Part 359

The part taken by Sardinia in the Crimean War gave that kingdom a standing in European politics which had never been recognized before. It was a measure of sagacious policy due to the able statesman, Count Cavour, who had become the trusted minister of Victor Emmanuel, the Sardinian king. The king and his minister were agreed in one aim—the unification of Italy under the headship of the House of Savoy. By her participation in the war with Russia, Sardinia won a position which enabled her to claim and secure admission to the Congress of Paris, among the greater powers. At that conference, Count Cavour found an opportunity to direct attention to the deplorable state of affairs in Italy, under the Austrian rule and influence. No action by the Congress was taken; but the Italian question was raised in importance at once by the discussion of it, and Italy was rallied to the side of Sardinia as the necessary head of any practicable movement toward liberation. More than that: France was moved to sympathy with the Italian cause, and Louis Napoleon was led to believe that his throne would be strengthened by espousing it. He encouraged Cavour and Victor Emmanuel, therefore, in an attitude toward Austria which resulted in war (1859), and when the Sardinians were attacked he went to their assistance with a powerful force. At Magenta and Solferino the Austrians were decisively beaten, and the French emperor then abruptly closed the war, making a treaty which ceded Lombardy alone to Sardinia, leaving Venetia still under the oppressor, and the remainder of Italy unchanged in its state. For payment of the service he had rendered, Louis Napoleon exacted Savoy and Nice, and Victor Emmanuel was compelled to part with the original seat of his House.

There was bitter disappointment among the Italian patriots over the meagerness of the fruit yielded by the splendid victories of Magenta and Solferino. Despite the treaty of Villafranca, they were determined to have more, and they did. Tuscany, Parma, Modena and Romagna demanded annexation to Sardinia, and, after a plébiscite, they were received (March, 1860) into the kingdom and represented in its parliament. In the Two Sicilies there was an intense longing for deliverance from the brutalities of the Neapolitan Bourbons. Victor Emmanuel could not venture an attack upon the rotten kingdom, for fear of resentments in France and elsewhere. But the adventurous soldier, Garibaldi, now took on himself the task of completing the liberation of Italy. With an army of volunteers, he first swept the Neapolitans out of Sicily, and then took Naples itself, within the space of four months, between May and September, 1860. The whole dominion was annexed to what now became the Kingdom of Italy, and which embraced the entire peninsula except Rome, garrisoned for the Pope by French troops, and Venetia, still held in the clutches of Austria. In 1862, Garibaldi raised volunteers for an attack on Rome; but the unwise movement was suppressed by Victor Emmanuel. Two years later, the King of Italy brought about an agreement with the French emperor to withdraw his garrison from Rome, and, after that had been done, the annexation of Rome to the Italian kingdom was a mere question of time. It came about in 1870, after the fall of Louis Napoleon, and Victor Emmanuel transferred his capital to the Eternal City. The Pope's domain was then limited to the precincts of the Vatican.

The Austro-Prussian War.

The unification of Italy was the first of a remarkable series of nationalizing movements which have been the most significant feature of the history of the last half of the nineteenth century. The next of these movements to begin was in Germany—the much divided country of one peculiarly homogeneous and identical race. Influences tending toward unification had been acting on the Germans since Prussia rose to superiority in the north. By the middle of the century, the educated, military Prussia that was founded after 1806 had become a power capable of great things in capable hands; and the capable hands received it. In 1861, William I. succeeded his brother as king; in 1862, Otto von Bismarck became his prime minister. It was a remarkable combination of qualities and talents, and remarkable results came from it.

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In 1864, Prussia and Austria acted together in taking Schleswig and Holstein, as German states, from Denmark. The next year they quarreled over the administration of the duchies. In 1866, they fought, and Austria was entirely vanquished in a "seven weeks war." The superiority of Prussia, organized by her great military administrator and soldier, Moltke, was overpowering. Her rival was left completely at her mercy. But Bismarck and his king were wisely magnanimous. They refrained from inflicting on the Austrians a humiliation that would rankle and keep enmities alive. They foresaw the need of future friendship between the two powers of central Europe, as against Russia on the one side and France on the other, and they shaped their policy to secure it. It sufficed them to have put Austria out of the German circle, forever; to have ended the false relation in which the Hapsburgs—rulers of an essentially Slavonic and Magyar dominion—had stood towards Germany so long.

Prussia now dominated the surrounding German states so commandingly that the mode and the time of their unification may be said to have been within her own control. Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, Schleswig-Holstein, and Frankfort were incorporated in the Prussian kingdom at once. Saxony and the other states of the north were enveloped in a North German Confederation, with the King of Prussia for its hereditary president and commander of its forces. The states of southern Germany were left unfederated for the time being, but bound themselves by treaty to put their armies at the disposal of Prussia. Thus Germany as a whole was already made practically one power, under the control of King William and his great minister.

Final Expulsion of Austria from Italy.

The same war which unified Germany carried forward the nationalization of Italy another step. Victor Emmanuel had shrewdly entered into an alliance with Prussia before the war began, and attacked Austria in Venetia simultaneously with the German attack on the Bohemian side. The Italians were beaten at Custozza, and their navy was defeated in the Adriatic; but the victorious Prussians exacted Venetia for them in the settlement of peace, and Austria had no more footing in the peninsula.

Austria-Hungary.

It is greatly to the credit of Austria, long blinded and stupefied by the narcotic of absolutism, that the lessons of the war of 1866 sank deep into her mind and produced a very genuine enlightenment. The whole policy of the court of Vienna was changed, and with it the constitution of the Empire. The statesmen of Hungary were called into consultation with the statesmen of Austria, and the outcome of their discussions was an agreement which swept away the old Austria, holding Hungary in subjection, and created in its place a new power—a federal Austria-Hungary—equalized in its two principal parts, and united under the same sovereign with distinct constitutions.

The Franco-German War.

The surprising triumph of Prussia in the Seven Weeks War stung Louis Napoleon with a jealousy which he could not conceal. He was incapable of perceiving what it signified,—of perfection in the organization of the Prussian kingdom and of power in its resources. He was under illusions as to the strength of his own Empire. It had been honeycombed by the rascalities that attended and surrounded him, and he did not know it. He imagined France to be capable of putting a check on Prussian aggrandizement; and he began very early after Sadowa to pursue King William with demands which were tolerably certain to end in war. When the war came, in July, 1870, it was by his own declaration; yet Prussia was prepared for it and France was not. In six weeks time from the declaration of war,—in one month from the first action,—Napoleon himself was a prisoner of war in the hands of the Germans, surrendered at Sedan, with the whole army which he personally commanded; the Empire was in collapse, and a provisional government had taken the direction of affairs. On the 20th of September Paris was invested; on the 28th of October Baznine, with an army of 150,000 men, capitulated at Metz. A hopeless attempt to rally the nation to fresh efforts of defence in the interior, on the Loire, was valiantly made under the lead of Gambetta; but it was too late. When the year closed, besieged Paris was at the verge of starvation and all attempts to relieve the city had failed. On the 28th of January, 1871, an armistice was sought and obtained; on the 30th, Paris was surrendered and the Germans entered it. The treaty of peace negotiated subsequently ceded Alsace to Germany, with a fifth of Lorraine, and bound France to pay a war indemnity of five milliards of francs.

The Paris Commune.

In February, 1871, the provisional "Government of National Defense" gave way to a National Assembly, duly elected under the provisions of the armistice, and an executive was instituted at Bordeaux, under the presidency of M. Thiers. Early in March, the German forces were withdrawn from Paris, and control of the city was immediately seized by that dangerous element—Jacobinical, or Red Republican, or Communistic, as it may be variously described—which always shows itself with promptitude and power in the French capital, at disorderly times. The Commune was proclaimed, and the national government was defied. From the 2d of April until the 28th of May Paris was again under siege, this time by forces of the French government, fighting to overcome the revolutionists within. The proceedings of the latter were more wantonly destructive than those of the Terrorists of the Revolution, and scarcely less sanguinary. The Commune was suppressed in the end with great severity.

The Third French Republic.

M. Thiers held the presidency of the Third Republic in France until 1873, when he resigned and was succeeded by Marshal MacMahon. In 1875 the constitution which has since remained, with some amendments, in force, was framed and adopted. In 1878 Marshal MacMahon gave place to M. Jules Grévy, and the latter to M. Sadi Carnot in 1887. Republican government seems to be firmly and permanently established in France at last. The country is in a prosperous state, and nothing but its passionate desire to recover Alsace and to avenge Sedan appears threatening to its future.

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The new German Empire.

While the army of the Germans was still besieging Paris, and King William and Prince Bismarck were at Versailles, in January, 1871, the last act which completed the unification and nationalization of Germany was performed. This was the assumption of the title of Emperor by King William, in response to the prayer of the princes of Germany and of the North German Parliament. On the 16th of the following April, a constitution for the German Empire was proclaimed.

The long and extraordinary reign of the Emperor William I. was ended by his death in 1888. His son, Frederick III., was dying at the time of an incurable disease, and survived his father only three months. The son of Frederick III., William II., signalized the beginning of his reign by dismissing, after a few months, the great minister, Count Bismarck, on whom his strong grandfather had leaned, and who had wrought such marvels of statesmanship and diplomacy for the German race. What may lie at the end of the reign which had this self-sufficient beginning is not to be foretold.

The Russo-Turkish War.

Since the Franco-German War of 1870-1871, the peace of Europe has been broken but once by hostilities within the European boundary. In 1875 a rising against the unendurable misrule of the Turks began in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and was imitated the next year in Bulgaria. Servia and Montenegro declared war against Turkey and were overcome. Russia then espoused the cause of the struggling Slavs, and opened, in 1877, a most formidable new attempt to crush the Ottoman power, and to accomplish her coveted extension to the Mediterranean. From May until the following January the storm of war raged fiercely along the Balkans. The Turks fought stubbornly, but they were beaten back, and nothing but a dangerous opposition of feeling among the other powers in Europe stayed the hand of the Czar from being laid upon Constantinople. The powers required a settlement of the peace between Russia and Turkey to be made by a general Congress, and it was held at Berlin in June, 1878. Bulgaria was divided by the Congress into two states, one tributary to the Turk, but freely governed, the other subject to Turkey, but under a Christian governor. This arrangement was set aside seven years later by a bloodless revolution, which formed one Bulgaria in nominal relations of dependence upon the Porte. This was the third important nationalizing movement within a quarter of a century, and it is likely to go farther in southeastern Europe, until it settles, perhaps, "the Eastern question," so far as the European side of it is concerned.

Bosnia and Herzegovina were given to Austria by the Congress of Berlin; the independence of Roumania, Servia, and Montenegro was made more complete; the island of Cyprus was turned over to Great Britain for administration.

Spain in the last half Century.

A few words will tell sufficiently the story of Spain since the successor of Joseph Bonaparte quitted the scene. Ferdinand VII. died in 1833, and his infant daughter was proclaimed queen, as Isabella II., with her mother, Christina, regent. Isabella's title was disputed by Don Carlos, the late king's brother, and a civil war between Carlists and Christinos went on for years. When Isabella came of age she proved to be a dissolute woman, with strong proclivities toward arbitrary government. A liberal party, and even a republican party, had been steadily gaining ground in Spain, and the queen placed herself in conflict with it. In 1868 a revolution drove her into France. The revolutionists offered the crown to a prince distantly related to the royal family of Prussia. It was this incident that gave Louis Napoleon a pretext for quarreling with the King of Prussia in 1870 and declaring war. Declined by the Hohenzollern prince, the Spanish crown was then offered to Amadeo, son of the King of Italy, who accepted it, but resigned it again in 1873, after a reign of two years, in disgust with the factions which troubled him. Castelar, the distinguished republican orator, then formed a republican government which held the reins for a few months, but could not establish order in the troubled land. The monarchy was restored in December, 1874, by the coronation of Alfonso XII., son of the exiled Isabella. Since that time Spain has preserved a tolerably peaceful and contented state.

England and Ireland.

In recent years, the part which Great Britain has taken in Continental affairs has been slight; and, indeed, there has been little in those affairs to bring about important international relations. In domestic politics, a single series of questions, concerning Ireland and the connection of Ireland with the British part of the United Kingdom, has mastered the field, overriding all others and compelling the statesmen of the day to take them in hand. The sudden imperiousness of these questions affords a peculiar manifestation of the political conscience in nations which the nineteenth century has wakened and set astir. Through all the prior centuries of their subjection, the treatment of the Irish people by the English was as cruel and as heedless of justice and right as the treatment of Poles by Russians or of Greeks by Turks. They were trebly oppressed: as conquered subjects of an alien race, as religious enemies, as possible rivals in production and trade. They were deprived of political and civil rights; they were denied the ministrations of their priests; the better employments and more honorable professions were closed to them; the industries which promised prosperity to their country were suppressed. A small minority of Protestant colonists became the recognized nation, so far as a nationality in Ireland was recognized at all. When Ireland was said to have a Parliament, it was the Parliament of the minority alone. No Catholic sat in it; no Catholic was represented in it. When Irishmen were permitted to bear arms, they were Protestant Irishmen only who formed the privileged militia. Seven-tenths of the inhabitants of the island were politically as non-existent as actual serfdom could have made them. For the most part they were peasants and their state as such scarcely above the condition of serfs. They owned no land; their leases were insecure; the laws protected them in the least possible degree; their landlords were mostly of the hostile creed and race. No country in Europe showed conditions better calculated to distress and degrade a people.

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This was the state of things in Ireland until nearly the end of the eighteenth century. In 1782 legislative independence was conceded; but the independent legislature was still the Parliament in which Protestants sat alone. In 1793 Catholics were admitted to the franchise; but seats in Parliament were still denied to them and they must elect Protestants to represent them. In 1800 the Act of Union, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, extinguished the Parliament at Dublin and provided for the introduction of Irish peers and members to represent Irish constituencies in the greater Parliament at London; but still no Catholic could take a seat in either House. Not until 1829, after eighteen years of the fierce agitation which Daniel O'Connell stirred up, were Catholic disabilities entirely removed and the people of that faith placed on an equal footing with Protestants in political and civil rights. O'Connell's agitation was not for Catholic emancipation alone, but for the repeal of the Act of Union and the restoration of legislative independence and national distinctness to Ireland. That desire has been hot in the Irish heart from the day the Union was accomplished. After O'Connell's death, there was quiet on the subject for a time. The fearful famine of 1845-7 deadened all political feeling. Then there was a recurrence of the passionate animosity to British rule which had kindled unfortunate rebellions in 1798 and 1803. It produced the Fenian conspiracies, which ran their course from about 1858 to 1867. But soon after that time Irish nationalism resumed a more politic temper, and doubled the energy of its efforts by confining them to peaceful and lawful ways. The Home Rule movement, which began in 1873, was aimed at the organization of a compact and well-guided Irish party in Parliament, to press the demand for legislative independence and to act with united weight on lines of Irish policy carefully laid down. This Home Rule party soon acquired a powerful leader in Mr. Charles Parnell, and was successful in carrying questions of reform in Ireland to the forefront of English politics.

Under the influence of its great leader, Mr. Gladstone, the Liberal party had already, before the Home Rule party came into the field, begun to adopt measures for the redress of Irish wrongs. In 1869, the Irish branch of the Church of England, calling itself the Church of Ireland, was disestablished. The membership of that church was reckoned to be one-tenth of the population; but it had been supported by the taxation of the whole. The Catholics, the Presbyterians and other dissenters were now released from this unjust burden. In 1870, a Land Bill—the first of several, which restrict the power of Irish landlords to oppress their tenants, and which protect the latter, while opening opportunities of land-ownership to them—was passed. The land question became for a time more prominent than the Home Rule question, and the party of Mr. Parnell was practically absorbed in an Irish National Land League, formed to force landlords to a reduction of rents. The methods of coercion adopted brought the League into collision with the Liberal Government, notwithstanding the general sympathy of the latter with Irish complaints. For a time the Irish Nationalists went into alliance with the English Conservatives; but in 1886 Mr. Gladstone became convinced, and convinced the majority of his party, that just and harmonious relations between Ireland and Great Britain could never be established without the concession of Home Rule to the former. A bill which he introduced to that end was defeated in the House of Commons and Mr. Gladstone resigned. In 1892 he was returned to power, and in September of the following year he carried in the House of Commons a bill for the transferring of Irish legislation to a distinct Parliament at Dublin. It was defeated, however, in the House of Lords, and the question now rests in an unsettled state. Mr. Gladstone's retirement from the premiership and from the leadership of his party, which occurred in March, 1894, may affect the prospects of the measure; but the English Liberals are committed to its principle, and it appears to be certain that the Irish question will attain some solution within no very long time.

Conclusion.

The beginning of the year 1894, when this is written, finds Europe at peace, as it has been for a number of years. But the peace is not of friendship, nor of honorable confidence, nor of good will. The greater nations are lying on their arms, so to speak, watching one another with strained eyes and with jealous hearts. France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Russia, are marshaling armies in the season of peace that, not many years ago, would have seemed monstrous for war. Exactions of military service and taxation for military expenditure are pressed upon their people to the point of last endurance. The preparation for battle is so vast in its scale, so unceasing, so increasing, so far in the lead over all other efforts among men, that it seems like a new affirmation of belief that war is the natural order of the world.