Book: History of Modern Europe 1792 1878

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[Louis Philippe and Guizot, 1847.]

Few intrigues have been more disgraceful than that of the Spanish
Marriages; none more futile. The course of history mocked its ulterior
purposes; its immediate results were wholly to the injury of the House of
Orleans. The cordial understanding between France and Great Britain, which
had been revived after the differences of 1840, was now finally shattered,
Louis Philippe stood convicted before his people of sacrificing a valuable
alliance to purely dynastic ends; his Minister, the austere and
sanctimonious Guizot, had to defend himself against charges which would
have covered with shame the most hardened man of the world. Thus stripped
of its garb of moral superiority, condemned as at once unscrupulous and
unpatriotic, the Orleanist Monarchy had to meet the storm of popular
discontent which was gathering over France as well as over neighbouring
lands. For the lost friendship of England it was necessary to seek a
substitute in the support of some Continental Power. Throwing himself into
the reactionary policy of the Court of Vienna, Guizot endeavoured to
establish a diplomatic concert from which England should be excluded, as
France had been in 1840. There were circumstances which gave some
countenance to the design. The uncompromising vigour with which Lord
Palmerston supported the Liberal movement now becoming so formidable in
Italy made every absolute Government in Europe his enemy; and had time been
granted, the despotic Courts would possibly have united with France in some
more or less open combination against the English Minister. But the moments
were now numbered; and ere the projected league could take substance, the
whirlwind descended before which Louis Philippe and his Minister were the
first to fall.

[Demand for Parliamentary Reform.]

A demand for the reform of the French Parliamentary system had been made
when Guizot was entering upon office in the midst of the Oriental crisis of
1840. It had then been silenced and repressed by all the means at the
disposal of the Executive; King Louis Philippe being convinced that with a
more democratic Chamber the maintenance of his own policy of peace would be
impossible. The demand was now raised again with far greater energy.
Although the franchise had been lowered after the Revolution of July, it
was still so high that not one person in a hundred and fifty possessed a
vote, while the property-qualification which was imposed upon the Deputies
themselves excluded from the Chamber all but men of substantial wealth.
Moreover, there existed no law prohibiting the holders of administrative
posts under the Government from sitting in the Assembly. The consequence
was that more than one-third of the Deputies were either officials who had
secured election, or representatives who since their election had accepted
from Government appointments of greater or less value. Though Parliamentary
talent abounded, it was impossible that a Chamber so composed could be the
representative of the nation at large. The narrowness of the franchise, the
wealth of the Deputies themselves, made them, in all questions affecting
the social condition of the people, a mere club of capitalists; the
influence which the Crown exercised through the bestowal of offices
converted those who ought to have been its controllers into its dependents,
the more so as its patronage was lavished on nominal opponents even more
freely than on avowed friends. Against King Louis Philippe the majority in
the Chamber had in fact ceased to possess a will of its own. It represented
wealth; it represented to some extent the common-sense of France; but on
all current matters of dispute it only represented the executive government
in another form. So thoroughly had the nation lost all hope in the Assembly
during the last years of Louis Philippe, that even the elections had ceased
to excite interest. On the other hand, the belief in the general prevalence
of corruption was every day receiving new warrant. A series of State-trials
disclosed the grossest frauds in every branch of the administration, and
proved that political influence was habitually used for purposes of
pecuniary gain. Taxed with his tolerance of a system scarcely
distinguishable from its abuses, the Minister could only turn to his own
nominees in the Chamber and ask them whether they felt themselves
corrupted; invited to consider some measure of Parliamentary reform, he
scornfully asserted his policy of resistance. Thus, hopeless of obtaining
satisfaction either from the Government or from the Chamber itself, the
leaders of the Opposition resolved in 1847 to appeal to the country at
large; and an agitation for Parliamentary reform, based on the methods
employed by O'Connell in Ireland, soon spread through the principal towns
of France.

[Socialism.]

But there were other ideas and other forces active among the labouring
population of Paris than those familiar to the politicians of the Assembly.
Theories of Socialism, the property of a few thinkers and readers during
the earlier years of Louis Philippe's reign, had now sunk deep among the
masses, and become, in a rough and easily apprehended form, the creed of
the poor. From the time when Napoleon's fall had restored to France its
faculty of thought, and, as it were, turned the soldier's eyes again upon
his home, those questionings as to the basis of the social union which had
occupied men's minds at an earlier epoch were once more felt and uttered.
The problem was still what it had been in the eighteenth century; the
answer was that of a later age. Kings, priests, and nobles had been
overthrown, but misery still covered the world. In the teaching of
Saint-Simon, under the Restoration, religious conceptions blended with a
great industrial scheme; in the Utopia of Fourier, produced at the same
fruitful period, whatever was valuable belonged to its suggestions in
co-operative production. But whether the doctrine propounded was that of
philosopher, or sage, or charlatan, in every case the same leading ideas
were visible;--the insufficiency of the individual in isolation, the
industrial basis of all social life, the concern of the community, or of
its supreme authority, in the organisation of labour. It was naturally in
no remote or complex form that the idea of a new social order took
possession of the mind of the workman in the faubourgs of Paris. He read in
Louis Blanc, the latest and most intelligible of his teachers of the right
to labour, of the duty of the State to provide work for its citizens. This
was something actual and tangible. For this he was ready upon occasion to
take up arms; not for the purpose of extending the franchise to another
handful of the Bourgeoisie, or of shifting the profits of government from
one set of place-hunters to another. In antagonism to the ruling Minister
the Reformers in the Chamber and the Socialists in the streets might for a
moment unite their forces: but their ends were irreconcilable, and the
allies of to-day were necessarily the foes of to-morrow.

[The February Revolution, 1848.]

[Feb. 22nd.]

At the close of the year 1847 the last Parliament of the Orleanist Monarchy
assembled. The speech from the Throne, delivered by Louis Philippe himself,
denounced in strong terms the agitation for Reform which had been carried
on during the preceding months, though this agitation had, on the whole,
been the work of the so-called Dynastic Opposition, which, while demanding
electoral reform, was sincerely loyal to the Monarchy. The King's words
were a challenge; and in the debate on the Address, the challenge was taken
up by all ranks of Monarchical Liberals as well as by the small Republican
section in the Assembly. The Government, however, was still secure of its
majority. Defeated in the votes on the Address, the Opposition determined,
by way of protest, to attend a banquet to be held in the Champs Elysees on
the 22nd of February by the Reform-party in Western Paris. It was at first
desired that by some friendly arrangement with the Government, which had
declared the banquet illegal, the possibility of recourse to violence
should be avoided. Misunderstandings, however, arose, and the Government
finally prohibited the banquet, and made preparations for meeting any
disturbance with force of arms. The Deputies, anxious to employ none but
legal means of resistance, now resolved not to attend the banquet; on the
other hand, the Democratic and Socialist leaders welcomed a possible
opportunity for revolt. On the morning of the 22nd masses of men poured
westwards from the workmen's quarter. The city was in confusion all day,
and the erection of barricades began. Troops were posted in the streets; no
serious attack, however, was made by either side, and at nightfall quiet
returned.

[Feb. 23rd.]

On the next morning the National Guard of Paris was called to arms.
Throughout the struggle between Louis Philippe and the populace of Paris in
the earlier years of his reign, the National Guard, which was drawn
principally from the trading classes, had fought steadily for the King.
Now, however, it was at one with the Liberal Opposition in the Assembly,
and loudly demanded the dismissal of the Ministers. While some of the
battalions interposed between the regular troops and the populace and
averted a conflict, others proceeded to the Chamber with petitions for
Reform. Obstinately as Louis Philippe had hitherto refused all concession,
the announcement of the threatened defection of the National Guard at
length convinced him that resistance was impossible. He accepted Guizot's
resignation, and the Chamber heard from the fallen Minister himself that he
had ceased to hold office. Although the King declined for awhile to commit
the formation of a Ministry to Thiers, the recognised chief of the
Opposition, and endeavoured to place a politician more acceptable to
himself in office, it was felt that with the fall of Guizot all real
resistance to Reform was broken. Nothing more was asked by the
Parliamentary Opposition or by the middle-class of Paris. The victory
seemed to be won, the crisis at an end. In the western part of the capital
congratulation and good-humour succeeded to the fear of conflict. The
troops fraternised with the citizens and the National Guard; and when
darkness came on, the boulevards were illuminated as if for a national
festival.

[Feb. 24th.]

In the midst, however, of this rejoicing, and while the chiefs of the
revolutionary societies, fearing that the opportunity had been lost for
striking a blow at the Monarchy, exhorted the defenders of the barricades
to maintain their positions, a band of workmen came into conflict,
accidentally or of set purpose, with the troops in front of the Foreign
Office. A volley was fired, which killed or wounded eighty persons. Placing
the dead bodies on a waggon, and carrying them by torchlight through the
streets in the workmen's quarter, the insurrectionary leaders called the
people to arms. The tocsin sounded throughout the night; on the next
morning the populace marched against the Tuileries. In consequence of the
fall of the Ministry and the supposed reconciliation of the King with the
People, whatever military dispositions had been begun had since been
abandoned. At isolated points the troops fought bravely; but there was no
systematic defence. Shattered by the strain of the previous days, and
dismayed by the indifference of the National Guard when he rode out among
them, the King, who at every epoch of his long life had shown such
conspicuous courage in the presence of danger, now lost all nerve and all
faculty of action. He signed an act of abdication in favour of his
grandson, the Count of Paris, and fled. Behind him the victorious mob burst
into the Tuileries and devastated it from cellar to roof. The Legislative
Chamber, where an attempt was made to proclaim the Count of Paris King, was
in its turn invaded. In uproar and tumult a Provisional Government was
installed at the Hotel de Ville; and ere the day closed the news went out
to Europe that the House of Orleans had ceased to reign, and that the
Republic had been proclaimed. It was not over France alone, it was over the
Continent at large, that the tide of revolution was breaking.


END OF VOL. II.






VOLUME III.



CHAPTER XIX.


Europe in 1789 and in 1848--Agitation in Western Germany before and
after the Revolution at Paris--Austria and Hungary--The March
Revolution at Vienna--Flight of Metternich--The Hungarian Diet--Hungary
wins its independence--Bohemian movement--Autonomy promised to Bohemia--
Insurrection of Lombardy--Of Venice--Piedmont makes war on Austria--A
general Italian war against Austria imminent--The March Days at
Berlin--Frederick William IV.--A National Assembly promised--
Schleswig-Holstein--Insurrection in Holstein--War between Germany and
Denmark--The German Ante-Parliament--Republican rising in Baden--Meeting
of the German National Assembly at Frankfort--Europe generally in March,
1848--The French Provisional Government--The National Workshops--The
Government and the Red Republicans--French National Assembly--Riot of May
15--Measures against the National Workshops--The Four Days of June--
Cavaignac--Louis Napoleon--He is elected to the Assembly--Elected
President.


[Europe in 1789 and 1848.]

There were few statesmen living in 1848 who, like Metternich and like Louis
Philippe, could remember the outbreak of the French Revolution. To those
who could so look back across the space of sixty years, a comparison of the
European movements that followed the successive onslaughts upon authority
in France afforded some measure of the change that had passed over the
political atmosphere of the Continent within a single lifetime. The
Revolution of 1789, deeply as it stirred men's minds in neighbouring
countries, had occasioned no popular outbreak on a large scale outside
France. The expulsion of Charles X. in 1830 had been followed by national
uprisings in Italy, Poland, and Belgium, and by a struggle for
constitutional government in the smaller States of Northern Germany. The
downfall of Louis Philippe in 1848 at once convulsed the whole of central
Europe. From the Rhenish Provinces to the Ottoman frontier there was no
government but the Swiss Republic that was not menaced; there was no race
which did not assert its claim to a more or less complete independence.
Communities whose long slumber had been undisturbed by the shocks of the
Napoleonic period now vibrated with those same impulses which, since 1815,
no pressure of absolute power had been able wholly to extinguish in Italy
and Germany. The borders of the region of political discontent had been
enlarged; where apathy, or immemorial loyalty to some distant crown, had
long closed the ear to the voices of the new age, now all was restlessness,
all eager expectation of the dawning epoch of national life. This was
especially the case with the Slavic races included in the Austrian Empire,
races which during the earlier years of this century had been wholly mute.
These in their turn now felt the breath of patriotism, and claimed the
right of self-government. Distinct as the ideas of national independence
and of constitutional liberty are in themselves, they were not distinct in
their operation over a great part of Europe in 1848; and this epoch will be
wrongly conceived if it is viewed as no more than a repetition on a large
scale of the democratic outbreak of Paris with which it opened. More was
sought in Europe in 1848 than the substitution of popular for monarchical
or aristocratic rule. The effort to make the State one with the nation
excited wider interests than the effort to enlarge and equalise citizen
rights; and it is in the action of this principle of nationality that we
find the explanation of tendencies of the epoch which appear at first view
to be in direct conflict with one another. In Germany a single race was
divided under many Governments: here the national instinct impelled to
unity. In Austria a variety of races was held together by one crown: here
the national instinct impelled to separation. In both these States, as in
Italy, where the predominance of the foreigner and the continuance of
despotic government were in a peculiar manner connected with one another,
the efforts of 1848 failed; but the problems which then agitated Europe
could not long be set aside, and the solution of them complete, in the case
of Germany and Italy, partial and tentative in the case of Austria, renders
the succeeding twenty-five years a memorable period in European history.

[Agitation in Western Germany.]

The sudden disappearance of the Orleanist monarchy and the proclamation of
the Republic at Paris struck with dismay the Governments beyond the Rhine.
Difficulties were already gathering round them, opposition among their own
subjects was daily becoming more formidable and more outspoken. In Western
Germany a meeting of Liberal deputies had been held in the autumn of 1847,
in which the reform of the Federal Constitution and the establishment of a
German Parliament had been demanded: a Republican or revolutionary party,
small but virulent, had also its own avowed policy and its recognised
organs in the press. No sooner had the news of the Revolution at Paris
passed the frontier than in all the minor German States the cry for reform
became irresistible. Ministers everywhere resigned; the popular demands
were granted; and men were called to office whose names were identified
with the struggle for the freedom of the Press, for trial by jury, and for
the reform of the Federal Constitution. The Federal Diet itself, so long
the instrument of absolutism, bowed beneath the stress of the time,
abolished the laws of censorship, and invited the Governments to send
Commissioners to Frankfort to discuss the reorganisation of Germany. It was
not, however, at Frankfort or at the minor capitals that the conflict
between authority and its antagonists was to be decided. Vienna, the
stronghold of absolutism, the sanctuary from which so many interdicts had
gone forth against freedom in every part of Europe, was itself invaded by
the revolutionary spirit. The clear sky darkened, and Metternich found
himself powerless before the storm.

[Austria.]

There had been until 1848 so complete an absence of political life in the
Austrian capital, that, when the conviction suddenly burst upon all minds
that the ancient order was doomed, there were neither party-leaders to
confront the Government, nor plans of reform upon which any considerable
body of men were agreed. The first utterances of public discontent were
petitions drawn up by the Chamber of Commerce and by literary associations.
These were vague in purport and far from aggressive in their tone. A
sterner note sounded when intelligence reached the capital of the
resolutions that had been passed by the Hungarian Lower House on the 3rd of
March, and of the language in which these had been enforced by Kossuth.
Casting aside all reserve, the Magyar leader had declared that the reigning
dynasty could only be saved by granting to Hungary a responsible Ministry
drawn from the Diet itself, and by establishing constitutional government
throughout the Austrian dominions. "From the charnel-house of the Viennese
system," he cried, "a poison-laden atmosphere steals over us, which
paralyses our nerves and bows us when we would soar. The future of Hungary
can never be secure while in the other provinces there exists a system of
government in direct antagonism to every constitutional principle. Our task
it is to found a happier future on the brotherhood of all the Austrian
races, and to substitute for the union enforced by bayonets and police the
enduring bond of a free constitution." When the Hungaran Assembly had thus
taken into its own hands the cause of the rest of the monarchy, it was not
for the citizens of Vienna to fall short in the extent of their demands.
The idea of a Constitution for the Empire at large was generally accepted
and it was proposed that an address embodying this demand should be sent in
to the Emperor by the Provincial Estates of Lower Austria, whose meeting
happened to be fixed for the 13th of March. In the meantime the students
made themselves the heroes of the hour. The agitation of the city
increased; rumours of State bankruptcy and of the impending repudiation of
the paper currency filled all classes with the belief that some catastrophe
was near at hand. [411]

[The March Revolution at Vienna.]

The Provincial Estates of Lower Austria had long fallen into such
insignificance that in ordinary times their proceedings were hardly noticed
by the capital. The accident that they were now to assemble in the midst of
a great crisis elevated them to a sudden importance. It was believed that
the decisive word would be spoken in the course of their debates; and on
the morning of the 13th of March masses of the populace, led by a
procession of students, assembled round the Hall of the Diet. While the
debate proceeded within, street-orators inflamed the passions of the crowd
outside. The tumult deepened; and when at length a note was let down from
one of the windows of the Hall stating that the Diet were inclining to
half-measures, the mob broke into uproar, and an attack was made upon the
Diet Hall itself. The leading members of the Estates were compelled to
place themselves at the head of a deputation, which proceeded to the
Emperor's palace in order to enforce the demands of the people. The Emperor
himself, who at no time was capable of paying serious attention to
business, remained invisible during this and the two following days; the
deputation was received by Metternich and the principal officers of State,
who were assembled in council. Meanwhile the crowds in the streets became
denser and more excited; soldiers approached, to protect the Diet Hall and
to guard the environs of the palace; there was an interval of confusion;
and on the advance of a new regiment, which was mistaken for an attack, the
mob who had stormed the Diet Hall hurled the shattered furniture from the
windows upon the soldiers' heads. A volley was now fired, which cost
several lives. At the sound of the firing still deeper agitation seized the
city. Barricades were erected, and the people and soldiers fought hand to
hand. As evening came on, deputation after deputation pressed into the
palace to urge concession upon the Government. Metternich, who, almost
alone in the Council, had made light of the popular uprising, now at length
consented to certain definite measures of reform. He retired into an
adjoining room to draft an order abolishing the censorship of the Press.
During his absence the cry was raised among the deputations that thronged
the Council-chamber, "Down with Metternich!" The old man returned, and
found himself abandoned by his colleagues. There were some among them,
members of the Imperial family, who had long been his opponents; others who
had in vain urged him to make concessions before it was too late.
Metternich saw that the end of his career was come; he spoke a few words,
marked by all the dignity and self-possession of his greatest days, and
withdrew, to place his resignation in the Emperor's hands.

[Flight of Metternich.]

For thirty-nine years Metternich had been so completely identified with the
Austrian system of government that in his fall that entire system seemed to
have vanished away. The tumult of the capital subsided on the mere
announcement of his resignation, though the hatred which he had excited
rendered it unsafe for him to remain within reach of hostile hands. He was
conveyed from Vienna by a faithful secretary on the night of the 14th of
March, and, after remaining for a few days in concealment, crossed the
Saxon frontier. His exile was destined to be of some duration, but no exile
was ever more cheerfully borne, or sweetened by a profounder satisfaction
at the evils which a mad world had brought upon itself by driving from it
its one thoroughly wise and just statesman. Betaking himself in the general
crash of the Continental Courts to Great Britain, which was still as safe
as when he had visited it fifty-five years before, Metternich received a
kindly welcome from the Duke of Wellington and the leaders of English
society; and when the London season was over he sought and found at
Brighton something of the liveliness and the sunshine of his own southern
home. [412]

[The Hungarian Diet.]

The action of the Hungarian Diet under Kossuth's leadership had powerfully
influenced the course of events at Vienna. The Viennese outbreak in its
turn gave irresistible force to the Hungarian national movement. Up to the
13th of March the Chamber of Magnates had withheld their assent from the
resolution passed by the Lower House in favour of a national executive;
they now accepted it without a single hostile vote; and on the 15th a
deputation was sent to Vienna to lay before the Emperor an address
demanding not only the establishment of a responsible Ministry but the
freedom of the Press, trial by jury, equality of religion, and a system of
national education. At the moment when this deputation reached Vienna the
Government was formally announcing its compliance with the popular demand
for a Constitution for the whole of the Empire. The Hungarians were
escorted in triumph through the streets, and were received on the following
day by the Emperor himself, who expressed a general concurrence with the
terms of the address. The deputation returned to Presburg, and the
Palatine, or representative of the sovereign in Hungary, the Archduke
Stephen, forthwith charged Count Batthyany, one of the most popular of the
Magyar nobles, with the formation of a national Ministry. Thus far the Diet
had been in the van of the Hungarian movement; it now sank almost into
insignificance by the side of the revolutionary organisation at Pesth,
where all the ardour and all the patriotism of the Magyar race glowed in
their native force untempered by the political experience of the statesmen
who were collected at Presburg, and unchecked by any of those influences
which belong to the neighbourhood of an Imperial Court. At Pesth there
broke out an agitation at once so democratic and so intensely national that
all considerations of policy and of regard for the Austrian Government
which might have affected the action of the Diet were swept away before it.
Kossuth, himself the genuine representative of the capital, became supreme.
At his bidding the Diet passed a law abolishing the departments of the
Central Government by which the control of the Court over the Hungarian
body politic had been exercised. A list of Ministers was submitted and
approved, including not only those who were needed for the transaction of
domestic business, but Ministers of War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs; and
in order that the entire nation might rally round its Government, the
peasantry were at one stroke emancipated from all services attaching to the
land, and converted into free proprietors. Of the compensation to be paid
to the lords for the loss of these services, no more was said than that it
was a debt of honour to be discharged by the nation.

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