THE HOLY ALLIANCE
Map-making was not the whole work of the Congress of Vienna. An association was made of the rulers of Russia, Austria and Prussia, under the promising title of the “Holy Alliance.” These devout autocrats proposed to rule in accordance with the precepts of the Bible, to govern their subjects like loving parents, and to see that peace, justice and religion should flourish in their dominions.
Such was the theory, the real purpose was one of absolute dominion, that of uniting their forces against democracy and revolution wherever these should show themselves. It was not long before there was work for them to do. The people began to move. The attempt to re-establish absolute governments shook them out of sluggish acceptance. Revolution lifted its head in spite of the Holy Alliance, its first field being Spain. Revolt broke out there in 1820 and was quickly followed by a similar revolt in Naples.
These revolutionary movements roused the members of the Alliance. An Austrian army invaded Italy, a French one, under the influence of the Alliance, was sent to Spain, and both the revolutions were vigorously quelled. The only revolt that succeeded was one in Greece against the Turkish power. There was no desire to sustain the Turks, and a Russian army was finally sent to aid the Greeks, whose freedom was attained in April, 1830.
Such were the chief events that followed the fall of Napoleon. Reaction was the order of the day. But it was a reaction that was to be violently shaken in the period now reached, the revolutionary year of 1830.
Chapter VII.
PAN-SLAVISM VERSUS PAN-GERMANISM
Russia’s Part in the Servian Issue—Strength of the Russian Army—The Distribution of the Slavs—Origin of Pan-Slavism—The Czar’s Proclamation—The Teutons of Europe—Intermingling of Races—The Nations at War
Pan-Slavism against Pan-Germanism was the issue which was launched when the Emperor of all the Russias took up Servia’s quarrel with Austria-Hungary. Russia, if she wanted a ground for war, could have found no better one. The popularity of her aggressive big-brother attitude to all the Slavs was quickly attested in St. Petersburg. It had been a long time since war had appealed with the same favor to so large a part of the Czar’s people. Slavs there were in plenty to menace the allied German Powers, even if there were not allied French arms, on Germany’s other flank, and Britain’s naval supremacy to cope with. Slavs in past times had spread over all of eastern Europe, from the Arctic to the Adriatic and the Aegean Seas. Their continuity was long ago broken into by an intrusion of Magyars. Finns, and Roumanians, leaving a northern Slavic section composed of North Russians, Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks, and a southern section comprising the main body of the Balkan people. For over a thousand years these Slavs have peopled Europe east of the Elbe River. And for centuries they kept the hordes of Cossacks, Turks and barbarians off Europe. Russia in those days was called “the nation of the sword.” And over a hundred years ago that sword was drawn for Servia. After 400 years of vassalage to Turkey, the Serbs rebelled in 1804, and then only Russian intervention saved them from defeat. In later wars oppression of the Slavs was a prominent issue.