Book: History of Modern Europe 1792 1878

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[Continuance of the war.]

The first result of the rejection of the Spanish demand for the direct
intervention of France was the downfall of the Minister by whom this demand
had been made. His successor, Toreno, though a well-known patriot, proved
unable to stem the tide of revolution that was breaking over the country.
City after city set up its own Junta, and acted as if the central
government had ceased to exist. Again the appeal for help was made to Louis
Philippe, and now, not so much to avert the victory of Don Carlos as to
save Spain from anarchy and from the constitution of 1812. Before an answer
could arrive, Toreno in his turn had passed away. Mendizabal, a banker who
had been entrusted with financial business at London, and who had entered
into friendly relations with Lord Palmerston, was called to office, as a
politician acceptable to the democratic party, and the advocate of a close
connection with England rather than with France. In spite of the confident
professions of the Minister, and in spite of some assistance actually
rendered by the English fleet, no real progress was made in subduing the
Carlists, or in restoring administrative and financial order. The death of
Zumalacarregui, who was forced by Don Carlos to turn northwards and besiege
Bilbao instead of marching upon Madrid immediately after his victories, had
checked the progress of the rebellion at a critical moment; but the
Government, distracted and bankrupt, could not use the opportunity which
thus offered itself, and the war soon blazed out anew not only in the
Basque Provinces but throughout the north of Spain. For year after year the
monotonous struggle continued, while Cortes succeeded Cortes and faction
supplanted faction, until there remained scarcely an officer who had not
lost his reputation or a politician who was not useless and discredited.

[Constitution of 1837.]

[End of the war, Sept., 1839.]

The Queen Regent, who from the necessities of her situation had for awhile
been the representative of the popular cause, gradually identified herself
with the interests opposed to democratic change; and although her name was
still treated with some respect, and her policy was habitually attributed
to the misleading advice of courtiers, her real position was well
understood at Madrid, and her own resistance was known to be the principal
obstacle to the restoration of the Constitution of 1812. It was therefore
determined to overcome this resistance by force; and on the 13th of August,
1836, a regiment of the garrison of Madrid, won over by the Exaltados,
marched upon the palace of La Granja, invaded the Queen's apartments, and
compelled her to sign an edict restoring the Constitution of 1812 until the
Cortes should establish that or some other. Scenes of riot and murder
followed in the capital. Men of moderate opinions, alarmed at the approach
of anarchy, prepared to unite with Don Carlos. King Louis Philippe, who had
just consented to strengthen the French legion by the addition of some
thousands of trained soldiers, now broke entirely from the Spanish
connection, and dismissed his Ministers who refused to acquiesce in this
change of policy. Meanwhile the Eastern Powers and all rational partisans
of absolutism besought Don Carlos to give those assurances which would
satisfy the wavering mass among his opponents, and place him on the throne
without the sacrifice of any right that was worth preserving. It seemed as
if the opportunity was too clear to be misunderstood; but the obstinacy and
narrowness of Don Carlos were proof against every call of fortune. Refusing
to enter into any sort of engagement, he rendered it impossible for men to
submit to him who were not willing to accept absolutism pure and simple. On
the other hand, a majority of the Cortes, whose eyes were now opened to the
dangers around them, accepted such modifications of the Constitution of
1812 that political stability again appeared possible (June, 1837). The
danger of a general transference of all moderate elements in the State to
the side of Don Carlos was averted; and, although the Carlist armies took
up the offensive, menaced the capital, and made incursions into every part
of Spain, the darkest period of the war was now over; and when, after
undertaking in person the march upon Madrid, Don Carlos swerved aside and
ultimately fell back in confusion to the Ebro, the suppression of the
rebellion became a certainty. General Espartero, with whom such distinction
remained as was to be gathered in this miserable war, forced back the
adversary step by step, and carried fire and sword into the Basque
Provinces, employing a system of devastation which alone seemed capable of
exhausting the endurance of the people. Reduced to the last extremity, the
Carlist leaders turned their arms against one another. The priests
excommunicated the generals, and the generals shot the priests; and
finally, on the 14th September, after the surrender of almost all his
troops to Espartero, Don Carlos crossed the French frontier, and the
conflict which during six years had barbarised and disgraced the Spanish
nation, reached its close.

[End of the Regency, Isabella, Queen, Nov., 1843.]

The triumph of Queen Christina over her rivals was not of long duration.
Confronted by a strong democratic party both in the Cortes and in the
country, she endeavoured in vain to govern by the aid of Ministers of her
own choice. Her popularity had vanished away. The scandals of her private
life gave just offence to the nation, and fatally weakened her political
authority. Forced by insurrection to bestow office on Espartero, as the
chief of the Progressist party, she found that the concessions demanded by
this general were more than she could grant, and in preference to
submitting to them she resigned the Regency, and quitted Spain (Oct.,
1840). Espartero, after some interval, was himself appointed Regent by the
Cortes. For two years he maintained himself in power, then in his turn he
fell before the combined attack of his political opponents and the extreme
men of his own party, and passed into exile. There remained in Spain no
single person qualified to fill the vacant Regency, and in default of all
other expedients the young princess Isabella, who was now in her fourteenth
year, was declared of full age, and placed on the throne (Nov., 1843).
Christina returned to Madrid. After some rapid changes of Ministry, a more
durable Government was formed from the Moderado party under General
Narvaez; and in comparison with the period that had just ended, the first
few years of the new reign were years of recovery and order.

[War between Mehemet Ali and the Porte, 1832.]

The withdrawal of Louis Philippe from his engagements after the
capitulation of Maria Christina to the soldiery at La Granja in 1836 had
diminished the confidence placed in the King by the British Ministry; but
it had not destroyed the relations of friendship existing between the two
Governments. Far more serious causes of difference arose out of the course
of events in the East, and the extension of the power of Mehemet Ali,
Viceroy of Egypt. The struggle between Mehemet and his sovereign, long
foreseen, broke out in the year 1832. After the establishment of the
Hellenic Kingdom, the island of Crete had been given to Mehemet in return
for his services to the Ottoman cause by land and sea. This concession,
however, was far from satisfying the ambition of the Viceroy, and a quarrel
with Abdallah, Pasha of Acre, gave him the opportunity of throwing an army
into Palestine without directly rebelling against his sovereign (Nov.,
1831). Ibrahim, in command of his father's forces, laid siege to Acre; and
had this fortress at once fallen, it would probably have been allowed by
the Sultan to remain in its conqueror's hands as an addition to his own
province, since the Turkish army was not ready for war, and it was no
uncommon thing in the Ottoman Empire for one provincial governor to possess
himself of territory at the expense of another. So obstinate, however, was
the defence of Acre that time was given to the Porte to make preparations
for war; and in the spring of 1832, after the issue of a proclamation
declaring Mehemet and his son to be rebels, a Turkish army led by Hussein
Pasha entered Syria.

[Ibrahim conquers Syria and Asia Minor.]

Ibrahim, while the siege of Acre was proceeding, had overrun the
surrounding country. He was now in possession of all the interior of
Palestine, and the tribes of Lebanon had joined him in the expectation of
gaining relief from the burdens of Turkish misgovernment. The fall of Acre,
while the relieving army was still near Antioch, enabled him to throw his
full strength against his opponent in the valley of the Orontes. It was the
intention of the Turkish general, whose forces, though superior in number,
had not the European training of Ibrahim's regiments, to meet the assault
of the Egyptians in an entrenched camp near Hama. The commander of the
vanguard, however, pushed forward beyond this point, and when far in
advance of the main body of the army was suddenly attacked by Ibrahim at
Homs. Taken at a moment of complete disorder, the Turks were put to the
rout. Their overthrow and flight so alarmed the general-in-chief that he
determined to fall back upon Aleppo, leaving Antioch and all the valley of
the Orontes to the enemy. Aleppo was reached, but the governor, won over by
Ibrahim, closed the gates of the city against the famishing army, and
forced Hussein to continue his retreat to the mountains which form the
barrier between Syria and Cilicia. Here, at the pass of Beilan, he was
attacked by Ibrahim, outmanoeuvred, and forced to retreat with heavy loss
(July 29). The pursuit was continued through the province of Cilicia.
Hussein's army, now completely demoralised, made its escape to the centre
of Asia Minor; the Egyptian, after advancing as far as Mount Taurus and
occupying the passes in this range, took up his quarters in the conquered
country in order to refresh his army and to await reinforcements. After two
months' halt he renewed his march, crossed Mount Taurus and occupied
Konieh, the capital of this district. Here the last and decisive blow was
struck. A new Turkish army, led by Reschid Pasha, Ibrahim's colleague in
the siege of Missolonghi, advanced from the north. Against his own advice,
Reschid was compelled by orders from Constantinople to risk everything in
an engagement. He attacked Ibrahim at Konieh on the 21st of December, and
was completely defeated. Reschid himself was made a prisoner; his army
dispersed; the last forces of the Sultan were exhausted, and the road to
the Bosphorus lay open before the Egyptian invader.

[Russian aid offered to the Sultan.]

[Peace of Kutaya, April, 1833.]

In this extremity the Sultan looked around for help; nor were offers of
assistance wanting. The Emperor Nicholas had since the Treaty of Adrianople
assumed the part of the magnanimous friend; his belief was that the Ottoman
Empire might by judicious management and without further conquest be
brought into a state of habitual dependence upon Russia; and before the
result of the battle of Konieh was known General Muravieff had arrived at
Constantinople bringing the offer of Russian help both by land and sea, and
tendering his own personal services in the restoration of peace. Mahmud had
to some extent been won over by the Czar's politic forbearance in the
execution of the Treaty of Adrianople. His hatred of Mehemet Ali was a
consuming passion; and in spite of the general conviction both of his
people and of his advisers that no possible concession to a rebellious
vassal could be so fatal as the protection of the hereditary enemy of
Islam, he was disposed to accept the Russian tender of assistance. As a
preliminary, Muravieff was sent to Alexandria with permission to cede Acre
to Mehemet Ali, if in return the Viceroy would make over his fleet to the
Sultan. These were conditions on which no reasonable man could have
expected that Mehemet would make peace; and the intention of the Russian
Court probably was that Muravieff's mission should fail. The envoy soon
returned to Constantinople announcing that his terms were rejected. Mahmud
now requested that Russian ships might be sent to the Bosphorus, and to the
dismay of the French and English embassies a Russian squadron appeared
before the capital. Admiral Roussin, the French ambassador, addressed a
protest to the Sultan and threatened to leave Constantinople. His
remonstrances induced Mahmud to consent to some more serious negotiation
being opened with Mehemet Ali. A French envoy was authorised to promise the
Viceroy the governorship of Tripoli in Syria as well as Acre; his
overtures, however, were not more acceptable than those of Muravieff, and
Mehemet openly declared that if peace were not concluded on his own terms
within six weeks, he should order Ibrahim, who had halted at Kutaya, to
continue his march on the Bosphorus. Thoroughly alarmed at this threat, and
believing that no Turkish force could keep Ibrahim out of the capital,
Mahmud applied to Russia for more ships and also for troops. Again Admiral
Roussin urged upon the Sultan that if Syria could be reconquered only by
Russian forces it was more than lost to the Porte. His arguments were
supported by the Divan, and with such effect that a French diplomatist was
sent to Ibrahim with power to negotiate for peace on any terms.
Preliminaries were signed at Kutaya under French mediation on the 10th of
April, 1833, by which the Sultan made over to his vassal not only the whole
of Syria but the province of Adana which lies between Mount Taurus and the
Mediterranean. After some delay these Preliminaries were ratified by
Mahmud; and Ibrahim, after his dazzling success both in war and in
diplomacy, commenced the evacuation of northern Anatolia.

[Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, July, 1833.]

For the moment it appeared that French influence had decisively prevailed
at Constantinople, and that the troops of the Czar had been summoned from
Sebastopol only to be dismissed with the ironical compliments of those who
were most anxious to get rid of them. But this was not really the case.
Whether the fluctuations in the Sultan's policy had been due to mere fear
and irresolution, or whether they had to some extent proceeded from the
desire to play off one Power against another, it was to Russia, not France,
that his final confidence was given. The soldiers of the Czar were encamped
by the side of the Turks on the eastern shore of the Bosphorus; his ships
lay below Constantinople. Here on the 8th of July a Treaty was signed at
the palace of Unkiar Skelessi, [401] in which Russia and Turkey entered
into a defensive alliance of the most intimate character, each Power
pledging itself to render assistance to the other, not only against the
attack of an external enemy, but in every event where its peace and
security might be endangered. Russia undertook, in cases where its support
should be required, to provide whatever amount of troops the Sultan should
consider necessary both by sea and land, the Porte being charged with no
part of the expense beyond that of the provisioning of the troops. The
duration of the Treaty was fixed in the first instance for eight years. A
secret article, which, however, was soon afterwards published, declared
that, in order to diminish the burdens of the Porte, the Czar would not
demand the material help to which the Treaty entitled him; while, in
substitution for such assistance, the Porte undertook, when Russia should
be at war, to close the Dardanelles to the war-ships of all nations.

[Effect of this Treaty.]

By the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, Russia came nearer than it has at any
time before or since to that complete ascendency at Constantinople which
has been the modern object of its policy. The success of its diplomatists
had in fact been too great; for, if the abstract right of the Sultan to
choose his own allies had not yet been disputed by Europe at large, the
clause in the Treaty which related to the Dardanelles touched the interests
of every Power which possessed a naval station in the Mediterranean. By the
public law of Europe the Black Sea, which until the eighteenth century was
encompassed entirely by the Sultan's territory, formed no part of the open
waters of the world, but a Turkish lake to which access was given through
the Dardanelles only at the pleasure of the Porte. When, in the eighteenth
century, Russia gained a footing on the northern shore of the Euxine, this
carried with it no right to send war-ships through the straits into the
Mediterranean, nor had any Power at war with Russia the right to send a
fleet into the Black Sea otherwise than by the Sultan's consent. The Treaty
of Unkiar Skelessi, in making Turkey the ally of Russia against all its
enemies, converted the entrance to the Black Sea into a Russian fortified
post, from behind which Russia could freely send forth its ships of war
into the Mediterranean, while its own ports and arsenals remained secure
against attack. England and France, which were the States whose interests
were principally affected, protested against the Treaty, and stated they
reserved to themselves the right of taking such action in regard to it as
occasion might demand. Nor did the opposition rest with the protests of
diplomatists. The attention both of the English nation and of its
Government was drawn far more than hitherto to the future of the Ottoman
Empire. Political writers exposed with unwearied vigour, and not without
exaggeration, the designs of the Court of St. Petersburg in Asia as well as
in Europe; and to this time, rather than to any earlier period, belongs the
first growth of that strong national antagonism to Russia which found its
satisfaction in the Crimean War, and which has by no means lost its power
at the present day.

[France and Mehemet Ali.]

In desiring to check the extension of Russia's influence in the Levant,
Great Britain and France were at one. The lines of policy, however,
followed by these two States were widely divergent. Great Britain sought to
maintain the Sultan's power in its integrity; France became in an
increasing degree the patron and the friend of Mehemet Ali. Since the
expedition of Napoleon to Egypt in 1798, which was itself the execution of
a design formed in the reign of Louis XVI., Egypt had largely retained its
hold on the imagination of the leading classes in France. Its monuments,
its relics of a mighty past, touched a livelier chord among French men of
letters and science than India has at any time found among ourselves; and
although the hope of national conquest vanished with Napoleon's overthrow,
Egypt continued to afford a field of enterprise to many a civil and
military adventurer. Mehemet's army and navy were organised by French
officers; he was surrounded by French agents and men of business; and after
the conquest of Algiers had brought France on to the southern shore of the
Mediterranean, the advantages of a close political relation with Egypt did
not escape the notice of statesmen who saw in Gibraltar and Malta the most
striking evidences of English maritime power. Moreover the personal fame of
Mehemet strongly affected French opinion. His brilliant military reforms,
his vigorous administration, and his specious achievements in finance
created in the minds of those who were too far off to know the effects of
his tyranny the belief that at the hands of this man the East might yet
awaken to new life. Thus, from a real conviction of the superiority of
Mehemet's rule over that of the House of Osman no less than from
considerations of purely national policy, the French Government, without
any public or official bond of union, gradually became the acknowledged
supporters of the Egyptian conqueror, and connected his interests with
their own.

[Rule of Mehemet and Ibrahim.]

Sultan Mahmud had ratified the Preliminaries of Kutaya with wrath in his
heart; and from this time all his energies were bent upon the creation of a
force which should wrest back the lost provinces and take revenge upon his
rebellious vassal. As eager as Mehemet himself to reconstruct his form of
government upon the models of the West, though far less capable of
impressing upon his work the stamp of a single guiding will, thwarted
moreover by the jealous interference of Russia whenever his reforms seemed
likely to produce any important result, he nevertheless succeeded in
introducing something of European system and discipline into his army under
the guidance of foreign soldiers, among whom was a man then little known,
but destined long afterwards to fill Europe with his fame, the Prussian
staff-officer Moltke. On the other side Mehemet and Ibrahim knew well that
the peace was no more than an armed truce, and that what had been won by
arms could only be maintained by constant readiness to meet attack. Under
pressure of this military necessity, Ibrahim sacrificed whatever sources of
strength were open to him in the hatred borne by his new subjects to the
Turkish yoke, and in their hopes of relief from oppression under his own
rule. Welcomed at first as a deliverer, he soon proved a heavier
task-master than any who had gone before him. The conscription was
rigorously enforced; taxation became more burdensome; the tribes who had
enjoyed a wild independence in the mountains were disarmed and reduced to
the level of their fellow-subjects. Thus the discontent which had so
greatly facilitated the conquest of the border-provinces soon turned
against the conqueror himself, and one uprising after another shook
Ibrahim's hold upon Mount Lebanon and the Syrian desert. The Sultan watched
each outbreak against his adversary with grim joy, impatient for the moment
when the re-organisation of his own forces should enable him to re-enter
the field and to strike an overwhelming blow.

[The commerce of the Levant.]

With all its characteristics of superior intelligence in the choice of
means, the system of Mehemet All was in its end that of the genuine
Oriental despot. His final object was to convert as many as possible of his
subjects into soldiers, and to draw into his treasury the profits of the
labour of all the rest. With this aim he gradually ousted from their rights
of proprietorship the greater part of the land-owners of Egypt, and finally
proclaimed the entire soil to be State-domain, appropriating at prices
fixed by himself the whole of its produce. The natural commercial
intercourse of his dominions gave place to a system of monopolies carried
on by the Government itself. Rapidly as this system, which was introduced
into the newly-conquered provinces, filled the coffers of Mehemet Ali, it
offered to the Sultan, whose paramount authority was still acknowledged,
the means of inflicting a deadly injury upon him by a series of commercial
treaties with the European Powers, granting to western traders a free
market throughout the Ottoman Empire. Resistance to such a measure would
expose Mehemet to the hostility of the whole mercantile interest of Europe;
submission to it would involve the loss of a great part of that revenue on
which his military power depended. It was probably with this result in
view, rather than from any more obvious motive, that in the year 1838 the
Sultan concluded a new commercial Treaty with England, which was soon
followed by similar agreements with other States.

[Campaign of Nissib, June, 1839.]

The import of the Sultan's commercial policy was not lost upon Mehemet, who
had already determined to declare himself independent. He saw that war was
inevitable, and bade Ibrahim collect his forces in the neighbourhood of
Aleppo, while the generals of the Sultan massed on the upper Euphrates the
troops that had been successfully employed in subduing the wild tribes of
Kurdistan. The storm was seen to be gathering, and the representatives of
foreign Powers urged the Sultan, but in vain, to refrain from an enterprise
which might shatter his empire. Mahmud was now a dying man. Exhausted by
physical excess and by the stress and passion of his long reign, he bore in
his heart the same unquenchable hatreds as of old; and while assuring the
ambassadors of his intention to maintain the peace, he despatched a letter
to his commander-in-chief, without the knowledge of any single person,
ordering him to commence hostilities. The Turkish army crossed the frontier
on the 23rd of May, 1839. In the operations which followed, the advice and
protests of Moltke and the other European officers at head-quarters were
persistently disregarded. The Turks were outmanoeuvred and cut off from
their communications, and on the 24th of June the onslaught of Ibrahim
swept them from their position at Nissib in utter rout. The whole of their
artillery and stores fell into the hands of the enemy: the army dispersed.
Mahmud did not live to hear of the catastrophe. Six days after the battle
of Nissib was fought, and while the messenger who bore the news was still
in Anatolia, he expired, leaving the throne to his son, Abdul Medjid, a
youth of sixteen. Scarcely had the new Sultan been proclaimed when it
became known that the Admiral, Achmet Fewzi, who had been instructed to
attack the Syrian coast, had sailed into the port of Alexandria, and handed
over the Turkish fleet to Mehemet Ali himself.

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