Book: History of Modern Europe 1792 1878

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







CHAPTER XVII.


France and England after 1830--Affairs of Portugal--Don Miguel--Don Pedro
invades Portugal--Ferdinand of Spain--The Pragmatic Sanction--Death of
Ferdinand: Regency of Christina--The Constitution--Quadruple Alliance--
Miguel and Carlos expelled from Portugal--Carlos enters Spain--The Basque
Provinces--Carlist War: Zumalacarregui--The Spanish Government seeks French
assistance, which is refused--Constitution of 1837--End of the War--Regency
of Espartero--Isabella Queen--Affairs of the Ottoman Empire--Ibrahim
invades Syria; his victories--Rivalry of France and Russia at
Constantinople--Peace of Kutaya and Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi--Effect of
this Treaty--France and Mehemet Ali--Commerce of the Levant--Second War
between Mehemet and the Porte--Ottoman disasters--The Policy of the Great
Powers--Quadruple Treaty without France--Ibrahim expelled from Syria--Final
Settlement--Turkey after 1840--Attempted reforms of Reschid Pasha.


[France and England after 1830.]

Alliances of opinion usually cover the pursuit on one or both sides of some
definite interest; and to this rule the alliance which appeared to be
springing up between France and England after the changes of 1830 was no
exception. In the popular view, the bond of union between the two States
was a common attachment to principles of liberty; and on the part of the
Whig statesmen who now governed England this sympathy with free
constitutional systems abroad was certainly a powerful force: but other
motives than mere community of sentiment combined to draw the two
Governments together, and in the case of France these immediate interests
greatly outweighed any abstract preference for a constitutional ally. Louis
Philippe had an avowed and obstinate enemy in the Czar of Russia, who had
been his predecessor's friend: the Court of Vienna tolerated usurpers only
where worse mischief would follow from attacking them; Prussia had no
motive for abandoning the connexions which it had maintained since 1815. As
the union between the three Eastern Courts grew closer in consequence of
the outbreak of revolution beyond the borders of France, a good
understanding with Great Britain became more and more obviously the right
policy for Louis Philippe; on the other hand, the friendship of France
seemed likely to secure England from falling back into that isolated
position which it had occupied when the Holy Alliance laid down the law to
Europe, and averted the danger to which the Ottoman Empire, as well as the
peace of the world, had been exposed by the combination of French with
Russian schemes of aggrandizement. If Canning, left without an ally in
Europe, had called the new world into existence to redress the balance of
the old, his Whig successors might well look with some satisfaction on that
shifting of the weights which had brought over one of the Great Powers to
the side of England, and anticipate, in the concert of the two great
Western States, the establishment of a permanent force in European politics
which should hold in check the reactionary influences of Vienna and St.
Petersburg. To some extent these views were realised. A general relation of
friendliness was recognised as subsisting between the Governments of Paris
and London, and in certain European complications their intervention was
arranged in common. But even here the element of mistrust was seldom
absent; and while English Ministers jealously watched each action of their
neighbour, the French Government rarely allowed the ties of an informal
alliance to interfere with the prosecution of its own views. Although down
to the close of Louis Philippe's reign the good understanding between
England and France was still nominally in existence, all real confidence
had then long vanished; and on more than one occasion the preservation of
peace between the two nations had been seriously endangered.

[Affairs of Portugal, 1826-1830.]

It was in the establishment of the kingdom of Belgium that the combined
action of France and England produced its first and most successful result.
A second demand was made upon the Governments of the two constitutional
Powers by the conflicts which agitated the Spanish Peninsula, and which
were stimulated in the general interests of absolutism by both the Austrian
and the Russian Court. The intervention of Canning in 1826 on behalf of the
constitutional Regency of Portugal against the foreign supporters of Don
Miguel, the head of the clerical and reactionary party, had not permanently
restored peace to that country. Miguel indeed accepted the constitution,
and, after betrothing himself to the infant sovereign, Donna Maria, who was
still with her father Pedro, in Brazil, entered upon the Regency which his
elder brother had promised to him. But his actions soon disproved the
professions of loyalty to the constitution which he had made; and after
dissolving the Cortes, and re-assembling the mediaeval Estates, he caused
himself to be proclaimed King (June, 1828). A reign of terror followed. The
constitutionalists were completely crushed. Miguel's own brutal violence
gave an example to all the fanatics and ruffians who surrounded him; and
after an unsuccessful appeal to arms, those of the adherents of Donna Maria
and the constitution who escaped from imprisonment or execution took refuge
in England or in the Azore islands, where Miguel had not been able to
establish his authority. Though Miguel was not officially recognised as
Sovereign by most of the foreign Courts, his victory was everywhere seen
with satisfaction by the partisans of absolutism; and in Great Britain,
where the Duke of Wellington was still in power, the precedent of Canning's
intervention was condemned, and a strict neutrality maintained. Not only
was all assistance refused to Donna Maria, but her adherents who had taken
refuge in England were prevented from making this country the basis of any
operations against the usurper.

[Invasion of Portugal by Pedro. July, 1832.]

Such was the situation of Portuguese affairs when the events of 1830
brought an entirely new spirit into the foreign policy of both England and
France. Miguel, however, had no inclination to adapt his own policy to the
change of circumstances; on the contrary, he challenged the hostility of
both governments by persisting in a series of wanton attacks upon English
and French subjects resident at Lisbon. Satisfaction was demanded, and
exacted by force. English and French squadrons successively appeared in the
Tagus. Lord Palmerston, now Foreign Secretary in the Ministry of Earl Grey,
was content with obtaining a pecuniary indemnity for his countrymen,
accompanied by a public apology from the Portuguese Government: the French
admiral, finding some difficulty in obtaining redress, carried off the best
ships of Don Miguel's navy. [396] A weightier blow was, however, soon to
fall upon the usurper. His brother, the Emperor Pedro, threatened with
revolution in Brazil, resolved to return to Europe and to enforce the
rights of his daughter to the throne of Portugal. Pedro arrived in London
in July, 1831, and was permitted by the Government to raise troops and to
secure the services of some of the best naval officers of this country. The
gathering place of his forces was Terceira, one of the Azore islands, and
in the summer of 1832 a sufficiently strong body of troops was collected to
undertake the reconquest of Portugal. A landing was made at Oporto, and
this city fell into the hands of Don Pedro without resistance. Miguel,
however, now marched against his brother, and laid siege to Oporto. For
nearly a year no progress was made by either side; at length the arrival of
volunteers from various countries, among whom was Captain Charles Napier,
enabled Pedro to divide his forces and to make a new attack on Portugal
from the south. Napier, in command of the fleet, annihilated the navy of
Don Miguel off St. Vincent; his colleague, Villa Flor, landed and marched
on Lisbon. The resistance of the enemy was overcome, and on the 28th of
July, 1833, Don Pedro entered the capital. But the war was not yet at an
end, for Miguel's cause was as closely identified with the interests of
European absolutism as that of his brother was with constitutional right,
and assistance both in troops and money continued to arrive at his camp.
The struggle threatened to prove a long and obstinate one, when a new turn
was given to events in the Peninsula by the death of Ferdinand, King of
Spain.

[Death of Ferdinand, Sept., 1833.]

Since the restoration of absolute Government in Spain in 1823, Ferdinand,
in spite of his own abject weakness and ignorance, had not given complete
satisfaction to the fanatics of the clerical party. Some vestiges of
statesmanship, some sense of political necessity, as well as the influence
of foreign counsellors, had prevented the Government of Madrid from
completely identifying itself with the monks and zealots who had first
risen against the constitution of 1820, and who now sought to establish the
absolute supremacy of the Church. The Inquisition had not been restored,
and this alone was enough to stamp the King as a renegade in the eyes of
the ferocious and implacable champions of mediaeval bigotry. Under the name
of Apostolicals, these reactionaries had at times broken into open
rebellion. Their impatience had, however, on the whole been restrained by
the knowledge that in the King's brother and heir, Don Carlos, they had an
adherent whose devotion to the priestly cause was beyond suspicion, and who
might be expected soon to ascend the throne. Ferdinand had been thrice
married; he was childless; his state of health miserable; and his life
likely to be a short one. The succession to the throne of Spain had
moreover, since 1713, been governed by the Salic Law, so that even in the
event of Ferdinand leaving female issue Don Carlos would nevertheless
inherit the crown. These confident hopes were rudely disturbed by the
marriage of the King with his cousin Maria Christina of Naples, followed by
an edict, known as the Pragmatic Sanction, repealing the Salic Law which
had been introduced with the first Bourbon, and restoring the ancient
Castilian custom under which women were capable of succeeding to the crown.
A daughter, Isabella, was shortly afterwards born to the new Queen. On the
legality of the Pragmatic Sanction the opinions of publicists differed; it
was judged, however, by Europe at large not from the point of view of
antiquarian theory, but with direct reference to its immediate effect. The
three Eastern Courts emphatically condemned it, as an interference with
established monarchical right, and as a blow to the cause of European
absolutism through the alliance which it would almost certainly produce
between the supplanters of Don Carlos and the Liberals of the Spanish
Peninsula. [397] To the clerical and reactionary party at Madrid, it
amounted to nothing less than a sentence of destruction, and the utmost
pressure was brought to bear upon the weak and dying King with the object
of inducing him to undo the alleged wrong which he had done to his brother.
In a moment of prostration Ferdinand revoked the Pragmatic Sanction; but,
subsequently, regaining some degree of strength, he re-enacted it, and
appointed Christina Regent during the continuance of his illness. Don
Carlos, protesting against the violation of his rights, had betaken himself
to Portugal, where he made common cause with Miguel. His adherents had no
intention of submitting to the change of succession. Their resentment was
scarcely restrained during Ferdinand's life-time, and when, in September,
1833, his long-expected death took place, and the child Isabella was
declared Queen under the Regency of her mother, open rebellion broke out,
and Carlos was proclaimed King in several of the northern provinces.

[The Regency and the Carlists.]

[Quadruple Treaty, April 22, 1834.]

[Miguel and Carlos removed, May, 1834.]

For the moment the forces of the Regency seemed to be far superior to those
of the insurgents, and Don Carlos failed to take advantage of the first
outburst of enthusiasm and to place himself at the head of his followers.
He remained in Portugal, while Christina, as had been expected, drew nearer
to the Spanish Liberals, and ultimately called to power a Liberal minister,
Martinez de la Rosa, under whom a constitution was given to Spain by Royal
Statute (April 10, 1834). At the same time negotiations were opened with
Portugal and with the Western Powers, in the hope of forming an alliance
which should drive both Miguel and Carlos from the Peninsula. On the 22nd
of April, 1834, a Quadruple Treaty was signed at London, in which the
Spanish Government undertook to send an army into Portugal against Miguel,
the Court of Lisbon pledging itself in return to use all the means in its
power to expel Don Carlos from Portuguese territory. England engaged to
co-operate by means of its fleet. The assistance of France, if it should be
deemed necessary for the attainment of the objects of the Treaty, was to be
rendered in such manner as should be settled by common consent. In
pursuance of the policy of the Treaty, and even before the formal
engagement was signed, a Spanish division under General Rodil crossed the
frontier and marched against Miguel. The forces of the usurper were
defeated. The appearance of the English fleet and the publication of the
Treaty of Quadruple Alliance rendered further resistance hopeless, and on
the 22nd of May Miguel made his submission, and in return for a large
pension renounced all rights to the crown, and undertook to quit the
Peninsula for ever. Don Carlos, refusing similar conditions, went on board
an English ship, and was conducted to London. [398]

[Carlos appears in Spain.]

With respect to Portugal, the Quadruple Alliance had completely attained
its object; and in so far as the Carlist cause was strengthened by the
continuance of civil war in the neighbouring country, this source of
strength was no doubt withdrawn from it. But in its effect upon Don Carlos
himself the action of the Quadruple Alliance was worse than useless. While
fulfilling the letter of the Treaty, which stipulated for the expulsion of
the two pretenders from the Peninsula, the English Admiral had removed
Carlos from Portugal, where he was comparatively harmless, and had taken no
effective guarantee that he should not re-appear in Spain itself and
enforce his claim by arms. Carlos had not been made a prisoner of war; he
had made no promises and incurred no obligations; nor could the British
Government, after his arrival in this country, keep him in perpetual
restraint. Quitting England after a short residence, he travelled in
disguise through France, crossed the Pyrenees, and appeared on the 10th of
July, 1834, at the headquarters of the Carlist insurgents in Navarre.

[The Basque Provinces.]

In the country immediately below the western Pyrenees, the so-called Basque
Provinces, lay the chief strength of the Carlist rebellion. These
provinces, which were among the most thriving and industrious parts of
Spain, might seem by their very superiority an unlikely home for a movement
which was directed against everything favourable to liberty, tolerance, and
progress in the Spanish kingdom. But the identification of the Basques with
the Carlist cause was due in fact to local, not to general, causes; and in
fighting to impose a bigoted despot upon the Spanish people, they were in
truth fighting to protect themselves from a closer incorporation with
Spain. Down to the year 1812, the Basque provinces had preserved more than
half of the essentials of independence. Owing to their position on the
French frontier, the Spanish monarchy, while destroying all local
independence in the interior of Spain, had uniformly treated the Basques
with the same indulgence which the Government of Great Britain has shown to
the Channel Islands, and which the French monarchy, though in a less
degree, showed to the frontier province of Alsace in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. The customs-frontier of the north of Spain was drawn
to the south of these districts. The inhabitants imported what they pleased
from France without paying any duties; while the heavy import-dues levied
at the border of the neighbouring Spanish provinces gave them the
opportunity of carrying on an easy and lucrative system of smuggling. The
local administration remained to a great extent in the hands of the people
themselves; each village preserved its active corporate life; and the
effect of this survival of a vigorous local freedom was seen in the
remarkable contrast described by travellers between the aspect of the
Basque districts and that of Spain at large. The Fueros, or local rights,
as the Basques considered them, were in reality, when viewed as part of the
order of the Spanish State, a series of exceptional privileges; and it was
inevitable that the framers of the Constitution of 1812, in their attempt
to create a modern administrative and political system doing justice to the
whole of the nation, should sweep away the distinctions which had hitherto
marked off one group of provinces from the rest of the community. The
continuance of war until the return of Ferdinand, and the overthrow of the
Constitution, prevented the plans of the Cortes from being at that time
carried into effect; but the revolution of 1820 brought them into actual
operation, and the Basques found themselves, as a result of the victory of
Liberal principles, compelled to pay duties on their imports, robbed of the
profits of their smuggling, and supplanted in the management of their local
affairs by an army of officials from Madrid. They had gained by the
Constitution little that they had not possessed before, and their losses
were immediate, tangible, and substantial. The result was, that although
the larger towns, like Bilbao, remained true to modern ideas, the country
districts, led chiefly by priests, took up arms on behalf of the absolute
monarchy, assisted the French in the restoration of despotism in 1823, and
remained the permanent enemies of the constitutional cause. [399] On the
death of Ferdinand they declared at once for Don Carlos, and rose in
rebellion against the Government of Queen Christina, by which they
considered the privileges of the Basque Provinces and the interests of
Catholic orthodoxy to be alike threatened.

[Carlist victories, 1834-5.]

There was little in the character of Don Carlos to stimulate the loyalty
even of his most benighted partizans. Of military and political capacity he
was totally destitute, and his continued absence in Portugal when the
conflict had actually begun proved him to be wanting in the natural
impulses of a brave man. It was, however, his fortune to be served by a
soldier of extraordinary energy and skill; and the first reverses of the
Carlists were speedily repaired, and a system of warfare organised which
made an end of the hopes of easy conquest with which the Government of
Christina had met the insurrection. Fighting in a worthless cause, and
commanding resources scarcely superior to those of a brigand chief, the
Carlist leader, Zumalacarregui, inflicted defeat after defeat upon the
generals who were sent to destroy him. The mountainous character of the
country and the universal hostility of the inhabitants made the exertions
of a regular soldiery useless against the alternate flights and surprises
of men who knew every mountain track, and who gained information of the
enemy's movements from every cottager. Terror was added by Zumalacarregui
to all his other methods for demoralising his adversary. In the exercise of
reprisals he repeatedly murdered all his prisoners in cold blood, and gave
to the war so savage a character that foreign Governments at last felt
compelled to urge upon the belligerents some regard for the usages of the
civilised world. The appearance of Don Carlos himself in the summer of 1834
raised still higher the confidence already inspired by the victories of his
general. It was in vain that the old constitutionalist soldier, Mina, who
had won so great a name in these provinces in 1823, returned after long
exile to the scene of his exploits. Enfeebled and suffering, he was no
longer able to place himself at the head of his troops, and he soon sought
to be relieved from a hopeless task. His successor, the War Minister
Valdes, took the field announcing his determination to act upon a new
system, and to operate with his troops in mass instead of pursuing the
enemy's bands with detachments. The result of this change of tactics was a
defeat more ruinous and complete than had befallen any of Valdes'
predecessors. He with difficulty withdrew the remainder of his army from
the insurgent provinces; and the Carlist leader master of the open country
up to the borders of Castile, prepared to cross the Ebro and to march upon
Madrid. [400]

[Request to France for assistance, May, 1835.]

The Ministers of Queen Christina, who had up till this time professed
themselves confident in their power to deal with the insurrection, could
now no longer conceal the real state of affairs. Valdes himself declared
that the rebellion could not be subdued without foreign aid; and after
prolonged discussion in the Cabinet it was determined to appeal to France
for armed assistance. The flight of Don Carlos from England had already
caused an additional article to be added to the Treaty of the Quadruple
Alliance, in which France undertook so to watch the frontier of the
Pyrenees that no reinforcements or munition of war should reach the
Carlists from that side, while England promised to supply the troops of
Queen Christina with arms and stores, and, if necessary, to render
assistance with a naval force (18th August, 1834). The foreign supplies
sent to the Carlists had thus been cut off both by land and sea; but more
active assistance seemed indispensable if Madrid was to be saved from
falling into the enemy's hands. The request was made to Louis Philippe's
Government to occupy the Basque Provinces with a corps of twelve thousand
men. Reasons of weight might be addressed to the French Court in favour of
direct intervention. The victory of Don Carlos would place upon the throne
of Spain a representative of all those reactionary influences throughout
Europe which were in secret or in open hostility to the House of Orleans,
and definitely mark the failure of that policy which had led France to
combine with England in expelling Don Miguel from Portugal. On the other
hand, the experience gained from earlier military enterprises in Spain
might well deter even bolder politicians than those about Louis Philippe
from venturing upon a task whose ultimate issues no man could confidently
forecast. Napoleon had wrecked his empire in the struggle beyond the
Pyrenees not less than in the march to Moscow: and the expedition of 1823,
though free from military difficulties, had exposed France to the
humiliating responsibility for every brutal act of a despotism which, in
the very moment of its restoration, had scorned the advice of its
restorers. The constitutional Government which invoked French assistance
might, moreover, at any moment give place to a democratic faction which
already harassed it within the Cortes, and which, in its alliance with the
populace in many of the great cities, threatened to throw Spain into
anarchy, or to restore the ill-omened constitution of 1812. But above all,
the attitude of the three Eastern Powers bade the ruler of France hesitate
before committing himself to a military occupation of Spanish territory.
Their sympathies were with Don Carlos, and the active participation of
France in the quarrel might possibly call their opposing forces into the
field and provoke a general war. In view of the evident dangers arising out
of the proposed intervention, the French Government, taking its stand on
that clause of the Quadruple Treaty which provided that the assistance of
France should be rendered in such manner as might be agreed upon by all the
parties to the Treaty, addressed itself to Great Britain, inquiring whether
this country would undertake a joint responsibility in the enterprise and
share with France the consequences to which it might give birth. Lord
Palmerston in reply declined to give the assurance required. He stated that
no objection would be raised by the British Government to the entry of
French troops into Spain, but that such intervention must be regarded as
the work of France alone, and be undertaken by France at its own peril.
This answer sufficed for Louis Philippe and his Ministers. The Spanish
Government was informed that the grant of military assistance was
impossible, and that the entire public opinion of France would condemn so
dangerous an undertaking. As a proof of goodwill, permission was given to
Queen Christina to enrol volunteers both in England and France. Arms were
supplied; and some thousands of needy or adventurous men ultimately made
their way from our own country as well as from France, to earn under
Colonel De Lacy Evans and other leaders a scanty harvest of profit or
renown.

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