Читать книгу Liberty in the Nineteenth Century - Frederic May Holland - Страница 6

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I. France had been freed by the Revolution from many ghosts of kingly, feudal, and priestly privileges; but she was still the prey of the most deadly of vampires—military glory. The followers of this fatal guide had driven the party of peace and liberty from power by force and fraud, and found a ruler after their own hearts in the conqueror who, in 1804, became the Emperor Napoleon.

Thus was established what some metaphysicians suppose to be the best form of government—an enlightened despotism. The autocrat knew that he had risen to power as the most popular champion of political equality; and he gave this democratic principle such additional authority that it has continued supreme in France. Her sons are still equals before the law, owners of the land they till, exempt from taxes levied for the benefit of any privileged class, and free to choose their own career and mode of worship. This is due in great part to the usurper who reduced representative government to an empty shell, and who centralised the administration of schools, police, streets, roads, and bridges, and all other local concerns even more completely than had ever been done before the Revolution.

He knew the real needs of France well enough to give her peace with all her enemies; but scarcely had he signed the last treaty when he took possession of Switzerland, and continued to annex territory, in defiance of the protests of the British ministers that he was making peace impossible. War was declared by them in 1803 and kept up against him for eleven years continuously, with occasional assistance from Russia, Austria, Prussia, Spain, and other countries. This was a period of great glory for France, but also of great suffering. Her boundaries were enlarged; but her most patriotic citizens were slaughtered in foreign lands; her shipping was swept away by British cruisers; her people were hindered in obtaining American grain, British cloth, and other necessaries of life, in exchange for wine, silk, lace, and other luxuries; the Emperor could not supervise the prefects who managed, or mismanaged, all internal interests, and who were responsible to him alone; freedom of the press was prohibited; and all the arts of peace decayed.

This was the price which France paid for Auster-litz, Jena, and other famous victories over Russia, Austria, and Prussia, which in 1807 brought peace with every enemy but England, and made Napoleon master, either directly through his prefects, or indirectly through tributary kings, not only of France but of the Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, Spain, Venice with the rest of Italy, and about three-fourths of Germany, including one-half of what had formerly been Prussian territory. Eight years from the usurpation in 1799 brought him to his zenith: eight years later, he was at Saint Helena.

His German, Swiss, and Italian subjects gained political equality, and also the permanent advantage of the code which bears his name. It had really been made by his lawyers, on foundations laid by the Convention. Throughout his dominions, Jew, Catholic, and Protestant became equals before the law. The fact that these reforms survived his authority proves that they could have been established without it. They were unavoidable results of the eighteenth century.

How little he was influenced by philanthropy is shown by his driving into exile a statesman named Stein, who had abolished serfdom in Prussia, and made it equally possible for the members of all classes to buy land and choose occupations. The establishment of the Empire had been preceded by the revival of slavery in several colonies where it had been abolished by the Convention. It was for helping the Haytians preserve their independence by heroic resistance, that Toussaint was sent by Napoleon to die in prison. The conquered nations in Europe were handed over from one master to another, without being even invited to consent; but what was still more oppressive was inability to exchange their own products for cloth and hardware from England, grain from the United States, coffee and sugar from the West Indies, and many other articles whose lack was keenly felt. This trouble was largely due to the blockade kept up by British Ships; but Napoleon was so ignorant of the advantage of commerce to both parties engaged in it as to suppose he could conquer England by a plan which really injured only himself and his subjects. He forbade all importation from Great Britain and her colonies wherever he had power or even influence; and many of the prohibited goods were taken from merchants and destroyed without compensation. Germany suffered also from having her manufactures forbidden to compete with the French. The latter asked in vain for freer trade, and were told by Napoleon that he understood their business better than they did. Countless outrages on prominent individuals helped the growth of disaffection.

II. The British ministry retaliated against Napoleon's attack on the right to trade freely, with a success which led to a great outrage on individual liberty in the United States. The war with Europe gave much of the world's commerce to American ships; but they were forbidden by Great Britain, in 1806, to trade with some of their best customers unless they stopped to pay tribute in her ports. The seizures for disobedience increased the anger which had been long felt against the British for impressing sailors on board of American ships. Three thousand citizens of the United States had been forced into a hostile navy before the refusal of our frigate, Chesapeake, in 1807, to submit to a search brought on a bloody contest.

Napoleon was then at the height of his power; and Great Britain was fighting against him single-handed. It was an unusually good time for declaring a war which soon proved inevitable in defence of merchants' and sailors' rights. Jefferson preferred to violate those rights himself, as had been done by the Federalists in 1794, and Congress aided him in forbidding American ships to sail for foreign ports. This embargo was so plainly unnecessary that every captain who was able to get out of New York harbour did so at once without caring what crew, cargo, or papers he had on board. Fifty million dollars' worth of shipping was kept idle for more than a year; a hundred thousand sailors and mechanics were thrown out of work; farms and plantations ceased to be profitable; clothing and tools became ruinously dear; thirteen hundred New Yorkers, who had been ruined by the embargo, were imprisoned for debt; and laws for protection against creditors were passed by the Southern and Western States. No one gained by the embargo except the smugglers; and attempts to suppress them called out dangerous manifestations of popular discontent. No one suffered less than the British merchants.

III. Meantime, Napoleon took the first step towards ruin in placing his brother on the throne of Spain. The Spaniards had borne patiently the loss of ships, commerce, and colonies; but this fresh wrong stirred up insurrection. The new King was brought to Madrid by French troops; but not a single Spaniard would enter his service; and he was soon obliged to leave the city. He said to his brother, "Your glory will be wrecked in Spain"; but Napoleon kept on sending in armies, whose victories made him hated, but not obeyed. He offered to abolish feudal privileges, the inquisition, and the tariffs which separated province from province. The only result was to make reform odious to a people which cared much more for nationality than progress. The clergy encouraged the peasants to keep up a guerilla war, in which his veterans perished ignominiously; and British auxiliaries won victories which made Wellington famous.

Austria took advantage of the situation to try to reconquer the lost provinces. The Tyrolese had been made subjects of the King of Bavaria; but they rose at the call of Hofer, and gained glorious victories over French and Bavarian soldiers. Other defeats were suffered by Napoleon; but he soon succeeded in forcing Austria to grant him, not only much more of her territory, but the hand of a young princess, who had never thought of him but with abhorrence. This involved his divorce from the loving Josephine. He pleaded desire for a son who might succeed him; but he was not likely to live until any child who might be born after this would be old enough to keep together an empire whose basis was conquest.

The Austrian princess had been demanded before Napoleon's application for a Russian one had been answered decisively; his plans for restoring Poland had given additional offence to the Czar; and the welfare of Russia demanded freedom to use the products of her forests, fields, and mines in buying British goods. This right was insisted upon by the Czar; and Napoleon had only abuse for the friends who warned him that defeat in Russia would call all Germany to arms against him. He was already so unpopular at Paris, that he had to remove with his Court.

The enormous army with which he invaded Russia might easily have taken possession of her Polish provinces, where the people were friendly. He preferred to march a thousand miles, through a hostile and barren country, to Moscow. The city was set on fire at his arrival; but he wasted so much time there, that winter helped the Russians turn his retreat into a rout. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers perished miserably.

The Prussians flew to arms; and Austria demanded restoration of her provinces. He replied that he should not yield an inch, and cared nothing for the loss of a million lives. He was driven out of Germany by "the Battle of the Nations," which was won at Leipsic, in October, 1813, by zealous cooperation of the Russians with Prussians, Austrians, Bavarians, and other Germans.

One result was described by saying that "The Dutch have taken Holland." Need of a strong government in time of war had given a power almost monarchical to the successors of that Prince of Orange who had saved his republic from Philip II. One of these princes was driven out by a democratic rebellion in 1787, but restored by a Prussian army. The French Revolution enabled Holland to return to republicanism; but alliance with the Directory meant continual spoliation; and there were grievous conscriptions under Napoleon, whose rule was extremely unpopular in a nation which lived by commerce. When the Dutch heard of his defeat at Leipsic, they rose against him without waiting for auxiliaries; and the French garrisons were soon driven out by the help of soldiers from Russia, Prussia, and England. The rulers of these countries sanctioned the desire of the Orange faction to make the prince a king. The people were not consulted, but were reconciled by a constitution, under which there was a legislature with some power, local self-government, freedom of worship, political equality, and liberty in commerce.

Napoleon might have remained emperor; but he refused to make any concessions, and kept on fighting until his generals abandoned him, and his deposition was voted by the Senate. The people would not rise for him, as they had done for the Republic; and the Parisians refused to cry "Vive l'Empereur" as he returned from Elba, to be overthrown at Waterloo. Three million Frenchmen perished in his wars; and he left France smaller than he found her. His restrictions on commerce were removed so suddenly as to destroy the industries which he had tried to foster; and the proportion of paupers to the population was three times as great as in 1880.

France was still desirous that the press should be free, and that taxation should be controlled by representatives of the people. Louis XVIII. had to promise that he would respect these rights which his predecessors had violated. Toleration continued; and the peasants kept the property and equality which the Revolution had given them, and which no sovereign could take away.

Napoleon is the most famous of generals; but his greatness as a statesman would have been plainer if he had not undertaken so many showy enterprises which had little chance of success. He failed signally in founding a dynasty, in making France the greatest of manufacturers, and in giving her an invincible navy, though he might have gained the first of these objects by peace, and the last by free trade. He could not even leave to his successor the territory which had been conquered by the Revolution. Yet these were his dearest purposes, except the wild dream of humbling England. Was he the greatest of architects, every one of whose colossal structures fell under their own weight before they could be used? Greater is he who builds what lasts for ages.

Napoleon made the twenty years ending with 1815 more glorious than any later period, and much more wretched. Western Europe was afflicted by bloody wars, and impoverished by restrictions on commerce. If his reign had been peaceable, he might have deprived France much more completely of what liberty she had enjoyed under the Directory. Every despot, however enlightened and benevolent, must necessarily interfere so much with the liberty of his subjects as to hinder their making themselves happy. France and Germany lost nothing in freedom and gained much in prosperity by his defeat; for it gave the world many years of peace. What he brought of political and religious equality to Prussia, Western Germany, and Switzerland survived him; for it was part of his inheritance from the Revolution which he closed treacherously. France had received her legacy without his help; and she retained much of it in spite of his interference. His victories over hereditary monarchs were so suggestive that books about him are still prohibited in Russia; but no people lost much by his overthrow except the Italians.

IV. Waterloo might have been called a "of the Nations" as well as Leipsic; but the best fighting was under the British flag. The English had suffered much from Napoleon, in spite of his never succeeding in making an invasion. The worst injury he did was in forcing them to remain in that absorption in war which had checked the growth of toleration, democracy, and prosperity in 1793. George III. was personally popular; but his weak, unprincipled successor was merely a figurehead. Two-thirds of the members of the House of Commons in 1815 had been appointed by the Ministry, or by some nobleman, and most of the others owned or rented some pocket-borough almost destitute of inhabitants. The House of Lords was overwhelmingly opposed to government by the people; and no Tories were more consistent than those sons or protégés of noblemen, the bishops. The successors of the apostles had no sympathy with the struggle of the Cross against the Crescent in lands where Paul had preached. They helped to vote down propagation of the Gospel in India, as well as enfranchisement of Roman Catholics, and mitigation of laws which punished pilfering with death. They tried in vain to save the slave-trade from prohibition; and most of the clerical and lay members of both Houses were in league to keep the tax on importation of wheat heavy enough to give them large incomes from their real estate.

This tariff and the depreciation of currency made food excessively dear. The country labourer was often unable to earn more than the price of a loaf a day. Employers agreed on wages so low that the peasants had to ask continually for parochial relief, and could not afford to go out of the parish to seek higher pay. Their degradation was increased by their almost universal illiteracy; and their misdemeanours, especially poaching, were punished cruelly; for the rural magistrate was either the squire or his ally, the parson. There was little chance of justice for the poor against the rich; the rural labourer could seldom improve his position; and the bad harvests of 1816, 1817, and 1818 helped to make him worse off than ever before or since.

The operatives had higher wages, but suffered under the friction of an industrial revolution, which has done more than any political convulsion for human happiness. The factory had been enabled by the invention of the steam-engine and other machines, shortly before 1800, to take the place of the cottages in making cloth. British goods were in great demand abroad during the war, and had to be carried in British ships. Improved roads and canals led merchants and manufacturers to opulence. The rich grew richer, as has usually been the case; but there were some exceptional years during which the poor really grew poorer. One man could make as much cotton cloth in a day as two hundred could have done before; but what was to become of the one hundred and ninety-nine? Demand for factory labour kept increasing until 1815; but population grew faster still. Wages were already falling; the return of peace lessened the demand abroad; and hundreds of thousands of discharged soldiers and sailors were added to the multitude of unemployed. Labourers were forbidden either to emigrate or to combine in order to keep up wages; and their earnings were lowest at the time when bread was the highest. Meat, sugar, foreign fruit, and many other articles now in common use were almost unattainable by the poor until late in the century. There was much more intelligence in the towns than in the country; but there were no opportunities of education in 1818 in England for one-half of the children.

Boys and girls entered the factory at the age of six, and often from the poor-house, where they had been sold into slavery. The regular time was fourteen hours a day; sitting down was seldom permitted; food was scanty and bad; punishment was constant and cruel; deformity and disease were frequent; and the death-rate was unusually high. Terrible cases occurred of pauper children, kept sixteen hours at a stretch without rest or food, driven by hunger to rob the troughs in the pig-sty, tortured merely for amusement by the overseer, and even advertised for sale with the mill.

The middle class differed much more widely than at present, both from the masses on one hand and from the aristocracy on the other, as regards food, dress, culture, amusements, and political liberty. Taxation was heavy and vexatious; representation in Parliament was notoriously inadequate; and honest men and women were still liable to imprisonment for debt. No one but an Episcopalian had a right to study at a university, enter Parliament, or hold any civil, naval, or military office in England; and neither Dissenters nor Catholics could marry without going through ceremonies which conscience forbade. The press was fettered by laws which kept Leigh Hunt imprisoned for two years, on account of an article acknowledging the unpopularity of the Prince Regent. Cobbett underwent an equally long imprisonment in Newgate for blaming the cruelty of sentencing insubordinate militiamen to be flogged five hundred lashes. No plays could be performed in London in 1814 until they had been read and licensed by the Lord Chamberlain's deputy.

As soon as a strong government ceased to be needed for protection against Napoleon, there broke out much agitation for relief of the disfranchised as well as of the destitute. There was an unprecedented circulation of the cheap pamphlets in which Cobbett advised the discontented to abstain from lawless violence, which could only give them another Robespierre, and devote themselves to striving peaceably for their political rights. Among these he asserted that of every man who paid taxes to vote for members of Parliament. The serious riots which took place in many parts of Great Britain, even London, made the aristocracy consider all opportunities of addressing the people dangerous. The ministry were empowered in 1817 to arrest speakers and authors without any warrant, and keep them in prison without a trial. Prohibition of public meetings was made possible by an act which extended to reading-rooms, debating societies, even among students at Cambridge, and scientific lectures.

The mounted militia was sent to disperse a meeting of fifty thousand unarmed men and women at Manchester, on August 16, 1819, in behalf of parliamentary reform. The people were packed together so closely that they were unable to separate quickly. Fear that some of the young gentlemen who had ridden into the throng might get hurt led the magistrates to order several hundred hussars to charge, without notice, into the dense crowd. The meeting was soon reduced to heaps of fallen men and women, who had been overthrown in the general struggle to escape or cut down by the soldiers; and the field was covered with bloody hats, shawls, and bonnets. Six people were killed, and more than thirty others wounded severely. There was indignation everywhere against this wanton cruelty; and the Common Council of London voted their censure; but Parliament passed laws that same year which made public meetings almost impossible, and put cheap pamphlets under a prohibitory tax, by requiring that they must have such an expensive stamp as kept newspapers beyond the reach of people generally. Arrests for printing and selling unstamped publications were thenceforward frequent. There were many bloody riots; and a conspiracy for assassinating the Ministry was organised in 1820. A dangerous revolution might then have broken out, if food had not been made plenty by abundant harvests.

Roman Catholics were still forbidden to hold any office under the British Government. They could not sit in either House of Parliament, or be married legally in Ireland, where they formed four-fifths of the population, and almost all the offices on that island were filled by Protestants who had been sent over from England, or else elected by close corporations containing scarcely any Catholics. The disfranchised nation was all the more indignant on account of such facts as that two-thirds of the soil of Ireland had been taken away without compensation by English invaders before 1700, and that the share of the Irish in 1800 was only one-tenth. This was held mostly in great estates, as was the rest of the island. Rents were everywhere high and wages low, for population was superabundant; manufactures had been crushed by laws to protect British interests; the people were left ignorant, even of agriculture; and there were frequent famines. Both the land and the government were mismanaged by an anti-Irish minority which took little pains to keep its own partisans from lawless violence, but did its utmost to extort money for a legion of priests, who were merely servants of oppression to nine-tenths of the people. How little they cared about their professed duty may be judged from the case mentioned by a traveller named Inglis (vol. i., p. 349), of a bishop who drew four or five hundred pounds a year for calling himself rector of a parish where there was no pretence of any public worship but the Catholic. Indignation of Irish Presbyterians had been one main cause of the bloody rebellion of 1798; and all patriotic Irishmen were exasperated at the oppression of the poor by the rich. Removal of religious disabilities was urgently demanded, and most of the men were members in 1825 of an independent association, which could easily have turned the island into one vast camp.

V. Germany had been devastated by twenty years of battles; and many thousand Germans had perished, either in defending their homes against Napoleon, or in serving under him in Russia. His overthrow left them in deeper subjection than ever to a league of despots, who differed in pomp of title and extent of territory, but agreed in obstinately denying any political liberty to the people. The servitude of Germany was confirmed by the agreement of clergymen and philosophers, that absolute monarchy was "ordained of God." The ban of church and university was on the revolutionary rationalism which had inspired the eighteenth century. The predominant philosophy during the first half of the nineteenth century insisted on the infallibility of what was called intuition, but was often merely tradition. This was already the case in Germany, where moribund ideas of politics and theology were worshipped as the loftiest revelations of pure reason.

Devout disciples still hold that all established institutions are justified and all knowledge revealed by Hegel's method of deduction from his own peculiar definition of the Infinite. That definition seems self-contradictory; but this is only a trifle, compared with the method's permitting the master to prefer absolute monarchy, and forcing him to deny that any nation, not extremely limited in area, can long remain a democracy. Hegel's indifference to the existence of the United States was like his asserting, after the discovery of Ceres, that the place where it had been found, and where hundreds of other planets are now known to exist, must be empty. Among other results of his system were a denial that lightning is electricity, and an assertion that rain is merely a change of air into water. Neither liberty nor knowledge gains by disregard of experience in favour of deductions from imaginary intuitions.

Unfortunately, the experience of Europe under Napoleon, as well as during the Revolution, seemed to justify restoration of old institutions as well as of former boundaries. The latter purpose was ostensibly that for which the conquerors of Napoleon met at Vienna, soon after he had retired to Elba; but their real object was to divide the spoils among themselves. The Emperors of Russia and Austria had the assistance, or opposition, of five kings, and of so many princes and nobles that three hundred carriages of state were kept in constant readiness. Lovely ladies of high rank came from many lands; and it seemed to the uninitiated as if nothing was going on but masked balls, private theatricals, hunting parties, stately dinners, and concerts. Beethoven was among the musicians. There was no general meeting of the monarchs and ambassadors; but there were frequent conferences of those most interested in one point or another; and the name of Congress of Vienna was amply justified by the number of bargains and compromises. The only persons never consulted were the thirty millions whose masters were thus selected.

Belgium, for instance, was forced into a union with Holland, which led to civil war; and the Norwegians were put under subjection to the Swedes, against whom they had just been fighting. Ten millions more of Poles were made subjects of the Czar; and his original wish to rule mildly was frustrated by their rebellion. The Italians had been brought by Napoleon into such unity and sense of nationality as they had not felt for many centuries. Offers of greater liberty made Lombardy and Venice take sides against him; they were rewarded by being put under the most hated of rulers, the Austrians; and the latter were made virtually masters of all Italy. When all the plunder had been divided, the royal robbers united in a declaration, acknowledging Jesus as the only sovereign and recommending the daily and universal practice of religion.

The only sovereign who kept his promise, that he would give his subjects a new constitution if they would help him conquer Napoleon, was Goethe's patron at Weimar. He presided over the University of Jena, which Schiller, Fichte, and other professors had made the centre of democratic influence in Germany. A secret political society was formed by students who had fought at Waterloo; and all the universities were invited to help celebrate, on October 18, 1817, the anniversary, not only of the victory at Leipsic, but of the opening of the Protestant Reformation. Five hundred students from various parts of Germany met in the Wartburg, the castle where Luther found refuge after bidding defiance at Worms to both Pope and Emperor. It was agreed that the new society should extend through all the universities, and should have banners of black, red, and yellow. These henceforth were the colours of liberty in Germany.

Napoleon had reduced Prussia's army to a minimum; among the preparations for breaking his yoke had been the practice of such gymnastics as are still kept up by the Turners; and a public exhibition was given that evening near the castle, before an immense bonfire. Reference was made there to kings who broke their word; and as the audience broke up, some of the students fed the blaze with various emblems of despotism, such as the canes with which soldiers were flogged by corporals. Then they burned a number of blank books, with titles copied from those of pamphlets recently published in opposition to progress.

The King of Prussia had taken some steps towards constitutional liberty, but these boyish freaks brought him completely under the influence of Prince Metternich. This crafty but kind-hearted Austrian worked steadily, from 1814 to 1848, at much sacrifice of ease and pleasure, in hope of preserving civilisation and religion from being destroyed by any new revolution. He was now the real Emperor of Germany; the British Ministry was in sympathy; and the Czar, who had at first been an admirer of parliamentary government, was converted by an outrage in the name of liberty on the right of free speech. One of the literary champions of Russian autocracy, Kotzebue, was assassinated, early in 1819, by a divinity student who had been at the Wartburg. That same year the representatives of the leading German states met at Carlsbad, and agreed, with the Czar's approval, that all German journals and universities should be under strict supervision, that political offenders should be tried by a special central tribunal, and that the new colours should be prohibited.

VI. Louis XVIII. cared as little as Charles II. of England about promises, but was quite as unwilling to have to travel abroad. He dissolved a legislature which was too reactionary; subsequent elections returned liberal candidates, though only one man in a hundred could vote; the National Guard was revived; and progressive ideas were expressed freely. France was moving forwards until February 13, 1820, when a Bonapartist murdered the King's nephew, in hope of cutting off the succession. The legislature was obliged, two days later, to let the press be muzzled; sanctions of individual liberty were thrown aside; and a law was passed to give rich men two votes apiece. The Liberal Ministry was dismissed; and its successor put all education under control of the priests, forbade Cousin and Guizot to lecture, and sent Béranger to prison for publishing incendiary songs. Louis XVIII., like Charles II., left the crown to a bigoted brother, who had been taught by the Jesuits to care much more for religion than human rights, or the duty of chastity; and Charles X. did his utmost to make himself an absolute monarch. Still worse results of assassination in the name of liberty had already been suffered in Spain and Italy.

No people had really lost much by the overthrow of Napoleon except the Italians. They were learning how to love each other as fellow-citizens of one common country, and how to care more for the welfare of the people than for that of the priests. The Congress of Vienna restored the supremacy of the clergy, and cut up Italy once more into little principalities, whose stupid and cruel despots were guided by Metternich. The people were already conscious of the tie of nationality, desirous to be governed with some regard to their own welfare, and destitute of faith in the divine right of kings. Few of them have been so plainly not "ordained of God" as Ferdinand of Naples and Sicily. He had run away basely from the invaders, and been brought back to promise amnesty, and to massacre men, women, and children by thousands. No criminals but patriots were watched closely; and brigands defied the government. There was no pretence of liberty, even on the stage; and the Jesuits kept literature and education down to merely nominal existence. The only refuge of freedom was among the Carbonari, or members of a secret society, half a million strong. Their flags of black, red, and blue were hoisted in many towns and villages on July 2, 1820, when the army led the revolt. The King swore on the Bible, and after hearing mass, that he would establish a constitution like the French one of 1791, and then asked help from Metternich. The latter brought the Austrian, Russian, and Prussian monarchs together at Troppau, Silesia, where they agreed, on December 8, 1820, to put down all rebels, especially in Italy. An Austrian army won a decisive victory next March over the Neapolitans, whose best troops were fighting against an attempt at secession in Sicily.

Austria took part, a month later, in suppressing a revolt which had just broken out against the petty despot nicknamed "King of Sardines." His first step on his restoration, in 1814, had been to reappoint every man who had been in office in 1798; and Napoleon's code gave way to ancient statutes which, for instance, forbade the Piedmontese to send wheat they could not use themselves to the Savoyards, who were starving. He was forced to abdicate by a revolt of citizens who wanted a constitution and of soldiers who wished to free Lombardy from Austria. Her help enabled his successor to keep the monarchy absolute; and her influence became paramount in Sardinia, as elsewhere in Italy.

VII. The month of April, 1821, brought an end of rebellion in Italy, and the outbreak of a ferocious revolution in Greece. The Turkish rule was intolerant, and intentionally oppressive. Exportation of food and clothing, for instance, was forbidden in hope of keeping down prices; and the result was to check production. The country was full of brigands; and the worst of wrongs were inflicted on unbelievers by the officials. Priests and rulers in other lands refused to help their fellow-Christians against Moslem tyrants; and the famous victory won by Bozzaris was over Roman Catholics. The new republic had only nominal authority. Independent bands of patriots fought desperately; and the Crescent soon gave place to the Cross in the Archipelago as well as in the Morea, once famous as the Peloponnesus; but the cause was continually disgraced by pillage, perfidy, massacre, and civil war. Several millions of contributions, mainly English, were squandered by the captains. Byron sacrificed his life in a vain attempt to create military discipline; and lack of any permitted the Morea to be conquered in 1825 by the regular army sent over by the Pasha of Egypt.

All resistance, north of the Isthmus of Corinth, was soon suppressed by the co-operation of Egyptians and Turks; and the islanders could do nothing better than ask help from foreigners. The only government which had thus far aided Greece was the American; and Congress had done much less than the people to relieve distress. An alliance between Great Britain, France, and Russia, for preventing extermination of the Greeks, was brought about by Canning. The sovereigns of Turkey and Egypt were so obstinate that their ships were destroyed by the allied fleet at Navarino, Messenia, on October 20, 1827. The Egyptians were driven out of the Morea by French soldiers; and Northern Greece rose against the Turks with a success which secured the present boundary. The Greeks were not permitted to establish a republic; but the monarchy finally became constitutional under the pressure of insurrection.

VIII. No nation had been less capable than the Spanish of appreciating the advantage, either of a vigorous government, or of toleration, freedom of the press, political equality, and personal liberty.

All the time-honoured abuses abolished by Napoleon had been at once restored with the help of the populace; but nothing effective was done to suppress the insurrections which had broken out, during the war, in Mexico and South America. Up to that time, the Indians were serfs and the negroes were slaves. All political power was monopolised by officials sent over from Spain. Spanish interests were protected so thoroughly that all domestic industries were crippled, and goods often cost six times as much as in Europe. Schools and newspapers were almost unknown; no books but religious ones could be bought; and heresy was punished pitilessly.

The invasion of Spain by Napoleon gave opportunity for several simultaneous insurrections. That in Venezuela was crushed by a great earthquake, which was accepted as a sign of divine wrath. Among the leaders was Bolivar, who retreated to Colombia. A Spanish version of Paine's Rights of Man had been circulated there, and the patriots were fighting gallantly. There were many bloody battles in Venezuela and Colombia; but both countries were finally made free by the battle of Carabolo, won on June 24, 1821, by Bolivar.

On July 28th, in that same year, the independence of Peru was proclaimed by General San Martin, who had liberated Chili, three years previously, with an army which he led from the Argentine Republic across the Andes by paths never used thus before. His decisive victories were won by the help of emancipated slaves. Chili would have made him her ruler; but he asked only her help against the Spaniards, who were concentrated in Peru. There he found such disorder as led him to declare himself Protector; but this made him so unpopular that he resigned his power and left the continent which he had done more than anyone else to liberate.

The war went on until the hold of Spain on America was broken forever by a battle fought, 12,000 feet above the sea, on December 9, 1826, at Ayacucho, a name given long before by Indians who had fought there among themselves, and meaning "the Corner of Death." Constitutions like that of the United States had already been proclaimed; too much power was held by Bolivar and other despots; but they did not keep the people in such poverty, ignorance, and apathy as had been inflicted by Spain. Paraguay, however, had a tyrant who dressed himself after a caricature of Napoleon, and tried to imitate his despotism, but had nothing of his genius. Francia was one of Carlyle's model rulers, perhaps because he allowed no elections, juries, public meetings, or newspapers, and sent everyone who talked politics to prison. Men who would not take off their hats to him were cut down by his guards; and timid boys were seen running through the streets with no other article of dress. There were no imports or exports, except by special permission; and goods cost ten times as much as at Buenos Ayres. Equality of races was sought by degrading the whites; but Francia's reign had the one merit of peace.

IX. Intelligent Spaniards were provoked at their king's failure to suppress the rebellion; and the soldiers who were called together for this purpose in 1819 had been so badly paid that they plotted with the friends of progress. A revolt broke out in the camp on the first day of 1820; and it was soon followed by one at Madrid, where the dungeon of the Inquisition was broken open. The King was forced to restore the Constitution which had been framed by the patriots in 1812, after the model of the French instrument of 1791. The prospect of freedom in religion made the clergy and peasantry mutinous. The reactionists in France and Spain found favour with the sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and Prussia. The Liberal Government was overthrown in April, 1823, by a French army. The peasants took sides with the invaders, and many patriots were massacred by the populace. Absolute monarchy and other ancient iniquities were restored, but not the Inquisition. France would have gone on to subdue the rebels in South America for her own benefit; but this was prevented by the British Ministry, which was now showing the liberalising influence of peace.

Napoleon's despotism had the awful and baneful grandeur of an eruption of Vesuvius; but his despicable enemies merely kept up the oppression of his empire without its glory. Their work completed his, as the last of the petty emperors at Rome and Constantinople showed the legitimate tendency of the political system of the mighty founder. Caesar and Napoleon had much in common as conquerors; but it showed far more greatness to found an empire which endured for fifteen centuries, than one which held together for scarcely as many years. Even that length of despotism was sadly too long for the welfare of mankind.