For a time the Concert of Europe struggled valiantly to carry on upon the old lines, but the French Revolution had shrivelled the heart of monarchy. In 1830, and again in 1848, the evaporation of the simple old royalist faith became very evident. Alexander I and his narrow-minded successor, Nicholas I, could still sustain the delusion of divine right in Russia—that did not perish until 1917—the idea hung on in Prussia in spite of much muttered criticism,[454] but for the rest of Europe the days of the unchallenged claim of kingship had gone. “What good are you?” said the world to monarchs; “and what do you do for us?”
So challenged, many of the monarchs became apologetic and fussily useful. One or two, as we shall have to tell, became “Napoleonic.” But so far no European monarch has betrayed any disposition to waive the remnant of his ancient trappings, to cease his passive and traditional opposition to political readjustment, and to move of his own accord towards that more broadly conceived government of human affairs as one world-wide community of will, which the future welfare of mankind demands.
§ 7[455]
For nearly forty years the idea of the Holy Alliance, the Concert of Europe which arose out of it, and the series of congresses and conferences that succeeded the concert, kept an insecure peace in war-exhausted Europe. Two main things prevented that period from being a complete social and international peace, and prepared the way for the cycle of wars between 1854 and 1871. The first of these was the tendency of the royal courts concerned, towards the restoration of unfair privilege and interference with freedom of thought and writing and teaching. The second was the impossible system of boundaries drawn by the diplomatists of Vienna.
The obstinate disposition of monarchy to march back towards past conditions was first and most particularly manifest in Spain. Here even the Inquisition was restored. Across the Atlantic the Spanish colonies had followed the example of the United States and revolted against the European Great Power system, when Napoleon set up his brother Joseph upon the Spanish throne in 1810. The Washington of South America was General Bolivar. Spain was unable to suppress this revolt, it dragged on much as the United States War of Independence had dragged on, and at last the suggestion was made by Austria in accordance with the spirit of the Holy Alliance, that the European monarchs should assist Spain in this struggle. This was opposed by Britain in Europe, but it was the prompt action of President Monroe of the United States in 1823 which conclusively warned off this projected monarchist restoration. He announced that the United States would regard any extension of the European system in the Western Hemisphere as a hostile act. Thus arose the Monroe Doctrine, which has kept the Great Power System out of America for nearly a hundred years, and permitted the new states of Spanish America to work out their destinies along their own lines. But if Spanish monarchism lost its colonies, it could at least, under the protection of the Concert of Europe, do what it chose in Europe. A popular insurrection in Spain was crushed by a French army in 1823, with a mandate from a European congress, and simultaneously Austria suppressed a revolution in Naples. The moving spirit in this conspiracy of governments against peoples was the Austrian statesman, Metternich.
In 1824 Louis XVIII died, and was succeeded by that Count d’Artois whom we have seen hovering as an émigré on the French frontiers in 1789; he took the title of Charles X. Charles set himself to destroy the liberty of the press and universities, and to restore absolute government; the sum of a billion francs was voted to compensate the nobles for the château burnings and sequestrations of 1789. In 1830 Paris rose against this embodiment of the ancient régime, and replaced him by the son of that sinister Philip, Duke of Orleans, whose execution was one of the brightest achievements of the Terror. The other continental monarchies, in face of the open approval of the revolution by Great Britain and a strong liberal ferment in Germany and Austria, did not interfere in this affair. After all, France was still a monarchy. This young man, Louis Philippe (1830-48), remained the constitutional king of France for eighteen years. He went down in 1848, a very eventful year for Europe, of which we shall tell in the next chapter.
