Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815

by H. Morse Stephens

Restored for a second time to the throne of France, Louis XVIII. declined to take warning from the result of his former policy. He again showered his favours on returned émigrés, and pursued a thoroughly reactionary policy. As soon as he was firmly seated at the Tuileries, with the Prussians and the English encamped round Paris, he dismissed Talleyrand and Fouché from office and formed a new and strongly Royalist ministry under the presidency of the Duc de Richelieu, who had spent the last twenty years of his life in exile as one of the chief administrators of Russia. The king avowed his intention of keeping the promises he made in the Charter of 1814, but those promises were carried out in such a way as to make them absolutely illusory. He took advantage of the general adhesion given to Napoleon on his return from Elba to exclude from the Upper Chamber or House of Peers most of the leading men in France, leaving the majority entirely in the hands of former émigrés, and of men who by the excess of their royalism wished to palliate their offence in not having emigrated. The Lower House, or Chamber of Representatives, even exceeded the House of Peers in its violent royalism. The deputies, chiefly elected under the direct pressure of threats of vengeance, were ready to adopt any reactionary measure suggested to them. Louis XVIII. gave this Assembly the name of the ‘Chambre Introuvable,’ which he intended as a compliment, but which has survived as a term of derision. Among the first laws voted were the suspension of individual liberty, and of the liberty of the press, and the request was then made that the King, in his goodness, would revise fourteen articles of the Charter which were too liberal. But even this chamber, aided by the presence of foreign armies, could not make France revert to the condition in which it had been before 1789. A hint of the resumption of ecclesiastical or national domains would have set the whole country in an uproar, and the Chamber had to be satisfied with voting a large sum of money out of the ordinary taxes as compensation to the émigrés for their sufferings in exile.

The Reaction in Spain.

Naples.

The spirit of reaction went much further in Spain than in France. Ferdinand VII., on returning to his capital in May 1814, issued a proclamation attacking the Cortes, which had done so much to recover the country from the hands of the French. In his own words: ‘A Cortes convoked in a manner never before known in Spain has been profiting by my captivity in France, and has usurped my rights by imposing on my people an anarchical and seditious Constitution based on the democratic principles of the French Revolution.’ The King of Spain then proceeded to annul by his own absolute authority everything that had been done during his absence. He re-established the Inquisition, and proscribed and condemned to death all who had taken part in reforming the institutions of Spain, whether under the authority of Joseph Bonaparte or under that of the National Cortes. Many hundreds, if not thousands, of Spanish patriots were put to death in a vain attempt of Ferdinand VII. to restore things as they had been in former days. The attempt to carry out a complete reaction resulted in utter failure. Insurrections broke out in all directions, and the Spanish colonies in South America took advantage of the troubles in the fatherland to strike a blow for their own freedom. It is satisfactory to be able to state that the head of the third reigning branch of the House of Bourbon behaved with more moderation and wisdom than Ferdinand VII. of Spain or Louis XVIII. of France. Ferdinand IV., King of the Two Sicilies, returned to his capital at Naples in June 1815. He can hardly be blamed for ordering the execution of Murat whom he had always regarded as a usurper, and it is greatly to his credit that he made some endeavour to retain the excellent administration on the French system which had been established by Joseph Bonaparte and Murat.

Results of the Congress of Vienna.

The final overthrow of Napoleon and his exile to St. Helena allowed the new system for the government of Europe as laid down by the Congress of Vienna to be tried. That system may be roughly designated as the system of the Great Powers. Before 1789, certain states, such as France and England and Spain, were, from fortuitous circumstances, or the course of their history, larger, more united, and therefore more fitted for war, than others, but the greater part of the Continent was split up into small, and in the case of Germany, into very small states. Several of these small states, such as Sweden and Holland, had at different times exercised a very considerable influence, and the policy of Frederick the Great had added another to them, in the military state of Prussia. At the Congress of Vienna the tendency was to diminish the number and power of the secondary states, and to destroy minute sovereignties. Sweden and Denmark were relegated to the rank of third-rate powers; the petty principalities of Germany were built up into third-rate states. Austria and Prussia were established as great powers, but the increase of their territory brought with it dissimilar results. Prussia became the preponderant state of Germany, while Austria, whose Imperial House had so long held the position of Holy Roman Emperor, became less German, and now depended for its strength on its Italian, Magyar, and Slavonic provinces. The irruption of Russia into the European comity of nations was another significant feature. By its annexation of the greater part of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, Russia thrust itself between Prussia and Austria territorially, while its leading share in the overthrow of Napoleon made its place as a European power unassailable. It may be doubted if the policy of Peter the Great and the Empress Catherine was thus carried out. The tendency of those rulers was to make the Baltic and the Black Sea Russian lakes, and to build up an Empire of the East; affairs in Central Europe only interested them in so far as they prevented interference with their Eastern designs, and did not lead to the erection of powerful states on the Russian border.

The Principle of Nationality.

Nothing is more remarkable in the settlement of Europe by the Congress of Vienna than the entire neglect of the principle of nationality. Yet it was the sentiment of national patriotism which had enabled France to repulse Europe in arms, and had trained the soldiers with whom Napoleon had given the law to the Continent and had overthrown the mercenary armies of his opponents. It was the principle of nationality which had crippled Napoleon’s finest armies in Spain, and which had produced his expulsion from Russia. It was the feeling of intense national patriotism which had made the Prussian army of 1813, and enabled Prussia after its deepest humiliation to take rank as a first-class power. But the diplomatists at Vienna treated the idea as without force. They had not learnt the great lesson of the French Revolution, that the first result of rousing a national consciousness of political liberty is to create a spirit of national patriotism. The Congress of Vienna trampled such notions under foot. The partition of Poland was consecrated by Europe; Italy was placed under foreign rulers; Belgium and Holland, in spite of the hereditary opposition of centuries, were united under one king. The territories on the left bank of the Rhine, which were happy under French rule, and had been an integral part of France for twenty years, were roughly torn away, and divided between Prussia, Bavaria, and the House of Orange, under the fancied necessity, induced by the exploded notion of maintaining the balance of power in Europe, of building up a bulwark against France. Such short-sighted policy was certain to be undone. Holland and Belgium separated; Italy became united; Poland maintained the consciousness of her national unity, and has more than once endeavoured to regain her independence; France has never ceased to yearn after her ‘natural’ frontier, the Rhine; the states of Germany have developed a national German patriotism which has led to the creation of the modern German Empire. This feeling of conscious nationality was the result of the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon; its existence is the strength of England, France, Russia, and Germany, its absence is the weakness of Austria. In so far as the spirit of nationality was neglected at the Congress of Vienna, its work was but temporary; in its resurrection, which has filled the history of the present century, the work of the French Revolution has been permanent.

Permanent results of the French Revolution.

But after all, the growth of the spirit of nationality is only a secondary result of the French Revolution upon Europe; it did not arise in France until foreign powers attempted to interfere with the development of the French people after their own fashion; it did not arise in Europe until Napoleon began to interfere with the development of other nations. The primary results of the French Revolution,—the recognition of individual liberty, which implied the abolition of serfdom and of social privileges; the establishment of political liberty, which implied the abolition of despots, however benevolent, and of political privileges; the maintenance of the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, which implied the right of the people, through their representatives, to govern themselves,—have also survived the Congress of Vienna. When Europe tried to interfere, the French people sacrificed these great gains to the spirit of nationality, and bowed before the despotism of the Committee of Public Safety and of Napoleon; they have since regained them. The French taught these principles to the rest of Europe, and the history of Europe since 1815 has been the history of their growth side by side with the idea of nationality. How the two, liberty and nationality, can be preserved in harmony is the great problem of the future; the history of Europe from 1789 to 1815 affords many examples of the difficulty of the problem and of the dangers which beset its solution.