting to extreme measures against King
Ferdinand, should compel Louis XVIII. to intervene on behalf of his
kinsman. The more violent section of the French Cabinet, represented by
Montmorency, the Foreign Minister, called for an immediate march on Madrid,
or proposed to delay operations only until France should secure the support
of the other Continental Powers.

[Spain from 1820 to 1822.]

[Ferdinand plots with the Serviles against the Constitution.]

The condition of Spain in the year 1822 gave ample encouragement to those
who longed to employ the arms of France in the royalist cause. The hopes of
peaceful reform, which for the first few months after the revolution had
been shared even by foreign politicians at Madrid, had long vanished. In
the moment of popular victory Ferdinand had brought the leaders of the
Cortes from their prisons and placed them in office. These men showed a
dignified forgetfulness of the injuries which they had suffered. Misfortune
had calmed their impetuosity, and taught them more of the real condition of
the Spanish people. They entered upon their task with seriousness and good
faith, and would have proved the best friends of constitutional monarchy if
Ferdinand had had the least intention of co-operating with them loyally.
But they found themselves encountered from the first by a double enemy. The
clergy, who had overthrown the Constitution six years before, intrigued or
openly declared against it as soon as it was revived; the more violent of
the Liberals, with Riego at their head, abandoned themselves to
extravagances like those of the club-orators of Paris in 1791, and did
their best to make any peaceable administration impossible. After combating
these anarchists, or Exaltados, with some success, the Ministry was forced
to call in their aid, when, at the instigation of the Papal Nuncio, the
King placed his veto upon a law dissolving most of the monasteries [331]
(Oct., 1820). Ferdinand now openly combined with the enemies of the
Constitution, and attempted to transfer the command of the army to one of
his own agents. The plot failed; the Ministry sent the alarm over the whole
country, and Ferdinand stood convicted before his people as a conspirator
against the Constitution which he had sworn to defend. The agitation of the
clubs, which the Ministry had hitherto suppressed, broke out anew. A storm
of accusations assailed Ferdinand himself. He was compelled at the end of
the year 1820 to banish from Madrid most of the persons who had been his
confidants; and although his dethronement was not yet proposed, he had
already become, far more than Louis XVI. of France under similar
conditions, the recognised enemy of the revolution, and the suspected
patron of every treason against the nation.

[The Ministry between the Exaltados and Serviles, 1821.]

[Attempted coup d'etat, July 6, 1822.]

[Royalists revolt in the north.]

The attack of the despotic Courts on Naples in the spring of 1821
heightened the fury of parties in Spain, encouraging the Serviles, or
Absolutists, in their plots, and forcing the Ministry to yield to the cry
for more violent measures against the enemies of the Constitution. In the
south of Spain the Exaltados gained possession of the principal military
and civil commands, and openly refused obedience to the central
administration when it attempted to interfere with their action Seville,
Carthagena, and Cadiz acted as if they were independent Republics and even
spoke of separation from Spain. Defied by its own subordinates in the
provinces, and unable to look to the King for any sincere support, the
moderate governing party lost all hold upon the nation. In the Cortes
elected in 1822 the Exaltados formed the majority, and Riego was appointed
President. Ferdinand now began to concert measures of action with the
French Ultra-Royalists. The Serviles, led by priests, and supported by
French money, broke into open rebellion in the north. When the session of
the Cortes ended, the King attempted to overthrow his enemies by military
force. Three battalions of the Royal Guard, which had been withdrawn from
Madrid, received secret orders to march upon the capital (July 6, 1822),
where Ferdinand was expected to place himself at their head. They were,
however, met and defeated in the streets by other regiments, and Ferdinand,
vainly attempting to dissociate himself from the action of his partisans,
found his crown, if not his life, in peril. He wrote to Louis XVIII. that
he was a prisoner. Though the French King gave nothing more than good
counsel, the Ultra-Royalists in the French Cabinet and in the army now
strained every nerve to accelerate a war between the two countries. The
Spanish Absolutists seized the town of Seo d'Urgel, and there set up a
provisional government. Civil war spread over the northern provinces. The
Ministry, which was now formed of Riego's friends, demanded and obtained
from the Cortes dictatorial powers like those which the French Committee of
Public Safety had wielded in 1793, but with far other result. Spain found
no Danton, no Carnot, at this crisis, when the very highest powers of
intellect and will would have been necessary to arouse and to arm a people
far less disposed to fight for liberty than the French were in 1793. One
man alone, General Mina, checked and overthrew the rebel leaders of the
north with an activity superior to their own. The Government, boastful and
violent in its measures, effected scarcely anything in the organisation of
a national force, or in preparing the means of resistance against those
foreign armies with whose attack the country was now plainly threatened.

[England and the Congress of 1822.]

When the Congress of Laibach broke up in the spring of 1821. its members
determined to renew their meeting in the following year, in order to decide
whether the Austrian army might then be withdrawn from Naples, and to
discuss other questions affecting their common interests. The progress of
the Greek insurrection and a growing strife between Russia and Turkey had
since then thrown all Italian difficulties into the shade. The Eastern
question stood in the front rank of European politics; next in importance
came the affairs of Spain. It was certain that these, far more than the
occupation of Naples, would supply the real business of the Congress of
1822. England had a far greater interest in both questions than in the
Italian negotiations of the two previous years. It was felt that the system
of abstention which England had then followed could be pursued no longer,
and that the country must be represented not by some casual and wandering
diplomatist, but by its leading Minister, Lord Castlereagh. The intentions
of the other Powers in regard to Spain were matter of doubt; it was the
fixed policy of Great Britain to leave the Spanish revolution in Europe to
run its own course, and to persuade the other Powers to do the same. But
the difficulties connected with Spain did not stop at the Spanish frontier.
The South American colonies had now in great part secured their
independence. They had developed a trade with Great Britain which made it
impossible for this country to ignore their flag and the decisions of their
law courts. The British navigation-laws had already been modified by
Parliament in favour of their shipping; and although it was no business of
the English Government to grant a formal title to communities which had
made themselves free, the practical recognition of the American States by
the appointment of diplomatic agents could in several cases not be justly
delayed. Therefore, without interfering with any colonies which were still
fighting or still negotiating with Spain, the British Minister proposed to
inform the Allied cabinets of the intention of this country to accredit
agents to some of the South American Republics, and to recommend to them
the adoption of a similar policy,

[Death of Castlereagh, Aug. 12, 1822.]

Such was the tenour of the instructions which, a few weeks before his
expected departure for the Continent, Castlereagh drew up for his own
guidance, and submitted to the Cabinet and the King. [332] Had he lived to
fulfil the mission with which he was charged, the recognition of the South
American Republics, which adds so bright a ray to the fame of Canning,
would probably have been the work of the man who, more than any other, is
associated in popular belief with the traditions of a hated and outworn
system of oppression. Two more years of life, two more years of change in
the relations of England to the Continent, would have given Castlereagh a
different figure in the history both of Greece and of America. No English
statesman in modern times has been so severely judged. Circumstances, down
to the close of his career, withheld from Castlereagh the opportunities
which fell to his successor; ties from which others were free made it hard
for him to accelerate the breach with the Allies of 1814. Antagonists
showed Castlereagh no mercy, no justice. The man whom Byron disgraced
himself by ridiculing after his death possessed in a rich measure the
qualities which, in private life, attract esteem and love. His public life,
if tainted in earlier days by the low political morality of the time, rose
high above that of every Continental statesman of similar rank, with the
single exception of Stein. The best testimony to his integrity is the
irritation which it caused to Talleyrand. [333] If the consciousness of
labour unflaggingly pursued in the public cause, and animated on the whole
by a pure and earnest purpose, could have calmed the distress of a breaking
mind, the decline of Castlereagh's days might have been one of peace. His
countrymen would have recognised that, if blind to the rights of nations,
Castlereagh had set to foreign rulers the example of truth and good faith.
But the burden of his life was too heavy to bear. Mists of despondency
obscured the outlines of the real world, and struck chill into his heart.
Death, self-invoked, brought relief to the over-wrought brain, and laid
Castlereagh, with all his cares, in everlasting sleep.

[Canning Foreign Secretary. Wellington deputed to the Congress, Sept.,
1822.]

[Congress of Verona, Oct., 1822.]

The vacant post was filled by Canning, by far the most gifted of the band
of statesmen who had begun their public life in the school of Pitt.
Wellington undertook to represent England at the Congress of 1822, which
was now about to open at Vienna. His departure was, however, delayed for
several weeks, and the preliminary meeting, at which it had been intended
to transact all business not relating to Italy, was almost over before his
arrival. Wellington accordingly travelled on to Verona, where Italian
affairs were to be dealt with; and the Italian Conference, which the
British Government had not intended to recognise, thus became the real
Congress of 1822. Anxious as Lord Castlereagh had been on the question of
foreign interference with Spain, he hardly understood the imminence of the
danger. In passing through Paris, Wellington learnt for the first time that
a French or European invasion of Spain would be the foremost object of
discussion among the Powers; and on reaching Verona he made the unwelcome
discovery that the Czar was bent upon sending a Russian army to take part,
as the mandatary of Europe, in overthrowing the Spanish Constitution.
Alexander's desire was to obtain a joint declaration from the Congress like
that which had been issued against Naples by the three Courts at Troppau,
but one even more formidable, since France might be expected in the present
case to give its concurrence, which had been withheld before. France indeed
occupied, according to the absolutist theory of the day, the same position
in regard to a Jacobin Spain as Austria in regard to a Jacobin Naples, and
might perhaps claim to play the leading military part in the crusade of
repression. But the work was likely to be a much more difficult one than
that of 1821. The French troops, said the Czar, were not trustworthy; and
there was a party in France which might take advantage of the war to
proclaim the second Napoleon or the Republic. King Louis XVIII. could not
therefore be allowed to grapple with Spain alone. It was necessary that the
principal force employed by the alliance should be one whose loyalty and
military qualities were above suspicion: the generals who had marched from
Moscow to Paris were not likely to fail beyond the Pyrenees: and a campaign
of the Russian army in Western Europe promised to relieve the Czar of some
of the discontent of his soldiers, who had been turned back after entering
Galicia in the previous year, and who had not been allowed to assist their
fellow-believers in Greece in their struggle against the Sultan. [334]

[No joint declaration by made by the Congress against Spain.]

Wellington had ascertained, while in Paris, that King Louis XVIII. and
Villele were determined under no circumstances to give Russian troops a
passage through France. His knowledge of this fact enabled him to speak
with some confidence to Alexander, It was the earnest desire of the English
Government to avert war, and its first object was therefore to prevent the
Congress, as a body, from sending an ultimatum to Spain. If all the Powers
united in a declaration like that of Troppau, war was inevitable; if France
were left to settle its own disputes with its neighbour, English mediation
might possibly preserve peace. The statement of Wellington, that England
would rather sever itself from the great alliance than consent to a joint
declaration against Spain, had no doubt its effect in preventing such a
declaration being proposed; but a still weightier reason against it was the
direct contradiction between the intentions of the French Government and
those of the Czar. If the Czar was determined to be the soldier of Europe,
while on the other hand King Louis absolutely denied him a passage through
France, it was impossible that the Congress should threaten Spain with a
collective attack. No great expenditure of diplomacy was therefore
necessary to prevent the summary framing of a decree against Spain like
that which had been framed against Naples two years before. In the first
despatches which he sent back to England Wellington expressed his belief
that the deliberations of the Powers would end in a decision to leave the
Spaniards to themselves.

[Course of the negotiation against Spain.]

But the danger was only averted in appearance. The impulse to war was too
strong among the French Ultra-Royalists for the Congress to keep silence on
Spanish affairs. Villele indeed still hoped for peace, and, unlike other
members of his Cabinet, he desired that, if war should arise, France should
maintain entire freedom of action, and enter upon the struggle as an
independent Power, not as the instrument of the European concert. This did
not prevent him, however, from desiring to ascertain what assistance would
be forthcoming, if France should be hard pressed by its enemy. Instructions
were given to the French envoys at Verona to sound the Allies on this
question. [335] It was out of the inquiry so suggested that a negotiation
sprang which virtually combined all Europe against Spain. The envoy
Montmorency, acting in the spirit of the war party, demanded of all the
Powers whether, in the event of France withdrawing its ambassador from
Madrid, they would do the same, and whether, in case of war, France would
receive their moral and material support. Wellington in his reply protested
against the framing of hypothetical cases; the other envoys answered
Montmorency's questions in the affirmative. The next step was taken by
Metternich, who urged that certain definite acts of the Spanish people or
Government ought to be specified as rendering war obligatory on France and
its allies, and also that, with a view of strengthening the Royalist party
in Spain, notes ought to be presented by all the ambassadors at Madrid,
demanding a change in the Constitution. This proposal was in its turn
submitted to Wellington and rejected by him. It was accepted by the other
plenipotentiaries, and the acts of the Spanish people were specified on
which war should necessarily follow. These were, the commission of any act
of violence against a member of the royal family, the deposition of the
King, or an attempt to change the dynasty. A secret clause was added to the
second part of the agreement, to the effect that if the Spanish Government
made no satisfactory answer to the notes requiring a change in the
Constitution, all the ambassadors should be immediately withdrawn. A draft
of the notes to be presented was sketched; and Montmorency, who thought
that he had probably gone too far in his stipulations, returned to Paris to
submit the drafts to the King before handing them over to the ambassadors
at Paris for transmission to Madrid.

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