These reflections should not make us forget the main thread of our story, which became relatively weak after Troppau. From that time it was clear that Europe had no hopes of peace through coöperation under either of the two plans that had been suggested. Almost immediately began a train of events which gave added impulse to the dissolution of the Alliance. In 1821 began the Greek War of Independence. Austria was in consternation lest the revolution should spread to her own people. Russia, however, was deeply sympathetic with the Greeks, partly through religious affiliations and partly because the Russian people, looking toward the possession of Constantinople, were anxious to weaken the Turk in any of his European possessions. Alexander I showed signs of going to war for the Greeks, and Metternich hastily sought to counteract any such course.
At the same time the situation in Spain’s American colonies was becoming more urgent, because the weakness of the government had stimulated the South American revolutionists to renewed activity until Mexico as well as the rest of the Continental colonies except Peru was in successful revolt. Metternich would have helped Turkey against the Greeks and allowed the tsar to carry out his long cherished wish of intervening in Spain, as a means of keeping him quiet. The situation seemed to call for another conference and after some discussion a meeting was arranged at Verona, 1822. France was anxious to take over the task of punishing the Spanish revolutionists, and as Russia, Austria, and Prussia agreed to her plan, four of the five Great Powers now stood side by side in favor of repression. They would have gone further, and settled the fate of the American revolutionists, but against that course Great Britain made such a protest that the question was left open.
It was not definitely closed until the next year, and then through the action of the United States, taken in association with Great Britain. For when France had performed her task, she looked forward to taking some of the Spanish colonies as indemnity for her expenses. The principle of federation among the Powers was working so well that it was considered only a natural thing to call another conference at which France could be assigned the right of conquering the colonies. Canning, at the head of the British government, was genuinely alarmed. The four united Powers were willing to defy Great Britain if she stood alone. He turned to the United States as the only ally in sight. Would we support him in opposition to the designs of the Powers? President Monroe, influenced by John Quincy Adams’ stout patriotism, replied in the affirmative and went a step further; for he insisted that the defiance of the Powers should be announced in Washington, not as a mere expedient to meet an isolated case, but as a general policy of our government. The Monroe Doctrine was one of the things that broke up the Quintuple Alliance, already weakened by the alienation of Great Britain.
The last blow was the revolution in France in 1880, which drove the Bourbon king into exile and made a liberal government possible. At the same time so strong were the manifestations of republicanism in other countries that the old conservatism was lowered in tone and chastened in pride. From France the revolutionary movement passed into Belgium, which the Congress of Vienna had decreed should be a part of the kingdom of the Netherlands. So completely was the revolution successful that even the Great Powers had to bow to it, and in a congress at London they recognized Belgium as a separate state and saw it set up a liberal constitution with a king at the head of the government. Several of the small German governments also adopted more liberal forms. Poland broke into rebellion and before its power of resistance was crushed by Russia the infection spread into Lithuania and Podolia. At last the arms of the tsar overpowered all resistance and peace reigned; but the reactionaries were sobered, and the dream of a league to enforce repression passed away.
Glancing backward we may see through what a development the ideas of reform had passed. Europe, distressed by the wars of 1800–1815, had hungered for peace. Having issued from a decade of discussion of liberty and humanity, the friends of freedom were more than ordinarily earnest for replacing war by an age of reason. In our own day the cause of universal peace stands on a broader and better laid foundation than a hundred years ago, but it is, perhaps, no more impressive. At any rate the philosophically inclined men of the earlier period supported Kant and Rousseau, among them, Alexander I. A considerable portion of the world believed that the outcome of the war madness then reigning must be an era of sanity.
We have seen that two plans of improvement were formed in the minds of men who were in position to have practical influence: the tsar’s scheme for a league, or federation, that was so strongly integrated that the central authority should be able to enforce its commands upon constituent states; and the plan of Castlereagh for prolonging the existing system of coöperation in a form which we may call the Concert of the Great Powers. We have seen that the tsar’s plan, ignored at first, was seized on by Metternich as a possibility for enforcing a system of reaction, that it met the opposition of Great Britain and aroused the revolutionary protest of 1830, and thus it came to an end. It was never the dream of any of the philosophers that a federation should be formed which might become an engine of despotism, yet practical use showed that such a course was within the bounds of possibility. The mere glimpse of such a thing was enough to make Europe prefer the old era of wars.
One does not have to look far into the situation to see that the real failure of the plan was due to the wide use of arbitrary government in Europe. Had Austria, Russia, and Prussia been ruled by the people, either as republics or as liberal monarchies, the great alliance of Europe could hardly have been turned to the side of repression; and under the guidance of enlightened statesmen it might have been the beginning of a long era of peace and international good will. The failure of the nineteenth century, therefore, does not prove that federation is essentially impossible. It only proves that a century ago the world was not ready to employ it successfully.