XIV. Bismarck and the New Empire of Germany…

XIV. Bismarck and the New Empire of Germany

[=The Empires of Germany and France=]

What was for many centuries known as "The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" was a portion of the great imperial domain of Charlemagne, divided between his sons on his death in 814. It became an elective monarchy in 911, and from the reign of Otho the Great was confined to Germany, which assumed the title above given. This great empire survived until 1804, when the imperial title, then held by Francis I. of Austria, was given up, and Francis styled himself Emperor of Austria. It is an interesting coincidence that this empire ceased to exist in the same year that Napoleon, who in a large measure restored the empire of Charlemagne, assumed the imperial crown of France. The restoration of the Empire of Germany, though not in its old form, was left to Prussia, after the final overthrow of the Napoleonic imperial dynasty in 1871.

[=The Rapid Growth of Prussia=]

Prussia, originally an unimportant member of the German confederation, rose to power as Austria declined, its progress upward being remarkably rapid. Frederick William, the "Great Elector" of Brandenburg, united the then minor province of Prussia to his dominions, and at his death in 1688 left it a strong army and a large treasure. His son, Frederick I., was the first to bear the title of King of Prussia. Frederick the Great, who became king in 1740, had under him a series of disjointed provinces and a population of less than 2,500,000. His genius made Prussia a great power, which grew until, in 1805, it had a population of 9,640,000 and a territory of nearly 6,000 square miles.

We have seen the part this kingdom played in the Napoleonic wars. Dismembered by Napoleon and reduced to a mere fragment, it regained its old importance by the Treaty of Vienna. The great career of this kingdom began with the accession, in 1862, of King William I., and the appointment, in the same year, of Count Otto von Bismarck as Minister of the King's House and of Foreign Affairs. It was not King William, but Count Bismarck, who raised Prussia to the exalted position it has since assumed.

[=Bismarck's Despotic Acts and Warlike Aggressions=]

Bismarck began his career by an effort to restore the old despotism, setting aside acts of the legislature with the boldness of an autocrat, and seeking to make the king supreme over the representatives of the people. He disdained the protest of the Chamber of Deputies in concluding a secret treaty with Russia. He made laws and decreed budget estimates without the concurrence of the Chambers. And while thus busily engaged at home in altercations with the Prussian Parliament, he was as actively occupied with foreign affairs.

In 1864 Austria reluctantly took part with Prussia in the occupation of the duchy of Schleswig-Holstein, claimed by Denmark. A war with Denmark followed, which ultimately resulted in the annexation to Prussia of the disputed territory. In this movement Bismarck was carrying out a project which he had long entertained, that of making Prussia the leading power in Germany. A second step in this policy was taken in 1866, when the troops of Prussia occupied Hanover and Saxony. This act of aggression led to a war, in which Austria, alarmed at the ambitious movements of Prussia, came to the aid of the threatened states.

Bismarck was quite ready. He had strengthened Prussia by an alliance with Italy, and launched the Prussian army against that of Austria with a rapidity that overthrew the power of the allies in a remarkably brief and most brilliant campaign. At the decisive battle of Sadowa fought July 3, 1866, King William commanded the Prussian army and Field-marshal Benedek the Austrian. But back of the Prussian king was General Von Moltke one of the most brilliant strategists of modern times, to whose skillful combinations, and distinguished services in organizing the army of Prussia, that state owed its rapid series of successes in war.

[=Austria Overthrown at Sadowa=]

At Sadowa the newly-invented needle-gun played an effective part in bringing victory to the Prussian arms. The battle continued actively from 7.30 A.M. to 2.30 P.M., at which hour the Prussians carried the centre of the Austrian position. Yet, despite this, the advantage remained with the Austrians until 3.30, at which hour the Crown Prince Frederick drove their left flank from the village of Lipa. An hour more sufficed to complete the defeat of the Austrians, but it was 9 P.M. before the fighting ceased. In addition to their losses on the field, 15,000 of the Austrians were made prisoners and their cause was lost beyond possibility of recovery.

There seemed nothing to hinder Bismarck from overthrowing and dismembering the Austrian empire, as Napoleon had done more than once, but there is reason to believe that the dread of France coming to the aid of the defeated realm made him stop short in his career of victory. Napoleon III. boasted to the French Chambers that he had stayed the conqueror at the gates of Vienna. However that be, a treaty of peace was signed, in which Austria consented to withdraw from the German Confederation. Bismarck had gained one great point in his plans, in removing a formidable rival from his path. The way was cleared for making Prussia the supreme power in Germany. The German allies of Austria suffered severely for their assistance to that power. Saxony kept its king, but fell under Prussian control; and Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, and the free city of Frankfurt-on-the-Main were absorbed by Prussia.

[=South German States in the War=]

The States of South Germany had taken part on the side of Austria in the war, and continued the struggle after peace had been made between the main contestants. The result was the only one that could have been expected under the circumstances. Though the Bavarians and Würtembergers showed great bravery in the several conflicts, the Prussians were steadily successful, and the South German army was finally obliged to retire beyond the Main, while Würzburg was captured by the Prussians. In this city a truce was effected which ultimately led to a treaty of peace. Würtemberg, Bavaria, and Baden were each required to pay a war indemnity, and a secret measure of the treaty was an offensive and defensive alliance with Prussia for common action in case of a foreign war.

[=Disunion of Germany=]

Mention was made in the last chapter of the long disunion of Italy, its division into a number of separate and frequently hostile states from the fall of the Roman Empire until its final unification in 1870. A similar condition had for ages existed in Germany. The so-called German Empire of the mediæval period was little more than a league of separate states, each with its own monarch and distinct government. And the authority of the emperor decreased with time until it became but a shadow. It vanished in 1804, leaving Germany composed of several hundred independent states, small and large.

Several efforts were made in the succeeding years to restore the bond of union between these states. Under the influence of Napoleon they were organized into South German and North German Confederacies, and the effect of his interference with their internal affairs was such that they became greatly reduced in number, many of the minor states being swallowed up by their more powerful neighbors.

[=Efforts at Union=]

The subsequent attempts at union proved weak and ineffective. The Bund, or bond of connection between these states, formed after the Napoleonic period, was of the most shadowy character, its congress being destitute of power or authority. The National Assembly, convened at Frankfurt after the revolution of 1848, with the Archduke John of Austria as administrator of the empire, proved equally powerless. It made a vigorous effort to enforce its authority, but without avail; Prussia refused to be bound by its decisions; and the attitude of opposition assumed by this powerful state soon brought the new attempt at union to an end.

In 1886 the war between the two great powers of Germany, in which most of the smaller powers were concerned, led to more decided measures, in the absorption by Prussia of the states above named, the formation of a North German League among the remaining states of the north, and the offensive and defensive alliance with Prussia of the South German states. By the treaty of peace with Austria, that power was excluded from the German League, and Prussia remained the dominant power in Germany. A constitution for the League was adopted in 1867, providing for a Diet, or legislative council of the League, elected by the direct votes of the people, and an army, which was to be under the command of the Prussian king and subject to the military laws of Prussia. Each state in the League bound itself to supply a specified sum for the support of the army.

[=The Feeling for Unity=]

Here was a union with a backbone--an army and a budget--and Bismarck had done more in the five years of his ministry in forming an united Germany than his predecessors had done in fifty years. But the idea of union and alliance between kindred states was then widely in the air. Such a union had been practically completed in Italy, and Hungary in 1867 regained her ancient rights, which had been taken from her in 1849, being given a separate government, with Francis Joseph, the emperor of Austria, as its king. It was natural that the common blood of the Germans should lead them to a political confederation, and equally natural that Prussia, which so overshadowed the smaller states in strength, should be the leading element in the alliance.

The great increase in the power and importance of Prussia, as an outcome of the war with Austria, was viewed with jealousy in France. The Emperor Napoleon sought, by a secret treaty with Holland, to obtain possession of the state of Luxemburg, for which a sum of money was to be paid. This negotiation became known and was defeated by Bismarck, the King of Holland shrinking from the peril of war and the publicity of a disgraceful transaction. But the interference of Prussia with this underhand scheme added to the irritation of France.

[=The Position of Louis Napoleon=]

And thus time passed on until the eventful year 1870. By that year Prussia had completed its work among the North German states and was ready for the issue of hostilities, if this should be necessary. On the other hand, Napoleon, who had found his prestige in France from various causes decreasing, felt obliged in 1870 to depart from his policy of personal rule and give that country a constitutional government. This proposal was submitted to a vote of the people and was sustained by an immense majority. He also took occasion to state that "peace was never more assured than at the present time." This assurance gave satisfaction to the world, yet it was a false one, for war was probably at that moment assured.

There were alarming signs in France. The opposition to Napoleonism was steadily gaining power. A bad harvest was threatened--a serious source of discontent. The Parliament was discussing the reversal of the sentence of banishment against the Orleans family. These indications of a change in public sentiment appeared to call for some act that would aid in restoring the popularity of the emperor. And of all the acts that could be devised a national war seemed the most promising. If the Rhine frontier, which every French regarded as the natural boundary of the empire, could be regained by the arms of the nation, discontent and opposition would vanish, the name of Napoleon would win back its old prestige, and the reign of Bonapartism would be firmly established.

[=Preparations for Hostilities=]

Acts speak louder than words, and the acts of Napoleon were not in accord with his assurances of peace. Extensive military preparations began, and the forces of the empire were strengthened by land and sea, while great trust was placed in a new weapon, of murderous powers, called the mitrailleuse, the predecessor of the machine gun, and capable of discharging twenty-five balls at once.

On the other hand, there were abundant indications of discontent in Germany, where a variety of parties inveighed against the rapacious policy of Prussia, and where Bismarck had sown a deep crop of hate. It was believed in France that the minor states would not support Prussia in a war. In Austria the defeat in 1866 rankled, and hostilities against Prussia on the part of France seemed certain to win sympathy and support in that composite empire. Colonel Stoffel, the French military envoy at Berlin, declared that Prussia would be found abundantly prepared for a struggle; but his warnings went unheeded in the French Cabinet, and the warlike preparations continued.

[=The Revolution in Spain=]

Napoleon did not have to go far for an excuse for the war upon which he was resolved. One was prepared for him in that potent source of trouble, the succession to the throne of Spain. In that country there had for years been no end of trouble, revolts, Carlist risings, wars and rumors of wars. The government of Queen Isabella, with its endless intrigues, plots, and alternation of despotism and anarchy, and the pronounced immorality of the queen, had become so distasteful to the people that finally, after several years of revolts and armed risings, she was driven from her throne by a revolution, and for a time Spain was without a monarchy and ruled on republican principles.

But this arrangement did not prove satisfactory. The party in opposition looked around for a king, and negotiations began with a distant relative of the Prussian royal family, Leopold of Hohenzollern. Prince Leopold accepted the offer, and informed the king of Prussia of his decision.

[=The Spanish Succession=]

The news of this event caused great excitement in Paris, and the Prussian government was advised of the painful feeling to which the incident had given rise. The answer from Berlin that the Prussian government had no concern in the matter, and that Prince Leopold was free to act on his own account, did not allay the excitement. The demand for war grew violent and clamorous, the voices of the feeble opposition in the Chambers were drowned, and the journalists and war partisans were confident of a short and glorious campaign and a triumphant march to Berlin.

[=Napoleon's Demand and William's Refusal=]

The hostile feeling was reduced when King William of Prussia, though he declined to prohibit Prince Leopold from accepting the crown, expressed his concurrence with the decision of the prince when he withdrew his acceptance of the dangerous offer. This decision was regarded as sufficient, even in Paris; but it did not seem to be so in the palace, where an excuse for a declaration of war was ardently desired. The emperor's hostile purpose was enhanced by the influence of the empress, and it was finally declared that the Prussian king had aggrieved France in permitting the prince to become a candidate for the throne without consulting the French Cabinet.

[=The Declaration of War=]

Satisfaction for this shadowy source of offence was demanded, but King William firmly refused to say any more on the subject and declined to stand in the way of Prince Leopold if he should again accept the offer of the Spanish throne. This refusal was declared to be an offence to the honor and a threat to the safety of France. The war party was so strongly in the ascendant that all opposition was now looked upon as lack of patriotism, and on the 15th of July the Prime Minister Ollivier announced that the reserves were to be called out and the necessary measures taken to secure the honor and security of France. When the declaration of war was hurled against Prussia the whole nation seemed in harmony with it, and public opinion appeared for once to have become a unit throughout France.

Rarely in the history of the world has so trivial a cause given rise to such stupendous military and political events as took place in France in a brief interval following this blind leap into hostilities. Instead of a triumphant march to Berlin and the dictation of peace from its palace, France was to find itself in two months' time without an emperor or an army, and in a few months more completely subdued and occupied by foreign troops, while Paris had been made the scene of a terrible siege and a frightful communistic riot, and a republic had succeeded the empire. It was such a series of events as have seldom been compressed within the short interval of half a year.

[=State of the French and German Armies=]

In truth Napoleon and his advisers were blinded by their hopes to the true state of affairs. The army on which they depended, and which they assumed to be in a high state of efficiency and discipline, was lacking in almost every requisite of an efficient force. The first Napoleon was his own minister of war. The third Napoleon, when told by his war minister that "not a single button was wanting on a single gaiter," took the words for the fact, and hurled an army without supplies and organization against the most thoroughly organized army the world had ever known. That the French were as brave as the Germans goes without saying; they fought desperately, but from the first confusion reigned in their movements, while military science of the highest kind dominated those of the Germans.

Napoleon was equally mistaken as to the state of affairs in Germany. The disunion upon which he counted vanished at the first threat of war. All Germany felt itself threatened and joined hands in defence. The declaration of war was received there with as deep an enthusiasm as in France and a fervent eagerness for the struggle. The new popular song, Die Wacht am Rhein ("The Watch on the Rhine") spread rapidly from end to end of the country, and indicated the resolution of the German people to defend to the death the frontier stream of their country.

[=Bismarck and Von Moltke=]

The French looked for a parade march to Berlin, even fixing the day of their entrance into that city--August 15th, the emperor's birthday. On the contrary, they failed to set their foot on German territory, and soon found themselves engaged in a death struggle with the invaders of their own land. In truth, while the Prussian diplomacy was conducted by Bismarck, the ablest statesman Prussia had ever known, the movements of the army were directed by far the best tactician Europe then possessed, the famous Von Moltke, to whose strategy the rapid success of the war against Austria had been due. In the war with France Von Moltke, though too old to lead the armies in person, was virtually commander-in-chief, and arranged those masterly combinations which overthrew all the power of France in so remarkably brief a period. Under his directions, from the moment war was declared, everything worked with clocklike precision. It was said that Von Moltke had only to touch a bell and all went forward. As it was, the Crown Prince Frederick fell upon the French while still unprepared, won the first battle, and steadily held the advantage to the end, the French being beaten by the strategy that kept the Germans in superior strength at all decisive points.

But to return to the events of war. On July 23, 1870, the Emperor Napoleon, after making his wife Eugenie regent of France, set out with his son at the head of the army, full of high hopes of victory and triumph. By the end of July King William had also set out from Berlin to join the armies that were then in rapid motion towards the frontier.

[=Strength of the Armies=]

The emperor made his way to Metz, where was stationed his main army, about 200,000 strong, under Marshals Bazaine and Canrobert and General Bourbaki. Further east, under Marshal MacMahon, the hero of Magenta, was the southern army, of about 100,000 men. A third army occupied the camp at Chalons, while a well-manned fleet set sail for the Baltic, to blockade the harbors and assail the coast of Germany. The German army was likewise in three divisions, the first, of 61,000 men, under General Steinmetz; the second, of 206,000 men, under Prince Frederick Charles; and the third, of 180,000 men, under the crown prince and General Blumenthal. The king, commander-in-chief of the whole, was in the centre, and with him the general staff under the guidance of the alert Von Moltke. Bismarck and the minister of war Von Roon were also present, and so rapid was the movement of these great forces that in two weeks after the order to march was given 300,000 armed Germans stood in rank along the Rhine.

[=Battles of Saarbrück and Weissenburg=]

The two armies first came together on August 2d, near Saarbrück, on the frontier line of the hostile kingdoms. It was the one success of the French, for the Prussians, after a fight in which both sides lost equally, retired in good order. This was proclaimed by the French papers as a brilliant victory, and filled the people with undue hopes of glory. It was the last favorable report, for they were quickly overwhelmed with tidings of defeat and disaster.

Weissenburg, on the borders of Rhenish Bavaria, had been invested by a division of MacMahon's army. On August 4th the right wing of the army of the Crown Prince Frederick attacked and repulsed this investing force after a hot engagement, in which its leader, General Douay, was killed, and the loss on both sides was heavy. Two days later occurred a battle which decided the fate of the whole war, that of Worth-Reideshofen, where the army of the crown prince met that of MacMahon, and after a desperate struggle, which continued for fifteen hours, completely defeated him, with very heavy losses on both sides. MacMahon retreated in haste towards the army at Chalons, while the crown prince took possession of Alsace, and prepared for the reduction of the fortresses on the Rhine, from Strasburg to Belfort. On the same day as that of the battle of Worth, General Steinmetz stormed the heights of Spicheren, and, though at great loss of life, drove Frossard from those heights and back upon Metz.

[=Occupation of Alsace and Lorraine=]

The occupation of Alsace was followed by that of Lorraine, by the Prussian army under King William, who took possession of Nancy and the country surrounding on August 11th. These two provinces had formerly belonged to Germany, and it was the aim of the Prussians to retain them as the chief anticipated prize of the war. Meanwhile the world looked on in amazement at the extraordinary rapidity of the German success, which, in two weeks after Napoleon left Paris, had brought his power to the verge of overthrow.

Towards the Moselle River and the strongly fortified town of Metz, 180 miles northeast of Paris, around which was concentrated the main French force, all the divisions of the German army now advanced, and on the 14th of August they gained a victory at Colombey-Neuvilly which drove their opponents back from the open field towards the fortified city.

[=The Situation at Metz=]

It was Moltke's opinion that the French proposed to make their stand before this impregnable fortress, and fight there desperately for victory. But, finding less resistance than he expected, he concluded, on the 15th, that Bazaine, in fear of being cooped up within the fortress, meant to march towards Verdun, there to join his forces with those of MacMahon and give battle to the Germans in the plain.

The astute tactician at once determined to make every effort to prevent this concentration of his opponents, and by the evening of the 15th a cavalry division had crossed the Moselle and reached the village of Mars-la-Tour, where it bivouacked for the night. It had seen troops in motion towards Metz, but did not know whether these formed the rear-guard or the vanguard of the French army in its march towards Verdun.

In fact, Bazaine had not yet got away with his army. All the roads from Metz were blocked with heavy baggage, and it was impossible to move so large an army with expedition. The time thus lost by Bazaine was diligently improved by Frederick Charles, and on the morning of the 16th the Brandenburg army corps, one of the best and bravest in the German army, had followed the cavalry and come within sight of the Verdun road. It was quickly perceived that a French force was before them, and some preliminary skirmishing developed the enemy in such strength as to convince the leader of the corps that he had in his front the whole or the greater part of Bazaine's army, and that its escape from Metz had not been achieved.

[=The Battle of Mars-la-Tour=]

They were desperate odds with which the brave Brandenburgers had to contend, but they had been sent to hold the French until reinforcements could arrive, and they were determined to resist to the death. For nearly six hours they resisted, with unsurpassed courage, the fierce onslaughts of the French, though at a cost in life that perilously depleted the gallant corps. Then, about four o'clock in the afternoon, Prince Frederick Charles came up with reinforcements to their support and the desperate contest became more even.

[=Defeat of the French=]

Gradually fortune decided in favor of the Germans, and by the time night had come they were practically victorious, the field of Mars-la-Tour, after the day's struggle, remaining in their hands. But they were utterly exhausted, their horses were worn out, and most of their ammunition was spent, and though their impetuous commander forced them to a new attack, it led to a useless loss of life, for their powers of fighting were gone. They had achieved their purpose, that of preventing the escape of Bazaine, though at a fearful loss, amounting to about 16,000 men on each side. "The battle of Vionville [Mars-la-Tour] is without a parallel in military history," said Emperor William, "seeing that a single army corps, about 20,000 men strong, hung on to and repulsed an enemy more than five times as numerous and well equipped. Such was the glorious deed done by the Brandenburgers, and the Hohenzollerns will never forget the debt they owe to their devotion."

[=Great Victory of the Germans at Gravelotte=]

Two days afterwards (August 16th), at Gravelotte, a village somewhat nearer to Metz, the armies, somewhat recovered from the terrible struggle of the 14th, met again, the whole German army being now brought up, so that over 200,000 men faced the 140,000 of the French. It was the great battle of the war. For four hours the two armies stood fighting face to face, without any special result, neither being able to drive back the other. The French held their ground and died. The Prussians dashed upon them and died. Only late in the evening was the right wing of the French army broken, and the victory, which at five o'clock remained uncertain, was decided in favor of the Germans. More than 40,000 men lay dead and wounded upon the field, the terrible harvest of those nine hours of conflict. That night Bazaine withdrew his army behind the fortifications at Metz. His effort to join MacMahon had ended in failure.

[=The Siege of Metz=]

It was the fixed purpose of the Prussians to detain him in that stronghold, and thus render practically useless to France its largest army. A siege was to be prosecuted, and an army of 150,000 men was extended around the town. The fortifications were far too strong to be taken by assault, and all depended on a close blockade. On August 31st Bazaine made an effort to break through the German lines, but was repulsed. It became now a question of how long the provisions of the French would hold out.

[=MacMahon Marches to Relieve Bazaine=]

The French emperor, who had been with Bazaine, had left his army before the battle of Mars-la-Tour, and was now with MacMahon at Chalons. Here lay an army of 125,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry. On it the Germans were advancing, in doubt as to what movement it would make, whether back towards Paris or towards Metz for the relief of Bazaine. They sought to place themselves in a position to check either. The latter movement was determined on by the French, but was carried out in a dubious and uncertain manner, the time lost giving abundant opportunity to the Germans to learn what was afoot and to prepare to prevent it. As soon as they were aware of MacMahon's intention of proceeding to Metz they made speedy preparations to prevent his relieving Bazaine. By the last days of August the army of the crown prince had reached the right bank of the Aisne, and the fourth division gained possession of the line of the Maas. On August 30th the French under General de Failly were attacked by the Germans at Beaumont and put to flight with heavy loss. It was evident that the hope of reaching Metz was at an end, and MacMahon, abandoning the attempt, concentrated his army around the frontier fortress of Sedan.

[=The French Surrounded=]

This old town stands on the right bank of the Meuse, in an angle of territory between Luxemburg and Belgium, and is surrounded by meadows, gardens, ravines, ditches and cultivated fields; the castle rising on a cliff-like eminence to the southwest of the place. MacMahon had stopped here to give his weary men a rest, not to fight, but Von Moltke decided, on observing the situation, that Sedan should be the grave-yard of the French army. "The trap is now closed, and the mouse in it," he said, with a chuckle of satisfaction.

Such proved to be the case. On September 1st the Bavarians won the village of Bazeille, after hours of bloody and desperate struggle. During this severe fight Marshal MacMahon was so seriously wounded that he was obliged to surrender the chief command, first to Ducrot, and then to General Wimpffen, a man of recognized bravery and cold calculation.

[=The Battle of Sedan=]

Fortune soon showed itself in favor of the Germans. To the northwest of the town, the North German troops invested the exits from St. Meuges and Fleigneux, and directed a fearful fire of artillery against the French forces, which, before noon, were so hemmed in the valley that only two insufficient outlets to the south and north remained open. But General Wimpffen hesitated to seize either of these routes, the open way to Illy was soon closed by the Prussian guard corps, and a murderous fire was now directed from all sides upon the French, so that, after a last energetic struggle at Floing, they gave up all attempts to force a passage, and in the afternoon beat a retreat towards Sedan. In this small town the whole army of MacMahon was collected by evening, and there prevailed in the streets and houses an unprecedented disorder and confusion, which was still further increased when the German troops from the surrounding heights began to shoot down upon the fortress, and the town took fire in several places.

That an end might be put to the prevailing misery, Napoleon now commanded General Wimpffen to capitulate. The flag of truce already waved on the gates of Sedan when Colonel Bronsart appeared, and in the name of the king of Prussia demanded the surrender of the army and fortress. He soon returned to headquarters, accompanied by the French General Reille, who presented to the king a written message from Napoleon: "As I may not die in the midst of my army, I lay my sword in the hands of your majesty." King William accepted it with an expression of sympathy for the hard fate of the emperor and of the French army which had fought so bravely under his own eyes. The conclusion of the treaty of capitulation was placed in the hands of Wimpffen, who, accompanied by General Castelnau, set out for Doncherry to negotiate with Moltke and Bismarck. No attempts, however, availed to move Moltke from his stipulation for the surrender of the whole army at discretion; he granted a short respite, but if this expired without surrender, the bombardment of the town was to begin anew.

[=Surrender of Napoleon and His Army=]

At six o'clock in the morning the capitulation was signed, and was ratified by the king at his headquarters at Vendresse (2d September). Thus the world beheld the incredible spectacle of an army of 83,000 men surrendering themselves and their weapons to the victor, and being carried off as prisoners of war to Germany. Only the officers who gave their written word of honor to take no further part in the present war with Germany were permitted to retain their arms and personal property. Probably the assurance of Napoleon, that he had sought death on the battlefield but had not found it, was literally true; at any rate, the fate of the unhappy man, bowed down as he was both by physical and mental suffering, was so solemn and tragic, that there was no room for hypocrisy, and that he had exposed himself to personal danger was admitted on all sides. Accompanied by Count Bismarck, he stopped at a small and mean-looking laborer's inn on the road to Doncherry, where, sitting down on a stone seat before the door, with Count Bismarck, he declared that he had not desired the war, but had been driven to it through the force of public opinion; and afterwards the two proceeded to the little castle of Bellevue, near Frenois, to join King William and the crown prince. A telegram to Queen Augusta thus describes the interview: "What an impressive moment was the meeting with Napoleon! He was cast down, but dignified in his bearing. I have granted him Wilhelmshöhe, near Cassel, as his residence. Our meeting took place in a little castle before the western glacis of Sedan."

[=Revolution and the Third Republic=]

The locking up of Bazaine in Metz and the capture of MacMahon's army at Sedan were fatal events to France. The struggle continued for months, but it was a fight against hope. The subsequent events of the war consisted of a double siege, that of Metz and that of Paris, with various minor sieges, and a desperate but hopeless effort of France in the field. As for the empire of Napoleon III., it was at an end. The tidings of the terrible catastrophe at Sedan filled the people with a fury that soon became revolutionary. While Jules Favre, the republican deputy, was offering a motion in the Assembly that the emperor had forfeited the crown, and that a provisional government should be established, the people were thronging the streets of Paris with cries of "Deposition! Republic!" On the 4th of September the Assembly had its final meeting. Two of its prominent members, Jules Favre and Gambetta, sustained the motion for deposition of the emperor, and it was carried after a stormy session. They then made their way to the senate-chamber, where, before a thronging audience, they proclaimed a republic and named a government for the national defence. At its head was General Trochu, military commandant at Paris. Favre was made minister of foreign affairs; Gambetta, minister of the interior; and other prominent members of the Assembly filled the remaining cabinet posts. The legislature was dissolved, the Palais de Bourbon was closed, and the Empress Eugenie quitted the Tuileries and made her escape with a few attendants to Belgium, whence she sought a refuge in England. Prince Louis Napoleon made his way to Italy, and the swarm of courtiers scattered in all directions; some faithful followers of the deposed monarch seeking the castle of Wilhelmshöhe, where the unhappy Louis Napoleon occupied as a prison the same beautiful palace and park in which his uncle Jerome Bonaparte had once passed six years in a life of pleasure. The second French Empire was at an end; the third French Republic had begun--one that had to pass through many changes and escape many dangers before it would be firmly established.

[=Jules Favre's Defiance=]

"Not a foot's breadth of our country nor a stone of our fortresses shall be surrendered," was Jules Favre's defiant proclamation to the invaders, and the remainder of the soldiers in the field were collected in Paris, and strengthened with all available reinforcements. Every person capable of bearing arms was enrolled in the national army, which soon numbered 400,000 men. There was need of haste, for the victors at Sedan were already marching upon the capital, inspired with high hopes from their previous astonishing success. They knew that Paris was strongly fortified, being encircled by powerful lines of defence, but they trusted that hunger would soon bring its garrison to terms. The same result was looked for at Metz, and at Strasburg, which was also besieged.

Thus began at three main points and several minor ones a military siege the difficulties, dangers, and hardships of which surpassed even those of the winter campaign in the Crimea. Exposed at the fore-posts to the enemy's balls, chained to arduous labor in the trenches and redoubts, and suffering from the effects of bad weather, and insufficient food and clothing, the German soldiers were compelled to undergo great privations and sufferings before the fortifications; while many fell in the frequent skirmishes and sallies, many succumbed to typhus and epidemic disease, and many returned home mutilated, or broken in health.

[=Hardships of the Conflict=]

No less painful and distressing was the condition of the besieged. While the garrison soldiers on guard were constantly compelled to face death in nocturnal sallies, or led a pitiable existence in damp huts, having inevitable surrender constantly before their eyes, and disarmament and imprisonment as the reward of all their struggles and exertions, the citizens in the towns, the women and children, were in constant danger of being shivered to atoms by the fearful shells, or of being buried under falling walls and roofs; and the poorer part of the population saw with dismay the gradual diminution of the necessaries of life, and were often compelled to pacify their hunger with the flesh of horses, and disgusting and unwholesome food.

[=Thiers and Bismarck=]

The republican government possessed only a usurped power, and none but a freely elected national assembly could decide as to the fate of the French nation. Such an assembly was therefore summoned for the l6th of October. Three members of the government--Crémieux, Fourichon, and Glais-Vizoin--were despatched before the entire blockade of the town had been effected, to Tours, to maintain communication with the provinces. An attempt was also made at the same time to induce the great powers which had not taken part in the war to organize an intervention, as hitherto only America, Switzerland, and Spain had sent official recognition. For this important and delicate mission the old statesman and historian Thiers was selected, and, in spite of his three-and-seventy years, immediately set out on the journey to London, St. Petersburg, Vienna, and Florence. Count Bismarck, however, in the name of Prussia, refused any intervention in internal affairs. In two despatches to the ambassadors of foreign courts, the chancellor declared that the war, begun by the Emperor Napoleon, had been approved by the representatives of the nation, and that thus all France was answerable for the result. Germany was obliged, therefore, to demand guarantees which should secure her in future against attack, or, at any rate, render attack more difficult. Thus a cession of territory on the part of France was laid down as the basis of a treaty of peace. The neutral powers were also led to the belief that if they fostered in the French any hope of intervention, peace would only be delayed. The mission of Thiers, therefore, yielded no useful result, while the direct negotiation which Jules Favre conducted with Bismarck proved equally unavailing.

Soon the beleaguered fortresses began to fall. On the 23d of September the ancient town of Toul, in Lorraine, was forced to capitulate, after a fearful bombardment; and on the 27th Strasburg, in danger of the terrible results of a storming, after the havoc of a dreadful artillery fire, hoisted the white flag, and surrendered on the following day. The supposed impregnable fortress of Metz held out little longer. Hunger did what cannon were incapable of doing. The successive sallies made by Bazaine proved unavailing, though, on October 7th, his soldiers fought with desperate energy, and for hours the air was full of the roar of cannon and mitrailleuse and the rattle of musketry. But the Germans withstood the attack unmoved, and the French were forced to withdraw into the town.

[=Siege and Surrender of Metz=]

Bazaine then sought to negotiate with the German leaders at Versailles, offering to take no part in the war for three months if permitted to withdraw. But Bismarck and Moltke would listen to no terms other than unconditional surrender, and these terms were finally accepted, the besieged army having reached the brink of starvation. It was with horror and despair that France learned, on the 30th of October, that the citadel of Metz, with its fortifications and arms of defence, had been yielded to the Germans, and its army of more than 150,000 men had surrendered as prisoners of war.

[=The Germans at Versailles=]

This hasty surrender at Metz, a still greater disaster to France than that of Sedan, was not emulated at Paris, which for four months held out against all the efforts of the Germans. On the investment of the great city, King William removed his headquarters to the historic palace of Versailles, setting up his homely camp-bed in the same apartments from which Louis XIV. had once issued his despotic edicts and commands. Here Count Bismarck conducted his diplomatic labors and Moltke issued his directions for the siege, which, protracted from week to week and month to month, gradually transformed the beautiful neighborhood, with its prosperous villages, superb country houses, and enchanting parks and gardens, into a scene of sadness and desolation.

[=The Siege of Paris=]

In spite of the vigorous efforts made by the commander-in-chief Trochu, both by continuous firing from the forts and by repeated sallies, to prevent Paris from being surrounded, and to force a way through the trenches, his enterprises were rendered fruitless by the watchfulness and strength of the Germans. The blockade was completely accomplished; Paris was surrounded and cut off from the outer world; even the underground telegraphs, through which communication was for a time secretly maintained with the provinces, were by degrees discovered and destroyed. But to the great astonishment of Europe, which looked on with keenly pitched excitement at the mighty struggle, the siege continued for months without any special progress being observable from without or any lessening of resistance from within. On account of the extension of the forts, the Germans were compelled to remain at such a distance that a bombardment of the town at first appeared impossible; a storming of the outer works would, moreover, be attended with such sacrifices, that the humane temper of the king revolted from such a proceeding. The guns of greater force and carrying power which were needed from Germany, could only be procured after long delay on account of the broken lines of railway. Probably also there was some hesitation on the German side to expose the beautiful city, regarded by so many as the "metropolis of civilization," to the risk of a bombardment, in which works of art, science, and a historical past would meet destruction. Nevertheless, the declamations of the French at the Vandalism of the northern barbarians met with assent and sympathy from most of the foreign powers.

[=The Energy of Resistance=]

[=Gambetta and His Work=]

[=The Southward Advance of the Germans=]

Determination and courage falsified the calculations at Versailles of a quick cessation of the resistance. The republic offered a far more energetic and determined opposition to the Prussian arms than the empire had done. The government of the national defence still declaimed with stern reiteration: "Not a foot's breadth of our country; not a stone of our fortresses!" and positively rejected all proposals of treaty based on territorial concessions. Faith in the invincibility of the republic was rooted as an indisputable dogma in the hearts of the French people. The victories and the commanding position of France from 1792 to 1799 were regarded as so entirely the necessary result of the Revolution, that a conviction prevailed that the formation of a republic, with a national army for its defence, would have an especial effect on the rest of Europe. Therefore, instead of summoning a constituent Assembly, which, in the opinion of Prussia and the other foreign powers, would alone be capable of offering security for a lasting peace, it was decided to continue the revolutionary movements, and to follow the same course which, in the years 1792 and 1793, had saved France from the coalition of the European powers--a revolutionary dictatorship such as had once been exercised by the Convention and the members of the Committee of Public Safety, must again be revived, and a youthful and hot-blooded leader was alone needed to stir up popular feeling and set it in motion. To fill such a part no one was better adapted than the advocate Gambetta, who emulated the career of the leaders of the Revolution, and whose soul glowed with a passionate ardor of patriotism. In order to create for himself a free sphere of action, and to initiate some vigorous measure in place of the well-rounded phrases and eloquent proclamations of his colleagues Trochu and Jules Favre, he quitted the capital in an air-balloon and entered into communication with the Government delegation at Tours, which through him soon obtained a fresh impetus. His next most important task was the liberation of the capital from the besieging German army, and the expulsion of the enemy from the "sacred" soil of France. For this purpose he summoned, with the authority of a minister of war, all persons capable of bearing arms up to forty years of age to take active service, and despatched them into the field; he imposed war-taxes, and terrified the tardy and refractory with threats of punishment. Every force was put in motion; all France was transformed into a great camp. A popular war was now to take the place of a soldiers' war, and what the soldiers had failed to effect must be accomplished by the people; France must be saved, and the world freed from despotism. To promote this object, the whole of France, with the exception of Paris, was divided into four general governments, the headquarters of the different governors being Lille, Le Mans, Bourges, and Besançon. Two armies, from the Loire and from the Somme, were to march simultaneously towards Paris, and, aided by the sallies of Trochu and his troops, were to drive the enemy from the country. Energetic attacks were now attempted from time to time, in the hope that when the armies of relief arrived from the provinces, it might be possible to effect a coalition; but all these efforts were constantly repulsed after a hot struggle by the besieging German troops. At the same time, during the month of October, the territory between the Oise and the Lower Seine was scoured by reconnoitering troops, under Prince Albrecht, the south-east district was protected by a Würtemberg detachment through the successful battle near Nogent on the Seine, while a division of the third army advanced towards the south accompanied by two cavalry divisions. A more unfortunate circumstance, however, for the Parisians was the cutting off of all communication with the outer world, for the Germans had destroyed the telegraphs. But even this obstacle was overcome by the inventive genius of the French. By means of pigeon letter-carriers and air-balloons, they were always able to maintain a partial though one-sided and imperfect communication with the provinces, and the aërostatic art was developed and brought to perfection on this occasion in a manner which had never before been considered possible.

[=Gambetta's Army of Defence=]

The whole of France, and especially the capital, was already in a state of intense excitement when the news of the capitulation of Metz came to add fresh fuel to the flame. Outside the walls Gambetta was using heroic efforts to increase his forces, bringing Bedouin horsemen from Africa and inducing the stern old revolutionist Garibaldi to come to his aid; and Thiers was opening fresh negotiations for a truce. Inside the walls the Red Republic raised the banners of insurrection and attempted to drive the government of national defence from power.

[=The Negotiations Are Broken Off=]

This effort of the dregs of revolution to inaugurate a reign of terror failed, and the provisional government felt so elated with its victory that it determined, to continue at the head of affairs and to oppose the calling of a chamber of national representatives. The members proclaimed oblivion for what had passed, broke off the negotiations for a truce begun by Thiers, and demanded a vote of confidence. The indomitable spirit shown by the French people did not, on the other hand, inspire the Germans with a very lenient or conciliatory temper. Bismarck declared in a despatch the reasons why the negotiations had failed: "The incredible demand that we should surrender the fruits of all our efforts during the last two months, and should go back to the conditions which existed at the beginning of the blockade of Paris, only affords fresh proof that in Paris pretexts are sought for refusing the nation the right of election." Thiers mournfully declared the failure of his undertaking, but in Paris the popular voting resulted in a ten-fold majority in favor of the government and the policy of postponement.

[=Famine and Misery in Paris=]

After the breaking off of the negotiations, the world anticipated some energetic action towards the besieged city. The efforts of the enemy were, however, principally directed to drawing the iron girdle still tighter, enclosing the giant city more and more closely, and cutting off every means of communication, so that at last a surrender might be brought about by the stern necessity of starvation. That this object would not be accomplished as speedily as at Metz, that the city of pleasure, enjoyment, and luxury would withstand a siege of four months, had never been contemplated for a moment. It is true that, as time went on, all fresh meat disappeared from the market, with the exception of horse-flesh; that white bread, on which Parisians place such value, was replaced by a baked compound of meal and bran; that the stores of dried and salted food began to decline, until at last rats, dogs, cats, and even animals from the zoological gardens were prepared for consumption at restaurants. Yet, to the amazement of the world, all these miseries, hardships, and sufferings were courageously borne, nocturnal watch was kept, sallies were undertaken, and cold, hunger, and wretchedness of all kinds were endured with an indomitable steadfastness and heroism. The courage of the besieged Parisians was also animated by the hope that the military forces in the provinces would hasten to the aid of the hard-pressed capital, and that therefore an energetic resistance would afford the rest of France sufficient time for rallying all its forces, and at the same time exhibit an elevating example. In the carrying out of this plan, neither Trochu nor Gambetta was wanting in the requisite energy and circumspection. The former organized sallies from time to time, in order to reconnoitre and discover whether the army of relief was on its way from the provinces; the latter exerted all his powers to bring the Loire army up to the Seine. But both erred in undervaluing the German war forces; they did not believe that the hostile army would be able to keep Paris in a state of blockade, and at the same time engage the armies on the south and north, east and west. They had no conception of the hidden, inexhaustible strength of the Prussian army organization--of a nation in arms which could send forth constant reinforcements of battalions and recruits, and fresh bodies of disciplined troops to fill the gaps left in the ranks by the wounded and fallen. There could be no doubt as to the termination of this terrible war, or the final victory of German energy and discipline.

[=The Fall of the Fortresses=]

Throughout the last months of the eventful year 1870, the northern part of France, from the Jura to the Channel, from the Belgian frontier to the Loire, presented the aspect of a wide battlefield. Of the troops that had been set free by the capitulation of Metz, a part remained behind in garrison, another division marched northwards in order to invest the provinces of Picardy and Normandy, to restore communication with the sea, and to bar the road to Paris, and a third division joined the second army, whose commander-in-chief, Prince Frederick Charles, set up his headquarters at Troyes. Different detachments were despatched against the northern fortresses, and by degrees Soissons, Verdun, Thionville, Ham, where Napoleon had once been a prisoner, Pfalzburg and Montmedy, all fell into the hands of the Prussians, thus opening to them a free road for the supplies of provisions. The garrison troops were all carried off as prisoners to Germany; the towns--most of them in a miserable condition--fell into the enemy's hands; many houses were mere heaps of ruins and ashes, and the larger part of the inhabitants were suffering severely from poverty, hunger and disease.

[=Guerilla Warfare in the East=]

The greatest obstacles were encountered in the northern part of Alsace and the mountainous districts of the Vosges and the Jura, where irregular warfare, under Garibaldi and other leaders, developed to a dangerous extent, while the fortress of Langres afforded a safe retreat to the guerilla bands. Lyons and the neighboring town of St. Etienne became hotbeds of excitement, the red flag being raised and a despotism of terror and violence established. Although many divergent elements made up this army of the east, all were united in hatred of the Germans and the desire to drive the enemy back across the Rhine.

Thus, during the cold days of November and December, when General Von Treskow began the siege of the important fortress of Belfort, there burst forth a war around Gray and Dijon marked by the greatest hardships, perils and privations to the invaders. Here the Germans had to contend with an enemy much superior in number, and to defend themselves against continuous firing from houses, cellars, woods and thickets, while the impoverished soil yielded a miserable subsistence, and the broken railroads cut off freedom of communication and of reinforcement.

[=In the Jura District=]

The whole of the Jura district, intersected by hilly roads as far as the plateau of Langres, where, in the days of Cæsar, the Romans and Gauls were wont to measure their strength with each other, formed during November and December the scene of action of numerous encounters which, in conjunction with sallies from the garrison at Belfort, inflicted severe injury on Werder's troops. Dijon had repeatedly to be evacuated; and the nocturnal attack at Chattillon, 20th November, by Garibaldians, when one hundred and twenty Landwehrmen and Hussars perished miserably, and seventy horses were lost, affording a striking proof of the dangers to which the German army was exposed in this hostile country; although the revolutionary excesses of the turbulent population of the south diverted to a certain extent the attention of the National Guard, who were compelled to turn their weapons against an internal enemy.

[=Gambetta and the Army of the Loire=]

By means of the revolutionary dictatorship of Gambetta the whole French nation was drawn into the struggle, the annihilation of the enemy being represented as a national duty, and the war assuming a steadily more violent character. The indefatigable patriot continued his exertions to increase the army and unite the whole south and west against the enemy, hoping to bring the army of the Loire to such dimensions that it would be able to expel the invaders from the soil of France. But these raw recruits were poorly fitted to cope with the highly disciplined Germans, and their early successes were soon followed by defeat and discouragement, while the hopes entertained by the Paris garrison of succor from the south vanished as news of the steady progress of the Germans were received.

[=The Bombardment of Paris=]

During these events the war operations before Paris continued uninterruptedly. Moltke had succeeded, in spite of the difficulties of transport, in procuring an immense quantity of ammunition, and the long-delayed bombardment of Paris was ready to begin. Having stationed with all secrecy twelve batteries with seventy-six guns around Mont Avron, on Christmas-day the firing was directed with such success against the fortified eminences, that even in the second night the French, after great losses, evacuated the important position, the "key of Paris," which was immediately taken possession of by the Saxons. Terror and dismay spread throughout the distracted city when the eastern forts, Rosny, Nogent and Noisy, were stormed amid a tremendous volley of firing. Vainly did Trochu endeavor to rouse the failing courage of the National Guard; vainly did he assert that the government of the national defence would never consent to the humiliation of a capitulation; his own authority had already waned; the newspapers already accused him of incapacity and treachery, and began to cast every aspersion on the men who had presumptuously seized the government, and yet were not in a position to effect the defence of the capital and the country. After the new year the bombardment of the southern forts began, and the terror in the city daily increased, though the violence of the radical journals kept in check any hint of surrender or negotiation. Yet in spite of fog and snow-storms the bombardment was systematically continued, and with every day the destructive effect of the terrible missiles grew more pronounced.

[=The Last Great Sally from Paris=]

Trochu was blamed for having undertaken only small sallies, which could have no result. The commander-in-chief ventured no opposition to the party of action. With the consent of the mayors of the twenty arrondissements of Paris a council of war was held. The threatening famine, the firing of the enemy, and the excitement prevailing among the adherents of the red republic rendered a decisive step necessary. Consequently, on the 19th of January, a great sally was decided on, and the entire armed forces of the capital were summoned to arms. Early in the morning, a body of 100,000 men marched in the direction of Meudon, Sevres and St. Cloud for the decisive conflict. The left wing was commanded by General Vinoy, the right by Ducrot, while Trochu from the watch-tower directed the entire struggle. With great courage Vinoy dashed forward with his column of attack towards the fifth army corps of General Kirchbach, and succeeded in capturing the Montretout entrenchment, through the superior number of his troops, and in holding it for a time. But when Ducrot, delayed by the barricades in the streets, failed to come to his assistance at the appointed time, the attack was driven back after seven hours' fierce fighting by the besieging troops. Having lost 7,000 dead and wounded, the French in the evening beat a retreat, which almost resembled a flight. On the following day Trochu demanded a truce, that the fallen National Guards, whose bodies strewed the battlefield, might be interred. The victors, too, had to render the last rites to many a brave soldier. Thirty-nine officers and six hundred and sixteen soldiers were given in the list of the slain.

[=A Truce at Paris=]

Entire confidence had been placed by the Parisians in the great sally. When the defeat, therefore, became known in its full significance, when the number of the fallen was found to be far greater even than had been stated in the first accounts, a dull despair took possession of the famished city, which next broke forth into violent abuse against Trochu, "the traitor." Capitulation now seemed imminent; but as the commander-in-chief had declared that he would never countenance such a disgrace, he resigned his post to Vinoy. Threatened by bombardment from without, terrified within by the pale spectre of famine, paralysed and distracted by the violent dissensions among the people, and without prospect of effective aid from the provinces, what remained to the proud capital but to desist from a conflict the continuation of which only increased the unspeakable misery, without the smallest hope of deliverance? Gradually, therefore, there grew up a resolution to enter into negotiations with the enemy; and it was the minister Jules Favre, who had been foremost with the cry of "no surrender" four months before, who was now compelled to take the first step to deliver his country from complete ruin. It was probably the bitterest hour in the life of the brave man, who loved France and liberty with such a sincere affection, when he was conducted through the German outposts to his interview with Bismarck at Versailles. He brought the proposal for a convention, on the strength of which the garrison was to be permitted to retire with military honors to a part of France not hitherto invested, on promising to abstain for several months from taking part in the struggle. But such conditions were positively refused at the Prussian headquarters, and a surrender was demanded as at Sedan and Metz. Completely defeated, the minister returned to Paris. At a second meeting on the following day, it was agreed that from the 27th, at twelve o'clock at night, the firing on both sides should be discontinued. This was the preliminary to the conclusion of a three weeks' truce, to await the summons of a National Assembly, with which peace might be negotiated.

[=Bourbaki's Army and the Siege of Belfort=]

[=The Harsh Terms of Peace=]

The war was at an end so far as Paris was concerned. But it continued in the south, where frequent defeat failed to depress Gambetta's indomitable energy, and where new troops constantly replaced those put to rout. Garibaldi, at Dijon, succeeded in doing what the French had not done during the war, in the capture of a Prussian banner. But the progress of the Germans soon rendered his position untenable, and, finding his exertions unavailing, he resigned his command and retired to his island of Caprera. Two disasters completed the overthrow of France. Bourbaki's army, 85,000 strong, became shut in, with scanty food and ammunition, among the snow-covered valleys of the Jura, and to save the disgrace of capitulation it took refuge on the neutral soil of Switzerland; and the strong fortress of Belfort, which had been defended with the utmost courage against its besiegers, finally yielded, with the stipulation that the brave garrison should march out with the honors of war. Nothing now stood in the way of an extension of the truce. On the suggestion of Jules Favre, the National Assembly elected a commission of fifteen members, which was to aid the chief of the executive, and his ministers, Picard and Favre, in the negotiations for peace. That cessions of territory and indemnity of war expenses would have to be conceded had long been acknowledged in principle; but protracted and excited discussions took place as to the extent of the former and the amount of the latter, while the demanded entry of the German troops into Paris met with vehement opposition. But Count Bismarck resolutely insisted on the cession of Alsace and German Lorraine, including Metz and Diedenhofen. Only with difficulty were the Germans persuaded to separate Belfort from the rest of Lorraine, and leave it still in the possession of the French. In respect to the expenses of the war, the sum of five milliards of francs ($1,000,000,000) was agreed upon, of which the first milliard was to be paid in the year 1871, and the rest in a stated period. The stipulated entry into Paris also--so bitter to the French national pride--was only partially carried out; the western side only of the city was to be traversed in the march of the Prussian troops, and again evacuated in two days. On the basis of these conditions, the preliminaries of the Peace of Versailles were concluded on the 26th of February between the Imperial Chancellor and Jules Favre. Intense excitement prevailed when the terms of the treaty became known; they were dark days in the annals of French history. But in spite of the opposition of the extreme Republican party, led by Quinet and Victor Hugo, the Assembly recognized by an overpowering majority the necessity for the Peace, and the preliminaries were accepted by 546 to 107 votes. Thus ended the mighty war between France and Germany--a war which has had few equals in the history of the world.

[=The Glory of Germany=]

Had King William received no indemnity in cash or territory from France, he must still have felt himself amply repaid for the cost of the brief but sanguinary war, for it brought him a power and prestige with which the astute diplomatist Bismarck had long been seeking to invest his name. Political changes move slowly in times of peace, rapidly in times of war. The whole of Germany, with the exception of Austria, had sent troops to the conquest of France, and every state, north and south alike, shared in the pride and glory of the result. South and North Germany had marched side by side to the battlefield, every difference of race or creed forgotten, and the honor of the German fatherland the sole watchword. The time seemed to have arrived to close the breach between north and south, and obliterate the line of the Main, which had divided the two sections. North Germany was united under the leadership of Prussia, and the honor in which all alike shared now brought South Germany into line for a similar union.

The first appeal in this direction came from Baden. Later in the year plenipotentiaries sought Versailles from the kingdoms of Bavaria and Wurtemberg and the grand duchies of Baden and Hesse, their purpose being to arrange for and define the conditions of union between the South and the North German states. For weeks this momentous question filled all Germany with excitement and public opinion was in a state of high tension. The scheme of union was by no means universally approved, there being a large party in opposition, but the majority in its favor in Chambers proved sufficient to enable Bismarck to carry out his plan.

[=Restoration of the Germany Empire=]

This was no less than to restore the German Empire, or rather to establish a new empire of Germany, in which Austria, long at the head of the former empire, should have no part, the imperial dignity being conferred upon the venerable King William of Prussia, a monarch whose birth dated back to the eighteenth century, and who had lived throughout the Napoleonic wars.

Near the close of 1870 Bismarck concluded treaties with the ambassadors of the Southern States, in which they agreed to accept the constitution of the North German Union. These treaties were ratified, after some opposition from the "patriots" of the lower house, by the legislatures of the four states involved. The next step in the proceeding was a suggestion from the king of Bavaria to the other princes that the imperial crown of Germany should be offered to King William of Prussia.

[=The Crowning of William I. at Versailles=]

When the North German Diet at Berlin had given its consent to the new constitution, congratulatory address was despatched to the Prussian monarch at Versailles. Thirty members of the Diet, with the president Simson at their head, announced to the aged hero-king the nation's wish that he should accept the new dignity. He replied to the deputation in solemn audience that he accepted the imperial dignity which the German nation and its princes had offered him. On the 1st of January, 1871, the new constitution was to come into operation. The solemn assumption of the imperial office did not take place, however, until the 18th of January, the day on which, one hundred and seventy years before, the new emperor's ancestor, Frederick I., had placed the Prussian crown on his head at Königsberg, and thus laid the basis of the growing greatness of his house. It was an ever-memorable coincidence, that in the superb-mirrored hall of the Versailles palace, where, since the days of Richelieu, so many plans had been concerted for the humiliation of Germany, King William should now proclaim himself German Emperor. After the reading of the imperial proclamation to the German people by Count Bismarck, the Grand Duke led a cheer, in which the whole assembly joined amid the singing of national hymns. Thus the important event had taken place which again summoned the German Empire to life, and made over the imperial crown with renewed splendor to another royal house. Barbarossa's old legend, that the dominion of the empire was, after long tribulation, to pass from the Hohenstaufen to the Hohenzollern, was now fulfilled; the dream long aspired after by German youth had now become a reality and a living fact.

The tidings of the conclusion of peace with France, whose preliminaries were completed at Frankfurt on the 10th of May, 1871, filled all Germany with joy, and peace festivals on the most splendid scale extended from end to end of the new empire, in all parts of which an earnest spirit of patriotism was shown, while Germans from all regions of the world sent home expressions of warm sympathy with the new national organization of their fatherland.

[=A Decade of Remarkable Changes=]

The decade just completed had been one of remarkable political changes in Europe, unsurpassed in significance during any other period of equal length. The temporal dominion of the pope had vanished and all Italy had been united under the rule of a single king. The empire of France had been overthrown and a republic established in its place, while that country had sunk greatly in prominence among the European states. Austria had been utterly defeated in war, had lost its last hold on Italy and its position of influence among the German states. And all the remaining German lands had united into a great and powerful empire, of such extraordinary military strength that the surrounding nations looked on in doubt, full of vague fears of trouble from this new and potent power introduced into their midst.

Bismarck, however, showed an earnest desire to maintain international peace and good relations, seeking to win the confidence of foreign governments, while at the same time improving and increasing that military force which had been proved to be so mighty an engine of war.

[=The Legislature of the Empire=]

In the constitution of the new empire two legislative bodies were provided for, the Bundesrath or Federal Council, whose members are annually appointed by the respective state governments, and the Reichstag or Representative body, whose members are elected by universal suffrage for a period of three years, an annual session being required. Germany, therefore, in its present organization, is practically a federal union of states, each with its own powers of internal government, and with a common legislature approximating to our Senate and House of Representatives.

[=The Power of the Catholic Church in Prussia=]

The remaining incidents of Bismarck's remarkable career may be briefly given. It consisted largely in a struggle with the Catholic Church organization, which had attained to great power in Germany, and was aggressive to an extent that roused the vigorous opposition of the chancellor of the empire, who was not willing to acknowledge any power in Germany other than that of the emperor.

King Frederick William IV., the predecessor of the reigning monarch, had made active efforts to strengthen the Catholic Church in Prussia, its clergy gaining greater privileges in that Protestant state than they possessed in any of the Catholic states. They had established everywhere in North Germany their congregations and monasteries, and, by their control of public education, seemed in a fairway to eventually make Catholicism supreme in the empire.

[=The New Laws Against Church Power=]

This state of affairs Bismarck set himself energetically to reform. The minister of religious affairs was forced to resign, and his place was taken by Falk, a sagacious statesman, who introduced a new school law, bringing the whole educational system under state control, and carefully regulating the power of the clergy over religious and moral education. This law met with such violent opposition that all the personal influence of Bismarck and Falk were needed to carry it, and it gave such deep offence to the pope that he refused to receive the German ambassador. He declared the Falk law invalid, and the German bishops united in a declaration against the chancellor. Bismarck retorted by a law expelling the Jesuits from the empire.

In 1873 the state of affairs became so embittered that the rights and liberties of the citizens seemed to need protection against a priesthood armed with extensive powers of discipline and excommunication. In consequence Bismarck introduced, and by his eloquence and influence carried, what were known as the May Laws. These provided for the scientific education of the Catholic clergy, the confirmation of clerical appointments by the state, and a tribunal to consider and revise the conduct of the bishops.

[=The Triumph of the Church=]

These enactments precipitated a bitter contest between church and state, while the pope declared the May Laws null and void and threatened with excommunication all priests who should submit to them. The state retorted by withdrawing its financial support from the Catholic church and abolishing those clauses of the constitution under which the church claimed independence of the state. Pope Pius IX. died in 1878, and on the election of Leo XIII. attempts were made to reconcile the existing differences. The reconciliation was a victory for the church, the May Laws ceasing to be operative, the church revenues being restored and the control of the clergy over education in considerable measure regained. New concessions were granted in 1886 and 1887, and Bismarck felt himself beaten in his long conflict with his clerical opponents, who had proved too strong and deeply entrenched for him.

[=The Socialists and the Insurance Laws=]

Economic questions became also prominent, the revenues of the empire requiring some change in the system of free trade and the adoption of protective duties, while the railroads were acquired by the various states of the empire. Meanwhile the rapid growth of socialism excited apprehension, which was added to when two attempts were made on the life of the emperor. These were attributed to the Socialists, and severe laws for the suppression of socialism were enacted. Bismarck also sought to cut the ground from under the feet of the Socialists by an endeavor to improve the condition of the working classes. In 1881 laws were passed compelling employers to insure their workmen in case of sickness or accident, and in 1888 a system of compulsory insurance against death and old age was introduced. None of these measures, however, checked the growth of socialism, which very actively continued.

In 1882 a meeting was arranged by the chancellor between the emperors of Germany, Russia, and Austria, which was looked upon in Europe as a political alliance. In 1878 Russia drifted somewhat apart from Germany, but in the following year an alliance of defence and offence was concluded with Austria, and a similar alliance at a later date with Italy. This, which still continues, is known as the Triple Alliance. In 1877 Bismarck announced his intention to retire, being worn out with the great labors of his position. To this the emperor, who felt that his state rested on the shoulders of the "Iron Chancellor," would not listen, though he gave him indefinite leave of absence.

On March 9, 1888, Emperor William died. He was ninety years of age, having been born in 1797. He was succeeded by his son Frederick, then incurably ill from a cancerous affection of the throat, which carried him to the grave after a reign of ninety-nine days. His oldest son, William, succeeded on June 15, 1888, as William II.

[=William II. and the Dismissal of Bismarck=]

The liberal era which was looked for under Frederick was checked by his untimely death, his son at once returning to the policy of William I. and Bismarck. He proved to be far more positive and dictatorial in disposition than his grandfather, with decided and vigorous views of his own, which soon brought him into conflict with the equally positive chancellor. The result was a rupture with Bismarck, and his dismissal from the premiership in 1890. The young emperor subsequently devoted himself in a large measure to the increase of the army and navy, a policy which brought him into frequent conflicts with the Reichstag, whose rapidly growing socialistic membership was in strong opposition to this development of militarism.

The old statesman, to whom Germany owed so much, was deeply aggrieved by this lack of gratitude on the part of the self-opinionated young emperor. Subsequently a reconciliation took place. But the political career of the great Bismarck was at an end, and he died on July 30, 1898. It is an interesting coincidence that almost at the same time died the equally great, but markedly different, statesman of England, William Ewart Gladstone. Count Cavour, the third great European statesman of the last half of the nineteenth century, had completed his work and passed away nearly forty years before.

[=The Development of the German Army=]

The career of William II. has been one of much interest and some alarm to the other nations of Europe. His eagerness for the development of the army and navy, and the energy with which he pushed forward its organization and sought to add to its strength, seemed significant of warlike intentions, and there was dread that this energetic young monarch might break the peace of Europe, if only to prove the irresistible strength of the military machine he had formed. But as years went on the apprehensions to which his early career and expressions gave rise were quieted, and the fear that he would plunge Europe into war vanished. The army and navy began to appear rather a costly plaything of the active young man than an engine of destruction, while it tended in considerable measure to the preservation of peace by rendering Germany a power dangerous to go to war with.

The speeches with which the emperor began his reign showed an exaggerated sense of the imperial dignity, though his later career indicated far more judgment and good sense than the early display of overweening self-importance promised, and the views of William II. now command far more respect than they did at first. He has shown himself a man of exuberant energy. Despite a permanent weakness of his left arm and a serious affection of the ear, he early became a skilful horseman and an untiring hunter, as well as an enthusiastic yachtsman, and there are few men in the empire more active and enterprising to-day than the Kaiser.

[=State Socialism=]

A principal cause of the break between William and Bismarck was the system of partial state socialism established by him, of which the old chancellor strongly disapproved. This was a system of compulsory old age insurance, through which workmen and their employers--aided by the state--were obliged to provide for the support of artisans after a certain age. The system seems to have worked satisfactorily, but socialism of a more radical kind has grown in the empire far more rapidly than the emperor has approved of, and he has vigorously, though unsuccessfully, endeavored to prevent its increase. Another of his favorite measures, a religious education bill, he was obliged to withdraw on account of the opposition it excited. On more than one occasion he has come into sharp conflict with the Reichstag concerning increased taxation for the army and navy, and a strong party against his autocratic methods has sprung up, and has forced him more than once to recede from warmly-cherished measures.

[=Constitution of the German Empire=]

It may be of interest here to say something concerning the organization of the existing German empire. The constitution of this empire, as adopted April 16, 1871, proposes to "form an eternal union for the protection of the realm and the care of the welfare of the German people," and places the supreme direction of military and political affairs in the King of Prussia, under the title of Deutscher Kaiser (German emperor). The war-making powers of the emperor, however, are restricted, since he is obliged to obtain the consent of the Bundesrath (the Federal Council) before he can declare war otherwise than for the defence of the realm. His authority as emperor, in fact, is much less than that which he exercises as King of Prussia, since the imperial legislature is independent of him, he having no power of veto over the laws passed by it.

This legislature consists of two bodies, the Bundesrath, representing the states of the union, whose members, 58 in number, are chosen for each session by the several state governments; and the Reichstag, representing the people, whose members, 397 in number, are elected by universal suffrage for periods of five years. The German union, as now constituted, comprises four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, three cities, and the Reichsland of Alsace-Lorraine; twenty-six separate states in all. It includes all the German peoples with the exception of those of Austria.

[=The Progress of Germany=]

The progress of Germany within the century under review has been very great. The population of the states of the empire, 24,831,000 at the end of the Napoleonic wars, is now over 52,000,000, having more than doubled in number. The wealth of the country has grown in a far greater ratio, and Germany to-day is the most active manufacturing nation on the continent of Europe. Agriculture has similarly been greatly developed, and one of its products, the sugar beet, has become a principal raw material of manufacture, the production of beet-root sugar having increased enormously. The commerce of the empire has similarly augmented, it having become one of the most active commercial nations of the earth. Its imports, considerable in quantity, consist largely of raw materials and food stuffs, while it vies with Great Britain and the United States in the quantity of finished products sent abroad. In short, Germany has taken its place to-day as one of the most energetic of productive and commercial nations, and its wealth and importance have increased correspondingly.

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XV. Gladstone, the Apostle of Liberalism in England

[=Gladstone's First Political Address=]

It is a fact of much interest, as showing the growth of the human mind, that William Ewart Gladstone, the great advocate of English Liberalism, made his first political speech in vigorous opposition to the Reform Bill of 1831. He was then a student at Oxford University, but this boyish address had such an effect upon his hearers, that Bishop Wordsworth felt sure the speaker "would one day rise to be Prime Minister of England." This prophetic utterance may be mated with another one, by Archdeacon Denison, who said: "I have just heard the best speech I ever heard in my life, by Gladstone, against the Reform Bill. But, mark my words, that man will one day be a Liberal, for he argued against the Bill on liberal ground."

[=Gladstone in Parliament and the Cabinet=]

Both these far-seeing men hit the mark. Gladstone became Prime Minister and the leader of the Liberal Party in England. Yet he had been reared as a Conservative, and for many years he marched under the banner of Conservatism. His political career began in the first Reform Parliament, in January, 1833. Two years afterward he was made an under-secretary in Sir Robert Peel's Cabinet. It was under the same Premier that he first became a full member of the Cabinet, in 1845, as Secretary of State for the Colonies. He was still a Tory in home politics, but had become a Liberal in his commercial ideas, and was Peel's right-hand man in carrying out his great commercial policy.

[=The Letters from Naples=]

The repeal of the Corn-laws was the work for which his Cabinet had been formed, and Gladstone, as the leading Free-trader in the Tory ranks, was called to it. As for Cobden, the apostle of Free-trade, Gladstone admired him immensely. "I do not know," he said in later years, "that there is in any period a man whose public career and life were nobler or more admirable. Of course, I except Washington. Washington, to my mind, is the purest figure in history." As an advocate of Free-trade Gladstone first came into connection with another noble figure, that of John Bright, who was to remain associated with him during most of his career. In 1857 he first took rank as one of the great moral forces of modern times. In that year he visited Naples, where he saw the barbarous treatment of political prisoners under the government of the infamous King Bomba, and described them in letters whose indignation was breathed in such tremendous tones that England was stirred to its depths and all Europe awakened. These thrilling epistles gave the cause of Italian freedom an impetus that had much to do with its subsequent success, and gained for Gladstone the warmest veneration of patriotic Italians.

[=First Contest Between Gladstone and Disraeli=]

In 1852 he first came into opposition with the man against whom he was to be pitted during the remainder of his career, Benjamin Disraeli, who had made himself a power in Parliament, and in that year became Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Derby's Cabinet and leader of the House of Commons. The revenue Budget introduced by him showed a sad lack of financial ability, and called forth sharp criticisms, to which he replied in a speech made up of scoffs, gibes and biting sarcasms, so daring and audacious in character as almost to intimidate the House. As he sat down Mr. Gladstone rose and launched forth into an oration which became historic. He gave voice to that indignation which lay suppressed beneath the cowed feeling which for the moment the Chancellor of the Exchequer's performance had left among his hearers. In a few minutes the House was wildly cheering the intrepid champion who had rushed into the breach, and when Mr. Gladstone concluded, having torn to shreds the proposals of the Budget, a majority followed him into the division lobby, and Mr. Disraeli found his government beaten by nineteen votes. Such was the first great encounter between the two rivals.

Lord Derby resigned at once, and politics were plunged into a condition of the wildest excitement and confusion. Mr. Gladstone was the butt of Protectionist execration. He was near being thrown out of the window at the Carlton Club by twenty extreme Tories, who, coming upstairs after dinner, found him alone in the drawing-room. They did not quite go this length, though they threatened to do so, but contented themselves with insulting him.

In the Cabinet that followed, headed by Lord Aberdeen, Gladstone succeeded Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer, a position in which he was to make a great mark. In April, 1853, he introduced his first Budget, a marvel of ingenious statesmanship, in its highly successful effort to equalize taxation. It remitted various taxes which had pressed hard upon the poor and restricted business, and replaced them by applying the succession duty to real estate, increasing the duty on spirits, and extending the income tax. The latter Gladstone spoke of as an emergency tax, only to be applied in times of national danger, and presented a plan to extinguish it in 1860. His plan failed to work. Nearly fifty years have passed since then, and the income tax still remains, seemingly a fixed element of the British revenue system.

[=Gladstone's Great Budget Speech=]

Taken altogether, and especially in its expedients to equalize taxation, this first Budget of Mr. Gladstone may be justly called the greatest of the century. The speech in which it was introduced and expounded created an extraordinary impression on the House and the country. For the first time in Parliament figures were made as interesting as a fairy tale; the dry bones of statistics were invested with a new and potent life, and it was shown how the yearly balancing of the national accounts might be directed by and made to promote the profoundest and most fruitful principles of statesmanship. With such lucidity and picturesqueness was this financial oratory rolled forth that the dullest intellect could follow with pleasure the complicated scheme; and for five hours the House of Commons sat as if it were under the sway of a magician's wand. When Mr. Gladstone resumed his seat, it was felt that the career of the coalition Ministry was assured by the genius that was discovered in its Chancellor of the Exchequer.

[=Gladstone's Powers as an Orator=]

It was, indeed, to Gladstone's remarkable oratorical powers that much of his success as a statesman was due. No man of his period was his equal in swaying and convincing his hearers. His rich and musical voice, his varied and animated gestures, his impressive and vigorous delivery, great fluency, and wonderful precision of statement, gave him a power over an audience which few men of the century have enjoyed. His sentences, indeed, were long and involved, growing more so as his years advanced, but their fine choice of words, rich rhetoric, and eloquent delivery carried away all that heard him, as did his deep earnestness, and intense conviction of the truth of his utterances.

We must pass rapidly over a number of years of Gladstone's career, through most of which he continued to serve as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and to amaze and delight the country by the financial reforms effected in his annual Budgets. Between 1853 and 1866 those reforms represented a decrease in the weight of the burden of the national revenue amounting to £13,000,000.

Meanwhile his Liberalism had been steadily growing, and reached its culmination in 1865, when the great Tory university of Oxford, which he had long represented, rejected him as its member. At once he offered himself as a candidate for South Lancashire, in which his native place was situated, saying, in the opening of his speech at Manchester: "At last, my friends, I am come among you; to use an expression which has become very famous and is not likely to be forgotten, 'I am come among you unmuzzled.'"

[=Gladstone the Liberal Leader of the House=]

Unmuzzled he was, as his whole future career was to show. Oxford had, in a measure, clipped his wings. Now he was free to give the fullest expression to his liberal faith, and to stand before the country as the great apostle of reform. In 1866 he became, for the first time in his career, leader of the House of Commons--Lord Russel, the Prime Minister, being in the House of Lords. Many of his friends feared for him in this difficult position; but the event proved that they had no occasion for alarm, he showing himself one of the most successful leaders the House had ever had.

[=The Suffrage Reform Bill=]

His first important duty in this position was to introduce the new suffrage Reform Bill, a measure to extend the franchise in counties and boroughs that would have added about 400,000 voters to the electorate. In the debate that followed Gladstone and Disraeli were again pitted against each other in a grand oratorical contest. Disraeli taunted him with his youthful speech at Oxford against the Reform Bill of 1831. Gladstone replied in a burst of vigorous eloquence, in which he scored his opponent for lingering in a conservatism from which the speaker gloried in having been strong enough to break. He and the Cabinet were pledged to stand or fall with the Bill. But, if it fell, the principle of right and justice which it involved would not fall. It was sure to survive and triumph in the future. He ended with this stirring prediction:

"You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side. The great social forces which move onwards in their might and majesty, and which the tumult of our debates does not for a moment impede or disturb, those great social forces are against you: they are marshalled on our side; and the banner which we now carry into this fight, though perhaps at some moment it may droop over our sinking heads, yet it soon again will float in the eye of Heaven, and it will be borne by the firm hands of the united people of the three kingdoms, perhaps not to an easy, but to a certain, and to a not far distant, victory."

[=England Agitated on Reform=]

Disraeli and his party won. The Bill was defeated. But its defeat roused the people almost as they had been roused in 1832. A formidable riot broke out in London. Ten thousand people marched in procession past Gladstone's residence, singing odes in honor of "the People's William." There were demonstrations in his favor and in support of the Bill throughout the country. The agitation continued during the winter, its fire fed by the eloquence of another of the great orators of the century, the "tribune of the people," John Bright. This distinguished man and powerful public speaker, through all his life a strenuous advocate of moral reform and political progress, had begun his parliamentary career as an advocate of the Reform Bill of 1831-32. He now became one of the great leaders in the new campaign, and through his eloquence and that of Gladstone the force of public opinion rose to such a height that the new Derby-Disraeli ministry found itself obliged to bring in a Bill similar to that which it had worked so hard to overthrow.

And now a striking event took place. The Tory Reform Bill was satisfactory to Gladstone in its general features, but he proposed many improvements--lodger franchise, educational and savings-bank franchises, enlargement of the redistribution of seats, etc.--every one of which was yielded in committee, until, as one lord remarked, nothing of the original Bill remained but the opening word, "Whereas." This bill, really the work of Gladstone, and more liberal than the one which had been defeated, was passed, and Toryism, in the very success of its measure, suffered a crushing defeat. To Gladstone, as the people perceived, their right to vote was due.

[=Disraeli Becomes Prime Minister=]

But Disraeli was soon to attain to the exalted office for which he had long been striving. In February, 1868, failing health caused Lord Derby to resign, and Disraeli was asked to form a new administration. Thus the "Asian Mystery," as he had been entitled, reached the summit of his ambition, in becoming Prime Minister of England.

[=Gladstone is Made Prime Minister=]

He was not to hold this position long. Gladstone was to reach the same high eminence before the year should end. Disraeli's government, beginning in February, 1868, was defeated on the question of the disestablishment of the Irish Church; an appeal to the country resulted in a large Liberal gain; and on December 4th the Queen sent for Mr. Gladstone and commissioned him to form a new ministry. The task was completed by the 9th, Mr. Bright, who had aided so greatly in the triumph of the Liberals, entering the new cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. Thus at last, after thirty-five years of active public life, Mr. Gladstone was at the summit of power--Prime Minister of Great Britain with a strong majority in Parliament in his support.

Bishop Wilberforce, who met him in this hour of triumph, wrote of him thus in his journal: "Gladstone as ever great, earnest, and honest; as unlike the tricky Disraeli as possible. He is so delightfully true and the same; just as full of interest in every good thing of every kind."

The period which followed the election of 1868--the period of the Gladstone Administration of 1868-74--has been called "the golden age of Liberalism." It was certainly a period of great reforms. The first, the most heroic, and probably--taking all the results into account--the most completely successful of these, was the disestablishment of the Irish Church.

Though Mr. Gladstone had a great majority at his back, the difficulties which confronted him were immense. In Ireland the wildest protests emanated from the friends of the Establishment. The "loyal minority" declared that their loyalty would come to an end if the measure were passed. One synod, speaking with a large assumption, even for a synod, of inspired knowledge, denounced it as "highly offensive to the Almighty God." The Orangemen threatened to rise in insurrection. A martial clergyman proposed to "kick the Queen's crown into the Boyne" if she assented to such a Bill. Another announced his intention of fighting with the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other. These appeals and these threats of civil war, absurd as they proved to be in reality, were not without producing some effect in Great Britain, and it was amid a din of warnings, of misgiving counsels, and of hostile cries, that Mr. Gladstone proceeded to carry out the mandate of the nation which he had received at the polls.

[=Disestablishment of the Irish Church=]

On the first of March, 1869, he introduced his Disestablishment Bill. His speech was one of the greatest marvels amongst his oratorical achievements. His chief opponent declared that, though it lasted three hours, it did not contain a redundant word. The scheme which it unfolded--a scheme which withdrew the temporal establishment of a Church in such a manner that the Church was benefited, not injured, and which lifted from the backs of an oppressed people an intolerable burden--was a triumph of creative genius. Leaving aside his Budgets, which stand in a different category, it seems to us there is no room to doubt that in his record of constructive legislation this measure for the disestablishment of the Irish Church is Mr. Gladstone's most perfect masterpiece.

Disraeli's speech in opposition to this measure was referred to by the London Times as "flimsiness relieved by spangles." After a debate in which Mr. Bright made one of his most famous speeches, the bill was carried by a majority of 118. Before this strong manifestation of the popular will the House of Lords, which deeply disliked the Bill, felt obliged to give way, and passed it by a majority of seven.

[=The Irish Land Bill Enacted=]

In 1870 Mr. Gladstone introduced his Irish Land Bill, a measure of reform which Parliament had for years refused to grant. By it the tenant was given the right to hold his farm as long as he paid his rent, and received a claim upon the improvement made by himself and his predecessors--a tenant-right which he could sell. This bill was triumphantly carried; and another important Liberal measure, Mr. Forster's Education Bill, became law.

In the following sessions the tide of Liberal reform continued on its course. Among the reforms adopted was that of vote by ballot. A measure was introduced abolishing purchase in the Army; and on this question Mr. Gladstone had his third notable conflict with the Lords. The Lords threw out the Bill. The imperious Premier, having found that purchase in the Army existed only by royal sanction, advised the Queen to issue a Royal Warrant cancelling the regulation. By a single act of executive authority he carried out a reform to which Parliament had, through one of its branches, refused its assent. This was a high-handed, not to say autocratic, step, and it afforded a striking revelation of the capacities in boldness and resolution of Mr. Gladstone's character. It was denounced as Cæsarism and Cromwellism in some quarters; in others as an unconstitutional invocation of the royal prerogative.

[=Defeat of Gladstone and the Liberals=]

But the career of reform at length proved too rapid for the country to follow. The Government was defeated in 1873 on a bill for University Education in Ireland. Gladstone at once resigned, but, as Disraeli declined to form a Government, he was obliged to resume office. In 1874 he took the bold step of dissolving Parliament and appealing to the country for support. If he were returned to power he promised to repeal the income tax. He was not returned. The Tory party gained a majority of 46. Gladstone at once resigned, not only the Premiership, but the leadership of the Liberal party, and retired to private life--a much needed rest after his many years of labor. Disraeli succeeded him as Prime Minister, and two years afterwards was raised to the peerage by the Queen as the Earl of Beaconsfield.

Mr. Gladstone was never idle. The intervals of his public duties were filled with tireless studies and frequent literary labors. Chief among the latter were his "Homeric Studies," works which showed great erudition and active mental exercise, though not great powers of critical discrimination. They adopted views which were then becoming obsolete, and their conclusions have been rejected by Homeric scholars. Gladstone's greatness was as an orator and a moral reformer, not as a great logician and brilliant thinker.

[=Gladstone on the Bulgarian Horrors=]

In the period at which we have arrived his moral greatness and literary fervor were both called into exercise in an international cause. The Bulgarian atrocities of 1876--spoken of in Chapter X--called the aged statesman from his retirement, and his pamphlet entitled "Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East," rang through England like a trumpet-call. "Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner--by carrying off themselves," he wrote. "Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and their Yuzbachis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province they have desolated and profaned."

[=His Second Great Contest with Disraeli=]

He followed up this pamphlet by a series of speeches, delivered to great meetings and to the House of Commons, with which for four years he sought, as he expressed it, "night and day to counterwork the purpose of Lord Beaconsfield." He succeeded; England was prevented by his eloquence from joining the Turks in the war; but he excited the fury of the war party to such an extent that at one time it was not safe for him to appear in the streets of London. Nor was he quite safe in the House of Commons, where the Conservatives hated him so bitterly as to jeer and interrupt him whenever he spoke, and a party of them went so far as to mob him in the House.

Yet the sentiment he had aroused saved the country from the greatest of the follies by which it was threatened; and, if it failed to stop the lesser adventures in which Lord Beaconsfield found an outlet for the passions he had unloosed,--an annexation of Cyprus, an interference in Egypt, an annexation of the Transvaal, a Zulu war which Mr. Gladstone denounced as "one of the most monstrous and indefensible in our history," an Afghan war which he described as a national crime,--it nevertheless was so true an interpretation of the best, the deliberate, judgment of the nation, that it sufficed eventually to bring the Liberal party back to power.

[=Gladstone Again Made Premier=]

This took place in 1880. In the campaign for the Parliament elected in that year Gladstone took a most active part, and had much to do with the great Liberal victory that followed. In the face of the overwhelming majority that was returned Lord Beaconsfield resigned office, and Gladstone a second time was called to the head of the government.

[=Parnell Becomes the Leader of the Irish Party=]

As in the previous, so in the present, Gladstone administration the question of Ireland loomed up above all others. While Beaconsfield remained Premier Ireland was lost sight of, quite dwarfed by the Eastern question upon which the two life-long adversaries measured their strength. But as Turkey went down in public interest Ireland rose. The Irish people were gaining a vivid sense of their power under the Constitution. And another famine came to put the land laws and government of Ireland to a severe test. Still more, Ireland gained a leader, a man of remarkable ability, who was to play as great a part in its history as O'Connell had done half a century before. This was Charles Stewart Parnell, the founder of the Irish Land League--a powerful trade-union of tenant farmers--and for many years the leader of the Irish party in Parliament. In the Parliament of 1880 his followers numbered sixty-eight, enough to make him a power to be dealt with in legislation.

Gladstone, in assuming control of the new government, was quite unaware of the task before him. When he had completed his work with the Church and the Land Bills ten years before, he fondly fancied that the Irish question was definitely settled. The Home Rule movement, which was started in 1870, seemed to him a wild delusion which would die away of itself. In 1884 he said: "I frankly admit that I had had much upon my hands connected with the doings of the Beaconsfield Government in every quarter of the world, and I did not know--no one knew--the severity of the crisis that was already swelling upon the horizon, and that shortly after rushed upon us like a flood."

[=The Famine and the Bill for Irish Relief=]

He was not long in discovering the gravity of the situation, of which the House had been warned by Mr. Parnell. The famine had brought its crop of misery, and, while the charitable were seeking to relieve the distress, many of the landlords were turning adrift their tenants for non-payment of rents. The Irish party brought in a Bill for the Suspension of Evictions, which the government replaced by a similar one for Compensation for Disturbance. This was passed with a large majority by the Commons, but was rejected by the Lords, and Ireland was left to face its misery without relief.

[=Mr. Forster's Policy of Coercion=]

The state of Ireland at that moment was too critical to be dealt with in this manner. The rejection of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill was, to the peasantry whom it had been intended to protect, a message of despair, and it was followed by the usual symptom of despair in Ireland, an outbreak of agrarian crime. On the one hand over 17,000 persons were evicted; on the other there was a dreadful crop of murders and outrages. The Land League sought to do what Parliament did not; but in doing so it came in contact with the law. Moreover, the revolution--for revolution it seemed to be--grew too formidable for its control; the utmost it succeeded in doing was in some sense to ride without directing the storm. The first decisive step of Mr. Forster, the chief secretary for Ireland, was to strike a blow at the Land League. In November he ordered the prosecution of Mr. Parnell, Mr. Biggar, and several of the officials of the organization, and before the year was out he announced his intention of introducing a Coercion Bill. This step threw the Irish members under Mr. Parnell and the Liberal Government into relations of definitive antagonism.

Mr. Forster introduced his Coercion Bill on January 24, 1881. It was a formidable measure, which enabled the chief secretary, by signing a warrant, to arrest any man on suspicion of having committed a given offence, and to imprison him without trial at the pleasure of the government. It practically suspended the liberties of Ireland. The Irish members exhausted every resource of parliamentary action in resisting it, and their tactics resulted in several scenes unprecedented in parliamentary history. In order to pass the Bill it was necessary to suspend them in a body several times. Mr. Gladstone, with manifest pain, found himself, as leader of the House, the agent by whom this extreme resolve had to be executed.

[=Gladstone's New Land Bill=]

The Coercion Bill passed, Mr. Gladstone introduced his Land Bill of 1881, which was the measure of conciliation intended to balance the measure of repression. This was really a great and sweeping reform, whose dominant feature was the introduction of the novel and far-reaching principle of the State stepping in between landlord and tenant and fixing the rents. The Bill had some defects, as a series of amending acts, which were subsequently passed by both Liberal and Tory Governments, proved; but, apart from these, it was on the whole the greatest measure of land reform ever passed for Ireland by the Imperial Parliament.

[=Stirring Events in Ireland=]

But Ireland was not yet satisfied. Parnell had no confidence in the good intentions of the government, and took steps to test its honesty, which so angered Mr. Forster that he arrested Mr. Parnell and several other leaders and pronounced the Land League an illegal body. Forster was well meaning but mistaken. He fancied that by locking up the ringleaders he could bring quiet to the country. On the contrary, affairs were soon far worse than ever, crime and outrage spreading widely. In despair, Mr. Forster released Parnell and resigned. All now seemed hopeful; coercion had proved a failure; peace and quiet were looked for; when, four days afterward, the whole country was horrified by a terrible crime. The new secretary for Ireland, Lord Cavendish, and the under-secretary, Mr. Burke, were attacked and hacked to death with knives in Phoenix Park.

Everywhere panic and indignation arose. A new Coercion Act was passed without delay. It was vigorously put into effect, and a state of virtual war between England and Ireland again came into existence. Great Britain, in her usual fashion of seeking to carry the world on her shoulders, had made the control of the Suez Canal an excuse for meddling with the government of Egypt.

[=The Bombardment of Alexandria and Death of Gordon=]

The result was a revolution that drove Ismail Pasha from his throne. As the British still held control, a revolt broke out among the people, headed by an ambitious leader named Arabi Pasha, and Alexandria was seized, the British being driven out and many of them killed. Much as Gladstone deprecated war, he felt himself forced into it. John Bright, to whom war was a crime that nothing could warrant, resigned from the cabinet, but the Government acted vigorously, the British fleet being ordered to bombard Alexandria. This was done effectively. The city, half reduced to ashes, was occupied by the British, Arabi and his army withdrawing in haste. Soon afterwards he was defeated by General Wolseley and the insurrection was at an end. Egypt remained a vassal of Great Britain. An unfortunate sequel to this may be briefly stated. A formidable insurrection broke out in the Soudan, under El Mahdi, a Mohammedan fanatic, who captured the city of Khartoum and murdered the famous General Gordon. For years Upper Egypt was lost to the state, it being recovered only at the close of the century by a military expedition.

In South Africa the British were less successful. Here a war had been entered into with the Boers, in which the British forces suffered a severe defeat at Majuba Hill. Gladstone did not adopt the usual fashion of seeking revenge by the aid of a stronger force, but made peace, the Boers gaining what they had been fighting for.

[=The Defeat of the Liberals=]

Disasters like this weakened the administration. Parnell and his followers joined hands with the Tories, and a vigorous assault was made upon the government. Slowly its majority fell away, and at length, in May, 1885, it was defeated.

The scene which followed was a curious one. The Irish raised cries of "No Coercion," while the Tories delivered themselves up to a frenzy of jubilation, waving hats and handkerchiefs, and wildly cheering. Lord Randolph Churchill jumped on a bench, brandished his hat madly above his head, and altogether behaved as if he were beside himself. Mr. Gladstone calmly resumed the letter to the Queen which he had been writing on his knee, while the clerk at the table proceeded to run through the orders of the day, as if nothing particular had happened. When in a few moments the defeated Premier moved the adjournment, he did so still holding his letter in one hand and the pen in the other, and the Conservatives surged through the doorway, tumultuously cheering.

Gladstone's great opponent was no longer on earth to profit by his defeat. Beaconsfield had died in 1881, and Lord Salisbury became head of the new Tory Government, one which owed its existence to Irish votes. It had a very short life. Parnell and his fellows soon tired of their unnatural alliance, turned against and defeated the Government, and Gladstone was sent for to form a new government. On February 1, 1886, he became Prime Minister of Great Britain for the third time.

[=Gladstone a Convert to Home Rule=]

During the brief interval his opinions had suffered a great revolution. He no longer thought that Ireland had all it could justly demand. He returned to power as an advocate of a most radical measure, that of Home Rule for Ireland, a restoration of that separate Parliament which it had lost in 1800. He also had a scheme to buy out the Irish landlords and establish a peasant proprietary by state aid. His new views were revolutionary in character, but he did not hesitate--he never hesitated to do what his conscience told him was right. On April 8, 1886, he introduced to Parliament his Home Rule Bill.

[=A Remarkable Scene in Parliament=]

The scene that afternoon was one of the most remarkable in Parliamentary history. Never before was such interest manifested in a debate by either the public or the members of the House. In order to secure their places, members arrived at St. Stephen's at six o'clock in the morning, and spent the day on the premises; and, a thing quite unprecedented, members who could not find places on the benches filled up the floor of the House with rows of chairs. The strangers', diplomats', peers', and ladies' galleries were filled to overflowing. Men begged even to be admitted to the ventilating passages beneath the floor of the Chamber that they might in some sense be witnesses of the greatest feat in the lifetime of an illustrious old man of eighty. Around Palace Yard an enormous crowd surged, waiting to give the veteran a welcome as he drove up from Downing Street.

Mr. Gladstone arrived in the House, pale and still panting from the excitement of his reception in the streets. As he sat there the entire Liberal party--with the exception of Lord Hartington, Sir Henry James, Mr. Chamberlain and Sir George Trevelyan--and the Nationalist members, by a spontaneous impulse, sprang to their feet and cheered him again and again. The speech which he delivered was in every way worthy of the occasion. It expounded, with marvelous lucidity and a noble eloquence, a tremendous scheme of constructive legislation--the re-establishment of a legislature in Ireland, but one subordinate to the Imperial Parliament, and hedged round with every safeguard which could protect the unity of the Empire. It took three hours in delivery, and was listened to throughout with the utmost attention on every side of the House. At its close all parties united in a tribute of admiration for the genius which had astonished them with such an exhibition of its powers.

Yet it is one thing to cheer an orator, another thing to vote for a revolution. The Bill was defeated--as it was almost sure to be. Mr. Gladstone at once dissolved Parliament and appealed to the country in a new election, with the result that he was decisively defeated. His bold declaration that the contest was one between the classes and the masses turned the aristocracy against him, while he had again roused the bitter hatred of his opponents.

But the "Grand Old Man" bided his time. The new Salisbury ministry was one of coercion carried to the extreme in Ireland, wholesale eviction, arrest of members of Parliament, suppression of public meetings by force of arms, and other measures of violence which in the end wearied the British public and doubled the support of Home Rule. In 1892 Mr. Gladstone returned to power with a majority of more than thirty Home Rulers in his support.

[=Gladstone's Last and Greatest Triumph=]

It was one of the greatest efforts in the career of the old Parliamentary hero when he brought his new Home Rule Bill before the House. Never in his young days had he worked more earnestly and incessantly. He disarmed even his bitterest enemies, none of whom now dreamed of treating him with disrespect. Mr. Balfour spoke of the delight and fascination with which even his opponents watched his leading of the House and listened to his unsurpassed eloquence. Old age had come to clothe with its pathos, as well as with its majesty, the white-haired, heroic figure. The event proved one of the greatest triumphs of his life. The Bill passed with a majority of thirty-four. That it would pass in the House of Lords no one looked for. It was defeated there by a majority of 378 out of 460.

[=The Close of a Great Career=]

With this great event the public career of the Grand Old Man came to an end. The burden had grown too heavy for his reduced strength. In March, 1894, to the consternation of his party, he announced his intention of retiring from public life. The Queen offered, as she had done once before, to raise him to the peerage as an earl, but he declined the proffer. His own plain name was a title higher than that of any earldom in the kingdom.

On May 19, 1898 William Ewart Gladstone laid down the burden of his life as he had already done that of labor. The greatest and noblest figure in legislative life of the nineteenth century had passed away from earth.

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XVI. Ireland the Downtrodden

[=Ireland in the Past Centuries=]

Time was when Ireland was free. But it was a barbarian freedom. The island had more kings than it had counties, each petty chief bearing the royal title, while their battles were as frequent as those of our Indian tribes of a past age. The island, despite the fact that it had an active literature reaching back to the early centuries of the Christian era, was in a condition of endless turmoil. This state of affairs was gradually put an end to after the English conquest; but the civilization which was introduced into the island was made bitter by an injustice and oppression which has filled the Irish heart with an undying hatred of the English nation and a ceaseless desire to break loose from its bonds.

For centuries, indeed, the rule of England was largely a nominal one, the English control being confined to a few coast districts in the east. In the interior the native tribes continued under the rule of their chiefs, were governed by their own laws, and remained practically independent.

[=The O'Neill Rebellion and the Confiscation of Ulster=]

It was not until the reign of James I. that England became master of all Ireland. In the last days of the reign of Elizabeth a great rising against the English had taken place in Ulster, under a chief named O'Neill. The Earl of Essex failed to put it down and was disgraced by the queen in consequence. The armies of James finally suppressed the rebellion, and the unruly island now, for the first time, came fully under the control of an English king. It had given the earlier monarchs nothing but trouble, and James determined to weaken its power for mischief. To do so he took possession of six counties of Ulster and filled them with Scotch and English colonists. As for the Irish, they were simply crowded out, and left to seek a living where they could. There was no place left for them but the marshes.

This act of ruthless violence filled the Irish with an implacable hatred of their oppressors which has not vanished in the years since it took place. They treasured up their wrongs for thirty years, but in 1641, when England was distracted by its civil war, they rose in their wrath, fell upon the colonists, and murdered all who could not save themselves by flight. For eight years, while the English had their hands full at home, the Irish held their reconquered lands in triumph, but in 1649 Cromwell fell upon them with his invincible Ironsides, and took such a cruel revenge that he himself confessed that he had imbued his hands in blood like a common butcher. In truth, the Puritans looked upon the Papists as outside the pale of humanity, and no more to be considered than a herd of wild beasts, and they dealt with them as hunters might with noxious animals.

[=Cromwell's Bloody Severity and the Fate of the Irish=]

The severity of Cromwell was threefold greater than that of James, for he drove the Irish out of three provinces, Ulster, Leinster and Munster, bidding them go and find bread or graves in the wilderness of Connaught. Again the Irish rose, when James II., the dethroned king, came to demand their aid; and again they were overthrown, this time in the memorable Battle of the Boyne. William III. now completed the work of confiscation. The greater part of the remaining province of Connaught was taken from its holders and given to English colonists. The natives of the island became a landless people in their own land.

[=The Cause of Irish Hatred of England=]

To complete their misery and degradation, William and the succeeding monarchs robbed them of all their commerce and manufactures, by forbidding them to trade with other countries. Their activity in this direction interfered with the profits of English producers and merchants. By these merciless and cruel methods the Irish were reduced to a nation of tenants, laborers and beggars, and such they still remain, downtrodden, oppressed, their most lively sentiment being their hatred of the English, to whom they justly impute their degradation.

The time came when England acknowledged with shame and sorrow the misery to which she had reduced a sister people--but it was then too late to retrieve the wrong. English landlords owned the land, manufacturing industry had been irretrievably crowded out, the evil done was past mending.

With these preliminary statements we come to the verge of the nineteenth century. America had rebelled against England and gained independence. This fact stirred up a new desire for liberty in the Irish. The island had always possessed a legislature of its own, but it was of no value to the natives. It represented only the great Protestant landowners, and could pass no act without the consent of the Privy Council of England.

[=Home Rule and the Act of Union=]

A demand for a national Parliament was made, and the English government, having its experience in America before its eyes, granted it, an act being passed in 1782 which made Ireland independent of England in legislation, a system such as is now called Home Rule. It was not enough. It did not pacify the island. The religious animosity between the Catholics and Protestants continued, and in 1798 violent disturbances broke out, with massacres on both sides.

The Irish Parliament was a Protestant body, and at first was elected solely by Protestant votes. Grattan, the eminent Irish statesman, through whose efforts this body had been made an independent legislature,--"The King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, to make laws for the people of Ireland,"--carried an act to permit Catholics to vote for its members. He then strove for a measure to permit Catholics to sit as members in the Irish Parliament. This was too much for George III. He recalled Lord Fitzwilliam, the viceroy of Ireland, who had encouraged and assisted Grattan and blighted the hopes of the Irish Catholics.

[=The United Irishmen and Act of Union=]

The revolt that followed was the work of a society called the United Irishmen, organized by Protestants, but devoted to the interests of Ireland. Wolfe Tone, one of its leading members, went to France and induced Napoleon to send an expedition to Ireland. A fleet was dispatched, but this, like the Spanish Armada, was dispersed by a storm, and the few Frenchmen who landed were soon captured. The rebellion was as quickly crushed, and was followed by deeds of remorseless cruelty, so shameful that they were denounced by the commander-in-chief himself. With this revolt the independence of Ireland ended. An act of union was offered and carried through the Irish Parliament by a very free use of money among the members, and the Irish Legislature was incorporated with the British one. Since January 1, 1801, all laws for Ireland have been made in London.

Among the most prominent members of the United Irishmen Society were two brothers named Emmet, the fate of one of whom has ever since been remembered with sympathy. Thomas A. Emmet, one of these brothers, was arrested in 1798 as a member of this society, and was imprisoned until 1802, when he was released on condition that he should spend the remainder of his life on foreign soil. He eventually reached New York, at whose bar he attained eminence. The fate of his more famous brother, Robert Emmet, was tragical. This young man, a school-fellow of Thomas Moore, the poet, was expelled from Trinity College in 1798, when twenty years of age, as a member of the United Irishmen. He went to the continent, interviewed Napoleon on behalf of the Irish cause, and returned in 1802 with a wild idea of freeing Ireland by his own efforts from English rule.

[=The Fate of Robert Emmet=]

Organizing a plan for a revolution, and expending his small fortune in the purchase of muskets and pikes, he formed a plot to seize Dublin Castle, capture the viceroy, and dominate the capital. At the head of a small body of followers he set out on this hopeless errand, which ended at the first volley of the guards, before which his confederates hastily dispersed. Emmet, who had dressed himself for the occasion in a green coat, white breeches and cocked hat, was deeply mortified at the complete failure of his scheme. He fled to the Wicklow mountains, whence, perceiving that success in his plans was impossible, he resolved to escape to the continent. But love led him to death. He was deeply attached to the daughter of Curran, the celebrated orator, and, in despite of the advice of his friends, would not consent to leave Ireland until he had seen her. The attempt was a fatal one. On his return from the interview with his lady-love he was arrested and imprisoned on a charge of high treason. He was condemned to death September 19, 1803, and was hanged the next day.

Before receiving sentence he made an address to the court of such noble and pathetic eloquence that it still thrills the reader with sympathetic emotion. It is frequently reprinted among examples of soul-stirring oratory. The disconsolate woman, Sarah Curran, perished of a broken heart after his untimely death. This event is the theme of one of Moore's finest poems: "She is far from the land where her young hero lies."

[=Landlords, Tenants and Clergy=]

The death of Emmet and the dispersal of the United Irishmen by no means ended the troubles in Ireland, but rather added to their force. Ireland and England, unlike in the character and religion of their people and in their institutions, continued in a state of hostility, masked or active, the old feuds being kept alive on the one side by the landlords, on the other by the peasantry and the clergy. The country was divided into a great number of small farms, thousands of them being less than five acres each in size. For these the landlords--many of whom the tenants never saw and some of whom had never seen Ireland--often exacted extravagant rents. Again, while the great majority of the people was Catholic, the Catholic clergy had to be supported by the voluntary contributions of the poverty-stricken people, while tithes, or church taxes, were exacted by law for the payment of clergymen of the English Church, who remained almost without congregations. Finally, the Catholics were disfranchised. After the abolishment of the Irish Parliament they were without representation in the government under which they lived. No Catholic could be a member of Parliament. It is not surprising that their protest was vigorous, and that the British government had many rebellious outbreaks to put down.

[=O'Connell and Catholic Emancipation=]

It was the disfranchisement of the Catholics that first roused opposition. Grattan brought up a bill for "Catholic Emancipation"--that is, the admission of Catholics to the British Parliament and the repeal of certain ancient, and oppressive edicts--in 1813. The bill was lost, but a new and greater advocate of Irish rights now arose, Daniel O'Connell, the "Liberator," the greatest of Irish orators and patriots, who for many years was to champion the cause of downtrodden Ireland.

[=The "Counsellor" and His Oratory=]

The "counsellor"--a favorite title of O'Connell among his Irish admirers--was a man of remarkable powers, noted for his boisterous Irish wit and good humor, his fearlessness and skill as a counsel, his constant tact and readiness in reply, his unrivalled skill in the cross-examination of Irish witnesses, and the violent language which he often employed in court. This man, of burly figure, giant strength, inexhaustible energy and power of work, a voice mighty enough to drown the noise of a crowd, a fine command of telling language, coarse but effective humor, ready and telling retort, and master of all the artillery of vituperation, was just the man to control the Irish people, passing with the ease of a master from bursts of passion and outbreaks of buffoonery to passages of the tenderest pathos. Thoroughly Irish, he seemed made by nature to sustain the cause of Ireland.

O'Connell was shrewd enough to deter revolt, and, while awakening in the Irish the spirit of nationality, he taught them to keep political agitation within constitutional limits, and seek by legislative means what they had no hope of gaining by force of arms. His legal practice was enormous, yet amid it he found time for convivial relaxation and for a deep plunge into the whirlpool of politics.

[=The Irish Association=]

The vigorous advocate was not long in rising to the chiefship of the Irish party, but his effective work in favor of Catholic emancipation began in 1823, when he founded the "Irish Association," a gigantic system of organization which Ireland had nothing similar to before. The clergy were disinclined to take part in this movement, but O'Connell's eloquence brought them in before the end of the year, and under their influence it became national, spreading irresistibly throughout the land and rousing everywhere the greatest enthusiasm. To obtain funds for its support the "Catholic Rent" was established--one penny a month--which yielded as much as £500 per week.

In alarm at the growth of this association, the government brought in a bill for its suppression, but O'Connell, too shrewd to come into conflict with the authorities, forstalled them by dissolving it in 1825. He had set the ball rolling. The Irish forty-shilling freeholders gained courage to oppose their landlords in the elections. In 1826 they carried Waterford. In 1828 O'Connell himself stood as member of parliament for Clare, and was elected amid the intense enthusiasm of the people.

This triumph set the whole country in a flame. The lord-lieutenant looked for an insurrection, and even Lord Wellington, prime minister of England, was alarmed at the threatening outlook. But O'Connell, knowing that an outbreak would be ruinous to the Catholic cause, used his marvelous powers to still the agitation and to induce the people to wait for parliamentary relief.

[=O'Connell in Parliament=]

This relief came the following year. A bill was passed which admitted Catholics to parliament, and under it O'Connell made his appearance in the House of Commons May 15, 1829. He declined to take the old oaths, which had been repealed by the bill. The House refused to admit him on these conditions, and he went down to Clare again, which sent him back like a conqueror. At the beginning of 1830 he took his seat unopposed.

O'Connell's career in parliament was one of persistent labor for the repeal of the "Act of Union" with Great Britain, and Home Rule for Ireland, in the advocacy of which he kept the country stirred up for years. The abolition of tithes for the support of the Anglican clergy was another of his great subjects of agitation, and this one member had the strength of a host as an advocate of justice and freedom for his country.

[=The Tithe Troubles=]

The agitation on the Catholic question had quickened the sense of the wrongs of Ireland, and the Catholics were soon engaged in a crusade against tithes and the established Church, which formed the most offensive symbols of their inferior position in the state. In 1830 the potato crop in Ireland was very poor, and wide-spread misery and destitution prevailed. O'Connell advised the people to pay no tithes, but in this matter they passed beyond his control, and for months crime ran rampant. The farmers refused to pay tithes or rents, armed bands marched through the island, and murder and incendiarism visited the homes of the rich. A stringent coercion bill was enacted and the troubles were put down by the strong hand of the law. Subsequently the Whig party, then in power, practically abolished tithes, cutting down the revenue of the Established Church, and using the remainder for secular purposes, and the agitation subsided.

In 1832 O'Connell became member for Dublin, and nominated most of the Irish candidates, with such effect that he had in the next Parliament a following of forty-five members, known sarcastically as his "tail." He gradually attained a position of great eminence in the House of Commons, standing in the first rank of parliamentary orators as a debater.

[=The Home Rule Crusade=]

When a Tory ministry came into power, in 1841, O'Connell began a vigorous agitation in favor of repeal of the Act of Union and of Home Rule for Ireland, advocating the measure with all his wonderful power of oratory. In 1843 he travelled 5,000 miles through Ireland, speaking to immense meetings, attended by hundreds of thousands of people, and extending to every corner of the island. But thanks to his great controlling power, and the influence of Father Mathew, the famous temperance advocate, these audiences were never unruly mobs, but remained free from crime and drunkenness. The greatest was that held on the Hill of Tara, at which, according to the Nation, three-quarters of a million persons were present.

O'Connell wisely deprecated rebellion and bloodshed. "He who commits a crime adds strength to the enemy," was his favorite motto. Through a whole generation, with wonderful skill, he kept the public mind at the highest pitch of political excitement, yet restrained it from violence. But with all his power the old chief began to lose control of the enthusiastic Young Ireland party and, confident that the government must soon yield to the impassioned appeal from a whole nation, he allowed himself in his speeches to outrun his sober judgment.

[=O'Connell Imprisoned=]

Fearful of an outbreak of violence, the government determined to put an end to these enormous meetings, and a force of 35,000 men was sent to Ireland. A great meeting had been called for Clantarf on October 5, 1843, but it was forbidden the day before by the authorities, and O'Connell, fearing bloodshed, abandoned it. He was arrested, however, tried for a conspiracy to arouse sedition, and sentenced to a year's imprisonment and a fine of £2,000. This sentence was set aside by the House of Lords some months afterward as erroneous, and at once bonfires blazed across Ireland from sea to sea. But the three months he passed in prison proved fatal to the old chief, then nearly seventy years old. He contracted a disease which carried him to the grave three years afterwards.

[=The Young Ireland Rebellion=]

During his withdrawal the Young Ireland party began to advocate resistance to the government. In 1846 and 1847 came the potato famine, the most severe visitation Ireland had known during the century, and in 1848 the revolutionary movement in Europe made itself felt on Irish soil. In the latter year the ardent Young Ireland party carried the country into rebellion; but the outbreak was easily put down, hardly a drop of blood being shed in its suppression. The popular leader, Smith O'Brien, was banished to Australia, but was eventually pardoned. John Mitchell, editor of the Nation and the United Irishman, was also banished, but subsequently escaped from Australia to the United States.

The wrongs of Ireland remained unredeemed, and as long as this was the case quiet could not be looked for in the island. In 1858 a Phoenix conspiracy was discovered and suppressed. Meanwhile John O'Mahony, one of the insurgents of 1848, organized a formidable secret society among the Irish in the United States, which he named the Fenian Brotherhood, after Finn, the hero of Irish legend. This organization was opposed by the Catholic clergy, but grew despite their opposition, its members becoming numerous and its funds large.

[=The Fenian Brotherhood=]

Its leader in Ireland was James Stephens, and its organ the Irish People newspaper. But there were traitors in the camp and in 1865 the paper was suppressed and the leaders were arrested. Stephens escaped from prison ten days after his arrest and made his way to America. The revolutionary activity of this association was small. There were some minor outbreaks and an abortive attempt to seize Chester Castle, and in September, 1867, an attack was made on a police van in Manchester, and the prisoners, who were Fenians, were rescued. Soon after an attempt was made to blow down Clerkenwell Prison wall, with the same purpose in view.

The Fenians in the United States organized a plot in 1866 for a raid upon Canada, which utterly failed, and in 1871 the government of this country put a summary end to a similar expedition. With this the active existence of the Fenian organization ended, unless we may ascribe to it the subsequent attempts to blow down important structures in London with dynamite.

[=Land Holding Reform in Ireland=]

These movements, while ineffective as attempts at insurrection, had their influence in arousing the more thoughtful statesmen of England to the causes for discontent and need of reform in Ireland, and since that period the Irish question has been the most prominent one in Parliament. Such men as Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright took the matter in hand, Gladstone presenting a bill for the final abolition of Irish tithes and the disestablishment of the English Church in Ireland. This was adopted in 1868, and the question of the reform of land holding was next taken up, a series of measures being passed to improve the condition of the Irish tenant farmer. If ejected, he was to be compensated for improvements he had made, and a Land Commission was formed with the power to reduce rents where this seemed necessary, and also to fix the rent for a term of years. At a later date a Land Purchase Commission was organized, to aid tenants in buying their farms from the landlords, by an advance of a large portion of the purchase money, with provision for gradual repayment.

[=The Home Rule Agitation=]

These measures did not put an end to the agitation. Numerous ejections from farms for non-payment of rent had been going on, and a fierce struggle was raging between the peasants and the agents of the absentee landlords. The disturbance was great, and successive Coercion Acts were passed. The peasants were supported by the powerful Land League, while the old question of Home Rule was revived again, under the active leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell, who headed a small but very determined body in Parliament. The succeeding legislation for Ireland, engineered by Mr. Gladstone, to the passage in the House of Commons of the Home Rule Bill of 1893, has been sufficiently described in the preceding chapter, and need not be repeated here. It will suffice to say in conclusion, that the demand for Home Rule still exists, and that, in spite of all efforts at reform, the position of the Irish peasant is far from being satisfactory, the most prolific crop in that long-oppressed land seemingly being one of beggary and semi-starvation.

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XVII. England and Her Indian Empire

[=The Black Hole of Calcutta=]

In 1756, in the town of Calcutta, the headquarters of the British in India, there occurred a terrible disaster. A Bengalese army marched upon and captured the town, taking prisoner all the English who had not escaped to their ships. The whole of these unfortunates, 146 in number, were thrust into the "black hole," a small room about eighteen feet square, with two small windows. It was a night of tropical heat. The air of the crowded and unventilated room soon became unfit to breathe. The victims fought each other fiercely to reach the windows. The next morning, when the door was opened, only twenty-three of them remained alive. Such is the famous story of the "black hole of Calcutta."

[=Clive and the Battle of Plassey=]

In the following year (1757) this barbarism was avenged. On the battlefield of Plassey stood an army of about 1,000 British and 2,100 Sepoys, with nine pieces of artillery. Opposed to them were 50,000 native infantry and 18,000 cavalry, with fifty cannon. The disproportion was enormous, but at the head of the British army was a great leader, Robert Clive, who had come out to India as a humble clerk, but was now commander of an army. A brief conflict ended the affair. The unwieldy native army fled. Clive's handful of men stood victorious on the most famous field of Indian warfare.

This battle is taken as the beginning of the British Empire in India. It is of interest to remember that just one hundred years later, in 1857, that empire reached the most perilous point in its career, in the outbreak of the great Indian mutiny. Plassey settled one question. It gave India to the English in preference to the French, in whose interest the natives were fighting. The empire which Clive founded was organized by Warren Hastings, the ablest but the most unscrupulous of the governors of India. At the opening of the nineteenth century the British power in India was firmly established.

[=Wellesley's Career in India=]

In 1798 the Marquis of Wellesley--afterwards known as Lord Wellington--was made governor. Even there he had his future great antagonist to guard against, for Napoleon was at that time in Egypt, and was thought to have the design of driving the British from India and restoring that great dominion to France. Wellesley's career in India was a brilliant one. He overthrew the powerful Marhatta Confederacy, gained victory after victory over the native chiefs and kings, captured the great Mogul cities of Delhi and Agra, and spread the power of the British arms far and wide through the peninsula.

In the succeeding years war after war took place. The warlike Marhattas rebelled and were again put down, other tribes were conquered, and in 1824 the city of Bhartpur in Central India, believed by the natives to be impregnable, was taken by storm, and the reputation of the British as indomitable fighters was greatly enhanced. Rapidly the British power extended until nearly the whole peninsula was subdued. In 1837 the conquerors of India began to interfere in the affairs of Afghanistan, and a British garrison was placed in Cabul, the capital of that country, in 1839.

[=The Terrible Retreat from Cabul=]

Two years they stayed there, and then came to them one of the greatest catastrophes in the history of the British army. Surrounded by hostile and daring Afghans, the situation of the garrison grew so perilous that it seemed suicidal to remain in Cabul, and it was determined to evacuate the city and retreat to India through the difficult passes of the Himalayas. In January, 1842, they set out, 4,000 fighting men and 12,000 camp followers. Deep snows covered the hills and all around them swarmed the Afghans, savage and implacable, bent on their utter destruction, attacking them from every point of vantage, cutting down women and children with the same ruthless cruelty as they displayed in the case of men. One terrible week passed, then, on the afternoon of January 13th, the sentinels at the Cabul gate of Jelalabad saw approaching a miserable, haggard man, barely able to sit upon his horse. Utterly exhausted, covered with cuts and contusions, he rode through the gate, and announced himself as Dr. Brydan, the sole survivor of the army which had left Cabul one week before. The remainder, men, women, and children,--except a few who had been taken prisoners,--lay slaughtered along that dreadful road, their mangled bodies covering almost every foot of its bloodstained length.

The British exacted revenge for this terrible massacre. A powerful force fought its way back to Cabul, defeated the Afghans wherever met, and rescued the few prisoners in the Afghan hands. Then the soldiers turned their backs on Cabul, which no British army was to see again for nearly forty years.

[=The War With the Sikhs=]

Three years afterwards the British Empire in India was seriously threatened by one of the most warlike races in the peninsula, the Sikhs, a courageous race inhabiting the Punjab, in northern India, their capital the city of Lahore. In 1845 a Sikh army, 60,000 strong, with 150 guns, crossed the Sutléj River and invaded British territory. Never before had the British in India encountered men like these. Four pitched battles were fought, in each of which the British lost heavily, but in the last they drove the Sikhs back across the Sutléj and captured Lahore.

That ended the war for the time being, but in 1848 the brave Sikhs were in arms again, and pushing the British as hard as before. On the field of Chilianwala the British were repulsed, with a loss of 2,400 men and the colors of three regiments. This defeat was quickly retrieved. Lord Gough met the enemy at Guzerat and defeated them so utterly that their army was practically destroyed. They were driven back as a shapeless mass of fugitives, losing their camp, their standards, and fifty-three of their cherished guns. With this victory was completed the conquest of the Punjab. The Sikhs became loyal subjects of the queen, and afterwards supplied her armies with the most valorous and high-spirited of her native troops.

[=The Causes of the Mutiny=]

Thus time went on until that eventful year of 1857, when the British power in India was to receive its most perilous shock. For a long time there had been a great and continually increasing discontent in India. Complaints were made that the treaties with native princes were not kept, that extortion was practised by which officials grew rapidly and mysteriously wealthy, looking upon India as a field for the acquisition of riches, and that the natives were treated by the governing powers with deep contempt, while every license was granted to the soldiery. The hidden cause of the discontent, however, lay in the deep hatred felt by the natives, Hindu and Mussulmen alike, for the dominant race of aliens to whom they had been obliged to bow in common subjection; and the fanaticism of the Hindus caused the smouldering elements of discontent to burst out into the flames of insurrection. A secret conspiracy was formed, in which all classes of the natives participated, its object being to overthrow the dominion of the English. It had been prophesied among the natives that the rule of the foreign masters of India should last only for a hundred years; and a century had just elapsed since the triumph of Clive at Plassey.

[=The Greased Cartridges=]

Small chupatties, cakes of unleavened bread, were secretly passed from hand to hand among the natives, as tokens of comradeship in the enterprise. This conspiracy was the more dangerous from making its way into the army, for India was a country governed by the sword. A rumor ran through the cantonments of the Bengal army that cartridges had been served out greased with the fat of animals unclean to Hindu and Mussulman alike, and which the Hindus could not bite without loss of caste, the injunction of their religion obliging them to abstain from animal food under this penalty. After this nothing could quiet their minds; fires broke out nightly in their quarters; officers were insulted by their men; all confidence was gone, and discipline became an empty form.

[=The Old Emperor Akbar=]

The sentence of penal servitude passed upon some of the mutineers became the signal for the breaking out of the revolt. At Meerut, on the Upper Ganges, the Sepoys broke into rebellion, liberated their comrades who were being led away in chains, and marched in a body to Delhi, the ancient capital of India and former seat of the Mogul empire. Here they took possession of the great military magazine and seized its stores. Those among the British inhabitants who did not save themselves by immediate flight were barbarously put to death; and the decrepit Akbar, the descendant of the Moguls, an old man of ninety, who lived at Delhi upon a pension granted to him by the East India Company, was drawn from his retirement and proclaimed Emperor of Hindostan by the rebels, his son, Mirza, being associated with him in the government.

[=The Frightful Massacre at Cawnpore=]

The mutiny spread with terrible rapidity, and massacres of the English took place at Indore, Allahabad, Azimghur, and other towns. Foremost in atrocity stands the massacre perpetrated at Cawnpore by Nana Sahib, the adopted son of the last Peishwa of the Marhattas, who, after entering into a compact with General Wheeler, by which he promised a free departure to the English, caused the boats in which they were proceeding down the river to be fired upon. The men were thus slain, while the women and children were brought back as prisoners to Cawnpore. Here they were confined for some days in a building, into which murderers were sent who massacred them every one, the mutilated corpses being thrown down a well.

[=The Scotch Slogan at Lucknow=]

In Oude, the noble-minded Sir Henry Lawrence defended himself throughout the whole summer in the citadel of Lucknow against the rebels under Nana Sahib with wonderful skill and bravery, until he was killed by the bursting of a bomb, on the 2d of July. The distress of the besieged, among whom were many ladies and children, was now extreme. But the little garrison held out for nearly three months longer against the greatest odds and amid the most distressing hardships. At length came that eventful day, when, to the keen ears of one of the despairing sufferers, a Scotch woman, came from afar a familiar and most hopeful sound. "Dinna ye hear the pibroch?" she cried, springing to her feet in the ecstacy of hope renewed.

Those near her listened but heard no sound, and many minutes passed before a swell of wind bore to their ears the welcome music of the bagpipe, playing the war-march of the Highlanders of her native land. It came from the party of relief led by General Havelock, which had left Calcutta on the first tidings of the outbreak, and was now marching in all haste to imperilled Lucknow.

[=The March of Havelock=]

On his way Havelock had encountered the mutineers at Futtipur and gained a brilliant victory. Three days later Cawnpore was reached. There the insurgent Sepoys fought with desperation, but they were defeated, and the British entered the town, but not in time to rescue the women and children, whose slaughter had just taken place. What they saw there filled the soldiers with the deepest sentiments of horror and vengeance. The sight was one to make the blood run cold. "The ground," says a witness of the terrible scene, "was strewn with clotted blood, which here and there lay ankle deep. Long locks of hair were scattered about, shreds of women's garments, children's hats and shoes, torn books and broken playthings. The bodies were naked, the limbs dismembered. I have seen death in all possible forms, but I could not gaze on this terrible scene of blood."

The frightful slaughter was mercilessly avenged by the infuriated soldiers on the people of Cawnpore and on the prisoners they had taken. Havelock then crossed the Ganges and marched into Oude. Fighting its way through the difficulties caused by inclement weather and the continual onslaughts of the enemy, Havelock's regiment at last effected a coalition with the reinforcements under General Outram, and together they marched towards Lucknow, which was reached at the end of September.

An especial act of heroism was achieved during the siege of Lucknow by Mr. Kavanagh, an official, who offered, disguised as a native, to penetrate through a region swarming with enemies, to communicate with the general of the approaching relieving force. He happily accomplished his dangerous exploit, from which he obtained the honorable nickname of "Lucknow Kavanagh."

[=The Relief of Lucknow=]

As the army of relief drew near, the beleaguered people heard with ears of delight the increasing sounds of their approach, the roar of distant guns reaching their gladdened ears. Yet the enterprise was a desperate one and its success was far from assured. Havelock and Outram had no more than 2,600 men, while the enemy was 50,000 strong. Yet as the sound of the guns increased there were evidences of panic among the natives. Many of the town people and of the Sepoys took to flight, some crossing the river by the bridge, some by swimming. At two o'clock the smoke of the guns was visible in the suburbs and the rattle of musketry could be heard. At five o'clock heavy firing broke out in the streets, and in a few minutes more a force of Highlanders and Sikhs turned into the street leading to the residency, in which the besieged garrison had so long been confined. Headed by General Outram, they ran at a rapid pace to the gate, and, amid wild cheers from those within, made their way into the beleaguered enclosure, and the first siege of Lucknow was at an end.

[=The Suffering at Lucknow=]

The garrison had fought for months behind slight defences and against enormous odds. They were well supplied with food and water, but they had been exposed to terrible heat and heavy and incessant rains. The Sepoys had been drilled by British officers, were well supplied with arms and ammunition, and from the housetops of the town kept up an incessant fire that searched every corner of the defended fortress. Sickness raged in the crowded and underground rooms in which shelter was sought against the constant musketry, and death had reaped a harvest among the gallant and unyielding few who had so long held that almost untenable post.

[=The Coming of Campbell=]

Havelock's men were able to do no more than reinforce the garrison. After fighting their way with heavy losses into the citadel, they found that it was impossible, with their small army, to force a retreat through the ranks of the enemy with the women, children and invalids, surrounded by the swarms of rebels who surged round the walls like a foaming sea. They were compelled, therefore, to shut themselves up, and await fresh reinforcements. Provisions, however, now began to diminish, and they were menaced with the horrors of starvation; but matters did not reach this last extremity. Sir Colin Campbell, the new commander-in-chief, with 7,000 well-equipped troops, was already on the way. He arrived at Lucknow on the 14th of November, made a bold and successful attack on the fortifications, and liberated the besieged. Unable to hold the town, he left it to the enemy, being obliged to content himself with the rescue of the people in the residency. Eight days afterwards Havelock died of cholera. His memory is held in high esteem as the most heroic figure in the war of the mutiny.

[=Siege and Capture of Delhi=]

Meanwhile Delhi was under siege, which began on June 8th, just one month after the original outbreak. It was, however, not properly a siege, for the British were encamped on a ridge at some distance from the city. They never numbered more than 8,000 men, while within the walls were over 30,000 of the mutineers. General Nicholson arrived with a reinforcement in middle August, and on September 14th an assault was made. The city was held with desperation by the rebels, fighting going on in the streets for six days before the Sepoys fled. Nicholson fell at the head of a storming party, and Hodson, the leader of a corps of irregular horse, took the old Mogul emperor prisoner, and shot down his sons in cold blood.

[=Final Operations Against Lucknow=]

It was not until three months and a half after the release of the garrison at Lucknow that Sir Colin Campbell, having dealt out punishment to the mutineers at many of the stations where they still kept together, and having received large reinforcements of men and artillery from home, prepared for the crowning attack upon that place. On the 4th of February he advanced from Cawnpore, with three divisions of infantry, a division of cavalry, and fifteen batteries, and on the 1st of March operations began; General Outram, with a force of 6,000 men and thirty guns, crossing the Goomtee, and reconnoitering the country as far as Chinhut. On the following day he invested the king's race-house, which he carried the next day by assault, and on the 9th Sir Colin Campbell's main force captured, with a slight loss, the Martinière, pushed on to the bridges across the river, and carried, after some hard fighting, the Begum's palace. Two days later the Immaumbarra, which had been converted into a formidable stronghold and was held by a large force, was breached and stormed, and the captors followed so hotly upon the rear of the flying foe that they entered with them the Kaiserbagh, which was regarded by the rebels as their strongest fortress. Its garrison, taken wholly by surprise, made but a slight resistance. The loss of these two positions, on which they had greatly relied, completely disheartened the enemy, and throughout the night a stream of fugitives poured out of the town.

[=The Storming of the Fortresses=]

The success was so unexpected that the arrangements necessary for cutting off the retreat of the enemy had not been completed, and very large numbers of the rebels escaped, to give infinite trouble later on. Many were cut down by the cavalry and horse artillery, which set out the next morning in pursuit; but, to the mortification of the army, a considerable proportion got away. The next day a number of palaces and houses fell into the hands of the advancing troops without resistance, and by midnight the whole city along the river bank was in their possession. In the meantime Jung Bahadoor, the British ally, was attacking the city with his Goorkhas from the south, and pushed forward so far that communications were opened with him halfway across the city. The following day the Goorkhas made a further advance, and, fighting with great gallantry, won the suburbs adjacent to the Charbach bridge.

The hard fighting was now over; the failure to defend even one of the fortresses upon which for months they had bestowed so much care, completely disheartened the mutineers remaining in the city. Numbers effected their escape; others hid themselves, after having got rid of their arms and uniforms; some parties took refuge in houses, and defended themselves desperately to the end. The work was practically accomplished on the 21st, and Lucknow, which had so long been the headquarters of the insurrection, was in British hands, and that with a far smaller loss than could have been expected from the task of capturing a city possessing so many places of strength, and held by some 20,000 desperate men fighting with ropes round their necks.

[=The Booty of the Soldiers=]

[=The East India Company Abolished=]

[=Victoria is Made Empress of India=]

The city taken, the troops were permitted to plunder and murder to their hearts' content. In every house were dead or dying, and the corpses of Sepoys lay piled up several feet in height. The booty which the soldiers carried off in the way of jewels and treasures of every kind was enormous. The widowed queen of Oude set out for England, to proclaim the innocence of her son "in the dark countries of the West," and to preserve to her house the shadow of an independent monarchy. She never saw her sunny India again, however; on the return journey she died of a broken heart. Though the rebellion gradually lost force and cohesion after this period, the vengeance continued for a year longer. But the chief rebel, Nana Sahib, and the two heroic women, the Begum of Oude and the Ranee of Jansee, escaped to Nepaul. In the course of the year 1858, peace and order again returned to the Anglo-Indian Empire, and the government was able to consider means of reconciliation. By a proclamation of the queen all rebels who were not directly implicated in the murder of British subjects, and would return to their duty and allegiance by January, 1859, were to obtain a complete amnesty. This proclamation also announced that the queen, with the consent of Parliament, had determined to abolish the East India Company, to take the government into her own hands, and to rule India by means of a special secretary of state and council. The Indian Empire, both within and without, had assumed such gigantic proportions that it could no longer be properly ruled by a mercantile company, and came properly under the control of the crown. In 1876 Queen Victoria assumed, by act of Parliament, the title of Empress of India. The most recent important event, in the acquisition of territory in this part of the world, was the invasion of Burmah in 1885, and its capture after a short and decisive campaign. The Indian Empire of Victoria has now grown enormous in extent, its borders extending to the Himalayas on the north, where they are in contact with the boundaries of the great imperial dominion which Russia has acquired in Asia. Whether the two great rivals will yet come into conflict on this border is a question which only the future can decide.

India possesses a population only surpassed by that of China amounting at the census of 1896 to 221,172,952. This excludes the native and partially independent states, the population of which numbers 66,050,479, making a total for the whole empire, including Burmah, of 287,223,431. Under British control the country has been greatly developed, and abundantly supplied with means of internal communication, its railroad lines covering a length of about 27,000 miles, and its telegraphs of over 45,000 miles, while the telephone has also been widely introduced. Its commerce amounts in round numbers to nearly $500,000,000 annually.

This great country has long been subject to devastating disasters. In 1876 a terrible tidal wave drowned thousands of the people and destroyed millions in value of property. In 1897 much of the country suffered frightfully from famine, being the fifteenth occasion during the century. In the same year a plague broke out in the crowded city of Bombay and caused dreadful ravages among its native population. For ages past India has been subject to visitations of this kind, which have hitherto surpassed the power of man to prevent. In the last named all the world came to the aid of the starving and science did its utmost to stay the ravages of the plague.

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Chapter XVIII

Thiers, Gambetta, and the Rise of the French Republic.

[=A Provisional Government=]

It has been already told how the capitulation of the French army at Sedan and the captivity of Louis Napoleon were followed in Paris by the overthrow of the empire and the formation of a republic, the third in the history of French political changes. A provisional government was formed, the legislative assembly was dissolved, and all the court paraphernalia of the imperial establishment disappeared. The new government was called in Paris the "Government of Lawyers," most of its members and officials belonging to that profession. At its head was General Trochu, in command of the army in Paris; among its chief members were Jules Favre and Gambetta. While upright in its membership and honorable in its purposes, it was an arbitrary body, formed by a coup d'etat like that by which Napoleon had seized the reins of power, and not destined for a long existence.

[=Excitement in Paris=]

The news of the fall of Metz and the surrender of Bazaine and his army served as a fresh spark to the inflammable public feeling of France. In Paris the Red Republic raised the banner of insurrection against the government of the national defence and endeavored to revive the spirit of the Commune of 1793. The insurgents marched to the senate-house, demanded the election of a municipal council which should share power with the government, and proceeded to imprison Trochu, Jules Favre, and their associates. This, however, was but a temporary success of the Commune, and the provisional government continued in existence until the end of the war, when a national assembly was elected by the people and the temporary government was set, aside. Gambetta, the dictator, "the organizer of defeats," as he was sarcastically entitled, lost his power, and the aged statesman and historian, Louis Thiers, was chosen as chief of the executive department of the new government.

The treaty of peace with France, including, as it did, the loss of Alsace and Lorraine and the payment of an indemnity of $1,000,000,000, roused once more the fierce passions of the radicals and the masses of the great cities, who passionately denounced the treaty as due to cowardice and treason. The dethroned emperor added to the excitement by a manifesto, in which he protested against his deposition by the assembly and called for a fresh election. The final incitement to insurrection came when the assembly decided to hold its sessions at Versailles instead of in Paris, whose unruly populace it feared.

[=Outbreak of the Commune=]

In a moment all the revolutionary elements of the great city were in a blaze. The social democratic "Commune," elected from the central committee of the National Guard, renounced obedience to the government and the National Assembly, and broke into open revolt. An attempt to repress the movement only added to its violence, and all the riotous populace of Paris sprang to arms. A new war was about to be inaugurated in that city which had just suffered so severely from the guns of the Germans, and around which German troops were still encamped.

The government had neglected to take possession of the cannon on Montmartre; and now, when the troops of the line, instead of firing on the insurrectionists, went over in crowds to their side, the supremacy over Paris fell into the hands of the wildest demagogues. A fearful civil war commenced, and in the same forts which the Germans had shortly before evacuated firing once more resounded; the houses, gardens, and villages around Paris were again surrendered to destruction, and the creations of art, industry, and civilization, and the abodes of wealth and pleasure were once more transformed into dreary wildernesses.

[=Outrages of the Insurgents=]

The wild outbreaks of fanaticism on the part of the Commune recalled the scenes of the revolution of 1789, and in these spring days of 1871 Paris added another leaf to its long history of crime and violence. The insurgents, roused to fury by the efforts of the government to suppress them, murdered two generals, Lecomte and Thomas, and fired on the unarmed citizens who, as the "friends of order," desired a reconciliation with the authorities at Versailles. They formed a government of their own, extorted loans from wealthy citizens, confiscated the property of religious societies, and seized and held as hostages Archbishop Darboy and many other distinguished clergymen and citizens.

[=Punishment of the Commune=]

Meanwhile the investing troops, led by Marshal MacMahon, gradually fought their way through the defences and into the suburbs of the city, and the surrender of the anarchists in the capital became inevitable. This necessity excited their passions to the most violent extent, and, with the wild fury of savages, they set themselves to do all the damage to the historical monuments of Paris they could. The noble Vendôme column, the symbol of the warlike renown of France, was torn down from its pedestal and hurled prostrate in the street. The most historic buildings in the city were set on fire, and either partially or entirely destroyed. Among these were the Tuileries, a portion of the Louvre, the Luxembourg, the Palais Royal, the Elysée, etc.; while several of the imprisoned hostages, foremost among them Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, and the universally respected minister Daguerry, were shot by the infuriated mob. Such crimes excited the Versailles troops to terrible vengeance, when they at last succeeded in repressing the rebellion. They went their way along a bloody course; human life was counted as nothing; the streets were stained with blood and strewn with corpses, and the Seine once more ran red between its banks. When at last the Commune surrendered, the judicial courts at Versailles began their work of retribution. The leaders and participators in the rebellion who could not save themselves by flight were shot by hundreds, confined in fortresses, or transported to the colonies. For more than a year the imprisonments, trials, and executions continued, military courts being established which excited the world for months by their wholesale condemnations to exile and to death. The carnival of anarchy was followed by one of pitiless revenge.

The Republican government of France, which had been accepted in an emergency, was far from carrying with it the support of the whole of the assembly or of the people, and the aged, but active and keen-witted Thiers had to steer through a medley of opposing interests and sentiments. His government was considered, alike by the Monarchists and the Jacobins, as only provisional, and the Bourbons and Napoleonists on the one hand and the advocates of "liberty, equality and fraternity" on the other, intrigued for its overthrow. But the German armies still remained on French soil, pending the payment of the costs of the war; and the astute chief of the executive power possessed moderation enough to pacify the passions of the people, to restrain their hatred of the Germans, which was so boldly exhibited in the streets and in the courts of justice, and to quiet the clamor for a war of revenge.

[=President Thiers and the Assembly=]

The position of parties at home was confused and distracted, and a disturbance of the existing order could only lead to anarchy and civil war. Thiers was thus the indispensable man of the moment, and so much was he himself impressed by consciousness of this fact, that he many times, by the threat of resignation, brought the opposing elements in the assembly to harmony and compliance. This occurred even during the siege of Paris, when the forces of the government were in conflict with the Commune. In the assembly there was shown an inclination to moderate or break through the sharp centralization of the government, and to procure some autonomy for the provinces and towns. When, therefore, a new scheme was discussed, a large part of the assembly demanded that the mayors should not, as formerly, be appointed by the government, but be elected by the town councils. Only with difficulty was Thiers able to effect a compromise, on the strength of which the government was permitted the right of appointment for all towns numbering over twenty thousand. In the elections for the councils the Moderate Republicans proved triumphant. With a supple dexterity, Thiers knew how to steer between the Democratic-Republican party and the Monarchists. When Gambetta endeavored to establish a "league of Republican towns," the attempt was forbidden as illegal; and when the decree of banishment against the Bourbon and Orlean princes was set aside, and the latter returned to France, Thiers knew how to postpone the entrance of the Duc d'Aumale and Prince de Joinville, who had been elected deputies, into the assembly, at least until the end of the year.

[=The National Loan=]

The brilliant success of the national loan went far to strengthen the position of Thiers. The high offers for a share in this loan, which indicated the inexhaustible wealth of the nation and the solid credit of France abroad, promised a rapid payment of the war indemnity, the consequent evacuation of the country by the German army of occupation, and a restoration of the disturbed finances of the state. The foolish manifesto of the Count de Chambord, who declared that he had only to return with the white banner to be made sovereign of France, brought all reasonable and practical men to the side of Thiers, and he had, during the last days of August, 1871, the triumph of being proclaimed "President of the French Republic."

The new president aimed, next to the liberation of the garrisoned provinces from the German troops of occupation, at the reorganization of the French army. Yet he could not bring himself to the decision of enforcing in its entirety the principle of general armed service, such as had raised Prussia from a state of depression to one of military regeneration. Universal military service in France was, it is true, adopted in name, and the army was increased to an immense extent, but under such conditions and limitations that the richer and more educated classes could exempt themselves from service in the army; and thus the active forces, as before, consisted of professional soldiers. And when the minister for education, Jules Simon, introduced an educational law based on liberal principles, he experienced on the part of the clergy and their champion, Bishop Dupanloup, such violent opposition, that the government dropped the measure.

[=Reorganization of the Army=]

In order to place the army in the condition which Thiers desired, an increase in the military budget was necessary, and consequently an enhancement of the general revenues of the state. For this purpose a return to the tariff system, which had been abolished under the empire, was proposed, but excited so great an opposition in the assembly that six months passed before it could be carried. The new organization of the army, undertaken with a view of placing France on a level in military strength with her late conqueror, was now eagerly undertaken by the president. An active army, with five years' service, was to be added to a "territorial army," a kind of militia. And so great was the demand on the portion of the nation capable of bearing arms that the new French army exceeded in numbers that of any other nation.

[=Gambetta as an Agitator=]

But all the statesmanship of Thiers could not overcome the anarchy in the assembly, where the forces for monarchy and republicanism were bitterly opposed to each other. Gambetta, in order to rouse public opinion in favor of democracy, made several tours through the country, his extravagance of language giving deep offence to the monarchists, while the opposed sections of the assembly grew wider and more violent in their breach.

[=Trial and Condemnation of the Generals=]

Indisputably as were the valuable services which Thiers had rendered to France, by the foundation of public order and authority, the creation of a regular army, and the restoration of a solid financial system, yet all these services met with no recognition in the face of the party jealousy and political passions prevailing among the people's representatives at Versailles. More and more did the Royalist reaction gain ground, and, aided by the priests and by national hatred and prejudice, endeavor to bring about the destruction of its opponents. Against the Radicals and Liberals, among whom even the Voltairean Thiers was included, superstition and fanaticism were let loose, and against the Bonapartists was directed the terrorism of court martial. The French could not rest with the thought that their military supremacy had been broken by the superiority of the Prusso-German arms; their defeats could have proceeded only from the treachery or incapacity of their leaders. To this national prejudice the Government decided to bow, and to offer a sacrifice to the popular passion. And thus the world beheld the lamentable spectacle of the commanders who had surrendered the French fortresses to the enemy being subjected to a trial by court-martial under the presidency of Marshal Baraguay d'Hilliers, and the majority of them, on account of their proved incapacity or weakness, deprived of their military honors, at a moment when all had cause to reproach themselves and endeavor to raise up a new structure on the ruins of the past. Even Ulrich, the once celebrated commander of Strasburg, whose name had been given to a street in Paris, was brought under the censure of the court-martial. But the chief blow fell upon the commander-in-chief of Metz, Marshal Bazaine, to whose "treachery" the whole misfortune of France was attributed. For months he was retained a prisoner at Versailles, while preparations were made for the great court-martial spectacle, which, in the following year, took place under the presidency of the Duc d'Aumale.

[=MacMahon Elected President=]

The result of the party division in the assembly was, in May, 1873, a vote of censure on the ministry which induced them to resign. Their resignation was followed by an offer of resignation on the part of Thiers, who experienced the unexpected slight of having it accepted by the majority of the assembly, the monarchist MacMahon, Marshal of France and Duke of Magenta, being elected President in his place. Thiers had just performed one of his greatest services to France, by paying off the last installment of the war indemnity and relieving the soil of his country of the hated German troops.

[=The Count de Chambord and His Demand=]

The party now in power at once began to lay plans to carry out their cherished purpose of placing a Legitimist king upon the throne, this honor being offered to the Count de Chambord, grandson of Charles X. He, an old man, unfitted for the thorny seat offered him, and out of all accord with the spirit of the times, put a sudden end to the hopes of his partisans by his mediæval conservatism. Their purpose was to establish a constitutional government, under the tri-colored flag of revolutionary France; but the old Bourbon gave them to understand that he would not consent to reign under the Tricolor, but must remain steadfast to the white banner of his ancestors; he had no desire to be "the legitimate king of revolution."

This letter shattered the plans of his supporters. No man with ideas like these would be tolerated on the French throne. There was never to be in France a King Henry V. The Monarchists, in disgust at the failure of their schemes, elected MacMahon president of the republic for a term of seven years, and for the time being the reign of republicanism in France was made secure.

[=Trial and Sentence of Bazaine=]

While MacMahon was thus being raised to the pinnacle of honor, his former comrade Bazaine was imprisoned in another part of the palace at Versailles, awaiting trial on the charge of treason for the surrender of Metz. In the trial, in which the whole world took a deep interest, the efforts of the prosecution were directed to prove that the conquest of France was solely due to the treachery of the Bonapartist marshal. Despite all that could be said in his defence, he was found guilty by the court-martial, sentenced to degradation from his rank in the army, and to be put to death.

A letter which Prince Frederick Charles wrote in his favor only added to the wrath of the people, who cried aloud for his execution. But, as though the judges themselves felt a twinge of conscience at the sentence, they at the same time signed a petition for pardon to the president of the republic. MacMahon thereupon commuted the punishment of death into a twenty years' imprisonment, remitted the disgrace of the formalities of a military degradation, without cancelling its operation, and appointed as the prisoner's place of confinement the fortress on the island of St. Marguerite, opposite Cannes, known in connection with the "iron mask." Bazaine's wealthy Mexican wife obtained permission to reside near him, with her family and servants, in a pavilion of the sea-fortress. This afforded her an opportunity of bringing about the freedom of her husband in the following year with the aid of her brother. After an adventurous escape, by letting himself down with a rope to a Genoese vessel, Bazaine fled to Holland, and then offered his services to the Republican government of Spain.

[=The New Constitution of France=]

In 1875 the constitution under which France is now governed was adopted by the republicans. It provides for a legislature of two chambers; one a chamber of deputies elected by the people, the other a senate of 300 members, 75 of whom are elected by the National Assembly and the others by electoral colleges in the departments of France. The two chambers unite to elect a president, who has a term of seven years. He is commander-in-chief of the army, appoints all officers, receives all ambassadors, executes the laws, and appoints the cabinet, which is responsible to the Senate and House of Deputies,--thus resembling the cabinet of Great Britain instead of that of the United States.

[=MacMahon Resigns and Grevy Elected=]

This constitution was soon ignored by the arbitrary president, who forced the resignation of a cabinet which he could not control, and replaced it by another responsible to himself instead of to the assembly. His act of autocracy roused a violent opposition. Gambetta moved that the representatives of the people had no confidence in a cabinet which was not free in its actions and not Republican in its principles. The sudden death of Thiers, whose last writing was a defence of the republic, stirred the heart of the nation and added to the excitement, which soon reached fever heat. In the election that followed the Republicans were in so great a majority over the Conservatives that the president was compelled either to resign or to govern according to the constitution. He accepted the latter and appointed a cabinet composed of Republicans. But the acts of the legislature, which passed laws to prevent arbitrary action by the executive and to secularize education, so exasperated the old soldier that he finally resigned from his high office.

[=Gambetta as Prime Minister=]

Jules Grévy was elected president in his place, and Gambetta was made president of the House of Deputies. Subsequently he was chosen presiding minister in a cabinet composed wholly of his own creatures. His career in this high office was a brief one. The Chambers refused to support him in his arbitrary measures and he resigned in disgust. Soon after the self-appointed dictator, who had played so prominent a part in the war with Germany, died from a wound whose origin remained a mystery.

The constitution was revised in 1884, the republic now declared permanent and final, and Grévy again elected president. General Boulanger, the minister of war in the new government, succeeded in making himself highly popular, many looking upon him as a coming Napoleon, by whose genius the republic would be overthrown.

[=The Career of Boulanger=]

In 1887 Grévy resigned, in consequence of a scandal in high circles, and was succeeded by Sadi Carnot, grandson of a famous general of the first republic. Under the new president two striking events took place. General Boulanger managed to lift himself into great prominence, and gain a powerful following in France. Carried away by self-esteem, he defied his superiors, and when tried and found guilty of the offence, was strong enough in France to overthrow the ministry, to gain re-election to the Chamber of Deputies, and to defeat a second ministry.

But his reputation was declining. It received a serious blow by a duel he fought with a lawyer, in which the soldier was wounded and the lawyer escaped unhurt. The next cabinet was hostile to his intrigues, and he fled to Brussels to escape arrest. Tried by the Senate, sitting as a High Court of Justice, he was found guilty of plotting against the state and sentenced to imprisonment for life. His career soon after ended in suicide and his party disappeared.

[=The Panama Canal Scandal=]

The second event spoken of was the Panama Canal affair. De Lesseps, the maker of the Suez Canal, had undertaken to excavate a similar one across the Isthmus of Panama, but the work was managed with such wild extravagance that vast sums were spent and the poor investors widely ruined, while the canal remained a half-dug ditch. At a later date this affair became a great scandal, dishonest bargains in connection with it were abundantly unearthed, bribery was shown to have been common in high places, and France was shaken to its centre by the startling exposure. De Lesseps, fortunately for him, escaped by death, but others of the leaders in the enterprise were condemned and punished.

[=Anarchy in France and Murder of the President=]

In the succeeding years perils manifold threatened the existence of the French republic. A moral decline seemed to have sapped the foundations of public virtue, and the new military organization rose to a dangerous height of power, becoming a monster of ambition and iniquity which overshadowed and portended evil to the state. The spirit of anarchy, which had been so strikingly displayed in the excesses of the Parisian Commune, was shown later in various instances of death and destruction by the use of dynamite bombs, exploded in Paris and elsewhere. But its most striking example was in the murder of President Carnot, who was stabbed by an anarchist in the streets of Lyons. This assassination, and the disheartening exposures of dishonesty in the Panama Canal Case trials, stirred the moral sentiment of France to its depths, and made many of the best citizens despair of the permanency of the republic.

[=The Reorganization of the Army=]

But the most alarming threat came from the army, which had grown in power and prominence until it fairly overtopped the state, while its leaders felt competent to set at defiance the civil authorities. This despotic army was an outgrowth of the Franco-Prussian war. The terrible punishment which the French had received in that war, and in particular the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, filled them with bitter hatred of Germany and a burning desire for revenge. Yet it was evident that their military organization was so imperfect as to leave them helpless before the army of Germany, and the first thing to be done was to place themselves on a level in military strength with their foe. To this President Thiers had earnestly devoted himself, and the work of army organization went on until all France was virtually converted into a great camp, defended by powerful fortresses, and the whole people of the country were practically made part and portion of the army.

The final result of this was the development of one of the most complete and well-appointed military establishments in Europe. The immediate cause of the reorganization of the army gradually passed away. As time went on the intense feeling against Germany softened and the danger of war decreased. But the army became more and more dominant in France, and, as the century neared its end, the autocratic position of its leaders was revealed by a startling event, which showed vividly to the world the moral decadence of France and the controlling influence and dominating power of the members of the General Staff. This was the celebrated Dreyfus Case, the cause celèbre of the end of the century. This case is of such importance that a description of its salient points becomes here necessary.

[=The Opening of the Dreyfus Case=]

Albert Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jew and a captain in the Fourteenth Regiment of Artillery of the French army, detailed for service at the Information Bureau of the Minister of War, was arrested October 15, 1894, on the charge of having sold military secrets to a foreign power. The following letter was said to have been found at the German embassy by a French detective, in what was declared to be the handwriting of Dreyfus:

"Having no news from you I do not know what to do. I send you in the meantime the condition of the forts. I also hand you the principal instructions as to firing. If you desire the rest I shall have them copied. The document is precious. The instructions have been given only to the officers of the General Staff. I leave for the manoeuvres."

For some time prior to the arrest of Dreyfus on the charge of being the author of this letter, M. Drumont, editor of the Libre Parole, had been carrying on a violent anti-Semitic agitation through his journal. He raved about the Jews in general, declared Dreyfus guilty, and asserted that there was danger that he would be acquitted through the potent Juiverie, "the cosmopolite syndicate which exploits France."

Public opinion in Paris became much influenced by this journalistic assault, and under these circumstances Dreyfus was brought to trial before a military court, found guilty and condemned to be degraded from his military rank, and by a special act of the Chamber of Deputies was ordered to be imprisoned for life in a penal settlement on Devil's Island, off the coast of French Guiana, a tropical region, desolate and malarious in character. The sentence was executed with the most cruel harshness. During part of his detention Dreyfus was locked in a hut, surrounded by an iron cage, on the island. This was done on the plea of possible attempts at rescue. He was allowed to send and receive only such letters as had been transcribed by one of his guardians.

He denied, and never ceased to deny, his guilt. The letters he wrote to his counsel after the trial and after his disgrace are most pathetic assertions of his innocence, and of the hope that ultimately justice would be done him. His wife and family continued to deny his guilt, and used every influence to get his case reopened.

[=Belief in the Innocence of Dreyfus=]

The first trial of Dreyfus was conducted by court-martial and behind closed doors. Some parts of the indictment were not communicated to the accused and his lawyer. The secrecy of the trial, the lack of fairness in its management, his own protestations of innocence, the anti-Jewish feeling, and the course of the government in the affair aroused a strong suspicion that Dreyfus, being a Jew, had been used as a scapegoat for some one else and had been unjustly convicted. Many eminent literary men of France, and even M. Scheurer-Kestner, a vice president of the Senate--none of them Jews--eventually advocated the revision of a sentence which failed to appeal to the sense of justice of the best element of France.

It was asserted by some that Dreyfus had sold the plans of various strongly fortified places to the German government, and by others that the sale had been to the Italian government. It was also said that he had disclosed the plans for the mobilization of the French army in case of war, covering several departments, and especially the important fortress of Briançon, the Alpine Gibraltar near the Italian frontier.

[=The Bordereau and the Dossier=]

The bordereau, the paper on which the charges against Dreyfus were based, was a memorandum of treasonable revelations concerning French military affairs. The dossier was the official envelope containing the papers relative to the case, which embraced facts alleged to be sufficient to prove the guilt of the accused officer. The bordereau was examined by five experts in handwriting, only three of whom testified that it could have been written by Dreyfus. The papers in the dossier were not shown to Dreyfus or his counsel, so that it was impossible to refute them. In fact, the court-martial was conducted in the most unfair manner, and many became convinced that some disgraceful mystery lay behind it, and that Dreyfus had been made a scapegoat to shield some one higher in office.

[=The Accusation of Esterhazy=]

It was in the early part of 1898 that the case was again brought prominently to public notice, after the wife of the unfortunate prisoner had, with the most earnest devotion for three years, used every effort to obtain for him a new trial. Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart, in charge of the secret service bureau at Paris, became familiar through his official duties with the famous case, and was struck with the similarity between the handwriting of the bordereau and that of Count Ferdinand Esterhazy, an officer of the French army and a descendant of the well-known Esterhazy family of Hungary. Shortly afterwards M. Scheurer-Kestner declared that military secrets had continued to leak out after the arrest of Dreyfus, that in consequence a rich and titled officer had been requested to resign, and that this officer was the real author of the bordereau. This man was Count Esterhazy, whose exposure was due to Picquart's fortunate discovery. Others took up this accusation, and the affair was so ventilated that Esterhazy was subjected to a secret trial by court-martial, which ended in an acquittal.

[=Zola's Letter and Accusation=]

At the close of the Esterhazy trial a new defender of Dreyfus stepped into the fray, Emile Zola, the celebrated novelist. He wrote an open letter to M. Faure, then President of France, entitled "J'accuse" ("I accuse"), which was published in the Aurore newspaper. In it he boldly charged that Esterhazy had been acquitted by the members of the court-martial on the order of their chiefs in the ministry of war, who were anxious to show that French military justice could not possibly make an error.

This letter led to the arrest and trial of Zola and the manager of the paper, their trial being conducted in a manner specially designed to prevent the facts from becoming known. They were found guilty of libel against the officers of the court-martial and sentenced to heavy fines and one year's imprisonment. On appeal, they were tried again in the same unfair way, and received the same sentence. Zola took care, by absenting himself from France, that the sentence of a year's imprisonment should not be executed.

[=Henry's Forgery and Suicide=]

As time went on new evidence became revealed. Colonel Henry, who was one of the witnesses in the Zola trial, was confronted with a damaging fact, one of the most important papers in the secret dossier being traced to him. He confessed that he had forged it to strengthen the case against Dreyfus, was imprisoned for the offence, and committed suicide in his cell--or was murdered, as some thought. Picquart was punished by being sent to Africa, and afterwards imprisoned. He made the significant remark that if he should be found dead in his cell it would not be a case of suicide. Esterhazy was said to have acknowledged to a London editor that he was the author of the bordereau, and it was proved that the handwriting was identical with his and the paper on which it was written a peculiar kind which he had used in 1894. The papers in the secret dossier were also alleged to be a mass of forgeries.

The great publicity of this case, in which the whole world had taken interest,--the action of the French courts being universally condemned,--and the development of the facts just mentioned, at length goaded the officials of the French government to action. President Faure had the case considered by the cabinet, and finally forced a revision. In consequence the cabinet resigned and a new one was chosen. As a result the case was brought before the Court of Cassation, the final court of appeal, which, after full consideration, ordered a new trial of the condemned officer.

[=A Second Condemnation=]

Captain Dreyfus was accordingly brought from Devil's Island, and on July 1, 1899, reached the city of Rennes, where the new court-martial was to be held. It is not necessary to repeat the evidence given in this trial, which lasted from August 7th to September 7th, and with which the world is sufficiently familiar. It will suffice to say that the evidence against Dreyfus was of the most shadowy and uncertain character, being largely conjectures and opinions of army officers, and seemed insufficient to convict a criminal for the smallest offence before an equitable court; that the evidence in his favor was of the strongest character; that the proceedings were of the loosest description; that much favorable evidence was ruled out by the judges, the presiding judge throughout showing a bias against the accused; and that the trial ended in a conviction of the prisoner, by a vote of five judges to two, the verdict being the extraordinary one of "guilty of treason, with extenuating circumstances"--as if any treason could be extenuated.

[=The World's Opinion=]

This is but an outline sketch of this remarkable case, which embraced many circumstances favorable to Dreyfus which we have not had space to give. The verdict was received by the world outside of France with universal astonishment and condemnation. The opinion was everywhere expressed that not a particle of incriminating evidence had been adduced, and that the members of the court-martial had acted virtually under the commands of their superior officers, who held that the "honor of the army" demanded a conviction. Dreyfus was thought by many to have been made a victim to shield certain criminals of high importance in the army, which so dominated French opinion that the great bulk of the people pronounced in favor of the sacrifice of this innocent victim to the Moloch of the French military system. It was widely felt in foreign lands that the great development of militarism in France, and the vast influence of the general staff of the army, formed a threatening feature of the governmental system, which might at any time overthrow the republic and form a military empire upon its ruins. Two republics have already been brought to an end in France through the supremacy of the army, and the safety of the third is far from assured. The Dreyfus case has thrown a flood of light upon the volcanic condition of affairs in France.

The general condemnation of this example of French "justice" by the press of other nations, and very probably the recognition by the governing powers of France of the inadequacy of the evidence led, shortly after the conclusion of the court-martial, to the pardon of the condemned. The sentence of the court in no sense affected his position before the world, he being looked upon everywhere outside of France as a victim of injustice instead of a criminal. The severity of his imprisonment however, had seriously affected his health, and threatened to bring his life to an end before he could obtain the justice which he proposed to seek in the courts of France.

This remarkable case, which made an obscure officer of the French army the most talked-of and commiserated man among all the peoples of the earth, at the end of the nineteenth century, is of further interest from the light it throws upon the legal system of France as compared with that of Anglo-Saxon nations. Dreyfus, it is true, was tried by court-martial, but the procedure was similar to that of the ordinary French courts, in which trial by jury does not exist, the judge having the double function of deciding upon the guilt or innocence of the accused and passing sentence; while efforts are made to induce the prisoner to incriminate himself which would be considered utterly unjust in British and American legal practice. The French legal system is a direct descendant of that of ancient Rome. The British one represents a new development in legal methods. Doubtless both have their advantages, but the Dreyfus trial seems to indicate that the system of France opens the way to acts of barbarous injustice.

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Chapter XIX

Paul Kruger and the Struggle for Dominion in South Africa.

At the close of the nineteenth century, not the least important among the international questions that were disturbing the nations was the controversy between the English and the Boers in South Africa, concerning the political privileges of the Uitlanders, or foreign gold miners of the Transvaal. A consideration of this subject obliges us to go back to the beginning of the century and review the whole history of colonization in South Africa.

[=The Dutch Settlement in South Africa=]

[=Great Britain in Cape Colony and the Emigration of the Boers=]

That region belongs by right of settlement to the Dutch, who founded a colony in the region of Capetown as early as 1650, and in the succeeding century and a half spread far and wide over the territory, their farms and cattle ranches occupying a very wide area. The first interference with their peaceful occupation came in 1795, when the English took possession. In 1800, however, they restored the colony to Holland, which held it in peaceable ownership until the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, came to disturb the map of Europe, and in a measure that of the world. As part of the distribution of spoils among the great nations, Cape Colony was ceded to Great Britain. Since then that country, which has a great faculty of taking hold and a very poor faculty of letting go, has held possession, and has pushed steadily northward until British South Africa is now a territory of enormous extent, stretching northward to the borders of the Congo Free State and to Lake Tanganyika.

This vast territory has not been gained without active and persistent aggression, from which the Dutch settlers, known as Boers, and the African natives have alike suffered. In truth, the Boers found the oppression of British rule an intolerable burden early in the century, and in 1840 a great party of them gave up their farms and "treked" northward--that is, traveled with their ox-teams and belongings--eager to get away from British control. Here they founded a republic of their own on the river Vaal, and settled down again to peace and prosperity.

[=A Huntsman's Paradise=]

The country in which they settled was a huntsman's paradise. On the great plains of the High Veldt or plateau (from 4,000 to 7,000 feet in height) antelopes of several species roamed in tens of thousands. In the valleys and plains of the low country the giraffe, elephant, buffalo, lion and other large animals were plentiful. The rivers were full of alligators and hippopotami. Here the newcomers found abundance of food, and a land of such pastoral wealth that the farm animals they brought increased abundantly. For years a steady stream of Boers continued to enter and settle in this land, deserting their farms in the British territory, harnessing their cattle to their long, lumbering wagons, and bringing with them food for the journey, and a good supply of powder and lead for use in their tried muskets. Their active hunting experience brought them in time to rank among the best marksmen in the world.

[=The Boers Drive Out the Blacks=]

They had not alone wild animals to deal with, but wild men as well. Fierce tribes of natives possessed the land, and with these the Boers were soon at war. A number of sanguinary battles were fought, with much slaughter on both sides, but in the end the black men were forced to give way to the whites and cross the Limpopo River into Matabeleland, to the north, which their descendants still occupy. Others of the natives were subdued and continued to live with the Boers. The latter were essentially pioneers. They did not till the soil, but divided up the land into great grazing ranges, covered with their abundant herds. And they had no instinct for trade, what little commerce the country possessed falling into British hands.

[=The South African Republic Founded=]

Two settlements were made, one between the Orange and the Vaal rivers, and the other north of the Vaal. The former had much trouble with the British previous to 1854, in which year it was given its independence. It is known as the Orange River Free State. The latter was given the name of Transvaal, and originally formed four separate republics, but in 1860 these united into one under the title of the South African Republic. The settlers were for a time covered with the shadow of British sovereignty, the claims of the British extending up to the 25th degree of latitude. But this claim was only on paper, and in 1852 it was withdrawn, Great Britain formally renouncing all rights over the country north of the Vaal. And for years afterwards the Boers lived on here free and undisturbed.

[=The Discovery of Diamonds=]

But their country possessed other wealth than that of pasture lands, and its hidden treasures were to yield them no end of trouble in the years to come. Under their soil lay untold riches, which in time brought hosts of unruly strangers to disturb their pastoral peace. The trouble began in 1867, when diamonds were found in the vicinity of the Vaal River, and a rush of miners began to invade this remote district. But the diamond mines lay west of the borders of the Transvaal, and brought rather a threatening situation than immediate disturbance to the Boer state. It was the later discovery of gold on Transvaal territory that eventually overthrew the quiet content of the pastoral community.

[=Shepstone's Annexation of the Transvaal=]

In 1877 the first intrusion came. The British were now abundant in Griqualand West, the diamond region, and on the Transvaal borders lay a host of native enemies, chief among them being the warlike Zulus, led by the bold and daring Cetewayo. Only fear of the British kept this truculent chief at rest. Meanwhile the Boer Republic had fallen into a financial collapse. Its frequent wars with the natives had exhausted its revenues and thrown it deeply into debt. A serious crisis seemed impending. On the plea of preventing this, Sir Theophilus Shepstone, secretary of Natal, made his way to Pretoria, the capital of the republic, and issued a proclamation annexing the Transvaal country to Great Britain. The public treasury he found to be almost empty, it containing only twelve shillings and six pence, and even part of this was counterfeit coin. His act was arbitrary and unwarranted, and while the Boers submitted, they did so with sullen anger, quietly biding their time.

[=The Zulu War=]

In the following year the Zulus, who had been threatening the Boers, broke out into war with the British, and with such energy that the whites were at first repulsed by the impetuous Cetewayo and his warlike followers. In this onset Prince Napoleon, son of the deposed emperor Louis Napoleon, who served as a volunteer in the British ranks, was killed. The British soon retrieved the disaster, and in the end decisively defeated the Zulus, capturing their king, who was taken as a prisoner to London. After the Zulu war Sir Garnet Wolseley led his troops into the Transvaal, telling the protesting Boers that "so long as the sun shone and the Vaal River flowed to the sea the Transvaal would remain British territory." Other acts of interference, and the attempt of the British officials to tax the Boers, added to their exasperation, and at the end of 1880 they resolved to fight for the independence of which they had been robbed. Wolseley had before this left the territory, and the troops had been reduced to a few detachments, scattered here and there.

[=War With the Boers=]

The first hostile action took place on December 20, 1880, a detachment of the Ninety-fourth regiment, on its march to Pretoria, being waylaid by a body of about 150 armed Boers, who ordered them to stop. Colonel Anstruther curtly replied: "I go to Pretoria; do as you like." The Boers did more than he liked. They closed in on his columns and opened on them so deadly a fire that the British fell at a frightful rate. Out of 259 in all, 155 had fallen dead or wounded in ten minutes' time. Then the colonel, himself seriously wounded, ordered a surrender, and the Boers at once became as friendly as they had just been hostile. They had lost only two killed and five wounded.

As soon as news of this disaster reached Natal, Colonel Sir George Colley, in command at Natal, marched against the Boers without waiting for reinforcements, the force at his disposal being but 1,200 men. He paid dearly for his temerity and contempt of the enemy. On January 28, 1881, he was encountered by the Boers at a place called Lang's Nek, and met with a bloody defeat. In about a week afterwards another engagement took place, in which the British lost 139 officers and men, while the whole Boer loss was 14. Practised hunters, their fire was so deadly that almost every shot found its mark.

[=The Stand at Majuba Hill=]

The war was going badly for the British. It was soon to go worse. Receiving reinforcements, Colley made a stand in an elevated position known as Majuba Hill, whose summit was 2,000 feet above the positions held by the Boers and its ascent so steep and rugged that the soldiers had to climb it in single file. Near the top of the ascent the grassy slopes were succeeded by boulders, crags, and loose stones, over which the weary men had to drag themselves on hands and knees. In this way about 400 men gained the summit on the morning of February 27th. The top of the hill was a saucer-shaped plateau, about 1,200 yards wide, with an elevated rim within which the British were posted.

The place seemed impregnable, but the daring Boers did not hesitate in the attack. A force of the older men were detailed to keep on the watch below--picked shots ready to fire on any soldier who should appear on the rim of the hill. The younger men began to climb the slopes, under cover of the shrub and stones. The assault was made on every side, and the defenders, too weak in numbers to hold the whole edge of the plateau, had to be moved from point to point to meet and attempt to thwart the attacks of the Boers. Slowly and steadily the hostile skirmishers clambered upwards from cover to cover, while the supports below protected their movement with a steady and accurate fire. During the hours from dawn to noon the British did not suffer very heavily, notwithstanding the accuracy of the Boer marksmanship. But the long strain of the Boers' close shooting began to tell on the morale of the British soldiers, and when the enemy at length reached the crest and opened a deadly fire at short range the officers had to exert themselves to the utmost in the effort to avert disaster. The reserves stationed in the central dip of the plateau, out of reach until then of the enemy's fire, were ordered up in support of the fighting line. Their want of promptitude in obeying this order did not augur well, and soon after reaching the front they wavered, and then gave way. The officers temporarily succeeded in rallying them, but the "bolt" had a bad effect. To use the expression of an eye-witness, a "funk became established."

[=The Boers Storm the British Camp=]

It was struggled against very gallantly by the officers, who, sword and revolver in hand, encouraged the soldiers by word and by action. A number of men, unable to confront the deadly fire of the Boers, had huddled for cover behind the rocky reef crossing the plateau, and no entreaty or upbraiding on the part of their officers would induce them to face the enemy. What then happened one does not care to tell in detail. Everything connected with this disastrous enterprise went to naught, as if there had been a curse on it. Whatever may have been the object intended, the force employed was absurdly inadequate. Instead of being homogeneous, it consisted of separate detachments with no link or bond of union--a disposition of troops which notoriously has led to more panics than any other cause that the annals of regimental history can furnish. Fragments of proud and distinguished regiments fresh from victory on another continent shared in the panic of the Majuba, seasoned warriors behaving no better than mere recruits. To the calm-pulsed philosopher a panic is an academic enigma. No man who has seen it--much less shared in it--can ever forget the infectious madness of panic-stricken soldiers.

[=The Victory of the Boers=]

In the sad ending, with a cry of fright and despair the remnants of the hapless force turned and fled, regardless of the efforts of the officers to stem the rearward rush. Sir George Colley lay dead, shot through the head just before the final flight. A surgeon and two hospital attendants caring for the wounded at the bandaging place in the dip of the plateau were shot down, probably inadvertently. The elder Boers promptly stopped the firing in that direction. But there was no cessation of the fire directed on the fugitives. On them the bullets rained accurately and persistently. The Boers, now disdaining cover, stood boldly on the edge of the plateau, and, firing down upon the scared troops, picked off the men as if shooting game. The slaughter would have been yet heavier but for the entrenchment which had been made by the company of the Ninety-second, left overnight on the Nek, between the Inquela and the Majuba. Captain Robertson was joined at dawn from camp by a company of the Sixtieth, under Captain Thurlow. Later there arrived at the entrenchment on the Nek a troop of the Fifteenth Hussars, under the command of Captain Sullivan. After midday the sound of the firing on the Majuba rapidly increased, and men were seen running down the hill towards the laager, one of whom brought in the tidings that the Boers had captured the position, that most of the troops were killed or prisoners, and that the general was dead with a bullet through his head.

[=A Panic Flight=]

Wounded men presently came pouring in, and were attended by Surgeon-Major Cornish. The laager was manned by the companies, and outposts were thrown out, which were soon driven in by large bodies of mounted Boers, under whose fire men fell fast. Robertson dispatched the rifle company down the ravine towards the camp, and a little later followed with the company of the Ninety-second under a murderous fire from the Boers, who had reached and occupied the entrenchment. The Highlanders lost heavily in the retreat, and Surgeon-Major Cornish was killed. The surviving fugitives from Majuba and from the laager finally reached camp under cover of the artillery fire from it, which ultimately stopped the pursuit. With the consent of the Boer leaders a temporary hospital was established at a farm-house near the foot of the mountain, and throughout the cold and wet night the medical staff never ceased to search for and bring in the wounded. Sir George Colley's body was brought into camp on March 1st, and buried there with full military honors.

[=Peace Declared with British Suzerainty=]

Of 650 officers and men who took part in this disastrous affair the loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners was 283; the Boers had one man killed and five wounded. Majuba Hill was enough for the British, fighting as they were in an unjust cause. An armistice was agreed upon, followed by a treaty of peace on March 23d. Large reinforcements had been sent out, which would have given the British an army of 20,000 against the 8,000 Boers, capable of bearing arms; but to fight longer in defence of an arbitrary invasion against such brave defenders of their homes and their rights, did not appeal to the conscience of Mr. Gladstone, and he lost no time in bringing the war to an end. By the terms of the treaty the Boers were left free to govern themselves as they would, they acknowledging the queen as suzerain of their country, with control of its foreign relations.

[=The Gold Diggings of the Transvaal=]

The next important event in the history of the Transvaal was the exploitation of its gold mines. Gold was discovered there soon after the opening of the diamond mines, but not under very promising conditions. It exists in a conglomerate rock, whose beds extend over an area of seventy by forty miles, and through a depth of from two to twenty feet; but years passed before the richness in metal of these rocks was discovered, and it was not until after the Boer war that mining fairly began. No one in his wildest dreams foresaw that these "banket" beds would in time yield gold to the value of more than $60,000,000 a year. The yield of the diamond mines was also enormous, and these two incitements brought a steady stream of new settlers to that region, destined before many years greatly to outnumber the sturdy farmers and herders of Dutch descent.

[=The Career of Cecil Rhodes=]

In the vicinity of the gold mines, not far from Pretoria, the Boer capital, rose the mining city of Johannesburg, which now has a population of more than 100,000 souls, of whom half are European miners and nearly all the remainder are natives. The great event in the history of the diamond mines was the advent thither of Cecil Rhodes. This remarkable man, the son of a country parson in England, who was ordered to South Africa for the benefit of his failing lungs, displayed such enterprise and ability that he soon became the leading figure in the diamond mining industry, organizing a company that controlled the mines, and accumulating an immense fortune.

This accomplished, he entered actively into South African politics, and was not long in immensely extending the dominion of Great Britain in that region of the earth. He obtained from Lord Salisbury, prime minister of Great Britain, a royal charter giving him the right to occupy and govern the great territory lying between the Limpopo River on the south and the Zambesi on the north, and extending far to the north and the west of the South African Republic. With an expedition of a thousand men, volunteers from the Transvaal and the Cape Colony, Rhodes marched north through a country filled with armed Zulus,--the best fighting stuff in Africa,--and reached the spot where now stands the flourishing town of Fort Salisbury without firing a shot or losing a man. Here gold mines were opened, the resources of the country developed, and within three years as many important townships were founded and settled.

[=War With the Matabeles=]

Not until July, 1893, did trouble with the natives arise. Then a rupture took place with the Matabele chief, Lobengula, who sent against the whites powerful bands of his dreaded Zulu warriors, numbering in all over 20,000 armed blacks. These were met by Dr. Jameson, the administrator of the chartered territory, and dealt with so vigorously and skilfully that in two months the power of the Matabeles was at an end, their army was practically annihilated, their great kraals were occupied, and their king was driven from his capital into the desert, where he died two months later. Thus Cecil Rhodes added to the dominion of Great Britain a territory as large as France and Germany, very fertile and healthful, and rich in gold and other metals.

[=The Domain of the South African Company=]

Zambesia--or Rhodesia, as it is often called--now extends far to the north of the Zambesi River, being bordered on the north by the Congo Free State and Lake Tanganyika, and on the east by Lake Nyassa, and embracing the heart of South Africa. This territory was chartered in 1889 by the British South Africa Company, with Cecil Rhodes, then premier of the Cape Colony, as its managing director and practical creator.

[=What the Foreigners Brought to the Transvaal=]

The rapid development of British interests in South Africa, the acquisition of territory in great part surrounding the South African Republic,--which was completely cut off from the sea by British and Portuguese territory,--and the growth of a large foreign population on the soil of the republic itself, could not fail to be a source of great annoyance to the Boers, who deeply mistrusted their new neighbors. Their effort to get away from the British had been a failure. They were surrounded and overrun by them. It is true, the coming of the gold miners had been a great boon to the Boer in one way. From having an empty treasury, he had now an overflowing one. The tax on the gold product had made the government rich. The foreigners had also brought the railway, the electric light, the telegraph, cheap and abundant articles of every-day use, newspapers, schools, and other appendages of civilization, but it is doubtful if these were as welcome to the Boers as the cash contribution, since they tended to break up their simple, patriarchal style of living and destroy their time-honored customs.

[=Paul Kruger and the Uitlanders=]

The question that particularly troubled the Boer mind was a political one. Paul Kruger, the president of the republic, was a man of remarkable character, an astute statesman, a shrewd politician, with an iron will and keen judgment, a personage strikingly capable of dealing with a disturbing situation. While ignorant in book lore, he had associated with him as secretary of state an educated Hollander, Dr. Leyds by name, one of the ablest and shrewdest statesmen in South Africa. The pair of them were a close match for the bold and aspiring Cecil Rhodes, then premier of the Cape Colony. The difficulty they had to deal with was the following: The Uitlander(Outlander or foreign) element in the republic had grown so enormously as far to outnumber the Dutch. The country presented the anomaly of a minority of 15,000 ignorant and unprogressive Dutch burghers ruling a majority of four or five times their number of educated, wealthy and prosperous aliens, who, while possessing the most valuable part of the territory, were given no voice in its government. They were not only deprived of legislative functions in the country at large, but also of municipal functions in the city of their own creation, and they demanded in vain a charter that would enable them to control and improve their own city. President Kruger, fearing to have his government overwhelmed by these Anglo-Saxon strangers, sternly determined that they should have no political foothold in his state until after a long residence, foreseeing that if they were given the franchise on easy terms they would soon control the state. In this sense the gold which was making them rich seemed a curse to the Boers, since it threatened to bring them again under the dominion of the hated Englishman.

[=The Jameson Raid=]

In 1895 the state of affairs reached a critical point. The British in Matabeleland, north of the Transvaal, were in warm sympathy with their brethren in Johannesburg, and between them a plot was laid to overthrow Kruger and his people. An outbreak took place in Johannesburg, led by Colonel F. W. Rhodes, brother of Cecil Rhodes, by whom it was thought to have been instigated. It was quickly followed by an invasion from Matabeleland, led by Dr. L. S. Jameson, Cecil Rhodes' lieutenant in that region. The movement was a hasty and ill-considered one. The invaders were met by the bold Boers, armed with their unerring rifles, were surrounded and forced to surrender, and their leaders were put on trial for their lives.

Paul Kruger, however, was shrewd enough not to push the matter to extremities. Jameson and his confederates were set at liberty and allowed to return to England, where they were tried, convicted of invading a friendly country and imprisoned--Cecil Rhodes going free. This daring man soon after suppressed an extensive revolt of the Matabeles, and gained the reputation of designing to found a great British nationality in South Africa. At a later date he devised the magnificent scheme of building a railroad throughout the whole length of Africa, from Cairo to Cape Colony, and threw himself into this ambitious enterprise with all his accustomed energy and organizing capacity.

[=The Demands of the Uitlanders=]

The victory of the Boers over Jameson and his raiders did not bring to an end the strained relations in Johannesburg. The demand of the Uitlanders for political rights and privileges grew more earnest and insistant as time went on, and the British government, on the basis of its suzerainty, began to take a hand in it. The right to vote, under certain stringent conditions as to period of residence and declaration of intention to become citizens, was accorded by the Boer government, but was far from satisfactory to the foreign residents, who demanded the suffrage under less rigorous conditions.

In 1899 the state of affairs became critical, England taking a more decided stand, and strongly pressing her claim to a voice in the status of British residents under her suzerainty--despite the fact that the latter gave her no right to interfere in the domestic affairs of the state. Joseph Chamberlain, secretary of state for the colonies, demanded a more equitable arrangement than that existing, and his insistence led to a conference between the Boer authorities and those of Cape Colony. But President Kruger refused to yield to the full demands made upon him, while the concessions which he offered were not satisfactory to the British cabinet.

Negotiations went on during the summer and early autumn of 1899, but at the same time both sides were actively preparing for war, and Great Britain had begun to send large contingents of troops to South Africa. The state of indecision came to a sudden end on October 10th. President Kruger apparently fearing that Joseph Chamberlain, who conducted the negotiations, was deceiving him, and seeking delay until he could land an overwhelming force in South Africa, sent a sudden ultimatum to the British cabinet. They were bidden to remove the troops which threatened the borders of his state before five o'clock of the next day or accept war as the alternative.

Such a mandate from a weak to a strong state was not likely to be complied with. The troops were not removed, and the Boers promptly crossed the borders into Natal on the east and Cape Colony on the west. The Orange River Free State had joined the South African Republic in its attitude of hostility, and the British on the borders found themselves outnumbered and outgeneraled. The towns of Mafeking and Kimberley on the west were closely besieged, and on the east the outlying troops were driven back on Ladysmith, where General White, the British commander, met with a severe repulse, losing two entire regiments as prisoners.

Meanwhile General Buller, the British commander-in-chief, had reached Cape Town and a powerful army was on the ocean, and it was widely felt that the successes of the Boers were but preliminaries to a desperate struggle whose issue only time could decide.

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