recognition of the South American republics. Presently, in order to
preserve the balance of power between slavery and freedom, it was enacted
that Maine was to be admitted on March 15, making twelve free and twelve
slave holding States. A bill was passed pronouncing the maritime slave
trade piracy. On October 20, Spain ratified the treaty ceding Florida.
Congress reassembled in November. James Monroe and John Quincy Adams were
the opposing candidates for the Presidency. Monroe received 231 electoral
votes; Adams received one from a New Hampshire elector who voted in
sympathy with a popular sentiment that Washington should stand alone in the
high honor of a unanimous choice.
[Sidenote: Quinine]
In this year the great fever drug quinine was first clearly separated and
identified by Drs. Pelletier and Caventou, who were spurred on to their
labors by the previous experiments with the drug by Drs. Gomez and Lambert.
In its crude form the bark of the chinchona tree had been used for its
medical properties since times immemorial.
[Sidenote: Homeopathy]
It was about this time that the German physician Hahnemann's theory of
homeopathy caused general discussion among medical practitioners and
laymen. Hahnemann's first thesis was that many diseases could most quickly
be eradicated by similar effects--fever with fever, poison with
anti-poison. This theory of "like with like"--the Greek homoia
homoiois--was accordingly named by him homeopathy. It was most fully
expressed in his "Dogma of Rational Healing" and in the later treatise
"Chronic Ailments and their Homeopathic Cure." These books created such a
widespread sensation that they were at once translated into several
languages and ran through a great number of editions. As a matter of
course, Hahnemann's peculiar theories were violently combated by his fellow
practitioners.
[Sidenote: Hydropathy]
Almost at the same time with the rise of the new science of homeopathy came
Vincenz Priessnitz's innovation of hydropathy or water cure. He established
his first sanitarium at Grafenberg, his birthplace, and in the face of
vehement medical opposition soon won government recognition for his
sanitarium. Similar water-cure establishments were erected by many
imitators and followers in Germany and elsewhere.
[Sidenote: Convention of Troppau]
[Sidenote: Intervention in Naples]
Late in the year Emperor Alexander of Russia and Metternich came together
to settle on the counter strokes to be delivered against the revolutionists
of Spain and southern Italy. When Metternich first heard of the fall of
absolute government in Naples he was dismayed. Gentz, who saw him at that
time, has left this record: "Prince Metternich went to-day to inform the
Emperor of the sad events in Naples. As long as I know him I have never
seen him so upset by any event." Metternich had reason to feel alarmed. A
revolution in Naples was almost sure to be followed by an Italian uprising
in the Austrian possessions of Venice and an insurrection in the Papal
States. Had Metternich felt free to follow his own devices, he would
forthwith have marched an Austrian army into southern Italy to put an end
to the troubles there. With all his exasperation he did not feel free to
cut loose from joint action with the Czar and with the other sovereigns of
Europe. Thus it came that the summer was spent in arranging for another
conference of the allied monarchs. They met on October 20, at Troppau in
Moravia. The Emperors of Austria and Russia and the King of Prussia
received one another in state. The envoys of England and France were found
to be in accord against armed intervention in southern Italy. The other
powers determined to proceed on their course without them. Metternich's
diplomatic dealings with the Czar were greatly hampered by the clever
intrigues of Count Capodistrias, Alexander's foreign minister. For once
Metternich found himself matched by a diplomat even more subtle than
himself. In the end, he prevailed over Capodistrias sufficiently to
overcome Alexander's scruples against harsh measures in Naples. It was
determined to invite King Ferdinand to meet the sovereigns at Leibach, in
Austria, and to address a summons to the Neapolitans commanding them to
abandon their constitution, under threat of immediate invasion. Accordingly
a note was issued from Troppau to all the courts of Europe, embodying the
doctrine of federative intervention, as applied to Naples.
[Sidenote: King Ferdinand's duplicity]
As soon as King Ferdinand received the summons he prepared to leave Naples.
The populace became aroused, and angry crowds surrounded the palace.
Ferdinand was not allowed to leave Naples until he had once more sworn on
his honor to maintain the constitution borrowed from Spain. The King took
this oath as readily as he did the other. Then he journeyed northward. Half
way, at Leghorn, he sent letters to each of the five principal sovereigns
of Europe declaring his last declaration just as null and void as his
previous perjuries. His double-dealing was rather too much even for the
Holy Alliance. As Gentz, the secretary of the Congress, expressed himself
in private: "The conduct of this wretched sovereign, since the beginning of
his troubles, has been nothing but a tissue of weaknesses and lies. Happily
they will remain secret. No Cabinet will care to draw them from the
graveyard of its archives. Till then there is not much harm done."
[Sidenote: Benjamin West]
Benjamin West, the celebrated American-English artist, died at London in
his eighty-second year. At the opening of the Eighteenth Century, West was
in the forefront of the agitation that grew out of his contested succession
to Sir Joshua Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy. Wearied with
these quarrels he visited Paris, where he studied the newly pillaged
masterpieces at the Louvre. He resigned from the Royal Academy, but was
almost unanimously re-elected. It was then that he painted his famous
"Christ Healing the Sick." His later works failed to attain the success of
his earlier historical paintings. When West died, his reputation had
declined appreciably, still a public funeral at St. Paul's Cathedral was
accorded to him, a unique honor for an American.
1821
[Sidenote: Congress of Leibach]
[Sidenote: Naples under duress]
The Congress of Leibach met in January. It was attended by the
representatives of Russia, Austria, Prussia, England, France, Sardinia and
Modena. When King Ferdinand of Naples arrived he was received by the
Emperors of Russia and Austria in person. It was predetermined that
absolute government in Naples should be restored by Austrian arms. The only
problem remaining to diplomacy was to put a respectable face on King
Ferdinand's dishonor. Capodistrias offered to make up some fictitious
correspondence in which Ferdinand was proudly to uphold the constitution
which he had sworn to support, and to yield protestingly to the powers only
after actual threats of war. The device was rejected as too transparent.
Moreover, the old king scarcely cared how his conduct appeared to his
subjects. A letter was sent in his name to his son, the acting-viceroy,
stating that the Powers were determined not to tolerate the order of things
sprung from revolution, and that certain securities for peace would have to
be given. The reference to securities meant the occupation of the country
by an Austrian army. The letter reached Naples on February 9. Three days
before the Austrian troops had received their orders to cross the Po.
[Sidenote: Battle of Rieti]
[Sidenote: Revolt of Piedmont]
The invading army of Austria was 50,000 strong. The Neapolitan soldiers
numbered a little more than 40,000, of whom 12,000 were in Sicily engaged
at Palermo in suppressing a counter revolution for home rule. At the first
encounter at Rieti in the Papal territory, the Neapolitans under General
Pepe were utterly routed. Their forces melted away, as they did when Murat
made his last stroke for Italy and Napoleon. Not a single strong point was
defended. On March 24, the Austrians entered Naples. Then came a moment of
danger. Rebellion broke out in Piedmont, and an attempt was made to unite
the troops of Piedmont with those of Lombardy. The King of Piedmont rather
than sign the Spanish Constitution abdicated his throne. On the refusal of
the King's brother, Charles Felix, to recognize a constitution, his cousin
Charles Albert of Carignano was made the regent and commander of the
troops. He advanced so cautiously that the conspirators at Milan dared not
follow suit with a revolution of their own. In the meanwhile the Czar had
ordered 100,000 Russians to march in the direction of the Adriatic. The
Austrian forces advanced westward from the Venetian strongholds, and,
brushing aside all resistance, entered Piedmont.
[Sidenote: End of Italian revolution]
[Sidenote: Silvio Pellico]
The victory of absolutism in Italy was complete. Courts-martial sat all
over Italy. Morelli, the officer who had led out the so-called sacred band
of Nola, was shot. His followers were expressly excluded from all amnesty
acts. An attempted insurrection in Sicily cost the conspirators their
lives. Hundreds of persons were cast into prison, or were marched off to
distant fortresses in Austria. It was at this time that Silvio Pellico, the
author of the famous "Prison Records," was sent to the dungeon of
Spielberg. Then began that long stream of fugitives to England and America.
[Sidenote: Revolt in Brazil]
[Sidenote: Mexican independence]
[Sidenote: San Martin's Campaign]
The Holy Alliance, sitting at Leibach, thought the time was ripe to
pronounce its anathema against all peoples seeking their liberties
elsewhere than in the grace of their legitimate sovereigns. Yet the spirit
of revolt was abroad, and its flames continued to flicker up at widely
separated points. On February 26, the Portuguese troops in Brazil rose in
revolt. The king, still residing at Rio Janeiro, was compelled to appoint a
new Ministry pledged to give to both Portugal and Brazil a new
representative system. In Mexico, General Iturbide, at the same time,
issued a pronunciamiento, containing his so-called "Plan of Iguala," which
proposed independence for Mexico under a Spanish Bourbon prince. Several
rebel leaders acquiesced in this, and forced the Spanish viceroy to resign.
Juan O'Donoju became acting-viceroy. He signed a treaty with Iturbide
virtually accepting the plan. The people of Buenos Ayres profited by the
military troubles in Brazil to throw in their lot with that of the
Argentine Republic. Their popular idol, San Martin, meanwhile was leading
his victorious troops from Chile into Peru. Lima, one of the greatest
Spanish strongholds in South America, was threatened by the revolutionists.
[Sidenote: War in Annam]
[Sidenote: Taouk-Wang]
At the other end of the earth, the new force of national feeling showed
itself in popular uprisings. In distant Annam the death of Emperor
Gia-Long, followed by a bloody struggle for the succession between his
sons, incited the people to a national demonstration against the
encroachments of the French in Tonquin. In China the new Emperor Taouk-Wang
was enthroned. He was the first to throw his whole personal influence
against the evils of the opium trade inflicted upon China by English
merchants since 1800.
[Sidenote: Philike Hetairia]
[Sidenote: Ypsilanti]
[Sidenote: Vladimiresco]
In Greece and in the Balkans the people rose against the yoke of Turkey.
The plan of the Philike Hetairia--_i.e._ Patriotic Association--was to
begin their revolution on the Danube, so as to induce Russia to take a hand
in their favor. They believed that Capodistrias, the Prime Minister of
Russia, himself a Greek, would win the Czar to their cause. Unfortunately
for them, Metternich's influence proved stronger than that of the Greek
Minister. Capodistrias deemed it advisable to publish a pamphlet warning
his countrymen against any rash step. Failing to win the open support of
Capodistrias, the Hetairists turned to Prince Alexander Ypsilanti, a Greek
exile serving in the Russian army. Ypsilanti agreed to raise the standard
of revolt in Moldavia. It was arranged that Theodore Vladimiresco, a
Roumanian who had served in the Russian army, was to call his countrymen to
arms against the Turk. Then the Greeks were to step in, and the help of
Russia was to be invoked.
[Sidenote: Rising of Roumania]
In February, Vladimiresco proclaimed the abolition of feudal servitude in
Roumania, and marched with a horde of peasants upon Bucharest. Early in
March, the Greek troops at Galatz, let loose by their commander, Karavias,
massacred the Turkish population of that town.
Ypsilanti, waiting on the Russian frontier, crossed the Pruth and appeared
at Jassee with a few hundred followers. A proclamation was issued, calling
upon all Christians to rise against the Crescent. Ypsilanti went so far as
to declare that "a great European power," meaning Russia, was "pledged to
support him." The Greek Hospodar of Jassee immediately surrendered the
government, and supplied a large sum of money. Troops to the number of
2,000 gathered around Ypsilanti. The road to the Danube lay open.
[Sidenote: Ypsilanti repudiated]
[Sidenote: Death of Vladimiresco]
[Sidenote: Georgakis]
Ypsilanti wasted valuable time loitering at Jassee. A month was lost before
he reached Bucharest. He delayed partly on account of his expectations of
Russian help in response to a letter he had written to the Czar. The delay
proved fatal to him. The Czar, now wholly under the influence of
Metternich, sent a stern answer from Leibach. Ypsilanti was dismissed from
the Russian service. The Russian consul at Jassee issued a manifesto that
Russia repudiated and condemned Ypsilanti's enterprise. The Patriarch of
Constantinople was made to issue a ban of excommunication against the
rebels. In an official note of the Powers, the Congress of Leibach branded
the Greek revolt as a token of the same spirit which had produced the
revolution of Italy and Spain. Turkish troops crossed the Danube. The
Roumanian peasants, seeing no help from Russia, held aloof. Vladimiresco
plotted against the Greeks. It was in vain that brave Georgakis captured
the traitor at his own headquarters and carried him to his death in the
Greek camp. Ypsilanti was defeated in his first encounter with the Turks.
He retired before them toward the Austrian frontier. In the end he fled
across the border and was promptly made a prisoner in Austria. His
followers dearly sold their lives. At Skuleni, 400 of them under Georgakis
made a last stand on the Pruth. They were surrounded by ten times their
number. Georgakis refused to surrender. Bidding his followers flee, at the
moment when the Turks broke in the doors, he blew himself up in the
monastery of Skuleni.
[Sidenote: Revolt of Morea]
[Sidenote: Gregorios hanged]
At the news of Ypsilanti's uprising in Moldavia the entire Greek population
of the Morea rose against the Turk. From the outset, the Moreotes waged a
war of extermination. They massacred all Turks, men, women and children.
Within a few weeks the open country was swept clear of its Mohammedan
population. The fugitive Turks were invested within the walls of
Tripolitza, Patras, and other strong towns. Sultan Mahmud took prompt
vengeance. A number of innocent Greeks at Constantinople were strangled by
his executioners. The fury of the Moslem was let loose on the Infidel. All
Greek settlements along the Bosphorus were burned. But the crowning stroke
came on Easter Sunday, the most sacred day of the Greek Church. The
Patriarch of Constantinople, while he was celebrating service, was summoned
away by the dragoman of the Porte. At the order of the Sultan he was haled
before a hastily assembled synod and there degraded from his office as a
traitor. The synod was commanded to elect his successor. While the
trembling prelates did their bidding, Patriarch Gregorios was led out in
his sacred robes and hanged at the gate of his palace. His body remained
hanging throughout the Easter celebration, and was then given to the Jews
to be dragged through the streets and cast into the Bosphorus. A similar
fate befell the Greek archbishops of Salonica, Tirnovo, and Adrianople. The
body of Gregorios floating in the sea was picked up by a Greek ship and
carried to Odessa. This return to Christian soil of the remains of the
Patriarch was hailed as a miracle in Russia. Gregorios was solemnly buried
by the Russian Government as a martyr.
[Sidenote: Russia aroused]
[Sidenote: The Czar found wanting]
If the will of the Russian people had been carried out, the Russian army
and nation would have avenged the murder of their high-priest by an
immediate war upon the Turks. Strogonov, the Russian Ambassador at
Constantinople, at once proposed to his diplomatic colleagues to join him
in calling for warships to protect the Christians there. Lord Stranford,
the British Ambassador, refused to accede to this proposition.
Single-handed, Strogonov presented an ultimatum to the Sultan demanding the
restoration of Christian churches and the Porte's protection for Christian
worship. A written answer was exacted within eight days. Encouraged by
England's attitude, the Sultan ignored Strogonov's requests. On July 27,
the Russian Ambassador left Constantinople. To the amazement of his
moujiks, the Czar did not declare war. The councils of Prince Metternich
prevailed. With the help of the representatives of England, Metternich
persuaded the Czar to view the rebellion of Greece as a mere unfortunate
disturbance. Any countenance of it, he argued, would imperil the peace of
Europe.
[Sidenote: Rising of the Greeks]
[Sidenote: Ali Pasha]
[Sidenote: Moreote campaign]
[Sidenote: Petrobei]
[Sidenote: Kolokotrones]
[Sidenote: Maurokordatos]
[Sidenote: Massacre of Navarino]
[Sidenote: Sack of Tripolitza]
The murder of the Greek Patriarch was followed by risings of the Greeks
throughout continental Greece and the Archipelago. Here, as in the Morea,
the cause of Greek freedom was disgraced by massacres, and indignities to
Turkish women. The Sultan's troops, led by able commanders, retaliated in
kind. Khurshid, with a large Turkish army, besieged Janina. He held firmly
to his task, even after his whole household fell into the hands of the
Moreotes. The Greeks in Thessaly failed to rise, and thus the border
provinces were saved for the Ottoman Empire. The risings in remoter
districts were soon quelled. In Epirus, Ali Pasha, the Albanian chieftain,
was surrounded by overwhelming numbers and lost his life. On the Macedonian
coast the Hetairist revolt, in which the monks of Mount Athos took part,
proved abortive. Moreover, the desultory warfare on water carried on by the
islanders of Hydra, Spetza, and Psara served only to annoy the Turks. The
real campaign was waged in the Morea, where Tripolitza, the seat of the
Turkish Government, was besieged by the insurgents. Demetrios Ypsilanti,
Prince Alexander's brother, landed on the coast and was welcomed as a
leader by the peasants in arms. Three other leaders rose to prominence.
First, in the eyes of the people, came Petrobei, chief of the family of
Mauromichalis. Surrounded by his nine sons, this sturdy chieftain appeared
like one of the old Homeric kings. Second in popular favor was
Kolokotrones, a typical modern Clepht, cunning and treacherous, but a born
soldier. The ablest political leader was Maurokordatos, a man of some
breadth of view and foresight, but over-cautious as a general. The early
insurgent successes were marred by bad faith and gross savagery. On the
surrender of Navarino, in August, a formal capitulation was signed,
safeguarding the lives of the Turkish inhabitants. In the face of this
compact the victorious Greeks put men, women and children to the sword. Two
months later the Turkish garrison of Tripolitza, after sustaining a siege
of six months, began negotiations for surrender. In the midst of the truce,
the Greek soldiery got wind of a secret bargain of their leaders to extend
protection for private gain. In defiance of the officers, the peasant
soldiers stormed Tripolitza and scaled the walls. Then followed three days
of indiscriminate looting and carnage. By thousands, the Turks, with their
women and children, were slaughtered. Kolokotrones himself records how he
rode from the gateway to the citadel of Tripolitza, his horse's hoofs
touching nothing but human bodies.
[Sidenote: Philhellenism]
The Greek struggle for independence aroused conflicting emotions in Europe.
The passionate sympathy of the Russians rested wholly on their religious
bonds. The more enlightened Philhellenes of France and Germany affected to
see in this struggle a revival of the ancient Greek spirit that blazed
forth at Thermopylae and Marathon. For this same reason, perhaps, Metternich
and his colleagues in the Holy Alliance looked upon the Greek revolution
with an evil eye. Any cause espoused by the hot-headed liberals at the
universities in those days of itself became obnoxious to the reactionary
rulers of the German and Austrian states.
[Sidenote: Lord Byron's Greek lyrics]
The sympathy with the Greeks was most pronounced in England. There the
stirring lyrics of Lord Byron had reached the height of their popularity.
His songs of Greece and Greek freedom were justly regarded as among his
best. It was but a short time before this that the poet, to use his own
phrase, had awakened one morning to find himself famous. Now his Greek
songs were hailed by the whole world as classics. Notable among them were
the "Isles of Greece," embodied in the third canto of his "Don Juan" with
the famous stanza:
The mountains look on Marathon--
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone
I dreamed that Greece might still be free.
And the equally celebrated lines from "The Bride of Abydos":
Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle
Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime?
Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,
Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime!
[Sidenote: Death of Keats]
[Sidenote: Byron's satire]
[Sidenote: Keats's work]
In English literary annals this year was marked furthermore by the death of
John Keats. He was but twenty-five, still in the first flush of his genius.
Keats was buried in Rome, where he died. On his gravestone is the epitaph
composed by himself: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." It was
generally assumed in England that the poet's death was caused by his
anguish over the merciless criticisms of "Blackwood's Magazine" and the
"Quarterly Review." Lord Byron was unkind enough to exploit this notion in
his "Don Juan":
John Keats, who was killed off by one critique,
Just as he really promised something great
If not intelligible, without Greek
Contrived to talk about the gods of late
Much as they might have been supposed to speak.
Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate;
'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.
As a matter of fact Keats died of consumption. The ravages of this disease
in his case were accelerated by his feverish passion for poetry, his love
affair with Fanny Brawne, financial embarrassments, and only to a slight
extent by the inevitable disappointment arising from adverse criticisms.
What Byron did for modern Greece in England, Keats may be said to have done
for ancient Greece. The beautiful songs of Greece, embodied in "Endymion"
and "Hyperion," no less than the enthusiastic odes and sonnets in praise of
Hellenic works of art, opened the eyes of many of the contemporaries of
Keats to the enduring beauties of Greece. It was in his exquisite "Ode to
a Grecian Urn," that Keats expressed his poetical master passion for
beauty:
Beauty is truth, truth beauty--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
[Illustration: LORD BYRON
Painted by Maurin]
[Sidenote: "Adonais"]
Shortly after Keats's death appeared one of the most beautiful of Shelley's
longer poems--"Adonais," written as an elegy on the death of Keats: