The historical development of modern Europe : from the Congress of Vienna to the present time.

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Preface To The Students’ Edition

HE desire of the publishers to issue a one-volume edition

of The Fiistorical Development of Modern Europe gives

me the opportunity to add a brief preface explaining the purpose of the work and its relation to teachers and students.

The volumes were written as an aid to a better understanding of the last eighty years of European history, and as a guide to the intricacies of the political, constitutional, and diplomatic development of the leading European states during that period. As I believed that the duty of the teacher was to interpret and instruct, quite as much as to retail information, and the duty of the student to understand the meaning and importance of historical events as well as to acquire a knowledge of the facts regarding them, I adopted certain methods in presenting my subject, of which I not only approved in theory but which I had tested already in the class-room. ‘The matter here contained represents the concluding portion, considerably enlarged, of a college course in general European: history, and has been shaped according to certain simple principles, which I believe to be scientifically sound, and practically helpful to students.

In the first place, I selected for treatment those larger aspects of European history which are of first importance as indicating the continuity of European development, and considered them as fully as time and space would allow. Secondly, I arranged the matter dealt with under separate topics, that the student might see at once the great issues involved, before being called upon to master many details. ‘Thirdly, iii iv PREFACE.

I treated each issue or movement with constant regard for the idea of progress, dealing with those events only that serve to make clear the progressive changes in institutions and ideas, and neglecting all others. Fourthly, I endeavoured to preserve the organic unity of the whole, so that the student might see not only the relation of every event examined to the immediate issue, but also the connection of that issue or movement with the larger development of European civilisation. Thus I sought to systematise and simplify the subject, to throw events into a logical and orderly form, to arouse in the student a sense of proportion and a spirit of criticism which might aid him in acquiring a scientific mental habit as important to him as would be a knowledge of facts. Nor doI believe that the interest of the subject is lessened thereby. History understood can never be dull, for there is nothing more fascinating than the gradual unfolding of the tale of human progress.

I sought to be impartial by eliminating from my own mind all prepossessions and by viewing the subject objectively; to be accurate by basing every statement upon the most reliable source, whether original or secondary, that I was able to obtain ; and to be lucid in dealing with epoch-making events even at the risk of repeating myself, knowing full well that perfect clearness in the presentation of many details is difficult to attain by even the best-intentioned writers.

It has always been my wish that for use in the class-room this history should supplement or be supplemented by a good narrative to be used for illustrative purposes. When writing it I had in mind the work, which I then hoped would soon appear but which is still delayed, the last volume (viii.) of the . Periods of European History series.

C. M. A.

Preface

N this work, as its title indicates, I have attempted to trace | _ the historical development of Europe from the congress of Vienna to the present time. As the condition of Europe in 1815 and the later movements in the various countries cannot be properly understood without some knowledge of the political, social, and economic changes that have transformed Europe of the eighteenth into Europe of the nineteenth century, I have devoted considerable introductory space to the chief characteristics of the old végzme, to an outline of the French Revolution, and to the career and influence of Napoleon Bonaparte. The present volume carries the subject to 1848 in France, to 1849 in Italy, and to 1850 in Germany ; the next will bring

_ it down to the present time.

There are two methods of writing the history of Europe since 1815, one or the other of which will be employed according to the purpose of the writer. The first of these is to treat events more or less chronologically, by passing from country to country, from national to international affairs, not so much with regard to continuity of treatment and unity of subject as from a desire to keep the history of all the European states at a constant level. ‘his method, which has been in the main employed by the two ablest historians of Modern Europe, Fyffe and Stern, is better adapted for advanced students than for those less familiar with the subject ; because by never completing the study of any one movement in any one place, it tends to leave a confused picture in the mind of the reader. Therefore, in this Vv vi PRELACE.

work, which is not in the first instance written for students, I have employed a different method, that of treating separate movements and subjects—such as the European political system, the Restoration in France, the July Monarchy, the liberal movement in Germany—as logical wholes, carrying each forward to its issue before turning to the others. Although this method involves some repetition, and an occasional reference to events not related in full in this volume, I believe that it will prove the most satisfactory for the purpose in hand.

In another particular does the plan of the work call for an explanation. I have tried to present the subject with a distinct regard for the continuous development of the life and thought of Europe, to study those movements that have made for progress rather than to describe events in detail, or to present all subjects with historical completeness. ‘Therefore I have given but little space to the detail of the Austrian administration and policy, and one entire chapter to the growth of political experience and education in Italy. ‘This movement in Italy deserves prominence, not only because of its importance in the struggle for Italian independence and unity, but also because it stands as a type of the educational development of all the people of central Europe. I have treated the revolutions in Greece and Belgium chiefly in connection with the diplomatic history of Europe, and have said little, except incidentally, of internal events in Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, and Sweden, for, however interesting and important these events are in themselves, they had little part in bringing about the. great changes in political thought and organisation that have characterised the last sixty years. 3

It has seemed best in a work of this kind to omit all foot-notes and elaborate bibliographical references. I have used the best authorities, and have incorporated in a number of instances material from special monographs and recently printed documents, but I cannot pretend to have noted all the literature on

PREFACE. vii the subje.t, nor was it necessary for my purpose to do so. I am not aware of having been dependent upon any single work or set of works to such an extent as to make necessary special reference to them here. Students familiar with Sorel’s ZL’ Zurope et la Révolution francaise and with Fournier’s Napoleon der Erste will note my indebtedness in my first and second chapters to these writers. In the later chapters on France I have been greatly stimulated by that excellent little work, Dickinson’s Revolution and Reaction in Modern France, and in all that treats of Germany I have depended, as all must depend, very largely upon Sybel’s Die Begriindung des deutschen Reiches, which I ~have used in the English translation. Finally, I may express my regret that Stern’s admirable Geschichte Luropas, which has been very serviceable, has not gone beyond the year 1820. The _ maps accompanying this volume are intended to satisfy no more than the immediate needs of the reader for the period after 1815. The best work in which to trace in detail all geographical changes is Hertslet’s Map of Europe by Treaty, 1814-1891, in four volumes. ‘There is an excellent map, Europe apres les Traités des 1815, in Schrader’s Adlas de Géographie historique (Part 5, sold separately); and in Larned’s Azstory for Ready Reference, pp. 244, 1540, 1864, are useful maps, of which the second on the Germanic Confederation, the Zollverein, and the Netherlands is admirable. Satisfactory maps can be found in the less accessible atlases of Spruner-Menke, Droysen, and Putzger.

In conclusion, I wish to express my thanks to the many friends who have encouraged me, and to those students in my classes who have given me assistance. But to no one am I under greater obligation than to my wife, whose criticism has guided and strengthened me in every part of the work.

CHARLES M. ANDREWS.

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Contents

I.—THE FRENCH REVOLUTION . ; ' : ° . 5

II.—NAPOLEON BONAPARTE . . , ; . a . ;

III.—RECONSTRUCTION AND THE EUROPEAN SYSTEM. 5 ,

Chapter I. The French Revolution

N tracing the forces that in their development and expansion have had a direct part in creating the civilisation of our present age, we find ourselves led step by step back to the religious revolution of the sixteenth century. In the outset mainly a religious attack upon the unity and universality of the medizeval church, the revolution soon plunged its followers into a series of religio-political wars in France, Germany, and the Netherlands that, for the time, retarded the normal progress of civilisation. In the midst of this struggle the national states of Europe, freed from the incubus of a medizeval empire, and already outgrowing the limitations of their medizeval life, entered upon their careers as independent political units, and gave to the last period of the great religious struggle an essentially political character. Furthermore, the Thirty Years’ War, beginning as a local German movement and, at the start, concerning itself altogether with religious and economic questions, began to assume a cosmopolitan character ; and before it was over the questions that were to occupy the attention of

Europe for another century and a half had presented themselves a for solution. Differences of opinion as to the relation of states, and not religious dissensions, caused the wars and shaped the diplomacy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Although this struggle in its entirety lasted for more than a century, it was no less a revolution than was that of France a century and a half later. Its principles were general and abstract, its influence was cosmopolitan—for it appealed with equal force to people of all Europe,—and it provoked war of the bitterest kind. It broke up the existing order of religious and political society, and established a new system based on the traditions and the tendencies of individual European states. The treaty of Westphalia, which closed the Thirty Years’ War, shows that at the time it was made the medizeval system had broken down, that universality in church and state had passed away and the state system been established in religion and politics, and that the public law of the Middle Ages had been destroyed as well in practice as in theory. This treaty gave legal sanction to that system which it was the part of the French Revolution to overthrow. ‘The work of one revolution was as complete as that of the other, but the tasks to be performed and the means employed were essentially unlike.

The new system was based on one fundamental idea, the supremacy of the state, an idea that dominated the public law of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But the embodiment of the state was not the nation, it was the prince, the product of Roman, feudal, and Christian forces; the prince, autocrat, suzerain, and chosen of God. ‘To this conception of the state the tendencies of fourteen centuries had been contributing: the Roman law and institutions, the feudal law and customs, the Christian doctrine regarding the divinity of kings , had tended to advance the interests of the prince rather than those of the people, to encourage not the liberty of man but the authority of the state. Furthermore, the state confounded itself with the person of the sovereign, and the authority of the state centred in the person of the prince. He gathered into his own hands all the lines of power; he made alliances and accepted treaties, was chief of the armies and arbiter in peace and war; he fixed the taxes, regulated imposts, extended or curtailed the expenses, had the right of confiscation and escheat, and owned unoccupied lands ; he created the nobility, made the laws, dispensed justice, and stood as sovereign head in religious matters ;—he was the master of his people, their guardian, judge, legislator, and pontiff. Such were Louis XIV., Frederic II. of Prussia, and Joseph II. of Austria. Under such circumstances it naturally followed that no other human authority was recognised. Legislative bodies as such did not exist, for assemblies of notables, estates, or peoples were but councils of state, committees for consultation not for action. God alone was the judge of the actions of princes, and to him alone was the prince responsible.

Just as at home the state recognised no other will than its own, so abroad it recognised no public law to which it was even morally responsible. Other rights than those of state were not taken into consideration by the kings and diplomats of the old régzme, who, acting upon the principle that those who gain nothing lose, made it their policy to extend the boundaries of the state and increase its grandeur. Centralisation of authority and enlargement of territory became the two main objects of the states of the old 7égime, and in trying to secure these the diplomats of the eighteenth century developed an international system based on the principle that one nation’s gain is another nation’s loss, and the interests of one are necessarily opposed to the interests of all. For reasons of state engagements could be broken, contracts of marriage recognised or denied, wills and pragmatic sanctions set aside, wars waged, territory divided, rights of succession disputed, and monarchs dethroned. Of this policy founded on the necessities of state, war was the chief agency ; and inasmuch as what was necessary was just, war was also the arbiter of justice. Thus there existed no general law governing the relation of state with people, or of state with state; the code of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was silent upon the subject of established right, good faith, the durability of engagements, and the obligation of contracts.

The public law defined by the treaty of Westphalia was, therefore, neither a guarantee of right nor a support for public order and public peace. It was dominated by a spirit of selfishness due to the rivalry of states, and by a narrowness of principle that was inevitable when each state was determined to retain for its own use all available resources. While the system of equilibrium was pretending by its principle of the balance of power to ensure its own stability, it was by the abuse of that principle making itself unstable and insecure. Europe of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was well prepared for conquest, because by a logical development of ideas it had come gradually to believe that the dismemberment of states and the dethronement of kings, in satisfying ambition, prevented war. Europe was broken into fragments, and with the exceptions of France and England, no homogeneous national units could be found.

Instead of asolidarity of monarchies supported by a national sentiment there existed a group of states whose territories were constantly liable to curtailment, and whose princes were in constant danger of dethronement or exclusion from succession. This state of affairs resulted from the mis-application of the theory of the balance of power; and, paradoxical as it may seem, the theory when most loudly proclaimed was, in the very act’ of its maintenance, being most vigorously perverted. Expropriation for the common good of Europe became in time the principle of the state system. Force and the convenience of the sovereigns had become the supreme law to the states of the eighteenth century, and at the time of the French Revolution, when in theory, at least, sovereignty resided not in the prince but in the people, it became the supreme law to the revolutionists, who had but to turn against the state system its own methods to destroy it.

Although the form of: government differed among the states of the European system, from the despotism in Spain, Prussia, and the states of the Habsburgs in Austria to the republicanism of Switzerland, Holland, and Poland ; nevertheless, the causes for the general decay were everywhere the same. Unequal distribution of wealth; excessive expenditures in court life; the erection of magnificent buildings, and the maintenance of extravagant mistresses and court-favorites; armaments costly, and constantly increasing in number ; and the heavy demands of war ;—these were the burdens that weighed upon the states of Europe. States were in debt, and, crushed by an ever recurring deficit, were forced to borrow at ruinous rates, and to draw on their revenue for many years ahead to pay the interest. In these respects the smaller states were more exhausted than the larger, because with inferior and more uncertain resources they were equally prodigal. The nobility and the church freed themselves from financial obligations to the state on the ground of privilege ; the bourgeoisie, hampered by annoying gild and trade restrictions, paid to the state more than their due ; while the peasantry, crushed by a double burden, made payment not only to the government, but also to the feudal seigneurs, who, though they no longer fulfilled their part of the feudal contract by giving their dependents protection, yet retained their feudal rights and held the peasantry in subjection. In France these burdens were least onerous and least vexatious, though here as in Denmark the nobility, partly resident, partly non-resident, gave control of their estates to intendants and agents. Serfage had been re-established in Russia and Prussia in the sixteenth century ; in Poland it was still harshly maintained ; in Germany was rigidly and painfully enforced ; though in some parts of

Italy, in Hungary, and parts of Prussia the kings endeavoured to restrain the heartless nobility, yet in most of the minor states of the Holy Roman Empire the treatment of the peasantry was atrocious, the agricultural labourer being little better than a slave.

But the tendency toward decay was accompanied with a movement toward reform. ‘The prevailing suffering, due to internal disorder and the survival of manorial rights and obligations, did not escape the attention of the governments, nor was it permitted to pass unnoticed by the more humane thinkers and philosophers of the period. In the writings of Voltaire and Diderot and in the practical work of Turgot the desire for reform first found expression, but in France as in other countries men turned their attention not to a reorganisation of the state but to the redress of abuses. But this desire for reform was not confined to France; it existed in the other countries of Europe, where it was brought about not by the influence of French ideas but by conditions antedating the French Revolution, analogous, however, to those whence the French Revolution sprang. Natural law founded on reason, and drawn from the Christian religion and the precepts of the Roman law, after its second revival in the sixteenth century, prevailed over positive and public law founded on fact. That which was as old as Plato, which Locke and Hobbes voiced in England, Wolf in Germany, and Filangieri in Italy, Rousseau made popular in France. The religion of humanity, the sentiment that all laboured for the good of the human race, began to find expression throughout Europe. Sympathy with the revolution in America, and admiration for the incomplete reforms of Louis XVI. and Turgot and for the mistaken efforts of Joseph II., roused the interests of philosophers and politicians who believed that reforms should be undertaken by the state and in the interest of the state. Kings and reformers worked in common, but for different reasons; reformers appealed to princes

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 7 eee instead of to nobles, inasmuch as everywhere, in Sweden, Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia the estates were showing themselves, as were the Pariements of France, enemies of change and jealous guardians of their privileges; while princes, in the interest of their own struggle with the assemblies for absolute power, encouraged the speculation of philosophers. Throughout Europe the progressive revolution went steadily on. An enlightened despotism began to recognise the importance of a better intellectual, social, and judicial system ; education was encouraged, schools were opened, universities were increased in number, and in Sweden and Prussia religious toleration began to be appreciated. Serfage began to disappear: it was ameliorated in Prussia under Frederic II., in Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia, and Hungary under Joseph II., and already overthrown in England two centuries before, it was abolished in Baden in 1783, and in Denmark in 1788. In other countries the corvées were diminished, and the pitiable lot of the peasant was made more endurable. ‘The penal laws were amended, torture was either done away with or reduced in severity, and reforms of the civil law were begun. It isa striking fact that the reforms of Joseph II., though undertaken with an unfortunate disregard of tradition and national prejudice, were more drastic in their nature than those proposed by the Constituent Assembly of the French Revolution itself. Along with this attack on feudalism, which materially benefited the people at large, went an attack on the church for the purpose of reducing it to subjection to the state. The Society of Jesus, which during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries had advocated the autocracy of princes, and, in its zeal for the extension of the faith, had aided in gaining the victory for absolutism, now fell before the very power it had helped to create. The struggle thus begun against the Jesuits was carried on against the Roman Church itself, and while the philosophers attacked the doctrine, the princes attacked the discipline of the church. In each case the authority of the Pope was threatened, and the ecclesiastical estates, already diminished by secularisation, became a ready source of supply for a safe enlargement of princely territory. Catholic princes resisted the temporal claims of the papacy, and in Austria, Parma, Tuscany, and Portugal there was open conflict between church and state. France, the chief defender of the papacy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, followed the practice of the other states of the old 7ég¢me when under the Constituent Assembly and later under Bonaparte it subjected the ecclesiastical orders to the authority of a temporal sovereign.

There was thus throughout Europe toward the end of the eighteenth century a preparation for a social and civil reformation by the state, for the state, but in no way limiting the state. Reforms were undertaken in the interest of power: enlightened despotism was willing to recognise religious toleration and civil liberty, though there was no thought of a reorganisation of the state itself in the interest of popular - sovereignty or of political liberty.

But the state, in neutralising the influence of assemblies, in promoting social and civil reform, in destroying feudalism, and in overthrowing the power of the church, stirred the passions of the people, rousing hopes rather than satisfying desires. These very reforms made by the state led the people to believe that the old world needed rejuvenating, created disquietude at a time when the instability of the social order gave promise of success to popular movements, and familiarised the people with the idea of change. ‘There was unrest in Prussia, and in Sweden discontent with monarchy ; the Belgians were in armed resistance to the house of Austria ; revolution broke otit in Bohemia, Hungary, and Galicia, and civil war in Holland, where the patriot party tried to regain its national privileges usurped by a despotic stadtholder ; while in Geneva, a municipal revolt that had been stimulated by the writings of Rousseau foreshadowed, in its hatred of classes and in the cosmopolitan character of the principles that actuated it, the greater revolution tocome. ‘The state system that in its pursuit of absolute power had ruined the institutions of the past, was in its turn threatened with ruin when the sudden outbreak in France transformed a progressive revolution into a cataclysm which overwhelmed, in a marvellously brief space of time, the whole European order. Beginning as a national movement, the French Revolution took the form of a great convulsion, and, scattering its ideas and principles throughout Europe by means of military proselytism, drew down upon itself the wrath of the states of Europe. By its declared principles it seemed to threaten the very foundations of European monarchy. Its doctrine of the sovereignty of the people presented as an evident and universal truth, and its appeal to all nations to’ revolt and free themselves, were so foreign to the principles upheld by the old végzme that they were interpreted as a menace to all established governments, to whom revolution, considered as a normal overturning of society, was unknown and incomprehensible.

The revolution broke out in France not because the misery was more intolerable or the feudal practices more iniquitous there than elsewhere, nor because the government was less intelligent and more despotic. The reasons were exactly the reverse. The movement began in those parts of France where the old institutions were already disappearing, where the agriculturist, already ceasing to be a serf and becoming a proprietor, was the more alive to the burdens he bore, and resented more deeply the imposition of the feudal dues. The feudal obligations became more hateful as the condition of the peasantry improved ; the yoke seemed less easy to bear as it became less weighty. As prosperity increased, the people of France sought to escape from the restrictions that feudalism and mercantilism imposed upon them ; they felt the demands of a progressive civilisation, and revolted against a system that, on the eve of the nineteenth century, retained the narrow and burdensome condition of three centuries before. France was a country where ideas of reform had been most widely spread, where intelligence was most highly esteemed, and where education even among the peasantry was ‘well advanced; where was greater homogeneity of national feeling, where government was more centralised, the nobility less politically important, and the power of the king more absolute than was the case elsewhere. ‘The fact that France was a nation free from disintegrating forces, either political or racial, gave to her popular movement a strength that was wanting to similar uprisings in other European states; and she acted before the other states because she had already solved the problem of national unity and national independence.

At this crisis France was in need of a great minister and a great king. Louis XVI., as has been well said, was a good man and a Christian, but not a king. He knew how to love, to pardon, to suffer, and to die, but he did not know how to reign. He would not delegate authority to another, yet he was unable to take energetic and consistent action himself. The work of his minister, Turgot, inaugurated a promising reform that was nothing less than a revolution; but Turgot was too hopeful, too little cognisant of the difficulties of the situation, too anxious for a consummation of his plans, and, thwarted by the opposition of those who were interested in the. financial privileges, he fell. A reaction to the advantage of the nobility followed, and the events of the next few years completed the embarrassment of monarchy. ‘The existing condition of things could not last ; a crisis was inevitable. France more than any other country was fruitful, the taxation per capita was less than it is to-day ; yet the state was suffering from an enormous deficit and the people were complaining.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. II

The parlement was in full revolt; the army, disorganised and on the verge of insurrection, was ready for defection ; while the people, aware of the necessity of reform and of the inability of the government to consummate it, were denouncing existing institutions as a negation of their inalienable rights. With liberty, they thought, all things would become possible; they had become the superstitious supporters of an idea. ‘The government, also recognising a crisis, though ignorant of its true meaning, was powerless to act, and looked in vain for support among the ruins of the old institutions. But from top to bottom of the hierarchy, from centre to extremities, every power was paralysed. The old rég¢zme, having exhausted its own resources by excessive centralisation, had now no resort save an appeal to the nation. In convoking the States-General France solemnly confessed the impotence of the old institutions.