Book: History of Modern Europe 1792 1878

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[Villele and Montmorency.]

[Speech of Louis XVIII., Jan. 27, 1823.]

It was with great dissatisfaction that Villele saw how his colleague had
committed France to the direction of the three Eastern Powers. There was no
likelihood that the Spanish Government would make the least concession of
the kind required, and in that case France stood pledged, if the action of
Montmorency was ratified, to withdraw its ambassador from Madrid at once.
Villele accordingly addressed himself to the ambassadors at Paris, asking
that the despatch of the notes might be postponed. No notice was taken of
his request: the notes were despatched forthwith, Roused by this slight,
Villele appealed to the King not to submit to the dictation of foreign
Courts. Louis XVIII. declared in his favour against all the rest of the
Cabinet, and Montmorency had to retire from office. But the decision of the
King meant that he disapproved of the negotiations of Verona as shackling
the movements of France, not that he had freed himself from the influence
of the war-party. Chateaubriand, the most reckless agitator for
hostilities, was appointed Foreign Minister. The mediation of Great Britain
was rejected; [336] and in his speech at the opening of the Chambers of
1823, King Louis himself virtually published the declaration of war.

[England in 1823.]

[French invasion of Spain, April, 1823.]

The ambassadors of the three Eastern Courts had already presented their
notes at Madrid demanding a change in the Constitution; and, after
receiving a high-spirited answer from the Ministers, they had quitted the
country. Canning, while using every diplomatic effort to prevent an unjust
war, had made it clear to the Spaniards that England could not render them
armed assistance. The reasons against such an intervention were indeed
overwhelming. Russia, Austria, and Prussia would have taken the field
rather than have permitted the Spanish Constitution to triumph; and
although, if leagued with Spain in a really national defence like that of
1808, Great Britain might perhaps have protected the Peninsula against all
the Powers of Europe combined, it was far otherwise when the cause at stake
was one to which a majority of the Spanish nation had shown itself to be
indifferent, and against which the northern provinces had actually taken up
arms. The Government and the Cortes were therefore left to defend
themselves as best they could against their enemies. They displayed their
weakness by enacting laws of extreme severity against deserters, and by
retiring, along with the recalcitrant King, from Madrid to Seville. On the
7th of April the French troops, led by the Duke of Angouleme, crossed the
frontier. The priests and a great part of the peasantry welcomed them as
deliverers: the forces opposed to them fell back without striking a blow.
As the invader advanced towards the capital, gangs of royalists, often led
by monks, spread such terror and devastation over the northern provinces
that the presence of foreign troops became the only safeguard for the
peaceable inhabitants. [337] Madrid itself was threatened by the corps of a
freebooter named Bessieres. The commandant sent his surrender to the French
while they were still at some distance, begging them to advance as quickly
as possible in order to save the city from pillage. The message had
scarcely been sent when Bessieres and his bandits appeared in the suburbs.
The governor drove them back, and kept the royalist mob within the city at
bay for four days more. On the 23rd of May the advance-guard of the French
army entered the capital.

[Angouleme and the Regency, and the ambassadors.]

It had been the desire of King Louis XVIII. and Angouleme to save Spain
from the violence of royalist and priestly fanaticism. On reaching Madrid,
Angouleme intended to appoint a provisional, government himself; he was,
however, compelled by orders from Paris to leave the election in the hands
of the Council of Castille, and a Regency came into power whose first acts
showed in what spirit the victory of the French was to be used. Edicts were
issued declaring all the acts of the Cortes affecting the monastic orders
to be null and void, dismissing all officials appointed since March 7,
1820, and subjecting to examination those who, then being in office, had
not resigned their posts. [338] The arrival of the ambassadors of the three
Eastern Powers encouraged the Regency in their antagonism to the French
commander. It was believed that the Cabinet of Paris was unwilling to
restore King Ferdinand as an absolute monarch, and intended to obtain from
him the grant of institutions resembling those of the French Charta. Any
such limitation of absolute power was, however, an object of horror to the
three despotic Courts. Their ambassadors formed themselves into a council
with the express object of resisting the supposed policy of Angouleme. The
Regency grew bolder, and gave the signal for general retribution upon the
Liberals by publishing an order depriving all persons who had served in the
voluntary militia since March, 1820, of their offices, pensions, and
titles. The work inaugurated in the capital was carried much further in the
provinces. The friends of the Constitution, and even soldiers who were
protected by their capitulation with the French, were thrown into prison by
the new local authorities. The violence of the reaction reached such a
height that Angouleme, now on the march to Cadiz, was compelled to publish
an ordinance forbidding arrests to be made without the consent of a French
commanding officer, and ordering his generals to release the persons who
had been arbitrarily imprisoned. The council of ambassadors, blind in their
jealousy of France to the danger of an uncontrolled restoration, drew up a
protest against his ordinance, and desired that the officers of the Regency
should be left to work their will.

[The Cortes at Cadiz.]

[Ferdinand liberated, Oct. 1.]

After spending some weeks in idle debates at Seville, the Cortes had been
compelled by the appearance of the French on the Sierra Morena to retire to
Cadiz. As King Ferdinand refused to accompany them, he was declared
temporarily insane, and forced to make the journey (June 12). Angouleme,
following the French vanguard after a considerable interval, appeared
before Cadiz in August, and sent a note to King Ferdinand, recommending him
to publish an amnesty, and to promise the restoration of the mediaeval
Cortes. It was hoped that the terms suggested in this note might be
accepted by the Government in Cadiz as a basis of peace, and so render an
attack upon the city unnecessary. The Ministry, however, returned a defiant
answer in the King's name. The siege of Cadiz accordingly began in earnest.
On the 30th of August the fort of the Trocadero was stormed; three weeks
later the city was bombarded. In reply to all proposals for negotiation
Angouleme stated that he could only treat when King Ferdinand was within
his own lines. There was not the least hope of prolonging the defence of
Cadiz with success, for the combat was dying out even in those few
districts of Spain where the constitutional troops had fought with energy.
Ferdinand himself pretended that he bore no grudge against his Ministers,
and that the Liberals had nothing to fear from his release. On the 30th of
September he signed, as if with great satisfaction, an absolute and
universal amnesty. [339] On the following day he was conveyed with his
family across the bay to Angouleme's head-quarters.

[Violence of the Restoration.]

The war was over: the real results of the French invasion now came into
sight. Ferdinand had not been twelve hours in the French camp when,
surrounded by monks and royalist desperadoes, he published a proclamation
invalidating every act of the constitutional Government of the last three
years, on the ground that his sanction had been given under constraint. The
same proclamation ratified the acts of the Regency of Madrid. As the
Regency of Madrid had declared all persons concerned in the removal of the
King to Cadiz to be liable to the penalties of high treason, Ferdinand had
in fact ratified a sentence of death against several of the men from whom
he had just parted in friendship. [340] Many of these victims of the King's
perfidy were sent into safety by the French. But Angouleme was powerless to
influence Ferdinand's policy and conduct. Don Saez, the King's confessor,
was made First Secretary of State. On the 4th of October an edict was
issued banishing for ever from Madrid, and from the country fifty miles
round it, every person who during the last three years had sat in the
Cortes, or who had been a Minister, counsellor of State, judge, commander,
official in any public office, magistrate, or officer in the so-called
voluntary militia. It was ordered that throughout Spain a solemn service
should be celebrated in expiation of the insults offered to the Holy
Sacrament; that missions should be sent over the land to combat the
pernicious and heretical doctrines associated with the late outbreak, and
that the bishops should relegate to monasteries of the strictest observance
the priests who had acted as the agents of an impious faction. [341] Thus
the war of revenge was openly declared against the defeated party. It was
in vain that Angouleme indignantly reproached the King, and that the
ambassadors of the three Eastern Courts pressed him to draw up at least
some kind of amnesty. Ferdinand travelled slowly towards Madrid, saying
that he could take no such step until he reached the capital. On the 7th of
November, Riego was hanged. Thousands of persons were thrown into prison,
or compelled to fly from the country. Except where order was preserved by
the French, life and property were at the mercy of royalist mobs and the
priests who led them; and although the influence of the Russian statesman
Pozzo di Borgo at length brought a respectable Ministry into office, this
only roused the fury of the clerical party, and led to a cry for the
deposition of the King, and for the elevation of his more fanatical
brother, Don Carlos, to the throne. Military commissions were instituted at
the beginning of 1824 for the trial of accused persons, and a pretended
amnesty, published six months later, included in its fifteen classes of
exception the participators in almost every act of the revolution.
Ordinance followed upon ordinance, multiplying the acts punishable with
death, and exterminating the literature which was believed to be the source
of all religious and social heterodoxy. Every movement of life was watched
by the police; every expression of political opinion was made high treason.
Young men were shot for being freemasons; women were sent to prison for ten
years for possessing a portrait of Riego. The relation of the restored
Government to its subjects was in fact that which belonged to a state of
civil war. Insurrections arose among the fanatics who were now taking the
name of the Carlist or Apostolic party, as well as among a despairing
remnant of the Constitutionalists. After a feeble outbreak of the latter at
Tarifa, a hundred and twelve persons were put to death by the military
commissions within eighteen days. [342] It was not until the summer of 1825
that the jurisdiction of these tribunals and the Reign of Terror ended.

[England prohibits the conquest of Spanish colonies by France or its
allies.]

[England recognises the independence of the colonies. 1824-5.]

France had won a cheap and inglorious victory. The three Eastern Courts had
seen their principle of absolutism triumph at the cost of everything that
makes government morally better than anarchy. One consolation remained for
those who felt that there was little hope for freedom on the Continent of
Europe. The crusade against Spanish liberty had put an end for ever to the
possibility of a joint conquest of Spanish America in the interest of
despotism. The attitude of England was no longer what it had been in 1818.
When the Czar had proposed at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle that the
allied monarchs should suppress the republican principle beyond the seas,
Castlereagh had only stated that England could bear no part in such an
enterprise; he had not said that England would effectually prevent others
from attempting it. This was the resolution by which Canning, isolated and
baffled by the conspiracy of Verona, proved that England could still do
something to protect its own interest and the interests of mankind against
a league of autocrats. There is indeed little doubt that the independence
of the Spanish colonies would have been recognised by Great Britain soon
after the war of 1823, whoever might have been our Minister for Foreign
Affairs, but this recognition was a different matter in the hands of
Canning from what it would have been in the hands of his predecessor. The
contrast between the two men was one of spirit rather than of avowed rules
of action. Where Castlereagh offered apologies to the Continental
sovereigns, Canning uttered defiance [343] The treaties of 1815, which
connected England so closely with the foreign courts, were no work of his;
though he sought not to repudiate them, he delighted to show that in spite
of them England has still its own policy, its own sympathies, its own
traditions. In face of the council of kings and its assumption of universal
jurisdiction, he publicly described himself as an enthusiast for the
independence of nations. If others saw little evidence that France intended
to recompense itself for its services to Ferdinand by appropriating some of
his rebellious colonies, Canning was quick to lay hold of every suspicious
circumstance. At the beginning of the war of 1823 he gave a formal warning
to the ambassador of Louis XVIII. that France would not be permitted to
bring any of these provinces under its dominion, whether by conquest or
cession. [344] When the war was over, he rejected the invitation of
Ferdinand's Government to take part in a conference at Paris, where the
affairs of South America were to be laid before the Allied Powers. [345]
What these Powers might or might not think on the subject of America was
now a matter of indifference, for the policy of England was fixed, and it
was useless to debate upon a conclusion that could not be altered. British
consular agents were appointed in most of the colonies before the close of
the year 1823; and after some interval the independence of Buenos Ayres,
Colombia, and Mexico were formally recognised by the conclusion of
commercial treaties. "I called the New World into existence," cried
Canning, when reproached with permitting the French occupation of Spain,
"in order to redress the balance of the Old." The boast, famous in our
Parliamentary history, has left an erroneous impression of the part really
played by Canning at this crisis. He did not call the New World into
existence; he did not even assist it in winning independence, as France had
assisted the United States fifty years before; but when this independence
had been won, he threw over it the aegis of Great Britain, declaring that
no other European Power should reimpose the yoke which Spain had not been
able to maintain.

[Affairs in Portugal.]

[Constitution granted by Petro, May, 1826.]

The overthrow of the Spanish Constitution by foreign arms led to a series
of events in Portugal which forced England to a more direct intervention in
the Peninsula than had yet been necessary, and heightened the conflict that
had sprung up between its policy and that of Continental absolutism. The
same parties and the same passions, political and religious, existed in
Portugal as in Spain, and the enemies of the Constitution found the same
support at foreign Courts. The King of Portugal, John VI., was a weak but
not ill-meaning man; his wife, who was a sister of Ferdinand of Spain, and
his son Don Miguel were the chiefs of the conspiracy against the Cortes. In
June, 1823, a military revolt, arranged by Miguel, brought the existing
form of government to an end: the King promised, however, when dissolving
the Cortes, that a Constitution should be bestowed by himself upon
Portugal; and he seems to have intended to keep his word. The ambassadors
of France and Austria were, however, busy in throwing hindrances in the
way, and Don Miguel prepared to use violence to prevent his father from
making any concession to the Liberals. King John, in fear for his life,
applied to England for troops; Canning declined to land soldiers at Lisbon,
but sent a squadron, with orders to give the King protection. The winter of
1823 was passed in intrigues; in May, 1824, Miguel arrested the Ministers
and surrounded the King's palace with troops. After several days of
confusion King John made his escape to the British ships, and Miguel, who
was alternately cowardly and audacious, then made his submission, and was
ordered to leave the country. King John died in the spring of 1826 without
having granted a Constitution. Pedro, his eldest son, had already been made
Emperor of Brazil; and, as it was impossible that Portugal and Brazil could
again be united, it was arranged that Pedro's daughter, when of sufficient
age, should marry her uncle Miguel, and so save Portugal from the danger of
a contested succession. Before renouncing the crown of Portugal, Pedro
granted a Constitution to that country. A Regency had already been
appointed by King John, in which neither the Queen-dowager nor Miguel was
included.

[Desertion of Portuguese soldiery, 1826.]

[Spain permits the deserters to attack Portugal.]

[Canning sends troops to Lisbon, Dec., 1826.]

Miguel had gone to Vienna. Although a sort of Caliban in character and
understanding, this Prince met with the welcome due to a kinsman of the
Imperial house, and to a representative of the good cause of absolutism. He
was received by Metternich with great interest, and his fortunes were taken
under the protection of the Austrian Court. In due time, it was hoped this
savage and ignorant churl would do yeoman's service to Austrian principles
in the Peninsula. But the Regency and the new Constitution of Portugal had
not to wait for the tardy operation of Metternich's covert hostility. The
soldiery who had risen at Miguel's bidding in 1823 now proclaimed him King,
and deserted to Spanish soil. Within the Spanish frontier they were
received by Ferdinand's representatives with open arms. The demands made by
the Portuguese ambassador at Madrid for their dispersion and for the
surrender of their weapons were evaded. The cause of these armed bands on
the frontier became the cause of the Clerical and Ultra-Royalist party over
all Europe. Money was sent to them from France and Austria. They were
joined by troops of Spanish Carlists or Apostolicals; they were fed,
clothed, and organised, if not by the Spanish Government itself, at least
by those over whose action the Spanish Government exercised control. [346]
Thus raised to considerable military strength, they made incursions into
Portugal, and at last attempted a regular invasion. The Regency of Lisbon,
justly treating these outrages as the act of the Spanish Government, and
appealing to the treaties which bound Great Britain to defend Portugal
against foreign attack, demanded the assistance of this country. More was
involved in the action taken by Canning than a possible contest with Spain;
the seriousness of the danger lay in the fact that Spain was still occupied
by French armies, and that a war with Spain might, and probably would,
involve a war with France, if not with other Continental Powers. But the
English Ministry waited only for the confirmation of the alleged facts by
their own ambassador. The treaty-rights of Portugal were undoubted; the
temper of the English Parliament and nation, strained to the utmost by the
events of the last three years, was such that a war against Ferdinand and
against the destroyers of Spanish liberty would have caused more rejoicing
than alarm. Nine days after the formal demand of the Portuguese arrived,
four days after their complaint was substantiated by the report of our
ambassador, Canning announced to the House of Commons that British troops
were actually on the way to Lisbon. In words that alarmed many of his own
party, and roused the bitter indignation of every Continental Court,
Canning warned those whose acts threatened to force England into war, that
the war, if war arose, would be a war of opinion, and that England, however
earnestly she might endeavour to avoid it, could not avoid seeing ranked
under her banner all the restless and discontented of any nation with which
she might come into conflict. As for the Portuguese Constitution which
formed the real object of the Spanish attack, it had not, Canning said,
been given at the instance of Great Britain, but he prayed that Heaven
might prosper it. It was impossible to doubt that a Minister who spoke
thus, and who, even under expressions of regret, hinted at any alliance
with the revolutionary elements in France and Spain, was formidably in
earnest. The words and the action of Canning produced the effect which he
desired. The Government of Ferdinand discovered the means of checking the
activity of the Apostolicals: the presence of the British troops at Lisbon
enabled the Portuguese Regency to throw all its forces upon the invaders
and to drive them from the country. They were disbanded when they
re-crossed the Spanish frontier; the French Court loudly condemned their
immoral enterprise; and the Constitution of Portugal seemed, at least for
the moment, to have triumphed over its open and its secret enemies.

[The policy of Canning.]

The tone of the English Government had indeed changed since the time when
Metternich could express a public hope that the three Eastern Powers would
have the approval of this country in their attack upon the Constitution of
Naples. In 1820 such a profession might perhaps have passed for a mistake;
in 1826 it would have been a palpable absurdity. Both in England and on the
Continent it was felt that the difference between the earlier and the later
spirit of our policy was summed up in the contrast between Canning and
Castlereagh. It has become an article of historical faith that
Castlereagh's melancholy death brought one period of our foreign policy to
a close and inaugurated another: it has been said that Canning liberated
England from its Continental connexions; it has even been claimed for him
that he performed for Europe no less a task than the dissolution of the
Holy Alliance. [347] The figure of Canning is indeed one that will for ever
fill a great space in European history; and the more that is known of the
opposition which he encountered both from his sovereign and from his great
rival Wellington, the greater must be our admiration for his clear, strong
mind, and for the conquering force of his character. But the legend which
represents English policy as taking an absolutely new departure in 1822
does not correspond to the truth of history. Canning was a member of the
Cabinet from 1816 to 1820; it is a poor compliment to him to suppose that
he either exercised no influence upon his colleagues or acquiesced in a
policy of which he disapproved; and the history of the Congress of
Aix-la-Chapelle proves that his counsels had even at that time gained the
ascendant. The admission made by Castlereagh in 1820, after Canning had
left the Cabinet, that Austria, as a neighbouring and endangered State, had
a right to suppress the revolutionary constitution of Naples, would
probably not have gained Canning's assent; in all other points, the action
of our Government at Troppau and Laibach might have been his own. Canning
loved to speak of his system as one of neutrality, and of non-interference
in that struggle between the principles of despotism and of democracy which
seemed to be spreading over Europe. He avowed his sympathy for Spain as the
object of an unjust and unprovoked war, but he most solemnly warned the
Spaniards not to expect English assistance. He prayed that the Constitution
of Portugal might prosper, but he expressly disclaimed all connection with
its origin, and defended Portugal not because it was a Constitutional
State, but because England was bound by treaties to defend it against
foreign invasion. The arguments against intervention on behalf of Spain
which Canning addressed to the English sympathisers with that country might
have been uttered by Castlereagh; the denial of the right of foreign Powers
to attack the Spanish Constitution, with which Castlereagh headed his own
instructions for Verona, might have been written by Canning.

[Canning and the European concert.]

The statements that Canning withdrew England from the Continental system,
and that he dissolved the Holy Alliance, cannot be accepted without large
correction. The general relations existing between the Great Powers were
based, not on the ridiculous and obsolete treaty of Holy Alliance, but on
the Acts which were signed at the Conference of Aix-la-Chapelle. The first
of these was the secret Quadruple Treaty which bound England and the three
Eastern Powers to attack France in case a revolution in that country should
endanger the peace of Europe; the second was the general declaration of all
the five Powers that they would act in amity and take counsel with one
another. From the first of these alliances Canning certainly did not
withdraw England. He would perhaps have done so in 1823 if the Quadruple
Treaty had bound England to maintain the House of Bourbon on the French
throne; but it had been expressly stated that the deposition of the
Bourbons would not necessarily and in itself be considered by England as
endangering the peace of Europe. This treaty remained in full force up to
Canning's death; and if a revolutionary army had marched from Paris upon
Antwerp, he would certainly have claimed the assistance of the three
Eastern Powers. With respect to the general concert of Europe, established
or confirmed by the declaration of Aix-la-Chapelle, this had always been
one of varying extent and solidity. Both France and England had held
themselves aloof at Troppau. The federative action was strongest and most
mischievous not before but after the death of Castlereagh, and in the
period that followed the Congress of Verona; for though the war against
Spain was conducted by France alone, the three Eastern Powers had virtually
made themselves responsible for the success of the enterprise, and it was
the influence of their ambassadors at Paris and Madrid which prevented any
restrictions from being imposed upon Ferdinand's restored sovereignty.

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