Europe, 1789-1920

Preface

The author has attempted to write an account of Europe since the French Revolution. The past few years have added much and brought considerable alteration in perspective.

To people now living the epoch since 1789 is the most important and interesting in the history of mankind. It began with a revolution whose effects are not yet all measured; it ended with another whose consequences can scarcely yet even be guessed at. It was ushered in and completed by devastating wars which altered and may alter Europe for many generations. It was a period of mournful failures and mistakes, but it witnessed more progress than any epoch preceding. It was a period when for the first time the mass of the people got education, and some political power — which still they are learning to use. In the latter part of the period, amidst the infinite complexity of modern life, there was slowly unfolded a mighty sequence of things, ever more ominous and dreadful, like the prologue to some ancient tragedy, or music which forebodes doom approaching, until at last a catastrophe came which threatened to engulf civilization. As this book begins at the end of an old era, so it concludes with the ending of an era which already begins to seem old.

The work has been partly a labor of love, based on studies undertaken for their own sake, then elaborated in the teaching of some years. My obligations to others are numerous and very great; but not a few of the conclusions are based upon study and observation in Europe.

vii

Vlll

PREFACE

The bibliographies have been reduced from twice their present size, and in earlier version the text was a third longer than now. It seemed all-important, even at the cost of omissions, to make a text brief enough not to interfere with additional reading in the sources and best accounts of the masters. It is better for the student also to have examined some of the constitutions and state papers, some of the great biographies, and some books like the Reminiscences of Bismarck, than merely to have studied a text in which all the important information is assembled.

The author is indebted to Professor W. A. Frayer, of the University of Michigan for reading critically all of the manuscript, and generously giving assistance and suggestions.

Edward Raymond Turner.

Ann Arbor, Michigan*

CONTENTS PART I

1789-1871

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Old Europe 3

II. Separation of the Communities in

America. 22

III. The French Revolution 40

IV. Napoleon 67

V. The Congress of Vienna and the Concert of Europe 93

VI. The Industrial Revolution .... 109

VII. The United Kingdom, 1789-1832. . . 146

VIII. The United Kingdom, 1832-1867. . . 168

IX. France Before 1870 188

X. Austria, the Germanies, and the Rise

of Prussia 212

XI. Italy 249

XIII. The Lesser Peoples 291

Part II 1871-1920

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Military Triumphs of Germany,

1864-1871 313

II. The Growth of the New German Empire 329 x CONTENTS — Continued

CHAPTER PAGE

III. The Leadership of Germany — The

Triple Alliance 352

IV. The Recovery of France — The Dual

Alliance 377

V. Democratic Britain 400

VI. Russia 419

VII. Austria, Turkey, the Balkans . . . 439

VIII. Colonies and Imperial Expansion . . 423

IX. Triple Alliance and the Ententes . '494

X. The Causes of the Great War. . . 513

XI. The Great War 534

XII. The Settlement of 1920 576

XIII. The Russian Revolution 600

XIV. European Civilization Since the French

XV. Social and Intellectual Changes . . 632

Appendix 653

Index 663

MAPS

SO. PAGE

1. Europe in 1789 (In colors) . . . Following 4

2. Relief Map of Europe .... “ 20

5. The Coal, Iron, and Oil Resources of

Europe Following 116

8. The Germanic Confederation . “ 212

9. Racial Map of Austria-Hungary . . . 221

12. Map to Illustrate the History of Poland 271

13. The Russian Empire in 1914 . . Following 276

14. Ethnographic Map of Europe . “ 292

16. Alsace-Lorraine 327

17. The British Empire in 1914 . . Following 404

18. Racial Map of Russia 423

19. The Treaty of San Stefano 453

20. The Balkans in 1878 454

21. The Balkans in 1913 461

22. Asia in 1914 Following 484

24. Supposed Pan-German Plan . . “ 532

25. The Western Front in the Great War . 546

26. The Eastern Front in the Great War 547

27. Africa in 1920 Following 580

XI

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MAPS

NO. PAGE

28. Czechoslovakia 589

29. The Balkans in 1920 591

30. Jugo-Slavia 595

31. The British Empire in 1920 . . Following 596

32. Europe in 1920 (In colors) . “ 644

PART I

1789-1870

For additional reading Antonin Debidour, Hisloire Diplomatique de V Europe, 181^-1878, 2 vols. (1891). Of longer works Alfred Stern, Geschichte Europas seit den Vertragen von 1815 bis zum Frankfurter Frieden von 1871, exhaustive and based largely on sources, is the best; volumes I-Vn (1894-1916), covering the years down to 1852, have appeared. More comprehensive are the great cooperative histories: The Cambridge Modern History, ed. by A. W. Ward, G. W. Prothero, S. Leathes, 14 vols. (1902-12), of which the volumes are bulky and the contents seldom inspiring, but they are always instructive, and in them the student will find a vast amount of additional information about most of the important topics treated in this volume — this work and others similar will be mentioned only here, and not at the end of each chapter, but they should always be borne in mind when further information is needed; Histoire GenSrale du IVe Siecle a Nos Jours, ed. by Ernest Lavisse and Alfred Rambaud, 12 vols. (1894-1901), less up to date but more attractive. For information about historical writing, Eduard Fueter, Geschichte der Neueren Historiography (1911); G. P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (1913).

For the treaties. Sir Edward Hertslet, The Map of Europe by Treaty , 181^-1891, 4 vols. (1875-91). Baron Descamps and L. Renault, Recueil International des Traites du XIXe Siecle (1914- ).

For the miscellaneous things, about which ready information is often not easily obtained, the best source is the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., 29 vols. (1910-11).

For additional biographical information, the Dictionary of National Biography, 72 vols. (1885-1913); N ouvelle Biographie Generale, 46 vols. (1855-66); Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 54 vols. (1875 - ).

If possible, students should sometimes consult the principal historical reviews, where they will not only find much rare and interesting information but be brought into contact with the best of modern scholarship and research: The American Historical Review; The English Historical Review; Historische Zeitschrift; La Revue Historique; La Revue des Questions Historiques; and, for the more elementary student. The Historical Outlook.

No text book ever contained too many maps, and the student will find it well to use an atlas as much as he can: E. W. Dow, Atlas of European History (1907); W. R. Shepherd, Historical Atlas (1911); Cambridge Modern History, vol, XIV; and H. B. George, The Relations of Geography and History (1910).

For military affairs, General A. von Horsetzky, A Short History of the Chief Campaigns in Europe since 1792 (tr. by Lieut. K. B. Ferguson, 1909).

International law: L. F. W. Oppenheim, International Law, 2 vols. (1905-6); H. J. F. X. Bonfils, Manuel du Droit International Public ( Droit des Gens), 7th ed. (1914).

Chapter I The Old Europe

The Kingdom of England is an Hereditary Paternal Monarchy . . .

It is a Monarchy that hath been continued almost 1000 Years. . . . John Chamberlayne, Magnce Britannioe Noiitia (1716), p. 40.

Un grand empire suppose une autorite despotique dans celui qui gouverne . . . que la loi soit dans une seule tete . . .

Montesquieu, De V Esprit des Lois (1748), livre viii. chap. xix.

Of this slave trade, which flourished down to 1783, when the Crimea was finally conquered and annexed by Russia, we have a graphic account. . . . Slaves may be always had for sale . . . The stronger of these captives, branded on the forehead and the cheeks and manacled or fettered, are tortured by severe labor all day, and are shut up in dark cells at night. They are kept alive by small quantities of food. . . .

Sir D. M. Wallace, Russia (1912) pp. 233, 234, quoting Michael the Lithuanian, De Moribus Tartarorum Fragmina (1615).

Europe in the Old Time or Ancien Regime , before the French Revolution, was, like other places then, so different, for the most part, from what we are accustomed to now, that it is difficult even for scholars to realize, to live over again in mind, the system and the life which prevailed then. It is true, the most important things, which are the very base and foundation of life now, were the most important then also, as they had been through unnumbered generations back to the beginning of the time which we know. Then as now children grew up under the protection and authority of their parents; young men and young women loved each other and were married and

Ancien

Regime

Absence of things common now

Life in the country reared their children; and the principal occupation of most people was making their living, getting food and clothing and shelter. But a great many things, important and necessary now, and taken as a matter of course, had not been then brought to pass. There were no railroads, no steamboats, no telephones or telegraphs, no electric cars or lights, no moving pictures, and, except in England where the Industrial Revolution had recently begun, no great mechanical appliances and no factories filled with machinery working for men. Newspapers were few and small and had small circulation. A great many books and pamphlets were published, but most men and women were not able either to read or to write. There were no systems of education for all the people, in what we call public schools nowadays. Compared with the times in which we live, life in those days was for most people simple and homely, bare, lowly, and coarse. In many respects conditions in the latter part of the eighteenth century were more like what they had been a hundred, or even a thousand, years before, than they were like those of the present.

Europe about the end of the eighteenth century, like all parts of the civilized world down to that time, was predominantly agricultural. The majority of the inhabitants were grouped in small villages set in the midst of plowland, meadow, grazing land, and wood. As is still so in less favored countries, the houses were lowly and small, with poor furniture and simple utensils. There were not many windows to give light by day, and after dark the inmates went to bed, for there was no gas, no electric bulb, oil was expensive, and often candles cost more than people could spend. The cots or the hovels of unnumbered peasants were dirty, and damp, and dark. The joyous seasons were spring and summer and early autumn, in a way not known to some of us now, for the warmth of the sun gave almost all the heating which the mass of the people could get. In winter there were i T?TmrvPP TXT 1789 only a few in Europe who could have coal, and only a small number of the well-to-do who had fire-wood in ample supply. There was more joy in out-of-doors then than now. But work in the fields or on the wastes, in the pasture or in the woods, was hard and the hours were long. Farming was rude and implements poor; crops were generally not bountiful, or, if they were, a great part of them went to pay rent to the owner or the lord, and tithe to the Church. The center of life for the neighborhood was the parish church in a manner scarcely to be conceived of now, for then the church was the holy place of the community, in which people were baptized, married, and taught by the priest, and which received them at last in its consecrated ground. It was also the social center of the neighborhood doing for people in some fashion what is now got from moving pictures or in theaters and schools. And often near by, hated or revered, was the fine dwelling of some great man, the manor-house of a lord, or even the castle of some proud noble. In them went on a life very different, but most of the people never saw it; and the tales of it were almost as remote to them as accounts of fairies or some faraway land.

Lowly as was the condition of these people, in many parts of Europe it was better than it had been in earlier days. In antiquity a great number of the people were slaves, entirely unfree, often bought and sold exactly like chattels or things. It was a great advance upon this when in the later days of the Roman Empire, partly because of economic changes and partly through the influence of Christianity, slavery began to disappear and the great mass of the people after a while were in the higher condition of serfdom. As serfs men and women were free in their personal relations, not to be bought and sold like chattel property; but none the less they were partly unfree, since they were bound to remain in the place of their birth, and were under obligation to give the lord of their

The village church

Serfdom

Decline of serfdom

The rural population

Slowness of change land part of what they raised and to work for him many of the days of the year. Then, like slavery before it, serfdom began to pass slowly away, due chiefly to the working of economic causes which made it more profitable for the lord to give wages than the use of his land, and collect rent rather than take a share or labor from his people. The disappearance of serfdom was a slow process. In England it had disappeared by the beginning of the seventeenth century; in Scotland there were traces of it until near the end of the eighteenth. By that time in some parts of the continent it was completely gone, but there were still thousands of serfs in France, while to the east in the German lands there were many more, and in Poland and Russia the great bulk of the population remained partly unfree. It was the results of the French Revolution, and the power of Napoleon, soon to come, which would abolish serfdom in central Europe, while in Russia it would linger on until 1861, about the very time when negro slavery was brought to an end in the southern part of the United States. So recent is the civil freedom of a great part of the population of the world.

We have no reliable statistics before the nineteenth century, but it is probable that nine tenths of the people lived their lives in the small agricultural communities, though in England and parts of western Europe the proportion was less. Simple, lowly, ignorant folk they were, unlettered, narrow, oftentimes incredibly superstitious and dependent upon their parson or priest, filled with prejudice against outsiders, for traveling was difficult and most people seldom went far from their homes. These people had no part in the governing of their countries, except sometimes in the management of their humblest local affairs. History tells little about them. Governments heeded them scantily, except to take from them taxes and labor. Seldom did they rebel or stir against their masters. The peasants of Gaul gave trouble in the later centuries of the Roman Empire; the Jacquerie rose against their lords in France during the Hundred Years’ War; there was a memorable Peasant Revolt in England in 1381 ; and a more memorable rising of German peasants in 1525. These movements and a few others were always crushed mercilessly by the upper classes, and came to nothing. The day of the great mass of the people, of the rights of man, had not come yet. In countless villages men and women lived little lives, with rude plenty at best, generally in meager existence, often in grinding poverty and toil. They lived and died and passed from recollection; and that is all, except that throughout this time they were most of the people of Europe, and made the nations ruled by great kings and led by commanders.

History has almost nothing to say about women. — - beyond the fact that they were the fundamental part of society. Through long generations they had been the mothers of the human race, and made the homes of the men and the children. They did a large part of all the work and much of the most useful work. Almost always their condition was lower and worse than the men’s. There had been empresses and queens, sometimes, and very few rulers in Europe had been greater than Elizabeth of England or Catherine of Russia. Rut almost always women were strictly subordinate to men — to their fathers before they were married, afterward to their husbands. For them there was practically no calling but marriage, and the law generally considered them to be part of their husbands, not persons or individuals, after marriage. They owed obedience to their husbands, who were responsible for them under the law. Most women, perhaps were treated well, as things then were, but many were subjected, without hope of relief, to petty tyrants in their homes. It was a man’s world much more than it is now.

Above the masses of the people was a much smaller class which had arisen in the towns, the boroughs or burgs.

Position of women

Subordination of women

The

bourgeoisie

Future

importance called in France the bourgeoisie , which would now be better known as the middle class. It had been rising and increasing in numbers and power for some hundreds of years, as towns and cities developed and as commerce and industry increased. It was made up of the lawyers, the masters of the small industries which then existed, the merchants, and the traders. To a considerable extent it contained within its numbers the ablest and most progressive men, and some of the wealthiest and most substantial. They had much influence in the Germanies and in France, as once they had had in the Italian states; they had considerable part in the government of Great Britain, and were of large consequence in the Netherlands; but generally their influence was indirect and their power small, for they were looked down upon by the aristocracy, and debarred from the privileges and opportunities which were open to nobles and great men of the Church. After all, they represented the power of the cities and of industrial life, and most of Europe was still rural. Nevertheless the future was with these bourgeois. It was they who would guide the French Revolution and make the enduring changes of the Revolutionary period. They were to rise greater and greater as the Industrial Revolution slowly spread over Europe in the nineteenth century. Then political power, management of government, and greatest place in the state were all to be taken by this middle class, which in many respects would be the upper class, as nobles and princes were thrust into the background and deprived of old privilege and power. It would be the bourgeois whom socialists and others would regard as their worst opponents; and in the twentieth century, the middle class would be assailed by the Bolsheviki as arch-enemies to be overthrown in raising up the proletariat, or mass of the people.

Although most of the people of Europe lived in villages in the country, there were towns and some cities great

Cities and important. London had more than a million inhabitants, and Paris more than half a million. Amsterdam and other Dutch cities were mighty hives of industry and commerce. The Spanish cities were now slumbering in decay, and the places once renowned in the Spanish or Austrian Netherlands were enveloped in the hush and the quiet which come when progress and activity cease. So it was with the Italian cities, great in the Middle Ages, and the very cradles of the Renaissance: Venice was dying in the midst of that charm which travellers still love to see; and Genoa, Milan, and Rome were all greater in the memory of what they had been than for what they continued to be. The seaports of the German states, Hamburg, Liibeck, Bremen, and the others, thriving in the days of the glory of the Hanseatic League, were sunk now in the silence and decay which would last until the revival and unification of the Germanies awoke them once more. Vienna was the old, proud capital of the German countries. Far to the southeast on the Bosporus Constantinople continued to be magnificent under the Turks. And in the distant eastern parts, little known to most of Europe, were holy Moscow and the new capital, St. Petersburg, which had only been founded in 1703.

In the cities the principal occupations were manufacturing and especially trade, for the greatest of all of them had grown mostly because of their commerce. Since there were no railroads yet, and not many canals, and since roads were poor, the most important communications were by water, and the greatest cities were by the sea, like Amsterdam and London and Marseilles, or on some river, like Paris, Nijni Novgorod, and Vienna. The manufacturing was then, for the most part, as the name implies, done by hand ; and while by this time in the great towns of western Europe much of it was carried on in factories, a great deal more was still done according to the domestic system, in the homes of the workers themselves. Some of these cities

Urban life

Importance of some cities

The

nobility

High position were important out of all proportion to their population, for they were the centers of financial power, of intellectual activity and progress, and often the seat of the government of the nation. By the end of the eighteenth century Paris was the very heart and center of France, and in England the course of London could usually be decisive. The English Civil Wars of the seventeenth century were decided against the king largely because parliament was supported by London; in 1789 the French Revolution was made possible and begun by the citizens of Paris.

The greatness of the middle class and the effects of the Industrial Revolution were for the future, and still most of the power and wealth in Europe was in the hands of an aristocracy which made the smallest and highest class. Long before, when the central authority of the Roman Empire broke up and Europe was scourged by barbarian invaders — Germans, Northmen, Hungarians — everywhere fortresses were built by strong and able men, who governed their districts, protected the inhabitants, lorded it over them, and exacted obedience and service from them. In the early Middle Ages the best of these feudal lords had saved such civilization as remained. But in course of time they were an encumbrance rather than a benefit wherever they were, and often the best hope of further progress lay in their being overthrown. To a considerable extent they had already been shorn of their political power in the progressive places, though in Poland their importance and ancient power remained nearly unabated. Everywhere they continued to have the social and economic advantages possessed in earlier times. In England, in France, in the German countries, in Russia, great lords and great ecclesiastics constituted a caste apart. For them oftentimes were reserved the important offices of state; frequently they directed the councils of the nation; everywhere, except in Switzerland and Holland, they held a great part of all of the land and the wealth; they were generally exempt from heavy taxation; their blood was deemed better than that of the commoner; and usually no person outside the noble class could aspire to marry within it. An immeasurable gulf divided the members of this noble aristocracy from all the other classes beneath them; and even in England, where the division was not so deep, the distance was still very great. In Europe of this old regime the nobles, whether great lords or petty knights of the Empire, were the splendid top of a society which rested upon the toil and the support of the immense multitude of the people.

But while they kept their wealth and their privileges, in many lands now their independent political power was gone. Once they had ruled without interference from a higher authority, and still they continued to do so in Poland; but a long time before, in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, their power had been broken in Spain, in France, in England, and elsewhere, and strong, powerful, centralized governments erected. By the time of Philip II (1556-1598) the king of Spain had absolute power, and by the time of Louis XIV (1643-1715) the king of France could have made the declaration: “I am the State.” And the tendency toward absolute power and belief in the divine right of rulers had spread all over Europe. It was so in Austria, in Russia, in the larger German states and also in the smaller. There were only a few exceptions. Venice, in name a republic, was ruled by an oligarchy of aristocrats. In Switzerland and in the Dutch Netherlands there were confederations of small states ruled by the citizens of their upper and middle classes. In Germany there were still a few free cities. But the notable exception was England. In England there was indeed an effective central government, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there had been strong tendency to make the power of the king absolute. But in England there survived what had once existed in

Kings

In

Primacy of the European states

Spain and France and other places but bad long since withered away, a parliament, or assembly of representatives of the upper classes. On the continent usually danger from foreign enemies had been so great that the representatives of the upper classes, the estates, had given power of taxation and military control to the king; but Englishmen, secure from invasion in their island, had not had to do this. In the seventeenth century this parliament had contested with the king for the principal power in the state; after 1688 it got to be definitely superior to the king; and it made of England, what no other great state then was: a limited, constitutional monarchy. But almost everywhere in Europe toward the end of the eighteenth century, political power was completely in the hands of great rulers or small princes, while around them were grouped the upper classes in possession of the high offices? the wealth and privileges of the land. In England the principal difference was that the power of the king was shared with the upper classes.

This Europe of the end of the eighteenth century was the seat of the largest amount of the power and importance of the world and of most of the world’s civilization. There were in Europe more civilized men and women organized under efficient governments, with powerful armies and ships of war, and directed by restless, enterprising rulers, than anywhere else in the world. They had for some time been expanding into other continents, and in great part Europeans had by this time taken North and South America. Already the Russians in Siberia and the English in India had got control of large portions of Asia. Australia and New Zealand had just been visited by the English. Africa, except for trading stations along the coast, was not yet taken, as it was to be completely in the next hundred years. There was a fine old culture among the warlike people of Japan, and a better and older civilization among the swarming millions of China; but

China and Japan were far off on the edge of the world. A strange and ancient culture endured also among the teeming myriads of India; but there was neither political greatness nor military power in India’s people, and already they had come under the direction of the English East India Company. There was still a Persia, but all of her grandeur was gone. Greatness, progress, power, and wealth were mostly in Europe, especially in the western parts, or else in some portions of America, where men from Europe had gone.

First of European states was Great Britain. The inhabitants had been fortunate in the greater part of the British Isles. Early in the Middle Ages, while other peoples were still divided among numerous feudal lords, the English had been brought together as one nation in a strongly organized, well administered state. Usually safe in their island from foreign foes, they were spared most of the horrors of invasion and devastation so frequent then. Wales was early united with England, and Scotland finally in 1707, so that all the people of the greatest of the British Isles were brought together. With their union came more and more prosperity and strength. The people of Britain had long been renowned for their boldness and skill on the sea. After the discovery of America, and as the northern part of Europe became what the southern part had previously been, the wealthier and greater portion, it was seen that Britain had for commerce and trade the most advantageous position in Europe. Many of the best routes of trade lay so near as to be within her control. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries she became the greatest commercial nation in the world, obtaining supremacy on the sea, with dominating positions upon the principal sea lanes of the world, and she was presently the greatest of the colonial powers, with the exception of decadent Spain. From the Dutch, from the Spaniards, and especially from the French, she took dominions in all parts of the earth.