Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815

by H. Morse Stephens

Genoa: Republic.

Venice.

Italy, in the eighteenth century, was composed of a number of small states. The idea of Italian unity lived only in the minds of the great Italian writers and thinkers; it met with no support from the powers of Europe. Italy was still the home of music and the arts, which were fostered by the numerous small Courts; but politically, owing to its subdivision, it hardly counted as a power, and its diplomacy had little weight in the European State system. It was entirely under the influence of France and Austria, and showed the tendencies of the century in the good government of most of the petty rulers. The most important of the Italian states was the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which comprised the southern part of the peninsula and the island of Sicily. The kingdom had been granted to Ferdinand IV., when his father, the celebrated Don Carlos, succeeded as Charles III. to the throne of Spain in 1759. It was in Naples that Charles III. had commenced his career as a reforming monarch, and the great Neapolitan minister, Tanucci, continued to administer the affairs of the kingdom in a most enlightened fashion during the early years of the new monarch’s reign. His policy was to check the feudal instincts of the Neapolitan barons, whom he deprived of the lucrative right of administering justice, and thus to strengthen the influence of the Crown; and he also opposed the pretensions of the Pope, and concurred in the suppression of the Jesuits. The power thus acquired for the Crown was wisely used; the financial system was revised, education was encouraged, and an attempt was made to procure a general reform of the laws. The young publicist, Filangieri, whose Science of Legislation contained the most enlightened views on political economy and government, and who ranks next to Montesquieu as a typical political thinker of the eighteenth century, was a Neapolitan, and his speculations largely influenced the current of Italian thought. Sicily, however, remained to a great extent untouched by the influence of the great Neapolitan minister owing to its insular jealousy and the maintenance of its mediæval parliament. Ferdinand IV., in 1768, married Maria Carolina, the ablest daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa, who at once assumed the most entire sway over her ill-educated and indolent husband. She secured the dismissal of Tanucci, whom she disliked on much the same grounds that her sister, Marie Antoinette, disliked the reforming French ministers, Turgot and Necker, in 1776, and after an interval replaced him by Acton, a native of France of Irish descent, who, owing to the temper of his patroness, was not able to continue efficiently the work of Tanucci. The States of the Church, including the Legations of Bologna and Ferrara and the principalities of Benevento and Ponte Corvo, were also governed in accordance with the enlightened ideas of the eighteenth century. The Papacy had much fallen in influence, and had been forced to comply with the demands of Pombal, Choiseul, Aranda, and Tanucci for the suppression of its spiritual mainstay, the order of the Jesuits; but it nevertheless maintained its temporal sovereignty in Italy. Giovanni Angelo Braschi, who had been elected Pope in 1775, and taken the title of Pius VI., was a man of singular ability and courtly manners. But he had to assent to vast reforms in Tuscany, which seriously affected the wealth of the Church in that part of the country, and had been unable, in spite of a personal visit to Vienna, to persuade Joseph II. to alter his policy towards the Papacy. His most notable internal measures in the Papal States were the draining of the Pontine marshes, and his reconstitution of the Clementine Museum at Rome, which he placed under the charge of the eminent antiquary, Ennius Quirinus Visconti. Tuscany flourished under the rule of the Grand Duke Leopold, brother and eventual successor of Joseph II., the ablest administrator of all the benevolent despots. His reforms extended in every direction; with the help of Scipio de Ricci, Bishop of Pistoia, he reduced the number of bishoprics and monasteries; he drained many of the marshes, and so benefited agriculture; he reorganised education and encouraged the Universities of Pisa and Siena. But his greatest reforms were legal and economic. Tuscany having originated from a number of mediæval republics, had been hitherto administered as a collection of semi-independent cities and districts, with their own laws and local finances. Leopold was one of the first monarchs to project a uniform code of laws for his state, which he intrusted to the great jurist, Lampredi, to compile, and he abolished all personal privileges before the law, torture, the right of asylum for malefactors, confiscation of the property of condemned malefactors, and secret denunciations. In economics he was the pupil of the French physiocrats, and the friend of the Marquis de Mirabeau, the ‘Ami des hommes,’ and in consonance with their doctrines he swept away all the internal customs duties and other restrictions on industry and commerce. Lastly, Leopold, seeing that his state was not strong enough to carry on a real war, abolished the Tuscan army, to the great advantage of his finances. Next to Tuscany, the best-governed state in Italy was Parma. Ferdinand, Duke of Parma and Piacenza, was the only son of Don Philip, the second son of Philip V. of Spain and Elizabeth Farnese, by Elizabeth of France, daughter of Louis XV. He was educated by the celebrated French philosopher, Condillac, and early in his reign showed the influence of the best eighteenth century ideas. He had succeeded his father in 1765, and continued his minister, a Frenchman, Du Tillot, Marquis of Felino, in office. Du Tillot, though working in a smaller sphere, was as great a reformer as Pombal and Tanucci. He brought about the suppression of the Inquisition in Parma, improved the internal administration, and encouraged education so greatly that the University of Parma, under the management of the learned scholar, Paciaudi, became one of the most famous in Europe. In 1769 Duke Ferdinand married Maria Amelia, daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa, who two years later secured the dismissal of Du Tillot from office. This dismissal was not, however, followed by a reaction, though it put a close to the progress of reform, and Parma, under the administration, first of a Spaniard, Llanos, and then of a Frenchman, Mauprat, retained its reputation as a well governed state. It was otherwise with Modena, where the last Duke of the House of Este, Hercules III., reigned. This prince had succeeded to the duchies of Modena, Reggio, and Mirandola in 1780, when already a man of fifty-three, and had added to them by marriage the principalities of Massa and Carrara. His only daughter and heiress, Maria Beatrice, was married to the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand, younger brother of the Emperor Joseph, and Governor-General of Lombardy. Duke Hercules was a superstitious and avaricious ruler, whose chief care was to amass money, and, politically, he followed out the wishes of Austria. While the House of Austria, by its scions or by marriages, ruled the greater part of Italy indirectly, it possessed the direct sovereignty of Lombardy, or, more accurately, of the Milanese and Mantua. This province profited by the salutary policy of Joseph II., and was administered, under the governor-generalship of the Archduke Ferdinand, by a great statesman, Count Firmian, who understood and carried out the most important reforms. His patronage of the arts and of education was especially remarkable; he laboured ardently to restore the efficiency of the Universities of Milan and Pavia, and appointed Beccaria, the celebrated philanthropist, Professor of Political Economy at the former, and Volta, the equally celebrated man of science, Professor of Physics at the latter. The only other monarchy of Italy, that of Sardinia, was more closely related to France than to Austria. Its king, Victor Amadeus III., had married a Spanish princess, and two of his daughters were married to the two brothers of Louis XVI. of France—Monsieur, the Comte de Provence, and the Comte d’Artois. His dominions comprised the island of Sardinia, Piedmont, Savoy, and Nice, and it was a great subject of complaint to his Piedmontese subjects that he unduly favoured his French-speaking province of Savoy. He, too, was influenced by the spirit of his century; he encouraged agriculture and commerce; he patronised literature and science; he built the Observatory at Turin, and founded academies of science and fine arts; and he undertook great public works, of which the most important was the improvement of the harbour of Nice. But in one matter he pursued an opposite policy to the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, for he increased and reorganised his army, and constructed fortifications of the most modern description at Tortona and Alessandria. Lastly must be noticed three Italian republics, survivals of the Middle Ages. Of these the smallest was the Republic of Lucca, which was entirely surrounded by the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Its trade suffered from the encouragement given by the Grand Duke Leopold to Leghorn; but, on the whole, it was well governed and prosperous. It was otherwise with the two great aristocratic republics, in which the long continuance of oligarchical government had stamped out all vestiges of political liberty. The Republic of Genoa, of which Raphael di Ferrari was Doge in 1789, was in utter decay. Its people were poverty-stricken; its trade had gone to Leghorn and Nice; and its laws and customs were unreformed. It was so weak that it had been unable to subdue the rebels in Corsica, who had risen under Paoli for the right of self-government, and it had ended by ceding the island to France in 1768. The Republic of Venice, of which the Doge in 1789 was Paul Renier, had not fallen so low in the eyes of Europe. Its possessions on the mainland, which extended from Verona to the Tyrol and along the east coast of the Adriatic Sea, and included the Ionian Islands, were administered for the benefit of the Venetian oligarchy, and supplied it with wealth. From Dalmatia was raised a considerable army, but the administration was wholly selfish, and did not keep pace in enlightenment with that of Lombardy, Parma, Tuscany, and Naples. On the whole, where monarchy existed in Italy, it tended in the eighteenth century to benevolent despotism; and such rule was far more beneficial to the people than that of the antiquated republics. Politically, the whole country might be reckoned as a factor in the Franco-Austrian alliance.

England: George III.

The Policy of Pitt.

The chief power of the Triple Alliance, which balanced the loosely-defined league of Russia, France, and Austria, was England. The severe blow which had been struck by the revolt of her American colonies had made Great Britain appear weaker than she really was to the powers of the Continent. The Treaty of Versailles, by which she had been obliged to make cessions to France, seemed to have set the seal on her humiliation. But in reality her finances were more affected than her fighting strength, and the English navy, which, from her insular position, must always constitute the principal element of her force, was as excellent as ever. The policy of the younger Pitt, who had come into office in 1783, was one of peace and retrenchment. The country had lasted well through the financial strain of the American War, and the chief aim of the minister was to allow its vast commercial and industrial resources to expand. As a pupil of Adam Smith, Pitt understood the great principles of political economy, and the most significant part of his foreign policy was his conclusion of the Commercial Treaty with France. A fiscal system, far in advance of that in any continental country, enabled the English Government to draw on the wealth of the nation more effectively than any other government, if the money was needed for patriotic purposes. In spite of his love of peace, Pitt was induced by his first Foreign Secretary, the Duke of Leeds, to take an active part in European politics, and was eventually led by the state of affairs in Holland to enter into the Triple Alliance. At home, England was unaffected by the intellectual movement which led to the French Revolution. She had in the previous century got rid of the relics of feudalism, which pressed so heavily on the continental farmer and peasant, and had won the boons of individual and commercial liberty, and of equality before the law; while politically, though her government was an oligarchy, supported by the class of wealthy merchants and traders, an opportunity was afforded through the existence of a free press and of the system of election, however hampered by antiquated franchises, for public opinion to make itself felt.

Prussia: Frederick William II.

Prussia, the other principal member of the Triple Alliance, contrasted in every way with England. Seemingly, owing to the prestige of Frederick the Great’s victories and that able monarch’s careful organisation of his army, Prussia was the first military state in Europe; in reality, her reputation was greater than her actual power. Prussia was weak where England was strong. Prussia had no financial system worthy of the name, no industrial wealth, and no national bank; her only resources for war were a certain quantity of specie stored up in Berlin. The Prussian Government was an absolutism, in which the monarch’s will was supreme; its administration was based on feudalism, of which England had entirely and France had practically got rid, with all its mediæval incidents of serfdom, privilege of the nobility, and social and commercial inequalities. The Prussian army was not national; the soldiers were treated as slaves, and the officers, who were all of noble birth, were tyrants in the maintenance of military discipline.

Policy of Prussia.

Frederick the Great was one of the finest types of the benevolent despot of the eighteenth century, but in him the belief in the importance of his despotic power outweighed his benevolence. While wishing for the prosperity of the people, he deliberately maintained the authority of the nobility, and discouraged any desire for change on the part of the agriculturists or citizens. The former were left at the disposal of their lords, the latter trammelled by antiquated civic constitutions. The weakness of Prussia was not only inherent in its government, but was also due to geographical causes. Its component parts were scattered; its Rhenish duchies and East Friesland were separated from its main territories by many German states; its central districts, the Marks of Brandenburg, were sparsely populated, and cut off from the sea; its largest provinces, Prussia Proper, Pomerania, Silesia, and Prussian Poland were, in spite of German and French Huguenot colonies, mainly Slavonic, and as backward in civilisation as other Slavonic races in the eighteenth century. In Russia, however, the Slavonic population in its barbarism yet retained sufficient local organisation to make its lot fairly endurable; in eastern Prussia, and especially in Prussian Poland, the people had been brought into contact with the mediæval and Latin civilisation, and were consequently treated as absolute serfs without the relief afforded by local institutions. The policy of Prussia, as laid down by Frederick the Great, had both Prussian and German aspirations, and in both was utterly selfish. The example set by the cynical monarch in the Silesian wars had left a deep impress on the minds of Prussian statesmen, and the maxims of justice and international law were subordinated by them to expediency. The Prussian policy of Frederick the Great culminated in the first partition of Poland, which he had suggested, by means of which Prussia united her eastern province of Prussia Proper to Brandenburg, and cut off Poland from the sea, and the aim of his successors was to pursue this path of aggrandisement, and, by further annexations, to connect Silesia directly with Prussia Proper. The German policy of Prussia was to assume the leadership of the Empire by pretending the greatest zeal for the rights of the Princes of the Empire, and posing as their protector, and it was on this ground that Frederick the Great formed the League of the Princes. The hereditary enemy of Prussia was Austria, which, though distinctly injured by the conquest of Silesia, still retained the chief influence over the Empire, and also showed a tendency to check the designs on Poland. It was Frederick the Great of Prussia who had thwarted the Emperor’s scheme of exchanging the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria, and he intrigued against Austria at the Courts both of Russia and France. It was as a counterblow to the Franco-Austro-Russian alliance that Prussia intervened in Holland, at the request of England, and formed the Triple Alliance with England and Holland in 1788. King Frederick William II. of Prussia, who succeeded his famous uncle in 1786, was a man of feeble intellect and undecided nature, but he had thoroughly imbibed the classic ideas of Prussian policy, and regarded Austria as the inevitable foe of Prussia, to be duped and taken advantage of on every possible occasion. His chief minister, Hertzberg, was a consistent enemy of Austria, but owing to the curious character of the king, the real power of the State rested not with the minister but with the royal favourites, of whom the chief at the end of 1788 were Bischofswerder and Lucchesini.