Book: History of Modern Europe 1792 1878

C >> C. A. Fyffe >> History of Modern Europe 1792 1878




[Leopold elected King, June 4.]

Thus far, a crisis which threatened the peace of Europe had been surmounted
with unexpected ease. But the first stage of the difficulty alone was
passed; it still remained for the Powers to provide a king for Belgium, and
to gain the consent of the Dutch and Belgian Governments to the territorial
arrangements drawn up for them. The Belgians themselves, with whom a
connection with France was popular, were disposed to elect as their
sovereign the Duc de Nemours, second son of Louis Philippe; and although
Louis Philippe officially refused his sanction to this scheme, which in the
eyes of all Europe would have turned Belgium into a French dependency, he
privately encouraged its prosecution after a Bonapartist candidate, the son
of Eugene Beauharnais, had appeared in the field. The result was that the
Duc de Nemours was elected king on the 3rd of February, 1831. Against this
appointment the Conference of the Powers at London had already pronounced
its veto, and the British Government let it be understood that it would
resist any such extension of French influence by force. Louis Philippe now
finally refused the crown for his son, and, the Bonapartist candidate being
withdrawn, the two rival Powers agreed in recommending Prince Leopold of
Saxe-Coburg, on the understanding that, if elected King of Belgium, he
should marry a daughter of Louis Philippe. The Belgians fell in with the
advice given them, and elected Leopold on the 4th of June. He accepted the
crown, subject to the condition that the London Conference should modify in
favour of Belgium some of the provisions relating to the frontiers and to
the finances of the new State which had been laid down by the Conference,
and which the Belgian Government had hitherto refused to accept.

[Settlement of the Belgian frontier.]

The difficulty of arranging the Belgian frontier arose principally from the
position of the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg. This territory, though subject to
Austria before the French Revolution, had always been treated as distinct
from the body of the Austrian Netherlands. When, at the peace of 1814, it
was given to the King of Holland in substitution for the ancient
possessions of his family at Nassau, its old character as a member of the
German federal union was restored to it, so that the King of Holland in
respect of this portion of his dominions became a German prince, and the
fortress of Luxemburg, the strongest in Europe after Gibraltar, was liable
to occupation by German troops. The population of the Duchy had, however,
joined the Belgians in their revolt, and, with the exception of the
fortress itself, the territory had passed into possession of the Belgian
Government. In spite of this actual overthrow of Dutch rule, the Conference
of London had attached such preponderating importance to the military and
international relations of Luxemburg that it had excluded the whole of the
Duchy from the new Belgian State, and declared it still to form part of the
dominions of the King of Holland. The first demand of Leopold was for the
reversal or modification of this decision, and the Powers so far gave way
as to substitute for the declaration of January a series of articles, in
which the question of Luxemburg was reserved for future settlement. The
King of Holland had assented to the January declaration; on hearing of its
abandonment, he took up arms, and threw fifty thousand men into Belgium.
Leopold appealed to France for assistance, and a French army immediately
crossed the frontier. The Dutch now withdrew, and the French in their turn
were recalled, after Leopold had signed a treaty undertaking to raze the
fortifications of five towns on his southern border. The Conference again
took up its work, and produced a third scheme, in which the territory of
Luxemburg was divided between Holland and Belgium. This was accepted by
Belgium, and rejected by Holland. The consequence was that a treaty was
made between Leopold and the Powers; and at the beginning of 1832 the
kingdom of Belgium, as defined by the third award of the Conference, was
recognised by all the Courts, Lord Palmerston on behalf of England
resolutely refusing to France even the slightest addition of territory, on
the ground that, if annexations once began, all security for the
continuance of peace would be at an end. On this wise and firm policy the
concert of Europe in the establishment of the Belgian kingdom was
successfully maintained; and it only remained for the Western Powers to
overcome the resistance of the King of Holland, who still held the citadel
of Antwerp and declined to listen either to reason or authority. A French
army corps was charged with the task of besieging the citadel; an English
fleet blockaded the river Scheldt. After a severe bombardment the citadel
surrendered. Hostilities ceased, and negotiations for a definitive
settlement recommenced. As, however, the Belgians were in actual occupation
of all Luxemburg with the exception of the fortress, they had no motive to
accelerate a settlement which would deprive them of part of their existing
possessions; on the other hand, the King of Holland held back through mere
obstinacy. Thus the provisional state of affairs was prolonged for year
after year, and it was not until April, 1839, that the final Treaty of
Peace between Belgium and Holland was executed.

[Affairs of Poland.]

The consent of the Eastern Powers to the overthrow of the kingdom of the
United Netherlands, and to the establishment of a State based upon a
revolutionary movement, would probably have been harder to gain if in the
autumn of 1830 Russia had been free to act with all its strength. But at
this moment an outbreak took place in Poland, which required the
concentration of all the Czar's forces within his own border. The conflict
was rather a war of one armed nation against another than the insurrection
of a people against its government. Poland--that is to say, the territory
which had formerly constituted the Grand Duchy of Warsaw--had, by the
treaties of 1814, been established as a separate kingdom, subject to the
Czar of Russia, but not forming part of the Russian Empire. It possessed an
administration and an army of its own, and the meetings of its Diet gave to
it a species of parliamentary government to which there was nothing
analogous within Russia proper. During the reign of Alexander the
constitutional system of Poland had, on the whole, been respected; and
although the real supremacy of an absolute monarch at St. Petersburg had
caused the Diet to act as a body in opposition to the Russian Government,
the personal connection existing between Alexander and the Poles had
prevented any overt rebellion during his own life-time. But with the
accession of Nicholas all such individual sympathy passed away, and the
hard realities of the actual relation between Poland and the Court of
Russia came into full view. In the conspiracies of 1825 a great number of
Poles were implicated. Eight of these persons, after a preliminary inquiry,
were placed on trial before the Senate at Warsaw, which, in spite of strong
evidence of their guilt, acquitted them. Pending the decision, Nicholas
declined to convoke the Diet: he also stationed Russian troops in Poland,
and violated the constitution by placing Russians in all branches of the
administration. Even without these grievances the hostility of the mass of
the Polish noblesse to Russia would probably have led sooner or later to
insurrection. The peasantry, ignorant and degraded, were but instruments in
the hands of their territorial masters. In so far as Poland had rights of
self-government, these rights belonged almost exclusively to the nobles, or
landed proprietors, a class so numerous that they have usually been
mistaken in Western Europe for the Polish nation itself. The so-called
emancipation of the serfs, effected by Napoleon after wresting the Grand
Duchy of Warsaw from Prussia in 1807, had done little for the mass of the
population; for, while abolishing the legal condition of servitude,
Napoleon had given the peasant no vestige of proprietorship in his holding,
and had consequently left him as much at the mercy of his landlord as he
was before. The name of freedom appears in fact to have worked actual
injury to the peasant; for in the enjoyment of a pretended power of free
contract he was left without that protection of the officers of State
which, under the Prussian regime from 1795 to 1807, had shielded him from
the tyranny of his lord. It has been the fatal, the irremediable bane of
Poland that its noblesse, until too late, saw no country, no right, no law,
outside itself. The very measures of interference on the part of the Czar
which this caste resented as unconstitutional were in part directed against
the abuse of its own privileges; and although in 1830 a section of the
nobles had learnt the secret of their country's fall, and were prepared to
give the serf the real emancipation of proprietorship, no universal impulse
worked in this direction, nor could the wrong of ages be undone in the
tumult of war and revolution.

[Insurrection at Warsaw, Nov. 29.]

A sharp distinction existed between the narrow circle of the highest
aristocracy of Poland and the mass of the poor and warlike noblesse. The
former, represented by men like Czartoryski, the friend of Alexander I. and
ex-Minister of Russia, understood the hopelessness of any immediate
struggle with the superior power, and advocated the politic development of
such national institutions as were given to Poland by the constitution of
1815, institutions which were certainly sufficient to preserve Poland from
absorption by Russia, and to keep alive the idea of the ultimate
establishment of its independence. It was among the lesser nobility, among
the subordinate officers of the army and the population of Warsaw itself,
who jointly formed the so-called democratic party, that the spirit of
revolt was strongest. Plans for an outbreak had been made during the
Turkish war of 1828; but unhappily this opportunity, which might have been
used with fatal effect against Russia, was neglected, and it was left for
the French Revolution of 1830 to kindle an untimely and ineffective flame.
The memory of Napoleon's campaigns and the wild voices of French democracy
filled the patriots at Warsaw with vain hopes of a military union with
western Liberalism, and overpowered the counsels of men who understood the
state of Europe better. Revolt broke out on the 29th of November, 1830. The
Polish regiments in Warsaw joined the insurrection, and the Russian troops,
under the Grand Duke Constantine, withdrew from the capital, where their
leader had narrowly escaped with his life. [390]

[Attempted negotiation with the Czar.]

The Government of Poland had up to this time been in the hands of a Council
nominated by the Czar as King of Poland, and controlled by instructions
from a secretary at St. Petersburg. The chief of the Council was Lubecki, a
Pole devoted to the Emperor Nicholas. On the victory of the insurrection at
Warsaw, the Council was dissolved and a provisional Government installed.
Though the revolt was the work of the so-called democratic party, the
influence of the old governing families of the highest aristocracy was
still so great that power was by common consent placed in their hands.
Czartoryski became president, and the policy adopted by himself and his
colleagues was that of friendly negotiation with Russia. The insurrection
of November was treated not as the beginning of a national revolt, but as a
mere disturbance occasioned by unconstitutional acts of the Government. So
little did the committee understand the character of the Emperor Nicholas,
as to imagine that after the expulsion of his soldiers and the overthrow of
his Ministers at Warsaw he would peaceably make the concessions required of
him, and undertake for the future faithfully to observe the Polish
constitution. Lubecki and a second official were sent to St. Petersburg to
present these demands, and further (though this was not seriously intended)
to ask that the constitution should be introduced into all the Russian
provinces which had once formed part of the Polish State. The reception
given to the envoys at the frontier was of an ominous character. They were
required to describe themselves as officers about to present a report to
the Czar, inasmuch as no representatives of rebels in arms could be
received into Russia. Lubecki appears now to have shaken the dust of Poland
off his feet; his colleague pursued his mission, and was admitted to the
Czar's presence. Nicholas, while expressing himself in language of injured
tenderness, and disclaiming all desire to punish the innocent with the
guilty, let it be understood that Poland had but two alternatives,
unconditional submission or annihilation. The messenger who in the
meanwhile carried back to Warsaw the first despatches of the envoy reported
that the roads were already filled with Russian regiments moving on their
prey.

[Diebitsch invades Poland, Feb. 1831.]

Six weeks of precious time were lost through the illusion of the Polish
Government that an accommodation with the Emperor Nicholas was possible.
Had the insurrection at Warsaw been instantly followed by a general levy
and the invasion of Lithuania, the resources of this large province might
possibly have been thrown into the scale against Russia. Though the mass of
the Lithuanian population, in spite or several centuries of union with
Poland, had never been assimilated to the dominant race, and remained in
language and creed more nearly allied to the Russians than the Poles, the
nobles formed an integral part of the Polish nation, and possessed
sufficient power over their serfs to drive them into the field to fight for
they knew not what. The Russian garrisons in Lithuania were not strong, and
might easily have been overpowered by a sudden attack. When once the
population of Warsaw had risen in arms against Nicholas, the only
possibility of success lay in the extension of the revolt over the whole of
the semi-Polish provinces, and in a general call to arms. But beside other
considerations which disinclined the higher aristocracy at Warsaw to
extreme measures, they were influenced by a belief that the Powers of
Europe might intervene on behalf of the constitution of the Polish kingdom
as established by the treaty of Vienna; while, if the struggle passed
beyond the borders of that kingdom, it would become a revolutionary
movement to which no Court could lend its support. It was not until the
envoy returned from St. Petersburg bearing the answer of the Emperor
Nicholas that the democratic party carried all before it, and all hopes of
a peaceful compromise vanished away. The Diet then passed a resolution
declaring that the House of Romanoff had forfeited the Polish crown, and
preparations began for a struggle for life or death with Russia. But the
first moments when Russia stood unguarded and unready had been lost beyond
recall. Troops had thronged westwards into Lithuania; the garrisons in the
fortresses had been raised to their full strength; and in February, 1831,
Diebitsch took up the offensive, and crossed the Polish frontier with a
hundred and twenty thousand men.

[Campaign in Poland, 1831.]

[Capture of Warsaw, Sept. 8, 1831.]

The Polish army, though far inferior in numbers to the enemy which it had
to meet, was no contemptible foe. Among its officers there were many who
had served in Napoleon's campaigns; it possessed, however, no general
habituated to independent command; and the spirit of insubordination and
self-will, which had wrought so much ruin in Poland, was still ready to
break out when defeat had impaired the authority of the nominal chiefs. In
the first encounters the advancing Russian army was gallantly met; and,
although the Poles were forced to fall back upon Warsaw, the losses
sustained by Diebitsch were so serious that he had to stay his operations
and to wait for reinforcements. In March the Poles took up the offensive
and surprised several isolated divisions of the enemy; their general,
however, failed to push his advantages with the necessary energy and
swiftness; the junction of the Russians was at length effected, and on the
26th of May the Poles were defeated after obstinate resistance in a pitched
battle at Ostrolenka. Cholera now broke out in the Russian camp. Both
Diebitsch and the Grand Duke Constantine were carried off in the midst of
the campaign, and some months more were added to the struggle of Poland,
hopeless as this had now become. Incursions were made into Lithuania and
Podolia, but without result. Paskiewitch, the conqueror of Kars, was called
up to take the post left vacant by the death of his rival. New masses of
Russian troops came in place of those who had perished in battle and in the
hospitals; and while the Governments of Western Europe lifted no hand on
behalf of Polish independence, Prussia, alarmed lest the revolt should
spread into its own Polish provinces, assisted the operations of the
Russian general by supplying stores and munition of war. Blow after blow
fell upon the Polish cause. Warsaw itself became the prey of disorder,
intrigue, and treachery; and at length the Russian army made its entrance
into the capital, and the last soldiers of Poland laid down their arms, or
crossed into Prussian or Austrian territory. The revolt had been rashly and
unwisely begun: its results were fatal and lamentable. The constitution of
Poland was abolished; it ceased to be a separate kingdom, and became a
province of the Russian Empire. Its defenders were exiles over the face of
Europe or forgotten in Siberia. All that might have been won by the gradual
development of its constitutional liberties without breach with the Czar's
sovereignty was sacrificed. The future of Poland, like that of Russia
itself, now depended on the enlightenment and courage of the Imperial
Government, and on that alone. The very existence of a Polish nationality
and language seemed for a while to be threatened by the measures of
repression that followed the victory of 1831: and if it be true that
Russian autocracy has at length done for the Polish peasants what their
native masters during centuries of ascendency refused to do, this
emancipation would probably not have come the later for the preservation of
some relics of political independence, nor would it have had the less value
if unaccompanied by the proscription of so great a part of that class which
had once been held to constitute the Polish nation. [391]

[Insurrection in the Papal States, Feb., 1831.]

During the conflict on the banks of the Vistula, the attitude of the
Austrian Government had been one of watchful neutrality. Its own Polish
territory was not seriously menaced with disturbance, for in a great part
of Galicia the population, being of Ruthenian stock and belonging to the
Greek Church, had nothing in common with the Polish and Catholic noblesse
of their province, and looked back upon the days of Polish dominion as a
time of suffering and wrong. Austria's danger in any period of European
convulsion lay as yet rather on the side of Italy than on the East, and the
vigour of its policy in that quarter contrasted with the equanimity with
which it watched the struggle of its Slavic neighbours. Since the
suppression of the Neapolitan constitutional movement in 1821, the
Carbonari and other secret societies of Italy had lost nothing of their
activity. Their head-quarters had been removed from Southern Italy to the
Papal States, and the numerous Italian exiles in France and elsewhere kept
up a busy communication at once with French revolutionary leaders like
Lafayette and with the enemies of the established governments in Italy
itself. The death of Pope Pius VIII., on November 30, 1830, and the
consequent paralysis of authority within the Ecclesiastical States, came at
an opportune moment; assurances of support arrived from Paris; and the
Italian leaders resolved upon a general insurrection throughout the minor
Principalities on the 5th of February, 1831. Anticipating the signal,
Menotti, chief of a band of patriots at Modena, who appears to have been
lured on by the Grand Duke himself, assembled his partisans on February 3.
He was overpowered and imprisoned; but the outbreak of the insurrection in
Bologna, and its rapid extension over the northern part of the Papal
States, soon caused the Grand Duke to fly to Austrian territory, carrying
his prisoner Menotti with him, whom he subsequently put to death. The new
Pope, Gregory XVI., had scarcely been elected when the report reached him
that Bologna had declared the temporal power of the Papacy to be at an end.
Uncertain of the character of the revolt, he despatched Cardinal Benvenuti
northwards, to employ conciliation or force as occasion might require. The
Legate fell into the hands of the insurgents; the revolt spread southwards;
and Gregory, now hopeless of subduing it by the forces at his own command,
called upon Austria for assistance. [392]

[Attitude of France.]

The principle which, since the Revolution of July, the government of France
had repeatedly laid down as the future basis of European politics was that
of non-intervention. It had disclaimed any purpose of interfering with the
affairs of its neighbours, and had required in return that no foreign
intervention should take place in districts which, like Belgium and Savoy,
adjoined its own frontier. But there existed no real unity of purpose in
the councils of Louis Philippe. The Ministry had one voice for the
representatives of foreign powers, another for the Chamber of Deputies, and
another for Lafayette and the bands of exiles and conspirators who were
under his protection. The head of the government at the beginning of 1831
was Laffitte, a weak politician, dominated by revolutionary sympathies and
phrases, but incapable of any sustained or resolute action, and equally
incapable of resisting Louis Philippe after the King had concluded his
performance of popular leader, and assumed his real character as the wary
and self-seeking chief of a reigning house. Whether the actual course of
French policy would be governed by the passions of the streets or by the
timorousness of Louis Philippe was from day to day a matter of conjecture.
The official answer given to the inquiries of the Austrian ambassador as to
the intentions of France in case of an Austrian intervention in Italy was,
that such intervention might be tolerated in Parma and Modena, which
belonged to sovereigns immediately connected with the Hapsburgs, but that
if it was extended to the Papal States war with France would be probable,
and if extended to Piedmont, certain. On this reply Metternich, who saw
Austria's own dominion in Italy once more menaced by the success of an
insurrectionary movement, had to form his decision. He could count on the
support of Russia in case of war; he knew well the fears of Louis Philippe,
and knew that he could work on these fears both by pointing to the presence
of the young Louis Bonaparte and his brother with the Italian insurgents as
evidence of the Bonapartist character of the movement, and by hinting that
in the last resort he might himself let loose upon France Napoleon's son,
the Duke of Reichstadt. now growing to manhood at Vienna, before whom Louis
Philippe's throne would have collapsed as speedily as that of Louis XVIII.
in 1814. Where weakness existed, Metternich was quick to divine it and to
take advantage of it. He rightly gauged Louis Philippe. Taking at their
true value the threats of the French Government, he declared that it was
better for Austria to fall, if necessary, by war than by revolution; and,
resolving at all hazards to suppress the Roman insurrection, he gave orders
to the Austrian troops to enter the Papal States.

[Austrians suppress Roman revolt, March, 1831.]

[Casimir Perier, March, 1831.]

The military resistance which the insurgents could offer to the advance of
the Pope's Austrian deliverers was insignificant, and order was soon
restored. But all Europe expected the outbreak of war between Austria and
France. The French ambassador at Constantinople had gone so far as to offer
the Sultan an offensive and defensive alliance, and to urge him to make
preparations for an attack upon both Austria and Russia on their southern
frontiers. A despatch from the ambassador reached Paris describing the
warlike overtures he had made to the Porte. Louis Philippe saw that if this
despatch reached the hands of Laffitte and the war party in the Council of
Ministers the preservation of peace would be almost impossible. In concert
with Sebastiani, the Foreign Minister, he concealed the despatch from
Laffitte. The Premier discovered the trick that had been played upon him,
and tendered his resignation. It was gladly accepted by Louis Philippe.
Laffitte quitted office, begging pardon of God and man for the part that he
had taken in raising Louis Philippe to the throne. His successor was
Casimir Perier, a man of very different mould; resolute, clear-headed, and
immovably true to his word; a constitutional statesman of the strictest
type, intolerant of any species of disorder, and a despiser of popular
movements, but equally proof against royal intrigues, and as keen to
maintain the constitutional system of France against the Court on one side
and the populace on the other as he was to earn for France the respect of
foreign powers by the abandonment of a policy of adventure, and the steady
adherence to the principles of international obligation which he had laid
down. Under his firm hand the intrigues of the French Government with
foreign revolutionists ceased; it was felt throughout Europe that peace was
still possible, and that if war was undertaken by France it would be
undertaken only under conditions which would make any moral union of all
the great Powers against France impossible. The Austrian expedition into
the Papal States had already begun, and the revolutionary Government had
been suppressed; the most therefore that Casimir Perier could demand was
that the evacuation of the occupied territory should take place as soon as
possible, and that Austria should add its voice to that of the other Powers
in urging the Papal Government to reform its abuses. Both demands were
granted. For the first time Austria appeared as the advocate of something
like a constitutional system. A Conference held at Rome agreed upon a
scheme of reforms to be recommended to the Pope; the prospects of peace
grew daily fairer; and in July, 1831, the last Austrian soldiers quitted
the Ecclesiastical States. [393]

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.