Movements in the Mediterranean States beginning in 1820--Spain from 1814 to
1820--The South American Colonies--The Army at Cadiz: Action of Quiroga
and Riego--Movement at Corunna--Ferdinand accepts the Constitution of
1812--Naples from 1815 to 1820--The Court-party, the Muratists, the
Carbonari--The Spanish Constitution proclaimed at Naples--Constitutional
movement in Portugal--Alexander's proposal with regard to Spain--The
Conference and Declaration of Troppau--Protest of England--Conference of
Laibach--The Austrians invade Naples and restore absolute Monarchy--
Insurrection in Piedmont, which fails--Spain from 1820 to 1822--Death of
Castlereagh--The Congress of Verona--Policy of England--The French invade
Spain--Restoration of absolute Monarchy, and violence of the reaction--
England prohibits the conquest of the Spanish Colonies by France, and
subsequently recognises their independence--Affairs in Portugal--Canning
sends troops to Lisbon--The Policy of Canning--Estimate of his place in the
history of Europe.
[The Mediterranean movements, beginning in 1820.]
When the guardians of Europe, at the end of the first three years of peace,
scanned from their council-chamber at Aix-la-Chapelle that goodly heritage
which, under Providence, their own parental care was henceforth to guard
against the assaults of malice and revolution, they had fixed their gaze
chiefly on France, Germany, and the Netherlands, as the regions most
threatened by the spirit of change. The forecast was not an accurate one.
In each of these countries Government proved during the succeeding years to
be much more than a match for its real or imaginary foes: it was in the
Mediterranean States, which had excited comparatively little anxiety, that
the first successful attack was made upon established power. Three
movements arose successively in the three southern peninsulas, at the time
when Metternich was enjoying the silence which he had imposed upon Germany,
and the Ultra-Royalists of France were making good the advantage which the
crime of an individual and the imprudence of a party had thrown into their
hands. In Spain and in Italy a body of soldiers rose on behalf of
constitutional government: in Greece a nation rose against the rule of the
foreigner. In all three countries the issue of these movements was, after a
longer or shorter interval, determined by the Northern Powers. All three
movements were at first treated as identical in their character, and all
alike condemned as the work of Jacobinism. But the course of events, and a
change of persons in the government of one great State, brought about a
truer view of the nature of the struggle in Greece. The ultimate action of
Europe in the affairs of that country was different from its action in the
affairs of Italy and Spain. It is now only remembered as an instance of
political recklessness or stupidity that a conflict of race against race
and of religion against religion should for a while have been confused by
some of the leading Ministers of Europe with the attempt of a party to make
the form of domestic government more liberal. The Hellenic rising had
indeed no feature in common with the revolutions of Naples and Cadiz; and,
although in order of time the opening of the Greek movement long preceded
the close of the Spanish movement, the historian, who has neither the
politician's motive for making a confusion, nor the protection of his
excuse of ignorance, must in this case neglect the accidents of chronology,
and treat the two as altogether apart.
[Spain between 1814 and 1820.]
King Ferdinand of Spain, after overthrowing the Constitution which he found
in existence on his return to his country, had conducted himself as if his
object had been to show to what lengths a legitimate monarch might abuse
the fidelity of his subjects and defy the public opinion of Europe. The
leaders of the Cortes, whom he had arrested in 1814, after being declared
innocent by one tribunal after another were sentenced to long terms of
imprisonment by an arbitrary decree of the King, without even the pretence
of judicial forms. Men who had been conspicuous in the struggle of the
nation against Napoleon were neglected or disgraced; many of the highest
posts were filled by politicians who had played a double part, or had even
served under the invader. Priests and courtiers intrigued for influence
over the King; even when a capable Minister was placed in power through the
pressure of the ambassadors, and the King's name was set to edicts of
administrative reform, these edicts were made a dead letter by the powerful
band who lived upon the corruption of the public service. Nothing was
sacred except the interest of the clergy; this, however, was enough to keep
the rural population on the King's side. The peasant, who knew that his
house would not now be burnt by the French, and who heard that true
religion had at length triumphed over its enemies, understood, and cared to
understand, nothing more. Rumours of kingly misgovernment and oppression
scarcely reached his ears. Ferdinand was still the child of Spain and of
the Church; his return had been the return of peace; his rule was the
victory of the Catholic faith.
[The nation satisfied: the officers discontented.]
But the acquiescence of the mass of the people was not shared by the
officers of the army and the educated classes in the towns. The overthrow
of the Constitution was from the first condemned by soldiers who had won
distinction under the government of the Cortes; and a series of military
rebellion, though isolated and on the smallest scale, showed that the
course on which Ferdinand had entered was not altogether free from danger.
The attempts of General Mina in 1814, and of Porlier and Lacy in succeeding
years, to raise the soldiery on behalf of the Constitution, failed, through
the indifference of the soldiery themselves, and the power which the
priesthood exercised in garrison-towns. Discontent made its way in the army
by slow degrees; and the ultimate declaration of a military party against
the existing Government was due at least as much to Ferdinand's absurd
system of favouritism, and to the wretched condition into which the army
had been thrown, as to an attachment to the memory or the principles of
constitutional rule. Misgovernment made the treasury bankrupt; soldiers and
sailors received no pay for years together; and the hatred with which the
Spanish people had now come to regard military service is curiously shown
by an order of the Government that all the beggars in Madrid and other
great towns should be seized on a certain night (July 23, 1816), and
enrolled in the army. [307] But the very beggars were more than a match for
Ferdinand's administration. They heard of the fate in store for them, and
mysteriously disappeared, so frustrating a measure by which it had been
calculated that Spain would gain sixty thousand warriors.
[Struggle of Spain with its colonies, 1810-1820.]
The military revolution which at length broke out in the year 1820 was
closely connected with the struggle for independence now being made by the
American colonies of Spain; and in its turn it affected the course of this
struggle and its final result. The colonies had refused to accept the rule
either of Joseph Bonaparte or of the Cortes of Cadiz when their legitimate
sovereign was dispossessed by Napoleon. While acting for the most part in
Ferdinand's name, they had engaged in a struggle with the National
Government of Spain. They had tasted independence; and although after the
restoration of Ferdinand they would probably have recognised the rights of
the Spanish Crown if certain concessions had been made, they were not
disposed to return to the condition of inferiority in which they had been
held during the last century, or to submit to rulers who proved themselves
as cruel and vindictive in moments of victory as they were incapable of
understanding the needs of the time. The struggle accordingly continued.
Regiment after regiment was sent from Spain, to perish of fever, of forced
marches, or on the field. The Government of King Ferdinand, despairing of
its own resources, looked around for help among the European Powers.
England would have lent its mediation, and possibly even armed assistance,
if the Court of Madrid would have granted a reasonable amount of freedom to
the colonies, and have opened their ports to British commerce. This,
however, was not in accordance with the views of Ferdinand's advisers.
Strange as it may appear, the Spanish Government demanded that the alliance
of Sovereigns, which had been framed for the purpose of resisting the
principle of rebellion and disorder in Europe, should intervene against its
revolted subjects on the other side of the Atlantic, and it implied that
England, if acting at all, should act as the instrument of the Alliance.
[308] Encouragement was given to the design by the Courts of Paris and St.
Petersburg. Whether a continent claimed its independence, or a German
schoolboy wore a forbidden ribbon in his cap, the chiefs of the Holy
Alliance now assumed the frown of offended Providence, and prepared to
interpose their own superior power and wisdom to save a misguided world
from the consequences of its own folly. Alexander had indeed for a time
hoped that the means of subduing the colonies might be supplied by himself;
and in his zeal to supplant England in the good graces of Ferdinand he sold
the King a fleet of war on very moderate terms. To the scandal of Europe
the ships, when they reached Cadiz, turned out to be thoroughly rotten and
unseaworthy. As it was certain that the Czar's fleet and the Spanish
soldiers, however holy their mission, would all go to the bottom together
as soon as they encountered the waves of the Atlantic, the expedition was
postponed, and the affairs of America were brought before the Conference of
Aix-la-Chapelle. The Envoys of Russia and France submitted a paper, in
which, anticipating the storm-warnings of more recent times, they described
the dangers to which monarchical Europe would be exposed from the growth of
a federation of republics in America; and they suggested that Wellington,
as "the man of Europe," should go to Madrid, to preside over a negotiation
between the Court of Spain and all the ambassadors with reference to the
terms to be offered to the Transatlantic States. [309] England, however, in
spite of Lord Castlereagh's dread of revolutionary contagion, adhered to
the principles which it had already laid down; and as the counsellors of
King Ferdinand declined to change their policy, Spain was left to subdue
its colonies by itself.
[Conspiracy in the Army of Cadiz.]
It was in the army assembled at Cadiz for embarkation in the summer of 1819
that the conspiracy against Ferdinand's Government found its leaders.
Secret societies had now spread themselves over the principal Spanish
towns, and looked to the soldiery on the coast for the signal of revolt.
Abisbal, commander at Cadiz, intending to make himself safe against all
contingencies, encouraged for awhile the plots of the discontented
officers: then, foreseeing the failure of the movement, he arrested the
principal men by a stratagem, and went off to Madrid, to reveal the
conspiracy to the Court and to take credit for saving the King's crown
(July, 1819). [310] If the army could have been immediately despatched to
America, the danger would possibly have passed away. This, however, was
prevented by an outbreak of yellow fever, which made it necessary to send
the troops into cantonments for several months. The conspirators gained
time to renew their plans. The common soldiers, who had hitherto been
faithful to the Government, heard in their own squalor and inaction the
fearful stories of the few sick and wounded who returned from beyond the
seas, and learnt to regard the order of embarkation as a sentence of death.
Several battalions were won over to the cause of constitutional liberty by
their commanders. The leaders imprisoned a few months before were again in
communication with their followers. After the treachery of Abisbal, it was
agreed to carry out the revolt without the assistance of generals or
grandees. The leaders chosen were two colonels, Quiroga and Riego, of whom
the former was in nominal confinement in a monastery near Medina Sidonia,
twenty miles east of Cadiz, while Riego was stationed at Cabezas, a few
marches distant on the great road to Seville. The first day of the year
1820 was fixed for the insurrection. It was determined that Riego should
descend upon the head-quarters, which were at Arcos, and arrest the
generals before they could hear anything of the movement, while Quiroga,
moving from the east, gathered up the battalions stationed on the road, and
threw himself into Cadiz, there to await his colleague's approach.
[Action of Quiroga and Riego, Jan. 1820.]
The first step in the enterprise proved successful. Riego, proclaiming the
Constitution of 1812, surprised the headquarters, seized the generals, and
rallied several companies to his standard. Quiroga, however, though he
gained possession of San Fernando, at the eastern end of the peninsula of
Leon, on which Cadiz is situated, failed to make his entrance into Cadiz.
The commandant, hearing of the capture of the head-quarters, had closed the
city gates, and arrested the principal inhabitants whom he suspected of
being concerned in the plot. The troops within the town showed no sign of
mutiny. Riego, when he arrived at the peninsula of Leon, found that only
five thousand men in all had joined the good cause, while Cadiz, with a
considerable garrison and fortifications of great strength, stood hostile
before him. He accordingly set off with a small force to visit and win over
the other regiments which were lying in the neighbouring towns and
villages. The commanders, however, while not venturing to attack the
mutineers, drew off their troops to a distance, and prevented them from
entering into any communication with Riego. The adventurous soldier,
leaving Quiroga in the peninsula of Leon, then marched into the interior of
Andalusia (January 27), endeavouring to raise the inhabitants of the towns.
But the small numbers of his band, and the knowledge that Cadiz and the
greater part of the army still held by the Government, prevented the
inhabitants from joining the insurrection, even where they received Riego
with kindness and supplied the wants of his soldiers. During week after
week the little column traversed the country, now cut off from retreat,
exhausted by forced marches in drenching rain, and harassed by far stronger
forces sent in pursuit. The last town that Riego entered was Cordova. The
enemy was close behind him. No halt was possible. He led his band, now
numbering only two hundred men, into the mountains, and there bade them
disperse (March 11).
[Corunna proclaims the Constitution Feb. 20.]
[Abisbal's defection March 4.]
With Quiroga lying inactive in the peninsula of Leon and Riego hunted from
village to village, it seemed as if the insurrection which they had begun
could only end in the ruin of its leaders. But the movement had in fact
effected its object. While the courtiers around King Ferdinand, unwarned by
the news from Cadiz, continued their intrigues against one another, the
rumour of rebellion spread over the country. If no great success had been
achieved by the rebels, it was also certain that no great blow had been
struck by the Government. The example of bold action had been set; the
shock given at one end of the peninsula was felt at the other; and a
fortnight before Riego's band dispersed, the garrison and the citizens of
Corunna together declared for the Constitution (February 20). From Corunna
the revolutionary movement spread to Ferrol and to all the other
coast-towns of Galicia. The news reached Madrid, terrifying the Government,
and exciting the spirit of insurrection in the capital itself. The King
summoned a council of the leading men around him. The wisest of them
advised him to publish a moderate Constitution, and, by convoking a
Parliament immediately, to stay the movement, which would otherwise result
in the restoration of the Assembly and the Constitution of 1812. They also
urged the King to abolish the Inquisition forthwith. Ferdinand's brother,
Don Carlos, the head of the clerical party, succeeded in preventing both
measures. Though the generals in all quarters of Spain wrote that they
could not answer for the troops, there were still hopes of keeping down the
country by force of arms. Abisbal, who was at Madrid, was ordered to move
with reinforcements towards the army in the south. He set out, protesting
to the King that he knew the way to deal with rebels. When he reached Ocaña
he proclaimed the Constitution himself (March 4).
[Ferdinand accepts the Constitution 1812, March 9.]
It was now clear that the cause of absolute monarchy was lost. The ferment
in Madrid increased. On the night of the 6th of March all the great bodies
of State assembled for council in the King's palace, and early on the 7th
Ferdinand published a proclamation, stating that he had determined to
summon the Cortes immediately. This declaration satisfied no one, for the
Cortes designed by the King might be the mere revival of a mediæval form,
and the history of 1814 showed how little value was to be attached to
Ferdinand's promises. Crowds gathered in the great squares of Madrid,
crying for the Constitution of 1812. The statement of the Minister of War
that the Guard was on the point of joining the people now overcame even the
resistance of Don Carlos and the confessors; and after a day wasted in
dispute, Ferdinand announced to his people that he was ready to take the
oath to the Constitution which they desired. The next day was given up to
public rejoicings; the book of the Constitution was carried in procession
through the city with the honours paid to the Holy Sacrament, and all
political prisoners were set at liberty. The prison of the Inquisition was
sacked, the instruments of torture broken in pieces. On the 9th the leaders
of the agitation took steps to make the King fulfil his promise. A mob
invaded the court and threshold of the palace. At their demand the
municipal council of 1814 was restored; its members were sent, in company
with six deputies chosen by the populace, to receive the pledges of the
King. Ferdinand, all smiles and bows, while he looked forward to the day
when force or intrigue should make him again absolute master of Spain, and
enable him to take vengeance upon the men who were humiliating, him, took
the oath of fidelity to the Constitution of 1812. [311] New Ministers were
immediately called to office, and a provisional Junta was placed by their
side as the representative of the public until the new Cortes should be
duly elected.
[Condition of Naples, 1815-1820.]
Tidings of the Spanish revolution passed rapidly over Europe, disquieting
the courts and everywhere reviving the hopes of the friends of popular
right. Before four months had passed, the constitutional movement begun in
Cadiz was taken up in Southern Italy. The kingdom of Naples was one of
those States which had profited the most by French conquest. During the
nine years that its crown was held by Joseph Bonaparte and Murat, the laws
and institutions which accompanied Napoleon's supremacy had rudely broken
up the ancient fixity of confusions which passed for government, and had
aroused no insignificant forces of new social life. The feudal tenure of
land, and with it something of the feudal structure of society, had passed
away: the monasteries had been dissolved; the French civil code, and a
criminal code based upon that of France, had taken the place of a thousand
conflicting customs and jurisdictions; taxation had been made, if not
light, yet equitable and simple; justice was regular, and the same for
baron and peasant; brigandage had been extinguished; and, for the first
time in many centuries, the presence of a rational and uniform
administration was felt over all the south of Italy. Nor on the restoration
of King Ferdinand had any reaction been permitted to take place like that
which in a moment destroyed the work of reform in Spain and in Westphalia.
England and Austria insisted that there should be neither vengeance nor
counterrevolution. Queen Marie Caroline, the principal agent in the
cruelties of 1799, was dead; Ferdinand himself was old and indolent, and
willing to leave affairs in the hands of Ministers more intelligent than
himself. Hence the laws and the administrative system of Murat remained on
the whole unchanged. [312] As in France, a Bourbon Sovereign placed himself
at the head of a political order fashioned by Napoleon and the Revolution.
Where changes in the law were made, or acts of State revoked, it was for
the most part in consequence of an understanding with the Holy See. Thus,
while no attempt was made to eject the purchasers of Church-lands, the
lands not actually sold were given back to the Church; a considerable
number of monasteries were restored; education was allowed to fall again
into the hands of the clergy; the Jesuits were recalled, and the Church
regained its jurisdiction in marriage-causes, as well as the right of
suppressing writings at variance with the Catholic faith.
[Hostility between the Court party and the Muratists.]
But the legal and recognised changes which followed Ferdinand's return by
no means expressed the whole change in the operation of government. If
there were not two conflicting systems at work, there were two conflicting
bodies of partisans in the State. Like the emigrants who returned with
Louis XVIII., a multitude of Neapolitans, high and low, who had either
accompanied the King in his exile to Sicily or fought for him on the
mainland in 1799 and 1806, now expected their reward. In their interest the
efficiency of the public service was sacrificed and the course of justice
perverted. Men who had committed notorious crimes escaped punishment if
they had been numbered among the King's friends; the generals and officials
who had served under Murat, though not removed from their posts, were
treated with discourtesy and suspicion. It was in the army most of all that
the antagonism of the two parties was felt. A medal was struck for service
in Sicily, and every year spent there in inaction was reckoned as two in
computing seniority. Thus the younger officers of Murat found their way
blocked by a troop of idlers, and at the same time their prospects suffered
from the honest attempts made by Ministers to reduce the military
expenditure. Discontent existed in every rank. The generals were familiar
with the idea of political change, for during the last years of Murat's
reign they had themselves thought of compelling him to grant a
Constitution: the younger officers and the sergeants were in great part
members of the secret society of the Carbonari, which in the course of the
last few years had grown with the weakness of the Government, and had now
become the principal power in the Neapolitan kingdom.
[The Carbonari.]
The origin of this society, which derived its name and its symbolism from
the trade of the charcoal-burner, as Freemasonry from that of the builder,
is uncertain. Whether its first aim was resistance to Bourbon tyranny after
1799, or the expulsion of the French and Austrians from Italy, in the year
1814 it was actively working for constitutional government in opposition to
Murat, and receiving encouragement from Sicily, where Ferdinand was then
playing the part of constitutional King. The maintenance of absolute
government by the restored Bourbon Court severed the bond which for a time
existed between legitimate monarchy and conspiracy; and the lodges of the
Carbonari, now extending themselves over the country with great rapidity,
became so many centres of agitation against despotic rule. By the year 1819
it was reckoned that one person out of every twenty-five in the kingdom of
Naples had joined the society. Its members were drawn from all classes,
most numerously perhaps from the middle class in the towns; but even
priests had been initiated, and there was no branch of the public service
that had not Carbonari in its ranks. The Government, apprehending danger
from the extension of the sect, tried to counteract it by founding a rival
society of Calderari, or Braziers, in which every miscreant who before 1815
had murdered and robbed in the name of King Ferdinand and the Catholic
faith received a welcome. But though the number of such persons was not
small, the growth of this fraternity remained far behind that of its model;
and the chief result of the competition was that intrigue and mystery
gained a greater charm than ever for the Italians, and that all confidence
in Government perished, under the sense that there was a hidden power in
the land which was only awaiting the due moment to put forth its strength
in revolutionary action.
[Morelli's movement, July 2, 1820.]
After the proclamation of the Spanish Constitution, an outbreak in the
kingdom of Naples had become inevitable. The Carbonari of Salerno, where
the sect had its headquarters, had intended to rise at the beginning of
June; their action, however, was postponed for some months, and it was
anticipated by the daring movement of a few sergeants belonging to a
cavalry regiment stationed at Nola, and of a lieutenant, named Morelli,
whom they had persuaded to place himself at their head. Leading out a
squadron of a hundred and fifty men in the direction of Avellino on the
morning of July 2nd, Morelli proclaimed the Constitution. One of the
soldiers alone left the band; force or persuasion kept others to the
Standard, though they disapproved of the enterprise. The inhabitants of the
populous places that lie between Nola and Avellino welcomed the squadron,
or at least offered it no opposition: the officer commanding at Avellino
came himself to meet Morelli, and promised him assistance. The band
encamped that night in a village; on the next day they entered Avellino,
where the troops and townspeople, headed by the bishop and officers,
declared in their favour. From Avellino the news of the movement spread
quickly over the surrounding country. The Carbonari were everywhere
prepared for revolt; and before the Government had taken a single step in
its own defence, the Constitution had been joyfully and peacefully
accepted, not only by the people but by the militia and the regular troops,
throughout the greater part of the district that lies to the east of
Naples.
[Affairs at Naples, July 2-7.]
The King was on board ship in the bay, when, in the afternoon of July 2nd,
intelligence came of Morelli's revolt at Nola. Nothing was done by the
Ministry on that day, although Morelli and his band might have been
captured in a few hours if any resolute officer, with a few trustworthy
troops, had been sent against them. On the next morning, when the garrison
of Avellino had already joined the mutineers, and taken up a strong
position commanding the road from Naples, General Carrascosa was sent, not
to reduce the insurgents--for no troops were given to him--but to pardon,
to bribe, and to coax them into submission. [313] Carrascosa failed to
effect any good; other generals, who, during the following days, attempted
to attack the mutineers, found that their troops would not follow them, and
that the feeling of opposition to the Government, though it nowhere broke
into lawlessness, was universal in the army as well as the nation. If the
people generally understood little of politics, they had learnt enough to
dislike arbitrary taxation and the power of arbitrary arrest. Not a single
hand or voice was anywhere raised in defence of absolutism. Escaping from
Naples, where he was watched by the Government, General Pepe, who was at
once the chief man among the Carbonari and military commandant of the
province in which Avellino lies, went to place himself at the head of the
revolution. Naples itself had hitherto remained quiet, but on the night of
July 6th a deputation from the Carbonari informed the King that they could
no longer preserve tranquillity in the city unless a Constitution was
granted. The King, without waiting for morning, published an edict
declaring that a Constitution should be drawn up within eight days;
immediately afterwards he appointed a new Ministry, and, feigning illness,
committed the exercise of royal authority to his son, the Duke of Calabria.
[Ferdinand takes the Oath to the Spanish Constitution, July 13.]
Ferdinand's action was taken by the people as a stratagem. He had employed
the device of a temporary abdication some years before in cajoling the
Sicilians; and the delay of eight days seemed unnecessary to ardent souls
who knew that a Spanish Constitution was in existence and did not know of
its defects in practice. There was also on the side of the Carbonari the
telling argument that Ferdinand, as a possible successor to his nephew, the
childless King of Spain, actually had signed the Spanish Constitution in
order to preserve his own contingent rights to that crown. What Ferdinand
had accepted as Infante of Spain he might well accept as King of Naples.
The cry was therefore for the immediate proclamation of the Spanish
Constitution of 1812. The court yielded, and the Duke of Calabria, as
viceroy, published an edict making this Constitution the law of the kingdom
of the Two Sicilies. But the tumult continued, for deceit was still feared,
until the edict appeared again, signed by the King himself. Then all was
rejoicing. Pepe, at the head of a large body of troops, militia and
Carbonari, made a triumphal entry into the city, and, in company with
Morelli and other leaders of the military rebellion, was hypocritically
thanked by the Viceroy for his services to the nation. On the 13th of July
the King, a hale but venerable-looking man of seventy, took the oath to the
Constitution before the altar in the royal chapel. The form of words had
been written out for him; but Ferdinand was fond of theatrical acts of
religion, and did not content himself with reading certain solemn phrases.
Raising his eyes to the crucifix above the altar, he uttered aloud a prayer
that if the oath was not sincerely taken the vengeance of God might fall
upon his head. Then, after blessing and embracing his sons, the venerable
monarch wrote to the Emperor of Austria, protesting that all that he did
was done under constraint, and that his obligations were null and void.
[314]
[Affairs in Portugal, 1807-1820.]
A month more passed, and in a third kingdom absolute government fell before
the combined action of soldiers and people. The Court of Lisbon had
migrated to Brazil in 1807, when the troops of Napoleon first appeared upon
the Tagus, and Portugal had since then been governed by a Regency, acting
in the name of the absent Sovereign. The events of the Peninsular War had
reduced Portugal almost to the condition of a dependency of Great Britain.
Marshal Beresford, the English commander-in-chief of its army, kept his
post when the war was over, and with him there remained a great number of
English officers who had led the Portuguese regiments in Wellington's
campaigns. The presence of these English soldiers was unwelcome, and
commercial rivalry embittered the natural feeling of impatience towards an
ally who remained as master rather than guest. Up to the year 1807 the
entire trade with Brazil had been confined by law to Portuguese merchants;
when, however, the Court had established itself beyond the Atlantic, it had
opened the ports of Brazil to British ships, in return for the assistance
given by our own country against Napoleon. Both England and Brazil profited
by the new commerce, but the Portuguese traders, who had of old had the
monopoly, were ruined. The change in the seat of government was in fact
seen to be nothing less than a reversal of the old relations between the
European country and its colony. Hitherto Brazil had been governed in the
interests of Portugal; but with a Sovereign fixed at Rio Janeiro, it was
almost inevitable that Portugal should be governed in the interests of
Brazil. Declining trade, the misery and impoverishment resulting from a
long war, resentment against a Court which could not be induced to return
to the kingdom and against a foreigner who could not be induced to quit it,
filled the army and all classes in the nation with discontent. Conspiracies
were discovered as early as 1817, and the conspirators punished with all
the barbarous ferocity of the Middle Ages. Beresford, who had not
sufficient tact to prevent the execution of a sentence ordering twelve
persons to be strangled, beheaded, and then burnt in the streets of Lisbon,
found, during the two succeeding years, that the state of the country was
becoming worse and worse. In the spring of 1820, when the Spanish
revolution had made some change in the neighbouring kingdom, either for
good or evil, inevitable, Beresford set out for Rio Janeiro, intending to
acquaint the King with the real condition of affairs, and to use his
personal efforts in hastening the return of the Court to Lisbon. Before he
could recross the Atlantic, the Government which he left behind him at
Lisbon had fallen.
[Revolution at Oporto, August 1820.]
The grievances of the Portuguese army made it the natural centre of
disaffection, but the military conspirators had their friends among all
classes. On the 24th of August, 1820, the signal of revolt was given at
Oporto. Priests and magistrates, as well as the town-population, united
with officers of the army in declaring against the Regency, and in
establishing a provisional Junta, charged with the duty of carrying on the
government in the name of the King until the Cortes should assemble and
frame a Constitution. No resistance was offered by any of the civil or
military authorities at Oporto. The Junta entered upon its functions, and
began by dismissing all English officers, and making up the arrears of pay
due to the soldiers. As soon as the news of the revolt reached Lisbon, the
Regency itself volunteered to summon the Cortes, and attempted to
conciliate the remainder of the army by imitating the measures of the Junta
of Oporto. [315] The troops, however, declined to act against their
comrades, and on the 15th of September the Regency was deposed, and a
provisional Junta installed in the capital. Beresford, who now returned
from Brazil, was forbidden to set foot on Portuguese soil. The two rival
governing-committees of Lisbon and Oporto coalesced; and after an interval
of confusion the elections to the Cortes were held, resulting in the return
of a body of men whose loyalty to the Crown was not impaired by their
hostility to the Regency. The King, when the first tidings of the
constitutional movement reached Brazil, gave a qualified consent to the
summoning of the Cortes which was announced by the Regency, and promised to
return to Europe. Beresford, continuing his voyage to England without
landing at Lisbon, found that the Government of this country had no
disposition to interfere with the domestic affairs of its ally.
[Alexander proposes joint action with regard to Spain, April, 1820.]
It was the boast of the Spanish and Italian Liberals that the revolutions
effected in 1820 were undisgraced by the scenes of outrage which had
followed the capture of the Bastille and the overthrow of French absolutism
thirty years before. [316] The gentler character of these southern
movements proved, however, no extenuation in the eyes of the leading
statesmen of Europe: on the contrary, the declaration of soldiers in favour
of a Constitution seemed in some quarters more ominous of evil than any
excess of popular violence. The alarm was first sounded at St. Petersburg.
As soon as the Czar heard of Riego's proceedings at Cadiz, he began to
meditate intervention; and when it was known that Ferdinand had been forced
to accept the Constitution of 1812, he ordered his ambassadors to propose
that all the Great Powers, acting through their Ministers at Paris, should
address a remonstrance to the representative of Spain, requiring the Cortes
to disavow the crime of the 8th of March, by which they had been called
into being, and to offer a pledge of obedience to their King by enacting
the most rigorous laws against sedition and revolt. [317] In that case, and
in that alone, the Czar desired to add, would the Powers maintain their
relations of confidence and amity with Spain.
[England prevents joint diplomatic intervention.]
This Russian proposal was viewed with some suspicion at Vienna; it was
answered with a direct and energetic negative from London. Canning was
still in the Ministry. The words with which in 1818 he had protested
against a league between England and autocracy were still ringing in the
ears of his colleagues. Lord Liverpool's Government knew itself to be
unpopular in the country; every consideration of policy as well as of
self-interest bade it resist the beginnings of an intervention which, if
confined to words, was certain to be useless, and, if supported by action,
was likely to end in that alliance between France and Russia which had been
the nightmare of English statesmen ever since 1814, and in a second
occupation of Spain by the very generals whom Wellington had spent so many
years in dislodging. Castlereagh replied to the Czar's note in terms which
made it clear that England would never give its sanction to a collective
interference with Spain. [318] Richelieu, the nominal head of the French
Government, felt too little confidence in his position to act without the
concurrence of Great Britain; and the crusade of absolutism against Spanish
liberty was in consequence postponed until the victory of the
Ultra-Royalists at Paris was complete, and the overthrow of Richelieu had
brought to the head of the French State a group of men who felt no scruple
in entering upon an aggressive war.
[Naples and the Great Powers.]
[Austria.]
[England admits Austrian but not joint intervention.]
But the shelter of circumstances which for a while protected Spain from the
foreigner did not extend to Italy, when in its turn the Neapolitan
revolution called a northern enemy into the field. Though the kingdom of
the Two Sicilies was in itself much less important than Spain, the
established order of the Continent was more directly threatened by a change
in its government. No European State was exposed to the same danger from a
revolution in Madrid as Austria from a revolution in Naples. The Czar had
invoked the action of the Courts against Spain, not because his own
dominions were in peril, but because the principle of monarchical right was
violated: with Austria the danger pressed nearer home. The establishment of
constitutional liberty in Naples was almost certain to be followed by an
insurrection in the Papal States and a national uprising in the Venetian
provinces; and among all the bad results of Austria's false position in
Italy, one of the worst was that in self-defence it was bound to resist
every step made towards political liberty beyond its own frontier. The
dismay with which Metternich heard of the collapse of absolute government
at Naples [319] was understood and even shared by the English Ministry, who
at this moment were deprived of their best guide by Canning's withdrawal.
Austria, in peace just as much as in war, had uniformly been held to be the
natural ally of England against the two aggressive Courts of Paris and St.
Petersburg. It seemed perfectly right and natural to Lord Castlereagh that
Austria, when its own interests were endangered by the establishment of
popular sovereignty at Naples, should intervene to restore King Ferdinand's
power; the more so as the secret treaty of 1815, by which Metternich had
bound this sovereign to maintain absolute monarchy, had been communicated
to the ambassador of Great Britain, and had received his approval. But the
right to intervene in Italy belonged, according to Lord Castlereagh, to
Austria alone. The Sovereigns of Europe had no more claim, as a body, to
interfere with Naples than they had to interfere with Spain. Therefore,
while the English Government sanctioned and even desired the intervention
of Austria, as a State acting in protection of its own interests against
revolution in a neighbouring country, it refused to sanction any joint
intervention of the European Powers, and declared itself opposed to the
meeting of a Congress where any such intervention might be discussed. [320]
[Conference at Troppau, Oct. 1820.]
Had Metternich been free to follow his own impulses, he would have thrown
an army into Southern Italy as soon as soldiers and stores could be
collected, and have made an end of King Ferdinand's troubles forthwith. It
was, however, impossible for him to disregard the wishes of the Czar, and
to abandon all at once the system of corporate action, which was supposed
to have done such great things for Europe. [321] A meeting of sovereigns
and Ministers was accordingly arranged, and at the end of October the
Emperor of Austria received the Czar and King Frederick William in the
little town of Troppau, in Moravia. France had itself first recommended the
summoning of a Congress to deal with Neapolitan affairs, and it was
believed for a while that England would be isolated in its resistance to a
joint intervention. But before the Congress assembled, the firm language of
the English Ministry had drawn Richelieu over to its side; [322] and
although one of the two French envoys made himself the agent of the
Ultra-Royalist faction, it was not possible for him to unite his country
with the three Eastern Courts. France, through the weakness of its
Government and the dissension between its representatives, counted for
nothing at the Congress. England sent its ambassador from Vienna, but with
instructions to act as an observer and little more; and in consequence the
meeting at Troppau resolved itself into a gathering of the three Eastern
autocrats and their Ministers. As Prussia had ceased to have any
independent foreign policy whatever, Metternich needed only to make certain
of the support of the Czar in order to range on his side the entire force
of eastern and central Europe in the restoration of Neapolitan despotism.
[Contest between Metternich and Capodistrias.]
[Circular of Troppau, Dec. 8, 1820.]
[The principle of intervention laid down by three Courts.]
The plan of the Austrian statesman was not, however, to be realised without
some effort. Alexander had watched with jealousy Metternich's recent
assumption of a dictatorship over the minor German Courts; he had never
admitted Austria's right to dominate in Italy; and even now some vestiges
of his old attachment to liberal theories made him look for a better
solution of the Neapolitan problem than in that restoration of despotism
pure and simple which Austria desired. While condemning every attempt of a
people to establish its own liberties, Alexander still believed that in
some countries sovereigns would do well to make their subjects a grant of
what he called sage and liberal institutions. It would have pleased him
best if the Neapolitans could have been induced by peaceful means to
abandon their Constitution, and to accept in return certain chartered
rights as a gift from their King; and the concurrence of the two Western
Powers might in this case possibly have been regained. This project of a
compromise, by which Ferdinand would have been freed from his secret
engagement with Austria, was exactly what Metternich desired to frustrate.
He found himself matched, and not for the first time, against a statesman
who was even more subtle than himself. This was Count Capodistrias, a Greek
who from a private position had risen to be Foreign Minister of Russia, and
was destined to become the first sovereign, in reality if not in title, of
his native land. Capodistrias, the sympathetic partner of the Czar's
earlier hopes, had not travelled so fast as his master along the
reactionary road. He still represented what had been the Italian policy of
Alexander some years before, and sought to prevent the re-establishment of
absolute rule at Naples, at least by the armed intervention of Austria.
Metternich's first object was to discredit the Minister in the eyes of his
sovereign. It is said that he touched the Czar's keenest fears in a
conversation relating to a mutiny that had just taken place among the
troops at St. Petersburg, and so in one private interview cut the ground
from under Capodistrias' feet; he also humoured the Czar by reviving that
monarch's own favourite scheme for a mutual guarantee of all the Powers
against revolution in any part of Europe. Alexander had proposed in 1818
that the Courts should declare resistance to authority in any country to be
a violation of European peace, entitling the Allied Powers, if they should
think fit, to suppress it by force of arms. This doctrine, which would have
empowered the Czar to throw the armies of a coalition upon London if the
Reform Bill had been carried by force, had hitherto failed to gain
international acceptance owing to the opposition of Great Britain. It was
now formally accepted by Austria and Prussia. Alexander saw the federative
system of European monarchy, with its principle of collective intervention,
recognised as an established fact by at least three of the great Powers;
[323] and in return he permitted Metternich to lay down the lines which, in
the case of Naples, this intervention should follow. It was determined to
invite King Ferdinand to meet his brother-sovereigns at Laibach, in the
Austrian province of Carniola, and through him to address a summons to the
Neapolitan people, requiring them, in the name of the three Powers, and
under threat of invasion, to abandon their Constitution. This determination
was announced, as a settled matter, to the envoys of England and France;
and a circular was issued from Troppau by the three Powers to all the
Courts of Europe (Dec. 8), embodying the doctrine of federative
intervention, and expressing a hope that England and France would approve
its immediate application in the case of Naples. [324]
[Protest of England.]
There was no ground whatever for this hope with regard to England. On the
contrary, in proportion as the three Courts strengthened their union and
insisted on their claim to joint jurisdiction over Europe, they drove
England away from them. Lord Castlereagh had at first promised the moral
support of this country to Austria in its enterprise against Naples; but
when this enterprise ceased to be the affair of Austria alone, and became
part of the police-system of the three despotisms, it was no longer
possible for the English Government to view it with approval or even with
silence. The promise of a moral support was withdrawn: England declared
that it stood strictly neutral with regard to Naples, and protested against
the doctrine contained in the Troppau circular, that a change of government
in any State gave the Allied Powers the right to intervene. [325]
France made no such protest; but it was still hoped at Paris that an
Austrian invasion of Southern Italy, so irritating to French pride, might
be averted. King Louis XVIII. endeavoured, but in vain, to act the part of
mediator, and to reconcile the Neapolitan House of Bourbon at once with its
own subjects and with the Northern Powers.
[Conference at Laibach, Jan., 1821.]
The summons went out from the Congress to King Ferdinand to appear at
Laibach. It found him enjoying all the popularity of a constitutional King,
surrounded by Ministers who had governed under Murat, exchanging
compliments with a democratic Parliament, lavishing distinctions upon the
men who had overthrown his authority, and swearing to everything that was
set before him. As the Constitution prohibited the King from leaving the
country without the consent of the Legislature, it was necessary for
Ferdinand to communicate to Parliament the invitation which he had received
from the Powers, and to take a vote of the Assembly on the subject of his
journey. Ferdinand's Ministers possessed some political experience; they
recognised that it would be impossible to maintain the existing
Constitution against the hostility of three great States, and hoped that
the Parliament would consent to Ferdinand's departure on condition that he
pledged himself to uphold certain specified principles of free government.
A message to the Assembly was accordingly made public, in which the King
expressed his desire to mediate with the Powers on this basis. But the
Ministers had not reckoned with the passions of the people. As soon as it
became known that Ferdinand was about to set out, the leaders of the
Carbonari mustered their bands. A host of violent men streamed into Naples
from the surrounding country. The Parliament was intimidated, and Ferdinand
was prohibited from leaving Naples until he had sworn to maintain the
Constitution actually in force, that, namely, which Naples had borrowed
from Spain. Ferdinand, whose only object was to escape from the country as
quickly as possible, took the oath with his usual effusions of patriotism.
He then set out for Leghorn, intending to cross from thence into Northern
Italy. No sooner had he reached the Tuscan port than he addressed a letter
to each of the five principal sovereigns of Europe, declaring that his last
acts were just as much null and void as all his earlier ones. He made no
attempt to justify, or to excuse, or even to explain his conduct; nor is
there the least reason to suppose that he considered the perjuries of a
prince to require a justification. "These sorry protests," wrote the
secretary of the Congress of Troppau, "will happily remain secret. No
Cabinet will be anxious to draw them from the sepulchre of its archives.
Till then there is not much harm done."
[Ferdinand at Laibach.]
[Demands of the Allies on Naples.]
Ferdinand reached Laibach, where the Czar rewarded him for the fatigues of
his journey by a present of some Russian bears. His arrival was peculiarly
agreeable to Metternich, whose intentions corresponded exactly with his
own; and the fact that he had been compelled to swear to maintain the
Spanish Constitution at Naples acted favourably for the Austrian Minister,
inasmuch as it enabled him to say to all the world that negotiation was now
out of the question. [326] Capodistrias, brought face to face with failure,
twisted about, according to his rival's expression, like a devil in holy
water, but all in vain. It was decided that Ferdinand should be restored as
absolute monarch by an Austrian army, and that, whether the Neapolitans
resisted or submitted, their country should be occupied by Austrian troops
for some years to come. The only difficulty remaining was to vest King
Ferdinand's conduct in some respectable disguise. Capodistrias, when
nothing else was to be gained, offered to invent an entire correspondence,
in which Ferdinand should proudly uphold the Constitution to which he had
sworn, and protest against the determination of the Powers to force the
sceptre of absolutism back into his hand. [327] This device, however, was
thought too transparent. A letter was sent in the King's name to his son,
the Duke of Calabria, stating that he had found the three Powers determined
not to tolerate an order of things sprung from revolution; that submission
alone would avert war; but that even in case of submission certain
securities for order, meaning the occupation of the country by an Austrian
army, would be exacted. The letter concluded with the usual promises of
reform and good government. It reached Naples on the 9th of February, 1821.
No answer was either expected or desired. On the 6th the order had been
given to the Austrian army to cross the Po.
[State of Naples and Sicily.]
[The Austrians enter Naples, March 24, 1821.]
[Third Neapolitan restoration.]
There was little reason to fear any serious resistance on the part of the
Neapolitans. The administration of the State was thoroughly disorganised;
the agitation of the secret societies had destroyed all spirit of obedience
among the soldiers; a great part of the army was absent in Sicily, keeping
guard over a people who, under wiser management, might have doubled the
force which Naples now opposed to the invader. When the despotic government
of Ferdinand was overthrown, the island of Sicily, or that part of it which
was represented by Palermo, had claimed the separate political existence
which it had possessed between 1806 and 1815, offering to remain united to
Naples in the person of the sovereign, but demanding a National Parliament
and a National Constitution of its own. The revolutionary Ministers of
Naples had, however, no more sympathy with the wishes of the Sicilians than
the Spanish Liberals of 1812 had with those of the American Colonists. They
required the islanders to accept the same rights and duties as any other
province of the Neapolitan kingdom, and, on their refusal, sent over a
considerable force and laid siege to Palermo. [328] The contest soon ended
in the submission of the Sicilians, but it was found necessary to keep
twelve thousand troops on the island in order to prevent a new revolt. The
whole regular army of Naples numbered little more than forty thousand; and
although bodies of Carbonari and of the so-called Militia set out to join
the colours of General Pepe and to fight for liberty, they remained for the
most part a disorderly mob, without either arms or discipline. The invading
army of Austria, fifty thousand strong, not only possessed an immense
superiority in organisation and military spirit, but actually outnumbered
the forces of the defence. At the first encounter, which took place at
Rieti, in the Papal States, the Neapolitans were put to the rout. Their
army melted away, as it had in Murat's campaign in 1815. Nothing was heard
among officers and men but accusations of treachery; not a single strong
point was defended; and on the 24th of March the Austrians made their entry
into Naples. Ferdinand, halting at Florence, sent on before him the worst
instruments of his former despotism. It was indeed impossible for these men
to renew, under Austrian protection, the scenes of reckless bloodshed which
had followed the restoration of 1799; and a great number of compromised
persons had already been provided with the means of escape. But the hand of
vengeance was not easily stayed. Courts-martial and commissions of judges
began in all parts of the kingdom to sentence to imprisonment and death. An
attempted insurrection in Sicily and some desperate acts of rebellion in
Southern Italy cost the principal actors their lives; and when an amnesty
was at length proclaimed, an exception was made against those who were now
called the deserters, and who were lately called the Sacred Band, of Nola,
that is to say, the soldiers who had first risen for the Constitution.
Morelli, who had received the Viceroy's treacherous thanks for his conduct,
was executed, along with one of his companions; the rest were sent in
chains to labour among felons. Hundreds of persons were left lying,
condemned or uncondemned, in prison; others, in spite of the amnesty, were
driven from their native land; and that great, long-lasting stream of
fugitives now began to pour into England, which, in the early memories of
many who are not yet old, has associated the name of Italian with the image
of an exile and a sufferer.
[Insurrection in Piedmont, March 10.]
There was a moment in the campaign of Austria against Naples when the
invading army was threatened with the most serious danger. An insurrection
broke out in Piedmont, and the troops of that country attempted to unite
with the patriotic party of Lombardy in a movement which would have thrown
all Northern Italy upon the rear of the Austrians. In the first excess of
alarm, the Czar ordered a hundred thousand Russians to cross the Galician
frontier, and to march in the direction of the Adriatic. It proved
unnecessary, however, to continue this advance. The Piedmontese army was
divided against itself; part proclaimed the Spanish Constitution, and, on
the abdication of the King, called upon his cousin, the Regent, Charles
Albert of Carignano, to march against the Austrians; part adhered to the
rightful heir, the King's brother, Charles Felix, who was absent at Modena,
and who, with an honesty in strong contrast to the frauds of the Neapolitan
Court, refused to temporise with rebels, or to make any compromise with the
Constitution. The scruples of the Prince of Carignano, after he had gone
some way with the military party of action, paralysed the movement of
Northern Italy. Unsupported by Piedmontese troops, the conspirators of
Milan failed to raise any open insurrection. Austrian soldiers thronged
westwards from the Venetian fortresses, and entered Piedmont itself; the
collapse of the Neapolitan army destroyed the hopes of the bravest
patriots; and the only result of the Piedmontese movement was that the
grasp of Austria closed more tightly on its subject provinces, while the
martyrs of Italian freedom passed out of the sight of the world, out of the
range of all human communication, buried for years to come in the silent,
unvisited prison of the North. [329]
[The French Ultra-Royalists urging attack on Spain.]
Thus the victory of absolutism was completed, and the law was laid down to
Europe that a people seeking its liberties elsewhere than in the grace and
spontaneous generosity of its legitimate sovereign became a fit object of
attack for the armies of the three Great Powers. It will be seen in a later
chapter how Metternich persuaded the Czar to include under the anathema
issued by the Congress of Laibach (May, 1821) [330] the outbreak of the
Greeks, which at this moment began, and how Lord Castlereagh supported the
Austrian Minister in denying to these rebels against the Sultan all right
or claim to the consideration of Europe. Spain was for the present left
unmolested; but the military operations of 1821 prepared the way for a
similar crusade against that country by occasioning the downfall of
Richelieu's Ministry, and throwing the government of France entirely into
the hands of the Ultra-Royalists. All parties in the French Chamber,
whether they condemned or approved the suppression of Neapolitan liberty,
censured a policy which had kept France in inaction, and made Austria
supreme in Italy. The Ultra-Royalists profited by the general discontent to
overthrow the Minister whom they had promised to support (Dec., 1821); and
from this time a war with Spain, conducted either by France alone or in
combination with the three Eastern Powers, became the dearest hope of the
rank and file of the dominant faction. Villèle, their nominal chief,
remained what he had been before, a statesman among fanatics, and desired
to maintain the attitude of observation as long as this should be possible.
A body of troops had been stationed on the southern frontier in 1820 to
prevent all intercourse with the Spanish districts afflicted with the
yellow fever. This epidemic had passed away, but the number of the troops
was now raised to a hundred thousand. It was, however, the hope of Villèle
that hostilities might be averted unless the Spaniards should themselves
provoke a combat, or, by resorting to extreme measures against King
Ferdinand, should compel Louis XVIII. to intervene on behalf of his
kinsman. The more violent section of the French Cabinet, represented by
Montmorency, the Foreign Minister, called for an immediate march on Madrid,
or proposed to delay operations only until France should secure the support
of the other Continental Powers.
[Spain from 1820 to 1822.]
[Ferdinand plots with the Serviles against the Constitution.]
The condition of Spain in the year 1822 gave ample encouragement to those
who longed to employ the arms of France in the royalist cause. The hopes of
peaceful reform, which for the first few months after the revolution had
been shared even by foreign politicians at Madrid, had long vanished. In
the moment of popular victory Ferdinand had brought the leaders of the
Cortes from their prisons and placed them in office. These men showed a
dignified forgetfulness of the injuries which they had suffered. Misfortune
had calmed their impetuosity, and taught them more of the real condition of
the Spanish people. They entered upon their task with seriousness and good
faith, and would have proved the best friends of constitutional monarchy if
Ferdinand had had the least intention of co-operating with them loyally.
But they found themselves encountered from the first by a double enemy. The
clergy, who had overthrown the Constitution six years before, intrigued or
openly declared against it as soon as it was revived; the more violent of
the Liberals, with Riego at their head, abandoned themselves to
extravagances like those of the club-orators of Paris in 1791, and did
their best to make any peaceable administration impossible. After combating
these anarchists, or Exaltados, with some success, the Ministry was forced
to call in their aid, when, at the instigation of the Papal Nuncio, the
King placed his veto upon a law dissolving most of the monasteries [331]
(Oct., 1820). Ferdinand now openly combined with the enemies of the
Constitution, and attempted to transfer the command of the army to one of
his own agents. The plot failed; the Ministry sent the alarm over the whole
country, and Ferdinand stood convicted before his people as a conspirator
against the Constitution which he had sworn to defend. The agitation of the
clubs, which the Ministry had hitherto suppressed, broke out anew. A storm
of accusations assailed Ferdinand himself. He was compelled at the end of
the year 1820 to banish from Madrid most of the persons who had been his
confidants; and although his dethronement was not yet proposed, he had
already become, far more than Louis XVI. of France under similar
conditions, the recognised enemy of the revolution, and the suspected
patron of every treason against the nation.
[The Ministry between the Exaltados and Serviles, 1821.]
[Attempted coup d'état, July 6, 1822.]
[Royalists revolt in the north.]
The attack of the despotic Courts on Naples in the spring of 1821
heightened the fury of parties in Spain, encouraging the Serviles, or
Absolutists, in their plots, and forcing the Ministry to yield to the cry
for more violent measures against the enemies of the Constitution. In the
south of Spain the Exaltados gained possession of the principal military
and civil commands, and openly refused obedience to the central
administration when it attempted to interfere with their action Seville,
Carthagena, and Cadiz acted as if they were independent Republics and even
spoke of separation from Spain. Defied by its own subordinates in the
provinces, and unable to look to the King for any sincere support, the
moderate governing party lost all hold upon the nation. In the Cortes
elected in 1822 the Exaltados formed the majority, and Riego was appointed
President. Ferdinand now began to concert measures of action with the
French Ultra-Royalists. The Serviles, led by priests, and supported by
French money, broke into open rebellion in the north. When the session of
the Cortes ended, the King attempted to overthrow his enemies by military
force. Three battalions of the Royal Guard, which had been withdrawn from
Madrid, received secret orders to march upon the capital (July 6, 1822),
where Ferdinand was expected to place himself at their head. They were,
however, met and defeated in the streets by other regiments, and Ferdinand,
vainly attempting to dissociate himself from the action of his partisans,
found his crown, if not his life, in peril. He wrote to Louis XVIII. that
he was a prisoner. Though the French King gave nothing more than good
counsel, the Ultra-Royalists in the French Cabinet and in the army now
strained every nerve to accelerate a war between the two countries. The
Spanish Absolutists seized the town of Seo d'Urgel, and there set up a
provisional government. Civil war spread over the northern provinces. The
Ministry, which was now formed of Riego's friends, demanded and obtained
from the Cortes dictatorial powers like those which the French Committee of
Public Safety had wielded in 1793, but with far other result. Spain found
no Danton, no Carnot, at this crisis, when the very highest powers of
intellect and will would have been necessary to arouse and to arm a people
far less disposed to fight for liberty than the French were in 1793. One
man alone, General Mina, checked and overthrew the rebel leaders of the
north with an activity superior to their own. The Government, boastful and
violent in its measures, effected scarcely anything in the organisation of
a national force, or in preparing the means of resistance against those
foreign armies with whose attack the country was now plainly threatened.
[England and the Congress of 1822.]
When the Congress of Laibach broke up in the spring of 1821. its members
determined to renew their meeting in the following year, in order to decide
whether the Austrian army might then be withdrawn from Naples, and to
discuss other questions affecting their common interests. The progress of
the Greek insurrection and a growing strife between Russia and Turkey had
since then thrown all Italian difficulties into the shade. The Eastern
question stood in the front rank of European politics; next in importance
came the affairs of Spain. It was certain that these, far more than the
occupation of Naples, would supply the real business of the Congress of
1822. England had a far greater interest in both questions than in the
Italian negotiations of the two previous years. It was felt that the system
of abstention which England had then followed could be pursued no longer,
and that the country must be represented not by some casual and wandering
diplomatist, but by its leading Minister, Lord Castlereagh. The intentions
of the other Powers in regard to Spain were matter of doubt; it was the
fixed policy of Great Britain to leave the Spanish revolution in Europe to
run its own course, and to persuade the other Powers to do the same. But
the difficulties connected with Spain did not stop at the Spanish frontier.
The South American colonies had now in great part secured their
independence. They had developed a trade with Great Britain which made it
impossible for this country to ignore their flag and the decisions of their
law courts. The British navigation-laws had already been modified by
Parliament in favour of their shipping; and although it was no business of
the English Government to grant a formal title to communities which had
made themselves free, the practical recognition of the American States by
the appointment of diplomatic agents could in several cases not be justly
delayed. Therefore, without interfering with any colonies which were still
fighting or still negotiating with Spain, the British Minister proposed to
inform the Allied cabinets of the intention of this country to accredit
agents to some of the South American Republics, and to recommend to them
the adoption of a similar policy.
[Death of Castlereagh, Aug. 12, 1822.]
Such was the tenour of the instructions which, a few weeks before his
expected departure for the Continent, Castlereagh drew up for his own
guidance, and submitted to the Cabinet and the King. [332] Had he lived to
fulfil the mission with which he was charged, the recognition of the South
American Republics, which adds so bright a ray to the fame of Canning,
would probably have been the work of the man who, more than any other, is
associated in popular belief with the traditions of a hated and outworn
system of oppression. Two more years of life, two more years of change in
the relations of England to the Continent, would have given Castlereagh a
different figure in the history both of Greece and of America. No English
statesman in modern times has been so severely judged. Circumstances, down
to the close of his career, withheld from Castlereagh the opportunities
which fell to his successor; ties from which others were free made it hard
for him to accelerate the breach with the Allies of 1814. Antagonists
showed Castlereagh no mercy, no justice. The man whom Byron disgraced
himself by ridiculing after his death possessed in a rich measure the
qualities which, in private life, attract esteem and love. His public life,
if tainted in earlier days by the low political morality of the time, rose
high above that of every Continental statesman of similar rank, with the
single exception of Stein. The best testimony to his integrity is the
irritation which it caused to Talleyrand. [333] If the consciousness of
labour unflaggingly pursued in the public cause, and animated on the whole
by a pure and earnest purpose, could have calmed the distress of a breaking
mind, the decline of Castlereagh's days might have been one of peace. His
countrymen would have recognised that, if blind to the rights of nations,
Castlereagh had set to foreign rulers the example of truth and good faith.
But the burden of his life was too heavy to bear. Mists of despondency
obscured the outlines of the real world, and struck chill into his heart.
Death, self-invoked, brought relief to the over-wrought brain, and laid
Castlereagh, with all his cares, in everlasting sleep.
[Canning Foreign Secretary. Wellington deputed to the Congress, Sept.,
1822.]
[Congress of Verona, Oct., 1822.]
The vacant post was filled by Canning, by far the most gifted of the band
of statesmen who had begun their public life in the school of Pitt.
Wellington undertook to represent England at the Congress of 1822, which
was now about to open at Vienna. His departure was, however, delayed for
several weeks, and the preliminary meeting, at which it had been intended
to transact all business not relating to Italy, was almost over before his
arrival. Wellington accordingly travelled on to Verona, where Italian
affairs were to be dealt with; and the Italian Conference, which the
British Government had not intended to recognise, thus became the real
Congress of 1822. Anxious as Lord Castlereagh had been on the question of
foreign interference with Spain, he hardly understood the imminence of the
danger. In passing through Paris, Wellington learnt for the first time that
a French or European invasion of Spain would be the foremost object of
discussion among the Powers; and on reaching Verona he made the unwelcome
discovery that the Czar was bent upon sending a Russian army to take part,
as the mandatary of Europe, in overthrowing the Spanish Constitution.
Alexander's desire was to obtain a joint declaration from the Congress like
that which had been issued against Naples by the three Courts at Troppau,
but one even more formidable, since France might be expected in the present
case to give its concurrence, which had been withheld before. France indeed
occupied, according to the absolutist theory of the day, the same position
in regard to a Jacobin Spain as Austria in regard to a Jacobin Naples, and
might perhaps claim to play the leading military part in the crusade of
repression. But the work was likely to be a much more difficult one than
that of 1821. The French troops, said the Czar, were not trustworthy; and
there was a party in France which might take advantage of the war to
proclaim the second Napoleon or the Republic. King Louis XVIII. could not
therefore be allowed to grapple with Spain alone. It was necessary that the
principal force employed by the alliance should be one whose loyalty and
military qualities were above suspicion: the generals who had marched from
Moscow to Paris were not likely to fail beyond the Pyrenees: and a campaign
of the Russian army in Western Europe promised to relieve the Czar of some
of the discontent of his soldiers, who had been turned back after entering
Galicia in the previous year, and who had not been allowed to assist their
fellow-believers in Greece in their struggle against the Sultan. [334]
[No joint declaration by made by the Congress against Spain.]
Wellington had ascertained, while in Paris, that King Louis XVIII. and
Villèle were determined under no circumstances to give Russian troops a
passage through France. His knowledge of this fact enabled him to speak
with some confidence to Alexander. It was the earnest desire of the English
Government to avert war, and its first object was therefore to prevent the
Congress, as a body, from sending an ultimatum to Spain. If all the Powers
united in a declaration like that of Troppau, war was inevitable; if France
were left to settle its own disputes with its neighbour, English mediation
might possibly preserve peace. The statement of Wellington, that England
would rather sever itself from the great alliance than consent to a joint
declaration against Spain, had no doubt its effect in preventing such a
declaration being proposed; but a still weightier reason against it was the
direct contradiction between the intentions of the French Government and
those of the Czar. If the Czar was determined to be the soldier of Europe,
while on the other hand King Louis absolutely denied him a passage through
France, it was impossible that the Congress should threaten Spain with a
collective attack. No great expenditure of diplomacy was therefore
necessary to prevent the summary framing of a decree against Spain like
that which had been framed against Naples two years before. In the first
despatches which he sent back to England Wellington expressed his belief
that the deliberations of the Powers would end in a decision to leave the
Spaniards to themselves.
[Course of the negotiation against Spain.]
But the danger was only averted in appearance. The impulse to war was too
strong among the French Ultra-Royalists for the Congress to keep silence on
Spanish affairs. Villèle indeed still hoped for peace, and, unlike other
members of his Cabinet, he desired that, if war should arise, France should
maintain entire freedom of action, and enter upon the struggle as an
independent Power, not as the instrument of the European concert. This did
not prevent him, however, from desiring to ascertain what assistance would
be forthcoming, if France should be hard pressed by its enemy. Instructions
were given to the French envoys at Verona to sound the Allies on this
question. [335] It was out of the inquiry so suggested that a negotiation
sprang which virtually combined all Europe against Spain. The envoy
Montmorency, acting in the spirit of the war party, demanded of all the
Powers whether, in the event of France withdrawing its ambassador from
Madrid, they would do the same, and whether, in case of war, France would
receive their moral and material support. Wellington in his reply protested
against the framing of hypothetical cases; the other envoys answered
Montmorency's questions in the affirmative. The next step was taken by
Metternich, who urged that certain definite acts of the Spanish people or
Government ought to be specified as rendering war obligatory on France and
its allies, and also that, with a view of strengthening the Royalist party
in Spain, notes ought to be presented by all the ambassadors at Madrid,
demanding a change in the Constitution. This proposal was in its turn
submitted to Wellington and rejected by him. It was accepted by the other
plenipotentiaries, and the acts of the Spanish people were specified on
which war should necessarily follow. These were, the commission of any act
of violence against a member of the royal family, the deposition of the
King, or an attempt to change the dynasty. A secret clause was added to the
second part of the agreement, to the effect that if the Spanish Government
made no satisfactory answer to the notes requiring a change in the
Constitution, all the ambassadors should be immediately withdrawn. A draft
of the notes to be presented was sketched; and Montmorency, who thought
that he had probably gone too far in his stipulations, returned to Paris to
submit the drafts to the King before handing them over to the ambassadors
at Paris for transmission to Madrid.
[Villèle and Montmorency.]
[Speech of Louis XVIII., Jan. 27, 1823.]
It was with great dissatisfaction that Villèle saw how his colleague had
committed France to the direction of the three Eastern Powers. There was no
likelihood that the Spanish Government would make the least concession of
the kind required, and in that case France stood pledged, if the action of
Montmorency was ratified, to withdraw its ambassador from Madrid at once.
Villèle accordingly addressed himself to the ambassadors at Paris, asking
that the despatch of the notes might be postponed. No notice was taken of
his request: the notes were despatched forthwith. Roused by this slight,
Villèle appealed to the King not to submit to the dictation of foreign
Courts. Louis XVIII. declared in his favour against all the rest of the
Cabinet, and Montmorency had to retire from office. But the decision of the
King meant that he disapproved of the negotiations of Verona as shackling
the movements of France, not that he had freed himself from the influence
of the war-party. Chateaubriand, the most reckless agitator for
hostilities, was appointed Foreign Minister. The mediation of Great Britain
was rejected; [336] and in his speech at the opening of the Chambers of
1823, King Louis himself virtually published the declaration of war.
[England in 1823.]
[French invasion of Spain, April, 1823.]
The ambassadors of the three Eastern Courts had already presented their
notes at Madrid demanding a change in the Constitution; and, after
receiving a high-spirited answer from the Ministers, they had quitted the
country. Canning, while using every diplomatic effort to prevent an unjust
war, had made it clear to the Spaniards that England could not render them
armed assistance. The reasons against such an intervention were indeed
overwhelming. Russia, Austria, and Prussia would have taken the field
rather than have permitted the Spanish Constitution to triumph; and
although, if leagued with Spain in a really national defence like that of
1808, Great Britain might perhaps have protected the Peninsula against all
the Powers of Europe combined, it was far otherwise when the cause at stake
was one to which a majority of the Spanish nation had shown itself to be
indifferent, and against which the northern provinces had actually taken up
arms. The Government and the Cortes were therefore left to defend
themselves as best they could against their enemies. They displayed their
weakness by enacting laws of extreme severity against deserters, and by
retiring, along with the recalcitrant King, from Madrid to Seville. On the
7th of April the French troops, led by the Duke of Angoulême, crossed the
frontier. The priests and a great part of the peasantry welcomed them as
deliverers: the forces opposed to them fell back without striking a blow.
As the invader advanced towards the capital, gangs of royalists, often led
by monks, spread such terror and devastation over the northern provinces
that the presence of foreign troops became the only safeguard for the
peaceable inhabitants. [337] Madrid itself was threatened by the corps of a
freebooter named Bessières. The commandant sent his surrender to the French
while they were still at some distance, begging them to advance as quickly
as possible in order to save the city from pillage. The message had
scarcely been sent when Bessières and his bandits appeared in the suburbs.
The governor drove them back, and kept the royalist mob within the city at
bay for four days more. On the 23rd of May the advance-guard of the French
army entered the capital.
[Angoulême and the Regency, and the ambassadors.]
It had been the desire of King Louis XVIII. and Angoulême to save Spain
from the violence of royalist and priestly fanaticism. On reaching Madrid,
Angoulême intended to appoint a provisional, government himself; he was,
however, compelled by orders from Paris to leave the election in the hands
of the Council of Castille, and a Regency came into power whose first acts
showed in what spirit the victory of the French was to be used. Edicts were
issued declaring all the acts of the Cortes affecting the monastic orders
to be null and void, dismissing all officials appointed since March 7,
1820, and subjecting to examination those who, then being in office, had
not resigned their posts. [338] The arrival of the ambassadors of the three
Eastern Powers encouraged the Regency in their antagonism to the French
commander. It was believed that the Cabinet of Paris was unwilling to
restore King Ferdinand as an absolute monarch, and intended to obtain from
him the grant of institutions resembling those of the French Charta. Any
such limitation of absolute power was, however, an object of horror to the
three despotic Courts. Their ambassadors formed themselves into a council
with the express object of resisting the supposed policy of Angoulême. The
Regency grew bolder, and gave the signal for general retribution upon the
Liberals by publishing an order depriving all persons who had served in the
voluntary militia since March, 1820, of their offices, pensions, and
titles. The work inaugurated in the capital was carried much further in the
provinces. The friends of the Constitution, and even soldiers who were
protected by their capitulation with the French, were thrown into prison by
the new local authorities. The violence of the reaction reached such a
height that Angoulême, now on the march to Cadiz, was compelled to publish
an ordinance forbidding arrests to be made without the consent of a French
commanding officer, and ordering his generals to release the persons who
had been arbitrarily imprisoned. The council of ambassadors, blind in their
jealousy of France to the danger of an uncontrolled restoration, drew up a
protest against his ordinance, and desired that the officers of the Regency
should be left to work their will.
[The Cortes at Cadiz.]
[Ferdinand liberated, Oct. 1.]
After spending some weeks in idle debates at Seville, the Cortes had been
compelled by the appearance of the French on the Sierra Morena to retire to
Cadiz. As King Ferdinand refused to accompany them, he was declared
temporarily insane, and forced to make the journey (June 12). Angoulême,
following the French vanguard after a considerable interval, appeared
before Cadiz in August, and sent a note to King Ferdinand, recommending him
to publish an amnesty, and to promise the restoration of the mediæval
Cortes. It was hoped that the terms suggested in this note might be
accepted by the Government in Cadiz as a basis of peace, and so render an
attack upon the city unnecessary. The Ministry, however, returned a defiant
answer in the King's name. The siege of Cadiz accordingly began in earnest.
On the 30th of August the fort of the Trocadero was stormed; three weeks
later the city was bombarded. In reply to all proposals for negotiation
Angoulême stated that he could only treat when King Ferdinand was within
his own lines. There was not the least hope of prolonging the defence of
Cadiz with success, for the combat was dying out even in those few
districts of Spain where the constitutional troops had fought with energy.
Ferdinand himself pretended that he bore no grudge against his Ministers,
and that the Liberals had nothing to fear from his release. On the 30th of
September he signed, as if with great satisfaction, an absolute and
universal amnesty. [339] On the following day he was conveyed with his
family across the bay to Angoulême's head-quarters.
[Violence of the Restoration.]
The war was over: the real results of the French invasion now came into
sight. Ferdinand had not been twelve hours in the French camp when,
surrounded by monks and royalist desperadoes, he published a proclamation
invalidating every act of the constitutional Government of the last three
years, on the ground that his sanction had been given under constraint. The
same proclamation ratified the acts of the Regency of Madrid. As the
Regency of Madrid had declared all persons concerned in the removal of the
King to Cadiz to be liable to the penalties of high treason, Ferdinand had
in fact ratified a sentence of death against several of the men from whom
he had just parted in friendship. [340] Many of these victims of the King's
perfidy were sent into safety by the French. But Angoulême was powerless to
influence Ferdinand's policy and conduct. Don Saez, the King's confessor,
was made First Secretary of State. On the 4th of October an edict was
issued banishing for ever from Madrid, and from the country fifty miles
round it, every person who during the last three years had sat in the
Cortes, or who had been a Minister, counsellor of State, judge, commander,
official in any public office, magistrate, or officer in the so-called
voluntary militia. It was ordered that throughout Spain a solemn service
should be celebrated in expiation of the insults offered to the Holy
Sacrament; that missions should be sent over the land to combat the
pernicious and heretical doctrines associated with the late outbreak, and
that the bishops should relegate to monasteries of the strictest observance
the priests who had acted as the agents of an impious faction. [341] Thus
the war of revenge was openly declared against the defeated party. It was
in vain that Angoulême indignantly reproached the King, and that the
ambassadors of the three Eastern Courts pressed him to draw up at least
some kind of amnesty. Ferdinand travelled slowly towards Madrid, saying
that he could take no such step until he reached the capital. On the 7th of
November, Riego was hanged. Thousands of persons were thrown into prison,
or compelled to fly from the country. Except where order was preserved by
the French, life and property were at the mercy of royalist mobs and the
priests who led them; and although the influence of the Russian statesman
Pozzo di Borgo at length brought a respectable Ministry into office, this
only roused the fury of the clerical party, and led to a cry for the
deposition of the King, and for the elevation of his more fanatical
brother, Don Carlos, to the throne. Military commissions were instituted at
the beginning of 1824 for the trial of accused persons, and a pretended
amnesty, published six months later, included in its fifteen classes of
exception the participators in almost every act of the revolution.
Ordinance followed upon ordinance, multiplying the acts punishable with
death, and exterminating the literature which was believed to be the source
of all religious and social heterodoxy. Every movement of life was watched
by the police; every expression of political opinion was made high treason.
Young men were shot for being freemasons; women were sent to prison for ten
years for possessing a portrait of Riego. The relation of the restored
Government to its subjects was in fact that which belonged to a state of
civil war. Insurrections arose among the fanatics who were now taking the
name of the Carlist or Apostolic party, as well as among a despairing
remnant of the Constitutionalists. After a feeble outbreak of the latter at
Tarifa, a hundred and twelve persons were put to death by the military
commissions within eighteen days. [342] It was not until the summer of 1825
that the jurisdiction of these tribunals and the Reign of Terror ended.
[England prohibits the conquest of Spanish colonies by France or its
allies.]
[England recognises the independence of the colonies. 1824-5.]
France had won a cheap and inglorious victory. The three Eastern Courts had
seen their principle of absolutism triumph at the cost of everything that
makes government morally better than anarchy. One consolation remained for
those who felt that there was little hope for freedom on the Continent of
Europe. The crusade against Spanish liberty had put an end for ever to the
possibility of a joint conquest of Spanish America in the interest of
despotism. The attitude of England was no longer what it had been in 1818.
When the Czar had proposed at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle that the
allied monarchs should suppress the republican principle beyond the seas,
Castlereagh had only stated that England could bear no part in such an
enterprise; he had not said that England would effectually prevent others
from attempting it. This was the resolution by which Canning, isolated and
baffled by the conspiracy of Verona, proved that England could still do
something to protect its own interest and the interests of mankind against
a league of autocrats. There is indeed little doubt that the independence
of the Spanish colonies would have been recognised by Great Britain soon
after the war of 1823, whoever might have been our Minister for Foreign
Affairs, but this recognition was a different matter in the hands of
Canning from what it would have been in the hands of his predecessor. The
contrast between the two men was one of spirit rather than of avowed rules
of action. Where Castlereagh offered apologies to the Continental
sovereigns, Canning uttered defiance [343] The treaties of 1815, which
connected England so closely with the foreign courts, were no work of his;
though he sought not to repudiate them, he delighted to show that in spite
of them England has still its own policy, its own sympathies, its own
traditions. In face of the council of kings and its assumption of universal
jurisdiction, he publicly described himself as an enthusiast for the
independence of nations. If others saw little evidence that France intended
to recompense itself for its services to Ferdinand by appropriating some of
his rebellious colonies, Canning was quick to lay hold of every suspicious
circumstance. At the beginning of the war of 1823 he gave a formal warning
to the ambassador of Louis XVIII. that France would not be permitted to
bring any of these provinces under its dominion, whether by conquest or
cession. [344] When the war was over, he rejected the invitation of
Ferdinand's Government to take part in a conference at Paris, where the
affairs of South America were to be laid before the Allied Powers. [345]
What these Powers might or might not think on the subject of America was
now a matter of indifference, for the policy of England was fixed, and it
was useless to debate upon a conclusion that could not be altered. British
consular agents were appointed in most of the colonies before the close of
the year 1823; and after some interval the independence of Buenos Ayres,
Colombia, and Mexico were formally recognised by the conclusion of
commercial treaties. "I called the New World into existence," cried
Canning, when reproached with permitting the French occupation of Spain,
"in order to redress the balance of the Old." The boast, famous in our
Parliamentary history, has left an erroneous impression of the part really
played by Canning at this crisis. He did not call the New World into
existence; he did not even assist it in winning independence, as France had
assisted the United States fifty years before; but when this independence
had been won, he threw over it the aegis of Great Britain, declaring that
no other European Power should reimpose the yoke which Spain had not been
able to maintain.
[Affairs in Portugal.]
[Constitution granted by Pedro, May, 1826.]
The overthrow of the Spanish Constitution by foreign arms led to a series
of events in Portugal which forced England to a more direct intervention in
the Peninsula than had yet been necessary, and heightened the conflict that
had sprung up between its policy and that of Continental absolutism. The
same parties and the same passions, political and religious, existed in
Portugal as in Spain, and the enemies of the Constitution found the same
support at foreign Courts. The King of Portugal, John VI., was a weak but
not ill-meaning man; his wife, who was a sister of Ferdinand of Spain, and
his son Don Miguel were the chiefs of the conspiracy against the Cortes. In
June, 1823, a military revolt, arranged by Miguel, brought the existing
form of government to an end: the King promised, however, when dissolving
the Cortes, that a Constitution should be bestowed by himself upon
Portugal; and he seems to have intended to keep his word. The ambassadors
of France and Austria were, however, busy in throwing hindrances in the
way, and Don Miguel prepared to use violence to prevent his father from
making any concession to the Liberals. King John, in fear for his life,
applied to England for troops; Canning declined to land soldiers at Lisbon,
but sent a squadron, with orders to give the King protection. The winter of
1823 was passed in intrigues; in May, 1824, Miguel arrested the Ministers
and surrounded the King's palace with troops. After several days of
confusion King John made his escape to the British ships, and Miguel, who
was alternately cowardly and audacious, then made his submission, and was
ordered to leave the country. King John died in the spring of 1826 without
having granted a Constitution. Pedro, his eldest son, had already been made
Emperor of Brazil; and, as it was impossible that Portugal and Brazil could
again be united, it was arranged that Pedro's daughter, when of sufficient
age, should marry her uncle Miguel, and so save Portugal from the danger of
a contested succession. Before renouncing the crown of Portugal, Pedro
granted a Constitution to that country. A Regency had already been
appointed by King John, in which neither the Queen-dowager nor Miguel was
included.
[Desertion of Portuguese soldiery, 1826.]
[Spain permits the deserters to attack Portugal.]
[Canning sends troops to Lisbon, Dec., 1826.]
Miguel had gone to Vienna. Although a sort of Caliban in character and
understanding, this Prince met with the welcome due to a kinsman of the
Imperial house, and to a representative of the good cause of absolutism. He
was received by Metternich with great interest, and his fortunes were taken
under the protection of the Austrian Court. In due time, it was hoped this
savage and ignorant churl would do yeoman's service to Austrian principles
in the Peninsula. But the Regency and the new Constitution of Portugal had
not to wait for the tardy operation of Metternich's covert hostility. The
soldiery who had risen at Miguel's bidding in 1823 now proclaimed him King,
and deserted to Spanish soil. Within the Spanish frontier they were
received by Ferdinand's representatives with open arms. The demands made by
the Portuguese ambassador at Madrid for their dispersion and for the
surrender of their weapons were evaded. The cause of these armed bands on
the frontier became the cause of the Clerical and Ultra-Royalist party over
all Europe. Money was sent to them from France and Austria. They were
joined by troops of Spanish Carlists or Apostolicals; they were fed,
clothed, and organised, if not by the Spanish Government itself, at least
by those over whose action the Spanish Government exercised control. [346]
Thus raised to considerable military strength, they made incursions into
Portugal, and at last attempted a regular invasion. The Regency of Lisbon,
justly treating these outrages as the act of the Spanish Government, and
appealing to the treaties which bound Great Britain to defend Portugal
against foreign attack, demanded the assistance of this country. More was
involved in the action taken by Canning than a possible contest with Spain;
the seriousness of the danger lay in the fact that Spain was still occupied
by French armies, and that a war with Spain might, and probably would,
involve a war with France, if not with other Continental Powers. But the
English Ministry waited only for the confirmation of the alleged facts by
their own ambassador. The treaty-rights of Portugal were undoubted; the
temper of the English Parliament and nation, strained to the utmost by the
events of the last three years, was such that a war against Ferdinand and
against the destroyers of Spanish liberty would have caused more rejoicing
than alarm. Nine days after the formal demand of the Portuguese arrived,
four days after their complaint was substantiated by the report of our
ambassador, Canning announced to the House of Commons that British troops
were actually on the way to Lisbon. In words that alarmed many of his own
party, and roused the bitter indignation of every Continental Court,
Canning warned those whose acts threatened to force England into war, that
the war, if war arose, would be a war of opinion, and that England, however
earnestly she might endeavour to avoid it, could not avoid seeing ranked
under her banner all the restless and discontented of any nation with which
she might come into conflict. As for the Portuguese Constitution which
formed the real object of the Spanish attack, it had not, Canning said,
been given at the instance of Great Britain, but he prayed that Heaven
might prosper it. It was impossible to doubt that a Minister who spoke
thus, and who, even under expressions of regret, hinted at any alliance
with the revolutionary elements in France and Spain, was formidably in
earnest. The words and the action of Canning produced the effect which he
desired. The Government of Ferdinand discovered the means of checking the
activity of the Apostolicals: the presence of the British troops at Lisbon
enabled the Portuguese Regency to throw all its forces upon the invaders
and to drive them from the country. They were disbanded when they
re-crossed the Spanish frontier; the French Court loudly condemned their
immoral enterprise; and the Constitution of Portugal seemed, at least for
the moment, to have triumphed over its open and its secret enemies.
[The policy of Canning.]
The tone of the English Government had indeed changed since the time when
Metternich could express a public hope that the three Eastern Powers would
have the approval of this country in their attack upon the Constitution of
Naples. In 1820 such a profession might perhaps have passed for a mistake;
in 1826 it would have been a palpable absurdity. Both in England and on the
Continent it was felt that the difference between the earlier and the later
spirit of our policy was summed up in the contrast between Canning and
Castlereagh. It has become an article of historical faith that
Castlereagh's melancholy death brought one period of our foreign policy to
a close and inaugurated another: it has been said that Canning liberated
England from its Continental connexions; it has even been claimed for him
that he performed for Europe no less a task than the dissolution of the
Holy Alliance. [347] The figure of Canning is indeed one that will for ever
fill a great space in European history; and the more that is known of the
opposition which he encountered both from his sovereign and from his great
rival Wellington, the greater must be our admiration for his clear, strong
mind, and for the conquering force of his character. But the legend which
represents English policy as taking an absolutely new departure in 1822
does not correspond to the truth of history. Canning was a member of the
Cabinet from 1816 to 1820; it is a poor compliment to him to suppose that
he either exercised no influence upon his colleagues or acquiesced in a
policy of which he disapproved; and the history of the Congress of
Aix-la-Chapelle proves that his counsels had even at that time gained the
ascendant. The admission made by Castlereagh in 1820, after Canning had
left the Cabinet, that Austria, as a neighbouring and endangered State, had
a right to suppress the revolutionary constitution of Naples, would
probably not have gained Canning's assent; in all other points, the action
of our Government at Troppau and Laibach might have been his own. Canning
loved to speak of his system as one of neutrality, and of non-interference
in that struggle between the principles of despotism and of democracy which
seemed to be spreading over Europe. He avowed his sympathy for Spain as the
object of an unjust and unprovoked war, but he most solemnly warned the
Spaniards not to expect English assistance. He prayed that the Constitution
of Portugal might prosper, but he expressly disclaimed all connection with
its origin, and defended Portugal not because it was a Constitutional
State, but because England was bound by treaties to defend it against
foreign invasion. The arguments against intervention on behalf of Spain
which Canning addressed to the English sympathisers with that country might
have been uttered by Castlereagh; the denial of the right of foreign Powers
to attack the Spanish Constitution, with which Castlereagh headed his own
instructions for Verona, might have been written by Canning.
[Canning and the European concert.]
The statements that Canning withdrew England from the Continental system,
and that he dissolved the Holy Alliance, cannot be accepted without large
correction. The general relations existing between the Great Powers were
based, not on the ridiculous and obsolete treaty of Holy Alliance, but on
the Acts which were signed at the Conference of Aix-la-Chapelle. The first
of these was the secret Quadruple Treaty which bound England and the three
Eastern Powers to attack France in case a revolution in that country should
endanger the peace of Europe; the second was the general declaration of all
the five Powers that they would act in amity and take counsel with one
another. From the first of these alliances Canning certainly did not
withdraw England. He would perhaps have done so in 1823 if the Quadruple
Treaty had bound England to maintain the House of Bourbon on the French
throne; but it had been expressly stated that the deposition of the
Bourbons would not necessarily and in itself be considered by England as
endangering the peace of Europe. This treaty remained in full force up to
Canning's death; and if a revolutionary army had marched from Paris upon
Antwerp, he would certainly have claimed the assistance of the three
Eastern Powers. With respect to the general concert of Europe, established
or confirmed by the declaration of Aix-la-Chapelle, this had always been
one of varying extent and solidity. Both France and England had held
themselves aloof at Troppau. The federative action was strongest and most
mischievous not before but after the death of Castlereagh, and in the
period that followed the Congress of Verona; for though the war against
Spain was conducted by France alone, the three Eastern Powers had virtually
made themselves responsible for the success of the enterprise, and it was
the influence of their ambassadors at Paris and Madrid which prevented any
restrictions from being imposed upon Ferdinand's restored sovereignty.
Canning is invested with a spurious glory when it is said that his action
in Spain and in Portugal broke up the league of the Continental Courts.
Canning indeed shaped the policy of our own country with equal independence
and wisdom, but the political centre of Europe was at this time not London
but Vienna. The keystone of the European fabric was the union of Austria
and Russia, and this union was endangered, not by anything that could take
place in the Spanish Peninsula, but by the conflicting interests of these
two great States in regard to the Ottoman Empire. From the moment when the
Treaty of Paris was signed, every Austrian politician fixed his gaze upon
the roads leading to the Lower Danube, and anxiously noted the signs of
coming war, or of continued peace, between Russia and the Porte. [348] It
was the triumph of Metternich to have diverted the Czar's thoughts during
the succeeding years from his grievances against Turkey, and to have
baffled the Russian diplomatists and generals who, like Capodistrias,
sought to spur on their master to enterprises of Eastern conquest. At the
Congress of Verona the shifting and incoherent manoeuvres of Austrian
statecraft can indeed only be understood on the supposition that Metternich
was thinking all the time less of Spain than of Turkey, and struggling at
whatever cost to maintain that personal influence over Alexander which had
hitherto prevented the outbreak of war in the East. But the antagonism so
long suppressed broke out at last. The progress of the Greek insurrection
brought Austria and Russia not indeed into war, but into the most
embittered hostility with one another. It was on this rock that the
ungainly craft which men called the Holy Alliance at length struck and went
to pieces. Canning played his part well in the question of the East, but he
did not create this question. There were forces at work which, without his
intervention, would probably have made an end of the despotic amities of
1815. It is not necessary to the title of a great statesman that he should
have called into being the elements which make a new political order
possible; it is sufficient praise that he should have known how to turn
them to account.