The Story of Mankind

by Hendrik Willem Van Loon

In the east, nothing was done to improve the terrible conditions of both the Slavs and the Greeks who were still subjects of the Sultan. In the year 1804 Black George, a Servian swineherd, (the founder of the Karageorgevich dynasty) had started a revolt against the Turks, but he had been defeated by his enemies and had been murdered by one of his supposed friends, the rival Servian leader, called Milosh Obrenovich, (who became the founder of the Obrenovich dynasty) and the Turks had continued to be the undisputed masters of the Balkans.

The Greeks, who since the loss of their independence, two thousand years before, had been subjects of the Macedonians, the Romans, the Venetians and the Turks, had hoped that their countryman, Capo d’Istria, a native of Corfu, and together with Czartoryski, the most intimate personal friend of Alexander, would do something for them. But the Congress of Vienna was not interested in Greeks, but was very much interested in keeping all “legitimate” monarchs, Christian, Moslem and otherwise, upon their respective thrones. Therefore nothing was done.

The last, but perhaps the greatest blunder of the Congress was the treatment of Germany. The Reformation and the Thirty Years War had not only destroyed the prosperity of the country, but had turned it into a hopeless political rubbish heap, consisting of a couple of kingdoms, a few grand-duchies, a large number of duchies and hundreds of margravates, principalities, baronies, electorates, free cities and free villages, ruled by the strangest assortment of potentates that was ever seen off the comic opera stage. Frederick the Great had changed this when he created a strong Prussia, but this state had not survived him by many years.

Napoleon had blue-penciled the demand for independence of most of these little countries, and only fifty-two out of a total of more than three hundred had survived the year 1806. During the years of the great struggle for independence, many a young soldier had dreamed of a new Fatherland that should be strong and united. But there can be no union without a strong leadership, and who was to be this leader?

There were five kingdoms in the German speaking lands. The rulers of two of these, Austria and Prussia, were kings by the Grace of God. The rulers of three others, Bavaria, Saxony and Wurtemberg, were kings by the Grace of Napoleon, and as they had been the faithful henchmen of the Emperor, their patriotic credit with the other Germans was therefore not very good.

The Congress had established a new German Confederation, a league of thirty-eight sovereign states, under the chairmanship of the King of Austria, who was now known as the Emperor of Austria. It was the sort of make-shift arrangement which satisfied no one. It is true that a German Diet, which met in the old coronation city of Frankfort, had been created to discuss matters of “common policy and importance.” But in this Diet, thirty-eight delegates represented thirty-eight different interests and as no decision could be taken without a unanimous vote (a parliamentary rule which had in previous centuries ruined the mighty kingdom of Poland), the famous German Confederation became very soon the laughing stock of Europe and the politics of the old Empire began to resemble those of our Central American neighbours in the forties and the fifties of the last century.

It was terribly humiliating to the people who had sacrificed everything for a national ideal. But the Congress was not interested in the private feelings of “subjects,” and the debate was closed.

Did anybody object? Most assuredly. As soon as the first feeling of hatred against Napoleon had quieted down—as soon as the enthusiasm of the great war had subsided—as soon as the people came to a full realisation of the crime that had been committed in the name of “peace and stability” they began to murmur. They even made threats of open revolt. But what could they do? They were powerless. They were at the mercy of the most pitiless and efficient police system the world had ever seen.

The members of the Congress of Vienna honestly and sincerely believed that “the Revolutionary Principle had led to the criminal usurpation of the throne by the former emperor Napoleon.” They felt that they were called upon to eradicate the adherents of the so-called “French ideas” just as Philip II had only followed the voice of his conscience when he burned Protestants or hanged Moors. In the beginning of the sixteenth century a man who did not believe in the divine right of the Pope to rule his subjects as he saw fit was a “heretic” and it was the duty of all loyal citizens to kill him. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, on the continent of Europe, a man who did not believe in the divine right of his king to rule him as he or his Prime Minister saw fit, was a “heretic,” and it was the duty of all loyal citizens to denounce him to the nearest policeman and see that he got punished.

But the rulers of the year 1815 had learned efficiency in the school of Napoleon and they performed their task much better than it had been done in the year 1517. The period between the year 1815 and the year 1860 was the great era of the political spy. Spies were everywhere. They lived in palaces and they were to be found in the lowest gin-shops. They peeped through the key-holes of the ministerial cabinet and they listened to the conversations of the people who were taking the air on the benches of the Municipal Park. They guarded the frontier so that no one might leave without a duly viséd passport and they inspected all packages, that no books with dangerous “French ideas” should enter the realm of their Royal masters. They sat among the students in the lecture hall and woe to the Professor who uttered a word against the existing order of things. They followed the little boys and girls on their way to church lest they play hookey.