Beacon Lights of History, Volume 10: European Leaders

Social evils in England on the accession of William IV. Political agitations. Premiership of Lord Grey. Aristocratic character of the reformers. Lord John Russell. The Reform Bi...

On the very evening of September 22 the bill was carried to the Lords, and Lords Althorp and Russell, with one hundred other members of the Commons, entered the Upper House with...

The new Parliament then turned its attention to a reduction of taxes. The duty on tiles was repealed; also the two-shilling stamp duty on advertisements, together with the vexat...

The year 1844 opened under happier auspices. The financial measures of the government had answered public expectations, and changed the growing deficiency into an increasing sur...

During the administration of Sir Robert Peel there was another agitation which at one time threatened serious consequences, but as it came to nothing it has not the historical i...

Joseph Mazzini, one of the earliest of the prominent men who aided in the deliverance of Italy, was a native of Genoa, belonging to a good but not illustrious family. He was a b...

In those days of discouragement, when all Italy was enslaved, Garibaldi left his country with a heavy heart, and sailing for South America, entered the service of the Republic o...

In 1866, while Austria was embroiled with Prussia, Victor Emmanuel, having formed an alliance with the Northern Powers, invaded Venetia; and in the settlement between the two Ge...

But he reckoned without his host. He was deceived by the pacific attitude of England, then ruled by the cabinet of Lord Aberdeen, who absolutely detested war. The premier was al...

There were now upon the coasts of the Crimea some thirty-seven thousand French and Turks with sixty-eight pieces of artillery (all under the orders of Marshal Saint-Arnaud), and...

When Louis Napoleon came into power in 1848, on the fall of Louis Philippe, it was generally supposed that European nations had sheathed the sword against one another, and that...

Resolved then on war, the real disturber of the peace of Europe, and goaded on by his councillors,--the conspirators of the 2d of December, Morny, Fleury, Maupas, etc.,--Louis N...

By this time Louis Napoleon had become prematurely old; he suffered from acute diseases; his constitution was undermined; he was no longer capable of carrying the burdens he had...

Count, afterward Prince, Hardenberg, held to substantially the same views, and was more acceptable to the king as minister than was the austere and haughty Stein, although his m...

When the revolution of 1848 broke out, which hurled Louis Philippe from the French throne its flames reached every continental State except Russia. Metternich, who had been all...

The triumphal return of the Prussian troops to Berlin was followed on the 24th of February, 1867, by the opening of the first North German parliament,--three hundred deputies ch...

Another thing gave him great solicitude, taxed to the utmost his fertile brain; and that was the rising and wide-spreading doctrines of Socialism,--which was to Germany what Nih...

It would be difficult to say when the welfare of the Church and the triumph of theological truth have not received a great share of Mr. Gladstone's thoughts and labors. At an ea...

The chief duty of Mr. Gladstone during his seven years connection with the new coalition party, headed by Lord Palmerston, was to prepare his annual budget, or financial stateme...

One would think that this disestablishment of the Irish Church would have been the last reform which a strict churchman like Gladstone would have made; certainly it was the last...