On the 22nd they signed a convention providing for the coercion of Holland by an embargo and by the despatch of a squadron to the Dutch coast. If any Dutch troops should be still in Belgium on November 15, a French force was empowered, subject to the consent of the Belgian government, to advance into Belgium and expel the Dutch troops from the country. The French were, however, to retire as soon as the Dutch evacuation was complete. The first result of this convention was the suspension of the conference. On the 29th the two powers made their demand. As the Dutch refused compliance, a joint French and British fleet sailed on November 4 to blockade the Scheldt, and the embargo was proclaimed on the 6th. On the 15th a French army of 56,000 men, commanded by Gérard, entered Belgium. On December 4 it opened fire on the citadel of Antwerp, which surrendered after a nineteen days' bombardment on the 23rd. The French army returned to its own country before the end of the year, leaving the Dutch in possession of two small forts on the Belgian side of the frontier, which were more than compensated by the positions held by the Belgians in Dutch Limburg. Even the fall of the citadel of Antwerp did not induce Holland to accept the settlement proposed by the powers, and Great Britain and France now attempted to effect a working agreement pending negotiations on the details of the treaty. It was in vain that Holland asked that Belgium should evacuate the Dutch provinces of Limburg and Luxemburg and pay her share of the interest on the Dutch debt. Palmerston and Talleyrand refused to include these provisions in a preliminary convention. Finally on March 21, 1833, a convention was signed between Great Britain, France, and Holland, which terminated the embargo and provided for the free navigation of the Scheldt and Maas. A similar convention was signed between Holland and Belgium on November 18. Six years, however, were to elapse before the Dutch government would consent to the conditions drawn up by the powers in 1831. Meanwhile the Belgians were free from their share of debt, held the greater part of Limburg and Luxemburg, and enjoyed the free navigation of the Maas and the Scheldt, over and above the terms granted them in 1831.
POLISH REBELLION.
It is inconceivable that the Belgian question should have been left so entirely in the hands of the two western powers, and that the settlement should have taken the form of a foreign coercion of a legitimate king for his unreadiness to make concessions to his revolted subjects, had not the attention of the three absolutist powers of eastern and central Europe been directed to another quarter. Just as the revolution of 1820 had spread through southern Europe in spite of Castlereagh's attempt to maintain that it was not of a contagious order, so that of 1830 awakened similar outbursts not only at Brussels but in various German states, in Switzerland, in Poland, and in Italy. The Polish insurrection was, like the Belgian, a national revolt, and the consequent military operations were of the nature of a war between Poland and Russia. The revolt broke out at Warsaw on November 29, 1830, and on January 25, 1831, the Polish diet proclaimed the independence of Poland. On February 5 a Russian army crossed the Polish frontier. In France there was a loud popular demand for intervention. But even the Laffitte ministry would not move without the co-operation of Great Britain, though the French ambassador at Constantinople tried to stir up the Porte to hostilities. The ministry of Casimir-Perier, which came into office in March, proposed a joint mediation of France and Great Britain, but to this Palmerston would not assent. He remonstrated with Russia on her violations of the Polish constitution, which Great Britain, along with the other powers, had guaranteed at the congress of Vienna, but he could not support the Polish claim to independence, since Great Britain had made herself a party to the union of the two countries. As it happened, the remonstrance was simply a cause of annoyance, which subsequent events were destined to intensify. It was only on September 8, 1831, that the Russians under Paskievitch captured Warsaw, an event which was followed on February 26, 1832, by the abolition of the Polish constitution. Palmerston protested again but with no more success than in the previous year.
DOM MIGUEL AND DON CARLOS.
In the Portuguese, as in the Belgian question, Palmerston drifted from the position of a neutral into that of a partisan. Ever since the year 1828, British subjects accused of political offences had been brutally ill-treated in Portugal, and as time went on the excesses increased. By despatching six British warships to the Tagus Palmerston succeeded in obtaining a pecuniary indemnity and a public apology on May 2, 1831. Similar insults to France were not so readily redressed. A threat of force on the part of the French government was followed by an appeal from Dom Miguel for British assistance. This Palmerston refused to grant, and in July a French squadron under Admiral Roussin forced the passage of the Tagus, and carried off the best ships of the Portuguese navy. Meanwhile much irritation had been caused in Brazil by Peter's advocacy of his daughter's claim to Portugal, which was considered inconsistent with his professed adherence to the separation of the two countries. On April 6, Peter abdicated the crown of Brazil in favour of his infant son, Peter II., and on the following day sailed for Europe in order to assert his daughter's right to the Portuguese throne. He arrived in Europe towards the end of May, and visited both England and France.
Though neither government assisted him directly, he was permitted to raise troops and even to secure the services of naval officers, and in December a force of 300 men sailed from Liverpool to Belleisle, which he had appointed as the rendezvous. Palmerston had thus, unlike Wellington, adopted the same attitude towards the Portuguese liberals that Ferdinand VII. had adopted towards the absolutists. Peter's expedition gathered further strength at the Azores and sailed for Portugal on June 27, 1832. On July 8, the fleet, commanded by Admiral Sartorius, a British officer, appeared off Oporto, which submitted on the following day. The town was, however, blockaded by Miguel's forces and Peter's cause made no headway until in June, 1833, the command of the fleet was transferred to Captain (afterwards Admiral Sir Charles) Napier. On the night of June 24, he landed at Villa Real a force of 2,500 men who conquered the province of Algarve in a week, and on July 5 he annihilated Miguel's navy in an engagement off Cape St. Vincent. After a further battle near Lisbon, Peter's forces entered the capital on the 24th, and subsequently repulsed a Miguelite attack upon the city. Miguel still held out in northern Portugal, when another train of events caused the western powers to substitute direct for indirect interference.
Ferdinand VII. of Spain had fallen so entirely under the influence of his fourth and last queen, Maria Christina of Naples, as to repeal by a pragmatic sanction the Salic law which the treaty of Utrecht had established as the rule of succession in Spain. The result of this edict was to leave the succession to his infant daughter Isabella instead of his brother Don Carlos, the leader of the Spanish absolutists. When Ferdinand died on September 29, 1833, Don Carlos was absent from the kingdom, supporting the cause of his fellow-pretender Dom Miguel. Isabella received the hearty support of the constitutional party and was almost universally acknowledged as queen. It was only in Biscay, where the centralising tendency of the Spanish constitution, published on April 10, 1834, seemed to entrench upon local liberty, that Don Carlos met with much active support. His cause, like that of Miguel in Portugal, was the more popular, but his adherents were as yet almost entirely devoid of organisation. Peter's partisans had already made substantial progress towards a complete victory, and Santha Martha, the Miguelite commander-in-chief, had surrendered in the beginning of April, when on April 22 a triple alliance, already signed between Great Britain, Maria Christina, Queen-regent of Spain, and Peter, as regent of Portugal, was converted into a quadruple alliance by the adhesion of France. This treaty provided for the co-operation of Spain and Portugal to expel Dom Miguel and Don Carlos from the Portuguese dominions. Great Britain was to assist by the employment of a naval force, and France was to render assistance, if required, in such manner as should be settled afterwards by common consent of the four contracting powers. The Spanish general, Rodil, immediately crossed the frontier. He met with no resistance, and on May 26 Miguel signed a convention at Evora, by which he accepted a pension, renounced his rights to the Portuguese throne, and agreed to quit the country.
THE CARLIST WAR.
Don Carlos, however, refused to renounce his rights to the Spanish throne, and all that the British navy could do was to convey the two pretenders, Carlos to England and Miguel to Genoa. Although Miguel, on June 20, repudiated his abdication, the Portuguese question was really at an end. The Spanish question was, however, merely entering on its critical stage. Don Carlos secretly left London on July 1, and nine days later appeared at the Carlist headquarters in Spain. Here he had the assistance of the ablest general of this war, Zumalacarregui. Melbourne's succession to the premiership in July left Palmerston at the foreign office, and was followed by no change in foreign policy. On August 18 an additional article to the quadruple alliance provided that France was to prevent reinforcements or warlike stores from reaching Don Carlos from the French side of the frontier, while Great Britain was to supply arms and stores to the Spanish royalists and, if necessary, intervene with a naval force. The short interlude of conservative government, with Peel as premier and Wellington as foreign secretary, was not marked by any change of policy nor yet by any new aggressions. Wellington's only interference with the course of hostilities was the mission of Lord Eliot to Navarre, which induced the combatants to abandon for the time being those cruelties to prisoners which had been the disgrace of the Spanish civil wars.
Shortly after the return of Melbourne and Palmerston to power, Zumalacarregui won a victory in the valley of Amascoas on April 21 and 22, 1835, which opened to him the road to Madrid. The Madrid government now appealed to France to send 12,000 men to occupy the Basque provinces. By the terms of the quadruple alliance the assent of Great Britain and Portugal was necessary in order to determine the manner in which France was to render assistance. Thiers, on behalf of Louis Philippe, suggested a separate French expedition on the lines of that of 1823. Palmerston, like Canning before him, refused to sanction such an expedition, though he was prepared to allow France to make the expedition on her own responsibility. He suggested in return that Great Britain should intervene. But Louis Philippe was equally opposed to the separate action of his own country and of Great Britain, and the result was that neither government sent any troops. The Spanish government was, however, permitted to enlist volunteers, and actually received the assistance of an English legion, a French legion, and 6,000 Portuguese. The immediate danger was averted by the obstinacy of Don Carlos, who refused to permit Zumalacarregui to march on Madrid till the conquest of Biscay was complete. The Carlist general turned aside in consequence to the siege of Bilbao, in which a few weeks later he met his death.