The geographical results of the rule of the second Buonaparte consist of the completion of the work which began under Philip the Fair, balanced by the utter undoing of the work of Richelieu, the partial undoing of the work of Henry the Second and Lewis the Fourteenth. ♦Annexation of Savoy and Nizza. 1860.
Loss of Elsass and Lorraine. 1871.♦ Savoy, Nizza, and Mentone were added; but Germany recovered nearly all Elsass and a part of Lorraine. The Rhine now neither crosses nor waters a single rood of French ground. As it was in the first beginnings of Northern European history, so it is now; Germany lies on both sides of the German river.
The time of the greatest power of France in Europe was by no means equally favourable to her advance in other parts of the world. ♦Independence of Hayti, 1801.♦ The greatest West India colony of France, Saint Domingo, now known as Hayti, became an independent negro state whose chiefs imitated home example by taking the title of Emperor. About the same time the last remnant of French dominion on the North American continent was voluntarily given up. ♦Louisiana ceded to Spain, 1763; recovered, 1800; sold to United States, 1803.♦ Louisiana, ceded to Spain by the Peace of Paris and recovered under the Consulate, was sold to the United States. All the smaller French West India islands were conquered by England; but all were restored at the peace, except Tobago and Saint Lucia. ♦Mauritius kept by England.♦ The isles of Bourbon and Mauritius were also taken by England, and Bourbon alone was restored at the Peace. ♦Pondicherry lost and restored.♦ In India Pondicherry was twice taken and twice restored.
But since France was thus wholly beaten back from her great schemes of dominion in distant parts of the world, she has led the way in a kind of conquest and colonization which has no exact parallel in modern times. ♦French conquest of Algeria, 1830;♦ In the French occupation of Algeria we see something different alike from political conquests in Europe and from isolated conquests in distant parts of the world. ♦of Constantine, 1837.♦ It is conquest, not actually in Europe, but in a land on the shores of the great European sea, in a land which formed part of the Empire of Constantine, Justinian, and Heraclius. ♦Character of African conquests.♦ It is the winning back from Islam of a land which once was part of Latin-speaking Christendom, a conquest which, except in the necessary points of difference between continental and insular conquests, may be best paralleled with the Norman Conquest of Sicily. Sicily could be wholly recovered for Europe and Christendom; but the French settlement in Algeria can never be more than a mere fringe of Europe and its civilization on the edge of barbaric Africa. It is strictly the first colony of the kind. Portugal, Spain, England, had occupied this or that point on the northern coast of Africa; France was the first European power to spread her dominion over a long range of the southern Mediterranean shore, a land which in some sort answers alike to India and to Australia, but lying within two days’ sail of her own coast.
We have thus finished our survey of the states which were formed out of the break-up of the later Western Empire. The rest of Western Europe must be postponed, as neither the Spanish, the British, nor the Scandinavian kingdoms rose out of the break-up of the Empire of Charles the Great. In our next Chapter we must trace the historical geography of the states which arose out of the gradual dismemberment of the dominion of the Eastern Rome, a survey which will lead us to the most stirring events and to the latest geographical changes of our own day.
[CHAPTER X.]
THE EASTERN EMPIRE.
♦Contrast between the Eastern and Western Empires.♦
The geographical, like the political, history of the Eastern Empire is wholly unlike that of the Western. ♦The Western Empire fell to pieces.♦ The Western Empire, in the strictest sense, fell asunder. Some of its parts fell away formally, others practically. The tie that held the rest snapped at the first touch of a vigorous invader. But that invader was an European power whose territories had once formed part of the Empire itself. From the invasions of nations beyond the European pale the Western Empire, as such, suffered but little. The Western Empire again, long before its fall, had become, so far as it was a power at all, a national power, the Roman Empire of the German nation. Its fall was the half voluntary parting asunder of a nation as well as of an Empire. ♦Position of the Western Emperors;♦ The Western Emperors again had, as Emperors, practically ceased to be territorial princes. No lands of any account directly obeyed the Emperor, as such, as their immediate sovereign. When the Empire fell, the Emperor withdrew to his hereditary states, taking the Imperial title with him. In the Eastern Empire all is different. It did to some extent fall asunder from within, but its overthrow was mainly owing to its being broken in pieces from without. ♦of the Eastern.♦ But, throughout its history, the Emperor remained the immediate sovereign of all that still clave to the Empire, and, when the Empire fell, the Emperor fell with it. ♦The Eastern Empire fell mainly through foreign invasion.♦ The overthrow of the Empire was mainly owing to foreign invasion in the strictest sense. It was weakened and dismembered by the Christian powers of Europe, and at last swallowed up by the barbarians of Asia. ♦Tendencies to separation.♦ At the same time the tendency to break in pieces after the Western fashion did exist and must always be borne in mind. But it existed only in particular parts and under special conditions. It is found mainly in possessions of the Empire which had become isolated, in lands which had been lost and won again, and in lands which came under the influence of Western ideas. The importance of these tendencies is shown by the fact that three powers which had been cut off in various ways from the body of the Empire, Bulgaria, Venice, and Sicily, became three of its most dangerous enemies. But the actual destruction of the Empire came from those barbarian attacks from which the West suffered but little.